Could this US case explode the global censorship cartel orchestrated by the BBC?
By Serena Wylde | TCW Defending Freedom | January 19, 2023
As the legacy media are showing no let-up in their vicious mendacity, particularly concerning Andrew Bridgen MP, it seems pertinent to highlight the likely next steps in the landmark case against the BBC-orchestrated cartel, the ‘Trusted News Initiative’, recently filed in Texas by Children’s Health Defense, their founder Robert F Kennedy Jr and others. As we reported here, the TNI, comprising the BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, the Washington Post and a raft of others, stand accused by the plaintiffs of both violating the anti-trust laws which protect against collusion between commercial competitors, and the First Amendment of the US Constitution which protects freedom of speech, on the grounds that the purpose of the cartel is to prevent anyone publishing content that undermines the commercial and reputational interests of its members.
Jed Rubenfeld, the lawyer responsible for crafting the case against the media giants, foresees that they will throw unlimited funds at legal teams to generate a barrage of motions to have the case dismissed on one basis or another before it reaches court. They will argue on every pretext that the plaintiffs don’t have a claim. As each of these motions will have to be fought by the plaintiffs, this is a tactic of drowning the adversary in paperwork to exhaust its resources before any damage can be done in the form of exposure by the case coming to court. RFK’s legal team expect to be out-resourced and outspent by TNI’s deep pockets, and because the secretive cartel has everything to lose if the case proceeds to trial. But they will fight the motions tooth and nail as they believe the facts and the law are on their side, and once this major hurdle is surmounted, the plaintiffs will then be granted ‘discovery’.
The potential discovery process has RFK highly motivated, not only because it grants access to the internal communications between the defendants, essential to proving the case, but because he wants to interrogate each defendant as to why they signed up to being a part of a worldwide censorship campaign in direct betrayal of their role as the gatekeepers of liberty, in service of the people against the oppressive tendencies and overreach of government. In his words, he wants to confront each and every one of them and ask them what individual advantage they saw from this secret arrangement, and whether they believe in censorship.
Prior to the American Revolution, suppression and censorship of free speech in the American Colonies was fiercely pursued under the laws of the British Crown, which mercilessly prosecuted the dissemination of information unfavourable to it under the crime of ‘seditious libel’. This is why James Madison introduced his original version of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights of 1789 by stating: ‘The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.’ And why in the First Amendment jurisprudence of the US Supreme Court, a judgment from some eighty years ago contains the words: ‘The freedom of speech depends on the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources. It is vital to the welfare of the Republic.’
The American War of Independence was won in 1783. Two hundred and forty years on, it is hard to imagine Providence will reverse the most vital of principles it led to. But we have some way to go yet. If the case proceeds, RFK’s legal team have asked for a trial by jury, a fitting request for a case which breaches everyone’s rights, and thus should be adjudicated by a jury of regular people. Litigation is expensive, which raises the question: if the BBC is funded by the licence-paying public, who will foot their bill? Initially, lawyers for them will be preparing to prevent the case from being heard. But if that fails and the case proceeds, there will be legal fees for defending the case in court. And if they lose in court, there will be very considerable damages to pay, plus the adversary’s legal fees. As for the reputational damage to the corporation, that will be for the demos to decide.
New Study Shows Respiratory Syncytial Virus Not a Hospitalization Threat to Frail Adults
Media Hype Died as Data Show Ambulatory Management is Sufficient
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 21, 2023
I have noticed on occasion over the past three years that media hype can well up over an infectious disease threat and then for unexplained reasons the story is dropped without follow-up or resolution. Examples include a global hepatitis outbreak in children, monkeypox, group A strep, and the “tripledemic” of COVID-19, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Some of these news stories escalate to a frenzy and in the case of monkeypox, President Biden declared a national emergency.
Americans are wondering to this day where is the monkeypox emergency? How has it impacted our lives? Most doctors including myself have never seen a case!
Last fall the fervor over RSV, largely a mild infantile illness was amplified to a point where some doctors were pushing for a third national emergency declaration (SARS-CoV-2, monkeypox, RSV). We were told new vaccines would be needed in every human being. Like the other stories, the RSV scare seems to have disappeared in the media cycle.
Concerns may be allayed in some part by a recent paper from Juhn et al of N=2325 adults including frail seniors that demonstrated a negligible risk (1 hospitalization, 0 deaths) with adult RSV usually manageable with outpatient nebulizer treatments for a few days.
If it occurs in infants and small children, a few hours in an urgent care or emergency department may be needed for breathing treatments, but again the outcomes are very favorable and certainly do not warrant vaccination, frightening news stories, or calls for national emergencies.
Pediatricians Call for National Emergency as Flu, RSV Surge Written by Lisa O’Mary Nov 17 2022
A Taiwan bloodbath might suit US decision-makers just fine
Wargames point to heavy losses in a conflict with China, but that’s unlikely to discourage America’s war advocates
By Tony Cox | RT | January 21, 2023
Most sane human beings would shudder to think about the carnage that would result from a US-China war over Taiwan. For the warmongers and military-industrial-complex profiteers in Washington, the bloody prospects are something to contemplate and calculate with a mixture of anticipation and opportunism.
No matter how they run the various scripts, the computers and the human analysts spit out findings that ought to be sobering for policy makers and generals alike. Consider, for example, this month’s wargaming report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a US think tank that considers its mission to be defining the “future of national security.”
CSIS studied 24 different scenarios for a US-China conflict following a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The gist of its findings was that the invasion would fail, but at an enormous cost to all parties involved. The US and Japan would lose dozens of warships, including two American aircraft carriers, hundreds of planes and thousands of troops. Taiwan would be left in ruins, “without electricity and basic services.” The think tank sees the dust clearing with Beijing’s vaunted naval forces “in shambles,” hundreds of ships and aircraft lost, and tens of thousands of Chinese troops either dead or captured.
I would argue that the outcome would be worse for the US and its allies (more on that later), but even if we accept a Washington-centric, rose-colored view of the conflict for discussion’s sake, it would seem like the sort of catastrophe that would terrify leaders on all sides – and spur them to ease tensions in the region. However, the scary thing is that if we consider Washington’s tactics past and present, America’s real decision-makers might actually be encouraged and emboldened by the CSIS’s projections.
When there’s money to be made and more power to be secured, Washington’s rulers have no qualms about getting thousands – or even millions – of people killed or maimed. That’s especially true of the smaller allies that they vow to support. From the South Vietnamese to the Iraqi and Syrian Kurds to the Afghans who sided with the West against the Taliban, many a little brother can testify to how big brother emboldened him to fight, pledging to have his back, only to throw him under the bus when it came time to skedaddle.
As former South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu put it after being betrayed by the US, “It is so easy to be an enemy of the United States, but so difficult to be a friend.”
The CSIS report paints a grim picture of the heavy losses that Japan and especially Taiwan would suffer. But from a US perspective, the allies’ devastation would be a small price to pay for feeding the American war machine.
We’re seeing the same thing play out today in Ukraine, where US politicians have spoken openly of what a great deal it is for the Pentagon to help kill Russian forces without putting any of its own troops in harm’s way. Washington helped lay the groundwork for the conflict by pushing for the expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders and helping to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Having achieved their desired proxy war, US leaders are trying to prolong it to weaken Russia’s military and generate more profits.
This isn’t altogether good news for the people who have to actually fight this bloody conflict. Big brother is happy to keep it going to the last Ukrainian. Little brother – the Ukrainian forces, for whom the US and its allies profess to care so deeply – just gets to die. Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov admitted in a January 5 TV interview that Kiev’s forces are “shedding their blood” for NATO, which probably didn’t give much satisfaction to the troops whose bodies littered the streets in Soledar when Russian forces captured the strategic city a week later.
That doesn’t mean Washington is terribly reluctant to get its own forces killed. In fact, their deaths can sometimes be useful enough in advancing an agenda. In the early days of World War II, then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt faced strong public opposition to joining the fight. A Gallup poll in May 1940 showed that 93% of Americans opposed entering the war with troops. One week after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, 91% said they agreed with the president’s decision to declare war on Germany and Japan.
Some historians argue that this catalyzing event, Roosevelt’s “day that will live in infamy,” didn’t happen by accident. In their view, which is considered a conspiracy theory by most other historians, Roosevelt’s administration sought to provoke Japan into attacking the US and to ensure that losses would be severe enough to make even isolationist Americans beg for war.
One of the leading advocates of this view, the late Robert Stinnett, author of ‘Day of Deceit’, described an October 1940 memo from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) that detailed how the US would push Tokyo’s back against the wall. The plan included giving all possible aid to the Chinese national government led by Chiang Kai-shek; making arrangements with British and Dutch forces for use of their bases in Southeast Asia; deploying US destroyers and submarines to the Orient; keeping the main strength of the US naval fleet in Hawaii; insisting that the Dutch refuse all Japanese demands for economic concessions, especially oil; and embargoing all trade with Japan, in cooperation with the UK.
The memo was never publicly adopted, but Stinnett writes that Roosevelt and his cabinet saw and approved it (though the “presidential routing logs” he cites as evidence are not provided).
Unbeknownst to the Japanese, Stinnett and other supporters of the ‘Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge theory’ claim, the US broke their communications codes, so their hand was exposed as Washington’s policies pushed Emperor Hirohito’s empire closer and closer to an overt act of war against America. Ironically, the ONI memo’s author, Lieutenant Commander Arthur McCollum, oversaw the routing of communications intelligence to Roosevelt during the run-up to the Pearl Harbor attack.
According to Stinnett, key intelligence was withheld from the top US commanders in Hawaii, US Navy Admiral Husband Kimmel and US Army Lieutenant General Walter Short, even as the movements of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s attack fleet were being monitored in the northern Pacific. When the bombs started dropping on a sleepy Sunday morning, US forces in Hawaii were caught off guard.
The attack killed 2,403 Americans, including 68 civilians, and destroyed or damaged 19 US Navy ships and hundreds of aircraft, but Roosevelt had his way. Congress voted the next day to declare war on Japan, which meant the US was essentially at war, too, with Tokyo’s ally, Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler made it official three days later, declaring war on the US on December 11. And with US industry ramping up to build new warships, aircraft and other weaponry, the Great Depression was finally over.
While Stinnett and others like him are dubbed revisionists, and their claims are widely refuted citing questionable sourcing and factual errors, it’s not difficult to understand how US warmongers can salivate over a horrific and devastating event on the scale of Pearl Harbor.
Consider the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a foreign policy think tank whose founding statement in 1997 was signed by such political heavyweights as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. John Bolton, the future national security advisor, was among its directors. In a report written in September 2000, PNAC wrote that in order to create “tomorrow’s dominant force,” the necessary transformation of America’s military would take a long time, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”
One year later, by which time Cheney had become vice president and Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, America had its new Pearl Harbor: the September 11 terrorist attacks on Washington and the Pentagon. Even the casualty total was similar, with 2,977 victims killed.
Aided by a sudden outbreak of bipartisanship in Congress, President George W. Bush’s administration leaped into action, firing up the war machine and trampling civil liberties in the name of national security. The US also followed through with a regime-change war in Iraq, as contemplated in the PNAC document.
The CSIS report, titled ‘The First Battle of the Next War’, predicts that 3,200 US troops would be killed in a Taiwan Strait conflict with China in just three weeks, while thousands more would be wounded. And after decades of operating with dominant firepower, the US Navy and Air Force would be staggered by the losses they’d suffer against China’s powerful forces.
It’s easy to imagine how war profiteers would see opportunity in such a situation. Just replacing the lost weaponry would be a bonanza for defense contractors. The aircraft carriers alone would cost more than $13 billion each. But it wouldn’t stop there.
For years, some US lawmakers have complained that even as Washington spends more on defense than the nine next-biggest military budgets combined, the Pentagon isn’t working aggressively enough to expand its forces and develop new weaponry to counter China’s rise. Imagine the spending binge that would ensue with the US military reeling from a fierce battle with Beijing.
The CSIS also predicts that the Chinese Communist Party would be destabilized by a failed invasion of Taiwan – surely an encouraging prospect for US policy makers. However, the study seems to overlook how catastrophically wrong the war could go for the US and its allies. Just as Washington has shrugged off escalation risks in its Ukrainian proxy war with Moscow, the CSIS suggests that a battle over Taiwan could be contained to that region and finished relatively quickly.
China is a nuclear-armed superpower that has grown weary of Washington’s unipolar worldview. Its leaders think in terms of centuries, not two- or four-year election cycles, and they likely wouldn’t consider losing an option in Taiwan. Through trade sanctions alone, China could wreak havoc on the US. Beijing also has allies and nuclear weapons. What if nuclear-armed North Korea saw this as a good time to attack Japan or South Korea? Wars tend to be full of surprises and unforeseen consequences.
Unfortunately, with so much to potentially be gained, US decision-makers appear to be recklessly provoking China. Washington wouldn’t publicly proclaim a policy of trying to instigate war with Beijing, just as it didn’t announce a plan to trigger a Japanese attack. However, we need only watch US actions to guess at its intentions.
For instance, was there some legitimate benefit contemplated when 82-year-old congressional leader Nancy Pelosi disregarded China’s warnings and visited Taiwan last August? Did she bring the countries closer to war or further from it? The result was China’s decision to dramatically increase drills in the Taiwan Strait and sever military and climate ties with the US.
The same questions might be asked about Washington’s “freedom-of-navigation” exercises in the region, such as when the US Navy sent warships through the Taiwan Strait earlier this month. Do such actions create more risk of conflict or less? What was the point? On the latter question, a US Navy spokeswoman said, “The United States military flies, sails and operates anywhere international law allows.”
When the US was doing the same sort of thing in 1940-41, the provocations near or within Japanese waters were called “pop-up cruises.” Roosevelt advocated the tactic, saying, “I just want them to keep popping up here and here and keep the Japs guessing.” Kimmel, who later became a scapegoat for the Pearl Harbor attack, was among the critics of the pop-up strategy, saying, “It is ill-advised and will result in war if we make this move.”
Like the sailors, soldiers and civilians whose lives were ended or shredded that day, Kimmel paid a price for the US war-instigation policy when he lost his command. But the heavy losses were a price worth paying, at somebody else’s cost, for the war planners in Washington.
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
US urges Ukraine not to ‘fixate’ on defending key city
RT | January 21, 2023
The US believes that Ukraine should “refocus” on preparations for a new offensive, suggesting fierce battles for the eastern city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut by Ukraine) may be “hampering” Kiev, according to multiple news outlets, citing a senior US official. The comments cut against months of Western media reports that described the town as a key, strategic area.
Speaking to a small group of reporters on Friday, a top official in the administration of President Joe Biden (who refused to be named or cited verbatim) said that Ukraine “should not fixate on defending the city of Bakhmut at all costs,” according to AFP. Instead, Kiev was advised to use the time to prepare a large counter-offensive against Russia.
The strong focus on the city is “hampering Ukraine in the more important task” of organizing a spring offensive to reclaim territory lost to Moscow, the official reportedly added, noting that “time favors Russia” due to its superior troop numbers and artillery.
In a similar report on Friday, Reuters also indirectly quoted a senior Biden administration official advising Kiev to wait “until the latest supply of US weaponry is in place and training has been provided,” apparently referring to the $2.5 billion arms package approved in Washington this week. The aid includes a large number of artillery rounds, munitions for the US-supplied HIMARS multi-launch rocket platform, and, for the first time, Stryker combat vehicles – but no tanks. A small number of Ukrainian troops are also undergoing training at a US base in Germany, with some learning how to operate the Patriot missile defense battery authorized for Kiev in December.
The official allegedly said that Western weapons that will be needed for a “mobile offensive force” for future battles are currently “pouring into Ukraine,” adding that Kiev should not waste its limited resources on the “strategically unimportant target,” according to Reuters.
While much of the Western press – including outlets such as PBS, NBC, CBS, the New York Times, and others – have repeatedly deemed the city a key hub of major strategic importance, US officials have voiced an altogether different view in recent days.
Even if Moscow successfully captures the city, “it’s not going to strategically change the dynamics on the battlefield. It’s not going to set the Ukrainians back to a degree where they’re all of a sudden on the back foot and they’re losing,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said earlier on Friday.
The city of Artyomovsk has become a stronghold of the Ukrainian army in the years since the 2014 coup in Kiev. It is part of a 70-kilometer-long defense line created by the Ukrainian forces during the intervening years. Russia claims sovereignty over the city along with the rest of the Donetsk People’s Republic, which joined Russia in October after a referendum. Kiev rejected the vote as a “sham.”
The city remains a major logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the region and has emerged as a focal point of the conflict in recent months. Russian troops have achieved several victories in the area over the last several weeks, taking the city of Soledar and the strategic village of Klescheevka among several other settlements as they seek to encircle Artyomovsk.
While it remains unclear whether Kiev will heed the advice, the comments from US officials came on the heels of a Friday report by Der Spiegel, which cited Germany’s Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) as being “alarmed” over heavy losses suffered by Ukrainian troops in the area. Earlier this week, British newspaper The Times also reported that Kiev had sent poorly equipped troops with little combat experience to defend Artyomovsk.
‘US, British Snipers Sent to Potemkin Island Near Kherson’
Samizdat – 21.01.2023
Ukrainian servicemen have told Russian security forces that snipers from the United States and the United Kingdom have been sent to Potemkin Island (Ostriv Velykyi Potomkin) near Kherson to kill civilians in order to pass them off as victims of the Russian Armed Forces, a Russian law enforcement source told Sputnik.
“According to information received from sources in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, an American-British group of mercenaries, mostly snipers, drove to Bolshoy Potemkin Island in the Kherson region in order to terrorize the Russian-speaking population,” the source said.
“The victims of the mercenaries’ murders are supposed to be passed off as those killed by the Russian army.”
In early January, a video started circulating on Ukrainian websites showing how Ukrainian militants allegedly raised the Ukrainian flag on Potemkin Island, controlled by Russian troops. Subsequently, the footage was reported to have been filmed in a “gray zone.”
A Sputnik correspondent visited the island on December 5 and confirmed that it was under the control of Russian troops. One of the Russian soldiers on the island told Sputnik in an interview that the Ukrainian video showing the alleged raising of the Ukrainian flag was a fake.
Earlier Friday, French media reported that the US officials were also urging the Ukrainian regime to prepare for a counteroffensive against Russian forces as opposed to clinging to the town of Bakhmut.
The latest comes as reports detailed on Wednesday that the Biden administration was considering providing Ukraine with weapons necessary to target the Crimean Peninsula.
Under Biden Federal Agencies Turned Into Instrument of Intimidation, FBI Whistleblower Says
By Ekaterina Blinova – Samizdat – 20.01.2023
The GOP-controlled House of Representatives has formed a judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponization of the federal government,” including law enforcement and national security agencies. FBI special agent Steve Friend explained to Sputnik what the trigger for the initiative, which has been compared with the famous Church Committee, was.
“The FBI is unquestionably politicized,” FBI special agent Steve Friend told Sputnik. “Any objective observer can see that the FBI is concentrating its attention and resources to investigate and prosecute citizens holding opposing views to the current administration. This includes parents at school board meetings, pro-life activists praying outside abortion clinics, and non-violent protesters who attended President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021.”
Friend had had an “exemplary” work record since he joined the FBI in 2014, and even won awards, but he was suspended in September 2022 after he started questioning the bureau’s and the Department of Justice’s (DoJ) conduct in the January 6 investigation. He informed the US Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, about alleged violations in a whistleblower complaint.
Friend particularly raised concerns about the FBI and DoJ violating the constitutional rights of January 6 defendants, falsifying statistics on domestic extremism, and misusing SWAT teams to make misdemeanor arrests.
“The cases were being assigned around the country, but managed through Washington, DC,” explained Friend. “This resulted in creating a false statistical narrative that domestic terrorism was on the rise around the US, when all the cases were from a single incident in one location. I also made disclosures about my concerns the FBI was using unnecessary, heavy-handed tactics to investigate and arrest January 6 subjects. I was suspended indefinitely from duty. I did not leave the agency and am still considered an FBI employee.”
January Sixers
In 2021, US conservative political commentators described numerous cases where January Sixers had been raided by SWAT teams despite not being accused of any violent crime or having any criminal record. Many of the defendants were also interrogated with no lawyer present, according to observers.
In one case on June 24, 2021, the FBI arrested a Florida pastor and his son for their alleged involvement in the January 6 protest. The son, Casey Cusick, was handcuffed in front of his three-year-old daughter, while Cusick’s father, James, the founder and pastor of a church in Melbourne, Florida, also was arrested. Neither of the Cusicks was accused of violent crimes related to the DC incident.
In another case, elderly New Yorker and former Red Cross volunteer Joseph Bolanos, 69, was raided in February 2021 by the FBI anti-terrorism task force because a tipster falsely linked him to the January 6 protest. The old man remained handcuffed and detained for three hours.
There were also J6 detainees who were held behind bars with no possibility of bail, although they did not have criminal records and were not accused of violent crimes, according to conservative observers. Richard Barnett, 60, who was photographed with his feet on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the DC protest, reportedly spent almost four months in solitary confinement being refused bail, even though he had no criminal record and wasn’t charged with violent crimes apart from “violent entry.”
“The FBI is making the investigative process a punishment for individuals,” the special agent said. “The most clear example is the use of SWAT teams to apprehend J6 subjects who already retained counsel, communicated with FBI special agents, and pledged to cooperate with the FBI’s investigative processes. SWAT arrests represent a far departure from the FBI’s usual practice of deploying the least amount of force necessary to safely arrest subjects.”
Twitter Files & FBI
In December 2022, Twitter owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk initiated an unprecedented dump of the Twitter Files in collaboration with US investigative journalists.
The expose shed light on the FBI’s involvement in content moderation and censorship practices of US social media giants and provided further details on how the bureau suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop bombshell ahead of the 2020 presidential elections.
“The Twitter Files shed light on an emerging information industrial complex,” Friend pointed out. “Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies are working with big tech and social media to investigate regular citizens and shape public discourse. I was alarmed at the existence of an FBI squad assigned to investigate first amendment protected speech on Twitter. I also note that 80 FBI special agents is more manpower than some field offices which are tasked with investigating all criminal and national security matters across entire states and regions in the United States. This fact indicates the FBI’s true priorities.”
GOP’s New ‘Church Committee’
Friend expressed hope that the GOP-proposed “Church Committee” fully investigates abuse and politicization within the FBI and takes the necessary action to reform the agency.
“I hope the members also review how the FBI is suspending whistleblowers’ security clearances in order to skirt federal whistleblower protection laws and discourage other employees from coming forward with additional information the committee needs to conduct a comprehensive investigation. I have pledged to assist the committee any way I can,” he emphasized.
The Church Committee, formally called the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, was a congressional body that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS in 1975.
The most embarrassing revelations of the committee reportedly included Operation MKULTRA, human experimentation on mind control involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens; COINTELPRO, which envisaged the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil rights organizations; and Operation Mockingbird, a propaganda campaign run by the CIA in coordination with domestic and foreign journalists and US Media outlets, to name but a few.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Prescribe Freedom” plan bans vaccine passports, supports doctors’ free speech
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | January 19, 2023
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis plans to introduce legislation that will, among other things, stop Florida from being a “biomedical security state.” The legislation will ban all vaccine passport mandates.
DeSantis said the purpose of the legislation is to “prescribe freedom.”
“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” the Republican governor said on Tuesday. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”
“It required us over the past few years to stand against major institutions in our society: The bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media, and even the President of the United States who, together, were working to impose a biomedical security state on society,” he added.
DeSantis’ surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo said he supports the bill because it would protect the free exchange of ideas between medical professionals.
“As a health sciences researcher and physician, I have personally witnessed accomplished scientists receive threats due to their unorthodox positions,” Ladapo said. “However, many of these positions have proven to be correct, as we’ve all seen over the past few years. All medical professionals should be encouraged to engage in scientific discourse without fearing for their livelihoods or their careers.”
The legislation would protect medical professionals’ freedom of speech by protecting their religious views and their right to disagree with the preferred narrative. The bill would also protect medical freedom of choice by banning discrimination based on vaccination status, testing, and mask-wearing.
Related:
California’s chilling medical misinformation law is an affront to the US constitution
The situation in African countries is deteriorating as a result of US policies
By Valery Kulikov – New Eastern Outlook – 20.01.2023
In the last few years the USA and its Western allies have been making increasingly overt attempts to put pressure on Africa in a bid to stop the continent turning towards Russia and China.
The situation in African countries has started to deteriorate seriously as a result of the West’s thoughtless and self-serving sanctions against Russia, which have caused the continent problems in a number of areas, including that of food security. For example purely as a result of having to buy wheat from Argentina rather than from Russia, Angola has lost more than $15 million since the beginning of Moscow’s special operation to denazify the criminal regime in Ukraine and the West’s imposition of sanctions against Russia.
According to an announcement made by Turkey’s Minister of Agriculture Vahit Kirişci, since the signing of the “grain deal” 16.9 million tons of grain, carried by 633 ships, have been exported from Ukraine through the marine humanitarian corridor established under the deal. However, just 5.4% of the exported grain has found its way to poor nations, including African nations, despite the West’s insistence that the deal would prioritize shipments to these countries.
As for Russia, despite the restrictions imposed on it by the West, it has been able to export more than 15 million tons of grain as well as large volumes of mineral fertilizer, much of it intended for poor countries. Moreover, in discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdoğan last November, it was decided to supply grain to the poorest African nations free of charge.
According to Saudi media it is the events in Ukraine and the anti-Russian policies of the West that are to blame for the sharp rise in food prices in 2022 (wheat, rice, maize, vegetable oil etc.) and the resulting famine that caused widespread suffering, especially in the world’s poorest countries. By tightening their financial policies the developed nations have reduced the flow of funds to poor countries, and the departure of foreign investment has significantly exacerbated the food crisis – a problem which, even in 2023, will be particularly challenging to overcome. In March 2022 global food prices reached their highest ever level. According to statistics published by the media, global spending of food imports amounted to almost $2 trillion in 2022, significantly more than in previous years. Shortages of wheat and fertilizer have caused price increases and raised the cost of importing food for the most vulnerable sections of society (by more than $25 billion). State support for low income families has been unable to raise their standards of living, as most of the subsidies granted have been eaten up by rising food prices. Jasper Okodi, a consultant to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has stated that even if global prices fall the price of foods in local markets in unlikely to fall until the third quarter of 2023.
Unlike the West, Russia has been a trusted partner to African states for many decades. From the mid 20th Century onwards, as African nations achieved independence from the yoke of their former colonial masters, the Soviet Union provided them with a great deal of disinterested support, building up their social and economic infrastructure. As representatives of the African nations themselves insist, Russia has never been involved in schemes to rob Africans of their natural wealth, and has never applied political pressure in an attempt to gain economic benefits. In the current highly challenging conditions posed by the anti-Russian policies of the USA and its western allies, African leaders clearly understand that Russia, despite the aggressive and immoral opposition of the West, is fighting to bring about a just world order. It is also fighting the USA’s overt propaganda campaign, which is based on disinformation and lies about Moscow’s policies. Speaking on this and other issues at a meeting of the UN Security Council on January 10, Anna Evstigneeva, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation, categorically rejected the West’s attempts to discredit Russia’s assistance to African nations by falsely accusing it of appropriating African resources or contributing to the growth of terrorism in the continent.
Many African politicians have emphasized that while France, Britain and the USA are now losing their influence in Africa, in the past, when these countries dominated the continent, it was very difficult for Africans to stand up against Western neo-colonialism. But now the world order is changing and the African nations are able to breathe freely at last.
In an article published at the end of December The Times was forced to admit that 22 African nations refused to censure Russia’s special operation to protect residents in the Donbass at the UN General Assembly, and that in the light of current international feelings Moscow was winning more and more sympathy in the world’s most rapidly developing continent. The Times also recognized that the West has already lost the battle for Africa and that Africans are turning away from their former colonial powers and towards Russia, China, Turkey and the Persian Gulf States.
The struggle between the USA and Russia for influence in Africa took a new turn when South Africa’s president took on the chairmanship of the BRICS group and the country’s ruling party proposed inviting new members from among the world’s major developing nations to join the grouping. As the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said, “The BRICS group should lead the process of reforming the entire international architecture for the benefit of most countries in the world, and this group has an important role to play in leading the creation of new decision-making mechanisms in the UN and other international organizations to establish a more inclusive, just and sustainable world order.” And that will certainly end the global dominion of the West and particularly of the USA, which is why the USA is opposing such reform.
Washington is particularly critical of the plans for Russia, South Africa and China to hold joint naval exercises – known by the code name Mosi – in the Indian Ocean off the Southern African coast from February 17 to 26. The exercises will include artillery practice and anti-aircraft drills. Similar joint naval exercises were held in November 2019 in the South Atlantic ocean, off the Cape of Good Hope, not far from Cape Town.
In view of the above background and specifically Washington’s growing opposition to African countries’ good relations with Russia, Thandi Modise, South Africa’s Minister of Defense and Military Veterans was recently impelled to accuse the USA of putting pressure on those African nations that maintain good relations with Russia. The Wall Street Journal admitted the truth of this accusation in a recent article on the US reaction to the docking of the Russian cargo ship Lady R at a South African port.
The West understands that Russia has an interest in maintaining international relations with strong, self-sufficient and economically independent partner countries – including in Africa – which are able to ignore the West’s threats of repressive measures and work as allies of Moscow in the creation of a new multipolar world order. But it is precisely this process that the West fears, and it is imposing all the illegitimate sanctions that it can devise in order to impose its neocolonial policies in Africa.
US and allies must address Russia’s security concerns and their past deceptions on Donbass, the Kremlin says
RT | January 20, 2023
US-Russia relations are at their lowest point ever amid the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. As the conflict deteriorates, the only way to reverse it is for Western nations to acknowledge their mistakes and change their policies, he added.
Despite initial hopes that under President Joe Biden the US would engage Russia diplomatically, the last two years “have been very bad for our bilateral relations,” the official told journalists. They are now “probably at their lowest point, historically” he added, and “there is no hope for improvement anytime soon.”
The Ukraine hostilities – the focus of the confrontation between Russia and Western nations – are in “an upward spiral” according to Peskov.
“We can see a growing indirect, and sometimes direct involvement of NATO nations in this conflict,” he stated. The nations that back Kiev are acting under “a delusion that Ukraine has any chance to win on the battlefield,” he explained.
Asked how the vicious circle could be broken, Peskov suggested that the US and its allies had to mentally turn the clock back to the end of 2021, “when Russia was suggesting a discussion of its concerns at the negotiations table” only to be dismissed.
Western repentance for its “cynicism” was also in order, he added.
“Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time,” he said, referring to the roadmap for Ukraine reconciliation, which the three nations signed with Russia in 2015.
Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Pyotr Poroshenko, the leaders at the time of Germany, France and Ukraine respectively, have since stated that the deal they negotiated with Russia was meant to give Kiev time to rebuild its military.
Moscow considers these admissions to be evidence that the negotiations were conducted in bad faith and that the Ukrainian government and its backers had always intended for the Minsk agreements to fail and for the Donbass standoff to be resolved by military means. Russia claimed that its military campaign in Ukraine launched last February preempted an offensive planned by Kiev with NATO’s help.
Ukraine, Germany, and France “lied to the people of Donbass, as they had a terrible fate planned for them, which Russia prevented,” Peskov explained.
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From the Archives
Israel: Strategic Ally or Liability?
By Stephen Sniegoski | My Catbird Seat | June 12, 2010
The claim that Israel serves as a valuable ally for the United States is made by both pro-Zionists and much of the anti-war and anti-Zionist Left that is influenced by Noam Chomsky. As a result of the Gaza flotilla massacre, which has caused a world-wide uproar against Israel, the value of Israel to the United States is being publicly questioned in more mainstream foreign policy forums. … continue
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