YouTube Censors Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2023
YouTube has continued its censorship of those with opposing positions on Covid 19 and vaccines. This week it prevented users from hearing the views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Despite Kennedy running on the failures of the pandemic response, YouTube will not allow users to hear what it considers harmful thoughts.
On Sunday, both Kennedy and podcast host Jordan Peterson tweeted that they were the latest to be censored by the company. Kennedy tweeted: “What do you think… Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates? My conversation with [Peterson] was deleted by [YouTube].”
He added: “Luckily you can watch it here on [Twitter] (thank you [Elon Musk]).”
The incident shows why many on the left continue an unrelenting attack on Musk and Twitter. Musk eliminated most of the company’s censorship system and, despite a few censorship controversies, the site is now the most open social media site among the major companies.
A Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital YouTube “removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”
Rather than allow experts and others to debate that question, Google and YouTube will not allow the debate to occur. It is consistent with calls from Democratic leaders for dissenting voices to be removed on subjects ranging from Covid to gender identity to climate control.
We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens.
President Joe Biden has at times acted as a virtual censor-in-chief, denouncing social-media companies for “killing people” by not censoring enough. Recently, he expressed doubt that the public can “know the truth” without such censorship by “editors” in Big Tech. There is growing evidence of long-suspected back channels between government and Democratic political figures and Big Tech. Some of those contacts were recently confirmed but Congress again refused to investigate.
For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her with a “pants on fire rating.”
The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat and what the WHO called our “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks and the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections.
Yet, the censorship continues to the point that even a presidential candidate is now being silenced on social media.
The censorship of Kennedy is a national disgrace. Despite the proven legitimacy of prior censorship of viewpoints like the lab theory and natural immunities, Google continues to silence those with opposing views.
YouTube is signaling that this election will be another exercise in corporate approved messaging and ideas.
If you want to use YouTube, you will now have to engage in self-censorship, eliminating views that Google disagrees with. You may be able to “Broadcast Yourself” but you must first “Censor Yourself” . . . or YouTube will do it for you.
Defining Dictator Down Won’t Make Us Free
By James Bovard | Brownstone Institute | June 20, 2023
For 27 seconds on Tuesday night, Fox News posted a chyiron beneath a video of President Biden: “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested.” That sparked a media uproar over what was portrayed as the biggest breach of decorum since the 1865 assassination of President Lincoln at Ford’s Theater.
The Washington Post howled that Fox News “shocks with ‘wannabe dictator’ graphic.” A Daily Beast columnist shrieked that the chyron “spreads dangerous lies.” Liberal zealots called for completely shutting down Fox News – as if the network had committed a sin that could never be expunged.
But rather than razing a network headquarters, Americans must recognize the disputed terminology that spurred this fracas.
Biden’s critics are using an archaic definition of dictatorship, one that focuses myopically on whether a president obeys the law and the Constitution. Under the new definition, “dictatorship” only refers to rulers who do bad things to good people. (Maybe the National Security Agency can automatically “correct” all dictionaries on the Internet.)
As Biden explained last year, Republicans are guilty of “semi-fascism.” So, nothing Biden does to his political opponents can be “dictatorial” because they deserve whatever the feds inflict.
It is true that Biden dictated that 84 million Americans working for large companies must get injected with the Covid vaccine. But that wasn’t dictatorial because, as Biden explained, vaccine skeptics were murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you” with Covid. (The Supreme Court nullified that dictate early last year.)
It is true that the Biden White House dictated that social media companies suppress billions of posts, including true information from critics of the administration’s Covid policies. But that didn’t count because, as top Biden advisor Andrew Slavitt declared, “People with murderously selfish ideas— driven by an unwillingness to sacrifice & wrapped in phony intellectualism— entered” the debate over Covid policies. (A federal appeals court is exposing the vast sweep of Biden’s Covid censorship.)
It is true that Biden issued a dictate extending the national moratorium on evictions of deadbeat renters. The Supreme Court torpedoed Biden’s policy. But he was blameless because the Court decision relied on an archaic standard: “Our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends.”
It is true that Biden appointees dictated that two-year-old children in Head Start must wear masks all day. But that wasn’t dictatorial because children were permitted to briefly remove the masks when they ate meals. (A federal judge torpedoed that mandate in late 2022.)
It is true that Biden revived dictatorial policies that entitled federal bureaucrats to ban landowners from farming or building on any land with puddles, ditches, or other purported wet spots. But Biden had no choice but to take drastic action to rescue his environmentalist supporters from hopeless depressions. (The Supreme Court nullified Biden’s wetlands policies last month).
It is true that Biden dictated that taxpayers must shoulder the cost of $300+ billion in federal student loans that he canceled to buy political support. But that didn’t count because God wanted Democratic candidates to do well in last November’s midterm election. (The Supreme Court is expected to nullify Biden’s student loan forgiveness scheme in the coming weeks.)
It is true that the Biden White House dictated that the FBI target and investigate parents who protested at school board meetings. But the feds were justified in classifying mothers and fathers as terrorist threats because they committed verbal micro-aggressions against liberal sacred cows including the teachers’ union.
It is true that Biden appointees are arbitrarily dictating sweeping prohibitions of firearms parts that could turn tens of millions of peaceful gun owners into federal felons. But that is not dictatorial because “C’mon, man!” Or maybe, “Why’d you ask such a dumb question?”
It is true that Biden dictated… actually, we probably have not heard or seen his most arbitrary or dangerous dictates. The Biden administration is stonewalling congressional investigations and dropping a cloak of secrecy around its most controversial policies. But this is not a dictatorial abuse because Biden needs a second term to “literally redeem the soul of America” (as he promised on Wednesday).
The hypersensitivity over tagging Uncle Joe with the D-word is ludicrous after activists spent four years howling that Donald Trump was literally Hitler, or maybe only Stalin. Many protestors who vehemently denounced Trump were not opposed to dictators per se; they simply wanted different dictates. Now that Biden is dictating at full speed, Biden’s allies seek to rewrite the English language. As usual, the Washington media devotes far more attention to political labels than to the realities of government power.
Perhaps Biden could satisfy his gender-fluid supporters by coming out publicly and personally identifying as “non-dictator.” But other Americans will continue wryly watching the political rascality, laughing at the media’s snit-fits, and awaiting the next judicial demolition of Biden’s decrees.
James Bovard, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is author and lecturer whose commentary targets examples of waste, failures, corruption, cronyism and abuses of power in government.
“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | June 20, 2023
Late last month the office of the United Nation’s Secretary General published a policy document on aims for the future of the internet.
A follow-up to the 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, the new report’s title says it all really, “A Global Digital Compact”. That’s the goal, international legislation that would seek to control and enforce the use of digital technology.
The proposed clauses promote everything you’d expect them to promote.
Digital identities linked with financial access:
Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes
Environmental or climate change-based social credit systems:
Sensors and monitors connected to the Internet of things, cloud-based data platforms, blockchain-enabled tracking systems and digital product passports unlock new capabilities for the measurement and tracking of environmental and social impacts across value chains.”
Public-Private Partnership:
Partnerships between States, private sector and civil society leverage the capacity of digital tools to provide solutions for development across the Sustainable Development Goals. Examples include the Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance, the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability and public-private partnerships for disaster response.”
Countering online “harm”:
Disinformation, hate speech and malicious and criminal activity in cyberspace raise the risks and costs for everyone online […] we must strengthen accountability for harmful and malicious acts online.
Those are the obvious ones, there’s also more sneaky, insidious language regarding “equity” and “access”. The report is concerned there are many people in the world (mostly the developing world) who don’t have regular access to the Internet.
This concern would be more honestly expressed in the language of control – people who don’t consume digital media can’t be hypnotised, people who don’t communicate online can’t be censored, and people who don’t rely on digital banking can’t be controlled.
To sum up, the Digital Global Compact is a piece of globalist legislation serving the final aim of globalist policy: Control of all aspects of life, achieved by inserting a digital filter between people and reality.
Banking, communication, media consumption, shopping. Every interaction you have will be through a digital membrane which can both monitor your exchanges with the world and – if deemed necessary – deny you access to that world.
An interesting final point to note is the words the report doesn’t use. “Globalist” and “globalism” do not appear once, “vaccine passports” or “vaccine certificates” are likewise not mentioned. Neither are “social credit” or “central-bank digital currency”. They are discussed, but not mentioned.
They seem to be avoiding buzzwords they know will trigger resistance or set off alarm bells. Would they have done that before the skeptics started winning the Covid conversation? I don’t think so.
You don’t have to take my word for any of this, of course, you can read the whole report yourself.
There’s nothing surprising in there at all, obviously. But it’s definitely a “quiet part out loud moment”, and a link to send to those people who still dismiss you as a conspiracy theorist.
The Hate Crime Purging of “Antisemites” Is Underway!
Saying anything about Israel’s misbehavior can send you to jail
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 20, 2023
There have recently been a number of incidents that would be of interest if one has concerns about the sorry state of free speech in Europe and the United States, the so-called “democracies” who tend to boast about their freedoms and the rights of their citizens. The chosen weapon in the US and elsewhere in the Anglo-sphere has been the designation “hate speech” which also covers “hate writing,” “possessing hate literature or films,” and even “hate thinking.” In Europe, where “hate speech” is often referred to using the English words, the expression is often preceded by the word “illegal” to make sure that the point about consequences is made and the potential penalty is clearly understood. Some Europeans have in fact been convicted and sent to prison when they have falsely believed they were exercising free speech.
Though the “hate” designation was originally coined to discourage racist language and other forms of expression it has increasingly been exploited by Israel and its associated Jewish support groups to criminalize any criticism of Israel or of Jewish group behavior. It has extended its reach by moving into subsets, notably “holocaust denial” and “antisemitism” which are also regarded ipso facto as hate crimes in a context in which Jews are always regarded as victims, never as perpetrators of violence.
Much of what is going on might be described in fairly simple terms: Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its unprovoked lethal attacks on its neighbors might reasonably be described as “deplorable” or even genocidal in the case of the Palestinians. Beyond that, Israel, which pretends to be a democracy, operates a system of control over the Christian and Muslim minority within its own borders and also in the area it illegally occupies that is describable as “apartheid,” where the minority is compelled to accept limited resources and consistently harsh treatment from the dominant Jewish population. More to the point, the extremist government coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the situation even worse for those non-Jews that it controls, with talk of introducing mass expulsions and imprisonments. The death toll of Palestinians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces has also been going up, with more than 150 Palestinians killed this year, including 26 children.
To be sure, Israel has become a home for Jews that can no longer tolerate anyone else. Some ministers in the new government are particularly vile in their views but it is to be assumed that Netanyahu and others in his administration are genuinely supportive of turning Israel into a truly and even exclusively Jewish state, which is in fact how it legally defines itself. The one minister most cited for his cruelty and racism is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for support of a Jewish terrorist group. He is a former supporter of the now deceased right wing fanatic Meir Kahane, and, like Kahane, envisions an Israel that is as Palestinian free as possible and centered exclusively on Jewish interests. He has called for deporting Arabs who aren’t loyal to a Jewish Israel, annexing all of the West Bank and exercising full Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, where the Muslim venerated Al-Aqsa mosque is located. He supports legislation defying international agreements to “divide” the Al-Aqsa site to permit regular Jewish worshippers and there have even been suggestions that the Israeli government will seek to rebuild the so-called Biblical Second Temple, destroyed in the First Century by the Romans, in that location.
MK Itamar Ben Gvir at a ceremony honoring late Jewish extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in Jerusalem on November 10, 2022. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians. He has led marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns and has even brought settlers and other extremists to the al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and to interrupt Friday prayers. To cap the irony, he has been since November 2022 the National Security Minister, which gives him authority over the police, to include the so-called Border Police as well as the police forces located on the illegally occupied West Bank. Indeed, as a practical matter, Ben-Gvir is seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians. He has also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He demands a state judiciary that relies only on Torah and Jewish traditional law. Accused of inciting hatred against Arab Israelis, he told Arab Israeli lawmakers in October 2021, that “it’s a mistake that David Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw all of you out in 1948.”
The increasing brutality of the Israeli government and its security forces have produced a reaction among many observers worldwide, so the supporters of Israel have engaged in their own first strike frequently using the “hate crime” weapon. They have basically turned the hate crime legislation to their advantage by convincing many nations to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of the “hate crime” antisemitism to automatically include criticism of Israel as being equivalent to hatred of Jews. When that doesn’t work the powerful Israel lobby can also resort to much more brutal threats. When Iceland sought to make illegal infant circumcision five years ago, regarding it as genital mutilation performed on an unconsenting child, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) threatened to unleash Jewish power to destroy their economy and international reputation as punishment for making their country “inhospitable to Jews.”
Now that the “hate crime” genie together with the associated links to holocaust denial and antisemitism have been released from the bottle, they are being used regularly to silence anyone who even indirectly criticizes prominent Jews like George Soros. Conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have recently been on the receiving end of the antisemitism label after referring to Soros and his “Globalist” agenda. It is my belief that Tucker was fired at least in part due to Jewish pressure on FOX as he had been very critical of groups like the hysterical ADL and its hideous director Jonathan Greenblatt.
Roger Waters, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd, has emerged as a powerful critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. As a consequence, he has been hounded by authorities in Europe, has had his concerts canceled, and has been threatened with legal action to make him shut up. The Biden Administration’s antisemitism Czar Deborah Lipstadt has also attacked him, saying “I wholeheartedly concur with [an online] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.” She was referring to a tweet stating that “I am sick & disgusted by Roger Waters’ obsession to belittle and trivialize the Shoah & the sarcastic way in which he delights in trampling on the victims, systematically murdered by the Nazis. In Germany. Enough is enough. Holocaust trivialization is criminalized across the EU.” The State Department, speaking for the White House, then piled on adding that Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and a concert he gave late last month in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust… The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
One might observe that the depiction of Waters is basically untrue – he is a critic of Israeli crimes against humanity but does not hate Jews. One might also add how the fact that the United States State Department actually has a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism speaks for itself and tells you exactly who is in charge in Washington. I wonder how much it costs to run Lipstadt’s mouth from a no doubt well-appointed office in Foggy Bottom each year? Maybe someone should do a cost/benefit analysis and give Debbie her walking papers.
Beyond that, several other recent stories show how it all often works in practice to confront and silence critics. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is facing what is obviously a coordinated backlash on social media after criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In an Instagram message to her 6.3 million followers, the 23-year-old declared the ongoing cross-border violence, which is killing mostly Arabs, was a “crime” against Palestinians. Her effort to be somewhat even handed was ignored, in the message, which she later deleted, where she wrote “We have to stand up for Jewish people all over the world facing anti-Semitic violence and threats, but we must also call out a state upholding apartheid and KILLING civilians, funded by American dollars.” She ended the message with the hashtag “#freepalestine.”
Larsson was hardly calling for targeting Jews or anything like that, but the reaction to her comment was symptomatic of the typical overkill response engaged in by Israel and its friends whenever anyone challenges the standard narrative of Israeli perpetual victimhood. Two other instances of comments about Israel leading to an overwhelming response to punish the perpetrators took place during the past month in the United States at college commencement ceremonies. The first was on May 12th, at a graduation ceremony for the law school of the City University of New York (CUNY), where Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism, citing in particular the acceptance of student groups protesting against Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians. She said “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young and even attacking funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinians homes and businesses. As it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes. Silence is no longer acceptable.”
The response to Mohammed was immediate, including a scathing news report in the New York Post, a call by several Jewish groups to cut funding to CUNY and demands that the law school dean be fired. And the controversy again made news when a second student spoke out at a commencement at El Camino community college in Torrance California. Jana Abulaban, 18, strongly criticized Israeli government policies during her speech on June 9th.
Abulaban, who was born in Jordan in a family of Palestinian refugees, reportedly felt “inspired” by the speech of Fatima Mousa Mohammed and she told the audience “I gift my graduation to all Palestinians who have lost their life and those who continue to lose their lives every day due to the oppressive apartheid state of Israel killing and torturing Palestinians as we speak.’’
There was, of course an immediate reaction to the Abulaban speech coming from a variety of West Coast and New York pro-Israel sources. Brooke Goldstein, a claimed human-rights lawyer founder of The Lawfare Project, said, “This is yet one more example of the systemic Jew-hatred we’re seeing on our college campuses. When a student gives a commencement speech targeting Jews, trafficking in modern tropes of antisemitism, it’s clear that there has been a complete failure in that school to promote social justice for the Jewish people. If any other minority group were targeted like this, there would be consequences for the bigot. The Jewish community deserves no less.”
Of course, both women only spoke the truth about what is happening in the Middle East. Neither attacked the Jewish religion or Jews per se and only criticized Israel’s appalling behavior. When I last checked, Israel was a foreign country with both foreign and domestic policies that are considered very questionable by most of the world, so why should it be protected from being challenged in the United States? The two women were brave to speak up as they did, surely knowing that they would be targeted by the Jewish state’s many friends and supporters. Those of us who continue to speak out on Israel’s genocidal policies can likewise expect no less, particularly as both the federal as well as many state governments and also the media are now on a witch hunt directed against those who seek to speak the truth. But we must persevere. As Fatima Mousa Mohammed put it, “Silence is no longer acceptable.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Switzerland Votes to Keep Covid Laws & Vaccine Passes
Also voted for the Climate Protection Act
NAKEDEMPEROR | JUNE 19, 2023
Often, the narrative put forth suggests that the restrictions and mandates related to Covid-19 were enforced upon citizens by their governments. This viewpoint could seemingly imply that if left to the discretion of the masses, these lockdowns, social distancing protocols, and mandatory vaccinations might never have seen the light of day.
However, one nation stands as a testament against this theory – a control country allowing us to examine the public sentiment more closely – Switzerland.
Switzerland distinguished itself as one of the few nations globally that entrusted its citizens with the power to vote on measures concerning Covid-19. The first referendum took place in June 2021. It was a time when only approximately a third of the populace was vaccinated, yet the poll results exhibited a significant majority support for the Covid laws with a staggering 60.2% favouring them.
Not long afterwards, in November 2021, Switzerland’s second referendum took place. This vote was particularly contentious as it encompassed an array of substantial measures like stricter restrictions, comprehensive contact tracing, and the issuance of vaccination certificates. Despite the divisive nature of these policies, an even greater number of people endorsed them, with a 62% majority, which interestingly, was also the fourth-highest voter turnout in Swiss history, standing at 65.7%.
Surely, in 2023, the outcome would be different? Nobody is talking about Covid anymore. With the global narrative having largely moved on from Covid, would the Swiss people continue to support these laws?
Yes they would and no, in 2023 the outcome is no different. Yesterday, a rare third referendum was held. At the end of 2022, the Swiss parliament decided to extend some aspects of the Covid laws, including the vaccine certificates, until summer 2024. The reason given was that a dangerous new Covid variant may emerge and the authorities would have to react quickly. Due to the extension, opponents of the policies obtained enough signatures to force a new referendum.
Despite the ongoing contention, a significant majority of 61.9% voted in favour of these laws.
59% of voters also agreed to pass a climate change law which aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Opponents said the plan would drive up electricity use and prove too costly for consumers but authorities plan to incentivise households and businesses to be more climate-friendly.
It seems people never learn and Covid restrictions & vaccine passes could return tomorrow if a new health panic were to emerge.
UK Government Plans To “Unlock The Power Of Location Data,” Surveil Population Movements
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 19, 2023
The UK government has published its Geospatial Strategy 2030, an update to the one unveiled a decade ago – and the focus now is on “unlocking the power of location data,” as well as surveillance of population movements.
The document, prepared by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Geospatial Commission, set up five years ago, claims that the implementation of the new strategy will “unlock” billions of pounds via “location-powered innovation,” thanks to using AI, satellite imaging and real time data.
Those behind the strategy are selling it as a way to better public services, create higher-paying jobs, and spur economic growth.
And to get there from here, the government proposes moving in three main directions: allowing technology to speed up what it calls geospatial innovation, push for more use of geospatial applications in the economy, and, as “mission 3” – “build confidence in the future geospatial ecosystem.”
First up, slated to be done by 2025, is a review of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), which is described as the largest investment of the public sector in location data.
The same deadline is set for the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) to become fully operational, the strategy revealed.
And what’s an example of a time when location-based insights turned out to be particularly valuable? Commission chairman Sir Bernard Silverman has the answer: during the pandemic, when outbreak tracking was allegedly of “critical” importance in making relevant public health decisions.
And going forward – this same type of insights will be again highly useful regarding climate change, energy security and economic growth, said Silverman.
By the end of this year, a report is expected to detail how location data can be utilized in the healthcare sector, while in addition to those areas already set in the new document, other potential targets include increasing the number of electric vehicle charge-points, and connected and automated mobility, among others.
The strategy explains that the plans laid out here represent a continuation of existing activities, now seeking to scale and ensure more investment.
The document also states that the Commission that produced it focuses on “innovation” and growing the geospatial ecosystem – “with initial targeted initiatives on remote sensing and population movement data.”
James Corbett Testifies at the National Citizens Inquiry
Corbett • 06/12/2023
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
On May 18, 2023, James Corbett testified to the National Citizens Inquiry in Ottawa on the subject of the WHO’s looming global pandemic treaty, the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, and the One Health approach that is being used to justify an even greater centralization of power in the hands of unaccountable institutions in the name of “global health.” The presentation also includes information on the prospect of Canada or other member states withdrawing from the WHO, information on the technocratic roots of the One Health agenda, how states of exception are used to undermine constitutional rights, and much, much more.
For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack / Download the mp4
DOCUMENTATION
| National Citizens Inquiry – #SolutionsWatch | |
| Time Reference: | 00:47 |
| National Citizens Inquiry homepage | |
| Time Reference: | 01:17 |
| Quotations from WHO Constitution | |
| Time Reference: | 05:19 |
| Zero draft of the WHO CA+ for the consideration of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body at its fourth meeting | |
| Time Reference: | 10:12 |
| WHO says COVID emergency is over. So what does that mean? | |
| Time Reference: | 13:20 |
| WHO chief declares monkeypox an international emergency after expert panel fails to reach consensus | |
| Time Reference: | 20:55 |
| Newsweek: PHEIC gives WHO widespread powers, up to and including “mobilizing NATO military assets” | |
| Time Reference: | 21:40 |
| Council of Europe: The handling of the H1N1 pandemic: more transparency needed | |
| Time Reference: | 23:01 |
| BMJ: WHO and the pandemic flu “conspiracies” | |
| Time Reference: | 23:04 |
| Proposed Amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) submitted in accordance with decision WHA75(9) (2022) | |
| Time Reference: | 23:33 |
| Quote on Global Digital Health Certification Network from Implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005) |
|
| Time Reference: | 25:07 |
| CDC page on One Health | |
| Time Reference: | 33:27 |
| Quadripartite Secretariat for One Health | |
| Time Reference: | 35:24 |
| Sovereignty Coalition Press Conference: Get the US out of the W.H.O. | |
| Time Reference: | 40:12 |
| Biosecurity and Politics (Giorgio Agamben) | |
| Time Reference: | 43:15 |
| State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben | |
| Time Reference: | 51:33 |
| Universal Declaration of Human Rights | |
| Time Reference: | 51:59 |
| Lab-grown meat could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef | |
| Time Reference: | 55:21 |
| Shock: Elon Musk’s Grandfather Was Head Of Canada’s Technocracy Movement | |
| Time Reference: | 57:44 |
| Exploring Biodigital Convergence – Policy Horizons Canada | |
| Time Reference: | 01:01:04 |
| Denis Rancourt on excess mortality during the scamdemic | |
| Time Reference: | 01:15:40 |
| The Independent Panel: “Pandemic Preparedness” scores vs. death rates | |
| Time Reference: | 01:16:31 |
Can We Please Have Some Honesty About Trump’s Lockdowns?
By Alan Dowd | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2023
The salvos being lobbed between former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over their respective handling of the COVID-19 pandemic are at once troubling, encouraging, and revealing. Citizens who believe in individual liberty, individual responsibility, and constitutional government should listen to what these men and all policymakers are saying about COVID-19 today—and equally important—remember how they responded in 2020.
Causes and Consequences
With global health experts initially warning that the virus was killing 3.4 percent of those infected—and the now-disgraced British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson churning out computer models that offered policymakers a false choice between mass death or mass lockdowns—Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services drafted a document aimed at containing COVID. It was on March 13, 2020.
Stamped “not for public distribution or release” and indeed kept from public view for several months, that document would guide decision-makers at every level of government and every sector of the economy in dealing with COVID-19.
In March 2020, the Trump administration unveiled elements of the document under the banner “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” Among other things, the document introduced us to phrases like “social distancing,” “workplace controls,” “aggressive containment,” and “non-pharmaceutical interventions” at the federal, state, local and private-sector level. These would include “home isolation strategies,” “cancellation of almost all sporting events, performances, and public and private meetings,” “school closures,” and “stay-at-home directives for public and private organizations.”
A PDF sheet handed out at the March 16 press conference said: “In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”
This was the blueprint for locking down and closing down our free and open society. With that one sentence, an attempt to nationalize the pandemic response, the Bill of Rights became a dead letter, free association was abolished, and free enterprise itself was put on hold.
It’s no surprise that, when faced with estimates of such a high infection-fatality rate (IFR) and such terrifying computer models, some of the people advising the president would recommend locking down.
What is surprising and telling is that, apparently, the president didn’t respond to those recommendations with questions that would serve to defend individual liberty, encourage individual responsibility and challenge the default position of locking down—questions like: “Haven’t we, as a society, dealt with viruses like this in the past? Didn’t something like this happen in the late 1960s and late 1950s?
What did government do—and not do—back then? How dependable are those IFR numbers? Can we trust those computer models? Are the costs of locking down—economic, societal well-being, individual well-being, constitutional, institutional—worth the benefits? Are there any computer models on that? What are the trade-offs? Is there anything in the scientific canon that challenges this lockdown strategy?”
Americans don’t expect their Presidents to have all the answers. What they expect—and need—from their Presidents is a breadth of knowledge and experience to ask those kinds questions, the capacity to build a diverse team to help answer such questions and to challenge the answers, the ability to instill a sense of calm in the face of chaos, and enough wisdom to navigate a crisis without first worsening it.
Trump did not display any of those characteristics in mid March 2020, which came as no surprise to some of us. There was a revealing moment during the 2016 campaign when Trump was asked, “Who do you talk to for military advice?” Candidate Trump answered, “I watch the shows”—as in the cable-news shouting matches, where the loudest voice or scariest scenario or biggest bang or best one-liner or sharpest elbow or nastiest rejoinder or last word wins. That’s no way to learn about or understand issues of war and peace, life and death. But it revealed much about how a President Trump would respond in a time of crisis.
He seemed to have no intellectual curiosity, no sense of history, no nuance or depth, no wisdom, not a modicum of humility to ask questions. And so, when the COVID crisis slammed into America, Trump was influenced by the last words he heard, impressed by the most maximalist course of action, and drawn to the loudest, biggest-bang advisors—people who had no interest in anything beyond their enclaved neighborhood of expertise, no grasp of the law of unintended consequences, no desire to try to balance public health with individual liberty.
The consequences were devastating—far worse than COVID-19 itself. Aimed at saving life, the lockdowns—ironically but predictably—were a hideous destroyer of life and living. The evidence is literally everywhere: a 25.5 percent increase in alcohol-related deaths, a 30 percent surge in homicides, huge spikes in domestic violence and child abuse, thousands of preventable cancer deaths and heart-disease deaths, decreased life expectancy and decreased earnings for a generation of children, every level of government utterly failed, hundreds of thousands of businesses shuttered, millions left jobless, tens of millions of Americans barred from gathering for worship, the devaluing of work, the expansion of government, the acceleration of dependency.
As a recent study conducted by scientists at Johns Hopkins University and Lund University concludes, the lockdowns were a “policy failure of gigantic proportions…the biggest policy mistake in modern times.”
Yet in the wake of all that wreckage and destruction, we are left to conclude that Trump has no second thoughts, no regrets, no apologies, no lessons learned, no remorse, no sense of responsibility.
While he claims, “I never was for mandates,” and his campaign gushes that “President Trump saved millions of lives, opposed mandates and embraced the federalist system to allow states to make the decisions best for their people,” his record and rhetoric say otherwise.
For example—ignoring factors such as age, comorbidities and population size—Trump recently jabbed, “How about the fact that [DeSantis] had the third most deaths of any state having to do with the China virus? Even [New York Governor Andrew] Cuomo did better.”
He’s comparing here a lockdown state—a state that followed his HHS “guidelines,” quarantined the healthy and tried to control a virus through government coercion—with an individual-liberty state. And he’s applauding the former while criticizing the latter.
“I did the right thing,” he has said about his response to COVID. Almost boasting, he huffs, “We closed the country down…I had to shut down.”
But it wasn’t the right thing to do—not in light of the prescient warnings of people like Donald Henderson, not in light of the Constitution, not in light of history.
He did not have to shut the country down. Other free societies did not imitate the PRC and lock down in response to deadly new viruses—Taiwan, South Korea and Sweden in 2020, America in 1957 and 1968.
And while Trump says he never imposed mandates, his administration drafted and disseminated the blueprint for locking down—a blueprint almost every state followed. If he “had to shut it down,” to use his words, did he do so with gentle suggestions? In fact, Trump himself used the bully pulpit to publicly scold governors for ending lockdowns, especially Georgia Governor Brian Kemp. As Kemp tried to pry open his state after a month of lockdowns, Trump warned him he was “in violation” of the administration’s “phase one guidelines.” This had a chilling effect on other governors who wanted to follow Kemp’s lead. So much for “the federalist system.”
The reality is that by bringing in Scott Atlas—who was using reason and facts to fight the mass psychosis unleashed by the lockdown herd—in August 2020, Trump was tacitly admitting his mistake in handing over the reins of America’s government and economy to unelected public-health officials.
But by then it was too late. In their refusal to allow a return to normalcy and their Orwellian lexicon—“15 days to slow the spread…30 days to slow the spread…the next two weeks are critical…essential workers…together apart…follow the science…six feet apart or six feet under…shelter in place…no mask no service…proof of vaccination required…get the shot and get back to normal”—we were reminded of the human tendency to control other humans, the penetrating potency of fear, and the state’s default desire to expand its reach and role. Once these pathologies are let loose, as they were in March 2020, they are not easily or quickly subdued.
The New Normal
DeSantis—a kind of stand-in for all of us who have a default belief in individual liberty and individual responsibility—initially deferred to Washington’s mandates and threats masquerading as “guidelines.” He says he regrets not challenging Trump and the high priests of scientism from the outset. He deserves credit not only for admitting his initial reaction was wrong, not only for changing course once he recognized what the lockdowns were doing to America and Americans, but also for making this a front-and-center issue today.
Although the Trump camp has resorted to a “My opponent did it too” defense, the New York Times reported in spring 2020 on DeSantis’s “resistance to closures throughout the coronavirus pandemic.” DeSantis reopened and returned his state to normalcy so early that people like Cuomo attacked him: “You played politics with this virus, and you lost,” Cuomo preened in mid-2020. In his backslapping exchange with Trump, Cuomo recently added, “Donald Trump tells the truth…Florida’s policy of denial allowed COVID to spread, and that’s why they had a very large second wave.”
But the numbers tell a different story. “Florida had less excess mortality than California or New York,” as DeSantis points out. Plus, a study conducted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, using CDC data, found free Florida’s age-adjusted COVID deaths per 100,000 (265) to be far lower than locked-down New York’s (346).
“Leaders,” DeSantis argues, “don’t subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci.” He bluntly calls “Fauci-ism” and its lockdowns “wrong” and “destructive.” He openly wonders why Trump—best known before his presidency for his trademark tagline “You’re fired!”—couldn’t bring himself to fire Anthony Fauci or at least shut down the White House Coronavirus Taskforce. And he challenges Americans—the tens of millions who were impoverished, broken, left alone by the lockdowns—to wrestle with an unsettling idea: “If [Trump] thinks Cuomo handled it better, that’s an indication if something like this were to happen again, he would double down and do what he did in 2020.”
This isn’t about supporting DeSantis or any other candidate. It’s about discovering who has learned from history and who would repeat the mistakes of March 2020. Every candidate running for every federal office and statewide office should be asked where they stand on this fundamental issue—because there will be other viruses, other pandemics, other computer models that tempt or terrify those in power. In a nation founded on individual liberty and individual responsibility, lockdowns cannot become the new-normal response to such events.
Alan Dowd is an essayist and a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute in Indianapolis.
HHS is Still Wasting Money Fighting Online Covid “Disinformation”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 17, 2023
Apparently, Covid discussions are still a thing worth cracking down on. That’s at least according to The Biden administration, which is injecting $500,000 into Texas Woman’s University as part of a grant program aimed at curbing COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation” allegedly aimed at Hispanics, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The grant aims “to expand research on mitigating the effect of misinformation and disinformation” regarding “COVID-19 prevention and treatment initiatives among Hispanics.”
Timeline: Kicking off on May 10 and set to wrap up in April 2024, this grant is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s Food and Drug Administration’s portfolio. It’s part of Biden’s broader push to censor alleged disinformation by joining forces with social media platforms on content moderation – a move likened to “censorship” by some Republicans.
What GOP says: This funding allocation may prod GOP lawmakers to probe deeper into the Biden administration’s methods in countering certain types of speech. House Republicans, according to the Washington Examiner, are considering wielding the appropriations process as a tool to block federal agencies from pumping money into domestic initiatives tagged as combating “disinformation.”
What HHS did before: In 2021, HHS, spearheaded by Secretary Xavier Becerra, allegedly dabbled in misinformation tracking, by offering guidance to Twitter and Facebook on handling virus-related content. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy admitted in an August 2021 call with education groups, that the government was “working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies.”
Skeptical voices: Brian Harrison, a former HHS chief of staff under Trump and a current GOP Texas state House member, communicated his skepticism to the Washington Examiner: “I have no confidence this is anything more than Biden’s HHS spending money we don’t have on government censorship efforts.”
Inside the project: Texas Woman’s University’s venture consists of crafting a “social network analysis” to scrutinize “misinformation consumed by the Hispanic community.” It involves conducting focus groups, creating “an economic impact analysis of proposed informational strategies for Hispanics,” and establishing a “longitudinal misinformation/disinformation index.” The study, set in El Paso, Texas, is also sifting through social media content in both English and Spanish.
Deja vu?: The aforementioned “index” has set off alarm bells due to its echo of a tool from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which previously backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity that faced criticism for supposedly operating blacklists of conservative media outlets.
HHS’s stance: In response, HHS spokeswoman Anne Feldman said: “HHS does not censor speech.”
Europe is shielding Israel under guise of combating anti-Semitism, new report finds
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 16, 2023
The chilling repercussions of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have been revealed in a recent report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). Titled “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”, the report by the independent Dutch-based organisation uncovered shocking examples of the IHRA’s weaponisation against critics of Israel and the suppression of free speech under the guise of combatting anti-Semitism.
Using dozens of case studies from across Europe, ELSC showed that the endorsement, adoption and implementation of the IHRA in the European Union, its member states and the UK, has led to widespread restrictions of the right of assembly and freedom of expression. Despite strong opposition and warning against its adoption by Jewish groups, experts on anti-Semitism, academics and activists, the controversial definition has been implemented by public and private bodies as if the IHRA is legally binding. Despite qualification by advocates of the IHRA that it is “non-legally binding”, a definition of anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism has been placed at the centre of regulatory frameworks across Europe.
Some of the shocking findings include the following: Advocates of Palestinian rights who are targeted using the IHRA suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage; advocates of Israel routinely weaponise the IHRA to intimidate and silence people defending Palestinian rights; allegations of anti-Semitism that invoke the IHRA within the documented cases uncovered by the ELSC found that they are overwhelmingly used to target Palestinians and Jewish people opposed to Israel’s brutal occupation.
In one of the many remarkable findings, ELSC discovered that, not only was there a failure to carry out a risk assessment prior to IHRA’s adoption, the EU appeared to lie about the checks it had conducted. When asked if the Commission had conducted a risk assessment of the implications of the IHRA on fundamental rights, the EU Commissioner on anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, affirmed that an assessment of the consequences had indeed been carried out. “Yes, we assessed“, said Schnurbein in a tweet on 23 November 2022, in response to critics who accused the Commission of failing to carry out basic due diligence.
However, responding on 9 December 2022 to a Freedom of Information request, the European Commission acknowledged it “has not conducted ‘any fundamental rights assessment or scrutiny (…) into the human rights implications of its endorsement and/or promotion of the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.” Details of the misleading information by the Commissioner on anti-Semitism were covered at length by the advocacy group, Law for Palestine.
Misinformation about risk assessment is just one of the many examples of underhanded practices revealed by the ELSC report. The European Commission also failed to address and reflect the diversity of positions regarding definitions of anti-Semitism. The EC not only ignored that the IHRA is highly controversial and contested, it completely ignored less controversial definitions of anti-Semitism such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, and the Nexus Document. In contrast to the EU, the US has referenced other controversial definitions of anti-Semitism.
In sharp contrast to the IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration states that, “Even if contentious, it is not anti-Semitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.” The Nexus Document is equally explicit. It states that “Paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of anti-Semitism.”
The US also appears to favour a less politicised definition that is not centred on shielding Israel and the political ideology of Zionism. In detailing its plan to combat the rise of anti-Jewish racism, the White House opted for the following definition: “Anti-Semitism is a stereotypical and negative perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” said the strategy document, without mentioning Israel once. “It is prejudice, bias, hostility, discrimination or violence against Jews for being Jews or Jewish institutions or property for being Jewish or perceived as Jewish. Anti-Semitism can manifest as a form of racial, religious, national origin, and/or ethnic discrimination, bias, or hatred; or, a combination thereof. However, anti-Semitism is not simply a form of prejudice or hate. It is also a pernicious conspiracy theory that often features myths about Jewish power and control.”
Questions were also raised over why the EU adopted a definition that had been discarded because of its threat to fundamental rights to free expression. In 2004-2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) published a “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”. This definition, according to the ELSC report, featured “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism”, including examples relating to the State of Israel. The examples were criticised due to its conflation between opposition to Israel and anti-Semitism. The definition was abandoned by the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), which removed it from its website in 2013. In its explanation for discarding the IHRA, FRA explained that it had “never been viewed as a valid definition of anti-Semitism; that the Agency was not aware of any official EU definition of anti-Semitism; and that the document was removed in a clear-out of non-official documents.”
The most serious bad-faith attempt to mislead the public in order to roll out the IHRA is the claim that the definition is “non-legally binding”. Despite promoting the IHRA as “non-legally binding”, most of the EU Member States have endorsed the IHRA as the authoritative instrument for addressing anti-Semitism which, according to the ELSC, has given the definition centred on shielding Israel and Zionism “soft law power”. EU statements and policies through which the IHRA is being applied, is said to show that it has gained law like force and impact.
“Hard-core advocates of the IHRA always intended it to have binding legal status and force” said ELSC. “The ‘non-legally binding’ provision was only added to secure its adoption by the IHRA Plenary in May 2016. Efforts have been made since, in some Member States to introduce the IHRA as a basis for legislation.
The real-life impact has been devastating for critics of Israel. The IHRA has been implemented in the UK, Austria and Germany by public and private bodies in ways that have led to widespread infringement of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly, ELSC found. Advocates of Palestinian rights, who are targeted, are said to suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage. IHRA is often found to be weaponised by pro-Israel advocates to intimidate and silence those advocating for Palestinian rights.
The good news is that, when challenged in court, most of the allegations of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA are found to be unsubstantiated and thrown out. Though this is a silver lining, the adoption of the IHRA has created a perverse situation which undermines democracy and the principal of “innocent until proven guilty”. In this toxic culture, some sections of the population are having to go to court to protect basic freedoms, like the right to free speech. According to the ELSC report, even though most challenges to the implementation of the IHRA were successful, the disciplinary procedures and litigation resulting from false allegations of anti-Semitism have produced a “chilling effect” on the freedom of expression and assembly.
Pandemic and Panopticon: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State
By Janet Levy | American Thinker | April 20, 2023
The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.
A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.
It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.
Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. The book traces the roots of state interference in, and control of, the biomedical aspects of citizens’ lives to utilitarian ideas that began with Galton and Darwin, and trickled into eugenics, which he says is falsely viewed as entirely a creation of the Nazis when in fact American states were enforcing sterilization from the 1900s to the 1960s.
The core idea, he says, is this: the freedom of a citizen to make health and life decisions can be annulled by the state for the greater good, especially during emergencies. The questions it raises are: Who makes these decisions and on what basis? Who decides what is the greater good? Who is to be held responsible for errors of judgement? What checks and balances do we have, then, against the dictatorial inclinations of the powerful? Ancillary to the idea, he says, is the dangerous circular logic of the state of exception: those who declare an emergency in which citizens’ rights – including the right to question the declaration – stand suspended will believe that in that instance it is morally and politically justified!
We saw all that playing out during the pandemic. Kheriaty observes that the global elite and other political entities, in unbridled collaboration with intelligence and police powers, promoted the acceptance of biomedical surveillance. None of the extreme measures – lockdown, school closure, mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and passports – were subject to debate. No benchmarks were set to justify the emergency or identify when it would end. In fact, America continues to remain in a state of emergency (until May 11th).
Compliance was achieved through propaganda, policing, and surveillance. Guilt – Don’t Kill Granny – and Mao-style rousing – 15 Days to Stop the Spread – were deployed. Six-foot social distancing and curtailment of gatherings to no more than 10 people were imposed with no explanation of where these magic numbers came from. Human contact was redefined as a source of contagion. Exposure could build natural immunity, but this wasn’t acknowledged, for it would have potentially halved the profits of the $100 billion Covid vaccine industry.
Kheriaty identifies the characteristics of the biosecurity paradigm:
- a hypothetical risk, magnified to worst-case scenario to adduce grounds for maximum behaviorial control;
- systematic imposition of control on the entire citizenry, instead of vulnerable subsets;
- catastrophizing, in order to justify intrusive surveillance and the use of police and military action; and
- a merging of public health and the military-intelligence-industrial complex in developing and implementing tracking and data-mining capabilities.
Surveillance is the backbone of dictatorial regimes, and it was no different during the pandemic. In 2021, evidence emerged that the CIA had used digital surveillance to gather information on Americans sans judicial oversight or congressional approval. There were no safeguards to protect civil liberties. Such scenarios have long been envisioned – as far back as 1999, a possible smallpox outbreak was studied. Exercises such as Dark Winter, Atlantic Storm, Clade X, and Event 201 followed. They simulated imposition of martial law, detention of citizens, control of messaging, censoring dissent, enforcing mandates, and surveillance during public health crises. Recommendations to increase state power and use police or military intervention were subsequently embodied in the 2002 U.S. Public Health Security & Bioterrorism Preparedness & Response Act.
The religion of scientism took hold as Dr. Anthony Fauci, former chief medical advisor to the President, reframed the narrative on Covid, shifting the focus from the virus to viewing humanity as a vector. Fauci and a set of scientists and technocrats with broad powers arrogated to themselves a monopoly on knowledge and expertise. Lacking rational explanation, they used force, defamation of critics, and dubious promises of future outcomes to obtain public conformity to the security and surveillance measures.
The vast influence of Big Pharma over governments, the research establishment, and media, says Kheriaty, cannot be understated. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are wealthier than most countries, with vast sums available for lobbying. In 2020, 72 senators and 302 congressional representatives cashed campaign checks from the pharmaceutical industry. Biomedical researchers and medical journal editors receive payments from pharma. In a nine-year-period, two-thirds of all FDA reviewers took positions in the industry they regulated. The National Institute of Health, which owns half of the Moderna vaccine patent, chose to conduct internal testing of the vaccine rather than leave it to independent university-based researchers. Media acquiescence was achieved through $1 billion-worth of vaccine advertisements, paid for in taxpayer dollars!
Kheriaty goes so far as to assert that the lockdown was driven by an economic agenda disguised as public health protocol. It helped Big Pharma, multinationals, and the global elite who control them achieve the largest transfer of wealth in history by eliminating competition and spelling doom for small business.
The ultimate plan, devised by the global elite, is for a new world order, shifting government authority from sovereign states to powerful NGOs like the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Plans are afoot for a WHO-driven international pandemic treaty tied to a digital ID system, while IMF is promoting central bank digital currency (CBDC), which will allow complete tracking of monetary transactions. WEF chairman Klaus Schwab nurses transhumanist dreams, saying “we will not change what we do” but “who we are,” through gene- and bio-engineering.
The concluding chapter suggests ways of avoiding totalitarian emergencies and the abyss of the biomedical security state. He suggests strict limits on the declaration and control of emergencies, incorporating more checks and balances if necessary. He calls for substantive institutional reform that will eliminate the revolving door between Big Pharma and federal agencies. Besides, he says, the NIH monopoly must be broken, perhaps by distributing research grants to 50 state institutes of health that will focus on issues of local concern. Other ideas include provision of accurate, comprehensive information to allow people to give informed consent; allowing doctors to prescribe off-label or repurposed drugs and provide individualized care; holding Big Pharma accountable by bringing back product liability.
Freedom is at stake, as we discovered during the pandemic. Dr. Kheriaty lost his job, without a chance to defend himself, for daring to dissent. This – or much worse – can happen to any of us if we allow America to become the biomedical security state the global elite want to transform the world into.
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Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
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