LAPD officers have been told to collect the social media information of all civilians they stop, whether or not they have been arrested or even accused of a crime. Critics have noted the social media information collected could be used for illegal surveillance.
A report on The Guardian revealed that the “field interview cards” LAPD officers use when interviewing civilians include a line for the collection of information on social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
A leaked internal memo revealed that Police Chief Michael Moore told officers that collecting the social media information was important for “investigations, arrests, and prosecutions.”
The police boss also warned that the cards would be reviewed to ensure that the social media information was collected. The collection of social media information started in 2015.
The Brennan Center for Justice, the civil rights non-profit that obtained the documents, warned that the collection of social media information by law enforcement agencies could be used for unjustified mass surveillance of civilians in the future.
“There are real dangers about police having all of this social media identifying information at their fingertips,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, a deputy director at the Brennan Center.
The organization reviewed another 40 police departments in the country but did not find evidence of the gathering of social media information.
The LAPD’s field interview cards have been the center of controversy in the past. Three officers were criminally charged for falsely accusing civilians of being gang members by checking a “gang member” box on the interview cards.
“The fact that a department under scrutiny for racial profiling was also engaged in broad scale social media account collection is troubling,” said Levinson-Waldman, speaking to The Guardian.
Hamid Khan, of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, noted that the data collected by the LAPD is shared with federal agencies, which have previously been accused of using “predictive policing” based on data provided by police.
Khan described the social media information collection as “stop and frisk,” warning that the department was doing it “with the clear goal of surveillance.”
Unfortunately there’s a problem with this narrative: it is itself misinformation. Bizarrely and ironically, universities are propagating an untrue conspiracy theory while simultaneously claiming to be defending the world from the very same.
The visualization above comes from “The Rise and Fall of Social Bot Research” (also available in talk form). It was quietly uploaded to a preprint server in March by Gallwitz & Kreil, two German investigators, and has received little attention since. Yet their work completely destroys the academic field of bot research to such an extreme extent that it’s possible there are no true scientific papers on the topic at all.
The authors identify a simple problem that crops up in every study they looked at. Unable to directly detect bots because they don’t work for Twitter, academics come up with proxy signals that are asserted to imply automation but which actually don’t. For example, Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Project – responsible for the first paper in the diagram above – defined a bot as any account that tweets more than 50 times per day. That’s a lot of tweeting but easily achieved by heavy users, like the famous journalist Glenn Greenwald, the slightly less famous member of German Parliament Johannes Kahrs – who has in the past managed to rack up an astounding 300 tweets per day – or indeed Donald Trump, who exceeded this threshold on six different days during 2020. Bot papers typically don’t provide examples of the bot accounts they claimed to identify, but in this case four were presented. Of those, three were trivially identifiable as (legitimate) bots because they actually said they were bots in their account metadata, and one was an apparently human account claimed to be a bot with no evidence. On this basis the authors generated 27 news stories and 323 citations, although the paper was never peer reviewed.
In 2017 I investigated the Berkley/Swansea paper and found that it was doing something very similar, but using an even laxer definition. Any account that regularly tweeted more than five times after midnight from a smartphone was classed as a bot. Obviously, this is not a valid way to detect automation. Despite being built on nonsensical premises, invalid modelling, mis-characterisations of its own data and once again not being peer reviewed, the authors were able to successfully influence the British Parliament. Damian Collins, the Tory MP who chaired the DCMS Select Committee at the time, said: “This is the most significant evidence yet of interference by Russian-backed social media accounts aroundthe Brexit referendum. The content published and promoted by these accounts is clearly designed to increase tensions throughout the country and undermine our democratic process. I fear that this may well be just the tip of the iceberg.”
But since 2019 the vast majority of papers about social bots rely on a machine learning model called ‘Botometer’. The Botometer is available online and claims to measure the probability of any Twitter account being a bot. Created by a pair of academics in the USA, it has been cited nearly 700 times and generates a continual stream of news stories. The model is frequently described as a “state of the art bot detection method” with “95% accuracy”.
That claim is false. The Botometer’s false positive rate is so high it is practically a random number generator. A simple demonstration of the problem was the distribution of scores given to verified members of U.S. Congress:
In experiments run by Gallwitz & Kreil, nearly half of Congress were classified as more likely to be bots than human, along with 12% of Nobel Prize laureates, 17% of Reuters journalists, 21.9% of the staff members of UN Women and – inevitably – U.S. President Joe Biden.
But detecting the false positive problem did not require compiling lists of verified humans. One study that claimed to identify around 190,000 bots included the following accounts in its set:
Taken from a dataset shared by Dunn et al.
The developers of the Botometer know it doesn’t work. After the embarrassing U.S. Congress data was published, an appropriate response would have been retraction of their paper. But that would have implied that all the papers that relied upon it should also be retracted. Instead they hard-coded the model to know that Congress are human and then went on the attack, describing their critics as “academic trolls”:
Root cause analysis
This story is a specific instance of a general problem that crops up frequently in bad science. Academics decide a question is important and needs to be investigated, but they don’t have sufficiently good data to draw accurate conclusions. Because there are no incentives to recognize that and abandon the line of inquiry, they proceed regardless and make claims that end up being drastically wrong. Anyone from outside the field who points out what’s happening is simply ignored, or attacked as “not an expert” and thus inherently illegitimate.
Although no actual expertise is required to spot the problems in this case, I can nonetheless criticize their work with confidence because I actually am an expert in fighting bots. As a senior software engineer at Google I initiated and designed one of their most successful bot detection platforms. Today it checks over a million actions per second for malicious automation across the Google network. A version of it was eventually made available to all websites for free as part of the ReCAPTCHA system, providing an alternative to the distorted word puzzles you may remember from the earlier days of the internet. Those often frustrating puzzles were slowly replaced in recent years by simply clicking a box that says “I’m not a bot”. The latest versions go even further and can detect bots whilst remaining entirely invisible.
Exactly how this platform works is a Google trade secret, but when spammers discuss ideas for beating it they are well aware that it doesn’t use the sort of techniques academics do. Despite the frequent claim that Botometer is “state of the art”, in reality it is primitive. Genuinely state-of-the-art bot detectors use a correct definition of bot based on how actions are being performed. Spammers are forced to execute polymorphic encrypted programs that detect signs of automation at the protocol and API level. It’s a battle between programmers, and how it works wouldn’t be easily explainable to social scientists.
Spam fighters at Twitter have an equally low opinion of this research. They noted in 2020 that tools like Botometer use “an extremely limited approach” and “do not account for common Twitter use cases”. “Binary judgments of who’s a “bot or not” have real potential to poison our public discourse – particularly when they are pushed out through the media …. the narrative on what’s actually going on is increasingly behind the curve.”
Many fields cannot benefit from academic research because academics cannot obain sufficiently good data with which to draw conclusions. Unfortunately, they sometimes have difficulty accepting that. When I ended my 2017 investigation of the Berkeley/Swansea paper by observing that social scientists can’t usefully contribute to fighting bots, an academic posted a comment calling it “a Trumpian statement” and argued that tech firms should release everyone’s private account data to academics, due to their capacity for “more altruistic” insights. Yet their self-proclaimed insights are usually far from altruistic. The ugly truth is that social bot research is primarily a work of ideological propaganda. Many bot papers use the supposed prevalence of non-existent bots to argue for censorship and control of the internet. Too many people disagree with common academic beliefs. If only social media were edited by the most altruistic and insightful members of society, they reason, nobody would ever disagree with them again.
THE Coronavirus Act 2020 received Royal Assent on March 25 last year after passing through the House of Commons without a vote, such was the panic engendered by media images of overwhelmed medical services in Italy and Imperial College’s massively exaggerated Covid death predictions. The Act granted the government emergency powers to handle the Covid-19 pandemic. These allow the government to limit or suspend public gatherings, to detain individuals suspected to be infected by Covid-19, and to intervene or relax regulations in a range of sectors to limit transmission of the disease, ease the burden on public health services, and assist healthcare workers and the economically affected. Areas covered by the act include the National Health Service, social care, schools, police, Border Force, local councils, funerals and courts.
The Act was originally designed to expire at the end of March 2022 without interruption, but thanks to former Brexit Secretary David Davis it became subject to a six-monthly renewal vote in Parliament. Davis’s amendment tabled on March 21 last year to restrict the Act to a ‘brick-wall stop’ of one year failed, but this and the threat of a backbench rebellion led to the government’s own amendment to the Bill requiring parliamentary renewal of its powers every six months. The first of these came at the end of September 2020, the second in March 2021. Each time, shamefully, its extension has been voted through by a large majority of MPs. Only 24 MPs voted against the first time, and a very disappointing 76 the second time.
The one party to date to make a formal stand against its extension are the Liberal Democrats. Their leader, Ed Davey, has accused the Government of making ‘false claims’ over the need for an ongoing Coronavirus Act to enforce emergency lockdown restrictions. Notable critics to take a stand against it in the Conservative Party include Sir Charles Walker, Sir Graham Brady and Sir Desmond Swayne.
The argument that the Coronavirus Act is not important because most of the restrictions that have been irrationally imposed on society have been under section of the 1984 Public Health Act is mistaken. Nothing has been more symbolic of the slide into tyranny than this rubber-stamped Act. Numerous prosecutions have been attempted and indeed made under its provisions. If MPs fail to repeal it for the third time they will be allowing the government – and indeed the media which they appear to lead by the nose – to continue with the charade that there is a Covid crisis national emergency. There is not.
Powers in the Act remain dangerous. Schedule 22 gives the government extraordinary powers to prohibit gatherings, meaning that protests, vigils and political assemblies could be banned. It has never been activated in England and so is plainly unnecessary, but neither is it proportionate in a democracy. All the time it sits on the statute books it poses a threat to the right to free expression, freedom of assembly and democracy.
The fact is that none of the measures were ever necessary. They were granted in the middle of a panic to prevent a worst-case scenario that never came to pass. Since then the government has used these powers irresponsibly, if not abused them. The Coronavirus Act has made the problem worse, not better. There was and is no justification for extending these powers. All the data accumulated in the last eighteen months says this Act is not needed, as has been documented endlessly on these pages, on Lockdown Sceptics (now the Daily Sceptic), by HART and by numerous other independent scientists and doctors. As James Delingpole put it brutally and accurately at the beginning of the year, most of the government Covid statistical analysis is bollocks and designed to engender false fear.
Now, in less than three weeks, the vote for renewing this unjustifiable Act is coming up for a third time.
In March we advised readers to write to their MPs and set out a specimen letter. We fear repeating this letter is a waste of time. We suggest instead that readers concentrate their MPs’ minds by telling them that if he or she fails to vote against this next Coronavirus Act extension you will be giving your vote to the LibDems next time round, as the only party taking a decisive stand on the Act’s immediate repeal, or any other emergent party taking an equally decisive stand.
We’d also encourage you to sign this Repeal the Coronavirus Act petition here and forward it to like-minded friends.
Finally we invite readers to suggest or design their own TCWDefending Freedom car and window stickers to promote our ‘Repeal the Coronavirus Act’ campaign. And we invite your suggestions, below the line and via email to info@conservativewoman.co.uk on how to further our campaign and which other groups we could or should join forces with.
It’s time to end the charade. It’s time to end this legislative symbol of fear and to take away these tyrannical powers from an immoral government that looks quite capable of using them. Please make your voice heard.
In some of these blogs I have been trying to gently highlight what should be a very obvious fact: that “the science” we are being constantly told to follow is not quite as scientific as is being claimed.
That is inevitable in the context of a new virus about which much is still not known. And it is all the more so given that our main response to the pandemic – vaccination – while being a relatively effective tool against the worst disease outcomes is nonetheless an exceedingly blunt one. Vaccines are the epitome of the one-size-fits-all approach of modern medicine.
Into the void between our scientific knowledge and our fear of mortality has rushed politics. It is a refusal to admit that “the science” is necessarily compromised by political and commercial considerations that has led to an increasingly polarised – and unreasonable – confrontation between what have become two sides of the Covid divide. Doubt and curiosity have been squeezed out by the bogus certainties of each faction.
All of this has been underscored by the latest decision of the Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisation, the British government’s official advisory body on vaccinations. Unexpectedly, it has defied political pressure and demurred, for the time being at least, on extending the vaccination programme to children aged between 12 and 15.
The British government appears to be furious. Ministers who have been constantly demanding that we “follow the science” are reportedly ready to ignore the advice – or more likely, bully the JCVI into hastily changing its mind over the coming days.
And liberal media outlets like the Guardian, which have been so careful until now to avoid giving a platform to “dissident” scientists, are suddenly subjecting the great and the good of the vaccination establishment to harsh criticism from doctors who want children vaccinated as quickly as possible.
Watching this confected “row” unfold, one thing is clear: “the science” is getting another political pummelling.
Peek behind the curtain
There are a few revealing snippets buried in the media reports of the JCVI’s reasons for delaying child vaccinations – information that challenges other parts of the vaccination narrative that have been unassailable till now.
One concerns long Covid, fear of which has probably been the main factor driving parents to push for their children to be vaccinated – given that Covid poses little immediate threat of serious illness to the vast majority of children. Of long Covid in children, the JCVI argues, according to the Guardian, that “the impact of the symptoms may be no worse than those seen in children who have not actually had Covid”.
What to make of that? We know that over the past few decades a small but growing proportion of children have been suffering from long-term chronic fatigue syndromes – often following a viral infection. This may relate to more general immunity problems in children that, like other chronic disease, doctors have been largely baffled by – and may even be contributing to.
Is long Covid another fatigue syndrome, and one that many of these children would have suffered from if they had been infected with a different virus, like flu? Don’t hold your breath waiting for a debate on that question, let alone an answer, any time soon.
Then there is this. The Guardian reports that the JCVI was concerned about “the unknown longer-term consequences of a rare side-effect [myocarditis – heart inflammation] seen with mRNA vaccines such as the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna shots. … What makes the JCVI uneasy is that there is little long-term follow-up on vaccinated children.”
“Unknown longer-term consequences”? A lack of “follow-up” on vaccinated children? These sound more like the criticisms of the tin-foil hat-wearers than the cautious advice of vaccination experts.
Or is it just that we have been given a fleeting peek behind the curtain of official medical debate to see an uncertainty that has been actively concealed from us. “The science” is not quite as solid as the scientists or politicians would have us believe, it seems.
Piling on the pressure
What sensible view should we, the public, take when that “scientific” consensus suddenly solidifies – possibly as soon as next week – behind exactly what the politicians are demanding.
The government and parts of the media are clearly going to keep piling the pressure on the JCVI. The committee’s efforts to avoid being drawn into a highly charged and politicised debate about vaccinating children is written all over the caveats and get-out clauses in its decision on Friday.
The government’s stated aim in wanting to vaccinate children is to avoid “disruption” to children’s education, as though this is about the well-being of pupils. But we need to be honest: the disruptions were imposed on schools by politicians and educators not for the sake of children but for the sake of adults, frightened by our own vulnerability to Covid.
The JCVI has embarrassed the government by reminding us of this fact in relation to child vaccinations. Not only have we deprived children of a proper education over a year or more and opportunities to develop physically, mentally and emotionally through their school life, clubs, trips and sport, but now, suggests the JCVI, we want to inject them with a new drug whose long-term consequences are not fully understood or, it seems, being properly investigated.
All of this will be unmentionable again as soon as the JCVI can be arm-twisted into agreeing to the government’s demands. We will be told once again to blindly “follow the science”, to obey these political dictates as we were once required to obey the spiritual dictates of our clerics.
Censoring testimony
“Follow the science” is a mantra designed to shut down all critical thinking about how we respond to the pandemic – and to justify censorship of even well-qualified dissenting scientists by corporate media and their social media equivalents.
For example, YouTube has excised the testimony of medical experts to the US Congress who have been trying to bring attention to the potential benefits of ivermectin, a safe, long-out-of-patent medicine. Instead the corporate media is derisively describing it as a “horse drug” to forestall any discussion of its use as a cheap therapeutic alternative to endless, expensive vaccine booster shots.
(And by the way, before the “follow the science” crowd work themselves into a lather, I have no particular view on the usefulness of ivermectin, I simply want experts to be allowed to discuss it in public. Watch, for example, this farcical segment below from the Hill in which the presenters are forced, while discussing the media furore about podcast star Joe Rogan’s use of ivermectin to treat his Covid, to avoid actually naming the drug at the centre of the furore for fear of YouTube censorship.)
To want more open debate, not less, about where we head next, especially as western states have vaccinated significant majorities of their populations, is often being treated as the equivalent of “Covid denial”.
Where this new authoritarian climate leads is apparent in the shaming of anyone who tries to highlight that our responses to Covid are following a familiar big-business-friendly pattern: focus all attention on expensive, short-term, resource-hungry quick fixes (in this case, vaccines) and ignore important, long-term, sustainable solutions such as improving the population’s health and immunity to this pandemic and the ones likely to follow.
My latest: Most politicians and doctors have ignored the amassing evidence of Vitamin D's dramatic effects on Covid hospital patients. Might it be because the vitamin is made in the mystical touch of sun on skin rather than by white-coated lab technicians? https://t.co/gsh4xEOzd5
An obesity epidemic – obesity is a key factor in susceptibility to severe Covid, though you would hardly know it from the media coverage – is still not being tackled, even though the obesity epidemic, unlike Covid, has been growing as a public health threat for many decades. Why? Because the corporate food industry, and more especially the fast-food and sugar industries, and the corporate health industries are financially invested in it never being tackled.
There is no serious media debate about the role of health in tackling Covid because the corporate media are invested in exactly the same consumption model as the food and health corporations – not least, they heavily depend on corporate advertising.
Which is why the media hurried to amplify attacks on Jonathan Neman, head of the salad fast-food restaurant chain Sweetgreen, for supposedly “downplaying the importance of vaccines”, as soon as he pointed out the statistical fact that 78 per cent of people admitted to hospital for Covid are obese and overweight. He asked quite reasonably:
What if we made the food that is making us sick illegal? What if we taxed processed food and refined sugar to pay for the impact of the pandemic? What if we incentivized health?
Politicians, of course, have no interest in taking action against the corporate food industry both because they depend on campaign donations from those same corporations and because they want good press from the corporate media.
Studies on immunity
Another topic that has been made all but taboo is the issue of natural immunity. A series of recent studies suggest that those who have caught and recovered from Covid have a better response to the delta variant than those who have been vaccinated only.
Those who have recovered appear to be many times less likely to get reinfected, suggesting natural immunity confers stronger and longer-lasting protection against Covid than vaccines, including preventing hospitalisation and transmission to others.
That may have significant implications for our reliance on vaccines. For instance, vaccines may be playing a part in creating new, more aggressive variants, given that the vaccinated have been wrongly encouraged to see themselves as at less risk of catching Covid but are in fact more likely than those who have recovered to transmit the disease.
If that is the case, the current orthodoxy preferring vaccines has turned reality on its head.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, these studies have received almost no coverage. They conflict with every single message the politicians, media and “follow the science” crowd have been promulgating for months.
How much that narrative has been engineered can be seen in the role the World Health Organisation played early on, as the vaccines were being rolled out, in secretly trying to rewrite medical history. Uniquely in the case of Covid, they pretended that herd immunity could only be achieved through vaccination, as though natural immunity did not count.
I've had run-ins with Off-Guardian of late, but they're right to highlight the WHO mucking about with the established definition of 'herd immunity'. This kind of thing does nothing but undermine trust in science and scientists https://t.co/SgEMqnptZu
Highlighting this new study does not mean that letting Covid rip through the population is the best strategy, or that vaccinations do not help prevent illness and the spread of Covid.
But it does undermine the simple-minded, and novel, insistence that vaccination is the only safe way to protect against a virus, or even the best.
It does undermine the case increasingly being promoted by politicians and the media that the unvaccinated should be treated as a threat to society and accorded second-class status (watch the video below).
It does undermine the demand for vaccine passports as a prerequisite for “normal life” being restored.
And it hints at an additional reason the JCVI may have been reluctant to rush into testing a new generation of vaccines on children for a disease that is rarely serious for them and to which they will have stronger immunity if they catch it rather than being vaccinated against it.
Glaring vacuum
What these studies and others suggest is that we need a more open, honest debate about the best way forward, a more inclusive debate rather than what we have at the moment: accusations, arrogance and contempt – from both sides.
The left should not be siding with media corporations to shut down debate, even Covid denial; they should be pushing for more persuasive arguments. And the left should not be cheering on the bullying or stigmatising of people who are hesitant about taking the vaccines, either for themselves or their children.
Enforce a glaring vacuum in the public discourse, as has happened with Covid, and two things are guaranteed: that politicians and corporations will exploit that vacuum to increase their power and profits; and a significant section of the public will attribute the worst, most cynical motives to those enforcing the vacuum.
The very act of gagging anyone – but most especially experts – from conducting certain kind of conversations is bound to increase political alienation, cynicism and social polarisation. It creates no kind of consensus or solidarity. It creates only division and bitterness. Which, putting my cynic’s hat on for a moment, may be the very reason why it seems to be our leaders’ preferred course of action.
I find it extremely unbelievable that nobody will investigate this entire scam for what it is. The people behind the vaccines should be dragged in to testify what is going on. Moderna has admitted it took them only 2 days to create the vaccine. In Texas, they are trying to launch a criminal investigation. The FDA is no longer trustworthy, for the normal time to get anything approved is 12 years. What has been released in less than one year with no animal studies? There has been NO TESTING to determine side effects on pregnancy, fertility, or lactation.
It is just stunning that we have politicians REFUSING to look at anything, probably because they are too busy counting their bribes. The White House said under NO condition would they ever fire Fauci, meaning under NO condition will they investigate anyone.
Meanwhile, even the notorious corrupt Snopes had to admit this is TRUE. Despite demanding everyone gets vaccinated, the White House said its own staff DOES NOT need to be vaccinated provided they are routinely checked. So why is the White House the entire exception? Even the military is demanding 100% compliance. Meanwhile, the White House has demanded everyone else receive vaccinations or lose their job.
The fact that they have skipped animal trials is very disturbing. When the government is part of the conspiracy against the public, we will NEVER know the truth about anything. Jack Dorsey has been especially protective of the narrative. Nobody is allowed to question the government no matter what.
Then there are studies revealing that natural immunity to COVID is 13 times better than the vaccines. They try to bury such studies, and they also try to ensure that they are not peer-reviewed in order to discredit them. The Science journalist Alex Berenson was permanently suspended from Twitter one day after his tweets that reported an Israeli study that making this finding that natural immunity from a prior Covid-19 infection is 13 times more effective than vaccines against the delta variant. Twitter is now acting against the very basis of free speech, which is threatening people’s lives. I would love to see Twitter taken down, for they are clearly now responsible for the deaths of many people from vaccine injuries.
To show that this is one giant cover-up, OSHA has instructed employers NOT TO REPORT vaccine injuries suffered by employees if they only “recommend” the shots. Many employers with more than 10 employees are required to keep a record of serious work-related injuries and illnesses. Nobody should volunteer to be vaccinated to satisfy an employer, for you will not be covered for any injury or loss of pay, and you could be fired for not showing up to work for a period of time. However, if employers mandate vaccines to work, then the vaccine injuries should become subject to reporting, lawsuits, and workman’s comp claims.
A culture of silence and fear stops people learning what really can happen when you undergo ‘sex change’ operations. The trans lobby tries to portray it as easy and straightforward – yet it’s anything but…
There is an unspoken price being paid for the fashionable transgender theories of our day. There are unseen victims, invisible, though in plain sight. They are hidden because their supporters believe too blindly, and their detractors write them off, and their misery is facilitated by a lack of open discussion and a censorship of the facts.
These victims get overshadowed by the concerns of the general public who are caught in a culture war, by the parents who lose children to this strange and manufactured dogma, and by the disinterested innocents subjected to bewildering pronoun-usage and terrible Netflix adaptations.
These hidden victims are the young transgenders themselves, who are led to believe so strongly that they can ‘change their sex’ that they undergo sex-reassignment surgery, only to find themselves not just disappointed by the result, but horrified.
These are true victims, in the sense that many of them suffer horrific and irreversible physical damage and pain, which often leads to them committing suicide.
You may have heard of these high rates of suicide among transgender people. What many people are not aware of is that this suicide problem is not predominantly due to social rejection, bullying, or self-doubt. It is due to the complex, unnatural, and somewhat shady nature of the surgery involved in ‘sex changes,’ and its after-effects. I will focus in this article on the male-to-female cases, as the list of complications in these operations is long and harrowing.
It should go without saying at this point that a person cannot really change their sex; it comprises your genetic make-up at the molecular level (XX/XY genes). A man who seeks to become a woman will never have a baby. The surgeon’s knife is not a ‘magical’ transformation, it is a complicated cosmetic operation, changing one’s outward appearance. It is a complex, fraught rearranging of flesh.
Many young people today believe (and are being taught) that they can elect their sex like they choose an item of clothing, and go through with ‘surgery’ that will wholly transform them. Often the result leads to disappointment, and there are many stories of regret, and of (too late) reticence just before committing to the operation. These stories are unfashionable to the ears of gender-theory enthusiasts, who wish to forever believe that sex is a fluid and insubstantial thing, and can be easily changed.
With male-to-female surgeries, post operative complications occur at a rate of 32.5% (that is a one-in-three chance of complication), and there is a re-operation rate of 21.7%. This is insanely high for any kind of medical procedure, let alone considering this is an elective surgery, and one that is performed, generally, on healthy, functioning bodies. They now call it ‘gender affirmation surgery’ so that even the language is deceptively adapted to sound positive and non-threatening.
In this sense, medical ethics and genuine concern (not virtue signalling) for these young people appears to be out the window.
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING
It is not often discussed (likely because it is not a topic for the squeamish) exactly what are the common complications resulting from modern sex-change surgeries. If you can bear it, I will attempt to elucidate a few of the male-to-female complications, while seeking not to be overly graphic. Those who are faint of heart may wish to stop reading here.
The patient’s “neovagina” is partly constructed from an inverted scrotum and penis, therefore any hair-bearing skin used for the “neo-urethra” can cause chronic infection and obstruction. In vaginoplasty, failure to perform preoperative or intraoperative hair removal can lead to inaccessible hair deep within the vagina. This can result in a hairball, which can be a nidus for debris and infection. Infections are common and known to be incredibly painful, according to sufferer accounts.
There is no natural lubrication for a neovagina. In a procedure called colovaginoplasty, a lubricant is sourced by opening up the abdomen and using part of the colon to join the gap and make the vagina. The lubrication comes from the bowel, and is constant (not based on arousal). Post-op patient questions vary from, ‘Is it dangerous for my partner to ingest this lubricant?’, to ‘Will I need to wear a pad forever?’ (Often, yes).
Another complication is known as a Rectoneovaginal Fistula, which is an ‘abnormal connection between the rectum and neovagina’. The result is that the neovagina begins to secrete fecal matter, resulting in permanent diaper-wearing. There are many difficulties that can arise when you decide to open a new hole in your pelvis that was not there naturally.
Sufferers have complained about ‘never being able to have sex again’ – in some ways an odd complaint after making the decision to castrate yourself. Another common complaint is the necrotising of the neovagina, where the constructed vagina (or portions of it) simply dies off.
The surgery in general requires perpetual clinical follow-up and post-op monitoring, as well as a lifetime reliance on estrogen and other medication.
The wider trans community and the wealthy trans lobby do not want any such negative information about transgenderism to get out. They maintain that it is impossible to tell the difference between a vagina and a negovagina, but this is not true. Many who undergo the procedure learn the hard way that they have caused irreversible damage to themselves, and their suicide rates are astronomical. There are many stories of chronic pain and tissue necrosis that are too graphic to relay, and there is too much fear of censorship and legal threats from the trans lobby for sufferers to speak out.
The sad result of this is that many confused kids, often encouraged by virtue-signalling parents and teachers, are being led down the path that leads to these horrors. Nobody seems to care about the realities that await them, that there is a very high chance their lives will be ruined and they will suffer great pain and remorse. Yet the gender theory activists still pretend that you can easily change your sex with surgery.
These people require rigorous mental health treatment, real role models, and a society which does not encourage them to mutilate themselves.
Brett Sinclair is an author, artist, historian, op-ed writer and blogger who has worked for several national magazines in Canada and international media.
According to Facebook’s content transparency report for the first quarter of 2021, released in mid-August 2021, the most popular article shared on the platform between January 2021 and March 2021 was about a 56-year-old Miami, Florida, obstetrician who died two weeks after his first Pfizer injection.1
The story initially ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel 2 April 8, 2021, and was republished by the Chicago Tribune that same day.3 The doctor, Dr. Gregory Michael, received his first dose December 18, 2020.
Three days later, he developed small spots on his hands and feet, which prompted him to go to the emergency room, where they found he had an abnormally low blood count. Platelets stop bleeding by clotting, and when platelets drop too low, internal bleeding can occur, resulting in what looks like blood blisters on the skin.
Michael remained in intensive care for two weeks, but no matter what they did, his platelet count refused to budge. During the night of January 3, 2021, he died of a massive stroke. According to the coroner, the COVID injection could not be ruled out as a contributing or causative factor.
In a Facebook post, Michael’s widow stated he’d been “very healthy” and that he’d been a COVID-19 vaccine advocate. His death caused her to question the safety of the shot, however.
“I believe that people should be aware that side effects can happen, that the vaccine is not good for everyone and in this case destroyed a beautiful life, a perfect family and has affected so many people in this community.” she wrote. “Please do not let his death be in vain please save more lives my making this information news.”4
Even Viral Content Has Minor Reach
According to The New York Times,5 Facebook held off on publishing the first-quarter report for fear the findings might “look bad for the company.” Executives decided they wanted to make some “key fixes to the system” before releasing it. That’s why it wasn’t published until August.
Interestingly, the report reveals that even when something goes viral, the total number of views is still a tiny fraction of the overall content. Even the biggest accounts make up but a small portion of overall content views. Combined, the top 20 accounts with the most views during the first quarter — which included UNICEF, The Dodo and LADbible — accounted for only 1.18% of all U.S. content views.
As noted in the report, this “shows that, even though it may seem like a page or post has extensive reach on the platform, that isn’t the case when measured against the total amount of content available on the platform.”
Facebook Calls Out CCDH for Manufacturing ‘Faulty Narrative’
As you may know, an obscure one-man organization funded by dark money called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has published several reports, including “The Anti-Vaxx Playbook,”6 “The Disinformation Dozen”7 and “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”8 in which the founder, Imran Ahmed — an unregistered foreign agent — claims to have identified the top most influential “anti-vaxxers” in the U.S.
In a completely unexpected turn of events, Facebook is now calling out the CCDH for having manufactured a faulty narrative without evidence against the 12 individuals targeted in its reports (myself included).9
This is important, seeing how the CCDH reports have been the primary “reference” source of authority used by media and government officials to smear, threaten and infringe on American citizens’ right to free speech.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security even lists promulgating “false narratives” around COVID-19 as a top national security threat, which basically puts a “domestic terrorist” target on the backs of those of us who have been identified by the CCDH as the most prolific “superspreaders” of COVID misinformation.
As reported by GreenMed Info :10
“Google now shows an astounding 84,700 search results for CCDH’s defamatory phrase ‘disinformation dozen. ’Amazingly, this includes 16,000 news stories within the international press, approximately 100% of which are word-for-word amplifications of CCDH’s claims/defamatory statements and reported uncritically as fact.
In addition, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and president Biden all used CCDH’s report as the sole source for their own defamatory accusations, reaching a dangerous rhetorical climax on July 20th when Biden stated that these 12 individuals are literally “killing people” [by spreading misinformation].”
No Evidence to Support ‘Misinfo Superspreader’ Claim
In an August 18, 2021, Facebook report, Monika Bickert, vice president of Facebook content policy, sets the record straight, and in the process, demolishes the CCDH’s claims:11
“In recent weeks, there has been a debate about whether the global problem of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation can be solved simply by removing 12 people from social media platforms. People who have advanced this narrative contend that these 12 people are responsible for 73% of online vaccine misinformation on Facebook. There isn’t any evidence to support this claim …
That said, any amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards — and we have removed over three dozen Pages, groups and Facebook or Instagram accounts linked to these 12 people, including at least one linked to each of the 12 people, for violating our policies.
We have also imposed penalties on nearly two dozen additional Pages, groups or accounts linked to these 12 people, like moving their posts lower in News Feed so fewer people see them or not recommending them to others. We’ve applied penalties to some of their website domains as well so any posts including their website content are moved lower in News Feed.
The remaining accounts associated with these individuals are not posting content that breaks our rules, have only posted a small amount of violating content, which we’ve removed, or are simply inactive.
In fact, these 12 people are responsible for about just 0.05% of all views of vaccine-related content on Facebook. This includes all vaccine-related posts they’ve shared, whether true or false, as well as URLs associated with these people.”
It’s worth restating the key point in this quote: Combined, the top 12 individuals and organizations identified by the CCDH as being responsible for a whopping 73% of vaccine misinformation on Facebook, are in fact only responsible for 0.05% of vaccine-related content — 1,460 times lower than the CCDH’s outrageous claim. That’s no small discrepancy.
CCDH Claims Blasted as Unjustified and Biased
Bickert goes on to refer directly to the CCDH report “The Disinformation Dozen,”12 stating:
“The report13 upon which the faulty narrative is based analyzed only a narrow set of 483 pieces of content over six weeks from only 30 groups, some of which are as small as 2,500 users.
They are in no way representative of the hundreds of millions of posts that people have shared about COVID-19 vaccines in the past months on Facebook.
Further, there is no explanation for how the organization behind the report identified the content they describe as ‘anti-vax’ or how they chose the 30 groups they included in their analysis. There is no justification for their claim that their data constitute a ‘representative sample’ of the content shared across our apps.”
CCDH Meets Definition of ‘Hateful Extremists’
Ironically, while the CCDH claims to “counter hate” online, and Ahmed sits on the Steering Committee of the U.K. Commission on Countering Extremism, CCDH itself actually meets the Commission’s definition of hateful extremists.14 In the 2019 Commission document, “Challenging Hateful Extremism,” the term is defined as:15
“Behaviours that can incite and amplify hate, or engage in persistent hatred, or equivocate about and make the moral case for violence; And that draw on hateful, hostile or supremacist beliefs directed at an out-group who are perceived as a threat to the wellbeing, survival or success of an in-group; And that cause, or are likely to cause, harm to individuals, communities or wider society.”
In addition, in the forward of the report, lead commissioner Sara Khan notes that “Hateful extremists seek to restrict individual liberties and curtail the fundamental freedoms that define our country.”
All of these definitions and clarifications of what hateful extremism is fit the CCDH to a T. Ahmed manufactured data to create a false narrative that 12 individuals pose a threat to the well-being and survival of the whole world, and then used that narrative to incite hate against us and curtail our freedom of speech.
Who Fact Checks the Fact Checkers?
In related news, the self-appointed arbiter of factual truths, NewsGuard, has had to backpedal in recent months and issue dozens of corrections to “fact checks” in which they’ve labeled the Wuhan lab leak theory as a debunked conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, NewsGuard has wrongly down-rated 225 websites for articles mentioning the lab leak theory.16 In reality, there’s far more evidence to support the lab leak theory than any other theory, but it took over a year before the weight of this evidence became too obvious for the media to ignore.
NewsGuard’s erroneous fact checks were recently highlighted in an August 11, 2021, report by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER).17
AIER decided to take a closer look at NewsGuard after receiving a request for comments on a NewsGuard fact check article regarding AIER and the Great Barrington Declaration — a statement written by public health experts from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford that calls on government to implement focused protection rather than lockdowns and self-isolation. AIERS investigation found that:18
“… NewsGuard falls far short of the very same criteria for accuracy and transparency that it claims to apply to other websites. Most of the company’s fact checkers lack basic qualifications in the scientific and social-scientific fields that they purport to arbitrate.
NewsGuard’s own track record of commentary — particularly on the Covid-19 pandemic — reveals a pattern of unreliable and misleading claims that required subsequent corrections, and analysis that regularly conflates fact with opinion journalism in rendering a judgement on a website’s content.
Furthermore, the company’s own practices fall far short of the transparency and disclosure standards it regularly applies to other websites … NewsGuard’s staff primarily evaluates scientific claims by appealing to the authority of public figures who they designate as ‘experts’ on the subject in question.
Their approach generally avoids direct examination of the evidence surrounding contested claims, and instead cherry-picks a figure to treat as an authoritative final word … many of their preferred authorities are political officeholders rather than persons trained in scientific or social-scientific methods.
By selectively curating cherry-picked political authorities rather than evaluating evidence directly, NewsGuard’s approach to fact-checking effectively sidesteps the scientific method. This strategy is rendered even more problematic by the general lack of scientific expertise within NewsGuard’s team of writers.
We examined the educational credentials, including the highest degree listed, for 28 publicly identified staff members on NewsGuard’s website. The company’s staff page reveals shockingly little expertise in either the hard sciences such as medicine or social sciences such as public policy, economics, and related fields …
Most NewsGuard articles on Covid-19 topics and policies are written by [NewsGuard Deputy Editor for Health, John] Gregory, whose only identified qualification is a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts … Gregory would not qualify as an expert in most of the fields he is responsible for fact-checking …
Of course, non-experts have every right to offer opinions on scientific and social-scientific matters. Whether or not they should be taken seriously as fact checkers or act as arbiters of scientific disputes is another question entirely.”
NewsGuard Staff by Field and Highest Degree Attained
NewsGuard Apologizes for Erroneous Fact Checks
After being confronted about its erroneous fact checks on the lab leak theory, NewsGuard offered the following apology in a statement sent to AIER:19
“NewsGuard either mischaracterized the sites’ claims about the lab leak theory, referred to the lab leak as a ‘conspiracy theory,’ or wrongly grouped together unproven claims about the lab leak with the separate, false claim that the COVID-19 virus was man-made without explaining that one claim was unsubstantiated, and the other was false.
NewsGuard apologizes for these errors. We have made the appropriate correction on each of the 21 labels.”
AIER commented on the apology:20
“Gregory and his colleagues appear to have simply decided that their own premature dismissal of the lab leak hypothesis equated to ‘fact’ and proceeded to penalize other sites not for factual errors, but rather for diverging from NewsGuard’s own editorial position on the same subject.
When this position turned out to be mistaken, NewsGuard pivoted to remove the errors — albeit in non-transparent ways that downplay the significance or pervasiveness of their mistake.”
NewsGuard Fails to Fulfill Its Own Credibility Criteria
In their report, AIER goes on to apply the criteria NewsGuard uses to evaluate a website’s credibility to NewsGuard itself. It’s ranking? A paltry 36.25 out of 100. According to AIER:21
“This website fails to adhere to several basic journalistic standards, and should be used with extreme caution as a source for verifying the reliability of the websites it purports to rate …
When we see fact checkers like NewsGuard, who not only fail to uphold their high-sounding principles but even publicly encourage working with the government to suppress speech, we should raise red flags.”
The NewsGuard ratings are meant to influence the reader, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. That it would serve as the thought police of the technocratic establishment that seeks to silence dissent and bury information that doesn’t help move the Great Reset agenda forward is no surprise.
Especially considering its primary startup capital came from Publicis Groupe,22 a PR group that represents most of Big Pharma, including vaccine makers, and Big Tech. NewsGuard is also backed by Microsoft23 and Google.
The Publicis Groupe has been manipulating what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, this advertising and communications firm bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet.
With revenue avenues secured, Publicis’ clients and partners built a global presence that dominated the advertising world. Be it tobacco or sugar, Publicis Groupe found a way to promote and strengthen big industries. Publicis was recently sued24 for its deadly and illegal marketing of Purdue Pharma’s opioid products.
When you consider that Publicis describes its business model approach as putting clients and their needs and objectives at the center of all they do so their clients can “win and grow,” it’s easy to see what’s driving NewsGuard.
Overall, NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competitors and analysts who empower you with information that runs counter to any given industry’s agenda.
If you’re as disturbed by censorship as I am, be sure to contact your local library today to find out if they’re one of the more than 700 libraries using NewsGuard. If they are, then ask them if they’re aware of NewsGuard’s censorship of truthful news that is now encroaching on scientific freedom and threatening the very roots of our democracy.
If your local library is using NewsGuard, it would be helpful to start a campaign to get it removed. Contact your neighbors and let them know what is happening so they can kick out this public health threat. Likewise, whenever you see someone referencing reports by the CCDH, call them out on it.
Dr. Paul Oosterhuis is an Australian anaesthetist with over thirty years experience, including in critical care and resuscitation, who urgently needs your support.
He is facing a hearing by the Medical Board of NSW for posting information on social media regarding COVID-19. His posts related to early treatment and prophylaxis, PCR tests, and risk-benefit calculations regarding COVID-19 vaccination and lockdowns (scroll down for details). His hearing is on September 3rd. Please help him by signing and sharing this petition.
We are practicing doctors and allied health professionals and/or scientists and academics and/or members of the public and/or represent professional organisations. We support the right of Dr Oosterhuis, and that of all doctors, to offer informed medical opinions on COVID-19 and to discuss the available evidence on COVID-19 interventions.
As doctors we too have advised and continue to advise patients and the general public about the medical management of COVID-19 disease and vaccination on the basis of good science. As members of the public we reserve the right to receive honest information, opinion and advice from our doctors, free from government interference.
From Dr Oosterhuis:
Dear colleagues and concerned citizens,
Thank you for taking the time to read this petition.
My name is Dr Paul Oosterhuis. I am an anaesthetist from Australia. I have been called before the NSW Medical Board for a hearing on September 3rd 2021 following anonymous complaints about my social media posts on Facebook regarding COVID-19. I have been advised by the Medical Council that:
“The Medical Council of NSW received two anonymous notifications regarding your activity on social media.
Due to the concerns outlined in the notifications the Council has resolved to convene proceedings under section 150 of the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law (NSW) to consider whether any action is required for the protection of the health and safety of the public or in the public interest.”
Ahead of the hearing I am seeking signatures from my medical and scientific colleagues and members of the public to help me defend my own and all doctors’ rights to offer our informed medical opinions, share our expertise, and engage in open discussion regarding COVID-19.
I am a Sydney University trained medical graduate. I undertook my internship and residency at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, followed by postgraduate training in Anaesthesia at The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. I have more than 30 years of practice, the first 20 years involving hands-on critical care and resuscitation, and the last 10-plus years as a senior Visiting Medical Officer working in the Sydney Local Health District.
In the social media posts for which I face a Medical Board hearing, I discussed issues such as early treatment and prophylaxis against COVID-19, evidence for government measures such as lockdowns and PCR tests, and evidence regarding risk-benefit analyses of COVID-19 vaccines.
For example:
“I wish you could just add EARLY TREATMENT and drug PROPHYLAXIS …..Tell everyone to take Vit D, Zinc, and EARLY TREATMENT with IVM/ HCQ as evidence based medicine alternatives.”
I provided a link to a presentation by Dr Paul Marik on prophylaxis in support of the post, highlighting a chart of vitamin D versus risk of COVID from Dr Marik’s presentation, to illuminate the low hanging fruit of prophylaxis.
In other posts I questioned the evidence base for the government’s policies of lockdowns and mask mandates, and pointed out that there is evidence of vaccines having low effectiveness and real risks and harms (which are being suppressed), along with harms from the totalitarian lockdowns causing massive damage society-wide.
The risk of Antibody Dependent enhancement of disease, predicted by Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, driven by immune escape from the selective evolutionary pressure of vaccinating with a non sterilising agent is a real and present danger and needs to be discussed. The danger to millions is distressing to me, and discussing that danger is, I believe, unarguably in the public interest.
Early in 2020, I was active in criticising my medical administrators for failure to prepare for an outbreak such as COVID-19 when it was apparent that PPE was being rationed (P95’s were in short supply). I urged my colleagues to perform quantitative fit testing of our available P95 masks in early 2020 during which we found a surprising number of staff failed quantitative fit testing with the hospital issued PPE. This was something I had hypothesised after looking at the number of healthcare workers in Northern Italy catching the disease.
I withdrew from clinical practice last year out of concerns about the increasing incompetence of the health administrators and the rapidly reduced autonomy of doctors to just be able to be a doctor.
Over the last 18 months I have been increasingly concerned about the misinformation and censorship creeping into science and medicine. Fellow physicians were saving lives with early treatment and medication/supplement approaches to prevention but it was THIS that was attacked and censored! People like Dr Paul Marik, Dr Pierre Kory of the FLCCC Alliance, Dr Robert Malone, Dr Geert Vanden Bossche, Dr Michael Yeadon, Dr Vlad Zelenko, Dr Chris Martensen, Dr Eric Weinstein and others are making credible and serious warnings about the gene therapy being coerced upon our populations.
Censoring their work, and the research of experts like Dr Tess Lawrie, Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Sucharit Bhakdi and America’s Frontline Doctors is dangerous.
The Medical Board of NSW is now using intimidation, threatening doctors like myself, who share data which questions the official narrative. I don’t believe that censorship is compatible with good science and good medicine, and I believe that it needs to stop now, in the name of public health and public interest.
I would be very grateful if you could help to support me in my effort to inform as many as possible about their true health choices. My hearing is in a matter of days.
While I wish I did not have to defend my right to speak truthfully as a doctor, the song and video below captures my attitude to fighting for that right. I hope you enjoy it.
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has been permanently banned from Twitter for violating its COVID-19 “misinformation policies.”
The author has become well-known as a critic of coronavirus quarantines and mandates.
A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the commentator’s account was blocked on Saturday due to “repeated violations.”
“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” the Twitter representative stated.
The journalist has repeatedly expressed his views about COVID-19, in particular the efficacy of the vaccines, but a recent tweet apparently triggered Twitter’s decision to ban him.
“It doesn’t stop infection or transmission,” stated the tweet, which casts doubt on vaccine effectiveness. “It doesn’t stop infection or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine.”
“Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”
Twitter later claimed the message was “misleading,” resulting in Berenson’s account being deactivated.
After being suspended from Twitter, Benson made an entry on Substack, a newsletter service, which featured the tweet that appears to have caused the issue.
In the post headlined “Goodbye Twitter,” Berenson wrote: “I am officially suspended. This was the tweet that did it. Entirely accurate. I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this. Meantime, guess you’ll be getting more Substacks.”
“We have reached a dangerous moment. Social media companies that have audiences which dwarf any other are now actively censoring reporters at the behest of governments,” Berenson said in a statement.
“I will continue to fight to get out the truth and am considering all legal options.”
A huge amount of opprobrium was heaped on the Americans for allowing this sensitive data to fall ‘into the wrong hands’. However, surely a better question is why had they gathered all this deeply personal data in the first place?
It’s been reported that the Taliban has seized US military biometric devices in the wake of Washington’s flight from Afghanistan, which could put civilians who assisted coalition forces at significant risk.
The devices, known as HIIDE, for Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment, contain identifying biometric data such as iris scans and fingerprints, as well as biographical information – while their primary stated purpose is to track insurgents, biometric data was also collected and stored on Afghans who assisted the US occupation forces.
The story sparked outcry, widely invoked by both opponents and advocates of the 20-year war as yet another deplorable example of Washington leaving its allies high and dry. While it seems clear there was no consideration given to what could happen if the technology fell into the ‘wrong’ hands, critics have nonetheless overwhelmingly failed to consider the terrifying ramifications of this data being in the right hands, and how the US came into possession of it in the first place.
When precisely the practice of collecting Afghans’ biometric data began isn’t certain, although at a 2010 conference in Kabul, US military officials laid out the terms of Afghan 1,000, a program which sought to collate information on 80% of the country’s population, around 25 million people. It was framed in extremely positive terms, not merely as a means to identify terrorists and criminals, but “enable progress in society” due to its “countless applications for the provision of services” to citizens.
It’s uncertain if that target was reached before Washington’s withdrawal, but the strategy remained in operation for over a decade. The next year, it was reported that Washington ultimately sought to gather biometric data on all living Afghans.
To achieve the lofty goal, a policy of mandatory data collection was imposed for every traveler entering the country via any means, and a dedicated Population Registration Department was created, with offices throughout the country. Even foreign journalists covering the war were fingerprinted, and their irises scanned. Moreover, occupation forces conducted innumerable “enrolment missions”, entering towns and villages and forcing locals to hand over their biometric data at literal gunpoint.
A US Army guide states emphatically that “all combat outposts and checkpoints throughout Afghanistan make it a priority to collect biometric data from as many local nationals as possible.” In the aftermath of a bombing or skirmish, soldiers are told to “enroll everyone”, including the dead, their DNA to be collected using buccal swabs to capture cells lining the mouth. The “payoff” for coalition forces was said to be so great, “commanders must be creative and persistent in their efforts to enroll as many Afghans as possible.”
In a section disturbingly titled “Population Management”, the guide recommends that everyone who lives within an operational area “should be identified and fully biometrically enrolled with facial photos, iris scans, and all ten fingerprints (if present).” Soldiers must also record “good contextual data” about individuals, such as “where they live, what they do, and to which tribe or clan they belong.” Citizens were to be told the collection protected them from potentially violent elements and troublemakers.
A lengthy article in the January 2014 edition of Military journal Joint Forces Quarterly offers a glowing appraisal of the “biometric-enabled intelligence” system rolled out in Kabul, declaring it to be a “key enabling factor” in US counterinsurgency efforts, and “an invaluable part of the campaign that has even greater potential in the future.” It documents how enrolment was often carried out using colorful trucks with jingling bells, in the manner of an ice cream van, in order to make the process “more culturally appealing” – particularly in respect of children, presumably.
Also included are several alleged “success stories”, such as one instance in which two Afghan police officers, neither of whom could read or write, spotted an individual on a “biometrically developed insurgent watch list” approaching their checkpoint.
One of the officers is said to have taken the man – identified as having been involved in “multiple IED events” – into custody “with a broad smile,” and the anecdote ends on an upbeat note, hailing how the officers’ illiteracy was no barrier to them removing a dangerous insurgent from the battlefield due to the miracle of biometric intelligence. Cheery stuff, although journalist Annie Jacobsen has exposed in chilling detail just how fallible biometric evidence can be.
In July 2012, US Army First Lieutenant Clint Lorance ordered his platoon to shoot three unarmed motorcycle riders in Kandahar province. The next year, a court martial found him guilty of two counts of second-degree murder, attempted murder, wrongfully communicating a threat, reckless endangerment, soliciting a false statement, and obstructing justice, sentencing him to 20 years in prison. However, in November 2019, he received a pardon from Donald Trump.
The then-president released Lorance after he was shown fingerprints and DNA data that purportedly indicated the Afghan men killed were Taliban bomb makers, not civilians. However, after some determined digging, Jacobsen found that one set of fingerprints allegedly found on an exploded IED said to prove one of the dead men was a bomber actually belonged to a police officer, who was likely to have contaminated the evidence in the line of duty. The other set did indeed belong to a bomber – who was still alive.
Lorance isn’t an isolated example either. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales is serving life for killing 16 Afghan villagers in cold blood in March 2012. While he pleaded guilty to the charges and admitted his tours of Afghanistan and Iraq had instilled a loathing of the local population within him, he’s now appealing his sentence. The case rests on data provided by a biometrics expert who also worked on the Lorance case, which he claims proves witnesses to Bales’ crimes were Taliban bomb makers who left their fingerprints on bomb components.
Evidently though, Afghanistan was just an experiment – and Washington was enamored with the results. The White House’s proposed Army budget for 2022 seeks over $11 million to purchase 95 new biometric collection devices, meaning the policy will almost inevitably be rolled out again in whichever country is next in the US crosshairs.
Where that will be is unknown, but there’s also the question of what implications the Afghan test run has for the Western world. Governments, police forces, security services and even big business are increasingly using cutting-edge technology to amass, store and analyze vast reams of sensitive personal data – much of it was similarly trialed during the War on Terror, and sold to home audiences on the basis of convenience and security, just as the military’s biometric data harvest was sold to Afghans. Now the troops are finally home, has the fight been brought back with them?
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
August 12, 2021, NBC Chicago reported1 the launch of Vax Verify, an online COVID jab verification portal for residents of Illinois. Anyone over the age of 18 can use the portal to check and download their shot records for events and businesses that require it. Illinois Department of Public Health director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said in a statement:
“As more businesses, events, organizations, and others require proof of vaccination, Illinois residents will be able to confirm using Vax Verify that they have been vaccinated for COVID-19. With the current surge in cases, more people are making the decision to get a COVID-19 vaccine and this new tool will aid residents in confirming their vaccination where needed.”
Will Your Medical Status and Finances Be Tied Together?
Identity authentication on the Vax Verify portal is done using a one-time verification process through the financial credit score company Experian — a decision that suggests your medical history and finances might become interconnected in the future.
This is risky territory, considering we’re already hearing calls to exclude unvaccinated individuals from society in any number of ways. For example, politicians, government officials, health authorities, media personalities and common folk have suggested making life untenable for the unvaccinated by:
Requiring them to get tested daily at their own expense
Charging them nonrefundable quarantine fees
Denying them medical care at hospitals and private medical offices
Canceling their private insurance or raising premiums by thousands of dollars a year
Suspending their gun permits
Suspending their driver’s licenses
Denying access to loans
Withholding government assistance
Withholding federal benefits like Social Security, VA benefits, subsidized housing and pensions
Barring them from bars and restaurants
Barring them from exercise facilities and hotels
Barring them from buying food in grocery stores
Barring them from using public transportation and traveling on airplanes
The way we’re going, it’s not hard to imagine a near future in which unvaccinated people aren’t allowed to hold a job, get an education, travel or even have access to basic financial services. Taken at face value, the rhetoric thrown around right now indicates the plan is to basically destroy the life of anyone who refuses to consent to be a part of this medical experiment.
This is as coercive as it can possibly get, and coercing volunteers to participate in human medical trials is strictly forbidden by both national and international bioethics laws.3,4,5,6 Yet it’s happening at a scale that is nothing short of mind-boggling, and with full support of the U.S. government.
It’s Not ‘Just a Vaccine Passport’
For years, Naomi Wolf, author of the book, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” has warned that the United States is on the path toward tyranny. In the book, she lays out 10 steps toward tyranny that have been followed by virtually all would-be tyrants, be they on the political left or right. They were followed in Italy in the ’20s, Germany in the ’30s, East Germany in the ’50s, Chile in the ’70s, China in the ’80s, and worldwide right now.
The 10 steps toward tyranny start with the invocation of a terrifying internal and/or external threat. It may be a real threat or an imagined one, but in all cases, it’s a hyped-up threat. From 2001 onward, that threat was terrorism, which was used as the justification for stripping us of our liberties.
The “war on terror” has now shifted from unknown terrorists to an even more elusive enemy: the virus. And unlike previous wars, enemies of the state now include a nation’s own citizens.
Punishable acts of terror have also shifted from blowing things up with explosives to simply disagreeing with our government about medical matters and opposing irrational health recommendations. “Opposition to COVID Measures” is now actually on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of potential terror threats.7
In a March 28, 2021, interview with Fox News’ Steve Hilton, Wolf explained how vaccine passports will ultimately be used to control you and erase human liberty and freedom altogether:8,9
“‘Vaccine passport’ sounds like a fine thing if you don’t understand what those platforms can do,” she said. “I’m CEO of a tech company, I understand what these platforms can do. It is not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about your data.
Once this rolls out, you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform … It can be merged with your Paypal account, with your digital currency.
Microsoft is already talking about merging it with payment plans. Your network can be sucked up. It geolocates you everywhere you go. Your credit history can be included. All of your medical and health history can be included …
It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass … I cannot stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.”
Digital ID Wallet Is Here
That the Great Reset is upon us is clear. At the end of July 2021, Thales announced10 a digital biometric ID wallet, designed to help you “access government services from anywhere.”
The article explains how the last 18 months have led to the necessity for digital equivalent of services we’d normally access in person. Here, Thales spells out what has so far been brushed off as a conspiracy theory:11
“So-called digital ‘vaccination passports’ will play a key role in enabling citizens to access all manner of services and will act as a precursor to the rollout of mobile digital IDs.”
Thales admits that this is the intention behind the rollout of vaccine passports in the European Union. Thales further explains that the digital IDs will:12
Enable you to authenticate your identity
Allow you to keep multiple documents in one place
Combine identity verification and payments
Manage digital signatures, thereby enabling the execution of contracts remotely
If you look at the list of suggested punishments for lack of COVID injection, you can see how this technology could make all those processes more or less automatic. The vaccine passport simply becomes a digital ID wallet, and without a digital ID wallet, you simply cannot do anything or go anywhere.
If you’re upset that PayPal and other digital transaction services are shutting down your account based on your personal views and the things you read,13 just wait until your entire life is tied to a digital ID and you miss your monthly mystery injection.
You might just find yourself a nonperson all of a sudden, with no access to food, money or services of any kind — and probably no real human being to complain or object to either.
Of course, this digital ID will undoubtedly be tied to a China-inspired social credit score as well, so you might become a persona non-grata — an unacceptable and unwelcome outcast — simply by crossing the street illegally or failing to pick up your dog’s poop. Video surveillance with facial recognition is everywhere, and you already carry a geolocation tracker (or two) on your person.
Legal Remedies for Privacy Violations Are Lacking
That vaccine passports will violate your privacy is virtually guaranteed. As noted by MSNBC columnist Tiffany Li in an article titled, “The Risks of COVID ‘Vaccine Passports’ Are Scarier Than You Might Think”:14
“The lack of a federal privacy law leaves digital vaccine passports vulnerable to privacy breaches, they don’t solve the glaring problem of vaccination inequality, and, perhaps most dangerously, they risk reinforcing a system of haves and have-nots when our poor and marginalized communities are already suffering disproportionately in the pandemic …
So while vaccine passports could help hasten the end of the pandemic, they also come with severe risks to privacy, equality and civil liberties. There are ways to design vaccine passport apps to preserve as much individual privacy as possible.
But the problem with any solution is that we lack legal remedies for privacy violations and technological discrimination … There are few legal limits to what data a vaccine passport app could collect, and things get complicated if people feel forced to use the apps to re-enter society.
Of course, there are ways to solve these privacy and security problems. Vaccine passport apps should collect as little information as possible — and only information that is strictly necessary to verify vaccinations.
States and companies would need to promise not to sell the information collected by the apps — or, at the very least, not to sell the health information or other sensitive private information.”
Forget Privacy — You’ll Have None
Unfortunately, that’s not the plan. On the contrary, the plan is clearly to collect and join together as much personal information as possible, and there’s no reason to think this data won’t be shared for someone else’s profit.
That’s what Google, Facebook and other platforms have done for years. Big Data is an industry all its own, and they’re hardly going to forgo the chance to profit from the unprecedented amount of personalized data they can obtain from tapping into digital IDs. That seems a given at this point. Add to that the facts that:
We have a Rockefeller Foundation white paper15 stating that privacy must necessarily be loosened if we are to conquer biological threats
Biological threats are the new never-to-actually-end war because it’s the highway to the Great Reset
The Great Reset and subsequent technocratic rule depends on social engineering, and
Effective social engineering depends on big data from mass surveillance, combined with artificial intelligence
We’re Headed Someplace Few Want to Go
As explained by independent journalist James Corbett,16 the Great Reset ties you to its control system through an electronic ID linked to your bank account, health records and social credit system, so that it can then be used to dictate every facet of your life. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that wannabe dictators don’t give power back to the people once they have it.
Once you’ve given up even a modicum of freedom, you have to fight tooth and nail to get it back. We see this in states all across the U.S. right now, where governors are still holding on to temporary emergency powers after more than 18 months. Freedom is simply never handed out, and protecting your freedom is a lot easier than getting it back once it’s been taken from you.
Also, understand that all the hardware, software, surveillance technology and artificial intelligence the technocrats need to run and ruin your life already exists. All they have to do is link everything together and tie all the various data points to each individual person. Once that’s done, you either obey whatever decree comes out next, or you’ll find yourself unplugged from the matrix that is everyday life.
In a January 7, 2021, article titled “Technocrats Embrace a New COVID Policy: Vaccine Passports,”17 Mitchell Nemeth noted that “For now, the concept of a vaccine passport is only an idea in the abstract.” Fast-forward a mere seven months, and we’re already in the thick of it, with state and national governments around the world rolling out health passports and mandates to match.
At the time, Nemeth pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party was embracing the idea and urged countries to “harmonize” their policies with that of China, where QR codes are used to designate who may or may not enter public spaces, based on their infection status — using a test now known to produce mostly false positives.
China’s surveillance system is such they can track to the minute an infected person’s journey through the city, automatically tagging each and every person they came within 6 feet of along the way, so they can then get a no-go QR code and have to quarantine at home.
CDC Misled Us About Outdoor Transmission Risk
While we’re on the topic of transmission, I hope you watch Tucker Carlson’s report at the top of this article. He covers quite a bit of ground in just 15 minutes, including the revelation that the CDC lied when it claimed outdoor transmission accounted for “less than 10% of COVID cases” — a statistic that led to the recommendation to wear a mask when walking or exercising outdoors.
As it turns out, the 10% statistic was “based partly on a misclassification of some COVID transmission that actually took place in enclosed spaces,” according to The New York Times, which broke the story in early May 2021.18
“Saying that less than 10% of COVID transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving,” The New York Times said.
What’s more, even indoors, the transmission rate is exceedingly low — likely below 1% and possibly as low as 0.1%, Carlson reports. So, even indoors, your risk of getting infected is low, with or without a mask. Certainly, you accomplish nothing good by wearing it outdoors, particularly if you’re exercising.
‘Passports Don’t Prove Immunity; Only Compliance’
Getting back to the passport issue, in a mid-August 2021 blog post,19 independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson pointed out what should be obvious to everyone yet for some reason still isn’t: “Vaccine passports don’t prove immunity; only compliance.”
The reason is simple. The COVID shots don’t prevent infection or transmission. This is admitted by all COVID shot developers, the CDC and real-world infection data. Since the shots cannot prevent infection or transmission, those who have gotten the jab are no less of a risk to other people than an unvaccinated person. So, what public health benefit, exactly, does the vaccine passport offer?
“The only sure thing a vaccine ‘passport’ or verification proves is that somebody complied with advice or mandates,” Attkisson writes. “It does not guarantee that the person has any level of immunity. The person could be infected with COVID-19, and could be spreading it to others.
Meantime, absent from much public discussion is the broader and longer lasting immunity scientists believe is enjoyed by the 120 million+ Americans who have recovered with COVID (or been infected without showing any symptoms).
This group, according to the bulk of scientific data, generally has better protection than the group of vaccinated patients, particularly among the vaccinated for whom the vaccines are no longer proving as effective as the early months after the shots. What do you think is behind the push to require vaccination and passports, and ignore natural immunity?”
Commenters on Attkisson’s blog overwhelmingly thought the intention behind vaccine passports is power grabbing, population control and increasing the Big Pharma revenue stream. What’s your take?
How Might Vaccine Passports Affect Our Economy?
In closing, a blog post by the Birch Gold Group, a precious metal IRA specialist, delves into how vaccine passports might affect the financial realm and reshape the economic landscape:20
“Yes, it’s an official concern now … A mandatory ‘vaccine passport’ … Should a mandatory vaccine passport system be implemented, life will never be normal again … Such a program would mean that around half the country could be put in the position of hearing they have no right to employment or possibly even general interaction in trade because they won’t take the experimental jab …
Second, we have to consider what the immediate economic and financial effects will be in light of this conflict. For example, look at the amount of relocation and migration that has happened in the U.S. in the past year alone … As has been well documented, blue states are much slower in recovering economically when compared to red states with less restrictions. Not only that, but money moves with people. This is a hard reality …
But let’s say for a moment that vaccine passports were somehow implemented everywhere in the country at the same exact time. What would happen then? Well, the amount of bureaucracy that would be added between the average consumer and everyday trade would be immense, and with red tape comes a slowdown in business.
Whole new wings of the government would have to be created to track and enforce vaccine passports rules … Regular inspections of businesses would have to be enacted, and new taxes would have to be created to pay for the system …
The end result would be the complete disintegration of the small business sector … and of course many millions of jobs would be lost in the process. Less competition means ever increasing prices and a lower quality of goods and services …
Then again … [w]hen governments restrict domestic trade and limit consumer participation based on frivolous requirements, people … find other ways to get the things they need more freely. This means black market trade or barter markets, alternative currencies and sometimes entire underground economies …
And this is where the government disguise of humanitarianism will really fall away and true tyranny will be revealed … By providing services for each other, common people would be ‘opening the door’ to survival outside of the system, and if survival is possible, then non-vaccination is possible. Therefore, the argument will be made by the establishment that alternative economies need to be eliminated ‘for the good of society as a whole.’
There is always an excuse for totalitarianism. With a large portion of the population seeking a means to live without oppression, alternative markets will thrive, and the government will make war on them. Which means the people will be forced to make war on the government. It’s inevitable under every scenario …
Straight barter will be useful, but so will precious metals (especially gold and silver) along with other hard commodities with intrinsic value and utility. What I see in the near future is economic disaster in the wake of any attempt at a vaccine passport system. Millions will lose their jobs or quit their jobs in protest.
Small businesses will disappear under the weight of bureaucracy and constant scrutiny. The quality of goods and services will suffer as competition shrivels. But I also see the birth of a whole new economic system outside of the mainstream control grid. I see true free markets returning, and eventually, I see full blown rebellion.
What I suggest is that people get ready for this eventuality. We need to become producers again, rather than mere consumers. In order to position ourselves for success in the new trade environment we have to be able to make necessities, repair necessities or teach necessary skills. Those that are able to do this will do very well within alternative markets.”
Reject Vaccine Passports
Like the author of that Birch Gold piece, I see nothing positive coming from mandatory COVID injections and vaccine passports, only the destruction of lives and livelihoods. And that’s not even taking into account the potential destruction of people’s health.
Already, roughly half of the American population has put themselves at risk for serious health problems in the future, the full extent of which remains to be seen. Can the health care system survive such an onslaught?
Will the medical system even survive in the long term if worst-case predictions come true and people realize they’ve been duped by people they’ve been brought up to trust with their lives? And who’s going to pay for the medical carnage — again, if worst-case suspicions do come true?
The way out of this nightmare, I believe, is to just say “No” now, while there’s still enough of us to turn this tide around. Yes, you might lose your job. Don’t quit. Let them fire you and get the cause (vaccine refusal) in writing. Yes, you might not be able to fly on certain airlines for the time being, or go on a cruise this summer. This is about the long game. Any freedom you’re willing to give up today, you won’t get back tomorrow.
Remember, the vaccine passport/digital ID wallet will only remain valid as long as you’re in compliance with the rules of the day. Right now, the price of admission to society is one or two COVID shots. In a couple of months, it’ll be another shot. And then another, and then something else.
Once you’re get on this compliance treadmill, you cannot get off. You have to keep complying, no matter what’s asked, or lose your “privileges” — which used to be everyday freedoms we’ve taken for granted our entire lives. Is that really the life you want for yourself and your children?
If not, you have to be brave. The good news is that in this war, we don’t have to dodge bullets. But we do have to exercise moral courage, and simply say “No, I won’t give up my freedom. Not for a virus. Not for anything.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is currently facing recall in his state and could realistically lose, is still popular among at least one “demographic” – YouTube censors, whether they’re automated or human.
At least that transpires now that Oscar winning filmmaker Errol Webber is facing what reports say is “double censors” because he’s really not fond of the Democrat’s track record in office.
Webber won his Oscar for “Music by Prudence” that deals with a singer with disabilities in Zimbabwe. Back in California, though, Webber decided to flex his apparently stellar documentary-making muscle by taking on a project under the title, “100 Reasons to Recall Gavin Newsom” that looks into all the things that Newsom did wrong during his three years in office, reports say.
This is where things came to a screeching halt, at least on YouTube, where the video got blocked and placed under a total of two warning labels.
In one screenshot shared by Webber, YouTube declared the Newsom era-exposing documentary as something that “may not be appropriate for some users” (true enough – especially when it comes to his hard-core political supporters, but why would YouTube care to appease those?).
Plus, YouTube sent Webber an email informing him that his content was not appropriate for all age groups.
So YouTube was “thinking of the children,” not “of the Democrats” here.
In any case, users can still see the video but only if they wish to proceed by clicking a button on an ominously back screen complete with a prominent exclamation mark seemingly demoting danger ahead.
The other labelled screen reads, (with another the big exclamation mark and a button that lets users “understand and proceed,” reading that, “the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate and offensive to some audiences.”
One would be hard pressed to find a video on YouTube that doesn’t fall into this nebulous category of “offending” someone’s sensibilities; but for YouTube not all sensibilities are born equal.
The video showcasing Newsom’s term in office uses “authoritative” sources like CNN and AP to document all that’s gone wrong during the governor’s rule.
“I made sure that many of the sources for this video were left wing media, so if the fact checkers on YouTube and Facebook wanted to fact check me and discredit something they would be discrediting their own left wing media,” Webber said.
And despite the hurdles on its way, Webber’s content is still finding an audience on YouTube – until, that is, the giant fine-tweaks its censorship tools to downrank what it doesn’t like without necessarily removing it.
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
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