Newsom criminalizes scientific dissent
By Mike Campbell | The Counter Signal | October 11, 2022
California Governor Gavin Newsom has made it illegal for doctors to express dissent with state health authorities on COVID-19.
Bill 2098 was approved by Newsom on September 30.
“This bill would designate the dissemination of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct. The bill would also make findings and declarations in this regard.”
Any information doctors give that publicly contradicts state messaging on the COVID-19 virus, COVID vaccines, and prevention and treatment information is now “unprofessional conduct.”
Misinformation, as defined by the bill, refers to “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
In other words, the state now has legal grounds to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they publicly disagree with its COVID related messaging.
In response to Newsom’s new law, the Liberty Justice Center quickly filed a lawsuit against the state’s Medical Board and Attorney General on behalf of two doctors.
“Science is not static. By its very nature science is constantly evolving and the subject of unending debate,” the Justice Center states.
“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and other public health authorities have constantly shifted their public presentation of the scientific data. Governor Newsom himself closed schools and even outdoor spaces— policies now widely acknowledged as unscientific and harmful.”
Last month, in another bizarre display of scientific tyranny, the UN’s Global Communications representative Melissa Fleming said, “We own the science.”
Fleming was speaking to the World Economic Forum’s “disinformation” panel.
“We’re becoming much more proactive. We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do,” she said.
In Canada, provincial health boards have threatened medical professionals who go against their messaging.
Earlier this year, 40 doctors from Ontario were under “investigation” for COVID-19 related decisions that went outside the province’s orders.
Open Letter to Therese Coffey Urging Her to Apologise to the Care Workers Forced Out by Vaccine Mandate
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 10, 2022
Campaign group Together’s latest campaign, an Open Letter to Health Secretary Therese Coffey urging her to “Apologise, Reinstate, Compensate the 40,000 Care Workers Forced Out by Covid Jab Mandate” has attracted over 10,000 signatures within a few hours of going live. Here is an extract:
Forcing out approximately 40,000 social care workers for declining the Covid jab was not just unethical, but disastrous for the care sector and those it supports. The sector now has 165,000 vacancies, with 500,000 members of the public waiting for assessments, care or reviews. The situation is grave and urgent, not least as without a functioning care sector the NHS will collapse.
Failure to respect bodily autonomy was wrong in principle. ‘No jab, no job’ amounted to blackmail. But even on a practical level, the ‘mandate’ policy was always illogical and ill-advised.
For starters, natural immunity was totally ignored as a factor – for reasons that remain unclear. Throughout most of 2021 it was clear that Covid jabs did not prevent transmission and by October, the Guardian was explicitly reporting that ‘research reveals fully vaccinated people are just as likely to pass (the) virus on… whether an infected individual is themselves fully vaccinated or unvaccinated makes little or no difference to how infectious they are to their household contacts’. This alone should have been enough to kill off this divisive policy. Yet, seemingly oblivious to the actual scientific data, your predecessor Sajid Javid took to television the same month, belligerently ‘warning’ care workers ‘if you cannot be bothered to go and get vaccinated then get out… go and get another job.’
On November 9th 2021, the Department of Health and Social Care warned Javid that his ‘mandate’ policy would result in upwards of 40,000 care staff leaving the sector. He persisted with it anyway, and on 11 November workers who had not already been forced out were sacked in droves. Many lost not only their jobs, but also their pensions.
Already a range of well-known people including Prof Carl Heneghan, journalists Allison Pearson and Julia Hartley-Brewer, author and broadcaster Laura Dodsworth, Richard Tice of Reform UK and Laurence Fox of the Reclaim party, medics Dr Tony Hinton, Dr Renee Hoenderkamp, Dr Clare Craig and Dr Teck Khong, and sportsman Matt Le Tissier, have all signed.
You can read the Open Letter in full and sign it here.
Is PayPal About to Go Bankrupt?
BY IZABELLA KAMINSKA | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | OCTOBER 9, 2022
With the stock prices of both Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank under pressure, many in the financial field are becoming concerned the world could be facing a renewed financial crisis. But this time around events could play out very differently. It might not even be banks that pose the greatest financial risk to consumers. It could be payment providers like PayPal.
The really big difference between 2007 and 2022 is that bank runs no longer look like the image above, they look like this:
That’s what I was faced with when I tried to transfer £500 from my PayPal account to a regular bank account. On Sunday morning the same message was still occurring. A quick scan of social media proved I was not alone.
“Boycott PayPal” was also trending on Twitter.
So what might the error message indicate about the business?
Here’s what we know so far.
In the last 48 hours a sneaky amendment to PayPal’s acceptable use policy widely captured the public’s attention. Free speech advocates had spotted that customers agreeing to the update would be allowing a sum of $2,500 to be lifted from their accounts if PayPal ever found them guilty of “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation” or “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing”.
When word got out, those already concerned about the company’s draconian turn started shutting their accounts and urging others to do the same on social media.
For some, the action proved the final straw.
On Saturday evening U.K. time, PayPal’s former president David Marcus distanced himself very clearly from the action. Elon Musk, whose pathway to billionairehood started in 2000 when his company X.com was merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to create the PayPal of today, later tweeted that he agreed.
Readers of the Daily Sceptic and members of the Free Speech Union (such as myself) will already know that over the past few months PayPal has been on a whirlwind tour of shutting down the accounts of platforms and media sites it has deemed guilty of spreading misinformation. In many instances, those affected, such as the Daily Sceptic, were not even consulted ahead of the fact and had little idea of what specific text, post or media had violated PayPal terms.
So why exactly would PayPal descend to this level of reputational self-harm?
It’s hard to know for sure, but chances are the decision rests on pressures PayPal itself is facing with respect to its legal duty to enforce Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) rules. If I was to take an educated bet, it’s the counterterrorism section of the rulebook that is most relevant.
These days it’s hard to imagine that banks weren’t always responsible for screening transactions and making judgements about their legitimacy. But until the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) was formed in 1989 with a view to combatting money laundering, banks only really cared about screening credit risk. It wasn’t until 2001 and the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers (and the introduction of the Patriot Act) that the scope of banks’ responsibilities in this field was expanded to include combatting the financing of terrorism too.
Tackling terrorist financing and criminality was easy enough when everyone was on the same page about what constituted terrorism or financial crime. But one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. And in an increasingly polarised world, it’s become harder for ordinary bank employees to differentiate free-speech critical of authority from radicalising terrorist content, such as that distributed by Isis on social media to recruit new members.
It wasn’t the job they were hired to do.
Three factors have muddied the waters further.
The first is the scale of penalties directed at banks found in breach of AML/KYC regulation. The fear of being slammed with fines has made banks and payment providers like PayPal hugely risk-averse and inclined to err on the side of caution when facing any ambiguity. If something even whiffs of misinformation, from their point of view it’s better to shut it down than to run the risk of getting a fine.
Second, is a lack of resources. Human arbitration is costly, and screening activities would be unaffordable if they were to be done by living, breathing individuals. This is why banks and payment providers like PayPal have invested huge sums of money in cost-saving screening technology to detect illegal transactions both actively and preemptively. The problem here is that most of these tools, known as suptech or regtech, are algorithmically applied with limited human oversight. That means it’s mostly artificial rather than human intelligence deciding who gets to stay on a platform and who gets frozen out. As yet, robots are not well known for their sense of nuance, empathy or capacity to process ambiguity. How they decide what they decide is a black-box interpretation of the inputs they’ve been programmed with.
The third issue is the structure of the KYC/AML policing system itself. Since the scale of the task is so enormous, it goes beyond the scope and capacity of any existing government agency. Knowing this, governments, very similar to how they managed the enforcement of lockdown policy, realised it would be more cost-efficient to outsource the policing of their own rules to the banks and payment companies directly. But this is a strategically coercive dynamic. If payment companies don’t fall in line, they risk having their licences removed and their businesses shut down. Non-compliance is therefore not an option. PayPal isn’t perfect, but the pressure it is facing is very similar to the pressure pubs, restaurants and supermarkets faced under Covid. The structural problem here, as with the retail sector during Covid, is those payment companies are not legislative specialists. They take for granted that the governments know what they are doing and that the rules they are setting are human rights compatible and in line with the laws of the land. Nor do the payment companies have the capacity to investigate the rights and wrongs of every case. This is a job for the legal system, which is already excessively costly to access for most ordinary individuals.
This in itself is a huge blind spot for the financial system. There’s a very strong case to be made that the way democratic governments have gone about enforcing AML legislation is not compatible with human rights at all. The enshrined right of habeas corpus might even be under threat. The FATF has itself belatedly realised this. Back in October 2021, it noted in a “stock-take on the unintended consequences of the FATF standards” that (my emphasis):
Situations have arisen in the course of FATF evaluations concerning the interaction between the FATF Recommendations on combating TF (particularly R.5 and R.6) and due process and procedural rights (e.g. to legal representation, fair trial, and to challenge designations, etc.), which have been considered on a case-by-case approach as they arise in specific country contexts. In addition, the FATF has also been made aware of instances of the misapplication of the FATF Standards, which are allegedly introduced by jurisdictions to address AML/CFT deficiencies identified through the FATF’s mutual evaluation or ICRG process, potentially as an excuse measures with another motivation. This information often comes as a result of stakeholder input or when the attention of the FATF or its members is drawn to a particular issue, such as when another international body is reviewing legislation or actions are taken by national authorities. Analysis in the stocktake has therefore focused on the due process and procedural rights issues most often arising in evaluations or feedback.
The stock-take identified the following factors as key examples of where misapplication of FATF standards had affected due process and procedural rights:
- excessively broad or vague offences in legal counterterrorism financing frameworks, which can lead to wrongful application of preventative and disruptive measures including sanctions that are not proportionate;
- issues relevant to investigation and prosecution of TF and ML offences, such as the presumption of innocence and a person’s right to effective protection by the courts;
- and, incorrect implementation of UNSCRs and FATF Standards on due process and procedural issues for asset freezing, including rights to review, to challenge designations, and to basic expenses.
Readers can hopefully see the issue.
The entire regulatory system since 2008 has focused on ensuring that the 24-hour payment banking infrastructure we have become used to will never face the risk of going down again.
Put bluntly, the style of service disruption currently being experienced at PayPal is something major banking and payment institutions are not supposed to be able to get away with. At least not for long. So yes, it does feel like a big deal.
For the most part, the practice of shuttering access through website maintenance, downtime or error messages is more commonly seen at cryptocurrency platforms during extreme bitcoin selloffs. Closing access to people’s accounts or pretending to do website maintenance often gives operators the time to raise the liquidity they need by slowing redemptions. But it’s far from a transparent or honourable policy.
For PayPal to have triggered a run on itself because it was merely following government orders is not just unfortunate, it is careless. But it also speaks of a deeper problem at the heart of the anti-money laundering regulatory structure. The entire system we have created may no longer be fit for purpose. Consider, for example, that despite many billions of dollars spent on FATF compliance, a company like Wirecard, whose business model in retrospect looks to have been based on fraud as a service (FAAS), could so easily rise to the top of the German stock market. Nor has any of the regulation been successful at combatting the type of electronic financial fraud (mostly based on phishing attacks or social engineering) that impacts users every day.
We need to seriously ask if the benefits outweigh the collateral damage also being incurred.
But while PayPal might not be entirely responsible for its own actions on the KYC/AML front, its business model may be more vulnerable to this sort of fallout than most people appreciate. The culpability for that lies with PayPal exclusively.
A key revenue generator for the group has always been the interest revenue it absorbs from all the customer balances it holds. (You may not have realised it, but if you have any significant sums in a PayPal account, you won’t be collecting interest on them.) A large outflow of deposits could easily inhibit the company’s ability to raise this income and harm its overall revenue-generating capability. (You don’t have to hold balances at PayPal to use it.)
More critical for PayPal at this juncture will be its inability as a payments company to access the central bank lender-of-last-resort backstop. That means if the group is genuinely facing challenges meeting transfer and redemption requests, it will only be able to turn to wholesale liquidity markets to make up the difference. The degree to which customer balances are locked up in harder-to-liquidate securities or bonds will largely determine its success here. Frustratingly for PayPal, in the current illiquid bond market, there’s a good chance that selling these quickly and without a loss could be challenging. The alternative path for PayPal will be to use these securities as collateral for temporary loans. But the expense here is potentially open-ended if there are no obliging counterparts. That may (or may not) be why the company is currently restricting transfers.
Before rushing to conclusions, it’s important to stress the company still has recourse to liquidity from fully-funded (in fact over-collateralised) entities. We may not know the makeup of that liquidity, but solvency is unlikely to be an issue over the longer term. The biggest problem facing users today will be uncertainty over how quickly they can transfer funds out of the PayPal ecosystem.
What I can say is that in the modern digital age, bank runs will be different. We may even long for the days when tellers transparently shut up shop when the vaults ran dry. At least it was clear what was going on. These days, on the other hand, it will become ever harder to differentiate a bank run from a maintenance issue on a website. Such matters will be shrouded in plausible deniability and uncertainty. Suffice it to say, corporate communication departments will always err towards disinformation of their own sort, that any such outage is nothing out of the ordinary.
Even more concerning is that in the event of a run, customers will no longer be able to tell if those with better connections aren’t unfairly cutting ahead of them in the redemption queue. Virtual queues may seem technologically efficient, but there’s no transparency to them at all.
That’s why if you’re caught out by any of these policies you already don’t stand a chance of getting your account back unless you have existing connections to the management or a platform of your own. None of this is progressive or encouraging.
Izabella Kaminska is the Editor of the Blind Spot, a financial news media service focused on the news everyone else is missing.
PayPal was not contacted for this piece, which is based on the opinions of the author.
Western regimes are intent on maintaining energy poverty in Africa
By Ekaterina Blunova – Samizdat – 05.10.2022
Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim criticized the West on Monday for obstructing African nations’ effort to develop their own hydrocarbon reserves and constantly ignoring the energy poverty problems of the Global South. What’s behind the Global North’s political short-sightedness and who benefits from the controversy?
Even though Africa boasts roughly 12% and 9% of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves, respectively, most of the continent’s nations suffer from energy poverty. However, once the energy crisis hit Europe, EU governments immediately turned to the African continent, seeking to tap its resources while overlooking the continent’s longstanding problems.
“The West’s exploitation of Africa’s wealth is driven by two factors,” explained Dr. Mamdouh G. Salameh, an international oil economist and a global energy expert. “The first is the old racist view that African people are backward and inferior to Western people and therefore can’t defend themselves or protect their natural resources. In a nutshell, it is doable. The second factor is greed and profit, which are the core of the Western capitalist system of taking advantage of poor and helpless people and exploiting their resources without letting them benefit the slightest from their stolen resources. That is how Western empires were built in Africa and around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
The Central African Countries suffer from severe energy poverty because they neither have the infrastructure (refineries, oil and gas pipelines) to benefit from their vast energy resources and also distribute energy, nor do they have the financial means to build such infrastructure, according to the oil economist. The deplorable state of Africa’s energy infrastructure stems from the fact that the West is by no means interested in the continent’s sustainability, Salameh highlighted.
“The ultimate beneficiary from Africa’s energy poverty, particularly refined products, is Western oil companies,” the energy expert said.
One glaring example is the 4,128 km-long Trans-Saharan gas pipeline. It is supposed to link Nigeria to Algeria, passing through Niger and bring Nigerian and Algerian gas exports to Europe while simultaneously benefiting energy-poor African countries from Nigeria’s and Algeria’s plentiful gas reserves estimated at 206.53 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and 159 tcf respectively, the oil economist explained.
Although this pipeline was conceived in the 1970s, it is still at the drawing board stage despite many memorandums of understanding signed over the years, the latest in mid-February, Salameh pointed out, forecasting that “it won’t see the light of day even in the next 10 years.”
“Western countries have consistently ignored Africa’s energy resources for years declining to offer investments as long as they didn’t need these resources at the time,” he said. “But in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict and having introduced sweeping sanctions against Russia, the European Union is trying to curry favor with African hydrocarbon producers to reduce its dependence on Russia’s gas and oil supplies.”
The unfolding energy crisis offers new opportunities for Africa to develop oil and gas infrastructure and step up production of hydrocarbons. However, while African business leaders and policy-makers are brushing off the dust from their long-delayed energy projects, Western politicians and environmentalists have raised concerns about climate change issues, insisting that Africa’s consumption of fossil fuels could make matters far worse.
“The West puts so much importance on the climate change agenda in Africa,” said Salameh. “I would hazard two explanations for the West’s attitude. The first explanation is that the West is under the misjudged and erroneous view that any future energy assets – like investing in oil and gas production and building pipelines will end up after 2030 as stranded assets. The second explanation is a more sinister one, with the West wishing to keep African energy resources underground in order to satisfy its own appetite for energy in the future.”
Last month, US climate czar John Kerry discouraged investors from funding long-term gas projects in Africa, warning that they would be unable to recoup their investments beyond 2030. According to Kerry, it will be important to capture the emissions from gas after 2030, as the world is set to reach net-zero emissions in 2050.
On October 3, Sudanese-British billionaire Mo Ibrahim lambasted the West for hypocrisy and a double-standard approach at the “Reuters impact” conference in London. Ibrahim drew attention to the fact that the “Global North” is preventing African nations from developing their own gas reserves over climate change fears, while at the same time seeking opportunities to gain from African resources themselves.
This is not the first time that Ibrahim has lambasted Western policy-makers over their Africa policies. In July 2022, the billionaire’s foundation released “The road to COP27: Making Africa’s case in the global climate debate,” dedicated to the forthcoming 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt scheduled for November, 6-18. The report highlighted that “the current climate agenda is failing Africa” and placed the emphasis on the continent’s people’s right to energy access, given that a staggering 600 million Africans are still lacking it.
“The green agenda is hampering African countries from fully tapping and exploiting their hydrocarbon resources,” said Salameh. “This is a double-edged approach in that it enhances energy poverty in Africa while simultaneously depriving the EU of Africa’s energy resources (…) If African countries don’t have the infrastructure, the technical know-how and the financial resources to benefit from their own vast hydrocarbon resources, how would anyone expect them to develop green energy?”
Meanwhile, the Western green agenda for Africa is “faulty,” according to the energy expert: Africa accounted for only 3.8% of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and industry in 2020, which is the smallest share among all world regions.
On the other hand, climate groups who call for an abrupt end to fossil fuels and a sudden adoption of renewable energy fail to recognize the obvious lack of logic in this, continued Salameh.
“On their own, renewables aren’t capable of satisfying global demand for electricity and energy because of their intermittent nature,” the oil economist explained, characterizing a total energy transition as an “illusion.”
The current energy crisis in Europe clearly indicated that the Old Continent can’t rely on renewables alone. Furthermore, EU member states had to restart their coal plants after resorting to an anti-Russia energy embargo over the latter’s special military operation in Ukraine.
“While denying Africa’s right to push ahead with its own energy endeavors, the West would be eager to offer investments and technological know-how to the continent in exchange for receiving the lion’s share of the regional hydrocarbon wealth. The West doesn’t care whether African countries are experiencing severe energy poverty or not as long as it gets its hands on these reserves,” Salameh concluded.
They denounce Meloni, but the despots of the Covid State are the real fascists
By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | October 5, 2022
ACCORDING to the dictionary, fascism is: ‘A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc, and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.’
That’s all right as far as it goes. But I would add two other elements – the reach of fascism (and totalitarianism more generally) into people’s private lives, and the corporatist state model as fascism’s operating system.
The election in Italy – technically the home of fascism – of a Right-wing politician, Giorgia Meloni, was all too much for the dreary Left. Here in Australia, the Guardian’s Van Badham has given us the headline: The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men
I have previously noted Badham in the context of women in politics. Here our interest is in Meloni’s other defining characteristic, her alleged fascism. Comparing perceived Right-wingers to Hitler is, of course, an old trick. But fascism is again all the rage with Meloni’s election.
Two of fascism reporting’s traditional attributes are the frequent misuse of the term (do most journalists even know what it means?), and the clueless irony of accusations of fascism by those who exhibit all the signs of being, well, fascists themselves.
I was not familiar with Badham’s Covid writing, and a quick internet search suggests I would not find it rewarding. More broadly, the Guardian has been at the forefront of Covidmania, what with all the death reporting (which it still runs) and the modern Left’s endless appetite for lockdowns and all the rest.
It is becoming tedious to report that (of course) the Guardian is funded by Bill Gates. So, no prizes for guessing the rag’s line on anti-vaxxers, and on all matters Covid.
Only this week, it reported on the vaccine review conducted by ‘respected’ public servant Jane Halton, aka Bill Gates’s girl in Canberra. Her conclusions? Keep the vaccines coming! We aren’t out of the woods yet. A ‘twindemic’ is coming this British winter.
Jane reckons we are not yet at ‘Covid stable’. Yes, the commissars of the Covid State do actually talk like this. She says we should keep advertising the (unnecessary, dangerous and ineffective) vaccines ‘till 2024’. Why stop at 2024?
Seriously, how does this woman have the gall to keep telling blatant, self-serving porkies? (To see why I say self-serving, just search her CV; she has a massive interest in prolonging the narrative).
To say that the Guardian’s reportage of Covid remains breathless would be to indulge in understatement. (‘Twindemic’ and ‘Covid stable’ are vying for Covid Bulls**t Term of the Week at this point).
Mercifully, the Guardian is still keeping us informed of Gates’s moods, with one recent headline stating: ‘The strain is the worst of my lifetime’: How Bill Gates is staying optimistic.
Thank God Bill is staying optimistic. He has doubled his wealth in his proclaimed ‘decade of vaccines’, and now, in effect, runs global public health. The New World Order is running to plan. No wonder he is optimistic. And to have the Left media on side as well!
The point is that fascism as an ideology has far more in common with the Left than with the conservative or libertarian versions of ‘the Right’. The American conservative writer Jonah Goldberg realised this some time back, when he published his excellent book Liberal Fascism.
Fascism has more in common with anyone (like the World Economic Forum) supporting public-private partnerships, than with Meloni-type pollies – since fascism is, above all else, an ideology of the corporate state, big government and of global crony capitalism.
The irony of Left-wing media siding with Big Capitalism is exquisite, or would be if it were not so deadly. The Covid State IS fascism, nothing more and nothing less.
The ‘fascist-adjacent’ Meloni actually wants to get rid of the vile Green Passes (vaccine passports) in Italy. Hint to the Left – this is precisely why she was elected.
This is despite Meloni’s apparent support for elements of the Covid State in the past. It would be hilarious if Badham accidentally spoke the truth about Meloni. Perhaps Badham is like the broken clock, right twice a day. But for the wrong reasons, and she would not understand if I tried to explain it.
Supporting Covid policies in the past is the only link to fascism that I can see in Meloni, and it is tenuous at best. The alt-media as a jury is still very much out on the new Italian PM, not least because of the Covid stances referred to above. She also sounds too good to be true.
But it seems Meloni has clearly seen the error of her Covid policy ways. (Like the economist John Maynard Keynes, who is famously said to have stated: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’) Fact is, Meloni’s party alone in Italy stood up for freedom when it mattered in 2021.
Nicholas Farrell in the Spectator last year saw the irony, and was bemused by the non-opposition from Leftists to the Green Pass.
He wrote: ‘Here is your starter for ten. Which Italian political party believes that individual liberty is sacred? Answer: The party invariably defined by the international media as “far Right” or “fascist” and jointly Italy’s most popular party in the opinion polls – in other words, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy).
‘Here in Italy, birthplace of fascism, the 44-year-old leader of the Right-wing Fratelli d’Italia – Giorgia Meloni – has been busy promoting distinctly anti-fascist values. In defence of human liberty, she has spoken out passionately against the decree issued on 22 July by Italian Premier Mario Draghi which will introduce the “Green Pass” to Italy.
‘As of this Friday, all Italians over the age of 12 will be banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they are equipped with this digital pass that proves they have had at least one Covid vaccine.’
But the legacy media cannot resist all the ‘far Right’ nonsense in its reportage on the Italian election. Here is Roberto Saviano in the Guardian: ‘The Brothers of Italy (a delightfully sexist name for a political party) leader denies she is a fascist, but clings to the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”’.
It is hard to say which is the more ludicrous – bagging the support for nation, religion and family as dangerous, or branding it as fascist.
For patriots, deplorables, populists and conservatives everywhere, such a motto might be summarised thus: ‘Not all that we want, but a fine start’.
Throw in some ‘climate inaction now’, ‘woke comes here to die’ (with apologies to Ron DeSantis) and ‘crush the Covid State’ and we might just have a platform worth supporting. And a platform that is not remotely fascist, by the way, on any definition.
Saviano also claims that Hungarians have lost all their rights under Meloni’s assumed mentor, Viktor Orban, another hate-figure for the Left and globalists everywhere.
Lost rights? This is rich coming from the Covid State’s chief media promoter. Here is the irony again. It is the truly fascist Covid Class that has disempowered people across the world. The Guardianistas obviously don’t do irony, or read dictionaries.
The EU prioritises the Abraham Accords
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 4, 2022
At the UN General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, defined Israel’s security concerns as the motivating factor behind supporting the two-state paradigm, even as the US has been repeating that it does not envisage any resolution in the immediate future. With the Abraham Accords being the main driving force behind US-Israeli decisions, Lapid’s nod towards the failed international consensus holds no substance for the Palestinian people. In practice, Lapid’s words are no different from refuting the paradigm – the Israeli government’s colonial settlement expansion has determined the pace.
However, the EU’s Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, claimed encouragement at Lapid’s words. “This is also what we want to push for. We want the resumption of a political process that can lead to a two-state solution and a comprehensive regional peace,” Borrell stated at the EU-Israeli Association Council meeting on Monday.
The EU’s position statement regarding the meeting, however, indicates full agreement with the Abraham Accords, which are mentioned prior to the bloc’s adherence to the two-state compromise. Referencing the normalisation agreements, the EU’s statement partly reads, “In this regard, the EU will seek to encourage and build upon the recent establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries, with a view to enhancing the prospects to reach a comprehensive settlement in the Middle East Peace Process.” Giving prominence to the Abraham Accords in this way suggests that the EU was not as averse to the Trump administration’s politics as it sought to portray. Only US President Joe Biden made it easier for the EU to retain its two-state diplomacy, while overtly agreeing to policies which were previously ridiculed only because the US had Donald Trump as President.
Since the US is actively engaging with Arab countries through the normalisation framework and trying to get the Palestinian Authority on board as well, the Abraham Accords have gained more recognition in international circles. The EU, however, is clearly stating that it will be using the agreements to “enhance” the possibility of a resolution, knowing full well that the agreements only serve to solidify Israel’s diplomatic ties and, in return, bolster its impunity.
In his virtual address to the meeting yesterday, Lapid’s commitment to the two-state paradigm included an assertion that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided capital, which goes against international resolutions. However, Lapid’s best card was the Israeli government’s economic concessions to the PA, spoken of without the context of Israel knowing it is facing a gradually changing Palestinian society which will not wait upon its leadership to determine the way forward to legitimate resistance against colonialism.
The EU’s press release describing the meeting states the intent to “build upon the momentum generated at the UN General Assembly” in terms of the so-called peace process. Yet, Palestinians know that the veneer of concern was nothing more than a bid to deflect criticism from the fact that the EU chose, yet again, to engage with a colonial entity which specialises in breaking international law and committing war crimes. With the Abraham Accords subtly taking centre stage, and with full agreement on behalf of the EU, it should at least be made clear that no independence and no Palestinian State can be reached, unless a radical change in politics is implemented.
The targeted killing of Palestinians is the next Israeli crime to be normalised
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 3, 2022
For decades, the international community has sought to portray the occupied West Bank as being distinct from Gaza by focusing on the Palestinian Authority in terms of diplomacy, and showcasing Ramallah as an example of prosperity. Israel’s colonial violence in the occupied West Bank and the PA’s “sacred” security collaboration to oppress Palestinians don’t suit this narrative. Neither does it suit the PA’s financial backers to speak about how Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem are also active in legitimate anti-colonial resistance, against both the PA and Israel.
The truth is that while Palestinians’ experiences in Gaza differ from those of Palestinians under the PA in the occupied West Bank, colonial violence is a reality across the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel has the power to implement measures that can make both on a par in terms of violence, because it enjoys unparalleled international impunity.
Despite the efforts by Israel and the PA, particularly given Washington’s insistence that the latter should be strengthened to avoid the possibility of Hamas gaining ground politically, the Palestinian people have reclaimed their anti-colonial struggle from the manipulation of political factions. The refugee camps in particular have displayed unity in resistance which has prompted Israel to approve the use of drones during raids by the Israeli military, thus making targeted killings of Palestinians another violation to which the international community will soon be turning a blind eye.
