CHD Defeats NY State Healthcare Workers COVID Mandate!
Children’s Health Defense | January 13, 2023
In a groundbreaking decision filed today, NY State (NYS) Supreme Court Judge Gerard Neri held that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is now “null, void, and of no effect.” The court held that the NYS Dept. of Health lacked the authority to impose such a mandate as this power is reserved to the state legislature. Furthermore, the court found that the mandate was “arbitrary and capricious” as COVID-19 vaccines do not stop transmission, vitiating any rational basis for a mandate.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) financed this lawsuit on behalf of Medical Professionals for Informed Consent and several individual healthcare workers. Sujata Gibson, lead attorney, said, “This is a huge win for New York healthcare workers, who have been deprived of their livelihoods for more than a year. This is also a huge win for all New Yorkers, who are facing dangerous and unprecedented healthcare worker shortages throughout New York State.”
CHD President Mary Holland stated, “We are thrilled by this critical win against a COVID vaccine mandate, correctly finding that any such mandate at this stage, given current knowledge is arbitrary. We hope that this decision will continue the trend towards lifting these dangerous and unwarranted vaccine mandates throughout the country.”
We are off to a great start in 2023.
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
WHO Proposals Could Strip Nations of Their Sovereignty, Create Worldwide Totalitarian State, Expert Warns
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 13, 2023
Secretive negotiations took place this week in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR), considered a binding instrument of international law.
Similar negotiations took place last month for drafting a new WHO pandemic treaty.
While the two are often conflated, the proposed IHR amendments and the proposed pandemic treaty represent two separate but related sets of proposals that would fundamentally alter the WHO’s ability to respond to “public health emergencies” throughout the world — and, critics warn, significantly strip nations of their sovereignty.
According to author and researcher James Roguski, these two proposals would transform the WHO from an advisory organization to a global governing body whose policies would be legally binding.
They also would greatly expand the scope and reach of the IHR, institute a system of global health certificates and “passports” and allow the WHO to mandate medical examinations, quarantine and treatment.
Roguski said the proposed documents would give the WHO power over the means of production during a declared pandemic, call for the development of IHR infrastructure at “points of entry” (such as national borders), redirect billions of dollars to the “Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex” and remove mention of “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said the proposed documents may also contravene international law.
Boyle, author of several international law textbooks and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, recently spoke with The Defender about the dangers — and potential illegality — of these two proposed documents
Other prominent analysts also sounded the alarm.
Proposals would create ‘worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state’
Meeting in Geneva between Jan. 9-13, the WHO’s IHR Review Committee worked to develop “technical recommendations to the [WHO’s] Director-General on amendments proposed by State Parties to the IHR,” according to a WHO document.
The IHR was first enacted in 2005, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1, and took effect in 2007. They constitute one of only two legally binding treaties the WHO has achieved since its inception in 1948 — the other being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
As previously reported by The Defender, the IHR framework already allows the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency in any country, without the consent of that country’s government, though the framework requires the two sides to first attempt to reach an agreement.
According to the same WHO document, the recommendations of the IHR Review Committee and the member states’ Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (WGIHR) will be reported to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by mid-January, in the leadup to the WHO’s 76th World Health Assembly in late May.
Boyle said he questioned the legality of the above documents, citing for instance the fact that “the proposed WHO treaty violates the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,” which was ratified in 1969, and which Boyle described as “the international law of treaties for every state in the world.”
Boyle explained the difference between the latest pandemic treaty and IHR proposals. “The WHO treaty would set up a separate international organization, whereas the proposed regulations would work within the context of the WHO we have today.”
However, he said, “Having read through both of them, it’s a distinction without a difference.” He explained:
“Either one or both will set up a worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state under the control of Tedros and the WHO, which are basically a front organization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and the Chinese Communist government that pays a good chunk of their bills.
“Either they’ll get the regulations or they’ll get the treaty, but both are existentially dangerous. These are truly dangerous, existentially dangerous and insidious documents.”
Boyle, who has written extensively on international law and argued cases on behalf of Palestine and Bosnia in the International Court of Justice, told The Defender he has “never read treaties and draft international organizations that are so completely totalitarian as the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty,” adding:
“Both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty, as far as I can tell from reading them, are specifically designed to circumvent national, state and local government authorities when it comes to pandemics, the treatment for pandemics and also including in there, vaccines.”
Talks for both the proposed pandemic treaty and the proposed IHR amendments appear to follow a similar timeline, in order to be submitted for consideration during the WHO’s World Health Assembly May 21-30.
“It’s clear to me they are preparing both the regulations and the treaty for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May of 2023,” Boyle said. “That’s where we stand right now as I see it.”
According to the WHO, the International Negotiating Body (INB) working on the Pandemic Treaty will present a “progress report” at the May meeting, with a view toward presenting its “final outcome” to the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024.
Boyle: proposed legally-binding pandemic treaty violates international law
Commenting on the pandemic treaty, Tedros said, “The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned.” He described the current “conceptual zero draft” of the treaty as “a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”
Roguski, in his analysis of the “Pandemic Treaty,” warned that it will create a “legally binding framework convention that would hand over enormous additional, legally binding authority to the WHO.”
The WHO’s 194 member states would, in other words, “agree to hand over their national sovereignty to the WHO.” This would “dramatically expand the role of the WHO,” by including an “entirely new bureaucracy,” the “Conference of the Parties,” which would include not just member states but “relevant stakeholders.”
This new bureaucracy, according to Roguski, would “be empowered to analyze social media to identify misinformation and disinformation in order to counter it with their own propaganda.”
The WHO currently partners with numerous such organizations, such as “fact-checking” firm NewsGuard, for these purposes.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty also would speed up the approval process for drugs and injectables, provide support for gain-of-function research, develop a “Global Review Mechanism” to oversee national health systems, implement the concept of “One Health,” and increase funding for so-called “tabletop exercises” or “simulations.”
“One Health,” a brainchild of the WHO, is described as “an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment” that “mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines and communities” and “is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In turn, “tabletop exercises” and “simulations” such as “Event 201,” were remarkably prescient in “predicting” the COVID-19 and monkeypox outbreaks before they actually occurred.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty would provide a structure to redirect massive amounts of money “via crony capitalism to corporations that profit from the declarations of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern” (‘pandemics’) and “the fear-mongering that naturally follows such emergency declarations.”
Boyle warned that the treaty and proposed IHR regulations go even further. “The WHO, which is a rotten, corrupt, criminal, despicable organization, will be able to issue orders going down the pike to your primary care physician on how you should be treated in the event they proclaim a pandemic.”
Moreover, Boyle said, the pandemic treaty would be unlike many other international agreements in that it would come into immediate effect. He told The Defender :
“If you read the WHO Treaty, at the very end, it says quite clearly that it will come into effect immediately upon signature.
“That violates the normal processes for ratification of treaties internationally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and also under the United States Constitution, requiring the United States Senate to give its advice and consent to the terms of the treaty by two-thirds vote.”
