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PBS top lawyer says gov should build ‘enlightenment camps’ and remove children from Trump supporting homes
Sara Carter
Jan 12, 2021
Source: Project Veritas Youtube

This is what the leftists, along with those that support their agenda, think about Americans. It’s in their own words. Believe them when they say it.

“Americans are so fucking dumb,” said PBS Principal Counsel Michael Beller, who was chatting with one of Project Veritas‘ undercover self-described guerilla journalists. “You know most people are dumb.”

Beller is just saying what I would hear over and over again in Washington D.C. parties and pubs. He’s not the exception and his disdain for our nation makes my stomach turn because he, and others like him, are seizing power from the people every day. They hold positions of power that actually can affect our daily lives and that of our children.

And to think PBS if funded with our taxpayer dollars.

“Kids who are growing up, know nothing but Trump, for four years, you’ve got to wonder what they’re (Trump supporting children) going to be like, ” Beller told the undercover journalist. “They’ll (Trump supporters) be raising a generation of intolerant, horrible people – horrible kids.”

Beller suggests SAYS removing the children from parents who supported Trump and then sending them to enlightenment camps.

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IS BELLER FOR REAL!

This idea is similar to what is actually happening in China, as the Chinese Communist Party has been terrorizing and removing the Uighur Muslim population to supposed “re-education” camps.

Beller needs to be fired by PBS. My daughter watches PBS and she won’t be anymore. This is absolutely intolerable.

Oh, Beller also said that if “even if Biden wins, we go for all the Republican voters, Homeland Security will take their children away…”

Folks, welcome to America’s worst nightmare.

BREAKING: @PBS Principal Counsel Michael Beller Incites Political Violence In Radical Left-Wing Agenda

“Go to the White House & throw Molotov cocktails…”

“Even if Biden wins, we go for all the Republican voters, Homeland Security will take their children away…”#ExposePBS pic.twitter.com/OzBLeCP8YH
— James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) January 12, 2021

You used to be able to follow Sara A. Carter on Parler @SaraCarterOfficial, until the BIG TECH OLIGARCHS decided you didn’t have the right to speak freely.

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Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
You know, the vast majority of advice columns for the last 5 years have been about Chumpers being brainwashed to the point they cannot hold a civil conversation about ANYTHING ELSE, them kicking out or harassing family that doesn't agree with them.... on TOP of the usual homophobic, sexist, racist, and controlling nature most of them exhibit naturally. That "no PC, no fucks given attitude" has ruined many peoples happy, normally civil homes.

5 years ago I'd have said nahhh to the above idea...now I'm pretty sure he's right.

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Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
L...O....L
And now I post endless justifications for my bad behavior, while insisting that I don't have to follow the rules I set for others

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January 12, 2021
Ron Paul Posts Criticism of Censorship on Social Media Shortly Before Facebook Blocks Him

We have been discussing the chilling crackdown on free speech that has been building for years in the United States. This effort has accelerated in the aftermath of the Capitol riot including the shutdown sites like Parler. Now former Texas congressman Ron Paul, 85, has been blocked from using his Facebook page for unspecified violations of “community standards.” Paul’s last posting was linked to an article on the “shocking” increase of censorship on social media. Facebook then proceeded to block him under the same undefined “community standards” policy.

Paul, a libertarian leader and former presidential candidate, has been an outspoken critics of foreign wars and an advocate for civil liberties for decades. He wrote:

“With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ @Facebook has blocked me from managing my page. Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”

His son is Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) tweeted, “Facebook now considers advocating for liberty to be sedition. Where will it end?”

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
For the past four years I've lied about, misrepresented, defamed, name-called, harassed, and even threatened WISHY; and REAVERBOT, THUGR, SECOND, and even JO.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

WISHY is truly beyond reach of reason. Despite having the many horrors of her various ideas pointed out to her, she finds a way to rationalize the horrors she creates, and embrace them even tighter.

On top of that she outright hallucinates and insists her hallucinations are real.

I think she's beyond any amount of discussion by anybody.

The only reason I'm posting is b/c Signy posted, but honestly, I can't think of a reason why I would respond to WISHI on my own. I can't imagine it doing any amount of good, and it even seems to drive her deeper into the cesspool of her thoughts.

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Originally posted by CAPTAINCRUNCH:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
For the past four years I've lied about, misrepresented, defamed, name-called, harassed, and even threatened WISHY; and REAVERBOT, THUGR, SECOND, and even JO.

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Fify
Imagine you playing the lying gop pity card. Nahhhh....

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You’ve never been a convincing poster, kiki. “C” movie acting at best.

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Originally posted by reaverfan:
Hey, Siggy. We don't need another thread for you to spew your fascist Russian troll bullshit.

You are a terrorist and an enemy of the US. Kill yourself.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

FIND ONE INSTANCE WHERE I'VE LIED.
BET YOU CAN'T FIND ANY.

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Originally posted by WISHIMAY:
L...O....L

Like you idiots haven't name called, made up delusions about my family, trolled, and tried to endlessly manipulate. Which you are still doing NOW.

I don't know if you've realized this, BUT THIS IS AN INTERNET DISCUSSION FORUM.

Of COURSE, it's gonna be ugly. AND WE DO NOT HAVE A RELATIONSHIP. AT ALL.



At least ONE of us...ME!...isn't pretending we all need to stand in a circle and sing Kumbaya.

I don't have to agree with you ppl about a DAMN THING!

I also don't have to be nice to ppl who are fundamentally abhorrent!

Leeches and Traitors and Oblivious Morons...OH MYYY!

Hell, 6ix can't get along with ANYONE and will die alone...IN REAL LIFE.
And if Sig had any real friends she wouldn't be on here 23 hours a day.

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Originally posted by 1KIKI:

The only reason I'm posting is b/c Signy posted, but honestly, I can't think of a reason why I would respond to WISHI on my own.

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Originally posted by THG:
To Signym kiki and Jack I say, tough shit. Your opinions are meaningless because they are mired in alternative facts; lies.

6 days 12 hrs. Trumps gone, deal with it.

T

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How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler

In the last three months, tech giants have censored political speech and journalism to manipulate U.S. politics, while liberals, with virtual unanimity, have cheered.

Glenn Greenwald

Users of the social media platform Parler encountered this error message as of Jan. 11, 2021, after Apple, Google and Amazon united to remove them from app stores and hosting services [see original for link]

Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want.

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If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.

The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.

Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.

As Silicon Valley censorship radically escalated over the past several months — banning pre-election reporting by The New York Post about the Biden family, denouncing and deleting multiple posts from the U.S. President and then terminating his access altogether, mass-removal of right-wing accounts — so many people migrated to Parler that it was catapulted to the number one spot on the list of most-downloaded apps on the Apple Play Store, the sole and exclusive means which iPhone users have to download apps. “Overall, the app was the 10th most downloaded social media app in 2020 with 8.1 million new installs,” reported TechCrunch.

It looked as if Parler had proven critics of Silicon Valley monopolistic power wrong. Their success showed that it was possible after all to create a new social media platform to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And they did so by doing exactly what Silicon Valley defenders long insisted should be done: if you don’t like the rules imposed by tech giants, go create your own platform with different rules.
List of most-downloaded apps on Apple Store, Jan. 8, 2021

But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.

If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.

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The united Silicon Valley attack began on January 8, when Apple emailed Parler and gave them 24 hours to prove they had changed their moderation practices or else face removal from their App Store. The letter claimed: “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property.” It ended with this warning:

To ensure there is no interruption of the availability of your app on the App Store, please submit an update and the requested moderation improvement plan within 24 hours of the date of this message. If we do not receive an update compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines and the requested moderation improvement plan in writing within 24 hours, your app will be removed from the App Store.

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The 24-hour letter was an obvious pretext and purely performative. Removal was a fait accompli no matter what Parler did. To begin with, the letter was immediately leaked to Buzzfeed, which published it in full. A Parler executive detailed the company’s unsuccessful attempts to communicate with Apple. “They basically ghosted us,” he told me. The next day, Apple notified Parler of its removal from App Store. “We won’t distribute apps that present dangerous and harmful content,” said the world’s richest company, and thus: “We have now rejected your app for the App Store.”

It is hard to overstate the harm to a platform from being removed from the App Store. Users of iPhones are barred from downloading apps onto their devices from the internet. If an app is not on the App Store, it cannot be used on the iPhone. Even iPhone users who have already downloaded Parler will lose the ability to receive updates, which will shortly render the platform both unmanageable and unsafe.

In October, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law issued a 425-page report concluding that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all possess monopoly power and are using that power anti-competitively. For Apple, they emphasized the company’s control over iPhones through its control of access to the App Store. As Ars Technica put it when highlighting the report’s key findings:

Apple controls about 45 percent of the US smartphone market and 20 percent of the global smartphone market, the committee found, and is projected to sell its 2 billionth iPhone in 2021. It is correct that, in the smartphone handset market, Apple is not a monopoly. Instead, iOS and Android hold an effective duopoly in mobile operating systems.

However, the report concludes, Apple does have a monopolistic hold over what you can do with an iPhone. You can only put apps on your phone through the Apple App Store, and Apple has total gatekeeper control over that App Store—that's what Epic is suing the company over. . . .

