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University receives $750k of federal funds to stop reporters from creating “negative unintended outcomes”

The government continues to get involved with shaping journalism

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 24, 2021

Researchers at Temple University received $750,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop a tool that warns journalists that they are about to publish polarizing content. The NSF is a federal government agency focused on supporting research and education in non-medical fields of engineering and science.

The initiative is part of NSF’s “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems.” It is called the “America’s Fourth Estate at Risk: A System for Mapping the (local) Journalism Life Cycle to Rebuild the Nation’s News Trust.”

The focus of the project, according to a report on Campus Reform, is creating a system that alerts journalists that the content they are about to publish might have “negative unintended outcomes” such as “the triggering of uncivil, polarizing discourse, audience misinterpretation, the production of misinformation, and the perpetuation of false narratives.”

The researchers hope that the system will help journalists measure the long-term impact of their stories, that go beyond existing metrics such as likes, comments, and shares.

One of the researchers involved in the project, Temple University’s professor Eduard Dragut, said that the system will “use natural language processing algorithms along with social networking tools to mine the communities where [misinformation] may happen.”

“You can imagine that each news article is usually, or actually almost all the time, accompanied by user comments and reactions on Twitter. One goal of the project is to retrieve those and then use natural language processing tools or algorithms to mine and recommend to some users [that] this space of talking, this set of tweets, which may lead to a set of people, like a sub-community, where this article is used for wrong reasons,” he added.

Journalists and other players in the news industry will be involved with the project, which already includes researchers from other universities including Boston University and the University of Illinois-Chicago.

“We want journalists to be part of the process, not just the mere users of the product itself,” Dragut said. “So you can imagine sort of an analytics tool that informs the journalists and editors and other people involved in this business how their products or how their creative act is used or misused in social media.”

He added that the project is attempting to “create a collaborative environment with both social media platform[s] and other organizations like Google” because of their expertise.

“We have some preliminary conversation with Bloomberg, for instance, and we will have to define exactly how they are going to help us. Google has an initiative to help local news, and we are working to create a relationship with them, and there are others,” Dragut told Campus Reform. “This product will not work unless we are successful in bringing some of these high tech companies into the game.”

Another researcher involved in the project, professor Lance Holbert, said that, for now, the misinformation the project is focusing on is that of the spread on local media.

“Certainly some topics over time will become more versus less interesting, but also we’re focused here initially on local media as well, so each locality may have different topics or particular points of interest that come up in the news,” he said. “We’re trying to keep this generalizable across topics.”

Holbert noted that misinformation is not “happening in the political spectrum” alone.

“[It’s happening] in sports, it’s happening in economics,” he said. “Like a few years back, I know, an example from Starbucks where there was a sort of a campaign on Twitter [saying] that Starbucks is targeting, in the wrong way, African Americans, which was wrong.”

The NSF is expected to further fund the project when its first phase becomes successful.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 1 Comment

The COVID-Catholic Parallel – been here before?

Gregory’s Blog | October 13, 2021

We see unprecedented use of ‘unprecedented’ today. Yes, it applies to putting entire nations under house arrest. Yes, it applies to the near-universal wearing of masks (more accurately muzzles). Yes, it applies to needing a passport to be normal. But perhaps the entire phenomenon we are experiencing is not unprecedented.

Let us look back in time to 380, when Rome became the superspreader of Christianity by making it their empire’s official religion. Within 100 years the Roman Empire collapsed but despite the death of its host, Christianity survived and for over 1000 years the head of the Catholic Church was the most powerful figure in all of Europe.

Most rulers of nations, then and now, have one core raison d’être, which is to protect us from other versions of themselves. But the Catholic Church would tolerate no other versions. Its Pope reigned supreme, having spiritual authority over kings, dukes, princes and local overlords. As the Lord’s Prayer tells us “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Your local priesthood conveyed the will to be done on earth, working hand in glove with the local lord, whose temporal power was recognised by God’s official mouthpiece, the Pope.

You may ask how the church came to have and maintain such power. The answer is simple: faith and fear.

They had agents throughout the land, with a church in every town. The priest class, from archbishops down to parish priest, were the most highly-educated and respected sector of society. The priesthood was a sought-after secure profession, and people had faith in the truth of what the priest told them. It was often sound advice they could find nowhere else. The church had a near monopoly on education, with part of the core curriculum being God and creation, Jesus and miracles, sin and salvation, as well as good deeds, forgiveness, and useful guidance. Most priests were good people, people of faith, and following their advice was the passport to Heaven.

Then there is the fear. The devil can manifest anywhere in the world, tempting people to stray from the path of righteousness. The devil can be lurking unseen within any one of us, prompting urges that God wants us to supress. We must be on our guard from those he may have corrupted. We must follow the priest’s advice to avoid the fearsome prospect of Hell.

Believers knew that if they behaved badly during their 50 or so years of this existence, they would suffer a miserable and horrific existence in Hell, forever – like eternity. What a terrifying prospect! This was the picture the church taught and most people absolutely believed what they were told by the highly educated priests. Bastards, born out of wedlock, were a product of sin and not welcome in society. Those who missed church on Sunday were avoided. Just speaking with these dangerous people could infect one with sinful thoughts.

