Political power advances like a car with a manual gearbox. Normal motion is forward, going through the gears, but occasionally reverse gear is engaged. Sometimes the electorate react against policies going too far, or being taken on a ride not of their choosing. Such was the impetus for Brexit and Donald Trump, both portrayed by the establishment as populist regression that risked undoing social and economic progress. Fearing further democratic shocks, progressive leaders got back into the driving seat and put their foot down in the direction of one-world government.
As rather too confidently anticipated by US medical administrator Anthony Fauci on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, there was ‘no doubt’ the incoming president would be confronted with a ‘surprise’ infectious disease outbreak.
Looking back, there are strong indications that certain people knew what was coming, whatever the plausible deniability. A pandemic would enable a giant stride towards a highly regulated society, with the traditional social structures of faith, flag and family obliterated, and citizens neutered. A ‘new normal’ would be instilled, disingenuously justified by a public health emergency. Mortal fear would have more immediate impact than the other contrived crisis of climate change.
And so it came to pass. With remarkable speed World Economic Forum leader Klaus Schwab wrote a book on how to ‘build back better’ from the contagion. In The Great Reset, published in June 2020, he enthused that ‘the pandemic represents a rare but narrow opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world’.
Anybody undecided about the masterplan of the WEF, which our politicians and mainstream media either ignore or deride as conspiracy theory, should read its blueprint Future Focus, published in June 2022. The Executive Summary asserts that ‘societies, the global economy and the planet face unprecedented challenges and disruptions that remain urgent and require an unprecedented transformation of the world’s economic, environmental and social systems’. The future is encapsulated in a terrifying hub-and-spoke diagram, in which every aspect of our lives revolves around digital identity: education, health, banking, food and travel. The tentacles of the WEF monster are spreading all over us.
The three missions of Future Focus are a fairer society, sustainability and harnessing technology for the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, all themes of Schwab’s The Great Reset. Almost three years after Covid-19 was unleashed on an unsuspecting world, we can assess how far the globalist project has advanced.
By ‘fairer society’, the WEF means collectivisation, removing people’s rights, property and privacy, as depicted by the slogan ‘you will own nothing, and you will be happy’. A basic universal income will ensure dependence on the state. Despite globalists’ concerns about overpopulation, the WEF is keen on mass migration from poorer regions to the West, thus abandoning border controls when it suits (contrast the strict Covid regime for citizens with the unimpeded crossings of the English Channel and the Mexican border). So-called refugees are not only cheap labour, they are less likely to resist radical policies.
The UK population rose significantly in the ‘plague’ year of 2020, when police stopped Nigel Farage from reporting the dinghies arriving in Dover. The relentless influx may seem contradictory to the second theme of sustainability, until it is understood that the globalists are most interested in sustaining not the harmony of nature but their own power. They want to reduce the masses to neo-feudalist subsistence, under total control of resources. Food or fuel shortages are used for sequential power grabs, through a problem-reaction-solution mechanism. As seen in Sri Lanka, depriving the people of petrol (problem) caused riots (reaction), leading to acceptance of rationing by digital identity system (solution). Arguably, the war in Ukraine is causing economic strife in Europe for a similar purpose. Meanwhile the elite continue to fly around the world in private jets.
Thirdly, technological progress is accelerating the application of constant surveillance systems. Central digital currency will require every citizen to hold a virtual wallet linked to their national (or international, at least in the EU) identification. Total control of the population will ensue. Citizens will be monitored via checking in and out of buildings, face recognition cameras in public places, and all purchases. It goes much further than that. Potentially, through mandatory vaccination the authorities could exert control over hormones and fertility. Transmittable microchips embedded in hands are already in use in Sweden. Homo sapiens is being led along the path of transhumanism.
The erection of a digital cage shows that Covid-19 has worked wonders for the globalists. Yuval Noah Harari, historian and philosopher turned globalist ideologue, recently admitted that the virus was unremarkable, while lauding the unprecedented progress enabled by lockdown. Imagine how much could be done with a really serious crisis, he mused, such as climate change.
The Covid regime has not yet been relinquished, but millions have realised that the primary motive was not saving lives but control through fear.
Even the most gullible ‘normies’ must be asking themselves, belatedly, whether public health is really the priority. Farcically, Australian female cricketer Tahlia McGrath played in the Commonwealth Games despite testing positive for Covid-19, while the world’s top tennis player Novak Djokovic cannot go to Australia because he is unvaccinated.
Court cases are swinging in favour of freedom. An Ohio federal judge blocked the vaccine mandate for US Army, Air Force and Navy personnel with religious exemption.
A US healthcare company was ordered to pay $10.3million compensation to doctors and nurses whose claimed exemption was denied by hospital management. Pastor Artur Pawlowski, persecuted by the authorities in the Canadian province of Alberta for opening his church during lockdown, spending months in jail for his sins, won reimbursement of unlawful fines.
Is this all too late? Covid-19 has done its job, dramatically changing our lives on the road to a global technocracy. ‘If you want a picture of the future,’ George Orwell wrote in 1984, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ Yet the viral coup has not been overwhelmingly successful. Some of us are more awake than ever; once we see we can’t un-see.
August 16, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights |
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Fox News is reporting that the FBI seized boxes containing attorney-client privileged and potentially executive privileged material during its raid Mar-a-Lago. When the raid occurred, I noted that the legal team had likely marked material as privileged at the residence and that the collection could create an immediate conflict over such material. Now, sources are telling Fox that the Justice Department not only took attorney-client material but has refused Trump requests for a special master to review the records.
The request for a special master would seem reasonable, particularly given the sweeping language used in the warrant. It is hard to see what material could not be gathered under this warrant.
Attachment B of the warrant has this provision:
“Any physical documents with classification markings, along with any containers/boxes (including any other contents) in which such documents are located, as well as any other containers/boxes that are collectively stored or found together with the aforementioned documents and containers/boxes; b.. Information, including communications in any form, regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information or classified material”
Thus, the agents could not only take an entire box if it contained a single document with classification markings of any kind but could then take all boxes around that box.
It is not surprising that dozens of boxes were seized.
Given that sweeping language (and the various lawsuits and investigations facing Trump), it would seem reasonable to request a special magistrate. That is why the reported refusal is so concerning. What is the harm from such a review? The material is now under lock and key. There is no approaching deadline in court or referenced grand jury.
Moreover, many have accused the Justice Department of using this search as a pretext. While saying that they were seeking potential national security information, critics have alleged that the real purpose was to gather evidence that could be used against Trump in a prosecution over his role in January 6th riot. I have noted that such a pretext would be deeply disturbing given the documented history of Justice Department officials misleading or lying to courts in prior Trump-related investigations. The continuation of such subterfuge could be disclosed in a later oversight investigation.
The use of a special master could have helped quell such claims of a pretextual search. Conversely, the denial of such a protective measure would fuel even greater concerns.
The refusal to take this protective measures is almost as troubling as the sweeping language in the search warrant itself. We need to see the affidavit that led to this search warrant. I am not going to assume that the search was unwarranted until I see that evidence. However, in the interim, Attorney General Merrick Garland could have allowed accommodations for this review to assure not just the Trump team but the public that the search was not a pretext for seeking other evidence like January 6th-related material.
August 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | FBI, United States |
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The CDC has dropped special quarantine recommendations for unvaccinated persons, finally admitting that natural immunity should be considered and that vaccines don’t stop infection.
“CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild, and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection,” their update reads.
The CDC removed the recommendation that unvaccinated persons quarantine after they’re exposed to the virus. They now recommend that individuals wear a mask for ten days post-exposure and get tested after five days.
The CDC further acknowledged that the Omicron variant of COVID poses a smaller risk of hospitalization and death than previous variants.
This announcement will likely pressure Canada’s health authorities (and Trudeau) to follow suit. Although numerous countries dropped their medical segregation policies long ago, Canada remains one of the last to do so.
Moreover, each consecutive variant appears to be weakening, with immunity (including natural immunity) being widespread. Although Canada has an abnormally high amount of mask and vaccine fanatics, the remaining medical segregation could soon be a thing of the past.
With that said, Canada’s health authorities have done nothing but warn of a return to restrictions and upcoming waves of COVID, telling Canadians that the pandemic is not over.
Additionally, the University of Toronto recently mandated that young health students living on residence get a 3rd vaccine.
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, CDC, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Facebook has hidden posts with the “#diedsuddenly” hashtag because it claims that some of these posts violate its far-reaching community standards. When users search for this hashtag, no results are displayed and Facebook shows a message stating that the results are hidden.
While Facebook doesn’t specify which rules these posts allegedly violated, Twitter users have been using the hashtag to share news stories about people who died suddenly. Most of these Twitter posts note that those who died were fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and allude to there being a connection between the vaccines and their deaths.
If Facebook users are posting similar content under this hashtag, the posts are likely to violate the tech giant’s ban on a wide range of COVID-19 vaccine claims. Facebook prohibits claims that “vaccines are toxic, dangerous, or cause autism” and reduces the distribution of “shocking stories” about the vaccines. One of Facebook’s examples of a shocking story is “Uncovered: See the 632 reports made of people who died within a week of having the new COVID-19 vaccine.”
The blocking of this hashtag is the latest of many examples of Facebook censoring content that is critical of or raises questions about the COVID-19 vaccines. Throughout the pandemic, Facebook has also mass censored anti-mask content, anti-lockdown content, and content that said the coronavirus came from a lab (a censorship policy that was suddenly reversed after the Biden admin announced that it would be investigating the origins of COVID).
Not only does Facebook mass censor content that goes against or questions government guidance and the legacy media narrative on COVID but it also partnered with the Pfizer-backed CDC Foundation to increase “vaccine uptake” and maintained a close relationship with US federal agencies on COVID messaging.
The tech giant has previously used hashtag blocking to censor many other topics including “#buchamassacre” (a block that it later said was a mistake), “#Revolution” (which was blocked on a July 4th weekend), and “#SaveTheChildren.”
August 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, Facebook |
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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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