Sandra Finley

2024-10-31 Biometrics, Digital ID Make ‘Fully Digital Travel Experience’ a Reality: International Air Transport Association (IATA)+ More. CHD

 Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys, Surveillance, Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 312024
 
October 31, 2024 › Censorship/Surveillance

Big Brother NewsWatch

Biometrics, Digital ID Make ‘Fully Digital Travel Experience’ a Reality: International Air Transport Association (IATA)+ More

The Defender’s Big Brother NewsWatch brings you the latest headlines related to governments’ abuse of power, including attacks on democracy, civil liberties and use of mass surveillance. The views expressed in the excerpts from other news sources do not necessarily reflect the views of The Defender.

by Children’s Health Defense Team
The Defender’s Big Brother NewsWatch brings you the latest headlines.
Biometrics, Digital ID Make ‘Fully Digital Travel Experience’ a Reality: IATA

Biometrics News reported:

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is claiming a win following a biometrics proof-of-concept (PoC) which, according to a release, involved “two passengers using different digital wallets and travel credentials on a round-trip between Hong Kong and Tokyo.”

The two-day PoC involved partnerships with Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong International Airport, Narita International Airport, Branchspace, Facephi, NEC, Neoke, Northern Block and SICPA. Airport elements were conducted in a live environment, building on a 2023 PoC carried out in a test environment.

IATA and partners then ran the standard airport objective for biometrics firms: seamless progression through airport processes and checkpoints — including bag drop, security, immigration and boarding — using biometric authentication, eliminating the need to show travel documents.

“A seamless fully digital travel experience powered by digital identity and biometrics has moved from theory to proven reality,” says Nick Careen, senior vice president for operations, safety, and security for IATA. “The challenge now is to make this more efficient travel experience available to all travelers. There is good reason for optimism. With One ID standards already in place,” he says, “the industry could be ready for this in the very near future.”

Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Projects Are Foundering in Five-Eye Nations. What Gives?

ZeroHedge reported:

As we warned in May 2022, a financial revolution is quietly sweeping the world (or at least trying to) that has the potential to reconfigure the very nature of money, making it programmable, far more surveillable and centrally controlled. To quote Washington DC-based blogger and analyst NS Lyons, “if not deliberately and carefully constrained in advance by law,… CBDCs have the potential to become even more than a technocratic central planner’s dream. They could represent the single greatest expansion of totalitarian power in history.”

At the time of writing that post, around 90 countries and currency unions were in the process of exploring a CBDC, according to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker. Today, just two and a half years later, that number has increased to 134, representing 98% of global GDP. Around 66 of those countries are in the advanced stage of exploration — development, pilot, or launch.

But they do not include the U.S. In fact, the U.S. is not just trailing most countries on CBDC development; it could soon become the first country to explicitly ban the central bank from issuing a CBDC, to the undisguised horror of certain think tanks.

In May, the US House of Representatives passed HR 5403, also known as the “CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act.” The bill, first introduced in September 2023 and sponsored by U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, proposes amendments to the Federal Reserve Act to prohibit the U.S. Federal Reserve from issuing CBDCs. It also seeks to protect the right to financial privacy and prevent the U.S. government from “weaponizing their financial system against their own citizens.”

Legal Scholars Developing Guidance for Biometrics Legislation

Biometrics News reported: 

Two law institutes, one from Europe and one from the U.S., launched a new collaborative project focusing on the ethical and legal implications of collecting and using biometric data.

Initiated by the Philadelphia-based American Law Institute and the Vienna-headquartered European Law Institute, the main task of the project is defining a legal framework aimed at regulators working in different democratic countries.

The move comes at a crucial time for regulating artificial intelligence and biometric data on both side of the Atlantic. This year, the European Union finally launched its artificial intelligence, or AI Act, while U.S. agencies have been developing AI guidelines and debating uses such as facial recognition. The project, titled Principles for the Governance of Biometrics, has four initial goals.

 

Deaths Linked to Chatbots Show We Must Urgently Revisit What Counts as ‘High-Risk’ AI

The Conversation reported:

Last week, the tragic news broke that U.S. teenager Sewell Seltzer III took his own life after forming a deep emotional attachment to an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on the Character.AI website.

As his relationship with the companion AI became increasingly intense, the 14-year-old began withdrawing from family and friends, and was getting in trouble at school.

In a lawsuit filed against Character.AI by the boy’s mother, chat transcripts show intimate and often highly sexual conversations between Sewell and the chatbot Dany, modelled on the Game of Thrones character Danaerys Targaryen. They discussed crime and suicide, and the chatbot used phrases such as “that’s not a reason not to go through with it”.

In a statement to CNN, Character.AI has stated they “take the safety of our users very seriously” and have introduced “numerous new safety measures over the past six months”. In a separate statement on the company’s website, they outline additional safety measures for users under the age of 18. (In their current terms of service, the age restriction is 16 for European Union citizens and 13 elsewhere in the world.)

However, these tragedies starkly illustrate the dangers of rapidly developing and widely available AI systems anyone can converse and interact with. We urgently need regulation to protect people from potentially dangerous, irresponsibly designed AI systems.

Largest U.S. Healthcare Data Breach Exposes Medical Records of 100 Million Customers

Mashable reported:

A staggering new update has confirmed that February’s UnitedHealth data breach has impacted over 100 million Americans, now marking it as the largest healthcare data breach in U.S. history. But the fallout extends beyond individual patients — it touches entire families, elevating the scope and scale of this unprecedented attack.

The revised figure was disclosed on Oct. 24 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, which updated its data breach portal to reflect the full breadth of the breach. While the attack occurred in February, this latest report is the first official accounting of the impact widespread.

As reported by Forbes, the breach didn’t just expose data; it crippled critical services to hospitals, clinics, and medical practices nationwide, causing widespread operational chaos across the healthcare network.

UnitedHealth reportedly paid the ransomware hacker group $22 million in a desperate bid to recover the stolen data and halt further exposure. But in a bold move, the hackers reneged on the deal, pocketing the payout while keeping the data — leaving tens of millions of Americans’ information dangling on the dark web.

Children's Health Defense Team

Children’s Health Defense Team

2024-10-30 Digital credentials for Canadians? When and by whom?

 Privacy of Personal Information; Charter Right; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys, Surveillance, Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 312024
 

The reporting indicates to me that many Canadian Members-of-Legislatures finally realize that the game is changing:  THEY aren’t the ones making the decisions.   They’re just the Fall Guys.

Maybe they don’t want to be the Fall Guy?   Maybe we can work with them?   Whatever – – I think  it’s an opportune time to increase our one-to-one communications with our Elected Representatives.   They are more likely to listen when they’re vulnerable AND supported.

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Tamara Ugolini, Rebel News, writes:

Another so-called “conspiracy theory” could be on the way to becoming reality.

Federal regulators are gearing up to expand their ability to track and monitor Canadians with the push by Shared Services Canada of a new “digital credential” scheme — otherwise known as a digital ID.

Blackrock’s Reporter broke the news that unelected regulators are working to advance “digital credentials” without Parliamentary approval or debate and successive calls by MPs warning the move would be risky and expensive.

Will this be a necessary step to keep Canadians “safe” or is it a solution for a problem that doesn’t even exist?

Here’s the latest on what we know:

Digital IDs have been a fevered dream of multinational organizations like the WEF and governments around the world for years as world “leaders” progressively push us toward their technocratic utopia.

While they continually sell the idea based on its convenience, in reality, the adoption of digital IDs only opens the door for governments to assert more power over us.

Canadians have already gotten a glimpse of what a digital ID could entail following the vaccine passport and ArriveCan experiments. Both were used to segregate society and limit mobility based on people’s health status, access to technology, and willingness to participate in a Big Pharma profit-driven mass injection campaign.

Will history repeat itself? And if it does, will you comply?

If you want to stop the implementation of digital IDs and the ushering in of a bio-security social credit system, please sign our petition at StopDigitalID.com.

Yours truly,

Tamara Ugolini

P.S. Governments around the world want to impose digital IDs on the population, which grants access to all our personal information, including biometric and tracking data. They must be stopped. Say no to digital ID by signing our petition at StopDigitalID.com.

2024-10-31 Alberta’s Bill of Rights. 4 different analyses by John CARPAY, JCCF.

 Rule of Law, Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 312024
 

John Carpay is President of the JCCF.  His columns are published on the

  • JCCF Website; also selectively, for example,  by
  • Western Standard News and
  • Epoch Times.

During October, John has written columns related to Alberta’s (Premier Danielle Smith’s) efforts to improve Rights legislation.    His  Commentary is helpful (#1 – #4 below).

Western Standard News adds depth – –  the origin of the Alberta Bill of Rights :  Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said an updated Alberta Bill of Rights will be coming out in the fall. Columnist Michael Wagner says the original one has already proved its worth

See   https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/wagner-smith-right-a-bill-of-rights-is-an-instrument-of-freedom/58337?utm_source=website&utm_medium=related-stories

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CARPAY’S WORK;

1.  Canadians Need Legislation to Protect Their Rights

  • October 11, 2024

Media Inquiries: media@jccf.ca

Photo credit: mbruxelle

In September, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith announced that the right to make one’s own choices about receiving vaccinations should be added to the Alberta Bill of Rights, stating: “No Albertan should ever be subjected or pressured into accepting a medical treatment without their full consent.”

Some argue that new laws to protect the right to bodily autonomy are redundant because the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms already protects citizens from government abuse.

In theory, the Charter protects bodily autonomy, including the right to make medical choices, under the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.” In theory, the Charter protects the right to decide for oneself, without any coercion or pressure, whether to get injected with a vaccine. In theory, governments must justify “demonstrably” with cogent and persuasive evidence that any health order that violates a Charter right or freedom is reasonable, rational, truly necessary, and bringing about more good than harm. In theory, judges should base their rulings only on the evidence placed before them in court by the parties in a dispute, to the exclusion of media reports. In theory, when judges state that party “A” has presented better and more persuasive evidence than party “B,” judges will explain why and how they came to that conclusion. In theory, when a judge upholds lockdowns or vaccine passports as justified violations of Charter rights and freedoms, the judge will explain why she or he believes that the government’s evidence is better and more persuasive. In theory, Canadians don’t need laws to be changed because the Charter already protects citizens from being forced, pressured, or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine.

Using the words “in theory” seven times in the paragraph above is necessary, unfortunately. In reality, when Canadians have challenged governments in court over violating Charter rights and freedoms, some judges have upheld lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies without providing clear reasons—or any reasons—as to why the judge preferred the government’s evidence over the evidence presented by the citizens. In some cases, judges have made assertions in their rulings that are not supported by any evidence at all; these assertions appear to be based only on what the media have stated repeatedly.

In Gateway Bible Baptist Church v. Manitoba, the judge described Covid as an “unprecedented” public health threat and “the worst global pandemic in over a century.” He did so without referencing any evidence to support his claim that Covid was more deadly than the1957–58 Asian Flu and the 1968–69 Hong Kong Flu, each of which claimed between one and four million lives, according to the World Health Organization. It appears that the judge’s assertion about Covid was based only on the repeated claims made by fearmongering, government-funded media.

In Alberta Health Services v. Artur Pawlowski, the judge ordered an outspoken pastor to proclaim the government’s narrative about Covid, lockdowns, and vaccines whenever the pastor addressed these topics in public. The judge ordered the pastor to state, among other things, that “Vaccinations have been shown statistically to save lives and to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms.” When the judge issued this totalitarian order in 2021, the mRNA vaccine was still in clinical trials, and no long-term safety data was available about the impact of this new technology on people.

In O.M.S. v. E.J.S., the judge was so convinced of the truth of the government-and-media narrative about Covid and vaccines that he declared the vaccine to be “safe and effective” for everyone. In September 2021, he ordered a 12-year-old girl to get injected with the Covid vaccine, against her will and against the will of her mother. The judge declared that he could conclude without the necessity of any specific proof that Covid poses a “serious and significant” health risk to children. This amounts to declaring: “The media and politicians have been saying every day for the past 18 months that COVID seriously threatens adults and children. This claim must be true, because I have heard it repeated hundreds of times by politicians and journalists, often in combination with frightening pictures of sick, dying, and dead people. Repeated media assertions combined with disturbing visual images are a good substitute for evidence in court.”

If the judge had bothered to look at death statistics from any Canadian province, or any country in the world, he would have understood that children were as likely to die of Covid as they were to die of lightning strikes.

The judge in O.M.S. v. E.J.S. went on to take “judicial notice” of the “fact” that the Covid vaccine was “safe and effective” for use in both adults and children, because Health Canada and the Saskatchewan Health Authority had said so. The judge actually asserted in his ruling that no reasonable person would dispute the accuracy of a claim made by a government health authority!

Perhaps he has never heard of all the people damaged by thalidomide, a drug deemed safe and effective by health authorities in the 1950s. Doctors advised pregnant women to take thalidomide, resulting in miscarriages as well as babies dying at birth or shortly after. The babies who were not killed by thalidomide suffered life-long deformities and permanent damage to their limbs, brains, and other organs. All of this happened under the watchful eye of health authorities in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Germany, and other countries. But when the Saskatchewan Health Authority declared a vaccine that was still in clinical trials to be “safe and effective” for children, this judge happily embraced the government’s claim as gospel truth.

In Hillier v. Ontario, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld the government’s total ban on all outdoor protests as a justified violation of the Charter freedom of citizens to assemble peacefully. The judge ruled in favour of the government without considering seriously the very real harms that lockdowns inflicted on millions of people. The judge completely ignored a lengthy and comprehensive report by medical anthropologist Dr. Kevin Bardosh. His expert report relied on 150 peer-reviewed Canadian studies representing hundreds of Canadian scholars, showing the magnitude of lockdown harms in Canada.

In Ontario v. Trinity Bible Chapel, the judge upheld the government’s violations of Charter freedoms while declaring proudly that she would not engage in a serious scientific analysis of the relevant issues: “My role is not that of an armchair epidemiologist. I am neither equipped nor inclined to resolve scientific debates and controversy surrounding Covid-19.” The judge further declared that “it is not my task to mediate or resolve conflicting views about Covid-19.” Wrong. Resolving conflicting views is a judge’s job description. The Charter requires that governments justify “demonstrably” with persuasive evidence any health order that violates one or more of our Charter freedoms. This judge lowered the bar for government, and merely asked “Was it open to Ontario to act as it did?”

In theory, the Charter protects Canadians from being forced, pressured or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine. In light of recent court rulings that are more media-based than evidence-based, the sad reality is that legislation must be changed expressly to protect citizens from government abuse.

John Carpay – The Epoch Times

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  • October 30, 2024
The Alberta Legislature Building is located in Edmonton, Alberta, and is the meeting place of the Legislative Assembly and the Executive Council.

Introduced in the Legislature on October 28, Bill 24 improves the Alberta Bill of Rights by recognizing that “the position of the family in a society of free people and free institutions” should be honoured and respected.

Another positive addition is its assertion that human rights and fundamental freedoms are of foundational importance “including during times of emergency.” Bill 24 would amend the Alberta Bill of Rights to recognize expressly the individual’s right not to be coerced into receiving medical care, treatment or procedure (including a vaccine). Bill 24 strengthens property rights to include “the right not to be subject to a taking of property except to the extent authorized by law and where just compensation is provided.”

Bill 24 adds “the right to acquire, keep and use firearms.” However, this new right is rather vague, and possibly meaningless, because its exercise must be “in accordance with the law.” If a new provincial law unfairly or unreasonably restricts the use of firearms, would this new addition to the Alberta Bill of Rights be helpful to a firearms owner?

To stop judges from continuing to ignore the Alberta Bill of Rights (as some judges have done), a new provision declares that “any law of Alberta that is inconsistent with the provisions” of the Alberta Bill of Rights is “to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.”

Sadly, the rights and freedoms recognized by the Alberta Bill of Rights are severely undermined by the addition of a new clause that mirrors Section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bill 24 expressly permits government to violate rights and freedoms by claiming that a law or government policy is a “reasonable limit” that can be “demonstrably justified” in a free and democratic Alberta.

These same words were used by judges across Canada to uphold lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies under Section 1 of the Charter. In cases across Canada, governments admitted in court that they were violating Charter rights and freedoms, and judges happily accepted these violations as “reasonable limits” without bothering to take a hard look at the harms that lockdowns were inflicting on people. Why would judges interpret the Alberta Bill of Rights differently than the Charter, when the exact same language about “reasonable limits” would be added by Bill 24?

In Alberta Health Services v. Artur Pawlowski, the judge ordered an outspoken pastor to proclaim the government’s narrative about Covid lockdowns and vaccines whenever the pastor addressed these topics in public. The judge ordered the pastor to state, among other things, that “Vaccinations have been shown statistically to save lives and to reduce the severity of Covid symptoms.”

When the judge issued this totalitarian order in October 2021, the mRNA vaccine was still in clinical trials, and no long-term safety data was available about the impact of this new technology on people.

In O.M.S. v. E.J.S., Harper-appointed judge Michael Megaw ordered a 12-year-old girl to get injected with the Covid vaccine, against her will and against the will of her mother. In September 2021, he declared that Covid posed a “serious and significant” health risk to children, and that he needed no specific proof to support his conclusion.

If he had bothered to look at death statistics from Canada or other countries, he would have understood that children were as likely to die of Covid as they were to die of lightning strikes. The judge went on to take “judicial notice” of the “fact” that the Covid vaccine was “safe and effective” for use in both adults and children, because Health Canada and the Saskatchewan Health Authority had said so. This judge asserted that no reasonable person would dispute the accuracy of a claim made by a government health authority!

What about thalidomide, a drug deemed safe and effective by health authorities in the 1950s that killed and damaged so many babies across the globe?

In Hillier v. Ontario, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice upheld the government’s total ban on all outdoor protests as a justified violation of the Charter freedom of citizens to assemble peacefully. The judge applied Charter section 1 and ruled in favour of the government while completely ignoring a lengthy and comprehensive expert report by medical anthropologist Dr. Kevin Bardosh, that outlined the magnitude of lockdown harms in Canada.

These judgments in the Pawlowski, O.M.S. and Hillier cases are representative of how judges abused Section 1 of the Charter to place their stamp of approval on lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies.

In theory, Bill 24 amends the Alberta Bill of Rights so as to protect Albertans from being forced, pressured or manipulated into getting injected with a vaccine, along with other new protections. However, in light of recent court rulings that used Section 1 of the Charter to violate human rights, the new protections that Bill 24 seeks to create may be illusory.

