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Twitter bans Alex Berenson over COVID tweets

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 29, 2021

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.”

August 29, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Some are horrified the Taliban seized biometric devices. The real scandal is the extent of US’ data collection.

US soldier scans an Afghan resident with an Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) during a mission © AFP / TAUSEEF MUSTAFA
By Kit Klarenberg | RT | August 28, 2021

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 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Why Vaccine Passports Must Be Rejected

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 28, 2021

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.”

Sources and References

August 28, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

YouTube censors Gavin Newsom critic, Errol Webber

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2021

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.

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

Washington State Creeps Toward COVID Police State With Vaccine Mandates, ‘Tracking Monitors’ in Schools

21st Century Wire | August 26, 2021

It’s a race to the bottom of humanity and the competition just keeps getting scarier by the day. On the heels of what we thought was a clear One Horse Race in the ‘Zero COVID’ Sweepstakes, led by New Zealand, a new contender has emerged stateside – Washington, USA.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee, a self-avowed climate zealot, now adds pseudo-medical segregationist and authoritarian to his political resume with a raft of new COVID diktats including a vaccination mandate for all educators across his state.

State education workers will need to be ‘fully vaccinated’ by the hard deadline of October 18th.

Inslee called the vaccines being mandated “incredibly effective, amazingly effective… they are a medical miracle, they are a double miracle…”

Personal and religious beliefs will also not be tolerated:

Inslee topped up his orders by declaring the state’s indoor mask mandate expanded to require everyone to ‘mask up’ in indoor settings, regardless of vaccine status, set to take effect on Monday, August 30th.

You may have seen by now New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern gleefully advocating for COVID ‘ankle bracelets’ – she says “YEES!”:

The News Tribune reports that Eatonville High School in Washington has already implemented Ardern’s fanatical fantasy – requiring its student-athletes and coaches to wear tracking monitors during practices:

“We received grant funding (known as ESSER III) that specifically included provisions to support higher-risk athletic programs, and we used some of those funds to pay for athletic proximity monitors,” the statement reads. “We are using these monitors for high contact and moderate indoor contact sports. The monitors are for both staff (coaches) and students on the field, regardless if they are vaccinated or unvaccinated. If a student or coach tests positive, we will have immediate information regarding athletes’ and coaches’ contacts, so we can more tightly determine who might need to quarantine.”

A parent of two student-athletes at the high school, Jason Ostendorf, told The Times Tribune he had “no choice in the matter” but to sign the consent forms allowing the school to track his kids while they practiced their sports, adding:

“It’s just one more thing they’re doing to the kids through this whole covid thing,” he said. “The vaccine, now be tracked when you’re at practice. Where does this end? I feel like this is an experiment on our kids to see how much we can put them through before they start breaking.”

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

LA Fire Captain faces investigation, calls to be fired, over online video criticizing forced vaccines

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 25, 2021

Captain Christian Granucci of the Los Angeles Fire Department is under investigation for posting an online video criticizing LA’s vaccine mandate for city employees. The fire captain described the mandate as tyranny.

In a statement, the LAFD said that it “was made aware of the video posted on social media,” after Twitter users called for him to be fired.

The statement added that while the department respects “the individual’s right to his opinion, he is not authorized to speak on behalf of the Department.

“Therefore, the matter has been submitted to our Professional Standards Division for investigations, which may lead to disciplinary action.”

The statement was referring to a video posted by Captain Christian Granucci. The captain started the video by saying: “I’m a 31-year veteran with this agency and I’m more than likely going to catch total grief from my administration from this, but I am done being silent on this matter and so are many of our members. This is regarding the vaccine mandate by the city of Los Angeles for all city employees.”

Granucci referenced a recent incident where a captain at the Hawaii fire department resigned because he refused to forcibly take the vaccine.

“Well, now it’s here in Los Angeles and the mandate has come down from the mayor and the city council that we, all city employees including first responders, shall take the vaccine,” he said. “If we do not take the vaccine, we have to be subjected to testing twice a week and if we refuse that, termination.”

He also criticized the LAFD Union for not speaking up against the vaccine mandate on behalf of its members. The fire captain accused the union of being in “lockstep with total tyranny.”

Granucci explained: “This is not about politics. This is not about left or right. This is not about red versus blue. This is not about Republican versus Democrat. This isn’t even about vaccinated versus unvaccinated. This is tyranny. This is about freedom of choice.”

Predicting that there would be booster shots and even more vaccines, Granucci asked: “When will this end?”

“I’ll tell you where it’s going to stop,” he began answering his question. “It’s going to stop right here, right now. I am putting my administration and my union on blast. You had the opportunity to get in front of this and you didn’t.”

The fire captain claimed that hundreds of first responders had a lawyer on retainer, who he described as “a shark.”

“We will seek legal counsel and we will take the fight to you, the city of Los Angeles,” he said.

“We all see what’s happening here,” he said, concluding the video. “I can’t sit idly by anymore. If things have moved that fast in the last 18 months, where the hell will we be in the next 18 months?”

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

COVID Noncompliance Now Labeled Top ‘Terror Threat’

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | August 25, 2021

When you think of potential terror threats, what comes to mind? Did opposing irrational and/or illegal COVID measures make your list? Well, it recently got top billing on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of potential terror threats as we approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

potential terror threats

Over the past 18 months, COVID countermeasures have become increasingly tyrannical, and we now appear to have reached a new high (or low, depending on your perspective). The U.S. government is actually viewing citizens who exercise their Constitutional rights as domestic terrorists, enemies of the state.

Dehumanizing Discrimination Against Unvaccinated

As reported by Daisy Luther with The Organic Prepper,1 “Shocking and dehumanizing discrimination against the unvaccinated is about to make life VERY difficult.” She is, of course, referring to the media and government narrative that if anyone gets infected with SARS-CoV-2, it’s the fault of some germ-ridden disease-spreading unvaccinated person.

Public officials and media pundits alike are seemingly intentionally fanning the flames of unveiled hatred against those who choose to not participate in the world’s largest medical experiment and get a novel injection that programs your body to produce a disease-causing protein, the full ramifications of which won’t be known for years.

Getting the shot is a patriotic duty, we’ve been told, and opting out is nothing short of a traitorous act, according to some. This kind of narrative is extremely dangerous, yet no one seems to care — not even the departments responsible for keeping this the land of the free.

As noted by Luther, the rhetoric now hurled at unvaccinated people would under normal circumstances be considered hate speech. Now, it’s promoted as virtuous, and reporting a statistic or published medical finding that counters the official narrative that masks work, lockdowns are effective and the COVID shot is safe and effective is considered hate speech.

Can You See the Psychological Operation at Work?

It’s important to realize that this insanity is not accidental. It’s by design, and part of a sophisticated psychological operation to drive people mad. I wrote about this last week.

The article is no longer available, as all articles are removed after 48 hours, but you can still view the video I featured, which explains how mass psychosis is induced using fear, waves of increasing threat, isolation and other dehumanizing tricks of the psychological trade.

Once a population has sufficiently lost touch with reality and embraced a “magical rationale” where irrationality is justified, they become capable of unthinkable horrors and abuses against people believed to be responsible for their ongoing anxiety.

By convincing everyone that unvaccinated people are to blame for the never-ending pandemic, the pandemic industrial complex prevents the masses from identifying and turning on the real culprits — the string-pullers and beneficiaries of the psychological breakdown.

“It has happened many times in history: when human beings were used as slaves and property, when human beings were the subject of horrific experiments when the media and people in power deliberately manipulated human beings to believe that other humans weren’t like them, and therefore, it was permissible to mistreat or abuse them,” Luther writes.2

“As the saying goes, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And repeat it, they are. I think, regardless of our stance, we can all agree that fervently wishing for bad things to happen to those who believe differently and dehumanizing them for their beliefs is pretty awful.

Don Lemon of CNN believes the unvaccinated should not be allowed to buy food or work. Does this mean he believes that they should starve to death? …

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner says that unvaccinated people shouldn’t go to bars and restaurants. A doctor pondered the ethics of whether he could refuse to see unvaccinated patients in The New York Times.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s Big Kahuna of COVID, blames those not vaccinated for a new spike in cases … Alabama Governor Kay Ivey wants everyone to blame the unvaccinated for any cases of COVID that happen to occur …

That’ll really be helpful if someone unhinged loses a loved one to COVID and decides to seek vengeance on some ‘unvaccinated folk.’ After all, the governor said it was their fault. Speaking of which, Nick Cohen of The Guardian said that it was only a matter of time before ‘we turn on the unvaccinated.’”

Concerns for Lack of Vaccination Are Highly Irrational

Those who continue to pressure everyone to get vaccinated have simply failed to look at the most recent data, which clearly demonstrate that those who are vaccinated are actually FAR more likely to get COVID, and worse, contribute to the process of creating variants.

As recently reported by Israeli National News,3,4,5 recent data show Israelis who have received the COVID jab are 6.72 times more likely to get infected than people who have recovered from natural infection.

Among the 7,700 new COVID cases diagnosed so far during the current wave of infections that began in May 2021, 39% were vaccinated (about 3,000 cases), 1% (72 patients) had recovered from a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection and 60% were neither vaccinated nor previously infected. Israeli National News notes:6

“With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.

By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.”

Penalties Large and Small Are Being Proposed

In addition to the penalties for lack of vaccination already mentioned in the quote above, Luther lists a number of others in her article, such as requiring unvaccinated people to:

  • Get tested daily at their own expense
  • Docking people’s paychecks
  • Charging students nonrefundable quarantine fees
  • Denying medical care at hospitals
  • Canceling private insurance or raising premiums by thousands of dollars a year
  • Suspending gun permits and driver’s licenses
  • Denying access to loans
  • Withholding government assistance and federal benefits like Social Security, VA benefits, subsidized housing and pensions

As noted by Luther, “The rabid contempt for those who think differently can lead nowhere good. For those who believe we should all get vaccinated or not, are you okay with this kind of dehumanization?”

Project Veritas Exposes Doxing Double-Standard

In the video above, Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe exposes yet another double-standard that has become norm. Project Veritas has been accused of unethically doxing the rich and powerful, yet CNN a few weeks ago did the exact same thing to me.

CNN reporter Randi Kaye filmed herself ambushing staff at our corporate headquarters in Cape Coral, Florida, without blurring out the suite number. She then went to my home. As noted by O’Keefe, mainstream media routinely dox “the non-powerful” whose right to privacy is actually greater than government and media officials.

Project Veritas recently got banned from Twitter for publishing a video in which they confronted Facebook vice president Guy Rosen outside his home, asking questions about Facebook’s hate speech policy. So, to recap, Project Veritas got banned from Twitter for doing the exact same thing CNN did to me — but didn’t get banned for.

Artificial Intelligence Is Part of the New Battlefield

In mid-July 2021, surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a public advisory,7,8 calling COVID misinformation “an urgent threat to public health” that undermines “our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic.” The advisory calls for software algorithms to be deployed by social media platforms to “avoid amplifying misinformation” and strengthening monitoring of misinformation.

Similarly, at a recent Health Information Management Systems Society conference in Las Vegas, Hans Kluge, Europe region director of the World Health Organization, called for the use of “digital health” and artificial intelligence to fight misinformation. Artificial intelligence could also be used to identify communities with low COVID jab rates so that “swift assistance” can be launched in those communities.

According to STAT News,9 Kluge has “established a WHO unit focused on behavioral and cultural insights to understand the drivers of vaccine hesitancy and develop programs to counteract it.” Such programs include community outreach programs and identifying “champions” for the COVID jabs within religious communities, youth communities and the media.

Already, Kluge’s team is working with an artificial intelligence tool called EARS (Early AI-supported Response with Social listening tool). It mines blogs, news articles and online forums in 20 countries and analyzes the narratives it finds.

It can then anticipate how the information will spread, and what the effects of the information might have. While not stated in the STAT article, it seems reasonable to assume EARS is also capable of predicting which narratives would most effectively counter the concerns people express on these mined platforms.

Chosen propaganda narratives can then be pumped out using bot farms, such as the one imaged below.10 It may be shocking to some to realize that many of the “people” who are in favor of the official COVID narrative are not real people at all.

There are tons of fake profiles run by bot farms on all social media platforms that generate massive amounts of propaganda, including accounts with blue checkmarks.

The blue checkmark is supposed to designate that a user’s identity has been verified by Twitter and is “of public interest,” but clearly, the authentication process lacks in some of the basics, such as making sure the user actually exists in physical form and has physical control over the account in question.

james tweet

Anti-Digital Hate Group Promotes Digital Hate

A central cog in the network fanning the flames of hatred and attacks on people whose only sin is the desire to make decisions for themselves is a group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

It’s founded by a British national and unregistered foreign agent named Imran Ahmed, who is also a member of the Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force under the British government’s Commission for Countering Extremism.

According to Ahmed, anyone who questions the rationale behind lockdowns, mask wearing or the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 injection may be prone to violent extremism, and the reason CNN trekked hundreds of miles across central Florida in search of me is because Ahmed has labeled me a top COVID misinformer.

In the CCDH’s initial report, “The Anti-Vaxx Playbook,”11 I was identified as one of the six most influential “anti-vaxxers” online that must be silenced. This was followed by “The Disinformation Dozen”12 and “Disinformation Dozen: The Sequel,”13 in which the list of targets doubled from six to 12.

These last two reports are what everyone — politicians, attorneys general, social media platforms and “blue checkmark influencers” — are now using to “prove” I am the most-dangerous and prolific superspreader of misinformation on the net.14

Whose Interests Does CCDH Protect and Promote?

When you think about it, isn’t it rather curious that government officials are actually targeting and violating the Constitutional rights of American citizens based on the opinions of an unregistered foreign agent who runs a tiny little “pop-up group” funded by dark money?15 As noted in a July 20, 2021, Drill Down article:16

“When a report goes viral in the news cycle, it only makes sense to question where it came from — especially if that report has influence all the way up to the Oval Office, affecting public health policy, while also having dangerous implications for free speech.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate … released a bombshell report earlier this week. It was picked up everywhere and had the following revelation: The majority of COVID misinformation came from just 12 people … But could this be a wily gambit by outside interests to justify the Biden administration’s censorship partner-up with Big Tech?

According to The Federalist, ‘The Center for Countering Digital Hate is an obscure international group reportedly based out of the United Kingdom and Washington, D.C., that works as an adviser to multiple governments and elite-run institutions about digital technology and regulation.

According to its website, the left-wing Center for Countering Digital Hate prides itself on ‘researching, exposing, and then shutting down users and news sites it deems unacceptable in the digital sphere.’

Users and news sites it deems unacceptable? That seems potentially dangerous, considering we know very little about the CCDH.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressed his concerns on Twitter with the following post: ‘Who is funding this overseas dark money group — Big Tech? Billionaire activists? Foreign governments? We have no idea. Americans deserve to know what foreign interests are attempting to influence American democracy’ …

No one knows who funds them. No one knows who is driving their research. But their findings are being used in censorship efforts under the guise of controlling misinformation?”

Violating Bioethical Principles Puts Lives at Risk

The sad irony is that government officials are really the ones contributing to unnecessary death and suffering by not adhering to bioethical principles that are enshrined in law. These laws exist for a good reason. They protect people from unnecessary harm and unwanted medical risks.

As an experimental trial participant, which is what everyone is at the moment who accepts a COVID shot, you have the right to receive full disclosure of any adverse event risks. Based on that disclosure, you then have the right to decide whether you want to participate.

Adverse event risk disclosure should be provided at the level of detail disclosed in any drug package insert. However, the COVID shots have no such insert or detailed disclosure, and adverse event reports are even being suppressed and censored from the public.

Instead, as explained by the FDA,17 since the COVID shots are not yet licensed,18 rather than providing a package insert, the FDA directs health care providers to access a lengthy online “fact sheet” that lists clinical trial adverse events and ongoing updates of adverse events reported after emergency use administration to the public.

A shorter, separate, online fact sheet with far less information in it is available for patients — but, provider or patient, you still have to know where to look up each of the vaccines authorized for emergency use separately on the FDA website to access those fact sheets.19

Adverse event risks must also be communicated in a way that you can comprehend what the risks are. This means the disclosure must be written in eighth grade language. In clinical trials, researchers must actually verify participants’ comprehension of the risks.

Failure to disclose these adverse effects, which is likely occurring in nearly every COVID injection case, results in an inability to give true informed consent as the person was never informed of all of the already well-established risks.

As just one example of many, Marie Follmer, in an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,20 said no one ever warned her there was a risk of myocarditis. Her athletic son, Greyson, took the shot and is now unable to do much of anything and she fears he might die.

She admits not doing any of her own research, blindly trusting what she was told. Now, she distrusts the whole process, including doctors, as all have so far refused to acknowledge that there might be a link to the shot, and no one knows how to make him better.

Most importantly, the acceptance of an experimental product must be fully voluntary and uncoerced. Enticement is forbidden. It’s downright impossible to argue that the public messaging and incentives ranging from free junk food to million-dollar lotteries do not constitute coercion.

At the end of the day, if you decide you want to participate in a medical experiment, whatever it might be, that’s up to you. But everyone else also has that same right to choose.

If you find aggression mounting against an unvaccinated friend or family member, thanks to the current indoctrination that encourages savage and irrational behavior, think of something you absolutely don’t want done to your body, and then imagine being forced to do it just to maintain your right to enter a grocery store, buy insurance or keep your job.

Sources and References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Face Mask Folly in Retrospect

“It’s just a mask”: Global impact of the face mask folly (K. Birb)
Swiss Policy Research | August 22, 2021

It has been known for decades that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. Why has much of the world nonetheless fallen for the face mask folly? Ten reasons.

1) The droplet model

Many ‘health authorities’ have relied on the obsolete ‘droplet model’ of virus transmission. If this model were correct, face masks would indeed work. But in reality, respiratory droplets – which by definition cannot be inhaled – play almost no role in virus transmission. Instead, respiratory viruses are transmitted via much smaller aerosols, as well as, possibly, some object surfaces. Face masks don’t work against either of these transmission routes.

2) The Asian paradox

During the first year of the pandemic, several East Asian countries had a very low coronavirus infection rate, and many ‘health experts’ falsely assumed that this was due to face masks. In reality, it was due to very rapid border controls in some countries neighboring China as well as a combination of metabolic and immunologic factors reducing transmission rates. Nevertheless, many East Asian countries eventually got overwhelmed by the coronavirus, too (see charts below).

3) The Czech mirage

In the spring of 2020, the Czech Republic was one of the first European countries that introduced face masks. Because the Czech infection rate initially stayed low, many ‘health experts’ falsely concluded that this was due to the masks. In reality, most of Eastern Europe simply missed the first wave of the epidemic. A few months later, the Czech Republic had the highest infection rate in the world, but by then, much of the world had already introduced face mask mandates.

4) Fake science

For decades, studies have shown that face masks don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics. But with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and increasing political pressure (see below), suddenly studies appeared claiming the opposite. In reality, these studies were a mixture of confounded observational data, unrealistic modelling and lab results, and outright fraud. The most influential fraudulent study certainly was the WHO-commissioned meta-study published in The Lancet.

5) Asymptomatic transmission

Another factor contributing to the implementation of mask mandates was the notion of ‘asymptomatic transmission’. The idea was that everybody should be wearing a mask because even people without symptoms might spread the virus. The importance of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is still a matter of debate – up to half of all transmission might occur prior to symptom onset –, but either way, face masks simply don’t work against aerosol transmission.

6) Political pressure

Several political factors contributed to the implementation of mask mandates. First, some politicians simply wanted to “do something” against the pandemic; second, some politicians thought face masks might have a “psychological effect” and might “remind” citizens to stay cautious (if anything, it had the opposite effect: creating a ‘false sense of security’); third, some politicians used mask mandates to enforce compliance and pressure the population into accepting mass vaccination.

In addition, there was a vicious circle involving science and politics: politicians claimed to “follow the science”, but scientists followed politics. For instance, the WHO famously admitted that their updated mask guidelines were in response to “political lobbying”, not new evidence. The most influential lobby group was “masks4all”, founded by a “Young Leader” of the World Economic Forum (WEF).

7) The media

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the ‘mass media’ amplified the fraudulent science and the political pressure driving mask mandates. Only some independent media outlets and some truly independent experts questioned the validity of the underlying evidence. However, their voices got suppressed as dubious “fact checking” organizations eagerly enforced official guidelines and throttled or censored many articles and videos critical of face masks.

8) “Surgeons wear masks”

Surgeons wear masks, so they must be effective, right? This was another notion contributing to the face mask misunderstanding. In reality, surgeons wear masks not against viruses, but against much larger bacteria, but more importantly, studies have long shown that even surgeons’ masks make no difference in terms of bacterial wound infections.

9) Misleading memes

To convince low-IQ social media users of the effectiveness of face masks, several unscientific memes were created. The most notorious one probably was the “peeing into your pants” meme, shared by many ‘health experts’ (really). Many of these memes exploited the fact that most people simply don’t realize how small and ubiquitous viral aerosols really are.

10) Doubling down

After mask mandates had been implemented globally and hundreds of billions of dollars had been spent on masks, it soon became obvious – once more – that masks simply don’t work against respiratory virus epidemics (see charts below). But at that point, neither politicians, nor ‘health experts’, nor duped citizens who had to wear them for months wanted to admit this anymore.

Instead, some ‘health authorities’ doubled down and enforced outdoor masking (even on beaches), double-masking, or N95/FFP2 masking, to no avail. The one novel scientific insight produced during the coronavirus pandemic was that even N95/FFP2 mask mandates have made no difference at all.

Sweden: The exception that proved the rule

Only very few countries in the world have resisted the face mask folly. The most famous example certainly is Sweden (see charts below), which has also resisted the lockdown experiment. Naturally, Swedish coronavirus mortality has remained below the European average. But the many vicious attacks against Sweden by much of the international media showed just how difficult it has been to escape the global madness and follow the real science during this bizarre pandemic.

A child wearing a mask at school (more)

How face masks and lockdowns failed

The following charts show that infections have been driven primarily by seasonal and endemic factors, whereas mask mandates and lockdowns have had no discernible impact (charts: IanMSC).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 24, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And BuzzFeed wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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