Witness Forced to Walk Back Accusations That Led Maine Medical Board to Suspend Dr. Meryl Nass’ License
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 1, 2023
The Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine on Tuesday held its third hearing on the suspension of Dr. Meryl Nass related to her treatment recommendations for patients with COVID-19.
As it did on day two of the hearings, held on Oct. 27, 2022, the board focused on Nass’ alleged “sloppy” record-keeping for three patients she treated and on her prescribing of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for those patients.
The board suspended Nass, a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory board, on Jan. 12, 2022, without a hearing.
The board initially accused Nass of “unprofessional” and “disruptive” behavior, spreading “misinformation” and prescribing hydroxychloroquine and a “deworming medication” (ivermectin) to patients.
However, the board withdrew the accusations of “misinformation” on Sept. 26, 2022, just prior to her first hearing date, Oct. 11, 2022.
The board’s case now rests on Nass’ alleged non-adherence to the medical “standard of care” as it pertained to ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19 and on the alleged “record-keeping” issues.
Two witnesses hired by the board — Dr. Thomas Courtney of the Maine Medical Center and Dr. Jeremy Samuel Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts and instructor at Harvard Medical School — testified during Tuesday’s proceedings, and Nass’ attorney, Gene Libby, cross-examined Courtney.
Cross-examination pokes holes in ‘expert witness’ testimony
Throughout his testimony, Courtney repeated his assertion that Nass did not follow an adequate standard of care in prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to three patients, alleged improprieties in her communication and remote (telemedicine) consultations with the patients, and claimed Nass’ record-keeping was lacking.
But Courtney was obliged to walk back significant portions of his earlier testimony under his cross-examination by Libby.
For instance, Courtney claimed Nass did not adhere to an appropriate standard of care because she failed to advise two of her patients who didn’t recover as expected to seek care at an emergency room.
But under cross-examination, he acknowledged Nass had, in fact, advised the patients to go to the ER.
Courtney also criticized Nass for not prescribing monoclonal antibodies to her patients, one of whom was pregnant.
However, when cross-examined, Courtney admitted that, unlike hydroxychloroquine, monoclonal antibodies were not recommended for pregnant women and most monoclonal antibodies available at the time Nass was advising her patients were known to be ineffective against the Omicron variant of COVID-19, the dominant strain of the virus at that time.
Libby pointed out that the pregnant patient fully recovered eight days after the onset of her illness and had a normal birth, during which she was administered hydroxychloroquine and monoclonal antibodies.
Because evidence shows monoclonal antibodies are ineffective for pregnant women, the patient’s full recovery was credited to hydroxychloroquine.
Courtney also criticized Nass for making decisions about a patient’s care, including which medications to prescribe, on the basis of incomplete medical records.
He later walked back those claims after Libby demonstrated that Nass had received extensive documentation about the condition of one of the patients from his spouse, who provided Nass with vital signs, including the patient’s blood oxygen level.
Libby noted the three patients had specifically requested not to be treated with remdesivir, had asked to be prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — and were fully within their rights as patients to request such treatment. Courtney was obliged to concur.
Libby also pointed out that off-label prescriptions of medications such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, even for uses other than their primary purpose, are well within the generally accepted standard of care for physicians, and that federal agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health do not issue binding requirements in this regard.
Courtney confirmed these statements.
In another characteristic exchange, Courtney, who had previously been critical of alleged gaps in Nass’s record keeping, was forced to concede that he did not “personally have a strong opinion on it.”
Referring to Courtney’s testimony, Nass wrote on her blog that despite his “opining that I lacked the fitness to practice medicine, he was unable to identify a single thing I had done wrong in my records.”
“I sent 2 patients to the ER when they did not recover as expected, although one of the board’s initial charges against me was that I failed to do so,” Nass wrote.
She likened the board’s accusations against her to “simply throwing lots of spaghetti on the wall to try and overwhelm me with charges so I would wilt and surrender my license.”
Referring to the medical claims Courtney made, Nass wrote:
“Courtney did not know the difference between an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] product and a licensed drug. He incorrectly repeated a false claim made only once by FDA that the EUA for HCQ [hydroxychloroquine] was withdrawn because you would need to administer a toxic dose to get benefit. He had clearly failed to give that assertion any thought. Nor had he evaluated the U.S. government literature showing it to be false.
“He thought I should have treated 2 outpatients with monoclonal antibodies, but eventually agreed that cases in December 2021 were a mix of Omicron and Delta when the patients were ill, that none of their variants had been sequenced so we did not know which variant they had, and the monoclonals would not have worked against Omicron variants, which were likely to have been present then.”
“Doctor Courtney doesn’t read journal articles,” Nass wrote. “He sticks by the recommendations of government agencies and his specialty organization, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).”
Nass noted that the IDSA was sued by the State of Connecticut “for denying the existence of chronic Lyme disease.”
In the brief time that was available for Faust to begin his testimony, he focused on attacking the credibility of Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist at the Yale University School of Public Health, for a journal article he wrote finding that treatments such as hydroxychloroquine were effective against COVID-19.
Nass had relied in part on Risch’s findings in dispensing hydroxychloroquine to her patients. During his testimony, Faust claimed, “There’s no disagreement here among the most prestigious experts in this area” with regard to the purported lack of effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients.
Nass wrote:
“Faust was the Board’s epidemiology expert. He got some of the epidemiology right and he got a lot wrong. His arrogance when he was not sure of the answer was off-putting. He insulted Yale epidemiology professor Harvey Risch. He insulted my ability to read a journal article and he had a novel theory that this was sufficient disqualification to justify revoking my license.
“No one mentioned that Dr. Courtney could not cite journal articles used for forming his opinions on COVID treatment, having solely relied on pronouncements from government agencies.
“Should his license be revoked for that? Of course not.”
Nass also pointed out that Faust is a proponent of pregnant women receiving multiple mRNA injections. For instance, he was the lead author of “Pregnancy should be a condition eligible for additional doses of COVID-19 messenger RNA vaccines,” published in November 2022 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology MFM.
Nass also wrote that Faust “publicly melted down when the mask mandate on planes was lifted,” accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of “killing babies.”
Next hearing set for March 2
The Maine board has scheduled two more hearings, the next one for March 2.
However, according to Nass, “The questioning of Dr. Faust is likely to take half a day more. Then I have 8 witnesses to go, including 3 patients who are at issue.”
About 140,000 people tuned in to Tuesday’s live broadcast of the proceedings, according to Nass.
Children’s Health Defense is providing support for Nass’ legal team.
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.
California to Ditch Plans to Mandate COVID Vaccines for Schoolchildren
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 2, 2023
California will end plans to mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren when the state ends its COVID-19 state of emergency on Feb. 28, California Department of Public Health officials told EdSource, which reported the news on Wednesday.
Commenting on the news, Michael Kane, national grassroots organizer for Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and founder of NY Teachers For Choice, told The Defender :
“We [in the movement] have some really good momentum right now, and what just happened in California is indicative of that.
“People are done with this. They’re done with the most extreme portions of this COVID agenda, the idea of this shot in kids is a no-starter for anybody.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in October 2021, that California would be the first state to require COVID-19 vaccinations for children to attend school. It was also the first to mandate masking and staff vaccination measures.
At the time, state Sen. Richard Pan proposed legislation to strengthen the vaccine requirement even further by eliminating personal and religious exemptions. The legislation didn’t pass.
The vaccine requirement for children was originally set to kick in on July 1, 2022, when it was expected the vaccines, still under Emergency Use Authorization at the time, would be fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
But in April 2022, California announced it would delay the mandate to July 1, 2023.
The FDA still has not fully approved the COVID-19 vaccines for anyone under age 12. The CDC recommends the vaccines and the bivalent boosters for children ages 6 months and older.
The bivalent boosters were authorized for emergency use without any human clinical trials.
In California, 67% of 12- to 17-year-olds and 38% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine primary series. Less than 42% of 12- to 17-year-olds and less than 30% of 5- to 11-year-olds have been boosted.
Those numbers are higher than national averages. Only 58% of children ages 12 to 17 and 32% of children ages 5 to 11 have received two doses of the vaccine.
“The booster uptake is a complete failure, so this idea of routinizing a COVID shot for school every year, which is what they wanted, is failing in all the states they thought it was a guarantee in,” Kane said.
California ended the school mask mandate in March 2022, and ended the vaccine mandate for teachers and school staff in October 2022.
‘This kind of coercion never should have been normalized’
In the last two years, while state lawmakers debated California’s school vaccine mandate, school districts across the state proposed and passed their own COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
Alex Gutentag, former Oakland public school teacher and political analyst, told The Defender :
“Newsom has referred to California as ‘the true freedom state,’ but he more than any other U.S. governor has tried to undermine the medical freedom of kids and their families when it comes to COVID-19.
“It is definitely a positive development that California is ending its plan for a school mandate, but it’s important to remember that many kids have already been coerced into vaccination through the threat of both statewide and local mandates.
“Several California cities, including Los Angeles, told families that COVID vaccines would be required to attend school in person, but eventually had to scrap and delay these plans. It was a clear effort to increase vaccine uptake, and was a major abuse of power. This kind of coercion never should have been normalized.”
The pressure to scrap mandate plans came in part from attorneys and citizen advocacy groups who brought three major lawsuits against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the Piedmont Unified School District and the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD).
Children’s Health Defense-California Chapter (CHD-CA) and Protection of the Educational Rights of Kids (PERK), a California-based child advocacy group, used state laws to rule out local policies and pause vaccine mandates in the LAUSD and the Piedmont school district.
They sued the LAUSD, the second-largest school district in the U.S., alleging the district lacked the legal authority to impose a COVID-19 vaccine requirement for students ages 12 and older.
The mandate would have excluded 32,000 students from in-person classes.
After Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff ruled the case could go forward in April 2022, the LAUSD announced it would delay the COVID-19 vaccine requirement until July 1, when the state mandate kicked in.
Piedmont also voted to repeal its mandate after a judge granted CHD-CA and PERK’s Application for an Alternative Writ of Mandate and ordered the district to show why its policy could not be struck down.
In San Diego, a group called Let Them Choose filed a lawsuit contesting the SDUSD’s vaccine mandate for school children ages 16 and up. The court ruled, and in December 2022, an appellate court affirmed, that the district’s mandate violated state guidelines.
According to Rita Barnett-Rose, legal director of CHD-CA, the San Diego ruling established that individual school districts cannot institute COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the district level, because there is a statewide statutory scheme in place to set mandates.
That means the end of the California COVID-19 vaccine mandate for children at the state level will effectively end all school mandates in California.
Political will for mandates faltering across the country
Rita Barnett-Rose underscored that California health officials have not yet made the news about ending the mandate for the state’s schools official. However, she said, “Right now it looks like positive news.”
However, Barnett-Rose said, “The question still remains, are they [state legislature] going to try to put something on the legislative agenda this year?”
Gutentag also noted the lack of an official announcement:
“I also think it’s notable that officials only said they were not going to implement the mandate after EdSource pressed them for answers. State leaders probably knew that there were too many legal and logistical challenges, but did not want to admit this in order to save face.
“All Californians should be concerned that our state government is not honest and direct with us about major policy decisions.”
This shift in California’s school mandate decision is the latest in a string of developments calling into question the COVID-19 vaccines and marking a shift in public consensus on vaccines.
“I’m not surprised at all that California is admitting that it’s not politically possible to force a shot that’s unnecessary and dangerous on children to attend school,” Kane said, adding:
“It makes perfect sense to me, given what I am seeing in New York that this same type of pressure is in California.
“The entire thing is political. The whole thing is what can we politically do? They can’t politically force the shot on kids. The fallout is too much. They just can’t risk it, you know.”
Barnett-Rose told The Defender she thinks that when Newsom announced the mandate he thought a lot of other states would follow suit.
“I’m hoping this signifies that the political will to force these mandates on kids is really declining significantly.”
CDC adds COVID shots to child immunization schedule
California reversed its vaccine mandate decision despite the fact that in October 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended adding COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months old to the new Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule, which will be rolled out this month.
The revised recommendations include the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 6 months and the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 12 years.
All COVID-19 vaccines being administered in the U.S. to people under 18 are still Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) products.
The FDA did grant full approval to Pfizer’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine for ages 12 and older. However, the Comirnaty vaccine is not available in the U.S. — which means all children who get the Pfizer vaccine are getting an EUA product.
The FDA also informed a congressional committee in May 2022 that the COVID-19 vaccines for children under 6 would not have to meet the agency’s 50% efficacy threshold required to obtain EUA.
COVID-19 vaccines for adolescents, teens and adults had to meet the requirement.
“If these vaccines seem to be mirroring efficacy in adults and just seem to be less effective against Omicron like they are for adults, we will probably still authorize,” Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the FDA, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis.
Last week, The Epoch Times reported that recently released emails revealed top officials, including Marks, rushed approval of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to enable vaccine mandates, despite concern by others in the agency that the rush compromised the integrity of the approval process.
On Dec. 9, 2022, the CDC expanded the use of updated (bivalent) COVID-19 vaccines for children ages 6 months through 5 years. They made that decision despite the fact that the bivalent shots were approved for adults without any clinical data and have yet to show efficacy.
In an amicus brief for a lawsuit challenging the vaccine mandate for school children in the state of Louisiana, CHD wrote:
“Simply put, the COVID vaccines have not been shown to be either effective or safe for children. The benefits to children are minuscule, while the risks — including the risk of potentially fatal heart damage — are ‘known’ and ‘serious,’ as the [FDA] itself has acknowledged.”
The Louisiana Department of Health rescinded the mandate.
Legal struggles continue over age of consent for vaccines
Legal battles over vaccines for children in California and elsewhere are ongoing.
In California, Maribel Duarte is suing the LAUSD and Barack Obama Global Preparation Academy alleging they vaccinated her 13-year-old son without her consent.
A vaccine clinic was set up in his school — Barack Obama Global Prep Academy — and he was allegedly bribed with a pizza to get vaccinated without parental consent.
One of the adults at the clinic requested the teen provide a parent-signed consent form, which he did not have. The child was then told to sign his mother’s name and not tell anyone.
Currently, Sen. Cheryl Kagen of Maryland is proposing Senate Bill 378, which would allow children 14 and up to consent to vaccination themselves and prevent parents from accessing medical records.
California attempted to pass a similar bill, SB 866, for children ages 12 and up.
The District of Columbia also attempted to pass a similar law, for children 11 and older, but a preliminary injunction issued in March 2022 temporarily blocked the district from implementing the law.
CHD and the Parental Rights Foundation sued the district and are seeking to declare the D.C. act unconstitutional.
The D.C. school district still plans to mandate children be vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend school starting in the 2023-2024 school year, just not without their parents’ consent.
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.
Federal government is accused of using antiterrorism tech to target vaccine dissent
Using it against its own citizens
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2023
The US federal government is adopting military-grade AI that was used to crack down on ISIS to censor dissent by US citizens on issues like election fraud and vaccine hesitancy, according to the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz.
Private firms and universities have received millions of dollars in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), a federal agency, to develop tools similar to those developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Social Media in Strategic Communications (SMISC) program in 2011.
SMISC’s tools were used “to help identify misinformation or deception campaigns and counter them with truthful information,” in the Middle East. In a report, Mike Benz detailed how the NSF and other organizations are using this technology to censor the speech of Americans.
“One of the most disturbing aspects of the Convergence Accelerator Track F domestic censorship projects is how similar they are to military-grade social media network censorship and monitoring tools developed by the Pentagon for the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism contexts abroad,” reads the report.
Speaking to Just the News, he said: “DARPA’s been funding an AI network using the science of social media mapping dating back to at least 2011-2012, during the Arab Spring abroad and during the Occupy Wall Street movement here at home. They then bolstered it during the time of ISIS to identify homegrown ISIS threats in 2014-2015.”
According to Benz, the NSF has adopted DARPA’s technology to target two groups of Americans: those skeptical of recent election results and those who claim COVID-19 vaccines could be harmful.
“The terrifying thing is, as all of this played out, it was redirected inward during 2016 — domestic populism was treated as a foreign national security threat,” Benz said.
“What you’ve seen is a grafting on of these concepts of mis- and disinformation that were escalated to such high-intensity levels in the news over the past several years being converted into a tangible, formal government program to fund and accelerate the science of censorship,” he said.
“You had this project at the National Science Foundation called the Convergence Accelerator,” Benz recounted, “which was created by the Trump administration to tackle grand challenges like quantum technology. When the Biden administration came to power, they basically took this infrastructure for multidisciplinary science work to converge on a common science problem and took the problem of what people say on social media as being on the level of, say, quantum technology.
“And so they created a new track called the track F program … and it’s for ‘trust and authenticity,’ but what that means is, and what it’s a code word for is, if trust in the government or trust in the media cannot be earned, it must be installed. And so they are funding artificial intelligence, censorship capacities, to censor people who distrust government or media.”
Benz noted how mainstream media and fact-checkers have become arbiters of truth, determining what is acceptable and unacceptable to post online, and how the pandemic has normalized “censorship in the name of public health.”
“What’s happened now is the government says, ‘Okay, we’ve established this normative foothold in it being okay to [censor political speech], now we’re going to supercharge you guys with all sorts of DARPA military grade censorship, weaponry, so that you can now take what you’ve achieved in the censorship space and scale it to the level of a U.S. counterinsurgency operation,’” Benz explained.
Rights group submits objection to US plans to build new embassy in Jerusalem
MEMO | January 31, 2023
Adalah yesterday filed an objection against the Jerusalem District Planning Committee over the US’ plan to build a new embassy on illegally confiscated Palestinian land in Jerusalem.
Action was taken on behalf of 12 of the descendants of the original Palestinian owners of the land, with the rights group calling on Washington to “immediately cancel” its plans to build the embassy.
“If the US proceeds with this plan, it will be a full-throated endorsement of Israel’s illegal confiscation of private Palestinian property in violation of international law,” a letter to the US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
“Additionally, the State Department will be actively participating in violating the private property rights of its own citizens.”
These descendants include four US citizens, three Jordanian residents and five East Jerusalem residents.
According to Wafa news agency, the land was confiscated by the Israeli government under the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950, which Adalah says is one of the most arbitrary, discriminatory and draconian laws enacted in the state of Israel.
The Absentees’ Property Law was the main legal instrument used by Israel to take possession of the land belonging to the internal and external Palestinian refugees and Muslim Waqf properties across the newly formed state.
Adalah also highlighted that the confiscation of the land on which the US Diplomatic Compound is to be built violates international law, in particular, Article 46 of The Hague Regulations.
Australian Health Authorities Call For More COVID Boosters… But The Public Says No
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 30, 2023
Australia and New Zealand suffered some of the worst pandemic mandate conditions of any country in the western world, crossing the line into totalitarianism on a number of occasions. Australian authorities restricted residents of larger cities to near house arrest, with people not being allowed to go more than 3 miles from their homes. Citizens were given curfew hours between 9pm and 5am. They were banned from public parks and beaches without a mask, even though it is nearly impossible to transmit a virus outdoors and UV light from the sun acts as a natural disinfectant.
In the worst examples, Australian citizens received visits from police and government officials for posting critical opinions about the mandates on social media. Some were even arrested for calling for protests against the lockdowns. In Australia and New Zealand, covid camps were built to detain people infected with covid. Some facilities were meant for those who had recently traveled, others were meant for anyone who stepped out of line.
As the fears over covid wane and the populace realizes that the true Infection Fatality Rate of the virus is incredibly small, restrictions are being abandoned and things seems to be going back to normal. It’s important, however, to never forget what happened and how many countries faced potentially permanent authoritarianism under the shadow of vaccine passports. If the passports rules had been successfully enforced, we would be living in a very different world today in the west.
Luckily, the passports were never implemented widely. Australian health authorities are once again calling for the public to take a fourth covid booster shot, but with very little response. Only 40% of citizens took the third booster, and new polling data shows that 30% are taking the fourth booster.
With an astonishing rise in excess deaths by heart failure in Australia coinciding exactly with the introduction of the covid mRNA vaccines, perhaps people are deciding to finally err on the side of caution. Why take the risk of an experimental vaccine over a virus that 99.8% of the population will easily survive?
The Censorship of Mercola — A Timeline
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | January 30, 2023
While the drug and chemical industries have attacked and tried to discredit me for years, blatant censorship didn’t begin until 2020, after the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
For legal and historical purposes, I am sharing a timeline of events with you that document a chain of coordinated events and attacks against me and this website. My first article about the pandemic came out February 4, 2020, in which I predicted that it was a grossly exaggerated threat that would enrich pandemic vaccine makers.
March 8, 2020, I published an interview with bioweapons expert Francis Boyle, Ph.D., in which he warned that SARS-CoV-2 had all the hallmarks of a genetically engineered bioweapon. Boyle was among the first, if not the first, to suspect the outbreak was the result of a lab leak.
While every health authority on the planet insisted there was no treatment, and that patients simply go to the hospital to be placed on mechanical ventilation and die, I interviewed medical experts working on early treatment options and published articles detailing the potential benefits of vitamin D, zinc, quercetin and other nutraceuticals that boost immune function, as well as decades-old drugs like hydroxychloroquine.
I also published the testimony of whistleblowers such as Erin Marie Olszewski, a frontline nurse, who warned that patients were being intentionally killed on ventilators as it quickly proved to be a deadly intervention for COVID-19.
Summer of 2020 — The Suppression of Vitamin D Begins
Early on, it became apparent that vitamin D levels and spending time outdoors played an important role in the risk of infection and the ultimate outcomes. This has been true for all respiratory infections, so it should come as no surprise it is also true for coronavirus infections. Despite that, health authorities insisted vitamin D was useless.
The only way out of the pandemic, they said, would be a vaccine — and this despite the fact that no previous attempts at creating a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine had ever succeeded because of its rapid ability to mutate.
In June 2020, I launched an information campaign, StopCovidCold, about vitamin D. I released a downloadable scientific report detailing how and why optimizing vitamin D levels among the general population could minimize the impact of the next wave of COVID. Optimizing vitamin D is a rational, safe and inexpensive measure that no sane health official would object to. And yet, they all did.
July 21, 2020, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) issued a press release1 calling on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) “to bring enforcement proceedings against Mercola and his companies for their unlawful disease claims that falsely and misleadingly claim to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19 infections.”
CSPI accused me of falsely claiming “that at least 22 vitamins, supplements and other products available for sale on his web site can prevent, treat, or cure COVID-19 infection.” This despite the fact that their Appendix of Illegal Claims2 clearly show I made no COVID-19-related claims to any specific products and only referenced published studies and mainstream media articles to support my opinions.
In an August 12, 2020, email, CSPI president Dr. Peter Lurie — a former FDA associate commissioner — also made the spurious claim that I was “profiting from the pandemic” through “anti-vaccine fearmongering:” 3
“Mercola brazenly has claimed that many of his products are coronavirus treatments or cures, including vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium, ‘molecular hydrogen,’ licorice, and other substances.
Besides profiting from the pandemic, Mercola has seemingly advised people to contract COVID-19 after taking supposedly ‘immunity boosting’ supplements (which of course he sells). Making matters worse, Mercola is a leading proponent of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories — and has been fearmongering against prospective COVID-19 vaccines even before such vaccines are available!”
By mid-August, a comprehensive campaign to put an end to Mercola.com had been launched, with Laurie asking CSPI members to flood the FDA and FTC with prewritten Tweets, urging them to take action against us. He also urged “state attorneys general to investigate how they may further protect consumers from Mercola’s illegal marketing.”4
Not surprisingly, CSPI is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, Bloomberg Philanthropies and other billionaire-owned foundations. It’s also partnered with Bill Gates’ agrichemical PR group, the Cornell Alliance for Science. Greg Jaffe, who heads up CSPI’s Biotechnology Project, is also the associate director of legal affairs at Alliance for Science.
Winter of 2020 — Vitamin D Attacks Heat Up
The attacks against me really heated up though after I published a peer-reviewed scientific paper5 on the benefits of vitamin D at the end of October 2020. With that, I established my medical and scientific merit and my right to a professional opinion, which is something the U.S. Constitution absolutely provides for.
The paper, “Evidence Regarding Vitamin D and Risk of COVID-19 and Its Severity,” published in the journal Nutrients, was coauthored by William Grant, Ph.D., and Dr. Carol Wagner, both of whom are part of the GrassrootsHealth expert vitamin D panel.
As noted in that paper, dark skin color, increased age, pre-existing chronic conditions and vitamin D deficiency are all features of severe COVID disease, and of these, vitamin D deficiency is the only factor that is modifiable. As such, it would be foolish to ignore, especially since vitamin D supplements are readily available and low cost.
Christmas Eve 2020, attorney general Letitia James sent us a cease and desist notice, demanding we stop sharing information about how immune-boosting nutritional supplements might lower your risk of COVID, including vitamin D, zinc, NAC and vitamin C.
February 2021, FDA Tries to Silence Protected Speech
After the new presidential administration took over, on February 18, 2021, the Rockefeller-funded CSPI and AG James got their wish, as the FDA sent us a warning letter for “Unapproved and Misbranded Products Related to Coronavirus Disease 2019.”6 Laurie even publicly bragged7 about his ability to influence the FDA to take action against us.
The FDA’s letter highlighted statements in articles on my website that were fully referenced and supported by published science, and none of the articles cited had any commercial advertising linking the information to my products, as per the law. We had done nothing illegal or irregular in that regard, and my professional opinions are protected under the U.S. Constitution.
Needless to say, we fully addressed both James’ cease and desist notice and the FDA’s warning letter, putting them both on notice that they cannot censor protected speech simply because they don’t like what’s being said.
On a side note, William Correll, the director of the Office of Compliance at the FDA who signed the warning letter, sadly “passed away suddenly” just two months later, on April 18 “after a short battle with COVID-19.”8
Gates-Funded Front Group Gets on the Bandwagon
The agrochemical front group Cornell Alliance for Science (CAS),9 the primary funding for which comes from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,10 also jumped on the bandwagon, falsely stating11 that “pages advertising vitamin C and quercetin as having ‘synergistic effects that make them useful in the prevention and early at-home treatment of COVID-19′” were still available on my website nearly a month after the FDA’s warning letter.
To be clear, we had fully referenced scientific news articles. News articles are NOT “advertising,” as they do not link to any specific products, nor do they refer to or recommend any specific brands. In the case of the warning for vitamin C, the article discussed hospitals utilizing IV vitamin C for the treatment of COVID-19 and sepsis.
Such coordinated attacks are to be expected, though, considering Gates’ influence over the operation, and seeing how CAS and CSPI work closely together — a fact CAS admitted in its hit piece.12
March 2021, Booksellers Urged to Ban My Book
Around that same time (February 11, 2021), my book “The Truth About COVID-19” also went up for presale, and by early March, booksellers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia were being pressured not to sell it, or to add some sort of misinformation warning label to it. As reported by Sky News March 5, 2021:13
“In the UK, more than 20 million vaccine doses have been administered as part of efforts to defeat COVID-19, but worries continue that misinformation is stopping some people from having the jab. Shadow health minister Alex Norris told Sky News:
‘Getting our population vaccinated is a massive priority and it is very sad to see these things so freely available. We would hope that retailers would act responsibly and have a look at whether they want to be associated with such products and whether they want to be seen to be profiting off such products.'”
Shady ‘Anti-Hate’ Outfit Publishes Hit List
March 3, 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) — a shady U.K.-based organization with anonymous funding led by Imran Ahmed — also got in on the action, publishing a hit list14 of the “Top 10 anti-vaxxers” it wanted permanently silenced and eradicated from public forums. The list showed, by way of crossing out names, which had already been successfully deplatformed, and from which social media.
While precious little was (and still is) know about the CCDH, some digging revealed Ahmed had been appointed to the steering committee of the U.K. government’s Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020, just as fearmongering about the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up. The CCDH is also linked to a number of technocratic centers within the globalist network through its board members.15
More Fabrications and Lies From the CCDH
A couple of weeks later (March 15), Ahmed somehow managed to get an article titled “Dismantling the Anti-Vaxx Industry”16 published in the journal Nature Medicine. In it, Ahmed lied, claiming he’d “recorded a private, three-day meeting of the world’s most prominent anti-vaxxers,” when in fact it was a public, international conference given online, attended by thousands around the world, all of whom had access to the recordings.
He could have done the normal, ethical and truly journalistic thing and admitted he simply attended a public virtual conference, but instead he twisted it into some risky undercover agent mission where he secretly recorded private discussions that revealed the inner workings of “the opposition.”
Then, March 21, 2021, the CCDH published the fabricated “Disinformation Dozen” report,17,18,19 in which Ahmed falsely claimed 12 people and/or organizations, including yours truly, were responsible for 65% of all anti-vaccine content on social media.
March 24, 2021 — AGs Try to Censor Protected Speech
March 24, 2021, 12 attorneys general sent a letter20 to the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook, seeking their “cooperation in curtailing the dissemination” of COVID jab “misinformation” — all based on the fabrications of the CCDH. According to the AGs:
“The people and groups spreading falsehoods and misleading Americans about the safety of coronavirus vaccines are threatening the health of our communities, slowing progress in getting our residents protected from the virus, and undermining economic recovery in our states.
As safe and effective vaccines become available, the end of this pandemic is in sight. This end, however, depends on the widespread acceptance of these vaccines as safe and effective. Unfortunately, misinformation disseminated via your platforms has increased vaccine hesitancy …
According to a recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, so-called ‘anti-vaxxer’ accounts on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitter reach more than 59 million followers … Given ‘anti-vaxxers’ reliance on your platforms, you are uniquely positioned to prevent the spread of misinformation about coronavirus vaccines …”
Facebook Set the Record Straight
August 18, 2021, after conducting an internal investigation, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, publicly called out the falsehoods in “The Disinformation Dozen” report, stating:21
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook.
There isn’t any evidence to support this claim … In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”
Bickert highlighted the fact that Ahmed had preselected the 12 individuals listed in the report, and that his “faulty narrative” was based on nothing more than “a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.”
“Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis,” Bickert noted. “There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”
Apparently, no one in government was smart enough to see the flaws in the CCDH’s report though, and a long list of officials cited the CCDH’s fabricated claims throughout the remainder of 2021, even long after Facebook denounced its claims. What’s more, even though Facebook admitted the CCDH’s claims were bogus, they still took action against accounts by applying penalties and/or bans.
April 8, 2021 — AGs Call on Social Media to Ban ‘the 12’
April 8, 2021, attorneys general James and William Tong published an op-ed in The Washington Post,22 again calling on social media companies to ban the “disinformation dozen” identified by the CCDH. The lack of acceptance of novel gene therapy technology, they claimed, was all because a small group of individuals with a social media presence — myself included — were successfully misleading the public with lies about nonexistent vaccine risks.
April 27, 2021 — Dr. Hotez Calls for Cyberwarfare
April 27, 2021, Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute23 — which has received tens of millions of dollars from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,24,25 — escalated the threat even further in an article published in the journal Nature.
Citing the CCDH’s findings, Hotez called for cyberwarfare experts to be enlisted in the war against vaccine safety advocates and people who are “vaccine hesitant.” He wrote:26
“Accurate, targeted counter-messaging from the global health community is important but insufficient, as is public pressure on social-media companies. The United Nations and the highest levels of government must … move to dismantle anti-vaccine groups in the United States.
Efforts must expand into the realm of cyber security, law enforcement, public education and international relations. A high-level inter-agency task force reporting to the UN secretary-general could assess the full impact of anti-vaccine aggression, and propose tough, balanced measures.
The task force should include experts who have tackled complex global threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks and nuclear armament, because anti-science is now approaching similar levels of peril. It is becoming increasingly clear that advancing immunization requires a counteroffensive.”
In short, Hotez called for the use of warfare tactics on law abiding American citizens, and the Nature journal actually published this blatant threat. One day later, April 28, the CCDH published a second report, “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”27 which focused on Big Tech’s failure to get rid of us “despite bipartisan calls from Congress.”
To understand the massive reach the CCDH gained, despite no one having heard of them before COVID, consider this: By the end of August 2021, there were 84,700 Google search results for CCDH’s defamatory phrase “disinformation dozen,” including 16,000 news stories in the international press, nearly all of which parroted the CCDH’s defamatory statements verbatim and reported them as fact.
May 2021 — Financial Warfare Led to Removal of COVID Articles
Shortly after the op-ed by AGs James and Tong appeared, our business bank accounts were abruptly shut down and our credit cards canceled. Our business partners also had their PayPal accounts shut down.
This new threat, which I could not defend against in a court of law, led to my May 4 decision to remove all articles related to vitamin D, vitamin C, zinc and COVID-19 from my website.
July 2021 — The White House Publicly Calls for Censorship
In mid-July 2021, the White House stepped in to pressure Facebook to purge “anti-vaxxers” from its platform. Then-press secretary Jen Psaki regurgitated the CCDH’s false claims, saying:28
“There’s about 12 people who are producing 65% of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms. All of them remain active on Facebook, despite some even being banned on other platforms, including ones that Facebook owns.
Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove harmful, violative posts. Posts that would be within their policy for removal often remain up for days, and that’s too long. The information spreads too quickly.”
In another mid-July press conference, President Joe Biden himself demanded social media take action against “the disinformation dozen,” claiming our “misinformation” was “killing people.”29,30 None of these officials ever questioned the authority of the CCDH. Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever responded to the White House’s demands, saying:
“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts. The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet … The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”
Summer of 2021 — A Parade of Hit Pieces
July 24, 2021, the New York Times named me the No. 1 superspreader of COVID misinformation online.31 According to the NYT itself, this was the most-read article of the year up to that point. Penned by Sheera Frenkel, it was so littered with blatant lies, my attorneys sent her a retraction demand.32
For example, she claimed the FDA has levied multimillion-dollar fines against me. This is a complete fabrication, as I’ve never been fined by the FDA. She also implied that I misrepresented myself as a published author of a paper on vitamin D for COVID-19, stating she was “unable to verify” my claim. This despite being given a direct link to the paper! My paper can also be located on PubMed.gov in seconds by searching my name.
Frenkel boldly claimed that I am the No.1 spreader of misinformation online, but she didn’t even qualify what “misinformation” actually is. Without qualifying what it is you’re looking for, how can you quantify it? She also provided no proof that I in fact had the greatest reach of all the individuals reporting on COVID injections. My name didn’t even show up in the Top 15 in a Crowdtangle search for anti-vax Facebook posts.
Frenkel’s hit piece was followed up by CNN, which August 4 aired a segment show CNN reporter Randi Kaye stalking me across central Florida. And, of course, Kaye’s primary citation for her accusations against me was the CCDH.
August 4, 2021 — Mercola Deletes Articles After 48 Hours
August 4, 2021, I also implemented yet another change on my website. I had already removed all articles relating to COVID-19 and vitamin D. At this point, I deleted over 15,000 articles from the past 20-plus years from my website as the business and personal threats grew out of hand.
After 48 hours, articles were instead migrated over to Substack, where only paid members through a private membership agreement have access to them. This was a painful but necessary workaround, as the paid subscription provides a layer of protection against these threats.
September 7, 2021 — Senator Warren’s Book Burning Campaign
September 7, 2021, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sent a letter33 to Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation.”34,35,36
While she didn’t spell out what laws Amazon might be breaking, she warned Jassy that the company may be held legally responsible for wrongful death and homicide by selling books that “misinform” readers about COVID-19, and she specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of the kinds of books she wanted banned.
Warren again relied on the fabrications of the CCDH, even though Facebook had refuted the CCDH report as baseless three weeks before she sent that letter.
“Dr. Mercola has been described as ‘the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,'” Warren wrote, adding: “Not only was this book the top result when searching either ‘COVID-19’ or ‘vaccine’ in the categories of ‘All Departments’ and ‘Books’; it was tagged as a ‘Best Seller’ by Amazon and the ‘#1 Best Seller’ in the ‘Political Freedom’ category.
The book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about COVID-19 and false and misleading information about vaccines. It asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D and quercetin … can prevent COVID-19 infection … And the book contends that vaccines cannot be trusted, when study after study has demonstrated the overwhelming effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
It should come as no surprise that the book is rife with misinformation. One of the authors, Dr. Mercola, is one of the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ a group responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter …”
YouTube Deplatforms Mercola in Breach of Contract
Warren’s attempt at getting Amazon to ban my book was swiftly followed up by YouTube, which deleted my account September 29, 2021, allegedly for violating community guidelines. The problem was, they’d published and implemented those new guidelines that very morning.
While I disagreed with YouTube’s censorship, when its “COVID-19 misinformation” policy was implemented back in April 2021, I carefully avoided posting any content on YouTube that might violate that guideline. At no point had I ever received a violation notice from YouTube.
On the morning of September 29, 2022, at 9 a.m. EDT, The Washington Post published an article titled “YouTube Is Banning Joseph Mercola and a Handful of Other Anti-Vaccine Activists.” According to the WaPo :37
“YouTube is taking down several video channels associated with high-profile anti-vaccine activists including Joseph Mercola … As part of a new set of policies aimed at cutting down on anti-vaccine content on the Google-owned site, YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous.
The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox.”
In short, as of September 29, 2021, you could no longer post any video discussing or stating that any vaccine is dangerous or ineffective. Six minutes after the publication of that WaPo article, I received an email from YouTube informing me that my entire channel had been deplatformed, having been found in violation of this new policy.
October 2021 — CNN’s Second Hit Piece
October 4, 2021, two months to the day after their first attempted hit piece against my book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” CNN aired a follow-up in which they echoed Warren’s call for Amazon to ban the sale of my book.
Like something straight out of George Orwell’s “1984” newsspeak dictionary, CNN host Anderson Cooper said my book is loaded with “mistruths” about COVID. Yet he failed to present a single piece of evidence to back up that claim.
This is one of the oldest propaganda trick in the book. If you just spew out enough derogatory terms about your opponent, people will forget the fact that you provided zero proof to back up your position.
November 2021 — Mercola Sues Sen. Warren
November 7, 2021, two months after Warren tried to get my best-selling book “The Truth About COVID-19” banned from Amazon, I, my coauthor Ronnie Cummins, my publisher and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who wrote our foreword, sued Warren,38 both in her official and personal capacities, for violating our First Amendment rights and scaring book sellers into pulling and/or suppressing sales.
As a government official, it is illegal for her violate the U.S. Constitution, and pressuring private businesses to do it for her is not a legal workaround.
February 2022 — NIH Director Blames Mercola For Pandemic Continuation
In February 2022, former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins blamed me personally for the government’s inability to bring the COVID pandemic to a close. This despite the fact that I was by then heavily censored just about everywhere. The only people, really, who could see my information were those who subscribed to my newsletter and received it by email.
August 2022 — NYT Airs Hit Piece Documentary
Fast-forward to August 2022, The New York Times published the documentary “Superspreader,” featuring yours truly, on FX and Hulu (both of which are owned by Disney). They clearly went through a lot of trouble, trying to dig up dirt from anyone they could find from my past — some going back 40 years, to my medical school days — who would be able to share some tidbit with which they could discredit me with.
But it seems they came up empty handed: After a year of investigation, they couldn’t come up with anything. Surprisingly, they even showed two people who claimed I’d saved their lives. All the other interviews were with people who don’t actually know me. One was with a Chicago journalist who interviewed me once — 13 years ago. Two classmates from med school, whom I haven’t seen in over 40 years, also described their impressions.
Ironically, yet again, just one week before the “Superspreader” program aired, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed all of its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby proving my position on COVID was correct all along. Of course, this was never mentioned in their program though.
September 23, 2022 — Mercola Website Taken Down in Cyberattack
Next up was a cyberattack that took down my entire website and destroyed our servers. Cyberattacks have been ongoing for the past six years, but the one that took place September 23, 2022, finally got through our defenses. By that time, my reach on social media had been throttled back to next to nothing, and my website was about the only place you could find my articles (with the exception of republications, which I allowed).
September 28, 2022 — Mercola Sues Google and YouTube
Warren isn’t the only one I’ve had to sue to protect my First Amendment right. In September 28, 2022, I also filed a lawsuit39 against Google, YouTube and Alphabet Inc. for breach of contract.40
As detailed in my complaint, YouTube unilaterally amended the contract without notice, which is a violation of its own terms of service, and then used this last-minute amendment to justify removing my content, which went back to 2005, the same year YouTube was founded. At the time YouTube deleted my content, I had more than 300,000 subscribers, and my videos had collectively garnered more than 50 million views.
The WaPo article was embargoed until the morning of September 29 in order to prevent me (and anyone else affected by this change) from reviewing the new policy, take steps to bring my channel into compliance, or move my content to another platform. Instead, they simply deleted 16 years’ worth of intellectual property, without warning.
This is a clear violation of its own terms of service, which state that YouTube “will provide reasonable advance notice” of any changes to the terms of service, and that users will have “the opportunity to review them” and to remove content if they do not agree to the new terms.
YouTube’s terms of service also include a “three strikes” policy, where users are given three warnings and opportunities to remove content that violates the guidelines before being banned. I had no “strikes” against my channel on the day I was deplatformed and deleted.
I’m also suing YouTube for unjust enrichment, as for the last 16 years, my video content, having generated in excess of 50 million views, has been of great financial benefit to YouTube, allowing them to increase advertising revenue on the site. Additionally, they’ve refused to allow me to retrieve any of this content, which they still have in their possession. So, YouTube has unjustly benefited at my expense.
January 2023 — Third Lawsuit Filed to Protect Free Speech
January 10, 2023, I, along with several other plaintiffs, also filed a lawsuit41 against The Washington Post, the BBC, the Associated Press and Reuters — also known as the Trusted News Initiative (TNI),42 a self-appointed Pharma and Big Tech industry partner that has spent the past couple years playing judge and jury of news.
It has been doing everything it can to censor what it doesn’t want the public to hear. As noted in the complaint, the TNI has not only censored free speech, it has also engaged in antitrust activity. 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.”
As evidence of this allegation, our complaint 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.”
The Fight for Truth and Freedom Continues
The globalist cabal is extremely coordinated, as you can see. What’s more, they play dirty. But we will not give up, nor give in. Our freedom is far too precious for that, and freedom depends on getting the truth out. So, I will continue doing my part. You can help by sharing articles you think are important with family and friends, in whatever ways are available.
Sources and References
- 1 CSPI July 21, 2020
- 2 Illegal Claims Pertaining to Mercola Group Products (PDF)
- 3 CSPI July 19, 2017
- 4, 7 SCPInet.org March 4, 2021
- 5 Nutrients October 31, 2020;12, 3361; doi:10.3390/nu12113361
- 6 FDA Mercola Warning Letter February 18, 2021
- 8 Sun Gazette April 24, 2021
- 9 USRTK September 23, 2020
- 10 Cornell Alliance for Science Our Funders
- 11, 12 Cornell Alliance for Science, March 2021, FDA Warns Mercola
- 13 Sky News March 5, 2021
- 14 Twitter CCDH March 3, 2021
- 15 In-this-together.com, CCDH The Center for Cancel Culture and Digital Hypocrisy Part 2
- 16 Nature Medicine March 15, 2021
- 17 Counterhate.com Disinformation Dozen March 21, 2021
- 18 The Disinformation Dozen
- 19 PR Newswwire March 24, 2021
- 20 Letter to Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg March 24, 2021
- 21 Facebook August 18, 2021
- 22 Washington Post April 8, 2021
- 23 Texas Children’s Hospital Peter Hotez
- 24 PND July 1, 2011
- 25 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
- 26 Nature April 27, 2021
- 27 CCHD Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel April 28, 2021
- 28 Reason July 15, 2021
- 29 CNN July 16, 2021
- 30 AP July 16, 2021
- 31 New York Times July 24, 2021 (Archived)
- 32 Twitter Dr. Joseph Mercola July 26, 2021
- 33 Warren’s letter to Andy Jassy September 7, 2021
- 34 National Interest September 12, 2021
- 35 The Guardian September 13, 2021
- 36 New York Times September 8, 2021
- 37 Washington Post September 29, 2021
- 38 US District Court Western District of Washington Case: 2:21-cv-01508
- 39 Complaint for Contract Breach Mercola vs Google, YouTube, Alphabet Inc. September 28, 2022
- 40 Reuters September 29, 2022
- 41 US District Court Northern District of Texas Case: 2:23-cv-00004-Z
- 42 The Defender January 10, 2023
US refuses to call West Bank Israeli occupied territory
MEMO | January 30, 2023
The US State Department refused to describe Palestinians in the West Bank as living under a military occupation during a heated exchange between journalists last week. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel brushed aside questions about Washington’s view on the status of the occupied West Bank in the wake of an Israeli military raid that killed ten Palestinians in Jenin.
“What is the status of the Palestinian people in the West Bank, including Jenin… and everywhere else in the West Bank?” Said Arikat of Al-Quds newspaper asked Vedant. “It’s a simple question. Are they under occupation?”
Patel refused to answer the question despite being asked repeatedly to clarify the position of the US regarding the status of the West Bank. At one point Patel shockingly said that the status of the Palestinians is that “they reside on those territories.”
Frustrated at not getting an answer, Arikat asked if the West Bank is considered a “different planet” and if the US “subscribes to the fact that they are under military occupation?” Patel refused to answer the question.
“Vedant, are they occupied or are they not occupied? What is the status that you give the Palestinians right at this moment? What kind of status do they have?” Arikat insisted.
Patel again refused to answer, deflecting the question by focusing on the escalation of violence and calling for peace and calm in the region. “I’m not talking about a recent period. I am saying about legally, how do you designate the Palestinians in the West Bank? What is their status?” Arikat asked to know for a fourth time.
“I understand the question you’re asking, and I – as we’ve said previously, it is vital for both sides to take action to prevent even greater loss, and we condemn any violence, escalation, or provocation,” said Patel.
Under International law the West Bank and Gaza is Israeli occupied territory. Experts in international law say that given the length of the occupation and given that Israel has no intention to ever withdraw, the correct designation is that it is an illegal occupation. The International Court of Justice has been asked to issue an opinion on that very matter.
The Dictionary Definition of “Anti-Vaxxer” Has Broadened
Soon there will be nobody left that does not meet the dictionary definition of “anti-vaxxer”
By Aaron Siri | Injecting Freedom | January 29, 2023
The common response to any criticism of a vaccine or a vaccine mandate is to yell, “anti-vaxxer,” rather than address the substance of the criticism. Here is a recent tweet reflecting this reality:
Even those opposed to receiving an endless stream of COVID-19 boosters based on cogent reasoning are often met with the retort of “anti-vaxxer.” This reality is now reflected in the updated definition of “anti-vaxxer” in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
The old definition included “a person who opposes the use of vaccines or regulations mandating vaccination”:
The new definition is “a person who opposes the use of some or all vaccines, regulations mandating vaccination, or usually both”:
So now to be an “anti-vaxxer,” per the dictionary, one need only oppose receiving some vaccines. For example, annual ever-changing flu shots or numerous and changing COVID-19 vaccine boosters.
Consider that, despite spending billions in taxpayer dollars promoting flu shots and COVID-19 booster shots, polling reflects a majority of Americans do not plan to get either of these shots and hence are dictionary definition “anti-vaxxers.”
The irony is that rationally considering each of these medical products and making an informed medical decision makes you a thinking, rational human being. But if you mindlessly get every single vaccine, then there are those would claim you are making an intelligent, thoughtful decision?! Hats off to the public relations firms representing pharma and CDC/FDA in being able to convince the public that up is down and down is up on this one.
The next time someone calls you an anti-vaxxer because you have made a decision regarding whether or not to engage in a medical intervention, you let them know that, yes, you did make an informed, independent medical decision. And wish them luck doing the opposite. Worked out for Novak Djokovic who just won the Australian Open!
You can also let them know that since “anti-vaxxers” are now the majority, you can understand their insecurity and hostility. But they should not worry: the thinking majority is not interested in taking away their rights and choices. They can feel free to vaccinate all day long. You, and the majority, just ask that those individuals respect our right to do the same.
The 77th Brigade Spied on Lockdown Sceptics, Including me
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 29, 2023
A shadowy unit of the British Army, as well as secretive ‘disinformation’ agencies within Whitehall, spied on British citizens who challenged the Government’s pandemic response, including Peter Hitchens and me. These revelations are contained in a report by Big Brother Watch due to be published tomorrow, which includes the results of subject access and freedom of information requests submitted by me and others. The Mail on Sunday has more.
A shadowy Army unit secretly spied on British citizens who criticised the Government’s Covid lockdown policies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Military operatives in the UK’s ‘information warfare’ brigade were part of a sinister operation that targeted politicians and high-profile journalists who raised doubts about the official pandemic response.
They compiled dossiers on public figures such as ex-Minister David Davis, who questioned the modelling behind alarming death toll predictions, as well as journalists such as Peter Hitchens and Toby Young. Their dissenting views were then reported back to No. 10.
Documents obtained by the civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, and shared exclusively with this newspaper, exposed the work of Government cells such as the Counter Disinformation Unit, based in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and the Rapid Response Unit in the Cabinet Office.
But the most secretive is the MoD’s 77th Brigade, which deploys ‘non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of adversaries’.
According to a whistleblower who worked for the brigade during the lockdowns, the unit strayed far beyond its remit of targeting foreign powers.
They said that British citizens’ social media accounts were scrutinised – a sinister activity that the Ministry of Defence, in public, repeatedly denied doing.
Papers show the outfits were tasked with countering ‘disinformation’ and ‘harmful narratives… from purported experts’, with civil servants and artificial intelligence deployed to ‘scrape’ social media for keywords such as ‘ventilators’ that would have been of interest.
The information was then used to orchestrate Government responses to criticisms of policies such as the stay-at-home order, when police were given power to issue fines and break up gatherings.
It also allowed Ministers to push social media platforms to remove posts and promote Government-approved lines.
How did the Government manage to convince these supposedly independent state agencies, with powers to monitor the activities of British citizens, that critics of its barmy lockdown policy were enemies of the state? And does this mean James Delingpole has been right all along? We will discuss tomorrow on London Calling and I’m going to write about it for this week’s Spectator.
Worth reading in full.
Department of Health and Human Services is sued after ignoring freedom of information request over censorship demands
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | January 29, 2023
Activist group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for all records and communications between the Surgeon General’s office and social media companies about COVID-19 vaccines.
Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the HHS refused to adequately respond to a FOIA request filed in March 2022.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The request was for: “All records, including, but not limited to, electronic mail, texts, memoranda, and handwritten notes, of, regarding, referring, or relating to any efforts of Alexandria Phillips, Communications Director, Office of the Surgeon General, to contact any employee of Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Pinterest concerning COVID-19 vaccines.”
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has previously called for censorship of Covid misinformation. In 2021, he published a report titled “Confronting Health Misinformation,” which aimed to “slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.”
The report encouraged platforms to censor vaccine misinformation and other misinformation related to the pandemic.
In March 2022, Murthy ordered social media platforms to hand over information about accounts spreading Covid misinformation.
Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said, “Biden’s Surgeon General is abusing his office to pressure Big Tech companies to censor Americans. This lawsuit aims to uncover the details of this government attack on the First Amendment.”
Related: US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy suggests Joe Rogan should be censored
Vimeo bans documentary about parents’ concern over transgender surgery for minors
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 28, 2023
Video-sharing platform Vimeo has removed a documentary titled “Dead Name” about parents and guardians trying to prevent their kids from getting gender-related surgeries.
Vimeo claimed that the video violated its policy on “hateful conduct.”
“We can confirm that Vimeo removed the video in question for violating our Terms of Service prohibiting discriminatory or hateful content,” the video platform said. “We strive to enforce these policies objectively and consistently across our platform.”
According to the maker of the film Taylor Reece, Dead Name is “subtly explosive but does not contain hate speech or anything hateful.
“All these people talk about is how much they want to protect their children,” Reece told The Daily Signal.
Reece said that transgender activists pressured Vimeo to remove the video and that it was only online for 34 days before it was removed.
“Parents are living in the Twilight Zone, they are beside themselves and don’t know what to do about it,” Reece said. “This film is an attempt to force a conversation, not just in Republican legislatures, but around the country.”
“In the transgender world, the name is the first thing that most of these children shed,” the filmmaker added. “The erasure of who they are, their name, their history, their identity, it erodes little by little until it becomes a physical manifestation — like double mastectomies.”
Reece also said that “unless you are the parent of that child, you have no idea what this journey actually is.”
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Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- The Coming GOP Bloodbath?
- Arctic Scare Stories Melt Away
- Wrong, Euronews: Climate Change Has Not Created a Food, Energy, and Economic “Meta-Crisis”
- New positive ivermectin evidence
- Met Office Caught Fabricating Daily Temperature Record Claims
- Merck Virologists Admitted to Falsely Certifying Vaccine Efficacy
- Mandatory Folic Acid for every man, woman & child
- Pro-Palestine protesters arrested outside UK’s ruling Labour Conference in Liverpool
- Mauritius denies landing permit to flight from Israel, forcing cancellation: Tour operator
- Israeli finance minister calls for genocidal war on West Bank, annexation of south Lebanon
- If Americans Knew
- Israel kills more Palestinians, amid push to resettle Gaza – Daily Update
- Israel forces Gazans to live in constant peril – Daily Update
- Deconstructing Netanyahu’s pants-on-fire UN rant – Daily Update
- Trump betrayed voters with his campaign lies and prioritized a foreign country once he took office
- Netanyahu calls Israel’s war in Gaza ‘opposite of genocide’ in UN speech to near-empty hall
- Settler Kidnappings: Torture, Sexual Abuse and Terrorisation of Palestinian Abductees as Israel Deepens Annexation of West Bank
- Gaza winter nears as 162,000 tents become unusable, raising fears of humanitarian crisis
- Netanyahu says, “It’s the opposite of genocide”; UN says Gaza economy is world’s ‘most severe crisis on record’ – Daily Update
- Israel’s US-Backed Assault on Gaza Has Created the ‘World’s Most Severe Economic Crisis on Record’: UN
- ‘Protecting U.S. Citizens’… From Israel
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
