In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.
There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.
For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.
But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.
Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.
Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.
Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”
Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.
You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?
Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.
Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?
Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?
Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.
The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.
The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.
Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.
February 10, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
Leave a comment
On the morning of January 25, 1993, a man named Mir Amal Kansi appeared outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he began assassinating people who were driving their cars into the facility. He ended up killing two CIA employees and wounding three others.
Four years later, FBI agents arrested Kansi in Pakistan and brought him back to the United States.
Kansi was prosecuted in a Virginia state court for murder, where he was convicted and sentenced to die. On November 14, 2002, the state of Virginia executed him.
What I find fascinating in this episode is that under U.S national-security law, when the CIA assassinates people, it isn’t considered murder. But as Kansi’s case shows, when people assassinate CIA officials, it is considered murder.
Kansi gave the reason for his assassinations. No, he didn’t say that he hated America for its “freedom and values.” He said that the reason he was assassinating CIA officials was to retaliate for the fact that the U.S. government was killing people in Iraq and for its role in helping Israel kill Palestinians.
Under U.S. national-security law, U.S. officials can assassinate anyone they want — “communists,” “terrorists,” “bad guys,” “adversaries,” “opponents,” “rivals,” or “enemies.” When they do that, it’s to be called an “assassination” or a “targeted killing.”
Moreover, under the law, U.S. officials can kill whoever they want with economic sanctions, as they were doing with the Iraqi people at the time that Kansi was retaliating. I am reminded of U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.” Those killings weren’t called “murder” of course. They were called unfortunate deaths arising from the sanctions.
U.S. officials also wield the authority to kill whoever they want with invasions of Third-World countries. The people of Afghanistan and Iraq can attest to that. Again, those killings are not considered to be murder. They are considered to be casualties of war.
If, however, anyone retaliates against the national-security establishment by assassinating officials within the national-security establishment, it’s called “murder,” in which case the assassin will be put to death after being accorded a trial.
Of course, this was the law prior to the 9/11 attacks. After those attacks, the law was implicitly amended to provide that the national-security establishment had the option of taking “bad guys” like Kansi to Gitmo, where they could be tortured, held indefinitely without trial, or executed after a kangaroo trial before a military tribunal.
All this hypocrisy goes to show what the conversion from a limited-government republic to a national-security state has done to the consciences of the American people. Most everyone has come to accept the state-sponsored assassinations and deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, and wars of aggression to just be part of the U.S. government’s “foreign policy tools.”
As I pointed out in a recent blog post, however, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s assassinations constitute murder, just as Kansi’s assassinations do. Why, even Lyndon Johnson referred to the CIA’s assassination program as “Murder, Inc.,” which is precisely what it is. The same goes for deaths arising from sanctions, embargoes, wars of aggression, invasions, and occupations. It’s just plain murder.
Referring to Kansi, Virginia prosecutor Robert F. Horne stated, “I’ve tried an awful lot of killers in my life, and I think he’s the only one I’ve run into that is absolutely proud of what he did. You get a lot of killers who don’t feel all that bad about what they did, but he’s proud of it.”
Apparently Horne has never met any CIA assassins. Like Kansi, they feel really good about their killings and are absolutely proud of what they do. What Horne fails to realize is that even though Kansi is a “bad guy” for assassinating people, that doesn’t convert the CIA assassins into “good guys.”
It’s probably worth mentioning that after Kansi was executed, four American citizens were assassinated in Pakistan in retaliation.
What we need in America is a great awakening, one that involves a revival of individual conscience. When that day comes, Americans will put a stop to the evil within our midst by converting America back to a limited-government republic and putting an end to state-sponsored murder. It will also make Americans traveling overseas a lot safer.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | CIA, Human rights, Iraq, Palestine, United States |
Leave a comment

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a new terrorism bulletin in response to concerns over “conspiracy theories” and “misleading narratives.”
Yes, really.
“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” the DHS bulletin stated.
The advisory goes on to assert that the US is in a “heightened threat landscape” due to “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”
Apparently, lack of trust in the Biden administration and the legacy media represents a terrorist threat.
Under DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas, who thinks “white extremists” are the biggest terror threat to America, five separate bulletins striking a similar tone have now been issued.
One of the bulletins even suggested that Americans who are angry at COVID lockdown rules or who express concerns about election integrity are potential extremist threats.
“It’s clear as day these bulletins are pure political propaganda to demonize all white people as “domestic terrorists” ready to carry out terrorist attacks at any moment and justify using terrorism laws against them as part of the new Domestic War on Terror,” writes Chris Menahan.
Since Biden took office, his administration has intensified efforts to demonize its political adversaries, tens of millions of ordinary Americans, as domestic extremists.
Following the January 6 Capitol riot, Democrats ludicrously compared the events to September 11 in an attempt to justify using federal resources that would normally be focused on actual terrorists against American conservatives.
Last month, the Justice Department created a new “specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism” in response to an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.
As we also reported in January, the US Army conducted a “guerrilla warfare exercise” in North Carolina where troops engaged in mock battle against “freedom fighters.”
In September last year, the National Association of School Boards (NASB) sent a letter to the Biden administration claiming parents were engaging in domestic terrorism by fighting against CRT and mask mandates.
Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently announced the DOJ and FBI would establish a task force aimed at probing a “disturbing spike” in threats against school officials.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | DHS, FBI, Human rights, Joe Biden, United States |
Leave a comment
If you’ve ever felt like Google’s watching you, it’s because they, quite literally, are. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data,” Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.1
He’s among four attorneys general who have sued Google for its deceptive practices in collecting location data from the public. The separate lawsuits allege that Google continued to track location data of its users even after they had disabled location tracking.
“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Racine said.2
Google’s Been Secretly Tracking People Since at Least 2014
Racine initiated an investigation into Google after a 2018 AP News report revealed Google was tracking people’s movements even when they’d opted out of such tracking.3 Google’s misleading claims to users regarding privacy protections available in their account settings have been ongoing since at least 2014, Racine’s investigation found.4
The AP investigation included a real-world example from privacy researcher Gunes Acar, whose location was tracked to dozens of locations over the course of several days, and the data saved to his Google account, even though he had turned “Location History” off on his cellphone.5
Location data collected by Google has been used in criminal cases in the past, including a warrant issued by police in Raleigh, North Carolina, to track down devices in the area of a murder.6 When you use an app like Google Maps, it will ask you to allow access to location, but it also tracks your location during use of apps that you might not expect. According to the AP investigation:7
“For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.
The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.”
Tracking You Even When ‘Location History’ Is Off
At issue is the company’s continued tracking of its users even when Location History is turned off. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Jonathan Mayer, a former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau, told the AP. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”8
Indeed, it states on Google’s Account Help webpage, “You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.” Only lower down on the page does it explain, however, that location data may still be saved even if Location History is paused:9
“If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.
For example, location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings.”
Aside from hiding location tracking under settings users wouldn’t expect, like Web & App Activity — which is turned on by default — Google is accused of collecting and storing location information via Google services, Wi-Fi data and marketing partners, again after device or account settings had been changed to stop location tracking.10
In addition to the District of Columbia, the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana have also filed lawsuits against Google for their deceptive data collection practices. The suits allege that Google also pressured users to use location tracking more often because it claimed — falsely — that its products wouldn’t function properly without it.11
“Google has prioritized profits over people,” Todd Rokita, Indiana attorney general, told The New York Times. “It has prioritized financial earnings over following the law.”12 Texas, meanwhile, has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google that alleges it has abused a monopoly over ad space auctions to marketers. The suit joins those from more than a dozen other states that claim Google has maintained and abused a monopoly over searches online.13
Google Is Even Tracking Children
Google has been called a dictator with unprecedented power because it relies on techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history, according to Robert Epstein, a Harvard trained psychologist who is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices.
They’re not only a surveillance agency — think about products like Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive and YouTube — but also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what you can and cannot see.
Google has also infiltrated education with its Google classrooms, usage of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, but many aren’t aware that even their children are being tracked. The attorney general of New Mexico filed a suit against Google for its educational tools in its classroom suite, helping to “break through the fog,” Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff said:14
“[The suit is] identifying the huge amounts of data that they’re taking about kids, how they track them across the internet are they integrate it with all the other Google streams of information and have it as a foundation for tracking those children all the way through their adulthood.”
The suit was later dismissed, but the attorney general filed an appeal, maintaining that Google’s G-Suite for Education products “spy on New Mexico students’ online activities for its own commercial purposes, without notice to parents and without attempting to obtain parental consent.”15
Google Force Installed COVID-19 Tracking Apps
In another sign of Google’s dictatorial tendencies, it partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Apple to create a smartphone app called MassNotify, which tracks and traces people, advising the users of others’ COVID-19 status.
While the tool claims to have been developed “with a focus on privacy,”16 the app suddenly appeared on Massachusetts residents’ Android phones out of nowhere, without consent. The feature must be enabled by the user for it to function, but it’s extremely disconcerting that the tool was automatically added to people’s cellphones, whether they intend to use it or not.
In China, COVID-19 tracking apps have been used as surveillance tools in collaboration with its social credit system, raising red flags that this force-installed app could be tracking residents’ movements and contacts without their knowledge and consent. The MassNotify app uses Google’s and Apple’s Bluetooth-based Exposure Notifications Express program.
The software framework was first released in April 2020,17 with the goal of allowing users who test positive for COVID-19 to report their results, which then sends out an alert to anyone whose phone crossed paths with the positive case and may have been exposed. The Exposure Notifications Express program acts as a blueprint from which states can implement their own tracking systems without having to develop their own individual apps.
While other states have required users to download an app to use the system, MassNotify was integrated directly into the operating system of Android phones.18 Such apps are based on technology developed by Apple and Google that was previously known as the “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project”19 and is now referred to as the Exposure Notifications API (application programming interface).
In a May 2020 Forbes article by Simon Chandler, he pointed out that while contact tracing apps “may be cryptographically secure,” they still “threaten our privacy in broader and more insidious ways,”20 namely encouraging you to keep your cellphone with you at all times and tracking your whereabouts while you do, and further “normalizing” the constant use of technology to dictate your freedoms and behavior.
Using ‘Trickery for Profits’
The attorneys’ general lawsuits against Google are seeking fines and an end to Google’s use of “dark patterns” that influence users to give up more and more personal data in order for the company to increase its profits. The suits allege that Google’s products are designed to pressure users to allow location tracking “inadvertently or out of frustration,” in violation of state consumer protection laws.21
“Google uses tricks to continuously seek to track a user’s location,” Racine said. “This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states.” The more data that Google collects about individual users, the more advertising dollars it can generate. But, Racine noted, “The time of trickery for profits is over.”22
In a similar lawsuit filed in 2020, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich also alleged that Google used deceptive practices to track its users’ locations. That suit stated:23
“This case concerns Google’s widespread and systematic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users, including its users in Arizona, which Google then exploits to power its lucrative advertising business. Google makes it impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google’s collection of location information, should the users seek to do so.”
Location data, meanwhile, can be used to reveal your gym memberships, health care visits, stores and restaurants you frequent or where you go to church. It may also be used to provide personalized ads on digital billboards as you pass by, and Google tracks and provides to its customers information about how well online ads work to drive people into brick-and-mortar stores.24
In addition to disabling as many location tracking apps as possible, and deleting your location history from your Google accounts, you can avoid additional Google products — and the privacy invasions they entail — using the following tips:
- Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo and Startpage
- Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
- If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service instead such as ProtonMail, an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
- Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25
- If you’re a student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts
Sources and References
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | China, Covid-19, Google, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, has, today announced that all coronavirus restrictions will be lifted in less than two weeks. This is a month earlier than initially proposed, showing the accelerating change in the narrative.
He said he plans to abolish the remaining restrictions in the UK, including the self-isolation rules after testing positive. It is not clear, however, whether this will also apply to the unvaccinated.
Mr Johnson said “I can tell the house today, that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half term recess to present our strategy for living with Covid”. What is this new normal that the Prime Minister has in plan? Surely living with Covid means going back to the old normal, not even thinking about Covid anymore?
In other parts of the world, Portugal, Greece and France are to ease travel restrictions and Italy is changing its mask mandate for outdoor areas. The EU is removing testing regimes for fully vaccinated travellers, again leaving the nasty after taste that the new narrative is to go back to normal whilst leaving restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Across the pond, in Canada, Saskatchewan Premier, Scott Moe, announced the end to Covid passes and masks, signalling a victory for the protesting Truckers. Will Trudeau realise which way the wind is blowing and cave in but try to spin a victory or will he double down?
Fauci has said that America is almost past the ‘full blown’ pandemic phase and will be winding down restrictions and masks ‘soon’.
Although Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, admitted that Scotland is entering a ‘calmer’ stage of the pandemic, she still decided that masks and Covid certification will remain.
The Scottish public, on the other hand, are saying enough is enough. Data from their Test AND Protect system shows that 91.5% of incomplete cases (purple), in the recent few weeks, are due to the public not responding to the surveillance calls.

It seems the narrative is collapsing and faster and faster each day. However, whilst this may be due to Omicron being more mild, I remain sceptical. The reasons being given are the same reasons many of us said restrictions were unnecessary in the first place. Now, all of a sudden, the corona fog is receding and everyone, in multiple countries and along similar time scales, is seeing the light. Or are they? Will all restrictions be removed or will they remain all but in name for the unvaccinated?
Will they remove all legislation to ensure none of these measures will never return again? If the legislation stays then it will be all too easy for restrictions to return when vaccines wane and seasonal illnesses return in the winter.
Will they remove all restrictions for everybody, including the unvaccinated? That means no additional testing regimes for the unvaccinated and no back-door use of Covid passes.
Or are we truly seeing the end of the pandemic? Some of the pharma documentation that I am about to write an article on may suggest that they see the writing is on the wall.
The next few weeks will certainly be interesting and the key will be to keep an eye on the small print.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, European Union, Human rights, UK |
Leave a comment
In Part 5 I look at the scientific literature on face mask use. I look at a lot of studies, but I am not undertaking an exhaustive review of all mask studies, which is an impossible task. However, I do review all the randomized controlled trials, which are the most credible trials. After that I look at a selection of the better trials and meta-analyses. I do focus more on those papers that conclude that there is little or no benefit to mask wearing. I have done this because academia, governments, health institutions and the media are currently giving such an appallingly one-sided view that a corrective is needed.
Also, many of the studies that pro-maskers refer to are not credible, or are not relevant to the real world, and a better evidence base is required.
Bear in mind, as statistician William Briggs says,
The burden of proof is entirely on those who make masklessness a crime: they are imposing, we are not. I have no obligation, none whatsoever, to show masks do not work. But, we have more than enough evidence they do not.
I also refer the reader to City Journal’s ‘Do Masks Work? A Review of the Evidence’, which demolishes some poor studies, including ones that the CDC has pushed. For example, the CDC has especially promoted an incredibly weak observational study which
focused on two Covid-positive hairstylists at a beauty salon in Missouri. The two stylists, who were masked, provided services for 139 people, who were mostly masked, for several days after developing Covid-19 symptoms. The 67 customers who subsequently chose to get tested for the coronavirus tested negative, and none of the 72 others reported symptoms.
The CDC’s spin was reported uncritically in media such as the New York Times.
‘This study’, the City Journal article went on,
has major limitations. For starters, any number of the 72 untested customers could have had Covid-19 but been asymptomatic, or else had symptoms that they chose not to report to the Greene County Health Department, the entity doing the asking. The apparent lack of spread of Covid-19 could have been a result of good ventilation, good hand hygiene, minimal coughing by the stylists, or the fact that stylists generally, as the researchers note, “cut hair while clients are facing away from them.” The researchers also observe that “viral shedding” of the coronavirus “is at its highest during the 2 to 3 days before symptom onset.” Yet no customers who saw the stylists when they were at their most contagious were tested for Covid-19 or asked about symptoms. Most importantly, this study does not have a control group. Nobody has any idea how many people, if any, would have been infected had no masks been worn in the salon. Late last year, at a gym in Virginia in which people apparently did not wear masks most of the time, a trainer tested positive for the coronavirus. As CNN reported, the gym contacted everyone whom the trainer had coached before getting sick—50 members in all—“but not one member developed symptoms.” Clearly, this doesn’t prove that not wearing masks prevents transmission.
5.1: The effectiveness of face masks: Randomized-controlled trials
5.2: The effectiveness of face masks: Other trials and studies
5.3: The effectiveness of face masks: reviews and meta-analyses
5.4: The effectiveness of face masks: preprints, commentaries, editorials and academic letters
5.5: The effectiveness of respirators in healthcare settings
5.6: The effectiveness of surgical face masks in surgical settings
5.7: Face mask harms
5.8. Relevant media reports (a small selection)
The main Face Mask FAQs page.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Covid-19, Human rights, New York Times |
Leave a comment
Yesterday, a number of important Democratic governors lifted mask mandates in their states. Almost to a one, they cited the changes wrought by the fast moving and relatively mild omicron variant of the SARS-CV2 virus as the prime reason for the change.
What none of them did was admit what “the Science” has shown for at least two decades, and has been clear through the last two years to anyone doing a modicum of independent research on the subject: masks have never been shown to fundamentally alter the spread of respiratory viruses within the general population.
What they did say almost to a one, like their counterparts in Great Britain, Denmark and other countries now dismantling previous Covid restrictions, was that the return to normality was greatly facilitated by the uptake of vaccines in the populations they currently govern.
Nearly a half century ago, a man named Ron Ziegler held the position now occupied by Jen Psaki. Like all presidential spokespeople before and since he was a serial dissembler.
But back then there were still a few journalists at the presidential court and beyond willing to do their jobs. And when one day in the midst of the Watergate scandal he used the passive voice construction “mistakes were made” in an attempt to explain away obvious breaches of honesty and ethics committed quite actively by the Nixon Administration, he was roundly mocked by the press corps.
Sadly, however, as I have argued elsewhere, this type of non-apology apology, which caused a scandal then, has become ubiquitous across our social landscape. And that’s a shame.
Why?
Because real apologies and expressions of accountability are important. Without them, neither the apologizer nor the aggrieved party ever experiences what the ancient Greeks considered a cardinal element in human development and human relations: catharsis.
This is especially so in the case of government entities. Without admissions of guilt, the assumptions and premises undergirding failed policies remain intact, lying fallow until such time as the government entity in question feels it opportune to deploy them again in the service of another misguided crusade.
This is what is currently occurring with the Covid hawks who have violated our fundamental rights time and again over the last two years.
These enemies of human dignity and freedom now realize that many of their former supporters among the citizenry feel exhausted, and in many cases, flat out deceived.
At the same time, however, they do not want to permanently relinquish the powerful repressive tools they have acquired during the two-year state of exception.
The answer?
One part of it, already mentioned, is the moderated limited hangout operation now being conducted regarding the use of masks in public. By relaxing these strictures while in no way addressing the fundamental fallacies upon which the masking policies were based, they ensure that mask mandates can be brought back when and if they deem it necessary to do so.
The second part, which is far more pernicious and consequential, is the effort to push a proposition that is at best quite tenuous in light of what actual scientific studies are currently revealing about vaccine efficacy: that without widespread injection uptake the virus would have never receded, and we would have thus never have gotten into a position to recover our freedoms.
Note the underlying logic here. We are not getting our freedoms back because they intrinsically belong to us and were unjustly stolen. We are getting them back because an important plurality of us have done what the “experts” and the “authorities” coerced us into doing.
With this approach there is no catharsis or healing, and certainly no acquisition of new wisdom and knowledge. What there is, is a sly reification of the infantilizing and anti-democratic ways of thinking that have predominated in our policy-making class throughout the pandemic.
Though many people, laboring under the mortal fear of being branded with the weaponized term of “conspiracy theorist,” are reluctant to admit it, the central concern of policy-makers throughout the pandemic has not been the health of our communities, but rather gaining enhanced control over where we go and what we put into our bodies.
