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How a Secluded 1984 Conference Forged Israel’s Unprecedented Influence Over US Media

By Kit Klarenberg | MintPress News | October 31, 2024

As Israel’s October 1 invasion of Lebanon unfolds, the media’s complicity in shaping public perception raises urgent questions, particularly when viewed through the lens of a controversial 1984 conference where influential advertising and media figures gathered to refine Israel’s narrative strategies. This conference laid the groundwork for a sophisticated propaganda campaign—Hasbara—that sought to sanitize Israel’s actions and cast its military operations in a favorable light. Today, as Western journalists whitewash, distort, and conceal the realities of Israel’s deadly campaign of violence, the enduring legacy of this meeting becomes alarmingly clear, revealing how narratives crafted decades ago continue to shape the coverage of a conflict that claims countless lives.

In the first week of October, Israeli forces fired 355 bullets at a car containing a five-year-old, then shot at rescue workers who rushed to save her life. A horrific crime – yet, per many Western media headlines, she was simply a “girl killed in Gaza.” The circumstances and perpetrators of her death, if mentioned at all, were invariably buried at the bottom of reports, well hidden from the 80% of the news-consuming public who only read headlines, not accompanying articles.

By contrast, on October 15, Sky News was very keen that its viewers know the names and faces of four “teenage” IDF soldiers “killed” in a “Hezbollah drone attack,” humanizing and infantilizing individuals who, by mere token of their service in Israel’s military, are by definition, guilty of genocide. In passing, the same report briskly noted: “‘23 die’ in Gaza school strike.” Their identities, ages, and photos, let alone clarity on who or what murdered them, weren’t provided.

Moreover, the inverted commas incongruously hovering around the number of Palestinians killed subtly undermined that claim’s credibility while reducing the child victims to an afterthought compared to the considerably more important quartet of deceased IDF genocidaires. MintPress News senior staff writer Alan MacLeod put it succinctly when he Tweeted, “In years to come, students in university departments around the world will be studying the propaganda embedded in this headline. It’s truly incredible how much propaganda has been packed into 16 words.”

The mainstream media’s systematic use of distancing and evasive language, omission and other duplicitous chicanery to downplay or outright justify Israel’s murder of innocent civilians while simultaneously dehumanizing their victims and delegitimizing Palestinian resistance against brutal, illegal IDF occupation is as unconscionable as it is well-documented. Amazingly though, ‘twasn’t ever thus. Once upon a time, mainstream news networks exposed Israel’s war crimes without qualification, and anchors and pundits openly condemned these actions on live TV to audiences of millions.

The story of how Western media was transformed into Israel’s doting, servile propaganda appendage is not only a fascinating and sordid hidden chronicle. It is a deeply educational lesson in how imperial power can easily subordinate supposed arbiters of truth to its will. Comprehending how we got to this point equips us with the tools to assess, identify, and deconstruct lies large and small – and effectively challenge and counter not only Israel’s falsehoods but the entire settler colonial endeavor.

‘Neighborhood Bully’

On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. The effort was ostensibly intended to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters away from their positions on Israel’s northern border. But, as the IDF savagely pushed ever-deeper into the country, including Beirut, it became clear that ethnic cleansing, massacres, and land theft were – as in Palestine – the true goal. Throughout the Lebanese capital, news crews from major networks and reporters from the West’s biggest newspapers were waiting.

Israel’s rapacious bloodlust and casual contempt for Arab lives had hitherto been, by and large, successfully concealed from the outside world. Suddenly, though, scenes of deliberate IDF airstrikes on residential housing blocks, Tel Aviv’s trigger-happy soldiers running amok in Beirut’s streets, and hospitals overflowing with civilians suffering from grave injuries, including chemical burns due to Israel’s use of phosphorus shells, were broadcast the world over, to nigh-universal outcry. As veteran NBC news anchor John Chancellor contemporarily explained to Western viewers:

What in the world is going on? Israel’s security problem, on its border, is 50 miles to the south. What’s an Israeli army doing here in Beirut? The answer is we are now dealing with an imperial Israel, which is solving its problems in someone else’s country, world opinion be damned.”

Global shock and repulsion at Israel’s conduct would only ratchet during the IDF’s resultant illegal military occupation of swaths of Lebanon. In September 1982, an Israel-backed armed Christian militia, Phalange, entered Sabra, a Beirut neighborhood home to many Palestinians displaced by the 1948 Nakba. Over a two-day span, they slaughtered up to 3,500 people while mutilating and raping countless others. Again, unfortunately for Tel Aviv, mainstream journalists were on hand to document these heinous crimes first-hand.

To say the least, Israel had an international PR disaster of historic proportions on its blood-soaked hands. The risk that further exposure of its genocidal nature might decisively and permanently shift global opinion in favor of the Palestinians and the Arab world more generally was significant. The attack on Lebanon had already spurred Western news outlets to critically reassess other illegal annexations and occupations in which Israel was and remains engaged. As ABC News reporter Richard Threlkeld commented at the time:

Israel was always that gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds. Now, the Israelis have annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, settled down more or less permanently on the West Bank, and occupied close to half of Lebanon. In the interests of self-defense, that gallant little underdog, Israel, has suddenly started behaving like the neighborhood bully.”

So it was that in the summer of 1984, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) – a major Zionist lobby organization – convened a conference in Jerusalem, Israel’s Public Image: Problems and Remedies. It was chaired by U.S. advertising supremo Carl Spielgovel, who a decade earlier provided pro bono advice to the Israeli government on strategies for publicly communicating why Tel Aviv refused to adhere to the terms of the Henry Kissinger-brokered 1973 Sinai Accords. Spielgovel later recalled:

It occurred to me then that the Israelis were doing a good job at training their military people, and they were doing a relatively good job at training their diplomatic corps. But they weren’t spending any time training information officers, people who could present Israel’s case to embassies and TV anchormen around the world. Over the years, I made this a personal cause celebre.”

