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Government Documents reveal how Brits have been manipulated into complying with Medical Tyranny

THE DAILY EXPOSE • MAY 6, 2021

The ordinary hard working people of the United Kingdom have been played. They have been manipulated and coerced into complying with medical fascism, thanks to the psychological warfare unleashed by the UK Government and its Scientific advisors every waking hour since March 2020.

The authority’s weapons have included the television, the radio, the newspapers. But their most important weapon in ensuring the general public have complied with dictatorial tyranny and offered themselves up as lab rats in the largest experiment to ever be conducted in human history, is a weapon that everyone reading this will know personally. Because that weapon has been you.

To understand just how the authorities have managed to manipulate and coerce the British people into complying with medical fascism we must go back to March 2020. It was at this point that Boris Johnson had one simple instruction for the British people, that instruction being that “you must stay at home”. Stay at home in order to protect the NHS and save lives. This was sold to the British people by informing them that the authorities needed just “three weeks to flatten the curve”. But those three weeks turned into six weeks. Then those six weeks turned into twelve weeks. Then those twelve weeks turned into twelve months, and still to this day the freedoms that were taken for granted prior to March 2020 do not seem within reach.

But how on earth have they managed to get away with it? Well we only need to delve into government documents which are readily available to the public, if they know how to find them. The first document we discovered is titled ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’ and was published on the 22nd March 2020, one day prior to the announcement that the British people “must stay at home”.

This is one of the problems they felt they has in persuading people to social distance –

A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened; it could be that they are reassured by the low death rate.

They were quite right, and are still quite right to be reassured by the low death rate, as statistics show that just 0.2% of those who develop the alleged Covid-19 disease tragically die. And even then the vast majority who do die are over the age of 85 and also have underlying conditions.

But that wouldn’t help to create the illusion of a problem if they couldn’t get people to social distance so here’s what the behavioural insight team advised the UK Government to do in response to this problem –

The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.

‘Perceived’ is probably the most key word within that advice given to the UK Government on how to manipulate the British people. As this entire charade has been entirely about perception. If there was any level of personal threat then there would be no need to use hard hitting emotional messaging as people would already genuinely feel threatened. If there was truly something for the British people to be wary of then it would not need a mass media advertising campaign to make them aware of it.

But here’s an example of some of the ‘hard hitting emotional messaging’ used to manipulate the British people into complying with medical fascism –

“Don’t kill granny with the virus” warns Matt Hancock who blames spike in Covid cases on middle-class youth. This is just one example of many that have been used to increase the perceived level of personal threat.

But propaganda messages via the media weren’t enough on their own so that’s where the most vital weapon up the authorities sleeve came in – you. The ‘Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures’ document has within it a section titled ‘Coercion’. No we’re not making it up, and this was one of the points made within that section –

Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour, (therefore) consideration should be given to the use of social disapproval.

Those who fell for the propaganda and lies broadcast on every mainstream TV channel and radio station, and published in every mainstream newspaper have been the glue that has kept the destruction of life as we knew it together. Because they have policed the introduction of medical fascism for the authorities, and they don’t even realise that they have and are being used.

The document lists every single tactic used to ensure the British people complied with the loss of their rights and freedoms and these have included –

  • Using media to increase the sense of personal threat
  • Using media to increase the sense of responsibility to others
  • Using and promoting social approval for desired behaviors
  • Using social disapproval for those who do not comply

The document explains in full how they have managed to manipulate and coerce the British public into complying with medical fascism using psychological warfare. But how exactly are authorities going to keep up this charade now that the “miraculous” experimental vaccines are being rolled out across the country? How are they going to ensure the British people continue to comply with medical fascism now that the most vulnerable to this alleged disease have been vaccinated?

Well another document found on the Government website helps us to find the answer to that. The document is titled ‘Behavioural and social considerations when reducing restrictions’ and was released on the 10th February 2021. A document which essentially confirms the writing is on the wall for a return to normality and that the introduction of vaccine passports (freedom passes) is inevitable.

One of the points made in the document describes the issues that may arise as some interventions are lifted. With complications on messaging due to “differences across tiers” and “immunity or vaccination certificates providing exemptions” for those who are vaccinated to carry out or take part in certain activities.

Tiers? But Boris Johnson said we were going back to normal on the 21st June, why on earth would we need tiers? Because he’s a liar.

Another line in the document explains that another problem for the authorities in getting the British public to continue to comply with medical fascism is that “as perceptions of immunity grow, messaging may need to explain why continued adherence to specific protective measures is important”.

Why exactly will the British people need to continue to adhere to restrictions if they now have a miraculous experimental vaccine that will “save” them from Covid-19? After all the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock is constantly reminding us that “vaccination is our route back to normal”.

Well maybe the next part of the document can explain why, and it’s a card they have kept up their sleeve and are yet to really play, but we all know it is coming.

he document states that “17% of adults expect life to return to normal in six months or less. Modelling from SPI-M suggests this is optimistic. Additionally, the challenge of new variants may call for sudden, strict reimposition of measures”.

If you thought life was going back to normal on the 21st June then think again, it’s not in the script, quite the opposite is going to happen and we’ve just shown you the evidence in black and white.

May 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

A Third of All Recent ‘Covid Deaths’ in England and Wales Not Caused by Coronavirus


21st Century Wire | May 6, 2021

After a year of incessant fearmongering, fraudulent PCR testing and generally inflating its Covid numbers, new data analysis reveals how the government’s rampant statistical fraud still continues unabated, as increasing numbers of people whose underlying cause of death was not due coronavirus – are still being included in the government’s hallowed ‘death count.’

Despite this exposure, the mainstream media and government officials seem unwilling to acknowledge how this fundamental deception has been used as the underlying basis for nearly every single ‘public health’ measure – coming at an incalculable cost for those countries and societies placed under the yoke of so-called ‘virus mitigation’ policies.

The inflated Covid death numbers are then used by the government and media as a ‘moral trigger’ to impose rolling lockdowns, as well as other repressive and needless policies such as mask mandates, business and school closures, deregulated emergency vaccine roll-outs, and arbitrary non-science-based “social distancing” rules.

The UK Telegraph reports…

Nearly one third of recently registered Covid deaths in England and Wales are people who died primarily from other causes, the latest figures show.

Weekly death data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that, for nearly 33 per cent of people included in the overall coronavirus death figures, Covid was not an underlying cause of death but was merely mentioned on the death certificate.

The number of people who are not principally dying from Covid but are still being included in the official figures has been creeping up steadily as the pandemic has declined.

It had been running at around 10 per cent for most of the crisis but had risen to nearly a quarter by mid-April and is continuing to increase.

In the latest data, published on Wednesday, which records death registrations in the week ending April 23, some 260 deaths from Covid were recorded in England and Wales, but only 67.7 per cent (176) of those had the virus as an underlying cause.

Continue this story at The Telegraph

May 6, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

The Covid-19 Emergency Did Not Justify Lockdowns

By Donald J. Boudreaux | AIER | May 4, 2021

Acommonplace justification for the lockdowns and other Covid-19 restrictions imposed over the past 15 months is this: SARS-CoV-2 poses a threat to humanity that differs categorically from any of the many threats that we routinely encounter. Confronting a categorically unique monster is said to excuse government officials from the obligation of taking the time required to weigh carefully the likely costs of alternative responses against these responses’ likely benefits.

Act resolutely! Act boldly! Act quickly! We’re told that the sudden and surprising arrival of a serious new threat to humanity denies to us the luxury of taking measured steps the costs and benefits of which have been carefully considered and debated.

I know from having now fought long in the Covid-policy trenches that many people find this argument for lockdowns to be compelling. Yet even apart from the many empirical problems that plague the case for lockdowns, this argument does not withstand logical scrutiny.

Potential Perils All Around

Even if we grant, contrary to fact, that Covid-19 poses to humankind a threat that’s categorically unique, it does not follow that lockdowns are justified or even excusable. The reason is that months-long global lockdowns are themselves, and in fact, categorically unique events fraught with serious perils.

It is true that in March 2020 we had little knowledge of the extent to which humanity would be ravaged by Covid. But we also had little knowledge of the extent to which humanity would be ravaged by lockdowns imposed to fight Covid. Because there was never any reason to doubt that lockdowns would have severe economic and non-economic costs – and because lockdowns arrived on the scene just as suddenly and just as surprisingly, and with just as much novelty, as did the coronavirus – the same ‘logic’ that appears to justify an embrace of the case for lockdowns also justifies an embrace of the case against lockdowns.

In short, humanity in early 2020 was confronted with two novel dangers. Yet only one of these dangers – that lurking in the novel coronavirus – was recognized as such. It and only it was taken to be an excuse for potential overreaction. It and only it was taken to justify acting-now-and-asking-questions-only-later. The other of these dangers – that lurking in the novel lockdowns – was largely ignored or severely discounted.

One of the hallmarks of sound science is appropriate classification of phenomena. Another is logical coherence of analyses. It’s sensible that novel dangers that are reasonably believed to pose severe risks to human well-being justify us, in our encounters with such dangers, to err on the side of caution. But this sensible advice applies to all such novel dangers. And so if we encounter such a danger X at 9:00am and then encounter a second such danger Y at 9:15am, we would behave quite irrationally if we ignore or discount danger Y simply because we encountered danger Y after we encountered danger X.

Two Surprising and Sudden Dangers

In early 2020 humanity first encountered the dangerous coronavirus. Almost immediately thereafter we encountered the dangerous lockdowns. The fact that the lockdowns were proposed as a ‘solution’ to the coronavirus does nothing to protect them from the need of scrutiny. History, after all, is saturated with solutions that turn out to be worse than the problems they were meant to solve.

Yet the dangers of novel lockdowns were ignored or hand-waved away by all but a puny puddle of people. “We’re up against an unknown and monstrous enemy in this coronavirus,” screamed the vast ocean of people who screamed for novel lockdowns. “Until the risk of Covid is brought way, way down, we can’t afford the luxury of listening to those who warn of the dangers of lockdowns!”

As a matter of logic, however, an identical panic-stricken reaction to lockdowns would have been equally appropriate – or, as the case might be, equally inappropriate. “We’re up against an unknown and monstrous enemy in these lockdowns,” many people could have screamed. “Until the risk of lockdowns is known to be very, very low, we can’t afford the luxury of listening to those who warn of the dangers of Covid!”

In reality, each danger, and each proposal for reducing the danger, should be considered with appropriate rationality and never in a panic. (That tamping down panic is often difficult in practice doesn’t make this advice any less warranted.) No one doubts that the greater, the more novel, and the more immediate the danger, the greater is the justification for acting to avert the danger with vigor and speed. But if one of the speedily proposed means for averting the danger is itself novel and plausibly poses dangers as great as – even if not as immediate as – those posed by the danger itself, this proposed means ought to be resisted until and unless a careful calculation provides sound reason to believe that use of this means is likely to generate benefits greater than costs.

Yet there was no such careful calculation for the lockdowns imposed in haste to combat Covid-19. Lockdowns were simply assumed not only to be effective at significantly slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but also to impose only costs that are acceptable. Regrettably, given the novelty of the lockdowns, and the enormous magnitude of their likely downsides, this bizarrely sanguine attitude toward lockdowns was – and remains – wholly unjustified. And the unjustness of this reaction is further highlighted by the fact that, in a free society, the burden of proof is on those who would restrict freedom and not on those who resist such restrictions.

While I believe that the evidence is now decisive that lockdowns were a huge mistake, my point here is not, strictly speaking, anti-lockdown. My point here, instead, is pro-science and good sense: Whatever the novelty and dangers of Covid-19, the novelty and dangers of Covid-19 lockdowns are at least arguably of the same magnitude. The dismissal of the unknown possible horrors of lockdowns in order to focus attention exclusively on the unknown possible horrors of SARS-CoV-2 is as unjustified by science as it is unpardonable as policy.

May 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

This Biden Proposal Could Make the US a “Digital Dictatorship”

BY WHITNEY WEBB | UNLIMITED HANGOUT | MAY 5, 2021

Last Wednesday, President Biden was widely praised in mainstream and health-care–focused media for his call to create a “new biomedical research agency” modeled after the US military’s “high-risk, high-reward” Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA. As touted by the president, the agency would seek to develop “innovative” and “breakthrough” treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, and diabetes, with a call to “end cancer as we know it.”

Far from “ending cancer” in the way most Americans might envision it, the proposed agency would merge “national security” with “health security” in such as way as to use both physical and mental health “warning signs” to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur. Such a system is a recipe for a technocratic “pre-crime” organization with the potential to criminalize both mental and physical illness as well as “wrongthink.”

The Biden administration has asked Congress for $6.5 billion to fund the agency, which would be largely guided by Biden’s recently confirmed top science adviser, Eric Lander. Lander, formerly the head of the Silicon Valley–dominated Broad Institute, has been controversial for his ties to eugenicist and child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his relatively recent praise for James Watson, an overtly racist eugenicist. Despite that, Lander is set to be confirmed by the Senate and Congress and is reportedly significantly enthusiastic about the proposed new “health DARPA.”

This new agency, set to be called ARPA-H or HARPA, would be housed within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and would raise the NIH budget to over $51 billion. Unlike other agencies at NIH, ARPA-H would differ in that the projects it funds would not be peer reviewed prior to approval; instead hand-picked program managers would make all funding decisions. Funding would also take the form of milestone-driven payments instead of the more traditional multiyear grants.

ARPA-H will likely heavily fund and promote mRNA vaccines as one of the “breakthroughs” that will cure cancer. Some of the mRNA vaccine manufacturers that have produced some of the most widely used COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, stated just last month that “cancer is the next problem to tackle with mRNA tech” post-COVID. BioNTech has been developing mRNA gene therapies for cancer for years and is collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create mRNA-based treatments for tuberculosis and HIV.

Other “innovative” technologies that will be a focus of this agency are less well known to the public and arguably more concerning.

The Long Road to ARPA-H

ARPA-H is not a new and exclusive Biden administration idea; there was a previous attempt to create a “health DARPA” during the Trump administration in late 2019. Biden began to promote the idea during his presidential campaign as early as June 2019, albeit using a very different justification for the agency than what had been pitched by its advocates to Trump. In 2019, the same foundation and individuals currently backing Biden’s ARPA-H had urged then president Trump to create “HARPA,” not for the main purpose of researching treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s, but to stop mass shootings before they happen through the monitoring of Americans for “neuropsychiatric” warning signs.

For the last few years, one man has been the driving force behind HARPA—former vice chair of General Electric and former president of NBCUniversal, Robert Wright. Through the Suzanne Wright Foundation (named for his late wife), Wright has spent years lobbying for an agency that “would develop biomedical capabilities—detection tools, treatments, medical devices, cures, etc.—for the millions of Americans who are not benefitting from the current system.” While he, like Biden, has cloaked the agency’s actual purpose by claiming it will be mainly focused on treating cancer, Wright’s 2019 proposal to his personal friend Donald Trump revealed its underlying ambitions.

As first proposed by Wright in 2019, the flagship program of HARPA would be SAFE HOME, short for Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes. SAFE HOME would suck up masses of private data from “Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo, and Google Home” and other consumer electronic devices, as well as information from health-care providers to determine if an individual might be likely to commit a crime. The data would be analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms “for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.”

The Department of Justice’s pre-crime approach known as DEEP was activated just months before Trump left office; it was also justified as a way to “stop mass shootings before they happen.” Soon after Biden’s inauguration, the new administration began using information from social media to make pre-crime arrests as part of its approach toward combatting “domestic terror.” Given the history of Silicon Valley companies collaborating with the government on matters of warrantless surveillance, it appears that aspects of SAFE HOME may already be covertly active under Biden, only waiting for the formalization of ARPA-H/HARPA to be legitimized as public policy.

The national-security applications of Robert Wright’s HARPA are also illustrated by the man who was its lead scientific adviser—former head of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office Geoffrey Ling. Not only is Ling the main scientific adviser of HARPA, but the original proposal by Wright would have Ling both personally design HARPA and lead it once it was established. Ling’s work at DARPA can be summarized by BTO’s stated mission, which is to work toward merging “biology, engineering, and computer science to harness the power of natural systems for national security.” BTO-favored technologies are also poised to be the mainstays of HARPA, which plans to specifically use “advancements in biotechnology, supercomputing, big data, and artificial intelligence” to accomplish its goals.

The direct DARPA connection to HARPA underscores that the agenda behind this coming agency dates back to the failed Bio-Surveillance project of DARPA’s Total Information Awareness program, which was launched after the events of September 11, 2001. TIA’s Bio-Surveillance project sought to develop the “necessary information technologies and resulting prototype capable of detecting the covert release of a biological pathogen automatically, and significantly earlier than traditional approaches,” accomplishing this “by monitoring non-traditional data sources” including “pre-diagnostic medical data” and “behavioral indicators.”

While nominally focused on “bioterrorist attacks,” TIA’s Bio-Surveillance project also sought to acquire early detection capabilities for “normal” disease outbreaks. Bio-Surveillance and related DARPA projects at the time, such as LifeLog, sought to harvest data through the mass use of some sort of wearable or handheld technology. These DARPA programs were ultimately shut down due to the controversy over claims they would be used to profile domestic dissidents and eliminate privacy for all Americans in the US.

That DARPA’s past total surveillance dragnet is coming back to life under a supposedly separate health-focused agency, and one that emulates its organizational model no less, confirms that many TIA-related programs were merely distanced from the Department of Defense when officially shut down. By separating the military from the public image of such technologies and programs, it made them more palatable to the masses, despite the military remaining heavily involved behind the scenes. As Unlimited Hangout has recently reported, major aspects of TIA were merely privatized, giving rise to companies such as Facebook and Palantir, which resulted in such DARPA projects being widely used and accepted. Now, under the guise of the proposed ARPA-H, DARPA’s original TIA would essentially be making a comeback for all intents and purposes as its own spin-off.

Silicon Valley, the Military and the Wearable “Revolution” 

This most recent effort to create ARPA-H/HARPA combines well with the coordinated push of Silicon Valley companies into the field of health care, specifically Silicon Valley companies that double as contractors to US intelligence and/or the military (e.g., Microsoft, Google, and Amazon). During the COVID-19 crisis, this trend toward Silicon Valley dominance of the health-care sector has accelerated considerably due to a top-down push toward digitalization with telemedicine, remote monitoring, and the like.

One interesting example is Amazon, which launched a wearable last year that purports to not only use biometrics to monitor people’s physical health and fitness but to track their emotional state as well. The previous year, Amazon acquired the online pharmacy PillPack, and it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which data from Amazon’s Halo wellness band is used to offer treatment recommendations that are then supplied by Amazon-owned PillPack.

Companies such as Amazon, Palantir, and Google are set to be intimately involved in ARPA-H’s activities. In particular, Google, which launched numerous health-tech initiatives in 2020, is set to have a major role in this new agency due to its long-standing ties to the Obama administration when Biden was vice president and to President Biden’s top science adviser, Eric Lander.

As mentioned, Lander is poised to play a major role in ARPA-H/HARPA if and when it materializes. Before becoming the top scientist in the country, Lander was president and founding director of the Broad Institute. While advertised as a partnership between MIT and Harvard, the Broad Institute is heavily influenced by Silicon Valley, with two former Google executives on its board, a partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners, and the former CEO of IBM, as well as some of its top endowments coming from prominent tech executives.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who was intimately involved with Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and who is close to the Democratic Party in general, chairs the Broad Institute as of this April. In March, Schmidt gave the institute $150 million to “connect biology and machine learning for understanding programs of life.” During his time on the Broad Institute board, Schmidt also chaired the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a group of mostly Silicon Valley, intelligence, and military operatives who have now charted the direction of the US government’s policies on emerging tech and AI. Schmidt was also pitched as potential head of a tech-industry task force by the Biden administration.

Earlier, in January, the Broad Institute announced that its health-research platform, Terra, which was built with Google subsidiary Verily, would partner with Microsoft. As a result, Terra now allows Google and Microsoft to access a vast trove of genomic data that is poured into the platform by academics and research institutions from around the world.

In addition, last September, Google teamed up with the Department of Defense as part of a new AI-driven “predictive health” program that also has links to the US intelligence community. While initially focused on predicting cancer cases, this initiative clearly plans to expand to predicting the onset of other diseases before symptoms appear, including COVID-19. As noted by Unlimited Hangout at the time, one of the ulterior motives for the program, from Google’s perspective, was for Google to gain access to “the largest repository of disease- and cancer-related medical data in the world,” which is held by the Defense Health Agency. Having exclusive access to this data is a huge boon for Google in its effort to develop and expand its growing suite of AI health-care products.

The military is currently being used to pilot COVID-19–related biometric wearables for “returning to work safely.” Last December, it was announced that Hill Air Force Base in Utah would make biometric wearables a mandatory part of the uniform for some squadrons. For example, the airmen of the Air Force’s 649th Munitions Squadron must now wear a smart watch made by Garmin and a smart ring made by Oura as part of their uniform.

According to the Air Force, these devices detect biometric indicators that are then analyzed for 165 different biomarkers by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency/Philips Healthcare AI algorithm that “attempts to recognize an infection or virus around 48 hours before the onset of symptoms.” The development of that algorithm began well before the COVID-19 crisis and is a recent iteration of a series of military research projects that appear to have begun under the 2007 DARPA Predicting Health and Disease (PHD) project.

While of interest to the military, these wearables are primarily intended for mass use—a big step toward the infrastructure needed for the resurrection of a bio-surveillance program to be run by the national-security state. Starting first with the military makes sense from the national-security apparatus’s perspective, as the ability to monitor biometric data, including emotions, has obvious appeal for those managing the recently expanded “insider threat” programs in the military and the Department of Homeland Security.

One indicator of the push for mass use is that the same Oura smart ring being used by the Air Force was also recently utilized by the NBA to prevent COVID-19 outbreaks among basketball players. Prior to COVID-19, it was promoted for consumer use by members of the British Royal family and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey for improving sleep. As recently as last Monday, Oura’s CEO, Harpeet Rai, said that the entire future of wearable health tech will soon be “proactive rather than reactive” because it will focus on predicting disease based on biometric data obtained from wearables in real time.

Another wearable tied to the military that is creeping into mass use is the BioButton and its predecessor the BioSticker. Produced by the company BioIntelliSense, the sleek new BioButton is advertised as a wearable system that is “a scalable and cost-effective solution for COVID-19 symptom monitoring at school, home and work.” BioIntelliSense received $2.8 million from the Pentagon last December to develop the BioButton and BioSticker wearables for COVID-19.

BioIntelliSense, cofounded and led by former Microsoft HealthVault developer James Mault, now has its wearable sensors being rolled out for widespread use on some college campuses and at some US hospitals. In some of those instances, the company’s wearables are being used to specifically monitor the side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine as opposed to symptoms of COVID-19 itself. BioIntelliSense is currently running a study, partnered with Philips Healthcare and the University of Colorado, on the use of its wearables for early COVID-19 detection, which is entirely funded by the US military.

While the use of these wearables is currently “encouraged but optional” at these pilot locations, could there come a time when they are mandated in a workplace or by a government? It would not be unheard of, as several countries have already required foreign arrivals to be monitored through use of a wearable during a mandatory quarantine period. Saint Lucia is currently using BioButton for this purpose. Singapore, which seeks to be among the first “smart nations” in the world, has given every single one of its residents a wearable called a “TraceTogether token” for its contact-tracing program. Either the wearable token or the TraceTogether smartphone app is mandatory for all workplaces, shopping malls, hotels, schools, health-care facilities, grocery stores, and hair salons. Those without access to a smartphone are expected to use the “free” government-issued wearable token.