Not all the ‘common’ people bought into the church’s teachings or went to priests for advice on things spiritual or material. Some chose a more direct spiritual interface with the living world. Many were women who also practiced unlicensed healing, whether through herbs or ‘occult’ practices invoking natural energies of the earth and human body. Tens of thousands of these women were burned, drowned or tortured to death as witches, for their deviant beliefs.

Of course, being a God-fearing church goer did not stop people from being sinners but at least you were trying and could confess your sins to the priest, do some penance and be forgiven. Without that escape clause, the ungodly sinner was doomed to Hell.

Those who wrote or spoke publicly in contradiction of the church’s teachings were guilty of heresy and their books burned and banned, as well as the heretic at times. To speak disrespectfully of things holy was considered blasphemy, punishable as a serious crime, occasionally warranting death. This unfortunate situation still prevails in many Islamic nations, with a religion 600 years younger than Christianity.

The Christian church does not have the power it once held over the minds of those in so-called Western cultures. There are still some who believe in a God who created the Universe in a few days and did it all for the benefit of humankind, before throwing us out of the Garden of Eden. Most, if not indoctrinated early, instinctively reject the idea that we are born with the burden of sin and can only find spiritual truth and salvation through the son of God, whom we crucified. The spiritual credibility of the church has not been helped in recent years by the paedophile scandals surrounding its priesthood.

Today we are witnessing a new “religion” taking hold and this one has nothing to do with spirituality, yet has spread faster than any before. It has gripped the minds of billions across the planet and is also powered by faith and fear, with an enemy as invisible as Hell and the Devil himself. Curiously, it has had its greatest success to date in the ‘West,’ perhaps filling the fear vacuum that has been created in the world’s traditionally Christian cultures.

Today’s priesthood is embodied in the medical industry, staffed by highly trained professionals with secure careers, for whom the public has high regard. Just as we once needed priests to act as intermediaries to God, we now need trained doctors as intermediaries to our bodies and guardians of our health. Many people are sadly out of touch with their mortal frame and have unquestioning faith in doctors knowing best – the high priests of health.

The medical establishment does not like competition for its services, doing whatever it can to ban or denigrate healing practices other than their own, whether herbs or naturopathy, prayer or acupuncture, homeopathy or reiki. Theirs is the only true path to health, and all other routes are portrayed as fraught with danger.

We do not know how well organised Christians were before the Romans assimilated them – before Christian belief was standardized and regulated at the Council of Nicaea. We do know that before the healing profession was dominated by the World Health Organisation, The Centre for Disease Control, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, there was full medical freedom of choice for the individual. In 1880 there were more homeopaths in the USA than allopathic doctors, while mechanics earned more than either of them. It is no accident that the WHO, CDC, and GAVI are largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry, and headed by their chosen men and women. They have become today’s equivalent of the Vatican during its 1000 years of dominance. They claim a monopoly on truth and woe betide those who question or counter it.

Notable physicians, respected virologists, vaccine designers, even a Nobel Prize winner have countered the official narrative and lost their positions, been discredited and denounced.  They are denied any further involvement in the hospitals, clinics and practices spread across the land as thickly as were early chapels, churches and cathedrals. Popular speakers, performers and entertainers have had their bookings cancelled for refusing to be vaccinated, or for questioning the push to global vaccination. We could view these outspoken characters as being excovidicated from the medical and media establishments.

It takes a lot of faith to accept being injected with a partially tested new-concept mRNA injection. Taking the second jab could be seen as one’s baptism into the Covidian Church. Like it or not, it is an affirmation and commitment.  And unlike the splashing of holy water and utterance of sacred words, it may be difficult to decouple our immune system from the one implanted by Big Pharma. This new system will need an upgrade every 6 months to keep your internal software up to date. Where have we heard this before?  What will system crashes look like?

Just as going to church does not prevent God-fearing folk from sinning, taking the injection does not prevent Covid-fearing folk from getting the virus, or from spreading it. But, we are told, if the case is bad enough to need hospitalisation, the sufferer will be less likely to die. Considering that the Covid survival rate, before vaccination began, was over 99.9%, how much the vaccine increases it is, perhaps, a moot point.

In today’s somewhat free society, it is okay to declare that the Queen is a shape-shifting lizard, okay to accuse the Bush family and their associates of taking down the three towers (the twins and WTC 7); okay to accuse Hilary Clinton of running a paedophile ring and drinking an extract of tortured children.

It is decidedly NOT okay to counter the narrative of the BIG PHARMA’ three – to suggest that Covid-9 is not an existential threat;  to recommend tested known treatments for it; to disclose that natural immunity is widespread and better than jabs; to publicise the hundreds of thousands of documented adverse reactions to the injection. Those who question or counter the narrative on any level are guilty of (forgive me) ‘blaspharmy.’ Thou shalt not speak against the trinity of the CDC, WHO and GAVI.

Instead of burning books today, they ‘burn’ the online platforms of those who question or challenge the narrative of Big Pharma. YouTube channels are shut down without warning, with all their content removed from view – troves of information that was approved and online for years. Twitter accounts are terminated. Much like the bad old Soviets used to remove people from official photos when they fell out of favour, today Wikipedia entries of repeat blaspharmers can be erased, with Google searches relegating links to 20th places. This all may be more ‘climate-friendly’ than burning books, but does immense harm to the free flow of ideas, the emergence of truth, and the connected feedback loops that power positive evolution.

