Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

A Tale of Two Reporters in Moscow

Malcolm Muggeridge, Walter Duranty, and the collision of ideology with evidence

Malcolm Muggeridge, Moscow correspondent for the Manchester Guardian
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 7, 2022

Blinded by Ideology: Part 4 in a series on Willful Blindness

Malcolm Muggeridge was an exceptionally talented journalist who lived in Moscow in 1933, working for the Manchester Guardian. Though attracted to communism in his youth, the experience of being in Stalin’s Russia and observing what was going on in it caused him to become disillusioned. Especially disturbing was his realization that Stalin’s army and police were—as part of their collectivization program—starving millions of landowning peasants (known as kulaks) in the Ukraine by confiscating their grain. This massive organized crime—known as the Holodomor—resulted in the deaths of millions in the winter of 1933.

Muggeridge was the only western journalist to report what was going on. When his reports were published, many of his fellow writers—including George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Jean-Paul Sartre, Upton Sinclair and Theodore Dreiser, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb—refused to believe them and passionately asserted that Muggeridge was spreading falsehoods about Stalin’s regime. Muggeridge was related to the Webbs by marriage, and years later he told a funny story about Beatrice.

I remember Mrs. Webb, who after all was a very cultivated upper-class liberal-minded person, an early member of the Fabian Society and so on, saying to me, ‘Yes, it’s true, people disappear in Russia.’ She said it with such great satisfaction that I couldn’t help thinking that there were a lot of people in England whose disappearance she would have liked to organize.”

For decades, Muggeridge’s accurate reporting of the Holodomor was denied and suppressed. The dominant narrative of Stalin’s Russia in the early thirties was that propagated by the New York Times Moscow bureau chief, Walter Duranty, who vehemently denied the Holodomor. While Muggeridge’s true and courageous reporting was denied, Duranty won a Pulitzer Price for his concealment of one of the greatest crimes of the 20th Century. It’s a testament to the power of Duranty’s mendacious work that most Americans have still never heard of the Holodomor.

Walter Duranty, Moscow bureau chief for the New York Times

Over the last two years I’ve often thought about Muggeridge and Duranty as I have watched courageous scholars like Dr. Peter McCullough persecuted and censored, while COVID-19 vaccine ideologues are rewarded. Most notable is the COVID-19 vaccine propagandist, Dr. Peter Hotez, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize.

One of the most bizarre features of our bizarre time is that an experimental, gene transfer technology has become an object of unshakable devotion. Among members of the COVID-19 Vaccine Cult, belief in the substance (about which they know nothing) is an article of faith.

In the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s, many of the most prominent journalists, writers, intellectuals, and artists believed in Stalin’s Cult of Personality. Muggeridge knew (from his own observations) that they weren’t seeing the reality of Stalin’s regime. Because they viewed the world through the highly distorting lens of ideology, they couldn’t see what was right in front of them.

November 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

NHS England Admits its Hospital Mask Mandate is Based on Modelling That Simply Assumes They Work

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Earlier this year, the Smile Free campaign wrote an open letter to the NHS Chief Executives of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland calling for the lifting of the face mask requirement for all staff, patients and visitors in healthcare settings. Signed by over 2,000 medical and healthcare professionals, the letter cited gold-standard RCT scientific evidence that highlighted both the ineffectiveness of masks as a viral barrier and the potential physical, social and psychological harms associated with their use. The attempts of Scotland and Wales to justify their hospital mask requirements were criticised in an earlier article in the Critic. Now NHS England has spoken, defending its endorsement of mass masking primarily on the basis of computer modelling. Dr. Gary Sidley takes the organisation to task in the Critic.

