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Trump’s been deleted from internet, and any one of us could be next

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | January 14, 2021

Donald Trump has been deleted from the internet. He hasn’t been put behind a warning or had his followers reduced, or been forced to switch platforms. He’s gone.
Snapchat. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Google. Amazon. Instagram. Shopify. Twitch. Tiktok. Gone.

And he’s the President of the United States. If they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone.

Indeed, that’s the message being sent. It’s an intimidation move, designed to frighten people into policing themselves.

Many people have picked up on this already.

But unfortunately, many more are still lost in what they falsely believe to be the heady scent of victory. They’ll realise their mistake eventually, but it may be too late for us all by then.

It didn’t even stop at Trump, either. Tens of thousands of other people were banned in the following days.

For years the refrain from people defending censorship on social media – ironically, people who would usually identify as “socialists” – has been that private companies have the right to police their platforms as they see fit, and if you don’t like it you can switch to another social network.

… but now those other social networks are being shut down too.

It started with Gab a few years ago, but the recent assault on Parler was even stronger. Gab survived, Parler has not. The tech giants got together and stamped the life out of a smaller competitor. (Pretty sure antitrust laws are there to prevent exactly that scenario, but nevermind.)

The whole week since the “Capitol Hill Riot” has been one long display of dominance. A peacock fanning its tail or a silverback banging on tree trunks.

They are telling us who’s in charge, but some people are refusing to listen.

A common meme doing the rounds among “liberal” voices – who are these days well-schooled in missing the point – goes something like this: “If he’s too dangerous to have a twitter account, why does he have the nuclear codes?”

But, of course, the real question is – if they don’t even let him have a Twitter account, do you honestly think they let him anywhere near the nuclear codes?

Do you really think he has, or had, any power at all? Do you think Joe Biden does?

Do you think the same architecture that just publically castrated the “most powerful man on Earth” and the “leader of the free world” will suddenly start doing what it’s told when a “progressive” voice is in charge?

If they don’t bow to the will of the people now, why should they ever?

They won’t. They never have.

We’ve been told, in very clear terms, who has the power. And it is certainly not us, nor is it our elected representatives.

In fact, it’s not anyone with either democratic mandate or legal accountability, but rather a series of nameless executives, faceless bureaucrats and a succession of tech-billionaires forming a new breed of royalty.

Deleting Donald Trump wasn’t just a “panic response” to the “violence” on Capitol Hill, and it wasn’t a punishment for the man himself – It was a calculated display of honesty. A declaration of intent.

A notification of the limitations we’re all going to face as the increasingly dystopian new normal shapes a different kind of society.

It’s all been clearly co-ordinated. The Deep State and big business and the media working together. Police are instructed to create unrest on Capitol Hill, allow “rioters” into the building. The media report it as an “attempted coup”, while the social networks remove all of Trump’s denunciations so he can be blamed for “inciting violence”.

They created the lie. They spread the lie. They silenced anyone who would gainsay the lie. They have, as Karl Rove would put it, “created reality”, and now we’re here analysing it.

It was a big lie, this time, because it had to be. Because the man – or rather the office – was big. But for Joe Bloggs it can be a small lie. “he posted child porn” or “he was spreading hate” or “he was denying the pandemic”.

The precedent has been created. They can ban anyone they want and make up the reasons later.

Frank Zappa famously said:

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

Well, we’ve been shown the wall, and we’re being encouraged to cheer because the first person to run into it was Donald Trump. Rather predictably, millions have fallen for it.

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Pandemic Reading List for Left, Right, and Libertarians

 

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | American Institute for Economic Research | January 14, 2021

Daily the news is pouring in: SARS-CoV-2 behaves like a textbook respiratory virus in its vectors of transmission and its conferring immunity. It is not and never was a strange and unfamiliar pathogenic meteor hitting the earth warranting panic to the point of shutting down the normal course of life.

The policy response should have followed the proven path of the past: vulnerable people protecting themselves while non-vulnerable populations go about life as normal with an expectation of exposure. This was the settled presumption of public health. This is what the Great Barrington Declaration said and it is what Public Health England is saying now.

Why did all this happen? Did sizable parts of the world fail to pay attention in 9th grade biology class when the subjects of viruses and immunity were discussed? For that matter, is this stuff not taught anymore?

I’m just not sure what accounts for this sudden loss of knowledge. I do know that people who specialize in political economy were blindsided last March with the policy response to pandemic. Nothing like widespread lockdowns had ever been attempted in the US, which accounts for why so little has actually been written about it. The result was that many intellectuals – on all sides! – found themselves unprepared. Subjects like cell biology and infectious disease are not topics usually examined by economists and philosophers, so many people decided to say nothing at all, thereby granting the lockdowners a free hand that dominated public discussion.

I had been variously writing on the topic of pandemic policy responses since 2006, but beyond the general conviction that government would only make things worse, I too was unprepared to deal with the specifics concerning viruses and their mitigation. Is it really true that closing restaurants and churches makes a contribution to stopping disease spread? Is forcing people apart actually a sound response to the presence of a pathogen? Is there no other path to minimizing the social harm of a virus other than waiting for a vaccine? For that matter, can a virus really be stopped?

Answering these questions takes more than political or ideological conviction. It requires at least some knowledge of cell biology, pathogens, pandemic history, public health practices, and immunological history. I scrambled to get up to speed so that I could understand more thoroughly and write in a more compelling way.

Mostly this consisted of reading as many medical studies on Covid as possible, in addition to listening to endless hours of talks online by specialists. That was essential. Even so, what I really needed was to embed myself in the bigger topic more deeply.

The books below provided me the most help on this intellectual journey.

The History of Public Health, by Paul Rosen. This fascinating treatise was first published in 1958 and reissued in 1993 with new material. It is a wonderful introduction to the whole concept of public health and how it evolved through the centuries. A major theme of the book is how poor understanding of disease dominated public health from the ancient world through the 19th century. Ignorance and fear led to a run-from-the-miasma mentality. Once the science of cell biology improved, so too did public health.

The last bout of medieval-style brutality toward disease was in 1918, after which public health got very very serious and swore that nothing like that would happen again. The turning point occurred when it became clear that large-scale collective efforts to beat back and hide from pathogens were futile and tremendously harmful. Instead, disease is something to be managed by doctors and their patients. The job of public health became to focus on clean sanitation and water and otherwise give a message of calm, and clear recommendations to people in light of medical resources.

The hardest challenge for public health was to get common people to understand the scalability of their own immune systems, so that people would stop fearing exposure as such but rather embrace evolutionary reality. After World War II, this became a major feature of public education.

Rosen further emphasizes how modern public health differs from ancient and medieval theory in that it is never about chasing away a single pathogen. Rather, public health must consider all aspects of health including economic and mental health. So panicking by running away from a germ is completely contrary to modern public health, to say nothing of lockdowns, which have zero to do with health.

One thing that slightly bothers is Rosen’s tendency to attribute all improvement in health to science and better policies. He has a whole chapter on the strange disappearance of a vast number of diseases after WWI. He thinks it is due to better sanitation and so on, which is undoubtedly true in part. But even while reading, I couldn’t shake Sunetra Gupta’s point that trade and migration vastly improved immune systems. It was a natural process of tossing off naive systems for exposed systems that made the largest contribution to longer lives and better health.

Molecular & Cell Biology For Dummies, by Rene Fester Kratz. This quick Kindle download provides an accurate look at the core of the topic at hand while minimizing the amount of technical and medical razzle-dazzle you would otherwise face with a first-year textbook from medical school. Not having an extensive background in this topic myself, I not only found the book fascinating; I was amazed that I found it fascinating! The human immune system shares features with any complex evolved system: as a reader you cannot help but be in awe of its workings and interactions with the world. In a year in which the lockdowners tried to pretend as if the immune is nonoperational without a vaccine, this introduction to disease basics is an outstanding corrective.

Smallpox: The Death of a Disease: The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer, by Donald A. Henderson. This is a spectacular history of one of the greatest triumphs in modern medicine. It is also beautifully written. Inoculation against smallpox has been around since the 18th century, and the vaccine since the late 19th century. The real challenges that met the eradicators – the author himself among the most famous and dedicated of them all – was about production, distribution, and administration. Here was what requires decades of work, and Henderson chronicles the litany of difficulties he faced around the world. I think of this book often these days given the completely predictable chaos of Covid vaccine distribution in 2021.

The Plague, by Albert Camus. This short but powerful book, written about the author’s own quarantine and published in 1947, is a work of fiction that speaks to the terrifying reality of lockdowns in the midst of a plague – the sort of plague that takes people down ferociously and brutally. He captures perfectly how the fear of sickness and death taps into a primal instinct and causes first denial and then panic. He speaks profoundly to the loss of direction and purpose in the midst of lockdown, the isolation and psychological damage that being cut off from the normal flow of life brings about. And he speaks to the loss of control felt both by citizens and officials when confronted with a mysterious pathogen, and just how disorienting it is to discover that the disease is smarter and more powerful than any of us.

Coronavirus and Economic Crisis, edited by Peter C. Earle. I am listing this one not because I have several essays in it, but rather because this book compiles some of the best research and writing from the early months of the pandemic lockdown. It is filled with white-hot passion and tremendous erudition. It also provides proof that what many of our writers predicted came true: tremendous social, cultural, and economic damage. We were warned at the time that we were acting too soon in publishing this, and it is true that AIER was just about first out the door with a book on the topic. But it turned out to serve as a great inspiration to others, and gave the principles that guided the opposition to lockdowns for the rest of the year. In the meantime, AIER released three additional books on the topic in addition to my own book Liberty or Lockdown.

Pandemic responses will continue to serve as a convenient rationale for government interventions in the future. Anyone who has a concern for human liberty and prosperity should be armed with intellectual ammunition to combat this huge increase in government power. We need more than ideological instincts here; to fully understand, we need to be aware of the sciences of infectious disease and the discipline of public health.

At this point, ignorance threatens everything we hold dear. We owe the cause of freedom some effort on our part to read up, learn, and be prepared for the long battle ahead.

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Lockdown Britain turning into East Germany? No, in many ways it’s worse. Believe me… I was there

By Neil Clark | RT | January 14, 2021

“I don’t want to live in East Germany,” says Nigel Farage in a new video in which he expresses concern at where Britain is heading. He has a point; I was in the DDR in 1989 and found it to be less oppressive than Britain today.

It started with stamps. My interest in the ‘German Democratic Republic’ began when a very nice lady called Frieda, who lived on our road when I was a child, started to give me her old East German stamps for my collection. She was from the DDR, and went every year to visit her elderly mother there. She told my mother she was followed by the secret police when she went back. My apolitical fascination with this rather mysterious ‘Behind the Iron Curtain’ country grew. I had a pen friend who lived in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz), and we exchanged football pennants and stickers. In September 1989, I was finally able to visit. It was some experience.

Without wishing to brush over or downplay in any way the negatives, which I will go into, I found the country was a lot less grim than popularly portrayed. Perhaps that was partly due to the gloriously sunny weather. But it soon became clear to me that, despite living in a ‘dictatorship’, people could still enjoy happy, meaningful lives. I remember packed bars and restaurants (including one self-service cafeteria that was open all night at Erfurt station, where my friend and I spent our first night on wooden benches).

We also witnessed a very joyous old-style wedding – with horse and carriage ­– in the centre of beautiful Wernigerode, the quaint little town in the Harz Mountains where we stayed. I travelled around on trains (including a wonderful old steam locomotive), buses, and trams. In Magdeburg, I went to a football match. I chatted with people wherever I went. I found everyone friendly and eager to enter into conversations. I was also struck by the very high general level of education. People loved talking about books.

It’s a sobering thought that things I could do in East Germany in 1989 I cannot do in the locked-down Britain of today. Pubs, restaurants, and nightclubs are shut, by Order of the State. Ditto theatres and other places of public entertainment. Football matches are played ‘behind closed doors’. Earlier this week, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi appealed for people not to stop and chat to friends they bump into outside, and also told people not to sit on park benches! “Don’t go out and sit or have that opportunity of social interaction,” he said. Again, this is worse than East Germany.  You could always meet your friends there, and make new ones too.

In less than 12 months, Britain has been transformed from a relatively free country into an authoritarian police state where physical social interaction is strongly discouraged, if not illegal. Last week, we saw a shocking video of police breaking into a home in Scotland after a ‘tip-off’ that there were ‘too many people’ there.

In Wales, a couple were given a fixed penalty notice for travelling seven miles to see the wife’s 94-year-old mother in a care home, a journey the police deemed ‘unnecessary’. “I feel like I’m living in some sort of dystopian novel after what happened,” a ‘mortified’ Mrs Carol Richards said afterwards (After much publicity, the fine was subsequently rescinded, but that still doesn’t excuse the police action).

Under the ‘rules’, people have even been prevented from visiting seriously ill loved ones in hospital. Just how inhuman is that?

The biggest bugbear people I spoke to had with life in the old DDR was the restrictions on foreign travel. But although we have no Berlin Wall, we have restrictions on travel in Britain today (at least for the plebs). When Home Secretary Priti Patel boasted about ending free movement, the left presumed she was talking about immigration. It transpired it was the British people’s free movement that was ending, under the guise of fighting a virus.

And with the World Economic Forum-sponsored roll-out of health passports – which the power behind the throne, Tony Blair, assures us “will” happen – will those who refuse to get vaccinated ever be able to leave the country again? It’s certainly a major concern.

East Germany had its Stasi, which we all know about; in ‘free democratic’ Britain, people are encouraged to call ‘hotlines’ and use ‘online portals’ to snitch on their neighbours if they believe they are breaching Covid regulations. My friend, the Oxford academic Mark Almond, tweeted that he has a friend who is a chairman of a gardening association here, but who was in East Berlin in 1983. Mark’s friend told him she had received anonymous denunciations of breaches of lockdown in the allotment! “Makes one nostalgic for the Stasi,” she remarked.

“Ah,” I hear some of you say… “But East Germany was a de facto one-party system, whereas Britain is a multi-party democracy. There’s really no comparison.” But what use is having opposition parties if they all toe the ‘official’ line and agree with the government on the biggest issues of the day? All of the parliamentary parties are pro-lockdown. The only opposition to the Conservatives from Labour has been on the lines of “You’re not locking down hard enough!” When Parliament debated the latest lockdown measures last week, just 16 MPs – out of a House of 650 – voted against. Not one Labour MP opposed.

It was the very wise French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery who noted in ‘The Little Prince’, “what is essential is invisible to the eye.” So it is with societies. We can cite GDP figures until we’re blue in the face, but the important thing about a country is how things feel. Are people happy? Is there joy to be had in everyday life?

The mood in East Germany in September 1989 was optimistic. Perhaps people thought positive change was on its way. Perhaps others were genuinely enthused by the 40 Jahre DDR celebrations. I don’t feel the same atmosphere in Britain today. People seem demoralised and depressed. That’s borne out by the news that antidepressant use soared in 2020, with six million people in England receiving anti-depressants in the three months to September – the highest figure on record.

The downbeat national mood is not at all surprising when you consider that people have been physically isolated from one another and we have been fed a 24/7 diet of fear-porn from the government and most of the media for the past nine months. Relentless psychological warfare has been waged on us. It has certainly taken its toll. Who wouldn’t be depressed if they watched Piers Morgan and ‘Good Morning Britain’ every day?

East Germany was an attempt to build a ‘workers’ state’ out of the ruins of the Third Reich. But although economically it represented a big change to what had gone on before, with a largely collectivised planned economy, the important point is that everyday life wasn’t that much different to how it had been for centuries. The basics remained the same.

People could still go out, socialise, have a laugh and a joke, a pint and a smoke, spend time with their families, and find love and romance and happiness in chance encounters. In other words, do all the things that make life worth living.  But such simple pleasures – which we took for granted before March 2020 – are deprived to us in Britain today, where under the imposition of the ‘Great Reset’ we are being conditioned to accept as a ‘new normal’ an entirely abnormal way of living that goes against every human instinct.

As bad as things are in early 2021, even worse will follow, unless there is a massive pushback against the globalists’ dystopian agenda. An agenda which, as my fellow RT.com columnist Tomasz Pierscionek pointed out last week, is about constructing a “living hell that combines the worst of Communist totalitarianism with the worst of capitalism’s detached callousness towards those deemed expendable, perhaps topped off with liberal and woke militants cancelling those committing thought crimes.”

In a TV interview on Wednesday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted he had no timetable for a lifting of lockdown even after vaccinations. Priti Patel has already told us“social distancing is here to stay.” Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has said that lockdown (if it is ever eased) could be re-imposed next winter.

Is this really our future? Rolling lockdowns, bans on seeing our families and friends, and threats of even tougher restrictions hanging permanently over us? And all this while being told to ‘mask up’ and keep two or even three metres away from our fellow human beings – and of course not to chat to them. The utterly hellish and soul-destroying ‘New Normal’ designed for us by the Davos elites makes late 1980s East Germany – for all its well-documented faults – look like paradise on Earth. Just think about that for a moment.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Poland slams social media deplatforming of Trump as government readies anti-censorship law

RT | January 14, 2021

The Polish government has decried social media platforms’ (mis)handling of US President Donald Trump’s accounts as Warsaw prepares to pass its own legislation to stop ideological censorship.

Facebook’s decision to remove Trump’s account was politically motivated, hypocritical, and “amounts to censorship,” Deputy Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta told local media.

Under the country’s new anti-censorship law, “removing lawful content would directly violate the law, and this will have to be respected by the platforms that operate in Poland,” he explained to Polish outlet Rzeczpospolita.

PM Mateusz Morawiecki made similar comments earlier this week, though he did not mention the US president by name. “Algorithms or the owners of corporate giants should not decide which views are right and which are not,” he wrote on Facebook. “There can be no consent to censorship.”

“Censorship of free speech, which is the domain of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, is now returning in the form of a new, commercial mechanism to combat those who think differently,” Morawiecki continued.

The new anti-censorship law, first unveiled last month, will allow users whose content is taken down by the Big Tech companies to petition a special court if they believe the content did not violate Polish law and should be restored. The user may first file a complaint to the platform, which has 24 hours to restore the ‘offending’ content if they agree it does not violate Polish law.

If the platform refuses, however, the user has 48 hours to petition a court newly created for this purpose. Should the court find in favor of the censored user over a seven-day consideration period, the censoring platform can be fined up to €1.8 million.

Polish government figures, especially those on the right wing of the political spectrum, have had their own struggles with Facebook censorship in the past. The platform kicked Konfederacja party MP Janusz Korwin-Mikke off the site in November despite some 780,000 followers, alleging he had repeatedly violated “community standards.”

Morawiecki has called for the EU to adopt similar rules for governing social media, though the multinational group’s current trajectory seems to lean toward punishing platforms for not removing ‘offensive’ content quickly enough.

However, individual countries such as France are starting to push back against the dominance of Big Tech. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire recently referred to the tech titans as a “digital oligarchy” and “one of the threats” to democracy.

As when Poland first announced the new rule, social media users tired of being tread on by Facebook and Twitter expressed their approval.

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Trump Impeached Again, Nearly Half the Country Opposed

By Stephen Lendman | January 14, 2021

There’s no ambiguity about Trump’s legion of supporters.

On average, polls show that nearly half of voting-age Americans oppose impeaching Trump and removing him from office.

Yet Wednesday on the House floor, lynch mob “justice” triumphed over the rule of law.

Trump became the first US president impeached twice.

Both times were for politicized reasons with no legitimacy — Wednesday’s process largely along party lines.

Ten Republicans joined with 222 undemocratic Dems.

One article of impeachment falsely accused Trump of “willfully inciting violence against the government of the United States.”

His public remarks and tweets did nothing of the sort. He urged nonviolence on January 6, not the other way around.

Once again on Wednesday from the White House, Trump denounced week ago Capitol Hill violence, urging calm.

The die was cast. Dems out for blood and their establishment media, press agents have been going all-out to deny Trump a second term — along with wanting him defrocked, humiliated, and prevented from holding public office ahead for the wrong reasons, not legitimate ones.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that the article of impeachment will be sent to the Senate straightaway.

Separately, he turned reality on its head by the following Big Lie on national television, saying:

“The timing was thrust upon us by the actions of the president of the United States (sic).”

“The fact that he is leaving should not divert us from holding accountable behavior which many of us believe is treasonous behavior and criminal behavior (sic).”

At earliest, Senate trial won’t begin until January 19 as things now stand — two days before Trump’s tenure ends.

A two-thirds super-majority is needed for conviction, a high bar to cross, what never happened before in US history.

Will Trump be the US president to be removed from office following impeachment?

If not, will he be convicted by a Senate super-majority post-tenure?

What’s unthinkable based on the fabricated charge of inciting insurrection is unlikely but possible.

That’s the depth to which the state of the nation sank, greater depths likely ahead.

The rule of law died long ago in Washington.

9/11 added an exclamation point.

Made-in-the-USA covid (that’s renamed seasonal flu) and orchestrated Main Street economic collapse last year, continuing with no end of it in prospect, added two more.

Orchestrated by anti-Trump dark forces, last week’s Capitol Hill coup attempt added another.

In response to Trump’s politicized impeachment 2.0, Law Professor Jonathan Turley said the following:

Wednesday’s “snap” impeachment of Trump “dispense(d) with the traditional hearing or inquiry of impeachment.”

“There was no opportunity to debate the language or the implications of the language.”

“(T)he rush to judgment could become a parade of constitutional horribles.”

It’s “ripe for challenge on the Senate floor and even later in the federal courts.”

Impeachment “language… is sweeping and raises serious concerns of this standard for future presidents.”

Trump’s remarks did not rise to the level of “criminal incitement…”

“(T)he Senate should reject the impeachment if on the basis that an impeachment of a former president is unwarranted and likely unconstitutional.”

It’s based on invented reasons, not legitimate ones.

Turley is a sharp Trump critic as am I — for justifiable reasons, not phony ones to satisfy vengeful Dems.

Impeaching Trump twice for politicized reasons — along with seeking lynch mob “justice” against him throughout his tenure — proves conclusively that Dems are self-serving and unfit to lead the nation.

Their involvement in staging a Capitol Hill coup attempt against a sitting president left the state of the nation and rule of law in tatters.

Post-inauguration of unelected Biden/Harris next week, will they declare martial law?

Will tyranny follow on their watch?

A pox on both right wings of the one-party state.

On her website, Sharyl Attkisson posted results of what she called “a recent unscientific poll of more than 640 people,” adding:

“When asked if they generally trust (US) election integrity, 70% said ‘Absolutely no’ and 19% said ‘More no than yes’ for a total of 89% expressing skepticism.”

“Another 6% said they tend to trust election integrity: 2% said ‘Absolutely yes’ and 4% said ‘More yes than no.’ ”

Along with earlier stolen US federal elections since the early 19th century, media-supported Election 2020 theft may have been most brazen of all.

Events post-election, leading up to last week’s orchestrated Capitol Hill coup attempt, Wednesday’s impeachment, and what may follow are proof positive of a nation dismissive of the rule of law.

It’s on a fast track to full-blown tyranny if not challenged by nonviolent mass action in the streets before it’s too late.

Stephen Lendman’s two Wall Street books are timely reading:

How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War

 

Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Alert: the operation to squash protests in America – PART ONE

By Jon Rappoport | January 14, 2021

The Department of Justice has announced it’s mounting a full-scale operation to arrest and charge people who broke into the Capitol on January 6.

There will be a wide-ranging menu of charges, starting with criminal trespass, and moving all the way to weapons possession, theft of National Security data, assault, and sedition.

The DOJ list of charges is meant to impress the American people.

Of course, an impressive DOJ list could have been leveled against thousands of people who participated in Antifa/BLM-led burning, looting, theft, and assault across the US over the past six months.

But that didn’t happen.

Those violent riots were a form of “insurrection,” but the label was never applied.

And Big Tech never considered banning social media users who planned and supported the riots.

From here on out, people will need to announce quite specifically what they’re protesting against. I’m talking, of course, about protests against the brutal COVID lockdowns.

Because you can be sure the government/media complex will paint such people with the “Capitol-break-in” brush. That’s part of this operation to squash dissent.

On a related note, social media are censoring users, and news media are censoring their own talent, if the issue of the stolen election continues to be raised. However, there is no expiration date on accusations of vote fraud.

Remember, after Trump won the 2016 election, Democrats spent the next three years claiming he didn’t win, but instead was part of a Russian conspiracy that handed him the presidency. Who was censored for saying THAT?

Back to the protests: As I’ve mentioned in prior articles, equating distinct events, and thus turning them into “the same event,” is part and parcel of mind control.

A hundred bereft business owners, who have been driven into bankruptcy by the COVID lockdowns, gathering near a governor’s office to protest, will be equated with “crazy dangerous Trumpers who believe the election was stolen.”

This is no accident. It’s standard operating procedure in the world of intelligence-agency campaigns.

If the CIA wants to maintain a foreign dictator in office, because he makes favorable deals with mega-corporations to loot and plunder his country, they’ll spread vast disinformation about the rebels who want free elections:

“The rebel force threatening to unseat the president is led by the cult of child-killers who have been ravaging families in the countryside…”

Closer to home, imagine something like this: “The group called Citizens for a Free Nation, who showed up at the governors’ mansion last week to protest COVID safety measures, is largely composed of unhinged anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters, some of whom may have attended the January 6 rally at the Capitol, which resulted in an act of insurrection. Police and FBI are investigating…”

Behind it all? A determination to suppress resistance to the COVID lockdowns, aka mass imprisonments.

The Police State knows the months of lockdowns and economic destruction have driven more and more people to the wall. The US population is a dry tinder forest in a season of high heat and no rain.

Controlling the population is a major problem. So those who stand up and visibly break out of jail have to be made into despicable illustrations of Something Else.

What label is at hand? By mere coincidence: INSURRECTIONISTS, “who broke into the Capitol on January 6, the day that will live in infamy.”

That label can now be applied anywhere. It’s a major item on the game board of intelligence-agency operations. When dissenting heads pop up, paint them with it.

Nevertheless, protests are still legal and legitimate. People who run them need to articulate what they’re about, over and over, in very clear fashion.

Americans, who’ve lived with more freedom and security than people in other parts of the world, tend to think their government, when it muscles in, signifies The End and Total Defeat.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Freedom never dies.

It is an eternal quality.

January 14, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Biden Exploits His Capitol Gains

By Diana Johnstone | Consortiumnews | January 11, 2021

What happened in the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not surprising. It could have been avoided. It could have been prevented if the Democratic Establishment which held onto keys of power throughout Trump’s mandate had truly wanted a smooth presidential transition. For months prior to the election, the elite Transition Integrity Project was spreading the alarm, loudly echoed by liberal media, that Trump would lose and refuse to acknowledge his loss.

There was a simple, obvious way to avoid such a drama. In an article for Consortium News last August, I suggested how this could be done.

“It seems to me that if the Democratic establishment gave priority to a peaceful election and transition, against the possibility that Trump might reject the results, the smart and reasonable thing to do would be to reassure him on the two counts which they suggest might incite him to balk: postal vote fraud accusations and the threat of criminal charges against him. […]

As for postal balloting, it should be conceivable that Trump’s misgivings are justified. […] In an age when anyone can photocopy any document, when mails are slow and when there are many ways in which ballots might be destroyed, such misgivings are not far-fetched. […]

For the sake of domestic peace, why not try to find a compromise? Kamala Harris has introduced legislation to generalize postal balloting. Why not, instead, extend polling time, opening polls not only on the second Tuesday in November but on the preceding Saturday and Sunday? This would provide time to allow voters afraid of Covid-19 to keep distances from each other, as they do when they go to the supermarket. It would reduce the number of absentee ballots, the time needed for counting and above all the suspicions attached to postal voting. But the more wary Trump is of postal voting, the more Democrats insist on making it universal.

It becomes clearer and clearer that hatred of Trump has reached such a pitch, that for the Democratic establishment and its hangers-on, defeating Trump at the polls is not enough. They are practically inciting him to contest the election. Then they can have something more exciting and decisive: a genuine regime change.”

So indeed what we got was something more exciting. Not exactly regime change, because we are seeing instead a powerful reaffirmation of the regime that was really still there during Trump’s largely deformed four-year term. The haste with which his aides and allies desert him in his last hour makes this clear. He was always a president without a team, operating on hunches, rhetoric and advice from his son-in-law and a few insiders who were really outsiders.

But what we are getting is indeed exciting: an alleged “insurrection” supposedly incited by Trump to “steal the election” (which it had absolutely no way of doing). The scenes of disorder have been instantly exploited to plunge him and his followers into an abyss of ignominy, if not criminal proceedings and imprisonment.

More Like Otpor

What happened on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection. Anyone wanting to know what an insurrection is should look up the U.S.-sponsored armed uprising that overthrew duly elected Chilean President Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973. The Capitol disturbance was more like what happened when U.S.-trained “Otpor” militants broke into the Serbian parliament in the midst of that country’s 2000 presidential election and set fire to ballot boxes.

Or check out a particularly pertinent insurrection when truly violent demonstrators took over the Ukrainian Parliament in 2014 and overthrew the government, an event hailed by then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden as a great victory for democracy. Then there was the Hillary-endorsed coup in Honduras, the almost successful attempt to overthrow democracy in Bolivia, the U.S.-backed Guaido farce in Venezuela, etc., etc., etc.

No, an insurrection is not when a large crowd of people who feel their candidate has been cheated vent their indignation by managing to break into “their” parliament with no purpose in mind. Most of the intruders milled about taking selfies with no clear idea what to do next. By world standards, the “violence” on Jan. 6 was very mild indeed, the only gun violence being the fatal shooting of an unarmed Trump enthusiast, Ashli Babbitt, who could easily have been pushed back from her adventurous attempt to climb over a barricade.

The intrusion was so far from carrying out a pro-Trump plan that it had the opposite effect. The immediate political result of the eruption of the undisciplined crowd was to prevent Republican Senators who were so inclined from presenting their arguments against the legitimacy of the November vote. If anything, the action worked in the favor of President-elect Biden.

One might think that in his moment of victory, a true statesman would demonstrate the qualities it takes to lead a nation by offering to bring all people together as fellow Americans. He did quite the opposite.

The very next day after the Capitol happening, in his small fiscal haven home state of Delaware, Biden raged against his opponents as a terrorist mob, no less.

“They weren’t protestors,” he proclaimed. “Don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic. It’s that simple.”

Trump, said Biden, “has unleashed an all-out assault on our institutions of democracy from the outset, and yesterday was but the culmination of that unrelenting attack.” Trump had poisoned the political environment by using “language that autocrats and dictators use all over the world to hold on to power.”

Biden’s own language certainly sounded less like a magnanimous winner uniting his people than like that used by autocrats and dictators to hold onto power. Trump was trying to “deny the will of the American people,” he said, much as Trump said of him. The whole problem was that “the will of the American people” was far from unanimous.

The Authoritarian Center

So even before his inauguration, President-elect Biden has given us a bitter taste of days ahead. There is to be no sacred unity, but deepened division between The Good (woke liberals), the Bad (Russians and other enemies of Our Democracy) and the Ugly Americans, to be labeled Domestic Terrorists, White Supremacists and fascists.

The authoritarian center, ranging from opportunistic Republicans to The Squad, can rally around the necessary purge of Domestic Terrorists, silencing their communications and getting them properly fired from their jobs.

The Establishment has long been determined to crush Trump. But there is talk of “purging” all his followers as well. Biden is already speaking like a War President, calling for measures to combat the internal enemy such as accompany major wars.

The oligarchic nature of the American War Party is revealed by the haste with which privately owned social media enterprises silence dissent – even the still acting President of the United States. Indeed, who really rules the United States? Is the president only an agent of economic powers whose role is to serve their interests? And the trouble with Trump is that he had not been picked for the job.

Trump managed to appeal to millions of discontented Americans without offering any coherent practical program to replace the War Party with policies capable of transforming the nation into a haven of peace and prosperity. His confusion mirrored the ideological confusion of a population scandalously undereducated in history and political ideas. The illusion that Trump was the leader dissident Americans needed cost Ashli Babbit her life and led thousands of Trump voters into what amounts to a trap. Trump himself was led into the trap.

A completely different approach to politics is needed to restore democracy to America. All appeals to identities and ideologies can only deepen the confusion and divisions, because they prevent people from understanding each other.

The Biden administration appears intent on strengthening such confusion and divisions precisely by recourse to identities and ideologies. I firmly believe that only a scrupulously rational, open-minded, factual and pragmatic approach to clearly defined practical problems could bring peace to the United States, a peace that could favor peace in the world.

From outside the melee, it is easy to define the serious issues that should dominate political debate in the United States. But instead of that, we hear a torrential exchange of insults. The establishment elite cannot stoop to exchange viewpoints with populists denounced as deplorable, racist, misogynist, white supremacist, fascist and now even “terrorist.”

The populists’ unfocused denunciation of the elite describes Wall Street Democrats as “socialists” and veers off into accusations of genocidal vaccination campaigns, occult pedophile rites and Satanism. Instead of anything resembling a clear political division, America is increasingly split by blind, burning mutual hatred.

What American political life needs is not more censorship, but the self-censorship of reason. That is very far away.

January 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Why Does the US Department of Justice Want to Worsen the Split in the US Population?

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | January 13, 2021

The initial charges against those few who entered the Capitol during the Trump rally were “entering a restricted building without permission and engaging in disorderly conduct while inside.” This charge does not carry sufficient punishment for the kind of example the Establishment intends to make of Trump supporters.

Michael Sherwin, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sees a chance for his 15 minutes of fame. He announced in a press conference that he has built a team of national security attorneys to create sedition and conspiracy charges against Trump “rioters who stormed the Capitol.”

Note that excessive language accompanies excessive charges. Whether those who got into the Capitol were let in or broke in, there was no “storming,” and certainly no conspiracy to commit sedition. Sherwin says that he is “treating this just like a significant international counterterrorism or counterintelligence operation.”

Even the videos shown on anti-Trump news sites, such as The Hill, show the “insurrectionists” in the Capitol walking peacefully and keeping within the roped lane. How is this violent insurrection? There are videos making the rounds that show Trump supporters restraining a man who is trying to break a window in the Capitol. It is clear that the Trump supporters regard the person as an Antifa member.

In any demonstration there will be nutcases and provocateurs.  To define a peaceful demonstration by the acts of a few is dishonest. Remember, the presstitutes repeatedly called the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots that looted and burned business areas of Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and other cities “peaceful protests.” When the presstitutes had to acknowledge that there was violence, they blamed it on Trump supporters or white supremacists who had allegedly infiltrated the peaceful protests.

Infiltration does seem to have happened to Trump supporters at the Capitol. According to a report by a person present at the Capitol to film the event that was sent to Professor Mark Crispin Miller at New York University, agitators suddenly appeared with bull horns and provoked Trump supporters to rush up the steps at the back of the Capitol. The relatively few who entered the Capitol apparently entered from the front.  Some reports say they were allowed in. Here is the account of the cameraman that I reported on January 7:

“I was in Washington, D.C. today filming the Trump rally and related events. I also ran across your post concerning the Capitol demonstration tonight. Perhaps this short account will help you assess what others are saying in a small way.

“I was also at the Capitol before the crowd appeared setting-up my camera on a stone wall around the perimeter of the back of the capitol (the rear facing Constitution Avenue). Then I waited for President Trump’s speech to end and for supporters to walk-up Constitution Avenue to the Capitol. I was located at the precise location where supporters first rushed up the slope towards the back of the Capitol after casting aside a section of the first Capitol perimeter barrier. Supporters gathered roughly at the center of the back of the capitol, but a circle began to grow around the perimeter as the crowd grew larger. I had no sense that the growing crowd intended to rush the Capitol.

“After a large crowd emerged at the perimeter a man in perhaps his late 30’s or early 40’s showed-up, pacing quickly to his left then to his right before the crowd, and essentially began hurling insults at the crowd challenging their political wisdom. He excoriated the crowd for thinking that their attendance would be taken seriously by members of congress. (Hard to say that he was wrong about that, whoever he was). I cannot recall his precise words, but for a very short period he engaged in a shouting exchange with supporters, and suddenly supporters pushed aside the first barrier and rushed towards the back of the Capitol. Others on the northern edge of the perimeter followed suit. But the first rush was right at the center of the back of the Capitol. I followed the rush to the bottom of the Capitol back steps, and began filming again from atop an inner perimeter stone wall.

“The police, so it appeared, were a little surprised by the rush, and this gave supporters an opportunity to race up the steps. One or two men even made it as far as the steps leading up to the scaffolds on the south side of the Capitol before police arrested them. By this time, five or ten men had climbed to the top of the tall steel tower structure facing the Capitol. Then the police erected and lined-up behind a new barrier perimeter at the foot of the Capitol steps. Police at the top of the Capitol steps aimed rifles down on the crowd (perhaps rubber bullet rifles, I could not tell). The crowd began arguing with police and pressing hard against the new barrier. The police sprayed men pressing directly against the barrier with tear gas from time to time causing them to retreat. “Meanwhile, the men at the top of the tower began rallying the crowd to challenge the new barrier (over bull horns) by filling any gaps between the barrier and the stone wall that I was using as a filming vantage point.  Another man worked the crowd with a bull horn immediately in front of me and also encouraged supporters to climb over the inner perimeter stone wall (my filming vantage point) and create a wall of pressure on the new barrier at the bottom of the Capitol back steps.

“After about 30 minutes to an hour I dropped to the bottom of the stone wall to reload my camera when suddenly the barrier gave way and police attempted to fortify it by blasting tear gas into the area between the stone wall and the barrier. I was hit by the gas myself and struggled back over the stone wall in order to breathe. The gas threw many crowd members into a panic. And I was nearly trampled as I struggled to lift my camera and heavy gear bag over the wall after two women began pulling desperately on the back of my coat to pull themselves up and over the moderately high wall in retreat.

“After the second perimeter barrier gave way, the men with the bull horns began working the crowd very hard to fill-up with Trump supporters the steps of the Capitol and the scaffolding on both sides of it. At this point one of the calls, which the men with bull horns repeated from time to time in order to encourage people to climb the Capitol steps was “this is not a rally; it’s the real thing.” Another frequent call was “its now or never.” After about a two hour effort peppered with bull horn calls of this nature the entire back of the Capitol was filled with Trump supporters and the entire face of the Capitol was covered with brilliant small and very large Trump banners, American flags, and various other types of flags and banners.

“Sometime after the rush on the back of the Capitol, people were apparently able to enter the Capitol itself through the front. But I was not witness to anything at the front or inside the Capitol.

“One clearly bona fide Trump supporter who had apparently entered the Capitol himself was telling others emotionally and angrily (including press representatives of some sort, even a foreign newsman) that he witnessed someone inside the Capitol encouraging violence whom he strongly suspected was not a legitimate Trump supporter (apparently on the basis that the man showed no signs at all of Trump support on his apparel). I did not pay that close attention to his claims (for example the precise claim of the violence encouraged) because, naturally, I had not yet read your post and it had not occurred to me that professional outsiders might play a role in instigating particular violent acts in order to discredit the event.

“I overheard one Trump supporter (who followed the rush on the Capitol himself) say aloud, “I brought many others to this rally, but we did not sign on for this” as he watched matters escalate.

“Still, from my seat, I would say that large numbers of very legitimate Trump supporters felt that it was their patriotic duty to occupy the Capitol in light of their unshakable beliefs that (1) the 2020 election was a fraud, (2) that the vast majority of the members of congress are corrupt and compromised, and (3) that the country is in the throes of what they consider a “communist” takeover (although many use the expression “communism” as a synonym for “totalitarianism”). They are also convinced that the virus narrative is a fraud and an essential part of an effort to undermine the Constitution –in particular the Bill of Rights. They have a very real fear that the country and the very conception of any culture of liberty is on the verge of an irreparable collapse. For most (if not a very large majority) rushing the Capitol was a desperate eleventh hour act of partiotism –even of the order of the revolution that created our nation. Some Trump supporters sang the Star Spangled Banner and other patriotic songs as others climbed the Capitol steps. They also demonstrated a measure of respect for the Capitol itself.  I saw no attempt by anyone to deface the Capitol simply for the sake of defacing it.

“The incontrovertibly compromised press has called this event a riot. But from what I saw and heard this would indeed be a gross and intentionally misleading oversimplification at best. At least from the standpoint of supporters, if their Capitol event was a riot, then so was the Boston Tea Party. It also seems to me that some professional help (very aware of deep sentiments) might have come from somewhere to make sure that the party happened.”

It was a riot and violent and an insurrection, because that is what the Establishment wants it to be. Overstating what happened turns it into a weapon that can be used against Trump and his supporters as Acting US Attorney Michael Sherwin intends to do.

If Sherwin were to conduct a real investigation, he would probably find that the organized plan he is looking for was an Antifa plan or a plan of some Establishment group to use provocateurs to stampede rally attendees into some action that would discredit Trump and the rally. Of course, this is nothing that Sherwin wants to find.

The violent looters who rampaged through American cities have not been held accountable. Yet the US Justice Department is intent on framing people protesting what they believe was a stolen election as “insurrectionists” with a conspiracy of sedition. If Sherwin and the Establishment he serves had any judgment, they would not throw gasoline on a fire unless they want a bigger fire. It seems that a bigger fire is what they do want.

A bigger fire would help the new domestic terrorism bill that criminalizes dissent. Under this bill, those who challenge Establishment explanations could find themselves charged with terrorism. Law is what prosecutors establish it to be. What is terrorism becomes a subjective judgment and is whatever a prosecutor says it is.

There was no insurrection on January 6, which is puzzling in a way. If tens of millions of Americans believe that their democracy is threatened by a stolen election and nothing was being done about it, who would be surprised if there was an insurrection? It seems to me that everyone but the Establishment and its minons would support such an insurrection.

To charge Trump supporters for something that did not happen, while not charging Antifa for what did happen, is the best way to split the population. Why does Michael Sherwin want to splint the American population?

January 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Conservative Commentator Says AIG Canceled His Insurance Over His Social Media Posts

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 13, 2021

Conservative commentator and former baseball star Curt Schilling says that AIG canceled his insurance policy over his “social media profile,” a new level of deplatforming not yet seen.

“We will be just fine, but wanted to let Americans know that @AIGinsurance canceled our insurance due to my “Social Media profile,” tweeted Schilling.

“The agent told us it was a decision made by and with their PR department in conjunction with management,” he added.

While innumerable Trump supporters have lost their Twitter and Facebook accounts due to social media censorship and cancel culture, cases of individuals being cut off by banks and other financial services are now growing too.

The purge has gone beyond the realm of simply silencing people on major platforms for their opinions, but punishing them for expressing them by trying to make their lives unlivable.

Numerous respondents pointed out the obvious – that without insurance it’s impossible to mortgage a home or register a vehicle.

However, other leftists applauded the move and said that Schilling deserved it for his support of Trump.

“You’ve definitely earned it,” remarked one.

“I mean… capitalism right? They calculated the risk and decided your premiums weren’t worth the long term exposure?” added another.

What happened to Schilling is yet another chilling example of how Chinese Communist social credit score system is being implemented in America.

In August 2019, the Communist state bragged about how it had prevented 2.5 million “discredited entities” from purchasing plane tickets and 90,000 people from buying high speed train tickets in the month of July alone.

January 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Who was Jeff Bezos BEFORE Amazon?

Comment by Brian Shilhavy | Health Impact News | January 10, 2021

Jeff Bezos is the founder and owner of Amazon.com, and in 2019 surpassed Bill Gates as the richest man in the world.

He just single-handedly destroyed Parler.com, the biggest competitor to Big Tech.

Since being censored on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other Big Tech networks, Health Impact News has enjoyed the most success on Parler.com where we have not been censored for criticizing Big Pharma. Even when we have criticized President Trump on the mainly Right Wing platform, we have enjoyed free speech to publish our articles.

All of that ends tonight, as Jeff Bezos and his company Amazon Web Services (AWS) has decided to kick Parler off of their Cloud-based server system.

ReallyGraceful did a documentary in 2020 about Jeff Bezos’ rise into the Big Tech Oligarchy that is now trying to take over America.

January 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

PBS lawyer fired after championing ‘REEDUCATION CAMPS’ for children of Trump supporters in latest Project Veritas sting

RT | January 12, 2021

Hidden camera footage of PBS exec Michael Beller, in which he appears to wax poetic about ‘deprogramming’ Trump supporters’ kids and celebrates their parents’ death from Covid-19, has apparently gotten him fired.

Speaking to an undercover reporter for conservative muckraking outfit Project Veritas, Beller appeared to boast that “even if [president-elect Joe] Biden wins, we go for all the Republican voters, and Homeland Security will take their children away.”

“We’ll put them into re-education camps,” he continued, suggesting this was necessary because “kids who are growing up knowing nothing but Trump” would take after their Trump-supporting parents and presumably become pint-sized bigots.

They’ll be raising a generation of intolerant, horrible people -–horrible kids.

Full article

January 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

CONFIRMED: Britain Will Issue VACCINE PASSPORTS

By Steve Watson | Summit News | January 12, 2021

Despite previous government denials that there are any plans to roll out COVID vaccine passports, reports have confirmed that every person vaccinated in two select areas of Britain will be offered exactly that as a ‘trial’ being rolled out with immediate effect.

The London Telegraph reports that biometrics firm iProov and cybersecurity firm Mvine have developed the vaccine passports, which will be optionally provided as an app on phones of those vaccinated.

The government will conduct the rollout in two local authorities, and monitor its application until March.

The report notes that the government has ploughed £75,000 into the trial already, which is claimed to be a way of monitoring who has had the vaccine.

Frank Joshi, director and founder of Mvine noted that while the project started as just a way of keeping a record of COVID tests, extra funding was pumped into it in order to turn it into a vaccine passport scheme.

“Originally we started off with this need to prove whether you’ve had an antibody test, but it can be equally used to demonstrate whether you’ve been vaccinated,” Joshi said, according to the report.

Andrew Bud, chief executive of the other company involved, iProov, said that the system will be integrated with the National Health Service, and could easily be rolled out to everyone in the country.

“We’re talking about a piece of remarkable technology that can be brought to bear and can be readily integrated with the NHS,” he said.

The development appears to be separate from the government contracts given to two other firms to develop COIVD ‘freedom passports’, which we reported on several weeks ago.

Last month, Britain’s vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi announced that the government had no plans to introduce immunity passports en mass, or place restrictions on those who do not take the jab.

This latest revelation puts Zahawi’s already dubious claim into serious doubt.

We also previously reported, back in November, on the UK government’s active plans to develop a QR code system to use as an ‘immunity passport’.

The report, stemming from sources close to the government, noted that “Those who refuse to get the Covid-19 jab would likely be refused entry to venues, as part of the same proposals.”

Other reports have suggested that an app already used prominently in the UK by people to book doctor and hospital appointments could implement a vaccination status section that will show whether a person has taken the coronavirus jab or not, and that businesses may use it to refuse entry to those who have not.

The spectre of so called ‘immunity passports’ is looming globally.

Yesterday it was revealed that Denmark is the latest country to announce that it is rolling out a ‘Covid passport’, to allow those who have taken the vaccine to engage in society without any restrictions.

Recently, the government in Ontario, Canada admitted that it is exploring ‘immunity passports’ in conjunction with restrictions on travel and access to social venues for the unvaccinated.

Last month, Israel announced that citizens who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be given ‘green passports’ that will enable them to attend venues and eat at restaurants.

A litany of other government and travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming in order for ‘life to get back to normal’.

Sam Grant, campaign manager at the civili liberties advocacy group Liberty has warned that “any form of immunity passport risks creating a two-tier system in which some of us have access to freedoms and support while others are shut out.”

“These systems could result in people who don’t have immunity potentially being blocked from essential public services, work or housing – with the most marginalised among us hardest hit,” Grant further warned.

“This has wider implications too because any form of immunity passport could pave the way for a full ID system – an idea which has repeatedly been rejected as incompatible with building a rights-respecting society,” Grant further urged.

January 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

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