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Nigeria cleric Zakzaky, wife acquitted of all charges, freed from jail

Press TV – July 28, 2021

A court in Nigeria’s central state of Kaduna has acquitted Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, and his wife of all the charges levelled against the duo.

The trial at the Kaduna State High Court started on May 15, 2018 and dragged on for over three years. The high court issued its final verdict on Wednesday, Ishaq Adam Ishaq, their lawyer, said in a statement.

They were released from detention following the ruling, he added.

“At last, we defeated them. we won,” hailed the legal representative, adding, “They have gained their freedom. They are now freed and with us.”

Zakzaky and his wife, Mallimah Zeenat, were standing trial in the court on an eight-count charge of alleged culpable homicide, disruption of public peace and unlawful assembly among others levelled against them by the Kaduna state government.

They had pleaded not guitly.

In December 2015, Nigeria’s military launched a crackdown as part of a deadly state-ordered escalation targeting the movement that Abuja has branded as illegal.

The campaign saw the troops attacking Zakzaky’s residence in the town of Zaria in Kaduna, afflicting him and his wife with serious injuries that reportedly caused the cleric to lose his left eye.

During the crackdown, the military also attacked the movement’s members as they were holding religious processions, with the government alleging that the Muslims had blocked a convoy of the country’s defense minister.

The movement has categorically rejected the allegation, and said the convoy had intentionally crossed paths with the IMN’s members to whip up an excuse to attack them.

The violence led to the death of three of Zakzaky’s sons and more than 300 of his followers.

The couple were kept in custody despite a 2016 ruling by Nigeria’s federal high court that ordered their release from prison.

Amid the long-drawn-out jail term, the couple were allowed to leave for India for medical purposes. Their stay was, however, reportedly plagued by the state’s interference aimed at preventing them from receiving proper medical treatment.

The couple’s freedom came following tireless activism on the part of Nigeria’s Shia faithful and repeated damning reports about their situation by international human rights bodies.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , | Leave a comment

What’s Decent About Torture, Assassination, and Secret Surveillance?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 28, 2021

In a Los Angeles Times editorial predictably hyping up the extreme danger to “national security” arising from the January 6 Capitol protests, the Times quotes Capitol police officer Harry Dunn as saying, “We represent the good side of America, the people who believe in decency.”

Really?

So tell us, Officer Dunn, what is decent about the following actions of the U.S. government:

1. The torture center and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.
2. The indefinite detention of people at Guantanamo Bay without charges or trial.
3. The denial of trial by jury in terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay.
4. The use of evidence acquired by torture at Guantanamo Bay.
5. The use of confessions acquired by torture at Guantanamo Bay.
6. The use of hearsay to secure convictions in terrorism “trials” at Guantanamo Bay.
7. The secret monitoring of communications between attorney and detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
8. The torture of people at the hands of U.S. officials in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the world.
9. The intentional destruction of videotapes depicting the torture of people at the hands of U.S. officials.
10. The invasion, occupation, and war of aggression against Iraq, a country that had never invaded or attacked the United States.
11. The invasion of Afghanistan and the resulting 20-year destruction of life and property.
12. The secret mass surveillance of the American people.
13. The secret illegal surveillance partnerships with American telecoms.
14. The sanctions against the people of Iraq, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children.
15. U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions, while difficult, were “worth it.”
16. The decades-old embargo against Cuba, which has been a major factor in the suffering of the Cuban people.
17. The sanctions against Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and other countries, with the aim of causing death and suffering among the citizenry to achieve regime change.
18. Trade wars against China and other nations.
19. MKULTRA.
20. The invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
21. Coups and invasions for the purpose of regime change, including against democratically elected foreign presidents and prime ministers.
22. State-sponsored assassinations and executions, including of American citizens, along with cover-ups of such assassinations.
23. Official lies, including under oath.
24. The secret hiring of Nazis to secretly serve the U.S. government.
25. COINTELPRO.
26. The “war on terrorism.”
27. Secret illegal surveillance of American officials and American citizens for the purpose of blackmailing them.
28. The racist war on drugs, along with civil asset forfeiture, mandatory minimum sentences, and deadly no-knock raids.
29. The war on immigrants, which has brought untold death and suffering to countless people.
30. The immigration Berlin Wall along America’s southern border.
31. The immigration police state along America’s southern border, including domestic highway checkpoints, warrantless searches of farms and ranches, boarding of Greyhound buses to check people’s papers, and violent raids on American businesses.
32. The unexplained killing of Ashli Babbit during the January 6 Capitol protests.
33. Soaring federal spending and debt.
34. Waco and Ruby Ridge.
35. The undeclared Vietnam War.
36. The undeclared Korean War.
37. Inciting crises and new official enemies to justify ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment and its army of “defense” contractors.
38. The Federal Reserve and decades of monetary debauchery and debasement.
39. The IRS.
40. The persecution and prosecution of people who disclose the evil and sordid dark-side secrets of the U.S. government.

Pray tell, Officer Dunn: Is all this the official “decency” to which you refer?

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

New York Times reporter deletes tweets calling Trump supporters ‘enemies of the state’

By Graham Dockery | RT | July 28, 2021

New York Times reporter Katie Benner has deleted a series of tweets calling Trump supporters “enemies of the state.” Benner called the tweets “wrongly worded,” but her sentiment is largely shared by the state itself.

As a Democrat-run committee investigating the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill in January got underway on Tuesday, viewers were treated to garish tales of violence and tears from lawmakers who lamented the “dark day” they experienced in January. Portrayed by Republican leadership as a “sham” that “no-one will believe,” the hearing evidently worked as intended on New York Times journalist Katie Benner.

Midway through the proceedings, Benner angrily called for the US’ national security apparatus to target supporters of former President Donald Trump.

“Today’s #January6thSelectCommittee underscores America’s current, essential natsec dilemma: Work to combat legitimate national security threats now entails calling a politician’s supporters enemies of the state,” she tweeted.

“As Americans, we believe that state power should not be used to work against a political figure or a political party. But what happens if a politician seems to threaten the state? If the politician continues to do so out of office and his entire party supports that threat?” she continued.

Benner apparently viewed Trump and his supporters as a “threat” long before January 6, as she pointed out that two impeachments and the ‘Russiagate’ investigation had left this “dilemma… unresolved.”

Benner’s tweets triggered an avalanche of criticism from the right, and she later deleted them, claiming that they had been “unclearly worded.”

Benner’s sentiment is shared by the Biden administration and its security apparatus, though they speak of “extremists” rather than “Trump supporters.” The Democratic Party and its spokespeople have painted January 6 as an “insurrection,” a “coup,” and “domestic terrorism” for the last six months, and these words have been translated into policy. The White House’s new domestic terrorism strategy, for example, focuses heavily on the supposed threat posed by the right, and lists the “attack” on the US Capitol alongside mass shootings in Pittsburgh and El Paso. The strategy promises increased funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and states that the federal government will work closer with the tech industry to combat “extremist content” and “disinformation and misinformation.”

Meanwhile, right-wingers deemed extremists are being purged from military and law enforcement ranks, participants in the January 6 riot are being detained in allegedly brutal conditions with court dates at least six months off, and the FBI is encouraging Americans to turn in family members for “homegrown violent extremism.” Concurrently, the Capitol Police – a force immune from Freedom of Information Act requests – is expanding its operations beyond Washington and purchasing military-grade surveillance equipment for use on Americans.

Benner is not the only journalist to openly call on the state to target Trump’s supporters. ABC News has called for “cleansing the movement” Trump created, a lawyer for PBS suggested that the former president’s “stupid” supporters be sent to “re-education camps,” and former FBI assistant director turned MSNBC analyst Frank Figliuzzi has called for the arrest of pro-Trump Republicans in Congress “in order to really tackle terrorism.”

It is unclear whether Benner deleted her tweets at the direction of the Times or of her own accord. However, back in 2018 the newspaper denounced Trump for referring to journalists as “enemies of the people,” saying that such terminology could “lead to violence” against the media. At time of writing, the Times has not condemned Benner’s tweets, or warned that they could lead to violence against Trump supporters.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Google sues Germany over “hate speech” laws

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim the Net | July 28, 2021

Google has announced legal action against new provisions in Germany’s hate speech law, which the tech giant claims violates its users’ privacy rights. The law mandates online platforms to provide law enforcement with the personal details of the person(s) behind accounts accused of posting or sharing hateful content.

Google announced the legal action through YouTube’s blog. The company is taking issue with new provisions in Germany’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG), which took effect in April this year.

The NetzDG was introduced in early 2018 to protect Germans from so-called online “hate speech.” The law requires social media platforms to be responsible for monitoring “hateful” content, and share regular updates of their compliance.

Earlier this year, Germany’s parliament expanded the law to introduce new provisions. Now, online platforms are required to reveal the details of individuals accused of sharing hateful content with federal law enforcement.

The law has not only been criticized by social media companies, but also opposition political parties and the European Commission.

“In our opinion, this massive interference with the rights of our users is not only in conflict with data protection, but also with the German constitution and European law,” Sabine Frank, YouTube’s regional head of public policy, wrote in the blog post.

Per the blog post, Google feels that sharing the personal data of its users with the police “is only possible after a detailed examination by a court and a judicial confirmation.”

Frank added: “For us, the protection of our users’ data is a central concern. We have therefore decided to have the relevant obligations of the legislative package examined by the Cologne Administrative Court as part of a declaratory action.”

Elsewhere in the European region, UK’s media regulator Ofcom announced on Tuesday the appointment of Anna-Sophie Harling for the position of online safety principal. She would be responsible for tackling misinformation and harmful content on online platforms.

Harling holds the position of Europe region’s managing director at NewsGuard Technologies, a company that specializes in auditing the accuracy of online news publishers. Her appointment comes in anticipation of the approval of the Online Safety Bill, which will give Ofcom authority to police content on online platforms.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

California Governor Gavin Newsom Has a New Coronavirus Crackdown Hypocrisy Scandal

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 28, 2021

California Governor Gavin Newsom, over the last year and a half, has been one of the American governors imposing the most extensive crackdowns on freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. He also famously exhibited extreme hypocrisy in November by flagrantly violating his own California coronavirus-related mandates while taking part in a dinner party at the uber-expensive French Laundry restaurant. Newsom’s attitude seems to be that his rules are for regular people, not for himself and his friends.

Now comes word of another scandal in which Newsom has flaunted the mandate he has imposed in the state. Eric Ting reported Tuesday at the San Francisco Gate that two of Newsom’s children recently attended a basketball summer camp that had informed parents ahead of time that children would not be required to wear masks despite a state mandate that children ages two to 11 do so. After a picture of one of Newsom’s children, along with other children at the camp, with uncovered faces appeared on the internet, Newsom’s kids were pulled out of the camp early. Woops, the Newsom family had missed reading the camp’s email mentioning the camp’s mask policy, explained the communications director of Newsom’s governor office.

It is great that Newsom and his friends can enjoy an “old normal” dinner party with friends, though the dinner party at issue looks like it was also a get-together of government and special interest lobbyists. And it is great that Newsom’s children, who are in an age group for which risk of serious injury or death from coronavirus is nearly zero, can participate in a summer camp without wearing uncomfortable, dehumanizing masks that are known to cause health problems but have not been shown to provide any net protection from coronavirus. It would also be great if more summer camps followed freedom-friendly policies as did the camp Newsom’s children attended. Kudos for people taking part in such forbidden activities that bring joy to life. The problem with Newsom is that he takes these actions for himself and his children while, at the same time, he decrees that ordinary people are prohibited from doing so.


Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Piers Morgan Calls For Unvaccinated to be Denied Medical Treatment

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | July 28, 2021

Professional attention-seeker Piers Morgan is leading the charge for unvaccinated people to face state-sanctioned discrimination after he asserted that those who haven’t had the COVID jab should be denied medical treatment.

Yes, really.

“Those who refuse to be vaccinated, with no medical reason not to, should be refused NHS care if they then catch covid,” tweeted Morgan. “I’m hearing of anti-vaxxers using up ICU beds in London at vast expense to the taxpayer. Let them pay for their own stupidity & selfishness.”

Morgan failed to mention that those who have chosen not to take the vaccine also pay for the NHS through their taxes.

He subsequently called those who haven’t taken the shot “incredibly stupid and deeply depressing,” asking, “What the f*ck is wrong with you????”

Essentially, Morgan is arguing that people who refuse to allow themselves to be injected with vaccines linked with innumerable side-effects to ward off a virus for which they have a 99.8 per cent survival rate should be left to die in order to save money.

If enacted, his ‘solution’ would also end up killing people who are admitted to hospital for ailments that have nothing to do with COVID, given that positive tests in hospitals are counted as COVID admissions even if the person is asymptomatic and is being treated for a non-COVID illness.

As we have repeatedly stressed, a two-tier society is now being created where discrimination targeting the unvaccinated is becoming not only normalized but encouraged.

Morgan is about one step removed from openly calling for the unvaccinated to be rounded up and incarcerated in medical prison camps.

An added irony to his faux-populist authoritarianism is that Morgan himself has been caught repeatedly flouting the same COVID-19 rules that he aggressively demands be imposed on everyone else.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

French back restauranteur’s ‘free zone’ rebellion against Macron’s mandatory passes

RT | July 28, 2021

People in France have shown their support for a restaurateur who declared his eatery a ‘free zone’ in response to the government’s vaccine passports mandate for restaurant and bar entry amid widespread protests.

With the government set to require all people to show their Covid-19 health passport when entering bars and restaurants from the beginning of August, some in France have started their own campaign to rebel against what they described as the state’s “health dictatorship.”

The Twitter account ‘Zone Libre’ or ‘Free Zone’ is encouraging restaurateurs to display a sign rejecting the health pass mandate by President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

The tweet reads: “Zone Libre becomes the slogan of opponents of the health dictatorship,” adding the hashtag “Zone Libre” and “No to the Shame Pass.”

The tweet is accompanied by an image of a sign that reads: “Here, we respect your freedom, your dignity and medical secrets.” The message on the outside of the sign says “All welcome, with or without a health pass.”

While the account itself hasn’t received much attention, a video of chef Michel Le Menn sticking the sign to the facade of his eatery has been widely shared across social media. The restaurant, ‘Le Coup de Fourchette’ is reportedly located in Brest, a port town in Brittany.

In the footage, people can be seen photographing the ‘Zone Libre’ sign while the crowd chants “Liberte” or “Freedom.”

Sharing the video, one person wrote: “resistance starts like this, respect Sir.”

“All restaurateurs must do the same, if he is the only one to do it the state will crush him with all its weight to make an example,” one person wrote.

The term itself is rather controversial, as the ‘Zone Libre’ was also the name for the area of France controlled by the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Petain during World War II. The short-lived state was notoriously anti-Semitic.

On Monday, the French government passed into law a bill forcing vaccination for medical workers and greater use of the controversial health pass. The government had previously stated its intention to make compulsory the use of the health pass for access to bars and restaurants from August; the passes are already required for places like museums and swimming pools.

The health pass, which can be displayed on an app or printed out, shows whether the individual has either been vaccinated or provided a negative test.

Macron’s government has seen widespread opposition to the pass, with 160,000 people protesting across the country on Saturday. Demonstrators chanted “Freedom, Freedom” as they marched around French towns and cities.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Was Lockdown Illegal?

By Noah Carl • The Daily Sceptic • July 27, 2021

There has been much debate among lawyers as to whether the various “non-pharmaceutical interventions” (i.e., lockdown measures) that have been imposed over the past year and a half are actually legal.

In April of 2020, the barrister Francis Hoar wrote an article laying out the case for the illegality of Britain’s lockdown. While his piece is very much worth reading in full, I will do my best to summarise the main points here.

Hoar argues that lockdown measures were a “disproportionate interference with the rights protected by the European Convention on Human Rights”, and were therefore in breach of the Human Rights Act 1998.

To make his case, he appeals to the so-called Siracusa Principles, which were adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1984. These principles stipulate that government responses to national emergencies that involve the restriction of human rights must fulfil certain criteria.

Specifically, they must be: carried out in accordance with law; directed toward an objective of general interest; strictly necessary to achieve that objective; the least intrusive way of achieving that objective; based on scientific evidence, and neither arbitrary nor discriminatory; of limited duration, respectful of human dignity and subject to review.

Hoar argues convincingly that lockdown measures failed to meet several of these criteria. For example, lockdowns were not strictly necessary, since the same outcomes could plausibly have been achieved with far less intrusive measures (i.e., a focused protection strategy).

And it’s highly doubtful that lockdowns were “respectful of human dignity and subject to review”, given that they initially proscribed all political gatherings and public demonstrations without exception – a measure unprecedented in British history.

Hoar suggests that, “were they challenged by judicial review”, the measures should be “disapplied if necessary”. (Recall that he was writing back in April of last year). Incidentally, a longer and more detailed version of his article is available here.

Another figure from the legal community to argue for the illegality of the UK’s lockdowns is Lord Sumption, the former Supreme Court Justice. In a lecture delivered to the Cambridge Law Faculty in October 2020, he claimed that lockdown measures were without legal basis, and described the U.K.’s response as “a monument of collective hysteria and government folly”.

As readers may be aware, there was in fact a major legal challenge to the U.K.’s lockdowns, brought by the entrepreneur Simon Dolan (and funded to the tune of £427,000). The challenge sought a judicial review of the lockdown measures. Unfortunately, it proved unsuccessful.

I’ve been told by people with legal expertise that mounting another challenge would be difficult, given the adverse judgement in the case brought by Dolan. It’s therefore unlikely the Government will be liable for claims from individuals and businesses who’ve suffered due to lockdown.

Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that legal bodies in each of the following countries have found at least some aspect of the lockdown policy illegal: FranceBelgium, the NetherlandsGermanyAustriaSpainFinlandCzechiaScotlandSlovakiaAustraliaNew ZealandSouth Africa and the United States.

So while the High Court in London did reject Dolan’s case against the Government, lockdown opponents have won important victories in a number of countries.

And given that the evidence against lockdown has only increased since the judgement in Dolan’s case, lockdown opponents will have plenty of ammunition if any future Government decides to lock down in response to a similar virus.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Authoritarians Drunk on Power: It Is Time to Recalibrate the Government

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | July 27, 2021

It is time to recalibrate the government.

For years now, we have suffered the injustices, cruelties, corruption and abuse of an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution or the rights of the citizenry.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.

We have lingered too long in this strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

This COVID-19 pandemic has provided the government with the perfect excuse to lay claim to a long laundry list of terrifying lockdown powers (at both the federal and state level) that override the Constitution: the ability to suspend the Constitution, indefinitely detain American citizens, bypass the courts, quarantine whole communities or segments of the population, override the First Amendment by outlawing religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, reshape financial markets, create a digital currency (and thus further restrict the use of cash), determine who should live or die, and impose health mandates on large segments of the population.

These kinds of crises tend to bring out the authoritarian tendencies in government.

That’s no surprise: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.

So what we can do to wrest back control over a runaway government and an imperial presidency?

It won’t be easy.

We are the unwitting victims of a system so corrupt that those who stand up for the rule of law and aspire to transparency in government are in the minority. This corruption is so vast it spans all branches of government: from the power-hungry agencies under the executive branch and the corporate puppets within the legislative branch to a judiciary that is, more often than not, elitist and biased towards government entities and corporations.

The predators of the police state are wreaking havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives. The government doesn’t listen to the citizenry, it refuses to abide by the Constitution, which is our rule of law, and it treats the citizenry as a source of funding and little else.

In other words, the American police state is alive and well and flourishing.

We have arrived at the dystopian future depicted in the 2005 film V for Vendetta, which is no future at all.

Set in the year 2020, V for Vendetta provides an eerie glimpse into a parallel universe in which a government-engineered virus wreaks havoc on the world. Capitalizing on the people’s fear, a totalitarian government comes to power that knows all, sees all, controls everything and promises safety and security above all.

Concentration camps (jails, private prisons and detention facilities) have been established to house political prisoners and others deemed to be enemies of the state. Executions of undesirables (extremists, troublemakers and the like) are common, while other enemies of the state are made to “disappear.” Populist uprisings and protests are met with extreme force. The television networks are controlled by the government with the purpose of perpetuating the regime. And most of the population is hooked into an entertainment mode and are clueless.

Sounds painfully familiar, doesn’t it?

In V for Vendetta, as in my new novel The Erik Blair Diaries, it takes an act of terrorism for the people to finally mobilize and stand up to the government’s tyranny: in Vendetta, V the film’s masked crusader blows up the seat of government, while in Erik Blair, freedom fighters plot to unmask the Deep State.

These acts of desperation and outright anarchy are what happens when a parasitical government muzzles the citizenry, fences them in, herds them, brands them, whips them into submission, forces them to ante up the sweat of their brows while giving them little in return, and then provides them with little to no outlet for voicing their discontent: people get desperate, citizens lose hope, and lawful, nonviolent resistance gives way to unlawful, violent resistance.

This way lies madness.

Then again, this madness may be unavoidable unless we can wrest back control over our runaway government starting at the local level.

How to do this? It’s not rocket science.

There is no 10-step plan. If there were a 10-step plan, however, the first step would be as follows: turn off the televisions, tune out the politicians, and do your part to stand up for freedom principles in your own communities.

Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree. Defend freedom at all costs. Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc. Vote like Americans, for a change, not Republicans or Democrats.

Most of all, use your power—and there is power in our numbers—to nullify anything and everything the government does that undermines the freedom principles on which this nation was founded.

Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it. If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it. Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it.

That’s their job: make them do it.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all freedoms hang together. They fall together, as well.

The police state does not discriminate. Eventually, we will all suffer the same fate.


Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

July 28, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Film Review | , | Leave a comment

Biden Gives “Five Eyes” What It Always Wanted: Access To Everyone’s Social Media

MassPrivateI | July 27, 2021

For years, Americans have largely ignored corporate social media surveillance. But all of that is about to change, thanks to President Biden.

No one has taken the White House’s plan to turn Big Tech into a quasi-Five Eyes censorship program seriously despite repeated warnings from journalists and news websites.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone warned, the White House is pushing for Facebook and Microsoft to censor any social media stories the Feds don’t like.

“After Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted on Thursday that the administration has given Facebook a list of accounts to ban for spreading misinformation about the Covid vaccine, she has now doubled down saying that people who circulate such materials online should be banned from not just one but all social media platforms.”

The Feds want Big Tech to ban stories and people they do not approve of from social media.

“You shouldn’t be banned from one platform and not others for providing misinformation out there,” Psaki told the press on Friday.

Reuters revealed some of America’s biggest tech companies will let “Five Eyes” and the U.N. decide whose stories the “Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism” should censor.

“Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.”

Big Tech’s GIFCT is essentially a Five Eyes censorship program, masquerading as a Big Tech social media forum to stop terrorism and extremism.

“Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos — often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence — and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”

Twitter and YouTube are also helping help Five Eyes spy on the world’s social media.

“The firms, which include Twitter and YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it.”

Other companies that have access to the GIFCT database are Reddit, Snapchat, Instagram, Verizon Media, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Mailchimp and Airbnb.

Three years ago the mass media warned us about Five Eyes demanding that tech companies give them backdoors to users’ encrypted data, and now they finally got their wish.

The dangers of Big Tech giving URLs, PDFs and personal information to a global intelligence agency will allow governments to secretly track and ID people and organizations they deem a threat.

Radio New Zealand said if one government has access to this information, then other government’s will request it as part of doing business with another country.

New Zealand’s Privacy Commissioner also warned that there is nothing stopping governments’ from abusing their access to people’s social media posts. And that is the real danger of letting Big Tech, Five Eyes and the U.N. decide who is a terrorist or extremist.

“Even then you don’t solve the technical challenge of allowing access for legitimate purposes while maintaining a secure network, and people in the tech industry tell me this is impossible” Privacy Commissioner John Edwards said.

The GIFCT claims to “bring together the technology industry, government, civil society, and academia to foster collaboration and information-sharing to counter terrorist and violent extremist activity online.” But what it does not tell you is how they decide to brand someone a terrorist or extremist.

GIFCT admits that Big Tech has been secretly compiling a database of “hashes” or unique digital fingerprints of suspected terrorist/extremist social media posts since 2016.

Big Tech also uses their in-house “Content Incident Protocol” (CIP) to justify sharing hashes of an extremist’s video, and other related content with Big Tech companies, Five Eyes and the U.N.

If the GIFCT’s secret social media database and CIP sounds familiar, that’s because it is.

The United States Postal Service and Fusion Centers across the country have been secretly spying on Americans social media for years.

Earlier this week, PayPal announced that they are working with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate how extremist and hate movements in the United States take advantage of financial platforms to fund their criminal activities.

PayPal is basically setting up its own version of GIFCT to justify monitoring people’s transactions under the terrorist/extremist umbrella. As the article mentioned, PayPal and the ADL will “uncover and disrupt the financial flows of anti-government and white supremacist organizations” on their own!

“The information collected through the initiatives will be shared with other firms in the financial industry, law enforcement and policymakers, PayPal said.”

It is only a matter of time before GIFCT censorship will be used to monitor and stop protests that corporations and the White House disapprove of.

As Caitlin Johnstone so eloquently put it:

  • They said we need internet censorship because of Russia.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of COVID.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of election security.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of the Capitol riot.
  • They said we need internet censorship because of domestic extremism.
  • Pretty sure they just want internet censorship.

Using the GIFCT to allow corporations and Five Eyes to ban and censor whoever they want, put’s everyone’s freedom at risk.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Telegraph Exposes Massive Covid Hospital Fraud

By Richie Allen – July 27, 2021

In an exclusive in today’s Telegraph, journalists Laura Donnelly and Harry Yorke claim that more than half of covid hospitalisations are patients who tested positive AFTER they were admitted to hospital with something else.

This means that vast numbers of people are being labelled as hospitalised by covid when in reality they were admitted to hospital for something else and covid was only picked up during routine testing.

This is fraud. The government has always known this, yet it claimed that the NHS was under enormous pressure from covid-19 cases and imposed draconian and devastating lockdowns.

According to The Telegraph :

Experts said it meant the national statistics, published daily on the government website and frequently referred to by ministers, may far overstate the levels of pressures on the NHS.

The leaked data – covering all NHS trusts in England – show that, as of last Thursday, just 44 per cent of patients classed as being hospitalised with Covid had tested positive by the time they were admitted.

The majority of cases were not detected until patients underwent standard Covid tests, carried out on everyone admitted to hospital for any reason.

Overall, 56 per cent of Covid hospitalisations fell into this category, the data, seen by The Telegraph, show.

The Telegraph article goes on to make a crucial point. At no time was there any attempt to distinguish between those admitted with severe illness, later found to be caused by covid and those in hospital for different reasons who might otherwise never have known that they had picked it up.

Simply stated, when someone came in with heart palpitations or symptoms of stroke, they were given a PCR test. The test has been thoroughly discredited as it returns a high rate of false positives.

When the stroke or heart attack patient then tested positive for covid they were listed as a covid hospitalisation. This is breathtakingly corrupt. This wasn’t bad policy or mismanagement. They knew what they were doing. They’re still doing it.

Greg Clark, the chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee said that he would be writing to the Health Secretary, asking him to publish the breakdown on a regular basis following The Telegraph’s article. Clark said:

“If hospitalisations from Covid are a key determinant of how concerned we should be, and how quickly restrictions should be lifted, it’s important that the data is not presented in a way that could lead to the wrong conclusions being drawn.

While some of these people may be being admitted due to Covid, we currently do not know how many. And for those who are not, there is a big distinction between people who are admitted because of Covid and those who are in for something else but have Covid in such a mild form that it was not the cause of their hospitalisation.”

For 16 months, this government has been telling us that the NHS was overwhelmed by covid-19. They were lying. We knew they were lying. Now there is irrefutable proof.

The lies were used to justify tyrannical lockdowns that have done immeasurable damage to people’s health and wellbeing. What happens next? I don’t know. This is an example of outstanding journalism by Donnelly and Yorke.

It’s now over to SKY, BBC, ITV and Channel 4. It’s in their hands. It is their duty to put The Telegraph’s findings to government ministers and SAGE scientists and relentlessly pursue the truth.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The New Normal: “Covert Moral Enhancement” for “coronavirus defectors”

Academic article suggests putting psycho-active drugs in the water supply to make people “co-operative”

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 14, 2020

Four days ago the Conversation – an “independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community” – published an article headlined:

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

The article’s author is Parker Crutchfield, an Associate Professor of Medical Ethics, Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University, and his argument can be broken down into four key points:

  1. Wearing masks and social distancing are good for public health
  2. People who refuse to follow these rules are “defectors” who need to be “morally enhanced”
  3. This moral enhancement can be achieved with medication to make people more “empathetic” and “co-operative”
  4. This medication should be compulsory and/or administered secretly via the water supply.

I swear I’m not exaggerating. Not even a little bit. To absorb the full horror I suggest you read it for yourself (and then read the comment section as well, it will make you feel better) but, if you’re not so inclined, here are some choice quotes:

like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior.

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

These substances interact directly with the psychological underpinnings of moral behavior […] Then, perhaps, the people who choose to go maskless or flout social distancing guidelines would better understand that everyone, including them, is better off when they contribute, and rationalize that the best thing to do is cooperate.

Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it […] a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.

This isn’t just a panicked response to an unforeseen emergency, Crutchfield’s area of bioethics research focuses on “questions like how to induce those who are noncooperative to get on board with doing what’s best for the public good”, and a look through his articles reveals that this is an agenda which pre-dates our current “pandemic”.

There’s The epistemology of moral bioenhancement from 2016 and then Compulsory moral bioenhancement should be covert from just last year.

This isn’t just about masks, if it were implemented it would be a lot more far-reaching. From masks to vaccines to anything else, beyond even the “pandemic”. The author admits as much himself [our emphasis]:

But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change.

Happy Pills in our water to make us proper cooperative citizens? “Covert moral enhancement” to produce “superior post-persons”?

That is literally “Soma” from Huxley’s Brave New World. It can’t be satirized or exaggerated. It is the very zenith of dystopian horror. And it is being seriously suggested by research scientists in apparently respectable publications.

This may be just one article in a comparatively small (and murkily funded) magazine, but that’s how it starts.

Of course, it also further feeds into the stream of propaganda which seeks to dehumanise those who express dissent.

We’ve already been told that “defectors” are more likely to be narcissists or psychopaths, and seen them subject to police brutality with total impunity.

New Zealand are setting up “quarantine centres” where you will have to stay “indefinitely” if you refuse a to be tested.

And now it’s being seriously posited that those who refuse to comply should be subject to covert medication to render them more malleable to the “public good”.

It’s not hard to see where this is going. Show this article to everyone you know. People have to be told what their world is being turned into, while we still have the brainpower to stop it.

July 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment