Covid and Human Rights Day
Let's Make Human Rights Come Alive
Dear New Friends and Evolving Community,
Friday, December 10 is Human Rights Day, which has always been sacred to me. It is the day they award the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Twice I have been part of groups that won.
In 1985 it was awarded to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. At the time I was a young mother and speaker for Physicians for Social Responsibility, the US branch of IPPNW. I am a psychologist and set aside my shyness to speak about the image of the enemy and the psychology of the arms race.
In 2017 it was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons for the UN Conference on the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which I attended as an NGO civil society representative for Transcend, International, www.transcend.org.
It seems I am attracted to issues of global survival, including climate and environment, and have been preparing for Covid. Who knew?
Years ago I created a deck of cards with the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UDHR, and added 10 new rights unthought of in 1948 and activities to do with the cards. Info on https://www.consciouspolitics.org
I have more grey hair now.
It evolved into an activity book and journal which I put on Amazon as an e-book and print-on-demand. See description on https://www.consciouspolitics.org/livingrights. It was published last year. I am pleased that I included the Nuremberg Code before it became popularized by our current oppression.
The 8.5 x 11 book has an activity section with 31 activities for a variety of ages, including coloring pages, maze, word search and an activity on Pandemic and Human Rights, a journal section with a page for each article of human rights, and a resource section with a list of Nobel Prize winners (some deserving), books, films, quotes, songs, videos, organizations, ethical codes and more. I added a special section on Nuclear Awakening and Human Rights in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the US Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also has resources to plan events, workshops, and human rights assemblies in schools.
Here are the activities.
I have not been able to promote the book until now, due to disabling exposure to toxic mold and impairments of executive function, legal abuse and violations of my human rights. For many years I was unable write much or read very slowly which was excruciatingly frustrating. I am rebuilding my health, brain function and ability to write.
I would like to have a special Human Rights Day sale on Amazon (I otherwise boycott Amazon, don’t have Prime and avoid Whole Foods) for December 10 - 12. I have no idea how to handle the logistics. I am looking for assistance to help manifest my work. If you have skills please write me at ConsciousPoliticsDC@gmail.com.
I am so grateful to Substack for providing a safe platform, having been censored 3 times on Medium, and to Bobby Kennedy Jr. for posting a link to my Open Letter and Challenge for Rachel Maddow IVERMECTIN: Truth or Consequences,
Children’s Health Defense’s The Defender newsletter. This gave me a jump start to building the community I have been aching to have for many years. It has been wonderful to connect with you thoughtful readers and writers and to be out of isolation. This is all new and welcome.
You can look inside here https://www.amazon.com/Living-Rights-Making-Human-Alive-ebook/dp/B08PP2G58G/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=diane+perlman&qid=1607269074&sr=8-1&asin=B08PP2G58G&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
The updated version should be out on Friday.
Since there is an ebook, I put the coloring pages and puzzles on my website for free - available now, and made a template for cards - 5 pages with 8 HR articles on each page that can be printed and cut out so that everybody can have their rights in their pocket.
There are tabs here for free coloring pages card deck, and more.https://www.consciouspolitics.org/livingright
The book makes a good holiday gift, also appropriate for Kwanza, being about values and nonmaterialistic. I hope to promote human rights education in schools and beyond.
Here is the Pandemic Activity - much more wordy than the other activities. I welcome feedback. If I get it in time I will consider including in revision.
ACTIVITY 26
Pandemic and Human Rights (Updated December 2021)
COVID-19 has changed much for all life-forms on Earth. In addition to health, the pandemic has exposed and intensified existing human rights violations and created new ones.
Legitimate worries about death and disease have been exploited by manipulation of fear, disinformation, censorship, scapegoating, surveillance and abuse of power. The crisis has magnified conflicts related to freedom, control and coercion. Both rights and health must be vigilantly protected.
By consciously grappling with these rights, we have the potential to improve actual health, equity and social justice. If we rise to the occasion, we can also effect a global transformation that can save us from the scourges of war, climate breakdown and the abuse of technology.
Unequal Impact of COVID-19: People of color and the poor have higher rates of chronic diseases which rendered them more vulnerable to Covid. They faced disparities in testing, treatment, the severity and death rates. Systemic causes include unequal treatment in the health care system, lack of access to quality healthcare, fresh produce, and nutrition, and higher exposure to pollution and toxins, compounded by institutional failure by some to take their complaints seriously and irrational beliefs in higher pain thresholds.
These disparities cause suffering in the form of unrelenting stress from racism, constant fear of profiling, the witnessing of the murders of innocents, economic and educational deprivation, humiliation and frustration about barriers to equality.
Vulnerability, Comorbidity and Human Rights: People of all races and wealth levels with “comorbidities” (e.g., diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, chronic heart and kidney disease, asthma, and immune deficiencies) have far higher death rates. Compared with high income OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), the US spends more of GDP on healthcare yet has twice the rate of chronic disease and obesity, high hospitalizations from preventable causes and the highest rate of avoidable deaths. Much is known about prevention of disease, including nutrition, exercise, the avoidance of toxic exposures, boosting the immune system and reducing stress. For more information, see
Collateral Damage: The superficial, unscientific, unsuccessful focus on stopping the spread of Covid by lockdown, has caused greater harm to more people due to unemployment, financial devastation, stress, anxiety, depression, suicide, fear, hunger, loneliness, educational setbacks, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, trauma, heart attacks, etc.
Focusing only on COVID-19 while ignoring collateral damage is like solving only one side of a Rubik’s cube (Mark Davidson’s Uncommon Sense: The Life and Thought of Ludwig von Bertalanffy). By solving only one side, you set back to solution of the puzzle as a whole.
Irrational Lockdown Policies
Transfer of Wealth: Covid exploited the biggest transfer of wealth in history as millions of small businesses were destroyed, jobs were lost, and stores were closed transferring businesses to Walmart, Target, and Amazon, creating many new billionaires.
Social Deprivation: Places of worship were closed, while liquor stores remained opened as essential businesses. Schools were closed, even though not one healthy child has died from Covid and there have been no school outbreaks around the world. Children have strong innate immune systems that handle the virus with no or mild symptoms. Children do not transfer to adults.
Research: “Vaccines” (in name only), are genetic manipulations used for the first time on humans, despite disastrous results in animal testing, insufficient human safety testing, fraudulent studies, elimination of subjects who had adverse reactions, falsification of data, unknown long-term effects, and more.
Data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, (VAERS) https://openvaers.com, despite an estimated 1% - 10% rate of underreporting, revealed higher rates of adverse reactions, injuries, disabilities and deaths in the first 11 months of the fast-tracked ,warp speed mRNA and DNA injection rollout compared to all vaccines over 30 previous years combined.
Suppression of Early Treatment: In the US, people with Covid were told that there were no treatments and advised to go home and come to the hospital when it got worse. Living in fear, people were told there was nothing to do but wait in lockdown for vaccines to save them and humanity.
Frontline doctors, including Drs. Peter McCullough, Pierre Kory, Vladimir Zelenko, Mary Bowen, and Paul Marik, continuously explore early treatments, share experiences and develop highly successful protocols that repurpose safe, inexpensive combinations of drugs and nutraceuticals. Their work was suppressed, research censored. Many were fired, threatened and defamed. Covid has a very high recovery rate, especially if treated in the first days. Deprived of early treatment, coming to the hospital at advanced stages., many died unnecessarily. Hospitals were paid incentives to diagnose people with Covid, to put them on ventilators with very high death rates.
Adverse “Vaccine” Reactions: Those with adverse reactions to the injections during clinical trials were excluded from the study. “Post-marketing” adverse reactions and deaths after the trials are ignored, denies, dismissed, diagnosed as anxiety, and censored. Victims experience that medical authorities denied association of their injuries to the vaccines and abandoned them.
Helplessness vs. the Right to Information, Immune Enhancement and Empowerment: Public health is about behaviors and contagion—not about metabolic and immune function and factors that enable people to reduce severity and duration of infections. We hear almost nothing about prevention, optimal health and resilience.
We are not informed about empowering actions that improve health and reduce fear, including well-researched, safe, immune-boosting foods, supplements and treatments with demonstrated antiviral, anti-inflammatory and sepsis-preventing effects that can reduce Covid severity, duration, and prevent the inflammatory cytokine storm, a major factor in death. A healthy immune system and metabolism are the best defenses against COVID-19. Promising, natural, safe, available, preventive measures, inexpensive treatments are suppressed. They are not patentable and cannot make huge profits do not receive funding, publicity or promotion.
The British Frontline Immune Support Team, founded by Charlotte Pulver, provides National Health Service workers with free liposomal vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc packs to bolster immune function.
“Supporting private clients during the Covid-19 pandemic, including doctors and nurses, I’ve been creating preventative immune resilience plans and have helped many people recovering from the onset of symptoms. People coming to me with high fevers, troublesome coughs, chest pain and high levels of fear and anxiety would report within 24 hours of receiving immune support that their fever had gone and their cough had been 90% eradicated, largely due to taking high doses of Vitamin C.” —Charlotte Pulver, Natural healthcare practitioner
Similar protocols are widely reported around the world. Most recommend D3, zinc, selenium, and high doses of C. Other protocols include magnesium, Coenzyme Q10, NAC, glutathione, vitamin A, quercetin, omega 3 and a healthy diet.
mRNA Vaccinations for Children: Healthy children have no chance of dying form Covid. They usually have mild or no symptoms, and achieve naturally immunity which provides herd immunity. Children are incapable of informed consent. They are at much higher risk of adverse reactions, injuries, disabilities and deaths including damage to heart, blood, brain and immune system. Their human rights and bodily integrity are being violated.
Rights and Responsibilities of the Naturally Immune: Those who recovered from Covid have natural immunity which is enduring and robust against variants. They are safe to be around and at higher risk for adverse reactions from Covid shots. They should not be coerced to get injections There is no need for social restrictions and they can be helpful to the vulnerable.
What does COVID-19 have to do with human rights?
● Make a list of human rights issues that might pertain to COVID-19. Discuss.
● What can be done to promote optimal health as a human right?
● We have a right to healthcare to treat disease. Do we also have a right to disease prevention, including clean air (pollution increases death rate), clean water, nutrition, detoxification, fresh produce grown without toxic pesticides, etc.?
● Do we have a right to insurance coverage for integrative, complementary, functional, naturopathic and regenerative medicine to address and correct root causes, repair biology, which can reverse some conditions?
● Do we have a right to the funding of evidence-based, peer-reviewed research on safe, available and natural treatments that support immune function and enhance recovery?
● Consider the concept of “total harm.” Are the lives of non-COVID-19, lockdown victims less valuable than the lives of COVID-19 victims? Is it a forced choice? Who decides?
● Do we have a right to hear from scientists other than virologists and epidemiologists, like immunologists, naturopaths, risk assessment experts,, psychologists, etc.?
● Can we design optimal, varied strategies to protect the maximum number of people?
● Design policies that can simultaneously protect those vulnerable to COVID-19 without causing harm to others—for schools, places of worship, businesses, etc.
● What human rights issues are relevant to research and clinical trials? Consider transparency, ethics, conflicts of interest, funding priorities, treatment of subjects, scientific methodology, truly informed consent, less-profitable alternatives, etc.
● Do we have a right to research that abides by the “gold standard” of randomized, controlled, double-blind studies on subjects representative of the population (not just super healthy) and controls using real, inert placebos on large samples followed long enough to determine short- and long-term reactions?
● Do we have a right to policies promoted by officials with no industry ties or financial interests in the companies and drugs they are promoting?
● Are subjects guaranteed the right to fully informed consent regarding ingredients, risks, side-effects, new experiments and the potential for genetic alterations, etc.?
● Do we have a right to equal funding of research and the promotion of effective, nontoxic treatments that cannot be patented for big profits?
● Should everyone be given immune-boosting supplements, as is done in some countries?
● There are extremely high correlations between vitamin D levels, mildness of symptoms and survival. The government is offering free vaccines. Should the government also provide free testing and vitamin D3 + K? For more information, watch this 13-minute video: https://www.theenergyblueprint.com/vitamin-d-for-covid-and-immune-health/?inf_contact_key=9c228245c65627d03fb6f87be213b566c9b359cd3c30ad03dee6fdfba69fa879
Here is another activity for you (I am having trouble with formatting and spacing text on Substack -
ACTIVITY 28. The Human Rights Pledge and Other Pledges
I will respect your rights regardless of who you are.
I will uphold your rights even when I disagree with you.
When anyone’s human rights are denied,
everyone’s rights are undermined, so I will STAND UP.
I will raise my voice. I will take action.
I will use my rights to stand up for your rights.
· Can you voluntarily take the pledge? Do you have any reservations?
· Would you make any changes?
· Would you want others to take the pledge o uphold your rights? to
When have you or others succeeded or failed to uphold the rights of others?
● Tell a story of someone who stood up for others.
● Are those with more rights better able to stand up for those without? For example, whites for Blacks, men for women, straight people for gay people, free people for those enslaved, imprisoned or living under occupation.
● Do those with more rights have a responsibility to stand up for others?
● What can people who lack rights do to stand up for themselves?
● What does it mean to take a pledge?
● Think of one thing you can pledge to now or in the future.
Check out page 156 in Section 4 for examples of oaths and codes.
· Do we need pledges, oaths and codes? If so, why?
· Look up ethical codes for any field—doctors, nurses, psychologists, clergy, lawyers, businesses, nonprofits, journalists, media, the military, etc.
· Check out the Geneva Conventions and other laws of war.
● Check out the Graduation Pledge on page 157. Many who took the pledge later challenged the companies they worked for. Can you take it?
● Check out the Cancun Business and Biodiversity Pledge on page 158
● Check out the Nuremberg Code on page 163. How is it relevant today?
● Write a pledge for yourself; your family; your school; your place of work; your political or social organization; or your religious, ethnic or other group.
LIVING RIGHTS ENDORSEMENTS
“This book is an invitation to act, to make a difference, to live with meaning on front after front. Each right constitutes an imperative to address a disparity, to reject the status quo, to define oneself as an activist. Each triggers an awareness that may come from outside but somehow activates something inside. We recognize a mandate that we can no longer ignore to circumstances we might have been numbed to in the past. It awakens something inside us, something right, something that we know is ours.
“Silence and inaction are not neutral. Read this book. Live with meaning.”
Edgar S. Cahn PhD, JD, legal professor, former counsel and speechwriter to Robert F. Kennedy, Executive Assistant to Sargent Shriver, co-founder the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia
“The importance of ‘Making Human Rights Come Alive’ cannot be overstated. Faith communities committed to social justice, ecological integrity and sustainable peace understand well that a practical articulation of values we hold dear is contained in the compendium of universal human rights. Diane Perlman’s excellent, practical resource can help generate the deeper thinking and civic engagement so desperately needed in our broken world.”
Marie Dennis, Senior Advisor to the Secretary General, Co-President (2007-2019), Pax Christi International
“As citizens, we will enjoy more secure and meaningful lives if we promote human rights for ourselves and for people everywhere. Diane Perlman’s Making Human Rights Come Alive ingeniously guides readers through interactive activities of many kinds, imparting all the while a deep appreciation of why we owe it to ourselves and to others to learn as much as we can about human rights, and then practice what we learn throughout our lives.”
Richard Falk, author, international law professor at Princeton University, United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”
“It is with great pleasure that I endorse Diane Perlman’s book and Journal. It is a cry for justice that brings Human Rights to our attention in our busy lives and remind us of our brotherhood and sisterhood for all. It is an inspiration for the young and old to look at life as a joy and see how many people accept and recognize that every person has rights. It is an example for children, families and communities to use this book for education to bring human rights as the basis of human dignity. It is a gift of the spirit to those whose rights have been violated and feel depressed to show them that they have the same inalienable Human Rights without exception.”
Mubarak Awad, a Christian Palestinian-American psychologist, referred to as the Palestinian Gandhi, founder of Nonviolence International
“Diane Perlman is right: Many people around the world are not aware that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights exists. This book, together with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights cards, offer a great experiential way to everyone to get a deeper understanding of our common humanity and our place in history, and to appreciate why human rights ideals are such a revelation and gift to humanity.”
Evelin Lindner, PhDs, founding president of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize
“Diane Perlman takes on a subject that most Americans either ignore or know nothing about—the role of human rights whistleblowers in the functioning of our democracy. What is a democracy without respect for human rights, without transparency, without honesty, without those sentinels of the public trust promoting ethics and morality in our society? A society cannot exist without the whistleblower. And without human rights, the United States as a beacon of freedom is simply a myth.”
John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower on torture, former CIA analyst, and senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
“As a literacy educator and researcher, I define literacy as the capacity to navigate the world. Together, we can work to build a society where every person is not only equipped with reading skills, but also with information literacy, digital literacy, financial literacy, health literacy, environmental literacy, and political literacy. Dr. Perlman provides the backbones for the development of another fundamental literacy: rights literacy.”
Allister Chang, Member, DC State Board of Education
“Dr. Perlman brings an intimate, personal, deeply human approach to the greatest, most imminent threat to human rights and sustaining civilization—the possibility of the explosive use of nuclear weapons by accident, design, or madness. Often the issue of addressing the production and threat to use these horrific devices remains abstract and in the distant realm of complex geopolitics. Dr. Perlman’s work helps bring it into our lives, where it belongs. Ignoring, denying, or avoiding the issue will not serve us well. Facing reality is the first step to improving it. Thank you, Diane, for this book and bringing attention to the nuclear threat as the ultimate human rights violation to help us move to a safer, saner world.”
Jonathan Granoff, President Global Security Institute
How heartbreaking to have this Human Rights Day marred by the UK High Court's decision to hand over Julian Assange to the Biden Administration, still smarting over Hillary Clinton's loss. While Wikileaks publicizing the DNC emails plotting to cheat Bernie out of the nomination partly contributed to the loss, it's not like Democrats are entitled to keep their cheating secret.