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Wanted US Capitol insurrectionist asks Belarus for asylum

RT | November 8, 2021

An American man wanted in the US on charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds after taking part in the infamous January 6 riot in Washington is now in Belarus, and has asked Minsk to grant him asylum.

In an interview with Belarusian state media, Evan Neumann claimed that the accusations against him are “unfounded.”

Neumann is also charged with “assaulting, redirecting, or impeding” law enforcement officers and “knowingly entering or remaining in” a restricted building.

The American says he moved in March from California to Ukraine, where he stayed for four months. He claims that, after just two weeks, he saw Ukrainian Security Service officers following him, which eventually led to his decision to move to Belarus and seek asylum.

On his journey to Belarus, he trekked across swamps of northern Ukraine before reaching the border near Pinsk.

According to the FBI, Neumann was a part of the mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump that stormed the United States Capitol in Washington on January 6 this year. The attack, known commonly as ‘the insurrection’, sought to disrupt and delay the Electoral College vote count that would confirm Joe Biden’s election as the 46th US president. The rioting led directly to five deaths and has since been blamed for four police officers committing suicide.

Speaking to Belarusian TV, Neumann claimed that he was innocent.

“I’m charged, I believe, with six cases. And I think all of them are felonies. A felony is a very serious charge. It means you hurt somebody or something,” he explained. “I don’t think I committed any crime. One of the charges was very serious. The allegation is that I hit a police officer. It is completely unfounded.”

Neumann doesn’t deny that he was at the riot.

In the words of TV channel Belarus 1, Neumann “sought justice” and “asked uncomfortable questions,” and is now “being persecuted by the US government.”

According to Belarus’ Ministry of Internal Affairs, three US citizens have applied for refugee status, protection, or asylum in Belarus in 2021.

Neumann’s trek through Ukraine’s swampy forests wasn’t his first trip to the country. According to the FBI, he took part in the Western-backed Orange Revolution in 2004 and 2005, which led to a pro-NATO/anti-Russian government in Kiev.

November 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli soldiers given ‘prizes’ for helping compile database of Palestinians’ pictures – reports

Israeli forces detain a man during a protest in Hebron. September 9, 2021. © Reuters / Mussa Qawasma
RT | November 8, 2021

The Israeli military has reportedly compiled a digital surveillance database to monitor Palestinians in Hebron in the West Bank using invasive facial recognition tech integrated into a network of cameras and soldiers’ phones.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) even incentivized soldiers to compete against each other to take photos of residents “with prizes for the most pictures collected by each unit,” according to the Washington Post. Soldiers were reportedly offered rewards such as a night off if they managed to take the most pictures.

The surveillance dragnet is apparently based in part on smartphone technology called ‘Blue Wolf’ that captures the photos and cross-references the faces to find matches on the database. The application then signals to the soldier through a “traffic light” of colors which individuals to detain, arrest or leave alone.

Noting that the IDF has admitted to the initiative’s existence in an online brochure, the report also features interviews with former soldiers who had previously spoken to Breaking the Silence – a group of veterans that highlights human rights violations by the IDF.

One former soldier reportedly described the program as the IDF’s secret “Facebook for Palestinians.” Another veteran told the paper a network of facial recognition cameras had been installed at various checkpoints in the flashpoint town – as well as a broader network of CCTV cameras known as ‘Hebron Smart City’ that sometimes even allows the IDF to see inside people’s homes.

The network also apparently makes use of ‘White Wolf’, an app employed by security volunteers in the West Bank to provide ID information about Palestinians before they enter settlements to work.

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable if they used it in the mall in [my hometown], let’s put it that way,” said one recently discharged soldier who reportedly served in an intelligence unit. She called the Hebron surveillance system a “total violation of privacy of an entire people.”

People worry about fingerprinting, but this is that several times over.

In response, the IDF issued a statement that noted how “routine security operations” were “part of the fight against terrorism and the efforts to improve the quality of life for the Palestinian population in [the West Bank].” It would not comment on the IDF’s “operational capabilities in this context.”

November 8, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

The EU is proposing blatant mass surveillance of email and chat messages

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 8, 2021

A German member of the European Parliament is warning against EU plans to adopt new, wide-ranging mass surveillance rules that he says would seriously jeopardize citizens’ right to privacy by forcing tech companies to give access to encrypted messages to the authorities.

And that is what the laws now in the works in Brussels – that are supposed to replace temporary rules adopted in July – are designed to do, by ordering messaging and video chat providers like WhatsApp and Skype to put tech in place that would provide access to people’s private communications and, thanks to an automated system, monitor chats in real time and report suspicious content.

In a statement, MEP Patrick Breyer said that the EU commission must understand that it cannot give itself the right to intrusive surveillance of digital communication of every citizen, and do it without “specific suspicion.” He also believes EU’s policy on this issue is not only illegal and irresponsible – but also [in]effective.

As is often the case, the new intrusive regulation is being sold to the public as a way to combat sexual abuse of children, but the ramifications are much broader, while the idea of suspecting everyone in advance – making citizens “guilty until proven innocent” – doesn’t sit at all well with privacy advocates like Breyer.

Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld shed light on how dissenters on this issue are treated, revealing that they are made to feel like they are not committed to combating child abuse because they have questions critical of the proposed laws.

A number of other MEPs are opposed to the idea and speak about that openly, with some comparing the EU’s model of mass online surveillance to what is happening in China.

On his website, Breyer explained that what he refers to as “chatcontrol” is allowing the EU to have access to chats, messages and emails the providers scan in a way that is “general and indiscriminate.” He also said that building on the July regulation, the EU planned to already have expanded rules in place this fall, but that the date had to be postponed because of pushback from citizens and stakeholders.

November 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The old saying was right: kill your television

(and your smartphone)

By Richard Hugus | November 8, 2021

A month ago, illegal and criminal coercion toward covid injections in the workplace was announced by the Biden Administration. Many have lost their jobs for rightly refusing this unsafe, ineffective, and possibly life-changing medical procedure. Now it has been announced by the pharma-owned FDA and CDC that children 5 to 11 years old may be given the shot. Comments from the public and renowned doctors and scientists were overwhelmingly against this, but as with so may other boards across the country, the officials at the table voted unanimously in favor, as if they never heard a thing. This shot will now be mandated in spite of the fact that older children who have already been injected have experienced heart problems and other serious reactions, including death. Neither of these age groups have ever been in danger, and the shots can only hurt them. Next it will be children newborn to 4. What are we to make of a government willing to sacrifice children to pharmaceutical company profits, or ends even worse?

Coerced injections, worthless for their stated purpose, and now provably harmful, are clearly a means to some end. This might include social control through digital passports, totalitarian surveillance, the re-engineering of humanity through genetic manipulation, the reduction of the world’s population (a longtime dream of eugenicists), hooking people up to the “internet of bodies”, or all of the above. One thing is certain — none of this was ever about public health. That lie is impossible to believe as we watch health care workers being fired, leaving hospitals understaffed; as news of injection injuries is censored; as ER doctors ignore injection injuries and fail to report them; as the medical establishment is seen to be under the obvious control of politics and corporations; as goalposts are moved, new rules invented, and definitions changed; as sanitation workers are let go and garbage piles up in the streets; as fire fighters and first responders are put on “leave without pay;” as workers across the country lose their jobs and can no longer provide for themselves or their families; as mental health declines from isolation, fear, and stress; as natural immunity is suddenly no longer recognized; and as effective medicines are withheld while harmful medicines are protocol. The goal is apparently not to promote public health, or indeed social order, but to destroy it. One might think that government would respond to the obvious deterioration of society, but the last two years have shown that this is actually what governments want. This is a war from the inside out. Our own government is trying to kill us.

We have been fed a string of lies 20 months long, but lies over time have a way of wearing thin. In the attempt to explain contradictory evidence, official explanations become more and more elaborate, and the more this happens the easier it is for us to see both the lies and the liars. Our great advantage is that the truth doesn’t need the vast resources of states and corporate media to be told. When it came to the point where the state was forced to just censor the truth outright, this was just another lesson for us. The bigger the coverup, the more obvious the crime. Clarity grows every day.

The tyranny we are facing didn’t just start in March 2020. We are in the midst of a system that had already surrounded us when the “pandemic” operation began. This is why such an obvious hoax gained so much territory so quickly across the world. The operation itself was carefully planned, but it was built on an established foundation. For almost 60 years — counting back to the John F. Kennedy assassination — the world has been subjected to a long list of planned attacks in which black operators created a traumatic public event, manipulated the public into believing the event was carried out by a selected patsy, and made desired institutional changes on the basis of that event. The September 11, 2001 attack seemed the pinnacle of any ambition these operators could possibly have, until covid 19 came along and somehow struck 193 countries with the same catastrophic results all at the same time. Manufactured case and death statistics then started rolling in, videos of people dying in the streets were produced, and the narrative of a terrible, unprecedented public health emergency was everywhere around us. The real event was seasonal respiratory illness hyped as a “pandemic”, with maybe a dash of real bioweapon thrown in. The patsy was bats in China spreading a mysterious deadly virus. And the deep institutional change looks like a wholesale re-organization of national economies, resources, and populations to suit the one-world-government fantasy of Vanguard investment bankers, secret cabals, and the openly conniving Davos elite. Far more people were immediately killed by health care policy and medical malpractice in the early days of the covid operation — for example, the elderly sent to die in nursing homes, the ventilator murders — than the 3,000 who died on September 11. Without death and gore, there is no trauma, and the scale of this op required plenty of trauma. As intended in the 9-11 operation, the US proceeded with a series of wars against the enemies of Israel. As intended in the Covid 19 operation, the oligarchs have proceeded to destroy economies worldwide. 9-11 led to millions of deaths; covid 19 (the operation) will bring many more.

