Reader’s links for November 11, 2021

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

41 Replies to “Reader’s links for November 11, 2021”

  1. German ‘Newspaper’ Prints List of Soccer Players Collapsing With Cardiac Issues

    The independent German Newspaper, Berliner Zeitung has another list of athletes who have collapsed with cardiac issues. If you missed it, we published an extensive list last week of athletes who had collapsed or died in what appears to be alarming numbers.

    I’d expect some crossover from the original list but I did not make any effort to compare them.

    And as I noted in the previous piece these are not definitive lists of known COVID-vaccinated athletes suffering cardiac events. We’re posting these to alert folks that there appears to be a marked increase in these incidents alongside a global push for mandatory vaccination.

    Given the increased incidence of known cardiac issues (Myocarditis) from these vaccines in younger folks and the marked increase over the last several months, a correlation seems likely.

  2. Yuri Bezmenov’s Marxist Crisis Is Near
    And it’s just the beginning of the Left’s plan to destroy America as we know it.

    Demoralization. Destabilization. Crisis. Normalization.

    Long-time readers of this column will remember those four words from an entry in this space exactly 17 months ago. That entry, a column entitled “Four Stages of Marxist Takeover: The Accuracy of Yuri Bezmenov,” was the most heavily trafficked item of mine last year, and either the busiest or one of the busiest on The American Spectator‘s entire site in 2020.

    That happened for a reason. Namely, that it described exactly what was happening in America, and why there was a method to the apparent madness.

    I thought I’d check in with the deceased Mr. Bezmenov and see how his prescriptions for how the Left might destroy our society on purpose are holding up.

    Unfortunately, the answer is, “Pretty well, and better than we hoped.”

    For those of you who have neither read the column last year or just hit the link above, a quick recap. Bezmenov, the son of an elite military officer, was a higher-up of sorts within the Soviet Union’s ranks of message-makers and propagandists. A KGB operative, he defected to Canada and in 1984 gave an incredibly interesting interview to G. Edward Griffin, who might have been the Alex Jones of his time.

    In that interview, Bezmenov outlined the Soviet plan, hinted at so many years before by Premier Nikita Khrushchev, to implode American society from within. It had four stages.

    Demoralization. Destabilization. Crisis. Normalization.

    Bezmenov’s formulation was eminently believable, even if things didn’t turn out the way he envisioned. It informed virtually every single Marxist takeover of the 20th century, from Latvia to Venezuela. But it never quite permeated our understanding of the Marxist project, because less than a half-decade after Bezmenov’s interview with Griffin the Soviet Union had fallen apart and our attention to communism as a threat to our freedom diverted elsewhere.

    You’re probably a lot more familiar with the Cloward–Piven strategy than Bezmenov’s four stages, and that’s not surprising.

    But right now, if you want to understand the insane times in which we’re living and make some sense of why things are happening as they are, perhaps the best way to do so is to focus on the first two stages Bezmenov outlined.

    Demoralization and destabilization are where we are.

    Things aren’t falling apart by accident, and they aren’t falling apart because Joe Biden is incompetent. As my column last year noted, Joe Biden wasn’t selected by the Democrat Party’s top leadership because he was a strong leader — exactly the opposite is true. In Biden they have a figurehead they can control completely. Tucker Carlson noted on his show Monday a perfect example of this; namely Biden’s 180-degree turnaround from declaring that a Wall Street Journal report revealing his administration is giving some $450,000 per illegal alien separated from their families during the Trump administration was “garbage” to, just a few days later, pounding a podium and yelling about the injustice of illegal immigrants “losing a child!” while trespassing across the border.

    He’s a puppet. A dupe. A rube. Biden isn’t running the country. You face cancellation for asking who is, or that they be held accountable.

    You’re being demoralized, or perhaps they’re already finished with you. You believe America’s best days are behind you and that our culture is permanently debauched. You’re maybe even questioning whether the America you thought you loved ever existed. We don’t keep our promises to our allies, we’re no longer a meritocracy, cancel culture abounds, parents are horrified upon finding out what’s taught to their children in schools.

    All of it. It’s demoralizing, and we are demoralized.

    How did this happen? Look at the monolithic control the woke Left has over all of our cultural institutions. That didn’t happen by accident and it didn’t happen overnight. It took more than a decade, and it’s the product of aggressive efforts to depose not just conservatives but classical liberals from positions of influence in those institutions.

    Chris Pratt delivers a love letter to his wife on social media and he’s attacked as an ableist for not including his handicapped son in a line about his “healthy” daughter. Dave Chappelle can’t tell jokes about transgenders. Joe Rogan can’t describe his recovery from COVID. Aaron Rodgers can’t take Rogan’s advice. Paul Gosar can’t make fun of AOC in a parody Twitter video.

    It’s all a play. It’s demoralization. You’re supposed to believe all of America is this way. It isn’t. Most of the country, regardless of how they vote, is the America you’ve always known. It’s the slimeball elite with the power to buffalo the normals into small concessions who are pushing this.

    The women posting their pronouns on dating profiles don’t even know why they’re doing it. They’re just trying to be nice, and they’ve never even stopped to consider the absurdity. Or if they have, they’re afraid of the mob.

    That’s demoralization. When you’ve decided it’s not worth fighting these aggressions, you’re demoralized. Those face diapers you’re wearing are “I’m Demoralized” signs, in case you haven’t noticed, and the head of the CDC just demanded you wear them forever.

    We’re clearly in the Destabilization phase. That began when Republican state legislatures in Arizona and Georgia and Wisconsin and other places didn’t stop the Left from altering the best practices of election integrity and allowed ballot harvesting and mail-in voting on a large scale. The results didn’t just change the outcome of a presidential election; they gravely damaged public confidence in American electoral integrity. You can see Lin Wood and Sidney Powell as cranks, and following the Virginia results last week you should, and still see massive problems with a system altered to allow Zuckerbucks into the sausage-making.

    January 6 might have been conceived as a protest against those electoral irregularities, but it was clearly executed, against the will of most of the participants, as an exercise in destabilization. Or do you really believe the same feds who gave us the faux Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot didn’t goad those protesters into the Capitol? And why else would so many patriotic Americans whose offenses hardly go beyond trespassing in a building leftist demonstrators breach on the regular be locked up without trial or bail for months on end?

    That’s destabilization. It’s an effort to provoke the “right-wing violence” the Left so badly needs.

    Our economy is being destabilized. It’s being destabilized at those ports in southern California where the supply chain has been broken, it’s being destabilized by trillions of dollars in wasteful government spending, and it’s being destabilized at the border. The administration continues goosing the demand side of the economy like “experts” in a not-so-farcical futuristic film water the crops with Brawndo; the effect is to make your purchasing power nil and to create shortages of everything. Soon there will be rationing; there always is. And when prices can no longer reflect the relative value of goods, the market economy is lost.

    The schools are broken. Your rights are forfeit. The Fifth Circuit issues a stay against Biden’s vaccine mandate for employers with 100 or more workers, so the administration begins talking about imposing it on even smaller companies. Biden levies war on the domestic oil and gas industry, creating a rift between supply and demand, and when the prices skyrocket he demands OPEC make up the difference. Asked whether a return to formerly sound policies might be coming, his energy secretary cackles, witchlike, and demurs from any responsibility.

    It isn’t incompetence. It’s the plan. It’s Cloward–Piven. It’s destabilization. They’re even gaslighting you, trying to make you believe it’s a good thing.

    You might think we’ve reached the next stage, which is the crisis from which the Marxist state arises and brings on normalization — your process of accepting your new fate. But the good — and bad — news is we haven’t.

    This isn’t the crisis, as bad as it feels. The real crisis hasn’t begun.

    The real crisis comes when China invades Taiwan. Or when the supply chain failure gets so bad that there is no food or fuel. Or when our small and medium-sized businesses, so battered by endless destructive government policies and facing death by OSHA vaccine mandate firing squads at $14,000 per bullet, shed workers and close shop. Or when the FBI begins arresting dissident journalists by the hundreds or thousands. Or when dozens of others of now-foreseeable horrors come to fruition. Destabilization begets crisis. This is just the stage being set.

    We aren’t there. But we can see it from here.

    Now is the time to fight back. Now is the time to exact a price from these people for what they’ve already done and what they plan to do. And that price had better be steep. Now is the time to speak loudly — and rudely. It’s the time for patriotic and like-minded Americans, who know who we are and the society and values we came from, to stand up and say, “Hell, no.”

    Virginia was a start. A baby step. Next year’s elections will be a bigger one. But pushback at the ballot box is nowhere near sufficient. We need mass non-compliance, not just with the Biden administration but with corporate America, local government tyranny, Big Tech, even within our social circles.

    It isn’t about starting fights. The fights have already been started. It’s about winning them, and making sure everyone knows they’ve been won.

    I keep saying it, but the revival has to begin now. We can’t wait for the crisis. And the timetable is short.

    Yuri Bezmenov would say the die is already cast. But he was wrong before about us. We’ve got to make him wrong again.

  3. Big Teacher Is Watching: How AI Spyware Took Over Schools
    The pandemic caused schools to embrace laptops, tablets, Zoom, and an app called GoGuardian that tracks everything students (and, sometimes, parents) do online.

    At Pekin Community High School, the teachers are something close to omniscient. Education, even in-person education, is digital in the Covid-19 era, and staff members use a piece of software to watch everything students do on school-issued laptops and to keep them off banned websites. The kids are aware. “They pretty much know that they’re being monitored 24/7,” says Cynthia Hinderliter, head of technology at the school outside Peoria, Ill.

    Still, class clowns persist. Hinderliter pulls up a detailed dashboard of student online activity, which reveals the identities of rule breakers. A yellow “EXPLICIT” label appears beside the name of a youngster who had typed “sexy girls” and “sugar daddy dating” into Google. Other students were searching YouTube for videos of a farming simulation game, guitar tutorials, and, for some reason, nursery rhymes about trucks. Another popular search: “How you bypass GoGuardian,” which is the name of the tracking software Pekin High uses. GoGuardian has been around since 2014, but the pandemic gave educators new reasons to adopt it. The software is quickly becoming almost as commonplace inside American classrooms as standardized tests.

    Even as schools throughout the U.S. have opened back up for full in-person instruction, they’ve generally kept the technologies they picked up during the unending months of Zoom lessons. This includes laptops and tablets, which some schools were already using before Covid, as well as apps that allow students to attend classes while they are quarantining after an illness or a potential exposure and software to allow educators to keep tabs on them.

    For kids that means their every keystroke, click, and search is recorded and analyzed by companies such as GoGuardian, which is based in Los Angeles. Its competitors include Gaggle.Net, Securly, and Bark Technologies. In addition to monitoring and website filtering, GoGuardian sells software tools for classroom management, video calling, and network security. Its most futuristic offering, Beacon, is an artificial intelligence feature the company claims can identify students who, based on their online behavior, are at risk of hurting themselves or others. Advait Shinde, GoGuardian’s chief executive officer, says his company plans to offer software for “classwork, homework, exams”—every aspect of primary and secondary school. “We haven’t fully realized what technology can do.” He imagines computer systems that recommend assignments and offer personalized curricula based on data GoGuardian collects. This summer he raised $200 million, valuing Liminex Inc. (the company’s official name) at more than $1 billion.

    Earlier this year, GoGuardian struck deals with state education departments in Delaware and West Virginia, which will give every school in both states access to the software. New York City, the nation’s largest district, recently signed a similar contract with the company, bringing GoGuardian’s potential reach to more than 23 million students. Some parents and privacy groups find the use of tracking software inside classrooms to be disturbing, but many school administrators (and many parents, for that matter) seem to regard those concerns as overblown. Schoolkids already turn over personal data to big companies when they mindlessly scroll through TikTok and Instagram, and surveillance in schools has been around for as long as there have been hall monitors. “I’ve always felt that they’re already being tracked,” says Pekin High’s principal, Joel Schmieg. Administrators at another GoGuardian customer—Success Academy, the large New York charter school network renowned (or infamous) for harsh discipline—say they hear demands from parents for more internet filtering, not less.

    Even if most educators believe that students should be monitored when they’re using computers, there’s far less clarity about what computers mean for the future of learning. For years, Silicon Valley has tried to leave its distinctive mark on education, but most attempts have failed. Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, haven’t been the game changer for higher education that futurists and TED talkers once described. Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million effort to remake the school system in Newark, N.J., led to allegations of corruption along with limited evidence of improvement. AltSchool, an education company backed by Zuckerberg and top venture capital firms and founded by former Google executives, started closing its 3D-printer-equipped classrooms in 2017 and got out of the business of operating schools entirely in 2019.

    Will this latest Silicon Valley foray into education end any differently? GoGuardian and similar apps were rushed into schools during the pandemic. Teachers like the apps, students accept them, and they even play in Peoria—or just outside it, anyway. But no one actually knows how well, or even if, these technologies work.

    In 2013, President Barack Obama unveiled ConnectEd, an initiative calling on schools to embrace the internet era and to give students cheap computers. Soon, iPads and Chromebooks started pouring into classrooms, and Shinde, then a programmer at Google, sensed an opportunity. He quit his job and, working with two acquaintances, created a browser widget called Laptop Lookout. It was supposed to help schools hunt down kids’ lost devices. Their pitch didn’t take, but it gave him a new idea.

    “This stuff is great and all,” Shinde recalls hearing when he talked to teachers. “But I’m having trouble keeping my kids from watching Netflix in class.” After unleashing the internet in classrooms, schools were desperate for ways to control it. The trio reworked their spiel into one for a web-censoring widget called GoGuardian. Rather than blocking entire websites—an approach that many corporate IT departments take to control what employees do on their work computers—the system they developed claimed to analyze text and pixels on each website to filter out only those deemed inappropriate or unwanted. So, in theory, teachers could send kids to Reddit and YouTube without worrying they might wander down distracting or darker paths. “You end up blocking much less,” Shinde says. Schools would pay a per-student fee (now around $5) for each GoGuardian product they used. GoGuardian raised $5 million in seed funding in 2015 and saw encouraging if unspectacular growth in its early years. In 2018 private equity firm Sumeru Equity Partners LP bought most of the company for an undisclosed price, and Shinde’s co-founders left, leaving him in charge.

    relates to Big Teacher Is Watching: How AI Spyware Took Over Schools
    GoGuardian CEO Shinde.COURTESY: GOGUARDIAN
    Shinde has no background in education, nor, at age 31, is he a parent—“not yet,” he says. But he’s won fans in the field simply by being more agreeable than the average tech bro. Many Silicon Valley executives selling products to schools “model themselves after Steve Jobs: ‘I know best,’?” says Tony Miller, a deputy secretary of education under Obama. Shinde met Miller in 2018 and recruited him to GoGuardian’s board. Shinde “had a real vision for improving education that was less about technology and more about its benefit,” Miller says.

    The pandemic gave Shinde’s pitch urgency. He sweetened the deal by offering GoGuardian software for free on a trial basis to any school that wanted it. Teachers can see students browsing the web in real time. “It’s like the teacher is there with them,” says Marshall Beyer, education technology coordinator for the Turlock Unified School District in California’s Central Valley, where GoGuardian tracks roughly 14,000 students. If a kid is playing a video game instead of working, the teacher can commandeer the screen and force-quit the game. There are Reddit threads from teachers cataloging student Googling, ranging from the banal (photos of potatoes) to the discomfiting (“cat poop” and “how much does horse semen cost”).

    More than 1,000 schools signed up for free trials in the spring of 2020, and some of those paid for accounts at the end of the school year. In some cases new customers used federal Covid relief funds for the purchase. That fueled whiplash growth for GoGuardian: Since March 2020 the company has added 253 employees, bringing its total to about 480, and Shinde acquired two other ed-tech startups.

    The schools—not GoGuardian—decide what to block on kids’ computers, though this isn’t always clear to pupils. Precocious seventh graders once emailed Shinde to complain that their district in New Jersey had blocked the New York Times but let right-wing outlets such as Breitbart News slide. The seventh graders blamed Shinde. He set up a video call to explain to the students that GoGuardian didn’t make filtering decisions and suggested they lobby their administrators. He hasn’t heard from them since. “From our perspective,” he says, “we’re not in a position to say what’s right or wrong.”

    Pekin High was flooded with alerts and “kids searching for problematic stuff,” Hinderliter says. “Problematic would be porn”

    Pekin is a blue-collar town. Its public high school sits next to a strip mall with a Pizza Hut and a nail salon and is 1 mile from a park that claims to have the “world’s greatest sundial.” (It isn’t the tallest sundial in the world, or even in the country, but it does have informative plaques about the solar system, and there’s a lagoon nearby.)

    Pekin High signed up for GoGuardian three years ago, after doling out bare-bones Acer Chromebooks to its 1,800 students. Every summer the school gives graduates a chance to keep their computers (for $25 each) and orders a fresh batch of 500. With the help of a few members of the school staff, Hinderliter sets up each laptop, which comes equipped with only a web browser, adding some library and math programs, and a software widget for recording online lessons.

    On the computer at her desk, nestled in a corner of the school library, Hinderliter is already logged in to GoGuardian. She opens a dashboard labeled “Fleet” and pulls up a digital map, revealing the location of each laptop. “This one says that it’s 6 miles away,” she says, pointing to the screen. It’s summer vacation, so the student is online at home. “That’s very useful when we have a stolen Chromebook.”

    It’s taken a while for Hinderliter and her team to figure out what to do with all the intel pouring in. After first introducing GoGuardian, Pekin High was flooded with alerts and “kids searching for problematic stuff,” she says. “Problematic would be porn.” Her philosophy is fairly liberal. A few questionable Google queries won’t result in any discipline, though she calls students to her desk to warn them not to cross lines on a school laptop. “We don’t have the time or the staff to monitor every little thing they do,” she says.

    Repeat offenders are put in what she calls “the penalty box”—a virtual form of detention that locks them out of anything unrelated to schoolwork. Hinderliter clicks on the search history of the sophomore recently busted for Googling “sexy girls,” unfurling a string of time stamps and other naughty terms. Hinderliter is letting it go for now but is keeping an eye on him in case he continues to look for adult content. “For an entire semester, we might have a kid in the penalty box,” she says. Hinderliter says she also has to remind at least one student each year not to send love letters through school email accounts.

    For teachers, GoGuardian’s classroom tools are the major attraction. Riley Faille, a Pekin math teacher, says she logs in to GoGuardian from the laptop on her desk when she’s teaching so she can limit what students have open on their screens to only what she wants—a calculator or exam, for instance. During study halls she uses the software to watch what the students are doing. If someone strays from homework, she’ll open a tab on their screen and type GoDoYourWork.com. “I like stuff like that,” she says. She considers it a gentle way to remind them “Oh, I shouldn’t be doing this right now.”

    At the end of each class, Faille gets a report with pie charts summarizing what students were doing on their laptops, which helps her see if they missed something while she was teaching. But on days when students are home because they’re sick or quarantining, she finds GoGuardian less useful. Last year, Pekin split kids into two cohorts, with each coming in every other day. On work-from-home days, students were free to set their own schedules. When kids were in class in person, Faille blocked sites such as YouTube, but she couldn’t limit YouTube usage for students at home because they might need access to online videos for their Spanish or French assignments.

    No matter where kids are, Hinderliter watches GoGuardian closely every day. Almost half of Pekin’s high schoolers receive free or reduced lunch, and many take after-school jobs. During the pandemic, Hinderliter watched bills get paid and unemployment forms get filled out on student laptops, knowing that her kids’ Chromebooks were often the only computers at home.

    Sometimes she saw more troubling indicators. Around dinnertime on a Thursday earlier this year, Hinderliter received a panicked alert. A student had Googled “How to tell your girlfriend if you’re suicidal.” Hinderliter and three other administrators sprang to action in a text thread, so that a school official could call the student’s home and alert a guidance counselor. Hinderliter declines to share details, other than to say that the student was ultimately all right.

    Schmieg, the principal, says GoGuardian can help catch a slip in a student’s mental health well before teachers, counselors, or loved ones might notice. He says he has called parents, finding them entirely unaware that their child is in distress. “That’s happened multiple times in the past year,” he recalls.

    This school year, Pekin began using Beacon, which automates the process of alerting administrators about students the software deems most at risk. Schmieg says he received more than 40 alerts in the first week on the service. With each alert, the software created a report of the student’s online activity, so he and school staff wouldn’t have to dig through their search history to try to figure out what was going on. “I already love it,” he says.

    GoGuardian began testing Beacon back in 2018, but, like most of what the company offers, the service exploded in popularity after schools closed in March 2020. Last year, Clark County, an enormous district that includes Las Vegas, started using Beacon and saw more than 7,300 alerts, acting on almost a third of those. GoGuardian has promoted the new service as a way to combat the psychological strain students have faced during the pandemic. Shinde says the company “could be in a position to shine a flashlight on this issue.”

  4. “INVESTIGATION – Deadliest batches of the Covid-19 Vaccines were disproportionally sent to red Republican states across the USA”
    BY THE EXPOSÉ ON NOVEMBER 10, 2021 • ( 17 COMMENTS )
    https://theexpose.uk/2021/11/10/deadliest-batches-of-covid-vaccine-sent-to-red-states-in-usa/
    Excerpt:
    That investigation also led to the discovery that 130 different lot numbers of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine distributed to more than 13 states, harmed on average 639 times more people, hospitalized on average 109 times more people, and killed on average 22 times more people than the 4,289 different lt number of Pfizer vaccine distributed to 12 states or less.
    However, the most shocking finding of the investigation was that 100% of Covid-19 vaccine deaths reported to VAERS with identified lot numbers had been caused by just 5% of the batches produced. But the deeply troubling findings don’t end there, because we decided to conduct further analysis of the VAERS data on the Covid-19 vaccines, and we’ve discovered that the majority of the deadliest batches were clearly sent to Republican controlled red states across the USA.
    EXCERPT:
    The chart above shows that 96% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine had zero death reports made against them. Meaning the 2,828 reported deaths were associated with just 4% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine.
    Five lot numbers were associated with 61-80 deaths each, a further 5 lot numbers were associated with 81-100 deaths each, and just 2 separate lot numbers were associated with over 100 deaths each.
    EXCERPT:
    The same can be seen for the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. Ninety-five-percent of the lots of Moderna vaccine had zero death reports made against them. Meaning the 2,603 deaths were associated with just 5% of the lots of Moderna vaccine.
    Thirteen lot numbers were associated with 41-60 deaths each, 2 lot numbers were associated with 61-80 deaths each and 1 lot number was associated with 81-100 deaths.
    The original investigation of VAERS data also found that specific batches of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines which were distributed to between 13 and 50 states across the USA had an unusually high number of adverse event reports and deaths compared to lots that were distributed to 12 states or less across the USA

  5. Moderna CLASHES with US govt over jab patent rights

    COVID vaccine manufacturer Moderna and the US government are in dispute, with the drugs-maker claiming it is the sole inventor of a crucial component in a patent claim, despite having had help from federal scientists to create the jab.

    …. a lifesaving technology

    • reuters – NIH claims co-ownership of Moderna vaccine patent

      The U.S. National Institutes of Health intends to claim co-ownership of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine patent, according to NIH Director Francis Collins

    • Deutsche Pravda – 50,000 new infections: Germany’s political power vacuum impedes the country’s COVID response

      The rising cases have alarmed Germany’s top health officials and political leaders. Virologist Christian Drosten said the country could witness as many as 100,000 more deaths from the virus and called for urgent action.

      Chancellor Angela Merkel is pushing for talks with state premiers to craft a “quick and unified response” to the crisis.

      Some parts of the country are putting more pressure on unvaccinated citizens.

      On Monday, Berlin will require a certificate of vaccination or recovery for people entering public venues such as restaurants, gyms and hairdressers.

    • Miami-Dade pharmacy accidentally gives 5-year-old adult dose of COVID-19 vaccine

      Erin Slutak is all about the vaccines and said that she would get her son vaccinated again, but is urging parents to pay extra attention.

    • paul j watson – Despite Vaccine Passport Schemes, COVID Cases Surging Across Europe

      While no lockdown, no mandate Sweden is doing just fine.

      Despite vaccine passport schemes and high vaccination rates in many of the countries affected, COVID cases across Europe are surging once again.

      New coronavirus cases in Germany topped the 50,000 mark for the first time, with authorities pushing for the imposition of more restrictions on top of the ones that haven’t worked.

      As Will Jones writes, “A late autumn surge in reported Covid infections is underway in Europe, with spikes in Austria, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Norway, and the possible beginnings of one in France, Portugal and Italy. This is despite high vaccine coverage and the heavy use of vaccine passports in most of these countries including Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Italy and France.”

      Jones notes that there is no new variant of the virus causing the spike and that virtually all of these countries already experienced a surge due to the delta variant.

      Since all these countries have relatively high vaccination rates, one can only assume that the new surge is partly due to the waning effectiveness of vaccines.

      As we highlighted yesterday, a choir concert in Germany that allowed only fully vaccinated or recovered people to attend, banning those who are unvaccinated but could provide a negative test, resulted in a COVID-19 outbreak that infected at least 24 people.

      One place where COVID cases and deaths remain low compared to other European countries is Sweden, which never imposed a hard lockdown and has no vaccine passport scheme or mask mandate.

      You’d think there might be a lesson in that.

      But apparently, the very existence of “herd immunity” is now a ‘dangerous conspiracy theory’.

      https://summit.news/2021/11/11/despite-vaccine-passport-schemes-covid-cases-surging-across-europe/

    • twitter @fox5dc

      JUST IN: The Virginia Department of Health has confirmed that a pharmacy in Loudoun County incorrectly administered the COVID-19 vaccine formulated for those 12 years and older to children aged 5-11 years old.

      https://twitter.com/fox5dc/status/1458629871635255298

      ===============================================

      Virginia pharmacy incorrectly administered COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 5 to 11

      LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va. (FOX 5 DC) – The Virginia Department of Health has confirmed that a pharmacy in Loudoun County incorrectly administered the COVID-19 vaccine formulated for those 12 years and older to children aged 5-11 years old.

      VDH believes that 112 children aged 5-11 years old were impacted by this situation on Nov. 3-4 at Ted Pharmacy in Aldie, which resulted in these children receiving a lower dose than recommended.

      On November 5, state and federal authorities ordered the pharmacy to discontinue administering the vaccine, and VDH subsequently collected all COVID-19 vaccines at the pharmacy.

      Officials instructed the pharmacy to notify parents about next steps, including the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding whether patients should restart the vaccine series or receive a correct second dose.

      VDH is also working to contact parents and ensure they understand the guidance on next steps.

      VDH has not received any other reports of pharmacies or providers administering COVID-19 vaccines formulated for 12 years and older to children 5-11 years old.

      VDH contacted other pharmacy partners with additional communication that outlined vaccine administration guidance. VDH also issued a letter to clinicians outlining information about this new vaccine formulation on Nov. 5, which was drafted prior to receiving this report.

      https://www.fox5dc.com/news/virginia-pharmacy-incorrectly-administered-covid-19-vaccine-to-children-ages-5-to-11

    • city news – Anti-vaxxers disrupt Kelowna Remembrance Day ceremony

      …leading to outrage from attendees.

    • city news – New COVID-19 treatment comes to Alberta

      What is Sotrovimab?

      Alberta started using the new COVID-19 treatment Tuesday.

      Carly Robinson speaks with infectious disease doctor Daniel Gregson, who says this is very good news for transplant recipients and others.

    • “INVESTIGATION – Deadliest batches of the Covid-19 Vaccines were disproportionally sent to red Republican states across the USA”
      BY THE EXPOSÉ ON NOVEMBER 10, 2021 • ( 17 COMMENTS )
      https://theexpose.uk/2021/11/10/deadliest-batches-of-covid-vaccine-sent-to-red-states-in-usa/ Charts & reference links are at article link
      Excerpt:
      That investigation also led to the discovery that 130 different lot numbers of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine distributed to more than 13 states, harmed on average 639 times more people, hospitalized on average 109 times more people, and killed on average 22 times more people than the 4,289 different lt number of Pfizer vaccine distributed to 12 states or less.
      However, the most shocking finding of the investigation was that 100% of Covid-19 vaccine deaths reported to VAERS with identified lot numbers had been caused by just 5% of the batches produced. But the deeply troubling findings don’t end there, because we decided to conduct further analysis of the VAERS data on the Covid-19 vaccines, and we’ve discovered that the majority of the deadliest batches were clearly sent to Republican controlled red states across the USA.
      EXCERPT:
      The chart above shows that 96% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine had zero death reports made against them. Meaning the 2,828 reported deaths were associated with just 4% of the lots of Pfizer vaccine.
      Five lot numbers were associated with 61-80 deaths each, a further 5 lot numbers were associated with 81-100 deaths each, and just 2 separate lot numbers were associated with over 100 deaths each.
      EXCERPT:
      The same can be seen for the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. Ninety-five-percent of the lots of Moderna vaccine had zero death reports made against them. Meaning the 2,603 deaths were associated with just 5% of the lots of Moderna vaccine.
      Thirteen lot numbers were associated with 41-60 deaths each, 2 lot numbers were associated with 61-80 deaths each and 1 lot number was associated with 81-100 deaths.
      The original investigation of VAERS data also found that specific batches of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines which were distributed to between 13 and 50 states across the USA had an unusually high number of adverse event reports and deaths compared to lots that were distributed to 12 states or less across the USA

  6. EU to blacklist Belarus airline ahead of economic sanctions, diplomats say
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-eu-blacklist-belarus-airline-ahead-economic-sanctions-diplomats-say-2021-06-01/
    The European Union is preparing sanctions on Belarus’ national airline and around a dozen top Belarusian aviation officials, three diplomats said, a stop-gap measure before economic sanctions following the forced landing of a passenger plane.
    The proposed asset freezes and travel bans are part of a package of new sanctions on Belarus from EU states, which are outraged that a Ryanair flight was pressed to land in Minsk on May 23 to arrest a dissident journalist and his girlfriend.
    EU governments, which described the incident as state piracy, say they are looking at targeting sectors that play a central role in the Belarus economy, to inflict real punishment on President Alexander Lukashenko. They could include bond sales, the oil sector and potash, a big Belarusian export.
    Before imposing such economic sanctions, the bloc is expected to agree by June 21 – when EU foreign ministers meet – a smaller sanctions list on individuals and two entities as a quick, intermediary response, the diplomats said.
    “All EU states agree with this approach,” one diplomat said. A second diplomat said there would be “a clear signal for Lukashenko that his actions were dangerous and unacceptable”.
    While the sanctions are still under discussion, EU ambassadors as early as Friday could pre-approve banning overflights and landing in EU territory by Belarus airlines, allowing EU ministers to formally sign off on them later in the month.
    Britain, no longer part of the EU, has suspended the air permit for Belarus’ national carrier, Belavia. The EU is expected to do the same, the diplomats said.
    [..]

  7. Lukashenko threatens to cut gas supplies to Yamal-Europe gas pipeline if EU imposes new sanctions, promises to send refugees dry firewood
    https://intellinews.com/index.php/lukashenko-threatens-to-cut-gas-supplies-to-yamal-europe-gas-pipeline-if-eu-imposes-new-sanctions-promises-to-send-refugees-dry-firewood-226655/
    Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko has threatened to cut off gas transit to Europe through his country by shutting down the Yamal-Europe pipeline if the EU imposes new sanctions on the country.
    The Yamal-Europe pipeline is part of the northern route that also includes the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and transits gas from Russia’s Arctic Yamal fields via Belarus to Poland and on to Germany.
    Currently the Yamal-Europe pipeline is playing a key role in delivering gas to alleviate the European gas crisis as the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline has not received EU permission to start operating and the Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom is not sending any more gas than it is required to under the terms of a new transit deal signed in December 2019. Europe is already suffering from an estimated 15bn cubic metre (bcm) gas deficit for this winter’s heating season and any more interruptions in supplies would send prices on the gas spot market soaring again.
    EU leaders met yesterday and floated the idea of imposing a fifth packet of sanctions on Belarus, which has been bussing thousands to Middle Eastern refugees to the Polish border, who are attempting to cross illegally into the EU. Blocked by some 15,000 Polish border guards and soldiers, the situation in the forest between the two countries is rapidly turning into a humanitarian crisis. The EU foreign ministers are due to meet next week and could vote on new retaliatory sanctions on Minsk.
    “They have started to intimidate us with the fifth package [of sanctions]. With regard to this fifth package, the prime minister has been instructed to think of retaliatory measures,” Lukashenko said at a Council of Ministers meeting in Minsk, as cited by the state-owned BelTA news agency. “Poland is threatening us with the border closure. They are welcome to do it.”
    Both Poland and Lithuania have declared a state of emergency this week and closed the border for a month while the refugee crisis continues.
    Lukashenko went on to single out the Yamal-Europe pipeline for attention. The president noted that the gas pipeline goes through Belarus, and recently Russia has significantly increased the volume of gas transit to the West via the pipeline.
    [..]

  8. Migrants gathering around the sports palace of Minsk, Belarussia:
    https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1458762257672851462

    “A very interesting situation when foreigners can gather but Belarusians would have been immediately dispersed and sent to jail”: looks like the Belarussians are learning about migrant privilege / illegal privilege.

    OR it’s just a staging area for the hybrid war at the polish border:
    https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1458793086415425542

    This hybrid war is not very eco-friendly:
    https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1458762257672851462

  9. Norwegian Refugee Council calls on world to help Iran deal with hundreds of thousands of fled Afghans
    https://intellinews.com/index.php/norwegian-refugee-council-calls-on-world-to-help-iran-deal-with-hundreds-of-thousands-of-fled-afghans-226528/?source=iran
    The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) on November 10 sounded a warning that as many as 300,000 Afghans have crossed into Iran since the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan in August and that hundreds of thousands more are expected to arrive in the coming winter amid harsh below zero temperatures.
    Advising that as many as 4,000-5,000 Afghans have been arriving in Iran daily since the Taliban seized Kabul, often via informal border crossings, the NRC called for more international support to help Iran deal with the critical situation, pointing out that the country is in the midst of its own deep economic crisis.
    “Thousands of exhausted women, children and men are crossing from Afghanistan into Iran every day in search of safety. Iran cannot be expected to host so many Afghans with so little support from the international community,” said NRC secretary general Jan Egeland. “There must be an immediate scale up of aid both inside Afghanistan and in neighbouring countries like Iran, before the deadly winter cold.”
    “We commend Iran for welcoming and hosting millions of displaced Afghans for the past four decades. But now the international community must step up to support Afghanistan’s neighbours,” Egeland added.
    Violence and repression
    Iran is often the preferred destination for Shi’a Muslim minorities in Afghanistan who speak a Persian dialect and fear violence and repression from the Sunni Muslim and largely Pashtun Islamist fundamentalist Taliban. Tajikistan is the other neighbour of Afghanistan that speaks a Persian dialect.
    Iran and Pakistan together are thought to be hosting around 90% of the 5mn Afghans displaced outside their country, although not all of these are counted as refugees. UN agencies, meanwhile, have said up to 22.8mn people of Afghanistan’s 39mn-strong population are facing acute food insecurity as the Taliban regime—still unrecognised as a government internationally and with no access, for instance, to the Afghan central bank’s reserves frozen in the US—threatens to descend into an economic and humanitarian disaster.
    Egeland also said: “We’ve heard heartbreaking stories from families that have recently arrived in Iran. One refugee said they were targeted for being Shi’a Muslim, their few remaining possessions were taken, their house burned, and they had to flee multiple times within Afghanistan before reaching Iran. They were told that their daughters would be married off to fighters as soon as they reach the age of 10.”
    The United Nations refugee agency’s has launched an appeal to support Afghans fleeing to neighbouring countries. It calls for nearly $300mn to help up to 515,000 people that may flee before the end of the year. The appeal is only 32% funded so far. About $136mn of the total appeal funding is needed to support Afghans in Iran.
    ‘Stop deporting asylum seekers’
    The NRC added that while a large number of Afghan refugees are not moving towards Europe yet, all rich nations should both ramp up aid and keep their borders open to those fleeing conflict and persecution. “European nations, including Poland, must stop deporting Afghan asylum seekers and review all failed applications in light of the crisis,” it said.
    The NRC also noted that some 3.6mn Afghans reside in Iran, although only 780,000 are recognised as refugees. It said Iran would be the second largest refugee hosting country in the world after Turkey, if all Afghans were recognised as refugees.
    Iran, meanwhile, is among the most Covid-affected countries in the region. Close to 6mn people have been infected officially, while the number of reported associated deaths is over 126,000. Iran has been vaccinating Afghan refugees, including those undocumented, the NRC said.
    Afghan children in Iran, regardless of the legal status of their parents, can enrol in public schools together with Iranian children. “This is an example of one of the most inclusive refugee policies globally,” said the NRC.
    Overall, more than half of Afghanistan’s population are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations.

  10. November 11 2021 Belarus leader says he needs Russian nuclear-capable bombers to navigate border crisis
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-nuclear-capable-bombers-rehearse-bombing-runs-belarus-training-exercise-2021-11-11/
    Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday he needed Russian nuclear-capable bombers to help him navigate a migrant crisis at the Poland-Belarus border after two Russian Tu-160 planes rehearsed bombing runs in a training exercise.
    [..]

    ‘No going back’: Migrants tell of being trapped on Belarus-Poland border
    https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/no-going-back-migrants-tell-being-trapped-belarus-poland-border-2021-11-10/
    Syrian migrant Youssef Atallah feared he would die in the forest on the Polish border after being left without food or water in freezing cold, unable to breathe through his nose after it was broken by what he said was an assault by a Belarusian soldier.
    [..]

    Latest: EU’s Borrell cites ‘danger to Europe’ to sell military plan
    https://www.nbs24.org/en/2021/11/11/51031/latest-eus-borrell-cites-danger-to-europe-to-sell-military-plan/
    European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell says since “Europe is in danger,” it is vital for the bloc to agree on his “guide to action” — an ambitious military doctrine — in order to become a security provider for its citizens by creating an emergency military force before 2025.
    Borrell made the warning during a meeting with major European media outlets on Wednesday, stressing that European citizens wanted to be protected by the bloc, which is why it must become a security provider.
    “We need to have rapid deployment capabilities,” he stressed, adding that as the first step, it would be necessary to create a rapid crisis force, composed of 5,000 soldiers.
    The US-led NATO, however, remains primarily responsible for Europe’s collective defense, Borrell emphasized.
    Commenting on the first draft of the EU’s so-called Strategic Compass, which is meant to guide the implementation of the security and defense dimension of the bloc’s Global Strategy, he added that European citizens “want member states to improve their capacities in order to be more effective, and they want to project Europe in the world because they know that our security starts far away from our borders and depends on the security of our partners.”
    [..]

  11. the gateway pundit – EXCLUSIVE: Archbishop Vigano Shares Letter with TGP Directed Towards Tomorrow’s Protesters Against Health Tyranny in Switzerland

    Today TGP received a message from Archbishop Vigano in regards to freedom from tyranny masquerading as a vaccine. We share this in its entirety.
    Archbishop Vigano shared:

    Allow me to send you the message that Dr Robert Kennedy jr with his Foundation (Children Health Defense) asked me to release on the occasion of an important demonstration in Bern (Switzerland), against the health dictatorship, this Friday 12 November.

    On the 13th, Dr. Kennedy will also be in Milan for another event, in which our mutual friend Francesco Toscano will also participate.

    We have highlighted the following excerpts from Archbishop Vigano’s message:
    Allow me to ask you all some questions.

    Are you protesting because of a limitation of your constitutional liberties, or because you realize that these first control measures are only the first step of a progressive cancellation of your individual liberty, absorbed by a State/Doctor that decides for you how to treat you, of a State/Master that decides if and when you can leave the house, work, go to a restaurant, and travel?

    Are you demonstrating against the green pass and yet accepting the narrative about the pandemic and the vaccines, or have you realized that this colossal farce is based on a virus produced in a laboratory that has been spread in order to create an emergency pandemic that would give a pretext for placing all of humanity under control?

    Have you taken to the streets because it annoys you to have to scan your QR-code in order to enter your office or factory and yet you have been inoculated with the experimental genetic serum, or have you realized that the so-called vaccines are ineffective, the risk of even grave adverse long- and short-term side effects, and that the pharmaceutical houses who are using you as guinea pigs have no responsibility, and that if you get sick or die they will not have to pay any damages or respond criminally to any court?

    And this:

    True freedom is instead the ability to act within the limits of the Good, and this is the freedom to which you ought to aspire, this the freedom that you ought to claim with courage and pride, this the freedom that “will set you free” (Jn 8:32).

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    Archbishop Vigano’s full speech translated into English below:

    https://fr.scribd.com/document/538974906/AB-Viganon-Demonstration-in-Switzerland-11-12-2021#download&from_embed

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    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/11/exclusive-archbishop-vigano-shares-letter-tgp-directed-towards-tomorrows-protesters-health-tyranny-switzerland/
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    Here is Archbishop Vigano’s speech in Italian.