Va. Public School to Use Precrime Thought-Police Program to Deter Off-Campus, Social Media Hate Speech by Students
The Rutherford Institute | February 17, 2022
FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — A Virginia public school system has announced its plan to adopt what has been likened to a precrime surveillance program in order to monitor and deter social media threats, hate speech, bullying and harassment by students. Pointing out that the social media monitoring program being developed and considered by Fairfax County Public Schools (“FCPS”) raises significant concerns about government surveillance and its chilling effect on the lawful speech of students, parents, and other community members, The Rutherford Institute also warned that such a program could give rise to one-size-fits-all zero tolerance policies regarding expressive activity that is misconstrued as negative, critical or hateful.
“While it may appear commendable at first glance, this school-sponsored social media monitoring program is problematic on multiple fronts, not the least of which is the message it would send students that they have no rights: to privacy, free speech, or the freedom to explore different ideas and think for themselves. Indeed, this program is tantamount to an Orwellian precrime program complete with thought police,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Where such an endeavor runs into trouble is when those overseeing this kind of pre-crime program get overzealous and overreach, targeting students for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the school’s precrime sensors. In such an environment, students learn to self-censor, critical thinking dissipates, and the schools become breeding grounds for compliant citizens, rather than raising up a generation of individuals with a dynamic understanding of what freedom and tolerance mean.”
In November 2021, Fairfax County Public Schools (“FCPS”) issued an Informal Request for Proposal to solicit and establish a contract for social media software which would seek to detect and collect data from social media, classify aliases and usernames, identify connections between persons, set alerts for active listening, and produce high-level summary reports. FCPS intends to use the software for “social media listening” in order to monitor “threats, harassment, hate speech and bullying” which “may be directed to racial groups or any student or teacher within FCPS.” Yet as The Rutherford Institute warned in its letter to members of the Fairfax County School Board, by reportedly subjecting students, parents, and other community members to constant surveillance, the Social Media Monitoring Program lays the groundwork for a broad range of constitutional violations. Specifically, Institute attorneys point out that the social monitoring precrime program threatens to chill lawful First Amendment activity, undermines parents’ rights, could lead to viewpoint discrimination and a troubling expansion of school zero tolerance policies, and may exceed the scope of the Board’s statutory authority. Denouncing the program as an ill-advised plan that could expose FCPS to legal jeopardy, The Rutherford Institute has asked the Fairfax County School Board to reconsider its adoption of a Social Media Monitoring Program and offered to advise and assist the County in striking a better balance between school safety and the rights of students and parents.
The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.
DOCUMENTS
The Rutherford Institute’s letter to the Fairfax County School Board
Ottawa cops crack down on protesters
Workers construct a barrier fence around the parliament building © Getty Images / Scott Olson
RT | February 17, 2022
Police have started to erect fencing around the Freedom Convoy protest in downtown Ottawa, Canada, and have brought in extra officers in a push to clear the demonstration. The move comes after the truckers were threatened with arrest under emergency powers enacted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Video footage captured on Thursday showed busloads of police arriving in downtown Ottawa, and officers purportedly holding crowd control drills. Meanwhile, workers were seen putting up metal fencing near the demonstration, which has brought traffic in the center of the Canadian capital to a standstill for nearly three weeks now.
Shortly after these videos surfaced, Ottawa Police announced that “residents are seeing a major increase in the number of police officers on our streets.” The force also stated that barriers and fencing are going up around the “core” of downtown Ottawa, cutting the protest off from the rest of the city. Only those who live and work within this area will be allowed to pass the barriers.
“The unlawful protesters must leave the area and will not be provided access,” Ottawa Police stated on Twitter.
Cops on Wednesday began handing out fliers to the protesters, warning them that they could face arrest if they refuse to leave. The notices also said that, thanks to emergency powers enacted by Trudeau on Monday, those traveling to Ottawa to join the protest are now also breaking the law, and face the risk of having their vehicles seized.
“We’re going to take back the entirety of the downtown core and every occupied space,” interim police chief Steve Bell told city councilors on Wednesday evening, adding that his officers would “remove this unlawful protest” and “return our city to a state of normalcy” in the coming days.
The emergency powers invoked by Trudeau also allow the government to order bank accounts linked with the protest frozen, and to suspend the trucking licenses of participants.
Canada orders firms to freeze assets of anyone who “indirectly” engages in Freedom Convoy protests
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | February 17, 2022
On Monday, the Canadian government announced drastic plans to freeze the bank accounts of protesters associated with the Freedom Convoy – a movement that’s standing against vaccine mandates. However, the government document containing these plans, which was published by the Canadian government late Tuesday night, reveals that the financial restrictions will extend far beyond bank accounts and can be used to target anyone who’s deemed to have “indirectly” engaged in the protests.
The new government order applies to a wide range of entities including banks, fundraising platforms, insurance companies, investment firms, loan companies, securities dealers, credit unions, and fraternal benefit societies.
It requires these entities to determine whether they’re dealing with a “designated person” which is defined as “any individual or entity that is engaged, directly or indirectly” in prohibited activities under the Emergencies Act. These prohibited activities include any “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace” and include the activities of the Freedom Convoy protesters which Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau branded “illegal blockades.”
If these entities determine that they are dealing with a designated person, they’re required to:
- Freeze the designated person’s property (which includes funds and virtual currency)
- Cease providing “any financial or related services” to the designated person (insurance policies that were valid prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act on Monday and not associated with vehicles that are deemed to be engaging in prohibited activities are exempt from this provision)
- Report the designated person to the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) or the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS)
- Report any “suspicious transactions” from the designated person to Canada’s anti-money laundering agency FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada)
These entities have also been granted full immunity against civil lawsuits for any actions they take to comply with this order.
You can read the full Canadian government order here.
According to the state-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), “banks will be working with law enforcement to decide who should be ‘de-banked.’”
CBC also spoke with a senior Canadian government official who said that police could gather the names and license plate numbers of protesters and share this information with FINTRAC.
A former CSIS senior strategic analyst, Jessica Davis, added that freezing and seizing funds under these new rules is “likely to put a lot of financial pressure on the people who are participating in the protest” and that “it’s going to be very difficult for them.”
Canadian Justice Minister David Lametti even suggested that these sweeping new powers would be used to target those who are part of the “pro-Trump movement” when he was asked about whether those who donated to the Freedom Convoy because of their opposition to vaccine mandates should be worried about their bank accounts being frozen.
“If you are a member of… a pro-Trump movement who’s donating hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you oughta be worried,” Lametti said.
Shortly after the Canadian government announced these sweeping financial surveillance and censorship measures, the RCMP issued an order to all FINTRAC regulated companies in Canada and demanded that they cease transacting with 34 crypto wallets that are allegedly associated with the Freedom Convoy’s fundraising efforts. The order also demands that these companies report “any information about a transaction or proposed transaction” related to these addresses.
Greg Taylor, chief investment officer of fund manager Purpose Investments Inc., told BNN Bloomberg Television that the Trudeau government’s order had “caught everyone off guard.”
Philippe Jette, senior consultant to the Rivemont Crypto Fund, described the censorship of money as “something we see in an authoritarian country, not one like Canada” and warned that “freezing accounts for political reasons is a big, big slippery slope.”
Why Did Chris Whitty Go From Opposing Face Masks to Mandating Them With No New Evidence They Work?
By Gary Sidley | The Daily Sceptic | February 15, 2022
One of the major frustrations throughout the COVID-19 crisis has been the failure of high-profile journalists to ask ministers and SAGE scientists challenging questions about the rationale for their – often unprecedented – decisions. When they were not baying for earlier and harder restrictions, the journalists who participated in the numerous coronavirus press conferences typically restricted themselves to questions seeking clarification about the detail of a new rule or imposition rather than imploring the experts to justify the reasoning that led to their non-evidenced diktats.
I am sure I’m not alone in fantasising about the sort of questions I would like to put to the key rule-makers responsible for this extraordinary two-year assault on our basic human rights. Consider, for instance, Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, and his belated support for requiring people to wear masks in community settings, arguably the most insidious of all the COVID-19 restrictions.
This is not an academic issue. Thanks to the Government’s relentless messaging about the purported benefits of face coverings, there is a real danger that widespread community masking – with all the attendant physical, social, psychological and environmental harms – could become a permanent feature, at least in certain sections of our society.
Prof. Whitty’s track record on the contentious issue of masking healthy people is, like that of many of the high-profile political and scientific rule-makers, characterised by contradiction. In early March 2020, he unequivocally stated that healthy people should not be wearing face-coverings. One month later, he was faltering, saying that, “The evidence is weak, but the evidence of a small effect is there under certain circumstances”. Since this time he has supported – or, at least silently colluded – with the pro-mask lobby. What changed his mind? No robust evidence supporting mask efficacy emerged in spring 2020, nor any time since, so what ‘nudged’ him to relinquish his anti-mask stance?
To clarify the reasons for his change of mind, I would be keen to be given the opportunity to ask our Chief Medical Officer the following questions:
- Around April/May 2020, what piece of robust real-world research made you change your mind about the ineffectiveness of masking healthy people in the community?
- As late as December 2020, a WHO document concluded that: “There is only limited and inconsistent scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of masking healthy people in the community.” Do you agree with the BBC Newsnight reporter Deborah Cohen that the WHO’s U-turn on masks was likely to have been the result of political lobbying?
- With regard to the imposition of masks, what has been the specific rationale offered to you by the Government’s behavioural scientists, such as Professor David Halpern?
- Is it merely a coincidence that masks powerfully help enforce the main ‘nudges’ promoted by behavioural scientists to achieve compliance with COVID-19 restrictions?
- Do you agree that the most robust type of scientific evidence is that provided by real-world, randomised controlled trials? If so, how can you reconcile your promotion of mask wearing with the results of such trials that consistently show that masks do not significantly reduce the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2?
- Do you agree that, in a democratic free society, the evidential bar for mandating an intervention (such as masking the healthy) should be set very high? If so, do you believe that the empirical evidence for the benefits of masks as a means of reducing viral transmission reaches this threshold?
- There are a wide range of harms (physical, social, psychological and environmental) associated with masking healthy people, including the maintenance of inflated levels of fear that will have contributed significantly to the tens-of-thousands of non-Covid excess deaths and the current mental health crisis. Do you believe that a marginal reduction in viral transmission can compensate for this extensive collateral damage?
- If the Government’s behavioural scientists had not promoted masks as a way of increasing a sense of ‘solidarity’ that encouraged general compliance with the COVID-19 restrictions, can you confirm whether you would have changed your advice?
Growing numbers of people would like to hear Whitty’s answers to these important questions. Given the opportunity, I would be very happy to directly put them to our Chief Medical Officer in a public forum. Failing this, maybe a high-profile journalist will rise to the challenge. Ah, we can but dream.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist, a member of HART and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.
Ottawa Freedom Convoy Tears Down Illusion of Democracy in North America
By Matthew Ehret | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 16, 2022
No, there is a limit to the tyrant’s power!
When the oppressed man finds no justice,
When the burden grows unbearable, he appeals
With fearless heart to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights,
Which there abide, inalienably his,
And indestructible as stars themselves.-Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell’s Rutli Oath
Who would have thought that Canada would ever be a spark plug for a freedom movement against tyranny?
As the editor of a Canadian geopolitical magazine for over 10 years and author of four books on Canadian History, I am a bit embarrassed to say that I certainly didn’t think that Canadians had this in them.
The “monarchy of the north” certainly isn’t something that exudes revolutionary sentiment- having been founded on such non-revolutionary principles as “Peace, Order and Good Governance” which have stood in stark contrast to the significantly more inspiring “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” enshrined in the founding documents of our southern cousins. Even our founding 1867 document (drafted over a champagne fueled month of hedonism in 1864) explicitly calls out the purpose of confederation not as a means of “supporting the general welfare” as was the case of the USA’s constitution in 1787, but rather “to promote the interests of the British Empire”.
But here it is.
Countless thousands of patriots have driven across the country to bunker down in Ottawa in peace and high festive spirits which I had to see with my own eyes to believe demanding something so simple and un-tainted by ideology: freedom to work, provide for families and a respect for basic rights as laid out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (a 1982 upgrade to the embarrassingly oligarchical British North America Act of 1867).
Mainstream media and political hacks have been working overtime to paint the Freedom convoy that converged on Ottawa on January 29 as an “insurrectionist movement” full of “white supremacists”, “Russian stooges”, and “Nazis” out to “overthrow the government”. Even the Bank of England’s former governor (and World Economic Forum Trustee) Mark Carney chimed in on February 7 stating that “this is sedition” and that “those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law”. Carney, the perennial financial darling of Goldman Sachs and the City of London (and Prime Ministerial hopeful) called for a targeting of all those who donated money to this domestic terror operation.
Faced with an organic civil rights movement of blue-collar truckers, farmers and tens of thousands of supporters who have convened on Canada’s capital to demand a restoration of their basic freedoms, the current Liberal government has failed to show even an ounce of humanity or capacity to negotiate. This shouldn’t be a surprise for those who have seen the hypocrisy of neo-liberal “rules-based” order ideologues in action over the past few years who are quick to celebrate the “liberty” of citizens of Ukraine, Hong Kong, or Xinjiang when the outcome benefits the geopolitical aims of detached technocrats hungry for global hegemony. The moment genuine self-organized labor movements arise demanding basic rights be recognized, then the masks come off and the raging tyrants show their true faces.
So instead of negotiation and discussion around principled constitutional issues as the protestors have requested, we have instead seen only threats, slander and more threats ranging from cutting off $10 million of funding raised on GoFundMe on February 4, and then another $8 million raised on GiveSendGo on February 10. We have seen the government impose a state of emergency first in the city of Ottawa followed by a full province wide state of emergency on February 11 justifying cutting off vital supplies of fuel to those truckers and their families who have been camped out in -22 degree Celsius temperatures. Edicts making it illegal to provide supplies to the protestors under threat of fines ranging up to $100,000 dollars and one year in prison have been drafted and the patriotic citizens who have organized for their right to not live under a dictatorship have been stigmatized by the media relentlessly as “insurgents”.
Emergency Measures Act invoked
Then on February 14, Justin Trudeau, followed by Deputy Prime Minister and WEF-Trustee Chrystia Freeland took turns announcing the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act which itself had formerly been known as “The War Measures Act” last invoked nearly 50 years earlier by Justin’s father Pierre Elliot Trudeau as a “solution” to the RCMP-directed terror cells deployed across Quebec and culminating in the month-long ‘October Crisis’ of 1970. The name was changed in 1988 although it is in function entirely identical.
Under the Emergency Measures Act, the Deep State of Canada managing Trudeau has adopted the Mark Carney program outlined on February 7 of targeting bank accounts of all Canadians either involved with the convoy directly or having supported the convoy via online donations or cryptocurrencies. What might those individuals suffer for the crime of having offered support or participation in the protests? Those ‘deplorable insurgents’ are facing the threat of seeing their bank accounts indefinitely frozen, and if they own businesses, having their insurance policies cancelled. The ‘big 5’ banks of Canada have thus been “deputized” and given full legal protections from being sued by those whose lives will be damaged by the shutdown of bank accounts.
One thing has become apparent thus far: the threats are not working with truckers and other protestors renewing their commitments to remain in place and even four Provincial Premiers (from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec and Manitoba) denouncing the emergency measures.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has also loudly denounced the Act saying “the federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the emergencies act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: The act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes… Emergencies Act can only be invoked when a situation ‘seriously threatens the ability of the government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada’ and when the situation ‘cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada”.
Fissures Across the Establishment
Due to the inflexible Borg-like inability to negotiate with an organic civil rights movement suffered by all technocratic Davos-creatures, major fissures have begun to break throughout the political establishment of Canada.
Already two members of the Liberal Party have gone renegade breaking with Canada’s holy system of whips and loyalty to party above conscience demanding that Trudeau repeal the immensely unpopular and useless covid measures. On February 8, Liberal MP Joel Lightbound commented that Trudeau’s vile generalizations of the protestors have only served to “wedge divide and stigmatize” Canadians making the point that he has only seen a wide diversity of races attend the freedom convoy in Ottawa and across the provinces. One day later, a second Liberal MP Yves Robillard broke party ranks re-emphasizing his support for Lightbound’s statements and warned that many others within the party share these dissenting views and will soon speak out if changes are not effected soon.
In the Conservative Party, a coup of sorts took place on February 3 when opposition leader Erin O’Toole was ousted by his own caucus for sounding too much like a World Economic Forum ghoul and for the first time in over two years, an actual counter voice of opposition can be heard in the halls of parliament with demands by every single Conservative member of parliament to end the lockdown mandates and support the nation-wide protest movement.
On provincial levels, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec and PEI have announced a repeal of their covid mandates including vaccination passports, while Quebec has stepped back from the anti-vaccination tax which was threatened by Premier Legault until only a week ago.
Even NDP head Jagmeet Singh who had labelled all protestors white supremacists just a few days ago reversed his tune- perhaps due to the overwhelming presence of Sikhs in the federal and provincial convoys.
Freedom Convoy Nightmares for Technocrats in USA and Europe
Meanwhile the Biden Administration has given its full support to Justin Trudeau to use the full force of federal power to shut down the protests (conflagrating the blockade of US-Canada trade in Windsor and Manitoba as being tied directly to the Ottawa protests… which it isn’t).
Perhaps Biden is concerned that the example of the convoy has spread not only across nations of the Trans Atlantic Community and Five Eyes cage, but also to the USA itself where a parallel American freedom convoy will leave Southern California for Washington D.C. on March 5 involving tens of thousands of American truckers.
Former Obama Asst. Sec. of Homeland Security and frequent CNN commentator Juliette Kayyem delivered her disturbing comments to this festering problem which must be stopped at all costs saying: “Trust me, I will not run out of ways to make this hurt: cancel their insurance; suspend their drivers licenses’ prohibit any future regulatory certification for truckers etc. Have we learned nothing? These things faster when there are no consequences”
How this process will unfold in the coming days and weeks is impossible to determine. The illusion of liberal democracy which fueled self-aggrandizing virtue signaling technocrats lecturing “bad” authoritarian states of Eurasia how freedom should work has collapsed.
One thing is certain.
Those tyrants living in their ivory tower echo chambers demanding the world to conform to their ideal post-nation state utopias are panicking as they have no idea how to interact with actual human beings organizing themselves around such non-mathematical principles as “freedom”, “justice” and “rights” which are inalienable to all citizens- even if they live under a monarchy.
Texas sues to unmask travelers
RT | February 17, 2022
Forcing Americans to mask up while traveling goes beyond what US health authorities are legally allowed to do, a new lawsuit coming from Texas argued on Wednesday, demanding the end of the mandate that has been in effect for over a year now.
Congresswoman Elizabeth Van Duyne (R-Texas) filed the lawsuit in a federal court on Wednesday, joined by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) nonprofit and the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. The US government was named as the defendant, along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and their leaders.
“It is time for all mandates to be lifted, including those affecting airline passengers,” Van Duyne said, accusing the CDC of causing “untold damage” to the US with its “constantly changing science, fluctuating recommendations and oppressive need to control all aspects of society.”
The lawsuit argues that the CDC’s mask mandates amount to an abuse of power and violate constitutional authority – the same reasoning used to successfully challenge the agency’s eviction moratorium in May 2021 and vaccination mandates for cruise lines in July.
“The CDC is relying on specific and narrowly tailored provisions in the law to exercise enormously broad powers Congress has not granted the agency,” said TPPF’s senior attorney Matt Miller. The organization’s general counsel Robert Henneke also denounced the “tyranny” of the Biden administration in the name of Covid-19.
Announcing that he joined the lawsuit, AG Paxton described the mask mandate as “anti-science, virtue-signaling” and called it “not only silly, but illegal too.”
In his very first executive order, President Joe Biden mandated the wearing of face masks on federal property and announced a “100-day masking challenge.” That was 392 days ago. The requirement that travelers on planes, trains, buses and other public transit must wear face coverings went into effect on February 1, 2021 and has been extended three times since. It is currently set to expire in March, unless renewed.
The Jacinda Papers
By Guy Hatchard | February 15, 2022
A remarkable trove of documents has been created in New Zealand by an organisation called Te Punaha Matatini—Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa hosted by the University of Auckland but funded directly by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is headed by the wildly inaccurate Covid modeller Dr Shaun Hendy who once predicted 80,000 imminent New Zealand deaths (currently at 53 in NZ) and includes the participation of academics from universities across New Zealand.
The documents are remarkable because they indicate the genesis of the unique and blinkered pandemic perspective of our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern which has diverged from that followed among other countries and from that found in global science publishing.
The documents in some cases exhibit in their referenced material, a lack of awareness of the extensive content of global science publishing on the pandemic.
One paper of particular interest is entitled:
Evaluating the infodemic: assessing the prevalence and nature of COVID-19 unreliable and untrustworthy information in Aotearoa New Zealand’s social media, January-August 2020
https://cpb-ap-se2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.auckland.ac.nz/dist/d/75/files/2020/09/06092020-disinformation-formatted2.final_.pdf
It is hardly remarkable that the New Zealand government uses sophisticated computer systems to closely monitor the social media content of its citizens (what government doesn’t?), but the methods used and the starting point of evaluation are highly indicative of where the repressive and controlling New Zealand Labour government Covid policy began:
- The paper accepts a number of controversial ideas as true at face value such as the zoonotic origin of Covid-19. It describes discussion of a bioengineered origin of Covid in a Chinese lab as Xenophobia and a conspiracy trope, when it actually was, at the time the article was published, a matter of general scientific debate.
- Table 2 (excerpted above) designates some common types of scientific discussion around Covid-19 as ‘disinformation’, most of which were actually the subject of science publishing even in mid 2020. It dismisses them as fallacious without justification. Subsequent data analysis has upheld them in large part. Yet the rejection by Ardern of their moderating tone, was and is used to stoke fear in the whole population.
- Concepts of herd immunity since found to play a highly significant role in reducing Covid severity are dismissed as oversimplification and misrepresentation despite their verified and time-honoured role in developing human immunity.
