Newly released internal messages between Twitter staff show them discussing an April 2021 meeting with the White House where the Biden administration reportedly pushed for journalist and author Alex Berenson to be booted from the platform before Twitter banned him.
Berenson was banned from Twitter for violating its “COVID-19 misinformation” rules four months later in August 2021. Berenson responded by suing Twitter in December 2021, with the lawsuit accusing the tech giant of acting “on behalf of the federal government in censoring and barring him from access to its platform.” Berenson’s account was subsequently reinstated in July 2022 after both parties settled the censorship lawsuit.
These internal messages were published by Berenson and show April 22, 2021 discussions between Twitter employees on the business messaging app Slack. Berenson said he obtained the messages as part of his lawsuit against Twitter.
In one of the Slack messages, a Twitter employee says their meeting with the “WH [White House]” was “pretty good” but “they had one really tough question about why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform.”
In another Slack message, a Twitter employee says that the White House “really wanted to know about Alex Berenson” and that Andy Slavitt, a Senior Advisor to President Biden’s COVID-19 Response Coordinator, “suggested they had seen data viz that had showed he was the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.”
Berenson said that in another Slack message, a Twitter employee said: “I’ve taken a pretty close look at his account and I don’t think any of it’s violative.”
Berenson noted that the message about White House officials questioning why he hadn’t been banned from the platform “make clear that top federal officials targeted me specifically, potentially violating my basic First Amendment right to free speech.”
He added: “If the companies are acting on behalf of the federal government they can become ‘state actors’ that must allow free speech and debate, just as the government does.”
Berenson also noted that previous censorship lawsuits accusing the government and social media companies of colluding to ban users have failed because the courts have “universally held that people who have been banned have not shown the specific demands from government officials that are necessary to support state action claims.”
However, in this case, Berenson argues that “federal officials appear to have gone far beyond generically encouraging Twitter to support Covid vaccines or discourage ‘misinformation’ (i.e. information that the government does not like). Instead, top officials targeted me personally.”
Berenson said he intends to sue the Biden administration for violating his First Amendment rights by pressing Twitter to ban him and that there will be “more to come soon.”
Jenin Younes, an attorney for the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), who has worked on two lawsuits that accuse the Biden administration of violating Americans’ First Amendment rights by coercing tech companies to censor “misinformation,” said that the revelations in the Slack messages released by Berenson are “a virtual smoking gun, and along with myriad circumstantial evidence proves our contention beyond any doubt.” Younes added that despite initial setbacks, she is confident that the NCLA’s lawsuits will be successful.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Twitter, United States |
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New York Post columnist and investigative journalist Paul Sperry was suspended from Twitter following tweets criticizing the FBI’s raid on President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago.
The tweet that was widely shared when Sperry got suspended read: “Funny, don’t remember the FBI raiding Chappaqua or Whitehaven to find the 33,000 potentially classified documents Hillary Clinton deleted. And she was just a former secretary of state, not a former president.”
However, speaking to MRC’s News Busters, Sperry said that he received a notice from Twitter saying that his account had been permanently suspended. He added that Twitter did not give a reason or explanation for the suspension.
“This is outrageous censorship,” Sperry told MRC. “Yes, Twitter is a private entity, but it has become the [dominant] public town square for political information and debate and it also enjoys a monopoly as the site where government agencies and corporations first post their releases and statements to the press. Denying a veteran working journalist access to this platform restricts my ability to cover events and issue[s].”
Sperry went on to criticize the Biden administration for its involvement in censorship on social media, saying the suspension “amounts to state censorship by proxy.”
The Biden administration has encouraged social media censorship. Last year, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was “regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing across all of social and traditional media.”
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | FBI, Hillary Clinton, Twitter, United States |
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Samizdat – 12.08.2022
Former US President Donald Trump dismissed on Friday a report that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence in order to search for classified nuclear weapons documents.
“Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a Hoax, two Impeachments were a Hoax, the Muller investigation was a Hoax and much more. Same sleazy people,” Trump wrote. He also questioned why the FBI would not allow his lawyers to be present during the agency’s inspection, suggesting that they “planted” evidence.
The Washington Post had reported Thursday that the intention of the raid at Trump’s Florida resort was to recover nuclear weapons documents that the former president illegally removed from the White House.
The Justice Department also requested the same day for a judge to unseal the FBI search warrant in order to refute Republican claims of a political attack. Attorney General Merrick Garland also revealed that he had personally approved the search.
On Monday, the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of a probe focused on classified materials the former president allegedly took with him after leaving office.
Trump condemned the raid and characterized it is as a continuation of the political witch hunt by Democrats and the establishment to prevent him to run in the 2024 US presidential election and reverse their policies.
Trump also said the raid shows that the US justice system has been weaponized to act against the Democrats’ political opponents and added that investigators have not found any wrong doing despite probing him for years.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | FBI, United States |
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A former Washington State University football coach is seeking $25 million from the university for wrongful termination after he was fired last year for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, The Seattle Times reported Tuesday.
A tort claim was filed April 27 on behalf of Nick Rolovich with the state’s risk management office. Filing a claim is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit against a state agency.
There’s a 60-day waiting period between when a claim is filed and when the claimant can file a lawsuit. As of Wednesday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Bob Ferguson said no suit had been filed, according to The Washington Post.
After denying Rolovich’s request for a religious exemption from Gov. Jay Inslee’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees, the university in October 2021 fired Rolovich.
At the time of his firing, Rolovich was subject to a five-year contract with three seasons remaining and was paid $3.2 million per year — the highest public salary in the state. He had coached 11 games with the Cougars over two seasons.
Rolovich’s attorney, Brian Fahling, said at the time his client would take legal action for religious discrimination. He filed a 34-page letter with the university appealing the university’s decision to fire Rolovich, but the appeal was denied.
Rolovich, a Catholic, is not the first person to file a claim for wrongful termination or religious discrimination over an employer’s failure to grant a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
Liberty Counsel on July 29 settled the nation’s first class action lawsuit on behalf of healthcare workers who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate by their employer, Chicago-based NorthShore University HealthSystem.
The $10,337,500 settlement, filed in the federal Northern District Court of Illinois, compensates NorthShore employees who were “punished for their religious beliefs against taking an injection associated with aborted fetal cells.”
As part of the settlement agreement, NorthShore also will change its unlawful “no religious accommodations” policy to make it consistent with the law and must provide religious accommodations in every position across its numerous facilities.
In addition, employees who were terminated because they refused to receive a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds will be eligible for rehire if they apply within 90 days of the final settlement approved by the court, and they will retain their previous seniority level.
The amount of individual payments from the settlement fund will depend on how many valid and timely claim forms are submitted during the claims process.
If the settlement is approved by the court and nearly all of the affected employees file valid and timely claims, it is estimated employees who were terminated or resigned because of their religious refusal of a COVID-19 vaccine will receive approximately $25,000 each.
Also under the settlement, employees who were forced to get the shot against their religious beliefs to keep their jobs will receive approximately $3,000 each.
The 13 healthcare workers who are lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit will receive an additional approximate payment of $20,000 each for their role in bringing this lawsuit and representing the class of NorthShore healthcare workers.
Lawsuits over denied exemptions or insufficient accommodations to COVID-19 vaccine requirements began last September after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine, allowing more employers to enact vaccine mandates.
Workers as of May 19, 2022, had filed at least 66 lawsuits since September 2021 against private employers for refusing to grant exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine requirements, according to Bloomberg Law.
Judges rejected workers’ requests for immediate court orders blocking enforcement of mandates in 22 cases.
In one case involving United Airlines Inc., the airline changed its policy allowing accommodations rather than contest the lawsuit.
According to Bloomberg Law, 59% of lawsuits filed over COVID-19 vaccine mandates are related to an employer’s response to faith-based requests for accommodation.
About 22% of lawsuits involve contesting a company’s handling of both religious and disability requests and 5% involve health-related accommodations.
Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States, Washington State University |
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Twitter will start censoring “disputed claims,” “potentially harmful and misleading information,” and “false” information about the 2022 US midterms from today under its “Civic Integrity Policy.”
Tweets that fall foul of this policy will be removed or labeled with links to “credible information” or “helpful context.” Labeled tweets aren’t amplified or recommended by Twitter and the platform also dissuades or prevents users from liking and sharing labeled tweets. Twitter also noted that its latest label design reduces likes by 10%, reduces replies by 13%, and reduces retweets by 10%.
Users who have tweets removed or labeled under this policy are subject to Twitter’s five strikes system. The account owner is given two strikes if their tweet is deleted and one strike if their tweet is labeled. 2-4 strikes results in a temporary account lock and five strikes results in a permanent account suspension.
In addition to censoring tweets, Twitter will also start artificially boosting content that it deems to be “reliable” by displaying this content prominently on the “Home” and “Search” tabs and promoting it in the “Explore” tab.
Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy resulted in mass censorship in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election. The rule banning “disputed claims that could undermine faith in the process itself, such as unverified information about election rigging, ballot tampering, vote tallying, or certification of election results” was used to justify much of this censorship with users that discussed election discrepancies often targeted.
Many of former President Trump’s statements about the election were censored under this policy before he was permanently banned. This same policy was also used to mass censor other users and tweets before and after the 2020 election.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Twitter, United States |
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The World Economic Forum is becoming a little concerned. Unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal. The censorship engines employed by Internet platforms, turned out to be quite stupid and incapable. People are even daring to complain about the World Economic Forum, which is obviously completely unacceptable.
So, WEF author Inbal Goldberger came up with a solution: she proposes to collect off-platform intelligence from “millions of sources” to spy on people and new ideas, and then merge this information together for “content removal decisions” sent down to “Internet platforms”.
To overcome the barriers of traditional detection methodologies, we propose a new framework: rather than relying on AI to detect at scale and humans to review edge cases, an intelligence-based approach is crucial.
By bringing human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence into learning sets, AI will then be able to detect nuanced, novel abuses at scale, before they reach mainstream platforms. Supplementing this smarter automated detection with human expertise to review edge cases and identify false positives and negatives and then feeding those findings back into training sets will allow us to create AI with human intelligence baked in. This more intelligent AI gets more sophisticated with each moderation decision, eventually allowing near-perfect detection, at scale.
What is this about? What’s new?
The way censorship is done these days is that each Internet platform, such as Twitter, has its own moderation team and a decision making engine. Twitter would only look at tweets by any specific twitter user, when deciding on whether to delete any tweets or suspend their authors. Twitter moderators do NOT look at Gettr or other external websites.
So, for example, user @JohnSmith12345 may have a Twitter account and narrowly abide by Twitter rules, but at the same time have a Gettr account where he would publish anti-vaccine messages. Twitter would not be able to suspend @JohnSmith12345’s account. That is no longer acceptable to the WEF because they want to silence people and ideas, not individual messages or accounts.
This explains why the WEF needs to move beyond the major Internet platforms, in order to collect intelligence about people and ideas everywhere else. Such an approach would allow them to know better what person or idea to censor — on all major platforms at once.
They want to collect intelligence from “millions of sources”, and train their “AI systems” to detect thoughts that they do not like, to make content removal decisions handed down to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and so on. This is a major change from the status quo of each platform deciding what to do based on messages posted to that specific platform only.
For example, in addition to looking at my Twitter profile, WEF’s proposed AI would also look at my Gettr profile, and then it would make an “intelligent decision” to remove me from the Internet at once. It is somewhat of a simplification because they also want to look for ideas and not only individuals but, nevertheless, the search for wrongthink becomes globalized.
This sounds like an insane conspiracy theory from hell: WEF collecting information on everyone everywhere, and then telling all platforms what posts to remove, based on a global decision-making AI engine that sees everything and can identify individual people and ideas beyond any given platform.
If someone ever told me that it would be contemplated, I would probably think that this person is insane. It sounds like a sick technological fantasy. Unfortunately, this crazy stuff is real, is in a WEF agenda proposal that is officially posted on their website’s “WEF Agenda” section. And WEF is not messing around.
You will have no voice and you will be happy!
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, WEF |
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Canada’s RCMP and its commissioner Brenda Lucki are fending off requests to reveal if the police force used malware to also spy on members of the country’s parliament (MPs).
The bombshell question was posed in a request filed by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics – but Lucki’s response provided no useful response.
When it comes to wiretapping MPs and other employees of the parliament – “this information will not be provided by the RCMP,” Lucki brushed the question off, according to media reports out of Canada.
Earlier, these reports noted that the RCMP have been using spyware for a decade now (on-device investigation tools, ODITs, that not only record communications, but are installed on the targeted mobile devices) – to access cameras and microphones; and the law enforcement agency confirmed it.
Naturally, those holding public office in Canada, particularly those from the ranks of the opposition, then wanted to know if they, by any chance, had been subjected to this type of surveillance via government-deployed spyware.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino reportedly avoided responding, unlike Lucki who’s now unapologetically suggesting that Canada’s democracy doesn’t stretch quite as far as providing this type of information to its legislators.
Opposition Conservatives are rattled by the whole affair. MP Pat Kelly noted that a parliamentary committee should have unfettered powers to request these documents.
“A blanket refusal to a committee is troubling,” Kelly is quoted as saying.
And a troubling development of this kind in any parliamentary democracy raises so many questions. One came from a Bloc Québécois MP – who asked RCMP commissioner for national security Mark Flynn if the office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner was involved in evaluating if the spyware in question was in compliance with Canada’s Privacy Act.
Flynn’s response was, “No.”
But one of Canada’s former privacy commissioners, Daniel Therrien, was far more forthcoming when he commented on RCMP’s collection of citizens’ personal data via ODITs to call that an extremely intrusive practice.
The authorities’ persistent policy of obscuring the details of the spyware-utilizing surveillance tools is “a crisis of accountability” – that’s how the Canadian Civil Liberties Association non-profit described the situation.
Transparency around such issues in Canada these days apparently goes as far – and no further – than the government stating that it is “not using NSO’s Pegasus.”
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Canada, RCMP |
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The media stopped describing the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as a “raid” after a top former FBI agent complained about the wording during an appearance on MSNBC.
Federal agents ransacked Trump’s Florida home, even going through his wife Melania’s wardrobes, in a bid to find classified records Trump allegedly took from the White House.
Trump supporters assert that the boxes recovered during the raid contain files that were already declassified by the time Trump left office.
The raid was carried out after an FBI informant had infiltrated Mar-a-Lago and discovered the precise location of where the files were being kept.
Despite widespread anger at the raid from both Trump supporters and Republicans in general, one former FBI agent tried to language police by insisting that the raid, timed for when the feds knew Trump wouldn’t be home, was not in fact a raid.
“Agents, by the way, don’t like the word raid, they don’t like it,” former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi told MSNBC.
“It sounds like it’s some kind of, you know, extra judicial non legal thing. It’s the execution of a search warrant. It’s a court authorized search warrant,” he added.
Figliuzzi insisted that the FBI would want the incident described as them having “executed a search warrant” and that calling it a “raid” helped Trump define what happened as “prosecutorial misconduct.”
Almost instantly, the media followed orders.
“MSNBC changed their chyron, from “FBI Raids Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Home,” to “FBI Executes Search Warrant At Trump’s Mar-A-Lago,” moments after Figliuzzi’s appearance, notes Jack Hadfield.
The New York Times also changed the word “raid” to “search”.
Twitter’s trending tab description of the incident was also changed to omit the word “raid”.
Meanwhile, Trump himself said on Truth Social last night that the FBI had already visited Mar-a-Lago in June to view the records after they asked Trump to secure them with an extra lock.
“Then on Monday, without notification or warning, an army of agents broke into Mar-a-Lago, went to the same storage area, and ripped open the lock that they had asked to be installed,” wrote Trump.
August 11, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | FBI, New York Times, Twitter, United States |
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The World Health Organization (WHO) is moving ahead with plans to enact a new or revised international pandemic preparedness treaty, despite encountering setbacks earlier this summer after dozens of countries, primarily outside the Western world, objected to the plan.
A majority of WHO member states on July 21, during a meeting of WHO’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB), agreed to pursue a legally binding pandemic instrument that will contain “both legally binding as well as non-legally binding elements.”
STAT News described the agreement, which would create a new global framework for responding to pandemics, as “the most transformative global health call to action since [the] WHO itself was formed as the first specialized United Nations agency in 1948.”
Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum, African Union and World Bank — which created a $1 billion fund for “disease surveillance” and “support against the current as well as future pandemics” — are developing their own pandemic response mechanisms, including new cross-country vaccine passport frameworks.
WHO’s ‘pandemic treaty’: what’s been proposed and what would it mean?
Ongoing talks to formulate a new or revised “pandemic treaty” are building on the existing international framework for global pandemic response, the WHO’s International Health Regulations (IHR), considered a binding instrument of international law.
On Dec. 1, 2021, in response to calls from various governments for a “strengthened global pandemic strategy” and signaling the urgency with which these entities are acting, the WHO formally launched the process of creating a new treaty or amending the IHR, during Special Session — only the second in the organization’s history.
During the meeting, held May 10-11, WHO’s 194 member countries unanimously agreed to launch the process, which previously had been discussed only informally.
The member countries agreed to:
“Kickstart a global process to draft and negotiate a convention, agreement or other international instrument under the Constitution of the World Health Organization to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”
The IHR, a relatively recent development, were first enacted in 2005, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1.
The IHR legal framework is one of only two binding treaties the WHO has achieved since its inception, the other being the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
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.
The proposals for a new or revised pandemic treaty, put forth at the special ministerial session of the WHO in May, would “somewhat” strengthen the WHO’s pandemic-related powers, including establishing a “Compliance Committee” that would issue advisory recommendations for states.
However, according to the Daily Sceptic, while the IHR is already legally binding, the amendments proposed in May would not strengthen existing legal obligations or requirements:
“The existing treaty regulations, like all (or most) international law, do not actually compel states to do anything other than talk to the WHO and listen to it, and neither do they specify sanctions for non-compliance; almost all their output is advice.
“The proposed amendments don’t alter that. They don’t allow the WHO unilaterally to impose legally binding measures on or within countries.”
The Daily Sceptic noted one of the risks stemming from the negotiations for a new or updated treaty include the potential codification of “the new lockdown orthodoxy for future pandemics,” which would “replace the sound, science-based, pre-COVID recommendations” previously in place.
According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, such a treaty would grant the WHO “absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities/vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, travel restrictions, standardized medical care and more.”
Mercola also questioned a “one-size-fits-all approach to pandemic response,” pointing out that “pandemic threats are not identical in all parts of the world. In his view, he said, “the WHO is not qualified to make global health decisions.”
Similar concerns contributed at least in part to opposition against the proposals presented at the special ministerial session, during which a bloc of mostly non-Western countries, including China, India, Russia and 47 African nations, prevented an agreement from being finalized.
Will opposition fade away?
Although no final agreement was achieved at the May meeting, consensus was reached to organize a new special ministerial session of the WHO later this year, possibly after the WHO’s World Health Assembly, scheduled for Nov. 29 through Dec. 1, Reuters reported.
Mxolisi Nkosi, South Africa’s ambassador to the UN, told the WHO’s annual ministerial assembly the new special session would “consider the benefits for such a convention, agreement or other international instrument.”
Nkosi added:
“Probably the most important lesson COVID-19 has taught us is the need for stronger and more agile collective defences against health threats as well as for building resilience to address future potential pandemics.
“A new pandemic treaty is central to this.”
At the time, the U.K.’s ambassador to the UN, Simon Manley, addressing the lack of an immediate agreement and the consensus to hold a new meeting, tweeted “negotiations may take time, but this is a historic step towards global health security.”
The INB, at its meeting held in Geneva July 18-21, also agreed with this view, reaching a consensus that its members will work on finalizing a new legally binding international pandemic agreement by May 2024.
As part of this process, the INB will meet again in December and will deliver a progress report to the 76th World Health Assembly of the WHO in 2023.
According to the WHO, “Any new agreement, if any when agreed by Member States, is drafted and negotiated by governments themselves, [which] will take any action in line with their sovereignty.”
The WHO further claims that “governments themselves will determine actions under the accord while considering their own national laws and regulations.”
The Biden administration expressed broad support for a new or updated pandemic treaty, with the U.S. heading previous negotiations on this issue, along with the European Commission, via its president Ursula von der Leyen, who, as previously reported by The Defender, is also a strong proponent of vaccine passports and mandatory COVID-19 vaccination.
An analysis by the Alliance for Natural Health International speculated that any final agreement may simply strengthen the existing IHR or, alternatively, may involve an amendment to the WHO’s constitution — or both.
Just two days after the July 21 INB agreement, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, tweeted:
“I’m pleased that alongside the process of negotiating a new [international] accord on pandemic preparedness & response, WHO’s Member States are also considering targeted amendments to the [IHR], incl. ways to improve the process for declaring a [public health emergency of international concern, or PHEIC].”
In the same Twitter thread, he also declared the ongoing monkeypox outbreak “a public health emergency of international concern,” one “that is concentrated among men who have sex with men, especially those with multiple sexual partners.”
Notably, the WHO director-general overruled an expert panel that was divided over whether to classify the outbreak as a global public health emergency.
With this declaration, three “global health emergencies” are now in place, as determined by the WHO: COVID-19, monkeypox and polio.
Busy summer for vaccine passport proposals
While the WHO and global governments weigh plans for an updated or new pandemic treaty, other organizations are moving forward on vaccine passport technologies and partnerships.
On July 8, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of many of the world’s industrialized nations, announced it would promote the unification of the different vaccine passport systems currently in use around the world.
Thirty-six countries and international organizations participated in a July meeting with the goal of “creating a multilateral framework for establishing a global vaccine passport regime,” according to Nick Corbishley of Naked Capitalism.
The development is a continuation of efforts involving the WHO to harmonize global vaccine passport regimes.
In February, the WHO selected Germany’s T-Systems as an “industry partner to develop the vaccination validation service,” which would enable “vaccination certificates to be checked across national borders.”
T-Systems, an arm of Deutsche Telekom, was previously instrumental in developing the interoperability of vaccine passport systems in Europe.
Also in July, 21 African governments “quietly embraced” a vaccine passport system, which in turn would also be interlinked with other such systems globally.
On July 8, which is also Africa Integration Day, the African Union and the Africa Centers for Disease Control launched a digital vaccine passport valid throughout the African Union, describing it as “the e-health backbone” of Africa’s “new health order.”
This follows the development in 2021, of the Trusted Travel platform, now required by several African countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Togo and Zimbabwe, and air carriers such as EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways, for both inbound and outbound travel.
Beyond Africa, Indonesia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the G20, is conducting “pilot projects” that would bring about the interoperability of the various digital vaccine passport systems currently in use globally. The project is expected to be completed by November, in time for the G20 Leaders’ Summit.
Naked Capitalism highlighted the role of South African company Cassava Fintech in the efforts to develop an interoperable vaccine passport for all of Africa.
A subsidiary of African telecommunication company Econet, Cassava initially developed the “Sasail” app, which the company described as Africa’s first “global super app” that combines “social payments” with the ability to send and receive money and pay bills, chat with others and play games.
Cassava and Econet entered into a strategic partnership with Mastercard, “to advance digital inclusion across Africa and collaborate on a range of initiatives, including expansion of the Africa CDC TravelPass.”
As previously reported by The Defender, Mastercard supports the Good Health Pass vaccine passport initiative that is also backed by the ID2020 alliance and endorsed by embattled former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair.
Mastercard has also promoted technology that can be embedded into the DO Card, a credit/debit card that keeps track of one’s “personal carbon allowance.”
ID2020, founded in 2016, claims to support “ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital ID.” Its founding partners include Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation, Accenture, GAVI-The Vaccine Alliance (itself a core partner of the WHO), UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank.
Mastercard’s top two stockholders are Vanguard and BlackRock, which hold significant stakes in dozens of companies that supported the development of vaccine passports or implemented vaccine mandates for their employees. The two investment firms also hold large stakes in vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
Mastercard provides funding for the World Bank’s Identity for Development (ID4D) Program, which “focuses on promoting digital identification systems to improve development outcomes while maintaining trust and privacy.”
The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York School of Law recently described the ID4D program, which touts its alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) , as one which could pave the way to a “digital road to hell.”
According to the center, this would occur through the prioritization of “economic identity” and the use of an infrastructure that has “been linked to severe and large-scale human rights violations” in several countries.
Mastercard is also active in Africa through its joint initiative with another fintech (financial technology) company, Paycode, to “increase access to financial services and government assistance for remote communities across Africa” via a biometric identity system containing the data of 30 million individuals.
World Bank, WHO promote ‘pandemic preparedness’ and vaccine passports
The World Bank in late June announced the creation of a fund that will “finance investments in strengthening the fight against pandemics” and “support prevention, preparedness and response … with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.”
The fund was developed under the lead of the U.S., Italy and current G20 president Indonesia, “with broad support from the G20,” and will be active later this year.
It will provide more than $1 billion in funding for areas such as “disease surveillance” and “support against the current as well as future pandemics.”
The WHO is also a “stakeholder” in the project and will provide “technical expertise,” according to WHO’s director-general.
The agreement follows a 2019 strategic partnership between the UN and the World Economic Forum, to “accelerate” the implementation of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its SDGs.
Although the agreement has recently circulated on social media, it was announced in June 2019, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It encompasses six areas of focus, including “health” and “digital cooperation.”
In terms of health, the agreement purports that it will “support countries [sic] achieve good health and well-being for all, within the context of the 2030 Agenda, focusing on key emerging global health threats that require stronger multistakeholder partnership and action.”
In turn, the “digital cooperation” promoted by the agreement will purportedly “meet the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution while seeking to advance global analysis, dialogue and standards for digital governance and digital inclusiveness.”
However, despite rhetoric preaching “inclusiveness,” individuals and entities that have refused to go along with applications such as vaccine passports have faced repercussions in their personal and professional lives.
Such was the example of a Canadian doctor who was fined $6,255 in June over her refusal to use the country’s ArriveCAN health information app — which is being investigated over privacy concerns — to enter the country.
Dr. Ann Gillies said she was fined when re-entering Canada after attending a conference in the U.S.
Andrew Bud, the CEO of biometric ID company iProove, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor, described vaccine certificates as driving “the whole field of digital ID in the future,” adding they are “not just about COVID [but] about something even bigger” and that “once adopted for COVID [they] will be rapidly used for everything else.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
August 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Africa, Gates Foundation, Human rights, Rockefeller Foundation, WEF, WHO, World Bank |
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German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach has announced that the nation’s digital contact tracing and vaccine passport app, Corona-Warn-App (CWA), will start assigning different colors to citizens based on whether they received a COVID-19 vaccine within the last three months.
The CWA will assign one color to citizens who add proof that they received a vaccine within the last three months and a different color to citizens who add proof of vaccination that’s more than three months old. Only those with the color showing that they’re “freshly vaccinated” (have received a vaccine within the last three months) will be exempt from Germany’s mask requirement in public indoor spaces.
Other citizens, including those who received multiple vaccines but had their last vaccine more than three months ago, will have to show proof of recent recovery from COVID or a current negative test to get an exemption from this mask requirement.
Germany’s Berliner Zeitung noted that the colors codes in the vaccine passport app would “give different rights in the future” and said the system would put citizens who are already quadruple vaccinated on the same legal footing as those who are unvaccinated.
Berliner Zeitung also reported that this new German vaccine passport system would be similar to China’s color code vaccine passport system. China’s system assigns a green, yellow, or red code to citizens. Those with a green code are allowed to move freely, those with a yellow code may be asked to stay home for seven days, and those with a red code have to quarantine for two weeks.
Despite moving to this color code vaccine passport system, Lauterbach has admitted that the goalposts could shift at any time and that if too many freshly vaccinated people make use of the mask exception, Germany will change the rules and close the exception.
Lauterbach, who is quadruple vaccinated, announced this new color code vaccine passport system four days after he contracted COVID. The new vaccine passport system is being introduced as part of Germany’s “Infection Protection Act.”
Health agencies defended the rollout of vaccine passports and other COVID surveillance measures by claiming that they would prevent the spread of the coronavirus. However, in recent weeks, government health experts have admitted that COVID vaccines don’t prevent infection.
Despite this admission, Germany and other nations are continuing to push far-reaching, restrictive vaccine passport systems. Some countries are also combining vaccine passports with digital ID or rolling out more invasive COVID surveillance devices such as wristbands and ankle bracelets.
August 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Germany, Human rights |
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The FBI has raided Donald Trump’s home in Florida and opened a private safe, hanging around for hours looking for classified material that might be there. They were likely looking for items that Trump believed he had declassified – the president can do this with anything – but is still holding in his possession. Top officials of the National Archives, the DOJ, and the FBI believed otherwise and thus sought the search warrant.
If the New York Times is correct, then, this is really about state secrets. Trump wanted them public. Others inside the deep-state machinery disagreed.
The scene in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, gives rise to images from societies without law and constitutions, places where regimes are merely juntas seeking plunder and revenge. In this case, the problem is complicated by a mass administrative state apparatus that lives outside the democratic process.
“Aides to President Biden,” reports the Times, “said they were stunned by the development and learned of it from Twitter.” This is likely true. But it gives rise to the more fundamental question: who is actually running government?
If we didn’t before realize the extent of the multivariate crisis gathering all around us, now is the time. It’s a time for analysis and understanding. It’s also the time to make a decision concerning what we are all going to do about it.
Even those of us who are not fans of Trump – I wrote one of the first articles from 2015 warning against his ideological leanings which later become a full book – see the deeper implications. The betting odds favor him for the presidency in 2024. Someone somewhere wants to make this impossible. So all the forces of the administrative state – the actual rulers of this country – have coalesced around crushing him and his legacy, Soviet like.
In the background of all of this is the real struggle that will define American politics for years to come. Two weeks before he left office in 2020, Trump issued an executive order that would have put a major dent in the power of the administrative state in this country, taking the first steps toward returning government to the people after a century in which it gradually slipped away.
In some people’s view, this is intolerable.
Trump, for all his failings, among which was green-lighting the lockdowns that started this social and economic crisis, has become over time a symbol of resistance. The raiding of his private home sends a message about who is in charge. It’s a warning for everyone. An intimidation tactic.
We are used to this but we should not become so.
Biden has once again declared a national emergency in the name of virus control. Such a declaration effectively enshrines the permanent bureaucracy to rule the country at all levels in whatever ways they desire, at least until courts stop them. The extension of the declaration hardly made the news.
Have we forgotten what normalcy is? It was only three years ago. Yes, there were political arguments and enormous problems but it still felt like a nation of laws with a government subject to the people.
Already, there was something in the air in mid-March 2020, something that suggested that everything was changed. Governments all over the world dared to do the unthinkable, partly under the influence that it happened in the US, and under a Republican administration. Countless millions found themselves locked in their homes. The churches were forcibly closed. Businesses and schools too.
You know the story. It was not only a sweeping use of state power without precedent. It foreshadowed dark times ahead. Here we are two-and-a-half years later and the state is on the march in ways we never imagined possible three years ago. The raiding of Trump’s home is but a sign and symbol: none of our homes are safe. And haven’t been for years now.
Even now, in the land of the free, people are being pressured to accept the shot or get fired. We all have unvaccinated friends who want to visit us but cannot because the US government blocks them. Our health authorities have only expressed regret in one area: for not having locked down more. And they are creating a bureaucratic machinery to make doing so next time more ferocious and better enforced.
All of this is taking place without a scrap of evidence that any of it makes any scientific and/or medical sense. The scientists who resist have been canceled. Only one view is permitted to ascend. Everyone with doubt is being marginalized and silenced.
Congress itself became addicted to authorizing trillions in spending, and they keep doing it again and again. This adds pressure on the Federal Reserve to enter the markets and buy the resulting debt with freshly printed money just as rates are being pushed up to clean up its disastrous balance sheet. No one knows, least of all the Fed, how long this grueling inflation will continue but regardless, the damage is done.
The labor markets, despite the propaganda from the White House, reveal alarming weakness. Fewer full-time jobs. More part-time jobs. More people with two jobs. And fewer workers overall, as labor-market participation and worker/population ratios fall and fall. Not only have these markets not recovered from lockdowns. The trends are getting worse, with fully one million dropped out completely from the labor force since March of 2022, which is highly suggestive of a demoralized workforce lacking in ambition and hope for the future.
Wages and salaries in real terms are falling more than the nominal rates can cover. There is a debate about whether we are in a recession because the GDP has fallen for two straight quarters. But looking at the broad trends, there can be no mistaking what is happening. American prosperity is fundamentally threatened. The relationship between freedom and prosperity is one of the most well-established truths in economic literature. It should not be surprising that both decline in tandem.
Complain too much and you will find yourself without a voice on social media. The tech companies developed a deep relationship with the administrative state over the last two years, corresponding with each other, sharing insights, making enemies lists, and silencing dissidents of all sorts.
Clearly, the lockdowns did not achieve the goal, as the virus came and has gradually become endemic regardless of external interventions including mass vaccination mandates. What they did do was test society’s tolerance for despotism. Tragically, they got away with it all, much more easily than most of us might have expected.
Even now, even though the ruling class has never been less popular with the public, too many have adapted to the new normal. For many people, this is by necessity: what, after all, can anyone really do when freedom is slipping away and even core functioning of civilization (safe streets, vibrant cities, class mobility) is something we can no longer take for granted?
Let history record that lockdowns triggered this. All of it. Yes, there were problems before but they seemed within the realm of fixable. There appeared to be in the old days (three years ago) some relationship between public opinion and regime priorities. That was blown away with lockdowns. Now it is no longer clear whether and to what extent public opinion matters at all to the masters and commanders of our societies. They are leading us to ever greater crises and yet we feel powerless to do anything about it.
In the most incredible of ironies, it was Trump himself, now targeted for destruction by the bureaucrats he sought to control, who enabled this in the dreadful year of 2020. Realizing but never admitting his error, he flipped in the other direction late in the season, arguing for openness and normalcy. But it was too late. He already lost control, as Deborah Birx’s book makes clear. The deep state that he had loathed needed to prove its hegemony. This raid on his own home underscores the point.
One read of history is that such times lead inexorably to the forward march of tyranny. Certainly interwar political history teaches us this. The crisis in Germany began in an economic crisis that cried out for a strongman, but Germany was hardly alone in this. The same inexorable push toward centralization and against freedom took place the world over in these horrible years: Spain, Italy, France, China, the US.
Read the popular and scholarly literature from the early 1930s: freedom and democracy was out and central planning was in. I read all of this in college and was grateful that those days were gone forever. We are so much more enlightened now! How wrong I was. The same themes are back again today as entrenched elites clamor to hold on to power regardless of public opinion.
In the 1930s, the extremist political left threatened many countries and the extremist political right arrived to prevent that from happening and then erected their own despotisms, always under the cover of emergency. It became a kind of civil war between two opposing camps with their own plans for people’s lives. Freedom was lost in the struggle.
We had hoped those days were long behind us. But the allure of power has proven too tempting for the worst among us. We are all watching as all the things we love – the way of life that many generations have fought to protect – are being swept away. And it is happening with not nearly enough explanation or protest.
These are not the most terrifying times in history but they are among the most terrifying in our lifetimes in the West. Where are the parties and movements that defend freedom as a first principle? Where are the successors to Voltaire, Locke, Goethe, Paine, and Jefferson, among the many great thinkers who sacrificed so much for the liberal vision of a social order in which people manage their own lives?
Such people are here, many of them writing for Brownstone among other venues, and producing books and podcasts to get around the opinion cartel being built by censors public and private.
What difference can they make and how? This much is true: what man has made, man can unmake and make something new: a new Magna Carta, whether formal or de facto. The urgency has never been more intense. A state without an acquiescing populace is powerless in the end. But not without struggle. And that struggle is ultimately an intellectual one. It’s about what we believe and what kind of society we want to live in.
Our prayer today should be for freedom above all else, a society and a world in which powerful elites do not rule the rest of us and forever fight amongst themselves for the right to do so, with the people deployed as fodder in their struggles, and while hope and prosperity slip ever deeper into memory.
These are very dangerous times, with a toxic mix as backdrop: a growing economic crisis, a spitefully supercilious ruling class, and a vengeful administrative state determined to crush all enemies before it. Something has got to give. May the USA defy the historical odds, find its way back to simple liberty, and begin to restore what has been lost so dramatically and so quickly. Otherwise, all truth will be declared a state secret and our homes will never be safe from invasion.
August 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | United States |
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Brownstone Institute has repeatedly reported on the unholy alliance between the administrative state and Big Tech with the censorious results of free speech suppression. We’ve published a full articles of inquiry as a template for further investigation into these unprecedented actions.
The cooperation between these people during the pandemic response became intense and pervasive. This model is being deployed in other areas too, with a symbiotic relationship between power centers that ends in suppressing dissent. This is contrary to the First Amendment.
The state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana have filed suit against the Biden administration. Among the plaintiffs are Brownstone Senior Scholars Martin Kulldorff, Jay Bhattacharya, and Aaron Kheriaty who have experienced this censorship first hand. The case is joined by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Monroe Division.
The text of the lawsuit is embedded below. Here is an excerpt.
The aggressive censorship that Defendants have procured constitutes government action for at least five reasons: (1) absent federal intervention, common-law and statutory doctrines, as well as voluntary conduct and natural free-market forces, would have restrained the emergence of censorship and suppression of speech of disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoint on social media; and yet (2) through Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and other actions, the federal government subsidized, fostered, encouraged, and empowered the creation of a small number of massive social-media companies with disproportionate ability to censor and suppress speech on the basis of speaker, content, and viewpoint; (3) such inducements as Section 230 and other legal benefits (such as the absence of antitrust enforcement) constitute an immensely valuable benefit to social-media platforms and incentive to do the bidding of federal officials; (4) federal officials—including, most notably, certain Defendants herein—have repeatedly and aggressively threatened to remove these legal benefits and impose other adverse consequences on social-media platforms if they do not aggressively censor and suppress disfavored speakers, content, and viewpoints on their platforms; and (5) Defendants herein, colluding and coordinating with each other, have also directly coordinated and colluded with social-media platforms to identify disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content and thus have procured the actual censorship and suppression of the freedom of speech. These factors are both individually and collectively sufficient to establish government action in the censorship and suppression of social-media speech, especially given the inherent power imbalance: not only do the government actors here have the power to penalize noncompliant companies, but they have threatened to exercise that authority.
August 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, United States |
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