The Utter Orwellian Stupidity of Masks on Airplanes

I recently traveled across the country to Hillsdale, Michigan. My wife and I sat for five hours each way on airplanes with a mesh mask pressed across our faces. It made the absurdity of the mask mandate we live under both clear and depressing. The charade in which we are all forced to participate is not only totalitarian in nature, but also a big Orwellian lie.

I am sure most of the passengers on the planes were either COVID-19-vaccinated or COVID-19-recovered. While few speak about the thousands of people who have had COVID-19 and survived, they are turning out to be an important group in the ongoing battle against the virus. I myself am COVID-recovered after a bout with the disease a couple of months ago. I now have natural immunity to the disease.

Forcing someone like me to wear a mask makes no scientific or health sense. There are no studies to show that mask-wearing on an airplane can stop a respiratory viral illness. If that were the case, we would expect pilots always to wear masks while in the cockpit. But they don't. Maybe the recirculated air on airplanes keeps them safe from onboard viruses. Furthermore, if mask-wearing on an airplane were critical to preventing the spread of the disease, why are we allowed to remove our masks for extended periods of time while eating and drinking? I wish someone would pose that specific question to Dr. Fauci.

The requirement to wear a mask when entering or exiting a restaurant, but leaving it off while eating and drinking, also makes absolutely no sense. Do the authorities suppose that the COVID-19 virus stops seeking new hosts to infect only when we are unmasked but not eating or drinking? Do these bureaucratic geniuses really believe that the virus plays fair, observing equivalent rules to those invented by the Marquess of Queensberry for boxing? I think the COVID-19 virus is more likely to play by Fight Club rules!

The CDC recently acknowledged that it does not have any data showing that naturally immune COVID-recovered people can get and spread the disease to others. Despite this, the CDC discriminates against these people by insisting that they be fully vaccinated in addition to wearing a mask to function in society.

Since the CDC is requiring these measures, you would think it would have a mountain of evidence to support such a draconian policy. It doesn't. The science, in fact, shows just the opposite. It shows that natural immunity is strong, durable, and broad-based. Strong means that natural immunity protects against a COVID infection better than immunity produced by a vaccine. It is why we do not see COVID-recovered patients getting COVID again.

While it is common to see COVID-vaccinated people getting COVID and even requiring hospitalization, COVID-recovereds stay healthy. Multiple studies have confirmed that SARS-CoV-2 behaves much like SARS-CoV-1 as well as many other viral illnesses such as chickenpox, measles, mumps, rubella, etc. That is, these diseases provide long-lasting immunity to those who have been infected.

Fair use excerpt. Read the rest here.

from The Utter Orwellian Stupidity of Masks on Airplanes

After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA

On this day in 2001, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was created in a demonstration that the Keystone Kops are always prepared to exploit a crisis. In the ensuing two decades, the TSA has proven itself skilled at harassing travelers and freaking out over pocketknives and water bottles while steadfastly failing at its assigned task of making air transportation any safer. The TSA, in short, is an awful example of government in action.

"On the morning of September 11, 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed in a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia," the TSA summarizes in its official history. "The attacks resulted in the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, designed to prevent similar attacks in the future."

The TSA launched with the passage of the Aviation and Transportation and Security Act on November 19, 2001. The new law nationalized passenger screening, which previously had been the responsibility of airlines. It's not clear why anybody saw a need for the TSA, since it's unlikely that a federal agency would have been any more successful than private contractors at predicting terrorists' unprecedented use of aircraft as kamikaze weapons. It's especially unlikely that the federal agency we actually got would have successfully diverted itself from confiscating play-doh to thwarting homicidal fanatics.

"The TSA is failing to defend us against the threat of terrorism," security expert and frequent TSA critic Bruce Schneier pointed out in 2015. "The only reason they've been able to get away with the scam for so long is that there isn't much of a threat of terrorism to defend against."

"Terrorists are much rarer than we think, and launching a terrorist plot is much more difficult than we think," Schneier added. "I understand this conclusion is counterintuitive, and contrary to the fearmongering we hear every day from our political leaders. But it's what the data shows."

What set Schneier off in 2015 was a report from ABC News that "internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation's busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials."

The TSA blog carries constant reports of weapons confiscated from people who forgot to remove them from carry-on bags. But the Homeland Security Red Teams in the 2015 test actively concealed forbidden items just as real criminals and terrorist would. The result was that "TSA agents failed 67 out of 70 tests, with Red Team members repeatedly able to get potential weapons through checkpoints."

Two years later, a Red Team test at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport achieved the same 95 percent failure rate to detect explosives, weapons, and illegal drugs. Repeat national tests in 2017 also went badly, "in the ballpark" of an 80 percent failure rate.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg of abject failure represented by the TSA. The agency repeatedly has been called out for spending vast amounts of money on unproven toys and techniques and then failing to assess their effectiveness—or just leaving them to gather dust.

Fair use excerpt. Read the rest here.

from After 20 Years of Failure, Kill the TSA

Austria Freak Out: Lockdown EVERYTHING!

Just a day after announcing that the unvaccinated would lose all basic human rights, the Austrian government took it a stage further and ruled that the entire country would lose its basic human rights. Back to a nationwide lockdown to control a covid outbreak that was not controlled last time by a nationwide lockdown. Make sense? Also...as the AP reports, experts are "baffled" that in unvaccinated Africa, where there have been no lockdowns, there are very few covid cases and deaths are a tiny fraction of those in Europe and the US per capita. Finally today: Fauci demands three jabs and Biden's approval rating continues to freefall. Today on the Liberty Report:



from Austria Freak Out: Lockdown EVERYTHING!

Hybrid War

There is no shortage of growing tensions in eastern Europe. There is the growing EU-Belarus standoff over illegal migration. There are western reports that Russia is amassing troops within its own borders. And of course, there is the self-inflicted crisis of European energy supplies. It is no coincidence some are calling this a hybrid war. But whose hybrid war against whom? CrossTalking with Earl Rasmussen, Daniel McAdams, and Peter Kuznick:

Read the full report by clicking the title, below...

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/november/19/hybrid-war/

Fighting 'Information Disorder': Aspen’s Orwellian Commission on Controlling Speech in America

The Aspen Institute has issued the results of its much heralded 16-person Commission on Information Disorder on how to protect the public from misinformation. The commission on disinformation and “building trust” was partially headed by Katie Couric who is still struggling with her own admission that she edited an interview to remove controversial statements by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Aspen recommendations however are a full-throated endorsement of systems of censorship.

The findings and recommendations are found in an 80-page report on how to combat “disinformation” and “misinformation,” which are remarkably ill-defined but treated as a matter of “we know when we see it.” From the outset, however, the Commission dismissed the long-standing free speech principle that the solution to bad speech is better speech, not censorship. The problem is that many today object to allowing those with opposing views to continue to speak or others continue to listen to them. The Commission quickly tosses the free speech norm to the side:

“The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course.”

In addition to Couric, the Commission was headed by Color of Change President Rashad Robinson and Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Robinson was also a notable choice since he has been one of the most outspoken advocates of censorship. While some of us have been denouncing the expanding system of censorship by companies like Facebook, Robinson was threatening boycotts if the companies do not “rein in” those considered racists or spreaders of misinformation.

The Commission also includes Prince Harry who has referred to free speech protections under the First Amendment as “bonkers.”

Much of the report seems more aspirational in recommendations like “endorsing efforts that focus on exposing how historical and current imbalances of power, access and equity are manufactured and propagated with mis- and disinformation — and on promoting community-led solutions to forging social bonds.”

The Commission also appears to endorse the movement against “objectivity” and “both sideism” in the media: “Commissioners also discussed the need to adjust journalistic norms to avoid false equivalencies between lies and empirical fact in the pursuit of ‘both sides’ and ‘objectivity,’ particularly in areas of public health, civil rights, or election outcomes.”

Former New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones was one of the journalists who pushed the New York Times to denounce its own publication and promise to curtail columns in the future. In so doing, she railed against those who engage in what she called “even-handedness, both sideism” journalism. Likewise, Stanford Communications Professor Emeritus Ted Glasser has publicly called for an end of objectivity in journalism as too constraining for reporters in seeking “social justice.” In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

However, the most chilling aspect of the report is the obvious invitation for greater forms of censorship. It calls for the government to become involved in combatting misinformation, the scourge of free speech and an invitation for state controls over speech. Ironically, there is no need for such direct government involvement when social media companies are acting as the equivalent of a state media in the censorship of public debates.

The import of the recommendations are abundantly clear:

Reducing Harms: Mitigating the worst harms of mis- and disinformation, such as threats to public health and democratic participation, and the targeting of communities through hate speech and extremism.

Comprehensive Federal Approach: Establish a comprehensive strategic approach to countering disinformation and the spread of misinformation, including a centralized national response strategy, clearly-defined roles and responsibilities across the Executive Branch, and identified gaps in authorities and capabilities.

Public Restoration Fund: Create an independent organization, with a mandate to develop systemic misinformation countermeasures through education, research, and investment in local institutions.

Civic Empowerment: Invest and innovate in online education and platform product features to increase users’ awareness of and resilience to online misinformation.

Superspreader Accountability: Hold superspreaders of mis- and disinformation to account with clear, transparent, and consistently applied policies that enable quicker, more decisive actions and penalties, commensurate with their impacts — regardless of location, or political views, or role in society.

Amendments to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996: 1) Withdraw platform immunity for content that is promoted through paid advertising and post promotion; and 2) Remove immunity as it relates to the implementation of product features, recommendation engines, and design.”

The ill-defined terms of “misinformation” and “disinformation” become more menacing when those terms are used as the basis for a government and private sector system to take “decisive actions and penalties” against those who spread such information. The Commission is more focused on harm than the specific definition:

Disinformation inflames long-standing inequalities and undermines lived experiences for historically targeted communities, particularly Black/African American communities. False narratives can sow division, hamper public health initiatives, undermine elections, or deliver fresh marks to grifters and profiteers, and they capitalize on deep-rooted problems within American society. Disinformation pours lighter fluid on the sparks of discord that exist in every community.

In the end, the Commission dismisses the classic defense of free speech while calling for greater regulation of speech to address “deep-rooted problems in American society.” However, the deepest rooted problems in our society include the denial of free speech. Indeed, the First Amendment is premised on the belief that this right is essential to protecting the other freedoms in the Constitution. It is the right that allows people to challenge their government and others on electoral issues, public health issues, and other controversies.

The Aspen report is the latest evidence of a building anti-free speech movement in the United States. It is a movement that both rejects core free speech values but also seeks to normalize censorship. In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views. Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll has denounced the “weaponization” of free speech, which appears to be the use of free speech by those on the right. So the dean of one of the premier journalism schools now supports censorship.

Free speech advocates are facing a generational shift that is now being reflected in our law schools, where free speech principles were once a touchstone of the rule of law. As millions of students are taught that free speech is a threat and that “China is right” about censorship, these figures are shaping a new and more limited role for free speech in society.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

from Fighting 'Information Disorder': Aspen’s Orwellian Commission on Controlling Speech in America

US Blacklists Strategic Culture Foundation in Attack on Independent Journalism and Political Dissent

In an audacious attack on free speech, journalists and writers based in the United States have now been banned by the US federal authorities from publishing articles with Strategic Culture Foundation. We interview one of those authors affected by the ban, New York City-based journalist Daniel Lazare who shares his thoughts on the profound implications for free speech, independent journalism and political dissent.

Lazare is one of several US-based writers who formerly published regular columns with Strategic Culture Foundation. Our online journal greatly appreciated their intelligent insights and analysis of US and international politics. Sadly, we will no longer be able to publish their columns because of the threat levied on them by the US federal authorities who accuse SCF of being an influence operation directed by the Kremlin. The allegations and threats are baseless and draconian.

If US-based writers defy the ban, they have been threatened with astronomical financial penalties of over $300,000. The prohibition has only emerged in recent weeks. It follows earlier moves by the US State Department and the Treasury Department accusing SCF of being an agent of Russian foreign intelligence. No evidence has been presented by the US authorities to support their provocative claims. The Editorial Board of SCF categorically dismisses the allegations. In a statement, the editors said: “We reject all such claims by the US authorities that the journal is an alleged Russian intelligence operation. We have no connection with the Russian government. We provide an independent forum for international writers to debate and freely critique major topical issues of world importance.”

Strategic Culture Foundation’s editorial production is based in Russia and the journal has been publishing articles by international authors for over a decade. The online journal has gained respect and readership primarily in North America for its critical and diverse coverage of geopolitics. It seems that the official move to ban SCF by the US government is really aimed at shutting down independent journalism and critical thinking under the cynical guise of combating a “foreign enemy”. This has baleful echoes with the Red Scare Cold War years in the US

By banning American voices from the journal, Washington is attempting to bolster its smear against SCF as being a sinister intelligence agency. But the real objective is to criminalize critical journalism and indeed any form of critical dissent. Arguably, the draconian attack by the US authorities has to be seen in the wider context of persecuting Julian Assange and other whistleblowers who have exposed Washington’s crimes and corruption.

Daniel Lazare is a veteran newspaper journalist who specializes in US constitutional law and rights. He formerly worked for Consortium News and Strategic Culture Foundation among other outlets. The New York City-based writer now publishes a regular column for The Weekly Worker, the paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Interview

Question: You mentioned that you were approached by members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning article contributions as a columnist for Strategic Culture Foundation. Can you expand on those circumstances? When were you first approached, how recently, and did they specify SCF and the reasons for why the journal was being targeted?

Daniel Lazare: A couple of FBI agents knocked on my door on a blazing hot day in July 2020. My memory is fuzzy, but I distinctly remember them asking whether I could tell them about SCF and its alleged links with Russian intelligence. I replied that I wasn’t interested because I regard the entire avenue of inquiry as bogus and a product of the anti-Moscow hysteria that’s running rampant in Washington. So the agents left. Everything was polite and low-keyed, and the entire exchange took no more than four or five minutes.

Question: Other US-based writers who have had articles published by SCF also say they were warned by the FBI to halt writing. They say they were warned that such activity could incur massive financial penalties. Was such a penalty cited to you?

Daniel Lazare: Yes it was. Early in November this year, that is 15 or 16 months after the initial visit, one of the FBI agents showed up at my door again with a letter from the US Treasury dated October 15, 2021, warning that, “pursuant to Executive Order 13848 of September 12, 2018, … all property and interests in property of SCF that are subject to US jurisdiction are blocked, and US persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.” The letter further advised that “each violation… is subject to a statutory maximum civil monetary penalty of up to the greater of $311,562 or twice the value of the underlying transaction.” I’m not even sure what “up to the greater” means. But I got the message that my savings could be wiped out if I didn’t desist.

Question: The US State Department and Treasury have sanctioned SCF on the basis of allegations that the journal is an instrument of Russian foreign intelligence and the Russian foreign ministry. The SCF editorial board rejects those allegations. What do you make of the US accusations? Are they credible?

Daniel Lazare: No, they are not credible. Anyone who takes one look at the SCF website will see that it features articles on foreign policy and world affairs that, politically speaking, cover the map from conservative to Marxist. To be sure, most of the articles published are critical of US policy, but that’s the only consistent thread. So I can’t see how this benefits the Kremlin in any significant way since such viewpoints are common throughout the internet. Everyone knows that the United States is a global bully, so why bother adding to the chorus? Of course, if the US authorities provided something by way of tangible evidence of an intelligence link, things might be different. But since they haven’t, we are left with nothing more than an assertion that is dubious on its face.

Question: Presumably, the US authorities will not pursue legal and financial action against US-based authors who desist from further writing work for SCF. That is, there will be no retrospective litigation for past work. That suggests the move is an expedient and unscrupulous one aimed at intimidating writers. How do you see it?

Daniel Lazare: I see it that way too. As part of its sanctions campaign, Washington is not only trying to impose an economic blockade on Russian companies but a journalistic blockade as well. And it thinks nothing of trampling on Americans’ First Amendment rights in doing so.

Question: Do you think perhaps that the US authorities are exploiting hysteria over alleged Russian interference and influence as a pretext to close down critical independent speech? It seems the “Russiagate” narrative that began as a way to undermine the Trump presidency in 2016 is alive and well.

Daniel Lazare: The implications in terms of free speech and critical thinking are profound. By forcing journalists to line up behind US foreign policy in this way, the Washington federal government is telling them that dissent has its limits. Intelligence and analysis are fine as long as they don’t deviate from the official line. This was certainly the case during Russiagate when journalists who dared question the “collusion” thesis found themselves effectively sidelined. And it’s still true even though Russiagate is supposedly behind us. The bottom line is that critical thinking will hurt your career, so don’t indulge yourself too much if you want to get ahead.

Question: In your long experience of working as a newspaper journalist, have you seen anything like this effort by the US government to censor? Historically, how does it compare with the McCarthyite Cold War era of persecuting alleged fifth columnists for the Soviet Union?

Daniel Lazare: Unfortunately, the campaign against SCF is far from unprecedented. Since the days of anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s, the government has worked overtime at narrowing the bounds of acceptable discourse. Free speech has never been verboten as a whole. Indeed, it was perfectly OK – even voguish in certain quarters – to argue that “Tailgunner Joe”, a nickname by which McCarthy was mocked, was going too far, that he was running roughshod over civil liberties, etc. As long as you were careful to stress that communism was still a threat, you were fine. But arguing that the McCarthyite Red threat was overdone while also arguing that communists might actually be right about certain things, such as the poisonous levels of racism in the US South, that was completely off-limits. Journalists had to engage in careful self-censorship so as to preclude any suggestion of fundamental ideological disagreement. The effort is alive and well during the age of neo-McCarthyism known as Russiagate.

Question: In the sinister age of persecution of whistleblowers like Julian Assange by the US authorities, it seems that independent journalism is being criminalized. Do you see a connection between the Assange case and what the US government is doing with regard to prohibiting US-based journalists from working for Strategic Culture Foundation?

Daniel Lazare: I do see a connection in that the aim in both cases is clearly to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. On one hand, the US government wants us to swallow the absurd lie that Assange is guilty of espionage merely because he has received inside government information, something that investigative journalists do seven days a week. On the other, it wants journalists to agree not to write for a website on the grounds that it’s an arm of Russian intelligence even though the government has provided nothing by way of evidence. It’s impossible to do either without tossing critical faculties by the wayside. But that’s exactly what the US government wants us to do – so as to eliminate political dissent.

Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation.

from US Blacklists Strategic Culture Foundation in Attack on Independent Journalism and Political Dissent

Back To The Unspeakable: Europe Locks Down 'Unclean' Unvaxxed

Across Europe, from Germany to Italy, governments are placing millions under house arrest for the "crime" of not being "fully" vaccinated. While there is no public health justification for the move - we know from experts such as the CDC Director that the vaxxed continue to spread the virus - there is a distinct punitive intent. Those who do not follow the orders - as irrational as the orders - are to be denied basic human rights. Haven't we seen this movie before? Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Back To The Unspeakable: Europe Locks Down 'Unclean' Unvaxxed