sgtreport.com

Everybody knows that if you challenge the conventional wisdom about “Covid” you can be banned from YouTube and Facebook. Sometimes people on the lunatic left want to make this criminal. If you question “science,” you are harming other people and should be sent to a concentration camp. You don’t have the right to free speech when you oppose what they take to be the public good.

According to a story in Human Rights Watch in February 2021, “At least 83 governments worldwide have used the Covid-19 pandemic to justify violating the exercise of free speech and peaceful assembly, Human Rights Watch said today. Authorities have attacked, detained, prosecuted, and in some cases killed critics, broken up peaceful protests, closed media outlets, and enacted vague laws criminalizing speech that they claim threatens public health. The victims include journalists, activists, healthcare workers, political opposition groups, and others who have criticized government responses to the coronavirus.

‘Governments should counter Covid-19 by encouraging people to mask up, not shut up,’ said Gerry Simpson, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. ‘Beating, detaining, prosecuting, and censoring peaceful critics violates many fundamental rights, including free speech, while doing nothing to stop the pandemic.’

Governments and other state authorities should immediately end excessive restrictions on free speech in the name of preventing the spread of Covid-19 and hold to account those responsible for serious human rights violations and abuses, Human Rights Watch said. The United Nations Human Rights Council in its session beginning February 22, 2021, should commission a new report from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights focusing on states’ compliance with their human rights obligations in responding to Covid-19, including the impact of restrictions on free speech and peaceful assembly.

Human Rights Watch reviewed national government responses around the world to the Covid-19 pandemic and found that unlawful interference with free speech has been one of the most common forms of overreach. In some countries, violations were limited. In others, such as China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, and Vietnam, government violations affected hundreds or thousands of people.

In some countries, including Bangladesh, China, and Egypt, people remain in detention at the time of writing simply for criticizing government responses to Covid-19 months earlier.

They include Zhang Zhan, a 37-year-old citizen journalist, who in December was sentenced to four years in prison by a Shanghai court for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ by traveling in February 2020 to Wuhan and reporting from there on the coronavirus outbreak. Officials have been force-feeding Zhang since she started a hunger strike soon after her detention in May and her health is deteriorating, her lawyer said.

‘I spend every day in fear,’ Zhang said before her conviction. ‘I am afraid when an Army officer threatens me. Or when the police tell me they’d beat me to death. Or when a friend warns me that the National Security Department is onto me. … I’m just documenting the truth. Why can’t I show the truth?’

Human Rights Watch identified the following trends:

-   Military or police forces in at least 18 countries physically assaulted journalists, bloggers, and protesters, including some who criticized government responses to Covid-19 such as insufficient healthcare funding, lockdowns, and a lack of masks and gloves for medical workers. Abuses include firing live ammunition at peaceful protesters, beating them at checkpoints, and assaulting them in detention, with apparent impunity. In most cases, these forces said they were enforcing Covid-19-related regulations. In Uganda, security forces also killed dozens of protesters.

-   Authorities in at least 10 countries have arbitrarily banned or broken up protests against government responses to Covid-19, in some cases citing social distancing concerns, or have used Covid-19 as a justification to disperse protests and other gatherings critical of government policies unrelated to the coronavirus. In all cases, the authorities intervened despite permitting other large gatherings.

-   Since January 2020, governments in at least 24 countries have enacted vague laws and measures that criminalize spreading alleged misinformation or other coverage of Covid-19, or of other public health crises, which the authorities claim threaten the public’s well-being. Governments can easily use imprecise laws as tools of repression. At least five countries have also criminalized the publication of alleged misinformation on a range of other topics, including public health.

-   Authorities in at least 51 countries have used laws and regulations adopted to prevent the spread of Covid-19, as well as counterterrorism and other measures pre-dating the pandemic, to arbitrarily arrest, detain, and prosecute critics of government responses to the coronavirus, or of policies unrelated to the pandemic, resulting in fines and imprisonment. Those targeted include journalists, bloggers and others posting online, opposition figures and activists, protesters, academics, healthcare workers, students, lawyers, cartoonists, and artists.

-   Using the new laws, laws pre-dating the pandemic, or without citing any laws, at least 33 governments have threatened critics, in some cases with prosecution, if they criticize the authorities’ response to the pandemic. Eight of these countries investigated, threatened, and dismissed medical staff for speaking publicly about the authorities’ response to the pandemic. At least eight countries have also suspended or restricted the right to request and receive information from the authorities, including on public health matters. At least 12 countries have blocked specific Covid-19-related media reports or shut down media outlets for their reporting on the pandemic.”

Ivermectin has proved to be a very effective treatment for “Covid”, but if you advertise ivermectin for sale, you can be put in jail. This sad state of affairs doesn’t begin with the alleged “pandemic”; it goes back a long way. According to a story that appeared in the “Pink Sheet” in August 1990, “FORMER MERCK/SCHERING RESEARCHER INDICTED with an accomplice from pharmacological consulting firm, Biopharm Research, in trade secret conspiracy involving Merck’s animal anti-parasitic ivermectin (Mecitzan) and Schering-Plough’s anti-cancer drug alfa interferon (Intron-A), New Jersey U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoff announced Aug. 21. Bernard Mayles, PhD, and Mario Miscio, PhD, were arrested on Aug. 10 while attempting to sell ivermectin production documents and the microorganism needed to produce the drug for $1.5 mil. to an undercover FBI agent posing as a broker. Mayles and Miscio were each charged with one count of conspiracy, three counts of mail and wire fraud, and one count of interstate transmission of stolen property. Mayles was a senior research director at Merck from 1971 to 1982 and a former section leader in microbiological products and fermentation at Schering-Plough from 1982 to 1987. Miscio is director of Biopharm Research. Ivermectin is the largest-selling animal health product in the world. Merck also distributes ivermectin under the brand name Mectizan to residents of tropical areas of West Africa and South America for the treatment of river blindness. According to Schering-Plough, sales of Intron-A were over $100 mil. last year. Intron-A is currently indicated for Kaposi’s sarcoma, hairy cell leukemia and genital warts and is in clinical trials for the treatment of hepatitis B, hepatitis C, AIDS and several forms of cancer. An FDA advisory committee recently recommended that the hepatitis C indication be approved. The indictment alleges that ‘the defendants obtained unauthorized possession of proprietary trade secret information from the pharmaceutical firms Merck and Schering-Plough and undertook to sell this information to potential buyers.’ The FBI was alerted to the scam by the security department of one of the pharmaceutical companies. If convicted, each faces up to 30 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Both pleaded not guilty to the federal criminal complaint preceding the indictment, and are free on$50,000 bail after appearing before an Atlanta federal court. The two will be arraigned within the next two weeks in Newark federal court. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, ‘Mayles and Miscio had conspired since February 1990 to sell trade secrets relating to ivermectin’ After asking $2.2 mil. for the ivermectin documents, the pair agreed to sell them for $1.5 mil. In subsequent discussions with the ‘broker,’ Miscio revealed that he had available for sale ‘information bearing on the processes for the production of specified product categories, including antibiotics, antivirals, anticancers, immunomodifiers, bioinsecticides, sweeteners, anti-ulcers and growth factors.’ On Aug. 10, Mayles and Miscio met with the ‘broker’ in Atlanta and received $1.5 mil. in cash and bonds for 29 pages of information about the production of ivermectin and a sample of microorganisms needed to produce the drug. At the Aug. 10 meeting, Mayles also ‘discussed with the purchaser a prospective transaction for the sale of the technology for the manufacture of interferon for a price in the range of $6 mil. to $8 mil.,’ according to the indictment. The FBI subsequently arrested the pair and conducted simultaneous searches of the Biopharm Research labs in Hazlet, New Jersey, and Mayles’ home in Manalapan, New Jersey. These searches also produced evidence of the defendants’ plans to sell patent-protected information, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Biopharm Research is not related to the contract clinical research firm Bio-Pharm Clinical Services, located in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania (see box, at left). BIO-PHARM CLINICAL SERVICES IS NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH BIOPHARM RESEARCH, FIRM SAYS Excerpted and paragraphed by ‘The Pink Sheet’ from an Aug. 22 letter from Bio-Pharm Clinical Services, Inc. VP-Finance and Administration Thomas Henwood. ‘Our company, Bio-Pharm Clinical Services, Inc. is an established, full-service contract clinical research organization. We were founded in 1985 and currently employ nearly 150 professionals at our Blue Bell, Pennsylvania headquarters (just outside of Philadelphia). Our clients include most of the large and mid-sized U.S. pharmaceutical firms and several European and Japanese firms as well. Within the Food and Drug Administration and with our clients, we enjoy a high-quality reputation and are well known in our business sector under the trade name “Bio-Pharm.” For this reason we are concerned that existing and prospective clients may experience some confusion upon reading such articles; indeed we have already received some telephone calls to that effect. There is absolutely no connection between our firm and the company or the individuals mentioned in the published articles, and there has never been.’”