Samizdat – 12.08.2022
Former US President Donald Trump dismissed on Friday a report that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence in order to search for classified nuclear weapons documents.
“Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Muller investigation was a Hoax and much more. Same sleazy people,” Trump wrote. He also questioned why the FBI would not allow his lawyers to be present during the agency’s inspection, suggesting that they “planted” evidence.
The Washington Post had reported Thursday that the intention of the raid at Trump’s Florida resort was to recover nuclear weapons documents that the former president illegally removed from the White House.
The Justice Department also requested the same day for a judge to unseal the FBI search warrant in order to refute Republican claims of a political attack. Attorney General Merrick Garland also revealed that he had personally approved the search.
On Monday, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of a probe focused on classified materials the former president allegedly took with him after leaving office.
Trump condemned the raid and characterized it is as a continuation of the political witch hunt by Democrats and the establishment to prevent him to run in the 2024 US presidential election and reverse their policies.
Trump also said the raid shows that the US justice system has been weaponized to act against the Democrats’ political opponents and added that investigators have not found any wrong doing despite probing him for years.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | FBI, United States |
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Samizdat – 12.08.2022
BEIJING – Beijing cannot ignore the deployment of US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems in South Korea as it undermines China’s strategic security, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday.
“China has always respected South Korea’s sovereignty and understood its security concerns, but the US deployment of THAAD missile systems in South Korea undermines China’s strategic security, and Beijing cannot ignore this,” Wang told a briefing.
Heads of foreign ministries of South Korea and China during a meeting in the Chinese city of Qingdao earlier this week, exchanged views and expressed their positions on the THAAD matter. The parties agreed that this issue should not be a stumbling block between Beijing and Seoul.
“We hope that the South Korean side will continue to properly resolve this issue in accordance with the mutual understanding and consensus reached at the meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries,” Wang added.
THAAD is an anti-ballistic missile defense system capable of shooting down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The deployment of additional THAAD missiles in South Korea was an initiative put forward by President Yoon Suk-yeol in January, when he was still a candidate for the top post.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism | China, South Korea, United States |
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Eleven days after the US President Joe Biden’s dramatic announcement of August 1 regarding the killing of the emir of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Moscow has broken its silence. Ten days back, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova had replied to a query that Moscow was yet to “get the details” on what had happened on July 31.
Revisiting the topic during yesterday’s MFA press briefing, in response to a follow-up question, the deputy spokesperson Ivan Nechayev has stated: “We do not undertake to confirm the authenticity (‘dostovernost’ — достоверность) about the destruction in Kabul on July 31 this year as a result of a drone strike of the leader of Al-Qaeda, A. Zawahiri.”
No doubt, this is a very carefully worded Russian statement that focuses on the reliability of Biden’s version. Indeed, Biden got away scot-free since he made the announcement from the White House without taking any questions from the media.
Nechayev pointed out that “Washington has not provided the public with any evidence of the elimination of this terrorist.” And he merely took note of media reports that the apartment building hit by the Americans in Kabul belonged to the “Haqqani clan”.
However, curiously, Nechayev offered that some “first conclusions can be drawn” on the basis of the official comments of the authorities in Kabul — namely, “that they have no information about A. Zawahiri’s stay in the Afghan capital.”
Russia has traditionally kept a robust intelligence system working on Afghanistan providing real time inputs to Moscow, including during the Taliban rule from 1996-2001, when the Russian embassy and consulates remained closed.
In fact, Russian sources were far ahead of others in sharing the details of former Ashraf Ghani’s hasty evacuation from Kabul on August 15 last year amidst the chaotic arrival of the Taliban in the city. (Ghani apparently chose to keep even his hand-picked vice-president and super spy Amrullah Saleh in the dark that he was fleeing with his wife and then national security advisor Hamdullah Mohib.)
Therefore, it is a reasonable surmise that Nechayev probably spoke on what security experts would call a “need-to-know” basis. That makes his remarks doubting the authenticity of Biden’s remarks truly astounding. It is as good as saying that Moscow has received conflicting reports! (Interestingly, Tass highlighted Nechayev’s remarks in a special report yesterday.)
However, Nechayev plunged the knife deep and raised some very pertinent questions in this strange case of a murder without evidence. He commented that “such aggressive actions of the US Air Force, which invaded the sovereign territory of Afghanistan, raise a number of serious questions.” Nechayev posed two questions: “For example, who provided the airspace for the airstrike on Kabul? Who will be responsible in case of collateral civilian casualties during such actions?”
They are indeed big questions. Afghanistan shares its borders with only six countries — Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China and Pakistan. It is a safe bet that Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China wouldn’t have got involved in such a murderous act by the Americans in violation of international law and UN Charter. As for Tajikistan, its airspace is under Russian control. That leaves Pakistan as the only plausible culprit here.
Perhaps, does the Biden Administration refuse to provide “evidence” for fear it might put Rawalpindi in a tight spot at a time when the incumbent army chief is a strategic asset for Washington? There are no easy answers. All we know is that the present army chief Gen. Bajwa is known to take a hands-on role in all major issues and most minor issues in Pakistan-US relations.
He even reached out to Wendy Sherman, the US Deputy Secretary of State, with a request seeking her intervention with the IMF to release the pending tranche of financial bail-out for Pakistan.
Significantly, Nechayev alluded to “attempts to use a real threat to cover up their (US’) own geopolitical ambitions.” He concluded: “Washington, judging by this incident, prefers to act as it pleases, following strictly in line with its foreign policy benefits, regardless of international law and the national sovereignty of other states.”
What could be the “foreign policy benefits” here? There are three ways to look at the question. First and foremost, Biden burnishes his image as a decisive leader when his incoherent public behaviour on numerous occasions lately came to be widely noticed within the US and abroad. Indeed, Biden’s August 1 remarks were peppered with large dollops of self-praise taking credit for the decapitation of the dreaded al-Qaeda. He projected himself as a “hands-on” president.
Second, the US has created a precedent by this act of July 31 — underscoring its prerogative to act as it chooses on Afghanistan. Simply put, the Rubicon has been crossed and the US military might has “returned” to Afghanistan, now that Washington claims that al-Qaeda is very much active in Afghanistan.
Of course, it is a humiliating blow for the Taliban whose two-decade long “resistance” was all about regaining Afghanistan’s sovereignty. Furthermore, the door has been firmly shut on any US-Taliban engagement for a foreseeable future, now that Washington doesn’t have to look beyond that to allege a continuing Taliban-al Qaeda nexus.
Logically, the US can even justify joining hands henceforth with the UK (and France) to extend support to the Panjshiris’ armed rebellion against the Taliban. The Taliban faces a pincer move from Pakistani military and the Biden Administration at a time when, ironically, its best supporter, Imran Khan, is also being defanged systematically in a nutcracker by the civilian government in Islamabad and the so-called “powers that be.”
Of course, keeping Afghanistan in turmoil would serve the US and Nato interests at the present juncture when Russia, the provider of security for Central Asia, is preoccupied with the Ukraine conflict, and China is brooding over Taiwan’s reunification.
Third, the timing: Biden struck when only about 24 hrs were left for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plane to descend on Taipei. The fiction that Washington propagated to the effect that the Administration had no control over the Speaker had, ironically, boomeranged, casting Biden in a poor light as a commander-in-chief who could not even order a military plane to change direction.
Suffice to say, the theatrics of the July 31 airstrike in Kabul momentarily at least distracted attention from the miserable picture Biden drew for himself as a weak, ineffectual POTUS.
The most interesting part is that alongside Nechayev’s remarks in Moscow, the Russian embassy in Washington has since voiced support for a group of more than 70 economists from the United States and other countries with a call to unfreeze all international reserves of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, in an August 10 appeal published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Europe’s leading network of Economic Policy Researchers.
The Russian embassy says: “We fully support this appeal. Considering unacceptable the situation in which the American authorities illegally withhold financial resources belonging to the Afghan people. At the same time, we believe that their bargaining with Kabul regarding the conditions for allocating half of the amount to it is cynical … Washington’s actions are exacerbating the suffering of innocent Afghans…”
Moscow implies that the alibi of an alleged Taliban-al Qaeda nexus to block the engagement with the Taliban by the regional states is unacceptable. In sum, Russia rejects the American version of the murder in Kabul as substantiating anything.
All in all, this indeed becomes “a perfect murder”, worthy of being a sequel to the Michael Douglas-Gwyneth Paltrow crime thriller on a murder that left no clue to trace the perpetrators. By the way, the pleasurable 1998 film also had two alternate endings on the original Blu-ray disc release. The viewer was at liberty to choose which version was found more agreeable.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception | Afghanistan, Russia, United States |
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By Lucas Leiroz | August 12, 2022
New tensions are growing between Iran and the US. Recently, Washington said Tehran plotted to kill White House Advisor John Bolton. The plan would be a retaliation for Trump Administration’s terrorist-like assassination of Iranian Top General Qasem Soleimani, in 2020. The Iranian government denied any involvement in such a plan, considering the accusation absolutely baseless. Indeed, the Americans have not presented any convincing evidence so far, but, being the narrative accurate or not, frictions are likely to escalate.
On August 10, US government’s spokespersons commented on an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate John Bolton, which would have been organized last year and would involve Iranian agents and a US citizen. The case became the topic of an official note from the US Department of Justice, where the alleged plot is narrated. The narrative is built on the testimony of an American who would have been possibly hired by an Iranian to commit the crime. The reward would be a sum of 300,000 dollars, to be paid by an Iranian named Mehdi Rezayi.
The American citizen allegedly involved in the case claims to have been advised to create a cryptocurrency account in order to receive the money safely. Then he would have received assistance from Iranian intelligence on where to find Bolton. The Iranians reportedly told him to photograph the Advisor before murdering him and evading him – possibly as a way of “proving” that the operation was successful. The contact between the American and the Iranians would have taken place for a few months between October 2021 and April 2022. The conversations were carried out through encrypted messages in a safe platform.
US officials also mentioned the detail that the plot would be a retaliatory measure by Tehran against the US operation to kill Qasem Soleimani. Supposedly, the Iranian authorities would have been “pressured” by people to respond to the American terrorist actions against Soleimani – and Bolton would have been the chosen target for this response.
However, now, the situation is partially reversing: with the alleged plot coming to light, it is the US authorities who are mobilizing to “respond” to Iran and punish those involved. Assistant Director in Charge Steven M. D’Antuono of the FBI Washington Field Office commented on the topic: “An attempted assassination of a former U.S. Government official on U.S. soil is completely unacceptable and will not be tolerated (…) The FBI will continue to identify and disrupt any efforts by Iran or any hostile government seeking to bring harm or death to U.S. persons at home or abroad. This should serve as a warning to any others attempting to do the same – the FBI will be relentless in our efforts to identify, stop, and bring to justice those who would threaten our people and violate our laws”.
Tehran for its part denies absolutely any involvement in this type of plot. Iran’s Foreign Ministry Nasser Kanaani comments that “the spinning of these threadbare and baseless myths is becoming a recurring custom in the American judicial and propaganda system”. Washington’s objective with such lies, according to him, would be to legitimize anti-Iranian policies and divert attention from crimes committed by the US government itself, such as the murder of Iranian officials and support for terrorist groups in the Middle East.
“Continuing their endless accusations, their failed Iranophobic policy, the American judicial authorities, in a new yarn spinning, have raised accusations without providing valid evidence and necessary documentation (…) Such baseless claims are made with political motives and aims and in fact amount to […] escaping the responsibility of responding to numerous terrorist crimes that the American government has either directly participated in, such as the cowardly assassination of General Martyr Soleimani, or like the terrorist crimes committed by the Zionist regime and terrorist groups like Daesh with the support of America”, Kanaani said.
This scenario significantly worsens tensions. Recently the US and Iran have intensified their diplomatic frictions. Amid the current global security crisis, the attempt at a new nuclear deal has failed and the US has provided Israel with broad support with military exercises to intimidate Tehran. So, it is likely that in fact the plot narrative was invented with the aim of serving as a “carte blanche” for coming measures against Iran.
In addition, it is notorious how the narrative seems weak and unconvincing. The US Department of Justice reports the alleged result of “investigations” but does not provide any evidence for its claims. And there are still inconsistent data in the description of the plot, such as the fact that it was planned more than a year after Soleimani’s death. It is also unclear why Bolton was chosen as a target, considering that there is a strong presence of American officials in the Middle East, both military and diplomats, who would certainly be “easier” targets to be hit than high-ranking state officials within the American territory.
In fact, the main problem is that, whether true or not, the narrative has served its purpose: it has boosted hostility between the US and Iran, worsening relations between them. Expectations for the near future are of escalating tensions.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Iran, United States |
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Further legitimate doubts are being raised about the scale of global warming claimed by the U.K. Met Office, following publication of a damning report into U.S. weather stations. The report found that 96% of the weather stations used by the U.S. weather service NOAA were “corrupted” by the localised effects of urbanisation. The U.S. has one of the largest temperature measuring systems in the world, and information from the stations forms an important part of the Met Office HadCRUT5 database.
Since 2013, the Met Office has boosted recent global warming by 30%, depressed past measurements and abolished the temperature pause from 1998 to 2012 – this pause is still discernible in the accurate satellite and meteorological balloon record. Using the HadCRUT5 database means the Met Office can claim continuing warming and further heat records. Anthony Watts, the author of the report, titled Corrupted Climate Stations, noted that data from the stations that have not been corrupted by faulty placement, “show a rate of warming in the United States reduced by almost half compared to all stations”. With a 96% warm-bias in U.S. temperature measurements, “it is impossible to use any statistical methods to derive an accurate climate trend for the U.S.”, added Watts. The same can, of course, be argued to apply to all global sets that use the corrupted U.S. data.
The corruption is caused by close proximity to asphalt, machinery and other heat-producing, heat-trapping, or heat-accentuating objects. “Placing temperature stations in such locations violates NOAA’s own published standards, and strongly undermines the legitimacy and magnitude of the official consensus on long-term climate warming trends in the United States,” it says.
Of course the Met Office’s own U.K. temperature measuring is subject to considerable urban heat distortions. During the recent brief heatwave (“feels like an apocalypse,” Piers Morgan), three of the four highest temperatures were recorded at airports including Heathrow, one of the least suitable sites it is possible to imagine. Interestingly, the average temperature for the U.K. last month was 16.6°C, the same as the year before and nearly identical to the 16.5°C of 1976. Given that 11 million more people live in the U.K. and urbanisation has rapidly expanded since then, last month was almost certainly cooler than the same glorious period in 1976. In addition, these averages were not far off the temperature of 16°C recorded in 1911.
Frequent upwards adjustments to HadCRUT, and an increasing disconnect with satellite and balloon records, do pose legitimate questions that the state-funded Met Office is actually recording increasing urban heat, and not much warming of the global atmosphere. And further questions can be posed along the lines – is it just a coincidence that the data is beneficial to those arguing the climate is breaking down, and a command-and-control Net Zero solution must be imposed in less than 30 years?
As we reported recently in the Daily Sceptic, Watts also publicised a rarely referenced dataset that NOAA started in 2015, designed to remove all urban heat distortions. Called the U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), it collected data from 114 U.S. stations and was aiming for “superior accuracy and continuity in places that land use will not likely impact during the next five decades”. Over the last 17 years it found very little evidence to indicate a warming trend. In fact it showed that May 2022 was cooler than May 2005. Watts comments that the data the network produces are never mentioned in monthly or yearly climate reports published by NOAA for public consumption.
Much of the Watts report supplies details of the field trips made to NOAA stations. He supplies copious notes and photos of what was found.
The above photo was taken at Fort Pierce in Florida and shows a digital measuring devise (MMTS) sited next to a large building and five air conditioning units pumping out hot air. Watts, a meteorologist by profession, notes that digital devices are often placed next to buildings since installing a cable to a reading devise is more difficult when roads and paths have to be crossed.
Several examples of stations where the siting could be described as “absurd” were noted in the survey. Watts gives further details:
These include a GHCN station at Lava Hot Springs, Idaho – a tourist site at which the MMTS sensor was placed into a natural hole in the ground where hot water for bathing and swimming emanates from the ground: … a station in Virginia City, Nevada – at which the MMTS was not only missing its protective cap, but also placed near asphalt, generators, and air conditioning units exhausts. Perhaps the most absurd was a UNHCN station in Colfax, California, which was recently moved due to a modernisation upgrade at the California fire station where it is located. The new station has been placed directly above a 20-foot rock wall that absorbs a massive amount of solar energy during the day, and releases it as LWIR [Long Wave Infrared] at night, with heated air rising to the sensor.
In conclusion the report found a “slight warming trend” when examining temperatures from “unperturbed” stations and this was similar to the satellite record compiled by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). “This warming trend, however, is approximately half the claimed rate of increase promoted by many in the climate science community,” it was noted. The UAH monthly record is frequently published by the Daily Sceptic as providing the best guide to global temperature. Not only does it show clearly that temperatures paused from 1998-2012 but a current pause is underway, and this has lasted nearly eight years. The inconvenient data are not to everyone’s taste. Earlier this year, Google Adsense ‘demonitised’ the page providing the monthly results on the grounds of “unreliable and harmful claims”.
“The rate of warming as measured by unperturbed surface stations, USCRN and UAH does not represent a climate crisis,” says Watts. Meanwhile it is almost certain that as temperatures rise in the U.K. this week, the Met Office will be reporting from Heathrow. But its addiction to such data, shown to be “corrupted” by the Watts report, is leading to serious doubts about its ability to provide an accurate indication of U.K. and global temperatures.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | NOAA, UK, United States |
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It’s summer. so there are wildfires!
Tony Heller reminds us that this has always been the case:
Confirmation of Tony’s video comes in this publication by the US Forest Service:
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | United States |
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31% boosted people still contagious 10 days post-infection vs. 6% unvaccinated
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has demonstrated that people who are triple-vaccinated (boosted) against COVID recover significantly more slowly from COVID infection and remain contagious for longer than people who are not vaccinated at all.
The study did not deal with the severity of illness with or without a vaccine.
Researchers swabbed infected people and cultured the swabs, repeating the process for over two weeks until viral replication was not observed.
At five days post-infection, less than 25 percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious, whereas around 70 percent of boosted people were still carrying viable virus particles. For those partially vaccinated, around 50 percent were still contagious at this point.
Even more strikingly, at ten days post-infection, one-third of boosted people (31 percent) were found to still be carrying live, culturable virus. By contrast, just six percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious at day 10.
In other words, people who have received a booster shot are five times more likely still to be contagious at ten days post-infection than are unvaccinated people.
The findings go a long way to explaining why Paxlovid, Pfizer’s anti-viral medication, is often not effective for people who have been vaccinated against COVID, with many experiencing a recurrence of symptoms along with a positive COVID test after completing the five-day regimen (as recently occurred with quadruple-vaccinated Dr. Anthony Fauci). This phenomenon is known as COVID rebound.
Meanwhile, Israeli Health Ministry data shows that in the older population (those over the age of 60), having submitted to more COVID shots often correlates to a greater likelihood of becoming infected with COVID.
Israel Ministry of Health
The blue line represents the unvaccinated; light-green is the partially-vaccinated; dark-green is those who have received a booster shot within the past six months.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Israel |
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Germany has seen a “dramatic drop” in birthrate during the first 4 months of 2022, according to transitionnews.de, leading to rising suspicions over COVID vaccine safety.
“Compared to the previous year, the number of births has fallen by 12 percent – that’s about 25,000 fewer births in the first four months of 2022,” reports Sternfried Müller of transitionnews.de.
The above chart shows the number of births for the January-April period each year since 2018. During the Corona years of 2020 and 2021, Germany saw a rise in the number of births, climbing to 250,000 births. But in 2022, the number of births mysteriously plummeted a whopping 12%!
Something unusual must have triggered the phenomenon. Going back 9 months prior to the January-April 2022 period takes us to the April to July 2021 period, which coincides to COVID vaccination of younger adults in earnest. Remarkably, Germany’s media have been silent on the latest published statistics, issued by the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
The next transitionnews.de chart shows the monthly number of births and just how dismally 2022 lags so far compared to the previous years:
A number of reasons have been proposed to explain the dramatic decline, among them fewer marriages. But that remains highly doubtful.
There are increasing suspicions that it is vaccine linked, as some studies already suggest: see here and here.
For the time being German authorities obstinately continue to remain in denial mode when it comes the the adverse effects of the COVID vaccines. Currently the Ministry of Health is gearing up to roll out another mass wave of vaccinations and restrictions in the run-up to the fall flu season.
See entire article at transitionnews.de
Also read here.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Germany |
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A former Washington State University football coach is seeking $25 million from the university for wrongful termination after he was fired last year for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, The Seattle Times reported Tuesday.
A tort claim was filed April 27 on behalf of Nick Rolovich with the state’s risk management office. Filing a claim is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit against a state agency.
There’s a 60-day waiting period between when a claim is filed and when the claimant can file a lawsuit. As of Wednesday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Bob Ferguson said no suit had been filed, according to The Washington Post.
After denying Rolovich’s request for a religious exemption from Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees, the university in October 2021 fired Rolovich.
At the time of his firing, Rolovich was subject to a five-year contract with three seasons remaining and was paid $3.2 million per year — the highest public salary in the state. He had coached 11 games with the Cougars over two seasons.
Rolovich’s attorney, Brian Fahling, said at the time his client would take legal action for religious discrimination. He filed a 34-page letter with the university appealing the university’s decision to fire Rolovich, but the appeal was denied.
Rolovich, a Catholic, is not the first person to file a claim for wrongful termination or religious discrimination over an employer’s failure to grant a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Liberty Counsel on July 29 settled the nation’s first class action lawsuit on behalf of healthcare workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate by their employer, Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem.
The $10,337,500 settlement, filed in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois, compensates NorthShore employees who were “punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.”
As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore also will change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law and must provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities.
In addition, employees who were terminated because they refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of the final settlement approved by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level.
The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process.
If the settlement is approved by the court and nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID-19 vaccine will receive approximately $25,000 each.
Also under the settlement, employees who were forced to get the shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.
The 13 healthcare workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore healthcare workers.
Lawsuits over denied exemptions or insufficient accommodations to COVID-19 vaccine requirements began last September after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine, allowing more employers to enact vaccine mandates.
Workers as of May 19, 2022, had filed at least 66 lawsuits since September 2021 against private employers for refusing to grant exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine requirements, according to Bloomberg Law.
Judges rejected workers’ requests for immediate court orders blocking enforcement of mandates in 22 cases.
In one case involving United Airlines Inc., the airline changed its policy allowing accommodations rather than contest the lawsuit.
According to Bloomberg Law, 59% of lawsuits filed over COVID-19 vaccine mandates are related to an employer’s response to faith-based requests for accommodation.
About 22% of lawsuits involve contesting a company’s handling of both religious and disability requests and 5% involve health-related accommodations.
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States, Washington State University |
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Twitter will start censoring “disputed claims,” “potentially harmful and misleading information,” and “false” information about the 2022 US midterms from today under its “Civic Integrity Policy.”
Tweets that fall foul of this policy will be removed or labeled with links to “credible information” or “helpful context.” Labeled tweets aren’t amplified or recommended by Twitter and the platform also dissuades or prevents users from liking and sharing labeled tweets. Twitter also noted that its latest label design reduces likes by 10%, reduces replies by 13%, and reduces retweets by 10%.
Users who have tweets removed or labeled under this policy are subject to Twitter’s five strikes system. The account owner is given two strikes if their tweet is deleted and one strike if their tweet is labeled. 2-4 strikes results in a temporary account lock and five strikes results in a permanent account suspension.
In addition to censoring tweets, Twitter will also start artificially boosting content that it deems to be “reliable” by displaying this content prominently on the “Home” and “Search” tabs and promoting it in the “Explore” tab.
Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy resulted in mass censorship in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. The rule banning “disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, such as unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results” was used to justify much of this censorship with users that discussed election discrepancies often targeted.
Many of former President Trump’s statements about the election were censored under this policy before he was permanently banned. This same policy was also used to mass censor other users and tweets before and after the 2020 election.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Twitter, United States |
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The World Economic Forum is becoming a little concerned. Unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal. The censorship engines employed by Internet platforms, turned out to be quite stupid and incapable. People are even daring to complain about the World Economic Forum, which is obviously completely unacceptable.
So, WEF author Inbal Goldberger came up with a solution: she proposes to collect off-platform intelligence from “millions of sources” to spy on people and new ideas, and then merge this information together for “content removal decisions” sent down to “Internet platforms”.
To overcome the barriers of traditional detection methodologies, we propose a new framework: rather than relying on AI to detect at scale and humans to review edge cases, an intelligence-based approach is crucial.
By bringing human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence into learning sets, AI will then be able to detect nuanced, novel abuses at scale, before they reach mainstream platforms. Supplementing this smarter automated detection with human expertise to review edge cases and identify false positives and negatives and then feeding those findings back into training sets will allow us to create AI with human intelligence baked in. This more intelligent AI gets more sophisticated with each moderation decision, eventually allowing near-perfect detection, at scale.
What is this about? What’s new?
The way censorship is done these days is that each Internet platform, such as Twitter, has its own moderation team and a decision making engine. Twitter would only look at tweets by any specific twitter user, when deciding on whether to delete any tweets or suspend their authors. Twitter moderators do NOT look at Gettr or other external websites.
So, for example, user @JohnSmith12345 may have a Twitter account and narrowly abide by Twitter rules, but at the same time have a Gettr account where he would publish anti-vaccine messages. Twitter would not be able to suspend @JohnSmith12345’s account. That is no longer acceptable to the WEF because they want to silence people and ideas, not individual messages or accounts.
This explains why the WEF needs to move beyond the major Internet platforms, in order to collect intelligence about people and ideas everywhere else. Such an approach would allow them to know better what person or idea to censor — on all major platforms at once.
They want to collect intelligence from “millions of sources”, and train their “AI systems” to detect thoughts that they do not like, to make content removal decisions handed down to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and so on. This is a major change from the status quo of each platform deciding what to do based on messages posted to that specific platform only.
For example, in addition to looking at my Twitter profile, WEF’s proposed AI would also look at my Gettr profile, and then it would make an “intelligent decision” to remove me from the Internet at once. It is somewhat of a simplification because they also want to look for ideas and not only individuals but, nevertheless, the search for wrongthink becomes globalized.
This sounds like an insane conspiracy theory from hell: WEF collecting information on everyone everywhere, and then telling all platforms what posts to remove, based on a global decision-making AI engine that sees everything and can identify individual people and ideas beyond any given platform.
If someone ever told me that it would be contemplated, I would probably think that this person is insane. It sounds like a sick technological fantasy. Unfortunately, this crazy stuff is real, is in a WEF agenda proposal that is officially posted on their website’s “WEF Agenda” section. And WEF is not messing around.
You will have no voice and you will be happy!
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, WEF |
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France is an important factor in Europe’s energy supply. But the country is planning on shutting down more than half of its nuclear reactors. The reason given is that they supposedly need maintenance.
The energy exporter is going to have to access energy from abroad. But that can turn out to be more difficult than planned with the European energy crisis expanding. Is a mega blackout looming?
Some 56 nuclear reactors at 18 locations normally supply France with electricity. But 18 of these reactors are already shut down. Long-term maintenance work is to be carried out. That had been planned for a long time, authorities said. But then France also had to shut down 12 more reactors last week.
Damage caused by corrosion is said to be the reason for this. The supply in Europe’s power grid seems all the more uncertain in winter.
In many places, the European power grid is dependent on the energy security of the neighboring country. If a country fails over a large area, other states are drawn into the blackout. France has been an important factor in European energy supply in recent years. But the Grande Nation itself may have to switch to energy imports.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Nuclear Power | France |
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