Are U.S. Taxpayers Funding ‘Corrupt Dark-money Network’ That Censored CHD, RFK Jr. and Others?
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |February 7, 2025
A new analysis of government spending revealed that several major U.S. taxpayer-funded organizations are linked to the U.K.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), according to a Substack report by Sayer Ji of GreenMedInfo.
CCDH, an influential nonprofit anti-disinformation organization, authored “The Disinformation Dozen” list. The group allegedly collaborated with U.S. and foreign governments and Big Tech to censor Ji, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD founder and former chairman, and others for spreading “disinformation.”
A new analysis of government spending published by DataRepublican.com showed that at least 17 heavily taxpayer-funded U.S. organizations also may have funneled money into CCDH’s operations, Ji reported.
“The revelation that so many U.S.-based organizations are funding CCDH confirms what many of us have been warning about: that censorship efforts are not merely private initiatives but part of a broader, coordinated strategy involving government-linked entities and foreign influence networks,” Ji told The Defender.
Ji said this provides more evidence that censorship is being outsourced, “creating a system of plausible deniability for those seeking to silence dissenting voices under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’”
CCDH famously drafted a list of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen” — which included Ji, founder of the natural health website GreenMedInfo ; Kennedy; Dr. Joseph Mercola; and Ty and Charlene Bollinger, founders of The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer websites.
CCDH alleged in its report that just 12 accounts produced the majority of “anti-vaccine … disinformation” on social media.
Meta investigated and dismissed the report, and released a statement that there “isn’t any evidence” to support the report’s claims and that the small sample used in CCDH’s analysis was “in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines” on Facebook.
“There is no justification for [CCDH’s] claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps,” Meta stated.
Yet, the report was used by the White House and Twitter, now X, to censor the people and organizations on CCDH’s list, and by legacy media outlets such as NPR, The Guardian and others to discredit the people on the list.
“Twitter Files” documents published in 2023 by investigative journalist Paul D. Thacker detailed how Twitter and the White House used CCHD’s “Disinformation Dozen” report to justify censoring the people on the list.
Last year, reporting by Thacker and Matt Taibbi, based on internal documents leaked by CCDH insiders, revealed that CCDH planned to “kill” X, shut down popular social media accounts on other platforms, censor non-establishment voices and “bring back” attacks on “antivaxx” voices, among other things.
According to the documents, CCDH planned to organize “black ops” against Kennedy, who was a U.S. presidential candidate at the time. The group also planned to pressure Substack to remove COVID-19 vaccine critics Mercola and Alex Berenson from its platform.
The documents reveal that CCDH has pushed for a U.S. social media censorship law akin to the European Union’s “Digital Services Act” and the U.K.’s “Online Safety Act.”
Ji said:
“Despite their baseless claims and accusations, CCDH and similar organizations have had a powerful impact. They have provided the justification for widespread deplatforming, demonetization, and reputational attacks against independent journalists, scientists, and advocates.
“Their reports — often methodologically flawed and politically motivated — are treated as authoritative sources by mainstream media and tech platforms, leading to real-world suppression of speech. The fact that they are now directly linked to potential violations of U.S. election laws raises serious questions about accountability and transparency.”
Who is behind CCDH?
CCDH does not disclose its funders — even though journalists, including Thacker, and a U.S. congressional committee have requested that information.
CCDH also did not respond to The Defender’s request for information on its funding sources.
Imran Ahmed, CCDH’s CEO and founder, previously worked for Merrill Lynch. He was a British Labour Party political operative and is the co-author of “The New Serfdom: The Triumph of Conservative Ideas and How to Defeat Them.”
Ahmed emerged during the pandemic as a “vaccine and disinformation expert,” although he lacked any experience that would qualify him as such, Thacker reported.
The organization’s website states only that it is funded by “philanthropic trusts and members of the public.” It has denied receiving any grants, contracts or funding from the U.S. government.
DataRepublican.com used a financial tracing tool to follow donations made by taxpayer-funded organizations to other nonprofits.
CCDH has a relatively small budget of under $2.5 million. Publicly available information shows where some of those donations come from, including the Tides Foundation, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund and Schwab Charitable Fund.