In a letter dated October 4th 2022, Dame Ruth May (Chief Nursing Officer and national lead for infection control), responding on behalf of Amanda Pritchard (NHS England Chief Executive), asserted that there was “strong” evidence that widespread use of face coverings achieved a “significant impact” on the prevention of COVID-19 transmission. To support this premise she cited a computational modelling study, posted in October 2021. This pre-print paper reported that, based on its model, “universal masking” would achieve a 46% reduction in infections among healthcare workers. Given the substantial amount of robust scientific evidence available, aggregating around the conclusion that – in the real world – masks constitute an ineffective viral barrier, it is astonishing that NHS England is relying on a modelling study to justify its blanket policies.

There appears to be little recognition of the inauspicious legacy of the epidemiologist Professor Neil Ferguson. In collaboration with his colleagues at Imperial College London, Ferguson deployed computer modelling to predict the doomsday scenarios of Covid killing 2.2 million Americans and 500,000 people in the U.K. Such inaccurate prophecies were largely responsible for spooking Western governments into lockdowns, an unprecedented public health policy that has led to extensive collateral harms. Now healthcare chiefs are citing a similar modelling study as a key reason for persisting with mask recommendations in our hospitals, health centres and GP practices.

An initial glance at the study highlighted in the NHS England response is sufficient to reveal that it falls well short of an evidential bar that would justify imposing masks on healthy people. As a pre-print paper, it has not been peer-reviewed, and it comes with an explicit cautionary note at the beginning of the article that “it should not be considered conclusive, used to inform clinical practice or referenced by the media as validated information”. Within the body of the article, there are further warnings about the dubious reliability of its findings – for example, references to its reported outcomes as “highly uncertain”.

The modelling preprint itself acknowledges there are “important gaps in the evidence base” and that “evidence around the efficacy of interventions such as wearing surgical masks… is severely lacking”. Yet by assuming mask efficacy in its model, the paper ‘finds’ face coverings will prevent 46,000 infections of healthcare staff.

Dr. Sidley concludes that policies requiring habitual face coverings are not based on solid empirical evidence: “A piece of ill-fitting cloth or plastic does not transform into an impermeable viral barrier by virtue of crossing the threshold of a hospital or health centre.”

Time to ditch the masks.

Worth reading in full.

November 7, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Hey Incoming Congress: Try These Three Simple Tricks for a Successful Start

By Ron Paul | November 7, 2022

Tomorrow is election day and polls suggest that Americans are going to overturn Democratic Party control of the House and Senate. Politicians and the media always say that this is the most important election ever, but all too often once the voting is over and the smoke has cleared, not much changes. The Washington uni-party takes over and makes sure the status quo is maintained.

It doesn’t have to be this way. An incoming Republican House and Senate, for example, could take early steps to reassure their supporters that their votes weren’t wasted on Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum in Washington. Here are three suggestions to get things off to a good start.

First, Republican Party Leadership must vow to end the massive money spigot opened by the last Congress for Ukraine. By some estimates some $60 billion dollars have been authorized for Ukraine to fight a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia.

This would be a move strongly supported by the Republican base. A recent Wall Street Journal poll showed that only 37 percent of Republicans support sending more US aid to Ukraine. Republican firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene said recently that under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. While I am skeptical that her party leadership would support such a move, it’s clear Republican voters would.

Plus, ending this proxy war would carry with it the benefit of reducing the dangerously high possibility of global nuclear war. That’s not a bad trade-off.

Second, Republicans can signal that they will de-fund the Department of Homeland Security. At the time this monstrosity was created, I said this on the House Floor:

“The list of dangerous and unconstitutional powers granted to the new Homeland Security department is lengthy. Warrantless searches, forced vaccinations of whole communities, federal neighborhood snitch programs, federal information databases, and a sinister new ‘Information Awareness Office’ at the Pentagon that uses military intelligence to spy on domestic citizens are just a few of the troubling aspects of the new legislation.”

Unfortunately all of these things came to pass…and more. As we recently learned, the DHS has been colluding with social media companies to try and prevent Americans from being able to say or post opinions the government doesn’t want others to hear.

They promised that a Department of Homeland Security would keep us safer, but there is nothing that makes us less safe than the destruction of our Constitution.

Finally, the third task an incoming Republican House and Senate can take is maybe the easiest one: pass the Audit the Fed bill. Ten years ago the US House voted in a bipartisan manner to pass my Audit the Fed legislation only to see it stall in the Senate. With Republican control of both houses of Congress there is no reason a broadly-supported bill to open the books at the Federal Reserve cannot find its way to President Biden’s desk. We all support transparency, right?

Inflation is out of control and causing real harm to the American middle class. The Biden Administration seems determined to lead us to a potentially life-ending war with Russia. The Department of Homeland Security has turned into a weapon mobilized against the American people and our Constitution.

A Republican-controlled House and Senate can actually do something to fix these problems and thus make us more safe and more free. Will they?

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute

November 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Research: Countries That Sought ‘Zero-COVID’ Lockdowns Have The Least Immunity

Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
By Steve Watson | Summit News | November 4, 2022

New research has revealed the countries that implemented the harshest lockdowns as part of ‘zero-COVID’ policies now have the least immunity from the virus itself.

The analysis by The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine estimates that China, which still has multiple lockdowns in place, has the lowest level of immunity to COVID-19 on the planet.

Other nations that didn’t institute harsh lockdowns, including Russia, Singapore and Brazil are thought to have the highest immunity levels, according to the research.

The research estimates immunity rates according to infection numbers, vaccination rates and how much time has passed in the interim.

The analysis posits that as of the end of October 2022, just 17.2% of the Chinese population have immunity from the virus, while Russia on the other hand is estimated to have an immunity rating of 74.5% with everyone in the country having contracted the virus.

While Singapore’s immunity rating is thought to be around 70%, and Brazil’s 68%, Japan, another country that put into place harsh restrictions is believed to have just 38.9% immunity.

The U.S. is believed to have 60.5% immunity at this time, according to the analysis.

Ironically, given the IHME’s COVID model being used to laud strict restrictions, the analysis again highlights the futility of lockdowns in preventing the spread of the virus in the longterm.

Johns Hopkins University previously concluded that lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last month highlighted how a record number of children in the U.S. are now being hospitalised with common colds due to weakened immune systems.

The CDC data is consistent with research by scientists at Yale who warned that it is not normal to see children with combinations of seven common viruses, including adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza, as well as COVID-19.

As we previously highlighted, there has also been a global outbreak of hepatitis cases in children, with the media asserting the cause is “unknown.”

Biden administration officials have continuously pushed for children to keep wearing masks in schools, and there are still hordes of hypochondriacs forcing their children to do so, despite COVID posing virtually no risk to the health of children in normal circumstances.

The European Medicines Agency’s (EMA), Europe’s equivalent of the FDA, has also warned that relying on endless rounds of booster shots to fight COVID-19 could end up causing “immune response” problems.

November 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Jen Psaki says censorship deposition would be “burdensome” for her family life and new MSNBC gig

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 6, 2022

Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary, and Department of Justice (DOJ) are fighting a subpoena requiring her to testify in the lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general – alleging that the Biden administration colluded with social media platforms to censor certain viewpoints on the pandemic.

The motion to quash the subpoena was filed in a federal court in Virginia. It argues that the deposition would be “extremely burdensome” for Psaki, who is preparing to be the host of a new show on MSNBC.

We obtained a copy of the motion for you here.

“Among other things, I understand that I would need to devote several days preparing for the deposition, as well as attending the deposition itself, and that would be highly disruptive to both my work and my family,” Psaki wrote in the request.

Psaki has in the past admitted that the Biden administration was flagging people’s speech to social media platforms.

The DOJ argued that Psaki’s deposition would result in a debate over executive privilege considering she was a top adviser to President .

The DOJ lawyer said: “If permitted to proceed, the deposition of Ms. Psaki would inevitably set the Executive and Judicial Branches ‘on a collision course’ through adjudications of executive privilege, thrusting the court into ‘the awkward position of evaluating the Executive’s claims of confidentiality and autonomy,’ and ‘difficult questions of separation of powers and checks and balances’ would quickly be pushed to the fore.”

