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THE VACCINE EXPERIMENT BEGINS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | December 18, 2020

Facts about Covid Vaccine rollout: What happened in Australia?; New HCQ study with Dr. Zelenko; Dr. Bhakdi on the Covid shot; Dr. Gold’s 5-point plan

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

What have they got to hide? While trying to dismiss suggestions of ties to UK spooks, Bellingcat founder again lies about finances

By Kit Klarenberg | RT | December 17, 2020

For a man who loves the public eye, and revels in accolades, Bellingcat chief Eliot Higgins is rather evasive when it comes to the funding his group receives from governments, and continually struggles to get his story straight.

On Monday, controversial US government-funded ‘online investigations’ website Bellingcat published a bombshell exclusive, claiming Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny had been closely followed by a host of FSB (Federal Security Service) operatives on his various travels around Russia, before he was allegedly poisoned with Novichok in August. The nerve agent is said to be the most deadly known to man.

At first glance, the evidence presented seems compelling, although significant question marks hover over how the organization was able to access certain data – which included the passport details, vehicle registration information, phone numbers and call records of the alleged agents accused of being involved.

Even staunch Kremlin critics are convinced the material was provided by Western intelligence services in some fashion. In response to an article in which I noted that, among other things, BBC journalist Mark Urban had stated that Bellingcat received many of its sensitive documents as a result of GCHQ hacking, the collective’s founder Higgins took to Twitter to dismiss its significance, falsely claiming I’d been “deployed” for the purpose.

While the piece didn’t tackle the ever-thorny issue of Bellingcat’s finances, in his limp riposte Higgins, for reasons unclear, felt it incumbent to claim details of his organization’s funders, “along with the results of an independent audit” of its accounts, could be found on its website.

This too is an outright lie. While an independent audit of Bellingcat’s accounts for 2019 is available, this relates to its Netherlands-based Stichting, or ‘foundation’, established November 2018, not the UK-based commercial entity, which was founded by Higgins in November 2015. These are two entirely separate legal entities, in different jurisdictions.

The UK-based Bellingcat’s accounts are totally opaque, and while the website’s ‘about’ section does offer a list of funders – which includes the US state-agency National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the amounts each entity gives, and whether this list is comprehensive, isn’t at all clear.

Moreover, Bellingcat’s receipt of funds from the UK’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) is entirely unmentioned. Instead, it’s sparingly and evasively stated that the organization is a “partner” in the Open Information Partnership (OIP), without mentioning the initiative is entirely FCO-bankrolled, to the tune of millions annually.
The OIP is a narrative management, or information warfare, outfit which serves as an umbrella group for various organizations considered amenable to the UK government’s agenda.

Higgins has long-been extremely sensitive about allegations of receiving Whitehall funds, which reached fever pitch in late 2018 when files related to the Integrity Initiative, a secretive FCO military intelligence operation, were leaked by hacktivist collective Anonymous. Several of the documents referred to Bellingcat, some suggesting the two organizations were collaborating on certain projects.

Bellingcat’s founder and chief was repeatedly probed on the question following the file dump, but strenuously denied his company had conducted any work for or with the Initiative, or received FCO funding – denials difficult to maintain when FCO files related to OIP were leaked by Anonymous March 2019.

The documents make it clear that the OIP is a “disinformation factory” which seeks to, among other things, influence “elections taking place in countries of particular interest to the FCO.”

Bellingcat staffers Aric Toler and Christiaan Triebert were named as part of OIP’s ‘training support’ team in one document. When quizzed, Triebert revealed Bellingcat was “subcontracted” by OIP lead partner Zinc Network to “give workshops to journalists in the Baltic States and Balkans” on the FCO’s dime.

It’s not clear how much Bellingcat has reaped from this arrangement to date. Curiously though, given the endeavour’s scope, Triebert said he was “surprised” to see his name in the files, and was unfamiliar with the project, as it hadn’t been discussed with him previously.

It’s surely a supremely strange “small, independent” organization in which staff are offered up for projects without their knowledge or consent, and their employer enters into significant commercial agreements without apparent internal consultation.

In any event, the question of whether there’s any meaningful difference between being “subcontracted” or funded by the UK state is an open one, particularly given OIP is entirely financially reliant upon the FCO, and its activities are wholly directed by the department. Nonetheless, it’s a distinction Higgins and Bellingcat are evidently determinedly keen to maintain, to the point of conscious and deliberate obfuscation.

