Facebook has not had a shortage of whistleblowers over the past years, but most have been ignored and sometimes vilified by mainstream media and the authorities; however, they now have a “star” one, Frances Haugen, who seems to finally be telling them exactly what they want to hear.
And now European countries seem ready to use Haugen’s claims and her testimony this week before the US Congress as an excuse to promote more regulation that would force tech giants to come up with risk assessments every year regarding issues such as misinformation and hate speech.
The gist of Haugen’s testimony, and the reason why she revealed a number of internal Facebook documents prior to that, is the accusation that the social media giant has a negative and harmful effect on society.
So high is the profile now of this former product manager that straight after the congressional testimony, she was on the phone with European Commissioner Thierry Breton, and he was the one to inform the public about their conversation.
Breton, who is known for advocating very far reaching and strict new regulation of US tech giants, said Haugen “confirmed the importance and urgency of why we are pushing to rein in the big platforms.”
The leaked documents that were first reported in the Wall Street Journal – some of which had to do with the practice of white-listing celebrities and their content – now seem to be used as a catalyst in the EU to speed up the process of adopting new rules that aim to deal not only with the platform’s alleged anticomeptitive behavior stemming from their market dominance – but also make to go for more stringent ways of policing their networks – often a euphemism for unchecked moderation and even censorship.
Reports suggest that Haugen and EU officials drafting this legislation are having something of a meeting of minds, since a number of ideas she now has on how to contain Facebook are in agreement with what Brussels has been deliberating and debating for a year.
One of them, the Digital Services Act, would require transparency and disclosure both to regulators and researchers of services, algorithms and content moderation – but in the same breath, “force Facebook and other tech giants to conduct annual risk assessments in areas such as the spread of misinformation and hateful content,” writes the New York Times.
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights |
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Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.
Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.
Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.
Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.
Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.
A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.
Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.
Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.
A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.
It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.
Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.
The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.
Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.
Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.
At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.
One can’t help but be reminded of 15-year-old Kuwaiti citizen Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥa tearfully addressing the US Congress’ Human Rights Caucus in the lead up to the Gulf War.
“I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital… While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators,” she attested. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
Her words travelled the world over, were repeated endlessly on all major Western news networks, endorsed by Amnesty International, and cited repeatedly by US lawmakers and President George H. W. Bush as a rationale for waging war on Iraq, which occurred three months later.
It would not be until 1992 that Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and her story to be completely untrue. Her Congressional appearance was a publicity stunt organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, run by US propaganda merchants Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
It’s been said that if Nayirah’s lies had been exposed for what they were at the time, it might’ve prompted the public, journalists and politicians to consider whether they were being manipulated into supporting military action. Given the degree to which Haugen is preaching to the converted, even such a discrediting, debilitating exposure surely won’t hamper the US national security state’s inexorable push to take over the internet for good.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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Three US medical certifying boards have warned doctors that they risk losing their certification and licence if they spread covid vaccine misinformation.
Internists, family doctors, and paediatricians received an email on 9 September that quoted a warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July1 which read: “Providing misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical licence.”2
Richard Baron, president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), told The BMJ that the move was an attempt to establish a standard of care. “As standard setting organisations, we thought it was important to be on record, in a public way, to make clear that putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.” Baron said that the statement has been well received—“4 to 1 positive.” But community physicians contacted by The BMJ thought differently.
“When I got that email I thought I’d better not put anything on social media about vaccines,” said Shveta Raju, a community physician in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, who has treated covid patients and led the vaccination effort at her outpatient clinic.
“The email was sent more as a veiled threat to keep doctors on the official, established narrative, and that’s what I find chilling,” said a paediatrician who pseudonymously blogs under the name Elizabeth Bennett. “Pandemic or no, there is a problem with having an ill defined concept of misinformation that’s tied to public health messaging that hasn’t been consistent. How are physicians supposed to figure out what is misinformation when public health messaging swings so wildly?” Bennett asked.
Undefined offence
Baron said that the statement was also intended to signal the certifying boards’ support for physicians “trying to do the right thing.”
“We wanted to support that group and say ‘hey, we do have a standard of care here and you are doing the right thing when you uphold it,’” he said.
Raju responded, “If that was their intent, they should have defined misinformation. By leaving it undefined, the message was that we can’t talk about this at all.” She said that physicians are, by and large, a conservative group. “If they’re not sure what can be deemed misinformation, physicians would rather be quiet.”
Bennett concurred: “The thing I find most alarming is that they don’t define misinformation, but if they strip you of your board certification, you would lose your means of earning a living.”
Doctors spreading misinformation?
Official and social media company efforts to target “vaccine misinformation” predate the pandemic.3 But the new statement from ABIM, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Paediatrics is one of several recent statements putting doctors in the spotlight for the first time.
In Canada, warnings about physician information began earlier, when in April the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario declared that physicians “have a professional responsibility not to communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements or promote unsupported, unproven treatments for covid-19.”4
The Canadian statement triggered an outcry, leading to a clarification that the statement was “not intended to stifle a healthy public debate about how best to address aspects of the pandemic.” But concerns continued. In June, a Canadian member of parliament held a press conference on censorship of Canadian clinicians and scientists. YouTube removed the video of the meeting.56
The BMJ asked ABIM about the size of the problem of board certified physicians spreading misinformation.
“We don’t have a sense of numbers of physicians spreading misinformation,” Baron said. “We’re at the beginning.” He believed it was only a “small number of doctors.” The medical boards opted to send the statement to all doctors, he said, because focusing on just the offending individuals would “miss the impact they’re having because of how much their voices are being amplified.”
As an example of “unprofessional or unethical behaviour,” Baron cited the case of a Florida doctor offering medical exemptions from mask wearing for $50 (£37; €43).7
Personalised medicine—or one-size-fits-all?
The BMJ asked whether physicians expressing doubt about the need for booster doses or vaccination of patients with natural immunity—two matters that have been the subject of debate and changing official guidance—would qualify as misinformation.8 “I don’t think we have concerns with doctors wrestling with areas where the science is unclear,” Baron said, “but there is no debate about whether people should get a primary vaccination series.”
Raju worries about the impact on personalised care. “The job of physicians is to take guidelines and apply them to the patient in front of them.” But now “physicians are basically being told that when it comes to covid vaccines it’s one-size-fits-all.”
Baron said, “We’re not trying to stifle conversations between doctors and patients. We understand that different people may look at evidence in different ways, but when you have an overwhelming preponderance of medical consensus in a certain area, you need at least to tell patients that there is an overwhelming professional consensus here.”
Cautious approach
Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that in the context of the pandemic, he was “not opposed to certain levels of misinformation triggering a decision to question somebody’s licence.” He said, “I can see this being an appropriate remedy at a time of public health emergency.
“But this is not how the system for licensure and certification has traditionally worked, and creates many opportunities for mistaken judgment about what is and is not misinformation, and those decisions would have to be rendered with extreme caution.”
Flier added, “We have to remember that there are legitimate areas of debate, and such matters should not fall within the scope of disciplinary actions.”
“There are reasons to be concerned that state boards might be unprepared for these kinds of decisions at a time when so many aspects of covid policy have been enmeshed with political views.”
Footnotes
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This article was updated on 4 October to make clear that it was medical certifying boards, rather than licensing boards, that emailed physicians. The email quoted an earlier warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards.
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Competing interests: PD gave a public statement at a 17 September 2021 FDA advisory committee to discuss covid-19 vaccines, where he highlighted the joint statement. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position of the University of Maryland.
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Provenance: commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.
https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage
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October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Dr. Rochagné Kilian
OWEN SOUND, Ontario – Dr. Rochagné Kilian recently resigned as an emergency room and family practice physician due to her concerns that the Ontario health system and Grey Bruce Health Services (GBHS) crossed ethical lines throughout the pandemic.
In a virtual meeting that included GBHS CEO Gary Sims and other staff members, Dr. Kilian asked Sims a series of questions about what she believes is unethical behaviour on behalf of the Ontario health system at all levels. Sims appeared to be unprepared for difficult questions pertaining to the ongoing rollout of vaccination mandates and vaccine segregation restrictions the Ontario heath system is championing.
Kilian estimated that 80 percent of the patients she saw in the ER during the past month who had inexplicable symptoms were “double vaxxed.”
Dr. Kilian relocated to Owen Sound – a small city in Grey County, Ontario – from South Africa after previously working in British Columbia. When she resettled in Owen Sound with her family, she expressed to a local paper how happy she was to live there: “Our recruitment to Owen Sound might have been by chance, but our choice to settle here was definitely not. Our four months in Owen Sound have been blessed. A little town with lots of soul, surrounded by beautiful landscapes, filled with welcoming residents and businesses, and exciting festivals, programs and activities. We truly feel fortunate to raise a family here.”
The first issue that Dr. Kilian brought up during the meeting was informed consent regarding the COVID jab and what she considered to be a coercive mentality of pressuring people to accept medications that she pointed out are still in “clinical trials.”
An GBHS administrator did not answer her question directly, but instead passed the buck to the provincial government and stated they do not have “oversight or input” regarding consent mechanisms presented to patients.
Kilian added that having more input into what patients are consenting to is something that GBHS “should consider,” especially in light of enacting the government-recommended vaccination mandates with their own staff.
Referring to informed consent and mandating experimental vaccines that been linked to thousands of deaths and injuries, Sims explained that because of the “pandemic,” certain procedural normalities will not take place.
“In a pandemic, some of those pieces that you think would be there [mechanisms of informed consent from the government] when you have lots of time to review stuff … in a pandemic, they’re going to pass mandates, and they’re going to pass laws, and they’re going to pass directives as needed to manage that pandemic,” he said. “And some of the things … will feel like they’re infringing on or taking short cuts … they are doing that directly to save lives.”
Sims then stated that there is a “massive scientific group” that has reviewed all the issues pertaining to the vaccines and their usage and rollout. This meeting took place August 23. Since then, the Ontario government has admitted that at least one of the vaccines pushed on the public has caused serious heart problems in young men, who are at virtually no statistical risk of suffering severely from COVID.
Dr. Kilian pressed Sims about claims that protocols of informed consent can be skirted due to an emergency, and clarified that the Tri-Council Policy Statement stipulates that an emergency situation does not warrant skirting protocols that protect the population from being put at risk due to medical experimentation. The Tri-Council Policy Statement is a Canadian guideline for the ethical conduct of research involving humans and/or human biological materials. As the vaccinations are still technically under experimental trial, they are being implemented under a research-based framework on the population.
It was Kilian’s opinion that the ethical framework is being ignored, thus health workers and citizens are being forced to take something against their will that is not proven to be safe or effective in the long term, as a result of vaccination mandates.
Sims reacted sharply to Kilian and said, “Nobody is forcing you to do this, you have a right to say no, but the reality is the government has the right to say that you’re not employed.”
“When the law looks at it, the law is saying you have the right to do it [enforcing vaccine mandates],” he added.
Dr. Byram Bridle, a University of Guelph professor, recently released a letter he sent to the president of his university that called into question the legitimacy of vaccine mandates, both from a medical and legal perspective. He stated in the letter that he is “confident there will be lawyers willing to test this in court.”
Dr. Kilian asked a final question in the virtual meeting about the claims that Sims and others at GBHS have made about the majority of COVID-associated cases in the region being among the unvaccinated. She asked if there was a detailed database that could be shared to prove this point. Sims stated that the vaccination status of the individuals who have been admitted in his region could not be released due to privacy reasons, but that the provincial government would have the information.
He then claimed that provincially, “less than 0.7 percent of people who ended up in ICUs were vaccinated.”
He referred to the “third wave” of COVID in Ontario that he said was due to the Delta variant, and stated that “it was all unvaccinated” who fell seriously ill at that time. The third wave in Ontario is reported to have happened in April and May. The vast majority of Ontarians had not received their second dose of any COVID jab by that point, and the province has made it clear in numerous places that a person only counts as “full vaccinated” for clinical purposes after 14 days have passed since they have received their second dose.
During the month of May in the Grey Bruce region, there were a total three confirmed hospitalizations with COVID-19. Five people in the region died that month with a COVID-positive diagnosis, and two of the deaths were residents who died outside of the county.
Sims said on the call that a minimum “80 percent” and up to “97 percent” of ICU patients with COVID across the province were unvaccinated. It is impossible to reach that number given the Grey Bruce statistics because there are too few people for calculations to be mathematical doable.
He then intimated that there will be great fears among pediatric physicians regarding autumn COVID numbers “if children start to die.” There is no evidence to suggest that COVID is dangerous to children in any statistically significant way.
Dr. Kilian resigned from her position while on the call with GBHS administration and spoke about her situation on the The Strong and Free TruthCast, where she criticized the state of health care in Canada. She expressed that care for the individual patient has gone by the wayside during the “farce that we have been living through.”
She said that throughout the entire time that the pandemic has been declared, she has only admitted two patients to the ICU that tested positive for COVID. She then clarified that this did not mean they were in the ICU due to COVID, but only that they had tested positive. She stated that her emergency department was “dead” throughout all of the declared waves of COVID, and that she took pictures of the official numbers to prove that they “had nothing to do” with lack of patients.
Dr. Kilian added that since the rollout of COVID jabs, she has seen a striking uptick in patients who have been admitted with heart issues and do not fit risk categories. She stated that as more and more people have received the jab, she has seen a host of strange events in her patients. She spoke of “people coming with newly diagnosed high blood-pressure, diabetics that was controlled that are no longer controlled – their sugars are either through the roof or they’re down in the ground … The only factor … constant that changed in their life was the injection of an experimental biologic.”
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Five Palestinian factions called on Wednesday for the cancellation of the Oslo Accords and the adoption of a national agenda agreed upon by their secretaries general in September last year, Sama has reported.
According to the news agency, the five factions are the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Islamic Jihad in Palestine, the Vanguard for the Popular Liberation War, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command.
They warned against what they called the blackmailing of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and undermining of its status at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian refugees. The EU’s “extortion” against UNRWA to make school textbooks and curriculums “Israel friendly” is intended to make Palestinian students grow up without knowing their national identity, they said.
The factions also reiterated the importance of fast-tracking the adoption of a national resistance strategy instead of Oslo and its related Paris Economic Protocol. The formation of a united leadership for a comprehensive popular resistance effort to push the Israeli occupation out of Palestine is also a priority, they insisted.
“Betting on the delusional international proposals” and dependence on the International Quartet led by the United States “is an extension of a three-decade of failure,” they added. “Political escalation is not achieved through illusory and empty statements, but through the accumulation of material power on the ground.”
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) has introduced a bill, the Mind Your Own Business Act (S.2829), that would hold corporate officers personally liable when actions they take on behalf of the corporation are considered political, “un-American,” or in some other way not in the best interests of the shareholders.
Among other things, Mind Your Own Business would hold corporate officers personally liable for the act of “boycotting a state” – undermining their freedom to boycott Israel over its endemic human rights abuses. This is in spite of the fact that Americans in general are very supportive of boycotts: only about 1 in 5 agree with the anti-BDS legislation of the type that Rubio and others (including many Democrats) have been trying to pass. The BDS movement (boycott, divest, and sanctions) is based on “the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”
The practice of boycott in the 1990s was instrumental in the toppling of apartheid in South Africa, and is a growing movement today. Numerous experts have documented Israel’s profoundly discriminatory system, which amounts to apartheid.
The BDS Movement has declared that “states have a legal responsibility to end complicity and dismantle apartheid” in Israel; all over the US, universities, local governments, and unions are considering BDS actions.
Israeli impunity
Interestingly, while laws in 32 states forbid the boycotting of Israeli companies, these same states are in favor of boycotting under different circumstances.
That is, businesses (and in some cases, individuals) that participate in boycotts of Israel are often themselves boycotted. The difference is simply that in the first case, the action is taken on moral grounds (for example, in protest of Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians); the second is merely punishment for the entity’s exercise of free speech.
Last month, several states boycotted Unilever, parent company of Ben & Jerry’s, when the ice cream company decided to stop selling its products inside illegal Israeli settlements.
Human rights organizations argue that penalizing those that oppose Israel’s policies has enabled Israel to continue violating international law. Human Rights Watch maintains that “States should encourage, not sanction, companies that avoid contributing to rights abuses.”
Supporting Israel is damaging to Americans on many levels.
In addition to providing arms to a country that abuses human rights (and that in turns provides arms to other human rights abusers), the US has lost respect globally for its complicity; foreign agents are controlling much of our country’s foreign policy; pro-Israel donors hold many politicians hostage; and American freedoms are being eroded in the name of protecting Israel from criticism. Israel also often spies on Americans and steals our technology.
Congressional impunity
Sen. Rubio himself, like many other senators, refuses to take responsibility for his actions in Congress that are not in the best interest of his constituents: his support for Israel (and Israel partisans’ support for him) is well-known; Rubio has prioritized Israel over his own country, and worked against American free speech.
Only a quarter of Americans consider themselves Zionists, yet the vast majority of our Congress members vote pro-Israel.
In addition, Americans are increasingly in favor of limiting and/or conditioning aid to Israel, while the majority of our legislators are willing to send Israel $10 million a day (and much more besides) with no strings attached – even though we have laws that prohibit such aid to countries that commit large-scale human rights abuses.
This would suggest that perhaps these Congress members – not corporations wanting to boycott Israel – may be acting in an un-American way, not according our best interests.
Our Congress is failing its shareholders.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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The European Commission is set to incorporate the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as part of Europe’s strategy to combat anti-Jewish racism. Details of the Commission’s plan were outlined yesterday in a 26-page programme. The three central goals are to prevent anti-Semitism in all its forms; protect and foster Jewish life; and promote Holocaust research, education and remembrance.
None of this, of course, is particularly controversial. Indeed, we would expect the Commission, if it were likewise to adopt a programme for combating Islamophobia, to include the protection and fostering of Muslim life as a goal while also promoting research and education to expose groups peddling anti-Muslim bigotry.
“We want to see Jewish life thriving again in the heart of our communities,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is how it should be. The strategy we are presenting today is a step-change in how we respond to anti-Semitism. Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities feel safe and prosper.”
European Union member states are encouraged to develop national strategies by the end of 2022 to tackle anti-Semitism, or include measures in their national action plans against racism and provide sufficient funding to implement them.
More controversially, but unsurprising nonetheless, the EU said that it will strengthen its cooperation with Israel and use the IHRA “working definition” to determine what constitutes anti-Jewish racism. It will also encourage local authorities, regions, cities and other institutions and organisations to do the same.
Putting aside the obvious contradiction in working with a state practicing apartheid and promoting Jewish supremacy, in order to combat racism, the incorporation of the highly contested IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into a programme as important as this risks undermining the very goal that the Commission has set out to achieve.
The problem with the IHRA is not the actual definition. No one opposes the text at the heart of the document: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Nevertheless, the IHRA and the European Commission’s strategy are good examples of how well-meaning endeavours are hijacked for use as weapons in someone else’s propaganda war.
Seven of the 11 illustrative examples within the IHRA definition conflate racism towards Jews with criticism of the state of Israel. It is this that is having a chilling effect on free speech across Europe and elsewhere, despite the insistence by its supporters that the IHRA text has no legal force and is meant to serve only as a guide. If the Commission were to adopt a programme to combat Islamophobia, would it incorporate a definition that included criticism of “Islamism” or any so-called “Islamic” countries as examples of anti-Muslim racism? I doubt it. Just as it would reject China’s insistence that criticising Beijing is in any way anti-Chinese.
Recent high-profile cases illustrate why critics are right to fear that the IHRA has been weaponised for Israel’s benefit. The University of Bristol, for instance, has dismissed a leading British critic of Israel and its lobby, Professor David Miller, following a long “pressure campaign by Israel’s assets in the UK.” An expert in propaganda and political pressure groups, Miller has been a key critic of the pro-Israel lobby for the past decade, as well as of Zionism, the state’s racist official ideology.
Some 200 academics and public intellectuals signed an open letter to the university in support of Miller and his work. Denouncing the attack against him as the “weaponisation” of anti-Semitism, the signatories said: “We oppose anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate. We do so because such vilification has little to do with defeating the harms caused by racism. Instead, efforts to target, isolate and purge individuals in this manner are aimed at deterring evidence-based research, teaching and debate.”
Bristol University claimed that it was committed to an environment preserving “academic freedom” and admitted that Miller’s anti-Israel remarks did not constitute “unlawful speech”. Nonetheless, the university apparently caved in under pressure from groups describing themselves as “proud” Zionists that have been leading the campaign to have him sacked. The very same groups are also pushing for the blanket adoption of the IHRA definition in order to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.
In America, the latest example of the chilling effect of the IHRA definition has seen Israeli diplomats reportedly put pressure on the dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to have Kylie Broderick, a teacher critical of the occupation state, removed from her job. The intervention by the Israeli officials followed a campaign by right-wing, pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group who highlighted Broderick’s Twitter account and posts which criticised Israel and Zionism. They cited the posts as evidence of anti-Semitism. The university said it followed guidelines in the IHRA definition to assess whether Broderick’s remarks were anti-Semitic or not.
These are just two of the most recent examples of how the IHRA definition has been used to crackdown on free-speech. It has had the impact about which its many critics have warned, including the drafter of the IHRA text, Kenneth Stern. “Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently anti-Semitic and must be suppressed,” wrote Stern in a sensational article in the Times of Israel. He claimed that pro-Israel lobby groups have weaponised the definition in an attempt to silence critics of Zionism.
As the European Commission was busy adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the Senate in France, which in recent years has adopted a number of laws slammed by critics as Islamophobic, duly adopted the working definition. The decision has been applauded by anti-Palestinian groups, which have urged other European parliaments to follow suit.
Freedom of speech is often described as one of the pillars of liberal democracy but not, it seems, when that freedom is used to express legitimate criticism of the Zionist state of Israel and its pernicious, racist ideology. As many pro-Palestine activists have said, “Anti-Semitism is a crime; anti-Zionism is a duty.” The two should never be conflated.
October 6, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Human rights, Israel |
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Resistance to the introduction of vaccine passes, based on various grounds and gaining momentum for different reasons – is not present only among the general population and customers. In Scotland, owners of businesses have joined those who are opposed to a mandated COVID passport system by announcing a weekend boycott of the program.
Their argument is that the scheme Scotland launched via an app is so technically flawed that it is causing chaos and harming their businesses, as it keeps customers and visitors to places like night clubs and football stadiums away by simply not working.
This seems to be yet another in UK’s botched schemes rolled out over the course of the pandemic, and besides being riddled with technical problems, another thing these have in common is that they cost a lot of taxpayers’ money – although the latest Scottish “omnishambles” as some are calling the app is “cheap” compared to some other UK COVID fiascos – it cost a “mere” £600,000 ($816,520) to develop, although that’s probably £600,000 too much, considering that it doesn’t appear to work.
The first to defiantly pull out of the scheme once it became apparent it was useless were football clubs, who have been hard-hit by COVID restrictions that kept fans out of stadiums and seriously undermined their revenues for months on end.
The app was officially put in practice last Friday morning, with the SNP-led government announcing people would need to show proof of vaccination to be let into this type of venue. But the very same day, realizing the app wasn’t working, Aberdeen FC simply abandoned this requirement for its fans to attend the game upcoming on Sunday.
“Nobody will be asked to show proof of vaccine,” the club announced on Friday, reacting to fans being unable to buy tickets because the app could not be used to prove their vaccination status. Other Scottish clubs, like Rangers and Hearts, soon followed suit, while owners of nightclubs and others in the hospitality industry did the same, saying the confusion was “farcical.”
What followed was Health Secretary Humza Yousaf having to reverse previous policy, saying that “nobody should be denied entry this weekend if they failed to show proof of vaccination, and admitted the widespread technical problems may take ‘days’ to fix,” the Telegraph reported.
October 5, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK |
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Twitter’s fact-checkers appended a “misleading” alert to an obituary about a young woman who allegedly died after contracting a rare blood-clotting condition provoked by the COVID-19 vaccine.
After being accused of going so far with its censorship that it would resort to censoring an obituary, Twitter relented to the backlash and reversed the censorship.
The woman in question, Jessica Berg Wilson, a 37-year-old mother of two, died in the first week of September from Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, a rare blood disorder in which small clots grow throughout the body, damaging platelets and preventing blood from reaching key organs. According to her obituary, Wilson’s greatest life ambition was to “be the best mother possible” to her daughters Bridget and Clara.
“She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat,” it read.
Kelly Bee, a Twitter user, posted Jessica Berg Wilson’s obituary with the statement, “an ‘exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,’ passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. She did not want to get vaccinated.”
However, Twitter flagged the post as “misleading” and blocked it from being replied to, shared, or liked.
The majority of critics were outraged that Twitter was censoring an obituary and they responded by urging their followers to help the tweet go viral in violation of the company’s warning. Twitter has since removed the “misleading” designation and revoked the shadowban.
Additionally, several bloggers, including Ben Domenech of The Federalist, retweeted the obituary. Ben’s tweet reads: Who @Twitter decided it was okay to say an OBITUARY is ‘misleading’ ?”
Another tweet said “Twitter is now censoring obituaries,” – posted by Sean Davis.
Furthermore, Sebastian Gorka, who worked in the Trump administration’s Department of Defense, tagged Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a tweet asking what aspect of the obituary was incorrect or “misleading.”
“Hey @jack, Jessica was healthy and died. Why are you censoring that fact as ‘misleading??” he said.
October 4, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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But lockdowns will remain until 90% of population is vaxxed
New Zealand has announced it is dropping its controversial ‘zero COVID’ policy after numerous critics pointed out that such an approach to eliminating the virus was impossible.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made the announcement earlier today during a press conference in which she acknowledged, “The return to zero has been extremely difficult.”
“What we have called a long tail has been more like a tentacle that has been difficult to shake,” she added, noting that the delta variant of the virus forced a change in policy.
Critics had repeatedly asked how the country expected to maintain a ‘zero COVID’ policy given the emergence of new variants of the virus and decreasing efficacy of the initial round of vaccinations.
However, with 48% of the population fully vaccinated, no return to normal is expected anytime soon given that Ardern has said 90% will need to be fully vaxxed before the lockdowns will end.
Kiwis have faced continuous lockdown measures almost as brutal as their Aussie neighbors since the beginning of the pandemic.
As we highlighted in August, Ardern mimicked Australia’s top public health official by telling citizens, “Don’t talk to your neighbors,” after the country went into full lockdown as a result of just a single COVID case being detected.
Authorities also previously announced that they would put all coronavirus infectees and their close family members in “quarantine facilities” even if they refuse.
October 4, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New Zealand |
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Since 2020, public health technocrats and their allies among elected officials have clung to the position that absolutely every person who can possibly get a covid vaccine should get one.
Both the Mayo Clinic website and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example, insist that “research has not yet shown” that people who have recovered from covid have any sort of reliable protection. Moreover, the CDC page points to a single study from Kentucky claiming that people with natural immunity are more than twice as likely to contract covid again, compared to people who have been vaccinated.
This narrative is reflected in the fact that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates are a one-size-fits-all policy insisting that virtually all adults, regardless of whether or not they’ve already had the disease, receive a covid vaccine. The official position is apparently this: nothing except the vaccine can provide any sort of resistance or immunity. So get a vaccine. No exceptions!
Health technocrats have repeatedly insisted that “the science” points unambiguously toward everyone receiving a vaccine, even to the point of pushing vaccines for children. All this in spite of the fact the risk to children from covid is far less than a dozen common daily risks, such as riding in an automobile.
The regime has attached itself closely to a vaccinate-everybody-no-matter-what policy, and a sudden u-turn would be politically problematic. So it’s no wonder there’s so little interest in the topic.
Indeed, in a September 10 interview, senior covid technocrat Anthony Fauci claimed that the matter of natural immunity was not even being discussed at government health agencies. Fauci’s response suggested that the facts of natural immunity warranted discussion at some point in the future. But the comment certainly fit the dominant regime narrative nonetheless: the facts of natural immunity don’t matter for now. Everyone should just get vaccinated:
CNN’s Sanjay Gupta asked if people who have already recovered from COVID-19 should still be required to get the vaccine.
“I don’t have a really firm answer for you on that,” [Fauci] said Thursday on CNN. “I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously.”
Maybe someday they’ll get to talking about it.
But some physicians aren’t as obsessed with pushing vaccine mandates as Anthony Fauci, and the evidence in favor of natural immunity is becoming so undeniable that even mainstream publications are starting to admit it.
In an op-ed for the Washington Post last week, Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine argues that the medical profession has hurt its credibility in pretending that natural immunity is virtually irrelevant to the covid equation. Moreover, the dogmatic “get vaccinated” position constitutes a lack of honesty about the data. Rather, Makary concludes:
[W]e can encourage all Americans to get vaccinated while still being honest about the data. In my clinical experience, I have found patients to be extremely forgiving with evolving data if you are honest and transparent with them. Yet, when asked the common question, “I’ve recovered from covid, is it absolutely essential that I get vaccinated?” many public health officials have put aside the data and responded with a synchronized “yes,” even as studies have shown that reinfections are rare and often asymptomatic or mild when they do occur.
And what are these studies? Makary continues:
More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic covid infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild covid infection resulted in long-lasting immunity.
The policy bias in favor of vaccines ignores many other facts as well, such as the relative risks of vaccines, especially for the young:
The current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention position about vaccinating children also dismisses the benefits of natural immunity. The Los Angeles County School District recently mandated vaccines for students ages 12 and up who want to learn in person. But young people are less likely to suffer severe or long-lasting symptoms from covid-19 than adults, and have experienced rare heart complications from the vaccines. In Israel, heart inflammation has been observed in between 1 in 3,000 and 1 in 6,000 males age 16 to 24; the CDC has confirmed 854 reports nationally in people age 30 and younger who got the vaccine.
A second dose of the two-shot mRNA vaccine like that produced by Pfizer and Moderna may not even be necessary in children who had covid. Since February, Israel’s Health Ministry has been recommending that anyone, adult or adolescent, who has recovered from covid-19 receive a only single mRNA vaccine dose, instead of two. Even though the risk of severe illness during a reinfection is exceedingly low, some data has demonstrated a slight benefit to one dose in this situation. Other countries use a similar approach. The United States could adopt this strategy now as a reasonable next step in transitioning from an overly rigid to a more flexible vaccine requirement policy. For comparison, the CDC has long recommended that kids do not get the chickenpox vaccine if they had chickenpox infection in the past.
The nonscientific, ideology-induced blind spot for natural immunity also prompted The BMJ (the journal of the British Medical Association) to note that “[w]hen the vaccine rollout began in mid-December 2020, more than one quarter of Americans—91 million—had been infected with SARS-CoV-2…. As of this May, that proportion had risen to more than a third of the population, including 44% of adults aged 18–59.”
And yet, the authors note this fact doesn’t appear to be a part of any policy discussion at all:
The substantial number of infections, coupled with the increasing scientific evidence that natural immunity was durable, led some medical observers to ask why natural immunity didn’t seem to be factored into decisions about prioritising vaccination.
This problem is reflected in the Biden administration’s drive for booster shots—announced in mid-August—even before there was any clinical research on booster shots at all. Even by mid-September, as one hospital’s chief medical officer put it, “the data is not compelling one way or another.”
But those sorts of details don’t trouble federal “public health” officials, and the Biden administration quickly moved toward pushing booster shots for everyone.
This Is Why There Should Be No Mandatory Medical Treatment
Of course, mandating vaccines—like mandating any medical treatment—would still be immoral even if we could list a dozen studies suggesting boosters are a boon and that natural immunity is no good.
What if there were twenty-five studies “proving” vaccines are better than natural immunity, but only twenty studies “proving” natural immunity is better? Would coercive vaccine mandates then suddenly be justified? Unfortunately, that’s exactly how many advocates for repressive covid policies think the world should work. For these people, policy is just a matter of adding up the number of studies “proving” their side is right, and then claiming this justifies forcing mandatory medications on millions of human beings.
(It never works in reverse, of course. The fact that there’s a lot of evidence—as Makary points out—against vaccines for those who have natural immunity, the dominant narrative is nonetheless that vaccines are “necessary” and “worth it” for everybody, always and everywhere.)
In the real world, however, many medications—including these new vaccines—come with risks that must be weighed against potential benefits. These decisions can only be made at the individual level, where patients must make their own decisions about what substances to put into their own bodies. In other words, blanket policies proclaiming “everyone must receive this medical treatment immediately, or else” contradicts the realities of the uncertainties and varying risk levels that affect individuals. The facts of uncertainty and informed consent were once considered a mainstay of medical ethics—and of any political ideology that actually respects self-determination and basic human rights. Unfortunately, the philosophy of “public health” appears to be uninterested in such trivialities.
At this point, it would be embarrassing for the regime to admit what actual scientific inquiry has shown: that natural immunity is generally superior to receiving the vaccine. The regime doesn’t like to be embarrassed, and neither do the countless doctors and nurses who have long toed the regime’s political line. So expect more of the same.
October 4, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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