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Putting Israel First, Rubio Victimizes Harmless Student Over Op-Ed

Using slander, imprisonment and deportation to suppress Israel criticism

By Brian McGlinchey | Stark Realities | May 31, 2025

Given Marco Rubio’s long history of subservience to the State of Israel — which has earned him a mountain of campaign cash from the country’s US-based collaborators — many Americans were understandably wary that his ascension from senator to secretary of State portended disturbing moves to advance Israel’s interests. However, few foresaw Rubio orchestrating the abduction, imprisonment and deportation of foreign students for using their universal human right of free speech to criticize the Israeli government and advocate for Palestinians.

With President Trump’s blessing, Rubio has targeted many foreign students in this fashion — students who’ve been charged with no crimes. However, no case better illustrates the campaign’s casual cruelty than that of 30-year-old Tufts University PhD candidate Rumeysa Ozturk. Ozturk, who’s been studying child development, was arrested in March and whisked away to a far-off prison merely because — an entire year earlier — she co-authored a Tufts Daily op-ed urging the university to formally characterize Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, and to sell the school’s Israel-associated investments.

Rubio would like you to assume her essay must have been an unhinged, antisemitic, violence-inciting screed. To the contrary, harkening back to Tufts’ 1989 decision to divest from apartheid South Africa, its tone is decidedly calm and measured. Read this excerpt of the essay’s most pointed language about Israel and judge for yourself:

These [student senate] resolutions were the product of meaningful debate…and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

… the student body is calling for … the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.

Ozturk’s persecution represents a major escalation of an aggravating dynamic in which people in the United States are vilified as dangerous, volatile antisemites for saying things about Israel that are frequently said by respected people and institutions in Israel. For example, in an op-ed of his own, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week wrote, “What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians … Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”

In March of this year, the State Department revoked Ozturk’s student visa without notifying her — she had no idea that her presence in the country was now illegal. Four days later, in an incident captured on video, she was grabbed off a Somerville, Massachusetts street by masked, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, taken to New Hampshire and then Vermont, before being shackled in chains and airlifted 1,400 miles to a federal detention center in Louisiana.

For the next month and a half, she was stuffed with 23 others in a cell meant for 14. Ozturk says constant exposure to dust and inadequate ventilation sparked more than a dozen asthma attacks — after having previously had only about 13 in her entire life. Sleep was hard to come by, as motion-detecting fluorescent lights repeatedly triggered throughout the night.

Trying to justify the unjustifiable, the Trump administration has gone to slanderous extremes to vilify Ozturk. In a since-deleted social media post following her arrest, Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said “DHS + ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” (As an aside, note that, while some 43 Americans — including dual nationals — died in the Oct 7 attacks, there’s no history of Hamas ever setting out to target Americans.)

When protests of Israel’s tactics in Gaza erupted in 2022, Israel supporters across government, major media and social media branded all pro-Palestine protesters as Hamas supporters and antisemites. With the ascendency of the second Trump administration, that tactic has evolved from a malicious PR smear to a government-weaponized allegation that’s putting nonviolent foreign students in prisons and derailing their lives — all in service to a foreign country.

In a partial reversal of her appalling treatment, Ozturk was released from confinement on May 9 on the orders of a federal judge, who also denied the government’s wish to make her wear an ankle monitor. However, her troubles are far from over: In addition to the enduring harm of a six-week interruption of her academic pursuits, she is still targeted for deportation.

When DHS initially leveled the “activities in support of Hamas” accusation against Ozturk, many people assumed the government must have something on her other than an essay in a student newspaper. However, as the weeks ground on, the government never pointed to anything else, something US District Judge William Sessions noted when he ordered her to be released from her cage in Louisiana :

“I suggested to the government that they produce any additional information which would suggest that she posed a substantial risk. And that was three weeks ago, and there has been no evidence introduced by the government other than the op-ed. That literally is the case. There is no evidence here... The court finds that Ms. Öztürk has raised a substantial claim of a constitutional violation.”

Judge Sessions called Ozturk’s seizure “a traumatic incident” and said “her continued detention potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.” That is most certainly the Trump administration’s goal.

Falling for Rubio’s dishonest portrayal of his prey and failing to scrutinize the facts, many so-called “conservatives” have enthused over his drive to deport anti-Israel activists and rushed to defend it. In their flimsiest argument, you’ll find them claiming Ozturk and others have no right of free speech because they’re not US citizens. That hollow attack rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of rights — one that wrongly views rights as government-granted privileges, rather than something that springs from one’s humanity. As I’ve explained elsewhere at Stark Realities, the Constitution’s Bill of Rights isn’t a granting of rights, it’s a prohibition against government interference with pre-existing rights shared by everyone on Earth.

Employing a quintessential straw man argument, Rubio and others also say “nobody has a right to a visa.” The controversy has never been about any mythical entitlement to visas — it’s about the morality and constitutionality of using visa revocations as a means of punishing and suppressing expression of certain political beliefs.

To mete out that punishment, Rubio and the Trump administration are exploiting the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which recklessly empowers the secretary of State — a single individual — to deport foreigners the secretary deems “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the United States. The law provides no elaboration on that standard, much less any provision for its application with any semblance of due process for the affected individual.

Invoking that provision, the administration told a court that DHS and ICE determined Ozturk “had been involved in associations that ‘may undermine U.S foreign policy by creating a hostile environment for Jewish students and indicating support for a designated terrorist organization’ including co-authoring an op-ed that found common cause with an organization that was later temporarily banned from campus.”

First, note how tangential and tenuous the opening and concluding allegations are. The government says Ozturk is being targeted for unspecified “associations,” and because her stance on Israel merely overlaps with the stance of a campus group that was only temporarily banned.

Next, we see the Trump administration dishonestly saying Ozturk “indicat[ed] support for Hamas” by writing an op-ed calling for Tufts to say Israel is committing war crimes, and to divest from the country. The op-ed never mentions Hamas or Oct. 7 or even implicitly endorses the group or its tactics, and there’s been no allegation of any other form of her supposed “support for Hamas.”

