Hey, Boris, leave my friends alone!
If I don’t #GrabAJab I’ll be an outcast
Harry Dougherty Blog | July 22, 2021
Facebook keeps pestering me to get the Covid19 vaccine. They won’t give up!
One feature tells me that I can somehow ‘help to end the pandemic’ by putting my vaccination status in my profile picture frame, pointing out (as if I care) that some of my Facebook friends have done so already. Another one from the ‘NHS England and NHS Improvement’ Facebook page, ever so sweetly threatens me.
‘Planning your summer vacation? #GrabAJab’
‘Spending a day at the shops? #GrabAJab’
‘Going for a drink with friends? #GrabAJab’
So friendly. So familiar. So understanding.
To be honest, I can probably cope without the shopping trips, a dreary enough ordeal without the muzzles and the one-way systems. But I must confess I do love a sesh once every so often and I need my holidays, preferably in Europe. Tropical, rainy countries that require umpteen injections just to avoid the ICU never really blew my hair away, as they do with the Mount Kilimanjaro climbing gap yah types.
However, if I don’t ‘grab a jab’ these simple pleasures of life will become unavailable to me, and I will forever become an outcast. I will have no kind of life whatsoever. Simples!
I still won’t budge for the nudgers. I owe no one a jab in my arm, and I would never demand someone else risk their health or be excluded from society for my safety. I might be selfish, but I’m not that selfish.
But sadly, the mixture of guilt and threat works on most people, including those who never bought into the exaggerated dangers of Covid. Even Winston Smith loved Big Brother eventually.
Last week, I received an Instagram message from an old friend. We both worked in events back in the day, shortly before our full pay MPs decimated the hospitality sector.
Out of the blue, she asked me, ‘what is your opinion on the vaccine?’
Not wanting to be off-puttingly preachy, I answered succinctly: ‘your choice, but I wouldn’t recommend it!’
Alas, it was too late anyway. She replied, ‘I took it (Pfizer) so that I can travel back home easier… and guess who is having a severe kidney infection now.’
She continued, ‘whole day yesterday at the hospital.. now on antibiotics and painkillers.’
I should mention that she is very healthy and in her twenties. As of 7 July 2021, there are currently 24 cases of kidney infection and 33 cases of acute kidney injury, (with two fatalities on the latter) listed on the Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to the Yellow Card scheme. Her case (in the true meaning of the word ‘case’ ) is not listed among them.
She continued, “my roommate had a really bad urine infection after the sake vaccine. My aunt had kidney stones.”
Like me, she opposed the lockdown from the very beginning in March 2020, amazed by the sheer absurdity of the rules and the public’s pathetic acceptance of them.
But they got to her, like gangsters warning a witness ‘you might wanna think about your family.’
Of course, the BBC will not be much interested in telling her story, nor that of one of my regular customers who last week described the AstraZeneca vaccine as ‘the biggest regret of my life’.
Instead, they put out a story about a morbidly obese 51 year old man who tragically died from Covid, who told one of the nurses that he regretted not getting vaccinated. We are then expected to politely not ask if he also regretted having a dangerously unhealthy lifestyle. We cannot peddle dangerous philosophies like personal responsibility and encourage habits that might actually save people from premature death, can we?
Don’t get me wrong, there are genuine cases of young healthy men not getting vaccinated against Covid and living to regret it, such as Matthew Roche, 38, and Darren Howard, 28, who both just so happened to be actors from the same talent agency ‘Mandy’. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, and there have been a lot of those lately.
The monstrous Johnson, who spent his career posing as a cuddly libertarian, dared to lecture the public about social responsibility when he said “I don’t want to have to close nightclubs again as they have elsewhere. But it does mean nightclubs need to do the socially responsible thing.”
This is the language of an abuser. “I don’t want to hit you, but you made me do it.”
Then the weasel Wales secretary Simon Hart said vaccine passports came with “the heaviest of hearts”, lying that “we are really left with no option.”
No option? How can that be, when Belarus kept their nightclubs, Christmas markets, sports stadiums open throughout the entire ‘pandemic’? How did Texas, Tennessee, and Florida, among several other major US states manage to reopen their nightlife scene without health apartheid as a condition?
Whose safety is that important, that young people should be cornered into an ultimatum between societal exclusion and taking a non-market authorised drug with no long-term data, that is associated with a total 1470 UK deaths and 1,059,307 reported Reactions?
The government’s summary falsely reassures us, “some (adverse) events may have happened anyway, regardless of vaccination. This is particularly the case when millions of people are vaccinated, and especially most vaccines are being given to the most elderly people and people who have underlying illnesses.”
The same is true of People who have with Covid19 on their death certificate in the last 18 months, yet the same summary reads ‘at the time of this report, 128,662 people across the UK have died within 28 days of a positive test for coronavirus’.
They don’t mention that despite Covid19, the UK national life expectancy is still higher than its ever been, and the average age of a Covid death exceeds even that. They don’t mention that even in the most vulnerable groups, the great majority of people infected by the disease survive. They don’t emphasise that many of these “covid” deaths “may have happened anyway”, as they anxiously claim about vaccine-associated deaths.
Even the doomster in chief Neil Ferguson admitted last year that most Covid deaths involved people who may have died soon anyway. But Would, say, AstraZeneca victims Dr. Stephen Wright and BBC presenter Lisa Shaw have died anyway? No. Nor likely would have the 44-year-old man from Tasmania nor the 48-year-old woman in Victoria, whose deaths from the clotshot (that’s what the kids are calling AstraZeneca nowadays) were recently reported in the revamped penal colony of Australia, another country where vaccine refusers are facing open persecution from their ruling elite.
It will be interesting to see how quickly vaccine related deaths catch up with Covid deaths in countries that happened to have low exceedingly low Covid mortality. New Zealand’s official figures show 26 Covid related deaths, overwhelmingly in citizens of great age and already suffering with comorbidities, at least two of whom had initially been diagnosed with influenza (make of that what you will). As far as I can discover, the youngest victim was a man in his 50s who tragically passed away in September. Bearing in mind that Covid has a year’s head start on the vaccine rollout in New Zealand and that only 18.6% Kiwis have been given at least one vaccine dose, let us now compare New Zealand’s 26 Covid related deaths with the 18 suspected vaccine related deaths reported to the Centre for Adverse Reaction Monitoring (CARM). Again, the Wellington regime gives the same false reassurances as the UK Yellow Card Summary, dismissing reported vaccine deaths as coincidental in a way that could just as easily be said of Covid deaths. But it will only take eight more reported vaccine deaths for New Zealand’s deaths from and with the vaccine to equalise with New Zealand’s current number of deaths from and with the ‘once in a century pandemic’. There have been a total of 6,143 reported adverse vaccine reactions, more than half of which aged under 50. These include 21 reports of anaphylaxis, 19 cases of Bell’s Palsy (facial paralysis), 12 cases of myocarditis, 21 haemorrhages, 13 strokes, 11 DVTs, and an unspecified number (less than six but at least one each) of spontaneous abortions, acute liver injuries, heart attacks, Thrombosis episodes and cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Already, the cure is far worse than the disease and the benefits don’t outweigh the risks.
Somewhere, someday soon, a teenager near you will develop myocarditis, while another develops a fatal blood clot for no other reason because they were told that in the end, the vaccine was their ticket to ‘freedom’. It And the blood will be on Johnson and Zahawi’s hands. Frankly, anyone who thinks that these deaths, or indeed my friends’ vaccine injury, were worth it to keep them safe doesn’t deserve to be safe.
Daily COVID Deaths in Sweden Hit Zero, as Other Nations Brace for More Lockdowns
Sweden isn’t in the news much these days. There’s a reason for that.
By Jon Miltimore | FEE | July 22, 2021
More than 100,000 people flooded streets in France over the weekend and multiple COVID vaccination centers were vandalized as opposition grew to the government’s most recent pandemic strategy. In President Emmanuel Macron’s latest incarnation of lockdowns, government officials have decreed that unvaccinated individuals will no longer be allowed to enter cafes, restaurants, theaters, public transportation and more.
Needless to say, people were not happy.
France’s approach is unique, but it’s just one of many countries around the world imposing new restrictions as fears grow over a new variant of COVID-19. Australia’s recent restrictions have placed half the country under strict lockdown—even though a record 82,000 tests had identified just 111 new coronavirus cases—while restaurants in Portugal are struggling to survive amid newly imposed restrictions.
One country not making much news is Sweden.
Sweden, of course, was maligned in 2020 for foregoing a strict lockdown. The Guardian called its approach “a catastrophe” in the making, while CBS News said Sweden had become “an example of how not to handle COVID-19.”
Despite these criticisms, Sweden’s laissez-faire approach to the pandemic continues today. In contrast to its European neighbors, Sweden is welcoming tourists. Businesses and schools are open with almost no restrictions. And as far as masks are concerned, not only is there no mandate in place, Swedish health officials are not even recommending them.
What are the results of Sweden’s much-derided laissez-faire policy? Data show the 7-day rolling average for COVID deaths yesterday was zero (see below). As in nada. And it’s been at zero for about a week now.
Even a year ago, it was clear the hyperbolic claims about “the Swedish catastrophe” were false; just ask Elon Musk (also see: here, here, and here). But a year later the evidence is overwhelming that Sweden got the pandemic mostly right. Sweden’s overall mortality rate in 2020 was lower than most of Europe and its economy suffered far less. Meanwhile, today Sweden is freer and healthier than virtually any other country in Europe.
As much of the world remains gripped in fear and nations devise new restrictions to curtail basic freedoms, Sweden remains a vital and shining reminder that there is a better way.
The Jan. 6th Show Trials Threaten All of Us
By Ron Paul | July 26, 2021
The recent felony conviction and eight month prison sentence of January 6th protester Paul Hodgkins is an affront to any notion of justice. It is a political charge and a political verdict by a political court. Every American regardless of political persuasion should be terrified of a court system so beholden to politics instead of justice.
We’ve seen this movie before and it does not end well.
Worse than this miscarriage of justice is the despicable attempt by the prosecutor in the case to label Hodgkins – who has no criminal record and was accused of no violent crime – a “terrorist.”
As journalist Michael Tracey recently wrote, Special Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky declared Hodgkins a “terrorist” in the court proceedings not for committing any terrorist act, not for any act of violence, not even for imagining a terrorist act.
Sedky wrote in her sentencing memo, “The Government … recognizes that Hodgkins did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” She added, “we concede that Mr. Hodgkins is not under the legal definition a domestic terrorist.”
Yet Hodgkins should be considered a terrorist because the actions he took – entering the Senate to take a photo of himself – occurred during an event that the court is “framing… in the context of terrorism.”
That goes beyond a slippery slope. He is not a terrorist because he committed a terrorist act, but because somehow the “context” of his actions was, in her words, “imperiling democracy.”
In other words, Hodgkins deserved enhanced punishment because he committed a thought crime. The judge on the case, Randolph D. Moss, admitted as much. In carrying a Trump flag into the Senate, he said, Hodgkins was, “declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation.”
As Tracey pointed out, while eight months in prison is a ridiculously long sentence for standing on the floor of the “People’s House” and taking a photograph, it is also a ridiculously short sentence for a terrorist. If Hodgkins is really a terrorist, shouldn’t he be sent away for longer than eight months?
The purpose of the Soviet show trials was to create an enemy that the public could collectively join in hating and blaming for all the failures of the system. The purpose was to turn one part of the population against the other part of the population and demand they be “cancelled.” And it worked very well… for awhile.
In a recent article, libertarian author Jim Bovard quoted from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago about how average people turned out to demand “justice” for the state’s designated “political” enemies: “There were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even school-children). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: ‘Death! Death! Death!’”
While we are not quite there yet, we are moving in that direction. Americans being sent to prison not for what they did, but for what they believe? Does that sound like the kind of America we really want to live in?
While many Biden backers are enjoying seeing the hammer come down on pro-Trump, non-violent protesters, they should take note: the kind of totalitarian “justice” system they are cheering on will soon be coming for them. It always does.
Copyright © 2021 by RonPaul Institute.
Vaccinated To Have More Freedoms In Germany
By Richie Allen | July 26, 2021
Speaking to Bild newspaper yesterday, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief of staff said that the vaccinated “will definitely have more freedoms.” Helge Braun said that if cases continue to rise in Germany, the unvaccinated would be barred from pubs, restaurants theatres and stadiums.
The chief of staff who is also a medical doctor told Bild :
“If we have a high rate of infection despite our testing procedures then the unvaccinated will have to reduce their contacts. Those who have been vaccinated will definitely have more freedom than those who have not been vaccinated.”
Braun went on to say that the unvaccinated wouldn’t even be allowed to take a covid test to gain entry to venues. When asked why, she replied: “The risk to everyone else is too high.”
As to the legality of introducing such discriminatory measures Braun said that, “the state has a duty to protect the health of its citizens.”
Neighbouring France has introduced Covid passes as a condition of entry to restaurants, café’s and supermarkets. From late September, anyone wanting to go to a nightclub or a concert in the UK, will have to prove that they’ve been double jabbed.
The UK government is also expected to say that anyone attending sports venues in the Autumn will also need to prove that they have been jabbed.
And from today, Irish citizens wishing to drink or dine inside a pub or restaurant, must show that they have been jabbed or that they recently produced a negative covid test.
Lockstep anyone?
Tory MP: “Tyranny Is Government Controlling Everything You Do!”
By Richie Allen | July 26, 2021
Speaking to Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer this morning, Conservative MP Steve Baker asked, “What do people think that tyranny is? It’s this total control over what you do!”
He went on to say that people should write to their MP’s to tell them that they should vote against the introduction of vaccine passports. Baker is the deputy chair of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group. He told Brewer this morning:
“…. you really do need to ask what’s going on. I’m pretty clear in my own mind that what it is is the government choosing effectively to coerce young people to get vaccinated.
I would have thought that we could do better surely than threatening vaccine passports. I do think it’s a proper slippery slope this one. We’re now looking at digital ID’s, we’re looking at a social credit system being trialled to get people to deal with obesity.
A central bank digital currency will enable the state to enormously intervene in our lives. And reasonably you can sit back and say wow what is going on with the change in the relationship between the individual and the state? I can see why some people are quite frightened.”
Sadly though, Baker went on to tell Hartley-Brewer that officials mean well. According to Baker, there is no wider agenda and there is no great conspiracy. He believes that the problem lies with good people making bad decisions. Does he know better? I can’t say. I don’t know him.
But this is why people like Baker refuse to come on The Richie Allen Show. I will go further. I will ask the hard questions. Talk Radio is mainstream light. When Brewer asked Baker to tell people what they can do to stop this madness, he said that they should write to their MP’s.
Freedom? We must seize it for ourselves
By Simon Dolan | The Conservative Woman | July 26, 2021
LAST Monday’s long-awaited ‘Freedom Day’ brought with it a theoretical end to most restrictions on social contact. In reality, ‘Freedom Day’ was nothing of the sort.
How free are we really, when ‘freedom’ means being forced to wear masks and use Covid passports for travelling, attending events and even going to the pub? As things stand, I fear we will be trapped in a vicious cycle of restrictions being slightly scaled down only to be ramped back up again. If masks and Covid passes are still to be mandatory, it won’t take much to initiate new lockdowns, and so it continues.
What’s more, the ‘pingdemic’ is wreaking havoc across the country. How ironic that in the week England was finally meant to be free, 750,000 children were sent home from school after coming into contact with a Covid case and another 620,000 members of the public were ‘pinged’ by the NHS app and so forced to isolate at home.
This is devastating, and not only for the individuals affected. With so many people stuck at home, hundreds of businesses have warned of crippling staff shortages, some even having to close owing to employees being forced to isolate.
Train services have been delayed or cancelled, bank branches have closed their doors and there’s talk of food shortages after factories were forced to shut.
For 18 months the public have had their liberties stripped away, so for us to move forward from the pandemic we must be granted some element of personal responsibility and freedom of choice. As usual, the Government is promising one thing, then doing quite the opposite. ‘Freedom Day’ is actually our leaders mandating businesses and organisations to push their agenda of fear instead.
With talks of additional lockdowns already gaining momentum, we cannot give up and must continue to fight for our freedoms. At Keep Britain Free, we will not rest until our rightful liberties are restored.
Senator Klobuchar ignores First Amendment with new bill to censor online “misinformation”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | July 25, 2021
Section 230 is under attack again, this time by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) who introduced a bill that would make online platforms liable for the health “misinformation” posted by users to encourage mass censorship on the platform. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects online platforms from being sued over content posted by users.
The bill, called the Health Misinformation Act, would require online platforms to remove health misinformation, particularly vaccine skepticism during public health crises. Failure to remove such content would make a platform legally liable.
We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.
The liability, however, would be adjudicated by a court. The bill would require the Department of Health and Human Services of the current administration to determine what qualifies as health misinformation.
“These are some of the biggest, richest companies in the world and they must do more to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation,” said Klobuchar.
“Earlier this year, I called on Facebook and Twitter to remove accounts that are responsible for producing the majority of misinformation about the coronavirus, but we need a long-term solution.
“This legislation will hold online platforms accountable for the spread of health-related misinformation.”
The introduction of the bill came a few days after President Joe Biden accused social media companies, specifically Facebook, of “killing people” by allowing the spread of vaccine misinformation.
Earlier this week, On Tuesday, the White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield said the administration was exploring ways to hold social media companies accountable for publishing vaccine misinformation.
“Social media companies have a responsibility,” Bedingfield said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We’re reviewing that and certainly they should be held accountable. I think you heard the president speak aggressively about this.”
She also said social media companies are not the only ones at fault.
“It is also the responsibility of the people creating the content. Again I go back to there are conservative news outlets creating irresponsible content sharing misinformation about the virus that’s getting shared on these platforms. So it is a big and complicated ecosystem and everybody bears responsibility.”
The Health Misinformation Act does not have the support of a single Republican, and that’s not likely to change.
The bill also hasn’t considered the First Amendment and all of the problems that come with having the government decide what is and isn’t health “misinformation.” It would likely turn into a political weapon to censor critics of those who are currently in power, just like it has in other countries where similar laws have been created.
While a review of Section 230 is a bipartisan issue, Republicans and Democrats want it changed for different reasons. The left wants it changed so that tech companies can be held responsible for misinformation and harmful content, while the right wants it changed so that they can sue tech companies for disproportionately censoring their content.
According to the Chamber of Progress, a center-left tech policy activism group, Klobuchar’s bill is a mistake.
“We all want less misinformation online, but this approach would turn future Republican presidents into the speech police,” Chamber of Progress’ chief executive Adam Kovacevich said. “Democrats would regret this.”
White House admits US government works with Facebook to censor free-speech
Press Secretary says Biden admin is “flagging disinformation” which social media giant then removes
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | July 24, 2021
Government agencies are flagging posts as “misinformation” for Facebook. Essentially telling internet companies who to censor. We’ve always suspected as much, but now they’ve actually admitted it.
Jen Psaki, Biden’s Press Secretary, said as much in a press briefing last week:
We are flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation”
If true – and that’s never a given when Psaki is talking – it’s a frank admission that the White House is actively breaching the first amendment rights of US citizens (and potentially the human rights of foreign nationals too).
The issue of censorship on the internet is one we have discussed at length at OffG. It has been slowly and steadily increasing for over a decade, with marked acceleration after the Ukraine conflict kicked it to the top of the to-do list in 2015.
Every act of terrorism, every controversy, every election… every “pandemic” is new excuse to place fresh restrictions on who is allowed to say what, where.
This culminated in every single social media and internet platform coordinating to completely remove the incumbent President of the United States from the internet.
News that X celebrity, Y journalist or Z website has been deleted or demonetized or de-platformed is an everyday occurrence now. The internet, or at least the mainstream internet, has become a quasi-police state. The digital Gestapo knock on doors in the middle of the night and *poof*… the dissident voice is quieted.
The mainstream media is, of course, fine with this. They outright refuse to talk about “censorship”. Instead choosing to talk about “free speech having consequences”, or arguing that “free speech needs a new definition in the age of social media”.
The “liberal” or “progressive” stance has always been that free speech is only about state suppression, not about private companies or individuals.
The argument has always been that Facebook/Twitter/Google etc. are private companies that have every right to decide what appears on their platforms. Of course, if the state is actively instructing the private companies on what to remove… that argument crumbles to dust.
Psaki’s casual revelation means this sophistry is no longer simply logically flawed, it is now inherently dishonest.
It also confirms that the pantomime of government vs social media is just that…, a pantomime. Every time a politician rails against Facebook for allowing hate speech, or bemoans the lack of regulations for internet giants, they are lying.
It’s a false conflict. A constructed PR exercise designed to hide a basic truth – The government tells Facebook what to remove, and Facebook removes it.
They said it, and they can’t unsay it… but they’ll probably try to stop us repeating it.
Meet Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | July 21, 2021
LONDON –This past Sunday, an investigation into the global abuse of spyware developed by veterans of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 gained widespread attention, as it was revealed that the software – sold to democratic and authoritarian governments alike – had been used to illegally spy on an estimated 50,000 individuals. Among those who had their communications and devices spied on by the software, known as Pegasus, were journalists, human rights activists, business executives, academics and prominent political leaders. Among those targeted political leaders, per reports, were the current leaders of France, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Iraq.
The abuse of Pegasus software in this very way has been known for several years, though these latest revelations appear to have gained such traction in the mainstream owing to the high number of civilians who have reportedly been surveilled through its use. The continuation of the now-years-long scandal surrounding the abuse of Pegasus has also brought considerable controversy and notoriety to the Israeli company that developed it, the NSO Group.
While the NSO Group has become infamous, other Israeli companies with even deeper ties to Israel’s intelligence apparatus have been selling software that not only provides the exact same services to governments and intelligence agencies but purports to go even farther.
Originally founded by former Israeli Prime Minister and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ehud Barak, one of these companies’ wares are being used by countries around the world, including in developing countries with the direct facilitation of global financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank. In addition, the software is only made available to governments that are “trusted” by Israel’s government, which “works closely” with the company.
Despite the fact that this firm has been around since 2018 and was covered in detail by this author for MintPress News in January 2020, no mainstream outlet – including those that have extensively covered the NSO Group – has bothered to examine the implications of this story.
Worse than Pegasus
Toka was launched in 2018 with the explicit purpose of selling a “tailored ecosystem of cyber capabilities and software products for governmental, law enforcement, and security agencies.” According to a profile of the company published in Forbes shortly after it launched, Toka advertised itself as “a one-stop hacking shop for governments that require extra capability to fight terrorists and other threats to national security in the digital domain.”
Toka launched with plans to “provide spy tools for whatever device its clients require,” including not only smartphones but a “special focus on the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).” Per the company, this includes devices like Amazon Echo, Google Nest-connected home products, as well as connected fridges, thermostats and alarms. Exploits in these products discovered by Toka, the company said at the time, would not be disclosed to vendors, meaning those flaws would continue to remain vulnerable to any hacker, whether a client of Toka or not.
Today, Toka’s software suite claims to offer its customers in law enforcement, government and intelligence the ability to obtain “targeted intelligence” and to conduct “forensic investigations” as well as “covert operations.” In addition, Toka offers governments its “Cyber Designers” service, which provides “agencies with the full-spectrum strategies, customized projects and technologies needed to keep critical infrastructure, the digital landscape and government institutions secure and durable.”
Given that NSO’s Pegasus targets only smartphones, Toka’s hacking suite – which, like Pegasus, is also classified as a “lawful intercept” product – is capable of targeting any device connected to the internet, including but not limited to smartphones. In addition, its target clientele are the same as those of Pegasus, providing an easy opportunity for governments to gain access to even more surveillance capabilities than Pegasus offers, but without risking notoriety in the media, since Toka has long avoided the limelight.
In addition, while Toka professes that its products are only used by “trusted” governments and agencies to combat “terrorism” and maintain order and public safety, the sales pitch for the NSO Group’s Pegasus is remarkably similar, and that sales pitch has not stopped its software from being used to target dissidents, politicians and journalists. It also allows many of the same groups who are Toka clients, like intelligence agencies, to use these tools for the purpose of obtaining blackmail. The use of blackmail by Israeli security agencies against civilian Palestinians to attempt to weaken Palestinian society and for political persecution is well-documented.
Toka has been described by market analysts as an “offensive security” company, though the company’s leadership rejects this characterization. Company co-founder and current CEO Yaron Rosen asserted that, as opposed to purely offensive, the company’s operations are “something in the middle,” which he classifies as bridging cyber defense and offensive cyber activities — e.g., hacking.
The company’s activities are concerning in light of the fact that Toka has been directly partnered with Israel’s Ministry of Defense and other Israeli intelligence and security agencies since its founding. The company “works closely” with these government agencies, according to an Israeli Ministry of Defense website. This collaboration, per Toka, is meant to “enhance” their products. Toka’s direct IDF links are in contrast to the NSO Group, a company that does not maintain overt ties with the Israeli security state.
Toka’s direct collaboration with Israel’s government is also made clear through its claim that it sells its products and offers its services only to “trusted” governments, law enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies. Toka’s Rosen has stated that Russia, China, and “other enemy countries” would never be customers of the company. In other words, only countries aligned with Israeli policy goals, particularly in occupied Palestine, are permitted to be customers and gain access to its trove of powerful hacking tools. This is consistent with Israeli government efforts to leverage Israel’s hi-tech sector as a means of countering the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement globally.
Further evidence that Toka is part of this Israeli government effort to seed foreign governments with technology products deeply tied to Israel’s military and intelligence services is the fact that one of the main investors in Toka is Dell Technologies Capital, which is an extension of the well-known tech company Dell. Dell was founded by Michael Dell, a well-known pro-Israel partisan who has donated millions of dollars to the Friends of the IDF and is one of the top supporters of the so-called “anti-BDS” bills that prevent publicly employed individuals or public institutions in several U.S. states from supporting non-violent boycotts of Israel, even on humanitarian grounds. As MintPress previously noted, the fact that a major producer of consumer electronic goods is heavily investing in a company that markets the hacking of that very technology should be a red flag.
The government’s initial admitted use of the hi-tech sector to counter the BDS movement coincided with the launch of a new Israeli military and intelligence agency policy in 2012, whereby “cyber-related and intelligence projects that were previously carried out in-house in the Israeli military and Israel’s main intelligence arms are transferred to companies that, in some cases, were built for this exact purpose.”
One of the reasons this was reportedly launched was to retain members of Unit 8200 engaged in military work who were moving to jobs in the country’s high-paying tech sector. Through this new policy that has worked to essentially merge much of the private tech sector with Israel’s national security state, some Unit 8200 and other intelligence veterans continue their work for the state but benefit from a private sector salary. The end result is that an unknown – and likely very high – number of Israeli tech companies are led by veterans of the Israeli military and Israeli intelligence agencies and serve, for all intents and purposes, as front companies. A closer examination of Toka strongly suggests that it is one such front company.
Toka — born out of Israel’s national security state
The company was co-founded by Ehud Barak, Alon Kantor, Kfir Waldman and retired IDF Brigadier General Yaron Rosen. Rosen, the firm’s founding CEO and now co-CEO, is the former Chief of the IDF’s cyber staff, where he was “the lead architect of all [IDF] cyber activities,” including those executed by Israeli military intelligence Unit 8200. Alon Kantor is the former Vice President of Business Development for Check Point Software, a software and hardware company founded by Unit 8200 veterans. Kfir Waldman is the former CEO of Go Arc and a former Director of Engineering at technology giant Cisco. Cisco is a leader in the field of Internet of Things devices and IoT cybersecurity, while Go Arc focuses on applications for mobile devices. As previously mentioned, Toka hacks not only mobile devices but also has a “special focus” on hacking IoT devices.
A slide from an April 20, 2021 presentation given by Toka’s VP of Global Sales, Michael Anderson
In addition to having served as prime minister of Israel, Toka co-founder Ehud Barak previously served as head of Israeli military intelligence directorate Aman, as well as several other prominent posts in the IDF, before eventually leading the Israeli military as minister of defense. While minister of defense, he led Operation Cast Lead against the blockaded Gaza Strip in 2009, which resulted in the deaths of over 1,000 Palestinians and saw Israel illegally use chemical weapons against civilians.
Toka is the first start-up created by Barak. However, Barak had previously chaired and invested in Carbyne911, a controversial Israeli emergency services start-up that has expanded around the world and has become particularly entrenched in the United States. Carbyne’s success has been despite the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, given that the intelligence-linked pedophile and sex trafficker had invested heavily in the company at Barak’s behest. Barak’s close relationship with Epstein, including overnight visits to Epstein’s now-notorious island and apartment complexes that housed trafficked women and underage girls, has been extensively documented.
Barak stepped away from Toka in April of last year, likely as the result of the controversy over his Epstein links, which also saw Barak withdraw from his chairmanship of Carbyne in the wake of Epstein’s death. Considerable evidence has pointed to Epstein having been an intelligence asset of Israeli military intelligence who accrued blackmail on powerful individuals for the benefit of Israel’s national security state and other intelligence agencies, as well as for personal gain.
Another notable Toka executive is Nir Peleg, the company’s Vice President for Strategic Projects. Peleg is the former head of the Research and Development Division at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, where he led national cybersecurity projects as well as government initiatives and collaborations with international partners and Israeli cybersecurity innovative companies. Prior to this, Peleg claims to have served for more than 20 years in leading positions at the IDF’s “elite technology unit,” though he does specify exactly which unit this was. His LinkedIn profile lists him as having been head of the IDF’s entire Technology Department from 2008 to 2011.
While at Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, Peleg worked closely with Tal Goldstein, now the head of strategy for the World Economic Forum’s Partnership against Cybercrime (WEF-PAC), whose members include government agencies of the U.S., Israel and the U.K., along with some of the world’s most powerful companies in technology and finance. The goal of this effort is to establish a global entity that is capable of controlling the flow of information, data, and money on the internet. Notably, Toka CEO Yaron Rosen recently called for essentially this exact organization to be established when he stated that the international community needed to urgently create the “cyber” equivalent of the World Health Organization to combat the so-called “cyber pandemic.”
Claims that a “cyber pandemic” is imminent have been frequent from individuals tied to the WEF-PAC, including CEO of Checkpoint Software Gil Shwed. Checkpoint is a member of WEF-PAC and two of its former vice presidents, Michael Anderson and Alon Kantor, are now Vice President for Global Sales and co-CEO of Toka, respectively.
The Wolrd Economic Forum does little to hide its partnership with former Israeli intelligence officials
Toka’s Chief Technology Officer, and the chief architect of its hacking suite, is Moty Zaltsman, who is the only chief executive of the company not listed on the firm’s website. Per his LinkedIn, Zaltsman was the Chief Technology Officer for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Last January, when Toka was covered by MintPress News, his profile stated that he had developed “offensive technologies” for Israel’s head of state, but Zaltsman has since removed this claim. The last Toka executive of note is Michael Volfman, the company’s Vice President of Research and Development. Volfman was previously a cyber research and development leader at an unspecified “leading technology unit” of the IDF.
Also worth mentioning are Toka’s main investors, particularly Entrèe Capital, which is managed by Aviad Eyal and Ran Achituv. Achituv, who manages Entrée’s investment in Toka and sits on Toka’s board of directors, was the founder of the IDF’s satellite-based signals intelligence unit and also a former senior vice president at both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys. Both Amdocs and Comverse courted scandal in the late 1990s and early 2000s for their role in a massive Israeli government-backed espionage operation that targeted U.S. federal agencies during that period.
Despite this scandal and others in the company’s past, Comverse subsidiary Verint was subsequently contracted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to bug the telecommunications network of Verizon shortly after their previous espionage scandal was covered by mainstream media. The contract was part of Operation Stellar Winds and was approved by then-NSA Director Keith Alexander, who has since been an outspoken advocate of closer Israeli-American government cooperation in cybersecurity.
In addition to Entrèe Capital, Andreessen Horowitz is another of Toka’s main investors. The venture capital firm co-founded by Silicon Valley titan Marc Andreessen is currently advised by former Secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers, a close friend of the infamous pedophile Jeffery Epstein. Early investors in Toka that are no longer listed on the firm’s website include Launch Capital, which is deeply tied to the Pritzker family — one of the wealthiest families in the U.S., with close ties to the Clintons and Obamas as well as the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby — and Ray Rothrock, a venture capitalist who spent nearly three decades at VenRock, the Rockefeller family venture capital fund.
In light of the aforementioned policy of Israel’s government to use private tech companies as fronts, the combination of Toka’s direct Israeli government ties, the nature of its products and services, and the numerous, significant connections of its leaders and investors to both Israeli military intelligence and past Israeli espionage scandals strongly suggests that Toka is one such front.
If this is the case, there is reason to believe that, when Toka clients hack and gain access to a device, elements of the Israeli state could also gain access. This concern is born out of the fact that Israeli intelligence has engaged in this exact type of behavior before as part of the PROMIS software scandal, whereby Israeli “superspy” Robert Maxwell sold bugged software to the U.S. government, including highly sensitive locations involved in classified nuclear weapons research. When that software, known as PROMIS, was installed on U.S. government computers, Israeli intelligence gained access to those same systems and devices.
The U.S. government was not the only target of this operation, however, as the bugged PROMIS software was placed on the networks of several intelligence agencies around the world as well as powerful corporations and several large banks. Israeli intelligence gained access to all of their systems until the compromised nature of the software was made public. However, Israel’s government was not held accountable by the U.S. government or the international community for its far-reaching espionage program, a program directly facilitated by technology-focused front companies. The similarities between the products marketed and clients targeted by Maxwell during the PROMIS scandal and currently by Toka are considerable.
World Bank, IDB aid Toka in targeting Palestine’s allies
While the ties between Toka and Israel’s national security state are clear as day, what is also significant and unsettling about this company is how its entry into developing and developed countries alike is being facilitated by global financial institutions, specifically the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Notably, these are the only deals with governments that Toka advertises on its website, as the others are not made public.
Several projects funded by one or another of these two institutions have seen Toka become the “cyber designer” of national cybersecurity strategies for Nigeria and Chile since last year. Significantly, both countries’ populations show strong support for Palestine and the BDS movement. In addition, Toka garnered a World Bank-funded contract with the government of Moldova, an ally of Israel, last September.
The World Bank selected Toka in February of last year to “enhance Nigeria’s cyber development,” which includes developing “national frameworks, technical capabilities and enhancement of skills.” Through the World Bank contract, Toka has now become so intimately involved with both the public and private sectors of Nigeria that it relates to the country’s “cyber ecosystem.” The World Bank’s decision to choose Toka is likely the result of a partnership forged in 2019 by the state of Israel with the global financial institution “to boost cybersecurity in the developing world,” with a focus on Africa and Asia.
Toka executives pose with Nigerian officials in 2020. Photo | Israel Defense
“Designing and building sustainable and robust national cyber strategy and cyber resilience is a critical enabler to fulfilling the objectives of Nigeria’s national cybersecurity policy and strategic framework,” Toka CEO Yaron Rosen said in a press release regarding the contract.
Given Toka’s aforementioned use of its technology for only “trusted” governments, it is notable that Nigeria has been a strong ally of Palestine for most of the past decade, save for one abstention at a crucial UN vote in 2014. In addition to the government, numerous student groups, human rights organizations, and Islamic organizations in the country are outspoken in their support for Palestine. With Toka’s efforts to offer its products only to countries who align themselves with “friendly” countries, their now intimate involvement with Nigeria’s cyber development could soon have consequences for a government that has tended to support the Palestinian cause. This is even more likely given Toka CEO Rosen’s statements at an April 2021 event hosted by Israel’s Ministry of Economy, where he emphasized the role of cyber in developing countries specifically in terms of their national defense and economic strategy.
Three months after the deal was struck with Nigeria through the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) selected Toka to advise the government of Chile on “next steps for the country’s national cybersecurity readiness and operational capacity building.” As part of the project, “Toka will assess the current cybersecurity gaps and challenges in Chile and support the IDB project implementation by recommending specific cybersecurity readiness improvements,” per a press release. Toka claims it will help “establish Chile as a cybersecurity leader in South America.” Regarding the deal, Toka’s Rosen stated that he was “thankful” that the IDB had “provided us with this opportunity to work with the Government of Chile.”
Israel signed consequential agreements for cooperation with the IDB in 2015, before further deepening those ties in 2019 by partnering with the IDB to invest $250 million from Israeli institutions in Latin America specifically.
Toka executives are pictured with Chilean officials during a 2020 meeting in Santiago
Like Nigeria, Chile has a strong connection with Palestine and is often a target of Israeli government influence efforts. Though the current far-right government of Sebastián Piñera has grown close to Israel, Chile is home to the largest Palestinian exile community in the world outside of the Middle East. As a result, Chile has one of the strongest BDS movements in the Americas, with cities declaring a non-violent boycott of Israel until the Piñera administration stepped in to claim that such boycotts can only be implemented at the federal level. Palestinian Chileans have strong influence on Chilean politics, with a recent, popular presidential candidate, Daniel Jadue, being the son of Palestinian immigrants to Chile. Earlier this year, in June, Chile’s congress drafted a bill to boycott goods, services and products from illegal Israeli settlements.
While Toka frames both of these projects as aimed at helping the cyber readiness and economies of the countries it now services, Israeli media has painted a different picture. For instance, Haaretz wrote that Israel’s partnerships with development banks, specifically those made in 2019 that resulted in these Toka contracts, were planned by an inter-ministerial committee set up by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to realize the potential of international development to strengthen the Israeli economy, improve Israel’s political standing and strengthen its international role.” One source, quoted by Haaretz as being close to this undertaking, stated that “development banks are a way to help advance Israel’s interests and agenda in the developing world, including Latin America. But it’s not philanthropy.”
Given these statements, and Toka’s own modus operandi as a company and its background, it seems highly likely that the reason both Nigeria and Chile were chosen as the first of Toka’s development banks contracts was aimed at advancing the Israeli government’s agenda in those specific countries, one that seeks to counter and mitigate the vocal support for Palestine among those countries’ inhabitants.
The spyware problem goes far beyond NSO Group
The NSO Group and its Pegasus software is clearly a major scandal that deserves scrutiny. However, the treatment of the incident by the media has largely absolved the Israeli government of any role in that affair, despite the fact that the NSO Group’s sales of Pegasus to foreign governments has been approved and defended by Israel’s government. This, of course, means that Israel’s government has obvious responsibility in the whole scandal as well.
In addition, the myopic focus on the NSO Group when it comes to mainstream media reporting on Israeli private spyware and the threats it poses means that other companies, like Toka, go uninvestigated, even if their products present an even greater potential for abuse and illegal surveillance than those currently marketed and sold by the NSO Group.
Given the longstanding history of Israeli intelligence’s use of technology firms for international surveillance and espionage, as well as its admitted policy of using tech companies as fronts to combat BDS and ensure Israel’s “cyber dominance,” the investigation into Israeli spyware cannot stop just with NSO Group. However, not stopping there risks directly challenging the Israeli state, particularly in Toka’s case, and this is something that mainstream media outlets tend to avoid. This is due to a mix of factors, but the fact that NSO’s Pegasus has been used to spy on journalists so extensively certainly doesn’t help the matter.
Yet, Israel’s weaponization of its tech industry, and the global use of its spyware offerings by governments and security agencies around the world, must be addressed, especially because it has been explicitly weaponized to prevent non-violent boycotts of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, including those solely based on humanitarian grounds or out of respect for international laws that Israel routinely breaks. Allowing a government to engage in this activity on a global scale to stifle criticism of flagrantly illegal policies and war crimes cannot continue and this should be the case for any government, not just Israel.
If the outlets eagerly reporting on the latest Pegasus revelations are truly concerned with the abuse of spyware by governments and intelligence agencies around the world, they should also give attention to Toka, as it is actively arming these same institutions with weapons far worse than any NSO Group product.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for MintPress News. She currently writes for her own outlet Unlimited Hangout and contributes to The Last American Vagabond and MintPress News.
Adelaide authorities intend to use CCTV surveillance and shop purchase data to enforce contact tracing and quarantine
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | July 24, 2021
In Australia, announcements have been made just this week that credit card data trails and CCTV surveillance footage will now be used for contact tracing.
South Australia State’s capital Adelaide will go into a seven-day lockdown and in announcing this, officials there said that in order to more efficiently implement their contact tracing scheme, they will use QR scan information to determine people’s location.
In addition, the authorities will also be accessing people’s bank account details and CCTV cameras, while restaurant owners are said to be “aware of this” and working very closely with the state.
Although these latest measures might seem draconian, they are not surprising in a country that boasts having “very sophisticated contact tracing.”
This means that tracking of people and collection of their data from a variety of sources is widespread – but any “sophistication” seems to end there, as there have already been cases of abuse of data supposedly harvested only for public health purposes, to then be turned over to the police investigating their unrelated cases; and there have been some rushed attempts to retroactively write contact tracing into law to avoid legal trouble down the road.
Regardless of all this, some Australian states are still championing contact tracing, crediting it for the country presenting itself as a “test case” showcasing the spread of the Delta variant among Australia’s “largely unvaccinated” population – which also has low case numbers – thus providing “clean data.”
So far, the accepted “wisdom” of how the virus spreads and what represents risky behavior has been to avoid indoor gatherings; but now, some scientists are looking to suggest that outdoor transmission is also becoming a problem, and single out Australia’s “well-resourced contact tracing teams” in helping test and prove this claim.
Once again, this time in the state of Victoria, contact tracing that employs QR codes, CCTV and ticketing – though people’s banking details are left out here – is said to have provided good information on the spread of the Delta variant.
And, the notion of outdoor transmission (which, if it becomes COVID “canon,” would further restrict (unvaccinated) people’s activities though various restrictions) is being brought up as a real possibility.
“There’s been a lot of reports of, ‘well, we’ve never heard of outdoor transmission’, a lot of that is because (across the world) they haven’t got the very sophisticated contact tracing that we’re now doing across Australia, and in Victoria in particular,” said Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton.
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