The committee found internal documents showing that company leadership, including former CEO Steve Jobs, "acknowledged that IAP requirement would stifle competition and limit the apps available to Apple's customers." The report concludes that Apple has also unfairly used its control over APIs, search rankings, and default apps to limit competitors' access to iPhone users.

Shortly thereafter, Parler learned that Google, without warning, had also “suspended” it from its Play Store, severely limiting the ability of users to download Parler onto Android phones. Google’s actions also meant that those using Parler on their Android phones would no longer receive necessary functionality and security updates.

It was precisely Google’s abuse of its power to control its app device that was at issue “when the European Commission deemed Google LLC as the dominant undertaking in the app stores for the Android mobile operating system (i.e. Google Play Store) and hit the online search and advertisement giant with €4.34 billion for its anti-competitive practices to strengthen its position in various of other markets through its dominance in the app store market.”

The day after a united Apple and Google acted against Parler, Amazon delivered the fatal blow. The company founded and run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, used virtually identical language as Apple to inform Parler that its web hosting service (AWS) was terminating Parler’s ability to have AWS host its site: “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.” Because Amazon is such a dominant force in web hosting, Parler has thus far not found a hosting service for its platform, which is why it has disappeared not only from app stores and phones but also from the internet.

On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.

With virtual unanimity, leading U.S. liberals celebrated this use of Silicon Valley monopoly power to shut down Parler, just as they overwhelmingly cheered the prior two extraordinary assertions of tech power to control U.S. political discourse: censorship of The New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the banning of the U.S. President from major platforms. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a single national liberal-left politician even expressing concerns about any of this, let alone opposing it.

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Not only did leading left-wing politicians not object but some of them were the ones who pleaded with Silicon Valley to use their power this way. After the internet-policing site Sleeping Giants flagged several Parler posts that called for violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked: “What are @Apple and @GooglePlay doing about this?” Once Apple responded by removing Parler from its App Store — a move that House Democrats just three months earlier warned was dangerous anti-trust behavior — she praised Apple and then demanded to know: “Good to see this development from @Apple. @GooglePlay what are you going to do about apps being used to organize violence on your platform?”

The liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pronounced herself “disturbed by just how awesome [tech giants’] power is” and added that “it’s dangerous to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone and who does not.” She nonetheless praised these “young tech titans” for using their “dangerous” power to ban Trump and destroy Parler. In other words, liberals like Goldberg are concerned only that Silicon Valley censorship powers might one day be used against people like them, but are perfectly happy as long as it is their adversaries being deplatformed and silenced (Facebook and other platforms have for years banned marginalized people like Palestinians at Israel’s behest, but that is of no concern to U.S. liberals).

That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. Liberals now want to use the force of corporate power to silence those with different ideologies. They are eager for tech monopolies not just to ban accounts they dislike but to remove entire platforms from the internet. They want to imprison people they believe helped their party lose elections, such as Julian Assange, even if it means creating precedents to criminalize journalism.

World leaders have vocally condemned the power Silicon Valley has amassed to police political discourse, and were particularly indignant over the banning of the U.S. President. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, various French ministers, and especially Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador all denounced the banning of Trump and other acts of censorship by tech monopolies on the ground that they were anointing themselves “a world media power.” The warnings from López Obrador were particularly eloquent:

Even the ACLU — which has rapidly transformed from a civil liberties organization into a liberal activist group since Trump’s election — found the assertion of Silicon Valley’s power to destroy Parler deeply alarming. One of that organization’s most stalwart defenders of civil liberties, lawyer Ben Wizner, told The New York Times that the destruction of Parler was more “troubling” than the deletion of posts or whole accounts: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.”

Yet American liberals swoon for this authoritarianism. And they are now calling for the use of the most repressive War on Terror measures against their domestic opponents. On Tuesday, House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) urged that GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “be put on the no-fly list,” while The Wall Street Journal reported that “Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists

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and increasing funding to combat them.”

So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance about that platform, and about basic principles of free speech. I’d be very surprised if more than a tiny fraction of liberals cheering Parler’s removal from the internet have ever used the platform or know anything about it other than the snippets they have been shown by those seeking to justify its destruction and to depict it as some neo-Nazi stronghold.

Parler was not founded, nor is it run, by pro-Trump, MAGA supporters. The platform was created based in libertarian values of privacy, anti-surveillance, anti-data collection, and free speech. Most of the key executives are more associated with the politics of Ron Paul and the CATO Institute than Steve Bannon or the Trump family. One is a Never Trump Republican, while another is the former campaign manager of Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Among the few MAGA-affiliated figures is Dan Bongino, an investor. One of the key original investors was Rebekah Mercer.

The platform’s design is intended to foster privacy and free speech, not a particular ideology. They minimize the amount of data they collect on users to prevent advertiser monetization or algorithmic targeting. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, they do not assess a user’s preferences in order to decide what they should see. And they were principally borne out of a reaction to increasingly restrictive rules on the major Silicon Valley platforms regarding what could and could not be said.

Of course large numbers of Trump supporters ended up on Parler. That’s not because Parler is a pro-Trump outlet, but because those are among the people who were censored by the tech monopolies or who were angered enough by that censorship to seek refuge elsewhere.

It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.

Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube.

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As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.” The article quoted Fadi Quran, campaign director at the human rights group Avaaz, as saying: “In DC, we saw QAnon conspiracists and other militias that would never have grown to this size without being turbo-charged by Facebook and Twitter.”

And that’s to say nothing of the endless number of hypocrisies with Silicon Valley giants feigning opposition to violent rhetoric or political extremism. Amazon, for instance, is one of the CIA’s most profitable partners, with a $600 million contract to provide services to the agency, and it is constantly bidding for more. On Facebook and Twitter, one finds official accounts from the most repressive and violent regimes on earth, including Saudi Arabia, and pages devoted to propaganda on behalf of the Egyptian regime. Does anyone think these tech giants have a genuine concern about violence and extremism?

So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?

In part it is because these Silicon Valley giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple — donate enormous sums of money to the Democratic Party and their leaders, so of course Democrats will cheer them rather than call for punishment or their removal from the internet. Part of it is because Parler is an upstart, a much easier target to try to destroy than Facebook or Google. And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their adversaries. This corrupt motive was made expressly clear by long-time Clinton operative Jennifer Palmieri:
Jennifer Palmieri @jmpalmieri
It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.

The nature of monopolistic power is that anti-competitive entities engage in anti-trust illegalities to destroy rising competitors. Parler is associated with the wrong political ideology. It is a small and new enough platform such that it can be made an example of. Its head can be placed on a pike to make clear that no attempt to compete with existing Silicon Valley monopolies is possible. And its destruction preserves the unchallengeable power of a tiny handful of tech oligarchs over the political discourse not just of the United States but democracies worldwide (which is why Germany, France and Mexico are raising their voices in protest).

No authoritarians believe they are authoritarians. No matter how repressive are the measures they support — censorship, monopoly power, no-fly lists for American citizens without due process — they tell themselves that those they are silencing and attacking are so evil, are terrorists, that anything done against them is noble and benevolent, not despotic and repressive. That is how American liberals currently think, as they fortify the control of Silicon Valley monopolies over our political lives, exemplified by the overnight destruction of a new and popular competitor.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by THG:

To Signym kiki and Jack I say, tough shit. Your opinions are meaningless because they are mired in alternative facts; lies.

6 days 12 hrs. Trumps gone, deal with it.

T

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THUGR, this thread isn't for "my opinions", it's for FACTS: laws, events, policies, behaviors, and opinions of THOSE IN POWER whch demonstrate that we live in 1984. Today.

You say you're all about "facts",

So can you refute these facts, or add to them? Or just stick to the topic?

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Originally posted by THG:
Trump has been impeached for the second time.

T

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Originally posted by THG:
Trump has been impeached for the second time.

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In "Staggering" Lack Of Self-Awareness, Twitter Lectures Uganda On Principles Of 'Open Internet'

Twitter decided that now would be a good time to weigh in on how things are going in Uganda of all places, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has taken the drastic action of temporarily banning Facebook and Twitter in the final hours leading up to Thursday's general elections for the presidency and parliament.

Museveni argued that the US-based social media platforms are engaged in censorship that unfairly targets his campaign while propping up opposition frontrunner candidate Bobi Wine. After being on a days-long massive purge of pro-Trump accounts in the US which began when the president himself was permanently banned, Twitter had this to say, and without irony:

"We strongly condemn internet shutdowns..."

The lack of self-awareness is staggering. https://t.co/f9Xah4Su7Q
— Clifford Asness (@CliffordAsness) January 12, 2021

Billionaire co-founder of AQR Capital Management Cliff Asness immediately said exactly what was on everyone's mind: "The lack of self-awareness is staggering."

It is indeed yet another example of Twitter being completely blinded by the hypocrisy as to the way it exercises its immense power in its own backyard (or worse, the major Silicon Valley moguls are quite aware and simply don't care).

This also after Amazon, Apple and Google agreed in unison to destroy Parlor as it was politically expedient, apparently. And now Twitter is actually lecturing the head of a foreign state on not violating the "principles of the Open Internet".

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Microsoft, Big Tech Coalition Developing Rockefeller Funded COVID Passports

‘The most significant vaccination effort in history’


on 15 January, 2021

Steve Watson
AlexLMX / Getty Images


A coalition of big tech companies, including Microsoft is developing a COVID passport, with the expectation that a digital document linked to vaccination status will be required to travel and get access to basic services.

The group is calling itself the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI), and includes Microsoft, Salesforce and Oracle.

The US health provider Mayo Clinic is also involved in the project, which is being described as “the most significant vaccination effort in the history of the United States.”

The idea is now a familiar one. Anyone who has been vaccinated will receive a QR code that can be stored on their mobile phone in the wallet app. Those without phones will have access to a printed version.

We have previously reported on the development of this so called ‘CommonPass’, which also has backing from the World Economic Forum, and now more details have emerged.
Screenshot: ‘CommonPass’ outline – click to enlarge

“The goal of the Vaccination Credential Initiative is to empower individuals with digital access to their vaccination records,” said Paul Meyer, CEO of non-profit The Commons Project, also involved in the project.

Tech giants want to help you prove you’ve been vaccinated for COVID-19, via @FastCompany https://t.co/tNNDzC3cux #vaccinecredential #covidvaccine pic.twitter.com/q0GIsjuc06
— The Commons Project (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021

Meyer said that the document will allow people “to safely return to travel, work, school, and life, while protecting their data privacy.”

Meyer said the coalition is working with several governments, and expects standards to be adopted that will see mandatory negative tests or proof of vaccination, in order to re-engage in society.

“Individuals are going to need to have to produce vaccination records for a lot of aspects of getting back to life as normal,” he added. “We live in a globally connected world. We used to anyway — and we hope to again.”

We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with @MITREcorp and a broad coalition of industry leaders across healthcare and technology to accelerate digital access to COVID-19 vaccination records. Read more: https://t.co/9tJR8Cbymc #vaccinecredential pic.twitter.com/e9leRz2Bza
— The Commons Project (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021

The Financial Times reports that The Commons Project has received funding for the project from the Rockefeller Foundation, and that it is being implemented by all three major airline alliances.

The Rockefeller Foundation has previously touted its plans for a ‘Covid-19 data and commons digital platform’ as well as a desire to “launch a Covid Community Healthcare Corps for testing and contact tracing.”

“Coordination of such a massive program should be treated as a wartime effort,” the foundation states on its website, adding that there should be “a public/private bipartisan Pandemic Testing Board established to assist and serve as a bridge between local, state, and federal officials with the logistical, investment and political challenges this operation will inevitably face.”
Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation ‘Covid action plan’ website
Screenshot: Rockefeller Foundation ‘Covid action plan’ website

Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce join a push for digital vaccination credentials. Read more via @nytimes on #vaccinecredential https://t.co/AOXrVtRJEW
— The Commons Project (@commons_prjct) January 14, 2021

The group also wants to see a global standardisation of the so called vaccine passports, noting that “The current vaccination record system does not readily support convenient access, control and sharing of verifiable vaccination records.”

The coalition of big tech firms is looking to “customize all aspects of the vaccination management lifecycle and integrate closely with other coalition members’ offerings, which will help us all get back to public life,” said Bill Patterson, an executive vice president at Salesforce.

“With a single platform to help deliver safe and continuous operations and deepen trust with customers and employees, this coalition will be crucial to support public health and wellbeing,” Patterson claimed.

Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of Oracle’s Global Business Units added that “This process needs to be as easy online banking. We are committed to working collectively with the technology and medical communities, as well as global governments.”

Ken Mayer, founder and CEO of Safe Health also stated that the VCI “will enable application developers to create privacy-preserving health status verification solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into existing ticketing workflows.”

Put more simply, it will “help get concerts and sporting events going again,” Mayer said.

The context seems clear. Those without the COVID passport will not be allowed to travel or engage in social events.

Hundreds of Tech companies are scrambling over themselves to develop COVID passport systems.

As we reported last month, the IATA, the world’s largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021.

A further ‘COVID passport’ app called the AOKpass from travel security firm International SOS is currently undergoing trials between Abu Dhabi and Pakistan.

We have exhaustively documented the privacy and rights concerns associated with the move toward adoption, and more importantly the global standardisation of so called COVID passports.

UK based human rights group Privacy International has warned that if “immunity” passports are issued by some governments, it could signal a creep toward “digital identity schemes” and other mandatory ID schemes.

“Once you have multiple uses (e.g. access to services) in multiple domains (i.e. public sector, private sector), in multiple countries (i.e. travel), then we are approaching a global identity document needed to live your life,” the group warned.

Sweden based human rights group The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) warned recently that 61 per cent of countries have used COVID restrictions “that were concerning from a democracy and human rights perspective.”

Anna Beduschi, an academic from Exeter University, commented on the potential move toward vaccine passports by EU, noting that it “poses essential questions for the protection of data privacy and human rights.”

Beduschi added that the vaccine passports may “create a new distinction between individuals based on their health status, which can then be used to determine the degree of freedoms and rights they may enjoy.”

The EU’s own data protection chief Wojciech Wiewiórowski recently labeled the idea of an immunity passport “extreme” and has repeatedly said it is alarming, and ‘disgusting’.

A report compiled last year by AI research body the Ada Lovelace Institute said so called ‘immunity’ passports “pose extremely high risks in terms of social cohesion, discrimination, exclusion and vulnerability.”

Sam Grant, campaign manager at the civili liberties advocacy group Liberty has warned that “any form of immunity passport risks creating a two-tier system in which some of us have access to freedoms and support while others are shut out.”

“These systems could result in people who don’t have immunity potentially being blocked from essential public services, work or housing – with the most marginalised among us hardest hit,” Grant further warned.

“This has wider implications too because any form of immunity passport could pave the way for a full ID system – an idea which has repeatedly been rejected as incompatible with building a rights-respecting society,” Grant further urged.

Gloria Guevara, CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), has also slammed the passports as “discriminatory”, saying “We should never require the vaccination to get a job or to travel.”

Speaking at a Reuters event, the head of the WTTC also condemned airline Qantas for their previous assertion that unvaccinated people would not be allowed on their aircraft.

“It will take a significant amount of time to vaccinate the global population, particularly those in less advanced countries, or in different age groups, therefore we should not discriminate against those who wish to travel but have not been vaccinated,” Guevara noted.

Nevertheless, the spectre of so called ‘immunity passports’ is looming globally.

As noted above, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has penned a letter to EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, demanding that the Commission should ‘standardise’ a vaccine passport across all member countries, and that it should be required for people to travel throughout the area, further outlining that “Persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel.”

The request is set to be debated in the coming days.

Vaccine passports have previously been touted by the EU, with officials suggesting back in April that visa applicants would also be required to be vaccinated.

EU countries including Spain, Estonia, Iceland, and Belgium have all indicated that they are open to some form of vaccine passports, as well as sharing the data across borders.

Denmark recently announced that it is rolling out a ‘Covid passport’, to allow those who have taken the vaccine to engage in society without any restrictions.

Poland has also announced plans to introduce vaccine passports, which will allow those who have taken the COVID shot greater freedoms than those who have not.

Having left the EU, Britain would not be part of any standardised European scheme, however it has now confirmed that it is rolling out vaccine passports, despite previous denials that it would do so.

Recently, the government in Ontario, Canada admitted that it is exploring ‘immunity passports’ in conjunction with restrictions on travel and access to social venues for the unvaccinated.

Last month, Israel announced that citizens who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be given ‘green passports’ that will enable them to attend venues and eat at restaurants.

A litany of other government and travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming in order for ‘life to get back to normal’.

In addition, hotels have also indicated they will do the same.

Insurers have also indicated that they will fall in line with any standardisation of vaccination passports, and may demand to see proof of vaccination before covering those wishing to go on holiday.

The international Travel and Health Insurance Journal reported that “If the EU obliges travellers to vaccinate, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover those who decline to have the vaccination.”

EU news website Schengenvisainfo also reported on the likely move by insurers, pointing out that anti-vaxxers will likely be specifically targeted by the mandates.

“Even if anti-vax travellers find a loophole in the requirement and manage to enter any of the Member States, travel insurance providers may refuse to cover them,” the report states.

It continues, “With the high volume of fake news and conspiracy theories that have been going on for months now on the pandemic and vaccination, the real challenge for the EU will not be to purchase the necessary vaccine doses, but rather to convince people to be vaccinated.”

The report adds that “Conspiracy theorists, in Europe and further in the world, have targeted Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who is known as a supporter of vaccination, claiming he is responsible for the Coronavirus pandemic.”

While surveys have indicated that around half the people in the world are not willing to take the vaccine at this stage. However, a recent poll has indicated that 74% of Americans say they are willing to get a COVID vaccination passport, should they be introduced in the U.S.

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Originally posted by THG:
Trump has been impeached for the second time.

T

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Stanford Scientist Can Tell If You're A Liberal Just By Looking At Your Face

... Researchers have developed a facial recognition algorithm that they claim can determine a person's political views with reasonable accuracy.

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Stanford University's Michal Kosinski conducted a study published on Monday in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.

"Ubiquitous facial recognition technology can expose individuals' political orientation, as faces of liberals and conservatives consistently differ," Kosinski said.

He trained the facial recognition algorithm to accurately guess a person's political view with an accuracy rating of about 72%. To do this, the researcher trained an algorithm with over one million profiles from social media websites across the US, UK, and Canada.

"Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal-conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). Accuracy was similar across countries (the U.S., Canada, and the UK), environments (Facebook and dating websites), and when comparing faces across samples. Accuracy remained high (69%) even when controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity," he said.

Kosinski said the algorithm is "high predictability" in determining political views from viewing faces, which implies a notable difference between the facial images of conservatives and liberals.

One of the most significant facial features that differentiate both political parties' faces - aside from gender, age and race was head orientation and emotional expression. He also said liberals were more likely to stare directly at the camera and more likely to look surprised than disgusted.

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Here are the procedures used to predict political orientation from facial images.... [image]

It was also explained that liberals tend to smile "more intensely and genuinely," leaving them with a different wrinkle pattern as they age. Meanwhile, conservatives "tend to be healthier, drink less alcohol and smoke less, and have a different diet" – attributes that affected the skin's health and texture.

The thought that algorithms can determine your political views from a quick scan of your face is a frightening one.

Kosinski is known for his work with the data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica

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ahead of the 2016 US Presidential election.

He also worked as an adviser on Faception, a company that uses facial recognition algorithms to determine if someone is a terrorist, pedophile, or a criminal.

China has been deploying facial recognition cameras for years to monitor its citizens. This sort of surveillance is coming to America - by the way - it's already here.

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Parler CEO John Matze says his life has been threatened in the wake of tech titans suspending his app and admits he 'does not know when it will resume service' - while pundits warn Twitter is in 'dire straits' after dumping Trump

John Matze, who launched the app in August 2018 as an alternative to Twitter, said that he was being destroyed by the tech giants.

'People are threatening my life,' he said. 'I can't go home tonight.

'So this is really a lot, you know. This is not just our civil liberties. [Big Tech] can shut down a billion-dollar company, half-a-billion dollar company overnight.'

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Dec 10, google begins The Purge; and other big tech nastiness. And gee, just before campaiging really starts ...

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Facing clash between race-obsessed narrative and Trump’s non-white support, racist professor invents ‘MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS’

19 Jan, 2021 00:08 / Updated 19 hours ago

By Tony Cox, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

Confronted with irreconcilable differences between racial obsession and reality, an NYU professor averted the narrative-violating truth by branding non-white conservatives as politically white – by definition, aligned with evil.
Opining in the Washington Post on Saturday, New York University's Cristina Beltran invented a new phenomenon, "multiracial whiteness," to get around the uncomfortable fact that people of various skin colors can have sincere and legitimate political beliefs differing from her own. In Beltran's book, good whites vote for "multiculturalism," and bad non-whites adopt the "politics of aggression, exclusion and domination," as espoused by President Donald Trump. Everybody else votes as conventionally coded by their skin color.

"Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity – a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others," Beltran wrote.

Such mental gymnastics were made necessary by Trump's success in getting non-white voters off the Democrat plantation. Even after four years of being painted as a modern-day Hitler by the mainstream media, the 2020 election saw Trump win the most non-white support for a Republican in 60 years. Even among those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, leftists such as Beltran saw too many non-white faces for comfort.

After all, Democrat politicians and their partners in the media have been busy painting the riot as a "white supremacist uprising." The story couldn't be that those voters were authentically angry about allegations that Democrat Joe Biden stole the presidency through election fraud. They had to be white supremacists and neo-Nazis who were trying to disenfranchise the urban black votes that pushed Biden over the top.

In fact, the pro-Trump movement was made so synonymous with white supremacy that politicians such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said they feared that heinous Republicans in Congress would turn them over to the rioters to be murdered.

With a narrative that hysterical – and with an urgent need to permanently crush the populist, anti-globalist movement that brought Trump to power – we couldn't have people noticing so much non-whiteness in the conservative tent. Persuasive black Republicans, such as Candace Owens, the Blexit leader with 2.5 million Twitter followers, need to be discredited. It's a lot easier than debating her. And it doesn't help, when you're trying to demonize the Proud Boys as white supremacist terrorists, that the group's chairman, Enrique Tarrio, is Afro-Cuban.

As Beltran notes, "Stop the Steal" organizer Ali Alexander "identifies as" black and Arab. But not to worry, she explains that multiracial whiteness allows non-whites to "engage in the wild freedom of unbridled rage and conspiracy theories."

"Thinking in terms of multiracial whiteness helps us recognize that much of today's political rift is a division between those who are drawn to and remain invested in a politics of whiteness and those who seek something better," Beltran adds.

This is a neat little racist package to comfort the distressed identitarian mind. White equals evil. Non-white equals "something better." Those non-whites who vote incorrectly are just politically white – i.e., politically evil. Explaining how they took such a horribly wrong turn on the way to fulfilling their correct political destiny would probably require a two-semester course. The good news is that some whites can rise above whiteness and vote for "something better."

For a professor to say this publicly – and for the Washington Post, supposedly one of our newspapers of record, to publish such bigotry – shows how much American society has degraded. As Biden explained on the campaign trail, if you're a black person who even needs to question whether you will vote for him come November, "you ain't black."

Beltran concludes by saying that the challenge will be to "prevail over the extremism of Trump's white majority while trying to prevent the politics of whiteness from becoming an increasingly multiracial affair."
Got it America? After electing and re-electing a black man as president, your bitter whiteness rose up to put a white extremist in office. As CNN's Van Jones said, it was a "whitelash."

It couldn't have been that you were sick of being thrown under the bus by Democrats and Republicans alike – who opened your nation's borders, shipped out your jobs and told you over and over and over again that you were racist. It couldn't have been that you were tired of racists like Cristina Beltran indoctrinating generations of young people with mental illness. The ruinous trade deals, the fake wars, the fading civil liberties, the high taxes – none of that bothered you.

Like everything else, Trump's 2016 election victory could only be explained by skin color. And when the skin colors don't seem to line up with the story line, "multiracial whiteness" is the new woke brain elixir.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of the hallmarks of "1984" was a society in which language was tightly controlled by government, and in which meanings were constantly changing. No more messy connotations! Awful, terrible, horrific etc were replaced by "double plus ungood". It reminds me of today's PC police, and how new words are made up to describe things that don't actually exist, like "multiracial whiteness", described below.


Facing clash between race-obsessed narrative and Trump’s non-white support, racist professor invents ‘MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS’

19 Jan, 2021 00:08 / Updated 19 hours ago

By Tony Cox, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:

Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of the hallmarks of "1984" was a society in which language was tightly controlled by government, and in which meanings were constantly changing. No more messy connotations! Awful, terrible, horrific etc were replaced by "double plus ungood". It reminds me of today's PC police, and how new words are made up to describe things that don't actually exist, like "multiracial whiteness", described below.


Facing clash between race-obsessed narrative and Trump’s non-white support, racist professor invents ‘MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS’

19 Jan, 2021 00:08 / Updated 19 hours ago

By Tony Cox, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

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Why no link to the article source? Huh - are you reading RT again?

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512909-multiracial-whiteness-trump-conservati
ves/

How is ONE New York City professor "today's PC police?"

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by captaincrunch:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of the hallmarks of "1984" was a society in which language was tightly controlled by government, and in which meanings were constantly changing. No more messy connotations! Awful, terrible, horrific etc were replaced by "double plus ungood". It reminds me of today's PC police, and how new words are made up to describe things that don't actually exist, like "multiracial whiteness", described below.

Facing clash between race-obsessed narrative and Trump’s non-white support, racist professor invents ‘MULTIRACIAL WHITENESS’

19 Jan, 2021 00:08 / Updated 19 hours ago

By Tony Cox, a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

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Why no link to the article source? Huh - are you reading RT again?

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512909-multiracial-whiteness-trump-conservati
ves/

How is ONE New York City professor "today's PC police?"

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I assumed that the author's name and title would be enough for anyone with two neurons to rub together to know who "the source" is (obviously, the author) and figure out what s/he had to say.


Obviously, you don't have two neurons to rub togther, but if you REALLY need a website that published this article, here is one

https://thefrontierpost.com/facing-clash-between-race-obsessed-narrati
ve-and-trumps-non-white-support-racist-professor-invents-multiracial-whiteness/

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of the hallmarks of "1984" was a society in which language was tightly controlled by government, and in which meanings were constantly changing. No more messy connotations! Awful, terrible, horrific etc were replaced by "double plus ungood". It reminds me of today's PC police, and how new words are made up to describe things that don't actually exist, like "multiracial whiteness", described below.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol Second didn't get 1984 either. Huge surprise.

At least he knows how to read. It's better than half the Democrats on this board can do.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Most of the key executives are more associated with the politics of Ron Paul and the CATO Institute than Steve Bannon or the Trump family. One is a Never Trump Republican, while another is the former campaign manager of Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Among the few MAGA-affiliated figures is Dan Bongino, an investor. One of the key original investors was Rebekah Mercer.

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