The date was August 8th and the Vaxxed team had just wrapped up a two-week tour of Australia, where the communities of parents received their info with great interest. It was time for the team, consisting of a medical doctor, a scientist, a videographer, and a mother of a vaccine-injured son to pass through Australia’s Department of Immigration within the airport on the way to their flight to New Zealand. Three passed through unhassled, one didn’t. Vaxxed team member Polly Tommey describes what happened to her:
“I get taken to one side and that’s when two immigration police take me into a room and tell me that I’ve been detained and ask for my phone…and then they told me that I was in violation of my Visa and they took my phone and went right through everything in my phone. They typed in ‘Australia’ they went through every contact and every email that there had been with myself and the team. They took my phone away and photographed everything.”
In an instant Tommey was a persecuted individual who moments later would find out she was officially banned from Australia for three years. Next, it came time for airport security immigration officers to address one of the reasons Tommey was being harassed:
“Then they asked me about Vaxxed. Did I have a copy of it? Endless questions about Vaxxed being a very dangerous film with lies…I’m a mother recording stories from parents. And parents come to me to tell their stories. I didn’t seek them out, they come to me. And that is more of a threat than anything else?”
How did we get to the point where a mother can be banned from a western country for simply offering a voice to families?
When the documentary Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe burst onto the scene, it was met with censorship attempts from the starting gun. In March 2016, Vaxxed was officially confirmed for inclusion within Tribeca’s New York Film Festival. Yet after a slew of hit pieces from corporate mainstream media outlets, Tribeca with its co-founder Robert DeNiro was forced to quickly pull the film only days after the announcement.
Since it hadn’t been released at that point, the corporate mainstream media’s disparaging attacks on the film fell flat, as the reporters were harshly criticizing a film they hadn’t seen. A look behind the astroturf curtain revealed a media narrative being forced onto the US population. The narrative was abusive, authoritarian, and repulsive for free-thinking Americans, as outlets ran the false headlines using words like “anti-vax,” “quack,” and “debunked.” The media reports backfired in spectacular fashion as countless theaters, multiple international distributors, Amazon, Netflix, and others leaped at the opportunity to show the film over the past year.
The American media lost and it did what it always does when it gets bested by an uncomfortable narrative – it went completely silent. The Vaxxed team seized the buzz created by the film’s controversial debut along with the vacuum created by a full media blackout. The team acquired a bus and traveled the country to connect with the considerable cross section of American families with vaccine-injured children who have been purposely rendered invisible by their fallen regulatory agencies, government representatives, and media.
Without artificially scripting a narrative, the team simply filmed the stories of parents, children, adults, and medical practitioners who told of shocking levels of institutional abuse, an inept healthcare system, and hauntingly similar cases of vaccine injury. Vaccine-injured Americans who were ignored and discarded by the medical system and government agencies once again had a voice, and this time it wasn’t going to be censored. The Vaxxed team was doing the old-fashioned gumshoe detective journalism that the golden age legacy of American media was built upon but abandoned years ago for billions in annual pharmaceutical ad revenue.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world the sun was beginning to set upon medical ethics, informed consent, and justice as the push for mandatory vaccine bills began. Starting years prior, the Australian media began floating the idea of curtailing free speech and punishing parents for refusing to vaccinate their children. In 2013, Australian’s Sydney Morning Herald quoted the Australian Medical Association’s Federal President Dr. Steve Hambleton in the article titled “No Vaccine, No School Says, Says AMA Chief”:
“We need to look at the groups providing those anti-vaccination messages and we need to make sure we stop them…We should certainly make it difficult for [unvaccinated] children to get to school.”
It was clear that the age of censorship was attempting to root in Australia. Also during 2013, the Chairman of Chiropractic Board of Australia (CBA) officially announced the following:
“We will not tolerate registered chiropractors giving misleading or unbalanced advice to patients, or providing advice or care that is not in the patient’s best interests.”
The CBA went further by declaring all registered chiropractors would be required to remove anti-vaccination claims from their websites and would face audits. By 2015 Australia’s legislative framework began to match their media’s authoritarian rhetoric. An amendment nicknamed No Jab, No Pay purposely targeted some of Australia’s most vulnerable communities by cutting the access to childcare services and benefits for low-income families if they don’t vaccinate. The amendment contradicts Australia’s own Department of Health message, which states for consent to be legally valid, a medical procedure (vaccination) “…must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.”
The persecution of the Vaxxed team isn’t the first time Australian pro-vaccine groups acted like censorship-wielding tyrants. In January 2015, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny was invited by Australian vaccine activists to give a series of talks on the topic of vaccine safety, but the Australian Press called for the government to revoke her visa and prevent her from traveling to Australia. In the end, when media hit pieces weren’t enough to stop Dr. Tenpenny, factions within the country resorted to underhanded techniques. After receiving sustained threats from pro-vaccine extremists calling for violence and making bomb threats against venue owners and their families, Dr. Tenpenny was forced to cancel her talks.
Coming back full circle, Vaxxed team member Polly Tommey is yet another canary in the Australian censorship coal mine. There can no longer be a doubt that Australia is at the disappointing forefront of modern-day censorship of the free expression of ideas, information, and speech. During their two-week tour and on the day Tommey was excommunicated from Australia, their media continually attempted to assassinate the team’s character. One outlet claimed Tommey and Dr. Humphries “entered the country on false visas…it is believed they did not declare their intentions to work…” However, as independent journalist Jon Rappoport quickly discovered and reported, the media was just plain lying. Much like the initial New York Vaxxed ‘Tribeca Moment’ from 2016, it appears the media didn’t learn a thing, as Tommey describes:
“They really are fools these people [the Australian media] because first of all, with all their bad press and everything they gave us out there, we had waiting lists for every single venue in Australia. I’ve never seen that anywhere else that we’ve traveled. People calling literally desperate to get in because they told them that it was a dangerous, anti-vaccine pack of lies. So all they’re doing is making people want to go and see what this is about.”
“I get taken to one side and that’s when two immigration police take me into a room and tell me that I’ve been detained and ask for my phone…and then they told me that I was in violation of my Visa and they took my phone and went right through everything in my phone. They typed in ‘Australia’ they went through every contact and every email that there had been with myself and the team. They took my phone away and photographed everything.”
In an instant Tommey was a persecuted individual who moments later would find out she was officially banned from Australia for three years. Next, it came time for airport security immigration officers to address one of the reasons Tommey was being harassed:
“Then they asked me about Vaxxed. Did I have a copy of it? Endless questions about Vaxxed being a very dangerous film with lies…I’m a mother recording stories from parents. And parents come to me to tell their stories. I didn’t seek them out, they come to me. And that is more of a threat than anything else?”
How did we get to the point where a mother can be banned from a western country for simply offering a voice to families?
When the documentary Vaxxed: From Cover Up to Catastrophe burst onto the scene, it was met with censorship attempts from the starting gun. In March 2016, Vaxxed was officially confirmed for inclusion within Tribeca’s New York Film Festival. Yet after a slew of hit pieces from corporate mainstream media outlets, Tribeca with its co-founder Robert DeNiro was forced to quickly pull the film only days after the announcement.
Since it hadn’t been released at that point, the corporate mainstream media’s disparaging attacks on the film fell flat, as the reporters were harshly criticizing a film they hadn’t seen. A look behind the astroturf curtain revealed a media narrative being forced onto the US population. The narrative was abusive, authoritarian, and repulsive for free-thinking Americans, as outlets ran the false headlines using words like “anti-vax,” “quack,” and “debunked.” The media reports backfired in spectacular fashion as countless theaters, multiple international distributors, Amazon, Netflix, and others leaped at the opportunity to show the film over the past year.
The American media lost and it did what it always does when it gets bested by an uncomfortable narrative – it went completely silent. The Vaxxed team seized the buzz created by the film’s controversial debut along with the vacuum created by a full media blackout. The team acquired a bus and traveled the country to connect with the considerable cross section of American families with vaccine-injured children who have been purposely rendered invisible by their fallen regulatory agencies, government representatives, and media.
Without artificially scripting a narrative, the team simply filmed the stories of parents, children, adults, and medical practitioners who told of shocking levels of institutional abuse, an inept healthcare system, and hauntingly similar cases of vaccine injury. Vaccine-injured Americans who were ignored and discarded by the medical system and government agencies once again had a voice, and this time it wasn’t going to be censored. The Vaxxed team was doing the old-fashioned gumshoe detective journalism that the golden age legacy of American media was built upon but abandoned years ago for billions in annual pharmaceutical ad revenue.
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world the sun was beginning to set upon medical ethics, informed consent, and justice as the push for mandatory vaccine bills began. Starting years prior, the Australian media began floating the idea of curtailing free speech and punishing parents for refusing to vaccinate their children. In 2013, Australian’s Sydney Morning Herald quoted the Australian Medical Association’s Federal President Dr. Steve Hambleton in the article titled “No Vaccine, No School Says, Says AMA Chief”:
“We need to look at the groups providing those anti-vaccination messages and we need to make sure we stop them…We should certainly make it difficult for [unvaccinated] children to get to school.”
It was clear that the age of censorship was attempting to root in Australia. Also during 2013, the Chairman of Chiropractic Board of Australia (CBA) officially announced the following:
“We will not tolerate registered chiropractors giving misleading or unbalanced advice to patients, or providing advice or care that is not in the patient’s best interests.”
The CBA went further by declaring all registered chiropractors would be required to remove anti-vaccination claims from their websites and would face audits. By 2015 Australia’s legislative framework began to match their media’s authoritarian rhetoric. An amendment nicknamed No Jab, No Pay purposely targeted some of Australia’s most vulnerable communities by cutting the access to childcare services and benefits for low-income families if they don’t vaccinate. The amendment contradicts Australia’s own Department of Health message, which states for consent to be legally valid, a medical procedure (vaccination) “…must be given voluntarily in the absence of undue pressure, coercion or manipulation.”
The persecution of the Vaxxed team isn’t the first time Australian pro-vaccine groups acted like censorship-wielding tyrants. In January 2015, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny was invited by Australian vaccine activists to give a series of talks on the topic of vaccine safety, but the Australian Press called for the government to revoke her visa and prevent her from traveling to Australia. In the end, when media hit pieces weren’t enough to stop Dr. Tenpenny, factions within the country resorted to underhanded techniques. After receiving sustained threats from pro-vaccine extremists calling for violence and making bomb threats against venue owners and their families, Dr. Tenpenny was forced to cancel her talks.
Coming back full circle, Vaxxed team member Polly Tommey is yet another canary in the Australian censorship coal mine. There can no longer be a doubt that Australia is at the disappointing forefront of modern-day censorship of the free expression of ideas, information, and speech. During their two-week tour and on the day Tommey was excommunicated from Australia, their media continually attempted to assassinate the team’s character. One outlet claimed Tommey and Dr. Humphries “entered the country on false visas…it is believed they did not declare their intentions to work…” However, as independent journalist Jon Rappoport quickly discovered and reported, the media was just plain lying. Much like the initial New York Vaxxed ‘Tribeca Moment’ from 2016, it appears the media didn’t learn a thing, as Tommey describes:
“They really are fools these people [the Australian media] because first of all, with all their bad press and everything they gave us out there, we had waiting lists for every single venue in Australia. I’ve never seen that anywhere else that we’ve traveled. People calling literally desperate to get in because they told them that it was a dangerous, anti-vaccine pack of lies. So all they’re doing is making people want to go and see what this is about.”
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