Censorship & Force are back in vogue

Authoritarianism is on the rise globally

Four items have arisen this week as far apart as Canada, Brazil and England. A conspiracy theorist might ask, “Who is pulling the strings?”

Canada:

British Columbia last year got Royal Assent on The Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA) (Bill 36).  It is about to be implemented.

The Canadian Society for Science & Ethics in Medicine has put together a synopsis of the Bill here: 

1. All BC practitioners must now follow health guidelines set by political appointees for their patients or risk penalties including loss of license to practice. 

2. Non-compliance with Ministry therapeutic guidelines may result in fines up to $200,000 or $500,000 (corporations) and incarceration up to 6 months or 2 years.  

3. Anonymous complaints to the Colleges can result in summary suspension of licensure to practice before the complaint is investigated. 

4. Appointees chosen by politicians may now enter a healthcare practice, seize patient records and restrict access to that facility without a warrant or court order.

5. Refusal to accept all Ministry mandated vaccines and therapies will likely result in delicensure.

6. College advisory boards will now consist of government appointees only. 

7. All “self-regulatory” healthcare professions in BC will be governed entirely by politicians and their agents, using appointees selected by the Ministry of Health. 

8. The Cabinet and the Minister of Health can adopt as law in BC any regulations, codes, standards or rules enacted in foreign jurisdictions or international bodies. 

9. The new Health Professions and Occupations Act requires further elucidation of undefined terms used in the Act, such as “false or misleading information”, which may be defined by appointees at their discretion, lacking consultation with health professionals. 

It is being debated in BC state parliament on 9th November with objections raised by BC Rising  Librti.com 

A not dissimilar law was passed in October 2022 in Queensland, Australia.

Brazil

Covid-19 vaccines have been added to the routine children’s immunisation schedule. This is already mandatory in Brazil, with parents who decline losing child benefit and their children’s right to state schooling. The change, announced in late October, will mandate Covid-19 vaccine for infants from 6 months up. 

According to Frontline News:

“During the pandemic, a parallel program was created to operationalize the Covid-19 vaccine, outside of our national program," said the Health Ministry's Health and Environment Surveillance Secretary Ethel Maciel. "What we did this year was to bring the vaccine against Covid-19 into the National Immunization Program. The vaccine is now recommended in the children's calendar. For all children born or who are in Brazil, aged between 6 months and under 5 years, the vaccine becomes mandatory in the vaccination calendar.”

The article goes on to say:

“Parents of unvaccinated children will be denied welfare and may be subject to fines, reports Revista Oeste. Unvaccinated children will be denied entry to schools.

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been openly totalitarian on vaccines, which he called “a guarantee of life” and accused parents who do not vaccinate their children as having no love for them. “For God’s sake, we can’t be ignorant to the point of thinking it’s not worth getting vaccinated,” Lula said. “I keep asking myself what kind of love does this mother have for her children, that she doesn’t take care of them at the most important moment when they can be vaccinated and can avoid a more delicate disease in their lives,”

he added:

“In April, Brazil’s Health Ministry demanded that the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM) take action against health experts who do not embrace all vaccines, which it called “denialism.” The ministry claimed that misinformation has been propagated by professionals in all areas of health and that “hesitation in vaccines has brought harm to the population.”

Closer to home

The Great Resist is an organisation describing itself as ‘The People’s Answer to the Great Reset’. Organiser, Liz Phillips, is one of the many people giving her time and energy to raising questions and promoting open debate. As part of that she has been organising a series of conferences. The first was held successfully in Wales in June at the Neon, an independent venue in Newport, and the programme of speakers is shown here. This was followed in September by Peterborough, at The Holiday Inn and a third conference was booked to take place on Saturday 11th November at another Holiday Inn, this time in central Liverpool. The balance of the booking fee had been paid a month ago and the conference was filling up steadily, until on Wednesday 8th November, with no warning, the organiser received this email: 

Dear Mrs Phillips,

Following some communication to the hotel, I have taken the decision that we are going to have to cancel your booking at the hotel on Saturday. We take a non-political view within the hotel and we feel that by hosting this event in the hotel, we are then appearing to take a side on political matters and we do not want to do this.

I am sorry for the inconvenience caused and the impact to you.

We will arrange for payment of your deposits to be sent back to you.

Kind regards

Matt General Manager Tel: 0151 709 7090, Holiday Inn Liverpool City Centre, Lime Street, Liverpool, L1 1NQ

Feel free to contact Matt to let him know your thoughts on the matter.

What the organisers have still not managed to discover is who  or what is meant by ‘some communications to the hotel’.  Despite phoning over 100 venues in Liverpool and Manchester, no other venue has been found at such short notice so the conference is being held on line. The manager mentions repaying the deposits but of course this won’t cover any of the expenses by people who may have already booked travel and maybe overnight accommodation. Hopefully a Subject Access Review will provide a bit more information.

This is not the first time such censorship has been tried in the UK. The first Better Way conference in 2022 was originally booked to be held in the Assembly Rooms in Bath, but the City Council decided to unilaterally cancel the booking.  Luckily The Apex Conference centre was willing to provide a venue at short notice and of course in 2023 they were the first choice for a repeat booking. 

The Isabel Oakshott/Matt Hancock WhatsApp files had a very successful airing at The Leicester Square Hippodrome in London, after the Emmanuel Centre pulled the plug at the last minute (rumour had it they were told by Matt Hancock’s lawyers that if they held the event, they would in effect be ‘handling stolen goods’)!

We wish The Great Resist team good luck with investigating why the conference was cancelled and finding a new and open venue. 

Meanwhile, Bob Moran, cartoonist extraordinaire, presented ‘Art-pocolypse’ two evenings running in central London at the Bloomsbury Theatre to full houses - a mixture of art, comedy and personal testimony. Those who saw it were posting details of his next appearance, scheduled for the Tyne Theatre & Opera House in Newcastle in January. But only days later, clicking on the link gave a blank screen. 

If you hunt on their website, you can find this chilling statement:

A statement from our Chief Executive regarding the cancellation of Bob Moran’s ART-POCALYPSE:

“Since having our attention brought to specific content posted online by Bob Moran that does not align with our values as a venue or organisation, we have made the decision that we are not the correct host for his ART-POCALYPSE show. While we believe it is everyone’s right to hold and express their own beliefs and opinions on political issues, any public views that could be interpreted as being discriminatory against groups based on their identity directly contradicts our values as a venue.”

We can only suppose this means they think his show would be discriminatory against the vaccinated, but that is confusing since previously the theatre, like many other venues, was discriminating against the ‘unvaccinated’. Or perhaps, more likely, they hadn’t seen it and had no idea who he might be lampooning. It seems a long time since the heady days of Punch magazine, which immortalised the cartoon as a medium for lampooning the politicians and royalty of the time.