The New Zealand (“NZ”) Labour Party have introduced a Therapeutic Products Bill. The public only has until 15 February to make submissions. More than 50% of the NZ public uses Natural Products. The structure of the Bill is very concerning. It establishes a regulator who will be empowered to take decisions and control availability, it does not adequately specify what factors should influence his decisions. In other words, it is an enabling bill of the type favoured by repressive regimes.
We don’t see any evidence that the public is being disadvantaged under current regulations, Dr. Guy Hatchard said, nor is there any evidence they are being harmed by Natural Products. This is an area where the government has no need to tighten regulations.
The Bill will place additional financial burdens on manufacturers and end users and it will introduce uncertainty about products that have been sold and relied upon by millions of New Zealanders. In our opinion, it is an underhand move to structure the Bill as regulation without specifying content. This is designed to disperse and deflect public interest, especially as the public consultation period spans the summer break.
It is of note that the very long list of common herbals planned to be banned under the 2016 bill drawn up by Medsafe with the help of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (“ICMRA”) is still in existence. Some of these are even used regularly and traditionally in cooking. Under the Bill, there is nothing to stop the new regulator from simply adopting this list as soon as appointed. This list would disrupt the availability of traditional remedies.
ICMRA was born out of the 65th World Health Assembly conference in 2012 under the excuse of a need “to address current and emerging human medicine regulatory and safety challenges globally, strategically and in an ongoing, transparent, authoritative and institutional manner.” Its members include medicine and drug regulatory bodies from 22 countries and the European Union. Additionally, another 15 countries are counted as associate members. The World Health Organisation is noted as an “observer.” And so, this is not only a problem New Zealanders face. What is happening in New Zealand in respect of prohibiting and controlling Natural Products will be rolled out to the detriment of populations in a large portion of the world.
Natural Products Regulation – An Overreach of Government Control
Civilisations come and go through the ages. When governments empower people, they harness the intelligence and creativity of their citizens for the good of all, when they seek to control their populations, they fall into decline.
Following three years of pandemic control, governments are not stopping there. Here in New Zealand, the government has introduced the ‘Therapeutic Products Bill’ which will control how products which appear to benefit health are manufactured, prescribed, imported, advertised, supplied and exported. According to Health Minister Andrew Little:
It will enable New Zealand to take advantage of advances in medicine, such as cell and tissue therapies, emerging gene therapies, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning software. Having risk-proportionate approval systems will improve access to necessary and life-saving medicines, such as vaccines in a pandemic.
An important part of the bill aims to regulate the natural health products used by more than 50% of our population. This is the third attempt of the Labour Party to introduce extreme regulation of the public’s options to choose their medical care, supplements, and diet. Their earlier two attempts failed because of vocal public opposition. In 2017 Labour opted for a prohibited list of 300 common herbal ingredients (for some of these see below):
It won’t have escaped your notice that many of these like Cinnamon and Mustard are currently sold in shops. So how on earth did they get onto a prohibited list? The answer lies in attempts to gain control of our food supply. Natural products that are beneficial to health cannot be patented, but synthetic copies can be. To make this work, the products that grow in gardens need to be banned.
Labour and the Ministry of Health did not make this list up, the list was supplied by the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) of which Medsafe is a member. ICMRA is largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry whose interests they serve. You can read all about it in my book ‘Your DNA Diet’ available as a Kindle from Amazon or a hard copy from the Hatchard Report.
Labour says it has learned from prior public opposition. This time the Bill will not name any prohibited ingredients. Instead, is an enabling bill, the type of legislation made famous by Adolf Hitler. The Bill establishes a new regulator headed by an independent statutory officer, with a wide remit:
The new regulator will be responsible for ensuring the safety, quality and efficacy of natural products. It will design and implement proportionate, risk-based market authorisation pathways. Its functions will include, in addition to market authorisation, licensing-controlled activities, post-market surveillance, and compliance.
These services will be funded through levies on the industry which are liable to be costly. Government regulatory schemes mooted in the last two attempts were likely to push small players out of the market due to the cost of compliance, as happened as a result of the Food Bill.
Crucially the Bill also includes a range of modern enforcement tools allowing for a graduated and proportionate response to breaches, including tiered criminal offences, strict liability offences, improved infringement notices and a civil pecuniary penalty regime.
In other words, the Bill appoints a new, as yet, unnamed regulator who is being empowered to do whatever he thinks fit to control the manufacture and availability of supplements. He could, and is in fact very likely to publish a list of banned herbal ingredients soon after his appointment. The list is ready to go from the ICMRA database connected to Medsafe courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry.
If we wish to be able to continue to freely chose herbal medicines and supplements without government interference, we will need to speak up. Go to THIS link to make a submission before 15 February. Write to your Member of Parliament and complain that the appointment of a regulator amounts to an open-ended blank cheque to control the use of products used by more than 50% of our population without fully specifying the principles he should use.
Guy Hatchard, PhD, was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a global food testing and safety company (now known as FoodChain ID). You can subscribe to his websites HatchardReport.com and GLOBE.GLOBAL for regular updates by email. GLOBE.GLOBAL is a website dedicated to providing information about the dangers of biotechnology.
January 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, New Zealand |
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The splash-screen says it all – are you ready to confront true evil? You’re not gonna believe this one – but it’s true!
The Twitter Space recording: https://twitter.com/hartgroup_org/status/1612774916490952705?s=20&t=X-FSrbEgD7OmaouiloFxHw
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January 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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In a groundbreaking decision filed today, NY State (NYS) Supreme Court Judge Gerard Neri held that the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare workers is now “null, void, and of no effect.” The court held that the NYS Dept. of Health lacked the authority to impose such a mandate as this power is reserved to the state legislature. Furthermore, the court found that the mandate was “arbitrary and capricious” as COVID-19 vaccines do not stop transmission, vitiating any rational basis for a mandate.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) financed this lawsuit on behalf of Medical Professionals for Informed Consent and several individual healthcare workers. Sujata Gibson, lead attorney, said, “This is a huge win for New York healthcare workers, who have been deprived of their livelihoods for more than a year. This is also a huge win for all New Yorkers, who are facing dangerous and unprecedented healthcare worker shortages throughout New York State.”
CHD President Mary Holland stated, “We are thrilled by this critical win against a COVID vaccine mandate, correctly finding that any such mandate at this stage, given current knowledge is arbitrary. We hope that this decision will continue the trend towards lifting these dangerous and unwarranted vaccine mandates throughout the country.”
We are off to a great start in 2023.
Children’s Health Defense is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Secretive negotiations took place this week in Geneva, Switzerland, to discuss proposed amendments to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Health Regulations (IHR), considered a binding instrument of international law.
Similar negotiations took place last month for drafting a new WHO pandemic treaty.
While the two are often conflated, the proposed IHR amendments and the proposed pandemic treaty represent two separate but related sets of proposals that would fundamentally alter the WHO’s ability to respond to “public health emergencies” throughout the world — and, critics warn, significantly strip nations of their sovereignty.
According to author and researcher James Roguski, these two proposals would transform the WHO from an advisory organization to a global governing body whose policies would be legally binding.
They also would greatly expand the scope and reach of the IHR, institute a system of global health certificates and “passports” and allow the WHO to mandate medical examinations, quarantine and treatment.
Roguski said the proposed documents would give the WHO power over the means of production during a declared pandemic, call for the development of IHR infrastructure at “points of entry” (such as national borders), redirect billions of dollars to the “Pharmaceutical Hospital Emergency Industrial Complex” and remove mention of “respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.”
Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, said the proposed documents may also contravene international law.
Boyle, author of several international law textbooks and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, recently spoke with The Defender about the dangers — and potential illegality — of these two proposed documents
Other prominent analysts also sounded the alarm.
Proposals would create ‘worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state’
Meeting in Geneva between Jan. 9-13, the WHO’s IHR Review Committee worked to develop “technical recommendations to the [WHO’s] Director-General on amendments proposed by State Parties to the IHR,” according to a WHO document.
The IHR was first enacted in 2005, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1, and took effect in 2007. They constitute one of only two legally binding treaties the WHO has achieved since its inception in 1948 — the other being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
As previously reported by The Defender, the IHR framework already allows the WHO director-general to declare a public health emergency in any country, without the consent of that country’s government, though the framework requires the two sides to first attempt to reach an agreement.
According to the same WHO document, the recommendations of the IHR Review Committee and the member states’ Working Group on Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (WGIHR) will be reported to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus by mid-January, in the leadup to the WHO’s 76th World Health Assembly in late May.
Boyle said he questioned the legality of the above documents, citing for instance the fact that “the proposed WHO treaty violates the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,” which was ratified in 1969, and which Boyle described as “the international law of treaties for every state in the world.”
Boyle explained the difference between the latest pandemic treaty and IHR proposals. “The WHO treaty would set up a separate international organization, whereas the proposed regulations would work within the context of the WHO we have today.”
However, he said, “Having read through both of them, it’s a distinction without a difference.” He explained:
“Either one or both will set up a worldwide totalitarian medical and scientific police state under the control of Tedros and the WHO, which are basically a front organization for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Tony Fauci, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and the Chinese Communist government that pays a good chunk of their bills.
“Either they’ll get the regulations or they’ll get the treaty, but both are existentially dangerous. These are truly dangerous, existentially dangerous and insidious documents.”
Boyle, who has written extensively on international law and argued cases on behalf of Palestine and Bosnia in the International Court of Justice, told The Defender he has “never read treaties and draft international organizations that are so completely totalitarian as the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty,” adding:
“Both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty, as far as I can tell from reading them, are specifically designed to circumvent national, state and local government authorities when it comes to pandemics, the treatment for pandemics and also including in there, vaccines.”
Talks for both the proposed pandemic treaty and the proposed IHR amendments appear to follow a similar timeline, in order to be submitted for consideration during the WHO’s World Health Assembly May 21-30.
“It’s clear to me they are preparing both the regulations and the treaty for adoption by the World Health Assembly in May of 2023,” Boyle said. “That’s where we stand right now as I see it.”
According to the WHO, the International Negotiating Body (INB) working on the Pandemic Treaty will present a “progress report” at the May meeting, with a view toward presenting its “final outcome” to the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024.
Boyle: proposed legally-binding pandemic treaty violates international law
Commenting on the pandemic treaty, Tedros said, “The lessons of the pandemic must not go unlearned.” He described the current “conceptual zero draft” of the treaty as “a true reflection of the aspirations for a different paradigm for strengthening pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.”
Roguski, in his analysis of the “Pandemic Treaty,” warned that it will create a “legally binding framework convention that would hand over enormous additional, legally binding authority to the WHO.”
The WHO’s 194 member states would, in other words, “agree to hand over their national sovereignty to the WHO.” This would “dramatically expand the role of the WHO,” by including an “entirely new bureaucracy,” the “Conference of the Parties,” which would include not just member states but “relevant stakeholders.”
This new bureaucracy, according to Roguski, would “be empowered to analyze social media to identify misinformation and disinformation in order to counter it with their own propaganda.”
The WHO currently partners with numerous such organizations, such as “fact-checking” firm NewsGuard, for these purposes.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty also would speed up the approval process for drugs and injectables, provide support for gain-of-function research, develop a “Global Review Mechanism” to oversee national health systems, implement the concept of “One Health,” and increase funding for so-called “tabletop exercises” or “simulations.”
“One Health,” a brainchild of the WHO, is described as “an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment” that “mobilizes multiple sectors, disciplines and communities” and “is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect, and respond to global health threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In turn, “tabletop exercises” and “simulations” such as “Event 201,” were remarkably prescient in “predicting” the COVID-19 and monkeypox outbreaks before they actually occurred.
Roguski said the pandemic treaty would provide a structure to redirect massive amounts of money “via crony capitalism to corporations that profit from the declarations of Public Health Emergencies of International Concern” (‘pandemics’) and “the fear-mongering that naturally follows such emergency declarations.”
Boyle warned that the treaty and proposed IHR regulations go even further. “The WHO, which is a rotten, corrupt, criminal, despicable organization, will be able to issue orders going down the pike to your primary care physician on how you should be treated in the event they proclaim a pandemic.”
Moreover, Boyle said, the pandemic treaty would be unlike many other international agreements in that it would come into immediate effect. He told The Defender :
“If you read the WHO Treaty, at the very end, it says quite clearly that it will come into effect immediately upon signature.
“That violates the normal processes for ratification of treaties internationally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, and also under the United States Constitution, requiring the United States Senate to give its advice and consent to the terms of the treaty by two-thirds vote.”
Indeed, Article 32 of the proposed treaty regarding its “Provisional application” states:
“The [treaty] may be applied provisionally by a Party that consents to its provisional application by so notifying the Depository in writing at the time of signature or deposit of its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval, formal confirmation or accession.
“Such provisional application shall become effective from the date of receipt of the notification by the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
“Whoever drafted that knew exactly what they were doing to bring it into force immediately upon signature,” said Boyle. “Assuming the World Health Assembly adopts the treaty in May, Biden can just order Fauci or whoever his representative is there to sign the treaty, and it will immediately come into effect on a provisional basis,” he added.
“I don’t know, in any of my extensive studies of international treaties, let alone treaties setting up international organizations, of any that has a provision like that in it,” said Boyle. “It’s completely insidious.”
Proposed amendments to IHR described as a WHO ‘power grab’
According to Roguski, who said the WHO is “attempting a power grab,” the proposed amendments to the IHR may be even more concerning than the pandemic treaty.
Roguski wrote that while he believes the pandemic treaty is “an important issue,” he also thinks it is “functioning as a decoy that is designed to distract people from the much larger and more immediate threat to our rights and freedoms, which are the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.”
The IHR Review Committee working on the proposed amendments “began its work on 6 October 2022,” according to a WHO document, and has convened five times since then, including this week’s meetings in Geneva. Access to the meetings was prohibited for the unvaccinated.
The final proposals of the IHR Review Committee and the WGIHR will be presented to Tedros in mid-January and to the World Health Assembly in May. According to Roguski, “If the proposed amendments are presented to the 76th World Health Assembly, they could be adopted by a simple majority of the 194 member nations.”
As a result, Roguski said, compared to the proposed pandemic treaty, “The amendments to the International Health Regulations are a much more immediate and direct threat to the sovereignty of every nation and the rights and freedoms of every person on earth.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would seek to remove 3 very important aspects of the existing regulations,” including “removing respect for dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms” from the text of the IHR, changing the IHR from “non-binding” to “legally binding” and obligating nations to “assist” other nations.
“Essentially, the WHO’s Emergency Committee would be given the power to overrule actions taken by sovereign nations,” Roguski said.
According to Boyle, similarly to the pandemic treaty, “again, Biden can instruct his representative in May, assuming they adopt the regulations, to sign the regulations. And then, the Biden administration will treat that as a binding international agreement, just like they did with the 2005 regulations,” referring to the original IHR ratified that year.
He added:
“Those [the 2005 IHR] were signed and the U.S. State Department at that time considered them to be a legally binding international executive agreement that they list in the official State Department publication, ‘Treaties in Force.’
“In other words, they treat the 2005 regulations as if they were a treaty that never received the advice and consent of the United States Senate, and therefore the supreme law of the land under Article 6 of the United States Constitution that would be binding upon all state and local governments here in the United States, even if they are resisting, the IHR regulations or the WHO treaty.”
According to Roguski, “The proposed amendments would implement a great number of changes that everyone should absolutely disagree with.”
These changes include “dramatically expand[ing] the scope of the International Health Regulations from dealing with actual risks to dealing with anything that had the potential to be a risk to public health,” which Roguski said “would open up the doors wide to massive abuse beyond anything we have seen over the past three years.”
The proposed amendments also would shift the WHO’s focus “away from the health of real people” to “place primary preference upon the resilience of health care systems,” and would establish a “National Competent Authority” that “would be given great power to implement the obligations under these regulations,” Roguski said.
If the amendments come to pass, Roguski said, “The WHO will no longer need to consult any sovereign nation in which an event may or may not be occurring within that nation before declaring that there is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern within the borders of that nation.”
“Intermediate Public Health Alert[s],” “Public Health Emergenc[ies] of Regional Concern” and “World Alert and Response Notice[s]” could also be declared by the WHO’s director general, while the WHO would be recognized “as the guidance and coordinating authority during international emergencies.”
During such real or “potential” emergencies, the amendments would empower the WHO to mandate a variety of policies globally, which would be legally binding on member nations.
These policies could include requiring medical examinations or proof of such exams, requiring proof of vaccination, refusing travel, implementing quarantine and contact tracing or requiring travelers to furnish health declarations, to fill out passenger locator forms and to carry digital global health certificates.
“Competent health authorities” would also be empowered to commandeer aircraft and ships, while surveillance networks to “quickly detect public health events” within member nations would also be set up, as per the proposed amendments.
The WHO would also be empowered to be involved in the drafting of national health legislation.
The proposed amendments would give the WHO the power to develop an “Allocation Plan,” allowing it to commandeer the means of production of pharmaceuticals and other items during an “emergency,” and would oblige developed nations to provide “assistance” to developing nations.
“The proposed amendments … would facilitate digital access to everyone’s private health records,” Roguski said, and similar to the proposals in the pandemic treaty, would “also facilitate the censorship of any differing opinions under the guise of mis-information or dis-information.”
Roguski said the proposals are being made despite a “lack of input from the general public” by “unknown and unaccountable delegates” using vague and “undefined terminology” and vague criteria “by which to measure preparedness.”
He said the proposals would “trample our rights and restrict our freedoms,” including the right to privacy, to choose or refuse treatment, to express one’s opinions, to protect one’s children, to be with family and friends and to be free from discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of one’s vaccination status.
“The finality of decisions made by the Emergency Committee” foreseen by the amendments “would be a direct attack on national sovereignty,” Roguski said.
How did we get here?
According to the WHO, the members of the INB — during a meeting in Geneva July 18-21, 2022 — reached a “consensus,” agreeing that any new “convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” would be “legally binding” on member states.
For Boyle, this is the WHO’s response to the “enormous opposition” to the COVID-19-related restrictions of the past three years. He told The Defender :
“As far as I can figure out what happened here was this: As you know, there has been enormous opposition here in the United States [against] these totalitarian edicts coming out, and this was under both Trump and Biden.
“These totalitarian edicts coming out of the federal government, the White House, the CDC, everyone else on this pandemic and also the vaccine mandates, there’s enormous grassroots opposition. And so, as far as I can tell what happened, this culminated in Trump pulling us out of the WHO, which I think was a correct decision.
“So you know, I’m a political independent. I’m just looking at this subjectively. Now, what happened was then, when Biden came to power, his top scientific advisor was Tony Fauci. So Biden put us back into the WHO and then appointed Fauci as the U.S. representative on the Executive Committee of the WHO.
“That’s where both the IHR regulations and the WHO treaty come from: to circumvent the enormous grassroots opposition to the handling of the edicts coming out of the federal government with respect to the pandemic and the vaccine mandates.”
Boyle explained what “legally binding” would mean in this context, if either set of proposals comes to pass:
“What will happen is the WHO will come up with an order, this new organization will come up with an order that they will then send to Washington, D.C., whereupon the Biden administration will enforce it as a binding international obligation of the United States of America under Article 6 of the United States Constitution, and it will usurp the state and local health authorities, who generally have constitutional authority to deal with public health under the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“The Biden administration will then argue that either the regulations or the treaty will usurp the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution and state and local health authorities, governors, attorney generals, public health authorities will have to obey [any] order coming out of the WHO.”
Referring to his remarks about the illegality of the two proposals under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Boyle clarified that under Article 18 of the convention, “a treaty does not come into force when signed. When the state has signed the treaty, it is only obligated to act in a manner that does not defeat the object and purpose of the treaty.”
Article 18 states:
“A State is obliged to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty when: (a) it has signed the treaty or has exchanged instruments constituting the treaty subject to ratification, acceptance or approval, until it shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty.”
According to Boyle a state’s signature “does not provisionally bring the treaty into force.”
Boyle also described the proposals as “a massive power grab by Fauci, the CDC, the WHO, Bill Gates, Big Pharma, the biowarfare industry and Tedros.”
He added:
“I’ve never seen anything like this in any of my research, writing, teaching, litigating international organizations going back to the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899, up until today.”
Roguski and Boyle argued that the U.S. — and other countries — should exit the WHO. Boyle told The Defender :
“I’m not a supporter of President Trump, but I think we have to go back to pulling out of the WHO right away. In the last session of Congress, there was legislation introduced pulling us out of the WHO. We need that legislation reintroduced immediately, in this new session of Congress.
“I think the House of Representatives has to make it clear that they object, that there’s no way they are going to go along with any orders coming out of the WHO, the World Health Assembly [WHA] or this new international pandemic organization, and that they have the power of the purse and that they will defund anything related to the WHO.”
However, for Boyle, this is not just a matter for federal lawmakers. “We need, certainly, the state governments here in the United States to take the position that they will not comply with any decisions coming out of the WHO, the WHA or this new international pandemic organization,” adding that he recently made such recommendations to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“We need that replicated all over the United States, on a state-by-state basis,” said Boyle, “and I think we need it right away because they’re trying to rush through these WHO regulations and the [pandemic] treaty for the WHO assembly in May.”
Close cooperation with Gates Foundation, others
According to the WHO, the INB discussions are taking place not just among all member states, but also with “relevant stakeholders” listed in document A/INB/2/4.
Who are these stakeholders? One example is GAVI, The Vaccine Alliance, listed as an “Observer” alongside the Holy See (Vatican), Palestine and the Red Cross.
As previously reported by The Defender, GAVI proclaims a mission to “save lives and protect people’s health,” and states it “helps vaccinate almost half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.”
GAVI describes its core partnership with various international organizations, including names that are by now familiar: the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, and with the ID2020 Alliance, which supports the implementation of “vaccine passports.”
ID2020’s founding members include the Gates Foundation, Microsoft and the Rockefeller Foundation.
In turn, the Gates Foundation, alongside Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation, the International Air Transport Association (IATA — think “vaccine passports”) and the Population Council — founded by John D. Rockefeller and known for its “population control” initiatives — are listed in the same WHO document under Annex C as “non-state actors in official relations with WHO.”
“Other stakeholders, as decided by the INB, invited to attend [and] speak at open sessions of meetings of the INB [and] provide inputs to the INB” include IATA, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the World Bank Group.
“Open Philanthropy” and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and “nonprofit consumer advocacy organization” Public Citizen, are among the groups listed in the WHO document as “other stakeholders” that can “provide inputs to the INB,” alongside two Russian state-affiliated health organizations.
Lead U.S. negotiator for the pandemic treaty, Pamela Hamamoto — previously an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch — “helped coordinate early responses to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2015 … and a strengthened WHO response.”
Hamamoto also was “instrumental in the 2014 launch of the Global Health Security Agenda” (GHSA), a “global effort … focused on strengthening the world’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats,” spearheaded by the CDC and founded with the purpose of accelerating the IHR passed in 2005.
The World Bank, the Global Health Security Consortium, the Private Sector Roundtable and the WHO are part of the GHSA’s steering group. AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines, are members of the Private Sector Roundtable.
Advising the GHSA is the “GHSA Consortium,” which includes within its steering committee the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (which hosted Event 201) and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
As previously reported by The Defender, the NTI organized a “tabletop exercise” that predicted a “fictional” May 2022 monkeypox outbreak with remarkable accuracy. “Open Philanthropy” funded the final report for this exercise.
General members of the GHSA Consortium include the Gates Foundation, Amazon Web Services (which maintained COVID-19 immunization databases for the CDC), Boston University and the institution’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL), and Emergent BioSolutions.
As previously reported by The Defender, NEIDL is where “a new strain of COVID-19 that killed 80% of the mice infected with the virus” was recently developed.
Emergent BioSolutions, which produced the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and attained infamy for losing a $600 million federal contract after millions of vaccine doses were ruined, is connected to the 2001 Dark Winter anthrax simulation.
In June 2022, with the support of the U.S., Italy (current chair of the GHSA) and then-G20 president Indonesia, the World Bank announced the launch of a $1 billion “pandemic fund.”
In November 2022, Indonesian Minister of Health Budi Gunadi Sadikin, at the G20 meeting held in Bali, pushed for an international “digital health certificate acknowledged by the WHO” to enable the public to “move around.” Indonesia is also a permanent member of the GHSA’s steering group.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
January 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Gates Foundation, Human rights, Rockefeller Foundation, United States, WHO |
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Even Prime Ministers
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) was set up in 2010 by the UK Cabinet Office to nudge the population into doing things they might not necessarily decide to do without prompting. Since then it has gone from strength to strength, massively expanded and its methods exported around the world.
David Halpern, a British psychologist, has been in charge of the BIT since its formation. In an astonishing admission in a recent Telegraph ‘article’, David revealed how he and his team even used their techniques on Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK at the time.
Professor Halpern and his team had decided that everyone needed to wear masks but Boris wasn’t as convinced. This was probably due to all the previous advice, trials and science showing that masks did little to help during a pandemic. However, the behavioural scientist thought it was their jobs to push back against Boris’ leadership that saw masks as “nonsensical”.
“We did share with him a slide pack at one point. It had a series of images of pretty much every single world leader wearing a mask, and then a picture with him not,” he recalls. This nudge was used to point out that “a normal thing for a world leader to do right now is wear a mask”.
David Halpern brazenly tells the British public how he used psychological techniques to change the mind of the man running the country. From his point of view, it is perfectly acceptable to use nudging on anyone and everyone, no matter their position, on an issue that he has decided is the correct path to take.
And this is the nudging he admits to, what else did he nudge Boris Johnson or other members of the government to do without them realising it?
The ‘article’ was in fact a piece commissioned for the Reckitt Global Hygiene Institute an “independent, not-for-profit founded in 2020 to generate practical, high-quality scientific research and behavioural insights in the area of health hygiene”.
But how ‘independent’ and ‘not-for-profit’ is an institute set up by a company motivated by profit? The Institute was set up by the Reckitt Benckiser Group (trading as Reckitt) whose brands include Dettol (antiseptics), Disprin & Neurofen (pain killers), Strepsils (sore throat medicine), other health and cleaning brands and…you guessed it…masks.
For example, in 2018, Reckitt teamed up with the Cambridge Mask Co to produce masks combatting the effects of air pollution.
So where is the line between nudging and advertising? Here we have a company motivated by profit, setting up a behavioural insights research team which no doubt advises the BIT on health hygiene issues. The BIT then nudges the population to buy and wear masks, which in turn leads to a healthy profit for the original company.
And if something gets in the way, like the leader of a country, no matter, we’ll just nudge them to do what we want.
The Telegraph ‘article’ notes how, in the US, mask wearing became a political issue, which happened to a much lesser extent in the UK. They determine that not wearing masks in the UK is due to cultural, not political reasons.
Comparing mask-wearing in East Asia to the UK, they seem to suggest that the way forward is for the state to be given more power.
“Because of that experience [past pandemics], they have changed their statutory laws to allow the state to have certain rights during a pandemic that trump individuals’ liberty.”
Another reason masking in the West is so controversial, according to the ‘article’ is that we don’t have a collectivist mindset.
“it’s harder to get people to do something they don’t want to do for the common good,” Prof Kwong said. “Even if it’s something as simple or as easy as wearing a mask.”
David Halpern thinks there is a link between experience and collectivism. Therefore because of Covid-19 “the response to a future pandemic may be more prepared and less individualistic”.
In a glimpse at what may be in store for the West, Professor Halpern explains how ‘behavioural and cultural imprinting’ may be used to create ‘habit loops’.
“in the same way that your body reacts to seeing the virus before… behaviourally some of the same is true. You can respond because the behavioural pathway is ready.” This allows for a “much clearer habit loop” for everyone, as well as for society.
So to encourage future masking there will be several focus points. Using key figures to create a ‘thread’ or ‘prompt’ to declare a social norm. Religion will also be targeted to create ‘social cues’ as well as clear messaging.
All of this combined creates a ‘scaffolding’ which can then be removed once mask wearing becomes habit.
“It’s like a little booster shot for your vaccination,” said Prof Halpern. “Occasionally you need to be reminded of wearing a mask. Then it can become quite a robust habit.”
In this revealing insight in to how the head of the BIT thinks, we can see that David Halpern has no problem into nudging world leaders to follow an agenda that he has deemed to be the correct one. Everything must be done for the common good so individuals can’t stand in the way.
With a complete lack of transparency in the BIT, especially now that it is private company, we have no idea what ‘common good’ agendas they are pursuing. The common good might benefit society as a whole but be detrimental to a segment within it. Is that ok?
We have learnt recently that children were forced to wear masks in school purely to appease teaching unions who threatened to stop teaching. So in this case the common good can be defined as keeping children in school, justifying nudging the use of masks. It is easy to find a common good to pursue which can then result in the justification of something bad.
And using the common good can quickly get out of hand. The defence cultural specialist unit, which co-incidentally was launched in the same year as the BIT, works “side-by side with psychological operation teams”. This unit is part of the infamous 77th Brigade which has been used against Covid misinformation.
This in turn can lead to a whole legion of fake doctors pushing for masking and lockdowns.
The masking nudging/propaganda is returning again which can be seen in this Times article. Wear a mask to help the health service. Wear a mask voluntarily so that we don’t succumb to another bout of Covid. Wear a mask, it’s the responsible thing to do.
Clear as day when you understand what is going on but for the rest of the population the masks will start being worn again.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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The Tories, with the political establishment and mainstream media cheering on in the background, have finally got rid of that irritant MP Andrew Bridgen, who (albeit belatedly) keeps prodding them in the side with truth about Covid vaccine harms.
They have used the expedient of the Holocaust being referenced in a comment he quoted from a doctor: ‘As one consultant cardiologist said to me, this is the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust.’
Chief whip Simon Hart proclaimed: ‘Andrew Bridgen has crossed a line, causing great offence in the process. As a nation we should be very proud of what has been achieved through the vaccine programme. The vaccine is the best defence against Covid that we have. Misinformation about the vaccine causes harm and costs lives. I am therefore removing the whip from Andrew Bridgen with immediate effect, pending a formal investigation.’
Rishi Sunak effectively smeared the North West Leicestershire MP as an anti-Semite in the Chamber of Lies (aka House of Commons): ‘Obviously, it is utterly unacceptable to make linkages and use language like that, and I’m determined that the scourge of anti-Semitism is eradicated. It has absolutely no place in our society. And I know that the previous few years have been challenging for the Jewish community, and I never want them to experience anything like that ever again.’
The establishment knives have found their target, and comments from the likes of John Mann, the government’s independent anti-Semitism adviser, and Andrew Percy, the Conservative MP and vice-chair of the All-Party Group against anti-Semitism, are calling for Bridgen to be barred from standing for the Conservative Party again.
The BBC, Sky News and Guardian have published their hit pieces, as have most other news outlets. Sky News further smeared Bridgen’s vaccine position by stating: ‘About 20million lives were saved by the Covid vaccine in its first year, Imperial College London research published in June last year found. The Imperial research suggests another 600,000 deaths could have been avoided if a World Health Organisation (WHO) target of vaccinating 40 per cent of the global population by the end of 2021 had been met.’
Michael Fabricant MP said of his former colleague: ‘If this deters people from being vaccinated and causes deaths as a direct consequence, he’ll have blood on his hands. His tweets are wholly irresponsible.’
This may come across as a piece of party political revenge, purging the Tories of a renegade MP who questioned one of its star ‘achievements’. But it may have deeper consequences.
It appears that the political establishment has circled its wagons and decided it will make a stand against any and all who voice questions regarding Covid vaccine. No gradual rolling back on vaccine efficacy or safety, but a doubling down on the dishonest propaganda that espouses the importance and essential need for the vaccine and ongoing vigilance, and acceptance of Government as the only source of truth for future emergencies (e.g. catastrophic climate change).
The expulsion of Andrew Bridgen is a shot across the bows of any other MPs who might consider raising their heads above the parapet. The claims of vaccine safety and effectiveness will be amplified, false data re-asserted as truth, and opposition quelled by any means.
This is authoritarianism coming out into the light, ready to use its recently found power over our lives. Over the last three years it has taken control over almost all aspects of our lives, and now it has decided it is going to go on the offensive to cement its position of dominance over the shaping of all our futures, and it will not be forced to relinquish its grip without drastic action by us, the electorate.
Statement by Andrew Bridgen MP
I’m disappointed that the Chief Whip, Simon Hart, with the support of the Prime Minister, has chosen to suspend me as a member of the Conservative Parliamentary Party. My tweet of 11th of January was in no way anti-Semitic. Indeed, it alluded to the Holocaust being the most heinous crime against humanity in living memory. Of course, if anyone is genuinely offended by my use of such imagery, then I apologize for any offence caused.
I wholeheartedly refute any suggestions that I am racist and currently I’m speaking to a legal team who will commence action against those who have led the call suggesting that I am. Indeed, the Israeli doctor I quoted in my tweet has stated that there was nothing at all antisemitic about the statement. The fact that I have been suspended over this matter says much about the current state of our democracy, the right to free speech and the apparent suspension of the scientific method of analysis of medicines being administered to billions of people.
As I’ve consistently maintained, there are very reasonable questions to be asked about the safety and effectiveness of the experimental MRNA vaccines and the risks and benefits of these treatments. There are reasonable questions to ask of a government that is considering extending the use of these experimental vaccines to children as young as six months of age. These, ladies and gentlemen, are babies.
There are reasonable questions about the side effects of MRNA vaccines, especially when we know categorically that the current risk of harm to most of the population, and especially young people, from COVID 19, is minuscule. We have a government who indemnifies vaccine manufacturers from claims against the harms caused by their products, and a government, who, it appears, actively look to remove MPs who raise questions about those harms.
I was saddened to hear yesterday of my suspension, but I’m not downhearted. I’ve received huge support from ordinary people, medical workers, who are too intimidated to speak out and of course from those who’ve experienced vaccine harms themselves or to a loved one. Hopefully the media interest around my suspension will finally get the issue of vaccine harms into the media who have been so reluctant to cover this issue for so long, an issue which is clearly of huge and growing concern to many people across the globe.
Reasonable questions about the safety and effectiveness of MRNA vaccines must continue to be asked, and I will continue to ask them. If I cannot do that as a Conservative member of Parliament, then so be it. Highlighting these important questions. Questions about life, death, serious injury, must override party loyalty. I owe that not only to my constituents in North West Leicestershire, but also to the wider British public and especially to our children and young people who are the very future of our great nation.
Thank you very much for listening to me.
Notes
Andrew’s statement can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/LD2lhNnlDbQ
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Samizdat – 12.01.2023
WASHINGTON – US government officials and media outlets promoted conspiracies about Russian bot activity on Twitter despite pushback and evidence to the contrary from the social media company, reporter Matt Taibbi said on Thursday in the latest release of the so-called Twitter Files.
In January 2018, Twitter users began posting the hashtag “ReleaseTheMemo” in support of the declassification of a memorandum by then-Congressman Devin Nunes, which detailed flaws in the FBI’s investigation of alleged collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.
In response, Democrats denounced the memorandum, claiming it was boosted by Russian “bots” and not an organic social media movement, even after Twitter informed the lawmakers that they found no signs that the movement was affiliated with Russia.
“Twitter warned politicians and media they not only lacked evidence, but had evidence the accounts weren’t Russian – and were roundly ignored,” Taibbi said. “Execs eventually grew frustrated over what they saw as a circular process – presented with claims of Russian activity, even when denied, led to more claims.”
Nevertheless, Twitter went on to follow a pattern of not challenging the claims regarding Russia on the record, Taibbi said. Consequently, a number of US media outlets continued to push the Russian bots narrative despite a lack of evidence, Taibbi added.
The lawmakers contributed to one of the “greatest outbreaks of mass delusion in US history” by spreading the Russian collusion hoax and attempting to discredit Nunes’ memorandum, the congressman said in a statement. The contents of Nunes’ memorandum were verified in a December 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The Twitter Files are based on internal information and released in coordination with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who committed to reforming the social media company after acquiring it last year.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | FBI, United States |
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Last Friday, President Biden held a White House ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot. Biden showered a dozen Presidential Service Medals on people connected to the 2020 election or the January 6 events. Biden talked of the anniversary as a “day of remembrance”—perhaps echoing the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Many Americans would be happy to never hear about January 6 again. No such luck. Vice President Kamala Harris equated January 6 with 9/11 and threw in Pearl Harbor to score a trifecta. Biden endlessly invoked January 6 in his speeches supporting Democrats in the mid-term congressional elections. In August, Biden denounced Republicans for “semi-fascism.” In September, he claimed that MAGA Republicans (which effortlessly became all Republicans) “embrace political violence.” In a preview of Biden’s speech last week, Politico accurately forecast that Biden will “again put center stage the danger and chaos posed by election deniers… He will link Republicans to the extremists who attempted to forcibly overturn the results of Donald Trump’s defeat.”
Since Biden is running for re-election, he will likely be perpetually flogging January 6 in his speeches between now and November 2024. Thus, it is worthwhile to have a closer analysis of Biden’s speech and the continuing effort to exploit January 6 to vilify political dissent.
In his White House speech last week, Biden repeated his efforts to portray January 6 as a conspiracy to destroy American democracy. Biden declared that “a violent mob of insurrectionists… vandalized sacred halls,” seeking to “overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power.” Biden repeatedly slurred his pronunciation of “insurrectionists” and referred to the attacks on “July the sixth” (instead of January the sixth).
Exploiting the boundless historical illiteracy of his audience, Biden declared, “The U.S. Capitol was breached, which had never happened before in the history of the United States of America, even during the Civil War.” Actually, the British Army burned the Capitol down in 1814. But since none of the British were wearing furry horned hats, it would be unfair to compare their soldiers to the January 6 protestors.
Seeking to vivify the viciousness of the protestors, Biden lamented that a police officer he gave an award to “was tased.” Unfortunately, tasing only counts as a human rights abuse when law enforcement is on the voltage receiving end. Biden listed five police who had died (several by suicide) in the wake of January 6 but did not mention Ashli Babbitt, the only person who was gunned down and killed that day. The Capitol policeman who shot Babbitt (who was unarmed) was hailed as a hero.
Biden, staying on script, repeated his claim that the January 6 clash “was fueled by lies about the 2020 election.” And since the protestors were spurred by false claims, Biden was automatically exempted from any obligation for candor. The January 6 protestors magically become collectively guilty for anything bad that happened inside the District of Columbia for the rest of 2021.
Biden declared:
“Today is a ceremony to honor heroes of January 6th, but we also recognize the late U.S. Capitol Police Officer, Billy Evans. Three months after January 6th, while they were still cordoning off the Capitol because threats these—by these sick insurrectionists continued to be profligated on the Internet, again, all of America saw what happened, what Officer Evans was killed defending a checkpoint you had to go through to get up to the Capitol, because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth. And the whole world saw it.”
The whole world saw what? If someone relied on Biden’s spiel, they would assume some wacko wearing a MAGA hat brutally killed a cop on Capitol Hill. Actually, Evans was killed by Noah Green, a black 25-year-old Nation of Islam zealot who struggled with hallucinations and drug addiction. After Green smashed his car into a checkpoint, he leaped out with a knife and lunged at officers before he was shot and killed. The effort to blame Evans’ death on the January 6 protestors epitomized Biden’s “close enough for government work” demonology.
Biden claimed that the checkpoint was necessary “because of these God-awful, sick threats that continue to move forth.” The media has memory-holed the militarization of Washington that Biden and congressional allies ordered in 2021. More than 10,000 National Guard troops occupied much of Washington the following months and Capitol Hill was surrounded by fences topped with barbed wire. Some skeptics believed that the ominous trappings sought to frighten members of Congress to support sweeping new anti-terrorism legislation to vilify any American who distrusted Washington.
The so-called “Temple of Democracy” looked like a Beirut bunker. Some members of Congress favored permanently turning Capitol Hill into the equivalent of a supermax prison. The American Civil Liberties Union recognized that Congress hiding behind a fence projects “the kind of message that heads of autocratic regimes send by cloistering themselves away from their populaces in armored fortresses.” The closing off of the Capitol illustrated how far politicians would go to exploit one day’s violence for an extended shutdown of the trappings of democracy.
Some January 6 protestors were violent and destructive and deserve to be sent up the river. But the Biden January 6 narrative is bolstered by endless prosecutions of folks who were little more than hapless bystanders to the violence that day. Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted last Wednesday that the January 6 “investigation has resulted in the arrest of more than 950 defendants for their alleged roles in the attack.” The total arrests far exceed the number of violent private citizens at the Capitol that day. A Justice Department press release noted, “860 defendants have been charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building or grounds.” Shades of Lee Harvey Oswald!
“Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism” is the Biden standard for prosecuting January 6 defendants. The FBI treats every individual charged with a January 6 offense “as domestic terrorists.” Prosecutors are not formally charging January 6 defendants with terrorism because that unsubstantiated charge would be laughed out of federal courtrooms. But for Biden scoring of January 6 federal triumphs, “parading without a permit” is close enough to terrorism.
While Biden paints all the January 6 arrestees as deadly perils to democracy, federal judges are scoffing at histrionic Justice Department claims. The Washington Post reported last week that “judges in U.S. District Court in Washington… have gone below federal prosecutors’ sentencing recommendations in more than three-quarters of the cases so far.” While the Justice Department boasts of the total number of arrests, “only 69 have been convicted and sentenced so far [for felonies], mostly for assaulting police or obstructing Congress.”
The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack conducted many hearings and issued an 845-page report on their findings. At the behest of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), the committee’s final report expunged criticism of the failure of law enforcement, enraging Democratic committee staffers. This was a bizarre omission—considering that even the Washington Post condemned “one of the biggest security failures in the nation’s history.” The U.S. Capitol Police have almost 2,000 officers and a budget larger than that of Detroit and St. Louis. However, fewer than 200 Capitol police “were deployed to interior or exterior posts at the US Capitol” January 6 — as if the cops were prepping for the annual visit from the Future Farmers of America.
Nor did the House Select Committee show any interest in the role of federal informants or undercover agents in the Capitol clash. A year ago at a congressional hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked senior FBI official Jill Sanborn: “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” She refused to answer.
Two months ago, it was revealed that the FBI had as many as eight informants inside the Proud Boys, a far right group that has been charged with seditious conspiracy for their January 6 violence. Suspicions have also been spurred by Ray Epps, an Arizona activist who urged people to go inside the Capitol building and boasted that he “orchestrated” January 6 has faced no criminal charges. Epps, a darling witness of the House Select Committee, has been accused of being an informant (which he denies). Nor did the Select Committee push to disclose the thousands of hours of videotape from the Capitol’s cameras that could resolve many of the J6 controversies. According to Darren Beatty, the founder of Revolver News, “Without federal involvement, that rally could not have turned into the riot that it did.” But we have not seen the evidence to confirm or rebut Beatty’s conclusion.
The January 6 prosecutions are part of a growing FBI onslaught against dissent. The FBI crackdown is skewed because “Washington is obsessed with threats to Washington itself,” as a senior government official recently told Newsweek’s William Arkin, one of the best investigative journalists in DC. “We’ve become too prone to labeling anything we don’t like as extremism, and then any extremist as a terrorist,” the official observed. The FBI is expanding its targeting of “Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (AGAAVEs),” groups or individuals the feds claim “intend to commit violence or criminal activity.” And how will the FBI know their intentions? Trust thousands of FBI informants to gin up the evidence to keep propelling the prosecution juggernaut. And every anti-government “extremist” who is indicted can be portrayed by politicians as a co-conspirator with the January 6 traitors.
Biden will continue to invoke January 6 (or July 6, depending on how he is doing that day) to portray himself as the only thing standing between America and utter chaos. But the Biden storyline hinges on keeping Americans blindfolded on many details that occurred at the Capitol before, during, and after that day. Biden’s pitch also hinges on Americans acquiescing to federal agencies and prosecutors vilifying ever more dissenters. Unfortunately, there is no reason to presume that the coverups and the demagoguery will cease working any time soon.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.
January 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | FBI, United States |
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Australia’s authorities have updated their “misinformation code” but remain unhappy that large end-to-end encrypted apps are still not “regulated” in a way they would find satisfactory.
That’s despite the fact the “update” does what various governments like the most – leave a lot of room to interpret the rules as best suits them. Thus harm is now communication that represents “serious and credible” threat. And the previous definition is that this threat must also be imminent – however, that is no longer included in the wording.
The code in question, published late last month, is said to be “voluntary” and concerns combating whatever’s flagged as “disinformation and misinformation” – but now the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is making it clear that it is not nearly enough.
Currently, the “voluntary” reference has to do with the Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) and its members, such as Apple, Google, Facebook (Meta), TikTok and Twitter, “self-regulating” in a bid to find common ground with Australia’s government and avoid negative consequences to their business.
But now the regulator said that while the update is welcome, the work to gain powers necessary to force social media platforms to turn over data will continue.
At stake here are these companies revealing to state authorities how they fight against “misinformation,” and also, “how they respond to complaints.” Specifically, the push is to make those behind social media hand over information about “posts and audience.”
And that, in turn, the government claims, is necessary in its decision-making process, when it comes to making sure laws dealing with “misinformation” are ever stricter.
ACMA is particularly concerned with what they see as the lack of a “robust” framework that would expand the code to “cover the propagation of mis- and disinformation on messaging services that facilitate large-scale group messaging,” the regulator told Guardian Australia.
The article mentions WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in particular in this context – and tries to back up the case for the need to access data from these apps by mentioning “false rumors about child abduction spreading in India through WhatsApp,” and, “the death tax scare campaign at the 2019 election” in Australia.
In addition to wanting the “voluntary” code to become more stringent consequences-wise – as it becomes more loosely worded – ACMA wants “reserve powers” for itself to bring about future codes that would be binding.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Australia, Human rights |
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Samizdat – 11.01.2023
WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a resolution establishing a select subcommittee to investigate whether components of the federal government have been weaponized against everyday citizens.
House lawmakers passed a resolution establishing the special Judiciary Committee panel in a vote of 221-211, falling along partisan lines.
“Congress hasn’t kept pace with the federal government’s potential to abuse new technology, and we need to better understand how US intelligence agencies work with each other and with the private sector to collect information on Americans or to undermine their fundamental constitutional rights,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a statement on the panel.
The subcommittee will investigate how the FBI, Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and other executive branch agencies obtain information from and provide information to the private sector and other agencies to facilitate actions against US citizens.
The panel will be granted access to information shared with the House Intelligence Committee and the authority to review ongoing criminal investigations. The panel is styled after the Church Committee of 1975, which conducted similar oversight of federal agencies.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will name 13 members to the subcommittee, including five Democrats in consultation with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | Human rights, United States |
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By Wyatt Reed – Samizdat – 11.01.2023
A new government probe suggests the tide may be turning against the US-backed government which seized power in Peru last month, depriving President Pedro Castillo of his power.
Peru’s Attorney General has opened an investigation into the country’s new leaders after over a dozen Peruvians were killed in confrontations with security forces.
According to local media, officials are investigating the politicians for the crimes of genocide, homicide, and inflicting grievous injuries.
“The preliminary investigation is related to the alleged crimes of genocide, murder, and grievous bodily harm committed during the demonstrations of December 2022 and January 2023 in the regions of Apurimac, La Libertad, Puno, Junin, Arequipa, and Ayacucho,” reads a statement issued by the office.
Much of the upper echelon of Peru’s new authorieis are reportedly being scrutinized, including the self-declared president, Dina Boluarte, Prime Minister Alberto Otárola, Interior Minister Victor Rojas, and Defense Minister Jorge Chavez.
On Tuesday morning, left-leaning Congresswoman Ruth Luque asked the Attorney General’s office to probe the role played by high-ranking officials of the Boluarte cabinet in its crackdown on pro-Castillo protesters that left at least 17 Peruvians dead in the Southern city of Juliaca Monday.
The investigation comes as Peru’s notoriously unpopular legislature gave its approval to a vote of confidence aimed to legitimize the new government.
On Friday, Peru’s Attorney General opened an earlier investigation into the the new cabinet, which stands accused of killing dozens of demonstrators and bystanders amid the ongoing political crisis.
Massive protests have consumed Peru since the ouster of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, who was arrested hours after attempting to dissolve parliament after lawmakers proceeded with an impeachment vote. He has remained in police custody since his detainment.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Latin America, Peru |
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The general strike against Peru’s coup regime is on its sixth consecutive day with barricades and roadblocks erected across the country. The weekend also saw countless illegal arrests of protesters and journalists.
According to authorities, protesters have blocked highways at 45 different points. The indigenous Aymara region of Puno is the center of opposition to the regime, with the highest number of barricades erected along highways. The roads connecting Puno to Arequipa, Cusco, and the Amazon, are among those currently blocked.
In Lima, 224 people were detained on Friday for participating in protests organized by workers’ unions. Nevertheless, the transport workers union has announced that they will join the general strike “if this is the only way for them to listen to us,” said their general secretary Ricardo Pareja.
The possibility of dialogue appears unlikely after the Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP), the largest union confederation, announced that it would not participate in the ‘National Agreement Session’ organized by the regime. The unions say that there cannot be social peace while the Peruvian people are being massacred, tortured, and killed for using their right to social protests.
The regime of Dina Boluarte has killed more than 30 protesters, mostly indigenous, since the coup against Pedro Castillo. Strike demands include the resignation of Dina Boluarte, new elections, a constituent assembly, and the release of Pedro Castillo.
January 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Human rights, Latin America, Peru |
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Aletho News 