The parallel has been made with the Papal precedent. There is much of positive value to gain from Christian teachings but they are not and never were the only source of spiritual and moral guidance. Neither is the medical establishment the only viable source of sound and effective  advice on healing and health. It’s biggest player, Big Pharma, does exceedingly well out of poor health.

We are at a unique and yes, unprecedented turning point in the story of our species. Do we remain independent human beings, able to freely associate and communicate with each other, how and where it suits us? Do we remain able to choose what we eat, and travel by the means of our choice, all while having primary responsibility for our health and well-being?

Or do we welcome being merged with outside agencies, starting with one that manages our vital immune system with regular injections? Vaccine passports, once established, would (for greater ease) morph into a body implanted chip and soon also serve as door key, passport, credit card, wallet, bus/train ticket, bar tab, membership card – and desirable citizen monitor.

We know how once wild animals were so attracted by regular food and a roof that domestication became possible. Are we sacrificing the last vestiges of personal freedom and privacy to become part of a digitally managed body of people? What are the consequences of this? We do not know, but the ‘religious’ suppression of opposition to its rapid implementation does not bode well. Technology has and can make our lives easier without being under central control by coercive bodies, sometimes headed by psychopathic personalities.

If it looks like an externally managed future is being forcibly rammed down our throats that could well be because it is. What can we do about it? The most powerful tool we have is mass non-compliance, which begins with each and every one of us, including small businesses, and those big ones with customer interests at heart. If enough employers, employees, diners, care workers, café goers, hospitality staff, shoppers and so forth refuse to pretend there is an existential killer on the loose, the scheme will immediately fall apart. And that’s another article…

– – – O – – –

For an up-to-date overview listen to eminent cardiologist Dr Peter McCollough speaking in plain English on Oct 2, 2021. Check his outstanding CV here.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | 1 Comment

Several German cities halt use of e-buses following series of unresolved cases of fire

By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | October 24, 2021

The potential risks of electromobility are being closely examined in Germany after a third major fire in a bus depot apparently caused by an electric bus. Public transport companies are taking action after the electric bus allegedly triggered a fire in Stuttgart last week, newspaper Die Welt reports.

The Munich public transport company, MVG, is taking eight similar e-buses out of service until the cause of the fire in Stuttgart has been clarified. The fire may have started while the bus was being charged in the depot, according to investigators, who assume that a technical defect may be the cause of the fire. The 30 September fire completely destroyed 25 buses in the depot, including two with electric drives, causing damage worth millions of euros.

The Stuttgart transport company, SSB, has also halted the use of electric buses in the city. The incident followed a similar fire in June in a bus depot in Hanover, which destroyed the hall and nine buses. E-buses were then recalled but are expected to resume service in November. In April, a fire at the Rheinbahn depot in Düsseldorf caused damages totalling several million euros. Investigators determined the fire had been triggered by a technical issue but could not clearly identify the cause.

While the number of electric buses in German public transport doubled last year compared to 2019, a recent survey found that 58 percent of Germans had doubts about the “environmental compatibility” of electric mobility.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | 1 Comment

NATO’s new secret plan for nuclear war & space battles with Russia risks spiraling into a new arms race

By Paul Robinson | RT | October 24, 2021

Tensions between Russia and NATO are at an all-time high. But instead of seeking a way off the ladder of escalation, the US-led bloc’s new plan for hybrid war risks accelerating an already dangerous lethal arms race with Moscow.

There’s a concept in international relations, almost one of the first that students learn, called the ‘security dilemma’. It’s hardly rocket science, but it’s something governments and armed forces planners seem to consistently forget when it comes to making policy.

The idea is basically this: Country A feels threatened by country B; it therefore takes some measures – such as increasing its defence spending – to make itself more secure; but when country B sees what country A is doing, it in turn feels threatened, and so takes reciprocal measures of its own. The result is that country A ends up less safe than it was to start with.

The dilemma is that if you do nothing to strengthen your defences, you’ll be insecure, but if you do something you’ll end up worse off because of the counter-measures the other side will take. What do you do? If countries A and B both take action to defend themselves, they will find themselves in an ever-escalating process – what theorists like to call the ‘spiral model’, but which in public parlance is often called an arms race.

The obvious way out is to break the spiral. Avoid escalating and resort to other measures, such as negotiation and arms control. All it may take is for one side to unilaterally step back, and the vicious circle will turn into a virtuous one.

It’s pretty basic stuff, but again and again, state leaders choose to ignore it and prefer instead to march down the path of the spiral. So it is today in the case of Russian-NATO relations, which are as classic an example of the security dilemma as you could possibly hope to find. Deep down, there’s no fundamental reason for conflict, but mutual suspicion leads to a continuing ramping up of reciprocal measures that deepen the suspicion, leading to more measures, more suspicion, and so on, seemingly ad infinitum.

For instance, earlier this year, the Russian military undertook a series of exercises close to its Western borders. From a Russian perspective, these were purely defensive. From a Western perspective, they appeared potentially threatening, justifying in turn Western exercises that NATO claims are entirely for defence, but which Russia considers a threat, prompting further Russian measures.

The latest round in this dangerous process is the announcement this week that NATO has developed a new ‘masterplan’ to defend against a possible Russian attack. The plan itself is secret, so we don’t know its contents, but it’s said to focus on non-conventional war, including nuclear strikes, cyberwarfare, and even war in space. Geographically, it covers the whole spread of NATO’s border with Russia, from the Baltic to the Black Seas inclusive.

In part, this is just what military institutions do: They plan for possible future conflicts. The Russian military almost certainly also has similar contingency planning in place for a potential war with NATO. It would be very odd if it didn’t. In this sense, NATO’s new masterplan shouldn’t in theory be seen as a cause for alarm. Moreover, NATO insists that its purpose is not aggressive. Rather, the plan’s aim is deterrence, thus its formal title: ‘Concept for Deterrence and Defence in the Euro-Atlantic Area’.

However, as students of the spiral model know, reality is much less important than perception. Deterrence is a matter of signals. One sends a message to potential enemies that if they attack, they will suffer devastating consequences. The problem is that although this message may be clear to the one doing the signalling, it may not be so clear to the one to whom it is sent. You think you are deterring, but they think you are threatening. They therefore respond in kind. In this way, deterrence ends up being counter-productive.

This doesn’t always happen, but in this instance, it seems to be the case. Some aspects of NATO’s announcement seem unnecessarily escalatory, in particular the references to nuclear war. We’ve come a long way from the musings of nuclear strategists like Herman Kahn and Bernard Brodie, who tried to calculate how it was possible to fight and win a nuclear war. One shouldn’t be surprised that when other people hear such talk being revived, they’re not deterred but alarmed.

Unsurprisingly, Russia’s reaction to NATO’s new military concept has been decidedly negative. “There is no need for dialogue under these conditions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, continuing: “this alliance was not created for peace, it was conceived, designed and created for confrontation.”

From the Russian point of view, NATO’s actions justify Russia’s recent decision to sever ties with the Atlantic alliance. Rather than bringing Russia to heel, NATO may merely be driving it into an ever more hostile position.

In this way, the West’s perception of Russia as a threat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The same, of course, could be said the other way around. For if the West perceives Russia as threatening, it is because of things that Russia has done – as it sees it, for its own defence. For instance, NATO argues that what has made its new plan necessary is Russia’s strengthening of its armed forces and its recent advances in military technology.

The more Russia defends itself, the more it incites NATO. And the more NATO defends itself, the more it incites Russia. A security dilemma par excellence. The risk both parties run is that the situation will continue to spiral further and further into ever more dangerous territory. Already this spring, Europe passed through a period of high tension in which it looked entirely possible (although unlikely) that war might erupt between Ukraine and Russia. Anything that contributes to a further worsening of the situation is therefore thoroughly undesirable. NATO’s new military plan, it seems fair to say, runs the risk of doing just that.

Paul Robinson, a professor at the University of Ottawa. He writes about Russian and Soviet history, military history and military ethics, and is the author of the Irrussianality blog.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Youth from Gaza survives Israeli airstrike that killed his father and three sisters

Defence for Children Palestine | October 14, 2021

Yousef A. from Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip survived an Israeli airstrike in May 2021 that killed his father and three of his sisters. He is still recovering from his injuries.

October 24, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | 1 Comment

Viral Tweet Opposing ‘Herd Immunity’ Gets Pretty Much Everything Wrong

By Noah Carl  • The Daily Sceptic • October 22, 2021

In a recent viral tweet, the anti-Brexit campaigner Jolyon Maugham criticised the Government’s initial Covid strategy (which, as we know, was later ditched in favour of lockdowns).

I’m no defender of the Government’s response to the pandemic, but it’s hard to imagine a more wrong-headed criticism than this. Indeed, it’s impressive how many fallacies Maugham managed to pack into 280 characters.

First: “Herd immunity”. As the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration have tirelessly pointed out, describing any response to the pandemic as a ‘herd immunity strategy’ is like describing a pilot’s plan to land a plane as a ‘gravity strategy’. Given that Covid cannot be eliminated, herd immunity will eventually be reached, regardless of what we do.

The goal of any plan to address Covid, write Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, “should be to minimise disease mortality and the collateral harms from the plan itself, while managing the build-up of immunity in the population.”

Second, the implication of Maugham’s tweet is that the Government’s initial strategy was motivated by Conservative ideology, and that the alternative – lockdown – is what’s backed by science.

Yet, as I and others have pointed out, it’s actually lockdown that deviates substantially from the pre-Covid consensus. Indeed, the UK’s pandemic preparedness plan does not even mention the term. And in 2019, the WHO classified “quarantine of exposed individuals” as “not recommended under any circumstances”.

Given that the first lockdown was implemented by a communist one-party state, and that subsequent lockdowns were imposed with almost no prior discussion, it would make more sense to say lockdown was motivated by ideology.

Third, the virus does not “target” working class and poorer people, while leaving Etonians and bankers unscathed. It is not some pathogenic agent of class warfare.

If “target” is taken to mean “infect”, then the virus targets people who aren’t immune to it. And if “target” is taken to mean “kill”, then it would be most accurate to say the virus targets the old and the immunocompromised. After all, these groups account for the overwhelming majority of deaths.

Now, it’s true that death rates have been higher in working class occupations, as I noted in a previous post. But this is far more plausibly due to lockdown than to the Government’s initial strategy, which was in any case abandoned in March of 2020.

As the art critic J. J. Charlesworth quipped, “There was never any lockdown. There was just middle-class people hiding while working-class people brought them things.” Middle-class people like Jolyon Maugham, I might add.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 1 Comment

17,000+ deaths reported after COVID vaccines, including new report of 12-year-old who died after Pfizer vaccine

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | October 23, 2021

Data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020, and Oct. 15, 2021, a total of 818,044 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

The data included a total of 17,128 reports of deaths — an increase of 362 over the previous week, and a new report of a 12-year-old who died after getting the Pfizer vaccine.

There were 117,399 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 5,434 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 612,125 adverse events, including 7,848 deaths and 50,225 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Oct. 15, 2021.

Of the 7,848 U.S. deaths reported as of Oct. 15, 11% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 15% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 28% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 406.1 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Oct. 15. This includes: 237 million doses of Pfizer, 154 million doses of Moderna and 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

The data come directly from reports submitted to VAERS, the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

This week’s U.S. data for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

The most recent death involves a 12-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 1784945) who died from a respiratory tract hemorrhage 22 days after receiving her first dose of Pfizer’s vaccine.

Another recent death includes a 15-year-old male who died six days after receiving his first dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. According to his VAERS report (VAERS I.D. 1764974), the previously healthy teen complained of brief unilateral shoulder pain five days after receiving his COVID vaccine.

The next day he played with two friends at a community pond, swung on a rope swing, flipped into the air, and landed in the water feet first. He surfaced, laughed and told his friends “Wow, that hurt!” He then swam toward shore underwater, as was his usual routine, but did not re-emerge.

An autopsy showed no external indication of a head injury, but there was a small subgaleal hemorrhage — a rare, but lethal bleeding disorder — over the left occiput. In addition, the boy had a mildly elevated cardiac mass, increased left ventricular wall thickness and small foci of myocardial inflammation of the lateral wall of the left ventricle with myocyte necrosis consistent with myocardial infarction.

  • 57 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 535 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 527 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 119 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.

This week’s U.S. VAERS data, from Dec. 14, 2020, to Oct. 15, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Human Rights NGOs will not be Silenced

Statment By Al-Haq independent Palestinian non-governmental human rights organisation, October 23, 2021:

Al-Haq strongly rejects the designation made by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, on 19 October 2021, of Al-Haq and five fellow Palestinian civil society organisations as “terror organisations,” under Israel’s domestic Anti-Terrorism Law, 2016 and calls for international solidarity and concrete measures to ensure its immediate rescission.

The baseless allegations represent an alarming and unjust escalation of attacks against the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom, justice and  the right to self-determination. Israel’s widespread and systematic smearing of Palestinian human rights NGOs and human rights defenders aims to delegitimize, oppress, silence and drain their work and resources.

Further, the unlawful application of Israel’s domestic law to the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) serves to entrench the maintenance of its settler-colonial and apartheid regime of institutionalised racial discrimination and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole.

For decades, Al-Haq has struggled to end Israel’s illegal settler-colonial policies and practices which, since 1948, have denied the Palestinian people from exercising their inalienable right to self-determination. Al-Haq is one of the leading Palestinian organizations calling for accountability and an end to Israel’s impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

It is no coincidence that Israel’s recent escalation of punitive measures against Al-Haq and fellow civil society organisations, has come in the immediate aftermath of the opening of an International Criminal Court investigation into Israel’s crimes in the Situation in Palestine. To that end, Al-Haq will tirelessly maintain its efforts to ensure that Israeli perpetrators of mass atrocity crimes are held accountable.

The history of human rights advocacy and defense, from Africa to Latin America and other corners of the globe, have shown that the means and methods of the oppressor have no limits. In striving towards the liberation of Palestine from Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial regime, our work as human rights defenders will not be deterred or silenced.  We are confident in the solidarity of our friends and partners around the world in confronting these obstacles placed before us.

The Palestinian struggle is a universal struggle against oppression and the denial of self-determination in the pursuit of justice and the ability to live in dignity.  We remain steadfast in advocating for a dignified future for the Palestinian people and the liberation of Palestine from the shackles of Israel’s unlawful colonial rule.

Justice will prevail.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Here lies Colin Powell…

By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | October 23, 2021

Following his death from Covid-19 earlier this week, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s legacy will be examined by many people for many different reasons. Some will eulogise him as one of America’s top diplomats and presidential advisers. Many more, I suspect, will remember him as the man who lied for his country again, and again, and again.

One of the Greek sages, Chilon of Sparta, said we should not speak ill of the dead (what is now the Latin aphorism “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est”), a maxim with which I would generally agree. However, it is precisely because of the dead that I am writing these words.

The dead to which I refer come from many nations around the world; countless men, women and children who left this earth in the absence of mercy, a voice or justice. Millions of others have yet to have any sort of closure or peace due to US militarism, wars, interventions and atrocities over many decades. Powell supported, excused and covered up most of them from Vietnam to the present day.

A memorial service for General Powell will be held at the Washington National Cathedral in the US capital next month. The so-called great and good will eulogise the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and US Secretary of State. My own contribution is not for Powell and the mourners, but for the forgotten survivors who will have been propelled back into very dark places at seeing his name in the headlines this week.

To the Iraqi people, Powell was the man who did the dirty work in arguing the case for a war that created more than a million widows and orphans. Estimates of the number of dead in Iraq continue to be amended. It was Powell who stood before the UN on behalf of President George W Bush in February 2003 and spoke with great authority, using photographs to “prove” that Iraq under Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). This was a lie, and he knew it.

A couple of weeks ahead of his speech, some Algerian refugees were arrested for allegedly producing ricin in Wood Green, North London. The British media splashed with the headlines that anti-terror police had uncovered an Al-Qaida cell poised to unleash the deadly poison on an unsuspecting public. The more lurid reports also claimed that the “ricin factory” contained bomb-making equipment. British Prime Minister Tony Blair — another man with a long-distance relationship with the truth — whipped up a frenzy of hysteria claiming that, “This danger is present and real, and with us now.”

Blair was backed up by Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council; both men were pushing the case for war against Iraq. Powell cited the London “find” gravely as an “Iraq-linked terrorist network”. Despite the fact that the British government’s chemical weapons research facility at Porton Down knew that there was no ricin in Wood Green in early January 2003, Powell went ahead and peddled his lies regardless. Blair and Powell both appear to have ignored the facts. In a nest of vipers, it’s always difficult to separate one snake from another.

Two years later a very different story emerged during the Old Bailey trial of the Algerian refugees: there was no ricin and no sophisticated Al-Qaida plot. Jury foreman Lawrence Archer was so outraged at what emerged during his seven-month odyssey in court that he co-wrote a book with journalist Fiona Bawdon exposing the lies told by Powell backed up by “shamelessly distorted” words from the British government, media and security agencies.

Powell claimed later to regret his performance at the UN. That didn’t help the Algerians, though, who were held in a high-security prison for more than two years until the case against them in their infamous trial by jury collapsed. The US official knew that there was no ricin plot; indeed, that there was no ricin, so what was the white powder in the vial he waved around so dramatically in the Security Council meeting?

To the people of Vietnam, Colin Powell was the soldier who covered up the war crimes carried out in Mỹ Lai by a unit of US troops who slaughtered 500 civilians. Powell admitted in a 1968 memo that there might have been be “isolated cases of mistreatment”, but in August 1971 he eventually told the truth in a sworn affidavit during the war crimes trial of Brigadier General John Donaldson who, it was alleged, had routinely “killed or ordered the killing of, unarmed and unresisting” Vietnamese civilians from his helicopter.

Powell ingratiated himself in 1985 as a senior assistant to US Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, when he helped cover up the selling of weapons to Iran so that the Reagan administration could funnel money to the US-backed and funded right-wing Contra counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua. Weinberger faced five charges related to the so-called Iran-Contra scandal only to be pardoned by President George H.W. Bush before he could be put on trial. It emerged that Powell took part personally in at least one covert weapons sale in exchange for hostages.

He had his finger in many pies in subsequent years which saw the demise of some dictatorships and the rise of others in US military action in Panama, the Philippines, Somalia, Liberia, Bangladesh, Russia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf and the Middle East.

To the Palestinians — and myself, I must add — Powell will always be the man who was treacherous and duplicitous towards them. He lied about Israel’s massacre of Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) tried desperately to hide one of its many war crimes committed in the occupied West Bank when its soldiers killed at least 52 Palestinians in the refugee camp between 1 and 11 April at the height of the Second (Al-Aqsa) Intifada. Ariel Sharon’s cowardly troops would have made a quick exit but for the dilemma of how to cover up the killing of so many people. It’s a dilemma that focused the minds of those in charge of so-called Operation Defensive Shield.

As I wrote in MEMO last year, “[They] decided to enforce a siege so tight that no one, despite global protests, could get past Israel’s ring of steel; it was a total lockdown and lasted for weeks while the Israeli government did its best to keep journalists and human rights observers away from the Palestinian city…

“The atmosphere was tense and the UN announced that it was planning to launch an investigation into compelling allegations of Israeli war crimes said to have been committed in the refugee camp. The Israelis did what they do well, and mobilised malleable politicians and government advisers to mislead a gullible media and public.”

The then US Secretary of State Powell was brought in to use calm, authoritative tones at a press conference in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which Zionist terrorists blew up in 1946, killing 91 people and wounding 41 others. The irony wasn’t lost on the Palestinians and the watching world.

He claimed to have seen “no evidence” of a massacre. In last year’s article I pointed out: “By 23 April Powell was back in Washington briefing senators: ‘Right now, I’ve seen no evidence of mass graves and I’ve seen no evidence that would suggest a massacre took place.’ He wasn’t lying, of course, because he never went to Jenin, so could not have ‘seen’ the evidence even if he had wanted to.”

I was one of the first journalists on the scene, though, and was in the refugee camp in Jenin on the day that the former general presented his less than honest briefing to the world’s media. The anger and frustration I felt listening to his lies was probably nothing compared with the feelings of the Palestinians in Jenin who told me how their mothers, wives, children and other relatives had been killed before their eyes. I remember seeing a group of Palestinian women tearing at the rubble with their bare, bloodied hands trying to find the bodies of loved ones. The stench of death was overwhelming. Moreover, while Powell said that he saw “no evidence” of a massacre, Human Rights Watch disagreed, and said so when it published a hard-hitting report on what happened in Jenin.

The Jacobin online magazine has published a brutally savage obituary of Powell. “There’s Nothing Honourable or Decent About Colin Powell’s Long List of War Crimes” was the headline. I and millions like me couldn’t agree more. He was buried on Friday morning, but as yet there’s no official tombstone. When it is eventually fixed on his grave, it should be very simple: “Here lies Colin Powell – in death as in life”.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 3 Comments

NATO, Not Russia, Perpetuates Cold War Logic… It is a Relic Best Ignored

Strategic Culture Foundation | October 22, 2021

It was the end of an era this week when Russia announced that it was severing diplomatic links with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. For the past 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation has engaged with the US-led military bloc in a bid to establish partnership and secure peace.

The incipient detente culminated in the NATO-Russia Founding Act in 1997 which demarcated certain boundaries for peaceful coexistence. Those boundaries were subsequently flouted as NATO doubled its members over the ensuing years to stand at the current membership of 30 countries, including states that share a border with Russia.

There was also established in 2002 a NATO-Russia Council which in principle provided a forum for dialogue between delegations hosted in the Belgian capital Brussels where NATO has its headquarters.

But the truth is initial promises of partnership have waned. For several years now, at least since the 2014 Ukraine crisis, NATO’s relations with Russia have been characterized more and more with an imperious attitude of lecturing Moscow over a litany of alleged transgressions. These allegations are more accurately described as slanders because they are never substantiated beyond bald accusation.

Russia is routinely accused of posing a threat to Europe and plotting to sabotage Western democracies. This week the NATO defense ministers held a summit in which it was breathlessly claimed that Russia is becoming an even greater threat to the transatlantic alliance. On the back of that hysterical claim, NATO has now moved to implement  a “master plan” to “defend” Europe from a “potential Russian attack on multiple fronts”.

Reality check. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it has no intent of aggression towards the United States, NATO, Europe or anyone else for that matter. Despite this categorical assurance, the Western bloc has persisted in talking up tensions with Russia.

It is the United States that has abrogated several arms-control treaties and introduced new missile systems into Europe. It is NATO that is encroaching on Russia’s territory. Reality is turned on its head by Western accusations.

Indeed there have been conflicts over Georgia in 2008 and ongoing in Ukraine. But in each case, there are substantial grounds for laying the blame of these conflicts on NATO. How did the coup d’état in Kiev happen in 2014, who supported it? And why did the people of Crimea vote in a constitutional referendum to secede from Ukraine to join the Russian Federation with which they have centuries of shared history and culture?

In any case, if there were proper partnership and dialogue between NATO and Russia then such concerns and disputes could have been appropriately aired and discussed in the assigned forum. But the fact is there was never any genuine attempt at dialogue by NATO. Russia has become an object of harangue and hostility. The supposed partnership envisaged some three decades ago became a travesty. Instead of dialogue and debate there was simply disdain. Instead of equality there was vilification, opprobrium, and sensationalized smears without the slightest due process afforded to Russia (the Skripals, Navalny, Novichok, electoral interference, cyberattacks, shooting down a Malaysian airliner, and so on and so on, like an old skipping vinyl record incapable of moving on.)

The supposed diplomatic channels were nothing but echo chambers for NATO propaganda talking points, rather than being used as a means to resolve misapprehensions through mutual dialogue and presentation of evidence.

As the Russian foreign ministry noted this week in explaining the severance of diplomatic ties, it is NATO that systematically destroyed relations and “chose the Cold War logic”.

Alexander Grushko, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, commented that normal relations were not possible amid unfriendly steps taken by NATO “sliding into Cold War schemes”.

The last straw was the expulsion earlier this month by NATO of Russian diplomats from the NATO forum in Brussels. The Russian staff were accused of being “undeclared spies” allegedly working for military intelligence. No evidence was provided, as usual, by the accusers. It was the familiar high-handed approach of fait accompli and Russia “guilty until proven innocent”.

Everyone recognizes that relations between the Western states and Russia are at their lowest since the end of the former Cold War. Thus it may be put to Moscow that it is being reckless to close down channels of communication at this precarious time.

Russia has not ruled out pursuing a more productive relationship in the future. It has said, however, that it is up to NATO to make the first move towards improving relations. Until then, henceforth, any communications can be submitted through Russia’s ambassador to Belgium.

It is our view that Russia has made the correct call to drop diplomatic channels with NATO. Russia will pursue bilateral relations with individual nations as it does already, for example, with the United States on the vital issues of arms control and cybersecurity. NATO has proven to be incapable of progressive negotiations owing to an organizational “groupthink” that is encumbered with Russophobia and Cold War ideology.

By engaging directly with individual nations, it may be more productive for mutual understanding to be advanced because the noise of “groupthink” and of competing group negativity is removed.

Unfortunately, it has to be noted that the original purpose of NATO when it was formed in 1949 was rooted in Cold War hostility towards the Soviet Union. Such animosity has not abated even though the Soviet Union no longer exists.

Fundamentally, NATO is an organization in search of enemies in order to justify the militarism that is essential for the functioning of Western capitalism. There is a pivotal contradiction between NATO and today’s emerging world of multipolar cooperation and peaceful development. Its disgraceful, diabolical destruction of Afghanistan alone debars that organization from having any progressive role in today’s world.

Russia is right to disabuse the illusion of “partnership” with NATO. It is a relic of Cold War hostility that belongs in a war museum not in a modern forum for diplomacy.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | 2 Comments

Release of JFK records delayed again, with Biden citing Covid-19 and national security

RT | October 23, 2021

President Joe Biden has ordered the remaining files on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination to remain hidden until next December, citing the coronavirus pandemic. He’s not the first president to delay releasing the files.

In a memo on Friday, Biden wrote that the remaining files concerning the assassination “shall be withheld from full public disclosure” until December 15 next year, nearly 60 years after Kennedy was shot dead as his motorcade rolled through Dallas, Texas.

Biden’s memo states that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Archivist have been prevented from checking in with every agency affected by the files, and can’t determine whether releasing the unredacted documents would impact national security.

Therefore, Biden wrote, “temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations.”

Some information already deemed appropriate will be released this December, while the remainder will stay secret until at least next December.

Although Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for Kennedy’s murder, he never stood trial as he was shot dead two days later by Jack Ruby. As a result, Kennedy’s murder has spawned countless conspiracy theories, and a majority of Americans still believe that sinister forces were behind the assassination.

These theories have persisted for decades, and in 1992, Congress ruled that all records surrounding the shocking murder “should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination.” However, multiple administrations since have stalled on this disclosure.

Former President Donald Trump promised via tweet in 2017 to allow the “long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.” Despite Trump’s promise, a pledge that many thought he’d follow through on due to his status as a political ‘outsider’ in Washington, only a selection of material was released, and some of this material remained redacted.

Whenever the Biden administration releases the rest of these documents, they will at least be easier for the general public to view. At present, the 250,000 or so records released so far are viewable only at NARA’s location in College Park, Maryland. Biden’s memo orders NARA to digitize these files and make them available online.

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

Illinois Sheriffs Reject Mayor Lightfoot’s Urgent Plea To Cover Police Shortage In Crime-Hit Chicago

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | October 22, 2021

As hundreds of Chicago police are being put on “no-pay leave” over their refusal to submit their personal Covid vaccination status with the city, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears to have fewer and fewer allies as she desperately tries to fill the gap of officer shortages due to the vax order. Area county sheriffs are refusing to send additional manpower that’s she requesting to urgently cover the gaps, telling her that’s it’s a problem of the mayor’s own making.

“Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot received a rude awakening after multiple sheriffs in nearby jurisdictions refused her request to fill the gap in police manpower after she threatened to fire 3,000 local officers for not complying with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate,” The Washington Examiner reports on the latest developments. “DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick and Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain said they’ve helped Lightfoot in the past, but her latest request is a self-inflicted wound that could have been avoided. They said they would only step in and help the Chicago Police Department if city officers were in distress or under duress.”

Sheriff Hain had this to say, echoing recent criticisms of the Chicago police union which has cited terrible communication and heavy-handedness in place of requests for dialogue on the issue: “[The Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System] typically responds to emergency situations where there is no opportunity for planning,” Hain said. “This situation to me is much different.”

Despite sheriff’s offices shutting the door on the mayor’s request to cover Chicago PD officer shortages, police continue to reportedly be summoned to headquarters where they are given one last on the spot ultimatum: submit to last week’s vaccine status order or be relieved from duty without pay.

So far the city says it’s not yet going after street patrol officers, which is obviously on fears of a coming crime wave that will hit an already understaffed notoriously high-crime city.

BBC has compiled recent statistics as the standoff over the vax mandate continues:

Chicago, a city of nearly three million people, has seen more than 1,600 sexual assaults, nearly 3,000 shootings and 649 murders this year – a 14% increase over last.

Just as violent crimes have risen, though, thousands of the city’s police force may not show up to work.

… Nearly one-third of Chicago’s almost 13,000-member police department have so far refused to register their vaccination status, putting them on track for dismissal. Twenty-one have been officially removed from active duty so far, but some officials have warned that the mandate could leave Chicago’s police force dangerously depleted.

Adding fuel to the fire of the crisis, President Joe Biden during his CNN Town Hall remarks Thursday night continued pushing his view that emergency responders should be fired for defying local vaccine mandates.

The president even appeared to mock those rejecting vaccine mandates on the basis of “freedom”…

“I have the freedom to kill you with my COVID,” Biden said, mocking what he sees as the attitude of mandate opponents. “No, I mean, come on, freedom.”

Meanwhile the head of Chicago’s largest police union, John Catanzara, is still urging officers to hold the line, despite a weekend gag order imposed on him by the city.

“It is the city’s clear attempt to force officers to ‘Chicken Little, the sky is falling’ into compliance,” he’s recently urged the union’s 11,000 members. “Do not fall for it. Hold the line.”

October 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

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