Why is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy: Three Possible Answers
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 28, 2021
At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability?
The military’s new rules now allow Israeli soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.
The reference to ‘civilians’ in the revised army manual applies to armed Israeli Jewish settlers who have colonised the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law and Palestinian sovereignty. These settlers, who often operate as paramilitary forces in direct coordination with the Israeli army, endanger the lives of their own families by residing on occupied Palestinian land. Per Israel’s twisted standards, these violent Israelis, who have killed and wounded numerous Palestinians throughout the years, are ‘civilians’ in need of protection from rock-throwing Palestinian ‘assailants.’
In Israel, throwing rocks is a “serious crime” and Palestinians who throw rocks are “criminals”, according to Liron Libman, Israel’s former chief military prosecutor, commenting on the new rules. For Israelis, there is little disagreement on these assertions, even by those who are questioning the legality of the new rules. The point of contention, according to Libman and others, is that “a person who is fleeing does not present a threat,” though, according to Libman himself, “the new policy could potentially be justified,” The Times of Israel reported.
The ‘debate’ on the new open-fire policy in Israeli media, gives one the false impression that something fundamental has changed in the Israeli army’s relationship with occupied Palestinians. This is not the case at all. There are numerous, daily examples in which Palestinians, including children, are shot and killed with impunity, whether throwing rocks or not, going to school or merely protesting the illegal confiscation of their land by the Israeli military or armed settlers.
In the Palestinian village of Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank, eight unarmed Palestinians have been killed since May. This small village has been the scene of regular demonstrations against Jewish settlement expansion and against the illegal settlement outpost of Eviatar, in the Palestinian rural area of Mount Sabih. The victims include Muhammad Ali Khabisa, the 28-year-old father of an eight-month-old child, who was shot dead last September.
Though the new rules have placed much emphasis on the status of the supposed Israeli victims, labelling them ‘civilians’, in practice, the Israeli military has used the exact same standard to shoot, maim and kill Palestinian alleged rock-throwers, even when armed settlers are not present.
A famous case, in 2015, involved the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, Mohammad Kosba, at the hands of an Israeli army colonel, Yisrael Shomer. The latter alleged that Kosba had thrown a rock at his car. Subsequently, Shomer chased down the Palestinian teenager and shot him in the back, killing him.
The Israeli officer was “censored” for his conduct, not for killing the boy, but for not stopping “in order to aim properly,” according to The Times of Israel. The Israeli military chief prosecutor at the time concluded that “Shomer’s use of deadly force under the framework of the arrest protocol was justified from the circumstances of the incident.”
Israel’s disregard of international law in its targeting of Palestinians is not a secret. Israeli and international human rights groups have repeatedly condemned the Israeli army’s inhumane and barbaric behaviour in the occupied territories.
In an extensive report as early as 2014, Amnesty International condemned Israel’s “callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank” over the years. AI said that such killings had taken place “with near total impunity.”
“The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy,” the Amnesty report read.
Even Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, concurs. The organisation decried the Israeli army’s “shoot-to-kill policy”, which is also applied to “people who have already been ‘neutralized'”. Indeed, in the case of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man who was shot point-blank in Al-Khalil (Hebron), by an Israeli military medic, Elor Azaria, in 2016, was not only ‘neutralized’ but also unconscious.
According to B’tselem, Israeli “soldiers and police officers have become judge, jury and executioner”. With this tragic and sinister trajectory in mind, one is left to wonder why the Israeli army would amend its open-fire policy at this particular moment. There are three possible answers:
One, the Israeli government and army are anticipating a surge in Palestinian popular resistance in the coming months, possibly as a result of the massive expansion of illegal settlements and forced evictions in occupied East Jerusalem.
Two, by perfectly aligning the existing open-fire policy with the aggressive shoot-to-kill military practice already in place, Israeli courts would no longer have to contend with any legal repercussions for killing Palestinians, including children, regardless of the circumstances of their murders.
Finally, the revised rules would allow Israel to make a case for itself in response to the open investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), concerning human rights violations and war crimes in occupied Palestine. Israel’s Attorney General will now argue that no war crimes are taking place in Palestine since the killing of Palestinians is consistent with Israel’s own military conduct and judicial system. Since the ICC is investigating alleged war criminals, not the government itself, Israel hopes that it can spare its own murderers from having to contend with the legal expectations of the Court.
Though the timing of the Israeli military decision to amend its open-fire policy may appear sudden and without much context, the decision is still ominous, nonetheless. When a country’s military decides that shooting a child in the back without any proof that the alleged ‘criminal’ posed any danger whatsoever is a legal act, the international community must take notice.
It is true that Israel operates outside the minimum standards of international and humanitarian laws, but it is the responsibility of the international community to protect Palestinians, whose lives remain precious even if Israel disagrees.
Kennedy’s Fauci revelations – Part Two
By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | December 22, 2021
This is the second of two parts. The first appeared yesterday.
THE revelations in Robert F Kennedy Jnr’s book about Anthony Fauci’s handling of the Covid crisis are damning. That is putting it politely.
He illustrates how the United States chief medical adviser, in charge of healthcare for the American people for over 40 years, presided over the worst coronavirus death rate in the world, nearly double that of many countries. The US suffered 2,107 deaths per 100,000 citizens, while Sweden, who accidentally became the world’s control group by ignoring damaging lockdown and mask mandates, had 1,444 deaths per 100,000.
Fauci is blinkered to affordable treatments, and inexplicably banned them. The rest of the world followed suit with the result that thousands who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were left to deteriorate at home until gasping for breath, when they were finally admitted to hospital and ventilated. Many never came home.
RFK Jnr, 67, son of assassinated US attorney general Bobby Kennedy and nephew of assassinated President John F Kennedy, began his legal career as an environment lawyer. Time.com named him ‘hero for the planet’. These days he is accused of being an antivaxxer, but like most activists in this arena he is simply pro-vaccine safety.
As he says at the beginning of his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health: ‘Complex scientific and moral problems are not resolved through censorship of dissenting opinions, deleting content from the Internet, or defaming scientists and authors who present information challenging to those in power. Censorship leads instead to greater distrust of both government institutions and large corporations.’
Many formerly respected medics, as well as RFK Jnr, now find they are victims of cancel culture, while those in power are able to dictate undemocratic, unproven and draconian measures with the capability to destroy our lives and economies without censure or challenge.
Here is an edited extract from chapter 1:
‘Peer-reviewed science offered anaemic if any support for masking, quarantines and social distancing, and Dr Fauci offered no citations or justifications to support his diktats. Both common sense and the weight of scientific evidence suggest that all these strategies, and unquestionably shutting down the global economy, caused far more injuries and deaths than they averted.
‘During a speech to HHS [Health and Human Services] regulators, Fauci explained the fruitlessness of masking asymptomatic people. “The one thing historically people need to realise, that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
‘Dr Fauci observed in March 2020 that a mask’s only real efficacy may be in “making people feel a little better”. Perhaps he recognised that what masking lacked in efficacy against contagion, it compensated for with powerful psychological effects. These symbolic powers demonstrated strategic benefits for the larger enterprise of encouraging public compliance with draconian medical mandates. Dr Fauci’s switch to endorsing masks after first recommending against them came at a time of increasing political polarisation, and masks quickly became important tribal badges – signals of rectitude for those who embraced Dr Fauci, and the stigmata of blind obedience to undeserving authority among those who balked. Moreover, masking, by amplifying everyone’s fear, helped inoculate the public against critical thinking.
‘By serving as persistent reminders that each of our fellow citizens was a potentially dangerous and germ-infected threat to us, masks increased social isolation and fostered divisions and fractionalisation – thereby impeding organised political resistance.
‘The impact of masking on the national psyche reminded me of the subtle contribution of the “duck and cover drills” of my youth, drills that sustained and cemented the militaristic ideology of the Cold War. Those futile exercises reinforced what my uncle John F Kennedy’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, called “National Mass Psychosis”. By suggesting to Americans that full-scale nuclear war was possible, but also survivable, ruinous investments in that project were justified. For the government and mandarins of the Military Industrial Complex, this absurd narrative yielded trillions in appropriations.
‘Social distancing mandates also rested on a dubious scientific footing. In September 2021, former FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb admitted that the six-foot distancing rule that Dr Fauci and his HHS colleagues imposed upon Americans was “arbitrary,” and not, after all, science-backed. The process for making that policy choice, Gottlieb continued, “is a perfect example of the lack of rigour around how CDC made recommendations”.
‘Finally, the lockdowns of the healthy were so unprecedented that the World Health Organisation’s official pandemic protocols recommended against them. Some WHO officials were passionate on the topic, among them Professor David Nabarro, Senior Envoy on Covid-19, a position reporting to the Director General.
‘On October 8, 2020, he said, “We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as a primary means of controlling this virus. We may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We’ll have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents in poor families are not able to afford it. This is a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe, actually, and so we really do appeal to all world leaders: Stop using lockdown as your primary control method . . . lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle – and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
‘Dr Fauci and other officials made no inquiry or claims as to whether lockdowns would cause more harm and death than they averted. Subsequent studies have strongly suggested that lockdowns had no impact in reducing infection rates. There is no convincing difference in Covid infections and deaths between laissez-faire jurisdictions and those that enforced rigid lockdowns and masks. Dr Fauci’s mask deceptions were among several “noble lies” that, his critics complained, revealed a manipulative and deceptive disposition undesirable in an even-handed public health official. Dr Fauci explained to the New York Times that he had upgraded his estimate of the vaccine coverage needed to insure “herd immunity” from 70 per cent in March to 80-90 per cent in September not based on science, but rather in response to polling that indicated rising rates of vaccine acceptance.
‘He supported Covid jabs for previously infected Americans, defying overwhelming scientific evidence that post-Covid inoculations were both unnecessary and dangerous.’
Under questioning on September 9, 2021, Dr Fauci conceded he could cite no scientific justification for this policy.
‘In September 2021, in a statement justifying Covid vaccine mandates to school children, Dr Fauci dreamily recounted his own grade-school measles and mumps vaccines – an unlikely memory, since those vaccines weren’t available until 1963 and 1967, and Dr Fauci [who is 80 years old] attended grade school in the 1940s. Dr Fauci’s little perjuries about masks, measles, mumps, herd immunity, and natural immunity attest to his dismaying willingness to manipulate facts to serve a political agenda.’
Big Brother Watch launches legal challenge to England’s vaccine passport
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
London-based rights group Big Brother Watch, a vocal opponent of Covid passes being introduced in England, has launched a legal challenge to the scheme it considers an example of divisive and discriminatory dystopia.
After raising nearly a quarter of a million pounds online to fund its cause (and crowdfunding campaign continues) – which Big Brother Watch said would go entirely towards fighting against Covid passes, including via costly legal challenges – the group has decided to oppose the government’s Covid passes law in court.
Big Brother Watch is challenging the law on mandatory Covid passports in England claiming that it violates privacy, and is draconian and discriminatory in nature. They are also raising concerns that the Human Rights Act and equality law may fall victim to the new Covid pass rules.
Previously, the rights group urged its supporters to speak up against the scheme as unnecessary and counterproductive, as well as introducing a checkpoint society, surveillance state, along with mission creep and detrimental measures that will become irreversible.
In a pre-action letter to launch the legal battle against the law that is proving to be highly controversial even among the ruling majority in the UK parliament, the group notes that the government failed to provide any evidence about the Covid passes benefiting public health, while a damning parliamentary report said that there was no scientific or logical justification for their introduction.
In addition, Big Brother Watch stated, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) failed to recommend Covid passports, and for all these reasons the scheme is seen as draconian, and pointless.
Nonetheless, PM Johnson’s government recently pushed the proposal through parliament despite nearly 100 MPs from his Conservative Party voting against – the biggest rebellion of the Johnson era.
Since mid-December, those entering nightclubs, sports and other large events must show the pass that proves they have been fully vaccinated or recently tested.
In announcing the bid to reverse this policy by legal means, Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said that Covid IDs “don’t tell you that a person doesn’t have Covid or can’t spread Covid, but do make society less free, less equal and less accessible for people.”
New York Democrat introduces new social media censorship bill
The bill aims to curb people’s speech by targeting platforms
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
If a state senator got his way, the state of New York could soon get a new law aimed at regulating what content can appear on social media. The bill is designed to circumvent existing federal-level solutions in some instances and is reportedly inspired by internal documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.
But many legal experts believe that the bill, if passed, would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional for preventing dissemination of protected content.
The bill sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman wants to tackle what’s referred to as unlawful online content such as “misinformation” (particularly around Covid/vaccines), and posts that might allegedly lead users to develop eating disorders or engage in self-harm.