- Assertions that Covid-19 disproportionately affects those already ill with comorbidities or the aged (a highly verified fact) are outrageously dismissed as the result of ableism.
- Table 3 in the paper asserts additionally that suggestions that the vaccine might have adverse effects or may alter DNA is a conspiracy theory. Subsequently there have been over 1000 papers published worldwide examining the deficiencies in mRNA vaccination safety and adverse effects reporting including evidence published late in 2020 that RNA vaccine genetic sequences can and do integrate into the human genome.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.12.422516v1
- Mainstream scientists like Dr. Simon Thornley, media personalities like Mike Hosking, and politicians including Gerry Brownlee are described as using conspiracy theories to recruit NZers to right wing causes. All of whom should rightly have been described as high profile public figures stimulating discussion around political and scientific policies affecting a complex subject. The attempt to marginalise Ardern’s political opponents is obvious.
- The paper rejects health and wellbeing narratives, many of which are in fact grounded in mainstream medical advice, as misleading. Thus it specifically rejects self-care options. Yet prior and subsequent research has found many of these lifestyle and dietary options to be helpful if not critical to healthy Covid outcomes and avoidence of serious illness. These include adequate rest, exercise, a balanced diet, and nutritional supplements.
- This rejection of the value of wellbeing programmes has found its obvious conclusion in the formation of New Zealand government mandates. Yet the paper describes the suspicion that there are hidden government agendas to introduce ‘forced vaccination regimes’ as an ‘opportunistic conspiracy theory’. As we now know, these suspicions voiced early on social media are almost indistinguishable from the actual oppressive New Zealand vaccination mandates which Ardern eventually introduced denying employment and impoverishing those wishing to avoid risk and continue to make their own medical choices.
The push to introduce the censorship of scientific information and discussion that characterises the Ardern government is evident throughout the paper. Specific individual scientists tied to the government by both ideology, and in some cases by financial support, are picked out as people who should be the public’s sole sources of reliable information. These include: microbiologist Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles, physicist Professor Shaun Hendy, and epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker.
The paper says the aim of government messaging should take the form of ‘branding’ designed to teach the public to trust the government alone. Something so close to propaganda as to be almost indistinguishable.
Emphasis in social media on ‘individual rights’ is described as an undesirable import from America. Ardern’s more recent rejection of protests as ‘imported ideas’ echoes Trudeau’s recent dismissal of protestors as ‘taking up space’, both of which hint at exclusionary agendas to come.
In conclusion the paper hints that ‘simply relying on the successful multi-faceted science and public health communication approaches of the government earlier in the pandemic will not be sufficient to debunk’ what it describes as ‘increasing prevalence of conspiracy theories about state control and individual rights’.
And continues:‘a wide-ranging response to the increasing discussion of unreliable sources, untrustworthy narrators, and conspiracy narratives in media, political, and civil society discourses is required’.
It further reports that a computational methodology and process for on-going monitoring of the prevalence of mis- and dis-information, and conspiracy narratives, within Aotearoa New Zealand’s social and mainstream media ecosystems has been established. It describes public access to a plethora of social media platforms, as a problem that needs to be addressed.
The very limited scientific outlook of Covid-19 Modelling Aotearoa is evident in the many other papers it has produced for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. In particular, their narrative has diverged in content from trends now well-understood through published data analysis around the world, including:
- The strident saturation advertising of Covid-19 mRNA vaccination referring to its absolute safety.
- The Ardern doctrine that the government should be the public’s only source of information.
- The confidence Ardern extends to tentative and often subsequently falsified science without feeling the need to update policy.
- The encouragement the government has offered to social media sites to censor content.
- The politicisation of NZ’s Covid-19 policy.
Obviously, the paper and others may have fuelled and validated Ardern’s limited understanding of science. Science is a global, rational, empirical endeavour to arrive at truth, not a process tailor-made to support ideology.
Perhaps its most frightening consequence is Ardern’s rejection of the notion of individual health rights which has obvious historical parallels.
Guy Hatchard PhD was formerly a senior manager at Genetic ID a food testing and certification company (now known as FoodChain ID)
Forced Vaccination Policy in Austria Has No Impact on Jab Uptake
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 15, 2022
Austria’s best-selling newspaper says the government’s introduction of a mandatory vaccination policy has had no discernible impact on jab uptake in the nation’s capital and could have even caused a drop-off.
Since the compulsory jab mandate came into force on February 5, Kronen Zeitung reports that the law actually caused a reduction in the number of people being vaccinated.
“There is no mandatory vaccination effect – and if there is, then rather in the other direction,” the newspaper reported.
There was a significant reduction in the number of people getting vaccinated on February 6, one day after the mandate was imposed, a trend that was also noted on February 12.
“All in all, the Austrian instruments relating to measures and vaccination do not result in a well-rounded strategy and have no recognizable goal,” the the office of City Councilor for Health Peter Hacker told Kronen Zeitung. “That is why no run on vaccinations is to be expected in the coming days and weeks.”
While the mandate failed to boost vaccination rates, it did succeed as prompting Canadian trucker-style protests in Austria.
As we highlighted last week, enforcement of the jab mandate is nothing less than draconian.
Citizens are being stopped randomly in the street and pulled over in their vehicles and forced to comply with vaccine status checks by police.
As we previously reported, the Austrian government authorities announced they would hire people to “hunt down vaccine refusers.”
Austrians who don’t get vaccinated face fines of up to €7,200 ($8,000) for non-compliance, and those who refuse to pay would also face a 12 month jail sentence.
Trudeau’s latest power-crazed move
This isn’t a fight against a virus anymore, it’s a fight for freedom
By Laura Dodsworth | February 15, 2022
The Canadian Federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever, for what we were told only recently is a “fringe minority” of protestors.
Trudeau’s language has been carefully nationalistic and his style contained while discussing the protestors. He repeatedly makes appeals for the “safety” of all Canadians. His case sounds reasonable:
“Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy, and our fellow citizens’ daily lives,” he said. “It has to stop.”
But the pursuit of safety can become a danger when it leads an alarmed populace to acquiesce to increasingly strong-arm government.
The language used by Trudeau also subverts ideas that would typically appeal to liberals. He has declared the protestors to be “anti-vaxxers”, “racist” and “misogynist”. They are bad people, and therefore we should stand against them.
Unfortunately for Trudeau – although fortunately for the reputations of the freedom convoy truckers – the cat was out of the bag when we saw footage of protestors of all ethnicities, peacefully singing and dancing in the streets. Even Joël Lightbound, a member of Trudeau’s same party, has accused the prime minister of trying “to divide and to stigmatise” the unvaccinated.
I suspect Trudeau may even have welcome a little violence to justify a strong dispersement of this protest, but it has remained remarkably peaceable.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said that banks and financial institutions would be able to freeze the bank accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order. The truckers’ insurance licenses can be revoked. The police will have new powers to fine and imprison protestors.
Freeland said they were broadening Canada’s “Terrorist Financing” rules to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms as part of the effort. Well, naturally. Imagine being able to bypass fiduciary totalitarianism – must put a stop to that!
This should be a huge wake up call to people. If western liberal democracies (in the case of Canada, I use this term more lightly than I would like at the moment) go down the route of programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), governments will be able to swiftly switch off access to money, or specific products and services, if they do not like your behaviour. Here in the UK, the Treasury and the Bank of England are exploring a potential UK CBDC, and identity-based programmable money is under consideration. As I have already written, all that glitters is not gold. Add to this the subjective complexities of defining terrorism and the problem is self-evident.
Shutting down protest and blanket defunding a large group of protestors is a bad look for liberalism. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in a statement that the standard for invoking the Emergencies Act “has not been met”. The media will be dissecting whether this step was overreach for weeks to come. Those with a liberal heart know it is overreach now. If you support Trudeau’s action, you might as well support setting up a Chinese-style social credit system.
The battle lines are being redrawn. We are no longer engaged in a fight against a virus, but a fight for liberal values and against despotism.
The Sad and Brutal Final Hours of Camp Freedom and the Convoy to Canberra
A Sense of Place | February 15, 2022
What had been a remarkably successful policing operation, handling the one million protestors who showed up in Canberra to protest two years of government overreach during the Covid era, turned sour in the final hours.
Until that point there had been no reports of violence, rapes, vandalism or all the other behaviours one might fairly expect with such a wildly diverse and yes, angry crowd.
Although the crowd was unmasked, and certainly weren’t lining up to QR code in, the authoritarian derangement and violent police excesses the nation has become accustomed to were nowhere to be seen.
Australians are extremely slow to protest; but with millions having lost their jobs, their businesses, even contact with their families amidst deep social divisions created by being daily threatened or ostracised if they do not take “the jab”, they are silent no more.
The hands off policing which had characterised both the protest and the handling of the 200,000 campers at Camp Epic, only one of a number of campsites, were largely peaceful because the police did not seek confrontation.
That all ended on the 14th of February, 2022, two days after a million people marched on Parliament House in jubilant unity.
The putative and publicly squabbling leadership of the movement at Camp Epic did nothing to dispel tensions. And all of them disappeared on the penultimate day, leading to yet more fear and confusion amongst the thousands who remained on the site itself, including many with children who had no jobs and no homes to return to.
All the rhetoric from various members of the movement that they were there “until the job is done”, or “until this is over”, proved as substantial as smoke.
The social chaos and personal crises wrought by the blizzard of government diktats and authoritarian overreach of the past two years is now clearly evident.
Camp Epic was already rapidly emptying on the final day when police moved in and aggressively moved every last protestor off the site.
In the inflammatory leadup, sowing yet more tension and confusion, protestors were initially told that they would have to move on by midnight. One woman with two young children said people had come to her tent early in the evening and told her she would be bashed and arrested if she did not move on.
The woman did not have a car and had no way of complying.
The next rumour in this evolving drama was that campers had until 8am to comply.
As it turned out the police arrived in force at around 11am, repeatedly broadcasting the message: “Leave Now. You are trespassing. Leave immediately. If you do not leave you will be arrested.”
Police, tolerating no resistance, worked their way through from the showgrounds from the top camping ground until every last protestor had been evicted.
The irony of police aggressively moving demonstrators from the nation’s capital, ostensibly the heart of Australian democracy, was lost on nobody.
As more than 98% percent of protestors had already left, and of the holdouts most were already packing up to leave, it was a largely pointless show of force.
In one of those all too human moments, one protestor pleaded with the police: “Don’t vax your kids.”
One sign, emblematic of the passionate sincerity of protestors, read: “Touch Our Kids & It’s War.”
While from a policing point of view the dissolving of Camp Freedom may well be deemed a success and end up as a textbook model for policing in highly volatile situations, it has also left many questions over its inhumanity and deceptive nature.
Every last protestor moved on yesterday has one message in their head: “The government is my enemy.”
Campers were told multiple conflicting stories. They could move to a large holiday camp an hour outside of town; that they could move to another Council controlled camping ground Camp Cotter at Cotter Creek half an hour away; or that they would be safe and welcome to stay on Ground Seven, at the top of the Epic showgrounds.
In the dramatic unravelling, none of these stories, or deliberate falsehoods, turned out to be true.
The hundreds of people who moved up to Ground Seven on the understanding that as it was private property they would be safe to stay were easily kettled, or corralled, given no choice but to leave after more than 50 police entered the grounds with backup forces clearly evident behind them. While many wore the standard uniforms of local police, there were other heavily armed special operatives wearing masks and holding leashed dogs, adding to the fear and panic already spreading through the crowd.
Amid these surreal and frightening scenes, it was obvious that a few of the officers were enjoying their role perhaps “a little too much”; but that many were unhappy about the duties they were being asked to perform.
In the midst of this chaos, some of the younger officers in particular, were exceptionally polite, thanking the protestors for their cooperation.
Many protestors moved to Cotter Creek Campground, a council run venue, on the assurance that they would be safe and welcome there.
That also proved false, with police aggressively moving protestors on, despite the fact that they had already made bookings and paid for their visit.
Another suggestion that protestors could move to a large conference and adventure centre Caloola Farm, an hour outside of Canberra, provided free of charge by the sympathetic owner, also proved false.
Police blockaded the roads and refused to let protestors enter.
Owner Ralph Hurst-Meyers, well known for his community generosity, said: “After consultation with the authorities, Caloola Farm and the Hurst-Meyers Charity Limited will allow vulnerable people affected by recent events such as the elderly, the disabled, and the indigenous community, single mothers with children, vulnerable families with children to temporarily stay at Caloola Farm free of charge while they make preparations to return home.
The problem with that, of course, is that many of the remaining protestors have no home to return to.
As one of the many passionate people involved in the weeks events observed: “Everyone here is on the verge of losing everything.”
A million people on their doorstep has upset the smug disdain displayed towards the largely working class protestors by Canberra’s insular, well paid public servants and their political overlords.
But as the many Australians who are refusing to accede to the government’s vaccine mandates burn through their savings and resources, the social chaos inflicted on Australia’s working and middle classes by the Canberra elites can only intensify.
The authorities may have succeeded in moving the protestors on this time around, but this story is going nowhere.
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The myth of oil as a dwindling resource
By Bruce Everett | August 18, 2008
… Natural resources are limited by definition, but how limited? … continue
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