‘Free’ Interactive Kiosks Surveil Everyone While Scooping Up Their Personal Information
MassPrivateI | November 10, 2021
It seems like no matter where you go ‘free’ smart interactive kiosks are being installed in cities everywhere.
It appears politicians across America can’t stop boasting about IKE’s free “Smart City” kiosks.
Smart interactive kiosks like IKE boast about offering free advertising to local businesses during the pandemic, so how do they make any money?
IKE’s website does a great job of painting itself as a ‘free’ interactive kiosk service to the public. In fact they do such a great job of obscuring how they collect users personal information, that I didn’t think there was much of a story here.
After clicking on IKE’s four tabs “About, Technology, Applications and Team” I thought maybe they really were using advertising dollars to pay for their rapid expansion. But then I struck paydirt after I clicked on their privacy policies at the bottom of their website.
IKE claims that it “respects your privacy and is committed to protecting it through our compliance with this policy” but if you continue reading their privacy policy you soon realize that all is not as it seems.
IKE tells users that they will collect information on each user’s interactions with the Kiosk. “We may share this information without restriction with the city where the Kiosk is located and its agencies…”
The types of information their kiosks collect becomes a little clearer in IKE’s interactive section.
IKE reveals that users accessing their QR codes can be personally identified.
“The QR code will anonymously link your mobile device to the applications. If your mobile device is not capable of accessing the applications by scanning the QR code, you may access these features by providing the information requested by the Kiosk, some of which may personally identify you.”
IKE claims that they will not share or sell users personal information to third parties but then the next paragraph they say the exact opposite.
“[I]n choosing to engage these features, you agree that we can provide the information you give to a Kiosk, including any information that may personally identify you, to that Third-Party Partner: (a) 311; (b) Get Around; and (c) Photo Booth.”
Basically, what IKE is saying is that anyone who uses IKE’s kiosks agrees to give their personally identifiable information (PII) to them and third parties. So much for respecting users privacy.
IKE goes on to explain that 311 user information is stored by Third-Party Partners.
“With respect to any feature operated by a Third-Party Partner, the Kiosk will only store the information you provide long enough to perform the service you request. After that, the information will no longer be retained by the Kiosk or IKE, but it may continue to be retained by the Third-Party Partner.”
IKE’s WiFi Service section says their kiosk’s might “share certain technical information with the internet service provider across the Wi-Fi signal.” But users shouldn’t worry because IKE deletes their personally identifiable information every 12 months.
This is nearly the exact same business model that “Smart City Kiosks” used in New York City three years ago, the only difference is that that IKE’s kiosks are not equipped with microphones.
So how does IKE make a profit? It appears that IKE makes money from letting Third-Party Partners pay for the right to collect users PII information.
Users of IKE kiosks should be concerned about two things.
Sharing certain technical information with an “internet service provider” is a slick way of saying IKE and Third-Party Partners are IDing every Bluetooth enabled device.
The second concern is third party internet service providers are under under no obligation to delete a user’s personal information every 12 months, or ever.
Things get a lot more disconcerting after reading IKE’s “Camera” section.
“Each Kiosk may be equipped with one or more cameras. The cameras capture images of the area surrounding the Kiosk, and those images may include you. We will not keep any footage captured by any camera for longer than 15 days, unless the footage is necessary to investigate an incident. Furthermore, we will not use or disclose data collected by our cameras except to improve the functionality and ensure the security of the Kiosks, as necessary to address illegal activity on, associated with or perpetrated against the Kiosks or in the surrounding area, or if we believe the disclosure is required by law or in the interest of public safety.”
Everyone passing in front of an “IKE Smart City” kiosk will be recorded and have their images stored for at least 15 days. Except of course if IKE or law enforcement want to save the footage, then it is anyone’s guess how long they will retain the footage for.
IKE’s “disclosure of information” section is basically an indemnity clause against future lawsuits.
“In addition to the disclosures we have identified elsewhere in this policy, we may also disclose any and all information collected by us or that you provide to us via a Kiosk as described in this policy to our parents, subsidiaries and affiliates, and/or any entity who acquires, by any means, some or all of the assets or ownership interests of IKE Smart City, LLC.”
“We (IKE) may also disclose any and all information collected by us that you provided via a kiosk”? Was your phone’s Bluetooth enabled when you used or walked by an IKE kiosk[s]? Unless you just happened to click on their privacy policies at the bottom of their website, users’ would have no way of knowing how much PII is being collected and stored.
“We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in applicable law. Because any personal information you provide to us is not stored or maintained in databases owned or created by us, we will be unable to notify you as and when this Privacy Policy is updated.”
And to make matters worse, users must constantly check and make sure that IKE has not changed their privacy policy. Also, IKE’s kiosks are not supposed to be used by children under 13. Why? See above.
IKE’s surveillance camera kiosks popping up in cities everywhere have all the earmarks of a Big Brother surveillance network masquerading as a ‘free’ interactive kiosk network.
Top NIH Unvaxxed Scientist Willing to Lose Job and License, Will Argue Against Vaccine Mandates in Livestreamed Ethics Review
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | November 9, 2021
A senior bioethicist who heads a research team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) is taking the lead at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the debate over the ethics of COVID vaccine mandates.
Dr. Matthew Memoli, director of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases at NIH, will argue against vaccine mandates during a Dec. 1 livestreamed roundtable session, which will be open to the public.
“There’s a lot of debate within the NIH about whether [a vaccine mandate] is appropriate,” David Wendler, a senior NIH bioethicist in charge of planning the session, told the WSJ. “It’s an important, hot topic.”
Memoli opposes mandates for the COVID vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., and has chosen not to be vaccinated.
Memoli sought a religious exemption from the mandatory vaccine requirements imposed by health authorities in the District of Columbia, where he is licensed to practice medicine.
Memoli said he is willing to risk his job and his license for the right not to receive a COVID vaccine. During the scheduled roundtable early next month, he will make the case against mandates.
“I think the way we are using the vaccines is wrong,” Memoli said in a July 30 email to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the NIAID, and two of his lieutenants. Memoli called mandated vaccination “extraordinarily problematic.”
Memoli told the WSJ one of Fauci’s colleagues thanked him for his email. Memoli said he supports COVID vaccines for high-risk populations including the elderly and obese, but said, “blanket vaccination of people at low risk of severe illness could hamper the development of more-robust immunity gained across a population from infection.”
Memoli, a 16-year veteran at the NIH was selected this month for a 2021 NIH director’s award — a top recognition from the head of the agency, for his supervision of a national study into undiagnosed COVID cases early in the pandemic.
Memoli said his children have received their childhood vaccines, and he will support the results of the ethics discussion regardless of the outcome.
“I do vaccine trials. I, in fact, help create vaccines,” Memoli told the WSJ. “Part of my career is to share my expert opinions, right or wrong … I mean, if they all end up saying I’m wrong, that’s fine. I want to have the discussion.”
Christine Grady, head of NIH’s Clinical Center bioethics department and Fauci’s wife, approved the Dec. 1 seminar — a session called “Grand Rounds.”
Grady said in an email she believes there is interest in the topic across the agency.
“Our hope is that the December Grand Rounds will be relevant to the debates that are going on around the country regarding vaccine mandates,” an agency spokeswoman said on Grady’s behalf.
Federal appeals court temporarily halts Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate for private employers
A federal appeals court on Saturday issued a stay temporarily halting the Biden administration’s private-employer COVID vaccine mandate, citing, “grave statutory and constitutional” issues with the requirement.
“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the mandate, the mandate is hereby stayed pending further action by this court,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in the order.
The case was brought by multiple businesses and several states, including Texas, Utah, Louisiana, South Carolina and Mississippi. They argued the requirements exceed the authority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which will enforce the mandates, and amount to an unconstitutional delegation of power to the executive branch by Congress.
The Biden administration on Monday asked the federal court to lift the order blocking the mandate for large private employers. The administration said the petitioners were not claiming a “major prospect of harm” from the rule, so the court should allow the mandate to proceed while the case makes its way through the system.
“Accordingly, there is no need to address petitioners’ stay motions now, and the court should lift its administrative stay and allow this matter to proceed under the process that Congress set forth for judicial review of OSHA standards,” lawyers for the administration argued.
The White House on Monday said businesses should move forward with Biden’s vaccine mandate for private businesses, despite a federal court order temporarily halting the rules, CNBC reported.
“People should not wait,” White House Deputy Press Sec. Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters during a press briefing. “They should continue to move forward and make sure they’re getting their workplace vaccinated.”
The OSHA regulation applies to employers with at least 100 workers, creating an emergency temporary rule that will require employers to mandate workers be vaccinated against COVID or submit to regular testing. A deadline for companies to comply with the regulation was set for Jan. 4.
Petitioners said the mandate, publicized as an emergency temporary standard by OSHA, should be struck down because it exceeds OSHA’s authority under the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
More than two dozen states have filed lawsuits against the Biden administration over the vaccine mandate for large private employers in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th and D.C. Circuits. Federal law dictates cases be consolidated and heard by one federal appeals court chosen by a lottery.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the lottery could take place on or around Nov. 16, and the case could make its way to the Supreme Court.
Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.
© 2021 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
No Peace Dividend Again
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | November 10, 2021
Back when the Soviet Union fell apart, there was much talk of a peace dividend — a big reduction in the United States government’s spending on militarism. The peace dividend did not arrive. Instead, the US government proceeded to spend big on the military and engage in a series of military actions across the world, including, as the dissolution of the Soviet Union proceeded, the US military’s first of two invasions of Iraq.
Now, about 30 years after the Soviet Union went away, US military members are still stationed across Europe, as well as aboard ships near Russia, ready to counter the ghost of red spread.
Special interests behind the scenes worked overtime in the 1990s to ensure that the money kept flowing to the military-industrial complex. Containment of the Soviet menace evaporated as an excuse, but people came up with new excuses.
Ron Paul explained the transition in his April of 2013 comments upon the founding of his Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Paul stated:
The Cold War, as we now know, was itself largely hyped up by beneficiaries of the military build-up, but at the very least we should have expected at the end of the thousands of missiles pointed at us some sort of peace dividend. Instead, thanks to those whose careers and fortunes depended in some manner on the military industrial complex, we stumbled from the end of the war on communism to the war to control the world. This war has failed.
One big part of the US government’s “war to control the world” that has failed is the Afghanistan War. After a 20-years war with an estimated over two trillion dollars cost that wrought destruction to Afghan infrastructure and lives on a grand scale, the US military left Afghanistan. The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had failed to achieve promoted “nation building” objectives such as the women’s liberation objective then-First Lady Laura Bush promoted for Afghanistan in a November of 2001 as a substitute for her husband in his weekly presidential radio address and the combatting corruption objective President Barak Obama promoted in a December of 2009 speech. As the US troops left, Afghanistan returned for the most part to its status from before the war began, only worsened by the devastation of war.
But, at least we can obtain some sort of peace dividend due to the ending of the US government’s longest war? Nope. It looks like President Joe Biden and the US Congress are intent on ensuring that the militarism spending continues to increase nonetheless. With the Afghanistan War in the rearview mirror, the Washington, DC politicians and the special interests who gain from foreign interventions, including war, are now focused on new “monsters to destroy,” just as the people running the show in DC were focused when the Cold War wound down.
In a Sunday Intercept article, Peter Maass provided details regarding how politicians in Washington, DC appear to be ensuring there again will be no peace dividend, with legislation making its way through Congress that directs military spending to increase next year despite the ending of the Afghanistan War.
Gavin Newsom Reappears, Claims He Skipped Climate Conference to go ‘Trick-or-Treating’
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | November 10, 2021
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has reappeared in public for the first time since October 27th, claiming he missed the Cop26 climate conference to go ‘trick-or-treating’ with his children.
Newsom spoke at the California Economic Summit, where he complained about the “treadmill” of work he had to plough through.
Fox News reports that Newsom’s children held an “intervention” during a family dinner because they “couldn’t believe I was going to miss Halloween.”
“He ultimately decided to stay home because the “knot” in his stomach was too much to bear,” according to the report.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollak wondered why Newsom had to miss the climate summit given that it is still ongoing and Halloween was 10 days ago.
“In addition to family, Newsom claims he has devoted the past two weeks to work — though he spent Saturday at the lavish wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty, with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) officiating the nuptial vows,” he writes.
Speculation had been raging as to why Newsom hadn’t appeared in the public eye for two weeks after receiving his COVID-19 booster shot.
Journalist Steve Kirsch previously claimed that Newsom had been out of sight since October 27 because he had a bad reaction to the jab.
“The explanation Gavin gave in the video (that he had a change of heart and wanted to spend Halloween with his kids) seems a bit odd since his press office said he was working in the Capitol,” writes Kirsch.
“I have a good friend who is politically well connected who spoke with Newsom’s former staffers and they all thought it was a really weird explanation,” he added.
Kirsch says he showed the before and after videos of Newsom to a neurologist, who claims the Governor is “100%” recovering from Bell’s palsy due to lingering “telltale” signs.
“She had a dermatologist review as well who said the same thing,” claims Kirsch. “She said most people wouldn’t be able to tell, but this is her “bread and butter” so she knows exactly what to look for.”
Macron goes nuclear to protect France’s energy independence in green future
RT | November 9, 2021
France will start building new nuclear reactors after a decades-long pause, President Emmanuel Macron has announced, citing both energy security needs and the promise to reach carbon emission neutrality by mid-century.
“To guarantee France’s energy independence, to guarantee our country’s electricity supply, and to reach our goals – notably carbon neutrality in 2050 – we will for the first time in decades revive the construction of nuclear reactors in our country, and continue to develop renewable energy,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation on Tuesday.
The French president made the announcement after attending last week’s COP26 UN climate summit in Glasgow, where activists called for radical changes to energy production in order to stave off the projected rise in global temperatures.
Some 75% of France’s electricity comes from nuclear power, and early in his presidency Macron pledged to lower that to 50% by 2035, also in the name of preserving the environment. Skyrocketing oil and natural gas prices, as well as the mixed performance of wind and solar, appear to have changed his mind, however.
Macron’s remark about the reactors was part of a broader speech addressing the Covid-19 pandemic, social policies, and the impending French presidency of the EU.
Attenborough and his climate cohorts are scaring the young into mental illness
By David Seedhouse | TCW Defending Freedom | November 10, 2021
THE BBC last week re-published yet another video article – Climate Change: The Facts – featuring David Attenborough. It shows scenes of calamity and collapse and has a single main message: ‘Act now or we are all doomed.’
Despite its title, there is no attempt whatsoever at a balanced analysis of ‘the facts’. The video includes a comment from the discredited Michael Mann, whose faulty algorithm created the famous ‘hockey stick‘ chart of supposed global warming that so exercised Al Gore and Greta Thunberg – who has no scientific credentials, or arguably any right at all to be included in a ‘fact-based’ video.
Towards the end of his presentation, Attenborough declares: ‘We now stand at a unique point in our planet’s history, one where we must all share responsibility both for our present wellbeing and for the future of life.’
Hyperbole, hubris, hysteria … but no humility. We have apparently become the gods of ancient Greece, able to control all aspects of life, including the planet.
It is unclear how we all have responsibility for ‘the future of life’, which managed very well before humans existed and, according to experts of Attenborough’s ilk, will inevitably change according to the laws of evolution in any case.
However, we surely do have responsibility towards each other, especially not to cause unwarranted alarm, and to support the mental health of our young people, which according to many reports is at a nadir.
One large survey found that nearly 60 per cent of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried about the climate issue.
More than 45 per cent said such feelings affected their daily lives. Some 75 per cent thought the future was frightening, while 56 per cent think humanity is doomed.
Take a minute to digest this. The survey, led by Bath University in collaboration with five other universities, spanned ten countries. It amassed responses from 10,000 people aged between 16 and 25 and found that a staggering majority are so scared and depressed that they feel they have no future.
This devastating situation has not happened spontaneously. Nor is it a rational response to the actual evidence. Rather it is the result of years of uninhibited scaremongering by older people who prefer to be part of a lucrative alarmist club than set a decent example of balanced reasoning.
Most traditional societies revere and respect their elders, for their life experience and wisdom. And in return the elders quietly and calmly protect the young, beneficently pointing to the good things in life that may come.
This seemingly timeless human – and indeed animal – circle of life has come close to breaking with astonishing speed. Many of our prominent elders, who should be sage, measured and knowing, are behaving like reckless toddlers in a sandpit they think is all theirs.
They spent 2020 and much of 2021 locking young people away from their schools, their friends, and their elderly relatives, terrifying them with useless masks and distancing to ‘protect’ them from a virus that poses hardly any risk to them.
These thoughtless adults constantly say how much they care for the future of humanity but show, with every poorly-researched exaggeration, that they don’t give two hoots for the psychological wellbeing of the young who actually are the future.
Whether through guilt, ignorance, psychological bias or just the misplaced desire to show how powerful they are, such infantile elders display little awareness of the damage they are causing. And if they have even an inkling of how they are harming the young, they show no restraint.
Their imagined certainties do not exist. We do not know everything there is to know about viruses and we certainly do not know everything about the climate of a vast and complex planet. We cannot possibly say with any confidence what will happen to us, and we cannot control Nature. Nor should we try.
Young people do not need to be saved by anyone, not least these false prophets of doom. They need the wherewithal to live fulfilled lives – with knowledge, curiosity, social support, friendships, honesty and, above all, the modesty to accept human limitations, without self-righteous hectoring from older adults who have lived most of their own lives in circumstances where the future held promise rather than terror.
Those such as David Attenborough and the rest of the climate establishment presumably have the best of intentions. But their obsession with controlling the uncontrollable has completely blinded them to the awful damage their blinkered obsessiveness has caused our young.
They have abjectly failed to provide sensible information and an inquisitive, questioning environment. They should be setting an example of gentle wisdom, where problems are solved by open minds. Instead, they have caused a huge avoidable mental health crisis, and have barely noticed what they have done.
The first “climate change” diagnosis is here. It will not be the last.
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 9, 2021
Doctor Kyle Merritt, an attending physician at an emergency department in Nelson BC, added “climate change” as a contributing factor to the medical issues of one of his patients. And, in so doing, has achieved a remarkable and troubling world first.
The first-ever medical diagnosis of “climate change”.
Dr Merritt said in an interview with Glacier Media:
If we’re not looking at the underlying cause, and we’re just treating the symptoms, we’re just gonna keep falling further and further behind,” the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media. […] It’s me trying to just… process what I’m seeing.”
The entire situation raises some interesting questions.
DOES IT MAKE MEDICAL SENSE?
Of course it doesn’t.
He diagnosed her as “suffering from climate change”. You can’t do that, it is insane.
That’s like diagnosing someone who was struck by lightning as “suffering from the effects of rain” or a person having a heart attack as “suffering from the effects of Mcdonald’s”.
… actually, it’s worse than that. At least my examples have a distinct cause-and-effect relationship, and there are no scientific papers suggesting Mcdonald’s doesn’t actually exist.
The patient in question is over 70, asthmatic, diabetic and suffering from heart failure. She’s very, very sick… no matter the climate.
Even if Dr Merritt can somehow trace a decline in her health due to the weather (and there’s no evidence at all that he can), actually diagnosing it is completely bonkers.
… SO WHY DO IT?
It’s a staged PR move. A very obvious one, when you think about it.
For one thing, there’s the question of how the media ever found out it happened, since medical records and diagnoses are completely private.
Clearly Dr Merritt didn’t just diagnose his patient with “climate change”, he then immediately called up the local media to tell them he had done it.
Throw in the fact that this happened to occur during the COP26 conference in Glasgow, which only today warned of “climate-linked health risks” rising, and that the move has already spawned a new NGO, “Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health”, and you have a textbook example of a stage-managed media rollout.
WHY NOW?
In simple terms, because Covid worked and climate didn’t.
They have been stoking up public fear of “a new ice age” and acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer and myriad other supposedly incipient climate disasters for literal decades, and never touched one-tenth of the level of hysteria created by the Covid19 “pandemic”.
Somewhere, some not especially bright public relations executive has decided that the way to push the “pivot from Covid to climate” is to try and turn the long-predicted environmental disaster into a public health issue.
It’s hamfisted, a little funny, and probably won’t work, but it does open up some troubling possibilities going forward.
LIKE WHAT?
Well, for starters, this may be the first “climate change diagnosis”, but do you honestly believe it will be the last?
Don’t be surprised if we see a huge spike in “climate diagnoses” in the next few months.
There are already widespread academic efforts to create a causal link between “climate change” and common illnesses.
A few days ago, the Independent headlined The climate crisis is not just about the environment – it’s about health too.
As I mentioned earlier, just today the COP26 panel warned that “climate-linked health risks” are going to rise.
Only last week the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology published a paper titled “Climate Change and Global Issues in Allergy and Immunology” which argues climate change is already making asthma and some allergies worse.
It’s not hard to put together a list of other common afflictions that are already being linked back to climate change.
Cancer, pneumonia, heatstroke, diabetes, heart disease and essentially all lung conditions.
There’s also all diseases spread by mosquitos or other zoonotic agents, plus every waterborne illness.
And that’s without even severely stretching logic, which Covid has shown our medical and scientific institutions have no trouble doing.
They are already discussing “climate-related” mental health issues such as stress, anxiety and depression. These could easily become further types of “climate-related diagnoses” too.
Now, allow me to speculate for a few paragraphs…
The practice of “climate-related diagnosis” is likely going to expand. When questions about the science behind this are raised by sceptics, they will naturally be accused of “climate denial”.
Opinion pieces will appear torturing reason to defend the practice of diagnosing “climate illness”. So-called journalists, or mercenary experts in made-up fields like “climate ethics”, will crochet strands of reason into positions so full of holes they barely exist.
We’ll be told that even if the practice is technically inaccurate, it’s serving a greater truth. That people might not literally be sick due to climate change, but we are all figuratively dying of it.
“Covid has shown us people only do what’s right when they’re scared: We need to make them feel climate fear.”
“Climate change diagnoses are on the rise. And that’s a good thing.”
“Healthcare workers take stand on climate with new diagnosis trend.”
“NHS workers saved us from Covid, and now want to take on climate.”
… you don’t have to read the Guardian as much as I have to feel those headlines, or ones very like them, in our future.
Then the deaths can start happening. Covid has demonstrated that you can create a “mass casualty” scare by essentially just adding an extra line on a death certificate. They can do that for climate too. The headlines will carry on…
“Physicians see spike in “climate deaths” as people suddenly feel the consequences of inaction”
When people point out the flaws in reasoning the papers will argue that, even if people aren’t really dying of climate change, symbolically putting it on death certificates is the best way to illustrate how much danger we’re in.
They’ll backhandedly admit the statistic isn’t real, but then use it as an excuse to call for action anyway:
“Weekly climate deaths are outstripping Covid – we need to address the “climate pandemic.”
… it will go on and on.
Climate change will start being listed as an “underlying cause of death” for more and more diseases. I already mentioned cancer, lung disease and heart disease. They’ll all be “climate-related”.
The press spent the last year telling us that climate change “makes pandemics more likely”, so any future “pandemic” can be linked to climate and boom, a few hundred thousand climate deaths.
Climate change is allegedly bad for unborn babies, so stillbirths and miscarriages can all be “climate deaths”.
They can do a study finding “higher levels of solar radiation” can “increase the risk of cancer”, and then start saying anyone who dies of cancer also died of climate.
They don’t even have to limit it to natural causes.
Drowned in a flash flood? That’s a climate death.
Starved due to drought? Climate death.
Committed suicide? “he was pretty upset about the climate”.
Attacked by a polar bear? Well, climate change forced it out of its natural habitat.
I’m not being funny. This is not satire, I wish it were. Believe me, they could easily actually say it, or something like it, eventually.
If the past twenty months have done nothing else, they should at least have taught you this valuable lesson: There is nothing – NOTHING – too dishonest, too cynical or even too insane for the establishment to sell.
It doesn’t matter if it’s unlikely, or self-contradictory or irrational – it doesn’t even matter if it’s literally physically impossible – they will say it, and they will expect you to believe it.
We now have our first climate “case”. The first death “with climate” probably won’t be far behind. Thousands more will likely follow.
That’s when talk of “climate lockdowns” will come back.
Thousands of Australians with unpaid fines for Covid rules to have bank accounts raided and property siezed
Dystopia Down Under
Women System | November 7, 2021
As if the dystopian hell Australians are dealing with wasn’t bad enough already, residents of the country’s 2nd largest state are now at risk of losing the money in their bank accounts, their homes or other property, and even their driving privileges, if they do not pay their fines from breaking any of the tyrannical government’s draconian Covid rules in a timely manner.
Since at least September, Queensland Health has employed the services of the State’s Penalties Enforcement Register (SPER) to collect a total of 3046 unpaid fines totaling around $5.2 million, which includes 2755 separate individuals and businesses who were issued citations for not following the public health dictatorship’s unjustifiable orders during Covid lockdowns.
The extreme measures are expected to be implemented in other areas of the country, which could bring in close to $100 million in total. In just New South Wales alone, there are over 56 million in unpaid Covid fines that would be subject to collection, according to 9News Australia.
Keep in mind, throughout the lengthy lockdowns, a huge number of citizens were not permitted to work or make a living in any way. Residents of Queensland could not even leave the house without being harassed by police or military officials, and if they dared stray too far from their house they were issued a ticket and a fine.
According to the latest data from Queensland Health, 18.4% of all fines are outstanding and would be subject to the extreme recovery options laid out above. Another 25% are also under investigation or pending and could potentially be sent into collections.
Just 56.4 percent of fines have been paid in full or are currently on a payment plan.
From the Brisbane Times :
SPER was undertaking “active enforcement” on another 18.4 percent of fines, worth about $1 million, which a spokesman said “may include garnishing bank accounts or wages, registering charges over property, or suspending driver licences.”
The unpaid fines are not the only big-ticket that Queensland’s public health dictators are looking to cash in on. They are also looking to chase down 5.7 million in “significantly overdue invoices” from the government’s mandatory quarantine facilities.
Unbelievably, Not only are Australian travelers forced into mandatory quarantine centers for 2 weeks upon arrival, but they are also sent a bill for their stay totaling a few thousand dollars.
In order to collect these payments, Queensland Health went outside the usual channels, calling in private debt collectors to chase down the money on 2045 invoices for hotel quarantine.
“Queenslanders rightly expect travellers will pay for their hotel quarantine stays and not leave taxpayers to foot the bill.” – Queensland Health official on agency hiring outside debt collectors.
The commission debt collectors will make from recovering the unpaid fines is not yet known.
There have been over 44,000 hotel quarantine stays that are not paid for as of right now. Only about 11% are considered eligible for collections, but many more are expected to default over the coming months.
Postcard from Genoa
By Roger Watson | Reflections on life and religion | November 9, 2021
If anyone who is unvaccinated is considering visiting Italy soon, I would strongly advise against it. Britain seems very civilised in comparison, despite having a run in with a BA official who questioned me about my lack of a mask on leaving the first class lounge in Heathrow, seemingly unaware that we were still on British soil. But, as reported in a Postcard From Istanbul, once the curtain was drawn behind us in BA Club Class, the masks were off and not donned again until arrival in Milan. From Milan I took the train to Genoa to work at the University of Genoa, where I teach regularly, for a week. It is worth noting that I completed the European Passenger Location Form using details from my British passport but, to avoid the queue at the border, I used my Irish passport to enter Italy. I expected to be questioned about the lack of congruence between this passport and the one used to complete the online form which, I assumed, would have to match at immigration. I was through like the proverbial dose of pesto thus indicating, beyond reasonable doubt, that the completion and submission of passenger location forms is a complete waste of time.
You may enter Italy unvaccinated after the requisite Covid tests and then a period of quarantine. But, thereafter, freedom does not beckon as, wherever you step out of quarantine, you will remain… indefinitely. No form of public transport such as trains, buses and internal flights is permitted without displaying a euphemistically named ‘Green Pass’ (Italy’s vaccine passport). If anyone from the U.K. wants to see what the introduction of vaccine passports will be like, then Italy is already there. Mask wearing is strongly enforced on public transport with repeated ‘mascherina’ messages over the PA system.
Social distancing is requested too but the one exception was taxis where, ironically, you can be squeezed into very close proximity with your fellow passengers without the benefit of any social distancing. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that passengers are not allowed to travel in the front of the taxi beside the driver, so it was common for three people to be arse cheek by jowl in the back. On one journey I was asked to mask up in a taxi that had no functioning seat belt.
To be fair to most restaurateurs and bar owners, who are supposed to demand your vaccine passport, they were not doing this. I was never once asked to don a mask. In typical Italian fashion, the rules are selectively applied. But the Italians have bought into the mask mandate to an incredible degree. Mask wearing is not required outside but no self-respecting Genovese would be seen without a mask at the ready, mainly under the chin at all times, or draped on the wrist like an adornment.
Of course, being Italian, the men can look stylish in a mask and the women still look elegant, but it is the sheer mass scale anticipatory obedience on entering public buildings, bars and restaurants and the 100% compliance that is shocking – and all without any apparent enforcement. In some ways compliance is worse when it is self-imposed.
My small class of doctoral students always insisted on remaining masked when meeting with me but made no comment about my facial nudity. They refused to remove their masks at my request and when challenged, could only refer to “the rules”. Despite attending my class on systematic reviewing and evidence assessment, not one had ever considered the evidence regarding masks and, even more distressing, was their complete lack of interest. I had to wonder, Godwin-like, whether this is how Mussolini started? Or am I just a bad teacher?
Roger Watson is a Professor of Nursing at Hull University.
Anti-Covid pass campaigners’ message – Welsh defeat won’t stop us
TCW Defending Freedom – November 10, 2021
YESTERDAY was a dark day for Wales as plans to extend the use of Covid passes were agreed by the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd – no thanks to Plaid Cymru who shamefully backed the government – and set to start next Monday.
So no more cinemas, theatres, or concert halls for the new pariahs of Welsh society, no freedom for anyone who chooses not to have the experimental covid ‘vaccine’.
How very nasty, how very irrational.
The group Together, who have been co-ordinating a national campaign and who were in Cardiff lobbying yesterday, rightly refuse to be set back. They will keep on fighting this injustice. We all must. As they pointed out in their supporters’ email today, there has been no attempt by the Welsh Government to provide any evidence whatsoever (which they can’t, since the evidence does not stack up) to justify this egregious theft of individual liberty. They also report on the bad faith of the Senedd who refused to let its members speak to them. So much for any vestige of a free society in Wales.
That said, the Together team reported how inspiring it was to see so many people come from various parts of the UK to Cardiff to have their voices heard together. What is needed now, they say, is to get as many people who want to enjoy life normally and see friends without restrictions in a discriminatory two-tier society, engaging with Together’s events around the country.
The next of these is tomorrow, Thursday November 11, in New Brighton, Merseyside for a panel event: Can there be Science without Free Speech? It is to be held at Hope, the anti-supermarket, Victoria Road, New Brighton, Merseyside. Speakers include @DrHoenderkamp @jadenozzz @danieldaviesRPL @alanvibe.
They also invite us to ‘Stand with Health care Workers’ tomorrow in London at 3pm at Parliament Square. As we’ve already reported 60,000 care workers face loss of jobs because of the introduction of mandatory vaccinations. Choice is a fundamental right for all, and we need to uphold it.
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From the Archives
6 MAJOR US foreign policy failures of the post-Cold War era
By Adam Garrie | The Duran | September 14, 2017
In the 1990s, US officials, all of whom would go on to serve in the George W. Bush White House, authored two short, but deeply important policy documents that have subsequently been the guiding force behind every major US foreign policy decision taken since the year 2000 and particularly since 9/11.
These documents include the Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years (more commonly known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine). This document, as the name implies was authored by George W. Bush’s deeply influential Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as well as I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who served as an advisor to former US Vice President Dick Cheney.
The other major document, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, from 1996 was authored by former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee in the administration of George W. Bush, Richard Norman Perle.
Both documents provide a simplistic but highly unambiguous blueprint for US foreign police in the Middle East, Russia’s near abroad and East Asia. The contents of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were first published by the New York Times in 1992 after they were leaked to the media. Shortly thereafter, many of the specific threats made in the document were re-written using broader language. In this sense, when comparing the official version with the leaked version, it reads in the manner of the proverbial ‘what I said versus what I meant’ adage.
By contrast, A Clean Break was written in 1996 as a kind of gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who apparently was not impressed with the document at the time. In spite of this, the US has implemented many of the recommendations in the document in spite of who was/is in power in Tel Aviv.
While many of the recommendations in both documents have indeed been implemented, their overall success rate has been staggeringly bad.
Below are major points from the documents followed by an assessment of their success or failure. … continue
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