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Category Archives: Transhuman News

How independent and international news orgs are circumventing censorship in Russia – Freedom of the Press Foundation

Posted: March 29, 2022 at 1:41 pm

Russia has cracked down extensively on independent reporting within its borders since it invaded Ukraine last month, leading many outlets to cease publishing or pull editorial staff from the country entirely. Still, international and independent news outlets that would face official censorship within Russia are finding ways to distribute uncensored news to avid readers.

If youre a journalist or represent a news org looking to circumvent censorship in Russia, please reach out to Freedom of the Press Foundation we may be able to help.

In some cases, the solutions are high-tech. BBC and The New York Times, for example, both offer Tor onion services to make an encrypted connection to their site available to anybody with Tor browser access. Providing an onion address offers benefits above simply encouraging Tor usage for news sites, which weve explained in the context of tracking onion roll-outs and which security researcher Alec Muffett has recently described in more detail.

Importantly, these outlets didnt start offering onion addresses with the invasion rather, theyve long provided Tor access as one channel to read their reporting, meaning the onion URLs have already been widely distributed and would be harder to substitute with spoofs.

For services that havent always been available over Tor, offering a new onion service is still a welcome development. Twitter somewhat quietly rolled out a long-anticipated onion service this month.

Independent news outlets on the ground in Russia may not have the infrastructure to launch an onion service, but Meduza which long anticipated the ban that was issued against it this month was able to educate readers about using VPNs or other circumvention techniques to continue accessing the site, and offers a mobile app that has not been as straightforward to restrict. It has continued to produce valuable reporting since the new restrictions and is looking to non-Russian audiences to help fund its continued existence.

Some outlets have embraced the platform Telegram, which is popular in both Russia and Ukraine, to distribute news through designated channels. Last week, The New York Times announced that it would begin offering updates through the app.

In addition to the channels which provide a sort of newsfeed, Telegram is advertised as a secure messenger, though security researchers have long cautioned about some of its security design decisions. Earlier this month EFF provided a guide to harm reduction for users of the app. (For encrypted communication, we recommend Signal and maintain a guide to maximizing its security.)

Finally, some of the censorship-circumvention techniques being practiced in Russia are decidedly much more old-school. This month the BBC revived its regional short-wave radio broadcasts technology usually more associated with World War II than the Internet age and is transmitting World Service news into Russia and Ukraine for hours each day.

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How independent and international news orgs are circumventing censorship in Russia - Freedom of the Press Foundation

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Shouting down speakers is mob censorship: Part 14 of answers to arguments against free speech from Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff – FIRE -…

Posted: at 1:41 pm

In May 2021, I published a list of Answers to 12 Bad Anti-Free Speech Arguments with our friends over at Areo. The great Nadine Strossen former president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008, and one of the foremost experts on freedom of speech alive today saw the series and offered to provide her own answers to some important misconceptions about freedom of speech. My answers, when applicable, appear below hers.

Earlier in the series:

Assertion: Shoutdowns/hecklers vetoes are an exercise of speech rights, not censorship

Note: this answer refers to and assumes situations where audience members have attempted to shout down events and keep them from proceeding, as opposed to brief heckling that is itself protected speech. My colleagues at FIRE will be writing on how to distinguish protected brief heckling from unprotected hecklers vetoes/substantial event disruption in the near future.

Greg Lukianoff: This argument has been all over Twitter in recent weeks, following incidents where members of the audience shouted down speakers at UNT, UC Hastings, and, most recently, Yale.

The university is meant to be a place of uniquely open minds, where ideas even wrong and offensive ones are interrogated.

Shouting down a speaker to stop an event from proceeding is mob censorship, full stop. It gives the shouters the power to dictate what anyone else is able to say or to hear. The idea that a group or even a single individual pulling a fire alarm or banging a cowbell can decide what others can and cannot listen to is incompatible with pluralism. It replaces the free exchange of ideas with a system of might makes right, and it is especially egregious for this to happen in the university context where the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to seek out any information is most important.

This is so obvious that, I believe, those who make this argument either do so in bad faith, or have not thought through the implications of this position. For example, no one would argue that one has a right to go to a university orchestra concert and play electric guitar from their seat. It is equally hard to imagine that those sympathetic to shout-downs at Yale and Hastings would make the same argument if, for example, a pro-choice speaker was shut down by rowdy pro-life protestors, or if a student shouted down his professor for the duration of class. And yet all of these examples logically follow from the asserted free speech right for some audience members to take over an event.

In each of these cases, a government or university administrator stepping in to stop the individual or mob from dictating what can be said reflects a positive duty to protect freedom of speech. The necessity of free speech, and, in particular, the ability to voice unorthodox and unpopular views on a college campus, is something that I have written about so frequently and at such length, I will attempt to be brief here.

The university is meant to be a place of uniquely open minds, where ideas even wrong and offensive ones are interrogated. As I wrote in the previous part of this series:

Indeed, scholarship at its best is supposed to be a process of arguing, testing, researching, re-arguing, retesting all to via subtraction (a.k.a. via negativa) eliminate a larger and larger number of false assertions. While in everyday life among many people matters of preference and emotional state may be primary topics of discussion, the project of higher education is to help us understand what ideas may be false by aiming toward a better approximation of the truth, even if we never arrive there.

This process is short-circuited when some through shouting, noisemakers, or fire alarms prevent others from speaking and being heard by those who wish to hear them. Those who shut down events through disruption dont just deprive listeners who agree with the speaker from hearing speech: They also deprive those who disagree and want to interrogate the viewpoint with pointed questions, and those who want to listen with scholarly detachment to learn more about the view being expressed.

Its especially galling for this to occur at a law school the work of lawyers requires being able to argue effectively against opposing viewpoints. And responding effectively to opposing viewpoints first requires hearing them out.

Its not just the right to speak that is at issue in these cases. Justice Marshall pointed to a corresponding right to hear in his dissent in Kleindienst v. Mandel:

[T]he right to speak and hear including the right to inform others and to be informed about public issues are inextricably part of that process. The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin. But the coin itself is the process of thought and discussion. The activity of speakers becoming listeners and listeners becoming speakers in the vital interchange of thought is the means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.

Justice Marshall was not the first to do so. Frederick Douglass wrote about the right to hear following the shout-down of an abolitionist event he organized in Boston 1860 by outraged members of the public:

There can be no right of speech where any man, however lifted up, or however humble, however young, or however old, is overawed by force, and compelled to suppress his honest sentiments. Equally clear is the right to hear. To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker. It is just as criminal to rob a man of his right to speak and hear as it would be to rob him of his money.

If you are not persuaded by these philosophical arguments, here is a pragmatic one: If we continue down the path of allowing anyone with the ability to draw a big enough crowd to shut down any speech they do not like, it will have dire consequences for speech that you like. Whatever your political leanings, a shout-down opposite them has almost certainly occurred at some point. Normalizing this behavior and allowing it to go unpunished will incentivize more of it: There will always be parts of the country where it will be easier to assemble a mob opposed to your views than in favor of them.

I believe these shout-downs are often allowed to proceed, go unpunished, or even receive encouragement from administrators because some administrators dislike the particular speech being shouted down. But the bottom line is this: A university that allows or disallows speech based on the assumption that might makes right is one where speech isnt really free at all.

Nadine Strossen: Protesters who have disrupted speakers through loud, persistent shouting have argued that such tactics, far from violating freedom of speech, constitute exercises of such freedom.

To be sure, these tactics convey messages namely, disagreement with the suppressed ideas, and also rejection of the notion that the speaker and audience should have a right to convey and receive these ideas. Yet the Supreme Court rightly has recognized that the sole fact that conduct conveys a message is not enough for it to be treated as speech within the First Amendments ambit, let alone as speech that is immune from regulation or punishment. Were it otherwise, there would be a First Amendment defense to even the most heinous, harmful violent crimes, including the assassination of a political leader; after all, such assassinations surely convey the murderers abhorrence of the victims policies.

Ironically, many who assert this expansive concept of protected free speech when they defend speech-suppressive tactics such as shoutdowns assert a much narrower concept concerning the suppressed speech itself. Critics of the targeted speech often proclaim that the speech is violence, which has no claim to First Amendment protection. Most ironically, some who attack words as violence defend actual physical violence against those who utter such words. Alarmingly, recent surveys indicate that substantial percentages of college students condone physical violence against controversial speakers.

What are the actual First Amendment rights and wrongs in these situations?

Government may prohibit and punish any conduct including shouting that interferes with speakers and audience members exercise of their First Amendment rights.

First, some conduct is sufficiently expressive to be eligible for First Amendment protection. Classic examples include burning a U.S. flag in political protest and marching in a demonstration. To come within the First Amendments scope, conduct must both be intended to convey a particularized message and have a great likelihood that the message would be understood by those who viewed it. Even conduct that meets this standard may still be regulated, so long as the regulation focuses on the general conduct, rather than the specific message, and promotes an important public purpose. Accordingly, even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that a physical assault on a speaker triggered First Amendment analysis, the assailant could and should still be punished, to further the important public interest in physical safety.

What about speech-suppressive tactics that primarily consist of words, and hence are clearly eligible for First Amendment protection? The most common such tactic is shouting down the speaker, making it impossible for the audience to hear the speakers words.

The First Amendment clearly protects protesters who express their disagreement with a speakers message in a peaceful, non-disruptive manner, which does not substantially interfere with the speakers right to speak or the audiences right to listen. Non-disruptive protest tactics include: holding signs with messages (so long as the signs do not block the audiences view of the speaker); handing out leaflets; wearing T-shirts or other apparel with messages; walking out of the venue after the speaker is introduced or begins to speak; occasional and relatively quiet hissing and booing during the speakers presentation; and even occasional loud bursts of expression conveying disapproval of the speakers statements. In contrast, disruptive protest tactics substantially interfere with the speakers efforts to communicate to the audience for example, through sustained shouting.

In some situations, reasonable people can disagree about whether protests have crossed the line between non-disruptive and disruptive tactics. This is the case, for example, if protests solely delay an event, or temporarily interfere with the speakers delivery of a message, rather than completely halting the event. In many recent situations, the protesters clearly do aim to completely halt the event, and succeed in doing so either by shouting so persistently that the speaker gives up trying to talk, or by threatening physical violence against the speaker or others, thus prompting campus officials to cancel the event due to security concerns.

In accordance with general, sensible First Amendment principles, the government may impose content-neutral restrictions on any verbal disruption tactics. Such restrictions do not single out the speechs particular content or messages, but rather, they regulate the speechs time, place, or manner. For example, all expression during a speakers presentation could be limited to particular locations, durations, or decibel levels, to prevent undue interference with the speakers message. The First Amendment permits such content-neutral regulations so long as they promote an important public purpose and leave ample alternative channels for the regulated expression to reach its intended audience. The protection of First Amendment rights is indisputably a sufficiently important purpose, and protesters have ample non-disruptive means to convey their objections to speakers and audience members. Therefore, government may prohibit and punish any conduct including shouting that interferes with speakers and audience members exercise of their First Amendment rights.

The term hecklers veto has been used to describe the impact that disruptive protesters have on others free speech rights when the protesters speech (and other disruptive conduct) is not subject to punishment. In effect, the hecklers those who disagree with a speakers message are given veto power over the First Amendment freedoms of speakers and audience members. Because hecklers vetoes are likely to be exercised by individuals and groups who wield power in particular communities, they predictably tend to be targeted against relatively powerless, unpopular speakers and groups in those communities.

The term was coined by University of Chicago Law Professor Harry Kalven, in his classic 1965 book about the essential role that robust free speech rights played in the civil rights movement, The Negro and the First Amendment. In that historic context, hostile mobs too often sought to exercise a hecklers veto to silence pro-civil rights advocates, and law enforcement officials too often failed to punish the mob.

A 1951 case, which the Supreme Court later effectively overturned, illustrates this general pattern. In Feiner v. New York, the majority opinion allowed a hecklers veto, over spirited dissents by liberal Justices Black and Douglas. Irving Feiner, a young college student, was speaking at an open-air meeting in Syracuse, New York on behalf of The Young Progressives organization, to a crowd of about seventy-five or eighty people, both Negro and white. The Courts majority opined that one of Feiners statements triggered hostile demonstrators disruption and hence (assertedly) justified police officers demand that he cease speaking. According to the majority, Feiner gave the impression that he was endeavoring to arouse the Negro people against the whites when he said that black people dont have equal rights, and they should rise up in arms and fight for them. As Justice Black noted in dissent, this ruling meant that, as a practical matter, minority speakers can be silenced in any city.

On todays campuses, the hecklers are often following in Irving Feiners footsteps, insofar as they espouse progressive causes and castigate the denial of equal rights to black Americans. Yet too many of todays progressive students also follow in the footsteps of Feiners hecklers and censors, insofar as they seek to stifle views of which they disapprove. And too often campus officials follow in the footsteps of the officials who facilitated the silencing of Feiner: They fail to punish the hecklers and to protect the speakers and audience members. Paraphrasing Justice Black, todays hecklers vetoes can silence[] speakers espousing minority views in any [campus community]. Indeed, hecklers vetoes recently have been deployed against liberal speakers on campus by conservative protesters, as well as against conservative speakers by liberal protesters.

The historic record of hecklers vetoes, and their continued power to suppress marginalized voices and views, should give pause to anyone who might be tempted to defend this tactic as potentially promoting any progressive cause.

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Shouting down speakers is mob censorship: Part 14 of answers to arguments against free speech from Nadine Strossen and Greg Lukianoff - FIRE -...

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"When Humans Become Cyborgs." A Glimpse Into the World …

Posted: at 1:30 pm

The World Economic is the anti-human, techno-fascist scum of the Earth.

WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his minions are the enemies of humanity and freedom for the global population.

Last week, I introduced WeLoveTrump readers toYuval Noah Harari, Schwabs top advisor. If you havent heard of this transhumanist, I recommend viewing his creepy presentations.

Who is Professor Yuval Noah Harari, Klaus Schwabs Top Advisor?

But I want to shine awareness on another sickening aspect of the World Economic Forums transhumanist agenda.

What is transhumanism?

Per Wikipedia:

Transhumanismis a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates for the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhancelongevityandcognition. It also predicts the inevitability of such technologies in the future.[1][2]

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers ofemerging technologiesthat could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as theethics[3]of using such technologies. Some transhumanists believe that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label ofposthumanbeings.

In simpler terms, transhumanism is merging humans and machines through artificial intelligence.

So, Im not joking when saying Klaus Schwab wants to turn you into a cyborg.

Its a legitimate presentation given by these anti-human globalists.

As stated by the WEF:

Recent advances in brain-computer interfaces are blurring the lines between mind and machine. What steps do leaders need to take now to ensure the ethical and responsible application of human enhancement?

Join an in-depth discussion that explores the principles and priorities for governing disruptive technologies.

One of the speakers at When Humans Become Cyborgs is Victor Dzau, President of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Dzau is also the President of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB).

The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB) is an independent monitoring and accountability body to ensure preparedness for global health crises. Co-convened by the Director-General of the World Health Organization and the President of the World Bank, the GPMB is comprised of political leaders, agency principals and world-class experts. It is tasked with providing an independent and comprehensive appraisal for policy makers and the world about progress towards increased preparedness and response capacity for disease outbreaks and other emergencies with health consequences. In short, the work of the GPMB is to chart a roadmap for a safer world.

Guess whos a former Board member of the GPMB?

Anthony Fauci.

Get an understanding of the God-complex these transhumanists possess by watching When Humans Become Cyborgs.

As a reminder, Klaus Schwab has bragged about infiltrating world governments to insert these types of individuals into positions of power.

VIDEO FOUND: Klaus Schwab Admits To Penetrating The Cabinets Of Most World Governments

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Dr. Zelenko Crimes Against Humanity and the Transhumanist …

Posted: at 1:30 pm

This is the story of how one man challenged the system.

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Dr. Zelenko Crimes Against Humanity and the Transhumanist ...

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CS Lewis’s Space Trilogy: A Guide to Living on Earth – The Stream

Posted: at 1:30 pm

The radical leftist nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court who favors slaps on the wrist for child pornography addicts cant say what a woman is. Even though she was only appointed because she could check off that box, in addition to the black one. So she cant really prove that, in fact, she qualifies as a woman since she doesnt know what one is. She said to ask a biologist.

But the postmodern paradigms Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson fetishizes dont care about the verdict of biology. If you present as a woman, then others must treat you as one. So presumably drag queen RuPaul could equally fulfill Joe Bidens campaign promise. But not Rachel Dolezal, because she only presents as black.

And you cant claim membership in another race, just the opposite sex. This even though race is a biologically trivial detail, while sex is absolutely crucial to thousands of species, including our own. So I could change my name to Tallulah and insist that Im a white woman, and you must treat me as such. But I couldnt rename myself Africa X. Zmirak and insist that Im a black man. Because we are governed by reason and science, you see.

In fact, we are governed by blank insanity. Sometimes it feels like were living through a mishmash of bleak, dystopian novels from the past. We flinch in fear of committing thoughtcrimes out of George Orwells 1984. Then we drown our anxieties in pleasures proper to Aldous Huxleys Brave New World. We watch as our society gets balkanized by multicultural colonization straight out of Jean Raspails The Camp of the Saints. We see eunuchs and perverts elevated to prestige and power, as in Anthony Burgesss The Wanting Seed. And we cringe in helpless horror as our own church leaders betray both reason and faith, as they do in Robert Hugh Bensons The Lord of the World.

But more than any other prophetic work of fiction, C.S. Lewiss That Hideous Strengthseems like a document produced in 1945 by a time traveler from 2022. When I first read the novel in the early 1990s, parts of it struck me as shrill and overly alarmist. I just finished re-reading it, and it seemed like a documentary.

Among his many theological, philosophical, and literary gifts, C.S. Lewis possessed what we must call vision. He could see 50 chess moves ahead how abstract ideas seemingly harmless in the classroom or the laboratory would wreak absolute havoc. Not just in the social and political life of the West, but in the fragile ecosystem of the human heart and soul.

If you havent read the Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength forms the third volume, you need to. I mean, the way you need to take your blood pressure or heart medication if its prescribed. The books themselves are masterworks of imaginative fiction, exquisite blends of futuristic fancy and learned historical allusion. Lewis had devoured the fictional works of men like H.G. Wells, written in service of shallow, degrading theories of human life. Lewis decided to plough the same fictional field on behalf of Biblical, Classical accounts of mans nature and fate. In this trilogy, as well as the seven Narnia novels, Lewis succeeded brilliantly.

In That Hideous Strength, Lewis shows the corrosive, corrupting effects of false pictures of man, especially of scientific materialism such as Darwins. He depicts the logical fallacies such worldviews entail such as reasoning to the conclusion that reasoning is impossible. More importantly, he depicts how entertaining such theories degrades our perceptions of the world, undermines our wholesome instincts and virtuous habits, and ends in the abolition of man. Pretend for long enough that you are just a trousered ape, or a meat robot, and eventually you will act like it. Or worse, youll soak in a demonic contempt for man as God made him, and join in the Enemys attack on Creation as Transgenderists and Transhumanists are attacking it today.

Lewis managed the remarkable prophetic feat of telescoping into the plot of a single novel, with a small cast of characters, the moral collapse into tyranny that in the real world took seven decades. We today may be the first people who can read That Hideous Strength and realize exactly how prescient it was.

But there is much more to this novel, and Lewis imaginative fiction, than doleful prophecies of doom. In fact, the Space Trilogy and the Narnia novels are healthy, wholesome meals for the mind and soul. They contain in them the antidote to materialism and Gnosticism, the alternative to disillusionment. Lewis worked in those books to re-enchant Creation with the Creators light and love. As a scholar of Medieval literature, he treasured a deep love for the cosmology that underlay its masterworks, from Beowulf to The Divine Comedy. That worldview stands in stark contrast to the bleak materialism mixed with political superstitions that produced todays Woke religion, and props up its priests of Baal, such as Judge Jackson.

Lewis sought to revive in modern readers the Medieval sensibility, which saw in the heavens the orderly handiwork of a glorious Craftsman, and in each planet an emblem of certain attributes of God. To really appreciate these novels, I recommend two books by astute Christian critics: Planet Narnia by Michael Ward (on the Narnia books), and Deeper Heaven by Christiana Hale (on the Space Trilogy). These authors delve into minute detail, unpacking Lewis imagery and allusions in light of his project.

One more author, if I might. Perhaps the most powerful practitioner of the scientific discipline known as Intelligent Design is Hugh Ross. A vastly knowledgeable physicist, he is also a gifted theologian. He strives in his books to show how scientifically implausible materialist claims really are, in the light of the massive fine-tuning required to make any life possible, much less human life. Beyond that, he reflects on the accounts in Genesis to show how (if properly read) they anticipate the latest findings of contemporary cosmology. Get hold of his The Creator and the Cosmos and Why the Universe Is the Way It Is. These books, dealing with real-world astronomy and biology, serve the same goal that Lewiss novels did: restoring to our view of the world the proper gratitude and wonder.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of God, Guns, & the Government.

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CS Lewis's Space Trilogy: A Guide to Living on Earth - The Stream

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Recycling old antivax tropes as bioethics-based arguments against COVID-19 vaccination for children – Science Based Medicine

Posted: at 1:30 pm

Regular readers might be getting tired of my pointing out how theres nothing new under the antivax sun in terms of deceptive arguments, conspiracy theories, and tropes designed to argue against vaccinating. However, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced these talking points to a much large audience than had ever seen them before so I considered it my duty to educate our readers and to point out that none of the antivaccine misinformation that has hit us like a tsunami since COVID-19 vaccines first entered large clinical trials in the summer of 2020 is anything new. It just seems new if you havent seen it before. Examples include, of course, misinformation claiming that the vaccine kills based on misinterpretation of the VAERS database; that it sterilizes our womenfolk; that it sheds and endangers the unvaccinated; and that it causes cancer, none of which are anything new. Even the claim that it permanently alters your DNA, although it might appear like a new talking point based on the fact that Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines were the first successful translations of mRNA technology into a clinical product, if you look really hard, is not a new claim. (Transhumanism, anyone?) As Charles Pierce likes to say, history is so cool. In this case, though, Id add: Its only cool and useful if you know about it and can use it to counter the pernicious misinformation about vaccines of the sort published by, for example, The Wall Street Journal and deconstructed by Jonathan Howard yesterday.

Last week the journal Bioethics published another example of how everything old is new again in the form of an article titled Against COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children. It might as well have been titled Against vaccination of healthy children, because pretty much every one of the arguments presented could be used to argue against long-accepted childhood vaccines that have been mandated as a prerequisite for school enrollment in the US for decades. Ill explain in a moment, but, given that this is presented as piece of serious scholarship, I wondered who was behind it. It turned out to be from a last-year graduate student named Steven R. Kraaijeveld at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and Associate Fellow at the Research Consortium on the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies. Its noted in the Biographies section that his PhD dissertation is on the ethics of vaccination. His research focuses on philosophy and ethics of technology, medical ethics, public health ethics, and moral psychology. After reading this article, Id say that he needs to go back to the drawing board, particularly given the Tweets with which he bragged about his paper on Friday:

In the thread, as he lists his reasons for arguing against the both routine and mandatory COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children he brags about all the data that back up his ethical conclusions, after, of course regurgitating the health freedom and parental rights arguments that have long been a staple of antivaccine activists going back decades:

Mr. Kraaijevelds co-authors include Rachel Gur-Arie, PhD, MS, Hecht-Levi Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethics and Infectious Disease at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, and Euzebiusz Jamrozik, MD, PhD, practicing Internal Medicine Physician and fellow in Ethics and Infectious Diseases at Ethox and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford, as well as Head of the Monash-WHO Collaborating Centre for bioethics at the Monash Bioethics Centre. Youd think that at least Dr. Jamrozik would be aware of the antivaccine tropes being recycled in this graduate students paper, but apparently not. Ive found that, depressingly, a lot of academics who actually work on infectious diseases and vaccines are blissfully unaware of common antivaccine tropes, which leads them to regurgitate them inadvertently in a much more palatable, academic-seeming form. This is what this paper does.

In the case of this article, its hard not to think of Bioethics like this.

In fairness, I will give the authors a modicum of credit in that they seem to realize that their arguments could be used to argue against other childhood vaccines. They even say so in the introduction, claiming that theyll show you why the arguments in favor of routine vaccination of children against COVID-19, arguments that they find compelling for other childhood vaccines, dont hold up for COVID-19 vaccines. In fact, as Ill show, the arguments they make against the key pillars of the case for vaccinating children against COVID-19 could just as easily be deployed against many, if not most, childhood vaccines currently in use and long accepted.

Kraaijeveld notes:

This article presents an analysis of the ethics of vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19 by responding to the strongest arguments that might favor such an approach.5 In particular, we present three arguments that might justify routine6 COVID-19 vaccination of children, based on (a) an argument from paternalism, (b) an argument from indirect protection and altruism, and (c) an argument from the global public health aim of COVID-19 eradication.7 We offer a series of objections to each respective argument to show that, given the best available data, none of them is tenable. These arguments, which might be compelling for childhood vaccination against other diseases and in different circumstances,8 do not appear to hold in the case of COVID-19 with the currently available vaccines. Given the present state of affairs and all things considered, COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children is ethically unjustified.

If one accepts our conclusion that routine vaccination of healthy children against COVID-19 is ethically unjustified, then it follows that coercion, which is an ethically problematic issue in itself, is even less warranted. Nonetheless, mandatory vaccination of healthy children against COVID-19 is already being consideredand, in some places, implementedas a way of increasing vaccine uptake.9 We therefore also provide two objections specifically against making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for children, which center on additional ethical concerns about overriding the autonomy of parents and legal guardians and of children who are capable of making autonomous decisions. If vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19 is ethically problematic, then coercing vaccination is even less acceptablebut even if vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19 should at some future point be considered more defensible (e.g., should a much more favorable costbenefit analysis emerge), important ethical objections against coercive mandates will still remain.

As I said before, Mr. Kraaijeveld is recycling the health freedom and parental rights arguments that portray any attempt to require vaccines for children before entering public school or daycare facilities as an unacceptable fascistic assault of freedom. Its a very old antivaccine argument that takes a reasonable debate about the limits of what can be mandated in the service of public health and turns it into a Manichean view that portrays any sort of mandate or even mild coercion as evil. One has only to look at the Defeat the Mandates rally held in Washington, DC in January (with a repeat scheduled for Los Angeles in April) to see this argument taken to an extreme.

Its true that Defeat the Mandates tends to include more than vaccine mandates, but it also adds a healthy dash of parental rights to the rhetoric of health freedom, all with a Boomer-friendly design (note the font) reminiscent of Woodstock.

Lets look at Mr. Kraaijevelds main arguments one by one.

Mr. Kraaijeveld begins by characterizing the appeal to paternalism thusly:

The first argument in favor of childhood vaccination for COVID-19 derives from paternalistic considerations and holds that routine vaccination of healthy children is justified because it is in the best interests of the would-be vaccinated children. The argument from paternalism suggests that COVID-19 vaccination will, all things considered, benefit children the most (or cause them the least harm). Given that routine vaccination is the most effective way to ensure vaccine uptake, it is therefore justified for the sake of the health and well-being of children themselves.

Unsurprisingly, his objections are twofold:

Both Dr. Howard and I have been repeating for months now how these claims are not only wrong, but echo the same claims made by antivaxxers about the MMR vaccine. Whenever the argument that we shouldnt vaccinate children against COVID-19 because the disease isnt that dangerous to children (i.e., quite literally, doesnt kill that many children), Im reminded of the appeal to the Brady Bunch commonly repeated by antivaxxers in 2015. Ill discuss that more in a moment, but first lets see what Mr. Kraaijeveld actually argues:

According to the best available data, healthy children are at a much lower risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and are less susceptible to infection than older adults.10 In contrast to many other vaccine-preventable diseases, healthy children are at low risk of severe COVID-19 infection, morbidity, and mortality.11 Hospitalization of children with COVID-19 is rare, although emerging data suggest that children with severe underlying comorbidities are at higher risk.12 Deaths among healthy children due to COVID-19 are very rare; for example, a large study in Germany found no deaths among children aged 511 without comorbidities.13 We agree with the assessment that COVID-19 is not a pediatric public health emergency.14

That last citation (#14) is to an article by Drs. Wesley Pegden, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral published in May 2021 arguing that COVID vaccines for children should not receive emergency use authorization. Dr. Howard recently discussed that article and its many flaws in great detail in follow-up to his original discussion of the article last year, which means I dont have to now. Read the articles for the details, but, in brief, Pegden et al. presented a case that made COVID-19 appear essentially harmless to healthy children (much as antivaxxers had long claimed that measles, chickenpox, and the like are essentially harmless to healthy children for years before) while leaving out information about how effective the vaccines were in children. Lets just echo what Dr. Howard said by listing again some of his key bullet points (remember, this was May 2021 and lots more children have been hospitalized and died since then in the US):

That sounds serious to me, and, remember, the Pegden et al. article was published almost 11 months ago, and, as our very own Dr. Howard pointed out, there was definitely some cherry picking going on here:

And also, others pointed out how cherry picked Mr. Kraaijevelds citations were:

Actually, it wasnt just cherry picking; it was misrepresentation, too:

Id also suggest that Mr. Kraaijeveld look at who is leaping to his defense. Personally, Id be embarrassed if I had people like this defending me:

If you want to see how bad Mr. Kraaijevelds arguments are, look no further than this passage:

Overall, the burden of COVID-19 in children appears to be similar to or lower than that of typical seasonal influenza in the winter (unlike the much higher disease burden of COVID-19 in adults).16 In 2020, 198 children aged <17 officially died of COVID-19 in the United States.17 In 2021, with Delta being the predominant variant, that number increased to 378,18 which is comparable to the official number of children aged <17 who died in the 20182019 influenza season in the United States (i.e., 372).19

Notice how every time the claim is made that COVID-19 is much less deadly (or at least no more deadly) than the flu in children (even, as I note, routine yearly vaccination against the flu is recommended for children), its always the 2018-2019 flu season thats cited, Always. Of course, that was the last complete flu season before the pandemic, which means that citing it is citing a season with zero mitigations of the likes that the pandemic brought us. There were no mask mandates, no business shutdowns, no virtual schooling, and no social distancing. Its an intellectually dishonest comparison of apples to oranges worthy of antivaccine activists (which is why Mr. Kraaijeveld really shouldnt have used it), and, as Dr. Howard put it, 1,200 is more than six. Basically, in the same environment, with mask mandates and mitigations, COVID-19 was much more deadly to children than the flu. Mr. Kraaijevelds argument boils down to the same argument antivaxxers make, namely that routine (or even mandated) vaccination of children against COVID-19 is unnecessary because its more or less harmless to healthy children and not that many children die of it. Again, it used to be accepted that children arent supposed to die if we can reasonably prevent it (which we can with COVID-19 vaccines), but arguments like Mr. Kraaijevelds amount to a shrugging of the shoulders over a level of child death that used to be considered unthinkable, even though 20% of COVID-19 deaths occur in children with no underlying conditions. Some ethics!

This brings us back to the Brady Bunch.

I last discussed the Brady Bunch gambittwo weeks ago. It was basically an antivax trope pioneered several years ago by antivaxxers about the measles. Theyd point to a 1969 episode of the classic sitcom The Brady Bunch in which all six kids (and, ultimately, Mike and Alice, who, it turns out, had never had the measles as children) caught the measles. The whole situation was played for laughs, with the kids happily staying home and playing games, the only evidence that they were ill being phony-looking red spots on their faces and limbs. It wasnt just The Brady Bunch either. Even though its only two weeks since I last cited it, heres a 2014 YouTube video that was making the rounds then:

You get the idea, I think. I consider Mr. Kraaijevelds paper to be an academic version of the Brady Bunch gambit, which is why Ill take this opportunity to point out yet again that according to the CDC, before the vaccine, 48,000 people a year were hospitalized for the measles; 4,000 developed measles-associated encephalitis; and 400 to 500 died. By any stretch of the imagination that was a significant public health problem, and the introduction of the measles vaccine in 1963, followed by the MMR in 1971, made it much less so, bringing measles under such control that it became very uncommon and deaths from it rare. As Dr. John Snyder reminded us nearly 13 years ago in his response to Dr. Sears making the same arguments in his vaccine book that touted an alternative vaccination schedule, measles is not a benign disease, regardless of what popular culture thought of it 50 or 60 years ago. (More recent data show that a severe complication of measles, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), is more common than we used to think.) Meanwhile, over 13 years ago Dr. Sears was claiming that the risk of fatality from measles is as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero. Sound familiar? This is basically the same argument that Mr. Kraaijeveld is making for COVID-19, which has killed over 1,300 children in the US since the pandemic hit, arguably more than the average yearly toll of measles before the vaccine.

Mr. Kraaijeveld also invokes another common antivax argument:

Furthermore, post-infection immunity has been found to be at least as effective as vaccination at protecting against disease due to reinfection with COVID-19.24 An increasingly large body of evidence suggests that immunity after previous severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is at least as robust as vaccine-induced immunity.25 Childhood exposure to SARS-CoV-2, which, as previously discussed, is generally associated with mild viral illness, may offer protection against more severe illness in adulthood.26 To date, hundreds of millions of children have already been infected with COVID-19. For children with immunity from previous infection, the potential benefits of vaccination are likely to be lower than for children without immunity

Ill give Mr. Kraaijeveld credit for using the preferred term post-infection immunity rather than natural immunity, but this, too, is an old antivax argument, namely that natural immunity is better than (or at least as good as) vaccine-induced immunity. Its an argument that I first encountered over 20 years ago, which was when I first started taking a serious interest in the antivaccine movement. Sometimes it got really ridiculous too. Does anyone remember the book Melanies Marvelous Measles 11 years ago? It was a childrens book that argued that measles was not only not harmful but that it was good for children because it built natural immunity. Indeed, its blurb read:

This book takes children aged 4 10 years on a journey of discovering about the ineffectiveness of vaccinations, while teaching them to embrace childhood disease, heal if they get a disease, and build their immune systems naturally.

Actually, measles is worse than we thought in that it causes immune amnesia that suppresses immune memory and makes one susceptible to other infections for 2-3 years. You know why natural immunity isnt better than vaccine-induced immunity? Its because achieving natural immunity requires that one actually suffer through the disease and risk its complications, up to and including death.

I like to ask everyone, including Mr. Kraaijeveld, who argues against routine vaccination of children against COVID-19 because it isnt that dangerous to them: Why arent you arguing against routine vaccination against measles? The death toll among children due to COVID-19 over the last two years (>1,300) translates to a higher yearly death toll than the measles produced in the years right before the vaccine. What about chickenpox, which used to kill only around 100 children a year before the vaccine? Why arent you arguing against the varicella vaccine?

Oh, thats right. Its because the COVID-19 vaccine is supposedly so much more dangerous:

The case for vaccinating healthy children against COVID-19 for their own sake is undermined by uncertainty; that is, by the currently poorly characterized potential for rare, harmful outcomes associated with the vaccines in children. Public safety data from the Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trials in children included 2,260 participants aged 12 to 15, of which 1,131 received the vaccine.37 In addition to a small sample size, the trial follow up period was of short duration; therefore, no reliable data presently exist for rare or longer-term vaccine-related harms.38 Though common adverse events occurring less than 6 months after vaccination may be ruled out, the risks of rare or delayed adverse outcomes can simply not yet be evaluated.39 Should vaccine harms occur, they will be revealed in the general pediatric population only after thousands or millions of children are already vaccinated, which would also risk seriously undermining vaccine confidence. The restriction of AstraZeneca vaccines to older age groups due to blood clotting events early on in the COVID-19 vaccination rollout, as well as reports of increased rates of vaccine-related myocarditis among younger age groups illustrates that rare risks are sometimes more common in younger age groups and might sometimes outweigh benefits in children.40 Severe cardiac manifestations such as myocarditis and pericarditis are now recognized as rare risks of the COVID-19 vaccines.41 Myocarditis-induced deaths following COVID-19 vaccination have been documented in adolescents as well as in adults.42

This is a classic antivax argument, namely that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. Of course, if the vaccine truly is more dangerous than the disease, then that is a compelling argument. However, as weve discussed many times (particularly Dr. Howard), this is not the case with COVID-19 vaccines. Even the cases of two adolescent deaths after vaccination cited by Mr. Kraaijeveld are not nearly as clearcut as portrayed, as pediatric cardiologist Dr. Frank Han discussed, noting that dilation of the heart (found in one boy) doesnt occur within days and the autopsy findings were missing some key pieces of information that would definitively suggest the vaccine as the cause.

The speculation about potential long term effects is also a common antivaccine trope. Antivaxxers, failing to be able to make the case that routine childhood vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases that they vaccinated against, often pivot to handwaving about unknown (and undescribed and unproven) long term effects. Before COVID-19, those long term adverse events were autism, autoimmune disease, cancer (still a favorite for COVID-19 vaccines), and pretty much every major chronic illness. (Indeed, antivaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. came up with the false claim that the current generation of children is the sickest generation, largely due toyou guessed it!vaccines.) The last time I dealt with the claim of long term adverse events (i.e., greater than a few weeks to six months after vaccination), I noted that they were very rare, so rare that Paul Thacker, for instance, had to do incredible contortions to find very rare cases that occurred only in the special case of immunosuppressed children and cite narcolepsy after the H1N1 vaccine Pandemrix, which actually occurred within weeks after vaccinationhardly long term.

So this section is basically one antivax argument that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease. Its not; so Mr. Kraaijevelds ethical argument falls apart. Next up, he appeals to a lack of sterilizing immunity.

The next arguments for vaccination against COVID-19 that Mr. Kraaijeveld takes are all based on the observation that COVID-19 vaccines do not produce sterilizing immunity; i.e., they do not completely prevent infection and transmission, although he does concede that they are quite effective at preventing severe disease, hospitalization, and death. Based on this observation (primarily), he takes on the argument from indirect protection and altruism and the argument from global eradication. Ill start with the latter first, because in its service he makes an argument that caused me, literallyand I do mean literallyto facepalm as I read it. Specifically, he objects to claims that ongoing transmission will:

Mr. Kraaijeveld objects to the first argument by pointing out that evolutionary fitness of an infectious virus is determined more by increased transmissibility rather than virulence, which is true as far as it goes, although he cites a 2020 paper making the argument that there was not yet evidence of SARS-CoV-2 variants with increased transmissibility. (Those would arrive a few months later in the form of the Delta and Omicron variants, the Delta variant being more transmissible than the original Wuhan strain and the Omicron variant being more transmissible than the Delta variant.) Howeverand heres where the facepalm came in as I readthat is actually a strong argument for doing everything reasonable, especially vaccination, to decrease the level of transmission to as low a level as is feasible, in order to decrease the likelihood of more transmissible variants arising. Again, as people making these arguments always seem to do, Mr. Kraaijeveld is falling prey to the Nirvana fallacy, in which an imperfect intervention is portrayed as a useless one. When someone like this argues that COVID-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, it implies that the vaccines dont prevent infection or transmission at all, which is nonsense. Of course they do; theyre just not 100% effective (or, since the rise of Delta and Omicron even close to it).) The way to look at it is that the vaccines are less good at preventing infection and transmission than they are at preventing serious disease and death, not that they dont prevent transmission or infection at all.

What flows from Mr. Kraaijevelds Nirvana fallacy is predictable. He argues, as I mentioned above, that mass vaccination of children will not contribute to preventing the development of more harmful variants. I note that, even as he observes that virulence and transmissibility are often incorrectly conflated, Mr. Kraaijeveld himself seems to be doing the same thing as he in essence argues against a straw man of the real argument, that decreasing transmission is useful in terms of controlling the disease, even if the vaccines dont produce anything near sterilizing immunity. He also argues:

The notion that unbridled transmission would make the virus more likely to escape vaccine-derived immunity makes the eradication argument either self-defeating or incredibly costly. Aside from the fact that current vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission, if certain variants really are highly efficient at evading vaccine-derived immunityor, worse still, if more variants continuously evolve to evade vaccines more efficientlythen attempts at eradication through global vaccination, and the strong evolutionary selection pressures this entails, will be met with diminishing returns for the costs of such a program.

Its also rather funny how Mr. Kraaijeveld fails to note that these new variants are also pretty good at evading post-infection natural immunity as wellpossibly even as good as they are at evading vaccine-induced immunityto the point where its increasingly being concluded that, while its better to prevent COVID-19 with vaccination, if you do get it hybrid immunity (a combination of infection-induced and vaccine-induced immunity from getting the vaccine after youve recovered) is better at preventing the disease than either alone. I also note that there are few areas in the world where the vaccination rate among adults (much less among children) is anywhere near high enough to result in significant selection for variants that evade the immune response; what we are seeing is primarily a selection for increased transmissibility due to wide and largely uncontrolled circulation of the coronavirus among large populations.

Mr. Kraaijeveld also argues that children are not a major driver of COVID-19 transmission, thus making vaccinating healthy children pointless, because, according to him, COVID-19 is not dangerous to healthy children. One notes that there is more cherry picking here, given that all the studies he cites are pre-Delta and pre-Omicron. Moreover, more recent studies showing that mask mandates significantly decreased transmission suggest that schools are not as insignificant a source of COVID-19 circulation as Mr. Kraaijeveld would argue.

The last part of Mr. Kraaijevelds paper opposes any sort of mandates for COVID-19 vaccines for children that are straight from the antivax playbook. First, the appeal to parental rights:

Mandates for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19 would limit and, depending on their nature, even override the autonomy of parents and guardians to make decisions about the health of their children. This requires ethical justification as such, but it demands stronger justification in proportion to the level of coercion that mandates would involve.100 When mandates are in place, the actors who make decisions for the health and well-being of children de facto become governments and public health officials rather than parents, although less coercive measures (e.g., small fines) might allow some parents to opt out and thereby retain decisional autonomy.101

I have to wonder right here if Mr. Kraaijeveld understands how mandates work for children, in the US at least. Here, the mandate is that children require certain vaccines to attend school, but there is no legal penalty for not vaccinating ones children other than not being allowed to enroll them in school. Certainly, there are no fines, and its pretty rare that parents are investigated by child protective services for not vaccinating their children. (Usually, such investigations involve far more than just not vaccinating.) He also seems unaware that most states allow religious and philosophical exemptions to these mandates, in addition to medical exemptions. In the US, at least, the coercion that he decries isnt much in the way of coercion at all, which makes me wonder why he doesnt think that, in the US at least, mandating COVID-19 vaccines for school is acceptable. Oh, wait. As discussed above, he echoesunknowingly, I hope, but possibly knowingly I fearantivaccine talking points about them, such as the claims that COVID-19 doesnt harm healthy children, that the vaccine is more dangerous than the disease, that it doesnt produce sterilizing immunity and is therefore useless in contributing to herd immunity, and other arguments.

He also goes straight into Great Barrington Declaration/Urgency of Normal territory of focused protection:

For COVID-19, vaccines are safe and effective in higher-risk groups, including older adults and the immunocompromised,59 and significantly reduce the risk of severe illness even when vaccinated groups are exposed to substantial community transmission.60 While there are some people for whom the current COVID-19 vaccines are contraindicated (e.g., those with severe allergies), this group appears to be small.61 It is therefore not the case that vulnerable groups cannot protect themselves, which would make routine vaccination of less vulnerable groupschildren, in this casemore compelling. Moreover, as argued above, children are not major drivers of COVID-19 transmission. As such, there is no strong ethical justification for COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children for the sake of vulnerable groups.

This is, in essence, the same argument that Great Barrington Declaration authors make about all interventions to prevent the spread of COVID-19including masks, lockdowns, and vaccinesnamely that its possible to protect the vulnerable (focused protection) and that no intervention should be permitted that is not completely voluntary. Unsurprisingly, consistent with this Mr. Kraaijeveld is apparently not a fan of nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as masks and lockdowns, to slow the spread of COVID-19 either, viewing them as ethically problematic as well.

To summarize, Mr. Kraaijeveld argues that, because current COVID-19 vaccines do not produce sterilizing immunity, herd immunity is not achievable, and vaccinating children doesnt protect others, nor would vaccinating them prevent the evolution of more harmful and/or immune-evading variants, and, as a result, vaccinating children is not ethically supportable, and vaccine mandates of any kind for COVID-19 are completely unjustifiable from an ethical standpoint. Of course, he fails to mention that most vaccines do not produce sterilizing immunity. Its not as though this hadnt been discussed at the time the vaccines were being rolled out or that scientists hadnt recognized that COVID-19 vaccines were unlikely to produce true sterilizing immunity. Its just plain incorrect to argue that you have to have sterilizing immunity for a vaccine to contribute to herd immunity or even the elimination of a disease. For example, the smallpox vaccine did not produce sterilizing immunity; yet, as has been observed, it was crucial in eradicating smallpox. Neither the Salk (inactivated) nor the Sabin (live attenuated) polio vaccine produces sterilizing immunity, but the global eradication of polio is within reach, thanks to the vaccines:

Also, while were on the topic of polio, it turns out that the same appeal to the disease doesnt kill that many children argument can be made for polio:

One wonders whether Mr. Kraaijeveld similarly questions whether routine polio vaccination is advisable, as well. Just as most of his arguments could be used against routine measles vaccination, similarly most of them could also be used against polio.

Or rotavirus:

The case of rotaviruswhich causes severe vomiting and watery diarrhea and is especially dangerous to infants and young childrenis fairly straightforward. Vaccination limits, but does not stop, the pathogen from replicating. As such, it does not protect against mild disease. By reducing an infected persons viral load, however, it decreases transmission, providing substantial indirect protection. According to the Centers for Disease Control, four to 10 years after the 2006 introduction of a rotavirus vaccine in the U.S., the number of positive tests for the disease fell by as much as 74 to 90 percent.

I mean

In other words, it is not a prerequisite that COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission completely for them to be very valuable in curbing the pandemic. Moreover, newer generations of COVID-19 vaccines might actually be able to achieve sterilizing immunity. I also note that it has long been a favorite antivaccine argument to cite one vaccine in particular that doesnt provide sterilizing immunity, specifically the pertussis vaccine, whose immunity also wanes with time, like that from COVID-19 vaccines.

While issues of freedom and parental rights are issues of ethics and law about which there will always be some subjectivity based on differing belief systems and about which reasonable people can disagree, accurate science and data are required to have reasonable debates about how much the state should be allowed to infringe upon individual freedom and autonomy as well as parental rights. By massively downplaying the severity of COVID-19 in children in a manner that is, quite frankly, eugenicist in its emphasis on the disease supposedly being pretty close harmless to healthy childrennot to mention based on cherry picked data primarily from before the Delta and Omicron surgesand exaggerating the dangers of the vaccine, Mr. Kraaijeveld, whether he realizes it or not or will admit it or not, tilts the playing field in favor of his arguments in the same intellectually dishonest manner that antivaxxers have long done. He even recycles their arguments, as the way his appeal to the lack of sterilizing immunity due to COVID-19 vaccination and his claim that COVID-19 is close to harmless to most healthy children, both of which are old antivaccine claims used for a number of vaccines in the past, but particularly MMR, rotavirus, and varicella.

All of these reasons are why I now eagerly await Mr. Kraaijevelds next bioethical treatise arguing that we should not routinely vaccinate children against measles because the disease doesnt kill that many kids and that we shouldnt vaccinate against polio, pertussis, and most other childhood diseases because the vaccines dont produce sterilizing immunity and therefore cannot produce herd immunity or contribute to the elimination of the disease. After all, if hes going to recycle, he should go all-in and recycle everything.

Meanwhile, people who like Mr. Kraaijevelds message will go all Humpty Dumpty about words and argue that an article titled Against COVID-19 vaccination of healthy children is not actually arguing against vaccinating children against COVID-19:

Same as it ever was.

Originally posted here:
Recycling old antivax tropes as bioethics-based arguments against COVID-19 vaccination for children - Science Based Medicine

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Could Will Smith lose his Oscar? Explaining the Academy’s code of conduct – New York Post

Posted: at 1:26 pm

Will Smith may be asked to hand back his Best Actor statuette following his live onstage assault of Chris Rock, industry insiders told The Post.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which handed out awards Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, has strict guidelines in its code of conduct.

One highly placed Hollywood source told The Post after the incident: Its basically assault. Everyone was just so shocked in the room, it was so uncomfortable.

I think Will would not want to give his Oscar back, but who knows what will happen now, the insider said.

Meanwhile, the Academy cryptically announced from its official Twitter account: The Academy does not condone violence of any form. Tonight we are delighted to celebrate our 94th Academy Awards winners, who deserve this moment of recognition from their peers and movie lovers around the world.

Smith was seen laughing and posing with photos following his win, as industry bigwigslike JuddApatow took aim.

Knocked Up director Apatow was highly critical of Smith in a now-deleted tweet: He could have killed him. Thats pure out of control rage and violence. Theyve hearda million jokes about them in the last three decades. They are not freshman in the world of Hollywood and comedy. He lost his mind.

TV comic Fortune Feimster tweeted: Someone in the audience charged the stage Friday night during my openers set and attempted to throw the speaker, started taking swings at the people trying to stop her and pushed down a security guard. Its scary times. So, no, I dont find someone getting hit on stage amusing.

The Post has reached out to the Academy for comment.

But its conduct code, released in 2017 in the wake of the sexual misconduct scandal that hit the industry, emphasizes the importance of upholding the Academys values, like inclusion, fostering supportive environments, and respect for human dignity.

At the time, AMPAS CEO Dawn Hudson wrote to members: Academy membership is a privilege offered to only a select few within the global community of filmmakers, Variety reported.

In addition to achieving excellence in the field of motion picture arts and sciences, members must also behave ethically by upholding the Academys values of respect for humandignity, inclusion, and a supportive environment that fosters creativity.

She added: There is no place in the Academy for people who abuse their status, power or influence in a manner that violates recognized standards of decency. The Academy is categorically opposed to any form of abuse, harassment or discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, age, religion, or nationality. The Board of Governors believes that these standards are essential to the Academys mission and reflective of our values.

In terms of the law, Smith could be in the clear. The Los Angeles Police Department told The Post in a statement that it is aware of the incident.

LAPD investigative entities are aware of an incident between two individuals during the Academy Awards program, a rep said. The incident involved one individual slapping another. The individual involved has declined to file a police report. If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report.

See the rest here:
Could Will Smith lose his Oscar? Explaining the Academy's code of conduct - New York Post

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Supercharging the future by balancing technology with human intervention – Firstpost

Posted: at 1:26 pm

As technology continues to evolve, there is a rising concern of machines taking over humans, talks of the unavoidable battle between the automation of jobs and human interaction.

Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, released way back in 2002, is one of my favourite sci-fi movies. It creatively portrayed and accurately predicted disruptive technologies including multi-touch interfaces, retina scanners, electronic paper, and even crime prediction software become a part of our lives. Fast forward to just about two decades ahead, and almost all of these have become the norm. Technology enthusiasts have conjured up utopian visions of futuristic versions of nearly everything right from the future of the workplace, autonomous driving, to space travel.

As technology continues to evolve, there is a rising concern of machines taking over humans, talks of the unavoidable battle between the automation of jobs and human interaction. While some people believe technology will replace most of the tasks performed by humans, the eventual outcome is probably not as simple.

I firmly believe technology that benefits and transforms lives will stay forever. Post-pandemic, the Internet has become essential for our daily existence be it at work, home, education, or socializing. The possibilities available through artificial intelligence, augmented reality, cloud computing, quantum computing creates a wide range of options for us to leverage. It is equally imperative that we carefully consider the use of technology, understand its potential impact, and exercise this decision judiciously.

Embrace technology and quell the fear of tech replacing humansNobody likes to feel that their job is at risk. Theres a lot of buzz around automation and AI-enabled tools stepping in to handle tasks that people otherwise would, no doubt sparking fear of robots replacing humans shortly. Whats important here is to embrace technology in a manner that results in better outcomes and productivity.

Lets look at the banking industry, for instance. Digital banking has become a norm during the pandemic, and customers are now more comfortable transacting online than ever before. Several banks have also deployed bots that provide a quick turnaround of responses to customers. It has led to freeing up the capacity for executives to focus on other key functions. With technology taking the lead on mundane tasks, professionals are focusing on essential activities such as enabling new and innovative products to the market, be increasingly effective in addressing customer problems a win-win for all.

Collaborative tech for best resultsArtificial Intelligence technology is redefining the way we work, driving big changes in productivity, quality, and speed on data-intense and predictable work outcomes. AI algorithms can be used to improve everything across the product lifecycle or customer lifecycle journey. As per Gartner, the use of AI in many business sectors has grown by 270% over the last four years.

Were already experiencing this transformation in our daily lives. Lets take the simple example of customer service irrespective of the industry, we are often chatting with an intelligently programmed assistant / Bot on the other side who can record our grievance and offer a momentary solution. The behavioural intelligence embedded within AI can certainly be used to guide customers. However, human beings still drive cognitive decisions, and technology alone cannot be relied upon to solve all problems or quell the anxiety of an agitated customer. To satisfy customers who feel their needs are not met, you need something humans possess, and bots dont: creativity and empathy.

Focus on peopleAsk any business about their values today, and chances are 'customer centricity' will top that list. It is great for the company. But for it to truly excel, I recommend a more people-centric approach; put people customers, employees, vendors, partners, associates at the heart of what you do, and deploy technology solutions to solve problems that real people face. For instance, in the education sector, virtual learning is bridging the digital divide by giving the underprivileged access to specialized training programs and experts. Similarly, technologies such as AI, VR are helping save lives and extend life expectancy by diagnosing diseases faster and providing remedies in real-time. However, technology also brings the possibility of cyber security threats and attacks. Businesses need to contend with it and at the same time ensure ethical use of technology for customers and the world at large. We have a choice to make in how we harness and develop new technologies, as always, it comes down to finding the right balance.

In conclusion, history proves that no technology innovation survived without positively impacting the larger human population. Behind every leading tech innovation, theres a team of great human minds working together to solve a problem or helping realize a bigger purpose. While the industry navigates through disruption, I believe there is a way to strike a balance between adopting innovation, implementing technology, and maintaining a human approach to doing business. Rather than resisting technological change, companies can control how they respond and take advantage of it in a way that doesnt lose sight of its purpose.

The author is the CEO of Fulcrum Digital. Views expressed are personal

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Bring Me The Horizon Have Achieved Their First Ever Billboard 100 Track With ‘Maybe’ – ROCKSOUND.TV

Posted: at 1:26 pm

As you know, Bring Me The Horizon have collaborated with Machine Gun Kelly on his recent album 'Mainstream Sellout' on the track 'Maybe', a dancefloor-filling pop-punk belter.

And it is giving them their first-ever plaudit on a very big stage.

That's the Billboard Hot 100, with the song hitting #91 this week.

The track has also racked up over 15 million streams over on Spotify since its release as well.

The band have featured on the Billboard 200 with their albums over the last decade, with their peak being 'That's The Spirit' in 2015 at No.02 and most recently Post Human: Survival Horror peaking at No.46.

But with this being their first appearance on Billboard's biggest chart, that's pretty amazing, isn't it?

Bring Me the Horizon earns their first ever entry on the Hot 100 this week (@bmthofficial).

Billboard Hot 100: #91(new) Maybe, @machinegunkelly & @bmthofficial.

The video for the track has dropped as well and has already racked up over 2.5 million views.

You can have a little watch of that below:

Oh, and the band are also going to be releasing a new song this Friday (April 01) in collaboration with Masked Wolf.

Here's a little snippet:

View original post here:
Bring Me The Horizon Have Achieved Their First Ever Billboard 100 Track With 'Maybe' - ROCKSOUND.TV

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The internet is crucial – Human Rights Watch

Posted: at 1:26 pm

In many Eastern European and Central Asian countries, media discourse suffers from the freedom of expression not being respected. Nonetheless, the situation is not hopeless, according to Hugh Williamson of Human Rights Watch. He shared his insights in a D+C/E+Z interview, which was finalised shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine.

You are observing a huge and diverse world region on behalf of Human Rights Watch. It spans eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey as well as Central Asia. What do these countries have in common?

It is fascinating to see how powerful the human right of freedom of expression is everywhere, despite people facing such huge challenges. The internet and social media have made it even more important. Authoritarian regimes feel particularly threatened, but some democratically elected governments feel threatened too. The methods used to restrict the freedom of expression vary depending on the kind of political order.

Please give examples.

In Kazakhstan, the government in January shut down the internet entirely for several days. An authoritarian state was responding in a draconian manner to peaceful protests. In Turkey, however, the opposition is systematically repressed by other means. Using the pretence of anti-terrorism legislation, the government removed legislators from parliament and even detained some of them. Most victims belong to Kurdish parties. The result is that an important minority is deprived of its fundamental right to political representation. In Hungary, a democratic EU member, the government is trying to take control of the media. The authorities used petty formalities to withdraw the license of Klubrdi, one of the last independent radio stations. The lesson is that we have to pay very close attention to what is happening, whether in Europe or other parts of the world.

In Russia, opponents of President Vladimir Putin live dangerously. One of the most prominent is Alexei Navalny. He almost died after being poisoned and is now held captive in a prison camp. Does Russia respect human rights?

Well, we are currently seeing a nadir in regard to human rights in Russia. What happened to Navalny, happens to less well-known people too. Journalists are sent to prison. The government is closing down civil-society organisations and independent media outlets. New legislation serves to undermine the rights of assembly and free expression. Putin knows that freedom of speech puts his power in question, so he does what he can to stay in control. Every passing day, life is getting tougher for the few independent media outlets that are still operating in Russia. On the other hand, Putin is taking advantage of media issues for diplomacy purposes. The most recent example is that Russia banned Deutsche Welle, Germanys public international broadcaster, from operating in Russia. At the same time, the country is promoting RT, its own broadcaster. Putins focus is on national interests, not media freedom. It matters of course, that RT is under direct government control, whereas DW is run by a pluralistic board and is obliged to adhere to journalistic standards such as indicating sources and checking facts (full disclosure: Hugh Williamson worked for DW from 19951999).

Russias neighbour Belarus has been making headlines too. In August 2020, the re-election of autocratic president Alexander Lukashenko was controversial, and mass protests arose (see Hans Dembowski on http://www.dandc.eu). Dissidents were arrested and freedom of speech was restricted. How do you assess matters there?

From the human-rights perspective, Lukashenkos decision to crush the protests was terrible. One result is that the country hardly has anything one might call an independent civil society any more. The opportunities citizens have for getting involved in public affairs have been reduced to what we last saw decades ago. Quite obviously, Russia is paying close attention. Putin fears that, one day, public protests may spread in his country, which is why he supports Lukashenko generously.

By comparison, we get far less news from other former Soviet republics. What is the scenario in Central Asia?

Well, it is a complex region (see my article on http://www.dandc.eu). Turkmenistan stands out as a totalitarian state. It gives absolutely no scope to dissident opinions and independent media. The regime censors the internet heavily. It is even illegal to use a virtual private network (VPN) at home. Turkmenistan has been sealed off systematically, so we hardly get information concerning human rights. Websites are often blocked in Tajikistan too. On the other hand, the governments of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan officially endorse the freedom of expression. However, the Kazakh government is exerting pressure on independent media, and in Uzbekistan in February, a Muslim blogger was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison because of a single Facebook post. Human Rights Watch has documented his case. Something like that does not happen in a truly open society. The only central Asian nation where meaningful investigative journalism is feasible is Kyrgyzstan. It matters and deserves further support.

In which directions are things developing in this region?

Things are getting worse in various ways, as my examples have indicated. Kyrgyzstan has just passed legislation which permits authorities to shut down websites if they spread disinformation. What exactly amounts to disinformation, is not defined however, so it is left to arbitrary decision-making. On the other hand, we must not forget that people are rising up in growing numbers to express grievances. In January, average citizens took to the streets in Kazakhstan, venting their anger about rising fuel prices. They were actually quite brave. They were risking arrest because, as a matter of principle, rallies are not allowed. Nonetheless, the protests spread nationwide and fast. The point is that exasperated people are willing to take risks. In all countries we are discussing, there are people who fight for human rights. Human Rights Watch and others support them in doing so.

What can western democracies like Germany or the USA do?

Well, they can speak up for those who are doing good work in the countries concerned, including civil-society organisations. A tangible cause is to support professional journalistic training. Of course, governments want good foreign relations, and Kazakhstan, for example, is resource rich. Nonetheless, western diplomats should put human rights high on the agenda in bilateral negotiations.

You keep mentioning the internet. How important is it in regard to the freedom of expression?It has become the crucial space for freedom of expression. Only thanks to the internet did protests spread like wildfires in Kazakhstan. In Turkey, many cases of domestic abuse only became known thanks to social media, as Human Rights Watch has reported. Abused victims did not go to the police they did not trust, but they did attract attention on social media and that, in turn, helped to put pressure on state agencies. More generally speaking, the internet has become essential in many ways. When a state shuts it down, not only the freedom of speech is affected. Economic and social rights suffer too just consider online banking or digitised health services.

What about online disinformation (see Rishikesh Thapa on http://www.dandc.eu)?

It is known that in Russia there are propagandists posting pro-Putin comments online in order to manipulate public opinion. We must assume that other countries in the region rely on troll factories as well (see Alan C. Robles on http://www.dandc.eu). Trolling is a huge challenge because it has an impact on peoples perceptions and is changing our society. Disinformation is designed to promote a certain reading of reality and reduce the space for other ideas. Accordingly, it reduces the scope for critical discourse. It is therefore an indirect tool for limiting the freedom of expression.

What you say sounds quite sobering, especially given the many negative examples.

We must not be too pessimistic. The key to success is to make even better use of the internet in ways that support peoples self-determination and freedom of expression, which must not be confused with fake news and conspiracy theories. It is inspiring, for example, that Lukashenkos opponents who had to leave Belarus are now organising online. They are spanning great distances, from Ukraine to Poland and the Baltic states. While there are depressing examples, hope is justified just as much.

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The internet is crucial - Human Rights Watch

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