Ironically though, it may be the FCO that actually wishes to distance itself from Bellingcat. An assessment it commissioned of the organization’s suitability for OIP by Zinc Network found Higgins et al were “discredited” due to “spreading disinformation,” and “being willing to produce reports for anyone willing to pay.” Despite this damning indictment, they were still invited to participate and play a leading role in OIP.

Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Deception | | Leave a comment

Texas hospital botches vaccine PR stunt as nurse jabbed with EMPTY SYRINGE

RT | December 17, 2020

An El Paso, Texas, hospital tried to promote Covid-19 vaccination by turning its first doses into a media event, but the publicity stunt backfired when one of the nurses being inoculated was apparently stuck with an empty syringe.

Video of Tuesday’s vaccinations of five nurses at University Medical Center of El Paso showed the second nurse being jabbed with a needle, but the plunger won’t go down because it’s already at the bottom of the syringe.

The video circulated on social media on Thursday, but rather than focusing on the embarrassing blunder, some observers suggested that posting the footage was an attack meant to diminish public confidence in vaccines.

For instance, when independent journalist Tim Pool tweeted the video on Thursday, Democrat strategist Nate Lerner said, “It’s really weird how anti-vaccine you are. You’ve been hanging out with Alex Jones too much, my guy.”

Another Democrat commenter also smelled an anti-vaxxer rat. “A mistake that probably happened because of the media attention,” he said of the botched shot. “The real question is, what are you trying to accomplish with this tweet? Furthering distrust in institutions that function great while still being susceptible to the occasional bit of human error?”

The hospital issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon, saying the nurse in question was inoculated “again” to “remove any doubt raised that he was not fully vaccinated and further strengthen confidence in the vaccination process.”

University Medical Center, the first hospital in its region to receive the Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, implied that the scene with the apparently empty syringe was legitimate. It said that “re-vaccinating the nurse will not cause adverse effects.”

Twitter users mocked the public-relations blunder. “We must demand higher-quality propaganda,” one observer said.

Other observers pointed out that the El Paso incident is just one of several videos on social media that appear to show deceptive or botched public vaccinations. One such video shows Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk purportedly receiving a flu shot in April, but the syringe is covered with a cap.

According to a Reuters fact-check of the video, however, Palaszczuk had received her shot moments earlier, and the video shows it being re-enacted for photographers.

Also on rt.com:

SECOND health worker in Alaska suffers allergic reaction after getting Pfizer Covid-19 jab

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Instagram is Using False “Fact-Checking” to Protect Joe Biden’s Crime Record From Criticisms

By Glenn Greenwald | December 17, 2020

A long-standing and vehement criticism of Joe Biden is that legislation he championed as a Senator in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly his crime bill of 1994, contributed to the mass incarceration of Americans generally and African-Americans specifically.

Among the many on the left and libertarian right who have voiced this criticism (along with President Trump) is then-Senator Kamala Harris, who said during the 2020 Democratic primary race that Biden’s “crime bill — that 1994 crime bill — it did contribute to mass incarceration in our country.” When Hillary Clinton was running for President in 2015, Bill Clinton, who as president signed Biden’s bill into law, told the NAACP: “I signed a bill that made the problem worse. And I want to admit it.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told Biden during a 2019 presidential debate: “There are people right now in prison for life for drug offenses because you stood up and used that tough-on-crime phony rhetoric that got a lot of people elected but destroyed communities like mine.” Booker then said in an interview with The Huffington Post that that Biden’s “crime bill was shameful, what it did to black and brown communities like mine [and] low-income communities from Appalachia to rural Iowa,” also denouncing it for “overwhelmingly putting people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses that members of Congress and the Senate admit to breaking now.”

In 2016, author and scholar Michele Alexander argued that Hillary did not deserve the votes of black people due to her and her husband’s support for numerous bills, including Biden’s 1994 crime bill, that led to the mass incarceration of African-Americans. Harvard’s Cornel West said in 2019: “When [Biden] says [the 1994 crime bill] didn’t contribute to mass incarceration, I tell him he has to get off his symbolic crack pipe.”

While that debate over the damage done by Biden’s crime bill has long raged in Democratic Party politics and the criminal justice reform movement, it is now barred from being aired on the Facebook-owned social media giant Instagram, or at least is formally denounced as disinformation. With Joe Biden about to enter the White House — one that will exercise significant influence in determining Silicon Valley’s interests, will be filled with tech executives, and was made possible in large part by Silicon Valley’s largesse poured into the Biden/Harris campaign — Instagram has arrogated unto itself the power to declare these well-established criticisms of Biden and his crime bill to be “False” and having “no basis in fact.”

As first noted on Monday by former Sanders campaign organizer Ben Mora, Instagram publicly denounced as “False” a post on Sunday by the left-wing artist and frequent Biden critic Brad Troemel, who has more than 107,000 followers on that platform. Troemel’s post said nothing more than what Biden’s chosen running mate, Kamala Harris, has herself said, as well as numerous mainstream media outlets and countless criminal justice reform advocates have long maintained.

Troemel posted a 1994 photo of a smiling, mullet-sporting Biden standing next to then-President Bill Clinton. The photo contained this caption: “Find someone that looks at you the way Biden looked at Clinton after signed Biden’s crime bill into law. Bringing mass incarceration to black Americans.” This was the same photo and caption which an anonymous Trump supporter under the name “realtina40” first posted back in June.

Shortly after Troemel posted this on Sunday, Instagram appended a note in red letters, with a warning sign that read: “Learn why fact-checkers have indicated that this is false.” That was followed by a note plastered over Troemel’s original post with the title: “False,” and which claimed “independent fact-checkers say this information has no basis in fact.” The same thing was done by Instagram to “realtina40” original June post.

This is not the first time Troemel has been censored by Instagram for posting criticisms of Biden. In response to questions, he told me he first earned the “false” label when posting a meme in April which he had created that mocked Biden’s campaign messaging. Instagram’s retaliation happened after the Biden campaign loudly complained about Troemel’s satirical ad. Biden campaign operatives falsely blamed the Trump campaign for having created it, and then induced Twitter to censor it.

As Troemel told me: “Here you can see Dems using the Russia-tinged cover of disinformation as a way to discredit any and all criticism of Biden found on social media.” When Troemel re-posted that meme last month with the clear notation that it was satirical, Instagram began “shadow banning” him: severely limiting the reach of his posts. It was those events — all involving Troemel’s criticisms of Biden from the left — that caused Instagram to heavily scrutinize his postings, culminating in its blurring of his latest post with a “False” label that contained these well-documented criticisms of Biden’s crime bill.

The only thing that is demonstrably “false” here is Instagram’s Biden-shielding assertion that there is a “fact-checking” consensus that this criticism of Biden’s 1994 crime bill is false. It is true that one media outlet, USA Today, fact-checked the identical claim posted back in June by the anonymous Instagram user and concluded that “our research finds that while the crime bill did increase the prison population in states, it did not bring about a mass incarceration relative to earlier years.” But that article so concluded even while admitting that Biden’s “crime bill did increase the prison population in states” and “any increase in the overall prison population would automatically translate into a larger number of Black inmates.” The article’s own premises thus bolster, not refute, the claim at issue.

But numerous other media outlets and fact-checking organizations — far more than just one — concluded the opposite: namely, that there is at least a reasonable and substantial basis for these claims about Biden’s bill:

