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ICAN Sues CDC to Stop Hiding V-Safe Data from the Public

Informed Consent Action Network | December 29, 2021

The FDA and CDC have now made crystal clear that their promise of transparency with regard to COVID-19 vaccines was hogwash. As everyone now knows, the FDA has asked a federal judge to give it at least 75 years to produce the pre-authorization/licensure safety data. And we now know with certainty, federal health authorities similarly want to hide the post-authorization/licensure safety data.

The FDA and CDC have admitted their existing safety monitoring program, VAERS, was incapable of determining causation and therefore unreliable. The CDC has therefore deployed a new safety monitoring system for COVID-19 vaccines called v-safe, and now claims that these “vaccines are being administered under the most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in U.S. history.”

V-safe is a smartphone app that allows vaccine recipients to “tell CDC about any side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.” The purpose of the app “is to rapidly characterize the safety profile of COVID-19 vaccines when given outside a clinical trial setting.” Data submitted to v-safe is “collected, managed, and housed on a secure server by Oracle,” a private computer technology company. Although the CDC has “access to the individualized survey data,” Oracle can only access “aggregate deidentified data for reporting.” Meaning, based on the CDC’s own documentation, the data submitted to v-safe is already available in deidentified form (with no personal health information) and could be immediately released to the public.

ICAN, through its attorneys, therefore asked in three FOIA requests that the CDC produce the deidentified data from the v-safe program in the same form in which Oracle can currently access it. The agency acknowledged that “v-safe data contains approximately 119 million medical entries” but denied producing that data because the “information in the app is not de-identified.” The CDC had apparently not read its own documentation regarding v-safe. But ICAN’s attorneys had and so they administratively appealed this decision and, at the same time, to leave no doubt what was being requested, submitted another request to the CDC that sought all data deidentified after it was submitted to the v-safe app (in other words, in the form that the agency made known that Oracle has the data). Incredibly, the CDC administratively closed this request stating it was duplicative of the original request.

Meaning, the first request was denied by the CDC because the CDC claimed it requested data that was deidentified when entered into the app, but then the CDC closed the second request (which was identical to the first request except for making clear it was seeking data deidentified at any point – before or after it was entered into the app) by claiming the second request was duplicative of the first request! The CDC is plainly playing games. It clearly does not want the v-safe data released.

The public should have immediate access to all v-safe data in deidentified form. Despite the fact that this deidentified data already exists, that it is already in the hands of a private company, and that the CDC has never objected to its production, the CDC has so far failed to produce it to ICAN or to the American public – the same people being mandated to take this liability-free product. But don’t worry, ICAN will not rest until this data is made public and so today has commenced a lawsuit against the CDC and HHS demanding that a court compel them to release this data.

You can read this lawsuit here.

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The Covid narrative is insane and illogical… and maybe that’s no accident

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | December 29, 2021

Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.”
George Orwell, 1984

The “Covid pandemic” narrative is insane. That is long-established at this point, we don’t really need to go into how or why here. Read our back catalogue.

The rules are meaningless and arbitrary, the messaging contradictory, the very premise nonsensical.

Every day some new insanity is launched out into the world, and while many of us roll our eyes, raise our voices, or just laugh… many more accept it, believe it, allow it to continue.

Take the situation in Canada right now, where the government has enforced a vaccine mandate on healthcare workers, meaning in British Columbia alone over 3000 hospital staff were on unpaid leave by November 1st.

How have local governments responded to staff shortages?

They are asking vaccinated employees who have tested positive for Covid to work.

Whether or not you believe the test means anything, they notionally do. In the reality they try to sell us every day, testing positive means you are carrying a dangerous disease.

So they are requesting people allegedly carrying a “deadly virus” work, rather than letting perfectly healthy unvaccinated people simply have their jobs back.

This is insanity.

But could anything more perfectly illustrate the priorities of those running the game?

We already know it’s not about a virus, it’s not about protecting the health service and it’s not about saving lives. Every day the people running the “pandemic” admit as much by their actions, and even their words.

Rather, it seems to be about enforcing rules that make little to no sense, requiring conformity at the price of reason, drawing arbitrary lines in the sand and demanding people respect them, making people believe “facts” that are provably untrue.

But why? Why is the story of Covid irrational and contradictory? Why are we told on the one hand to be afraid, and on the other that there is nothing to be afraid of?

Why is the “pandemic” so completely insane?

You could argue that it’s simple happenstance. The by-product of a multi-focused evolving narrative, a story being told by a thousand authors all at once, each concerned with covering their own little patch of agenda. A car with multiple drivers fighting over a single steering wheel.

There’s probably some truth to that.

But it’s also true that control, true control, can only be achieved with a lie.

In clinical psychology one of the diagnostic signs of the psychopath is that they tell elaborate lies, compulsively. Many times they will tell a lie even if the truth would be more beneficial.

Nobody knows why they do this, but I have a theory, and it applies to the swarming groups of little rat minds running the sewers of power as much as it does any individual monstrosity.

If you want to control people, you need to lie to them, that’s the only way to guarantee you have power.

If you are standing in the road, and I yell “look out, there’s a car a coming”, and you move just as a car whips past, I will never know if you moved because I said so, or because there actually was a car.

If my interest is in making sure you don’t get hurt, this would not matter to me either way.

But, what if my only true aim is the gratification of watching you do what I say, simply because I said it?

… well, then I need to scream out a warning of a car that does not exist, and watch you dodge an imaginary threat. Or, indeed, tell you there is no car, and watch you get run over.

Only by doing this can I see my words mean more to you than perceivable reality, and only then do I know I’m truly in control.

You can never control people with the truth, because the truth has an existence outside yourself that cannot be altered or directed. It may be the truth itself that controls people, not you.

You can never force people to obey rules that make sense, because they may be obeying reason, not your force.

True power lies in making people afraid of something that does not exist, and making them abandon reason in the name of protecting themselves from the invented threat.

To guarantee you have control, you must make people see things that are not there, make people live in a reality you build around them, and force people to follow arbitrary, contradictory rules that change day by day.

To truly test their loyalty, their hypnosis, you could even tell them there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, but they need to follow the rules anyway.

Maybe that’s the point. Maybe the story isn’t supposed to be believable. Maybe the rules aren’t meant to make sense, they are meant to be obeyed.

Maybe the more contradictory & illogical the regulations become, the more your compliance is valued.

Maybe if you can force a person to abandon their judgment in favour of your own, you have total control over their reality.

We started with an Orwell quote, so let’s end with one too:

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

Isn’t that what we’re seeing now? What we’ve been seeing since the beginning?

People being mind broken into being afraid of something they are told isn’t frightening, following rules they are told are not necessary, taking “medicine” they are told does not work.

Maybe forcing people to believe your lies, even as you admit you are lying, is the purest expression of power.

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

NZ Doctors Receive ‘Perverse’ Monetary Incentives to Vaccinate, ‘Hush Money’ Paid to Victims’ Families

By Amy Mek | RAIR Foundation | December 21, 2021

Veteran New Zealand doctor René de Monchy’s career came to an abrupt halt after refusing to be vaccinated. Wanting to remain “vaccine-free,” the physician of over 48 years was fired, banned from his hospital, and not allowed to say goodbye to his patients.

The general practitioner and psychiatrist is shining a spotlight on the Globalist forces using Covid to help them seize control of New Zealand. The brave doctor questioned why doctors and patients receive monetary “vaccine” incentives. Furthermore, Dr. Monchy believes the actual number of people who have died from the vaccines is not reported, and relatives of those killed from the injection are receiving “hush money.”

Critical From The Begining

From their inception, Dr. Monchy was very critical of the “experimental, never-before-used mRNA vaccines.” The Doctor disagreed with the vaccine’s “lack of a control group and long-term outcomes,” reports the Doctors Collective. Even more so, the Doctor is outraged that the injection is being promoted to children and pregnant women,

… what closed the door for me was when the vaccines were also given to children, who are absolutely not at risk with corona infection. In addition, the mRNA vaccines were also promoted for pregnant women, which is completely contrary to any medical and scientific tradition of carefully weighing the pros and cons. The immune system, especially of a child, is a delicate interplay. It is like a symphony orchestra with several sections; the winds, strings, and percussion, all of which must fill in at just the right time. By administering vaccines whose effects are still largely unknown, you are going to disrupt this interplay. We have every reason to be cautious.

“Peverse”Monetary Incentives

Since the arrival of the gene-therapy injections, New Zealand has pushed to have 90% of its population receive two injections. In December, the country successfully reached its milestone. To achieve its 90% “vaccination” goal, Dr. Monchy explained that every citizen who received the injection was bribed with a voucher of 20 NZD (12 euros). At the same time, doctors have been given 359 NZD (216 euros) per vaccine.

Just five weeks ago, New Zealand had a so-called “vaxxathon,” a kind of festive campaign, with the sole purpose of giving as many people as possible a shot. Dr. Monchy reported that one health center made 175,000 NZD (105,000 euros) during that vaxxathon. “There is a perverse incentive for doctors to participate in this kind of campaign,” stated the Doctor.

No Vaccine Exemption

Vaccine exceptions were initially allowed in New Zealand, but were soon withdrawn by the government. The only exception now is if someone has suffered anaphylactic shock or a pulmonary embolism after the injection, explains the doctor. “I have had patients who suffered a stroke or Guillaume Barré after the first injection. But what do you think? No exception was given for a second vaccination.”

Similarly, in Australia, Senator Gerard Rennick condemned his government for forcing citizens to take a second shot if they suffered an adverse event from the first.

Chance Of Fine Or Jail

Those who don’t get pricked are demonized as anti-vaxxers and increasingly socially excluded. Since November 18, an unvaccinated person is no longer allowed to work in health care, education, or air and sea transport. Following the introduction of the Corona Pass on December 3, the unvaccinated are no longer welcome in hospitality, sports, cultural events, and non-essential stores. Those who fail to comply risk a fine of NZD 12,000 (€7210) or six months in prison. We have become a segregated society, explains Dr. Monchy.

Because the Doctor works in healthcare, he was also required to get vaccinated. On the day the deadline passed, the manager called him in her office. She asked if he had been vaccinated. He replied, “no.” Immediately his computer account and swipe card were blocked. He was unable to say goodbye to patients and colleagues. He received a restraining order from the hospital, “like a hooligan receiving a stadium ban,” stated Dr. Monchy.

One of the doctor’s closest colleagues told him that there is no talk about the people forced to leave the hospital. The doctor’s co-workers are afraid of losing their livelihoods. The rumor is that doctor’s medical licenses will be revoked, which has already happened to three colleagues.

The doctor is sporadically working under the radar. He sees patients through teleconsultations. His only hope is to continue doing the work he loves.

Posthumous PCR Positive

At the onset of the corona crisis in early 2020, the doctors were initially shocked by the extreme outlook we were presented with, states Dr.Monchy. However, it soon became apparent that the mortality rate was much lower than predicted; in New Zealand, exactly 46 people have died from Covid-19 from January 2020 to date, according to official statistics. Anyone who dies within 28 days of a positive PCR test is counted as a corona death, regardless of other circumstances. Recently, the police in New Zealand shot and killed a criminal. Posthumously, the PCR test turned out to be positive. As a result, he, too, went down in the books as a corona death explains the Doctor.

Leaders Do Not Care About People’s Health

Standard ways of improving health are not encouraged, such as diet, exercise, and fresh air, but rather suppressed. Moreover, any dissent by doctors is being dealt with harshly, either in the media or through the Medical Councils (professional organizations), states Dr. Monchy. “At some point, it dawned on me: this is not so much about health, but more about politics, money, power, and social manipulation.”

Globalists Have Seized Control Of New Zealand

New Zealand is a testing ground for international organizations wanting to roll out systems worldwide, explains Dr. Monchy. For example, credit cards and PIN payment (EFTPOS) were first introduced in New Zealand. In addition, the country is remote and easy to manage, as the population is generally accommodating.

The Doctor slammed the country’s globalist Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern,

She is intelligent, but also shrewd woman, who has mastered political maneuvering to her fingertips. After the attack in Christchurch, she was able to count on much goodwill among the population. Ardern has a degree in communications which you can see, she knows how to play to the masses. What has also helped her is that the press was completely in her hands, and still is by the way.

Jacinda Ardern is closely connected with World Economic Forum (WEF) and was its selected Young Global Leader. RAIR Foundation USA recently reported on her and the Young Global Leaders school, which was established and managed by Klaus Schwab of the WEF. Arden, like many of the school’s famous for Covid dictator attendees are exploiting the pandemic with the aim of crashing national economies and introducing a global digital currency.

Arden’s Labour party has an absolute majority in parliament. The Doctor explains that this allows Arden’s party to publish laws on Thursday, and her government will quickly and quietly push them through on Monday. The leader operates at a pace that the public is supposed to struggle to keep up with.

The Prime Minister has already said that there will be no end to vaccines. The latest Covid-19 law is far-reaching: the Minister of Health can declare a location an emergency area, after which agencies have the right to enter a home, test the people present, and provide mandatory “treatment.” All court cases brought against this type of measure, up to the Supreme Court, have been lost.

“It would be a mistake to think that this system is unique to New Zealand or that only here will it be so extreme.” I think the system is only being perfected here before it is introduced in other places, explains the Doctor.

Powerful international organizations, such as the WEF are out to bring about an overall social transformation. A new plan is launched almost every week in our area, such as a general smoking ban. So much is unknown, but what the Doctor feels sure about is, “so much power should never be in the hands of a government.”

“It is fascinating but creepy to see how a small group of people around Jacinda Ardern have taken control of this country,” states the Doctor. He questions why a majority of the population goes along with this?

Why do we allow ourselves to be split into “good citizens” and the “anti-vaxxers” or “outcasts”? I have noticed that it is precisely the more intellectual people who fall for it. That includes, unfortunately, many fellow physicians, when you cannot possibly maintain that this regime of vaccines and measures is good for public health. I think the scale of the deception certainly has something to do with it. It is simply too big to grasp. The moment you see through it, you lose much of what you have assumed to be valid up to that point. Intellectuals have more invested in the system; they, therefore, have more to lose. Perhaps our greatest fear is that we will lose our minds. To give up confidence in this corona system is maddening; many people do not yet dare to do so.

Sums Of Hush Money

According to official figures, 117 deaths have been reported as “possibly associated” with the Pfizer vaccine, of which only one case has been assessed as “probable.” The rest are still under investigation, or the deaths were dismissed as “not related to the vaccine.”

These are entirely different figures reaching us through the unofficial route, explains the doctor. We have collected 220 cases via next of kin in which the vaccine is most likely the cause of death. For example, a healthy 50-year-old man or a 15-year-old youth died a day after their shot. He reports that “there are indications that relatives are being offered sums of hush money.”

History Repeating Itself

The doctor grew up in the Netherlands and was conceived around the liberation. His father was active in the underground, helping Allied pilots to escape. But, of course, this was dangerous, so his family lived in a certain tension.

During his childhood, the war was never far away. He grew up playing in the bomb craters in the street. His family regularly discussed the war in their home; it was not taboo. Dr. Monchy’s father described how the occupying forces gradually tightened the thumbscrews: “identification requirements, more and more restrictions, then excluding entire groups.” Exactly as is happening now in New Zealand and elsewhere worldwide, explained the doctor. Unfortunately, it is the known way to take control, as history has repeatedly shown.

Hope For New Zealand

The doctor has not lost hope and praised activist organizations like Voices for Freedom for doing fantastic work in New Zealand. Demonstrations are held in many cities almost every week and attract hundreds or even thousands of people. The Globalists can only suppress human beings for so long stressed the doctor,

You have to remember that our “opponents” see us as interchangeable, as expendable units. For everyone the same vaccine. For all the world the same QR system. There is no place for our sense of self in their human vision. But this clashes with the uniqueness of the human being. You can suppress the sense of self for a while, but not for very long. Once people have rediscovered themselves, they start to see the seriousness of the current situation and the turnaround comes.

In April 2021, doctors, dentists, pharmacists and veterinarians set up an organization, New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science. Their group objected to pharma companies actions and the harsh consequences they faced for voicing their concerns,

Our group formed around an open letter to the New Zealand government that expressed our concerns with the Pfizer Comirnaty Covid-19 injection, as well as the implication from our regulatory bodies that we would be considered incompetent in our duties if we provided fully informed consent about this procedure.

The organization is growing quickly as hundreds of doctors, nurses, and other paramedics have been fired for being vaccine-free – they deliberately do not call them “unvaccinated.” When the first side effects of the gene therapy injections appeared, people noticed that their complaints were brushed aside, as was the personal experience of nurses in hospitals. Their organization tries its best to help these brave individuals.

Seeking Connection

Many colleagues Dr. Monchy speaks to express open doubts about the harsh corona policy in private. They wonder whether the measures still have to do with public health. The doctor is glad that they are expressing their doubts and seeking a connection with other medics. “For myself, I will remain true to my principles. I stand for individual freedom and responsibility, for ‘Respect for Life.’ No one can judge me on that.”

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Evidence that Omicron causes mild disease, and evidence that hype about pediatric hospitalizations is hogwash

By Meryl Nass, MD | December 28, 2021

This graph is from the Telegraph 2 days ago, and it shows that hospitalizations and deaths have not paralleled the rise in cases for Omicron, as they did for earlier waves.

The second graph shows hospitalizations [with Covid] over time by age from today’s NY Times. The yellow line is pediatric ages. While I have not posted a “cases” graph, cases have shot up, while hospitalizations and deaths have not shot up proportionately, as happened in the US with prior waves.

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Aletho News | Leave a comment

Why is Japan crushing COVID?

By Steve Kirsch | December 28, 2021

I cannot recall a time in American history where the medical boards would go after you for prescribing an approved drug off-label for a condition that is supported by over 60 positive studies and multiple peer-reviewed systematic reviews and meta-analyses which is the highest level of evidence-based medicine. Can you?

Is there a cost-benefit analysis somewhere that I missed showing that ivermectin causes harm?

If the cost-benefit analysis is clearly negative, how could those positive meta-analyses have been published?

Why is the FDA to be on the warpath against ivermectin? Check out this article: TrialSiteNews entitled “Feds Coming After Doctors & Pharmacies that Market Ivermectin as Effective & Safe for COVID-19.”

Perhaps they don’t want you to take it because if people found out it works, the pandemic would be over? Wow. That would be really evil.

Let’s look at a country that is allowed to use ivermectin: Japan

Here’s an article describing how Japan is using ivermectin to combat COVID. Here’s an excerpt:

Ivermectin was discarded unceremoniously till now, but Japan has demonstrated that the drug can be used as a more effective cure and a permanent substitute for the Coronavirus vaccines produced by big pharmaceutical companies. […]

The Pandemic in Japan was going out of control, yet the Japanese government was smart enough to look beyond vaccines in its COVID-19 containment efforts.

In September, Japan deployed Ivermectin and legalising the use of the anti-parasitic drug has helped people recover from COVID-19 with more durable and long-lasting immunity. Caseloads have come down rapidly without the need for booster vaccination doses. In Tokyo, there were around 6,000 cases in the middle of August, but the number has now dropped down to below one hundred.

Japan is now overcoming the Coronavirus, with the number of COVID tests dropping from 25% in the fag end of August to just 1% mid-October.

Ivermectin use is thus helping Japan permanently beat the COVID-19 Pandemic. If and when vaccine efficacy wanes, Japan will have a choice- using an anti-parasitic medicine as a permanent cure to ensure speedy recovery of infected patients with durable immunity. Japan has thus crushed Big Pharma with a small move- deploying the use of Ivermectin.

Let’s look at death rates in Japan vs. the US. See a difference? On a per capita basis, Japan is beating the US by a factor of 17. As soon as Japan rolled out ivermectin, their death rates dropped rapidly to 0.

I wonder if it could be caused by the ivermectin? What do you think?

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

COVID REVEALED – EPISODE 1: DR. PETER MCCULLOUGH, DEL BIGTREE, DR. ROBERT MALONE

November 30, 2021

00:00:10 – Preview
00:02:32 – Intro
00:06:59 – Dr. Peter McCullough
01:04:32 – Del Bigtree
01:44:28 – Dr. Robert Malone
02:19:08 – Patient Stories

Source: https://vrevealed.com

December 29, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | | 1 Comment

Victoria government lied about who had access to Covid contact tracing data

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 28, 2021

The government of the Australian state of Victoria not only decided to deliberately keep citizens in the dark about court rulings exposing the fact the privacy of their data collected by contact tracing apps can be compromised – but is now doubling down.

And the way the state’s Acting Premier Jacinta Allan, who has currently taken over while Premier Dan Andrews is being investigated for “concealing treason and fraud,” chose to defend the failure to inform people about matters pertaining to sensitive private information about them was to say the government was – shielding them from misinformation.

Australian media say the attempts to hide the truth have been made repeatedly, and Allan’s logic in defending the move is that if revealed, the Supreme Court’s secret ruling that said the data was not “absolutely protected” would have given rise to a “baseless scare campaign” as media reporting the facts would have caused “fear and misinformation.”

She did not clarify what type of “misinformation and fear” was expected to arise from the truth.

“The decision was taken in the balance of providing confidence in the Victorian community that this wasn’t a matter that needed to have that level of misinformation spread about it,” Allan said on Tuesday of the way the multiple levels of deceit had been handled.

This Supreme Court finding came to light after the Herald Sun reported that despite explicit promises of information safety, and its use only for health purposes, this was a lie – and one ongoing for two years.

Instead of making contact tracing data available only in order to fight the epidemic, it was also available to law enforcement, and authorities like the WorkCover agency.

It was precisely that agency’s demands to be given access to tracing app data that launched the legal case, when the Department of Health asked the court to order WorkCover to stop.

Another revelation is that the state’s Covid commander Jeroen Weimar petitioned the court to keep the case secret for five years. He tried to persuade the court that maintaining Victorians’ trust in the tracing system was what really matters – at the same time downplaying the importance of the citizens’ right to know their data can be shared, despite assurances from Covid tracers that this was not possible.

Asked if it was right to hide from the public the truth about the safety of their data – and the fact a court case was unfolding financed by their tax money, Allan said, “They don’t deserve a fear campaign, they don’t deserve misinformation,” and added that their data “will be protected.”

Shadow Attorney-General Matt Bach sees the scandal differently:

“People should be shocked and appalled. We should never become accustomed to this level of dishonesty.”

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | 3 Comments

China introduces “AI prosecutor” that can automatically charge citizens of a crime

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021

While in the West mostly speech and movement of people are policed through automated “AI” censorship and surveillance systems, in China, work appears to be well under way to create a machine that would act as an AI-powered prosecutor.

The product, which has already been tested by the busy Shanghai Pudong prosecutor’s office, is able to achieve 97 percent accuracy in charging people suspected of eight criminal acts, researchers developing it have alleged.

According to the South China Morning Post, the cases that the “AI prosecutor” is allegedly highly competent in handling involve crimes like credit card fraud, dangerous driving, gambling, intentional injury, obstructing officials, theft, but also something called “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

The last one is considered particularly “problematic” since its definition, or lack thereof, can cover different forms of political dissent.

And now the plan is to introduce a machine that would be given decision-making powers, such as whether to file charges, and what sentence to seek on a case-to-case basis.

That, said Professor Shi Yong, who heads the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ big data and knowledge management lab that is behind the project, is a marked difference between this and other “AI” tools that have already been in use in China for years. One of them is System 206, whose tasks are limited to assessing evidence, the danger a suspect poses to the public, and conditions under which they may be apprehended.

But the tech behind the new artificial prosecutor looks to be at the same time far more ambitious, and advanced. What has been disclosed is that it can be run on a desktop PC, processing 1,000 traits extracted from case description filed by humans, and based on that press a charge.

It’s unclear if the database of 17,000 cases spanning five years used to train the algorithms is enough to consider the project as true AI – and if the same result can be achieved by rule-based algorithms.

Either way, not all human prosecutors are thrilled about having some of their workload replaced in this way – although precisely this has been given as the motive for developing the tech.

“The accuracy of 97 per cent may be high from a technological point of view, but there will always be a chance of a mistake. Who will take responsibility when it happens? The prosecutor, the machine or the designer of the algorithm?,” one Guangzhou-based prosecutor noted, speaking on condition of anonymity.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Four Western provocations that led to U.S.-Russia crisis today

The one-sided indictments of Moscow’s behavior invariably ignore numerous missteps that took place, beginning with President Clinton

By Ted Galen Carpenter | Responsible Statecraft | December 28, 2021

At the end of 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved — a surprisingly peaceful end to a brutal empire. Russia, as the principal successor state, sought to join the democratic West, and the United States and its European allies officially welcomed that aspiration. Three decades later, however, the West and Russia are locked in an increasingly acrimonious cold war struggle. It is a tragic development, and one that could escalate into a catastrophic armed conflict. Neither side is blameless for the onset of a new cold war, but there is a substantial difference in the degree of culpability. Provocations by the United States and NATO were more numerous, more egregious, and began earlier.

U.S. and NATO officials, as well as most of the Western news media, contend that Russia is to blame for the current ugly confrontation. They highlight four Kremlin actions that severely spiked East-West tensions. The first episode, according to that version of history, occurred in 2008 when Russian forces invaded Georgia and advanced to the outskirts of the capital, Tbilisi.  A second, even more serious offense, took place in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and annexed that strategic peninsula after holding a bogus referendum. The third incident followed just months later when Russia orchestrated a separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and then sent in troops to assist the rebellion. During the years that followed, Vladimir Putin’s government exacerbated the emerging cold war by interfering in the internal political affairs of numerous Western countries, especially the United States.

Those allegations contain some truth, but all of them conveniently omit crucial context. For example, the 2008 invasion of Georgia occurred only after the Georgian military fired on Russian peacekeeping troops that had been in the secessionist region of South Ossetia since the early 1990s. Even a European Union investigation concluded that Georgian forces had initiated the fighting. The conflict also occurred in large part because President George W. Bush encouraged Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to believe that the United States and NATO would support his country if it became embroiled in a conflict with Russia.

Putin’s seizure of Crimea was indeed a blatant violation of international law, but it occurred only after the United States and key EU allies had shamelessly assisted demonstrators to overthrow Ukraine’s elected pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych. That thinly disguised coup triggered Russian fears that Ukraine was about to become a forward staging area for NATO military power. Among other worries, the Kremlin suspected that it would lose access to its crucial naval base at Sevastopol on the Crimea peninsula and watch that facility become a hostile NATO base.

The one-sided, self-serving indictments of Russia’s behavior invariably ignore the numerous Western provocations that took place long before Moscow engaged in disruptive measures.  Indeed, the deterioration of the West’s relations with post-communist Russia began during Bill Clinton’s administration.

Western provocation number 1: NATO’s first eastward expansion.

In her memoir “Madame Secretary,” former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of state Madeleine Albright concedes that Clinton administration officials decided already in 1993 to endorse the wishes of Central and East European countries to join NATO. The Alliance proceeded to add Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in 1998. Albright admitted that Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his associates were extremely unhappy with that development. The Russian reaction was understandable, since the expansion violated informal promises that President George H. W. Bush’s administration had given Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed not only to accept a unified Germany but a united Germany in NATO.  The implicit quid pro quo was that NATO would not move beyond the eastern border of a united Germany. 

Western provocation number 2: NATO’s military intervention in the Balkans.

NATO’s 1995 air war against Bosnian Serbs seeking to secede from the newly minted country of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the imposition of the Dayton Peace Accords greatly annoyed Yeltsin’s government and the Russian people. The Balkans had been a region of considerable religious and strategic interest to Moscow for generations, and it was humiliating for Russians to watch impotently as a U.S.-led alliance dictated outcomes there. The Western powers conducted an even greater provocation four years later when they intervened on behalf of a secessionist insurgency in Serbia’s restless Kosovo province. Detaching that province from Serbia and placing it under U.N. control not only set an unhealthy international precedent, but the move also displayed utter contempt for Russia’s interests and preferences in the Balkans.

The Clinton administration’s decisions to expand NATO and meddle in Bosnia and Kosovo were crucial steps toward creating a new cold war with Russia. Former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack F. Matlock Jr. cites the negative impact that NATO expansion and the U.S.-led military interventions in the Balkans had on Russian attitudes toward the United States and the West: “The effect on Russians’ trust in the United States was devastating. In 1991, polls indicated that about 80 percent of Russian citizens had a favorable view of the United States; in 1999, nearly the same percentage had an unfavorable view.”

Western provocation number 3: NATO’s subsequent waves of expansion. 

Not content with how the Clinton administration antagonized Moscow by moving NATO into Central Europe, George W. Bush’s administration pushed the allies to give membership to the rest of the defunct Warsaw Pact and to the three Baltic republics. Admitting the latter in 2004 dramatically escalated the West’s military encroachment. Those three small countries had not only been part of the Soviet Union, they also had spent most of their recent history as part of Czarist Russia’s empire. Russia was still too weak to do more than present feeble diplomatic protests, but the level of anger at the West’s arrogant disregard of Russia’s security interests rose.

Expanding NATO to Russia’s border was not the only provocation. Increasingly, the United States was engaging in “rotational” deployments of its military forces in the new alliance members. Even George Bush’s secretary of defense, Robert Gates, expressed worries that such actions were creating dangerous tensions. Putin’s February 2007 speech to the annual Munich Security Conference made it extremely clear that the Kremlin’s patience with U.S. and NATO arrogance was coming to an end. Bush, tone-deaf as ever, even tried to secure NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — a policy that his successors have continued to push, despite resistance from France and Germany.

Western Provocation number 4: treating Russia as an outright enemy in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Western leaders did not take Putin’s warnings seriously enough, however. Instead, the provocations on multiple fronts continued and, in some cases, even accelerated. The United States and key NATO powers bypassed the U.N. Security Council (and a certain Russian veto) in early 2008 to grant Kosovo full independence. Three years later, Barack Obama’s administration misled Russian officials about the purpose of a “humanitarian” U.N. military mission in Libya, convincing Moscow to withhold its veto. The mission promptly turned into a U.S.-led regime-change war to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Shortly thereafter, the United States worked with like-minded Middle East powers in a campaign to oust Russia’s client, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria. The egregious U.S.-EU meddling in Ukraine’s domestic politics followed.

It is unfair to judge Russia’s aggressive and destabilizing actions, including the annexation of Crimea, the ongoing military intervention in Syria, continuing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, and attempted interference in the political affairs of other countries, without acknowledging the multitude of preceding Western abuses. The West, not Russia, is largely responsible for the onset of the new cold war.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

Russia says it will put a stop to continued NATO enlargement

By Jonny Tickle | RT | December 28, 2021

At upcoming talks with Washington, Moscow will not only obstruct but will put a complete stop to any eastwards expansion of the US-led NATO military bloc, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister said on Tuesday.

Speaking to news agency Interfax, Sergey Ryabkov said his country would go into the negotiations with a clear agenda and reject any attempts by US diplomats to dilute the proposed agreement between the two parties.

“Our leadership has repeatedly said we can no longer tolerate the situation that is developing in the immediate vicinity of our borders. We cannot tolerate NATO expansion. We will not just prevent it. We will put a stop to it,” Ryabkov said.

The talks, due to be held on January 10, will focus on two publicly released draft treaties that include a list of promises Russia wants to obtain from the US and NATO. As well as pledges that the bloc won’t expand eastwards, the proposals also include the end of Western cooperation with post-Soviet countries, the removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe, and the withdrawal of NATO troops and missiles away from the Russian border.

However, according to Ryabkov, the US wants to ignore Russia’s firm demands, instead proposing a less structured form of negotiations. “We should not come up with some kind of dimensionless agenda when it is in our interest to include topics that have long been sorted out through other channels. We have to focus exclusively on the two draft documents that we have presented,” he said.

Ryabkov’s comments followed quotes in the Western media from unnamed sources in the White House claiming the forthcoming talks would focus on arms control, as well as the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

“That in itself is a very difficult task, given the degree of disagreement between us and the US, and us and NATO, on these issues,” the deputy FM said, explaining that Russia would not accept any American attempt to “dilute” the discussion over the proposed treaties.

“We would conclude, in such a case, that the US is not ready for a serious conversation. We call for negotiations, intensively and quickly. We believe that the issue is not just overdue. It is overripe,” he added.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Militarism | , | 1 Comment

Israel refuses to provide evidence for banning Palestinian rights groups

MEMO | December 28, 2021

The Israeli occupation authorities have failed to provide evidence for outlawing six Palestinian human rights and civil society groups, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) said on Tuesday.

“The organisations have not received any of the evidentiary materials that the Israeli authorities purport to justify this draconian and sweeping measure,” Adalah said in a statement.

Adalah pointed out that it had sent a letter to the Israeli security authorities, demanding that they reveal all of the evidence forming the bases of the designations.

“There is no justice, fairness or due process for the organisations, without access to these materials in their entirety in order to defend themselves,” Adalah stressed.

On 19 October 2021, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as “terrorist organisations” under Israel’s domestic Counter-Terrorism Law which was ratified in 2016.

The Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank also outlawed all the six groups, declaring them “unlawful associations.”

Adalah’s legal team said that “the designations constitute a blatant political decision aimed at destroying Palestinian civil society, based on arbitrary law and emergency measures.”

In its statement, Adalah described the six groups as “the most vocal against Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies locally and internationally and provide needed services to a wide range of Palestinian communities,” hinting that this is the real reason behind banning them.

“These baseless designations aim to delegitimise and discredit the work of these groups, placing the organisations, their staff and their supporters in danger of criminal charges,” the statement said.

Adalah reiterated that the six groups did not have any information about the reason for their designation. “To date, they have had no meaningful opportunity to review and challenge the bases of the designations, as no evidence has been provided to them,” Adalah said.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 1 Comment

Why is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy: Three Possible Answers

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 28, 2021

At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability?

The military’s new rules now allow Israeli soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.

The reference to ‘civilians’ in the revised army manual applies to armed Israeli Jewish settlers who have colonised the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law and Palestinian sovereignty. These settlers, who often operate as paramilitary forces in direct coordination with the Israeli army, endanger the lives of their own families by residing on occupied Palestinian land. Per Israel’s twisted standards, these violent Israelis, who have killed and wounded numerous Palestinians throughout the years, are ‘civilians’ in need of protection from rock-throwing Palestinian ‘assailants.’

In Israel, throwing rocks is a “serious crime” and Palestinians who throw rocks are “criminals”, according to Liron Libman, Israel’s former chief military prosecutor, commenting on the new rules. For Israelis, there is little disagreement on these assertions, even by those who are questioning the legality of the new rules. The point of contention, according to Libman and others, is that “a person who is fleeing does not present a threat,” though, according to Libman himself, “the new policy could potentially be justified,” The Times of Israel reported.

The ‘debate’ on the new open-fire policy in Israeli media, gives one the false impression that something fundamental has changed in the Israeli army’s relationship with occupied Palestinians. This is not the case at all. There are numerous, daily examples in which Palestinians, including children, are shot and killed with impunity, whether throwing rocks or not, going to school or merely protesting the illegal confiscation of their land by the Israeli military or armed settlers.

In the Palestinian village of Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank, eight unarmed Palestinians have been killed since May. This small village has been the scene of regular demonstrations against Jewish settlement expansion and against the illegal settlement outpost of Eviatar, in the Palestinian rural area of Mount Sabih. The victims include Muhammad Ali Khabisa, the 28-year-old father of an eight-month-old child, who was shot dead last September.

Though the new rules have placed much emphasis on the status of the supposed Israeli victims, labelling them ‘civilians’, in practice, the Israeli military has used the exact same standard to shoot, maim and kill Palestinian alleged rock-throwers, even when armed settlers are not present.

A famous case, in 2015, involved the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, Mohammad Kosba, at the hands of an Israeli army colonel, Yisrael Shomer. The latter alleged that Kosba had thrown a rock at his car. Subsequently, Shomer chased down the Palestinian teenager and shot him in the back, killing him.

The Israeli officer was “censored” for his conduct, not for killing the boy, but for not stopping “in order to aim properly,” according to The Times of Israel. The Israeli military chief prosecutor at the time concluded that “Shomer’s use of deadly force under the framework of the arrest protocol was justified from the circumstances of the incident.”

Israel’s disregard of international law in its targeting of Palestinians is not a secret. Israeli and international human rights groups have repeatedly condemned the Israeli army’s inhumane and barbaric behaviour in the occupied territories.

In an extensive report as early as 2014, Amnesty International condemned Israel’s “callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank” over the years. AI said that such killings had taken place “with near total impunity.”

“The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy,” the Amnesty report read.

Even Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, concurs. The organisation decried the Israeli army’s “shoot-to-kill policy”, which is also applied to “people who have already been ‘neutralized'”. Indeed, in the case of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man who was shot point-blank in Al-Khalil (Hebron), by an Israeli military medic, Elor Azaria, in 2016, was not only ‘neutralized’ but also unconscious.

According to B’tselem, Israeli “soldiers and police officers have become judge, jury and executioner”. With this tragic and sinister trajectory in mind, one is left to wonder why the Israeli army would amend its open-fire policy at this particular moment. There are three possible answers:

One, the Israeli government and army are anticipating a surge in Palestinian popular resistance in the coming months, possibly as a result of the massive expansion of illegal settlements and forced evictions in occupied East Jerusalem.

Two, by perfectly aligning the existing open-fire policy with the aggressive shoot-to-kill military practice already in place, Israeli courts would no longer have to contend with any legal repercussions for killing Palestinians, including children, regardless of the circumstances of their murders.

Finally, the revised rules would allow Israel to make a case for itself in response to the open investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), concerning human rights violations and war crimes in occupied Palestine. Israel’s Attorney General will now argue that no war crimes are taking place in Palestine since the killing of Palestinians is consistent with Israel’s own military conduct and judicial system. Since the ICC is investigating alleged war criminals, not the government itself, Israel hopes that it can spare its own murderers from having to contend with the legal expectations of the Court.

Though the timing of the Israeli military decision to amend its open-fire policy may appear sudden and without much context, the decision is still ominous, nonetheless. When a country’s military decides that shooting a child in the back without any proof that the alleged ‘criminal’ posed any danger whatsoever is a legal act, the international community must take notice.

It is true that Israel operates outside the minimum standards of international and humanitarian laws, but it is the responsibility of the international community to protect Palestinians, whose lives remain precious even if Israel disagrees.

December 28, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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