Liberals vote to keep travel ban against unvaccinated Canadians
The Counter Signal | May 30, 2022
Members of parliament today voted 202-117 to keep the current travel ban against unvaccinated Canadians in place.
The Conservatives proposed the motion to have the current travel ban against the unvaccinated lifted.
Trudeau, Jagmeet Singh, and Travel Minister Omar Alghabra voted against the motion, as did virtually every Liberal, NDP, and Bloq Quebecois member.
Conservatives all voted to lift the ban.
“Today, the NDP-Liberal government voted against our common-sense motion that would have returned to pre-pandemic rules and service levels for travel and helped end the delays we’re seeing at airports across the country,” their Conservative’s website reads.
“As Canadian travellers are being subject to extreme delays, line-ups, bottlenecks, and missed connections because of unnecessary protocols, our allies across the world, including the European Union and the United States, have loosened rules for passengers on flights and in airports.”
“. . . Airports have directly cited the Liberals’ policies as the reason for these delays . . .”
“After two long years of the pandemic, Canadians are finally looking to return to normalcy and begin travelling again. Unfortunately, the NDP-Liberal government continues to cling to outdated and unnecessary protocols that are exacerbating delays.”
Conservative members of parliament proposed the motion on May 17. However, Charter rights – such as freedom of movement – were not leveraged to justify their call to drop restrictions.
Instead, “unacceptable wait times” at the airport (for those who are allowed to travel), labour shortages, and economic losses caused by the restrictions were cited.
However, the motion also mentioned that the restrictions were ineffective and that international allies have all dropped their restrictions.
Indeed, Canada remains one of the only countries to have a ban on unvaccinated citizens from leaving their own country, and the efficacy of the restrictions appears questionable at best.
The Trudeau Liberal government was expected to renew the federal vaccine policy eight weeks ago but has still not announced anything.
Trudeau wants “new tools” to tackle online “misinformation”
No details given
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 28, 2022
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that the government is investing in new tools for security agencies to fight extremism and online “misinformation.”
“We need new tools to fight all of these pending threats, and that’s why we’ve turned to all of our security agencies to look at new ways of ensuring peoples’ safety,” Trudeau said in a press briefing in Vancouver, without specifying the tools he was referring to.
“Because, as we know, what happens in the virtual world has impact in the real world. It doesn’t stay on the internet.”
Trudeau added that the tools were necessary to fight “new threats weighing in on our society and country,” mentioning the spike in disinformation and misinformation and foreign adversaries and domestic extremists weaponizing social media.
“Whether it’s extremist ideology and right-wing terrorism on the rise in Canada, or whether it’s examples like the illegal [Freedom Convoy] protests we saw in the winter, there are a whole new set of challenges that we need to be responding to,” Trudeau said.
The prime minister paid the usual lip service that politicians do when they bring in limits to speech, saying that the new tools would be deployed in a way that protects free speech and the right to protest.
Trudeau specified that the government was “working closely with organizations like the Canadian Security Establishment [CSE] around communications.”
The mention of communications suggest tools that would collect and analyze data from social media to identify potential threats.
World Bank to receive $450 million to start pandemic preparedness fund
The Counter Signal | May 17, 2022
Joe Biden announced that the US would give the World Bank $450 million to start a pandemic preparedness fund, which will be run in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO).
“We’re increasing our support for [a] new pandemic preparedness and global health security fund that will be established at the World Bank this summer with $450 million in seed funding,” Joe Biden announced at the second Global COVID Summit.
Vice President Kamala Harris also said that the US would work to “shape new international norms” on pandemic-related issues.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom confirmed this and continued, reminding others in attendance that the WHO is still drafting its pandemic treaty.
“At the World Health Assembly this month, WHO will present a plan to strengthen the global architecture for health emergency preparedness response and resilience,” said Tedros Adhanom. “This includes the creation of a financial intermediary fund to support equitable access to life-saving tools in the face of future epidemics and pandemics.”
During the COVID Summit, other world leaders confirmed that they’re in favour of strengthening the WHO after reiterating that “the pandemic is not over” — even though it clearly is.
PM Justin Trudeau also announced that he would waste $732 million in Canadian taxpayers’ money on the Access to COVID-19 Tools-Accelerator (ACT-A).
“We must continue to work together and support the international response to end this pandemic everywhere and for everyone,” Trudeau began.
“Today, I am announcing new and meaningful funding for the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), bringing Canada’s total contribution to more than $2 billion since the start of the pandemic. Canada is contributing to the international pandemic response and will continue to work with partners to ensure that that we strengthen our collective ability to prevent, prepare and respond to disease outbreaks going forward.”
WHO pandemic treaty: A fresh push for vaccine passports, global surveillance, and more
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | May 20, 2022
Members of the World Health Organization (WHO) are days away from voting on an international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) which would give the unelected WHO greater control of national emergency healthcare decisions and new powers to push vaccine passports, global surveillance, and “global coordinated actions” that address “misinformation” whenever it declares a “health emergency.”
From May 22 to May 28, representatives of the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) will attend a World Health Assembly meeting in Geneva and vote on this treaty and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR). If passed, both the treaty and amendments to the IHR will be legally binding under international law.
The international pandemic treaty
The World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making body of the WHO, established an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) to draft and negotiate a “global accord on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” in December 2021. The WHA aims to have this treaty adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution which gives the WHA the power to impose legally binding conventions or agreements on WHO member states if two-thirds of the WHA vote in favor of them.
While the WHO framed this as an international pandemic treaty, the latest draft of the treaty has since evolved to cover all “health emergencies.” Unlike the term “pandemic,” which is limited in scope and refers to the worldwide spread of infectious disease, the WHO’s definition of a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) is much broader and applies to all types of disease, regardless of whether they’re infectious:
“A PHEIC is defined in the IHR (2005) as, ‘an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.’”
The draft treaty places the “WHO at the centre” and solidifies the WHO as “the directing and coordinating authority on international health” and gives it sweeping, legally binding powers to force member states to adopt many of the censorship and surveillance tools that were imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of the key areas of the draft treaty include:
International vaccine passports and contact tracing: Member states will be required to “support the development of standards for producing a digital version of the International Certificate of Vaccination and Prophylaxis” (the WHO’s official vaccine passport). The WHO will also “develop norms and standards” for “digital technology applications relevant to international travel” such as contact tracing apps and digital health forms.
Global surveillance: The WHO will conduct “coordinated global surveillance of public health threats” and member states will be required to build out their surveillance systems and work with “the WHO’s global systems for surveillance.” Non-state actors (which could include Big Tech companies) will also be required to work with governments, the WHO, and other international partners to leverage their “considerable data” to “create the strongest possible early warning and response systems.”
Addressing “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “too much information:” The draft treaty pushes “national and global coordinated actions to address the misinformation, disinformation, and stigmatization, that undermine public health.” Member states will also be required to strengthen their approaches to “infodemic management” (a term coined by the WHO that refers to “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak.”) Additionally, non-state actors will be required to actors to work with governments to fight disinformation.
Funding: WHO members are set to collectively pay the WHO over $950 million in dues for 2022-2023 and already paid over $270 million in voluntary contributions for 2020-2021. And this draft treaty proposes that G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US) also pay $11 billion for the “Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A).” Additionally, it intends to create an”International Pandemic Financing Facility” that will extract long-term (10-15 year) contributions of $5-10 billion per year.
We obtained a copy of the draft treaty for you here.
If this draft treaty is approved at the May 22 to May 28 WHA meeting, the INB will hold a second meeting on August 1 to discuss progress on the draft. A progress report will then be delivered at the 76th WHA meeting in May 2023. The final treaty will then be presented for adoption at the 77th WHA meeting in May 2024.
Proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005)
On January 18, the Biden administration quietly sent the WHO its extensive proposed amendments to the IHR. The details of these proposed amendments were only made public on April 12, almost three months after they were sent.
Under the current IHR, 196 countries are legally required under international law to build the capability to detect and report potential public health emergencies worldwide and respond promptly to a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) whenever it’s declared by the WHO.
These proposed amendments from the Biden administration give the WHO and its Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, sweeping new powers to declare public health emergencies, even over the objection of member states, and implement global surveillance measures that require the mass collection of genetic sequence data.
Some of the key amendments that are being pushed by the Biden administration include:
Increased WHO powers to declare “potential” emergencies: Currently, the WHO can only declare a PHEIC when there’s an actual “public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease.” These proposed amendments allow it to declare a PHEIC when there’s a “potential or actual” PHEIC. This means there doesn’t have to be evidence of the international spread of disease, just the potential for it.
Increased WHO powers to declare health emergencies: Currently, the WHO has to follow the PHEIC criteria when declaring a public health emergency and health emergencies can only be declared by the Director-General. But under these proposed amendments, the WHO Director-General can issue an “intermediate public health alert” to any country in response to events that don’t meet the criteria of a PHEIC and a WHO “regional director” can declare a “public health emergency of regional concern” (PHERC).
Global surveillance and data sharing: The Biden administration’s proposed amendments empower the WHO to develop new “early warning criteria” for monitoring “national, regional, or global risk posed by an event of unknown causes or sources.” Additionally, these proposed amendments expand the scope of data sharing under the IHR and require members to hand over genetic sequence data to the WHO whenever they have an event that “may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.”
We obtained a copy of the proposed amendments to the IHR for you here.
If these amendments are approved at the May 22 to May 28 WHA meeting, nations have six months to reject them. After six months, they’ll enter into force and any rejection or reservation “shall have no effect.”
The WHO’s history of supporting surveillance and acting as an arbiter of truth
Not only could this treaty and the proposed amendments to the IHR empower the unelected WHO to push surveillance, vaccine passports, and global programs that target what it deems to be misinformation but this international health agency already gave the world a taste of how it exercises these powers during the COVID-19 pandemic. As COVID-19 spread, the WHO rigorously supported surveillance tech and was increasingly used as an arbiter of truth on Big Tech platforms, even though it got many things wrong.
YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and others have partnered with the WHO to tackle misinformation or display labels with information from the WHO. YouTube even goes as far as removing videos that go against the WHO and has censored over 800,000 videos under this policy.
Despite having significant influence over how these platforms determine which posts to brand as misinformation, the WHO has got many things about COVID wrong and amplified misleading statements. For example, in an infamous January 14, 2020 tweet, the WHO stated that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.
The WHO has also praised China’s response to COVID which relies heavily on digital censorship and surveillance. Only recently did the WHO break this trend and criticize China’s zero-COVID policy. And when it did, these digital censorship systems were unsurprisingly used to censor the WHO’s statements on Chinese social platforms.
Another thing that the WHO heavily supported throughout the COVID-19 pandemic was vaccine passports. It pushed for them in December 2020 and it’s still pushing for the adoption of global vaccine passports this year.
The WHO’s undemocratic global governance system
The way the WHO gains its powers gives citizens almost no recourse. Instead of the response to national emergencies in democratic nations being the sole purview of elected officials who can vote on proposed measures that apply to their citizens and be held accountable at the ballot box by those citizens, WHO members vote on legally binding international treaties and agreements on their behalf via the WHA. If two-thirds of the WHA vote to adopt a treaty or agreement, it becomes legally binding under international law.
This global governance system has the support of both parties in most democratic countries. For example, during the 2022 Australian federal election campaign, both of the leading candidates expressed full support for the WHO’s expanded powers.
And the WHO Director-General has used the COVID-19 pandemic to push countries to further embrace the WHO’s global governance system by blasting countries that made their own decisions and claiming that their “‘me-first’ approaches… stymie the global solidarity needed to deal with a global threat.”
Countries that support the WHO’s expanded powers
Many countries have expressed support for the international pandemic treaty or the proposed amendments to the IHR.
The US supports both its proposed IHR amendments and the international pandemic treaty.
The treaty also has the support of the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states). According to the EC, 110 countries supported the decision to launch negotiations on the treaty. If these 110 countries vote in favor of the treaty, it would give the WHA close to the two-thirds of the majority it needs to pass the treaty.
Opposition to the WHO’s expanded powers
While there’s significant member state support for these expanded WHO powers, local politicians, citizens, and rights groups are opposing this power grab.
In the US, Congresswoman Mary Miller (R-IL), Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), have opposed the Biden administration’s proposed amendments to the IHR.
Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) have also opposed the Biden administration’s support of the international pandemic treaty.
In Australia, Senator Malcolm Roberts (One Nation), Senator Alex Antic (Liberal Party), and Senator Gerard Rennick have opposed the international pandemic treaty.
Several UK Members of Parliament (MPs), including the Conservative MPs Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, have also called for the government to provide clarity on the treaty.
UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid responded to Baker’s calls by stating that the UK government supports the treaty but “would not sign up to any instrument that compromises the UK’s sovereignty,” including “any instrument which compromises the UK’s ability to take domestic decisions on national restrictions or other measures.”
A UK Government and Parliament petition urging the government to not sign any WHO pandemic treaty unless it’s approved via public referendum has received over 130,000 signatures which means Parliament will now consider it for a debate. The petition has also trended on the homepage of the UK Government and Parliament petition’s website.
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Christine Anderson has opposed the treaty, branding it an “abolition of democracy by the global elites.”
Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Leslyn Lewis has also pushed back against the treaty and launched a “Stop The Treaty” petition which calls for Canada to decline the treaty.
And rights group World Council for Health has launched a #StopTheWho Campaign which opposes both the treaty and proposed IHR amendments.
But for now, the fate of this WHO power grab rests on the outcome of the May 22 to May 28 WHA meeting.
Trudeau Accuses Russia of ‘Silencing’ Media After CBC Office Shut in Tit-for-Tat Move
Samizdat – 18.05.2022
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Russia of “silencing” media after Moscow closed the local bureau of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in retaliation for Ottawa banning TV service providers in the country from distributing RT.
“Putin’s decision to expel Canadian media from Moscow is an attempt to silence them from reporting the facts, and it is unacceptable,” Trudeau said. “Journalists must be able to work safely – free from censorship, intimidation, and interference. That is something Canada will always stand up for.”
In March, the state telecommunications commission announced that Canada is banning the transmission of Russian broadcasters RT and RT France, citing the alleged exposure of Ukrainians to hate on the basis of race or national origin. The ruling came just weeks after Trudeau asked the commission to review RT’s license in the country.
While the ruling officially put a halt to RT’s presence on Canadian airwaves, the state Russian broadcaster had been pulled from all major television packages weeks earlier.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that in response to Canada’s actions, Russia is closing the CBC office and is canceling the accreditation and visas of its journalists.
Since the start of Russia’s military operation, a number of countries, including those in the European Union, have banned Russian media and introduced sanctions against journalists affiliated with the news outlets.
RT and Sputnik Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan has said Western countries always wanted go get rid of Russian media because the latter provided informative and balanced reporting, and are now using Russia’s special operation in Ukraine as an excuse to do so.
Is a Social Credit System Coming for Us?
By Tessa Lena | May 13, 2022
A Social Credit Score System Is Piloted in Bologna, Italy
The city administration of Bologna, Italy, is piloting a program that brings the beast of the Fourth Industrial Revolution straight to the citizens. It’s an early reiteration of Klaus’ Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution, the honey moon, so to speak — so it comes to the citizens wrapped in gift paper, with balloons, prizes, and party language. But make no mistake: underneath, there is cruel man-eating machine that wants to mine your data and control your behavior!
So, what exactly is happening in Bologna? The administration is “digitizing” their relationship with the citizens. For starters, they are launching an app — with a catch — that will provide an interface to get access to various local services. Without saying it, the they are implementing the “digital governance” aspect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Quoting the Italian source:
“We will give citizens services based on their needs – says the Mayor – and this will allow us to personalize their experience. People will be able to find everything the administration will do on their mobile phones or computers. The physical branches, however, will not disappear.
“We will maintain a ‘physical’ support for all people who do not use the web, especially the older ones,” assures Lepore [Mayor of Bologna]. But the goal is computer literacy that leaves no one behind.”
If we read this announcement with innocent eyes, it sounds like yet another initiative that the bureaucrats are launching, perhaps benevolently, to keep up with the times and with the buzzwords. And in an ideal world — a world filled with flowers, butterflies, rainbows, and harmless, caring bureaucrats — there would be nothing wrong with adding on a little extra convenience via technology.
Technology can be very helpful if done right, and if it comes to us without Trojan horses. But alas, at the moment, we don’t live in such a world!
We live in a world where Klaus Schwab and his buddies and masters are fighting with each other over who gets to eat the most peasants! We live in a world where those who already have great power are seeking even more power — and that world is quickly going back to the feudal-time psychological standards (while, ironically, keeping the modern standards for the levels of industrial poisons in everything around us.)
As far as Trojan horses, the Bologna municipal app actually comes with a social credit system! The “virtuous citizens,” doing nice things, such as using public transport, keeping their energy use low, etc., get “perks,” like points in gaming. For those points, they may be able to get discounts or prizes or access to additional services. Nice Trojan horse, right?
“Among the most innovative interventions is the smart citizen wallet [emphasis mine]. ‘The wallet of the virtuous citizen,’ explains Bugani, who had worked on the project with the Raggi [Virginia Raggi, Mayor of Rome from 2016 to 2021] administration (in Rome today the platform is active in an experimental phase). The idea is similar to the mechanism of ‘a supermarket points collection,’ as the councilor himself points out.
‘Citizens will be recognized if they separate waste, if they use public transport, if they manage energy well, if they do not incur sanctions from the municipal authority, if they are active with the Culture Card.’ Virtuous behaviors that will correspond to a score that the Bolognese will then be able to ‘spend’ on prizes, such as discounts, cultural activities and so on.”
In other words, it’s the “nice” face of digital control. Nice, for now. But we need to be clear: we are looking at the digital control of everything we do in the end of that journey!
Integrated Citizen Relationship Management in Rome
The Italian news source mentions that this approach is already in experimental use in Rome, Italy. In March 2022, Salesforce published the following announcement:
“Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, today announced that the Municipality of Rome has chosen Salesforce to create an Integrated Citizen Relationship Management platform …
Leveraging Salesforce Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud will deliver omni-channel self-service capabilities, seamless collaboration between local government departments, and empower citizens to receive the information they need faster through AI-powered chatbots.
The launch of the MyRhome platform is another step on the Municipality’s path to creating a ‘smart city’ [emphasis mine] — an ecosystem of public and private stakeholders serving citizens wherever they are”.
Of course! We can’t expect any less from Salesforce, given that Marc Benioff is on WEF Board of Trustees!
Also, remember the famous “lockstep scenario” document released by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Global Business Network? The document that the Rockefeller Foundation says today has been misinterpreted by the conspiracy theorists — because the good and virtuous Rockefeller Foundation totally didn’t mean to predict what actually happened in 2020 (and also probably had nothing to do with eugenics)?
Well, keeping in mind that “lockstep scenario” document, here is Peter Schwartz, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Planning at Salesforce and “an internationally renowned futurist and business strategist, specializing in scenario planning and working with corporations, governments, and institutions to create alternative perspectives of the future … Prior to joining Salesforce, Peter was co-founder and chairman of Global Business Network [emphasis mine].” In the words of George Carlin, “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club!”
Their Motive for the “Digital Governance” Model? It’s the Data, Stupid!
At first, it’s the data (to train our future boss, the robot) — and then, increasingly, it’s mainly about control!
Let’s look at a very “interesting” 2017 write-up on digitizing governments on the World Economic Forum’s website. It talks about the importance of collecting data to build and train their beloved AI. It also complains about the fact that a lot of the data kept by governments just sits there in paper format and, dammit, is not making itself useful to the sacred goal of training the AI! Not good, they say, what a waste!
Therefore, to “open” that data to the AI beast, they want the governments to digitize their services — sorry that was the quiet part — what they actually say is that the citizens are craving those digital government systems because, who doesn’t know that the elimination of privacy is … good for us?
The World Economic Forum also suggests that the governments should develop new legal frameworks and data management systems to make data available for free. What a great idea! In 2017, the World Economic Forum mouthpieces were more upfront that today, so it is useful to read exactly what they said back then:
“Need for data is quickly becoming a central theme that applies to all aspects of our evolving digital society. A case in point is the field of artificial intelligence, which promises to revolutionize society (governments included). Companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft are using AI-related techniques to train computers to recognize objects in photos and understand human language.
It is possible to train computers to perform these difficult feats because we have the enormous quantities of data that is required. The same applies to all forms of machine learning, smart manufacturing and every other tech-driven trend shaping the future. They are all reliant on data, and are only as good as the data they crunch. In this context, data has been described as the new oil.'”
“Today, a large majority of the world’s data is in the hands of the private sector … The remainder of the global data sits in government hands, mostly stored in paper format, or legacy systems. To maximize the societal benefits of the data age, a new movement started promoting open data.
While government data is all data or information that government entities produce or collect, making it open refers to publishing and sharing data that can be readily and easily consulted and re-used by anyone with access to internet with no fees or technological barriers.
Most of this data currently remains locked up and proprietary (private property of companies, governments and other organizations). This severely limits its public value.
Data is now a new social good and governments will need to think of some form of data responsibility legislation that guides the private sector and other data owners on their duties in the data age: the duty to collect, manage and share in a timely manner [emphasis mine], as well as the duty to protect.
This legislation is needed over and above a government’s own open and big data management systems, and will need to cover all data stakeholders (irrespective of ownership or other governing rules).”
“Once a clear legal framework is in place, governments need to develop, and quickly master, a new core capability: data curation … Most governments around the world still struggle with legacy databases that are incompatible with each other, and work against any kind of data-sharing or data-driven design. Laws and regulations are still in their infancy and struggling to cope with the pace of change …”
“Governments must review a vast number of laws and regulations [emphasis mine]. From harmonizing and enforcing privacy regulations and protecting against data-breaches, to regulations that ensure net neutrality and data flows. Today’s debates over the future of big data are based on the assumption that the internet will remain a series of open networks through which data easily flows.
Some countries have begun to harden their internet systems, and the concept of net neutrality is uncertain. If the internet becomes a network of closed networks, the full potential of big data may not be realized.”
“Governments must also improve their capabilities when it comes to citizen engagement to effectively and actively engage with both providers and users of data. This requires governments to create a culture of open data [emphasis mine] – something governments are starting to do with various degrees of success.
The level of citizen engagement is not the typical government communication function, but a more open, horizontal, and fast-paced G2C platform.”
Must, must, must. So I am guessing, national sovereignty is a sore thumb in the way of our aspiring Davos masters because in their minds, they have already decided that they want our data (but not theirs) to be openly available, and that they don’t want any questions from the peasants.
A tangential comment: As a musician, I am remembering with some bitterness how Big Tech was pushing for “open data” and “open access” back in the day, selling it as “free expression” and “democracy,” and as a result — since buying music became unfashionable — musicians lost much of their income … and nobody cared!
I am glad that now at least, a lot more people are realizing what liars whose Big Tech companies are, and what liars they have always been all along, when they were talking about “free expression”! Look at them now, with their “free expression”! They are quite happy to censor! So it’s only our data that they want to be open — not our opinions!
And Here Is Another Curiosity From the World Economic Forum
They published this article in 2018:
“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is expected to wreak havoc on labour markets, with AI and robots replacing various white-collar jobs. One job category largely excluded from scientific reports is that of government leaders, despite being one of the most critiqued, scrutinized and ridiculed jobs of all.”
“However, commentators from countries as diverse as India, the UK, New Zealand and Japan have started to suggest that robots as government leaders could drastically improve decision-making, by being much less irrational and erratic than their inherently flawed human counterparts.”
After freaking us out, the World Economic Forum writers chuckle and let us continue being governed by human politicians, at least for now:
“For the time being, it seems neither possible nor optimal for robots to replace government leaders, despite the clear imperfections displayed by the latter group … Ultimately, a more realistic and desirable scenario is one in which AI and automation are neither competitors nor substitutes to humans, but tools that government leaders can engage effectively and sometimes defer to, in order to make better, fairer and more inclusive decisions.”
Phew, it’s almost like … you know, when a street robber first tells us to give him all of your money but then agrees to take only half! Such a kindly, generous robber! We are so lucky!
World Economic Forum’s “Agile Nations”
The 2017 WEB write-up about digital governance reads like a “wish list” and a blueprint for the governments to act upon. (I guess, given the bribing and coercive power of the people who’ve composed the wish list, their wish list had a strong chance of becoming the bureaucrats’ blueprint the moment it was written.) So in 2020, seven nations got together and signed an agreement to essentially implement it. A quote from “Agile Canada“:
“In November 2020, seven countries signed on to the Agile Nations Charter, establishing Agile Nations as a forum for countries to collaborate on creating a global regulatory environment in which innovation can thrive.
Member countries include: Canada, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) also participate as observers.”
“Priority areas for cooperation are: data and communications, transportation, medical diagnosis and treatment, clean technology, legal and professional services, pro-innovation regulatory approaches.”
And here’s from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development:
“The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought economic and social disruption worldwide. As people and businesses focus on recovery, governments must ensure that innovation, which will power economic growth and solve the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges, is not held back by outdated regulations [emphasis mine].”
Translation from Orwellian to English: “We want your data, including your medical and biometric data — and we want it now. Look at how lovely our AI is … my precious! (Sorry couldn’t help it!) The so called national laws and regulations interfere with the speed at which we can get a hold of your data.
Like we said, we want it now, and so we would very much like it if so called national laws and regulation got replaced with a digital framework that we write and that we can update any time we like! Sounds like a good idea or what? Who wants some funding? You know what you need to do to get that funding, don’t you?” The quote continues:
“As part of the development of the OECD principles on Effective and Innovation Friendly Rule-Making in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have been co-operating to look deeper into the interlinkages between regulation and emerging technologies …
Ministers from Canada, Denmark, Italy, Japan, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom announced their plan to lead the world in fostering responsible innovation and entrepreneurship.”
“In addition, in support of the mission of the Agile Nations, representatives of Facebook also offered to launch a call for research – overseen by an independent steering committee of experts in the field of law, regulation and entrepreneurship – into what approaches to rulemaking (e.g. regulatory sandboxes, policy prototyping) were the most effective for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
As this initiative continues to develop, other businesses will be encouraged and invited to co-sponsor this initiative, and to venture their own ideas to support the work of the Agile Nations.”
“In sum, the Agile Nations Charter sets out each country’s commitment to creating a regulatory environment in which new ideas can thrive. The agreement paves the way for these nations to cooperate in helping innovators navigate each country’s rules, test new ideas with regulators and scale them across the seven markets.
Priority areas for cooperation include the green economy, mobility, data, financial and professional services, and medical diagnosis and treatment.”
“Scientific Management”
The World Economic Forum’s agenda is a strange mix of religious fundamentalism and “scientific management.” As I wrote earlier in an article about the mind of a technocrat, scientific management is a “method of industrial optimization developed by Taylor in the late 19th and early 20th century. The essence of his method was extreme fragmentation and compartmentalization of the production process.”
It required taking a complex process, breaking it down into very simple tasks, timing each task, optimizing it to the maximum using the stopwatch, and then assigning each of those simple tasks to different workers, while insisting that the workers should only use the pre-optimized motor patterns and work as efficiently as possible. Under scientific management, there was no room for workers’ creativity.
And while Taylor and Ford intended the scientific management method for the purpose of streamlining industrial production, the Davos charlatans aim to manage our entire lives, and justify it with some bogus “public good” and “community values”!
Whose “Community Values” Are Those, Anyway?
Here is the elephant in the room: It’s the Davos charlatans — and I want to repeat the word “charlatans” because that’s who they are underneath their bank accounts and their important speeches — who are writing our so called “community values”! They are trying to latch onto our natural social instincts and weaponize our good instincts against us!
They want us to be unassuming, guilty “good citizens” who put a limit on our carbon footprint and on the number of children we have — while they, the self-appointed “guardians” of the world, fly private jets to climate change conferences and have as many kids as they damn like!
And here’s the thing. There is nothing wrong with real community values! We are social creatures, and it benefits us to live together well. However, community values are only as good as the people who propose them — and community values turn into a pumpkin the moment someone like Schwab touches them!
As Good as the People
Let’s even forget about Schwab for a second and think how community values work in principle. Let’s imagine a small village. If the people living in that village are mostly healed and grounded, they will raise their children to seek wisdom and live well with others — from the heart, not from the letter.
However, if the people in the village have been abused, and abused, and abused again — and never healed — then even the authentic community values in that village could end up being anxious, rigid, and detrimental to freedom.
Hurt people tend to teach their children that life is meant to be joyless. They tend to slap their children’s wrists for wanting to be free, saying it’s a selfish folly. Hurt people hurt people! And at one point, the rigid rules might have been an invention of a cunning predator — but after prolonged abuse, people might have internalized them and passed them on to their children! (And look at how many people in the West sincerely adopted the religion of the Mask … they have internalized it!)
Another example: in my birth homeland of Russia, there are many small communities where the people carry so much hurt and sadness that the gloom is almost palpable in the air. I am saying this from personal experience, and with much pain and love for my people. I ran away from that gloom and immigrated to America because the “community values” felt too joyless!
So when it comes to Klaus Schwab and friends, they are only as powerful as we let them. I believe that that healing ourselves and our relationships is at the top of our priorities list in the battle against transhumanism — because anything we do from a place of love has more power than anything we do from the place of fear!
Why Will Transhumanism Fail?
This system, the entire man-eating beast, will eventually fail, I have no doubt — but we don’t know when, and we need to stay humble, brave, and very patient. The cruel beast may fail very soon, or it may take a while to fail. I think it depends on how quickly we remember to relate to each other in spirit, with love and happy humility — instead of labeling and judging each other based on ancestry, politics, or differences in opinion.
I think it depends on how quickly we realize that the freedom taken away from the people everywhere, throughout history, has been as existentially precious as the freedom that is being taken away from us right now — because there is no fundamental difference between us and other people, and never has been.
We, here and now, are dealing with the same dilemma that many in the past have dealt with, and some have died from. Spirit is spirit, and freedom is freedom! And I think that when we remember to stand together and honor each other and each other’s love and each other’s courage, we’ll be undefeatable. No Klaus Schwab can do anything to us if we refuse to betray our fellow human beings for any reason.
And sooner or later, spiritual clarity will prevail, and this transhumanist beast, the culmination of abuse, will fail. The reason why it will fail is simple. We are not machines, and when we are managed like machines — increasingly so over the centuries — our souls bleed badly. When we are managed like slaves, we suffer unbearably — and suffering, while it’s not a preferred way of obtaining clarity, still mysteriously leads to spiritual clarity. Life puts no suffering to waste!
And when the pain gets unbearable, and there is nowhere to go but toward our heart of hearts, our souls scream to the skies, and we pray for answers with no arrogance and no talking points, and then something magical happens. When our fear and pain become too much but we keep pushing, we grow our souls to where solutions show up out of nowhere.
And then we cry, laugh, and pray more for healing, and more solutions show up, and we look back and we suddenly know why we had to suffer, and why the sweetness was worth it. And then we start living well because, after all this suffering, we finally remember that everything in the world, everything-everything, has always been about love — and that living well with each other is not just pleasant but also very practical.
Meddling with modelling
Divisive and false claims that the unvaccinated are a danger
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | May 6, 2022
This paper, published in the “peer-reviewed” Canadian Medical Association Journal, quite simply represents an amoral, unethical and utterly transparent attempt to use pseudoscientific modelling to fabricate a false narrative. The apparent objective seems to be sowing divisions in society by marginalising and vilifying the unvaccinated.
The paper describes a “study” which is nothing of the sort. It actually describes a model which the authors have constructed. This is an unnecessarily complex model — and suspiciously so. The model itself has been very expertly taken apart by Jessica Rose here and Drs Rancourt and Hickey for the Ontario Civil Liberties Association here.
The authors appear to have tested their model to death to find the optimal combination of inputs which results in the “narrative” they wish to promote.
The logical flaws in this approach have been brilliantly analysed by Dr Byram Bridle, including a critique of the assumptions made for the various input parameters. Among the more egregious examples are:
(1) the model assumes 80% effectiveness against infection for the Covid injections vs omicron, whereas real-world data suggests zero — at best.
(2) the model assumes very little pre-pandemic immunity present within the community (they assume just 20% when for some time the evidence has suggested much higher levels, especially against severe illness).
(3) the model assumes no waning of efficacy at all over time, a claim not even made by the most ardent promoters of the covid vaccines.
Many news outlets — including Forbes — appear to have been taken in by this sham science and are reporting it as a bone fide “study” with no critical analysis whatsoever, this being their key message:
“The findings counter the common argument that the decision to get vaccinated is a personal one, the researchers said, as the unvaccinated are ”likely to affect the health and safety of vaccinated people in a manner disproportionate to the fraction of unvaccinated people in the population.”
One commentator on Twitter acerbically — though rather accurately — summed up the Forbes article thus:
It is quite clear that the model and the entire article has been constructed to push a political agenda, namely to neutralise the growing realisation by the population that the story they were told in relation to the Covid 19 injections is entirely false. Contrary to the authorities’ official narrative, in the context of Omicron the injections don’t reduce infections or transmission, and actually probably even increase them. Far from being a selfish act, it was in fact entirely rational — and beneficial to one’s fellow man — to decline the injection.
To use Dr Bridle’s words, the paper is actually “Fiction Disguised as Science to Promote Hatred”.
We support and join the many voices calling for this paper to be retracted.
Postscript: When Denis Rancourt, one of the authors of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association’s statement, tweeted the essence of their complaint with it, the paper’s author — David Fisman — didn’t respond by way of any form of scientific justification — he threatened legal action.
Is the West at war with disinformation or dissent?
By Rachel Marsden | Samizdat | May 5, 2022
When US President Joe Biden announced on April 27 that a new Disinformation Governance Board would serve the Department of Homeland Security, it was just the latest turn of the screw on freedom. This time, it’s an affront to citizens’ right to a diversity of information.
It’s one thing to correct inaccurate information, but this new entity seems more oriented towards narrative-policing that cracks down on the interpretation of information rather than the accuracy of it. Headed by a former communications advisor to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Nina Jankowicz, one of the board’s first responsibilities will be to address “disinformation coming from Russia as well as misleading messages about the US-Mexico border,” according to CBS News. Interesting that these two issues – immigration and foreign conflicts – are currently viewed as two of Washington’s most significant failures, which have given rise to populist dissent. Make no mistake, it’s the dissent that’s the ultimate target.
The fact that a former Ukraine government spin doctor was viewed as the best person to head up the new initiative tells you everything you need to know about its true purpose. Jankowicz published a book in 2020 whose title suggests that she believes the West to be in an online war with Russia. ‘How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict,’ portrays Western narratives as truthful and Russian narratives as “fake news.” Doing so obscures the fact that the mainstream Western media has not been immune to propagating narratives peddled by the state that could retroactively be considered fake news or war propaganda. Meanwhile, Russian media has often provided a platform for those seeking to express – or access – dissenting analysis or information that falls outside of the Western media bubble. Clearly, there are some ‘democracies’ that are bothered by this.
The appetite of Western nations to ensure that their citizens are only fed information that they control through their own highly concentrated government or corporate subsidized media isn’t new. It’s just getting more voracious. Perhaps it’s because the more authoritarian their agenda becomes, the more populist sentiment increases and gives rise to events such as Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, as well as trends such as opposition to US-backed conflicts, the rise in popularity of various populist political parties in Europe, and demonstrations against pandemic mandates, which just happen to be associated with government-issued QR codes.
Dissent is the enemy of authoritarian ambition. Supposedly free countries have manipulated their citizens into believing that censorship of certain views is for people’s own safety and security – hence why the military in Canada, the UK, and France, and now Homeland Security in the US, are involved in narrative policing. In reality, their efforts seem to be more about ensuring citizens’ compliance with their own agenda.
The fusion of domestic security and disinformation came to light as early as 2016, when the European Parliament grotesquely conflated Islamic terrorist propaganda with Russian media, in what seemed to be itself a propaganda effort to undermine the Russian media by equating these two totally unrelated things. But one by one, Western governments have placed free speech under national security control.
France, for example, handed off responsibility for online information arbitration to its domestic intelligence agency (the DGSI) and has reportedly considered involving defense-funded startups in the effort.
Canada has also turned to its security apparatus to shape Canadians’ information landscape – at least twice. The Communications Security Establishment, the country’s electronic spying agency, has been tweeting its own interpretations of disputed events occurring in the fog of the conflict in Ukraine as indisputable fact, while routinely denouncing Russia’s interpretation as invalid.
But Canada’s security establishment isn’t at its first rodeo in attempting to prevent citizens’ thinking from deviating from the state’s messaging. Under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the country’s armed forces deployed a months-long, military-grade propaganda campaign, which employed tactics honed during the war in Afghanistan, to mind-bend unsuspecting Canadians towards Trudeau’s Covid narrative, CBC News reported last year.
Not to be outdone, the psychological warfare specialists of the 77th brigade of Britain’s armed forces have also worked to shape messaging both in favor of the government’s Covid policies and against anything contrary out of Russia. “One current priority is combating the spread of harmful, false and misleading narratives through disinformation. To bolster this effort, the British Army will be deploying two experts in countering disinformation. They will advise and support NATO in ensuring its citizens have the right information to protect themselves and its democracies are protected from malicious disinformation operations used by adversaries,” Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said last year.
The fact that public safety and disinformation have suddenly become routinely conflated should be worrisome to defenders of whatever remnants of democracy that we still have left. Terrorism, health and now disinformation have all served as pretexts for the rapid erosion of our freedoms – all under the guise of protecting us from bad actors. But are we really safer? Or are we just increasingly less free?
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov interview with Xinhua News Agency
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs | April 30, 2022
Question: What do you think is at the root of the Ukrainian crisis? What can the international community do to solve this problem?
Sergey Lavrov: When we talk about the Ukrainian crisis, first of all we need to look at the destructive policy of the Western states conducted over many years and led by the United States, which set a course to knock together a unipolar world order after the end of the Cold War. NATO’s reckless expansion to the East was a key component of those actions, despite the political obligations to the Soviet leadership on the non-expansion of the Alliance. As you know, those promises were just empty words. All these years, NATO infrastructure has been moving closer and closer to the Russian borders.
The West was never concerned about the fact that their actions grossly violated their international obligations not to strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others. In particular, Washington and Brussels arrogantly rejected the initiatives put forward by Russia in December 2021 to ensure our country’s security guarantees in the west: to stop the expansion of NATO, not to deploy armaments that pose a threat to Russia in Ukraine and to return the Alliance’s military infrastructure to the 1997 configuration, when the NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed.
It is well-known that the United States and NATO member states have always viewed Ukraine as a tool to contain Russia. Over the years, they have actively fuelled anti-Russia sentiments there, forcing Kiev to make an artificial and false choice: to be either with the West or with Moscow.
It was the collective West that first provoked and then supported the anti-constitutional coup d’etat in Kiev in February 2014. Nationalists came to power in Ukraine and immediately unleashed a bloody massacre in Donbass, and set the course on the destruction of everything Russian in the rest of the country. Let me remind you that it was precisely because of this threat that the people of Crimea voted in a referendum for the reunification with Russia in 2014.
Over these past years, the United States and its allies have done nothing to stop the intra-Ukrainian conflict. Instead of encouraging Kiev to settle it politically based on the Minsk Complex of Measures, they sent weapons, trained and armed the Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions, and generally carried out the military-political development of Ukraine’s territory. They encouraged the aggressive anti-Russia course pursued by the Kiev authorities. In fact, they pushed the Ukrainian nationalists to undermine the negotiating process and resolve the Donbass issue by force.
We were deeply concerned about the undeclared biological programmes implemented in Ukraine with Pentagon’s support in close proximity to the Russian borders. And, of course, we could not disregard the Kiev leadership’s undisguised intentions to acquire a military nuclear potential, which would create an unacceptable threat to Russia’s national security.
In these conditions, we had no other choice but to recognise the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and launch the special military operation. Its aim is to protect people from genocide by the neo-Nazis, as well as to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. I would like to stress that Russia is acting to fulfil its obligations under bilateral agreements on cooperation and mutual assistance with the DPR and LPR, at the official request of Donetsk and Lugansk under Article 51 of the UN Charter on the right to self-defence.
The special military operation launched on February 24 is progressing strictly in accordance with the plan. All its goals will be achieved in spite of our opponents’ counteractions. At the moment we are witnessing a classic case of double standards and hypocrisy of the Western establishment. By publicly supporting the Kiev regime, NATO member states are doing everything in their power to prevent the completion of the operation by reaching political agreements. Various weapons are flowing endlessly into Ukraine through Poland and other NATO countries. All of this is being done under the pretext of “fighting the invasion”, but in fact the United States and the European Union intend to fight Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They do not care at all about the fate of Ukraine as an independent subject of international relations.
The West is ready to jeopardise the energy and food security of entire regions of the globe to satisfy its own geopolitical ambitions. What other explanation is there for the unrestrained flywheel of anti-Russian sanctions launched by the West with the start of the operation and which they aren’t thinking of stopping?
If the United States and NATO are truly interested in settling the Ukrainian crisis, then, first, they must come to their senses and stop supplying weapons and ammunition to Kiev. The Ukrainian people do not need Stingers and Javelins; what they need is a solution to urgent humanitarian issues. Russia has been doing this since 2014. During this time, tens of thousands of tonnes of humanitarian cargo have been delivered to Donbass, and about 15,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid have already arrived in the part of Ukraine liberated from the Kiev regime, the DPR and the LPR, since the launch of the special military operation.
Second, it is essential that the Kiev regime stops cynical provocations, including in the information space. Ukrainian armed formations are barbarically shelling cities using civilians as living shields. We saw examples of this in Donetsk and Kramatorsk. Captured Russian servicemen are being abused with animal cruelty, and these atrocities are being posted online. At the same time, they use their Western patrons and global media controlled by the West to accuse the Russian army of war crimes. As they say, laying the blame at somebody else’s door.
It is high time for the West to stop unconditionally whitewashing and covering up for Kiev. Otherwise, Washington, Brussels and other Western capitals should consider their responsibility for complicity in the bloody crimes perpetrated by the Ukrainian nationalists.
Question: What measures has Russia taken to protect the lives and property of civilians? What efforts has it made to establish humanitarian corridors?
Sergey Lavrov: As I mentioned earlier, the special military operation is proceeding according to plan. Under this plan, the Russian military personnel are doing everything in their power to avoid victims among civilians. Blows are carried out with high-precision weapons, first of all at military infrastructure facilities and places where armoured vehicles are concentrated. Unlike the Ukrainian army and nationalist armed groups that use people as living shields, the Russian army provides the locals with all kinds of assistance and support.
Humanitarian corridors open daily from Kharkov and Mariupol to evacuate people from dangerous districts, but the Kiev regime demands that the “national battalions” in control of those areas do not release the civilians. Nevertheless, many are able to leave with the assistance of Russian, DPR and LPR servicemen. During the special military operation, the hotline of the Interdepartmental Coordination Headquarters of the Russian Federation for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine has received requests for assistance in evacuating 2.8 million people to Russia, including 16,000 foreign citizens and employees of UN and OSCE international missions. In total, 1.02 million people have been evacuated from Ukraine, the DPR and LPR, of which over 120,000 are citizens of third countries, including over 300 Chinese nationals. There are over 9,500 temporary accommodation facilities operating in Russian regions. They have space for rest and hot meals, and everything that may be necessary. Newly arrived refugees are provided with qualified medical and psychological assistance.
Russia is taking measures to ensure civilian navigation in the Black and Azov seas. A humanitarian corridor opens daily, a safe lane for ships. However, Ukraine continues to block foreign ships, creating a threat of shelling in its internal waters and territorial sea. Moreover, Ukrainian naval units have mined the shore, the ports and territorial waters. These explosive devices disconnect from their anchor lines and drift into the open sea, so they pose a serious danger to both the fleets and the port infrastructure of the Black Sea countries.
Question: Since the special military operation was launched in Ukraine, Western counties have adopted a large number of unprecedented sanctions against Moscow. How do you think these sanctions will affect Russia? What are the main countermeasures taken by Russia? Some say that a new Cold War has begun. How would you comment on that?
Sergey Lavrov: It is true that the special military operation was used by the collective West as a pretext to unleash numerous restrictions against Russia, as well as its legal entities and individuals. The United States, Great Britain, Canada and EU countries do not conceal that their goal is to strangle our economy by undermining its competitiveness and blocking Russia’s progressive development. At the same time, the Western ruling circles are not embarrassed by the fact that anti-Russian sanctions are already beginning to harm ordinary people in their own countries. I mean the declining economic trends in the United States and many European countries, including growing inflation and unemployment.
It is clear that there can be no excuse for this anti-Russian line and it has no future. As President Vladimir Putin said, Russia has withstood this unprecedented pressure. Now the situation is stabilising, though, of course, not all risks are behind us.
In any case, they will not succeed in weakening us. I am confident that we will restructure the economy and protect ourselves from our opponents’ possible illegitimate and hostile actions in the future. We will continue to give a fitting and adequate response to the imposed restrictions, guided by the goal of maintaining the stability of the Russian economy and its financial system, as well as the interests of domestic businesses and the entire nation. We will focus our efforts on de-dollarisation, de-offshorisation, import substitution, and promotion of technological independence. We will continue to adapt to external challenges and step up development programmes for promising and competitive industries.
During the period of turbulence, our retaliatory special economic measures needed to ensure the normal functioning of the Russian economy will be continued and expanded. As a responsible player on the international market, Russia intends to continue scrupulously fulfilling its obligations under international contracts on export deliveries of agricultural products, fertilisers, energy carriers and other critical products. We are deeply concerned about a possible food crisis provoked by the anti-Russian sanctions, and we are well aware how important the deliveries of essential goods, such as food, are for the socioeconomic development of Asian, African, Latin American, and Middle Eastern countries.
I will be brief as regards the second part of your question. Today we are not talking about a new “cold war,” but, as I said earlier, about the persistent desire to impose a US-centric model of the world order coming from Washington and its satellites, who imagine themselves to be “arbiters of humankind’s fate.” It has reached the point where the Western minority is trying to replace the UN-centric architecture and international law formed after World War II with their own “rule-based order.” These rules are written by Washington and its allies and then imposed on the international community as binding.
We must realise that the United States has been carrying out this destructive policy for several decades now. It is enough to recall NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, attacks on Iraq and Libya, attempts to destroy Syria, as well as the colour revolutions that Western capitals staged in a number of countries, including Ukraine. All of this came at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives and resulted in chaos in various regions of the planet.
The West tries to crudely suppress those who carry out an independent course in their domestic and foreign policy. Not just Russia. We can see how bloc thinking is being imposed in the Asian-Pacific Region. We can recall the Indo-Pacific strategy promoted by the United States, which has a pronounced anti-China tendency. The US seeks to dictate the standards according to which Latin America should live, in the spirit of the outdated Monroe Doctrine. This explains many years of the illegal trade embargo on Cuba, sanctions against Venezuela, as well as attempts to undermine stability in Nicaragua and other countries. The pressure on Belarus continues in the same context. This list can go on.
It is clear that the collective West’s efforts to oppose the natural course of history and solve its problems at the expense of others are doomed. Today the world has several decision-making centres; it is multipolar. We can see how quickly Asian, African, and Latin American countries are developing. Everyone is getting a real freedom of choice, including where it comes to choosing their development models and participation in integration projects. Our special military operation in Ukraine also contributes to the process of freeing the world from the West’s neocolonial oppression heavily mixed with racism and a complex of exceptionalism.
The faster the West accepts the new geopolitical situation, the better it will be for the West itself and for the entire international community.
As President Xi Jinping said at the Boao Forum for Asia, “We need to uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security.”
Question: Russian-Ukrainian talks have attracted close attention of the international community. What are the main obstacles to the talks today? How do you regard the prospects of a peace treaty between the two parties? What kind of bilateral relations does Russia intend to have with Ukraine in the future?
Sergey Lavrov: At present the Russian and Ukrainian delegations are holding discussions on the possible draft almost daily, via videoconference. This document should contain such elements of the post-conflict situation as permanent neutrality, the non-nuclear, non-bloc and demilitarised status of Ukraine, as well as guarantees of its security. The agenda of the talks also includes denazification, recognition of the new geopolitical reality, the lifting of sanctions and the status of the Russian language, among other things. Settling the situation in Ukraine will make a significant contribution to the de-escalation of the military and political tensions in Europe and the world in general. The establishment of an institution of guarantor states is envisaged as a possible option. First of all, they will be the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and China. We share information on the progress in the talks with Chinese diplomats. We are grateful to Beijing and other BRICS partners for their balanced position on the Ukrainian issue.
We are in favour of continuing the talks, although the process is difficult.
You are right to ask about the obstacles. For example, they include the militant rhetoric and incendiary actions of Kiev’s Western patrons. They are actually encouraging Kiev to “fight to the last Ukrainian,” pumping the country with weapons and sending mercenaries there. Let me note that the Ukrainian security services staged a crude bloody provocation in Bucha with the help of the West, to complicate the negotiation process among other things.
I am confident that agreements can only be reached when Kiev starts to be guided by the interests of the Ukrainian people, and not the advisors from far away.
Speaking about Russian-Ukrainian relations, Russia is interested in a peaceful, free, neutral, prosperous and friendly Ukraine. Despite the current administration’s anti-Russian course, we remember the many centuries of all-embracing cultural, spiritual, economic and family ties between Russians and Ukrainians. We will definitely restore these ties.
How Canada is ‘Cutting Costs’ by Euthanizing their Poor
By Mary Manley | Samizdat | May 2, 2022
Canada, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, is finding a new way to cut costs on disabled people by… euthanizing them?
In 2015 the case of Carter v Canada (Attorney General) prompted the Supreme Court to strike down a previous provision in the Criminal Code, thereby allowing Canadian adults the option of assisted suicide, or Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).
That ruling then spiraled into a law known as Bill C-7, an all-encompassing euthanasia law passed in 2021 which threw out the requirement that those seeking assisted suicide need to have a terminal illness whose death was reasonably foreseeable.
Although Bill C-7 states that “Parliament affirms the inherent and equal value of every person’s life and the importance of taking a human rights-based approach to disability inclusion”, disability justice organizations and even the UN’s watchdog on disability opposed the new bill based on their belief that it would worsen discriminatory practices within the healthcare system.
More than 300 disability groups in Canada opposed Bill C-7, citing that the removal of the “reasonably foreseeable natural death” requirement would target disabled persons. Instead of being offered medical assistance or support, the Canadian government now has the option of doing away with any ill person that sucks up taxpayer money.
“Rather than funding and making life a possible and viable choice for many people, we’re entertaining this option of asking them if they would like to die, and it’s very scary,” said Spring Hawes, a former Invermere city councilor and the co-founder of Dignity Denied, in 2020.
“There is the danger that it might be considered a favor to offer someone dying when really that person just needs to have access to better care, better supports or the things they need to live well,” added Hawes who has a spinal cord injury and uses a wheelchair.
And what some could argue sounds like fear-mongering by a group of people who- in their very right have a legitimate reason to be afraid- is bolstered by horrifying stories told by disabled people which demonstrate abuse and neglect at the hands of their government.
In April of this year a 51 year-old Ontario woman with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) chose MAiD after two years of searching and failing to secure a bid for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners. “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a**,” she said in a video filmed on February 14, eight days before her assisted suicide.
One woman requested MAiD because she “simply [couldn’t] afford to keep on living”, after food banks became an inaccessible option. Another woman from Vancouver said she intended to use MAiD after COVID-19 left her with increased expenses and unmanageable pain. And in 2021, Chris Gladders chose to end his life via MAiD after experiencing “deplorable” living conditions at the retirement home called Greycliff Manor in Niagara Falls. When his family arrived to say goodbye to them they were horrified to find Chris in a room covered in urine and fecal matter.
“None of the floors were cleaned up or anything, you could see clearly where they changed his catheter bag,” said Shawn Gladders, Chris’s brother in January of 2021.
“There was urine on the floor, there were spots where there was feces on the floor… spots where your feet were just sticking. Like, if you stood at his bedside and when you went to walk away, your foot was literally stuck. It was very, very disturbing, for sure.”
Shawn said that on other occasions when he had visited his brother, Chris was taken outside of the room by a staff member, “I kick myself today, because I wish I would have walked in there before… I never would have left him there.” Shawn adds that Chris’ time at Greycliff Manor most likely contributed to his decision to end his own life.
In 2020, the Canadian government agreed to give a measly one-time payment of $600 to disabled persons who qualified, in response to the devastating economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. They estimated that just 1.67 million disabled persons would receive that assistance, compared to the 6 million disabled persons who live in Canada.
One disabled Canadian, who chose to remain anonymous, said that after asking her doctor to fill out a form for the credit he rejected her, saying, “You’re not disabled enough… You have to be sitting in the corner drooling to be able to get this.”
The fact is: the Canadian government has no interest in spending money on their disabled people. Instead, they see MAiD as a convenient option to cut costs on healthcare for persons with chronic conditions and other disabilities. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer even published an exciting report on the savings assisted suicide would garner their taxpayers: MAiD before Bill C-7 generated a total saving of $86.9 million per year, and Bill C-7, the government was pleased to announced, would save an additional $62 million a year.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, Canada’s government appears to be fixed on including those with mental illnesses (such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD) to become eligible for assisted suicide, by as soon as next year. If that decision were to go through, Canada would become one of few nations allowing the use of MAiD in cases of mental illnesses.
US food production threatened by mysterious fires in meat plants
Free West Media | April 25, 2022
More and more food processing plants are going up in flames in the US. Sixteen such incidents have been recorded so far. The background is unclear, but terrorism is being ruled out.
The fact is, however, that the basic needs of the population are massively threatened in some places by these attacks on infrastructure while authorities downplay the incidents.
Throughout the past year, but especially since February 2022, a series of devastating fires in the United States and Canada have destroyed or severely damaged food processing plants – mostly meat plants (slaughterhouses, hog and poultry farms), but also silage and large-scale grain production plants. As a result, there could be food shortages and price increases in many areas.
Devastating damage
The damage is catastrophic: an employee of an affected factory in Texas estimates that 50 to 100 truckloads of onions were destroyed there alone. A factory in Oregon was completely destroyed by a boiler explosion and all 244 employees had to be laid off. A fire in California had to evacuate 2 700 people around the affected factory.
Food prices are already at record highs in the US. The Rockefeller Foundation released an analysis of when a “massive, immediate food crisis” could start, and added that it would probably be “in the next six months”. The foundation shares the outlook of the World Economic Forum (WEF), advocating for the “Great Reset”.
Fires and explosions: possible connections
Officially, there are various reasons for the fires: the authorities downplay the possibility of any connections, and the Homeland Security Department does not assume terrorist attacks. At least one fire in Georgia last week was caused by a plane crashing onto a factory site. Since fires and explosions on factory premises and similar events repeatedly broke out for unknown reasons, some experts also suspect the likelihood of serial perpetrators and targeted attacks.
Conceivable would be militant animal or nature conservationists, climate activists or enemies of industrial food production, who are resorting to increasingly uncompromising means in the US just as they are in Europe.
Food crisis is getting worse
It is undisputed that the never-ending series of incidents will further exacerbate the food crisis, which is also noticeable in the US, as a result of supply chains that are already strained. In any case, the extent of the damage caused by the destruction in this sensitive key sector cannot yet be quantified; it also depends on how quickly the damaged or completely destroyed facilities can be repaired.
The FBI’s Cyber Division meanwhile published a warning about increased “cyber-attack threats” on agricultural cooperatives.
“Ransomware actors may be more likely to attack agricultural cooperatives during critical planting and harvest seasons, disrupting operations, causing financial loss, and negatively impacting the food supply chain,” the notice read, adding 2021 and early 2022 ransomware attacks on farming co-ops could affect the current planting season “by disrupting the supply of seeds and fertilizer”.
The agency warned, “A significant disruption of grain production could impact the entire food chain, since grain is not only consumed by humans but also used for animal feed … In addition, a significant disruption of grain and corn production could impact commodities trading and stocks. ”
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From the Archives
Examples of hate speech by Israel against Palestine
1. “There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies, not just in ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience. They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few hundred meters away, there are people who do not belong to our continent, to our world, but actually belong to a different galaxy.” Israeli president Moshe Katsav. The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001
2. “The Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more”…. Ehud Barak, Prime Minister of Israel at the time – August 28, 2000. Reported in the Jerusalem Post, August 30, 2000
3. ” [The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs.” Menahim Begin, speech to the Knesset, quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the Beasts”. New Statesman, 25 June 1982.
4. “The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Isreali Prime Minister (at the time) in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988
5. “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces, New York Times, 14 April 1983.
6. “How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
… Continue
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