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‘Health passports’ for air travel mean mandatory Covid-19 vaccines cloaked in the illusion of choice

By Helen Buyniski | RT | November 24, 2020

An airline lobbying group has volunteered its service as private-sector enforcer for the Covid vaccine mandates many countries have promised not to enact. Good luck flying – or getting a job, or government benefits – without one.

The CEO of Australian airline Qantas got a less than enthusiastic reaction earlier this week when he suggested all international travelers will soon be required to provide proof of vaccination against the novel coronavirus before they’ll be allowed on board.

While establishment types thought it was a smashing idea, skeptics were horrified at the thoughts that a private corporation could force them to consume a pharmaceutical concoction just to fly.

The most sinister aspect of such a policy, however, is that it won’t be forced at all. Wannabe-travelers can either take the rushed-through, side-effect-ridden jab, or stay home.

The illusion of ‘choice’ adroitly skirts the thicket of legal issues surrounding mandatory vaccination in most Western countries, as even the most draconian pandemic emergency laws run into difficulties when they try to mandate what would amount to pharmaceutical experiments on unwilling participants. The Nuremberg Code, and the Geneva Convention, for that matter, exist for a reason, and the nuclear-level public shaming deployed against so-called ‘anti-vaxxers’ can only do so much.

Deploying the ‘carrot’ – exemption from travel restrictions and weeks-long quarantines, entry into concerts and football matches, and other perks – rather than the ‘stick’ of mandates and arrests is much more likely to drive reluctant populations to the needle.

The government of Slovakia was able to test a whopping 97 percent of its population in under three weeks by rewarding the compliant with certificates excusing them from curfew and gathering restrictions, and the UK’s ‘nudge unit’ is considering embracing this paradigm for vaccination itself. The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a global airline lobbying group, has shown with its backing of Qantas’ questionable quest that it’s 100 percent on board as well.

As the backlash to the Australian airline’s announcement erupted, spearheaded by UK travel agency Tradewinds Travel’s vow not to do business with Qantas going forward, the IATA revealed the entire industry would soon follow in the airline’s footsteps. Not only would passengers need to provide proof of vaccination, but they’d be expected to download and use a mobile ‘health passport’ app. Indeed, the group is already hard at work on a ‘Travel Pass’ that will allow passengers to flash both their vaccination status and Covid-19 test results at the airport – privacy be damned.

The IATA’s efforts have the backing of the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets international standards for air travel. But it’s individual airlines’ private-sector status that makes their promised regulations so valuable to governments who’d otherwise be restricted from impinging on the bodily integrity of their citizens with vaccine mandates. Just as Google, Facebook and Twitter are weaponized by the US and allied governments to dodge citizens’ rights to free speech, airlines can adopt whatever rules they like. Don’t want to get the jab? Buy your own private jet, they’ll say.

The IATA’s Travel Pass is far from the only competitor in the health passport field, either. The World Economic Forum’s CommonPass, funded by the pandemic-ubiquitous Rockefeller Foundation, emerged as the clear frontrunner earlier this month when three airline conglomerates lined up behind it, issuing a joint statement urging governments to embrace privacy-destroying health passports over freedom-trampling quarantines.

Indeed, it was the WEF which drew up the prototype for these health passports years ago with its Known Traveler Digital Identity program. The organization coyly admitted it’s currently testing “components of the KTDI concept in a real-life, cross-border context” and working with the IATA as well as the International Civil Aviation Organization to shove the program down the world’s throat.

Not that it’ll need much shoving. The powers-that-be seem confident that, after ‘Lockdown 2.0’, most people will be so eaten up with cabin fever they’ll jump through any hoop imaginable just to climb onboard a plane and get out of wherever they are. ‘Flights to nowhere’ taking off and landing at the same airports in Australia and Hong Kong earlier this year have already proved frequent flyers are jonesing to get back in the air.

But even the most desperate would-be traveler should be wary of what they’re signing up for. The WEF has made no secret of its desire to get rid of cash in its sprawling ‘Great Reset’ plot, embracing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) tracked via blockchain (just like CommonPass, KTDI and other variations of the health passport). The establishment has strongly hinted that individuals who want to work in this brave new world will have to have their vaccines up to date, and a cashless society means the non-compliant won’t just be barred from travel and toil – they’ll be prohibited from conducting any transactions at all.

Sure, it will be great to be able to travel the world again. But is it really worth turning over the last shreds of privacy and control over one’s own body to a group of unelected, unaccountable megalomaniacs?

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

November 24, 2020 - Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, International Air Transport Association