The Case Against Mahmoud Khalil: How The Israel Lobby Fueled a Campus Crackdown
By Robert Inlakesh | Mint Press News | March 13, 2025
The detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist involved in organizing at Columbia University, is the result of more than a year of pro-Israeli think-tank propaganda and lobbying efforts to tie the students to Hamas and erode free speech protections in the United States.
Since the first anti-war encampment at Columbia University last April, a network of pro-Israel organizations—including lobby groups, think tanks, and private security firms—has worked to dismantle the student protest movement. Their influence has been evident in the rapid and coordinated response to suppress demonstrations.
Despite Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s public claim that Khalil is a “Hamas supporter,” no evidence has been provided to substantiate the allegation. In fact, a White House official admitted in an interview with The Free Press that “the allegation here is not that [Khalil] was breaking the law.”
The Trump administration has offered no evidence of illegal or violent activity to justify its efforts to deport Khalil, a Green Card holder. Instead, his removal appears rooted in political disagreement. Washington has made clear that any speech critical of Israel can be labeled as “pro-Hamas” and “antisemitic” without the need to substantiate such claims.
This absence of evidence has been a defining characteristic of the broader campaign—driven by the Israel Lobby—to curtail First Amendment rights on college campuses. While Jewish student groups were among those leading last year’s anti-war encampments, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters became a particular focus of political scrutiny.
A central figure in this push has been the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a neoconservative think tank frequently cited as a source for alleged links between Hamas and SJP. The FDD’s argument hinges on the claim that the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a major supporter of SJP chapters, has ties to individuals formerly associated with charities shuttered for allegedly financing terrorism. One such case, the Holy Land Foundation, resulted in convictions that have since been widely criticized as politically motivated.
The FDD first presented its claims publicly in 2016, but they failed to gain traction, mainly due to a lack of substantive proof. Among its chief concerns was that “AMP does not have to file an IRS 990 form that would make its finances more transparent.” That critique is striking, given that the Quincy Institute recently revealed the FDD itself operates with “dark money” funding and holds a zero transparency rating.
In May 2024, the Washington-based Atlantic Council suggested in an article that Iran was involved in the student protest movement. Corporate media quickly picked up on the claim and attempted to build a case around it. Yet, despite the steady stream of coverage, none of the reports were able to muster any real evidence to back up their accusation.
Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies—a company with deep ties to the CIA—has taken up a public crusade to reshape discourse on college campuses. His rationale for urgency is blunt: “If we lose the intellectual debate, you will not be able to deploy any army in the West, ever.”
Safra Catz, the Israeli-American CEO of Oracle and one of the highest-earning women in global business has also weighed in on the protests. When asked about the wave of student demonstrations, she framed the issue in starkly militaristic terms:
The reason, in my personal opinion, why they’re out there is because they think Israel is weak. They think the Jews are weak, so they stand up strong. If Israel regains its deterrence capability and America regains their deterrence capability and is strong, they will disperse like they always do. We’ve seen this pattern here in Israel—when the terrorists feel strong, they’re out in the streets. And when Israel comes in hard, they’re hiding under the floor.”
Not only did Catz compare student actions in the United States, framed as part of a “resurgence of antisemitism,” to “terrorists,” but the Israeli-American businesswoman has also contributed to both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio’s political bids in the past. As CEO of Oracle, which owns OpenAI, Catz doubled her company’s investment in Israel following October 7, 2023.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which has repeatedly accused the U.S. student movement of antisemitism and supporting Hamas, has openly called for the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil.
Pro-Israel groups insist that Khalil has ties to Hamas, yet even the Canary Mission—a site notorious for doxxing pro-Palestine university students—could not produce evidence beyond his participation in a protest chant. In its extensive profile on Khalil, the only supposed proof of “support for Hamas” was his involvement in a demonstration where the crowd chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The site argues that the phrase is pro-Hamas solely because Hamas leader Khaled Mashal has used it in the past.
One of the loudest voices behind the crackdown on campus protests is Trump’s UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, who has openly boasted about her role in forcing the resignations of five university presidents. Even Columbia University’s decision to give in to pressure from pro-Israel lobbying groups did not shield it from White House retaliation. The administration still moved to strip $400 million in federal funding from the university, sending a clear warning to other institutions.
This multi-pronged assault on free speech—built on baseless accusations of Hamas ties and antisemitism—is now being used to justify the deportation of a permanent U.S. resident whose wife and future child are American citizens. The campaign is part of a broader effort to erode First Amendment protections under the guise of national security.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47
US arrests Georgetown University student for criticizing Israel
Indian citizen Badar Khan Suri has been arrested in the US over criticism of Israel
Press TV – March 20, 2025
Indian citizen and Georgetown University student Badar Khan Suri has been arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents due to his criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza.
Sari, who is a post-doctorate fellow in peace and conflict studies at Georgetown University in Washington, is currently being held at an ICE detention facility in Virginia without contact with lawyers and family.
ICE has detained Sari even though he is a US permanent resident.
After his arrest, the dean of Georgetown University made a statement that Sari had not engaged in any illegal activities or posed a threat to campus security.
In a statement, the University Board of Georgetown Law SJP has called his arrest to be for expressing “constitutionally protected speech,” warning that if such arrests continue “higher education will crumble.”
Sari is believed to have been specifically targeted because of the anti-genocide activism of his wife Mapheze Saleh.
Saleh, a US citizen, is a prominent pro-Palestine activist who has come under attack by pro-Israel political organizations.
Jenin Younes, a lawyer and civil liberties expert, believes that Sari’s arrest is a case of citizens being held guilty by association.
“If they can’t target a Palestinian activist for deportation because they’re a citizen, they’ll target their spouse instead,” Younes said in an interview.
Imprisoning and punishing family members of political dissidents is a common repression tactic used by dictatorial regimes.
Google to acquire Israeli firm staffed by former Unit 8200 officers
The Cradle | March 20, 2025
On 18 March, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced plans to acquire the Israeli cloud security startup Wiz in a $32 billion deal, marking one of the largest-ever influxes of former Israeli intelligence officers into a US tech company.
“Google LLC today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz, Inc., a leading cloud security platform headquartered in New York, for $32 billion, subject to closing adjustments, in an all-cash transaction,” the US tech giant said on Tuesday.
Reports from western media indicate that following the acquisition, Wiz will keep its brand and operate independently from Google. Additionally, an extra retention bonus will be offered to employees, potentially totaling $1 billion, along with a break-up fee that Google would owe to Wiz if antitrust regulators block the deal.
The Israeli tech company was founded in 2020 by four former members of Unit 8200.
Wiz employs around 1,995 people, with most of its sales and marketing personnel located in North America and Europe. However, most of its engineering staff is based in Tel Aviv, a major hub for cybersecurity talent primarily linked to Unit 8200 alumni.
A 2018 study cited by Haaretz estimated that 80 percent of the 2,300 people who founded Israel’s 700 cybersecurity companies at the time had come through Israeli army intelligence. Two years earlier, Forbes estimated that over 1,000 companies were founded by Unit 8200 alumni.
“There are at least five tech companies started by Unit 8200 alumni publicly traded in the US, together worth around $160 billion. Private companies started by ex-8200 soldiers are worth billions more,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported last year.
“While Unit 8200 alumni once talked about their service in hushed tones, they now tout it in press releases to attract clients and investment money for their startups,” the report highlights.
As an integral part of Israel’s intelligence apparatus, Unit 8200 conducts signal intelligence (SIGINT) and cyber operations, emphasizing advanced technology, cybersecurity, and intelligence gathering.
Unit 8200 played a crucial role in the planning and execution of Israel’s pager terror attacks in Lebanon last year. Specifically, western security sources revealed that the unit was involved in embedding explosives inside the pagers ordered by Hezbollah, with the operation reportedly taking over a year to plan.
The Israeli spy unit is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool similar to ChatGPT, which is “capable of answering questions about people it is monitoring and providing insights into the massive volumes of surveillance data it collects.”
“It’s not just about preventing shooting attacks, I can track human rights activists, monitor Palestinian construction in Area C [of the West Bank]. I have more tools to know what every person in the West Bank is doing,” an informed source told The Guardian earlier this month.
Who is opposing peace in Ukraine?
By Dmitri Kovalevich – Al Mayadeen – March 20, 2025
March 2025 marks the beginning of a fourth year of the military conflict in Ukraine. Kiev, its sponsors in Europe and the United States, are proving unwilling to end the war being waged despite mounting evidence they are facing a major political and military defeat.
Zelensky vs Trump?
The five-year, electoral mandate dating from May 2019 of Volodymyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine expired ten months ago. Yet on February 28, Zelensky staged a widely publicized quarrel with the new US administration in Washington headed by Donald Trump. The administration reacted, in turn, with a dramatic suspension of US arms shipments and sharing of intelligence and satellite data. Without this data, Ukrainian troops are ‘blinded’ because US military specialists have played a key role in helping choose Russian targets and helping operate complex rocket and missile weaponry. Particularly valuable are the images provided, with US government approval, by US commercial satellite imaging company Maxar.
The ‘suspensions’ were very short-lived. A meeting in Saudi Arabia on March 11 between the Kiev government and the Trump administration saw a renewal of the briefly-disrupted partnership between the two after its brief interruption in supplying military data and equipment. The meeting issued a proposal to Russia (better described as a threat) prepared in advance by Washington for a 30-day ‘ceasefire’. Critics in Russia and abroad say the proposal would allow the Ukraine Armed Forces to rest and regroup. If Russia turned it down, the Western powers could then condemn it for refusing peace.
Every serious analyst is pointing out that the ceasefire proposal does not at all address Russia’s well-publicized minimum conditions for a peace settlement. In other words, the plan is something of a trap for Russia. For that reason, it will not see the light of day.
Zelensky was absent from the Ukraine delegation in Saudi Arabia. He remains apprehensive over the prospect that Trump may wish to replace him and could do so at any time. Ukrainian political analyst Kost Bondarenko, who now lives abroad, explained on Telegram on March 4 that Zelensky is no longer listening to anyone, including those in his personal entourage. “He is acting hysterically and capriciously, recognizing only his own claimed righteousness. He doesn’t even listen to Yermak [head of the Office of the President of Ukraine]. His egocentrism has made Ukraine hostage to his whims.”
Europe benefits from the war
Zelensky is seeking more support from his patrons in the European Union and becoming more dependent on them, especially on the government of Great Britain. The latter continues to encourage him to sacrifice the people of Ukraine in a losing war against Russia.
Former Ukrainian (now Russian) political scientist Rostislav Ishchenko said in an interview on March 7 that the only difference between the Trump regime in Washington and the leading governments of the European Union is that ‘liberal’ Europe wants a consolidated West under a ‘liberal’ image while the right-wing, conservative Trump regime wants a united West focused on weakening and paralyzing Russia while simultaneously weakening China.
“Trump’s goal is not to make life easier for Russia. Trump’s goal is to get a peace that is acceptable to America. So far, everything that Trump formulates is absolutely unacceptable to us.”
Another former Ukrainian and now Russian political analyst Andrey Vajra told a Crimea news broadcast in February that the war in Ukraine has helped the European elites to appropriate billions of euros. “Europeans understand perfectly well that the war is lost. But the European elite needs to continue stealing [from weapons supplying and the multitude of forms of ‘aid’]. I have already explained how it is possible to continue stealing billions of euros so long as the killings continue in Ukraine. Far more millions of euros can be had. That’s why the European leaders are clinging to a warmaking Ukraine.”
In early March, the head of German intelligence, Bruno Kahl, stated in an interview with the state-run Deutsche Welle that it would be ‘safer’ for Europe if the war in Ukraine continued for another five years. He criticized the Trump administration, saying the kind of swift end to the war being voiced by Trump “would enable the Russians to focus their energy against Europe”. This suggested ‘long war’ against Russia is the new, official theme of EU leaders as they strive to convince their populations of the need to massively expand military spending.
Even former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko (2007-2010) of the Batkivshchyna faction in the Ukrainian legislature says she is outraged by Kahl’s frank admission. “Bruno Kahl for the first time officially confirmed what we were so reluctant to believe: At the cost of thousands of Ukrainian lives and the very existence of Ukraine, some people decided on a war to ‘deplete’ Russia and thereby enhance the security in Europe? I did not think that they would dare to say it so officially and openly. This explains a lot,” Tymoshenko doth protest too much. She was a key fomentor of the violent, Maidan coup in February 2014 and an ardent advocate since then of military and political confrontation with Russia.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has also stated that a peace agreement could be more dangerous for Ukraine than an ongoing war. “I understand that many people believe that a peaceful solution or a ceasefire is a good idea, but we run the risk that peace in Ukraine would actually be more dangerous than the war that is ongoing now.”
Such pro-war stances are not only due to the fact that Western companies are getting rich on fulfilling military orders. A permanent war in Ukraine appeals to many Western leaders because this would weaken and pre-occupy Russia. “Israel” has long acted on the same principle in the Middle East. It has waged bloody wars in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon to weaken these countries and prevent them from doing anything to stop “Israel’s” genocide against Palestinians and its occupation of Syrian territory.
Those who justify continued war in Ukraine make two contradictory assertions. On the one hand, they argue that the war has greatly weakened Russia and that the government there may soon collapse. Ukrainians should therefore fight just a little longer to secure ‘victory’. On the other hand, they say that Russia has become too strong and is a threat to overrun more European countries in the future. Ukrainian social networks have coined an ironic term for this contradictory belief system, calling it ‘Russophrenia’ (derived from the word ‘schizophrenia’).
The end of Ukraine’s adventure in Kursk
Disaster has befallen the Ukraine Armed Forces present in the Kursk border region of Russia. Large numbers of Ukrainian troops have become encircled—as many as 10,000 according to some Western media outlets. A March 8 report in a Ukrainian media outlet nervously reassured that the situation in Kursk “is not yet catastrophic”.
The Ukrainian military command did not issue any orders to retreat from threatened encirclements in Kursk. This repeats the experiences with earlier military encirclements in Donbass. These have allowed the Russian army to make steady and continued military advances there.
As reported by the online Politnavigator on March 7, a former advisor to the office of Zelensky, Alexei Arestovich, sees a familiar pattern to events in Kursk. “In dire conditions where encirclement is threatened, only the introduction of reserve troops can help. So we [the Ukraine Armed Forces] proceed as usual: drop in a few reserves removed from other threatened locations. These will most likely be unable to stabilize for any length of time because there are few reserves to draw upon. No one is left. Even worse is to keep the army in encirclements or threatened encirclements for too long, waiting for the political leadership to give an order to retreat. But those orders do not come. This scenario has repeated itself over and over again. We need to stop playing by such scenarios.”
Arestovich lives in exile somewhere in Europe and has said he would be a candidate in a forthcoming election for president of Ukraine should a free election take place.
On March 8-9, Russian troops managed rather easily to contain the remaining Ukrainian forces in Kursk Oblast and cut off re-supply routes. This was partly helped by the spring thaw because Western-supplied military equipment becomes booged down in mud; it is designed primarily for use on paved or improved gravel roads.
Ukrainian opposition blogger Anatoliy Shariy writes that the losses of the AFU in Kursk are huge – some of the biggest losses that Ukrainian servicemen can remember.
The Ukrainian grouping in Kursk was centered around the border town of Suzdha. It is the site of an important pumping and transit station for a natural gas pipeline built during the Soviet era which connects the vast gas fields of eastern Russia to markets in Ukraine and further west in Europe. In January, Ukraine shut down pipeline shipments through Suzdha, drawing sharp protests and threats of counter-measures from Hungary and Slovakia.
An ironic consequence of Ukraine shutting down the pipeline was that Russian soldiers were able to use the now-empty pipeline to advance some 15 kilometers directly into the center of the Ukrainian grouping in Suzdha. They waited days for orders. Russia then surprised and overwhelmed the embedded Ukrainian forces with a multi-pronged attack beginning on March 8. Many Ukrainian soldiers and allied mercenaries ended up stampeding into surrounding minefields.
Russian military correspondent Anna Dolgareva spoke to Russian military scouts in Suzdha and reported, “For six days, the Russian fighters sat inside the pipeline awaiting orders to move. They spent some 24 hours of difficult walking to get there. The pipeline still contained traces of methane gas and so holes were cut in the pipe along the way for ventilation.”
This operation was made possible because Ukraine shut off gas transit causing European countries to buy much more expensive liquefied gas from producers in the United States. Western sanctions against Russia have cost Europe its supply of relatively cheap Russian gas, replaced by shipments of expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States as well as gas from Norway and Algeria shipped by pipeline.
Ukrainian elite on ‘starvation rations’
Representatives of the Ukrainian political elite are today extremely worried about Zelensky’s quarrel with the new US administration that exploded into view in Washington on February 28. For most, funding from the United States is their main source of income.
Since the early 1990s, Ukraine has developed an entire class of government officials and politicians who have ‘monetized’ Russophobia and anti-communism. A key piece of moving up the career ladder has been to act the loudest in stigmatizing the former Soviet Union and modern Russian Federation, and figuring out how best to draw Western funding for such efforts. This scheme has worked well for decades, but now the apparent chaos being sown by the new Trump regime in Washington has upset the old arrangements. The chaos is merely the expression of a governing U.S. regime facing a looming defeat of its proxy war in Ukraine along with its European partners.
Some legislators realize that Zelensky’s harsh outbursts and confrontation with Trump and Trump’s vice president in Washington on February 28 could cost the country dearly, but others are betting on maintaining an aggressive, pro-war rhetoric. They are looking to the British government to help out.
Alexei Arestovich writes that Zelensky’s ‘disobedience’ is based solely on his desire to extract security guarantees for himself and his entourage. He says the problem for the White House is that “providing personal guarantees to thieves risks setting yourself up before American justice.”
Ukrainian economist Oleksiy Kushch writes that for the Ukrainian elite, the era when it could act as a child and demand money from the ‘adult uncles’ in the West is coming to an end. The West is so used to that arrangement that Zelensky’s apparent conflicts with the U.S. administration are bewildering, a kind of ‘revolt against the boss’.
Kushch summarizes Ukraine’s situation after Zelensky’s quarrel with Trump in this way, “Like a teenager who ‘unexpectedly’ has a child and finds all responsibility now rests on him, ‘daddy’ U.S. may threaten to stop helping out as punishment for any ‘disobedience’ while ‘mommy’ Europe promises to continue giving money but not forever.”
The Ukrainian elite has been thoroughly corrupted by years of generous Western ‘aid’ handouts. It no longer knows how to earn revenue and wealth on its own. So if some character named Zelensky becomes an obstacle to the continued flow of ‘daddy’s’ money, he becomes expendable. So much the worse for him.
Seyed Marandi: America Attacks Yemen – Has Trump Set Himself Up For Failure?
Glenn Diesen | March 19, 2025
Seyed Mohammad Marandi is a professor, analyst and advisor to Iran’s nuclear negotiation team
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‘Medical Error’ Led to Death of 6-Year-Old Who Developed Pneumonia After Measles Diagnosis
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 19, 2025
A child who died in a Texas hospital after developing pneumonia following a measles infection died as a result of “medical error” — including failure to administer the correct antibiotic in time, according to a medical expert who reviewed the child’s medical records.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) obtained the medical records from the family of the 6-year-old girl. The parents said they wanted people to know what happened to their daughter so it wouldn’t happen to other children.
The parents obtained the records from Covenant Children’s Hospital in Lubbock where their child died on Feb. 26.
The parents told Dr. Ben Edwards, who successfully treated their other children for measles, that they didn’t want to use the information uncovered in the medical records to inflame the situation. However, they did want to get the word out about the mistake if it could prevent it from happening to other children.
Dr. Pierre Kory, who has extensive experience in pulmonary and critical care medicine, analyzed the records. He said today in an interview on CHD.TV, “I’ve done medical case reviews from malpractice lawyers for a good part of my career, and this case was tragic.”
According to Kory’s analysis of the records, the girl died from a secondary bacterial pneumonia that had “little to do with measles.”
He added, “When I say it has little to do with measles, secondary bacterial pneumonias can happen after any viral infection.”
Kory said the girl “died of a medical error — and that error was a completely inappropriate antibiotic” for treating the kind of pneumonia she had.
The records showed that the girl was initially admitted to the emergency room (ER) for “secondary bacterial pneumonia,” Kory told The Defender. At that time, her measles rash was already fading.
She was not administered the correct antibiotic for treating her secondary bacterial pneumonia until roughly two and a half days later. By that time, she had declined so severely that doctors had already placed her on a mechanical ventilator, Kory said.
Also, it appears there was a delay of more than nine hours from the time when the correct antibiotic was finally ordered and the time it was given, Kory said. “Less than 24 hours later, she died — and she died rather catastrophically … suddenly her blood pressure crashed and she arrested.”
Medical error is the third leading cause of death in the U.S., according to a 2016 analysis by Johns Hopkins University researchers including Dr. Marty Makary, Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Hospital initially prescribed inappropriate antibiotic
Kory broke down in more precise medical terms what appears to have happened.
When the girl was admitted to the ER, the staff made a general diagnosis that she had a secondary bacterial pneumonia. “She was clearly being admitted from the community so it was implied that it was a community-acquired pneumonia,” Kory said, referring to how the girl didn’t get the pneumonia from being in a hospital or healthcare facility.
They were “absolutely correct” about that, Kory said.
But what they initially gave her for that diagnosis was incorrect, he said.
Generally, doctors put patients on two antibiotics “to cover all the possibilities” of what specific kind of bacterial pneumonia the patient may have.
Kory said:
“It’s in every guideline — infectious disease, pulmonary — every guideline in the country tells you that for a hospitalized child or adult who gets admitted to the hospital, you put them on two antibiotics.
“One is from a category called beta-lactams, which is like penicillin, cephalosporins. And they [the hospital] got that part correct. They put her on something called ceftriaxone, which was excellent.
“But you always need to pair it with an antibiotic from a different category, which is called a macrolide or a quinolone.”
They didn’t do that part, Kory said. “They didn’t put her on the most common, which is azithromycin.”
Instead, they put her on vancomycin, an antibiotic used for very drug-resistant organisms like MRSA.
According to the Mayo Clinic, MRSA — short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus — is an infection caused by a staph bacteria that’s “become resistant to many of the antibiotics used to treat ordinary staph infections.” Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or healthcare settings, like nursing homes or dialysis centers.
Giving vancomycin to the girl was an inappropriate choice, according to Kory.
He said:
“There’s no reason to think that this child would come in with MRSA from the community, from a Mennonite community. She’s not coming from a facility where a lot of antibiotics are used. So it’s a grievous error and it’s an error which led to her death.”
Hospital didn’t change course of treatment for over two days
The records show that the hospital didn’t adjust the girl’s antibiotics until a test came back showing that she had a type of bacterial pneumonia called “mycoplasma pneumonia.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, mycoplasma is a single form of bacteria that causes an infection that can occur in different parts of the body, such as the respiratory, urinary or genital tracts.
“The tragedy is that mycoplasma is an extremely common — what we call community-acquired — organism,” Kory said. Azithromycin is very effective against mycoplasma, he said.
The hospital staff finally ordered it for her upon seeing her test results. But they should have ordered it much sooner, given that her bacterial pneumonia was community-acquired, Kory said.
Kory said it wasn’t proper doctoring to let her decline for days without adjusting the treatment they were giving her. “You almost have three full days of a seriously declining medical status with no real changes to her treatment plan.”
He added:
“If I’m taking care of someone, and I’m rounding on them every day and I see that today they’re doing a little bit worse than yesterday. And then the next day they’re doing a little bit worse than the day before, I’m going to review exactly what I’m doing and say, ‘What am I missing? What am I missing? What else can I do?’
“And that didn’t happen until a test showed up on a computer. And that’s just not doctoring.”
By this time, the child was in the intensive care unit. “And from my review of the records,” Kory continued, “the antibiotic was ordered at 11:00 p.m., or approximately 11:00 p.m., and as far as I can tell, it was not administered until 9:00 a.m. the next morning.”
“So not only did you have several days delay of decline without the appropriate antibiotic,” he said, “but then when they realized that they were missing the appropriate antibiotic, it took them, as far as I can tell, 10 hours to administer it.”
By the time the girl received the correct antibiotic, she was already on a ventilator.
Father ‘simply wants the truth out’ so the public can talk about measles vs. vaccine risks
Edwards and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker also reviewed the medical records. They concurred with Kory’s analysis.
Edwards said, “As Dr. Kory’s pointed out, unfortunately this was a big mistake, a tragic mistake — and I agree — a fatal mistake.”
However, Edwards said the girl’s father— who gave CHD permission to report on the medical records — didn’t intend “to inflame the situation or cause more division and more just hot rhetoric.”
Edwards told a brief story to illustrate how divisive the media coverage of the West Texas measles outbreak has been.
The day the girl died, Edwards was in the middle of an interview with a reporter. “I remember that reporter grabbing his phone as the alert just came from the news announcing the ‘first measles death.’”
Edwards said there was “almost a giddiness” in the reporter’s response to the news.
“It was disgusting, actually,” he said. “I want people to know Peter [the father] doesn’t want this information to be used on the other side in the same almost giddiness kind of way of, ‘Aha, we got you.’”
The girl’s father “simply wants the truth to be told so that other kids who potentially could go down the same path as his daughter won’t have to.”
The parents aren’t sharing the information “to give one side more ammunition” in the ongoing public debate around measles.
The father told Edwards, “I love my neighbor — and my neighbor’s my enemy. My neighbor’s the one who hurt me. My neighbor’s the one who offends me.”
Edwards said he wants the public to understand the father’s reason for letting the medical records go public so that “we can maybe come to the table on this.”
Edwards added:
“There’s potential risk — complications and death — from MMR [the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine]. We need to have that conversation at the table, both sides in a truthful, honest manner for the sake of these children.
“That’s what he wants.”
Watch CHD.TV interview with Dr. Pierre Kory:
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.
Demonstrations in American, European cities condemning Israeli crimes in Gaza
Thousands gathered outside the British government headquarters in London on Tuesday evening
Palestinian Information Center – March 19, 2025
Thousands of pro-Palestinian activists marched through the streets of American and European cities to condemn the resumption of the Israeli occupation’s war of extermination against the Gaza Strip that resulted in the martyrdom and injury of hundreds, most of whom children and women.
The marches began in cities like Seattle in Washington State, San Francisco in California, and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, protesting the U.S. administration’s approval of violating the ceasefire agreement, as shown in footage shared by pro-Palestinian pages on social media.
Participants in the protests demanded a ban on arming Israel while it commits genocide in Gaza, as well as the release of Palestinian student Mahmoud Khalil.
In Minneapolis, dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the Israeli consulate, holding signs demanding an end to the genocide in the Gaza Strip.
The Minneapolis demonstration, announced just four hours prior to its gathering, garnered significant attention as it coincided with rush hour in the city.
In France, demonstrators in Place de la République in Paris condemned Israel’s breach of the ceasefire agreement and the resumption of attacks on the Gaza Strip.
The protesters called for an end to the war on Gaza, an immediate end to the blockade of the Strip, halting Israeli genocide in Gaza, holding Netanyahu and occupation leaders accountable, and boycotting Israel.
In Italy, clashes erupted between police and pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Milan, where hundreds called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza amidst stalled ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas.
Footage shows columns of red smoke filling the air, while the sounds of explosions echoed through the Italian city’s streets. Protesters were seen marching, raising Palestinian flags and signs that read “Hands off the West Bank” and “Glory to the martyrs, freedom for the prisoners,” before being attacked by police forces.
In the Dutch capital Amsterdam, another demonstration was held in support of Gaza and against the genocide being committed by Israel against Palestinians.
Cities like Ankara, Istanbul, Diyarbakır, and other Turkish cities also witnessed demonstrations condemning the Israeli massacres against residents of the Gaza Strip.
Protesters accused Israel of committing genocidal crimes through its ongoing aggression against the Gaza Strip and called on the international community to hold it accountable for these crimes.
Turkish organizations, including the Anadolu Youth Association, the Humanitarian Relief Organization, and the Turkish Institutions Coalition for Jerusalem, called for organizing supportive demonstrations for the Gaza Strip in various Turkish cities and for the continuation of the boycott against Israel and products from supporting companies.
Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic Magazine & Columbia’s Pulitzer Board advocated killing Palestinian journalists
Why does the “safety” framework never apply to Arab students?
By Adam Johnson | The Column | March 14, 2025
In 2002, Columbia University Pulitzer Prize board member, alleged “anti-authoritarian” expert, and Atlantic Magazine columnist Anne Applebaum explicitly advocated in Slate magazine that Israel kill Palestinian journalists for the crime of making Israelis and Americans look bad. In her article, “Kill The Messenger,” there is little subtlety or equivocation about not only Israel’s right to blow up Palestinian media infrastructure, but to kill reporters for simply doing their job:
“… the official Palestinian media is the right place for Israel to focus its ire. In fact, in the reporting of the Middle East conflict, which almost always focuses on yesterday’s violence and today’s body count, the crucial role of the Voice of Palestine—the official broadcasting arm of the Palestinian Authority—has often been overlooked. Nor is the problem just radio and television. If you want to understand why the Oslo peace process failed, or where suicide martyrs come from, it is worth taking a closer look at all the Palestinian Authority’s official media…
Until then, the Voice of Palestine will remain what it has become: a combatant—and therefore a legitimate target—in a painful, never-ending, low-intensity war.”
This article, which Applebaum has never explained or renounced, is useful when contextualizing the current witch hunt on college campuses targeting anti-Gaza genocide protestors under the Planck Length-thin auspices of promoting “student safety” and “combatting anti-semitism.”
What’s especially noteworthy is that Applebaum never even bothers laundering her promotion of the execution of Palestinians media workers in the language of “terrorism” or “material support for terrorism”—she is simply lobbying Israel kill Palestinian media workers for the mere fact that they are making Israel and the US look bad. Indeed, a key example of coverage justifying their killing Appelbaum cites is an extremely banal political cartoon. As she writes:
… they are subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, anti-American. A recent cartoon in Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the Palestinian Authority official daily, showed a blindfolded George Bush aiming missiles indiscriminately at a dartboard covered with the names of Arab states. One of his darts had hit the bull’s eye marked “Afghanistan.” Another had gone astray and hit an Arab man in the back. The caption read, “The war in Afghanistan is only the beginning.” While there is plenty of other anti-Americanism in other Palestinian media, and indeed in Arab media everywhere, this is the voice of the Palestinian Authority, the government of Yasser Arafat, a frequent visitor to the White House.
Applebaum believes a cartoon depicting George W. Bush as a warmonger makes Palestinian media a legitimate target worthy of summary killing. “Anti-Americanism,” one is lead to believe is not only a form of racism but a mode of speech that strips one of their protected civilian status.
This is an extraordinary, illiberal, and racist opinion, yet Applebaum is allowed to remain in good standing among liberal and academic elites because racism and casual bloodlust targeting Palestinians and Arabs simply doesn’t register or matter in the “student safety” calculus.
Imagine, if you will, a Columbia professor or Pulitzer prize committee member advocating the summary killing of Israeli or American media workers because they undermined the cause of Palestinian liberation in their reporting. If this article surfaced it would stir up immediate outrage and condemnation, the academic in question would be quickly fired, apologies would be made and and new policies would be promised. But with Applebaum calling for the killing of Palestinian reporters, an article that goes semi-viral on Twitter every few months, no one cares. Nothing happens. It’s just another routine, normal Serious Foreign Policy opinion from a Serious Foreign Policy Expert.
Columbia University President Katrina Armstrong is currently working with Trump officials, DHS, ICE, and other government agents seeking to deport and imprison anti-Israel protestors for the simple fact that—according to Trump officials themselves— they have ideological viewpoints the Trump regime doesn’t like. Columbia, and many other universities, are maximally complying with these demands ostensibly to promote “campus safety” and “combat hatred.” Indeed, making students “feel safe” has been the high-minded liberal reason for virtually every university administrator cracking down on free speech, both before and after Trump took office. “We are focused,” Armstrong said in a press release last year, “on ensuring [student] safety, supporting their wellbeing, and protecting their ability to learn.”
“I have said it before, and I will say it again,” Armstrong insisted, “discrimination and harassment, including hate language, calls for violence, and the targeting of any individuals or groups based on their beliefs, ancestry, religion, gender identity, or any other identity or affiliation have no place at Columbia.”
Except that it does. Columbia, which manages and awards the Pulitzer prize, has no problem putting someone with a history of advocating the killing of Arab civilians in a position of power, helping determine who in journalism is worthy of its highest award, and creating an atmosphere on campus that makes clear to its Palestinian students that they are subhuman and unworthy of normal protections under the laws of war.
The Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Farce
By Ilana Mercer • Unz Review • March 18, 2025
‘A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.’ ~ Refaat Al-Areer, RIP
Nobody can quite determine any longer which of the two countries, America or Israel, is the Great Satan and which is the Little Satan. ~ ilana
“We’re the United States. We’re not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play.” So said Trump Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler to Zionist enforcer Jake Tapper, on CNN.
Boehler had been deputized by President Donald Trump to bypass Bibi Netanyahu and negotiate directly with Hamas. More to the point, Boehler had described Hamas, whom by now very many around the world consider resistance fighters, as holding points of view that merit a hearing. He even suggested, as Jewish Insider reported, that—lo—! “they’re actually pretty nice guys.” Hamas, that is.
Whatever was he thinking! Boehler was off his leash. Israeli officials were scurrying about in an attempt to get him back on it.
Talking to Hamas? Now Trump was talking!
Unlike the president’s Gaza Rivera plan to evict Palestinian survivors from Gaza; negotiations with Hamas do indeed constitute “out-of-the-box thinking,” if not original thinking. Unoriginal, because diplomacy, namely talking to adversaries, is standard statecraft. At least it ought to be.
Excerpted but barely in the Washington Examiner, the testy Boehler-Tapper televised exchange took time to propagate to the Internet. You see, US Deep Tech, Google included, generally cover for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which is also business partner to American tech. These multinationals are not about to throw sand in the IDF’s military bearings.
Tech multinationals (or Deep Tech, as I call them) have, after all, supplied the IDF with the killer infrastructure required to “build artificial intelligence (AI) programs designed to produce human targets with little human oversight.” (The other reasonable conclusion is that these multinationals are undisturbed by genocide.)
Talking to Hamas would certainly have been inconceivable under Joe Biden, alias Genocide Joe, remarks commentator extraordinaire Mouin Rabbani, a Palestinian. And while Trump has prioritized negotiations over American dual-national captives; his bold move broadcasts some salient facts about the situation:
Israel is an obstacle to an accord; to closing out the genocide. It is especially eager to avoid phase II of the January 17, 2025 ceasefire agreement. Not that the media system had noticed, but Israel never quite quit the killing.
By March 13, Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement upwards of one thousand times, in the estimation of Jon Elmer, military analyst at the Electronic Intifada. Staggering, perhaps, but utterly predictable historically. “Israel,” reminds a dejected Chris Hedges—he is a famed war correspondent—“has assassinated more people than any other people in the Western World.”
In the hours right after the ceasefire deal was announced; Israeli forces killed at least 87 Palestinians, 23 of them children. Quipped the late Refaat Al-Areer: “A ceasefire is when the Israelis fire and we cease.” As in “expire.” A mild-mannered, bookish Palestinian scholar, Dr. Al-Areer was murdered in his Gaza residence, in December of 2023.
Indeed, the low-grade killing across the coastal strip had continued throughout phase I of the “ceasefire.” To be exact, Israel had started up the killing fifteen minutes into the ceasefire’s implementation. Since January 15, 2025, Israel has murdered an average of three people every 24 hours—150 Palestinians since the start of the ceasefire on 19 January 2025.
No sooner were the Israelis steered by Steven Witkoff, in January, to a ceasefire; than the urge to kill overcame them. Israeli newspapers were telling about the “salty” language Witkoff, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, had deployed with Netanyahu, instructing the Israeli prime minister’s aides, as follows (and I paraphrase), “I don’t care that today’s your Sabbath. Get down here and sign this [old] ceasefire on the dotted line.” I ad-libbed “old” in, because the January-15 accord was modeled after one Hamas had composed in May of 2024.
Did Witkoff remind Netanyahu that the Israeli army, the IDF, does not rest up on the Seventh Day from the slaughter of innocents, and that, surely its commander-in-chief could get off his duff to make peace on the holy Sabbath?! Probably not. Still, what transpired was refreshing, even delicious.
The March 2025 violations of the agreement have seen Israel halt the meager aid let into starving Gaza, and cut off the remaining supply of electricity to Gaza. Because the main desalination water-treatment plant is producing a fraction of its prior output, running as it is only on generators—only one-in-ten Gazans currently has access to safe drinking water.
From the start, Israel had failed to allow into Gaza the agreed-upon medicines, fuel, food, housing units (15 out of a promised 60,000), tents (20 percent of the requisite 200,000), heavy earth-moving machinery, spare parts, construction material, and alternative energy systems, like generators.
Still regionally omnipotent, still resistless—Israel has now put its exterminatory foot to the floor again. The Jewish State continues to bleed the region like a leech, seizing Lebanese and Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights. As I write, via the chyron scroll across the screen comes news that Israel has just extinguished nine lives in Northen Gaza, and two in southern Lebanon, where a ceasefire is in effect.
Unless it is killing things, Israel is just not happy. Flora and fauna, too. Israeli genociders, candid economists might say, have a high time-preference mindset. In such an uncivilized society, impulses (to kill) are privileged over contractual commitments (to quit killing). Not some of the livestock, but all of the livestock. As hard as it is to believe, but under decades of a medieval blockade, Gaza’s farmers had, before October 7, fed a third of their people. Croplands, irrigation systems, batteries of greenhouses, living things that produce flowers then give fruit: everything has gone the way of cattle, poultry and family pets: dead.
The term Carthaginian Peace has lost its meaning under Israel’s malign sway. The bad idea of “peace” through crippling the opponent Israel has replaced with the idea of “peace” through conquering and killing the opponent off. Conversion is complete. The structural violence that is the State of Israel the US duopoly has helped normalize. Genocidal violence, yes or no, saturation bombing of civilians, pros and cons, and forced mass expulsion of starving, subjugated people—if not de rigueur, these state crimes are now part of normal governance in the West.
On top of all that, there was never a ceasefire in the West Bank. The West Bank’s civilians, so closely clustered, have been strafed from the air. For the first time in 20 years, tanks travel all over what are urban neighborhoods.
The depopulation underway in this de facto annexed territory hardly even percolates through to the West’s press. Yet thousands of West Bank Palestinians are being plucked from their homes, some detained, mostly without charges, at times shot on the spot; always degraded, tortured, and sicced upon by fulminating Jewish settlers, who “work” cheek-by-jowl with Israeli soldiers.
A screen picture of any day in the life of a subject in the State of Satan seconds my description. Taken on February 15, the captured headlines via Ha’aretz tell of 30,000 Palestinians driven from Jenin, a so-called refugee camp in the West Bank. The number of people evicted and dispossessed from these “camps” has since ballooned to close on 50,000. The West Bank’s Palestinians are denied access to their agricultural land, which means that soon it will lie fallow, and settlers will colonize it.
I call places like Jenin “so-called” camps because these were proper cities, not tent cities. As was noted in the Journal of Middle-East Studies (1992), these “camps are similar to any other urban neighborhoods,” into which they have evolved.
I’d been to Jenin. Our family had been invited as guests by generous residents. Childhood in Israel saw me visiting what I then knew as The Triangle: Tira, Tulkarem and Jenin. In the 1970s, these were not yet cities, but were definitely no nylon-dome encampments. My step-father, a doctor, headed healthcare clinics in what he called The Triangle. Daily, he’d return home laden with export-quality fresh produce. His patients were poor, yet so very generous. Upon the town’s doctor, a South African Jew who was appreciated in his role as a healthcare provider, they showered respect, affection and gifts.
We’d also be invited as a family to feasts held on the occasion of a wedding. The tables groaned with heavenly cuisine. Bestowed, this was a great honor, and these were grand affairs, an example of a culture in which hospitality and generosity are defining values. An invitation meant that you were never ignored. A lovely, if genteel, welcome awaited.
I do not know if the term Triangle deployed then denotes the same cluster of cities and villages. I do know that Jenin today is 70-percent levelled. Burdened by history like never before, I note, too, that Tira is no longer visible on the map.
Although the occupation army has pulled out of the Netzarim Corridor, which divides Gaza, it retains a presence in southern Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor. The serial-killer state had hoped, with Trump’s backing, to renege entirely on the ceasefire agreement, and, in particular, on its Phase-II obligations to permanently end the offensive and “withdraw armed forces from the Gaza Strip completely.” In order to “surmount the obstacle” that is Israel, the Trump Administration had, therefore, chosen to speak directly with Hamas leaders.
Early in January of 2025, there was hope. Trump is an Alpha Male; Bibi Netanyahu is a kept man. How long can the ego-bound leader of a Super Power tolerate being bossed about by the leader of a “sh-thole country,” to use Trump’s old coinage?
Two months distant, and hope is fading. Trump chose to channel son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner, the nepotistic scion of a dodgy New York realtor, and an empty husk of a man, has had his eye on the waterfront property of a conquered and dying people. He had said as much about Gaza in 2024.
In essence, some of the world’s wealthiest men were coveting the property of the world’s poorest and most persecuted people.
Soon to follow was Trump’s Gaza plan, a gaudy vulgar production, replete with bearded belly dancers. “Trump Gaza,” the plan’s title, was not “out-of-the-box thinking,” as some in the president’s Westen coalition had dubbed it. Rather, it sits on a continuum of evil. It is an extension and completion of Joe Biden’s genocide.
Eager, it would seem, to write the Palestinian People’s obituary, Trump had vowed to assume control over Gaza, rebuild it and evict the survivors of a genocide committed by client state Israel.
By removing the pitiful exhibits from the scene of the crime; Donald Trump would be covering-up the crime of genocide. Next, he planned to conclude Biden’s genocide by scattering the survivors across the Middle East. Israel will have been rescued. Gazans will have ceased to exist as a nation. The forced displacement and mass murder of Gaza’s Palestinians would have been achieved, completed.
Who said crime doesn’t pay? When the Superpower inverts the moral order of the universe; the Crime of All Crimes pays—and then some.
As Trump told it, nobody quite knows how or why Gaza became a “demolition site.” Somehow, the soil got soaked through with the blood of tens-of-thousands of Palestinians, and a toxic mix of 50-million tons of building debris. Somehow, piles of bodies decay beneath the surface. Somehow, garbage is piled as high as the bodies, were they to be stacked. Open sewage runs through what remains of the streets, and the byproducts and contaminants of munitions, like unexploded ordnance, lie everywhere.
It’s all a big mystery.
The other thing nobody can quite determine is which of the two countries, America or Israel, is the Great Satan and which is the Little Satan.
Back to Boehler: Israel went barking mad when our ex-envoy failed to show monk-like devotion to Israel, asserting, instead, American foreign-policy independence. The Lobby was marshalled. Fervid assurances were soon provided. Soon enough, Adam Boehler was gone. After being “nominated for the Senate-confirmed position of Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs,” he was demoted to “special government employee,” reports Ha’aretz. Found deficient in Zionist solidarity, Boehler “withdrew his nomination.”
The median elapsed time between an American official opposing anything Israel and then dropping out of history is getting shorter.
Like Joe Biden did before him, president Trump followed the Israeli prime minister on a leash. On March 5, he bellowed on Truth Social:
“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you.” Buoyed, at 2:00 AM today, March 18, Israel murdered over 400 Gazans. It is currently demanding that Hamas hand over hostages for nothing.
Will the Palestinians wronged and ruined get a reprieve? Will the mercurial Trump, who, to his credit, is ideologically unattached to Israel, cut Israel dead, as he ought to? These possibilities are looking remote.
***
Ilana Mercer is a paleolibertarian theorist, author and essayist. Her new book is “The Paleolibertarian Guide To Deep Tech, Deep Pharma & The Aberrant Economy” (February 2024). Mercer is described as “a system-builder. Distilled, her modus operandi has been to methodically apply first principles to the day’s events.” She’s Jewish and grew up in Israel from which she fled, aged 19, never to return. She had refused to serve in the IDF, the Israeli military.
US scraps monitoring of alleged ‘Russian sabotage’ – Reuters
RT | March 19, 2025
The US has halted a multi-agency program set up to detect and counter potential “sabotage, disinformation, and cyberattacks” it claims Russia could launch against the West, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing current and former officials.
The outlet says it could not verify if the order came from US President Donald Trump.
The program, initiated under former President Joe Biden and led by the country’s National Security Council, involved at least seven US security agencies and the EU, to counter alleged Russian “hybrid activities,” the outlet said.
Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Western officials have accused Russian intelligence agencies of conducting a covert campaign to weaken US-led support for Kiev. They claimed that Moscow has been “escalating a shadow war against Western nations” allegedly involving arson attacks, assassination attempts, election interference, damage to undersea cables, and other plots.
Russia has repeatedly dismissed the accusations as “unfounded,” with the Kremlin describing the allegations of so-called “Russian sabotage” as “empty and ephemeral.”
Since assuming office for the second time, Trump has diverged from Western efforts to isolate Russia, and instead opened direct communication with Russian President Vladimir Putin, while publicly clashing with Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, the article noted.
Trump administration officials ignored calls to continue the monitoring effort, the outlet claimed, adding that “much of the work has come to a standstill” since Trump took office in January.
Asked about Washington’s suspension of a “hybrid warfare campaign” monitoring, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters that the Trump administration was trying to get rid of “everything ineffective, corrupt and implausible,” something he said was “understandable.”
Over the past several months, there have been multiple cases in which telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged by vessels operating from Russian ports, triggering speculation that Moscow was behind the damage. However, an investigation carried out by NATO prosecutors has failed to find any evidence connecting the incidents to Moscow.
Peskov has previously stated that “it is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any grounds.”
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- 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
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