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Facebook is suppressing ‘facts’ that are flagged as promoting ‘vaccine hesitancy’: whistleblowers

RT | May 25, 2021

Facebook is taking aggressive steps to sideline any content, including factual material, critical of Covid-19 vaccines, two insiders have revealed to Project Veritas. The tech giant claims the policy was publicly announced.

The conservative media watchdog organization published a purported internal Facebook memo concerning “Vaccine Hesitancy Comment Demotion.” The policy aims to “drastically reduce user exposure to vaccine hesitancy,” the document states.

Another document leaked to Project Veritas discusses how to flag and categorize “non-violating content” that raises questions about vaccination, “thereby contributing to vaccine hesitancy or refusal.”

Comments can be “demoted” if they are flagged as directly or indirectly discouraging people from getting vaccinated. It doesn’t matter if the content is factually accurate, Project Veritas reported, citing the leaked documents.

According to the reported policy, “shocking stories” about side effects linked to the vaccines can be suppressed, even if they are “potentially or actually true events or facts that raise safety concerns.” The company explains that such content should be discouraged because it could “present a barrier to vaccination in certain contexts.”

Facebook is also said to target comments that claim vaccination is not necessary due to low Covid-19 death rates, or argue for natural herd immunity against the virus, as such views are considered “indirect discouragement” that could hurt immunization efforts.

One of the Facebook whistleblowers who reached out to Project Veritas said that anyone who questions the “narrative” of “get the vaccine, the vaccine is good for you” will be “singled out.”

A second company insider, identified as a data center technician, said that Facebook is working to censor all content that can be deemed critical of vaccines.

“They’re trying to control this content before it even makes it onto your page before you even see it,” the whistleblower told Project Veritas.

In response to the leaked documents, a Facebook spokesperson told the media watchdog that the company “proactively announced this policy on our company blog and also updated our help center with this information.”

In February, the platform said it was expanding its efforts to combat “false claims” about Covid-19 vaccines. Under the initiative, Facebook said it would remove content that claims “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” or that argues the jabs are “dangerous.”

The content crackdown comes amid growing concern about side effects that have been linked to the vaccines. Numerous countries temporarily suspended their rollout of the AstraZeneca jab amid reports of blood clotting in people who received it. The pharmaceutical company has insisted the vaccine is safe, a position that has been echoed by the EU’s drug regulator. However, some have argued that there is insufficient data to show that the vaccines represented on the market are safe and effective long-term, as their rollout was fast-tracked amid the pandemic.

May 25, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Telegraph: UK Needs “Vaccine Force” To Produce Jabs “On Tap”

By Richie Allen | May 24, 2021

Yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph editorial focused on vaccine production. The newspaper claimed that the UK should set up a “Vaccine Force” in the same way that we maintain a standing army in peacetime.

According to the editorial:

One of the big lessons from this crisis is that vaccines are essential, one of modern civilisation’s greatest inventions and must be deployed far more efficiently and ruthlessly than Britain’s public health establishment had previously fathomed.

Ruthlessly? I’ll come back to that. The Telegraph claims that the country needs to be better prepared for pandemics and flu-seasons to come and that vaccine work and human challenge trials should begin immediately. The paper says:

We need to be much better prepared next time a new virus emerges. Like this time, vaccine work must begin straight away; but the difference must be that we need immediate human challenge trials.

It was a remarkable achievement that it took just 11 months for vaccines to start being injected; but next time the target should be closer to three.

We need massive production and distribution capacity on tap, at all times, just as we maintain a standing army even in peacetime. Never again should an epidemiological challenge lead to the country being locked down for months on end.

The Telegraph’s message is pretty clear. The paper wants the country to set up a vaccine army that will run mass-production facilities and human trials forever more. It wants this new army or “force” to be ruthless in its endeavours.

This, says the paper, is the only way to avoid lockdowns in future. Lockdowns are intolerable and devastating for the economy and health. The only answer, says The Telegraph, is to have vaccines “on-tap.”

By ruthless, the paper might mean that there should be little or no red-tape to prevent these vaccines reaching our arms. Maybe the paper means that the UK should be ruthless in dealing with refuseniks, because after all, refuseniks delay the end of restrictions.

I’m betting that The Telegraph didn’t come up with the idea of a “Vaccine Force” all by itself. But then again, what the hell do I know? I do know this. We really are here now.

May 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

OSHA Pulls Guidance Stating Employers May Be Held Liable For ‘Adverse Reactions’ If They Mandate Vaxx

By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | May 23, 2021

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration threw workers under the bus over the weekend by pulling their new guidance which stated that employers they may be held liable for “any adverse reactions” if they mandate employees take COVID-19 vaccines “as a condition of their employment.”

On April 20, OSHA released a new FAQ on their website stating that if employers require their employees to be vaxxed “then any adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine is work-related” (and therefor must be recorded for, at the very least, worker compensation claims).

OSHA appears to have caved to political pressure and scrapped their own well-thought-out, pro-worker guidance after just one month so as not to “disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.”

Their FAQ now states:

DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.

OSHA was created to protect workers’ rights and instead it’s trampling all over them on behalf of Big Pharma.

“Encouraging COVID-19 vaccinations” comes before protecting workers’ rights.

Despite OSHA’s disgraceful actions, OSHA states on their own FAQ that their “guidance is not a standard or regulation, and it creates no new legal obligations.”

Employees are not under any legal obligation to take experimental mRNA shots. Employers who attempt to force these shots on their workers are going to get sued and the case may go all the way to the Supreme Court.

May 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Has Palestine resistance won?

By Robert Inlakesh | Quds News Network | May 21, 2021

When this Friday’s ceasefire was announced between Palestinian resistance groups and ‘Israel’, there was only one side celebrating, the Palestinians, who had taken to the streets to celebrate a historic defeat of Israel’s military machine.

During the 11-day conflict between Gaza and ‘Israel’, 248 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, this included 66 children, 39 women and 17 elderly people, in addition to 1,948 people having sustained injuries. On the Israeli side, 12 casualties were reported, it is unclear how many Israeli soldiers were killed as ‘Israel’ goes to great lengths to cover this up. Despite the disparity in death statistics, which clearly indicate much greater Palestinian suffering, Israel’s military and politicians were left utterly embarrassed and defeated.

A Unified Palestinian Resistance To Occupation & Netanyahu’s Political Failure

The Israeli aggression against the people of Jerusalem, specifically with its provocative attacks on worshippers at al Aqsa Mosque, its backing of far-right fascist settlers and the planned expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, all triggered a nationwide Palestinian response.

For the first time, in such a forceful way, the Palestinian citizens of ‘Israel’ joined in with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and the diaspora, to confront ‘Israel’ with all means necessary. National strikes, confrontations with settlers, mass non-violent demonstrations, riots, lone-wolf armed attacks and the unified armed groups in Gaza all piled on ‘Israel’.

Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had originally backed the hard-line settlers in their provocative actions in order to keep himself aligned with his Religious Zionism Party allies and to maintain support from right wingers in general. He had just lost his mandate to form a coalition, which was handed over to his rival Yair Lapid to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition, a task delayed due to recent tensions, along with the PM’s corruption trial. It seems that Netanyahu thought he would be able to buy time politically through an escalation with Palestinians, yet miscalculated the scale of the response and found himself in an embarrassing predicament. Instead of gathering more support, Netanyahu has instead now further divided the Israeli political scene and has entered a game of pointing fingers, whilst the right-wing is condemning him for his defeat.

The armed resistance from the Gaza Strip also proved more challenging for ‘Israel’ this time around also, no matter what ‘Israel’ did and up until the last moments before the ceasefire, the resistance was firing rockets. The armed groups also revealed new weapons technology, including drones, unmanned submarines and new rockets capable of hitting any part of historic Palestine. The armed groups also fired on Israeli warships, gas pipelines, ports, electrical facilities, chemical plants, airfields, military bases and even gave curfews to be followed for residents of Tel Aviv, along with forcing Israel’s airports to close.

The response to Israel’s aggression in Jerusalem was aimed to have ‘Israel’ abandon its settler march planned to raid al-Aqsa compound, the Palestinian resistance achieved the goal of stopping this march. The goal of forcing ‘Israel’ to accept that Palestinians will retaliate and put it in its place when Jerusalem is under attack, was also reached.

The Palestinians are now more unified than ever, with all Palestinians, regardless of their political affiliation, standing together in order to confront their occupier. The ceasefire was also agreed to without ‘Israel’ having achieved any victory against the Palestinian resistance in any of the territories, they simply backed off when confronted with the might of a unified people.

The Israeli “Ground Invasion” of Gaza

The important takeaway from the latest round of tensions is that ‘Israel’ failed to put a dent in any of the Palestinian armed groups and instead turned to targeting Palestinian civilians. ‘Israel’ failed to launch a ground invasion and after announcing it, only then to back track, attempted to paint their failure to do so as the result of a cunning plan to eliminate Hamas tunnel systems.

Much of the mainstream Western Press, which originally had taken the word of ‘Israel’ that its ground troops had entered Gaza, on May 14, also without hesitation published Israel’s excuse as to why it hadn’t done so. It was claimed by the Israeli military that there had been a “miscommunication”, which later turned into Israel’s “cunning plot” to allegedly deal a killer blow to Hamas and its tunnel system.

Israeli analysts, such as Channel 13 TV’s Or Heller, began to claim that ‘Israel’ had tricked Hamas into believing the ground invasion was coming through media reports and drew militants into their complex web of tunnel networks. Then as the Israeli military claimed, it destroyed the tunnels utilising 130 warplanes, bombing the tunnels for a period of 40 minutes.

It sounds like a triumphant story, but there’s one small problem, there isn’t any evidence to suggest this happened at all, in fact all of the evidence points to the contrary. ‘Israel’ did move its reservists close to the separation lines, but not actually “on the border”, they were nowhere to be seen close to the physical barriers. The confusion which was caused also by the countless excuses provided before ‘Israel’ got its narrative together, as to explain what happened, should also invite more scepticism.

‘Israel’, despite having 24 hour drone surveillance, could not provide a single photo proving this alleged destruction of “hundreds of kilometres” of the “metro” tunnel system, nor were there any combatant deaths reported in Gaza from the strikes. On top of this, anyone who was actually following the news cycle closely, or who lives in Gaza, knows that residential areas were heavily targeted during these strikes in the north of Gaza, around Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, causing civilian deaths. The strategy which was observed on the ground in Gaza did in fact look like a ground invasion strategy, that is, the Israeli military flattens everything in sight so that it can move its ground forces into an area. Then we have the Hamas sources which reported to al-Jazeera Arabic, that they had thwarted an Israeli attempt to launch a ground invasion.

The credibility of the Israeli military is also very low, it was able to even hide the deaths of at least 5 soldiers – killed in February of 2018 – by the Salahudeen brigades (Palestinian armed group), being forced to admit the incident only after the armed group released video showing the armed attack in the month of November. It is also yet to release the proper statistics for its own military losses, soldier deaths, soldier injuries and most likely never will.

Then we next have to ask the question, if ‘Israel’ could actually pull off a successful ground operation, why didn’t it do so at any time. Why did the Israeli military also withdraw from most of the close by areas to the actual separation lines too, which has been shown by drone footage released by Palestinian armed factions? The answer is, ‘Israel’ cannot occupy Gaza and it understands that it likely can’t even defeat the ground forces of Hamas.

If ‘Israel’ had known where the tunnel system actually was, they would have had years to launch attacks on it and to prepare for confronting Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades and Islamic Jihads’ Saraya al-Quds, but resorted to killing civilians.

The truth is, Israel’s military are scared of entering Gaza, or even merely operating too close to Gaza. Israeli military and political leaders understand that high troop casualties will mean the end of them politically, so they do not dare risk it. This is the same case when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, ‘Israel’ is petrified of confronting Lebanese Hezbollah, so much so that they place dummies along the border hoping to trick the enemy into striking dud targets so as to not escalate tensions.

If a ground invasion was possible, ‘Israel’ would have taken to this straight away, but it clearly was not. Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been dealt a severe blow by this round of tensions and if a ground invasion would have been an option, he would have taken it to save his own political life.

Israel’s Only Real Military Strategy Was Targeting Civilians

The proof of what really happened is there, on the ground, in Gaza. Over 75,000 people displaced, around half of those killed were women and children, civilian infrastructure was also pummelled the most severely, not key military sites. Were there tunnels hit? Yes, but of real significance? No. ‘Israel’ bombarded areas like al-Wehda street in the more prosperous area of al-Rimal, in Gaza City, it also destroyed factories, agricultural lands, mosques, malls, medical clinics, water purification sites, electrical sites, hit schools, bookstores and the list goes on.

After Israel’s announcement of a ground invasion amounted to nothing, the strategy had clearly been to beat down the spirits of the people of Gaza. When they had done massacring scores of innocent civilians, and only killing around roughly 40 members of Palestinian resistance armed wings, they realised that their military “operation”, called “Guardian of the Walls”, was leading nowhere and ‘Israel’ was looking for a way out.

It is also important to note that of the members of armed factions killed in Gaza, ‘Israel’ murdered most of them whilst they were at home and not actively fighting, which means these were not legitimate military targets, especially as some of them were at home with their families. Israeli PM Netanyahu announced, in his first speech after the ceasefire agreement was reached, that around “200 terrorists” had been killed, but even the Israeli public knows this to be a blatant lie. Statistically, it’s impossible for ‘Israel’ to argue it killed a significant number of Palestinian fighters and what is perhaps most ridiculous, is that Netanyahu used images of bombed roads to try and prove he destroyed significant tunnels.

The conclusion that can be drawn from recent events, is that a unified Palestinian people can successfully put the Israeli regime in its place and prevent it from crossing red-lines. A new political awakening has taken place, a new set of rules have been established. This moment, will go down in history as an important marker in the road to the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of Palestinian human rights.

May 23, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Iraqi Resistance: Government Incapable of Expelling US Occupation Forces, Our Operations to Be Escalated

Al-Manar | May 23, 2021

The Iraqi resistance command indicated that it gave the government a chance to hold negotiations with the US authorities for the with withdrawal of the occupation troops from Iraq, but that the outcomes of the two rounds of talks were bad and unfortunate.

In a statement, the Iraqi resistance pointed out that what exacerbated the matter was the statements made by the US officials who rejected to set a timeline for the withdrawal and revealed that the Iraqi government asked them to keep the occupation troops in Iraq.

“This turns the government to be incapable of meeting the public will which insists on expelling the occupation forces and protecting the sovereignty as well as Constitution.”

The statement rejected the outcomes of the negotiations between the Iraqi government and the US authorities, considering that it confirms the Americans do not understand except the force language and stressing that the operations against the occupation forces will be escalated.

May 23, 2021 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , | Leave a comment

Weakened Israeli Immunity?

By Stephen Lendman | May 22, 2021

Did Netanyahu go too far this time?

Did he shoot himself in the foot for massacring Gazan civilians — and by doing so generate mass pro-Palestinian protests in cities worldwide?

Did his international support weaken for terror-bombing and shelling residential neighborhoods on the phony pretext of claiming that Hamas used families and others as human shields?

Is his Western and regional media support diminished for targeting their Gazan facilities to silence them?

Did he generate widespread international anger for destroying Gazan infrastructure essential to sustain life and well-being, for striking medical facilities and much more in Gaza intensively?

For time immemorial, US and other Western media provided one-sided support for Israel, including earlier wars on Gaza and against Syria and Lebanon.

Did 11 days in May change things — even if only partially?

Did it put a chink in longstanding Israeli impregnability?

Days earlier, the most always pro-Israel NYT said the following:

The IDF “damaged 17 hospitals and clinics in Gaza, wrecked its only coronavirus test laboratory, sent fetid wastewater into its streets and broke water pipes serving at least 800,000 people, setting off a humanitarian crisis that is touching nearly every civilian in the crowded enclave of about two million people,” adding:

“Sewage systems inside Gaza have been destroyed.”

“A desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people in the territory is offline.”

“Dozens of schools have been damaged or closed, forcing some 600,000 students to miss classes.”

“Some 72,000 Gazans have been forced to flee their homes.”

“And at least 213 Palestinians have been killed, including dozens of children.”

“The level of destruction and loss of life in Gaza has underlined the humanitarian challenge in the enclave, already suffering under the weight of an indefinite blockade by Israel and Egypt even before the latest conflict.”

The above and more that followed was sharp criticism of Israel rarely ever reported about a US allied state.

On Friday, NBC News said “Israel-Gaza cease-fire doesn’t mean the IDF should be excused for striking health facilities.”

“Even if the fighting soon stops, not holding Israel to account for potential war crimes green-lights future heinous attacks.”

At times of war, civilians are protected persons under international law.

Targeting and “preventing them from receiving effective care for their wounds compounds their suffering,” NBC News added.

WaPo has been notably critical of Israeli aggression this month.

An opinion piece it published by Columbia University Professor of Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi said the following last week:

Days of Israeli aggression on Gaza reflect “the latest episode in the hundred-plus year war on Palestine,” adding:

“Israel’s brutal actions in and around Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, and its attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, were triggers for another violent, asymmetrical confrontation” between Israel’s powerful military and Palestinians armed with no more than crude rockets and their redoubtable will to resist oppression.

What went on for days and continues throughout the Occupied Territories through daily oppression of Palestinians has nothing to do with “riot(ing)” or a “real estate dispute” as phony Israeli “talking points” claimed, Khalidi explained.

It’s all about pursuing Israel’s longstanding aim for maximum Jews and minimum Arabs throughout all valued parts of historic Palestine — notably to assure that the world community recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital.

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181.

The Palestine Partition Plan granted 56% of historic Palestine to Jews (with one-third of the population), 42% to Palestinians.

Jerusalem was designated an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council.

Res. 181 also called for an Independent Arab state by October 1, 1948.

It called for “all governments and peoples to refrain from taking any action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations.”

The Security Council was and continues to be empowered with “necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation.”

Security Council (SC) Resolution 242 (1967) called for an end of conflict and withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the Occupied Territories.

The UN Charter, Fourth Geneva, and other international laws protect the rights of everyone everywhere, including Palestinians and other oppressed people.

Like the US and West, Israel operates exclusively by its own rules.

A permanent state of war by hot and other means has existed by Israel against Palestinians for nearly three-fourths of a century — with no end of it in prospect.

WaPo contributors Noura Erakat and Mariam Barghouti said Israel’s intention to expel Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah residents from their East Jerusalem homes and land “highlights the violent brazenness of (its) colonialist project.”

WaPo contributor Michael Chabon accused Israel of “violat(ing) the Fourth Geneva Convention, which limits the duration of military occupation to a year and prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own citizens to occupied territory.”

WaPo accused Israel of “leav(ing) Gaza in shambles.”

Questioning Netanyahu’s future, it said “Jerusalem is on verge of erupting again” because of Israeli violence on its people straightaway after agreeing to ceasefire in Gaza.

According to Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Mohammad Fityani, Israeli forces on Friday injured 21 Palestinians in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, adding:

Similar confrontations occurred throughout the West Bank.

WaPo quoted Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, saying:

“Our people rose up… to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque with their bare chests, and to prove to the whole world that (East) Jerusalem is (the exclusive Palestinian capital), and that Al-Aqsa is a red line.”

WaPo quoted Oxfam’s policy officer in Gaza Laila Barhoum, last week saying:

“We dread the darkness of the night, when you can no longer tell where or how close the black smoke is” from Israeli missiles and shells.

“You can only hear it, feel it and, if you’re lucky, survive it.”

“So, we gather together, support each other and tell ourselves that we will survive the night.”

“And we wait for the condemnation from the international community — condemnation that never comes,” notably not from the West.

WaPo contributor Raphael Mimoun said “(t)he Israeli occupation of the West Bank is, by every definition, apartheid: two legal systems for two ethnic groups.”

“Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end Israeli apartheid.”

The above and more like it in WaPo and in other US media editions expressed uncharacteristically harsh criticism of Israel.

Does it reflect a crack in its longstanding invulnerability to justifiable criticism?

Or is it the emotional response of the moment that’s likely to pass in the days and weeks ahead?

A Final Comment

Al Jazeera stressed that 11 days of Israeli bombardment… left (Gaza) in ruins,” adding:

The Biden regime “faced unprecedented criticism for failing to demand an immediate ceasefire to end Israel’s devastating bombing campaign, instead putting out what rights advocates described as milquetoast statements reaffirming Washington’s unequivocal support for Israel.”

Following ceasefire on Friday, “(w)hat’s Biden’s plan” for besieged Gazans and Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories?

Al Jazeera quoted Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver saying:

“There’s zero (US) plan” — other than supplying Israel with more heavy weapons and munitions for further war at its discretion against Palestinians and neighboring states.

Hashemi also stressed that “the more Israel is coddled, supported, and sustained (by the US and West), the more belligerent and intransigent (it) becomes” — knowing it can do what it pleases unaccountably.

May 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Russian Embassy Refutes Colombian Minister Remarks About Moscow Role in Inciting Violence

Sputnik – 22.05.2021

The Russian Embassy to Colombia has expressed bemusement over the remarks of Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano Aponte, who accused Russia of cyberattacks and inciting violence in the Latin American nation via social networks.

“The Russian Embassy expresses deep bewilderment at the statements of the Colombian defense minister, Mr. Diego Molano, made on May 17 in an interview with one of the main Spanish media, El Mundo. In particular, the high-ranking Colombian official, answering the question of whether there was foreign interference via social networks aimed at inciting violence, said, we quote, ‘there were cyberattacks that came, in particular, from Russia,'” the embassy wrote on its Twitter page on late Friday.

According to the Russian diplomatic mission, the defense minister made similar statements in an interview with the Colombian newspaper Tiempo.

“We strongly reject these claims. Such serious accusations against our country, which we consider completely unfounded and not supported by specific evidence, in no way contribute to the development of traditionally friendly relations between Russia and Colombia,” the embassy noted.

The Russian diplomatic mission has also expressed condolences over the reported fatalities during the protests in Colombia.

The nationwide demonstrations started in Colombia on April 28 in protest of tax reform. Although the reform bill was later withdrawn, the protests continue. Labor and student organizations demand social and healthcare reforms, demilitarization of cities, and dissolution of Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron forces.

Since April, according to the Defense Ministry, more than 1,900 people have been injured in clashes between security forces and protesters. The authorities have confirmed the deaths of 15 people, while human rights activists say more than 50 have been killed in the protests.

May 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

YouTube censors public meeting of Shawnee Mission School District parents for “misinformation”

The public hearing was deleted

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 21, 2021

A video from a school board meeting in Kansas has been removed from YouTube for violation of community standards around “misinformation.”

Shawnee Mission School Board president Heather Ousley announced this on Twitter, adding that the violations had to do with statements made by third parties during a meeting that was open to public comment.

The channel has received a strike, which means that if it is again found in breach of YouTube’s policies over the next 90 days, it will not be allowed to upload new videos for a week – a scenario which Shawnee Mission School District spokesperson David Smith said would represent “a serious interference to our work.”

YouTube is the district’s chosen and only platform for posting videos of public meetings and where they are also live streamed.

Over on Twitter, Ousley went on to say that comments made by those she referred to as third parties do not indicate the position of the board itself, or the school district.

Local media reported that during the meeting, parents and state Senator Mike Thompson urged the district to remove the mask mandate. Ahead of the meeting itself, residents, including the senator, protested against this mandate.

During the meeting, Thompson expressed his belief that masks are ineffective, comparing the size of the virus and the mask fabric to a 6-foot-tall person trying to walk through a 6,000 by 2,000 feet doorway.

Thompson later told the press that there was no medical misinformation presented during the meeting, and said his presence was in support of parents opposed to continued wearing of masks.

According to him, the meeting also heard from students who complained that it was hard to breathe with a mask on, while a parent spoke about their child being separated from the rest of the class and sent to another room for not wearing a mask.

The reason to allow “third party” comments during the meeting is to let taxpayers who fund the school express themselves, he said.

May 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Hateful hypocrisy: In hate crime-obsessed Britain, vilifying Covid vaccine ‘refuseniks’ comes with establishment approval

By Neil Clark | RT | May 21, 2021

We hear so much in woke Britain about ‘hate crime’ and how terrible it is. But right now, we’re in the midst of an extremely nasty campaign against those who don’t wish to take a Covid vaccine and somehow that’s deemed acceptable.

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.” From George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

“Selfish idiots.” “Refuseniks.” “Anti-vaxxer loonies.” “Holding the country to ransom.” “A menace to their own health and ours.” “They’re like drink drivers.” Just a few of the insults that have been hurled at Brits who, despite the biggest drug promotion campaign in our history, have decided they don’t wish to take one of the new-on-the-market Covid vaccines.

Freedom of choice? Bodily autonomy? They seem to have gone out of the window, along with all the other basic rights we have lost in Britain these past 15 months. The date is 2021, but we’re actually living in Orwell’s ‘1984,’ with its daily ‘Two Minutes Hate.’

A whole succession of obnoxious newspaper columnists, radio ‘shock jocks’ and some ‘celebrities’ have gone out of their way to be as rude as possible to those who don’t want to have a jab – and call for extreme measures to be used against them that would be more associated with a totalitarian state in mid-1930s Europe than a country which still styles itself a ‘democracy’. Or, indeed, with Pretoria, circa 1965.

Apartheid – which we all denounced when in place in South Africa – has had a 2021 public health makeover and is back in vogue, with ‘Covid vaccine passports’ replacing ‘pass laws.’

“Love the idea of covid vaccine passports for everywhere: flights, restaurants, clubs, football, gyms, shops etc. It’s time covid-denying, anti-vaxxer loonies had their bullsh*t bluff called & bar themselves from going anywhere that responsible citizens go,” tweeted media motormouth Piers Morgan.

Nick Cohen penned an article for the Observer entitled “It’s only a matter of time before we turn on the unvaccinated.” “Rational people will ask why they should continue to accept restrictions on their freedoms because of ignorant delusions,” he wrote.

Columnist Richard Littlejohn went even further  by calling for the unvaccinated to publicly declare themselves ‘Unclean.’ “If some people don’t like the idea of getting the jab, tough. I wouldn’t force them. But maybe refusniks should have to wear a bell round their necks and sport a sandwich board declaring themselves ‘Unclean’”, he wrote in the Daily Mail, in an article entitled “No jab, no job – it’s a no brainer.”

In similar vein there was Sean O’Grady, an associate editor of the supposedly ‘liberal’ Independent. His article, published earlier this week, was entitled “This is what we do about anti-vaxxers: No job. No entry. No NHS access.”

“The time has come when the hard choices are looming closer,” O’Grady opined. “If we don’t want this Covid crisis to last forever, we need some new simple, guidelines: No jab, no access to NHS healthcare; no jab, no state education for your kids. No jab, no access to pubs, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, stadiums. No jab; no entry to the UK, and much else.” I think we’ve got your point Sean. You wouldn’t make vaccination mandatory, but the unvaccinated wouldn’t be able to go anywhere, or do anything. And if they got ill? Well they’d just have to die because they shouldn’t have access to NHS healthcare. All in the name of ‘the common good’.

On the same day that O’Grady’s piece was published, we had one Sarah Vine weighing in with her penny’worth, too. “We can’t let idiots who don’t want Covid vaccines hold us hostage” was the title of her screed published in the Daily Mail. “You are stupid. Weapons grade stupid,” is how she addressed those who don’t want to take the Coronavirus vaccine. Who cares what this poisonous Vine thinks, I can hear you ask? But actually, it does matter, because her husband is none other than Michael Gove, the UK government minister currently heading a review into vaccine passports. If Gove’s wife thinks the unvaccinated are “weapons grade stupid” then it hardly gives us confidence that her husband won’t decide to discriminate against them.

It’s not just in print that the attacks on ‘refuseniks’ are coming. It’s on the airwaves, too. Iain Dale berated the unvaccinated on his LBC radio call-in show earlier this week. “The fact that people still refuse to get the vaccine for whatever reason, I don’t really care what the reason is, they are not only putting themselves at risk – they are putting other people at risk,” he said. “If you are 50, 60, 70, 80 years old and you still haven’t availed yourself of the opportunity of having the vaccine, I’m afraid you need your head read. You need your head examined. You are a selfish individual.”

Repeat after me: “I am a selfish individual. I am a selfish individual.” Gaslighting really doesn’t get any more obvious.

At least Dale didn’t suggest putting poison into ‘refuseniks’ coffee as his LBC colleague Shelagh Fogarty did. “I’d literally be in fights with these people (vaccine decliners),” she told a caller. “How do you keep seeing them at work without wanting to poison their coffee.”

Let’s not mince words: We are dealing here with the very open, plain-view demonisation of a group of people, with no consequences for those who are doing the demonisation. And all this is happening, lest we forget, in ‘woke’ times when anything you say might be seen as ‘offence’, ‘racism’, ‘sexism’, ‘genderism’ or a form of ‘ism’ or ‘phobia.’

To see the egregious double standards, just replace the ‘unvaccinated’ with a minority racial or religious group. But the unvaccinated are fair game. Hate crime, according to the Crown Prosecution Service website, “can be used to describe a range of criminal behaviour where the perpetrator is motivated by hostility or demonstrates hostility towards the victim’s disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity.” Vaccine status is not a “protected characteristic” so it seems people can be as hateful to the unvaccinated as they like.

But that doesn’t make what’s going on right. Far from it.

If someone is vaccinated, why should they care if someone else isn’t? We never had these arguments before about the flu jab. Either the vaccine works to protect the vaccinated, or it doesn’t. Nor were those who decided not to have a flu vaccine labelled ‘anti-vaxxers.’ You can be generally pro-vaccination, but have rational ‘wait and see’ reservations about the new-on-the-market Coronavirus ones, especially if your chances of becoming ill or indeed dying from Covid are extremely low. But that nuanced position is simply not recognised in the current, coercive ‘Just take the bloody jab’ hysteria.

As for the line that it is the unvaccinated who are holding the country hostage by putting in jeopardy an end to Covid restrictions? Sarah Vine really needs to look closer to home. Literally. It was the government of which her husband is a prominent member which assured us that life would be back to normal as soon as the most vulnerable were vaccinated. In an interview with The Spectator in January, Health Secretary Matt Hancock said he would “Cry freedom” as soon as the most vulnerable were vaccinated.

But we still don’t have freedom. The goalposts have moved from vaccinating the ‘most vulnerable’ to now vaccinating everyone. Is it any surprise there are those who wonder if this is motivated by the introduction of vaccine passports, which in turn could lead to other digitised social credit systems?

But, conveniently, it’s the vaccine ‘refuseniks’, the current subject of the daily Orwellian Two Minutes Hate, who are being blamed for continued restrictions and not the authorities. In these toxic times, ‘divide and rule’ has never been more blatant.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com.

May 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

“No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Unvaxxed”

By Dustin Broadbery | OffGuardian | May 21, 2021

The government is pressing ahead with its Vaccine Passport and plans for a two-tier society are afoot. The effrontery of those leading the charge beggar’s belief.

When they said ‘there were no plans for ‘discriminatory’ Covid vaccine passports’, they were quietly funding at least eight different vaccine passport schemes since last year.

And that’s just the half of it. We are midway through a Europe-wide feasibility study for the development of a common vaccine passport, launched by the European Commission in 2018.

They would have you believe – they were caught with their trousers down, their policies are proportionate to the emergency as it unfolds, and at all times they operate according to a system of informed consent.

But hang on a minute. Since the onset of SARS-CoV-2, they have played the most astonishing game of deception and manipulation. Cooking the books and fiddling the tills.

They have deliberately plunged society into two camps – skeptics and adherents, compliant and non-conformists.

Last year established the mood for pettifogging anyone questioning the narrative, while those refusing to comply were branded narcissists and psychopaths or denounced as ‘Covid deniers’ – the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier.

This government has polarised the nation on a scale never before attempted, legitimising a particular brand of prejudice and enmity not seen in Europe since the days of the Third Reich. And once the NHS App becomes your ticket to freedom on Monday, they will finally have means to weed out and punish dissidence while rewarding blind faith in authority. No matter how injurious their compliance is to society at large, the silent majority have lost their moral compass.

But it must be understood – this principle of divide and rule is as old as the hills. It was not so long ago that signs hung in the windows of establishments in Britain that read: ‘No dogs, No Irish, No blacks’. The difference today is that it won’t be the colour of your skin, your class, gender or sexual orientation that will condemn you, it will be something far more virulent – your ideology.

That this crucial point has been entirely missed by the chattering classes is astonishing. And despite the most flagrant attempts to marginalise large segments of society, identitarians, the woke brigade and other erstwhile defenders of the most marginalised remain largely unphased. Unless it is to flap their arms in the air over higher rates of vaccine hesitancy amongst ethnic minorities. But the rest of us can go to hell.

Who cares about anyone not from a protected social group, right?

In this bizarre parochial moral imperative, discrimination is only frowned upon if you’re discriminating against someone’s authorised and rubber-stamped marks of distinction, whereas discrimination, of and by itself, is entirely permissible.

These crowd-pleasers would defend their moral high ground by telling you “the unvaccinated are selfishly putting others’ lives at risk”, or that “mask refuseniks are superspreaders”. But hold on a minute. All of this is pure conjecture which, like everything else under the post-COVID sun, has been founded on speculative science and policies pulled straight from the magician’s hat.

Other than taking the government on its word, where is the actual evidence of asymptomatic transmission? Where is the evidence of mask efficacy?

In fact, can someone point me to a single risk assessment for any of these high-risk interventions? But to deny someone entry into an establishment, to prevent them from travelling, shopping, or worse, stepping foot outside of their own bolthole is no moot point. These are very real and tangible forms of discrimination, for no other reason than you personally disagree with their choices.

These people have clearly made peace with the fact that membership to society is now the exception rather than the rule. They labour under some neotribal sense of entitlement – if you’re not with us, you’re against us. Like their neolithic ancestors they take refuge in the herd from an unseen predator threatening their hand to mouth existences. Positioning themselves in the upper echelons of this looming two-tier system, with others equally desperate to get their lives back and ready to submit to whatever ephemeral demands are made of them in return for one coveted free pass to re-enter polite society.

While the rest of us – who will not be spoken for, bribed or coerced – will risk excommunication from the social-balm in defence of our principles.

This loose association of the poorest and most marginalised, conscientious objectors, lockdown skeptics, and anyone with a shred of faith in their god-given sovereignty of being or bodily autonomy will wage a personal crusade of civil disobedience against the tyranny de jour, as Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King did before them. For them, braver men have endured far worse for much less.

But what the first group fails to realise is that they are doing the unofficial bidding of another group – the well-healed members of our political establishment to whom the rules do not apply. Who are protected by more exemptions than the rest of us are governed by regulations. And who, at the onset of the pandemic, were not caught with their pants down, as the general population was.

As this group spoke of herd immunity, they quietly struck a £119 million COVID advertising and propaganda deal with one of the world’s biggest marketing companies. Going on to become the UK’s biggest advertiser in 2020.

Just a day before the first lockdown, their Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B) began work on the most criminal propaganda campaign in British history:

Extract from UK gov’t report “Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures”, read the whole thing here.

What most card-carrying conservative voters fail to realise is that this group is the country’s biggest employer, with 17% of the British workforce employed in the public sector, whose every agency has been pointed like a cruise missile launch pad at the general population, to essentially knock our stuffing out and railroad us along a critical path, towards what is arguably a controlled destination – the complete nullification of our rights, indefinitely.

But that’s only half of it. Once you conflate unlawful policies with science that falls apart under the lightest of scrutiny to bring about the most controversial changes to Britain’s laws since the Norman Conquests, it is written in the cards that two types of citizens will be left in the wreckage: those wandering aimlessly into the trap having abandoned all reason and judgement to the trappers; and those whose contempt runs so deep they will lay their life on the line in opposition.

Now here’s the thing – there’s nothing particularly avant-garde about a two-tiered society or the discrimination of certain minority groups by the prevailing social order. And no matter what polite excuse is used to justify vaccine passports, it cannot be denied – this is the same system of caste, class, eugenics, apartheid, persecution and slavery that would inflict those toppling statues with an extreme case of dashed hopes.

But what is even more terrifying than the depths which the political class is prepared to sink, is the collusion of a silent majority – without a vested interest – whose own complicity will result in the persecution of everyone else not toeing the line.

And now, with 353,341 variants at their disposal, the government has 350,000 reasons to keep this fiasco going until hell freezes over.

Riding roughshod over the British public who, make no mistake, will continue to weather such violations, in spectacular ignorance of the fact that only 388 healthy people under the age of 60 died from COVID in 2020, the average age of death was 82, and strangely enough, the vast majority had pre-existing conditions. Equally unremarkable is the fact that between 23%-85% of all deaths attributed to COVID, died from other underlying causes.

And the fact that 2020 had a lower standardised mortality rate than every single year prior to 2009 can be found in the dictionary under ‘Ignorance is Bliss’.

You would also be forgiven for assuming that once the most vulnerable had been vaccinated (which is now), not much remains between the people and their freedom. That any further attempts to “protect us” with more turns of the screw entirely defy common reason.

Yet here we are, fighting a battle for humanity.

The trouble, therefore, with lockdown skeptics such as Peter Hitchens publicly throwing in the towel, or Lord Sumption accepting the inevitability of vaccine passports – they have raised the white flag long before the real battle has begun.

While lockdowns and social distancing represent the abstract of this ideological war, its frontlines are being waged on the physical surrender of our will and bodily autonomies. The former is arbitrary, the latter is systematised. One is going to happen with or without your consent, the latter is wholly dependent on it.

It follows that for each skeptic who surrenders their compliance, they sell the rest of us downriver. The balance swings more in favour of the New Normal. And let’s be honest, vaccine passports only work if a majority of us comply.

So while we still have the illusive veneer of democracy to hold onto, politicians remain duty-bound to at least pretend to be upholding some sort of system of informed consent. Just as we are compelled to at least give the appearance of upholding the necessary checks and balances.

Even if you accept the logic of vaccine passports, where exactly on your map does this end? Three weeks to flatten the curve, three lockdowns later and there is already talk of further lockdowns in the summer, or worse, restrictions lasting two more years.

Meanwhile, in the US, Sloppy Joe has made it clear: ‘get vaccinated or wear a mask indefinitely’.

If none of this strikes the fear of God into you, then perhaps this will:

The Pentagon have developed a microchip that will detect asymptomatic COVID. The chip would be inserted below the skin and trigger a sensor if COVID infects the body. This is despite the internet being flooded with factchekers and MSM pundits debunking what the so-called “tin foil hat brigade” has been warning of all along.

In plain sight, they hide their motives and by small degrees, we continue to surrender ancient rights and protections to an unthinkable dystopia that is now within sniffing distance.

Dustin Broadbery is based in London and is interested in social theory and particularly how a mutual society could bring about great advancements in the social fabric. You can read more of his work at TheCogent.org.

May 21, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel bombing destroys water supplies of 20% of Gaza residents

MEMO | May 20, 2021

Israeli forces have deliberately targeted two water pipelines in the Al-Saftawi area cutting supplies to 20 per cent of the residents of Gaza City, the municipality said in a statement today.

“The Israeli air strikes on Al-Saftawi area last night damaged two main water pipelines feeding the northwestern residential areas,” the statement said.

“The Municipality of Gaza regrettably confirms that the bombing of these two water pipelines, one of which serves more than 200,000 citizens, leaves them with no water supply and aggravating the water crisis that the city suffers due to the deliberate targeting of its infrastructure,” the statement said.

The municipality of Gaza has begun inspecting the destruction and creating temporary solutions to reduce the water crisis caused by the destruction.

It went on to renew its condemnation of the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, buildings and vital facilities.

May 20, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s “private” COVID Alert app wasn’t so private after all

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | May 19, 2021

After by and large failing in its primary (and it was thought, the only) purpose, Canadian authorities are considering ways of repurposing their COVID Alert app to continue to collect a wider array of personal data.

The contact tracing app, which cost close to half a million dollars to develop and a further 16 million to promote, was hailed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on many occasions as a way to protect both people’s health and privacy.

But the app saw only six million downloads – about a fifth of mobile subscribers – with as few as 25,552 Canadians actually using it to enter data regarding their Covid status.

Now reports say that the government’s App Advisory Council is exploring ways to continue using it other than as a public healthcare tool – as something that would “also support Canadians and businesses in our economic, social and mental health recovery and restoration.”

Many privacy advocates have been warning ever since new apps and policies to track people and collect their data started appearing as a necessary way to protect health, that they would not just go away once the epidemic is over, or once they are proven ineffective in performing that task, as has been the case in a number of countries.

In Canada, the Council said they are consulting with Statistics Canada about what valuable data could be collected. According to reports, it has not been disclosed what type of data is collected from Canadians who have downloaded the app.

The Council stresses the critical need to create trust among individuals and businesses, i.e., persuade them that the use of the app will facilitate reopening of businesses and schools.

“The Council wants to continue to be engaged in discussions on collection of data, particularly the viability of data collection given privacy considerations,” it said, explaining that public perception of how additionally harvested data is handled is considered a risk, rather than the data collection itself.

To that end, the Council recommends “clear articulation” associated with additional data collection in order for that pitch to “outweigh the risk.”

In pushing for the app’s adoption last year, Trudeau said it was collecting data anonymously, but would also not rule out the possibility of implementing location tracking technology in an emergency. Last year, Toronto Mayor John Tory revealed this city was already doing that to track gatherings of people, thanks to phone operators providing “all the data on the pinging off their network on the weekend.

May 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

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