“Plaintiffs have not identified any evidence showing or even suggesting that Ms. Psaki ever communicated with any social-media company in her capacity as Press Secretary about misinformation, much less that she ‘exercised coercive power’ to compel a social-media company to take any action,” the DOJ added.

Other defendants that have tried to use a similar “burdensome” defense have already been shut down by District Judge Terry Doughty who said, “The Court finds that both the public interest and the interest of the other parties in preserving free speech significantly outweighs the inconvenience the three deponents will have in preparing for and giving their depositions.”

November 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Another Extraordinary Murder in Washington D.C.

Mary Mahoney was allegedly the victim of a botched robbery in the Georgetown Starbucks

Mary Mahoney, murdered on July 7, 1997
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 6, 2022

When Seth Rich was murdered in Washington D.C. on July 10, 2016, the Metropolitan Police Department immediately proposed that it was a “botched robbery.” The case reminded me of the murder of Mary Mahoney in a Georgetown Starbucks on July 7, 1997.

Mary Mahoney was an intern in Bill Clinton’s White House during his first term. She then got a job working as a manager of Starbucks in Georgetown, which was frequented by many notable figures in the Washington political establishment. Her murder (along with her two coworkers) was the first triple murder in the neighborhood’s history. Prior to the crime, not a single homicide had been committed in Georgetown for eighteen months.

Robbery appeared an unlikely motive, as none of the day’s cash proceeds had been taken from the store. Mahoney’s murder occurred during the same period that Newsweek reporter Mike Isikoff was investigating allegations that President Clinton had sexually harassed White House employees—an investigation that would ultimately lead him to Monica Lewinsky. Attorneys for Paula Jones were also seeking corroborating cases of Clinton’s sexual harassment of young women.

A year after the murder occurred, the police received a tip to examine a man named Carl D. Cooper from a woman who had just watched an America’s Most Wanted episode on the triple homicide. For several months, investigators found no evidence linking Cooper to the crime. Then another informant came forth—a former drug addict named Eric Butera, who was himself later murdered in “a robbery gone wrong.”

Based on information gleaned from Butera’s associates, Carl Cooper was arrested. After a grueling four-day interrogation, Cooper confessed, stating that the triple homicide was a “botched robbery” (which just happened to be the official working hypothesis). While held at gunpoint, Mary, refused to give Cooper the keys to the safe—a heroic act to save her 50 billion market cap employer from losing a few thousand dollars. Because Mary refused to give Cooper the keys, he shot her five times, including a shot to the back of the head. He then shot her two coworkers, and then left the store without taking a dime.

Cooper was convicted on the grounds of his confession to the Metropolitan Police. However, in a subsequent interview with an FBI investigator, Cooper recanted his confession. Although the FBI investigator unequivocally stated this in his testimony, the court concluded that Cooper’s initial confession was sufficient for his conviction. Cooper was initially represented by a court-appointed attorney, but after his trial began, his court-appointed attorney was joined by the prominent Washington D.C. defender, Francis D. Carter, who initially represented Monica Lewinsky when Monica stated her willingness to remain silent about her affair with Clinton. Carter drafted an affidavit for Monica in which she stated that she had NOT had an affair with the president. Carter was forced to withdraw this affidavit after Monica made statements to Lynda Tripp (equipped with a secret recording device) confirming her affair with Clinton.

That Carter joined the Carl Cooper defense team strikes me as very peculiar, especially given that Carter did not change the defense strategy. I wonder if Carter’s primarily job was—under cover of client-attorney confidentiality—to deliver a message to Carter pertaining to his sentencing prospects and what he might reasonably expect for his wife (to whom he was apparently very attached) if he stuck with his confession.

Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno initially sought the death penalty for Cooper— the first death-penalty matter brought to trial in the District in nearly 30 years, but federal prosecutors later withdrew this request. To date, no evidence has been found linking Cooper to the triple homicide.

In a related case, the District of Columbia was successfully sued for the wrongful death of Metropolitan Police informant, Eric Butera, as the jury concluded the police had been negligent in protecting him during an undercover operation to obtain more information about the Starbucks triple slaying. The woman who gave the initial tip to America’s Most Wanted later publicly accused the police of refusing to protect her and fell under suspicion for being motivated primarily by the reward money offered by the show.

Since the murders occurred, the crime has been the subject of extensive media coverage, several documentary television features, and hundreds of online commentators. Conventional newspaper coverage of the crimes—primarily conducted by the Washington Post and the Washington Times—consisted entirely of straightforward reporting of information provided by police and judicial officers.

Given the controversial nature of the police investigation and judicial proceedings against the man who was charged for committing the crime, it is surprising how little the mainstream media questioned official accounts. Likewise, the TV documentaries simply presented narratives provided by law officers as though they contained nothing that was questionable. This is particularly notable given that substantial details of the official narrative, provided by the same investigating officers, are represented differently in different documentaries. Moreover, some of officers’ statements in the documentaries pertaining to Starbucks procedures and security protocols are NOT consistent with what a veteran Starbucks manager told me.

I would like to interview Carl D. Cooper in prison, but I cannot find him in the federal prison system. Though I have not had the time and resources to dig deep into this component of the story, my preliminary research suggests that his whereabouts in the federal prison system have been concealed.

In 2016, the lead homicide detective in the Mary Mahoney case — Detective James Trainium — published a book titled How the Police Generate False Confessions. It’s a detailed examination of how the police obtain false confessions, and the author is clearly writing from personal experience.

November 6, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

An Extraordinary Unsolved Murder in Washington D.C.

In the matter of SETH RICH, the FBI asks for 66 years to release his laptop contents Nov 5 DNC Staffer Seth Rich, murdered on July 10, 2016

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 5, 2022

“A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both.” —James Madison

As an investigative author I’ve often dealt with the extreme frustration of making federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and state Open Records Act requests. So often, it seems that federal and state agencies don’t want to release the information, delay in responding, and then cite multiple exceptions to the law in order to justify keeping the information secret.

I therefore felt sympathy for my fellow Texan, Brian Huddleston, when I saw the recent Epoch Times report that his FOIA request for the information found on Seth Rich’s laptop is being thwarted by the FBI, which asked the judge who ruled in Huddleston’s favor to grant the Bureau 66 years to fulfill the request.

Readers of this Substack may find the FBI’s request reminiscent of the FDA’s request for 55 years to release COVID-19 vaccine data. Given the unfortunate reality of human mortality, one wonders what public interest will be served 55 or 66 years from now, apart from satisfying the curiosity of historians who aren’t yet born.

The murder of Seth Rich—in the middle of one of the most brutal presidential election years in history—has always struck me as an example of the authorities NOT investigating a matter of public interest. The mainstream media and half the country were so blinded by partisan passions that they couldn’t see the grounds for suspecting that the young man’s murder was politically motivated. Just a few hours after the incident occurred—before there was any time to perform an investigation—the Metropolitan Police Department announced that the murder appeared to be a “botched robbery.”

Since Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016—12 days before Wikileaks published embarrassing DNC e-mails—there has been much speculation that he could have been the source because he was upset about how the DNC had treated Bernie Sanders. A good investigator wouldn’t speculate about the crime, but he would certainly notice that, statistically speaking, the murder is extraordinary.

Seth Rich was shot in the back near his apartment building, and though he was carrying a valuable watch, wallet, and cell phone, these were not taken by the assailant. Perhaps it was a botched robbery, as the Metropolitan Police Department quickly announced, but shooting a guy in the back without taking his valuables is not typical of armed robbery. Other robberies in the same neighborhood around the same time followed the conventional pattern of the assailant threatening the victim and demanding his or her valuables instead of opening fire on the victim.

In the year 2016, there were 135 homicides in Washington D.C., which has a resident population of 672,000, which comes to approximately one murder per 5000 residents— a dramatic decline from the city’s murder rate in the early nineties. Incidentally, the Metropolitan Police conducted an analysis of homicide for the years 1998-2000—after homicide rates had dropped significantly—and concluded that the primary motives were

1) Argument/conflict

2). Drug related

3). Revenge/retaliation

4). Robbery

5). Gang related.

During this period, homicides were not equally distributed throughout the city, but were concentrated in particular neighborhoods. 92% of the victims were African Americans 3.2% were Hispanic and 3.2% were white. Though one must consider the possibility that homicide trends in DC have changed since 2000 (apart from merely decreasing in numbers) it’s notable that, of the currently unsolved homicides in Washington DC in the year 2016, Seth Rich is the only white victim in a city that is now 44% white.

Julian Assange has always insisted the DNC e-mails were leaked and not hacked. Former NSA technical director William Binney has also insisted that if the DNC e-mails were hacked, it would be child’s play for the NSA to establish the precise routing of the hack, which indicates that the e-mails were more likely leaked by an insider.

Regarding motive, a good investigator would consider the hypothesis that Seth Rich was murdered NOT in retaliation, but to eliminate him as a witness that the DNC e-mails were leaked by an insider and not hacked by Russians. Almost immediately after the embarrassing e-mails were published, the DNC vehemently proclaimed it was Russian hackers who were responsible, though no evidence has been presented to support this accusation.

Regarding the assailant: A good investigator would consider the hypothesis that he was contracted to murder Rich but knew nothing about his target or the motive for killing him. This hypothesis is consistent with Rich being murdered as he approached the entrance to his home—that is, the contract killer was provided only with the address and a photograph of his target.

Another notable aspect of this crime has been the extremely emotional tone of press reporting from the same reporters who so passionately embraced the Russian meddling story. The mere suggestion that Seth Rich’s murder was politically motivated prompted these same people to angrily denounce this (perfectly reasonable hypothesis) as “wild, right wing conspiracy theory” and to demand that reporters cease and desist from exploring this hypothesis.

And yet, given that the crime remains unsolved, why not explore this hypothesis?

November 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Second wave of refugees leave Lebanon as repatriation process continues

The Cradle | November 5, 2022

A new group of Syrian refugees left Lebanon on 5 November under protection from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the Directorate of General Security, as part of the current repatriation process carried out between Beirut and Damascus.

The refugees departed for Syria from the northern Lebanese border town of Arsal. This is a continuation of the process, after the first wave of 1,200 Syrian refugees left Lebanon on 26 October.

Syrian media reported that the refugees began to arrive in buses via the al-Dabousiyah border crossing, and will be returning to their homes in the areas formerly under the control of extremist groups.

Lebanon’s Directorate of General Security is continually processing the submitted requests of Syrian refugees who wish to return to their country.

On 25 October, the head of General Security, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, emphasized during a press conference that the repatriation process is fully voluntary, and will not “force any displaced to return” to Syria.

Ibrahim added that Lebanon only seeks to reduce the social and economic burden it carries, and made sure to reject the unsupported western claims that the repatriation process is involuntary.

Last month, a source told The Cradle that the Syrian government has been very cooperative in the process of repatriating the refugees, but that it “will take a lot of time and effort” before it is completed.

The source added that the western-led international community “does not agree” with this repatriation process and has so far “refused to help.”

The western disapproval and accusations of forced repatriation reinforce the belief held by some people that western countries, most notably the US, wish to prevent Syrian refugees from resettling in their country in order to maintain instability in Syria.

In November of last year, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister, Abdullah Bou Habib, said: “We are facing some difficulties from the West because they say that they do not want these refugees to return to Syria for reasons related to their position on the Syrian government.”

November 5, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Some States Say ‘No’ to Coronavirus Shots Mandate for Students Despite CDC’s Childhood Vaccine Schedule Change

By Adam Dick | RonPaul Institute | November 2, 2022

In October, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory committee voted to add yearly experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots to the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule. Many state governments have a history of looking to this CDC schedule to guide their imposing of shots mandates for students.

Which states will follow along to mandate the newly added shots? As we start the month following the committee’s vote, it is good to take a look across the country to see what different state governments have done to protect against or welcome the CDC schedule’s addition of these yearly shots that have proven to be neither safe nor effective and that are asserted to target a threat that has been long known to pose a miniscule risk of serious sickness or death for children. Young adults in college have also tended to be at very low risk, though you wouldn’t know it from the draconian policies many universities imposed in the name of countering coronavirus.

Compounding the absurdity and detestability of including the coronavirus shots in the CDC’s childhood vaccine schedule is that the much-hyped coronavirus that people were worried about during the coronavirus scare is long gone. What is not gone is the risk of serious sickness or death from the shots.

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo advised well when he posted the following at Twitter last week:

Parents, don’t hold your breath… CDC & FDA abandoned their posts. Keep sticking with your intuition and keep those COVID jabs away from your kids.

Unfortunately, when faced with a shots mandate for school attendance, many parents may, against their better judgment, give in to the pressure and authorize their children being given the shots. Older students at universities that have more commonly imposed coronavirus shots mandates since last year have faced similarly terrible pressure to take the shots.

The good news is that, according to tracking by the National Academy for State Health Policy (NASHP), 21 state governments have taken at least some action to prohibit mandating coronavirus shots for students. Still, even where state governments have taken action against mandated coronavirus shots for students, there is in many cases room to make that protection against pushing these shots on students both stronger and broader.

Check out NASHP’s map of America where you can see information regarding states standing up against or supporting mandated coronavirus shots for students. Put the cursor over a state to find out some details regarding a particular state’s policy on mandating the shots.

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.

November 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Judge rejects Biden regime’s request to delay depositions in social media censorship lawsuit

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 5, 2022

A US District Judge has rejected a request to delay the deposition of top officials in President Biden’s administration in the lawsuit filed by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, alleging censorship collusion between the Biden administration and social media companies.

District Judge Terry Doughty rejected a request for a partial stay of the deposition orders he approved for top officials in the current administration. Government attorneys requested a partial stay for the deposition of three officials pending a ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The government wants the appeals court to vacate part of the deposition orders for deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Jen Easterly, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director.

In their request for a partial stay, government lawyers argued that, “high-ranking governmental officials would be diverted from their significant duties and burdened in both preparing and sitting for a deposition, all of which may ultimately prove to be unnecessary if the Court of Appeals grants.”

Judge Doughty rejected the request because the government failed to show that the officials would be irreparably harmed by the depositions. According to the judge, being diverted from “significant duties” does not qualify as irreparable harm.

However, the plaintiffs could be irreparably harmed by the partial stay because they allege that the government violated their  rights, Doughty argued.

Quoting a ruling from another case, Doughty said, “The loss of First Amendment freedoms, even for minimal periods of time, unquestionably constitutes irreparable injury.”

“The Court finds that both the public interest and the interest of the other parties in preserving free speech significantly outweighs the inconvenience the three deponents will have in preparing for and giving their depositions,” Doughty added.

Following the ruling, the three officials will be deposed in December, unless the appeals court approves the government’s writ of mandamus on November 7. The writ requests the court to reverse the deposition orders for the three officials.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

November 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

FBI is ‘rotted at its core,’ Republican lawmakers say

RT | November 4, 2022

America is no longer a country where citizens are afforded equal justice under the law, as guaranteed by their Constitution, because the nation’s top law enforcement agency has been corrupted by politicized leadership and a “woke, leftist agenda” being imposed from the top, Republican lawmakers have claimed.

The allegations were contained in a 1,050-page report released on Friday by Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee. The report, which was based on information gathered from 14 FBI whistleblowers who came forward to expose a pattern of misconduct, argued that the agency was “rotted at its core.”

“Quite simply, the problem — the rot within the FBI — festers in and proceeds from Washington,” the report said. “The FBI and its parent agency, the Justice Department, have become political institutions.”

The report detailed such abuses as a secret partnership in which the FBI receives private information on conservative users from Facebook, without seeking their consent or going though the legal processes that would normally be required to tap such data.

Whistleblowers also alleged that the FBI “looked the other way” on dozens of attacks against anti-abortion groups, even as the agency sent heavily armed teams of officers to arrest pro-life activists at their homes for alleged violations of selectively enforced crimes. Parents who spoke out at school board meetings over controversial policies were targeted by investigators as alleged terrorists.

At the same time, former FBI official Timothy Thibault “shut down” a probe into the overseas business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and attempted to keep the case from being reopened, the report said. Thibault openly displayed his political bias in social media posts that included his official title.

“America’s not America if you have a Justice Department that treats people differently under the law,” Representative Jim Jordan, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, told Fox News on Friday. “It’s supposed to be equal treatment under the law. That’s not happening, and we know it’s not happening because 14 brave FBI agents came to us as whistleblowers and told us what exactly is going on here.”

The report also accused the FBI of inflating statistics on domestic extremism to help fuel a narrative promoted by President Joe Biden’s administration. FBI employees who have conservative views are being purged from the agency, it claims.

Republicans argued that the FBI was plagued by a “systemic culture of unaccountability,” as well as “rampant corruption, manipulation and abuse.” The agency’s shift toward “political meddling” has allegedly pulled resources away from legitimate law enforcement duties. For instance, one whistleblower claimed that he was told after the January 2021 US Capitol riot that child sex-abuse cases were “no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies.”

November 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption | , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Activist groups’ tanking Twitter profits – Musk

RT | November 4, 2022

Twitter owner Elon Musk has accused “activist groups” of “trying to destroy free speech in America” by pressuring advertisers to boycott his platform even though he hasn’t changed any policies. The billionaire took to Twitter to complain about the “massive drop in revenue” on Friday.

The platform is losing money “due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists,” Musk tweeted, calling the situation “extremely messed up!”

“They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” he wrote.

Musk held a Zoom call on Tuesday with representatives from the Stop Hate for Profit Coalition, a pressure group led by the ADL that has organized advertiser boycotts of social media platforms over perceived weaknesses in keeping out “hate speech.” Representatives from the NAACP, Color of Change, the Asian American Foundation, and the George Bush Presidential Center were also reportedly present, among others.

The coalition was able to secure all three of its “immediate requests” from the Tesla tycoon, according to multiple members and Musk himself.

He promised not to replatform banned accounts before the midterm election results were certified or before a “clear process” had been devised, and vowed to keep in place “election integrity” measures. Additionally, Musk agreed to form a “content moderation council” that would include representatives from the ADL and other coalition members with “diverse” viewpoints.

Despite appearing to bring the self-described “free speech absolutist” to heel, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt hinted that further controls might be necessary in a statement released following the call. He insisted “much more needs to be done to reduce lies and hate on Twitter” and said backtracking on previous progress was “not an option.”

A few Twitter users had suggestions for how Musk might deal with the pressure campaign.

“Name and shame the advertisers who are succumbing to the advertiser boycotts,” Mike Davis, co-founder of the Internet Accountability Project, tweeted, suggesting Musk’s followers engage in a “counter-boycott” against them.

More than three quarters of 2.7 million respondents agreed that advertisers should support free speech over political correctness when polled by Musk on Wednesday.

Musk fired the board of directors and several high ranking executives upon taking over as CEO last week. However, he has attempted to reassure advertisers that the site would not become a “free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequence” under his watch.

November 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »