Why Vaccine Passports Must Be Rejected
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 28, 2021
August 12, 2021, NBC Chicago reported1 the launch of Vax Verify, an online COVID jab verification portal for residents of Illinois. Anyone over the age of 18 can use the portal to check and download their shot records for events and businesses that require it. Illinois Department of Public Health director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a statement:
“As more businesses, events, organizations, and others require proof of vaccination, Illinois residents will be able to confirm using Vax Verify that they have been vaccinated for COVID-19. With the current surge in cases, more people are making the decision to get a COVID-19 vaccine and this new tool will aid residents in confirming their vaccination where needed.”
Will Your Medical Status and Finances Be Tied Together?
Identity authentication on the Vax Verify portal is done using a one-time verification process through the financial credit score company Experian — a decision that suggests your medical history and finances might become interconnected in the future.
This is risky territory, considering we’re already hearing calls to exclude unvaccinated individuals from society in any number of ways. For example, politicians, government officials, health authorities, media personalities and common folk have suggested making life untenable for the unvaccinated by:
- Requiring them to get tested daily at their own expense
- Charging them nonrefundable quarantine fees
- Denying them medical care at hospitals and private medical offices
- Canceling their private insurance or raising premiums by thousands of dollars a year
- Suspending their gun permits
- Suspending their driver’s licenses
- Denying access to loans
- Withholding government assistance
- Withholding federal benefits like Social Security, VA benefits, subsidized housing and pensions
- Barring them from bars and restaurants
- Barring them from exercise facilities and hotels
- Barring them from buying food in grocery stores
- Barring them from using public transportation and traveling on airplanes
The way we’re going, it’s not hard to imagine a near future in which unvaccinated people aren’t allowed to hold a job, get an education, travel or even have access to basic financial services. Taken at face value, the rhetoric thrown around right now indicates the plan is to basically destroy the life of anyone who refuses to consent to be a part of this medical experiment.
This is as coercive as it can possibly get, and coercing volunteers to participate in human medical trials is strictly forbidden by both national and international bioethics laws.3,4,5,6 Yet it’s happening at a scale that is nothing short of mind-boggling, and with full support of the U.S. government.
It’s Not ‘Just a Vaccine Passport’
For years, Naomi Wolf, author of the book, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” has warned that the United States is on the path toward tyranny. In the book, she lays out 10 steps toward tyranny that have been followed by virtually all would-be tyrants, be they on the political left or right. They were followed in Italy in the ’20s, Germany in the ’30s, East Germany in the ’50s, Chile in the ’70s, China in the ’80s, and worldwide right now.
The 10 steps toward tyranny start with the invocation of a terrifying internal and/or external threat. It may be a real threat or an imagined one, but in all cases, it’s a hyped-up threat. From 2001 onward, that threat was terrorism, which was used as the justification for stripping us of our liberties.
The “war on terror” has now shifted from unknown terrorists to an even more elusive enemy: the virus. And unlike previous wars, enemies of the state now include a nation’s own citizens.
Punishable acts of terror have also shifted from blowing things up with explosives to simply disagreeing with our government about medical matters and opposing irrational health recommendations. “Opposition to COVID Measures” is now actually on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of potential terror threats.7
In a March 28, 2021, interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton, Wolf explained how vaccine passports will ultimately be used to control you and erase human liberty and freedom altogether:8,9
“‘Vaccine passport’ sounds like a fine thing if you don’t understand what those platforms can do,” she said. “I’m CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about your data.
Once this rolls out, you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform … It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency.
Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. Your credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included …
It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”
Digital ID Wallet Is Here
That the Great Reset is upon us is clear. At the end of July 2021, Thales announced10 a digital biometric ID wallet, designed to help you “access government services from anywhere.”
The article explains how the last 18 months have led to the necessity for digital equivalent of services we’d normally access in person. Here, Thales spells out what has so far been brushed off as a conspiracy theory:11
“So-called digital ‘vaccination passports’ will play a key role in enabling citizens to access all manner of services and will act as a precursor to the rollout of mobile digital IDs.”
Thales admits that this is the intention behind the rollout of vaccine passports in the European Union. Thales further explains that the digital IDs will:12
- Enable you to authenticate your identity
- Allow you to keep multiple documents in one place
- Combine identity verification and payments
- Manage digital signatures, thereby enabling the execution of contracts remotely
If you look at the list of suggested punishments for lack of COVID injection, you can see how this technology could make all those processes more or less automatic. The vaccine passport simply becomes a digital ID wallet, and without a digital ID wallet, you simply cannot do anything or go anywhere.
If you’re upset that PayPal and other digital transaction services are shutting down your account based on your personal views and the things you read,13 just wait until your entire life is tied to a digital ID and you miss your monthly mystery injection.
You might just find yourself a nonperson all of a sudden, with no access to food, money or services of any kind — and probably no real human being to complain or object to either.
Of course, this digital ID will undoubtedly be tied to a China-inspired social credit score as well, so you might become a persona non-grata — an unacceptable and unwelcome outcast — simply by crossing the street illegally or failing to pick up your dog’s poop. Video surveillance with facial recognition is everywhere, and you already carry a geolocation tracker (or two) on your person.
Legal Remedies for Privacy Violations Are Lacking
That vaccine passports will violate your privacy is virtually guaranteed. As noted by MSNBC columnist Tiffany Li in an article titled, “The Risks of COVID ‘Vaccine Passports’ Are Scarier Than You Might Think”:14
“The lack of a federal privacy law leaves digital vaccine passports vulnerable to privacy breaches, they don’t solve the glaring problem of vaccination inequality, and, perhaps most dangerously, they risk reinforcing a system of haves and have-nots when our poor and marginalized communities are already suffering disproportionately in the pandemic …
So while vaccine passports could help hasten the end of the pandemic, they also come with severe risks to privacy, equality and civil liberties. There are ways to design vaccine passport apps to preserve as much individual privacy as possible.
But the problem with any solution is that we lack legal remedies for privacy violations and technological discrimination … There are few legal limits to what data a vaccine passport app could collect, and things get complicated if people feel forced to use the apps to re-enter society.
Of course, there are ways to solve these privacy and security problems. Vaccine passport apps should collect as little information as possible — and only information that is strictly necessary to verify vaccinations.
States and companies would need to promise not to sell the information collected by the apps — or, at the very least, not to sell the health information or other sensitive private information.”
Forget Privacy — You’ll Have None
Unfortunately, that’s not the plan. On the contrary, the plan is clearly to collect and join together as much personal information as possible, and there’s no reason to think this data won’t be shared for someone else’s profit.
That’s what Google, Facebook and other platforms have done for years. Big Data is an industry all its own, and they’re hardly going to forgo the chance to profit from the unprecedented amount of personalized data they can obtain from tapping into digital IDs. That seems a given at this point. Add to that the facts that:
- We have a Rockefeller Foundation white paper15 stating that privacy must necessarily be loosened if we are to conquer biological threats
- Biological threats are the new never-to-actually-end war because it’s the highway to the Great Reset
- The Great Reset and subsequent technocratic rule depends on social engineering, and
- Effective social engineering depends on big data from mass surveillance, combined with artificial intelligence
We’re Headed Someplace Few Want to Go
As explained by independent journalist James Corbett,16 the Great Reset ties you to its control system through an electronic ID linked to your bank account, health records and social credit system, so that it can then be used to dictate every facet of your life. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that wannabe dictators don’t give power back to the people once they have it.
Once you’ve given up even a modicum of freedom, you have to fight tooth and nail to get it back. We see this in states all across the U.S. right now, where governors are still holding on to temporary emergency powers after more than 18 months. Freedom is simply never handed out, and protecting your freedom is a lot easier than getting it back once it’s been taken from you.
Also, understand that all the hardware, software, surveillance technology and artificial intelligence the technocrats need to run and ruin your life already exists. All they have to do is link everything together and tie all the various data points to each individual person. Once that’s done, you either obey whatever decree comes out next, or you’ll find yourself unplugged from the matrix that is everyday life.
In a January 7, 2021, article titled “Technocrats Embrace a New COVID Policy: Vaccine Passports,”17 Mitchell Nemeth noted that “For now, the concept of a vaccine passport is only an idea in the abstract.” Fast-forward a mere seven months, and we’re already in the thick of it, with state and national governments around the world rolling out health passports and mandates to match.
At the time, Nemeth pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party was embracing the idea and urged countries to “harmonize” their policies with that of China, where QR codes are used to designate who may or may not enter public spaces, based on their infection status — using a test now known to produce mostly false positives.
China’s surveillance system is such they can track to the minute an infected person’s journey through the city, automatically tagging each and every person they came within 6 feet of along the way, so they can then get a no-go QR code and have to quarantine at home.
CDC Misled Us About Outdoor Transmission Risk
While we’re on the topic of transmission, I hope you watch Tucker Carlson’s report at the top of this article. He covers quite a bit of ground in just 15 minutes, including the revelation that the CDC lied when it claimed outdoor transmission accounted for “less than 10% of COVID cases” — a statistic that led to the recommendation to wear a mask when walking or exercising outdoors.
As it turns out, the 10% statistic was “based partly on a misclassification of some COVID transmission that actually took place in enclosed spaces,” according to The New York Times, which broke the story in early May 2021.18
“Saying that less than 10% of COVID transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving,” The New York Times said.
What’s more, even indoors, the transmission rate is exceedingly low — likely below 1% and possibly as low as 0.1%, Carlson reports. So, even indoors, your risk of getting infected is low, with or without a mask. Certainly, you accomplish nothing good by wearing it outdoors, particularly if you’re exercising.
‘Passports Don’t Prove Immunity; Only Compliance’
Getting back to the passport issue, in a mid-August 2021 blog post,19 independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson pointed out what should be obvious to everyone yet for some reason still isn’t: “Vaccine passports don’t prove immunity; only compliance.”
The reason is simple. The COVID shots don’t prevent infection or transmission. This is admitted by all COVID shot developers, the CDC and real-world infection data. Since the shots cannot prevent infection or transmission, those who have gotten the jab are no less of a risk to other people than an unvaccinated person. So, what public health benefit, exactly, does the vaccine passport offer?
“The only sure thing a vaccine ‘passport’ or verification proves is that somebody complied with advice or mandates,” Attkisson writes. “It does not guarantee that the person has any level of immunity. The person could be infected with COVID-19, and could be spreading it to others.
Meantime, absent from much public discussion is the broader and longer lasting immunity scientists believe is enjoyed by the 120 million+ Americans who have recovered with COVID (or been infected without showing any symptoms).
This group, according to the bulk of scientific data, generally has better protection than the group of vaccinated patients, particularly among the vaccinated for whom the vaccines are no longer proving as effective as the early months after the shots. What do you think is behind the push to require vaccination and passports, and ignore natural immunity?”
Commenters on Attkisson’s blog overwhelmingly thought the intention behind vaccine passports is power grabbing, population control and increasing the Big Pharma revenue stream. What’s your take?
How Might Vaccine Passports Affect Our Economy?
In closing, a blog post by the Birch Gold Group, a precious metal IRA specialist, delves into how vaccine passports might affect the financial realm and reshape the economic landscape:20
“Yes, it’s an official concern now … A mandatory ‘vaccine passport’ … Should a mandatory vaccine passport system be implemented, life will never be normal again … Such a program would mean that around half the country could be put in the position of hearing they have no right to employment or possibly even general interaction in trade because they won’t take the experimental jab …
Second, we have to consider what the immediate economic and financial effects will be in light of this conflict. For example, look at the amount of relocation and migration that has happened in the U.S. in the past year alone … As has been well documented, blue states are much slower in recovering economically when compared to red states with less restrictions. Not only that, but money moves with people. This is a hard reality …
But let’s say for a moment that vaccine passports were somehow implemented everywhere in the country at the same exact time. What would happen then? Well, the amount of bureaucracy that would be added between the average consumer and everyday trade would be immense, and with red tape comes a slowdown in business.
Whole new wings of the government would have to be created to track and enforce vaccine passports rules … Regular inspections of businesses would have to be enacted, and new taxes would have to be created to pay for the system …
The end result would be the complete disintegration of the small business sector … and of course many millions of jobs would be lost in the process. Less competition means ever increasing prices and a lower quality of goods and services …
Then again … [w]hen governments restrict domestic trade and limit consumer participation based on frivolous requirements, people … find other ways to get the things they need more freely. This means black market trade or barter markets, alternative currencies and sometimes entire underground economies …
And this is where the government disguise of humanitarianism will really fall away and true tyranny will be revealed … By providing services for each other, common people would be ‘opening the door’ to survival outside of the system, and if survival is possible, then non-vaccination is possible. Therefore, the argument will be made by the establishment that alternative economies need to be eliminated ‘for the good of society as a whole.’
There is always an excuse for totalitarianism. With a large portion of the population seeking a means to live without oppression, alternative markets will thrive, and the government will make war on them. Which means the people will be forced to make war on the government. It’s inevitable under every scenario …
Straight barter will be useful, but so will precious metals (especially gold and silver) along with other hard commodities with intrinsic value and utility. What I see in the near future is economic disaster in the wake of any attempt at a vaccine passport system. Millions will lose their jobs or quit their jobs in protest.
Small businesses will disappear under the weight of bureaucracy and constant scrutiny. The quality of goods and services will suffer as competition shrivels. But I also see the birth of a whole new economic system outside of the mainstream control grid. I see true free markets returning, and eventually, I see full blown rebellion.
What I suggest is that people get ready for this eventuality. We need to become producers again, rather than mere consumers. In order to position ourselves for success in the new trade environment we have to be able to make necessities, repair necessities or teach necessary skills. Those that are able to do this will do very well within alternative markets.”
Reject Vaccine Passports
Like the author of that Birch Gold piece, I see nothing positive coming from mandatory COVID injections and vaccine passports, only the destruction of lives and livelihoods. And that’s not even taking into account the potential destruction of people’s health.
Already, roughly half of the American population has put themselves at risk for serious health problems in the future, the full extent of which remains to be seen. Can the health care system survive such an onslaught?
Will the medical system even survive in the long term if worst-case predictions come true and people realize they’ve been duped by people they’ve been brought up to trust with their lives? And who’s going to pay for the medical carnage — again, if worst-case suspicions do come true?
The way out of this nightmare, I believe, is to just say “No” now, while there’s still enough of us to turn this tide around. Yes, you might lose your job. Don’t quit. Let them fire you and get the cause (vaccine refusal) in writing. Yes, you might not be able to fly on certain airlines for the time being, or go on a cruise this summer. This is about the long game. Any freedom you’re willing to give up today, you won’t get back tomorrow.
Remember, the vaccine passport/digital ID wallet will only remain valid as long as you’re in compliance with the rules of the day. Right now, the price of admission to society is one or two COVID shots. In a couple of months, it’ll be another shot. And then another, and then something else.
Once you’re get on this compliance treadmill, you cannot get off. You have to keep complying, no matter what’s asked, or lose your “privileges” — which used to be everyday freedoms we’ve taken for granted our entire lives. Is that really the life you want for yourself and your children?
If not, you have to be brave. The good news is that in this war, we don’t have to dodge bullets. But we do have to exercise moral courage, and simply say “No, I won’t give up my freedom. Not for a virus. Not for anything.”
Sources and References
- 1 NBC Chicago August 11, 2021
- 2 Theorganicprepper.com August 12, 2021
- 3 HHS.gov The Belmont Report
- 4 Nuremberg Code of 1947
- 5 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- 6 WMA Declaration of Helsinki
- 7 Todd Starnes/NBC News August 14, 2021
- 8 Real Clear Politics March 29, 2021
- 9 The Epoch Times March 29, 2021
- 10, 11, 12 Thales Group July 29, 2021
- 13 New York Post July 29, 2021
- 14 MSNBC April 23, 2021
- 15 The Rockefeller Foundation, National COVID-19 Testing Action Plan — Strategic Steps to Reopen Our Workplaces and Our Communities, April 21, 2020 (PDF)
- 16 Corbett Report October 16, 2020
- 17 Medium January 7, 2021
- 18 New York Times May 11, 2021, updated May 25, 2021
- 19 Sharyl Attkisson August 16, 2021
- 20 Birchgold.com August 4, 2021
TSA Controls Public Transit: Orders Americans To Wear Masks On Buses And Trains
MassPrivateI | August 26, 2021
For years, Edward Hasbrouck of “Papers Please” has been sounding the alarm over the TSA and DHS. And yours truly, has published numerous articles warning the public about the continued expansion of said organizations under the guise of the War on Terror.
Last week the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the TSA is requiring Americans to wear masks on public transit.
“Passengers will be required to wear masks on the nation’s trains, buses, airplanes and airports through Jan. 18 under a federal mandate extended Tuesday by the Biden administration.”
This is a privacy advocate’s worst fear. What was once considered “fake news” by our mass media is now a reality. This is not a CDC request, it is a TSA federal mandate, which essentially means that the TSA is now in control of America’s public transit.
How does a news agency like the San Francisco Chronicle just rubber-stamp a federal power grab of our public transportation networks and simply say; “the purpose of TSA’s mask directive is to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation.”
Is this an admission that the TSA is controlling our public transit agencies?
The TSA’s website matter-of-factly states that all transportation networks must require Americans to wear face masks.
“TSA has extended the face mask requirement for all transportation networks, including public transportation, through January 18, 2022. TSA’s initial face mask requirement went into effect on February 1, 2021 with an expiration date of May 11, 2021 and was then extended through September 13, 2021.”
A red flag in the TSA’s “mask mandate” is how they claim to have the power to fine public transit agencies that fail to comply.
“While this announcement extends the date of enforcement, all other aspects of the requirement remain unchanged, including exemptions and civil penalties.”
How can the TSA fine public transit agencies? How can the TSA essentially force public transit agencies into complying with their mandate[s]?
For years, we have watched the DHS/TSA install CCTV cameras and microphones on buses, bus stations, trains and train stations. As I wrote about in 2015, the TSA is using CCTV cameras to spy on commuters billions of times every year.
In New York, NICE has installed ten TSA/DHS surveillance cameras inside and outside their transit buses.
“Other features include: a transparent barrier by the fare box to shield drivers from attacks; 10 video cameras mounted inside and outside buses to record incidents and accidents; and lights on the sides of buses to help drivers see adjoining travel lanes better.”
All of those “public safety” CCTV cameras and surveillance systems come at a huge cost to our privacy. Public transit agencies who have used federal funds to upgrade their buses, trains etc., appear to be obligated to obey TSA mandates under the “FTA Master Agreement.”
And what makes the FTA Master Agreement so worrisome is that it does not have an expiration date.
“This Master Agreement does not have an Expiration Date. This Master Agreement continues to apply to the Recipient and its Underlying Agreement, until modified or superseded by a more recently enacted or issued applicable federal law, regulation, requirement, or guidance, or Amendment to this Master Agreement or the Underlying Agreement.”
The “procurement” page of Section 16 (f) basically says that public transit agencies can only purchase federally approved (surveillance) buses.
“In-State Bus Dealer Restrictions. The Recipient agrees that any state law requiring buses to be purchased through in-state dealers will not apply to purchases of vehicles supported with federal assistance appropriated or made available for 49 U.S.C. chapter 53, as provided in 49 U.S.C. § 5325(i).”
And subsection L basically says that public transit agencies must agree to turn buses, trains and stations into federally approved public surveillance platforms.
“National Intelligent Transportation Systems Architecture and Standards. The Recipient agrees to conform to the National Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Architecture requirements of 23 U.S.C. § 517(d).”
According to Section 18. “Rights in Data and Copyrights” (f), if the public catches transit agencies abusing people’s civil rights, they cannot sue the federal government for providing the surveillance equipment.
“Hold Harmless. Upon request by the Federal Government, the Recipient agrees that if it intentionally violates any proprietary rights, copyrights, or right of privacy, and if its violation under the preceding section occurs from any of the publication, translation, reproduction, delivery, use or disposition of subject data, then it will indemnify, save, and hold harmless the Federal Government against any liability.”
And if you’re thinking the FTA Master Agreement cannot possibly be used by the TSA to gain controlling interest in public transit agencies, it appears that the Feds have figured out a way to do just that
Section 19. “Use of Real Property, Equipment, and Supplies” basically lays it out in plain English or as plain as this master agreement can.
“Federal Interest. The Recipient agrees that the Federal Government retains a federal interest in all real property, equipment, and supplies acquired or improved for use in connection with a Project (Project property) until, and to the extent that, the Federal Government removes its federal interest.”
“Satisfactory Continuing Control. It will maintain continuing control of the use of its Project property as satisfactory to FTA, which is defined as the legal assurance that Project property will remain available to be used for its originally authorized purpose throughout its useful life or until disposition.”
I am not an attorney and I admit that the legal jargon quoted in the FTA Master Agreement can be interpreted any number of ways. But the takeaway from this story is, how the hell did the TSA manage to gain controlling interest of our public transit agencies? And why isn’t this headline news instead of just a matter-of-fact news story that has gone largely unnoticed?
Hopefully my version of a 1980’s pop song will put the TSA taking control our public transit into perspective.
“You may ask yourself, well, how did we get here? Letting the days go by, letting the TSA pat me down. Into the blue again, after our civil rights are gone. Letting the TSA take our rights away, into the silent sky. You may ask yourself, where does that road lead to? You may ask yourself, am I right, or are the Feds wrong? You may say to yourself, my GOD, what have we done to America? The Feds are lying to us, Al-Qaida isn’t after us. Letting the lies go by, letting the lies go by, letting the lies go by, once in a lifetime.” (lyrics by J. Cadillic based on original lyrics by: Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads.)
I changed the words of the original song to make a point: nothing good will come from letting the TSA take control of public transit.
The Latest Paper From Neil Ferguson et al. Defending the Lockdown Policy is Out of Date, Inaccurate and Misleading
By Mike Hearn • The Daily Sceptic • August 24, 2021
Neil Ferguson’s team at Imperial College London (ICL) has released a new paper, published in Nature, claiming that if Sweden had adopted U.K. or Danish lockdown policies its Covid mortality would have halved. Although we have reviewed many epidemiological papers on this site, and especially from this particular team, let us go unto the breach once more and see what we find. The primary author on this new paper is Swapnil Mishra.
The paper’s first sentence is this:
The U.K. and Sweden have among the worst per-capita Covid mortality in Europe.
No citation is provided for this claim. The paper was submitted to Nature on March 31st, 2021. If we review a map of cumulative deaths per million on the received date then this opening statement looks very odd indeed:
Sweden (with a cumulative total of 1,333 deaths/million) is by no means “among the worst in Europe” and indeed many European countries have higher totals. This is easier to see using a graph of cumulative results:
But that was in March, when the paper was submitted. We’re reviewing it in August because that’s when it was published. Over the duration of the journal’s review period this statement – already wrong at the start – became progressively more and more incorrect:
As always, we must note that these ‘death’ graphs can be heavily affected by testing levels, because Covid deaths are defined as any death within 28 days of a positive test. The U.K. tests much more than Sweden does. But putting that to one side, Sweden by now has significantly better results than the rest of the E.U. What’s going on here? A likely explanation is that although the paper was submitted in March it was actually written some time last year, probably starting around the end of the summer and finishing up in August. There then followed a strange many month gap before they submitted it, and then many more months were added by the glacial peer review process journals use. We can see evidence of this timeline in the abstract, where they say:
We use two approaches to evaluate counterfactuals which transpose the transmission profile from one country onto another, in each country’s first wave from March 13th (when stringent interventions began) until July 1st, 2020.
More evidence comes from the upload dates on the released code, which is from 10 months ago. In other words, Nature is publishing a paper about the fast-moving coronavirus situation that builds its entire case on obsolete data more than a year old, without explicitly noting that anywhere. In July 2020, Sweden and the U.K. did indeed have worse results than the rest of the E.U. However as we now know, this meant nothing and a year on the data looked very different.
Why did ICL wait so long before submitting this paper to Nature? No obvious explanation occurs. And why didn’t anyone notice that the claims were no longer true? Not for the first time, it appears nobody can actually be reading these papers adversarially before publication. Time and again we see that at major scientific journals the lights are on, but nobody’s home.
Seeing this made me wonder if they were once more engaging in a favourite trick of this team, by using Verity et al.‘s obsolete infection:fatality ratio estimates from January 2020. And indeed they are:
The idea that 1% of all SARS-CoV-2 infections would lead to death was later disputed as being ~4x too high by a meta-study of seroprevalence data published by the WHO. This newer estimate was based on far larger sample sizes, and serosurveys give an ability to detect people who recently had mild disease without getting tested or reporting it at the time. It’s thus a much more scientifically robust method of IFR estimation than Verity’s paper, which being written very early on had to rely on media reports and questionably reliable information coming out of China. As the authors discuss in the supplementary material, using a lower IFR (they try 0.5) means that the U.K.’s predicted mortality from adopting the Swedish strategy drops significantly due to the changed impact of herd immunity.
Who is responsible for this situation? Nature appears to be knowingly publishing a paper on Covid that makes claims in the present tense, but which is in reality so out of date that the very first sentence is factually false. This is not merely useless but actively damaging because non-academic readers (i.e., politicians and public health officials) will reasonably assume that claims published by scientists about Covid in August 2021 were actually written in August and have some relevance to the current situation. Nowhere is it explicitly stated at what time the analysis was believed to be accurate: it must instead be inferred from the choice of datasets and audit trails left on the source code hosting site they use.
Overall approach
Moving on. What does the model actually do?
The core concept is to try and calculate the changing infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2 for each of the U.K., Sweden and Denmark over time, then ‘graft’ the generated timeseries for R(t) onto the other countries. As is typical for this team, the authors assume that changes in Rt are driven only by government interventions or voluntary behavioural changes, and thus by transposing Rt onto other countries they claim to be calculating what would have happened if different countries had adopted each other’s policies. They try two different approaches to this, an ‘absolute’ and a ‘relative’ approach.
There are many problems with this methodology.
The study of only the U.K., Sweden and Denmark has no scientific basis. Why Denmark and not, say, France? This selection is very obviously politically motivated. In fact, the entire paper is basically a policy paper designed to influence politicians, not answer any question about viruses that a real scientist might ask.
With the benefit of 2021 hindsight we can argue persuasively that lockdowns had no real impact on Covid. The most recent and effective demonstration of that was the U.K.’s ‘Freedom Day’ in which cases dropped off a cliff just days after restrictions were relaxed, in defiance of the warnings of “international health leaders” that this would be “foolish” and “unethical”, a “threat to the world”, etc. There have been many other such events and analyses of global datasets show no correlation between lockdowns and health outcomes. Thus their underlying assumption that social policy is responsible for different outcomes is wrong. In fact, although they are well aware that there must be many factors influencing mortality outcomes, they explicitly disregard all of them: “While we cannot fully encompass the myriad of differences between each country, our analysis is nonetheless informative on best practice for control of future waves of the Covid pandemic.”
Despite asserting that their analysis can tell lawmakers what to do in future epidemics, they later admit that “our counterfactual scenarios should be interpreted as a exchange of both population behaviour and government policy between donor and recipient countries“. This is important for them to admit because they tried to explain why Covid has varying infectiousness in different countries by reference to “cultural differences“, which they boil down to a single statistic about the proportion of single person households in each country. But this is illogical nonsense. Even if we (wrongly) assume that all differences in observed outcomes are to do with policy and culture, governments cannot magically make the U.K. population become Danish or vice-versa. Any analysis that assumes this and claims to be “informative on best practice” is wrong and should have been dropped during peer review.
The paper has another difficulty with being “informative“. Although the authors propose two different approaches to try and answer the same underlying question, the two approaches give totally different answers. For example: “If Denmark followed U.K. policies, our relative approach estimates that mortality would not have been markedly different, although our absolute approach implies that mortality would have been more than twice that observed.” Their calculations aren’t even consistent with each other, yet the paper provides no specific recommendation on which approach is supposed to yield the best answer.
Other problems include an inability to actually calculate Rt from death data (“the high variance of this distribution leads to high uncertainty in Rt estimates“), even though their entire analysis is based on the presumed integrity of that calculation, and an implausibly high sensitivity to the exact starting date of policy changes (“a three-day difference in the introduction of measures can lead to twofold differences in mortality“). The strength of this connection in their model is absurd and would appear to be strongly motivated by ICL’s attempted rewriting of history to one of: “If only the Government had listened to us sooner everything would have been far better.”
Conclusion
Given the history of this department, it’s no surprise that ICL is still churning out delusional and misleading epidemiology papers. They will continue doing so for as long as they’re funded. Analysing each and every one is a futile effort due to the sheer scale at which academia operates (e.g. this paper alone has 19 authors). But we can nonetheless learn some more about bad science by reading them. This paper shows all the usual hallmarks of an academic sector that’s gone off the rails:
- A grotesque level of data cherry picking.
- A publishing process so slow that the claims are entirely wrong on the date of publication, and wrong from literally the first sentence.
- A delusional belief that their work is “informative” to policy makers, despite implicitly arguing that entire societies can be transplanted from one country to another.
Who is ultimately responsible for stopping this? It must be the funders, who for this paper include:
- The National Institute for Health Research
- The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- The U.K. Medical Research Council
- Community Jameel (a Saudi family foundation)
- Microsoft, who donated free compute time on Azure
- And finally, universities and other institutions who subscribe to Nature despite its history of publishing misleading papers
The theme here is that none of these organisations is paying close attention to what’s actually being written, apparently including the journals and peer reviewers. For funders, giving away money is not the means but the end. Until research is funded by people who actually care about the utility of the results our society will continue to be flooded with highly evolved scientism, of which the output of the ICL Epidemiology Department is a textbook example.
Mike Hearn is a former Google software engineer. You can read his blog here.
Dorothy versus Hassan
By Taxi | Plato’s Guns | August 27, 2021
The US ambassador to Lebanon, Dorothy Shea, thinks she’s smarter than Hassan Nasrallah.
Yet, evidence shows that since Trump appointed her as ambassador to Lebanon back in February 2020, every dastardly trap she has placed before Mr. Nasrallah and his Hezbollah resistance group has failed.
Proof of this failure is that Hezbollah keeps growing stronger and stronger, untouched by all external or internal forces hellbent on destroying the Lebanese resistance group. Failed simply because Dorothy is not as smart as she thinks she is. Most certainly, she is not as intelligent as the nifty leader of Hezbollah.
Having spent some three years working as Deputy Principal Officer at the US Consulate General in Jerusalem immediately prior to her post in Beirut, Dorothy no doubt continues to have a direct hotline to the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, if not to his direct cell phone; and no doubt, every morning, her first official word from Beirut is ‘shalom’.
Dorothy does not behave like a diplomat. Instead, she behaves like an eye-patched leader of a sketchy militia: laying aside all diplomatic decorum and behaviorism and charging forth into every single aspect of Lebanese social, economic and political life, with the blatant intent of widening existing societal fissures in Lebanon, as well as adding new ones: aiming for a sectarian war that would cause the wholesale mass murder of innocents. One could say that she behaves as the Jews do in DC. A Puss in Boots, but utterly charmless and physically unattractive. Puss in Boots with mouth bigger than boots. So much so that last year, a Lebanese judge banned Lebanese media from interviewing Dorothy for her atrocious and blatant attempts at creating sectarian warfare in Lebanon. Needless to say, Dorothy the ‘ambassador’ gave the proverbial middle finger to this native judge while hiding behind the skirts of her diplomatic immunity. She continues to pollute Lebanese media and its political landscape with daily feces propelled out of all her orifices. Yes, she literally defecates on Lebanon every day, while feigning love and affection for the Lebanese people. Because the Lebanese resistance group, Hezbollah, defeated Israel twice already on the battlefield, Dorothy’s instruction since taking the ambassadorship has been to starve the Lebanese population as punishment for these victories. Tel Aviv must love her for her Zionist activism and zeal. The Mossad must be sending her monthly boxes of Cuban cigars.
And I’ll remind American taxpayers here that their hard-earned taxes are being spent on starving populations in the middle east, when bombing them to smithereens is not feasible. Starving millions of people who have done absolutely no harm to the American people. I’ll remind taxpayers that they are paying Dorothy’s wages while she is spreading anti-Americanism with her bolshie, toxic behaviorism overseas. I’ll remind them that since 2005, no less than $30 billion have been spent on destroying the Lebanon as a means of demoting Hezbollah – all for the benefit of Israel and Israel alone. And although Lebanon’s society is currently teetering on total collapse due to Dorothy’s malicious and malignant schemes, yet Hezbollah itself appears untouched by this exuberant, negative expenditure. And I will add here that Lebanon has suffered from corrupt governments for some thirty years, yet all this while, the Lebanese collective enjoyed a decent lifestyle and were never in need. They became needy when Dorothy came to town.
Perhaps when she lived in Israel, Dorothy got everything she wanted. But in Lebanon, what Dorothy wants, Dorothy doesn’t get. Hassan has insured this. Time and time again, he has outsmarted all her plans to create civil war in Lebanon. All straight and curve-balls that Dorothy has daily thrown at Hassan have missed and landed either way off mark, or, unfortunately, on innocent, civilian bystanders.
Let us be clear here that the traditional role of an ambassador is to work the trade and Intel files, as well as to assist expats in a variety of bureaucratic and legal matters. It is never the job of a diplomat to act politically or to make inciteful, political statements concerning the host nation. Never! It is abnormal behavior for a diplomat to be an in-your-face politico whose name and incendiary words are headlines in local media on a daily basis. Yet, Dorothy Shea swans about the Lebanon like a privileged colonialist: doing exactly that and doing it with shameless gusto.
She is proud that she has turbo-charged the destruction of Lebanon. But she is very angry that the Hezbollah remains untouched. Livid that Hassan remains leagues ahead of her diabolical plans. How dare Hassan challenge her, the mighty Queen Sheba herself?! She Who Must Be Obeyed, must be obeyed or else!
Yet, she is not obeyed by Hassan. Currently, the genocidal-minded Dorothy is reeling from the latest punch in the teeth that Hassan metaphorically gave her last week, when he defied US sanctions on Lebanon and announced that Iranian fuel ships are now headed to fuel-starved Lebanon: a miserable and existential shortage that Dorothy herself had engineered for the Lebanese people through her incessant, corrupt interference in absolutely all internal Lebanese affairs bar none. (She has even interfered in local, district elections, personally rejecting and approving candidates!). Her destructive meddling is compounded by the Caesar Act sanctions that her chowderhead boss, Trump, had imposed on the Lebanon at the behest of Tel Aviv. Because Israelis dare not kill Lebanese people with their missiles for fear of an equal Hezbollah retaliation, starving the Lebanese people en mass was to be their path to mass murder of said Lebanese; and thus Dorothy has been assigned the task of insuring that all trade and energy doors were closed to the Lebanese, and all paths to a much-needed new government blocked and blocked some more, ad infinitum. Dorothy has forbidden the Lebanon from trading with any country in the world, and simultaneously forbidden friendly nations from delivering any aid to Lebanon’s starving population. She has appeared more than happy this past year and a half to just watch the very fabric of Lebanon disintegrate under her ‘ambassadorship’ – doing absolutely nothing to help the long-suffering, collective Lebanese people whatsoever. Au contraire, the more Lebanon’s system broke down, the more the people suffered, and the more Dorothy jumped with joy and stirred the sectarian embers further.
It appears that not only are Hezbollah and the Lebanese population as a whole a target for destruction by Dorothy, but so is the Lebanese government itself. She does not even want a government for the Lebanon to exist. She wants for Lebanon what Israel wants: wiping Lebanon and its flag right off the map and turning it into many-flagged, sectarian enclaves and warring Bantustans instead. Simply, everyone and everything Lebanese is her target for destruction.
Of course, Dorothy gets much help from powerful Lebanese persons and political entities who are opposed to Hezbollah. Fortunately for the Lebanon, these people do not represent the majority of the Lebanese. Known Lebanese members of Dorothy’s team are handsomely paid in mega dollars to destroy their own country, just so that they can boost their Swiss bank accounts and augment their seats of power by getting rid of the most popular party in the Lebanon: the Hezbollah. These unsavory, treasonous Lebanese are ideologically aligned with fascism and predatory globalism, and they are also known for being supporters of the Israeli enemy and its religio-colonialist project in the Levant. Their names and professional titles are known all over the Lebanon, and they are as follows:
- Riyad Salame is a Maronite Christian who heads the Lebanese Central Bank (Banque Du Liban). He is the very man who colluded with Dorothy to collapse the local Lebanese currency in order to initiate the ‘starvation plan’ of his own people. He is also behind the financial pyramid scheme that suddenly, and by his design, collapsed a year ago. He is also behind the ‘Capital Control’ system that has been imposed on all bank account holders since the collapse of the Lebanese Lira. This system limits monthly withdrawals of all account holders, be they rich or poor, to a pitiful $400 per month: thus consigning both rich and poor to the same poverty pot. This system is currently holding hostage all of the people’s earnings and life-savings. Salame continues to shamelessly collude with the haters of Lebanon, while hiding some twenty billion dollars that suddenly went missing out of the country a year and a half ago. He claims no knowledge of where this vast amount went. He has not been held accountable by Lebanese law, nor has he lost his highest banking office in the nation, all because he has Dorothy’s full political protection.
- Samir Gaegae, is a Maronite Christian who is a convicted war criminal who colluded with Israel during its 18 years of occupation of Lebanon back in the ’80’s and 90’s, causing thus the torture, the disappearance, and the mass murder of tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. And Ironically, it was Hezbollah’s hands, after the eviction of Israeli forces from Lebanon, who worked for his clemency, thus sparing him an execution. The ingrate Gaegae is now also best friends with both Saudi Arabia and Israel: tasked by them too to destroy Hezbollah, even at the cost of destroying Lebanon itself.
- Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rah, who holds the highest seat in the Lebanese Maronite church, is also known for regularly inciting sectarianism during his speeches and sermons. He became infamous for breaking a Lebanese law that forbids the cooperation or promotion of the Israeli enemy when he illegally visited Israel several years ago with the excuse of “I want to pray in Jerusalem.” No doubt he dined at Jewish Masonic Lodges there too. He adamantly refuses to separate ‘church from state’. He is a regular visitor to the US embassy in Beirut and all his political statements read like memos issued by Tel Aviv. He supports normalization with Israel that continues to occupy the Lebanese Shebaa Farms. For a religious Christian leader, he appears to devote his time to spreading the message of the Synagogue of Satan instead of the message of Jesus.
- NGO’s. The Lebanese population is some 4.6 million natives currently residing in Lebanon, yet Lebanon has over an astounding 10.000 NGO groups, with 92% of them being funded by foreign governments and other dubious Western and oil-Arab institutions. These shady NGOs are tasked with ‘inflaming’ the masses and creating a Color Revolution in the Lebanon. They have proved that they can successfully gather the protesting masses with matching banners and baseball hats, but they have failed to achieve their anarchic objective after several attempts. They are well-paid agents of chaos who swarm the Lebanon like biblical locust: receiving all their instruction from Dorothy’s office at the American embassy in Beirut; and eating all that great, green leaf we call ‘dollars’ right off Dorothy’s hand.
One can clearly discern that the American embassy in Beirut is more of a war theater against the Lebanese themselves, than it is a peaceful salon of diplomacy and trade activity.
Dorothy also enjoys the occasional support from other powerful Lebanese who may not share her ideology, but assist her when called upon because they are beholden to the US via their investment projects in the US, and also via their children and grandchildren who reside and study in the US. Yes, just like mafias threaten people with harm done to their businesses and families, so does Dorothy threaten her second tier of helpers, thus they always oblige. Saad Hariri (a Sunni leader), Walid Jumblatt (a Druze leader), and Nabih Berri (a Shia leader) are examples of second-tier helpers of the US embassy in Beirut.
Here I would add that although Dorothy’s Lebanese inner circle leaders are all Christian Maronites, between them, they actually represent the minority of Maronites in Lebanon. The majority of Maronites belong to the Maronite President Aoun’s party, who are allies and supporters of Hezbollah. And it appears that the Maronites who are anti Hezbollah are fundamentally Islamophobic, all due to an aftertaste that the brutal, Sunni Ottoman Empire left in their mouths back in 1922, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed and its soldiers finally exited Lebanon after some 500 years of miserable colonization.
Aside from creating the total collapse of the Lebanon, financially, socially and politically, it is germane here to give a summary of what the enemies of Hezbollah and Lebanon itself hoped to achieve with their treachery and sedition:
1- IMF enslavement of Lebanon’s financial life.
2- Disarming Hezbollah and the dismantlement of the Lebanese army, to be replaced with UN or NATO troops that answer to Tel Aviv and DC.
3- Destroying the current governmental system and the insertion of a new, federalized political theater where only enemies of the Hezbollah are in positions of power.
4- Naturalization into Lebanese citizenship of captive Sunni-Syrian refugees who are forbidden by the West to return to Syria, thus changing the voting demographic of Lebanon to favor Saudi-sponsored blocks (means Israeli-centric). This plan even has the temerity to favor Syrian naturalization over Palestinian one, even though Palestinian refugees have been stuck in Lebanon since 1948.
5- Allow Israel to annex gas field ‘Block 9’ that sits in the southern Lebanese maritime waters and is considered to be the richest field in the Lebanon waters.
6- Allow Israel to annex the Lebanese Litani River that’s some 23.6 miles from the Israeli border.
7- Through educational and cultural projects, unleashing insidious social-engineering programs such as ‘woke’, opioid and porn addiction, religious irreverence, cultural Marxism, and what I like to call the ‘gender bandito’ culture. In other words, social-engineering programs that shred the very fabric of traditional Lebanese life and culture. And sanity.
8- The looting and destruction of Lebanon’s museums and ancient artifacts so as to wipe out the ancient identity of the Lebanon.
9- Bantustaning and turning rural landscapes into militarized zones, and turning cities and towns into police states overseen by Israel-friendly UN or NATO forces.
10- Normalization with Israel through forced trade with Tel Aviv – the only entity Lebanon would be allowed to trade with.
And last but not least:
11- Empty Lebanon of its Christian population who are mainly concentrated in the Mount Lebanon area, but also scattered wide in villages and towns all over the Lebanon.
This is a project that analysts say has been handed to the current Lebanese Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros al-Rahi. His consistent sectarian incitement is intended to promote a religious civil war that will find the majority of Lebanese Christians fleeing the Lebanon as political refugees to mainly Canada and France, where they already have immigration programs that are specifically preferential and lucrative to Lebanese Christian applicants. Yes, France and Canada are partners with the US in the destruction of Lebanon. In fact, all other Western nations and some Arab ones too are also conspirators and abettors in this diabolical, mass-murderous plan.
The Patriarch’s other vital mission is to turn Maronite Aounist voters against President Aoun’s party – driving them to the arms of Saudi-sponsored Samir Gaegae, who is a Maronite himself too and an infamous friend of Israel – not forgetting here his close friendship with Dorothy the Destroyer.
Because Lebanon is the only Christian-Arab country, and Christian Lebanese are fundamental to Lebanese history, heritage and identity, removing them from the Lebanon facilitates the Jewish plan of turning Lebanon into a zombie without a national, rooted identity, all in preparation for future Judeofication of the Lebanon, as per the Yinon Plan.
Of course, Dorothy here is a mere soldier for Tel Aviv. But still, all responsibility of Lebanon’s current destruction lays at her feet for her absolute devotion and willingness to participate and manage this grand and evil project for the Lebanon. She is responsible for the current starvation and the misery of millions of Lebanese, Christian and Muslim alike, because she is the most powerful mover and shaker in the Lebanon: moving and shaking it towards its mass grave.
Even though this ‘starvation plan’ has been well conceived and executed with the help of internal traitors, yet Hezbollah and its Lebanese allies continue to stand like firm walls in its path. Hassan and his patriotism continue to outsmart Dorothy. In fact, so much so that now Hezbollah has unexpectedly taken up the new mantle of ‘economic resistance’, as opposed to only a military one. Only two weeks go, Dorothy’s breathless destruction literally forced the Hezbollah to actively enter the economic war against the Lebanon, after a year and a half of passivity. They are economically-resisting now by defying the Caesar’s Act and all other members of Dorothy’s inner circle. This defiance comes in the shape of organizing Iranian fuel ships to arrive to Lebanon as aid for the utterly desperate people of the Lebanon.
The first Iranian fuel ship is due to imminently arrive to Lebanese shores. Many more Iranian ships are slated thereafter, carrying much needed life-saving medicine and food to the needy Lebanese.
Hassan has botched all nefarious plans and checkmated Dorothy with this move. He has promised that any harm done to these Iranian aid ships will result in instant, open warfare against Israel. The man always means what he says. And he always delivers on his word. The Israelis know this only too well. They will be red-faced and watching through their north-pointing binoculars, a long stream of Iranian ships docking a mere hop away from Haifa port. This was never part of their plan. Their plan was to starve the Lebanon en mass so as to bring it to its knees and take from it what they want; as well as to get rid of Iran-friendly Hezbollah. Instead, they’re ending up with a stronger Hezbollah bringing in Iranian aid ships that will feed the Lebanese people and provide them with desperately needed medicine and fuel. Iranian ships that will be seen by most Lebanese as ‘savior ships’, while Hezbollah will be crowned as ‘savior of Lebanon’ for resisting and breaking the illegal, US economic siege on the Lebanon.
Begs the question here, therefore: will the Mossad continue to send Dorothy her boxes of Cuban cigars?
You cannot be forced to get the Covid vaccine. Here is the way out.
By Meryl Nass, MD | August 26, 2021
Let me show you how FDA, Pfizer and BioNTech colluded to fool everyone about the EUA status of the vaccine Americans will be offered. But close reading of their document gives you an escape route.
The “Fact Sheet for Recipients, “dated August 23, 2021, is approved by FDA and is on FDA’s website, and is signed by BioNTech and Pfizer.
Direct quotes from this easy to read 8 page document are below, and I suggest you print the document out, as it will help you avoid a vaccine mandate. Pay close attention. I added numbers to the most interesting excerpts.
After stating that you might receive the licensed vaccine or a vaccine under EUA in item 2, item 6 indicates that both the licensed vaccine AND the EUA vaccine are both under EUA. (This may be the way chosen to shield the licensed vaccine from liability.) Item 5 says that while under EUA, it is your choice whether or not to receive the vaccine.
Show this document to your college, your hospital, your boss. They cannot force you to receive either of these vaccines!
—————–
1. The FDA-approved COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) and the FDA-authorized Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) have the same formulation and can be used interchangeably to provide the COVID-19 vaccination series.[1]
2. You are being offered either COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) or the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to prevent Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2.
3. The licensed vaccine has the same formulation as the EUA-authorized vaccine and the products can be used interchangeably to provide the vaccination series without presenting any safety or effectiveness concerns. The products are legally distinct with certain differences that do not impact safety or effectiveness.
4. WHAT IF I DECIDE NOT TO GET COMIRNATY (COVID-19 VACCINE, mRNA) OR THE PFIZER-BIONTECH COVID-19 VACCINE?
5. Under the EUA, it is your choice to receive or not receive the vaccine. Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care.
6. This EUA for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and COMIRNATY will end when the Secretary of HHS determines that the circumstances justifying the EUA no longer exist or when there is a change in the approval status of the product such that an EUA is no longer needed.
Manufactured by Pfizer Inc., New York, NY 10017
Manufactured for BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH An der Goldgrube 12 55131 Mainz, Germany LAB-1451-7.2 Revised: 23 August 2021
With a “left press” like this, who needs fascist media?
“Progressive” stars and outlets manage not to say a word about the gravest crisis in the history
By Mark Crispin Miller | OffGuardian | August 27, 2021
It pains me to say it, but Caitlin Johnstone—whose work I used to champion ardently, defending her against the crypto-Stalinists at Counterpunch—is one of many “leftists” who keep partying like it’s 2019.
Same with the interminable Noam Chomsky, The Nation, Consortium News, MoveOn, Popular Resistance, Nation of Change, Covert Action Bulletin, Naomi Klein, Tom Engelhardt and others that I used to champion, and (in some cases) see as friends, as well as outlets that I used to write for.
So Caitlin loves her boomer Dad for his irrepressible outrage over the bombing of Afghanistan, and loves ALL boomers for their fiery dissidence—on issues that don’t matter much at this apocalyptic moment.
From her, and all those other “progressive” voices/outlets, you’d never know that World War III has been raging (openly) since January 2020—a global war against humanity itself.
Someone should tell Caitlin—an Australian!—that those feisty boomers, with some very few exceptions, have turned rigidly authoritarian, and often downright hateful toward the bravest and most necessary dissidents today, standing firm against the bio-fascist mandates of the New World Order, and the looming portents of the Great Reset: dangers that those “leftist” sages never even mention, much less question or confront.
While Caitlin, resident of Melbourne, riffs indignantly about the bombing of Afghanistan back in 19 B.C. (Before COVID), the staunchest dissidents Down Under are the truck drivers threatening to shut that country down, if its cops don’t take their boots off everybody’s necks.
In the midst of this vast slo-mo Holocaust, conducted in the name of “public health” (much as the last one was), we find no reference to it, nor any reference to the unprecedented global wave of censorship on which that Holocaust depends, or to the naked violence of the police throughout the “democratic” West, or to the financial purposes of this whole global nightmare, in any of the “leftist” outlets named above.
Instead, we get “Ban Killer Drones,” “Why US Policy in Nicaragua Isn’t Working,” “America’s Merchants of Death Then and Now” (with no mention of Big Pharma), “Hidden costs of militarism: Climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss,” and (my personal favorite) “Is a Cold War Still Possible in an Overheating World?”
My point is not that such well-worn concerns don’t matter anymore (though some of them were overblown before the COVID crisis), but that they’re now being used by our “left” press to give the misimpression that they’re really on the left — working for peace, freedom, civil rights and economic fairness, always in the interests of the people over all — instead of blinding us to this unprecedented global drive to make those things impossible, and snuff the people out.
Mark Crispin Miller is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University and the author of several books, including Boxed In: The Culture of TV; Seeing Through Movies; Mad Scientists: The Secret History of Modern Propaganda; Spectacle: Operation Desert Storm and the Triumph of Illusion; and The Bush Dyslexicon. You can read more of his work through his newsletter, News from the Underground
ALERT: All Parents In U.K. With Children Aged 12 – 15 years
By Dr. Mike Yeadon | August 26, 2021
I’ve just been informed via someone senior in the vaccination authorities that they will begin VACCINATING ALL SCHOOL CHILDREN AGED 12 – 15 years old STARTING SEPTEMBER 6th 2021.
WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT.
Children are at no measurable risk from SARS-CoV-2 & no previously healthy child has died in U.K. after infection. Not one.
The vaccines are NOT SAFE. The USA reporting system VAERS is showing around 13,000 deaths in days to a few weeks after administration. A high % occur in the first 3 days. Around 70% of serious adverse events are thromboembolic in nature (blood clotting- or bleeding-related).
We know why this is: all of the gene-based vaccines cause our bodies to manufacture the virus spike protein & that spike protein triggers blood coagulation.
The next most common type of adverse events are neurological.
Death rates per million vaccinations are running everywhere at around 60X more than any previous vaccine.
Worse, thromboembolic events such as pulmonary embolisms, appear at over 400X the typical low rate after vaccination.
These events are serious, occur at a hideously elevated level & are at least as common in young people as in elderly people. The tendency is that younger people are having MORE SEVERE adverse events than older people.
There is literally no benefit whatsoever from this intervention. As stated, the children are unquestionably NOT AT RISK & vaccinating them WILL ONLY RESULT IN PAIN, SUFFERING, LASTING INJURIES AND DEATH.
Children rarely even become symptomatic & are very poor transmitters of the virus. This isn’t theory. It’s been studied & it pretty much doesn’t happen that children bring the virus into the home. In a large study, on not one occasion was a child the ‘index case’ – the first infected person in a household.
So if you’re told “it’s to protect vulnerable family members”, THAT IS A LIE.
The information emerging over time from U.K. & Israel is now showing clearly that the vaccines DO NOT EVEN WORK WELL. If there’s any benefit, it wanes.
Finally, the vaccines ARE NOT EVEN NECESSARY. There are good, safe & effective treatments.
IF YOU PERMIT THIS TO GO AHEAD I GUARANTEE THIS: THERE WILL BE AVOIDABLE DEATHS OF PERFECTLY HEALTHY CHILDREN, and severe illnesses in ten times as many.
And for no possible benefit.
KNOWING WHAT I KNOW FROM 40 years TRAINING & PRACTISE IN TOXICOLOGY, BIOCHEMISTRY & PHARMACOLOGY, to participate in this extraordinary abuse of innocent children in our care can be classified in no other way than MURDER.
It’s up to you. If I had a secondary school age child in U.K., I would not be returning them to school next month, no matter what.
The state is going to vaccinate everyone. The gloves are off. This has never been about a virus or public health. It’s wholly about control, totalitarian & irreversible control at that, and they’re nearly there.
PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WIDELY.
With somber best wishes,
Mike
Dr Mike Yeadon
The Dubious Ethics of ‘Nudging’ the Public to Comply With Covid Restrictions
By Dr. Gary Sidley | The Daily Sceptic | August 22, 2021
A middle-aged woman, walking along a pavement in the afternoon sunshine, sees a young family approaching and instantly becomes stricken with terror at the prospect of contracting a deadly infection. A man in a queue in a garage kiosk leans into the face of another and screams, “You selfish idiot! Hundreds of people will die because you don’t wear a mask.” The aggressor is oblivious to the fact that his victim suffers a history of asthma and anxiety problems. A neighbour puts on a face covering and plastic gloves before wheeling her dustbin to the end of her drive. These are three recent examples of many similar events I’ve observed or read. What could be the main reason for such extraordinary behaviour? Has the emergence of the SARS-COV-2 virus magically re-wired our brains, transforming many of us into vindictive germaphobes?
No, of course not. These extreme human reactions are, I believe, primarily the result of the Government’s deployment of covert psychological ‘nudges’, introduced as a means of increasing people’s compliance with the Covid restrictions.
In an article in the Critic, I discussed the remit of the Government’s behavioural scientists in the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), a subgroup of SAGE which offers advice to the Government about how to maximise the impact of its Covid communications strategy. The methods of influence recommended by the SPI-B are drawn from a range of ‘nudges’ described in the Institute of Government document, MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy, several of which primarily act on the subconscious of their targets – the British people – achieving a covert influence on their behaviour. The three ‘nudges’ to have evoked the most controversy, among both psychological practitioners and the general public, are: the strategic use of fear (inflating perceived threat levels); shame (conflating compliance with virtue); and peer pressure (portraying non-compliers as a deviant minority) – or ‘affect’, ‘ego’ and ‘norms’, to use the language of behavioural science. (Specific examples of how each of these covert strategies have been used throughout the Covid crisis are described here).
The British Psychological Society (BPS) is the leading professional body for psychologists in the U.K. According to their website, a central role of the BPS is: “To promote excellence and ethical practice in the science, education and application of the discipline.” In light of this remit, I – together with 46 other psychologists and therapists – wrote a letter to the BPS on January 6th, 2021, expressing our ethical concerns about the use of covert psychological strategies as a means of securing compliance with Covid restrictions. In particular, our alarm centred on three areas: the recommendation of ‘nudges’ that exploit heightened emotional discomfort as a means of securing compliance; implementing potent covert psychological strategies without any effort to gain the informed consent of the British public; and harnessing these interventions for the purpose of achieving adherence to contentious and unevidenced restrictions that infringe basic human rights.
Responses from the BPS to our initial letter were slow and circuitous. However, on July 1st we received an email from Dr. Roger Paxton, the Chair of the Ethics Committee, which clarified the BPS’s position: in the Committee’s view, there is nothing ethically questionable about deploying covert psychological strategies on the British people as a means of increasing compliance with public health restrictions.
An in-depth inspection of Dr. Paxton’s defence of the BPS reveals that it is evasive, disingenuous and wholly unconvincing.
First, he quibbles about the use of the word “covert”, arguing that the compliance techniques under scrutiny are more appropriately described as “indirect”. Behavioural-science documents routinely refer to the psychological strategies underpinning Government communication campaigns as evoking responses from people that are “unconscious”, “subconscious” or “automatic”. The crucial point is that the human targets of these ‘nudges’ are often unaware that the intention of the SPI-B psychologists is to scare, shame them and socially pressure them to conform. The MINDSPACE publication – co-authored by Professor David Halpern, an SPI-B and SAGE member – seems to concur: “Citizens may not fully realise that their behaviour is being changed… Clearly, this opens Government up to charges of manipulation… [as] it may offer little opportunity for citizens to opt-out.” (p. 66)
Second, Dr. Paxton rejects the idea that it would be ethical to offer citizens an opportunity to opt-out by asserting that the application of covert psychological strategies to shape people’s behaviour falls outside the realm of individual consent. The BPS appears to be claiming that an appeal to some nebulous, ideologically-driven concept of social decision-making exempts psychologists from the fundamental requirement to seek a person’s informed agreement before delivering an intervention. So according to the BPS – the formal guardians of ethical practice in the U.K. – the Covid communications strategy, aimed at achieving mass behavioural change, was intended to influence some anonymous collective rather than the actions of as many individuals as possible.
Again, the BPS stance is at odds with Professor Halpern’s position. In his 2019 book, Inside the Nudge Unit, he states: “If Governments… wish to use behavioural insights, they must seek and maintain the permission of the public. Ultimately, you – the public, the citizen – need to decide what the objectives, and limits, of nudging and empirical testing should be.” (p. 375)
Third, Dr. Paxton’s claim that the levels of fear throughout the Covid pandemic were proportionate to the viral threat is ill-informed and does not stand up to scrutiny. The minutes of the SPI-B meeting of March 22nd, 2020, demonstrate that its endorsement of a covert psychological strategy was a calculated decision to scare the British people, recommending that: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent… using hard-hitting emotional messaging.” In her book, A State of Fear, Laura Dodsworth interviewed members of SPI-B who confirmed that there had been a concerted effort to elevate the fear levels of the general public. One committee member, Educational Psychologist Dr. Gavin Morgan, admitted: “They went overboard with the scary message to get compliance.” Another SPI-B member – who wished to remain anonymous – was even more forthright: “The way we have used fear is dystopian… The use of fear has definitely been ethically questionable. It’s been like a weird experiment. Ultimately, it backfired because people became too scared.”
The mission to indiscriminately instil fear in the British public has been highly effective. An opinion poll prior to ‘Freedom Day’ suggested most people were worried about the prospect of lifting the remaining Covid restrictions. Even now, when all the vulnerable groups have been offered vaccination, many of our citizens remain tormented by ‘Covid Anxiety Syndrome’ – a disabling combination of fear and maladaptive coping strategies – with 20% of the population ‘markedly affected’. And this psychology-assisted fear inflation will be responsible for a substantial proportion of the extensive collateral damage associated with the restrictions, including excess non-Covid deaths and mental health problems.
Fourth, Dr. Paxton’s response makes no reference to the use of shame and scapegoating, and whether these are acceptable strategies for a civilised society to use. One can only assume that the BPS either views these tactics as acceptable, or that they seek to avoid acknowledging that psychologists have recommended practices that, in some respects, resemble the methods used by totalitarian regimes such as China, where the state inflicts pain on a subset of its population in an attempt to eliminate beliefs and behaviour they perceive to be deviant.
The dismissal of our ethical concerns by the BPS was predictable: a cursory glance at the scientists comprising the SPI-B shows that several of its members are also influential figures in the BPS; a major conflict of interest that renders the impartiality of their views highly questionable. What was surprising was the strident tone of Dr. Paxton’s rejoinder, as exemplified by his assertion that the psychologists’ role in the pandemic response demonstrated “social responsibility and the competent and responsible employment of psychological expertise”. I suspect the lady trembling on the pavement, the young man being verbally abused in the garage, and the neighbour donning mask and gloves to wheel out her dustbin – along with the many others in similar positions – might all beg to differ.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist.
Fury over Covid rules is FINALLY helping Aussies lose their long-held, unhealthy respect for authority
By Damian Wilson | RT | August 26, 2021
Having been forced to endure months of harsh lockdowns, my often-malleable compatriots Down Under are starting to fight back as they realise their government is clueless and they’ve been nuts to swallow the ‘zero Covid’ strategy.
By any measure, Australia has not enjoyed the coronavirus pandemic – and that has nothing to do with the number of deaths, because at less than 1,000 for a population of 25 million, it has, in the main, escaped lightly.
Where it has really suffered is in identifying exactly what level of threat Covid-19 poses to the population and then acting accordingly. Instead of being bold, brave, and positive in its handling of the situation, Australia has shown all the spine of a bluebottle jellyfish.
The collywobbles set in at the slightest whiff of Covid. Not deaths. Not hospitalisations. But simple cases of the virus send public health officials into a spin, locking down millions, deploying the military onto the streets, and imposing needless and draconian curfews. Blind panic best sums up the Australian government’s approach.
Then there are the stern warnings from state leaders that would be hilarious if they weren’t so serious – about enjoying sunset on the beach, removing a mask to drink beer, dodging errant footballs while watching a game, and most recently, a local council deciding to shoot 15 rescue dogs rather than allow volunteers from an animal shelter to travel for their collection in case they spread the virus.
That’s the level of insanity we’re looking at.
Meanwhile, it was humans on the receiving end at a so-called ‘freedom rally’ in Melbourne, where violence between protesters and police led to officers firing rounds of pepper balls – the most powerful non-lethal force at their disposal – into the anti-lockdown crowd.
It was one sign that patience with being treated like sheep might finally have snapped among parts of the Australian public. And it’s about time. I had begun to wonder what happened to the rebellious larrikins, the famed Aussie battlers, the brave Diggers, the pioneering ‘new Australians’ who just a generation or so ago left homes and family in Italy, Greece, Vietnam and beyond to pursue their dreams in the Lucky Country.
It seemed that a subservience to the ruling class, an unhealthy respect for authority, had overwhelmed my homeland.
The whole penal colony fable is a bit exaggerated, and of course there have been generations of intermingling since the 18th century, when Australia’s first white arrivals were drawn from the ranks of Great Britain’s sheep thieves and petty criminals. The violence and harsh conditions that welcomed those newcomers to the shores of Botany Bay, however, instilled a deep loathing and mistrust of their governing class, and it is often argued that Australia’s success was built on that resentment, driving its people to prove themselves to the authorities at home – and back in Mother England – that they could more than hold their own on the world stage. That inferiority complex was the driving force that has seen us excel in literature, in music, and particularly in sport.
But it also makes the Aussies a malleable bunch at times. Authority can make us go all weak at the knees. Public awareness campaigns that might struggle for lift-off elsewhere prove wildly successful in obedient Oz.
There’s no doubt this has been employed effectively in the past. There were the anti-litter ‘Keep Australia Beautiful’, keep-fit ‘Life. Be in it’, and skin cancer prevention ‘Slip! Slop! Slap!’ campaigns of my childhood. There was the mandatory wearing of bike helmets that came into force in the early 1990s, the plain packaging for cigarettes that appeared in 2012, and even the strict limits on gun ownership under the National Firearms Agreement that followed the Port Arthur massacre which left 35 people dead in 1996.
We have long been suckers for any message whose central premise is: follow this prescriptive guidance and you will be totally free to enjoy the great outdoors (without dying from cancer, obesity, bike accident or gunshot). That explains why the heavy-handed Covid rules have faced such little resistance.
The problem public health officials are facing now, however, is that the message is no longer working. Aussies were told the ‘zero Covid’ strategy that their government was pursuing was the envy of the world. That closing all international borders and keeping everyone at home was the pathway to freedom. Just do as we say and everything will be bonzer.
But they lied. With the Delta variant on the loose, lockdowns, curfews, restrictions on movement and the rest of the usual draconian measures are coming into play once more. But the government has overplayed its hand, and a sceptical public is starting to think, “These galahs haven’t got a bloody clue!” And they’re right.
So we see unrest on the streets of Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, and Melbourne because patience has finally snapped. I say let it rip! I look forward to continuing protests, rule-breaking, tough questions, and political accountability. I look forward to heads rolling, humiliating inquiries, and heartfelt apologies from the bungling clowns in charge.
I might have to wait a few months, but hey, that’s okay… because like my fellow compatriots, I’m not going anywhere.
Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.
Washington school introduced invasive ankle bracelets for COVID tracing
Parents push back
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | August 25, 2021
A public high school in the state of Washington was making student athletes, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, wear ankle monitors for the purposes of social distancing and contact tracing.
The story was brought to the spotlight by the mother of a 15-year-old girl in Eatonville High School’s volleyball team.
Speaking to The Post Millennial, the mother said that her daughter sent her a text about being asked to wear the ankle monitor. After being unable to reach her daughter again, presumably because she was playing, the mother called the school, but no one answered her questions. So she decided to go to the school where she spoke with the coach who told her that a meeting about an ankle monitoring program for students was held last week.
The device was manufactured by a tech firm called Triax. The company’s website states that the device’s purpose is to help in “maintaining social distancing guidelines” as well as “real-time insight into whether these guidelines are being observed.” The site mentions construction and manufacturing businesses as potential customers, not schools.
The device achieves its social distancing goal through “a visual and audible alarm, so individuals know when to adjust their current distance to a proper social distance.”
The device also has a feature for “passive collection of worker interactions for contact tracing should an individual test positive.”
The coach, Gavin Kralik, told the mother that if an unvaccinated student tested positive, they would have to quarantine for 14 days. The quarantine policy would not apply for vaccinated students.
The ankle monitoring policy was not included in the school district’s back-to-school documents. Additionally, the mother was not informed about the meeting, where, apparently, she would have been provided with the option to opt-out of the program.
In an interview Tuesday on The Ari Hoffman Show, the mother expressed her concern that the program would result in the discrimination of unvaccinated students, because, unlike the vaccinated students, they would have to go into isolation for 14 days.
The Eatonville School District Superintendent Gary Neal insisted that the purpose of the device was not discrimination.
Neal told The Post Millennial : “We received grant funding (known as ESSER III) that specifically included provisions to support higher-risk athletic programs, and we used some of those funds to pay for athletic proximity monitors. We are using these monitors for high contact and moderate indoor contact sports. The monitors are for both staff (coaches) and students on the field, regardless if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated. If a student or coach tests positive, we will have immediate information regarding athletes’ and coaches’ contacts, so we can more tightly determine who might need to quarantine.”
But the School Board Director Matt Marshall had a different message, saying that the school district has “shelved the devices until proper procedures including community input and board approval process occur.”
“I will fight any requirements that segregate students based on vaccination status,” he added. “I am confident the rest of my colleagues will do the same.”
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Are There 50,000 ‘Israeli-born’ Individuals Living in the UK?
By Professor David Miller | August 18, 2026
Recent disclosures by the Zionist regime show that some 2,069 British nationals were serving in the IDF as of March 2025, according to Freedom of Information (FoI) requests submitted to the occupation forces (1,686 dual British-Israeli, plus 383 multinational). We cannot tell from the figures how many of these were already settler colonists and intend to stay in the colony, and how many will return or have returned to the UK. Presumably, those returning to the UK will number far fewer than 2,000, since many are known to have become permanently residents of the colony.
Additionally, the IDF figures only provide a snapshot, and do not tell us how many have served in the Jewish supremacist military either before or after March 2025. One way into the question of how many genocidaires are living in Britain is to ask how many current British residents were born in the Zionist colony. There is data on that, as we shall see. … continue
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