Dark actors with evil schemes have been honing their craft throughout history, but have never been able to fool more people than in the age of Edward Bernays, mass media, and social engineering. Today, a world-shaking falsity can be created out of thin air. The 1969 “moon landing” is a good example. Fortunately that psy-op was carried out without mass murder. It was an astounding feat. From the battleship Maine to the Reichstag fire to the Gulf of Tonkin, to “weapons of mass destruction”, to the 7-7 London bus bombing, to 9-11, to the Boston Marathon bombing, to the Las Vegas hotel shooter massacre, to the January 6 “insurrection”, and scores of other entrapments, fakes, and shootings; served by a veritable industry of crisis actors, informants, patsies, undercover police, agents, infiltrators, provocateurs, assassins, and spies; huge lies have been relentlessly sprung upon an unwitting, crisis-weary public, and the lies have succeeded for the most part because people can’t believe anyone would commit crimes of such magnitude.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink our relationship to the source of much of this manipulation — the TV screen. We literally are not seeing something real when it comes to us through this medium. The image on the screen is not reality. It may easily show us what someone else wants us to believe. The format is a wide open field for propagandists. Our personal experience is limited. TV makes our experience seem almost unlimited and we come to believe this expanded experience is authentic. We have been seduced by media and technology to such an extent that today much of our “reality” is not even real — it is virtual. It all comes down to epistemology — what is real and what we actually know is one of the central questions of philosophy. But as a practical matter, gaining knowledge through our own direct experience, dealing with people face to face, being there in person, interacting with the natural world in our immediate (non-mediated) surroundings, is overwhelmed by the simulacra that we get from electronic media. Like junk food, electronic media is pervasive and addictive. We are not physically or psychologically prepared to deal with it. We are simply not capable of ‘knowing’ all the people, places, ideas, and events brought to us in the avalanche of content on the internet. The hosts of the virtual world, like Facebook and Google, are happy to see us occupied on smart phones and social media with a previously unimaginable circle of hundreds of “friends.” We may even organize with our hundred friends to break Facebook and Google into a thousand pieces, but silicon valley doesn’t care because they gain so much more from collecting and selling our data. Technology once seemed to be there to make life easier, but then it quietly enslaved us. To fight technocracy — that is, government which derives its power from technology — we have only to look at the technocrats’ means of control — QR codes, data bases, surveillance cameras, license plate readers, algorithms, artificial intelligence, body scanners, microchips, video games, blockbuster movies, cable TV, smartphones, and credit scores — and get them one by one out of our lives. It is certainly within our means to get rid of the devices we ourselves carry. Are you opposed to “vaccine passports”? Then don’t carry or own the smartphone that makes them possible.

Facebook recently announced it wants to change its name to “Meta”, the Latin word for ‘beyond.’ To the forward-thinking predators running Facebook, the “metaverse” is the next frontier in the attempt to capture and control human minds. With a VR (virtual reality) headset, one actually believes he’s in a given program, and may even believe he’s interacting with the program. The next step will be a no-headset, or wireless, VR platform. Since the oligarchs want to use those of us who survive the Frankenshots as slave labor, they would want us to be more than just passive batteries in a pod with cables stuck to our heads, as in The Matrix. Mobile humans having reality fed to them wirelessly would be a huge improvement. Perhaps the technology for that is contained in the “vaccines”, with their strange magnetic effects, so far unacknowledged and unexplained. Indeed, this may be why Bill Gates said that “unfortunately everyone on the planet will have to be vaccinated.” Obviously, the privileged few can’t have unauthorized humans walking around in their own reality!

The ongoing operation for the digital enslavement of humanity is insane. We are not a Frankenstein experiment. We are not software programs. We are not computers. We are not ones and zeros. We are not transhuman. We are miracles created by God, not to be tampered with. It is time to de-digitize the world around us and return to our spiritual connections and our humanity. Like government, technology is there to serve us, not the other way around. Like government, technology is not to be trusted. When government and technology are working together, the potential for abuse increases exponentially. To save ourselves, both of these forces must be permanently put in their place.

These days many of us are in the streets protesting. The benefit of this is not that we might attract the attention of politicians who hold us in contempt, but that we see and talk to each other in person, and give those on the sidelines strength in seeing healthy and strong opposition to the madness. When it comes time to actually confront the authorities, they will have no choice but to listen, and they aren’t going to like it. On the way to that day, and perhaps in order to reach it, we have to get 60 years of very sophisticated, highly manipulative media programming well out of our heads. Hoaxes and false flags will then be immediately obvious, and will no longer be used against us. The “pandemic” and the cast of characters fomenting this two year atrocity will disappear like a bad dream. It’s as if we can beat this monstrosity simply by evolving.

November 8, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Critics fume as education official says she & others needed to flout mask mandate at event

RT | November 7, 2021

The head of a leading US teachers’ union said she and other speakers dropped their masks during a conference so people could hear them better, sparking outrage among critics of mask mandates at schools.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), was accused of hypocrisy for not wearing a mask during an event she attended earlier this week in Puerto Rico.

She and several other visiting officials speaking at the annual Somos conference addressed a “packed room” without wearing masks.

This appeared to violate the health guidelines of the US unincorporated territory, which requires face coverings to be worn in all indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status.

Weingarten, an outspoken advocate for mask mandates at schools, was confronted about photos from the conference on Twitter on Saturday.

She said people attending the event needed to have proof of vaccination and that she personally had a fresh negative Covid-19 test, but acknowledged the criticism was fair.

“I think you are right. If kids are wearing masks in schools to protect themselves & others educators must wear masks inside as well. I’m sorry,” Weingarten tweeted.

The official said she usually wore masks indoors, including during “the rest of the conference” and that she and other speakers “took them off as people were having a hard time hearing us.” The room was big and the audio system was bad, she explained.

The thread was bombarded with negative responses from anti-mandate campaigners, teachers who said they didn’t get to bend the rules like Weingarten did when in classrooms, and others displeased with her remarks.

AFT, the union that Weingarten leads, is the second-largest in the country, with some 1.7 million members. Other visiting speakers at Somos included Betty Rosa, New York City’s commissioner of education, and Meisha Porter, the chancellor of the city’s Department of Education.

The event was briefly disrupted by protesters, who decried Rosa for the role she plays in imposing austerity measures on Puerto Rico. She is a member of the Financial Oversight and Management Board, colloquially known as La Junta, installed by the US government to supervise the commonwealth’s budget. One of the protesters wore a voucher mask that covered his entire head.

November 7, 2021 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Media outlets campaign to get Facebook to censor climate “misinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 6, 2021

A series of articles have been appearing lately in Big Media, piling pressure on Facebook to step up censorship of what’s considered to be “climate misinformation” on the giant platform.

These reports published by the BBC, The Guardian, and The Verge – all citing and giving a lot of space to a study into climate-related content on Facebook produced by several fairly obscure advocacy groups – came shortly after Big Tech declared “climate misinformation” and “climate denial” to be its next censorship target.

One of these groups, “The Real Facebook Oversight Board,” announced on Twitter that it is publishing a quarterly report that documents “Facebook’s harms on climate change.”

The outfit, which states to be a part of the the-citizens.com site (that for now has a landing page and is funded, among others, by Luminate – an offshoot of billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s organization), said it was working with “Stop Funding Heat” and “Sum of Us” to produce the report.

The Verge bases its article on the “study” published on the Stop Funding Heat website, which accuses Facebook of “fact-checking” less than 4 percent of posts for climate misinformation, that is said to have increased by as much as 77% since January, to garner between about 800,000 and 1.3 million views.

“Facebook has been told over and over, through public reports and in private meetings, that its platform is a breeding ground for climate misinformation. Either they don’t care or they don’t know how to fix it,” Stop Funding Heat’s Sean Buchan is cited as stating.

“The Real Facebook Oversight Board” crops up again in a Guardian article dedicated to the same issue, which reveals that a majority of the 195 Facebook pages the activist groups analyzed mostly share memes ridiculing some politicians’ focus on climate change as a policy issue.

Facebook is singled out as being “among the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation,” while the giant’s perceived inaction in censoring content skeptical of climate change is seen as harmful to the “the battle” led by the elites who gathered in Glasgow for UN’s COP26 summit.

The BBC also covered the topic of the allegedly rampant climate misinformation on Facebook, choosing to cite a study which said only 8% of the 7,000 posts they consider misleading were labeled as misinformation.

November 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

COP 26: Methane Madness

By David Wojick, Ph.D. | PA Pundits – International | November 5, 2021

The grandly aspirational announcements getting all the COP 26 press actually have nothing to do with the COP, which is basically a business meeting.

Most of these big news events are in reality trivial, such as India saying it will try to hit net zero 50 years from now. Greta Thunberg will be pushing 70 so she is right that this is not action. As blah blah goes this is the real deal, hence her strident take on coming around the mountain, which I love.

One grand aspiration, however, is worth a closer look, because it is worse than empty. It is dangerously stupid. This is the growing pledge to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

Here is how Climate Home News put it: “The US and EU got more than a hundred countries on board with a commitment to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030, putting oil and gas sector leakage in the spotlight”.

Wow, more than a hundred countries. And who needs leakage, right? Leakage sounds like waste, although like recycling it might be ridiculously expensive to stop the waste.

The problem is that very few countries outside the EU and US generate a lot of methane from extensive oil and gas production. For most countries the methane comes from FARMING. If you cut farming by 30% a lot of people quickly starve to death. No one seems to have noticed this inconvenient truth.

The estimates of methane emissions by source are all over the place, which is another reason promising a 30% cut in 8 short years is stupid. But here are some standard global numbers that frame the issue.

The three big sources are energy, livestock and rice growing and they are roughly equal. In the US and EU energy is huge, while rice is very small and livestock is just sizable. In many developing countries energy is small while either rice or livestock are huge as a fraction of methane emissions. It does not matter how small your economy is, your target is still a 30% cut.

Livestock is not just cows, it is all domestic ruminants. In round numbers the estimated global population is 1.5 billion cows, 1.1 billion sheep and 0.9 billion goats. Basically 3.5 billion methane generating critters. Imagine the impact of cutting these huge numbers by 30%.

Rice is even worse because it can be the staple diet, or a leading export good, or both. Global rice production is right around half a billion tons a year. Cutting that 30% would be catastrophic.

All things considered this proposed methane reduction looks just as unrealistic as net zero, except it is supposed to happen in just 8 short years. We are not about to cut livestock and rice production at all, much less by an incredible 30%. Just as we cannot do without fossil fuels, we cannot do with huge cuts in livestock and rice.

Perhaps there is a method to this methane madness. Maybe having impossible aspirations is the road to great achievement. Should I aspire to be President or an Olympic gold medalist? Does possibility not matter? I find this hard to accept as a rational policy.

Or maybe the US and EU are promising big bucks to those poor countries that at least try to cut their methane emissions (even though methane is harmless climatewise). Is this just another great green bribe, like so much of the war on climate?

Let’s hope this methane madness is just another pointless aspiration.

November 6, 2021 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Al Gore proposes mass surveillance to find climate change ‘culprits’

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | November 5, 2021

Former Vice President Al Gore promoted a technology developed by the Climate TRACE coalition that tracks greenhouse gas emissions. The technology can help identify those that are “most responsible for climate change” but the system is already being accused of being nothing but mass surveillance.

Gore was vice president under President Bill Clinton. The Democrat has long been an advocate for measures to combat climate change.

In an interview on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, he touted the Climate TRACE technology, saying it would help reveal the identities of those responsible for greenhouse gases emissions. The government and climate change activists could use the data to hold greenhouse gases emitters accountable for “destroying” the environment.

“We get data consistently from 300 existing satellites, more than 11,000 ground-based, air-based, sea-based sensors, multiple internet data streams and using artificial intelligence,” Gore outlined. “All that information is combined, visible light, infrared, all of the other information that is brought in, and we can now accurately determine where the greenhouse gas emissions are coming from.”

“And next year we’ll have it down to the level of every single power plant, refinery, every large ship, every plane, every waste dump, and we’ll have the identities of the people who are responsible for each of those greenhouse gas emission streams, and if investors or governments, or civil society activists want to hold them responsible, they will have the information upon which to base their action and holding them responsible,” he added.

November 6, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Secret Israeli dossier contained no proof to declare Palestinian NGOs ‘terrorists’

RT | November 4, 2021

A classified dossier which Israel used to brand six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist outfits reportedly contains no concrete evidence to prove their involvement in violent activities or to otherwise justify the designation.

The document, which bears the logo of Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service, is the result of its inquiry into six West Bank civil society groups accused of securing foreign funding for a Palestinian militant group.

Despite the severity of the charges, however, Israel has yet to publicly release any evidence backing up its decision to brand the NGOs as terror organizations. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz prompted international backlash last month after he officially placed a terror designation on the six groups on the basis of the Shin Bet investigation.

Accessing the dossier, The Intercept and Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call found that the information used was based chiefly on interrogations of two accountants from another Palestinian NGO, the Health Work Committees, which was also labelled a terrorist organization last year.

The accountants’ lawyers told the outlets that Israeli authorities had “distorted” their testimonies, which were allegedly gathered under threats to family members and harsh interrogation methods that might be considered “torture.”

Shin Bet reportedly used a single statement from one accountant, about forging fake receipts for Health Work Committees, to accuse the other organizations of being involved in a similar scheme to fund the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) militant group. The men apparently described a number of educational and humanitarian initiatives which could be affiliated with the organization as “PFLP activities,” but they did not describe any financing of violent activities.

The outlets said that none of the testimonies cited in the 74-page dossier were backed up by any documents or receipts. The dossier was apparently delivered in May to a number of EU countries that have funded the organizations, prompting independent audits and public criticism from Dutch and Belgian ministers, who stated that the allegations did not contain “even a single concrete piece of evidence.”

“Since the Europeans didn’t buy the allegations, [Israel] used unconventional warfare: declaring the organizations terrorist groups,” Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer representing Al-Haq, one of the accused Palestinian NGOs, told The Intercept. He added that the charges were a “political [attack] under the guise of security.”

Meanwhile, senior officials from two unspecified European countries told the outlet that since Gantz’s announcement, Israel has ignored all requests for more information. While the Israeli Ministry of Defense did not comment, two US sources told the outlets that an Israeli delegation had presented similar dossiers on Capitol Hill.

The six NGOs accused by Israel are Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, Defense For Children International-Palestine and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

November 5, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

Here’s what’s wrong with Israel branding human-rights groups ‘terrorists’

By Eva Bartlett | RT | November 3, 2021

The Israeli government has designated several human-rights groups ‘terrorist organisations’ in a blatant attempt to further cover up the crimes they commit against the Palestinian people.

On October 22, Israel branded six respected Palestinian human-rights groups “terrorist organisations,” outraging the UN and the wider global community. This, coming from a state that imprisons and kills Palestinian children, and murders uniformed medics.

On the Israeli Defense Ministry’s list were Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.

The groups either document Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, which, in my opinion, routinely amount to terrorism themselves, provide legal support to targeted or imprisoned Palestinians, or work to empower Palestinian civilians. In what bizarre world can they be deemed “terrorist groups”?

A joint statement by leading Israeli rights group B’Tselem and numerous other Israeli and Palestinian rights organisations described the ministry’s action as “a draconian measure that criminalises critical human-rights work,” and noted the importance of documentation, advocacy, and legal aid for the protection of rights worldwide. “Criminalising such work is an act of cowardice, characteristic of repressive authoritarian regimes,” it said.

