Report: Israel demolished 950 Palestinian homes in 2022
MEMO | December 29, 2022
Israeli occupation forces demolished 950 Palestinian homes and confiscated more than 113,000 dunams (113 square kilometres) of land in 2022 in an effort to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, a Palestinian research centre said.
The Land Research Centre, operating in Palestine, said in its annual report on “Israeli Violations Against Palestinian Land and Housing Rights for 2022” that the Israeli forces have also torched, ravaged, or attacked 18,900 trees, most of them olive trees.
The report noted that 65 of the homes were demolished by their owners under the orders of Israeli occupation forces.
Some 66 wells were also razed in addition to 3,707 dunums (3.7 square kilometres) of land and pastures.
“The Israeli occupation issued 114 new settlement plans on Palestinian lands, and began construction on more than half of them and built about 2,220 new housing units for the settlers,” it added.
The Palestinian centre warned that all these measures confirm that the Israeli government has decided to destroy all agreements and impose new realities on the ground, making the two-state solution impossible to achieve.
Ukraine adopts restrictive media law
RT | December 29, 2022
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law a restrictive media bill on Thursday. The long-debated legislation introduces heavy state regulations, as well as officially forbids covering Russia in a positive way.
The legislation greatly empowers Ukraine’s media regulator, the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting. Half of the Council’s members are directly appointed by the Ukrainian president, with another half selected by the country’s parliament, Verkhovna Rada.
Under the new rules, the regulator is able to impose fines on all types of media, as well as hand them mandatory notices. The Council will be able to revoke licenses from printed media, as well as block online outlets for publishing restricted materials and refusing to take them down.
The new legislation also delves into the online media field, which has remained effectively unregulated in Ukraine. The final version of the bill has not imposed a mandatory registration for online media outlets, introducing a “voluntary” one instead. Those that opt to secure said registration will be shielded from extrajudicial blockage, while outlets without it can be subjected to 14-day bans after a number of “serious” violations.
Online media outlets with opaque structure, those not having easily distinguishable owners or reporters, can be easily banned by the regulator as well.
A sizable part of the legislation is devoted to tackling purported “Russian propaganda” and effectively outlaws any positive coverage of Moscow’s actions that challenge the official stance of Kiev. The bill also reinforces a ban on all Russian media outlets, which have been already de-facto outlawed in the country. Moreover, the legislation prohibits the media from publishing information somehow “discrediting” the Ukrainian language and denying or whitewashing the “criminal nature” of the Soviet-era “totalitarian regime.”
The media bill was first introduced back in 2020, but passing it was put into motion only after the ongoing conflict between Kiev and Moscow broke out in late February. The bill passed its first reading in late August, with the final version adopted early this month. The legislation has been repeatedly criticized by Ukrainian opposition figures, journalists, and international rights groups alike over the assertive role of the government and potential damage to freedom of speech in the country.
Hamas criticises ‘biased’, ‘contradictory’ EU resolution on two-state solution
MEMO | December 29, 2022
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas issued a statement yesterday criticising the EU over Resolution no. 2949/2022 (RSP), on the prospects for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
In a political memorandum, Hamas said the resolution “contained several inaccuracies and contradictions about the Palestinian issue”, noting that it “is heavily biased against the Palestinians’ inherent and legitimate rights to freedom, return and self-determination.”
Among the issues raised with the resolution, the movement said it has sided with the Israeli occupation’s narrative, while ignoring the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to resistance and self-defence.
“Voting against this right is considered a great sin that Europeans have committed, once again. This vote also reflects the double standards with which the European Union deals with issues of peoples and freedoms around the world.”
“In recent months, we have seen the European position on the crisis in Ukraine, and how the Ukrainian resistance was considered legitimate and supported with money and weapons,” the statement said. The resolution, Hamas insists, has disregarded terrorism practised by the Israeli occupation on a daily basis.
The EU resolution was called out over its double standards in regards to its advocating “customised” democracy for the Palestinians and the issue of the participation of resistance factions in free and fair elections, “despite the fact that most of the candidates for the Israeli Knesset have criminal records and terrorist practices and are labeled on terrorist lists in many countries, including Israel itself.”
Hamas acknowledged the resolution’s demand to end the Israeli blockade, imposed on the people of Gaza since 2006 but concluded that the resolution is further proof of “the European bias towards the Israeli occupation and its racist policies” and the EU’s lack of seriousness in pursuing a just and fair solution to the Palestinian cause.
The movement urged the European Parliament to reconsider Resolution 2949 and to correct its position in order to achieve a just solution for the Palestinian people.
Earlier this month, a senior member of Hamas denounced the EU over its silence concerning the complicity of over 700 European financial institutions in supporting illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.
Vaccine Failure a Major Determinant of Measles and Pertussis Outbreaks
Blaming the Children and Families for Vaccine Choice is not Justified
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | December 28, 2022
On vacation this week I had a chance to catch up on movies and watched Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe produced by Del Bigtree which focused on the MMR vaccine and the explosive epidemiology of autism in countries where this product is used. I was asked how dangerous measles was, so I went to the modern literature on measles and pertussis outbreaks and found this large review by Phadke et al from Emory University and was shocked at what I learned.
Phadke VK, Bednarczyk RA, Salmon DA, Omer SB. Association Between Vaccine Refusal and Vaccine-Preventable Diseases in the United States: A Review of Measles and Pertussis. JAMA. 2016 Mar 15;315(11):1149-58. doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.1353. Erratum in: JAMA. 2016 May 17;315(19):2125. Erratum in: JAMA. 2016 May 17;315 (19):2125. PMID: 26978210; PMCID: PMC5007135.
For measles, since it’s declaration of eradication in 2000 to 2015, there were 18 published measles studies (9 annual summaries and 9 outbreak reports), which described 1416 measles cases (individual age range, 2 weeks-84 years; 178 cases younger than 12 months) and 43.2% had been vaccinated against measles.
In this paper no hospitalizations or deaths were reported. Among 32 reports of pertussis outbreaks, which included 10,609 individuals for whom vaccination status was reported (age range, 10 days-87 years), the 5 largest statewide epidemics had substantial proportions (55%) that were vaccinated.
While the authors, like so many in public health, attempted to blame the victim (patients and families) for vaccine hesitancy, they had to concede: “However, several pertussis outbreaks also occurred in highly vaccinated populations, indicating waning immunity.”
For pertussis, which is readily treated with antibiotics, there were no reported hospitalizations or deaths in this study. In summary, large fractions of “preventable disease outbreaks” involving measles and pertussis occur because vaccines fail to provide adequate protection.
Given the neuropsychiatric concerns over the MMR vaccine and the stochastic risk of allergic/immunologic reactions to any injection including components of (DTaP, Tdap) or MMR, the parental movement for vaccine choice is well justified.
For measles and pertussis, the vaccines convey imperfect protection and breakthrough infection (vaccine failure) should receive considerable “blame” by public health researchers.
CDC About Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis Vaccines accessed Dec 28, 2022
The (Covid) Law is an Ass – No Jab, No Job
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | December 28, 2022
As I suggested in my article yesterday, 2023 will be the year of the excuse. One of those excuses will be that the vaccine may have caused some harm but it saved many more people.
A similar excuse of “we had to do these things to save lives” can be seen in a recent and terrible employment tribunal decision concerning care home staff.
Barchester Healthcare is one of the largest care home providers in the UK with over 250 care homes. In January 2021 it created a new vaccine policy whereby new staff would need to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Furthermore, existing staff wouldn’t be promoted or paid bonuses if they refused vaccination.
Shortly afterwards, in February of that year, it made vaccination a condition of employment for all of its 17,000 employees. Workers who weren’t exempt were told that by the end of April 2021 they could be dismissed if not jabbed. They were told it was part of their ‘moral and ethical duty to do the right thing’ and it was to be considered as a privilege to be vaccinated before the rest of the general population.
Between 11 November 2021 and 15 March 2022 it became mandatory for care home workers in the UK to be vaccinated. As a result up to 60,000 workers lost their jobs. However, vaccination was not mandatory when Barchester started firing it’s staff.
Five of the dismissed employees brought a claim of unfair dismissal against their former employer. One of their arguments was that the dismissal breached Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which concerns the right to respect for private and family life. Two of the claimants also argued that their right to freedom of religion or belief (Article 9) had also been breached.
The decision, which was published on 8 December 2022, found in favour of Barchester Healthcare. The tribunal decided that the reason for the claimants’ dismissal was genuine and undertaken fairly. Furthermore, firing the unvaccinated workers was done in order to protect the clinically vulnerable and was therefore fine.
Barchester said it needed to protect people because 10% of its residents and six staff members died “with Covid” in 2020.
When dealing with the issue of freedom of religion, this was dismissed due to the number of Christians and Muslims that had been vaccinated.
The Judge, who clearly sounded biased in his views, said “[Barchester] of course never proposed, for instance, vaccination by force.” Well that’s ok then, no one was tied down and vaccinated, case closed!
“Whilst they would not have judged it as free choice given the obvious implications of a loss of employment, it was a choice they had.”
He went on: “It was at pains, throughout the introduction of the policy, to reaffirm that it recognised vaccines could not be mandated, that vaccination was the choice of the individual, that consent had to be given freely and consent to future vaccination could be withdrawn at any stage.” It sounds like the Judge is actually Barchester’s representation!
Naturally, Barchester was thrilled:
“We welcome the ruling of the employment tribunal who found our vaccine policy to be reasonable, and accepted the introduction of our policy to reduce the risk of spread of Covid infection in our homes and hospitals. However we do respect personal choice and the decision of those who didn’t want the vaccine and we wish those staff well.”
The caring-times, who also reported on this case, quoted Sejal Raja a Partner at Weightmans law firm.
“This is a significant and welcome ruling, that will have direct implications for those employers in the care industry, who may face similar claims in the future.
The tribunal recognised the principle, enshrined in law, that people must be allowed to hold, and act, in line with their personal beliefs. But the ruling highlighted that the law also permits difficult but essential decisions to be taken where these rights interfere in order to protect others’ inviolable rights – specifically the right to life.
This judgement will give care home management teams that acted responsibly, with due process and with the safety of their residents front of mind, confidence in their decisions.”
The legal system has kicked off 2023 – the year of the excuse, with an extension of the excuse I reported on yesterday – “these things are necessary (and now legal) to save lives”.
Whilst Sejal Raja welcomes the decision, in reality it is a worrying and dangerous one. It sets the precedent that you can be sacked from your job if you don’t get vaccinated from the latest thing. No matter if there is no legal basis for the vaccination (which would also be wrong but anyway). And no need to show any data that supports your opinion that it protects people. If I read a headline on the BBC that says that the Science has found that the latest thing protects others from the latest thing then your human rights can be trampled on. And this latest judgement has just made you being trampled on in the future, legal and far more likely.
Powering up the WHO: be alert and alarmed
Why proposed changes to the International Health Regulations are a VERY BAD idea
By Libby Klein | Reclaim Ethical Medicine | December 18, 2022
One might think that of course we need an international body that can help everyone around the world to work together in times of crisis to combat pandemics and other scary global things.
Well that sounds sensible.
One might think that’s what we have the World Health Organisation (WHO) for.
Well that may have been the original idea, but it turns out there’s a few issues with the WHO. How effective is it and what role should it have?
Seems the world has skipped past those questions and gone straight to: let’s give the WHO all the power it needs so that it can do a better job of controlling pandemics.
And let’s not just tweak one or two things here and there. Let’s have a whole new treaty. And let’s call it something really long, like Convention, Agreement or Other International Instrument on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response and give it a confusing acronym, like CA+.
AND let’s also simultaneously amend the existing International Health Regulations. In ways that overlap. Through forums which are supposedly transparent but which are largely conducted in secret.
There’s a lot going on here. But don’t be fooled by the flowery language or put off by the density and complexity of the documents. Be assured there are some big issues which warrant your attention.
I’ve listed some of the issues in the most recent proposals to amend the International Health Regulations below. Please add your comments and share your insights!
Note: they don’t call a spade a spade and they don’t call a pandemic a pandemic. They call it a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”. There’s 2 reasons for that:
- they like to use long confusing names and make up impressive acronyms (“PHEIC”)
- they want to have power to do all sorts of things whether or not there’s actually a pandemic and even where they think there might be something happening which one day may result in a pandemic.
The scope of WHO’s powers is to be broadened significantly, from “public health risk” to “all risks with a potential to impact public health” (Article 2)
- Proposed new article 13A recognises the WHO as the authority of public health response during a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. (Note: none of the published submissions make this suggestion. Where did it come from?)
- Article 13A includes an undertaking by all Member States, that they will follow WHO’s “recommendations”. Earlier in the document, “recommendations” are defined to be legally binding.
- Countries are also required to ensure they have regulatory agency with legal authority to implement WHO’s dictates. (Article 4 para 1)
- Countries can contest the legally binding recommendations but the Emergency Committee’s review decision will be final, following which the country must report to the WHO that it has complied. (Article 43 para 6).
- The World Health Assembly can make decisions “on the strengthening of the implementation of these Regulations and improvement of compliance” – obscure language – does this mean the World Health Assembly can decide on sanctions?
- Developed countries must provide funding (Article 44 para 2(f); Annex 1 new para “1 bis”)
- The World Health Assembly will oversee expenditure of funds that Member States are required to provide (Article 44A para 2).
- WHO decides on allocation of health products (Article 13A).
- WHO requires Member States to scale up production (Article 13A para 4), and to supply health products to the WHO or other Member States as directed by the WHO (Article 13 para 5).
- The Director General – a single person – can make temporary, binding “recommendations” on the basis that an event has the potential to become a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and those recommendations can continue in force beyond the end of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (Article 15).
- The concept of public health measures which are aimed at achieving “the appropriate level of health protection” is to be removed. The new objective is to attain the “highest achievable level of health protection” without any consideration of proportionality.
- WHO can impose restrictions on international travel – and may not even disclose the information it has relied on in doing so – Article 11.
- Any discussions that countries have amongst themselves must be reported to the WHO (Article 44 para 3).
- Countries must comply with requests by WHO or other countries (Annex 10).
- Governments will be required to enforce compliance with WHO health measures by all actors including NGOs (Article 42).
- Countries must cooperate in censorship of information which the WHO deems to be “false and unreliable (Article 44 para 1(h)).
- WHO will strengthen capacities to counter misinformation and disinformation (Annex 1 para 7).
- The Director General – a single person – unilaterally determines whether there is a (potential or actual) Public Health Emergency of International Concern in a particular location. (Article 12 para 1).
- In deciding whether to declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the Director General does not have to consult with the country concerned or its own Emergency Committee (Article 12 para 2). (And at any rate the Director General chooses the members of the Emergency Committee – Article 48 para 2.)
- The ability of the country to object to the WHO’s declaration of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern has been removed (Article 12 para 3).
- There is to be “secure global digital exchange of health information” (Article 44 para 2(d))
- Centralised data sharing is to be controlled by the WHO (Article 11)
- Governments can agree to share and store your personal health data (Article 45 para 4).
- Regulatory dossiers submitted by manufacturers concerning safety and efficacy, and manufacturing and quality control measures, have to be shared, but countries can only use that information for accelerating the manufacture and supply of those products and technologies. There is no reference to using the data to make their own assessment of safety and efficacy, betraying a blind spot on the part of the drafters: they are so focussed on facilitating the imposition of pharmaceutical products on everybody that they don’t even think to make provisions regarding sharing of information for the purpose of assessing or monitoring safety and efficacy.
- There is a requirement to adopt “legal, administrative and technical measures to diversify and increase production of health products” (Annex 1 para 7) (but not to promote development of early treatment protocols for example).
- Rules of engagement: Malaysia (article 12 para 7) and Africa (article 13A para 7) have proposed new wording which ostensibly puts some guard rails around how the WHO engages with non-State actors, by requiring the WHO to comply with paragraph 73 of the Framework for Engagement of Non-State Actors (FENSA). However, that paragraph in FENSA does not impose any constraints on the WHO. On the contrary, it grants the Director-General complete flexibility: “… the Director-General may exercise flexibility as might be needed in the application of procedures of this framework in those responses, when he/she deems necessary, in accordance with WHO’s responsibilities as health cluster lead.” This complete flexibility is given to a single individual, the Director-General of the WHO.
- In terms of disclosure, the new article 13A does require the WHO to report all its engagements with other stakeholders to the World Health Assembly, and to “provide documents and information relating to such engagements upon request of State Parties.” However, this is far from requiring full disclosure. The WHO could supply summary documents and information, rather than making full disclosure. The WHO has not disclosed who has proposed this new article 13A.
Ban on Orthodox patriarch ‘disgrace’ for West – Serbian president
RT | December 27, 2022
The decision by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian government to block the Serbian Orthodox patriarch from entering the breakaway province is as shameful as the non-response of Pristina’s Western backers, President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday.
“This is a great shame, not for us, but for them,” Vucic said in a televised speech. “But it’s important for us to see how decision-makers, mainly in the West, truly feel about our people and our country.”
Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Orthodox Church was turned away when he tried visiting the patriarchal seat in Pec on Monday. Vucic noted that Western governments reacted by speaking about the importance of “freedom of movement” instead, focusing on the barricades put up by the protesting Serbs in the north of the breakaway province.
“Why is there such hysterical insistence on removing the barricades? Because they need to remove the Serbs from northern Kosovo, both the Albanians in Pristina and some in the international community,” the Serbian president said. “Albanians don’t use those roads, only Serbs in the north, who support the barricades as a way to defend their existence.”
The very same powers that “trampled Serbia’s territorial integrity” in 1999, during the NATO war, are “trying to do the same today” in violation of all international laws and treaties, “because they consider territorial integrity of Kosovo more important than Serb lives,” Vucic added.
NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 and handed control of Kosovo to ethnic Albanian separatists, who declared independence in 2008 and have demanded recognition from Belgrade ever since. Serbia has refused, despite pressure from the US and EU.
Residents of several Serb-majority municipalities in northern Kosovo put up roadblocks earlier this month, protesting the arrest of an ethnic Serb policeman and the heavy presence of ethnic Albanian police in their communities.
The Russian ambassador to Serbia, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, condemned Pristina’s actions towards the Orthodox patriarch, calling them “absolutely unreasonable” and “a ban on Orthodoxy.” He also said the ethnic Albanian police demanded the patriarch make “anti-Serb statements.”
Patriarch Porfirije described Monday’s incident as “if someone for no reason, with a laughable explanation, tried to prevent the Pope of Rome from entering the Vatican.” He nonetheless appealed for restraint and a peaceful solution to the ongoing tensions.
“Serbs have lived in Kosovo and Metohija for 15 centuries, five of them alongside Albanians. If there is good will, we can find a way to live together,” he said on Tuesday.
Every social media company censoring for government – Elon Musk
RT | December 27, 2022
All social media platforms work with the US government to censor content, Twitter CEO Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday. Documents released by Musk following his purchase of Twitter showed that the platform colluded with the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and other government agencies to suppress information on elections, Ukraine, and Covid-19.
“*Every* social media company is engaged in heavy censorship, with significant involvement of and, at times, explicit direction of the government,” Musk tweeted, adding that “Google frequently makes links disappear, for example.”
Musk was referring to internal Twitter communications published by journalist Matt Taibbi, which suggested that the platform’s senior executives held regular meetings with members of the FBI and CIA, during which the agencies gave them lists of “hundreds of problem accounts” to suspend in the runup to the 2020 election.
In addition to Twitter, the government was in contact “with virtually every major tech firm,” Taibbi claimed. “These included Facebook, Microsoft, Verizon, Reddit, even Pinterest.” CIA agents “nearly always” sat in on meetings of these firms with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, Taibbi claimed, explaining that although this task force was convened to fight alleged election interference by foreign states, it made “mountains of domestic moderation requests.”
A lawsuit filed earlier this year by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana alleges that officials from no fewer than 12 government agencies met weekly with representatives of Twitter, Facebook, and other Big Tech firms in 2020 to decide which narratives and users to censor, with topics ranging from alleged election interference to Covid-19.
A self-described “free speech absolutist,” Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October. He has since released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies. Published by several independent journalists, these document dumps have shown how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden’s election campaign, colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
The FBI said last week that correspondence between its agents and Twitter staff “show nothing more than examples of our tradition [of] longstanding and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements.”
The White House has refused to answer allegations that the FBI directed Twitter to censor information damaging to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
FBI COINTELPRO Is Back, And Worse Than Ever
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | December 27, 2022
Elon Musk has opened the floodgates to expose the FBI’s latest war on Americans’ freedom of speech. The FBI massively intervened to pressure Twitter to suppress accounts and tweets from individuals the FBI disapproved of, including parody accounts. The FBI and other federal agencies also browbeat Facebook, Instagram, and many other social media companies.
Thus far, most of the American corporate media has ignored or downplayed the story, known as the Twitter Files. Since many of the individuals who the FBI got squelched were pro-Trump, the violation of their rights is a non-issue (or a cause for quiet celebration). At this point, it is difficult to know whether the scant reaction to the Twitter Files is the result of political bias, collective amnesia, or simply a total ignorance of American history.
The history of the FBI provides the best guide to the abuses that may be now occurring. From 1956 to 1971, the FBI carried out “a secret war against those citizens it considers threats to the established order,” a 1976 Senate report noted. The FBI’s Operation COINTELPRO involved thousands of covert operations to incite street warfare between violent groups, to get people fired, to portray innocent people as government informants, to destroy activists’ marriages, and to cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, white racist, and anti-war organizations. The FBI let no corner of American life escape its vigilance; it even worked to expose and discredit “communists who are secretly operating in legitimate organizations and employments, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association and Boy Scouts.”
While many people are aware of how the FBI hounded Martin Luther King Jr. and pressured him to commit suicide, that was not even the tip of the iceberg of the FBI’s racial persecution. Almost any black organization could be targeted for illegal wiretaps. One black leader was monitored largely because he had “recommended the possession of firearms by members for their self-protection.” At that time, some southern police departments and sheriffs were notorious for attacking blacks who stood up for their civil rights.
The FBI office in San Diego instigated violence between the local Black Panthers and a rival black organization, US (United Slaves Inc.). Agents sent forged letters making accusations and threats to the groups purportedly from their rivals, along with crude cartoons and drawings meant to enrage the recipients. Three Black Panthers and one member of the US were killed during the time the FBI was fanning the flames. A few days after shootings in which two Panthers were wounded and one was killed, and in which the US headquarters was bombed, the FBI office reported to headquarters: “Efforts are being made to determine how this situation can be capitalized upon for the benefit of the Counterintelligence Program.” The FBI office bragged shortly thereafter: “Shootings, beatings, and a high degree of unrest continues to prevail in the ghetto area of southeast San Diego… it is felt that a substantial amount of the unrest is directly attributable to this [FBI] program.”
The FBI set up a Ghetto Informant Program that continued after COINTELPRO and that had 7,402 informants, including proprietors of candy stores and barbershops, as of September 1972. The informants served as “listening posts” “to identify extremists passing through or locating in the ghetto area, to identify purveyors of extremist literature,” and to keep an eye on “Afro-American type bookstores” (including obtaining the names of the bookstore’s “clientele”). The informants’ reports were stockpiled in the FBI’s Racial Intelligence Unit. The FBI also created a national “Rabble Rouser” Index, a “major intelligence program… to identify ‘demagogues.’”
The FBI targeted the women’s liberation movement, resulting in “intensive reporting on the identities and opinions of women who attended” women’s lib meetings. One FBI informant reported to headquarters of a meeting in New York: “Each woman at this meeting stated why she had come to the meeting and how she felt oppressed, sexually or otherwise… They are mostly against marriage, children, and other states of oppression caused by men.” Women’s lib informants were instructed to “go to meetings, write up reports… to try to identify the background of every person there… [and] who they were sleeping with.” The Senate report noted that “the intensive FBI investigation of the Women’s Liberation Movement was predicated on the theory that the activities of women in that Movement might lead to demonstrations and violence.”
The FBI took a shotgun approach toward protesters partly because of its “belief that dissident speech and association should be prevented because they were incipient steps toward the possible ultimate commission of an act which might be criminal.” Some FBI agents may have viewed dissident speech or protests as a “gateway drug” to blowing up the Washington Monument. The Senate report noted that the clearest FBI COINTELPRO constitutional violations consisted of “targeting speakers, teachers, writers or publications, and meetings or peaceful demonstrations… The cases include attempts (sometimes successful) to get university and high school teachers fired… to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations, including… most of the large antiwar marches.”
The FBI especially loathed any opposition to the Vietnam War. The bureau ordered field offices in 1968 to gather information illustrating the “scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.” FBI agents were told: “Every avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored. It cannot be expected that information of this type will be easily obtained, and an imaginative approach by your personnel is imperative to its success.” One FBI internal newsletter encouraged agents to conduct more interviews with antiwar activists “for plenty of reasons, chief of which are it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox.”
An FBI memo warned that “the anarchist activities of a few can paralyze institutions of learning, [conscription] induction centers, cripple traffic, and tie the arms of law enforcement officials, all to the detriment of our society.” The FBI declared: “The New Left has on many occasions viciously and scurrilously attacked the Director [J. Edgar Hoover] and the Bureau in an attempt to hamper our investigation of it and to drive us off the college campuses.”
Other federal agencies also trampled citizens’ privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston, testifying to Congress in 1973, lamented the FBI’s tendency “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”
Throughout the COINTELPRO era, presidents, congressmen, and other high-ranking federal officials assured Americans that the federal government was obeying the law and upholding the Constitution. It took a burglary of an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania to break the biggest scandal in the history of federal law enforcement. After hundreds of pages of confidential records were commandeered, the “Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI” began passing out the incriminating documents to the media. The shocking material sparked congressional and news investigations that eventually (temporarily) shattered the FBI’s legendary ability to control its own image.
The Senate report on COINTELPRO concluded: “Only a combination of legislative prohibition and Departmental control can guarantee that COINTELPRO will not happen again.” But the Ford administration derailed legislative reforms by promising an administrative fix. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft threw out many of those reforms as part of “a concerted effort to free the [FBI] field agents… from the bureaucratic, organizational, and operational restrictions” imposed after their prior abuses. Ashcroft declared: “In its 94-year history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been… the tireless protector of civil rights and civil liberties for all Americans.” The same tripe has been uttered by many Democrats and liberals in the last five years.
The FBI’s latest war on wrong-thinking Americans took off after the FBI helped fabricate the narrative that the Russian government conspired with the Trump presidential campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The 1976 Senate report noted that COINTELPRO’s origins “are rooted in the Bureau’s jurisdiction to investigate hostile foreign intelligence activities on American soil” and that the FBI used the “techniques of wartime.” William Sullivan, former assistant to the FBI director, declared, “No holds were barred…We have used [these techniques] against Soviet agents… [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate.” Senate investigators warned in 1976 that the “FBI intelligence system developed to a point where no one inside or outside the bureau was willing or able to tell the difference between legitimate national security or law enforcement information and purely political intelligence.”
In our time, FBI officials pressured Twitter to suppress Americans based on false claims of fighting foreign influence. The same pretext was used by the Department of Homeland Security to massively suppress Americans’ criticism of election procedures (especially mail-in ballots) for the 2020 presidential election.
One of the biggest “misses” in the media coverage of the Twitter Files is the stunning failure of Congress to expose the abuses that Elon Musk is revealing. A few months ago, FBI director Christopher Wray, facing vigorous questioning from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and others, walked out of a Senate oversight hearing claiming that he had an urgent appointment he must keep. It was later revealed that Wray’s “appointment” was hopping on an FBI jet for a family vacation. Congress punished the FBI with a $570 million budget increase, plowing $11.3 billion into its coffers in the coming year.
Is Congress terrified of the FBI nowadays like congressmen were in the COINTELPRO era? In 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs revealed the shameless kowtowing on Capitol Hill: “Our very fear of speaking out [against the FBI]… has watered the roots and hastened the growth of a vine of tyranny… Our society cannot survive a planned and programmed fear of its own government bureaus and agencies.” Boggs vindicated a 1924 American Civil Liberties Union warning that the FBI had become “a secret police system of a political character.” (The Louisiana congressman died a year later in an apparent plane crash.)
But old quotes provide no protection against new depredations. The Twitter Files prove that G-men have been off the leash for years. We still have no idea how far the FBI and other federal agencies have gone to suppress our freedom of speech. Until federal abuses are fully exposed, Americans would be damn fools to believe their constitutional rights are safe.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
Twitter Files describe Covid censorship campaign
RT | December 26, 2022
The latest batch of Twitter documents released by CEO Elon Musk show how the platform censored posts about Covid-19 that didn’t align with the White House’s message. Qualified doctors and epidemiologists were suppressed and banned at the direct request of the Biden administration, the documents suggest.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations pushed Twitter to moderate coronavirus-related content, journalist David Zweig reported on Monday, citing the company’s internal communications. While Trump’s team wanted to tamp down rumors of grocery-store shortages to combat panic-buying, Biden switched focus to “misinformation” about vaccines once his team took over in January 2021.
According to files seen by Zweig, Biden’s staff directly pressured Twitter to ban “high-profile anti-vaxxer accounts,” including that of former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, who has persistently claimed that the risks of vaccination outweigh the benefits. Twitter complied and suspended Berenson in July 2021, but Twitter employees said afterwards that “the Biden team” was still “not satisfied” with the platform’s censorship efforts, and angrily demanded that it “de-platform several accounts.”
Twitter placed a warning label on the account of a Harvard epidemiologist who argued that “those with prior natural infection” do not need to be vaccinated, and flagged as “misleading” tweets that cited the Biden administration’s own data on Covid death rates. It used a combination of AI “bots” and contracted moderators in foreign countries to make these decisions.
A physician was flagged for sharing the results of a peer-reviewed study linking vaccination with cardiac arrests in young people, while another doctor was permanently suspended for referring to a published study suggesting that vaccination temporarily impairs male patients’ sperm count.
“Dissident yet legitimate content was labeled as misinformation, and the accounts of doctors and others were suspended both for tweeting opinions and demonstrably true information,” Zweig tweeted.
When former President Donald Trump urged his followers not to “be afraid of Covid” following his own recovery from the illness, Twitter’s senior moderators debated taking action against the tweet, before concluding that Trump’s “optimistic” assessment did not count as misinformation.
Since purchasing Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has released batches of documents shedding light on the platform’s previously opaque censorship policies. Published by several independent journalists, these document dumps have shown how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden’s election campaign, colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
Twitter Files – The important question
The decline of the MSM
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | December 26, 2022
When Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, he promised to scrutinise the previous administration. Whether this was because he genuinely wanted to emancipate the company or because he was annoyed at being forced to pay the price he paid (after being sued), who knows but it provides for some interesting reading.
Musk enlisted the help of several journalists, including Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger and Lee Fang. Apparently, his one request was that any information found must first be revealed on Twitter.
On 2 December, the first instalment of the Twitter files was released with the most recent, ninth part, published on Christmas Eve.
So, what have we learnt so far?
Benjamin Carlson provides a good summary:
- History changed because of this:
- Hunter Biden’s alleged corruption censored;
- Covid 19 lockdown debate stifled;
- Trump silenced.
You may agree with each decision. But there is no denying that halting information flow and free debate had real consequences.
- Many things called conspiracy theories were true:
- FBI was working with Twitter and paid them million of dollars;
- Blacklists and shadow bans were real;
- US intel lobbied to censor accounts;
- Covid-19 conversation was heavily manipulated;
- Twitter rules changed and enforced by whim.
- Censorship is being cloaked in the language of safety:
- ‘Safety, harm, violence’ redefined to apply to ideas;
- Opinions and information deemed ‘unsafe’ subject to silencing;
- Jokes, memes, questions about the origin of Covid off limits.
- The government is policing opinion:
- FBI has 80 staff monitoring speech;
- Small accounts on left and right flagged;
- FBI held frequent meetings with Twitter;
- Facebook, Youtube and Instagram = similar?
- Private censors & police control what you say and to whom.
- Social media executives lie freely:
- Twitter execs repeatedly and publicly denied shadow bans;
- In reality, bans were in place as “visibility filtering”;
- Ultimately, no accountability to public.
- Free speech is controlled by a small group:
- Biggest decisions in Twitter Files made by 3-4 individuals;
- Despite misgivings and doubts, once made, decisions stuck;
- Now it’s Musk.
One difference: his embrace of public polls to set policy.
- The slippery slope is real:
- Staff rebellion led to Trump ban;
- Staff called for more covid-19 censorship;
- 2021-22 saw increase of bans and ‘one-offs’.
This is how you get Billy Baldwin in the crosshairs.
Once you silence a president, who has a right to speak?
This is all massive stuff but nothing most of us didn’t already know or suspect. And the Fauci files that Musk keeps saying he will release haven’t been published yet.
But the important question is, why have the Main Stream Media barely reported on it? If we had learnt that the secret services in another country had meddled with elections in their country, it would be everywhere. But happens in the West and nothing.
I keep getting adverts from the BBC popping up telling me to trust them.
So what have the BBC written about the Twitter files to earn my trust? It seems they have only written a brief article, two weeks ago, merely touching on the issues mentioned above. The article titled “Twitter Files spark debate about ‘blacklisting’” says we are missing the context as to whether other accounts have faced similar treatment. Furthermore, they question whether the restricted accounts were in breach of rules for example spreading false claims about Covid.
The BBC continues, “restricting accounts can be a useful tool if they are spreading harmful material.” and “there have been various reports suggesting marginalised groups including trans and plus size people were more likely to have their accounts restricted.”
So, unfortunately, I can’t trust you BBC, you haven’t written one sentence on the implications such meddling could have had on the US elections. If there had been an equivalent Russian Twitter Files, you would have been on the case every single day.
Marianna Spring, the BBC’s infamous disinformation correspondent analyses the situation at the end of the article. Unsurprisingly, but predictably, her main point is that how you interpret the “Twitter Files” depends on how you think misinformation should be dealt with. She also says that those caught up in the revelations have received backlash online.
Again, nothing about how the misinformation and censorship may have changed the outcome of the US election.
But that’s about it from the BBC.
Next on to the Guardian. They have one article called “I read Elon Musk’s ‘Twitter Files’ so you don’t have to” which pretty much sums up their position. The article describes the censorship as “individual examples of rightwing users being on the end of light-touch moderation” and Jay Bhattacharya as a “Covid sceptic”.
And again, other than this, the Guardian haven’t reported on the issue since.
The more right wing leaning newspapers have a few more stories. The Times and Telegraph reported on how Twitter aided the Pentagon, how Donald Trump was banned and a Republican claim that the Biden family is the most corrupt in history.
The Daily Mail is probably the only UK paper to have covered this story in detail.
So why, after all of the revelations from the “Twitter Files” is much of the Main Stream Media so happy to ignore what had been going on? It’s a rhetorical question. I know the answer and you know the answer but it’s one which erodes any remaining trust we might have in MSM reporting.
Most people, especially older people, trust the BBC, read the odd headline and watch the evening news. So, when the real scandals revealed in the “Twitter Files” are never reported on, the general population don’t have a clue. Even with well-read people, I have tried to discuss the topic but they haven’t even heard of the “Twitter Files”, let alone what has been revealed.
And this is before the Fauci files are released, if they ever are. But if they are, then don’t for one second think that the general public will hear about them or change their position on anything to do with Covid. It just won’t happen unfortunately. If the MSM do report on the Fauci files, it will be brief and they will conclude that lockdowns were necessary to prevent deaths and vaccines are a miracle from God.
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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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