Indeed, Article 32 of the proposed treaty regarding its “Provisional application” states:
“The [treaty] may be applied provisionally by a Party that consents to its provisional application by so notifying the Depository in writing at the time of signature or deposit of its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval, formal confirmation or accession.
“Such provisional application shall become effective from the date of receipt of the notification by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
“Whoever drafted that knew exactly what they were doing to bring it into force immediately upon signature,” said Boyle. “Assuming the World Health Assembly adopts the treaty in May, Biden can just order Fauci or whoever his representative is there to sign the treaty, and it will immediately come into effect on a provisional basis,” he added.
“I don’t know, in any of my extensive studies of international treaties, let alone treaties setting up international organizations, of any that has a provision like that in it,” said Boyle. “It’s completely insidious.”
Proposed amendments to IHR described as a WHO ‘power grab’
According to Roguski, who said the WHO is “attempting a power grab,” the proposed amendments to the IHR may be even more concerning than the pandemic treaty.
Roguski wrote that while he believes the pandemic treaty is “an important issue,” he also thinks it is “functioning as a decoy that is designed to distract people from the much larger and more immediate threat to our rights and freedoms, which are the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.”
The IHR Review Committee working on the proposed amendments “began its work on 6 October 2022,” according to a WHO document, and has convened five times since then, including this week’s meetings in Geneva. Access to the meetings was prohibited for the unvaccinated.
The final proposals of the IHR Review Committee and the WGIHR will be presented to Tedros in mid-January and to the World Health Assembly in May. According to Roguski, “If the proposed amendments are presented to the 76th World Health Assembly, they could be adopted by a simple majority of the 194 member nations.”
As a result, Roguski said, compared to the proposed pandemic treaty, “The amendments to the International Health Regulations are a much more immediate and direct threat to the sovereignty of every nation and the rights and freedoms of every person on earth.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would seek to remove 3 very important aspects of the existing regulations,” including “removing respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” from the text of the IHR, changing the IHR from “non-binding” to “legally binding” and obligating nations to “assist” other nations.
“Essentially, the WHO’s Emergency Committee would be given the power to overrule actions taken by sovereign nations,” Roguski said.
According to Boyle, similarly to the pandemic treaty, “again, Biden can instruct his representative in May, assuming they adopt the regulations, to sign the regulations. And then, the Biden administration will treat that as a binding international agreement, just like they did with the 2005 regulations,” referring to the original IHR ratified that year.
He added:
“Those [the 2005 IHR] were signed and the U.S. State Department at that time considered them to be a legally binding international executive agreement that they list in the official State Department publication, ‘Treaties in Force.’
“In other words, they treat the 2005 regulations as if they were a treaty that never received the advice and consent of the United States Senate, and therefore the supreme law of the land under Article 6 of the United States Constitution that would be binding upon all state and local governments here in the United States, even if they are resisting, the IHR regulations or the WHO treaty.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would implement a great number of changes that everyone should absolutely disagree with.”
These changes include “dramatically expand[ing] the scope of the International Health Regulations from dealing with actual risks to dealing with anything that had the potential to be a risk to public health,” which Roguski said “would open up the doors wide to massive abuse beyond anything we have seen over the past three years.”
The proposed amendments also would shift the WHO’s focus “away from the health of real people” to “place primary preference upon the resilience of health care systems,” and would establish a “National Competent Authority” that “would be given great power to implement the obligations under these regulations,” Roguski said.
If the amendments come to pass, Roguski said, “The WHO will no longer need to consult any sovereign nation in which an event may or may not be occurring within that nation before declaring that there is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern within the borders of that nation.”
“Intermediate Public Health Alert[s],” “Public Health Emergenc[ies] of Regional Concern” and “World Alert and Response Notice[s]” could also be declared by the WHO’s director general, while the WHO would be recognized “as the guidance and coordinating authority during international emergencies.”
During such real or “potential” emergencies, the amendments would empower the WHO to mandate a variety of policies globally, which would be legally binding on member nations.
These policies could include requiring medical examinations or proof of such exams, requiring proof of vaccination, refusing travel, implementing quarantine and contact tracing or requiring travelers to furnish health declarations, to fill out passenger locator forms and to carry digital global health certificates.
“Competent health authorities” would also be empowered to commandeer aircraft and ships, while surveillance networks to “quickly detect public health events” within member nations would also be set up, as per the proposed amendments.
The WHO would also be empowered to be involved in the drafting of national health legislation.
The proposed amendments would give the WHO the power to develop an “Allocation Plan,” allowing it to commandeer the means of production of pharmaceuticals and other items during an “emergency,” and would oblige developed nations to provide “assistance” to developing nations.
“The proposed amendments … would facilitate digital access to everyone’s private health records,” Roguski said, and similar to the proposals in the pandemic treaty, would “also facilitate the censorship of any differing opinions under the guise of mis-information or dis-information.”
Roguski said the proposals are being made despite a “lack of input from the general public” by “unknown and unaccountable delegates” using vague and “undefined terminology” and vague criteria “by which to measure preparedness.”
He said the proposals would “trample our rights and restrict our freedoms,” including the right to privacy, to choose or refuse treatment, to express one’s opinions, to protect one’s children, to be with family and friends and to be free from discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of one’s vaccination status.
“The finality of decisions made by the Emergency Committee” foreseen by the amendments “would be a direct attack on national sovereignty,” Roguski said.
How did we get here?
According to the WHO, the members of the INB — during a meeting in Geneva July 18-21, 2022 — reached a “consensus,” agreeing that any new “convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” would be “legally binding” on member states.
For Boyle, this is the WHO’s response to the “enormous opposition” to the COVID-19-related restrictions of the past three years. He told The Defender :
“As far as I can figure out what happened here was this: As you know, there has been enormous opposition here in the United States [against] these totalitarian edicts coming out, and this was under both Trump and Biden.
“These totalitarian edicts coming out of the federal government, the White House, the CDC, everyone else on this pandemic and also the vaccine mandates, there’s enormous grassroots opposition. And so, as far as I can tell what happened, this culminated in Trump pulling us out of the WHO, which I think was a correct decision.
“So you know, I’m a political independent. I’m just looking at this subjectively. Now, what happened was then, when Biden came to power, his top scientific advisor was Tony Fauci. So Biden put us back into the WHO and then appointed Fauci as the U.S. representative on the Executive Committee of the WHO.
“That’s where both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty come from: to circumvent the enormous grassroots opposition to the handling of the edicts coming out of the federal government with respect to the pandemic and the vaccine mandates.”
Boyle explained what “legally binding” would mean in this context, if either set of proposals comes to pass:
“What will happen is the WHO will come up with an order, this new organization will come up with an order that they will then send to Washington, D.C., whereupon the Biden administration will enforce it as a binding international obligation of the United States of America under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, and it will usurp the state and local health authorities, who generally have constitutional authority to deal with public health under the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“The Biden administration will then argue that either the regulations or the treaty will usurp the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution and state and local health authorities, governors, attorney generals, public health authorities will have to obey [any] order coming out of the WHO.”
Referring to his remarks about the illegality of the two proposals under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Boyle clarified that under Article 18 of the convention, “a treaty does not come into force when signed. When the state has signed the treaty, it is only obligated to act in a manner that does not defeat the object and purpose of the treaty.”
Article 18 states:
“A State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty when: (a) it has signed the treaty or has exchanged instruments constituting the treaty subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty.”
According to Boyle a state’s signature “does not provisionally bring the treaty into force.”
Boyle also described the proposals as “a massive power grab by Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and Tedros.”
He added:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in any of my research, writing, teaching, litigating international organizations going back to the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899, up until today.”
Roguski and Boyle argued that the U.S. — and other countries — should exit the WHO. Boyle told The Defender :
“I’m not a supporter of President Trump, but I think we have to go back to pulling out of the WHO right away. In the last session of Congress, there was legislation introduced pulling us out of the WHO. We need that legislation reintroduced immediately, in this new session of Congress.
“I think the House of Representatives has to make it clear that they object, that there’s no way they are going to go along with any orders coming out of the WHO, the World Health Assembly [WHA] or this new international pandemic organization, and that they have the power of the purse and that they will defund anything related to the WHO.”
However, for Boyle, this is not just a matter for federal lawmakers. “We need, certainly, the state governments here in the United States to take the position that they will not comply with any decisions coming out of the WHO, the WHA or this new international pandemic organization,” adding that he recently made such recommendations to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“We need that replicated all over the United States, on a state-by-state basis,” said Boyle, “and I think we need it right away because they’re trying to rush through these WHO regulations and the [pandemic] treaty for the WHO assembly in May.”
Close cooperation with Gates Foundation, others
According to the WHO, the INB discussions are taking place not just among all member states, but also with “relevant stakeholders” listed in document A/INB/2/4.
Who are these stakeholders? One example is GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance, listed as an “Observer” alongside the Holy See (Vatican), Palestine and the Red Cross.
As previously reported by The Defender, GAVI proclaims a mission to “save lives and protect people’s health,” and states it “helps vaccinate almost half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.”
GAVI describes its core partnership with various international organizations, including names that are by now familiar: the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, and with the ID2020 Alliance, which supports the implementation of “vaccine passports.”
ID2020’s founding members include the Gates Foundation, Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation.
In turn, the Gates Foundation, alongside Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Air Transport Association (IATA — think “vaccine passports”) and the Population Council — founded by John D. Rockefeller and known for its “population control” initiatives — are listed in the same WHO document under Annex C as “non-state actors in official relations with WHO.”
“Other stakeholders, as decided by the INB, invited to attend [and] speak at open sessions of meetings of the INB [and] provide inputs to the INB” include IATA, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Bank Group.
“Open Philanthropy” and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and “nonprofit consumer advocacy organization” Public Citizen, are among the groups listed in the WHO document as “other stakeholders” that can “provide inputs to the INB,” alongside two Russian state-affiliated health organizations.
Lead U.S. negotiator for the pandemic treaty, Pamela Hamamoto — previously an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — “helped coordinate early responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2015 … and a strengthened WHO response.”
Hamamoto also was “instrumental in the 2014 launch of the Global Health Security Agenda” (GHSA), a “global effort … focused on strengthening the world’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats,” spearheaded by the CDC and founded with the purpose of accelerating the IHR passed in 2005.
The World Bank, the Global Health Security Consortium, the Private Sector Roundtable and the WHO are part of the GHSA’s steering group. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines, are members of the Private Sector Roundtable.
Advising the GHSA is the “GHSA Consortium,” which includes within its steering committee the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (which hosted Event 201) and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
As previously reported by The Defender, the NTI organized a “tabletop exercise” that predicted a “fictional” May 2022 monkeypox outbreak with remarkable accuracy. “Open Philanthropy” funded the final report for this exercise.
General members of the GHSA Consortium include the Gates Foundation, Amazon Web Services (which maintained COVID-19 immunization databases for the CDC), Boston University and the institution’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and Emergent BioSolutions.
As previously reported by The Defender, NEIDL is where “a new strain of COVID-19 that killed 80% of the mice infected with the virus” was recently developed.
Emergent BioSolutions, which produced the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and attained infamy for losing a $600 million federal contract after millions of vaccine doses were ruined, is connected to the 2001 Dark Winter anthrax simulation.
In June 2022, with the support of the U.S., Italy (current chair of the GHSA) and then-G20 president Indonesia, the World Bank announced the launch of a $1 billion “pandemic fund.”
In November 2022, Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin, at the G20 meeting held in Bali, pushed for an international “digital health certificate acknowledged by the WHO” to enable the public to “move around.” Indonesia is also a permanent member of the GHSA’s steering group.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
Nobody is safe from the Nudgers
Even Prime Ministers
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | January 11, 2023
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) was set up in 2010 by the UK Cabinet Office to nudge the population into doing things they might not necessarily decide to do without prompting. Since then it has gone from strength to strength, massively expanded and its methods exported around the world.
David Halpern, a British psychologist, has been in charge of the BIT since its formation. In an astonishing admission in a recent Telegraph ‘article’, David revealed how he and his team even used their techniques on Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK at the time.
Professor Halpern and his team had decided that everyone needed to wear masks but Boris wasn’t as convinced. This was probably due to all the previous advice, trials and science showing that masks did little to help during a pandemic. However, the behavioural scientist thought it was their jobs to push back against Boris’ leadership that saw masks as “nonsensical”.
“We did share with him a slide pack at one point. It had a series of images of pretty much every single world leader wearing a mask, and then a picture with him not,” he recalls. This nudge was used to point out that “a normal thing for a world leader to do right now is wear a mask”.
David Halpern brazenly tells the British public how he used psychological techniques to change the mind of the man running the country. From his point of view, it is perfectly acceptable to use nudging on anyone and everyone, no matter their position, on an issue that he has decided is the correct path to take.
And this is the nudging he admits to, what else did he nudge Boris Johnson or other members of the government to do without them realising it?
The ‘article’ was in fact a piece commissioned for the Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute an “independent, not-for-profit founded in 2020 to generate practical, high-quality scientific research and behavioural insights in the area of health hygiene”.
But how ‘independent’ and ‘not-for-profit’ is an institute set up by a company motivated by profit? The Institute was set up by the Reckitt Benckiser Group (trading as Reckitt) whose brands include Dettol (antiseptics), Disprin & Neurofen (pain killers), Strepsils (sore throat medicine), other health and cleaning brands and…you guessed it…masks.
For example, in 2018, Reckitt teamed up with the Cambridge Mask Co to produce masks combatting the effects of air pollution.
So where is the line between nudging and advertising? Here we have a company motivated by profit, setting up a behavioural insights research team which no doubt advises the BIT on health hygiene issues. The BIT then nudges the population to buy and wear masks, which in turn leads to a healthy profit for the original company.
And if something gets in the way, like the leader of a country, no matter, we’ll just nudge them to do what we want.
The Telegraph ‘article’ notes how, in the US, mask wearing became a political issue, which happened to a much lesser extent in the UK. They determine that not wearing masks in the UK is due to cultural, not political reasons.
Comparing mask-wearing in East Asia to the UK, they seem to suggest that the way forward is for the state to be given more power.
“Because of that experience [past pandemics], they have changed their statutory laws to allow the state to have certain rights during a pandemic that trump individuals’ liberty.”
Another reason masking in the West is so controversial, according to the ‘article’ is that we don’t have a collectivist mindset.
“it’s harder to get people to do something they don’t want to do for the common good,” Prof Kwong said. “Even if it’s something as simple or as easy as wearing a mask.”
David Halpern thinks there is a link between experience and collectivism. Therefore because of Covid-19 “the response to a future pandemic may be more prepared and less individualistic”.
In a glimpse at what may be in store for the West, Professor Halpern explains how ‘behavioural and cultural imprinting’ may be used to create ‘habit loops’.
“in the same way that your body reacts to seeing the virus before… behaviourally some of the same is true. You can respond because the behavioural pathway is ready.” This allows for a “much clearer habit loop” for everyone, as well as for society.
So to encourage future masking there will be several focus points. Using key figures to create a ‘thread’ or ‘prompt’ to declare a social norm. Religion will also be targeted to create ‘social cues’ as well as clear messaging.
All of this combined creates a ‘scaffolding’ which can then be removed once mask wearing becomes habit.
“It’s like a little booster shot for your vaccination,” said Prof Halpern. “Occasionally you need to be reminded of wearing a mask. Then it can become quite a robust habit.”
In this revealing insight in to how the head of the BIT thinks, we can see that David Halpern has no problem into nudging world leaders to follow an agenda that he has deemed to be the correct one. Everything must be done for the common good so individuals can’t stand in the way.
With a complete lack of transparency in the BIT, especially now that it is private company, we have no idea what ‘common good’ agendas they are pursuing. The common good might benefit society as a whole but be detrimental to a segment within it. Is that ok?
We have learnt recently that children were forced to wear masks in school purely to appease teaching unions who threatened to stop teaching. So in this case the common good can be defined as keeping children in school, justifying nudging the use of masks. It is easy to find a common good to pursue which can then result in the justification of something bad.
And using the common good can quickly get out of hand. The defence cultural specialist unit, which co-incidentally was launched in the same year as the BIT, works “side-by side with psychological operation teams”. This unit is part of the infamous 77th Brigade which has been used against Covid misinformation.
This in turn can lead to a whole legion of fake doctors pushing for masking and lockdowns.
The masking nudging/propaganda is returning again which can be seen in this Times article. Wear a mask to help the health service. Wear a mask voluntarily so that we don’t succumb to another bout of Covid. Wear a mask, it’s the responsible thing to do.
Clear as day when you understand what is going on but for the rest of the population the masks will start being worn again.
How the EU constructs Israel impunity
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | January 12, 2023
The EU could have availed itself of an opportunity to hold Israel accountable for its violations but, instead it opted for the lesser value of requesting financial reparation for the structures funded by the bloc in the Occupied West Bank and destroyed by the settler-colonial enterprise. Neither is the EU’s request a novelty, since demanding financial compensation from Israel has happened in the past, without any compliance, of course.
Recent focus on Israel’s planned forced displacement of Palestinians living in Masafer Yatta prompted 24 European Parliament members to contact the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarcic, regarding financial reparation. The bottom line is that, while the EU is within its rights to demand financial compensation, the issue at stake – which is the Palestinian people being forcibly displaced by Israel – is nowhere on the EU’s agenda.
Lenarcic’s response, partially quoted by Haaretz, confirms the EU’s repetitive requests for financial compensation and that “the European Union is continuing to work in this regard through a range of diplomatic and political channels”. Of little to no consequence was Lenarcic’s reminding that EU representatives often visit areas in the Occupied West Bank that are slated for demolition, ostensibly “to warn against”. Yet, besides the opportunistic exploitation, keeping tally of EU-funded destroyed dwellings is more a case in point and futile, too. As Lenarcic stated, “The list of possible steps to ensure compensation from Israel for European financing that went down the drain in demolitions has not yet come up for discussion.”
If holding Israel accountable for something as basic as a financial transaction for damages it caused prompts so much caution in the EU’s official statements, it is safe to say that human rights in the EU’s repertoire, when it comes to Israel, descends into still silence. The EU still has not addressed the fact that, without holding Israel accountable for forcibly displacing Palestinians, its humanitarian projects for Palestinians is also financing Israel’s violations. Yet it is precisely what the humanitarian project which the international community imposed upon Palestinians intended. By investing a fragment of humanitarian aid aimed at alleviating the suffering caused by Israel’s colonial existence and violence, the international community can bypass the actual violations which go against international law.
The EU is no exception to this imposed rule. Advocacy by EU representatives does not work to hold Israel accountable but to extend a permanent contract of silence which, in turn, also silences Palestinians. Despite having political means at their disposal, EU representatives prefer playing the amateur activists when it comes to Palestine. Funds for travelling to the Occupied West Bank, after all, form part of the humanitarian project which Palestinians are forced to fit into. In the same way, EU-funded dwellings play a role in the humanitarian project but fail to sustain Palestinian autonomy. The latest purported concern has nothing to do with Palestinians, and is only marginally related to the EU-funded dwellings that Israel routinely destroys. Detracting from Israel’s settler-colonial expansion and the EU’s role in maintaining it, however, is a major part of what the humanitarian paradigm constitutes.
Australia is concerned it can’t stop “misinformation” in private conversations
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 10, 2023
Australia’s authorities have updated their “misinformation code” but remain unhappy that large end-to-end encrypted apps are still not “regulated” in a way they would find satisfactory.
That’s despite the fact the “update” does what various governments like the most – leave a lot of room to interpret the rules as best suits them. Thus harm is now communication that represents “serious and credible” threat. And the previous definition is that this threat must also be imminent – however, that is no longer included in the wording.
The code in question, published late last month, is said to be “voluntary” and concerns combating whatever’s flagged as “disinformation and misinformation” – but now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is making it clear that it is not nearly enough.
Currently, the “voluntary” reference has to do with the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) and its members, such as Apple, Google, Facebook (Meta), TikTok and Twitter, “self-regulating” in a bid to find common ground with Australia’s government and avoid negative consequences to their business.
But now the regulator said that while the update is welcome, the work to gain powers necessary to force social media platforms to turn over data will continue.
At stake here are these companies revealing to state authorities how they fight against “misinformation,” and also, “how they respond to complaints.” Specifically, the push is to make those behind social media hand over information about “posts and audience.”
And that, in turn, the government claims, is necessary in its decision-making process, when it comes to making sure laws dealing with “misinformation” are ever stricter.
ACMA is particularly concerned with what they see as the lack of a “robust” framework that would expand the code to “cover the propagation of mis- and disinformation on messaging services that facilitate large-scale group messaging,” the regulator told Guardian Australia.
The article mentions WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in particular in this context – and tries to back up the case for the need to access data from these apps by mentioning “false rumors about child abduction spreading in India through WhatsApp,” and, “the death tax scare campaign at the 2019 election” in Australia.
In addition to wanting the “voluntary” code to become more stringent consequences-wise – as it becomes more loosely worded – ACMA wants “reserve powers” for itself to bring about future codes that would be binding.
US House Establishes Panel to Investigate Potential Weaponization of Federal Government
Samizdat – 11.01.2023
WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution establishing a select subcommittee to investigate whether components of the federal government have been weaponized against everyday citizens.
House lawmakers passed a resolution establishing the special Judiciary Committee panel in a vote of 221-211, falling along partisan lines.
“Congress hasn’t kept pace with the federal government’s potential to abuse new technology, and we need to better understand how US intelligence agencies work with each other and with the private sector to collect information on Americans or to undermine their fundamental constitutional rights,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a statement on the panel.
The subcommittee will investigate how the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and other executive branch agencies obtain information from and provide information to the private sector and other agencies to facilitate actions against US citizens.
The panel will be granted access to information shared with the House Intelligence Committee and the authority to review ongoing criminal investigations. The panel is styled after the Church Committee of 1975, which conducted similar oversight of federal agencies.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will name 13 members to the subcommittee, including five Democrats in consultation with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Genocide Investigation Launched Against Peruvian Authorities Following Massacre
By Wyatt Reed – Samizdat – 11.01.2023
A new government probe suggests the tide may be turning against the US-backed government which seized power in Peru last month, depriving President Pedro Castillo of his power.
Peru’s Attorney General has opened an investigation into the country’s new leaders after over a dozen Peruvians were killed in confrontations with security forces.
According to local media, officials are investigating the politicians for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and inflicting grievous injuries.
“The preliminary investigation is related to the alleged crimes of genocide, murder, and grievous bodily harm committed during the demonstrations of December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurimac, La Libertad, Puno, Junin, Arequipa, and Ayacucho,” reads a statement issued by the office.
Much of the upper echelon of Peru’s new authorieis are reportedly being scrutinized, including the self-declared president, Dina Boluarte, Prime Minister Alberto Otárola, Interior Minister Victor Rojas, and Defense Minister Jorge Chavez.
On Tuesday morning, left-leaning Congresswoman Ruth Luque asked the Attorney General’s office to probe the role played by high-ranking officials of the Boluarte cabinet in its crackdown on pro-Castillo protesters that left at least 17 Peruvians dead in the Southern city of Juliaca Monday.
The investigation comes as Peru’s notoriously unpopular legislature gave its approval to a vote of confidence aimed to legitimize the new government.
On Friday, Peru’s Attorney General opened an earlier investigation into the the new cabinet, which stands accused of killing dozens of demonstrators and bystanders amid the ongoing political crisis.
Massive protests have consumed Peru since the ouster of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, who was arrested hours after attempting to dissolve parliament after lawmakers proceeded with an impeachment vote. He has remained in police custody since his detainment.
Peru: General Strike Continues Despite Repression
Kawsachun News | January 9, 2023
The general strike against Peru’s coup regime is on its sixth consecutive day with barricades and roadblocks erected across the country. The weekend also saw countless illegal arrests of protesters and journalists.
According to authorities, protesters have blocked highways at 45 different points. The indigenous Aymara region of Puno is the center of opposition to the regime, with the highest number of barricades erected along highways. The roads connecting Puno to Arequipa, Cusco, and the Amazon, are among those currently blocked.
In Lima, 224 people were detained on Friday for participating in protests organized by workers’ unions. Nevertheless, the transport workers union has announced that they will join the general strike “if this is the only way for them to listen to us,” said their general secretary Ricardo Pareja.
The possibility of dialogue appears unlikely after the Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), the largest union confederation, announced that it would not participate in the ‘National Agreement Session’ organized by the regime. The unions say that there cannot be social peace while the Peruvian people are being massacred, tortured, and killed for using their right to social protests.
The regime of Dina Boluarte has killed more than 30 protesters, mostly indigenous, since the coup against Pedro Castillo. Strike demands include the resignation of Dina Boluarte, new elections, a constituent assembly, and the release of Pedro Castillo.
Peru Mourns ‘Massacre’ of 17 as Calls Grow for US-Backed ‘Coup Regime’ to Step Down
Samizdat – 10.01.2023
A shockingly bloody day of violence threatened to upend the new coup-borne regime’s grip on power as Peruvians reacted with horror to the deadliest day so far in the political struggle that has rocked the country for over a month.
Thousands of Peruvians took to the streets throughout the country on Tuesday as memorial services were held in the city of Juliaca for the 17 people killed Monday in what victims families’ are calling a “massacre” by the Andean country’s security forces.
At least two of the deceased – a boy and a girl – were reportedly children. According to a health ministry official in the Puno region of Peru, another 68 victims suffered injuries in Monday’s violence.
Videos showing several of the killings circulated widely on social media Monday night, as condemnations rolled in from across the globe.
“In the name of the sacred right to life, of the rights of indigenous peoples recognized by UN and international organizations, in the name of peace and social justice, we demand that the massacre of our brothers in Perú stop,” wrote former Bolivian President Evo Morales, who was labeled ‘persona non grata’ and barred from entering the country just hours beforehand.
It was by far the deadliest day of the chaos that has wracked Peru since its first working-class indigenous president, Pedro Castillo, was overthrown last month. Castillo has been jailed ever since, following what leaders of countries throughout the region have condemned as a coup d’etat.
The head of the intensive care unit of the Carlos Monge Medrano Hospital in Juliaca, Jorge Sotomayor Perales, reportedly suggested that authorities used lethal expanding bullets in the bloody crackdown. In comments given to journalists Monday evening, Sotomayor noted the gunshot victims had “no exit wounds” but had “their internal organs destroyed.”
“I want to call on the central government – how can we have so many dead?” he asked.
On Tuesday, as the regional government began observing a three-day mourning period in honor of those killed, Prime Minister Alberto Otarola responded with an announcement of his own: a three-day nighttime curfew in Puno, extending from 8 p.m. local time until 4 a.m.
Without providing evidence, Otarola insisted in a news conference Monday night that “foreign interests” and “drug traffickers” were to blame for the killings. The former Defense Minister Otarola ascended to his current position just weeks ago and has emerged as one of the prime beneficiaries of the coup.
Observers point to his meeting with US Ambassador Lisa Kenna, just two days before Castillo was arrested, as evidence of US support for the putsch. After the coup’s consummation, the US Embassy immediately extended its recognition to the controversial regime, which imposed itself on Peru under the figurehead of self-styled ‘President’ Dina Boluarte.
As of publishing, Boluarte still had yet to comment on the spate of seemingly state-backed killings in Juliaca.
However, on Tuesday evening, Peru’s human rights office called on “all qualified institutions to investigate and punish those responsible for all the deaths that have occurred in the last hours in Juliaca.”
Hours beforehand, a representative for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the international body was also “very concerned at the rising violence in Peru.”
In a statement urging the Boluarte regime to “comply with human rights standards and ensure that force is only used when strictly necessary,” and insisting “the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly must be respected and protected,” spokesperson Marta Hurtado noted that “one medical worker was killed while administering aid.”
The medical worker in question, Marco Antonio Samillan Sanga, was reportedly killed by the regime’s forces Monday while attempting to treat other victims.
In comments given to local media, his sister Milagros said that prior to his death, Sanga was on the verge of receiving his medical degree and dreamed of being “the best neurosurgeon in Juliaca.”
He was wearing his medical scrubs when he was killed while tending to the wounded “because of the goodwill and empathy that he had,” she said.
“How is it possible that they [give the] order to kill like that? How is it possible that President Dina Boluarte gives the order to kill whoever she wants?” she asked.
As Peruvians across the country awoke to the horrifying news, she was hardly the only one to demand answers.
On Tuesday, the Attorney General’s office announced it was opening an investigation into the role played by Boluarte and Otarola in the apparent state-sponsored massacre following a criminal complaint by Peruvian Congresswoman Ruth Luque, who wrote in the early hours that the “deaths cannot go unpunished.”
Landmark Lawsuit Slaps Legacy Media With Antitrust, First Amendment Claims for Censoring COVID-Related Content
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | January 10, 2023
In a live interview this evening on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief litigation counsel for Children’s Health Defense (CHD), announced that he and several other plaintiffs filed a groundbreaking novel lawsuit making antitrust and constitutional claims against legacy media outlets.
The lawsuit targets the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), a self-described “industry partnership” launched in March 2020 by several of the world’s largest news organizations, including the BBC, The Associated Press (AP), Reuters and The Washington Post — all of which are named as defendants in the lawsuit.
Filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas-Amarillo Division, the lawsuit alleges these outlets partnered with several Big Tech firms to “collectively censor online news,” including stories about COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. presidential election that were not aligned with official narratives regarding those issues.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Kennedy, Creative Destruction Media, Trial Site News, Ty and Charlene Bollinger (founders of The Truth About Cancer and The Truth About Vaccines), Erin Elizabeth Finn (publisher of Health Nut News ), Jim Hoft (founder of The Gateway Pundit ), Dr. Joseph Mercola and Ben Tapper, a chiropractor.
All of the plaintiffs allege they were censored, banned, de-platformed, shadow banned or otherwise penalized by the Big Tech firms partnering with the TNI, because the views and content they published were deemed “misinformation” or “disinformation.” This resulted in a major loss of visibility and revenue for the plaintiffs.
The lawsuit further alleges that Big Tech firms, having partnered with the TNI, based their decisions on determinations jointly made by TNI, which touted its “early warning system” by which each partner organization is “warned” about an individual or outlet that is disseminating purported “misinformation.”
The TNI’s legacy media and Big Tech firms then acted in concert — described in legal terms as a “group boycott” — to remove such voices and perspectives from their platforms. This forms the basis of the lawsuit’s antitrust and First Amendment claims.
Remarking on the lawsuit, Kennedy told The Defender :
“My uncle, President Kennedy, and my father, the attorney general, sought to prosecute antitrust laws that are still on the nation’s books, with vigor.
“As private enforcers of those laws, we are confident that the federal court in Texas will vindicate our bedrock freedom to compete with legacy media in the marketplace of ideas.”
Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, told The Defender :
“I’m glad that CHD is bringing this case. We are hopeful we will get a fair hearing, and I’m glad that we are together with other organizations that have also been harmed by these corporate and governmental censorship policies.
“To have a free society, you have to have free speech, you have to have a diversity of views. We don’t have the same views as all of the other plaintiffs by far … but we want to protect the marketplace of ideas.
“If in fact the government and the corporations they collaborate with can engage in censorship and propaganda nonstop, and there are no alternative voices, democracy is dead.”
Charlene Bollinger similarly remarked on the importance of preserving free speech. She said:
“This lawsuit is about preserving our free speech rights as Americans and holding those involved in violating antitrust laws accountable, like the TNI.
“My husband and I remain steadfast in our commitment to highlighting the well-documented risks of COVID-19 vaccines and the myriad of dangers to those who are not informed by their healthcare providers of the side effects of harsh pharmaceutical treatments for life-threatening illnesses.”
Mercola, in turn, focused on collusion between government agencies and media and Big Tech. He said:
“These are the twin evils of our day. Platforms partner with the alphabet soup of federal agencies to censor speech. Those same platforms and legacy media outlets conspire to boycott stories that don’t fit an official narrative about COVID and many other topics.
“Our nation’s founding fathers would be appalled and resolute in defense of maintaining an informed citizenry.”
Alleging per se and “rule of reason” violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act on the basis of direct and circumstantial evidence of horizontal agreement and economic collusion among the defendants and Big Tech firms, the plaintiffs are requesting a jury trial and treble damages.
They also are requesting orders declaring the defendants’ conduct unlawful and enjoining further such actions on their part.
TNI viewed organizations reporting non-establishment views as ‘an existential threat’
The lawsuit states, “There are two main categories of TNI members, playing different but often complementary roles in the online news market: (A) large legacy news organizations (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Legacy News Members’) and (B) Big Tech platform companies (hereafter the TNI’s ‘Big Tech Members’).”
Legacy news organizations are publishers of original news content and include the defendants named in the lawsuit.
“By contrast,” the lawsuit states, “the TNI’s Big Tech members — Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft — are first and foremost Internet companies, each of which is, owns or controls one or more behemoth Internet platforms, including social media platforms and search engines.”
“Core partners” of the TNI include the AP, Agence France Press, the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta, Microsoft, Reuters, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and The Washington Post.
The lawsuit’s executive summary states:
“The TNI exists to, in its own words, ‘choke off’ and ‘stamp out’ online news reporting that the TNI or any of its members peremptorily deems ‘misinformation.’
“TNI members have targeted and suppressed completely accurate online reporting by non-mainstream news publishers concerning both COVID-19 (on matters including treatments, immunity, lab leak, vax injury, and lockdowns/mandates) and U.S. elections (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story).”
The lawsuit also alleges:
“By their own admission, members of the [TNI] have agreed to work together, and have in fact worked together, to exclude from the world’s dominant Internet platforms rival news publishers who engage in reporting that challenges and competes with TNI members’ reporting on certain issues relating to COVID-19 and U.S. politics.
“While the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ publicly purports to be a self-appointed ‘truth police’ extirpating online ‘misinformation,’ in fact it has suppressed wholly accurate and legitimate reporting in furtherance of the economic self-interest of its members.”
According to the lawsuit, “this is an antitrust action,” and specifically, “Federal antitrust law has its own name for this kind of ‘industry partnership’: it’s called a ‘group boycott’ and is a per se violation of the Sherman Act.”
Legal precedent holds that a “group boycott” is “a concerted attempt by a group of competitors” to “disadvantage [other] competitors” by “cut[ting] off access” to a “facility or market necessary to enable the boycotted firm[s] to compete.”
As evidence of this allegation, the lawsuit references multiple public statements by TNI partners, including a March 2022 statement by Jamie Angus, then-senior news controller for BBC News, who explained TNI’s “strategy to beat disinformation”:
“Of course, the members of the Trusted News Initiative are … rivals … But in a crisis situation like this, absolutely, organizations have to focus on the things they have in common, rather than … their commercial … rivalries. … [I]t’s important that trusted news providers club together.
“Because actually the real rivalry now is not between for example the BBC and CNN globally, it’s actually between all trusted news providers and a tidal wave of unchecked [reporting] that’s being piped out mainly through digital platforms . … That’s the real competition now in the digital media world.
“Of course, organizations will always compete against one another for audiences. But the existential threat I think is that overall breakdown in trust, so that trusted news organizations lose in the long term if audiences just abandon the idea of a relationship of trust with news organizations. So actually we’ve got a lot more to hold us together than we have to work in competition with one another.”
The lawsuit alleges the above quote admitting the “existential threat” members of the TNI believed smaller news organizations posed to their news and informational primacy is evidence of anti-competitive collusion and of TNI members’ economic motivation to stifle this “threat”: “a paradigmatic antitrust violation … to cut off from the market upstart rivals threatening their business model.”
Angus has since left the BBC to take a position with Saudi Arabia’s state-owned television broadcaster, according to the lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs are among the many victims of the TNI’s agreement and its group boycott,” states the lawsuit. “Plaintiffs are online news publishers who, as a result of the TNI’s group boycott, have been censored, de-monetized, demoted, throttled, shadow-banned, and/or excluded entirely from platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram.”
As a result of this “group boycott,” the lawsuit states:
“The TNI did not only prevent Internet users from making these claims; it shut down online news publishers who simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources, such as scientists and physicians.
“Thus TNI members not only suppressed competition in the online news market but deprived the public of important information on matters of the highest public concern.”
The plaintiffs referenced Supreme Court precedent — specifically, a 1945 ruling involving the AP — to support their First Amendment claims against TNI, noting that contrary to popular belief, First Amendment violations do not exclusively refer to the censorship of speech by the government.
The lawsuit states that in the 1945 case, Associated Press v. United States, a news industry partnership (the AP ) “prevented non-members from publishing certain stories.”
These non-members sued under the Sherman Act, but the AP claimed its actions were protected by the First Amendment.
However, the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs. In the majority opinion, Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that the First Amendment:
“… rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society.
“Surely a command that the government itself shall not impede the free flow of ideas does not afford nongovernmental combinations a refuge if they impose restraints upon that constitutionally guaranteed freedom.
“Freedom to publish means freedom for all, and not for some. Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution, but freedom to combine to keep others from publishing is not. Freedom of the press from governmental interference under the First Amendment does not sanction repression of that freedom by private interests.”
Holland commented on the significance of the Supreme Court precedent, telling The Defender :
“The lawsuit is resting on a really strong Supreme Court precedent that basically says whether it is government censorship or it is collusive anti-competitive illegal suppression by the private sector, it’s illegal. You can’t do that.
“The AP, in its day, was very much a kind of precursor of the TNI, and it’s a very strong decision, very strong language against the Associated Press that was essentially doing the same thing back in the day.”
Noting the enormous market share held by Big Tech firms such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter, the lawsuit states, “The TNI’s Big Tech members are ‘platform gatekeepers’ in the online news market, with the power to cripple or destroy publishers by excluding them from their platforms.”
TNI’s legacy news partners took advantage of their cooperation with each other and with Big Tech, to “choke off” inconvenient narratives, the plaintiffs allege.
The lawsuit notes, for instance, that “TNI members agreed in early 2020 that their ‘ground-breaking collaboration’ would target online news relating to COVID-19 and that TNI members would ‘work together to … ensure [that] harmful disinformation myths are stopped in their tracks’” and “jointly [combat] fraud and misinformation about the virus.”
In July 2020, the lawsuit states, “TNI ‘extended’ its collaboration to cover so-called ‘disinformation’ about the United States presidential election,” stating it was “committed to a shared early warning system of rapid alerts to combat the spread of disinformation during the U.S. presidential election.”
And in 2020 and 2021, according to the lawsuit, the BBC’s Jessica Cecil, then-head of the TNI, made a series of statements, including a claim that TNI was “the only place in the world where disinformation is discussed in real time” and that its partners sought to find “practical ways to choke off” stories and topics TNI deemed “misinformation.”
TNI’s Big Tech partnerships were imperative in these efforts, according to the lawsuit, which included as evidence several public quotes from Cecil. In 2021 for instance, Cecil stated:
“The BBC convened partners across the world in an urgent challenge: at times of highest jeopardy, when elections or lives are at stake, we asked, is there a way that the world’s biggest tech platforms from Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to Twitter and Microsoft and major news organisations and others … can alert each other to the most dangerous false stories, and stop them spreading fast across the internet, preventing them from doing real world harm?”
The lawsuit also noted that Cecil admitted that TNI’s members, at “closed-door” meetings and in inter-firm communications, “signed up to a clear set of expectations on how to act” regarding such “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
According to Holland, only legacy news organizations are specifically targeted as defendants in this lawsuit, explaining that Big Tech firms typically have “very serious, very binding arbitration provisions” that require legal challenges against them to be filed in the courts of northern California.
“Northern California is Silicon Valley. It’s their turf,” said Holland. “And so, we decided, in order to be able to file in a jurisdiction that we believe will be more neutral on these issues … we elected to file in Texas just against the legacy media.”
But Big Tech could still be held liable, Holland said, “because the conspiracy between legacy media and Big Tech will incorporate all of them, if there is a conspiracy [found], they’re all liable, not just those who were named as defendants.”
TNI, in concert with Big Tech, censored COVID and 2020 election narratives
According to the lawsuit, TNI’s legacy news members acted in concert with their Big Tech partners to censor a wide range of non-establishment narratives pertaining to COVID-19 and to the U.S. presidential election of 2020, stating:
“TNI members have deemed the following to be ‘misinformation’ that could not be published on the world’s dominant Internet platforms: (A) reporting that COVID may have originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China; (B) reporting that the COVID vaccines do not prevent infection; (C) reporting that vaccinated persons can transmit COVID to others; and (D) reporting that compromising emails and videos were found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.”
“All of the above was and is either true or, at a minimum, well within the ambit of legitimate reporting,” according to the lawsuit.
“The TNI did not only prevent Internet users from making these claims; it shut down online news publishers who simply reported that such claims were being made by potentially credible sources, such as scientists and physicians.”
“Thus,” the lawsuit states, “TNI members not only suppressed competition in the online news market but deprived the public of important information on matters of the highest public concern.”
The lawsuit also alleges TNI members often knowingly removed or otherwise blocked content they knew was not false.
At a March 2022 TNI presentation, “Big Tech’s Part in the Fight,” a senior Facebook information moderation officer said “it was a mistake to think of ‘misinformation’ as consisting solely of ‘false claims,’ because a great deal of it is ‘not provably false.’”
Nevertheless, he “further emphasized the importance not only of targeting specific items of misinformation, but of ‘banning’ the sources thereof,” and stated that “Facebook works together with its ‘industry partners’ to combat ‘disinformation.’”
In emails revealed Jan. 6 as part of an ongoing lawsuit against President Biden and members of his administration alleging censorship, a memo by Meta (Facebook’s parent company) revealed efforts to reduce the visibility of CHD content, while a White House email asked for one of Kennedy’s COVID-19-related tweets to be “removed ASAP.”
The lawsuit contained a comprehensive list of “claims deemed ‘misinformation’ by one or more TNI members,” including:
- Claims that COVID-19 was manmade.
- Claims that COVID-19 was manufactured or bioengineered.
- Claims that COVID-19 was created by a government or country.
- Claims that “contradict” WHO or U.S. health officials’ guidance on the treatment, prevention, or transmission of COVID-19.
- Claims about the COVID vaccines that contradict “expert consensus” from U.S. health authorities or the WHO.
- Claims that Hydroxychloroquine (“HCQ”) is an effective treatment for COVID.
- Claims that Ivermectin (“IVM”) is an effective treatment for COVID.
- Claims that HCQ or IVM is safe to use as a treatment for COVID.
- Recommendations of the use of HCQ or IVM against COVID.
- Claims that COVID is no more dangerous to some populations than the seasonal flu.
- Claims that the mortality rate of COVID is for some populations the same or lower than that of the seasonal flu.
- Claims suggesting that the number of deaths caused by COVID is lower than official figures assert.
- Claims that face masks or mask mandates do not prevent the spread of COVID.
- Claims that wearing a face mask can make the wearer sick.
- Claims that COVID vaccines have not been approved.
- Claims that social distancing does not help prevent the spread of COVID.
- Claims that COVID-19 vaccines can kill or seriously harm people.
- Claims that the immunity from getting COVID is more effective than vaccination.
- Claims that the COVID vaccines are not effective in preventing infection.
- Claims that people who have been vaccinated against COVID can still spread the disease to others.
- Claims that the COVID vaccines are toxic or harmful or contain toxic or harmful ingredients.
- Claims that fetal cells were used in the manufacture or production of any of the COVID vaccines.
- Claims that a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was found at a computer repair store in or around October 2020 or that the contents reportedly found on that laptop, including potentially compromising emails, videos, and photographs, were authentic.
“Moreover,” states the lawsuit, TNI members “publicly declared — categorically, as if it were established fact — that the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID’s origins was ‘false.’”
The lawsuit also alleges “TNI members confer and coordinate in making their censorship decisions,” noting that “TNI members’ parallel treatment of prohibited claims further evidences concerted action” by “engaging in strikingly similar viewpoint-based censorship of plausible, legitimate news reporting relating to COVID-19.”
Moreover, according to the lawsuit, “the temporal proximity” of these sanctions, including shadow bans and outright suspensions and bans, “plausibly suggests inter-firm communication and concerted action.”
The lawsuit notes that the recently released “Twitter files” provide further indication of such inter-firm communication and coordination, including “regular meetings” and “standing weekly call[s]” to “discuss censorship policies and decisions.”
According to the lawsuit, YouTube de-platformed Mercola on Sept. 29, 2021. Mercola learned about this action via a Washington Post article published that morning, although YouTube did not inform him of the decision until after the article was published.
In the lawsuit, all plaintiffs allege similar coordinated efforts at censoring their content and their social media accounts and subsequent financial damages due to being de-platformed and sustaining significant reductions to their audience size.
For instance, providing evidence of coordination ranging beyond the TNI’s members and partners, the lawsuit alleges that online payment platforms and processors such as PayPal and Stripe banned multiple plaintiffs, including CHD and Creative Destruction Media, within the same “temporal proximity” as their social media bans.
As summarized by Holland, TNI acts as “a global media monopoly”:
“They couch what they’re doing, their conspiracy to suppress independent media, i.e. the voices of dissent about election information and COVID information, as a ‘need to preserve the trust of the people’ and ‘upgrade the trust.’
“By censoring independent voices, what they’re doing is economic suppression. Antitrust is against trusts, it’s against monopolies, and what the TNI has done is essentially create a global media monopoly in the English language.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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.
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From the Archives
Neocons confess: “We did 9/11-anthrax”
By Kevin Barrett | Press TV | September 6, 2014
As the 13th anniversary of the crimes of September, 2001 approaches, the neoconservatives are shrieking from the rooftops – and effectively confessing that they were the real perpetrators of the 9/11-Anthrax false flag operation. (The neocons, you may recall, openly called for a “new Pearl Harbor” in September, 2000 – and got one exactly one year later.)
Every year at this time, the neocons orchestrate and hype a series of public relations stunts designed to magnify fears of “radical Islam” and reinforce their crumbling 9/11-Anthrax cover story. But this year’s propaganda campaign is so extreme that it represents a tacit confession: The neocons know that the truth about the 9/11-Anthrax operation is slowly closing in on them; so they are over-reacting by desperately trying to stoke the dying embers of the so-called War on Terror, in order to maintain the myth that Muslims (rather than neoconservative Zionists) attacked America in the autumn of 2001.
When a hysterical person exhibits guilty demeanor by trying too hard to blame a crime on someone else, that person is almost certainly the real perpetrator. As the neocons try much too hard to blame Islam for 9/11 and “terrorism” in general, their hysteria inadvertently reveals their own culpability. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth, the neoconservative movement has blood on its hands and “doth protest too much.” … continue
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- Israel’s continued targeting of civilians in Lebanon renders ceasefire meaningless
- U.S. intelligence warns Israel is likely to undermine Iran peace deal, officials say
- In Gaza, Fathers Can’t Promise Their Children Food, Safety, or Even Survival
- This baby joins thousands of Gazans in need of medical evacuation
- Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist & Beloved Ecologist: 2 Articles
- Promoters of Israel: Leo Terrell, Ghana, Floyd Mayweather, Van Jones
- Gaza Soccer Player Who Dreamed of Competing in World Cup Can Now Barely Watch It
- Gaza baby loses mom and a leg; Palestinian prisoner tortured to death – Daily Update
- JNS Policy Summit to kick off in Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- 3 New Studies Find Increasing Trends In Solar Radiation Since The 1980s – Easily Explaining Warming
- THE TRANSCEIVER PARADOX: Why Organoid Intelligence (OI) Could Become Our Ultimate Alien Predator
- German Wind Turbines Face Regulatory Shutdown Due To Excessive Noise
- New Study: Chile’s Relative Sea Level Was 3.2 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
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