A number of UN special rapporteurs have condemned the decision as “a frontal attack on the Palestinian human-rights movement and on human rights everywhere.”

Meanwhile, Israel continues to attack unarmed protesters with rubber bullets, live ammunition and tear gas; approve new buildings in illegal Jewish colonies on Palestinian land; and bulldoze centuries-old Palestinian graves in Old Jerusalem; and Israeli colonists continue to brutalise Palestinian civilians, as they have long done. And, of course, Gaza remains under a cruel blockade – the longest lockdown in the world. The roughly two million Gazans barely living in the territory are deprived of the most basic essentials, including urgently needed medical supplies, and Israel guns down and abducts their fishermen, often destroying their boats.

But, no, according to the state responsible for these and countless other acts of terrorism, the “terrorists” are the human-rights groups. This is the state that not only abuses and murders Palestinian civilians, and flattens entire neighbourhoods of Gaza, deliberately destroying vital infrastructure, but also occupies Lebanese and Syrian land, violates Lebanese airspace, and routinely illegally bombs Syria.

This is not the first time Israel has harassed Palestinian (and Israeli) rights organizations.

The children’s agency, DCIP, is “an independent, local Palestinian child-rights organisation dedicated to defending and promoting the rights of children living in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.” In July 2021, prior to its “terrorist” designation, its main office was raided by Israeli forces.

At the time, DCIP described the raid as “the latest act by Israeli authorities to increasingly push forward a campaign to delegitimise and criminalise Palestinian civil society and human rights organisations.” They also noted this was a campaign that has been on the rise in recent years, “advanced by a network of rising nationalist Israeli civil society organisations and associated organisations elsewhere, with the support of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

With the minister of defence designating such groups as “terrorists” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs supporting the delegitimization campaign, it is not credible to argue the persecution is not coming from the Israeli government itself.

For one of the other listed groups, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), Israel’s targeted harassment caused the Dutch government to cease funding. Israel’s 972 magazine reported on this, saying “for years, a global network of Israel advocacy groups had been lobbying European governments to cut off funding to UAWC, a group that assists Palestinian farmers to cultivate and remain on their land, market their produce, and develop water infrastructure.”

Some of the work UAWC had done in recent years, the article noted, included establishing “52 cooperatives in the West Bank and Gaza, [and] rehabilitating almost 10,000 dunums of Palestinian land that were under threat of confiscation by Israeli authorities in Area C.”

It also planted nearly two million trees, and developed connecting routes amounting to almost 700km in distance. “UAWC also worked to provide better water access to Palestinians in Area C, where water and sanitation services are regularly interrupted by Israeli settlement expansion,” the article also said.

My experiences in Gaza, volunteering for years with impoverished Palestinian farmers and farm labourers coming under Israeli live fire on a near-daily basis, demonstrated to me that the work of groups like UWAC is essential to help farmers rehabilitate destroyed farmland. These are people simply trying to eke out an existence, being maimed and murdered by Israeli fire while doing so, their farmland and wells bulldozed and destroyed, their crops burned.

I also have some experience with the work of DCIP, which documents Palestinian child detainees in Israeli prisons, including children in solitary confinement, as well as children killed by Israeli soldiers or colonists. Without groups like this documenting these crimes, advocating for the children becomes all the more impossible. Clearly, this is one of the reasons Israel has made the outrageous terrorist designation.

But DCIP also helps sick and injured Palestinian children get medical care. The group helped rehabilitate a terribly injured, bedridden, 16-year-old Palestinian teen I met in a Cairo hospital in July 2008, months after an Israeli soldier shot him in the spine.

In March 2008, Abdul Rahman Abu Oida went to the roof of his home, checking the water tank to see why the family suddenly had no water, and was shot in the spine by an Israeli sniper hiding on another rooftop.

As I later wrote, “The bullet destroyed three vertebrae; the shot left Abed paralysed in a puddle of his own blood until his 13-year-old brother, 15 minutes later, found him and dragged him downstairs. Ambulances were prevented from accessing the area. Abed lay untreated for three hours before he reached a hospital in Gaza City.”

In the Cairo hospital where I met him, he was emaciated, with appallingly large bedsores on his backside and feet. These festering bedsores would be the cause of other ailments which plagued him and eventually caused his death. Through a contact at DCIP, Abed began to get proper treatment for his original wound and the consequences of the bedsores.

Although he survived the 2008/9 Israeli massacre, including Israel’s attack on the rehabilitation hospital in which he and 60 other patients were, in 2014 he finally passed away. But without DCIP’s intervention, Abed would surely have died not long after I met him in 2008.

I have written many times about the crimes Israel has perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, including sniping at medics and killing and maiming still other medics, including with dart bombs – both war crimes – as well as assassinating children and infants, and firing white phosphorus on civilian areas. These are all just from my personal documentation in the span of a few years.

Without people to document these crimes, Israel’s actions could be even more monstrous than they already are.

Last May, in an attempt to prevent journalists from reporting its war crimes, Israel precision-bombed key media buildings in Gaza (which it had previously done in 2009, 2012, and 2014).

Throughout occupied Palestine, the work of human rights groups in documenting Israel’s crimes remains imperative, and the country’s continued harassment of these groups – including their “terrorist” designation – indicates the effectiveness of their advocacy and the determination of Israel to whitewash its crimes.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

November 5, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

OSHA to Cover Up Vaccine Injuries by Preventing Workers’ Compensation Claims

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | November 3, 2021

As reported by Kim Iversen above, around the world people are gathering for massive protests against COVID shot mandates. In mid-September 2021, Italy became the first European country to announce the implementation of mandatory COVID-19 health passes (so-called “Green Pass”) for all workers, both public and private.

The Italian mandate took effect October 15, 2021. Residents have been protesting in the streets for months on end and there’s no sign of them letting up. Demonstrations are also taking place in The Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Greece, Romania, Slovenia, Australia and France.

Even in Israel, mass protests are now taking place as it was announced Israeli’s will lose their health pass privileges unless they get a third booster shot six months after their second dose. New York City has also seen large protests in the wake of its vaccine requirement for restaurants and other public venues.

Leaders Turn a Blind Eye

Yet, despite massive protests, the push for vaccine mandates and vaccine passports that will create a two-tier society continue unabated. With few exceptions, world leaders are simply turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the fact that their residents want nothing to do with their new world order.

At the same time, government agencies charged with keeping us safe are doing the complete opposite. That includes the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which President Biden has placed in charge of enforcing his unconstitutional edict that private companies with 100 employees or more must make COVID “vaccination” a requirement for employment or face fines of as much as $700,000 per incidence.1

OSHA will issue the mandate for employers as an emergency temporary standard (ETS), but as of this writing, no official mandate has actually been issued.

According to an October 18, 2021, report by PJ Media,2 OSHA has sent a draft to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. Since it’s being issued as an ETS, there will be no public comment period.

Once the OMB review is finalized, the vaccination rule will be published. Only then will the mandate actually go into effect. That said, OSHA has already amended an already existing rule in a way that will hide the true extent of the damage that this mandate will have on the American workforce.

OSHA Rule Change Covers Up Vaccine Injuries

According to OSHA rules (29 CFR 19043), employers must record and report work-related illnesses, injuries and fatalities, whether the employer was at fault or not. As reported on May 26, 2021, by employment law firm Ogletree Deakins,4 this recording requirement initially also applied to adverse reactions suffered by employees who had to get the COVID shot as a requirement for employment.

The original guidance stated that employers were required to record an employee’s adverse reaction to the COVID jab if the shot was a) work-related, 2) a new case under 29 C.F.R. 1904.6 and 3) met one or more OSHA general recording criteria set out in 29 C.F.R. 1904.7. OSHA specified that an adverse reaction to the jab would be considered “work-related” if the shot was required for employment.

Then, in late May 2021, OSHA suddenly revoked this guidance, saying it will not enforce the recording requirement if the injury or fatality involves the COVID jab, even if required for employment. The nonenforcement will remain in place through May 2022, at which time the agency will reevaluate its position.

Why would they remove the requirement to record and report vaccine injuries incurred as a result of a vaccine mandate? According to OSHA, the agency is “working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” “does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.”5,6 As reported by Ogletree Deakins:7

“There is no doubt that OSHA’s guidance created a disincentive for employers to mandate that their employees get vaccinated. With a mandatory vaccination policy, the guidance ensured that employees’ adverse reactions (with arguably little correlation to actual work-related injuries) could end up on a company’s OSHA recordkeeping logs — which could, in turn, negatively affect its insurance rates and, in some industries, its ability to bid for work.”

What Ogletree fails to address is that by not enforcing this recording requirement for COVID jab injuries, OSHA is intentionally covering up the ramifications these vaccine mandates might have on employees’ health. Meanwhile, employers are still required to record and report COVID-19 infections and COVID-19 deaths among their employees.

Federal Employees Get Special Treatment

In related news, federal employees must be fully “vaccinated” by November 22, 2021, or face the unemployment line. While coercion of this nature is abhorrent under any circumstance, federal employees at least get special treatment if they’re injured by the required jab. As reported by Stacey Lennox for PJ Media:8

“… October 1, 2021, the Federal Employee’s Compensation Act (FECA) issued a bulletin regarding coverage for vaccine injuries.9 FECA did not traditionally cover preventative measures and any resulting illness or injury. As of September 9, 2021, when President Biden announced the federal mandate, adverse reactions to COVID-19 vaccination are covered.”

As indicated in FECA Bulletin No. 22-01, dated October 1, 2021:10

“… this executive order now makes COVID-19 vaccination a requirement of most Federal employment. As such, employees impacted by this mandate who receive required COVID-19 vaccinations on or after the date of the executive order may be afforded coverage under the FECA for any adverse reactions to the vaccine itself, and for any injuries sustained while obtaining the vaccination.”

“This bulletin is an interesting turn of events given previous OSHA guidance to private employers,” Lennox writes.11 Indeed, while OSHA is selectively choosing to hide the vaccine injuries of private employees, federal employees will have access to financial compensation for their vaccine injuries, over and above the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Act (CICP).12

Who Will Pay for Private Employees Injured by the Jabs?

