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My own country of Canada expelled me because my Covid immunity was acquired naturally and not from a vaccine

Public Health Agency of Canada staff stand at their positions at Vancouver International Airport © Reuters
By Rachel Marsden | RT | August 3, 2021

I went home to visit my mother. Canada tried to force me into a Covid detention facility threatening fines and police action as they don’t recognize my natural immunity. I had no choice but to immediately fly back to Europe.

At the time of writing, I’m at an altitude of exactly 11,277m, 5,230km away from Vancouver, Canada, and 3,159km from my stopover in Munich, Germany, en route back to Paris, France. Where I really should be is relaxing on the backyard patio or in the jacuzzi at my home near Vancouver with a cold drink on a hot summer day. Instead, I’m on a Lufthansa flight heading back to Paris – just a few hours after arriving across the ocean on a 10-hour flight – because my own country’s officials kicked me out. All because I committed the apparent violation of trying to re-enter my own country with proof of naturally acquired Covid-19 antibodies made by my own immune system post-recovery rather than those generated by the manmade Covid-19 vaccine about which much is still to be learned.

Daily life for a Covid-19 survivor with natural immunity from the disease is not for the faint of heart. As someone with a high level of laboratory tested antibodies whose levels have yet to drop even after several months post-illness, my doctor has advised against vaccination. Much is obviously still to be learned about the Covid jabs, still in stage 3 of clinical trials and considered experimental by health authorities – particularly with reports abounding of breakthrough cases of vaccinated people catching and spreading Covid.

To protect and preserve my acquired immunity by opting out of vaccination that risks interfering with it or causing a risk to my health, France now requires me to succumb to nasal swab antigen tests every 48 hours if I wish to continue accessing everyday venues like public transit, gyms, restaurants, some shopping malls, and bars. But it’s a price that I’m willing to pay for my health.

And now I’m paying another price for choosing to protect my own health. I’ve found myself threatened with internment by the Canadian government – something that not even terror suspects or illegal immigrants are subjected to without at least a hearing.

When I attempted to return home from Paris to Vancouver to visit my elderly mother for the first time in a year, I was treated worse than a criminal. I arrived at the airport with a negative PCR test, two positive Covid antibody tests from March and July proving that I still had significant Covid antibodies post-recovery, and a ‘covid immunity certificate’ written and signed by my French doctor to confirm this fact.

The Canadian border officer refused to accept the antibody laboratory test results as proof that I had recovered and was immune from Covid. He wanted a PCR test less than three months ago, after which everyone is expected to take the vaccine. (I didn’t even know that I had Covid until I took a serology antibody test weeks later.) Nor did the officer show any consideration for the negative PCR test taken hours at departure, or for the various other antigen tests – all negative – taken every 48 hours for the prior 10 days. Instead, he ordered me to sign up for a 3-day stay at a government internment facility (to then be followed by a mandatory and monitored 14-day home isolation).

I was then referred to a federal health officer who asked if I had signed up and paid (up to $2,000) for the 3-day government internment. I said no. She said that I had no choice except with respect to which government-contracted facility I’d like to be detained in at my own expense. I asked, “What if I just walk out?” She gestured to the RCMP officer behind her and said that leaving would result in a fine of nearly $6,000. I asked, “Then what if I just stay here in the airport and book a flight back to Paris and cancel my entire visit back home to Canada?” She replied that it would be fine. So, I booked a flight back on my phone at a cost of just over $1,500 – still cheaper than the government internment. She took down my return flight number, wrote me up a federal ‘health order’ that I had to sign, acknowledging that I was to leave Canada on that flight or face criminal penalties up to and including imprisonment. She helpfully added that I could still be fined for my ignorance, but they’d graciously let me off with a warning this time. What a benevolent budding authoritarian regime.

Let’s be clear: The Canadian government, by behaving in this manner, is routinely criminalizing those with Covid antibodies that are not derived from a manufactured experimental vaccine.

Just a few hours later, I am now on that flight back to Paris. My mother broke down in tears waiting for me on the other side of the arrivals hall as her daughter was expelled from her own country – something that Canada doesn’t even do with terror suspects without some kind of due process.

The next step for myself and others subjected to this discrimination should be a court challenge to the federal government’s actions. Government-ordered internment facilities for immune Covid survivors under threat of incarceration have no place in any democracy.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 2 Comments

American Tax Dollars Financing Israeli Tourist Park Atop Historic Palestinian Neighborhood

Illegal colonist throws eggs
By Jessica Buxbaum | MintPress News | July 12, 2021

Roughly 2.5 miles from Sheikh Jarrah — the Palestinian neighborhood that grabbed the world’s attention in May — lies Silwan. This neighborhood in Occupied East Jerusalem is perched atop the steep slopes just outside the Old City. Houses are tightly compacted and stacked on top of each other as they dip into the valley below. And here, Palestinian residents face the same fate as their brethren in Sheikh Jarrah.

Israeli forces raided the al-Bustan neighborhood in Silwan with bulldozers on June 29 — razing a butcher shop and dispersing Palestinian protesters defending their homes with tear gas, stun grenades, batons and rubber-coated steel bullets. At least 13 people were injured and six arrested including the owner of the butcher shop, Nidal al-Rajabi, and his sons and brothers.

In regard to the recent demolition, Norwegian Refugee Council’s Palestine country director, Caroline Ort, said in a press release, “Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel has an obligation to protect civilians under its occupation and to refrain from destroying private property.”

Al-Rajabi’s store was destroyed on the pretext of lacking a building permit. Various human rights organizations involved in the issue state conflicting numbers, but according to Fakhri Abu Diab, spokesman for Silwan, 16 buildings in al-Bustan are also at immediate risk of being torn down. About 1,500 Palestinians live in more than a hundred houses in al-Bustan.

On June 7, two structures — including the butcher shop — received notices from the Municipality of Jerusalem to self-demolish their homes within 21 days or municipality authorities would do so and charge the residents the demolition fees, calculated at about $6,000.

Amy Cohen, director of International Relations and Advocacy at Ir Amim, a Jerusalem nonprofit, told MintPress News the second structure, a residential unit, has yet to receive a visit from municipality inspectors. Government officials typically come to a building with a pending demolition order to check whether it has already been demolished by the owners. If not, the inspectors then notify the residents that Israeli authorities will carry out the demolition within days, or even within 24 hours.

Discriminatory housing policies

According to Ir Amim, 68 homes in al-Bustan have pending demolition orders so as to execute the Jerusalem Municipality’s “King’s Garden” plan. The municipality outlined the initiative in 2010, stating:

The King’s Garden area [al-Bustan in Arabic] will be developed into a tourist and residential district. Commercial sections, restaurants, and art galleries will be built, turning it into a bustling tourist zone. For the first time, the local residents will have the legitimate right to live in this neighborhood.

The development plan has not moved forward since 2010, but the municipality’s recent objection to extending the demolition freeze suggests the plan could be reactivated.

In February, the Jerusalem Municipality filed an objection in the Local Affairs Court against al-Bustan residents’ request to extend the demolition freeze, arguing the proposed zoning plan for the area doesn’t follow proper guidelines and isn’t advancing quick enough. In March, the court ruled to extend the demolition freeze until August 15.

Negotiations have been ongoing between the municipality and the residents to develop a suitable zoning plan for al-Bustan since 2005. In 2009, the residents’ plan was rejected by the municipality in favor of the King’s Garden Plan.

According to Murad Abu Shafee, an al-Bustan resident who received a demolition order, the municipality told the residents, “This structure plan can’t happen in Israel. This might happen in Europe or any Arab country, but not here.”

“Our plan was very modern and it doesn’t fit with the Israeli government’s standards for East Jerusalem,” Abu Shafee explained. “[Israel] doesn’t want us to have a modern neighborhood. They want us always to be below the line.”

Despite the local court’s ruled extension, 20 demolition cases (including the butcher shop’s order) were excluded from the freeze due to the Israeli Kaminitiz Law — known as Amendment 116 to Israel’s Planning and Building Law — which was fully enacted in 2019. This legislation intensifies enforcement against unauthorized construction and allows for little legal intervention in preventing demolitions of structures built after 2017. The amendment has been partially frozen since 2020 amid ongoing discussions with Palestinian parliamentary members in the Israeli government.

In a statement to MintPress, the Jerusalem Municipality said:

There is no intention to build a ‘biblical garden’ in the area. This is a false claim. The area is designated for gardens and parks for the benefit of the local residents of Silwan.

The vast majority of demolition orders in Al-Bustan are suspended. There are a very few demolition orders that the court has recently decided to unfreeze. It should be emphasized that these orders are old. No new orders [were] issued whatsoever.

As to the execution [of] these orders, the municipality is obliged to act in accordance with the law and with the court rulings. We are still studying the latest ruling profoundly, and will decide on our next steps according to the situation on the ground.

The municipality noted that al-Bustan is designated as a green area because of its location near the Kidron River. Jeff Halper, director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, explained that when Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 following the Six-Day War, it declared the entirety of East Jerusalem as open, green space, meaning the area is frozen for future building.

Halper pointed out the hypocrisy of this development policy in how Israel treats settlement building versus Palestinian building, explaining:

Today, more than a hundred thousand Israelis live in East Jerusalem in these big settlements. But if East Jerusalem was frozen 100 percent for building, then how did you get all that building for Israelis? The answer is Israel rezones for Jewish settlements. But when a Palestinian wants to build, [the government] says, ‘Sorry, this area isn’t zoned for residential development but for open, green space. So, it’s really the use of bureaucracy and law and planning as tools of control.”

Construction in al-Bustan was done primarily by Palestinian residents themselves on their own land, but often without the necessary building permits. Ir Amim’s Cohen explained this is mostly owing to a lack of viable zoning plans rather than the municipality’s flat-out rejection of building permits:

With the absence of an outline plan, residents are precluded from acquiring the permits. You either have a lack of a zoning plan or you have such outdated zoning plans, which are from say 30 to 40 years ago, that it’s impossible to then receive building permits. And this is a very acute way that the Israeli authorities have neglected their municipal responsibility to provide this service.”

“Since 1967, this has been a means to suppress Palestinian building and planning within Palestinian areas,” Cohen concluded.

American tax dollars financing settler activity

Silwan is located in the Holy Basin—an  area coveted by religious settlers for its proximity to the Old City and alleged connections to King David. Ir David or Elad settler organization runs the City of David National Park in the al-Bustan area. Since the 1990s, Elad has sought to transform Silwan into a symbol of Jewish biblical past. Al-Bustan is specifically targeted because it stands as an obstacle to achieving Ir David’s vision of a biblical paradise.

Elad’s actions aren’t focused solely on building settlements but also on promoting archaeological excavations, tourist attractions and parks. According to the Foundation for Middle East Peace’s report on al-Bustan, the settlers’ goals became the official policy of the Israeli government in 2005 when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government approved plans to develop the Holy Basin area.

“In essence, the DNA of Elad’s biblical ideology became the DNA of the Government of Israel in and around the Old City, with [the] Government outsourcing many of its authorities to Elad in order to pursue these objectives,” FMEP wrote in its report. “The lines between government and the settlers became so blurred that they almost disappeared.”

Quteibah Odeh — whose family faces displacement in al-Bustan and in Batan al-Hawa, another neighborhood in Silwan and settler target — described the deep interconnections between settlers and the Israeli government, citing as an example that Arieh King is Jerusalem’s deputy mayor but is also a notorious settler leader responsible for displacing Sheikh Jarrah residents. “These settler organizations are the people running the government,” Odeh said. “They receive full support from the military and any ministry and municipality.”

Ir David isn’t just supported by the Israeli government but also backed by American money. Ir David’s sister nonprofit in the U.S., Friends of Ir David, secures tax-exempt donations for the organization.

According to a January investigation by MintPress News, the Hertog Foundation, Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation, Adelson Family Foundation, Mindel Foundation, Samueli Foundation, Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, and the Jewish Communal Fund have all donated to Friends of Ir David. The organization’s biggest contributors are the Irving I Moskowitz and Adelson Family Foundations. In 2018, the Irving I. Moskowitz Foundation gave Friends of Ir David $1.5 million and the Adelson Family Foundation contributed about $3 million.

The Ir David Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Congress members speak out

Israel’s forcible displacement of East Jerusalem Palestinians has caught the attention of the international community, including the U.S. government. On July 1, Illinois Representative Marie Newman delivered a speech on the House floor, urging President Joe Biden’s administration to intervene and stop the ongoing demolitions.

“Today I rise on behalf of the thousands of Palestinian families in the West Bank that face the prospect of eviction, demolition and displacement from their homes by the Israeli government,” the Democratic congresswoman said. “We have received word that demolition orders have already begun for homes in the al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan in East Jerusalem.”

In the face of international condemnations, Silwan spokesman Abu Diab said the recent demolition in al-Bustan demonstrates Israel’s willingness to go against these objections. He elaborated in a statement:

People know members of Congress are speaking out about these issues, yet [the demolition of the butcher shop] proved to the community that Israel is prepared to defy the international community, including members of the U.S. Congress. They assert, yet again, that demolitions and forcible displacement, including Israeli court-ordered evictions, are against international law, are codified as war crimes, and that the occupying power, Israel, has a duty to protect those under its occupation.

The residents of Silwan therefore call on the international community to uphold their third state responsibility, to call on Israel to cease forthwith such illegal policies, with real accountability being the price for any further demolitions or evictions.

As in Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians remain steadfast against Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing efforts. Demonstrations against the demolitions occur daily, Silwan resident Odeh said, adding:

These are our houses. Our parents, our grandparents and our great grandparents have lived here. We have memories, we have history and the people are the past, the present and the future.”

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | 3 Comments

No indication of Iran’s involvement in Israeli tanker attack: Russia

Press TV – August 2, 2021

A senior Russian foreign ministry official strictly rejects existence of any indications pointing to Iran’s likely involvement in a recent attack on an Israeli oil tanker off the Omani coast.

“We have not the slightest reason to believe [that Iran was involved in the attack],” the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Asian Department Director, Zamir Kabulov told Russia’s Sputnik news agency on Monday.

In a statement on Friday, Zodiac Maritime, the Israeli-owned firm managing the tanker, said that two crewmen, a Briton and a Romanian, had been killed in the assault.

The Israeli regime and its sworn allies, the United States and the UK, rushed to accuse Iran of having a role in the incident, without providing any evidence. The Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also alleged that the attack was deliberate and coordinated by Tehran.

Kabulov, however, reiterated Russia’s stance, saying Moscow’s refusal to corroborate such accusations was because “we have no facts.”

“When there are facts, then we will work out our position,” he added.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Britain’s chargé d’affaires and Romania’s ambassador to convey Tehran’s strong protest, reminding the envoys that the source of instability in the Persian Gulf was not the Islamic Republic, but actually extra-regional presence.

Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh has also refuted such accusations as “absolutely groundless,” saying they feature “contradictory,” “hollow,” and “provocative” claims.

The official also sounded a strong warning against any act of adventurism targeting the Islamic Republic’s interests based on the unfounded claims.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | 3 Comments

Have 1,200 Experts Ever Been Proved Wrong So Quickly?

By Toby Young • The daily Sceptic • August 3, 2021

Guido Fawkes reminds us today that over 1,200 so-called experts signed ‘the Declaration’ – cooked up by the same people behind the John Snow Memorandum – warning of the terrible effect easing coronavirus restrictions on July 19th would have. The Declaration originally took the form of a letter in the Lancet, published on July 7th, in which 120 self-described ‘scientists’, many of them members of Independent SAGE, described ‘Freedom Day’ as “dangerous and premature”. They cited the SAGE modelling showing there would be 100,000 new Covid cases a day if the Government went ahead its plans and set out the dire consequences for Britain and the rest of the world. “We believe the Government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19th, 2021,” they wrote.

Two weeks on from ‘Freedom Day’, their predictions aren’t holding up terribly well.

According to Public Health England, the number of new daily cases fell to 21,691 today, another five-week low. So the 1,200 signatories of the Declaration exaggerated the number of daily cases that would follow ‘Freedom Day’ by 500%.

The Lancet letter also predicted that hospital admissions would soar as a result of Boris’s recklessness:

The link between cases and hospital admissions has not been broken, and rising case numbers will inevitably lead to increased hospital admissions, applying further pressure at a time when millions of people are waiting for medical procedures and routine care.

Perhaps they should have thought twice before inserting that word “inevitably” because the latest data shows hospital admissions falling. “Another 731 admissions were recorded by officials on July 30th, the latest date available – down 15% on the week before,” reports MailOnline.

And it wasn’t just these 1,200 ‘experts’ who were sounding the alarm. Let’s not forget that Keir Starmer also described Boris’s plan to ease restrictions as “reckless”.

And, of course, our old friend Neil Ferguson said on July 18th that it was “almost inevitable” that daily cases would climb to 100,000 a day if Boris went ahead with the unlocking the following day and added that “the real question” was whether they would reach 200,000 a day or more and warned of a “significant burden on the healthcare system”. Out by 1000% – which is actually pretty modest by Ferguson’s standards.

As Guido Fawkes says: “Guido can’t remember a time 1,200 so-called experts were proven so wrong in one fell swoop…”

Boris’s decision to go ahead with ‘Freedom Day’ is the first time I can think of in the past 16 months when he’s stuck to his guns in the face of wildly apocalyptic claims from various ‘experts’ about the consequences of “letting it rip” (their phrase for giving us our freedoms back). On every previous occasion, because he’s done exactly as these gloomsters have asked, they haven’t been proved wrong. Admittedly, locking down three times hasn’t stopped the U.K. from having one of the worst Covid death tolls in Europe, and Sweden’s excess deaths in 2020 were lower than ours in spite of not locking down. But the crystal ball gazers have always been able to argue that things would have been so much worse if we hadn’t locked down. Yet this time – finally – Boris ignored their doom-mongering and, as a result, they have been proved spectacularly – and humiliatingly – wrong.

Will this experience stiffen Boris’s backbone the next time he’s prevailed upon by the Government’s scientific advisers, sundry public health experts and the chin-wobblers in the Cabinet to lock down again, which really is inevitable? We can but hope.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

2020 Election Audits: Dominion & Maricopa County Defy Arizona GOP’s Subpoenas, DoJ Issues Warning

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 03.08.2021

Last week, the Arizona state Senate requested election materials from Maricopa County and Dominion Voting Systems. However, county officials and voting machine manufacturers refused to comply with the Senate’s latest subpoenas, arguing that they are “invalid.” Earlier, the US DoJ yet again warned the states against conducting 2020 election audits.

Maricopa County’s Board of Supervisors and Dominion Voting Systems have resolutely defied the Arizona state Senate’s subpoenas requesting the election-related materials necessary to complete the audit of the 2020 election results in the state’s most populous county.

On 26 July, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Judiciary Committee Chairman Warren Petersen issued two subpoenas particularly seeking ballot envelopes or ballot envelope images, voter records, security keys for election machines, user names, passwords, routers or router images, and splunk logs.

However, in response, Maricopa County officials claimed that they do not have the user names, passwords, or security keys requested for the machines. They also refused to hand over routers or router images, or splunk logs, insisting that doing so would constitute “a security risk.” Ballot envelopes and voter records would be produced only if there’s confirmation “that appropriate security measures are in place”, highlighted the county’s attorney Allister Adel, as quoted by the Epoch Times.

​Both Adel and Eric Spencer, a lawyer representing Dominion Voting Systems, noted that the Arizona GOP’s subpoenas were “legally defective”, as they were issued while the state Senate was out of session.

“Because the Subpoena is illegal and unenforceable, Dominion hopes that litigation over the Subpoena will not be necessary,” Spencer wrote. “Should litigation result, however, Dominion intends to pursue all remedies available to it, including (but not necessarily limited to) recovery of its attorneys’ fees, expenses, and damages.”

According to The Epoch Times, the Arizona state Senate is unlikely to vote on formalising the subpoena request in the near term, because, first, the Senate is still not in session and, second, two Arizona state Republicans have recently signalled that they now oppose the audit, which means that any such vote would fail.

However, the refusal of Maricopa officials and Dominion to deliver requested materials does not basically stem from the fact that Fann’s subpoena appears “invalid”. The Maricopa Board of Supervisors similarly refused to fully comply with the state Senate’s previous subpoena request, recognised as legit by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason in February 2021.

For its part, Dominion has made it clear that it “is not a public officer or public body and, therefore, has no obligation to make its records available for public inspection”. The company refused to either produce or allow the inspection of any election-related materials owned by it in response to Senate President Fann’s 23 July public record request.

​Meanwhile, Maricopa Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers minced no words in his categorical statement urging the state Senators to “be prepared to defend any accusations of misdeeds in court”: “It is now August of 2021,” he wrote to Arizona Republican senators. “The election of November 2020 is over. If you haven’t figured out that the election in Maricopa County was free, fair, and accurate yet, I’m not sure you ever will.”

DoJ Meddling in State Election Audits, Again

While the Arizona Senate is reportedly preparing a formal response to the county and Dominion, Axios has drawn attention to the fact that the refusal to comply with the subpoenas came just days after the US Justice Department issued a “second warning” to states conducting audits of the 2020 election, called by the agency “the most secure in American history”.

On 28 July, the DoJ released a document titled Federal Law Constraints on Post-Election “Audits” which argues that regardless of the relevant state laws under which the states are conducting examination of the 2020 election results “federal law imposes additional constraints with which every jurisdiction must comply.” Furthermore, non-compliance with these federal laws may result in criminal penalties, the DoJ warned.

In particular, the agency expressed concerns that “some jurisdictions conducting [audits] may be using, or proposing to use, procedures that risk violating the Civil Rights Act”, which requires election officials to retain federal election records for at least 22 months after an election. The first warning was issued by the DoJ over the Arizona election audit in May 2021.

​However, the DoJ has fallen short of specifying whether it plans to take any action against Arizona and other states pursuing audits, as BuzzFeed remarked last Wednesday.

In addition to Arizona, which has been conducting its independent forensic audit since April, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin are seeking to carry out similar examinations of ballots, voting equipment and other materials related to the US 2020 elections. Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly endorsed the states’ legislative initiative, calling upon other states to follow suit. Independent auditors, election integrity activists and Republican officials in a number of states have called out instances of apparent voting irregularities, including duplicate ballots, non-matching ballot totals and cyber-security problems.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | Leave a comment

The Authoritarian in Charge at the NIH: Unvaccinated People Should be Fired, Banned from Public Places, and Barred from Travel

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | August 3, 2021

Francis S. Collins, the director of the United States government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), went full-on authoritarian in his Sunday interview with Jake Tapper at CNN’s State of the Nation. Collins, in the interview, supported in short succession the imposing of several extreme violations of the freedom of people who have chosen not to take experimental coronavirus vaccines — some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term.

Use vaccine passports to prevent these individuals from attending public events and entering businesses, fire them from their jobs, and bar them from traveling, Collins championed.

Here is the portion of the interview from the show’s transcript in which Collins made the comments:

TAPPER: Some businesses are going a step further and beginning to require proof of vaccinations not just for employees, but even for customers in some cases.

Audience members for Broadway plays and musicals will need to be vaccinated. Some bars in San Francisco and D.C. are requiring proof of vaccinations.

Do you think, as a public health measure, it would be good for more businesses to require vaccine credentials in order to have vaccinated customers?

F. COLLINS: As a public health person who wants to see this pandemic end, yes.

I think anything we can do to encourage reluctant folks to get vaccinated because they will want to be part of these public events, that’s a good thing. I’m delighted to see employers like Disney and Walmart coming out and asking their staff now to be vaccinated. I’m glad to see the president has said all federal employees — I oversee NIH with 45,000 people — need to also get vaccinated, or, if they’re not, to get regular testing, which is inconvenient. All of those steps I think are in the right direction. But I think maybe that’s what it will take for some of those who have still been a little reluctant to say, OK, it’s time. The data will support that decision.

TAPPER: Yes.

F. COLLINS: They are making the right choice for their own safety, but, sometimes, it takes a nudge.

TAPPER: Should airlines require that all fliers who are eligible to be vaccinated be vaccinated before boarding their planes?

F. COLLINS: I think that’s up to the airlines.

I do think a case could be made for that. And that would be another incentive for some of those who are reluctant. And people wouldn’t be surprised, I think, to see that start to happen. So, if you’re thinking about international travel and you’re not yet vaccinated, it might be time to go ahead and get started.

Decades back, Americans would hear similar authoritarian comments expressed by politicians and bureaucrats in the Soviet Union, and Americans would shake their heads in disgust. That could never happen here, many Americans would assure themselves.

Now it is one of the top bureaucrats in America expressing the same sort of authoritarian agenda and detailing how it is being implemented with the help of compliant companies. And, like in the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, American big media is cheering on the move. Welcome to the USSA.

Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 2 Comments

Lockdowns, science or voodoo magic? An Interview With Philippe Lemoine

By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • August 3, 2021

Philippe Lemoine is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Cornell University, with a background in computer science. He’s also a blogger, a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, and a lockdown sceptic. During the pandemic, he’s written several detailed articles about the efficacy of lockdowns. I interviewed him via email.

On December 4th, you published an article on your blog titled ‘Lockdowns, science and voodoo magic’, which criticised the well-known paper by Flaxman et al. That paper (which has been cited more than 1,300 times) concluded, “major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission”. Could you briefly summarise your criticisms?

I made two main points against that paper. First, the model assumed that only non-pharmaceutical interventions affected transmission, so any observed reduction in transmission could only be ascribed by the model to non-pharmaceutical interventions. Since in fact transmission went down quickly everywhere during the first wave, the only question was how much of that reduction would the model attribute to each intervention. But the fact that non-pharmaceutical interventions were jointly responsible for the entire reduction in transmission was not something the model inferred from the data, it was assumed at the outset by the authors when they defined the model. A consequence of this fact is that, when they compute a counterfactual scenario in which there weren’t any non-pharmaceutical interventions to estimate how many lives were saved by lockdowns and other restrictions, the authors just assume that cases would have continued to rise until the herd immunity threshold was reached and would only start to go down then. Although the authors did not deem it necessary to reveal this small detail, this meant that, in their counterfactual, more than 95% of the population was already infected by May 3, which is preposterous. Even one year and a half after the beginning of the pandemic, there isn’t a single country where the proportion of the population that has been infected even comes close to such a figure, not even in countries where restrictions were extremely limited. So when the paper finds that non-pharmaceutical interventions in general and lockdowns in particular saved 3 million lives in Europe alone during the first wave, they only reach that conclusion by comparing the actual number of COVID-19 deaths to the number of deaths in a ridiculous scenario where essentially everyone had been infected. Yet this preposterous estimate was taken seriously by the entire scientific establishment and, as you noted, the paper became of the most cited studies on the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second point I made is that, not only was this result based on totally unrealistic assumptions, but the authors failed to disclose a key result that completely undermined their conclusion. As I explained above, the model was bound to attribute the entire reduction in transmission that was observed in Europe during the first wave to non-pharmaceutical interventions, the only question was how much of it would be attributed to each intervention. Their headline result was that, apart from lockdowns, nothing else had any clear effect, which meant that lockdowns were responsible for the overwhelming majority of the 3 million lives that, according to this study, non-pharmaceutical had collectively saved. However, Sweden was included in the study and never locked down, yet only a tiny fraction of its population was infected during the first wave. How is that possible if only lockdowns have a substantial effect on transmission? I knew this made no sense, so I downloaded the code of the paper to reproduce their analysis on my computer and take a closer look at the results. Their model allowed the effect of the last intervention, which happened to be a lockdown everywhere except in Sweden, where it was a ban on public events, in each country to vary. What my analysis of their results showed is that, in order to fit the data, the model had to find that banning public events reduced transmission by ~72.2% in Sweden but only by ~1.6% elsewhere. In other words, according to the model, banning public events had somehow been 45 times more effective in Sweden than anywhere else. Now, unless you believe there are magical anti-pandemic faeries in Sweden that somehow made banning public events 45 times more effective than elsewhere, this obviously never happened. Rather, what this means is that the model was garbage, which in turn means that we have no reason to believe the paper’s headline result that lockdown had a huge effect on transmission. There is a lot more in my piece about that paper, which I methodically demolish, but those are the main points.

Then on March 4th, you published a report for the Centre for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology titled ‘The Case against Lockdowns’. This was followed by an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled ‘The Lockdowns Weren’t Worth It’. Could you briefly summarise the case against lockdowns, as you see it?

First, I think it’s impossible to estimate precisely the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions because too many factors contribute to transmission, and we lack the kind of background knowledge we’d need to be confident that the statistical techniques people use to estimate those effects are reliable, so people who claim to be able to do that are full of it. I just published another piece in which I take a very close look at a study which found that non-pharmaceutical interventions had a substantial effect on the number of cases and deaths in the US during the first wave. This study is far more sophisticated than Flaxman et al.’s paper and, in particular, the authors did not assume that only non-pharmaceutical interventions affect transmission, and tried to model the effect of voluntary behavioral changes. Nevertheless, as I show in my article, when you look at it closely and perform various sensitivity analysis, the conclusions no longer hold. So we have no way to estimate precisely the effects of non-pharmaceutical interventions and we should be honest about this. However, whatever their precise effects, they can’t be huge because otherwise they would be much easier to detect. The contrast with the effect of vaccination is particularly striking in that respect. In the case of vaccination, the effect is so obvious that you can see it on a simple chart, whereas in the case of non-pharmaceutical interventions you have to squint and use very complicated statistical techniques that, although they impress people because they look scientific, we have no reason to think are reliable in this context. Now, if you do a cost-benefit analysis, even if the only costs of lockdowns you take into account is the immediate effect they have on people’s well-being and you make ridiculously optimistic assumptions about how much stringent restrictions reduce transmission, they don’t pass a cost-benefit test. In fact, not only do they fail to pass a cost-benefit test, but it’s not even close. The costs of lockdowns, by which I mean just their immediate effect on well-being, so far outweigh their benefits that one cannot reasonably doubt a more rigorous cost-benefit analysis would reach a different conclusion.

According to some people, claiming that lockdowns don’t have a large effect on the spread of COVID-19 is tantamount to “denying germ theory”. What do you say to those people?

Nobody is denying that transmission occurs during physical interactions, but it doesn’t follow that lockdowns have a large effect on transmission, so people who make this argument simply haven’t thought things through. In theory, lockdowns could even increase transmission, so this argument is very confused. For instance, it could be that, although lockdowns decrease between-household contacts, the effect on transmission at the aggregate level is more than compensated by the increase in within-household contacts they produce. To be clear, I don’t believe this is the case, I’m just saying that it’s a theoretical possibility that obtains in some models, even though nobody denies the germ theory of diseases. There are many possible explanations for why lockdowns don’t result in the very large reduction in transmission that one might have expected. For instance, we don’t expect lockdowns to be equally effective at reducing all types of contacts and, as I just noted, they even increase the frequency of some types of contacts, such as within-household contacts. So it could be that the types of contacts that lockdowns manage to reduce a lot don’t contribute a lot to transmission, while the types of contacts they aren’t very useful for preventing contribute a lot to it. Another important point is that, even in the absence of a lockdown, people change their behavior in response to the pandemic. So it could be that the types of contacts that contribute the most to transmission are the same types of contacts that people tend to reduce voluntarily even in the absence of a lockdown. Anyway, whatever the explanation, it’s pretty clear that lockdowns don’t have a very large effect. It would be very surprising if such a fact were inconsistent with the germ theory of diseases, but fortunately it isn’t. It’s just that people who make this argument are confused. The effectiveness of lockdowns and restrictions in general is an empirical question that cannot be solved by theorizing from the armchair.

Much of your writing about lockdowns has dealt with the deficiencies of epidemiological models. Why have most models done so poorly at predicting the epidemic’s trajectory?

This is a difficult question and I’m not sure what the answer is. I’m very confident that part of the story is that most of those models don’t take into account the kind of voluntary changes of behavior I was just talking about. If your model is based on the assumption that people’s behavior only changes in response to government interventions, it should be no surprise that it performs terribly. But I don’t think it’s the whole story and I increasingly suspect that the fact that models don’t adequately model population structure is another factor. Most epidemiological models that have been used to make projections assume that, withing large age groups, people mix homogeneously. But this is totally unrealistic since, for instance, a 55-year-old is not equally likely to run into any other person in the 50 to 59 age group. Rather, a particular 55-year-old is very likely to have contacts with some people in that age group (such as friends and family), but very unlikely to meet many other people in that age group and has essentially no chance of running into the vast majority of people in that age group. Anyway, nobody really knows why those models perform so terribly at larger scales, but in order to investigate the problem epidemiologists would first have to acknowledge it. Unfortunately, they mostly ignore it and act as if their models had not proven incapable of explaining the data, except in the sense that you can always “explain” any data if you are willing to make enough purely ad hoc hypotheses, so they don’t even get started.

As far as I’m aware, no Western government has published a cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns. Why were these far-reaching policies implemented with so little regard for costs?

As I noted above, any serious cost-benefit analysis would immediately show that lockdowns are not worth it. Yet as you say no Western government has published any to justify their policy. This is particularly surprising when you know that, in most Western governments, the use of cost-benefit analyses is largely institutionalized and the authorities are often required to make one before they can embark on projects as banal as building a bridge. Yet they apparently didn’t feel the need to publish a cost-benefit analysis to justify what are effectively the largest attacks on individual freedoms in the West since the end of World War 2. One interpretation is they realize that, as I noted above, no cost-benefit analysis would ever vindicate lockdowns. But this wouldn’t explain why they are pursuing lockdowns and I don’t believe in that explanation for a second anyway. In a way, if that were really the explanation, I would almost find that reassuring because it would at least imply a level of competence and understanding which I think is entirely lacking from our political leaders. Rather, I think their decisions are the result of a combination of cluelessness not just on their part but also on the part of their advisors and a variety of bad incentives that conspire to create absurd policies, such as the desire not to leave themselves open to the accusation of not having done anything to curb the epidemic. This desire must be strong as they are constantly under pressure from the largely pro-lockdown media to enact more restrictions. In order to answer this unremitting call to “do something”, they do something, even if that’s completely absurd, as long as they have something to show to the people who constantly ask them to “do something”. The idea of measuring the costs of their decisions against their supposed benefits often doesn’t even enter their heads because their decision-process is not governed by rational considerations, but rather by this ungodly combination of emotion, illusion of control, bad incentives and even worse advice.

You’re a Frenchman. Given what we know now, what should Emmanuel Macron have done in March of 2020?

With the benefit of hindsight, I think he should have just told people to try to limit their contacts to reduce the amount of stress on hospitals, but leave them free to make their own choices and focus his efforts on preparing government services to respond as best as possible. I think there are lots of reasons to blame Macron and French officials for their conduct at the beginning of the pandemic, especially for their lack of preparation and their carelessness in the weeks leading up to the explosion of cases in the country, but if we put aside the lies they told repeatedly during that period and since then, they at least had the excuse that we didn’t know much about the virus and how different policies would affect spread. I was in favor of the first lockdown and, while I now think that I was wrong and that I should have predicted lockdowns would become entrenched after we had used them once, it was a genuinely difficult decision because we didn’t know much. But after the first wave there was no longer any excuse and Macron should be judged harshly for keeping us more or less locked down for months after the first wave, even though it was already very clear by that point that restrictions did not make a very large difference to transmission, yet had a very negative impact on the population’s well-being.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The Delta Helter Skelter. When Dire Delta is the excuse for new lockdowns and vaccine mandates, but the truth keeps dribbling out.

Today more news from Israel

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 3, 2021

‘Helter-skelter’ means ‘in chaotic and disorderly haste’.

It seems a good descriptor of how public health mouthpieces are dealing with the facts oozing out of the public health muck regarding the Delta variant. Considering their strategy has been to use Delta to impose ever more harsh and unjustifiable Great Reset measures. Not to mention vaccine mandates. But now things look a lot worse than they did in that CDC slide deck. Check out these official graphs from Israel: not only are cases rising equally in the vaccinated as the unvaccinated, but the vaccinated are not being spared severe illness, as claimed by our plucky CDC director.

If nearly all the elderly and high risk Israelis have been vaccinated, then there would be some benefit of vaccination in warding off severe illness… but still, 2/3 of those with severe illness have been doubly vaccinated.

How can you spin this into a justification for vaccine mandates? You can’t. And unless the authorities can prove there is no ADE [antibody-dependent enhancement], getting a booster could just make things a whole lot worse.

[I think we should stop talking about this as a pandemic response. It is a coup, a Reset of the world as we knew it. The so-called responses simply served to terrorize the public and prolong the illness. ]

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 1 Comment

Spanish Officials to Hire Foreign Snitch Squads to Report on Illegal House Parties

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 3, 2021

Under the justification of stopping the spread of COVID-19, officials on the Spanish island of Ibiza are planning to hire teams of snitch squads made up of foreigners who will report illegal house parties to the authorities.

Yes, really.

Organizers of illegal parties face gigantic fines of up to €600,000 euros, but that apparently hasn’t deterred some people from risking financial ruin after local authorities once again shut down nightclubs and imposed a ban on mixed household gatherings from 1am to 6am.

Local official Mariano Juan appealed for “outside help” after explaining that it was hard for police to infiltrate the parties because officers were known to locals.

He added that authorities are working with a private company to hire “foreigners between 30 and 40 years old” who can infiltrate the parties and then report back to police.

In other words, the government is hiring private snitch squads to grass people up for having fun in their own homes.

“The idea has… been heavily criticised by the Socialist party, which leads the regional administration covering Ibiza,” reports the Guardian. “A spokesperson, Vicent Torres, called on the island’s officials to put forth “serious proposals that have legal backing” rather than “acting irresponsibly by launching ideas that we cannot agree to.”

Draconian efforts to enforce coronavirus rules are still underway despite a recent ruling by Spain’s top court which concluded that the country’s lockdown was unconstitutional.

Spain’s lockdown was characterized by innumerable dystopian facets that confirmed it as one of the most brutal in Europe.

During the first six weeks of the lockdown, stay at home measures were so strict that Spaniards weren’t even allowed to go outside to exercise or walk their dogs.

In one case, police were called after a neighbor spotted two brothers playing soccer in their own back yard.

For many months during hot weather, wearing masks in every outdoor setting, even on beaches, was compulsory and authorities briefly told citizens that wearing masks while swimming in the sea was mandatory.

People were also issued fines of €2,000 euros for “disrespecting” a police officer during lockdown.

Numerous instances of police beating people for not wearing masks also emerged, while protesters at one point freed a woman from police arrest while cops were trying to handcuff her for not wearing a face covering.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | 1 Comment

The Vaccine War: Who really has the upper hand?

By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | August 3, 2021

I don’t believe governments are telling the truth about how many people have taken the COVID shot. I think they’re lying. Inflating the numbers because they’re desperate; far more people than advertised are refusing the vaxx.

In every war, spies and other hired hands try to demoralize the enemy. This is standard operating procedure. Inflating key numbers is one strategy.

In this vaccine war, the ace in the hole is obvious: if enough people say NO to the shot, it’s over. A tidal wave will engulf the governments and their corporate allies.

If people believed, say, that only 30% of Americans have taken the shot, and that number is holding steady, despite all the new mandates, morale would shoot up to a new high.

It always feels better to be on a winning side.

If most Americans knew that massive anti-vaxx protests are taking place in France and Germany and other countries, their attitude would shift. If most Americans knew that in Australia, the most fascist pro-vaxx government in the world is sweating bullets, because despite horrendous lockdowns and vaccine mandates, despite cops and soldiers on the streets, Aussies are still going to the beach…that knowledge would bolster spirits.

If people opposed to the vaccine and/or the mandates could get an accurate count on how many posts and how many videos and how many accounts have been censored by social media, worldwide, because those posts express opposition to the vaxx…people would see how large the resistance really is.

Here’s a report from statista.com: “As of August 1, 2021, China had administered about 1.67 billion doses of coronavirus COVID-19 vaccine, whereas about 4.18 billion doses of the vaccine had been applied worldwide.”

I don’t believe it. I don’t think the global organization and the logistics are that good. People who’ve traveled extensively know how diverse and spread-out the global landscape is. They know how inefficient many, many governments are.

The world isn’t one huge well-lit modern pharmacy with people lined up and techs administering the jabs.

As several people have pointed out, the unvaccinated are a control group in this vast COVID vaccine experiment. If a year from now, millions and millions of us who didn’t take the shot are obviously still healthy, that’s not going to sit well with the vaccinators-in-charge or the pro-vaccine crowd. They don’t want a vibrant control group. They want compliant robots.

Then there is this, from Stat News, July 21: “Millions of unused Covid-19 vaccines are set to go to waste as demand dwindles across the United States and doses likely expire this summer, according to public health officials…”

“Currently, states have administered 52.36 million fewer doses than have been distributed to them, according to federal data.”

“A significant tranche of Pfizer doses is expected to expire in August… Given waning domestic vaccine demand, those doses are unlikely to be fully used before they must be tossed.”

“’We’re seeing demand [for the vaccine] falling off across all the states,’ said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.”

So which sets of statistics should we believe? Those that pump up the numbers of people who’ve taken the shots, or those that show millions of vials going to waste? I think the latter stats are the true indicators. Officials are less likely to confess to them, unless they’re accurate.

Out in front, the movie called COVID VACCINE is being hailed as a brilliant blockbuster, but at the back end, ticket sales are dropping off a cliff.

There are reasons for that. One is: People are having very serious and severe injuries from the shot; they’re dying; and their families and friends know about it.

Here are the latest CDC figures I have, as compiled by Children’s Health Defense. The statistics are taken from VAERS, the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. “VAERS data released today by the CDC showed a total of 463,457 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 10,991 deaths and 48,385 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and July 9, 2021.”

Keep in mind there is vast underreporting of injuries, because most Americans don’t know what VAERS is or are hesitant to make a report.

Some analysts have suggested that, to get a reasonably accurate count, you should multiply reported numbers by 10.

The well-known 2010 Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. study of VAERS bluntly stated: “Adverse events from vaccines are common but underreported, with less than one percent reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Low reporting rates preclude or delay the identification of ‘problem’ vaccines, potentially endangering the health of the public.”

Following the finding of that study, you would multiply the number of reported vaccine injuries by 100 to arrive at a proper figure.

The numbers of vaccine injuries and deaths are huge. In any situation other than the current fake pandemic, the vaccination program would have been stopped. Cancelled.

No matter what governments and news parrots say about the vaccine (“safe and effective”), vast numbers of injured people, their families, and the families of those who’ve died from the shot are messengers for the truth.

The truth spreads.

In a war, when combatants and civilians end up in hospitals, and when many of them lie in coffins lowered into the ground, and when the people can no longer hold a coherent story in their minds about why the war is being fought, the whole mood of a country changes.

This is no time for surrendering or joining those who claim doom is the only outcome.

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Twitter To Work With Reuters & AP To Tackle Disinformation

By Richie Allen | August 3, 2021

Reuters and The Associated Press will work with Twitter to tackle disinformation on the social media site. The news agencies will provide Twitter with context and background information on events which create a high volume of Tweets.

Twitter believes that the collaboration will boost its efforts to stop the spread of misleading information and remove so-called fake news from its platform. Another way of putting it is that Twitter has appointed itself, Reuters and AP as the arbiters of what is true and what isn’t.

According to the BBC:

Currently, when large or rapidly growing conversations happen on Twitter that may be noteworthy or controversial, Twitter’s Curation team finds and promotes relevant context from reliable sources in order to counter potentially misleading information posted by users.

In a blogpost, Twitter said the new programme would “increase the scale and speed” of this work by increasing their “capacity to add reliable context to conversations happening on Twitter”.

Twitter and Facebook are the embodiment of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. They have total control of public discourse. It is terrifying. Social media was given to the world as a gift, but in reality it was a trojan horse.

We were told that we could connect and interact with one another in ways that were previously unimaginable. We were told that we could increase our visibility, enhance education, access markets, disseminate information and connect with people in real time and at any time.

In reality we were kettled. It was a coup. Twitter, Facebook and the rest were set up for one reason and one reason only, to administer truth. In 1984, Orwell’s ministry of truth was a misnomer. It didn’t spread truth, rather it spread falsehoods and propaganda to keep citizens in a perpetual state of fear and confusion. Sound familiar?

It’s exactly what Twitter and Facebook does today. Orwell’s ministry introduced newspeak to the population. In Orwell’s world, newspeak is a simplified language designed to reduce complicated issues to a few simple absolutes.

Again, doesn’t that sound familiar? Where do you think terms like hate speech, hate crime, white privilege and transphobia came from? Newspeak placed limits on citizens ability to think for themselves. Social media companies are doing it today. They don’t even try to hide it.

Working with the World Health Organisation, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its subsidiaries, Twitter and Facebook sold the fake covid pandemic to the world. They also ruthlessly de-platformed anyone who dared to challenge it, no matter what their credentials were.

Newspeak is everywhere. Hands, Face, Space. Keep your distance. Don’t kill Granny. Protect the NHS.

Now Twitter has announced that it will be collaborating with the two biggest news agencies on the planet, to help rid the world of fake news once and for all. Facebook will follow suit. Dissent will not be tolerated.

It makes you wonder what’s coming next, doesn’t it?

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 2 Comments

DR⁣ THOMAS BINDER ⁣⁣: DOCTORS FOR COVID ETHICS SYMPOSIUM

Info that matters. July 29, 2021

August 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment