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Four Attorneys General Claim Google Secretly Tracked People

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 9, 2022

If you’ve ever felt like Google’s watching you, it’s because they, quite literally, are. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data,” Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.1

He’s among four attorneys general who have sued Google for its deceptive practices in collecting location data from the public. The separate lawsuits allege that Google continued to track location data of its users even after they had disabled location tracking.

“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Racine said.2

Google’s Been Secretly Tracking People Since at Least 2014

Racine initiated an investigation into Google after a 2018 AP News report revealed Google was tracking people’s movements even when they’d opted out of such tracking.3 Google’s misleading claims to users regarding privacy protections available in their account settings have been ongoing since at least 2014, Racine’s investigation found.4

The AP investigation included a real-world example from privacy researcher Gunes Acar, whose location was tracked to dozens of locations over the course of several days, and the data saved to his Google account, even though he had turned “Location History” off on his cellphone.5

Location data collected by Google has been used in criminal cases in the past, including a warrant issued by police in Raleigh, North Carolina, to track down devices in the area of a murder.6 When you use an app like Google Maps, it will ask you to allow access to location, but it also tracks your location during use of apps that you might not expect. According to the AP investigation:7

“For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.”

Tracking You Even When ‘Location History’ Is Off

At issue is the company’s continued tracking of its users even when Location History is turned off. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Jonathan Mayer, a former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau, told the AP. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”8

Indeed, it states on Google’s Account Help webpage, “You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.” Only lower down on the page does it explain, however, that location data may still be saved even if Location History is paused:9

“If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.

For example, location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings.”

Aside from hiding location tracking under settings users wouldn’t expect, like Web & App Activity — which is turned on by default — Google is accused of collecting and storing location information via Google services, Wi-Fi data and marketing partners, again after device or account settings had been changed to stop location tracking.10

In addition to the District of Columbia, the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana have also filed lawsuits against Google for their deceptive data collection practices. The suits allege that Google also pressured users to use location tracking more often because it claimed — falsely — that its products wouldn’t function properly without it.11

“Google has prioritized profits over people,” Todd Rokita, Indiana attorney general, told The New York Times. “It has prioritized financial earnings over following the law.”12 Texas, meanwhile, has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google that alleges it has abused a monopoly over ad space auctions to marketers. The suit joins those from more than a dozen other states that claim Google has maintained and abused a monopoly over searches online.13

Google Is Even Tracking Children

Google has been called a dictator with unprecedented power because it relies on techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history, according to Robert Epstein, a Harvard trained psychologist who is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices.

They’re not only a surveillance agency — think about products like Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive and YouTube — but also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what you can and cannot see.

Google has also infiltrated education with its Google classrooms, usage of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, but many aren’t aware that even their children are being tracked. The attorney general of New Mexico filed a suit against Google for its educational tools in its classroom suite, helping to “break through the fog,” Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff said:14

“[The suit is] identifying the huge amounts of data that they’re taking about kids, how they track them across the internet are they integrate it with all the other Google streams of information and have it as a foundation for tracking those children all the way through their adulthood.”

The suit was later dismissed, but the attorney general filed an appeal, maintaining that Google’s G-Suite for Education products “spy on New Mexico students’ online activities for its own commercial purposes, without notice to parents and without attempting to obtain parental consent.”15

Google Force Installed COVID-19 Tracking Apps

In another sign of Google’s dictatorial tendencies, it partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Apple to create a smartphone app called MassNotify, which tracks and traces people, advising the users of others’ COVID-19 status.

While the tool claims to have been developed “with a focus on privacy,”16 the app suddenly appeared on Massachusetts residents’ Android phones out of nowhere, without consent. The feature must be enabled by the user for it to function, but it’s extremely disconcerting that the tool was automatically added to people’s cellphones, whether they intend to use it or not.

In China, COVID-19 tracking apps have been used as surveillance tools in collaboration with its social credit system, raising red flags that this force-installed app could be tracking residents’ movements and contacts without their knowledge and consent. The MassNotify app uses Google’s and Apple’s Bluetooth-based Exposure Notifications Express program.

The software framework was first released in April 2020,17 with the goal of allowing users who test positive for COVID-19 to report their results, which then sends out an alert to anyone whose phone crossed paths with the positive case and may have been exposed. The Exposure Notifications Express program acts as a blueprint from which states can implement their own tracking systems without having to develop their own individual apps.

While other states have required users to download an app to use the system, MassNotify was integrated directly into the operating system of Android phones.18 Such apps are based on technology developed by Apple and Google that was previously known as the “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project”19 and is now referred to as the Exposure Notifications API (application programming interface).

In a May 2020 Forbes article by Simon Chandler, he pointed out that while contact tracing apps “may be cryptographically secure,” they still “threaten our privacy in broader and more insidious ways,”20 namely encouraging you to keep your cellphone with you at all times and tracking your whereabouts while you do, and further “normalizing” the constant use of technology to dictate your freedoms and behavior.

Using ‘Trickery for Profits’

The attorneys’ general lawsuits against Google are seeking fines and an end to Google’s use of “dark patterns” that influence users to give up more and more personal data in order for the company to increase its profits. The suits allege that Google’s products are designed to pressure users to allow location tracking “inadvertently or out of frustration,” in violation of state consumer protection laws.21

“Google uses tricks to continuously seek to track a user’s location,” Racine said. “This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states.” The more data that Google collects about individual users, the more advertising dollars it can generate. But, Racine noted, “The time of trickery for profits is over.”22

In a similar lawsuit filed in 2020, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich also alleged that Google used deceptive practices to track its users’ locations. That suit stated:23

“This case concerns Google’s widespread and systematic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users, including its users in Arizona, which Google then exploits to power its lucrative advertising business. Google makes it impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google’s collection of location information, should the users seek to do so.”

Location data, meanwhile, can be used to reveal your gym memberships, health care visits, stores and restaurants you frequent or where you go to church. It may also be used to provide personalized ads on digital billboards as you pass by, and Google tracks and provides to its customers information about how well online ads work to drive people into brick-and-mortar stores.24

In addition to disabling as many location tracking apps as possible, and deleting your location history from your Google accounts, you can avoid additional Google products — and the privacy invasions they entail — using the following tips:

  • Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo and Startpage
  • Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
  • If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service instead such as ProtonMail, an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
  • Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25
  • If you’re a student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

Sources and References

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Who will carry the can?

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | February 9, 2022

Attention has increasingly begun to turn towards vaccine efficacy and vaccine damage now that we have collated some twelve months of data. HART has recently focused on the issue of the appropriateness and efficacy, as well as safety, of vaccinating children. One of the issues that has not been explored by anyone is liability for vaccine-induced damage; by this is meant liability to those not covered by the blanket government indemnity given to the vaccine manufacturers, but the potential liability of those pushing the vaccines, be that the personal liability of government officials, NHS employees, schools as well as public and private sector employers (or potentially the officials and employees of these organisations themselves). This is  a real issue given that none of the individuals encouraging, administering or in other ways nudging or coercing the acceptance of these procedures has any idea of the content of the vaccines, nor of the medium or long term side effects that these might produce.

This article was prompted by an unconfirmed report (court papers have not been published so as far as we are concerned this remains anecdotal) from France that a life insurance company had refused a claim under its policy against the death of an insured individual who died of the vaccine. The refusal was justified on the basis that damage from experimental voluntary medical procedures are not covered (the vaccines are currently still of course only approved under an emergency protocol) and that such a death would therefore be classified as suicide. It went on to say that suicide from this cause was also not covered under its policy. The case was taken to the highest court in France and the claimants lost. It is not clear that an English court, for a similar situation in England and Wales under English law, would come to the same conclusion. The view from discussions in the insurance market is that it would not, but this is also anecdotal at this stage. Suicide would almost invariably be covered under an English law life insurance policy. However, the French case does begin to put this issue into sharper relief.

There have also been reports from an insurer in the United States (OneAmerica) that deaths of 16-64 year olds have increased by 40%, based on its numbers in comparable quarters year on year. Similar increases have been reported by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. This is a catastrophic increase, given that a 1-in-200-year event would correspond to a 10% increase and would in itself be categorised as a catastrophe event by insurers if it were widely experienced. While one or two swallows does not make a summer, this is an unfolding event that insurers and regulators will be watching closely. The time to watch is this month as insurers begin to report on their Q4/21 numbers, but the picture is not likely to improve throughout the year. Swiss Re and Munich Re, the world’s most prolific reinsurers, will be worth keeping an eye on, as a key market bellwether. If the numbers are half or even a quarter as bad as OneAmerica’s data, there will have been some actuarial deep dives and the focus will soon turn to begin investigation of  the vaccine as one of the only materially different exogenous factors that could have influenced the data.

Furthermore, one of the states of the USA is in the early stages of introducing primary legislation to make employers liable for just this sort of event. The US is notoriously litigious, though Canada and Australia are very close behind. The principle of requiring the manufacturer and in some cases distributor as well as in this instance the administrator of a product to be liable if it causes harm is a perfectly sound one. This ultimately would be for the courts to decide, but in a liability policy, all parties involved with the drug that does harm would be in the chain of people to sue. However, in the case of vaccinations, a key part of that principle has long been abandoned, in that for decades now, since the first Reagan administration and Thatcher’s era in the UK, governments have given full indemnities to the pharmaceutical industry for vaccine-related liabilities. Yet governments themselves offer only paltry and complex compensation schemes that can take years to pay out at huge actual, as well as emotional cost to the victims, for sums that come nowhere close to being real compensation. This is and always has been unjust, legally unwise and morally wrong. It effectively encourages the wrong priorities for pharma, giving profit an easy priority over safety. And worst of all, it leaves victims powerless, jobless, and of course injured. It puts them and their wider families into crippling financial difficulties and does nothing to curb the behaviour of pharma. The family speaking here describe the huge financial impact in addition to the impact of the injury itself on an 18-year-old girl and her parents. Add to that, cooperative governments that then mandate vaccines and encourage or coerce employers to do so. This is disproportionate given the risk from the virus in most younger people and we witness a healthcare system that seems to have become prone to forget — or even relegate — what should be a sacrosanct principle of First Do No Harm. The result is a toxic mix in which the only beneficiaries are the balance sheets of pharma and their shareholders.

One sure-fire way of stopping vaccine mandates in their tracks is for primary legislation to ensure that employers are liable if they go along with government mandates or nudges. Insurers are likely to react by reviewing coverage for such scenarios, where under legislation they can. Employers will not wish to assume such liabilities without adequate insurance. And should they fall foul of this obvious pitfall, shareholders may resort to Director’s and Officer’s liability insurance lawsuits before which Workers’ Compensation (and their European and other-world equivalents) actions are likely to play out.

Let us hope that such legislation passes and spreads swiftly around the world.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Limited Hangout of the Mandaters

BY THOMAS HARRINGTON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Yesterday, a number of important Democratic governors lifted mask mandates in their states. Almost to a one, they cited the changes wrought by the fast moving and relatively mild omicron variant of the SARS-CV2 virus as the prime reason for the change.

What none of them did was admit what “the Science” has shown for at least two decades, and has been clear through the last two years to anyone doing a modicum of independent research on the subject: masks have never been shown to fundamentally alter the spread of respiratory viruses within the general population.

What they did say almost to a one, like their counterparts in Great Britain, Denmark and other countries now dismantling previous Covid restrictions, was that the return to normality was greatly facilitated by the uptake of vaccines in the populations they currently govern.

Nearly a half century ago, a man named Ron Ziegler held the position now occupied by Jen Psaki. Like all presidential spokespeople before and since he was a serial dissembler.

But back then there were still a few journalists at the presidential court and beyond willing to do their jobs. And when one day in the midst of the Watergate scandal he used the passive voice construction “mistakes were made” in an attempt to explain away obvious breaches of honesty and ethics committed quite actively by the Nixon Administration, he was roundly mocked by the press corps.

Sadly, however, as I have argued elsewhere, this type of non-apology apology, which caused a scandal then, has become ubiquitous across our social landscape. And that’s a shame.

Why?

Because real apologies and expressions of accountability are important. Without them, neither the apologizer nor the aggrieved party ever experiences what the ancient Greeks considered a cardinal element in human development and human relations: catharsis.

This is especially so in the case of government entities. Without admissions of guilt, the assumptions and premises undergirding failed policies remain intact, lying fallow until such time as the government entity in question feels it opportune to deploy them again in the service of another misguided crusade.

This is what is currently occurring with the Covid hawks who have violated our fundamental rights time and again over the last two years.

These enemies of human dignity and freedom now realize that many of their former supporters among the citizenry feel exhausted, and in many cases, flat out deceived.

At the same time, however, they do not want to permanently relinquish the powerful repressive tools they have acquired during the two-year state of exception.

The answer?

One part of it, already mentioned, is the moderated limited hangout operation now being conducted regarding the use of masks in public. By relaxing these strictures while in no way addressing the fundamental fallacies upon which the masking policies were based, they ensure that mask mandates can be brought back when and if they deem it necessary to do so.

The second part, which is far more pernicious and consequential, is the effort to push a proposition that is at best quite tenuous in light of what actual scientific studies are currently revealing about vaccine efficacy: that without widespread injection uptake the virus would have never receded, and we would have thus never have gotten into a position to recover our freedoms.

Note the underlying logic here. We are not getting our freedoms back because they intrinsically belong to us and were unjustly stolen. We are getting them back because an important plurality of us have done what the “experts” and the “authorities” coerced us into doing.

With this approach there is no catharsis or healing, and certainly no acquisition of new wisdom and knowledge. What there is, is a sly reification of the infantilizing and anti-democratic ways of thinking that have predominated in our policy-making class throughout the pandemic.

Though many people, laboring under the mortal fear of being branded with the weaponized term of “conspiracy theorist,” are reluctant to admit it, the central concern of policy-makers throughout the pandemic has not been the health of our communities, but rather gaining enhanced control over where we go and what we put into our bodies.

There is nothing more central to the idea and practice of freedom than bodily autonomy. It is the basal freedom from which all others are derived. Without it—as the history of slavery starkly reminds us—all other liberties are comparatively ornamental.

For this reason, we must vigorously oppose this organized attempt to present the vaccines, which have been delivered to millions under rather severe coercion, as a great, if not the greatest, hero of the pandemic film.

Thomas Harrington, Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute, is an essayist and Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford (USA) where he taught for 24 years. He specializes in Iberian movements of national identity Contemporary Catalan culture. His writings are at Thomassharrington.com.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

CNN ‘Doctor’: “The Science Has Changed” So Lift COVID Restrictions

By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 9, 2022

Despite nothing changing at all, CNN’s resident ‘doctor’ Leana Wen claimed this week that “the science has changed” and so COVID restrictions including mask mandates should now be rescinded.

Wen, who started to admit some weeks ago that masks don’t work in stopping the spread of COVID, stated that “the decision to wear a mask should shift from a government mandate to an individual choice.”

She added that kids in schools should not be forced to wear masks because it can be harmful and makes it harder for them to learn.

As recently as two months ago, Wen was advocating for the Biden administration to “further restrict the activities of the unvaccinated.”

Wen also previously entrenched a segregated society when she blamed people who hadn’t taken the jab for a COVID-19 “surge” while asserting “we can’t trust the unvaccinated.”

Wen also called for making it “hard for people to remain unvaccinated” by restricting their social freedoms.

She asserted that, “It needs to be hard for people to remain unvaccinated,” claiming that it wasn’t currently difficult (despite the group being demonized and discriminated against on a daily basis).

Wen also previously stated that children returning to school need to be forced to wear industrial grade face masks and should be subjected to weekly COVID tests until they are fully vaccinated.

Suddenly all of this has changed for Wen.

It just happens to coincide with the beginning of election season, and Democrats now moving away from lockdown policies they previously vehemently advocated over fears about being wiped out politically.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Pakistan in the Eye of the Storm

By Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 8, 2022

The joint statement issued on February 6 following the four-day visit by the Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to China has been an exceptional gesture by Beijing underscoring the highest importance attached to that country as a regional ally. Beijing feels the need to underscore that not only does it back the government in Islamabad to the hilt but is determined to boost the ties, especially by boosting the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

Aside its overt emphasis on the launch of the CPEC’s Phase 2, the two highlights of the joint statement are: one, the affirmation that ’stronger’ defence and security cooperation will be ‘an important factor of peace and stability in the region,’ and, two, the joint initiative to take up with the Taliban government the holding of the China-Pakistan-Afghanistan Trilateral Foreign Ministers’ Dialogue as well as the ‘extension of CPEC to Afghanistan.’

New trends have appeared in regional security during the past 6-month period since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan last August, which are highly consequential for regional politics. For a start, all evidence suggests that various terrorist groups continue to operate in Afghanistan. And groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Islamic State affiliates have a long history of working as the West’s geopolitical tool.

The acute humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan following the abrupt ending of western assistance in August and the U.S. vengeful decision to freeze the country’s funds abroad are being turned around as pressure points by Washington to engage with the Taliban Government with a view to manipulate its attitudes and policies. With the departure of U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, the CIA is in direct control of Washington’s dealings with the Taliban.

The Oslo talks (January 23-25) between the Taliban and the U.S. has been a turning point. Notably, last week, the U.S. Treasury Department has unilaterally ‘tweaked’ the sanctions regime against the Haqqani Network. Funds can now be transferred to Afghanistan by international banks, and aid agencies are allowed to work with the Haqqanis. Alongside, President Biden has designated Qatar as a ‘major non-NATO ally’ even as direct flights commenced last week between Kabul and Doha (where CIA operatives dealing with Afghan affairs are based), and, furthermore, Qatar will now be operating the Afghan airports and controlling that country’s air space. Taken together, Washington is rapidly putting in place the infrastructure for conducting its operations in Afghanistan pending diplomatic recognition and the establishment of physical presence.

Meanwhile, the climate of Pakistan’s relations with the Taliban government has deteriorated. A surge of cross-border violence culminated last week in brazen attacks on Pakistani military. The picture remains hazy. Intriguing questions arise as to the culpability.

The internal tensions within the Taliban are no big secret. It is only to be expected that at a time when the group is trying to gain international legitimacy and tackle domestic crisis, internal tensions get accentuated, as interest groups competing for positions and privileges pull in different directions. Suffice to say, the Taliban is more vulnerable today than ever to infiltration and manipulation by the western intelligence.

Recently, Barnett Rubin, former State Department official and expert on Afghanistan who was a key aide to late Richard Holbrooke, took a historical perspective when he said, “The Taliban are the most unified organisation in Afghanistan. There has never been a significant split in the organisation. There are many differences and rivalries that are seized on by their opponents as evidence that the Taliban are divided, but they have never been divided in practice. The CIA spent $1 bn trying to split the Taliban and failed.”

That was time past. Time present may hold surprises. What is apparent is that while the Taliban government is being seen by the world community as the monarch of all it surveys in Afghanistan, Washington is singling out the Haqqani Network as its interlocutor. The folklore used to be that the Haqqanis were the blue-eyed boys of Pakistan. Equally, they became synonymous with brutal acts of terrorism. That said, however, the Haqqanis also have another side to their bio-profile.

Lest it gets forgotten, the great patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani’s rift with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the subsequent split with Hizb-i-Islami in 1979 was not due to the acceptance or rejection of radicalism but reflected regional geography and their respective tribal origins. The Haqqanis belong to the Zadran Pashtun tribe, a branch of the Kalani tribal confederacy inhabiting southeastern Afghanistan (Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces) and parts of Pakistan’s Waziristan. That is what distinguishes the Haqqanis in the top rungs of the Taliban leadership in Kabul. Mullah Hasan Akhund, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Mohammed Yaqoob, etc. are largely drawn from the Abdali (Durrani) confederacy of the dominant Pashtun tribes.

True, the Taliban movement managed to put up a show of unity, but that was the period of the jihad against foreign occupation when clan and tribal identity got submerged and the friendship networks, or andiwali (Pashto for camaraderie) played an important cementing role. But even then, interestingly, the Haqqani Network had enjoyed battlefield autonomy while remaining politically subservient to the Quetta Shura.

Today, two factors become particularly important. First, no one knows whether the Taliban supremo Amir Hibatullah Akhundzada is still alive or not. There is a leadership vacuum. Second, since 2013-2014, Pakistan’s control of the Taliban had been progressively weakening following the assassination of several senior Taliban figures in Quetta. Now, these two factors combined together, there is no one with power or authority who can rein in the Taliban factions from going overboard. In all likelihood, Pakistan is helplessly watching. The cross-border tensions could well be a manifestation of this epochal transition in the Taliban’s tumultuous history.

Then, there is an interesting detail that has great relevance today. The Haqqanis and the CIA go back a long way. The Haqqani Network was the only Mujahideen group that then Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq permitted the CIA to have direct dealings during the 1980s jihad. How far that had anything to do with the Haqqanis’ devotion to ‘global jihad’ is a moot point today. The point is, it was in the safe hands of the Haqqanis that the CIA entrusted Osama bin Laden’s life and security during the 1980s jihad.

Is it coincidental that the U.S. has ‘tweaked’ the sanctions against the Haqqanis unilaterally so soon after the defeat in Afghanistan so as to revive their direct line of communication with them?

The regional states cannot but be worried. Simply put, the spectre that is haunting the region is the U.S.’ return to Afghanistan to finesse a new geopolitical tool for influencing regional politics in a wide arc of countries — Central Asian states, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. The China-Pakistan joint statement issued in Beijing on Sunday is a forceful signal from Beijing against any such attempt to use Afghan soil as a springboard to destabilise the region. But it is going to be an uphill struggle unless the attempt is nipped in the bud.

It is not without reason that the Chinese President Xi Jinping told his Kazakh counterpart Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at their meeting in Beijing on Saturday that ‘The dimension of China-Kazakhstan relations has gone beyond the bilateral scope and is of great significance to regional and even world peace and stability.’ The very next day, at the meeting with Imran Khan, President Xi emphasised that ‘as the world finds itself in a period of turbulence and transformation, China-Pakistan relations have gained greater strategic significance.’

February 8, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

16 States File New Lawsuit Challenging Vaccine Mandates for U.S. Healthcare Workers

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 7, 2022

Attorneys general from 16 states, led by Louisiana, filed a new legal challenge to COVID-19 vaccine mandates for U.S. healthcare workers.

The amended lawsuit was filed Feb. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, administrator of CMS.

The suit seeks to block the mandate for healthcare workers in the 25 states that previously challenged it and where it is set to take effect beginning this month.

The revised lawsuit puts forth a series of new arguments, including that the CMS mandate was designed in response to the Delta variant and is therefore now obsolete.

Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia joined Louisiana in the lawsuit.

The amended lawsuit comes in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 13 decision, which lifted injunctions that had been in effect in 25 states. The Supreme Court said mandates could go into effect while lawsuits challenging it continue to weave their way through the judicial system.

This decision came following a circuitous legal process, where U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty initially blocked the mandate nationwide, on Nov. 30, 2021. (Judge Doughty is overseeing the case involving the amended lawsuit.)

An appeals court later lifted the injunction in 26 states on Dec. 15, 2021, but the mandate was then separately blocked in Texas that same day by another judge.

These developments prompted the Biden administration in late December 2021 to file an emergency request with the Supreme Court, asking the court to lift the various injunctions barring implementation of the CMS mandate.

The mandate, as originally issued by the CMS, specifically applies to healthcare workers at hospitals and facilities that receive federal funding — namely, those that accept Medicare and Medicaid payments.

Following the Supreme Court decision, healthcare workers in 24 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming) will be required to furnish proof of having received at least one COVID vaccine dose by Feb. 14, and must complete their primary series of vaccines by March 15.

Healthcare workers in Texas have until Feb. 22 to receive their first dose, and March 21 to complete their primary series of vaccinations, while in states where the mandate had not previously been blocked, the respective deadlines are Jan. 27 and Feb. 28.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry described the CMS vaccine requirement as a “job-killing directive” that is ineffective as a measure to stop the spread of COVID or protect public health.

Landry argued the mandates violate states’ rights:

“The CMS vaccination rule remains a misguided, one-size-fits-all, job-killing directive that does not account for any change in circumstances — including how the vaccines do not stop the transmission of the Omicron variant.

“What’s more, the federal government has now made clear that it expects the states to implement this flawed policy with state employees. So I will continue fighting this ill-advised invasion of individual autonomy and my state’s rights.”

Landry said the mandate is “causing havoc in the healthcare labor market across the nation — especially in rural communities.”

The lawsuit addresses a notable discrepancy: The mandate, signed by Becerra, specifically references the danger the Delta variant poses to the unvaccinated, adding that vaccines “continue to be effective in preventing COVID-19 associated with the now-dominant Delta variant.”

The Supreme Court agreed with Becerra’s reasoning, stating he had “good cause” to impose the mandate without the typically mandated comment period, because of his belief that any additional delay would pose a danger to patient health and safety in light of the spread of the Delta variant.

The lawsuit argues that as of mid-December 2021 and based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Delta was no longer the prevalent strain of COVID, having been replaced by Omicron:

“[T]he Secretary’s rationale for the rule and for avoiding public comment no longer exists. The Delta variant has run its full course.

“… It is now established beyond any serious question that the secretary’s speculation was wrong. The Delta variant effectively disappeared from the scene within weeks of the issuance of the rule.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall also questioned the efficacy of the COVID vaccines against Omicron:

“The mandate was promulgated in response to the Delta variant, which now accounts for only 0.1 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the United States.

“But research suggests that COVID-19 vaccines do little to stop the transmission of the predominant strain today — the Omicron variant, which accounts for 99.9 percent of all cases — which undermines the premise for forcing people to submit to them.”

The amended lawsuit states, “Omicron’s transmission is largely undeterred by the vaccines.”

The lawsuit also references findings by the American Association of Retired Persons Public Policy Institute, which indicates nursing homes and long-term care facilities are already facing a severe shortage of nurses and aides, without the mandate having yet gone into effect.

The lawsuit argues these low staffing levels place patients at greater risk, including a higher likelihood of contracting COVID:

“By forcing healthcare workers to choose between their jobs or an experimental vaccine they do not want, CMS is affirmatively pinching an already strained workforce — and particularly so in rural areas within the States.”

The lawsuit also notes the shifting and contradictory position of the federal government, which, for instance, recently issued guidance permitting healthcare workers who have tested positive for COVID to go to work, which undercuts the policy that prohibits unvaccinated healthcare workers from going to work even with a negative test result.

The lawsuit further argues the CMS vaccine mandate violates the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution concerning states’ rights; the Spending Clause of the Constitution; the Anti-Commandeering Doctrine, which stems from two Supreme Court decisions prohibiting the federal government from commandeering state governments; and the Nondelegation Doctrine, a principle in administrative law that stipulates Congress cannot delegate its legislative powers to other entities.

In contrast, government lawyers told the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana in January that following the Jan. 13 Supreme Court decision striking down the previous injunctions, the case was “effectively concluded,” and they submitted a motion for its dismissal.

The CMS on Jan. 25 issued new guidance that broadened the mandate, extending the vaccine requirement to surveyors who enter the healthcare facilities covered by the rule.

In turn, the lawsuit argues the latest CMS guidance clashes with laws in the states participating in the lawsuit, including an Indiana law that bars government entities from requiring any individual to furnish proof of vaccination, and a Montana law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of vaccination status.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

February 8, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

J&J tried to block publication of story about its secret plan to limit baby powder lawsuit payouts

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 6, 2022

Johnson & Johnson has been accused of trying to suppress speech by asking a judge to block the Reuters news agency from publishing a story about the pharmaceutical giant’s legal strategy to counter lawsuits claiming that its Baby Powder is a cause of cancer.

“The First Amendment is not a license to knowingly violate the law,” J&J said in a court filing in New Jersey this week.

The filing was made at the US Bankruptcy Court where the Big Pharma giant is trying to get protections from “bankruptcy” from 38,000 lawsuits alleging the company’s baby powder product was advertised as safe but had long-term cancer risks.

This week, Reuters reported that J&J had a secret plan to shift the liability from the lawsuits to a new subsidiary which would then declare bankruptcy to limit having to pay up over the cancer lawsuits.

J&J attempted to stop Reuters from publishing the story by requesting the judge intervene and issue a restraining order.

See the court filing here.

J&J accused Reuters of obtaining documents that were protected from public disclosure, demanding that Reuters return the documents and not publish any information.

The request asks for an order:

“(1) precluding the Reuters news agency from using or relying upon any documents designated as “Confidential” in this proceeding;

(2) requiring the return of any such documents; and

(3) ordering each attorney who has made an appearance in the above-captioned proceeding to submit to the Court a declaration under penalty of perjury stating whether he or she disclosed any materials designated as “Confidential” in this proceeding to Reuters (the “Motion”).”

Lawyers for Reuters, in a court filing, said that Johnson and Johnson’s request to stop the publication was “among the most extraordinary remedies a litigant can request under the law” and that the request was a “prior restraint of speech on a matter of public interest.”

After Reuters published its story, J&J withdrew their request for an immediate hearing but was “not prepared to agree” that the request about the documents was moot.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Pfizer, FDA Lose Bid to Further Delay Release of COVID Vaccine Safety Data

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 7, 2022

A federal judge Wednesday rejected a bid by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with the support of Pfizer, to delay the court-ordered release of nearly 400,000 pages of documents pertaining to the approval of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Federal judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in an order issued Feb. 2, said the FDA must release redacted versions of the documents in question according to the following disclosure schedule:

  • 10,000 pages apiece, due on or before March 1 and April 1, 2022.
  • 80,000 pages apiece, to be produced on or before May 2, June 1 and July 1, 2022.
  • 70,000 pages to be produced on or before Aug. 1, 2022.
  • 55,000 pages per month, on or before the first business day of each month thereafter, until the release of the documents has been completed.

The order grants the FDA the ability to “bank” excess pages as part of this release schedule — meaning that if the agency exceeds its monthly quota in any given month it can apply those extra pages to a subsequent month.

Last week’s ruling is the most recent development in an ongoing court case that began with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed in August 2021 by Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency (PHMPT), a group of doctors and public health professionals.

PHMPT, a group of more than 30 medical and public health professionals and scientists from institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and UCLA, in September 2021 filed a lawsuit against the FDA after the agency denied its original FOIA request.

In that request, PHMPT asked the FDA to release “all data and information for the Pfizer vaccine,” including safety and effectiveness data, adverse reaction reports, and a list of active and inactive ingredients.

The FDA argued it didn’t have enough staff to process the redaction and release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, claiming it could process only 500 pages per month.

This would have meant the cache of documents would not be fully released for approximately 75 years.

In his Jan. 6 order, Pittmann rejected the FDA’s claim and instead required the agency to release 12,000 pages of documents by Jan. 31 and an additional 55,000 pages per month thereafter.

Pfizer responded, to the Jan. 6 order by filing a memorandum with the court on Jan. 21, requesting to intervene in the case for the “limited purpose of ensuring that information exempt from disclosure under FOIA is adequately protected as FDA complies with this Court’s order.”

Pfizer claimed to support the disclosure of the documents, but asked to intervene in the case to ensure that information legally exempt from disclosure will not be “disclosed inappropriately.”

As reported by The Defender, this request, if granted, would have also meant further delay for the release of the next tranche of documents, until May 1.

Lawyers for PHMPT, in a brief submitted Jan. 25, asked Pittman to reject Pfizer’s motion, prompting Pittman’s Feb. 2 order.

The first batch of documents produced in Nov. 2021, which totaled a mere 500 pages, revealed there were more than 1,200 vaccine-related deaths within the first 90 days following the release of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

© [Article Date] Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

More U.S. Murders in the Middle East

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | February 7, 2022

The U.S. national-security establishment and its acolytes in the mainstream press are celebrating the U.S. military’s murder in Syria of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim Hashimi Qurayshi. Mind you, they don’t call it murder. They call it a “targeted killing” of a “bad guy” or a “terrorist.” But murder it is because the U.S. military has no legitimate authority to kill anyone in the Middle East (or anywhere else), whether it be people it labels “bad guys,” “terrorists,” “communists,” “opponents,” “rivals,” “adversaries,” or “enemies.”

Let’s take a look at the Bill of Rights, specifically the Fifth Amendment. Yes, I know that the national-security establishment and its supporters in the federal judiciary hold that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to the military, the CIA, and the NSA. But a close reading of the amendment reveals that there is no exception carved out for the national-security branch of the government. By its express terms, the restrictions in the Fifth Amendment apply to everyone in the federal government, not just to some people within the federal government.

The Fifth Amendment states in part: “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”

Notice something important about that language: It doesn’t say “No American shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” It says “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” That means it encompasses citizens of other countries.

Notice something else important: It doesn’t say “No person within the United States shall be deprived of life without due process of law.” It says “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”

That’s what the Pentagon just did to Qurayshi. In a raid on a safe house in Syria, the Pentagon just deprived him of life without due process of law.

The Pentagon is pointing out that Qurayshi actually killed himself and his family with a bomb once the raid commenced. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the Pentagon isn’t responsible for killing him. The raid is the proximate cause of Qurayshi’s death as well as the deaths of other people who were with him, including women and children. That is, if the raid had not taken place, Qurayshi and those other people would still be alive.

In fact, the Pentagon is also responsible for the deaths of the women and children that were killed by Qurayshi’s suicide bomb. The Pentagon was well aware of the possibility that he could decide to blow himself up rather than be taken captive and carted away to Gitmo for torture and perpetual incarceration. That awareness did not stop them from conducting the raid anyway. The deaths of those women and children was a risk that the Pentagon felt was worth taking.

What is due process of law? It means notice and a trial. The Bill of Rights expressly prohibits the federal government from killing anyone without first giving him notice of criminal charges and a trial in federal district court. The notice comes in the form of a criminal indictment issued by a federal grand jury. At the trial, federal prosecutors are required to prove to a jury (or a judge) beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of the offense for which they wish to kill him.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, the Pentagon did not provide notice and a trial to Qurayshi before they raided that safe house and brought about his death and the deaths of more than a dozen other people. Perhaps the reason for that is that U.S. officials felt that they couldn’t prove that Qurayshi had committed a criminal offense against the United States.

National-security officials and their supporters implicitly claim that their “war on terrorism” trumps the Fifth Amendment. Really? Where does it say that in the Fifth Amendment? I certainly don’t see a “war on terrorism” exception in that amendment.

Indeed, what business do the Pentagon and the CIA have sitting in Syria and killing people? The last time I checked, Congress had not declared war on Syria. Moreover, the Syrian government has never invited the U.S. government to situate its troops and agents within the country. That makes the Pentagon and the CIA illegal interlopers in a foreign land, where they are killing whoever they want with impunity.

We also mustn’t forget that it is the Pentagon and the CIA that are responsible for the rise of ISIS in the first place, owing to their illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iraq.

What is a “war of aggression”? It is a type of war that was declared a war crime at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. That was the tribunal that put accused Nazi war criminals on trial. The tribunal, which included U.S. officials, convicted German officials of attacking other nations. That’s what they called waging a “war of aggression.”

That’s what U.S. officials did with Iraq. It is undisputed that Iraq never attacked the United States. When the U.S. government attacked this impoverished third-world country, it was waging a “war on aggression.” Moreover, the fact that the Pentagon and the CIA did not secure the constitutionally required congressional declaration of war before committing this Nuremberg-type crime only makes the situation more egregious.

After U.S. officials installed a puppet regime with their war of aggression on Iraq, ISIS formed with the aim of ousting that U.S.-installed puppet regime. In fact, many of the ISIS members had been officials in the Saddam Hussein regime that was violently ousted from power by the U.S. invasion and occupation of the country. (It’s worth noting that Saddam was a partner and ally of the Pentagon and the CIA during the 1980s, when he was killing Iranians in his own war of aggression against Iran.)

Thus, if the U.S. government had never waged an illegal and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iraq, there never would have been an ISIS, which means that the man they just murdered — Abu Ibrahim Hashimi Qurayshi — would not have been the leader of ISIS, which means that he and his family would not be dead today.

Of course, Qurayshi will quickly be replaced, just like drug lords are quickly replaced after they are killed or captured by drug-war agents. ISIS will retaliate for Qurayshi’s killing, and the “war on terrorism” will continue, just as the drug war continues, which means ever-increasing budgets, power, and influence for the national-security establishment. The “war on terrorism” is a better racket than the “war on drugs” and perhaps even better than the old Cold War racket of the “war on communism.”

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Truckers vs The Government; We need to get out ahead of all this

By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | February 7, 2022

You can support the truckers at TruckerLawyer.ca.

As of this writing, I’m told the police are making arrests in Ottawa. I assume this means they’re arresting truckers.

The Ottawa city government has declared a state of emergency. It’s now a crime for anyone on the scene to give food, fuel, or aid of any kind to the truckers.

The truckers and people all over Canada want freedom and peace. The government wants peace without freedom.

The government wants vaccine mandates and passports, and the ability to declare lockdowns and other fascist measures at any time.

No debate on “the science,” no need to justify the COVID measures, no legal cases taking up Constitutional limits on government power. Just: OBEY.

So that’s what the government is. That’s who they are. That’s who Trudeau is.

We might feel shock at what the government is doing to the truckers, but we shouldn’t be surprised. No one should have expected the government of “obey us” to just sit back and let this convoy happen and proceed, with so many Canadians supporting it.

No one should be surprised that rebellion against “obey us” governments is breaking out across the world.

Let’s get out ahead of what could happen in the coming days and weeks—-

No one with a conscience should back away if governments and their media front men throw around words like “insurrection” and “incitement” and “terrorism.” THESE ARE CONTROL WORDS.

They’re meant to paralyze people. They’re crude smears. The implication would be, anyone who is “a trucker” or a “supporter” wants to overthrow the entire government—rather than replace the fascists.

“Overthrow” was the official characterization of the January 6 Capitol break-in, in the US. “Well, led by a guy wearing a helmet and horns, a mob was going to take over the Congress.”

I see. Sure. And Trump, wearing a military uniform, having gained control over the PENTAGON, was going to swagger into the Capitol, declare martial law, and run the US with his junta.

Thereafter, The Rebels, commanded by a cigar-smoking fatigues-wearing Tony Fauci, encamped in the Catskills, would valiantly try to win back The Republic and the Constitution.

The truckers want freedom and peace, and their own right to earn a living. The Canadian government wants peace without freedom for everyone, and they’re ready to use force to force the peace.

If serious violence breaks out in Ottawa, the government will be behind it.

Violence shouldn’t make people back away from supporting the truckers.

Perhaps you noticed that the George Floyd protests and riots and the looting and burning and violence in many US cities didn’t make anyone on the political Left back away from supporting the rioters.

Did the government call those supporters insurrectionists or terrorists?

You might hear this from people “who are really in the know”: “You see, the whole convoy was a PLAN to cause violence, and then anyone who’s against the mandates and supports the truckers would be labeled a terrorist…”

Without real evidence, that formulation could be used to reject ANY form of mass protest on ANY issue. You may as well say ALL OF LIFE IS A FALSE FLAG, and therefore, we should do nothing and support nothing.

If serious violence does break out in Ottawa, a typical shaming operation will launch: “You people who supported the truckers—you’re responsible for this. You thought the truckers were honorable. But they were always breaking the law. They were stirred up by a mob mentality, by you who won’t accept the reality of the pandemic and what we all have to do to return to normal life…”

Guilt by association, except it turns out the people we’re associated with—the truckers—did nothing wrong.

Again, if anyone has actual evidence to the contrary, evidence that shows there was a plan to launch a convoy that would dead-end in violence, and cause the world to shake its head and say, “THIS is what the protesters and the anti-vaxxers were about all along, they’re all crazy…”, then present that evidence.

I say this, because in the coming days, we could see and hear more of such talk.

What I see in this convoy is honor, justice, the struggle for freedom.

Remember: The convoy is a hell of a lot more than the truckers.

It’s all the Canadians who are supporting it. So if a trucker is there simply because he wants to make a living, but he can’t cross the border unless he shows a vaccine passport, and he doesn’t want to take the vaccine, and that’s the sum of his protest; fine.

And if some trucker turns out to be bad actor, so what?

GET OUT AHEAD OF ALL THIS.

Get all these things straight in your mind, because if the presence of many people and trucks in Ottawa endures, you’re going to be WORKED by some experienced PR pros; worked to change your thoughts and opinions and feelings.

That’s their job. That’s how they operate.

Stand firm. Stay strong.

Make your voice heard.

Violence is always a government’s hole card. They play it, and then they say the rebels caused it or made it necessary. They splash the violence on the news, because they know it scares many people, who then retreat.

Don’t retreat.

Violence serves another purpose. People want it to stop, so they look to the current political leadership to stop it. They join forces with the fascists who started or triggered the violence.

Don’t fall for that.

If among all the truckers, there are a few bad actors who are government agents, and they do initiate violence, the news will highlight them to the max. This is pure Orwell 1984 stuff. Put pictures of the faces of “the killers” on the screen, over and over, with anchor voiceover telling the public what to see and think and feel. With the goal of stimulating outrage.

Outrage against everyone who supports the truckers or won’t take the vaccine or is opposed to the mandates.

Don’t buy that op.

Stay strong. Stand firm.

Remember what this is. A fight for freedom.

Here’s something else that could happen. The government suddenly announces a new wave of COVID cases. And the blame is directed at the throngs of unmasked truckers and their supporters out in the streets. Super-spreaders. The news, of course, would play that up. By accusation and indirect suggestion, the public will be told THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE PUBLIC HEALTH OFFICIALS FEARED.

The unmonitored numbers of irresponsible persons rebelling against common sense are responsible for KILLING ordinary law-abiding citizens.

That’s a straight con. During the past two years, it’s been played many times.

Don’t be fooled. Case numbers can be rigged at the drop of a hat. That’s been going on since the beginning of the “pandemic.”

Stand firm.

The pandemic story was planned with the sole purpose of canceling freedom.

Yours, mine, everybody’s.

Don’t give in.

Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated.

No matter what.

One more suggestion. Play out, in your mind, a worst-case scenario: The convoy WAS planned by bad actors with the intent to discredit actual freedom fighters and people who refuse the vaccine and oppose the COVID mandates and restrictions. Go ahead. Make a mind-movie of that.

Where does that lead you? What’s the bottom line?

It’s SO WHAT?

Because all the people on the streets and in the trucks ARE for freedom; and if the outcome is planned government-caused violence, that means NOTHING about what we’re fighting for. That discredits NOTHING.

If we stay strong.

If we stand up.

If we make our voices heard.

I could write 10,000 more words about a parallel event to the convoy, but I’ll keep it short. The parallel event was the January 6 rally in Washington after the Presidential election, the rally that had nothing to do with the Capitol break-in. Where hundreds of thousands of people gathered.

There were a number of ideas in the minds of all those people: a stolen election; freedom from lockdowns and other fascist COVID restrictions; opposition to the vaccine; opposition to the self-appointed thought-police of America…

In my opinion, Trump didn’t deserve that massive show of loyalty. Not at all. I’ve explained why in other articles. But the people who were there—they were the important ones. Regardless of who planned the break-in and for what reasons. THEY, the hundreds of thousands, wanted freedom. And still do.

The US government is trying to figure out every possible way to discredit and cancel them. Now.

This is the bigger picture.

Keep your eye on it.

I know. I’m not supposed to bring up the January 6 rally. People who want freedom are supposed to forget that. Hush hush. Because THAT event has been slammed mercilessly and discredited and made into a foul horror show.

But I don’t care. All over the world, the same pattern has been repeating. The people who want to live out in the open and throw off their chains are being painted as criminals. For whatever reasons can be cooked up.

And no, not all protests are the same or are launched for exactly the same reasons. But at the core, the impulse and the foundation are there: WE’RE TAKING IT BACK. FREEDOM.

This isn’t Qanon crap or Trumpism or racism or craziness or any hustle.

This is real.

The big smear, guilt by association, and all the other ops aren’t going to fool us.

If we don’t back down.

If we stand firm.

If we don’t quit.

If we make our voices heard.

No matter what.

Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Truckers’ Declaration

State of the Nation | February 5, 2022

We, the Truckers Of America, declare that whereas:

The “killer virus” is a mild flu

The Covid “vaccine” is a gene-modification treatment, harmful, often deadly, and damaging to the immune system

The Covid “vaccine” is unnecessary because cheap, effective remedies exist; administering these dangerous experimental jabs to children is especially evil and violates the Nuremberg code of 1947

The PCR test is totally fraudulent and can’t differentiate between COVID-19 and the seasonal flu, as the CDC and WHO now admit after two years; The tests mostly give false positives and were rigged to do so

The PCR swabs are invasive, potentially damaging to the olfactory nerve, and contain toxic substances

The case data generated is meaningless junk, as the authorities now admit

The masks are totally useless, increase the risks of disease, and can damage children’s brains by cutting off the supply of oxygen

The vaccine mandates are illegal, unconstitutional, and violate our fundamental human rights and the Nuremberg code of 1947

The vaccine “passports” are illegal, unconstitutional, discriminatory, go against science, and violate the Nuremberg code

The news media is the PR agency of Big Pharma, purveying disinformation and lies about this plandemic 24/7

The “Fact Checkers” are the paid mouthpieces of Big Pharma, disseminating untruths and misinformation

WE HEREBY DECLARE that we are not leaving this city until our demands are met, as follows:

* No more mandates

* No more gene-based “vaccines”

* No more bogus diagnostic tests

* No more masks

* No more health passports

* No more censorship by the lying News Media and Social Media—All the scientific findings by truth-telling doctors and researchers must be fully presented to the public.

* Full compensation by the vaccine manufacturers and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to every person injured by the COVID-19 “vaccines” or their bereaved families.

Our demonstration is totally peaceful and lawful. If any disturbance occurs it is the result of FBI dirty-tricks as occurred at the so-called “Capitol riot” of January 6, 2021.

IT’S TIME TO END THIS SCAMDEMIC

* * * * * *

Submitted by a Concerned Citizen in solidarity with America’s Truckers and Truckers Worldwide.

February 6, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

China’s support is a game changer for Russia

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | FEBRUARY 6, 2022

During the visit by President Vladimir Putin to Beijing on Friday, the world attention was focused on how far China would go in support of Russia in the latter’s standoff with the US and NATO. From the joint statement issued after the visit, China has given fulsome support to Russia, endorsing Moscow’s demand for security guarantee and its opposition to NATO expansion, the two core issues.

Russia never expected or sought any Chinese intervention in any military confrontation with the western alliance. Russia has the capability to safeguard its sovereignty.

The Chinese support to Russia at the present juncture can still manifest in a variety of ways. Aside China’s backing at the UN Security Council, what really matters most for Moscow would be the myriad ways in which Beijing can mitigate the effect of any harsh western sanctions against by way of transfer of technology, trade, investments, etc. Conceivably, Putin and Xi Jinping have reached an understanding. 

Already, a significant step has been taken in this direction during Putin’s visit with the agreement on new Russian oil and gas deals with China worth an estimated $117.5 billion, and China promising to ramp up Russia’s Far East exports. A new 30-year contract to supply 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year to China from Russia’s Far East was signed. 

Separately, Russian oil giant Rosneft signed a deal with China’s CNPC to supply 100 million tonnes of oil through Kazakhstan over 10 years, effectively extending an existing deal, which is worth an estimated $80bn. The construction of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline to China with a massive capacity of 50 bcm annually is also under discussion. 

No doubt, Russia is seriously diversifying its markets for oil and gas exports. This will create space for Moscow to negotiate with its European partners. The new deal with Beijing will not necessitate diversion of Russia’s gas exports to Europe, as they are linked to the gas reserves from the Pacific island of Sakhalin, whereas Russia’s European pipeline network sources gas from the Siberian fields. 

The ball is in now entirely in the European court — whether to continue to source assured energy supplies from Russia at such incredibly low prices or punish itself by forgoing that option. 

While sanctions may inflict some dislocation initially necessitating readjustments, Moscow will cope with it, as past experience shows. With around $640 billion in foreign exchange reserves, Moscow could persevere longer than the Europeans in the energy market. 

The big question is about Putin’s decisions regarding the dangerous situation on Russia’s western borders. The short answer is that Putin will not be browbeaten by the Biden Administration’s threat of sanctions. 

China does not consider that a full scale invasion of Ukraine is in the Russian calculus but it neatly sidesteps the issue, nonetheless. Putin acts very cautiously, and almost always is reactive. Be it in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria or Ukraine itself, that has been the pattern. Of course, it is a different matter that in all these instances, Putin acted decisively to make sure his objectives were realised. 

In the situation surrounding Ukraine, the Biden Administration is forcing Putin’s hands. The latest US and NATO troop reinforcements to Russia’s neighbours—particularly to the Baltic states, in close proximity to St. Petersburg — were completely unwarranted and can only be seen as a calculated act of provocation when there has so far been no evidence of an adequate justification for a major Russian military operation. 

Yet, there could be a method in this madness, given the real possibility of risky military operations in Donbass by an emboldened Ukrainian military or even worse, by the nationalist battalions in that region (to whom NATO has secretly provided a large influx of arms in recent weeks.) 

In the event of any attack on Donbass, make no mistake, Russian intervention is guaranteed. The legislation under consideration with the Duma in Moscow currently factors in precisely such a contingency. It calls upon the Russian government to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and, secondly, authorises the government to provide with new weapons to these two “people’s republics.”            

A plausible scenario could be that Russia will patiently wait for the Ukrainian provocation. That is, it all boils down to a question of resolve. For Russia, the stakes are exceedingly high and its staying power is far greater than that of its Western adversaries. 

There is a big element of brinkmanship here. What is happening in Europe at the moment has turned out to be a huge distraction for the US and as time passes, the Biden Administration would rue that its Indo-Pacific strategy is faltering and it is bogged down. The likelihood of Russia backing off is zero.

Evidently, the North Korean missile testing is already putting enormous strain on the US’ alliance system in the Far East. Unlike Ukraine, the US’ security interests are directly affected. Yet, on Friday, a US-drafted statement condemning Pyongyang crash-landed. 

Ironically, China called on the US to be more flexible in its dealings with North Korea and joined six other member countries (including Russia and India) in refusing to sign the joint statement. 

China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun later told reporters, “If they do want to see some new breakthrough, they should show more sincerity and flexibility. They should come up with more attractive and more practical, more flexible approaches, policies and actions and accommodating the concerns of the DPRK.” 

This is where the US is facing the new reality that its Cold War mentality to isolate China in the Asia-Pacific region and Russia in Europe will not work.

The solidarity between China and Russia reflected in Friday’s joint statement goes far beyond the immediate crisis in Ukraine or the tensions over Taiwan and has an epochal significance heralding a new era in international relations based on a pluralistic world order where the role of the US will no longer be exclusive or defining. 

Russia and China have a broad consensus today on almost all core issues related to global strategic stability, which is unprecedented in modern history. 

The joint statement mentions the US not less than five times while highlighting the common stance of China and Russia on several key regional and global issues, including the expansion of NATO, the US-led ideological clique in the name of democracy, the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy, AUKUS, etc. 

Xi told Putin he is willing to work with him to plan a blueprint and guide the direction of China-Russia ties under the new historical conditions. China has lent support to the fundamental principle of the indivisibility of security that Russia is upholding. In these circumstances, if the US with its zero-sum mindset thinks it can defeat Russia through sanctions, it is being delusional. 

Stonewalling the Russian demands is not going to be feasible, either. The challenge facing the Biden Administration will be how to preserve its credibility, especially in the European eyes. For, if Russia is compelled to act militarily to defend its non-negotiable core interests, as it will be at some point, a dangerous escalation may happen. 

Is the US ready for an open-ended conflict with Russia? Are its allies game for it? Can they afford it? Will their domestic opinion allow it — war with a thermonuclear nuclear power in Europe to defend ill-defined notions? 

A far more judicious course would be to seek a diplomatic formula that takes into account all of these self-evident realities and negotiate some kind of a document that guarantees Russia’s legitimate security needs.

February 6, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

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