PP NewsBrief: 2021-06-21

We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.

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The Notorious London Spy School Churning Out Many of the World’s Top Journalists

"In a previous investigation, MintPress News explored how one university department, the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, functions as a school for spooks. Its teaching posts are filled with current or former NATO officials, army officers and intelligence operatives to churn out the next generation of spies and intelligence officers. However, we can now reveal an even more troubling product the department produces: journalists. An inordinate number of the world’s most influential reporters, producers and presenters, representing many of the most well-known and respected outlets — including The New York Times, CNN and the BBC — learned their craft in the classrooms of this London department, raising serious questions about the links between the fourth estate and the national security state.

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Increasingly, it appears, intelligence agencies the world over are beginning to appreciate agents with a strong academic background. A 2009 study published by the CIA described how beneficial it is to “use universities as a means of intelligence training,” writing that, “exposure to an academic environment, such as the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, can add several elements that may be harder to provide within the government system.”

The paper, written by two King’s College staffers, boasted that the department’s faculty has “extensive and well-rounded intelligence experience.” This was no exaggeration. Current Department of War Studies educators include the former Secretary General of NATO, former U.K. Minister of Defense, and military officers from the U.K, U.S. and other NATO countries. “I deeply appreciate the work that you do to train and to educate our future national security leaders, many of whom are in this audience,” said then-U.S. Secretary of Defense (and former CIA Director) Leon Panetta in a speech at the department in 2013.

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Although a British university, King’s College markets itself heavily to American students. There are currently 1,265 Americans enrolled, making up about 4% of the student body. Many graduates of the Department of War Studies go on to attain powerful positions in major American media outlets. Andrew Carey, CNN’s Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, for example, completed a master’s there in 2012. Carey’s coverage of the latest Israeli attack on Gaza has presented the apartheid state as “responding” to Hamas rocket attacks, rather than being the instigator of violence. A leaked internal memo Carey sent to his staff last month at the height of the bombardment instructed them to always include the fact that the Gazan Ministry of Health is overseen by Hamas, lest readers begin to believe the well-documented Palestinian casualty figures brought on by days of bombing. “We need to be transparent about the fact that the Ministry of Health in Gaza is run by Hamas. Consequently, when we cite latest casualty numbers and attribute to the health ministry in Gaza, we need to include the fact that it is Hamas run,” read his instructions.

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The New York Times, the United States’ most influential newspaper, has also employed Department of War Studies alumni. Christiaan Triebert (M.A., 2016), for example, is a journalist on their visual investigations team. He even won a Pulitzer Prize for “Revelations about Russia and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive actions in countries including Syria and Europe.” Hiring students from the school for spooks to bash Russia appears to be a common Times tactic, as it also employed Lincoln Pigman between 2016 and 2018 at its Moscow bureau.

Josh Smith, senior correspondent for influential news agency Reuters and formerly its correspondent in Afghanistan, also graduated from the department in question, as did The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Ford.

Arguably the most influential media figure from the university, however, is Ruaridh Arrow. Arrow was a producer at many of the U.K.’s largest news channels, including Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC, where he was world duty editor and senior producer on Newsnight, the network’s flagship political show. In 2019, Arrow left the BBC to become an executive producer at NBC News.

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Unsurprisingly for a university based in London, the primary journalistic destination for Department of War Studies graduates is the United Kingdom. Indeed, the BBC, the country’s powerful state broadcaster, is full of War Studies alumni. Arif Ansari, head of news at the BBC Asian Network, completed a masters analyzing the Syrian Civil War in 2017 and was soon selected for a leadership development scheme, placing him in charge of a team of 25 journalists who curate news primarily geared toward the substantial Middle Eastern and South Asian communities in Great Britain.

Many BBC employees begin studying at King’s years after their careers have already taken off, and balance their professional lives with pursuing new qualifications. Ahmed Zaki, Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC Global News, began his master’s six years after he started at the BBC. Meanwhile, Ian MacWilliam — who spent ten years at BBC World Service, the country’s official news broadcast worldwide, specializing in sensitive regions like Russia, Afghanistan and Central Asia — decided to study at King’s more than 30 years after completing his first degree.

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...The point of this is not to allege that these journalists are all secretly card-carrying spooks: they are not. Rather, it is to highlight the alarmingly close links between the national security state and the fourth estate we rely on to be a check on their power and to hold them accountable.

Journalists trained in this sort of environment are far more likely to see the world in the same manner as their professors do. And perhaps they would be less likely to challenge state power when the officials they are scrutinizing were their classmates or teachers.

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the BBC admitted that, at least until the 1990s, it conspired with domestic spying agency MI5 to make sure that people with left-wing and/or anti-war leanings, or views critical of British foreign policy and empire were secretly blocked from being hired. When pressed on whether this policy is still ongoing, the broadcaster refused to comment, citing “security issues” — a response that is unlikely to reassure skeptics.

“While it strikes me as very interesting that a single academic institution could play such a major role in the recruitment of pro-establishment activist intellectuals and delivery of the same to the media, it is not so surprising,” Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Professor Emeritus at Bowling Green State’s School of Media and Communication and an expert in collusion between government and media, told MintPress, adding:

"Elite institutions in the past and doubtless still today have been major playgrounds for intelligence services. The history of the modern nation-state generally, not just the USA, seems to suggest that national unity — and therefore elite safety — is regarded by elites as achievable only through careful management and often suppression or diversion of dissent. Far more resources are typically committed to this than many citizens, drilled in the propaganda of democracy, realize or care to concede."

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While the journalists cataloged above are not spooks, some other Department of War Studies figures working in journalism could possibly be described as such, particularly those around the influential and increasingly notorious investigative website Bellingcat.

Cameron Colquhoun, for instance, spent almost a decade at GCHQ, Britain’s version of the NSA, where he was a senior analyst running cyber and counter-terrorism operations. He holds qualifications from both King’s College London and the State Department. This background is not disclosed in his Bellingcat profile, which merely describes him as the managing director of a private intelligence company that “conduct[s] ethical investigations” for clients around the world.

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For the longest time, Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgings dismissed charges that his organization was funded by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — a CIA cutout organization — as a ridiculous “conspiracy.” Yet by 2017, he was admitting that it was true. A year later, Higgins joined the Department of War Studies as a visiting research associate. Between 2016 and 2019 he was also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the brains behind the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

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Newly leaked documents show how Bellingcat, Reuters and the BBC were covertly cooperating with the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to undermine the Kremlin and promote regime change in Moscow. This included training journalists and promoting explicitly anti-Russian media across Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, the FCO noted, Bellingcat had been “somewhat discredited,” as it constantly spread disinformation and was willing to produce reports for anyone with money.

Nevertheless, a new European Parliament proposal published last month recommends hiring Bellingcat to assist in producing reports that would lay the groundwork for sanctioning Russia, for throwing it out of international bodies, and to “assist Russia’s transformation into a democracy.” In other words, to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.

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The Department of War Studies is also part of this pro-NATO, anti-Russia group. Quite apart from being staffed by soldiers, spooks and government officials, it puts out influential reports advising Western governments on foreign and defense policy....

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King’s College London academics have also proven crucial in keeping dissident publisher Julian Assange imprisoned. A psychiatrist who has worked with the War Studies department testified in court that the Australian was suffering only “moderate” depression and that his suicide risk was “manageable,” concluding that extraditing him to the United States “would not be unjust.” As Matt Kennard’s investigation found, the U.K. Ministry of Defence had provided £2.2 million ($3.1 million) in funding to the institute where he worked (although the psychiatrist in question claimed his work was not directly funded by the MoD).

King’s College London markets the War Studies department to both graduates and undergraduates as a stepping stone towards a career in journalism. In its “career prospects” section for its master’s course in war studies, it tells interested students that “graduates go on to work for NGOs, the FCO, the MoD, the Home Office, NATO, the UN or pursue careers in journalism, finance, academia, the diplomatic services, the armed forces and more.”

Likewise, undergraduates are told that:

"You will gain an in-depth and sophisticated understanding of war and international relations, both as subjects worthy of study and as intellectual preparation for the widest possible range of career choices, including in government, journalism, research, and humanitarian and international organisations."

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...we now have a media landscape where many of the West’s most influential journalists are being trained by exactly the same people in the same department as the next generation of national security operatives.

It is hardly a good look for a healthy, open democracy that so many spies, government officials, and journalists trusted to hold them accountable on our behalf are all being shot out of the very same cannon. Learning side by side has helped to create a situation where the fourth estate has become overwhelmingly deferential to the so-called deep state, where anonymous official’s words are taken as gospel. The Department of War Studies is just one part of this wider phenomenon."

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Australia limits AstraZeneca Covid jab to over-60s days after second blood clot death ‘likely linked’ to the vaccine

"The Australian Department of Health announced on Thursday that it will be limiting the AstraZeneca vaccine to over-60s, days after reports of the second death of someone who received the jab “likely linked” to blood clots.

In a statement released on the health ministry’s website, the Australian government said it had revised its previous guidance on the AstraZeneca vaccine “due to a higher risk and observed severity of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome” (TTS) in those aged 50-59.

While health officials recognize there are concerns about the side effects of the jab, they believe it is still appropriate to give it to over-60s, as the individual benefits of receiving the vaccine are greater in that age group due to the risk of experiencing severe illness from Covid-19.

The recent revision of the AstraZeneca guidance came after a 52-year-old woman in New South Wales died earlier in June after experiencing a “severe form” of blood clotting in the brain after her vaccination. Following the news of her death, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration investigated the situation and issued a report stating that her TTS was “likely linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

Since Australia began its inoculation rollout, health officials have recorded 60 confirmed and probable TTS cases in individuals who’ve received Covid-19 jabs, with 12 cases “linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine.”

Going forward, the Australian government will make the Pfizer vaccine the preferred jab for individuals aged 16 to 60..."

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Antitrust lawmakers decry Big Tech monopolies yet host their press conference inside Facebook’s walled garden

"...several antitrust lawmakers held a press conference where they discussed their 16-month investigation into Big Tech and the five antitrust bills that have been unveiled as a result of this investigation.

“These bills will pave the way for a stronger economy, a stronger democracy for the American people by reigning in the power of the most dominant firms online,” Congressman Jerry Nadler said during the first two minutes of the press conference.

Congressman David Cicilline followed up by stating: “These powerful corporations control access to key channels of distribution in the digital economy.”

One of the clearest examples of these Big Tech platforms maintaining a stranglehold on digital distribution is online video.

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The House of Representatives and the Senate both host their own live video feeds. And alternative video sharing platforms such as Rumble and Odysee also offer live streaming.

Yet rather than self-hosting their press conference or streaming it from an alt-tech platform, these antitrust lawmakers chose to go live on Facebook and urged viewers to watch via this tech giant’s video feed.

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While YouTube and Facebook dominate online video distribution, YouTube does at least maintain a relatively open live streaming viewing experience. Anyone with the link can watch live streams without being forced to sign in or sign up for an account.

Facebook, on the other hand, forces viewers to sign in or sign up to watch some live streams.

And many of those who attempted to watch this press conference via the link that these lawmakers promoted were forced to sign in to watch. If they didn’t have an account or didn’t want to sign in and have their viewing habits tied to their Facebook account, they were out of luck.

Cicilline’s senior adviser, Rich Luchette, defended the decision to stream via Facebook by saying: “The options for reaching a wide audience are limited because of the power of these platforms.”

But if these lawmakers believe Big Tech’s control of distribution in the digital economy is a problem that will be reigned in by their antitrust bills, why not also lead by example and promote alternatives to the platforms they’re rallying against with their legislation?"

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Authors are editing books post publication after being targeted by online outrage mobs

"Elin Hilderbrand faced backlash on Instagram for a passage in her new summer 2021 book, The Golden Girl. The passage is an exchange between two teenagers, Savannah and Vivi, where they discuss how Vivi will hide in the attic of Savannah’s home without Savannah’s parents knowing.

“You’re suggesting I hide here all summer?” Vivi asks. “Like… like Anne Frank?” she adds. The narrator then says, “This makes them both laugh – but is it really funny, and is Vivi so far off base?”

The passage was criticized through a post on the Instagram page of Little, Brown and Company, Hilderbrand’s publisher. The original post, which has since been deleted, described the passage as “horifically antisemitic,” and demanded an apology from both the publisher and Hilderbrand.

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The backlash forced the author to apologize, promising to remove the passage from all future printings.

“In a flashback scene in GOLDEN GIRL, p. 144, my main character Vivi compares herself to Anne Frank,” Hilderbrand wrote in her apology, posted on Instagram Stories. “I want to wholeheartedly apologize for this. It was meant as hyperbole but was a poor choice, that was offensive and tasteless. I have asked my publisher to remove the passage from digital versions of the book immediately and from all future printings."

There's people who write because they want to be writers and there's people who write because they have something they think needs to be said. Clearly these two are far more interested in having the title.

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Seat on space flight with Jeff Bezos sells for $28M

"Jeff Bezo’s space flight company, Blue Origin, sold a spare seat on its first human flight for nearly $30 million. In a Twitter post on Saturday, Blue Origin announced the winning bid for the seat aboard a sightseeing trip on the company’s New Shepard.

The live auction ended in under 10 minutes and started at nearly $5 million, receiving more than 20 bidders. The auction followed several weeks of online bidding, which registered more than 7,000 people from 159 countries.

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Additionally, the company said to stay tuned as the fourth and final crew member would also be announced before the crew takes off. The automated flight is expected to last about 11 minutes, where passengers inside the capsule will pass the Karman Line at about 350,000 feet.

Bezo’s journey comes amid growing competition as Blue Origin battles alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s space exploration technologies and Virgin Galactic Holdings Incorporated backed by Richard Branson to offer space tourism."

Sure, a number of billionaires want to use space tourism as a stepping stone to galaxy-spanning corporate empires. But the real problem is all that non-vat-grown meat you peasants are eating.

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Biden administration launches task force to share census and health data with private companies

"The Biden administration has launched a task force that will allow private companies like Google as well as researchers to access large sets of sensitive data about Americans that were previously collected and available only to the government.

The reasoning behind the initiative is supposedly to remain competitive with other countries, notably China and Russia, in the realm of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Those who will be given access to this data will be expected to come up with “great ideas” on how to put AI to use.

The National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force will have 12 members from government, tech industry, and academia, including Google’s head of cloud AI Andrew Moore, whose presence was explained by task force’s co-chair Lynne Parker as the need to have cloud providers’ “perspective.”

Among the records that are likely to become available to private companies are census, health, driving, and other data....

Another co-chair of the task force, Erwin Gianchandani, acknowledged that giving access to sensitive data to outside entities will present “challenges” – regarding people’s privacy – but suggested that if researches can find innovative ways “to make driving safer” that would mean it’s worth sharing the Transportation Department’s data from vehicle sensors that reveals people’s driving habits.

Big Tech has a dismal record regarding privacy and the fact is that most of these corporations’ business models are based on unscrupulous monetizing of private data, but for now, the task force has no clear rules on how to protect privacy. Instead, it is yet to “evaluate how to make such data available while protecting Americans’ privacy and addressing other ethical concerns,” say reports."

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Vaccine Casualties: Is the CDC Hiding the Real Numbers?

"The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) is the post-marketing surveillance system the FDA asks healthcare professionals to report adverse vaccine events to. The system is passive, meaning: when a healthcare professional recognizes a connection between an adverse event and a vaccine, the report is only made when they choose to take the time out of their day to record it.

In 2010, Harvard Medical School was granted $1 million by the US Department of Health and Human Services to investigate VAERS to see how efficient it is and to create a new automated monitoring system. They analyzed data by creating an automated system within their own Harvard Medical System. Their report, titled: Electronic Support for Public Health – Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System found that “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported to VAERS.”

As brilliantly efficient as Harvard’s newly created automated system was, it was never adopted by the country as planned. As Harvard stated in their final report, “Unfortunately, there was never an opportunity to perform system performance assessments because the necessary CDC contacts were no longer available and the CDC consultants responsible for receiving data were no longer responsive to our multiple requests to proceed with testing and evaluation.” So basically, upon learning of how few adverse vaccine reactions were actually reported to VAERS, the CDC (whose job it is to monitor disease and adverse reactions) chose not to accept a solution to the under-reporting problem.

Ten years later, despite the US government promising they would have a better safety monitoring system (known as BEST) up and running time for the COVID jab (it’s still in the “developmental stages”), the problem of fewer than 1% of adverse vaccine events being reported persists.

According to VAERS, there’s only 4.7 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 2.5 cases of anaphylaxis per million doses of the Modena vaccine. But an article in JAMA found a wildly different result. The article, titled Acute Allergic Reactions to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines, studied Mass General Brigham employees who received their first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine (half received Pfizer and half received Moderna). Of the 52,805 participant employees who received their COVID-19 vaccine, they found that “98% did not have any symptoms of an allergic reaction after receiving an mRNA vaccine. The remaining 2% reported some allergic symptoms” however, severe reactions consistent with anaphylaxis occurred at a rate of 250 per million -100 times the VAERS rate!"

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EU-bankrolled cybersecurity firm develops intrusive tech that allows ‘anonymous’ snooping & remote control of net devices – media

"The “anonymous interception” products, branded as ‘Invisible Man’ and ‘Night Crawler’, can remotely access files on a target’s device, discern their location, and even discreetly switch on cameras and microphones, according to WIRED magazine.

The developer, Mollitiam Industries, is also reportedly hyping up a tool that allows for the “mass surveillance of digital profiles and identities” across social media and even the dark web – which sounds strikingly similar to its work on a data-harvesting project funded in part by the EU’s Regional Development Fund.

That project is aimed at developing an automated intelligence-generation platform that analyzes and correlates large amounts of data “from open internet sources.”...

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“The fact that they received EU public money to develop their business is shocking. Mollitiam market capabilities that pose such a unique threat to our privacy and security that it’s highly debatable if such powers could ever be compatible with international human rights law,” Edin Omanovic, advocacy director at privacy watchdog Privacy International, told WIRED.

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During a recent webinar, Mollitiam showcased its tech’s ability to record WhatsApp calls and divulged details of social engineering and phishing tactics used “to gain the target’s trust.”

The report comes at a time when privacy concerns are being raised about efforts by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to gain access to personal data by circumventing encrypted messaging technologies.

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Earlier this year, the EU updated its rules on export of dual-use technology, including cyber-surveillance tools, so as to “prevent human rights violations and abuses.” However, the new regulations were deemed by privacy organizations to be too “fragile” to act as safeguards."

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Florida education board draws flak for banning ‘critical race theory,’ after state governor calls it a waste of ‘taxpayer dollars’

"Florida’s education board has kicked off a storm after unanimously adopting new rules that forbid instructors from trying to “indoctrinate” students and teaching topics like “critical race theory” that “distort historical events.”

The rule change came at a contentious meeting on Thursday, at which state Governor Ron DeSantis made a virtual appearance and argued that such “toxic” theories teach children that “the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate.”

Noting that critical race theory (CRT) exacerbates “divisions”, DeSantis told the meeting it was not worth spending taxpayer money teaching students to judge themselves and others on the basis of race and not “the content of their character” and “what they’re trying to accomplish in life.”

According to the amended rules, topics of instruction must be “factual and objective.” CRT was found to be inconsistent with this standard, as it holds that “racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.”

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“Rather than talking about the policy changes necessary to enable all our students to succeed, these politicians create boogeymen and use Florida’s public schools as a political football,” tweeted Andrew Spar, head of the Florida Education Association teachers’ union.

The meeting saw members of the audience protest about the rule change, with calls to “allow teachers to teach the truth” being raised during the time permitted for public comments."

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Facebook partners with WHO and more in a bid to end “vaccine hesitancy”

"The coalition, called the Alliance for Advancing Health Online, was announced via a blog post on Facebook’s Newsroom. The purpose of the alliance is “to advance public understanding of how social media and behavioral sciences can be leveraged to improve the health of communities around the world.”

Facebook’s partners in the initiative include, the WHO, the CDC Foundation, the Bay Area Global Health Alliance, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Merck, Sabin Vaccine Institute, the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the World Bank.

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“Social media is a powerful, constantly evolving tool that is shaping opinions and behaviors across the globe,” said Heidi Larson, PhD, head of the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “The Alliance will help us build a deeper understanding of the dynamics of health communication online and how the global community can use social media to improve health.”

Critics, and vaccine skeptics, will argue that the purpose of the initiative is to control or change people’s “health behavior.” And they will not be wrong. Merck’s press release about this new initiative states that “the Alliance intends to create a global network of centers of social media and health research focused on improving health behavior via online platforms.”"

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Florida Governor DeSantis declares victory as federal judge slaps down CDC ‘overreach’ on Covid-19 cruise ship rules

"Cruise ships may soon operate out of Florida once again, as Governor Ron DeSantis notched a court victory against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in an epic injunction order blasting the “authoritarian” agency.

US District Judge Steven Douglas Merryday on Friday granted Florida’s request to block the CDC “conditional sailing” order against cruise lines. The injunction won’t go into effect until July 18, however, at which point the CDC orders to cruise operators will be considered non-binding considerations, recommendations or guidelines.

“The CDC has been wrong all along, and they knew it,” said the Republican governor, announcing the decision. “The CDC and the Biden administration concocted a plan to sink the cruise industry, hiding behind bureaucratic delay and lawsuits. Today, we are securing this victory for Florida families, for the cruise industry, and for every state that wants to preserve its rights in the face of unprecedented federal overreach.”

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Merryday’s exhaustive 124-page ruling seemed to be designed to withstand Supreme Court scrutiny, referencing multiple justices, circuit precedents, case and statutory law, and even history of the CDC and quarantines. He zeroed in on the CDC’s understanding of its authority, however, pointing out that its lawyers repeatedly defined an “outbreak” as even a single instance of human-to-human virus transmission.

By doing so, the CDC claims authority to impose nationwide any measure whatsoever, based only on its director’s discretionary finding of “necessity,” wrote Merryday, calling it “a breathtaking, unprecedented, and acutely and singularly authoritarian claim.”

“One is left to wonder,” the judge wrote, whether the CDC could have tried to “generally shut down sexual intercourse” in the US to prevent the transmission of AIDS, syphilis or herpes. “Political prudence (and difficulty of enforcement) might counsel CDC against this particular prohibition, but the statute, as understood by CDC, certainly erects no barrier,” he noted before proceeding to reject that understanding."

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Florida Appeals Court Rules Mask Mandate Is Unconstitutional

"Although Florida has been largely free of state-based COVID restrictions and never had a mask mandate, several counties, such as Alachua, zealously instituted unconstitutional regulations until fairly recently. In a landmark ruling on Friday, Florida’s First District Court of Appeals ruled that a lower court had erred in tossing out the lawsuit against Alachua County’s mask mandate because it should be held as presumptively unconstitutional.

“Based on what the supreme court has told us about the scope of article I, section 23, Green (and anyone else in Alachua County) reasonably could expect autonomy over his body, including his face, which means that he was correct to claim an entitlement to be let alone and free from intrusion by Alachua County’s commission chairman,” Judge Adam Scott Tanenbaum, an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), wrote. “The mask mandate, then, implicated the right of privacy. According to Gainesville Woman Care, the mask mandate was presumptively unconstitutional as a result.”

This language is very significant because it’s the first time a judge is using the principle of bodily autonomy to affirm a constitutional right not to have one’s breathing restricted. The lawsuit was originally brought last May by Justin Green, a Gainesville business owner, but he was denied an injunction against the mandate by Eighth Judicial Circuit Judge Donna Keim.

There are several very striking elements about this ruling, which will reverberate throughout the country even as the mask mandates officially expire. Defendants had argued that the mandate is now moot given the orders of the governor requiring all counties to end their mandates. However, the judge noted in a footnote, “Because of the nature of the various emergency orders that we have seen and the county’s continued commitment to public mask wearing, we are not convinced that this is the last that we will see of this issue.”

In other words, you can’t have a gross violation of the most fundamental rights hanging over our heads at any time and somehow suggest that we have no recourse to eliminate it....

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Drawing on precedent from the state’s supreme court, the judge ruled that bodily autonomy is a fundamental right. What this means is that the starting point for any mask mandate must begin with the government proving that masks absolutely work and are necessary to achieve a vital state interest. “The supreme court in Gainesville Woman Care told us multiple times what this special approach means for the evidentiary burden at a temporary injunction hearing: A plaintiff does not bear a threshold evidentiary burden to establish that a law intrudes on his privacy right, and have it subjected to strict scrutiny, ‘if it is evident on the face of the law that it implicates this right.'”

Also notable in this opinion is how the judge believes that the harm to plaintiffs is not just the threat of fines or denial of service.

Another consequence was being subjected to whispering informants, impelled by county-designed publicity like the following proposed signage encouraging citizens to inform on their disobedient neighbors.

The judge warned, “The threat of government-sponsored shaming was not an idle one. The chairman who issued the original mask mandate stated publicly that ‘masks are the only outwardly visible signal that you are contributing to the solution.'”"

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Perpetrators with unmedicated, untreated brain illnesses behind majority of US mass shootings – study

"“We found that most mass shooters in our study experienced undiagnosed and unmedicated psychiatric illness,” the specialists revealed, describing their findings as “striking.” Symptoms of serious brain illness that can be diagnosed as clinical psychiatric disorders were identified in 32 of 35 perpetrators. Most of the shooters – 18 – had schizophrenia, while 10 more were diagnosed with bipolar, delusional and personality disorders. Those with schizophrenia had typical psychotic symptoms such as demons’ messages, paranoid delusions, and command hallucinations to “kill, burn or destroy.”

“None were medicated or received other treatment prior to the crime,” according to the study, which was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. It is said to be the first analysis of medical evidence on US domestic mass shooters.

To establish symptoms of mental illness and psychiatric states, the Stanford researchers led by Dr. Ira D. Glick assessed clinical information obtained from multiple sources, including records of forensic psychiatrists and court proceedings, as well as perpetrators’ writings and social media posts. They also researched 20 mass shooting cases in which assailants died at the crime scene, and concluded that at least eight of those had schizophrenia, while seven had other diagnoses, and five had unknown diagnoses – all medically untreated.

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“Most of the cases of domestic mass murders possibly might have been prevented had the assailant… been more consistently assisted to receive a correct diagnosis… followed by psychiatric medication treatment… to save lives.”"

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The NHS just changed how they count Covid “cases”…here’s why.

"From the beginning of the “pandemic” last spring, the NHS (and other countries all over the world) have defined a “case” as anyone who tests positive for the Sars-Cov-2 virus, regardless of whether or not they have symptoms.

Given that as many as 80% of those who have been infected have no symptoms, and the propensity for the flawed PCR tests to return false-positive results, this lead to likely massively inflated numbers of “cases”.

Now, though, the NHS is going to attempt to differentiate between patients who actually have the alleged disease “Covid19”, and those who are in hospital for other reasons and only “incidentally” tested positive for the virus.

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The distinction between “with” and “from” in Covid deaths – and “with” and “for” in hospitalisations – has been one Covid sceptics all over the world have been keen to make for over a year, but this is the first time any institution has really recognised the difference. And, certainly, it’s the first time any healthcare service has endeavoured to actually catalogue them differently.

So what does the NHS expect the impact of this change to be? Again, from the Independent:

One NHS source said the new data would be “more realistic” as not all patients were sick with the virus, adding: “But it will make figures look better as there have always been some, for example stroke [patients], who also had Covid as an incidental finding”.

That’s a frank admission, and an important one.

For the last eighteen months, voices all over the alternate media have been saying the Covid numbers are unrealistic, specifically because they include people who were never actually sick. We have been called “deniers” and “conspiracy theorists” for our trouble.

But now an NHS source has actually said, going forward, the Covid data will be “more realistic” as it will discount all the patients where Covid was only “an incidental finding”....

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It’s also important to note that the changes in data collection will only apply to new patients, it will not be retroactive. Prof Keith Willett, NHS England’s Covid incident director, was very clear on that in a quote for the Telegraph [emphasis added]:

In lay terms this could be considered as a binary split between those in hospital ‘for Covid-19’ and those in hospital ‘with Covid-19’. We are asking for this binary split for those patients newly admitted to hospital and those newly diagnosed with Covid while in hospital.”

So, the old (and now admitted unrealistic) data, will not be subject to change. The Covid “case” numbers before June 7th are etched in stone – everyone who tested positive was a “case”.

But after June 7th they will be separating Covid cases who are actually hospitalised due to Covid19, from other patients who only have “incidental covid”.

Any good scientist will tell you you can’t change the way you measure or collect your data halfway through an experiment, and you can’t compare data gathered in one way to data gathered in another. That is not “analysing the effect” of anything, it’s altering the experiment conditions.

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It is incredibly bad science.

…but it’s also totally in keeping with the trend of altering Covid practices to create the impression the “vaccine” is having a positive impact.

We’ve already reported that WHO changed their Covid diagnosis guidelines, and their PCR test guidelines, in late 2020 and early 2021, right in line with the first vaccination programs being launched. The US CDC has likewise been repeatedly fiddling their definition of “breakthrough infection” in order to make the vaccines appear more effective.

This NHS change is just more of the same – altering the experimental conditions to achieve the desired outcome. A total, complete inversion of the scientific method, by the same people who zealously scream about “following the science”."

This is why the push for more and more data is so problematic. It creates an illusion of certainty that you would not have if people were attempting to analyze things with less data available. Having humility is of course a requirement as well.

Those of us paying attention now recognize the massive flaws in this particular example. But decades removed, if we do not regain control of the narrative, people who never experienced the Covid hysteria and are only reading about it in books will have limited ability to determine the accuracy of the information presented. Think about all the things in history people have never experienced and yet still take for granted that the mainstream descriptions of them are accurate.

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Over 90% of the News You See on Television Is Owned and Controlled by Just 5 Giant Corporations

"The way that people view the world is greatly shaped by the “news” that they see on television and read on the Internet.  Unfortunately, much of that “news” is produced by just five enormous corporations.  In fact, although the numbers vary from month to month, more than 90 percent of the “news” that Americans watch on television is controlled by those five corporations.  Smaller outlets such as Newsmax are trying to make a dent, but it is an uphill battle.  Internet news is more diversified, but in conjunction with the 15 billionaires that own and control America’s newspaper industry, the same five corporations have come to dominate online as well.  The tech giants have certainly helped their cause by designating them as “trusted sources” and by adjusting algorithms to ensure that we get a steady diet of the “news” that the media giants are constantly putting out.  The entire system is designed to direct us to certain voices, and those voices are constantly working very hard to alter what we think about things.

According to one survey, the average American spends 238 minutes a day watching television.  If you allow anyone to pump that much propaganda into your mind day after day, it is inevitable that the way that you view the world is going to change.

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So exactly who are these five giant corporations that own and control almost all of the news that we see on television?

Well, the first is AT&T’s WarnerMedia which owns CNN…

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The second is Comcast which owns NBC News…

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Disney has now become the largest media company in the entire world, and they are the proud owners of ABC News…

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ViacomCBS may not be as big as the other corporations on this list, but their control of CBS News gives them a tremendous amount of influence…

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Last, but certainly not least, Fox Corporation (which is controlled by the Murdoch family) owns and controls Fox News…

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Every day, millions upon millions of Americans have conversations that center around the “news” that they just saw on television.  So those that decide what the “news” is going to be have an extraordinary amount of power.

Just look at what happened when the Fauci emails were revealed.  They showed that Dr. Fauci had been lying to us over and over again, and they also showed that he was involved in a massive conspiracy to cover up the true origin of the pandemic.

But CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News and CBS News all decided that it wasn’t going to be a scandal, and so most Americans don’t believe that it is one."

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GOP lawmakers in Pa. introduce election reform bill

"A new election reform bill is looking to mandate voter ID’s in Pennsylvania. On Friday, GOP state lawmakers unveiled the law that is looking to fix a slew of election security issues.

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Along with the voter ID mandate, the bill tackles issues facing mail-in voting by sending ballots only to voters who request them. However, experts have said it is likely to face opposition from Gov. Tom Wolf (D-Pa.).

“It’s wrong to pass laws that take away someone’s freedom to vote and that’s exactly what these bills are trying to do right now, right here in Pennsylvania,” claimed Wolf. The Pennsylvania governor went on to add that he will veto any bill that he thinks will limit access to voting."

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Government Seeks Retribution for the Biden Resistance

"Last week, Channing Phillips, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia overseeing the sprawling investigation into the events of January 6, filed another superseding indictment against the Oath Keepers while adding new defendants. Four men have been arrested since May 27; the total number of defendants is 16 and counting.

The Oath Keepers, as the media reminds us daily, pose a mortal threat to the country. As NPR recently warned, it is “one of the largest anti-government extremist groups in the far-right patriot militia movement.”  The group’s real crime, of course, is opposing Joe Biden; after the election, a founder of the Oath Keepers said the group would “resist” Biden’s presidency, an act of defiance considered mandatory in many quarters when it was directed at the Trump Administration from the Left.

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So, retaliation is underway. The first grand jury indictment was filed one week after Inauguration Day; three alleged Oath Keepers—Thomas Caldwell, Jessica Watkins, and Donovan Crowl—were charged with four trespassing and disorderly conduct offenses.

“The Oath Keepers are a large but loosely organized collection of militia who believe that the federal government has been co-opted by a shadowy conspiracy that is trying to strip American citizens of their rights,” Michael Sherwin, the prosecutor in charge of the early stage of the investigation who bragged about a “shock and awe” manhunt leading up to Biden’s inauguration, wrote in the original charging document. “The organization’s name alludes to the oath sworn by members of the military and police to defend the Constitution ‘from all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”

Since then, the Justice Department has tacked on a total of 13 counts and 13 more defendants with warnings of more to come. The prosecution of the Oath Keepers is critical in fueling the notion that groups of armed, pro-Trump vigilantes organized an assault on the seat of American democracy.

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Prosecutors allege the Oath Keepers “prepared themselves for battle before heading to the Capitol by equipping themselves with communication devices and donning reinforced vests, helmets, and goggles.”

That silly talk now guides the ongoing criminal investigation targeting veterans and ex-cops not accused of committing any violent crime. The so-called militia did not bring a single weapon into the building; they went into the Capitol building around 2:40 p.m. and were outside by 3:00 p.m. Only one Oath Keeper, Joshua James, is charged with shoving an officer in an attempt to “violently take over the Capitol,” prosecutors allege.

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The Oath Keepers’ militia force is so lethal that one of its purported leaders, a nearly 70-year-old former Navy lieutenant, was too debilitated by his service-related injuries to even enter the building.

Despite all the ridiculous hyperbole, nearly five months later, Biden’s Justice Department still is struggling to build its case. A prosecutor asked a federal judge this week for another 60-day continuance before setting a trial date. Judge Amit Mehta, the federal magistrate handling the Oath Keepers case, granted a 60-day continuance in March claiming “the ends of justice served by granting a request for a continuance outweigh the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial.” (This happens repeatedly in January 6 prosecutions.)

During a hearing on June 1, the Justice Department requested more time because the trove of evidence is so voluminous, assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said. Most of the proof will be gleaned from hours of body camera footage and surveillance video captured by the U.S. Capitol Police’s security system—recordings the USCP and Justice Department do not want the public, or even defense lawyers, to see."

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Philadelphia violated constitution when it dropped Catholic group that declined to work with same-sex foster parents, SCOTUS rules

"The US Supreme Court has ruled that the city of Philadelphia violated the US Constitution when it ended a contract with Catholic Social Services (CSS) because the group refused to work with same-sex couples as foster parents.

In a unanimous decision issued on Thursday, the court said the city failed to neutrally apply its non-discrimination policy when it ended CSS's long-standing contract in 2018.

“CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “It does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”

The city relies on contracts with private agencies to place displaced children with foster families. CSS, which had been among those contractors for more than 50 years, had a policy against placing children with unmarried or same-sex couples. No same-sex couples sought certification as foster parents through CSS, as 20 other agencies in the city work with them, but Philadelphia cut off the Catholic group after a newspaper article exposed its policy.

The ACLU tried to diminish Thursday's ruling as “very narrow,” saying it stemmed from the language of Philadelphia's foster-services contract, but a city official acknowledged that the decision has ramifications for other public services.

“The court has usurped the city's judgment that a non-discrimination policy is in the best interests of the children in its care, with disturbing consequences for other government programs and services,” city solicitor Diana Cortes said in a statement."

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Space Trip: Bon Voyage Jeff!

"The WSJ also discussed another of its pet themes, self-regulation, in yesterday’s piece:

"Congress agreed in 2004 to let the space-tourism industry self-regulate to speed its preparations for passenger flights. Years of delays, including an accident that killed a Virgin Galactic test pilot in 2014, have pushed back the start of flights for fare-paying passengers. The policy has been extended several times and now runs until October 2023.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s jurisdiction is limited to protecting public safety and the environment during launches and re-entries, a spokesman for the agency said. “Congress has not allowed the FAA to extend its authority to the safety of crew or space flight participants,” the spokesman said.

Regulators, lawmakers and industry executives are debating whether to introduce tougher rules, such as requiring passengers to be trained for the rigors of reaching the edge of space. The companies already offer some training for their short flights, which include periods of high G-forces and the possible disorientation that can come with weightlessness."

The 2014 Journal article cited above makes it clear that all the parties – including the companies, members of Congress, and transportation regulators – have been kicking this particular can down the road for a while as the issue is also discussed therein.

Self-regulation means the industry will regulate itself. How much training do the companies think is appropriate before they’ll rocket you into space? According to yesterday’s WSJ:

"The companies provide training over two or three days. Virgin Galactic’s preparation includes sessions with its pilots, instruction on weightlessness and time in a cabin mock-up. The company offers passengers optional flights in aircraft that simulate zero gravity, as well as time in a centrifuge that replicates some of the forces astronauts experience during flight.

Blue Origin said traveling in its spacecraft requires minimal training. “It’s familiarization of the safety features and preparations to travel to space on the fully autonomous New Shepard rocket,” said a spokeswoman.

The cost of space launches means the rockets and capsules have been tested much less exhaustively in flight than commercial aircraft, which are sent on thousands of hours of test flights before carrying paying customers.""

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UK govt gave contract to IT firm that is ‘openly plotting’ to turn vaccine passports into a national ID card, privacy groups warns

"Entrust, an IT firm that bills itself as a “global leader in identities, payments, and data protection,” was awarded a contract by the Department of Health and Social Care last month to work on the UK’s Covid-19 vaccine certificate system. The company was given £250,000 ($346,000) to provide cloud-computing services for the government’s Covid-status certification scheme, iNews reported. The contract is due to expire in March 2022, but the government has the option of extending it for an additional year.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated last month that proof of vaccination will be “necessary” for international travel, and in recent weeks reports have emerged claiming that the UK government may require the document of people attending sporting events or other large gatherings.

Judging from Entrust’s own stance on the issue, it’s possible that the government may have even more ambitious plans for the digital certificate. In a February blog post published on the company’s website, Jann Markey, Entrust’s product marketing director, argued that the advent of the vaccine passports could be used as an opportunity to roll out a national ID as part of “the infrastructure of the new normal.”

“Consider a national ID strategy: With the infrastructure and investment necessary to ensure a viable vaccine passport, why not redeploy this effort into a national citizen ID programme that can be used for multiple purposes including the secure delivery of government services, secure cross-border travel, and documentation of vaccination,” the blog, which explores vaccine passports in the “post-pandemic world,” states.

Notably, the US-based company has already helped Albania, Ghana and Malaysia deploy national ID systems, iNews said.

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Big Brother Watch, a privacy and civil liberties group, said the Entrust contract represents an attempt by the government to issue ID cards “by the backdoor.”  

“The fact that the government has done a deal with Entrust, a company which is openly plotting a route from vaccine passports to digital identity cards, only underlines what a serious threat Covid passes would be to our civil liberties and our privacy,” the organisation’s head of research, Jake Hurfurt, warned."