The administration also employs the Israeli-propagandist idea that criticism of the State of Israel — a political entity — creates a “hostile environment” for Jewish students. That notion is itself a form of bigotry — as it presumes all Jews endorse Israel’s actions. Of course, that presumption is belied by the significant presence of Jewish students in many protests of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Meanwhile, the notion that pro-Israel Jews should be protected from hearing contrary views is wildly hypocritical from an administration that — in regard to other topics — has rightly targeted censorship meant to prevent so-called “snowflakes” from having their feelings hurt.

Defenders of the administration’s conduct are compelled to do more than point to its supposed legality under a 1952 law. From FDR putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps to Woodrow Wilson jailing opponents of the draft, there’s a difference between legality and morality and bona fide constitutionality. Meanwhile, Ozturk’s ongoing challenge of her arrest and pending deportation may well reset the bounds of what’s legal under the Immigration and Nationality Act, with the courts potentially ruling it’s unconstitutional to revoke a visa over the expression of an opinion.

Finally, even the most ardent backers of the Israeli government should recognize that the use of the Immigration Act to round up and deport people whose views are inconsistent with the current administration’s foreign policy threatens to set a dangerous precedent — one that could see a future, Israel-hostile White House seizing, jailing and deporting foreign students who advocate US aid to Israel.

Over his political career, Rubio’s unwavering dedication to the agenda of the State of Israel has earned him a wealth of campaign contributions: Between 2019 and 2024, his largest and third-largest donors were the Pro-Israel PAC and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Those donors are again cashing in as their mercenary carries out a ruthless and deceitful drive to suppress anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian speech.

Consistent with the broader campaign of mass character-assassination that Israel’s advocates have long directed against critics of Israel, Rubio has repeatedly smeared Ozturk by insinuating that she is guilty of behavior that neither the federal government nor anyone else has accused her of, and even implying she is insane. For example, here’s what Rubio said at a March press conference:

“We revoked her visa… and here’s why… If you apply for a visa to enter the United States and be a student and you tell us that the reason why you’re coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds, but because you want to participate in movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus, we’re not going to give you a visa…. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa. We’re looking every day for these lunatics that are tearing things up.”

Challenged last week in a House Foreign Affairs hearing, Rubio said he “proudly” revoked Ozturk’s visa, defiantly adding “we’re going to do more of them.” Refusing to answer pointed questions about the constitutionality of deporting Ozturk for writing an op-ed, Rubio again reflexively resorted to maliciously dishonest hyperbole, saying “We’re revoking the visas of any lunatics we can identify.”

Ozturk is one of an unknown number of foreign, Palestinian-sympathizing students targeted for deportation by the Trump administration, which is providing very little transparency about the individuals concerned or specific rationales for the revocation of their visas.

The censorship blitz is disturbing enough on its face, but there’s another dimension that makes it even more sinister: In selecting Ozturk and other foreign students for persecution, the Trump administration is apparently heeding the suggestions of two shadowy and menacing pro-Israel organizations that use intimidation tactics on Israel’s behalf: Canary Mission and Betar.

According to its website, Canary Mission “documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond.” (Including “the USA” in its mission statement is dishonest pandering; listing it first is a joke.) In practice, Canary Mission works to silence Israel’s critics by using false allegations of antisemitism, doxxing, and the threat of career and reputational harm that could come from landing on its internet blacklist.

In one of the most unsettling incidents attributed to the group, two men in canary costumes stood silently in a George Washington University lobby in 2018 as the student government was set to vote on an Israel divestment resolution. In the days before the vote, Canary Mission flyers posted on campus warned “THERE ARE NO SECRETS. WE WILL KNOW YOUR VOTE AND WILL ACT ACCORDINGLY.”

Shortly after Ozturk’s arrest, Canary Mission posted a triumphant social media thread, saying “sources point to her Canary Mission profile as the primary cause.” That profile is thin. Linking to her Tufts op-ed, Canary Mission only claims she “engaged in anti-Israel activism in March 2024” (the month the op-ed was published) and is “a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.”

Betar brags that it is directly providing a list of targets to the administration. Maliciously referring to Ozturk and other peaceful activists as “jihadis,” the group took credit for her arrest: “She was on our list. Many more jihadis are. We will be making a new submission Monday with approximately 1800 more jihadis.”

Betar is a Zionist youth group founded in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who promoted an expansive vision of Israel that would see it take over not only the West Bank and Gaza, but part of Jordan too. The group’s ideology, rhetoric and embrace of vandalism, theft and vigilantism prompted even the staunchly Zionist Anti-Defamation League to list it among extremist and hateful groups.

An appalling incident in February illuminates the enormity of Betar’s Jewish-supremacist fanaticism. When a journalist posted a long list of names of Palestinian infants killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, Betar’s official account replied, “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!”

The group has also endorsed the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. The irony is sickening: The Trump administration arrested Ozturk for saying Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — and the recommendation to revoke her visa came from a group that calls for genocide in Gaza.

While Betar and Canary Mission seem to be playing a key role in identifying targets, the broader scheme of weaponizing the Immigration and Nationality Act by smearing Israel’s critics as pro-Hamas antisemites who undermine US foreign policy was the brainchild of the Heritage Foundation. According to New York Times, the group in 2023 launched Project Esther, “an ambitious plan to fight antisemitism by branding a broad range of critics of Israel as ‘effectively a terrorist support network,’ so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered ‘open society’.”

Achieving new heights of hypocrisy, Rubio this week declared that “free speech… legally enshrined in our constitution, has set us apart as a beacon of freedom around the world.” His soaring rhetoric came as he announced a new policy that will deny visas to “foreign officials and persons who are complicit in censoring Americans.”

While Ozturk’s story has received significant media attention, the same mainstream media that relentlessly promoted the 2020 Russia-collusion hoax is now failing to cast the Trump administration’s campaign against pro-Palestinian campus activism for what it is: The unconstitutional suppression of the human right of free expression in appalling subservience to a foreign government and its domestic, America-Second accomplices.

In case you’re inclined to shrug off Rubio’s campaign because its victims are foreigners, make no mistake — there are people inside and outside the US government who would love to see American citizens similarly seized and shackled for criticizing the State of Israel. Over the past several years, those forces have been aggressively pushing various means of using government power to suppress Israel’s critics:

  • The proposed Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would use an expansive definition of antisemitism to inflict penalties on schools that allow various forms of criticism of Israel to be expressed on their campuses — even by American citizens
  • The successful enactment of state laws requiring contractors to certify that they will not participate in boycotts of Israel — alongside repeated attempts to pass a similar federal law
  • Lawfare in the form of bogus lawsuits filed against universities, accusing them of failing to prevent “antisemitic incidents” that are simply expressions of opinions about Israel that Zionists revile
  • The Trump administration’s withdrawal of federal education funding from schools that tolerate “antisemitism” — with that term purposefully misdefined to encompass criticism of the Israeli government

Amid Americans’ steadily-shrinking support for Israel — even 50% of Republicans under 50 years old now view the country unfavorably — those forces are only going to grow more desperate and brazen in their assault on free expression in the United States. It’s the patriotic duty of every American — including Israel’s backers and critics alike — to resist them every step of the way.

June 2, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Australian doctor reports victims at Gaza aid distribution point shot in head, chest

MEMO | June 2, 2025

Australian Doctor Ahmed Abu Sweid said that several people shot by Israeli occupation forces yesterday morning at an aid distribution point in Rafah, southern Gaza, had been hit by bullets in the head and chest.

Dr Abu Sweid, who is volunteering in the emergency department at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Yunis, said: “We have only been here for a few days, and the level of trauma I have seen here is unlike anything I have witnessed before.”

“Today, we’ve had a significant number of casualties, with hundreds of confirmed injuries.”

Dr Abu Sweid, a specialist in emergency medicine, explained that the hospital is “full” and that medical teams are struggling due to a lack of essential medical equipment.

He continued: “We have only been here for a few days, but the doctors here have been dealing with the same situation for the past 200 days, and they are exhausted.”

He confirmed that all the victims were civilians. “They were instructed to collect food but instead suffered gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries. Most are in critical condition,” adding that some victims “were already deceased upon arrival, having been shot in the head and chest.”

June 2, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

White House Taps Palantir for Government-Wide Database of Americans

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | June 1, 2025

In a move raising red flags with civil rights organizations, the Trump administration is working with tech firm Palantir to develop a database for numerous government agencies to collect and store information on all Americans.

According to a New York Times report published Friday, a “key” Palantir product known as Foundry has been used by at least four US federal agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. The firm is now speaking with other cabinet-level agencies.

The widespread use of Foundry across the federal government will allow a number of agencies to access “hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.”

The program has caused concern among civil rights groups and former Palantir employees. “Data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses,” one ex-Palantir official told the Times. “Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the IRS, and the Social Security Administration are all expected to have access to the database. The system will work with Palantir’s Gotham software, which is “designed to analyze behavioral patterns in real-time, flag potential threats, and support decisions around public safety and fraud detection,” the Economic Times reported.

In a statement posted on the company’s blog, Palantir attempted to downplay its role in the project. “We act as a data processor, not a data controller,” it said. “Our software and services are used under direction from the organisations that license our products: these organisations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.”

Since Trump returned to office, Palantir has racked up over $100 million in government contracts, and the firm is slated to strike a nearly $800 million deal with the Pentagon. Palantir is also a major contractor for the Ukrainian and Israeli governments.

The company’s stock increased 5% after the NYT story revealed the contract, and is up 150% since Trump won the election.

Palantir co-founders Alex Karp and Peter Thiel have both been confronted over their work with the Israel Defense Forces as Tel Aviv ethnically cleanses Palestinians from Gaza. The co-founders defended the relationship with the IDF.

June 1, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

‘Brussels hijacked our future’ – Orban

RT | June 1, 2025

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has unveiled a proposal to increase the power of EU members and limit the authority of its bureaucracy. Calling it a “patriotic plan” for the bloc, he said in a series of weekend social media posts that it will revive the “European dream.”

The EU elites in Brussels have exploited every crisis to amass more power, Orban claimed in a post on X. This course has so far only translated into less sovereignty for member states and “failed policies,” according to the prime minister. “Brussels hijacked our future” by disrupting public safety through migration and eroding prosperity with “green dogmas,” he stated in another post.

“Europe can’t afford this any longer, it’s time to take back control,” he said.

The PM’s plan is based on what he calls four pillars: a path toward peace on the continent and defusing tensions with Russia, removing Brussels’ “centralized control” over finances, “bringing back free speech” and strengthening Europe’s Christian identity, and tightening control over immigration.

“We want peace, we don’t need a new Eastern front,” Orban said, commenting on his plan and stating that the bloc should not accept Ukraine as a member. “We don’t want our money poured into someone else’s war,” he added.

A military buildup and defense increase actively promoted by some EU nations could easily lock the bloc in an “arms race” with Russia, Orban warned. Such a development would “devour… taxpayers’ money,” he said. Instead of pouring more resources into the military, the bloc needs to contribute to the peace process between Moscow and Kiev, the prime minister maintained, praising US President Donald Trump’s efforts in this regard.

The EU needs to start “arms limitation talks with the Russians as soon as possible. Otherwise, all our money will be swallowed by the arms industry instead of being spent on peaceful… goals,” Orban argued.

European nations once united to create the “safest and the most advanced continent” in the world but this dream was “stolen,” the prime minister charged, calling on EU nations not to allow Brussels to use the Ukraine conflict “as an excuse to take more of our money.”

June 1, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

EC launches European fact-checking funding network to advance “Democracy Shield” and expand censorship

A €5 million fact-checking project becomes the velvet glove on the iron fist of EU content governance

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 30, 2025

The European Commission has launched a €5 million initiative presented as a fact-checking support program; but beneath the surface, it reads as yet another calculated step toward institutionalizing censorship across the European Union.

This call for proposals is marketed as a tool to “protect democracy” and combat “disinformation,” but the structure, goals, and affiliations of the program point clearly to the opposite: a top-down, publicly funded apparatus for narrative enforcement.

Slated to run until September 2, 2025, the project is open not only to EU Member States but also to candidate countries like Ukraine and Moldova; jurisdictions framed as highly vulnerable to “foreign interference,” especially pro-Kremlin disinformation.

This strategic framing serves a dual purpose: justifying increased surveillance of content and securing narrative dominance in geopolitically sensitive areas.

The program’s core deliverables; protecting fact-checkers from so-called “harassment,” creating a centralized repository of “fact-checks,” and building emergency “response capacity;” sound benign to some. But stripped of the euphemism, this is a blueprint for constructing a continent-wide content control grid.

The “protection scheme” offers legal and cyber assistance to fact-checkers, but more crucially it reinforces the narrative that opposition to these groups constitutes abuse rather than legitimate disagreement.

The “fact-check repository” enables centralized curation of what counts as “truth,” and the “emergency response” function gives the Commission a pretext to fast-track suppression efforts in politically sensitive moments.

Most telling is the program’s requirement that participating organizations be certified by either the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) or the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).

Many of their members, such as AFP and Full Fact, already work directly with major social media platforms like Meta under third-party moderation schemes. This effectively means the EC is reinforcing an exclusive gatekeeper class, already aligned with corporate censorship programs, now endowed with taxpayer funds and the backing of the European bureaucracy.

At least 60% of the funding will go to third parties, who must co-finance their participation.

The Commission claims this initiative supports the “European Democracy Shield,” a term that in practice functions as rhetorical armor for suppressing free expression.

Every policy facet of this initiative is tied to managing or mitigating “disinformation,” yet no clear or objective criteria for what constitutes disinformation are provided.

This vagueness enables the flexible application of suppression to a broad range of unwelcome speech.

May 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine faces record military desertions amid forced mobilization

Al Mayadeen | May 30, 2025

Ukraine’s military is witnessing a sharp and unprecedented rise in desertion cases, with 25,508 incidents recorded in the first five months of 2025 alone, according to data from Ukraine’s Unified State Register of Court Decisions.

If the current trend continues, the number of desertions could reach an estimated 61,000 by the end of the year.

In April 2025 alone, 6,245 soldiers deserted, marking a steep increase from 4,992 in January.

By comparison, 2024 saw 35,750 recorded desertions, nearly triple the 12,563 cases reported in 2023.

Inconsistent penalties, legal loopholes undermine discipline

The rise in Ukraine’s military desertions highlights an erosion of military discipline, compounded by legal inconsistencies.

The Pravda news website noted that while some soldiers face up to five years in prison, others return to active duty through legal loopholes or lenient judicial interpretations.

Analysts point to the pressures of forced mobilization and prolonged conflict as major contributors to the rise in desertion cases.

Ukrainian authorities have reportedly opted to turn a blind eye to discipline to avoid further reducing their fighting force, a trade-off that comes at the expense of unit cohesion and morale.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

‘It is grotesque. It is authoritarian’ – AfD’s Weidel warns of growing assault on democracy in Germany at CPAC Hungary

Remix News | May 30, 2025

Alternative for Germany (AfD) leader Alice Weidel used the stage at CPAC Hungary to raise awareness of what she says is growing authoritarian behavior from the German government towards millions of Germans. She points to calls to ban her party, the second-largest party in the country and the leading opposition party, as well as attacks on free speech and spying from the country’s powerful domestic intelligence agency.

“Let’s be clear, and this is what we want you to know. What we want the world to know what’s going on in Germany. Influential politicians in Germany have their minds up on banning the strongest opposition party on banning us the alternative for Germany,” said Weidel.

“They would eliminate a political force which will soon form the government in several East German regions. Furthermore, they want to ban a party and has caught up with and overtaken the chancellor’s party itself. It is grotesque. It is authoritarian. And yes, this is a path they pursue, but they will not prevail. They will not prevail,” she added.

Weidel’s party, the AfD, had not been previously invited to any CPAC events in Hungary in the previous three years, but this pattern appears to have been broken. Orbán, who said that he had not previously conducted outreach with the AfD due to threats from the German government and in order to maintain ties with Berlin, publicly backed the AfD before national elections in Germany last year.

Weidel has only grown in popularity since those elections, and her party has even broken into first place in many polls for the first time. Approximately one in four Germans now backs the party, yet, the establishment has only upped its assault on the party, including the domestic spy agency, the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV):

“The attempt to silence critical voices by framing them as right wing and extremist. Under the pretext of fighting hate speech and disinformation, legitimate opinions are being criminalized. And finally, there is our domestic intelligence service, the so-called Office for the Protection of our Constitution. In reality, it’s nothing but a service for protecting the establishment’s dwindling power.

When it comes to regular intelligence work uncovering terrorists and preventing terrorist attacks, this office is a complete failure. Instead of attending to the proper task, they spy on the opposition with one goal in mind to denounce the AFD as an enemy of the constitution and fabricate a pretext for outlawing our party.”

Weidel says that the establishment parties in Germany are looking to stop her party instead of addressing the legitimate issues driving her party’s growing popularity.

“In today’s speech, I am going to shed some light on the situation in Germany. For you to get some transparency about what’s going on in our home country. Our legacy media and establishment politicians fear us like no other party with good reason. More and more voters in Germany are simply fed up with being lied to and watching their quality of life deteriorating year for year.

Establishment politics have turned Germany into a danger zone for its citizens. Its people suffer from mass migration, exploding crime rates, high taxes, energy prices, inflation and the destruction of wealth. That’s why they voted out the old left-green government only to get a government that continues down the same disastrous path.

They got a government that pretends to prevent illegal immigration while leaving the gates wide open. In a futile attempt to evade his domestic problems, our chancellor travels the world fomenting conflict and throwing German taxpayers’ money out of the window as we see in the Ukraine. But when it comes to the daily horrors of imported migrant violence and Islamist terror on the streets, our chancellor remains silent.”

She also accused Merz of essentially stealing the AfD’s program, and then once winning the election, turning his back on all the promises he once made. Most notably, Merz immediately abandoned his promise to not take on more debt and relax the debt brake, instead choosing to take on nearly a trillion in debt.

“Mr. Merz won the election with copy-and-paste promises taken from us, the Alternative for Germany’s, program. The day after the election he went back on his word in every regard. He sold his soul to the leftists and kept them in power in exchange for being elected chancellor himself. Desperately clinging to power by all means has become the primary concern of our establishment politicians,” said Weidel. “Driven by panic, they bent laws, manipulate the constitution and eliminate the fundamental rights of the parliamentary opposition in order to prevent a democratic transfer of power. The current government continues a war on free speech started by its predecessors.”

Weidel said that her party represents 10 million voters, yet, these voters are being excluded by the firewall all parties say they have established against the AfD, which means they refuse to work with the party in government.

“The wind of change is blowing strong in Europe and in the Western world. The future belongs to free, patriotic citizens and sovereign nations. This conference gives testimony to that fact. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, thank you and your country for hosting us. You are truly a beacon of freedom. Thank you,” said Weidel towards the end of her speech.

May 30, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Report: Biden May Not Have Even Known About Detrimental Climate Policies of his Own Administration

Power The Future | May 28, 2025

While the Biden administration was quick to tout and implement its aggressive climate agenda, a closer look raises a more troubling question: did President Joe Biden ever even know about some of the sweeping actions taken in his name?

We reviewed eight major executive actions that fundamentally reshaped American energy policy, from banning offshore drilling to invoking emergency powers to boost solar manufacturing, and found no evidence that President Biden ever personally spoke about any of them. Not in a press conference. Not in a speech. Not even a video statement.

These aren’t minor procedural documents, memos, or messaging documents. They include:

  • Clean AI Data Centers EO (Jan. 14, 2025): Gave the Departments of Defense and Energy the green light to lease public land for AI data centers, provided they’re powered by “clean energy,” of course.
  • Offshore Drilling Ban (Jan. 6 2025): Pulled over 625 million acres of the Outer Continental Shelf out of future oil and gas leasing. Biden never mentioned it on camera.
  • EO 14143 (Jan. 16 2025): A last-days-of-the-administration decree making AmeriCorps alumni eligible for preferential federal hiring, potentially reshaping the makeup of the federal workforce without public debate and allowing eco-left to insert themselves in the administration.
  • Arctic Drilling Ban (March 13, 2023): Prohibited oil and gas leasing in sensitive areas of the Arctic. Notably timed just after approval of the Willow Project, this was a political fig leaf, not a presidential priority.
  • Defense Production Act Invocation (June 6, 2022): Used Cold War-era emergency powers to push solar panels and heat pumps without a peep from Biden himself.
  • EO 14027 (May 7, 2021): Created a “Climate Change Support Office” buried in bureaucracy, giving climate staffers yet another taxpayer-funded silo of influence.
  • EO 14030 (May 20, 2021): Ordered all federal agencies to assess “climate-related financial risk,” laying the groundwork for ESG-style investing mandates across the government.
  • EO 14057 (Dec. 8, 2021): Committed the entire federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050 and required 100% carbon-free electricity by 2030—one of the most expansive decarbonization orders in history.

After uncovering this slew of major executive actions reshaping America’s energy landscape that were never publicly addressed by President Biden, Power The Future Executive Director stated: “Americans deserve to know which unelected staffers or radical unnamed activists implemented sweeping change through an autopen. The Biden energy agenda destroyed livelihoods of energy workers and fueled the record-high inflation that broke the budgets of millions of Americans. The question is simple, and deserves an immediate answer: what did Joe Biden know, and when did he know it?”

Despite their massive consequences for American energy producers, workers, and consumers, President Biden made no public comment, on camera or to press, about any of these actions.

This lack of public acknowledgment begs the question of whether these orders were auto-penned by eco-left policy by ghostwriters?

Americans deserve to know whether their president is making energy policy or whether it’s being run by anonymous staffers in federal agencies and activist NGOs behind closed doors.

When executive power is used to shut down energy production, rewire the economy, and restructure the federal workforce, the American people should at least expect their elected leader to own it.

Instead, we’re left with a pile of signed orders and zero accountability. Power The Future will continue investigating the true origins of these impactful policies.

May 29, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Babiš attacks EU elites and calls for ‘renaissance of principle’ in fiery CPAC speech

Czech opposition leader Andrej Babiš branded Brussels a “technocracy without a soul” and warned that Europe is being dismantled from within

Remix News | May 29, 2025

Former Czech prime minister and current opposition leader Andrej Babiš delivered a blistering speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Hungary on Thursday, accusing the European Union’s ruling class of betraying its founding values and urging European nations to reclaim sovereignty and common sense from what he called a failing liberal global order.

Speaking just months before a general election in which he is widely expected to return to power, Babiš portrayed the EU as a decaying institution ruled by unelected bureaucrats, ideologues, and activist networks who have imposed censorship, economic sabotage, and uncontrolled migration on member states. He warned that the Brussels establishment has replaced cooperation among sovereign nations with a coercive, centralized system that punishes dissent and erodes national identity.

“We are standing at the historic crossroads in a time marked by deep divisions and mounting tensions,” Babiš declared. “The elites who built and profited from this system now look on in disbelief, confusion, and anger as it falls apart. But they have only themselves to blame. They betrayed the citizens who trusted them.”

In a wide-ranging speech, Babiš accused EU leaders of undermining the very foundations of European civilization. He denounced Brussels for replacing love of country with “hollow globalism,” burying common sense under “endless layers of bureaucracy,” and attempting to substitute the natural population growth with “mass migration.”

He reserved specific criticism for three key EU initiatives: the Digital Services Act, the Green Deal, and the new Migration Pact. He accused the first of ushering in online censorship, the second of sabotaging Europe’s economy under the guise of environmentalism, and the third of forcing nations to accept migrant quotas in violation of their sovereignty.

“Under this law, dissent can become a punishable offense,” Babiš said of the Digital Services Act. “This isn’t about safety. It’s about silencing.”

On the Green Deal, he argued that while China is expanding coal and nuclear power, Europe is deliberately impoverishing itself for symbolic environmental virtue. “This is not sustainability,” he said. “It’s economic self-sabotage dressed up as an environmental virtue.”

Turning to migration, he described the EU’s new asylum system as “coercion,” not solidarity, and said it “undermines cohesion, public safety, and national identity.”

Babiš framed these developments as part of a broader ideological drift in Brussels, where he said freedom is being replaced with surveillance, culture with identity politics, and values with apology. “They no longer defend our heritage, they apologize for it,” he said. “Instead of protecting Europe, they deconstruct it.”

Calling for a “renaissance, not just of policy, but of principle,” Babiš urged the EU to return to its original form: a voluntary community of nations rooted in mutual respect, diversity, and national self-determination.

“Europe is not Brussels. It is Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Rome, Paris, Madrid,” he declared. “It is the voices of citizens who want to be heard. It is the right of nations to govern themselves.”

“The age of patriots has begun,” Babiš concluded. “Not because we want to divide Europe, but because we want to save it.”

His appearance at CPAC Hungary — an event known for bringing together conservative leaders from across Europe and the United States — further cemented his alignment with other nationalist voices in the region, including Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Germany’s Alice Weidel, and Austrian Freedom Party leader Herbert Kickl.

May 29, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

ADL Regional Director Calls for Government-Regulated Online Censorship

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 27, 2025

The Anti-Defamation League’s David Goldenberg is demanding a broad overhaul of how speech is governed on the internet, calling for both government intervention and intensified corporate censorship. In a recent appearance, Goldenberg, who heads the ADL’s Midwest operations, expressed frustration over what he sees as declining efforts by tech firms to suppress online content he deems hateful.

Citing Meta’s rollback of its fact-checking team in the United States, he argued that platforms must be forced to take action. “You have a platform like Meta that just gutted its entire fact-checking department… And so what we need to do is we need to apply pressure in a real significant way on tech platforms that they have a responsibility, that they have an absolute responsibility to check and remove hateful speech that is insightful.(sic)”

Goldenberg advocated not just for voluntary moderation, but for legislative and regulatory measures, both at the federal and state level, that would compel platforms to act as speech enforcers. He pointed to efforts in states like California as examples of where local governments are already testing such models.

His concern centers around what he perceives as an ecosystem of radicalization made easily accessible by today’s digital infrastructure. He warned that extremist ideologies no longer require obscure forums or dark web communities to spread. “It used to be you had to fight going into the deep dark web… Now… it’s easier and easier to be exposed in the mainstream,” he said.

Framing the online environment as a catalyst for violence, Goldenberg argued that free access to controversial viewpoints must be curtailed. He called for social media companies to take a stronger stance by excluding users whose views fall outside accepted boundaries, adding that regulation should enforce this responsibility.

He zeroed in on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a critical piece of legislation that shields platforms from legal liability over user-posted content. “Congress needs to amend Section 230, which provides immunity to tech platforms right now for what happens,” Goldenberg said. He dismissed comparisons between modern platforms and telecommunications companies, referencing past remarks by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg about how phone providers were not liable for threats made over calls. Goldenberg’s view was blunt: “These tech platforms are not guaranteed under the Constitution. They’re just not.”

From his perspective, private companies should be free to “kick people off, to de-platform,” and if they fail to do so voluntarily, they must be pressured or regulated into compliance. He described accountability as a mechanism for shaping behavior, stating, “Accountability is a tool that can be incredibly effective in changing behavior.”

The position advanced by Goldenberg reflects a broader effort to blur the line between public authority and private platform control. By demanding that companies mirror the goals of activists and lawmakers, his approach seeks to institutionalize censorship and convert digital platforms into engines of ideological enforcement.

But such a vision comes with consequences. By urging the dismantling of legal protections and empowering both governments and corporations to decide which views should be silenced, this framework sets the stage for widespread suppression. What’s framed as protection from harm becomes a template for restricting dissent, and narrowing the range of permissible thought in public discourse.

May 27, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s claim that ‘Hamas is stealing aid’ is patently a lie. Here’s why

By Jonathan Cook | May 27, 2025

Israel’s claim that Hamas is “stealing aid” is so preposterous no serious journalist or politician ought to give it any kind of airing – yet there it is continuously cropping up in the coverage of Gaza.

How do I know Israel’s claim is utterly worthless? For this simple reason:

Israel has a fleet of surveillance drones constantly hovering over the tiny strip of land that is Gaza, monitoring every inch of the territory. The incessant whine you hear every time you watch someone there being interviewed is from one of those drones. They are Israel’s eyes on the enclave. If you are outside in Gaza, you might as well be living in the Truman Show.

Were Hamas stealing aid in Gaza, Israel would easily be able to document it. It would have the video footage from its drones. The fact that it has not provided any footage showing Hamas’ theft of aid – its ransacking of aid trucks, or its fighters smuggling themselves into aid warehouses – is confirmation enough that Israel has simply invented this claim to rationalise its plans to starve the people of Gaza to death through months of an aid blockade or force them to flee into neighbouring Sinai, whichever comes first.

Without its disinformation campaign about “Hamas stealing aid”, Israel knows popular revulsion at its starvation campaign would grow quickly, and western governments would further struggle to keep opposition in check.

There are lots of others reasons, of course, to reject Israel’s lies about “Hamas stealing aid”. Not least, because every single charity and aid agency dealing with Gaza says that aid is not being stolen by Hamas.

But also because, were Hamas fighters doing so, they would be stealing from their own families: from their children and grandparents, who are much more vulnerable to Israel’s starvation campaign than they are. The idea that Hamas is stealing aid makes sense only to a racist, European colonial mindset in which Hamas fighters are viewed as bogeymen figures indifferent to the deaths of their own children, wives and parents.

What undoubtedly is happening is that Israel is allowing the strongest extended families in Gaza – often crime families with significant private arsenals – to loot the aid. That has become a serious problem since Israel killed off Gaza’s civilian police force (in violation of international law), leaving no one to enforce public order.

When everyone’s starving, the most powerful families mobilise their strength to grab an unfair share of the aid. That was an entirely predictable outcome of Israel’s policy to smash all of Gaza’s institutions, including its hospitals, government offices, and police stations, on the bogus pretext that they were “Hamas”.

Note too that Israel has long cultivated close ties to Palestinian crime families, because they provide a potential alternative, and more co-optable, power base to the Palestinian national movements and are a good source of collaborators.

The evidence suggests Israel is encouraging these crime families to loot the aid precisely to justify its dismantling of an existing aid system that works remarkably well, given the catastrophic circumstances in Gaza, and replace it with its own militarised, completely inadequate “aid distribution” system, which is designed only to herd Palestinians into the southern-most tip of Gaza, ready to be expelled into Sinai.

No journalist ought to be repeating Israel’s transparent disinformation. To do so is to collude in the promotion of lies to justify genocide. But the western media class have been doing that now for more than a year and half. They have grown entirely insensible to their own active collusion in the genocide.

May 27, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Lies and Hubris Caused an Awakening

By Pat Fidopiastis | Brownstone Institute | May 26, 2025

In March 2020, the phrase “Fifteen days to slow the spread” was transmitting faster than SARS-CoV-2. At the time, it seemed reasonable to want to buy our health care workers a few weeks to prepare. Contemporaneously, Dr. Anthony Fauci reasonably summarized decades of research in his 60 Minutes interview by saying that masks are not an effective way to block respiratory viruses.

In a Snapchat interview, Dr. Fauci reasonably interpreted timely data on Covid-19 outcomes to conclude that young people could decide for themselves if they wanted to meet strangers on a dating app during the pandemic. As Dr. Fauci put it: “Because that’s what’s called relative risk.”

Even the authors of the “proximal origin” opinion piece in Nature Medicine made reasonable points in support of a natural origin of SARS-CoV-2 (despite revealing their cards by calling “lab leak” implausible): “… it is likely that SARS-CoV-2-like viruses with partial or full polybasic cleavage sites will be discovered in other species” and “More scientific data could swing the balance of evidence to favor one hypothesis over another.” 

Five years later, thousands of animals have been sampled, millions of genomic sequences have been analyzed, and still there is nothing remotely close to a non-human adapted, animal version of SARS-CoV-2; back in 2003, using “stone tools” compared to today’s technology, they found the animal version of that SARS virus in a few months.

Unfortunately, the honeymoon of reason was brief. Overwhelming evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was not natural became a “destructive conspiracy,” and if you spoke about it, you were somehow racist.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams instructed us on how to make a life-saving mask from an old t-shirt. Dr. Fauci used the bizarre excuse that he lied in his 60 Minutes interview to explain why he abruptly reversed himself and began promoting the epidemiological theater of wearing several masks at once.

Not to be outdone, Dr. Deborah Birx summed up the futility of her leadership with this pearl: “We know that there are ways that you can even play tennis with marked balls so you’re not touching each other’s balls.” This sounded more like a punchline than worthwhile public health advice. Perhaps most egregious of all, we learned that “Two weeks to slow the spread” was not meant to be taken literally.

For me, a professor of microbiology for nearly 25 years, the moment of reason ended when I stepped into an elevator on my campus and saw a floor sticker telling me where to stand (Fig. 1). I simply could not keep quiet and pretend that this was sound public health advice.

Fig. 1

Before long, businesses were inundated with pandemic rules. I was hired by one of the lucky ones deemed “essential,” and therefore allowed to open, to assist with “safe” operation plans.

When I arrived to conduct my inspection, the business looked more like an Ebola field hospital than a furniture store (Fig. 2). Masked customers were herded in the parking lot by ropes and signs. One by one, they were greeted by an attendant, grateful to still have a job, standing behind Plexiglas, wearing a mask and face shield.

The friendly attendant was instructed to ask uncomfortable questions about symptoms like diarrhea. If a customer responded “yes” to any of the symptoms or refused to answer, they could not shop for furniture. If “no,” then their temperature was measured.

It was nearly 100 degrees that day so almost everyone had to be scanned multiple times. Inside the store was a maze of one-way arrows, warning signs, Plexiglas, hand sanitizer stations, and boxes of masks and disposable couch covers. They even had a video monitor reporting the number of customers per 400 square feet of store. Sadly, the epidemiological version of “over-medicating the patient” did not stop with onerous business rules.

Fig. 2

Drunk with power, public health officials in California felt ordained to protect the unwashed masses from Thanksgiving dinner. Unsurprisingly, these farcical dining rules did not apply to everyone.

Who actually believed “singing, chanting, shouting, and physical exertion” at a family dinner was too risky? Who decided that we needed to bulldoze a skate park to prevent kids from congregating? Why was it necessary to arrest a lone paddleboarder in Santa Monica Bay for “flouting coronavirus closures?”

In the LA Times article on the paddler’s arrest, a professor from the prestigious Scripps Institute of Oceanography opined, “SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could enter coastal waters and transfer back into the air along the coast. I wouldn’t go in the water if you paid me $1 million right now.”

I tried laughing off the ridiculous, unenforceable Thanksgiving rules, those stickers in the elevators, and other nonsense that at the time was happening somewhere else. But I could not get past the frightening reality that so many of my highly educated peers actually believed nonsense like SARS-CoV-2 was leaping out of the ocean.

Anyone paying attention could compile government data on Covid-19 outcomes and assess risk for themselves (Table 1). The message was always the same – the vast majority of deaths attributed to Covid-19 were people over 65 years old with severe comorbidities, especially obesity.

Table 1

By signing the Great Barrington Declaration and discussing its premise of “focused protection” in my advanced microbiology courses, I received an avalanche of vitriol.

Among the most shocking responses were accusations of “ageism” and “fat-shaming” for discussing hard facts about the pandemic.

Just like that, the “Science doesn’t care about your feelings” crowd started prioritizing their feelings. The university newspaper asked for an interview. I was warned not to accept, but I wanted to start a bigger conversation. I regret my decision because the article they wrote did not represent the views I articulated.

Instead, I was accused of promoting a “power imbalance” by supposedly forcing my “junk science” views on students. I used to think the cries of “fake news” were just a lazy argument by people that could not support their position, until I read that article about me.

Ironically, these same people who attacked me had completely accepted the made-up “six-feet rule,” which was the root of so much collateral damage. Heavily biased news sources like NPR defended this unscientific rule by stating, “distance still protects you.” However, if the cure is not even remotely feasible, despite the best efforts of authoritarians, then it’s not really a cure.

Apparently I crossed the line when I discussed in class how politicized the pandemic had become. How is it that President Trump’s rallies were spreading “coronavirus and death” but BLM protests had no effect on coronavirus cases? The sampling bias was baked in, given that contact tracers were being told not to ask people if they had been to a protest.

Why was it acceptable for CNN to use phrases such as “Wuhan virus” and “Chinese coronavirus,” but when President Trump did it, he was called “racist?” Was it actually “racist” to discuss the obvious signs of genetic manipulation in the SARS-CoV-2 genome with my students in an Emerging Infectious Diseases class?

My campus newspaper and many of my colleagues thought so, as did an Asian American and Pacific Islander group calling for my resignation.  When the admonitions about masks became aggressive (Fig. 3), and draconian, unscientific outdoor mask fines were being implemented, I analyzed some data and conducted a few experiments to find out for myself if masks were worth all the anger.

Fig. 3

I looked at “cases” in places like New York City and pointed out when the mask mandate and fines were applied (Fig. 4). Notably, the NYC mandate was instituted after cases had already begun to fall, and coercive fines did not prevent the second wave, which was longer and reached a higher peak than the first wave.

Fig. 4

I had my allergy-prone daughter sneeze onto petri-plates with and without the CDC-approved masks we wore to enter locations that enforced the mask mandate (Fig. 5). The saliva spray patterns, illustrated by microbial growth on the plates, were virtually indistinguishable.

Fig. 5

In the 60 Minutes interview, Dr. Fauci stated that “… often there are unintended consequences…people keep fiddling with the mask and touching their face…” implying that germs collect on masks, making them a source of contagion rather than a barrier.

Indeed, after the sneeze experiment, I stamped the outside of my daughter’s mask onto a petri-plate. The resulting dense microbial growth supported Dr. Fauci’s argument against mask wearing – “fiddling with the mask” probably does spread microbes (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6

At the time, I stated in the campus newspaper that “the science on masks was mixed at best.” However, the third-year journalism student apparently knew better and decided I was pushing “junk science.” Was I naïve to expect an apology after “the science” started catching up to what I was saying?

During the pandemic, my lab was responsible for measuring SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater (Fig. 7) to use this information as a means of tracking community transmission. We learned two important lessons from this approach.

First, peak levels of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater (orange line) provided a few weeks’ lead to when we could expect to see peak levels of people testing positive for the virus (i.e., “cases;” blue line). Second, we learned that the mask mandate (red line) did not stop the virus from doing what it wanted. Despite the mask mandate, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 reached unprecedented highs.

Fig. 7

Taken together, my findings were supported by decades of research showing that masks are not effective against respiratory viruses, regardless of the quality. Still, the counterargument persisted that wearing an N95 mask suctioned to your face, and constantly replacing it, would have stopped the pandemic.

Again, if the cure is not feasible, then it’s not really a cure, is it? The reality is that there are no convincing data supporting mask mandates, none that even remotely support children being forced to wear saliva-soaked masks, and especially none that would justify people being choked and beaten for opposing them.

The “follow the science” crowd was honing their authoritarian skills in preparation for mandatory vaccinations. The motivation for these mandates was summed up perfectly: “During the Sars crisis in 2003 pharma companies answered the WHO’s call for vaccine research. They invested hundreds of millions of dollars, but then — when the outbreak died away — governments and charities lost interest.” According to epidemiologist Dr. Osterholm “The companies were left holding the bag.”

How could Big Pharma avoid “holding the bag” on a vaccine they hoped would stop a virus that had repeatedly ripped through the world’s population? Not surprisingly, their first order of business was to drop the concept of “natural immunity” into the memory hole, centuries of science be damned. The subtext was if regular people knew that natural immunity was real, they probably would not want the vaccine, especially if they already had Covid-19 a few times.

Leading up to the vaccine rollout, I tested myself regularly using PCR, antibody, and antigen assays. I eventually tested positive and had mild flu-like symptoms. While well-educated friends of mine had gone to such lengths as to move out of their homes to distance themselves from their children and wait for the vaccines, my family chose a different tack. Instead, we huddled, got mild infections (except for my wife, who seemed to be immune), shared some level of natural immunity to the latest version of the virus, and tracked our infections (Table 2).

Table 2

When I shared the “herd immunity” story with my small social media following, most appreciated hearing something other than doom and gloom. However, others showed a level of vindictiveness that should not have surprised me, given how acceptable it became to wish death on the unvaccinated.

A colleague attempted to shame me in the campus newspaper, while others wondered out loud whether Child Protective Services should be notified. How dare you give your children the sniffles! How dare you use this time of ridiculous “virtual learning” mandates to provide your children with some hands-on experience performing quantitative PCR!

Predictably, my SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels were extremely high after over two weeks of PCR-positivity. While still overflowing with SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, I was scheduled to receive mandatory shots in order to return to campus.

If the world had actually followed the science, my recent PCR positivity and elevated antibody titers should have been a reasonable exemption. Unfortunately, there was no such exemption. Having seen the terrible treatment of my colleague Dr. Kheriaty, I decided we would play the role of guinea pigs and take what would be an all-risk-and-no-reward shot, especially for my kids. That is, there was nothing in it for us except a few days of high fever and injection site swelling, but definite financial reward for everyone in the vaccine supply chain.

As a member of the “laptop class,” the “lockdowns” made my life easier in many ways. While small business owners struggled, I was getting full pay to upload instructional videos to my university students, and occasionally engage with them online. My wastewater epidemiology work was deemed “essential,” so I was permitted to go to my lab to perform those duties for additional compensation.

However, the ad hominem attacks and threats caused me to disengage from further attempts to start a discussion on pandemic policy, which no doubt was their goal. While the world was fighting over toilet paper and shaming each other for “killing grandma,” we tuned out for a while (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8

I was surrounded by so much anger that I truly believed I was alone in my heretical views on pandemic policy. However, I officially tuned back in when Dr. Scott Atlas invited me to join a small group called The Academy for Science and Freedom. 

Our meeting at the Hillsdale College Kirby Center in Washington, D.C. was the first time I had hope since the pandemic started. We were professors, medical doctors, publishers, and journalists, all united by a common belief that the people in charge abandoned a basic tenet of public health: voluntary instead of coercive measures would protect public trust and induce cooperation.

Despite all the great minds in the room, it was hard to imagine we would ever get to where we are right now. But here we are. Many of the people responsible for lockdowns, forced vaccinations, and covering up the unnatural origin of SARS-CoV-2 are gone.

In their place, are Academy members such as Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Matt Memoli, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Marty Makary. All of whom were treated far worse than me. The overwhelming rejection of “The Fauci School” of public health policy is vindicating. However, recent headlines suggest there are holdouts refusing to accept that they were fooled: Dr. Høeg is a “vaccine skeptic,”  Dr. Memoli “is known for questioning vaccine mandates,” and Dr. Prasad is an “anti-science MAHA extremist.”

The people I trusted probably fooled me on a lot of things I voted for, like the benefits of a 20,000-page health care policy. Who has time to actually read that stuff? However, they were never going to succeed at fooling me about the science of the pandemic.

Their lies and hubris caused an awakening, reminiscent of the scene in The Matrix when Neo emerged from the virtual world to a brutal reality. I just hope the people I trust who are now running the major institutions will allocate all resources to programs that will actually improve human health. In doing so, they should have no problem convincing those holdouts not only that they had been fooled, but who fooled them.

May 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

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