The Era of Digital Dictatorships Is Nearly Here

Making mandatory wearables the new normal not just for COVID-19 prevention but for monitoring health in general would institutionalize quarantining people who have no symptoms of an illness but only an opaque algorithm’s determination that vital signs indicate “abnormal” activity.

Given that no AI is 100 percent accurate and that AI is only as good as the data it is trained on, such a system would be guaranteed to make regular errors: the question is how many. One AI algorithm being used to “predict COVID-19 outbreaks” in Israel and some US states is marketed by Diagnostic Robotics; the (likely inflated) accuracy rate the company provides for its product is only 73 percent. That means, by the company’s own admission, their AI is wrong 27 percent of the time. Probably, it is even less accurate, as the 73 percent figure has never been independently verified.

Adoption of these technologies has benefitted from the COVID-19 crisis, as supporters are seizing the opportunity to accelerate their introduction. As a result, their use will soon become ubiquitous if this advancing agenda continues unimpeded.

Though this push for wearables is obvious now, signs of this agenda were visible several years ago. In 2018, for instance, insurer John Hancock announced that it would replace its life insurance offerings with “interactive policies” that involve individuals having their health monitored by commercial health wearables. Prior to that announcement, John Hancock and other insurers such as Aetna, Cigna, and UnitedHealthcare offered various rewards for policyholders who wore a fitness wearable and shared that data with their insurance company.

In another pre-COVID example, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article in August 2019 that claimed that wearables “encourage healthy behaviors and empower individuals to participate in their health.” The authors of the article, who are affiliated with Harvard, further claimed that “incentivizing use of these devices [wearables] by integrating them in insurance policies” may be an “attractive” policy approach. The use of wearables for policyholders has since been heavily promoted by the insurance industry, both prior to and after COVID-19, and some speculate that health insurers could soon mandate their use in certain cases or as a broader policy.

These biometric “fitness” devices—such as Amazon’s Halo—can monitor more than your physical vital signs, however, as they can also monitor your emotional state. ARPA-H/HARPA’s flagship SAFE HOME program reveals that the ability to monitor thoughts and feelings is an already existing goal of those seeking to establish this new agency.

According to World Economic Forum luminary and historian Yuval Noah Harari, the transition to “digital dictatorships” will have a “big watershed” moment once governments “start monitoring and surveying what is happening inside your body and inside your brain.” He says that the mass adoption of such technology would make human beings “hackable animals,” while those who abstain from having this technology on or in their bodies would become part of a new “useless” class. Harari has also asserted that biometric wearables will someday be used by governments to target individuals who have the “wrong” emotional reactions to government leaders.

Unsurprisingly, one of Harari’s biggest fans, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, has recently led his company into the development of a comprehensive biometric and “neural” wearable based on technology from a “neural interface” start-up that Facebook acquired in 2019. Per Facebook, the wearable “will integrate with AR [augmented reality], VR [virtual reality], and human neural signals” and is set to become commercially available soon. Facebook also notably owns the VR company Oculus Rift, whose founder, Palmer Luckey, now runs the US military AI contractor Anduril.

As recently reported, Facebook was shaped in its early days to be a private-sector replacement for DARPA’s controversial LifeLog program, which sought to both “humanize” AI and build profiles on domestic dissidents and terror suspects. LifeLog was also promoted by DARPA as “supporting medical research and the early detection of an emerging pandemic.”

It appears that current trends and events show that DARPA’s decades-long effort to merge “health security” and “national security” have now advanced further than ever before. This may partially be because Bill Gates, who has wielded significant influence over health policy globally in the last year, is a long-time advocate of fusing health security and national security to thwart both pandemics and “bioterrorists” before they can strike, as can be heard in his 2017 speech delivered at that year’s Munich Security Conference. That same year, Gates also publicly urged the US military to “focus more training on preparing to fight a global pandemic or bioterror attack.”

In the merging of “national security” and “health security,” any decision or mandate promulgated as a public health measure could be justified as necessary for “national security,” much in the same way that the mass abuses and war crimes that occurred during the post-9/11 “war on terror” were similarly justified by “national security” with little to no oversight. Yet, in this case, instead of only losing our civil liberties and control over our external lives, we stand to lose sovereignty over our individual bodies.

The NIH, which would house this new ARPA-H/HARPA, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars experimenting with the use of wearables since 2015, not only for detecting disease symptoms but also for monitoring individuals’ diets and illegal drug consumption. Biden played a key part in that project, known as the Precision Medicine initiative, and separately highlighted the use of wearables in cancer patients as part of the Obama administration’s related Cancer Moonshot program. The third Obama-era health-research project was the NIH’s BRAIN initiative, which was launched, among other things, to “develop tools to record, mark, and manipulate precisely defined neurons in the living brain” that are determined to be linked to an “abnormal” function or a neurological disease. These initiatives took place at a time when Eric Lander was the cochair of Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology while still leading the Broad Institute. It is hardly a coincidence that Eric Lander is now Biden’s top science adviser, elevated to a new cabinet-level position and set to guide the course of ARPA-H/HARPA.

Thus, Biden’s newly announced agency, if approved by Congress, would integrate those past Obama-era initiatives with Orwellian applications under one roof, but with even less oversight than before. It would also seek to expand and mainstream the uses of these technologies and potentially move toward developing policies that would mandate their use.

If ARPA-H/HARPA is approved by Congress and ultimately established, it will be used to resurrect dangerous and long-standing agendas of the national-security state and its Silicon Valley contractors, creating a “digital dictatorship” that threatens human freedom, human society, and potentially the very definition of what it means to be human.

May 5, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

DC Mayor Bans Dancing & Standing At Weddings!

By Richie Allen | May 4, 2021

Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has banned dancing at weddings. On Friday, Bowser said that weddings could go ahead but only at 25 per cent of a venues capacity. But she banned dancing and standing at receptions.

A spokesperson for the mayor’s office told FOX News on Friday that the measures were necessary to stop the spread of covid-19. The mayor said that people’s behaviour changes when they dance or stand around.

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis lifted all local coronavirus emergency orders in his state yesterday. He also signed a bill that effectively bans the use of vaccine passports in Florida.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that most restrictions will be removed from May 19th. However, Cuomo wants to retain social distancing and mask-wearing.

Will couples really ask wedding guests to remain seated at all times? Will they fence off the dance floor too?

Why is Muriel Bowser not being laughed out of town? Who are these people? Who are they taking advice from? Where do they get the balls to tell people who they can invite to weddings and how they must behave on the day?

You know this all goes away when people turn their backs on idiots like Bowser. Just ignore them. It really is that simple. Ignore them and carry on regardless. The only power they have is the power you give them. It’s time to take it back.

May 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Theresa Tam recommends wearing masks while jogging outdoors

The Post Millenial | May 2, 2021

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, has issued advice on the wearing of masks outdoors.

“You asked: Should I wear a mask when I’m jogging or walking outdoors?” her Tweet begins. “#MaskOn when you’re active outdoors in areas where #PhysicalDistancing is hard to maintain. Tip: Choose routes that make it easy to keep your distance from others.”

The CDC recently said it OK for Americans to not wear masks outdoors provided they are vaccinated and not in a large crowd.

President Biden, who is vaccinated, has continued to wear his mask outdoors, calling it a “patriotic responsibility” to do so.

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Theresa Tam had initially advised against the use of masks but has since advocated for their widespread use, including wearing them during sex.

May 4, 2021 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

From Mind Control to Viruses: How the Government Keeps Experimenting on Its Citizens

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | May 3, 2021

The U.S. government, in its pursuit of so-called monsters, has itself become a monster.

This is not a new development, nor is it a revelation.

This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.

Mind you, there is no greater good when the government is involved. There is only greater greed for money and power.

Unfortunately, the public has become so easily distracted by the political spectacle out of Washington, DC, that they are altogether oblivious to the grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions that have become synonymous with the U.S. government.

These horrors have been meted out against humans and animals alike. For all intents and purposes, “we the people” have become lab rats in the government’s secret experiments.

Fifty years from now, we may well find out the whole sordid truth behind this COVID-19 pandemic. However, this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. It is merely to acknowledge that such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers.

As we have learned, it is entirely possible for something to be both a genuine menace to the nation’s health and security and a menace to freedom.

This is a road the United States has been traveling for many years now. Indeed, grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions have become synonymous with the U.S. government, which has meted out untold horrors against humans and animals alike.

“We the people” have become the police state’s guinea pigs: to be caged, branded, experimented upon without our knowledge or consent, and then conveniently discarded and left to suffer from the after-effects.

For instance, did you know that back in 2017, FEMA “inadvertently” exposed nearly 10,000 firefighters, paramedics and other responders to a deadly form of ricin during simulated bioterrorism response sessions? In 2015, it was discovered that an Army lab had been “mistakenly” shipping deadly anthrax to labs and defense contractors for a decade.

While these particular incidents have been dismissed as “accidents,” you don’t have to dig very deep or go very far back in the nation’s history to uncover numerous cases in which the government deliberately conducted secret experiments on an unsuspecting populace—citizens and noncitizens alike—making healthy people sick by spraying them with chemicals, injecting them with infectious diseases and exposing them to airborne toxins.

Many of the government’s incursions into our freedoms over the years have been blacked out, buried under “entertainment” news headlines, or spun in such a way as to suggest that anyone voicing a word of caution is paranoid or conspiratorial.

Unfortunately, the incidents we know about are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the atrocities the government has inflicted on an unsuspecting populace in the name of secret experimentation.

For instance, there was the U.S. military’s secret race-based testing of mustard gas on more than 60,000 enlisted men. And then there was the CIA’s MKULTRA program in which hundreds of unsuspecting American civilians and military personnel were dosed with LSD, some having the hallucinogenic drug slipped into their drinks at the beach, in city bars, at restaurants.

Now one might argue that this is all ancient history and that the government today is different from the government of yesteryear, but has the U.S. government really changed?

After all, this is the same government that in 1949 sprayed bacteria into the Pentagon’s air handling system, then the world’s largest office building. In 1950, special ops forces sprayed bacteria from Navy ships off the coast of Norfolk and San Francisco, in the latter case exposing all of the city’s 800,000 residents.

In 1953, government operatives staged “mock” anthrax attacks on St. Louis, Minneapolis, and Winnipeg using generators placed on top of cars. Local governments were reportedly told that “‘invisible smokescreen[s]’ were being deployed to mask the city on enemy radar.” Later experiments covered territories as wide-ranging as Ohio to Texas and Michigan to Kansas.

In 1965, the government’s experiments in bioterror took aim at Washington’s National Airport, followed by a 1966 experiment in which army scientists exposed a million subway NYC passengers to airborne bacteria that causes food poisoning.

And this is the same government that has taken every bit of technology sold to us as being in our best interests—GPS devices, surveillance, nonlethal weapons, etc.—and used it against us, to track, control and trap us.

So, no, I don’t think the government’s ethics have changed much over the years. It’s just taken its nefarious programs undercover.

The question remains: why is the government doing this? The answer is always the same: money, power and total domination.

It’s the same answer no matter which totalitarian regime is in power.

When all is said and done, this is not a government that has our best interests at heart.

This is not a government that values us.

To the powers-that-be, the rest of us are insignificant specks, faceless dots on the ground.

To the architects of the American police state, we are not worthy or vested with inherent rights. This is how the government can justify treating us like economic units to be bought and sold and traded, or caged rats to be experimented upon and discarded when we’ve outgrown our usefulness.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, to those who call the shots in the halls of government, “we the people” are merely the means to an end.


Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

May 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

UN Challenges Delay of Palestinian Elections

IMEMC | May 4, 2021

The United Nations issued a statement Sunday calling on the Palestinian Authority to set a date for the Palestinian elections to be held. This statement follows the announcement on Friday by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that he would once again postpone the elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Abbas was last re-elected in 2006, and there have been no Palestinian elections since that year. Part of the reason for the ongoing delays in holding elections is the fact that the Israeli government, which rules the Palestinian Territories under martial law and has done so since 1967, has refused to recognize the results of the 2006 election, in which the Hamas party (the rival to Mahmoud Abbas’ Fateh party) won the majority of seats in the Palestinian legislature.

Since the Israeli military government does not approve of the Hamas party, they have refused to deal with the Palestinian Authority in certain areas in which Hamas is involved, and have frequently and repeatedly abducted elected Palestinian Parliament members who are affiliated with the Hamas party.

In this case, the elections, which had been set to take place on May 22nd (legislative election) and July 31st (presidential election) were postponed because of uncertainty as to the status of Palestinians in Jerusalem, and whether Israel would allow them to be able to vote.

Palestinians in Jerusalem hold a unique status in the world – they are citizens of no country, and cannot hold a Palestinian passport because the Israeli military authorities will not permit it. Because of the Israeli government’s stated objective of taking over Jerusalem for the state of Israel, many of the policies enacted by the Israeli government are aimed at stripping Palestinians in Jerusalem of their residency rights.

Any Palestinian landowner in Jerusalem who leaves their home for any period of time, for example, forfeits the ownership of their land to the Israeli government.

According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his announcement of the election delay on Friday, “Facing this difficult situation, we decided to postpone the date of holding legislative elections until the participation of Jerusalem and its people is guaranteed”.

In response, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, said that he understood the “disappointment of the many Palestinians” about the delay. He called on the Palestinian Authority to “continue on the democratic path” and said that these elections have “widespread international support”.

Wennesland added, “This will also set the path toward meaningful negotiations to end the occupation and realize a two-State solution based on UN resolutions, international law and previous agreements.”

He called on Abbas to set a new date for the Palestinian elections – especially considering that the last elections took place more than 15 years ago.

Some Palestinians, however, have pointed out the absurdity of voting for a Palestinian Authority that wields no real power, given the fact that the West Bank and Gaza are, in reality, not governed by the Palestinian Authority, but are governed by Israeli martial law.

May 3, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why is Britain handing huge new powers of censorship to tech giants to control what we write and say?

By Damian Wilson | RT | May 3, 2021

The UK is turning its broadcast regulator into the Hatefinder General, with a new law compelling social media companies to enforce an authoritarian crackdown on our behaviour that’s ‘unprecedented in any democracy’.

As the British nanny state widens its scope with the government’s new Online Safety Bill it is a sign that the German concept of wehrhafte Demokratie – or militant democracy – has arrived on our shores, dictating that some of our rights are sacrificed in the interests of order.

Once enshrined in law, the bill will ensure that true, online freedom of speech will follow the dial-up modem and those once omnipotent AOL subscription CDs into the dustbin of internet history. According to the authors of ‘You’re on Mute”, a briefing document from the Free Speech Union (FSU), the government’s plans “will restrict online free speech to a degree almost unprecedented in any democracy”.

But I have to admit, I’m a bit sceptical how this brand new plan is going to work. So far, it seems that Ofcom, the broadcaster regulator, will be asked to draw up a code of practice setting out the rules which social media companies will be legally obliged to follow. Ofcom will then enforce the rules with fines of up to £18 million or 10% of turnover levied on those who break them.

And what are the rules? Well, taking the guide to what constitutes hate speech as a starting point, it means not saying anything that might spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance on the grounds of disability, ethnicity, social origin, sex, gender, gender reassignment, nationality, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, colour, genetic features, language, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth or age. Phew!

Under the new bill, however, alongside the no-go areas, it will also become an offence to deliberately create and disseminate “false and/or manipulated information that is intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either for the purposes of causing harm, or for political, personal or financial gain”.

As well, the yet-to-be-revealed code will also insist that “legal but harmful” activity be blocked. How “harmful” that might be is to be judged upon the psychological impact it might cause. So be careful of those clown pics you’re posting on Facebook.

If someone told me these were the rules governing access to the internet in China, I would not bat an eyelid, so authoritarian and freedom-smothering they are even at first glance. But look at them a little closer and, well, they’re even scarier.

Ofcom’s list of hate speech minefields now includes one of the gender gestapo’s favourite areas of victimhood – gender reassignment, apparently putting a cordon around it so it may no longer be debated – and also “political, personal or financial gain”.

So how is this ever going to work in the realm of political campaigns, where the whole point is to offer flip-side views diametrically opposed to each other? As the authors of the FSU briefing point out: “No UK Government or Opposition should support proposals which give internet censors, whether this be a state regulator or ‘fact-checkers’ employed by social media companies, the power to censor the sometimes-offensive free speech which is part of any democracy. Political parties should also note that this will inevitably result in the censorship of their own activists.”

While Ofcom will act as Hatefinder General in policing its code of practice, the government is looking to tech giants like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to rise to the challenge and monitor their users for breaches of the new rules.

You may have noticed that these are the very same companies the UK continually fines and rails against over non-payment of taxes. Now they’re being asked to step up to a massive new role overseeing the way British people treat each other. Who dreamt up this model and thought it was a good idea?

Digging further, what exactly counts as disinformation or even misinformation under the new codes, which seem specifically drawn up with Covid-19 in mind and the various controversies of its origins, vaccine efficacy and countless hoaxes?

The internet is full of lies, we all know that. Not all are deliberate, but you could be caught out under the code’s definition of misinformation – “inadvertently spreading false information” – by sharing something that is not factually correct.

That this is something the government feels it needs to legislate is extraordinary. The whole thing should have been binned once Theresa May – who introduced the idea – was waved out the door of Downing Street.

Because what we need to help us navigate to the truth online is not less but more information. It’s the easy access to a diversity of views from one end of the scale to the other that is the whole point of the internet. It is not a problem that needs solving. Otherwise, we are stuck with a sanitised, government-approved version of truth that has ticked all the boxes and is now considered safe for human consumption even while some of what we are being asked to swallow is just too much.

And why are we asking tech companies to monitor this? It’s mad. The FSU has thrown up an interesting insight it gleaned from the White Paper on the proposed bill as the government extolled the virtues of YouTube’s censorship rules.

In its efforts to counter disinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, YouTube decided that any posts on its platform that offered a view that flew in the face of the opinions of the World Health Organisation would be taken offline in a bid to counter disinformation, including junk cures.

That made the worldview of the WHO the only version of the truth. And that is doubly weird because, in its efforts to suck up to China, the organisation now officially recognises traditional Chinese herbal medicine – known everywhere else as quack cures – alongside evidence-based medicine.

So we have the situation where YouTube is cracking down on junk cures expounded by users, while simultaneously promoting them through slavish adherence to the policy directives of the WHO. And now we want YouTube to take responsibility for the safety of their users across Britain? I’m not so sure this state-sponsored, tech giant-monitored censorship is such a good idea.

It allows those with no moral authority to trample over our freedoms while attempting to convince us it is for the greater good, while at the same time it patronises us, wraps debate up in a cosy blanket and whispers ‘night-night’ and rocks us to sleep protected from a world where, god forbid, we might be asked to think for ourselves.

There’s rubbish on the internet? So what? Let’s talk about it.

As the FSU says, “This is precisely why we have freedom of speech: to encourage debates about controversial issues, including the expression of unorthodox ideas that challenge what people currently believe to be true.”

This discourse is how we progress and the government needs to pause and think about that. Because the Online Safety Bill, in terms of that precious freedom of speech, is a retrograde step.

Damian Wilson is a UK journalist, ex-Fleet Street editor, financial industry consultant and political communications special advisor in the UK and EU.

May 3, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden lied about Yemen

By Caitlin Johnstone | April 29, 2021

The Biden administration has finally admitted that the US is indeed providing offensive material support to Saudi Arabia’s genocidal assault on Yemen, directly contradicting Biden’s February claim that it would no longer be providing offensive support in that war. We are being lied to about yet another US war by yet another US president.

“The United States continues to provide maintenance support to Saudi Arabia’s Air Force given the critical role it plays in Saudi air defense and our longstanding security partnership,” Pentagon spokesperson Jessica McNulty has informed Vox reporter Alex Ward.

“Multiple US defense officials and experts acknowledged that, through a US government process, the Saudi government pays commercial contractors to maintain and service their aircraft, and those contractors keep Saudi warplanes in the air. What the Saudis do with those fighter jets, however, is up to them,” Ward reported, adding, “The US could cancel those contracts at any time, thus effectively grounding the Saudi Air Force, but doing so would risk losing Riyadh as a key regional partner.”

“The recent admission by the Department of Defense that US companies are still authorized to maintain Saudi warplanes … means that our government is still enabling the Saudi operations, including bombings and enforcing a blockade on Yemen’s ports,” Hassan El-Tayyab, the legislative manager for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation lobbying group, told Ward.

El-Tayyab is on record speaking out after Biden’s deceitful February announcement, saying this administration needs to make it abundantly clear what it actually means by ending offensive support for the war on Yemen and actually stick to it.

“I’m not a full pessimist here. I welcome the news,” he told Al Jazeera at the time, adding, “But I’m just trying to stay vigilant and not take the foot off the gas on advocacy pressure. Because we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Well, now we do know. The US is maintaining and servicing the warplanes that are bombing Yemen and enforcing a blockade, which has killed hundreds of thousands and the United Nations warns could kill 400,000 more this year alone if conditions don’t change, proving Joe Biden a liar and vindicating the experts and activists who cautioned against accepting his announcement on blind faith.

Getting to this point where questions are finally answered about the reality of the Biden administration’s Yemen policy has been like pulling teeth, with officials giving questioners the runaround for months on this issue. Watch this clip of US Yemen Envoy Tim Lenderking dodging questions like George Bush dodges shoes as congressman Ted Lieu tries to get a straight answer as to whether the US has stopped supporting the war on Yemen:

Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp writes the following:

“The admission comes over two months since President Biden said he was ending support for Riyadh’s ‘offensive’ operations in Yemen. Vox reporter Alex Ward asked Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday if the planes that the US is servicing could be used for offensive operations in Yemen. Kirby admitted that the ‘maintenance support for systems could be used for both’ offensive and defensive operations. … Besides continuing to maintain the Saudi Air Force, the Biden administration has given Riyadh the political cover to continue enforcing the blockade on Yemen. Biden officials have claimed that Yemen is not under a blockade, even though Saudi warships are preventing fuel shipments from docking in the port of Hudaydah, which makes it impossible to deliver food to Yemen’s starving civilian population.”

The United Nations conservatively estimates that some 233,000 Yemenis have been killed in the [Saudi-led] war … mostly from what it calls “indirect causes.” Those indirect causes would be disease and starvation resulting from what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calls “the worst famine the world has seen for decades.”

When people hear the word “famine” they usually think of mass hunger caused by droughts or other naturally occurring phenomena, but in reality the starvation deaths we are seeing in Yemen (a huge percentage of which are children under the age of five) are caused by something that is no more natural than the starvation deaths you’d see in a medieval siege. They are the result of the Saudi coalition’s use of blockades and its deliberate targeting of farms, fishing boats, marketplaces, food storage sites, and cholera treatment centers with airstrikes aimed at making those parts [of the country, which are] controlled by Yemen’s Ansarullah movement so weak and miserable that they break.

The United States lies about all its wars with the help of the mass media, but up until this year its lies about Yemen have largely consisted of lies by omission: simply not talking about Yemen (like when MSNBC went an entire year without mentioning it a single time during the height of Russiagate hysteria), reporting on the famine as though it’s the result of a tragic natural disaster, or omitting America’s role in the slaughter. This time, it was just a straightforward lie: Biden said the US was ending offensive support, and it wasn’t.