Envisaged in the bill is an amendment to New York’s penal code that lets citizens, the state attorney general and city corporation councils sue tech companies behind social media networks, or individuals, if they are suspected of “contributing” to spread of misinformation in a manner that’s “knowing or reckless.”
And while the bill is worded in a way that states content seen as endangering people’s safety or health should be clamped down on if it is “promoted” – including (but not exclusively) by means of algorithms and other methods of recommendation, experts say the distinction between that and any post created by users is not clear enough to stand up to legal scrutiny.
“The distinction between ‘hosting’ and ‘amplifying’ content is incoherent,” Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman has told the New York Post, adding that Hoylman has taken that “incoherent” idea – “and embraced its most censorial option.”
According to Goldman, content that Hoylman’s bill takes aim at, such as, but not limited to, what’s considered false or harmful information that concerns Covid or political issues is in fact protected free speech under the First Amendment.
And for that reason, this expert believes, the draft legislation is unconstitutionally overbroad.
Commenting on the bill, David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation concurred that the law would face First Amendment hurdles, and noted that because of the rapidly changing official guidance regarding the pandemic, it is very hard to even define what qualifies for Covid misinformation (when so much “expert” information has turned out to be false.)
“It’s really very difficult to impose liability in an environment where the truth can be hard to grasp at any point in time,” this attorney remarked.
Children with disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders amid pandemic
RT | December 27, 2021
The UK’s efforts to “protect the NHS” from being overwhelmed during the Covid-19 pandemic reportedly extended to asking families of disabled minors whether they should be resuscitated in the event their heart stopped beating.
The so-called “do not resuscitate” orders, known as DNACPRs, were offered to families of children with autism and other learning disabilities amid concerns about pressure on the UK’s socialized National Health Service, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday.
The media outlet cited interviews with families that were presented the opt-out for resuscitation during routine medical appointments. For instance, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome said that a clinic employee offered her the option of a DNACPR for her son during a checkup.
“It is a disgusting question,” said the mother, Kent resident Karen Woollard. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting.”
The mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism said her son was offered a DNACPR during an NHS appointment and initially agreed because he didn’t understand the question. The boy is happy and healthy and has won gold medals in swimming competitions, said his mother, Debbie Corns.
“I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home,” Corns said. “I am a strong person, but I was devastated… The doctor devalued his life.”
The article follows British media reports earlier this year on patients with mental illness and learning disabilities being given DNACPRs during the pandemic. But unlike the latest report, those allegations concerned adult patients, at least one of whom reportedly died unnecessarily for lack of resuscitation.
DNACPRs are typically used for people who are too frail to be saved through cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the event their heart stops or they stop breathing. Mencap, a UK charity that advocates for people with learning disabilities, reported in January that disabled adults were being told by medics that they wouldn’t be resuscitated if they fell ill from Covid-19.
The UK’s Care Quality Commission said in March that some patients and family members had been denied the opportunity to discuss their DNACPR status or challenge NHS decisions on whether they would be resuscitated. Hundreds of elderly care home residents were written off with unlawful DNACPR decisions, the commission found.
Health agency spied on millions during Covid lockdowns
RT | December 26, 2021
Canada’s Public Health Agency has admitted to secretly tracking location data from at least 33 million mobile devices to analyze people’s movements during Covid-19 lockdowns.
The agency earlier this year collected data, including geolocation information from cell-towers, “due to the urgency of the pandemic,” a PHAC spokesperson told the National Post, essentially confirming a report by Blacklock’s Reporter. The tracking data was allegedly only used to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures and identify possible links between the movement of people and the spread of Covid-19.
PHAC obtained the information, which was “de-identified and aggregated,” through an outside contractor, Canadian telecommunications giant Telus. The contract ran from last March to October, and PHAC said it no longer had access to the data after the deal expired.
However, the agency plans to similarly track the movements of citizens over the next five years toward such ends as preventing the spread of other infectious diseases and improving mental health. PHAC last week posted a notice to prospective contractors seeking anonymous mobile data dating as far back as January 2019 and running through at least May 2023.
Critics argued that government tracking of citizens is likely more extensive than has been revealed and may become more troublesome in the years ahead.
“I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over—and afterwards,” privacy advocate David Lyon told the Post. He noted, too, that “de-identified” data can easily be “re-identified.”
Author Julius Reuchel said the tracking initiative smacks of a surveillance state spying on citizens “for your safety.” Another author, Paul Alves, said that with its new contract, PHAC will have direct access to all mobile location data, and expressed fear that “contact tracing will no longer require permission or a warrant.”
The apartheid regime’s Christmas propaganda and oppression of Palestinian Christians
By Denijal Jegic | Press TV | December 26, 2021
As people around the world are celebrating Christmas, occupied Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, remains under brutal Israeli apartheid. Meanwhile, the Israeli regime targets Western Christians with Zionist propaganda.
Zionist propaganda
The Israeli propaganda apparatus “Hasbara” has long invested large amounts of money and significant PR efforts in legitimizing the Zionist settler-colony in the eyes of its international audiences. In portraying the colony as a democracy with alleged human rights and co-existence between various religions, the Israeli regime has attempted to whitewash its genocidal oppression of Palestinians in the eyes of the West. The propaganda attempts have been successful to a large degree, as many Christians in the West either ignore the Palestinian plight, or provide outright support to the apartheid regime.
Evangelical Zionists in the United States have been amongst the most radical supporters of Israel. Christian tourism has contributed to the colony’s economy. This year again, Zionist politicians and officials have extended their holiday greetings to “Christian friends” around the world.
Such greetings are packed with colonial propaganda and appropriation of history. Israeli PM Naftali Bennett published a video on Christmas Eve this year from occupied Jerusalem, connecting the “ancient land” and the Bible to the current colony in his address to Christians. Bennett, who previously bragged about how many Arabs he killed in his life, lied that the colony provided “religious freedom, tolerance, and prosperity in a region where Christians are routinely persecuted.” The illusion that Israel offered religious freedom and that Christians outside of the colony are persecuted is widespread in the West. Bennett claimed that Israel is the “only one place” that “protects Christian life” and thanked his audience for “fighting for the state of Israel.”
While such proclamations further add to the positive image of the colony in the West, they stand in stark contrast to the reality on the ground.
The plight of Palestinian Christians
In fact, the world’s oldest Christian communities are victims of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialism.
As a result of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, the Christian population in Palestine has sharply declined throughout the decades. Places of significant importance for Christians are cut off from the outside world. The town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is surrounded by the apartheid wall.
Besides suffering under the structures of the apartheid regime, Palestinian Christians are also oftentimes prevented from exercising their religion. While foreign visitors may access Palestinian churches, the Palestinian right to worship is tightly controlled by the apartheid regime. Depending on where they live, Palestinians require permits issued by the apartheid authorities to attend Mass in churches. This year again, Palestinian Christians from Gaza applied for permits to travel to Bethlehem to attend prayers. Their requests were either rejected or outright ignored.
Palestinians are harassed by apartheid authorities on holy days, such as Easter and Christmas. This year on Easter, apartheid authorities escalated their ethnic cleansing campaign by expelling Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah (East al-Quds) from their homes. This Christmas again, hundreds of Palestinians were injured by occupation forces when they protested against settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Israeli violence has always extended beyond the borders of historic Palestine. The Israeli colonial regime has a history of targeting indigenous Christians in the region. It has done so during its military occupation and numerous wars in Lebanon and its continuous attacks on Syria. During last year’s Christmas celebrations, the Israeli regime invaded the Lebanese airspace to conduct airstrikes on Syria from there, killing several people.
The fallacy of a religious war
The Israeli regime is terrorizing Palestinians of all religions, but has been trying to portray the settler-colonial conquest as a “conflict” that is allegedly religious in its nature. Exploiting traditional Orientalism and anti-Muslim sentiments that are prevalent in Western cultures, the Israeli rhetoric has long focused not only on portraying Palestinian resistance – and oftentimes the very Palestinian existence as such – as anti-Jewish, but the regime has also tried to identify all Palestinians as Muslims to better advance its Islamophobic dichotomy and to frame the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation as a religious movement. It is the religious frame and the anti-Muslim prejudice amongst Israel’s backers that allows the apartheid regime to advance its goals. It is thus not surprising that the Israeli project is highly popular among the far-right and fascists around the world.
Of course the Palestinian struggle was never a sectarian one and many leading figures of Palestinian resistance have been Christians. Nor should the religion of colonized people determine the solidarity and support they receive from the outside world.
After all, destroying the cultural diversity of the region and dividing the population according to sectarian and ethnic lines have been long established practices of imperialist and colonialist forces.
Numerous Palestinian Christian leaders have appealed to Christians around the world to not turn a blind eye toward the continuous oppression and exploitation of Palestine. The Palestinian Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in al-Quds, Atallah Hanna, himself a crucial figure in the Palestinian resistance, has repeatedly affirmed that al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the holy sites will remain Palestinian. The Archbishop reminded Christians around the world that while streets and squares in Western cities are decorated with lights and Christmas trees, there would be no point in celebrating Christmas if they do not pay attention to what is happening in Palestine. He called upon all churches to urgently defend Palestine. The archbishop has reportedly been poisoned by Israeli authorities, but survived the attack.
The racist ideology of Zionism targets people of all religious affiliations who stand in the way of the settler-colonial conquest. This is, unfortunately, more often than not ignored internationally, and particularly by Western Christians. This year again, many Christians in the West celebrate the birth of Jesus without talking about the struggle in Palestine.
Denijal Jegic is a writer and researcher, currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a PhD in American studies.
VIDEO:
Not just Muslims, Christian Palestinians suffer apartheid as well
While the Christians across the world are celebrating Christmas, the Palestinian Christians are enduring systematic apartheid In their homeland.
Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to counter Covid restriction critics
BY KIT KLARENBERG AND MAX BLUMENTHAL · THE GRAYZONE · DECEMBER 24, 2021
By covertly recruiting popular YouTube influencer Abigail Thorn to counter growing opposition to UK gov’t Covid restrictions, psy-ops pros are bringing home the tactics they honed in the Syrian dirty war.
Leaked documents have revealed a state-sponsored influence operation designed to undermine critics of the British government’s coronavirus policies by astroturfing a prominent founder of the BreadTube clique of “anti-fascist” YouTube influencers.
The project aims to conduct psychological profiling on British citizens dissenting against policies such as mandatory vaccination and lockdowns, then leverage the data to establish a YouTube channel that portrays these critics as dangerous “superspreaders” of “disinformation.”
Designed “to curb the influence of pseudoscience material online, with specific emphasis on Coronavirus-related ‘anti-vaxxing’ sentiment,” the operation is run by the UK’s Royal Institution, and dubbed “Challenging Pseudoscience.”
Its top patron is Charles, the Prince of Wales, next in line to the British throne, who recently hit out at supposed “conspiracy theories” surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. The organization received a substantial cash injection in 2020 from the UK government’s Culture Recovery Fund earmarked for video production.
Leaked files obtained by The Grayzone indicate that the Royal Institution has enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a “social change” communications firm founded by a public relations operative previously involved in the UK Foreign Office’s campaign for violent regime change in Syria. Valent has also been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US intelligence cut-out, for a project aimed at “investigating disinformation.”
Valent’s central role in the operation highlights the trend of information warfare specialists bringing the techniques they honed against targets like the Syrian government back home to the West, where increasingly unpopular governments confront masses of citizens ever-bristling at coronavirus restrictions.
As in Syria, where communications firms like Valent created, trained and instrumentalized media organizations to further regime change objectives, they have covertly recruited a famed British YouTube influencer to lend their carefully calculated messaging campaign an authentic flavor.
According to internal documents, Valent plans to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” the founder of Philosophy Tube. Valent’s research on British citizens who reject official policy on COVID-19 “will be used to devise a campaign that utilises YouTuber Abigail Thorn’s existing platform to achieve a measurable cognitive shift in the target audience,” the files state.
Boasting over one million subscribers to her YouTube channel and more than 7000 Patreon supporters, Thorn has established a potent vehicle for any communications campaign. She is also a core member of BreadTube, an assortment of left-branded social media influencers that has attracted intense establishment interest for its purported ability “to pop YouTube’s political bubbles to create space for deradicalisation.”
While top BreadTubers are best known for employing memes and theatrical ploys to counter right-wing narratives, they have also dedicated intense energy to attacking the anti-imperialist left as “tankies” engaged in a secret “red-brown alliance” with right-wing extremists.
In his book, “BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism,” socialist organizer Caleb Maupin likened BreadTube to the “counter-gangs” deployed by British and US intelligence to infiltrate and dismantle insurgent forces from Kenya to Southeast Asia.
BreadTube “speaks in the name of left-wing sounding ideals. In reality, it is likely serving one section of the American ruling elite and the intelligence agencies,” Maupin wrote.
The covert relationship between BreadTube’s Abigail Thorn, Valent Projects, and the Royal Institute appears to validate Maupin’s thesis.
“It does not surprise me at all to find out there is documented evidence that the British Royal Family and an intelligence contractor is bankrolling the work of Abigail Thorn,” Maupin told The Grayzone. “It lines up with everything I have observed about her and the BreadTube trend overall.”
Maupin continued, “BreadTube’s ‘socialism’ is not really socialism, it is mobilizing young liberals to keep dissident elements in line. It’s securing the rule of British and American corporations over the planet by trying to silence those who get in its way.”
The national security establishment’s favorite socialists
Since launching Philosophy Tube in 2013, Abigail Thorn’s YouTube channel boasts over 7000 paying Patreon fans and well over one million YouTube subscribers. By probing complex philosophical and political issues in a highly accessible, engaging manner and deploying elaborate, artisanal audio and visual effects, she has emerged as a social media celebrity. A lengthy profile video produced by the BBC refers to her as “one of the most high-profile transgender figures in the UK.”
Thorn is among the most prominent figures within the loosely knit collective of YouTube influencers known as BreadTube. Inspired by the title of anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s tract, The Conquest of Bread, BreadTube advances a hyper-identitarian, imperialism-friendly interpretation of socialist politics that has earned its creators enthusiastic promotion from establishment interests.
The New York Times, for example, published a lengthy 2019 profile of a young man named Caleb Cain who supposedly “fell down the alt-right rabbit hole” on YouTube. Cain claimed he was de-radicalized through exposure to videos by Thorn and other popular BreadTubers like Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints. During the Trump era, as the Google-owned YouTube implemented a raft of stringent speech codes, it began amplifying BreadTube influencers through its algorithm.
Other popular BreadTube figures include Vaush, a video gamer from Beverly Hills, California named Ian Koshinski. Known for his superficial understanding of Marxism, crude invective against Trump supporters (“they disappear, or we all do”), female high school athletes who complain about being forced to compete against biological males (“sorry you fucking suck, dumb bitch”), and imprisoned journalist Julian Assange (“I want Assange to die in a CIA black site just because it would trigger all the worst people on Twitter”), the self-described “libertarian socialist” has earned the moniker “Vaush Limbaugh” from his critics.
Then there is Shaun, a British BreadTuber whose recent attack on left-wing political comedian Jimmy Dore’s criticisms of government Covid restrictions contained echoes of the “Challenging Pseudoscience” project prepared for Thorn by intelligence-related outfits. Shaun’s arguments relied heavily on statements by official experts and US government bodies like the FDA and CDC. While Dore has been limited by YouTube’s sweeping speech codes, Shaun’s viral video appears to have benefited from an algorithmic boost.
“All the key signs of infiltration are there,” Caleb Maupin said of BreadTube. “Since when does US mainstream media highlight the work of Marxist revolutionaries? Why are people who seem so unfamiliar with basic elements of socialist ideology suddenly elevated to the position of respected experts by the algorithms? Why do their foreign policy views seem to line up so closely with the US State Department? I have had no doubt they were being covertly supported by powerful entities with goals other than overthrowing capitalism.”
Unlike some fellow BreadTubers, Thorn comes across as amiable and trustworthy, fostering a personal bond with her viewers and regularly publishing thank you notes to patrons, listing them each by name. These qualities have attracted support for Philosophy Tube by both public and private backers.
Thorn’s April 2021 dismantling of the politics of right-wing culture warrior Jordan Peterson has racked up almost two million views and was sponsored by Curiosity Stream, a US media streaming service. The video opens with a black screen disclosing the support provided by the company and claiming Thorn would donate her fee to the feminist campaign group, Sisters Uncut. The video is also emblazoned with YouTube’s “paid promotion” logo.
Yet no such disclaimer referring to support from the Royal Institution can be found on any of her other uploads. And that may be because the Covid campaign was intended to be covert.
Astroturf campaign seeks to achieve ‘measurable cognitive shift’
The “Challenging Pseudoscience” operation designed for Thorn was launched in February 2021 by liberal science journalist Angela Saini. The author of several popular titles and a forthcoming book on “the origins of patriarchy,” she is also part of The Lancet Covid-19 Commission’s Task Force on Global Health Diplomacy.
The commission’s chief, Peter Daszak, a zoologist who serves as president of the US-based NGO known as EcoHealth Alliance, was forced to resign in June over conflict of interest issues.
In the years leading up to the outbreak of Covid-19, Daszak worked extensively on bat coronaviruses and gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His organization received tens of millions in funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division “[countering] weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.” In December 2019, Daszak warned that coronaviruses can “get into human cells,” one can “manipulate them in the lab pretty easily,” and “you can’t vaccinate against them.”
The host of Saini’s project, the Royal Institute, was founded in 1799 by British scientists of the day “with the aim of introducing new technologies and teaching science to the general public.” Landed gentry and royalty have always occupied the Institution’s highest levels. Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin, Field Marshal Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, has served as president since 1976.
The files indicate that the Royal Institution enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a communications firm “[working] with clients in the UK and all over the world to counter disinformation and strengthen the bonds between people.”
Valent was founded by Amil Khan, a former Reuters and BBC reporter who officially left journalism “to help good causes navigate the new information landscape.”
From February, Valent Projects proposed a “two-phase” project to “develop an understanding of the psychological drivers behind the generation and spread of anti-vaxxer narratives.” It planned to exploit this data “to develop and test public messaging responses.”
The findings would “inform other programming by Challenging Pseudoscience… as well as other stakeholders including the science community and concerned governments and public health bodies.”
In the campaign’s first phase, extensive online interviews were to be conducted, along with “ethnographic research” to secure “comprehensive understanding of the key online audiences driving anti-vaxxing mis/disinformation around the Coronavirus pandemic.”
Valent Projects then planned to “draw together insights” from these findings, developing “comprehensive audience profiles” – including “demographic information” – to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” who runs online channel Philosophy Tube.
Valent indicated its intent to exploit Philosophy Tube’s sizable platform to “achieve a measurable cognitive shift [emphasis added] in the target audience.”
Reaching the intended viewers was forecast to be a significant task in itself, however. Valent noted most Philosophy Tube viewers are within the 18 to 35 age range, but “existing research” suggested the “most prolific consumers of pseudoscience material” were over the age of 45.
The firm felt the “best topic to address this issue is probably along the lines of ‘the thing about expertise’ [sic].” Fittingly, in August 2020 Thorn uploaded a video, “Who’s afraid of the experts?” Featuring comedian Adam Conover of the popular show, “Adam Ruins Everything,” the 45 minute-long defense of the scientific consensus on the HIV/AIDS debate is the first result in any search for the term “vaccine” on Philosophy Tube’s channel.
The leaked documents thus expose what had long been suspected by critics of BreadTube: the popular social media collective has been instrumentalized by powerful interests with connections to Western intelligence agencies.
An astroturfed information warfare campaign hiding in plain sight
Multiple requests for comment from The Grayzone to Abigail Thorn’s agent and Angela Saini have gone unanswered.
When quizzed about the leaked files on Twitter, Valent Projects CEO Amil Khan flew into a rage, angrily asserting they were “obtained through hacking and then doctored,” in the manner of “classic doxing,” and threatened legal action against this journalist for publicizing them.
Khan later pumped out a series of tweets aimed at controlling the damage of his imminent exposure. In one, he falsely claimed that a co-author of this piece would publish their reporting in “Russian state affiliated media.”
Yet when challenged about his claim of doctoring, Khan did not respond.
Subsequent requests for clarity on which elements of the documents were maliciously altered and how that might have taken place have also gone unanswered. But evidence of the secret project’s existence was hiding in plain sight.
For example, Valent Projects lists the Royal Institution on its website as a client. An accompanying writeup notes it “developed and implemented a data-led behaviour change campaign [emphasis added] aimed at understanding and working with the psychological drivers behind anti-vaxer sentiment in the UK” for the organization.
Similarly, a post on the company’s official LinkedIn page refers to an “analysis of tens of thousands of UK-based social media users “posting/sharing anti-vax content online” it conducted for Countering Pseudoscience, which would “be used to inform ethnographic research designed to understand ‘why’ people hold these views.” In other words, a specific programming strand outlined in the documents.
From Valent Projects’ LinkedIn page
Moreover, none other than Abigail Thorn was guest-of-honor at Challenging Pseudoscience’s launch event in February, “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers,” which featured a debate on “how vaccines work, why people are skeptical despite the evidence, and how disinformation about vaccines spreads online.”
Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube participating in the Royal Institution’s “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers” event
Also on the event’s panel were an immunologist named Zania Stamataki and Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first “specialist disinformation reporter.” She has repeatedly perpetuated falsehoods about the size of anti-lockdown protests in 2020 and nature of their participants. In a bizarre experiment, she furthermore personally set up numerous “fake troll” accounts on assorted online platforms that “engaged” with “misogynistic” content, allegedly for academic purposes.
In May, Thorn published a characteristically ornate video, “Ignorance & Censorship,” which touched on the topic of “disinformation” and vaccines. The next month, Challenging Pseudoscience convened a similarly named panel discussion, “Misinformation or Censorship.”
Then, the newly-launched Challenging Pseudoscience podcast shared two prior Royal Institution debates – the aforementioned Vaccines: Warriors and worriers, and “Disinformation and how to counter it,” which featured none other than Amil Khan as a speaker. It would be entirely unsurprising if this deluge was a coordinated effort.
A wide-ranging, long-running, cross-platform propaganda campaign involving multiple actors requires substantial resources. Until 2020, however, the Royal Institution struggled financially despite its royal patronage and elite trustees.
The organization has been forced to rent out its grand central London headquarters for conferences, corporate bashes and weddings. To plug a multimillion pound budget deficit in late 2015, the Royal Institution auctioned off treasured first editions of works by Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and other eminent scientists. The fire sale prompted the BBC to ask whether the organization was on the verge of collapse.
Miraculously though, in October 2020, the Institution received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the UK government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund “to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and ensure it has a sustainable future.”
An accompanying press release noted the Royal Institution had over the course of the pandemic “[developed] a successful programme of weekly science talks online” broadcast via its “well-established” YouTube channel, which today boasts 1.11 million subscribers. The cash injection would “increase the number of livestreamed science talks” hosted by the organization, and help it develop “new digital content.”
Valent Projects staffer Hamish Falconer has disclosed that the “exciting” Challenging Pseudoscience campaign has also received “generous support” from the Open Society Foundations of CIA-adjacent billionaire George Soros.
As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported in 1991, Soros was at the heart of a network of “overt operators” helping US intelligence carry out “spyless coups” against former Soviet satellite states.
In July 2021, Soros teamed up with fellow billionaire Bill Gates to purchase a UK-based Covid-19 test developer for $41 million.
Three months later, as Alex Rubinstein documented for The Grayzone, Soros partnered with tech oligarch Reid Hoffmann to found Good Information Inc, a social media censorship operation marketed under the aegis of “countering disinformation.”
Hamish is the son of Charlie Falconer, a longtime friend and former roommate of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Following Blair’s May 1997 election victory, Falconer senior was elevated to the unelected House of Lords, and served in a series of high-ranking government posts throughout his pal’s tenure.
Along the way, he applied “huge pressure” to Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to change his view that invading Iraq would be illegal. His intervention may have played a decisive role in greenlighting the war of aggression.
Valent founder “embedded into terrorist organizations,” ran Syria psy-ops for armed extremists
Hamish Falconer’s hiring at Valent Projects in March 2021 highlights the firm’s deep ties to the UK’s intelligence apparatus. At the time, he was ostensibly on leave from the UK Foreign Office.
Khan trumpeted Falconer’s hire on LinkedIn, declaring that “he brings the action end to our work – experimenting and innovating with digital influence for good.” Having met in Pakistan “over a decade ago,” the pair “have not stopped talking and comparing notes since.”
Falconer’s spartan online résumé sheds little light on his professional history, noting only a spell at the UK government’s Department for International Development, followed by a seven-month gap, before he joined the Foreign Office as a ‘Diplomat’ until August 2020.
No detail is offered either on where Falconer has been posted, or what his role entailed at any point. He is a graduate of Yale University’s Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, named for the AIG founder who nearly became CIA director. The Greenberg fellows program identifies and grooms prospective future influencers, including no shortage of US-backed would-be coup leaders. Among the most famous alumni of the program is jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.
The Greenberg program’s profile of Falconer states, “he has led the Foreign Office’s Terrorism Response Team, UK efforts to start a peace process in Afghanistan and served in Pakistan and South Sudan,” and served a stint at the National Crime Agency – London’s equivalent of the FBI.
Counter-terror is not a stated Foreign Office purview, but just one of “three core areas of focus” for the UK foreign intelligence service MI6. It may just be a coincidence the agency’s spies typically pose as ‘diplomats’ overseas.
By contrast, Khan’s activities between December 2008, when he left his position as ‘hostile environments reporter’ for the BBC, and October 2017, when he joined elite UK national security think tank Chatham House as an ‘associate fellow’ – the next entry on his public CV – can be pieced together with much greater certitude, but still only approximately.
Valent Projects founder Amil Khan
A leaked document indicates that he first crossed paths with Falconer while managing a ‘countering violent extremism’ propaganda campaign for the UK government in Islamabad. The file relates to a Foreign Office funded effort to train “articulate Syrian armed and civilian grassroots opposition entities,” and promote them to “Syrian and international audiences” as a credible alternative to the government of Bashar al-Assad.
The project was delivered by ARK, a shadowy intelligence contractor founded by the likely MI6 operative, Alistair Harris, which has raked in innumerable lucrative contracts from waging covert information warfare operations on behalf of the UK government.
Khan was heavily involved in ARK’s Syrian efforts. Another leaked file, outlining some of the company’s work inside Syria shows that it oversaw a “rebranding” of the CIA-armed Free Syrian Army to portray it as a moderate, secular force unconnected to the hardcore jihadist factions that dominated the armed opposition. Khan is named as one of three operatives managing the media office of the parallel Syrian National Coalition government controlled by London through intelligence cutouts like ARK.
This work placed Khan in extremely close quarters with members of violent ‘rebel’ factions implicated in hideous crimes against humanity. That he “[provided] political and media support to opposition political and military groups” in Syria has been openly confirmed. A scathing internal Whitehall review of the Foreign Office’s information warfare operations in the country concluded they were “poorly planned, probably illegal, and cost lives.”
It wasn’t the first time Khan been in such murderous company. At some point after leaving ARK in August 2014, he joined InCoStrat, another contractor that conducted destabilizing psy-ops on the UK government’s behalf throughout the Syrian crisis. InCoStrat delivered “strategic communications support” to a variety of armed groups on-the-ground, including the notoriously brutal, Saudi-backed militia known as Jaysh al-Islam.
Khan also played a central role in this dubious initiative. In a document discussing its ability to “[develop] contacts in Arabic-speaking conflict affected states,” InCoStrat bragged how, “in his previous career as a journalist,” Khan “established relationships with, and embedded himself into terrorist organizations in the UK and the Middle East,” gaining “unique insight into their narratives, communication methods, recruitment processes and management of networks” as a result.
InCoStrat was founded by ex-Foreign Office political officer Emma Winberg and UK military intelligence journeyman Paul Tilley, a former director of Strategic Communications for the UK Ministry of Defence in the Middle East and North Africa. Winberg left to join Mayday Rescue, parent ‘charity’ of the fraudulent humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. She later married its founder, James Le Mesurier, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2019 after damaging revelations of financial corruption came to light.
A broad landscape of state-backed Covid propaganda ops
It’s probable the “Countering Pseudoscience” project is just one part of a wider landscape of online astroturf initiatives designed to restore cratering public trust in authorities around Covid policy.
Valent Projects has also conducted work for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a neoconservative think tank, researching “violent actors using the ‘dark web’ to mobilise recruits and threaten public figures in Europe.” This initiative was likely also aimed at countering lockdown opposition.
Back in April 2020, Khan appeared on a panel discussion convened by the organization, “Countering Disinformation in a Time of COVID19.”
At the start of December, the Institute released a brief report, “Between conspiracy and extremism: A long COVID threat?”, which attempted to frame the “radicalization” of anti-lockdown protesters as a terrorist threat. What input Khan may have had in this publication was unclear.
Valent Projects is just one of an array of companies that have brought psy-ops techniques honed in Syria and other theaters of Western information warfare back home with them, like soldiers returning from battlefields marketing their deadly skills to private security and intelligence firms. And Abigail Thorn is just one YouTuber, at a time when the British state is known to be maliciously recruiting digital personalities to further its interests across the globe.
For example, Foreign Office contractor Zinc Network maintains a clandestine nexus of Russian-speaking social media influencers throughout the former Soviet Union, to promote “media integrity, democratic values [and] complex social issues,” a campaign so intensive its relationship with these individuals necessitates “daily management.” This squadron of undercover psy-ops warriors are supported by an expert “in-house team of Russian speaking producers, researchers and digital growth strategists” in London, helping them create, edit and promote their output.
Coincidentally, Zinc has been engaged in efforts since the onset of the pandemic to concoct a link between extremist activities and anti-lockdown, vaccine hesitant views. It has also published research on how to best market a test-and-trace app to UK citizens, “as part of a broader research project on public understanding of and support for Artificial Intelligence.”
It is simply inconceivable that similar operations have not been enacted elsewhere in the world, or that this phenomenon is exclusive to the UK. Further, it is impossible to know if the next slick viral video countering grassroots dissent of an official narrative is state or quasi-state propaganda, cleverly crafted to induce a “cognitive shift” in viewers, in which the star of the online show is effectively an intelligence asset rattling off a script drawn up by full-time spooks.
The Beginning of the End? The virus part of the pandemic will probably soon be over.
eugyppius | December 26, 2021
Early reports that Omicron is substantially milder than other SARS-2 strains are every day confirmed by new data. A month into the unprecedented South African case spike, driven entirely by Omicron, Corona deaths remain low. It’s earlier days in the United Kingdom, where Omicron is only just over half of cases. So far, though, it is the same story there:
In the coming months, Omicron will outcompete all other lineages everywhere in the world. At that point, Corona will have completed its transformation into a mild coronavirus that nobody should care about, in the same way that nobody cares about other common human-infecting coronaviruses like hCoV-OC43. Unforeseen developments are always possible; Omicron might in time acquire greater pathogenicity. Particularly if we insist on vaccinating widely, we might drive its evolution in new and potentially dangerous directions. Those are, however, mere possibilities. Right now, everything tells us that the virus part of the pandemic will soon be over.
The major question, is how the rest of the Corona Circus will respond. Some thoughts on that:
In the short term, rising cases will probably fuel demand for more vaccinations. This is the blunt, stupid way that our public health experts respond to infections now, but it is not a game that will go well for the vaccinators. The vaccines will fail even more profoundly in stopping Omicron transmission, and there will be far fewer severe outcomes for them to prevent. I don’t know how long the crackpot vaccination regime can survive overt absurdities like this.
Omicron will probably also unwind the broader containment regime. South Africa has already abandoned their most intrusive tracing, quarantine and isolation policies, declaring a shift towards mitigation (which is what they should have done in the first place). Trying to defeat a minimally symptomatic highly contagious virus with the comically inadequate tools of the contact tracer is simply too ridiculous.
In the longer term, things look much more uncertain. It is hard to shake the feeling that Corona has swept away the last vestiges of liberal democracy in Europe, and perhaps in the whole world. I don’t think these political systems have been very good for the West, but our new theocratic regimes steered by the Corona astrologers have been vastly worse. As soon as the hysteria boils off, many of these villains will begin trying to get the panic machine up and running again. The alternative is a future where nobody much cares what they have to think, where they’re no longer able to interfere in millions of lives, and – perhaps most crucially – where a lot of politicians, journalists, and ordinary people begin to realise what utter failures they and their policies have been. There are failures that lose you your job, there are failures that make you a public disgrace, and then there are their failures, the kind that lead to arrest, indictment, imprisonment, and worse.
What we are doing to college kids is total madness
By Vinay Prasad | December 24, 2021
This is a post about the absolutely insane, crushing restrictions being imposed on young, healthy vaccinated (often booster and often naturally immune) people by institutions of knowledge. In order to prove my thesis that these policies are misguided, let me start with some basics.
When it comes to COVID19, there are only 3 things any of us can do:
- We can lower the risk of bad outcomes when we encounter the virus.
- We can delay the time to meet the virus
- We can engage in theater which does not delay the time to meet the virus
What goes in these buckets?
Category 1 (risk reduction) is easy. You can’t modify your age, a huge risk favor, but you can modify your vaccination status, and you can modify your weight and general health.
Category 2 (delay time to virus) is harder. We don’t have many well done studies, but theoretically if you sealed yourself in a bunker and ate canned food, you would do this. Wearing a snug n95 might also delay the time to meeting the virus. The challenge with these interventions is they are not sustainable by most people, and may lead to fatigue or backsliding, and thus the effect is transient.
Delaying serves 2 purposes:
- For the individual, it makes sense if, by delaying, you can do something for category 1 that you cannot do today. If you are waiting for your vaccine, for instance, by all means delay.
- For the community it makes sense, if, by some delaying, the pandemic trajectory is bent and hospitals are less likely to be overwhelmed.
Delaying also has a downside. It may hurt your mental health, particularly when you do it effectively. If you need evidence of this damage: please see twitter.
Category 3 (useless, virtue signaling theater) is the most common. Wearing your mask when you enter a restaurant and walk to your table, but not when you sit there for 2 hours laughing and drinking is one example. The fact this policy exists reflects serious impairment in thinking & total failure of policy makers.
Making a 2-4 year old wear a cloth mask in day care (which the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends against the advice of the World Health Organization), but, of course, kids take the cloth mask off to nap next to each other for 4 hours in the same room! Theater.
Closing beaches and other outdoor activities. Wearing a mask outside. The list goes on and on, and most things we did fit in this category. On a side note: Here we review all data on masking.
Enter young, healthy college kids.
The vast majority are either double vaxxed or have natural immunity or both, and some are also boosted. They are young (lucky them!), and the majority are healthy. What more can such students do for Category 1? Nothing.
What about category 2? It appears that many universities are making college kids wear masks, restricting their movement, banning gatherings etc. Here is just one example of how extreme they are:
These severe restrictions might actually delay the time till college kids meet the virus! But it does so with a huge disruption to their lives. All the wonderful things of being young require being very close to other people. Many simply cannot occur with a mask on.
Will these restrictions benefit the college kids? Absolutely not. When they eventually meet the virus— and they will— on vacation or next semester— they will just be a little older, but have similar great chances of doing well.
Will the restrictions benefit society? Doubtful. After all, everyone not on a college campus is not following any of these ridiculous rules, and the pandemic trajectory will be dictated by those (aka 99.9%) of places.
It will likely not even protect the faculty and staff on campus, who will largely face risks when they leave work and go home and on vacation, and again, if these folks have already optimized Category 1, delay makes little sense.
Will it harm the college kids? Absolutely, it will. Their mental health will surely suffer from this isolation. It has already. I will say again: all of the joys of youth require being close to other people.
What is the net balance? The net balance is these policies are catastrophically detrimental to them. Moreover, there is no countervailing benefit to staff or society to justify the huge imposition. It is morally and scientifically bankrupt.
Truly, I can’t even understand how anyone thinks these policies are justified. I am also surprised college students have accepted them with scant protest. I can only surmise that many have been mislead into thinking this sacrifice serves a broader interest (i.e. believe they are being altruistic), or that the incentives on their lives and career for conformity are so great they are afraid to speak up.
I suspect the strong link between restrictions and political party may also affect them. After all, the youth most strongly leans left, and thus adheres to the identity badges of the left (but in my case, sadly, I spent too many years studying & publishing on scientific evidence to turn my brain off).
In short, draconian restrictions on vaccinated young people or those with natural immunity living in tiny pockets of college campus makes no sense, and is a policy that contributes to a harm in societal well-being. The policy is unethical and illogical.
To young people: I am personally sorry that those of us who recognized the futility and harm of these policies could not have done more to shield you from the anxieties and risk aversion of the irrational.
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$1.5bn up in smoke: US THAAD missile stockpile dries up defending Israel against Iran
By Ivan Kesic | Press TV | July 2, 2025
According to American media, defense news outlets, and independent analysts, the 12-day Israeli military aggression against Iran significantly depleted the US stockpile of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptor missiles.
Citing official sources, American magazine Newsweek reported on Friday that the US transferred a substantial portion of its advanced missile defense capabilities to support the Israeli regime, an effort with questionable results and a critical impact on US strategic reserves.
THAAD, developed by Lockheed Martin arms manufacturing company, is a key component of Israel’s multi-layered air defense architecture. It is designed to intercept medium-range ballistic missiles, including those launched from Iran and Yemen.
The US-made system is capable of targeting short-, medium-, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles during their terminal phase, whether inside or outside Earth’s atmosphere.
THAAD uses a “hit-to-kill” method, relying on kinetic energy rather than explosive warheads to destroy incoming threats, intercepting at altitudes of up to 150 km and ranges between 150-200 km.
Operated exclusively by American personnel, the US military maintains eight THAAD batteries with an estimated 350–400 interceptors in total. The eighth battery was activated during the June 20 Israeli aggression against Iran and is capable of intercepting hypersonic missiles. … continue
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