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The Right to Be Let Alone: When the Government Wants to Know All Your Business

By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | March 7, 2023

There was a time when the census was just a head count.

That is no longer the case.

The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.

If you haven’t already received an ACS, it’s just a matter of time.

A far cry from the traditional census, which is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in each dwelling, their ages and ethnicities, the ownership of the dwelling and telephone numbers, the ACS contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire.

At 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), these questions concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among other highly personal and private matters.

For instance, the ACS asks how many persons live in your home, along with their names and detailed information about them such as their relationship to you, marital status, race and their physical, mental and emotional problems, etc. The survey also asks how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have in your house, along with the fuel used to heat your home, the cost of electricity, what type of mortgage you have and monthly mortgage payments, property taxes and so on.

And then the survey drills down even deeper.

The survey demands to know how many days you were sick last year, how many automobiles you own and the number of miles driven, whether you have trouble getting up the stairs, and what time you leave for work every morning, along with highly detailed inquiries about your financial affairs. And the survey demands that you violate the privacy of others by supplying the names and addresses of your friends, relatives and employer.

The questionnaire also demands that you give other information on the people in your home, such as their educational levels, how many years of school were completed, what languages they speak and when they last worked at a job, among other things.

Individuals who receive the ACS must complete it or be subject to monetary penalties.

Although no reports have surfaced of individuals actually being penalized for refusing to answer the survey, the potential fines that can be levied for refusing to participate in the ACS are staggering. For every question not answered, there is a $100 fine. And for every intentionally false response to a question, the fine is $500. Therefore, if a person representing a two-person household refused to fill out any questions or simply answered nonsensically, the total fines could range from upwards of $10,000 and $50,000 for noncompliance.

While some of the ACS’ questions may seem fairly routine, the real danger is in not knowing why the information is needed, how it will be used by the government or with whom it will be shared.

In an age when the government has significant technological resources at its disposal to not only carry out warrantless surveillance on American citizens but also to harvest and mine that data for its own dubious purposes, whether it be crime-mapping or profiling based on whatever criteria the government wants to use to target and segregate the populace, the potential for abuse is grave.

As such, the ACS qualifies as a government program whose purpose, while sold to the public as routine and benign, raises significant constitutional concerns.

The Rutherford Institute has received hundreds of inquiries from individuals who have received the ACS and are not comfortable sharing such private, intimate details with the government or are unsettled by the aggressive tactics utilized by Census Bureau agents seeking to compel responses to ACS questions.

Those who want to better understand their rights in respect to the ACS may want to take a look at Rutherford’s Q&A resource on the topic.

Bottom line: there are significant and legitimate questions concerning the authority of the government to require, under threat of prosecution and penalty, that persons answer questions posed by the ACS.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that citizens have no obligation to answer questions posed by the government and are free to refuse to do so—a principle that could be applied to questions posed by ACS agents—the question of a person’s right to refuse has not yet been decided by a court.

Until the courts take up the challenge, if you receive notice that you have been targeted to respond to the ACS and you desire to assert your right of privacy, you can voice those objections and your intent not to respond to the ACS by writing a letter to the Census Bureau. The Rutherford Institute has developed a form letter that you may use in standing up against the government’s attempt to force you to disclose personal information.

If you are contacted by Census Bureau employees, either by telephone or in person, demanding your response, you can assert your rights by politely, but firmly, informing the employee that you believe the ACS is an improper invasion of your privacy, that you do not intend to respond and that they should not attempt to contact you again. Be sure to document any interactions you have with Bureau representatives for your own files.

If you believe you are being unduly harassed by a Census Bureau employee, either by telephone or in person, it is in your best interest to carefully document the time, place and manner of the incidents and file a complaint with the U.S. Census Bureau.

Remember, nothing is ever as simple or as straightforward as the government claims.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, any attempt by the government to encroach upon the citizenry’s privacy rights or establish a system by which the populace can be targeted, tracked and singled out must be met with extreme caution.

While government agents can approach, speak to and even question citizens without violating the Fourth Amendment, Americans should jealously guard what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis referred to as the constitutional “right to be let alone.”

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

March 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

January 6 committee should be ‘tried for treason’ – Trump

RT | March 8, 2023

Former president Donald Trump has declared that the Democrat-led panel formed to investigate the January 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill should be “tried for fraud and treason.” The committee portrayed the riot as a “violent insurrection,” while video footage released by House Republicans showed more orderly scenes inside the Capitol.

“The Unselect Committee of political hacks and thugs has been totally discredited,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, repeating a label he has often used to describe the House committee formed to investigate the riot.

“They knowingly refused to show the videos that mattered,” Trump continued. “They should be tried for fraud and treason, and those imprisoned and being persecuted should be exonerated and released, now!”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently shared more than 40,000 hours of security camera footage with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who aired a selection of clips on Tuesday night. The clips show Capitol Police peacefully escorting a number of Trump supporters through the Capitol building during the riot, including so-called ‘Qanon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley, while suggesting that a man called Ray Epps – who some Trump supporters allege was a federal agent tasked with inciting violence against police officers – lied about leaving the Capitol before violence broke out.

The committee’s final report, on the other hand, declared the riot a “violent insurrection” aimed at “overthrowing our democracy.” The committee recommended in December that Trump be criminally charged with inciting an insurrection attempt, obstructing Congress, and conspiring to defraud the United States, arguing that a speech he gave to the crowd before the riot had instigated the riot.

Trump, who is running for office again in 2024, has not been criminally charged, but faces numerous civil lawsuits over his alleged role in fomenting the riot. More than 100 police officers say they were injured on the day, while four Trump supporters died. Two died of natural causes and one of an accidental overdose, while Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot by a Capitol Police officer near the entrance to the House chamber.

In an earlier Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump said that the footage shown by Carlson “sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened” on January 6, 2021. Carlson said that while there were some “hooligans” in the crowd that day, the majority of so-called “insurrectionists” were “sightseers.”

Out of more than 950 people charged in connection with the riot, 351 have been sentenced and 192 incarcerated. Around three quarters of those who pleaded guilty did so to misdemeanor offenses, according to the Department of Justice.

March 8, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Mother Sues D.C. Doctor Who Gave Kids COVID Vaccines Without Consent

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 6, 2023

The mother of two children who were given COVID-19 vaccines without the mother’s consent is suing the doctor who administered the vaccines.

An attorney representing NaTonya McNeil last week filed a lawsuit in Superior Court for the District of Columbia against Janine A. Rethy, M.D., M.P.H.

According to the complaint, on Sept. 2, 2022, McNeil took her two older children, ages 15 and 17, to the KIDS Mobile Medical Clinic/Ronald McDonald Care Mobile clinic, operated by Georgetown Hospital, to complete their required annual physical exam for the 2022-2023 school year.

The lawsuit alleges Rethy, director of the mobile clinic, held the children in the examination room longer than necessary for a regular check-up and vaccinated them against COVID-19 over their objections and without consulting their mother

In order to attempt to obtain the children’s consent — which they are not legally able to provide without a parent or guardian — the doctor falsely informed the children the COVID-19 vaccine was mandatory for school attendance and told them they could not lawfully decline it if they wanted to attend school.

The suit, filed by D.C. Attorney Matthew Hardin, seeks damages for false imprisonment, battery and fraud.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is financing the lawsuit because, according to CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland, “CHD couldn’t just sit still and not allow this wrong to go unpunished and not bring this to the public’s attention.”

In an exclusive conversation with The Defender, McNeil explained why she is suing the the doctor:

“I just feel like people shouldn’t be able to do whatever they want to do to other people and especially not to children. As a mother, I feel like, ‘You all just took all my rights away from me to do what you wanted to do to my kids.’

“I do want justice to be done in this case. I feel like something needs to be done. This can’t just continue to happen.”

‘I feel violated’

According to the complaint, Rethy’s stated goal is to vaccinate all children against COVID-19. The complaint quotes her statement to the press:

“Our goal is to increase vaccination rates in children here in D.C. . . . For more than 30 years our role has been to be in the community to help address the problem of health disparities, bringing families care where they are.

“For this particular effort, we are glad to be partnering with DC Health to provide both regular childhood vaccines and COVID-19 vaccines to all children.”

In addition to her role as director of the mobile clinic, Rethy is chief of MedStar Georgetown University Hospital’s Division of Community Pediatrics and assistant professor of pediatrics at Georgetown University School of Medicine.

McNeil said that when she took her older children to the clinic, she stayed outside the examination room to care for her infant. As soon as the children entered the doctor’s office, she called her daughter’s cellphone to let Rethy know she was just outside the door if the doctor needed to consult her for anything.

According to McNeil, the doctor did not ask or inform her about any vaccinations, and did not ask her to sign anything. At the end of the physical, Rethy came out to talk to her.

McNeil said the doctor explained her son’s asthma treatment plan, but that’s all they discussed.

As they were heading home, McNeil said she was shocked when her daughter complained that her arm hurt “pretty bad.” When McNeil asked her why it hurt, her daughter said she was given the COVID-19 shot, even though she told the doctor she didn’t want it.

When McNeil asked her why she allowed the doctor to administer the shot, her daughter said:

“When she had the needle in her hand and she was coming towards me, I backed up and I asked her what is that needle, and she said it was the COVID shot and I … told her I didn’t want it and she said, ‘Well it is mandatory, you have to get it in order to go to school.’”

Rethy allegedly administered the shot to her daughter, and then to her son. McNeil said:

“He’s 14 and he said they didn’t even ask him if he wanted it or not, but when they gave it to him, he said he thought he had to get it because his sister got it.”

According to the complaint, both children received the  Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, authorized for emergency use, and the meningococcal vaccine. Her son was also injected with TDaP.

Both children were upset and angry they had been coerced into vaccination, the complaint says.

No school mandate, despite what clinic and doctor alleged

When she got home, McNeil said she called the doctor’s office, and asked them why they vaccinated her children without her consent.

“I would have never consented to you all vaccinating my children,” she said. “I’m not vaccinated and I’m not getting vaccinated and my kids were never supposed to be vaccinated for COVID period, under no circumstances.”

She said the person on the phone said they were supposed to get them for school.

After hanging up, McNeil said she was “so irritated I even started crying” because she couldn’t believe “they put this poison” into her children’s bodies.

In July 2022, D.C. public schools imposed a vaccine mandate for schoolchildren ages 12 and up for the 2022-2023 school year. But on Aug. 26, just weeks after imposing the mandate, officials walked it back, postponing it until 2023.

That means when McNeil’s children saw the doctor, there was no school vaccine mandate in place, despite what the Rethy allegedly told the children.

The age of consent

The District of Columbia in March 2021 enacted the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Amendment Act of 2020 (D.C. Minor Consent Act), allowing children 11 and older to consent to the administration of any vaccine — including COVID-19 shots — recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) — without parental knowledge or consent if the medical provider believed “the minor is capable of meeting the informed consent standard.”

The law also required healthcare personnel to provide accurate immunization records to the Department of Health and to the student’s school, but not to parents with religious exemptions.

CHD and Parental Rights Foundation filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to declare the D.C. Act unconstitutional.

A judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on March 18, 2022, granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the D.C. mayor, Department of Health and public schools from enforcing the law.

That means at the time McNeil’s children visited the clinic, they could not legally provide consent to be vaccinated without their mother’s consent.

McNeil said:

“To do that to my little children, my innocent children. They took her rights. When she backed away from you [the doctor] and said she didn’t want it, that should have been the end of it.

“Or you [the doctor] should have called me on the phone to find out what I feel about the situation. But you [the doctor] basically told my child a lie so you [she] could do what you [she] wanted to do to my kid.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

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.

March 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Kirk Moore Insists He Did NOT Sell Fake COVID-19 Vaccine Cards

Utah doctor claims federal indictment contains fundamental falsehood

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 7, 2023

A week ago I reported the story of Dr. Kirk Moore—a plastic surgeon who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury in Utah for conspiracy to defraud the US; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property and aiding and abetting.

The government’s indictment and mainstream media are highlighting the assertion that Dr. Moore and his colleagues received $50 per procedure in which they disposed of a COVID-19 vaccine dose instead of injecting it into the patient, and then issued a fake vaccine card to the patient. This is deemed to prove that Dr. Moore—a plastic surgeon by trade—”benefitted” from his actions.

I initially assumed the federal investigators and prosecutors involved in the case must have found evidence to support their assertion in the indictment that Dr. Moore had “benefitted” from these transactions—that is, that HE received all or part of the $50 per procedure.

However, shortly after I posted my essay, I was contacted by people familiar with the matter who claimed that the indictment’s assertion is false. To check their assurance, I contacted Dr. Moore and conducted a long interview with him.

Dr. Moore insists that never received a single dollar for administering early treatments to COVID-19 patients or for issuing COVID-19 vaccine cards to patients who feared the mRNA gene transfer injections are not safe. A plastic surgeon by trade, he insists he administered early treatment and issued the cards solely as a charitable endeavor—that is, to help the sick stay out of hospital and to help his fellow citizens who were mandated to receive the injections in order to retain their student and job positions.

In other words, according to Dr. Moore, the federal indictment’s assertion that HE benefitted from the $50 per procedure is FALSE. Because most patients expressed their desire to pay him at least some fee for his invaluable service, he adopted the practice of instructing each to make a $50 donation to a medical freedom charity from which he received no funds. He assumed that keeping this practice strictly charitable would protect him from the charge that he received financial benefits for his actions. He claims the evidence presented in his forthcoming trial will prove that he received no benefit.

An especially intriguing detail he related in my interview is the strange fact that—though he knew he was under investigation because HHS and DHS agents visited him at his office and served him a search warrant to seize his cell phone—he was NOT subsequently served with notice that a federal prosecutor had impanelled a grand jury and secured an indictment.

He only learned about this alarming action in a press report, from which he also learned the date and time of his arraignment.

We encourage our Substack readers to learn more about Dr. Moore’s case by visiting his website: https://www.standformoore.com

March 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

FBI Whistleblowers Nail the Bureau at House Panel on Weaponization Hearings

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 05.03.2023

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, dubbed by some lawmakers a new Church Committee, is pushing ahead with its investigation of alleged misconduct and political bias by US government agencies.

Just the News, a media outlet founded by award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon, obtained some transcripts of the committee’s hearings which demonstrate that a growing number of FBI whistleblowers have stepped forward to expose the agency’s alleged misdeeds.

In particular, retired FBI supervisory intelligence analyst George Hill testified that the Washington Field Office exerted pressure on other field offices to probe US citizens for activities protected by the First Amendment.

Hill revealed that the Washington office pressed his own Boston Field Office to open cases on 140 people who, according to the retired analyst, were “guilty” of riding buses to DC in order to attend then President Donald Trump’s rally on January 6, 2021.

The former FBI employee noted that on a nationwide phone call of all 56 FBI field offices, then-chief of the Domestic Terrorism Operations Center Section Steve Jensen asked the Philadelphia Field Office about the status of a lead on American individuals that had been sent by the agency’s DC office. The individuals in question posted on social media about being pro-Second Amendment and anti-abortion. According to Hill, Jensen described those persons as “bleeping terrorists” even though social media posts appeared to be their only fault.

FBI whistleblower Garret O’Boyle testified before the House GOP committee that he was suspended by the agency after making “protected disclosures” to Congress.

O’Boyle also told the House GOP committee that following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade (which used to regard abortions a constitutional right in the US), the FBI prioritized possible threats against the justices from “pro-lifers,” i.e. those who are against abortions.

The whistleblower wondered at the time as to why the bureau was targeting pro-lifers when it was “pro-choice” people who threatened violence in front of justices’ houses. “I was like, why would this person know about those threats? He’s pro-life. Like, he’s not the one going and threatening the Supreme Court Justices,” O’Boyle testified.

Former FBI special agent Steve Friend, a former SWAT team member, testified before the committee that the bureau apparently misused heavily armed SWAT teams to arrest January 6 defenders who were not accused of violent crimes and did not have a criminal record. He particularly referred to a January Sixer who was cooperating with the FBI and willing to surrender voluntarily. Friend was concerned that the bureau wasn’t using the least intrusive methods possible to arrest them.

When Friend met with two senior officers he was “pushed back on” his concerns and was told that even though he had a right to raise them, he also should “follow through on the orders” which he was given.

Friend filed a whistleblower complaint to the US Office of Special Counsel last year concerning the apparent misuse of SWAT teams to arrest January Sixers accused of misdemeanors. He was suspended from his duties by the agency after that.

Speaking to Sputnik in January, Friend highlighted that “any objective observer can see that the FBI is concentrating its attention and resources to investigate and prosecute citizens holding opposing views to the current administration.”

Following his interview with Sputnik, Friend was forced to leave the FBI after he had been denied a paycheck for 150 straight days as his security clearance was placed under review in the wake of his whistleblower complaint. Speaking to US journalists in February, the former FBI agent said that after leaving the bureau he had accepted a job offer from a private nonprofit organization that will be conducting investigations of the FBI.

According to the US media, House Judiciary Democrats on Friday lashed out at the FBI whistleblowers in a 316-page report. The Democratic lawmakers claimed that the whistleblowers had “limited firsthand knowledge” and “did not present actual evidence of any wrongdoing at the Department of Justice or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” In response, the House GOP committee on weaponization lambasted their Democratic peers for disclosing the content of confidential witness depositions.

The House GOP’s new “Church Committee” follows in the footsteps of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which was a congressional body that investigated abuses by the CIA, NSA, FBI, and IRS in 1975.

The shocking revelations back in 1975 reportedly included Operation MKULTRA, human experimentation on mind control involving the drugging and torture of unwitting US citizens; COINTELPRO, which envisaged the surveillance and infiltration of American political and civil rights organizations; and Operation Mockingbird, a propaganda campaign run by the CIA in coordination with domestic and foreign journalists and US media outlets, to name but a few.

March 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Most Americans believe feds helped incite Capitol riot – poll

RT | March 4, 2023

More than six in ten Americans believe it’s at least “somewhat likely” that federal government agents helped provoke the January 2021 Capitol riot, a new poll has revealed, suggesting that legacy media outlets have largely failed to brand the incident as an insurrection incited by then-President Donald Trump.

The poll, released this week by Rasmussen Reports, shows that among the 61% of US voters who think the feds probably helped spur Trump supporters to breach the Capitol, most see that scenario as “very likely.” Just 30% of Americans believe it’s unlikely that undercover agents were involved in the riot, including 18% who say it’s “not at all likely.”

Rasmussen said its findings reflect a dramatic shift in public opinion in the two-plus years that have passed since the riot. For instance, a survey done during the week immediately after the incident found that half of Americans believed Trump should be removed from office and jailed for causing his supporters to storm Congress and disrupt certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory. By the end of 2021, 58% of voters believed the congressional panel appointed to investigate the riot had become a “partisan committee weaponized against innocent Americans.”

More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their alleged involvement in the riot. Many of the defendants have been held in jail, allegedly under harsh conditions, without being given the option of posting bail. Republican lawmakers have suggested that undercover government agents were involved in the riot and have questioned why an Arizona man named Ray Epps, who was seen on video urging Trump supporters to go into the Capitol, hasn’t been indicted.

The latest poll found that 70% of Republicans and 57% of both Democrats and independent voters now believe it’s likely that feds helped provoke the riot. Around 80% of all voters agree that all video footage of the riot should be released to the public. Earlier this week, US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, gave riot video footage that had been withheld by the congressional panel to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

A separate Rasmussen poll this week showed that 34% of US voters believe Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s idea of a “national divorce” between Republican- and Democrat-controlled states. Only one in three believes Biden is keeping his campaign promise to unite the country.

March 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

WHO moves forward with plans to target “misinformation” “infodemics” through international pandemic treaty

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 4, 2023

The global health agency, the  (WHO), this week held a meeting to advance the international pandemic treaty — a legally binding instrument that will enhance its powers to target anything that it deems to be “false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” if passed.

The scope of the WHO is vast and its 194 member states (which account for 98% of all the countries in the world) will have to comply with the treaty under international law if it passes.

During this meeting, which began on February 27 and ended on March 3, a WHO intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) discussed a zero draft of the pandemic treaty that was released earlier this year.

This zero draft empowers the WHO to target so-called misinformation and disinformation via Article 17 (“Strengthening pandemic and public health literacy”).

Specifically, WHO member states are instructed to “tackle false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through promotion of international cooperation” and manage “infodemics…through effective channels, including social media.” Infodemics is a term that the WHO uses to describe “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”

Additionally, Article 16 (“Whole-of-government and whole-of-society approaches at the national level”) recommends that WHO member states collaborate with non-state actors and the private sector when carrying out their obligations under the treaty.

As the treaty has progressed, it has faced increased political pushback from elected officials in member states, with US Republican Senators recently introducing a bill that would require the treaty to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate.

But despite this pushback, the Biden administration committed to the international pandemic treaty on the first day of the recent WHO meeting.

And the WHO is continuing to discuss the treaty and plan for its future. The global health agency has another meeting to discuss the treaty scheduled for April 3 to April 6, plans to present the treaty to its decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in May, and hopes to finalize the treaty by May 2024.

The WHO intends to adopt the treaty under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution through an international lawmaking process where a group of mostly unelected diplomats vote on the treaty.

If the treaty passes, WHO member states will be required to “raise financial resources for effective implementation” of the treaty and commit to allocating at least 5% of their annual health expenditure to “pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery.” Additionally, the treaty tells member states to commit an undisclosed amount of their gross domestic product (GDP) to “international cooperation and assistance on pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery.” This equates to billions of dollars in annual expenditure for many WHO member states and hundreds of billions of dollars per annum for some.

We obtained a copy of the zero draft of this international pandemic treaty for you here.

This WHO push to crack down on speech via this international pandemic treaty is being made in tandem with another WHO effort that targets “misinformation” and “disinformation” — proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005).

Like the treaty, these proposed amendments will be legally binding under international law if finalized. The amendments include provisions for the WHO to “counter misinformation and disinformation” at “the global level” and to develop member states’ capacities to gain “leverage of communication channels to communicate the risk, countering misinformation and dis-information.”

In a report that was released alongside the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), the WHO suggested it would use its new misinformation and disinformation targeting powers to go after content that could “undermine public trust in health agencies and impede public confidence in, and compliance with, governmental or WHO guidance.” It also called for “a balance between ensuring more accurate scientific information on one hand and freedom of speech and the press on the other.”

We obtained a copy of this report for you here.

As the WHO makes its move to take action against alleged misinformation and disinformation via international law, more and more evidence is being made available that supports the perspectives of those who were censored by Big Tech after being accused of spreading misinformation or disinformation. This evidence includes admissions about the Covid vaccine’s ability to prevent infections and growing support from officials for the Covid origins lab leak theory.

While many were censored by tech platforms for making these claims, the WHO was allowed to freely amplify a misleading claim from Chinese authorities that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.

The WHO’s attempt to curb speech is just one part of the power grab the unelected health agency is vying for with this treaty and the proposed IHR amendments. It’s also planning an expansion of its surveillance powers and laying out plans for global vaccine passports.

March 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Freedom of Information Request looks into Biden administration using 3rd party grants to push online censorship

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | March 3, 2023

America First Legal (AFL) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) related to contracts and grants to third parties to censor COVID-19 “misinformation” and criticism of the Biden administration’s response to the pandemic.

We obtained a copy of the request for you here.

The HHS does not have the authority to regulate content or censor misinformation of any kind. However, it has been using grants and contracts to get third parties to do so on its behalf.

It has awarded millions of dollars in grants to fight what it deems “misinformation.” For instance, last October, it awarded a $1.1 million grant to the University of  to “better understand patterns of misinformation in social media” with the study focusing on misinformation related to Covid testing and vaccines.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is under the HHS, posted a grant opportunity for “Developing a Public Health Tool to Predict the Virality of Vaccine Misinformation Narratives.” The tool would be used to “predict misinformation trends.”

The CDC was involved with social media companies in a campaign to identify and suppress COVID-19 views that were not in line with official narratives.

The purpose of AFL’s FOIA request is to expose the HHS for using federal funds to pay third parties to illegally censor American’s free speech and prevent open scientific debate.

“The absurdity of this Administration’s actions must not be forgotten,” said AFL vice president Gene Hamilton. “It engaged and is likely still engaging in a concerted campaign to identify and censor speech with which it disagrees.

“To silence speech it then labeled as misinformation, and to advance positions that are now known to be demonstrably false, it used private actors and taxpayer dollars to do what it could not on its own–all for the benefit of other private actors and the aggrandizement of government power. We will uncover, expose, and hold accountable these abuses of governmental power.”

March 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Twitter received ‘state-sponsored blacklists’ from US State Department

RT | March 2, 2023

The US State Department, both directly and through third-party organizations, pressed Twitter to censor American users for their non-existent connections to Russia, China, and Hindu nationalism, according to internal documents.

Published by journalist Matt Taibbi on Thursday, the latest ‘Twitter Files’ reveal that the company’s former trust and safety chief, Yoel Roth, was approached in 2021 and given a list of 40,000 accounts suspected of engaging in “inauthentic behavior” in support of India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

The list was provided by the ‘Digital Forensics Research Lab’ at the Atlantic Council, a think tank funded by the US State Department’s ‘Global Engagement Center’ (GEC), as well as a host of NATO governments and weapons manufacturers.

According to the files, Roth investigated the list and found that “virtually all appear to be real people” rather than Indian bots, while Taibbi contacted several and learned that they were “ordinary Americans” with no connection whatsoever to Indian politics.

Created in the final year of the Obama administration, the GEC is a State Department entity that works with multiple US intelligence agencies to “counter foreign disinformation.” It is forbidden from operating within the United States, and recently had to cut its ties with a George Soros-backed NGO that was using its funding to target American conservative news sites.

While the list of supposed Hindu nationalists was given to Twitter via the Atlantic Council, the GEC directly passed other lists to the social media platform, including 500 accounts that were allegedly spreading Iranian “disinformation,” and 5,500 “Chinese accounts” engaged in “state-backed coordinated manipulation,” despite the fact that this latter list included multiple Western government accounts and at least three CNN employees.

Roth described the Chinese list as “a total crock,” while fellow employee Aaron Rodericks said it provided “more entertainment value than anything.”

The GEC and its organizations tangentially connected to the State Department – such as the infamous ‘Alliance for Securing Democracy’ that published the ‘Hamilton68’ dashboard of “Russian bots” –  had long pressed Twitter to crack down on allegedly Kremlin-connected accounts, but Roth told staff that it was impossible to detect “Russian fingerprints” on any of the accounts.

Instead, accounts that retweeted “news sources linked to Russia” were considered Kremlin-sponsored. One list handed to Twitter by the GEC considered membership in France’s anti-government ‘Yellow Vests’ movement as “being Russia-aligned.”

While Twitter’s executives may have been skeptical of the GEC’s ‘blacklists’, the US media was not. Emails show that multiple news outlets and agencies – including the Associated Press – would receive reports from the organization, and then press Twitter to take action and ban the listed accounts.

“Reauthorization for GEC’s funding is up for a vote this year,” Taibbi wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “Can we at least stop paying to blacklist ourselves?”

March 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Protests greet Macron on Africa tour, Burkina Faso scraps military pact

Press TV – March 2, 2023

French President Emmanuel Macron has launched a tour of Africa with a message that France is not after meddling, but the visit revived old colonial wounds, sparking protests.

Macron on Thursday said the era of French interference in Africa was “well over” as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties.

Anti-French sentiment runs high in some former African colonies. Macron said France harbored no desire to return to past policies of interfering in Africa.

“The age of Francafrique is well over,” Macron said in remarks to the French community in Gabon’s capital Libreville, referring to France’s post-colonization strategy of supporting authoritarian leaders to defend its interests.

“Francafrique” refers to the wave of decolonization in 1960 when France began propping up dictators in its former colonies in exchange for access to resources and military bases.

Macron landed in Gabon on Wednesday, the first stop of the tour that will also take the president to Angola, Congo Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“What is Macron doing in Gabon? Is he coming for the forest or to back (President) Ali Bongo?” asked a 39-year-old technician. “If Macron wants to support the Bongo family, we will rise up,” he said. “Gabon is an independent country. It is not France that appoints Gabonese presidents.”

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), angry protesters gathered in front of the French embassy in Kinshasa, spray-painting anti-French graffiti on its wall and chanting “Macron is a killer!”

They unfurled banners reading, “Macron is the godfather of DRC balkanization,” “Congolese say no to French policy,” and “Macron is an unwanted guest in DRC”.

More than 3,000 French soldiers are deployed in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon and Djibouti, according to official figures.

Burkina Faso said it has scrapped a 1961 agreement on military assistance with France, only weeks after it told the French ambassador and troops to quit the country.

The Burkinabe foreign ministry advised the French government that the country was “renouncing the technical military assistance agreement reached in Paris on April 24 1961,” according to the correspondence, dated Tuesday.

The ministry said Burkina was giving one month’s notice for “the final departure of all French military personnel serving in Burkinabe military administrations.”

Burkina also gave France a month to pull out a special forces unit of 400 men that was based near the capital. The French flag was lowered on the base last month.

France withdrew the last of its troops from Mali last year, climaxing a break-up that was triggered by angry protests amid rise in Takfiri terrorism.

March 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

DHS is sued for records on online election censorship demands

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 25, 2023

Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the agency refused to provide records of communications related to election misinformation flagged by its Election Integrity Partnership (EIP).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after another agency under the DHS, the Cybersecurity and Information Security Agency (CISA) failed to comply with an FOIA request filed last October.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

Judicial Watch had requested all communications related to EIP’s work sent via Atlassian’s Jira platform between employees and CISA employees and social media companies and other organizations that flagged election misinformation including The Center for Internet Security, the National Association of State Election Directors, and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory.

Numerous organizations privately communicated through Jira, according to the lawsuit.

“The  ‘ Files’ are the tip of the iceberg, as the federal government ran a massive, secret censorship op against the American people,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “That the DHS is hiding these censorship records in violation of FOIA law shows the agency still has something to hide.”

In a separate lawsuit, Judicial Watch is suing the DHS for all communications between CISA and EIP, alleging that the agencies were actively flagging content in last year’s midterms. EIP flagged right-leaning news websites, including The Epoch Times, Breitbart, Fox News, The Washington Times, the New York Post, and Just the News.

February 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

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