  • PolitiFact rated as only “Half True” Biden’s claim that the 1994 crime bill “did not generate mass incarceration,” noting the bill provided funds to states on the condition that they force prisoners to serve longer sentences and that it bolstered the tough-on-crime climate that led to higher incarceration rates in the states (that was the same point Bill Clinton made to the NAACP: “the federal law set a trend…. [W]e had a lot people who were locked up, who were minor actors, for way too long”);
  • The Washington Post’s designated fact-checker Glenn Kessler assigned two Pinocchios to Biden’s insistence that his crime bill “did not generate mass incarceration,” noting that “the bill encouraged states to build more prisons — with more money coming to them if they increased penalties.” Kessler cited a Brennan Center report that “the 1994 Crime Bill is justly criticized for encouraging states to build and fill new prisons.”The Post added: “There are many factors that contributed to the United States having such a high incarceration rate, but few dispute the crime bill was a contributor. Bill Clinton has acknowledged this.” The paper’s “two Pinocchio” rating means Biden’s denial contains “significant omissions and/or exaggerations…. Similar to ‘half true’”);
  • CNN purported to fact-check the same claims from Biden and found that Biden’s denial “misses the broader impact that federal policy can have on the way that states incarcerate, including the influence of federal money,” concluding that the view that the 1994 crime bill was a significant factor in mass incarceration was, at the very least, debatable.
  • The fact-check from NBC News flatly stated that “though the bill was not the root cause of ‘mass incarceration,’ it was ‘the most high-profile legislation to increase the number of people behind bars,’ according to a Brennan Center analysis in 2016.”
  • Fact-checking Sen. Booker’s accusations against Biden, The Atlantic said: “it is true that the bill—which extended the death penalty to 60 new crimes, stiffened sentences, offered states strong financial incentives for building new prisons, and banned a range of assault weapons—helped lead to the wave of mass incarceration that’s resulted in the United States accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prison population.” It added that “a 2016 analysis by the Brennan Center concluded that the 1994 bill contributed both to the subsequent decline in crime and to the doubling of the rate of imprisonment from 1994 to 2009.”
  • The New York Times’ fact-check of Biden’s denial rated it “Exaggerated,” quoting a criminologist to say that Biden’s bill “encouraged [states] to mass incarcerate further.”
  • Regarding Biden’s denial that his 1994 crime bill “led to more prison sentences, more prison cells, and more aggressive policing — especially hurting Black and brown Americans,” Vox pronounced: “The truth, it turns out, is somewhere in the middle,” noting that “the law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states to do the same” and also ensured “an escalation of the War on Drugs.”

One could spend literally all day listing media outlets, criminal justice experts, and politicians from both parties who have insisted that Biden’s 1994 crime bill was a significant factor in mass incarceration generally and of African-Americans specifically, or that the assertion is at least reasonably debatable and grounded in empirical facts — exactly what Instagram has decided is out of bounds to state. It is axiomatically true, or at the very least logically reasonable, that if Biden’s crime bill led to more mass incarceration — and few doubt that it did — then the bill, in the words of the denounced Instagram post, “brought mass incarceration to black Americans.”

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On Monday, The New York Post sought comment from Facebook about Instagram’s “False” label. The tech giant, in the words of that paper, said “that Instagram won’t end its censorship unless USA Today changes its assessment.” Yet the Post — long an advocate for tough-on-crime legislation — itself echoed virtually every other media outlet by noting that “whether Biden’s law contributed to mass incarceration is a matter of debate.”

Indeed, from what I can tell, USA Today is the only prominent media outlet of all the ones which fact-checked this issue to conclude that the claim about Biden’s bill is “false.” The overwhelming consensus of fact-checkers and experts is that the 1994 crime bill at the very least contributed to mass incarceration generally and of African-Americans specifically, and that the magnitude of that role is debatable.

But Instagram has closed this debate, at least on its platform. They have announced that the claims about Biden’s 1994 crime bill as expressed by not only Brad Troemel — but also Kamala Harris, Bill Clinton, Cory Booker, Cornel West, the Brennan Center and countless others — has been proven false.

This episode demonstrates two crucial facts. The first is that what is so often passed off as quasi-scientific, opinion-free “fact-checking” are instead extremely tendentious, subjective and highly debatable opinions. That’s how Instagram can cherry-pick the conclusions of USA Today and treat it as if it is Gospel even though numerous other outlets, mainstream politicians in Biden’s own party, and criminal justice experts reached a radically different conclusion. “Fact-checking” in theory has journalistic value, but it is often nothing more than a branding tactic for media outlets to disguise their highly subjective pronouncements as unchallengeable Truth.

The second, more important point is that Silicon Valley giants lack any competency to determine the truth or falsity of political claims even when they act with the best of motives. Who at Instagram decided to rely on the USA Today claims while ignoring all the conflicting conclusions from other outlets and experts, and who decided how to apply that conclusion to the post at issue? And why did USA Today randomly decide to subject an anti-Biden meme about his crime bill from the account of a relatively obscure, anonymous Trump supporter but ignore similar statements coming from Senators Harris and Booker and Bill Clinton, thus handing Instagram an excuse to label any similar views as “False” and without “any basis”? Why are tech companies trying to officiate political debates this way?

Recall that the censorship of Twitter and Facebook of The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop was based at least in part on the claim that the documents were the by-product of hacking and “Russian disinformation” — claims that have “no basis in fact.” As Matt Taibbi put it last week when warning of the dangers of YouTube’s decision to ban from its platform any questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election while still allowing similar questioning of the 2016 election: “There’s no such thing as a technocratic approach to truth. There are official truths, but those are political rather than scientific determinations, and therefore almost always wrong on some level.”

Moreover, the assumption that tech giants are acting with the best of intentions is completely unwarranted. Like every faction, these companies are awash with bias, partisanship, ideological dogma and self-interest. They overwhelmingly donated to the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign. Their executives are residing in virtually every sector of the Biden/Harris transition. Currying favor with the Biden administration — by, say, soft-censoring or discrediting harmful critiques of the President-elect — serves their corporate interests in multiple ways. And their overwhelmingly establishment-liberal employees are increasingly insistent that views they dislike should be censored off their platforms.

This is why it has been so dangerous, so misguided, to acquiesce to a campaign that is being led by corporate media outlets to insist that these tech giants abandon a belief in a free internet and instead censor more aggressively. That a person will now be declared by Facebook’s properties to be a disseminator of disinformation for voicing long-standing and well-documented criticisms of Joe Biden’s crime record is yet another bleak glimpse of a future in which unseen tech overlords police our discourse by unilaterally arbitrating truth and falsity, decree what are permissible and impermissible ideas, and rigidly setting the boundaries of acceptable debate.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Police Launch Investigation Into Death of Vaccine Safety Advocate Brandy Vaughn

Children’s Health Defense | December 16, 2020

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Monday announced it is investigating the sudden death of Brandy Vaughn, a well-known Pharma whistleblower and advocate for vaccine safety, who died Dec. 7.

A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said in a statement that investigators won’t determine the cause of Vaughn’s death until the completion of a pending toxicology screening, a process that normally takes 4 – 6 weeks.

Brandy’s death was originally reported as resulting from gallbladder complications. But many of her friends and co-activists in the vaccine safety movement suspect foul play. Those suspicions have gained traction due to a wave of mysterious deaths — many of them violent —among alternative and integrative medical doctors in recent years. In response to this trend, Brandy made a Facebook post almost exactly a year before her death in which she said, “If something were to happen to me, I have arranged for a close group of my friends … to hire a team of private investigators to figure out all the details …”

Here’s what Brandy’s Facebook post said on Dec. 1, 2019:

The post I wish didn’t have to write…

But given certain sudden tragedies over the last couple of years, I feel it’s absolutely necessary to post these ten facts…and please screenshot this for the record.

  1. I’ve NEVER had any thoughts of taking my own life, not once, ever. Even before I had my son.
  2. I have a huge mission in this life. Even when they make it very difficult and scary, I would NEVER take my own life. Period.
  3. Bastien means everything to me and I would NEVER leave him. Period. I have sole custody and he needs me as much as I need him. I would NEVER think of leaving him for a second.
  4. I have NEVER been on an anti-depressant nor been diagnosed as depressed — don’t believe it if you ever hear anything like this.
  5. I’ve NEVER taken a daily pharmaceutical drug. And I haven’t taken any pharmaceuticals in 10 years (and ten years ago it was one pill, one day). Nothing over the counter, nothing by prescription. In other words, I’m not on anything that could kill me unexpectedly or suddenly. I’ve never done illegal drugs either. Not even once.
  6. There’s no way anyone could get into my house, no robbers, no angry exes (which I don’t have btw), no fanatical people — my house is like Fort Knox…unless it was someone super professional. It just wouldn’t be possible for anyone without highly special equipment and tactics (I.e. remotely taking down my high-level security system, which they have done before, unfortunately). But my place is also highly secure in a hard-wired kinda way. So even if the power was out, most people could still never get in.
  7. If something were to happen to me, it’s foul play and you know exactly who and why — given my work and mission in this life. I’m also NOT accident prone. And I got the highest health rating possible when I went through a battery of medical tests a couple of years ago for my life insurance policy.
  8. If something were to happen to me, I have arranged for a close group of my friends to start a GoFundMe to hire a team of private investigators to figure out all the details (I have the team and have passed the info on to them). Oh, and money for a PR firm to make It national news. There would be a press release sent to every journalist in this country (and more). It would not be swept under the rug, and it would be their worst nightmare.
  9. There have been many on this mission or a similar one that have been killed and it’s time this bullshit stopped. The darkness cannot win.
  10. I will NEVER stop speaking out for those who no longer can. Even if from the other side, where I imagine I would be FAR MORE powerful.

I have a team of angels surrounding me every step of this journey, but prayers of protection and love are ALWAYS appreciated.

Brandy had followed the stories of a number of natural health physicians and activists who, like herself, were outspoken critics of Big Pharma, and who had died suddenly and in some cases mysteriously.

A former Merck pharmaceutical representative, Brandy founded Learn The Risk in response to one of the nation’s first mandatory vaccination for education laws — SB277 in California.

After leaving the pharmaceutical industry, Brandy spent eight years living in Europe where she saw how healthcare is handled in nations less corrupted by the Pharmaceutical paradigm. She gave birth to her son Bastien while overseas.

Brandy then spent several years researching vaccine ingredients and the risks of vaccinating versus not vaccinating. Brandy chose to raise her son without chemical interference, as in her words, “You owe it to your child to do your own research and not just believe everything you’re told, especially when it’s only one side of the story — the one that prioritizes profit over your child’s health.”

Brandy travelled the world educating people at numerous events, rallies and symposiums. She truly was an inspirational shining light. Her many devoted followers admired her passion, ferocity, fortitude, honesty and especially her amazing knowledge and fearlessness in debating anyone, anywhere, at any time.

A true warrior, great mother and revolutionary, Brandy is survived by her 9-year old son, Bastien, the love of her life. Bastien will join his grandparents and father in France shortly.

Children’s Health Defense will follow the investigation into Brandy’s death and provide updates as they are available.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Corruption | 1 Comment

Twitter Says It Will REMOVE All Posts Claiming Vaccines Can Harm People

By Steve Watson | Summit News | December 17, 2020

Twitter has declared that it will remove all posts that suggest there are any “adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations,” despite reports already emerging of health workers getting sick from taking Pfizer’s coronavirus shot.

Twitter announced that beginning next week it will memory-hole any posts that “invoke a deliberate conspiracy” or “advance harmful, false, or misleading narratives” about vaccines.

“Using a combination of technology and human review, we will begin enforcing this updated policy on December 21, and expanding our actions during the following weeks,” the company proclaimed.

Twitter added that it will be monitoring posts about vaccinations “in close consultation with local, national, and global public health authorities around the world.”

The tech company will also wipe any posts that suggest vaccines “are used to intentionally cause harm,” or “control populations,” or are “unnecessary.”

The statement also notes that posts will be scrubbed if they contain “false claims which have been widely debunked about the adverse impacts or effects of receiving vaccinations.”

Exactly what “debunked” means was not clarified. Presumably it means any claims about vaccines that Twitter disagrees with.

The New York Times and others reported Wednesday that healthcare workers in Alaska have been hospitalized with a serious allergic reaction after taking Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.

The development follows reports last week from Britain where some healthcare workers reported serious allergic reactions to the vaccine, prompting Britain’s medical regulator to issue a warning for people with a history of allergies not to take the shot.

There is a mountain of documented evidence that some vaccines can cause harm and have adverse effects, and compared to previous vaccines, the coronavirus shot is relatively untested, indeed six people even DIED during the rush to develop it.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulators also revealed that some people who got Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine during its trial have since developed Bell’s palsy, a form of facial paralysis.

Both the US and UK governments have rolled out technology specifically to monitor adverse effects of the vaccine, because they know there will be many, many cases.

Yet Twitter appears to be decreeing that any suggestion the shot could cause damage will be met with strict censorship.

Where it cannot prove something has been “debunked” and remove the post entirely, Twitter says it intends to attach “warning” labels to tweets that “advance unsubstantiated rumours, disputed claims, as well as incomplete or out-of-context information about vaccines.”

Last month, Twitter declared that it will send warnings to everyone who likes a post the company deems to contain “misleading information”.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Instagram censors claim that Biden’s 1994 Crime Bill led to ‘mass incarceration’ of black Americans

RT | December 17, 2020

Instagram has been actively censoring a meme about President-elect Joe Biden’s legislative record, after it flagged as “false” an artist’s post linking the ex-Senator’s 1994 Crime Bill to mass incarceration of black Americans.

The political meme, uploaded by Brad Troemel on Wednesday, shows an old photo of Biden and then-President Bill Clinton, along with a caption that reads: “Find someone that looks at you the way Biden looked at Clinton after Clinton signed Biden’s crime bill into law. Bringing mass incarceration to black Americans.”

The Facebook-owned platform quickly flagged Troemel’s image as “false information.” Instagram also cited “independent fact-checkers” from USA Today, who apparently “say this information has no basis in fact.” Thus, before being able to view the image, the platform requires users to first read a disclaimer, which links to a USA Today article allegedly debunking the claim that the 1994 crime bill led to mass incarceration of black Americans.

The so-called “fact check,” written by Doug Stanglin and published in July, asserts that despite the Crime Bill being “a grab-bag of crime-fighting measures,” ‘mass incarceration’ actually began “in the 1960s” and is not a racialized phenomenon.

Troemel’s interaction with Instagram was easy to verify, as the platform still almost immediately slams the “false information” label on a newly uploaded image.

Yet, USA Today’s analysis appears to fly in the face of assessments by both left-wing and some conservative supporters of criminal justice reform.

The issue ultimately appears up for debate, with some critics saying that the Crime Bill contributed massively to mass incarceration, while others split hairs, saying it simply exacerbated an already ongoing trend.

Instagram’s move, however, was largely seen as overly-protective of Biden, with some even calling it political censorship.

Facebook spokesperson Stephanie Otway told the New York Post, that Instagram would not stop flagging the Biden meme, as long as the platform’s “fact-checking partners” keep the rating the same. The Post itself referred to the so-called fact-check as “hotly disputed.”

After his post was flagged, Troemel updated his Instagram bio to say he was “currently shadowbanned for criticizing Joe Biden.”

In October, Biden himself admitted it was a “mistake” to support the bill, after facing renewed criticism over its impacts – and later reiterated the point during the final presidential debate against Donald Trump.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Strategic Victory For China? US Drops Key Project Amid Sri Lanka’s Unrelenting Security Concerns

By Rishikesh Kumar – Sputnik – 17.12.2020

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo paid a visit to Sri Lanka in October to coax the Gotabaya Rajapksa government to sign the Millennium Challenge Cooperation Agreement. A controversy erupted ahead of Pompeo’s visit, as the US called upon Colombo “to make difficult but necessary decisions” to pick sides between Beijing and Washington.

In a major setback amid the growing Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean Region, the US has decided to discontinue a proposed $480 million development assistance programme in Sri Lanka due to “lack of partner country engagement”.

The US Embassy in Colombo on Thursday informed through a press statement that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) board has decided that the approved fund for Sri Lanka will now be made available to other eligible partner countries.

The Millennium Challenge Cooperation Agreement was approved by the previous government of Ranil Wickremesinghe in the last year of his tenure, but he was unable to get approval from parliament, evoking widespread resistance among people who believed it compromised the nation’s sovereignty and national security.

Nevertheless, the US has once again reiterated that the programme, also facing resistance in another South Asian nation, Nepal, is transparent in nature.

“Country ownership, transparency, and accountability for grant results are fundamental to MCC’s development model”, the statement reads.The MCC has been dubbed a “development project aimed at poverty alleviation” by the US, but many people in Sri Lanka consider it a tool to expand military outreach in the Indian Ocean.

The MCC has partnered with nearly 30 countries worldwide on 38 grant agreements, totalling nearly $13.5 billion.

Ties between the two countries soured under the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government as the Trump administration considered it biased in favour of China. The Trump administration also introduced a ban on the entry of Sri Lanka’s Army Chief Lt. Gen. Shavendra Silva – who is considered a war hero in the 30-year battle against Tamil militancy – into the United States on charges of human rights violations.

In October this year, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Dean Thompson urged Sri Lanka to make “difficult but necessary choices” to secure its economic independence instead of choosing opaque practices in an apparent reference to China deepening its relations with the South Asian country. Beijing reacted to the remark and asked the US to shun a “Cold War” mentality. China has invested nearly $8 billion in infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka, with Colombo Port City and the Hambantota Port Projects being the two major ones.

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Sarajevo’s snub of Lavrov’s visit is in the hope of challenging Serbian power in Bosnia

By Paul Antonopoulos | December 17, 2020

The scandalous refusal of the members of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Željko Komšić and Šefik Džaferović, to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday, indicates what the Republika Srpska has been warning about for years is correct – that BiH is dysfunctional and it is impossible to cooperate with Sarajevo. Their move could also be linked to murmurings in Washington about intentions to destroy the Dayton Agreement that created BiH in 1995. BiH was established as two entities – the mostly Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Serbian-dominated Republika Srpska.

It is not the first time that Bosnian Muslim and Croat representatives have changed their minds before an event or meeting. At the beginning of the Bosnian War, Alija Izetbegović, who in 1992 became the first president of the Presidency of the newly independent BiH, withdrew from the Carrington–Cutileiro peace plan on the same day he met U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmermann, in Sarajevo. Zimmermann denies instructing Izetbegović to withdraw from the 1992 Carrington–Cutileiro peace plan, but it is not hard to connect the dots. Because of Izetbegović’s withdrawal from the peace plan, the Bosnian War violently waged on until December 1995.

Sarajevo maintains a policy of constantly toying with agreements to create diplomatic scandals. However, despite the Bosnian Muslims and Croats continually undermining the unity of BiH by opposing the Republika Sprska, Džaferović and Komšić created perhaps their biggest scandal yet by refusing to meet with Lavrov with an undiplomatic excuse that he did not respect BiH institutions – without providing examples. Instead of holding an already scheduled meeting with him, they decided to hold their own press conference at the same time the Russian Foreign Minister spoke with the third member of the Presidency, the Republika Srpaska’s Milorad Dodik.

“With respect to the Russian Federation as a big and powerful country, we will not agree to become a Russian pawn in the Balkans in their games and conflicts with EU or NATO member countries. We expect them to understand and support this,” Komšić said.

It is possible that the Bosnian Muslim and Croat in the Presidency of BiH misunderstood a short statement from the transitional cabinet of U.S. President-Elect Joe Biden about how the work in Dayton is not finished.

Lavrov, as an extremely experienced diplomat, did not violate any protocol and did everything according to international norms and standards. The obvious problem is that Sarajevo does not want dialogue with Moscow. The Bosnian Muslim and Croat representatives could have taken advantage of the Serbs in BiH, who have a historical, ethnic and religious connection with Russia, to benefit all BiH citizens. Instead they decided to create a scandal and once again divide the country along ethnic and religious lines.

The visit of a foreign minister from a larger and influential country is an opportunity for each country to try and explain their views and improve understanding and relations with each other. If such an opportunity is rejected, it sends a negative message, not only because of the lack of desire to improve relations for mutually beneficial cooperation, but also because it fosters suspicions and tensions.

Komšić’s and Džaferović’s refusal to meet with Lavrov is an irresponsible political decision considering Moscow has always had a principled attitude towards BiH, especially as Moscow is one of the guarantors of the Dayton Agreement. Their decision to snub Lavrov is a reflection of their own frustrations against the Dayton Agreement because Bosnian Muslims are not satisfied with it. This is because they have always had the goal of supremacy and domination over all of BiH, while simultaneously sidelining the Serbs. They continually attempt to disempower the Dayton Agreement in order to achieve their goal through a belief that a better functioning system can be achieved through a centralized Bosnian Muslim dominated state that would gain supremacy over not only the Serbs, but also the Croats, who for now are just enjoying an alliance of necessity with Bosnian Muslims.

Lavrov did not comment on the boycott at a media conference and the Russian Foreign Ministry posted a photo of the meeting without mentioning that the other two presidency members were not present. Publicly, Moscow is showing that this is an unimportant issue. However, within the Kremlin, it is likely decisionmakers are contemplating what to make of this snub and how to react at an appropriate time.

The Russian diplomat’s visit to BiH coincided with the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Dayton peace agreement, which although left BiH as an example of why artificial states like BiH result in failure, it did end the bloodshed that Izetbegović instigated for many years by withdrawing from the Carrington–Cutileiro peace plan in March 1992.

Lavrov emphasized on Monday, the other day before his visit to BiH, that the Dayton agreement must not be changed, referring to comments by Western diplomats, Bosnian politicians and Washington that it needs to be changed.

“I would like to say that any attempt to demolish [the Dayton agreement] can cause the most serious risks and consequences,” Lavrov said.

By snubbing the Russian Foreign Minister, it appears that Komšić and Džaferović are attempting to demolish the Dayton agreement so that Bosnian Muslims and Croats can achieve more power in BiH at the expense of the Republika Srpska.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

 

December 17, 2020 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment