New York’s New Gov Threatens To Replace Unvaccinated Hospital Workers With ‘Foreigners’
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | September 23, 2021
New York’s first female governor Kathy Hochul, who took the reins in the Empire State after her predecessor and former boss, Andrew Cuomo, finally resigned, is showing the state’s recalcitrant healthcare workers just how understanding and progressive she can be.
During a press briefing with reporters in Rochester Wednesday, Hochul told a group of reporters that she hoped all unvaccinated workers would meet Monday’s deadline to get the jab, or lose their jobs.
For those who continue to resist – including nearly 20% of the state’s hospital and nursing-home workers – they will be replaced. Possibly by foreign workers.
Faced with this, it makes sense to wonder how NY State, which has no immigration-related authority, could even credibly make such a threat? But Hochul says there have been conversations with the Department of State (albeit on a “limited basis”) about the possibility of doling out emergency visas to foreign workers.
“To those who won’t, we’ll be replacing people. And I have a plan that’s going to be announced very shortly,” she said.
“We’ve identified a whole range of opportunities we have to help supplement them.”
Hochul said state officials were “working closely with various hospital systems to find out where we can get other individuals to come in and supplement places like nursing homes.”
“We’re also reaching out to the Department of State to find out about visas for foreign workers, on a limited basis, to bring more nurses over here,” she said.
Per the Department of Health’s records, 19% of the state’s hospital workers remained unvaccinated as of Sept. 15, and 18% of nursing home employees remained unvaccinated as of Wednesday.
Starting Monday, employers can fire unvaccinated workers who don’t have a “valid medical exemption” (though employees who claim religious exemption are also immune until Oct. 12 due to a temporary injunction issued by a federal judge in Utica).
The plaintiffs in that case, almost all of them Catholic, oppose vaccines because they “employ aborted fetus cell lines in their testing, development, or production.”
Though the US Conference of Bishops says it’s okay for Catholics to take these vaccines if no alternatives are available, and Pope Francis has of course spoken out in favor of vaccination.
Circling back to the situation in New York, while Hochul is probably reveling in her first opportunity to play “hardball” – a game for which her predecessor was famous – New York health workers can probably rest easy – at least when it comes to the foreign worker threat. The State Department couldn’t process all those SIVs for Afghan collaborators in a timely manner. What makes you think they’ll be able to dole them out to foreign workers, who probably also haven’t been vaccinated. Where does Hochul think these foreign workers are going to come from? Europe?
Pending International Treaty Empowering The WHO
By Dr Urmie Ray B.A., M.A., Mmath, Ph.d. | Principia Scientific | September 23, 2021
Between 29 November and 1 December 2021, member states are meeting in a special session with the World Health Organisation to discuss, possibly sign, a new treaty on pandemic preparedness and response.
This decision was taken in March 2021 and backed by 26 nations, among which Australia, Canada, Iceland, Norway, Republic of Korea, South Africa, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay and Member States of the European Union.1
To be noted is the absence of Russia, China, and India among these 26.
The International Health Regulations (2005)[i] signed by 196 countries already provide States the legal right to:
“– review travel history in affected areas;
– review proof of medical examination and any laboratory analysis;
– require medical examinations;
– review proof of vaccination or other prophylaxis;
– require vaccination or other prophylaxis;
– place suspect persons under public health observation;
– implement quarantine or other health measures for suspect persons;
– implement isolation and treatment where necessary of affected persons;
– implement tracing of contacts of suspect or affected persons;
– refuse entry of suspect and affected persons;
– refuse entry of unaffected persons to affected areas; and
– implement exit screening and/or restrictions on persons from affected areas.”
In other words, all the measures applied round the world since 2020, including mandatory vaccination, are in effect legal under this former treaty.
In particular, it critically changes the definition of “quarantine” from that in the 1969 IHR. There, it is used only in the expression “in quarantine” defined to be a “state or condition during which measures are applied by a health authority to a … means of transport or container, to prevent the spread of disease, reservoirs of disease or vectors of disease from the object of quarantine”.[i]
The 2005 revised IHR use the term by itself, and define it as “the restriction of activities and/or separation from others of suspect persons who are not ill or of suspect baggage, containers, conveyances or goods in such a manner as to prevent the possible spread of infection or contamination”.
This represents a subtle but critical shift from protection of the community to restriction of individual liberties.
The implementation of quarantine and other coercive measures on all, including surveillance and vaccination, is legalized: the expression “suspect persons” criminalizes every individual, both healthy and unhealthy.
Indeed, it covers anyone “considered by a State Party as having been exposed, or possibly exposed, to a public health risk and that could be a possible source of spread of disease”. Of significance is the use of “possibly” and “possible”, hence not just anyone definitely known to be a risk factor.
So Why The Need For A New Treaty?
The answer was given by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “It’s the one major change, Tedros said, that would do the most to boost global health security and also empower the World Health Organization.”[i]
The 2005 revised IHR still leave some authority to States and require certain conditions for a health event in a particular State to be considered sufficiently serious globally for the State to be forced to communicate it to WHO. Once communicated, it becomes the prerogative of the director general of WHO to determine whether it “constitutes a public health emergency”, but in collaboration with that particular State.
Although it should be added that in case of disagreement, the director general decides after consultation with the emergency committee of WHO, and passed a certain period no State can reject or emit reservations about the IHR or any later amendments. Still, to some extent, measures implemented remain the result of a dialogue between “IHR focal points” in each country and “WHO IHR contact points”.
What is particularly important is that the above listed measures, although rendered legal by the IHR, can under this treaty, only be recommended by the WHO, not imposed, and that it is up to the States to proceed towards their imposition, and to verify they are followed by means already existing in their respective countries.[ii]
The new treaty would address the above “weaknesses” of the IHR as they are considered to be, by ensuring “independent verification, monitoring, and compliance”. Given the clearly expressed end of empowering the WHO, should one conclude that “independent” means under the authority of WHO rather than the States themselves?[i]
Further the IHR cover “public health hazards and public health emergencies of international concern”, whereas the treaty will concern “all hazards”, not just pandemics. In the latter case, it would take over from the IHR once a pandemic is officially declared by the WHO.[ii]
This said, the treaty would presumably also make clear the idea expressed in the 2007 CDC “Interim Pre-pandemic planning guidance”,[i] namely overruling the need of a pandemic to implement restrictive measures. All that would be needed would be for an event to be declared a “public health emergency of pandemic potential”.
Given that any future event is always hypothetical, does this enable the maintenance of the measures for an indeterminate period? For it can always be claimed that a pandemic will occur especially were the measures lifted. This raises many questions, all the more so as the event would no long need to be of “international concern as in the current IHR”. “Measures”, as advised, should also go beyond the current scope of IHR”, in particular to cover the production and supply of vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments”.[ii]
The treaty would unlike the IHR also go beyond sanitary issues and allow the implementation of measures against “social and economic disruptions” as well as “broader disaster risk”.[i]
Would this in effect not only make it legal to put an end to criticisms, and thus to the freedom of expression, and make it possible to control any public antagonism against restrictive measures through “urgent international assistance”,[ii] namely not just by national police or military forces, but international ones?
In short, would the treaty not provide the international legal framework for derogation from the civil and political rights guaranteed “even in time of emergency threatening the life of the nation” by The Syracuse Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights drafted in 1984,[iii] namely:
“the right to life; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent; freedom from slavery or involuntary servitude; the right not be be imprisoned for contractual debt; the right not to be convicted or sentenced to a heavier penalty by virtue of retroactive criminal legislation; the right to recognition as a person before the law; and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These rights are not derogable under any conditions even for the asserted purpose of preserving the life of the nation”?
For the Syracuse Principles only ensure that “No state party shall” in any circumstance “derogate from the Covenant’s” above guarantees”. However, according to the new treaty, would the WHO, possibly together with the help of other international bodies, not become an occupying planetary power, with each State a collaborating subservient unit, like France in 1940, and hence without any power to ensure that non-derogable rights are protected?
Last but not least, “[t]rying to revise the IHR would be a long process and take several years. … In addition, any amendment made to the IHR will enter into force only two years after its adoption. A world in crisis cannot afford to wait this long.”[i] Why such a rush to get the treaty ratified?
It should not be forgotten that among the main contributors of WHO are the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and the vaccine alliance (GAVI). It established in 2000 and whose initial funding it essentially provided – a “unique public-private partnership … bring[ing] together key UN agencies, governments, the vaccine industry, private sector and civil society”.[i]
References
[1] https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA74/A74_ACONF7-en.pdf
[1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/international-health-regulations#tab=tab_1
[1] https://www.who.int/csr/ihr/WHA58-en.pdf
[1] https://www.who.int/csr/ihr/WHA58-en.pdf
[1] Ibid.
[1] https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/cbn/2007/cbnreport_02072007.html
[1] Ibid.
[1] Ibid.
Fighting Vaccine Mandates – #SolutionsWatch
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Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
While the UK is supposedly dropping their vaccine passport idea (for now), things are looking bleak in country after country as people all around the world are facing the threat of vaccine mandates. Today on #SolutionsWatch James explores the array of solutions that are on the table to thwart this threat.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee or Download the mp4
SHOW NOTES:
What’s Going on in Japan? – Questions For Corbett #078
Japan’s vaccine passports: Here’s what you need to know
Suga challenger in LDP leadership race vows huge COVID relief package (Kishida calls for vaccine passport)
UK Government drops plans for domestic vaccine passports
Did Ayn Rand defeat vaccine passports?
President Biden Announces Vaccination Mandate for Employers
Australian Premier Dan Andrews: “we are going to lock out the unvaccinated”
Italy makes COVID-19 pass mandatory for all workers | DW News
Surging Delta variant: France and Greece introduce mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers
Alberta to launch proof-of-vaccination program, declares health emergency
Form for Employees Whose Employers Are Requiring Covid-19 Injections
HomeRemedySupply comment on September Open Thread
America’s Frontline Doctor’s Legal Team’s “Vaccines and the Law” page
Vaccine religious exemption template downloads from Gab.com
Doctors for COVID Ethics example forms, templates, letters and other resources
Legal principle of non discrimination
The COVID-19 “Vaccine” and the Nuremberg Code. Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide
No, COVID-19 vaccines do not violate the Nuremberg Code
Bioethics and the New Eugenics
United Airlines warns of unpaid leave for staff given religious vaccine exemptions
Religious exemption to vaccine mandates may be difficult to obtain, as Amish case shows
How To Meet Like-Minded People
Here’s How To Still Dine At A Restaurant UNVAXXED!! Suss Them Out & Find Out Who’s Cool!!
1000s take over Time Square in NYC for the protest against the mandatory shot
Beware of Fake “Resistance” to Mandates
Executive Orders and How to Stop Them
James Corbett – Ernest Hancock with Arizona Dara (Solutions; BlackMarketFridays.com)
New Proof Emerges of the Biden Family Emails: a Definitive Account of the CIA/Media/BigTech Fraud
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer warns that emails and other documents reported on by The NY Post about Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China may be “Russian disinformation,” Oct. 16, 2020.
By Glenn Greenwald | September 22, 2021
A severe escalation of the war on a free internet and free discourse has taken place over the last twelve months. Numerous examples of brute and dangerous censorship have emerged: the destruction by Big Tech monopolies of Parler at the behest of Democratic politicians at the time that it was the most-downloaded app in the country; the banning of the sitting president from social media; and the increasingly explicit threats from elected officials in the majority party of legal and regulatory reprisals in the event that tech platforms do not censor more in accordance with their demands.
But the most severe episode of all was the joint campaign — in the weeks before the 2020 election — by the CIA, Big Tech, the liberal wing of the corporate media and the Democratic Party to censor and suppress a series of major reports about then-presidential frontrunner Joe Biden. On October 14 and then October 15, 2020, The New York Post, the nation’s oldest newspaper, published two news reports on Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine and China that raised serious questions about his integrity and ethics: specifically whether he and his family were trading on his name and influence to generate profit for themselves. The Post said that the documents were obtained from a laptop left by Joe Biden’s son Hunter at a repair shop.
From the start, the evidence of authenticity was overwhelming. The Post published obviously genuine photos of Hunter that were taken from the laptop. Investigations from media outlets found people who had received the emails in real-time and they compared the emails in their possession to the ones in the Post‘s archive, and they matched word-for-word. One of Hunter’s own business associates involved in many of these deals, Tony Bobulinski, confirmed publicly and in interviews that the key emails were genuine and that they referenced Joe Biden’s profit participation in one deal being pursued in China. A forensics analyst issued a report concluding the archive had all the earmarks of authenticity. Not even the Bidens denied that the emails were real: something they of course would have done if they had been forged or altered. In sum, as someone who has reported on numerous large archives similar to this one and was faced with the heavy burden of ensuring the documents were genuine before risking one’s career and reputation by reporting them, it was clear early on that all the key metrics demonstrated that these documents were real.
Despite all that, former intelligence officials such as Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper led a group of dozens of former spooks in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Note that this phrase contains two separate assertions: 1) the documents came from Russia and 2) they are fake (“disinformation”). The intelligence officials admitted in this letter that — in their words — “we do not know if the emails are genuine or not,” and also admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement.” Yet it repeatedly insinuated that everyone should nonetheless believe this:
Letter from 60 former intelligence officials about the New York Post reporting, Oct. 19, 2020
But the complete lack of evidence for these claims — that even these career CIA liars acknowledged plagued their assertions — did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to censor this reporting from the internet. One of the first to spread this lie was the co-queen of Russiagate frauds, Natasha Bertrand, then of Politico and now promoted, because of lies like this, to CNN. “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” blared her headline in Politico on October 19, just five days after the Post began its reporting. From there, virtually every media outlet — CNN, NBC News, PBS, Huffington Post, The Intercept, and too many others to count — began completely ignoring the substance of the reporting and instead spread the lie over and over that these documents were the by-product of Russian disinformation.
On October 21 — exactly one week after the Post‘s first report — The Intercept published a false story under the melodramatic headline “We’re Not a Democracy” about these materials from former New York Times reporter James Risen. This propaganda assault masquerading as “news” mindlessly laundered the CIA’s lies about the laptop. This is what appeared in this outlet that still claims to do “adversarial” reporting:
Their latest falsehood once again involves Biden, Ukraine, and a laptop mysteriously discovered in a computer repair shop and passed to the New York Post…. This week, a group of former intelligence officials issued a letter saying that the Giuliani laptop story has the classic trademarks of Russian disinformation.
Note that even the intelligence officials, who acknowledged they had no evidence to support this claim, were more honest than The Intercept, which omitted that critical admission. Days later, this very same outlet — which I co-founded seven years earlier to be adversarial, not subservient, to evidence-free assertions from the intelligence community, and which was designed to be an antidote to rather than a clone of The New York Times — told me that I could not publish the article I had written about the Biden archive because it did not meet their lofty and rigorous editorial standards: the same lofty and rigorous editorial standards that led to uncritical endorsement of the CIA’s lies just days earlier. It was that episode, as Matt Taibbi recounted at the time, that prompted my resignation from the outlet I created in protest of this censorship, in order to report instead only on free speech platforms such as this one.
But the media disinformation about the Post‘s documents — obviously designed to protect Joe Biden in the lead-up to the election — were not the worst aspect of what happened here. Far worse was the decision by Twitter to prohibit any discussion of this reporting or posting of links to the story both publicly and privately on the platform. Worse still was the immediate announcement by Facebook through its communications executive Andy Stone — a life-long Democratic Party operative — that it would algorithmically suppress the story pending a “fact check” by “Facebook’s third-party fact-check partners.” Despite multiple requests from me and others, Facebook never published the results of this alleged fact-check and still refuse to say whether it ever conducted one. Why? Because the documents they blocked millions of Americans from learning about were clearly true and authentic.
As indicated, there was ample proof from the start that these documents were genuine and that the only ones engaged in “disinformation” and lies was this axis of the CIA, corporate media, and Big Tech. Yet the most dispositive proof yet emerged on Tuesday — not from a right-wing news outlet that liberals have been trained to ignore and disbelieve but from one of the most mainstream news institutions in the country.
A young reporter for Politico, Ben Schreckinger, has published a new book entitled “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power.” To his great credit, he spent months investigating the key documents published by The New York Post and found definitive proof that these emails and related documents are indisputably authentic. His own outlet, Politico, was the first to publish the CIA lie that this was “Russian disinformation,” but on Tuesday — without acknowledging their role in spreading that lie — they summarized Schreckinger’s findings this way: the book “finds evidence that some of the purported Hunter Biden laptop material is genuine, including two emails at the center of last October’s controversy.” In his book, the reporter recounts in these passages just some of the extensive work he did to obtain this proof:
A person who corresponded with Hunter in late 2018 confirmed to me the authenticity of an email in the cache. Another person who corresponded with Hunter in January 2019 confirmed the authenticity of a different email exchange with Hunter in the cache. Both of these people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of being embroiled in a global controversy.
A third person who had independent access to Hunter’s emails confirmed to me that the emails published by the New York Post related to Burisma and the CEFC venture matched the substance of emails Hunter had in fact received. (This person was not in a position to compare the published emails word-for-word to the originals.)
The National Property Board of Sweden, part of the Swedish Finance Ministry, has released correspondence between Hunter and House of Sweden employees to me and to a Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, under the country’s freedom of information law. Emails released by the property board match emails in the cache.
Excerpts from POLITICO reporter Ben Schreckinger’s new book: “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power”, Sept. 2020
Given what I regard as the unparalleled gravity of what was done here — widespread media deceit toward millions of American voters in the weeks before a presidential election based on a CIA lie, along with brute censorship of the story by Big Tech — and given that so much of what was done here took place on television, we produced this morning what I regard as the definitive video report of this scandal. I realize this report is longer than the standard video — it is just over an hour — but I really believe that it is vital, particularly with the emergence of this new indisputable proof, to take a comprehensive look at how the intelligence community, in partnership with Big Tech and the corporate media, disseminated massive lies and disinformation, using censorship and other manipulative techniques, to shape the outcome of what was a close election. (We will very shortly institute our new feature of producing transcripts for all videos above ten minutes in length, but I really hope that as many people as can do so will watch this video report).
After observing what they did, I hope and believe you will have a similar reaction to the one I had after spending the day compiling and reporting it all. No matter how much you despise this sector of the corporate media, it is nowhere near close enough to the level of contempt and scorn they deserve. You can watch our video report on my Rumble page.
Energy poverty is not an option for India’s 360 million poor
By Vijay Jayaraj | American Thinker | September 22, 2021
The global call to impose climate shutdowns akin to the COVID-19 lockdowns fails to recognize that there are millions of poor people for whom there is no room to compromise on energy liberty.
Political organizations like the World Economic Forum see the pandemic-driven economic pause as an opportunity to impose energy restrictions to address climate change. Many organizations now want to “save the planet” by implementing policies that will help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or at least make them appear sensitive to the issue. However, the poor in the developing world cannot forgo access to fossil-driven economic development just because of the climate delusions of politicians in luxurious European offices.
Speaking for my own country, India, the 360 million people living in poverty should have more of an option than continued deprivation. Presenting as morally superior their choosing to sacrifice the use of fossil fuels for the sake of a faux battle against climate change is itself immoral.
I know a family’s sole breadwinner whose only livelihood is stitching clothes in a poor neighborhood of India‘s most populated city. For her, the electrical sewing machine — recently bought with help — is an absolute essential. Any intermittency in power supply is likely to make her lose out on precious money.
File photo.
For this woman, who is already below the poverty line, the real possibility of not being able to buy basic groceries is a much larger problem than a few degrees’ change in global temperature. In fact, the United Nations has forecasted that even a large rise in global average temperature during the next 80 years will result in a loss of less than five percent in global GDP (gross domestic product).
So why would this impoverished woman give up her access to cheap and reliable coal-powered electricity just because of a theoretical loss of GDP postulated as a worst-case scenario by the year 2100? How dare anybody — least of all affluent jet-setters — ask her to?
While governments in the U.S., Canada, and Europe offered cash payment during the economic lockdown, the poor in developing parts of the world suffered without any help.
Yes, many small businesses in the West suffered during the COVID-19 lockdown. But the situation in developing countries was worse. A majority of the poor in these countries work in a sector of the economy that requires no documentation or proof of identification, making it difficult to get aid to them.
We are talking about numbers larger than the entire U.S. population who do not have a home or a vehicle or people to help them. Studies have shown that India lost years of progress against poverty during the four-month initial COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. For this reason, the country‘s federal government refused to impose a nationwide lockdown during the second wave. Economic restrictions were mostly imposed by state governments.
The proposed climate lockdowns would be not at all different from the brutal COVID-19 lockdowns. They would deny the poorest hope of climbing the socio-economic ladder.
Even worse are stealthy energy restrictions that international political bodies have been imposing on developing economies. Climate alarmists have made a consistent effort to disrupt the fossil-fuel sector during the past two decades.
Oil, coal, and natural gas are requisites for the sustenance of the poor. Without them, there is no cooking fuel for billions of people in the Third World. Even a slight interruption of the coal supply will result in blackouts for more than a billion people on an everyday basis.
It makes absolutely no sense for governments to switch to intermittent renewables like wind and solar in the name of climate change. Firstly, there is no backup solution (other than fossil) that can substitute for intermittent sources in real time during peak hours. Secondly, even advanced economies like the U.K. are unable to cope with the power demand when their renewables fail. Why would developing countries fare any better? Thirdly, wind and solar are proven contributors to a rise in electricity prices globally.
Oh, yes — we should mention that there is no climate emergency. The world has been warmer for most of the last 10,000 years, and predictions of a warming catastrophe are based on consistently wrong computer models.
The clarion call from the world’s poor is not a climate SOS! Rather, they desperately need economic growth that can be fostered only through extensive use of fossil fuels.
Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate for the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a master‘s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
Photo credit: Jorge Royan, CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
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IMF report suggests credit scores could soon be based on web browsing history
Dystopian future
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 21, 2021
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has published the results of research conducted into how lenders are likely to be doing their business in the future, and what new information and personal data these companies plan to start asking from borrowers in order to determine their credit score.
The biggest takeaway is the seemingly inevitable shift from merely accessing credit information to also incorporating people’s online behavior into the process of deciding whether to lend them money necessary, for example, to buy a house.
Compared to the way the system now works in most countries – these changes, which are expected to be coming soon, look fairly invasive privacy-wise, and with no “vision” of proper safeguards. Banks and others will go as far as to access personal browsing and shopping history. This would be done by allowing automated systems, powered by algorithms, to harvest the data and turn it into credit reports.
From the report:
“The use of non-financial data will have large effects on the provision of financial services. Traditionally, banks rely on the analysis of customer financial information from payment flows and accounting records. The rise of the internet permits the use of new types of nonfinancial customer data, such as browsing histories and online shopping behavior of individuals, or customer ratings for online vendors.”
Currently, those hoping to take out a loan can expect to have their repayment and credit history length, as well as total debt checked, but going forward, the IMF study suggests, this will be expanded to include what’s known as people’s digital footprint – either collected from data already publicly available, or that obtained by credit bureaus.
The stated goal is to improve “loan default predictions” – and the upcoming trend is sold as a way to give access to money to people who have previously been unable to use loans because their status is “unscorable.” Also known as “credit invisibles,” these are mostly low-income minorities and immigrants, and having access to their personal habits and behavior as exhibited on the internet is supposed to help banks and other lenders “profile” them precisely enough to determine if they should be given a loan.
On the other hand, citizens who are “scorable” but whose score is low might suffer in the new system now in the making, as their online activity could persuade lenders to cut them off from access to money.
Although the move in this direction looks inevitable, some key answers are missing: what data scraped from the internet will be used to determine someone’s credit rating, and how it will be secured.
IMF’s post warns, however, to expect an “efficiency-privacy trade-off.”
Alabama Hospital Defies Biden Administration, Ends COVID Vaccine Requirement for Staff
By Jack Davis | Western Journal | September 20, 2021
Bowing to the threat of legal action against it, one Alabama hospital has rescinded its requirement that all staff be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
UAB Hospital in Birmingham said it will wait to learn how the federal vaccine mandates announced by President Joe Biden play out before imposing any requirement, according to WBRC-TV.
Last week, the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty said the hospital was violating state law, according to Al.com.
The letter said the state’s ban on vaccine passports means government entities cannot require anyone to disclose vaccine information.
“As the Supreme Court of Alabama has recognized, UAB Hospital is a state-run hospital,” the letter said.
“Consequently, UAB Hospital may not require its employees to disclose whether they have been vaccinated or not. Likewise, the Alabama Attorney General has examined the law and concluded that ‘no government, school, or business in Alabama may demand that a constituent, or customer, respectively, be vaccinated for COVID-19 or show proof of his or her vaccination for COVID-19,’” the letter said.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also questioned the legality of the Biden administration mandate, saying he had received complaints about privacy violations, according to the Alabama Political Reporter.
“The Attorney General’s Office has received complaints from healthcare employees who believe their COVID-19 immunization status was obtained by their employers through the ImmPRINT registry for the purpose of verifying compliance with the employer’s immunization requirement,” Marshall said, referring to a statewide immunization database.
“In several of those cases, a shared employer specifically acknowledged accessing the state immunization database for this purpose. This privacy violation is unlawful,” he said.
Marshall said other health care providers should also take note and not be asking employees about their immunization status.
He has said that when the vaccine mandate takes place, Alabama will file a lawsuit against it, according to Al.com.
“The vaccine mandate is unprecedented in its audacity and unlawful in its application,” Marshall said. “The Biden administration knows this full well. The State of Alabama will not allow such an authoritarian power grab to go unchecked.”
Dr. Don Williamson, president of the Alabama Hospital Association, said voluntary efforts have produced vaccination rates of 50 percent to 80 percent depending upon the facility.
“It’s not a small issue if we have unvaccinated employees,” Williamson said. “Hospitals have successfully navigated the waters of getting people vaccinated and for the most part, they have been able to do it without mandates.”
The UAB Hospital in Birmingham issued a statement explaining why a mandate imposed one month was scrapped the next.
“The UAB Health System’s policy requiring COVID vaccines for its workers was implemented in August prior to the announcement of forthcoming federal directives,” it said.
“President Biden issued an executive order Sept. 9 indicating that federal rules and regulations will be issued in the coming weeks that will require COVID vaccines for workers at health care facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid dollars.
“Because UAB Health System must follow federal law, UAB Health System will remove its vaccine policy at this time. UAB Health System will wait for the detailed federal guidance to develop a replacement vaccine policy in order to ensure full compliance with federal law.”
The statement noted that a voluntary incentive that rewards employees who get vaccinated with $400 remains in place.
US Officials Demand Ban on Dr. Mercola’s Book
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 20, 2021
Since the publication of my book, “The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing The Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal,” which became an instant best seller on Amazon.com, there’s been a significant increase in censorship and ruthless attacks.
Sadly, many of these attacks have been levied by the very people elected to safeguard democracy and our Constitutional rights. Most recently, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter1 to Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.com, demanding an “immediate review” of Amazon’s algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation.”2,3,4
Warren specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of “highly-ranked and favorably-tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures” that she wants to see banned from sale.
“Dr. Mercola has been described as ‘the most influential spreader of coronavirus misinformation online,” Warren writes,5 adding: “Not only was this book the top result when searching either ‘COVID-19’ or ‘vaccine’ in the categories of ‘All Departments’ and ‘Books’; it was tagged as a ‘Best Seller’ by Amazon and the ‘#1 Best Seller’ in the ‘Political Freedom’ category.
The book perpetuates dangerous conspiracies about COVID-19 and false and misleading information about vaccines. It asserts that vitamin C, vitamin D and quercetin … can prevent COVID-19 infection … And the book contends that vaccines cannot be trusted, when study after study has demonstrated the overwhelming effectiveness and safety of COVID-19 vaccines.
It should come as no surprise that the book is rife with misinformation. One of the authors, Dr. Mercola, is one of the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ a group responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on Facebook and Twitter …”
Two days later, September 9, 2021, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., followed in Warren’s footsteps, sending letters6 to Facebook and Amazon, calling for more prolific censorship of vaccine information.7
Modern-Day Book Burning
Essentially, what Warren is calling for is modern-day book burning. “The Truth About COVID-19” exposes the hidden agenda behind the pandemic, showing the countermeasures have nothing to do with public health and everything to do with ushering in a new social and economic system based on totalitarian technocracy-led control. So, it’s not misinformation they fear. It’s the truth they want to prevent from spreading.
To make her case, Warren leans on a discredited report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). In that report, “The Disinformation Dozen,”8 the CCDH founder Imran Ahmed claims to have identified the top most influential “anti-vaxxers” in the U.S. The problem is Ahmed made that up.
CCDH ‘Manufactured Narrative Without Evidence’ Facebook Says
August 18, 2021 — nearly three weeks before Warren sent that letter to Amazon — Facebook actually called out the CCDH for having manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its reports.9 Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, set the record straight, stating:10
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …
That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.
We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.
The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.
In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.
The report11 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users. They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.
Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”
‘Disinfo Dozen’ Barely Register on the Social Media Radar
In its report, the CCDH claims 12 people, including me, are responsible for 65% of anti-vaccine content on social media. I’m not sure where Bickert got the 73% figure from. Either way, we’re not responsible for anywhere near either 65% or 73%.
According to Facebook’s own investigation, we account for a minuscule 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. Still, Warren and myriad other government officials are using the CCDH as some sort of ultimate authority.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, White House press secretary Jen Psaki and President Biden have all used the CCDH as the sole source for their wild assertions. Now, Warren wants to use the CCDH’s fraudulent report to ban the sale of certain books, and she does so even after Facebook itself has refuted the CCDH report as being baseless!
In an email, Kara Fredrick, a research fellow in technology policy at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News that:12
“Warren’s push for more censorship is yet another example of the growing symbiosis between Big Tech and big government,” and is indicative of a “broader trend: That of the Biden Administration and other progressive officials attempting to circumvent the Constitution by pressuring private tech companies to restrict freedom of expression under a broad definition of misinformation.”
Fredrick further stressed that “A healthy body politic depends on the genuine interrogation of ideas,” and that “Big Tech companies’ eagerness to suppress specific points of view is already corroding our free society.”
Freedom Is Corroding Before Our Eyes
Indeed, in early August 2021, I decided to remove the entire article archive from my website — articles I’ve made available for free for the last 24 years — and only make new articles readable for 48 hours. I did this in an effort to appease the power players who have an arsenal of overwhelming tools at their disposal, and are actively using them against us.
Cyberwarfare and authoritarian forces are beyond our abilities to withstand, and these changes were deemed necessary to keep us moving forward, even if hobbled. Still, Warren is not satisfied. She wants me silenced entirely. She doesn’t even want people willing to pay for the information to have access to it.
Clearly, she’s panicked about something. Reading her letter, I see before me the giant Goliath, yelling and screaming for help, demanding an army of fighters because the pea-sized David with his makeshift slingshot is in the neighborhood.
What is she really afraid of? Why pick on a person whose social media reach is a fraction of 0.05%? Could it be because the ‘Disinfo Dozen’ are actually telling the truth, and the truth has a tendency to win against all odds?
Goal Posts Set in Shifting Quicksand
According to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, Biden met his 70% vaccination rate at the beginning of August 2021.13 For months, we were told that all would be well and good if only we would meet the goal of 70%.
Yet as soon as it was met, we were told 70% “should be seen as a floor, rather than a ceiling” and Biden went on the news saying his patience with the vaccine hesitant is “wearing thin.” Because a small minority — if we are to believe CDC data — refuses to take the shot despite myriad bribes, Biden is now calling on businesses with more than 100 employees to mandate the COVID shots or face fines.
It’s beyond irrational, and to many seems highly irrational, unjustified and unconstitutional. This is especially egregious as ALL illness and injury expenses will be paid by the patient, even though they were forced to take the injection as the companies have zero liability.
However, as noted by Dr. Peter Breggin in yesterday’s interview, these actions are completely logical once you realize we are at war, and there are evil people out there who are intentionally trying to hurt us under the banner of providing protection. It’s no different than being in an abusive relationship where the abuser says he or she is beating you and locking you in the basement “to make you a better person.”
The Web of Elite Extremists Behind the Censorship
I’ve written many articles over the years about attempts by various groups and organizations to smear my credibility and label this site as a fake news hub. In March 2021, it was The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) that accused me of spreading misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19.14
Not surprisingly, TBIJ is funded by Bill Gates,15,16 a leading force within the technocratic takeover movement who doles out money to anything and anyone that will help further the globalist agenda, including media.17
In November 2019, as if blessed with some particular foresight, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave TBIJ a $1,068,169 grant from its “Global Health and Development Public Awareness and Analysis” advocacy program.18
Other TBIJ sponsors include19 the Google News Initiative,20 George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.21 All of these — Gates, Google, Soros and Wellcome — are easily identified as parts of the technocratic globalist network that is reaping unprecedented financial rewards from the pandemic.
Whose Interests Does CCDH Protect and Promote?
While the financial supporters of the CCDH are far more opaque, it seems clear this group is yet another front for the technocratic power structure. It’s founded by a British national and unregistered foreign agent named Imran Ahmed, who is also a member of the Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force under the British government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.
When you think about it, isn’t it rather curious that American government officials are targeting and violating the Constitutional rights of citizens based on the opinions of an unregistered foreign agent funded by dark money?22 As noted in a July 20, 2021, Drill Down article:23
“When a report goes viral in the news cycle, it only makes sense to question where it came from — especially if that report has influence all the way up to the Oval Office, affecting public health policy, while also having dangerous implications for free speech.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate … released a bombshell report earlier this week. It was picked up everywhere and had the following revelation: The majority of COVID misinformation came from just 12 people … But could this be a wily gambit by outside interests to justify the Biden administration’s censorship partner-up with Big Tech? …
According to its website, the left-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate prides itself on ‘researching, exposing, and then shutting down users and news sites it deems unacceptable in the digital sphere.’
Users and news sites it deems unacceptable? That seems potentially dangerous, considering we know very little about the CCDH. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressed his concerns on Twitter with the following post:
‘Who is funding this overseas dark money group — Big Tech? Billionaire activists? Foreign governments? We have no idea. Americans deserve to know what foreign interests are attempting to influence American democracy’ …
No one knows who funds them. No one knows who is driving their research. But their findings are being used in censorship efforts under the guise of controlling misinformation?”
Violating Bioethical Principles Puts Lives at Risk
The sad irony is that government officials are really the ones contributing to most of the unnecessary death and suffering by not adhering to bioethical principles that are enshrined in law. These laws exist for a good reason. They protect people from unnecessary harm and unwanted medical risks.
As an experimental trial participant, which is what everyone is at the moment who accepts a COVID shot, you have the right to receive full disclosure of any adverse event risks. Based on that disclosure, you then have the right to decide whether you want to participate.
Adverse event risk disclosure should be provided at the level of detail disclosed in any drug package insert. Not only do vaccinees not get any such disclosure documents, the censorship also prevents them from getting any balancing information regarding their risk-reward ratio, along with risk of death and permanent disability, from other sources, be it through Google searches, social media or mainstream news.
When given just one side of the story, informed consent simply isn’t possible, and as such, violates several different national and international laws, including the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations 45 CFR 46 (subpart A, the Belmont report),24 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty,25 the Declaration of Helsinki26 and the Nuremberg Code.27 U.S. Supreme Court rulings have also clarified that Americans have the right to choose their own health care in general.28,29
As just one example of many, Marie Follmer, in an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,30 said no one ever warned her there was a risk of myocarditis. Her athletic son, Greyson, took the shot and is now unable to do much of anything and she fears he might die.
She admits not doing any of her own research, blindly trusting what she was told. Now, she distrusts the whole process, including doctors, as all have refused to acknowledge that there might be a link to the shot, and no one knows how to treat him.
Most importantly, the acceptance of an experimental product must be fully voluntary and uncoerced. Enticement is forbidden. It’s downright impossible to argue that incentives ranging from free junk food to million-dollar lotteries and threats of losing your job, refusal of an education, travel and shopping restrictions and more do not constitute coercion.
At the end of the day, if you decide you want to participate in a medical experiment, whatever it might be, that’s up to you. But everyone else also has that same right to choose.
Sen. Warren Threatens Amazon to Ban ‘The Truth About COVID-19’
Since the publication of my latest book, “The Truth About COVID-19” there’s been a significant increase in calls for censorship and ruthless attacks against me.
Most recently, so-called “progressive” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., in an outrageous, slanderous and basically unconstitutional attempt to suppress free speech, sent a letter to Amazon, demanding an “immediate review” of their algorithms to weed out books peddling “COVID misinformation.”
Warren specifically singled out “The Truth About COVID-19” as a prime example of “highly ranked and favorably tagged books based on falsehoods about COVID-19 vaccines and cures” that she wants to see banned from sale.
Two days later, U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., followed in Warren’s footsteps, sending letters to Facebook and Amazon, calling for more prolific censorship of vaccine information. Even President Joe Biden has recently used a debunked report as his sole source to call for my censorship.
Sadly, these attacks are being levied by the very people elected to safeguard democracy and our Constitutional rights. Essentially, what they are calling for is modern-day book burning. This is a democracy, not a monarchy.
Sources and References
- 1, 5 Warren’s letter to Andy Jassy September 7, 2021
- 2 National Interest September 12, 2021
- 3 The Guardian September 13, 2021
- 4 New York Times September 8, 2021
- 6 Twitter Adam Schiff September 9, 2021
- 7 The Hill September 9, 2021
- 8, 11 CCDH, The Disinformation Dozen
- 9, 10 Facebook August 18, 2021
- 12 Fox News September 13, 2021
- 13 CNBC August 2, 2021
- 14 TBIJ February 28, 2021
- 15, 19 TBIJ Sponsors and Supporters
- 16, 18 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grant to TBIJ November 2019
- 17 Columbia Journalism Review August 21, 2020
- 20 Thebureauinvestigates.com Bureau Fellowship
- 21 Wellcome Trust
- 22 The Federalist July 20, 2021
- 23 The Drill Down July 20, 2021
- 24 HHS.gov The Belmont Report
- 25 UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
- 26 WMA Declaration of Helsinki
- 27 British Medical Journal December 7, 1996; 7070(313): 1448 (PDF)
- 28 Justia Rochin v. California
- 29 Justia Griswold v. Connecticut
- 30 Podbean The Defender, Child Casualty in Ohio
Ford ‘violating privacy law’ by storing driver’s private conversations and releasing them to cops and private company
New Class Action Lawsuit Filed
By Anna Bradley-Smith | Top Class Actions | September 15, 2021
Ford Motor Company uses its infotainment system to secretly download and store drivers’ private text conversations, and then turns them over to law enforcement and the private company Berla, a new class action lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit was filed in Washington on Sept. 10 by lead plaintiffs Mark Jones and Michael McKee, who allege the company violated the Washington Privacy Act. The act, they say in the suit, forbids any entity in the state of Washington from intercepting or pre-recording any private communication without first obtaining consent of all the participants in the communication.
But Ford, they allege, has been doing so illegally through software and hardware made by Berla Corporation. Berla then supplies those conversations to law enforcement, military, civil and regulatory agencies, and select private industry organizations, the lawsuit alleges. Berla does not give private citizens any means to access or delete their own conversations.
“On information and belief, vehicle infotainment systems in Ford vehicles automatically download a copy of every text message stored on any phone connected to the system and store that copy in computer memory on the vehicle in such a manner that the vehicle owner cannot access it,” the lawsuit reads.
Jones owns a 2021 Ford vehicle with an infotainment system he has used repeatedly. He says in the claim that he has never consented to Ford downloading and storing his text messages, and similarly did not consent to third parties such as Berla or law enforcement having access to copies of such text messages made by his Ford vehicle’s infotainment system.
McKee sent messages to Jones and his messages have also been stored without his consent, the lawsuit states.
Ford also Accused of Violating Privacy by Recording Conversations and Illegally Downloading Phone Data in Rental Cars
The same issue is true even with rental cars, the lawsuit says, with Ben LeMere, the CEO and founder of Berla, telling reporters the company has seen a number of messages stored in rental cars that were requesting drugs and sex. LeMere told the reporteres that as soon as a phone is plugged into a USB power port, the hardware and software will “start sucking all your data down into the car.”
Jones argues Ford has violated their customer’s privacy and they are suing on behalf of all Washington Ford owners for violations of the Washington Privacy Act. He seeks certification of the Class, injunctive relief, declaratory relief, damages, legal fees and costs, and a jury trial.
Advice for Parents Concerned About the Vaccination of Their Healthy Children
By Michael Curzon | The Daily Sceptic | September 19, 2021
The Covid vaccine roll-out for healthy 12-15 year-olds is due to begin this week, but scientists remain concerned about the likely side effects. Some teachers tell me their schools still aren’t fully aware of the role they are supposed to play – “I can see it becoming a minefield”, said one teacher at a school in Yorkshire – and there seems to be some confusion among parents about the power they hold. Can they withhold their consent for the vaccination of their children or not?
Parents will be sent consent forms but only, it seems, as a formality since children who are deemed ‘competent’ (the assessment of which contains no set of defined questions) will be able to overrule the decisions of their parents anyway. This is of a piece with the Government’s decision to push ahead with its roll-out despite being told by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) that “there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms” of Covid vaccination in healthy teenagers and that – given the small risk Covid poses to healthy 12-15 year-olds – the “margin of benefit… is considered too small”.
The JCVI is “generous” in its assessment, according to an executive at a pharmaceutical company writing for the Daily Sceptic. (He, by the way, believes vaccines are among the “three greatest medical innovations”, so could hardly be labelled “anti-vax”!) Responding to the data, he says there is a “serious enough” risk of children developing myocarditis after vaccination (inflammation of the heart muscle, the long-term consequences of which aren’t fully understood) whereas the benefits of vaccination are “not well quantified” by the JCVI. The body also fails to properly consider the risk of other conditions following vaccination.
Professor Adam Finn sums up the situation by saying the vaccination of children would not – in normal times – have been approved because of the possible risks. He believes that parents are justified in waiting to allow their children to get ‘jabbed’ until these risks are better understood. But therein lies the problem. What – if anything – can parents do to delay the vaccination of their children?
I’ve been trying to find the answer to this question over the past week – and the prospects for concerned parents are fairly bleak.
It’s probably best to start by ruling out protesting, given that schools have been told to call the police if “anti-vaxxers” plan demonstrations outside their gates. (I’m not sure that seeing their parents being dragged away by the police will be great for children’s mental health, which the vaccine roll-out is supposed to protect, but that’s a matter for another article.) One also has to question whether protesting would be worth it even if there wasn’t the risk of arrest.
The main tool in the parent’s armoury seems to be the written – or, perhaps, the spoken – word. You can’t be arrested for telling your local headteacher (either in a letter or at a meeting) that you disagree with your child being vaccinated without your consent (though you might be removed from their Christmas card list). The Yorkshire teacher mentioned above tells me that he gets the impression his school will do all it can to wash its hands of responsibility on this matter, preferring to say that the important decisions (i.e., “who should be vaccinated at school”) will be made by health professionals who use the school site (School Age Immunisation Service (SAIS) officials), not by the school itself. The school would, in this case, be wrong. Lawyers For Liberty (LFL), a group of non-partisan lawyers, made this point quite clear in its recent letter to the heads of regulatory bodies concerned with the protection of children and safety in schools:
If schools are intended to be the ultimate setting for the child vaccination programme, then school leaders will be deemed to have approved the Vaccination against the JCVI Advice. This has a variety of potential legal ramifications for school staff. Certainly many are concerned that there may be a serious safeguarding concern that would not align with the legal duties of schools, as outlined in the Department for Education document “Keeping Children Safe in Education”.
In another letter that LFL has drafted for parents to send to schools (see more details here), heads are given notice of their (and their school’s) potential legal liability on the matter of Covid vaccination.
If a parent communicates to you that their child will not to be included in the vaccination programme or does not provide consent, then that decision must be respected, without any further consequences for the child, including direct or indirect discrimination or coercion. Failure to do so may result in possible legal claims against you personally and for your School.
(It is worth noting here that Government guidelines say if a child gets ill following vaccination and the SAIS team has left the school, the situation should be managed “according to existing policies for pupil sickness in school”. In other words, it will be the responsibility of the school.)
Given the likelihood that schools would sooner “wash their hands” of responsibility on this tricky and confusing matter than face an array of expensive legal challenges (schools could be “vicariously liable for any harm which may come to any child receiving the vaccination whilst in your care leading to financial sanctions between £180,000 to £20 million”, according to LFL), simply presenting (personally or through the LFL letter) the head of your child’s school with the above information could be enough to prevent your child from being vaccinated without your consent. Imagine raising a question about the school’s insurance policy coverage for vaccination on school sites in the case of side effects. Staff are likely to respect your wishes, but it goes without saying that responses will differ from one school to the next.
Perhaps concerned that their words won’t be enough to block the vaccination of their children, some parents have decided to go one step further and keep their children away from school to stop them from being peer-pressured to accept the vaccination, according to the Telegraph. If you do decide to do that, it’s worth bearing in mind that the SAIS providers will likely only set up in your local school for one to two days, depending on the number of students, and that parents will [allegedly] be notified of the specific date(s) beforehand.
Elderly Australian woman knocked down & Pepper-Sprayed by police during protest against lockdowns
RT | September 19, 2021
An elderly woman believed to be in her 70s was attacked by Melbourne police and pepper-sprayed while she was on the ground during a protest against Covid-19 lockdowns on Saturday.
As she held an Australian flag and stood on the road facing toward a group of approaching police, one officer shoved the woman, sending her tumbling to the ground. Another officer then pepper-sprayed the woman as she laid motionless and unable to protect herself.
Seconds after the attack – with the offending officers having already moved on – another group of police officers came to the woman’s aid and attempted to help her up.
Videos of the attack from multiple angles went viral on social media this weekend, with many Australians accusing the Melbourne officers of police brutality.
Australian MP Craig Kelly called the attack “despicable,” “disgusting,” and “ILLEGAL,” and tweeted, “This is not my Australia… We cannot accept Police in Australia pushing to the ground an unarmed 70 yr old woman (or anyone) who presents no threat & then have 2 officers pepper spray the unarmed, defenceless person in the face while on the ground.”
Former New South Wales Senator David Leyonhjelm also condemned the attack, calling the officers “gutless,” while journalist Ky Chow wrote, “I’ve watched several videos of this, and it’s hard to see how the Vic cops defend this.”
Several other incidents of violence between police and protesters broke out during the protest in Melbourne on Saturday and 235 people were reportedly arrested.
Melbourne police were also caught on camera pepper-spraying dozens of other Australians who were involved with the “unauthorized protest.”
Both Melbourne and Sydney have experienced repeated protests over the past few months in response to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions in the two cities. In August, a man from the state of Victoria was sentenced to a maximum of eight months in prison for helping to organize a protest in Sydney, New South Wales.
FEC rules Twitter shadowbanning Congressman Matt Gaetz wasn’t election interference
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 18, 2021
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) unanimously rejected a complaint by Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz against Twitter, alleging the social media company shadowbanned him in 2018. The complaint accused Twitter of election interference.
In 2018, Vice reported that Twitter subjected Republican legislators, including Gaetz, to shadowbans, which limited the visibility of their accounts in search results. Following the report, Gaetz filed a complaint against Twitter with the FEC in July 2018.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The FEC also recently ruled that Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden corruption story was not election interference.
Last month, all six FEC commissioners agreed that Twitter’s shadowban did not break election interference laws.
Twitter explained that Gaetz’s account was shadowbanned because of being “associated with other accounts that already had high indicia of misuse or abuse.”
In the original complaint, Gaetz said that Twitter’s shadowban amounted to “making an in-kind contribution to [Gaetz’s] political opponents.”
He used a “free billboards” analogy to make his point: “Imagine the following: a billboard company in Florida wants to get involved in the political process, so it offers all candidates running for office… free billboards to promote their campaigns.”
“If the company did not randomly assign locations, but rather, offered large billboards in premium locations within the district to Democratic candidates, but only offered billboards stuck behind dumpsters, outside the district, to Republican candidates, it could not credibly argue that it was not giving an “in-kind” donation to the Democratic candidates.”
The complaint also argued that Twitter was a debate platform, and, therefore, it is supposed to follow FEC’s regulations on political debates.
“Twitter, as a self-identified news organization, and as a recognized debate platform, is a staging organization for candidate debates,” the complaint said.
The FEC rejected the argument, Business Insider reported, referring to a 2019 legal analysis by its general counsel that found out that Twitter could legally limit an account’s activity if it is concerned about “divisive content.” The analysis also concluded that Twitter messages are not “debate within the meaning of the Commission’s regulation,” as its definition of debate means “face-to-face appearances or confrontations.”
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Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
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- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
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- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
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