The 1984 Jerusalem conference offered Spielgovel and a welter of Western advertising and public relations executives, media specialists, editors, journalists, and leaders of major Zionist advocacy groups an opportunity to achieve that malign objective. Together, they hammered out a dedicated strategy for ensuring the “crisis” caused by news reporting on the invasion of Lebanon two years earlier would never be repeated. Their antidote? Ceaseless, methodical, and wide-ranging “Hasbara” – Hebrew for propaganda – for “changing people’s minds [and] making them think differently.”

‘Big Scoop’

The AJC subsequently published records of the conference. They offer extraordinarily candid insight into how multiple Hasbara strategies, which have been in perpetual operation ever since were birthed. For example, basic propaganda messages were agreed upon. This included messages that are echoed by Israel’s supporters to this day, emphasizing Israel’s regional importance to the U.S. and Europe, Western cultural and political values, geographic vulnerability, and supposed striving for peace in the face of implacable Palestinian belligerence and intransigence.

As Judith Elizur, an expert in “communications” from Tel Aviv’s Hebrew University, explained:

Because the ‘power dimension’ of Israel’s image is so problematic, it seems to me that Hasbara must concentrate on reinforcing other aspects of Israel that have a positive appeal – medicine, agriculture, science, archaeology… We have been too preoccupied with extinguishing political brush fires. We need to devote more of our resources to long-range image-making. We must recreate a multi-dimensional image of Israel which will assure us the basic support we require in times of crisis.”

There was extensive discussion of how to present “unpalatable policies” to Western populations, and counter the perception of Israel as “Goliath steamrolling” across West Asia, against adversaries “outgunned, outclassed and outmanned” with “no capacity to resist.” The necessity of training the Jewish diaspora in countering criticism of Israel was considered paramount.

AJC’s president lamented that “many American Jews” had condemned the invasion of Lebanon and “did us a terrible disservice.” Any such future “disagreement” would make it “very difficult for us to conduct Hasbara effectively.”

Joseph Block, Pepsi’s former vice president of public relations, stressed the need for a dedicated, 24/7 Israel press operation “equipped to offer foreign journalists an occasional exclusive or scoop” and engage in other media outreach to balance critical coverage and get reporters and newsrooms ‘on side.’ Block lamented that had Israeli officials not “briefed NBC and other networks appropriately” and given them “a big scoop” during Lebanon’s invasion, “a different story would have reached America’s 90 million TV households”:

News doesn’t just jump into a camera. It’s directed. It’s managed. It’s made accessible. Public relations is a process that makes news available in a particular form. In the US, PR is as important as accounting, the law and the military… As a corporate spokesman for two of America’s top 50 corporations, I wish I had a shekel for every time I said, ‘no comment’ to a reporter. I was always careful, however, not to antagonize or intimidate the reporter. I knew I had to live with him or her.”

Yoram Ettinger, media analysis chief at the Israel Information Center, concurred, declaring that media framing on Israel’s actions needed to be determined in advance. “Actions” such as “blowing up houses,” which were “difficult to explain,” could be preemptively justified or at least relativized by placing them “in context” while “[drawing] analogies that others will understand.” This would “help others to interpret their meaning,” per Tel Aviv’s perspectives.

The Conference hoped such efforts would mean “our American friends will be able to take a more activist posture as amplifiers of our policy” and assist them in “tucking away the house problems in a back room.” It was also suggested that on an individual and organizational level, Zionist activists serve as a rapid reaction force, deluging news outlets with complaints en masse should their coverage of Israel be at all critical. One attendee boasted of their personal success in this regard:

One day CBS News Radio reported that an American soldier had been hurt by stepping on an Israeli cluster bomb at the Beirut airport. I called CBS to point out that no one had established the bomb was an Israeli one. One hour later CBS reported that an American soldier had stepped on a bomb; this time the report omitted any reference to Israel.”

‘Frequent Violations’

Another significant recommendation came from Carl Spielgovel: creating a “training program” to bring carefully selected Israeli information specialists into U.S. advertising, PR agencies, and major news outlets. The initiative aimed to equip them with industry insights, ensure Hasbara efforts were maximized, and establish close relationships between Israeli officials and the organizations to which they were assigned.

These “specialists” would operate under the guidance of a U.S.-Israeli council described as “wise persons who can project different scenarios and how to cope with them” on complex issues like “annexation and Jerusalem.” Spielgovel was careful to clarify that he was “not suggesting that we make policy” but rather that “we should make the best minds available to help elucidate the consequences of certain policies.” The goal, he suggested, was to reinforce to the American public that Tel Aviv remains Washington’s “staunch political and military ally.”

Spielgovel further proposed that future AJC conferences should incorporate input from “young people” and people of color to better promote Tel Aviv’s image among diverse “constituencies.” He argued that “Hasbara needs to implant in the consciousness of the world the day-to-day existence” of Israeli citizens, requiring a steady stream of “stories in the arts, business, and cooking sections of U.S. newspapers.” Since then, a dedicated Hasbara program aimed at cultivating skilled Zionist advocates in the U.S. has operated continuously.

Buoyed by its success, the operation soon expanded to include school and university students worldwide, training them to act as vigorous advocates for Israel in classrooms and on campuses. Graduates of these Israeli-funded programs frequently enter influential fields, including journalism, where they continue to promote Hasbara narratives and defend Israel’s actions. The impact on Western media coverage of Palestine has been profound.

To a significant degree, the portrayal of Tel Aviv as “the gallant little underdog democracy fighting for survival against all the odds” has been firmly reestablished. Despite the ongoing crisis in Gaza, mainstream outlets seldom provide context for Palestinian resistance to Israel’s policies of annexation, occupation, and military actions. Coverage nearly always frames Israel’s actions as “self-defense” against “terrorist” threats, with Western journalists keenly aware of potential repercussions for diverging from this narrative.

The rapid reaction force proposed at the 1984 AJC conference remains highly active. An extensive network of Hasbara-trained individuals and Israel lobby organizations is always on standby, ready to pressure and intimidate news outlets if coverage diverges from favorable framing or casts Israel in a critical light. As a senior BBC producer once confided to veteran media critic Greg Philo:

We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis. The only issue we face then is how high up it’s come from them. Has it come from a monitoring group? Has it come from the Israeli embassy? And how high has it gone up our organization? Has it reached the editor or director general? I have had journalists on the phone to me before a major news report, asking which words can I use – ‘is it alright I say this’?”

An October exposé by Al Jazeera, citing testimony from BBC and CNN whistleblowers, detailed “pro-Israel bias in coverage, systematic double standards, and frequent violations of journalistic principles” at both networks. According to insiders, much of this was driven by concerns over how Israeli officials might perceive and react to certain coverage. Independent activists and journalists, however, are not bound by such institutional pressures—and since October 7, 2023, they have mounted a formidable challenge to Hasbara narratives.

Were it not for the persistent investigations by outlets like MintPress News, The Grayzone, and Electronic Intifada, unfounded allegations promoted by Israel since the outset of the Gaza conflict—such as claims of Hamas committing mass rape or beheading infants—might never have been thoroughly debunked and might still shape the “context” for Israel’s actions against Palestinians. Meanwhile, countless concerned citizens have actively challenged Western narratives on the conflict in real-time across social media, a groundswell of critique that may be fueling pushback within some mainstream newsrooms.

It is a poetic irony that the same information warfare techniques once honed under Hasbara are now being directed at Israel and its defenders. For decades, these methods allowed Israel to proceed with its gradual displacement of the Palestinian people, often with tacit approval from Western audiences. But those times seem to be fading. Today, critics and former targets of Israeli policy are effectively using these strategies, wielding what they see as their most potent tools—truth and justice.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg.

November 2, 2024 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO trying to push Russia out of Black Sea – Putin aide

RT | November 2, 2024

Russia must work to strengthen its Navy to counteract NATO’s continued efforts to establish dominance in the Black Sea, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aide Nikolay Patrushev has said.

During a meeting with the command of the Russian Navy and the Black Sea Fleet, Patrushev, who serves as the chairman of the Maritime Collegium, pointed out that pushing Russia out of the Black Sea has long been one of the primary goals of Washington and its allies.

“Historical facts show that pushing Russia away from the Black Sea shores has traditionally been considered one of the key tasks in Anglo-Saxon politics. And today, the collective West, led by the United States, is hatching plans to establish its own long-term presence in the Black Sea and along its perimeter to the detriment of the legitimate interests of our country,” Patrushev said.

He added that the US and its NATO allies are currently “hatching plans” to expand their naval presence in the Black Sea through the use of Europe’s internal waterways for military purposes; in this case, to access it through the Danube.

“Reducing Russia’s role as a maritime power in the Black Sea region is one of the areas of action of unfriendly Western states in the context of their policy aimed at inflicting a strategic defeat on our country,” he said, noting that the increase of NATO’s presence is also a violation of the Montreux Convention, which limits the presence of military vessels in the straits between the Black and Mediterranean seas.

Patrushev also pointed out that according to Russia’s maritime doctrine, the Black Sea and the Azov Sea are regarded as key regions for the protection of the country’s national interests in the global ocean space.

He stressed that it was necessary to ensure “a balance of power” in the region and increase the universality of the Russian Navy and expand its range of its tasks to help protect national interests.

In July, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky had signed a decree outlining the country’s maritime security strategy, which included the establishment of a permanent NATO presence in the Black Sea and the organization of maritime patrols in the Azov-Black Sea basin in coordination with Kiev’s partner countries.

Moscow responded to the move by pointing out that a “concentrated presence” of NATO ships in the Black Sea represented a threat to Russia’s national security and that it would respond by taking measures to protect its interests in the region.

November 2, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Lebanese House Speaker: ‘Israel’ Rejected Lebanon’s Ceasefire Roadmap, Gaza Scenario “Possible”

Al-Manar | November 1, 2024

The Lebanese House Speaker Nabih Berri indicated that the Israeli enemy’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the ceasefire roadmap adopted by the Lebanese government in agreement with the US presidential envoy Amos Hochstein.

Netanyahu obliterated the latest ceasefire opportunity in Lebanon, Speaker Berri said in an interview with the Saudi newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat.

Speaker Berri noted that the political endeavor aimed at concluding a ceasefire in Lebanon had been postponed till after the US presidential elections, adding that the battlefield would have its say and voicing its concerns and fears of Gaza scenario recurrence in Lebanon.

Hochstein promised to contact us in case of observing positive indications during his meetings in Tel Aviv, Speaker Berri said, adding that the US envoy left without telling us about the results of his visit to the occupation entity.

Speaker Berri reiterated Lebanon’s commitment to the implementation of the UN Resolution 1701 without any amendment.

Meeting with Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), Major General Aroldo Lazaro, Speaker Berri stressed that ‘Israel’ has wasted, at least since last September, more than one tangible opportunity to cease fire, implement Resolution 1701, restore calm and return the displaced persons on both sides of the border.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Government Agents Try to Stir Up Fear of Russian Election Interference a Third Presidential Election in a Row

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | November 1, 2024

For a third United States presidential election in a row, US agents are out warning of Russian election interference.

In the previous two elections the warnings were spurious. Still, the government agents succeeded in raising worry in people’s minds regarding candidate Donald Trump. And they suppressed consideration of information damaging to Trump’s opponents, including through indicating the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were “Russian disinformation.”

This election, the government agents are at it again. Their latest spurt of relating supposed Russian election interference arrived in a Friday joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). This joint statement is one among a series of updates concerning what the press release calls “Moscow’s broader effort to raise unfounded questions about the integrity of the U.S. election and stoke divisions among Americans.”

Yeah, whatever, guys. Have you ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf?

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

The War Against the Palestinians Must Go On

Both major political parties connive at Israel’s genocide in Gaza

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • November 1, 2024

The sucking up to Israel and its backers by the political class in America never seems go away. Indeed, it if anything increases during the lead up to national elections. In the latest manifestation of Judeophilia, Rudy Giuliani, self-described as “America’s Mayor,” has now informed us that “They [the Israelis] are our best friends. I worked for Ronald Reagan for eight years and Ronald Reagan said that we have to always be there for Israel because Israel is always there for us! Hamas is not there for us, the Iranians are not there for us, they want to kill us and the Palestinians are taught to kill us at two years old! They won’t let a Palestinian in Jordan. They won’t let a Palestinian in Egypt. And [Kamala] Harris wants to bring them to you! They may have good people, I don’t care, but I won’t take a risk with people that are taught to kill Americans at two! I’m on the side of Israel! You’re on the side of Israel! Donald Trump is on the side of Israel! And they [the Democrats] are on the side of the terrorists.”

Giuliani said all that and more at a Donald Trump election rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he was breathing fire in a speech [at minute 17:27] that one media outlet described as “unhinged” to rouse the overflow crowd to hate Israel’s enemies, which apparently includes the Democratic Party if they should regain the presidency. I would not want to disagree with a man of Giuliani’s psycho-phantasmagoric stature about facts, but I do not recall when the United States was actually threatened by Israel’s enemies to include Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran or a place we once called Palestine, but then again, I am getting older and my memory might be failing. Nor can I recall anything at all that Israel has done for what was once my country apart from take huge bundles of our tax money equivalent to one quarter of a trillion dollars while also corrupting our politicians and undermining both our rule of law and our Bill of Rights, but, then again, blame it on my memory since I cannot imagine a warm and friendly chap like Benjamin Netanyahu doing anything nasty or naughty.

In trying to score political points, Giuliani does not seem to get that the adoration of the Jewish state is a bipartisan thing, that the US government, no matter who wins elections, will continue to supply the Israelis with money and weapons to expel or kill as many of its neighbors as possible. The carnage will create a new metaphoric “land without people” empty space between the Euphrates and Nile Rivers that will become a great nursery for establishing and populating the Eretz or “Greater Israel” Chosen by Yahweh to rule the Middle East.

One good thing about Giuliani and his master Donald Trump is that they do not even pretend to want to help Palestinians and other “lesser breeds without the law” to resist the occupation and eradication by their Jewish masters. Trump would like to have the job of extermination finished so Israel’s public relations image would not be further damaged. Kamala, on the other hand, would keep handing out weapons and money while piously calling for a cease fire, an objective that is routinely rejected by a stern Netanyahu. How the Biden-Harris rule of foreign relations vis-à-vis the Middle East operates is to pretend one thing while doing something else. It has been reported that Biden’s peace negotiators Amos Hochstein, an Israeli who served in the IDF, and Brett McGurk, who were ostensibly working to help avoid expansion of the Gaza crisis into Lebanon, were doing quite the opposite. They have been working “behind the scenes” to encourage Israel, and they are now describing Israel’s Lebanon operations that have included a major land invasion as a “history-defining moment” — one that will “reshape the Middle East for the better for years to come.”

And there’s more. The US Ambassador to Lebanon one Lisa Johnson has been meeting with the various parties and groups that make up the Lebanese government and its social and religious mix with a proposal that it organize to prepare the country for a “post-Hezbollah era” by mobilizing “internal” forces to eliminate the Islamic resistance movement while it is engaged in fighting the Israeli Army. Johnson, a Joe Biden appointee to her post, certainly reflects White House and State Department thinking on the Middle East. She reportedly told Lebanese politicians, “Israel cannot achieve everything through war; it’s time for you to do your part and launch an internal uprising under the banner of ‘Enough.’ The Lebanese people must show their desire to rise-up and get rid of Hezbollah.” Johnson challenged the politicians, “Why do you seem afraid? Hezbollah has been defeated, its leadership is destroyed, and we are with you, and the entire free world stands by your side… We do not only want to limit Hezbollah’s influence, but we will strike its support lines, and we are working non-stop to bring down the regime in Iran as well.”

Someone should remind Ms. Johnson as well as McGurk and Hochstein that we are not legally at war with Lebanon, nor with Iran, and nor even with the Palestinians whose genocide we are enabling. The reality is that Gaza and Lebanon are America’s war in the sense that Israel’s onslaught against its neighbors would not be either possible or sustainable without Washington picking up the costs and supplying the weapons. A recently released report by the Israeli news outlet Calcalist reviewed Israeli military spending on wars since fighting began on October 7th. It determined that Washington has over the past year funded directly 70% of Tel Aviv’s total military costs. That has amounted to more than $20 billion in military aid, a figure close to the $22.57 billion estimated by several US sources including Brown University’s highly respected Cost of War Project which has likewise looked at the numbers. And, one assumes there are also substantial hidden expenses consisting of armaments shipped directly from US arsenals without any accounting procedure as well as money concealed in other projects. As a bottom line, one has to conclude without direct US support, Netanyahu’s war would simply be unaffordable for the Jewish state. Calcalist concludes that “Therefore, it is doubtful whether this war would have been conducted as it is – neither in intensity nor in scope – without the American assistance.” So in a very real sense it is and has been America’s war while the secret objective by the US government to destroy Hezbollah as well as Hamas and even overthrow the regime in Iran indicates clearly that Netanyahu’s hegemonical and genocidal plan to make Israel the supreme power in the Middle East is shared by many in Washington.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

House Panel Refers Andrew Cuomo for Prosecution

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 1, 2024

NBC News just reported the following:

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic sent a letter Wednesday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland accusing the former governor of providing false statements to the panel when he testified on June 11.

In the Republican-led committee’s referral, it says Cuomo “knowingly and willfully made materially false statements” to the panel during its investigation into the New York’s Covid-19 response. The statements in question stem from exchanges about a New York state Department of Health report on nursing home infections and deaths that was released on July 6, 2020.

The report caught my eye because I have long followed the New York nursing home scandal, which I thoroughly investigated for our book The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex.

This particular chapter about the mindbogglingly stupid and criminal pandemic response is so noteworthy that I believe it is worth republishing.

CHAPTER 11: “Cuomosexuals”

On the same day (March 23) that Dr. Bright initiated his scheme to restrict hydroxychloroquine to hospitalized patients, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued the following executive order:

No pharmacist shall dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine except when written as prescribed as an FDA-approved indication; or as part of a state approved clinical trial related to COVID-19 for a patient who has tested positive for COVID-19 with such test result documented as part of the prescription. No other experimental or prophylactic use shall be permitted …

This order prohibited New York pharmacies from filling off-label prescriptions for Covid patients. The exceptionally determined Dr. Zelenko found a way to get around it, but it made his practice much more difficult.