According to Israeli media reports, drones will now be used “not only as cover and intelligence for forces during operations but also to carry out strikes should armed gunmen be identified as posing imminent threats to their troops.” The targeted killings of Palestinians are thus the next Israeli crimes to be normalised.
Both Israel and the PA have attempted to write off Palestinian refugees as irrelevant. For Israel, refugees represent an absolute demographic alteration if their legitimate right of return is ever implemented. During the Trump administration, Israel sought to change the definition of who constitutes a Palestinian refugee to the point of their elimination altogether. The PA, on the other hand, has written off Palestinian refugees and the right of return as symbolic references in its rhetoric, while removing their relevance to the formation of a Palestinian state by diluting the already compromised right of return, and has no apparent issue at all with Zionist colonialism.
Palestinian anti-colonial struggle has been moving towards its roots, recognising the strength within communities on the ground and uniting with a common objective. The emergence of new brigades which are not affiliated to political factions is also evidence of the changes which Palestinians are now displaying. Mistrust of the PA, largely due to its security services carrying out purges within the occupied West Bank for the benefit of Israel and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, have prompted Palestinians to reclaim not only their narrative, but also their political expression.
Extending not only the use of drones, but also the targeted killings of Palestinians, should prompt us all to questions about Israel and its accomplices, including the PA. Just months ago, an Israeli sniper murdered Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who posed no threat to the Israeli army at the time of her killing. The absence of on the ground contact in Israel’s new page of aggression against the Palestinians will take targeted killings like that of Akleh to a new level. In the past, such killings made headlines due to the involvement of Israel’s domestic security agency, Shin Bet. The Israeli plan to normalise such violence within the occupied Palestinian territories using the latest technology is upping the ante against Palestinian refugees, while extending the boundaries of what constitutes normalised and acceptable violence, as long as Palestinians are the victims.
We have to ask both the PA and the international community why they continue to speak of a “two-state solution” even while Israel is seeking to make the killing of Palestinians even easier. Why are they not talking about protecting Palestinians from, and their right to resist, Israel’s brutal military occupation?
Only 1 out of 573 People Took “Bivalent Boosters” — In a State Without Vaccine Mandates
Bivalent Boosters Available, but NOT mandated in Florida
By Igor Chudov | October 2, 2022
A very uplifting post to end the weekend.
In terrible news for Covid vaccine enthusiasts, only 1 out of 573 residents of Florida took the new safe and effective bivalent booster, extensively tested on 8 mice and fully approved by “science”.
Considering that Florida’s population is 21,220,000 people, this works out to one out of 573 Floridians taking the new and improved science juice. The rest decided to pass for now.
Bivalent Covid vaccine uptake is moribund everywhere. Only 4.4 million doses were administered in the entire USA. This works out to 1.3% of Americans (one person out of 76) taking the bivalent boosters. Reminder, our Federal government purchased, and printed money to pay for, 171 million doses.
Why is the uptake of the bivalent booster, per 1,000 persons, greater in the USA as a whole than in Florida? The boosters are surely available to any Florida resident, right? The reason is that in other places, some holdouts keep vaccine mandates, demanding hapless young people to take Covid vaccines, and in Florida, such mandates are banned.
Go to at www.nocollegemandates.com to fight these stupid, and deadly, mandates.
So, just running the math, had there not been remaining mandates to take the boosters, instead of one out of 76 Americans taking the bivalent, only one of 573 would take it — of SEVEN TIMES FEWER. The same is happening in Germany, by the way.
Such is the time that we live in — only one out of 573 Americans still believes in science.
Is that good or bad? And is that even science?
WAFA documents 26 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists and media in September
WAFA – October 1, 2022
RAMALLAH – The Palestinian News and Information Agency, WAFA, documented 26 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists and media in the occupied territories during September.
It said in its monthly report on Israeli violations against journalists and media outlets published today that the Israeli occupation forces continued to deliberately target Palestinian journalists with an aim to limit their coverage of the Israeli army practices and violations against the defenseless Palestinian citizens.
The report said 11 journalists were hurt in September from rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas canisters fired by soldiers, as well as severe beatings and other attacks.
In addition, 13 cases were recorded in which soldiers detained, seized press cards or opened fire at journalists without causing injury, while two cases were documented in which soldiers damaged press equipment and attacked media outlets.
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Anti-science
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
Blog Roll
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