FLORIDA SURGEON GENERAL ON COVID VAX MANDATE
The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 20, 2022
Florida Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, minces no words regarding his State’s stance on Covid Vaccine Mandates, after a CDC committee voted unanimously to recommend Covid vaccines for kids older than 6 months.
COVID Vaccines and Organ Transplants: Are Healthcare Providers Ignoring Safety Signals?
The Defender | October 24, 2022
Since its experimental beginnings in the mid-1950s, organ transplantation has evolved into what the medical community now casually refers to as a “standard-of-care” procedure, albeit one with still substantial failure rates.
For example, though kidneys top the list of transplanted organs, 14% to 21% of kidney transplants fail within five years, and 15% of kidney transplant candidates are awaiting a repeat procedure.
Recent studies identified a new concern related to the failure of transplanted kidneys and other organs: COVID-19 vaccination.
In one study, published in September in Transplant Infectious Disease, researchers cataloged acute organ rejection within a week or two of COVID-19 vaccination in five individuals who had received kidney, liver or heart transplants six to 18 months earlier.
In August, Japanese researchers reported rejection of corneal grafts in COVID-19 vaccine recipients, occurring from one day to six weeks post-vaccination.
The events caught the Japanese authors’ attention because corneal grafts ordinarily have a high success rate due to the cornea’s status as an organ with immune privilege.
Noting literature that documents transplant rejection in association with other vaccines such as influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and yellow fever, the Japanese authors expressed worry about what “the projected societal shift towards a more frequent vaccination schedule” portends for transplant recipients.
Concerns about the impact of COVID-19 jabs on people with existing transplants are important, but another pressing-yet-unaddressed question lurks in the shadows: What happens if an unvaccinated person receives a transplanted organ from someone who got one or more COVID-19 jabs?
A record year
Although transplantation experienced a brief lull in the early days of the pandemic, by 2021, the U.S. saw a record-setting number of transplants performed — more than 40,000 kidneys, hearts, livers and other organs.
Although supply is never adequate to meet demand, transplant centers were able to achieve their 2021 milestone in part because of a 10% increase over 2020 in the number of “deceased organ donors” (as opposed to living donors), with 45 of 57 organ procurement organizations setting “all-time records for donors recovered in a single year.”
The surge in organ donation from deceased donors represents a decade-long trend, with “the rising number of deaths of young people due to the ongoing opioid epidemic” hypothesized to be a contributing factor prior to 2021. Still, in prior years, the increase averaged only 5%.
Thrilled with the increased availability of organs, transplant organizations have displayed no curiosity about whether fatalities linked to the rollout of experimental COVID-19 vaccines may be eclipsing or even replacing organs sourced from opioid-related deaths — even though there was a 30% increase (over 2020) in organ donation from individuals who died of cardiorespiratory failure, and a 15% increase in organs from deceased 50- to 64-year-olds.
The COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been linked to 2021’s explosive rise in all-cause mortality in the working-age population, including unprecedented heart-related fatalities in younger adult COVID-19 vaccine recipients.
Traffic fatalities are a key pipeline for organ donation, so transplant centers also benefited from the 16-year high in traffic-related deaths in 2021.
Some observers believe these could be linked to COVID-19-vaccine-related loss of consciousness behind the wheel.
Damaged organs?
According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), transplant rejection “is when the organ recipient’s immune system recognizes the donor organ as foreign and attempts to eliminate it.”
Rejection begins as an acute phenomenon but may proceed to the gradual loss of organ function defined as chronic rejection.
UNOS says, “Some degree of rejection occurs with every transplant,” which is why immunosuppressive medications, often for life, are a sine qua non following transplantation.
In August, the independent group of doctors and scientists known as Doctors for COVID Ethics outlined disturbing evidence from autopsies of persons deceased after COVID-19 vaccination about what is happening to the organs of mRNA vaccine recipients — organs potentially being offered to transplant recipients.
They noted that mRNA vaccines “travel throughout the body and accumulate in various organs” where they “induce long-lasting expression of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein” that in turn induces autoimmune-like inflammation — and the vaccine-induced inflammation “can cause grave organ damage, especially in vessels, sometimes with deadly outcome.”
Citing evidence from Pfizer’s animal experiments, they also underscored the particularly rapid accumulation of mRNA vaccine in the liver, and concluded that blood vessels, at the very least, “will be exposed and affected in every organ and in every tissue.”
Other researchers have highlighted “the possibility of subclinical organ dysfunction in vaccinated recipients.”
No transplant for you
Ironically, transplant programs commonly recommend that would-be organ recipients get “up-to-date” on a slew of vaccines — “typically hepatitis A and B, tetanus [diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus], pneumococcus, measles, human papillomavirus, influenza, and others dependent on geography and age.”
Given the manufacturer-documented potential for vaccines to cause organ-damaging adverse events, this advice was already questionable — but then many transplant centers made matters worse by adding stringent requirements for COVID-19 vaccination.
Even though researchers very quickly established that the immunosuppressive drugs taken by transplant recipients guarantee a “significantly blunt[ed]” COVID-19 vaccine response, prominent healthcare systems like Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Colorado’s UCHealth did not hesitate to coldly remove the unvaccinated from their transplant waiting lists.
The American Society of Transplant Surgeons’ COVID-19 Strike Force recommends COVID-19 vaccination not just for all transplant candidates but also for recipients, their family members and live donors.
They virtuously claim that decisions to deny transplants to the unvaccinated are based on a desire to “avoid futile transplants and wasting organs that could benefit other candidates.”
A University of Chicago physician who asserted a “legal right to discriminate against candidates who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine” nevertheless squeamishly labeled the discrimination “too severe,” asking, “one must ask how far the [transplant] community will go” and wondering, “will they mandate multiple boosters”?
Big bucks
Although organ transplantation is shrouded in noble lifesaving verbiage, it is also a major profit center for modern medicine.
Global projections for 2021-2028 suggest the combined organ and tissue transplantation market will double in size, going from $7.24 billion to $14.67 billion — and those figures do not take into account a thriving black market for trafficked organs.
Market analysts expect the growth to be fueled both by demand factors — such as the growing incidence of chronic diseases that cause “catastrophic damage to tissue and organs” — and increased supply — including a rise in celebrity-driven organ donation pledges.
Because access to organs remains the key barrier to transplantation, there has also been a push in recent years to allow donation from “suboptimal” or “extended criteria” donors — for example, the elderly, individuals with fatty liver disease, donors with malignancies or viral hepatitis or donations “after cardiac death.”
Will COVID-19-vaccine-contaminated organs become just another category of “suboptimal” donation?
Recent studies of COVID-19 vaccine recipients’ blood suggest that worries about a contaminated blood supply likely also extend to the organ supply and could place transplant recipients’ lives at risk.
Unfortunately, when problems arise, they will probably be chalked up to ordinary transplant rejection, with no one the wiser about the insidious role of newfangled COVID-19 or future mRNA vaccines.
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.
“We are not QR codes” New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith apologizes for vaccine passports
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2022
During the United Conservative party’s annual general meeting, Alberta’s new Premier Danielle Smith is seeking legal advice on pardoning those that got arrested or fined for violating COVID-19 rules such as not having a vaccine passport.
“We are human beings,” said Smith. “We are not QR codes,” she said, adding that she wanted to “purge” the QR database.
“I believe that Alberta Health Services is the source of a lot of the problems that we’ve had,” she said.
“They signed some kind of partnership with the World Economic Forum right in the middle of the pandemic; we’ve gotta address that. Why in the world do we have anything to do with the World Economic Forum? That’s got to end.”
“The things that come to top of mind for me are people who got arrested as pastors (and) people given fines for not wearing masks,” Smith said. “These are not things that are normal to get fines and get prosecuted for. I’m going to look into the range of outstanding fines and get some legal advice on which ones we are able to cancel and provide amnesty for.”
Smith also doubled down on her promise to amend the Human Rights Act to ban discrimination based on Covid vaccination status. She said the amendment would focus on Covid vaccines because the issue is not medical, it is political.
“Since it was a very specific reaction to a very specific vaccine mandate, we’re going to be very precise when we write the legislation,” she said.
“We have to get back to an attitude of ‘you take a vaccine to protect yourself.’
“[But] we have to get away from this attitude that you demonize those who make a different choice.”
Smith is a vocal opponent of vaccine passports and mandates, especially the Alberta Health Services (AHS) for not allowing people to work if they are not vaccinated against Covid. According to the premier, people not vaccinated against Covid are the most discriminated against she has seen in her life.
Smith vowed to reorganize the AHS governance system and fire the entire board.
“The system, my friends, is broken,” she said. “Most of those managing AHS today are holdovers from the NDP years. They have had their chance to fix this bloated system and they have largely failed on almost all accounts. Failure is no longer an option.”
Smith failed to address the comments she made during a virtual interview with Western Standard about the World Economic Forum (WEF). During the interview, she said she would end the AHS data sharing deal with other health providers, including Mayo Clinic, under a program overseen by the WEF.
Over a million Saudi citizens forcibly displaced in Jeddah to make way for extravagant project
The Cradle | October 22, 2022
More than one million people have become victims of forced displacement and have not received adequate compensation as old neighborhoods are being demolished in the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to make way for luxury hotels and entertainment venues, according to human rights groups.
On December 2021, the Saudi Public Investment Fund — chaired by Crown Prince and newly appointed Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) — announced the launch of a development project called ‘Jeddah Central,’ which would include a museum, an opera house, a stadium, an aquarium, hotels, and new residential neighborhoods.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a US-based rights group, stated that “while the Riyadh regime is expected to spend more than $20 billion on the ambitious plan, very little of that amount has been allocated to compensate the 1.5 million people who have lost or will lose their homes and livelihoods”, according to PressTV.
A research conducted by DAWN concluded that ”the Saudi forced displacements are in violation of international law since the measures are incompatible with internationally recognized legal principles to guarantee and protect the population’s rights.”
France 24 reported that Saudi authorities have carried out demolitions in some 60 different neighborhoods, mostly located in the southern part of the city. Demolitions are expected to continue and more neighborhoods are expected to be affected in the coming months.
The revelations come just days after it was revealed that Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court sentenced three members of the Howeitat tribe to death a few weeks ago, for resisting their forced eviction and displacement from the country’s northwestern Tabuk region.
The three tribesmen, Shadli, Atallah, and Ibrahim al-Howeiti, were detained in 2020 for speaking out against the eviction of their tribe from the area, which was cleared by Saudi authorities in order to make way for the Neom project.
The Neom project, announced in 2017 by MbS, is a $500 billion megacity being built in the Tabuk region, which plans to serve as a “technological hub and tourist destination.”
Israeli regime brings in strict rules on West Bank visitors amid international criticism
Press TV – October 21, 2022
The Israeli regime has implemented strict rules on all foreigners or Palestinians holding dual nationality who intend to come to the Occupied Palestinian territories, where it limits their ability to enter and stay in the occupied West Bank.
A 90-page authoritative order came into effect on Thursday despite international criticism, as reported by The Guardian, which will create complications for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families who hold dual nationality and are already having a hard time maneuvering a complicated permit system.
COGAT, the Israeli body in charge of Palestinian civilian affairs issued the rules, which are to be allegedly implemented over a two-year pilot period. The strict rules are expected to suffocate the Palestinian economy and academia and the work of aid agencies, where all foreign internationals coming to volunteer, study or work in the West Bank will be granted a single-entry visa valid for only three months.
There are no guarantees they will be granted a visa again, and they will have to leave and wait between visas in some cases for more than one year before they are able to reapply for entry. In most cases, residency is limited to a 12- to 27-month period, making family life and long-term employment almost impossible.
Palestinian academics, business leaders and rights groups expressed outrage over the policy when it was first outlined in February.
“This is going to cause major issues. Some of our board members come here frequently and they need to be able to see their investments. They are destroying Palestinian businesses,” said Bassem Khouri, chief executive of a pharmaceutical company in the West Bank, adding, “Who can live and work here is supposed to be a Palestinian decision. This is designed to isolate us.”
Meanwhile, Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked, an Israeli human rights group that has challenged the rules in court slammed the ordinance, saying, “The Israeli military is proposing new restrictions in order to isolate Palestinian society from the outside world and keep Palestinian families from living together.”
In a move that controls the lives of foreigners and Palestinians as well, the rules stipulate that only 150 foreign students a year may register at Palestinian colleges and universities. The major they chose to study must be pre-approved, and there is a quota of 100 foreign “distinguished” lecturers that will be determined by the Israeli occupation regime.
Also, Palestinians holding dual citizenship will have to hand the Israeli apartheid regime a list of names and ID numbers of family and friends they plan to visit beforehand, even before they travel.
Students, teachers, journalists working for Palestinian media outlets, tourists, and Palestinian family members including siblings, grandparents or grandchildren will all have to undergo these new rules.
The rules also read that if a foreigner starts a relationship with a Palestinian, “the appointed COGAT official must be informed as part of their request to renew or extend the existing visa.”
According to Montell, none of the rules have any legal ground. “Under international law, the Israeli military is only allowed to work for the interests of the occupied population, or its own security needs. These restrictions obviously advance neither.”
The new procedures apply only to Palestinians, and not Israeli settlers living across the area in violation of international law. Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
Israeli Colonizers Assault International Activists, Stab One, Near Bethlehem
IMEMC | OCTOBER 19, 2022
On Wednesday, a group of illegal Israeli paramilitary colonizers assaulted many Palestinians and international peace activists picking Palestinian olive trees in Kisan village, east of Bethlehem, and stabbed a female activist.
The olive orchard owner, Ibrahim Obeyyat, said the colonizers invaded his land and assaulted the locals and the international peace activists who came to help in picking the olive trees, especially since the area is subject to constant Israeli violations.
Obeyyat added that the international peace activist was stabbed in the back and suffered a fracture in her leg after the colonizers struck her with a bar.
He stated that the colonizers also uprooted at least 300 olive saplings and sprayed many olive trees with chemicals in his 90 Dunam olive orchard.
The colonizers repeatedly target Kisan, its farmers, and lands, and have stolen agricultural supplies, uprooted trees, and frequently attack the farmers and the shepherds.
Canadian intelligence reported ‘no concerns’ about Freedom Convoy on day Trudeau invoked Emergencies Act
By Anthony Murdoch – Life Site News – October 17, 2022
OTTAWA – Documents show that the Canadian federal government received regular updates indicating the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa were non-violent in nature, despite the Trudeau administration’s claims otherwise.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Internal Department of Public Safety reports show that on the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act (EA) to clear out the protesters, a report stated the protests were peaceful.
“No concerns at this time,” noted a February 14 report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Trudeau on the same day, however, claimed to reporters that the protests were “illegal and dangerous,” saying they could not be allowed “to continue.”
Multiple daily reports from the Department of Public Safety leading up to Trudeau enacting the EA show that there were no major concerns that the Freedom Convoy protests were violent.
A January 27 report said, “The Freedom Convoy so far has been peaceful and cooperative with police.”
Blacklock’s Reporter listed five such statements asserting there were no issues.
A January 29 report stated there were “No major incidents,” while a report from February 1 said, “no violence took place.”
A February 6 report concluded that disruption to “government activities is so far minor.”
A report from February 10 said that there was a “minimal” amount of people on Parliament Hill, while an update from the next day stated the “situation remains stable and planning is ongoing.”
Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino also claimed the Freedom Convoy might be violent in nature, despite the internal reports stating otherwise.
Government staff even wrote that the “majority of the events have been peaceful,” noting that as most people were working from home, there was very little disruption to “government activities.”
Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs in a memo said that it had “not observed any significant indicators of foreign state involvement related to the truckers’ convoy.”
Canada’s draconian COVID measures were the catalyst for the Freedom Convoy, which took to the streets of Ottawa to demand an end to all mandates for three weeks in February.
The EA gave the Trudeau government unprecedented powers such as the ability to freeze bank accounts without a court order and deploy police at will.
While Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23, many who supported the Freedom Convoy were targeted by the federal government and had their bank accounts frozen without a court order.
Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission began public hearings last Thursday into Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act.
The hearings are open to the public livestream and will call forth at least 65 witnesses over six weeks.
Video footage showed police using what many said was disproportionate force
Many claims by government officials and mainstream media pundits that the Freedom Convoy would lead to violence never came to light.
After Trudeau had enacted the EA, scuffles only broke out after police directly intervened in the protests.
Video footage of police on horseback trampling an elderly protester went viral, as well as videos showing non-violent protesters being physically assaulted and pepper-sprayed by police.
Also, an independent journalist said she was beaten and intentionally shot at with a tear gas canister.
Just recently, former Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief Peter Sloly testified that Freedom Convoy protesters were permitted by the cops to park their vehicles outside Canada’s Parliament in the early days of the protest.
OPS interim chief Steve Bell recently acknowledged his department did not request that Trudeau invoke EA to take down the Freedom Convoy.
Even Sloly said he did not request the use of the EA. He resigned as OPS Chief on February 25.
Trudeau had made claims that the Freedom Convoy protesters were funded by foreign entities with ties to terrorist-linked financing. This reasoning was used as justification for Trudeau to use the EA against the Freedom Convoy.
Canada’s state broadcaster the CBC in March had to retract a story that falsely claimed most support for the Freedom Convoy came from foreigners.
Difficult months ahead: Why Israel is afraid of the Lions’ Den
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 18, 2022
This headline in the Israeli newspaper, the Jerusalem Post, only tells part of the story: “The Lions’ Den, Other Palestinian Groups are Endless Headache for Israel, PA.”
It is true that both the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority are equally worried about the prospect of a widespread armed revolt in the Occupied West Bank, and that the newly formed Nablus-based brigade, the Lions’ Den, is the epicentre of this youth-led movement.
However, the growing armed resistance in the West Bank is causing more than a mere ‘headache’ for Tel Aviv and Ramallah. If this phenomenon continues to grow, it could threaten the very existence of the PA, while placing Israel before its most difficult choice since the invasion of major Palestinian West Bank cities in 2002.
Though Israeli military commanders continue to undermine the power of the newly formed group, they seem to have no clear idea regarding its roots, influence and future impact.
In a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, claimed that the Lions’ Den is a “group of 30 members”, who will eventually be reached and eliminated. “We will lay our hands on the terrorists,” he declared.
The Lions’ Den, however, is not an isolated case, but part of a larger phenomenon that includes the Nablus Brigades, the Jenin Brigades and other groups, which are located mostly in the northern West Bank.
The group, along with other armed Palestinian military units, has been active in responding to the killing of Palestinians, including children, elders, and, on October 14, even a Palestinian doctor, Abdullah Abu Al-Teen, who succumbed to his wounds in Jenin. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, over 170 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank and Gaza, since the beginning of the year.
The Palestinian response included the killing of two Israeli soldiers, one in Shuafat on 8 October, and the other near Nablus on 11 October.
Following the Shuafat attack, Israel completely sealed the Shuafat refugee camp as a form of collective punishment, similar to recent sieges on Jenin and other Palestinian towns.
Citing Israel’s Hebrew media, the Palestinian Arabic daily, Al Quds, reported that the Israeli military will focus its operations in the coming weeks on targeting the Lions’ Den. Thousands more Israeli occupation soldiers are likely to be deployed in the West Bank for the upcoming battle.
It is difficult to imagine that Israel would mobilise much of its army to fight 30 Palestinian fighters in Nablus. But not only Israel, the PA, too, is terribly concerned.
The Authority has tried but failed to entice the fighters by offering them a surrender ‘deal’, where they give up their arms and join the PA forces. Such deals were offered in the past to fighters belonging to Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, with mixed degrees of success.
This time around, the strategy did not work. The group rejected the PA’s overtures, compelling the Fatah-affiliated governor of Nablus, Ibrahim Ramadan, to attack the mothers of the fighters by calling them ‘deviant’ for “sending their sons to commit suicide”. Ramadan’s language, which is similar to language used by Israeli and pro-Israel individuals in their depiction of Palestinian society, highlights the massive schisms between the PA’s political discourse and those of ordinary Palestinians.
Not only is the PA losing its grasp of the narrative, but it is also losing whatever vestiges of control it has left in the West Bank, especially in Nablus and Jenin.
A senior Palestinian official told the Media Line that the Palestinian “street does not trust us any more”, as they “view us as an extension of Israel”. True, but this lack of trust has been in the making for years.
The ‘Unity Intifada‘ of May 2021, however, served as a major turning point in the relationship between the PA and Palestinians. The rise of the Lions’ Den and other Palestinian armed groups are but a few manifestations of the dramatic changes underway in the West Bank.
Indeed, the West Bank is changing. A new generation that has little or no memory of the Second Intifada (2000-2005), had not experienced the Israeli invasion then but grew up under occupation and apartheid, feeding on the memories of the resistance in Jenin, Nablus and Hebron.
Judging by their political discourse, chants and symbols, this generation is fed up with the crippling and often superficial divisions of Palestinians among factions, ideologies and regions. In fact, the newly established brigades, including the Lions’ Den, are believed to be multi-factional groups bringing, for the first time, fighters from Hamas, Fatah and others into a single platform. This explains the popular enthusiasm and lack of suspicion among ordinary Palestinians of the new fighters.
For example, Saed Al-Kuni, a Palestinian fighter who was recently killed by Israeli soldiers in an ambush on the outskirts of Nablus, was a member of the Lions’ Den. Some have claimed that Al-Kuni was a leading member of Fatah’s Brigades, and others say he was a well-known Hamas fighter.
This lack of certainty regarding the political identity of killed fighters is fairly unique to Palestinian society, at least since the establishment of the PA in 1994.
Expectedly, Israel will do what it always does: amassing more occupation troops, attacking, assassinating, crushing protests and laying sieges on rebellious towns and refugee camps. What they fail to understand, at least for now, is that the growing rebellion in the West Bank is not generated by a few fighters in Nablus and a few more in Jenin, but is the outcome of a truly popular sentiment.
In an interview with Yedioth Ahronoth, translated by Al-Quds, an Israeli commander described what he has witnessed in Jenin during a raid:
“When we enter (Jenin), armed fighters and stone throwers wait for us in every corner. Everyone takes part. You look at an old man … and you wonder, will he throw stones? And he does. Once, I saw a person who had nothing to throw (on us). He rushed to his car, grabbed a milk carton and he threw it on us.”
Palestinians are simply fed up with the Israeli occupation and with their collaborating leadership. They are ready to put it all on the line; in fact, in Jenin and Nablus, they already have. The coming weeks and months are critical for the future of the West Bank and, in fact, for all Palestinians.
Americans criticize US Middle Eastern policies
By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 18.10.2022
The USA never misses an opportunity to present itself as an open and democratic society and a state in which the government authorities respect the will of the majority of the people and tailor their policies accordingly. That may have been the case in the past, but the facts no longer support this view – the President and his team are pushing through policies which favor their own interests and which are quite different from what they promised in their election campaigns.
There is a great deal of evidence to support this claim, but one particularly striking example is a new wide-ranging survey of Americans’ views on Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The survey revealed that the majority of young Americans oppose their country’s policy in relation to Israel and, specifically against its sale of arms to the Israeli regime. The survey also shows that there is a great deal of support in American society for the Iran nuclear deal.
The survey, conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF), shows that young Americans are more politically aware than older generations in relation to Israel’s aggressive policies against the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. Most respondents aged between 18 and 29 were not in favor of continuing to supply arms to Israel. Older Americans (over sixty years old), on the other hand, tend to be in favor of the US providing military support to Israel.
The US supplies Israel with military aid worth some $4 billion a year. As a result, Israel is the biggest recipient of American military support in the world. But this support is being paid for by American taxpayers, many of whom are unaware that their taxes are being used to support the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians. Similarly, more than 80% of Americans support the Biden administration’s policy of negotiating in order to revive the Iran nuclear deal, as they consider that this will help improve the situation in the Middle East. Both in the region and at the international level there is a great deal of debate about how ready ordinary Americans are to criticize their government’s military support for dictatorships and authoritarian regimes enforcing policies of territorial occupation and ethnic segregation. Washington, in a bid to justify its actions, frequently claims that its support is made necessary by so-called security concerns, but many are skeptical of these arguments, dismissing them as cheap populism.
Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, describes the motivation behind the survey, “We began this survey five years ago because we believed lawmakers and foreign policy leaders conducting foreign policy on behalf of the American people would benefit from a window into their opinions and priorities.” He also expressed the hope that the survey results would be used by decision makers responsible for foreign policy in relation to the Middle East would study the survey “to make the activities they pursue more sensitive to – and informed by – the opinions of their constituents, and to bridge the gap between the concerns of policymakers and those of ordinary Americans.”
Unfortunately, the above hope is very naive: officials in Washington and in the Biden administration do not take the interests of ordinary Americans into account when making foreign policy decisions. It would suffice to cite Washington’s involvement supporting neo-Nazi groups in the war in Ukraine, thus threatening the world with nuclear war.
Or one could cite its offer to supply Israel – completely free of charge – with four Boeing military refueling aircraft over the next four years. Boeing signed a contract with the US Defense Department for the supply of four Boeing KC-46 Pegasus aircraft at a cost of $927 million. In effect, this means that the purchase price of $927 million will be paid by the US taxpayer, and Boeing will make a handsome profit from the transaction. According to Israeli media reports and also official government sources, Israel is already planning to use these state-of-the art aircraft to attack Iranian territory. It is obvious that the revival of the so-called Iran nuclear deal is in the interests both of the USA and of ordinary Americans, and that it would have a very positive effect on the highly tense situation in the Middle East.
In a formal statement on the decision to supply Israel with the refueling planes, Benny Gantz, Israel’s Minister of Defense, said, “This is further proof of the alliance and the strategic relations of the Israeli and American defense establishments.” In line with their standard practice, the Minister of Defense and other Israeli officials, along with their counterparts in Washington, all falsely name Iran as the justification for their huge military aid budget. This military aid has support from both parties in Congress, and is approved each year by a majority of lawmakers, even though this support goes against the interests of ordinary Americans.
According to a study by Maryland University, less than 1% of respondents consider Israel to be one of Washington’s two main allies. Many other surveys conducted over a number of years confirm the findings of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Earlier this year a survey by Pew Research also found that Americans under 30 tended to have a negative view of Israel. 61% of respondents in that age group felt sympathy towards the Palestinians. Maryland University also found that only a small proportion were in favor of stronger links with Israel, and that Israel is able to manipulate these links to favor its own interests.
In an interview with Middle East Eye, Dr. Zuri Linetsky, a Research Fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, explained that many American respondents who stated that they were against arms sales to Israel explained that they saw Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory as a violation of human rights. That last survey also found that many Americans are against their government’s continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia, with 70% of respondents critical of Washington’s policy in relation to Riyadh.
That is despite the fact that rights groups are deeply concerned about the Biden administration’s continuing approvals of new arms sales to countries such as Israel, which have a record of invading other Arab nations. In August President Biden approved a $5 billion sale of rocket technology to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The survey also shows that respondents are in favor of reining in US military involvement abroad, and, conversely, want to see the US administration make more efforts in the field of diplomacy, especially in relation to US rivals.
One of the key findings of the survey conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation is that respondents attach a lot of importance to the Iran nuclear deal. It revealed that, irrespective of whether they vote Democrat or Republican, most Americans are in favor of talks with Tehran. Almost 80% of them support Joe Biden’s administration engaging in talks to revive the nuclear deal. To a great extent, support for the talks cuts across party divisions, with more than 70% of Republicans believing that the USA should continue with the talks.
However, approximately 80% of respondents also feel that Congress should more strictly control the President’s powers and authority in military matters, and that such decisions should be made by Congress. The USA has invaded many countries, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, and its military continues to be involved in combat operations in Syria. Washington is also still illegally “occupying” a number of Arab countries, and has military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. And the Pentagon does all this without consulting Congress – it prefers to take action and present the legislature with a fait accompli.
When asked about Afghanistan, almost two thirds of respondents consider that the most important lesson to be learned from the Afghan war is that the USA should not be involved in nation-building, or that it should only send troops into harm’s way if its vital national interests are threatened.
As for nuclear weapons, almost 75% of respondents said that they were concerned about this problem. Those respondents who have served or currently serve in the armed forces were less concerned than those with no military experience. “For the vast majority of the 21st century, the United States has been involved in conflicts in far-flung parts of the world. So the question is, is this what the American people want? Does this represent their interests?”, asked Zuri Linetsky, in his interview with Middle East Eye.
In conclusion, the author can confidently state that the survey is a good test to determine the areas in which respondents are dissatisfied with American policies in relation to the Middle East, and what they consider should be their leaders’ priorities, whether concerning international or domestic matters. The survey shows that in relation to many questions, the White House’s policies are inconsistent with the views of the majority of respondents. The survey sample was made up of a highly diverse group of Americans from all parts of the country, with different religions, political affiliations, drawn from every age group and representing all income levels.
What kind of democracy is that?
Submission to Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission
Fearless Canada | October 16, 2022
As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many of our members witnessed first-hand what the situation looked like on the ground and how it all began. We took extensive video footage of the events during the first weekend from the moment when truckers were being directed toward Parliament by Ottawa police. We have decided to submit our evaluation of the events as well as our strongly held view that the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act (hereafter referred to as “EMA”) by the Trudeau government was not only inappropriate, but also unlawful and unconstitutional.
We must first unequivocally state that, in our view, the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the EMA in no way met the legal threshold to do so. The usage of the EMA is reserved for exceptional circumstances in which a serious foreign or existential threat imperils the security of the nation. Such security threats would be typically related to war, as the older, subsequently replaced War Measures Act aimed to address. In no conceivable way could the temporary discomfort or inconvenience borne by Ottawa citizens or businesses justify the use of an Act that is meant to aid the government in protecting the nation against threats of an incalculably larger scale. As such, the purpose of the Commission is not to determine whether the invocation of the EMA served the Trudeau government in its objective to deescalate the so-called “occupation” of Ottawa’s downtown core, but rather to assess whether the legal threshold for its invocation was met.
The Early Days in Ottawa
Our group arrived in Ottawa in the early afternoon of January 28, 2022. The first thing we noticed was Ottawa police directing truckers and their rigs onto Wellington Street towards Parliament. The atmosphere was festive and light despite the frigid weather. As more protesters arrived in Ottawa over the course of the weekend, we would quickly observe that the crowds were both peaceful and diverse. Men, women, and children from all different backgrounds and walks of life gathered in the capital with a common goal. They demanded that the Trudeau government lift measures that, in their view, were both unjustified and discriminatory in nature. As a result of those measures, the majority of protesters in Ottawa were themselves directly impacted in profound and often irreversible ways.
In talking with dozens of truckers and protesters, we learned that many had lost their jobs, connections to loved ones, access to essential services, and much more. While speaking with police officers, we learned that many felt they were unlawfully coerced into taking a COVID vaccine in order to keep their jobs. Our impression on the ground was that the majority of police officers were in fact aligned with the goals of the protest. They, too, wanted to see an immediate end to damaging and ineffective policies that divided our nation along medical lines previously acknowledged as a matter of private and personal concern.
Legacy Media and the Trudeau Government’s Portrayal of the Freedom Convoy
While in Ottawa, our group kept an eye on the news coming out of legacy media outlets such as the CBC, CTV News, and Global News. It became impossible not to notice that a concerted narrative had quickly taken shape to misrepresent the situation and characterize protesters as far-right extremists, racists, antisemites, and more. The unjustified slander of protesters directly conflicted with our experience on the ground. What we saw was a festive and peaceful rally, replete with volunteers offering food and shelter from the cold, routinely cleaning streets and sidewalks, and organizing fun activities for the kids. At no time did we spot a single racist or Nazi in the vast crowds, as was incessantly suggested by both the Liberal government and the mainstream media. From what we could tell, these characterizations were fabricated in order to serve a narrative that aimed to discredit the legitimacy and lawfulness of the protest.
As time went on, the media’s portrayal of the situation continued to unhinge itself from reality. The press published stories about imminent violence, a van loaded with illegal firearms, and more. None of these allegations turned out to be true. Yet, the misrepresentation of the situation had already reached the eyes and ears of Canadians from coast to coast, very few of which witnessed the event themselves. But by then, the damage had already been done, just as it seemed to have been intended.
The Invocation of the EMA
At the moment the Trudeau government invoked the EMA, it must be noted that the protest in Ottawa was already in the process of de-escalation. The protest organizers and their lawyers had already brokered a dismantlement deal with the Ottawa mayor and police services. Truckers were already on their way out of the downtown core and the blockades at two Canadian points of entry had already long-since been dismantled. Yet rather than follow an organized de-escalation plan agreed to by all factions, Ottawa police and the Trudeau government instead opted to escalate the situation by using violence and propaganda against Canadian citizens. The impacts of the invocation of the EMA were profound and unwarranted.
Immediately ensuing the invocation of the EMA, police and governmental authorities froze protesters’ bank accounts and deployed violent anti-riot squads all over the downtown core of Ottawa. Several protesters were injured as police again escalated tensions using all manner of crowd dispersal techniques. In the days following the invocation of the EMA, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wasted no time in announcing that certain aspects of the EMA would be written into law, granting broad and unconstitutional powers to government without the requisite EMA enacted. It had become clear that the Trudeau government had a predetermined objective in enacting the EMA, one that would grant greater leverage over political dissidents and, more broadly, Canadians that disagreed with its ideology. This in itself represents an egregious misuse of the EMA in order to further a political agenda.
Conclusion
The volunteer activists at Fearless Canada include Canadian scholars, lawyers, professors, small business owners, and artists. We unanimously and unequivocally feel that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the EMA as a response to ongoing protests in Ottawa was both unlawful and unconstitutional. We submit that the government manipulated public opinion by fabricating evidence of unlawful activity in Ottawa and invoked the EMA under false pretenses in order to abet their predetermined agenda. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports our position, and we look forward to seeing all of it brought to light during the Commission’s discovery process.
This statement was authored by the executive of Fearless Canada and endorsed by members.
The statement has been submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission of Canada, which began public hearings on Thursday, October 13, which will run every weekday until November 25. Live hearings can be viewed here, and True North Centre publishes a recap for each day.
Et Tu, PayPal? The EU’s Role in Defunding Dissent
BY ROBERT KOGON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 15, 2022
PayPal appears unsure whether it should participate in the current crusade against online “disinformation” or not.
First it closed the PayPal accounts of The Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, and even the personal account of their founder Toby Young, and then, two weeks later, it restored them. Then it announced that it would be docking $2,500 from anyone who uses its services in connection with “promoting misinformation” and then, two days later, it again reversed course and announced that this language was never intended to be included in its new Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).
It was not intended to be included? Well, where did it come from then?
Could the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation and its Digital Services Act (DSA), about which I wrote in my last Brownstone article, have something to do with PayPal’s skittish forays into “combatting disinformation?” Well, yes, they could, and you may rest assured that EU officials or representatives have already had a word with PayPal about them.
As discussed in my previous article, the Code requires signatories to censor what is deemed by the European Commission to be disinformation on pain of massive fines. The enforcement mechanism, i.e. the fines, has been established under the DSA.
PayPal is not, for the moment, a signatory of the Code. Furthermore, since it is neither a content platform nor a search engine – the potential channels of “disinformation” targeted in the DSA – it is obviously not in a position to censor per se. But the very first commitment in the “strengthened” Code of Practice unveiled by the European Commission last June is dedicated precisely to demonetization.
Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the business models of the most prominent signatories – Twitter, Meta/Facebook and Google/YouTube – this commitment and the six “measures” it comprises are mostly related to advertising practices.
But the “Guidance” that the Commission issued in May 2021, prior to the Code’s drafting, explicitly calls for “broadening” efforts to defund alleged purveyors of disinformation and contains the following highly pertinent recommendation:
Actions to defund disinformation should be broadened by the participation of players active in the online monetisation value chain, such as online e-payment services, e-commerce platforms and relevant crowd-funding/donation systems. (p. 8; emphasis added)
PayPal, the online e-payment service par excellence, was thus already in the Commission’s sights.
Somewhat illogically, given their own emphasis on advertising and the fact that an advertising-based revenue model and a donation or pay model would ordinarily be regarded as alternatives, the signatories of the “strengthened” Code thus pledged to
… exchange best practices and strengthen cooperation with relevant players, expanding to organisations active in the online monetisation value chain, such as online e-payment services, e-commerce platforms and relevant crowd-funding/donation systems. … (Commitment 3)
But the outreach to PayPal has not only occurred via third parties like the Code signatories.
In late May, shortly after the text of the Digital Services Act had been finalized – but before the European Parliament had even had the opportunity to vote on it! – an 8-member delegation from the parliament was dispatched to California to discuss the DSA and the related Digital Markets Act (DMA) with relevant “digital stakeholders.”
In addition to Code signatories Google and Meta, the “host list,” so to say – since the parliamentarians were to be the guests and they were inviting themselves! – also included PayPal. (See the delegation report here.)
Curiously, Twitter was not included among the companies and organizations to be visited, perhaps because of the turmoil unleashed by Elon Musk’s takeover bid. But, as touched upon in my prior article, Thierry Breton, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, had already paid a visit to Musk in Austin, Texas earlier in the month to have a word with him about the DSA.
No less than three of the delegation’s eight members – Alexandra Geese, Marion Walsmann and delegation head Andreas Schwab – were German, whereas Germans only account for around 13% of the total members of the parliament. This stark overrepresentation is telling, since Germany has undoubtedly been the prime mover behind the EU’s censorship drive, having already adopted its own online censorship law in 2017 with the express motivation of “combatting criminal fake news in social networks” (p. 1 of the legislative proposal in German here).
The German legislation, commonly known as “NetzDG” or the Network Enforcement Act, threatens platforms with fines of up to €50 million for hosting content that infringes any of a variety of German laws that restrict speech in ways that would be unthinkable and unconstitutional in the United States. It is also the source of the Twitter notices that many Twitter users will have received informing them that their account had been denounced by “a person from Germany.”
As noted above, PayPal is not presently a signatory of the Code of Practice on Disinformation. On July 14, however, just nine days after the passage of the DSA, the Commission issued a “Call for interest to become a Signatory” of the Code. The call is explicitly addressed to, among others, “e-payment services, e-commerce platforms, crowd-funding/donation systems.” The latter are identified as “providers whose services may be used to monetize disinformation.”
Evidently not satisfied merely with “deplatforming,” the Commission has thus made clear that the next frontier in its combat against “disinformation” is attempting to defund dissenters who, despite their discrimination by or banishment from the major online platforms, have managed to preserve a place in the online discussion thanks to platforms of their own.
PayPal, moreover, will know that the “exclusive” – in effect, dictatorial – powers that the DSA confers on the European Commission include the power to designate the “very large” online platforms that are susceptible to incurring the massive DSA fines of up to 6% of global turnover. PayPal will easily satisfy the “very large” size criterion of having at least 45 million users in the EU, but it is obviously not a content platform.
Nonetheless, this appears not to be so obvious to the European Commission. For the Commission press release on the call for signatories treats it precisely… as a content platform! Thus, the press release refers to “providers of e-payment services, e-commerce platforms, crowd-funding/donation systems, which may be used to spread disinformation.” Huh?
In the meanwhile, on September 1, the EU has opened a specially-dedicated office or “embassy” in San Francisco to conduct what it itself describes as “digital diplomacy” with US tech firms. The “ambassador,” Commission official Gerard de Graaf, is reportedly one of the drafters of the DSA. Perhaps he will be able to explain the intricacies of the DSA to PayPal – or even already has. PayPal headquarters are, after all, just a stone’s throw away in Palo Alto.
In any case, PayPal has been put on notice, and, with it, so too have dissident websites that depend on user support for their survival. Ignore the EU at your peril.
Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, a translator, and researcher working in Europe. He writes at edv1694.substack.com.
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The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
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