Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

The Bizarre Refusal to Apply Cost-Benefit Analysis to COVID Debates

By Glenn Greenwald | August 25, 2021

In virtually every realm of public policy, Americans embrace policies which they know will kill people, sometimes large numbers of people. They do so not because they are psychopaths but because they are rational: they assess that those deaths that will inevitably result from the policies they support are worth it in exchange for the benefits those policies provide. This rational cost-benefit analysis, even when not expressed in such explicit or crude terms, is foundational to public policy debates — except when it comes to COVID, where it has been bizarrely declared off-limits.

The quickest and most guaranteed way to save hundreds of thousands of lives with policy changes would be to ban the use of automobiles, or severely restrict their usage to those authorized by the state on the ground of essential need (e.g., ambulances or food-delivery vehicles), or at least lower the nationwide speed limit to 25 mph. Any of those policies would immediately prevent huge numbers of human beings from dying. Each year, according to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “1.35 million people are killed on roadways around the world,” while “crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54.” Even with seat belts and airbags, a tragic number of life-years are lost given how many young people die or are left permanently and severely disabled by car accidents. Studies over the course of decades have demonstrated that even small reductions in speed limits save many lives, while radical reductions — supported by almost nobody — would eliminate most if not all deaths from car crashes.

Given how many deaths and serious injuries would be prevented, why is nobody clamoring for a ban on cars, or at least severe restrictions on who can drive (essential purposes only) or how fast (25 mph)? Is it because most people are just sociopaths who do not care about the huge number of lives lost by the driving policies they support, and are perfectly happy to watch people die or be permanently maimed as long as their convenience is not impeded? Is it because they do not assign value to the lives of other people, and therefore knowingly support policies — allowing anyone above 15 years old to drive, at high speeds — that will kill many children along with adults?

That may explain the motivation scheme for a few people, but in general, the reason is much simpler and less sinister. It is because we employ a rational framework of cost-benefit analysis, whereby, when making public policy choices, we do not examine only one side of the ledger (number of people who will die if cars are permitted) but also consider the immense costs generated by policies that would prevent those deaths (massive limits on our ability to travel, vastly increased times to get from one place to another, restrictions on what we can experience in our lives, enormous financial costs from returning to the pre-automobile days). So foundational is the use of this cost-benefit analysis that it is embraced and touted by everyone from right-wing economists to the left-wing European environmental policy group CIVITAS, which defines it this way:

Social Cost Benefit Analysis [is] a decision support tool that measures and weighs various impacts of a project or policy. It compares project costs (capital and operating expenses) with a broad range of (social) impacts, e.g. travel time savings, travel costs, impacts on other modes, climate, safety, and the environment.

This framework, above all else, precludes an absolutist approach to rational policy-making. We never opt for a society-altering policy on the ground that “any lives saved make it imperative to embrace” precisely because such a primitive mindset ignores all the countervailing costs which this life-saving policy would generate (including, oftentimes, loss of life as well: banning planes, for instance, would save lives by preventing deaths from airplane crashes, but would also create its own new deaths by causing more people to drive cars).

While arguments are common about how this framework should be applied and which specific policies are ideal, the use of cost-benefit analysis as the primary formula we use is uncontroversial — at least it was until the COVID pandemic began. It is now extremely common in Western democracies for large factions of citizens to demand that any measures undertaken to prevent COVID deaths are vital, regardless of the costs imposed by those policies. Thus, this mentality insists, we must keep schools closed to avoid the contracting by children of COVID regardless of the horrific costs which eighteen months or two years of school closures impose on all children.

It is impossible to overstate the costs imposed on children of all ages from the sustained, enduring and severe disruptions to their lives justified in the name of COVID. Entire books could be written, and almost certainly will be, on the multiple levels of damage children are sustaining, some of which — particularly the longer-term ones — are unknowable (long-term harms from virtually every aspect of COVID policies — including COVID itself, the vaccines, and isolation measures, are, by definition, unknown). But what we know for certain is that the harms to children from anti-COVID measures are severe and multi-pronged. One of the best mainstream news accounts documenting those costs was a January, 2021 BBC article headlined “Covid: The devastating toll of the pandemic on children.”

The “devastating toll” referenced by the article is not the death count from COVID for children, which, even in the world of the Delta variant, remains vanishingly small. The latest CDC data reveals that the grand total of children under 18 who have died in the U.S. from COVID since the start of the pandemic sixteen months ago is 361 — in a country of 330 million people, including 74.2 million people under 18. Instead, the “devastating toll” refers to multi-layered harm to children from the various lockdowns, isolation measures, stay-at-home orders, school closures, economic suffering and various other harms that have come from policies enacted to prevent the spread of the virus:

From increasing rates of mental health problems to concerns about rising levels of abuse and neglect and the potential harm being done to the development of babies, the pandemic is threatening to have a devastating legacy on the nation’s young. . . .

The closure of schools is, of course, damaging to children’s education. But schools are not just a place for learning. They are places where kids socialize, develop emotionally and, for some, a refuge from troubled family life.

Prof Russell Viner, president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, perhaps put it most clearly when he told MPs on the Education Select Committee earlier this month: “When we close schools we close their lives.”

The richer you are, the less likely you are to be affected by these harms from COVID restrictions. Wealth allows people to leave their homes, hire private tutors, temporarily live in the countryside or mountains, or enjoy outdoor space at home. It is the poor and the economically deprived who bear the worst of these deprivations, which — along with not having children at all — may be one reason they are assigned little to no weight in mainstream discourse.

“The stress the pandemic has put on families, with rising levels of unemployment and financial insecurity combined with the stay-at-home orders, has put strain on home life up and down the land,” the BBC notes. But even for adults and those who are middle-class and above, severe and sustained isolation from community and life is bound to produce serious mental health harms, as two mental health experts I interviewed all the way back in April, 2020, warned.

None of this is to say that these are easy calculations. How COVID deaths or hospitalizations are weighed against the grave harms from anti-COVID restrictions is a complex question, one that almost certainly yields different answers in different countries and cultures. It may even yield a different policy answer in the same country as the virus and the social conditions which COVID produces evolve. One can debate how the contagiousness of COVID compares to the huge number of people who lose their lives or ability to lead healthy lives every year (so often, this argument is met with the more or less accurate but irrelevant distinction that COVID is contagious while car accidents are not: how does that bear on one’s willingness to endorse road policies (such as allowing driving cars at high speeds) that will inevitably kill large numbers of people or one’s refusal to consider the countervailing costs of anti-COVID measures?).

Put another way, this is not an argument in favor of or against any particular policy undertaken in the name of fighting COVID. What it is, instead, is an attempt to highlight the pervasive and deeply misguided refusal to assign any costs to the harms caused by anti-COVID policies themselves.

Perhaps this irrational mindset is explainable by the fact that COVID hospitalizations and deaths are more dramatic than the more insidious, lurking harms from sustained life disruptions. Perhaps the rapidly declining rates of child-rearing in the West make it more difficult to observe or care about the damage all of this is doing to the developmental abilities and mental health of children. Perhaps other factors — from a psychological desire for parental protection in the form of authoritarian power or a warped sense of “safetyism” — is rendering any cost-benefit analysis morally unacceptable. None of those speculative theories, however, accounts for the virtually unanimous refusal to consider a ban on cars or a 25 mph nationwide speed limit; that willingness to sacrifice huge numbers of lives by opposing life-saving automobile policies seems driven by the inconvenience such policies would impose on particular groups of people.

Whatever is true about motives, what is unacceptable — sociopathic, really — is the insistence on assigning severe costs to just one side of the ledger (harms from COVID itself) while categorically refusing to recognize let alone value the costs on the other side of the ledger (from severe, enduring anti-COVID disruptions to and restrictions on life). Given the reflexive rage that is produced when one tries to make this argument — what immediately emerges are accusations that one is indifferent to COVID deaths — I wanted to walk through the evidence and rationale demonstrating why this approach is reckless, immoral and irrational. That is the argument I examine in both this article and in a 30-minute video I produced for Rumble.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Northern Ireland Doctor, Anne McCloskey, suspended over online video showing concern over vaccinating kids

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 25, 2021

A Northern Ireland doctor has been suspended over a YouTube video (now only available on Odysee after being deleted by YouTube) where she expressed concerns about young people taking the COVID-19 vaccine.

A Health and Social Care Board (HSCB) investigation is being carried out as a result of concern raised over Dr. McCloskey’s comments in the video.

Her comments on the COVID-19 vaccinations appeared in a video posted online after treating patients at an after-hours clinic.

During the investigation period, McCloskey, a former Aontú councillor, will not be permitted to participate in health service activities.

Several assertions were made by Dr. McCloskey in the nine-minute video uploaded on Sunday, among them that she had come across a girl that had a blood clot in her upper arm and alleged she spoke to a boy who couldn’t get out of bed two weeks after getting vaccinated.

Allegedly, GPs and members of the public have complained about the video, according to the BBC.

“There is no evidence to support Dr. McCloskey’s comments,” the BBC stated.

According to the Derry GP, “I dealt with very many sick, distressed, worried, traumatized people, almost all of them, with the exception of small children, have been double jabbed.”

McCloskey said that some vaccinated young people she treated at the weekend became ill because they were “damaged” by vaccination.

She said that many young people had been “coerced, bribed, or bullied” into getting them.

She stated, “… This whole hype has largely been a figment of the media, and the government and their lying scientific advisors and their deceptions.”

According to the Health and Social Care Board (HSCB), Dr. McCloskey was suspended “as a precautionary measure,” while an investigation was being conducted.

“Suspension is not an automatic occurrence when undertaking an investigation” a spokesman stated, “but may be necessary where there are concerns regarding patient safety and in the public interest.”

Dr. McCloskey, on the other hand, told BBC News NI she stands by her views.

As per the HSCB, Dr. McCloskey works for Western Urgent Care, which provides GP out-of-hours services in the western area, on a sessional basis, however, the Western Urgent Care (WUC) is also conducting its own “investigations and internal processes in regard to the matter,” the statement reads.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

In the Name of ‘Public Safety’ Australia Descends Into a Nightmarish Orwellian Police State

By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 25, 2021

The land Down Under appears to be reverting back to its original status as a penal colony as government officials, looking more like prison wardens than any servants of the people, clamp down on demonstrators weary of more Covid lockdowns.

A heavy police presence in the major Australian cities on the weekend didn’t stop thousands of protesters from taking to the streets in what many saw as a last-ditch effort to protect their severely threatened liberties and freedoms.

The protests came after New South Wales announced its second extended lockdown, which puts Sydney’s 5 million residents under strict curfew conditions until mid-September. The wait will seem all the more excruciating, however, as rumors are flying that the shelter in place orders may be extended all the way until January.

Meanwhile in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city behind Sydney, citizens face similar restrictions, which mean that – aside from going shopping within a designated radius from their homes, exercising for an hour a day outdoors, and going to work so long as they are engaged in “essential employment” – have essentially become prisoners inside of their own homes.

At this point in Australia’s history, the only thing that remains certain is the uncertainty, which makes the lockdowns all the more unbearable.

Images from Australia’s two major cities on Saturday showed powder keg conditions as demonstrators squared off against police, who responded with batons, pepper spray and mass arrests (It will interesting to see if Big Media describes the police actions against the lockdown protesters in the same compassionate way it described the actions taken against Australia’s very own Black Lives Matter protests around the same time last year. As the Guardian sympathetically reported: “At least 20,000 attended the Sydney [BLM] march which passed off peacefully, except for ugly scenes when police officers used pepper spray on protesters who had flowed into Central station after the rally finished.” It will be advisable not to hold your breath). In live footage obtained by Facebook user ‘Real Rukshan,’ large groups of police are seen confronting individual citizens, seemingly guilty of nothing else aside from just being there.

In one scene (at the 2:10 marker), an elderly man who appears to be leaving a Starbuck’s coffee shop is surrounded by no less than five police officers, who proceed to handcuff the man and, presumably, take him to prison. In another scene (at the 0:30 mark), two men are seen standing in front of the Bank of Melbourne confronted by six officers. In front of them on the street are four mounted officers astride anxious horses. The feeling conjured up in these incidences is the same: authoritarian police-state overkill.

Given the massive police presence amid the steady deterioration of basic human rights a person might get the impression that Australia is really dealing with an existential crisis. While that may be true with regards to obesity, drug abuse and homelessness, it seems to be a real exaggeration when it comes to Covid-19. After all, while evidence of the above mentioned scourges is visible everywhere in the country, the only place the coronavirus seems to exist in Australia is on the nightly news channels (which, by the way, have done a very poor job of keeping their audiences up to date on latest developments. Sources in New Zealand, for example, have informed that the media there has largely ignored the story of anti-lockdown protests happening just across the Tasman Sea).

For example, New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian, in an effort to portray the pandemic as enemy number one, expressed from the boob tube her “deepest, deepest sympathies” to the families of three people who died overnight from/with the coronavirus. Who were these fatalities? The public was not informed of their identities, but Berejiklian described them as “a man in his 80s, and a man in his 90s, and a female in her 90s.”

It’s just a hunch, but could the comorbidity in each of those “tragic” cases have been that silent killer popularly known as ripe old age? Yes, every life is precious and worth saving, but is Australian officialdom secretly shooting for absolute immortality among the population and not just prevention? That would certainly be the height of irony if true considering that the effort is killing just about everyone. In fact, it seems that the real pandemic attacking the Australian people is government-sponsored fear.

Meanwhile, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews added insult to injury when he commanded from his bully pulpit that citizens, now deprived of their favorite drinking holes to while away the jobless hours, were forbidden from removing their masks to drink alcohol in the great outdoors. As to whether the consumption of a non-alcoholic beverage outdoors would also fall within the tight confines of the mask regime, dear leader did not say. However, the answer seems pretty clear since the state is actually using police helicopters to shoo away sunbathers from the nation’s many famous beaches.

All of this insanity has befallen the people Down Under after the continent has witnessed the barest uptick of Covid cases. In the state of New South Wales, for example, where Sydney is located, there were just 825 acquired infections reported on Saturday, an increase from the 644 the day prior. In the state of Victoria, home to Melbourne, the situation appears even less worrying, with just 61 cases reported as of Saturday. These low infection rates, taken together with a high level of public skepticism with regards to the safety of the Covid vaccines, translates into just 29 percent of the population opting to be jabbed to date.

So as the petty tyrants Down Under seem more concerned with getting every single Australian citizen the Big Pharma jab – together with the lifetime of booster shots and lockdowns that will certainly follow – the populace is more concerned about how to save their collective health, sanity and jobs. That’s no easy task when the police give a hard time even to people who are found to be walking their dogs without a face mask on. These days even man’s best friend seems to have it better than the people struggling to survive Down Under.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Ohio state representative Al Cutrona introduces anti-social-media-censorship bill

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | August 24, 2021

Representative Al Cutrona of Canfield, R-59th, wants legislation passed that would forbid social media platforms from censoring their users.

If Cutrona’s bill moves forward, it would prohibit social network sites removing users or editing posts for their views and does not include posts that break state or federal laws, such as encouraging violence or criminal activity.

Rep Al Cutrona had this to say: “These monopolized Big Tech platforms should not have the power to dictate what they deem as acceptable speech, that’s exactly why we have the First Amendment.”

Cutrona’s office states that the same legislation has been introduced in 29 additional states, with a quote in the press release saying:

“With social media being a quintessential form of communication these days, this bill is to ensure people’s constitutional right to freedom of speech is not infringed on. As Americans, obviously we are not all going to agree with one another on thoughts and ideas, and that’s OK. But it’s surely not the job of Big Tech employees to choose favorites on what deserves censorship based on ambiguous policies and their personal views.”

Users would have the right to appeal censorship decisions and companies have to explain why their speech was removed.

As part of transparency regulations, social media firms would also have to publicly reveal their content management practices and explain how their material is selected and targeted.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

S. Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to ‘take every action available’ to stop Biden from ‘illegally’ mandating vaccines

RT | August 24, 2021

South Dakota governor and anti-lockdown advocate Kristi Noem has promised to do all it takes to “protect” residents from a hypothetical federal vaccine mandate after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot received full approval from regulators.

Noem has vowed to take the Joe Biden administration to court if it tries to impose a blanket vaccination requirement on Americans, claiming that such an order would be illegal.

“If Joe Biden illegally mandates vaccines, I will take every action available under the law to protect South Dakotans from the federal government,” Noem sounded off on Twitter.

The tweet came hours after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted its full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, one of three that have been used as part of the mass vaccination drive in the US. The others remain approved on an emergency basis only.

President Biden cited the long-awaited green light from the FDA to urge private businesses, nonprofits and other organizations to “step up the vaccine requirements” and demand that employees and visitors show proof of vaccination. “Require it,” Biden said, doubling down on his previous rhetoric that total immunization was necessary to put an end to Covid-19 in the US.

Although Biden had already mandated all federal workers to either get a Covid-19 jab or face regular testing, and recently extended a similar requirement to staff at certain nursing homes, he has not floated a broader federal vaccine mandate – something that is considered to be out of his reach.

In late July, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky caused a stir when she appeared to suggest the administration was “looking into” such a mandate, only to walk back her comments later the same day and “clarify” that she was speaking about mandates by private companies and some government agencies.

Noem’s pre-emptive vow to defy mandatory vaccinations has earned her both praise and criticism online. Opponents of the administration’s vaccine policy lauded her for “fighting for freedom,” some even saying they were contemplating a move from California to South Dakota. Vaccination advocates, however, blasted the governor for letting constituents “die” for her “political ambitions,” and urged her to encourage immunizations instead.

Biden has waged a war of words with Republican governors, such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott in Texas, who have been at odds with the Democratic administration’s Covid-19 policy, banning businesses and schools from requiring masks.

Biden argued that requiring masks is “doing the right thing,” saying it was in the governor’s “power” to “save lives.”

“I say to these governors: Please help, but if you aren’t going to help at least get out of the way,” he said on August 3.

Republicans argue that masks and vaccines should be left up to personal choice, noting that nobody is prohibited from wearing face coverings or scheduling vaccinations.

There has been a steady increase in new cases in South Dakota over the past several weeks, but no deaths were reported since last weekend. And despite the recent surge, South Dakota still remains below the US national average in cases.

About 70% of the state’s adult population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including 61% that have been fully inoculated. Overall, some 48% of the state’s total population has been vaccinated fully.

August 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Biden administration demands Facebook hands over data on “misinformation” and vaccine skeptics

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 21, 2021

The Biden administration continues to pressure Facebook to collaborate and help it achieve its goals, one of them being to counter COVID vaccine skepticism and get more people in the US vaccinated.

After Biden shockingly denounced Facebook and others as “killing people” because they are allegedly letting COVID misinformation run rampant on their platforms, that pressure now continues in media reports, like the one The Washington Post published, citing three anonymous administration sources.

According to them, The White House and Facebook have had a series of meetings whose aim was to get the social media giant to turn over massive amounts of user data to the government, apparently as a “good will gesture” – since there doesn’t seem to be any legal ground for such a request.

Instead, the “tense” meetings saw the administration’s COVID crew “begging” Facebook to give them access to data showing how many people on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp see content branded as coronavirus misinformation, how many are still undecided whether to get the jab, and also the efficiency of Facebook’s censorship algorithms, i.e., how many people still get to see content that it aims to block.

It’s not obvious why the officials quoted by the article thought Facebook was under obligation to do this, but they accused the company of “hiding, filibustering and deflecting” – while at the same time commending Google and Twitter for apparently being much more accommodating in similar meetings around the same subject.

Although it is clear that these meetings are initiated and the data sought by the government, the criticism of Facebook in this matter conflates the notions of government and the public, saying it was the latter that “needs to understand” the scale of COVID misinformation and how to “potentially” fight this real or perceived problem.

The data Facebook has collected from its billions of users is described as “singular” and so complex and fine-grained that it can reveal people’s behavior and position on issues – clearly this is where the belief that the data would show the Biden administration how many users are still undecided on the vaccine comes from.

“It’s not that they wouldn’t provide data. It’s that they wouldn’t provide meaningful data, and you end up with a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily have value,” Andy Slavitt, who represented The White House in the meetings, said.

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

FBI admits it “has so far found no evidence” January 6th Capitol riot was organized on social media

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2021

The narrative that the January 6 storming of the US Capitol was organized on social media contributed to the shutdown of alternative tech app Parler, led to mass social media censorship, and was even used by some Big Tech platforms to justify the permanent suspension of President Trump.

But now, the FBI is disputing this narrative, with multiple current and former law enforcement officials telling Reuters there is scant evidence that the events of January 6 were the result of an organized plot and no evidence that Trump was involved in organizing the storming of the Capitol.

Four current and former law enforcement officials, who have been either directly involved or regularly briefed on the FBI’s investigations into the storming of the Capitol, told Reuters that “the FBI at this point believes the violence was not centrally coordinated by far-right groups or prominent supporters of then-President Donald Trump.”

One of the sources added that “ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases” and that the remaining five percent “were more closely organized” but “there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”

Additionally, the sources said that the FBI “has so far found no evidence” that Trump or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.

These revelations from law enforcement sources directly dispute the January 6 narrative that has been pushed by numerous media outlets which, in the immediate aftermath of the storming of the Capitol, blamed social media and Trump supporters for the events at the US Capitol.

In a January 6 article titled “The storming of Capitol Hill was organized on social media,” The New York Times claimed that groups that had been “bolstered by Mr. Trump” had “openly organized on social media networks and recruited others to their cause.”

The article also directly connected this alleged months-long organization on social media to the storming of the Capitol by stating “their online activism became real-world violence, leading to unprecedented scenes of mobs freely strolling through the halls of Congress and uploading celebratory photographs of themselves, encouraging others to join them.”

Countless other media outlets, including BuzzFeed and ProPublica, pushed the same narrative by claiming that the Capitol rioters had been planning online for weeks.

Not only did these media articles allege that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media but many also suggested that alt-tech sites such as Gab, Parler, and Telegram were to blame.

The New York Times piece claimed that both Gab and Parler were being “used by the far-right” to share “directions on which streets to take to avoid the police and which tools to bring to help pry open doors.”

And BuzzFeed wrote:

“On pro-Trump social media website Parler, chat app Telegram, and other corners of the the far-right internet, people discussed the Capitol Hill rally at which Trump spoke as the catalyst for a violent insurrection. They have been using those forums to plan an uprising in plain sight, one that they executed Wednesday afternoon, forcing Congress to flee its chambers as it met to certify the results of the election.”

This media narrative, which is now being disputed by the FBI, triggered a wave of online censorship after January 6.

President Trump was banned from all of the major social media platforms days after January 6. Big Tech justified the bans by referencing the events at the Capitol and suggesting that Trump was inciting violence.

Twitter even pushed similar talking points to those being pushed by the media and claimed that “plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021” were one of the factors that led to it banning Trump.

And Parler was booted from Apple and Google’s app stores and Amazon’s web hosting services within days of the Capitol riot. Apple even echoed the media’s assertion that Parler was being “used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021” in its threat to ban the alt-tech platform from the App Store.

Other examples of post-January 6 Big Tech censorship include Facebook banning photos and videos from protestors at the US Capitol and YouTube disabling live chats on some streams discussing protests at the Capitol.

As this media narrative that the storming of the Capitol was organized on social media starts to fall apart, those who were impacted by the subsequent censorship are still feeling its impact.

President Trump is still blacklisted from all of the Big Tech platforms and has lost his ability to reach the millions of followers he had accumulated on these platforms, even after these law enforcement sources said the FBI has found no evidence that Trump or his prominent supporters had anything to do with coordinating or organizing the events of January 6.

And since it was deplatformed by Apple, Google, and Amazon in January, Parler has lost more than 95% of its traffic. According to web analytics service SimilarWeb, Parler’s traffic declined from a peak of over 40 million visits in January to 1.93 million visits in July.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media outlets that pushed this narrative are still given preferential treatment by Big Tech through algorithms that boost their reach by up to 20x.

This phenomenon of mainstream media outlets pushing a narrative that leads to mass censorship, only for the narrative to crumble months later isn’t limited to January 6.

Countless social media users were censored for suggesting the possibility of the coronavirus leaking from the infamous Wuhan lab until the media reversed course and reported that this could in fact be a possibility. Facebook then changed its rules to allow discussions of the lab leak theory but most of those who were censored before the media reversed course still haven’t had their accounts or posts reinstated.

Yet the media outlets that previously claimed the lab leak theory was a “conspiracy” and then reversed course, haven’t faced any sanctions and get to maintain their status as “authoritative sources” that are boosted by Big Tech’s algorithms.

Related:  How Big Tech’s “authoritative” mainstream media sources prop up each other’s falsehoods

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Facebook suspends Canadian political candidate Marc Emery during campaign season

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 22, 2021

A Canadian candidate for political office who is currently running for a seat in parliament has been suspended by Facebook, most likely for posts critical of the country’s COVID policy.

Facebook cited five posts published over the past year as the reason, and one of them, Marc Emery took aim at what he called “the evil Covid dictatorship.”

The ban – which will last as long as his campaign and thus cut him off from communicating with his potential voters on the world’s largest social media site – came because Facebook found the posts to violate its community standards on “hate speech.”

Emery, who is a libertarian and a candidate of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), is also an activist and entrepreneur who is known as “prince of pot” for his previous activism to legalize cannabis, and who has run for various offices in the past.

It was precisely the government’s response to the pandemic and the way many Canadians are accepting the sometimes draconian restrictions that inspired Emery to return to politics.

Among the posts that Facebook said contained hate speech is one featuring photos of a takeout bag from a restaurant ruined by lockdowns. Emery linked the shutting down of the restaurant with Canadians being “soft, weak, unprincipled” and “virtually begging for this dictatorship because of hysteria, propaganda, lies and manipulation.”

In the same post, he accused what he said was “the hysterical and evil Covid dictatorship” for destroying businesses every day, something he added was a tyranny happening at all levels of government.

The rest of the posts marked as “hate speech” show what is said to be marijuana that Emery bought legally, and one of cannabis samples he received as a gift.

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Facebook names government-funded CBC’s Radio-Canada as “fact-checker” for Canadian election

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 23, 2021

Facebook has revealed that Radio-Canada, a French-language news service owned by the government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), will be serving as a “fact-checker” for the 2021 Canadian election campaign.

Facebook made the announcement as part of its Canadian Election Integrity Initiative and revealed that Radio-Canada’s “Les Décrypteurs,” a team that fact-checks “false information” and “disinformation,” has been added to the program since the last federal election.

Not only is a service that’s owned by a public broadcaster that receives over $1 billion in annual funding from the Canadian federal government being given the power to act as an arbiter of truth for Facebook during a federal election but the appointment also follows CBC admitting to several major factual errors in its own reporting via its public corrections and clarifications page.

Some of CBC’s self-admitted errors this year include incorrectly describing the AstraZeneca vaccine as 100% effective in preventing the severe outcomes of COVID-19 in multiple stories, incorrectly stating that Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman had contracted COVID-19, and incorrectly reporting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had fatally shot a women in Edmundston, New Brunswick.

In addition to CBC receiving government funding and having a public history of major errors, CBC also sued the Conservative Party, the opposition to the current ruling Liberal Party, during the last Canadian federal election in 2019 for using CBC footage in its ads. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed but critics argued that it was an example of CBC’s bias against the Conservatives.

More recently, journalist and best selling author Candice Malcolm highlighted the disparity in CBC’s coverage of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative leader Erin O’Toole:

“Just last week the CBC ran an article framing Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole as an anti-vaxxer over his stance on mandatory vaccines for the civil service. O’Toole supports vaccines and encourages all federal employees to get vaccinated, with the small caveat that he would make accommodations for those who fail to get the shot.

This is nearly identical to Trudeau’s position. A federal memo on vaccines similarly discusses alternatives and accommodations for those who do not get vaccinated.

And yet, CBC’s report read like a Liberal news release.

“O’Toole has come out against mandatory vaccinations for federal public servants,” read one headline.

“Trudeau pushed to make mandatory vaccination an election issue Friday calling the Conservative opposition to it ‘irresponsible’ and ‘dangerous,’” read another CBC headline.”

Members of Facebook’s fact-checking program can have a significant influence over the total number of clicks posts generate because their fact-checks can result in a warning label being appended to posts. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, these warning labels cut clicks through to content by 95%.

Award-winning former Toronto Star reporter Richard J. Brennan responded to the news by tweeting: “First off, when did Facebook give a damn about giving its members accurate info? And secondly, CBC should mind its own store.”

Michael Campbell, host of Canada’s top-rated syndicated business radio show MoneyTalks, added: “Now I know I’ve entered the Twilight Zone.”

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Comments in response to FDA’s license of Pfizer vax today for 16 years and up

By Meryl Nass, MD | August 23, 2021

The vaccine-induced protection provided by Covid vaccines starts fading within months. In late July, Israel’s Minister of Health said vaccine protection had dropped to 39%. It is not preventing severe illness in Israel and the UK either, though the US CDC changed its collecting methods for breakthrough cases on May 1 to disguise this fact.

While the US government has said it will begin booster doses of mRNA vaccines the week of September 20, there is actually NO evidence that Covid-19 boosters will provide increased protection against infection, or that they are effective against the delta variant or other new variants.

For other vaccines, such as mumps and pertussis, there is no evidence that booster doses after the initial course add measurable protection.

Boosters do raise antibody levels, briefly, which increases the risk of autoimmune adverse effects, immune overactivity and the dire possibility of antibody-enhanced disease (AED), a.k.a. vaccine-enhanced disease (VED), in which those who are vaccinated have a much more severe illness when exposed to Covid than do the unvaccinated.

Since the UK’s top vaccine expert Sir Andrew Pollard told Parliament 2 weeks ago that herd immunity cannot be obtained—in fact it is a “myth”– because the vaccine is not halting transmission, and since the CDC director confirmed this, there is no logical reason to mandate vaccinations for anyone, since the vaccines are not protecting the community.

Mandating vaccinations for the young and healthy, who are at minimal risk from Covid, but at increased risk from Covid vaccinations, is a travesty. The risk of myocarditis after vaccination in a male teenager is 50 times higher than the risk to a 65 year old, according to CDC data. The teenager has many years ahead of him, while the long-term side effects from Covid vaccines have yet to be identified.

Reported deaths following Covid vaccinations are at least 10 times higher than for any vaccine ever approved in the US. Yet FDA and CDC have never explained the causes of these deaths, and they  pretend they do not exist.

This fact alone should have been sufficient to stop FDA granting a license to the Pfizer vaccine.

Here is the convoluted license-plus-authorization letter from FDA. This could be a bait and switch–see the next post.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Robert Dingwall: We Need to Hold Advocates of Mask Mandates to Account

By Toby Young | The Daily Sceptic | August 23, 2021 

Robert Dingwall, a Professor at Nottingham Trent University and a leading sociologist, has written an excellent piece for Social Science Space criticising the imposition of mask mandates, given the paucity of evidence that masks interrupt transmission and the lack of any robust evaluation of the harms masks cause.

First, Professor Dingwall looks at the two main sources of evidence purporting to show that masks are effective.

One is studies at various scales of the impact of mask mandates on reported infection rates. These may compare cities, states, provinces or entire nations using time series data to look for inflections of rates that may be attributable to the mandates. A great deal of mathematical ingenuity has been expended in trying to control for the numerous confounders from biases in reporting, differences in diagnosis, leads and lags in public behaviour in response to the mandates, seasonal fluctuations, mobility – the list is almost endless. By the time these manipulations are complete, though, it is very difficult to conclude that there is any clear and obvious effect. Infection rates do not seem to vary much between comparable communities regardless of the NPIs that have been introduced. I have yet to see a study that identifies a clear and unequivocal benefit from a mask mandate in the form of an obvious inflection point attributable to the intervention. For all the reasons cited, this would be hard to find so perhaps we should not treat its absence as conclusive proof of a lack of benefit so much as something that is consistent with the RCT evidence that any benefit is likely to be minimal.

The other main source of evidence is laboratory studies of the properties of masks using techniques from physics and engineering. Some studies treat masks as a straightforward air filtration experiment. These are well-controlled and reproducible, but bear little resemblance to real-world conditions. The more sophisticated studies use mannikins to create a jet of air carrying inert particles into a controlled space, mimicking human exhalation. Masks can then be used to interrupt the air flow. The resulting measurements are the basis for computational models that provide more general descriptions of the spread of particles, which may be used to create video simulations. These studies are often elegant but suffer familiar problems in generalising to real-world environments. Within reason, the experimenter can manipulate the average velocity of the jet, the size of particles and the permeability of the mask in ways that aim to mimic breathing at different rates, coughing or sneezing. To get reliable measurements, including video or photographic evidence of the dispersion of the particles, the simulated exhalations must enter still air. Air, however, is never still in the real world. In any space there are thermal currents that are moving air around and dispersing exhalations in ways that are not captured, and probably cannot be captured, by the experimenter in a physically meaningful way. The efficacy of masks is also sensitive to the choice of particle size. If the experimenter favours droplets, larger particles, masks capture these quite well – but they also fall quickly to the ground and are unlikely to be inhaled by anyone at a normal social distance. If the experimenter favours aerosols, smaller particles, these are likely to pass through or around cloth masks, whose pore size is typically significantly larger than the aerosol particles. In which case the masks may filter a small proportion of the particles but probably let most through or around the edges. Where higher quality masks have been mandated, the community evidence runs into the same problems as before.

Having concluded that neither body of evidence is remotely persuasive, he then turns to the potential harms that masks do.

The precautionary principle also requires a proper evaluation of the potential harms. Few such studies have actually been done but relevant issues can readily be identified. Four are clearly important. First, they discriminate against a large group of people with communicative disabilities of speech and hearing, with neurodisabilities, such as autism or Aspergers, or with mental health issues, such as prior trauma from confinement as an abused child or as a survivor of sexual assault. Second, they discriminate against people who have medical consequences such as acute skin infections, eye infections or respiratory infections as a result of mask use. In the pre-pandemic world, such people could find workplaces where these issues were avoided but they cannot escape the mandates. Third, there is the impact on child development, particularly in relation to language and social interaction. The American Academy of Pediatrics claimed that there was no evidence for this, but there is a substantial body of research from psychology, education and linguistics establishing the importance of observing faces, particularly for small children. Fourth, and perhaps hardest to measure, there is the impact on community levels of fear and anxiety. This, indeed, has been the ultimate fall-back for committed advocates of masks – they may not have an impact on the transmission of the virus but they remind everyone that there is a pandemic going on and that they should be cautious every time they set foot outside their home – the safety of the home is assumed, of course. The consequence, of course, is that we are nudged towards regarding our fellow human beings as no more than potential vectors of infection. Everyone is guilty until proven innocent. The trust on which everyday life depends in modern societies is fatally compromised.

He concludes that mask mandates should never have been introduced, given the paucity of the evidence and the lack of research into potential harms.

If we do not think it is acceptable to have our lives ordered in ways that discriminate against large sections of the population, that impair the development of children, that damage the mental health of the nation and that make each of us fearful of the other, then it is time to hold the advocates of masking to account for the quality of evidence. It is simply too fragile to justify coercive measures, whether by the state or by private actors. Why has there been so little investment in RCTs? Why are mask advocates now arguing that RCTs would be unethical because the benefits are obvious, when they patently are not? It is more unethical to perpetuate a practice without evidence than to challenge one’s preconceptions. This is truly how science progresses and debate should be conducted.

Worth reading in full.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ten reasons why the jab must never be mandatory

By Abir Ballan | TCW Defending Freedom | August 21, 2021

COVID-19 presents a high risk of severe illness and death to a few and a negligible risk to the majority of the population. This epidemiological reality lends itself to a focused vaccine approach: offering a safe and efficacious vaccine to high-risk individuals (mostly people above 50 who already have health problems) when the benefit of the intervention clearly outweighs the risk.

Mandatory vaccination has no place in a free society. Public health policy should never be coercive and should always be participatory. Decisions must be made by those who have ‘skin in the game’ and not by bureaucrats or a conflicted elite who will never have to live with the consequences of their actions. The role of public health agencies is to provide the public with accurate information, and allow individuals and communities to make their own decisions.

Seven ethical principles of public health should be at the heart of any public health intervention: non-maleficence, beneficence, respect for autonomy, health maximisation, efficiency, justice and proportionality. Human rights, scientific facts and common sense should also be applied.

Ten reasons why Covid-19 vaccination should never be mandatory:

1.    Non-maleficence – the Hippocratic duty of ‘first, do no harm’. There is mounting evidence of serious adverse events, particularly myocarditis in the young, following Covid-19 vaccination. Adverse events reporting systems act as a signalling system so immediate action can be taken to prevent greater harm. There are currently strong enough signals to warrant an investigation. Vaccines arealso contra-indicated for individuals with certain health conditions. Vaccination of pregnant/breastfeeding women must be approached with great care – pregnant women were excluded from the vaccine trials; Covid risk is low in healthy women of child-bearing age, while vaccine risks to the foetus/infant cannot be determined yet.

2.    Beneficence – the duty to produce benefit for the individual. Health interventions should be based on individual needs.Vaccination is indicated only when the intervention clearly represents a greater benefit than risk for the individual. This criterion is not met for children and young people, individuals below 60 with no existing health problems, and individuals with past SARS-CoV-2 infection (including asymptomatic infection).

3.    Respect for autonomy – allowing individuals to pursue their wellbeing as they perceive it. Every person has a high value and cannot merely be treated as a means to the end of others’ good. This entails seeking the individual’s informed consent before any medical intervention: informing them of the risks and the benefits of the intervention and getting their voluntary consent without any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion. Currently, individuals cannot be provided with full information on vaccine side effects as no long-term data exists yet. The results of the vaccine trials should be replicated by independent scientists prior to vaccine rollout to the high risk group. Public transparency of all efficacy and safety data is necessary.

4.    Health maximisation – maximising the health of all members of the general public requires a holistic and multi-layered approach: educating the public about a healthy lifestyle to improve their chronic illness, the importance of Vitamin D in fighting respiratory infections, the importance of home-based early treatment, the availability of life saving treatment protocols, safe and effective drugs (such as ivermectin), as well as vaccines for the high-risk group. Vaccinating individuals who incur greater risk from the vaccine than benefit increases total harm.

5.    Efficiency – the duty to produce as many benefits to as many people given limited resources. Vaccinating individuals who do not benefit from the intervention diverts valuable resources away from the vulnerable as well as from far more devastating global health issues like TB, HIV, diabetes, cancer and cardiac diseases.

6.    Justice – all humans have equal worth and no one should be discriminated against based on their health choices. Unfair practices such as denial of services, requirements for employment, restrictions on travel, higher insurance premium for the unvaccinated create a two-tiered society. It breaks social solidarity and cohesion.

7.    Proportionality –the reasonable balance between benefits and costs of an intervention in terms of individual welfare versus collective benefit. Vaccines are designed to confer protection to the vaccinated. It is unethical for a person to incur any vaccine risk or lose personal freedoms for the sake of somebody else.

8.    Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can result from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The virus can also be transmitted among animals. Even if everyone is vaccinated, transmission will continue and variants will keep on evolving. A Zero Covid strategy is unrealistic and unachievable.

9.    Herd immunity can be reached through a combination of natural infection and vaccination. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is broad and long-lasting – more so than vaccine-induced immunity, especially in combating variants. Recovery from infection prevents serious illness if reinfected. It is not necessary to vaccinate the entire planet for the ‘greater good’ of society.

10.  Non-derogable rights, as stated in Article 58 of the Siracusa Principles on the Limitation and Derogation Provisions in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1958), apply under all circumstances, even under threat of ‘national security’:

‘No state party shall, even in time of emergency threatening the life of the nation, derogate from the Covenant’s guarantees of the right to life; freedom from torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and from medical or scientific experimentation without free consent . . . and freedom of thought, conscience and religion. These rights are not derogable under any conditions even for the asserted purpose of preserving the life of the nation.’

We face two scenarios. Either the vaccines work, delivering protection to the vaccinated and eliminating the claim that everyone needs to be vaccinated. Or the vaccines don’t work, and therefore no one should get vaccinated. On both counts, vaccine passports are a pointless ‘public health’ tool that will undermine trust in the medical profession and vaccination programmes. They seem to serve economic, financial, political and ideological agendas. Most fundamentally, they are unethical. They swing the gate wide open for totalitarian rule through a digital social credit system.

Vaccine passports represent the epitome of the greater evil of society. This is the inch we must not yield.

August 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »