A man who spent last year believing everything the Government and media said about Covid-19 and Lockdowns, only to find out that none of the things he’d believed are true, has announced his continued belief that they must be acting out of purely altruistic motives. Brian Sprocket, a 38-year-old teaching assistant from Barnsley, spent most of last year staying home, wearing a mask on the few occasions he ventured out, and ensuring he stayed away from all human beings, whom he regarded as walking virus carriers.
But at the beginning of this year, he was forced to think for the first time about what was going on, after his television stopped working. With nothing to watch, Brian decided to look at an email sent to him by a friend last autumn, which he had previously dismissed as a conspiracy theory:
“The email claimed that Asymptomatic transmission was a myth, based almost entirely on one false case in Germany. To my amazement, when I actually did a bit of research for the first time in nearly a year, I realised that this claim, which Governments around the world had used as the pretext for Lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and, well everything, wasn’t actually true.”
From there, nothing could hold Brian back from his new found quest for the truth. Having previously believed that the quarantining of millions of healthy people for months on end was a normal health policy that had been used since time immemorial, he was shocked to find out that this wasn’t the case at all, and that normal practice was to quarantine the sick:
“I must admit, I felt a bit of a numpty when I found that out. I suppose it’s obvious when you think about it, but I suppose at least I wasn’t the only one who fell for it.”
From there, Brian entered a whole new world of truth discovery. For instance, he was amazed to find out that the authorities had been lying about PCR testing, which even its inventor said should never be used as a clinical diagnostic tool. He was also shocked to find out the truth about the lethality of Covid-19, which he had been convinced was roughly the same as Bubonic Plague, which had killed up to 60% of the populations it infected:
“All through 2020,” he said, “I’d been sending angry and sneering Tweets to those claiming Covid-19 was not much different to a bad seasonal flu, calling them names like Covidiots and Covid Deniers, that sort of thing. But back in February, I came across a paper by one of the world’s most cited epidemiologists, Stanford University’s John Ioannidis, who found that the Infection Fatality Rate of Covid-19 is around 0.23% — roughly the same as a bad flu. This was accepted by the World Health Organisation. You’d think finding out that Covid-19 isn’t the Plague would be reassuring, but I must admit I found it all a bit unnerving.”
After going on to discover that the vaccines aren’t really vaccines, but experimental gene therapies that haven’t completed their clinical trials, Brian started to write a stern letter to his MP, telling her he’d never vote for her again if she didn’t start holding the Government to account, oppose Vaccine Passports, and demand our freedoms back. However, just as he was completing it, his TV was returned from the repair shop, and after turning it on to watch the latest Government briefing, he forgot everything he’d found out over the past few weeks, and instead expressed his anger at those who refuse to wear masks, who don’t wish to be “vaccinated”, and who are sounding the alarm about Vaccine Passports:
“I can’t believe those stupid tinfoil hat wearing Covidiots and Vaccine Deniers,” he said from under his triple mask. “Don’t they realise there’s a deadly virus about and the Government is just trying to do its best to keep us safe. All we need to do is keep following the rules, stay apart from each other, keep your distance, keep masking up, make sure we don’t mess it up now, get the vax, follow the science, behave responsibly etc etc.”
April 13, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights |
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Court authorizes Cyber Unit to continue operating in the shadows, conducting quasi-judicial censorship without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday, 12 April 2021, rejected a petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) giving a green light to the continued operations of the Israeli state attorney’s office Cyber Unit and its “alternative enforcement” model of censoring social media content.
Israel’s Cyber Unit uses an “alternative enforcement” mechanism to essentially censor social media platforms and muzzle users: it flags and submits social media posts – without legal proceedings and often without even the knowledge of the individual user – to social media giants and requests their removal.
This Israeli state practice is aimed at clamping down on social media dissent, and frequently even results in the suspension or removal of users. This censorship is conducted in collaboration and coordination with social media outlets, including U.S.-based giants Facebook and Twitter.
Similar units operating in countries around the world are known as Internet Referral Units (IRUs).
Adalah attorneys Fady Khoury and Rabea Eghbariah had filed the petition against the Cyber Unit to the Israeli Supreme Court on 26 November 2019. They stressed that the Cyber Unit’s “alternative enforcement” mechanism violates the constitutional rights of freedom of expression and due process, and that the unit is operating without any legal authority.
Israeli Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer announced the decision on Monday morning in Jerusalem, in his final ruling before retirement.
In its decision, the court granted unchecked and unauthorized power to the Israeli state, allowing it to govern online speech by using informal channels with social media corporations. The court essentially privatized the judicial process, allowing private corporations to decide upon censorship of social media content based on ostensibly unbinding requests from Israeli state authorities.
Adalah Attorney Rabea Eghbariah commented immediately following the Israeli Supreme Court ruling:
“The Israeli Supreme Court has just authorized the state to continue to use its Cyber Unit to conduct quasi-judicial censorship proceedings in cooperation with private corporations, without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content. Israel’s Cyber Unit has operated in the shadows of the law to censor tens of thousands of social media posts every year. The Supreme Court has now, to our regret, given Israel a blank check to continue with this practice.”
April 13, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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Fed up after years of relentless National Guard deployments in undeclared wars, state lawmakers across the country are pushing legislation that would prohibit the use of Guard units in combat zones without a formal declaration of war by Congress.
The bills are being promoted by BringOurTroopsHome.US, a self-described organization of “right-of-center” veterans working to end American involvement in “endless wars” and restore congressional authority over war-making. The libertarian 10th Amendment Center is also backing the cause.
The proposed laws would require governors to determine the constitutionality of orders that place Guard units on federal active duty; where they’re deemed unconstitutional, the governor is required to take action to prevent the unit from being surrendered to federal control and sent into harm’s way.
The first “Defend the Guard” bill was conceived and introduced by Air Force veteran and West Virginia state legislator Pat McGeehan. While no state has enacted the law yet, interest is spreading widely, with legislators now pushing the measure in 31 states.
Conservative Veterans Taking Point
BringOurTroopsHome.US is led by Dan McKnight, a 13-year veteran of the Marine Corps Reserve, active duty Army and Idaho Army National Guard whose military service ended after he was injured in Afghanistan.
McKnight and many other veterans leading the drive against the War on Terror are from the right side of the political spectrum. That’s a sharp contrast to the typical antiwar veteran of the Vietnam era, but McKnight says vets from both wars share a common experience.
Today’s veterans “are coming home and saying the same thing (Vietnam vets did): ‘What was the point of that? What was our mission? We have no mission, we have no definition of success, we have no clear path to victory, we have no idea what victory means and we’re there without a constitutional authority to send us there’,” he says.
“Every one of us raised our hands and swore an oath to the Constitution…and when it says Congress shall be the only body to declare war, we take that to heart. And when Congress doesn’t do it, we understand bad things can happen: long, endless foreign misadventures,” says McKnight.
In a 2019 Pew Research poll, 64% of veterans said the war in Iraq wasn’t worth fighting; 58% said the same of Afghanistan. A January Concerned Veterans for America/YouGov poll found two-thirds or more of veterans support full withdrawals from both countries.
“The right-of-center veterans are now echoing the message of left-of-center veterans, and it’s hard to ignore when veterans from the entire political spectrum are saying the same thing: Enough already—if you want us to go and bleed and die and spend our lives and your treasure in a foreign land, then Congress should put their name on the line before we put our boots on the ground,” McKnight says.
That’s what the Constitution demands. In an impassioned speech at the West Virginia legislature last month, McGeehan quoted James Madison: “The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. It has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”
Deployments’ Steep Toll
The National Guard has played a major role in America’s post-9/11 militarism: As recently as December, more than 57,000 Guard members were deployed around the world.
The federal government’s reliance on the National Guard makes state legislatures an intriguing second front in the drive to curtail the War on Terror. “Defend the Guard” laws also give state lawmakers a rare chance to influence foreign policy—and to impose consequences for the executive branch’s usurpation of war powers.
The heavy reliance on the Guard takes a toll on soldiers, families, neighborhoods and states. The intense pace of National Guard deployments was underscored at a recent Defend the Guard hearing in South Dakota: While opposing “Defend the Guard,” the state adjutant general acknowledged that, during the entire Global War on Terrorism to date, the state has had all its troops home for just 42 days.
McKnight has friends who’ve done a staggering 12 or 13 overseas National Guard deployments. Beyond the risk to life and limb, and the hardships imposed on individuals, families and marriages, he says communities also pay a price.
Guard members “are police officers, tradesmen, mechanics, schoolteachers, attorneys. (When) they have to leave that job behind, it puts a burden on the community,” says McKnight. Upon their return, Guard members are generally guaranteed the option to reclaim their jobs—but that sometimes means displacing those who filled their positions while they were away, compounding the disruptive effect.
Deployments also prevent National Guard units from responding to crises at home—their primary reason for existing. For example:
- When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005, thousands of the states’ National Guard soldiers were deployed to Iraq. Mississippi’s 223rd Engineer Battalion returned to repair hurricane damage—but was ordered to leave its equipment in Iraq for use by other units.
- In 2020, as Oregon endured some of its worst wildfires ever, half the state’s National Guard helicopters were in Afghanistan, including all its CH-47 Chinooks—dual-rotor choppers capable of carrying 26,000-pound payloads and ideal for use in firefighting. The Oregon Guard did what it could with Blackhawk helicopters that have one tenth the lifting power.
The Empire Strikes Back
When Defend the Guard measures are introduced in state legislatures, the national security establishment and its allies emerge to defend the status quo—by hook or by crook.
In South Dakota, McKnight says, “the military-industrial complex…sent a two-star general to testify…and made all kinds of threats, and insinuated the state would lose their National Guard if they passed this bill, which is simply not true.”
Weeks ago, Republican Idaho Representative Joe Palmer, who chairs the state’s Transportation & Defense Committee, seemed to resort to underhanded tactics to kill a Defend the Guard bill.
He put the measure to an initial procedural vote in the committee, and declared it to have failed by voice vote. Video of the proceedings, however, shows the result of the voice vote to be unclear at best, and McKnight says his group’s post-vote polling of members suggests the measure would have advanced had Palmer taken a recorded vote.
If Palmer didn’t already know he should play fair with veterans who are trying to prevent fellow citizen-soldiers from dying in unconstitutional wars, he may be learning that lesson now: McKnight says his group facilitated an emergency meeting of the GOP committee in Palmer’s home town, which is now considering a resolution censuring Palmer for his conduct.
“If you want to play parliamentary tricks and the price of your tricks is the blood of my brothers and sisters who (deploy) over and over again, then we’re going to take some blood of our own, and we’re going to do that the way politicians understand, and that’s with voters in the primary and the general election,” says McKnight.
Sometimes, the establishment’s machinations are done away from cameras. In a 2015 interview, West Virginia’s McGeehan said he was summoned to a meeting in the Speaker’s office with the commander of the state National Guard. The general said he’d received a call from the Pentagon, threatening that, if Defend the Guard became law, West Virginia bases would find their way onto the list of installations targeted for closure.
Liz Cheney Intervenes to Thwart Wyoming Bill
McKnight says “the most offensive opposition that we’ve faced” came from U.S. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney.
“When we pushed the Defend the Guard bill in Wyoming last year, she or her staff contacted members of the Wyoming legislature and said, ‘If this passes in Wyoming, I will personally see to it that two C-130 aircraft are stripped from Wyoming and sent to Texas’,” says McKnight, who was in Cheyenne to support the bill, along with U.S. Senator Rand Paul.
Bethany Baldes, Wyoming state director of BringOurTroopsHome.US, was also on hand. She too says lawmakers told her they received calls from Cheney’s office that included threats to send new C-130 cargo planes to Texas. (Cheney’s communications director has not replied to an invitation to comment on this story.)
The measure failed, 35-22. A statement signed by a group of Wyoming senators opposing the measure seemed to turn logic on its head by claiming the bill “calls into question Wyoming’s support for our soldiers and airmen in the National Guard.”
That episode was McKnight’s second jarring encounter with Cheney, whom he describes as a “warmonger heiress of a military-industrial fortune.” Months before, he and other veterans met with Cheney in Washington to urge her to support the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.
“We went into Liz Cheney’s office and we asked her, ‘What conditions must be met on the ground for you to support ending the war in Afghanistan and bringing our troops home?’ And she said, ‘I don’t think I could ever support that position’.”
Pressing the issue, the veterans asked Cheney how long troops should remain. “She looked us stone-faced in the eye and said, ‘Forever. American troops will be in Afghanistan forever’,” says McKnight. “That’s when we decided it was time to step away from the swamp and work in the states, and force the states to force Congress’s hand.”
April 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Militarism | United States |
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Featured image: Mark Zuckerberg walks among attendees at a VR conference in Barcelona, Spain in 2016, Source: Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook page
In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as “anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police,” was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of “transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.”
The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. “If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,” Baker had written on his Facebook event page.
Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first “precrime” arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing “increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,” the steady advance toward a precrime-centered “war on domestic terror” has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.
This new so-called war on domestic terror has actually resulted in many of these types of posts on Facebook. And, while Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a “town square” that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world’s largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent.
Part 1 of this two-part series on Facebook and the US national-security state explores the social media network’s origins and the timing and nature of its rise as it relates to a controversial military program that was shut down the same day that Facebook launched. The program, known as LifeLog, was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States while also seeking to harvest data for producing “humanized” artificial intelligence (AI).
As this report will show, Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant whose origins coincide closely with this same series of DARPA initiatives and whose current activities are providing both the engine and the fuel for a hi-tech war on domestic dissent.
DARPA’s Data Mining for “National Security” and to “Humanize” AI
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, DARPA, in close collaboration with the US intelligence community (specifically the CIA), began developing a “precrime” approach to combatting terrorism known as Total Information Awareness or TIA. The purpose of TIA was to develop an “all-seeing” military-surveillance apparatus. The official logic behind TIA was that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks.
The architect of TIA, and the man who led it during its relatively brief existence, was John Poindexter, best known for being Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor during the Iran-Contra affair and for being convicted of five felonies in relation to that scandal. A less well-known activity of Iran-Contra figures like Poindexter and Oliver North was their development of the Main Core database to be used in “continuity of government” protocols. Main Core was used to compile a list of US dissidents and “potential troublemakers” to be dealt with if the COG protocols were ever invoked. These protocols could be invoked for a variety of reasons, including widespread public opposition to a US military intervention abroad, widespread internal dissent, or a vaguely defined moment of “national crisis” or “time of panic.” Americans were not informed if their name was placed on the list, and a person could be added to the list for merely having attended a protest in the past, for failing to pay taxes, or for other, “often trivial,” behaviors deemed “unfriendly” by its architects in the Reagan administration.
In light of this, it was no exaggeration when New York Times columnist William Safire remarked that, with TIA, “Poindexter is now realizing his twenty-year dream: getting the ‘data-mining’ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.”
The TIA program met with considerable citizen outrage after it was revealed to the public in early 2003. TIA’s critics included the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the surveillance effort would “kill privacy in America” because “every aspect of our lives would be catalogued,” while several mainstream media outlets warned that TIA was “fighting terror by terrifying US citizens.” As a result of the pressure, DARPA changed the program’s name to Terrorist Information Awareness to make it sound less like a national-security panopticon and more like a program aiming specifically at terrorists in the post-9/11 era.
DARPA’s IOA, oversaw Total Information Awareness during its brief existence
The TIA projects were not actually closed down, however, with most moved to the classified portfolios of the Pentagon and US intelligence community. Some became intelligence funded and guided private-sector endeavors, such as Peter Thiel’s Palantir, while others resurfaced years later under the guise of combatting the COVID-19 crisis.
Soon after TIA was initiated, a similar DARPA program was taking shape under the direction of a close friend of Poindexter’s, DARPA program manager Douglas Gage. Gage’s project, LifeLog, sought to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence” that included an individual’s relationships and communications (phone calls, mail, etc.), their media-consumption habits, their purchases, and much more in order to build a digital record of “everything an individual says, sees, or does.” LifeLog would then take this unstructured data and organize it into “discreet episodes” or snapshots while also “mapping out relationships, memories, events and experiences.”
LifeLog, per Gage and supporters of the program, would create a permanent and searchable electronic diary of a person’s entire life, which DARPA argued could be used to create next-generation “digital assistants” and offer users a “near-perfect digital memory.” Gage insisted, even after the program was shut down, that individuals would have had “complete control of their own data-collection efforts” as they could “decide when to turn the sensors on or off and decide who will share the data.” In the years since then, analogous promises of user control have been made by the tech giants of Silicon Valley, only to be broken repeatedly for profit and to feed the government’s domestic-surveillance apparatus.
The information that LifeLog gleaned from an individual’s every interaction with technology would be combined with information obtained from a GPS transmitter that tracked and documented the person’s location, audio-visual sensors that recorded what the person saw and said, as well as biomedical monitors that gauged the person’s health. Like TIA, LifeLog was promoted by DARPA as potentially supporting “medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic.”
Critics in mainstream media outlets and elsewhere were quick to point out that the program would inevitably be used to build profiles on dissidents as well as suspected terrorists. Combined with TIA’s surveillance of individuals at multiple levels, LifeLog went farther by “adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.” One critic, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned at the time that the programs that DARPA was pursuing, including LifeLog, “have obvious, easy paths to Homeland Security deployments.”
At the time, DARPA publicly insisted that LifeLog and TIA were not connected, despite their obvious parallels, and that LifeLog would not be used for “clandestine surveillance.” However, DARPA’s own documentation on LifeLog noted that the project “will be able . . . to infer the user’s routines, habits and relationships with other people, organizations, places and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task,” which acknowledged its potential use as a tool of mass surveillance.
In addition to the ability to profile potential enemies of the state, LifeLog had another goal that was arguably more important to the national-security state and its academic partners—the “humanization” and advancement of artificial intelligence. In late 2002, just months prior to announcing the existence of LifeLog, DARPA released a strategy document detailing development of artificial intelligence by feeding it with massive floods of data from various sources.
The post-9/11 military-surveillance projects—LifeLog and TIA being only two of them—offered quantities of data that had previously been unthinkable to obtain and that could potentially hold the key to achieving the hypothesized “technological singularity.” The 2002 DARPA document even discusses DARPA’s effort to create a brain-machine interface that would feed human thoughts directly into machines to advance AI by keeping it constantly awash in freshly mined data.
One of the projects outlined by DARPA, the Cognitive Computing Initiative, sought to develop sophisticated artificial intelligence through the creation of an “enduring personalized cognitive assistant,” later termed the Perceptive Assistant that Learns, or PAL. PAL, from the very beginning was tied to LifeLog, which was originally intended to result in granting an AI “assistant” human-like decision-making and comprehension abilities by spinning masses of unstructured data into narrative format.
The would-be main researchers for the LifeLog project also reflect the program’s end goal of creating humanized AI. For instance, Howard Shrobe at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and his team at the time were set to be intimately involved in LifeLog. Shrobe had previously worked for DARPA on the “evolutionary design of complex software” before becoming associate director of the AI Lab at MIT and has devoted his lengthy career to building “cognitive-style AI.” In the years after LifeLog was cancelled, he again worked for DARPA as well as on intelligence community–related AI research projects. In addition, the AI Lab at MIT was intimately connected with the 1980s corporation and DARPA contractor called Thinking Machines, which was founded by and/or employed many of the lab’s luminaries—including Danny Hillis, Marvin Minsky, and Eric Lander—and sought to build AI supercomputers capable of human-like thought. All three of these individuals were later revealed to be close associates of and/or sponsored by the intelligence-linked pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who also generously donated to MIT as an institution and was a leading funder of and advocate for transhumanist-related scientific research.
Soon after the LifeLog program was shuttered, critics worried that, like TIA, it would continue under a different name. For example, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told VICE at the time of LifeLog’s cancellation, “It would not surprise me to learn that the government continued to fund research that pushed this area forward without calling it LifeLog.”
Along with its critics, one of the would-be researchers working on LifeLog, MIT’s David Karger, was also certain that the DARPA project would continue in a repackaged form. He told Wired that “I am sure such research will continue to be funded under some other title . . . I can’t imagine DARPA ‘dropping out’ of a such a key research area.”
The answer to these speculations appears to lie with the company that launched the exact same day that LifeLog was shuttered by the Pentagon: Facebook.
Thiel Information Awareness
After considerable controversy and criticism, in late 2003, TIA was shut down and defunded by Congress, just months after it was launched. It was only later revealed that that TIA was never actually shut down, with its various programs having been covertly divided up among the web of military and intelligence agencies that make up the US national-security state. Some of it was privatized.
The same month that TIA was pressured to change its name after growing backlash, Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir, which was, incidentally, developing the core panopticon software that TIA had hoped to wield. Soon after Palantir’s incorporation in 2003, Richard Perle, a notorious neoconservative from the Reagan and Bush administrations and an architect of the Iraq War, called TIA’s Poindexter and said he wanted to introduce him to Thiel and his associate Alex Karp, now Palantir’s CEO. According to a report in New York magazine, Poindexter “was precisely the person” whom Thiel and Karp wanted to meet, mainly because “their new company was similar in ambition to what Poindexter had tried to create at the Pentagon,” that is, TIA. During that meeting, Thiel and Karp sought “to pick the brain of the man now widely viewed as the godfather of modern surveillance.”
Peter Thiel speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2013, Source: Mirko Ries Courtesy for the World Economic Forum
Soon after Palantir’s incorporation, though the exact timing and details of the investment remain hidden from the public, the CIA’s In-Q-Tel became the company’s first backer, aside from Thiel himself, giving it an estimated $2 million. In-Q-Tel’s stake in Palantir would not be publicly reported until mid-2006.
The money was certainly useful. In addition, Alex Karp told the New York Times in October 2020, “the real value of the In-Q-Tel investment was that it gave Palantir access to the CIA analysts who were its intended clients.” A key figure in the making of In-Q-Tel investments during this period, including the investment in Palantir, was the CIA’s chief information officer, Alan Wade, who had been the intelligence community’s point man for Total Information Awareness. Wade had previously cofounded the post-9/11 Homeland Security software contractor Chiliad alongside Christine Maxwell, sister of Ghislaine Maxwell and daughter of Iran-Contra figure, intelligence operative, and media baron Robert Maxwell.
After the In-Q-Tel investment, the CIA would be Palantir’s only client until 2008. During that period, Palantir’s two top engineers—Aki Jain and Stephen Cohen—traveled to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, every two weeks. Jain recalls making at least two hundred trips to CIA headquarters between 2005 and 2009. During those regular visits, CIA analysts “would test [Palantir’s software] out and offer feedback, and then Cohen and Jain would fly back to California to tweak it.” As with In-Q-Tel’s decision to invest in Palantir, the CIA’s chief information officer during this time remained one of TIA’s architects. Alan Wade played a key role in many of these meetings and subsequently in the “tweaking” of Palantir’s products.
Today, Palantir’s products are used for mass surveillance, predictive policing, and other disconcerting policies of the US national-security state. A telling example is Palantir’s sizable involvement in the new Health and Human Services–run wastewater surveillance program that is quietly spreading across the United States. As noted in a previous Unlimited Hangout report, that system is the resurrection of a TIA program called Biosurveillance. It is feeding all its data into the Palantir-managed and secretive HHS Protect data platform. The decision to turn controversial DARPA-led programs into a private ventures, however, was not limited to Thiel’s Palantir.
The Rise of Facebook
The shuttering of TIA at DARPA had an impact on several related programs, which were also dismantled in the wake of public outrage over DARPA’s post-9/11 programs. One of these programs was LifeLog. As news of the program spread through the media, many of the same vocal critics who had attacked TIA went after LifeLog with similar zeal, with Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists telling Wired at the time that “LifeLog has the potential to become something like ‘TIA cubed.’” LifeLog being viewed as something that would prove even worse than the recently cancelled TIA had a clear effect on DARPA, which had just seen both TIA and another related program cancelled after considerable backlash from the public and the press.
The firestorm of criticism of LifeLog took its program manager, Doug Gage, by surprise, and Gage has continued to assert that the program’s critics “completely mischaracterized” the goals and ambitions of the project. Despite Gage’s protests and those of LifeLog’s would-be researchers and other supporters, the project was publicly nixed on February 4, 2004. DARPA never provided an explanation for its quiet move to shutter LifeLog, with a spokesperson stating only that it was related to “a change in priorities” for the agency. On DARPA director Tony Tether’s decision to kill LifeLog, Gage later told VICE, “I think he had been burnt so badly with TIA that he didn’t want to deal with any further controversy with LifeLog. The death of LifeLog was collateral damage tied to the death of TIA.”
Fortuitously for those supporting the goals and ambitions of LifeLog, a company that turned out to be its private-sector analogue was born on the same day that LifeLog’s cancellation was announced. On February 4, 2004, what is now the world’s largest social network, Facebook, launched its website and quickly rose to the top of the social media roost, leaving other social media companies of the era in the dust.
Sean Parker of Founders Fund speaks during the LeWeb conference in 2011, Source: @Kmeron for LeWeb11 @ Les Docks de Paris
A few months into Facebook’s launch, in June 2004, Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz brought Sean Parker onto Facebook’s executive team. Parker, previously known for cofounding Napster, later connected Facebook with its first outside investor, Peter Thiel. As discussed, Thiel, at that time, in coordination with the CIA, was actively trying to resurrect controversial DARPA programs that had been dismantled the previous year. Notably, Sean Parker, who became Facebook’s first president, also had a history with the CIA, which recruited him at the age of sixteen soon after he had been busted by the FBI for hacking corporate and military databases. Thanks to Parker, in September 2004, Thiel formally acquired $500,000 worth of Facebook shares and was added its board. Parker maintained close ties to Facebook as well as to Thiel, with Parker being hired as a managing partner of Thiel’s Founders Fund in 2006.
Thiel and Facebook cofounder Mosokvitz became involved outside of the social network long after Facebook’s rise to prominence, with Thiel’s Founder Fund becoming a significant investor in Moskovitz’s company Asana in 2012. Thiel’s longstanding symbiotic relationship with Facebook cofounders extends to his company Palantir, as the data that Facebook users make public invariably winds up in Palantir’s databases and helps drive the surveillance engine Palantir runs for a handful of US police departments, the military, and the intelligence community. In the case of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Palantir was also involved in utilizing Facebook data to benefit the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Today, as recent arrests such as that of Daniel Baker have indicated, Facebook data is slated to help power the coming “war on domestic terror,” given that information shared on the platform is being used in “precrime” capture of US citizens, domestically. In light of this, it is worth dwelling on the point that Thiel’s exertions to resurrect the main aspects of TIA as his own private company coincided with his becoming the first outside investor in what was essentially the analogue of another DARPA program deeply intertwined with TIA.
Facebook, a Front
Because of the coincidence that Facebook launched the same day that LifeLog was shut down, there has been recent speculation that Zuckerberg began and launched the project with Moskovitz, Saverin, and others through some sort of behind-the-scenes coordination with DARPA or another organ of the national-security state. While there is no direct evidence for this precise claim, the early involvement of Parker and Thiel in the project, particularly given the timing of Thiel’s other activities, reveals that the national-security state was involved in Facebook’s rise. It is debatable whether Facebook was intended from its inception to be a LifeLog analogue or if it happened to be the social media project that fit the bill after its launch. The latter seems more likely, especially considering that Thiel also invested in another early social media platform, Friendster.
An important point linking Facebook and LifeLog is the subsequent identification of Facebook with LifeLog by the latter’s DARPA architect himself. In 2015, Gage told VICE that “Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog at this point.” He tellingly added, “We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information to advertisers and data brokers and without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.”
Users of Facebook and other large social media platforms have so far been content to allow these platforms to sell their private data so long as they publicly operate as private enterprises. Backlash only really emerged when such activities were publicly tied to the US government, and especially the US military, even though Facebook and other tech giants routinely share their users’ data with the national-security state. In practice, there is little difference between the public and private entities.
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, notably warned in 2019 that Facebook is just as untrustworthy as US intelligence, stating that “Facebook’s internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their capability, and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment. And damn the consequences.”
Snowden also stated in the same interview that “the more Google knows about you, the more Facebook knows about you, the more they are able . . . to create permanent records of private lives, the more influence and power they have over us.” This underscores how both Facebook and intelligence-linked Google have accomplished much of what LifeLog had aimed to do, but on a much larger scale than what DARPA had originally envisioned.
The reality is that most of the large Silicon Valley companies of today have been closely linked to the US national-security state establishment since their inception. Notable examples aside from Facebook and Palantir include Google and Oracle. Today these companies are more openly collaborating with the military-intelligence agencies that guided their development and/or provided early funding, as they are used to provide the data needed to fuel the newly announced war on domestic terror and its accompanying algorithms.
It is hardly a coincidence that someone like Peter Thiel, who built Palantir with the CIA and helped ensure Facebook’s rise, is also heavily involved in Big Data AI-driven “predictive policing” approaches to surveillance and law enforcement, both through Palantir and through his other investments. TIA, LifeLog, and related government and private programs and institutions launched after 9/11, were always intended to be used against the American public in a war against dissent. This was noted by their critics in 2003-4 and by those who have examined the origins of the “homeland security” pivot in the US and its connection to past CIA “counterterror” programs in Vietnam and Latin America.
Ultimately, the illusion of Facebook and related companies as being independent of the US national-security state has prevented a recognition of the reality of social media platforms and their long-intended, yet covert uses, which we are beginning to see move into the open following the events of January 6. Now, with billions of people conditioned to use Facebook and social media as part of their daily lives, the question becomes: If that illusion were to be irrevocably shattered today, would it make a difference to Facebook’s users? Or has the populace become so conditioned to surrendering their private data in exchange for dopamine-fueled social-validation loops that it no longer matters who ends up holding that data?
Part 2 of this series on Facebook will explore how the social media platform has grown into a behemoth that is much more extensive than what LifeLog’s program managers had originally envisioned. In concert with military contractors and former heads of DARPA, Facebook has spent the last several years doing two key things: (1) preparing to play a much larger role in surveillance and data mining than it currently does; and (2) advancing the development of a “humanized” AI, a major objective of LifeLog.
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 Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
April 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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In the past several years, it has been fashionable to gawk in horror at China’s “social credit system,” an all-encompassing integration of surveillance, finance and state. Writing for The Triple Helix, Brown’s student publication focused on science and society, Priya Bhanot ’23 called China’s surveillance apparatus “Black Mirror Brought to Life.” China’s reputation for ubiquitous surveillance isn’t unjustified; a 2020 review of surveillance camera research by Comparitech found that of the world’s top 20 cities by cameras-per-capita, 18 are in China. But ubiquitous surveillance is far closer to home than Americans might think. As of 2020, Brown University has deployed one surveillance camera for approximately every 18 community members, placing it just shy of London, but ahead of every Chinese city except Taiyuan and Wuxi. In other words, Brown has about as many surveillance cameras as it does full-time faculty, of which it currently has 816!
It wasn’t always like this. In the span of two decades, Brown University quietly deployed an expansive surveillance apparatus, unbeknownst to many in the community; it’s well past time we critically examined our University’s pervasive surveillance of College Hill.
In 2000, the University only had 60 surveillance cameras, which the University mostly used to surveil parking lots and computer labs; a smattering watched Faunce’s club storage area, too. That year, Brown overhauled its fragmented VCR-based recording system into a fully-digital one, enabling Public Safety to monitor its cameras en masse from a central command center. This infrastructure investment marked a paradigm shift in Brown’s capacity for video surveillance.
By 2003, the total had increased to 105 cameras, with some now watching Faunce’s game room and the Main Green. According to The Chronicle, this proliferation of cameras into recreation spaces drew students’ first complaints about camera surveillance:
At Brown University, students have not complained about the cameras that watch over areas such as the basement of a student center. But students did object to a proposal to place cameras facing the main green of campus — to help manage crowds during commencement and other major events — says David Cardoza, card-access manager for the university’s security department.
Nevertheless, Brown continued to deploy new surveillance cameras in public spaces. By 2007, Brown had deployed 185 cameras, with 16 newly-installed cameras monitoring the Friedman Study Center in the Sciences Library. By 2011, Brown had deployed 250 cameras.
From here, the rate of installation increased drastically. In December 2013, the Campus Safety Task Force touted that Brown had deployed 430 cameras and a new array of 47 storage units for their footage. As of February 2020, the latest date for which data is publicly available, Brown University operates approximately 800 surveillance cameras. Following a spree of hateful graffiti in Hegeman Hall, the University installed its first cameras inside a dormitory. At the time of writing, the cameras remain installed.
This explosive proliferation of surveillance cameras at Brown University has progressed virtually unchecked and without community input. University Chief of Police Mark Porter suggested that the proliferation of cameras may reduce students’ fear of crime, but campus sentiment is considerably less enthusiastic about surveillance. In fall 2010, Herald editorial cartoonist Evan Donahue ’11 posted hoax letters in Keeney for a class project that announced the installation of security cameras around Keeney and Pembroke. Dylan Field ’13, a Residential Counselor in Keeney, told The Herald he was worried about the possibility of camera installation. Richard Bova, then-senior associate dean of Residential and Dining Services, categorically rejected the letter’s premise: “There has never been a plan — never will be a plan — to install cameras in any residence halls.” Of course, there eventually was such a plan.
Statements from DPS staff suggest a position of seemingly-limitless surveillance. “When you’re getting into the investigative side, you couldn’t have enough cameras,” said DPS Technical and Support Systems Manager David Cardoza to The Herald in 2008. Yet, in a 2011 interview with The Herald, Porter estimated that only about six crimes had been solved with the help of cameras. These solved crimes included the theft of a laptop from the Brown Bookstore and the truly shocking case of a thrown soda can in Faunce.
The successful use of cameras as an investigative aid in these incidents fails to justify the monetary expense of the camera system (exceeding $300,000 in 2000), much less the cost of students’ privacy. So what good are they? Speaking to The Herald in 2011, Porter instead emphasized the cameras’ purpose to deter, rather than aid in investigations: “We know that when we install them, that people will know they’re there.” This troubling justification invokes the specter of pre-crime — the almost-unfalsifiable presumption that there are agents on College Hill who would terrorize our community if not for the thin blue line of ubiquitous surveillance.
This justification warrants skepticism. A 40-year systemic review and meta-analysis published in 2019 found that passively monitored surveillance camera systems — like that adopted by Brown University — had no significant effect of crime reduction. Nor is it credible that “people will know” that cameras are there. Katie Goddard ’12 remarked to The Herald in 2011, “I haven’t noticed them”; neither had Daniel Valmas ’12, also interviewed by The Herald. Indeed, DPS makes no effort to draw attention to its surveillance cameras.
Rather, Brown University outright obscures the extent of its surveillance of College Hill. In 2008, the University declined to release its policy governing surveillance cameras to The Herald, or to provide a list of camera locations, or comment on how long recorded footage is archived for. The University’s surveillance policy, location of cameras and data retention practices remain completely opaque.
How can the Brown community engage in an informed discussion about surveillance if they are unaware of the scope of the surveillance? Until the University embraces transparency, the practice of “sousveillance” — the monitoring of people and institutions of authority by ordinary citizens — provides a means by which we students can educate ourselves and our peers. Since 2017, my friends and I have marked the locations of approximately 150 surveillance cameras on College Hill. While this is only a fraction of Brown University’s more than 800 cameras, the scope of the surveillance is staggering: It is impossible to cross (or even approach) Brown University without being surveilled. I encourage you to try.
John Wrenn MS’18 PhD’21 is a fifth-year doctoral candidate. He can be contacted at me@jswrenn.com, where he would be delighted to instruct you in the sousveillance of Brown University. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
April 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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A video out of Chile shows an elderly woman being refused entry to a supermarket because she didn’t obtain the necessary government permission to buy groceries under the country’s lockdown rules.
The clip shows the woman, who is apparently 100-years-old, appearing to be confused as she is denied access by security guards in uniform.
“Unfortunately government measures are not intended for the most vulnerable, not everyone handles the technology, not everyone has access to the internet,” tweeted Radio Villa Francia along with the video.
https://twitter.com/rvfradiopopular/status/1380924584032153603?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1380924584032153603%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fsummit.news%2F2021%2F04%2F12%2Fchile-elderly-woman-denied-entry-to-supermarket-after-failing-to-obtain-government-permission-to-buy-food%2F
In Chile, people have to apply for a “safe conduct pass” online, which only allows them to buy essential food items twice a week between the hours of 5am and 9pm.
Under the country’s ‘sanitary quarantine’, citizens must request “temporary instruments that authorize people to carry out fundamental activities and stock up on essential goods and services” in their communes.
The elderly lady’s failure to obtain the pass may have been related to her presumed inability to navigate the Internet.
The video serves as a chilling reminder as to what could be introduced in the west once vaccine passports and Chinese-style social credit score programs are implemented.
In the UK, vaccine passports won’t initially be required to enter venues like pubs, restaurants and grocery stores, but the government refused to rule it out longer term in their planning document.
In China, citizens who allow their social credit score to dip as a result of committing relatively minor infractions are denied the right to purchase things like plane and train tickets.
April 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Chile, Covid-19, Human rights |
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Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer and political analyst, who has lived in and reported from the occupied West Bank. He has written for publications such as Mint Press, Mondoweiss, MEMO, and various other outlets. He specializes in analysis of the Middle East, in particular Palestine-Israel. He also works for Press TV as a European correspondent.
Israeli and US officials are citing concerns over the potential outcome of the upcoming May 22 Palestinian legislative elections, and if their reactions mirror the past example, the conflict in the Palestinian Occupied Territories could severely escalate.
The people of the West Bank, East Jerusalem al-Quds and Gaza are set to vote in their first set of elections in 15 years. Much to the dismay of Israel and the United States, who claim they will not interfere in Palestinian democratic processes, it looks like their most despised group Hamas is on the way to a potential landslide victory.
In 2006, Hamas historically won the legislative elections, seizing control of the Gaza Strip. Their Fatah Party rivals, the United States and Israel, however, did not accept the election results and decided to take action to punish the people of Palestine for having their own say at the ballot box.
What ensued was dubbed as the ‘Palestinian civil war,’ which officially ended in 2007, with Hamas having successfully stopped an attempted Fatah-led coup – backed by the United States and Israel. Israel, as a result of the removal of Fatah power from the Gaza Strip, saw the perfect opportunity to impose a full and tightened blockade over the territory – thus collectively punishing its civilian population for their choice in the elections. Upon the Hamas victory, the US and EU also imposed overwhelming sanctions on Gaza meant to undermine the elected Hamas government.
As a result of the rivalry between the Fatah Party, currently heading the Palestinian Authority (PA) – which maintains limited control over small portions of the West Bank – and Hamas, there have been no elections since. Time and time again Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term in office expired in 2009, has postponed the elections, until early this year, when Abbas announced that legislative and presidential elections were finally to take place.
For Palestinians, their elections are set up to fail from the get-go. Pretty much the only political party they have to choose from, without being punished by the West and Israel, is the Fatah Party. All other major political Parties are registered terrorist organizations by most Western countries and Israel itself. Due to Western political immaturity, no organization that refuses to sell out the Palestinian cause for national liberation is to be considered as a legitimate political force and so instead it must be punished, attacked, sanctioned and humiliated. Thus, any Palestinian voting for a change to the status quo, meaning voting outside of lists belonging to Fatah, are to be punished for their choice to change to political scene.
We know from statements published by Fatah and Hamas that both intend to set up a unity government, meaning that Hamas will be in on decisions to lead the Palestinians of the occupied Palestinian territories. Yet, if this occurs, Israel is very open about their rejection of any collaboration with a government formed of Hamas members. This means that all of the cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, such as “security cooperation,” would cease and the two would be at conflict.
Early this year, Israeli Shin Bet chief Nadav Argaman had repeatedly warned President Mahmoud Abbas about the consequences of holding elections and made it clear that Hamas would not be tolerated. The Shin Bet chief also stressed that Abbas not go ahead with the elections.
Now it has been reported that, in a meeting between the two, both Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken are “concerned” about a Hamas win and urge a postponement of the elections. The hilarious part of the meeting, reported by Israel’s Walla news outlet, was that both figures also stressed that they didn’t intend to interfere in Palestinian democratic processes. But if you are urging a postponement of elections, after 15 years of no elections and are set to reject the party most likely to win at this point, then what else other than interference is that?
Israel has already gone on a tirade of arresting Palestinian political activists and prominent members of Hamas, in the West Bank and threatens ending cooperation with the PA, which will result in an escalation of violence. The US also does not indicate it will accept a Hamas win and is already expressing concern. So, if Hamas were to win in the West Bank, then we can only assume that their sanctions against Gaza may be transferred somewhat onto the West Bank too. This is essentially the US and Israel offering the Palestinian people an ultimatum; choose the status quo and still have the limited money you have, or choose who you like and we will crush you.
Due to the internal divisions now seen in the Fatah Party – which seems most likely to pave the way for a Hamas win – there is no indication that this will be respected by the West and Israel.
So, what do Palestinians do, vote for the status quo and continue to suffer as usual, watching the settlements expand upon the rest of their lands in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds), or vote for the alternative which will likely mean an all-out conflict with the West and Israel?
As much as the West and Israel attempt to publicly distance themselves from the Palestinian elections, they are as much a part of it as are all the Palestinian political parties themselves. This is just the reality of the ongoing illegal occupation, there is no official autonomous Palestinian State, only oppressed peoples fighting for that State. So, any attempt to act as if a fair election, without Israeli-US influence is possible, is a product of great imagination.
April 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Hamas, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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On 1 April, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced another 28-day province-wide COVID “shutdown”. Some observers claim that the officials need the restrictions in order to introduce vaccination passports.
According to human rights advocate Chris Sky, local government representatives and their medical advisers also don’t want to end the string of lockdowns because it will undermine the vaccination campaign.
Sputnik: Your province is currently in “shutdown mode”, with restrictions on retail and with a stay-at-home order in place. How are the people of Ontario reacting to all that?
Chris Sky: People like me saw the shutdown coming a mile away. I was on shows like Alex Jones’ “Infowars” and others, and I literally warned about the exact state of the shutdown. I even gave people the headline they were going to use. I told everyone they are going to pretend to open then they are going to tell you they are “pulling the emergency brake” because this shutdown has been planned well in advance.
The entire “plandemic” has been planned in advance, and the goal at the moment is to close down as many businesses as possible, so they can push universal basic income through parliament, and make Canadians accept it as a good thing.
And the second part of this whole lockdown is trying to make it so Canadians can’t leave their homes until they agree to be vaccinated so then they can get enough compliance with the vaccine, which they are not getting right now – nobody wants it, even with all the coercion going on.
They want to get enough compliance with the vaccine, so they can implement the vaccine passport like we’ve seen them do in Israel, like we’ve seen them do in New York State, and like we’ve seen them try to do in Texas, Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts, who have blocked it. And Canadians are still in denial that vaccine passports are even a reality. It’s insane.
Sputnik: But the disease is still there, isn’t it?
Chris Sky: No one is saying there is no disease, but that doesn’t mean that you need to submit to a forced vaccination multiple times a year for the rest of your life in order for the pretense to be free to live your life and to travel. That’s medical tyranny. And the vaccine passport has been the goal since the start of this. The vaccine passport has been on the books in European law from 2018 before the pandemic.
And the European internal documents show that they planned to have the vaccine passport implemented worldwide by 2021. And what are we seeing? Just like the documents stated, it’s 2021 and we’re seeing vaccine passports being implemented.
Sputnik: Recently you were placed on Canada’s no-fly list. Why did it happen?
Chris Sky: Well, I can only speculate, but it’s seems pretty obvious – because of my activism, and because of me trying to inform Canadians of their rights and their ability to “#JustSayNo”. That’s my international hashtagging campaign to get people aware, to ask questions, and not just blindly comply with rules that are against their own best interests.
It ended up with a no-fly list, but it was a build-up of things from that – I’ve been getting charged by the police, I’ve been getting fined by the police, I had the police show up at my house at one o’clock in the morning without a warrant, and basically trying to get at me with about 40 police using 20 cruisers to block off both sides of the street around my house. And they didn’t even have a warrant to be there. So, basically they are just trying to silence me.
What they did to me – putting me on the no-fly list, was nothing short of lawless, communist-style dictatorship, political targeting of dissident. Our no-fly list explicitly states that it cannot be used against political activists or people utilising their free speech rights. And that’s exactly what they did, and it’s 100 percent illegal.
Sputnik: But formally they could have placed you on the list just because you are refusing to wear a mask, couldn’t they?
Chris Sky: It has nothing to do with the mask. If they pretend that it has to do with the mask – they are lying even further. Just like they did when they showed up at my house with 40 policemen to try to arrest me at one in the morning for not wearing a mask. I don’t wear a mask anywhere I go.
Sputnik: During the past year Ontario officials frequently used numbers of COVID cases as a pretext to shut down the province. At least in 2020, these numbers were overblown, since even suicides of persons with coronavirus were counted as COVID deaths – a practice which Toronto Public Health refused to comment on when asked by Sputnik last week. Do you think there is a chance that the authorities will impose further restrictions in Ontario beyond the current 28-day-long shutdown?
Chris Sky: Of course. What do you think they’ve done so far? Before it was about “flatten the curve”. We heard it a million times a day. And that mean don’t “overwhelm our hospitals”. Well, now the gig is up and everybody knows that there is nobody in the hospitals. So, now they lie and talk about “cases” and “new variants”. And they just make anything they want up.
If they want to raise cases – just test an extra 10 or 20 thousand people that week and – surprise, you’re going to have more cases. So, it’s all complete bull. Anybody that knows anything knows that they have no intention of relinquishing the lockdown, no intention of cancelling the emergency. The moment they cancel the emergency, they can no longer force the vaccine on people, because it only has emergency approval. So, they have absolutely zero intention of ever relinquishing this emergency until their agenda is complete.
April 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine |
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Reporters for the right-leaning news outlet Rebel News have posted videos showing employees being detained by police at an Airbnb location where they were working covering Covid-19 lockdown measures.
In one video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Rebel News reporter David Menzies can be seen having a tense exchange with police officers, which eventually leads to him being hauled away and detained.
Another reporter for the outlet, Keene Bexte, tweeted that he had also been arrested.
Rebel News co-founder Ezra Levant promised he would be suing the officers for their conduct and in another video can be seen taking down one officer’s name.
According to a statement from the Canadian outlet, police arrived at an Airbnb where Rebel News journalists were staying to cover anti-lockdown protests and Covid-19-related arrests and forced everyone out and conducted a “room to room” search.
“When we asked them what the ‘crime’ was, all they could come up with was that our staying in the hotel was an illegal ‘gathering,’ contrary to Quebec’s lockdown laws,” they said.
The outlet added that they were staying in a “registered, legal hotel rental on Airbnb” and fewer guests than the place was built for.
Levant claims the outlet’s unflattering reporting on Montreal police and their enforcement of Covid-19 restrictions is what prompted the visit and search of the houseboat being utilized by the reporters.
“This is their revenge,” he said. “Because we report on their misconduct.”
Levant is already fundraising to support his lawsuit against police, alleging the search and arrests were unjustified and claiming officers have repeatedly harassed Rebel News reporters in recent weeks and made bigoted remarks.
The reaction to the arrests has been mixed at best. While many have expressed shock at the police behavior and allegations from Rebel News on social media, others have simply used the opportunity to blast the highly-controversial outlet, which is often dismissed in mainstream media as a “far-right” enterprise pushing misinformation.
Montreal on Saturday saw a mass protest against the strict Covid-19 measures recently imposed by the authorities in Quebec. An 8pm curfew has been reintroduced in the city, while all the non-essential businesses and schools have been told to shut down until at least April 19. According to the independent news outlet Westphalian Times, the organizers of the protest march sought to highlight the “negative impacts restrictions in schools have on the well-being & development of children.”
Updates:
April 10, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Canada, Covid-19, Human rights, Quebec |
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According to the UK Government, as of 27 March 2021, 126,515 people have died as a result of contracting Covid-19, and an additional 21,610 people have died with COVID-19 on their death certificates.
The government alleges, therefore, that a total of 148,125 people in the UK have died as a result of COVID-19. As we shall see, this claim is not credible.
Justifiable Policy?
Claims about mortality have been used by both the government and the mainstream media to justify the policy response.
The pace of change driven by that policy response has been astonishing. With Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s recent announcement of the creation of the UK Health Security Agency and its commitment to take “action to mitigate infectious diseases and other hazards to health before they materialise,” it is clear the government’s new (ab)normal is here to stay.
There is clearly an agenda; one entirely founded upon the idea that COVID-19 presents a significant threat. The primary evidence offered to substantiate this claim is suggested COVID-19 mortality.
Age Standardised Mortality
Just like nearly every other mortality cause, COVID-19 risks increase proportionately with age. Statistics for those of working age show a population mortality risk of between 0.0166% and 0.0046%, depending upon who you believe. The COVID-19 risk to the working age population is statistically insignificant. For the under 18’s it is statistically zero.
Mortality risk disproportionately impacts men. In 2018 the average age of death for men was approximately 80, and 83 for women in England and Wales.
The average age of COVID-19 death is just over 82. When we look at standard mortality distribution, there is no observable impact from COVID-19.
UK all cause mortality doesn’t suggest any need to panic either.
The ONS released data estimating a total of 607,173 deaths from all causes in England and Wales for 2020. Given demographic changes over time, the ONS use Age Standardised Mortality Rates (ASMR’s) to calculate relative death rates. The ASMR showed that 2020 was the worst year for mortality in the last decade.
ASMR’s were in continual decline throughout the post war period. That decline stopped abruptly in 2009 as the economic impact of the global financial crisis took its toll on public health. Thereafter it showed a marginal rise to 2019. Mortality in 2020 and 2021 should be seen in the context of a global financial crisis that dwarfs the credit crunch of 2008.
ASMR’s fluctuate annually and 2020 showed a significant increase above the 5 year average mortality rate. This was higher than most rises but by no means “unprecedented.” ASMR’s in England since 1938 show similar increases in 1947, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1963, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1985, 1993 and 2014.
Most of these spikes in ASMR’s were in the region of 35 to 45 points. For example, in 2014 the ASMR rose by 40.2, in 1993 by 38.4 and in 1985 by 46.3 points. It rose by 90.5 in 1947, by 83.5 in 1963, it went up by 104.9 in 1970 and in 1951 by 216.3. So the 2020 rise of 118.5 is by no means the worst.
The death toll in 1951 was attributed to the the influenza epidemic which struck some parts of the UK (most notably Liverpool) but left others relatively unscathed. To this day science has struggled to account for this.
2020 not only didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the post war period, it didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the 21st century either. 2020 ranked 9th, out of 20 consecutive years, for all cause mortality in England and Wales. It was the 11th least dangerous year in the last 50.
While there is no statistical evidence of an unprecedented global pandemic in England and Wales (nor in Scotland and Northern Ireland) this tells us little about how many deaths were genuinely attributable to COVID-19. Nor does it indicate at which point we should sacrifice our rights, freedoms, children’s educations and economy in the service of public health.
We certainly didn’t sacrifice them in 1947, 1963, 1970, nor even in 1951. Why was 2020 different?
PCR Does Not Mean COVID
For the purposes of this analysis, we will use the government’s higher claim of 148,000 deaths. The vast majority of these deaths were attributed based upon a positive RT-PCR test. The UK Coronavirus Act makes a clear distinction between the virus and the disease. It states:
Coronavirus means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); coronavirus disease means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are not the same thing. The detected presence of SARS-CoV-2 does not mean the person has or will develop COVID-19.
Therefore the attribution of mortality based solely upon a positive test result in no way proves the person died of COVID-19. The extent to which the disease caused or contributed towards a death is a precise medical assessment. The UK government created a death certification and registration process where this did not occur in an unknown number of cases. We need to know what that number is.
COVID-19 has a distinct presentation that requires careful diagnosis. The unique symptoms are severe hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), hypercapnia (elevated blood Co2 saturation) and unusually no corresponding loss of respiratory system compliance.
Measurement of gaseous exchange and fluid retention in the lungs appears normal, meanwhile the patient, in serious cases, struggles to breath. This is unlike other influenza like illnesses (ILI’s).
Yet the NHS describe a list of COVID-19 symptoms that could be attributable to any ILI. A high temperature, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell are associated with many. While this is public information, intended to guide our decision to seek medical advice or a test, the list of possible causes expands further given that the NHS state just one of these symptoms possibly indicates COVID-19.
Without precise symptomatic diagnosis, it is difficult to distinguish COVID-19 from a range of other respiratory illnesses. A study from the University of Toronto found:
The symptoms can vary, with some patients remaining asymptomatic, while others present with fever, cough, fatigue, and a host of other symptoms. The symptoms may be similar to patients with influenza or the common cold.
A Cochran Review meta analysis of available studies looked for a clear definition of COVID-19 symptoms. Published in June 2020, the reviewers noted:
The individual signs and symptoms included in this review appear to have very poor diagnostic properties … Based on currently available data, neither absence nor presence of signs or symptoms are accurate enough to rule in or rule out disease.
Even using advanced diagnostics, such as a computer tomography (CT) scan, won’t always provide a clear result. A study attempting to improve differential diagnosis using CT scans found:
Although typical and atypical CT image findings of COVID-19 are reported in current studies, the CT image features of COVID-19 overlap with those of viral pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Hence, it is difficult to make an exclusive diagnosis.
Regardless of their SARS-CoV-2 test status, without a very accurate diagnosis of symptoms, suspected COVID-19 patients could be suffering from one among a range of ILI’s. Again, a positive test result does not mean the patient died from COVID-19, even if they had corresponding symptoms.
Notifications of Infectious Diseases
In England and Wales it is a legal requirement for all registered medical practitioners to notify their local health authority of any suspected cases of notifiable diseases. The list of Notifiable Infectious Diseases (NOIDS) includes COVID-19. This is not optional.
All diagnosing doctors must complete a NOIDS report upon making a diagnosis. Testing laboratories are also required to notify Public Health England (PHE) of positive tests for notifiable diseases.
According to the fact checker FullFact there were 18,152 COVID-19 notifications made by doctors in the whole of 2020.
Yet the government claim that there were 70,853 COVID-19 deaths, never mind cases, in England and Wales in the same year.
Fullfact offered an explanation for this apparent huge discrepancy:
People with Covid symptoms are advised to get a test, but not to visit their doctor, which may be part of the reason why doctors reported so few cases of the disease through NOIDS. Since Covid became widespread in the UK, and began to be monitored in other ways, it is also possible that doctors felt there was little need to continue notifying PHE about each case.
This is not credible. While it is true that people were told not to go to a doctor if they suspected they had COVID-19, a diagnosis by a doctor was still necessary at some point. Self diagnosis doesn’t usually afford access to hospital treatment. The suggestion by FullFact that doctors unilaterally decided not to bother with their statutory obligations is ridiculous.
What this massive difference between claimed cases, subsequent COVID-19 mortality and NOIDS indicates, is that Doctors were largely reliant upon laboratory testing to fulfil the duty to notify the authorities. This adds considerable weight to the notion that laboratory testing was the leading determinant in the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 diagnosis.
Until mid August 2020, a UK COVID-19 death was reported if the decedent had tested positive at any point during the preceding months. An individual may have have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in March, have died of cancer in August and subsequently have been recorded as a COVID-19 statistic.
The scientific rationale for this did not exist. Research conducted by scientists at Oxford University analysed the COVID-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System (CHESS) and calculated the average time between infection (positive test) and mortality to be 26.8 days.
And so, in response to public and scientific pressure this approach changed to only recording a COVID-19 death within 28 days of a positive test. Still the UK government would not let go of its inflated number system, adding nothing but statistical confusion, they announced:
In England, a new weekly set of figures will also be published, showing the number of deaths that occur within 60 days of a positive test. Deaths that occur after 60 days will also be added to this figure if COVID-19 appears on the death certificate.
The August methodological change reduced claimed COVID-19 deaths by 5,377 in England alone. This didn’t make any difference to the number of people who had died from COVID-19, it just changed the number of people who had reportedly died from COVID-19.
This wasn’t the only notable change to the data gathering process. Just before the significant spring spike in mortality, on the 30th March 2020, the MSM reported that the government had instructed the ONS to change the way they record COVID-19 deaths. Hitherto the ONS only reported a COVID-19 death if it was recorded as the direct or underlying cause. This was changed to recording “mentions” of COVID-19. A spokesperson for the ONS said:
It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.
The reporting of COVID-19 comorbidity rates was“paused” in July and has yet to resume. The final published ONS analysis that directly reported the number of pre-exiting conditions for deaths “with” COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate, was released for the period ending 30 June 2020.
From this we learned that 91.1% of alleged COVID deaths had at least 1 serious additional comorbidity. The mean number of comorbidities for a those under 70 was 2.1 and for the vast majority over 70 it was 2.3.
It is preposterous to claim that a decedent who had cancer, pneumonia and had just had surgery, but tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 four weeks earlier, could reasonably be categorised as a COVID-19 death. Yet that is precisely what happened, and continues to happen to this day.
Covid-19 Cures the Flu
COVID-19 also cured influenza and other respiratory disease, such as adenovirus. Early January is always a period of notable influenza outbreaks, resultant hospital admissions and mortality. This is evident if we look at PHE’s Weekly Influenza Report for week 2 in any year prior to 2020.
In 2020, according to the newly combined PHE Weekly Influenza and COVID Report, there have been virtually no cases of influenza, treatment or related deaths.
The ONS note all the details on a death certificate. In their mortality roundup for the January to August 2020 period they stated:
Influenza and pneumonia was mentioned on more death certificates than COVID-19, however COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death in over three times as many deaths between January and August 2020.
How can flu and pneumonia possibly be on more death certificates than COVID-19 if, as the media and PHE allege, it has been wiped out? It seems the medical profession didn’t get the memo.
A Systemic Catch-22
A positive SARS-CoV-2 test appears to be the primary reason for attribution of mortality. Only the most fastidious diagnosis can differentiate between COVID-19 symptoms and other ILI’s. Is it credible to believe that flu and pneumonia are on more death certificates but that COVID-19 is deemed the cause of death on three times as many Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (MCCD’s)?
These are somewhat rhetorical questions. The reason why bizarre anomalies like this occurred is because recording COVID-19 as the cause of death was practically unavoidable.
The Coronavirus Act overhauled the MCCD and death registration processes. In addition, World Health Organisation Coding changes and guidance issued by the NHS and other medical authorities combined to create a systemic Catch-22.
In England and Wales an MCCD is completed online using the WHO’s recommended coding. The MCCD is split into sections. Part 1. a) “Disease or condition directly leading to death”; b) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (a)”; and c) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (b)”.
Part 2 records “Other significant conditions contributing to the death, but not related to the disease or condition causing it.” For example, a person may have died from heart failure caused by pneumonia but obesity, though not directly related to the immediate cause of death, could have contributed and would therefore be recorded in Part 2.
In the case of respiratory disease, the direct cause of death could be Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This may be brought on by, for example, pneumonia which was caused by influenza. In this instance the direct cause of death would be recorded in Part 1. a) as ARDS, prompted by pneumonia in Part1. b), and the underlying cause would be set as influenza in Part 1. c).
The WHO Family of International Classifications (WHOFIC) Network Classification and Statistics Advisory Committee (CSAC) created new International Classification of Diseases codes (ICD-10 codes) for COVID-19. If the decedent had tested positive, or had been in contact with anyone else who had, a recorded COVID-19 death was practically a fait accompli.
A “confirmed case” was dependent solely upon a positive test result and was given the code U07.1. Observable symptoms were not necessary for U07.1 code to be recorded on a death certificate.
A suspected COVID-19 case was coded as U07.2. A decedent known to have had contact with a SARS-CoV-2 positive person who, while neither testing positive nor having any symptoms themselves, was deemed a suspected/probable COVID-19 case and given the code U07.2.
Neither the U07.1 nor the U07.2 codes required any evidence that the decedent had COVID-19.
As the U07.1 code indicated a “confirmed case,” unless the decedent passed away from something obviously unrelated, such as head trauma, a SARS-CoV-2 positive test would almost automatically confirm COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death.
The WHO clearly described this process in their International MCCD coding guidelines. They defined what death “due” to COVID-19 was:
A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death. A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer).
A clinically compatible illness could be any ILI. Even if the individual died from cancer, as long as they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, or the Doctor suspected respiratory distress, the death would be registered as “due to” COVID-19. COVID-19 would again be the reported as the underlying cause.
Additional WHO guidance stated:
COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death. Although both categories, U07.1 … and U07.2 … are suitable for cause of death coding … it is recommended, for mortality purposes only, to code COVID-19 provisionally to U07.1 unless it is stated as probable or suspected.
If a doctor was uncertain and merely suspected a probable COVID-19 case, they were clearly advised to record it on the MCCD as a confirmed case (U07.1 and not U07.2). Again, ensuring it would be reported as the “underlying cause.”
The Office of National Statistics stated:
Deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) include those with an underlying cause, or any mention, of U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified) …
If the Doctor held firm and coded COVID-19 as U07.2 on Part 2 of the MCCD, the ONS (and the NRS and NISA) would still report it as a COVID-19 death.
In the Clear
The Coronavirus Act indemnified all NHS doctors against any claims of malpractice or negligence. It removed the need for a second medical opinion (Medical Examiner), it effectively ruled out both post-mortem examinations and jury-led coroner’s inquests, allowed virtually anyone to act as the qualified informant and facilitated rapid cremation.
In response to the Coronavirus Act and WHO IC10 coding, the NHS issued guidance to doctors for the completion of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD). The COVID-19 death certification and registration process they produced beggars belief. Under the guidance, acting on their own without any corroborating opinion:
Any medical practitioner with GMC registration can sign the MCCD, even if they did not attend the deceased during their last illness.
Attend doesn’t mean examine either. Checking in with the decedent via Zoom is sufficient. Failing that, if the MCCD signing doctor has only seen the decedent after death, providing they have tested positive, a review of their notes is still sufficient to record a COVID-19 death. The NHS stated COVID-19 could be recorded wherever:
A medical practitioner has attended the deceased (including visual/video consultation) within 28 days before death, or viewed the body in person after death.
In keeping with the WHO coding guidelines, there isn’t even any need for a positive test result. The NHS guidance added:
If before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID-19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death … In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.
The NHS then created a system of remote death certification:
During periods of excess deaths due to COVID-19, healthcare providers are encouraged to redeploy medical practitioners whose role does not usually include direct patient care, such as some medical examiners, to provide indirect support by working as dedicated certifiers, completing MCCDs.
These dedicated certifiers, though medically qualified, are tasked with signing off COVID-19 MCCD’s. GP’s and hospital physicians gather reports, perhaps from a review of the deceased’s medical notes or a video conference with a care home provider, and pass that information to the dedicated COVID-19 certifier for MCCD completion.
The NHS advised that no proof was required for the attribution of a COVID-19 death. They stated:
Without diagnostic proof, if appropriate and to avoid delay, medical practitioners can circle ‘2’ in the MCCD (information from post-mortem may be available later)
This suggestion that a post mortem may be available is implausible.
Additional guidance issued by the Royal College of Pathologists states:
If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.
Bearing in mind that the WHO had instructed suspected U07.2 deaths to be coded as confirmed U07.1 deaths, the chance of anything other than confirmed COVID-19 death reaching a pathologist is extremely remote. Any MCCD signed “without diagnostic proof” would almost certainly be agreed by the pathologist without further scrutiny. The mere act of putting COVID-19 anywhere on the MCCD was enough to negate the need for a post mortem.
This new death certification system, specifically designed for COVID-19, has understandably caused confusion. The British Medical Association’s verification of death guidance advises that if no signing doctor has seen the decedent prior to completing the MCCD they should refer it to the coroner. However, this was only a policy recommendation not a legal requirement.
Contradicting this, the Chief Coroner advised:
COVID-19 is a naturally occurring disease and therefore is capable of being a natural cause of death … The aim of the system should be that every death from COVID-19 which does not in law require referral to the coroner should be dealt with via the MCCD process.
This means that even if a coroner receives a referral from a doctor, they will be highly likely to automatically approve the MCCD without further inquiry. Since a post mortem has already effectively been ruled out, there will be little point in the coroner investigating further.
NHS staff and carers who may have been uncomfortable with all this have been under no illusions. The use of draconian Hospital Trust gagging orders (non disclosure agreements) are widely reported. Carers who have spoken out have been sacked.
To finalise this unbelievable COVID-19 death registration system, the Coronavirus Act also withdrew the standard second opinion required prior to cremation. The need to complete Cremation form 5 was suspended for all COVID-19 deaths.
Alleged COVID-19 decedents can be cremated without any clear evidence that they ever had the disease, regardless of their family’s wishes, swiftly ending any chance of any investigation by sceptical family members.
What was the Cause of Death?
SAGE assessed the UK mean operational false positive rate (FPR) for RT-PCR to be 2.3% of all conducted tests. The government say they have conducted just over 118M tests of which 4.3M were positive. This includes an unknown number of multiple tests of the same individual. A mean FPR of 2.3% suggests 2.7M of those 4.3M positive tests were false positives. This equates to 62.7% of all positive test results.
As we have already discussed it is highly likely that laboratory testing was the primary determinant for a diagnosis of COVID-19. Therefore it is not unreasonable to surmise that at least 50% of claimed COVID-19 deaths were attributed on the basis of false positives. We can halve the claimed 148,000 to 74,000 COVID-19 deaths.
The 2020 ONS mortality data for England showed a reduction in deaths from a number of other causes.
Deaths from Ischaemic heart diseases were 1,450 below the 5 year average. Cerebrovascular disease was down by 2,276, malignant respiratory neoplasm by 1,537, chronic lower respiratory disease by 2,764 and influenza and pneumonia deaths were 7,313 below the 5 year average. An apparent reduction of 15,340 deaths from other causes.
It seems highly likely that these deaths were wrongly recorded as COVID-19.
As we have seen above, approximately 90% of supposed COVID-19 decedents had at least one other comorbidity. Using the Government’s 148,125 figure, we might claim, therefore that only something like 15,000 of these died of, rather than with.
Is this claim justifiable? Well, consider this:
The Department of Health and Social Care published a study of residents in care homes which purported to show the total number of confirmed cases. Among this number they claimed:
80.9% of residents who tested positive were asymptomatic.
A meta analysis by the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine found that asymptomatic rates among those who tested positive varied between 5% – 80%. If there are no symptoms, then the disease cannot have contributed towards a death.
Taking everything into account, from high rates of comorbidity, to low rates of symptomatic individuals, the impact of false positives on testing and a death certification regime heavily biased towards recording COVID-19 as the underlying cause, then it is reasonable to conclude that the total number of deaths from Covid-19 is not 148,000, nor 126,000, but much closer to 15,000.
April 10, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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IN THE early stages of the ongoing ‘war on terror’, which started twenty years ago, a nebulous conception of the enemy, non-existent victory conditions and the consistent dishonesty of warmongering politicians such as Blair led some to wonder if the threat of the global ‘Axis of Evil’ had been exaggerated to achieve some other set of goals.
Today, in similar circumstances of unanswered questions and ambiguous realities underpinned by systematic deception, reinforced by Boris Johnson on Monday as he launched the new phase of the psychological and economic war he is waging on the British people – vaccine passports (and after that?) – this question is being asked:
Is there a pandemic? Was there ever a pandemic?
Perhaps the most important point to grasp is that a pandemic is a construct, not an object. There is nothing you can point at which is the pandemic, only various data points indicating that one exists.
The World Health Organisation changed its definition in 2008 to exclude the criterion of ‘enormous numbers of deaths and illness’. In other words, the definition of a pandemic is ultimately a matter of interpretation. There is no data that currently supports the claim there is a pandemic in Britain at this moment, and whether any data ever did is doubtful..
The scientific process has happened in reverse. Starting in January last year, the existence of a deadly new pandemic, unlike anything previously confronted, was conjectured on the basis of terrifying rumours and unreliable reports from China, not scientifically established facts.
Once the existence of an extraordinary pandemic was assumed, extraordinary measures were justified to fight it, including the rapid deployment of highly unreliable PCR protocols developed by the Gates Foundation-funded Christian Drosten, shock propaganda messaging, a massive and drastic reduction in health care provision (which has functionally destroyed the NHS in order to ‘protect’ it) and de facto euthanasia policies in care homes, based on Neil Ferguson’s Gates Foundation-funded models.
Compromised administrative procedures recorded deaths as lives lost to the pandemic, providing further evidence for its existence.
As is now well known, an overwhelming majority of pandemic casualties also suffered from other conditions and the average age of victims tracks life expectancy in every country.
If the pandemic had not been assumed to exist, and the reckless and cynical interventions against it had not taken place, how would anyone know there was one?
Data clearly demonstrates that lockdowns and related policies were never necessary or effective. Experimental therapies have been deployed which are unreliable and potentially dangerous. Vaccination may or may not prevent contagion or transmission. The fact that governments and their paid experts are unable or unwilling to incorporate these matters into their thinking testifies either to their sinister intentions or the extent to which their mental processes have been corrupted.
Either they believe that some clandestine end justifies repressive and deceptive means, or else they are insane, or mindless through conformism: there is no other explanation.
Phenomenologically, the most important evidence for the existence of the pandemic is its external signifiers, especially face masks, this mass psychological theatre.
Here again, the conjecture of the pandemic itself justified the imposition of the mandate, and nothing else: no evidence supports the thesis that masks have any positive medical effect and the more plausible scenario is their medical effect is negative. Nonetheless the Gates Foundation-funded behavioural psychologists of Sage and their equivalents in other countries argued that mandating them was necessary (‘because most people still did not feel sufficiently threatened’).
The vague objective of an incomprehensible ambition, opposed against a nightmare, discloses a more concrete aim: control.
Why the authors of this initiative want control presents a complex question. Either they just want it without even knowing why, or they want it for another reason. Perhaps they have a broader plan which demands dramatically upgraded repression.
Either way, what they seem to desire is control over the bodies of their populations. In the idea of vaccine passports, what is being implemented is a political and legal climate in which experimental genetic therapies on human populations are normalised and inescapable. Armed with vaccine passports, global governments and their corporate allies would be able to establish the foundations of a global surveillance state, with the power to monitor every social interaction.
Vaccine passports are the gateway to the most radical slavery the world has ever seen. It now seems likely that creating a psychological and social climate in which to impose them was always the aim behind the engineered pandemic. The pandemic was needed to impose the vaccinations, and the vaccinations are needed to impose the passport.
This transformation of one part of the population into the vaccinated simultaneously invents the unvaccinated, a problem which could eventually be resolved through liquidation, but meanwhile offering opportunity for politically profitable stigmatisation. The vaccinated (via vaccine passports) are granted ‘privileges’ that the unvaccinated are denied in order to compel compliance.
Like accepting being forced to wear a government mandated gimp mask, for no reason whatsoever, a person accepting vaccination implicitly accepts the terms of the new normal. At the same time, vaccination is a ritual, substantiating membership in a psychological community.
Anyone who supposes the vaccine passport could lead to discrimination fails to grasp that this is the whole purpose of this document. The entire point is to divide society, to rule it. By creating checkpoints everywhere, power flows to the authority controlling access, in this case Johnson and his faction: a criminal cartel.
Accepting vaccination does not automatically imply a happy ending. The privilege to resume the semblance of a normal life (a ’new normal’ life) is linked to vaccination status now, but the reasoning behind this privilege is contingent on the existence of the non-vaccinated. Once non-vaxxers vanish, the reason for continuing to offer privileges is also gone. At this point a new status category can be introduced, and the same selective sequence played again. In this way, it would be possible progressively to eliminate a significant percentage of the population.
So far the theatre of the pandemic has been organised as a campaign of psychological manipulation with policies conceived to ‘nudge’ compliance by alternately dangling rewards (which are usually snatched away) and making threats. This campaign has also featured systematic censorship and intimidation directed against some of the most accomplished scientists in the world.
Although these tactics make a mockery of the principle of informed consent, they are of the ‘softer’ variety. Ultimately, more aggressive tactics will be deployed. The intensifying lawlessness of the police now points in this direction.
What can be done? The government is ruling via a threadbare fraud. When that disintegrates what will remain is force, but the real command authority of Johnson and his collaborators over the monopoly of violence that defines the British state has barely been tested.
Would British police or soldiers open fire on peaceful protesters on Johnson’s, Gove’s or Starmer’s orders? The question may arise. So far, the Territorial Support Group have been used by Johnson to attack protesters, and a strategy of tension is being used to increase antagonism between the people and the police, but further escalation would be risky.
What is needed in the meantime is urgently to unwind the cycle of compliance, beginning with the mass removal of the mask, extending to the deconstruction of the narrative, and culminating in total disobedience against the tyranny now represented by this illegitimate and shameful government.
April 10, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, Human rights, UK |
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