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DON’T VOTE “#GREATRESET”

By Olly Connelly | Daily Chaos | May 5, 2022

It’s local election day in the UK and, as you’ll be aware, elections are underway also in France and in the US.

Local, constituency or national level, if you vote for someone who is not talking about defeating the #GreatReset, then you are voting for Klaus Schwab, you are voting “to own nothing”, for communism directed by fascists, you are voting for tyranny, for censorship, for more fake pandemics and more fraudulent war, you are voting for divide-rule on an epic scale that is destroying families, communities and societies from within despite the farcical topics such as “how to define a woman” for crying out loud, you are voting for the normalisation of Satanism and paedophilia as can increasingly be seen in Biden’s America, you are voting for genocidal war criminals like Tony Blair to never be brought to account while being BBC-platformed to lecture you on using experimental drugs on your innocent children, you are voting to condone yet more phony elections, for Martial law in Western societies as we saw in Ottawa, for the hundreds of thousands in death toll in places like Yemen while the globalists distract with Ukraine, you are voting for CCP-style oppression and their model social credit score to keep you in check, you are voting for the last of our liberty ie an end to cash, for Google’s bloodstream nanobots and Musk’s brain chip, for Gates’ quaxxines and the final cull of the Mama-Papas defeated by the Bezos drones.

DON’T VOTE FOR SLAVERY.

Don’t vote for the Great Reset. DON’T VOTE FOR ANYONE WHO IS NOT ACTIVELY WARNING AGAINST THE GREAT RESET, THEY ARE A FRAUD, A DECEIT…

… At this stage in the game, I tell you, ANYONE in politics or journalism who is not warning of the dangers of the Great Reset is somewhere between fraudulent and downright evil.

If in doubt, if in any doubt, do not vote. In most cases this is almost certainly the best option, to help de-power the them-us elitism, to deny a mandate and to create a window to be able to say, “WE DID NOT ELECT YOU.”

We should have seen, by now, the vile outcome by supporting cheats and liars. We should have seen that voting for the lesser of the evils DOES NOT HELP. Do not make things worse by voting yet again for PROVEN cheats and liars.

Do not mindlessly vote. And yes, at this stage in the game where practically everyone on the global stage is either bought or blackmailed, A VOTE “NOT TO VOTE”, an abstention from the Big Lie, is in no way dishonourable. A vote for more of what we have in power now, on the other hand, is downright moronic.

Here’s to us, and bugger plutocracy!

May 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

UK intensifies crackdown against Russian media

Samizdat | May 4, 2022

The UK is forcing social media, internet service providers and app stores to block content from state-sponsored Russian media outlets – RT and Sputnik news agency. “For too long RT and Sputnik have churned out dangerous nonsense dressed up as serious news to justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Tech and Digital Economy Minister Chris Philp said on Wednesday.

“These outlets have already been booted off the airwaves in Britain and we’ve barred anyone from doing business with them. Now we’ve moved to pull the plug on their websites, social media accounts and apps to further stop the spread of their lies.”

In March, Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, revoked RT’s broadcasting license. The EU decided to ban RT from broadcasting the same month. RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anna Belkina said at the time that Ofcom revoked the license for “purely political reasons tied directly to the situation in Ukraine.” She said that the regulator “falsely judged RT to not be ‘fit and proper’ and in doing so robbed the UK public of access to information.”

The UK also blacklisted the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), which operates Russia-1 and Russia-24 TV channels, among others. The UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) accused the broadcaster of playing “a key role in justifying Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.”

Sanctions were also imposed on InfoRos and the SouthFront news websites. The FCDO accused them of spreading “destabilizing disinformation.”

May 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Our Digital Panopticon

The CDC has been using phone tracking data to monitor schools and churches. The CIA has also been spying on Americans, with no judicial oversight and without congressional approval.

By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | May 4, 2022

Yesterday, Vice broke the story that during the previous two years, as the headline announced, “The CDC tracked Millions of Phones to See If Americans Followed COVID Lockdown Orders.” According to documents obtained by Motherboard, the CDC used phone location data to monitor schools and churches, and wanted to use the data for applications beyond covid: “The documents also show that although the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly, it intended to use it for more-general CDC purposes.” The recovered CDC documents, dating from 2021, state that the data “has been critical for ongoing response efforts, such as hourly monitoring of activity in curfew zones or detailed counts of visits to participating pharmacies for vaccine monitoring.”

The documents contain a long list of what the CDC describes as 21 different “potential CDC use cases for data.” These include, among others, monitoring curfews, neighbor-to-neighbor visits, visits to churches and other places of worship, school visits, and “examination of the effectiveness of public policy on [the] Navajo Nation.” Other use cases mentioned in the documents include public health issues beyond covid, such as “research points of interest for physical activity and chronic disease prevention such as visits to parks, gyms, or weight management businesses” as well as “exposure to certain building types, urban areas, and violence.”

Although the data the CDC purchased from the controversial broker, SafeGraph, was aggregated and designed to show trends, “researchers have repeatedly raised concerns with how location data can be deanonymized and used to track specific people.” Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that that unmasking specific users from these aggregated human mobility datasets is possible. One research team studied fifteen months of human mobility data for one and a half million individuals and published their results in Nature: Scientific Reports: “In a dataset where the location of an individual is specified hourly and with a spatial resolution equal to that given by the [mobile phone] carrier’s antennas, four spatio-temporal points are enough to uniquely identify 95% of the individuals.” They coarsened the special and temporal data and still found “even coarse datasets provide little anonymity.”

“SafeGraph offers visitor data at the Census Block Group level that allows for extremely accurate insights related to age, gender, race, citizenship status, income, and more,” one of the CDC documents reads. Due to its questionable practices, SafeGraph was banned from the Google Play Store in June 2021, which meant that meant that any app developers using SafeGraph’s code had to remove it from their apps. The company includes among its investors the former head of Saudi intelligence. This is where the CDC went to get its tracking data, paying SafeGraph $420,000 for access to one year of data.

Evidence also emerged recently that the CIA, like Israel and Canada, has been similarly using unauthorized digital surveillance to spy on Americans. After supporting vaccine mandates in 2021, the ACLU finally took an interest again in civil liberties in 2022. They expressed alarm when newly declassified documents revealed that the CIA has been secretly conducting massive surveillance programs that capture Americans’ private information.

