Smile for the Camera

Posted on August 16, 2022 by marcia

All the Data Amazon’s Ring Cameras Collect About You

The popular security devices are tracking (and sharing) more than you might think.

Amazon Ring doorbell camera mounted on wall

IF YOU WALK through your local neighborhood—providing you live in a reasonably large town or city—you’ll be caught on camera. Government CCTV cameras may record your stroll, but it is increasingly likely that you’ll also be captured by one of your neighbors’ security cameras or doorbells. It’s even more likely that the camera will be made by Ring, the doorbell and security camera firm owned by Amazon.

Since Amazon splashed out more than a billion dollars for the company in 2018, Ring’s security products have exploded in popularity. Ring has simultaneously drawn controversy for making deals (and sharing data) with thousands of police departments, helping expand and normalize suburban surveillance, and falling to a string of hacks. While the cameras can provide homeowners with reassurance that their property is secure, critics say the systems also run the risk of reinforcing racism and racial profiling and eroding people’s privacy.

Videos shared from security cameras and internet-connected doorbells have also become common on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, raking in millions of views. “Ring impacts everybody’s privacy,” says Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Most immediately, it impacts the people who walk down the streets every day, where the cameras are pointing out.”

While Ring is far from the only maker of smart doorbells and cameras—Google’s Nest line is another popular option—its connections to law enforcement have drawn the most criticism, as when it recently handed over data without warrants. So, what exactly does Ring collect and know about you?

What Ring Knows About You

Whenever you use any tech, it’s collecting data about you. Spotify uses the data it collects to work out your mood, Slack knows how many messages you send. Ring’s products are no different. Ring’s privacy policy—running 2,400 words—and its terms of service detail what it collects about you and how it uses that information. In short: It’s a lot.

Ring gets your name, phone number, email and postal address, and any other information you provide to it—such as payment information or your social media handles if you link your Ring account to Facebook, for instance. The company also gets information about your Wi-Fi network and its signal strength, and it knows you named your camera “Secret CIA Watchpoint,” as well as all the other technical changes you make to your cameras or doorbells.

In March 2020, a BBC information request revealed that Ring keeps detailed records of people’s doorbell activity. Every doorbell press was logged. Each motion the camera detected was stored. And details were saved every time someone zoomed in on footage on their phone. In just 129 days, 4906 actions were recorded. (Ring says it does not sell people’s data.)

Ring can also collect the video and audio your camera records—the system doesn’t record all the time, but it can be triggered when it senses movement. Ring says its cameras can detect movement “up to 155 degrees horizontally” and across distances of up to 25 feet. This means there’s a good chance cameras can be triggered by people walking down the street or pick up conversations of passersby. According to tests by Consumer Reports, some Ring cameras can record audio from about 20 feet away.

Jolynn Dellinger, a senior lecturing fellow focusing on privacy and ethics at Duke University’s school of law, says recording audio when someone is on the street is a “serious problem” for privacy and may change how people behave. “We operate with a sense of obscurity, even in public,” Dellinger says. “We are in danger of increasing surveillance of everyday life in a way that is not consistent with either our expected views or really what’s best for society.” In October 2021, a British woman won a court case that said her neighbor’s Ring cameras, which overlooked her house and garden, broke data laws.

Ring’s privacy policy says it can save videos of subscribers to its Ring Protect Plan, a paid service that provides an archive of 180 days of video and audio captured. The company says people can log in to the service to delete the videos, but the company may ultimately keep them anyway. “Deleted Content and Ring Protect Recordings may be stored by Ring in order to comply with certain legal obligations and are not retrievable without a valid court order,” the privacy policy says.

Ring can also keep videos shared to its Neighbors’ app—an app where people and law enforcement agencies can share alerts about “crimes” and post their videos of what is happening around the homes. (There are rules about what people are allowed to post.)

Ring’s privacy policy and terms of service allow it to use all this information it collects in multiple ways. It lists 14 ways the company can use your data—from improving the service Ring provides and protecting against fraud to conducting consumer research and complying with legal requirements. Its privacy policy includes the ambiguous statement: “We also may use the personal information we collect about you in other ways for which we provide specific notice at the time of collection and obtain your consent if required by applicable law.” Ring spokesperson Sarah Rall says this could apply if the company added features or use cases that are not already covered by its privacy policy. “We would provide additional notice or get permission as needed,” Rall says.

While Ring’s privacy policies apply to those who purchase its devices, people who are captured in footage or audio don’t have a chance to agree to them. “Privacy, security, and customer control are foundational to Ring, and we take the protection of our customers’ personal and account information seriously,” Rall says.

Ultimately, you agree to give Ring permission to control the “content” you share—including audio and video—while you own the intellectual property to it. The company’s terms of service say you give it an “unlimited, irrevocable, fee free and royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide right” to store, use, copy, or modify content you share through Neighbors or elsewhere online. (Audio recording can be turned off in Ring’s settings.)

“When I went out to buy a security camera last year, I looked for ones only that did local storage,” says Jen Caltrider, the lead researcher on Mozilla’s Privacy Not Included, which evaluates the privacy and security of products. Caltrider says people should try to keep as much control of their data as possible and not store files in the cloud unless they need to. “I don’t want any company having this data that I can’t control. I want to be able to control it.”

How Ring Works With Police

Ring’s deals with police forces—both in the US and the UK—have proved controversial. For years, the company has partnered with law enforcement agencies, providing them with cameras and doorbells that can be given to residents. By the start of 2021, Ring had partnered with more than 2,000 US law enforcement and fire departments. Documents have shown how Ring also controls the public messaging of police departments it has partnered with. “There is nothing mandating Ring build a tool that is easily accessible and helpful to police,” Guariglia says.

Rings’ terms of service say that the company may “access, use, preserve and/or disclose” videos and audio to “law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties” if it is legally required to do so or needs to in order to enforce its terms of service or address security issues. Government officials could include any “regulatory agency or legislative committee that issues a legally binding request for information,” Rall says. For the six months between January and June 2022, Ring says it had more than 3,500 law enforcement requests in the US.

In December 2021, researchers at New York University’s (NYU) Policing Project released an audit of Ring’s relationship with law enforcement and the way its Neighbors app works. (Ring provided data to the audit’s authors about how the service functions.) The report details concerns that Ring could exacerbate police bias against Black and brown communities and notes a lack of transparency around how Neighbors works.

“We see a lot of risk in having police responding to calls about homeless people or low-level drug use,” says Max Isaacs, a staff attorney with the Policing Project and a coauthor of the audit. “When police are relying on private devices like Ring devices, it creates a democratic deficit, because now police can greatly expand their surveillance capabilities,” Isaacs says. Citizen-on-citizen surveillance, which Isaacs calls “lateral surveillance,” lacks scrutiny. “They can have thousands of cameras in a jurisdiction … without any legislative oversight.”

In response to the NYU audit, Ring said it made more than 100 changes to its service. These changes hint at how the app may have previously been misused by law enforcement agencies. Police are now required to use official accounts to request content about crimes, Ring will not donate devices to law enforcement bodies, and it will “no longer will participate in police sting operations.”

Ring also agreed to stop citing the impact its cameras have on crime—previous claims say it reduces crime in areas—until that has been verified by an independent study. “Ring also reviewed all of its marketing and social media materials to remove any claims about crime reduction,” the report says. The change that will do most to protect people’s privacy may be the introduction of end-to-end encryption, which means the company can’t access recordings of users who have the feature enabled. However, it isn’t turned on by default. Here’s how to turn it on.

Update 10:30 am ET, 8-5-22: Ring spokesperson Sarah Rall’s statement that the company “would provide additional notice or get permission as needed” pertains to other ways Ring may use your personal information, not to its data-retention policies.

from: https://www.wired.com/story/ring-doorbell-camera-amazon-privacy/

GeoPolitics and Why to Move to Russia

Posted on August 15, 2022 by marcia

THAT VERY STRANGE RUSSIAN COMMERCIAL

August 14, 2022 / Joseph P. Farrell /

I’m publishing this early, on a Sunday, because there’s a little bit of chatter on the internet about a very strange Russian television commercial that’s been making the rounds, mostly on YouTube. That in itself is worth some commentary, but we’ll get back to that later, as it forms part of today’s high octane speculation. I was first made aware of this commercial last Friday (Aug 12, 2022) during our members’ vidchat when someone first mentioned it, and another member chimed in and said that they’d also seen it.

After the vidchat I quickly went searching for the commercial, and any information that might corroborate that the commercial is genuine, and indeed a product of the Russian government. Welll, according to this article from the U.K. Express, the commercial is indeed genuine, so I’m going to throw caution to the winds and run with it:

‘This for real?’ Moscow ridiculed as ‘move to Russia’ ad sparks hilarious Twitter slapdown

Now in case you missed the commercial itself while you were watching Sean Vannity on Faux News, or whoever-it-is on SeeBS or whatever, here it is:

So in that short minute, the case for moving to Russia is reduced to the following 16 points:

(1) delicious cuisine: check, I have to admit that I miss my mother’s beef Stroganoff, although she wasn’t Russian (for that matter, I also liked her chicken paprikash, and she wasn’t Hungarian either, but Orban makes a good case too);

(2) Beautiful women: well, check, at least they seem to know what women are in Russia (beautiful or not), and the last time I checked, they’re not letting men swimmers compete against women swimmers just because the former “identify” as the latter, which makes one wonder if Ron De Santis is either Russian, or a Russian agent. His lack of gender confusion is…well, it’s just highly suspicious;

(3) Cheap gas: well, that’s probably a check. I don’t know, because I haven’t bought any gas in Russia lately, or for that matter, ever. I imagine, however, that the way the Germans are wincing, it’s probably true. I know it’s not nearly as cheap here as it was when Orange-Man-Bad was president.

(4) Rich history: check, Russia certainly has that, and with several intriguing nooks and crannies well worth exploring. Take it from me, because I used to teach Russian history in college.

(5) World famous literature: again, check, and probably several checks. Dostoyevsky alone would have put Russia on the literary map, and he’s just one of very many. And while we’re on the subject, isn’t it a bit ironic and creepy that Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard resembles more the modern USSA than it does Russia, they having gone through their “cherry orchard” dark ages-evil empire moment called the Soviet Union? Who can forget the fun and frolic with Yezov, Yagoda, and Beria, huh?

(6) Unique architecture: yup, check: they have everything from Byzantine, classical, and European to that unique style that can only be called “Soviet Modern Ugly”, sort of the Russian equivalent in spartan ugliness to the German Bauhaus school, only the Soviet style isn’t nearly as ugly. The only uglier style is the Obama Presidential Library Style that infects modern America.

(7) Fertile soil: well, a probable check here. Again, I don’t know, and I’m the last person anyone should ask, because after years of careful and studious neglect, I’ve managed to kill my mother’s old Swedish ivy plant. I know nothing about soil conditions, and particularly Russian soil conditions, except I do know that the Russian government doesn’t like GMOs, has banned than, and that this has to be good for the soil. That one factoid alone makes me extremely suspicious of Western motivations in backing the regime in Kiev (and yes, I’m going to keep spelling it and pronouncing it that way, just to be irritating).

(8) Cheap electric and water: again, a probable check, because I don’t know, I’m not there. That said, we do have a couple of members of this website who actually maintain rather spacious apartments in St. Petersburg (a city full of that unique architecture) and when they told me how cheap their rent was for such a large city, I was flabbergasted, so I can believe the cheap water and gas, though I suppose like everywhere else, it depends on local conditions.

(9) Ballet: ok, check. I’m not a big ballet fan as one might have guessed, probably for the same reasons I’m just not a big opera guy. But, once that’s on the record, the music itself has become part of the standard repertoire. Who of us haven’t heard The Nutcracker or Swan Lake? If you haven’t, well, then that sort of makes the commercial’s point: you’re a modern western cretin, and the commercial isn’t targeting you to move to Russia. Had I been in charge of making the commercial for the Russian government and its evil-super-criminal-genius-and-never-to-be-trusted-byzantine-mastermind Vladimir Putin, I would have stressed “Great music” rather than ballet, with perhaps a snippet of Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev playing in the background.

(10) Cheap taxi and delivery: well, a probable check on that one too, though I haven’t had to ride any Russian taxis or have any packages delivered in that country, although my guess is, yea, that’s probably true too.

(11) Traditional values: ok, check. You don’t get to dress up in outlandish costumery and purple hair, call yourselves “Pussy Riot”, and carry on in a lewd fashion in an Orthodox Cathedral and call it a “protest” without being clapped in the slammer; up to that point, apparently, it was ok to dress as outlandishly as your liked, and to call yourself whatever offensive name you wished; you just don’t get to do that in church.

(12) Christianity: ok, check. Granted, the Christianity in Russia is, well, Russian Orthodox by and large, but so what? When Kirill wakes up and realizes that the Church is missing a golden opportunity to put some real weight behind an Orthodox western rite complete with hierarchy, then who knows where that will lead. (Here’s a hint Kir: neither Antioch nor ROCOR know what they’re doing… dig in your archives long enough and you’ll find out what I’m talking about… have your people contact my people; let’s talk.)

(13) No cancel culture: well, ok, check, but with caveats: when are we talking about here? Certainly there was a lot of “canceling” being done under the aforementioned Mssrs Yezov, Yagoda, and Beria. But I grant the basic proposition: no one carted Pussy Riot off to a gulag; rather, one gets the impression that Pussy Riot would be entirely ok with putting the entirety of the Russian Church back in the gulag.

(14) Hospitality: check: this one deserves some ‘splaining. While I’ve not been to Russia, I have been around a lot of Russians, and yes, I can vouch for the hospitality. WARNING (and I learned this trick far too late to do me any good): don’t drink the vodka (the next point on the list). Claim that you’re an alcoholic. I’m still suffering a hang-over with a half-life of 243 years because I drank vodka with Russians, and I’ll still be suffering that hang-over long after I’m dead.

(15) Vodka: check (see point 14 above).

(16) An economy that can withstand thousands of sanctions. Well, ok, check. To listen to the western propatainment media tell it, Russia’s economy is on its last legs and will implode at any moment. Now, in my humble and uninformed opinion, that’s probably right up there with The Ukraine is Winning Hugely meme we’ve been watching. We’re supposed to be gloating that the Russian military is doing so poorly. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but I don’t see the American military anywhere close, and one wonders how its “reality fluid” approach to basic metaphysical categories would fare. If the captured American-and-NATO trained fascist military units are any indicator, then they wouldn’t fare too well. It was, after all, Russian 152mm cannon firing point blank into the Reichstag, and not German 15omm cannon firing point blank into the Kremlin, that ended the last little fascist saber-rattling episode, as I recall.

Finally, the commercial ends with a cheery “Time to Move to Russia” and then a not-so-cheery “Winter is Coming.”

Now I’ve taken a lot of time to review this commercial, because frankly, it intrigued me. Why produce such a thing at all? After all, Russian media has been all but totally banned in the west. In a way, it was easier when I was a boy to dial up the English language service of Radio Moscow than it is to tune into Russian television now. Why go to the production expense to produce such a commercial, when buying advertising time on Deutsche Welle or SeeBS or FAUX news or the Canadian Broadcorping Castration is a foregone negative conclusion? Why produce something that millions of people won’t see? Or rather, why produce something that the Western media and their masters won’t let millions of people see?

One obvious answer is that this commercial may be a typical dye-the-waters operation to see who is paying attention in the alternative media, and how the commercial circulates there. In which case, I’m happy to help. But the other possibility is that we’re also looking at the next phase of a campaign. If you’ve been paying attention to Russia lately, you’ll have noted that it’s not exactly on Mr. Globaloney’s bandwagon because it’s been insisting that there can be no global order that cancels national sovereignty, and more importantly, that global order does not arise without respect to culture and tradition. That’s a fancy way of saying that a merely technocratic approach to global order is doomed to failure. It’s a commercial deliberately designed to highlight the failures of the globalist cabal and their programs, and, indeed, to invite those who crave for an expression of traditional European culture to move to the one place where it still has a living expression, in spite of the best efforts of Bolshevik technocrats and their Pussy Rioting lackeys to crush it.

One can see this by contempleting the implied negative message of the commercial: (1) delicious cuisine, versus poor nutrition, “fast food” and eating bugs; (2) Beautiful women, versus not knowing what a woman is; (3) Cheap gas, versus alleged President Joe Bidenenko; (4) Rich history, versus people that cannot even read and who do not even know, nor are taught, their own; (5) World Famous Literature, versus a population that can barely write and scrawl its own name; (6) Unique architecture; versus collapsing footbridges designed by “inclusive and diverse” committees; (7) fertile soil; versus soil polluted and corrupted, and robbed of nutritional value by “argibusiness”; (8) cheap electric and water, versus alleged President Joe Bidenenko; (9) Ballet, versus the bump-whump of subwoofers in vehicles drumming out a primitive jungle beat and screaming unrelenting iambic pentameter, for everyone to hear; (10) cheap taxi and delivery; versus lockdowns (11) Traditional values; versus collapsing reality and epistemological solipsism; (12) Christianity, versus hollowed out ecclesiastical institutions, bishopettes, mangled and gutted “liturgies”, “inclusiveness” and empty churches, (13) no cancel culture, or rather, a culture period, and one not apologizing for existing.

The bottom line that I’m suggesting here is that this commercial is not a one-off. It’s but the latest chapter in a long series of messages of culture and tradition and history that post-Soviet Russia has been sending. So far, they’ve been sending that message – at the popular level at least – mostly to their own population. In so far as they have sent that message to the West, it’s been to the Western leaders, who, of course, are stupid and tone-deaf and unable to hear it. But the western populations… they are a different matter. This is a serious message, addressed to them. And I suspect it’s only the first of many. There is even a carefully calculated geopolitical aspect to it, but I’ll leave that for you to guess, and perhaps take it up at another time.

… See you on the flip side…

from: https://gizadeathstar.com/2022/08/that-very-strange-russian-commercial/

Where’s Your Crypto?

Posted on February 17, 2022 by marcia

CNBC Investigations

Fraudsters are using bots to drain cryptocurrency accounts

Published Tue, Feb 15 20227:00 AM ESTUpdated Tue, Feb 15 2022 8:16 AM EST

Scott Zamost @scottzamost

Eamon Javers @EamonJavers

Key Points

Fraudsters are selling bots on Telegram that are designed to trick investors into divulging their two-factor authentication, leading to accounts being wiped out.
Crypto investors are being targeted around the country.
Dr. Anders Apgar, a Coinbase customer, said his account had a balance of more than $100,000 in crypto when it was hacked during a robocall

Dr. Anders Apgar was out for dinner last month with his family, and his phone would not stop buzzing. It looked like a robocall, so he tried to ignore it.

But the calls would not stop. Then his wife’s phone also started to ring.

“When she picks it up, a banner came across, a notification that says, ‘Your account’s in jeopardy,’” he said.

The warning, which he said was a text message, prompted him to pick up his phone. That was when the couple’s nightmare started.

It’s the kind of nightmare many crypto account holders around the country are facing as hackers target a boom in the industry, cybersecurity experts said.

The Apgars, who are both Maryland-based obstetricians, began investing in cryptocurrency several years ago. By December, their account had grown to about $106,000, mainly held in bitcoin. Like millions of investors across the country, their account is with Coinbase, the country’s largest cryptocurrency platform.

When Apgar picked up the phone, a female voice said, “Hello, welcome to Coinbase security prevention line. We have detected unauthorized activity due to failed log-in attempt on your account. This was requested from a Canada IP address. If this (is) not you, please press 1, to complete precautions recovering your account.” The call lasted just 19 seconds.

Alarmed, Apgar pressed 1.

He said he cannot remember if he manually entered his two-factor authentication code or if it came up automatically on his screen. But what happened in that moment led to his account being locked in less than two minutes. As Apgar has not regained access, he said he assumes the fraudsters stole most if not all of the crypto, but he can’t be sure.

“It was just dread and an emptiness of just, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t get this back,’” he said.

The Apgars were targeted by a particularly insidious type of fraud that takes advantage of two-factor authentication, or 2FA. People use 2FA, a second level of security that often involves a passcode, to safeguard a range of accounts at crypto exchanges, banks or anywhere else they carry out digital transactions.

Dr. Anders Apgar

CNBC

But this new type of fraud goes right at that 2FA code, and it uses people’s fear of their accounts being hacked against them. In taking action they think will protect them, they actually expose themselves to thieves.

The fraud tool is called a one-time password, or OTP, bot.

A report produced by Florida-based cybersecurity firm and CNBC contributor Q6 Cyber said the OTP bots are driving substantial losses for financial and other institutions. The damage is hard to quantify now because the bot attacks are relatively new.

“The bot calls are crafted in a very skillful manner, creating a sense of urgency and trust over the phone. The calls rely on fear, convincing the victims to act to ‘avoid’ fraud in their account,” the report said.

The scam works in part because victims are used to providing a code for authentication to verify account information. At first listen, the robocalls can sound legitimate — especially if the victim is harried or distracted by other things at the moment the call comes in.

“It’s human nature,” said Jessica Kelley, a Q6 Cyber analyst who authored the report. “If you receive a call that tells you someone’s trying to sign in to your account, you’re not thinking, ‘Well, I wasn’t trying to.’”

The bots began showing up for sale on messaging platform Telegram last summer. Kelley identified at least six Telegram channels with more than 10,000 subscribers each selling the bots.

While there is no official estimate on the amount of crypto stolen, Kelley said fraudsters routinely brag on Telegram about how well the bots have worked, netting for each user thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto. The cost of the bots ranges from $100 a month to $4,000 for a lifetime subscription.

“Before these OTP bots, a cybercriminal would have to make that call himself,” Kelley said. “They would have to call the victim and try to get them to divulge their personal identifiable information or bank account PIN or their 2FA passcode. And now, with these bots, that whole system is just automated and the scalability is that much larger.”

“Once the victim inputs that 2FA code, or any other information that they requested the victim put in their phone, that information gets sent to the bot,” Kelley said. The bot “then automatically sends it to the cybercriminal, who then has access to the victim’s account.”

She said criminals could “potentially steal everything, because with these transactions, they can do them one after the other until the amount is basically drained.”

In a statement to CNBC, a Coinbase spokesperson said, “Coinbase will never make unsolicited calls to its customers, and we encourage everyone to be cautious when providing information over the phone. If you receive a call from someone claiming to be from a financial institution (whether Coinbase or your bank), do not disclose any of your account details or security codes. Instead, hang up and call them back at an official phone number listed on the organization’s website.”

David Silver, another Coinbase customer, knew the company would not be calling him. He recently received a robocall saying there was a problem with his account.

“And immediately, it was an electronic voice that told me it was Coinbase Fraud Department,” he said. “And I immediately turned to the lawyer sitting next to me and said, ‘Start videoing.’ I knew instantaneously what this was and what it was going to be.”

Attorney David Silver

CNBC

Silver knew what the call was about because he is not just a Coinbase client — he is an attorney who specializes in cryptocurrency and financial fraud cases.

Silver pressed 1 and found himself on a live call. A person got on the line pretending to be a Coinbase employee.

“And they immediately started telling me things that I know are in violation of what Coinbase would do,” he said. “For instance, they will never ask for your password. They will never try and take over your computer.”

Silver asked if he could be sent an email verifying that the call was from Coinbase. The answer was no.

“And their answer was no because there’s only certain ways that you can mask the email coming directly from a domain that nowadays, the domain carriers such as GoDaddy, Google — it’s very hard to spoof email coming from the domains,” he said. “And they weren’t willing to send me the email. I would say that was my last shred of hope that they were legitimate is when I asked them to send me the email and they said no.”

After nearly seven minutes, Silver was asked to share his computer screen. He ended the call.

“I’m not surprised I got the call. But I do question how they had my personal cell phone number and where they’re getting that information to tie me to Coinbase,” he said.

Apgar said he wishes he had never answered the phone. To make matters worse, he has been unable to get his account access restored, he said. When CNBC reached out to Coinbase about the Apgars regaining access to their account, a company spokesperson said the matter was turned over to its security team.

Apgar said Monday that he had just responded to an email from Coinbase to help restore access to the account.

Customer service at Coinbase has been a widespread problem, CNBC found last year. Customers around the country said hackers were draining their accounts but when they turned to Coinbase for help they could not get a response. After the story, Coinbase set up a phone support line to help customers, but even that has been fraught with problems.

Asked what he could have done differently, Apgar said it’s simple: not answer the phone.

from: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/15/crypto-fraudsters-use-robocalls-to-drain-accounts.html

The Terrorism of Free Speech

Posted on February 12, 2022 by marcia

Americans who question government now ‘threat actors,’ DHS Says

By Eric Utter

A new federal terror advisory contains a threat assessment that characterizes Americans who “mislead” others into questioning government-approved messages as being on par with terrorists. That is as anti-American messaging as could be imagined. America was founded on questioning governments, foreign and domestic. And that has been her saving grace, the reason for her unique success.

The assessment specifically identifies those who engage in “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” as “threat actors.” It also cites “widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19” as having a deleterious effect on government institutions.

Actually, it’s the actions of government institutions that often have a deleterious effect on (people’s views of) government institutions…and on the people. But, no matter, our First Amendment rights are out the window. 1984 is here. “Wrong-thought” has been criminalized.

If not stopped—and reversed– this is the end of the Great Experiment and the Land of Opportunity.

So, fellow threat actors, what are we to do about this?

First off, we must realize that “misinformation” is what has typically been put out by governments since governments were instituted among men. The larger and more powerful the government in relation to the people, the more preposterous the misinformation, false narratives, outright lies, and other propaganda it will churn out. And the less it will tolerate dissent and independent thought. This is a historical fact. It was true of feudal kings. Offend the king and it could be “off with your head.” The Third Reich blamed all Germany’s troubles on the Jews. So it imprisoned and exterminated them. The Soviet Union killed millions of folks who didn’t toe the party line. Speak out against the government? Hello, “re-education” camp or gulag. And today we have Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Eritrea, North Korea…and, of course, China. (How’s your “social credit score?” You might be about to find out.) China graciously exported the pandemic to the West, and it now appears many Western nations may be attempting to appropriate its system of government, as well. Talk about forgiveness and tolerance. Amazing. The governments of Australia, New Zealand, Austria, several other European nations, and even Canada and the United States have quickly and zealously headed down the road to tyranny.

Leftists in the U.S. are attacking the First and Second Amendments (among others). These are the essence and guarantor of our freedoms, respectively. They are marginalizing, canceling, and even incarcerating those who have the effrontery to challenge their narrative. Meaning their power. That is tyranny. That is terrorism. They are “threat actors.” And they do this while accusing Trump supporters, Christians, patriots, rednecks, Rogan listeners, Republicans, rural residents, truck drivers—and anyone else with whom they disagree– of being a “threat to our democracy.”

The truth is precisely the opposite, of course. They are the threat to our democracy. Demonstrably and inarguably. They want to squelch free speech and vigorous dialogue. They wish to take away your right to protect yourself and your family. They wish to pack the court. They wish to end the filibuster. Theywish to eliminate the Electoral College. We don’t wish to do any of those things to them or anybody else. Oh, and they locked us all down and masked us all up for the past two years.

There has been much talk of a Second Civil War or a Second American Revolution. Either, of course, would be tragic, insofar as violence and bloodshed are concerned. But what we really need, and what might help avoid either of the aforementioned, is a second Declaration of Independence. If our elite rulers knew—were absolutely convinced– that we will no longer accept their forays into tyranny and despotism, will no longer meekly acquiesce to their every wish and whim no matter how banal, damaging, or evil, perhaps we could start reclaiming and restoring “our democracy.” Peacefully.

I’ll even offer to write it.

It might go something like this:

“As Americans, we still hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And that legitimate governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, not attempt to repeal them. We must never forget that just governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. These are the defining characteristics of America, the blueprint for this nation, and we will not throw our birthrights away. As our Founders noted, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. Indeed, when a government is trending towards absolute despotism, it is their duty to do so. For, as Americans, we owe it to our forefathers, ourselves, and our posterity to reclaim our former freedoms and see to a rebirth of our once blessed and unrivaled republic.

“The following are some of the abuses, injuries, and usurpations compelling us to make this Declaration:

“Our leaders have used a pandemic, that they partially paid for, to tell us that we couldn’t leave our houses. For the first time, they quarantined the healthy. They told us that we must wear a mask over our mouths and noses at all times, even indoors. They said we couldn’t visit our loved ones in hospitals or in hospice. Pure, unadulterated evil. They barred us from attending weddings and funerals. They informed many of us that our jobs are ‘not essential,’ even as they paid many not to work. Preposterous! They have fomented and excused months-long violent protests and riots by some which led to numerous deaths and billions of dollars in damage…while incarcerating without charge many who peacefully walked into our Capitol Building. They have unilaterally instituted a two-tier system of justice, where laws apply utterly differently to different people based on ideology. They have weaponized the FBI, CIA, DOJ, DHS, and IRS against the American people, and are now even attempting to do the same with our military. They have, through extreme incompetence or malevolence given succor to our enemies and created grave doubts in the minds of our friends and allies. They have decided not to tend to or defend our Southern border, leaving us wide open to criminals, drug and sex trafficking, and potential acts of terrorism. They do this because they wish to replace us, legal citizens, with those whom they can more easily control—and whom they can count on to vote for them in the future. Monstrous! Moreover, they have created conditions mandating that crime rates will surge across the nation, making all of us less safe. They have disabled our energy industry, making us once again dependent on foreign actors and adversely affecting our national security. They have mismanaged the economy, driving up inflation and diminishing our quality of life. They have—in myriad ways—caused absolutely needless pain and suffering for scores of millions of Americans, as reflected in the skyrocketing rates of substance abuse and suicides. All these are egregious and frightening acts signaling a descent into tyranny.

“Yet, whenever we have petitioned for redress, we have been summarily rebuffed. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. We have been mocked, scorned, canceled.

“Our leaders must know that we will not choose hopelessness and despair. We will not tolerate their arrogance, scorn, and contempt. We will, once more, be free.

“Therefore, we the citizens of the United States of America, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the universe for the righteousness of our intentions, do solemnly publish and declare that, to this end, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

from: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/americans_who_question_government_now_threat_actors_dhs_says_.html

Pfizer Told 8 Months to Release “Vaccine” Data

Posted on January 7, 2022 by marcia

Judge Rejects FDA’s 75 Year Delay On Vax Data, Cuts To Just 8 Months

A federal judge has rejected a request by the FDA to produce just 500 pages per month of the data submitted by Pfizer to license its Covid-19 vaccine – and has ordered them to produce 55,000 pages per month. Assuming there are roughly 450,000 pages, that means it will take just over eight months for the world to see what’s under the hood.

Attorney Aaron Siri, who represents the plaintiff in the case, has provided this stunning update via his blog, Injecting Freedom:

On behalf of a client, my firm requested that the FDA produce all the data submitted by Pfizer to license its Covid-19 vaccine. The FDA asked the Court for permission to only be required to produce at a rate of 500 pages per month, which would have taken over 75 years to produce all the documents.

I am pleased to report that a federal judge soundly rejected the FDA’s request and ordered the FDA to produce all the data at a clip of 55,000 pages per month!

This is a great win for transparency and removes one of the strangleholds federal “health” authorities have had on the data needed for independent scientists to offer solutions and address serious issues with the current vaccine program – issues which include waning immunity, variants evading vaccine immunity, and, as the CDC has confirmed, that the vaccines do not prevent transmission.

No person should ever be coerced to engage in an unwanted medical procedure. And while it is bad enough the government violated this basic liberty right by mandating the Covid-19 vaccine, the government also wanted to hide the data by waiting to fully produce what it relied upon to license this product until almost every American alive today is dead. That form of governance is destructive to liberty and antithetical to the openness required in a democratic society.

In ordering the release of the documents in a timely manner, the Judge recognized that the release of this data is of paramount public importance and should be one of the FDA’s highest priorities. He then aptly quoted James Madison as saying a “popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy” and John F. Kennedy as explaining that a “nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

The following is the full text of the Judge’s order, a copy of which is also available here.

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

PHMPT, Plaintiff v. FDA, Defendant, No. 4:21-cv-1058-P

ORDER

This case involves the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”). Specifically, at issue is Plaintiff’s FOIA request seeking “[a]ll data and information for the Pfizer Vaccine enumerated in 21 C.F.R. § 601.51(e) with the exception of publicly available reports on the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System” from the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”). See ECF No. 1. As has become standard, the Parties failed to agree to a mutually acceptable production schedule; instead, they submitted dueling production schedules for this Court’s consideration. Accordingly, the Court held a conference with the Parties to determine an appropriate production schedule.[1] See ECF Nos. 21, 34.

“Open government is fundamentally an American issue” – it is neither a Republican nor a Democrat issue.[2] As James Madison wrote, “[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”[3] John F. Kennedy likewise recognized that “a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”[4] And, particularly appropriate in this case, John McCain (correctly) noted that “[e]xcessive administrative secrecy . . . feeds conspiracy theories and reduces the public’s confidence in the government.”[5]

Echoing these sentiments, “[t]he basic purpose of FOIA is to ensure an informed citizenry, [which is] vital to the functioning of a democratic society.” NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214, 242 (1977). “FOIA was [therefore] enacted to ‘pierce the veil of administrative secrecy and to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.’” Batton v. Evers, 598 F.3d 169, 175 (5th Cir. 2010) (quoting Dep’t of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 361 (1976)). And “Congress has long recognized that ‘information is often useful only if it is timely’ and that, therefore ‘excessive delay by the agency in its response is often tantamount to denial.’” Open Soc’y Just. Initiative v. CIA, 399 F. Supp. 3d 161, 165 (S.D.N.Y. 2019) (quoting H.R. REP. NO. 93-876, at 6271 (1974)). When needed, a court “may use its equitable powers to require an agency to process documents according to a court-imposed timeline.” Clemente v. FBI, 71 F. Supp. 3d 262, 269 (D.D.C. 2014).