On the whole, it’s clear that private employees will be at a distinct disadvantage in terms of compensation. If their employer requires them to get the jab to keep their job, and they get injured by it, the only recourse they have is to file a CICP claim, which is near-impossible to get. By not requiring companies to record vaccine injuries, it effectively shuts down the path for an employee to seek worker’s compensation if they’re injured by a mandated COVID jab.

“While OSHA recordability does not govern worker’s compensation, after managing both for several employers, I have never seen a compensable injury that is not OSHA recordable,” Lennox writes.13

As for CICP, in its 15-year history, it has paid out fewer than 1 in 10 claims.14,15,16 It also offers rather limited help, as you first have to exhaust your personal insurance before it kicks in to pay the difference.

Even if they can get it, CICP awards are likely to be a drop in the bucket for most people. The average award is $200,000, and compensation for fatalities are capped at $370,376.17 Meanwhile, you can easily rack up a $1 million hospital bill if you suffer a serious thrombotic event.18

Perhaps most egregious of all, it’s your responsibility to prove your injury was the “direct result of the countermeasure’s administration based on compelling, reliable, valid, medical and scientific evidence beyond mere temporal association.”

In other words, you basically have to prove what the vaccine developer itself has yet to ascertain, seeing how you are part of their still-ongoing study. You must also pay for your own legal help and any professional witnesses you may need to support your claim.

The fact that federal workers who are injured by the mandated COVID jabs will be covered by FICA now gives unionized employees a new bargaining chip though. As noted by Lennox:19

“Without the OSHA ETS, unions would have bargained about having a vaccine mandate as a term or condition of employment at all. Now, unions should still have an opportunity for effects bargaining to ensure their members are covered if they sustain a vaccine injury.”

Recordability Guidance Must Be Changed Back

As mentioned earlier, the OSHA requirement to record vaccine injuries was scrapped because it disincentivized employers to mandate the shot. Having large numbers of injury reports can raise a company’s insurance costs. However, if OSHA is now going to require all employers with 100 or more employees to implement vaccine mandates, then most companies will be in the same boat.

Since no employer will be at a particular disadvantage, OSHA really needs to change its recordability guidance back, Lennox says, adding:20

“Private sector employees deserve the same protection as federal employees in the face of mandatory vaccines. The mandates will put a severe risk between them and their ability to earn a living for some people.

If they [employers] cave, they should be liable just as every taxpayer is now liable for a vaccine injury to a federal employee. If employers don’t want the liability, they should fight the mandate.”

Sources and References

November 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Video | , , | Leave a comment

White House Expands Vaccine Mandate To Cover 80 Million Workers

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | November 4, 2021

The White House has just released new policies requiring all companies – big and small – to coerce their workers into accepting the vaccine, or face termination, as the Biden Administration continues to up the pressure on all working Americans to get vaccinated before Jan. 4.

According to Axios, President Biden is planning to announce Thursday that employers with more than 100 workers on their payroll must guarantee that their workers are fully vaccinated, or tested weekly, by Jan. 4, 2022. If not, they could face federal fines starting at tens of thousands of dollars per offense.

What’s more, health-care workers will face even tougher restrictions which will effectively require every health-care worker in the country to be vaccinated, or lose their job, despite the fact that millions of health-care workers have already been infected with the virus by natural means.

To be sure, managing weekly testing programs for a minority of corporate employees will be extremely costly, and the ramifications of this new policy will essentially force employees for the biggest companies in the US to accept the vaccine.

Per Axios, the new rules – formally known as the COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing Emergency Temporary Standard – will be enforced by OSHA. They will affect roughly two-thirds of America’s workforce, or roughly 80MM people. Many businesses and hospitals have already started to enforce vaccine mandates, and while Axios reports that they have seen “minimal” noncompliance, that doesn’t exactly square with the fact that less than 60% of the American population is fully vaccinated.

While corporations might be able to absorb some of these costs, small businesses will likely be left with some difficult decisions to make. However, there’s one important catch: OSHA will mostly rely on “complaints” to enforce the rule, meaning it will be up to American workers whether or not they want to hold their fellow workers accountable for defying the policy. This incentive to snitch out co-workers and neighbors has already elicited criticism from some, including Conservative Radio host Dan Bongino, who has pushed back against vaccine mandates in favor of bodily autonomy.

The strict mandate for health-care workers is already creating some problems because, while 40% of health-care businesses have purportedly already enforced the policy, the supposedly “minimal” level of noncompliance is reportedly exacerbating worker shortages at hospitals and other critical service providers.

In another indication of how companies are struggling with the mandate, some federal contractors had been expected to enforce the Biden Admin’s vaccine mandate by Dec. 8, but those expectations have now been pushed back to Jan. 4. When asked whether the pushback was due to worker shortages, or the timing of the holiday season, they refused to comment, saying only that the delay is meant to “align” with health-care facilities and US employers.

Perhaps President Biden (and VP/President-in-waiting Kamala Harris) have already forgotten the lessons of Tuesday’s “off-year” election?

November 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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