Like the Israeli spy agency Shin Bet, our federal intelligence agency was spying not on suspected terrorists but on ordinary Americans, with no judicial oversight and without congressional approval, as the ACLU noted: “This surveillance is done without any court approval, and with few, if any, safeguards imposed by Congress to protect our civil liberties.” They concluded: “These reports raise serious questions about what information of ours the CIA is vacuuming up in bulk and how the agency exploits that information to spy on Americans. This invasion of our privacy must stop.” Though ACLU arrived a bit late to the party, as the old saw has it, better late than never.

U.S. Senators Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, both Democrats and members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for declassification of relevant CIA documents. In a letter of April 13, 2021 which they made public, the two senators expressed concern that the CIA program was “entirely outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection [of data], and without any of the judicial, congressional or even executive branch oversight that comes from [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—FISA] collection.” Despite Congress’s clear intent, with the support of the American people, to limit warrantless collection of Americans’ private records, the senators warn, “these documents reveal serious problems associated with warrantless backdoor searches of Americans, the same issue that has generated bipartisan concern in the FISA context.”

There is a broader legal context for these extra-legal developments in mass surveillance of civilian populations. Since the war on terror began, Western nations have legislatively scaled up their increasingly intrusive networks of mass surveillance (often referred to with the euphemism “bulk collection”). The last decade has seen such measures passed in the U.K., France, Australia, India, Sweden, and other countries—not to mention the AI and facial- and gate-recognition enabled surveillance in China, technology that Xi is already exporting to eager rogue regimes around the globe.

May 4, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Extends Detention of World Vision Gaza Director

Mohammed Al-Halabi, World Vision’s Operations Manager in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: File)
Palestine Chronicle | May 3, 2022

Israel’s prosecution requested to extend the detention of Palestinian aid worker Mohammed al-Halabi nearly six years after Israel accused him of diverting tens of millions of dollars from an international charity to Hamas, The New Arab reported.

World Vision — a major Christian charity that operates around the world — as well as independent auditors and the Australian government, have found no evidence of any wrongdoing. Al-Halabi’s lawyer says he has rejected multiple plea bargains that would have allowed him to walk free years ago.

The prosecution has requested another hearing on Monday to extend his detention, he has yet to be convicted in an Israeli court and is still being held in detention.

Al-Halabi has consistently denied the accusations throughout his 167 court hearings. Israel hopes that in time and under duress, the father of five will confess under pressure, activists say.

After al-Halabi’s arrest, World Vision suspended its activities in Gaza, where over 2 million Palestinians live under a crippling 15-year Israeli blockade.

May 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk responds to Mike Huckabee’s request for Twitter to remove online anonymity

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | May 3, 2022

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has asked Elon Musk to remove online anonymity if his Twitter bid becomes successful, sparking concern from privacy advocates about how Musk will “authenticate all humans” and whether it will involve users handing over ID to use the platform.

“I hope @elonmusk will insist that all Twitter posters use their real names & not be keyboard cowards hiding behind silly little sophomoric screen names. Be man enough or woman enough (if you even know what that is) to stand by what you say! If you can’t own it don’t say it,” Huckabee tweeted.

Twitter has distinguished itself from other platforms like Facebook by allowing users to use pseudonyms. For that reason, people who need anonymity, like whistleblowers and dissidents in repressive regimes, people living in countries where anonymity is the difference between life and death, or even those who have opinions that go against the mainstream, have had a place where they can speak freely without fear of retribution.

In a new tweet, Musk replied to Huckabee indicating that there will be a balance when it comes to authenticating users vs preserving anonymity.

In a series of tweets, US Naval Academy’s associate professor of Cybersecurity Law Jeff Kosseff explained why Twitter should continue to allow anonymity.

“The Musk/Twitter press release states that the company will authenticate ‘all humans.’ I’m not sure what this means, but there is at least a chance that it could compromise users’ ability to be anonymous. In this thread I explain some concerns with this possibility,” Kosseff wrote.

“At least some high-profile commentators have interpreted it as banning anonymity/requiring ID verification. If that is the case, and it applies to “all humans” (rather than just making verification an option for everyone), then that could threaten some of the values that have helped to define and distinguish Twitter from platforms like Facebook that have always required real names.”

Twitter itself supported anonymity in a 2021 blog post, citing a PhD graduate who was able to express her frustration with the lack of job prospects without fearing her current employer would retaliate or losing potential employers.

“Being able to express vulnerability and the messiness of real life is important to Brooke, which is why she Tweets under a pseudonym,” the post read. “This is the handle where she can be herself, including talking frankly about the challenges of job searching, without worrying about turning off a potential employer.”

If Twitter were to collect ID on users, dictatorial governments would be able to pressure it to provide personally identifiable data of critics, journalists, and dissidents. That would contradict Musk’s stand of free speech stance.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

By redefining UNRWA, Washington destroys the foundation for a Just peace in Palestine

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | May 3, 2022

Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.

Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of 11 December, 1948.

“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.

In a stern warning on 24 April, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.

Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.

Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”

The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. With an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.

Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organisation that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.

In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.

This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 per cent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.

Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.

By entering into an agreement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.

Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.

Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.

Though the Palestinian Authority, various poltical factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Does Israel Permit Freedom of Worship?

Palestinian Christians will soon be extinct

By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | May 3, 2022

A week ago I wrote a piece describing how Israel’s power over the US government is such that no American official will confirm that the Israelis have, and have had for years, a secret nuclear arsenal consisting of as many as 200 nukes. The situation is particularly odd in that the United States is on record as being strongly opposed to nuclear proliferation, except for Israel, and the enriched uranium that was used to create Israel’s bombs as well as the nuclear triggers were stolen and exported illegally from the US. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself was reportedly involved in the thefts. One lawyer friend has suggested that the reason for the reticence is that under US law by way of the Symington Amendment, no assistance or aid can be given to any country that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Israel has not signed and also has a widely acknowledged nuclear arsenal. To preserve Israel’s billions of dollars in annual largesse from the US taxpayer, silence over what goes on when the government breaks its own laws must be maintained. Some might consider that a case of pandering to Israel rather than taking steps to enhance United States security, but when it comes to the Jewish state that argument is a non-starter in Washington as Israel always comes first.

This week I am going to describe another aspect of the Zionist state’s policy that has been invisible if one relies on the mainstream media or the chattering magpies that occupy Capitol Hill and the White House. That is the ongoing elimination of Christianity in the region where it was born being carried out by Israel and its friends. The United States has been the enabler of much of the change in spite of the prevalence of self-described devout Christians in Congress, many of whom ironically are vocal and even enthusiastic supporters of Israeli “security” policies. Killing Palestinians is all too often justified in Congress and the White House with the meaningless expression “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

American power wielded on behalf of Israel has already destroyed a thriving Christian community in Iraq while still laboring to do the same in Syria and possibly even Lebanon. At Christianity’s very birthplace, in what was once Palestine, Israel has been engaged in making the lives of Palestinian so miserable that they frequently choose to emigrate. Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion famously declared in a letter to his son that “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…” and he exploited massacres of unarmed civilians carried out by the Haganah to create terror to accomplish that end. Since that time, Israel has refused to allow Palestinians driven from their homes by the 1948 fighting to return, has destroyed more than 400 Arab villages and confiscated other Palestinian properties, has appropriated additional land and water resources for its illegal settlements, has allowed armed settlers to destroy Palestinians crops and other forms of livelihood, and controlled Palestinian movements through a network of Jews only roads and numerous checkpoints. Even Palestinians who happen to be Israeli citizens are legally and in practice treated like second-class citizens with limited rights. There are more than 60 laws in Israel that discriminate against non-Jews while Israel now legally defines itself as a Jewish state. Israel has also imprisoned without any trial thousands of West Bank and Jerusalem Palestinians, including children, and shot dead hundreds more.

I could go on, but the point is that Israel wants Palestinians gone, a process that has particularly impacted on the Christian community. It has not been done by ethnic cleansing in the classic sense after the initial Nakba massacres and appropriations in 1948, but rather accomplished by creating incentives to leave. And it has been successful. At the end of the Second World War, an estimated one third of the Palestinian population identified as Christian, but the percentage is currently closer to 9% and continuing to decline. The numbers suggest that Christians in the former Palestine are verging on extinction. In fact, Christians have been able to become disproportionately emigrants from their homeland because they more frequently than Muslims have family already established in Europe and the US and have also been able to rely on networking through their churches for resettlement assistance in a new country.

Even by the wretched standards of the past 70 years, Israel’s seeking a “final solution” with the Palestinians recently has become particularly outrageous, focusing as it does on loosening their ties to their religious and cultural institutions while also destroying their livelihoods and appropriating their properties.

Hardly reported in the US media was the use of new Israeli imposed security restrictions to disrupt this year’s Palestinian Christian Orthodox Easter celebrations of Christ’s Resurrection at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. This comes on top of similar police action to support the usual crowd of rampaging settlers and other Jewish extremists at the most recent Ramadan services held by Palestinian Muslims at the al-Aqsa Mosque, which included using a drone to fire tear gas at worshipers.

What took place during Holy Week and more particularly on Easter Sunday has been described by Rod Dreher, who writes for The American Conservative. I will confess that I do not much like Dreher as he is fond of celebrating himself in everything he writes, full of navel gazing and smug sanctimonious twaddle, but as he was a participant and eye witness to what occurred his account is of necessity extremely valuable. To be sure, he makes it clear that readers understand that he is not criticizing Israelis in general, nor is he engaging in anything objectionable to Jewish sensitivities when he includes himself in how “we American Christians, especially those who support Israel,” also as “an American who cares about Israel,” and who refers to “my Israeli Jewish friends” and then goes on to assert “I condemn anti-Semitism unreservedly. Criticizing the Jewish settlers and official Israeli policy does not constitute anti-Semitism” before concluding that “most Israeli Jews wouldn’t support these hate-filled radical settlers.”

Actually, the US and other governments as well as many states do believe that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. And, depending on how the question is phrased many, possibly most Jews worldwide, support firm action against Muslims in particular, who are routinely described in the media and by the Israeli government as “terrorists.” Rod clearly understands that it is a bad idea to veer into areas that Jews are uncomfortable with as they can be surprisingly sensitive and unreasonably reactive to perceived slights. No need to bite the hand that feeds you, as one might put it, particularly if one wants to stay employed.

Dreher reports how he was “staying at a hotel inside the Old City, where I was advised to book a room out of fear that the Jerusalem police would not let Christians into the Old City on Holy Saturday. This turns out to have been very good advice.” Holy Saturday for Orthodox Christians features a “miracle” of the Holy Fire, which is believed to be the first sign of the Resurrection of Jesus. Normally, at 11 am, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher opens and is quickly packed with believers. After noon, the Greek Patriarch the “little house” built directly over the tomb of Christ, prays, and what is referred to as “divine energy” descends from heaven to light the Patriarch’s candles, the flames from which are shared with everyone present. He then emerges and passes the flame to everyone there.

Dreher and a friend reportedly left their hotel early to pray but when they arrived at the end of the street at the Jaffa Gate, two Jewish police officers refused to allow them to pass out of the Old City, warning that if they left they might not be able to come back in. They then walked over to an access point to the Jaffa Gate, and witnessed a large group of Christians behind a barrier on the other side, blocked from entering into the Old City where the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is situated. Dreher observed that at the same time Orthodox Jews wearing white prayer shawls, entered freely into the Old City on their way to the Western Wall to pray on the Jewish Sabbath. Later that morning, Dreher was only allowed to pass into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because he had obtained a ticket to the “fire” service. The tickets, to control and limit attendance at the church was an innovation by the Israeli police. The Patriarch objected, observing that tickets had never before been required. The tickets allowed entry of only 1,800 worshipers in the church, which normally accommodates 10,000, a reduction of 82% of the faithful permitted to be in attendance on the highest of all holy days.

An Anglican priest from Virginia who spoke to Dreher at the service described that morning’s experience this way: “Police checkpoints were at every corner. Even when we reached the private property of the Greek Patriarchate, police had taken over there as well. They actually turned back nearly a dozen Consuls General and other diplomatic representatives, including ones from the United States. We had to take an alternative route to get inside. If that was the way it worked for VIPs, imagine you’re a local Palestinian Christian simply trying to worship on the holiest of Christian holidays inside the church built over the very Tomb of Christ.”

At issue are demands by radical Jewish groups, most notably the extremist Jewish settlers’ organization Ateret Cohanim, a type of Jewish Taliban, to “cleanse” Jerusalem of all non-Jews. They have been aggressively buying or otherwise occupying properties in and around the traditional Christian and Muslim quarters of the city and often use violence when they are resisted by local residents. Christians, unlike the Muslim community, notably do not tend to resort to violence in support of their property or civic rights even though recourse to the Israeli courts is useless as the judges have consistently sided with the settlers and police.

In Jerusalem there have been regular instances of verbal abuse, vandalism and spitting on Christian clergy, as well as sporadic violent assaults. In the Armenian Christian quarter a monk reports how “[The settlers] destroy the tires of our cars, graffiti ‘death to Christians’, break windows, they desecrate our cemetery, you know… ugly things, and it’s really invasive.” Some Christians have pointed to what happened to the former St John’s Hospice near the Jaffa Gate as a prime example of what the Christian churches fear could happen across the quarter. The building’s lintel still shows the tau-phi monogram of the Greek Patriarchate but in 1990, this pilgrims’ hostel was illegally occupied by Ateret Cohanim, and now the vast building is covered with multiple Israeli flags and houses violent armed Israeli settlers. The local Christians Dreher talked to “believe that this is part of a settler plot to choke off access to Christian holy sites within the city, and force Christians out.”

The Israeli authorities tend to ignore the settler activity as they have powerful supporters, including from the diaspora community in the US and some Evangelicals who help to fund them. Ateret Cohanim’s 2010 annual gathering featured as guest speaker no less than John Bolton and the Kushner Family Foundation has reportedly helped finance its activities. In addition, Israel’s religious conservative parties are a necessary component in the coalition government and their extreme behavior is tolerated and even aided and abetted on the sly. Nor will secular Jews stand up for their Christian brothers in Israel in enough numbers to matter. Also, many Israelis believe that increasingly hardline radical Jewish groups are actually the future of Israel based on demographic trends. All excuses aside, clearly enough of the ruling elite in America, and in Israel, support the radical settlers, or none of this would be happening.

And the situation is little better for Christians in Palestine outside Jerusalem. A Franciscan monk visitor to a monastery outside of the city reported how the Israeli authorities had cut off water to the building while the missionaries themselves were verbally abused and had rocks and other debris hurled at them by settlers. In Bethlehem, a Christian gift shop was deliberately put out of business after nearby Jewish settlements were allowed to erect walls blocking access to it. Other attacks on Christians have included a June 2015 arson incident at the Church of the Multiplication and a nearby Benedictine monastery in Tabgha, located 120 miles north of Jerusalem. The church is built on the site where Christ fed the 5,000 through the multiplication of loaves and fishes. The attackers left Hebrew graffiti on the walls, reading “all idols will be smashed.” In 2014 occurred vandalization of a Romanian Orthodox church, the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition, and Catholic offices in Jerusalem, as well as a monastery in Beit Shemesh. The year before, more than 20 Christian sites of the Latin Patriarchate were attacked by vandals. And in 2012, a Trappist monastery in Latroun was subject to arson and graffiti, while the Convent of St. Francis on Mt. Zion was vandalized. Non-Jews in Bethlehem and on the West Bank meanwhile live under a system of Israeli military laws and check points established by government order number 101. In Hebron, non-Jews living on Jewish-only streets cannot even walk out their front doors and they are regularly bombarded by feces and other waste hurled down upon them by the settlers.

Israel’s anti-Christian policies are international and includes support of groups the US has called terrorists. Israel has given money and weapons to the jihadists fighting against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, which includes al-Nusra Front, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Wounded jihadists even have crossed into Israel to received hospital treatment. Once, ISIS accidentally fired into Israel and then publicly apologized. Israel is intent on removing al-Assad, which will lead to an exodus of Christians from Syria, similar to what took place in neighboring Iraq after US forces deposed Saddam Hussein.

There is a certain irony in how the United States doggedly pursues China over its alleged maltreatment of the Uighurs while at the same time rewarding and protecting Israel even though it spies relentlessly on the US and very clearly persecutes Palestinians. Dreher asks the question why the US government, which gives Israel multiple billions of dollars a year, cannot stop Israel’s de facto official punishment of its Christians. The answer is at least in part simple, that most American Christians do not care about the plight of their co-religionists in the Middle East. Millions of true-blue Christians not unlike Dreher, many weaned on the Scofield Bible and its dispensationalism, and many of whom wind up in government or other positions of power, choose to disengage from the problem, accepting that Jews are the “chosen people” of God and, for some, part of End Time prophecy. They are therefore to be given a pass by both the media and government on all their exclusivism and bad behavior even as they meddle in US politics and work to hobble freedom of speech by criminalizing anyone who criticizes Israel or supports Palestinians by urging a boycott against it. Until all that changes, if it even can happen, Christians in the so-called Holy Land will be on the chopping block and when the churches and monasteries no longer have a community to sustain them, it will be the end of Christianity in the place where it was born. And more’s the pity, the United States will have played a major role in enabling that to happen.

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.

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

HOW IS THIS A THING? #NWO, #TRANSHUMANISM

Computing Forever | May 1, 2022

May 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Why requiring transplant recipients to be vaccinated is indefensible and objectively evil regardless of the scientific merits

Covid Vaccines are not remotely similar to other conditions that are typically required of or used to rank transplant patients.

By Ashmedai | May 2, 2022

One of the more pernicious and morally shocking developments surrounding the covid vaccines is hospitals forcing transplant recipients (and sometimes even their families) to be vaccinated with one of the covid vaccines.

I have heard a number of people defend this vile practice, who were genuinely convinced that there was nothing wrong with it. None of these individuals were “evil”, or anything close. Yet, they genuinely did not see a concern or dilemma that would disqualify the whole policy, or even one that would at least counsel a more thoughtful review before taking such a momentous and consequential step.

It is therefore worthwhile to present a clear explanation why, even assuming that transplant recipient vaccination is objectively beneficial as a purely scientific matter, mandating vaccination as a prerequisite for receiving a transplant is destructive to society and evil.

The following are a few of the more salient reasons why mandating recipient vaccination as a condition to remain eligible to receive a transplant, even assuming that transplant recipient vaccination are objectively beneficial as a purely scientific matter, is unjustifiable, destructive, and evil:

Breaks the Social Compact of Society:

    • Discriminates on the basis of a controversial political/social issue
    • Politicizes and undermines the trustworthiness of the medical community
    • Weaponizes the medical community / medical institutions in the “culture wars”
    • Drives the Balkanization of society

Is Intrinsically Immoral:

    • Such a mandate inflicts tremendous psychological torment upon people who are already suffering the stress and physical torment of a life-threatening disease
    • Erodes the ethics and character of medical professionals, so they regard some people as “inferior” and therefore undeserving of or not worth being treated
    • This is a policy that cannot be plausibly portrayed as being “in the best interests of patients”
    • Catch-all: Will cause considerable stress to the entire society

The Broader Context that Informs how People View Such a Mandate – The Medical Community no longer possesses the moral authority or credibility to make this sort of policy decision:

    • The already heavily damaged reputation and image of the medical community due to covid policies so far
    • A sizable minority today believes (if not outright majority) that hospitals and doctors are possibly complicit in the deaths of millions around the world and the unimaginable suffering of hundreds of millions more

Breaks the Social Compact of Society:

Discriminates on the basis of a controversial political/social issue

The reality of the current situation is that the covid vaccines are one of the preeminent issues at the forefront of the body politic in the country. This is therefore automatically a consideration when making policies on behalf of society, which any decisions regarding the prioritization scheme of transplant recipients are.

Decisions broadly affecting the whole of society that discriminate or persecute a faction/s of society break the social compact and erode or destroy the moral legitimacy of the major institutions through which political and social power and ideology are disseminated and enforced.

Specifically for this point, discriminating against a political or social minority – and surely where it is literally determining by proxy who lives and who dies – is by definition apartheid in both spirit and practice.

It goes without saying that apartheid policies are both harmful to a healthy and functioning society and evil.

Politicizes and undermines the trustworthiness of the medical community

Enacting a policy that is inextricably intertwined with a highly visible social or political controversy unavoidably conveys – regardless of whether it’s true – that the medical community is:

(A) a political actor that has

(B) vested political interests and objectives – such that it will

(C) pursue using the resources at its disposal

(D) even if/when they are in conflict with the neutral practice of medicine.

The damage from such overt political overtones and imaging (to say the least) to the practice of medicine, and the implications for the physical and mental health of the broader society, is something that does not require elaboration.

Importantly, this is true even for many of the people who agree with vaccination, because they also perceive that the medical community is “allying” with them to promote a political cause. The worse the reputation of the medical community is tarnished with political entanglements, the more difficult it becomes to rehabilitate subsequently.

Weaponizes the medical community & medical institutions in the “culture wars”

The participation of the medical community to coerce political compliance at gunpoint transforms the medical community (more than it is already) from a shared societal institution to a partisan one that one side views as a hostile force or enemy and the other views as a means to achieve political or social objectives.

This is true not just regarding people’s perception, but regarding the medical community itself. Even if the medical community would be starting off as an objective and non-partisan actor, committing such an overtly political act affects how the medical community will view and think of itself going forward (and the truth is that the medical community is by no means starting off from a “non-partisan” disposition).

The obvious (i.e. uncontroversial as factual observations regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the underlying position of either side here) societal harms that flow from this are manifold. Transforming the shared social institutions of science/medicine into a partisan weapon will cause the following negative consequences (among others; ‘shared’ is an increasingly tenuous proposition these days):

  • undermines trust in the practice of science
  • undermines the integrity of medical scientists by creating and incentivizing political objectives that take precedence over scientific integrity
  • causes a sizeable portion of society to regard doctors and medical professionals as enemies, which is harmful both to patients who will then not receive the same standards of medical care and to doctors who will suffer constant harassment and demoralizing stresses
  • encourages the propagation of propaganda as everyone is now incentivized to either deify or demonize medical practitioners and institutions regardless of the factual merits of any specific issue or incident

A society must have shared institutions that are not “playable characters” in the everyday social or political maelstroms that are the domain of politics in order to function and survive as a single political entity.

Drives the Balkanization of society

The most prominent consequence of the politicization and weaponization of the medical community and institutions is that it is a Balkanization of society. Regardless of the factual or scientific merits, even the perception by one faction that another faction is trying (and succeeding) in hijacking and corrupting the medical establishment is the fraying of the society as an organized political and social unit. To actually go ahead and do so is more damaging by orders of magnitude. Medical care is possibly the most foundational institution in a society – consider that the most consequential apartheid policy (besides for outright slavery) is the proscription of medical care by political or social affiliation. Thus proscribing medical care for a highly visible and prominent social faction within society – even if it wouldn’t be an outright death sentence for the patients restricted from medical treatment as is the case here – is tantamount to a declaration of [civil] war against anyone politically affiliated with the group targeted by the mandates.

It should also go without saying that you can’t have a functional society if whether your life and your human rights can be legally and socially vindicated depends upon on your political affiliation or ideological coadunation. There is no rational universe where this is an acceptable tradeoff for the conjectured benefits of restricting transplants to vaccinated patients.

Transplant Vaccine Mandates Are Intrinsically Immoral:

Such a mandate inflicts tremendous psychological torment upon people who are already suffering the stress and physical torment of a life-threatening disease

Any policy decision must consider the entire picture, not just the virtues of the preferred course of action.

Transplant vaccine mandates are dealing with a population that is exclusively comprised of people who are already under extreme suffering that is hard to contemplate or understand for someone bereft of this sort of experience. Adding distress to people already so tormented would therefore be warranted only if there was an exceptionally pressing concern. Even if the covid vaccines are somewhat beneficial as a purely scientific matter to patients awaiting an organ transplant, the marginal benefit of vaccination is hardly something that is so massive that imposing a vaccine mandate – in the context of everything else articulated in this article – can even be plausibly entertained let alone imposed. (The marginal benefit is the absolute risk reduction in all-cause morbidity/mortality gained from vaccination, not the “relative” risk reduction which is not relevant to assessing the real-world value of vaccination.)

Erodes the ethics and character of medical professionals, and influences and/or habituates them to regard some people as “inferior” and therefore undeserving of or not worth being treated

A policy of ‘either you acquiesce to vaccination or you die’ conveys to medical practitioners a clear message that people who reject the covid vaccines are not worthy of medical treatment. This is true regardless of the scientific merits of a (theoretically) objective cost/benefit analysis. Contingency of life-or-death treatment upon a political behavior or choice internalizes to medical practitioners and laypeople alike that it is appropriate to proscribe treatment to people because of political affiliation, so much so that we will even consign them to death. Medical apartheid on the basis of political or social faction characteristics is quite literally in the mold of the ideology and policies implemented in Germany in the 1930’s. Such a comparison is sufficient to retire any further consideration by itself of transplant vaccine mandates.

Such a dynamic is also corrosive to compassion and empathy — two attributes that are already in short supply in healthcare settings these days. The deprivation of treatment, especially in circumstances that are exceptionally heartwrenching, forces practitioners at minimum to suppress their sense of compassion. For many, the internal dissonance between their sense of compassion and the cruelty being inflicted on defenseless patients (& the relegation of a political class to “2nd class citizens”) that some would be complicit in will lead them to zealously embrace rationalizing that the unvaccinated are less than fully human. This is precisely how otherwise civilized people can be indoctrinated into an ideology that if unchecked ultimately enables them to commit or be complicit in the commission of atrocities.

(Requiring adherence to personal behavior standards – such as not consuming alcohol or drugs – whose medical rationale is obvious and apparent to everyone and which have already been standard requirements for decades is an entirely separate matter that has nothing to do with this discussion, and is something that requires its own lengthy dissertation to properly explore and flesh out.)

Like every other enumerated argument here, this point is true regardless of the factual merits of vaccination for transplant patients.

This is a policy that cannot be plausibly portrayed as being “in the best interests of patients”

Medical ethics is organized around the proposition that all decisions or policies must be in the best interests of patients. It is hard to imagine more blatant disregard of patients’ welfare than compromising the integrity and viability of the entire edifice of healthcare provision in the country as millions of people are less able and/or willing to seek and receive medical care as a result of all of the other points articulated above and below (and it is also not in the patients’ best interests for medical treatment to be withheld without which the patient will perish).

Contumeliously discarding the millennia-old foundational ethical principium of medicine ominously portends the possibility of medicine and healthcare unanchored to an ethical North Star.

Catch-all: This will cause considerable stress to the entire society

Polls consistently reveal that people of all social and political affiliations are suffering considerable stress. Policies that antagonize or that are erosive to the body politic spur or inflame the already burdened and fraying psyche of the populace. Even those advantaged by politically prejudicial persecution cannot escape the stresses that beset even those that have the upper hand politically, such as the worry that someday you will become a victim to the same social or political forces, or the stresses of living in a society where the social fabric is frazzled and fragmented. Especially in light of the current mental health apocalypse presently afflicting the country, it surely behooves the medical community to avoid further exacerbating the already overwrought stressors in people’s lives.

The Broader Context that Informs how People View Such a Mandate – The Medical Community no longer possesses the moral authority or credibility to make this sort of policy decision:

The reputation and image of the medical community has already been brutally savaged by the performance of the medical establishment throughout the covid crisis, especially the govt health agencies which are the backbone of the medical community’s authority and credibility. Moreover, at least a sizeable minority of the country believes that hospitals and doctors are complicit in the deaths of millions around the world and the unimaginable suffering of hundreds of millions more through draconian isolation of psychologically/emotionally vulnerable patients, denial of covid treatment, society-wide lockdowns, and vaccine carnage.

As a result, the medical community has lost the moral legitimacy and expert authority that until now was taken for granted. This is a monumental shift that is hard to overstate. The medical community previously was accorded the considerable latitude and deference by society they needed to make life-and-death policy decisions that society wouldn’t reflexively view as illegitimate or political. Without unambiguous and widely conceded moral authority to make controversial life-and-death policy decisions, the medical community ceases to be trusted and neutral stewards whose decisions can determine who lives and dies. Instead, they are no better than any other partisan and unobjective actor with their own biases and agenda. Empowering what is rationally perceived by one half of society as a conflicted and dishonest political actor to determine who lives and dies on the basis of a political characteristic is inherently evil and lacks even a semblance of moral credibility.

This last point is worth restating: This is akin to having a republican decide that democrats are not eligible for transplants unless they switch party affiliation or vice versa. The disfavored group would rightly and accurately perceive that a government that proscribes them from receiving lifesaving treatment lacks legitimacy.

Caveats:

It is important to note that there are many heroic doctors and nurses who do not agree with these policies. In a similar vein, the impact of such a policy (and the other covid policies that are similarly evil or just plainly irrational) is not uniform on all healthcare practitioners – there is a wide range of resiliency and resistance to the mental and psychological influence of this sort of policy.

It is also important to note that there is already considerable damage along the lines of everything stipulated above, so for the most part transplant mandates are aggravating already belabored destructive social pathologies as opposed to initiating or creating new ones.

However, this does not detract from the intensity or imperative of the arguments raised. The fact of the already-widespread devastation underscores how critical it is to reverse these developments – meaning that exacerbating them is that much more unconscionable.

Conclusion

Medical institutions are integral to the translation of medical and scientific knowledge into practice in a manner that will be accepted by the various major factions of society (there are always going to be fringe lunatic groups or cults that repudiate any sort of governing political bodies no matter what). A society without a shared epistemology cannot survive, as there can be no agreement on how to determine factual truth. The medical establishment institutions are fiduciaries to the entire population, granted awesome powers over society, and therefore commensurately responsible for the broader social impact of their actions (something that the medical literature en masse freely embraces, one need only look at the hundreds of papers condemning the medical community for their role in promoting “health inequities” and systemic racism).

It is not just prudent but obligatory to consider the political climate when weighing a policy choice that implicates and will resonate through the exigent political and social realities on the ground such as they are. One would think it would be common sense to go to the farthest practical extreme to avoid even the hint of appearing partisan or political, never mind actually further inflaming the divisive and increasingly weaponized political tensions. This is by no means even remotely controversial. The typical standards that society holds critical non-partisan institutions to is that they must avoid “even the appearance of” conflicts of interest, partisanship, etc. – recusals for these reasons are routine in the legal world for instance.

One would also be forgiven for thinking that the medical community would be embarrassed to be caught openly embracing the same fundamental political philosophy that animated the Nazi’s systematic denudement of the medical community back then of the ethical code synonymous with the practice of medicine.

Enacting a policy that in practice is political discrimination is irreconcilable with both basic medical ethics and the responsibility of the medical community to scrupulously avoid even the appearance of partisanship or other non-medical entanglements. There is no justification or defense for such an egregious lapse of judgement.

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

How Canada is ‘Cutting Costs’ by Euthanizing their Poor

By Mary Manley | Samizdat | May 2, 2022

Canada, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, is finding a new way to cut costs on disabled people by… euthanizing them?

In 2015 the case of Carter v Canada (Attorney General) prompted the Supreme Court to strike down a previous provision in the Criminal Code, thereby allowing Canadian adults the option of assisted suicide, or Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).

That ruling then spiraled into a law known as Bill C-7, an all-encompassing euthanasia law passed in 2021 which threw out the requirement that those seeking assisted suicide need to have a terminal illness whose death was reasonably foreseeable.

Although Bill C-7 states that “Parliament affirms the inherent and equal value of every person’s life and the importance of taking a human rights-based approach to disability inclusion”, disability justice organizations and even the UN’s watchdog on disability opposed the new bill based on their belief that it would worsen discriminatory practices within the healthcare system.

More than 300 disability groups in Canada opposed Bill C-7, citing that the removal of the “reasonably foreseeable natural death” requirement would target disabled persons. Instead of being offered medical assistance or support, the Canadian government now has the option of doing away with any ill person that sucks up taxpayer money.

“Rather than funding and making life a possible and viable choice for many people, we’re entertaining this option of asking them if they would like to die, and it’s very scary,” said Spring Hawes, a former Invermere city councilor and the co-founder of Dignity Denied, in 2020.

“There is the danger that it might be considered a favor to offer someone dying when really that person just needs to have access to better care, better supports or the things they need to live well,” added Hawes who has a spinal cord injury and uses a wheelchair.

And what some could argue sounds like fear-mongering by a group of people who- in their very right have a legitimate reason to be afraid- is bolstered by horrifying stories told by disabled people which demonstrate abuse and neglect at the hands of their government.

In April of this year a 51 year-old Ontario woman with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) chose MAiD after two years of searching and failing to secure a bid for affordable housing free of cigarette smoke and chemical cleaners. “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless and a pain in the a**,” she said in a video filmed on February 14, eight days before her assisted suicide.

One woman requested MAiD because she “simply [couldn’t] afford to keep on living”, after food banks became an inaccessible option. Another woman from Vancouver said she intended to use MAiD after COVID-19 left her with increased expenses and unmanageable pain. And in 2021, Chris Gladders chose to end his life via MAiD after experiencing “deplorable” living conditions at the retirement home called Greycliff Manor in Niagara Falls. When his family arrived to say goodbye to them they were horrified to find Chris in a room covered in urine and fecal matter.

“None of the floors were cleaned up or anything, you could see clearly where they changed his catheter bag,” said Shawn Gladders, Chris’s brother in January of 2021.

“There was urine on the floor, there were spots where there was feces on the floor… spots where your feet were just sticking. Like, if you stood at his bedside and when you went to walk away, your foot was literally stuck. It was very, very disturbing, for sure.”

Shawn said that on other occasions when he had visited his brother, Chris was taken outside of the room by a staff member, “I kick myself today, because I wish I would have walked in there before… I never would have left him there.” Shawn adds that Chris’ time at Greycliff Manor most likely contributed to his decision to end his own life.

In 2020, the Canadian government agreed to give a measly one-time payment of $600 to disabled persons who qualified, in response to the devastating economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. They estimated that just 1.67 million disabled persons would receive that assistance, compared to the 6 million disabled persons who live in Canada.

One disabled Canadian, who chose to remain anonymous, said that after asking her doctor to fill out a form for the credit he rejected her, saying, “You’re not disabled enough… You have to be sitting in the corner drooling to be able to get this.”

The fact is: the Canadian government has no interest in spending money on their disabled people. Instead, they see MAiD as a convenient option to cut costs on healthcare for persons with chronic conditions and other disabilities. Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer even published an exciting report on the savings assisted suicide would garner their taxpayers: MAiD before Bill C-7 generated a total saving of $86.9 million per year, and Bill C-7, the government was pleased to announced, would save an additional $62 million a year.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Canada’s government appears to be fixed on including those with mental illnesses (such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and PTSD) to become eligible for assisted suicide, by as soon as next year. If that decision were to go through, Canada would become one of few nations allowing the use of MAiD in cases of mental illnesses.

May 2, 2022 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

New so-called ‘Ministry of Truth’ actually just a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’, which is precisely the opposite: DHS

Samizdat | May 2, 2022

The newly-unveiled ‘Disinformation Governance Board’, operating within the Department of Homeland Security, has triggered a massive pushback, forcing DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas to make several appearances on national TV in an attempt to clarify how this unit will operate.

Many critics, including top Republicans, blasted the initiative as a “Ministry of Truth,” directly from the pages of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Mayorkas deflected this criticism by claiming such thought policing is “precisely the opposite of what this small working group within the Department of Homeland Security will do.”

“What it will do is gather together best practices in addressing the threat of disinformation from foreign state adversaries from the cartels and disseminate those best practices to the operators that have been executing in addressing this threat for years,” he explained, after CNN’s Dana Bash said it was still not clear “how this governance board will act.”

The new body is headed by Nina Jankowicz, whose resume includes advising the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and overseeing the Russia and Belarus programs at the National Democratic Institute lobby group. Detractors also scrutinized her for dismissing the New York Post’s suppressed ‘Hunter’s laptop’ story as a fake “Russian influence op,” only for it to be later verified by major media outlets.

In a separate appearance on ‘Fox News Sunday’, Mayorkas defended the qualifications and objectivity of Jankowicz, calling her “eminently qualified” and a “renowned expert in the field of disinformation.”

“I don’t question her objectivity. There are people in the department who have a diverse range of views and they’re incredibly dedicated to mission. We’re not the opinion police.”

The new “anti-disinformation” push was announced on Wednesday, just two days after billionaire Elon Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for $44 billion and vowed to restore freedom of speech on the platform.

Responding to news of Musk’s Twitter takeover, Jankowicz said, “I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities, which are already shouldering disproportionate amounts of this abuse.”

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Hospital and Care Home Visiting Restrictions Are “Cruel, Inhumane and Unnecessary”, Doctors Tell MPs

By Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic | April 29, 2022 

The Pandemic Response and Recovery All-Party Parliamentary Group met this week to hear about visiting restrictions still being imposed by many care homes and NHS Trusts. Co-chaired by Rt Hon Esther McVey MP and Graham Stringer MP, the Group listened to evidence about the devastating effects visiting restrictions in hospitals have on patients and their loved ones. MPs also heard how visiting restrictions in care homes, along with the continued use of rolling lockdowns and over interpretation of testing guidelines, is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of the residents.

Leandra Ashton, who co-founded The People’s Care Watchdog, Dr. Ammar Waraich, a medical registrar in the West Midlands, Carol Munt, experienced Patient Partner and Advocate and Dr. Ali Haggett, community mental health and wellbeing specialist, told MPs of the obstacles still in place when trying to visit a loved one and the shocking impact on vulnerable hospital patients, care home residents and their families.

All the speakers voiced serious concerns that obstacles are still in place in some healthcare settings. Politicians heard harrowing accounts of the harmful effects of isolation and loss of social contact on physical and mental health, safeguarding problems with medication, dehydration, hygiene and lack of basic care and the failures to uphold existing legislation to protect those who lack capacity.

Leandra Ashton’s mother was arrested in November 2020 for taking her grandmother out of her care home a day before the second lockdown. Two years on, many residents are still being isolated from their loved ones. She told MPs:

When I took the video of my mum being arrested taking my nan out of her care home, I did not think it would go viral. So many families got in touch and it led to us setting up the People’s Care Watchdog. We were struck by how much legislation is in place, such as Article 8 of the Human Rights Act, Deprivation of Liberty and the Mental Capacity Act, to protect those in care homes. These laws are simply not being upheld and instead guidelines are being over-interpreted and the legislation even used to keep people in care homes and hospitals as if they were prisons. The public bodies that are supposed to uphold the protective legislation are not doing so.

There are still obstacles in place when trying to visit a loved one in a care home and the impact has been and continues to be devastating. The safeguarding issues I am seeing and hearing about are atrocious. Residents left for hours in dirty, wet incontinence pads leading to dangerous pressure ulcers. Malnutrition. Dehydration. End of life medication given to patients without their or their family’s consent. Psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress and suicides have resulted because of this. Multiple systems are failing, including Local Authorities and the CQC. It is a complex situation that needs a bold approach by both empowering families and galvanising Government action to hold public bodies to account and stop private equity firms placing profit over people.

Listening to the evidence, Esther McVey said:

I am troubled by the evidence presented by our speakers, particularly the safeguarding issues and neglect that care home residents are suffering as a result. In hospitals, we have heard about patients losing hope and refusing treatment without the encouragement of family. We know patients have much better treatment outcomes when they have support from relatives and friends around them.

Most of the infection control measures that restricted visiting in healthcare settings have been removed, most recently NHS Trusts were told healthcare workers, patients and visitors no longer need to distance in hospitals, so I fail to see why and how these visiting restrictions are still in place in any healthcare setting. I shall be writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask that he makes it absolutely clear that all patients and residents must be able to see visitors.

Highlighting how visitation is an important and necessary part of healthcare, Carol Munt said:

In the same way that we would not stop prescribed medication and treatments, we should not have stopped visits. Why were decisions taken without any consideration for the need of patients and their families to connect? Why do we still have such variation in compassionate care across the country? There is no uniformity among care homes apart from the need to be profitable for their owners. Some care homes made a superhuman effort to arrange visiting, as did the Bristol Nightingale Hospital. There was good practice in some places so there should be good practice everywhere. We should expect more of these endemic situations and we must be prepared for them.

I could not comprehend how any Minister for Health and Social Care could allow this to happen and not make the effort to get his department to look at ways that visiting could be facilitated. I heard and continue to hear the most callous reports of relatives dying alone with no visitors. The same goes for hospital patients. Ultimately, I think we need legislation to ensure that visiting rights are enshrined and protected.

Medical Registrar Dr. Ammar Waraich reported that many hospitals are still preventing visits due to the potential risk of Covid spread:

The policy is cruel, inhumane and unnecessary. Seeing loved ones can be immensely therapeutic and give struggling patients the will to survive. It is deeply traumatic for families to lose loved ones suddenly or see them go through difficult treatment without being there in person. Video calls are not a good enough replacement and we do not have the staff, the time or resources to facilitate calls for all our patients.

Most infection control measures have been lifted as the level of risk is no longer there. Hospitals can no longer function as detention centres and an inpatient stay should not become a sentence. The policy was one of the major mistakes of lockdown. Visiting sick relatives in hospital is, and must remain, a fundamental right, not to be given up.

Co-chair Graham Stringer said:

I find it extraordinary that no visiting is allowed in some healthcare settings, even to this day. It is cruel that family members are being denied access to sick and vulnerable loved ones, often not getting regular updates, living in anxiety about what their relatives may be going through, but knowing they are going through frightening and difficult treatment, often at the end of their lives, without being able to be with them in person.

“At the height of the pandemic it was understandable that there were precautions but there is no longer a basis to that argument. All the restrictions have been lifted and NHS Trusts across England have now been told to ‘return to pre-pandemic physical distancing in all areas’. The government must take action to resolve this situation.

Speaking about her experience working in the community throughout the pandemic, Dr. Ali Haggett said:

I have spent the last eighteen months with the support group Unlock Care Homes, uncovering the plight of many thousands of families who are still denied regular, meaningful contact with care home residents and hospital patients. Even before Covid, we knew that isolating people, particularly older people, has a serious impact on physical and psychological health. We have continued to isolate adults in care and in some hospitals almost continuously for two years. The effects have been felt particularly badly by those with dementia. Many residents no longer recognise their families and have been denied the most basic of human needs.

My concern is that this situation is concealing neglect and abuse on a significant scale. One of my community members sadly died and the hospital has admitted liability partly because he was completely blind and couldn’t reach his food or drink. Had his wife been allowed to visit, this wouldn’t have happened. Families I work with report numerous issues still affecting them, not just visiting restrictions. Rolling lockdowns, over-interpretation of testing, PPE requirements resulting in poor communication and fear, lack of ancillary services such as podiatry or physiotherapy leading to huge health problems, residents asked to isolate when one person tests positive, sometimes for 10 days or more and the one significant visitor recommendation being ignored or rejected. Families must be able to visit openly and check the wellbeing of residents.

Stop Press: MPs and Peers including Esther McVey, Lord Frost, Sir Iain Duncan Smith, Sir Graham Brady, Emma Lewell-Buck, Graham Stringer and Sammy Wilson have written to the Telegraph to say they are “deeply concerned” that visiting is still forbidden in many institutions where “over-interpretation of testing guidelines is leading to isolation, neglect and abuse of vulnerable residents”. They point out that Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and the Mental Capacity Act “could and should have protected against this situation arising” but this legislation is being “wilfully misinterpreted as an excuse” to keep people isolated in care homes and hospitals “as if they were prisons”.

May 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

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