Here, the Court recognizes the “unduly burdensome” challenges that this FOIA request may present to the FDA. See generally ECF Nos. 23, 30, 34. But, as expressed at the scheduling conference, there may not be a “more important issue at the Food and Drug Administration . . . than the pandemic, the Pfizer vaccine, getting every American vaccinated, [and] making sure that the American public is assured that this was not [] rush[ed] on behalf of the United States . . . .” ECF No. 34 at 46. Accordingly, the Court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance.

“[S]tale information is of little value.” Payne Enters., Inc. v. United States, 837 F.2d 486, 494 (D.C. Cir. 1988). The Court, agreeing with this truism, therefore concludes that the expeditious completion of Plaintiff’s request is not only practicable, but necessary. See Bloomberg, L.P. v. FDA, 500 F. Supp. 2d 371, 378 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 15, 2007) (“[I]t is the compelling need for such public understanding that drives the urgency of the request.”). To that end, the Court further concludes that the production rate, as detailed below, appropriately balances the need for unprecedented urgency in processing this request with the FDA’s concerns regarding the burdens of production. See Halpern v. FBI, 181 F.3d 279, 284–85 (2nd Cir. 1991) (“[FOIA] emphasizes a preference for the fullest possible agency disclosure of such information consistent with a responsible balancing of competing concerns . . . .”).

Accordingly, having considered the Parties’ arguments, filings in support, and the applicable law, the Court ORDERS that:

1. The FDA shall produce the “more than 12,000 pages” articulated in its own proposal, see ECF No. 29 at 24, on or before January 31, 2022.

2. The FDA shall produce the remaining documents at a rate of 55,000 pages every 30 days, with the first production being due on or before March 1, 2022, until production is complete.

3. To the extent the FDA asserts any privilege, exemption, or exclusion as to any responsive record or portion thereof, FDA shall, concurrent with each production required by this Order, produce a redacted version of the record, redacting only those portions as to which privilege, exemption, or exclusion is asserted.

4. The Parties shall submit a Joint Status Report detailing the progress of the rolling production by April 1, 2022, and every 90 days thereafter.[6]

SO ORDERED on this 6th day of January, 2022.

[1] Surprisingly, the FDA did not send an agency representative to the scheduling conference.

[2] 151 CONG. REC. S1521 (daily ed. Feb. 16, 2005) (statement of Sen. John Cornyn).

[3] Letter from James Madison to W.T. Barry (August 4, 1822), in 9 WRITINGS OF JAMES MADISON 103 (S. Hunt ed., 1910).

[4] John F. Kennedy, Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America (Feb. 26, 1962).

[5] America After 9/11: Freedom Preserved or Freedom Lost?: Hearing Before the S. Comm. on the Judiciary, 108th Cong. 302 (2003).

[6] Although the Court does not decide whether the FDA correctly denied Plaintiff’s request for expedited processing, the issue is not moot. Should the Parties seek to file motions for summary judgment, the Court will take up the issue then.

from: https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/judge-rejects-fdas-75-year-delay-vax-data-cuts-8-months?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=399

What About Your Fact Checkers, Mark???

Posted on January 7, 2022 by marcia

Rapid response to:

Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial

BMJ 2021; 375 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n2635 (Published 02 November 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;375:n2635

Rapid Response:

Open letter from The BMJ to Mark Zuckerberg

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

We are Fiona Godlee and Kamran Abbasi, editors of The BMJ, one of the world’s oldest and most influential general medical journals. We are writing to raise serious concerns about the “fact checking” being undertaken by third party providers on behalf of Facebook/Meta.

In September, a former employee of Ventavia, a contract research company helping carry out the main Pfizer covid-19 vaccine trial, began providing The BMJ with dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails. These materials revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety. We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.

The BMJ commissioned an investigative reporter to write up the story for our journal. The article was published on 2 November, following legal review, external peer review and subject to The BMJ’s usual high level editorial oversight and review.[1]

But from November 10, readers began reporting a variety of problems when trying to share our article. Some reported being unable to share it. Many others reported having their posts flagged with a warning about “Missing context … Independent fact-checkers say this information could mislead people.” Those trying to post the article were informed by Facebook that people who repeatedly share “false information” might have their posts moved lower in Facebook’s News Feed. Group administrators where the article was shared received messages from Facebook informing them that such posts were “partly false.”

Readers were directed to a “fact check” performed by a Facebook contractor named Lead Stories.[2]

We find the “fact check” performed by Lead Stories to be inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible.

— It fails to provide any assertions of fact that The BMJ article got wrong

— It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”

— The first paragraph inaccurately labels The BMJ a “news blog”

— It contains a screenshot of our article with a stamp over it stating “Flaws Reviewed,” despite the Lead Stories article not identifying anything false or untrue in The BMJ article

— It published the story on its website under a URL that contains the phrase “hoax-alert”

We have contacted Lead Stories, but they refuse to change anything about their article or actions that have led to Facebook flagging our article.

We have also contacted Facebook directly, requesting immediate removal of the “fact checking” label and any link to the Lead Stories article, thereby allowing our readers to freely share the article on your platform.

There is also a wider concern that we wish to raise. We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence.[3] Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ.

We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.

Best wishes,

Fiona Godlee, editor in chief
Kamran Abbasi, incoming editor in chief
The BMJ

Competing interests:
As current and incoming editors in chief, we are responsible for everything The BMJ contains.

References:

[1] Thacker PD. Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial. BMJ. 2021 Nov 2;375:n2635. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n2635. PMID: 34728500. https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635

[2] Miller D. Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials. Nov 10, 2021. https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2021/11/fact-check-british-medical-jo…

[3] https://twitter.com/cochranecollab/status/1458439812357185536

Competing interests: As current and incoming editors in chief, we are responsible for everything The BMJ contains.

from: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635/rr-80

Where O-Where is Covid 19

Posted on October 10, 2021 by marcia

The non-existent virus; an explosive interview with Christine Massey

Oct7 by Jon Rappoport

With a background in biostatistics, Christine Massey has been using Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests as a research tool, as a diamond drill, to unearth the truth about SARS-CoV-2. As in: Does the virus exist?

Her approach has yielded shocking results.

In a half-sane world, Christine’s work would win many awards, and rate far-reaching coverage. In the present world, more and more people, on their own, are waking up to her findings and completely revising their perception of the “pandemic.”

Here is my recent interview with the brilliant relentless Christine Massey:

Q: You and your colleagues have made many FOIA requests to public health agencies around the world. You’ve been asking for records that show the SARS-CoV-2 virus exists. How did you develop this approach?

A: In 2014, a lady in Edmonton submitted a freedom of information request to Health Canada asking for studies relating to the addition of hydrofluorosilisic acid (industrial waste fluoride acid) to public drinking water (water fluoridation). HealthCanada’s response indicated that they had no studies whatsoever to back up their claims that the practice is safe or effective.

A few years later, some high quality government-funded studies showed that common fluoride exposure levels during pregnancy are associated with lower IQs and increased ADHD symptoms in offspring. Nevertheless, dentists and the public health community continued to promote and defend the so-called “great public health achievement” of forcing this controversial preventative dental treatment onto entire communities, and were dismissive of those studies. So I used freedom of information requests to show that various institutions promoting and defending water fluoridation in Ontario, Alberta and Washington State could not provide or cite even one primary study indicating safety with respect to those outcomes.

So once I learned from people like David Crowe, Dr. Andrew Kaufman, Dr. Stefan Lanka and Dr. Thomas Cowan that the alleged [COVID] virus had never been isolated (purified) from a patient sample and then characterized, sequenced and studied with controlled experiments, and thus had never been shown to exist, I realized that freedom of information (FOI) requests could be used to verify their claims.

Most people are not going to take the time to check all of the so-called “virus isolation” studies for themselves, so FOIs were a way to 1) ensure that nothing had been overlooked, and 2) cut to the chase and back-up what these gentlemen [Kaufman, Cowan, Crowe, Lanka] were saying, if they were indeed correct.

So in May 2020 I began submitting FOI requests for any record held by the respective institution that describes the isolation/purification of the alleged “COVID-19 virus” from an unadulterated sample taken from a diseased patient, by anyone, anywhere on the planet.

Q: How many public health and government agencies have you queried with FOIA requests?

A: I have personally queried and received responses from 22 Canadian institutions. These are public health institutions, universities that claim to have “isolated the virus”, and 3 police services – due to their enforcement of “COVID-19” restrictions. I have also personally received responses from several institutions outside of Canada including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). I await responses from a number of additional institutions.

Many people around the world have obtained responses to the same/similar, or related, [FOIA] requests, from institutions in their own countries. One person who has done a lot of work on this in New Zealand and other countries is my colleague Michael S. Also a fellow named Marc Horn obtained many in the UK. A handful of other people obtained several responses, and lots of people have obtained 1 or 2.

I have been compiling all of the responses that are sent to me on my FOI page, and as I type this (October 4, 2021) we have FOI responses from 104 institutions in well over 20 countries all relating to the purification/existence of the alleged virus. Additionally, there are court documents from South Africa and Portugal. In total, 110 instructions are represented at this moment on my website. There are FOI responses from more institutions that I haven’t had a chance to upload yet.

Q: How would you characterize the replies you’ve gotten from these agencies?

A: Every institution without exception has failed to provide or cite even 1 record describing purification of the alleged virus from even 1 patient sample.

Twenty-one of the 22 Canadian institutions admitted flat out that they have no such records (as required by the Canadian legislation). Many institutions outside Canada have admitted the same, including the CDC (November 2, 2020), Australia’s Department of Health, New Zealand’s Ministry of Health, the UK Department of Health and Social Care…

And in some cases, silly excuses were provided. For example, the Norwegian Directorate of Health’s response was that they do not own, store or control documents with information about patients. Public Health Wales told Dr. Janet Menage that they have not produced any such records, and that while they would normally be willing to point her towards records that are in the public domain it would be too difficult in this case.

Brazil’s FDA-like injection-approver, the Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa), told Marcella Picone that they have no record of virus purification and are not required to by law, thus it is (in their minds) not their obligation to make sure that the virus actually exists.

Q: What is the exact text of your FOIA requests?

The text has varied somewhat over time. For example, in the beginning I used the word “isolation”. But since that term gets abused so badly by virologists, I now stick to “purification”.

In all requests I specified exactly what I meant by isolation/purification (separation of the alleged virus from everything else), and that the purified particles should come directly from a sample taken from a diseased human where the patient sample was not first adulterated with any other source of genetic material (i.e. the monkey kidney cells aka Vero cells and the fetal bovine serum that are typically used in the bogus “virus isolation” studies).

I always clarified that I was not requesting records where researchers failed to purify the alleged virus and instead cultured something and/or performed a PCR test and/or sequenced something. I also clarified that I was requesting records authored by anyone, anywhere – not simply records that were created by the institution in question. And I requested citations for any record of purification that is held by the institution but already available to the public elsewhere.

The latest iteration [of the FOIA request] is posted on a page of my website where I encourage others to submit requests to institutions in their own country: Template for “SARS-COV-2 isolation” FOI requests.

Q: These agencies are all saying they have no records proving SARS-CoV-2 exists, but at the same time some of these agencies sponsor and fund studies that claim the virus does exist. How do you account for this contradiction?

I will address this by way of an example.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) is the only Canadian institution that failed to provide a straightforward “no records” response thus far. Instead, they provided me with what they pretended were responsive records.

The records consisted of some emails, and a study by Bullard et al. that was supported by PHAC and their National Microbiology Laboratory, and by Manitoba Health and Manitoba’s Cadham Provincial Laboratory.

Neither the study nor the emails describe purification of the alleged virus from a patient sample or from anything else. The word “isolate” (or “isolation” / “purify” / “purification”) does not even appear, except in the study manuscript in the context of isolating people, not a virus.

…in the Materials And Methods section we find that these researchers performed PCR “tests” for a portion of the E gene sequence (not a virus), and they incubated patient samples (not a virus) on Vero cells (monkey kidney cells) supplemented with fetal bovine serum, penicillin/streptomycin, and amphotericin B, and they monitored for harm to the monkey cells.

No virus was looked for in, or purified from, the patient samples. No control groups of any kind were implemented in the monkey cell procedures. No virus was required or shown to be involved anywhere in the study, but “it” was blamed for any harm to the monkey cells and “it” was referred to repeatedly throughout the study (I counted 26 instances).

Nevertheless, this was the sole paper provided by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

And although the researchers did not claim to have “isolated” the alleged virus in this paper, they performed the same sort of monkey business / cell culture procedure that is passed off as “virus isolation” by virologists in country after country. (Because virology is not a science.)

…Note the admission in the [study] Abstract: “RT-PCR detects RNA, not infectious virus”.

…So I wrote back to the Public Health Agency of Canada and advised the that none of the records they provided me actually describe separation of the alleged virus from everything else in a patient sample, and that I require an accurate response indicating that they have no responsive records.

In their revised response, the Agency insisted that the gold standard assay used to determine the presence of intact virus in patient samples is visible cytopathic [cell-killing] effects on cells in a cell culture, and that “PCR further confirms that intact virus is present”.

…As you have pointed out to your readers again and again: No one has isolated/purified “the virus”. They simply assume that patient samples contain “it” (based on meaningless PCR tests). They adulterate patient samples with genetic material and toxic drugs, starve the cells, then irrationally blame “the virus” for harm to the cells. They point to something that has never been purified, characterized, sequenced or studied scientifically, in a cell culture and insist “that’s the virus”. They fabricate the “genomes” from zillions of sequences detected in a soup. It’s all wild speculation and assumptions, zero science.

So the people responsible for the blatantly fraudulent claims made by these institutions are either wildly incompetent or intentionally lying.

—end of interview—

To bolster Christine’s final comments, these agencies will respond to FOIA requests with: “we have no records of virus purification”—and then sponsor studies that claim the virus HAS BEEN purified and discovered, because…

The standards for purifying the virus in the studies are no standards at all. They’re entirely irrational.

However, because Christine is very precise and accurate in her FOIA requests, when it comes to what purification means, the agencies are compelled to reply…

“Well, in THAT case, we have no records of virus purification…”

Meaning: There are no records showing the virus has been isolated; there are no records showing the virus exists.

from: https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2021/10/07/the-non-existent-virus-explosive-interview-with-christine-massey/

Bill’s Ills

Posted on October 5, 2021 by marcia

Bill Gates: The Figurehead of Modern Technocracy

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

Posted By: Dr. Joseph Mercola September 29, 2021

Bill Gates is a ruthless monopolist with visions of global dominance. His tentacles manipulate education, geo-engineering, climate, agriculture, population surveillance, genetics, medicine and governments. He is singularly the most important driver of the pandemic and mandated vaccine policies. ⁃ TN Editor

(NOTE: This is relatively long, but you can get a sense of the article by checking out the summary below. The video is quite informative.)

STORY AT-A-GLANCE–

> After years of building a reputation as a “ruthless tech monopolizer,” Bill Gates 2.0 was launched with the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With this foundation, he reinvented and rebranded himself as one of the world’s most generous philanthropists

> However, Gates’ brand of philanthropy creates several new problems for each one it solves and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism”

> Today, Gates monopolizes or wields disproportional influence over the tech industry, global health and vaccines, agriculture and food policy (including biopiracy and fake food), weather modification and other climate technologies, surveillance, education and media

> According to Gates, vaccines are phenomenal profit makers, with more than a 20-to-1 return

> Gates is now promoting the technocratic “reset” plan, which includes an aggressive climate change agenda, yet Gates’ extensive travel by private jet makes him a top polluter

“Bill Gates — What You Were Not Told,” a segment of the Plandemic documentary,¹ reviews the personal and professional background of the Microsoft mogul, Bill Gates. Contrary to popular myth, many see Gates as more of an opportunist than a genius inventor, and the video touches on several of the less honorable moments of his career.

After years of building a reputation as a “ruthless tech monopolizer,” Bill Gates 2.0 was launched with the creation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With this foundation, he reinvented and rebranded himself as one of the world’s most generous philanthropists.

Gates’ Charity Is Not What It Seems

Alas, as noted by AGRA Watch,² Shiva Vandana, Ph.D., and others, Gates’ brand of philanthropy creates several new problems for each one it solves and can best be described as “philanthrocapitalism.” As noted in the AGRA Watch article, “Philanthrocapitalism: The Gates Foundation’s African Programs Are Not Charity,” published in December 2017, advocates of philanthrocapitalism:³

“… often expect financial returns or secondary benefits over the long term from their investments in social programs. Philanthropy becomes another part of the engine of profit and corporate control. The Gates Foundation’s strategy for ‘development’ actually promotes neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalization.”

Indeed, over the years, Gates has ended up in a position where he monopolizes or wields disproportional influence over not only the tech industry, but also global health and vaccines, agriculture and food policy (including biopiracy and fake food), weather modification and other climate technologies,⁴ surveillance, education and media.

Not surprisingly, he’s tied to online fact checker organizations that strangle free speech, and recently told “60 Minutes” that to combat mistrust in science, we need to find ways to “slow down the crazy stuff.”⁵ What’s “crazy” and what’s not, however, is rarely as clear-cut as the mainstream media would like you to believe.

And, like a true philanthrocapitalist, Gates’ generosity ends up benefiting himself most of all. In reality, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donates billions to the very same companies and industries that the foundation owns stocks and bonds in. As Gates himself reveals in the featured video, he figured out that vaccines are phenomenal profit makers, saying they’re the best investment he’s ever made, with more than a 20-to-1 return.

The one thing that allows for this is the liability shield vaccine makers have been given by the U.S. government through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (NVICP).^6,7 Under this law no vaccine maker can be sued directly by a consumer; if vaccine injury is suspected, the victim(s) must sue under the NVICP, which is run by special “masters” who determine the cases.

Gates, Global Climate Czar

As mentioned in the featured video, Gates is financing an effort to divert solar rays from the Earth’s surface in an attempt to combat global warming — an irrational approach at best, considering the potential this has to devastate global agriculture.

His latest book also details his climate change recommendations, which just so happen to include urging governments to support the very companies he’s invested in and similar sleight-of-hand gestures.

Meanwhile, as noted by The Nation, Gates himself is a serious polluter, with a 66,000 square-foot mansion, a private jet, 242,000 acres of farmland (which makes him the largest farmland owner in the U.S.) and investments in fossil fuel-dependent industries such as airlines, heavy machinery and cars.

“According to a 2019 academic study⁸ looking at extreme carbon emissions from the jet-setting elite, Bill Gates’s extensive travel by private jet likely makes him one of the world’s top carbon contributors — a veritable super emitter,” The Nation writes.⁹

“In the list of 10 celebrities investigated — including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, and Oprah Winfrey — Gates was the source of the most emissions. ‘Affluent individuals can emit several ten thousand times the amount of greenhouse gases attributed to the global poor,’ the paper noted. ‘This raises the question as to whether celebrity climate advocacy is even desirable …’”

Gates Leads the Technocratic Takeover

Gates’ focus on climate change makes perfect sense once you realize that he’s part of the technocratic elite that, for decades, have been working to gobble up the world’s resources in anticipation for the Great Reset,¹⁰ previously known as the One World Order.

Over the past year, the need for the Great Reset has been announced by government leaders around the world, the clarion call being that we need to “reset” the global economy and the way we live, work, travel and socialize in order to make the world more fair and sustainable. Addressing climate change under the banner of a global emergency is part and parcel of that PR campaign.

If you’ve paid attention, you’ve probably seen the hints. During the initial lockdowns in the early part of 2020, there were a slew of articles talking about how nature and wildlife were thriving in the absence of human socialization and travel. At other times, the COVID-19 pandemic has been presented as a warning to us all as to what happens when you get out of sync with nature.

No Real Food for You

Gates clearly feels pressure to do his part to realize the technocratic dream. He told “60 Minutes”¹¹ he is eager to see his various visions come to fruition within his lifetime, and he guesses he might have 20 or 30 years left. As reported by ZeroHedge:¹²

“Gates is pushing drastic and ‘fundamental’ changes to the economy in order to immediately halt the release of greenhouse gasses — primarily carbon dioxide— and ‘go to zero’ in order to save the planet from long-prognosticated (and consistently wrong) environmental disaster. Changes we’ll need to make in order to realize Gates’ vision include:

Allocating $35 billion per year on climate and clean energy research.
Electric everything.
Widespread consumption of fake meat, since cows account for ‘4% of all greenhouse gases.’
Retooling the steel and cement industries, which Gates says account for 16% of all carbon dioxide emissions, to inject up to 30% of captured C02 into concrete, and create a different type of steel.
Widespread adoption of next generation nuclear energy to supplement wind and solar.

And since producing plants to make fake meat emits gases as well, Gates has backed a company which uses fungus to make sausage and yogurt, which the billionaire calls ‘pretty amazing’ … ‘The microbe was discovered in the ground in a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Without soil or fertilizer it can be grown to produce this nutritional protein — that can then be turned into a variety of foods with a small carbon footprint.’”

Indeed, Gates would like wealthy Western nations to switch entirely to synthetic lab-grown beef, and he rails against legislative attempts to make sure fake meats are properly labeled as such, since that slows down public acceptance.¹³

Gates Again Proves Feudalism Is a Failed System

With his land ownership, Gates clearly is in a monopoly position (yet again!) to drive agriculture and food production in whatever direction he desires, and he wants us all to eat as much fake food as possible. As noted in a long and detailed article on Gates’ philanthrocapitalist endeavors by The Defender:¹⁴

“Thomas Jefferson believed that the success of America’s exemplary struggle to supplant the yoke of European feudalism with a noble experiment in self-governance depended on the perpetual control of the nation’s land base by tens of thousands of independent farmers, each with a stake in our democracy.

So at best, Gates’ campaign to scarf up America’s agricultural real estate is a signal that feudalism may again be in vogue. At worst, his buying spree is a harbinger of something far more alarming — the control of global food supplies by a power-hungry megalomaniac with a Napoleon complex.”

The article goes on to detail Gates’ “long-term strategy of mastery over agriculture and food production globally,” starting with his support of GMOs in 1994. Ever since then, Gates’ “philanthropic” approaches to hunger and food production have been built around his technology, chemical, pharmaceutical and oil industry partners, thereby ensuring that for every failed rescue venture, he gets richer nonetheless.

“As with Gates’ African vaccine enterprise, there was neither internal evaluation nor public accountability,” The Defender writes.¹⁵ “The 2020 study ‘False Promises: The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)’ is the report card on the Gates’ cartel’s 14-year effort.

The investigation concludes that the number of Africans suffering extreme hunger has increased by 30 percent in the 18 countries that Gates targeted. Rural poverty has metastasized dramatically …

Under Gates’ plantation system, Africa’s rural populations have become slaves on their own land to a tyrannical serfdom of high-tech inputs, mechanization, rigid schedules, burdensome conditionalities, credits and subsidies … The only entities benefiting from Gates’ program are his international corporate partners …

His investment history suggests that the climate crisis, for Gates and his cronies, is no more than an alibi for intrusive social control, ‘Great Reset’-scale surveillance, and massive science fiction geoengineering boondoggles, including his demented and terrifying vanity projects to spray the stratosphere with calcium chloride or seawater to slow warming, to deploy giant balloons to saturate our atmosphere with reflective particles to blot out the sun, or his perilous gambit of releasing millions of genetically modified mosquitoes in South Florida.

When we place these nightmare schemes in context alongside the battery of experimental vaccines he forces on 161 million African children annually, it’s pretty clear that Gates regards us all as his lab rats.”

Gates Foundation Seeded Catastrophic COVID-19 Policies

Gates, of course, has also played a leading role in the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel, who has a channel on Substack,¹⁶ Gates had a hand in the “criminally negligent coronavirus response policies” that killed an inordinate number of senior citizens in nursing homes in New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Schachtel points out that a common thread in these instances is that they listened to the frightfully inaccurate modeling forecasts from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which is funded and controlled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He writes:¹⁷

“In March and early April, politicians were informed by the modeling ‘experts’ at Gates-funded IHME that their hospitals were about to be completely overrun by coronavirus patients.

Modelers from IHME claimed this massive surge would cause hospitals to run out of lifesaving equipment in a matter of days, not weeks or months. Time was of the essence, and now was the time for rapid decision making, the modelers claimed.

On two separate April 1 and April 2 press conferences, Cuomo made clear that his policy decisions were based off of the IHME model … In an April 9 briefing, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer referred to the IHME model in order to project deaths and the PPE resources needed for the supposed surge. It was the same story with the government of Pennsylvania.”

White House Coronavirus Task Force members Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, both of whom have substantial ties to Gates, also relied on the IHME forecast models. As noted by Schachtel:

“These models, and the policy decisions that were made by relying on them, set off a chain of events that led to indefinite lockdowns, complete business closures, statewide curfews, and most infamously, the nursing home death warrants.”

Delete That Which No Longer Serves

The Gates Foundation also co-sponsored Event 201, a scripted tabletop exercise held mere months before the COVID-19 outbreak that ended up being remarkably prophetic.

Strangely enough, in an April 2020 BBC interview, Gates denied the simulation had occurred, saying that “We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”¹⁸ In an article for National Herald India, Norbert Häring highlights Gates’ apparent forgetfulness, stating:¹⁹

“It is true that if a little less emphasis had been placed on opinion manipulation, more attention could have been paid to health and economic policy. One of the four meetings was entirely devoted to this. But health and economic policies did get discussed. Gates can hardly have forgotten that.

The video on control of public opinion is the most interesting one, as it helps to put in perspective the efforts in this regard, which we are currently experiencing. One participant tells us that Bill Gates is financing work on algorithms which comb through the information on social media platforms to make sure that people can trust the information that they find there.”

Gates has also erased other evidence where the truth is coming back to haunt him. Case in point: Gates-funded fact checkers have vehemently denied claims that Gates ever said we’ll need digital vaccine passports, passing it off as yet another crazy conspiracy theory.

But Gates did say that in a June 2020 TED Talk. Someone just edited that specific statement out of his speech after the quote started making the rounds on social media. In a December 11, 2020, article, The Defender presented the proof.²⁰

Fact checkers also dismiss claims that subdermal microchips or digital tattoos will eventually be used to track and trace us, yet as noted by The Defender, Gates did commission MIT to develop an injectable quantum dot dye system to “tattoo” medical data on your body, and has patented technology that uses implanted biosensors that monitor body and brain activity and is tied to a crypto currency system.

He’s also invested tens of millions into microchip devices with remote-controlled drug-delivery systems and military contractors that track and trace pandemic infections and vaccine compliance. He also has a greater than $1 billion investment in 5G video surveillance satellites and 5G antennas. When you put all of these things together, Gates’ plans start to take on a rather ominous feel.

Gates Is the Most Visible Figurehead of Modern Technocracy

Whether preplanned or not, the COVID-19 pandemic is clearly being used to usher in highly controversial changes that are unmistakably totalitarian-building, including the private take-over of government through public-private partnerships.

Surveillance has become the biggest for-profit industry on the planet, and your entire existence is now being targeted for profit. Among those who stand to profit the most is Gates himself. Time is running out. To have any chance of stopping it, we must understand our trajectory, and unite to change the course Gates and others like him have set for us.

from: https://www.technocracy.news/bill-gates-the-figurehead-of-modern-technocracy/

What YouTube Sees

Posted on October 4, 2021 by marcia

YouTube Bans all Content That Questions the Safety or Effectiveness of Vaccines

October 3, 2021 Information Liberation 1

Screen Shot 2021-10-03 at 6.43.07 PM — Censorship, Unsplash

Youtube, under Susan Wojcicki’s leadership, has already removed 130,000 videos for violating their COVID-19 vaccine policies, and the company is now expanding its ban to criticism of other vaccines as well. Despite evidence showing that autism is linked to vaccines, Matt Halprin, the global head of trust and safety at YouTube, said, “The ban will include any media that claims vaccines are dangerous or lead to chronic health outcomes such as autism.” Videos by Robert Kennedy, Jr., and Dr. Joseph Mercola have been removed.-GEG

Under YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s new speech codes, YouTubers can now be banned for quoting CDC director Rochelle Walensky admitting last month on live TV that covid shots do not “prevent transmission” of the virus.

From YouTube’s Official Blog, “Managing harmful vaccine content on YouTube”:

Today, we’re expanding our medical misinformation policies on YouTube with new guidelines on currently administered vaccines that are approved and confirmed to be safe and effective by local health authorities and the WHO.

[…] Since last year, we’ve removed over 130,000 videos for violating our COVID-19 vaccine policies.

[…] We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines.

Specifically, content that falsely alleges that approved vaccines are dangerous and cause chronic health effects, claims that vaccines do not reduce transmission or contraction of disease, or contains misinformation on the substances contained in vaccines will be removed. This would include content that falsely says that approved vaccines cause autism, cancer or infertility, or that substances in vaccines can track those who receive them. Our policies not only cover specific routine immunizations like for measles or Hepatitis B, but also apply to general statements about vaccines.

Read full article here…

from: https://needtoknow.news/2021/10/youtube-bans-all-content-that-questions-the-safety-or-effectiveness-of-vaccines/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=youtube-bans-all-content-that-questions-the-safety-or-effectiveness-of-vaccines

Elon’s Witchy Connections

Posted on October 4, 2021 by marcia

When Elon Musk Hooked Up With The Pagan Witch

Musk and Grimes flashing occult sign

Posted By: Joe Allen via Salvo Magazine October 1, 2021

When Technocrat Musk met Transhumanist/occultist Grimes, they spawned a baby in 2020 whose given name is “X Æ A-XII”. Now a toddler, X Æ A-XII calls his mother by her birth name, “Claire”. Even though Musk and Grimes are recently separated, the connection has been forever established: Technocracy and Transhumanism are joined at the hip like Siamese Twins and shrouded in occult darkness.Grimes’ lyrics in the music video below correctly reveals the ultimate intent of these evil twins: “What will it take to make you capitulate? We appreciate power, we appreciate power…” ⁃ TN Editor

Everyone knows the old saying: “Behind every technocrat is a transhumanist sorceress.” Nothing lasts forever, though, except the immortal soul and silicon.

In the tradition of celebrity lovebirds, Elon Musk just announced he’s splitting with the techno-pagan pop star Grimes (or “c”, or “War Nymph,” or whatever she’s calling herself these days). But the world’s richest man assured gossip writers they’re still on good terms. After all, Musk and Grimes have their son X Æ A-Xii to raise. Some say he has his father’s eyes.

For the consumer class, celebrity technocrats are exalted as idols. Even after their nasty separation, Bill and Melinda Gates are adored as heroic philanthropists. On a spiritual level, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan represent a postmodern fusion of Western Judaism and Eastern Buddhism.

As cultural icons, Musk and Grimes blend his tech expertise with her dark transhumanist vision. Grimes’s pop fantasies—deeply rooted in futurism and the occult—are being realized alongside Musk’s innovations.

In the same way that rock n’ roll foretold America’s current chemical dependency and loose sexual norms, rave culture is a herald of fashionable technocracy.

Kneeling to the Highest Power

Even as a casual techno fan, I never paid attention to Grimes until a wise right-wing blogger noticed her 2018 single “We Appreciate Power.” The catchy, if intensely irritating track is a hymn to a super-conscious Computer God. The lyrics portray humanity living in a virtual simulation, ruled over by divinized artificial intelligence—to whom every knee shall bend. The sappy bridge is about uploading the mind to achieve digital immortality.

Biology is superficial

Intelligence is artificial

Submit

Submit

Submit

The song may be the most annoying sound anyone’s made since Billy Idol recorded “Neuromancer” in 1993. But hearing Grimes pray to AI on YouTube—with over 23 million views and counting—it seems like a significant cultural moment.

Maybe it’s her romantic connection to Elon Musk—the tycoon who plans to sell Neuralink brain implants for cognitive enhancement and populate cities with scrawny robot slaves—a man who advocates universal basic income while praising China as a “global leader in digitalization.” Or maybe the starlet is unsettling on her own merits.

Celebrities do all sorts of weird things, but Grimes takes it to future shock levels. She claims to have eliminated blue light from her vision “through an experimental surgery that removes the top film of [her] eyeball and replaces it with an orange ultra-flex polymer…as a means to cure seasonal depression.” The singer says she gobbles a handful of supplements every day to amp up her mitochondria. “From that point,” she told her 2.1 million Instagram fans, “I spend 2-4 hours in my deprivation tank, this allows me to ‘astro-glide’ to other dimensions—past, present, and future.”

Her stories may be as preposterous as Musk’s fully autonomous Tesla, but in both cases, it’s the symbolism that counts. As every parent or schoolteacher knows, a primary instinct behind cultural evolution is “monkey see, monkey do.” Role models replicate from the top down.

In 2020, Grimes released Miss Anthropocene, “a concept album about the anthropomorphic Goddess of Climate Change: A psychedelic, space-dwelling demon/beauty-Queen who relishes the end of the world.” As a foil to this deity, Grimes created a bald baby avatar—dubbed War Nymph—to inhabit our new age of social media and virtual reality.

“Everyone is living two lives,” she told The Face, “their digital life and their offline life.” She added,

The avatar allows us to play to the strengths of digital existence rather than be a human trying to navigate a world that isn’t made for us. … We also wanted to develop a new species that would be ready for the next evolution in media. Something that can transport our identities to worlds that simply can’t exist in reality. … I’m also pregnant.”

She went on to describe something that resembles a personal philosophy.

The existence of consciousness seems like God to me. Maybe we’ve been looking outside ourselves for an answer, but perhaps we are the answer. … Or maybe we’re in a simulation that is more purposeful, being run by someone with a plan. As I get deeper, I become less skeptical of intelligent design.”

Typical of flaky pop stars, Grimes is both inspired and totally incoherent. Given that freedom, she offers a window into the scattered mentality of our cultural elite. Last year on Earth Day, her War Nymph avatar declared, “A capitalist-socialist technocracy would be ideal. Strong safety net, compensation for motherhood. leadership [sic] via ethical tech like lab grown meat (cruelty free)”

Read full story here…

from: https://www.technocracy.news/when-elon-musk-hooked-up-with-the-pagan-witch/

Chromographics Institute

Color + Art = Healing

Category Archives: Of Interest