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Va. Public School to Use Precrime Thought-Police Program to Deter Off-Campus, Social Media Hate Speech by Students

The Rutherford Institute | February 17, 2022

FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — A Virginia public school system has announced its plan to adopt what has been likened to a precrime surveillance program in order to monitor and deter social media threats, hate speech, bullying and harassment by students. Pointing out that the social media monitoring program being developed and considered by Fairfax County Public Schools (“FCPS”) raises significant concerns about government surveillance and its chilling effect on the lawful speech of students, parents, and other community members, The Rutherford Institute also warned that such a program could give rise to one-size-fits-all zero tolerance policies regarding expressive activity that is misconstrued as negative, critical or hateful.

“While it may appear commendable at first glance, this school-sponsored social media monitoring program is problematic on multiple fronts, not the least of which is the message it would send students that they have no rights: to privacy, free speech, or the freedom to explore different ideas and think for themselves. Indeed, this program is tantamount to an Orwellian precrime program complete with thought police,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Where such an endeavor runs into trouble is when those overseeing this kind of pre-crime program get overzealous and overreach, targeting students for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the school’s precrime sensors. In such an environment, students learn to self-censor, critical thinking dissipates, and the schools become breeding grounds for compliant citizens, rather than raising up a generation of individuals with a dynamic understanding of what freedom and tolerance mean.”

In November 2021, Fairfax County Public Schools (“FCPS”) issued an Informal Request for Proposal to solicit and establish a contract for social media software which would seek to detect and collect data from social media, classify aliases and usernames, identify connections between persons, set alerts for active listening, and produce high-level summary reports. FCPS intends to use the software for “social media listening” in order to monitor “threats, harassment, hate speech and bullying” which “may be directed to racial groups or any student or teacher within FCPS.” Yet as The Rutherford Institute warned in its letter to members of the Fairfax County School Board, by reportedly subjecting students, parents, and other community members to constant surveillance, the Social Media Monitoring Program lays the groundwork for a broad range of constitutional violations. Specifically, Institute attorneys point out that the social monitoring precrime program threatens to chill lawful First Amendment activity, undermines parents’ rights, could lead to viewpoint discrimination and a troubling expansion of school zero tolerance policies, and may exceed the scope of the Board’s statutory authority. Denouncing the program as an ill-advised plan that could expose FCPS to legal jeopardy, The Rutherford Institute has asked the Fairfax County School Board to reconsider its adoption of a Social Media Monitoring Program and offered to advise and assist the County in striking a better balance between school safety and the rights of students and parents.

The Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, provides legal assistance at no charge to individuals whose constitutional rights have been threatened or violated and educates the public on a wide spectrum of issues affecting their freedoms.

DOCUMENTS

The Rutherford Institute’s letter to the Fairfax County School Board

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US warns of ‘global fallout’

The world economy will pay a heavy price if the West imposes new sanctions on Moscow, the US Treasury warns

By Alexey Viryasov | RT | February 17, 2022

If Russia launches an invasion of Ukraine, the global economy will suffer an inevitable fallout as a result of newly unleashed Western sanctions on Moscow, the US Treasury secretary warned on Wednesday.

Speaking to French news agency AFP, Janet Yellen explained that the US and its European allies are preparing a “very substantial package of sanctions that will have severe consequences for the Russian economy.”

However, despite Washington wanting the highest cost to fall on Moscow, she admitted that there would be “some global fallout” from the measures.

The primary concern of Washington and Brussels is the potential impact of economic sanctions on the global energy market. As a major exporter of energy, Moscow supplies around 40% of the gas used by EU countries. The bloc’s energy security could be in danger if Moscow were to cut off its gas pipelines in retaliation for economic sanctions, some have claimed. And even if Russia doesn’t limit its supply, energy prices could still rise even further in the event of a large-scale conflict in Europe.

Earlier on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden warned that Americans would also have to pay a heavy price for the escalation around Ukraine.

“If Russia decides to invade, that would also have consequences here at home. But the American people understand that defending democracy and liberty is never without cost,” he said. “I will not pretend this will be painless.”

The recent spat over Ukraine between Moscow and NATO allies started when Russia allegedly began amassing troops on its Western border. Fears of war then led to some nations, including the US, opting to evacuate diplomatic personnel from Kiev. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that it is planning a military incursion, claiming that troop movements near the frontier are due to planned training exercises.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

U.S. Officials Are Lying Too on Ukraine

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 17, 2022

U.S. officials are declaring unequivocally that Russian officials were lying when Russia stated that it was withdrawing troops from the Russia-Ukraine border. U.S officials say that it’s the exact opposite — that Russia is actually bringing more troops to the border.

Russian officials might well be lying about Russian troop movements. It certainly shouldn’t surprise anyone, especially if Russia is in fact going to actually invade the country.

Unfortunately, however, the Russians wouldn’t be the only ones lying about what is going on with Ukraine. So are U.S. officials. But of course that shouldn’t surprise anyone either, given that lying has always been a foundation stone of the U.S. national-security establishment, at least when “national security” is at stake.

As Russia has made clear, its objective is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a member of NATO. If Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, that would enable the Pentagon and the CIA to install U.S. missiles, tanks, and troops along Russia’s border. That’s precisely what Russia opposes, in much the same way that U.S. officials would (and did) oppose Russian missiles, troops, and weaponry in Cuba.

In other words, if the U.S. provided assurances to Russia that Ukraine would not become a NATO member, the crisis would be over and Russian troops would be withdrawn. But the problem is that the Pentagon and the CIA do not want to give Russia that assurance. They are insistent on making Ukraine a member of NATO, an old Cold War dinosaur bureaucratic entity, so that they can station their missiles, troops, and tanks on Russia’s border. 

U.S. officials claim that Russia has nothing to worry about because, they say, the U.S. government is a peace-loving, non-aggressive regime. That’s a lie. In fact, the U.S. government is the most aggressive regime on the planet. Just ask the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries against which the U.S. government waged wars of aggression and killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people in the process.

During the Cold War, Poland was aligned with the Soviet Union as a member of the Warsaw Pact. After the ostensible end of the Cold War, the U.S. absorbed Poland into NATO, thereby enabling the Pentagon and the CIA to station missiles, troops, and tanks closer to Russia’s border, which is precisely what they want to do in Ukraine.

In fact, as the New York Times reported yesterday, the Pentagon has installed  missiles near the Polish village of Redzikowo, which is only about 100 miles from Russian territory. U.S. officials say that those missiles are situated there to protect Eastern Europe from Iran. That’s just another lie and a ridiculous one at that. Iran is no more a threat to Eastern Europe than Paraguay is. The fact that U.S. officials feel the need to lie about why their missiles are in Poland would obviously concern anyone in Russia.

Today, the Pentagon is sending thousands of U.S. troops into Romania and Poland, which gives everyone a very good picture of what would happen if Ukraine were absorbed into NATO. As soon as U.S. officials stoked any new crisis with Russia, there is no doubt that the Pentagon would do what they are doing today in Romania and Poland — they would be rushing thousands of troops into Ukraine along with missiles, tanks, other weaponry being positioned on Russia’s border.

In fact, it is a virtual certainty that if NATO absorbs Ukraine, the Pentagon will expand its worldwide system of permanent military bases to Ukraine. It’s not difficult to imagine a string of sprawling military bases in Ukraine, along with the bars, brothels, corruption, pollution, and violent crimes that inevitably come with them. 

As with anything that pertains to the Pentagon and the CIA, the mainstream press is playing its standard deferential and supportive role in the Ukraine crisis, blinding themselves from seeing the critical role that the U.S. national-security establishment has played in producing this crisis. It’s that blindness that then causes the mainstream press to continue endorsing ever-increasing budgets, power, and influence for the national-security establishment and its army of well-heeled “defense” contractors.

The only way out of this statist and highly dangerous morass is for the American people to come to the realization of what a horrific mistake it was to convert the U.S. government to a national-security state after World War II, which thereby enabled the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA to wage their Cold War racket and, later, their global war-on-terrorism racket. If Americans were to come to that realization, we could then have our founding constitutional system of a limited-government republic back and no more perpetual foreign-policy crises.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow responds after US ‘cherry picked’ from Russia’s security proposals

RT | February 17, 2022

The US has “failed to provide a constructive answer” to all the key elements of Russia’s proposals on security guarantees, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in an official response to Washington on Thursday. The 10-page document was handed over in Moscow to American ambassador John Sullivan.

Washington has “cherry picked” some “convenient” topics out of a set of “indivisible” proposals and has further “twisted” them to create security advantages for the US and its allies, the ministry said, in an assessment of America’s security proposals. Such actions “raise doubts” as to the US’ willingness to improve European security, the Russian diplomats have added.

“Our ‘red lines’; our key security interests and Russia’s sovereign right to defend them are still being ignored,” the ministry said, adding that Moscow would have to respond with “military and technical measures.”

Russia also blasted ongoing Western media reports and officials’ statements about the supposedly planned invasion of Ukraine, saying the only purpose of such an information campaign is to “exert pressure” on Moscow and “discredit” Russia’s security proposals.

“No ‘Russian invasion’ into Ukraine the US and its allies have been talking about since autumn has taken place or is planned,” the ministry has said, adding that Moscow cannot be blamed for the rising tensions in Europe.

The Ukrainian conflict has been caused by solely internal reasons, Russia maintains, adding that Moscow has nothing to do with it. De-escalation of the situation around the embattled nation can only be achieved through Kiev fulfilling its part of the Minsk agreements and the US and NATO stopping arms supplies to Ukraine, ceasing joint drills with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and pulling out all Western instructors from its territory, the statement said.

The US ultimatums demanding Russia withdraw its troops from the “certain areas on its own territory” and threats of sanctions are “unacceptable” and only “undermine the prospects of reaching some real agreements,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“Russian Armed Forces deployed to Russia’s territory do not affect and cannot affect fundamental US interests,” the statement pointed out, adding that “there are no [Russian] forces on the territory of Ukraine.”

Moscow also accused the US of circumventing the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe regulating the limits on and deployment of conventional military equipment in Europe, as well as the 1997 Russia-NATO ‘Founding Act’ on mutual relations. Washington and its allies have expanded their military infrastructure further to the east by deploying troops to the territory of the bloc’s new members after 1997, the foreign ministry said, calling such a situation “unacceptable.”

