News Round-Up: UN draws up "hate speech and disinformation" regulation, Pfizer Hid Vaccine Injuries and Women As 'Non-Men'
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
UN draws up "hate speech and disinformation" regulation
Pfizer concealed information on more than one and a half million Covid-vaccine injuries
US university defines women as 'non-men' to include 'non-binary' identities
Consequence of Covid's closure policy: nearly a quarter of children in England are persistently absent from school
California debates a bill that could strip custody from parents who do not affirm their child's so-called gender identity
UN Secretary-General pushes for global regulation against 'hate speech and disinformation'
This Monday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres issued a statement calling for a decisive crackdown on hate speech and disinformation. According to him, the spread of hate and lies on digital platforms and the threat of artificial intelligence becoming an uncontrollable "monster" require coordinated global action. In a statement, the UN Secretary-General presented a new report on the "Principles of the U.N. Code of Conduct for Information Integrity on Digital Platforms". According to Guterres, social media has helped people strive for peace, dignity and human rights across the planet, but today the same technology is often a source of fear, not hope. Digital platforms are wrongly used to undermine science and spread disinformation and hatred among billions of people. The spread of lies and hatred fuels death and destruction, threatens democracy and human rights and undermines public health and climate action. Significantly, the report gives examples of assessments of both the Corona crisis and the climate debate. For example, according to the report, many victims of COVID-19 refused vaccinations and did not take basic health precautions after being exposed to false and disinformation on the internet. On the climate debate issue, the report states that mis- and disinformation is delaying urgent action on climate emergencies. According to the report, climate-related mis- and disinformation can be understood as false or misleading content that undermines the scientifically agreed basis for the existence, causes and effects of man-made climate change. This Guterres statement and the UN report have been criticised for their marked subjectivity and authoritarian approach. For example, psychiatrist and philosopher Jordan B. Peterson has called the 'trinity' of misinformation shown in the report the most Orwellian of all images.
Freedom Research has published an in-depth analysis (Part 1 and Part 2) of how the pretext of fighting "hate speech" and "disinformation" was used during the Covid-19 crisis to restrict the freedom of thought and expression of scientists, doctors and journalists in both the mainstream and social media. We have also looked at the consequences of so-called "fight against hate speech" and its criminalisation in France, Norway, Finland and Germany.
Pfizer recorded more than one-and-a-half million Covid-vaccine related injuries in six months: neither the company nor the European Medicines Agency informed the public
Documents submitted by the pharmaceutical company Pfizer to the European Medicines Agency as part of the pharmacovigilance process show that Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, with whom the coronavirus vaccine was launched, were aware of the vaccine's very serious adverse reactions on an ongoing basis.
The report, submitted to the Agency in August 2022, covers the period from 19 December 2021 to 18 June 2022. As highlighted by Conservative Review, a total of nearly 1.6 million adverse events were recorded during this period for individuals injected with the Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine. A third of these were classified as serious. Three times more adverse events occurred in women than in men. In 60% of cases, the report was given with the verdict of "outcome unknown" or "not recovered", meaning that a large proportion of the injuries were not transient.
The highest number of cases occurred in the age group 31-50, with 92% of those individuals having no comorbidities. It is therefore likely that the vaccine was the cause of their extensive and sudden injury.
As a side note, it is worth noting that John P. Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and one of the world's most renowned epidemiologists, has calculated the infection fatality rate (IFR) in the 30-39 age group before vaccination to be 0.035% and in the 40-49 age group 0.129%. So one could argue that no vaccinations were actually required in those age groups to begin with.
Another Pfizer document from August 2022, discussed in the same Conservative Review article, reveals that the company recorded hundreds of thousands of post-vaccination diagnoses, many of them severe and rare.
For example, Pfizer was aware of following post-vaccination complications:
73 542 cases of vascular disorders
696 508 cases of nervous system disorders
61 518 adverse events related to eyes
about 225 000 cases of skin and tissue disorders
about 190 000 cases of respiratory disorders
over 178 000 cases of reproductive disorders
more than 77 000 psychiatric disorders
3711 cases of tumours
about 127 000 cardiac disorders
about 100 000 cases of blood and lymphatic disorders
A lawsuit against Pfizer's vaccine partner BioNTech began in Hamburg, Germany, this Monday, with a woman who suffered vaccine damage claiming at least €150 000 in damages from the company. According to the plaintiff, she suffers from pain in her upper body, swollen extremities, fatigue and sleeping disorder as a result of the vaccine. The law firm Rogert & Ulbrich, which represents the woman, has filed about 250 similar complaints in Germany.
US Johns Hopkins University defines lesbians: “non-men who like non-men”
At the start of the week, Johns Hopkins University updated the LGBTQ glossary published on its website, changing the current meaning of the word "lesbian". "Lesbian" – according to the university's new guideline – is "a non-man attracted to non-men".
"While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label," the university's website said, explaining why the change was deemed necessary.
This new definition was immediately met with sharp criticism, particularly from women. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and a renowned women's rights activist, tweeted with irony that in the future, women should only be defined through men. "Man: no definition needed. Non-man (formerly known as woman): a being definable only by reference to the male. An absence, a vacuum where there is no man-ness," she wrote.
Following criticism, the university decided to remove the glossary from its website. Now, in its place, is a brief explanatory comment, "Johns Hopkins strives to create a campus culture that is inclusive and welcoming for all gender identities, sexual orientations, experiences and viewpoints, and we are committed to ensuring Johns Hopkins is a place where LGBTQ people feel supported. The LGBTQ Glossary serves as an introduction to the range of identities and terms that are used within LGBTQ communities, and is not intended to serve as the definitive answers as to how all people understand or use these terms. While the glossary is a resource posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review."
Nearly a quarter of children in England are persistently absent from school as a result of 'closure policies'
Since the start of the pandemic, the number of children persistently absent from school in England has doubled to 1.6 million, writes Daily Mail. Figures from the UK Department for Education show that 22% of pupils were persistently absent in the 2022/23 school year. Prior to the Covid pandemic, 10.9% were persistently absent. The problem is higher at senior level. In secondary school, 27.1% of pupils were absent for at least 10% of lessons in the 2022/23 school year. In primary schools, the same figure was 17.5%.
Rachel de Souza, England's Children's Commissioner, calls the situation “a crisis of attendance”. She says the Covid pandemic and teachers' strikes have made truancy the norm, and that should be the first thing on the education minister's desk. "Kids did so much for us during lockdown – they gave up their social lives and their time, we need to help get them back," she added.
Seamus Murphy, chief executive of Turner Schools, an academy trust operating five schools in Kent, UK, blamed lockdowns for 'disrupting good habits' and slammed parents who have become 'inclined to let children stay at home on a Friday'.
In Califronia, parents who do not affirm their child's gender identity could lose custody in the future
The California state legislature is set to debate a bill that could strip custody from parents who do not recognise their child's so-called gender identity, reports Daily Mail.
Under the proposal by Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener and Democratic Assemblymember Lori Wilson, the Family Code would be amended to leave the removal of a child from home, where parents do not affirm their child's gender, to be determined by the courts. For example, if a child's parents do not agree to call their son, who identifies as a girl, a girl, they would risk losing custody, if the bill becomes a law.
Wilson recently commented that she believes it is in the "best interests" of the child that the parents support the child's gender identity.
However, critics say the draft is deeply worrying. Nicole Peterson, founder of Facts Law Truth Justice, even called it "horrifying". "If a parent or guardian is unwilling or simply not ready to affirm their 7-year-old's new identity — as they transition from Spongebob to Batman to Dora the Explorer — they can be found guilty of child abuse under AB-957 if it passes into law," she said.