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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

Genocide is embedded in US diplomacy

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 31, 2024

Israel is only conducting occasional atrocities that do not align with US interests, if we are to believe US rhetoric. The Israeli air strike that killed at least 20 children in Beit Lahiya was “a horrifying incident with a horrifying result,” according to US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller.

“We have reached out to the Government of Israel to ask what happened here,” Miller continued, before adding, “But step back and look at where we are in this campaign.” According to the US State Department, the kill toll in Gaza is merely a result of Israel’s relentless attack on Hamas, its leadership and its weapons. As such, the 20 children killed in Beit Lahiya – indeed all the Palestinian civilians killed – pale into insignificance when compared with Israel’s purported aim.

When questioned about the US supplying Israel with weapons, Miller responded, “It’s something that we have to be very deliberate about and take time to assess the underlying circumstances to decide whether there was any particular potential legal violation and what the implications of that would be.” Ending the war, Miller added, is the US aim.

While still supplying Israel with weapons, one might add.

Miller also said that the US is not calling for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to avoid a power vacuum that Hamas may fill again. Hamas did not come to power through a power vacuum, but through a democratic election that the West pushed for, but then adamantly refused to accept the result. If a power vacuum exists in Palestinian politics, it is the West that created it by refusing to recognise a legitimate election result and allowing the Palestinian Authority to rule without political legitimacy.

Mahmoud Abbas’s mandate ended in 2009, in case you have forgotten.

Meanwhile, at the UN Security Council, imperialism wasn’t faring much better in imparting convincing rhetoric. Speaking about starvation in Gaza, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield blamed Hamas for the lack of food, not Israel’s genocidal plan. Astonishingly, Thomas-Greenfield then proceeded to list many of Israel’s international law violations along with the expectation that Israel complies with international law. The bottom line, according to the US, is that Israel still needs to be protected, while Palestinians do not.

This was made very clear in Thomas-Greenfield’s rhetoric regarding UNRWA. Israel and the UN need dialogue, she stated, “to address the fears that led to the Knesset’s legislation.” What fears, exactly? A premeditated plan to close down UNRWA, a plan built on earlier attempts to discredit the agency as well as the Palestinian right of return, is not built on fear but is part of the settler-colonial framework that paves the way for ethnic cleansing and forced expulsion.

If there was a shard of fairness in this world, Thomas-Greenfield would not be given a platform to speak of her memory of a child dying of starvation, while the diplomats she aligns herself with do the same to Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Asking Israel to provide humanitarian aid does not stave off starvation.

It merely tells Israel that the US will do nothing but offer mild criticism from compromised international platforms, while weapons transfers continue unhindered.

Between Miller and Thomas-Greenfield, the US is merely stating what is now obvious to the rest of us: feed Palestinians, maybe, but kill them later, definitely. Genocide is embedded in US diplomacy.

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US-Israeli proposals do not include permanent ceasefire: Source

Al Mayadeen | October 31, 2024

The Israeli and US proposals regarding a deal on Gaza lack provisions for a permanent ceasefire or a complete withdrawal from the Strip, a Palestinian source told Al Mayadeen on Thursday.

Instead, the proposal entails 10 days of calm in exchange for the release of four Israeli captives, including two women, in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian detainees, according to the approved mechanism.

The proposal also stipulates the entry of about 300 aid trucks daily into Gaza.

The source stressed that Hamas believes the US wants to exploit partial initiatives to benefit election campaigns only. Meanwhile, upcoming meetings are planned between Fatah and Hamas to resume discussions on managing the Gaza Strip and forming a special committee with mutual approval from both parties.

Netanyahu ‘buying time’ with Gaza deal negotiations: Hamas official

On Wednesday, Taher al-Nounou, a senior Hamas official told Al Mayadeen that in any negotiations, the movement’s goal is to stop the war on the Gaza Strip while “Israel” merely seeks a prisoner exchange.

Al-Nounou stressed that any potential agreement must include a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, reconstruction of the Strip, an end to the blockade, and a captive-prisoner exchange.

According to the official, prioritizing a prisoner exchange alone would not necessarily lead to a lasting ceasefire.

The Palestinian official argued that current discussions regarding a deal are merely a waste of time, under the guise of negotiations in preparation for the coming US elections.

Al-Nounou said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim with these proposals is to “buy time”, which he sees as “part of a local or US election campaign.”

“We have no veto on listening to mediators if they have any proposals,” the Hamas official reiterated but underlined that the movement had made it clear that it opposes a temporary pause of hostilities and the resumption of the Israeli aggression on Gaza.

The Palestinian official clarified that openness to offers is distinct from agreeing to them, particularly “if they fail to meet the resistance’s four core demands,” affirming, “If we are invited to hear new proposals, we will certainly attend.”

His statements echoed those of the movement’s spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri, who confirmed on Tuesday that Hamas has responded to requests from mediators to discuss new proposals regarding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Several meetings have already occurred on this matter, with more scheduled to follow, Abu Zuhri indicated.

October 31, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Texas judge: Enforcing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism limits speech

Interim decision allows policies to remain in place for now

‘Freedom for Palestine’ protest march that drew thousands of participants on November 4, 2023 in Berlin, Germany. [Sean Gallup/Getty Images]
MEMO | October 31, 2024

A federal court in Texas ruled this week that restrictions imposed by Texas public universities on anti-Israel speech violate the First Amendment. The case, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston et al v Greg Abbott et al, involves student organisations who argue that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order, known as GA-44, stifles their ability to engage in constitutionally protected criticism of Israel on campus.

The order, issued by Governor Abbott in March 2024, was framed as a measure against rising anti-Semitism in Texas universities. It mandates all higher education institutions in Texas to update their free speech policies to include a specific definition of anti-Semitism, incorporating the highly controversial, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Seven of the 11 examples cited in the IHRA conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism. It’s widely criticised for having a chilling effect on free speech including by its founder Kenneth Stern. It lists examples of anti-Semitic acts, such as claiming that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Student groups argue that these examples restrict their ability to express criticisms of Israeli policies without facing sanctions from the university.

The plaintiffs, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Houston and the Palestine Solidarity Committee at the University of Texas at Austin, said amendments to the speech policy were unconstitutional. They argued that the policies discriminate against their legitimate views, effectively censoring their criticisms of Israeli state policies by labelling them anti-Semitic. The plaintiffs further alleged that the policy changes chill free expression on campus, leading to self-censorship due to fear of punishment. This crackdown on speech was unconstitutional, they added.

Judge Robert Pitman, who presided over the case, noted that the IHRA definition specifically targets expressions critical of Israel, thus chilling a form of “political speech that is fundamental to the university experience.” The judge highlighted that universities, as centres of intellectual debate, are “vital spaces” where students should be able to engage in robust discussions on contentious issues, including foreign policy matters such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

While the court acknowledged that universities have a responsibility to prevent genuine harassment and anti-Semitism, it found that enforcing a definition which includes political criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic oversteps constitutional boundaries. The court’s decision emphasised that the First Amendment prohibits the state from punishing viewpoints it finds disagreeable and that universities cannot impose speech restrictions based solely on anticipated discomfort or controversy.

This ruling is also a significant critique of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has faced growing scrutiny for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Free speech advocates argue that adopting such definitions threaten to limit open discussions on Israel-Palestine issues. Civil rights organisations and free speech groups have long warned that such definitions, when codified into policy, could stifle legitimate political discourse and are particularly problematic in academic settings.

The court’s decision sends a clear signal about the constitutional risks of using the IHRA definition as a basis for regulating speech in academic settings. As Judge Pitman observed, the inclusion of specific IHRA examples within university policies likely infringes upon the First Amendment by “chilling” protected political expression critical of Israel.

The court ultimately denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction, meaning it declined to enforce any immediate changes to the university’s policies while the case continues. Although the court recognised that the plaintiffs could have a strong First Amendment claim, it found that the specific restrictions they requested were too broad to impose right away.

This interim decision allows the policies to remain in place for now, but the court’s findings suggest that any restrictions on political speech at public universities will undergo rigorous First Amendment scrutiny. The case will continue as the plaintiffs seek a resolution, which could further clarify the limits of permissible restrictions to free speech in academic institutions across the US.

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

Georgian president refuses to back up election theft claims

RT | October 30, 2024

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili has refused to be interviewed by the prosecutor general’s office about her claims of election fraud, arguing that investigators should look for evidence themselves.

Zourabichvili has joined several pro-Western opposition parties in accusing the ruling Georgian Dream party of “stealing” Saturday’s parliamentary vote, without providing specific examples.

The Prosecution Service of Georgia subsequently launched an investigation into the alleged falsification of the election and summoned Zourabichvili to appear on Thursday and provide evidence on the matter.

“I don’t intend to go to the prosecutor,” Zourabichvili said at a press conference in Tbilisi.

“It’s not up to the president to provide the proof,” she argued, adding that NGOs, election monitors and ordinary citizens have been providing “huge amounts” of evidence of election rigging. She said that more than 1,100 complaints have been filed regarding the conduct of the election.

“In any standard investigation, it’s the investigative body’s duty to gather proof, not the other way around. I’ve never seen an investigative authority ask a president for election-related evidence,” the president wrote on X.

“What we’re witnessing is an attempt to fuel tension and fear amid frustration over stolen votes. There’s psychological pressure directed at both you and me,” she added.

Mamuka Mdinaradze, executive secretary of Georgian Dream, advised the president to cooperate with the prosecutors. “President Zourabichvili must answer what her accusations are based on,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “We are ready, as part of the investigation in the prosecutor’s office, to open any polling station to prove that the elections were held fairly.”

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said that Zourabichvili and the opposition “have no evidence of election fraud, and if they do not go to the prosecutor’s office, this will be the clearest evidence that they made false statements about the elections.”

Kobakhidze previously stated that the election was “absolutely clean, democratic and fair.”

Zurab Japaridze, leader of the Girchi – More Freedom party said the critics of the government “do not trust” the prosecutor’s office and would advise the president not to meet with them.

Official tallies showed Georgian Dream received nearly 54% of the vote, winning a convincing parliamentary majority. The French-born Zourabichvili has rejected the results, describing the election as a “Russian special operation.” Along with the opposition leaders, she has demanded a new election, organized under international supervision.

Georgian election officials complained about Zourabichvili’s rhetoric on Tuesday, urging the prosecutors to investigate “unfounded attacks” on the central election commission. They noted that international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have “positively assessed the elections” and found no significant violations. The US and the EU, however, expressed their concerns and urged the Georgian authorities to investigate the reports of irregularities.

October 30, 2024 Posted by | Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Will Tuesday’s Vote Counts Be Another Sham Biden-Harris Statistic?

By James Bovard – Mises Wire – October 30, 2024

If Kamala Harris wins the presidential election on Tuesday, Americans will be told that the final vote count is a sacred number that was practically handed down from Mt. Sinai engraved on a stone tablet. Any American who casts doubt on Harris’s victory will be vilified like one of those January 6, 2021 protestors sent to prison for “parading without a permit” in the US Capitol. Actually, anyone who doubted the 2020 election results was being prominently denounced as “traitors” even before the Capitol Clash.

But is there any reason to expect the final vote count in next week’s presidential election to be more honest than any other number that the Biden-Harris administration jiggered in the last four years?

Biden, Harris, and their media allies endlessly assured Americans that the national crime rate had fallen sharply since Biden took office. That statistical scam was produced by the equivalent of disregarding all the votes in California and New York. FBI crime data simply excluded many of the nation’s largest cities until a revision earlier this month revealed that violent crime had risen nationwide.

Deceitful national crime data helped cover-up the disastrous impact of open border policies. The Biden-Harris administration did backflips to avoid disclosing the true size of the surge of illegal immigrants from early 2021 onwards. Kamala Harris did zombie-like face plants in recent interviews when elbowed for honest answers.

In the same way that another surge of unverified mail-in ballots may determine the 2024 election, Biden manipulated the number of illegal aliens by using his presidential parole power to entitle more than a million people from Haiti, Venezuela, Cubans, and other countries to legally enter and stay in America on his own decree. The Biden administration even provided a vast secretive program to fly favored foreign nationals into select airports late at night where their arrival would occur under the radar.

Some states will officially count mail-in ballots that arrive well after Election Day even if the envelopes have no postmark. This is the same “late doesn’t matter” standard that Biden used to vindicate the $42 billion provided by his 2021 infrastructure law to boost broadband access in rural America—which Uncle Joe said was “not unlike what Roosevelt did with electricity.” Unlike the Tennessee Valley Authority, Biden’s broadband program has nothing to show since it delivered faster internet access to almost no one. The same default occurred with the Inflation Reduction Act’s alleged showpiece achievement—42,000 new charging stations around the nation for electric vehicles. But that program produced more presidential applause lines than EV refills. As of March, $7.5 billion in federal spending had only produced seven new charging stations nationwide.

How many votes will Harris lose on Tuesday because Americans remain outraged at the inflation that has slashed the dollar’s value by more than 20 percent since Biden took office? There would be far more popular fury if the feds had not deceived Americans about the full financial damage that Washington inflicted. The official inflation statistic doesn’t count soaring mortgage and housing costs—which is akin to excluding any state south of the Mason-Dixon Line from the national vote tally. Larry Summers, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, said that if the feds today used the same inflation gauges used in the 1970s, Biden’s peak inflation would have been 18 percent, twice as high as the reported number.

Tens of millions of voters will not be obliged to show any identification before voting in this election: they are presumed trustworthy regardless of zero verification. But this is the same standard that the Biden-Harris administration uses for not disclosing its most controversial policies to American citizens. People will vote next week without knowing the facts behind whistleblower allegations on Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party, to Secret Service failures to prevent Trump assassination attempts, and the brazen details of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

In Washington, politicians feel entitled to applause for any grandiose promise—regardless of their failure to deliver. Similarly, politicians and election officials promising that the presidential vote count will be accurate and reflect “the will of the people” is far more important than tabulating the actual ballots. Will the unmanned ballot boxes in big cities be stuffed with bogus ballots the same way a politician jams endless balderdash into his campaign speeches? As pundit Stephen Kruiser quipped, “the clothing donation boxes that were all over my old neighborhood in Los Angeles were probably more secure than the ballot drop boxes.”

Of course, if Trump wins, then all the forces of decency must instantly shift to the other side of the barricades. Any electoral victory by Trump will be illegitimate because of politically incorrect comments made by speakers at Trump campaign rallies. As in 2017, if Trump wins, every “true patriot”—or at least every true progressive—will be honor-bound to join The Resistance™.

October 30, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | Leave a comment

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