However, some of the funding for the organizations making direct donations to CCDH can be traced back to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations that receive major funding from the U.S. government and redistribute that money to other organizations, DataRepublican.com showed.
Some of the 17 organizations that fund CCDH’s direct funders include the National Endowment for Democracy, the sister nonprofit of USAID; Freedom House; the National Democratic Institute; Global Communities; World Vision; Save the Children Federation; Columbia University; Princeton University and others.
Other investigations have also shown that CCDH has connections to key political and Hollywood figures.
For example, a 2023 investigation by Thacker revealed the CCDH received anonymous donations of upwards of $1 million and hired a lobbying firm. A search of the 2021 tax filings of the Schwab Charitable Fund — a donor-advised fund that allows anyone to donate anonymously — revealed a $1.1 million donation to CCDH.
Thacker also discovered that CCDH’s chairman is Simon Clark, a former senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP). He also uncovered ties between CCDH, Ahmed and Hollywood.
A subsequent investigation by Ji traced some of the organizations that financially support CCDH, including several U.K.-based nonprofits affiliated with legacy media organizations, the U.K. government and major philanthropic organizations such as the Open Society Foundations and the Ford Foundation.
“These hidden contributions reveal a coordinated pipeline of financial influence involving U.S. intelligence-adjacent entities, UK Crown interests, and Soros-backed organizations like the Tides Foundation,” Ji wrote.
Questions about the organization’s activities and funding sources led Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to subpoena CCDH as part of a 2023 congressional investigation into the nonprofit’s censorship-related activities.
The subpoena requested all communications and documents “between or among CCDH, the Executive Branch, or third parties, including social media companies, relating to the identification of groups, accounts, channels, or posts for moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduced circulation.”
It also requested details about any grants, contracts or funds from the U.S. government, CCDH replied that such information doesn’t exist. However, Ji’s report this week throws that response into question.
Ahmed continues to appear in mainstream media as a critic of X and the Trump administration calling for “transparency and accountability.”
“CCDH’s role as a foreign influence operation masquerading as a ‘nonprofit’ watchdog must be fully investigated,” Ji wrote. “Congress, media and civil rights organizations must demand answers.”
He added:
“This corrupt dark-money network must be exposed and dismantled. CCDH is not a ‘hate speech watchdog’ but a weaponized political hit squad, funded by taxpayer dollars and foreign actors, used to silence voices that challenge establishment power.”
Related stories in The Defender
- Watch: ‘We’re in a Different Era’ of Free Speech Now
- Revealed: Dark Money Funders Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Report
- Congressional Investigation into Authors of ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Intensifies
- Group Behind ‘Disinformation Dozen’ Has Ties to Hollywood, Corporate Dems
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Jim Jordan Challenges EU Over Its Censorship Laws
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 6, 2025
US House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has written to the EU Commission’s Executive VP for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy Henna Virkkunen regarding the bloc’s censorship law, the Digital Services Act.
Jordan wants the EU to, by February 13, inform the committee of how it plans to enforce the law when it comes to US tech companies, and also about investigations that are at this time underway, against Meta and X.
Jordan, as usual, doesn’t mince words and has no problem with referring to the DSA as legislation that has “censorship provisions” – to express what he said was the committee’s serious concern over how those might affect free speech in the US.
Here, he was referring to the nature of social platforms that are global, and how they typically use the same set of policies regarding speech – meaning that if those policies were aligned with the EU’s restrictive legislation, the result could be the setting of “de facto global censorship standards.”
Even though for a long time criticized by speech and privacy advocates, the DSA was flying under the radar of the previous White House, now it is emerging as a significant point, as the two sides clash on a number of issues.
Under the DSA, which the EU and the law’s supporters treat as a set of “moderation” rules for the good of the internet – companies can be forced to pay up to six percent of global turnover or even get blocked.
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and President Trump have been among those who previously publicly criticized the DSA. Previously, Virkkunen denied that the DSA enabled censorship and even claimed that free speech is “respected and protected” by the law.
Jordan and the commission he heads have been involved in multi-year efforts to expose online censorship practices in the US, but this is not the first time that these investigations have also turned toward the EU.
Last summer, during the presidential campaign in the US, he wrote to then Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton because of this EU official’s scandalous warning issued to Musk regarding a live stream of an interview with then-candidate Trump.
The letter to Virkkunen was reported by Politico, but the EU Commission is yet to publicly comment on its contents.
UK Government Secretly Orders Apple to Build Global iCloud Backdoor, Threatening Digital Privacy Worldwide
The UK government’s extremism is a global threat to privacy, a new report shows
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 7, 2025
Imagine waking up one morning to find out your government has demanded the master key to every digital iPhone lock on Earth — without telling anyone. That’s exactly what British security officials have tried to pull off, secretly ordering Apple to build a backdoor into iCloud that would allow them to decrypt any user’s data, anywhere in the world. Yes, not just suspected criminals, not just UK citizens — everyone. And they don’t even want Apple to talk about it.
This breathtakingly authoritarian stunt, first reported by The Washington Post, is one of the most aggressive attempts to dismantle digital privacy ever attempted by a so-called Western democracy. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from regimes that plaster their leader’s face on every street corner, not from a country that still pretends to believe in civil liberties.
The Order: Total Access, Zero Oversight
This isn’t about catching a single terrorist or cracking a single case. No, this order — issued in secret last month by Keir Starmer’s Labour government — demands universal decryption capabilities, effectively turning Apple into a surveillance arm of the UK government. Forget warrants, forget oversight, forget even the pretense of targeted investigations. If this order were obeyed, British authorities would have the power to rifle through anyone’s iCloud account at will, no justification required.
The officials pushing for this monstrosity are hiding behind the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, a law so Orwellian it’s lovingly referred to as the “Snoopers’ Charter.” This piece of legislative overreach forces tech companies to comply with government spying requests while making it illegal to even disclose that such demands have been made. It’s the surveillance state’s dream—limitless power, zero accountability.
Apple’s Answer: Thanks, But No Thanks
Apple, to its credit, has not rolled over — yet. Instead of turning itself into an informant for MI5, the company is reportedly considering pulling encrypted iCloud storage from the UK entirely. In other words, British users could lose a major security feature because their government is hell-bent on playing digital dictator.
But even that isn’t enough for UK authorities, who aren’t just demanding access to British accounts. They want a skeleton key to iCloud data worldwide, including in the US That’s right—British intelligence, in a stunning display of overreach, is trying to force an American company to compromise American users on American soil.
The “Appeal” Process: A Kafkaesque Farce
Technically, Apple has the right to challenge this order. But in true dystopian fashion, its only option is to plead its case before a secret technical panel, which will then determine if the request is too expensive. If that doesn’t work, Apple can go before a judge, who will decide whether the demand is “proportionate” to the government’s needs. Because if there’s one thing we know about government surveillance, it’s that it’s always reasonable and restrained.
Meanwhile, Apple has refused to comment, likely because doing so would be a criminal offense under UK law. That’s right — even talking about the demand could land Apple executives in legal trouble. Nothing screams “free society” like threatening jail time for discussing government overreach.
Here’s the wider issue: even if Apple were to challenge this draconian demand, it wouldn’t matter. The law requires immediate compliance — meaning that even as Apple fights the order, it would still be forced to hand over the keys in the meantime. It’s the legal equivalent of being forced to serve a prison sentence while appealing your conviction. By the time the courts make a decision, the damage is already done.
Apple, to its credit, saw this Orwellian nightmare coming from a mile away. Last year, it explicitly warned British lawmakers that such a demand would be nothing less than an assault on global privacy. The company made its stance clear:
“There is no reason why the U.K. [government] should have the authority to decide for citizens of the world whether they can avail themselves of the proven security benefits that flow from end-to-end encryption.”
In other words: Who the hell does Britain think it is? The UK government, in its wisdom, apparently believes it should have the power to determine how encryption works for everyone, everywhere, not just in its own backyard. Because why stop at surveillance when you can have global surveillance?
The Official Non-Denial Denial
Of course, when asked about this breathtakingly bold power grab, the UK Home Office fell back on the bureaucrat’s favorite escape hatch: refusing to confirm or deny reality itself.
“We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”
In other words, “We won’t admit we’re demanding this, but we won’t deny it either.” Because why be transparent when you can keep the public guessing?
How the UK Plans to Kill Encryption by Exploiting the Cloud
For those still clinging to the idea that end-to-end encryption will protect their messages from prying eyes, here’s the bad news: the UK government already has a backdoor, and most people don’t even realize it.
Yes, apps like iMessage, WhatsApp, and Signal use end-to-end encryption, meaning only the sender and recipient can read the messages. But the moment you back up those encrypted chats to the cloud? They become fair game. Law enforcement can demand access through legal orders, bypassing encryption entirely.
Apple’s Advanced Data Protection was designed to close this loophole, giving users a way to keep their cloud backups as secure as their messages. And that, of course, is precisely why the UK wants to kill it.
Because for governments that dream of unlimited surveillance, letting people secure their own data is simply unacceptable.
The UK Is Now Outpacing the US in Anti-Privacy Extremism
For years, the US has led the charge in trying to undermine encryption, with the FBI repeatedly demanding backdoors and government officials throwing tantrums whenever a tech company refuses to play ball. But even America has never gone this far.
Now, Britain is attempting to leap ahead, pushing for surveillance powers that would force not just UK companies, but global tech giants to comply — regardless of where their users live. And Apple? It’s just the first target.
Google, which has offered default encrypted backups for Android since 2018, could easily be next. When asked whether the UK or any other government had made similar demands, Google spokesperson Ed Fernandez gave a carefully worded response:
“Google can’t access Android end-to-end encrypted backup data, even with a legal order.”
That’s a fancy way of saying “We don’t have the keys, and we’re not planning to give them up.” But how long until the UK demands that Google build a key, just like it’s demanding from Apple?
And then there’s Meta. WhatsApp’s encrypted backups are another thorn in the side of surveillance-hungry governments. When pressed on whether they had received any secret orders for access, Meta, predictably, refused to comment.
Australian Tribunal Rules Against eSafety Commissioner’s “Informal” Censorship of X Post
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 7, 2025
An Australian woman whose X post was censored based on what are known as “informal” notices, issued by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to social platforms, has appealed against the decision and won.
This was more of an uphill battle than getting censorship decisions revoked usually involves: the “informal” nature of the notices means that normally they cannot even be appealed – and eSafety’s main argument was that the appeal should not even be considered.
But the X user, Celine Baumgarten, managed to convince the Administrative Review Tribunal the censorship notice should not be considered “informal” and that her complaint was therefore within the tribunal’s jurisdiction.
Baumgarten’s post from May 2024 detailed a “queer club” in Melbourne that was operating in a primary school, organized for children 8 to 12 years old.
“There is absolutely NO place for any type of LGBTxyz club in a PRIMARY SCHOOL, or any school for that matter,” Baumgarten, herself a bisexual and an activist, wrote at the time, adding, “Children should NOT be learning about sexualities at such a young, impressionable age. This is foul. Leave the kids ALONE.”
Next, in swooped Grant’s office, with what they maintain was no more than a “complaint alert” to X – as opposed to a removal notice – referring to “adult cyber-abuse material” as the reason to have Baumgarten’s post blocked for X users in Australia.
eSafety essentially tried to “sneak in” censorship under the guise of an “informal notice” – aware that an official takedown request was impossible given that they found their own rules were not violated, not in the entirety of their many parts.
X erred on the side of censorship and blocked the post for two months, to then inform Baumgarten this was done “in error.” Interestingly, Instagram, which received the same eSafety notice, ignored it.
And now the tribunal has done much more than vindicate Baumgarten; the judge broke down eSafety’s process to reveal that while asserting that the notice was “informal” and referring to the terms of use X has for itself – the complaint was actually lodged via X’s channels “for use by government authorities to submit valid legal requests for the removal from X of potentially illegal content.”
All this was interpreted by Justice Emilios Kyrou to mean that the censorship notice was clearly official and therefore eligible to be appealed.
Since eSafety prefers what it calls “informal” to “official” takedown notices (several hundred vs. three or four just over the past year), the implication of the ruling could be significant – prompting a review of other such “informal” reports.
Israel used toxic gas to suffocate Palestinian resistance fighters, captives in Gaza’s tunnels, report finds
MEMO | February 7, 2025
Journalist Richard Medhurst Raided and Detained
Richard Medhurst | February 6, 2025
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Richard Thomas Medhurst (1992) is an independent journalist, political commentator, and analyst from the United Kingdom with a focus on international affairs, US politics, and the Middle East. Medhurst is known for his coverage of the Julian Assange extradition case in London, as one of the only journalists to report on the trial of the WikiLeaks founder from inside the court.
He has also covered the Iran nuclear deal talks on the ground in Vienna. Medhurst was born in Damascus, Syria. His father is English and mother is Syrian. Both his parents served in United Nations Peacekeeping and Observer missions and were among the UN Peacekeepers awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988. Owing to his parents’ professional mobility, he has lived in Syria, Pakistan, Switzerland, and Austria. He speaks four languages fluently: English, Arabic, French, and German.
As an independent journalist, Medhurst regularly hosts live broadcasts and video reports on his YouTube channel. Previous guests include the Foreign Minister of Venezuela, the Dep Foreign Minister of Iran; the Palestinian, Russian and Cuban ambassadors to the United Nations in Vienna; the former British Ambassador to Syria; and various UN officials, journalists, and more.
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Israel wants European nations to take displaced Palestinians
RT | February 6, 2025
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has instructed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to prepare a plan to encourage Palestinians to emigrate from Gaza, according to a post he made on X on Thursday.
The minister also suggested that refugees should be taken in by European countries that opposed West Jerusalem’s military action in the enclave. Katz said that it would reveal their “hypocrisy” if these nations declined to accept Gazans.
It follows US President Donald Trump’s remarks on Tuesday that the US would “take over the Gaza Strip” and take charge of reconstruction. He added that Palestinians living there should leave, to be provided for by “neighboring countries of great wealth.”
Katz has praised Trump’s “bold initiative” to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.
Among possible destinations, he mentioned Spain, Ireland, and Norway, claiming they have “falsely accused Israel” over its war against the Gaza-based Hamas militant group and therefore are “legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory.”
Commenting on Katz’s remarks, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares has rejected the suggestion that Spain should accept displaced people from Gaza.
”Spain makes decisions sovereignly and independently. No third party should tell us what to do,” Albares told broadcaster RNE.
The minister stressed that “Gazans’ land is Gaza” and that “Gaza should be part of the future Palestinian state.” He added that the debate about whether Palestinians should leave Gaza is “closed,” and Spain “is introducing our humanitarian aid as much as possible to help the people.”
Ireland, which formally recognized Palestine as a state last year, also rejected Katz’s comments about receiving war refugees.
In an emailed statement to Reuters, the Irish Foreign Department stressed that “The objective must be a massive scale-up of aid into Gaza, return of basic services and a clear framework under which those displaced can return,” adding that “any comments to the contrary are unhelpful and a source of distraction.”
UK Government Fast-Tracking Bill to Monitor Bank Accounts, Revoke Licenses, and Search Homes
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 5, 2025
UK’s government is accused of attempting to rush a controversial bill – the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error & Recovery) Bill – through parliament. Critics say the draft legislation contains some dystopian social credit-style surveillance provisions.
The 116-page bill was only introduced a week ago, prompting rights campaigner Big Brother Watch to conclude that MPs may not even have enough time to read the text before they are supposed to start debating it.
Despite its very public-spirited title – the bill’s opponents are warning that under the guise of preventing mass waste of taxpayer money through benefit fraud, it would also serve to set up a system of “mass spying” of bank accounts, carried out by the government (the Department for Work and Pensions, DWP).
That includes constant monitoring of people’s bank statements, the ability to revoke driving licenses, and search premises, computers, and other devices.
The UK’s welfare system would in this way be turned into “a digital surveillance system (…) with unprecedented privacy intrusions,” said Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo.
On the other hand, the DWP claims that while they will have access to bank statements belonging to accounts targeted as defrauding the benefits system, and be able to cause money to be taken from those accounts – they won’t have “direct access to actual accounts.”
That’s cold comfort, privacy groups are suggesting, since the law then expands into requiring that banks and building societies submit reports about suspected fraud, which will allow DWP investigators to exercise their new ability to ask for search warrants, and then together with the police carry out searches, including of houses and devices.
It appears to be yet another example of a “two-tier” system in the UK, this time tied to the justice system – at least judging by Carlo’s interpretation.
She is concerned that, on the one hand, the most at-risk part of society – the elderly, the poor, and the disabled, will be deprived of the right to be heard in court and become more vulnerable to, catastrophic to their financial situation, “mistaken punishments.”
On the other, Carlo said the provisions represent “totally unprecedented privacy intrusions and punishments that will do more damage to fundamental British values of fairness and justice than to the serious fraudsters.”
UK Home Secretary Signals Tougher Online Censorship Beyond Current Censorship Laws
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 5, 2025
Judging by the most recent statements made by UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the government feels it will have to implement even more stringent speech-restrictive measures than those contained in the sweeping and controversial censorship law, the Online Safety Act.
Appearing on a BBC political talk show, Cooper kept beating the now well-established drum the ruling Labour has gone for in the wake of last year’s Southport killings, and subsequent mass protests – namely, to try to portray social media companies as somehow “a part of the crime,” which is verbatim how the cabinet minister put it.
One of the recurring themes these last weeks, since the Southport trial saw its conclusion, has been that tech companies are “morally responsible” for not deleting (that request came only last week) one of the violent videos viewed by the killer, Axel Rudakubana.
This request was made even though said companies are under no legal obligation to do that, until the spring of this year and the start of the enforcement of some parts of the Online Safety Act.
The stage set that way, Cooper’s logic – or lack thereof – goes like this: “We are being clear that we are prepared to go further if the Online Safety Act measures are not working as effectively as we need them to do,” she told the host, Laura Kuenssberg.
There is no way to predict how social media firms will act once they are under obligation to remove certain types of content – and yet Cooper is already threatening to make the Online Safety Act even worse.
After the case played out in court, the authorities are now going to organize an inquiry that will broaden the narrative and examine how social media, i.e., the content that third parties can publish there, is influencing “online radicalization” (Cooper mentions Islamist and far-right extremism in the same breath) and “obsession with violence” among young people.
At one point – but well into this attempt to implicate the availability of both illegal and legal content related to violence as an important factor behind the Southport tragedy – the interviewer mentions that Rudakubana was “on the radar of the social services, he was on the radar of Prevent, a Home Office program, and yet no one stopped him.”
When asked whose responsibility it was to stop him before the crime, Cooper danced around the topic (but surprisingly, didn’t name social networks.)
Australian cricket commentator sacked for noting mass deaths in Gaza
By Oscar GRENFELL | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 5, 2025
For the second time, the cricket world has provided a petty, vindictive and downright ridiculous example of the broader campaign by the powers-that-be to silence opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
In December 2023, the International Cricket Council (ICC) forbade Australian batsman Usman Khawaja from taking the field in international matches with shoes that read “all lives are equal” and “freedom is a human right.” The bureaucrats, who run the game from the ICC’s headquarters in the dictatorial United Arab Emirates, deemed those statements to be “political” because they were regarded as a reference to Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians.
The ICC’s suspicious and hostile attitude to professions of human rights and basic decency has now been matched by the Sports Entertainment Network, which runs the popular SEN sports radio broadcaster.
Over the weekend, SEN unceremoniously dumped Peter Lalor, a widely-respected cricket commentator, over posts he made on his X/Twitter account referencing Gaza. The sacking was done in a hurry. Lalor was in Sri Lanka as a freelance commentator commissioned by SEN to cover the ongoing Australia-Sri Lanka Test cricket series when he was dismissed.
Lalor had commentated the first test in Galle without incident, and was scheduled to cover the second. Why then the sudden rush by SEN to sever all ties with a leading cricket expert? For anyone familiar with the witch-hunts of the past 16 months that have accompanied the Israeli war crimes, inevitably “upset” and “offended” Zionists were in the picture.
As per Lalor’s account, “I was asked by station boss Craig Hutchison, who was civil, if I didn’t care that my retweeting of events in Gaza made Jewish people in Melbourne feel unsafe. I said I didn’t want anyone to feel unsafe.” Predictably, Hutchison reportedly related accusations that Lalor may be an antisemite, which has been the go-to line for shutting down opposition to the assault on Gaza.
Lalor went on: “The following day Hutchison told me that because the ‘sound of my voice made people feel unsafe’ and that people are ‘triggered by my voice,’ I could not cover the cricket for them anymore.”
If Zionists were telling SEN management that Lalor’s measured commentary of a Test cricket match was making them feel “unsafe,” the appropriate response would have been to dismiss the remarks as absurd.
More to the point, SEN should have noted that the complainants were making a cynical bid to have someone sacked for disagreeing with them politically. They should have told the witch-hunters to stop harassing their employee.
But, as has so often been the case with the Zionist witch-hunts, SEN management rolled over.
After Lalor’s sacking, Hutchison issued a nauseating statement. “SEN Cricket is a celebration of differences and nationalities,” it proclaimed, although those “differences” evidently did not extend to opposing the unfolding genocide or referencing the mass killing of Palestinians. To justify its censorship, the statement went on to describe the station as a “a place where our SEN audience can escape what is an increasingly complex and sometimes triggering world.”
Like the saga of Khawaja’s shoes, the most striking aspect of this incident is the complete mismatch between Lalor’s “offence” and the response. Lalor is not accused of ever having mentioned Gaza during a broadcast, so the references to the sound of his voice are presumably because it reminds the Zionists of his X/Twitter feed.
Moreover, the posts on his feed are simply not of a highly controversial character. In any objective assessment, Lalor comes across as a humane and democratically minded man, disturbed by the mass killing of Palestinians and wishing for an end to war.
Most of his posts were retweets from other accounts. As per Lalor’s account, Hutchison indicated that SEN was hit with complaints over Lalor during the first Test match, played from January 29 to February 1. It is difficult to determine when something was retweeted, as against when it was posted by the original account.
But some of Lalor’s X content around that time included retweeting a post reporting that “Palestine Red Crescent teams have recovered another 14 decomposed Palestinian bodies from several areas on the Rashid Coastal Road in Gaza.”
Another was a statement by a Palestinian Christian leader, condemning the invitation by US President Donald Trump for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Washington. The pastor wrote, “The man who has an arrest warrant for him from the ICC [International Criminal Court] is invited to the White House as a guest of honor. This is the world we live in. Faith leaders must make their voices heard in times like this.” Other retweets by Lalor have highlighted the plight of Palestinian children and prisoners.
People instigating a witch-hunt over such content, which has nothing whatsoever to do with antisemitism, are simply supporters of war crimes.
Media and cricket figures have spoken out in defence of Lalor.
Khawaja declared on Instagram: “Standing up for the people of Gaza is not antisemitic nor does it have anything to do with my Jewish brothers and sisters in Australia, but everything to do with the Israeli government and their deplorable actions. It has everything to do with justice and human rights.” He concluded: “Pete is a good guy with a good heart. He deserves better.”
As per Lalor’s account of the sacking, “I was told in one call there were serious organisations making complaints; in another, I was told that this was not the case.”
Throughout the genocide, right-wing Zionist lobby groups that collaborate closely with the Israeli state and support its every crime against the Palestinians have fraudulently been depicted by governments and the media as representative Jewish organisations. Their every pronouncement has been reported uncritically and they have had access to the corridors of power.
These groups have repeatedly instigated witch-hunts targeting critics of Israel. Journalist Antoinette Lattouf is currently in the Federal Court, having brought a case against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) for unlawful termination. Lattouf was sacked halfway through a week-long fill-in position, after a concerted campaign by Zionist lawyers who barraged the ABC with vexatious complaints.
Lattouf’s sacking, ostensibly because she shared a post to her personal social media from Human Rights Watch condemning Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war, occurred in December 2023. The dismissal of Lalor, more than a year later, in such similar circumstances, underscores the normalisation of witch-hunting and politically motivated sackings by the Australian political, media and corporate establishment.
Such repressive measures set a precedent for broader attacks on working people as they enter into struggle against the broader eruption of militarism, including Australia’s transformation into a frontline state for a US-led war against China, completed by the same federal Labor government that has consistently backed Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
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Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- US bill to grant Americans serving in Israeli army same rights as US troops
- What a president, a movie star, a congressman, and a cell phone all dared to say
- ‘An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership’: Merz
- Pakistan Throws Open Its Gates for Iran’s Transit Trade to Third Countries
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 