Robert Dingwall, a Professor at Nottingham Trent University and a leading sociologist, has written an excellent piece for Social Science Space criticising the imposition of mask mandates, given the paucity of evidence that masks interrupt transmission and the lack of any robust evaluation of the harms masks cause.
First, Professor Dingwall looks at the two main sources of evidence purporting to show that masks are effective.
One is studies at various scales of the impact of mask mandates on reported infection rates. These may compare cities, states, provinces or entire nations using time series data to look for inflections of rates that may be attributable to the mandates. A great deal of mathematical ingenuity has been expended in trying to control for the numerous confounders from biases in reporting, differences in diagnosis, leads and lags in public behaviour in response to the mandates, seasonal fluctuations, mobility – the list is almost endless. By the time these manipulations are complete, though, it is very difficult to conclude that there is any clear and obvious effect. Infection rates do not seem to vary much between comparable communities regardless of the NPIs that have been introduced. I have yet to see a study that identifies a clear and unequivocal benefit from a mask mandate in the form of an obvious inflection point attributable to the intervention. For all the reasons cited, this would be hard to find so perhaps we should not treat its absence as conclusive proof of a lack of benefit so much as something that is consistent with the RCT evidence that any benefit is likely to be minimal.
The other main source of evidence is laboratory studies of the properties of masks using techniques from physics and engineering. Some studies treat masks as a straightforward air filtration experiment. These are well-controlled and reproducible, but bear little resemblance to real-world conditions. The more sophisticated studies use mannikins to create a jet of air carrying inert particles into a controlled space, mimicking human exhalation. Masks can then be used to interrupt the air flow. The resulting measurements are the basis for computational models that provide more general descriptions of the spread of particles, which may be used to create video simulations. These studies are often elegant but suffer familiar problems in generalising to real-world environments. Within reason, the experimenter can manipulate the average velocity of the jet, the size of particles and the permeability of the mask in ways that aim to mimic breathing at different rates, coughing or sneezing. To get reliable measurements, including video or photographic evidence of the dispersion of the particles, the simulated exhalations must enter still air. Air, however, is never still in the real world. In any space there are thermal currents that are moving air around and dispersing exhalations in ways that are not captured, and probably cannot be captured, by the experimenter in a physically meaningful way. The efficacy of masks is also sensitive to the choice of particle size. If the experimenter favours droplets, larger particles, masks capture these quite well – but they also fall quickly to the ground and are unlikely to be inhaled by anyone at a normal social distance. If the experimenter favours aerosols, smaller particles, these are likely to pass through or around cloth masks, whose pore size is typically significantly larger than the aerosol particles. In which case the masks may filter a small proportion of the particles but probably let most through or around the edges. Where higher quality masks have been mandated, the community evidence runs into the same problems as before.
Having concluded that neither body of evidence is remotely persuasive, he then turns to the potential harms that masks do.
The precautionary principle also requires a proper evaluation of the potential harms. Few such studies have actually been done but relevant issues can readily be identified. Four are clearly important. First, they discriminate against a large group of people with communicative disabilities of speech and hearing, with neurodisabilities, such as autism or Aspergers, or with mental health issues, such as prior trauma from confinement as an abused child or as a survivor of sexual assault. Second, they discriminate against people who have medical consequences such as acute skin infections, eye infections or respiratory infections as a result of mask use. In the pre-pandemic world, such people could find workplaces where these issues were avoided but they cannot escape the mandates. Third, there is the impact on child development, particularly in relation to language and social interaction. The American Academy of Pediatrics claimed that there was no evidence for this, but there is a substantial body of research from psychology, education and linguistics establishing the importance of observing faces, particularly for small children. Fourth, and perhaps hardest to measure, there is the impact on community levels of fear and anxiety. This, indeed, has been the ultimate fall-back for committed advocates of masks – they may not have an impact on the transmission of the virus but they remind everyone that there is a pandemic going on and that they should be cautious every time they set foot outside their home – the safety of the home is assumed, of course. The consequence, of course, is that we are nudged towards regarding our fellow human beings as no more than potential vectors of infection. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The trust on which everyday life depends in modern societies is fatally compromised.
He concludes that mask mandates should never have been introduced, given the paucity of the evidence and the lack of research into potential harms.
If we do not think it is acceptable to have our lives ordered in ways that discriminate against large sections of the population, that impair the development of children, that damage the mental health of the nation and that make each of us fearful of the other, then it is time to hold the advocates of masking to account for the quality of evidence. It is simply too fragile to justify coercive measures, whether by the state or by private actors. Why has there been so little investment in RCTs? Why are mask advocates now arguing that RCTs would be unethical because the benefits are obvious, when they patently are not? It is more unethical to perpetuate a practice without evidence than to challenge one’s preconceptions. This is truly how science progresses and debate should be conducted.
COVID-19 presents a high risk of severe illness and death to a few and a negligible risk to the majority of the population. This epidemiological reality lends itself to a focused vaccine approach: offering a safe and efficacious vaccine to high-risk individuals (mostly people above 50 who already have health problems) when the benefit of the intervention clearly outweighs the risk.
Mandatory vaccination has no place in a free society. Public health policy should never be coercive and should always be participatory. Decisions must be made by those who have ‘skin in the game’ and not by bureaucrats or a conflicted elite who will never have to live with the consequences of their actions. The role of public health agencies is to provide the public with accurate information, and allow individuals and communities to make their own decisions.
Seven ethical principlesof public health should be at the heart of any public health intervention: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, health maximisation, efficiency, justice and proportionality. Human rights, scientific facts and common sense should also be applied.
Ten reasons why Covid-19 vaccination should never be mandatory:
1. Non-maleficence – the Hippocratic duty of ‘first, do no harm’. There is mounting evidence of serious adverse events, particularly myocarditis in the young, following Covid-19 vaccination. Adverse events reporting systems act as a signalling system so immediate action can be taken to prevent greater harm. There are currently strong enough signals to warrant an investigation. Vaccines arealso contra-indicated for individuals with certain health conditions. Vaccination of pregnant/breastfeeding women must be approached with great care – pregnant women were excluded from the vaccine trials; Covid risk is low in healthy women of child-bearing age, while vaccine risks to the foetus/infant cannot be determined yet.
2. Beneficence – the duty to produce benefit for the individual. Health interventions should be based on individual needs.Vaccination is indicated only when the intervention clearly represents a greater benefit than risk for the individual. This criterion is not met for children and young people, individuals below 60 with no existing health problems, and individuals with past SARS-CoV-2 infection (including asymptomatic infection).
3. Respect for autonomy – allowing individuals to pursue their wellbeing as they perceive it. Every person has a high value and cannot merely be treated as a means to the end of others’ good. This entails seeking the individual’s informed consent before any medical intervention: informing them of the risks and the benefits of the intervention and getting their voluntary consent without any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion. Currently, individuals cannot be provided with full information on vaccine side effects as no long-term data exists yet. The results of the vaccine trials should be replicated by independent scientists prior to vaccine rollout to the high risk group. Public transparency of all efficacy and safety data is necessary.
4. Health maximisation – maximising the health of all members of the general public requires a holistic and multi-layered approach: educating the public about a healthy lifestyle to improve their chronic illness, the importance of Vitamin D in fighting respiratory infections, the importance of home-based early treatment, the availability of life saving treatment protocols, safe and effective drugs (such as ivermectin), as well as vaccines for the high-risk group. Vaccinating individuals who incur greater risk from the vaccine than benefit increases total harm.
5. Efficiency – the duty to produce as many benefits to as many people given limited resources. Vaccinating individuals who do not benefit from the intervention diverts valuable resources away from the vulnerable as well as from far more devastating global health issues like TB, HIV, diabetes, cancer and cardiac diseases.
6. Justice – all humans have equal worth and no one should be discriminated against based on their health choices. Unfair practices such as denial of services, requirements for employment, restrictions on travel, higher insurance premium for the unvaccinated create a two-tiered society. It breaks social solidarity and cohesion.
7. Proportionality –the reasonable balance between benefits and costs of an intervention in terms of individual welfare versus collective benefit. Vaccines are designed to confer protection to the vaccinated. It is unethical for a person to incur any vaccine risk or lose personal freedoms for the sake of somebody else.
8. Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can result from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The virus can also be transmitted among animals. Even if everyone is vaccinated, transmission will continue and variants will keep on evolving. A Zero Covid strategy is unrealistic and unachievable.
9. Herd immunity can be reached through a combination of natural infection and vaccination. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is broad and long-lasting – more so than vaccine-induced immunity, especially in combating variants. Recovery from infection prevents serious illness if reinfected. It is not necessary to vaccinate the entire planet for the ‘greater good’ of society.
‘No state party shall, even in time of emergency threatening the life of the nation, derogate from the Covenant’s guarantees of the right to life; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent . . . and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These rights are not derogable under any conditions even for the asserted purpose of preserving the life of the nation.’
We face two scenarios. Either the vaccines work, delivering protection to the vaccinated and eliminating the claim that everyone needs to be vaccinated. Or the vaccines don’t work, and therefore no one should get vaccinated. On both counts, vaccine passports are a pointless ‘public health’ tool that will undermine trust in the medical profession and vaccination programmes. They seem to serve economic, financial, political and ideological agendas. Most fundamentally, they are unethical. They swing the gate wide open for totalitarian rule through a digital social credit system.
Vaccine passports represent the epitome of the greater evil of society. This is the inch we must not yield.
Ghassan Zawahreh, Palestinian former prisoner and longtime struggler for justice, was seized from his home in Dheisheh refugee camp by Israeli occupation forces in the pre-dawn hours of 19 August 2021. Zawahreh has been repeatedly detained since 2002, when he was only 14 years old. He was last released from Israeli occupation prisons on 4 March 2021 after 28 months jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. Almost every time he is released, he may spend only a few months with his family and community before being ripped away once again for arbitrary imprisonment with no charge or trial.
During his last detention, Zawahreh highlighted the injustice of administrative detention, announcing his boycott of the military courts: “Administrative detention is a heinous crime for the ages. What is even more criminal is the occupation’s attempts to mislead through mock courts and charades where the executioner and the ruler, dressed up in military suits, represent the Occupation and its crimes.”
He has spent nearly 16 years in total in Israeli prisons; his brother Moataz Zawahreh was murdered by Israeli occupation forces as he participated in a popular protest in Bethlehem in 2015. Moataz had actually returned home to Palestine from where he was studying in France to support Ghassan, who was engaged in a long-term hunger strike against his imprisonment without charge or trial. He won his release in December 2015, only to be seized again by occupation forces seven months later.
Ghassan Zawahreh mourns his brother after his release in 2015
He was in his last year of studies in social work at the Open University of Jerusalem when he was arrested in 2008, and has been prevented from completing his studies through multiple arrests.
He is well-known in the camp as a community activist and volunteer in popular programs that provide social services to people in the camp. He worked as a taxi driver in order to support his family, on the Bethlehem-Ramallah road.
Administrative detention was first used in Palestine by the British colonial mandate and then adopted by the Zionist regime; it is now used routinely to target Palestinians, especially community leaders, activists, and influential people in their towns, camps and villages.
There are currently approximately 550 Palestinians jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention, out of 4,750 Palestinian political prisoners. These orders are issued by the military and approved by military courts on the basis of “secret evidence”, denied to both Palestinian detainees and their attorneys. Issued for up to six months at a time, they are indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians — including minor children — can spend years jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention. There are currently nine Palestinians on hunger strike to end administrative detention without charge or trial.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network demands the immediate release of Ghassan Zawahreh, dedicated struggler for Palestine and leading political prisoner repeatedly attacked by Israeli occupation forces, and all of his fellow Palestinian political prisoners. We are committed to organize, struggle and work to achieve the liberation of Palestinian prisoners, and the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.
The following research article will deal with the issue of Palestinian property and its relationship with the Zionist settler bourgeoisie. Furthermore, it will tackle both the Palestinian property that was captured by the Zionist military armies in the period 1948-1949 and the Palestinian property that was legally owned by the Palestinians who were allowed to stay and who became Israeli citizens.
Moreover, this research article will tackle the issue of Palestinian property inside the colonized West Bank, including the area of East Jerusalem.
It is necessary, at this stage, to begin my analysis by providing a brief legal introduction to the issue of property, specifically, when it falls under belligerent military occupation.
International Law and Private and Public Property
In cases of belligerent occupations, the Hague Convention of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, are applicable international law tools. In the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, the Zionist authorities have violated numerous articles of these conventions. I will not deal with all these violations, nor will I deal with all the occupied territories, but will confine my research to the articles that are relevant to Palestinian private and public property inside Israel as well as inside the colonized West Bank.
Both the Fourth Geneva and Hague Conventions prohibit the belligerent occupiers from violating the rights to private property of Protected Persons. “Article 46 of the Hague Convention of 1907 provides that an occupying power must respect private property, which cannot be confiscated.”1 While,
Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits any destruction of real or private property whether belonging to private individual(s), the state or another organization, except when rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.2
Israel and Palestinian Property in 1948
After the conclusion of the grand campaign of ethnic cleansing in Palestine3, the Zionist authorities began to debate the policies they should adopt regarding the massive property that was left by the Palestinian refugees.
During the war that began on November 30, 1947 and ended on July 30, 1949, the State of Israel was a poor state in its first steps and had a great deal of war booty: about 77% of the land of Israel was the assets of the Palestinian refugees …4
Two months after the establishment of the State of Israel,
[t]he Provisional State Council, which was the legislative authority of the State of Israel from the end of the British Mandate until the establishment of the Knesset, established emergency regulations regarding the assets of the absentees … and appointed, on 21/07/1948, D. Shafir to be the custodian of the absentee property. Thus, the Palestinians’ connection to their land was erased, with the definition of “absentees” legitimizing the takeover of the assets. …5
In a report written in 1949, the newly appointed “Custodian of Absentee Property” described the situation on the ground as follows:
The frightened escape of the Arab residents and the abandoning of vast property in hundreds of thousands of apartments, shops, warehouses and workshops, the abandoning of grains in the fields, and fruit in gardens, orchards and vineyards, all during the war… put the victorious army in the face of severe material temptation…6
As it will become clearer later, the appointment of the “Custodian of Absentee Property” was not meant to take care of refugee property until the resolution of their problem, then the return of their property to their legitimate owners. But in actuality, it meant the plunder of the refugee property and its transfer to the Zionist state and private ownership. This Zionist conduct was a despicable thievery of the property that rightfully belonged to the Palestinian Arab refugees, the legitimate owners.
In 1950, the Absentee Property Law was enacted, according to which all assets owned by Palestinian refugees were transferred to the state of Israel through the custodian of absentee property. His powers were expanded by regulations that were in place until the law was enacted. In doing so, this institution was given great power. In addition, in close proximity to the Absentee Property Law, the Development Authority (Asset Transfer) Law was enacted in 1950, in order to sell the assets to a third party, i.e., laundering the absentee’s assets and erasing the Palestinians’ affiliation with the land. 7
Consequently,
At the time of the application of the Development Authority Law, the custodian sold most of the absentee property to Development Authority, and the Development Authority sold the land to the public and government institutions. As part of the mechanism for transferring agricultural assets – over 2.5 million dunams of absentee property including Waqf assets – were sold by the custodian to the Development Authority, which in turn sold it to the JNF, which transferred most of these resources to the (Jewish) farmers.8
The Massive Plunder of the Lands of Palestinian Arab Citizens
The Zionist settler bourgeoisie did not only plunder the property of the Palestinian refugees, but decided to plunder also the property of the Palestinians whom they decided to let them stay and who were granted Israeli citizenship. The Zionist laws that were enacted for the “absentees” did not apply for the citizens, so, the Zionist authorities enacted suitable laws for this grand robbery.
In a matter of few years, the lands of the Palestinian citizens were plundered with the help of Zionist colonial laws. This massive robbery, which was a typical settler colonial conduct, was justified under the false “security” pretense.
Subsequently, in 1953, the State of Israel enacted the Land Acquisition Law, which led to massive expropriations by the Development Authority and the dispossession of 1.2 million dunams of municipal and agricultural land of the “present absentees” (absentee property law of 1950 did not apply to them) …9
In actuality, the concise land area that was expropriated by the Zionist authorities from the Palestinian Arab citizens totaled 1,234,785 dunams. This official number was released, in 1955, by Zionist Minister of Finance, Levi Eshkol, in response to a query by Israeli Communist Party member of Knesset Shmuel Mikonis.10
At the government meeting regarding the sale of land to the JNF, Minister Pinchas Rosen noted that the Development Authority must be rushed and established, because formally only it is entitled to sell these lands. Finance Minister Kaplan demanded that the seller be not the custodian of absentee property, but the Development Authority.11 The reason for this is the desire to make it difficult to locate the original owners of the land and to protect its new owners from future claims by the refugees to reclaim the land.
Moreover, Uzi Lovia added that,
Money laundering was the initial goal of the establishment, while reducing the value of compensation for future Palestinian claims was the secondary goal, as reflected in a secret memo to the Minister of Finance by the Jerusalem District Supervisor, which emphasizes the need to eliminate absentee property – with an emphasis on the problematic value of the assets and/or by free market prices. “In addition to the economic problem of saying prices, the possibility of lowering the prices of real estate assets across the country in general should be checked by flooding the market with absentee property at a reduced price,” he said.12
Consequently, Uzi Lovia further explained that,
This policy applies more strongly to the development authority’s assets transferred to the JNF. In a memorandum by Finance Minister Kaplan in honor of the Director of the State Assets Department, regarding the consideration for the land transferred to the JNF as part of the million dunams (JNF purchased over 2 million dunams and received the territories in two installments), he writes that “the announcement by the Existing Fund that the prices that will be declared on them in the estate’s offices and which will be recorded in the bank of sale will be two-thirds of the prices set by the Committee – correct.”13 Is the Minister of Finance’s declaration and the action that followed legal?
It should be pointed out that the material compensation that the Zionist regime was ready to pay, for the legitimate Palestinian land owners, was decided upon in a way to be “of no real value”.
The Land Acquisition Law of 1952 was rife with covert intentions. Weitz writes: “It is not the owners who are guilty that the state did not pay for their land at the time of their seizure … The landowners, those who wish to remain citizens of Israel – will be severely deprived, the money they will receive for their assets will lack real value … From what was previously mentioned, it is understandable that the monetary value of the absentee assets is low, because the calculation of the value of compensation for the expropriation of the assets is determined from January 1, 1950. The range of years has improved the value of the assets, yet the absentees did not receive the proper value … Moreover, at the time of the application of the law, the Israeli Lira lost 80% of its value and the value of the land in 1953 was 15 times its value in 1950. 14
That was Zionist double robbery, of both land and in the price of compensations. All Zionist thievery was carried out under suitable settler colonial laws.
Consequently, and as a result of the massive expropriation of their lands,
… Israeli Arabs, who make up 21% of the population, control less than 3% of the country’s land. 97% of the land was taken out of their hands. Ben-Gurion was not satisfied with transferring ownership of the registered land, he wanted to change the registration in the consciousness as well: He declared in 1949 “We must also remove the Arabic names for political reasons. Just as we do not recognize the political ownership of Arabs in Israel, we do not recognize their spiritual ownership and their names.” 15
In addition to the plunder of the lands of the Palestinian private owners, the Zionist authorities categorized the Palestinian custodians of the “Muslim Waqf” as “absentees” also, therefore their property could be massively expropriated and sold to the Zionist ministries and municipalities. According to Israeli writer Uzi Lovia,
… the Representatives of The Muslims in Jaffa and the other cities involved received 1% of the total endowment assets scattered throughout the country, and were sold and/or transferred by the guardian to the Development Authority, for which it sold them to a third party – the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Religions and Municipalities…16
After the end of the major wave of Zionist ethnic cleansing in 1949, most of the Palestinian Arabs who remained inside Palestine were land owners who made their living from agriculture.
Consequently, the massive expropriations of their lands in the early 1950s led to structural changes in their economy and produced major changes in the class pyramid of the Palestinian society. It converted these farmers into unskilled workers who sought work inside Israeli cities.
Zionist Plunder of Palestinian West Bank Land
According to International Law and specifically to the Hague Convention of 1907, and to article 46 of this Convention, “Private property … must be respected and … cannot be confiscated.”17
In a research work carried out, in 2002, by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, the Zionist settler bourgeoisie adopted five types of methods to plunder Palestinian-owned land.18
Seizure for Military Needs;
Employment of the Ottoman Law Code of 1858;
Absentee Property;
Expropriation for Public Needs;
Acquisition of Land on the Free Market.
According to an estimation mentioned by Israeli researcher Joseph Algazy,
… from 1967 to 1984 the Israeli government requisitioned an estimated 5,500,000 dunams, or roughly half the total area of the West Bank, setting aside much of the land for military training and camping areas. 19
Apparently, the process of Zionist plunder of Palestinian land inside the colonized West Bank was carried out in various illegal ways. However, one of these ways was done according to a “fake legality” that is based on trickery. One example is to apply the old Ottoman “Land Registration Law of 1858” but only after creating conducive circumstances.
This Ottoman land law classified land under five categories. One of these categories is called the “mahlul” which stipulates that private land will revert to the state if left uncultivated by the owner for three consecutive years or left vacant.20
An example on the application of this law is what happened to the land of Ahmad Qaddoura, a Palestinian from the village of Laqef, the colonized West Bank. To begin with, almost half of his land was expropriated a decade ago for Israeli military facilities, including a watchtower.21 Later on, the rest of the land was expropriated through the misuse of this Ottoman law.
It should be mentioned that this land was cultivated with wheat prior to 1967.22 However, “… it was not possible” for the Qaddoura family members “to enter their land due to its closeness to the adjacent Karnei Shomron settlement.”23 One day the father of the family tried to plow his land, but was attacked by settlers and his plow was confiscated.24
Consequently, the Qaddoura family was forced, by the Zionist settler colonialists of the Karnei Shomron settlement, to abandon their land and not cultivate it for three consecutive years. Then, the Zionist colonial authorities applied the “Land Registration Law of 1858” that stipulates that land will revert to the state if left uncultivated for three years or left vacant.25 So, in 1986 a Zionist court issued a ruling that converted Qaddoura’s land into a state land, because the Qaddoura family “left their land uncultivated for three years”.26 Later on, the Zionist colonial authorities granted this land to the colonial settlers of Karnei Shomron who wanted to establish a factory on it.
Apparently, Zionist colonial courts do not feel legally obligated to take into consideration the circumstances that forced the Qaddoura family to abandon their land and leave it uncultivated for three years. Zionist colonial courts act according to the colonial tricks of “fake legality”. This colonial plunder by the Zionist State will appear, in Israeli eyes, “legal” because it has been carried out in accordance with the law. Collusion between the Zionist colonial courts and the settler colonialists of Karnei Shomron comes afterwards to an established colonial fact on the ground. The last stage of this colonial trickery is carried out discreetly by the Zionist colonial industrial bourgeoisie which invests in establishing a factory on robbed private Palestinian land. The Zionist army acts as enforcer of and protector of settler colonial schemes. In the end, all these colonial tools carry out their colonial roles in a complicit manner.
The Liquidation of Muslim Waqf Property
To begin with, the Islamic Waqf property is an “… Islamic property held in sacred trust for religious purposes…”27 for schools, public kitchens, mosques and libraries.28 According to International Law that is applicable inside occupied territories, specifically, articles 46 and 56 of the Hague Convention of 1907, it is forbidden to demolish and expropriate private property.29
Already in 1948, Israeli Zionist colonialists have never recognized the Palestinian rights bequeathed by Islamic Trust endowment. They regarded Waqf property as public property, or absentee property that can be expropriated by the Zionist state.
American author, Michael Dumper, calculated West Bank Waqf properties as exceeding 600,000 dunams…30 By the year 2013, Israeli settler colonialists were estimated to have expropriated more than 104,996 dunams of Waqf property mostly around Jerrico. 31
The Demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter
It should be pointed out that the Hague Convention of 1907 is applicable to the Palestinian occupied territories. According to Art. 46 of this Convention, “Private property … must be respected and … cannot be confiscated.”32
Moreover, According to Art. 56 of the Hague Convention of 190733,
The property of municipalities, that of institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, even when State property, shall be treated as private property.
All seizure of, destruction or willful damage done to institutions of this character, historic monuments, works of art and science, is forbidden, and should be made the subject of legal proceedings.
Prior to the Zionist occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, “Harat al-Magharibah” (the Moroccan Quarter) was one of the famous historical neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. It dates back to the end of the Crusaders wars.34
The entire Moroccan Quarter was endowed as Muslim waqf for the Maghribi community in recognition for the contribution of the Maghribis who fought with Salah Edin against the Crusaders.35
In the last day of the 1967 war, the Zionist authorities represented by Teddy Kollek, the “liberal” mayor of West Jerusalem, took two decisions, first to demolish the entire Moroccan Quarter and second to evacuate by force the Palestinian inhabitants of the “Jewish” Quarter.
On Saturday night, June 10, 1967, Israeli authorities informed more than 100 families living in the Moroccan Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City that they had three hours to evacuate their homes, where some had lived for generations.36
In total, the Zionist authorities demolished 135 houses, two mosques,37 schools, Muslim institutions and Sufi orders.38
Around 650 persons who resided in these houses, became refugees in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan, while some of them returned to Morocco.39
Later on, Teddy Kollek turned to the “Jewish” Quarter and decided to
… remove forcibly all the Palestinian Arab inhabitants of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, many of whom had fled there from parts of the city taken over by the Israelis… Never mind that the vast majority of buildings in the Jewish Quarter were Arab-owned at the time of the 1948 war. …40
That was another crime of despicable theft of Palestinian owned property, coupled with the crime of ethnic cleansing. Both incidents reveal how Zionist settler colonialists have no respect for Palestinian human beings and that they are ready to displace them and rob their property without remorse or human compassion.
It should be pointed out that Zionist insolence dare to claim that Palestinians are not attached to their city nor to their houses and that they are ready to receive money and vacate. According to Zionist logic, the attachment of settler colonialist thieves to the property they robbed, is stronger than the attachment of the indigenous people to their lands, villages and cities. Teddy Kollek claimed, in his biography that, “Jerusalem meant less to the Arabs”41 While former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir claimed that “Jerusalem has a “political, national significance for Jews, as opposed to a religious, almost imaginative significance for Muslims and Christians.”42
Since the beginning of Zionist occupation of the West Bank, expropriation and annexation of Palestinian owned property was an ongoing process. Expropriation was carried out under various pretexts and for different purposes, but Palestinian land kept being robbed and plundered then annexed to Zionist settlements.
In his public speech against annexation, Israeli Advocate Michael Spharad stated the following:
Annexation is an elaborate and new mechanism that will enable the expropriation and dispossession and displacement of Palestinians at a scale and pace that we did not know. When East Jerusalem was annexed, thousands of properties were declared absentee property and thousands of dunams were expropriated for so-called “public purposes.” And who is the public who is in his best interests these properties were expropriated? Of course, settlers. This happened in East Jerusalem, and this will definitely happen in the territories annexed in the West Bank if there will be annexation.43
According to the writer Ali Kadri,
By 1983, the expropriation was calculated to extend over 52% of the territory, most of its prime agricultural land and, just before the 1993 Oslo Accords, these confiscations had encompassed over three quarters of the West Bank.44
Waqf Muslim property in the colonized West Bank was plundered by the Zionist colonial authorities. When Palestinian Muslims protested this plunder and demanded their return, the Zionist colonial authorities were ready to return a very small portion of the Waqf land.
This outright thievery by the Zionist authorities was affirmed by the Israeli researcher Uzi Tovia who reported the following fact.
Needless to say, representatives of Muslims in Jaffa and the other mixed cities received 1% of the total endowment assets scattered throughout the country, and were sold and/or transferred by the guardian to the Development Authority, which on its part sold them to a third party – the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Municipalities…45
Moreover, Uzi Tovia points out that the enactment of a number of land laws in Israel, is a reflection of the continued process of plunder and theft. These laws have led to the deteriorating share of the Palestinian citizens in the total lands under the control of the state of Israel.
As noted, the State of Israel enacted land laws that legitimized the nationalization and laundering of the absentee’s assets. Today, the of Nationality Law, the Kaminitz Law and the application of sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley constitute the continuation of the theft and plunder. If the long-awaited peace reaches our country, then the State of Israel will tell the Palestinian refugees, the original landowners, that the possibility of returning the land to the absentee is legally impossible due to the large transfer of ownership of the land. Today, Israeli Arabs, who make up 21% of the population, control less than 3% of the country’s land. 97% of the land was taken out of their hands. Ben-Gurion was not satisfied with transferring ownership of the land registration, he wanted to change the registration in the consciousness as well: “We must also remove the Arabic names for political reasons. Just as we do not recognize the political ownership of Arabs in Israel, we do not recognize their spiritual ownership and their names,” he declared in 1949. 46
The Failed Policy of Demographic Containment
It should be emphasized that the present demographic situation of Palestinian cities, towns and villages is that of overcrowding, suffocation, lack of open spaces, and lack of plots of land for construction. This deplorable situation has been brought about by Zionist colonial policy of plunder of Palestinian owned land. The racist undertone of this policy could be clearly seen when we compare Palestinian residential localities with Jewish residential localities.
The Zionist regime realized that the policy of demographic containment of Palestinian citizens has failed. Palestinian citizens succeeded in infiltrating the all-Jewish cities of Nof Hagalil and Karmiel that were established specifically to contain Palestinian demographic expansion. Moreover, Palestinian citizens began to find solutions to their housing problems also inside neighbouring Jewish cities such as Haifa, Acre, and Afula. The failure of the Zionist racist policy of demographic containment was the direct result of the colonial policies of the massive land expropriations that took place in the fifties and sixties. By depriving the Palestinian Arab villages of their lands, the Zionist state has led to the creation of demographic overcrowding inside every Palestinian city and village. Available lands for housing and development have disappeared and land prices skyrocketed. Lack of available housing solutions drove lots of Palestinian citizens to migrate to the all-Jewish cities that have plenty of residential solutions.
Comparison Among Some Settler-Colonial Projects
When a comparison is conducted among the five settler colonial projects in the USA, Canada, French Algeria, South Africa and Israel – it would show a set of common similarities and another set of common differences.
Common Similarities
All settler colonial projects are based on the ideology of settler colonialism which produce the assumed racial superiority of the colonial settlers and the assumed racial inferiority of the indigenous population. Ultimately, this racial dichotomy leads to the dehumanization of the indigenous population. Its conduct towards the indigenous population cannot but reflect this ideology.
All settler colonialist projects begin their initial step by the destruction of the indigenous economy and the dissolution of indigenous societies. Then they begin the establishment of settler colonies on the plundered land of the indigenous population.
In their conduct, all settler colonial projects are motivated by the practice of segregation, walls, towers, fencing, closed zones, closed racist villages and racist ghettoes inside mixed cities.
Throughout its socio-political development, racist conduct becomes inherent in: law, courts, ministries, government agencies, official media, universities, the educational system, police treatment of indigenous population, land allocation, budget allocation, commerce, transportation and political narrative of its leaders.
These settler colonial regimes pursue an aggressive colonialist policy towards the indigenous population that gives no respect for their old traditions, religious beliefs and shrines.
The pursued colonialist policy does not recognize the previous regulations and laws that guided indigenous population prior to the advance of the aggressive settler colonial project.
Moreover, the pursued colonialist policy does not recognize the title of indigenous ownership for lands, whether private, public, or state. All indigenous lands are bound to be plundered by means of expropriation.
When faced with indigenous resistance, the leaders of the settler colonial project, the settlers, and the military agencies, resort to vicious violence, massacres, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Common Differences
When it comes to the differences, there are a number of differences that stem from: stages of the socio-economic development of the colonial metropolis, the degree of resistance paused by the indigenous population to the settler colonial project, and the end result of the settler indigenous conflict.
We could notice different degrees of “success” in three settler colonial projects such as in the United States of America, Canada and Australia. The settler colonial project “succeeded” in annihilating the Indigenous Population, through the use of ethnic cleansing, massive massacres and general genocide. According to Australian expert researcher on settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe, the primary motive that stood behind annihilation was the following.
… Whatever settlers may say— and they generally have a lot to say—the primary motive for elimination is not race (or religion, ethnicity, grade of civilization, etc.) but access to territory. Territoriality is settler colonialism’s specific, irreducible element.47
Concluding Remarks
Apparently, Zionist legal-minded political leaders, lawyers, and jurists deeply thought about the proper cover and moral justification for the plundering of the property of Palestinian Arab refugees and citizens. All their efforts could not produce a suitable solution except the provision of a thin veneer of fake legality. But how can you justify outright thievery with laws? Only a racist frame of mind of some colonialists thought that such a fallacy could be convincing.
After seventy-three years of Zionist settler colonialism, one can conclude that the Zionist settler bourgeoisie did not even once plan to achieve genuine peace with its Arab neighbors or with the Palestinian Arab people. The Zionist settler bourgeoisie opted in 1948 for the plunder of refugee property and this option totally negated the establishment of a genuine peace.
All Zionist talk about their desire for peace and about the extended hand for peace of Zionist leaders are nothing but Zionist propaganda. The Zionists have never thought of achieving genuine peace because their hand was extended only to grab Palestinian Arab lands. They thought that being militarily powerful is a state that could last forever and they regarded the support provided by Western imperialism to be guaranteed forever. They also thought that the rising Arab resistance to Zionist settler colonialism can be forever contained and managed.
Finally, the Zionist regime cannot but be a settler colonialist regime. Its conduct regarding the indigenous population and indigenous land remains colonial and aggressive. This regime cannot change by itself, it becomes callous and more inhuman. It will deteriorate and become more vicious, more violent and more racist.
Zuhair Sabbagh is a Palestinian Arab author specialized in Palestinian, Israeli and Third World issues. He lives in Nazareth, Israel. He worked for 21 years as an academic at the Bir Zeit University, at the department of social and behavioral studies. He is a graduate of the University of Manchester and holds a Ph.D. in Political Sociology. He is author of a number of books and research articles.
1 Natalie Sedacca, “Sanctioning land expropriation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – Israel’s new ‘Land Regularization Law’’, https://lphr.org.uk, 3-3-2017
2 Ibid.
3 Actually, Zionist ethnic cleansing did not start in 1948, but preceded that in many years. In 1907, a Zionist by the name of Yitshaq Epstein reported that Zionist settlers ethnically cleansed the Palestinian Arab residents of two villages, Al-Ja’uny and Al-Mtilli. Then Zionist settlers settled inside the evacuated Palestinian Arab houses. Moreover, Zionist ethnic cleansing did not stop in 1949, but still continues to this very day inside Israel’s June 4th., 1967 borders and also inside the colonized West Bank (ZS).
4 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the concept of laundering absentee property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
5 Proposal for absentee property ordinance on behalf of Justice Minister Felix Rosenblit to members of the government, dated 04/09/1948. As quoted by:Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
6 Report on operations until 31/03/1949 on behalf of the Custodian of Absentee Property, Ministry of Finance. As quoted by Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the concept of laundering absentee property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
7 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 As reported by “Kol Ha’am”, Voice of the People (in Hebrew), 3-2-1955. As was quoted by Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
11 A cabinet meeting regarding the sale of land to the JNF by the Development Authority, dated 05/10/1950. As quoted by: Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
12 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
13 Memorandum by Minister of Finance Kaplan regarding the consideration for land that goes to the JNF as part of the million Dunams, dated 22/01/1952. As quoted by: Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
14 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 The Hague Regulations of 1907, “CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND”, https://constitution.com. Retrieved on: 13-8-2021
18 Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
19 Algazy, Joseph (Spring-Summer 1985). “Israeli Settlement Policy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 7(2-3): 62-73 JSTOR 41857769, p.66. As quoted by: Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 18-8-2021
20 LeVine, Mark (2005). Overthrowing geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 184. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Ottoman Land Code of 1858”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 3-7-2021
21 Al-Bazz, Ahmad, “Settlers are seizing ‘empty’ land. The Palestinian owners are fighting back”, https://www.972mag.com, 7-1-2020
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 LeVine, Mark (2005). Overthrowing geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the struggle for Palestine, 1880-1948. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 184. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Ottoman Land Code of 1858”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 3-7-2021
26 Al-Bazz, Ahmad, “Settlers are seizing ‘empty’ land. The Palestinian owners are fighting back”, https://www.972mag.com, 7-1-2020
27 Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
32 The Hague Regulations of 1907, “CONVENTION RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND”, https://constitution.com. Retrieved on: 13-8-2021
33 Ibid.
34 Hatem, Bazian, “Israel’s Grand Theft of Muslim Endowments in Jerusalem”, http://www.hatembazian.com, 3-2-2016
35 Ibid.
36 Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993).
37 The demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter, a copy reserved on Y-Pack Machine, 4-2-2012. As quoted by Wikipedia, “The Moroccan Quarter”, (in Arabic), https://ar.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 1-7-2021
38 Hatem , Bazian, “Israel’s Grand Theft of Muslim Endowments in Jerusalem”, http://www.hatembazian.com, 3-2-2016
39 The Jerusalem City Website, “54 years on the demolishment of the Moroccan Quarter, the Occupation continues to Judaize the place in order to conceal its history”, (in Arabic), https://www.alquds-city.com. Retrieved on: 10-6-2021
40 Ibid.
41 Kollek, Teddy, with Kollek, Amos, For Jerusalem: A Life (New York: Random House, 1978), p. 2. As quoted by Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993).
42 Jerusalem Post, May 24, 1990. As quoted by Joost R Hiltermann “Teddy Kollek and the Native Question,” Middle East Report 182 (May/June 1993)
43 Spharad, Michael, “Annexation is conquest and dispossession”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 8-6-2020
44 Kadri, Ali (Autumn 1998). “A Survey of Commuting Labor from the West Bank to Israel”. Middle East Journal. 52 (4): 517–530. JSTOR 4329251., pp. 517–518. As quoted by Wikipedia, “Land expropriation in the West Bank”, https://en.wikipedia.org. Retrieved on: 27-6-2021
45 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
46 Lovia, Uzi, “Behind the Concept of Laundering Absentee Property”, (in Hebrew), https://www.haokets.org, 14-8-2020
47 Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native”, Journal of Genocide Research, https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjgr20. Retrieved on: 18-8-2021
At the start it was not even a university, but Seneca College. Then it was the University of Ottawa. Then Carleton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto. Now it is almost every university in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The law faculty at McGill is also demanding it, presumably to save the university from expensive litigation (an implied threat, and one that strangely assumes that only one side of a debate can litigate in court). If it happens first in the United States, then almost immediately it is copied and pasted into policy in Canada. It is coming everywhere: mandatory vaccination for all faculty, staff, and students.
As a tenured, full Professor in Canada, it is my duty to encourage all faculty to be united in non-compliance with such measures.
Mandatory vaccination pressures are issued allegedly in accordance with “public health”. However, they are mandated through neither parliaments nor legislation, but are instead issued unilaterally by governments under the umbrella of “emergency measures”.
Typically, such vaccination mandates stipulate the following: faculty, staff, and students must show proof of full vaccination in order to access campus and perform their duties. If they do not do so (and some allow refusal only on grounds of medical or religious exemptions), then they must submit to still undefined special measures, such as frequent testing (perhaps twice each week, using rapid antigen tests), and masking at all times and in all spaces on campus.
This will be, for most Canadian faculty, the first if not the only real test of their integrity and dignity, and their purpose as scholars and intellectuals. It is absolutely essential that they not fail this test from the start.
It must be emphasized that this is not a position that can be taken only by non-vaccinated faculty. Action to prohibit and prevent discrimination, and actual abuses of human rights, is a stance to be taken by all faculty, whether fully vaccinated or not.
Rather than following the alternative science narrative tied to the private interests of pharmaceutical corporations and those of politicians, we should expect Canadian universities to encourage critical thinking that—as is now commonly endorsed and celebrated—“speaks truth to power”. This would be in line with Canadian universities’ many recent statements in support of social justice. To see these same universities immediately fail the first real test of their avowed commitments, is both shocking and disappointing.
In particular, mandatory vaccination pressures plainly and indisputably discriminate against employees who are members of particular religious and ethnic communities, in such a way and to such a degree that any claims to upholding “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” become completely unravelled. Not sustaining this commitment in one area, and expecting it to be sustained in other areas, is obviously neither credible nor tenable. Furthermore, the policy which imposes such discrimination is in direct violation of a number of laws and human rights codes, both here in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
First, faculty should notify senior administrators that at no point, and under no circumstances, can they be compelled to involuntarily release any private information about their personal health status, whether they have been fully vaccinated or not. Such a mandate violates the rights of all, not just some. Such compulsion, that lies outside of the terms and conditions of employment as established by contracts or collective agreements, would be plainly illegal on a number of fronts, including violating existing laws as exist in Quebec and the rest of Canada. At no point when we were interviewed and then hired, were any of us informed of any health requirements to perform our jobs. Established policies for universities to maintain safe working environments place that burden on university administrations—they do not imply any demand for health screening and injection of faculty.
We should be particularly concerned about the apparent effort to pressure people into vaccination. As universities that staunchly uphold ethics in research, following federal requirements, this policy instead negates voluntary informed consent. Consent cannot be mandated, by definition. The policy also violates the principle of do no harm, by not advising members of the community that compliance with this policy could result in experiencing adverse effects, ranging from the mild and trivial, to serious injury requiring hospitalization, and in some cases even death. We have not seen any language warning about adverse reactions and possible death anywhere in the policy announcements.
The compulsion to vaccinate also runs afoul of legal provisions that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, and political beliefs.
What universities are also backing is an emergency measure, but they have not furnished any proof of an emergency. Rapidly spreading viruses are common to our university communities, as with each cold and flu that sweeps through a university population every year, even multiple times in a year. The condition of “rapid spread” and “contagiousness” is not, in and of itself, any basis for an “emergency”.
University administrations should rest assured that, as was usual, when employees develop any symptoms of any sickness, they will automatically refrain from coming to campus, as they have done when they had colds or the flu. Non-vaccinated faculty therefore represent no actual nor potential “threat” to the health of the community.
We must also point out that in the early fall of 2009, some Canadian faculty contracted H1N1, and in some cases they had to be absent from class for weeks. At no point did any university administration in Canada manifest any concern about this fact. It is important to recall that in 2009, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 to be a “global pandemic,” under the very same definition it then used for Covid-19. By enacting radically different measures today, Canadian universities are thus directly at odds with their own practice, from the recent past.
Second, if the consequence of non-compliance with such mandates are that faculty must undergo frequent testing—despite having no symptoms—then this would be unfair and discriminatory treatment based on assumed health status, and that too is illegal and lies outside of our terms and conditions of employment. Being a professor at a Canadian university has never been advertised as a position that comes with a health requirement, or a requirement for medical screening in order to perform one’s duties. Moreover, given that it is now solidly established that the fully vaccinated do carry as much viral load as the non-vaccinated, and do transmit the virus, to then subject one group of persons (assumed to be non-vaccinated) to testing, while exempting others, is obviously unfair discrimination.
One can only conclude that such a discriminatory bias is meant to punish a particular group, to hinder them in carrying out their daily work requirements, and to continue singling out healthy people as a problem. It is also obvious psychological harassment, and thus directly violates most Canadian universities’ own published workplace policies.
Before attempting to unilaterally transform the terms and conditions of employment, university administrations must at least sit down and negotiate with faculty unions. Over the past 18 months, we have seen professors suddenly required to work from home, which is work not required under existing terms and conditions of our employment—it is simply not in our job description, and most are not trained for online teaching. Conversely, we have now seen them barred from continuing remote delivery when this is their first choice. Now we see those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated being forced to undergo testing, regardless of symptoms, and regardless of possible natural immunity (which is irrationally and unjustifiably dismissed from this entire discussion).
The discriminatory testing requirement is thus another apparent legal violation, and it has no place at any Canadian university.
The announced policy is a violation of human dignity: it imposes psychological pressure through a regimen of punishment designed to make the performance of one’s ordinary work duties increasingly onerous and unsustainable. It reaches the point where we could argue that it constitutes a breach of contract.
The announced policy also demands that those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated (i.e., they do not furnish proof of full vaccination), must be visibly and publicly set apart from the rest of the community (i.e., masked where others are not masked). Given the prevailing mass psychosis that incites blame, disrespect, and even overt hatred against non-vaccinated persons, to make such non-vaccinated persons openly stand apart is to jeopardize their dignity and integrity.
Third, Canadian universities must not be pressured, and should not comply with any pressures that force their participation in a regime that violates human rights. As we are only now becoming aware of the real extent of atrocities committed at Canadian Residential Schools, which closed only in the late 1990s, Canadian educational institutions ought to be extremely wary of yet another wave of government demands for harsh, segregationist, and punitive measures in the name of “saving” people.
The administration of Canadian universities may reasonably respond that they are merely following government mandates. Any government mandate that is itself an extra-legal measure, imposed without legislative support, is not one that can be used to force a university into also violating either the law or human rights conventions established under international law, to which Canada is a signatory.
Any compliance by an individual with extra-legal extreme measures could also be read as tacit consent, which would then legitimize such measures which are backed neither by established laws, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms nor—it must be noted—are they backed by any scientific support.
The administrations of Canadian universities are best advised to be prudent, and on the right side of both the law and justice. They must immediately rescind any such policy issued under the heading of a vaccine mandate. They should also be aware that failure to do so exposes them to litigation from those at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment, not just from faculty and staff, but from an even larger number of students.
For any Canadian university to try to justify human rights abuses, because they are what the government ordered, is truly Nuremberg-worthy.
Fourth, any mandate must acknowledge that the burden of proof rests with those issuing, following, and enforcing the mandate. In particular, governments and university administrations in Canada must provide fully documented proof of the following—keeping in mind that widely spread fear is not proof of any emergency other than a psychological one:
(1) That there is indeed a current public health emergency, as an objective and verifiable medical fact, and not as an artifact of government decrees. The greatest number of hospitalizations and deaths in Canada occurred during the so-called “first wave” of March-May, 2020. There has been no repetition of those numbers since then. Even then, we are basing this on assumptions: we assume that people were infected with Covid-19, using flawed testing at a time when the virus had not been isolated, and when the amplification cycles were too high—and we did not follow WHO guidelines that advised against relying exclusively on PCR tests in making any clinical diagnosis. We also did not routinely conduct postmortems to establish the cause of death of most elderly victims in the spring of last year. On top of that, it has since come to light that even among those who were already close to the natural end of their lives, they were often subjected to starvation and dehydration—fear kept away many workers from nursing homes, which then resulted in the neglect of residents. We have also learned that, at least in Quebec, such elderly and frail patients were given morphine that suppressed respiration and which, in almost all cases, quickly resulted in death. Thus we do not yet know the exact size and nature of even the “first wave,” the worst and arguably the only real wave we had.
(2) That infection is spread only by the non-vaccinated. We now know definitively that the advertised “vaccines”—those in use in Canada—do not protect the injected from infection, nor do they stop them from spreading the virus, or even falling sick and dying from the virus. If the fully vaccinated can—and do—spread the virus, then any requirement for frequent and rapid testing must equally apply to them. Failure to do so is proof of discrimination on the basis of health characteristics.
(3) That by advertising the need for vaccination, that the university population is not being misled about the real protection such injectable products afford. Countries such as Israel, which vaccinated more fully and more quickly than Canada, are now witnessing a situation where the overwhelming majority of the infected are the fully vaccinated. In both Israel and the UK in recent weeks, the fully vaccinated account for the majority of Covid deaths. Without even speaking of death, which is extremely rare for anyone exposed to Covid—vaccinated or not—in both Europe and the US there are now several hundred thousand cases of serious adverse reactions. Universally it is acknowledged—even by the manufacturers themselves—that the effectiveness of these injectable products is declining to the point where any protection they might have offered increasingly drops to insignificant levels.
(4) That “cases” are a measure of anything significant. The term “cases” has been abused and distorted: anyone deemed to test positive for Covid-19, has been categorized as a “case”. This is despite the fact that they may have had no symptoms, or if they had symptoms they were mild and required no treatment. Typically a real case involves someone needing treatment as a patient, usually in a clinic or hospital. Therefore it needs to be proven that a rising number of so-called “cases” is any reason for extraordinary measures, especially when hospitalizations and deaths are but a tiny fraction of what they were during the first wave.
(5) That natural immunity is not real and does not matter. Nowhere in these mandates is there any language concerning natural immunity—natural immunity is assumed to not exist, or is assumed to be irrelevant. If those issuing, complying with, or enforcing such mandatory vaccination cannot address this scientific point, then the credibility of their entire argument collapses. On that basis alone, non-compliance would be fully justified and warranted.
(6) That healthy people can be assumed to be bearers of sickness. These workplace vaccine mandates all assume that healthy, even young and healthy people, who are not vaccinated are a “problem”. The healthy are assumed immediately and in advance to not only being actual or potential bearers of infection, but also being the sole bearers of infection, and of being solely infectious. Show the scientific support for this argument, and show it overcoming contrary scientific research.
(7) That the so-called “Delta variant” is in fact “more dangerous”. Being more contagious does not equal more danger of sickness and death, as attested to by published government data. Show the scientific proof for the fact that the Delta variant is a significant variation, not just one that varies by 0.3% of characteristics compared to the original Covid-19. Show the data that proves beyond a doubt that it causes more hospitalizations and deaths than the original Covid-19 ever did. Without this proof, the rationale for such mandates is null and void.
(8) That “herd immunity” can only be achieved with vaccination of 100% of a population. In particular, show the scientific support for achieving such immunity by using injectable products that confer no immunity at all. In addition, show the scientific support for the idea that herd immunity discounts natural immunity—see point #5 above.
If there is little or no scientific support for these positions, then there is no rational justification that warrants a mandate issued on medical grounds, in the name of safeguarding public health. In that case, the policy demands non-compliance and it must be rescinded.
If what remains is merely fear of danger, then in certain instances such fear of danger may in itself be a call for urgent psychological therapy or even psychiatric treatment. This is especially the case where fear is sustained in the absence of evidence or in denial of reality, and where it clearly does harm to the persons holding this fear, who then harm others (by issuing discriminatory mandates, for example).
It must also be recalled that during the height of the lockdowns, well before “vaccines” became available, and even before masking became mandatory, millions of Canadian workers operated in close quarters for long hours every day, and yet deadly outbreaks were few and far between. It remains to be shown why now, with vaccination and masking and numbers only a microscopic fraction of what they were, it is now necessary to go to extreme lengths to ensure 100% vaccination, using products that clearly cannot confer immunity. Such products are not only obviously and indisputably ineffective as tools of immunization, they can also be dangerous.
The announced measures, we already know, will do absolutely nothing to curb the spread of the virus. Knowing that means the policy is being followed for reasons not having to do with public health. We should thus reaffirm our commitment to non-compliance with this policy.
Lastly, if what universities really fear is exposure to litigation, then there is a very simple answer to this concern: ask all those who wish to access campus to sign a waiver that the university bears no responsibility for anyone who may become ill on campus (assuming it can even be proved they became ill on campus). If there is widespread fear of infection, a university could also allow for continued working and learning from home for those who prefer that option. Whatever the option may be, every possible option should be investigated without resorting to extreme and discriminatory measures that violate human rights and the rights of citizenship.
[Canadian faculty are encouraged to adopt and or adapt this statement, in whole or in part, for use in their individual institutional settings, and they can do so without formally crediting this statement, even though it is published under a Creative Commons license. French translation follows.]