Two days later, on March 25, the New York Department of Health issued the following directive to nursing home administrators:

No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.

As anyone who has ever worked in a nursing home knows, respiratory viruses can rip through the facility and cause severe illness. Virulent common cold rhinovirus outbreaks have resulted in multiple deaths in this setting. By March 25, it was crystal clear that the risk of severe disease and death from COVID-19 is by far the highest for patients over the age of seventy-five. Thus, ordering “confirmed or suspected” Covid patients to be readmitted to nursing homes was the equivalent of forcing foxes into henhouses. What was the New York State Health Department thinking?

On March 27, the United States set the world record of COVID-19 cases, and New York City was the nation’s epicenter—a five-alarm fire of serious infections. On April 10, New York State recorded more Covid cases than any country on earth except the United States in total and its nursing homes were devastated by the contagion. The legacy media was slow to notice this, perhaps because it was blinded by Governor Cuomo’s stardom. He gave daily press conferences in which he spoke about the measures he and his team were taking to keep New Yorkers safe. Millions across the country watched these performances for which he later received an Emmy.

As the spring wore on, reports of mass casualty events in nursing homes emerged, and these drew scrutiny to the Health Department’s March 25 directive. On May 21, the Associated Press reported that over 4,500 Covid patients had been sent back into New York nursing homes. This number would later be revised upward to over 9,000. The AP report coincided with growing suspicion the Health Department wasn’t being transparent about mortality data in these facilities. Suspicion was confirmed on January 28, 2021, when New York Attorney General Latitia James reported that the Department of Health had undercounted nursing home deaths by 50%.

On February 11, 2021, the New York Post published a leaked audio recording of Governor Cuomo’s secretary, Melissa DeRosa, speaking confidentially with the New York State Democratic Committee. On this tape she can be heard apologizing for concealing nursing home data. Though mealy-mouthed, her apology revealed that Cuomo’s team had acted out of fear of getting into trouble with the DOJ.

Basically, we froze because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.

After making this confession, she changed the subject to “the context” of their decision—namely, they were concerned that President Trump would try to politicize the incident in the upcoming election.

“Right around the same time, he [Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” she told the Committee.

For many who followed the New York nursing home story, it seemed emblematic of many pathologies afflicting the U.S. political and media class. First was the nepotism of the Cuomo family, with CNN Anchor Chris and Governor Andrew regularly putting on shows for their fawning, sentimental fans, many of whom called themselves “Cuomosexuals.” T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, and even a popular music video appeared bearing the term’s definition: In love with competent, reassuring governance by a leader who uses complete sentences and displays common sense during a pandemic.

The Governor’s cult of personality yielded a $5.2 million book deal with Penguin Random House, initiated by an acquiring editor on March 19, 2020, three days before the state went into lockdown. The deal for American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic stipulated the book be ready for publication before the November elections. Governor Cuomo purportedly wrote a 70,000-word typescript in three months while at the same time executing his duties as full-time “Leader” in handling New York’s Covid crisis. The state ethics board approved the deal on the condition that no state resources were used in the book’s production, but that didn’t stop Cuomo from using his staff and a ghostwriter.

Complementing the governor’s book deal was his Emmy Award. As Bruce Paisner, CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, explained in his announcement of November 20, 2020:

The Governor’s 111 daily briefings worked so well because he effectively created television shows, with characters, plot lines, and stories of success and failure. People around the world tuned in to find out what was going on, and New York tough became a symbol of the determination to fight back.

All these awards and extravagant expressions of adulation for the Governor’s leadership overlooked his executive order impeding access to hydroxychloroquine and his Health Department’s catastrophic directive to nursing homes. Protecting nursing homes was the only contagion control policy for which there was a crystal clear rationale. While general lockdowns did little to stop the spread, extraordinary measures to secure nursing homes probably would have given some protection to society’s most vulnerable. Instead, the New York Health Department sent thousands of Covid patients back into these facilities and then concealed the ensuing death toll. On June 2, 2020, USA Today reported that “Over the last three months, more than 40,600 long-term care residents and workers have died of COVID-19—about 40% of the nation’s death toll attributed to the coronavirus …”

After flying high in 2020, the Cuomo brothers fell back to earth in 2021, when multiple women accused the Governor of sexual harassment. He was then further accused of using his executive power to suppress these allegations. Chris Cuomo was likewise accused of using his powerful media connections to aid and abet his brother in the concealment.

A cynic might be tempted to wonder about the timing of the sexual misconduct allegations—right as reports emerged that New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Attorney Seth Ducharme of the Eastern District of New York, and the FBI were opening investigations into allegations of malfeasance resulting in nursing home deaths. Especially disturbing was the allegation that Governor Cuomo provided legal immunity to nursing home executives from whom he received campaign contributions, possibly giving them carte blanche to cut costs at the expense of the care and safety of their residents. As the Attorney General stated in her preliminary findings:

On March 23, Governor Cuomo created limited immunity provisions for health care providers relating to COVID-19. The Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA) provides immunity to health care professionals from potential liability arising from certain decisions, actions and/or omissions related to the care of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is reasonable to provide some protections for health care workers making impossible health care decisions in good faith during an unprecedented public health crisis, it would not be appropriate or just for nursing homes owners to interpret this action as providing blanket immunity for causing harm to residents.

With multiple allegations of sexual misconduct made in March 2021, the subject in mainstream media reporting was largely changed from New York State’s possible liability for the preventable deaths of thousands to Governor Cuomo’s inappropriate behavior with women.

On August 7, 2021, the New Yorker published a coda to Governor Cuomo’s rise to superstardom and his crashing fall from grace. In an essay titled, Diving Into the Subconscious of the “Cuomosexual,” reporter Lizzie Widdicombe posed the question:

How could we have witnessed the Governor’s narcissism, bullying, and hackneyed paternalism and found these qualities attractive?

To answer it, she interviewed psychoanalyst Virginia Goldner, who explained that Governor Cuomo “was radiating an eroticized masculinity that has within it hostility and a little tenderness. That combination of soft and hard—mostly hard, but also soft—is what so many women crave in some way.”