As we’ve discussed previously, when the people demand something of their government it’s a lot easier to simply tell them you’re on their side and redirect them than to tell them no. Democrats are especially good at this.

As awareness grows that Yemen is the single most horrifying atrocity taking place in our world today, pressure is mounting for the US government to use its tremendous amount of leverage over Saudi Arabia to cease the human butchery. Rather than increasing that pressure by saying no, the Biden administration defused it by falsely pretending to give in to the demands. Because the risk of “losing Riyadh as a key regional partner” was deemed too great.

And meanwhile the slaughter continues, unbroken from Obama to Trump and from Trump to Biden. The names change, the narratives change, but the murderous imperial war machine rolls on uninterrupted.

May 2, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Most US & UK businesses to REQUIRE at least some employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19, poll shows

© ASU Workplace Commons / rockefellerfoundation.org

RT | May 1, 2021

Many Americans and Brits will face de facto vaccine mandates, as a new poll shows that 56% of businesses will require at least some employees to be inoculated against Covid-19, in many cases under threat of losing their jobs.

The poll, which was conducted by Arizona State University and released on Thursday, showed that 40% of businesses will require all employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19, while 16% will mandate the jabs for at least some of their workers. All told, 88% of businesses will require or encourage their employees to be vaccinated, and 60% said they will demand some kind of proof of inoculation.

The survey, which was backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, paints a bleak picture for those who plan to resist getting the Covid-19 jabs. While the US and UK governments have refrained from making vaccines mandatory – and facing legal challenges that might ensue – the private sector may effectively do it for them. Businesses are already setting the stage to require so-called ‘vaccine passports,’ forcing customers to show proof of inoculation or a negative Covid test before accessing certain goods, services and events.

While many people can choose not to travel abroad or go to business venues that require proof of vaccination, an employer mandate could be more problematic. Arizona State said 31% of businesses plan to take disciplinary action, including possibly firing employees who refuse to comply with their vaccine policies.

A further 44% said non-compliant employees won’t be allowed to return to the workplace, while 27% said they will change the work responsibilities of those who fail to obey. Only 15% said there will be no consequences, even though the vaccines are being administered under emergency authorizations and so far lack the long-term study needed for full regulatory approval.

The survey was conducted at 1,168 companies, mostly large businesses with 250 or more employees based in the US and UK. The average business in the poll still has 57% of employees working remotely. About 75% expect workers to be back on site within the next one to six months, but 72% said they plan to offer more flexible work-from-home policies after the pandemic.

Employee wellbeing has suffered greatly during the pandemic. Nearly 58% of businesses said their concerns over employee mental health have increased, while 52% were more concerned about worker engagement. Other troubling issues included Covid-19’s impact on burnout, productivity and morale.

May 1, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

World police: Washington seeks to imprison foreign businesspeople for violating illegal US sanctions

By STANSFIELD SMITH · The Grayzone · APRIL 27, 2021

The United States uses economic sanctions as a weapon against states that choose a development path independent of US global domination. Sanctions can take the form of blocking a nation’s financial and trade transactions, not allowing financial institutions to process them. The US can also freeze the assets of another country.

Washington employs sanctions as a tool to destabilize governments that refuse to kow-tow to it. Sanctions are a weapon of war on civilians. Richard Nixon made this clear when, with Chile’s 1970 election of socialist Salvador Allende, the US president ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream,” to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.”

Sanctions can destroy the economy of a country by causing hyperinflation and unemployment and preventing the import of necessities such as food, medicine, and equipment to keep infrastructure and industries running. Sanctions drive capital flight from targeted nations, as corporations and financial institutions seek to avoid being hurt themselves. This results in deadly consequences for the civilian population.

According to the United Nations, US sanctions are unilateral coercive measures that violate international laws. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly called on all states not to recognize or apply unilateral coercive measures, such as those employed by the US. Every year since 1992 it has condemned the US blockade of Cuba; Washington’s response has been to worsen it. The 120 member Non-Aligned Movement has condemned sanctions on Venezuela.

This global influence enables the United States to block money transfers for even the smallest transaction, and to confiscate billions of dollars held by targeted governments and individuals. By controlling the international financial system, Washington can demand that banks in foreign countries accept US restrictions, or face sanctions themselves.

According to the United Nations, however, US sanctions are unilateral coercive measures that violate international laws. The UN Charter – which the US was itself instrumental in writing – clearly states only those sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council can be considered legal. Sanctions imposed by one country on another are not legal.

The UN General Assembly has repeatedly called on member states not to recognize or apply unilateral coercive measures, such as those employed by Washington.

Yet the US government continues to freely snub the UN and its Security Council by imposing unilateral sanctions on a variety of countries, most severely against Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, and Venezuela.

US sanctions contributed to 40,000 deaths in Venezuela just between 2017 and 2018, as well as to the deaths of 4,000 North Koreans in 2018, most of them children and pregnant women. In the 1990s, sanctions against Iraq led to the deaths of as many as 880,000 children under five due to malnutrition and disease.

Washington even brazenly threatened to sanction judges of the International Criminal Court if they dared investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan. National Security Advisor John Bolton bullied them, stating: “We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system … We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.”

This turned out to be no idle threat: the Trump administration ultimately slapped sanctions on the ICC and its staff.

In 2020 and 2021, the US government has taken its unilateral coercive measures to an even more ominous level by charging and attempting to extradite foreign businesspeople who have been abiding by international law, rather than the economic dictates of Washington.

Alex Saab, a Venezuelan national; Mun Chol Myong, a North Korean businessman; and Meng Wanzhou, from China’s Huawei tech giant, have each been charged with violating Washington’s unlawful sanctions – even though all are non-US citizens living and conducting business outside of the United States. The three are being politically persecuted for acting in the interests of their own countries, and not the US.

Alex Saab Venezuela US sanctions CLAP food

Venezuela’s Special Envoy Alex Saab, arrested for trying to buy food for the government’s CLAP program

The case of Venezuelan special envoy Alex Saab

The Obama administration justified unilateral sanctions against Venezuela in 2015 with the baseless claim that Venezuela poses “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security” of the United States. As Reuters noted at the time, “Declaring any country a threat to national security is the first step in starting a US sanctions program.”

Alex Saab, a Colombia-born Venezuelan businessman, was appointed a special envoy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. His job was to help the government buy food for its social program, CLAP, which provides boxes of food and sanitary supplies to an estimated 80 percent of the population, helping keep them alive under the US economic attack.

Saab’s government role means he should have diplomatic immunity under international law. But Washington has ignored all international protocol in targeting him.

Saab was en route to Iran to acquire basic food, medicine, and medical equipment needed for the people of Venezuela when, on June 12, 2020, he was detained – in effect kidnapped – during a stopover in Cape Verde, due to a US government extradition request.

Since then, Saab has been detained, first in prison and now under house arrest. He says his “illegal detention is entirely politically motivated.”

The US government charged Saab with “money laundering.” However, in his case and those of the other two foreign nationals targeted by the US, money laundering means nothing more than making international trade transactions, which must generally go through the US-controlled SWIFT financial system through which all dollar transactions pass, that circumvent Washington’s unilateral sanctions.

Because of its control over the international financial system, the United States can impose sanctions on the trade any country undertakes with nations that Washington sanctions or blockades, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, or Russia. ”Money laundering” is the charge that Washington uses to enforce its unilateral coercive measures on the rest of the world.

Saab explained in an April interview with a Colombian news outlet, “I have worked since 2015 to ensure the supply of basic food and medicine and other items to supply the [Venezuelan] government’s social welfare food program (CLAP). Since April 2018 I have been working as a servant of the state, as a special envoy and not as a private businessman.”

“For seven months … from the first day of my abduction, they tortured me and pressured me to sign voluntary extradition declarations and bear false witness against my government,” Saab recounted. He refused, stating “President Maduro has shown incredible leadership in the face of unprecedented sanctions and dirty political tricks from the US. I am honored to be able to assist President Maduro in any way I can, as he seeks to ensure the well-being of the people of Venezuela.”

In jail, Saab said he was kept in the dark for 23 hours a day, “lying on the concrete [floor].” This led him to partially lose his eyesight.

“I was forbidden to speak to anyone inside the prison, and everyone else was forbidden to speak to me,” Saab added. “I have lost 25 kilos [55 pounds].”

Switzerland investigated Saab over allegations of money laundering through Swiss banks. But, after a two-year investigation, Swiss courts formally closed their investigation on March 25, 2021, determining there was no evidence that Saab committed any irregularity.

Soon after the Swiss statement, the US Treasury Department on March 31 withdrew the sanctions that President Trump had issued on a group of companies allegedly linked to Alex Saab.

While Cape Verdean authorities approved Saab’s extradition to the US, the court of justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) declared his detention illegal, stipulating that he could not be extradited.

The African Bar Association also ruled that the Venezuelan diplomatic envoy should not be incarcerated. Nevertheless, the US government, continuing the Trump administration’s policy under President Joe Biden, has demanded that Cape Verde keep Saab under house arrest, pending extradition.

The case of North Korean businessman Mun Chol Myong

For the first time in history, a North Korean businessman was extradited to the United States from Malaysia on March 20, 2021. Mun Chol Myong faces charges of “money laundering,” “conspiracy,” and supplying goods to North Korea in violation of US law.

Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 shortly after a Washington, DC federal judge issued a warrant for his arrest. He spent nearly two years fighting extradition, arguing that his case was politically motivated and was being used as leverage in possible nuclear negotiations between the US and North Korea.

His actual crime, in the eyes of the US government, was supplying needed goods to North Korea in a manner that circumvented Washington’s sanctions and US-instigated UN sanctions. US government authorities, as of March 22, 2021, had not indicated what goods Mun is said to have exported to North Korea.

An indictment by the US District Court for the District of Columbia alleges that Mun and his unnamed “co-conspirators” used “front” companies and bank accounts registered to false names on behalf of North Korean entities that were barred from SWIFT. According to the FBI, by concealing transactions that benefitted North Korea, Mun deceived US financial institutions into processing more than $1.5 million in transactions which they would have otherwise not processed.

The US assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s National Security Division, John C. Demers, claimed Mun “is the first North Korean intelligence operative – and the second ever foreign intelligence operative – to have been extradited to the United States for violation of our laws.” Ignoring international law, Washington considers North Korean diplomats and international businesspeople to be “intelligence operatives.”

In other words, the US Justice Department is openly arguing that foreign nationals who have never been to or done work in the United States can be extradited there for violating “our laws.”

Demers went on to baselessly claim that Mun’s export of goods to North Korea was a national security threat to the American people, insisting, “We will continue to use the long reach of our laws to protect the American people from sanctions evasion and other national security threats.”

In the Justice Department’s press release, the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, Alan E. Kohler Jr., added ominously, ”We hope he will be the first of many.”

The US government has enforced sanctions, amounting to a de facto blockade, against North Korea since 1950, at the start of the US war on Korea. These sanctions have been designed to cut the country off from international trade and cripple its economic and social development.

The United States claims present-day sanctions were enacted because of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which is a legal program run by a country threatened by Washington’s own nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s charge d’affaires in Malaysia, Kim Yu Song, condemned Mun’s extradition as an “unpardonable crime,” declaring that it was the product of a US-led sanction program “which seeks to deprive our state of its sovereignty, peaceful existence and development,” and is “isolating and suffocating” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

The DPRK protested the extradition of its citizen by suspending official diplomatic ties with Malaysia.

China Huawei Meng Wanzhou US sanctions

Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, arrested by Canada and faced extradition to the US for violating unilateral sanctions

The case of Chinese Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou

The most infamous of these three extradition cases is that of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board of the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Meng faces charges of fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC, a British bank, about Huawei business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break unilateral US sanctions against Iran.

On August 22, 2018, a US District Court in New York issued an arrest warrant for Meng. Canada’s RCMP then arrested her in Vancouver on December 1, 2018, at US request.

Meng has now been under house arrest for almost two and half years. The Chinese government has said the detention is “lawless, reasonless and ruthless, and it is extremely vicious.”

The Trump administration relied on two Reuters articles from 2012 and 2013 to accuse Huawei of violating unilateral US sanctions on Iran.

Washington imposed sanctions on Iran shortly after its 1979 revolution. The present US sanctions are claimed to be in response to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, even though there is no proof that the country has been developing nuclear weapons.

As with the North Korean case, it is noteworthy that the only country that has actually used nuclear weapons on a civilian population sanctions other countries for supposedly developing them.

All UN-approved coercive measures against Iran were ended with the international nuclear agreement, or JCPOA, of 2015, and the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Tehran was in compliance with the deal.

Unilateral US sanctions on Iran were imposed without any legal basis, and Washington’s justification for extraditing Meng thus violates international law, because the sanctions that the Huawei executive is alleged to have circumvented are illegal according to the UN Security Council.

In an article explaining the Meng Wanzhou extradition case, political analyst K J Noh provided further context:

Most people understand that Meng is not guilty of anything other than being the daughter of Ren Zeng Fei, the founder of Huawei.

Huawei, as a global technological powerhouse, represents Chinese power and Chinese technical prowess, which the United States is hell-bent on destroying. Meng has been kidnapped as a pawn, as a hostage to exert pressure on Huawei and the Chinese government, and to curb China’s development.

In a maneuver reminiscent of medieval or colonial warfare, the US has explicitly offered to release her if China capitulates on a trade deal –– making clear that she is being held hostage. This constitutes a violation of the UN Convention on Hostages.

In court, Meng’s defense has argued that the US government deliberately misstated evidence and withheld evidence from the Canadian Court. Her attorneys say the Trump administration was using her as a “bargaining chip.”

Meng’s defense denied Washington’s jurisdiction to indict a Chinese national for her activities outside of US soil. “There is no connection … None of [Meng’s] alleged conduct occurred either in whole or in part in the United States. Nor did they have any effect there,” her lawyers stated.

It is also highly unusual for Washington to pursue criminal charges for sanctions violations against an individual rather than an institution. Where an executive is carrying out corporate policy, one would expect individuals not to be charged, rather, the corporation would be fined.

As economist Jeffrey Sachs noted:

In 2011, for example, JP Morgan Chase paid $88.3 million in fines in 2011 for violating US sanctions against Cuba, Iran, and Sudan. Yet Jamie Dimon wasn’t grabbed off a plane and whisked into custody.

And JP Morgan Chase was hardly alone in violating US sanctions. Since 2010, the following major financial institutions paid fines for violating US sanctions: Banco do Brasil, Bank of America, Bank of Guam, Bank of Moscow, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays, BNP Paribas, Clearstream Banking, Commerzbank, Compass, Crédit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan Chase, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, National Bank of Pakistan, PayPal, RBS (ABN Amro), Société Générale, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Trans-Pacific National Bank (now known as Beacon Business Bank), Standard Chartered, and Wells Fargo.

None of the CEOs or CFOs of these sanction-busting banks was arrested and taken into custody for these violations. In all of these cases, the corporation – rather than an individual manager – was held accountable.

The likelihood is that Saab, Mun, or Meng would receive a heavily politicized trial as “fair” as that inflicted on the Cuban 5 or Simon Trinidad.

These are political cases, disguised as criminal cases. The “crime” is the violation of US sanctions – illegal according to the United Nations – by non-US citizens living outside the United States.

The US government is flaunting international law by charging these three individuals for legal business between nations that violates illegal US coercive measures. All three represent the interests of governments that Washington seeks to crush, and the detentions of all three is the equivalent of hostage taking.

These cases open the door for the United States to charge and extradite any person in the world on baseless allegations of “organized crime, money laundering, or financing of terrorism,” if they engage in perfectly legal international trade which the US government declares to violate its unilateral sanctions.

April 30, 2021 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment