In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as “anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacists, and anti-police,” was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of “transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.”
The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. “If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,” Baker had written on his Facebook event page.
Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first “precrime” arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing “increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,” the steady advance toward a precrime-centered “war on domestic terror” has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.
This new so-called war on domestic terror has actually resulted in many of these types of posts on Facebook. And, while Facebook has long sought to portray itself as a “town square” that allows people from across the world to connect, a deeper look into its apparently military origins and continual military connections reveals that the world’s largest social network was always intended to act as a surveillance tool to identify and target domestic dissent.
Part 1 of this two-part series on Facebook and the US national-security state explores the social media network’s origins and the timing and nature of its rise as it relates to a controversial military program that was shut down the same day that Facebook launched. The program, known as LifeLog, was one of several controversial post-9/11 surveillance programs pursued by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that threatened to destroy privacy and civil liberties in the United States while also seeking to harvest data for producing “humanized” artificial intelligence (AI).
As this report will show, Facebook is not the only Silicon Valley giant whose origins coincide closely with this same series of DARPA initiatives and whose current activities are providing both the engine and the fuel for a hi-tech war on domestic dissent.
DARPA’s Data Mining for “National Security” and to “Humanize” AI
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, DARPA, in close collaboration with the US intelligence community (specifically the CIA), began developing a “precrime” approach to combatting terrorism known as Total Information Awareness or TIA. The purpose of TIA was to develop an “all-seeing” military-surveillance apparatus. The official logic behind TIA was that invasive surveillance of the entire US population was necessary to prevent terrorist attacks, bioterrorism events, and even naturally occurring disease outbreaks.
The architect of TIA, and the man who led it during its relatively brief existence, was John Poindexter, best known for being Ronald Reagan’s National Security Advisor during the Iran-Contra affair and for being convicted of five felonies in relation to that scandal. A less well-known activity of Iran-Contra figures like Poindexter and Oliver North was their development of the Main Core database to be used in “continuity of government” protocols. Main Core was used to compile a list of US dissidents and “potential troublemakers” to be dealt with if the COG protocols were ever invoked. These protocols could be invoked for a variety of reasons, including widespread public opposition to a US military intervention abroad, widespread internal dissent, or a vaguely defined moment of “national crisis” or “time of panic.” Americans were not informed if their name was placed on the list, and a person could be added to the list for merely having attended a protest in the past, for failing to pay taxes, or for other, “often trivial,” behaviors deemed “unfriendly” by its architects in the Reagan administration.
In light of this, it was no exaggeration when New York Times columnist William Safire remarked that, with TIA, “Poindexter is now realizing his twenty-year dream: getting the ‘data-mining’ power to snoop on every public and private act of every American.”
The TIA program met with considerable citizen outrage after it was revealed to the public in early 2003. TIA’s critics included the American Civil Liberties Union, which claimed that the surveillance effort would “kill privacy in America” because “every aspect of our lives would be catalogued,” while several mainstream media outlets warned that TIA was “fighting terror by terrifying US citizens.” As a result of the pressure, DARPA changed the program’s name to Terrorist Information Awareness to make it sound less like a national-security panopticon and more like a program aiming specifically at terrorists in the post-9/11 era.
DARPA’s IOA, oversaw Total Information Awareness during its brief existence
The TIA projects were not actually closed down, however, with most moved to the classified portfolios of the Pentagon and US intelligence community. Some became intelligence funded and guided private-sector endeavors, such as Peter Thiel’s Palantir, while others resurfaced years later under the guise of combatting the COVID-19 crisis.
Soon after TIA was initiated, a similar DARPA program was taking shape under the direction of a close friend of Poindexter’s, DARPA program manager Douglas Gage. Gage’s project, LifeLog, sought to “build a database tracking a person’s entire existence” that included an individual’s relationships and communications (phone calls, mail, etc.), their media-consumption habits, their purchases, and much more in order to build a digital record of “everything an individual says, sees, or does.” LifeLog would then take this unstructured data and organize it into “discreet episodes” or snapshots while also “mapping out relationships, memories, events and experiences.”
LifeLog, per Gage and supporters of the program, would create a permanent and searchable electronic diary of a person’s entire life, which DARPA argued could be used to create next-generation “digital assistants” and offer users a “near-perfect digital memory.” Gage insisted, even after the program was shut down, that individuals would have had “complete control of their own data-collection efforts” as they could “decide when to turn the sensors on or off and decide who will share the data.” In the years since then, analogous promises of user control have been made by the tech giants of Silicon Valley, only to be broken repeatedly for profit and to feed the government’s domestic-surveillance apparatus.
The information that LifeLog gleaned from an individual’s every interaction with technology would be combined with information obtained from a GPS transmitter that tracked and documented the person’s location, audio-visual sensors that recorded what the person saw and said, as well as biomedical monitors that gauged the person’s health. Like TIA, LifeLog was promoted by DARPA as potentially supporting “medical research and the early detection of an emerging epidemic.”
Critics in mainstream media outlets and elsewhere were quick to point out that the program would inevitably be used to build profiles on dissidents as well as suspected terrorists. Combined with TIA’s surveillance of individuals at multiple levels, LifeLog went farther by “adding physical information (like how we feel) and media data (like what we read) to this transactional data.” One critic, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned at the time that the programs that DARPA was pursuing, including LifeLog, “have obvious, easy paths to Homeland Security deployments.”
At the time, DARPA publicly insisted that LifeLog and TIA were not connected, despite their obvious parallels, and that LifeLog would not be used for “clandestine surveillance.” However, DARPA’s own documentation on LifeLog noted that the project “will be able . . . to infer the user’s routines, habits and relationships with other people, organizations, places and objects, and to exploit these patterns to ease its task,” which acknowledged its potential use as a tool of mass surveillance.
In addition to the ability to profile potential enemies of the state, LifeLog had another goal that was arguably more important to the national-security state and its academic partners—the “humanization” and advancement of artificial intelligence. In late 2002, just months prior to announcing the existence of LifeLog, DARPA released a strategy document detailing development of artificial intelligence by feeding it with massive floods of data from various sources.
The post-9/11 military-surveillance projects—LifeLog and TIA being only two of them—offered quantities of data that had previously been unthinkable to obtain and that could potentially hold the key to achieving the hypothesized “technological singularity.” The 2002 DARPA document even discusses DARPA’s effort to create a brain-machine interface that would feed human thoughts directly into machines to advance AI by keeping it constantly awash in freshly mined data.
One of the projects outlined by DARPA, the Cognitive Computing Initiative, sought to develop sophisticated artificial intelligence through the creation of an “enduring personalized cognitive assistant,” later termed the Perceptive Assistant that Learns, or PAL. PAL, from the very beginning was tied to LifeLog, which was originally intended to result in granting an AI “assistant” human-like decision-making and comprehension abilities by spinning masses of unstructured data into narrative format.
The would-be main researchers for the LifeLog project also reflect the program’s end goal of creating humanized AI. For instance, Howard Shrobe at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and his team at the time were set to be intimately involved in LifeLog. Shrobe had previously worked for DARPA on the “evolutionary design of complex software” before becoming associate director of the AI Lab at MIT and has devoted his lengthy career to building “cognitive-style AI.” In the years after LifeLog was cancelled, he again worked for DARPA as well as on intelligence community–related AI research projects. In addition, the AI Lab at MIT was intimately connected with the 1980s corporation and DARPA contractor called Thinking Machines, which was founded by and/or employed many of the lab’s luminaries—including Danny Hillis, Marvin Minsky, and Eric Lander—and sought to build AI supercomputers capable of human-like thought. All three of these individuals were later revealed to be close associates of and/or sponsored by the intelligence-linked pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who also generously donated to MIT as an institution and was a leading funder of and advocate for transhumanist-related scientific research.
Soon after the LifeLog program was shuttered, critics worried that, like TIA, it would continue under a different name. For example, Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told VICE at the time of LifeLog’s cancellation, “It would not surprise me to learn that the government continued to fund research that pushed this area forward without calling it LifeLog.”
Along with its critics, one of the would-be researchers working on LifeLog, MIT’s David Karger, was also certain that the DARPA project would continue in a repackaged form. He told Wired that “I am sure such research will continue to be funded under some other title . . . I can’t imagine DARPA ‘dropping out’ of a such a key research area.”
The answer to these speculations appears to lie with the company that launched the exact same day that LifeLog was shuttered by the Pentagon: Facebook.
Thiel Information Awareness
After considerable controversy and criticism, in late 2003, TIA was shut down and defunded by Congress, just months after it was launched. It was only later revealed that that TIA was never actually shut down, with its various programs having been covertly divided up among the web of military and intelligence agencies that make up the US national-security state. Some of it was privatized.
The same month that TIA was pressured to change its name after growing backlash, Peter Thiel incorporated Palantir, which was, incidentally, developing the core panopticon software that TIA had hoped to wield. Soon after Palantir’s incorporation in 2003, Richard Perle, a notorious neoconservative from the Reagan and Bush administrations and an architect of the Iraq War, called TIA’s Poindexter and said he wanted to introduce him to Thiel and his associate Alex Karp, now Palantir’s CEO. According to a report in New York magazine, Poindexter “was precisely the person” whom Thiel and Karp wanted to meet, mainly because “their new company was similar in ambition to what Poindexter had tried to create at the Pentagon,” that is, TIA. During that meeting, Thiel and Karp sought “to pick the brain of the man now widely viewed as the godfather of modern surveillance.”
Peter Thiel speaks at the World Economic Forum in 2013, Source: Mirko Ries Courtesy for the World Economic Forum
Soon after Palantir’s incorporation, though the exact timing and details of the investment remain hidden from the public, the CIA’s In-Q-Tel became the company’s first backer, aside from Thiel himself, giving it an estimated $2 million. In-Q-Tel’s stake in Palantir would not be publicly reported until mid-2006.
The money was certainly useful. In addition, Alex Karp told the New York Times in October 2020, “the real value of the In-Q-Tel investment was that it gave Palantir access to the CIA analysts who were its intended clients.” A key figure in the making of In-Q-Tel investments during this period, including the investment in Palantir, was the CIA’s chief information officer, Alan Wade, who had been the intelligence community’s point man for Total Information Awareness. Wade had previously cofounded the post-9/11 Homeland Security software contractor Chiliad alongside Christine Maxwell, sister of Ghislaine Maxwell and daughter of Iran-Contra figure, intelligence operative, and media baron Robert Maxwell.
After the In-Q-Tel investment, the CIA would be Palantir’s only client until 2008. During that period, Palantir’s two top engineers—Aki Jain and Stephen Cohen—traveled to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia, every two weeks. Jain recalls making at least two hundred trips to CIA headquarters between 2005 and 2009. During those regular visits, CIA analysts “would test [Palantir’s software] out and offer feedback, and then Cohen and Jain would fly back to California to tweak it.” As with In-Q-Tel’s decision to invest in Palantir, the CIA’s chief information officer during this time remained one of TIA’s architects. Alan Wade played a key role in many of these meetings and subsequently in the “tweaking” of Palantir’s products.
Today, Palantir’s products are used for mass surveillance, predictive policing, and other disconcerting policies of the US national-security state. A telling example is Palantir’s sizable involvement in the new Health and Human Services–run wastewater surveillance program that is quietly spreading across the United States. As noted in a previous Unlimited Hangout report, that system is the resurrection of a TIA program called Biosurveillance. It is feeding all its data into the Palantir-managed and secretive HHS Protect data platform. The decision to turn controversial DARPA-led programs into a private ventures, however, was not limited to Thiel’s Palantir.
The Rise of Facebook
The shuttering of TIA at DARPA had an impact on several related programs, which were also dismantled in the wake of public outrage over DARPA’s post-9/11 programs. One of these programs was LifeLog. As news of the program spread through the media, many of the same vocal critics who had attacked TIA went after LifeLog with similar zeal, with Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists telling Wired at the time that “LifeLog has the potential to become something like ‘TIA cubed.’” LifeLog being viewed as something that would prove even worse than the recently cancelled TIA had a clear effect on DARPA, which had just seen both TIA and another related program cancelled after considerable backlash from the public and the press.
The firestorm of criticism of LifeLog took its program manager, Doug Gage, by surprise, and Gage has continued to assert that the program’s critics “completely mischaracterized” the goals and ambitions of the project. Despite Gage’s protests and those of LifeLog’s would-be researchers and other supporters, the project was publicly nixed on February 4, 2004. DARPA never provided an explanation for its quiet move to shutter LifeLog, with a spokesperson stating only that it was related to “a change in priorities” for the agency. On DARPA director Tony Tether’s decision to kill LifeLog, Gage later told VICE, “I think he had been burnt so badly with TIA that he didn’t want to deal with any further controversy with LifeLog. The death of LifeLog was collateral damage tied to the death of TIA.”
Fortuitously for those supporting the goals and ambitions of LifeLog, a company that turned out to be its private-sector analogue was born on the same day that LifeLog’s cancellation was announced. On February 4, 2004, what is now the world’s largest social network, Facebook, launched its website and quickly rose to the top of the social media roost, leaving other social media companies of the era in the dust.
Sean Parker of Founders Fund speaks during the LeWeb conference in 2011, Source: @Kmeron for LeWeb11 @ Les Docks de Paris
A few months into Facebook’s launch, in June 2004, Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz brought Sean Parker onto Facebook’s executive team. Parker, previously known for cofounding Napster, later connected Facebook with its first outside investor, Peter Thiel. As discussed, Thiel, at that time, in coordination with the CIA, was actively trying to resurrect controversial DARPA programs that had been dismantled the previous year. Notably, Sean Parker, who became Facebook’s first president, also had a history with the CIA, which recruited him at the age of sixteen soon after he had been busted by the FBI for hacking corporate and military databases. Thanks to Parker, in September 2004, Thiel formally acquired $500,000 worth of Facebook shares and was added its board. Parker maintained close ties to Facebook as well as to Thiel, with Parker being hired as a managing partner of Thiel’s Founders Fund in 2006.
Thiel and Facebook cofounder Mosokvitz became involved outside of the social network long after Facebook’s rise to prominence, with Thiel’s Founder Fund becoming a significant investor in Moskovitz’s company Asana in 2012. Thiel’s longstanding symbiotic relationship with Facebook cofounders extends to his company Palantir, as the data that Facebook users make public invariably winds up in Palantir’s databases and helps drive the surveillance engine Palantir runs for a handful of US police departments, the military, and the intelligence community. In the case of the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Palantir was also involved in utilizing Facebook data to benefit the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign.
Today, as recent arrests such as that of Daniel Baker have indicated, Facebook data is slated to help power the coming “war on domestic terror,” given that information shared on the platform is being used in “precrime” capture of US citizens, domestically. In light of this, it is worth dwelling on the point that Thiel’s exertions to resurrect the main aspects of TIA as his own private company coincided with his becoming the first outside investor in what was essentially the analogue of another DARPA program deeply intertwined with TIA.
Facebook, a Front
Because of the coincidence that Facebook launched the same day that LifeLog was shut down, there has been recent speculation that Zuckerberg began and launched the project with Moskovitz, Saverin, and others through some sort of behind-the-scenes coordination with DARPA or another organ of the national-security state. While there is no direct evidence for this precise claim, the early involvement of Parker and Thiel in the project, particularly given the timing of Thiel’s other activities, reveals that the national-security state was involved in Facebook’s rise. It is debatable whether Facebook was intended from its inception to be a LifeLog analogue or if it happened to be the social media project that fit the bill after its launch. The latter seems more likely, especially considering that Thiel also invested in another early social media platform, Friendster.
An important point linking Facebook and LifeLog is the subsequent identification of Facebook with LifeLog by the latter’s DARPA architect himself. In 2015, Gage toldVICE that “Facebook is the real face of pseudo-LifeLog at this point.” He tellingly added, “We have ended up providing the same kind of detailed personal information to advertisers and data brokers and without arousing the kind of opposition that LifeLog provoked.”
Users of Facebook and other large social media platforms have so far been content to allow these platforms to sell their private data so long as they publicly operate as private enterprises. Backlash only really emerged when such activities were publicly tied to the US government, and especially the US military, even though Facebook and other tech giants routinely share their users’ data with the national-security state. In practice, there is little difference between the public and private entities.
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, notably warned in 2019 that Facebook is just as untrustworthy as US intelligence, stating that “Facebook’s internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their capability, and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment. And damn the consequences.”
Snowden also stated in the same interview that “the more Google knows about you, the more Facebook knows about you, the more they are able . . . to create permanent records of private lives, the more influence and power they have over us.” This underscores how both Facebook and intelligence-linked Google have accomplished much of what LifeLog had aimed to do, but on a much larger scale than what DARPA had originally envisioned.
The reality is that most of the large Silicon Valley companies of today have been closely linked to the US national-security state establishment since their inception. Notable examples aside from Facebook and Palantir include Google and Oracle. Today these companies are more openly collaborating with the military-intelligence agencies that guided their development and/or provided early funding, as they are used to provide the data needed to fuel the newly announced war on domestic terror and its accompanying algorithms.
It is hardly a coincidence that someone like Peter Thiel, who built Palantir with the CIA and helped ensure Facebook’s rise, is also heavily involved in Big Data AI-driven “predictive policing” approaches to surveillance and law enforcement, both through Palantir and through his other investments. TIA, LifeLog, and related government and private programs and institutions launched after 9/11, were always intended to be used against the American public in a war against dissent. This was noted by their critics in 2003-4 and by those who have examined the origins of the “homeland security” pivot in the US and its connection to past CIA “counterterror” programs in Vietnam and Latin America.
Ultimately, the illusion of Facebook and related companies as being independent of the US national-security state has prevented a recognition of the reality of social media platforms and their long-intended, yet covert uses, which we are beginning to see move into the open following the events of January 6. Now, with billions of people conditioned to use Facebook and social media as part of their daily lives, the question becomes: If that illusion were to be irrevocably shattered today, would it make a difference to Facebook’s users? Or has the populace become so conditioned to surrendering their private data in exchange for dopamine-fueled social-validation loops that it no longer matters who ends up holding that data?
Part 2 of this series on Facebook will explore how the social media platform has grown into a behemoth that is much more extensive than what LifeLog’s program managers had originally envisioned. In concert with military contractors and former heads of DARPA, Facebook has spent the last several years doing two key things: (1) preparing to play a much larger role in surveillance and data mining than it currently does; and (2) advancing the development of a “humanized” AI, a major objective of LifeLog.
Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.
In the past several years, it has been fashionable to gawk in horror at China’s “social credit system,” an all-encompassing integration of surveillance, finance and state. Writing for The Triple Helix, Brown’s student publication focused on science and society, Priya Bhanot ’23 called China’s surveillance apparatus “Black Mirror Brought to Life.” China’s reputation for ubiquitous surveillance isn’t unjustified; a 2020 review of surveillance camera research by Comparitech found that of the world’s top 20 cities by cameras-per-capita, 18 are in China. But ubiquitous surveillance is far closer to home than Americans might think. As of 2020, Brown University has deployed one surveillance camera for approximately every 18 community members, placing it just shy of London, but ahead of every Chinese city except Taiyuan and Wuxi. In other words, Brown has about as many surveillance cameras as it does full-time faculty, of which it currently has 816!
It wasn’t always like this. In the span of two decades, Brown University quietly deployed an expansive surveillance apparatus, unbeknownst to many in the community; it’s well past time we critically examined our University’s pervasive surveillance of College Hill.
In 2000, the University only had 60 surveillance cameras, which the University mostly used to surveil parking lots and computer labs; a smattering watched Faunce’s club storage area, too. That year, Brown overhauled its fragmented VCR-based recording system into a fully-digital one, enabling Public Safety to monitor its cameras en masse from a central command center. This infrastructure investment marked a paradigm shift in Brown’s capacity for video surveillance.
By 2003, the total had increased to 105 cameras, with some now watching Faunce’s game room and the Main Green. According to The Chronicle, this proliferation of cameras into recreation spaces drew students’ first complaints about camera surveillance:
At Brown University, students have not complained about the cameras that watch over areas such as the basement of a student center. But students did object to a proposal to place cameras facing the main green of campus — to help manage crowds during commencement and other major events — says David Cardoza, card-access manager for the university’s security department.
Nevertheless, Brown continued to deploy new surveillance cameras in public spaces. By 2007, Brown had deployed 185 cameras, with 16 newly-installed cameras monitoring the Friedman Study Center in the Sciences Library. By 2011, Brown had deployed 250 cameras.
From here, the rate of installation increased drastically. In December 2013, the Campus Safety Task Force touted that Brown had deployed 430 cameras and a new array of 47 storage units for their footage. As of February 2020, the latest date for which data is publicly available, Brown University operates approximately 800 surveillance cameras. Following a spree of hateful graffiti in Hegeman Hall, the University installed its first cameras inside a dormitory. At the time of writing, the cameras remain installed.
This explosive proliferation of surveillance cameras at Brown University has progressed virtually unchecked and without community input. University Chief of Police Mark Porter suggested that the proliferation of cameras may reduce students’ fear of crime, but campus sentiment is considerably less enthusiastic about surveillance. In fall 2010, Herald editorial cartoonist Evan Donahue ’11 posted hoax letters in Keeney for a class project that announced the installation of security cameras around Keeney and Pembroke. Dylan Field ’13, a Residential Counselor in Keeney, told The Herald he was worried about the possibility of camera installation. Richard Bova, then-senior associate dean of Residential and Dining Services, categorically rejected the letter’s premise: “There has never been a plan — never will be a plan — to install cameras in any residence halls.” Of course, there eventually was such a plan.
Statements from DPS staff suggest a position of seemingly-limitless surveillance. “When you’re getting into the investigative side, you couldn’t have enough cameras,” said DPS Technical and Support Systems Manager David Cardoza to The Herald in 2008. Yet, in a 2011 interview with The Herald, Porter estimated that only about six crimes had been solved with the help of cameras. These solved crimes included the theft of a laptop from the Brown Bookstore and the truly shocking case of a thrown soda can in Faunce.
The successful use of cameras as an investigative aid in these incidents fails to justify the monetary expense of the camera system (exceeding $300,000 in 2000), much less the cost of students’ privacy. So what good are they? Speaking to The Herald in 2011, Porter instead emphasized the cameras’ purpose to deter, rather than aid in investigations: “We know that when we install them, that people will know they’re there.” This troubling justification invokes the specter of pre-crime — the almost-unfalsifiable presumption that there are agents on College Hill who would terrorize our community if not for the thin blue line of ubiquitous surveillance.
This justification warrants skepticism. A 40-year systemic review and meta-analysis published in 2019 found that passively monitored surveillance camera systems — like that adopted by Brown University — had no significant effect of crime reduction. Nor is it credible that “people will know” that cameras are there. Katie Goddard ’12 remarked to The Herald in 2011, “I haven’t noticed them”; neither had Daniel Valmas ’12, also interviewed by The Herald. Indeed, DPS makes no effort to draw attention to its surveillance cameras.
Rather, Brown University outright obscures the extent of its surveillance of College Hill. In 2008, the University declined to release its policy governing surveillance cameras to The Herald, or to provide a list of camera locations, or comment on how long recorded footage is archived for. The University’s surveillance policy, location of cameras and data retention practices remain completely opaque.
How can the Brown community engage in an informed discussion about surveillance if they are unaware of the scope of the surveillance? Until the University embraces transparency, the practice of “sousveillance” — the monitoring of people and institutions of authority by ordinary citizens — provides a means by which we students can educate ourselves and our peers. Since 2017, my friends and I have marked the locations of approximately 150 surveillance cameras on College Hill. While this is only a fraction of Brown University’s more than 800 cameras, the scope of the surveillance is staggering: It is impossible to cross (or even approach) Brown University without being surveilled. I encourage you to try.
John Wrenn MS’18 PhD’21 is a fifth-year doctoral candidate. He can be contacted at me@jswrenn.com, where he would be delighted to instruct you in the sousveillance of Brown University. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
A video out of Chile shows an elderly woman being refused entry to a supermarket because she didn’t obtain the necessary government permission to buy groceries under the country’s lockdown rules.
The clip shows the woman, who is apparently 100-years-old, appearing to be confused as she is denied access by security guards in uniform.
“Unfortunately government measures are not intended for the most vulnerable, not everyone handles the technology, not everyone has access to the internet,” tweeted Radio Villa Francia along with the video.
In Chile, people have to apply for a “safe conduct pass” online, which only allows them to buy essential food items twice a week between the hours of 5am and 9pm.
Under the country’s ‘sanitary quarantine’, citizens must request “temporary instruments that authorize people to carry out fundamental activities and stock up on essential goods and services” in their communes.
The elderly lady’s failure to obtain the pass may have been related to her presumed inability to navigate the Internet.
The video serves as a chilling reminder as to what could be introduced in the west once vaccine passports and Chinese-style social credit score programs are implemented.
In the UK, vaccine passports won’t initially be required to enter venues like pubs, restaurants and grocery stores, but the government refused to rule it out longer term in their planning document.
In China, citizens who allow their social credit score to dip as a result of committing relatively minor infractions are denied the right to purchase things like plane and train tickets.
They are the stewards
Of the whole universe
Masters by force
Commanders without laws.
[…]
They eat everything
They eat everything
They eat everything
And leave nothing.
José “Zeca” Afonso, “Os Vampiros” (1963)
Fifteen years ago, a good Uruguayan friend said to me, “Tom, we are at the end of an era, not just any historical period, but an era. I don’t know what will come next, but I’m sure that almost all the structures that regulate our world today are no longer valid.”
Although I was well into the process of radically questioning the fantasies pumped out daily in my country about the culminating timelessness of the “liberal” order erected by the United States at the end of World War II, the flat, confident tone of my friend from down under still managed to disturb me.
And it set in motion a very long series of reflections about the enormous blindness that people, even so-called “thinking” people, who live and work at the heart of the world system of economic power and cultural production, often suffer.
It has been stated on more than one occasion that the modern novel, defined among other things by its extraordinary diversity of voices, and the constant dialogue between them, was born with the publication of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
And within this same critical framework, many have seen its protagonist’s famous shout of “I know who I am” as a statement of principles for the emergence of modern man, a being who, in contrast to his medieval predecessor, placed much greater value on his own perceptions of reality and demonstrated an increased confidence in his own ability to successfully navigate the multiple contingencies of life.
It was not so much that the role played by God in the previous age was excluded from the mental framework of man. It was rather that man appropriated a much larger parcel of the responsibilities and privileges that social pedagogies had said belonged exclusively to God or his “chosen” representatives on earth.
We can say that, in a sense, the modern man or, rather, the small educated class that adhered to the new principles of modernity, began the process that continues to this day of progressively deifying themselves while systematically ignoring and denigrating the accumulated “natural” wisdom of those who could not, or did not want to share the new vision of reality.
The first sustained dissent against this radical change of criteria from within the bourgeois class came from the romantics of central Europe, followed by thinkers such as Nietzsche, Bergson and Ortega who warned, each in his own way, about the very harmful secondary effects of the process, at first sight so laudable, of separating man from his most primary instincts and customs.
But, surprisingly for many, the vigorous resurrection of Western culture (1945-1975) after its two clear attempts at self-immolation (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) invalidated the pessimistic views of these thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Or perhaps not.
As Pasolini tried to convince us in the 1960s, and even more fervently in the early 1970s before his death, in all likelihood, at the hands of the Italian deep state, we should not and cannot place our faith in cultural recovery based on the propagation of consumerism.
This, for a very simple reason: consumerism, with its absolute contempt for the past, is nothing more and nothing less than anti-culture, a force, as noted by his contemporary Debord, that devours everything, including the idea, so essential for the growth and maintenance of modernity, of the willful person disposed to challenge the orthodoxies propagated by the great centers of political and social power.
If there is a master trope in the discourse of consumerism, it is this: “You are defective and we, only we, can repair you.” Listening to this repeatedly in advertising on a day-to-day basis, works, in time, and in the effective absence of any other attractive model of the good life, like the waves that wear down the sharp edges the stones located near the tide line at the beach.
Looking at our covidophobic, or perhaps more accurately, covidophilic world of 2021, it seems clearer and clearer that the long agony of modernity is finally over. Westerners are very tired, so tired that they are not even interested in minimally investigating the very questionable logics and findings of the oracles of the new church of biosafety.
The signs of what Unamuno called “the reason of unreason” are everywhere.
Like the peasants of yesteryear with their garlic necklaces, people now devotedly wear masks that, no matter what the public health authorities and their media lackeys say and repeat, have no clear cut, scientifically proven efficacy against the transmission of the virus.
And they accept as unquestionably legitimate methods for the containment of the virus freedom-robbing lockdowns that, when studied rigorously in comparative framework, show no clear sign of having positively affected infection curves or death rates in the places where they have been employed
In effect, consumerism has done what none of the reactionary movements of the past or the many self-inflicted wounds of the Enlightenment were able to do: empty the modern being of his desire to manage life along rational lines and in the expectation of ever greater freedoms. After sixty years of being bombarded by images designed to make us constantly doubt the often miraculous self-sufficiency of our bodies and our individual powers of discernment, we have surrendered to the law of “experts” paid by, and loyal to, big business.
Returning to Cervantes, it could be said that we no longer “know who we are” and it seems that, for most people, this loss of will and prerogative is not the slight bit problematic.
Why worry? Why look at the previously essential question of how to manage both risk and our own libidinal forces, they say, when we have well-credentialed sages, working hand-in-glove with power who, like the princes of the church in days past, clearly know how so much more about our defective lives than do we ourselves.
Thomas S. Harrington is an essayist, photographer and Professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford (USA). In addition to his academic work, he is a frequent commentator on politics and culture in the US press and a number of international media outlets, especially the Catalan-language press. You can find much of his public writing, photography and press interviews on his website. A selection of his academic writings can be found at Academia.edu
Reporters for the right-leaning news outlet Rebel News have posted videos showing employees being detained by police at an Airbnb location where they were working covering Covid-19 lockdown measures.
In one video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Rebel News reporter David Menzies can be seen having a tense exchange with police officers, which eventually leads to him being hauled away and detained.
Another reporter for the outlet, Keene Bexte, tweeted that he had also been arrested.
Rebel News co-founder Ezra Levant promised he would be suing the officers for their conduct and in another video can be seen taking down one officer’s name.
According to a statement from the Canadian outlet, police arrived at an Airbnb where Rebel News journalists were staying to cover anti-lockdown protests and Covid-19-related arrests and forced everyone out and conducted a “room to room” search.
“When we asked them what the ‘crime’ was, all they could come up with was that our staying in the hotel was an illegal ‘gathering,’ contrary to Quebec’s lockdown laws,” they said.
The outlet added that they were staying in a “registered, legal hotel rental on Airbnb” and fewer guests than the place was built for.
Levant claims the outlet’s unflattering reporting on Montreal police and their enforcement of Covid-19 restrictions is what prompted the visit and search of the houseboat being utilized by the reporters.
“This is their revenge,” he said. “Because we report on their misconduct.”
Levant is already fundraising to support his lawsuit against police, alleging the search and arrests were unjustified and claiming officers have repeatedly harassed Rebel News reporters in recent weeks and made bigoted remarks.
The reaction to the arrests has been mixed at best. While many have expressedshock at the police behavior and allegations from Rebel News on social media, others have simply used the opportunity to blast the highly-controversial outlet, which is often dismissed in mainstream media as a “far-right” enterprise pushing misinformation.
Montreal on Saturday saw a mass protest against the strict Covid-19 measures recently imposed by the authorities in Quebec. An 8pm curfew has been reintroduced in the city, while all the non-essential businesses and schools have been told to shut down until at least April 19. According to the independent news outlet Westphalian Times, the organizers of the protest march sought to highlight the “negative impacts restrictions in schools have on the well-being & development of children.”
Updates:
Something’s deeply wrong with Montreal’s @SPVM police. They arrest, handcuff & ticket our reporters, asking if we’re “Jews” or “Jew media”. They gave us $10,000+ in fines even though reporters are legally exempt from lockdowns. Please help us fight back at https://t.co/roDg8jvAa1pic.twitter.com/GPqTQAGr2f
According to the UK Government, as of 27 March 2021, 126,515 people have died as a result of contracting Covid-19, and an additional 21,610 people have died with COVID-19 on their death certificates.
The government alleges, therefore, that a total of 148,125 people in the UK have died as a result of COVID-19. As we shall see, this claim is not credible.
Justifiable Policy?
Claims about mortality have been used by both the government and the mainstream media to justify the policy response.
The pace of change driven by that policy response has been astonishing. With Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s recent announcement of the creation of the UK Health Security Agency and its commitment to take “action to mitigate infectious diseases and other hazards to health before they materialise,” it is clear the government’s new (ab)normal is here to stay.
There is clearly an agenda; one entirely founded upon the idea that COVID-19 presents a significant threat. The primary evidence offered to substantiate this claim is suggested COVID-19 mortality.
Age Standardised Mortality
Just like nearly every other mortality cause, COVID-19 risks increase proportionately with age. Statistics for those of working age show a population mortality risk of between 0.0166% and 0.0046%, depending upon who you believe. The COVID-19 risk to the working age population is statistically insignificant. For the under 18’s it is statistically zero.
The average age of COVID-19 death is just over 82. When we look at standard mortality distribution, there is no observable impact from COVID-19.
UK all cause mortality doesn’t suggest any need to panic either.
The ONS released data estimating a total of 607,173 deaths from all causes in England and Wales for 2020. Given demographic changes over time, the ONS use Age Standardised Mortality Rates (ASMR’s) to calculate relative death rates. The ASMR showed that 2020 was the worst year for mortality in the last decade.
ASMR’s were in continual decline throughout the post war period. That decline stopped abruptly in 2009 as the economic impact of the global financial crisis took its toll on public health. Thereafter it showed a marginal rise to 2019. Mortality in 2020 and 2021 should be seen in the context of a global financial crisis that dwarfs the credit crunch of 2008.
ASMR’s fluctuate annually and 2020 showed a significant increase above the 5 year average mortality rate. This was higher than most rises but by no means “unprecedented.” ASMR’s in England since 1938 show similar increases in 1947, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1963, 1970, 1972, 1976, 1985, 1993 and 2014.
Most of these spikes in ASMR’s were in the region of 35 to 45 points. For example, in 2014 the ASMR rose by 40.2, in 1993 by 38.4 and in 1985 by 46.3 points. It rose by 90.5 in 1947, by 83.5 in 1963, it went up by 104.9 in 1970 and in 1951 by 216.3. So the 2020 rise of 118.5 is by no means the worst.
The death toll in 1951 was attributed to the the influenza epidemic which struck some parts of the UK (most notably Liverpool) but left others relatively unscathed. To this day science has struggled to account for this.
2020 not only didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the post war period, it didn’t have the highest mortality rate in the 21st century either. 2020 ranked 9th, out of 20 consecutive years, for all cause mortality in England and Wales. It was the 11th least dangerous year in the last 50.
While there is no statistical evidence of an unprecedented global pandemic in England and Wales (nor in Scotland and Northern Ireland) this tells us little about how many deaths were genuinely attributable to COVID-19. Nor does it indicate at which point we should sacrifice our rights, freedoms, children’s educations and economy in the service of public health.
We certainly didn’t sacrifice them in 1947, 1963, 1970, nor even in 1951. Why was 2020 different?
PCR Does Not Mean COVID
For the purposes of this analysis, we will use the government’s higher claim of 148,000 deaths. The vast majority of these deaths were attributed based upon a positive RT-PCR test. The UK Coronavirus Act makes a clear distinction between the virus and the disease. It states:
Coronavirus means severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2); coronavirus disease means COVID-19 (the official designation of the disease which can be caused by coronavirus).
SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 are not the same thing. The detected presence of SARS-CoV-2 does not mean the person has or will develop COVID-19.
Therefore the attribution of mortality based solely upon a positive test result in no way proves the person died of COVID-19. The extent to which the disease caused or contributed towards a death is a precise medical assessment. The UK government created a death certification and registration process where this did not occur in an unknown number of cases. We need to know what that number is.
COVID-19 has a distinct presentation that requires careful diagnosis. The unique symptoms are severe hypoxemia (low blood oxygen levels), hypercapnia (elevated blood Co2 saturation) and unusually no corresponding loss of respiratory system compliance.
Measurement of gaseous exchange and fluid retention in the lungs appears normal, meanwhile the patient, in serious cases, struggles to breath. This is unlike other influenza like illnesses (ILI’s).
Yet the NHS describe a list of COVID-19 symptoms that could be attributable to any ILI. A high temperature, continuous cough and loss of taste and smell are associated with many. While this is public information, intended to guide our decision to seek medical advice or a test, the list of possible causes expands further given that the NHS state just one of these symptoms possibly indicates COVID-19.
Without precise symptomatic diagnosis, it is difficult to distinguish COVID-19 from a range of other respiratory illnesses. A study from the University of Toronto found:
The symptoms can vary, with some patients remaining asymptomatic, while others present with fever, cough, fatigue, and a host of other symptoms. The symptoms may be similar to patients with influenza or the common cold.
A Cochran Review meta analysis of available studies looked for a clear definition of COVID-19 symptoms. Published in June 2020, the reviewers noted:
The individual signs and symptoms included in this review appear to have very poor diagnostic properties … Based on currently available data, neither absence nor presence of signs or symptoms are accurate enough to rule in or rule out disease.
Even using advanced diagnostics, such as a computer tomography (CT) scan, won’t always provide a clear result. A study attempting to improve differential diagnosis using CT scans found:
Although typical and atypical CT image findings of COVID-19 are reported in current studies, the CT image features of COVID-19 overlap with those of viral pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Hence, it is difficult to make an exclusive diagnosis.
Regardless of their SARS-CoV-2 test status, without a very accurate diagnosis of symptoms, suspected COVID-19 patients could be suffering from one among a range of ILI’s. Again, a positive test result does not mean the patient died from COVID-19, even if they had corresponding symptoms.
Notifications of Infectious Diseases
In England and Wales it is a legal requirement for all registered medical practitioners to notify their local health authority of any suspected cases of notifiable diseases. The list of Notifiable Infectious Diseases (NOIDS) includes COVID-19. This is not optional.
All diagnosing doctors must complete a NOIDS report upon making a diagnosis. Testing laboratories are also required to notify Public Health England (PHE) of positive tests for notifiable diseases.
According to the fact checker FullFact there were 18,152 COVID-19 notifications made by doctors in the whole of 2020.
Yet the government claim that there were 70,853 COVID-19 deaths, never mind cases, in England and Wales in the same year.
Fullfact offered an explanation for this apparent huge discrepancy:
People with Covid symptoms are advised to get a test, but not to visit their doctor, which may be part of the reason why doctors reported so few cases of the disease through NOIDS. Since Covid became widespread in the UK, and began to be monitored in other ways, it is also possible that doctors felt there was little need to continue notifying PHE about each case.
This is not credible. While it is true that people were told not to go to a doctor if they suspected they had COVID-19, a diagnosis by a doctor was still necessary at some point. Self diagnosis doesn’t usually afford access to hospital treatment. The suggestion by FullFact that doctors unilaterally decided not to bother with their statutory obligations is ridiculous.
What this massive difference between claimed cases, subsequent COVID-19 mortality and NOIDS indicates, is that Doctors were largely reliant upon laboratory testing to fulfil the duty to notify the authorities. This adds considerable weight to the notion that laboratory testing was the leading determinant in the overwhelming majority of COVID-19 diagnosis.
Until mid August 2020, a UK COVID-19 death was reported if the decedent had tested positive at any point during the preceding months. An individual may have have tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in March, have died of cancer in August and subsequently have been recorded as a COVID-19 statistic.
The scientific rationale for this did not exist. Research conducted by scientists at Oxford University analysed the COVID-19 Hospitalisation in England Surveillance System (CHESS) and calculated the average time between infection (positive test) and mortality to be 26.8 days.
And so, in response to public and scientific pressure this approach changed to only recording a COVID-19 death within 28 days of a positive test. Still the UK government would not let go of its inflated number system, adding nothing but statistical confusion, they announced:
In England, a new weekly set of figures will also be published, showing the number of deaths that occur within 60 days of a positive test. Deaths that occur after 60 days will also be added to this figure if COVID-19 appears on the death certificate.
The August methodological change reduced claimed COVID-19 deaths by 5,377 in England alone. This didn’t make any difference to the number of people who had died from COVID-19, it just changed the number of people who had reportedly died from COVID-19.
This wasn’t the only notable change to the data gathering process. Just before the significant spring spike in mortality, on the 30th March 2020, the MSM reported that the government had instructed the ONS to change the way they record COVID-19 deaths. Hitherto the ONS only reported a COVID-19 death if it was recorded as the direct or underlying cause. This was changed to recording “mentions” of COVID-19. A spokesperson for the ONS said:
It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.
The reporting of COVID-19 comorbidity rates was“paused” in July and has yet to resume. The final published ONS analysis that directly reported the number of pre-exiting conditions for deaths “with” COVID-19 mentioned on the death certificate, was released for the period ending 30 June 2020.
From this we learned that 91.1% of alleged COVID deaths had at least 1 serious additional comorbidity. The mean number of comorbidities for a those under 70 was 2.1 and for the vast majority over 70 it was 2.3.
It is preposterous to claim that a decedent who had cancer, pneumonia and had just had surgery, but tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 four weeks earlier, could reasonably be categorised as a COVID-19 death. Yet that is precisely what happened, and continues to happen to this day.
Covid-19 Cures the Flu
COVID-19 also cured influenza and other respiratory disease, such as adenovirus. Early January is always a period of notable influenza outbreaks, resultant hospital admissions and mortality. This is evident if we look at PHE’s Weekly Influenza Report for week 2 in any year prior to 2020.
In 2020, according to the newly combined PHE Weekly Influenza and COVID Report, there have been virtually no cases of influenza, treatment or related deaths.
The ONS note all the details on a death certificate. In their mortality roundup for the January to August 2020 period they stated:
Influenza and pneumonia was mentioned on more death certificates than COVID-19, however COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death in over three times as many deaths between January and August 2020.
How can flu and pneumonia possibly be on more death certificates than COVID-19 if, as the media and PHE allege, it has been wiped out? It seems the medical profession didn’t get the memo.
A Systemic Catch-22
A positive SARS-CoV-2 test appears to be the primary reason for attribution of mortality. Only the most fastidious diagnosis can differentiate between COVID-19 symptoms and other ILI’s. Is it credible to believe that flu and pneumonia are on more death certificates but that COVID-19 is deemed the cause of death on three times as many Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (MCCD’s)?
These are somewhat rhetorical questions. The reason why bizarre anomalies like this occurred is because recording COVID-19 as the cause of death was practically unavoidable.
The Coronavirus Act overhauled the MCCD and death registration processes. In addition, World Health Organisation Coding changes and guidance issued by the NHS and other medical authorities combined to create a systemic Catch-22.
In England and Wales an MCCD is completed online using the WHO’s recommended coding. The MCCD is split into sections. Part 1. a) “Disease or condition directly leading to death”; b) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (a)”; and c) “Other disease or condition, if any, leading to (b)”.
Part 2 records “Other significant conditions contributing to the death, but not related to the disease or condition causing it.” For example, a person may have died from heart failure caused by pneumonia but obesity, though not directly related to the immediate cause of death, could have contributed and would therefore be recorded in Part 2.
In the case of respiratory disease, the direct cause of death could be Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). This may be brought on by, for example, pneumonia which was caused by influenza. In this instance the direct cause of death would be recorded in Part 1. a) as ARDS, prompted by pneumonia in Part1. b), and the underlying cause would be set as influenza in Part 1. c).
The WHO Family of International Classifications (WHOFIC) Network Classification and Statistics Advisory Committee (CSAC) created new International Classification of Diseases codes (ICD-10 codes) for COVID-19. If the decedent had tested positive, or had been in contact with anyone else who had, a recorded COVID-19 death was practically a fait accompli.
A “confirmed case” was dependent solely upon a positive test result and was given the code U07.1. Observable symptoms were not necessary for U07.1 code to be recorded on a death certificate.
A suspected COVID-19 case was coded as U07.2. A decedent known to have had contact with a SARS-CoV-2 positive person who, while neither testing positive nor having any symptoms themselves, was deemed a suspected/probable COVID-19 case and given the code U07.2.
Neither the U07.1 nor the U07.2 codes required any evidence that the decedent had COVID-19.
As the U07.1 code indicated a “confirmed case,” unless the decedent passed away from something obviously unrelated, such as head trauma, a SARS-CoV-2 positive test would almost automatically confirm COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death.
A death due to COVID-19 is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death. A death due to COVID-19 may not be attributed to another disease (e.g. cancer).
A clinically compatible illness could be any ILI. Even if the individual died from cancer, as long as they tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, or the Doctor suspected respiratory distress, the death would be registered as “due to” COVID-19. COVID-19 would again be the reported as the underlying cause.
Additional WHO guidance stated:
COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death. Although both categories, U07.1 … and U07.2 … are suitable for cause of death coding … it is recommended, for mortality purposes only, to code COVID-19 provisionally to U07.1 unless it is stated as probable or suspected.
If a doctor was uncertain and merely suspected a probable COVID-19 case, they were clearly advised to record it on the MCCD as a confirmed case (U07.1 and not U07.2). Again, ensuring it would be reported as the “underlying cause.”
Deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) include those with an underlying cause, or any mention, of U07.1 (COVID-19, virus identified) or U07.2 (COVID-19, virus not identified) …
If the Doctor held firm and coded COVID-19 as U07.2 on Part 2 of the MCCD, the ONS (and the NRS and NISA) would still report it as a COVID-19 death.
In the Clear
The Coronavirus Act indemnified all NHS doctors against any claims of malpractice or negligence. It removed the need for a second medical opinion (Medical Examiner), it effectively ruled out both post-mortem examinations and jury-led coroner’s inquests, allowed virtually anyone to act as the qualified informant and facilitated rapid cremation.
In response to the Coronavirus Act and WHO IC10 coding, the NHS issued guidance to doctors for the completion of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD). The COVID-19 death certification and registration process they produced beggars belief. Under the guidance, acting on their own without any corroborating opinion:
Any medical practitioner with GMC registration can sign the MCCD, even if they did not attend the deceased during their last illness.
Attend doesn’t mean examine either. Checking in with the decedent via Zoom is sufficient. Failing that, if the MCCD signing doctor has only seen the decedent after death, providing they have tested positive, a review of their notes is still sufficient to record a COVID-19 death. The NHS stated COVID-19 could be recorded wherever:
A medical practitioner has attended the deceased (including visual/video consultation) within 28 days before death, or viewed the body in person after death.
In keeping with the WHO coding guidelines, there isn’t even any need for a positive test result. The NHS guidance added:
If before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID-19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death … In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.
The NHS then created a system of remote death certification:
During periods of excess deaths due to COVID-19, healthcare providers are encouraged to redeploy medical practitioners whose role does not usually include direct patient care, such as some medical examiners, to provide indirect support by working as dedicated certifiers, completing MCCDs.
These dedicated certifiers, though medically qualified, are tasked with signing off COVID-19 MCCD’s. GP’s and hospital physicians gather reports, perhaps from a review of the deceased’s medical notes or a video conference with a care home provider, and pass that information to the dedicated COVID-19 certifier for MCCD completion.
The NHS advised that no proof was required for the attribution of a COVID-19 death. They stated:
Without diagnostic proof, if appropriate and to avoid delay, medical practitioners can circle ‘2’ in the MCCD (information from post-mortem may be available later)
This suggestion that a post mortem may be available is implausible.
If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.
Bearing in mind that the WHO had instructed suspected U07.2 deaths to be coded as confirmed U07.1 deaths, the chance of anything other than confirmed COVID-19 death reaching a pathologist is extremely remote. Any MCCD signed “without diagnostic proof” would almost certainly be agreed by the pathologist without further scrutiny. The mere act of putting COVID-19 anywhere on the MCCD was enough to negate the need for a post mortem.
This new death certification system, specifically designed for COVID-19, has understandably caused confusion. The British Medical Association’s verification of death guidance advises that if no signing doctor has seen the decedent prior to completing the MCCD they should refer it to the coroner. However, this was only a policy recommendation not a legal requirement.
Contradicting this, the Chief Coroner advised:
COVID-19 is a naturally occurring disease and therefore is capable of being a natural cause of death … The aim of the system should be that every death from COVID-19 which does not in law require referral to the coroner should be dealt with via the MCCD process.
This means that even if a coroner receives a referral from a doctor, they will be highly likely to automatically approve the MCCD without further inquiry. Since a post mortem has already effectively been ruled out, there will be little point in the coroner investigating further.
NHS staff and carers who may have been uncomfortable with all this have been under no illusions. The use of draconian Hospital Trust gagging orders (non disclosure agreements) are widely reported. Carers who have spoken out have been sacked.
To finalise this unbelievable COVID-19 death registration system, the Coronavirus Act also withdrew the standard second opinion required prior to cremation. The need to complete Cremation form 5 was suspended for all COVID-19 deaths.
Alleged COVID-19 decedents can be cremated without any clear evidence that they ever had the disease, regardless of their family’s wishes, swiftly ending any chance of any investigation by sceptical family members.
What was the Cause of Death?
SAGE assessed the UK mean operational false positive rate (FPR) for RT-PCR to be 2.3% of all conducted tests. The government say they have conducted just over 118M tests of which 4.3M were positive. This includes an unknown number of multiple tests of the same individual. A mean FPR of 2.3% suggests 2.7M of those 4.3M positive tests were false positives. This equates to 62.7% of all positive test results.
As we have already discussed it is highly likely that laboratory testing was the primary determinant for a diagnosis of COVID-19. Therefore it is not unreasonable to surmise that at least 50% of claimed COVID-19 deaths were attributed on the basis of false positives. We can halve the claimed 148,000 to 74,000 COVID-19 deaths.
The 2020 ONS mortality data for England showed a reduction in deaths from a number of other causes.
Deaths from Ischaemic heart diseases were 1,450 below the 5 year average. Cerebrovascular disease was down by 2,276, malignant respiratory neoplasm by 1,537, chronic lower respiratory disease by 2,764 and influenza and pneumonia deaths were 7,313 below the 5 year average. An apparent reduction of 15,340 deaths from other causes.
It seems highly likely that these deaths were wrongly recorded as COVID-19.
As we have seen above, approximately 90% of supposed COVID-19 decedents had at least one other comorbidity. Using the Government’s 148,125 figure, we might claim, therefore that only something like 15,000 of these died of, rather than with.
Is this claim justifiable? Well, consider this:
The Department of Health and Social Care published a study of residents in care homes which purported to show the total number of confirmed cases. Among this number they claimed:
80.9% of residents who tested positive were asymptomatic.
A meta analysis by the Oxford Centre for Evidence Based Medicine found that asymptomatic rates among those who tested positive varied between 5% – 80%. If there are no symptoms, then the disease cannot have contributed towards a death.
Taking everything into account, from high rates of comorbidity, to low rates of symptomatic individuals, the impact of false positives on testing and a death certification regime heavily biased towards recording COVID-19 as the underlying cause, then it is reasonable to conclude that the total number of deaths from Covid-19 is not 148,000, nor 126,000, but much closer to 15,000.
IN THE early stages of the ongoing ‘war on terror’, which started twenty years ago, a nebulous conception of the enemy, non-existent victory conditions and the consistent dishonesty of warmongering politicians such as Blair led some to wonder if the threat of the global ‘Axis of Evil’ had been exaggerated to achieve some other set of goals.
Today, in similar circumstances of unanswered questions and ambiguous realities underpinned by systematic deception, reinforced by Boris Johnson on Monday as he launched the new phase of the psychological and economic war he is waging on the British people – vaccine passports (and after that?) – this question is being asked:
Is there a pandemic? Was there ever a pandemic?
Perhaps the most important point to grasp is that a pandemic is a construct, not an object. There is nothing you can point at which is the pandemic, only various data points indicating that one exists.
The World Health Organisation changed its definition in 2008 to exclude the criterion of ‘enormous numbers of deaths and illness’. In other words, the definition of a pandemic is ultimately a matter of interpretation. There is no data that currently supports the claim there is a pandemic in Britain at this moment, and whether any data ever did is doubtful..
The scientific process has happened in reverse. Starting in January last year, the existence of a deadly new pandemic, unlike anything previously confronted, was conjectured on the basis of terrifying rumours and unreliable reports from China, not scientifically established facts.
Once the existence of an extraordinary pandemic was assumed, extraordinary measures were justified to fight it, including the rapid deployment of highly unreliable PCR protocols developed by the Gates Foundation-funded Christian Drosten, shock propaganda messaging, a massive and drastic reduction in health care provision (which has functionally destroyed the NHS in order to ‘protect’ it) and de facto euthanasia policies in care homes, based on Neil Ferguson’s Gates Foundation-funded models.
Compromised administrative procedures recorded deaths as lives lost to the pandemic, providing further evidence for its existence.
As is now well known, an overwhelming majority of pandemic casualties also suffered from other conditions and the average age of victims tracks life expectancy in every country.
If the pandemic had not been assumed to exist, and the reckless and cynical interventions against it had not taken place, how would anyone know there was one?
Data clearly demonstrates that lockdowns and related policies were never necessary or effective. Experimental therapies have been deployed which are unreliable and potentially dangerous. Vaccination may or may not prevent contagion or transmission. The fact that governments and their paid experts are unable or unwilling to incorporate these matters into their thinking testifies either to their sinister intentions or the extent to which their mental processes have been corrupted.
Either they believe that some clandestine end justifies repressive and deceptive means, or else they are insane, or mindless through conformism: there is no other explanation.
Phenomenologically, the most important evidence for the existence of the pandemic is its external signifiers, especially face masks, this mass psychological theatre.
Here again, the conjecture of the pandemic itself justified the imposition of the mandate, and nothing else: no evidence supports the thesis that masks have any positive medical effect and the more plausible scenario is their medical effect is negative. Nonetheless the Gates Foundation-funded behavioural psychologists of Sage and their equivalents in other countries argued that mandating them was necessary (‘because most people still did not feel sufficiently threatened’).
The vague objective of an incomprehensible ambition, opposed against a nightmare, discloses a more concrete aim: control.
Why the authors of this initiative want control presents a complex question. Either they just want it without even knowing why, or they want it for another reason. Perhaps they have a broader plan which demands dramatically upgraded repression.
Either way, what they seem to desire is control over the bodies of their populations. In the idea of vaccine passports, what is being implemented is a political and legal climate in which experimental genetic therapies on human populations are normalised and inescapable. Armed with vaccine passports, global governments and their corporate allies would be able to establish the foundations of a global surveillance state, with the power to monitor every social interaction.
Vaccine passports are the gateway to the most radical slavery the world has ever seen. It now seems likely that creating a psychological and social climate in which to impose them was always the aim behind the engineered pandemic. The pandemic was needed to impose the vaccinations, and the vaccinations are needed to impose the passport.
This transformation of one part of the population into the vaccinated simultaneously invents the unvaccinated, a problem which could eventually be resolved through liquidation, but meanwhile offering opportunity for politically profitable stigmatisation. The vaccinated (via vaccine passports) are granted ‘privileges’ that the unvaccinated are denied in order to compel compliance.
Like accepting being forced to wear a government mandated gimp mask, for no reason whatsoever, a person accepting vaccination implicitly accepts the terms of the new normal. At the same time, vaccination is a ritual, substantiating membership in a psychological community.
Anyone who supposes the vaccine passport could lead to discrimination fails to grasp that this is the whole purpose of this document. The entire point is to divide society, to rule it. By creating checkpoints everywhere, power flows to the authority controlling access, in this case Johnson and his faction: a criminal cartel.
Accepting vaccination does not automatically imply a happy ending. The privilege to resume the semblance of a normal life (a ’new normal’ life) is linked to vaccination status now, but the reasoning behind this privilege is contingent on the existence of the non-vaccinated. Once non-vaxxers vanish, the reason for continuing to offer privileges is also gone. At this point a new status category can be introduced, and the same selective sequence played again. In this way, it would be possible progressively to eliminate a significant percentage of the population.
So far the theatre of the pandemic has been organised as a campaign of psychological manipulation with policies conceived to ‘nudge’ compliance by alternately dangling rewards (which are usually snatched away) and making threats. This campaign has also featured systematic censorship and intimidation directed against some of the most accomplished scientists in the world.
Although these tactics make a mockery of the principle of informed consent, they are of the ‘softer’ variety. Ultimately, more aggressive tactics will be deployed. The intensifying lawlessness of the police now points in this direction.
What can be done? The government is ruling via a threadbare fraud. When that disintegrates what will remain is force, but the real command authority of Johnson and his collaborators over the monopoly of violence that defines the British state has barely been tested.
Would British police or soldiers open fire on peaceful protesters on Johnson’s, Gove’s or Starmer’s orders? The question may arise. So far, the Territorial Support Group have been used by Johnson to attack protesters, and a strategy of tension is being used to increase antagonism between the people and the police, but further escalation would be risky.
What is needed in the meantime is urgently to unwind the cycle of compliance, beginning with the mass removal of the mask, extending to the deconstruction of the narrative, and culminating in total disobedience against the tyranny now represented by this illegitimate and shameful government.
Former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan has accused pro-Israel lobbyists of “the most disgusting interference” in British politics, and of negatively influencing the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The veteran politician has also claimed that Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) went “ballistic” and blocked him from taking on a new post covering the region’s affairs.
Duncan, a former Conservative MP and government minister, makes the sensational claims in his newly published memoir, In The Thick of It: The private diaries of a minister (published by William Collins, 2021). Speaking to journalist Michael Crick about his book for the MailPlus website, the 64 year-old blasted CFI and its undue influence in British politics.
Conservative Friends of Israel, he said, had injected a “Netanyahu-type view of Israeli politics into our foreign policy,” referring to Israel’s right-wing prime minister. He claimed that it had applied pressure on Theresa May’s government to prevent him becoming Middle East minister at the Foreign Office.
In his book, Duncan claims that his new role was agreed until the then Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson alerted him to the fact that CFI “are going ballistic”. He insists that he was blocked from taking the post because he believes in the rights of the Palestinians.
In one diary entry Duncan is scathing about Conservative MPs’ fawning over Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain. He was “ashamed” of the British government, accusing officials of allowing Netanyahu to “peddle pro-settlement propaganda”.
Duncan described to Crick the culture of fear created by CFI. “A lot of things do not happen in foreign policy or in government for fear of offending them because that’s the way it’s put to them by the CFI.”
He warned: “It’s a sort of buried scandal that has to stop… they will interfere at a high level in British politics in the interests of Israel on the back of donor power in the UK.” Ultimately, he pointed out, the influence of the pro-Israel lobby group came at the expense of the Palestinians.
Duncan has been a major target for the pro-Israel lobby. In 2017, an Al Jazeera documentary sensationally exposed the operations of pro-Israel lobbyists working with the Israeli Embassy in London to “take down” a minister of the Crown. Duncan, fellow Conservative MP Crispin Blunt and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were marked out as targets. Writing for Al Jazeera at the time, Robert Grenier, a retired, 27-year veteran of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, warned against what he called the “insidious threats” of the pro-Israel lobby.
The WEF’s promotion of a Chinese ‘smart face mask’ that tracks every breath its wearer takes is further evidence that the changes to Western society over the last 12 months of Covid are intended to be permanent.
“It’s only for when you pop into Tesco’s to do your weekly shop, what‘s your problem with that, you selfish ‘right-wing’ libertarian?” That’s how the introduction of mandatory face-masks was sold to us in Britain last summer, by its virtue-signalling, “Look at me, I’m such a good citizen” supporters.
Masks would be temporary – restricted to shops – and as soon as the Covid threat had passed they would be dispensed with, like social distancing. Anyone who said these measures were designed to be permanent – and were part of the global elite’s plan to keep the plebs muzzled up forever – was dismissed as a ‘crank’ and ‘a conspiracy theorist’.
Well, nine months on, and where are we?
The UK government has issued a ‘road map’ for taking us – with the speed of a 150-year-old Galapagos Island tortoise on sleeping tablets – out of lockdown. But there’s no mention of when masks and social distancing will be dispensed with.
Could that be because there’s no intention of masks and social distancing ever being dispensed with? It certainly appears that way.
Since last July, we’ve seen the mask mandate expanded. You are now asked to wear them not just in shops, but in all indoor areas, unless exempt. Even school children have to wear them in class. That decision was supposed to be reviewed at Easter, and, guess what, the government has just extended the school mask mandate until the summer. In addition, football fans will be expected to wear masks when they’re finally allowed back into grounds this spring at ‘trial’ events.
‘Following the science’? Hardly. We shouldn’t forget that in the week that masks were first introduced last summer, deaths with Covid literally reached zero.
The BBC’s Health Correspondent Deborah Cohen asked the World Health Organisation if their change of advice on masks had been due to political lobbying, and they did not deny.
Why, if masks were so important in preventing transmission, weren’t we told to wear them last March and April? In fact, government scientists advised us not to wear them.
Now, it seems not only must we wear them, but we need to get used to them being a permanent part of daily life in the ‘New Abnormal’. In their recent paper, ‘Evaluating England’s Road Map out of Lockdown‘, published on the UK government’s website, the Imperial College Covid-19 Response team state: “Whilst the impact of Test Trace Isolate, mask wearing, hand hygiene and COVID security on ‘R‘ is difficult to quantify it will be vital to emphasise the importance of normalising and ensuring adherence to all measures even after ‘full lifting’ is achieved.” Got that? Masks need to stay even after Boris Johnson says ‘Lockdown is over‘.
It’s in this context that the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) enthusiastic promotion of the Chinese ‘smart face mask’ needs to be seen. It apparently reminds users when to wash it and checks if they’re wearing it properly. If too much carbon dioxide builds up inside, a phone alert reminds the wearer to catch a few breaths of fresh air. If the user forgets to put it on, the same phone app sends them a reminder to mask up.
This is not about public health, but all about making sure that measures introduced ostensibly to stop the spread of Covid-19 become permanent. Yes, once again the much-derided ‘crackpot conspiracy theorists’ of 2020 have been proved right.
Remember how last summer, the WEF was promoting a ‘Common Pass‘ health passport scheme, not just for international travel but for access to domestic events too? It would never happen, we were told. That’s ‘David Icke stuff’, was the condescending brush-off. Well, that too has come to pass – no pun intended.
To find out why all this is happening, all we have to do is to follow the money trail. All the way to Davos. What does the pro-permanent mask Imperial College have in common with the pro-permanent mask WEF? Answer: the pro-permanent mask Bill Gates.
Last month, Gates himself likened putting on a face mask to putting on a pair of trousers. “I just don’t think wearing a mask is such a deep inconvenience. I mean we ask people to wear pants. You know, why was this politicised?” Back in November, he made the same comparison. “We ask you to wear pants and, you know, no American says — or very few Americans say — that that’s, like, some terrible thing.”
But is masking up whenever we go out really the same as putting on a pair of trousers, to use the English term?
Of course it isn’t. Unless you’re Batman or The Lone Ranger, or another Saturday morning cinema superhero, or indeed a bank-robber, wearing a mask in public isn’t normal, and no amount of WEF-spin makes it so. But what walking about with pieces of black cloth over our mouths and noses does do, is maintain the levels of fear in the community.
If cases and deaths with Covid have plummeted to zero, but we want to make people live as if there is a permanent pandemic, to keep control over them, and to introduce ‘Covid-certification’ to restrict where they can and cannot go, how else can we keep Project Fear going without masks? It’s the only way we’d know that these were not ‘normal’ times. Which is, of course, precisely why they were introduced when deaths had dwindled to very low numbers.
Smart masks? The really smart thing is to get wise to the WEF’s dystopian agenda.
An anti-war activist said he was visited by California Highway Patrol officers after posting video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bumbling comments on Israel-Palestine. The action was initiated by a call to US Capitol Police.
As he waited for a food delivery at his home in Los Angeles on April 8, Ryan Wentz, an anti-war activist and producer for the online viral program, Soapbox, heard two men calling his name from over his front gate. When he approached, he realized they were not delivery drivers, but police officers flashing badges of the California Highway Patrol.
The cops informed Wentz that they had received a call from the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the US Congress, about a tweet he had sent that allegedly threatened Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Wentz told The Grayzone, “The officers said, ‘We got a warning about a sitting member of Congress. And it was because of your tweet, which tagged them in it.’ And then they just wouldn’t back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her.”
The California Highway Patrol indicated on Twitter that it had acted on a call from Capitol Police. The Grayzone has contacted the office of Ocasio-Cortez, known popularly as AOC, and will update this article when more information is available.
Whether or not AOC’s office was responsible for falsely informing Capitol Police of an online threat by Wentz, the Democratic congresswoman has demonstrated a pattern of spurious claims of violence against her critics, and of resorting to heavy-handed methods to suppress them. Any move by AOC to wield law enforcement against online detractors would be especially ironic given her status as a vehement advocate for defunding the police and ending mass incarceration.
Whoever called the police on Wentz furnished law enforcement with a patently false allegation, as he has never threatened violence against any member of Congress. In the tweet that triggered the police action, Wentz merely posted video of AOC delivering a vapid and embarrassingly convoluted answer to a question about resolving the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Describing her answer as “incredibly underwhelming,” he let the congresswoman’s cringeworthy commentary speak for itself.
Asked by Michael S. Miller of the New York Jewish Community Relations Council about actions that could be taken to support movements towards peace between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians, AOC responded as follows:
Earlier just now you and I were talking about the what and the how. And I think that when we talk about peace, centering people’s humanity, protecting people’s rights – it’s not just about the what and the end goal which actually gets a lot of focus, but I actually think it’s much more about the how, and the way we are coming together, and how we interpret that what, and how we act in, you know, the actions we take to get to that what. So what this really is about is a question more than anything else about process. And we really need to make sure that we are valuing a process where all parties are respected and have, you know, a lot of equal opportunity to really make sure we are negotiating in good faith, etcetera. That being said, you know, I think there’s just this one central issue of settlements, because if the what – if the what has been decided on as two state, then the action of settlements, it’s not the how to get to that what. And so, you know, I think that’s a central thing that, you know, we center. And that we value Jewish and rather, we value Israeli, uh, uh, uh, we value the safety and human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians, in that process that is similar, and that is on equal footing. And so all of that is extremely important in that process.
The video that Wentz tweeted of AOC’s long-winded dodge of a fundamental question about resolving the Israeli occupation of Palestine prompted a flood of online mockery and contempt, mostly from leftist Twitter users. Many derided AOC as a careerist who had abandoned progressive causes like Palestinian liberation in order to curry favor with Democratic Party power brokers, while others ridiculed her meaningless word salad.
Within hours of the online pile-on, someone reported Wentz to the Capitol Police for tweeting the video that embarrassed AOC. Because Wentz does not provide any information about his personal identity in his public Twitter profile, the social media giant appeared to have provided his private details to federal law enforcement.
“Another weird thing is usually I would get a report [from Twitter],” Wentz said, “because I’ve gotten my tweets reported before. But I didn’t get any notification about this.”
AOC’s staff has previously appealed to certain authorities to punish online critics. On February 4, 2021, her campaign sent a mass email to supporters asking them to “scan your social media to find posts with misleading information” about the congresswoman, and “use the built-in report feature to flag them for moderators.”
Team AOC issued its appeal for supporters to police social media in response to right-wing mockery of a dramatic livestream in which AOC suggested that the mob which stormed the Capitol building on January 6 nearly assassinated her.
“I just hear these yells of ‘WHERE IS SHE? WHERE IS SHE?’” she recounted in the livestream. “This was the moment where I thought everything was over. I thought I was going to die.”
Her eyes welling with tears, AOC continued, “I felt that if this was the journey my life was taking, I felt that things were going to be okay, and that I had fulfilled my purpose.”
However, the source of the yells which had terrified AOC turned out to be a Capitol Police officer who had been dispatched to protect her. Further, the congresswoman’s office was located in the Cannon House Office Building, which had not been penetrated by any rioters on January 6 and was located a block away from the melee.
Right-wing activists responded to AOC’s claims by launching a viral hashtag likening her to Jussie Smollet, the actor who faked an attack on himself. After attempting to challenge her critics directly, AOC delegated her staff to dispatch its army of supporters to report critics en masse to Twitter and Facebook censors.
Weeks earlier, online podcaster Jimmy Dore had initiated a “Force The Vote” campaign to pressure AOC and fellow members of the progressive congressional “Squad” to withhold their votes for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House until Pelosi agreed to bring a bill for Medicare for All to the floor for a vote.
In response to incendiary criticism from Dore for her refusal to buck centrist party leadership, AOC declared, “That’s not tone, that’s violence.”
AOC’s record of characterizing harsh criticism as violent abuse, and turning to online censors to suppress it, raises questions about whether her team was responsible for siccing the police on an anti-war activist.
According to Wentz, the police officers that visited him asked if he had any violent intent behind his tweet, then left. “If this was like a purely intimidation thing,” he reflected, “then I guess it did its job. It’s not comforting to be on the receiving end of that. But at the same time, they’re not going to shut the left up.”
Wentz added, “We are told that AOC is a member of the left, but if she really was involved in this [call to the Capitol Police] – and that’s how the left treats the left – then I want no part of that. I don’t want this fake adversarial movement that just entrenches the horrible deeds that we’re living under now.”
It’s April 2021 and we’re still being fed the same “stay home, save lives” line of 2020. But lockdowns are based on dodgy data and exaggerations, as well as causing more harm than they supposedly prevent.
As of today, Ontario is once again locked down. The last lockdown of two months was lifted only a month ago.
The province has endured the longest lockdowns in the country, thanks to politicians and medical officers pushing selective statistics.
The “Stay-at-Home” order (sounds so much nicer than lockdown!) requires people to imprison themselves again, except for “essential purposes” (exempt, of course, are Canadian politicians, who have repeatedly violated their own exhortations).
This latest draconian lockdown again impacts nearly every aspect of Ontarians’ ability to live their lives
It means: closed businesses; increasing poverty, loneliness, and depression; increased domestic abuse, a rise in suicides and self-harm; and utter media hysteria (actually, the media hysteria and fear mongering has not ceased since the announcement of a pandemic one year ago).
A petition to end Ontario’s lockdown of small businesses notes:
“There are over 440,000 small businesses in Ontario.
“Less than a week ago [state premier] Doug Ford told restaurants they would be allowed to operate outdoor dining even in grey zones; this caused restaurant owners to spend thousands of dollars on these spaces only to find out that this would not be the case in this current closure.
This level of carelessness and lack of foresight could be the demise of many locally owned restaurants.”
Alarmism and exaggerated ICU data
Premier Doug Ford, in his address yesterday, spoke of case rates, hospitalizations, and ICU occupancy “increasing rapidly, threatening to overwhelm the healthcare system.”
But, as I’ve written before, the whole concept of “cases rising” is meaningless: “Cases are determined by Covid-19 tests, which have proved to be unreliable and inaccurate, giving false positives and creating a false picture of reality. This faulty testing is exacerbating the media hype over ‘rising cases.’”
And according to a long-time employee at the Ottawa General hospital I corresponded with: “I work in a large hospital and I pass through the Covid-19 ICU unit every day. And it’s never been overflowing or too busy.”
Or, as a columnist for the Toronto Sun noted: “Toronto’s top doc said that data was showing younger people in ICUs. Asked about the data, she changed her tweet to say she was ‘hearing’ of younger Toronto ICU patients. Big difference between data showing and you hearing anecdotally.”
Or, as an Ontario MPP noted: “The @OntHospitalAssn keeps fear mongering about ICU capacity. But Critical Care Services Ontario ICU data for Apr 3 reveals: Toronto 375 of 496 beds taken (76%) Central: 398 of 513 (78%) Ontario: 1852 of 2418 (77%) The question to the OHA is why?”
In fact, every year in flu season, we’ve had reports of overcrowding in hospitals, hospitals bursting at seams. This never caused us to shut down our economy and lock down our citizens.
Finally, more and more journalists are asking for proof of the claims bandied about by the Fords and media.
Even Naomi Wolf, not your average “conspiracy theorist” or “right winger” (as those opposed to brutal lockdowns are often described by dinosaur media) tweeted, “How are Canadians still being told such gigantic lies? The whole ‘lockdown equals public safety’ mythology is fully deceased.”
Vested interests in vaccines?
While ordinary Canadians suffer tremendously under lockdowns, Canada’s unelected medical tyrants, the Medical Officers of Health (MOH) are doing quite well, earning $200,000 – $300,000, and more.
In addition to pushing for this latest lockdown, Ontario MOHs went the extra mile and called for “fewer businesses to be deemed essential and more operations shut down.”
Because a year-plus of lockdowns destroying small businesses’ ability to survive just wasn’t enough…
Some of these MOHs may even have financial links to the rollout of vaccines.
In his press conference yesterday, much of Premier Ford’s focus was on pushing jabs.
Ford promised, “better days are ahead of us,” followed by more calls for Ontarians to get jabbed with vaccines made faster than ever before which, technically, will not even be out of the clinical trials stage till next year at the earliest.
The AstraZeneca vaccine is being suspended by countries around the world for causing blood clotting, which could lead to death.
In spite of this, Ontario continues to push it. As of April first, Canada has bought around 24 million doses. In addition to its AstraZeneca purchases, Canada agreed to purchase at least 20 million doses of Pfizer’s hurried vaccine.
In March, the media reported that Toronto’s MOH, Eileen de Villa, is married to Dr Richard Choi, a cardiologist and lecturer at Unity Health Toronto, who lists Pfizer and AstraZeneca among his ‘Relationships with financial interests.’ Under de Villa’s leadership, “Toronto Public Health has been used as a tool to counter any ‘misinformation’ about vaccination,” and was allegedly “behind a call to ban vaccine exemptions because of religious or philosophical beliefs.”
Another article on the de Villa-Choi conflict of interest noted: “It’s not a good look when you lock down your city when you don’t have to and your husband has financial interests with AstraZeneca and Pfizer.”
In mid-March, Premier Ford said he isn’t making the decisions, the chief medical officers are. He also said it would essentially be political suicide to go against them.
“To be frank, there’s no politician in the country who’s going to disagree with their chief medical officer. They’re just not going to do it. They might as well throw a rope around their neck and jump off a bridge.”
Last December, Toronto’s Associate MOH, Dr. Barbara Yaffe, and Chief MOH, Dr. David Williams, admitted they are just reading a script, “I just say what they write down for me.” And laughed about it.
So, we have unelected medical officers running the show, essentially forcing government decisions on lockdowns and related issues. And as a Toronto lawyer opposed to lockdowns noted,“local Councils are legally powerless to stop” these unaccountable MOHs. How wonderfully democratic.
There is definitely a will and momentum to resist the brutal lockdown measures affecting all but the fat cats flouting them. With a new round of bullying by unelected medical officers, I hope the resistance to tyranny grows.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
Making children get jabs for common diseases is ‘necessary in democratic society’ and is in their best interests, the European Court for Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday in a landmark decision against anti-vaxxers.
It’s the first time the ECHR has ruled on mandatory vaccinations for children against common diseases. While the case dealt with the Czech Republic’s laws that require schoolchildren to have jabs against diseases like whooping cough, tetanus and measles, it has implications when it comes to compulsory Covid jabs.
Nicolas Hervieu, a legal expert specializing in the ECHR, said the ruling reinforces the possibility of compulsory vaccination under the current coronavirus pandemic conditions.
A panel of judges ruled 16-1 that the Czech health policy that prevented unvaccinated children from attending nurseries or schools was consistent with “the best interests” of children.
“The… measures could be regarded as being ‘necessary in a democratic society,” the court ruled.
“The objective has to be that every child is protected against serious diseases, through vaccination or by virtue of herd immunity.”
The judges dismissed the appeal brought by six Czech nationals who were fined for failing to comply with mandatory vaccination rules or whose children were denied admission to nursery school for the same reason. The parents had claimed that the mandatory jab rules violated their human rights.
“The objective had to be to protect every child against serious diseases,” the court ruled.
It said that the need for compulsory vaccination in the Czech Republic represented the national authorities’ answer to the pressing social need to protect individual and public health against diseases and “to guard against any downward trend in the rate of vaccination among children.”
The court said that while mandatory vaccinations raised sensitive issues, the value of social solidarity to protect the health of all members of society, particularly those who were especially vulnerable, required everyone to assume a minimum risk by having jabs.
There was no immediate reaction from the six who appealed the case to the ECHR.
By David Miller | Tracking Power | November 12, 2026
In August 1949, three months after Israel joined the United Nations, Lebanon’s envoy in Washington sent his government a long report. Charles Malik, no firebrand, had signed the UN Charter and helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. His Report on the Present Situation lay largely unread until Dar An-Nahar printed it in 2002. … continue
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