Dr. Goldner’s remarks pointed to a key feature of how the public responded to official Covid policy. Approval of policies had little to do with their substance. Mostly it derived from impressions of the personal qualities, political affiliation, and perceived authority of the officials who presented the policies. Governor Cuomo exuded masculine confidence and gave the impression of taking bold action against a foreign invader. His performances were fascinating to watch, but they had little to do with reality.

By late March of 2020, the virus had spread far beyond the possibility of being contained. The Swedish state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, pointed this out in a March 28, 2020 New York Times interview, but no major public health official in the United States acknowledged this reality. Because the virus was far beyond containment, it was unlikely that any of Governor Cuomo’s contagion control orders such as his statewide lockdown or shutdown of “nonessential businesses” made any positive difference. He was awarded an Emmy for embodying “the determination to fight back” against the virus. In fact, he disarmed New Yorkers by impeding their access to the only weapon (hydroxychloroquine) known at the time for fighting it. Covid patients, including thousands of sitting ducks in nursing homes, were consequently left defenseless.

From: The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, SKYHORSE, New York, 2022.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Tricks of the Trade: How the White House and Legacy Media Concoct Pro-Democrat Narratives

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 01.11.2024

Donald Trump recently announced his intention to sue CBS News for $10 billion, claiming that the network’s editing of Kamala Harris’s interview on 60 Minutes constituted “election interference.”

In a parallel move, House Republicans are contemplating an investigation into how the White House edited President Joe Biden’s controversial “garbage” comment. They argue this might violate the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The GOP contends that both the White House and the media are engaged in efforts to portray Biden and Harris more favorably as Election Day approaches. This appears to be part of a larger trend of collaboration between the press and White House staff that has been ongoing for some time.

In mid-August, The National Interest lambasted the US mainstream media for what it referred to as Kamala Harris’s “rebranding.” The publication pointed out that Harris received “glamorous cover profiles” and positive coverage, despite her historically low approval ratings as vice president and her inability to address the border crisis after being appointed by Biden as “border czar.”

In mid-October, Fox News anchor Bret Baier confronted Harris with a series of challenging questions regarding migration, her economic agenda, and her vice-presidential record. This line of questioning led Harris’s aides to cut the interview short after less than 30 minutes.

Earlier, the White House repeatedly downplayed and sugar-coated Joe Biden’s “gaffes”, including the one concerning US “military defense” of Taiwan.

In July, Civic Media, a radio station in Milwaukee, acknowledged that it had made two edits to a July 3 recording of an interview with Biden that aired later, following a request from his campaign. This interview came on the heels of Biden’s poor performance in his June 27 debate against Trump.

  • The first edit concerned Biden’s claim that his administration included more Black officials than “all other presidents combined.”
  • The second edit removed his comments about Trump’s call for the death penalty for the Central Park Five teens, who were later exonerated. “I don’t know if they even called for their hanging or not, but he–but they said […] convicted of murder,” Biden asserted.

In early July, Andrea Lawful-Sanders, a host on Philadelphia’s WURD radio, conducted a separate interview with Biden and later admitted that she had asked four out of the eight questions that had been drafted for her by Biden’s aides. Michael LaRosa, a former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden, commented to Axios that the practice of “pre-submitting questions” for interviewees has long been a strategy of the Biden team.

In February 2024, the White House pressured Fox News to revise its coverage of corruption allegations against President Biden, arguing that the claims were based on misleading data provided by FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who allegedly fabricated the accusations against the president. Fox News declined the request, citing broader corruption allegations put forth by House investigators concerning the Biden family.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Dumpster fire: White House Press Office faced internal criticism over the rewriting of Biden’s garbage comments

By Jonathan Turley | November 1, 2024

Since the “Let’s Go, Brandon” incident, the media has been repeatedly accused of reframing news or rewriting words to benefit the President or the Biden-Harris Administration. This week, the White House Press Office and various media outlets like Politico and MSNBC have been ridiculed for denying that President Joe Biden called Trump supporters “garbage.” It has created a weird dissonance as Democratic politicians denounced what the White House and many in the press denied was said. Now, the White House Press office is being criticized from a new quarter for the clean up on aisle three: the Director of White House Stenography, Amy Sands. The White House stenographers objected to the rewriting of the transcript by the Biden White House staff to suggest that the President was condemning Trump’s rhetoric, not his supporters.

The President’s attack on Trump supporters was nothing new. Leaders like Hillary Clinton called them “deplorables,” and Biden himself has described their views as a return of the confederacy and the rise of fascism. Democrats have called the movement a modern form of Nazism and an effort to destroy democracy, round up homosexuals, and create internment camps.

The problem was the timing. As Harris was denouncing Trump for name-calling and insisting that Democrats are bringing the country together (while condemning Trump as a modern version of Hitler), Biden was literally behind her in the White House, calling tens of millions of Trump supporters “garbage.”

Fox News reportedly obtained an email in which the supervisor sounded the alarm on the White House press office’s “breach of protocol and spoilation of transcript integrity between the Stenography and Press Offices.” Sands went on to say that

“if there is a difference in interpretation, the Press Office may choose to withhold the transcript but cannot edit it independently. Our Stenography Office transcript — released to our distro, which includes the National Archives — is now different than the version edited and released to the public by Press Office staff… After last night’s process, our team would like to reiterate that rush drafts/excerpts the Stenography Office sends to assist the Press Office are not intended for public distribution or as the final version of the transcript. Please avoid sharing rush drafts/excerpts, which are subject to review and might create confusion among staff, media, and the public while our Stenography Office completes a thorough review process.”

The White House was criticized for adding an apostrophe to the President’s comments to change the meaning of the key line.

After the statement, there was an immediate clean-up effort by Politico White House bureau chief and MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire, who was accused of changing the language by saying that “Biden, in a Zoom call with the organization Voto Latino, said ‘the only garbage’ was the ‘hatred’ of Trump supporters who said such things about American citizens.”

Lemire was widely ridiculed. For many, it sounded like another “Let’s Go Brandon” moment. He later turned to the apostrophe spin: “The full Biden quote from the Zoom tonight, which is being taken out of context.” Accompanying the text is a screenshot of a transcript that has Biden saying: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s — his — his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American.”

The spin would have been more convincing if many of these pundits were not at the same time insisting that a line from a comedian delivered at a Trump event should be attributed to Trump (despite his later condemnation of any such view). It would also be more credible if Biden had not spent much of the last four years portraying the Trump movement as a new confederacy (before it was reframed as the new Third Reich).

When asked about the internal objections, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates only repeated the prior statement: “The President confirmed in his tweet on Tuesday evening that he was addressing the hateful rhetoric from the comedian at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. That was reflected in the transcript.”

However, Fox noted that it remains “unclear … whether the transcript the White House cites is the one that was altered and released to the press or the final transcript that was sent to the National Archives.”

Other reporters now admit that Biden said what he said but describe it, as did CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, as “a gaffe by President Biden where he, in his explanation, inadvertently called Trump supporters garbage.” The “inadvertent gaffe” ignores years of portraying Trump supporters as seeking to return the United States to the Jim Crowe period or pursuing a neo-Nazi future.

While various Democratic politicians have denounced Biden’s statements and Harris has said that she strongly disagrees with them, diehards like MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocked those who were critical as “some of the worst” or just ungrammatical journalists:

“To do so, they had to refuse to listen to the actual sentence Joe Biden spoke. They had to refuse to look at the written words of that sentence. They had to refuse to understand English grammar. They had to refuse to understand what a singular possessive is. They had to refuse to understand what apostrophe ‘s’ means. They had to refuse to remember what they learned in elementary school about the English language.”

It appears that the non-partisan, career stenographers who recorded the interview contemporaneously are also on that “worst” list of ungrammatical morons.

The mainstream media is now dismissing the entire matter as just the placement of an apostrophe. Yet, many of these same voices were supporting a full-fledged investigation into the transcript of the Ukraine call during the Trump Administration over “the use of ellipses.”

I was critical of that call and supported calls for an accurate transcript, particularly on such a weighty issue. However, back then, the accuracy of such transcripts was accepted as of paramount importance. Whether it is a matter of foreign or domestic policy (or an apostrophe or ellipses), the public should be confident on the accuracy of White House transcripts, as stressed by Sands in her internal objections to the White House Press Office.

One of those objecting to the use of the ellipses was Lawrence O’Donnell.

It appears that one person’s punctuation is another person’s punch line.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

In Bryansk, the West once again shows its terrorist face

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 1, 2024

On October 28, 2024, in the Bryansk region, an undisputed territory of the Russian Federation, military personnel and border guards prevented an attempted ground invasion led by a foreign sabotage and reconnaissance group consisting of approximately 20 people.

As a result of the clash, four foreign saboteurs from the USA, Canada and Poland were eliminated by Russian soldiers. The other members of the group were hit by rocket and artillery fire while trying to evade, suffering even greater losses. Militarily, the enemy operation was an absolute failure, with no practical results on the battlefield and a high number of casualties.

It is surprising that, despite the fact that the conflict is, for the Western media, “between Russia and Ukraine”, not a single Ukrainian military personnel was identified in the group. It was discovered that the destroyed saboteurs had foreign weapons, uniforms and communications equipment, as well as personal items indicating their belonging to other countries that are not legally involved in the conflict in Ukraine. For example, according to some reports circulating on military channels (and confirmed by me with local sources), a Canadian flag, a prayer book in Polish, and a notebook with notes on tactical training in English were found with the dead enemies.

In addition, a rather interesting fact drew the attention of the Russian military to the case. A tattoo of the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, Parachute Reconnaissance Regiment of the U.S. Army Special Forces, was found on the body of one of the dead militants. It is practically impossible that such a tattoo was made “by chance”. Surely, the eliminated enemy was a veteran of such a military unit, and therefore a member of one of the most qualified commando groups in the West.

It must be remembered that the 75th Parachute Reconnaissance Regiment of the United States Army (75th Ranger Regiment), also known simply as the “Rangers”, is an amphibious reconnaissance paratrooper regiment. Like all American military units, the regiment is directly subordinate to the U.S. Department of Defense – and is, of course, part of the American war apparatus. The headquarters and main units of the Army’s special forces are stationed on the territory of the U.S. Army unit at Fort Benning, Georgia.

The regiment is designed to perform special combat missions, including reconnaissance and sabotage behind enemy lines, capture of airfields and reconnaissance in the interests of advancing units of the Ground Forces. Units of the 75th Parachute Regiment are troops prepared for helicopter landing or amphibious assault, being highly qualified groups with broad operational capabilities for the most diverse environments of military activity.

Officially, by decision of the U.S. Army leadership, the parachute battalions of the 75th Airborne Division must be on combat readiness to deploy anywhere in the world within 18 hours. This only reinforces how the group is part of what is most advanced, special and sophisticated in the American military.

Despite the special nature of the American unit, the Western media simply ignored Russian reports of a Ranger in the Bryansk raid. There was no explanation from U.S. authorities as to why members of their most highly skilled military personnel were fighting in a land invasion on another continent.

In theory, the Rangers should be under the full control of U.S. authorities. Like any special forces unit, the group must be on combat readiness so that it can be called into a real operational situation at any time – if Washington deems it necessary to use such forces on the battlefield. Given such conditions, it would not be an exaggeration if the Russian Federation viewed the involvement of such special forces in Ukraine as an open declaration of war, prompting an appropriate military response.

In practice, once again, it is only Russia’s diplomatic goodwill and its desire for de-escalation that prevent Moscow from taking decisive action against Western countries. NATO is making it increasingly clear that it is at war with Moscow and will not stop its efforts to harm Russia, using ever more terrorism and even its most skilled troops.

As long as this Western war effort is limited to low-level impacts, such as the useless and shameful invasion of Bryansk, Russian patience will prevent a reaction. But it is unwise for the West to continue betting on the constant violation of Russian red lines, since once patience runs out, there will be no turning back.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Deception, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The US Secretary of Defense is Ready to Fight a Nuclear War over Korea

By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | October 31, 2024

Few Americans today would try to justify the United States government taking part in the Korean War in the 1950s. Even most of those who would make such an attempt would ground their argument in asserting there was a special need back then, as part of the Cold War, to prevent the expansion of communism.

The Cold War is long over. So, why are still today tens of thousands of US soldiers in South Korea, and many more nearby, ready to resume fighting in the long paused Korean War at a moment’s notice? Inertia? Bloodlust? Reluctance of the military bureaucracy to give up any of its size and scope? The desire of the military-industrial complex to wring every possible dollar it can from the American people?

None of these reasons seems very persuasive. Instead of preparing to restart the war that wrought enormous death and destruction the first time around, US officials should be preparing for the US military to finally exit Korea.

Yet, there was US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Wednesday not just saying he has declared to the South Korea defense minister “that the United States remains fully committed to the defense” of South Korea. Further, Austin pledged that the US government’s “extended deterrence commitment” to South Korea “remains ironclad” and that that commitment “is backed by the full range of America’s conventional, missile defense, nuclear and advanced non-nuclear capabilities.”

There you go, the US secretary of defense is threatening going nuclear in a war for which the now generally rejected reason for the US becoming involved in it disappeared decades ago. The defense secretary is mad for war. In this condition he reflects US government policy.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

RIPPLE EFFECT

The HighWire | October 31, 2024

Jefferey Jaxen Guest Hosts! First, the continued demise of legacy media and the rise of new media delivering the truth; Jefferey reports on a massive Alzheimer’s fraud, and is the UK going to mandate weight loss injections?; Fluoride Win Attorney Walks through Video Depositions and Evidence Exposing Fluoridation as one of the most damaging public policies in American History.

Guest: Michael Connett, Esq.

November 1, 2024 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

House Floats Law to Make Colleges That Mandated COVID Shots Pay for Vaccine Injuries

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | October 30, 2024

Colleges that mandated the COVID-19 vaccine would be liable for medical expenses for students who experienced adverse events from the shot, under a bill introduced Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The University Forced Vaccination Student Injury Mitigation Act of 2024 would require higher education institutions to cover medical costs for students who were — or still are — required to get a COVID-19 shot for class attendance and who experienced an injury.

The bill — introduced by Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — stipulates colleges must cover the medical costs or risk losing all federal funding from the U.S. Department of Education.

“If you are not prepared to face the consequences, you should have never committed the act,” said Rosendale in a press release. “Colleges and universities forced students to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine knowing it was not going to prevent COVID-19 while potentially simultaneously causing life-threatening health defects like Guillain-Barré Syndrome and myocarditis.”

“It is now time,” Rosendale added, “for schools to be held accountable for their brazen disregard for students’ health and pay for the issues they are responsible for causing.”

Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Bill Posey (R-Fla.) co-sponsored the bill.

Dr. Joseph Marine, professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, explained in the press release why he supports the bill:

“COVID-19 vaccine mandates for college students were flawed policies that did not alter the course of the pandemic and were not needed to keep college campuses ‘safe.’ I had to make efforts to prevent my own high school and college-age children from receiving COVID-19 booster shots that they did not want or need.

“It seems reasonable to me that institutions that implemented such policies without a sound medical or scientific rationale should take responsibility for any proven medical harm that they caused.”

If passed, the bill would allow students to submit a formal request for reimbursement, the Washington Examiner reported.

The request would have to include a record of COVID-19 vaccination, certification from a medical provider that the vaccine caused some kind of disease and a detailed account of related medical expenses.

Diseases covered by the legislation include myocarditis, pericarditis, thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome and any other diseases that the U.S. Secretary of Education determines to be linked to COVID-19 vaccination.

After the student’s request is vetted to ensure it’s valid and contains sufficient evidence, the college would have to pay the medical costs within 30 days.

It is unclear when a vote on the bill will take place.

CHD took college mandate challenge to U.S. Supreme Court

Rutgers University was the first college or university in the U.S. to mandate the vaccines, threatening to disenroll noncompliant students in the fall 2021 semester. In August 2021, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) sued the university in an attempt to block the mandate.

The case was dismissed in January 2023. After losing on appeal in February, CHD in May asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case, but the court declined. Meanwhile, a month earlier, Rutgers abruptly ended the mandate.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court this summer ruled that employees in the Los Angeles Unified School District can sue the district over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate because the shots don’t prevent transmission.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) acknowledges that myocarditis and pericarditis may occur after COVID-19 vaccination. And research shows that adolescents and young adults are particularly at risk of vaccine-induced myocarditis.

As of Sept. 27, there were 1,604,710 Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reports of injury or death following a COVID-19 vaccination.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirming the reported adverse event was caused by the vaccine. VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

Meanwhile, citing concerns about the shots’ efficacy and safety, Idaho’s Southwest District Health last week voted to no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines at all 30 locations where it provides healthcare services.

17 colleges still have COVID vaccine mandates

By late May 2021, more than 400 U.S. colleges and universities required students to be vaccinated against COVID-19, The New York Times reported.

As of Oct. 19, 17 of those institutions still have a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for students to be able to enroll or live on campus, according to No College Mandates, a “group of concerned parents, doctors, nurses, professors, students and other college stakeholders working towards the common goal of ending COVID-19 vaccine mandates.”

Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, said in the press release:

“College students were never at risk of severe injury or death from any variant of the COVID-19 virus and institutions of higher education had this data well in advance of mandating COVID-19 vaccines.”

According to the CDC, age is the “strongest risk factor” for severe outcomes from COVID-19 — meaning that the older a person is, the greater their risk for severe symptoms and death.

The CDC said its National Center for Health Statistics shows that “compared with ages 18–29 years, the risk of death is 25 times higher in those ages 50–64 years, 60 times higher in those ages 65–74 years, 140 times higher in those ages 75–84 years, and 340 times higher in those ages 85+ years.”

In other words, the typical college student — ages 18-22 — isn’t usually at risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19 when compared with older age groups.

Nonetheless, Sinatra said, many colleges imposed “some of the most coercive and restrictive vaccination policies” on college students, stripping them of their “fundamental right to bodily autonomy and informed consent.”

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.

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

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