Universities in the United States are issuing fines to any students who refused to take the Covid “vaccine”, according to a report from Zero Hedge.
West Virginia Wesleyan College, announced a few weeks ago that it will fine any unvaccinated student $750. Whilst Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University will fine them $100 per week increasing in $25 increments (equal to $2250 for the first semester).
Not only that, but unvaccinated students will also be denied internet access. In the modern age, attempting to function in an academic institution without access to the internet, emails or digital learning resources is almost impossible. So this is essentially a mandate under any other name.
Other campuses are instituting “testing fees” of over $1500, but only for the unvaccinated. This is in spite of the fact vaccinated people are capable of testing positive for Covid.
2. “THE GREAT JOBS RESET”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the big daddy when it comes to pushing out the Great Reset, it’s the brainchild of their Chairman Klaus Schwab after all, and this past week they have unveiled their latest project. It’s called the “Jobs Reset Summit”.
The summit discusses, among other things, the alleged “impact of the pandemic” on employment. Bemoaning the loss of an estimated 255 million full-time jobs from the global economy, without ever mentioning (naturally) that these job losses had nothing to do with Covid, and everything to do with lockdown policies which were never intended to stop the spread of any virus.
The most alarming position to come out of this summit, however, was definitely a tweet that stated:
Get your COVID-19 jab – or you could face consequences from your employer #COVID19 #JobsReset21
Clearly supporting the idea that unvaccinated people should face censure, or even termination, from their employers. Just like they did with their “You’ll own nothing and be happy” article, they deleted the tweet and re-titled the article after a somewhat negative reaction.
The march toward a cashless society continues apace. We’ve been told already that cash is bad for the environment, and also contaminated with germs and drugs. Now the press is simply treating the cashless future as a fait acompli
It seems the totally real (and not-at-all agenda-driven) pandemic has accidentally facilitated the rise of a highly controlling government policy, which was around years before “Covid” even existed.
Weird how many times that’s happened in the last 18 months.
4. NO TRANSPLANTS FOR THE UNVAXXED
This week hospitals in both the USA and Ireland have admitted to removing unvaccinated patients from the donor organ waiting list.
Beaumont Hospital in Ireland sent out letters recommending doctors remove all unvaccinated patients from the kidney transplant waiting list. Whilst a man in Washington state was told he would not be considered for a heart transplant as long as he declined the Covid jab. Other patients in the same hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center, are reportedly in the same position.
The good news is that the public outcry was so intense, that the Beaumont hospital was forced to reverse its decision within days of the story breaking. But this policy will not go away, and just become more covert as it spreads.
BONUS: CREEPY SPEECH OF THE WEEK
Whoever runs the corporate puppet that lives inside Justin Trudeau’s skin has clearly decided it’s time for him to shake his rather inneffectual image and try and become a forceful public speaker. In a “strongman” speech in the run-up to the Canadian elections, Trudeau worked himself into a frenzy on vaccination:
“If you don’t want to get vaccinated, that’s your choice. But don’t think you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people and put them at risk!”
A tip for the future though – if you’re going to have the blandest man in the world try and excite a crowd, give him more than 80 people to work with. That said, however poorly delivered and however lukewarm the reception, the sentiment itself is very unsettling. Full on segregation in Canada. As someone remarked to us on Telegram, “instead of the back of the bus, it’s now no bus at all.”
IT’S NOT ALL BAD…
We’ve got the usual protests in France, Australia and all over the world to report this week. It’s also in the news that Denmark will be abandoning all Coronavirus measures from October first… but whether that’s truly good news remains to be seen.
However, this week’s main entry for INAB comes in the form of a music video that tells the whole story:
You can follow Lukas Lion on youtube or Instagram, and stream the song on Spotify, Apple music and other platforms.
We’d also remind everyone in the UK that next Saturday, the 28th August, is the Unite for Freedom “Freedom Carnival” protest in London (and maybe other cities around the country). You can also follow their telegram channel for updates.
Anecdotal evidence detailed by former Google software engineer Mike Hearn strongly suggests that most restaurants, cafes and other businesses in France are not enforcing the country’s controversial vaccine passport system.
As we highlighted last week, on the first day the new program was in place, police were visibly patrolling bars and cafes demanding customers show proof they’ve had the jab.
However, this seems to have largely been a bluff as just days later, businesses and venues have become very lax at checking people’s papers despite the threat of large fines.
“I decided to do a simple experiment to find out: always present an expired test even though I had a valid negative one, and see what happens,” writes Hearn.
“Over a four day stay I was required to show a valid pass exactly zero times; that includes at the airports in both directions. Compliance is absolutely min viable and often lower.”
“At small businesses enforcement was non-existent: sometimes the pass requirement was ignored entirely, other times we were asked “do you have a pass” and our answer wasn’t checked. One restaurant had come up with a clever way to detect police stings without requiring customers to actually present a pass. As expected, enforcement was stricter by larger firms, however even there we saw the following:
– Test certificates being checked once and then swapped for a token that doesn’t expire.
– Expired tests being accepted.
– People accepting paper test certificates without scanning them.
– Scanning tests and then not looking at the screen to see the results.
– Accepting QR codes that failed to scan.”
Hearn also reveals how mask mandates in theme parks and other venues are also not being followed, despite signs everywhere ordering people to cover their faces, while social distancing is also a “forgotten memory.”
Images showing empty cafes and bars on the first day the system was introduced may have spooked venues into taking a hands off approach.
In passing the law but failing to ensure that it is enforced, France is following the same model as Israel, where the point of introducing the system wasn’t really to enforce it, but merely as a means of bullying young people into getting the vaccine.
As we highlighted last week, despite the odious and draconian nature of the vaccine passport system, President Macron asserted that the it was actually introduced to protect people’s “freedom,” which is like saying putting you in prison is for your own safety.
Macron was billed as the ‘moderate candidate’ in the 2017 French presidential election but there’s nothing moderate about this authoritarian who has transformed France into a police state under the guise of countering a virus.
A few weeks ago, I was in the picturesque Suffolk coastal resort of Southwold. There is a large mural of the novelist George Orwell – who once lived there – at the entrance of the renovated pier. It couldn’t have been a more appropriate moment to be reminded of the author of ‘1984’ for, in 2021, we are truly living in Orwellian times. Almost everything we are being told is an inversion of the truth. Extreme policies are being enacted across much of the Western world by those claiming to be ‘moderates’, while those who oppose the removal of basic, inalienable human freedoms and making them conditional on taking a new-on-the-market vaccine, or proving one’s ‘health status’, are the ones being labelled ‘extremists’ – and categorised by the elite’s propagandists as either ‘far-right’ or ‘hard-left’.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in France.
It is now obligatory to present a ‘Pass sanitaire’ – proving you have been vaccinated or tested negative for Covid-19 or have recovered from the virus, to gain access to cafes, restaurants, health centres, libraries, department stores, long-distance trains and a whole host of public places. France has gone from a relatively free society to a 1940s-style ‘Where are your papers?’ state in an incredibly short time and without any proper parliamentary scrutiny or public debate. Macron the ‘moderate’ has turned into Macron the dictator.
What’s happened is deeply shocking – and worth more than one ‘Zut alors!’ – but actually not at all surprising when one considers what Macron’s brand of politics represents and in whose interests he governs (spoiler alert: it’s not the ordinary French people).
Back in 2017 – when ’centrists’ were hailing a new ‘French Revolution’ – I warned on this platform about the likely next president. “The so-called ‘outsider’ Macron is nothing of the sort. It’s a very strange ‘revolution’ indeed if the end result is the installation in the Elysee Palace of a neo-liberal pro-austerity investment banker (and Bilderberg attendee) heavily favoured by the establishment.”
I continued: “The likely success of Macron in round two won’t be a revolution, but the very opposite. It’ll represent a stunning victory for the French and globalist elites who’ve maintained their grip on power in an era of massive public discontent.”
I might also have added that in 2016 Macron was listed as one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders. You really couldn’t have anyone better than to usher in the WEF’s dystopian ‘Great Reset’ in France, could you?
Of course, ‘Health Passes’ – which, if they are allowed to be rolled out completely, will morph, as surely as night follows day, into digitized ID cards, and a fully fledged Chinese-style social credit system, are an integral part of the controlling-the-plebs, globalist project. It’s a project that ‘centrists’ and ‘moderates’ are at the forefront of promoting – just as they promoted the ‘War on Terror’, and a succession of illegal Middle Eastern/North African wars.
Consider this. Tony Blair was Britain’s leading advocate for war with Iraq in 2003. In 2021, Tony Blair is Britain’s leading advocate for vaccine passports. “I think you’re going to the stage where it’s going to be very hard for people to do a lot of normal life unless they can prove their vaccination status,” the Blair creature said earlier this year. In June, he said it was ‘time to distinguish for the purpose of freedom from restriction’ between those who have and haven’t had the vaccine.
Blair openly admitted: “Of course we are discriminating between vaccinated and unvaccinated,” yet the medical apartheid which he is so brazenly promoting is still presented by much of the media as a ‘moderate’ proposal. Meanwhile, those who oppose vaccine passports – and treating the unvaccinated as lepers who should be shunned by society – are smeared as ‘anti-vaxxers’ – a highly weaponised term meant to place someone outside the parameters of acceptable debate.
The truth is that what is today billed by establishment media as ‘centrism’ and ‘moderation’ is in fact the polar opposite. The conservative commentator Peter Hitchens was absolutely right to say that Blairism – which has become hegemonic not just in Britain but across the Western world – was much more extreme than Corbynism, which was actually only revived traditionally British radicalism. Hitchens said that Blairism was more ‘left-wing’ but that’s only true in a limited cultural sense.
Blairism can best be seen as global-elite, monopoly-finance capital-favouring freedom-destroying authoritarianism with a PR covering of wokery to make it appear ‘progressive’.
You only have to follow the money trail to see what’s behind extreme centrism – and in particular the push for vaccine passports. Tony Blair’s ‘Institute for Global Change’ has received generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which it lists as one of its ‘partners’. We know Gates’ links to the World Economic Forum. All roads in this ‘new normal’ operation lead back to Davos. That ain’t no ‘tin-foil hat conspiracy theory’ bruv, but rather a conspiracy fact.
A global agenda is quite clearly being implemented, with France being the European ‘trial’ case for vaccine passports. If the large, growing, and inspiring public protests force Macron to drop the scheme, other countries (including Britain, whose government says it wants to introduce jabs-only vaccine passports in October) will get cold feet about implementation too. But if France’s Blairite president succeeds? Let’s not even contemplate that nightmare scenario.
In June 2021, the U.S. National Security Council released a new “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism” document.1 While it’s being largely framed as a tool to fight White supremacy and political extremism, the definition of what constitutes a “domestic terrorist” is incredibly vague and based on ideologies rather than specific behaviors.
It’s not difficult to imagine this policy being used to silence political opposition simply by labeling anyone who disagrees with the government as a domestic terrorist and charging them with a hate crime.
We’re already seeing signs suggesting that this is the path we’re on. July 28, 2021, Dr. Peter Hotez published a paper2 in PLOS Biology titled “Mounting Antiscience Aggression in the United States,” in which he suggests criticizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other scientists ought to be labeled a “hate crime.” Commenting on the paper, Paul Joseph Watson at Summit News writes:3
“This is yet another transparent effort to dehumanize anti-lockdown protesters and demonize people who merely want to exercise bodily autonomy while elevating Fauci and his ilk to Pope-like status. Science isn’t supposed to be a religious dogma that is set in stone, it’s an ever-evolving knowledge base that changes and improves thanks to dissent and skepticism.”
Science Depends on Questioning and Challenging Assumptions
Attorney Jonathan Turley also responded to Hotez’s paper in an August 4, 2021, blog post, saying:4
“’Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.’ Feynman’s statement captures how science depends upon constant questioning and challenging of assumptions …
[T]here remain important debates over not just the underlying science relation to Covid-19 but the implications for such science for public policies. Criminalizing aspects of that debate would ratchet up the threats against those with dissenting views, including some scientists. That would harm not just free speech but science in the long run.”
Should We Have Protected Classes That Cannot Be Questioned?
Turley also points out how making scientists a protected class (and one would assume only those with specific political leanings) is a slippery slope that will likely have unwieldy ramifications:5
“The federal hate crime laws focus on basis of a person’s characteristics of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. We have seen calls for adding professions like police officers, which I also opposed.
As with police officers, the inclusion of such professions would have a direct and inimical impact on free speech in our society. Indeed, it would create a slippery slope as other professions demand inclusion from reporters to ministers to physicians. Hate crimes would quickly apply to a wide array of people due to their occupations.”
Will America Accept No-Fly List for Unvaccinated?
Writing for The Atlantic,6 former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem posits that people who do not want to be part of the COVID injection experiment “need to bear the burden” when it comes to preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2.
“The number of COVID-19 cases keeps growing, even though remarkably safe, effective vaccines are widely available,” Kayyem writes.7 “Many public agencies are responding by reimposing masking rules on everyone.
But at this stage of the pandemic, tougher universal restrictions are not the solution to continuing viral spread. While flying, vaccinated people should no longer carry the burden for unvaccinated people.
The White House has rejected a nationwide vaccine mandate … but a no-fly list for unvaccinated adults is an obvious step that the federal government should take.
It will help limit the risk of transmission at destinations where unvaccinated people travel — and, by setting norms that restrict certain privileges to vaccinated people, will also help raise the stagnant vaccination rates that are keeping both the economy and society from fully recovering.”
Travel Ban Identified as Effective Coercion Strategy
According to Kayyem, traveling in general and flying in particular is not a human right, and putting unvaccinated individuals on a no-fly list is a matter of national security, in the sense that the country needs to protect itself from people capable of spreading this dangerous virus.
She makes no mention of the scientifically confirmed fact that none of the COVID shots actually prevent you from getting infected, and that “vaccinated” individuals carry the same viral load as the unvaccinated,8,9 which means they’re just as infectious. The main difference is that vaccinated individuals might not realize that they’re carriers, as the primary effect when the injections do work is lessening symptoms of infection.
Kayyem also cites a New York Times and Kaiser Family Foundation poll in which 41% of unvaccinated respondents had said prohibition on airline travel would sway their decision, including 11% of those “adamantly opposed” to vaccination. In other words, where free doughnuts and million-dollar lotteries have failed to coerce people to get the shot, an airline travel ban might do the trick.
Despite her former position within government, she makes no mention of laws forbidding coercion of medical volunteers, such as the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A, the Belmont report),10 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty,11 the Declaration of Helsinki12 or the Nuremberg Code.13 Supreme court rulings have also clarified that Americans have the right to choose their own health care in general.14,15
Reframing to Confuse the Issue
Kayyem suggests circumventing such basic human rights by reframing the issue. She writes:16
“The public debate about making vaccination a precondition for travel, employment, and other activities has described this approach as vaccine mandates, a term that … suggests that unvaccinated people are being ordered around arbitrarily.
What is actually going on, mostly, is that institutions are shifting burdens to unvaccinated people … rather than imposing greater burdens on everyone.
Americans still have a choice to go unvaccinated, but that means giving up on certain societal benefits. Nobody has a constitutional right to attend The Lion King on Broadway or work at Disney or Walmart … People who still want to wait and see about the vaccines can continue doing so. They just can’t keep pushing all the costs on everyone else.”
As pointed out by Swift Headline,17 the owner of Atlantic magazine, Laurene Powell Jobs, the billionaire widow of Steve Jobs, owns two private jets herself, giving her the freedom to fly around the world at will, regardless what vaccine mandates might be in place. Many other ultra-rich individuals would also be able to ignore the rules due to wealth alone, essentially turning them into a protected class. Swift Headline points out this projection:18
“The Atlantic went on to say unvaccinated people who are exercising their individual rights as free Americans ‘do not deserve’ to be a ‘protected class’ …
Jobs’s wealth and class status is detailed in Breitbart News’ Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow’s book, ‘Breaking the News: Exposing the Establishment Media’s Hidden Deals and Secret Corruptions,’ which ‘exposes the hidden connections between the establishment media and the activist left.’
As Marlow details, Jobs’s past is a privileged one … Jobs ‘married well and inherited a lot of money, and her wealth is tied up in some of world’s biggest companies,’ Marlow continues. ‘She is the establishment.’”
The Price of Admission to Society
August 2, 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle also published an opinion piece19 by the Chronicle editorial board, in which they suggested we ought to “Make vaccination the price of admission to society.” One way to evaluate the reasonableness of such a proposition is to replace COVID “vaccination” with anything else. How about: “Make proof of contraception use the price of admission to bars and nightclubs.”
“Make clear skin the price of admission to gyms and public swimming pools.” “Make being taller than 5’ 9” the price of admission to theme parks.” “Make having a BMI below 25 the price of admission to airline flights.” “Make proof of not having an illness the price of admission to in-hospital care.”
According to the Chronicle editorial board, “the unvaccinated account for over 95% of hospitalizations and deaths.”20 The board does not cite where it got that data from, so let’s review the source of that data.
In an August 5, 2021, video statement, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky noted that this statistic was obtained by looking at hospitalization and mortality data from January through June 2021 — a timeframe during which the vast majority of the United States population were unvaccinated.
When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.
January 1, 2021, only 0.5% of the U.S. population had received a COVID shot. By mid-April, an estimated 31% had received one or more shots,21 and as of June 15, 48.7% were fully “vaccinated.”22
The CDC has also pointed out that you are not considered “fully vaccinated” until two weeks after your second dose (in the case of Pfizer or Moderna), which is given six weeks after your first shot.23 This means that if you receive your first dose on June 1, you won’t be “fully vaccinated” until eight weeks later, around August 1.
So, the narrative that we’re in a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was created by using statistics from a time period when the U.S. as a whole was largely unvaccinated. When you look at more recent data, the trend is swinging in the opposite direction.
Vaccinated Now Comprise the Bulk of Hospitalizations
For example, August 1, 2021, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis, director of Israel’s Public Health Services, announced half of all COVID-19 infections were among the fully vaccinated.24
A few days later, August 5, Dr. Kobi Haviv, director of the Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, appeared on Channel 13 News, reporting that 95% of severely ill COVID-19 patients are fully vaccinated, and that they make up 85% to 90% of COVID related hospitalizations overall.25
In Scotland, official data on hospitalizations and deaths show 87% of those who have died from COVID-19 in the third wave that began in early July were vaccinated,26 and in Gibraltar, which has a 99% COVID jab compliance rate, COVID cases have risen by 2,500% since June 1, 2021.27
A CDC investigation of an outbreak in Barnstable County, Massachusetts between July 6 through July 25, 2021, found 74% of those who received a diagnosis of COVID19, and 80% of hospitalizations, were among the fully vaccinated.28,29 Most, but not all, had the Delta variant.
“What the breakthrough cases appear to show is that the delta variant of the coronavirus is more easily carried and transmitted by vaccinated people than its predecessors,” the Chronicle editorial board writes.30
“In any case, the greater apparent transmissibility of the variant makes it that much more important to protect as many people as possible from severe COVID by increasing inoculation rates.”
What the board appears to be saying is that unvaccinated people must be protected against severe infection, against their will, if need be, and the best way to do that is to discriminate against them and treat them like second-class citizens.
Again, a simple way to check the reasonableness of this argument is to swap out the COVID reference for something else. How about, “It’s important to protect as many people as possible from dying in car accidents by raising car prices so fewer people can get behind the wheel.”
Can ‘Big Brother’ Save You From a Virus?
As early as April 2020, The Times in the U.K. weighed in with similar suggestions, stating “We need Big Brother to beat this virus.”31 Clare Foges, the author of the piece in question, went on to say, “Don’t let the civil liberties lobby blind us to the fact that greater state surveillance, including ID cards, is required.”
The argument that Big Brother can protect us from infection is ludicrous on its face, because no amount of people surveillance can prevent microscopic viruses from circulating.
The No. 1 place of viral spread is in institutions, such as nursing homes and hospitals, yet the staff within them are among the most well-trained in pathogenic control. If trained hospital staff can’t prevent the spread of viruses, how can government officials do it?
Importantly, the argument that we need vaccine passports to prove we’re “clean” enough to participate in society immediately falls apart when you take into account the fact that the COVID shots do not provide immunity. You can still be infected, carry the virus and spread it to others.
We’ve already seen several examples of situations where 100% of people were fully “vaccinated” against COVID-19 yet an outbreak occurred. We’ve even seen over 100 fully COVID injected people die from COVID in one state alone, Massachusetts,32 so it is likely there are now many thousands of fully “vaccinated” who have died from COVID.
Even a 100% Vaccination Rate Cannot Eliminate COVID
Most recently, Carnival cruise lines experienced an outbreak despite every last person on that ship having proof of COVID “vaccination.”33 The cruise liner had even intentionally reduced capacity from 4,000 to 2,800 to provide ample social distancing capability. None of the measures worked. People got sick anyway, which makes perfect sense if you remember that the shot doesn’t provide immunity, only symptom reduction.
Cases such as these clearly reveal that even if everyone gets the shot, SARS-CoV-2 will mutate and continue to circulate, taking people out here and there. To think that giving up basic rights and freedoms is the answer simply isn’t logical. Taking responsibility for your own health is, and that includes deciding if and how you want to protect yourself from SARS-CoV-2.
Nebulized hydrogen peroxide can also be used for prevention and treatment of COVID-19, as detailed in Dr. David Brownstein’s case paper34 and Dr. Thomas Levy’s free e-book, “Rapid Virus Recovery.” And if there’s effective treatment, there’s little need to risk permanent side effects from an experimental gene technology that can only provide a narrow range of protection in the first place.
According to the most recent stats released by the CDC this past Saturday, August 14, 2021, their Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) now has recorded more than twice as many deaths following the non-FDA approved experimental COVID-19 shots during the past 8 and a half months, than deaths recorded following ALL FDA approved vaccines for the past 30 years.
This has to be the most censored information in the U.S. right now, even though these statistics come directly from the CDC.
They have now recorded 12,791 deaths, 16,044 permanent disabilities, 70,667 emergency room visits, 51,242 hospitalizations, 13,139 life threatening events, among 682,873 reported injuries from 571,831 cases.
The CDC’s official response to these statistics is that they are basically coincidences, and are not related to the experimental COVID-19 shots.
Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)
Trusting in the CDC for COVID-19 safety information is quite obviously deadly. Because it is widely known that these statistics that they admit to are but a fraction of actual cases, as very few medical professionals are willing to classify an injury or death as caused by COVID-19 injections.
By way of contrast, deaths following all FDA-approved vaccines for the 30 years prior to the emergency use authorizations of the COVID-19 shots total 6,068 over 30 years according to the CDC.
What are NOT included in these 12,791 deaths the CDC is reporting following COVID-19 shots, are the number of fetal deaths following COVID-19 injections into pregnant women, which now numbers 1,360 deaths according to the CDC.
The Big Pharma cartel is now fully in control of just about every aspect of our lives. They own the corporate media which is not reporting any of these statistics from VAERS, and they control the health agencies like the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA.
Anthony Fauci did the Sunday talk show tour yesterday, and stated that Americans need to surrender their liberties (yes, he actually said that) because we are all fighting a common enemy, “the virus.”
In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has now issued a bulletin declaring that anyone who questions COVID-19 measures like masks and “vaccines” are potential “domestic terrorists.”
They are using a bogus COVID-19 “outbreak” called the “Delta variant,” and the CDC has already been caught lying about who are actually being hospitalized right now, falsely stating that the “unvaccinated” are filling up hospitals, when almost the exact opposite is happening around the world.
A federal judge refused to dismiss a case against a sheriff in Florida over a “Minority Report-style” computer program that predicts criminals. The sheriff’s office is accused of then proceeding to harass the “future criminals” identified by the program.
Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco sought to dismiss the case. According to the Institute for Justice(IJ), the organization representing the plaintiffs in the case, Judge Steven Merryday’s ruling to dismiss the motion to dismiss is a victory.
“Today’s decision is an important step toward the ultimate dismantling of the program,” explained Ari Bargil, an attorney at the Institute for Justice.
The lawsuit cites a “dystopian ‘predictive policing’ program used in the county, and enforced by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO). According to the IJ, for the past decade, the PCSO has used a “crude computer algorithm to identify and target supposed ‘future criminals.’”
The Tampa Bay Timesconducted an investigation that found out that the sheriff’s deputies show up at the homes of the identified “potential criminals” unannounced and demand to enter. If there was no cooperation, the deputies would write tickets for petty offenses such as having tall grass or missing house numbers.
A former deputy told the paper that they were ordered to “make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
“By rejecting the PCSO’s attempt to have the case thrown out, the judge signaled that the plaintiffs’ claims are meritorious and that a full inquiry into the constitutional legitimacy of the program is necessary. We look forward to proving up our claims in the weeks and months to come.”
The lawsuit, filed at the US District Court in Tampa, argues that the program and the sheriff’s office violate the Fourteenth, Fourth, and First Amendments. The case was filed by IJ on behalf of Robert Jones, Darlene Deegan, Dalanea Taylor, and Tammy Heilman, all who were “relentlessly surveilled and harassed.”
According to IJ, Jones received the worst treatment, which started in 2015 after his son was involved in an incident where police also became involved. After that, the “deputies started to conduct ‘prolific offender checks.’ These warrantless ‘checks’ involved repeated, unannounced visits to Robert’s home at all hours of the day. Robert grew tired of the harassment and stopped cooperating with police. That only made matters worse.”
He was then given a citation after the deputies measured the length of his grass and said it was too tall. He was later arrested for failing to appear in court for the citation, which “he was never told was happening.” He was arrested four more times after that.
“I lived through a living hell because a computer program said my family didn’t belong in Pasco,” said Robert Jones. “I only thought this kind of thing happened in movies, not in America. We’ve got rights. And I’m going to stand up for them and shut this program down.”
“The Pasco Sheriff’s Office has appointed itself judge, jury, and executioner in the lives of its residents, punishing alleged future criminals for hypothetical crimes that have not been committed,” said IJ Senior Attorney Rob Johnson. “Today’s decision means the sheriff is going to have to justify that behavior before a real judge.”
What we’ve just witnessed in Afghanistan is a historical repeat of the ‘Saigon moment’. But the final hours of the US occupation have been accompanied by a cacophony of neocons decrying the decision to end the war.
They cite women’s rights, regional stability and anti-terrorism as reasons the US should have remained in Afghanistan. But those were the very reasons cited for starting the war in the first place, back in 2001. How many more decades do they expect the world to be held hostage to the narratives of ‘the humanitarian war’? It’s now, at the end of the US’s longest war, that we must reflect on the past 20 years, and consider how it was that those false “humanitarian” narratives led us to this point.
Some of the most grave human rights violations occurred at the very onset of the war.
In the first months, the US dropped thousands of yellow cluster bombs around Afghan villages. They resembled aid packages – also yellow. Children would rush to collect what they believed to be food, only to end up dead after picking up and setting off an explosive device.
In an incident now known as ‘the convoy of death’, Taliban fighters who surrendered to the Afghan Northern Alliance were stuffed into sealed shipping containers and allowed to asphyxiate as they were driven across the desert – allegedly under the watchful eye of the CIA.
The list of US war crimes grew as the years went by. Reports emerged that US soldiers were killing civilians and allegedly keeping their body parts as souvenirs. Thanks to the bravery of former British Army major turned Australian army lawyer David McBride, who leaked secret documents, we learnt that Australian special forces had a similar kill team operating in Afghanistan.
One of the strongest narratives that sold the war on Afghanistan to the public was what removing the Taliban could do for women’s rights. But the notion that the US had any real interest in women’s rights is ludicrous, since, in the first place, it was the US that helped the Taliban take control of Afghanistan away from the Soviet-backed secular government.
In 2001, when the former Islamist commanders from the days of the anti-Soviet insurgency came to power, ‘bacha bazi’ – a practice linked with the oppression of women’s rights and child sex abuse that had been outlawed by the Taliban – became common again. American soldiers were reportedly instructed not to intervene, not even when their Afghan allies abused boys on US military bases. In fact, in 2010, a WikiLeaks cable revealed that American mercenaries in the employ of DynCorp paid to bring bacha bazi boys onto a military base to dance for Afghan commanders.
Afghan women deserve rights, but not through US occupation.
And, while we’re talking about rights abuses, what about the rights of American soldiers? How many young men were buried in pursuit of this ill-fated war? Many who survived face a lifetime of pain or mental illness. Veterans are twice as likely as the average American to die from an overdose using opioids – which, ironically, likely originated in Afghanistan.
According to the US military, 90% of the world’s heroin is made from Afghan opium. In 2000, the Taliban outlawed its cultivation, but after the US invasion, there was record-high production year after year. The US effectively turned Afghanistan into a narco-state. Even the longest-running US-backed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had a brother who was a drug lord and allegedly on the CIA’s payroll. It is perhaps no coincidence that the US is now facing one of the deadliest opioid epidemics in a century.
In order to buy into the notion that the US pull-out will be a threat to peace and stability in the region, we would first have to believe the occupation of Afghanistan was a source of peace and stability. The reality is, in the past 20 years, not a day went by without violence, and it has left Afghanistan in ruins. The invasion was sold as a way to defeat Al-Qaeda in the War on Terror, but instead, we saw the rise of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) across the Middle East and an increase in terrorist activity across the globe. Again, if the US were serious about defeating terrorism, it wouldn’t be backing Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Syria.
There is no reason to believe that America’s goals in Afghanistan had anything to do with maintaining stability. Although the US military has pulled out, that may, in fact, be part of Washington’s calculus to cause instability from afar – a cheaper alternative to the occupation. After all, as it pivots towards a confrontation with China, the US needs to retain its resources. China’s volatile Xinjiang province shares a border with Afghanistan. It would want to avoid any instability that could mean militants flowing over that border. Perhaps the US hopes to draw China into the graveyard of empires.
No one has a higher stake in maintaining Afghanistan’s stability than its neighbours – in particular, Pakistan, China, Iran, and Russia. After 40 years of conflict, the Taliban is now decidedly more pragmatic in its dealings with all of them. Russia, in spite of its own history of war in Afghanistan, has decided to normalise relations with the Taliban in the interests of stability. Iran, which had its share of animosity towards the formerly anti-Shi’ite Taliban, hosted peace talks with the militants and the US-backed Afghan government. China, too, has had its issues with the Taliban, as members of its Uighur minority have previously crossed the border to join Al-Qaeda and fight alongside them. The Taliban has promised not to intervene in China’s Uighur issue and, in return, China has offered to build Afghanistan’s infrastructure and bring it out of an era of ruin into an era of economic prosperity. That’s something else the decades of US control failed to accomplish.
Whatever may come next, as the last Chinook takes off from the US Embassy, Afghans finally have the ability to decide their own destiny. May we all stop to think twice when next the neocons spin a humanitarian narrative to breach the sovereignty of a nation.
Maram Susli is a Syrian-Australian political analyst and commentator. She has written for New Eastern Outlook and Sputnik UK, among others.
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.” … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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