The leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, said that if he were to be elected Prime Minister, he would not impose digital IDs. He made the comment on a campaign trail in Windsor, Ontario.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced its federal Digital Identity Program last August.
“And to answer your question, I will never allow the government to impose a digital ID,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre’s comment came a few days after Alberta and Saskatchewan’s premiers said that they were not interested in a federal digital ID.
“The government of Saskatchewan is not creating a Digital ID nor will we accept any requirements for the creation of a digital ID tied to healthcare funding,” said Saskatchewan’s Premier Scott Moe.
Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith said that she fully supported what Moe said.
Transport Canada has recently announced that the Known Traveller Digital Identity (KTDI) project is ongoing, contrary to earlier reports suggesting that the project has been discontinued.
The KTDI is a collaborative effort between the World Economic Forum (WEF), Accenture, INTERPOL, various government entities, and the governments of the Netherlands and Canada. The project was initiated in 2018 to create a secure and decentralized digital identity system for travelers between the Netherlands and Canada. The system utilizes cryptographic encryption and distributed ledger technology to ensure the protection of travelers’ personal information.
February 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Alberta, Canada, Human rights, Netherlands, Saskatchewan, WEF |
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On February 14, 2022, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked a sweeping nationwide measure, the kind of which hadn’t been used since his father, former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, during the October Crisis of 1970, amid a rash of terrorist incidents perpetrated by Francophone separatists in the province of Quebec.
The federal Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act used in 1970, as well as during both World Wars, is supposed to be used in cases of serious threat to national security or public welfare. So what was the threat that caused Trudeau to pull out the big guns? A convoy of truckers and their supporters — coined the Freedom Convoy — headed to Canada’s capital city of Ottawa to defend the notion of equal rights of all Canadians to work, assemble, enjoy indoor leisure activities, and travel regardless of anti-Covid vaccine status. The fact that these fundamental aspects of everyday life could no longer be taken for granted was a testament to how authoritarian the Canadian government had already become. And when Canadians finally decided to demonstrate that they were fed up, the Trudeau government’s response was an unprecedented crackdown that put Canada on par with countries that it in-turn criticizes.
“We are broadening the scope of Canada’s anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies,” deputy prime minister and finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, said during the Emergency Act announcement. She also introduced an order “authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations. This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
It’s hard to imagine that the conflation of Freedom Convoy protesters and terrorism was just coincidental. Western governments use the tactic frequently. The European Union, for example, routinely evokes “Russia” and “ISIS” in the same breath when arguing for the need to control “disinformation” or “propaganda”. Putting two very different things in the same rhetorical basket served to associate them in people’s minds. So people end up thinking that these average Canadians are like terrorists, and then end up supporting the blocking of their bank accounts by government order.
During an inquiry into the use of the Emergency Act, whose results are expected to be made public just after the one year anniversary of the events, it emerged that a CEO of one of Canada’s banks encouraged Freeland to make this designation. “Label them as terrorists,” he said. “Seize the assets and impair them.” Apparently the government simply dutifully complied.
Trudeau ended up lifting the order nine days later on February 23, 2022, before it could be defeated in a challenge, but the damage was done. As a Canadian born and raised near Vancouver, my earliest memories of protests and strikes roughly date back to the same time that I learned to walk. The Freedom Convoy protests weren’t any different from others. Many public demonstrations are loud, and block traffic. I can’t even count the number of times that traffic was halted on a particular Vancouver area bridge and into the downtown core, all because of environmental protesters perched in old growth trees. The cops usually just end up charging them with mischief, but no one calls a national emergency over it.
Freeland has argued that the extraordinary measures were needed to protect Canada’s economic interests. “What was happening was profoundly jeopardizing the Canadian economy and putting investment in Canada at risk,” she told the inquiry. Sorry, not buying it. How many protests against Canadian oil and gas pipeline projects, which are clearly critical to Canada’s economic security, have lasted for months on end while the government just sat back and let the police do their jobs as they see fit?
As civil rights groups have pointed out, wielding the Emergencies Act was like using a jackhammer on a thumbtack. It failed to specify who in Canada could be targeted by it, and in theory could have been used against anyone or any cause. “By invoking the Emergencies Act, Cabinet gave itself power to enact wide-reaching orders without going through the ordinary democratic process. Using this Act, the federal government gave police increased authority to shut down peaceful protests, on any issue, right across Canada,” argued the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. And that’s without even getting into the merits of the cause.
At the same time, the Canadian government invested a billion dollars to help Canadian provinces set up an integrated digital passport system that linked health and jab records to a digital QR code, much like the European Union’s digital Covid certificate that determined who had received the number of jabs mandated by the government as a prerequisite for access to all the old basic freedoms of daily life. The more people were coerced into getting jabs so they could travel, keep their job, or work out in a gym, the more digital identities could be tied to digital QR codes.
While the mandates have since largely fallen away, that digital tracking infrastructure hasn’t. It is still firmly in place. As long as it persists, it will serve as a reminder of Canada’s authoritarian turn under a questionable but convenient sanitary pretext — and of the government overreach that the Freedom Convoy fought against.
February 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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This screengrab shows an Israeli soldier assaulting Palestinian activist Issa Amro on February 13, 2023.
An Israeli soldier has been filmed assaulting a prominent Palestinian human rights activist in front of a famous American journalist in the occupied West Bank city of al-Khalil.
In a video posted on Twitter by Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker on Monday, the Israeli soldier is seen grabbing Issa Amro by his jacket and neck and throwing him to the ground. He then kicks Amro before being pulled away by another soldier.
“I never had a source assaulted in front of me until today when an Israeli soldier who stopped my interview did this … I can’t stop thinking how dehumanizing the occupation is on the young soldiers charged with enforcing it,” Wright, the author of The Looming Tower, wrote in a post on his Twitter account.
The Israeli military claimed in a statement that the incident occurred after the soldier, who was guarding a military post, asked the Palestinian activist who approached the post, to step away.
It further claimed that in response, the Palestinian began recording and cursing at the soldier, and that a verbal confrontation followed, which soon became a physical confrontation, during which the soldier hit the Palestinian.
However, Wright tweeted that Amro had done nothing to justify the “violent assault,” adding that the Israeli military is “misrepresenting” the build-up to the assault on the Palestinian peace activist.
“The soldier initiated the encounter, Amro did not curse him, [he] only asked to call his commander. Nothing to justify the violent assault that followed,” he said.
“Before the assault the other soldiers were afraid to intervene although I warned them it was getting out of hand,” he added.
Amro also posted several videos of the run-up to the incident on Twitter, saying the Israeli military has lied about what happened.
“I was detained outside the military post, I started shouting to bring the commander out, the soldiers refused to tell him, it was a trap for me by them. The commander came out only after I was beaten and grabbed by the throat and kicked and pushed on the ground,” he wrote n another post.
He said that the video is not just about the activist as it tells the story of every Palestinian in Palestine.
“It is not about Issa Amro, it is about the Palestinian women and children who are attacked frequently by Israeli soldiers and settlers. All Palestinians are living under Israeli occupation and apartheid. The video of the attack tells the story of each Palestinian in Palestine,” he added.
The Israeli military said the soldier was jailed for 10 days in a military prison following the incident.
Far-right Israeli minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has defended the soldier’s actions, describing the decision to put him in a military prison as a “disgrace.”
Amro, an engineer by profession, is a well-known human rights defender in his hometown of al-Khalil. He is the founder of Youth Against Settlements (YAS), which aims to empower the Palestinian community in the face of Israeli settlers in the Old City of al-Khalil.
He was detained in November days after filming a soldier assaulting an Israeli activist during a visit by Israeli anti-occupation activists to meet Palestinian residents near the Old City of al-Khalil.
Israeli occupation soldiers and Israeli settlers have noticeably been escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and other areas, in an attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands and make way for expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements.
More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
All the settlements are illegal under international law. The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions. – View videos
February 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Diaspora Jews choose to look the other way as the carnage increases
There is what passes for a sick joke among those who watch the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians with increasing shock over what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his thugs have been allowed to get away with. It goes something like this: Israel has succeeded in killing or driving out the remaining three million or so Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, describing them as “terrorists.” President Joe Biden, his cabinet and virtually all of Congress respond afterwards by saying how the move was unfortunate but “Israel has a right to defend itself.”
Such is the power of Israel as manifested through its Lobby in the US, and the saddest part of the joke is that it reflects quite likely exactly what would happen. The Palestinians have no constituency in the United States, where Israel and its friends rule the roost. But one of the real ironies of watching a genocide being carried out now in the twenty-first century is that the killers come from a group that constantly flaunts its claimed status as history’s perpetual victims. This duality is a convenience, to be sure, providing as it does immunity from its own crimes as it also escalates the criminal policies that might lead to the genocide of a whole category of potential “enemies.”
Israel’s new government, again headed by the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu, has shifted hard to the right, incorporating as it does the extremist settlers’ movement as well as parties that have spoken casually of forcing the Palestinians out and even of extermination if it comes to that. Half of Israelis are comfortable with the Arabs having minimal civil rights even if they are Israeli citizens and many accept the desirability of forced expatriation of the Palestinians to neighboring states like Jordan or Lebanon. Arab residents of Israel have only limited legal rights and, contrary to the US domestic Israel Lobby’s constant assertion that the Zionist entity is a “democracy,” Israel in reality became an apartheid state by law when it in 2018 declared itself to be legally the nation state of the Jews with “exclusive right of self-determination.”
More recently Netanyahu has made clear exactly what his government stands for. In late December, he stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” He was explicit that “all parts” was intended to include the West Bank and even Gaza, which have long been presumed to be the basis of a future Palestinian state. With Washington’s support, they presumably will become part of Eretz Israel, which will stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
To be sure, Israel and its powerful US lobby know very well that the constant claim of victimhood combined with labeling its perceived enemies as antisemites and holocaust deniers to discredit them is little more than a tool employed in part to excuse war crimes and human rights violations committed by the Israelis. In 2002 a former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni revealed in an interview how labeling a critic as an antisemite to discredit what is being is little more than “a trick.” She said “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [the US] people are criticizing Israel, then they are antisemitic.” She added that there was an “Israel, my country right or wrong” attitude and “they’re not ready to hear criticism”. Antisemitism, the holocaust and “the suffering of the Jewish people” are used to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”
Indeed, there is every indication that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be taking a much harder line not only with the Palestinians, but as well with its foreign “enemies” the Syrians, Iranians and Lebanese. And there is every sign that he has drawn the United States into his web. President Joe Biden, a self-declared Catholic “Zionist”, is politically too weak to take on the Israel Lobby even if he wanted to, and he has in any event surrounded himself with Zionist Jews as a foreign policy and national security team that would consider any weakening of ties with Israel to be unimaginable. Quite the contrary. Jewish power in the US demands unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel, even as its government moves to the right and becomes more dangerous regionally, threatening to involve the United States in new wars. Seemingly blind to what is developing, the US last month proceeded with the largest wargames ever involving the Jewish state. The games simulated an attack on Iran and could be a model for a series of pointless conflicts initiated by the more hawkish Israeli government.
And there is almost certainly much more to come, including a bill in the Knesset that will make it nearly impossible for Arab citizens to organize political parties. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He is exploiting his position to already call for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, the shoot to kill policy vis-à-vis Palestinians has increased the number of deaths already in 2023, totaling twelve on January 25th and 26th alone when a refugee camp at Jenin on the West Bank was raided by the army and two teenagers elsewhere were shot dead. Another shooting a week later took 5 Palestinian lives. Many more Palestinians were wounded in all the army attacks and the Israelis, as is their practice, routinely deny them any access to medical help. The army’s Chief of Staff has declared that its policy on using firearms will not be changed in spite of the large number of civilian deaths. Israeli soldiers and policemen who kill Palestinians, who are routinely described as “terrorists,” are almost never investigated or prosecuted and have been, in some cases, praised in the media and promoted.
And Ben-Gvir is not the only fanatic who has surfaced as a worrisome character in the new government. Another is Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party and now finance minister, who has called for Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and the imposition of citizenship requirements that would make Jewishness a prerequisite for inclusion.
Smotrich’s party aspires to make Israel a theocracy governed by the racist Talmud, and both he and Ben-Gvir have supported the expulsion of Arabs who fail to agree that “the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.” Smotrich has stated that his immediate plans include authorizing dozens of new and completely illegal West Bank outposts to include continuing the demolition of what he claims are unauthorized Palestinian homes there. Smotrich is also enthusiastically racist when it comes to the Palestinians, asserting that new Jewish mothers in hospitals should be separated from new Palestinian mothers. “[My wife] would not want to sleep next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby in twenty years.”
Zvika Fogel, another prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament, has called for genocide in his promotion of a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all,” saying in an interview that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was no longer good enough and that there should be one last war to “subdue them once and for all. It would be worth it because this will be the final war…”
Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis accelerate their expansion into areas that are nominally Palestinian. Palestinians who marry foreigners are not allowed to enter the country with their spouses while the Palestinian flag has now been declared illegal. The possibility that the Arabs will stage a general uprising increases daily, leading to more demands from some Israelis that remaining Palestinian centers of resistance be utterly destroyed.
To be sure, many young Jewish Israelis have recently been demonstrating against their own government’s shift rightwards. And in the United States many liberal Jews are concerned at developments, though they are critical of what is happening for all the wrong reasons. An increasing number of American Jews believe that Israel is indeed an apartheid state and that its treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane to say the least. But they, at the same time, oppose doing anything to punish the Israeli government to make it draw back from its most brutal and dangerous policies. They argue that the Netanyahu government is risking a confrontation with the US government, and the Jewish community will splinter over Israeli human rights abuses, weakening political support in Washington for a strong and enduring relationship with the Jewish state. In a sense the power of the Jewish diaspora both in the US and elsewhere thereby becomes the enabler of Israeli bad behavior even as it disapproves of what is taking place.
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.
February 14, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Revealed in a new affidavit
Employees of the New York City Department of Education who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 had their fingerprints and files sent to the New York Criminal Justice Services and the FBI, a legal filing alleges.
New York City had a vaccine mandate for employees of the Department of Education that required them to be fully vaccinated by September 2, 2022. By mid-September, about 1,950 employees had been fired for refusing to get the vaccines.
Those who refused to get vaccinated also had a “problem code” added to their personnel file.
We obtained a copy of the affidavit for you here.
“And while she applied to over 60 jobs during that span, she received no offers because, as one interviewer told her, the DOE attached a problem code for her due to alleged ‘misconduct.’ While she waited for a decision, her home went into foreclosure, her son had to leave college, and she was forced to get vaccinated to feed her family,” read the affidavit of a principal from the Bronx who got suspended without pay for refusing to get vaccinated.
Teachers For Choice claimed that teachers’ “fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services.”
The group further claimed that after personnel files got flagged, they were sent to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
“In addition, you’ve got these problem codes in the personnel files,” said John Bursch, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal group that is defending employees that were terminated by the city, to the court.
“When the city puts these problem codes on employees who have been terminated because of their unconstitutional policies, not only do they have this flag in their files, but their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services. So it impacts their ongoing ability to get employment.
“Even for those who are eligible for reinstatement, when they apply, they’ve all got so-called ‘problem codes’ in their personal file because they purportedly failed to fulfill a contractual condition, which was to get vaccinated.
“The city simply didn’t like that some people objected to the vaccine on religious grounds and they punished them for that.”
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | FBI, Human rights, New York City, United States |
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How might strong advocates of community masking – who happen to occupy positions within the hierarchy that provide opportunities to influence research activity – go about achieving their aims? I suggest it would include some combination of discouraging the undertaking of robust research about mask effectiveness and potential harms, impeding and delaying the publication of unfavourable findings, and undermining the value of rigorous empirical science. A look at the history of the Cochrane mask reviews seems to offer an illuminating case study of these insidious forces in action.
Cochrane reviews are widely recognised to provide the most authoritative and comprehensive evaluation of the scientific evidence regarding specific healthcare interventions, and their raison d’être is to inform the decision-making process. On January 30th 2023, the latest version of the Cochrane review of the effectiveness of physical interventions (including masks) in reducing the spread of respiratory viruses was published. In keeping with their earlier reviews, the overarching conclusion of the authors confirmed what we already knew: masks achieve no appreciable reduction in viral transmission. Arguably of more interest are the indications that powerful forces within the academic world were at work to obstruct the dissemination of this inconvenient truth.
In regard to the potential benefits of mask-wearing, the findings of the review were emphatic: after considering 12 research trials (ten in the community and two among hospital workers) the main takeaway message was that face coverings made “little or no difference to influenza-like or COVID-19-like illness transmission”. When only studies where respiratory infections had been confirmed in a laboratory were included in the analysis, the conclusion was even more stark: “Wearing masks had no effect on… influenza or SARS-CoV-2 outcomes”. Furthermore, the type of mask used – the surgical variety or the higher-quality N95/P2 respirators – made no difference to the outcome.
It is plausible to assume that the conclusions of the Cochrane scholars did not make easy reading for the pro-mask establishment. The Covid era has been characterised by extraordinarily high levels of censorship of views that did not tally with the dominant public health narrative, and this silencing of alternative perspectives has often been evident within the academic and research spheres. A close inspection of the two most recent updates to the Cochrane review – their development and content – suggests that these malign forces of suppression may have been targeting this initiative in an effort to dilute the impact of its masks-are-ineffectual message. There are five observations consistent with this premise.
1. Scarcity of robust studies
It is intriguing that, three years after the start of the Covid event, there is a dearth of prospective randomised controlled trials (RCTs) – the type that provide the most robust kind of scientific evidence – to evaluate the efficacy of community masking as a means of reducing viral transmission. In the words of the Cochrane review authors, there was a “relative paucity” of such studies “given the importance of the question”. In a politicised environment, where Covid policy was often determined without recourse to empirical evidence, perhaps those in power did not want to fund research that would provide a definitive answer to the question of whether masks offered an effective viral barrier, particularly in light of the earlier discouraging results?
2. Unpublished research
In November 2020, the Danish mask study – the first RCT of mask efficacy specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus – found that masks achieved no significant benefit for the wearer. Despite this ground-breaking conclusion, the research was initially rejected by at least three prestigious medical journals. This publication bias is also evident in the current Cochrane review where the authors, when discussing the range of RCTs included in the analysis, state that: “We identified four ongoing studies, of which one is finalised, but unreported, evaluating masks concurrent with the COVID‐19 pandemic” (my emphasis). Why would a finalised RCT, on such a pressing issue as mask effectiveness, not be published? The most likely answer, in this censorial environment, is that it came to the ‘wrong’ conclusion.
3. A disregard of the harms of masking
Very few of the studies included in the Cochrane review addressed the potential harms of wearing masks; harms were “rarely measured and poorly reported”. When one considers the wide range of credible negative consequences (physical, social and psychological) associated with mass masking in the community, this is a glaring omission. Once again, the most plausible reason for this inattention to harms in mask research in the last three years is political pressure – Government policy makers urgently sought evidence to support their premature decisions to impose mask mandates, to demonstrate their effectiveness as a viral barrier, and were disinclined to investigate the potential harms.
4. Publication delays
A blatant indication of top-down censorial influence on the ‘masks don’t work’ message is the way that publication of one of the Cochrane review updates was delayed. The previous 2020 version, incorporating updates up until January 2020, had passed peer review and was finalised by April of the same year. Extraordinarily, its publication was delayed until November 2020 due to “unexplained editorial decisions“. According to lead author, Dr. Tom Jefferson, this extra scrutiny was “a very unexpected event in Cochrane, especially during a period in which the topic of the review and the setting of policy was of global importance”.
It is unlikely to be coincidence that this window of delay corresponds to the period when the U.K. and other Governments, under intense pressure from pro-mask groups, U-turned and imposed mask mandates on their populations. In the midst of this policy flip-flop, it would have caused considerable political embarrassment to our public health leaders should the Cochrane group – the source of the most authoritative and comprehensive scientific evidence – have broadcast its conclusion that masks are ineffective as a viral barrier. In the words of Dr. Jefferson, by the time their report was published in November 2020, “the advisers had changed their minds about the evidence, and the policies had been set”.
The latest Cochrane review update includes studies up to October 2022. Its publication three months later suggest that this edition was not delayed, presumably because, at a time when most of society is unmasked, its conclusions are likely to evoke less discomfort for policy makers.
5. Editorial interference
An explicit example of the top-down interference with the Cochrane review process (referred to above) is an editorial that accompanied the 2020 edition. Including statements such as, “Waiting for strong evidence is a recipe for paralysis”, the content of this commentary appears totally at odds with the ethos of the Cochrane initiative. Indeed, this decisions-before-evidence assertion mirrors the proclamations of pro-mask zealot Professor Trish Greenhalgh, who has previously stated that the rigorous search for empirical evidence is the “enemy of good policy“.
In the words of Dr. Jefferson, the 2020 Cochrane editorial “seemed to undermine our work” and had the effect of “completely subverting the precautionary principle”. The lead author of the editorial was Dr. Soares-Weiser (Cochrane’s Chief Editor) who is “responsible for ensuring that the Cochrane Library meets its strategic goals of supporting health care decision-making by consistently publishing timely, high-priority, high-quality reviews”. Clearly, the 2020 Cochrane mask review failed her ‘timely’ criterion and her trivialisation of the value of empirical evidence is at odds with the ‘high-quality reviews’ aspiration.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS consultant clinical psychologist and a co-founder of the Smile Free campaign that opposes mask mandates.
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, Human rights |
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The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene set up a “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor what it would determine to be “dangerous misinformation” posted on social media, non-US sites, and non-English media in the US.
This “misinformation” mostly had to do with Covid vaccination – the Department was determined to drive vaccination rates up by spreading its word, and in this gathered over 100 partners whose job was to craft positive messaging around the controversial subject.
Among those the dedicated new unit is working with is Public Good Projects, otherwise known for receiving funding from a lobbying group representing two major Covid vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna.
Their “good” work here also included sending Twitter, on a weekly basis, lists of posts slated for censorship.
In an article published by the NEJM Catalyst journal, those behind the effort are now assessing the Unit’s work as successful, what with it being able to “rapidly identify messages” deemed as containing inaccurate information about the virus, vaccines, treatment, etc.
And although admitting that “vaccine hesitancy” remains high around the world even two years after the vaccines were first introduced – and this is something attributed to “disinformation and misinformation” and continues to worry the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General, as well as “medical experts” – the New York City Health Department thinks that it did well in getting its own narrative out, particularly in traditional media.
However, it needed help on the internet and so, in 2021, the NYC Health Commissioner penned a letter to the largest social networks asking them to engage in “broader efforts to curtail deliberate disinformation, particularly from the most notorious spreaders of disinformation and from non-English language sources.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
This is also where the Public Good Projects came in, to enlist social media “microinfluencers” to spread pro-vaccine messages, and train others to come up with campaigns.
The email Dave A. Chokshi, New York City health commissioner, addressed to then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with the subject line reading, “Vaccine Misinformation,” urges the pair to “take immediate action to stop the spread of fraudulent and inaccurate information about COVID-19 vaccines” on their platforms.
Chokshi wanted this action to be “effective and vigorous” and asserted that misinformation on these sites, as understood by the city’s Health Department, was “costing New Yorkers their lives.”
Twitter and Facebook were then urged to do the following: “Consistently and promptly remove all misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines from your platforms and ban any user that repeatedly posts misinformation, including the Dirty Dozen; redesign the algorithms used by your platforms to avoid amplifying misinformation, particularly among non-English languages; provide greater transparency to your data to allow health departments to better identify, track and understand the spread of misinformation, and amplify messaging from trusted public health experts and local partners.”
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New York City, Public Good Projects, United States |
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In future, it will no longer be enough for the EU to censor and silence undesirable alternative media only in its own area of responsibility. The EU also wants to fight unwelcome opinions and competing media in the rest of the world.
To this end, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has announced that he intends to use alleged “disinformation experts” in EU offices around the world. Their task would be fighting Russian and Chinese spreaders of alleged “fake news”.
Borrell announced the deployment of official censors to this end: “All our delegations will be equipped with experts in countering disinformation in many parts of the world so that our voice is better heard.”
A particular thorn in the side of the EU is the Russian and Chinese media and their multipliers, for example on platforms such as Telegram.
More international solidarity with allies is also required here, said Borrell. “We need to address this issue politically at the highest level.” The EU and like-minded partners should create their own way of sharing data and analysis of foreign disinformation campaigns, but also work more with authorities around the world to ban competing voices.
Borrell did not give any specific information about what this should look like in the future and how the EU broadcasters should act against “fake news”. So far, the EU has not come up with anything other than censorship when it comes to unwanted competition but that could be difficult in foreign countries.
From the point of view of Borrell and the EU authorities there is no reason whatsoever to doubt the official narrative, and every expressed doubt will now be given a new label: “Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference”, abbreviated FIMI.
The unelected preach ‘democracy’
The EU Commission is not a democratic structure, its members are appointed, not elected, and most of them lack any understanding of democracy. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell could virtually serve as Exhibit A.
Not long ago, Ursula von der Leyen deleted her mobile phone communication with Pfizer about the purchase of millions of doses of a pharmaceutical preparation and while it raises the suspicion of corruption, this could be presented as FIMI simply because it was also reported by a Russian broadcaster.
Borrell’s grasp of the English language is at least as bad as that of Ursula von der Leyen’s. Yet both insist on proposing these far-reaching measures in English, no longer an EU language. Do they understand the subtleties of their proposal?
Ignoring facts
The Chinese state media, according to the EU report, “have reinforced selected pro-Kremlin conspiracy narratives, for example about alleged US military biorepositories in Ukraine”.
This is a clear example of how to dispose of truth or factual information as a criterion. These labs are not only found as budget items listed in the US defence budget (a document over which the Kremlin presumably exercises no control), but individual collaborations, such as the research projects of the Bernhard Nocht Institute or the Friedrich Löffler Institute with these Ukrainian labs, can also be found on their websites, as well as the financier of these projects, the German Ministry of Defence.
It must therefore be stated that these laboratories existed, that they were financed from the military budget and that the research was carried out on behalf of the military, and not only on behalf of the US. Nevertheless, the EU has declared the very existence of the labs to be a “conspiracy narrative”.
In connection with protests under the title #StopKillingDonbass, the EU report stated that it was “falsely claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ‘paramilitary units of neo-Nazis’ were committing atrocities against civilians, including children” while the Soros NGO Human Rights Watch recently actually admitted that Ukraine had distributed butterfly mines in Donetsk, an outlawed munition in residential areas.
According to their rationale, any “disinformation” accusation by FIMI does not have to take into account whether the statement is true, but only that it contradicts the EU narrative.
Therefore, the report noted: “The information disseminated by these networks does not have to be provably false or misleading to constitute a FIMI incident, which FIMI applies more broadly than the classic definition of disinformation.”
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | European Union, Human rights |
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Wednesday, Congress held a hearing on Twitter’s censorship of The New York Post and its coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. While House Republicans focused on issues like shadowbanning and government collusion with Big Tech, Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats advocated for increased censorship from Silicon Valley companies.
Raskin argued that the committee would be better served focusing on “the real threats of massive Russian disinformation and white nationalist violent incitement on social media.”
Like the Biden Administration’s usurpation of the First Amendment, Raskin’s cohort’s goal is censorship and the accompanying augmentation of state power, not challenging the veracity of opponents’ arguments or claims.
In “Shouting Covid in a Crowded Theater,” I discuss how officials in the Biden Administration use wartime rhetorical strategies to slander dissidents. In doing so, they conflate dissent with threats to public safety to censor critics.
When discussing public health, the regime consistently uses labels of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But the more we learn about government operations, the more it appears that these labels are references to inconvenience, not falsity.
This strategy extends beyond the country’s COVID response.
Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.”
The sabotage presented a major energy crisis for the United States’ European allies. Europe imports nearly 40% of its gas from Russia, and the Nord Stream 1 was responsible for delivering approximately one third of that supply.
Now, Hersh reports that “the United States executed a covert sea operation” with Navy divers to sabotage Russia’s pipelines with explosives.
For a less obsequious press corps, this should have been an easy story to crack.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Biden announced his intention to act against the pipelines in the event of war.
“If Russia invades… there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” he told reporters. “We will bring an end to it.”
“How will you do that exactly?” a reporter asked.
“I promise you we will be able to do it,” President Biden said with a slight smile.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland was equally as explicit.
“I want to be very clear to you today,” she told reporters in January 2022. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed “Anglo-Saxons” in the West for “terror attacks” on the pipelines. “Those who profit from it have done it,” Putin told the press.
President Biden chastised Putin’s accusation for “pumping out disinformation and lies.”
“Just don’t listen to what Putin’s saying,” Biden added. “What he’s saying we know is not true.”
White House National Security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson backed up Biden’s claim, referring to Putin’s accusation as “Russia’s disinformation.”
Russia’s U.N. ambassador also implied that the United States had been involved in the sabotage. Richard Mills, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., responded by calling the claims “conspiracy theories and disinformation.”
Despite the Commander and Chief’s explicit announcement that he would take action against the Nord Stream pipeline, a credulous press corps has dutifully parotted government talking points that accusations of western involvement in the sabotage are “baseless” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theories.”
This all follows a similar pattern to the informational warfare of the Covid era: an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true (or at least highly plausible).
Arguments over natural immunity, vaccine efficacy, masks, the lab leak hypothesis, school shutdowns, lockdowns, and the scientific basis of social distancing are just a few examples that followed this cycle of reporting.
This was the same pattern as The New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop. Now, at hearings to investigate corruption that implicated Big Tech, intelligence officials, and the federal government, Raskin and his cohorts return to their familiar censorship ploys.
For censors, augmentation of power, not truth, remains the chief objective. To achieve this goal, they conflate dissent with domestic terrorism.
For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s “National Terrorism Advisory Service” listed misinformation and disinformation as terrorism threats in February 2022. The memo identified these threats as efforts to “undermine public trust in government.”
Regarding both Covid and Ukraine, the most powerful forces in the country have repeatedly lied and misled the American public. They censor critics to protect their delicate narratives of fiction, and they attack others for the public’s waning trust in government.
Hersh’s article pierces through the hegemonic narrative; hopefully, exposing their lies and warmongering will disrupt their ploys for censorship and power.
William Spruance is a practicing attorney and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center. The ideas expressed in the article are entirely his own and not necessarily those of his employer.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, United States |
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After I won my landmark “quarantine camp” lawsuit against Governor Hochul and her Department of Health a few months ago, people from around the globe started reaching out to me. Some wanted to simply send congratulations on a job well done, and thank me for giving them hope that this tyranny that somehow magically took hold contemporanously in countries around the world, could be defeated.
But many others wanted more than that. They wanted actual help. They wanted to know how they could fight back against the intense tyranny in their countries. So, I started doing interviews and presentations to groups based in the UK, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. I shared with them my legal theory behind my case, the separation of powers argument, and all about my courageous plaintiffs (Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Assemblyman [now Congressman] Mike Lawler, and a citizens’ group called Uniting NYS).
I told them about the other wonderful group of NYS Legislators that supported us with an Amicus Brief (Assemblymen Andy Goodell, Will Barclay and Joseph Giglio), and the battles that we fought and won along the way, as the Attorney General tried tactic after tactic to stall, derail and destroy our case. I shared all that I could with them in the hopes that it would assist them in their countries, as they pushed back against their government abuses.
At first I was taken aback by the response from those who reached out to me from abroad. It was hard for me to imagine that all those foreigners were watching our quarantine case so intently. Many told me they’d heard about it through “alternative media” sources, and had been quietly cheering me on and praying for a win. This made me realize that the utter helplessness brought on by the flagrant despotism of so many nations’ governments was eerily simultaneous – and equally frightening to all citizenry, no matter which country one called home.
Our quarantine camp lawsuit win against New York’s governor was almost akin to the proverbial shot heard around the world. Almost. Not quite. One big difference is that my lawsuit was (and still is today) heavily censored. Mainstream media barely covered it when we won, except for an article here and there in the New York Post and my interview on OAN Network. Epoch Times TV did a deep-dive interview with me on their wildly popular show, American Thought Leaders, but still yet, the Epoch Times is not legacy, mainstream media that continuously pours over the airwaves day in and day out.
Local and alternative media were covering it, but not mainstream media. I previously wrote an article about the censorship of my quarantine case which you can read here.
With my exposure to citizens from countries far and away, I was hearing tales of horrific happenings. Things that I simply could not believe governments would do their people, especially in countries that were supposedly “free”. And yet, here they were, telling me stories, sending me news articles or photos or actual video footage of atrocities I could not wrap my head around.
Some of the images are forever burned into my memory, no matter how hard I try to erase them. And at the end of each story that someone recanted, or each video that I watched, I thought to myself, “Thank God we won our quarantine camp lawsuit here in New York.”
I realized that we had not only stopped this complete totalitarianism from taking place in my home state, but we had likely stopped it from spreading across the nation to the point where quarantine camps would become the “new norm” as a way to (supposedly) stop the spread of a disease – or to punish someone the government didn’t like. (Remember, the languange in the reg we got struck down said the government did NOT have to prove you actually had a disease)! For more details on the reg and our lawsuit, go to www.UnitingNYS.com/lawsuit
Through my connection with Brownstone Institute, I was introduced to a wonderful and brave Australian who had spent two weeks in a quarantine camp in northern Australia. Let’s refer to her as “Jane”. I share with you now her first hand account that she shared with me of what happened and what it was like, replete with photographs from inside the camp.
At the time Jane was in the camp, Dan Andrews was (and still is) the Premier in Australia. The country had very strict COVID19 policies, which Jane points out, were constantly changing. Literally, the government would change a policy whilst people were flying mid-air, and upon landing at their destination, they’d be arrested because they now suddenly were in violation of a new COVID policy just issued!
The rule at the time was that no Australian was allowed to leave their state, unless you had a “legitimate reason” to do so, and in order to actually leave, you had to first quarantine for 2 weeks. Not in your home. No, don’t be silly! You had to quarantine in a facility that was run by the government. Some people got to choose which facility, others did not. There was a large camp in the Northern Territory near Darwin, and then there were many quarantine hotels scattered throughout the country.
Reportedly, the quarantine hotels were a total nightmare where you were shut into a room for 2 weeks, no exiting your room, no going outdoors allowed, and some rooms didn’t even have windows! But living in Melbourne, a large city in southest Australia, was just as bad. The government would only let you out of your home for ONE HOUR/day, with a mask on, and you couldn’t stray more than 5 kilometers from your house. You not only couldn’t leave the city, you couldn’t leave the country!
Forget having anyone visit – no guests were allowed in your home. The government set up a hotline so that Australians could call and report any of their neighbors who were disobeying the COVID mandates. The police would often check on the citizens to see if they were complying. They’d phone you, and if you didn’t respond within 15 minutes, they’d come knock on your door! The camp where Jane was quarantined seemed almost like a holiday, comparatively speaking. Well, not really.
So how it worked was that, if you had family or friends or business in another state, you had to first go to a government facility to quarantine for 2 weeks. Again, only if you had what the government deemed to be a legitimate reason. Jane needed to leave Melbourne, so she packed up her bags, booked an absurdly expensive flight to the Northern Territory, and off she went to the quarantine camp in Darwin for 2 weeks. Did she go “voluntarily”, of her own free will? That’s a very fine line of semantics there folks. Yes, she herself booked her flight and packed her bags to go, but it was only because the government told her that was the only way she could leave Melbourne. I don’t consider that free will. I hope you share my view.
The quarantine camp:
The camp had rows of trailer-like buildings that housed the inmates – I mean the there-of-their-own-free-will Australians. Jane was put into a unit that had a bedroom and a bathroom. Each unit had a small front stoop, sort of like a porch (see photo below). You were allowed to sit outside and talk to a neighbor, through a face mask of course, if you could stand the sweltering heat. Police were constantly patroling the camp, walking past the trailers, ensuring everyone was complying with the “social distancing” requirements and the forced masking, etc.
You weren’t allowed to do anything other than sit on your front stoop, or walk “laps” through the camp… as long as you stayed the proper distance from others, wore your mask, and didn’t try to do anything else. There was a swimming pool, but you were only allowed a dip in the pool twice during your 2 week stint there, and that was only if you were going to do some laps… no games allowed!
The food was terrible. No alcohol allowed. Cell phones and internet were allowed, at least when Jane was there. She said one woman tried to escape, but she was caught and then put into solitary confinement.
Now, sit down for this next part. The government restricted you from leaving your town, your state, your country, forced you into quarantine hotels or a camp if you were able to convince them that you had a real reason to cross a state border, treated you like a criminal, and get this – YOU had to pay for it!! And it was not cheap. The price tag was $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family at the camp. The “hotels” apparently were more costly at $3,000 for the 2 weeks.
There were more details that Jane shared with me, but I cannot cover all here. At this point, I’m going to close out this story with a part of my conversation with Jane that really struck me. She could tell that I was flabbergasted by the things she was telling me. She could hear it in my voice, but also in the long pauses in between my questions after she would answer the litany of inquiries I was throwing at her.
My underlying astonishment was obvious… “How could your government do these things to its people?!”
Her response was immediate and direct, “We don’t have your Second Amendment. If we had, our government never would have treated us this way.”
Let that sink in for a minute.
Lawsuit update:
As I mentioned above, we defeated New York’s quarantine camp regulation when we won our lawsuit last July against Governor Hochul and her DOH. The Attorney General filed a notice of appeal, and had 6 months to appeal the win. Elections were November 8th. Not surprisingly, no appeal was filed, until…
The first week of January, just days before their 6 month deadline was up, the Attorney General asked for an additional 2 months to appeal our victory over quarantine camps! Unfortunately, the Court granted the request, despite our objection.
For more information about the case, the timeline, or if you’d like to support our lawsuit against the Governor and her quarantine camp regulation, go to www.UnitingNYS.com/lawsuit
Together, we win this!
Bobbie Anne is an attorney with 25 years experience in the private sector, who continues to practice law but also lectures in her field of expertise – government over-reach and improper regulation and assessments.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Australia, Covid-19, Human rights, New York, United States |
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The term ‘moral injury’ is a new one for me, as it probably is for most. It’s more commonly applied in a military context and only recently in health and social care, since 2020 to be precise. Indeed, the literature gently, knowingly or unknowingly, nudges us into believing that moral injury, reframed as occupational moral injury, isn’t a new concept but an inevitable consequence of working in an ethically challenging health and social care system.
Moral injury is understood as the damage done to an individual’s conscience or moral compass when they perpetrate, witness or fail to prevent acts that transgress their own moral beliefs, values or code of ethics. The term is thought to have originated after the Vietnam war when returning veterans and their carers struggled to make sense of high levels of anguish, anger and alienation that couldn’t be explained in terms of a mental health diagnosis such a post-traumatic stress disorder. It doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to understand why veterans were morally injured but the Moral Injury Project at Syracuse University in New York cites examples such as using deadly force in combat and inadvertently causing harm or death to civilians and colleagues, giving orders which result in the injury or death of colleagues, failing to provide medical aid to civilians or colleagues and failing to report incidents such as sexual assaults.
When lockdowns were implemented in 2020, the health and social care workforce faced insurmountable and intolerable challenges when it was deemed unsafe in many situations to have close contact with fellow human beings who were in need of assistance. In essence, a workforce who function on the need for human contact could endanger life by simply doing their job. Subsequently, care and support was withdrawn or compromised through almost non-existent face-to-face interactions or time limited, with minimal physical contact if they took place at all.
Moral injury therefore makes sense in the context of health and social care. Staff were forced to deny medical and compassionate care to the injured and dying, leave adults and children in risky situations which in some cases led to death and injury, isolate frail older people from the life-giving company of family and friends and ignore or dismiss situations that previously justified urgent attention; all done while hiding smiles and humanity behind useless and potentially dangerous masks.
Moral injury during the pandemic can surely be applied across most professions and indeed the population: the police officer investigating a peaceful family gathering, the funeral director separating distressed relatives, the religious leader closing the door of a place of worship or the teacher who forced children to wear masks for hours on end. There were also the children who isolated their parents and parents who isolated their children, neighbours and community groups who withdrew essential help and support, and friends and family who got angry or fell out with those they disagreed with. Emotions and tensions ran high, leading me to think that many of us are morally injured to some degree or another. Is it any wonder that so many are struggling with poor mental health?
The growing number of articles drawing attention to moral injury, the most significant in the BMJ in July 2020 and a reference point for further articles, all focus on reassuring staff that a conflict of morals and the potential for injury is a normal consequence of doing what was necessary to prevent illness and death from Covid-19. At no point are the logic and morality of the rules called into question, which is surprising because the Moral Injury Project makes reference to two other potential causes of moral injury that are not referred to in recent literature:
‘Following orders that were illegal, immoral, and/or against the Rules of Engagement or Geneva Convention’;
‘A change in belief about the necessity or justification for war, during or after one’s service’.
As the realisation slowly dawns on the world that the inhumane actions which staff were forced to take were in fact unnecessary and based on flawed concepts with no robust evidence base, are we facing a rising tide of the morally injured? All measures were applied in the absence of risk/benefit analysis, despite common knowledge that blanket approaches to managing risk are likely to cause more damage than the presenting problem. Yet the whole population was terrified into believing we were all at equal risk of severe illness or death from a lethal virus, to which we had no natural immunity and was quietly spread from those with no symptoms, especially children. Lockdowns, school closures, testing, mask wearing, social distancing, mass vaccination programmes and subsequent passports were said to be necessary but in reality were unjustified and immoral. Dismissing the question of the necessity and morality of these measures and normalising moral injury as a natural consequence of a warlike situation places accountability solely on those who enforced the polices and vindicates those who created them.
A morally injured workforce is evidence that the response to Covid-19 was morally wrong. None of us know how we would have behaved in the shoes of the workers who enforced immoral policies that contravened their conscience and moral compass. However, we can be sure of one thing: many of the injured will need support to come to terms with the realisation they have inadvertently played a part in injuring some of the very people they intended to protect.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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It’s time to courageously stand up to the self-serving politicians, corporate media, and Big Tech who are weaponizing our tax-payer funded institutions against us, undermining our freedom and democracy. Our love for America can give us the strength to win this battle.
Press TV – February 11, 2023
Former Democratic US Representative Tulsi Gabbard has said Hillary Clinton is a “dangerous character” who is “envious” of President Joe Biden because she believes Biden is “channeling her warmongering ways.”
Gabbard made the remarks following the ex-secretary of state’s recent visit to India where she visited salt pan workers in Gujarat where and announced a $50-million initiative aimed at empowering women and communities to fight against climate change.
Gabbard told Fox News that the trip served little purpose and said that Clinton’s visit to drum up support for alternative clean energy shows that she still covets diplomatic authority and is “envious” of Biden’s presidency.
“Her desire to be commander-in-chief that she’s had for a very long time has nothing to do with ensuring the safety and security of the American people,” Gabbard said. “It has everything to do with the fact that if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.”
She added that she believes Biden to be “channeling her warmongering ways.”
Clinton has previously called Gabbard a “Russian asset,” which incited the former Hawaii Democrat to launch a defamation lawsuit.
Gabbard also stated that Clinton’s visit to India did nothing to address India’s more pressing issues and that its only purpose was to increase her own public profile.
“This is what makes her such a dangerous character,” Gabbard said. “She feels that she’s not accountable to anyone because she’s not suffering those consequences.”
The 42-year-old Gabbard served as a congresswoman in the US House of Representatives between 2013 and 2021, and as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) between 2013 and 2016. She quit DNC’s vice chairwomanship to protest the Democratic Party’s presidential primary process, blaming then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz for rigging the vote in favor of former Obama secretary of state Hillary Clinton against Vermont’s progressive Senator Bernie Sanders.
She quit the Democratic Party in October last year, blasting its leadership for being an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”
Gabbard said that today’s Democratic Party is “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers.”
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party,” she tweeted.
Gabbard also served two tours of war in the Middle East, including a tour in Iraq as a member of the Hawaii National Guard, and ran for president in 2020, where her evisceration of former California Attorney General – and current US Vice President — Kamala Harris by pointing to the latter’s record of incarcerating African Americans on petty drug offenses forced Harris to drop out of the presidential race before any primaries or caucuses were held.
She has long been among the top critics of US military interventions across the globe. She traveled to Syria in 2017 and censured Washington’s attempts at regime change there, and also slammed US military aid for Ukraine, pointing to the risk of the conflict escalating into a Third World War with Russia.
Gabbard has called Clinton the “embodiment of corruption” and “the queen of warmongers.”
Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, has repeatedly spoken against neoconservative war hawks with a history of supporting regime change wars. On the contrary, Clinton has supported America’s imperialist wars.
American writer Stephen Lendman once said Clinton is “a war goddess” who has supported all of the United States’s “imperial wars from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria.”
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Tulsi Gabbard, United States |
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Aletho News 