John Carpay – Western Standard

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3.   Steps forward, steps backward, in Bill 24 changes to the Alberta Bill of Rights

  • October 28, 2024

Media Inquiries: media@jccf.ca

The Justice Centre applauds various proposed amendments to the Alberta Bill of Rights in Bill 24, introduced in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta on October 28, 2024, especially those which:

  • Recognize the important “position of the family in a society of free people and free institutions”
  • Recognize that freedoms are important “including during times of emergency”
  • Ensure that Courts will actually apply the Alberta Bill of Rights to the laws and actions of the Alberta government
  • Clarify that the Alberta Bill of Rights shall apply to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and to the Government of Alberta
  • Recognize “the right of the individual with capacity not to be subjected to, or coerced into receiving, a vaccine without the consent of that individual”
  • Increase protections for property rights

The Justice Centre is disappointed, however, that the proposed amendments subject the rights and freedoms of Alberta to “reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic Alberta.” This language, because it mirrors section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, affords the Government of Alberta and government entities in Alberta too much latitude to violate rights and freedoms, given the broad deference Courts have recently given government under that language to violate Charter rights and freedoms. In theory, this language could result in citizens’ rights and freedoms being protected from abuse by government, but in practice judges have interpreted these words to make it easy for governments to violate fundamental Charter freedoms.

The Justice Centre is concerned about proposed amendments that appear to offer weak protections against forced medical care and treatment outside of a context involving vaccines. If Bill 24 passes in its current form, Albertans could be coerced into receiving medical care, treatments, or procedures if it is believed that the “individual is likely to cause substantial harm to that individual or to others” by not receiving it.

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4.   Opinion

CARPAY: Between the rock of the status quo and the hard place of Bill 24

No easy solution to protecting individual rights in Alberta
The status quo is bad, not because of deficiencies in the Alberta Bill of Rights, but because some judges really do not cherish the free society, writes lawyer John Carpay, in a further consideration of the Government of Alberta's Bill 24.
The status quo is bad, not because of deficiencies in the Alberta Bill of Rights, but because some judges really do not cherish the free society, writes lawyer John Carpay, in a further consideration of the Government of Alberta’s Bill 24.WS file photo
John Carpay

John Carpay    

Premier Danielle Smith and her United Conservative Party are between a rock and hard place, when it comes to protecting individual rights and freedoms in Alberta.

The Alberta Bill of Rights is provincial legislation that recognizes the individual’s right to liberty, security of the person and enjoyment of property, and the right not to be deprived thereof except by due process of law; the freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, association, and the press; and the right of parents to make informed decisions respecting the education of their children.

It states that “every law of Alberta” shall be so construed and applied as not to “abrogate, abridge or infringe” any of the rights or freedoms that are recognized and declared by the Alberta Bill of Rights. “Law of Alberta” means an Act of the Legislature as well as any order, rule or regulation.

Unlike the Charter, the Alberta Bill of Rights has no provision to authorize judges to strike down laws as being incompatible with the Alberta Bill of Rights. Rather, the Alberta Bill of Rights requires that all laws be construed and applied as protecting individual rights. The Alberta Bill of Rights does not have an equivalent to Section 1 of the Charter, the section which allows judges to condone laws and policies that violate our Charter freedoms.

It states that “every law of Alberta” shall be so construed and applied as not to “abrogate, abridge or infringe” any of the rights or freedoms that are recognized and declared by the Alberta Bill of Rights. “Law of Alberta” means an Act of the Legislature as well as any order, rule or regulation.

2024-10-30 No GM Wheat Event, Saskatoon, SK Tues Nov 5th

 Food  No Responses »
Oct 302024
 

Saskatchewan and the University of (Sask)  Monsanto’s Dept of Food and Bioproduct Sciences  are central to bioteched food.   The National Research Institute of Canada (NRC) has a large presence at the University and is also into biotechnology.  For example:

4DWheat – Diversity, Discovery, Design and Delivery

https://agbio.usask.ca/departments/food-and-bioproduct-sciences.php

The battle against GMO Wheat and other Foods has been raging for decades.  Our network is quite well-versed in the associated problems.   I had to laugh at the data for the financial side of the affairs.

 

 

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No GM Wheat

Resistance in Canada is rebuilding to take on the threat of genetically engineered (genetically modified or GM) wheat as the world’s first GM wheat is grown in Argentina and Canadian government researchers are conducting field tests of unregulated gene-edited wheat in Alberta. Click here to read CBAN’s new factsheet on GM wheat.

For more information on GM wheat see www.cban.ca/wheat.

Event – Saskatoon – November

We don’t knead GMO wheat!
Celebrating and protecting organic wheat
Join us on Tues, Nov 5, 6.30pm-8.30pm at the Broadway Collective, 733 Broadway Ave, Saskatoon. Hosted by SaskOrganics & Organic Connections.
Featured Speakers:

  • Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator, Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN)
  • Will Robbins, Organic grain farmer
  • Bryn Rawlyk, Owner, Night Oven Bakery

Companies are preparing to put new genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the market, including gene-edited wheat. Organic farmers are committed to fighting these GMOs and protecting non-GM choice for Canadians. Join organic farmers, bakers, and consumers to find out the latest updates about GMOs and enjoy an evening of learning, community, and celebration of organic food and farming.

Organic bread snacks and other refreshments served! Cash bar. For more information see www.saskorganics.org/events.

Donate today to support our work. www.cban.ca/donate.

Lucy Sharratt, Coordinator

coordinator@cban.ca

www.cban.ca

The Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN) brings together 15 organizations to research, monitor and raise awareness about issues relating to genetic engineering in food and farming. CBAN members include farmer associations, environmental and social justice organizations, and regional coalitions of grassroots groups. CBAN is a project of MakeWay’s shared platform.

Phone: 902 209 4906 www.cban.ca

Donate >

Having trouble reading this mail? View it in your browser.
  1.  ASIDE

ASIDE – – COVID RELATED

HUMAN HEALTH
Genome Prairie invests in functional genomics research aimed at improving the understanding of
human disease genes and finding new ways to improve patient outcomes, Some of Genome Prairie’s
projects supported in human health include:
• Canadian Prairie Metabolic Network (CPMN) (2021-2024) – $6.1 million total
CPMN is developing timely and cost-effective delivery of innovative and relevant genomic
testing in the Prairies for rare, in-build errors of metabolism in patients across the Prairies. It is
doing this by developing rapid, inexpensive mitochondrial DNA testing not available
elsewhere. CPMN looks to provide access to a full range of multidisciplinary expertise, develop
best practice approaches, and provide, as needed, clinical specialist coverage for generalist
physicians and their patients.
Canadian COVID-19 Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) (2020-2022) – $1.2 million total
With the CanCOGeN project, Genome Prairie provided advanced DNA sequencing technology
to public health laboratories in the Prairie Region in order to provide genomic solutions to a
very complex problem, specifically, COVID-19. Funding provided by Genome Canada supported
the provincial labs increasing local capacity and facilitating COVID-19 sequencing in the
provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
• COVID-19 Rapid Regional Response (COV3R) (2020-2022) – $0.5 million total
University of Regina professor Andrew Cameron is in the process of using genome capture to
tackle the problem of detecting co-infections in humans, especially in context of the COVID-19
pandemic and in the process providing powerful new tools for public health.

 

 

2024-10-29 Liberal capitalism only exists in the textbooks, by Toby Rogers

 Corporatocracy or Democracy or Administrative State or WHAT?  No Responses »
Oct 292024
 

­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­

Please go to Toby Rogers’ substack  /Sandra
Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

Liberal capitalism only exists in the textbooks

We are dealing with global monopoly capitalism that is trying to enslave and kill us

Toby Rogers
Oct 29

 

 
READ IN APP
 
  1. First principles

Capitalism moves through predictable stages.

The tendencies and dynamics that characterize early stage capitalism do not necessary apply to mature and late stage capitalist countries.

Too often economists make the mistake of modeling early stage capitalism that does not exist in the real world anymore or idealized capitalism that never existed.

Today the developed world in general and the United States in particular are characterized by late stage monopoly capitalism that has all of the hallmarks of fascism.

So we must continually shift our thinking from the economic textbooks, that are now largely irrelevant, to explaining the world as it actually is (which is terrifying).

  1. Early stage capitalism and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall

We need to talk about the “tendency of the rate of profit to fall.” Adam Smith first described the idea in Wealth of Nations (chapter 9) and it was further developed by John Stuart Mill, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx who all observed this trend in their own eras.

The theory is pretty straightforward — in liberal capitalist economies the rate of profit for invested capital tends to fall over time. There might be many reasons for this. At the most basic level, new entrants into the market increase competition which causes firms to invest more heavily in capital equipment just to survive which makes the firm more efficient but drives down the rate of profit per unit of investment (assuming demand stays constant).

More modern theorists such as Robert Reich argue that competition leads to a shift away from labor toward capital equipment which increases efficiency but drives down wages — which reduces overall consumer demand and puts downward pressure on prices and thus reduces profits.

The point I want to make — and it matters enormously for our purposes in the Resistance — is that Smith, Mill, Ricardo, and Marx were probably right about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in NASCENT CAPITALIST ECONOMIES but they didn’t have a long enough view of history to see what comes next.

What comes next is the truly terrifying part.

III. The rise of monopoly capitalism

For Marx, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall was so certain to produce crisis that revolution was inevitable.

But that’s not what happens.

INSTEAD, as the rate of profit falls, capital shifts to four strategies to increase profitability:

  1. Mergers and acquisitions. They remove their competitors from the market — which produces oligopolies and monopolies.
  2. Mega corporations take over the state. In the mercantile era, the crown and the parliament got a cut of the profits from state-chartered companies. But for the last 150 years the mega corporations have just told the state what to do and treated the state as modestly paid employees of the corporation.
  3. Colonies. They exploit the f*ck out of people who do not have the means to fight back.
  4. War. It’s the most profitable business in the world and if one goes to war against one’s industrial competitors, it also produces global monopolies and a version of colonization as the defeated nation can be forced to pay reparations.

So already by 1870 all of these strategies were being utilized. The burgeoning steel industry created early oligopolies. Mega corporations told the state what to do. Railroads combined with Manifest Destiny vastly expanded the reach of American capitalism. The need for raw materials plus the need for markets for finished goods led Europe to colonize nearly all of the African continent in the Scramble for Africa.

Pre-colonial Africa (until about 1500). (Image credit Jeff Israel.)

A map of Africa in 1914, with colors for the colonial powers. (Image credit Hogweard.)

In the Scramble for Africa, Europe reintroduced slavery too, shortly after it had mostly been eradicated from the world.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the development of the closely related automobile, rubber, and oil industries created new monopolies and oligopolies. And then the largest industrialized countries in the world went to war against each other in World War I and II.

The tendency of the rate of the profit to fall is the catalyst that leads to all of these other unsavory actions in monopoly and late stage capitalism. And once the economy shifts from early stage liberal capitalism to monopoly capitalism, a completely different set of dynamics come to the fore.

  1. Understanding the dynamics of global monopoly capitalism

Global oligopolies and monopolies:

  • Set their own prices (they are “price makers not price takers”). There’s no competition so the price is whatever the firm says it is and you’re out of luck if you don’t want to pay it.
  • Have little incentive to innovate. They want to wring as much profit as possible from existing plant and equipment.
  • Use their control of the regulatory system to block new companies from entering the market. Licensing requirements and regulations appears to raise standards but they also create barriers to entry that reduce the number of potential competitors.
  • Use their control of government to reward themselves with rich public contracts. Government spending rises for things like highways and national defense but it is paid for with borrowing rather than increased taxes. So corporations make money from the government contracts and make money again by buying the bonds used to pay for the contracts.
  • Are very profitable for a while. But the overall economy stagnates as innovation dwindles and consumers spend a growing proportion of their income enriching the monopolists. Economies characterized by monopoly capitalism squeeze all of the money they can out of the citizenry but there are limits to such rent-seeking behavior and eventually the economy freezes up in a recession or depression.
  • Engage in complicated financial schemes. They have heaps of capital that they don’t know what to do with. As monopolists, they expect outsized rates of return however there are few good places to invest their profits because the economy is not innovating. So they resort to gimmicks, tricks, and speculative investments that turn Wall Street into a casino that pumps wealth out of the rubes without producing valuable new goods and services.

After World War II, the U.S. was the sole global superpower. The U.S. economy thrived because we still had industrial capacity (our former competitors Japan and Germany were reduced to rubble). Through the Marshall Plan we built up western Europe to counter Soviet power and create new markets to buy our goods. But by the early 1970s, the rate of profit began to fall again.

So what happened? Capital shifted to its four favorite strategies to increase profitability:

  1. Mergers and acquisitions boomed in the 1980s and have continued ever since. We live in a monopoly capitalist economy.
  2. Mega corporations expanded their power over the state (following the blueprint laid out in the 1971 Powell Memorandum). Goldman Sachs now runs the U.S. Treasury. Tyson, Nestle, Kraft, Cargill, and ADM run the USDA. The big pesticide companies run the EPA. Big Pharma runs the NIH, FDA, and CDC. My “10 cartels” article is very good on this point and is worth revisiting.
  3. Neocolonialism/neoimperialism. The U.S. runs the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and organizes global trade policy to extract resources from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
  4. We went to war. The war on drugs. The war on terrorism. Endless wars in the Middle East.

That kept the Leviathan fat and happy for a while. But then the economy stalled out again in 2008 (and was temporarily resuscitated by the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve).

The monopolists were already rich. But they wanted even more. Enter Covid.

I want to be clear that the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is very different under early capitalism (where the problem is hyper-competition and falling prices) vs. monopoly capitalism (where the problem is a lack of competition, rising prices, and overall stagnation in the economy). But the outcomes are similar as the rich and powerful do whatever they can to increase the rate of return for capital.

The greatest irony of liberal capitalism is that the academics and politicians praise it even as the capitalist themselves are doing everything in their power to undermine it and replace it with static systems that they control.

  1. The Covid Crisis is the next phase of monopoly capitalism

Baby boomers were going to retire with a record $76 trillion in assets. Stealing that $76 trillion was one of the objectives of Covid.

Entitlement spending, particularly for Social Security and Medicare, was eating up a growing proportion of the budget and would have eventually led to calls for increased taxes on the monopolists and oligopolists.

There were very few good investment opportunities for capital. Innovation stalled because monopolies already controlled major industries. There were no new lands left to conquer. With the advent of cell phones, exploitation was harder to hide. Wages were rising even in former backwaters like China and Vietnam.

The internet enabled people to find each other and organize politically to start chipping away at state and corporate power. Arab Spring quickly morphed into Occupy Wall Street with 800 occupied plazas in major cities throughout the developed world.

The elites were losing their grip on power. And so they just threw the chessboard against the wall and started to demonstrate the full extent of their power.

They used the state to develop and release a new and novel virus that combined the furin cleavage site from HIV with a bat coronavirus.

They spent billions of dollars on propaganda to create a global panic.

They introduced murderous hospital protocols including ventilators that killed 90% of patients and blocked access to safe, effective, and cheap off-the-shelf medicines.

They developed and approved toxic and deadly treatments including Remdesivir and Paxlovid.

They bought the mainstream media and used it to broadcast lies every single day for five years and counting.

They developed the most toxic and deadly “vaccines” in human history which is really saying something because existing vaccines are horrible.

And in the process, they stole about $24 trillion globally and enslaved hundreds of millions of people throughout the developed world (where the money is) via chronic illness.

It’s the largest violent crime in human history. It’s the largest theft in human history. And it’s still going on.

Then they gave the Presidential Commendations, the Nobel Prize, honorary doctorates, and every public health award ever conceived (and some new ones they just made up) to the people who came up with this scheme. That’s the world we live in today with the worst people in human history still holding all of the most prestigious positions in society.
  1. The missed opportunity of left scholarship on monopoly capitalism

Some very good work was done on monopoly capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy.

And then that tradition was carried on and updated by John Bellamy Foster who documented the role of global monopoly capitalism in causing the 2008 global financial crisis and the ongoing ecological crisis.

I just learned of Matt Stoller’s book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy that came out in 2019.

Amy Klobuchar ran for president in 2020 based on the idea of reining in monopoly power. She even wrote a book that contained her plan for how to do it, called, Antitrust: Taking on Monopoly Power from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age.

These efforts were all well and good — but insufficient. They were not cynical enough and massively underestimated the size, power, and demonic cruelty of monopoly capitalism. When Covid came, the scholars of monopoly capitalism were swallowed up and turned into agents of the fascist Pharma state just like the rest of the left political scene.

So now the task falls on us to (re)build our understanding of monopoly capitalism with the knowledge of the last few years. To put it simply: monopoly capitalism appears to be an inevitable stage of capitalism, it is a form of fascism, and it engages in any activity that will produce large profits including slavery and genocide. Our challenge is to stop them from doing this to us and replace predatory global monopoly capitalism with a system that rewards decency, innovation, and hard work.

Blessings to the warriors. 🙌

Prayers for everyone fighting to stop the iatrogenocide. 🙏

Huzzah for everyone building the parallel society our hearts know is possible. ✊

In the comments, please let me know what’s on your mind.

As always, I welcome any corrections.

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© 2024 Toby Rogers
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2024-10-29 Idaho Health Board First in U.S. to Defy CDC and FDA by Removing COVID Vaccines From Clinics. Suzanne Burdick, CHD.

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 292024
 

Idaho’s Southwest District Health will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines after its board voted 4-3 last week to pull the shots from the 30 locations where it provides healthcare services.

Update, Nov 02, Dan:  Well, on a positive note, I see CTV ran the story about Idaho stopping the covid vaxx. Still some spin, but at least they didn’t ignore the story like I thought they would. Maybe they smell a change in the wind.

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.
 
covid vaccines and word "removed"
Listen to this article.    Download     00:00/07:17

Idaho’s Southwest District Health will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines after its board voted 4-3 last week to pull the shots from the 30 locations where it provides healthcare services.

“It’s the first health agency in America to do that,” Laura Demaray, a Southwest Idaho resident and nurse who attended the Oct. 22 vote, told The Defender.

Miste Karlfeldt, executive director of Health Freedom Idaho, agreed that the board’s vote is historic. “It’s thrilling,” she told The Defender.

The board’s vote came after it received about 300 public comments urging the district, which encompasses six counties, to stop promoting the shots.

Just before the board voted, members heard presentations from cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough, pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, pediatrician Dr. Renata Moon and obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. James Thorp on safety concerns related to the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. John Tribble, the board’s only physician, invited them to speak.

“Dr. Tribble was a very brave board member who is very aware of the harms of the COVID injection,” said Demaray. “He asked me to help gather the presenters.”

Demaray, who said she knows many people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines, and others reached out to experts who could present data related to COVID-19 vaccine harms to the board. “It was total teamwork.”

Mary Holland, Children’s Health Defense CEO, applauded the board’s action:

“After hearing from 300 constituents, listening to well-informed physicians and assessing the public record, the Southwest Idaho Health District Board made an informed decision not to stock its own clinics with COVID shots.”

Demaray and Holland pointed out that the board didn’t take away anyone’s freedom to get a COVID-19 vaccine. “If residents want, they can obtain the shots from other pharmacies and doctors’ offices,” Holland said.

Demaray said the board’s decision showed “there’s some distrust in this shot.” She added:

“If a health district is giving a shot in their own clinics, then it means they believe in the shot and they don’t think somebody will get hurt. It means they support it tacitly.”

Holland said, “The Health District Board was conveying its values to the public — ‘these products are unsafe and we do not promote them’ — and the board was within its authority to do this.”

A precedent for other health agencies?

Tribble told The Defender some of the backstory leading up to the historic vote. “The people of this district were demanding answers,” he said. “Many came forward with heartbreaking stories of vaccine injury.”

After listening to its residents, the board members felt it was important to allow “the free and open discussion and evaluation of the evidence for and against the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

In addition to hearing presentations from McCullough, Moon, Cole and Thorp, the board also heard from district staff physician Dr. Perry Jansen who recommended keeping the vaccine on the district’s clinic shelves.

 

“In the end,” Tribble said, “the evidence clearly showed a lack of safety and efficacy as it compares to the risk from COVID-19 and their [the board members’] decision reflected that.”

The board members who voted to remove the shot “exhibited courage” because they did so “based on the evidence, in direct opposition to the federal health agencies’ recommendations.” Tribble said:

“I believe our actions here stand as an example and precedent for other health agencies to take back control of their health and freedoms from a corrupted federal system. I hope this will inspire other health agencies to openly discuss this issue and evaluate the evidence for themselves.”

 

‘That is how you open up a can of truth’

Karlfeldt said she’s confident the board’s landmark decision will embolden other health administrators across Idaho and the rest of the U.S. to make similar moves.

Demaray agreed. She said she already heard from two other Idaho health districts that are now considering pulling the COVID-19 shots from their clinics after learning of the Southwest District’s vote.

Demaray encouraged other U.S. citizens to reach out to their local health board members, asking them to review the safety information on the COVID-19 vaccines.

Many federal health agency leaders are captured by industry, but that’s not the case with most local-level health officials, Demaray said. “They aren’t all bought out yet.”

“If you bring your local doctors like Dr. Tribble — or Dr. Cole, Dr. McCullough, Dr. Moon and Dr. Thorp — if you bring them and they make presentations, it is public record and your community gets to see that,” she said.

“That is how you open up a can of truth,” Demaray added.

There’s a lot of power at the local level because while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends COVID-19 vaccines and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves them, it’s typically the local agencies that adopt policies to promote them.

Holland said, “Sadly, people need to accept that they cannot trust the federal government anymore when it comes to their health.”

VAERS: 1.6 million reports of injury or death after COVID vaccination

Nicolas Hulscher, an epidemiologist at the McCullough Foundation, commended the board for its action.

“Southwest Idaho Health District has made the correct and brave choice to remove COVID-19 injections from their clinics,” Hulscher said. “The updated boosters were never tested in humans, while previous iterations have demonstrated that they’re not safe for human use.”

Hulscher noted that Boise State Public Radio’s coverage of the vote labeled the presentations by McCullough and others as “anti-vaccine.”

The Boise State Public Radio article — which referred to McCullough and the other presenters as “doctors widely accused of spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation” — appeared to “blindly favor COVID-19 vaccines,” he said, “while ignoring deeply worrisome safety data.”

October is Vaccine Injury Awareness Month. It’s also the launch of CHD’s Million-Dollar Match campaign. Please donate today to help Children’s Health Defense raise $1 million by October 31.
Donate Now

 

For instance, the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID-19 vaccination continues to climb.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirming the reported adverse event was caused by the vaccine. VAERS has historically been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

As of Sept. 27, there were 1,604,710 VAERS reports of injury or death following a COVID-19 vaccination.

The board’s vote has helped create greater public awareness that the COVID-19 shots “are massively injurious gene therapy products,” Holland said.

Tribble agreed:

“People need to understand that these shots are not vaccines by the traditional definition. That is to say, they do not impart immunity or prevent transmission.

“They were rushed to market, given legal immunity and coercively pushed upon the world’s population backed by unfounded fears spread by governments and media.”

Moreover, the safety and efficacy data we have is limited and primarily released by the same vaccine companies that stood to make hundreds of billions of dollars off of these injections, Tribble added.

“This experiment with mRNA gene therapy during COVID-19 will be shown to be one of the most egregious examples of democide in world history,” he said.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

2024-10-29 NIH (U.S.) EHR (Electronic Health Records). Spending $2.2 Million to ‘Nudge’ Elderly to Get More Vaccines. Baletti, CHD.

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 292024
 

According to grant documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense via a FOIA request, the NIH is spending $2.2 million in taxpayer money to test personalized “nudges” to coax older people into getting more vaccines.

by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.
 
brain and vaccine bottle
Listen to this article    Download     00:00/06:44

Using U.S. taxpayer dollars, researchers at two universities are identifying older people behind on their recommended vaccines and testing personalized “nudges” to coax them into getting more shots. nih-nudge-more-vaccines-feature.jpg

According to grant documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is funding the $2.2 million “BE IMMUNE” clinical trial, which began in 2020 and will run through 2025.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington are using Electronic Health Records (EHR) data — the electronic records from doctors’ offices containing patients’ detailed health and demographic data — to target African American, Hispanic and Asian people with lower flu, pneumococcal and herpes zoster vaccination rates.

The ongoing study blames the “poor vaccination rates” on patients’ and clinicians’ “widespread decision-making biases.” The trial is testing strategies drawn from behavioral economics, which uses insights from psychology to understand — and in this case to “nudge” or direct — people’s decision-making behavior.

The randomized controlled study is headed up by Dr. Shivan Mehta and a team of healthcare management experts who combine medical and business-based strategies to run studies like these.

The trials often are based in Penn Medicine’s in-house “Nudge Unit,” where behavioral design teams are dedicated to figuring out how to influence patient choices.

The grant is part of a massive initiative by the NIH to increase vaccine uptake by changing how people make decisions. The initiative has included hundreds of millions of dollars in grants since 2020 to create “culturally tailored” pro-vaccine materials to promote COVID-19 and flu vaccines.

It also included more than 50 grants worth $40 million designed to increase HPV vaccine uptake.

 

Testing the ‘ladder’ of behavioral interventions

The study is testing different “nudges” at more than 100 primary care practices at Penn Medicine, University of Washington Medicine and the Veterans Affairs Health System, one of the world’s largest EHR vendors in the world.

Over 1,000 primary care physicians and thousands of eligible patients at those practices are involved in the trial.

The range of tested interventions is scaled on a ladder.

Nudges lower on the ladder try presenting people with information so they can make their own decisions about vaccines —- methods that typically are not very effective for increasing vaccine uptake, the researchers said.

Nudges higher on the ladder either prompt people to make decisions, or simply plan their decisions for them.

For example, one nudge automatically sets up vaccination appointments for people, compelling them to go to their appointment and get vaccinated unless they intentionally opt out.

Credit: NIH

The “opt-out” framework has been effective in other areas of healthcare, such as colorectal cancer screening or persuading more people to take their flu shots, the researchers reported.

Netflix uses prompts to encourage binge-watching — healthcare should prompt people to get more shots

Penn’s “Nudge Unit,” which bills itself as the “world’s first behavioral design team embedded within a health system,” houses the study, which is also being conducted in a similar unit at the University of Washington.

Economist Richard H. Thaler and legal scholar Cass R. Sunstein popularized nudging in their 2008 book, “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness” as a method to create a “choice architecture” designed to influence people’s behavior in a predictable way “but without restricting choice” — particularly for policies or measures that might otherwise be unpopular.

Penn launched its Nudge Unit in 2016, inspired by British Prime Minister David Cameron’s Nudge Unit, established in 2010 to shape citizen behavior in the United Kingdom — a strategy the Penn researchers thought should also be applied to healthcare.

Penn’s Nudge Unit founders argued in a 2018 New England Journal of Medicine article that healthcare should use the same strategies businesses use to influence consumer behavior.

For example, they said, airlines require consumers to actively choose whether to purchase trip insurance before they can buy a plane ticket. Netflix changed its default settings to automatically play the next episode in a TV series to encourage binge watching.

“Similar opportunities exist to direct clinicians and patients toward better health care in situations where there’s consensus about desired behaviors,” they wrote, citing effective drugs, vaccines and targeted therapies as examples.

The strategy is being implemented globally — management consulting firm McKinsey reported that about 400 “nudge units” had been established globally by 2021.

However, even the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-backed Gavi concedes, “the theory has its critics — detractors argue that nudges can be paternalistic, invasive, ideological, and coercive in ways that erode public trust.”

The researchers behind this study also found that often the nudge approach doesn’t work.

In those cases, they argue “a stronger intervention—a ‘shove’—may be needed.”

October is Vaccine Injury Awareness Month. It’s also the launch of CHD’s Million-Dollar Match campaign. Please donate today to help Children’s Health Defense raise $1 million by October 31.
Donate Now

EHR — an opportunity to scale up the nudge

The researchers celebrated EHR for offering a unique opportunity to develop and rapidly scale up personalized nudges.

The records increasingly are used for research and clinical trial recruitment because they contain a wealth of data. And new technological tools now allow researchers to “mine, assimilate, analyze, link, reproduce and transmit information” gleaned from that data.

Twila Brase, a registered nurse and author of “Big Brother in the Exam Room: The Dangerous Truth about Electronic Health Records,” told The Defender most people think the privacy of their EHR is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, better known as HIPPA — but that’s not the case.

HIPPA only guarantees your data will be secure as it is passed among the various entities that have access to it, including researchers, Brase said. And that access can be provided without your consent.

“Nowhere in the law does HIPPA give you control over your medical records,” she said.

Because the records contain massive amounts of personal information that can be used and linked in many different ways, researchers studying EHR-based research argue that the use of EHR also raises “pressing questions concerning privacy, confidentiality, and patient awareness.”

They say that the use of one’s EHR data for research reasons can be confusing or even impossible to opt out of because often the provision of healthcare is linked to accepting a policy allowing researchers to use EHRs.

And EHR research often operates on the same logic as the nudge — an “opt-out” approach where permission is assumed unless a patient explicitly indicates they want to revoke it.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

2024-10-26 RFK’s Make America HEALTHY Again.

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Oct 292024
 

 

MAHA ISN’T JUST A SLOGAN
We’re Not Just a Little Behind–
We’re Dramatically Worse
Ever wonder why America spends more on healthcare than any other country yet has some of the worst health outcomes?
Here’s the answer: our own government agencies, like the FDA, have been corrupted.
Unfortunately, many Members of Congress, whom we elect to protect our interests, are taking campaign contributions from Big Pharma, Big Ag, and major food processing companies—the very industries the FDA is supposed to regulate.
I will take this corruption head on!
It’s one of the reasons I’m determined to get President Trump back in the White House and me to Washington so we can reform the FDA from the inside and Make America Healthy Again.
I want to put your health ahead of profits, and I need your help to do it.
Make America Healthy Again
Here’s a breakdown of what’s at stake:
AMERICA’S HEALTHCARE PERFORMANCE IS DEAD LAST
When compared to 10 other advanced countries, the U.S. ranks at the very bottom. Our health outcomes lag far behind those of countries like New Zealand, France, and Germany. We’re not just a little behind—we’re dramatically worse.
WE PAY THE MOST AND GET THE LEAST
Take a look at healthcare spending vs. outcomes. While the U.S. spends nearly double what other countries do, our performance doesn’t reflect that investment. That’s us, throwing money at a broken system and still falling short.
These charts show a grim reality: the U.S. has some of the worst health outcomes in the developed world. Americans are plagued with chronic diseases that are practically unheard of elsewhere.
This is not normal, and it doesn’t have to be this way.
If we clean out the corruption in agencies like the FDA, USDA, and CDC, we can cut our healthcare costs in half and double our health outcomes.
I’m asking for your support to help me break the cycle of corruption that’s keeping America sick. Help us put President Trump back in the White House this November—and get me inside the FDA to make a real difference.
Make America Healthy Again
The time is short! Visit Mahanow.org to contribute to this mission.
Together, we can Make America Healthy Again and restore power to the people instead of corporations.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Mahanow.org
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