There is nothing more central to the idea and practice of freedom than bodily autonomy. It is the basal freedom from which all others are derived. Without it—as the history of slavery starkly reminds us—all other liberties are comparatively ornamental.
For this reason, we must vigorously oppose this organized attempt to present the vaccines, which have been delivered to millions under rather severe coercion, as a great, if not the greatest, hero of the pandemic film.
Thomas Harrington, Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute, is an essayist and Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford (USA) where he taught for 24 years. He specializes in Iberian movements of national identity Contemporary Catalan culture. His writings are at Thomassharrington.com.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment

Despite nothing changing at all, CNN’s resident ‘doctor’ Leana Wen claimed this week that “the science has changed” and so COVID restrictions including mask mandates should now be rescinded.
Wen, who started to admit some weeks ago that masks don’t work in stopping the spread of COVID, stated that “the decision to wear a mask should shift from a government mandate to an individual choice.”
She added that kids in schools should not be forced to wear masks because it can be harmful and makes it harder for them to learn.
As recently as two months ago, Wen was advocating for the Biden administration to “further restrict the activities of the unvaccinated.”
Wen also previously entrenched a segregated society when she blamed people who hadn’t taken the jab for a COVID-19 “surge” while asserting “we can’t trust the unvaccinated.”
Wen also called for making it “hard for people to remain unvaccinated” by restricting their social freedoms.
She asserted that, “It needs to be hard for people to remain unvaccinated,” claiming that it wasn’t currently difficult (despite the group being demonized and discriminated against on a daily basis).
Wen also previously stated that children returning to school need to be forced to wear industrial grade face masks and should be subjected to weekly COVID tests until they are fully vaccinated.
Suddenly all of this has changed for Wen.
It just happens to coincide with the beginning of election season, and Democrats now moving away from lockdown policies they previously vehemently advocated over fears about being wiped out politically.
February 9, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, Human rights, United States |
Leave a comment
A succession of events in recent weeks all point to the inescapable fact that nearly 75 years of Israel’s painstaking efforts to hide the truth about its origins and its racist apartheid regime are failing miserably. The world is finally waking up, and Israel is losing ground quicker than it is able to gain new supporters or whitewash its past and ongoing crimes.
First, there were the revelations about Tantura, a peaceful Palestinian village whose inhabitants were mostly exterminated by Israel’s Alexandroni Brigade on 23 May, 1948. Like many other massacres committed against unarmed Palestinians over the years, the Tantura massacre was mostly remembered by the village’s few survivors, ordinary Palestinians and Palestinian historians. The mere attempt in 1998 by Israeli graduate student Theodore Katz to shed light on that bloody event ignited a legal, media and academic war, forcing him to retract his findings.
In a recent social media post, Professor Ilan Pappé revealed why, in 2007, he had to resign his position at Haifa University. “One of my ‘crimes’,” wrote Pappé, “was insisting that there was a massacre in the village of Tantura in 1948 as was exposed by MA student, Teddy Katz.”
Now, some Alexandroni Brigade veterans have finally confessed to the crimes in Tantura.
“They silenced it. It mustn’t be told, it could cause a whole scandal. I don’t want to talk about it, but it happened.” These were the words of Moshe Diamant, a former member of the Alexandroni Brigade who, with other veterans, revealed in the documentary “Tantura” by Alon Schwarz, the gory details of the horrific crimes that were committed in the Palestinian village.
An officer “killed one Arab after another” with his pistol, said former soldier Micha Vitkon. “They put them into a barrel and shot them in the barrel. I remember the blood in the barrel,” explained another. “I was a murderer. I didn’t take prisoners,” admitted Amitzur Cohen.
Hundreds of Palestinians were killed in Tantura in cold blood. They were buried in mass graves, the largest of which is believed to be under a car park at the Dor Beach, to which Israeli families flock daily.
The Tantura massacre is arguably the most glaring representation of “hidden” Israeli criminality on the occupation state’s roll call of shame. However, this is not the story of Tantura alone. The massacre in the village is representative of something much bigger, of ethnic cleansing on a huge scale, forceful evictions and mass killings. Thankfully, the truth is now being unearthed and exposed.
In another example, the Israeli army launched a full-scale military operation in 1951 to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouins from the Naqab Desert. The tragic scenes of entire communities being uprooted from their ancestral homes were justified by Israel with the usual cliché that the terrible deed was carried out for “security reasons”.
In 1953, Israel passed the so-called Land Acquisition Law, which allowed the occupation state to seize the land of the Palestinians who had been forced out of their homes. By then, Israel had unlawfully expropriated 247,000 dunams of land in the Naqab, with 66,000 remaining “unutilised”. The remaining land is currently the epicentre of an ongoing saga involving Palestinian Bedouin communities in Israel and the Israeli government, which makes ludicrous claims that the land is “essential” for Israel’s “development needs”.
Extensive research conducted by Professor Gadi Algazi points to Israel’s narrative in the Naqab being a complete fabrication. According to numerous newly-revealed documents, Moshe Dayan, then the head of the Israeli army’s Southern Command, was central to an Israeli government and military ploy to evict the Bedouin population and to “revoke their rights as landowners”, under the conveniently created Israeli law, which allowed the government to “lease” the land as if it was its own.
“There was an organised transfer of Bedouin citizens from the north-western Negev eastward to barren areas, with the goal of taking over their lands,” Algazi told Haaretz. “They carried out this operation using a mix of threats, violence, bribery and fraud.”
The entire scheme was organised in such a way as to facilitate the claim that the Palestinians had moved “voluntarily”, despite their legendary resistance and “the stubbornness with which they tried to hold onto their land, even at the cost of hunger and thirst, not to mention the army’s threats and violence.”
Furthermore, a newly-released volume by French historian Vincent Lemire has entirely dismissed the official Israeli version of how the Moroccan Quarter in Jerusalem was demolished in June 1967. Although Palestinian and Arab historians have long argued that the destruction of the neighbourhood — 135 homes, two mosques and more — was done as per the order of the Israeli government through the then Jewish Mayor of Jerusalem, Teddy Kollek, Israel has just as long denied that version. According to the official Israeli account, the demolition of the neighbourhood was carried out by “15 private Jewish contractors [who] destroyed the neighbourhood to make space for the Western Wall plaza.”
In an interview with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Lemire said that his book offers “definitive, written proof on the pre-meditation, planning and coordination of this operation,” and that includes official meetings between Kollek, the commander of the Israeli army and other top government officials.
The story continues with more heartbreaking revelations as a well-integrated version of the truth exposing long-hidden or denied facts. The days of Israel getting away with these crimes seem to be behind us. For the third time in a little over twelve months, a major human rights organisation, on this occasion Amnesty International, has condemned Israeli apartheid.
Amnesty’s report, “Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: A Look into Decades of Oppression and Domination”, is 280 pages of damning evidence of Israel’s racism and apartheid. It does not shy away from connecting Israel’s violent present with its equally bloody past, nor does it borrow from Israel’s deceptive language and self-serving division of Palestinians into disconnected communities, each with a different claim and a different status. For Amnesty, as was the case with Human Rights Watch’s report in April last year, Israeli injustices against the Palestinians must be recognised and duly condemned in their entirety.
“Since its establishment in 1948, Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony,” wrote Amnesty, “while minimising the number of Palestinians and restricting their rights.” This could only happen through mass killing, ethnic cleansing and genocide, from Tantura to the Naqab, to the Moroccan Quarter, the Gaza Strip and Sheikh Jarrah. The Israeli roll call of shame is long.
February 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
Leave a comment

The UK government is planning to re-work its human rights law to put an increased emphasis on “personal responsibility” and “duties to the wider society”, as well as preventing people “abusing” their rights.
Sounds pretty awful, doesn’t it? But let’s go back to the beginning.
In December 2020 the UK government announced they would be looking into Human Rights reform in the near future.
These announcements became more concrete a year later on December 14th 2021, when the government began a “consultation” on restructuring the Human Rights Act.
The plan is to replace current rights legislation with a so-called “UK Bill of Rights”, a policy dating from the Cameron administration. The new “bill of rights” would update and replace the Human Rights Act.
As a brief summary of UK human rights law:
Some rights are enshrined in common law from the days of Magna Carta, but the vast majority of the time when we talk about “human rights” in the UK we’re referring to the Human Rights Act 1998.
This act was written into law as essentially a verbatim copy of the European Convention on Human Rights passed by the Council of Europe in the 1950s.
The purpose of writing the international treaty into domestic law was so British citizens could take human rights cases to domestic courts, instead of having to go to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
As with most human rights laws, from the UN Declaration of Human Rights to the US Constitution, a lot of the time the Human Rights Act is flat-out ignored, or at best worked around. But it does exist, and it does offer some protection of the individual from the power of the state.
Will that continue to be the case after these “reforms”?
The UK’s current “consultation” on Human Rights “reform” is set to end next month (March 2022), & whatever its final recommendations are will likely not be published for several months after that. But, while we can’t yet be certain exactly what they will say…we can get some rough ideas from what they have released so far.
Dominic Raab, the Justice Secretary who commissioned the consultation, recently said in an interview on LBC:
Our plans for a Bill of Rights will strengthen typically British rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury, while preventing abuses of the system and adding a healthy dose of common sense.”
If you’re anything like me, the phrases “abuses of the system” and “common sense” just made your inner cynic twitch, but there’s no real detail there.
Perhaps you’re thinking, at this point, that if you read the whole briefing document there will be nothing there to justify any paranoia.
… except I have, and there is.
If you drill down through the filler, and can read through the bureaucratic language, there are some pretty concerning red flags waving around, especially in their stated aims [emphasis added]:
Our reforms will be a check on the expansion and inflation of rights without democratic oversight and consent, and will provide greater legal certainty.
[The Bill of Rights will] provide greater clarity regarding the interpretation of certain rights, such as the right to respect for private and family life, by guiding the UK courts in interpreting the rights and balancing them with the interests of our society as a whole
[The Bill of Rights will] provide more certainty for public authorities to discharge the functions Parliament has given them, without the fear that this will expose them to costly human rights litigation
The government is committed to ensuring that the biggest social media companies protect users from abuse and harm, and in doing so ensuring that everyone can enjoy their right to freedom of expression free from the fear of abuse.
Protecting authorities from legal consequences, stamping out “abuse” online, subordinating privacy to national security… these are pretty routine aims of new legislation these days. They are expected, almost cliche.
The biggest and freshest warning sign is the sheer number of mentions of “duty” or “responsibility” or “the wider society”.
For example, this sentence from the forward written by Raab himself:
our system must strike the proper balance of rights and responsibilities, individual liberty and the public interest,
And in point 6 of the Executive Summary…
The Bill of Rights will make sure a proper balance is struck between individuals’ rights, personal responsibility, and the wider public interest.
… and then point 9 too:
[The Bill of rights will] recognise that responsibilities exist alongside rights, and that these should be reflected in the approach to balancing qualified rights and the remedies available for human rights claims
The header at the top of Chapter 3, “The Case for Reforming UK Human Rights Law”, bemoans:
the growth of a ‘rights culture’ that has displaced due focus on personal responsibility and the public interest […] public protection [is] put at risk by the exponential expansion of rights
Going into greater detail further down:
The international human rights framework recognises that not all rights are absolute and that an individual’s rights may need to be balanced, either against the rights of others or against the wider public interest. Many of the rights in the Convention are ‘qualified’, recognising explicitly the need to respect the rights of others and the broader needs of society […] The idea that rights come alongside duties and responsibilities is steeped in the UK tradition of liberty
And then again, in the first paragraph from section IV “Emphasising the role of responsibilities within the human rights framework” [emphasis added]:
We all have responsibilities in our society: to society (such as to obey the law and pay taxes), to our families, and to people around us. Everyone holds human rights whether or not they undertake their responsibilities, particularly the absolute rights in the Convention such as the prohibition on torture. Nonetheless, the government believes that our new human rights framework should reflect the importance of responsibilities.
It carries on in equally concerning fashion…
when a court is considering the proportionality of an interference with a person’s qualified rights, it will consider the extent to which the person has fulfilled their own relevant responsibilities.
The overall message is clear: Human rights can be tempered with “responsibilities” & anyone who does not fulfil their “responsibilities” is less deserving of the legal protection of their rights.
This is neither new thinking nor new language. Throughout “Covid times” we have seen talk of liberty parried with talk of duty, but it predates Covid too.
For years free speech has been tempered with talk of “being offensive” or “spreading misinformation”. The right to privacy has long been secondary to “national security” and “keeping people safe”.
Human Rights law is regularly trumped by The Patriot Act or Investigatory Powers Act or a dozen equally appalling pieces of legislation from both sides of the Atlantic.
But now, rather than bypassing human rights laws, this government is going to – to quote Raab – “rebuild them”. Meaning shred the existing ones and write all new ones. Ones that use “common sense” to make sure people are “responsible” and don’t “abuse” their rights.
Within the scope of this so-called “reform” is the desire to add conditions to basic human liberties. Exchanging “self-evident” truths, “endowed upon men at their creation”, for a quid-pro-quo agreement with the state.
This is a seismic shift in the very definition of “rights”.
The entire point of human rights is that they are innate and inalienable, they exist for everyone everywhere, and are not in the gift of any authority.
But now, rather, the UK government is arguing your rights are given to you at their behest, and that they come at the cost of expected duty.
And given all the talk during the “pandemic” regarding “protecting others” and being “responsible” – with masks, lockdowns and most especially vaccines – it’s not hard to see how these new “duties” could be applied in the future.
There’s no direct talk of compulsory vaccination, yet, but if these new “human rights” laws are made a reality, the next pandemic could be much harder to navigate.
You can read the complete consultation on human rights reform here.
February 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
Leave a comment
There has been a lot of fanfare about the recent decision to abandon mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for National Health Service (NHS) staff in England. However, the pressure is still on.
The welcome U-turn was announced on 31 January, when Sajid Javid (the health secretary) said that whilst looking at the risks and opportunities of the vaccination as a condition of deployment policy, there were 2 new factors to consider. Firstly, the population as a whole is better protected against hospitalisation and secondly, Omicron is intrinsically less severe. He then concluded that while vaccination remains our very best line of defence, he no longer believes it is proportionate to require vaccination through statute.
All reasonably sensible stuff so far and this is what the majority of the media picked up on. However, he wasn’t finished yet. He continued with the following statement (emphasis my own):
Some basic facts remain: vaccines save lives, and everyone working in health and social care has a professional duty to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
So, while we will seek to end vaccination as a condition of deployment in health and social care settings using statute, I am taking the following steps:
First, I have written to professional regulators operating across health to ask them to urgently review current guidance to registrants on vaccinations, including COVID-19, to emphasise their professional responsibilities in this area.
Second, I have asked the NHS to review its policies on the hiring of new staff and the deployment of existing staff, taking into account their vaccination status.
And third, I’ve asked my officials to consult on updating my department’s code of practice, which applies to all CQC registered providers of all healthcare and social care in England.
They will consult on strengthening requirements in relation to COVID-19 including reflecting the latest advice on infection prevention control.
So it seems that, as suspected, the U-turn didn’t occur because it was the sensible path to follow but because of political motives. Too much pressure was building up in support of the unvaccinated health care workers. Furthermore, there would have been nowhere to hide politically, when 10 percent of the health care staff were sacked, causing massive chaos in an already overstretched service.
However, the pressure is still on for the staff who have chosen not to be vaccinated. Firstly, the regulations have not been revoked yet, they will be subject to a consultation and parliamentary approval. Secondly, similar to my article on the removal of human rights, there will be professional pressure applied to staff in the interests of the greater good. Thirdly, policies will be changed making it very difficult for unvaccinated workers. As one nurse put it:
No vaccine mandate but; you can’t change jobs, take a promotion, progress in your career, and you will forever be coerced into taking a jab and live with constant fear that one day you could be sacked for not taking it.
This is not over!
Yesterday, a Times article reported that Sajid Javid has told medical regulators to insist staff get jabs. It says the health secretary has said that “medical regulators must crack down on unvaccinated staff”. The article reports that “he has written to nine regulators, including the General Medical Council (GMC) and Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Abandoning compulsory vaccines ‘in no way diminished the importance that health and care workers are vaccinated. Indeed, it is the responsibility of all health care professionals to take steps to ensure the safety of patients’. [Sajid is] ‘concerned that the guidance from the professional regulators on this issue is currently limited to a statement about vaccination in general’ rather than about Covid-19 in particular”. Javid told the regulators “that they should ‘urgently’ work with senior health leaders ‘to ensure yourself that your current guidance on vaccination for Covid, sends a clear message to registrants’.”
I don’t think there will be much opposition at management level in the NHS, when individuals such as Chris Hopson (CEO of NHS Providers) and Matthew Taylor (CEO of NHS Confederation) issued a joint statement saying “NHS leaders are frustrated to have such a significant change in policy at the 11th hour, given all the hard and complex work that has gone into meeting the deadline set by the government. They recognise the reasons . . . but there will be concern at what this means for wider messaging about the importance of vaccination for the population as a whole.”
Also yesterday, England’s Chief Medical Officer (Chris Whitty), together with the Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Midwifery Officer, Medical Directors and others wrote to NHS colleagues about their professional responsibility to get vaccinated.

In the letter they say “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective because there have been over 10 billion doses given worldwide”. They also say that the vaccines “provide protection from becoming infected”. I don’t know how they can claim that when data from the UK Health Security Agency itself, shows infection rates to be higher in the majority of vaccinated age groups.
The main gist of the letter is to guilt health care workers into getting vaccinated. They use words such as “professional responsibility”, “the public reasonably expect” and “to protect our patients”. The letter ends by saying “the great majority of heathcare workers have already done so [been vaccinated]. We hope those of you who have not will consider doing so now.
The level of coercion to get vaccinated, particular with health care workers, is unacceptable and is not dying down. For a novel vaccine, with no medium to long term studies on side effects, the choice is down to the individual. The data suggests that the vaccinated are more likely to be infected, not less. So, even if the vaccine does protect someone on an individual basis, they are more likely to be infectious around patients, not less. Especially, if the vaccine masks any symptoms meaning a vaccinated individual is more likely to be infected and not realise they are.
Mandatory vaccinations for healthcare workers has been abolished for now, but the pressure is still being placed on them. Will new workers have to be vaccinated, will vaccination be necessary for certain roles or to progress careers. Or will the constant shaming or being made to feel guilty be too much for the individuals who have chosen not to be vaccinated and will they have to leave anyway but this time, without any legal redress or compensation?
The crescendoing chatter that this is for some greater good is also deeply concerning. The majority of individuals, when left to their own devices, will choose the correct path when deciding on the finely balanced risks between what is good for themselves and the public. Most people will always want to do the right thing and very often choose to help others over themselves. The only danger in society right now is the thought that public health officials or ministers can decide what is good for an individual based on a perceived threat to society. This top-down policy is not only dangerous but won’t achieve the results they are looking for.
I will conclude with a comment made by a reader on one of my previous articles:
“As a Human Geneticist in a profession that was responsible for the horrors of the Eugenics movement, I have been deeply steeped in ethics and the importance of abiding by codes of conduct especially those created after WW2 such as the Nuremberg Codes. As soon as one strays from these codes, one immediately falls into the danger of recreating the past horrors. Individual rights must always be respected over any other consideration and any abrogation of those rights no matter what the rationale must always be challenged and justified and as temporary and minimal as possible. One thing I learned taking courses in the mathematics of epidemiology is that public health are not trained in ethics in the same way. In fact they are almost trained in the opposite to always think of the good of the whole of society over the rights of individuals. Of all branches of medical health out there, it does not surprise me that tyranny came from public health.”
February 8, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
Leave a comment