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Matt Hancock’s UK Health Security Agency would be the worst April Fool’s ever – except he isn’t joking

By Neil Clark | RT | March 27, 2021

The UK Health Secretary confirmed this week that a new ‘UK Health Security Agency’ was being set up on April 1, thus marking the next stage in Britain’s transformation into a repressive bio-security state.

Back in 1957, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama (well, it was then) showed a short three-minute film of a family in Switzerland harvesting spaghetti from a family ‘spaghetti tree.’ People rang up the BBC switchboard afterwards for advice on growing their own spaghetti. They should have paid closer attention to the date of the broadcast. The first of April. Yes, it was an ‘April Fool.’ One of the best in history.

The first of April is also the date that the UK’s new ‘Health Security Agency’ is being established but this time it really is no laughing matter. If only Matt Hancock was joking when he said he was setting up a “dedicated, mission-driven national institution for health security.” But, unlike his namesake, the great comedian Tony Hancock, Matt isn’t remotely funny. The establishment of the UKHSA should give us all sleepless nights. It’s actually more terrifying than the scariest Hammer horror movie. Well, Hancock’s video announcing the news was, at any rate.

The new agency –which Britain needs right now as much as a hole in the head– brings together the work of Public Health England, NHS Test and Trace and the Joint BioSecurity Centre.

Hancock says the body will be mission driven, but what will be the mission?

“I want everybody at UKHSA, at all levels, to wake up every day with a zeal to plan for the next pandemic.”

Yes, that’s right. We’re at the tail end of Covid – but it’s time to plan for the next Covid to come along. Has a government agenda ever been so transparent? Of course, Hancock is only echoing Bill Gates when he talks about the ‘next pandemic’. Back in January the software multi-billionaire, who has been able to gain so much influence with his foundation’s funding of academics, scientists and public health organisations, outlined his strategy for dealing with the ‘next pandemic,’ which, he warns, could be “ten times more serious” than Covid. And, guess what, his strategy calls for “mega-diagnostic platforms,” mass vaccinations and governments spending lots of taxpayers’ money.

Compare Gates’ proposals with what Hancock says and the new “Securing Our Health” webpage introducing the UKHSA and you can see quite clearly where the ‘inspiration’ for all this is coming from. Hancock, as he’s done throughout 2020 and 2021, is following a global script.

As I highlighted in a recent OpEd, the ‘War on Covid’ is the new ‘War on Terror.’ Civil liberties were stripped away, post 9-11, in the ‘War on Terror’ and now we have the latest phase of the project. Like the War on Terror, the War on Covid/War on Viruses is never meant to end. In fact we don’t really need new viruses to come along. Covid variants will work quite nicely, if Gates’ ‘ten times more serious’ virus is delayed in traffic.

In a piece for Bloomberg this week entitled ‘We Must Start Planning for a Permanent Pandemic,’ Andreas Kluth spelt it out very clearly for those who still don’t get it: “For the past year, an assumption –sometimes explicit, often tacit– has informed almost all our thinking about the pandemic: At some point, it will be over, and then we’ll go “back to normal. This premise is almost certainly wrong. SARS-CoV-2, protean and elusive as it is, may become our permanent enemy, like the flu but worse.”

The establishment of the UKHSA at a time when deaths with Covid have dropped to low numbers is a clear sign that the UK government plans no ‘back to normal.’ Perhaps the scariest sentence in the UKHSA policy paper is “We need to consider how best to engage with citizens and drive behaviour change in the 21st century.”

What ‘behaviour change’ can that be, I wonder? Requiring people to wear face masks and maintain ‘social distance’ from one another permanently? Don’t forget Home Secretary Priti Patel declared last May that social distancing was ‘here to stay.’

Many thought she misspoke, but ten months later and ‘social distancing’ is still here.

Then there’s the list of the new agency’s five core functions. Number One, again with echoes of the ‘War on Terror,’  is “Prevent.” This means “Anticipating and taking action to mitigate infectious diseases and other hazards to health before they materialise, for example through vaccination and influencing behaviour.”

Yes, you read that right. “BEFORE they materialise.” We will need to be vaccinated against viruses and hazards to health that haven’t yet materialised! What a bonanza for Big Pharma that would be!

Hancock’s announcement comes in the same week as Boris Johnson – the dishevelled charlatan who promoted himself as a ‘libertarian’ to  get elected but who’s turned out to be the most dictatorial prime minister in our history – saying that pubs could require Vaccine Passports, once everyone had been offered a vaccine.

With us still in lockdown, and the Coronavirus Act extended for a further six months, the architecture for permanent digital slavery is being constructed – and it’s all being done under the guise of ‘protecting’ us. But who will protect us from our protectors? That really is the question we should all be asking.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.

March 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Canadian Gov’t’s Move to Hire Influencers to Tout its Work is a ‘Form of Propaganda’: Journalist

Sputnik – 27.03.2021

A website called Blacklock’s Reporter revealed on Thursday that Canada’s Department of Health wants to hire celebrities and digital influencers “to say nice things” about its work on social media. According to Canadian independent journalist Leigh Stewart, this spin operation shows that the Liberal government lacks honesty and transparency.

Sputnik: The news about the government’s online endorsement campaign appeared after several controversial stories involving Minister of Health Patty Hajdu, some of them pandemic-related, surfaced online. What do you think about it as a journalist, and as a taxpayer?

Leigh Stewart: It doesn’t surprise me that the government would be willing to pay people to give them praise, or promote what they are dishing out. It’s a form of propaganda. It reminds me what they did in 2019: paid influencers to promote the election (Trudeau’s election) until they scrapped it when people realised the social media influencers that were chosen had a Trudeau bias. We never did get that money back.

Sputnik: According to another news outlet – The Post Millennial, the influencers will not be required to tell their audience that the Trudeau government will be paying them – something which is illegal, according to the Canadian government’s own website. It’s also unclear how much money the bloggers will be receiving. Do you think Canadians deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent on celebrity endorsements?

Leigh Stewart: The government has never been transparent. If this current government was honest, they wouldn’t need to pay celebrities to praise them, that would come naturally. Canadians should definitely know where their tax dollars are going, it’s a mockery to the hard working Canadians to not be informed, personally I think it equates to theft.

Sputnik: It’s likely that a lot of  that “positive content” about the government will be COVID-related. Do you think the handling of pandemic-related issues by the Department of Health during the past year has been adequate and effective?

Leigh Stewart: Health Canada needs all the help they can get, seeking praise for their decisions surrounding the coronavirus. Nothing they have put in place, whether it be lockdowns, wearing masks, has worked. We are in the same place we were a year ago and not much has changed. I think the lockdowns are doing more harm than good, with the help of big tech and corporations, especially for small business. Anyone who speaks out against the current government and their solutions backed with zero evidence is silenced, or presented with a summons to court. I think their goal is to abolish the middle class. Get a majority of people on government assistance (Canada has the highest unemployment in the G7) and inflate prices so eventually, people cannot afford to live.

​Canadians don’t need a babysitter to tell them what to do, last time I checked we had a freedom of choice. If you don’t want to wear a mask, go ahead. If you want to keep your small business open, go ahead. There should be absolutely nothing wrong with people making the choices that they feel are best for them.

Sputnik: Ontario premier Doug Ford said that the authorities will be watching the daily case numbers, as the COVID infection rate has increased in your province.  All of that may sound as if the authorities are preparing for another lockdown, while the previous one has not been fully lifted. Do you think people would readily accept the new restrictions?

Leigh Stewart: I think a lot of people are getting fed up. In the beginning it was only 15 days to flatten the curve and here we are, a year later, only now the narrative has changed. It’s now about waiting for a vaccine. Which health officials say you will still have to wear a mask, even if you receive one. The Premier of Ontario Doug Ford is relying on medical health professionals to tell him what to do, when I’m not convinced they actually do know what they are doing. Locking down again hurts small business and even Ford has admitted that himself.

March 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | | Leave a comment

COVID VACCINE: THE NEW SACRED COW

Computing Forever | March 27, 2021

Source articles:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/anti-vax-email-deluge-hits-european-parliament-1.4519954

https://summit.news/2021/03/22/covid-restrictions-to-remain-in-place-for-years-says-public-health-official/

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-24/when-will-covid-end-we-must-start-planning-for-a-permanent-pandemic

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March 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Why Is Everyone in Texas Not Dying?

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | March 26, 2021

I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically.

If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control.

After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office.

At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for. A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized.

I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no.

The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states.

So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened.

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
  • Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
  • CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
  • Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
  • There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
  • Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
  • James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
  • Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
  • Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
  • Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
  • Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
  • Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
  • Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
  • Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
  • The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
  • Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
  • The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”

There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)?

Here are the data.

The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina.

What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.

On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case.

As for Texas, the results so far are in.

I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times.

What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them.

The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.

Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

March 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Inside the Department of Homeland Security’s Plan to Crush Right-Wing Americans

 By Eric Striker | National Justice | March 26, 2021

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing to use mass data collection, interagency prioritization directives, psychological operations and online censorship to crush what its recently confirmed Secretary Alejandro Mayourkas, a Jew from Cuba, has deemed “domestic violent extremism,” National Justice can report.

Who does the DHS consider to be a domestic violent extremist? The March 1st Director of National Intelligence threat assessment ordered by the Biden administration lists anti-abortion activists, environmentalists, members of militias, and advocates for white people as America’s top national security threats.

Besides intensifying police repression and government surveillance, DHS outlined on Wednesday its plan to use grants to fund private, unaccountable organizations that specialize in experimenting on “extremists,” psychological operations and brainwashing, and training teachers to spot and report children engaging in “hate speech.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a 77-year-old woman with purple hair, led the House Appropriations Committee discussion on combating “domestic violent extremism” with DHS’ two counter-terrorism department leaders, John Cohen and John Picarelli. Rep. DeLauro is the wife of former Ehud Barak advisor, Stan Greenberg.

Much of the discourse revolved around the frustration officials are having shutting down supposed “extremists” due to the fact that these individuals they claim are posing a national security risk are often not committing any criminal offenses. Rep. DeLauro frantically ranted about the need for legislation that would make membership in a patriotic militia of any kind illegal.

During the hearing, Cohen described how the DHS has been active behind the scenes in pushing social media companies to censor what he vaguely characterized as “toxic narratives,” legally dubious behavior that none of the Republicans — whose party is currently fundraising off opposing tech censorship — showed any interest in pressing him on.

Picarelli later added that his department has also been instructing online gaming and e-sports platforms to examine ways to quickly suppress and prevent what he claimed are “radicalizing” discussions.

The view that young men are “radicalized” by shouting obscenities at one another while playing video games with one another is a narrative made up by the Anti-Defamation League, not something based on sound data. Even more preposterous was Cohen’s assertion that “incels” — men who do not have regular sex — were in and of themselves a category of terrorist.

The most disturbing part of Picarelli’s testimony was when he revealed that DHS has been using NGOs to outsource projects intended to manipulate people and manufacture changes in political beliefs. They admitted that this is being used as a loophole. It would be illegal for the government to directly engage in this CIA-style activity in the homeland.

Historically, the federal government has primarily reserved NGO funding as a tool of war, regime change and influence in foreign lands, but under both the Obama and Trump administrations, and now accelerated under Biden, they have been increasingly utilized against Americans who disagree with the left-liberal Washington/New York/San Francisco consensus.

When asked about the results produced by grant making in recent years, Picarelli cited his favorite development on this front: research and experimentation being done at American University by a far-left activist that seeks to “inoculate” individuals exposed to political, religious or philosophical arguments and ideas the US government believes are undermining its power and credibility.

US Intelligence Cutouts

Some of the NGOs involved in these operations had representatives at the meeting, where they explained to the House their specialties, methods and goals.

They are as follows,

1) Richard Aborn — Citizens Crime Commission of New York City

Richard Aborn was invited to showcase his group’s “counter-terrorism” innovation, DEEP, which stands for Disruption and Early Engagement Program.

According to his description, individuals with radical beliefs are recommended to the program by the NYPD, FBI or other police organizations either before they’re arrested, while they’re in custody, or after they finish their prison sentences.

Once enrolled in the program, the “subject” (how a DHS fact sheet refers to candidates for the program) is subjected to a year or more of undisclosed psychological techniques designed specifically to depoliticize them. The way Aborn represented it sounded like a dystopian brainwashing scheme copied straight from the film A Clockwork Orange.

The ethically dubious program was created and is directed by a self-described counter-terrorism expert named Claire Abrahams.

Abrahams’ LinkedIn shows that she is a Zionist operative who has served on the committee of the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, a group of American Jews who provide funding to the Israeli military. While the group is allowed to keep non-profit status, it is for all intents and purposes an instrument of a foreign government.

2) Tyler Cote — Division 250

Another Jewish individual, Tyler Cote, peddled his Massachusetts based program, Division 250, which specializes in warning middle and high school students against accessing “hate speech” on the internet while also training teachers to spot politically problematic students.

Cote, a former math teacher at Fall River Jewish Home, has never attempted to hide his intense personal prejudices or loathing of Trump voters.

His main academic achievement is a 2017 academic paper titled “The Rhetorical Psychology of Trumpism: Threat, Absolutism, and the Absolutist Threat.”

3) Sammy Rangel — Life After Hate/Exit USA

Sammy Rangel’s group, Life After Hate/Exit , is also being utilized by the government.

Rangel, showing off his con, was the least vitriolic of all the people at the hearing.

According to Rangel, the group employs white nationalists who claim to have been “cured” and now see themselves as liberals, leftists, or in Christian Picciolini’s case, Antifa supporters.

In response to an inquiry about what he’s trying to do, Rangel admitted to the Committee that white nationalists often have real, fact based grievances.

His methodology revolves around pretending to befriend nationalists and talking them into channeling their anger at injustice and lack of political representations in an anti-racist direction.

The group is heavily inspired by a German program which shares the same name (EXIT).

The German equivalent is funded by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which is led by a Jewish woman who used to work for the infamous East German secret police unit, the Stasi.

Jewish Power Is Bipartisan

The Republicans at the inquiry expressed nothing but support for the malevolent schemes being plotted against their voters.

Only one serious concern about civil liberties was expressed to Cohen and Picarelli. Lauren Underwood, who represents Illinois’s 14th, demanded that DHS take extra care in protecting people’s civil rights and privacy, but only in cases involving minorities. Cohen reassured her that his relatives were “Civil Rights attorneys” and would stop him if they thought he was violating the rights of blacks and non-whites.

Ashley Hinson, Republican from Iowa, asked Cohen about four illegal aliens apprehended at the US border who were listed on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. Cohen responded by saying that being on the list doesn’t mean actually mean you’re a terrorist. Hinson failed to follow up with a logical question: then why does it exist?

Many of the names involved in this COINTELPRO revival are Jewish individuals who seem to lack respect for American civil traditions, and in some cases, basic human rights.

While Cohen — the “good” cop to Picarelli’s bad — paid some lip service to the First Amendment and constitutionally protected speech, the question was largely treated as an afterthought throughout the meeting.

There is no meaningful distinction between what Washington is doing and how political dissidents are treated in so-called authoritarian countries. Between 2018 and 2019, Ken Cuccarelli and Chad Wolf both began aggressively targeting primarily white nationalists. Now the Biden administration is expanding their precedent to politically persecute white Christians, libertarians, veterans and regular conservatives as well.

While this could be construed as him misspeaking, Joe Biden’s comment that the GOP may not exist in 2024 should be read as ominous in light of all that is happening.

At least half of America have been declared enemies of the state. The ruling class’s thirst for vengeance appears insatiable.

March 27, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Rutgers Says Students Must Have Injections Before They Can Come to the Campus in Fall

By Robert Wenzel | Target Liberty | March 26, 2021

COVID authoritarianism has hit the university level.

Rutgers University, in New Jersey, announced Thursday that all students would need to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus before they would be allowed to return to campus in the fall.

“Adding COVID-19 vaccination to our student immunization requirements will help provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students,” said Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers University, in a statement.

Beginning in the fall, students will have to show “proof of vaccination” before moving into their dorm or attending in-person classes.

According to the university, students may file for an exemption for medical or religious reasons.

According to the New York Times, even with the new requirement, students on the Rutgers campuses will be required to practice social distancing and use face coverings, the university said. How absurd is that. And for a virus that is of no serious consequence to anyone that is likely to be on campus.

Follow the science? It is more like following the madness of crowds.

The university has more than 70,000 students.

March 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

New York Times horrified that Alex Jones can still be found via Google Podcasts

RT | March 26, 2021

Always eager to see more “guardrails” and “content curation” applied to competitors, the Gray Lady is coming after Google Podcasts, which supposedly didn’t do its homework on purging undesirable voices.

Google Podcasts is a service that helps search for, subscribe to and playback podcasts, a self-publishing media that became so popular now that leaders in the field easily rival the popularity of top TV shows and newspapers. According to the New York Times, the app “stands alone among major platforms in its tolerance of hate speech and other extremist content.”

For instance, one could find there Alex Jones, whose concerted deplatforming by Big Tech in 2018 set the stage for the increasingly restrictive policing of content today, culminating in an ouster of a sitting US president. The tech giant treats its podcast app similar to its search engine – an instrument for finding stuff people are interested in. It doesn’t host the audio records and would only occasionally remove links to them from aggregation when required by law.

The Times finds objectionable the very fact that someone like Jones can find a way into people’s ears through Google’s app, whereas companies like Twitter and Facebook “have become more vigilant in recent years in their attempts to rein in the spread of harmful content.” Some experts interviewed for the story accuse the company of putting profits before people’s safety.

“Google is perfectly well aware of how to moderate content if it cares to,” Jessica Fjeld, the assistant director of the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, told the newspaper. She compared Google’s platform to Parler, a pro-free speech alternative to Twitter widely vilified in the mainstream media as a supposed hotbed of right-wing extremism. Parler was infamously kicked out by Silicon Valley in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riot.

“It seems like [Google has] made a decision to embrace an audience that wants more offensive content rather than constrain that content for the sake of safety and respect,” Fjeld argued.

The desire to protect the public from reading or hearing something bad online has recently become a major theme for the left legacy media. Another popular target for this kind of attack is Substack, an independent publishing site. It was accused of platforming “harassment” (alternatively: factual criticism) of Times reporter Taylor Lorenz, and even of being a threat to journalism in general (by allowing independent journalists to sell content without newsroom oversight).

One of the people criticizing Substack was Google’s Vice President of Privacy Product Management Rob Leathern, who said content moderation policies “can’t be afterthoughts anymore for serious businesses.” So, presumably some people in the company’s management would be receptive to more censorship at Google Podcasts, just as the Times advocates.

March 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Here There be Monsters

By Alan Sabrosky | Unz Review | March 25, 2021

We in America are neck-deep in a domestic political war to the finish. During the notable “kitchen debate” in Moscow in 1959, Nikita Khrushchev asserted that Richard Nixon’s grandchildren would live under communism, while Nixon argued that Khrushchev’s grandchildren would live in freedom. Both were correct, if not as either intended.

Americans generally applauded the implosion of the USSR and the collapse of communist regimes across Europe. Russia and some others today may not be ideal democracies, but they are a far sight better than 60-odd years ago – and in Russia’s case, more vibrant and more challenging as well.

Ironically, while external pressure and internal failings were bringing Lenin’s dream to ruins there, America and most of the West were rotting from within – victims of their own success in the Cold War and their misguided faith in the robustness of their own systems of government. The past year has brought that into stark relief.

The Democrats and their allies understand this clearly. They hold the upper hand in the Federal government, the media, academe and the streets. They did their best to make the country ungovernable during the Trump years. They needlessly locked down cities and states during the pandemic scare, all but ruining a robust economy. They sat back and watched their Antifa and BLM thugs riot, loot, burn, commit mayhem and even murder in hundreds of cities for months in 2020 in the walk-up to the election.

Then Democrats openly engaged in widespread election fraud to capture that election, aided and abetted by a compliant media and a refusal of the courts to hold them accountable. Now Democrats hold the White House and the Congress, and have begun their purge of Republican “threats” plus the implementation of a legislative agenda to codify their practices and position. They will make a shambles of governing here as their ilk have done everywhere else, but they have no intention of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on their march to power.

Most Republicans and almost all independents do not really understand this situation. They fail to understand that the Democrats today are not the Democrats of the days of Harry Truman and John Kennedy. If they did understand, they might have armed themselves and risen when Trump foolishly allowed Antifa-BLM rioters to rip the country apart for months on end, virtually unimpeded and often applauded by mostly Democrat mayors and governors, and most of the media.

But they did not. They are deluded by a toxic combination of disbelief and denial – disbelief that it can really be so bad, and denial that the Democrats and their even more radical allies really mean what they say. They foolishly appear to believe that this is simply an unusually brutal phase in our political life – worse than the 1960s but better than the eve of the Civil War – and that they can make some real gains in the 2022 mid-term elections, and regain power in 2024.

They are wrong. “Politics as usual” in America is dead. If the Democrats get their way, there may be some competitive elections in 2022 but not enough to matter, and before 2024 it will be a done deal – the U.S. for all intents and purposes will be a one-party state with, perhaps, some tame Republicans allowed to hold a few seats in Congress for the sake of appearances. It has happened before elsewhere. It can – and most likely will – happen in America now. Here there be monsters, indeed – and we bred them ourselves.

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

The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics

By Glenn Greenwald | March 24, 2021

A report declassified last Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security is raising serious concerns about the possibly illegal involvement by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic political affairs.

Entitled “Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2021,” the March 1 Report from the Director of National Intelligence states that it was prepared “in consultation with the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security—and was drafted by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).”

Its primary point is this: “The IC [intelligence community] assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021.” While asserting that “the most lethal” of these threats is posed by “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs),” it makes clear that its target encompasses a wide range of groups from the left (Antifa, animal rights and environmental activists, pro-choice extremists and anarchists: “those who oppose capitalism and all forms of globalization”) to the right (sovereign citizen movements, anti-abortion activists and those deemed motivated by racial or ethnic hatreds).

The U.S. security state apparatus regards the agenda of “domestic violent extremists” as “derived from anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” which includes “opposition to perceived economic, racial or social hierarchies.” In sum, to the Department of Homeland Security, an “extremist” is anyone who opposes the current prevailing ruling class and system for distributing power. Anyone they believe is prepared to use violence, intimidation or coercion in pursuit of these causes then becomes a “domestic violent extremist,” subject to a vast array of surveillance, monitoring and other forms of legal restrictions:

Department of Homeland Security report, Mar.1, 2021

It goes without saying that violence of any kind — including that which is politically motivated — is a serious crime under U.S. law, and it is the proper role of the U.S. Government to investigate and prevent it. But there are real and important legal and institutional limits on the authority of the intelligence community to involve itself in domestic law enforcement, or other forms of domestic political activity, that seem threatened here, if not outright violated.

In particular, the Report’s acknowledgement that it was compiled by institutions including “the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with contributions from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)” has alarmed numerous members of the House Intelligence Committee. On Thursday, all ten minority members of that Committee wrote a previously unreported letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines “to raise serious concerns about the production of this document by the Intelligence Community (IC) and to seek clarification of the facts related to its production.”

Among the issues raised was that the DHS Report was not subject to the standard rigors of an intelligence community finding, yet continually makes sweeping claims that it prefixes with the authoritative phrase “the IC assesses.” The Committee members found this “to be misleading,” adding: we “urge you to clarify which elements in the IC concurred with this judgement and the intelligence basis, if any, for that concurrence.” In other words, Haines claims that these dubious assertions about various threats faced by Americans are the findings of the intelligence community when that is not true: just like the originally false claim widely spread by the media that “all seventeen intelligence agencies” endorsed the 2016 election findings about Russian interference when, in fact, it was only a few which had done so. Haines’ claims have support only from a few agencies as well.

But the more substantive danger is the role played by the CIA and other intelligence agencies in the domestic politics of the U.S., all in the name of fighting “domestic terrorism” (similar dangers were previously created by the Bush and Obama administrations in the name of fighting “international terrorism”). As the committee members’ letter details:

The Intelligence Committee members, citing the fact that the intelligence community is “subject to longstanding prohibitions against domestic activities,” then demanded answers to a series of questions based on this substantive concern:

Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S. citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of fighting the Cold War. Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that massive machinery against the American public were central to the always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, “in its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse.”

Since then, Truman’s fear has been realized over and over. Some of the worst post-WW2 civil liberties abuses have been the result of breaches by the CIA and other agencies of this prohibition. As the ACLU documents, the CIA in the 1960s was caught infiltrating and manipulating numerous domestic political activist groups. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, entire new bureaucracies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) and new legal regimes (such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) were designed to erode these long-standing limitations by dramatically increasing surveillance powers aimed at U.S. citizens. And by design, the infiltration of these security state agencies in U.S. domestic politics has dramatically escalated.

As the first War on Terror was escalating, The Washington Post — under the headline “CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations” — reported in October, 2002, that “The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI’s 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities.” The Post added that in the name of that War on Terror:

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III recently described the new arrangement as his answer to MI5, Britain’s internal security service. Unlike the CIA, MI5 is empowered to collect intelligence within Britain and to act to disrupt domestic threats to British national security. “It goes some distance to accomplishing what the MI5 does,” Mueller told a House-Senate intelligence panel last week in describing the new CIA role in the FBI task forces.

In the years following, two NSA whistleblowers — William Binney and Edward Snowden — both cited their horror over the turning of the surveillance machinery against American citizens as the reason for their decision to denounce their agency. One of the aspects that most disturbed me about the Russiagate conspiracy theory from the start was that it was created and disseminated by the CIA and related agencies with the intent, first, to alter the outcome of the 2016 election, and then to undermine the elected president with whom they were at war. Shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) went on The Rachel Maddow Show to warn — or more accurately: threaten — Trump that the CIA would destroy his presidency if he continued to criticize or otherwise oppose them:

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/505WGUrCp10?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0

It is encouraging to see Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee starting to express serious concerns over the dangers of intelligence community involvement in domestic politics. That is underscored by their approving citation to the mild mid-1970s reforms of the intelligence community ushered in by the Senate’s Church Committee, once primarily a liberal cause. Indeed, many of the same House Republicans who wrote this important letter to the DNI have in the past supported laws that allow greater involvement of the CIA, NSA and other agencies in activities on U.S. soil — including the Patriot Act.

The head of the Church Committee, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), made clear in his iconic quote on Meet the Press in 1975 that those reforms were primarily motivated by fears that the U.S. Government would one day turn its vast intelligence powers onto the American people, rendering core civil liberties an illusion:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. (…) We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

(That quote from Sen. Church was the first one that appeared in my 2014 book on the NSA reporting I did with Edward Snowden, and the title of that book, No Place to Hide, was a nod toward Church’s chilling warning, now come true).

As I have been repeatedly noting over the last two months, the Biden administration, along with leading Democrats such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), have been stating explicitly that one of their top priorities is the adoption of new laws designed to import the Bush/Cheney/Obama War on Terror onto U.S. soil for domestic purposes. As recently as February 14, The Washington Post — under the headline: “The agency founded because of 9/11 is shifting to face the threat of domestic terrorism” —noted that Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is now demanding that homeland security resources be re-directed toward domestic extremists, and “lawmakers of both parties spoke favorably of new legislation to specifically address domestic terrorism.”

Nobody from the Biden administration or Congressional members demanding enactment of Schiff’s proposed new “domestic terrorism” law can identify any activities that are not now criminal that they believe ought to be. Unless it is to permit intelligence agencies to start policing constitutionally protected speech and associational activities among U.S. citizens, why are any new laws needed? Unless it is to empower them to escalate their already-aggressive use of War on Terror tactics against U.S. citizens, what do they want security state agencies to be able to do on U.S. soil that they cannot now do?

But just as the fear of international terrorism was constantly inflated to place such questions off limits when it came to the War on Terror, and just as critics of the excesses of the first War on Terror were constantly accused of downplaying the threat of Islamic extremism if not harboring outright sympathy for it, the same tactics are being used now. Anyone raising civil liberties concerns about what is being done in the name of combating “domestic extremism” is vilified as ignoring and even supporting such domestic extremism.

No matter: there are few dangers more acute than the weaponization of these security state instruments against U.S. citizens for political ends. The DNI should provide full, complete and truthful answers to the important questions posed by these Intelligence Committee members, and should do so promptly. The evidence of growing incursions by the intelligence community in U.S. domestic politics is already strong and ample, and further incursions would be both dangerous and illegal.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Professor: Britain Can’t Be Held To Ransom By Vaccine Refuseniks

By Richie Allen | March 24, 2021

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Brendan Wren, Professor of Vaccinology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said that “a third wave caused by vaccine refuseniks would devastate our return to normality.” He also said that “there is no excuse” for not having a vaccine. He writes:

… a worryingly high proportion of British people will continue to refuse the jab — preventing us reaching the crucial ‘herd immunity’, whereby the virus cannot spread because it cannot find enough people to infect.

We know, for example, that more than three million over-55s — including half a million over-65s — have still not been vaccinated, even though all are eligible and could surely have had the vaccine if they wanted it.

In both Britain and Europe, the costs of this vaccine hesitancy are now all too clear. France’s history of ‘anti-vax’ thinking — up to 60 per cent of French people have previously said they wouldn’t take a Covid jab — is now surely playing its part in the country’s third wave.

Here, we know, sadly, that vaccine hesitancy is particularly high in certain sections of the black, Asian and minority ethnic [BAME] communities.

Wren goes on to say that while he “ordinarily baulks” at the idea of compulsory vaccination, he does support making covid jabs mandatory for care workers. He then writes that Britain cannot be held to ransom by refuseniks:

Though I do not believe we are there yet, a third wave caused by vaccine refuseniks would devastate our return to normality. Britain cannot be held to ransom because of a minority who don’t understand the value of the vaccines, risking their own health and that of others in the process.

There it is. We, who will never take their experimental medicines, which are already causing real harm, will be blamed for delaying the exit from lockdown. We’ll be blamed for future lockdowns too. They’ll use every trick in the book, to get us to roll up our sleeves.

We know that Covid Status Certificates or Vaccine Passports are a reality. That’s effectively mandating by coercion.

Now a leading scientist is saying that the country cannot be held to ransom by refuseniks. This will lead to families, friends and neighbours falling out and singling out those of us who won’t have a jab. It’s going to get uglier, that’s for sure.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Lockdown One Year On – It doesn’t work, it never-worked & it wasn’t supposed to work

Light up the lone candle on the saddest birthday cake in the world! The most destructive public policy of the century is growing up and doesn’t look like slowing down.

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | March 23, 2021

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history.

1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

It’s a long time since “2 weeks to flatten the curve”, became an obvious lie. Sometime in July it turned into a sick joke. The curve was flattened, the NHS protected and the clapping was hearty and meaningful.

… and none of it made any difference.

This was not a sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was not a hard decision with arguments on both sides. It was not a risk-benefit scenario. The “risks” were in fact certainties, and the “benefits” entirely fictional.

Because Lockdowns don’t work. It’s really important to remember that.

Even if you subscribe to the belief that “Sars-Cov-2” is a unique discrete entity (which is far from proven), or that it is incredibly dangerous (which is demonstrably untrue), the lockdown has not worked to, in any way, limit this supposed threat.

Lockdowns. Don’t. Work.

They don’t make any difference, the curves don’t flatten and the R0 number doesn’t drop and the lives aren’t saved (quite the opposite, as we’ve all seen).

Just look at the graphs.

This one, comparing “Covid deaths” in the UK (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown):

Or this one, comparing “Covid deaths” in California (lockdown) and Florida (no lockdown):

From Belarus to Sweden to Florida to Nicaragua to Tanzania, the evidence is clear. “Covid”, whatever that means in real terms, is not impacted by lockdowns.

Putting the entire population under house arrest doesn’t benefit public health. In fact, it’s (rather predictably) incredibly counter-productive.

The damage done by shuttering businesses, limiting access to healthcare, postponing treatments and diagnoses, postponed surgeries, increasing depression, soaring unemployment and mass poverty has been discussed to death. The scale of the impact cannot be overstated.

Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, said this of lockdowns back in October:

We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…]just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry… look what’s happening to small-holding farmers […] it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

A terrible, global catastrophe. A doubling of childhood malnutrition.

The “pandemic” didn’t do that, lockdowns did that. They were never going to achieve their stated aims. And what’s more, they were never intended to achieve those aims.

Too often soft language in the media talks about “misjudgments” or “mistakes” or “incompetence”. Supposed critics claim the government “panicked” or “over-reacted”. That is nonsense. The easiest, cheesiest excuse that has ever existed.

“Whoops”, they say, with an emphatic shrug and shit-eating grin “I guess we done messed up!”. Unflattering, but better than the truth.

Because the truth is that the government isn’t mistaken or scared or stupid…they are malign. And dishonest. And cruel.

All the suffering of lockdown was entirely predictable and deliberately imposed. For reasons that have nothing to do with helping people and everything to do controlling them.

It’s been more than apparent for most of the last fifty-two weeks that the agenda of lockdown was not public health, but laying the groundwork for the “new normal” and “the great reset”.

A series of programmes designed to completely undercut civil liberties all across the world, reversing decades (if not centuries) of social progress. A re-feudalisation of society, with the 99% cheerfully taking up their peasant smocks “to protect the vulnerable”, whilst the elite proselytise about the worth of rules they happily admit do not apply to them.

And we’ve all had lives ruined and a year of precious time wasted. For nothing. You’ve been locked up for two weeks that lasted 365 days. For nothing.

…or rather, for everything. Because that’s what they are trying to take from us. Everything. And the only way to stop them is not to let them. To simply refuse consent.

Let’s not let lockdown get a second birthday.

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

Pro-Palestine activist stands trial after leading boycott against Israeli pharmaceutical company

Pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement march in Marseille, southern France. (Photo via Twitter)
Press TV –  March 22, 2021

French activist Olivia Zemor has gone on trial in Lyon after making an online appeal in 2016 for a boycott of Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva company.

She appeared in court on March 16 over publishing a call by Collectif Palestine 69 on EuroPalestine website, urging readers to boycott Teva, the largest Israeli pharmaceutical corporation by market value.

Zemor, an active advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, was sued for “defamation” by Teva after she accused the company of complicity in apartheid and occupation.

In comments to French newspaper Le Courrier de l’Atlas, she said, “Through its financial contribution to Israel, this pharmaceutical giant contributes to the financing of military operations in Gaza and to the development of colonization in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in defiance of the rights of the Palestinian people and of international resolutions.”

Therefore, she added, it is necessary to call for the company’s boycott.

Pro-Palestine activist Olivia Zemor is going on trial in France after leading a boycott campaign against Israeli pharmaceutical giant Teva pic.twitter.com/ENtpjlLG2I

However, Frédéric Jeannin, lawyer for the pharmaceutical company, denied the accusation, claiming that “Teva is not involved in a geopolitical, ethnic or religious conflict, and these actions hamper its economic activity.”

On the day of Zemor’s trial, activists gathered outside the courtroom to condemn the French government’s attempts to silence criticism of Israel and those who speak out against the oppression of Palestinians.

They argue that the European Court of Human Rights last year affirmed the right to boycott Israel and that this ruling invalidates the French prosecution of Zemor, who is the president of the EuroPalestine solidarity group.

French Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti is accused of “a blatant violation of the decision” by distributing a circular to prosecutors urging them to take action against activists supporting the BDS campaign.

Teva, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of generic drugs, provides millions of pounds in tax revenue to the Israeli regime and its military.

The company is accused of “joining hands with the French state to aggressively seek to shut down and silence international voices of conscience for exposing corporate complicity and profiteering from the Israeli occupation regime.”

People have been asked to show solidarity with Zemor by writing to French embassies and consulates and holding protests outside them.

Palestinians have for decades called on civil campaigns against Israel, organized under the BDS umbrella.

The BDS movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, unions, as well as cultural and rights groups, including all major political parties, trade and academic unions that were pushing for “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”

Thousands of volunteers worldwide have since then joined the nonviolent campaign, which calls for people and groups across the world to cut economic, cultural and academic ties to Tel Aviv, to help promote the Palestinian cause.

Israel claims that the movement is a strategic threat and accuses it of anti-Semitism – a claim that activists firmly deny, calling it an attempt to discredit them.

The BDS, which adheres to peaceful resistance, intends to exert pressure on the Israeli regime to adhere to international law and human rights by lobbying various states, institutions and individuals to understand its oppression of Palestinians and take action as a result.

March 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

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