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Family of Capitol rioter who died by ‘overdose’ demands autopsy review

RT | November 24, 2021

The family of a woman whose death during the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill was ruled a drug overdose is crowdfunding an autopsy review, after Washington, DC police refused to release body camera footage of her final moments.

Rosanne Boyland was 34 when she traveled in January from her home in Georgia to Washington, DC to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory. After crowds of Trump supporters took their rowdy protest to the US Capitol, Boyland would later be found dead among them, with her death ruled an amphetamine overdose by the DC medical examiner’s office several months later.

Her family aren’t buying the story, and have launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance a review of her autopsy.

“There are still many questions about exactly what happened to her,” the family wrote on GiveSendGo this month. “Videos show her being beaten by a female officer after being crushed by protesters pushed by police. Yet the DC Medical Examiner said Rosanne’s body showed no signs of trauma, and attributed her death to the prescription medication she took every day for years.”

In an update to the campaign posted on Tuesday, they added that Boyland was not abusing amphetamines. Rather she was taking adderall, a prescription drug containing four kinds of amphetamine used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. “The only drugs in Rosanne’s body were her prescription medications,” they wrote.

Thousands of hours of video footage – from both surveillance cameras and police body cameras – captured during the Capitol protest remain unreleased, with authorities citing the importance of this footage to ongoing criminal investigations. Boyland’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the DC Metropolitan Police to obtain body camera footage from officers who handled her unconscious body, but their request was denied.

Some of this footage allegedly shows Boyland being carried into a space beneath the House majority leader’s office, where lawyers for other defendants claim that their clients were assaulted by Capitol Police officers. Conservative journalist Julie Kelly reported on the story last week, after seeing legal documents alleging a series of brutal beatings taking place in the tunnels under the Capitol.

Three other protesters died in the Capitol on January 6. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot dead by a Capitol Police officer. Two other Trump supporters in their 50s – Benjamin Philips and Kevin Greeson – died of medical emergencies.

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was initially blamed on the pro-Trump mob, passed away of a stroke the day after the riot.

November 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Will You Be Jailed for Protesting Vaccine Mandates?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | November 22, 2021

On the surface, the Online Safety Bill, being pushed by the U.K. government, appears to protect children and adults from online messaging, content and websites through regulations and removal of those deemed to be “harmful.”1 After the draft of the bill was published in May 2021, it became apparent that it is another iteration of the controversial 2019 “Online Harms White Paper.”

The White Paper,2 which proposed legislative and nonlegislative strategies to purportedly protect you from online content that might harm you, was quickly criticized. Aside from the fact that unnamed entities would determine what kind of content, platforms and websites are harmful or inappropriate, serious concerns were raised that, if implemented, the paper’s dogma essentially was a model for stifling freedom of speech.

Britain’s Online Safety Bill evolved from that paper, but it, too is under scrutiny as critics say it not only is too “vague in its wording,” but “poses a threat to freedom of expression and places too much power in the hands of social networks.”3

In fact, it is poised to be yet another government-imposed step to limit personal freedoms and individual rights under the guise of transforming the world into a single body run by elites who believe they can make the world and your life better by limiting what you do, where you go and even what you own — if you own anything at all.

It is a world vision with global implications that, if implemented, would even control how you think. The foundation for these changes began long before the 2020 pandemic. The World Economic Forum and the United Nations have been working together to push the related WEF 2030Vision4 and the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development — an action plan that they say is for the people, the planet and prosperity. According to the United Nations this will involve:5

“All countries and all stakeholders, acting in collaborative partnership … to free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet.”

Again, on the surface, it appears that Big Brother is looking out for all the little people. But in essence, to achieve the goals set out by the WEF and the UN they must have ultimate control over your ability to make individual decisions for your life. Otherwise, in their estimation, America and every other free nation in this world will continue living in the same “chaos” that they have been in for as long as they have been free.

To achieve these goals, it is necessary that you purchase and eat only the types of food they deem sustainable. You may only work and get paid if you choose the right health plan, make the right medical decisions and use the correct currency.

In fact, the WEF said it best in their strangely ominous dictum that you will “own nothing and be happy.” While inexplicable in 2016 when it was first published in Forbes Magazine,6 the unstated implication that the world’s resources will be owned and controlled by the technocratic elite is coming closer and closer to reality.

It’s coming so close, in fact, that fact checkers at Reuters rushed to publish a rebuttal in February 2021 after a three-minute video clip with a mere 862 likes and 1,100 shares made the rounds on Facebook.7 With these small numbers, that video could hardly have been called viral. Yet, Reuters raced in to argue that the WEF has no stated goal that people will own nothing by 2030, despite Forbes’ 2016 prediction.

Should the Online Safety Bill in the U.K. pass with all its possible regulations and repercussions, this is exactly the type of video that, had it been a law in 2021, could have landed the video’s creator in jail for two years. This, despite the fact that the WEF published a video on Facebook two days after the Forbes article in which they said, “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2030.”8

Trolling May Get You Two Years in Prison

The media appear to come down on both sides of the fence as they report what’s happening with the Online Safety Bill. Rather unsurprisingly, the mainstream media, such as The Times,9 report the proposed law favorably while headlines from independent media read:

  • British Government May Jail Those Accused of Causing ‘Online Psychological Harm’10
  • Brits Who Post “False Information” About Vaccines Could Be Jailed For Two Years11

Before the internet, a troll was a dwarf or giant in Scandinavian folklore who inhabited the caves or hills.12 Today, it is slang for a person or actions that intentionally try “to instigate conflict, hostility, or arguments in an online social community.”13

The bill’s critics are focusing on a part of the bill that calls for a jail sentence of two years for anyone who causes psychological harm as a result of online trolling. But proponents of the bill stress how threats of punishment for trolling will stop these harms. In its support of this idea, The Times explains that the bill is:14

“… the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet. The proposed law change will shift the focus on to the “harmful effect” of a message rather than if it contains “indecent” or “grossly offensive” content, which is the present basis for assessing its criminality.”

In other words, the bill will change communication laws in the U.K. and create new offenses under which people can be jailed. The messages targeted will contain “threats of serious harm.” You might imagine those threats would be of abuse or death, but The Times reported that government sources used “the example of antivaxxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue.”15

The government spokesperson justified the bill as a good thing to do, even though former cabinet minister David Davis urged them to rethink the proposal and Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, called it “too broad.” The spokesperson said:16

“We are making our laws fit for the digital age. Our comprehensive Online Safety Bill will make tech companies responsible for people’s safety and we are carefully considering the Law Commission’s recommendations on strengthening criminal offences.”

But, as Principia Scientific International 17 points out, since the beginning of the pandemic, authorities have called multiple pieces of information posted on social media “false” that later turned out to be true. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci’s ongoing changes to his definition of herd immunity could fall under knowingly spreading false communication. But would it?

The most obvious example is when the vaccine was first released, and claims were made that it was not fully effective at stopping the spread of the disease. That would have fallen under the bill’s definition of disinformation. Yet, months later this was proven to be fact. So, if the bill passes in the U.K., what happens to someone who is in jail for making a “false” statement, which months later turns out to be true? Will they get an early release or recompense for false imprisonment?

New Law Sets Stage for Greater Public Control

On the surface it looks like the law is meant to protect people against threats of death or physical violence. But, in fact, this is a law that protects governmental agencies from outspoken citizens who would like to retain their right to free speech that is enjoyed by those who do not live under communist rule.

Should the law pass, what would stop the government from extending the definition of “false” statements? This could now cover any statement governmental agencies find “offensive” or that creates a “threat of serious harm.” For example, if you make statements against the high price of gasoline, food or heating oil, the government could say you are inciting anger.

The new law will also include something called “pile-ons.” This is a situation in which several individuals will join in sending harassing messages. However, which messages are defined as pile-ons or harassment will be determined by those in power, who are yet to be named. Therefore, as the reporter from Principia Scientific International wrote:18

“And if you think that will stop those of a certain political leaning who routinely form “pile-ons” against conservatives for expressing dissenting opinions, think again.”

According to Principia Scientific International,19 the bill is being promoted with “relentless propaganda.” Despite online abuse toward Black football players in the U.K. originating from Middle Eastern countries, the media is using the situation to justify the bill.

According to an analysis20 by Chris Pikes, CEO and co-founder of Image Analyzer, the bill will also pertain to any website where other people can upload content, videos or comment on each other’s posts. Image Analyzer21 is a software program designed to analyze visual threats using artificial intelligence.

If the bill passes, every digital platform operator will be responsible for removing illegal content. But since there is no clear definition of “harm” in the bill, how enforcement of the bill is determined and what content it will affect may be based on decisions made well after the bill has been approved.

The vague language threatens freedom of speech and the mandate to remove content may require companies to prescreen anything posted. Taking this a step further, all website companies would be responsible for removing content posted by U.K. citizens that may be covered by the Online Safety Bill. This means website owners in the U.S., France, Sweden and any other country would also have to comply with the British law.

This could create a system where journalists enjoy the freedom to report information and speak on social media, while citizens face censorship. The vague language in the bill also opens questions of advertising content. In this draft of the Online Safety Bill, there is the power to levy fines of up to £18 million22 (approximate $24.17 million in the exchange rate November 2021) or 10% of the company’s global profits, whichever is higher.

Tyrannical Regulations Justified by Ongoing ‘Emergency’

Using this definition of social media — anywhere that content can be posted by readers — it includes blog owners, family websites and author blogs where individuals have always enjoyed the freedom of sharing their opinions that were not indecent or grossly offensive. This is freedom of speech — except in socialist or communist regimes where the state dictates what you think, feel and how you act.

If the U.K passes this bill that may affect every website where comments are allowed, how many months could it be before a similar legislative action is drafted in other currently free countries, including the U.S.?

When you step back from what’s been happening over the past 18 months to two years, you have to ask the question of what is driving these legislative actions and political inaction to protect citizens. The process began under the guise of a medical emergency in which it was predicted that people would be dropping dead in the street.

But people have not been dropping dead in the streets. And, while the infection is a very real infection, it currently does not meet the threshold of “emergency.”

Successful treatment protocols have been developed23,24 but are not used or promoted as government agencies are pushing for as many people as possible to accept the genetic therapy shot being called a vaccine.25 Just a reminder: For the shot to meet the definition of a vaccine, the CDC had to change the definition of it.26

When it comes to death counts, according to data from the CDC,27 COVID-19 deaths accounted for 11.3% of all deaths in 2020 and 13.5% of all deaths in 2021. According to recounts and analysis of data in Alameda and Santa Clara counties in California, these numbers may be 20% to 25% too high.28

If the number of deaths were conservatively reduced by 15%, then the deaths from COVID-19 would drop to 9.6% in 2020 and 11.4% in 2021. This is far lower than the 19.4% of all deaths from heart disease in 2020.29

Your Personal Liberty Is Worth Fighting For

You might fortunately be in a position where life as you know it has not changed drastically. However, it’s important to recognize what personal freedoms we lose will be exponentially harder to get back. You only have to look at the history of other socialist and communist countries or hear the stories of people’s oppression to understand the direction that society is taking.

Our personal freedom is critically important and may be most important for our mental and physical health. The freedom to interact with other human beings is crucial. We may tolerate a lack of interaction for a short period of time, but as that time grows it takes a toll on health, emotional stability and longevity.

In mid-2020, the CDC30 wrote that adults were reporting considerably elevated mental health conditions, elevated suicide ideation and increased substance use — all because of lockdowns, job losses and the subsequent trauma that the pandemic fear campaign put on our lives. In 2021, news sources reported that the CDC estimated there were more than 93,000 drug overdose deaths in 2020.31 This was a 30% rise over 2019 and was an all-time high for the U.S.32

This is not something we should be prolonging by instituting new restrictions on our freedoms of expression, speech and thought. It is vital to stand your ground and fight peacefully for freedom now, before it’s too late. There are people who know what it’s like to lose their freedoms and be incarcerated systems that appear to purposefully forget them,33 and others who are held in jails without convictions or sentencing.34,35

And if you think such things can’t happen to you, think again. With every new piece of legislation that rips away at your personal freedom, we are one step closer to the “state” controlling what we think, eat, say and feel. By 2030, we could “own nothing and [NOT] be happy.”

Sources and References

November 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

The Spy Business

Just follow the money

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • NOVEMBER 23, 2021

I have been following the story regarding the arrest of the sub-source who reportedly provided much of the apparently fabricated “intelligence” that went into the Christopher Steele dossier that was commissioned by Hillary Clinton and the DNC to get the dirt on GOP candidate Donald Trump. The real story is, of course, that the Democrats used their incumbency in the presidency to illegally involve various national security agencies in the process of defaming Trump, but for the time being we have to be content with the detention of Russian born Virginia resident Igor Danchenko for the crime of lying to the FBI.

My problem is that apart from the lying, which might be categorized in a file labeled “Everyone Lies to the Police,” I can’t quite figure out what the poor sod did that was criminal. I have reconstructed the sequence of events as follows: A business intelligence research firm Fusion GPS originally began researching Trump’s possible ties with Russia during the primary elections on behalf of a conservative who wanted to damage Trump’s campaign. After Trump became the Republican nominee, the original funder discontinued the search, but Fusion GPS was hired to keep going by the Perkins Coie law firm, which was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign. Christopher Steele, former MI-6 officer with a good reputation and reported access to information coming from Russia among other places, was sub-contracted by Fusion to assist in the effort by compiling a dossier containing defamatory material on Trump. As he had limited access to the kind of sleaze that was being sought, Steele contacted a known intelligence researcher who appeared to have such access. That was Danchenko, an analyst who specialized in Russia, whom Steele subsequently described as his “primary sub-source.” Danchenko had worked for the Washington DC based and Democratic Party linked Brookings Institution from 2005 until 2010 and was considered reliable.

Steele tasked Danchenko with finding out details about Trump and the Russians, to include possible contacts with the Kremlin’s intelligence services during a trip to Moscow in 2013 where the Trump Organization was hosting the Miss Universe contest. Danchenko did just that to Steele’s satisfaction, which also pleased Steele’s clients. The information collected subsequently was incorporated into what became the notorious Steele Dossier and was used by the FBI among others to make a case against Donald Trump and his associates. Among other initiatives, the Bureau used the file, which it knew to be largely innuendo, as justification to obtain a secret surveillance court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (FISA) which authorized a wiretap targeting former Trump adviser Carter Page.

The only problem was that some of the information was fabricated, apparently by Danchenko, though that is by no means clear. The fake material included the notorious anecdote about Trump urinating on a prostitute in the bed that Barak Obama had slept in when he had visited the Russian capital. The assumption was that Trump would have been photographed in flagrante and the Kremlin would have been able to use the material to blackmail him. Other parts of the final dossier were also discovered to be false.

Making something up in a criminal investigation might be wrong, even criminal, but both Steele and Danchenko were private citizens with no legal status at the time. It was up to Steele to validate the information he was receiving. As for Danchenko, he was one of numerous former officials of various governments that have set themselves up profitably as intelligence peddlers. Some of them make a very nice living from it and many of them are quite willing to bend the facts to make a client happy. In my own experience in CIA I have run into many intelligence peddlers in Europe and the Middle East and they all use the same MO, namely mixing confirmable factual information with fabricated information so the former validates the latter. Since leaving government, I have also worked for three private security firms in the US and I would suggest that at least two of them would have been quite willing to slant what they were discovering to fit what the client was seeking to find. Such behavior is not at all unusual in the business since ex-intelligence officers and policemen tend to have a history of operating with little oversight and minimum accountability.

In this case, the charges cited in the indictment derived from statements made by Danchenko describing the sources he claimed to have used in providing sensitive information to Steele’s United Kingdom investigative firm with which he had contracted to prepare what are identified in the indictment as “Company Reports.” The implication would of course be that he had no actual sources and instead used his creative writing skills to come up with some suitable narratives relating to Trump’s behavior. Danchenko, for his part, reportedly claimed to investigators that it was Steele who overstated the information that had been provided from confidential Russian sources which was in the nature of “raw intelligence,” not a finished product. Be that as it may, the final dossier was a concoction of verifiable facts mixed with gossip, rumors and sheer speculation. Danchenko also denied knowing who was paying for the investigation even though it appears that he had had contact with several Clinton associates, most notably one Charles H. Dolan, who may have actually suggested to the investigators what type of “information” was being sought.

The arrest came as part of the special counsel John Durham investigation into Russiagate and related matters, most specifically the claim that Russian intelligence agencies had interfered in the 2016 election. This latest activity comes after Durham’s recent charging of Hillary Clinton’s former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann in an indictment that alleges that he lied to federal investigators in September 2016, when he gave them information that he falsely claimed showed a connection between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank in Russia.

So the takeaway from all of this is that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians to subvert the 2016 election. On the contrary, it was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that sought the dirt on Trump and used a largely fraudulent dossier to make its case. And, oh yes, President Barack Obama knew exactly what was going on, which led to the completely illegal involvement of the intelligence and law enforcement federal agencies. And you can bet that if Obama knew, so did his Vice President Joe Biden. And the former head of CIA John Brennan and FBI head James Comey, who corruptly engaged their agencies in the conspiracy, are still walking free instead of in jail where they should be. And as for Hillary… I will leave that up to the reader.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

November 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Commission cautions against “objectivity” in journalism and calls for censorship of “misinformation”

A chilling read

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 22, 2021

The Aspen Institute has released the results of its study on how to protect the public from “misinformation.” The 16-person Commission on Information Disorder recommended more censorship, warning misinformation propagated other issues such as social injustice.

Last week, the Aspen Institute published an 80-page report on how to fight misinformation and disinformation. The long-standing solution to misinformation is better information. However, the organization insisted that the best solution is censorship.

“The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course,” the report read.

One issue raised by critics when it comes to misinformation and disinformation is the lack of proper definitions. They are a matter of “we know when we see it.” However, the report ignores the definition of the terms and focuses on the harm caused, such as inflaming existing issues.

“Disinformation inflames long-standing inequalities and undermines lived experiences for historically targeted communities, particularly Black/African American communities. False narratives can sow division, hamper public health initiatives, undermine elections, or deliver fresh marks to grifters and profiteers, and they capitalize on deep-rooted problems within American society. Disinformation pours lighter fluid on the sparks of discord that exist in every community.”

The report also endorses a growing movement against what it describes “objectivity and both sideism” in the media, some of the hallmarks of responsible journalism.

“Commissioners also discussed the need to adjust journalistic norms to avoid false equivalencies between lies and empirical fact in the pursuit of ‘both sides’ and ‘objectivity,’ particularly in areas of public health, civil rights, or election outcomes,” the report shockingly reads.

The Commission also recommended the involvement of the government in fighting misinformation, ignoring the First Amendment.

Ultimately, the commission’s solution to the “deep-rooted problems in American society” is the regulation of speech, not free speech.

November 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Did Klaus Schwab Create an Army of Davos ‘Yes Men’ to Facilitate His Great Reset?

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 19, 2021

At a time when the world is being overwhelmed with an array of perplexing problems, the political leadership necessary for solving them is coming up short everywhere. Is this perceived shortage of talent on the global stage a mere coincidence, or is it by design?

For 40 years, Klaus Schwab, the German economist and engineer, has played host to the World Economic Forum in the picturesque town of Davos, Switzerland, a venue that the WEF itself describes as “sufficiently removed to foster among participants a feeling of seclusion and camaraderie.” It is amid that comfortable setting that the global elite are seeing through their plans without much transparency in the process. It’s probably safe to say that the financial elite deciding the fate of the planet at an isolated Swiss ski resort is probably not what the Ancient Greeks had in mind when they theorized about democracy and ‘rule of the people.’

Yet that is exactly what we’ve come to inherit from this exclusive Forum, which fervently believes that global affairs are best managed by an unelected assembly of corporations and technocrats that exert unprecedented power over governments and civil society. And now, thanks to the totally, 100% completely unexpected visitation to planet Earth by a virus of uncertain origins, the elite have been blessed with “a rare but narrow window of opportunity,” according to Schwab, to “reset our world” through a grand initiative known as the Great Reset, which can be summed up in six words: “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”

With such a downsized future ahead of us, the one question that seems to have escaped the world’s divided attention is: how is it remotely possible that one individual has managed to concentrate so much unwieldy power into his hands? The short answer is that it was probably no accident.

The young Schwab studied at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (1966-67), where he earned a Master of Public Administration degree. During his stay, he developed friendships with a number of luminaries, including the macroeconomist Dean Baker, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and the great godfather of RealPolitik, Henry Kissinger. Schwab’s relationship with Kissinger, the trigger-happy Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was more than casual. Schwab described it as a “50-year-long mentorship” that continues paying dividends to this day.

As the quaint story goes, in February 1971 the 32-year-old Schwab somehow managed to organize the first ‘European Management Symposium’ in Davos, which would change its name in 1987 to the World Economic Forum. That first meeting managed to attract over 400 corporate executives from 31 nations, an astonishing feat even for an ambitious young man like Schwab. In fact, the native of Ravensburg, Germany may have been less directly involved in the formation of the group than is typically believed.

As the journalist Ernst Wolff explains, “the Harvard Business School had been in the process of planning a management forum of their own, and it is possible that Harvard ended up delegating the task of organizing it to him.” Incidentally, 1971 was the very same year that President Richard Nixon enacted a plan that ended dollar convertibility to gold, a move that soon brought an end to the Bretton Woods System.

Now that Klaus Schwab and the WEC have drafted up the blueprints for their highly coveted technocratic state, there remains one crucial key, and that is making sure leaders sympathetic to the message are in positions of power to see it through.

Welcome to Schwab’s ‘Young Global Leaders’

In 1992, Schwab and the WEC established the Global Leaders for Tomorrow school, which went on to become Young Global Leaders in 2004. The Who Who’s list of past members of this “most exclusive private social network in the world,” as Bloomberg described it, suggests that Davos Man was fishing for a very particular type of future leader.

Included among the alumni of this elite grooming factory are former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Aside from Blair, who hailed from an earlier, more muscular period of U.S.-dominated history that focused heavily on the ‘war on terror,’ the two common features that unite these politicians is their strong liberal tendencies and draconian approach to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, Jacinda Ardern, for example, without the slightest hint of regret, smiled as she said that New Zealand was on its way to becoming a “two-tier society,” divided between those who choose to get the Covid vaccine and those who do not. Currently, residents must scan into stores using a QR code, which isn’t tied to a person’s vaccine status, but rather used for ‘contact tracing.’ Eventually, the Ardern government plans to implement vaccine passports and all of the delightful chaos that will inevitably incur.

In France, another graduate from the Young Global Leaders (YGL), French President Emmanuel Macron, has made it mandatory that visitors to cultural venues, like museums and theaters present a so-called ‘green pass’ to gain entry. Thus far, however, public resistance is stalling any future efforts at preventing the unvaccinated from shopping at the large retail outlets.

“There are protests all the time,” said Peter Kellow, a correspondent from London now residing in Toulouse. “I can use all the shops now. They tried making hypermarkets illegal for the non-vaxxed but backed down.”

“I expect the big companies were losing too much business,” he added.

Meanwhile, across the pond, in the United States, California Governor Gavin Newsom (Class of 2005), after mandating first-in-the-nation school masking and staff vaccination protocols, now wants to enforce vaccinations on children as young as five years old. Protesters gathered at the State Capitol in Sacramento this week in an effort to prevent the mandate from passing. Organizers of the rally emphasized they are not against vaccines, but simply want to have a democratic say in the matter.

A striking thing about the global leaders who passed through Schwab’s tutelage is their relative lack of any special achievements before rising to power. As Wolff further explains in an interview with the RAIR Foundation, “the thing that the Global Leaders graduates have in common is that most of them have very sparse CVs apart from their participation in the program prior to being elevated to positions of power…” Wolff goes on to surmise that this may demonstrate that it is “their connection to Schwab’s institutions that is the decisive factor in launching their careers.”

As shocking as it may be that so many like-minded politicians did an apprenticeship under the direction of Klaus Schwab, that twist of fate pales in comparison with the news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates also fell under the sway of YGL (Class of 2003). Perhaps more than any other person, Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and despite having no medical training whatsoever, has been a staunch proponent of Covid-19 vaccines. The problem here is not the vaccines per se, but rather the massive conflict of interest for the parties involved.

Here we have the secretive World Economic Forum not only grooming young overachievers who go on to advocate on behalf of Mr. Schwab and his technocratic vision for the future (i.e. the Great Reset), but also the business leaders who will profit handsomely from the great global transition, which the pandemic has made possible.

Take, for example, Jeff Bezos, yet another alumnus of YGL. Mr. Bezos saw his personal wealth explode exponentially as small businesses, many of which will never rise from the ashes, were forced to close their doors at the peak of pandemic. Millions of consumers, forced to ‘shelter in place,’ did the only thing possible, which was to flock to online stores, like Amazon.

Again, it is the glaring conflict of interest that makes the story of Klaus Schwab, the WEF and these fine, young protégés, who are perfectly placed at just the right moment in Schwab time, not a little disturbing. Not only did the World Economic Forum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security anticipate with astonishing accuracy the outbreak of a pandemic just two months before it happened with a security exercise dubbed ‘Event 201,’ the predicted health emergency allowed for Schwab’s long sought-after “better world” that he discussed with such enthusiasm in his book, ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset.’

“At the time of writing (June 2020), the pandemic continues to worsen globally,” Schwab writes, once again, with amazing foresight, especially considering the pandemic was just six months old. “Many of us are pondering when things will return to normal. The short response is: never. Nothing will ever return to the ‘broken’ sense of normalcy that prevailed prior to the crisis because the coronavirus pandemic marks a fundamental inflection point in our global trajectory.”

“Some analysts call it a major bifurcation, others refer to a deep crisis of “biblical” proportions,” he continues, “but the essence remains the same: the world as we knew it in the early months of 2020 is no more, dissolved in the context of the pandemic.”

Few other men have had the pleasure of watching their life dream – and a bold one at that – play out in real time as Klaus Schwab has. Indeed, the 83-year-old may just live to see his Great Reset come to fruition in his own lifetime. How much of that was the result of intense planning and preparation, or a random roll of the dice is anybody’s guess, but it may be wise to heed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s keen observation that “in politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

November 22, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

NIH Director Calls For COVID Conspiracists to be “Brought to Justice”

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | November 20, 2021

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has angrily called for anyone who spreads “misinformation” about COVID-19 online to be “brought to justice.”

“Conspiracies are winning here. Truth is losing. That’s a really serious indictment of the way in which our society seems to be traveling,” Collins told the Washington Post.

Citing an onslaught of angry messages directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Collins appears to believe is above criticism, the bureaucrat demanded that those responsible for such behavior should be identified and “brought to justice.”

The article cited one such example of “misinformation” being Fauci’s involvement in barbaric experiments conducted on dogs by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), despite the fact that such cruelty factually occurred under Fauci’s leadership.

While Collins didn’t specify precisely what he meant by “brought to justice,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla previously asserted that individuals who spread false information about COVID vaccines are “criminals” who “have literally cost millions of lives.”

That’s an interesting benchmark given that it was once considered false to claim that COVID vaccines didn’t stop the vaccinated spreading COVID, which is now an all too obvious fact.

Quite what constitutes “misinformation” about COVID-19 is anyone’s guess given that several things that turned out to be plausible or true, such as the origin of the virus behind the Wuhan lab, were once deemed to be “misinformation.”

It seems likely that whatever the National Institutes of Health, Anthony Fauci or Pfizer deem to be “misinformation” will become the standard.

As we previously highlighted, efforts to brand those who question the safety and efficacy of products manufactured by pharmaceutical corporations that have been plagued by a myriad of historical scandals are also underway in the UK.

The Online Safety Bill, described as “the flagship legislation to combat abuse and hatred on the internet,” will apparently include a provision that jails “antivaxers spreading false information that they know to be untrue” for a period of two years.

November 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

PATRIOT PURGE, PART 1

TUCKER CARLSON | November 2nd, 2021

November 19, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Just how rare are ‘rare’ vaccine injuries?

By Harry Dougherty | TCW Defending Freedom | November 19, 2021

‘ULTIMATELY, the mRNA vaccines are an example for that sort of gene therapy. I always like to say, if we had surveyed, two years ago, the public,“would you be willing to take gene or cell therapy and inject it into your body?” we probably would have had a 95 per cent refusal rate. I think this pandemic has opened many people’s eyes to innovation in a way that was maybe not possible before.’

The man who said this is called Stefan Oelrich. He said it publicly, in a speech to the World Health Summit. He is President of Pharmaceuticals at Bayer, one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. That’s right, fact-checkers, Big Pharma just admitted that the Covid19 mRNA vaccines are gene therapy and that most people would not have agreed to be injected with them in normal circumstances.

We are just beginning to see how wise 95 per cent of the public would have been. Indeed, a worryingly higher number of teenagers have died since the vaccine was rolled out to their age group, as Dr Will Jones has noted. There were 351 deaths in teenagers aged between 15 and 19 between week 23 and week 43 2021, that’s 108 more than in the same period last year. Even Fullfact’s attempt to dismiss Dr Jones’s findings was half-hearted. Why wasn’t there a similar rise in age groups that are yet to be offered Covid vaccines? No explanation was suggested.

An Icelandic midfielder collapses on the pitch, a Barcelona striker is forced to consider retirement due to a sudden heart condition, a Slovak ice hockey player dies suddenly midgame, and a member of UB40 dies after a ‘short illness’, all within weeks. Yes, yes, some of these may be coincidences, perhaps all of them. But why would anyone be so quick to rule out the possibility that Covid-19 vaccines played a role in any of these incidents unless they had an agenda or an incentive not to establish a causal link? How many doctors would have the courage to admit that they helped to damage people unnecessarily, even if they had done so in good faith?

Most helpfully, Wikipedia has a page listing the deaths of all association footballers who died while playing, from 1889 to the present. Globally, there were four deaths on the pitch in 2018, two of which were caused by cardiac arrest. There were three deaths on the pitch in 2019 and three again in 2020, all caused by cardiac arrest. In 2021 there were 14. One footballer was killed in a collision, while in another case, that of 15-year-old FC An der Fahner Höhe goalkeeper Bruno Stein, the cause of death isn’t specified. The rest died from cardiac arrest. No other year on the list has had as many deaths on the pitch as 2021. As many footballers died on the pitch in September and October 2021 as died in the whole of 2019 and 2020.

One of the deaths this year was 29-year-old Parma player Guiseppe Perrino, who died in a memorial match for his brother, who also died of cardiac arrest while cycling in 2018. Obviously Guiseppe’s brother’s death could not have been linked to the vaccine, but it strongly suggests that some families are more prone to unexpected heart problems than others, which brings us to the tragic case of Italian siblings Vittoria and Allesandro Campo, both footballers who died from cardiac arrest within two months of each other, in a country where life for the unvaccinated is made as miserable as possible.

According to Italian media sources, Allesandro’s death came two days after he received his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and the coroners did not exclude the possibility that his untimely death was caused by the jab. It’s difficult to know what caused Vittoria’s death since some reports say her mother insisted that Vittoria was not vaccinated and that toxicology reports found drugs in her system, while others claim her father confirmed that both of his children had been vaccinated. But both of these sibling tragedies raise the question as to whether the vaccine triggers heart problems in families that are predisposed to heart conditions. This is the problem with difficult-to-obtain ‘genuine’ medical exemptions for Covid vaccines: you don’t always know if you’re ‘genuinely’ exempt until it’s too late.

Would it really be that surprising if it turned out that a vaccine linked to heart problems was causing heart problems? Just days before Boris Johnson threatened 16- to 17-year-olds with the prospect of another ruined Christmas if they didn’t get their second vaccine dose, Taiwan suspended giving 12- to 17-year-olds the second dose over fears of a link between the Pfizer vaccine and heart inflammation.

In Australia, the Herald Sun reports that dozens of teenagers have developed myocarditis after their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. 10,000 Australians have filed for government compensation after being hospitalised by significant side effects from the Covid jabs. As per usual, these afflictions are dismissed as extremely rare, and minimised as mostly trivial. One account from Australian vaccine injury victim Dan Petrovic gives us a clue as to how difficult it is to get vaccine injuries acknowledged by medical professionals. Despite his vaccine-induced heart inflammation, which left him unable to work, walk or play with his daughter, Mr Petrovic says he does not regret having the vaccine.

Each to their own, I guess, but this makes him a reliable source who cannot be dismissed as an ‘anti-vaxxer’. According to Australia’s News.com, ‘neither his cardiologist nor his GP would submit an adverse event report to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA)’. One doctor said ‘I’m too busy’ while a cardiologist said ‘I cannot make a medical diagnosis, I’m not a practitioner.’

If health professionals are going above and beyond to not link the vaccine with adverse events, how can we be expected to believe that serious adverse reactions are as ‘extremely rare’ as is claimed?

Thankfully, there are some good blokes left in Australia’s political swamp. One is Gerard Rennick, Liberal National Party Senator for Queensland, where unvaccinated citizens are now banned from doing just about anything that makes life worth living. If you try to message through a question to the Queensland Health authority’s Facebook page, their automated chatbot will suggest ‘Try saying something like . . . Can I visit my family?’

Rennick is no lightweight. He has spent the latter half of this year advocating for the ever-growing number of young Australians who have suffered severe, life-changing adverse reactions to medical procedures they took under the threat of living a ‘lonely and miserable‘ life, as the Queensland health chief Chris Perry put it.

There are many on Senator Rennick’s Facebook account. Look them in the eyes and tell them that their avoidable life-changing injuries are insignificant.

Here is one story he shared, from Candice:

‘Prior to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, I was a very healthy/fit 38-year-old female that ran and exercised 2-3 times per week and lived a healthy lifestyle. On the 28/8/2021, I had my 2nd Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. The day after the vaccine, I developed a headache, neck pain, swollen lymph nodes under my arms and flu-like symptoms. On the 3rd day after the vaccine, I woke through the night with heart palpitations and sweating. Throughout that day I went for a walk and experienced a very sharp pain across the upper and the left-hand side of my chest. This lasted for approximately 20 minutes. That night I woke two times again with heart palpitations and sweating. I presented at the hospital the next day and they took blood tests. My bloods showed the Troponin enzyme that should be at ‘0’ as ‘2500’. This indicated damage to my heart.

‘After multiple tests, it was determined through an MRI that I had developed Myopericarditis due to the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. I was discharged from hospital 4 days later with medication to reduce the inflammation around my heart and was told I would not be able to run or exercise for around 3-6 months and will be under the care of a cardiologist for this period.’

Another, from Andrew, who was hospitalised by the AstraZeneca vaccine:

‘If winning lotto was as easy as getting a so-called “rare” adverse reaction from these vaccines that are supposedly voluntary but if I don’t get it I can’t do my job, therefore, I can’t put food on the table or pay the rent/mortgage, I’d be a millionaire.’

From Matt:

‘It has now been 10 weeks in hospital and I am still not able to walk. I was admitted 4 days after receiving my AZ vaccine previously being a 30 year old with no medical history to speak of, which left me with loss of function and sensation on my right side.’

From Adam:

‘5 days in hospital after 2nd Pfizer shot, server chest pain, shortness of breath and pain running down arm. ecg was out and bloods were elevated. was diagnosed with pericarditis. With my stay in cardiac ward I was wired up to the heart monitor the whole time, countless blood tests, ecgs, X-rays, CT scan, ultrasound, plus taking 20 tablets a day . . . Now that I’m out of hospital was told to take certain meds for 3 months and take it easy. Doctors and cardiologist wouldn’t go into detail on results.’

This, from Kym, a 38-year-old mother with no prior health problems, is perhaps the most important, because it demonstrates the unwillingness of the medical profession to admit that they have needlessly harmed countless people who would likely not have had any major complications from Covid19. Please share these accounts with your MP.

‘Monday 25/10 discharge dr verbally confirmed that these symptoms are related to the Pfizer vaccine. When I asked for the diagnosis written down on my discharge papers, the tone in the room changed! When asking the doctor for this verbal diagnosis to be put into writing, the answer was: “No, there is no need, this is normal and are just symptoms of the vaccine.” I informed the dr that my “symptoms” were also called “an adverse event” and must be reported to the TGA or QLD Health. Again the response was, “These are just symptoms of your vaccine not an adverse event, they are two different things.” I continued to push the issue with reporting this “event”. I then asked what my prognosis was and when these tachycardia events would subside. The doctor responded, “We don’t know, we don’t have data”, to which I responded that this is why I was pushing the point to have this event documented and reported. Immediately after this question, the doctor stated to me that I was “just admitted for reassurance!” This doctor did not admit me, an Emergency Dr did, this doctor had only met me for 5 minutes, stood at the end of my bed, no physical exam conducted. I was discharged with my papers stating “confident to be vaccination Pfizer-related symptoms/ reported to QLD Health re: adverse following injection”.’

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

The unvaccinated – lock ’em up!

By Laura Perrins | TCW Defending Freedom |  November 18, 2021

WHAT do you do with people who refuse to do what they’re told by our great overlords in government?

Why, you lock them up, of course.

If the latest opinion polls are to be believed, 58 per cent of Brits would support an Austria-style lockdown of the unvaccinated, rising to 63 per cent among Conservatives and 72 per cent for pensioners. Note, please, that only children of 12 and under are exempt from the lockdown in Austria. One Austrian official expressed doubts that such a lockdown could be enforced since it applies to only part of the population. Don’t worry about that, the interior minister said, the police will be able to carry out thorough checks. So it’s a return to ‘papers please’ in Austria for a minority. This is a disgraceful turn of events in Europe.

Forcing this kind of medical apartheid on a section of your population who will not play ball would have been unthinkable in Britain just a few years ago. Today various media outlets and of course the polling companies are falling over themselves trying to commission polls that say yes, it’s perfectly normal to demand that your neighbour be put under house arrest. Well, I’ve got news for you control freaks: it’s not!

It was bad enough when the government and members of the public wanted to deprive us of breathing fresh air by forcing us all to wear useless face masks, but the idea that it is morally right to demand your neighbours stay at home because they will not sacrifice their bodily integrity and consent to a vaccine that they have refused in good conscience is outrageous.

The selfishness of these people, people who would like to deprive their neighbours of their liberty, should not at this stage surprise us. The hallmark of the entire lockdown hysteria and fear porn has been selfishness dressed up as moral superiority.

It is also notable that 72 per cent of pensioners would either strongly support or somewhat support locking down their unvaccinated kids and grandchildren. Given how much teenagers have already sacrificed in this Covid mania, it once again is a very sad reflection on the older generation that they seek to jail their own grandchildren who have not consented to a vaccine that’s been around for about two minutes.

We have discussed whether or not the lockdown was a lockdown to save the baby boomers before and I received some pushback from those of the generation who pointed out that they did not support the lockdown. However it is also true that many got in touch with me privately to say that sadly they were indeed a minority and that there was overwhelming support amongst their boomer friends for a national lockdown.

The question is, what is the aim of this sort of medical apartheid? It surely cannot be to save the vaccinated as it would be ludicrous to lockdown the unvaccinated to protect those who have already been vaccinated against the illness they sought a vaccine for. We are on very shaky ground if the aim is to protect the unvaccinated from themselves. We don’t ban the obese from McDonald’s or alcoholics from pubs. It would seem ridiculous to ban those who refuse the vaccine from going about their daily lives. It is also morally indefensible to ban people from going about their daily lives in case they get ill. I didn’t think ‘Our NHS’ discriminated like that.

The only other argument is that it will somehow protect the health system as it’s more likely that the unvaccinated will end up in hospital. In fact frequently the vaccinated do end up in hospital, as for once the ‘the science’ is pretty clear  (and acknowledged even by the PM) that two doses of the vaccine do not stop one contracting the virus, nor do they stop person-to-person transmission, nor do they stop hospitalisation, while the jury is out on whether they mitigate the severity of the disease.

All in all, this is a very dark turn in our current Covid regime although it is unsurprising that yet again it is Austria and, it seems likely, Germany who are the first to introduce a medical apartheid.

Although I think it is unlikely that the Conservatives would introduce this kind of discriminatory lockdown and abuse of people’s bodily integrity and medical privacy, we must yet again not give in when it comes to these totalitarian measures being thought about or implemented by our government.

Even if such a draconian move is not made by Boris Johnson, it is unfortunate that the whole idea of medical apartheid can even be thought about in Britain. It causes serious damage to the social fabric in terms of separating those who have been compliant with the government and the medical establishment from those who wish to take a more prudent approach.

What I will not do is engage in a sort of apartheid system of my own or hold any ill will for those who have in their good conscience decided to be vaccinated.

I respect your decision and all we ask for is an equal amount of respect when it comes to our decision as to what we should or should not subject our bodies to.

The basic principles of civil liberties and medical ethics are well established. We will have to fight to conserve these principles that make up a civilised society and liberal democracy.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sweden’s “Vaccine Passes” should teach us an important lesson.

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | November 18, 2021

The Swedish Public Health Agency (PHA) has announced that, starting next month, gatherings of more than 100 people will require “Covid passes” showing vaccination status.

Unlike similar schemes in other countries, a negative test will not be accepted as a substitute – either you’re vaccinated, or you can’t enter the venue.

There’s no talk yet of including restaurants, bars or cafes in this… but it is still early.

The PHA published a press release yesterday, detailing the plans. Quoted in The Local, Sweden’s culture minister Amanda Lind said:

Being able to use vaccination certificates is something the government has been preparing for a long time. You have previously heard me talk about vaccination certificates as a “plan B”. Now that situation is here,”

The vaccination pass comes on the heels of announcing the re-introduction of other “anti-COVID” measures, including limitations on mass indoor gatherings. The pass is being described as a way to get around these restrictions by “guaranteeing that participants are vaccinated”.

… and so Sweden falls.

From the beginning of the “pandemic” Sweden has been almost an outlier. Their refusal to lockdown was held up as an example of irresponsible laissez-faire libertarianism in the mainstream press, but made it an important touchstone for lockdown sceptics who viewed it as a bastion of common sense.

It turns out neither is true.

While Germany, Austria, New Zealand, Canada (and others) have gone full fascist brutally suddenly, Sweden is taking the scenic route. Rather than refusing to comply with the narrative, Sweden is simply using a looser net to catch the stragglers.

Those championing Sweden’s approach to Covid have just been caught in a supranational game of “good cop, bad cop”.

It shouldn’t really come as a surprise, the warning signs were all there.

For starters, the sheer amount of coverage given to the “Swedish approach” should have tipped people off.

Let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that the countries that have really rejected the Covid narrative in its entirety – such as Belarus – are never in the news.

In fact the governments that genuinely refused to play ball all had colour revolutions (or attempted ones at least), or saw their presidents die of sudden heart attacks.

Sweden suffered no such bad luck. Because it was playing its part.

For over a year and a half, Sweden has been portrayed as the calm voice in a room of panicking hysterics. They ‘refused’ to lockdown, and their “covid deaths” never reached the disastrous predictions of the modellers, whilst their economy suffered markedly less than the rest of Europe.

Playing that level-headed role has bought them credibility in Lockdown-sceptic circles, which can now be parlayed into an argument for vaccine passes: “Oh you hate vaccine passports? Well you love Sweden and they have them there!”

It’s all about manipulation – getting the doubters to concede to your narratives bit by bit without realizing they are doing so.

By supporting Sweden’s no lockdown approach, because it seems relatively sane, you concede, without fully realizing it, that there is a pandemic, and it does require some kind of intervention.

The same can be said for the “alternate therapies” and “pre-existing immunity” arguments.

Although both seem to have scientific evidence supporting them, the argument is built on a priori assumptions which concede the basic reality of the pandemic narrative.

And you will never win if you play by those rules. This is their pandemic and they can reinvent it in any way they choose.

Think promoting ivermectin is a good way of opposing the vaxx without alienating the believers? No!

You have to follow rules. They don’t. They can just invent a new “variant” out of wholecloth. One that is “resistant to ivermectin”.

And then what do you do?

It’s a simple and important lesson, hopefully, forced home by now:

Don’t part-accept irrationality in an effort to be reasonable. Don’t try and meet insanity in the middle. Deal only in what you can research and observe yourself.

Don’t attempt to compromise with the establishment, because they will never compromise back. There is no middle way.

Never, EVER, accept part of their narrative on trust.

Sweden should teach us never to pick sides in the Covid game, because it’s all rigged and the only way to win is not to play.

November 18, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

We Must Not Shut Down University Campuses Again

By Dr. Alberto Giubilini | Collateral Global | November 17, 2021

Like many other pandemic measures, the extended closures of university campuses has been a massive social and public health experiment.

The results in the report published this week in Collateral Global this week on the impact of pandemic restrictions on university students’ mental health – sadly – should not be too surprising. Young people were not a priority during the pandemic. It is quite telling that most countries – and most people – did not change strategies and attitudes after the initial uncertainty, as we gained more evidence about how minuscule young people’s risk is from Covid. We continued imposing population-wide restrictions, including the closures of schools and university campuses, and moving to online-only teaching, even when it became clear that these restrictions would not benefit young people. They did not need protection from Covid as much as they needed protection from the effects of policy responses on their mental health and their psycho-physical development more generally. This report emphasises once more how we failed to protect young people’s well-being from the inevitable harms of prolonged restrictions.

Public health policies are justified to the extent that they produce significant enough collective benefits without disproportionately burdening certain groups. Admittedly, in situations of uncertainty, a rigorous cost-benefit analysis is not always possible. And yet, the stricter the restrictions, the stronger the duty to rigorously gather real-time evidence on what costs they impose on different groups. Like many other pandemic measures, the extended closures of university campuses have been a massive social and public health experiment. But even experiments require constant interrogation as to whether they are working, and a measure of their success must be the continuous evaluation of whether they are creating collateral damage. It seems we didn’t want to see or give due consideration to such damage.

The prolonged closure of university campuses and the decision to move online all the teaching, socializing, and formal and informal interactions that play a central role in young people’s psycho-physical development resulted in enormous costs that we could not see on our computer screens. With the report this week, the evidence of the significant damage we caused to them becomes more apparent – for example, with the studies showing one in three students reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Those of us working in academic institutions (or better, working on that non-existent space that is Zoom) could not see what was happening beyond those discrete windows through which we were delivering classes or supervising students from our homes. When the world exists only to the extent that it appears on a computer screen, it is easy to forget that students’ existence and experiences do not end the moment they disappear from view. When Zoom meetings and classes are over and the computer shuts down, the young people remain out of sight. Many were sitting alone in their rooms, deprived of their lives as students and, indeed, as whole persons, at a developmental stage when experiences and social interactions play a critical role in helping them understand themselves and the world around them. Although we could not see that, it should not have been difficult to imagine the damage already when the cameras turned off.

There may be limited utility at this point in blaming those responsible for the public health decisions that completely disregarded this potential (and foreseeable) damage to students. It also might be pointless to assign culpability to the academics who kept (and continue to keep) supporting tight restrictions and advocating for online teaching from the comfort of their homes while relegating students to social isolation. But what is undoubtedly useful, in light of this week’s report, is to look ahead as winter in the Northern Hemisphere approaches and more people begin putting restrictions back on the table.

Before making any decisions, we must acknowledge that we don’t need to run social and public health experiments on students any more. We have data now about the harm we have caused to them. And we now know the threat that closing campuses and moving the whole student experience online can pose.

Any decision to close university campuses at this point can no longer be construed as an innocent mistake – if, indeed, it ever was.

Dr. Alberto Giubilini is a Senior Research Fellow in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford.

Collateral Global is a U.K.-based charity researching the collateral impacts of the mandated non-pharmaceutical interventions.

November 17, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Kyle Rittenhouse, Project Veritas, and the Inability to Think in Terms of Principles

By Glenn Greenwald | November 16, 2021

The FBI has executed a string of search warrants targeting the homes and cell phones of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and several others associated with that organization. It should require no effort to understand why it is a cause for concern that a Democratic administration is using the FBI to aggressively target an organization devoted to obtaining and reporting incriminating information about Democratic Party leaders and their liberal allies.

That does not mean the FBI investigation is inherently improper. Journalists are no more entitled than any other citizen to commit crimes. If there is reasonable cause to believe O’Keefe and his associates committed federal crimes, then an FBI investigation is warranted as it is for any other case. But there has been no evidence presented that O’Keefe or Project Veritas employees have done anything of the sort, nor any explanation provided to justify these invasive searches. That we should want and need that is self-evident: if the Trump-era FBI had executed search warrants inside the newsrooms of The New York Times and NBC News, we would be demanding evidence to prove it was legally justified. Yet virtually nothing has been provided to justify the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and his colleagues, and the little that has been disclosed by way of justifying this makes no sense.

The FBI investigation concerns the theft last year of the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, yet Project Veritas, while admitting they received a copy from an anonymous source, chose not to publish that diary because they were unable to verify it. Nobody and nothing thus far suggests that Project Veritas played any role in its acquisition, legal or otherwise. There is a cryptic reference in the search warrant to transmitting stolen material across state lines, but it is not illegal for journalists to receive and use material illegally acquired by a source: the most mainstream organizations spent the last month touting documents pilfered from Facebook by their heroic “whistleblower” Frances Haugen.

On Monday night, we produced an in-depth video report examining the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe and Project Veritas and the dangers it presents (as we do for all of our Rumble videos, the transcript will soon be made available to subscribers here; for now, you can watch the video at the Rumble link). One of the primary topics of our report was the authoritarian tactic that is typically used to justify governmental attacks on those who report news and disseminate information: namely, to decree that the target is not a real journalist and therefore has no entitlement to claim the First Amendment guarantee of a free press.

This not-a-real-journalist tactic was and remains the primary theory used by those who justify the ongoing attempt to imprison Julian Assange. In demanding Assange’s prosecution under the Espionage Act, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions.” Yet the five-term Senator insisted: “but he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt.”

This not-a-real-journalist slogan was also the one used by both the CIA and the corporate media against myself and my colleagues in both the Snowden reporting we did in 2013, as well as the failed attempt to criminally prosecute me in 2020 for the year-long Brazil exposés we did: punishing them is not an attack on press freedom because they are not journalists and what they did is not journalism.

What is most striking about this weapon is that — like the campaign to agitate for more censorship — it is led by journalists. It is the corporate media that most aggressively insists that those who are independent, those who are outsiders, those who do not submit to their institutional structures are not real journalists the way they are, and thus are not entitled to the protections of the First Amendment. In order to create a framework to deny Project Veritas’s status as journalists, The New York Times claimed last week that anyone who uses undercover investigations (as Veritas does) is automatically a non-journalist because that entails lying — even though, just two years earlier, the same paper heralded numerous news outlets such as Al Jazeera and Mother Jones for using undercover investigations to accomplish what they called “compelling” reporting.

I am very well-acquainted with this repressive tactic of trying to decree who is and is not a real journalist for purposes of constitutional protection. Many have forgotten — given the awards it ultimately ended up winning — that the NSA/Snowden reporting we did in 2013 was originally maligned as quasi-criminal not just by Obama national security officials such as James Clapper but also by The New York Times. The first profile the Paper of Record published about me the day after the reporting began referred to me in the headline as an “Anti-Surveillance Activist” and then, once backlash ensued, it was changed to “Blogger” (the original snide, disqualifying headline is still visible in the URL).

The Guardian, Jan. 29, 2014

As the New York Times‘ own Public Editor at the time objected, by purposely denying me the label “journalist,” the paper was knowingly increasing the risks that I could be prosecuted for my reporting. Indeed, recent reporting from Yahoo! News about CIA plots to kidnap or murder Julian Assange reported that denying Assange the label “journalist,” and then re-defining what I and my colleague Laura Poitras were doing from “journalist” to “information broker,” would enable the U.S. Government to spy on or even prosecute us without having to worry about that inconvenient “free press” guarantee of the First Amendment.

New York Times, June 6, 2013

All of this demonstrates how dangerous it is to invoke this very same not-a-real-journalist tactic against O’Keefe and Project Veritas. Yet, if one warns of the dangers of the FBI’s actions, that is precisely what one hears from liberals, from Democrats and from their allies in the media: the FBI’s targeting of Project Veritas has nothing to do with press freedoms since they’re not real journalists. They are invoking the authoritarian theory that maintains that the state (or, in this case, the FBI) is vested with the power to decree who is a “real journalist” — whatever that means — and who is not.

There are so many ironies to the use of this framework. So often, employees of media corporations who have never broken a major story in their lives (and never will) revel in accusing independent journalists who have broken numerous major stories (such as Assange) of not being real journalists. At the height of the Snowden reporting, I went on Meet the Press in July, 2013, only for the host, David Gregory, to suggest that I ought to be in prison alongside my source Edward Snowden because I was not really a journalist the way David Gregory was. At the time, Frank Rich, writing in New York Magazine, noted how bizarre it was that the TV personality David Gregory assumed he was a real journalist, whereas I was a non-journalist who belonged in prison for my reporting, given that Gregory — like most employees of large media corporations — had never broken any story in his life. Rich used a Q&A format to make the point this way:

On Sunday, Meet the Press host David Gregory all but accused the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald of aiding and abetting Edward Snowden’s fugitive travels, asking, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” And, speaking to his larger point, do you see Greenwald as a journalist or an activist in this episode? And does it matter?

Is David Gregory a journalist? As a thought experiment, name one piece of news he has broken, one beat he’s covered with distinction, and any memorable interviews he’s conducted that were not with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, or Chuck Schumer. Meet the Press has fallen behind CBS’s Face the Nation, much as Today has fallen to ABC’s Good Morning America, and my guess is that Gregory didn’t mean to sound like Joe McCarthy (with a splash of the oiliness of Roy Cohn) but was only playing the part to make some noise. In any case, his charge is preposterous. As a columnist who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, Greenwald was doing the job of a journalist — and the fact that he’s an “activist” journalist (i.e., an opinion journalist, like me and a zillion others) is irrelevant to that journalistic function. . . . [I]t’s easier for Gregory to go after Greenwald, a self-professed outsider who is not likely to attend the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and works for a news organization based in London. Presumably if Gregory had been around 40 years ago, he also would have accused the Times of aiding and abetting the enemy when it published Daniel Ellsberg’s massive leak of the Pentagon Papers. In any case, Greenwald demolished Gregory on air and on Twitter (“Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?”).

At the time — both in terms of that exchange with Gregory and my overall reporting on the NSA — I had significant support from the liberal-left (though it was far from universal, given that we were exposing mass, indiscriminate, illegal spying by the Obama administration). But few believed that I ought to be prosecuted on the grounds that, somehow, I was not a real journalist.

So why are so many of them now willing to endorse this same exact theory when it comes to O’Keefe and Project Veritas, or even to justify the prosecution of Julian Assange? The answer is obvious. They are unwilling and/or incapable of thinking in terms of principles, ones that apply universally to everyone regardless of their ideology. Their thought process never even arrives at that destination. When the subject of the FBI’s attacks on O’Keefe is raised, or the DOJ’s prosecution of Assange is discussed, they ask themselves one question and only one question, and that ends the inquiry. It is the exclusive and determinative factor: do I like James O’Keefe and his politics? Do I like Julian Assange and his politics?

This primitive, principle-free, personality-driven prism is the only way they are capable of understanding the world. Because they dislike O’Keefe and/or Assange, they instantly side with whoever is targeting them — the FBI, the DOJ, the security state services — and believe that anyone who defends them is defending a right-wing extremist rather than defending the non-ideological, universally applicable principle of press freedoms. They think only in terms of personalities, not principles.

The FBI’s actions against Project Veritas and O’Keefe are so blatantly alarming that press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Freedom of the Press Foundation (on whose Board I sit) have expressed grave concerns about it, including on their social media accounts for all to see. Even the ACLU — which these days is loathe to speak out in favor of any person or group disliked by their highly partisan liberal donor base — issued a very carefully hedged statement that made clear how much they despise Project Veritas but said: “Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom” (at least thus far, the ACLU has just quietly stuck this statement on its website and not uttered a word about it on its social media accounts, where most of its liberal donors track what they do, but the fact that they felt compelled to say anything in defense of this right-wing boogieman demonstrates how extreme the FBI’s actions are). The federal judge overseeing the warrants has temporarily enjoined the FBI from extracting any more information from the cell phones seized from O’Keefe and other Project Veritas employees pending a determination of their legal justification.

Committee to Protect Journalists, Nov. 15, 2021

The reason this is such a grave press freedom attack is two-fold. First, as indicated, any attempt to anoint oneself the arbiter of who is and is not a “real journalist” for purposes of First Amendment protection is inherently tyrannical. Which institutions are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to decree who is a real journalist meriting First Amendment protection and who falls outside as something else?

But there is a much more significant problem with this framework: namely, the question of who is and is not a real journalist is completely irrelevant to the First Amendment. None of the rights in the Constitution, including press freedom, was intended to apply only to a small, cloistered, credentialed, privileged group of citizens. The exact opposite was true: the only reason they are valuable as rights is because they enjoy universal application, protecting all citizens.

Indeed, one of the most passionate grievances of the American colonists was that nobody was permitted to use the press unless first licensed by the British Crown. Conversely, the most celebrated journalism of the time was undertaken by people like Thomas Paine — who never worked for an established journalistic outlet in his life — as he circulated the pamphlet Common Sense that railed against the abuses of the King. What was protected by the First Amendment was not a small, privileged caste bearing the special label “journalists,” but rather the activity of a free press. The proof of this is clear and ample, and is set forth in the video we produced on Monday night.

But none of this matters. If you express concern for the FBI’s targeting of O’Keefe, it will be instantly understood not as a concern about any of these underlying principles but instead as an endorsement of O’Keefe’s politics, journalism, and O’Keefe himself. The same is true for the discourse surrounding Kyle Rittenhouse. If you say that — after having actually watched the trial — you believe the state failed to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in light of his defense of self-defense, many will disbelieve your sincerity, will insist that your view is based not in some apolitical assessment of the evidence or legal principles about what the state must do in order to imprison a citizen, but rather that you must be a “supporter” of Rittenhouse himself, his ideology (whatever it is assumed to be), and the political movement with which he, in their minds, is associated.

On some level, this is pure projection: those who are incapable of assessing political or legal conflicts through a prism of principles rather than personalities assume that everyone is plagued by the same deficiency. Since they decide whether to support or oppose the FBI’s actions toward O’Keefe based on their personal view of O’Keefe rather than through reference to any principles, they assume that this is how everyone is determining their views of that situation. Similarly, since they base their views on whether Rittenhouse should be convicted or acquitted based on how they personally feel about Rittenhouse and his perceived politics rather than the evidence presented at the trial (which most of them have not watched), they assume that anyone advocating for an acquittal can be doing so only because they like Rittenhouse’s politics and believe that his actions were heroic.

In sum, those who view the world through a prism bereft of principles — either due to lack of intellectual capacity or ethics or both — assume everyone’s world view is similarly craven. It is this same stunted mindset that saddles our discourse with so much illogic and so many twisted presumptions, such as the inability to distinguish between defending someone’s right to express a particular opinion and agreement with that opinion. In a world in which ideology, partisan loyalty, tribal affiliations, in-group identity and personality-driven assessments predominate, there is no room for principles, universally applicable rights, or basic reason.

November 16, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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