“Lockdown was NOT a “policy mistake”…It was murder”-Off-Guardian…”New research” finds “the science of lockdowns is clear; data are in: deaths saved were drop in the bucket compared to staggering collateral costs imposed”-UK Telegraph

March 2020 lockdowns in UK were based on dire predictions of death made by UK computer modeler, Neil Ferguson...“Researchers for the Johns Hopkins study said the findings showed that lockdowns had been “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions”.”…

6/5/23, “OffG’s Quick Take: Lockdown was NOT a “policy mistake”…It was murder.” Off Guardian

“Yesterday, the Telegraph [UK] reported on “new research” which claims that lockdowns saved only 1700 lives in England and Wales. A “drop in the bucket” compared to the harms done: [6/4/23, “Lockdown benefits ‘a drop in the bucket compared to the costs’, landmark study finds,” UK Telegraph, L. Donnelly]

“The science of lockdowns is clear; the data are in: the deaths saved were a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering collateral costs imposed.”

This is not a revelation, it’s not an admission, it’s not the system checks-and-balances working. Rather, it is public relations, perception management. Just one more example of the revisionism we highlighted in the most recent This Week in the New Normal.

It’s a campaign which pretends to accountability and honesty, but is really about carefully managing the covid autopsy. Ensuring any and all Covid conversation is had purely on the establishment’s terms, whilst

lulling those freshly-awakened by the pandemic back into a sound sleep.

The “new research” is basically a re-statement of the fundamental lie masquerading as “confession”. It “admits” that lockdown had little to no impact on “covid deaths”, which is just a backdoor way of maintaining the fiction that “covid deaths” really happened.

It doesn’t question the efficacy of the tests, the definitions of “cases” or “deaths”, or any of the architecture of the Covid scam. It just reinforces the basic underlying assumptions:

Covid was indeed a thing, and it did kill people.

Both of which are proven lies.

The truth is lockdowns didn’t save any lives at all, and none of the “consequences” of lockdown were a surprise. We go into this in our “40 Facts” on Covid.

The poverty, the depression, despair. The shuttered stores and closed hospitals and bankrupt businesses.

They were all predictable, and all deliberate.

They knew that’s what would happen…that’s what it was for.

That’s why “Covid” was invented.

Lockdown was not a policy mistake, it was a policy success.”

……………………………………..

Added: Further from Telegraph article referenced above, notes March 2020 lockdowns in UK were based on dire predictions made by UK computer modeler, Neil Ferguson:

“The Telegraph recently revealed that a secretive government unit worked with social media companies during the pandemic in an attempt to curtail criticism of controversial lockdown policies.

The Covid Disinformation Unit monitored social media and asked tech companies to remove posts it considered to be “potentially harmful content”.

Britain’s first lockdown, in March 2020, was introduced on the basis of modelling exercises from Prof Neil Ferguson which had predicted there could be more than 500,000 deaths in the UK, without action to stop the spread of the virus.

His research had suggested that even with mitigations such as social distancing, and household quarantines for Covid cases, there could be at least 250,000 deaths, unless further measures were taken….

Modelling by Prof Ferguson and his colleagues from Imperial College London in March 2020 had predicted that, without action, the UK could see 510,000 deaths from Covid,

with 2.2 million in the United States. 

After lockdown was imposed, the scientist suggested that “intense social distancing and other interventions now in place” could reduce that figure to 20,000 in the UK.

The Covid Inquiry is set to examine the Government’s decision making during the pandemic but it has already been the subject of significant criticism relating to its speed, scope and transparency.

Researchers for the Johns Hopkins study said the findings showed that lockdowns had been “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions”.”…

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Among comments to Off Guardian article:

……………………………………….

“Maxwell, Jun 6, 2023 3:06 AM:

Lockdowns are crimes against humanity,

every single public leader who supports them

should be treated as a criminal.

Those who advocated for lockdowns are complicit in tearing families apart, in inflicting untold suffering on millions of people around the world, in casting the poorest and most vulnerable in our societies into

even further grinding poverty- in murder. 

Being a decent human being and supporting lockdowns are mutually exclusive.

If you supported lockdowns, you also supported:

suicide, depression, drug overdoses, domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse, missed medical screenings and procedures, wealth inequality,

mass starvation and destitution.

In terms of the most horrendous acts on the part of mankind, the

Lockdown ranks up there with any of the worst events in history.

Keep in mind the impacts of these murderous policies have just started their lifecycle.”

…………………………………….

Added: 6/5/23,  “12. Sadism of the ruling class.

The kids were denied a year or two of school in some locations.

People missed medical diagnostics.

Weddings and funerals were on Zoom.

The aged were forced into desperate loneliness. The poor suffered. People turned to substance abuse and put on added pounds. The working classes were exploited. Small businesses were wrecked. Millions were forced to move and millions more were displaced from their jobs. The ruling class that advertised its wonderful altruism and public spiritedness became callous and completely disregarded all this suffering. Even when the data poured in about suicide ideation and mental illness from loneliness, it made no difference. They could not muster any concern. They changed nothing. The schools stayed closed and the travel restrictions stayed in place. Those who pointed this out were called terrible names. It was a form of grotesque sadism of which we did not know they were capable.“…6/5/23, Brownstone, Tucker

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Added: 11/5/2021, New Jersey truck driver Edward Durr cites voter backlash against US “pandemic” policies for his “shock” election to NJ State Senate, defeating longtime Democrat NJ State Senate head Steve Sweeney:

““It was a repudiation of the policies that have been forced down their throats

— people told

they can’t have a job,

they can’t go to church,

they can’t go to school,

they can’t go shopping,

they can’t go and eat dinner,”

Durr told NBC New York. “You can’t tell people they can’t do things when we live in the freest country in the world.””

…………………………

Added: As of Nov. 30, 2020, one third of New Jersey small businesses had closed permanently pursuant to Trump’s March 2020 declaration of National Emergency due to a virus:

“The Harvard-based data tracking project TrackTheRecovery.org recently put out numbers indicating that 31% of businesses in New Jersey have closed, a figure slightly above the national average.”…

…………………………

Added: Nationwide, as of 11/29/2020, about one third of all businesses had closed:

11/29/2020, “Nearly one-third of NY, NJ small businesses reportedly closed in 2020,” Fox Business News

“Nearly one-third of small businesses in New York and New Jersey have closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to TrackTheRecovery.org….

As of Nov. 16, [2020] 27.8 percent of small businesses in New York shut down for good – and in New Jersey the figure is 31.2 percent.

The stats are in line with the national average at 29.8 percent, The Hill reported.

During the first wave in spring,

52.5 percent of New York businesses and

53.9 percent in New Jersey closed.”…

 

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An America First Party with no apparent connection to Trump has existed in recent years, held a convention in 2002. In April 2018 it lamented Trump bombing Syria, calling it a repudiation of America First foreign policy principles

An America First Party has actually existed in recent years. In April 2018 its website lamented Trump’s 2018 bombing of Syria: “Syria Attack at Odds with an America First Foreign Policy – April 16 – It is with sadness that we witnessed President Trump’s effective repudiation of the principles of an America First foreign policy last week, with his attack on a nation which is not threatening the security interests of the United States, and which is a natural ally with us in opposing Al-Qaeda.“…The America First Party website didn’t claim any connection with Trump, his administration, or campaign.

In 2002 The America First Party invited Ohio Rep. Jim Traficant to speak at its convention. Traficant was born in and was beloved in his home town of Youngstown, Ohio. At one time he was Sheriff of Mahoning County. Sadly, he died in an accident in 2014. Traficant also spoke at a 2009 Tea Party rally in Ohio where he was greeted with cheers of “Traficant for President,” and “We’re with you Jim.” Traficant had been in prison for 7 years for financial crimes, was released on 9/2/2009. A serious advocate of enforcing a US southern border, in 1995 then Democrat Traficant proposed a bill in the House to relocate 10,000 US troops from Europe to the US southern border:

May 1996, “America First,“ James Traficant, Chronicles Magazine (subscription)

“Protecting Our Borders

Last year [1995] I introduced legislation that would authorize the Pentagon to redeploy American troops stationed in Europe to assist federal law enforcement officials patrolling America’s Southern border. Every day dangerous criminals pour into our country through our border with Mexico—unchallenged.

My bill authorizes the Secretary of Defense–at the request of the Attorney General–to transfer up to 10,000 American troops stationed in Europe back to the United States to assist the Border Patrol and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in preventing illegal aliens, drug traffickers, and terrorists from entering our country. The bill would also allow American troops to assist the Customs Service in inspecting cargo, vehicles, and aircraft at points of entry into the United States.

Let’s be candid. The Border Patrol has only 3,800 personnel to guard the two longest borders of one of the largest countries of the world. Reports indicate that, at any given time,

only 800 patrolmen are available to protect

our 2,000 mile border with Mexico.

Congress has failed to provide funding to enlarge the Border Patrol, and until Congress can find the money, this military option is the best short-term way to address this shortage of personnel.

We have hundreds of thousands of troops deployed throughout the world

protecting European, Asian, and Latin American nations.

If the Pentagon can send hundreds of thousands of American troops to protect our allies, it should be able to spare 10,000 military personnel to protect America.”…

Obviously, the bill didn’t pass, Jim was unpopular in the Beltway, eventually was sent to prison for financial crimes. When he got out, the Tea Party and America First Party greeted him with open arms.

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 Related

Trump was elected to end foreign wars and regime changes but did the opposite, thus proving US elections are meaningless. In April 2017 he bombed Syria, in June 2017 sent more US troops to Afghanistan, in 2019 tried to overthrow Venezuela-Tom Luongo5/1/19

Trump was elected to end US foreign wars and regime changes. Hacking group Shadow Brokers voted for Trump but wouldn’t be among current Trump sycophants cheering his depraved intervention of Venezuela and demonization of Russia. Trump bombing Syria in April 2017 so angered Shadow Brokers that it released a crucial NSA password for arsenal of NSA weapons, pw authenticated by Edward Snowden 4/8/17

Trump knows Idlib is a large Al Qaeda safe haven in Syria yet he’s forcing US taxpayers to defend them. Fine. Syria is completely justified in bombing the US in return. Until countries start bombing US in return, US taxpayers will remain enslaved to the Endless Unwinnable War and Regime Change IndustrySeptember 11, 2018"Syria should bomb the US if Trump bombs Syria"

 

 

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Many congratulations to the Syrian people and Pres. Assad who give hope to the world by defeating jihadists grotesquely funded by US taxpayers

May 16, 2023, “Syria officially reinstated in Arab League,” Voltaire Network

“Saudi Finance Minister Mohamed Al-Jaddan warmly welcomed the Syrian delegation, which included Foreign Affairs Minister Faisal Miqdad, Information Minister Boutros Al-Hallaq, Deputy Foreign Minister Ayman Soussaner, as well as the Director of the Foreign Minister’s Office, Jamal Najib.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been invited to the summit, which several Western leaders are expected to attend.

Recognition of the Syrian Arab Republic’s

victory over Western-backed jihadists

and its reintegration into the League of Arab States

marks the end of foreign domination over the region.” image from Voltaire

 

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Dr. King: “My dream has turned into a nightmare” because US government is “obsessed with guns of war” and is “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”-May 8, 1967

May 8, 1967, “Martin Luther King Jr.: “My dream has turned into a nightmare.”…In April 1968, 11 months before his assassination, Dr. King was interviewed at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta by Sander Vanocur of NBC News.

Dr. King’s April 4, 1967 speech in which he accurately described the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today“ enraged the media…Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”

 …………………

May 8, 1967, Excerpts from Ebenezer Baptist Church interview

@20: “I must confess that that dream that I had that day

has in many forms

turned into a nightmare….

(1:32) When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war,

it loses its social perspective and programs the social uplift suffer.

This is just a fact of history, so that we do face many more difficulties

as a result of the war [on Asian soil]. It’s much more difficult

to really arouse the conscience during a time of war.

There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive, it dulls the conscience, it strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence. I think the biggest problem now…(2:32) we’re confronting issues that cannot be solved without costing the nation billions of dollars. I think this is where we’re getting our greatest resistance. They may put it on many other things, but we can’t get rid of slums and poverty without it costing the nation something. I feel that non-violence is really the only way we can follow because violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating minimal problems for the Negro community,...you can burn down a building, but you can’t establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater but you can’t murder hate. And what we’re trying to get rid of is hate and injustice and all of these other things

that continue the long night of man’s inhumanity to man.”

———————

You Tube page: “Dr. King explains the war in Vietnam was undermining the fight for social justice by breeding insensitivity to the suffering of South Asians and dulling America’s collective conscience…”

He gave his “I have a dream” speech on August 27, 1963.

********************

Added: Whatever happened to US “Neutrality Acts”?  

The Neutrality Acts, were “a series of laws passed in the 1930s that would limit U.S. involvement in foreign wars. They passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939.”

“Neutrality Acts: Definitions,” Historyonthenet.com

“To involve America in World War Two, FDR had to overcome two major obstacles:

American public opinion and

a consistent body of neutrality legislation.

By the 1930s, 70 percent of Americans polled said that U.S. involvement in World War I had been a mistake. When war broke out again in 1939, Americans were determined to stay out of the affairs of its quarrelsome neighbors across the Atlantic. They were also

legally bound by the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws passed in the 1930s that would limit U.S. involvement in foreign wars. They passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939.

FDR’s other problem was the pesky neutrality laws from the 1930s that were designed to prevent the United States from being lured into war, and which especially sought to avoid the circumstances that had led to U.S. entry into World War I. Thus, for example, Americans on belligerent ships were at first told that they traveled at their own risk, and neutrality legislation later in the 1930s prohibited such travel altogether. The neutrality legislation also prevented the United States from selling weapons to countries at war. America could sell other goods to belligerents, but only on a cash-and-carry basis and transported in the recipient country’s ships. America’s ships could not venture into war zones to conduct wartime trade.

FDR sought to change the part of the neutrality legislation that stopped the United States from selling weapons to nations at war. As of 1939, therefore, it became legal for a belligerent (Britain, in this case) to acquire weapons from the United States on a cash-and-carry basis. The prohibition on the lending of money to belligerents was preserved, and the requirement that the equipment be transported in the belligerent’s own ships meant that American ships would not be exposed to danger.” Historyonthenet.com

**************************

Added: To get re-elected in 1940, FDR promised not to involve the US in a foreign war. In the US, it’s not illegal to lie to get elected:

FDR “declared at Cleveland on November 3: “The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war.”

So much for presidential words. What about presidential actions?

American involvement in war with Germany was preceded by a long series of steps, not one of which could reasonably be represented as conducive to the achievement of

the President’s professed ideal of keeping the United States out of foreign wars.”

………………………………..

Added: Famous saying: Everyone knows that “we have to fight them over there so they won’t attack us over here.” Editor of FDR Library

More “no foreign war” promises by FDR, a few days before 1940 election:

“On October 23, 1940, in Philadelphia, the President [FDR] again said:

“We are arming ourselves not for any foreign war. We are arming ourselves not for any purpose of conquest or intervention in foreign disputes. I repeat again that I stand on the platform of our party:

‘We will not send our army, naval or air forces

to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas,

except in case of attack.’”

……………..

Comment: What does “We will not send our army…except in case of attack” mean? Does it mean “if US is attacked on its soil” US will send military to foreign lands judged responsible for attacking them? That’s to be expected. Also, why does FDR use the term, “the Americas” which is defined as “North, Central, and South America and the West Indies”?

……………………….

Added: “‘[Bill] Clinton’s [1999] war on Serbia was a Pandora’s box from which the world still suffers.

Because politicians and most of the media

portrayed the war against Serbia as a moral triumph,

it was easier for the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq,

for the Obama administration to bomb Libya, and

for the Trump administration to repeatedly bomb Syria

[and illegally annex one third of Syria: 3/23/2019, Redrawn Syrian borders seen on flag flown by US funded Kurdish “fighters,” upper right is portion seized by Trump:

3/11/2018, “In January [2018], US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that US “troops will remain in Syria” indefinitely....The SDF, or Syrian Democratic Force, is a US-constructed outfit which…is neither Syrian…nor democratic….[4] “US President Donald Trump’s rollout of an updated Syria policy,” reports Aaron Stein, writing in the unofficial journal of the US State Department, Foreign Affairs, “commits US forces to maintaining a presence” in northeast Syria in order to “hedge against” any attempt by Damascus to assert sovereignty over its own territory. [5]”] (Trump admin. prevents starving Syrians from trying to grow crops on their own land)…3/30/2018, “The (largely unrecognized) US occupation of Syria,” Stephen Gowans]

All of those interventions sowed chaos that continues cursing the purported beneficiaries….

Anti-terrorism is a flag of convenience for Washington policymakers.…In 1999, the Clinton administration designated the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army]

as “freedom fighters” despite their horrific past

and gave them massive aid.“...6/25/2020, “Kosovo Indictment Proves Bill Clinton’s Serbian War Atrocities,” Jim Bovard

*************************

Trump admin. uses ““wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population:”

Added:  10/23/2019, “Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival,” Grayzone, Ben Norton. [Below, Syria map #1, gold area controlled by “Kurdish forces,” ie, the US. Syria map #2, below, light green area controlled by “Kurdish forces,” ie, the US]

“For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.

The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs….

US soldiers enabled Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include

90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as

70 percent of its wheat.

The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.

In June [2019], Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had

agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus,

after the US government pressured them to do so.

The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO,

proposed using

the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.

A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia”…

Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.

“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”

While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory –

which is illegal under international law –

it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.

A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the

theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.”

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America’s censorship regime, which includes virtually all government “agencies,” is on trial in Missouri v Biden. In March 2023 a Missouri judge denied government’s motion to dismiss-Tablet, 4/10/23

“Just last month [March 2023], in what is likely to become a decision of historical significance, the Missouri judge denied the government’s motion to dismiss.”...During Trump administration, "a number of agencies, including CDC, NIH, DHS, and FBI, acted independently to achieve these censorship aims," which continued and escalated during Biden admin.

4/10/23, “America’s Censorship Regime Goes on Trial," Tablet, Jenin Younes

“Missouri v. Biden will test the government’s ability to suppress speech in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’.”

“Ernest Ramirez, a car-wash technician in a small, south Texas town, led a simple but fulfilling life with his son, Ernesto Junior. Junior was a “wonderful child, full of smiles.” Ramirez had raised his son alone; he’d never known his own father and sought to provide Junior with the paternal love he had missed. A talented baseball player, Junior dreamed of playing professionally. The two lived paycheck to paycheck but were happy because, as Ramirez put it, they had each other.

Then, on April 19, 2021, 16-year-old Junior—who had no previous health problems—received the first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. Five days later, the young athlete collapsed while running. By the time the elder Ramirez arrived at the hospital, having been told he could not ride in the ambulance with his son,

Junior was dead.

According to the autopsy report, the cause of Junior’s death was an “enlarged heart.” Upon receiving the news, Ramirez lost all desire to go on living. But after the initial shock subsided, Ramirez decided to travel and speak about Junior’s fate, in hopes that he could help other families avoid similar tragedies.

That plan proved more difficult than Ramirez anticipated. In September 2021, GoFundMe removed an account he had opened to raise money for a trip to the nation’s capital to share his son’s story. “The content of your fundraiser falls under our ‘Prohibited Conduct’ section,” the company’s email explained. Ramirez lost the donations he had thus far received. Two months later, Twitter took down a photograph Ramirez had posted depicting him standing beside Junior’s open casket, along with the caption “My good byes to my Baby Boy” followed by three brokenheart emojis. Even a father’s simple expression of grief was apparently forbidden by the social media platform’s government-supported censorship regime.

Around that time, Ramirez met Brianne Dressen, a 40-year-old woman who had volunteered for the AstraZeneca vaccine trials and suffered a severe adverse reaction diagnosed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

as “post-vaccine neuropathy.”

Her varied and acute symptoms at times required use of a wheelchair and drastically curtailed her ability to participate in her young children’s lives.

For a time after her diagnosis, Dressen fell into a severe depression. However, during the spring of 2021, she discovered online support groups for vaccine-injured individuals and their family members. Connecting to others who understood her plight greatly improved her outlook on life, and she began serving as an administrator of several of the groups.

But in July 2021, less than 24 hours after Dressen participated in a press conference with U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Facebook shut down one support group’s account. Though participants had merely discussed their often-harrowing personal experiences and shared medical treatments that they found helpful, Facebook claimed they were spreading harmful “misinformation” that warranted the group’s removal.

The cascade of shutdowns of support groups and accounts belonging to the vaccine injured on Facebook and other social media platforms continues to this day. Ramirez, Dressen, and others learned that

when their accounts weren’t suspended or removed,

they were shadow-banned—

meaning that the platforms’ algorithms buried their posts so that they were rarely, if ever, viewable, even to like-minded individuals facing similar health problems. In Dressen’s words: “The constant threat of having our groups shut down and our connections pulled apart left me and many other members and leaders frozen, unable to communicate and connect with those who needed our help the most. We spent more time managing the chaos of the censorship algorithms that continued to evolve, than we did actually helping people through the trauma of their injuries.”

The obstacles encountered by Ramirez, Dressen, and thousands of other individuals with similar experiences and opinions were in no way coincidental or accidental. Nor were they the result of a series of errors in judgment made by low-level employees of social media platforms. Rather, they were the products of

concerted efforts at the highest levels of the American government to ensure that individuals with opposing viewpoints could not be heard,

contrary to the guarantees made to every American citizen in the Bill of Rights.

One purpose of these unconstitutional actions to violate the rights of American citizens was political gain.

As COVID-19 inoculations became widely available to the American public, the Biden White House came to view vaccine hesitancy as a significant political problem. Beginning in spring 2021, the administration explicitly and publicly blamed social media platforms for vaccine refusal: By failing to censor “misinformation” about the vaccines, the president infamously alleged, tech companies were effectively “killing people.” The president’s incendiary accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory or other legal action (should the companies refuse to comply) from various high-ranking members of the administration, including former White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Psaki boasted that government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what and in some cases even whom to censor.

Astute social media users noticed that censorship on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook escalated in tandem with the government’s threats, often yielding absurd results. For example, Twitter marked as misleading Dr. Martin Kulldorff’s April 2021 tweet

stating that not everyone needed a COVID-19 vaccine, especially children and the previously infected.

Dr. Kulldorff is one of the world’s most cited epidemiologists and infectious disease experts. That he was censored for speaking on the area of his expertise by someone almost certainly far less knowledgeable should concern any fair-minded person purely on the basis of preserving the openness that is required for educated scientific debate. (Last month [March 2023], the World Health Organization revised its official recommendation, saying that children and teenagers may not need COVID-19 vaccines—

a position deemed “misinformation” not half a year ago.)

The administration’s public threats, combined with the corresponding campaign of social media censorship, prompted several prolific social media users to file lawsuits against the Biden administration and a number of federal agencies alleging that their First Amendment free speech rights had been violated.

One of the First Amendment’s fundamental promises to all American citizens is freedom from government-induced, viewpoint-based censorship. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion,”

the Supreme Court explained in 1943.

A doctrine known as state action theory explicitly prohibits the government from using private entities as intermediaries to do what it cannot do directly. In the court’s words, it is “axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what [the state] is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

The plaintiffs in the social media cases argued that, since the First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring Americans for expressing certain views, government actors likewise cannot coerce, direct, or collude with private social media platforms to suppress airing of perspectives disfavored by the United States government.

For the most part, the initial wave of lawsuits against the Biden administration have been unsuccessful:

The judges held that the plaintiffs had not supplied sufficient facts from which to infer that the censorship on social media platforms was the product of government intervention, as opposed to the companies’ own internal content moderation policies.

But in one case, Missouri v. Biden, the judge wisely allowed the lawsuit to proceed, implicitly recognizing that

without a discovery order to permit a look behind the scenes at the companies’ own internal deliberations and direct communications with the government,

virtually no individual plaintiff would ever be able to establish that he or she had been censored at the government’s behest.

The lawsuit was brought last May [2022] by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana,

who were joined by private plaintiffs including epidemiologists and co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD) Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya and Dr. Kulldorff. (Full disclosure: In my capacity as litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance, I represent Drs. Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and two other private plaintiffs in the case.)

Written in October of 2020, the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration warned against the economic and social repercussions that lockdowns and other COVID restrictions would entail. Instead, they recommended steps in line with what had previously been the consensus approach to pandemic management, which would protect the vulnerable while allowing the rest of society to resume normal life. As revealed in private emails exposed pursuant to a FOIA request, Bhattacharya and Kulldorff were censored extensively on social media after Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Dr. Francis Collins of the NIH targeted the GBD for a “quick and devastating takedown.” During the same exchange, Collins described Stanford’s Bhattacharya and Harvard’s Kulldorff as “fringe epidemiologists.”

The Missouri judge ordered both the government defendants and tech companies to produce written exchanges between them containing various search terms, and required several high-ranking government officials—including Dr. Fauci—to sit for depositions. The resulting emails, text messages, and testimony have revealed that scads of

government actors, across at least a dozen federal agencies as well as within the White House itself, exerted direct and continuing pressure on social media platforms to censor posts expressing viewpoints on a wide variety of matters—from COVID-19 to the 2020 election to the Hunter Biden laptop story—that threatened the agenda of government actors. (Though Biden did not assume office until January of 2021,

a number of agencies, including CDC, NIH, DHS, and FBI, acted [during the Trump administration] independently to achieve these censorship aims,

which then escalated shortly after the [Biden] inauguration.) Put otherwise, the fruits of discovery established that the government was doing what it said it was doing.

For example, in March of 2021, Rob Flaherty, White House director of digital media, sent an email to a Facebook executive bearing the accusatory subject line, “You are hiding the ball.” The body of the email contained only a link to a Washington Post article claiming that Facebook was aware that its platform was being used to “spread ideas that lead to vaccine hesitancy.” When the Facebook executive responded that there had been a “misunderstanding,” Flaherty replied that he did not think so: “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy—period. … We want to know that you’re trying, we want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game … this would all be a lot easier if you would just be straight with us.”

About a week later, the Facebook executive followed up with Flaherty in an obvious effort to appease the White House official, notifying him that Facebook had made the requisite policy changes which included “removing vaccine misinformation” and “reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable misinformation.” That included removal of “Groups, Pages and Accounts” containing, in the executive’s words,

“often-true content” that “can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.”

The tragedies Dressen and Ramirez had endured and sought to share on social media undoubtedly fell into the category of “shocking” and “true.”

Indeed, their inconvenient truths

were just the sort of material Flaherty

sought to prevent from reaching the American public.

This was only one of dozens of emails employing a similarly aggressive, berating tone, that Flaherty sent Facebook, Google, and other companies. And Flaherty was only one of nearly 100 federal officials exploiting his office to ensure that Americans who expressed opinions or reported experiences that conflicted with the message the government wished to propagate

were not heard by the public—

and were not able to connect with each other.

Just last month [March 2023], in what is likely to become a decision of historical significance, the Missouri judge 

denied the government’s motion to dismiss.

In doing so, Judge Doughty recognized that federal government officials’ relentless pressure campaign to suppress the speech of Americans on social media that inconvenience the administration’s political agenda cannot be reconciled with the First Amendment. In the judge’s words, the “significant encouragement and coercion” exhibited by federal officials such as Flaherty “convert[ed] the otherwise private conduct of censorship on social media platforms into state action.”

The lawsuit is still in its early stages. But Judge Doughty’s decision marks a crucial first step toward ensuring that going forward, government actors like Flaherty cannot use their clout to effectuate the

removal of social media content or shut down online support groups.

Explicit judicial attention to such practices is necessary because it seems clear that, having enjoyed a taste of the censor’s power, political operatives and government bureaucrats

see no reason to give it up.

In fact, rather than retreating from its thus-far successful censorship activities, the government has been expanding its ambitions to encompass every corner of the public square. Disfavored viewpoints on an ever-increasing number of subjects on a growing array of platforms

are being targeted for removal and shadow-bans,

at the behest of more and more government agencies.

If the First Amendment stands for anything, it must mean that the government cannot be in the business of silencing Ernest Ramirez and Brianne Dressen, or of preventing them from associating with each other online simply because their inconvenient truths threaten a political agenda. It is up to the courts to put an end to this egregious transgression of the First Amendment’s guarantees, because if we have learned anything from history, it is that

governments do not relinquish power voluntarily.”

 

 

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Japan joins the fun, Japan Prime Minister visits Ukraine while US eases Europe pals into World War III-Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire

“On March 21, 2023, [Japan PM] Fumio Kishida and Volodymyr Zelensky form an alliance against Russia and China....In their final communiqué, Fumio Kishida and Volodymyr Zelensky emphasize “the inseparability of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security” and “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. For them, it is not only a matter of defending Ukraine from Russia, but also Japan from China.”

3/28/23, “The preparation of a New World War," Voltaire, by Thierry Meyssan

“The United States is pushing its European Union allies to prepare for a Third World War. They have no choice but to fight it if they want to emerge victorious from the “Thucydides trap”.

Unless all this commotion is just

a staging to “keep” the allies on their side

while many states in South America, Africa and Asia

declare themselves “neutral”.

At the same time, the noise of boots is stirring up the Japanese militarists

who, like the “radical nationalists” in Ukraine,

are back.

(This article is a follow-up to : “The Middle East is breaking free of the West,” March 14, 2023).

Faced with the progress made by the advocates of a multipolar world, the defenders of the “American imperialist” have not been slow to react. Two operations will be analyzed here:

the transformation of the European Common Market into a military structure and

the reformation of the World War II Axis. This second aspect brings a new actor into play: Japan.

The change in the European Union

In 1949, the United States and the United Kingdom created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). They included Canada and the states they had liberated in Western Europe. For them,

it was not a question of defending themselves, but of

preparing an attack on the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union responded by creating the Warsaw Pact.

In 1950, when the Korean War began [via fiat of globalist US Pres. Truman], the United States planned to extend the conflict to the German Democratic Republic (known as “East Germany”). In order to do this, they had to rearm the Federal Republic of Germany (known as “West Germany”) despite the opposition of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. They [US] therefore proposed the creation of a European Defence Community (EDC), but failed in the face of resistance from the Gaullists and the French Communists.

At the same time, they helped rebuild Western Europe with the Marshall Plan. This plan included

many secret clauses, including the

construction of a European common market.

Washington [imperialists] wanted to dominate Western Europe economically and preserve it politically from communist influence and Soviet imperialism. The European Economic Communities – and later

the European Union – form the civilian side of the US token,

whose military side is NATO.

The European Commission is not an administration of the heads of state and government of the Union, but the interface between them and the Atlantic Alliance. The European standards for not only armaments and construction, but also for equipment, clothing and food, etc., are established by the NATO services, first in Luxembourg, then in Belgium. They are transmitted to the Commission, and today approved by the European Parliament.

In 1989, as the Soviet Union was collapsing in on itself, the

French President, François Mitterrand, and the German Chancellor, Helmut Köhl, imagined

freeing Western Europe from American tutelage

so as to be able to compete with Washington. Negotiations on this treaty took place at the same time as the end of the quadripartite occupation of Germany (12 September 1990), the reunification of the two Germanies (3 October 1990) and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact (1 July 1991).

Washington accepted the Maastricht Treaty [creation of European Union]

as long as it recognized their [US taxpayer funded] military domination. Western Europeans accepted this principle.

However, Washington distrusted the Mitterrand-Köhl couple

and demanded at the last moment

that the European Union include all the former members of the Warsaw Pact,

and even the new independent states, which had emerged from the former Soviet Union.

These states did not share the aspirations of the [EU] Maastricht negotiators. In fact, they are rather suspicious of them. They want to free themselves from both German and Russian influence.

They rely on the  [US taxpayer funded] “American umbrella” for their defence.

In 2003, Washington took advantage of the Spanish presidency of the EU (the socialist Felipe González) and of the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana, to have the “European Security Strategy” adopted, modelled on the National Security Strategy of US President George W. Bush. High Representative Federica Mogherini revised this document in 2016.

Emmanuel Macron devoted France’s European presidency to reconstituting the EDC under the guise of the EU’s “Strategic Compass”. This time, the project is not submitted to national parliaments. It is a decision of the heads of state and government alone,

never discussed and submitted to their voters.

In 2022, during the war in Ukraine, the United States, as in the Korean War,

once again felt the need to rearm Germany against Russia (successor to the USSR).

So they are transforming the EU, carefully this time. During the presidency of the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, they proposed a “Strategic Compass”. This was adopted only one month after the Russian intervention in Ukraine. The members of the European Union are all the more stunned because they still do not know precisely whether they are together to cooperate or to integrate (the “constructive ambiguity”, as Henry Kissinger put it).

In March 2023, the current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, organized the first “Robert Schumann Forum on Security and Defence”. A large number of defense and foreign ministers from the EU member states are participating. In addition to the non-EU European states that are pro-US [and US “rules based international order”], many others are represented at ministerial level, such as

Angola, Ghana, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Egypt, Chile, Peru, Georgia, Indonesia and Japan. In addition to NATO, ASEAN, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the African Union are also represented. Above all, the Arab League is sending its Secretary General.

The explicit aim of this Forum is to defend “multilateralism and

a [US controlled] rules-based international order”;

an elegant way of

denouncing the Russian-Chinese project of

a “multipolar world based on international law”.

With the Covid epidemic, the European Union has already invested itself with powers in the field of health that were not foreseen by the Treaties. I explained at the beginning of this epidemic that the measure of

confinement of healthy people had no precedent in history.

It was devised at the request of the former head of Gilead Sciences and former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, by Dr. Richard Hatchett, who became the director of CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations)

and, as such, the initiator of this measure worldwide [1].

According to his classified report of 2005, which we unfortunately only know from the reactions it provoked,

the confinement of healthy civilians to their homes was supposed

to allow the identification of jobs that could be relocated,

to close down the consumer goods industries in the West and

to concentrate the work force in the defense industry.

We are not there yet, but the European Union, having seized public health powers not foreseen by the Treaties,

without raising any indignation,

is now interpreting the texts to become a military power.

Josep Borrell at the Robert Schumann Forum on Security and Defense

Last week, during the Schuman Forum, Josep Borrell presented his first report on the implementation of the “Strategic Compass”. The idea is

to coordinate the pooling of national armies,

including intelligence services,

in a spirit of integration rather than cooperation. Emmanuel Macron’s project now buries that of Charles De Gaulle and the French Communists. The “Europe of Defence” now appears to be a slogan aimed at placing not only the operational forces of the EU member states

under the authority

of the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR),

now the US General Christopher G. Cavoli,

but also at taking control of all the financing decisions that were

previously the responsibility of the national parliaments,

and even of the decisions on armaments and organization that were the responsibility of the member states’ executive bodies. Thus, the Union is organizing a common army without knowing who will command it.

The reconstitution of the Nazi-Nippon Axis

When we think of the Second World War, in Europe we think of 1939 and 1945. This is absolutely wrong. The war started in 1931 after Japanese generals attacked Chinese soldiers in Manchuria. This was the first overreach of Japanese civilian power by the militarist faction, which was amplified a few months later with the assassination of the civilian Prime Minister by a group of military men. In a few years,

Japan was transformed into a militaristic and expansionist power.

This war did not end with the

liberation of Manchuria by the Red [USSR] Army in 1945.

In fact, the United States [on August 6 and August 9, 1945]

used two atomic bombs

to prevent Japan’s surrender to the USSR

and to ensure that it would only take place before its own generals.

They continued to fight until 1946 because many Japanese refused to surrender to the United States who had not fought much in the Pacific until then. The Second World War lasted from 1931 to 1946. If we make these date errors, it is because it only became globalized with the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis (the “Tripartite Pact”), which Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania soon joined.

The foundation of the Axis was not the disparate interests of its members, but their cult of strength. To reform it today, we must unite those who share this cult.

Yoshio Kodama, the first godfather of the yakuza, played an important role in Japanese militarism. After World War II, he was imprisoned and then benefited from the change of policy in the United States. He founded the Liberal Party from which Shinzo Abe and Fumio Kishida emerged. Kodama directed, under the radar, many CIA operations in his country. He was a member of the World Anti-Communist League when Slava Stetsko (the drafter of Article 16 of the Ukrainian constitution) was president.

When the U.S. occupied Japan in 1946, the first thought was to purge all militaristic elements from the country. But when the Korean War broke out, the U.S. decided to use Japan to fight communism. They ended the ongoing trials and rehabilitated 55,000 high officials. They implemented the Dodge Plan, the equivalent of the Marshall Plan in Europe. One of the lucky beneficiaries of this policy change was Hayato Ikeda, who became Prime Minister and restored the country’s economy. With the help of the CIA, he founded the Liberal Democratic Party. It is from this party that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2012-20) and his successor Fumio Kishida (2020-) were born.

The latter has just made a surprise visit to Ukraine. He is the first Asian head of government to visit this country since the beginning of the war. He visited a mass grave in Bucha and expressed his condolences to the families of the victims of “Russian abuses”. Most analysts interpret the trip as preparation for the upcoming G7 summit in Japan. Unless it goes much further.

On March 21, 2023, [PM] Fumio Kishida and Volodymyr Zelensky form an alliance against Russia and China. Both extend the ties established by Yoshio Kodama and Slava Stetsko.

In their final communiqué, Fumio Kishida and Volodymyr Zelensky emphasize “the inseparability of Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security” and “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. For them, it is not only a matter of defending Ukraine from Russia, but also Japan from China. This communiqué lays

the foundation for a new alliance between the successors of the Nazis that are the Ukrainian “integral nationalists” [2]

and the successors of Shōwa nationalism.

Today’s Ukraine is the only state in the world with an 

explicitly racist constitution.

Adopted in 1996 and revised in 2020, it states in Article 16 that

“Preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state.”

The widow of the Ukrainian Nazi Prime Minister, Yaroslav Stetsko, wrote this article.

In contrast, the Japanese Constitution renounces war in its Article 9.

But Shinzo Abe and Fumio Kishida have initiated a

fight to repeal this provision.

Among other things, it makes it impossible to transfer lethal defense equipment, so Mr. Kishima offered about $7.1 billion in humanitarian and financial aid to Kyiv.

As for non-lethal military equipment, this week he could only announce the shipment of a stockpile worth $30 million.

This remilitarization of Japan is supported by Washington, which has already switched sides by supporting Ukraine.

U.S. Ambassador to Tokyo Rahm Emmanuel tweeted,

“Prime Minister Kishida is making a historic visit to Ukraine to protect the Ukrainian people and promote the universal values enshrined in the UN Charter…

About 900 kilometers away, a different and more nefarious partnership is taking shape in Moscow,” (referring to the Putin-Xi summit).

For his part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Weibin, said on the contrary, regarding the Prime Minister’s trip that he “hopes that Japan will press for an appeasement of the situation, not the other way around. For its part, Russia sent two strategic bombers over the Sea of Japan for about seven hours.”

Thierry Meyssan

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Translation

Roger Lagasse

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[1] “Covid-19 and The Red Dawn Emails”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 28 April 2020.

[2] “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists ?”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Roger Lagassé, Voltaire Network, 15 November 2022.

 

 

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