Russia “insists on the withdrawal of the US troops and equipment deployed in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Baltic States,” the statement said. Moscow has also demanded that the US withdraw its nuclear weapons deployed to the territory of its non-nuclear allies in Europe, as well as all the relevant rapid deployment infrastructure.

The very existence of nuclear weapons on their territory as well as NATO drills used to teach the troops of these nations to use nuclear arms violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Russia believes.

However, Moscow also sees some potential common ground for future negotiations with the US and NATO. Russia has particularly welcomed the US proposal on mutual verification and transparency measures, involving inspections of the US missile defense systems Aegis Ashore in Poland and Romania, as well as at relevant facilities in the European part of Russia’s territory.

Moscow also “sees a potential for future agreements” on mitigating the risks stemming from heavy-bomber sorties near the national borders of Russia, the US and its allies. The Russian Foreign Ministry welcomed “the US readiness” to discuss similar measures to prevent open-sea and neutral airspace incidents. Still, “this work cannot be a substitute for resolution of the key issues raised by Russia,” the statement cautioned.

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Public VAERS Data May Be Woefully Out of Date

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 15, 2022

In this short video posted on BitChute in December 2021, Brittany Galvin gives an overview of what she had to do in the previous six months to report her vaccine adverse events to VAERS. She begins by sharing that she has once again received an email asking for information on her VAERS report1 that was initially entered in May 2021.

VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System2 that was first established in 1990. It is coadministered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The system is supposed to be an early warning signal for vaccine manufacturers and health experts to identify vaccines that may be triggering a higher than expected number of adverse events. One of the primary objectives of the program is to:3

“Provide a national safety monitoring system that extends to the entire general population for response to public health emergencies, such as a large-scale pandemic influenza vaccination program.”

Anyone can make a report to VAERS — both patients and health professionals can use this system to report health concerns they suspect may be connected to a vaccine. Health professionals are required to use it for all adverse events that occur after the COVID-19 emergency use shots, but since the system is passive, whether the reports actually get filed depends entirely on each individual living up to that responsibility.

The reports must contain all hospital records and any other relevant medical information. Unfortunately, as Galvin succinctly notes in her video, the system is not efficient, and the data may be woefully out of date. This has a significant impact on monitoring the effects of the COVID inoculation program since it’s possible the currently published death and adverse event rates may be reprehensibly different from reality.

Magnetized Mom Tries to Report Injury to VAERS

Galvin has created many social media videos to document her journey. This four-minute synopsis begins with her vaccinations in May and ends in November 2021. In June 2021, in an interview with Stew Peters4 during her third hospitalization in two weeks, Galvin recalls that after her first injection, she immediately experienced chills, fever and many of the symptoms that others are reporting.

In addition to this, within four to five hours after the first shot, her legs felt heavy, which she described as feeling like she was walking through mud or cement. The experience left her nervous before the second dose. She put off getting the second shot for as long as she could. While she experienced no immediate symptoms after the second injection, on Day 13 her life changed.

Initially, she thought she had a seizure but later learned that her muscles had suddenly “seized up.” She passed out and reported severe pain in her head when she regained consciousness. Originally, the doctors believe she had had either a stroke or a seizure.

She was sent home from the first hospitalization with a diagnosis of pericarditis but when her symptoms didn’t get better, she was admitted two more times. On the third admission in two weeks, a neurologist told her that she had Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) because of the Moderna injection. In addition, she was also diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

Stew Peters comments that this was the first time he and others on his team had heard a doctor admit the adverse events were from a genetic therapy COVID-19 shot, yet Galvin reports that the physicians and nurses who treated her told her they had seen many patients with adverse events after the shots.5

Galvin reports the first question she was asked at each of the three ER visits was had she gotten a vaccine, when and which one? This suggests that health care officials and hospitals are aware of adverse events that are not reported in mainstream media.

She told Peters that she has never been against vaccines but didn’t want this one. She took it so she could go back to work. Instead of listening to her intuition, she listened to the shaming and the commercials that said if you didn’t have a vaccine you’d have to live differently. Now she wonders why all the people who have been concerned about people who died from the infection aren’t as concerned about dying from the vaccine.

Galvin’s social media page was originally filled with videos she had taken of herself, placing metal objects on her body that stuck because she was inexplicably “magnetized.” She reports that the doctors in the hospital have also placed metal objects on her skin and have seen with their own eyes that she is magnetized.

In addition, the MRI tech discovered that his body was also magnetized after seeing Galvin demonstrate how a spoon could attach to her body. As of January 2022, she is eight months into the reporting process to VAERS and has been advised by VAERS staff that it may be another six to 12 months before her case is posted.6

VAERS Has Only 50 People Processing Reports

Galvin has created several videos talking about the journey she’s been on trying to report her adverse events to VAERS. In a video posted in January 2022 on Odysee,7 Galvin recorded her phone conversation with an investigator from VAERS to discuss why her report filed in late May 2021 had not yet been counted in the system.

In one conversation she learned that the process takes many steps through different departments. The first stop for the VAERS reports is in a department with only 50 employees.8 Once the package of information is completed by this department, it is sent to a team of nurses who read and review every page.

If the staff have any concerns or if they feel they need more information, the package will be sent back to the first department for further information gathering.9 According to the recorded conversation, one investigator suggested that since anyone can make a report to the system, it’s possible there could be multiple reports for an individual and that this may be a reason why Galvin received multiple requests for information to complete her VAERS report.

And, that’s what did happen: There were two VAERS reports in the system for Galvin, one submitted by Galvin, and another submitted by Moderna. The VAERS report was still missing hospital information, which had been requested several times through the medical records department of the hospital. The VAERS investigator acknowledged that the reporting is a long process and explained:10

“The hospitals, a lot of them are not sending the records. My last two reports where they said, “We didn’t receive the requests.” Well, I’m like, OK, is this your fax number. “Yes, this is our fax number” … so, a lot of them are not sending the records when we ask for it.”

Galvin expressed her concern that there were hundreds of thousands of people like her and just 50 VAERS employees trying to process these reports. It could be months before the CDC receives the report of her vaccine injuries that can be published.11

“Meanwhile the whole government is trying to force everyone to get this thing. Lying to the people telling them that “no one has gotten GBS from it” but here I sit barely able to walk and my case isn’t going to be ‘technically’ reported because the CDC hasn’t investigated yet because the hospitals are dragging their feet … it’s like a revolving crazy door and all of us humans on this planet and in this country are being lied to, and it’s unfair.”

More Reasons Why Adverse Events Are Underreported

At the end of the conversation with the investigator, Galvin learned that while her report was filed in May 2021, it wasn’t assigned to someone at VAERS until September or November 2021.12 In addition to short-staffing at VAERS and hospitals dragging their feet to produce the documentation needed to support claims, there are other reasons why there is a significant underreporting factor in the system.

In the latter months of 2021, Deborah Conrad, certified physician assistant who worked as a hospitalist at a local hospital, stepped forward to speak to Del Bigtree at “The Highwire” about the lack of reporting to VAERS within her hospital. She also provided a voice recording of a conversation with the chief medical officer who chastised her for spending her time off to make the reports to VAERS for other physicians.13

The chief medical officer said: “There is a risk to the organization from a perspective of both underreporting and overreporting.”14 In other words, the lives of the patients were not the issue. And, despite the diligence done by VAERS investigators to ensure the reports are complete and accurate, the hospital must not overreport any injury.

It’s shocking that many physicians are still not aware of VAERS. Before 2020, the system was used primarily by pediatricians to report adverse events from childhood vaccines. Doctors were not educated on how to identify potential injuries, how to report them, or that they have a legal requirement to report all emergency use vaccine injuries.

In fact, this was one of the reasons used by Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, for pausing administration of the Johnson & Johnson jab when it was first revealed that individuals who took it had a higher risk of blood clots. She told ABC News:15

“One of the reasons for the pause was to make sure clinicians knew how to diagnose and treat this, but also to report it. Because we don’t know if we’ve missed some cases, whether the risk really is 1 in 1 million, or perhaps more than that.”

In addition to the lack of education, another reason why so few physicians report suspected injuries is because there are no penalties for failing to fulfill this legal responsibility. In other words, this passive reporting system is not enforced. As Conrad described in her interview with Bigtree, the forms are also long and tedious to fill out.16

Additionally, not all of Conrad’s colleagues agreed that the injuries should be reported because they didn’t want to believe that the vaccines could cause injury. Historically, vaccine injuries have been routinely underreported, even among pediatricians. A report published in late 2010, which has become known as the Lazarus Report after the principal investigator Ross Lazarus, found:17

“Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).”

More recently, a group of scientists used an engineering algorithm to determine the underreporting factor and found it had improved to 41, not less than 1% as had been reported 11 years earlier.18,19 This may be due in part to the media attention on VAERS. Nonetheless, there continues to be a significant underreporting factor indicating the numbers in VAERS20 are likely 41 times higher than published.

CDC and NIAID Imply Car Crashes Are Reported in VAERS

In addition to the underreporting factor and overworked VAERS employees that have created a large gap between the number of reports being submitted and the number being published, Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky appear bent on completely discrediting VAERS.21

Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Walensky is the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Since the CDC co-manages VAERS you would expect that she would have at least a working knowledge of how the reports are accepted and verified before being published.

During testimony January 11, 2022, before the Senate, both Fauci and Walensky very clearly stated that any death after a vaccine could be reported to VAERS. Both used the example of an individual who gets vaccinated, hit by a car and dies.

They implied without outright stating that this death would also be recorded in VAERS and logged as a death related to the vaccine. In other words, they both skirted the issue without outright lying to the Senate. Walensky said:22

“The vaccine adverse event reporting system is a mandatory system of any event that happens after being vaccinated. So, if you get hit by a car tragically after being vaccinated, that gets reported in the vaccine adverse event reporting system, the VAERS system.

So, the vaccines are incredibly safe. They protect us against omicron. They protect us against delta. They protect us against COVID. They don’t protect us against every other form of mortality out there.”

However, it’s evident not all medical professionals are reporting adverse events. Yes, you can report a car accident death after a vaccine, but the verification process will weed out that death.

Overall, the shots have not protected people from getting Omicron, Delta or any other form of COVID, which Walensky made clear in a CNN interview the day before testifying before the Senate.23 And, it goes without saying, that there is no shot that protects anyone from all forms of mortality.

Immediately after her response, Walensky was asked if the CDC kept data on the number of people who have died as a result of the vaccine. And she answered: “Absolutely yes. I couldn’t give you the number off the top of my head, but our staff could absolutely get back in touch with you.”

So, while publicly denying that any deaths have occurred from the jabs, Walensky is basically admitting that the CDC is aware that there have been people who died from this “incredibly safe” vaccine. Fauci was then asked if he knew the number or “had any clue on that, and he said:”24

“I don’t know the number, but I think part of the confusion is that when you do a reporting, when you get vaccinated, and you walk out and get hit by a car that is considered a death.

That’s the thing that gets confusing, that everything that happens after the vaccination, even if you die of something completely obviously unrelated, it’s considered a death. So, if I had metastatic cancer, got vaccinated and died two weeks later, that’s a death that gets counted.”

Fauci’s statement only implies that the death is counted as a vaccine death. That is, until his example of having metastatic cancer, when he says, “that gets counted.” Until that point, neither Fauci nor Walensky said it was anything more than a death. Meaning that they didn’t specifically say it would be recorded as caused by the vaccine.

When Fauci said “that gets counted,” Walensky immediately jumped in to save the explanation with, “And every one of those is adjudicated.”25 In other words, each of the reports of death not in any way associated with the shot are removed from the record. But unless you are listening carefully, you will mistakenly be led to believe that VAERS is riddled with reports of injuries and deaths not caused by the shot.

Sources and References

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Texas sues to unmask travelers

RT | February 17, 2022

Forcing Americans to mask up while traveling goes beyond what US health authorities are legally allowed to do, a new lawsuit coming from Texas argued on Wednesday, demanding the end of the mandate that has been in effect for over a year now.

Congresswoman Elizabeth Van Duyne (R-Texas) filed the lawsuit in a federal court on Wednesday, joined by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) nonprofit and the state’s Attorney General Ken Paxton. The US government was named as the defendant, along with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and their leaders.

“It is time for all mandates to be lifted, including those affecting airline passengers,” Van Duyne said, accusing the CDC of causing “untold damage” to the US with its “constantly changing science, fluctuating recommendations and oppressive need to control all aspects of society.”

The lawsuit argues that the CDC’s mask mandates amount to an abuse of power and violate constitutional authority – the same reasoning used to successfully challenge the agency’s eviction moratorium in May 2021 and vaccination mandates for cruise lines in July.

“The CDC is relying on specific and narrowly tailored provisions in the law to exercise enormously broad powers Congress has not granted the agency,” said TPPF’s senior attorney Matt Miller. The organization’s general counsel Robert Henneke also denounced the “tyranny” of the Biden administration in the name of Covid-19.

Announcing that he joined the lawsuit, AG Paxton described the mask mandate as “anti-science, virtue-signaling” and called it “not only silly, but illegal too.”

In his very first executive order, President Joe Biden mandated the wearing of face masks on federal property and announced a “100-day masking challenge.” That was 392 days ago. The requirement that travelers on planes, trains, buses and other public transit must wear face coverings went into effect on February 1, 2021 and has been extended three times since. It is currently set to expire in March, unless renewed.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

If you’re American and oppose war with Russia, expect to be smeared as unpatriotic

By Lauren Chen | RT | February 16, 2022

On Tuesday, after weeks of international uncertainty and fears of conflict, Russia announced it would be pulling its troops back from the border with Ukraine. This news came after repeated assurances from President Vladimir Putin and officials that Moscow had no desire for war, and that troop movements and positioning were merely training exercises.

Markets immediately responded to this development with renewed optimism, as the Dow jumped 400 points, European stocks closed higher on Tuesday, and natural gas and power prices fell. However, one group curiously silent in light of the seemingly positive turn of events was the war hawks, goaded by Western media, intelligence, and politicians, who in the preceding hours had all but assured the public that an invasion and armed conflict were inevitable.

And while the establishment neo-cons and neo-libs may say that their hawkish warnings and preparations were simply the logical conclusion given the information available at the time, it’s important to remember that throughout the recent hysteria, there have been voices who attempted to pull back the mounting calls for war. However, rather than address their reasoning, the pro-war camp instead resorted to smears in order to justify their peculiar need to stoke tensions with another global superpower.

Specifically, in one attempt to contextualize the intelligence communities’ assurances that Russia’s troop actions were a build-up to aggression against Ukraine, Green Party member and former presidential candidate Jill Stein reminded her social media followers of how officials had not just been wrong about previous conflicts, but had actually lied to the public to garner support for action in Vietnam and Iraq, among other wars. Similarly, many of these same insiders had also been less than truthful about recent stories involving Julian Assange and Russiagate.

The general response to Dr. Stein’s post was positive overall, in keeping with polling which suggests the American public has no interest in involving their country in new foreign engagements. However, the reaction from the pro-war camp was to accuse Dr. Stein of being a Russian asset. Because, of course, what other reason could there be for someone to oppose costly military intervention based on shaky intelligence other than disloyalty to their own country?

And in this same vein, Tulsi Gabbard, another vocal anti-war advocate who has fiercely criticized interventionist American foreign policy, has also spent weeks warning of the conflicting interests motivating those banging the war drums. Often, as Gabbard has pointed out, officials who are most supportive of American military action overseas are also those who stand to gain monetarily through defense contracts and spending.

What’s more, Gabbard has even gone so far as to suggest that by encouraging Ukraine to join NATO, certain American actors might actually be trying to spark a new Cold War, not to benefit US security interests, but rather the military industrial complex. After all, historically, American policy has considered breaches in spheres of influence occurring in countries close to them, such as Cuba, to be acts of aggression. What makes Western encroachment in Ukraine any different?

As with Dr. Stein, however, sadly Gabbard’s criticisms were met with the usual accusations of being a foreign asset, with little to no attempt to address the actual substance of her position.

Across the aisle on the political right, one of the most prominent anti-war voices that has emerged is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who has likewise been attacked for his views. Carlson has frequently devoted time on his program to questioning whether, regardless of Russia’s intentions, involving the US in Ukrainian affairs is in America’s best interests, especially at a time when domestic problems abound. Additionally, Carlson has been skeptical of political attempts to paint Ukraine as a Western-style democracy in order to garner public support for any potential alliances or interventions.

For his efforts, Carlson has received especially vicious condemnation from the likes of David Frum, who in 2003 accused those who were against military action in Iraq of being “unpatriotic.”  In a scathing article in The Athletic, Frum accused Carlson and others on the antiwar right of spouting “Vladimir Putin’s talking points,” and ironically likened his position to “isolationists who hoped to profit politically from that passivity.”

Russia’s troop withdrawal may have temporarily neutered the pro-war momentum building in Western discourse. However, the overt hostility toward those who argue against escalating tensions with Russia may signal that it’s only a matter of time before establishment forces are once more arguing that it is not just beneficiary, but rather necessary, for Western militaries to strike before Russian forces can do the same.

Lauren Chen is a political and social commentator. She began as a YouTuber, and has since gained millions of views on the platform and hundreds of thousands of followers.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

FDA official reveals Biden plan for Covid jabs — Project Veritas

Even toddlers will eventually be required to get annual Covid-19 jabs, an FDA official said in the undercover clip

© Project Veritas

RT | February 16, 2022

Investigative outlet Project Veritas has released footage of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) executive claiming that annual Covid-19 vaccine jabs are on the way, even for children under five.

In part one of a two-part undercover video series, Christopher Cole, an executive officer with the FDA and head of the agency’s Countermeasures Initiatives, told a Project Veritas reporter he is involved in the “approval process for the various” Covid vaccines. In the video released on Tuesday, Cole claimed more jabs are in the pipeline for everyone and acknowledged the “money incentive” for companies like Pfizer to promote more vaccination.

“It’ll be a recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring… if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company,” Cole said of vaccine manufacturers. At another point in the footage, the FDA official also admitted that the very companies the FDA regulates dump “almost a billion dollars a year” into its budget.

Cole said even toddlers would be included in this annual shot requirement, though he conceded that there hasn’t been enough testing on the long-term effects of the vaccines on various groups, including young children and pregnant women. Asked how he knew such a mandate could be coming, he said: “Just from everything I’ve heard, [the FDA] are not going to not approve it.”

The annual jab would be “just like the flu shot,” Cole said, and required as the effectiveness of vaccines “wanes.”

The FDA released a statement responding to Veritas’ video on Wednesday, saying Cole “does not work on vaccine matters” and “does not represent the views of the FDA.”

US President Joe Biden has not endorsed an annual vaccine jab, but Cole said the president “wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” Biden’s health officials have also floated the idea of regular jabs. White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has been open in recent talks to the idea of booster shots being needed regularly, though he has not endorsed annual shots for everyone.

“It will depend on who you are,” he told the Financial Times last week. “But if you are a normal, healthy, 30-year-old person with no underlying conditions, you might need a booster only every four or five years.”

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

ICAN-Obtained Email Shows Alliance Between White House, Facebook, and Pharma

Informed Consent Action Network | February 14, 2022

A White House email, obtained on behalf of ICAN, shows Facebook, Merck, and the CDC Foundation, whose corporate partners includes Pfizer, have formed an alliance “to use social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and drive uptake of vaccines.” No conflict there.

On August 12, 2021, ICAN, through its attorneys, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for communications between White House staff and Facebook, Google, and YouTube. In response to this request, ICAN received a June 15, 2021 email sent by Facebook’s then-Public Policy Manager, Nkechi “Payton” Iheme, to several White House employees.

In it, Iheme announces a new initiative, the “Alliance for Advancing Health Care,” between Facebook and several major companies and organizations, including Merck, the Vaccine Confidence Project, the Sabin Vaccine Institute, and the CDC Foundation. Significantly, one of the CDC Foundation’s corporate partners is Pfizer.  In the email, Iheme explains that the Alliance is “focused on advancing public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world” and states that its first project is to “provide grants to researchers and organizations for projects that explore how to use social media and digital platforms to build confidence in and drive uptake of vaccines.” Facebook announced this new initiative on June 9, 2021 here.

The conflict of interest is astonishing. This email shows without a doubt that, through the CDC Foundation created “to support the [CDC’s] work,” the federal government, which is in charge of ensuring the safety of vaccines, has teamed up with Big Pharma and Big Tech to push a liability-free product on the world, while attempting to stomp out anyone who questions this arrangement.

Just as the pharmaceutical companies will never rest when it comes to promoting and selling their vaccine products, and the federal government will not rest in its efforts to assist them, we will never rest in exposing the truth regarding these products or in demanding full transparency and full informed consent for any and all vaccines.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , , | Leave a comment

Are They Finally Admitting Natural Immunity?

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 14, 2022

In late January, the CDC published a report that made what might have been regarded as a shocking claim. If you have had Covid, the CDC demonstrated in a chart, you gain robust immunity that is better than that of vaccination, especially concerning duration.

That should be nothing surprising. Brownstone has chronicled 150 studies making that point. What made this new chart different was that it came from the CDC, which has buried the point so deeply for so long as to amount to a near denial.

So there: the CDC says it. So nonchalant! So uneventful!

If people had understood this two years ago, plus been made more completely aware of the dramatic risk gradient by age and health, lockdowns would have been completely untenable.

The society-wide mandates and lockdowns depended on keeping the public ignorant on settled points of cell biology and immunology, plus pressuring social media companies to censor anyone who didn’t fall in line. Here we are all this time later and the truth is coming out.

Had the knowledge of risk gradients and immunities been in the forefront of policy makers’ minds – instead of wild fear and obsequious deference to Fauci – we would have focused on protecting the vulnerable and otherwise allowed society to function normally so that the virus would become endemic. We would not only have saved thousands of lives; we could have avoided the vast economic, educational, cultural, and public-health wreckage all around us.

Somehow at the time, that point was made unsayable for reasons on which we can only speculate. And yet today, the New York Times had said exactly this. In a piece by David Leonhardt called Protecting the Vulnerable, he writes:

With the Omicron wave receding, many places are starting to remove at least some of their remaining pandemic restrictions. This shift could have large benefits. It could reduce the isolation and disruption that have contributed to a long list of societal ills, like rising mental-health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime and, as Substack’s Matthew Yglesias has written, “all kinds of bad behavior.”

At the same time, there remain those who are vulnerable and they deserve protection: “They include the elderly and people with immunodeficiencies that put them at greater Covid risk. According to the C.D.C., more than 75 percent of vaccinated people who have died from Covid had at least four medical risk factors.”

You can read that again: unhealthy but vaccinated people still die. What these people need is to enjoy the protection of herd immunity, the point at which the virus exhausts itself in the face of widespread immunity.

If you have followed this debate, you know exactly the origin of that precise idea now being pushed in part by Leonhardt: The Great Barrington Declaration. This is the document on which Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci ordered a media hit back in October 2020. It advocated nothing more than traditional public health measures as a moderate solution between lockdowns and complete negligence of the virus threat.

As decent as this article is, it overlooks a huge issue, namely why would non-vulnerable populations be forced to get a non-durable vaccine with risks when natural immunity is a known option? Leonhardt doesn’t go there but he should have.

Today, even Anthony Fauci is singing a different tune. He told the Financial Times:

“There is no way we are going to eradicate this virus,” he said. “But I hope we are looking at a time when we have enough people vaccinated and enough people with protection from previous infection that the Covid restrictions will soon be a thing of the past.”

Further:

As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated. There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.”

Again, this is straight out of the Great Barrington Declaration, almost to a word, but without acknowledgement.

There can be no question that early on in lockdowns, Fauci, the CDC, and the WHO all decided to bury the point that we would get to endemicity the same way we always have.

How did that happen? Paul Allan Offit is an epidemiologist who advises (or did advise) the Biden administration in the early days. He is not my favorite guy but, as things go, he is no Anthony Fauci. He seems sincere and intelligent.

Offit variously appears on podcasts. Last week, he let slip an astonishing thing. He said that early on in the pandemic, he met at the White House with Walensky, Fauci, Collins, and one other person. The topic was whether the Biden administration should recognize natural immunity to Covid — the most well-established fact about cell biology. He and one other person said absolutely. The rest said no.

Here is the remarkable clip.

Offit is fascinating in this interview because it was pretty clear to him that he was revealing something very important but he did not know whether this was going to be some kind of problem. He then proceeded to tell the story. He did not speculate about the reasons. He was smiling and laughing throughout the interview.

The immunity passports in place in three of the biggest American cities (though DC just repealed its own), the entire public sector, plus the attempt to impose them on the whole of the private sector, probably constitute the most invasive, aggressive, and controversial public policy since the Vietnam War draft. It all could have been fixed by a recognition of the immunological reality: the exposed and recovered are protected. That point of science was rejected by Fauci, Collins, and Walensky. The whole Biden administration went along.

We didn’t know until last week that this Offit meeting had even occurred. And surely this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more that time goes on, the more questions are piling up about this gang that wrecked liberty in the US after Inauguration Day 2021, a time when they could have reversed all the restrictions but instead went the other way.

Central to the concern here is what precisely happened in February 2020 to cause Fauci to forge plans to lock down the entire American economy for a virus that he previously said repeatedly could not be stopped. Why did he change his mind? We have plenty of evidence that his change of mind was related to his fear — real or imagined — that the pathogen was made in a lab and was leaked either deliberately or accidentally and that he would likely bear responsibility. Fauci and his friends were on burner phones for weeks and holding secret meetings. The HHS document ordering lockdowns were all forged in these weeks.

If the Republicans take back Congress, they are going to have a real time discovering the inner workings of the deep state here, if they find the courage to look deeply enough. That such an obvious and settled point of science became taboo for a time is truly a scandal for the ages. Now we know that it was a deliberate decision. Why? And why are we only now hearing about it, long after knowing this truth might have saved so much destruction?

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. 

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US Mulls to bolster Mideast Operations with Israeli-made Vessels

An unmanned Israeli navy vessel test fires missile off Ashkelon
Al-Manar | February 16, 2022

The US Navy is examining the possibility of bolstering its joint operations in the Middle East with Israeli-made unmanned vessels, a US official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

The report did not specify who would be operating the boats, but noted that additional Israeli military involvement in the Gulf region could anger Iran.

The unnamed official said the US military was examining a number of options, including using Israeli unmanned vessels during current Gulf exercises.

The Zionist entity is a participant in a massive US-led naval exercise focusing on unmanned naval systems and the use of artificial intelligence. The International Maritime Exercise, known by its acronym IMX, kicked off last month and is set to end on Thursday.

The Israeli navy has a fleet of unmanned ships that are used to complement its manned patrol boats around the occupied Palestinian coastal waters.

The Reuters report said the US was showing interest in Israeli-made surface drones that can be deployed in tandem with air and underwater UAVs.

“The Israelis are definitely vested in leveraging this technology,” the unnamed official said, adding that a US fleet commander had made a recent trip to Haifa to examine the surface drones.

The comments by the US official were made during a trip by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Bahrain, the first official visit by an Israeli premier to the Gulf kingdom, Israeli media reported.

February 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

America’s return to UNESCO will work in Israel’s favour

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 15, 2022

In 2017, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from the UN Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), citing “mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO.” A few hours later, Israel followed suit, with then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu describing the organisation as “a theatre of the absurd.” The Israeli ambassador to the UN at the time, Danny Danon, opined, “Today is a new day at the UN where there is a price to pay for discrimination against Israel.” On 1 January 2019, the US and Israel officially left the organisation.

Last year, though, the US announced its intention to re-join UNESCO, “to counter Chinese influence or promote other US interests,” reported Reuters. The Jerusalem Post added that Israel has no intention of rejoining, although last year Foreign Minister Yair Lapid considered following in America’s footsteps, arguing that Israel’s absence from UNESCO had no effect on “anti-Israel bias”. He also admitted that Israel’s decision to quit UNESCO made it difficult to influence foreign policy.

To rejoin UNESCO, the US Congress would have to waive a bill that prevents Washington from funding international organisations which accept the Palestinian Authority as a full member. The US decision is said to have been influenced by UNESCO changing its approach towards Israel, while America is expected to counter any anti-Israel bias, following talks between Israeli and US officials.

Israel had opposed UNESCO’s designations of Palestinian heritage sites, which it described as erasing history and memory. Never mind that Israel is built upon the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the erasure of their collective memory and sites. Perhaps the biggest and most obvious erasure in Israeli memory is that the settler-colonial state did not exist prior to the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and so neither Palestinians nor UNESCO can be faulted for designating Palestinian heritage sites which date from well before Israel was created as “Palestinian”.

Moreover, accusing UNESCO of anti-Israel bias follows no logic, given that UNESCO has recognised sites as pertaining to Israeli heritage, including Tel-Aviv’s “White City”, which means that the organisation has also legitimised Israel’s violent settler-colonial origins and existence. If Israel decides to follow Lapid’s suggestion, UNESCO is expected to increase the number of heritage sites attributed to Israel.

For now, the US is expected to pave the way for Israel’s return, hence the Israeli government’s insistence that it will not oppose the Biden administration’s decision to re-join the UN body. Meanwhile, Israel will seek to extort further concessions, all the while planning to return to the organisation and condescend to grace UNESCO with its presence, rather than a reappearance gloating at having colonised and appropriated more Palestinian land, history and memory.

This whole gimmicky process makes Israel’s accusations of international institutions harbouring “anti-Israel bias” collapse. All international institutions have legitimised Israel’s origins and existence, despite violations of international law and war crimes committed by Zionist paramilitary gangs prior to 1948, and in the uniforms of the “Israel Defence Forces” from then to the present day. The debacle of departing and hinting at returning is a ploy for colonial gain, and for such gain to be recognised by international resolutions and declarations. America’s return to UNESCO will thus work in Israel’s favour. It wouldn’t do so otherwise.

February 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

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