ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY: Recent Episodes
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Beginning in July of 2022 a series of articles here and on Disaster X have been examining and questioning what it means to declare crime a “public health emergency”. The case is that of Trinidad & Tobago, which is being used as a lab experiment by US agencies. This is relevant to important new research showing that in the US, the military and the national security state more broadly, drove the so-called “pandemic response” with the so-called “War on Covid”. The line between militarization and public health has been blurred beyond recognition. Drawing from this framework, in Trinidad the practice of “lockdowns” and the concept of “public health” have been weaponized and enlisted in the service of “national security”. A “war” requires combat, sacrifice, the loss/surrender of freedom and money, and authoritarian leadership, as General Stanley McChrystal explained—regimentation and confiscation in the name of security, thus fit the paradigm perfectly. Continuing the war theme, to this date the CDC continues to use telling language: “Vaccines continue to be the most important weapon in the fight against COVID-19”. Given the actual practice of lockdowns, emergency decrees, quarantines, firings, arrests, psychological operations, and censorship—the CDC is not using merely figurative expressions. In other ways the war continues with the practice of locking down being expanded, as in the US’ current ban on “unvaccinated” foreign travellers, which effectively amounts to a Black Travel Ban since those most affected constitute half or more of the Caribbean population and most of Africa. (For the complete series of three articles, click here for the PDF.)
[Dr. Aaron Kheriaty discusses how the Dept. of Homeland Security, created in the aftermath of 9/11 and encompassing the entire US military and intelligence apparatus, was in charge of Covid. This “new abnormal” is in fact an additional iteration of the military-industrial complex. Aaron Kkeriaty, featured in the above video clip from CHD.TV, discusses this. It is worth watching the complete video from the original source.]
The prime minister of Trinidad & Tobago promised to elaborate publicly on what he meant by his “public health approach” to crime—he has yet to do so formally, but has apparently put the idea into practice. That has left us with the task of deciphering the logic (the theory) by studying the actions taken. We now have a much more definite answer to the question, “What is a public health approach to crime?”
We have a basic outline of an answer. A “public health approach to crime” involves:
- Hierarchy: white collar crimes are excluded; the focus is on crimes alleged to have been committed by members of the working class, particularly youths.
- Emergency: implementing extraordinary measures, which can venture into the extra-legal domain; also, this heightens executive power. Democratic debate is neither invited nor factored into any of the decision-making.
- Totalitarianism: crackdowns combined with surveillance, are an attempt to close down a social system. Police become the new instruments of “public health”.
- Lockdowns: borrowing from/imitating the Chinese–originated and Chinese–promoted policy and practice implemented to “fight Covid,” which Trinidad like so many other countries imported, there is an invention of an existential crisis that requires radical containment measures.
- Indiscriminate Punishment: collective punishment, on all members of a designated socioeconomic sector, without any evidence or formal charges laid, without any trials, and even without a logic that rationalized the action as fair or appropriate.
- Economic intervention: the state assumes the right to intervene in an industry, by force, and and cancel the exercise of the right to private property.
- Confiscation: the state then places itself in charge of the occupied industry which was targeted by the lockdown.
The focus in this article, given recent events and announcements, is on the last four points above.
Before proceeding, it is important to note that when the government of Trinidad & Tobago talks about “targeting crime,” it is only the crime of a particular class that concerns the government. The much larger crimes of the rich and powerful are simply not included in the government’s “targeted” approach. This is true despite the fact of what is publicly well known. For example, in August of 2019, Trinidad’s The Guardian published this report: “THE MILLION-DOLLAR BUSINESS OF CRIME…police intelligence report names ‘big fish’”. In that article we read the following and it should be kept in mind (emphases added here, and anywhere else the reader finds them):
“Close to 40 prominent businessmen—from south, central and east Trinidad—who are linked to major drug and human traffickers, gun runners, gang leaders and murderers fuelling the multi-million dollar criminal enterprise in this country, have been named in a police intelligence report.
“These businessmen, who are being protected by some members of the T&T Police Service on their payroll, are among 100 people of interest identified in a confidential 2019 police intelligence report obtained by Guardian Media….
“These businessmen have formed symbiotic relationships with the underworld to rake in millions and are contributing to the rising homicides and increased lawlessness now pervading the country.
“The eye-opening report identifies people who have registered businesses which they are using as fronts to run lucrative human trafficking and prostitution rings.
“Guardian Media, in its special investigation on sex slavery done in May, had identified several complicit law enforcement officials who have aided and abetted these businessmen.
“The businessmen pay hitmen to execute people who interfere with their business and illicit operations, hire gang leaders in particular areas to provide security on various projects, or move contraband and assist with other activities….
“The question, however, remains: Why hasn’t the police acted on some of these ‘big fish’ if they were aware of their activities for some time?”
One rhetorical move that has become a standard part of the government’s narrative, is that of deflection. Rather than take responsibility for the police service itself not arresting known kingpins, and even collaborating with them, the prime minister accused the public of “protecting criminals”. The move is a familiar one: a downward transfer of blame to the mass of the society, and an upward extraction of capital.
Interestingly, and in a rare case where the truth is blurted out so clearly, Trinidad’s Minister of National Security, Fitzgerald Hinds, argued that his job is not to ensure the safety and protection of citizens:
“No, my duty is not to ensure that people feel safe and secure. My duty is to ensure that those organisations and agencies that are responsible for the public’s safety, border security, that they are clear about what the people through the Government’s policy is, that they are provided with the resources that they need, and that I lend encouragement and general support to them, that’s my duty”.
Thus another question that remains is: if the state does not seek to protect the population, then who or what is the state actually protecting?
Targeted Lockdowns: Expanding State Power, Deepening DependencyJust like international sanctions that are intended to shut down a target nation’s ability to import and export, and just as indiscriminate, a new form of collective punishment has been added by the Trinidadian state to the arsenal of state repression: targeted lockdowns. The pretext of “fighting Covid-19” provided the rationale and the necessary social and political conditioning that enabled use of this indiscriminate tool. Instead of “two weeks to flatten the curve,” in this particular case what we encounter is “six months to stop the crime”. However, not only does the tactic fail to address the actual source of the crime, or even target the criminals themselves, or address the most serious crimes, it will not stop the specific problem from reappearing if or when the targeted lockdown is ended. Thus, just like Covid lockdowns, industrial lockdowns fail to address the alleged problem, while threatening to make the problem much worse. To make matters even more twisted, the crime lockdown is utilized to address the harms and losses caused by the Covid lockdowns—even if the state officially pretends that no such harms happened and instead boasts that “we spent money to save your lives”.
And this is all done knowingly and deliberately. The central message in this story is that the state can and will interfere with and even kill a local, independent industry that allows people excluded from the formal economy to find a means of subsistence. In place of earnings from their own hard work, gained from their own two hands, they are offered not even state handouts but rather the opportunity to apply for state grants. Independent self-reliance is forcefully transformed into dependency.
Rule by EmergencyThis act of treating crime officially as a “public health emergency” is a supposedly novel, experimental strategy developed for Trinidad by foreign agencies, particularly USAID and the broader US federal state which itself operates in a permanent state of emergency. However, it needs to be noted, the combination of “health” and “security” is also to be found in China’s notion of fangkong, applied to combating “extremism”.
Trinidad’s approach—if one can call it Trinidad’s—bears a clear American imprimatur where rule by emergency is designed to stigmatize and then persecute local alternatives to the dominant regime, with the aim of destroying them. “Covid” and authoritarian politics thus form a closed loop. The implantation of “the pandemic” was never itself primarily a biomedical operation, rather epidemiology was used as a mask. The “pandemic” was first and foremost political, from the outset to the present. If the dominant medicine looked too much like “Bad Medicine,” it is because the politics driving bad medicine was even worse.
The Story of Scrap Iron in TrinidadSome background for this story is needed, and here we need to go into some of the particulars of this Trinidadian case which revolves around an economic activity in the informal sector: the collection of scrap metal of any kind (“scrap iron”) and its export. Trinidadians are very familiar with trucks calling out from their mounted loudspeakers as they patrol every inch of the large island: “Buying scrap iron, old battery buying!” Collectors will pay residents in any neighbourhood for any metal items which they wish to dispose, whether old appliances or leftover building materials, or discarded sheets of metal roofing, and so on.
Long-standing accusations are that some scrap metal collectors go the extra mile: taking down power lines to extract the copper, is a legendary example. Pious letters of indignation sent to the editors of local newspapers further entrench outlandish stories of theft committed in broad daylight, thus adding to the folklore. The result is neighbourhoods left without electricity, or utility hubs unable to pump water, deliver electricity, or maintain telephone service. Even church bells have gone missing. Still, there is no actual evidence that members of the local Scrap Iron Dealers Association are actually responsible. Anybody can steal metal and then deliver it to a scrap yard for money. Does it therefore follow that the industry itself is to be indicted? The government’s answer to this question is in the affirmative.
Tensions between the industry, represented by the Scrap Iron Dealers Association (SIDA), and some members of the public, and between the industry and government, have been developing for years. Alleged theft, and attempts by the state to displace the industry, have been at the centre of public debates.
For its part, scrap iron dealers have been publicly acknowledged by the government itself for having taken various steps on their own to “regularize” the industry by formally registering and identifying metal collectors.
The Political Economy of “Scrap Iron”“Buying scrap iron, old battery buying!” is a recorded line sung repeatedly from the loudspeakers of a truck, and one hears it in literally every neighbourhood in Trinidad. I personally heard it in 2019 and 2020. You can hear and view one such truck here. The ad is so famous in the country that it has been memorialized in at least two songs (such as the one below, sung by Leon Coldero in the local genre of Christmas music known as Parang).
The industry in Trinidad, rooted in the self-directed and independent efforts of low income, working class individuals who would likely be unemployed otherwise, has witnessed strong increases in profitability. This is true not just locally, but globally.
Locally, the scrap metal industry not only generates income for collectors and processors, but also generates crucial foreign exchange at a time of limited foreign exchange reserves held by the Central Bank. There are also downstream industries supported by scrap iron workers, that supply everything that they need to live everyday, from food markets to local parlours. Even in terms of foreign trade, shipping companies would suffer painful losses in the event of the industry being locked down: the majority of shipping containers holding exports from Trinidad, are filled with scrap metal, according to SIDA.
Globally, “with China’s increasingly voracious appetite for metal to feed its growth spurt,” scrap metal is prized. According to one source,
“recycling…generates more jobs than mining. Some of the most commonly recycled metals in the world and what their exports are valued at are: iron ($22.9B), copper ($12.4B), aluminum ($8.81B), stainless steel ($4.53B), nickel ($446M), lead ($444M), zinc ($412M), and tin ($90.2M)”.
Another source estimates that the global scrap metal industry is worth $500 billion. According to the Bureau of International Recycling, 45% of worldwide annual production of steel, more than 40% of copper production, and almost 35% of aluminum is produced from recycled material. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the scrap metal industry, though commonly overlooked (and looked down upon), is a crucial part of the world economy. A different source estimates that the global scrap metal market will reach $368.7 billion by 2030, but also notes that it has been growing annually by 9.7%. Another analyst expects the market to grow by $340.73 million during 2023-2027, accelerating at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8%. Similarly, one more source estimates that the global scrap metal market size was valued at US $326.6 billion in 2021, and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.62%, reaching US $566.8 billion by 2027.
The Trinidadian state’s interest in this industry has grown in step with the industry’s proven profitability. In 2020, we learned that: “the Ministry of Trade, since 2013, has been trying to regulate this industry, which has been growing globally, as reflected domestically. Statistics provided by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) show scrap metal exports escalated from $69 million in 2009 (another source states it was $82 million) to $96 million in 2010, an increase of 39 per cent in a year”. Profits continued to grow to $216 million in 2018, and have increased further since then, reaching a zenith of $285 million in 2021. Trinidad is the 75th largest exporter of scrap metal in the world, which may seem like a rather humble place, until one remembers that it is an island, with a population of 1.4 million. Furthermore, in 2022 the industry brought in US $43 million, at a time when foreign exchange was in short supply.
The state added a twist, however: growing profitability was tied, it alleged, to a growth in domestic theft—an argument that would create the opportunity for a state takeover under the guise of “fighting crime”. The intention was already on its way to making policy in 2021. By late 2021, unnamed advocates in the media lobbied for transforming the industry in a manner that would pave the way for an eventual state takeover: “the industry can go much further with the help of revamped government policies as well as a more serious approach from the State….it’s precisely because of the concerns about the troubling aspects of the sector that the State should involve itself and regulate more through beefed-up laws and rules”. Ordinary, self-employed people had apparently become so successful, that other interests began to lust after their success: “the service performed by scrap dealers may well be regarded as policy gold….scrap dealers might more than carry their economic weight”. It was more than one newspaper article that described the industry as a “goldmine”.
On July 8, 2022, Prime Minister Rowley publicly announced that he would seek the advice of the Attorney General on banning the marketing of scrap metal. It was in that same month that Rowley announced that crime was a “public health emergency”.
Controlled Opposition: A Collaborator in their MidstIt could be said that Allan Ferguson, the president of the Scrap Iron Dealers Association (SIDA), does not appear to be the astute, pragmatic, or even charismatic leader that his members deserve. Recently, when a church bell was stolen, he issued a public apology—thereby implicating his membership in the theft, even though no such thing had been proven. If the missing bell had been brought to one of the yards, then he ought to have known about it, and the police would have found it. Had the bell been delivered, then the guilty party would have also been known—somebody at a yard had to pay the culprits for the bell. Ferguson has not asked police to provide evidence that anyone in his association is guilty of theft. Accusations are made against scrap iron dealers for thefts from the telephone and electricity companies, without casting a suspicious eye on the employees of those companies themselves—even when government officials themselves hinted at the possibility of attacks on public utilities being an inside job. In other words, everything has been done to focus all blame on one single entity: scrap iron dealers.
There is no shortage of evidence that the police have in fact been able to tackle the vast majority of alleged scrap metal crimes, with an unusually high success rate. Police data revealed that, “in 2020 there were 58 reports of scrap-iron theft and they arrested 30 people. In 2021, police responded to 87 reports and 52 people were brought before the court. Between January and August this year [2022], a total of 162 reports were made and police arrested 136 people”. In other words, police arrested people in 84% of all reported cases of theft. This does not sound like there is a crisis in policing the industry, requiring special, additional measures. Indeed, local politicians have made the point that the police should simply be left to continue doing their job.
As if to underscore his role as the state’s intermediary, it was Ferguson who made himself complicit in demanding strong action by the state, against his own industry. In a report on July 4, 2022, Ferguson pleaded for the government to take action to stop copper theft: “trust me, the longer you take to stop the theft and crime from taking place, the stronger you will make the criminals”. Indeed, as president of the scrap iron association, Ferguson had himself urged the government to halt the export of copper. He did all this even as “he expressed suspicion that a case is being made out against scrap iron dealers as the perpetrators, to justify the handing over of the industry to a foreign conglomerate”. He then complained, “Anything poor people have, they [the wealthy] take it”. Why Ferguson would then facilitate the state, given the feared outcome, is something he would need to explain.
Dependency on the state, and specifically the ruling party, would seem to run counter to the independent ethos of scrap iron collectors. However, Ferguson established precedents that exposed his association to the danger of dependency. In the recent past, he cried out to the prime minister to assist his association in obtaining the scrap metal from a shuttered refinery, and the language is unmistakably that of an almost child-like supplicant: “Mr Prime Minister, you are a man that I watch, and I don’t lie: I admire you as a prime minister. Please, I know you are busy, but please hear our cries. I am not fighting for me, I am fighting for my organisation”. This a pattern that repeats all too often in Trinidad: members of the public identify a problem; they cry out for the government to “do something”; then the government takes action that is either a blunder which makes the problem worse, or is brutally heavy-handed; and, then the complaint is about what the government has done. Especially after the past three years, the last thing any Trinidadian should want is more government intervention in their affairs.
Further eroding the industry’s independent position as part of the unregulated informal economy, Ferguson called out to the government to “regularize” the scrap iron industry, and make it part of the established, institutional, regulated economy. He demanded “recognition” of the industry as a “viable employer” and “foreign-exchange earner”. Why his members would need such recognition was not explained. Also, surely the self-employed scrap iron collectors/vendors already know that they are viable employers—the actual association itself is not their employer. Having the state regulate their earnings also suggests the likelihood of losing income to pay taxes. One has to wonder for which side Ferguson is batting. Members of his own organization openly denounced him to the press. Scrap iron workers faulted the association’s executive for not coming to their aid once the lockdown was imposed:
“Another worker Keevon Perry said the association was not helping them. ‘They have not reached [come] here. So who is helping out us, the people?’ Perry said he was the breadwinner in his house. ‘Without this job, there is nothing for us. No one is hiring us’. He claimed the association was only seeing about itself and not its workers”.
Under Ferguson, measures were introduced to self-regulate against metal theft, just as the state indicated its growing interest in the industry. The state’s growing interest exactly matched the growing profitability of the scrap metal industry.
Ferguson, as president of the TT Scrap Iron Dealers Association (TTSIDA, or just SIDA), is on record for explicitly supporting state intervention in the industry whose independence he was charged with protecting. The language he used was that of abject dependency: “The only way we can improve ourselves is by working with the government to do what we have to do”. Government, according to Ferguson, exists to “improve” people. He then blamed the scrap iron dealers: “We, as dealers, cause most of our problems”. As a collaborator, and one who has turned against the majority of SIDA’s members, one wonders how Ferguson has kept his position, or whether the position retains any significance. The apparent betrayal may remind us of the leaders of Canadian faculty unions demanding policies of mandatory vaccination, knowing full well it would lead to some of their own members getting fired.
Support from independent media and social media activists fell far short of anything resembling solidarity—though the media published some expressions of sympathy from members of the public for the scrap iron workers. Instead stances of even anti-government activists was, by and large, patronizing and distant. The concern expressed was that scrap iron collectors, locked out of their jobs, might engage in disruptive protests that could inconvenience commuters. “You don’t want to turn the population against you,” cautioned Stephan Reis (host of “Breaking Dawn” and member of the Progressive Empowerment Party). Yet, the population on the whole has never been perceptibly for the scrap iron collectors, and has generally done nothing to support them since they have been locked out.
The policy announced by the Trinidadian government in 2021 involved sweeping regulation that would pry the scrap metal industry away from the informal economy. This was the very same “recognition” for which Ferguson, the president of the scrap iron dealers, had been praying. In particular, the government announced that,
“the policy seeks to provide the framework that will ensure compliance with health and environmental requirements, an improved licensing and monitoring system for the industry, reduction in the incidence of scrap metal theft, an increased accountability and transparency for tax administration”.
Ferguson endorsed this, even as the country’s leading industrial relations expert voiced strong concerns. This, according to former Senator Diana Mahabir-Wyatt, was a reprise of old colonial legislation designed to stamp out small entrepreneurs. The government’s policy would impose hefty new fines for failing to provide proof of written receipts for metal purchased from citizens, demanding a degree of literacy that would sometimes be problematic, and licensing requirements discriminated against ex-prisoners. Ferguson has been on board with the government, and Mahabir-Wyatt did not fail to suggest that.
One immediate consequence of the licensing system—endorsed by Ferguson himself—was the immediate halt or prolonged delay by the state in issuing licenses. Ferguson complained: “we are constantly denied licences to work”. But that was the apparent intention. Speaking out of the other side of his mouth, Ferguson returned to criticizing: Trinidad’s scrap iron, he said, has a huge export market which generates handsome revenue for dealers and “this is why I believe those in authority are targeting this industry,” he said.
At first, the state wanted its “cut”; then it wanted the whole pie.
Locking Down an IndustryOn August 12, 2022, the government of Trinidad & Tobago decreed that all exports of scrap metal would be halted for a period of six months, thereby locking down the industry in the country. Anyone caught violating the ban, “will be liable to a $15,000 fine under the 1904 Metal and Marine Stores Act or a $1000 fine and/or imprisonment of 12 months under the Trade Ordinance”. By November, the government was to introduce new legislation governing the industry, and by February 23, 2023, the lockdown was set to end, unless government decided to renew it for a further three months. By January of 2023, the $15,000 fine was raised to a $100,000 fine.
Minister of National Security, Fitzgerald Hinds, even invoked the spectre of “terrorism”. Calling crime a “public health emergency” was not enough for this government. Hinds “saw the attacks [on public utilities] as a ‘larger plot’ which may need the Anti-Terrorism Act to prosecute and alluded to ‘political purposes’ at play”. This was a thinly veiled reference to the opposition United National Congress. The government in fact declared the issue of scrap metal theft, a “national security issue”. Thus 9/11 met Covid met January 6: national security, public health, and criminalization of opposition.
The ban effectively shut down the entire industry, since it is export-oriented. The ban directly impacted at least 20,000 workers in the scrap metal industry (others put the number at 25,000). Workers immediately organized and protested by shutting down some roads. Prime Minister Keith Rowley, never a light touch when addressing opposition, referred to all the protesting workers as, “marauding gangs of metal thieves”.
This is not the first time that a Trinidadian government has locked down the scrap iron industry. In 2011, under a state of emergency that was declared to fight crime, the government closed down the industry. In 2011 there was no declaration of a “pandemic,” and the opportunity to cast crime as a “public health” issue had not yet ripened.
On July 7, 2022, the prime minister, Dr Keith Rowley declared: “As a matter of national security, I have asked the Attorney General whether we should prevent, for a restricted time, the marketing of used metals in Trinidad and Tobago….Manhole covers, they selling that. They cut the cable. Now they cutting the water lines”. Suddenly, it was now a matter of national security, and as is the norm when things are cast in that manner, draconian actions thus become thinkable.
Out of work scrap metal collectors were told by the Trinidadian government that they could apply for food grants to support them during the lockdown—just as the government did with its Covid lockdowns. The response of the Minister for Social Development and Family Services, Donna Cox, was cold, distant, and bureaucratic. There was no sense of urgency in her public statements that suggested an awareness of a need to rush to the aid of families that the government itself had thrown into even deeper poverty. Opposition MPs condemned the government on that very basis:
“…it was clear that this rushed decision by the government, without any proper consultation of the industry, would have brutal consequences on citizens who will now struggle to put meals on the table, send children to school, and even repay loans.
“Having listened to the executive of the (association), it is clear that the government has acted totally recklessly by ignoring the fact that not only will tens of thousands be thrown onto the breadline, with this ban but it was done at a time when many of these workers were depending on this income to send their children back to school”.
Scrap iron workers who temporarily blocked roads in protest declared, “If we can’t eat, none of all you can eat”. However, by the end of August (2022), those protests had ceased. Some of the workers did note that crime—the very thing that the government purported to be targeting—would necessarily result: “The devil finds work for idle hands….Hungry people is angry people”.
SIDA’s president, Allan Ferguson, pleaded with the government numerous times to schedule a meeting with his association, in the days leading to the announcement of the ban. He was ignored. Ferguson even proposed limiting the ban to copper alone, since that was the metal at the centre of all the thefts from public utilities plants, rather than shut down the whole industry. He even threatened to sue the government if it imposed a six-month ban. When the government did just that, no lawsuit ensued. At the very least, it cannot be said that SIDA remained passive in the face of government threats: at every step it has proposed meetings, held press conferences, and offered reasonable alternatives as solutions. It was all for naught. Ferguson even tried appealing to the World Trade Organization, in what appeared to be a futile effort.
Trinidad is not alone in imposing a six-month ban. At almost the exact same time, South Africa also imposed a six-month ban, using the same pretext of “crime”. The Trinidad Plan seems to be international in scope, and it thus appears to be a planned menu that is being followed by others. The UK, though not engaged in locking down its industry, nonetheless passed the Scrap Metals Dealers Act in 2013 which “stipulates that all dealers must be licensed and prohibits cash trade, presumably to create a paper trail for transactions”. Sellers of scrap metal are identified in the UK. Interestingly, also in 2013, Trinidad adopted a similar law (apparently not enforced), which once again suggests international coordination.
“The shutdown of the industry for six months feels like a scorched-earth response,” wrote Paolo Kernahan, a prominent Trinidadian journalist. He also argued that it reflected a a “brainless” and “rudderless” policy on the part of the government. However, I argue that it is instead “rudderful,” and here Kernahan seems to have overlooked the bigger plan. Too often citizens assume that any harm done by government, is unintentional, accidental, and simply the product of stupidity. This gives all of the benefit of the doubt to the state, signing a blank cheque of assumedly benign intentions. Such an assumption does not square with the history of the modern state, rooted in organized violence, extraction, and racketeering. For some local opposition politicians, the lockdown was seen as deliberate overkill, a form of collective punishment carried out because of a handful of thieves (who may or may not have even been regular scrap iron workers).
“Something big is coming. We have to get organised,” said SIDA President Ferguson, after the lockdown had been announced. This reflects an awareness that the lockdown itself was only Phase 1 of the government’s bigger plan, which went well beyond the pretext of fighting crime. Ferguson personally distanced himself from the street protests by members of his own body.
The effects of the lockdown were felt regionally. We learned that traders from other parts of the Caribbean had been travelling to Trinidad to sell scrap metal. The closure of the industry would thus impact the incomes of economically marginalized persons beyond Trinidad’s shores.
Some in Trinidad saw a pattern, but did not quite explain it. One attorney wrote to the media reminding them that the same government had also shut down Petrotrin (the national oil refinery), Caroni Ltd. (all sugar production), and the Seafood Industry Development Company. The case of scrap iron differs, however: the industry is not being closed down for good, but rather as temporary move to facilitate much bigger moves.
Having realized the profitability of this homegrown industry, the Trinidadian government immediately set out to do a feasibility study to examine the sector’s “value chain”. “We want to see what the industry holds in terms of the entire value chain,” said the Minister of Trade and Industry in October of 2022.
Capturing an Industry: Locking Out CitizensWhen it comes to culture, very little is invented out of whole cloth, and thus a great deal is repeated with only some variation. Here we find the “terra nullius” principle coming back to life. Whether the speakers are government officials, opposition politicians, or the local mass media, all of them have spoken at one point or another of the scrap metal industry as an opportunity to be maximized, as wealth to be realized, as an industry to be explored. They all seem to forget that 25,000 people have already been doing that, and that the business has existed in Trinidad for over a century (in fact British colonial authorities imposed an Act to govern the industry in 1904). Instead, the authorities pretend as if the industry were a clean slate—which speaks volumes about their intentions: tabula rasa. Lockdown was Phase 1. Phase 2 is expropriation.
Prime Minister Rowley announced plans to “regularize” the scrap metal industry. This meant imposing state regulations, state surveillance, and control over the entire industry. The industry would thus cease to operate as an independent one, part of the informal economy. While National Security Minister Hinds, “dismissed the notion that the plan is a roundabout way of taking the industry away from the average citizen and putting it in the hands of his party’s financiers,” this turned out very quickly to be mere gainsaying. The industry has been taken away from the hands of average citizens.
On December 16, 2022, the Senate passed a Scrap Metal Bill (“An Act to create measures to regulate the business of dealing in scrap metals and for other related matters”), that would submerge the industry under state regulation and continued surveillance. Scrap iron workers would now be forced to waive any rights that defended them against search and seizure, with police being allowed entry to their premises at any time. Note that for roughly 90% of scrap iron workers, their homes are their work premises. Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales actually expressed bewilderment that any scrap metal worker would oppose police intrusions into their homes, unannounced and without a warrant: “I cannot understand why someone who is interested in operating in a legal, regulated manner…would have a problem with a law enforcement officer coming into their premises”. Anyone who felt their rights had been violated, he said, had recourse to the courts (and presumably an endless supply of cash to pay for lawyers’ fees).
Thus, with the stroke of a pen, scrap metal workers have lost effective, real possession of their own homes. The state has not just nationalized their personal living space, it directly threatens to eliminate their workspace: those who are squatters, and have no formalized and documented “town and country approval,” cannot receive a license to continue their work. Thus scrap metal workers either lose actual possession of their homes, or they lose the ability to work. This is an open assault; it is an act of aggression; and, it clearly will result in diminishing the life chances of those who are being targeted. This is itself commission of a crime, done in the name of combating crime.
The violation of citizens’ homes has now been normalized, in large part thanks to the ground being laid under the pretext of an alleged “Covid pandemic”. The expansion of bureaucracy into the business of everyday life is another key feature. One needs to remember that scrap iron workers in particular, are in many cases working in the informal sector because the state itself laid them off from industries shut down by the state—the same state that now wants to control them where they were forced to flee.
In addition, the registration of dealers threatened to collect all sorts of personal data, including characteristics usually described as “racial”. Even persons selling metal to scrap iron collectors would be required to furnish personal information, such as copies of their passport or national ID: “I can’t see people wanting to hand over that information to a man driving around saying, ‘Buying old iron, Old battery buying’,” said opposition Senator Jayanti Lutchmedial.
Almost immediately after the passage of the new Act, scrap iron dealers found that they were required to pay $200 for a registration sticker. Many could no longer afford to pay that amount. Without the sticker on their vehicles, they would be barred entry into collectors’ yards. Much worse is that the money they receive for the metal they deliver has been abruptly and inexplicably cut: “dealers are now paying them $500 per tonne rather than $1,000”.
Not failing in his role as double-talking collaborator, SIDA’s Ferguson called on the state to ensure that it would enforce the new Act. He echoed the government’s threats. SIDA would now be self-policing, alongside the state’s policing: “the association will have its own team of people who will inspect and monitor the industry to weed out any wrongdoers”. Ferguson even vowed to directly participate in enforcement: “If you send containers to operators without licenses, I will send the police to your house personally”. By February, 2023, Ferguson repeatedly called on the President of the Republic to sign the bill into law, so that it could be immediately enforced. He appeared to dismiss the concerns of the majority of SIDA’s members who store scrap metal in their household yards, simply reminding them that under the new law that will be an offence thus they should hurry to get rid of it (i.e., go out of business). Ferguson even called on the national population to rally in support of the proclamation of this law.
The Attorney General, in introducing the new bill, essentially criminalized the existing industry by engaging in hyperbole: “Significant also, in the scourge of illegality associated with this industry, is the proliferation of illegal scrapyards, money laundering and concealment of illegal firearms”. He made the average scrap iron worker sound like a gangster. Copper was to be banned for much longer than the lockdown: copper exports from Trinidad were also criminalized, under the bill which bans its export for at least a full year, to begin with. What is important to note is that, to date, not a single person has been prosecuted for metal theft, despite the numerous reported arrests.
Along with criminalizing scrap iron workers, the Attorney General could barely disguise the lust of interested parties that back him: “In 2020, the global trade of scrap metal was valued at approximately US$128 billion”.
President of SIDA, Allan Ferguson, “thanked the government” for the new Bill. He then noted the destruction it would bring to people’s lives. First, “people who worked in the landfill collecting scrap iron would no longer be able to do so”. Second,
“many dealers in the industry have houses behind their scrapyards, and some of them are squatting. So when the government is telling them they have to get Town and Country and EMA planning approval, it means they have to close their yards. The association was lobbying government to get lands for them, but they didn’t find it fit to grant them the lands, so 90 per cent of the dealers will not be able to operate, as the government doesn’t want anyone to have their house in a scrapyard”.
Third, anyone with a criminal conviction would not be allowed to acquire a license, thus further marginalizing many workers and driving them to the abyss of extreme poverty (and no doubt, increasing the crime rate).
The intention seems to be not only to control the industry from the top of political power, but to also vacate the industry of much of its current labour force. For whose benefit? Referring to the new bill, Opposition Senator Wade Mark accused the government of snatching the industry from “the small man” in order to hand it over to privileged friends:
“We have been advised that a high public official, a high government official, through family connections, has made an application for a major recycling plant whose basis for existence and operation will be scrap metal. We want to know if the Government is aware of this individual. I know the name of the individual. I know the parties involved in it. I want to challenge the Government to tell us if this bill is designed to promote the interest of a financier who will eventually take control of the scrap-metal industry”.
Conclusion: Covidian Fetishes and the Grab for PowerThe outgoing figurehead President of Trinidad & Tobago, Paula-Mae Weekes, recently described citizens as becoming “a savage people”. For years she had been openly mocked and criticized by many Trinidadians, especially online, given her snooty manners, her silence on traumatic events besieging the nation, her absenteeism, and her ridiculous Covidian affectation (banning any member from her security detail who was not “vaccinated”). She acted as an absentee president, hidden away in her palace. Weekes was also accused of illegally covering up for the prime minister, in a scandal involving the selection of a new commissioner of police. Widely suspected of being a lesbian, this did not play in her favour in a society that is predominantly unwelcoming to “LGBTQ” ideology. Her final speech was her parting shot at the country which rejected her, and that apparently repulsed her. Weekes ended her speech with a revealing line: “The more things change, the more things stay the same”.
What is instructive about Weekes lambasting fellow citizens as “savages,” is that it openly reveals the attitudes of the elites in the country: contempt and conquest. After all, for the past three years Trinidadians have been berated almost daily by the authoritarian Rowley, who spoke down to them as if he were a colonial master of the Big House. Rowley was the Pandemicist commandant who mocked the people for wanting to see the safety data for the mRNA “vaccines,” but not asking for such data when it came to Horny Goat Weed, a name he uttered with a derisive tone. (Never mind that this is a widely used natural, herbal product, with a long history—perhaps that was the real problem Rowley had with it.) Revamped colonialism—the more things change, the more things stay the same, indeed.
Other members of the elite class pray for a return of “the pandemic”. They rejoiced in all the restrictions, because where there are many difficulties one finds many “graces”. So said Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon is his New Year sermon for 2023. God himself had given Trinidad & Tobago a gift in 2022—with the relentless lockdowns, the curfews, the state of emergency, mandatory “vaccination,” “vaccine” passports to enter bars and restaurants, people banned from going to beaches, and families fined for not wearing masks while in their own cars. These were all graces, and the passing of the lockdown pains Archbishop Gordon: “It was a year of incredible grace if you had eyes to see it. Times of difficulty are where God is growing us up, although we may not like the medicine. We need to look at what is around us, what happened to us, and see what was God’s grace in our lives”.
Prime Minister Rowley also had a New Year’s speech, in which he renewed his emphasis on “the public health consideration of criminal conduct in our society”. In the same speech, Rowley also reactivated his “vaccine” campaign, under the rubric of patriotism and civic duty. The new campaign would again target “the unvaccinated”. Also in a replay of 2020, Carnival was again set up as a likely source of mass infection.
From the supposed high points of Trinidadian society, it is not surprising to hear articulations of contempt and desires for conquest. The people are unruly savages—criminals. Crime is inevitably over played. However, one aspect that I have been forced to amend concerns perceptions of a growing crime rate in Trinidad & Tobago. While I would still maintain that it is sensationalized, fear having been promoted by politicians and activists, and sold by the media, still data exist to support the claim that the country has broken all of its records in terms of its annual murder rate in 2022. This still does not address the selective, self-serving manner in which the “crime” label is deployed, nor does it tell us anything about causes.
The government of Trinidad & Tobago is clearly not done with implementing its “public health” approach to crime. Recently, the Social Development and Family Services Minister, Donna Cox, spoke of a “parenting crisis” as being a driver of crime—clearly laying the blame for crime entirely at the feet of ordinary, struggling citizens. Many of those citizens, along with scrap iron collectors, have faced greater economic adversity thanks entirely to the actions taken by the government, which has shown little regard for their welfare.
Just like international sanctions imposed by imperial powers, lockdowns are an equally indiscriminate enactment of collective punishment. Like sanctions, lockdowns never succeed in achieving their purported objectives. Locking down an industry, under the pretext of fighting crime, will neither stop the problem from reappearing, nor will it prevent it from getting even worse. Government officials will defend their actions using the language common to political leaders today: the measures were “targeted” and “temporary”. The effects of the measures, as we see, are by no means temporary. As for targeting, given the absence of prosecutions, and with no information about the identities of alleged perpetrators of metal theft, we cannot even know that the government is targeting the right people. Treating theft like Covid, the state cannot shut down either. In both cases, the state is hammering the wrong source of the alleged problem.
What is particularly instructive about this case study is how Covidian pandemicism (the intersection of catastrophism and authoritarianism) has served to lay the foundations for “new” instruments of governance. By “new” I mean recently acquired or implemented—otherwise, rule by a permanent state of emergency is now well established, particularly since 9/11. “Disease” (at the root of any concept of a “public health emergency”) has been instrumentalized and weaponized, and the meaning of disease will inevitably be expanded into an amorphous term whose only utility is that it serves to signal a state’s intention to intervene further in people’s lives.
While we still do not know the identities of the persons who can stand to benefit from their relationships with the ruling party, and who allegedly will profit from taking over the scrap metal industry in Trinidad & Tobago, this still calls into question the meaning of “the state” and the real nature of “regulation”. Too many who self-identify as “progressives” seem to take for granted that a heightened role for the state, and increased regulation, are by default “good things” that preclude harm. At best, this is a naïve position, and it is not warranted by either historical or anthropological evidence or analysis. British anthropologist A.R Radcliffe-Brown several decades ago advised in his preface to African Political Systems (1940) that we should remember that “the state” is an abstraction: it consists of nested ties between living actors, i.e., real people. The state in Trinidad, like anywhere else, is a product of groups of interested actors who have captured its tools. The state’s enforcers are not called a “gang,” they are an “army”—an army is a gang that is commanded by a state. To rule is to “regulate”. More “regulation” means more rule by the gang that proclaims the rules. And while the state may rule to protect capital, or to defend the interests of particular capitalist factions, it can also rule for itself when it has been folded in with interests that exist outside of the strict legal confines of state agencies.
When dealing with a government that is a façade for the shadow government behind it, often the inverse of what appears on the surface is what is true. The largest criminal organization is the state itself, which presumes to usurp people’s homes and abolish their livelihoods—no other criminal organization in the country has either sought or has been able to achieve that. As a criminal organization, the state is guilty of racketeering and extortion, of inventing the problem that requires “protection,” and to support the costs of protection, the people must pay. This also describes a neo-feudal regime, and it is interesting to see how quickly and easily Trinidad & Tobago can fold itself into current international trends. We have thus not seen the end to lockdowns, not while a “public health” approach is allowed to expand without opposition.
As for the so-called “savages,” some seem to have taken to mocking the elites by turning this label into a badge of honour, relishing and revelling in it. As Carnival 2023 approached, a Soca tune titled “Outside Like Garbage” hit the airwaves and social media. Playing on the same “garbage” theme that is implied by the term “scrap iron,” the singer (Raw Nitro) exclaims: “I outside like garbage! I causin’ real damage! I gettin’ on savage!”. It was Lord Palmerston who in 1852 said that “dirt” is “nothing but a thing in a wrong place”; anthropologists have become familiar with the idea of dirt being “matter out of place” since Mary Douglas published Purity and Danger in 1966. Scrap-iron workers are thus treated exactly like garbage, as being out of place, savages, guilty of criminality. The state has thus locked them down (contained as if in a garbage can), and locked them out—outside like garbage. In the New Trinidad & Tobago, there is no place for the independent and the self-reliant, unless and until they fight to reclaim their own territory.
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As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many of our members witnessed first-hand what the situation looked like on the ground and how it all began. We took extensive video footage of the events during […]
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There are some suggestions that the Omicron variant could well end “the pandemic”. And that is a problem. It is a problem on two fronts. First, a variant that not only defeats the “vaccines,” but that also reduces the pandemic to a minor endemic phenomenon, is not one that can be exploited to generate profits for a transnational pharmaceutical giant like Pfizer, which has effectively captured the Canadian market and enjoys a near monopoly, plus a free sales-force (consisting of politicians, civil servants, academics, journalists, and many others). Second, any scaling down of illness removes the thin cover used by the state to centralize and maximize political power, under the pretext of an endless “state of emergency”.
First, what do we know about Omicron? Medical authorities in South Africa have already explained, and emphasized repeatedly, that the virus is following its normal course of evolution towards a strain that spreads easily and is far less lethal—indeed, its symptoms are very mild. Scientists elsewhere have concurred. In South Africa, Omicron has been accompanied by a reduction in hospitalizations, and deaths. Mild symptoms have been the worst of the Omicron experience there, and elsewhere. As of December 12, the WHO reported not a single death anywhere could be attributed to Omicron—after months of circulation in Africa. While fanning the flames of fear about overwhelmed hospitals in Canada and the US, in South Africa a published study found that persons with Omicron were 80% less likely to be hospitalized than if they caught another variant; compared to Delta infections, Omicron infections are associated with a 70% lower risk of severe disease. South African authorities are still wondering why Europe and North America are freaking out. (Answer: the freak out is calculated.)1
South Africa reminded us of some very important facts that are overlooked too often: Africa, with a negligible percentage of people being “vaccinated,” has evaded the worst of the “pandemic,” a fact that somehow baffled First World scientists. There simply has been no pandemic in Africa, by any long-standing definition of a pandemic. This has brought forth another fact: the worst of the Covid experience has been primarily centred in First World countries, which had the strictest measures, states of emergency, lockdowns, and mass “vaccination” that has approached between 75% and 100% of their populations. More than that, countries that imposed or enforced few or no restrictions, have fared the best—in the Caribbean region, that was Haiti, which rejected the importation of “vaccines” and which could not or did not impose or enforce masking and social distancing. Haiti has fared the best in the Caribbean under Covid; it has done better than nearby Cuba (which has developed two vaccines of its own), but it has even done better than its next door neighbour, the Dominican Republic, where incomes are higher, the injection rate is higher, and serious restrictions were imposed and enforced. Sweden, Florida, and Texas might occupy attention in Western-fixated media, obsessively concerned with their immediate experience, but none of these are the real test cases of what happens when places adopt diverse responses. The really important cases are instead to be found in Haiti and the African continent.
This chart compares Covid-19 deaths in Africa as a whole (the bottom line, in green), the European Union (blue line), and North America (brown line). This chart compares Covid-19 deaths in High Income nations (top line, red), Lower Middle Income countries (middle line, pink), and Low Income countries (lowest line, green). This chart compares Covid-19 deaths in Haiti (green line) versus the Dominican Republic (brown line). This chart shows that for most of the pandemic in the Caribbean, Haiti had the fewest Covid-19 deaths of all the major territories in the region. How could the Omicron variant end the pandemic? One way would be for Omicron to show that, like in South Africa, it is massively transmissible yet minimally dangerous—perhaps not even as bad as a common cold, from which it is practically indistinguishable. Yet, it would almost painlessly generate natural immunity on a broad scale. That would hardly merit new lockdowns, new or renewed states of emergency, mandatory “vaccination,” and the extreme social divisions deliberately constructed by the political class and their media collaborators. Another way Omicron could end the pandemic is by proving the irrelevance of existing “vaccines”. At present, all across Canada injections are being made mandatory for certain sectors of the workforce—and yet they are being injected with a product designed to counter a strain that has gone extinct and has already been replaced twice. The so-called “vaccines” were already being abundantly defeated by the Delta variant, rendered completely useless in achieving any goals of eradication or blocking transmission, and now Delta itself is being annihilated by Omicron.
Clearly, the mass of the population that voluntarily complied with getting injected, has been sold a flawed product. The new ad hoc social contract—where you get vaccinated, and they promised to return your lives to normal—has been completely torn up even before it was signed. An illusion of normalcy was based entirely on what the state permitted, and what the state allowed it could just as easily disallow—and it has. Businesses which collaborated with the state by enforcing “vaccine passports,” now see themselves either being reduced in terms of capacity or hours of operation, or they are being shut down altogether—after already losing business because of the pass system. Their customers were only and exclusively those who were “fully vaccinated”. If such establishments are now deemed “unsafe,” then this tells you everything you need to do know about the benefits and the promise of the “vaccines”.
(We can add this: those who assumed they were “fully vaccinated,” will soon be redefined as “inadequately vaccinated,” and have their QR code privileges revoked. The “fully vaccinated” are about to truly become the unvaccinated: i.e., those who fell out of vaccination.)
Omicron’s arrival in Canada is entirely the consequence of divisive, exclusionary, authoritarian measures that reserved air travel only for the “fully vaccinated”. Outbreaks have also occurred on cruise ships, with only “fully vaccinated” passengers on board. It was also “fully vaccinated” persons who carried Omicron into Canada, as much as the media and the state like to demonize the “unvaccinated”. Also, among the early numbers of those testing positive for Omicron in Montreal, 90% were “fully vaccinated”. In the US, about 80% of all Omicron cases are among “fully vaccinated” persons, and the CDC reported that 33% of these had received third doses. In Europe the young and the “fully vaccinated” have spread the majority of Omicron cases. Even The Atlantic is calling this “the pandemic of the vaccinated”. Whatever damage Omicron might do, it cannot be blamed on the establishment’s favourite scapegoat, the “unvaccinated”.
As for the “fully vaccinated” who are now leading in hospital admissions for Covid, who had been trained to stigmatize and demonize the “unvaccinated” for getting sick, many of the “fully vaccinated” now have to be counselled and consoled by the Washington Post that there is no shame in getting Covid.
Finding this image by accident in Telegram, it perfectly summarizes and expresses the essence of this article. The artist is unknown to the author. What some medical critics have said all along—and you might have heard them more easily had they not been roundly censored and expelled—is that we will not be able to “vaccinate” our way out of this “pandemic”. These “vaccines” prevent neither infection nor transmission, and what little they do, they do even less with rapidly declining efficacy. It is impossible to eradicate Covid, due to the existence of natural animal reservoirs, and the fact that the misnamed “vaccines” offer no sterilizing immunity—thus “herd immunity” through “vaccination” is impossible. On top of that, the current rules violate the principle of never vaccinating during a pandemic, since that itself helps to drive mutations that escape the vaccines. People are now being urged to get “boosters” (designed for an extinct variant), and such “boosters” will always be, at best, one variant behind what is currently dominant. A permanent lag means an unending series of shots, each of which comes with known risks—hence a multiplication of risk, with little proven benefit.
All of this is terribly worrying for the authorities. Their only answer is the most predictable one: more of the same. The objectives? Protect the pandemic. Shield the vaccines. Keep the people at bay.
The Vaccine Gold Rush: Mining a Renewable Resource For pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Moderna, the production of injectable drugs (dubbed “vaccines”) has been a veritable gold rush—with one important difference: the resource that is mined is renewable. Unlike a gold vein that can be exhausted, a human vein can be drilled again and again, and the drill is just a needle. What renders human veins renewable, what turns arms into resources, is the constant renewal of fear that makes arms extend in anticipation, plus the evolution of new variants which, if properly controlled and exploited, can be immensely profitable. Big Pharma is ready to cash in on Omicron, with the aid of public fear and government mandates. Fear-mongering about Omicron has been enormously profitable already: “Big pharma executives and shareholders saw their wealth skyrocket in the week after the Omicron variant was discovered, with just eight top Pfizer and Moderna shareholders adding a combined $10.31 billion to their fortunes”. Of course there is always the problem that with a greater number of injections, a greater number of resistant mutations is developing.
We may think we have been sold “vaccines,” but reality is more complicated and opaque. As others have suggested, it is we who have been sold to the “vaccines,” or specifically their manufacturers. Public funds, public infrastructure, and public-sector workers have been seized by Big Pharma, and taxpayers pay for the damages caused by the injections. Our bodies and the fruits of our labour are transferred to pharmaceutical giants. We have been purchased, acquired, captured. In return, we receive a vaccine-based security which is no security at all. That is a great deal given in return for what by comparison amounts to nothing.
For the pharmaceutical companies—and their partners in government, academia, and the media—the ideal outcome would be permanent injectability. That would mean a life that cannot be allowed to live freely without being artificially sustained through a ceaseless expansion of problems targeted with vaccines, and a ceaseless series of boosters for each product. The result, a sickly and isolated population confined to bubble-like quarters, living in terror of the world outside the window, reality mediated by what is allowed on their screens, is the perfect outcome. Like the humanitarian industry to which pharmaceutical companies are closely allied, the ideal is not just a needy subject, one obsessively focused on preserving bare life, but a permanently needy subject.
Anyone touting the virtues of “natural immunity”—indeed natural immunity itself—must therefore be an existential threat to such a system. Note how the mandates of governments, hospitals, universities, and a range of occupations never once mention even the existence or possibility of natural immunity. Natural immunity is just factored out. This is therefore not “science”; it is anti-science, or the “alternative science” of pharmaceutical corporations, authoritarian regimes, and censorial media. When nature and the natural are so feared, even detested, the only “science” that can arise is a perverse distortion driven by megalomania and fantasies of achieving invulnerability and invincibility.
Permanently Needy, Permanently Secure, Formerly Human Three turning points directly led to the situation we now face (I will expand on these points in the future). One turning point was September 11, 2001 and what it taught about invulnerability and invincibility. First, invulnerability: the fact that a small group of what appeared to be ordinary travellers could deliver such a shocking blow, was interpreted by the dominant apparatus and most of the population to mean that “the threat” could come from anyone, anywhere. Everyone was under suspicion. Security became paramount because the threat was generalized. Second, invincibility: no longer safe and secure in their homes, Americans and then many others in the global North accepted the notion that “we need to fight them over there, to keep them from fighting us here in our homeland”. Simplistic, dichotomous thinking prevailed—as it does again today. George W. Bush’s “You are either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” has become Michael Gunner’s, “If you are anti-mandate, you are absolutely anti-vax”. Fighting them over there has morphed into a call to push “vaccines” on Africa, where they are least wanted and least needed.
The financial collapse of 2008–2009 openly manifested not just the pure incompetence and corruption of the dominant elites, but it painfully reminded everyone of the vast and growing inequalities that prevailed. Corporate technocrats’ models were proven to be not only failures, but dangerous ones at that. Their esoteric, specialist knowledge was unmasked as little more than trickery. What became firmly acknowledged by almost everyone was the two-tiered nature of the “justice” system, with none of the culprits facing any convictions or time in prison. Out of this turning point, two powerful movements arose that worried the elites, one of which shrivelled up with time and the other growing into a serious electoral challenge: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement, respectively. As OWS declined, leftists left behind vital political platforms on the political playing field, which were then taken up by “the right”. As the “the left” lost its way moving down ever narrowing and subdividing corridors of identity politics, “the right” took up causes associated with the working class, national self-determination, free speech, and anti-interventionism in foreign affairs. The “right” became more leftist, while the “left” aligned itself with the agendas of billionaire oligarchs and became reactionary in its anti-populist posture. The rise of “populism” was the basis for the next turning point.
In 2016, first with Brexit and then with the election of Donald Trump, the ruling elites became terrified. Liberal democracy, until then, had existed as a means of pacification and control—it was never meant to be used as a tool for challenging the system. Now, liberal-democracy itself became a threat, to the extent that it opened the door to systemic challenges. Long-standing fear of the masses erupted into full view. From 2016 onward the elites resolved to destroy what they mockingly termed “populism” and to punish all those responsible for pushing “populist” agendas and winning elections as “populists”. Demonization would play a critical role by creating fear of dangerous Others, and automatically associating any of a number of sins—white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, misogyny, etc., etc.—with any of the Other’s positions. Anti-globalization? That’s easy: Racist. Self-determination? You mean: White supremacy. Anti-vaccines? You can guess.
Whether March 11, 2020, and what followed, were pre-planned or not makes no difference. What happened does not become any worse or better depending on whether or not the “pandemic” was pre-planned. In fact, “pre-planning” answers no significant question of interest here. Of course pandemics have been expected, and just as they occurred over the past century, they were expected to occur again—the existence of rehearsals, exercises, and planned responses is not surprising. What we do know is that what was brought to bear on “the pandemic” was what was already established and already in motion. What was already in motion was the elites’ war against populism. What was already established were firm historical foundations for authoritarianism: in the Caribbean, the history of slavery and the (quasi) total institution of the plantation became the backdrop for rulers’ responses, infecting their language, their measures, and their threats; in North America, histories of segregation, of denying civil rights, of Indian Schools, stern missionary traditions, “humanitarian interventionism,” and incarceration became the reservoirs for policy and practice; in Australia, its history of penal colonies came back to life in the form of the severest lockdowns and most absurd restrictions in the world; in Europe, traditions of fascism and socialist totalitarianism were reanimated—and so on, around the world, each nation putting forward its own traditions of oppression.
This is the Third World War. It was apparently not to be a war between nations of the world, but a war within nations around the world. The evident aim of those who launched this war is to save the pandemic from the people, at all costs.
What the “pandemic” furnished—and this was not realized by all or even most political leaders at first (a fact that undermines the pre-planning argument)—was a glorious opportunity to:
a) punish the people;
b) divide the people against each other; and,
c) discipline and control the people (i.e., the broad mass of the working population).
The “pandemic” is and has been a political phenomenon, first and foremost—a fact that even few critics seem ready to recognize. The only real relevance of “science” here is the degree to which it reveals this or that measure to be (in)effective or (un)justified given the officially stated goals. There is no path of “science” out of this crisis. We are not dealing with a problem of “uninformed” policy-makers and legislators.
What has (re)gained political capital in the course of this crisis is rule by state of emergency—a favourite tool of elected dictators since Adolf Hitler. It affords nearly absolute power to enact almost any fantasy. It is as desperate as it is ecstatic; worried and yet exuberant; awesome yet unsustainable. Rule by state of emergency today is not simply, as some may think, a reflection of a “public health threat”. There are many ways one can deal with a virus, and a state of emergency is not the most obvious one—in fact, all of the measures imposed under the “public health emergency” in Quebec are demonstrable failures. Emergency rule is instead evidence of the state’s lack of trust in the population, and the state’s willingness to blame the population for the spread of the virus (which makes as much sense as blaming the public for the flight of birds). Emergency rule is thus an antagonistic and belligerent position, a reflection of the state’s lack of confidence in its ability to convince and secure consensus. Emergency rule is an admission by the elites that they lack legitimacy. Thus the state and the dominant elites resort to psychological warfare, fear-mongering, behavioural manipulation, censorship, and threats. The aim is to reduce the population to a state of complete dependency on the state. The state thus appropriates a parental role in the name of “protection”. Rule under a “public health emergency” makes the state boss, doctor, father, priest, teacher, and babysitter, all in one. Conversely, the public is reduced to the status of wards, dependent on aid and tutoring, careful not to move without permission, and even then dressed according to the state’s dress code.
This emergent system based on permanently needy subjects under extended if not permanent states of emergency, results in the objectification and commodification of human beings. Humans are now reduced to arms. Government is now the art of “getting shots into arms”. With such reduction and dehumanization, we can only speak of the ex-human. The ex-human is that thing which has the outline of the former human being, now subsisting largely as an object used to carry a smartphone that leads ex-humans to wherever a QR code will permit. With information tightly restricted by media and academic outlets whose output resembles wartime propaganda, knowledge can be dispensed with altogether—“just Google it”. Ex-humans in ex-university classrooms are there only to make sure that everyone is correctly repeating dogma.
“The vaccine” is thus a useful lever, part of a machine well oiled by fear and programmed for “health”. Once “the vaccine” appeared as a quasi-magical solution—an instant technological fix—its foundation had already been laid by the imposition of a “health emergency” that demanded total “safety,” which meant absolute “security”. We have moved past the 19th-century problem of Order that was the central object of concern for the new social sciences. Now the system can not only live with disorder, it thrives on disorder, it foments disorder. Disorder is an inherent feature of the discourse of Progress, which involves the destruction of traditions and never ending ruptures with the past. The problem now is not Order, it is instead that of Security. Emblematic expressions of this securitization of everything are gated communities, home alarm systems, surveillance of Canadians during lockdowns, and “safe spaces” on campuses. Anything deemed contrary is treated like an intruder who “triggers” an alarm. Ex-humans are thus reprogrammed to function as components of a social surveillance system, and experience teaches that they are all too easily “triggered”.
Megalomania: Manufacturing Fear, Selling Disease For the clearest, most current examples of how “the pandemic” has been worked, one can examine what is presently happening with Omicron in Canada. The language used by the media and government officials, as well as media-selected academic “experts,” reveals what is undeniably a deliberate effort to promote mass fear (yet again). For the shrill-speakers, almost everything is premised entirely on the heightened mass terror of the “rise in ‘cases’,” as usual. Corporate and state media use “surging cases” to promote panic porn and to advocate for “stricter” measures, without the slightest concern for the vast range of damage wrought by lockdowns. The media’s agenda neatly dovetails with that of pharmaceutical companies which profit from disease mongering. The same is true of university-based medical “experts” predictably quoted by the media—academics whose research is either directly funded by the same pharmaceutical companies, or the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or they work in hospitals and research centres funded by these entities. Fear is weaponized, playing on rising “case” numbers: a doom loop is created where fear drives people to get tested, which drives the numbers higher (when even asymptomatic people who believe they have been “exposed” to “contact” rush to get tested); as the numbers increase, so does fear, thus repeating the cycle.
In early December the WHO and “public health” authorities in Europe and North America all stated very clearly that it would take three to four weeks to seriously examine Omicron, before jumping to any conclusions. Initial statements by “public health” officials in Canada and the US—including Fauci—suggested that Omicron would be less severe in its effects than any of the previous strains, but more transmissible. Both its behaviour, and its effects, are hardly distinguishable from the common cold—a very light version of the common cold.
Clearly, this type of narrative was not satisfactory for the media in Canada, who fancy themselves as the fourth branch of government after the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and possibly second only to the executive. This is not an exaggeration. One has only to watch their televised programs, listen to their radio talk shows, or hear their questions at press briefings, to easily pick up their pointed, commanding, instructional tones. They do not want to know what will be done; they want to tell the authorities what to do. The Canadian media always fall on the side of severity, extreme judgments, hyperbole, unrestrained scare mongering, and even violent malevolence—more on this later. When it comes to Omicron, the Canadian media will have none of this “less severe…like a common cold” commentary from scientists.
Examine even just a sample of a day’s worth of media reports in Canada, and their recurring themes:
Inflammatory language: “Omicron is raging in the U.K.”; “The World Health Organization (WHO) also sounded the alarm”: “unprecedented”; “the Omicron figure paints a starker image”; “the threat of the Omicron variant of concern mounts”; “the dramatic upturn in numbers”. (This is still not as melodramatic as the acted out hysteria one found in a selection of just one day’s headlines from US cable news channels which, almost simultaneously, repeated their characterizations of Omicron as “frightening,” “terrifying,” “scary,” and “rampaging”.)
Turning a positive into a negative: less deadly Omicron displacing deadlier Delta “is seen as potentially problematic by infectious disease specialists”.
Expecting the worst: “…Bauld said, only a small number of people are in hospital with the variant in the U.K., but she expects that to change as it’s still very early in this outbreak”; “Surely, we have learned by now that we underestimate this virus at our peril”; “could once again overwhelm unprepared health systems”; “the pandemic could spiral out of control”; “it would be ‘catastrophic’ to the health-care system”; “the prime minister recognized that this new surge in cases would be particularly difficult for families and communities given the time of year”; “We are preparing, unfortunately, for a significant rise in hospitalizations”; “we’re likely to see a substantial rise in hospitalizations”….“It’s about to start to be really challenging”; “it could cripple the Canadian health system”.
Training captive markets to freak out: “COVID-19: At least 7 schools currently closed in London, Ont”; “Two Montreal schools closed due to potential Omicron variant outbreaks”; “Feds formally advise against non-essential international travel amid COVID-19 case surge”.
Mystification: Signalling political goals, portraying them as the inevitable outcomes of Nature: “the pandemic is not yet over”; “if Canada does not respond with the proper restrictions, the situation could become disastrous”; “ If the measures are not put into place and used strictly…the toll the variant could take on the health care system would be severe”; “To those who are planning to travel, I say very clearly, now is not the time to travel. The rapid spread of the Omicron variant on a global scale makes us fear the worst for Canadians that may think of travelling,”; “avoid pre-holiday parties and gatherings…it’s really important right now to make a ‘collective effort’ and use caution”; “Trudeau and the premiers agreed that the key to moving beyond the pandemic is to ensure that as many Canadians as possible, including children, get vaccinated and have access to booster shots”.
ATOMICRON: A 100 Megaton Payload of Lies This is clearly a game on the part of government officials and the media, with the rules invented by them and agreed upon by them alone, and with the referees appointed by them. None of their favoured “measures” have worked, and yet they want to see them reimposed or reinforced. Masks (for children too), social distancing, the injectable drugs they falsely claim are “vaccines,” their QR codes—nothing has or can stop the spread of a virus, and the present situation proves that. Trinidadian talk show host, Stephan Reis, has formulated one of the authorities’ main problems as follows: on the one hand, they have to tell the resistant that the “vaccine” works, and they should get it; on the other hand, they have to tell the rest of the population that the “vaccine” is not working well enough, which is why they need to get more. Both messages are stated nearly at the same time, in front of both audiences.
To sustain interest in their game, the pharmaceutical PR firms known as “the media” have initiated a new and more virulent round of disinformation. It is utterly transparent just how severely unscrupulous and unreservedly mendacious their dangerous propaganda has become. Not waiting for Omicron to overwhelm hospitals, Canada’s CTV News, following “public health,” rushed to invoke that spectre:
“Even with stricter public health measures introduced in Quebec, hospitals could be over capacity with COVID-19 patients as the fifth wave of the pandemic explodes, a new report published Wednesday predicts. The report from the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) paints a mostly worrying picture of the situation in the province, which has been recording back-to-back record-breaking case counts in recent days. The INSPQ says that if public health measures are followed, more people get their third dose, and people can get tested, ‘we cannot exclude an overrun of hospital capacities even if these conditions are met, given the uncertainty concerning the severity of Omicron’. Local hospital leaders reported Tuesday they may need to start cancelling surgeries and clinics”.
Now that Quebec has caught up to the UK and Israel, where the “fully vaccinated” constitute the majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths, the narrative in Canada has changed: the “unvaccinated” are now “overrepresented” as a proportion of the “unvaccinated” population. Even before that, those with a “first dose” were being counted among the “unvaccinated” because they were not “fully vaccinated”—a brazen contradiction of past narratives from earlier this year that should have raised the ire of the populace. Thus this headline: “Quebec reports close to 1,000 new COVID-19 cases, 772 not fully vaccinated”. Of those newly testing positive, 78% received a first dose of the vaccine.
According to the new norm, those who have received just one dose, were no longer “adequately vaccinated” (when boosters become mandatory, two dose people will be deemed “inadequately vaccinated”). The impression one would get—if you have zero memory, or only now started reading news reports for the first time in your life—is that just one dose is tantamount to no protection at all.
Was that always the case? No, it most certainly was not.
On January 5 of this year, the media reproduced with approval these statements from a loyal doctor: “Research has shown that the Pfizer vaccine achieves 90% effectiveness two weeks after the first dose has been administered. The second dose is a ‘booster’ shot that enhances the already high level of protection”.
On January 11, Premier Francois Legault insisted, “the first dose does grant a fair level of immunity”.
Earlier this year then, a single dose was still deemed effective, enough that getting the second dose could be delayed by a dozen weeks, even more. The second dose was, after all, just a “booster” shot.
Indeed, the policy was to delay second doses, in order to “protect” the maximum number of people, because that is what we were told a first dose would do: protect. The delay in receiving a second dose simply did not matter: “Please rest assured that this change will not affect your health or well-being”.
The government of Quebec took to calling second doses, “booster shots”. It insisted that it would be fine to delay receiving the second dose, by 90 days.
Note how much just one dose mattered back then. Now it matters almost not at all.
Thus either the Quebec government and its alleged advice from so-called “Public Health” was again wrong, and imposed measures not grounded in scientific fact—or, it was the case that the so-called “vaccines” began failing from early on. If the former is true, then the government is either ignorant or incompetent. If the latter is true, then simply stating that X% of hospitalized people now are not “fully vaccinated,” is a way of masking the fact that what was asserted earlier, about the effectiveness of the vaccines, was and continues to be false.
With each passing day now, local headlines scream of “records being smashed,” and they are speaking only about “cases” (i.e., those testing positive). One headline blasted, “Quebec doctors warn hospitals may soon be overrun as health workers catch Omicron variant”. The “Health Minister” intoned, in a now familiar refrain: “the situation is critical,” with the Premier repeating the chorus line about “difficult choices ahead”. “The city’s hospitals are also struggling,” we are told, “with emergency rooms consistently over-capacity and 99 more people admitted with COVID-19 in the last week”.
And yet, a related article reports: “Compared to this time last year, before the province launched its vaccine campaign, hospital admissions are down 61 per cent, even as cases are up 92 per cent”. How can hospitals be struggling with reduced hospital admissions? Part of the answer lies in the fact that, just days before Christmas, the Quebec government fired 500 healthcare workers for refusing to undergo discriminatory and punitive testing (Alberta also laid off 1,650 hospital workers). The decision made no sense: anyone in the healthcare system, injected or not, can be infected and spread the virus—so why test only those who refused injection? Do they already possess natural immunity, given the high chance of that being the case in their line of work? The decision made even less sense given the announcement that, due to staffing shortages, Quebec hospitals were planning to let infected and even sick workers come to work.
Then we learned that the small number of new hospitalizations was not even caused by Omicron: “While Omicron appears to spreading rapidly throughout the province, and the rest of Canada, Quebec’s health minister said the variant’s effect has not been felt in hospitals. Most of the people who end up in hospital are affected by the Delta variant, he told a news conference”. That fact was repeated by hospital records.
Nonetheless, by juxtaposing articles intended to frighten readers about “surging Omicron cases,” next to articles about “hospitals stretched beyond capacity,” the impression that was conveyed—almost certainly by design—was that Omicron in Quebec had already started to overwhelm hospitals. Next to articles about record numbers of “cases” and the prevalence of Omicron, CTV News in “Surgeries, clinics could be delayed as COVID-19 cases rise in Quebec,” stated that it is, “the Omicron-driven fifth wave,” that “has halted any attempts to catch up on almost two years worth of delayed surgeries and clinical appointments”—even though most cases in hospitals were not Omicron-related. In “Emergency rooms in Quebec are overflowing: Index Santé,” CTV News deliberately creates the impression that Covid is to blame. However, we have known from this summer—when Covid cases were at their lowest—that emergency rooms across the province were stretched far beyond capacity because of backlogged surgeries and treatments. What CTV News was doing therefore was obscuring the fact that the lockdowns, which caused the backlogs that caused hospitals to become overwhelmed in 2021, were to blame—and not Covid, and certainly not Omicron. Instead, the media have been most vocal in creating a demand for a new lockdown and curfew.
CTV News also failed to inform its audience that in 2020, there was a 17.5% decrease in hospital activity compared to 2019; in fact, from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2021, only 2.1% of all hospitalizations in Quebec were due to Covid. Quebec hospitals are otherwise notorious for having overwhelmed ERs in normal times—I have never been in an ER that was not at 130% capacity or more, and I personally was “accommodated” in a chair in a hallway when admitted in 2015, which was a “normal” experience for a great many patients well before Covid. Thus the media also try to obscure how the deliberate underfunding of hospitals after years of austerity helped to create the very situation we see today. But Omicron is a convenient scapegoat, as are the “unvaccinated”.
To further alarm its audience, CTV News was all over this story, “Previously healthy baby, less than two months old, dies of COVID-19 in Montreal hospital”. Despite being short on details, CTV prominently featured this story as a banner, for 48 hours, suggesting a level of glee had set in the newsroom: “Finally! We got one!”. This is supposed to counterbalance the following facts: that for the entire “pandemic” through to October 16, 2021, there was not a single death in Quebec of any child below the age of 11; moreover, 0.008% of all children aged 5-11 years were hospitalized, and only 5.3% of all children ever tested positive. Yet, under the pretext of Omicron, Quebec authorities are scaring parents into getting their children injected, and at the time of writing already 54% of children have been needlessly injected with a drug that poses great risks.
In response to “surging cases,” the Quebec government resorted to tried, tested, and failed measures, with “experts” as always crying for harsher impositions. Once again, the paternalistic state instructed families on the appropriate number of people to host in their homes. Citizens apparently lack enough judgment and discretion to be allowed to manage their own affairs, they need mandatory limits. Zones that had been reserved exclusively for the “fully vaccinated,” subject to the “vaccine passport” system, were also constrained, with capacity limits reduced, as well as banning activities such as dancing and singing, with some establishments shutdown outright, such as gyms, bars, movie theatres—all of which could be accessed only by those with a QR code, and which are now barred to the “fully vaccinated”. Businesses which complied with the government, and enforced segregation while presumably trying to recover and regain income, now found themselves locked out in the cold once more. What is perhaps more significant is that these business closures are the final indictment against “vaccine passports” and against the “vaccines” themselves.
A Merry Bloody Christmas Firings, suspensions, threats, insults, and the promise of a grim threat, these were the special “Christmas” messages offered by political leaders in Canada, the US, Trinidad and Tobago, as elsewhere. In the US, Anthony Fauci advised families gathering for Christmas to exclude “unvaccinated” members: “Yes, I would do that. I think we’re dealing with a serious enough situation right now that if there’s an unvaccinated person, I would say, ‘I’m very sorry, but not this time, maybe another time when this is all over’”. (Of course none of this will be over if he has his way.) For his part, Biden predicted: “We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated”, after which he shouted at a national audience during a televised address, exasperated that the official religion of vaccine worship was still being challenged. Yet Biden did at least try to balance these statements in a cheerful Christmas message to a caller: “Let’s go Brandon, I agree”. Preceding this was another comedic act, or perhaps we confuse levity with bad taste: nurses from New York’s Northwell Health—the state’s largest health provider which fired 1,400 employees in October for refusing to be injected with the novel gene therapy—performed a cringe-worthy song-and-dance routine at the White House. It was rightly mocked. At a time when images of death and suffering were invoked by Biden and spread across headlines, someone felt it was appropriate to have nurses joyfully performing. This reminds us of the numerous TikTok videos of nurses dancing it up in allegedly overwhelmed ERs at the start of the emergency lockdowns in 2020.
Jabs for Jesus? This was the strikingly bizarre message contained in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Christmas address, which equated getting “vaccinated” with following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. He said: “Getting jabbed not just for themselves, for ourselves, but for friends and family and everyone we meet…that, after all, is the teaching of Jesus Christ, whose birth is at the heart of this enormous festival, that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves”. But that was not the only myth at the core of his address. Here Johnson reasserted the greater myth that the current Covid injectables stop infection and transmission, which they do not, and cannot, since they offer no sterilizing immunity. Yet this myth continues to be asserted, again and again, as if one gains special points for the number of times one repeats utter nonsense.
Keith Rowley, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, introduced some extremely harsh new mandates: the entire public service was slapped with mandatory “vaccination,” with hardly any time given for two doses should any public servants comply. This was announced less than a week before Christmas. Public sector workers in Trinidad who refused to comply, would be suspended without pay, indefinitely. It was revealed that certain sectors hosted workforces that were majority “unvaccinated”—this included the Police Service, the Defence Forces, and Prison Officers. Every branch of the public sector announced that workers would reject the mandate. Similar to Trinidad & Tobago, St. Vincent and the Grenadines had instituted a similar mandate for public sector workers, and there too workers were pushing back via the courts. But in Trinidad, Rowley’s Christmas message included some menacing remarks: “We should not, at any moment, think about asserting our rights, without acknowledging our responsibility to the person standing within arms’ length and, overall, to the nation-state of TT”. Rowley added that the global chaos he wrongly blamed on Covid-19, would “ultimately lead to the birthing of a new order”.
In Canada, colleagues in universities across Canada were facing the certainty that 2022 would bring unemployment, only without any unemployment benefits. Some nurses in Quebec, as already mentioned, were fired just a week from Christmas. New closures and restrictions were announced just three days before Christmas, with a hint of more to come. Canada was one of at least 12 countries that instituted special restrictions and emergency measures to limit Christmas activities.
Quebec, as already mentioned, instituted new restrictions in time for Christmas. These included the imposition of “vaccine passports” on all churches, to limit attendance. In a province where secularism is the new fundamentalist religion, this seemingly gratuitous measure is part of a pattern of attacking churches, some of which have been centres of opposition to the authoritarian mandates. What makes the measure truly absurd—along with existing “vaccine” mandates and “vaccine” passports—is that it demands getting injected against a variant that, very soon, will be very extinct. Elsewhere in Canada, masses of nurses, teachers, and students are being purged for not having an irrelevant “vaccination” against a dead variant. What Legault needed to spring on his audience, as a special Christmas gift, was the news that all people are being marched back to being 100% “unvaccinated”. Omicron nullifies injectables designed for a strain that has abundantly passed already, injectables which were already being solidly defeated by Delta. Welcome back to the fold of the “unvaccinated” everyone! We have been waiting for you.
Timing these messages to be delivered immediately before Christmas is clear psychological warfare. Workers, business owners, and members of the general public were subjected to psychological torture: their very livelihoods were threatened with annihilation just as they were preparing to celebrate Christmas with their families. Anxiety levels would skyrocket, as well as depression. We can imagine the impact this will have on the health of those affected, not to mention their family lives. With all we know about the vast damage done by lockdowns, these acts of state terrorism were committed with full knowledge of their impact.
Queuing Up for Nuremberg 2.0: The Toronto Star
The Toronto Star, one of Ontario’s most prominent newspapers and even one of Canada’s, seems to be keen to be on the first bench to answer charges for hate crimes and crimes against humanity in any future Nuremberg trials. How the paper has evaded the attention of the professional human rights industry is something that deserves an explanation. In the summer of 2021, The Star devoted its front page to the most brazen incitement of hatred seen on the front page of a Canadian daily since WWII. It not only incited hatred, it came very close to advocating violence against the “unvaccinated”. “We are all in this together” has given way to a pent up lust for genocide against a minority.
But The Star did not have the good sense to stop there. Instead, just five days before Christmas, the paper published an editorial demanding compulsory/forced “vaccination” for all Canadians. One could just easily dismiss the article as an expression of ignorant and fevered minds—compulsory vaccination is a legal impossibility in Canada. There is no federal law mandating vaccines, and in most cases there are no provincial laws mandating vaccination on even a limited scale (i.e., targeting some diseases, among children). There is thus neither a legal nor a customary precedent for current vaccine mandates (outside of Ontario, Manitoba, and New Brunswick, for children), and none for compulsory vaccination for adults anywhere in Canada, period. That is just a fact.
What is notable is that three of the five reasons given for forced vaccination, include a premise that the “unvaccinated” are overwhelming hospitals. The general experience across Canada, even at the height of the so-called “pandemic,” was one where hospitals were neither overwhelmed, not even particularly busy, and the phenomenon of empty ERs was not all that uncommon. We have direct evidence of this (as shared above for Quebec) plus anecdotal evidence from healthcare professionals. A mother of one of my students works as a nurse in a Montreal hospital and, according to her, not a single patient was admitted with Covid to the ICU during the worst of the “pandemic”—clearly, this happened in some hospitals, but not all apparently, and nowhere in numbers that were unmanageable. However, what no one has denied, is that the backlogged surgeries and treatments—backlogged due to fear of Covid and hospitals emphasizing Covid as a priority concern—are what has predictably overwhelmed hospitals, as discussed above. That is not the fault of the “unvaccinated”; it is the fault of the lockdowns and those who imposed them.
In Quebec, half or more of those in hospital with Covid are now themselves “fully vaccinated”. The so-called “vaccines,” it is worth repeating, do not and cannot stop infection and transmission. The Star’s solution does not match the problem.
The Star takes “war” beyond a figure of speech, and insists that this is a literal war. There could be no greater error of judgment than treating the spread of a virus as a war. This is pure fear-mongering, and it is fear that is the major political threat, and it does both psychological and immunological harm.
In Canadian media you will frequently read or hear statements along these lines: “We had to get vaccinated as children, so what’s the problem with mandating Covid vaccines?” Or: “Vaccination is compulsory for all children”. Or: “you were vaccinated to go to school, so this is nothing new”. These statements are, at a minimum, misleading, and in most cases, false. The Star chose to repeat this very disinformation. Leaving aside the highly disturbing reduction of Canadian adults to the status of infants, and leaving aside the problem of transforming the country into one large primary school, Canada simply has no nation-wide law making vaccination mandatory, not even for children, for any disease. What we hear echoed in The Star is the Ontario experience: Ontario, along with New Brunswick and Manitoba, is one of only three provinces that have mandatory child immunization, and even then only for some diseases (or just one). And there are clearly established exemptions. There are a total of ten provinces, plus three territories. In terms of population, this means that just 44.6% of Canada’s population is covered by some form of mandatory immunization for children. It is by no means the norm nor a universal standard.
What really animates the editors of The Toronto Star are not evidence-based arguments grounded in factual research, but rather malevolent myth-making used to cement divisions and motivate hatred. In particular, The Star is clearly bent on creating fear of a dangerous Other, using the very same principles we find in racist and genocidal ideological advocacy. In Nuremberg 2.0 trials, we would be well advised to line up the editors of The Toronto Star in the first wave of defendants.
Conclusion: The Utility of Fear Since the evidence is clearly there, that the authorities are deliberately manufacturing excessive fear—despite all the known harmful costs and consequences of increased and sustained fear—the question is why? Here are some tentative answers:
(1) The authorities are worried about a variant that rubbishes their much touted “vaccines”—destroying an exclusive, monopolistic, captive market. However, trying to shield the “vaccines” from the variant means re-imposing restrictions, on everyone, especially “the vaccinated,” which ruptures the ad hoc social contract between the authorities and the public.
(2) The authorities are worried that Omicron may be too much of a good thing, too soon: it could help generate natural immunity, far and wide, with the most minimal consequences yet in terms of sickness or death. That would destroy the epidemiological basis for insisting “the pandemic is not over,” and the massive increase in political power that the authorities have captured. The alleged basis for “vaccine” mandates and passports would be ruined.
(3) The authorities need to rush consumption of “booster shots,” while increasing injections among children. Hyping up Omicron could increase the pace.
(4) The authorities are trying to divert blame away from their continued underfunding and mismanagement of health care, by redirecting attention to a new scariant.
(5) The authorities are aiming for a new round of lockdowns, or bundles of measures that approximate lockdowns. The blame will be placed on the new scariant plus “the unvaccinated”. This could be the on ramp towards compulsory “vaccination”.
(6) The authorities might be looking for cover: specifically, by blaming Omicron for the hospitalizations and/or deaths that are actually due to the “vaccines” themselves. Such injuries/deaths are projected to rise with each successive booster shot.
NOTES 1 Some of the scientists interviewed in the Canadian media voiced doubts as to whether South Africa’s experience with Omicron would be the same in places such as Canada and northern Europe. Reasons for their doubts included the fact that the populations are not comparable: overall, South Africa’s population is younger, and there is a far higher degree of natural immunity given the very low “vaccination” rate. However, if we use this same logic, then “vaccination” itself cannot be a universal, one-size-fits-all solution, precisely because populations vary. Yet Africa is being targeted by “good intentions” and a drive to push the new injectables onto the continent’s peoples.
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There are some suggestions that the Omicron variant could well end “the pandemic”. And that is a problem. It is a problem on two fronts. First, a variant that not only defeats the “vaccines,” but that also reduces the pandemic to a minor endemic phenomenon, is not one that can be exploited to generate profits for […]
“Two weeks to flatten the curve,” is what we heard across Canada1 just after March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization unilaterally declared a global “pandemic” according to new criteria developed in 2009 that emphasized transmissibility over lethality.2 We are now approaching two years of a crisis that is routinely and deceptively blamed on “Covid”. Politicians, public health officials, and the mass media have made persistent pronouncements that tended towards the inflation of grim numbers and the exaggeration of threats.3
The State of Emergency and its Consequences Building on expanded threat perception, authorities have deliberately promoted fear, induced panic, and created stress.4 With the public suffering an epidemic of fear bordering on mass psychosis,5 states have multiplied and escalated the number and types of restrictions, few of which have the support of even a single published scientific study6: quarantining the healthy; school closures; shutting down small businesses; travel bans and internment of returning citizens; masking; social distancing; fines; curfews; vaccine passports7; and now, mandatory vaccination campaigns that threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands across Canada, including students, support staff, and professors, and impeding non-vaccinated Canadians from leaving the country.8 In the case of Quebec, such measures have been advanced under a State of Emergency deployed in accordance with the Public Health Act,9 which has seen the “emergency” renewed every seven days. Since the “emergency” was first declared on March 13, 2020, it was renewed 84 times (to October 27, 2021), and continues being renewed without consultation and approval by the National Assembly.10 On each occasion, the Government of Quebec has failed to explain the nature or even the existence of a situation that merits classification as an “emergency”.11
By displacing the political onto the medical, in biologizing and thus naturalizing political acts, both governments and the media typically assign blame to “Covid,” the “pandemic,” or the “unvaccinated,” to justify authoritarian emergency measures and to rationalize the ensuing social upheaval. But the virus is just a virus. The virus is neither a politician, a legislator, an economic adviser, a public health official, a corporate CEO, nor is it a media executive. The virus has not been “managed”: it has been worked.
The social, economic, political, medical, psychological, and cultural damage wrought by emergency measures, though inadequately documented and tallied in Canada, appears to be both vast and ongoing. At least 36 studies explain why our unnecessarily extended period of lockdowns not only failed to control the virus or lower mortality, but may even have increased excess mortality.12 Quebec’s Minister of Health, Christian Dubé, publicly acknowledged the impacts of the emergency on delayed treatments and surgeries, often for illnesses far more severe than Covid.13 The health system’s lopsided emphasis on Covid, coupled with fear that kept many patients with severe illnesses away from hospitals and clinics, created such a backlog of surgeries and treatments that emergency rooms exploded far beyond capacity by the summer of 2021, as reported Covid infections plummeted. Quebec’s Ministry of Health estimated that up to 4,000 people have gone undiagnosed with cancer as a result of a sharp decline in mammograms, pap smears and colorectal cancer screenings.14 Across Canada, projected cancer cases are expected to surge in the thousands.15 During the lockdowns, deaths caused by opioid overdoses rose by 88% in 2020 when compared to 2019.16 Alcohol abuse, suicides, and even homicides in domestic settings all increased substantially. Statistics Canada reported that during this emergency period, deaths from “accidental poisonings” (substance abuse) reached a new high, while the numbers for deaths caused by alcohol abuse, and drug use all increased, particularly for younger Canadians.17 StatCan noted that “the economic, social, and psychological impacts” as well as “the public-health measures in place may have played a role in increasing alcohol use”.18 In North America, lockdowns had a disproportionate impact on minority youths in terms of education and employment.19 Families with children at home reported dramatic degrees of deteriorated mental health.20 The economic devastation wrought by the lockdowns further increased the social, psychological, and medical harms.21 In Montreal, the homeless population doubled in size just from March 2020 to October 2021.22 Canada’s federal debt increased by 66%; provinces and even most universities also posted vastly increased deficits; and, hundreds of thousands of retail businesses were expected to permanently close.23 Both the savings and the ability to save for working-class Canadians simply vanished, and personal debt levels skyrocketed; women and minorities were among those hit hardest.24
How is public health served by spreading fear, creating stress, inducing anxiety, and terminating the livelihoods of those who do not comply with arbitrary and indiscriminate measures? What kind of public health is it that assaults the dignity of those to be saved, creating divisions, escalating tensions and conflict? We have certainly come a long way from “two weeks to flatten the curve”. Today, federal employees, healthcare workers, and educators across Canada are being suspended and fired, sentenced to a form of social and economic internal exile, thus effectively rendered aliens in a country which also traps them within its borders. Citizens are now effectively criminalized based on their medical status.
Coercive Medicine All of the devastation, displacement, and divisions have been to what end? What is it about the nature of this particular virus that makes it so spectacularly special that extreme measures are not only said to be warranted, but must also be continually multiplied and extended? Why are these “public health” measures so narrowly focused on only one specific solution—universal “vaccination”—when that “solution” has been shown to solve so little at the core of this crisis?
Encouraged by government and the media to conflate the two, most Canadians seem to have trouble remembering the difference between transmissibility (i.e., infectiousness) and lethality, such that any report of “cases” immediately sparks fears of impending and generalized death. The appearance of a “case” in an institution is called an “outbreak,” an alarmist term that inspires fear. Yet it is still true that official statistics reveal that this particular coronavirus, with its non-distinctive symptoms, is responsible for the deaths mostly of the very elderly, and even then those with advanced co-morbidities. In Canada as a whole, 63% of reported Covid deaths occurred among those aged 80 years or more; that number increases to 83% when we include those aged 60 years or more.25
This virus was never a lethal threat to the general population, but it has been governed as if it were. The global survival rate for Covid, for persons under the age of 70, is 99.83%; others report that it is as high as 99.95% (without “vaccination”), and for those under 45 years of age the infection fatality rate is almost zero.26 For the vast majority of the infected, 76.5%, Covid produces no symptoms at all, and for 86.1% no symptoms specific to Covid; for most of the rest, the symptoms are mild.27 The Norwegian government and the UK parliament have both recognized that Covid has fallen in lethality when compared with the seasonal flu.28 What then is the medical basis for instituting emergency measures, imposed on the total population? In early 2020, a few national leaders declared a “war on the virus”—but how do the facts of the virus justify use of tools of war, such as a state of emergency?
Throughout this crisis, premised on the generalization of the threat of death, we have nonetheless seen a differential and selective valuation of deaths.29 Death, rather than the possibilities for normal life, has been greatly emphasized. Regardless of co-morbidities, those who died with Covid were almost always reported as “Covid deaths,” even if Covid was not the cause of death. Yet, when persons have died after receiving injections, their deaths are usually attributed to co-morbidities, and they are not publicly reported by the media or state spokespersons as “vaccine deaths”. Some deaths, we discovered, matter more than others.
Having succeeded in spreading generalized fear of “Covid death,” the authorities have singled out that one “solution” of theirs: inoculation of the entire population, regardless of age, health, or natural immunity.30 They have denied effective early treatment of symptoms. They have obstinately ignored the fact that natural immunity has been proven to offer longer-lasting, broader and stronger protection than the current crop of novel gene therapies.31 We have been told, with absolute conviction, that these experimental gene therapies are “safe and effective”.32 Less assuring, however, has been the authorities’ refusal to share trial data with scientists.33 Doctors and scientists who question the “vaccine” dogma are censored, silenced, suspended, or fired, even as hundreds of thousands of doctors and healthcare workers worldwide34 have precisely detailed why these novel therapies are neither safe nor effective,35 with abundant empirical support and a growing number of published studies.36 Between the US and UK alone, nearly 20,000 persons have already died from the injectables, and more than two million people have suffered severe adverse reactions, according to officially published data.37 Yet the injectables themselves offer, at best, a 1.3% reduction in absolute risk of becoming ill from Covid. “Herd immunity” via “vaccination” is clearly impossible,38 particularly when the “vaccines” in question provide no sterilizing immunity, and when the virus has ample natural reservoirs in the wider animal population.
Given that the “fully vaccinated” can still be infected and transmit the virus among themselves, the stated logic for the domestic “vaccine passport” system has been nullified39—yet the mandate remains in place. Even with such mandates in place on US college campuses, with almost all students, staff and faculty injected, “outbreaks” have occurred.40 It should now be obvious that the “vaccine passport” is not a public health measure designed to “protect” people and “save lives”. Instead, it is a political measure designed to maximize control and foment divisions among the wider population, deflecting blame away from the state and toward the new dangerous Other, the “unvaccinated”.41
Questions for Academia Universities in Quebec and across Canada have internalized the “vaccine passport” system, notwithstanding public knowledge of the facts as shown above. They have done so even when aware of the differential impact on religious and ethnic minorities.42 Institutions that have adopted principles of “equity, diversity, and inclusion,” have failed the first real test of their policies. In Canada, as in the US, Black and Indigenous communities are among the most “vaccine hesitant” or “vaccine resistant” of all ethnic groups.43 However, given that the “war on the virus” has become a de facto war on the people, a larger segment of the national population has been created as a new minority suffering discrimination, one that has been as stigmatized as it has been caricatured.44 Where do academics stand here?
If “vaccination” was intended as a means of exiting the WHO’s declared pandemic, that has clearly not happened. Is it in fact intended as an exit, or as a gateway to something else? This is just one of many questions that academics should have been addressing, instead of cowering in fear before Covid, deferring to political authority, and clamouring for still more draconian restrictions.
As academics who have committed ourselves to ethics, integrity, and honesty, do we not see anything problematic in what is happening before our very eyes? Are we not disturbed by what is being committed in our name, for this alleged “common good” which none of us were ever called upon to define? What “common good” is it that thrives on coercion, exclusion, and works towards the monopolistic profits of Pfizer, which has an established criminal history,45 and Moderna, which has never before produced a vaccine?
Whether one is “adequately vaccinated” or not—according to the shifting standards and definitions of the moment—is not the core issue that should concern us. What should concern us is that the legal rights of all citizens are being transformed into temporary privileges; that coercion trumps democratic participation; that key institutions—including academic ones—are being rapidly conscripted for political purposes, and their basic missions are being undermined and distorted.
While many believe and assert that a “public health emergency” must limit basic human freedoms, it is precisely when faced by a real or alleged emergency that we need to be most careful and protective of human rights. Basic human rights are inalienable, and cannot be “suspended” because of any war, disaster, or other emergency.46 Bodily autonomy,47 informed consent, and by extension not being subjected to invasive testing or genetic treatment, are among the key rights which have been suspended or violated.48 Rights of conscience, as guided by religious and spiritual beliefs, along with the right to political beliefs and freedom of expression, must also be protected.49
Did we as scholars anticipate living in a country where our universities would purge tenured professors, fire support staff, and expel registered students (even escorting them off campus in front of other students), because of their health status, their innate biological characteristics, and their desire to preserve their privacy and bodily autonomy free from discrimination? When did we become comfortable with violating the right to an education and the right to work? How did we come to accept this discrimination, this deliberate segregation of a category of persons from the rest of society? Did we predict that one day we would see a demarcated group of Canadians being targeted not just for segregation, discrimination, and demonization, but that they would also be denied their livelihoods? Did we imagine that leaders, from the Prime Minister to the Premier, would verbally assault this same group and use the most threatening and dehumanizing language against it? This is happening, right now, all around us, right in front of us. Now that history has found us, how do we meet history? Do we even stop to take notice? When are we going to stand up and speak out?
In Canadian universities, many if not most scholars and students are not living up to goals of offering critical and independent perspectives on a crisis of momentous proportions. Ethics, freedom of choice, privacy, and democracy, have not been defended by our universities. Instead what has risen is a culture of silence, with some willingly reinforcing an instant orthodoxy that could only have been produced by widespread fear and unconditional trust in the authorities. Is this what we expect from our universities? Should students and professional scholars not be dedicated to developing independent, critical analytical abilities? Should they be trusting the authorities to the point of silently acquiescing with or even staunchly upholding their edicts and decrees? By not defending basic ethical principles of bodily autonomy, informed consent, and freedom of choice, and by even going as far as denying these rights, universities are actively engaged in violating human rights that are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and by international human rights law. By not challenging mandatory “vaccination” and “vaccine passports,” we allow a ready-made canon, furnished by the state and media, to supplant our own investigation and knowledge production. Worse yet, by directly engaging in censoring and silencing scientists, and by allowing intimidation and mobbing, universities in Canada appear to be engaging in intellectual, moral, and ethical suicide. What kind of university will emerge from this process? Can we even properly speak of a “university” in such a context?
In our universities, we have looked on silently as the media, backed by powerful private interests and our own bureaucrats, actively censor fellow scientists’ research and stifle critical questioning, to the benefit of transnational corporations such as Pfizer.50 We have watched tenure being invalidated, rendered null and void according to the whims of the state, as the terms and conditions of our employment are radically altered to depend—in clear violation of the Privacy Act—on disclosure of our medical status.51 Professors have been involuntarily deputized as auxiliary police forces, made to enforce mask mandates in their classrooms. Simply questioning the logic of such measures, and asking to see the scientific evidence that supports them, risks censure for “spreading misinformation”. Faculty unions have turned against faculty who resist the mandates, while most faculty either remain silent, or loudly support harsh restrictions.52 Academic freedom is in greater peril in Canada today than it ever has been.53 We have witnessed science succumb to the dictates of politics. As one concerned epidemiologist observed, with obvious restraint: “there will be lasting consequences from mingling political partisanship and science during the management of a public-health crisis”.54
In both medicine and international human rights law, the principle of voluntary and prior informed consent is fundamental and inviolable. Yet without adequate information, consent cannot be informed. The denial of informed consent is a grave violation of human rights, as established under multiple instruments of international human rights law. Coercion is also a denial of informed consent. Penalties, punishments, and threats offer the same kind of “choice” that is offered during the psychological torture of detainees under abusive interrogation. It is strange medicine that restricts family members from gatherings, worshippers from communing, workers from working—that creates unemployment and targets dissenting persons’ ability to clothe, house, and feed their families. “Vaccine hesitant” adults are treated as children, with medicine forced down their throats by a paternalistic state. Even if we had been dealing with actual children, in Canada we were supposed to have moved past our history of such abusive treatment. Mandates and restrictions have been overbearing, indiscriminate, redundant, authoritarian, arrogant, and punitive. Our strange medicine is the outcome of the politics of dispossession, which has reached such an extreme that it would have people sign off the rights to their immune system to a giant pharmaceutical corporation with a criminal record.
In such an environment, “vaccine refusal” is treated as tantamount to treason, an expression of “selfishness,” and a “threat to the community”. Yet a more sober and considered view would highlight the realization that, “mandatory vaccination amounts to discrimination against healthy, innate biological characteristics, which goes against the established ethical norms and is also defeasible a priori”.55
Independent, rational, critical analysis that seeks truth has been supplanted by deference to authority and its alternative “science”: the science of politicians, technocrats, the media, and lawyers. This alternative science has us thinking what was previously unimaginable, and doing what was previously unacceptable: never do you quarantine the healthy; never do you vaccinate the immune; never do you inject new treatments into children who do not need them;56 never do you vaccinate during a pandemic; and, never do you try new drugs on pregnant women.57 As we think the unthinkable, collaborate with the unimaginable, and support the unsupportable, we as academics are conspiring with those who demand we assert the unquestionable.
This has to change, and it has to change now.
NOTES
1 “Here’s what each Canadian province is doing to ‘flatten the curve’ of the novel coronavirus,” Toronto Star, March 15, 2020; “Our window to flatten the COVID-19 curve is narrow, says Dr. Theresa Tam,” The Canadian Press, March 15, 2020.
2 The WHO’s original definition of a pandemic specified simultaneous epidemics worldwide that were marked by “enormous numbers of deaths and illnesses”; this definition was changed just prior to the declaration of the 2009 swine flu “pandemic,” by deleting the criteria of severity and high mortality. See: Ron Law, “[Response] WHO and the pandemic flu ‘conspiracies’,” British Medical Journal, June 4, 2010, p. 340; Peter Doshi, “The Elusive Definition of Pandemic Influenza,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 89, pp. 532–538.
3 ON PCR TESTS AND THE PRODUCTION OF “CASES”:
One of the means by which numbers were inflated lies in the use of inappropriate testing procedures and their interpretation. Positive results using reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR, or just “PCR tests”) were reported as “cases,” a term that denotes a patient receiving medical attention, when in most cases persons did not even show symptoms. Numerous scientists criticized the use of PCR tests, beginning with Dr. Kary Mullis who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for inventing the PCR testing process now in wide use to diagnose coronavirus infection. Dr. Mullis is on record for challenging the utility of PCR tests: “it’s just a process that’s used to make a whole lot of something out of something. That’s what it is. It doesn’t tell you that you’re sick and it doesn’t tell you that the thing you ended up with really was going to hurt you or anything like that”—see: Patrick Howley, “Inventor of PCR Test Said Fauci ‘Doesn’t Know Anything’ and is Willing to Lie on Television,” National File, March 15, 2021. The World Health Organization advised caution in using PCR testing, warning of the potential for increased false positives and recommending that PCR testing be used only as “an aid for diagnosis”—see: “WHO Information Notice for Users 2020/05: Nucleic acid testing (NAT) technologies that use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for detection of SARS-CoV-2,” World Health Organization, January 20, 2021.
The original publication which advocated using PCR testing for SARS-CoV-2 (the “Corman-Drosten paper”) came in for severe criticism from 22 scientists who identified 10 fatal flaws with the paper, including its rush to publication after a single day of peer review. The Corman-Drosten paper, which influenced policy worldwide, originally recommended using 45 cycles of thermal amplification of swab samples for SARS-CoV-2—yet a published study reported that even at 35 cycles of amplification, up to 97% of the positive results using RT-PCR tests would be false (see: Rita Jaafar, Sarah Aherfi, Nathalie Wurtz, et al. “Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, 72(11), 2021). The Corman-Drosten article has since been subjected to three stages of correction. See: Victor M. Corman, Christian Drosten, et al., “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR,” Eurosurveillance, 25(3), 2020. For the critical review of the Corman-Drosten paper, see: Pieter Borger, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, Michael Yeadon, et al., “External peer review of the RTPCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 reveals 10 major scientific flaws at the molecular and methodological level: consequences for false positive results,” Corman-Drosten Review Report, January 2021; also see: Peter Andrews, “A global team of experts has found 10 Fatal Flaws in the main test for Covid and is demanding it’s urgently axed. As they should,” RT, December 1, 2020, and, Peter Andrews, “Flawed paper behind Covid-19 testing faces being retracted, after scientists expose its ten fatal problems,” RT, December 9, 2020.
The practical utility of using PCR testing to gauge infectiousness was also called into question by various public health agencies. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cautioned that, “detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms” (“CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel,” CDC, July 7, 2021, p. 38). The Department of Health of the Government of Australia cautioned, “that PCR tests cannot distinguish between ‘live’ virus and noninfective RNA” (“Novel coronavirus (COVID-19): Information for Clinicians,” March 2020, p. 2). This was echoed by Ireland’s specialist agency for the surveillance of communicable diseases, which stated: “PCR does not distinguish between viable virus and non-infectious RNA,” and warned of the dangers of false positives—see page 10: “Guidance on the management of weak positive (high Ct value) PCR results in the setting of testing individuals for SARS-CoV-2,” HSE Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC), July 7, 2021. “RT-PCR detects RNA, not infectious virus”: this is stated at the outset of a published study supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada and its National Microbiology Laboratory—see: Jared Bullard, Kerry Dust, Duane Funk, James E Strong, et al., “Predicting Infectious Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 From Diagnostic Samples,” Clinical Infectious Diseases, 71(10), November 15, 2020, pp. 2663–2666. For similar cautions, see: “Interpreting the results of Nucleic Acid Amplification testing (NAT; or PCR tests) for COVID-19 in the Respiratory Tract,” BC Centre for Disease Control/BC Ministry of Health, April 30, 2020.
In November of 2020 in Portugal, a verdict from the Lisbon Appeal Court ruled that a positive PCR test result could not definitively prove that someone was infected with SARS-CoV-2. In addition, the court cited published research that reported that, at the high cycle thresholds that were commonly used, the rate of false positives could be as high as 97%. See: Proc. 1783/20.7T8PDL.L1, Tribunal da Relação de Lisboa, November 11, 2020, and Peter Andrews, “Landmark legal ruling finds that Covid tests are not fit for purpose. So what do the MSM do? They ignore it,” RT, November 27, 2020.
In 2007, in an article in The New York Times titled, “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t,” what was believed to be an epidemic of whooping cough in New Hampshire turned out just to be a common cold—what is instructive is how health officials came to make this mistake which created what the paper called a “pseudo-epidemic”. At the centre of this pseudo-epidemic was reliance on PCR testing; experts quoted in the paper called them unreliable, and stated that they should not be used. PCR testing was applied to a sickness that had non-distinctive symptoms. This mistake led to further mistakes, that were not seen as mistakes: “Yet, epidemiologists say, one of the most troubling aspects of the pseudo-epidemic is that all the decisions seemed so sensible at the time”. Doctors tested anyone with a cough or runny nose, and the PCR tests returned false positive results for whooping cough. See: Gina Kolata, “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic That Wasn’t,” The New York Times, January 22, 2007.
In July of 2021 the CDC announced that, “after December 31, 2021, CDC will withdraw the request to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) of the CDC 2019-Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Real-Time RT-PCR Diagnostic Panel, the assay first introduced in February 2020 for detection of SARS-CoV-2 only,” in part because of the test’s inability to distinguish between SARS-CoV-2 and seasonal flu (“Lab Alert: Changes to CDC RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2 Testing,” CDC, July 21, 2021).
ON COVID DEATH STATISTICS AND EXAGGERATION OF THREATS:
Official reports on the numbers of deaths ascribed to Covid, have also been revealed to be highly controversial. In most countries, “Covid deaths” included both those who died with Covid, and those who specifically died from Covid, thus producing the largest possible number. On April 20, 2020, the World Health Organization published its “International Guidelines for Certification and Classification (Coding) of Covid-19 as Cause of Death”. The WHO advised public health authorities that when Covid-19 is the “suspected”, “probable,” or even just the “assumed” cause of death, then it must always be recorded in death certificates as the “underlying cause of death” (see pps. 3-7). This was to be done even if a decedent suffered from serious chronic illnesses. Indeed, comorbidities such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, or chronic non-Covid respiratory infections, should only be indicated as a “contributing cause” lower down in a death certificate. The WHO added: “Always apply these instructions, whether they can be considered medically correct or not” (p. 8).
In Quebec, both the Premier, François Legault, and the Director of Public Health, Horacio Arruda, publicly admitted that Quebec’s Covid death numbers were higher than Ontario’s, because in Quebec—regardless of the actual cause of death—once one had tested positive for Covid, the death was attributed to Covid. As Dr. Arruda explained, “Anytime, in Quebec, someone dies from cancer or another disease, if they have COVID-19 it will be counted as COVID-19”: Kelly Greig & Selena Ross, “Legault asks if Ontario’s under-counting COVID-19 deaths, drawing scientist’s ire,” CTV News, October 29, 2020.
Such practices, as recommended by the WHO and widely followed internationally, were subject to a successful legal challenge in Portugal. On May 15, 2021, a ruling from the Tribunal Administrativo de Círculo de Lisboa found that verified deaths from SARS-CoV-2 amounted to just 0.9% of all reported Covid deaths—that is, 152 deaths rather than the 17,000 plus Covid deaths reported by the state. See: Mordechai Sones, “Lisbon court rules only 0.9% of ‘verified cases’ died of COVID, numbering 152, not 17,000 claimed,” America’s Frontline Doctors, June 23, 2021; the ruling can be accessed here. In Italy there were also questions stemming from data published by the government’s national institute of health—Istituto superiore di Sanità—regarding the alleged Covid mortality rate; according to one interpretation, only 2.9% of registered Covid deaths from the end of February 2020 were due to Covid as such, thus of the 130,468 official Covid deaths, only 3,783 can be attributed to Covid alone—see: Franco Bechis, “Gran pasticcio nel rapporto sui decessi. Per l’Iss gran parte dei morti non li ha causati il Covid,” Il Tempo, October 21, 2021.
One exceptionally detailed empirical analysis of public health pronouncements and media reports in Canada found a consistent pattern of misdirection. The pattern was one that generalized from the situation of the deaths of very elderly persons with comorbidities (whose average age exceeded the national average for life expectancy), and who were primarily confined to long-term care homes, to the rest of the population. As of April, 2021, nearly 91% of all Covid deaths recorded in Canada occurred in long-term care homes for the elderly. By imposing a “one size fits all” approach, Canadians were thus increasingly taught to fear for the safety of their children. Canada had only one seriously deadly wave, and that was the first wave in March-May of 2020—the majority of those deaths took place inside of tightly controlled institutional settings which in many cases were publicly-administered. Long-term care and retirement homes, added to hospitals, and prisons, together accounted for 98.6% of all Covid deaths; thus if 13,611 Covid deaths occurred inside such tightly-controlled institutional settings, only 178 deaths occurred in the wider community. Yet what was an institutional crisis was then inflated into a population-wide health crisis. There was a massive failure that occurred on governments’ side of the institutional barrier, with attention subsequently and deliberately redirected to the rest of the population—healthy people had to be locked in their homes presumably to save the lives of those in nursing homes. For this, and much more, see: Julius Ruechel, “The Lies Exposed by the Numbers: Fear, Misdirection, & Institutional Deaths (An Investigative Report),” May 28, 2021.
Another study found that there was “no extraordinary surge in yearly or seasonal mortality in Canada, which can be ascribed to a Covid-19 pandemic” and that “several prominent features” in all-cause mortality per week during the Covid-19 period, “exhibit anomalous province-to-province heterogeneity,” one that is “irreconcilable with the known behaviour of epidemics of viral respiratory diseases”. The authors of the study stated: “We conclude that a pandemic did not occur”. See: Denis G. Rancourt, Marine Baudin, Jérémie Mercier, “Analysis of all-cause mortality by week in Canada 2010-2021, by province, age and sex: There was no COVID-19 pandemic, and there is strong evidence of response-caused deaths in the most elderly and in young males,” August 6, 2021.
In Quebec, the public is familiar with how during the “first wave” a massive number of deaths occurred in long-term care and retirement homes: 73% of all deaths occurred in such institutions (CHSLDs). About 92% of people who died between February 25 and July 11, 2020, were 70 and older, according to the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ). This was the high point of claimed Covid deaths; there has been no repetition of the mortality level we saw in that period. However, even here there is reason to doubt official numbers. Given the conditions in the homes, as reported by nurses, physicians, and by the Canadian military, an unspecified number of residents died due to starvation, dehydration, neglect, and even the deliberate administration of morphine to accelerate death—while all of these deaths were tallied as “Covid deaths”. In the UK there were similar reports of the administration of Midazolam which has been “been associated with respiratory depression and respiratory arrest, especially when used for sedation” according to published warnings. For more on these reports, see: Levon Sevunts, “Military report on conditions in Quebec nursing homes details several flaws,” Radio Canada International, May 27, 2020; Brig-Gen. F.G. Carpentier, “Observations sur les Centres D’hébergement de Soins Longues Durées de Montréal,” 2nd Canadian Division and Joint Task Force (East), May 18, 2020; The Canadian Press, “‘Systemic ageism’ to blame for CHSLD deaths during pandemic’s first wave, says expert,” CTV News, November 1, 2021; The Canadian Press, “Officials blamed COVID-19 for Herron deaths, when some were due to hunger, thirst: witness,” CTV News, September 14, 2021; The Canadian Press, “Health officials, Herron staff clashed as situation got worse, Quebec coroner hears,” CTV News, September 16, 2021; The Canadian Press, “Doctors concerned about rise in dangerous medications in long-term care homes during pandemic,” CTV News, December 3, 2020; Tu Thanh Ha, “Quebec nursing home often gave morphine rather than treat COVID-19 patients, inquest told,” The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2021; Emily Mangiaracina, “‘I had never seen deaths happen so quickly’: Quebec nursing home gave COVID patients morphine instead of virus treatments,” LifeSite News, July 22, 2021; and, despite the deceptive headline which adopts the perspective of an official responsible for instituting the use of morphine in Quebec nursing homes, see The Canadian Press, “No ‘euthanasia’ in Quebec care homes during COVID-19, expert tells coroner’s inquest,” CTV News, November 2, 2021.
Similar reports of inappropriate or questionable administration of sedatives such as Midazolam, that accelerated death among nursing and retirement home residents, were also registered internationally—see for example: Stephen Adams & Holly Bancroft, “Did care homes use powerful sedatives to speed Covid deaths? Number of prescriptions for the drug midazolam doubled during height of the pandemic,” The Mail on Sunday, July 11, 2020.
4 The Canadian Joint Operations Command used the WHO-declared “pandemic” as an opportunity to test new propaganda techniques on unsuspecting Canadians, using techniques similar to those used for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan; the Canadian Forces also invested in training public affairs officers on “behaviour modification” techniques: David Pugliese, “Military leaders saw pandemic as unique opportunity to test propaganda on Canadians: report,” National Post, September 27, 2021. Also see: Susan Delacourt, “‘The nudge unit’: Ottawa’s behavioural-science team investigates how Canadians feel about vaccines, public health and who to trust,” Toronto Star, February 21, 2021. The behavioural science sub-group (SPI-B) of the UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) prepared a document in May of 2020 advising on measures to be taken to increase public adherence to social distancing measures. The promotion of fear was explicitly advocated: “The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat” (emphasis in the original)—see: SPI-B, “Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures,” SAGE, March 22, 2020; also see, “How SAGE and the UK media created fear in the British public,” Evidence Not Fear, June 27, 2020. On the “doom loop” created by the UK government’s behaviour modification techniques—which dangerously spread fear when it is known to weaken immune systems—and which used the UK public for psychological experimentation, see Gordon Rayner, “State of fear: how ministers ‘used covert tactics’ to keep scared public at home,” The Telegraph, April 2, 2021, and Gary Sidley, “A year of fear,” The Critic, March 23, 2021. Sidely describes how the UK Government’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) developed strategies that would create “‘low cost, low pain ways of ‘nudging’ citizens…into new ways of acting by going with the grain of how we think and act’. Several interventions of this type have been woven into the Covid-19 messaging campaign, including fear (inflating perceived threat levels), shame (conflating compliance with virtue) and peer pressure (portraying non-compliers as a deviant minority)”. See also Laura Dodsworth, “Winter is coming, and so are the nudges,” October 4, 2021.
5 Knowing that “a frightened population is a compliant one” (Sidley, fn. 4), state officials and the media promote fear, and thus justify ever accumulating and restrictions on civil liberties and negation of key human rights. The demonstrable result of the prolonged and coordinated promotion of fear is an emergent mass psychosis, one that inoculates those suffering from psychosis from rational questioning and normal scepticism. For some psychiatrists, the real public health crisis of this period has been the wide extent of mass delusional psychosis, an indicator of the harm done to mental health in the name of “controlling Covid”. What a psychosis fueled by a sustained sense of everpresent danger has spawned, is a culture of control, or authoritarian risk management that redirects blame away from the virus (and the fact that the state cannot control its spread) and directes blame toward the behaviour of “unruly” others, thus also fomenting divisions and inter-personal and inter-group hostility. In the US, such divisions have been enlisted in the service of heightened partisanship. In such a context, truth has been replaced by authority: people looking up to the authorities for guidance, rather than seeking out knowledge individually, independently, and critically. While stressing “scientific evidence,” the tendency in this culture of mass control is to steer away actual evidence, with fear-driven mandates persisting. For more on these points, see: Philipp Bagus, José Antonio Peña-Ramos, & Antonio Sánchez-Bayón, “COVID-19 and the Political Economy of Mass Hysteria,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(1376), 2021; S.G. Cheah, “Psychiatrist: Americans Are Suffering From ‘Mass Delusional Psychosis’ because of Covid-19,” Evie, December 22, 2020; “Are We Experiencing a Mass Psychosis?” The Pulse, August 17, 2021; and, Emma Green, “The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown,” The Atlantic, May 4, 2021.
Fear appeals have also been very effective in North America and Europe in promoting “vaccine” uptake (even if fear can also undermine the effectiveness of injected treatments). Psychologists have found that, “Moderation analyses based on prominent fear appeal theories showed that the effectiveness of fear appeals increased when the message included efficacy statements, depicted high susceptibility and severity, recommended one-time only (vs. repeated) behaviors, and targeted audiences that included a larger percentage of female message recipients. Overall, we conclude that (a) fear appeals are effective at positively influencing attitude, intentions, and behaviors, (b) there are very few circumstances under which they are not effective, and (c) there are no identified circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes”: Melanie B. Tannenbaum, Justin Hepler, & Rick S. Zimmerman, et al., “Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories,” Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 2015, pp. 1178–1204. Scientists writing in the bulletin of the WHO warned in 2011 about the creation of “pandemics of fear” and a “culture of fear” caused by health-scares about viruses, leading to worst-case thinking and disproportionate responses that cause harm. Looking at prior “pandemics of fear,” they noted: “the exaggerated claims of a severe public health threat stemmed primarily from disease advocacy by influenza experts. In the highly competitive market of health governance, the struggle for attention, budgets and grants is fierce. The pharmaceutical industry and the media only reacted to this welcome boon. We therefore need fewer, not more ‘pandemic preparedness’ plans or definitions. Vertical influenza planning in the face of speculative catastrophes is a recipe for repeated waste of resources and health scares, induced by influenza experts with vested interests in exaggeration. There is no reason for expecting any upcoming pandemic to be worse than the mild ones of 1957 or 1968, no reason for striking pre-emptively, no reason for believing that a proportional and balanced response would risk lives”—see: Luc Bonneux & Wim Van Damme, “Health is more than influenza,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 89, 2011, pp.539–540.
Furthermore, fear can also produce negative immunological effects. Excessive and prolonged fear, suffered by large parts of the population during the past 19 months, can do both serious damage to persons’ physical health, and it can damage their brains—see: Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, “Chronic Stress, Anxiety can Damage the Brain, Increase Risk of Major Psychiatric Disorders,” ScienceDaily, January 21, 2016, and Debra Fulghum Bruce, “How Worrying Affects the Body,” WebMD, September, 2020. A published study from a team of researchers at the University of Nottingham stated: “It is well known that when negative mood states persist over time they result in the dysregulation of physiological systems involved in the regulation of the immune system. Thus, there exists significant potential for the psychological harm inflicted by the pandemic to translate into physical harm. This could include an increased susceptibility to the virus, worse outcomes if infected, or indeed poorer responses to vaccinations in the future”—see: Ru Jia, Kieran Ayling, & Trudie Chalder, et al., “Mental health in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic: cross-sectional analyses from a community cohort study,” BMJ Open, 10(9); Rosa Silverman, “What a year of lockdown has done to our immunity – and how to strengthen it,” The Telegraph, February 24, 2021; Shaoni Bhattacharya, “Brain study links negative emotions and lowered immunity,” New Scientist, September 2, 2003; APA, “Stress Weakens the Immune System,” American Pyschological Association, February 23, 2006; and, Suzanne C. Segerstrom & Gregory E. Miller, “Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System: A Meta-Analytic Study of 30 Years of Inquiry,” Psychological Bulletin, 130(4), 2004, pp. 601–630.
For more conceptual and philosophical understandings of fear in the contemporary context, the following is recommended: Giorgio Agamben, “What is Fear?” Old News, October 26, 2020, and Gustavo Esteva, “Uses of Fear,” D. Alan Dean, March 28, 2020.
6 ON LOCKDOWNS:
Published scientific research has found little if any evidence to support the notion that lockdowns reduced mortality. Instead, deaths rates tended to be determined more by the greater proportion of elderly citizens, the environment, and the prevalence of metabolic diseases—see: Quentin De Larochelambert & Andy Marc, et al., “Covid-19 Mortality: A Matter of Vulnerability Among Nations Facing Limited Margins of Adaptation,” Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 2020. Another study concluded, “it has become clear that a hard lockdown does not protect old and frail people living in care homes—a population the lockdown was designed to protect. Neither does it decrease mortality from COVID-19, which is evident when comparing the UK’s experience with that of other European countries”—see: Johan Giesecke, “The Invisible Pandemic,” The Lancet, 395(10238), 2020. One cross-national study reported that an “examination of lockdown intensity and the number of cumulative deaths attributed to Covid-19 across jurisdictions shows no obvious relationship,” adding that, “an examination of over 100 Covid-19 studies reveals that many relied on false assumptions that over-estimated the benefits and under-estimated the costs of lockdown,” and it reaffirmed that, “the unconditional cumulative Covid-19 deaths per million is not negatively correlated with the stringency of lockdown across countries”—see: Douglas W. Allen, “Covid-19 Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature,” International Journal of the Economics of Business, 2021. Another study that measured and compared weekly mortality rates from 24 European countries, found no clear association between lockdown policies and mortality rates: Christian Bjørnskov, “Did Lockdown Work? An Economist’s Cross-Country Comparison,” Social Science Research Network (SSRN), August 2, 2020. A medical study concluded that, “rapid border closures, full lockdowns, and wide-spread testing were not associated with COVID-19 mortality per million people,” and that “obesity, advanced age and higher per capita GDP are associated with increased national case load and mortality”—see: Rabail Chaudhry & George Dranitsaris, et al., “A country level analysis measuring the impact of government actions, country preparedness and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 mortality and related health outcomes,” EclinicialMedicine, 25(100464), 2020. In the critical case of Italy, published research found that tiered restrictions not only failed to reduce the spread of infection, such measures might have even been counterproductive for limiting the reproduction of the virus: Maurizio Rainisio, “The tiered restrictions enforced in November 2020 did not impact the epidemiology of the second wave of COVID-19 in Italy,” medRxiv, September 13, 2021.
ON MASKS:
Masking and mandates governing mask-wearing are likely among the very last to go. Yet, from the outset, there was no conclusive scientific evidence to support the notion that masks could ever reduce transmission or infection by any significant measure, and public health officials who supported masking had in previous weeks denied their utility. States have taken the reversal and turned it into decrees, with fines imposed for not wearing a mask; in some countries, arrest is possible. Masking also publicly spreads fear of infection and intensifies calls for increased risk management. There is also some scientific evidence that shows the different harms caused by prolonged masking. In Quebec, millions of masks had to be recalled due to their incorporation of known carcinogens and other toxic substances. See: Kai Kisielinski, Paul Giboni, &Andreas Prescher, et al., “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(8), 4344, 2021; LifeSiteNews Staff, “47 studies confirm ineffectiveness of masks for COVID and 32 more confirm their negative health effects,” LifeSite News, July 23, 2021; Shane Neilson, “The Surgical Mask is a Bad Fit for Risk Reduction,” Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), 188(8), 2016, pp. 606–607; Antonio I. Lazzarino, et al., “Face masks for the public during the covid-19 crisis,” BMJ, 369(1435), 2020; Jingyi Xiao, Eunice Y. C. Shiu, & Huizhi Gao, et al., “Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, 26(5), 2020; Michael Klompas, Charles A. Morris, & Julia Sinclair, et al., “Universal Masking in Hospitals in the Covid-19 Era,” New England Journal of Medicine, 382, 2020; Anna Balazy, Mika Toivola, & Atin Adhikari, et al., “Do N95 respirators provide 95% protection level against airborne viruses, and how adequate are surgical masks?” American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), 34(2), 2006, pp. 51–57; Youlin Long, Tengyue Hu, & Liqin Liu, et al., “Effectiveness of N95 respirators versus surgical masks against influenza: A systematic review and meta-analysis,” Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, 13(2), 2020, pp. 93–101; Angel N. Desai & Preeti Mehrotra, “Medical Masks,” Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 323(15), 2020, pp. 1517–1518; ECDC, “Using face masks in the community: Effectiveness in reducing transmission of COVID-19,” European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, February 15, 2021; Heow Pueh Lee & De Yun Wang, “Objective Assessment of Increase in Breathing Resistance of N95 Respirators on Human Subjects,” The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 55(8), 2011, pp. 917–921; Cong Liu, Guojian Li, & Yuhang He, et al., “Effects of wearing masks on human health and comfort during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Earth and Environmental Science, 531, 2020; Richard Besser & Baruch Fischhoff, “Rapid Expert Consultation on the Effectiveness of Fabric Masks for the COVID-19 Pandemic,” The National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine, April 8, 2020; Robert C.Hughes, Sunil S.Bhopal, & MarkTomlinson, “Making pre-school children wear masks is bad public health,” Public Health in Practice, 2, 2021; Tom Jefferson, Chris B Del Mar, & Liz Dooley, et al., “Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses,” Cochrane Library, November 20, 2020; WCH, “Face masks – the risks vs benefits for children,” World Council for Health, October 2, 2021; Damian D. Guerra & Daniel J. Guerra, “Mask mandate and use efficacy in state-level COVID-19 containment,” International Research Journal of Public Health, 5, 2021; Arjun Walia, “Masks Do ‘More Damage to the Children’ than COVID: Belgian Academy For Medicine,” The Pulse, October 11, 2021; Tom Jefferson & Carl Heneghan, “Masking lack of evidence with politics,” The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, July 23, 2020; SPR, “Are Face Masks Effective? The Evidence,” Swiss Policy Research, October 2021; Henning Bundgaard & Johan Skov Bundgaard, et al., “Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 174(3), 2021, pp. 335–343; Kiva A. Fisher, Mark W. Tenforde, & Leora R. Feldstein, et al. “Community and Close Contact Exposures Associated with COVID-19 Among Symptomatic Adults ≥18 Years in 11 Outpatient Health Care Facilities — United States, July 2020,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 69(36), 2020, pp. 1258–1264; Lillian Roy, “After recalling graphene-coated masks out of safety concerns, Health Canada says some models can come back on the market,” CTV News, July 14, 2021; Gabrielle Fahmy & Selena Ross, “Montreal transit workers the latest to learn they’ve been wearing potentially toxic masks,” CTV News, March 29, 2021; The Canadian Press, “Quebec’s education union wants to close down establishments where recalled masks were distributed,” CTV News, March 28, 2021; Selena Ross, “‘I just now feel a bit betrayed’: Quebec teachers and parents respond after potentially toxic masks pulled,” CTV News, March 26, 2021. For a philosopher’s understanding of masking, see Giorgio Agamben, “The Face and the Mask,” Old News, October 11, 2020.
7 David Cayley, “The Case against Vaccine Passports,” First Things, September 16, 2021; Giorgio Agamben, “Bare Life and the Vaccine,” D. Alan Dean, April 16, 2020; Lisa Bildy, “Trudeau’s vaccine passports are an affront to liberty,” Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, August 15, 2021; Douglas Farrow, “An Open Letter on Coercive Mandates and Vaccine Passports,” Crisis Magazine, August 30, 2021; Claus Rinner, Laurent Leduc, & Jan Vrbik, et al., “No, COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination do not ‘protect the health and safety of Canadians’,” Toronto Sun, August 24, 2021; Aaron Rock, “25 reasons to ban vaccine passports,” LifeSite News, August 31, 2021; Anthony Furey, “Why vaccine passports make things worse,” National Post, September 7, 2021; Jon Miltimore, “Harvard Epidemiologist Says the Case for COVID Vaccine Passports Was Just Demolished,” FEE Stories, August 30, 2021; Ann Cavoukian, “Vaccine passports to create ‘appalling’ level of surveillance tracking: Former Ontario privacy watchdog,” BNN Bloomberg; Isaac Teo, “Vaccine Passports Will Create a ‘Global Digital Infrastructure of Surveillance’: Former Ontario Privacy Commissioner,” The Epoch Times, October 20, 2021; OPCC, “Privacy and COVID-19 Vaccine Passports: Joint Statement by Federal, Provincial and Territorial Privacy Commissioners,” Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, May 19, 2021; Jeremy Loffredo & Max Blumenthal, “Public health or private wealth? How digital vaccine passports pave way for unprecedented surveillance capitalism,” The GrayZone, October 19, 2021; The Canadian Press, “Debate on vaccine passports would expose Quebecers to conspiracy theories: Legault,” CTV News, August 12, 2021; Daniel J. Rowe, “‘We have to confront our clients’: Quebec bars and restaurants struggling with COVID-19 vaccine passport rollout,” CTV News, September 24, 2021.
8 In almost all provinces of Canada, tenured and tenure-track plus part-time faculty, students, and staff, face expulsion and loss of employment for refusal to comply with the demand that they disclose their private and personal medical status; others have explicitly refused mandatory vaccination, while others still have rejected discriminatory testing in order to keep their jobs. See: Dr. Byram Bridle, “An Open Letter to the President of the University of Guelph,” September 17, 2021; Dr. Michael Palmer, et al., “Open letter to UW officials: Repeal the COVID vaccination and testing mandates,” August 26, 2021, see also “Requests to Repeal UW’s Mandatory Vaccination and Testing Policy”; CCCA, “Ethics professor threatened with dismissal for refusing vaccine,” Canadian Covid Care Alliance, also Arjun Walia, “Canadian Ethics Professor Dismissed For Refusing COVID Vaccine: A Powerful Message,” The Pulse, September 8, 2021; Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, “University Fires Surgeon Who Voiced Safety Concerns About COVID Vaccines for Kids,” The Defender, June 23, 2021. Many faculty unions have not only failed to stand by colleagues who faced termination over an abrupt change in the terms and conditions of their employment, the unions themselves have pushed for mandates. On the domestic travel ban that blocks non-vaccinated Canadians from accessing means of travel within the country, and that blocks them from leaving the country by normal means, see: Justin Trudeau, “Prime Minister announces mandatory vaccination for the federal workforce and federally regulated transportation sectors,” Prime Minister of Canada, October 6, 2021.
9 See in particular, “Division III: Public Health Emergency” (articles 118–130) of the Public Health Act (Bill 36, 2001, chapter 60), Second Session of the 36th Legislature, National Assembly of Quebec, 2001.
10 For the complete list of Quebec’s emergency measures, see: Measures adopted by Orders in Council and Ministerial Orders in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Orders in Council and Ministerial Orders related to COVID-19), Gouvernement du Québec,
11 Indeed, the Government of Quebec has gone as far as to admit publicly that the state of emergency is not being used because of a “public health emergency,” but as a political tool that permits interference in collective bargaining. Quebec Premier François Legault said on Thursday, November 18: “Right now we’re paying an additional $4 an hour (for staff) because there’s a shortage of people working in health establishments. To do that, which is something not included in the collective agreement, we’re obliged to use the state of emergency. We need the state of emergency to pay bonuses and we still need those bonuses to get more people working in health establishments” (emphases added). Reporters also noted that, “Legault made no reference to the province’s opposition parties, which have for weeks called for the state of emergency to be lifted in order to debate government decisions in a democratic manner. He was also silent concerning legal and rights experts who are questioning why emergency measures remain in effect”. These observations record the fact that the Quebec government has failed to explain or demonstrate the need for any continued state of emergency—see: The Canadian Press, “Quebec’s state of emergency will remain in effect until start of 2022,” Montreal Gazette, November 19, 2021. On the concept of rule by “state of emergency” (or state of exception), and the consequences of such rule in Canada, see the following: David Cayley, “Pandemic Revelations,” December 4, 2020; “Coronavirus and philosophers: M. Foucault, G. Agamben, S. Benvenuto,” European Journal of Psychoanalysis; Giorgio Agamben, “The State of Exception Provoked by an Unmotivated Emergency,” Praxis, February 26, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “The Coronavirus and the State of Exception,” Autonomies, March 3, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Contagion,” Write.as, March 11, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Reflections on the Plague,” Enough 14, April 7, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Social Distancing,” Ill Will, April 9, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “A Question,” An und für sich, April 15, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “New Reflections,” D. Alan Dean, April 22, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Medicine as Religion,” An und für sich, May 2, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Biosecurity and Politics,” D. Alan Dean, May 11, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “State of Exception and State of Emergency,” Old News, July 30, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “When the House Burns,” Architects for Social Housing, October 15, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “Some Data,” Old News, November 2, 2020; Giorgio Agamben, “War and Peace,” Ill Will, February 24, 2021.
12 Virat Agrawal, Jonathan H. Cantor, Neeraj Sood, & Christopher M. Whaley, “The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic and Policy Responses on Excess Mortality,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 28930, June, 2021; AIER Staff, “Lockdowns Do Not Control the Coronavirus: The Evidence,” American Institute for Economic Research, December 19, 2020; Greg Ip, “New Thinking on Covid Lockdowns: They’re Overly Blunt and Costly,” Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2020.
13 The Canadian Press, “‘We’ll be living with overflow for a few months,’ says minister Dube regarding Quebec emergency rooms,” CTV News, July 5, 2021; Adam Kovac, “Many Quebec ERs stretched to capacity even as COVID numbers shrink,” CTV News, June 16, 2021. The explosive growth in ER visits for non-Covid sickness, as a result of delayed treatments, is also occurring in the US: “Except for initial hot spots like New York City, many ERs across the U.S. were often eerily empty in the spring of 2020. Terrified of contracting COVID-19, people who were sick with other things did their best to stay away from hospitals. Visits to emergency departments dropped to half their normal levels, according to the Epic Health Research Network, and didn’t fully rebound until the summer of 2021. But now, they’re too full. Even in parts of the country where COVID-19 isn’t overwhelming the health system, patients are showing up to the ER sicker than they were before the pandemic, their diseases more advanced and in need of more complicated care”—see: Kate Wells, “ERs are now swamped with seriously ill patients — but many don’t even have COVID,” NPR, October 26, 2021.
14 The Executive Director of the Quebec Cancer Coalition was reported as saying, “Where this gets us is another pandemic”; Dr. Neil Fleshner, Chair of Urology at the University of Toronto: “I do believe that patients with cancer in Canada…are being rendered fatal, terminal or incurable, as a result of what’s happened”—see: Tom Blackwell, “Pandemic-related cuts in cancer screening, surgery have doctors worried more people will die,” National Post, April 13, 2021.
15 StatCan, “Disruptions to cancer screening may lead to increases in cancer rates and deaths,” Statistics Canada, March 11, 2021.
16 Stephane Giroux & Luca Caruso-Moro, “Montreal records increase in opioid deaths in pandemic year as national fatalities skyrocket,” CTV News, June 25, 2021; Health Canada, “Opioid- and Stimulant-related Harms in Canada,” Government of Canada, September, 2021.
17 Becky Robertson, “Way more young people in Ontario died from effects of lockdown than of Covid itself,” BlogTO, July, 2021; Nadine Yousif, “‘Very, very concerning’: Pandemic taking heavy toll on children’s mental health, Sick Kids study shows,” Toronto Star, July 8, 2021; and, Denette Wilford, “More young Canadians died from ‘unintentional side effects’ of the pandemic, not COVID,” Toronto Sun, July 13, 2021.
18 “Provisional death counts and excess mortality, January 2020 to April 2021,” Statistics Canada, July 12, 2021.
19 Simran Kalkat, Julie Yixia Cai, & Shawn Fremstad, “Over 3.8 Million Young Adults Found Not Working or in School in Early 2021,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), June 23, 2021.
20 Anne C. Gadermann, Kimberly C. Thomson, Chris G. Richardson, et al., “Examining the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Family Mental Health in Canada: Findings from a National Cross-Sectional Study,” BMJ Open, 2021.
21 Professor Douglas Allen, economist at Simon Fraser University, concluded that the lockdowns were possibly Canada’s greatest peacetime policy failure, one that also increased excess deaths—see: Douglas W. Allen, “Covid Lockdown Cost/Benefits: A Critical Assessment of the Literature”; HillNotes, “Impacts of COVID-19 on Employment in Canada by Sector,” Library of Parliament, June 25, 2020.
22 Matt Gilmour, “Number of homeless Montrealers doubled in pandemic; Plante floats new approach on campaign trail,” CTV News, October 11, 2021.
23 Tristin Hopper, “What 16 months of COVID lockdowns have cost us,” National Post, July 28, 2021; Nicole Gibillini, “Up to 225,000 Canadian firms could close because of COVID: CFIB CEO,” BNN Bloomberg, November 11, 2020; The Canadian Press, “Canada has slipped into recession due to COVID-19, C.D. Howe council says,” Global News, May 1, 2020.
24 Zara Liaqat, “Why COVID-19 is an inequality virus,” Policy Options Politiques, April 30, 2021. We note that “the virus” has no power to breed inequalities; this crisis bears only the imprints of the heavy hands of the state and large transnational corporations.
25 Government of Canada: Covid-19 daily epidemiology update.
26 Cathrine Axfors & John P.A. Ioannidis, “Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in community-dwelling populations with emphasis on the elderly: An overview,” medRxiv, July 13, 2021; John P.A. Ioannidis, “Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data,” Bulletin of the World Health Organization, October 14, 2020; Andrew T. Levin, William P. Hanage, & Nana Owusu-Boaitey, et al., “Assessing the Age Specificity of Infection Fatality Rates for COVID-19: Systematic Review, Meta-Analysis, and Public Policy Implications,” European Journal of Epidemiology, 35, 2020, pp. 1123–1138; Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine, appearing on a JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) Network conversation alongside Mark Lipsitch, DPhil and Dr. Howard Bauchner; Dominick Mastrangelo, “Stanford doctor: Coronavirus fatality rate for people under 45 ‘almost 0%’,” Washington Examiner, July 2, 2020.
27 UCL, “Symptoms of Covid-19 are a poor marker of infection,” UCL News, October 8, 2020, and Irene Petersen & Andrew Phillips, “Three Quarters of People with SARS-CoV-2 Infection are Asymptomatic: Analysis of English Household Survey Data,” Clinical Epidemiology, 12, 2020, pp. 1039‒1043.
28 The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) via: Office of the Prime Minister, “Norge går over til en normal hverdag med økt beredskap,” Regjeringen, September 24, 2021; in the UK, Jo Churchill, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, stated that, “as of 15 July [2021], Public Health England’s modelling group, with the MRC Biostats Unit, estimated that overall infection mortality rate is approximately 0.096%”: “Coronavirus: Death—Question for Department of Health and Social Care,” UK Parliament, July 12, 2021; the last point is relevant to the fact that, by some estimates, Covid is less fatal than the annual flu—see Simon Thornley, “The covid-19 elimination debate needs correct data,” BMJ, 371(3883), November 8, 2020.
29 Responding to news that a woman died from blood clotting caused by the AstraZeneca injectable (AstraZeneca has since been pulled from the market in Canada), Quebec Premier François Legault stated the following: “I’m very sad to know that a 54-year-old woman in good shape….died because she was vaccinated. Unfortunately these cases happen….I think people will still continue getting vaccinated. It’s very unfortunate and we’re sad about it, but unfortunately, that’s the price of vaccination” (emphases added): Amy Lift & Luca Caruso-Moro, “Experts worry AstraZeneca death will deter others from getting vaccinated,” CTV News, April 27, 2021. Death by “vaccination” was accepted as “the price to pay,” while even one death from the virus was condemned as “one death too many”—see: Franca Mignacca, “Quebec children can enjoy Halloween this year — but with some conditions,” CBC News, October 15, 2020, Kalina Laframboise, “Quebec mulls stricter COVID-19 measures but decision will be made next week, Legault says,” CTV News, December 11, 2020.
30 See this study which, “demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity”: Sivan Gazit, Roei Shlezinger, & Galit Perez, et al., “Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections,” medRxiv, August 25, 2021; plus, Jennifer Block, “Vaccinating people who have had covid-19: why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?” BMJ, 374(2101), 2021. For a study conducted in Vancouver, that showed that, “more than 90% of uninfected adults showed antibody reactivity against the spike protein, receptor-binding domain (RBD), N-terminal domain (NTD), or the nucleocapsid (N) protein from SARS-CoV-2”: Abdelilah Majdoubi, Christina Michalski, & Sarah E. O’Connell, et al., “A majority of uninfected adults show preexisting antibody reactivity against SARS-CoV-2,” JCI Insight, 6(8), 2021. This research echoes what was published in the summer of 2020 by Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute which showed that, “many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies….this means that public immunity is probably higher than antibody tests suggest”: “Immunity to COVID-19 is probably higher than tests have shown,” Karolinska Institutet, August 18, 2020; see also, Takuya Sekine, André Perez-Potti, & Olga Rivera-Ballesteros, et al., “Robust T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Individuals with Asymptomatic or Mild COVID-19,” Cell, 183(1), 2020, pp. 158–168.
31 Jeremy Loffredo, “We’re Not in a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated,’ Peter Doshi Explains During COVID Panel,” The Defender, November 5, 2021. Just as Peter Doshi critiqued the redefinition of the term “vaccine” to include treatments, the descriptive phrase “novel gene therapy,” is one that came from its developers—see: Grant A. Brown, “Can We Really Inject Our Way Out of This Pandemic? Part Two of a Special Series,” C2C Journal, September 22, 2021. This point was reinforced by Stefan Oelrich, president of Bayer’s Pharmaceuticals Division, who explained that cell and gene therapies have been marketed as “vaccines” to the public, to make them more palatable: Jack Bingham, “Bayer executive: mRNA shots are ‘gene therapy’ marketed as ‘vaccines’ to gain public trust,” LifeSite News, November 10, 2021.
32 On the advertised safety of the Pfizer product, see the whistle blower’s damning account of the nature of the actual safety trials: Paul D. Thacker, “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial,” BMJ, 375(2635), November 2, 2021. See also, Peter Doshi, “Does the FDA think these data justify the first full approval of a covid-19 vaccine?” BMJ, August 23, 2021, and, Alex Berenson, “More people died in the key clinical trial for Pfizer’s Covid vaccine than the company publicly reported,” Unreported Truths, November 16, 2021.
33 Aaron Siri, “FDA Asks Federal Judge to Grant it Until the Year 2076 to Fully Release Pfizer’s COVID-19 Vaccine Data,” Injecting Freedom, November 17, 2021.
34 See the Great Barrington Declaration; Declaration of the International Alliance of Physicians and Medical Scientists; the Canadian Covid Care Alliance COVID-19 Declaration; Canadian Frontline Nurses; World Council for Health; World Doctors’ Alliance; Doctors for Covid Ethics; Children’s Health Defense.
35 Several prominent Canadian scientists, doctors, and academics wrote in an open letter to Ontario Premier Doug Ford regarding recommendations by the Science Advisory Table (SAT). The SAT’s claims were: 1.That COVID-19 vaccines are safe; 2. That COVID-19 vaccines are effective; 3. That general infection prevention and control to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is imperfect whereas vaccines provide safe and effective protection; and, 4. That efforts to counter ‘vaccine hesitancy’ among the most vulnerable, e.g., racialized workers, through ‘education’ and ‘personalized outreach’, will lead to trust building and will avoid losing ‘valuable members of the workforce’”. The authors of the open letter summarized their response as follows (backed by published scientific research): “None of these claims are based on scientific evidence”. See: Claudia Chauffan, Stephen Pelech, & Deanna McLeod, et al., “Response: COVID-19 vaccine mandates for Ontario’s hospital workers,” United Healthcare Workers of Ontario (UHCWO), October 28, 2021. See also, Arjun Walia, “UBC Immunologist Cautions People On COVID Vaccine Safety & Efficacy,” The Pulse, November 16, 2021.
36 For more on each of these points, see the following: Piero Olliaro, Els Torreele, & Michel Vaillant, “COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and effectiveness—the elephant (not) in the room,” The Lancet, 2(7), E279-E280, 2021; Paul Elias Alexander, “22 Studies and Reports that Raise Profound Doubts about Vaccine Efficacy for the General Population,” Brownstone Institute, October 28, 2021; Harald Walach, Rainer J. Klement, & Wouter Aukema, “The Safety of COVID-19 Vaccinations—Should We Rethink the Policy?” Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law, 3, 2021, pp. 87‒99; Barbara A. Cohn, Piera M. Cirillo, & Caitlin C. Murphy, et al., “SARS-CoV-2 vaccine protection and deaths among US veterans during 2021,” Science, November 4, 2021; Berkeley Lovelace Jr., “Israel says Pfizer Covid vaccine is just 39% effective as delta spreads, but still prevents severe illness,” CNBC, July 23, 2021; “UK study finds vaccinated people easily transmit Delta variant in households,” Reuters, October 28, 2021; Michelle Roberts, “Covid: Double vaccinated can still spread virus at home,” BBC News, October 28, 2021; Anika Singanayagam, Seran Hakki, Jake Dunning, “Community transmission and viral load kinetics of the SARS-CoV-2 delta (B.1.617.2) variant in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the UK: a prospective, longitudinal, cohort study,” The Lancet, October 29, 2021; HART, “Compulsory vaccination for NHS staff back on the agenda?” Health Advisory & Recovery Team, June 3, 2021; Paul Elias Alexander, “96 Research Studies Affirm Naturally Acquired Immunity to Covid-19: Documented, Linked, and Quoted,” Brownstone Institute, October 17, 2021; Carolina Lucas, Chantal B.F. Vogels, & Inci Yildirim, et al. “Impact of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants on mRNA vaccine-induced immunity,” Nature, October 11, 2021; Gaëlle Breton, Pilar Mendoza, & Thomas Hagglof, et al., “Persistent Cellular Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Infection,” bioRxiv, December 9, 2020; Jennifer M. Dan, Jose Mateus, & Yu Kato, et al., “Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection,” Science, 371(6529), 2021; Victoria Jane Hall, Sarah Foulkes, & Andre Charlett, “SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN),” The Lancet, 397(10283), 2021, pp. 1459–1469; Jackson S. Turner, Wooseob Kim, & Elizaveta Kalaidina, et al., “SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans,” Nature, 595, 2021, pp. 421–425; Ronald B. Brown, “Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials,” Medicina, 57(199), 2021; Peter Doshi, “Pfizer and Moderna’s ‘95% effective’ vaccines—let’s be cautious and first see the full data,” BMJ, November 26, 2020; and, note that even when giving full approval to Pfizer, the FDA in a letter to the company listed numerous safety studies yet to be undertaken by Pfizer, and in some cases the completion dates for these studies are in 2025—the list of 13 safety studies to be undertaken begins on page 5.
37 See: VigiAccess, produced by the WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring with the Uppsala Monitoring centre, reported a total of 2,528,564 adverse events reported for Covid-19 vaccines; “From the 11/5/2021 release of VAERS data: Found 18,461 cases where Vaccine is COVID19 and Patient Died,” National Vaccine Information Center; MHRA, “Coronavirus vaccine – weekly summary of Yellow Card reporting,” Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency; “29,934 Deaths 2,804,900 Injuries Following COVID Shots in European Database of Adverse Reactions,” Vaccine Impact; and, Megan Redshaw, “Reports of Injuries, Deaths After COVID Vaccines Climb Steadily, as FDA, CDC Sign Off on Third Shot for Immunocompromised,” The Defender, August 16, 2021.
38 “Even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread”: Melissa Healy, “CDC shifts pandemic goals away from reaching herd immunity,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2021.
39 See: Paul Elias Alexander, “28 Studies on Vaccine Efficacy that Raise Doubts on Vaccine Mandates,” Brownstone Institute, October 28, 2021; Catherine M Brown, Johanna Vostok, & Hillary Johnson, et al., “Outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 Infections, Including COVID-19 Vaccine Breakthrough Infections, Associated with Large Public Gatherings – Barnstable County, Massachusetts, July 2021,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 70(31), 2021, pp. 10591062; Laurel Wamsley, “Vaccinated People With Breakthrough Infections Can Spread The Delta Variant, CDC Says,” NPR, July 30, 2021; S.V. Subramanian & Akhil Kumar, et al. “Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States,” European Journal of Epidemiology, September 30, 2021; Günter Kampf, “The epidemiological relevance of the COVID-19-vaccinated population is increasing,” The Lancet Regional Health – Europe, 11, December, 2021; Pnina Shitrit, Neta S Zuckerman, & Orna Mor, et al., “Nosocomial outbreak caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant in a highly vaccinated population, Israel, July 2021,” Eurosurveillance, 26(39), 2021; Kasen K. Riemersma, Brittany E. Grogan, & Amanda Kita-Yarbro, et al., “Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination,” medRxiv, October 15, 2021; Venice Servellita, Alicia Sotomayor-Gonzalez, & Amelia S. Gliwa, et al., “Predominance of antibody-resistant SARS-CoV-2 variants in vaccine breakthrough cases from the San Francisco Bay Area, California,” medRxiv, October 8, 2021; Charlotte B. Acharya, John Schrom, & Anthea M. Mitchell, et al., “No Significant Difference in Viral Load Between Vaccinated and Unvaccinated, Asymptomatic and Symptomatic Groups When Infected with SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant,” medRxiv, October 5, 2021; Nguyen Van Vinh Chau & Nghiem My Ngoc, et al., “Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Delta Variant Among Vaccinated Healthcare Workers, Vietnam,” The Lancet, October 11, 2021; “Pandemic of the Vaccinated – Worldwide data on 188 countries proves the highest Covid-19 case rates are in the most vaccinated countries,” The Exposé, November 2, 2021; and, Will Jones, “Vaccine Passports Make No Sense as the Vaccinated Are More Likely to Be Infected, Scientists Tell MPs,” The Daily Sceptic, November 22, 2021.
40 Elizabeth Redden, “Hundreds of Positive COVID Tests at Mostly Vaccinated Duke,” Inside Higher Ed, August 31, 2021; Kate Murphy, “Duke sets new campus restrictions after rise in COVID cases among vaccinated students,” The News & Observer, August 31, 2021; Joseph Silverstein, “Despite 95% vaccination rate, Cornell today has five times more COVID cases than it did this time last year,” The College Fix, September 4, 2021.
41 Eva Bartlett, “‘It’s absolutely appalling’: Unvaccinated Canadians become social outcasts and the new persecuted minority,” RT, October 21, 2021.
42 Even as the administration proclaimed its support for the vaccine passport system, and adopted it for all “non-essential” campus services (which include eating and fitness), the public relations unit of Concordia University proudly directed attention to new research involving Concordia that confirmed the large presence of “traditionally underrepresented groups” among the “vaccine hesitant”—see: Patrick Lejtenyi, “New data from a Montreal-led global study helps explain vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy,” Concordia University News, August 31, 2021. See also, Kennedy Hall, “‘Absolutely forbidden’ to give COVID shots to kids, young men and women, Jewish court rules,” LifeSite News, November 2, 2021.
43 Statistics Canada reported that, “Among people designated as a visible minority, 74.8% reported being very or somewhat willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Some differences exist for willingness among particular visible minority groups. Compared to non-visible minorities (77.7%), a much lower proportion of the Black population (56.4%) reported being somewhat or very willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine….A lower rate of vaccine willingness was also seen among the Latin American population (65.6%)”: StatCan, “COVID-19 vaccine willingness among Canadian population groups,” Statistics Canada, March 26, 2021; see also Cosmin Dzsurdzsa, “Trudeau ignores impact of mandatory vaccines on First Nations, black Canadians,” True North, August 9, 2021; Michèle Newton, “Vaccine hesitancy a problem for us all,” Toronto Star, August 26, 2021; and, Selena Ross, “Vaccine refusal very high in Nunavik for ‘religious’ reasons or fears; cases escalating,” CTV News, November 8, 2021. However, note the dismissive and disbelieving CTV News headline in the latter reference, putting religious reasons inside quotation marks, as if such reasons were false or not worthy of respect—this, while Canadians preach about the dangers of “systemic racism”. Similar impacts on minorities from mandates are felt in the US—see: Joseph Goldstein & Matthew Sedacca, “Why Only 28 Percent of Young Black New Yorkers Are Vaccinated,” The New York Times, August 12, 2021; Kevin Jenkins & Joshua Coleman, “Thanks to Vaccine Mandates, Segregation Is Making a Comeback. Once Again, Black Americans Will Suffer Most,” The Defender, August 13, 2021; “Voter ID is racist but this isn’t? Fury over New York City vaccine pass that ACTUALLY discriminates against black Americans,” RT, August 3, 2021.
44 For studies and reports that paint a more realistic portrait of the “unvaccinated,” see: Bruce Anderson, “Typical ‘vaccine hesitant’ person is a 42-year-old Ontario woman who votes Liberal: Abacus polling,” Maclean’s, August 11, 2021; also, Amy Judd, “Polling the unvaccinated: Why Canadians say they won’t get a COVID vaccine,” Global News, November 3, 2021. On educational levels see UnHerd, “The most vaccine-hesitant group of all? PhDs,” The Post, August 11, 2021 and in particular this survey which found that, “The association between hesitancy and education level followed a U-shaped curve with the lowest hesitancy among those with a master’s degree (RR=0.75 [95% CI 0.72-0.78] and the highest hesitancy among those with a PhD (RR=2.16 [95%CI 2.05-2.28]) or ≤high school education(RR=1.88 [95%CI 1.83-1.93]) versus a bachelor’s degree”: Wendy C. King & Alex Reinhart, et al., “Time trends and factors related to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy from January-May 2021 among US adults: Findings from a large-scale national survey,” medRxiv, July 23, 2021.
45 Robert G. Evans, “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR,” Healthcare Policy, 5(4), 2010, pp. 16–25; DoJ, “Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History,” The United States Department of Justice, September 2, 2009; FBI, “The Case Against Pfizer,” The Federal Bureau of Investigation, September 2, 2009; Drew Griffin & Andy Segal, “Feds found Pfizer too big to nail,” CNN, August 2, 2010; Pratap Chatterjee, “Pfizer Admits Bribery in Eight Countries,” CorpWatch, August 8, 2012; Richard Gale & Gary Null, “Pfizer’s History of Crimes and Misdemeanors,” Progressive Radio Network, March 10, 2021.
46 Gail Davidson, “The Right to Say No to COVID-19 Vaccines: International Human Rights Law Guarantees Rights and Prohibits Unlawful Restrictions,” Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA), October 28, 2021.
47 Michael Kowalik, “Ethics of vaccine refusal,” Journal of Medical Ethics, February 26, 2021.
48 “The specific and significant COVID-19 risk of ADE [antibody-dependent enhancement] should have been and should be prominently and independently disclosed to research subjects currently in vaccine trials, as well as those being recruited for the trials and future patients after vaccine approval, in order to meet the medical ethics standard of patient comprehension for informed consent”: Timothy Cardozo & Ronald Veazey, “Informed consent disclosure to vaccine trial subjects of risk of COVID-19 vaccines worsening clinical disease,” The International Journal of Clinical Practice, 75(3), 2021.
49 See: Title II, Chapter I, Art. 7 of Quebec’s Act Respecting Health Services and Social Services. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN issued the following statement, signed by a multitude of human rights experts: “The use of emergency powers must be publicly declared and should be notified to the relevant treaty bodies when fundamental rights including movement, family life and assembly are being significantly limited. Moreover, emergency declarations based on the Covid-19 outbreak should not be used as a basis to target particular groups, minorities, or individuals. It should not function as a cover for repressive action under the guise of protecting health nor should it be used to silence the work of human rights defenders. Restrictions taken to respond to the virus must be motivated by legitimate public health goals and should not be used simply to quash dissent”—OHCHR, “COVID-19: States should not abuse emergency measures to suppress human rights – UN experts,” Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, March 16, 2020.
50 Arjun Walia, “Rockefeller Foundation Pledges $13.5 Million To Censor Health ‘Misinformation’,” The Pulse, July 19, 2021.
51 Janice Flamengo, “How Covid-19 Killed Academic Tenure,” The Pipeline, October 14, 2021.
52 Janice Flamengo, “The Silence of the Professors,” Truth USA, August 31, 2021.
53 See the Special Issue on Covid Policies and Universities in Canada, published by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, and edited by Janice Flamengo.
54 Joseph A. Ladapo & Harvey A. Risch, “Are Covid Vaccines Riskier Than Advertised?” Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2021.
55 Michael Kowalik, “Ethics of Vaccine Refusal,” Journal of Medical Ethics, February 26, 2021. See also Lisa Boothe, “Why I’m Not Vaccinated,” Newsweek, November 15, 2021; and, Raelle Kaia, “What’s To Be Done about the Vaccine Hesitant?” November 11, 2021.
56 Ronald N. Kostoff, Daniela Calina, & Darja Kanduc, et al., “Why are we vaccinating children against COVID-19?” Toxicology Reports, 8, 2021, pp. 1665–1684; Heidi Ledford, “Deaths from COVID ‘incredibly rare’ among children,” Nature, 595, July 15, 2021; and, Larry Kwak, Steven T. Rosen, & Idit Shachar, “Applying brakes on ‘Warp Speed’ COVID-19 vaccinations for children: The long-term side effects are unknown,” The Washington Times, October 28, 2021; Elia Abi-Jaoude, Peter Doshi, & Claudina Michal-Teitelbaum, “Covid-19 vaccines for children: hypothetical benefits to adults do not outweigh risks to children,” BMJ, July 13, 2021; Jonas F. Ludvigsson, Lars Engerström, Charlotta Nordenhäll, Emma Larsson, “Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden,” New England Journal of Medicine, 384, 2021, pp. 669‒671.
57 Zachary Stieber, “Researchers Call for Halt on COVID-19 Vaccines for Pregnant Women After Re-analysis of CDC Study,” The Epoch Times, November 2, 2021; Aleisha R. Brock & Simon Thornley, “Spontaneous Abortions and Policies on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Use During Pregnancy,” Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law, 4, 2021, pp. 130–143; Colleen Huber, “COVID vaccines may rival or exceed ‘the morning-after pill’ in abortion efficacy,” The Defeat of Covid, August 6, 2021.
This paper was first published on the website of Résistance Scolaire – Québec -Academic Resistance (RSQAR) which is a collective of Quebec professors and teachers at all levels of the education system who have joined with students and support staff in fighting against the state of emergency and coercive medical practices.
“Two weeks to flatten the curve,” is what we heard across Canada1 just after March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization unilaterally declared a global “pandemic” according to new criteria developed in 2009 that emphasized transmissibility over lethality.2 We are now approaching two years of a crisis that is routinely and deceptively blamed on “Covid”. […]
On Thursday, October 21, 2021, just after 9:00pm, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr of the Jama’at al-Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago, passed away at the age of 80. He collapsed at home and was taken to the St. James Infirmary in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Imam was a monumental presence in the historical life of Trinidad and Tobago, and the gap he leaves—especially at this extremely dangerous time—is one that requires sober reflection. Yasin Abu Bakr was the famed leader of the July 27, 1990, Muslimeen uprising in Trinidad. One of Abu Bakr’s prominent children, Fuad Abu Bakr (who shares a close resemblance to his father), posted: “To Allah we belong and to him is our eventual return. ALLAHU AKBAR”.
Abu Bakr was a lion: a perfect portrait of courage who stood fearless in the face of threats and overwhelming odds. Standing well over six feet tall, he always exuded confidence and strength. Abu Bakr was a man who could be as humorous as he could be dauntless and ferocious. He would thunder in his sermons, and then speak in the gentlest tones in person. He was very much a self-made man, who was born to poverty in a large working class family, and who raised himself socially and economically, becoming a policeman, then studying abroad (at what is now Ryerson University in Toronto), and eventually creating his own businesses. The ethos of self-reliance and autonomy stood out in the unofficial credo of the Muslimeen which was printed on a sign that was prominently displayed at the Mucurapo compound:
“We the willing led by the unknowing are doing the impossible for the grateful. We have done so much for so long with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing”.
Class in Arabic at the Muslimeen headquarters in 1993 (Photo by the author)
Yasin Abu Bakr was devoted to seeing his people delivered from domination in Trinidad and Tobago. Poverty, discrimination, and hopelessness simply enraged him, and that rage emboldened him to push against the system with every sinew of his body, and every spark of his sharp mind. He read widely; he travelled widely, especially throughout the Islamic world. He planned, developed, and created. Abu Bakr was no social media activist of the kind that predominates in Trinidad today, fixated on the number of likes and shares that their videos get. Abu Bakr created real-world, concrete, practical alternatives: he secured a land grant; he established a mosque; he founded schools; he established enterprises that generated profits and employed thousands from marginalized communities; he ran a drug rehabilitation program; he recruited disadvantaged youths, got them to marry, start families, and work in Muslimeen companies. Abu Bakr thus established a wide social and economic network that turned the Muslimeen into a political force in its own right.
There are too many thoughts, too many words, that I can share about the life, the worldview, the practice, and the many impacts of Abu Bakr. I will just say that he was probably the most unique Trinidadian I ever had the honour of meeting. The leader of the Islamic Front of Trinidad and Tobago, Umar Abdullah (a prominent activist in his own right who has been at the forefront in protesting the current state of emergency, the curfews, the extended lockdowns, and mandatory vaccination), wrote eloquently about his colleague. In a statement, Umar Abdullah wrote the following:
“A good heart with a tower of strength has stopped beating, a good soul has ascended. We are honoured and blessed to have come to know him. He was truly an inspiration to all of the lives he touched; remembering his gentle yet mighty soul will forever remain in our hearts. We as a nation should never forget the importance of the role he played as one of the last standing pillars of strength in the Muslim community. Often the echoes and rumblings reflecting the cry of the people can be heard coming from his camp. When he spoke we paid attention”.
Placing the passing of Imam Abu Bakr within the present, Abdullah made some especially pertinent observations and raised some sharp questions:
“Needless to say, we are today witnessing the dismantling of our democracy here in Trinidad and Tobago, and quite interesting to the observer Imam Yaseen Abu Bakr’s death comes at a time when the resilience of our people is once again being tested and as we reflect on that very dark day in our country’s democracy; the 1990 coup, where 24 of our citizens made the ultimate sacrifice. No one can deny the contribution ‘the Imam’—as he is often referred to—made on that day, changed forever the political landscape of this great nation.
“According to our President, Her Excellency Paula-May Weeks ‘July 27 is an annual opportunity to be reminded of the value of our democratic freedoms and the need to ensure that such an egregious violation of our citizens’ rights and dignity can never again befall our nation.’ The question that should be asked was, who sacrificed and were preserving and protecting our democracy on that fateful day, was it the insurrectionist under the leadership of Imam Yaseen Abu Bakr? Or the government who continued to defy the will of the people?” [emphases added]
On Fridays his sermons were live streamed to Facebook, and one recently caught everyone’s attention because he issued a stern warning to the government if it should continue on its dictatorial and discriminatory path. It was just last month that Abu Bakr stood up during one of his Friday sermons and warned the government of a coming war. Among the statements he made that day, live streamed to Facebook, was the following:
“In Trinidad, don’t fix the society, don’t give to the poor what is their due, don’t start to be fair and just, don’t let go the prisoners who you locking up for 15 years without a trial, don’t do that and you will see what will happen—remember I warn you today. I warning the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, I warning the Police, I warning the Coast Guard, I warning everybody who is involved in the repression, the oppression of African people, I warning you today, this is your last day warning”.
In that sermon, Abu Bakr also addressed the damaging impacts of the government’s lockdown measures that disproportionately affected poorer and working class citizens who lost employment, received little or no social assistance, and were left to fend for themselves while locked down at home, in sheer despair:
“Covid-19 is killing persons. It affects the weakest among us. But we have people in our communities who are not eating because they cannot afford to eat. So give them food to eat. Why are they not doing that?
“I will tell you why. There is money in the virus. There is money in the vaccine. So they are putting the money elsewhere and they are starving you, and the more they starve you, the easier it is (for the virus) to kill you as the body can’t resist. So they keep being starved. But I say this now. A hungry man is an angry man. So you will see what happens if they keep starving us”.
(A widely circulated extract of that sermon is reproduced above at the right, along with the full sermon from Friday, September 10, below at the right.)
The Imam was clearly active and engaged in public life until the end. He was also, until very recently, a regular participant on WACK Radio 90.1 FM, every Wednesday afternoon from 1:00pm. Heard on air and online, the radio station also live streams from its studio to YouTube. I watched Abu Bakr’s last appearance in late September, when he and his comrade stormed out of the studio after some particularly bigoted remarks about his wives were uttered by someone who called in during the program. To the end, Abu Bakr was smeared with the label “terrorist”—even as Trinidadians lived under the daily terrorism of a state that reduced large parts of the population to unnecessary poverty and sickness, in the name of “fighting Covid”. (Note: just as Trinidadians are earning the least, and struggling financially the most, the government just rushed in a new property tax that could see many poorer persons, not to mention elderly pensioners, unable to pay and thus risk losing homes or land they have had their whole lives—this is clearly an attempt by the state to confiscate, expropriate, and dispossess.)
“And what is this now, but the lively Image of a perverse Reason of State, set up in opposition to Truth and Justice; but under the august Name and Pretence, however, of both? As Loyalty, for the purpose, shall be called Rebellion; and the Exercise of the most necessary Powers of Government shall pass for Tyranny and Oppression. Decency of religious Worship shall be made Superstition; Tenderness of Conscience shall be call’d Phanaticism, Singularity and Faction…”. (“Reflection” on “A Wolf and a Lamb” in Aesop’s Fables)
Continuing from what I wrote at the start, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr was and still is a monumental figure in the histories of Trinidad & Tobago, the Caribbean, and Islam internationally. I had the honour of meeting and sitting with him for a prolonged period, over years, and those interviews were the basis for my very first study in Trinidad and my very first book: Against the Trinity: An Insurgent Imam Tells His Story, which was self-published in 1995, then material was added and it was republished in 1996. The work had to be self-published: no publisher interested in Caribbean affairs would touch it; yet, like many of my works which have had the greatest impact, it was a blessing to self-publish the book, and through no special effort of my own (given limited resources) it still ended up on the shelves of the top libraries of the world. The Imam repeatedly told me in the years following publication—even in long-distance calls in recent years—that he thought it was the only credible and authentic source of information on the Muslimeen uprising in 1990. He was particularly proud of this book, in which he spoke at length, the full extent of my interviews with him being reproduced in the book. To this day the book stands apart as a challenge to the dominant narrative that the insurrection was a grab for power—Abu Bakr instead made it clear, forcefully and repeatedly, that he organized the armed uprising to protect the land on which his community rested, and to punish a harsh and corrupt government that he asserted was involved in the international drug trade. Dr. Selwyn Ryan, Trinidad’s leading political scientist and author of a mainstream account of 1990, published an article complaining about our book because it so thoroughly went against everything he penned and which he claimed was “the truth”.
(My plans in 2020 were to start editing and updating the book, for a new release to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1990 uprising. All of my plans were completely upended “thanks” to the onset of the so-called “pandemic”. The project remains frozen and may never be completed at this point. Moreover, without Abu Bakr around to see the results—and he was looking forward to the new edition—I have lost an important source of motivation.)
I am still extremely grateful for that unique experience of learning from Abu Bakr. The experience had a lasting impact. Aside from what I learned politically and culturally, and how it helped to shape me (I was still very young when I first met the Imam), that material also had a practical impact in educating others: it became a firm part of a number of my courses over the past 25 years. Even this coming Tuesday, a lecture of mine about religion in the Caribbean features Abu Bakr, and I have chosen to include an extract of that video lecture at the end of this statement.
The turning point that was 1990 marked almost my entire time in Trinidad, where I studied, did field research, lived, and worked, all told for over seven years. When I first moved to Trinidad in early August of 1990, the so-called “attempted coup” had just ended—Port of Spain was still smouldering, and I walked around looking at the scenes of destruction shown in the video below. In early 1993 I first met Abu Bakr, and several of his lieutenants, and spent time at the compound in Mucurapo. Abu Bakr had only recently been released from prison. At the time I was a mere graduate student in International Relations, at the University of the West Indies (St. Augustine, Trinidad). I continued meeting with him for years, including when I finally entered anthropology. Beyond the book, the work that resulted was developed into conference presentations; turned into slides to be shown on overhead projectors, and then slide projectors; parts were embedded in my (now laughably crude) first website, which I launched in 1995; and then some of the material formed the basis for lectures in the first courses I developed and taught (at SUNY-Binghamton) from 1995 to 1997, on Religion and Politics in the Caribbean. The Muslimeen were the very first community which I studied in Trinidad, and even when distant I was aware of their ongoing work via the media, phone calls, and their own social media. Just days before the official start of the impending “pandemic,” I was in Trinidad and went to the Muslimeen compound with the hope of seeing the Imam, to no avail—he was at the other end of the country.
What happened in 1990 in Trinidad was, though I would not have known at the time, a precursor or trial run for 9/11: the shock to a society; the resulting Islamophobia; the fortification of the national security state; and an outpouring of some of the most sanctimonious patriotism about “our beloved democracy” that one could ever expect to hear from light-skinned bourgeois elites. Some of these elements were repeated after 9/11, in the US and in its orbiting dependencies, not to mention among avid imitators and opportunists around the globe. For thirty years I have suffered illogical homilies that effectively boil down to an argument that the only way to save democracy, is by becoming a dictatorship—and now there is not even the pretense of saving democracy. In 1990 I lived in Trinidad under a nightly curfew, with an extended state of emergency. In 2021 I live in Quebec, which this same year has had a nightly curfew and continues to live under a state of emergency—as does Trinidad & Tobago, where lockdowns have been added to the toxic mix of deliberate destruction, discrimination, division, and fear-mongering in the service of domination. Now the convenient threat is a virus.
Like his ally, friend, and mentor—Col. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (Abu Bakr died almost to the day of the 10th anniversary of the murder of Gaddafi)—Abu Bakr was no follower of political parties. He was not at all interested in switching Candidate X in place of Candidate Y, in the ceaseless branding exercises of revolving door politics in the bankrupt pseudo-democracies of the West (the same ones that now turn on their own people with an almost lustful malice). Elections would not change the system. Yasin Abu Bakr spoke about this at length with me, and here I quote from the relevant pages in Against the Trinity (1995):
“The people said, ‘We will not tolerate that system of the NAR [National Alliance for Reconstruction], that system of government’. And the PNM [People’s National Movement] has come and said, ‘This is what we want to offer you now, a government that cares’. In the minds of the people, [they] said, ‘That is what we want. We want a government not like those, but one who will care about all the people and not the elite’.
“Unfortunately, the present government has done nothing to do that, because they can’t! Listen, it is what is there in the structure of the law, or the government rule. Let me give you an example. I don’t care who [is] put in charge of this society, it won’t work unless the structure is changed. You know Sir Lester Piggot—he is reputed to be the best jockey in the whole world—you think if you put Lester Piggot on a donkey he can beat anybody in the Derby or the Oaks or something? You see it has nothing to do with him being the best jockey—the fact is that he’s riding a donkey. And the system is a donkey! So I don’t care who you put to ride this system…the system is like a donkey no matter who you put to ride it, it cannot compete in a race with the thoroughbreds. You must give the jockey a good horse. So you have to change the donkey…not the jockey who rides it. That is what has to happen in the society. The structure of the society must be changed. The donkey must be changed into something else”. (p. 111)
“Yes, yes. I don’t know what form it’s going to take, I don’t have any knowledge of the future. But the society is going to convulse, it’s going to clash again—it’s imperative—unless substantial changes are made in the structure. There is no desire by the people who run the country to change the structure. There’s absolutely no desire…I mean when 1970 came [the Black Power Revolt] they said there was going to be no repeat of 1970. Then there came 1990 too. There is going to be another clash unless the things [are changed]…If these people had any sense, they would give us an opportunity to vent our feelings and say what were the things that caused this with an effort to plug those holes up or to amend the laws…but they have done the opposite. They have not allowed us to say to the public what caused these problems. It still remains unknown, it’s still there. It’s covered down. You can only cover the truth, but you can’t destroy the truth”. (p. 112)
Abu Bakr referred to governments in Trinidad and Tobago as “28% governments,” meaning: they were elected by, at most, 28% of all eligible electors. He was factually correct, for a while. Now matters have worsened and here in Canada “we” just “elected” a 20% government, led by Justin Trudeau in the service of the 0.1%. Abu Bakr emphasized that in political systems such as Trinidad’s, where executive power has increased dramatically (as it has now done everywhere where there is a state of emergency) the Prime Minister could act as a dictator:
“The Prime Minister in this country is a god. First of all, the Prime Minister appoints the President—which is madness….The Prime Minister appoints the Chief Justice. He appoints all the judges. Madness. The Prime Minister appoints the Commissioner of Police. The Prime Minister also appoints the Commissioner of Prisons. The Prime Minister appoints the head of the Defence Force. And nobody can veto those appointments. The Prime Minister, therefore, can do whatever he wants. Because the Prime Minister is the one who appoints these people, then, then, these people remain loyal, or they are loyal, to the Prime Minister because of political patronage. There is no such thing, therefore, as independence of the judiciary, or the judiciary remaining unfettered. The judiciary has to do what the Prime Minister wants, what the government wants in their interests, because [if not] they will not be appointed judges, they will not be appointed as Chief Justice”. (p. 73)
Abu Bakr taught that a people that rises up and fights against tyranny cannot be accused of perpetrating “violence,” that self-defence should never be called “violence”. He did so in terms that strongly resonate with our present situation where the reason of state has turned perverse (or, as some might hold, reverted to its natural shape):
“But I’m saying self-defence is not violence. Any violent act was done by the state. They are the ones who occupied the [Jama’at’s] land militarily….the government does not obey any law [if] it goes against them. So in truth and in fact there’s really no law in these societies because there’s nobody to enforce the law, except the military arm which is controlled by the government. I’m saying that the military personnel…[the highest officers] are appointed by the Prime Minister. So their allegiance is to the Prime Minister, their allegiance is not to what is right or what is just, but their allegiance is basically to the government in power, not to the law, not to the rule of law.” (pp. 90−91)
Yes, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, this lion of a man, will be sorely missed. Imagining a world without Abu Bakr was not something which I entertained, when it should have been normal and natural to expect this—there was such a permanence to him. What example do we now have to offer the cowed masses who line up compliantly in obedience to bizarre and arbitrary directives? Who is there to teach courage, to inspire fearlessness? Fortunately, many if not most Trinidadians have been abundantly schooled in skepticism, and the majority demonstrates it by resisting dogmatic vaccine mandates; I fear less for them than I do for Canadians. If Canada has distinguished itself in the world today as humanity’s leading example of cultural failure, where obedience has nearly erased any margin for questioning authority, places such as Trinidad still differ—for all their real or assumed faults—and they differ because their culture benefited from the presence of teachers such as Abu Bakr.
I wish the sincerest condolences to Yasin Abu Bakr’s family, and to his wider Muslimeen family. Thank you again for so much, Imam. May your soul rest in eternal peace.
On Thursday, October 21, 2021, just after 9:00pm, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr of the Jama’at al-Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago, passed away at the age of 80. He collapsed at home and was taken to the St. James Infirmary in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The Imam was a monumental presence in the historical life of […]
First it was not even a university, but Seneca College. Then it was the University of Ottawa. Then Carleton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto. Now it is almost every university in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The law faculty at McGill is also demanding it, presumably to save the university from expensive litigation (an implied threat, and one that strangely assumes that only one side of a debate can litigate in court). If it happens first in the United States, then almost immediately it is copied and pasted into policy in Canada. It is coming everywhere: mandatory vaccination for all faculty, staff, and students.
As a tenured, full Professor in Canada, it is my duty to encourage all faculty to be united in non-compliance with such measures.
Mandatory vaccination pressures are issued allegedly in accordance with “public health”. However, they are mandated through neither parliaments nor legislation, but are instead issued unilaterally by governments under the umbrella of “emergency measures”.
Typically, such vaccination mandates stipulate the following: faculty, staff, and students must show proof of full vaccination in order to access campus and perform their duties. If they do not do so (and some allow refusal only on grounds of medical or religious exemptions), then they must submit to still undefined special measures, such as frequent testing (perhaps twice each week, using rapid antigen tests), and masking at all times and in all spaces on campus.
This will be, for most Canadian faculty, the first if not the only real test of their integrity and dignity, and their purpose as scholars and intellectuals. It is absolutely essential that they not fail this test from the start.
It must be emphasized that this is not a position that can be taken only by non-vaccinated faculty. Action to prohibit and prevent discrimination, and actual abuses of human rights, is a stance to be taken by all faculty, whether fully vaccinated or not.
Rather than following the alternative science narrative tied to the private interests of pharmaceutical corporations and those of politicians, we should expect Canadian universities to encourage critical thinking that—as is now commonly endorsed and celebrated—“speaks truth to power”. This would be in line with Canadian universities’ many recent statements in support of social justice. To see these same universities immediately fail the first real test of their avowed commitments, is both shocking and disappointing.
In particular, mandatory vaccination pressures plainly and indisputably discriminate against employees who are members of particular religious and ethnic communities, in such a way and to such a degree that any claims to upholding “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” become completely unravelled. Not sustaining this commitment in one area, and expecting it to be sustained in other areas, is obviously neither credible nor tenable. Furthermore, the policy which imposes such discrimination is in direct violation of a number of laws and human rights codes, both here in Quebec and in the rest of Canada.
First, faculty should notify senior administrators that at no point, and under no circumstances, can they be compelled to involuntarily release any private information about their personal health status, whether they have been fully vaccinated or not. Such a mandate violates the rights of all, not just some. Such compulsion, that lies outside of the terms and conditions of employment as established by contracts or collective agreements, would be plainly illegal on a number of fronts, including violating existing laws as exist in Quebec and the rest of Canada. At no point when we were interviewed and then hired, were any of us informed of any health requirements to perform our jobs. Established policies for universities to maintain safe working environments place that burden on university administrations—they do not imply any demand for health screening and injection of faculty.
We should be particularly concerned about the apparent effort to pressure people into vaccination. As universities that staunchly uphold ethics in research, following federal requirements, this policy instead negates voluntary informed consent. Consent cannot be mandated, by definition. The policy also violates the principle of do no harm, by not advising members of the community that compliance with this policy could result in experiencing adverse effects, ranging from the mild and trivial, to serious injury requiring hospitalization, and in some cases even death. We have not seen any language warning about adverse reactions and possible death anywhere in the policy announcements.
The compulsion to vaccinate also runs afoul of legal provisions that prohibit discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, religion, and political beliefs.
What universities are also backing is an emergency measure, but they have not furnished any proof of an emergency. Rapidly spreading viruses are common to our university communities, as with each cold and flu that sweeps through a university population every year, even multiple times in a year. The condition of “rapid spread” and “contagiousness” is not, in and of itself, any basis for an “emergency”.
University administrations should rest assured that, as was usual, when employees develop any symptoms of any sickness, they will automatically refrain from coming to campus, as they have done when they had colds or the flu. Non-vaccinated faculty therefore represent no actual nor potential “threat” to the health of the community.
We must also point out that in the early fall of 2009, some Canadian faculty contracted H1N1, and in some cases they had to be absent from class for weeks. At no point did any university administration in Canada manifest any concern about this fact. It is important to recall that in 2009, the World Health Organization declared H1N1 to be a “global pandemic,” under the very same definition it then used for Covid-19. By enacting radically different measures today, Canadian universities are thus directly at odds with their own practice, from the recent past.
Second, if the consequence of non-compliance with such mandates are that faculty must undergo frequent testing—despite having no symptoms—then this would be unfair and discriminatory treatment based on assumed health status, and that too is illegal and lies outside of our terms and conditions of employment. Being a professor at a Canadian university has never been advertised as a position that comes with a health requirement, or a requirement for medical screening in order to perform one’s duties. Moreover, given that it is now solidly established that the fully vaccinated do carry as much viral load as the non-vaccinated, and do transmit the virus, to then subject one group of persons (assumed to be non-vaccinated) to testing, while exempting others, is obviously unfair discrimination.
One can only conclude that such a discriminatory bias is meant to punish a particular group, to hinder them in carrying out their daily work requirements, and to continue singling out healthy people as a problem. It is also obvious psychological harassment, and thus directly violates most Canadian universities’ own published workplace policies.
Before attempting to unilaterally transform the terms and conditions of employment, university administrations must at least sit down and negotiate with faculty unions. Over the past 18 months, we have seen professors suddenly required to work from home, which is work not required under existing terms and conditions of our employment—it is simply not in our job description, and most are not trained for online teaching. Conversely, we have now seen them barred from continuing remote delivery when this is their first choice. Now we see those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated being forced to undergo testing, regardless of symptoms, and regardless of possible natural immunity (which is irrationally and unjustifiably dismissed from this entire discussion).
The discriminatory testing requirement is thus another apparent legal violation, and it has no place at any Canadian university.
The announced policy is a violation of human dignity: it imposes psychological pressure through a regimen of punishment designed to make the performance of one’s ordinary work duties increasingly onerous and unsustainable. It reaches the point where we could argue that it constitutes a breach of contract.
The announced policy also demands that those who are assumed to be non-vaccinated (i.e., they do not furnish proof of full vaccination), must be visibly and publicly set apart from the rest of the community (i.e., masked where others are not masked). Given the prevailing mass psychosis that incites blame, disrespect, and even overt hatred against non-vaccinated persons, to make such non-vaccinated persons openly stand apart is to jeopardize their dignity and integrity.
Third, Canadian universities must not be pressured, and should not comply with any pressures that force their participation in a regime that violates human rights. As we are only now becoming aware of the real extent of atrocities committed at Canadian Residential Schools, which closed only in the late 1990s, Canadian educational institutions ought to be extremely wary of yet another wave of government demands for harsh, segregationist, and punitive measures in the name of “saving” people.
The administration of Canadian universities may reasonably respond that they are merely following government mandates. Any government mandate that is itself an extra-legal measure, imposed without legislative support, is not one that can be used to force a university into also violating either the law or human rights conventions established under international law, to which Canada is a signatory.
Any compliance by an individual with extra-legal extreme measures could also be read as tacit consent, which would then legitimize such measures which are backed neither by established laws, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms nor—it must be noted—are they backed by any scientific support.
The administrations of Canadian universities are best advised to be prudent, and on the right side of both the law and justice. They must immediately rescind any such policy issued under the heading of a vaccine mandate. They should also be aware that failure to do so exposes them to litigation from those at the receiving end of discriminatory treatment, not just from faculty and staff, but from an even larger number of students.
For any Canadian university to try to justify human rights abuses, because they are what the government ordered, is truly Nuremberg-worthy.
Fourth, any mandate must acknowledge that the burden of proof rests with those issuing, following, and enforcing the mandate. In particular, governments and university administrations in Canada must provide fully documented proof of the following—keeping in mind that widely spread fear is not proof of any emergency other than a psychological one:
(1) That there is indeed a current public health emergency, as an objective and verifiable medical fact, and not as an artifact of government decrees. The greatest number of hospitalizations and deaths in Canada occurred during the so-called “first wave” of March-May, 2020. There has been no repetition of those numbers since then. Even then, we are basing this on assumptions: we assume that people were infected with Covid-19, using flawed testing at a time when the virus had not been isolated, and when the amplification cycles were too high—and we did not follow WHO guidelines that advised against relying exclusively on PCR tests in making any clinical diagnosis. We also did not routinely conduct postmortems to establish the cause of death of most elderly victims in the spring of last year. On top of that, it has since come to light that even among those who were already close to the natural end of their lives, they were often subjected to starvation and dehydration—fear kept away many workers from nursing homes, which then resulted in the neglect of residents. We have also learned that, at least in Quebec, such elderly and frail patients were given morphine that suppressed respiration and which, in almost all cases, quickly resulted in death. Thus we do not yet know the exact size and nature of even the “first wave,” the worst and arguably the only real wave we had.
(2) That infection is spread only by the non-vaccinated. We now know definitively that the advertised “vaccines”—those in use in Canada—do not protect the injected from infection, nor do they stop them from spreading the virus, or even falling sick and dying from the virus. If the fully vaccinated can—and do—spread the virus, then any requirement for frequent and rapid testing must equally apply to them. Failure to do so is proof of discrimination on the basis of health characteristics.
(3) That by advertising the need for vaccination, that the university population is not being misled about the real protection such injectable products afford. Countries such as Israel, which vaccinated more fully and more quickly than Canada, are now witnessing a situation where the overwhelming majority of the infected are the fully vaccinated. In both Israel and the UK in recent weeks, the fully vaccinated account for the majority of Covid deaths. Without even speaking of death, which is extremely rare for anyone exposed to Covid—vaccinated or not—in both Europe and the US there are now several hundred thousand cases of serious adverse reactions. Universally it is acknowledged—even by the manufacturers themselves—that the effectiveness of these injectable products is declining to the point where any protection they might have offered increasingly drops to insignificant levels.
(4) That “cases” are a measure of anything significant. The term “cases” has been abused and distorted: anyone deemed to test positive for Covid-19, has been categorized as a “case”. This is despite the fact that they may have had no symptoms, or if they had symptoms they were mild and required no treatment. Typically a real case involves someone needing treatment as a patient, usually in a clinic or hospital. Therefore it needs to be proven that a rising number of so-called “cases” is any reason for extraordinary measures, especially when hospitalizations and deaths are but a tiny fraction of what they were during the first wave.
(5) That natural immunity is not real and does not matter. Nowhere in these mandates is there any language concerning natural immunity—natural immunity is assumed to not exist, or is assumed to be irrelevant. If those issuing, complying with, or enforcing such mandatory vaccination cannot address this scientific point, then the credibility of their entire argument collapses. On that basis alone, non-compliance would be fully justified and warranted.
(6) That healthy people can be assumed to be bearers of sickness. These workplace vaccine mandates all assume that healthy, even young and healthy people, who are not vaccinated are a “problem”. The healthy are assumed immediately and in advance to not only being actual or potential bearers of infection, but also being the sole bearers of infection, and of being solely infectious. Show the scientific support for this argument, and show it overcoming contrary scientific research.
(7) That the so-called “Delta variant” is in fact “more dangerous”. Being more contagious does not equal more danger of sickness and death, as attested to by published government data. Show the scientific proof for the fact that the Delta variant is a significant variation, not just one that varies by 0.3% of characteristics compared to the original Covid-19. Show the data that proves beyond a doubt that it causes more hospitalizations and deaths than the original Covid-19 ever did. Without this proof, the rationale for such mandates is null and void.
(8) That “herd immunity” can only be achieved with vaccination of 100% of a population. In particular, show the scientific support for achieving such immunity by using injectable products that confer no immunity at all. In addition, show the scientific support for the idea that herd immunity discounts natural immunity—see point #5 above.
If there is little or no scientific support for these positions, then there is no rational justification that warrants a mandate issued on medical grounds, in the name of safeguarding public health. In that case, the policy demands non-compliance and it must be rescinded.
If what remains is merely fear of danger, then in certain instances such fear of danger may in itself be a call for urgent psychological therapy or even psychiatric treatment. This is especially the case where fear is sustained in the absence of evidence or in denial of reality, and where it clearly does harm to the persons holding this fear, who then harm others (by issuing discriminatory mandates, for example).
It must also be recalled that during the height of the lockdowns, well before “vaccines” became available, and even before masking became mandatory, millions of Canadian workers operated in close quarters for long hours every day, and yet deadly outbreaks were few and far between. It remains to be shown why now, with vaccination and masking and numbers only a microscopic fraction of what they were, it is now necessary to go to extreme lengths to ensure 100% vaccination, using products that clearly cannot confer immunity. Such products are not only obviously and indisputably ineffective as tools of immunization, they can also be dangerous.
The announced measures, we already know, will do absolutely nothing to curb the spread of the virus. Knowing that means the policy is being followed for reasons not having to do with public health. We should thus reaffirm our commitment to non-compliance with this policy.
Lastly, if what universities really fear is exposure to litigation, then there is a very simple answer to this concern: ask all those who wish to access campus to sign a waiver that the university bears no responsibility for anyone who may become ill on campus (assuming it can even be proved they became ill on campus). If there is widespread fear of infection, a university could also allow for continued working and learning from home for those who prefer that option. Whatever the option may be, every possible option should be investigated without resorting to extreme and discriminatory measures that violate human rights and the rights of citizenship.
[Canadian faculty are encouraged to adopt and or adapt this statement, in whole or in part, for use in their individual institutional settings, and they can do so without formally crediting this statement, even though it is published under a Creative Commons license. French translation follows.]
DÉCLARATION DE NON-CONFORMITÉ À LA VACCINATION OBLIGATOIRE DANS LES UNIVERSITÉS CANADIENNES Par : Maximilian C. Forte, PhD
Au début, ce n’était même pas une université, mais le Seneca College. Ensuite, ce fut l’Université d’Ottawa. Puis l’Université Carleton, l’Université de Western Ontario et l’Université de Toronto. Maintenant, ce sont presque toutes les universités du Nouveau-Brunswick et de la Nouvelle-Écosse. La faculté de droit de McGill l’exige également, vraisemblablement pour sauver l’université d’un litige coûteux (une menace implicite, et qui suppose étrangement qu’un seul côté d’un débat peut plaider devant les tribunaux). Si cela se produit d’abord aux États-Unis, alors presque immédiatement, il est copié et collé dans la politique au Canada. Il arrive partout : vaccination obligatoire pour tous les professeurs, le personnel et les étudiants.
En tant que professeur titulaire au Canada, il est de mon devoir d’encourager tous les professeurs à s’unir face au non-respect de telles mesures.
Des pressions de vaccination obligatoire sont émises prétendument conformément à la « santé publique ». Cependant, ils ne sont mandatés ni par les parlements ni par la législation, mais sont plutôt émis unilatéralement par les gouvernements dans le cadre de « mesures d’urgence ».
En règle générale, ces mandats de vaccination stipulent ce qui suit : les professeurs, le personnel et les étudiants doivent présenter une preuve de vaccination complète afin d’accéder au campus et d’exercer leurs fonctions. S’ils ne le font pas (et certains n’autorisent le refus que sur la base d’exemptions médicales ou religieuses), ils doivent alors se soumettre à des mesures spéciales encore non définies, telles que des tests fréquents (peut-être deux fois par semaine, en utilisant des tests antigéniques rapides), et le port du masque à tout moment et dans tous les espaces du campus.
Ce sera, pour la plupart des professeurs canadiens, le premier sinon le seul test réel de leur intégrité, de leur dignité, et de leur objectif en tant qu’universitaires et intellectuels. Il est absolument essentiel qu’ils ne ratent pas ce test dès le départ.
Il faut souligner qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une position qui ne peut être prise que par des professeurs non vaccinés. L’action pour interdire et prévenir la discrimination, et les abus réels des droits de l’homme, est une position à prendre par tous les professeurs, qu’ils soient complètement vaccinés ou non.
Plutôt que de suivre le récit de la science alternative lié aux intérêts privés des sociétés pharmaceutiques et à ceux des politiciens, nous devrions nous attendre à ce que les universités canadiennes encouragent la pensée critique qui – comme cela est maintenant communément approuvé et célébré – « dit la vérité au pouvoir ». Cela serait conforme aux nombreuses déclarations récentes des universités canadiennes en faveur de la justice sociale. Voir ces mêmes universités échouer d’emblée au premier véritable test de leurs engagements avoués, est à la fois choquant et décevant.
En particulier, les pressions en matière de vaccination obligatoire discriminent clairement et indiscutablement les employés qui sont membres de communautés religieuses et ethniques particulières, de telle manière et à un degré tel que toute prétention à défendre « l’équité, la diversité et l’inclusivité » s’effondre complètement. Ne pas maintenir cet engagement dans un domaine, et s’attendre à ce qu’il soit maintenu dans d’autres domaines, n’est évidemment ni crédible ni tenable. De plus, la politique qui impose une telle discrimination contrevient directement à plusieurs lois et codes des droits de la personne, tant ici au Québec que dans le reste du Canada.
Premièrement, les professeurs devraient informer les cadres supérieurs qu’à aucun moment et en aucun cas, ils ne peuvent être contraints de divulguer involontairement des informations privées sur leur état de santé personnel, qu’ils aient été complètement vaccinés ou non. Un tel mandat viole les droits de tous, pas seulement de certains. Une telle contrainte, qui se situe en dehors des termes et conditions d’emploi tels qu’établis par les contrats ou les conventions collectives, serait manifestement illégale à plusieurs égards, notamment en violant les lois existantes telles qu’elles existent au Québec et dans le reste du Canada. À aucun moment, lorsque nous avons été interviewés puis embauchés, aucun d’entre nous n’a été informé des exigences en matière de santé pour effectuer notre travail. Les politiques établies pour que les universités maintiennent des environnements de travail sûrs imposent ce fardeau aux administrations universitaires – elles n’impliquent aucune demande de dépistage médical ou d’injection de professeurs.
Nous devrions être particulièrement préoccupés par l’effort apparent pour faire pression sur les gens pour qu’ils se fassent vacciner. En tant qu’universités qui défendent fermement l’éthique de la recherche, conformément aux exigences fédérales, cette politique nie plutôt le consentement éclairé volontaire. Le consentement ne peut pas être obligatoire, par définition. La politique viole également le principe de ne pas nuire, en n’informant pas les membres de la communauté que le respect de cette politique pourrait entraîner des effets indésirables, allant de légers et insignifiants à des blessures graves nécessitant une hospitalisation, et dans certains cas même la mort. Nous n’avons vu aucune parole d’avertissement concernant les effets indésirables et la mort possible dans les annonces de politique.
L’obligation de vacciner va également à l’encontre des dispositions légales qui interdisent la discrimination fondée sur l’appartenance ethnique, la religion et les convictions politiques.
Les universités soutiennent également une mesure d’urgence, mais elles n’ont fourni aucune preuve d’une urgence. Les virus à propagation rapide sont communs à nos communautés universitaires, comme chaque rhume et grippe qui balaie une population universitaire chaque année, même plusieurs fois par an. La condition de « propagation rapide » et de « contagiosité » n’est pas, en soi, une base pour une « urgence ».
Les administrations universitaires doivent être assurées que, comme d’habitude, lorsque les employés développent des symptômes de maladie, ils s’abstiennent automatiquement de venir sur le campus, comme ils l’ont fait lorsqu’ils ont eu un rhume ou une grippe. Les professeurs non vaccinés ne représentent donc aucune « menace » réelle ou potentielle pour la santé de la communauté.
Il faut aussi souligner qu’au début de l’automne 2009, certains professeurs canadiens ont contracté le virus H1N1, et dans certains cas, ils ont dû s’absenter des cours pendant des semaines. À aucun moment, aucune administration universitaire au Canada n’a manifesté de préoccupation à ce sujet. Il est important de rappeler qu’en 2009, l’Organisation mondiale de la santé a déclaré que le H1N1 était une « pandémie mondiale », selon la même définition qu’elle utilisait alors pour le Covid-19. En édictant aujourd’hui des mesures radicalement différentes, les universités canadiennes sont ainsi directement en rupture avec leur propre pratique, d’un passé récent.
Deuxièmement, si la conséquence du non-respect de ces mandats est que les professeurs doivent subir des tests fréquents, même s’ils ne présentent aucun symptôme, il s’agirait alors d’un traitement injuste et discriminatoire basé sur l’état de santé présumé, et cela aussi est illégal et ne relève pas de nos engagements et des conditions d’emploi. Être professeur dans une université canadienne n’a jamais été annoncé comme un poste assorti d’une exigence de santé ou d’une exigence de dépistage médical pour exercer ses fonctions. De plus, étant donné qu’il est désormais solidement établi que les personnes complètement vaccinées portent autant de charge virale que les non vaccinées et transmettent le virus, soumettre ensuite un groupe de personnes (supposées non vaccinées) à des tests, et en exempter d’autres, est manifestement une discrimination injuste.
On ne peut que conclure qu’un tel préjugé discriminatoire vise à punir un groupe particulier, à l’entraver dans l’accomplissement de ses tâches quotidiennes et à continuer à désigner les personnes en bonne santé comme un problème. Il s’agit également d’un harcèlement psychologique évident et viole donc directement les politiques publiées par la plupart des universités canadiennes en milieu de travail.
Avant de tenter de transformer unilatéralement les conditions d’emploi, les administrations universitaires doivent au moins s’asseoir et négocier avec les syndicats du corps professoral. Au cours des 18 derniers mois, nous avons vu des professeurs soudainement obligés de travailler à domicile, ce qui n’est pas un travail requis dans les conditions d’emploi existantes. Ce n’est tout simplement pas dans notre description de poste et la plupart ne sont pas formés pour l’enseignement en ligne. À l’inverse, nous leur avons maintenant interdit de poursuivre l’enseignement à distance alors qu’il s’agissait de leur premier choix. Maintenant, nous voyons ceux qui sont supposés non vaccinés être contraints de subir des tests, quels que soient leurs symptômes et quelle que soit leur immunité naturelle possible (ce qui est irrationnellement et sans justification exclu de toute cette discussion).
L’exigence de test discriminatoire est donc une autre violation légale apparente, et elle n’a sa place dans aucune université canadienne.
La politique annoncée est une violation de la dignité humaine : elle impose une pression psychologique par le biais d’un régime de punition conçu pour rendre l’accomplissement de ses tâches ordinaires de plus en plus onéreux et insoutenable. Cela atteint le point où nous pourrions soutenir qu’il s’agit d’une rupture de contrat.
La politique annoncée exige également que ceux qui sont supposés être non vaccinés (c’est-à-dire qu’ils ne fournissent pas de preuve de vaccination complète), doivent être visiblement et publiquement séparés du reste de la communauté (c’est-à-dire masqués là où d’autres ne le sont pas). Compte tenu de la psychose de masse qui prévaut qui incite au blâme, au manque de respect et même à la haine manifeste contre les personnes non vaccinées, faire en sorte que ces personnes non vaccinées se démarquent ouvertement revient à mettre en péril leur dignité et leur intégrité.
Troisièmement, les universités canadiennes ne doivent subir aucune pression et ne doivent se plier à aucune pression qui les force à participer à un régime qui viole les droits de la personne. Alors que nous commençons seulement maintenant à prendre conscience de l’étendue réelle des atrocités commises dans les pensionnats canadiens, qui n’ont fermé qu’à la fin des années 1990, les établissements d’enseignement canadiens devraient se méfier d’une nouvelle vague de demandes du gouvernement pour des mesures dures, ségrégationnistes et punitives au nom de “sauver” les gens.
L’administration des universités canadiennes peut raisonnablement répondre qu’elles ne font que suivre les mandats du gouvernement. Tout mandat gouvernemental qui est lui-même une mesure extra-légale, imposée sans appui législatif, n’est pas un mandat qui peut être utilisé pour forcer une université à violer également la loi ou les conventions relatives aux droits de la personne établies en vertu du droit international, auxquelles le Canada est un signataire.
Tout respect par un individu de mesures extrêmes extra-légales pourrait également être lu comme un consentement tacite, qui légitimerait alors de telles mesures qui ne sont adossées ni aux lois établies, ni à la Charte des droits et libertés ni, il faut le noter, tout support scientifique.
Les administrations des universités canadiennes sont mieux avisées d’être prudentes et du bon côté de la loi et de la justice. Elles doivent immédiatement annuler toute police de ce type émise au titre d’un mandat de vaccination. Elles doivent également être conscientes que ne pas le faire les expose à des litiges de la part de ceux qui subissent un traitement discriminatoire, non seulement de la part des professeurs et du personnel, mais d’un nombre encore plus grand d’étudiants.
Qu’une université canadienne essaie de justifier les violations des droits de la personne, parce que c’est ce que le gouvernement a ordonné, est vraiment digne de Nuremberg.
Quatrièmement, tout mandat doit reconnaître que le fardeau de la preuve incombe à ceux qui émettent, suivent et exécutent le mandat. En particulier, les gouvernements et les administrations universitaires au Canada doivent fournir une preuve entièrement documentée de ce qui suit, en gardant à l’esprit qu’une peur largement répandue n’est pas la preuve d’une urgence autre que psychologique :
(1.) Qu’il existe bien une urgence de santé publique actuelle, en tant que fait médical objectif et vérifiable, et non en tant qu’artefact de décrets gouvernementaux. Le plus grand nombre d’hospitalisations et de décès au Canada s’est produit au cours de la soi-disant « première vague » de mars-mai 2020. Il n’y a eu aucune répétition de ces chiffres depuis lors. Même alors, nous nous basons sur des hypothèses : nous supposons que les personnes ont été infectées par Covid-19, en utilisant des tests défectueux à un moment où le virus n’avait pas été isolé et où les cycles d’amplification étaient trop élevés – et nous n’avons pas suivi les directives de l’OMS qui déconseillaient de se fier exclusivement aux tests PCR pour établir un diagnostic clinique. Nous n’avons pas non plus effectué systématiquement d’autopsies pour établir la cause du décès de la plupart des victimes âgées au printemps de l’année dernière. En plus de cela, il est apparu depuis que même parmi ceux qui étaient déjà proches de la fin naturelle de leur vie, ils étaient souvent soumis à la famine et à la déshydratation – la peur a éloigné de nombreux travailleurs des maisons de retraite, ce qui a ensuite entraîné la négligence des résidents. Nous avons également appris que, du moins au Québec, ces patients âgés et fragiles recevaient de la morphine qui supprimait la respiration et qui, dans presque tous les cas, entraînait rapidement la mort. Ainsi, nous ne connaissons pas encore la taille et la nature exacte même de la « première vague », la pire et sans doute la seule vraie vague que nous ayons eue.
(2.) Cette infection n’est transmise que par les non-vaccinés. Nous savons maintenant avec certitude que les « vaccins » annoncés – ceux utilisés au Canada – ne protègent pas les personnes injectées contre l’infection, ni ne les empêchent de propager le virus, ni même de tomber malade et de mourir du virus. Si les personnes entièrement vaccinées peuvent propager le virus, et le font, alors toute exigence de tests fréquents et rapides doit également s’appliquer à elles. Ne pas le faire est une preuve de discrimination sur la base de caractéristiques de santé.
(3.) Qu’en annonçant la nécessité de la vaccination, que la population universitaire ne soit pas induite en erreur sur la véritable protection qu’offrent ces produits injectables. Des pays comme Israël, qui ont vacciné plus complètement et plus rapidement que le Canada, sont maintenant témoins d’une situation où l’écrasante majorité des personnes infectées sont complètement vaccinées. En Israël et au Royaume-Uni ces dernières semaines, les personnes entièrement vaccinées représentent la majorité des décès de Covid. Sans même parler de décès, ce qui est rarissime pour toute personne exposée au Covid, vaccinée ou non, en Europe comme aux États-Unis, on dénombre désormais plusieurs centaines de milliers de cas d’effets indésirables graves. Il est universellement reconnu, même par les fabricants eux-mêmes, que l’efficacité de ces produits injectables diminue au point que toute protection qu’ils auraient pu offrir tombe de plus en plus à des niveaux insignifiants.
(4.) Que les « cas » sont une mesure de tout ce qui est significatif. Le terme « cas » a été abusé et déformé : toute personne jugée positive au Covid-19 a été classée dans la catégorie « cas ». Ceci malgré le fait qu’ils n’ont peut-être eu aucun symptôme, ou s’ils avaient des symptômes, ils étaient légers et n’ont nécessité aucun traitement. Généralement, un cas réel implique une personne ayant besoin d’un traitement en tant que patient, généralement dans une clinique ou un hôpital. Par conséquent, il doit être prouvé qu’un nombre croissant de soi-disant « cas » est une raison pour des mesures extraordinaires, en particulier lorsque les hospitalisations et les décès ne représentent qu’une infime fraction de ce qu’ils étaient lors de la première vague.
(5.) Cette immunité naturelle n’est pas réelle et n’a pas d’importance. Nulle part dans ces mandats il n’y a de langage concernant l’immunité naturelle – l’immunité naturelle est supposée ne pas exister, ou est supposée non pertinente. Si ceux qui délivrent ou appliquent une telle vaccination obligatoire ne peuvent pas aborder ce point scientifique, alors la crédibilité de leur argument entier s’effondre. Sur cette seule base, la non-conformité serait pleinement justifiée.
(6.) On peut supposer que les personnes en bonne santé sont porteuses de la maladie. Ces mandats de vaccination en milieu de travail supposent tous que les personnes en bonne santé, même jeunes et en bonne santé, qui ne sont pas vaccinées sont un « problème ». Les personnes saines sont supposées immédiatement et d’avance non seulement être porteuses réelles ou potentielles de l’infection, mais aussi être les seules porteuses de l’infection, et être uniquement contagieuses. Montrez le soutien scientifique de cet argument et montrez-le surmontant les recherches scientifiques contraires.
(7.) Que le soi-disant « variant Delta » est en fait « plus dangereux ». Être plus contagieux n’équivaut pas à plus de danger de maladie et de mort, comme en témoignent les données gouvernementales publiées. Montrez la preuve scientifique du fait que le variant Delta est une variation significative, pas seulement une variation de 0,3% des caractéristiques par rapport au Covid-19 d’origine. Montrez les données qui prouvent sans aucun doute qu’il provoque plus d’hospitalisations et de décès que le Covid-19 original n’en a jamais fait. Sans cette preuve, la justification de tels mandats est nulle et non avenue.
(8.) Cette « immunité collective » ne peut être obtenue qu’avec la vaccination de 100 % d’une population. En particulier, montrez le soutien scientifique pour obtenir une telle immunité en utilisant des produits injectables qui ne confèrent aucune immunité. En outre, montrez le soutien scientifique de l’idée que l’immunité collective réduit l’immunité naturelle – voir le point 5 ci-dessus.
S’il y a peu ou pas de support scientifique pour ces positions, alors il n’y a aucune justification rationnelle pour un mandat délivré pour des raisons médicales, au nom de la sauvegarde de la santé publique. Dans ce cas, la politique exige la non-conformité et elle doit être annulée.
Si ce qui reste n’est que la peur du danger, alors, dans certains cas, cette peur du danger peut en elle-même être un appel à une thérapie psychologique urgente ou même à un traitement psychiatrique. C’est particulièrement le cas lorsque la peur est entretenue en l’absence de preuves ou dans le déni de réalité, et qu’elle nuit manifestement aux personnes qui ont cette peur, qui nuisent alors à autrui (en émettant des mandats discriminatoires, par exemple).
Il faut également rappeler qu’au plus fort des mesures de santé publique, bien avant que les « vaccins » ne soient disponibles, et même avant que le masque ne devienne obligatoire, des millions de travailleurs canadiens opéraient à proximité immédiate pendant de longues heures chaque jour, et pourtant les épidémies mortelles étaient rares et lointaines entre elles. Il reste à montrer pourquoi maintenant, avec la vaccination et le masquage et les chiffres seulement une fraction microscopique de ce qu’ils étaient, il faut maintenant aller très loin pour assurer une vaccination à 100%, en utilisant des produits qui ne peuvent clairement pas conférer une immunité. De tels produits ne sont pas seulement manifestement et incontestablement inefficaces en tant qu’outils d’immunisation, ils peuvent aussi être dangereux.
Les mesures annoncées, on le sait déjà, ne feront absolument rien pour freiner la propagation du virus. Le savoir signifie que la politique est suivie pour des raisons qui n’ont pas à voir avec la santé publique. Nous devons donc réaffirmer notre engagement à ne pas respecter cette politique.
Enfin, si ce que les universités craignent vraiment, c’est l’exposition au litige, alors il y a une réponse très simple à cette préoccupation : demander à tous ceux qui souhaitent accéder au campus de signer une renonciation que l’université n’assume aucune responsabilité pour toute personne qui pourrait tomber malade sur le campus (en supposant qu’il puisse même être prouvé qu’ils sont tombés malades sur le campus). S’il existe une peur généralisée de l’infection, une université pourrait également permettre à ceux qui préfèrent cette option de continuer à travailler et à apprendre à domicile. Quelle que soit l’option choisie, toutes les options possibles devraient être étudiées sans recourir à des mesures extrêmes et discriminatoires qui violent les droits de l’homme et les droits de citoyenneté.
[Les professeurs canadiens sont encouragés à adopter et/ou adapter cette déclaration, en tout ou en partie, pour une utilisation dans leur environnement institutionnel individuel, et ils peuvent le faire sans créditer formellement cette déclaration qui est publiée sous une licence Creative Commons.]
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La traduction en Français a été faite par Richard G de Fearless Canada / Courage Québec.
First it was not even a university, but Seneca College. Then it was the University of Ottawa. Then Carleton University, the University of Western Ontario, and the University of Toronto. Now it is almost every university in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. The law faculty at McGill is also demanding it, presumably to save the […]
On August 4, an interesting event took place: “Stop the Shot”. This was a video press conference organized by the Truth for Health Foundation in the US, which was live streamed online and has since been uploaded to various alternative video hosting platforms—on the main one advertised, it has already received three quarters of a […]
On August 4, an interesting event took place: “Stop the Shot”. This was a video press conference organized by the Truth for Health Foundation in the US, which was live streamed online and has since been uploaded to various alternative video hosting platforms—on the main one advertised, it has already received three quarters of a million views. I was in the audience for the live event, and have since decided to write a summary report after reviewing and adding some complementary research.
The video press conference lasted from 12:00pm EST until roughly 2:00pm—a fast-paced event, with numerous speakers. Pre-conference releases from the foundation indicated that the event would present new information, shared by the lead attorney in a US lawsuit against the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) regarding the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), and the under-reporting of deaths and injuries. We were informed that the presentation would include an update on the CDC Whistleblower affidavit, which indicates “more than 45,000 actual deaths have taken place following the COVID shot, versus the VAERS reports of only 11,000”. In fact, the news was even more astounding than that. In addition, the press conference was to provide previously undisclosed data from both Pharma-clinical trials and subsequent additional studies on the injectables related to “specific, serious, immediate, and long-term impacts on fertility in both men and women”. Finally, updates on medical studies concerning actual “vaccine” immunity would be discussed, as well as information about current lawsuits, and the theological implications of pandemic management.
Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet The event was chaired by Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet MD, who is the President and CEO of the Truth for Health Foundation, and a privately practising physician. She opened the event with some strong remarks about what she has observed among patients of hers, saying that among them were some of the worst “vaccine” reactions she has ever seen. This gathering would help to reveal some of the suppressed scientific data, statistics, and research that has been routinely silence or sidelined by the CDC, the FDA, the NIH, and the WHO. She stressed that common sense, important questions deserve answers. Dr. Vliet directed special attention to the case of Dr. Peter McCullough, a widely well-regarded and thus prominent medical expert who is also the Chief Medical Advisor for the same Truth for Health Foundation. Dr. Vliet noted that attempts to punish Dr. McCullough also had the effect of harming the work of a public, not-for-profit charitable foundation, which also violates the charity’s rights to freedom of speech. Medical censorship now underway, is the greatest threat to both truth and health ever witnessed, she emphasized. Dr. Vliet also noted the unpardonable contradiction between banning unvaccinated Americans from certain public venues in particular states, while admitting circa 50,000 “illegals” each week, almost all of whom are unvaccinated and many carry Covid-19. On entering the US, she remarked, they are then transported to places where locals face “vaccine” mandates—all of this happening with US taxpayers funding the DHS so that it can undertake this national distribution.
Dr. Peter A. McCullough Up next was Dr. Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, internist, cardiologist and epidemiologist, and a pioneer of early multi-drug combination medicines for early ambulatory treatment of COVID-19, and one of the most widely published, peer-reviewed physicians in the world (in cardiovascular and renal disease) with over 600 peer-reviewed publications in the National Library of Medicine, including 45 peer-reviewed papers on Covid-19 itself. Dr. McCullough, in line with his public advocacy, established the necessity for alternate treatments. He also noted that on the same day that Baylor Scott and White Health mandated vaccination for its staff, he was sued for allegedly misrepresenting the hospital system’s views when making his own case. Dr. McCullough is fighting back, and the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has also condemned the lawsuit by Baylor. Meanwhile Baylor University continues to have an endowed scholarship in McCullough’s name and he and his wife are major donors to the Baylor medical system. Besides being sued, his positions with the hospital and a college of medicine have been terminated—all for not backing a “vaccine” or nothing approach. The AAPS, Dr. McCullough noted also supports the kinds of early treatment that others doctors have neglected.
Dr. McCullough made the point that Americans have generally seen no reports on the safety of the Covid-19 injectable treatments (and are therefore deprived of their right to informed consent). He noted that in the US, roughly 100,000 individuals have been hospitalized due to adverse reactions or have died after being injected—while other fully “vaccinated” persons are still getting Covid-19, with some getting sick and even dying. Dr. McCullough ended by arguing that the real misinformation that has been inflicted on Americans is that the “vaccines” are “safe and effective”.
Dr. Mike Yeadon The next speaker was Dr. Michael Yeadon, PhD, Chief Scientific Advisor Truth for Health Foundation, a former Pfizer Vice-President, and a consultant to over 30 Biotech companies. Dr. Yeadon’s presentation essentially restated what was already covered in the symposium that happened a week earlier, and which was written about in detail in two parts here. He presented information that raises serious concerns about the safety of the injectables. Yeadon insisted: we are being lied to; there are next to no reports on the serious risks of the injectable products; we are not be treated as adults. In particular, he emphasized, we have never given experimental drugs to pregnant women, not since the Thalidomide crisis. Citing information obtained from a freedom of information access filing with Japan’s medical regulatory body, we have learned about the biodistribution of Pfizer’s Covid-19 treatment in rats (for more, see the notes on Dr. Michael Palmer’s presentation in the previously mentioned symposium). The “vaccine” distributes throughout the body, and it concentrates 20 times more in the ovaries than in other tissues. We still do not know what that might do, Yeadon noted. However he worried about the current experimentation with human females, observing the similarities between the spike protein and placental protein, which could hypothetically produce an “echo,” resulting in antibodies targeting the placenta. He noted a study of 15 women that were given the Pfizer injectable, and over one to four days there was a 200-300% increase in antibodies that acted against the placenta. Yeadon is thus extremely worried that the “vaccines” could well induce autoimmune attacks. The still unknown effects—because we are at an early stage—could be very serious. As a result, he advised those viewing: “Don’t accept the vaccines”.
Pastor Stephen Broden Pastor Stephen Broden spoke next. Pastor Borden is on the Board of Directors of the Truth for Health Foundation, a founder and Senior Pastor of Fair Park Bible Fellowship, in Dallas, Texas, and an Executive Director and Co-Founder of the National Black Pro-Life Coalition. Pastor Borden began his presentation by stating that the “pandemic” is based on false data premises—which is an empirically correct argument. He also noted that legitimate treatments have been ignored or censored—which is also a fact. Pastor Borden continued by stating that mRNA injections have caused deaths and adverse reactions—again, a fact. He underlined the fact that mandated injection is a violation of Constitutional rights and the Nuremberg Code. Vaccination, Pastor Borden argued, is an individual medical choice. From a religious standpoint, he rejected as flatly wrong the notion that injection is a moral responsibility. Churches, he pointed out, are not agents of the Federal Government. It is not the duty of churches to either coordinate injection, or urge people to get injected. Finally, Pastor Borden explained that churches can help to overcome censorship because they gather people together and disseminate information—which, we could add, is no doubt one reason churches have been especially targeted during lockdowns.
Tom Renz Tom Renz followed, speaking as a lead attorney on a federal lawsuit against the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) to overturn the entire Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the experimental Covid vaccines, and a leader in a national network of attorneys fighting to protect patients’ Constitutional rights against “vaccine” dictates. Renz began by stating that he could confirm that individuals under the age of 30 in the US, were more at risk of death from the Covid injections, than from the virus itself. Clinical trials have already shown that at least one out of every 1,000 children is paralyzed, and he noted that the FDA is continuing to investigate this. Renz praised the work of whistle-blowers. What he confirmed from their statements was quite shocking and new to me: many persons who have been counted as “vaccinated,” were in fact deceased at the time they were supposedly vaccinated. We look forward to seeing substantiation for this, as it would suggest extreme fraud. Renz also suggested that official reports that upwards of 70% of Americans have received at least one injection, is a lie—inflated figures can be used to influence behaviour, as with phony opinion polling during elections. He also indicated that hospitals in the US are reporting that over 40% of new admissions are due to breakthrough infections among the fully vaccinated, and in the cases of some hospitals that number can rise as high as 100%. These numbers are consistent with those for the UK and Israel—overall, however, the US and Canada are “strange exceptions,” suggesting that the lower numbers have been fabricated (it is a fact that those numbers have been actively suppressed in Canada).
Renz’s presentation, which was perhaps the most explosive one of the press conference, also accused HHS of working to promote commercial pharmaceutical products, against the public interest. He also blasted the Federation of State Medical Boards for publicly threatening doctors in order to silence them. As for clinical data on hydroxychloroquine use, Renz condemned those journals that published studies reporting the dangers of hydroxychloroquine use, noting one in particular where 2.5 times the lethal dose had been given to prove its dangers (when an overdose of even aspirin can kill). He ended his presentation by pointing out that none of the critics and skeptics taking part in the day’s press conference had been paid to mount opposition to the “vaccines”.
Reverend Sister Deidre Byrne Reverend Sister Deidre Byrne—a retired US military surgeon, a practising physician and medical missionary in Baltimore, who is also a member of the Truth for Health Foundation Advisory Council and a member of the Catholics for Preservation of Life initiative—was one of the presenters whose work straddled both religion and medicine. She began by recalling what followed the 9/11 attacks, and the kind of fear that spread. In December of 2019, a new “enemy” had “invaded,” according to the prominent public narratives of officials. Fear still prevails, Sister Byrne commented, a fear that continues dividing people and causes them to fight each other. She reminds us that “emergency use authorization” for the “vaccines” was granted because, allegedly, there were no other treatments. Vaccination was promoted as upholding the public or common good. Sister Byrne’s specific objection was that the injectables were tested using the tissues of aborted fetuses (Johnson & Johnson uses aborted fetal cells in the actual production of its vaccine). On top of this, she added, “vaccines” are being forced on children through mandates, even though children are proven to be at little risk from the coronavirus. Sister Byrne exclaimed that even two-year-old children are being masked, in what seems like either a barbaric act or one simply devoid of medical sense. She pointed out how during this period there has been a surge in teenage rage and suicide as a result of psychological stress induced by severe restrictions. Sister Byrne thus ended by quoting Matthew 10:28: “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”.
Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, a leading German immunologist and professor who has spoken extensively of the new data on widespread natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2, followed next. His was a truncated version of a presentation he has previously given, with a written summary and video provided previously here. To summarize even further, Dr. Bhakdi repeated his “end of the narrative” argument, which rests on acknowledgements contained in recently published research that revealed our immune systems are already trained for dealing with coronaviruses. He affirmed that Covid-19, and its variants, are now less dangerous than the seasonal flu, for the average person. When Dr. Bhakdi and his colleagues speak of “danger,” they mean the actual lethality of a virus—whereas dominant media use “dangerous” when speaking of a virus being infectious, which misleads the public and promotes unwarranted panic.
Dr. Jose Trasancos Speaking along lines similar to Sister Byrne above, Dr. Jose Trasancos, Executive Director of Children of God for Life, a member of the Truth For Health Advisory Council, and of Catholics for Preservation of Life Initiative, came next. Dr. Trasancos began by stating his opposition, as a Catholic who is pro-life, of the use of tissues from aborted fetuses in the development of injectables. He strongly denounced the heavy-handed politics of fear, and the acute degree of propaganda, that has marked this entire “pandemic”. He was critical of how “vaccination” has been pounded into people’s heads as a patriotic duty, or an act of charity, while dismissing alternative treatments that have proven beneficial as testified by doctors in their practise. In particular he criticized how human dignity and human conscience have been degraded. What is at risk, he argued, is out right to decide what is best for ourselves and our families. “Generated fear, political agendas, and perhaps the lure of economic gain and power,” collectively constitute, in his words, a direct assault on individual liberty and the dignity of human life. As a Catholic, he lamented the reasons why so many Catholics feel abandoned and betrayed by church leadership at the higher echelons who have been “coopted by the politics of the day”. Dr. Trasancos noted how response of church leaders to laity has often seemed unfeeling, unconcerned, and at times reproachful. Dr. Trasancos then laid out the bases for conscientious objection to “vaccination”. Here he quoted directly from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3 (Section 1), Article 6 (Section 3), points 1788 and 1789, which he read:
“1788—To this purpose, man strives to interpret the data of experience and the signs of the times assisted by the virtue of prudence, by the advice of competent people, and by the help of the Holy Spirit and his gifts.
“1789—Some rules apply in every case:
– One may never do evil so that good may result from it;
– the Golden Rule: ‘Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them’
– charity always proceeds by way of respect for one’s neighbor and his conscience: ‘Thus sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience…you sin against Christ’. Therefore ‘it is right not to…do anything that makes your brother stumble’”.
We need “honesty, mutual respect, and transparency,” he concluded, in order to avoid damage that could become even cataclysmic.
Pamela A. Popper Pamela A. Popper, a co-founder of Make Americans Free Again, president of Wellness Forum Health, and co-author of COVID Operation: What Happened, Why it Happened, and What’s Next, was the next person to speak. Popper was not overstating matters when she opened her remarks by stating that what we are witnessing is the biggest ever episode of medical tyranny, if anything because of its global scope. She defined medical tyranny as the situation where governments, pharmaceutical companies, and the health industry generally as the ones producing ever-changing and ever-escalating mandates, dictating what is now an increasing number of injections. The pharmaceutical cartel, Popper stated, is guilty of pushing drugs that are both problematic and unnecessary. We have the right to decide what goes into our bodies, she said. In terms of active organization to resist these mandates, Popper—like others have done in this and related venues—emphasized the need for local meetings of local people. She stressed the need for a very simple platform, such as, “No Medical Tyranny”. She also emphasized the importance of raising money for lawsuits, and of building a coalition together with medical professionals, much like the one presenting this press conference. Popper closed by directing attention to Americans for Medical Freedom and its related site.
Reverend William Cook The Rev. William Cook—founder of the US’ Black Robe Regiment, a member of both the Truth for Health Advisory Council and the Medicine and Ministry United initiative—referred to the “pandemic” as an alleged one, pointing to the arbitrary and unilateral manner in which “pandemics” are defined and declared. In addition, Rev. Cook argued, the so-called “pandemic” rested on a base of fraudulent data stemming from discredited PCR tests. He also agreed that Covid-19 is easily treatable, and can be treated early—thus making experimental mRNA shots completely unnecessary. Instead what we have are states that push “vaccination” only, with an emphasis on mRNA products. He also expressed his fear that the current campaign is part of a broader program to reduce the world’s population (which, we should note, has long been a stated eugenicist goal of liberal developmentalists, corporate philanthropists, environmentalists and “climate emergency” alarmists today). Rev. Cook also issued a warning about the growing totalitarianism that is being built on the basis of mandatory, i.e., forced vaccination.
Dr. Reiner Fullmich The next speaker was the always engaging Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, a leading attorney on international lawsuits, and member of the Bar in Germany and California. He lamented the fact that the “other side” has installed many of its “placeholders” (we might call them “force multipliers”) in numerous strategic locations, including courts of law. (I should note that one of the biggest frustrations for anti-lockdown activists in Quebec has been getting courts to seriously consider their cases—normally, the response of the courts boiled down to, “it’s a state of emergency, so the government can do what it likes,” which renders the legal system useless and marks it as a candidate for abolition.) In normal times, Dr. Fuellmich commented, we could not expect courts to be at the forefront of new socio-political changes—then in these times that is even more so the case. “In today’s times, the least they [courts of law] could have done is to enforce the existing laws,” he noted. At a very minimum, the Nuremberg Code, has to be observed particularly for its stress on voluntary informed consent—a basic ethical principle of medical practice that has been adopted in countries’ medical codes around the world. Instead, as Dr. Fuellmich observed, around the world individuals are not being properly informed by either “their” politicians or the media, and they are being improperly pressured and coerced into accepting injections. He noted escalating reports of serious adverse reactions—and we can add that this includes over 35,000 deaths caused by the “vaccines” to date in just the EU and North America (a number which might end up dwarfing the total number of persons who actually died from Covid-19, if a legal ruling from Portugal could be used as any indication of the true count, i.e., 0.9% of all reported Covid deaths were caused by the virus itself). Dr. Fuellmich explained that this was a good reason why many are feeling disinclined to being badgered and rushed into “vaccination”. While courts do not normally break new ground, they do respond and follow the court of public opinion, he argued, and in this regard he noted a successful lawsuit in Florida that challenged one district’s mask mandate; in South Africa, a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the lockdowns was successful, and is currently being appealed by the government; he also referenced the class action lawsuit filed against the Canadian and Ontario governments by Ottawa lawyer, Michael Swinwood, which is intended to become an international class action, and another one concerning children only; and, Fuellmich, had he more time, would have likely mentioned Portugal, where the Lisbon Court of Appeal concluded that PCR tests were both inaccurate and inappropriate, plus an appeal court judge who denounced mandates amounting to “sanitary apartheid”; and the ruling of a German District Court that concluded that lockdown measures were unconstitutional and violated existing laws. Also, the International Criminal Court in The Hague has accepted the filing of a complaint concerning violations of the Nuremberg Code by the Israeli government, with a decision pending on whether it will hear the case; the complaint is being simultaneously filed in a number of other courts, including in Israel.
In addition to these mounting legal challenges, whose empirical findings Dr. Fuellmich noted previously can be applied across national jurisdictions, he stressed the need to continue educating the public and to work for transparency. He explained that, while he hesitated to talk about it, there is a crucial religious/spiritual aspect that will need to be factored in. Dr. Fuellmich thus outlined how the fight has to continue on three fronts: 1) the legal front; 2) public education; and, 3) the religious front.
For Dr. Fuellmich, speaking of the legal front, stressed that the most important thing to attack is the validity of using the PCR test, which has been a foundation of this “pandemic”. He has personally interviewed 110 experts on PCR tests in preparation for the launch of lawsuits, and noted that there have already been three court decisions on the use of PCR tests that strengthen this campaign. He predicted that in the coming weeks and months, more such rulings would be issued—which, he noted, may be why the other side is becoming so openly desperate and panicking. Massive legal actions are happening, and we will soon see the results.
Dr. Fuellmich is now part of a group of more than 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts who have initiated legal proceedings against the CDC, the WHO, and the Davos Group for crimes against humanity.
Dr. Roger Hodkinson Dr. Roger Hodkinson, MA, MB, B.Chir. (Cantab), FCAP, FRCPC, a leading Canadian pathologist, graduate of Cambridge University, and chairman of an American Biotech company in DNA sequencing, was the final speaker. Dr. Hodkinson called this “pandemic” a totally unnecessary tragedy that has been fuelled by lies and propaganda—a “horror show,” he called it, “the worst in medical history”. It is a “grotesque tragedy…that somehow still continues,” he added. He emphasized that, at present, Covid-19 is for the majority of people nothing worse than the seasonal flu. What we have dealt with, he argued, is a pandemic of fear that has been driven by two major factors: 1) notoriously ineffective PCR tests, and, 2) blanket censorship and silencing of any competing research findings. He added that PCR tests create over 95% false positives in people who are perfectly well—but these results are then wrongly called “cases” which then populate the graphs published by the media. Meanwhile, politicians, the media, and physicians have engaged in silencing the truth, thus depriving people of the kind of information that would have needed to make up their own minds. He zeroed in on the majority of MDs, who have apparently put “income ahead of ethics,” namely ethics such as do no harm and informed consent. Fear became the excuse for politicians and unelected bureaucrats to enforce “ridiculous, arbitrary mandates that had no consensus for any effectiveness in the medical literature—none,” and among the mandates he mentioned masks, social distancing, travel bans, and lockdowns. “They couldn’t work; had not worked; and would not work,” he stated firmly. He criticized politicians for playing doctor, for appropriating to themselves the exclusive right to “protect” all people. However, Dr. Hodkinson countered, “I can tell you with categorical certainty, as a pathologist, death happens; life is risky; get used to it—just like you did with past flu epidemics, and every day when you drive your car”. He pressed governments to recognize a very basic fact: “modern medicine is totally impotent at controlling the spread of respiratory viruses,” adding, “we must simply accommodate to them in ways that we have done most effectively with past flu epidemics”. Dr. Hodkinson directly denounced Dr. Anthony Fauci for sponsoring gain-of-function research undertaken at the Wuhan Insitute of Virology, which he in turn blamed for starting this crisis. “Don’t let them scare you into get vaxxed,” he concluded, “tell them to stop the shot”.
Questions and Answers The formal program concluded there, and then opened up to a question-and-answer session that last 45 minutes. Questions received focused on workplace mandates for injections, and adverse reactions. On mandatory vaccination, the response from the panel was that the legality (in the US) was, at best, unclear, but that religious exemptions can counter such mandates. They also underlined the fact that by religious exemption, what is not meant is that one needs some sort of letter of certification from a religious leader—one’s own personal religious views are sufficient. Catholics who disagree with the church hierarchy’s position on the Covid-19 “vaccines,” do not need a priest to certify their exemption, it can be rooted in one’s individual beliefs. On the other hand, while some might think that labour laws (as in Germany and the US) could come to their aid, because one cannot force any unapproved substance on an employee; however, the problem is that many courts have been brought into line with the dominant program. What is necessary is a “high-profile case” to turn the tide.
On natural immunity vs. vaccine immunity, the answer was that up until May of 2021, the CDC had roughly 10,000 cases of “vaccine failure” (what others politely call “breakthrough infections”)—these were cases of fully vaccinated people, who had ample time to develop immunity, with 9% of these people being hospitalized, and 3% dying (which, we should note, are not noticeably better statistics than we have had for the “pandemic” prior to “vaccines” hitting the market). During that same time period, there were zero cases of infection of people who had previously acquired natural immunity. Bring matters up to the immediate present, they conceded there were some highly sketchy cases of people who may or may not have had Covid-19, and may or may not have developed antibodies. Overall, there is a 0.2% chance, over the course of a year, of a person with natural immunity becoming reinfected. “Natural immunity is robust, complete, and durable,” in the words of Dr. McCullough, “and there is no [significant] threat of a second infection” (for more on natural immunity and Covid-19, see this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this). He added this: “Under no circumstances should a Covid recovered patient be forced to take the vaccine—under no circumstances,” and he cited three papers which show increased rates of side effects, including those that require hospitalization, in patients that were Covid recovered and then needlessly vaccinated”. With the Delta variant, already data suggest that we are looking at wholesale failure of the “vaccines,” particularly the Pfizer product—84% of individuals in Israel who have the virus, are fully vaccinated; 42% of those infected with Delta in the UK are fully vaccinated with either Pfizer, Moderna, or AstraZeneca, and 65% of deaths from Delta in the UK are among people previously vaccinated. The so-called “pandemic of the unvaccinated” is a complete falsehood. Dr. Mike Yeadon made a much broader point: that he was unsure about either effectiveness or ineffectiveness, while we continue to use PCR tests—with such flawed testing, we cannot even be certain about what specifically is making patients ill. Dr. Yeadon underlined the fact that those who have been most at risk from Covid, are those who are already close to the end of their lives (indeed, Canada’s very first “vaccine” recipient died mere months later anyway). On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of persons who reportedly acquire this infection, “easily shrug it off” and then “they develop deep, broad, robust immunity”. Meanwhile, the vaccine merely encodes for one specific element, the spiked protein, and not the virus as a whole. Dr. Yeadon affirmed that “it is a trivially easy argument to make, that if you have been exposed to the virus you will have superior immunity to any that you could get from these vaccines,” agreeing that once one has been naturally exposed to Covid-19, one should not be subsequently vaccinated. Dr. Vlient at this point reintroduced Dr. Bhakdi’s observations about how studies showing that the first response immediately provoked by vaccines were precisely those recall antibodies that had been formed from prior exposures to either this or related previous coronaviruses, and not the delayed response antibodies that normally form first in reaction to infection. In other words, it is a false premise that this virus, Covid-19, is an entirely new virus and our bodies had established ability to react to it—this is a critical point, she stressed, that the listeners needed to understand. Our bodies are naturally able to recognize similarities between this coronavirus and previous coronaviruses to which we have been exposed, such as many common colds. Dr. McCullough added that the CDC’s findings were that at least 15% of Americans were already immune to Covid-19 because of such past exposures which built cross-over immunity (the numbers are significantly higher elsewhere: 80% and 50% of the German and UK populations respectively, are naturally resistant to Covid-19). Not everyone is susceptible, and he pointed to common accounts from everyday people about how with, say, six persons in a household in which Covid-19 circulated, perhaps two never got infected.
Another set of questions had to do with with the safety of injected persons donating blood, and whether pregnant women should receive the injections. Dr. Yeadon expressed his concern and anger at the regulatory failure of the authorities, including doctors who failed to do due diligence, and he reminded listeners that at no time do we ever give experimental substances to pregnant women. Initial studies are already showing the vaccines spreading to and depositing harmful elements in the ovaries. In addition, he worried about the similarity between the spiked protein and the placental protein. He was not declaring that there was a certain threat, but that he would not risk it. In any case, young and healthy people, like most who bear children, are not a serious risk from the virus and have no need to risk adverse effects from the injectables. Dr. Vliet pointed to research that already shows that women, during the early stages of pregnancy (especially the first trimester), are at higher risk of miscarrying if they have been vaccinated. She also warned that, on the advice of an expert in fetal medicine in their network, the mRNA injectables do cross the placental barrier and risk harming unborn babies. Dr. Yeadon applied the same caution to breast-feeding mothers who risk inadvertently ending their children’s lives, either because the “vaccine” itself, or what it produces, can be transferred from mother to baby.
On the safety of donated blood from vaccinated individuals, Dr. McCullough cited a Harvard study that showed that for two weeks following first dose injection, there were elevated levels of the spike protein. After the second dose, conditions appeared to return to normal. He also said that they informed blood bank authorities that the blood supply had been contaminated with spike protein and probably liquid nanoparticles containing mRNA. Dr. Yeadon added that the spike protein is biologically active and causes blood platelets to adhere to one another which results in blood coagulation—not everyone suffers any noticeable effects, but micro-level blood clotting is quite common. German studies conducted by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg and Dr. Bhakdi, showed that an overwhelming majority of vaccinated persons had elevated D-dimer readings that register micro blood-clotting. People receiving donated blood should be warned that they could be receive blood with coagulation levels beyond what is normal. Dr. Vliet confirmed that in her own practise, she has had to treat vaccinated patients who had elevated D-dimer levels.
Dr. Vliet also addressed the issue of the impact of the experimental “vaccines” on male fertility. She pointed out that the testes have a high density of ACE2 receptors, making them more susceptible to the spike protein generated by experimental mRNA injections. A number of her vaccinated male patients suffered testicular pain and inflammation. She added that we still do not know what may be the long-term consequences of concentrating the spike protein in testicles—but for younger, healthy men who are not any real risk of dying from Covid, this would seem to be a needless risk.
Dr. McCullough informed listeners that whenever we have more than 25% of a population being vaccinated, we start to put non-lethal pressures on a virus and then, instead of having a diversity of strains, now we actually force the virus into several dominant strains. One example of this is, as he said, the emergence of the Delta variant as a dominant strain. The Delta strain is an outcome of mass vaccination during pandemic spread—vaccinations if any, he added, should have been restricted to nursing home patients and workers in nursing homes.
On the legal front, Dr. Vliet reminded viewers that the Truth for Health website has legal resources that can help put people in the US into contact with organizations that fight for the liberty to refuse an experimental treatment. Tom Renz, as an attorney, strongly argued that the legal front should be where emphasis is placed, ahead of public awareness. He advised people to start their fight locally, with their town councils and country commissioners—to start small and then work big: “if they’re working from the top down, we’re working from the bottom up”. Before getting involved with an organization, Dr. Fuellmich advised, one has to first get informed. Dr. Fuellmich recommended the website of his Corona committee as an important starting point, with its numerous video interviews with experts and written transcripts—that site, https://corona-ausschuss.de/en/ was unfortunately experiencing interruptions to loading, at the time of writing, due to a 522 error. One may need to try the site at different times, as it subsequently loaded successfully (but slowly) about 15 minutes after I first tried to gain access.
Dr. Yeadon closed with these remarks: “Don’t be frightened of the virus…governments and others have exaggerated the risk persistently…do be frightened of the policy responses. Be frightened of your government”. He advised ordinary people to share their doubts about what they are being told by the authorities, and to do so publicly—even if it is as basic as saying that one is not really convinced or is confused. The pseudo-consensus on television is not real.
Mind and Body, Religion and Science: Resistance to Dictatorship One of the intriguing features of this event is that it combined doctors and research scientists with lawyers and religious leaders. In particular, the mixing of religion and science might strike some as akin to mixing oil and water. We have historical experience of science that owes some of its roots to selective and motivated studies of the Bible, such as Scientific Racism. However, while the Bible and our scientific knowledge are relatively finite in content at any given moment, that does not mean that combinations of the two are restricted to one or two possible outcomes—in other words, Scientific Racism will not, and is not, the predetermined outcome of combining religion and science. Clearly, this brief discussion cannot possibly hope to exhaust the full breadth and depth of the history of the religion and science relationship. But did this press conference even combine religion and science? What was the logic behind having religious leaders and scientists speak on the same panel?
There are a number of possible answers. One has to do with an integrated approach to health, that does not divorce mind and body, and that incorporates the spiritual, psychological, and what we normally recognize as medical.
Another explanation has to do with the powerful presence of religion in the lives of tens of millions in the US, so that speaking to people in terms they understand, recognize, and value, is a necessary mode of successfully reaching out—more on this below.
A third explanation is that religious practice is local—local congregations, local churches, local events—and as censorship online is unrestrained, local organizing through community institutions becomes more important than ever.
Otherwise, most of the religious persons in this event also seemed to be very much aware of the relevant scientific facts, which they incorporated into their discourse. Their presentations focused heavily on ethics. There was virtually no overt religious proselytizing in their arguments of the kind that would have suggested they were searching for religious converts.
A broader observation concerns religion and cultural roots in formulating responses to state mandates and the alternative science narrative tied to the vested interests of pharmaceutical corporations and politicians. Religion and culture are among the most overlooked aspects of so-called “vaccine resistance,” and it is rising already to a level that will confront the dominant, nominally “liberal” elites in ways that will demolish whatever they hoped to have left of their credibility, while underscoring the illegality of their measures. This has to do with exemptions from mandatory injection on religious grounds. Already the dominant elites have two strikes against them which can be the basis for severe litigation: one is the mandate that people divulge their personal health information, their confidential medical histories—which is illegal in Canada and elsewhere; the second is the total violation of the right to informed consent, which is enshrined under international law. But the third has to do with the identity politics regime set up by the same dominant elites, which established religion and ethnicity as two of the areas to be protected from discrimination under a whole range of “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” policies. It would unravel these elites’ entire argument against “systemic racism,” bankrupting their rhetorical repertoire and claims to the moral high ground, if they revealed how little they in fact understood about either the concept of racism, or the people to which they are appealing for support, i.e., those systemically oppressed and marginalized on the basis of their ethnic and religious affiliations.
In a word, what we are facing here is domination and persecution on another front: ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is witnessed by the complete disregard for the fact that some of the strongest resistance to “vaccine” dictates has been registered among African-Americans, among members of the Caribbean diaspora in Canada, and among a range of religious communities. Those who claim to be fighting “systemic racism,” are in fact rapidly expanding and updating it.
In Canada, besides witnessing how informed consent has been rendered impossible and is dismissed by state-imposed “vaccine” mandates, I am also seeing that cultural and religious exemptions are not even momentarily considered. No wonder churches were among the first, and the longest, to be locked down: many are actual or potential centres of opposition. Indeed, some of the harshest police actions in Canada have been directed at synagogues in Montreal, and Protestant evangelical churches in Alberta. We already know of the conflicts between Hasidic Jews and the municipal government of New York City. Given how much religion matters to particular cultural minorities, mandatory vaccination is becoming a veneer for ethnocentrism. In a society where adults are being returned to a stage of life they last experienced in primary school, abusive and coercive measures that impact overwhelmingly on cultural and religious communities will be nothing less than a continuation of Residential Schooling—a history that, one might have thought, had started to embarrass Canadians.
As readers may recall, I have been simultaneously tracking developments in Quebec, the rest of Canada, the UK, the rest of Europe, and particularly the Caribbean where the current conflict of dictatorship and resistance is unfolding. Regarding the Caribbean, some of the main forces of opposition to mandatory “vaccination” in the English-speaking Caribbean include Rastafarians, many Muslims, and breakaway organizations of Seventh Day Adventists. Each religious body has done extensive research on the policies surrounding “vaccination” as well as studies of the “vaccines” themselves, knowledge which is then incorporated and interpreted within their religious frameworks.
An interesting footnote: “follow the science” can have diverse meanings in the Caribbean, and is not understood the way non-Caribbean readers might expect. In Jamaica as in other parts of the world where Rastafarian populations are prominent, “the scientists” is a reference to Rasta herbalists and religious healers, with “the science” being a combination of both spiritual insight and natural medicinal use. In Trinidad, some use the term “science” to refer to what others might call “black magic,” known in Trinidad and elsewhere as Obeah, which is a complex cultural and religious knowledge system and body of practice, with deep knowledge of local botany and herbal medicines. That some pretend that Pfizer and Moderna can march unabashedly into such a zone, as if it were a tabula rasa, reminds us of the hubris so many other preceding developmentalist programs of modernization.
At the time of writing, protests against “vaccine” mandates are underway across the Caribbean, with the more notable cases being in St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Antigua & Barbuda, Grenada, Barbados, and Guadeloupe—much more on this will follow later (in the meantime, those who wish to learn more can check daily updates and reports posted in the Zero Anthropology Channel in Telegram). In Barbados, Rastafarians and Muslims worked together, particularly local members of the Nation of Islam.
Johnnie “Black Iron” Williams Almost everywhere, Rastafarians have been at the forefront of resistance against the “vaccines,” witnessed not just by leading protests but also in the production of numerous anti-“vaccine” songs of protest in Jamaica. One suspects that the government of Jamaica will be treading very carefully: always teetering on the edge, it would be reckless to provoke a massive, country-wide Rastafarian uprising. Indeed, the Jamaican government has been very careful: “Jamaica’s government is aware of the Rastafari community’s doubts, and prepared for the reality that not every Jamaican would take the vaccine, health ministry Permanent Secretary Dunstan Bryan told Reuters. ‘Herd immunity can be achieved without having all those populations vaccinated,’ he said”. Only 32% of Jamaicans said they would agree to be injected, according to a Gallup poll, making Jamaica one of the leading “vaccine” resistant nations in the world—and it is thanks to Rastafarian cultural resistance. Jamaica has thus vaccinated only 2% of its population thus far. Contrary to dire assumptions of doom, Jamaica has had among the lowest number of infections and deaths from Covid-19 in the Caribbean region, much lower than even some of its closest neighbours. Rastafarians “credit traditional medicine, like root wine and herbs such as neem, bitterwood and ginger, for helping fend off the virus, and do not want to take the vaccine”. Rastafarians generally tend to shun Western medicine and Western development programs, preferring their own natural solutions instead. As one Rasta Reggae artist, Jah Bouks, told Reuters: “It is a false alarm. They are fabricating a lot of things, government and scientists. It is a money-making thing you know”. In Grenada, Rasta musician Johnnie “Black Iron” Williams rejected not all vaccines, but specifically the Covid-19 injectables, saying that if they became mandatory his family would refuse and his five children would be home-schooled—there too, Grenada’s government has sworn it would not impose vaccination. This is despite the fact that Grenada has suffered some of the most extreme emergency measures of the region over the past year and a half. Rooting his concerns in a history of medical experimentation with Black people, and a belief that this vaccination campaign is biowarfare aimed at reducing population, Williams’ concerns were also rooted in knowledge of the marketed injectables, and the reign of silence that pervades public “discussion” about them:
“I do not know of any pharmaceutical product that does not come with side effects, so we must never ignore the side effects. If there are side effects, then there should be exemptions for people like myself, whose vegan dietary lifestyle is a part of my way of life. One of my main concerns is the ingredients used to create the vaccine and from my investigation, I became concerned that one of the ingredients in the vaccine is MRC5, which is tissues from aborted foetus”.
Evangelical churches in Jamaica, as in Trinidad, are also advising followers against vaccination. Again disproving predictions of doom if “measures are not followed,” Haiti stands out as a key case. Until the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse on July 6, the government had rejected the importation of the AstraZeneca vaccine which was made available to Haiti. Masking was generally not adopted, and social distancing was ignored. While the media call it an “unproven remedy,” many poor Haitians came up with their own remedy for treating coronavirus symptoms: “…Like many Haitians, she turned to a home remedy—in her case, a tea made with parsley, garlic, lime, thyme and cloves….”. Non-masking, and non-testing, were also partly determined by the high relative cost of both. Haiti has also not been one of the Caribbean’s worst cases for Covid-19 infections and deaths, having few of either, and far fewer than even its next-door neighbour, the Dominican Republic. Projections of catastrophe are nonetheless spread by Reuters, where the Chairman of the Thomson Reuters Foundation just happens to also sit on the Board of Directors of Pfizer. Surely this has no bearing on Reuters’ obsessive, opinionated “fact checking” of anything critical of the Pfizer “vaccine” and the “pandemic” used to sell its product?
On the same day this report was published, the same Truth for Health Foundation conducted another live-streamed press conference, this time dealing with the issue of the impacts of the injectables on fertility.
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Since the Government of Quebec under Premier François Legault decided to jump the gun today and announced the coming of “vaccine” certification on September 1st, possibly in response to the opposition’s demand for always harsher measures, I decided to post these extracts from my larger work earlier than planned. As always, the imitation of Americans is instant in Canada—this comes in the same week that New York City imposed its own “vaccine” certification system. In fact the Liberal Party in opposition added a cruel and perverse twist to the naming of the vaccine passport, calling it a “Freedom Passport”. Without the passport, no freedom, hence the indefinite suspension of the constitutional rights of a select group of Canadians, discriminated against on the basis of their health status. This must also mean that workers in “non-essential services” (does that include political parties?) will be mandated to get injected, or else be fired. A “vaccine passport” is thus also mandatory “vaccination” at the same time. Bruised by many months of lockdowns, private businesses are required to not only collaborate with the state, and agree to reduce their revenue by refusing customers, they also agree to be effectively deputized as the state’s auxiliary police service. Where under Canadian law it is stated that citizens are required to involuntarily divulge their private health information to strangers, it is not known, nor did Legault at any point cite any legal support (let alone scientific support) for this measure. We need to further analyze this obvious slide into full-fledged dictatorship, which uses a “pandemic” as a convenient cover and as a gold mine for imposing always more authoritarian measures.
Health Discrimination in Quebec The Government of Quebec began planning to penalize the “vaccine hesitant,” by removing from them the freedom to access “non-essential services,” as defined by the government (Manitoba is also following). This is clearly a case of shaming and stigmatizing, and the invention of a threat from those who are officially libelled as a dangerous Other. Having invented a vaccine passport (in the works for several months), for which at first the government claimed there was no use, now the government reveals its intended use: to segregate the public and pressure people to allow themselves to be injected, preemptively blaming them for any rise in “cases” given spreading variants (to which the vaccinated are also clearly vulnerable, and which they can spread). The passports, using QR codes, were easily hacked in a trial, thus the system would further breach persons’ private data. The federal government of Canada has not gone so far—since vaccine passports are discriminatory, divisive, and force people to reveal their personal health data—but is reportedly considering mandatory vaccination for all federal employees. Quebec Premier Legault, citing the flimsiest of evidence of increased infections (blamed on the unvaccinated, without any evidence) announced on August 5, 2021, that “vaccine passports” would indeed go into effect on September 1st. The “science” behind this, needless to say, is more akin to magic.
There has also been resistance to vaccine passports internationally, not just on the streets of Europe in massive weekly protests that the media refuse to cover, but also from the WHO. In the UK a parliamentary committee concluded that the scientific case for certification has not been made, that passports are discriminatory on prohibited grounds for discrimination, that there are valid concerns for privacy and data protection, and that such passports have “the potential to cause great damage socially and economically”. However, as noted by the Security and Policing Subgroup that advises the UK government, “Once the majority of the population is vaccinated, the exclusion of individuals who refuse vaccination may have public support” (SPI-B, “Lifting Restrictions: Security and Policing Implications,” February 10, 2021, p. 7)—thus one ostensible aim of mass vaccination is precisely to facilitate discrimination against the resistant. One report from France painted a complete picture of devastation wrought by the introduction of this certification regime, where citizens now have to qualify to enjoy inalienable human rights.
Millions Protest Vaccine Passports across Europe Vaccine certification is coercive, placing people under duress and violating free and informed consent; it is also entirely redundant and unnecessary if public health is really the issue. To be clear: vaccine certification is not a health or medical issue, it is political. Anything concerning inclusion/exclusion, controlling population mobility, borders, and passports, is by definition part of the political domain of the state. Highlighting the politics of vaccine passports, even the acute partisanship of the politics involved, witness Democrats in the US who applaud the entry of unvaccinated migrants from Central America, and yet simultaneously call for the exclusion of unvaccinated Americans from universities, schools, workplaces, and entertainment venues.
What is usually overlooked is that such a system of vaccine certification means the removal of basic rights for everyone in Quebec who is required to furnish proof of official approval to enter whichever establishment (a minor change in the app can change the range of access immediately): the right to participate in civic life is thus abrogated, rendering citizenship provisional and tentative. At a very minimum, this expands the already vastly expansive range of regulations that exist at all levels of government in Quebec, a multiplication of powers of oversight and surveillance that render personal autonomy fictitious. When people comply with this, they agree that all aspects of their everyday behaviour are now subject to licensing.
Testing the Logic of the Passport Examine the logic of the Quebec government’s decision. For this purpose I will use a semi-fictionalized example based on elements of my own routine, and for this purpose the reader will need to assume that the person in question has not been vaccinated. Let’s begin: schools are declared essential services, so there will be no vaccine discrimination when accessing them. Professor X teaches at a university in Montreal, but does not live in the city. To get to that university, Professor X spends 1.5 hours on a heavily packed train. In the train station itself in Montreal, there is a sandwich and coffee bar, in the middle of masses of people swirling around it—there is no feasible way of barring entry, since it has no walls and no door. After the train station, Professor X switches to a crowded Metro system. He arrives at his campus’ Metro stop, and shuffles in a massive throng of people to go up escalators. Then he squeezes into a packed elevator. He arrives at a packed classroom with no windows and poor ventilation. Class lasts three hours. That is just part of the work for that day. After all is done, on his way out of Montreal, he decides to stop at a restaurant near the campus, to have a bite alone—and it is there where he is barred entry.
(Not only that: within the very same building where Professor X teaches and has his office, there are two cafes and a pub—one of the cafes has only two walls—presumably, he will be denied access to services within the same building and among the same people to which he delivers his service.)
Everywhere else, he has been inside of crowds, for many hours, but suddenly when it comes to having a burger off campus, no, that is just too much. Why? Because the “vaccinated,” benefiting from a “vaccine” that keeps them “safe,” still need to be protected from the unvaccinated. Never has such a low bar of immunity been set for a “vaccine”. The vaccinated ought to be wondering exactly what was squirted into their veins that fails to make them immune to the unvaccinated. As for the unvaccinated, they will be protected from dangerous restaurants, but somehow they will also be safe among thousands of people in buildings that are like stacks of cruise ships. The vaccinated will be protected both inside the restaurant, and inside the train station, yet Professor X cannot have a burger in the restaurant, but he can have a sandwich in the train station. The virus understands these nuanced differences and respects the government’s finicky little dividing lines.
What is to be done to people working in “non-essential services,” who are themselves unvaccinated? Are they to be laid off? How is access regulated to establishments that offer a mix of both “essential” and “non-essential”? Will guards with QR code scanners be posted in each aisle? Meanwhile, all “non-essential services” will presumably need to dedicate personnel to stand guard at entrances and scan the QR code of each single person seeking entry to the establishment. There will be lines of people—people lining up like compliant little toddlers, shifting from foot to foot, and repeating this for each store they visit. The security theatre we found in airports all these years, will now be everywhere: every “non-essential” store will have to become a security clearance point, like in an airport.
If the Quebec government’s aim was to increase exasperation, add to confusion, multiply divisions among people, expand bureaucracy, violate the right to privacy, securitize daily life, openly signal politicians’ lust for total power, effectively suspend civil rights and nullify the defining rights of citizenship, and to maximize distrust of the authorities, then this strategy is refined beyond measure. Success is assured, unquestionably.
Medical Apartheid It’s an “exotic” word, so of course “educated” Canadians working in the media will struggle with it. Some in the Canadian media take umbrage at anyone calling such a pass-based system of discrimination, “apartheid”. They think that “apartheid” is a holy word, that is racially exclusive property belonging to a specific people. To call one act of discrimination by the same word used for another act of discrimination, somehow “cheapens” and “diminishes” that other discrimination. In other words, there is “good discrimination” which is to be applauded (“vaccine passports”) and then “bad discrimination” (which only became bad in Canada when it was politically convenient). Yet, what is the essence of apartheid? Two of the three definitions listed by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language state: “A policy or practice of separating or segregating groups” and “The condition of being separated from others; segregation”. Separation, segregation, discrimination—linking “vaccine passports” with apartheid is all the more warranted when we recognize the fact that targeted Others are forced to contain their movements within what is allowed by a pass. In both cases, the pass is associated with a certain biological property, whether it is skin colour or one’s health status.
Canada, at an official level, likes to celebrate itself as place where diversity and inclusivity reign, and where we face the injustices of the colonial past. This is very convenient, as a distraction. It is a stance that distracts from the new injustices being perpetrated in the immediate present, right under everyone’s nose.
Medical apartheid is precisely the kind of regime we would expect in a Health Security State as discussed extensively by Giorgio Agamben. Writing specifically about “vaccine passports” (or the Green Pass in the case of Italy) in a recent article which, translated from Italian, is titled “Second-Class Citizens,” he explains:
As happens every time a despotic emergency regime is established and constitutional guarantees are suspended, the result is, as happened with the Jews under fascism, the discrimination of a category of humans, who automatically become second-class citizens. This is the aim of the creation of the so-called green pass. That it is a discrimination based on personal beliefs and not an objective scientific certainty is proved by the fact that in the scientific field the debate is still ongoing on the safety and efficacy of vaccines, which, according to the opinion of doctors and scientists who there is no reason to ignore, they were produced quickly and without adequate testing.
Despite this, those who stick to their free and well-founded belief and refuse to be vaccinated will be excluded from social life. That the vaccine is thus transformed into a sort of political-religious symbol aimed at creating discrimination among citizens is evident in the irresponsible declaration of a politician, who, referring to those who do not get vaccinated, he said, without realizing that he was using a fascist jargon: “we will purge them with the green pass”. The “green card” constitutes those who do not have it in bearers of a virtual yellow star.
This is a fact whose political gravity cannot be overstated. What does a country become in which a discriminated class is created? How can one accept living with second-class citizens? The need to discriminate is as old as society and certainly forms of discrimination were also present in our so-called democratic societies; but that these factual discriminations are sanctioned by law is a barbarism that we cannot accept.
(Thanks to Robin Monotti for the translated text.) For more, see Agamben’s “Bare Life and the Vaccine”.
Such a certification regime—let us be absolutely clear about this—is authoritarian for everyone. It is not authoritarian just for the “unvaccinated” alone. Everyone who abides by such a system, agrees to furnish documentary proof to gain access to what was previously free and open to them. They thus agree to concede access, on grounds arbitrarily decided by the state. What was previously taken for granted, is now the focus of heightened securitization. This is effectively the abolition of the very concept of everyday life, for everyone.
To end on a personal note, this is an exceptionally depressing time in which I find myself. From the start, I suspected that our summer here of lessened restrictions was just a brief interim period, the carrot dangled in front of the mule before the stick struck our hindquarters again. Never have I personally witnessed such a dark curtain of fascism pulled across a society, and with such insignificant protest, and to the cheers of fake opposition parties and even faker media. Nobody will see this, thanks to ever widening censorship. I knew this was just the beginning of much worse to come, and this newest measure is itself an open door to a permanent “pandemic” of authoritarianism, fear, and the abolition of anything that can meaningfully be called society. It has come to pass, things have finally fallen apart.
Update: Tuesday, August 10, 2021 In revisions to the initial announcement, the Quebec government managed to make matters a little better, and a little worse. First, the government clearly signalled its continued subversion of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, by turning rights and freedoms into privileges. Quebec Premier François Legault announced “certain privileges” would be extended to people who are adequately vaccinated against the virus—what was once normal, taken for granted, and a right to freedom of movement, has now become a “privilege”. “We are revoking your privileges” is the kind of talk one would hear in a prison—no more weekend passes, no visitors, no extra time in the yard, “privileges”. Those without “privileges” (i.e., formerly rights under the law), can now endure a form of solitary confinement, until they learn to improve their behaviour. The thrust of the so-called “sanitary pass” is thus still punitive, and it returns adults to a stage of their lives that they last experienced in primary school (when they were also denied any say in what vaccinations they would get).
There was also a partial retreat: previously, the announcement was that only the fully “vaccinated” would have access to “non-essential” services—this has been narrowed down now to gyms, bars and restaurants, festivals, and large public events such as concerts. Retail stores are unaffected.
Yet there is a basic contradiction: people who are fully vaccinated may dine in a restaurant, but the staff of the restaurant are not required to be fully vaccinated. In other words, the pass affects the customers, but not the workers—but both are in the same space at the same time. Workers remain in a legal zone, while customers are banished to an extra-legal zone.
Respect for the Labour Code continues, but that may be temporary:
“In the type of establishments where a passport will be needed, employees will not be required to be vaccinated, but customers will. In this regard, [Health Minister] Dubé explained that the government would comply with the rules of the Labour Code, at least ‘for the time being’. He said staff vaccination ‘cannot be required’. ‘There is really a difference between the client and the employee,’ he said, ‘because legally, work is a right’. He would not comment on the case of teachers”.
While saying that “legally, work is a right,” that is a right that apparently may not apply to teachers, and is almost certain to be stripped from healthcare workers. Quebec is likely to impose mandatory vaccination on all healthcare workers. Of course, workers may refuse, and if they do they will easily find ample job opportunities waiting for them in other provinces and other countries, where they are likely to be paid more and be treated with more respect. The Quebec health system, already broken, could now suffer further losses beyond the many nurses who have reportedly already quit.
The so-called dangerous and highly infectious Delta variant—so legendary that it deserves an all-consuming focus denied to lesser diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiac diseses—continues to underperform and underwhelm: at the time of writing, no new deaths had been reported in days, and there were 17 people in ICU, in a province with more than eight million people. Yet, this has been called the start of a fourth wave, presumably referring to the virus and not to waves of incessant absurdity flowing from the mouths of officials.
Since the Government of Quebec under Premier François Legault decided to jump the gun today and announced the coming of “vaccine” certification on September 1st, possibly in response to the opposition’s demand for always harsher measures, I decided to post these extracts from my larger work earlier than planned. As always, the imitation of Americans […]
Friday, July 30, 2021 was Day #2 of an online international and interdisciplinary symposium organized by Doctors for Covid Ethics (see the report for Day #1). The symposium was titled, “Call for Immediate Intervention: Gold Standard Covid Science in Practice” (full program PDF, flyer PDF), and the five hour period for the second day was […]
Friday, July 30, 2021 was Day #2 of an online international and interdisciplinary symposium organized by Doctors for Covid Ethics (see the report for Day #1). The symposium was titled, “Call for Immediate Intervention: Gold Standard Covid Science in Practice” (full program PDF, flyer PDF), and the five hour period for the second day was divided into two sessions: “Session 3: First Do No Harm,” and “Session 4: The Hour of Justice”. Those who missed Day 1 and would like to view the recording, it is available on Rumble. The proceedings for Day 2 are also on Rumble, and below:
The day’s sessions were fast-paced and packed with so much information and insights that it became apparent that the 10 hours spent in this two-day symposium essentially constituted a crash course. As such, it was a crash course in the science and political analysis that has been purposely marginalized during this manufactured “pandemic”. I will avoid any personal commentary on each presentation, and close with a general evaluation and an argument for having further independent symposia on this broad subject matter.
Session 3: First Do No Harm The first panel for Session 3 was “The Propaganda Matrix: The complicit role of the media” with Taylor Hudak, Patrick Henningsen (founder and managing editor of the news website 21st Century Wire, and a UK Column writer and presenter), Dr. Michael Meyen (Professor at the Institute for Communication Studies and Media Research at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich) and Catherine Austin Fitts. Added to the group, though not in the published program, was Brian Gerrish.
Gerrish’s presentation focused on how Applied Behavioural Psychology is used in the UK to get the government’s message out and be able to influence both the wider public and local authorities (such as municipal councils and the police). Gerrish did not elaborate much on the history of applied behaviourism, but he tied it to the Tavistock Institute and its work in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Frankfurt School. More recently in the UK, as of 2000, this branch of psychology found a home in the Department of Environment and Rural Affairs, which worked on Foot and Mouth Disease, and it became the Behaviour Insight Team (BIT), spreading across the UK government and then to other European governments. Gerrish argued that applied behavioural psychology was brought into the “pandemic” in the form of the March 2020 paper from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) about how to use fear, stress, and anxiety in order to get people in communities to police themselves and each other. The paper he was apparently referencing was, “Options for increasing adherence to social distancing measures” from March 22, 2020. Gerrish felt that most people in the UK were and are simply unaware of what is behind government strategies during this period. Gerrish also made the point that applied behavioural psychology goes beyond propaganda, and is different from it (more on this below).
Michael Meyen criticized how both state and commercial media have defined the “pandemic,” in a manner that evidences the absence of an independent fourth estate. State and corporate media, he argued, have the power to define reality—and this is what he called “Key Media Reality”. He examined Key Media Effects: that what people know, what people believe, and that to which people adapt themselves, are all tied to Key Media Reality. Meyen argued that there could have been no pandemic without the media. The key media benefited from a state of engineered dependency, such that the key media emerged as some of the biggest “winners” of the “pandemic”. Fearful, desperate, and confused people turned to the key media and to official sources for guidance—thus audiences began to return to key media. In addition, governments offered various subsidies to the key media (this is true in Canada as well). Competitors—the alternative media—saw themselves blocked, further sidelined, or completely suppressed (often, we might note, at the prodding of establishment media which then cheered any de-platforming that resulted). We have thus been witnessing a cyber-war to suppress non-hegemonic messages. What is urgently needed, Meyen argued, is for fully independent media, now and for the future.
Patrick Hennigsen spoke next, focusing on streamlined and coordinated propaganda conducted by governments and the media—very much like a war effort (this was one of several instances where speakers likened our current conflict to war). One of the recent aims of propaganda efforts has been to single out and then marginalize so-called “anti-vaxxers,” and to then accuse them of effectively being “murderers”. Governments and media work hand-in-glove in polarizing and segregating the population, fostering sectarianism. In this, they show little to no restraint. The so-called fourth estate has become a fifth column, as Hennigsen put it. The media have been weaponized against people themselves—the media have made it their job to turn on and attack members of the public. Governments working with and through the media can be seen in the fact that, as commercial advertising revenues plunged during the early stage of the “pandemic,” governments stepped in and became the biggest advertisers. Henningsen pointed to a £119 million UK government advertising deal, which then rose above £250 million. He also directed attention to the work of private foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in subsidizing the media—while also investing in “vaccine” development. Very important, especially in framing this as war, Henningsen observed how the rhetoric of “National Security” has purposely infected the official narrative of the “pandemic”. Indeed, he pointed out, in 2018 the G7 established a Rapid Response Mechanism that would aim at developing a unified narrative with shared rhetoric, as part of an effort of global coordination.
In the general discussion that followed, Henningsen remarked about a MIT research team that studied alternative media and found their work to be more sophisticated, with greater attention to data integrity, than establishment media (a reference would have been useful here). Gerrish later added: “We are at war. We are being attacked. We are being attacked by our own government”. Part of this war effort, he commented, is the avalanche of skewed messages, blatant untruths, and highly emotive messages emanating from official channels. He returned to his point about applied behavioural psychology (ABP): whereas propaganda can be seen, deduced, and anticipated, ABP is not so obvious. ABP works through repetition, by example, and it is absorbed into the subconscious. Gerrish continued by arguing that “we are not in a democracy any more,” adding, “we are in a dictatorship”.
Meyen suggested that one way to counter the state-media-business complex is to connect all of the independent/alternative media across countries, around the world.
“Vaccines: Emergency Authorization Abused” by Dr. Mike Yeadon was most likely one of the most anticipated presentations of the symposium. Mike Yeadon is one of the more famous critics of the “vaccines,” and his expertise is undeniable—which makes him a particularly worrisome thorn in the side of governments and allied media. Yeadon was formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer for Allergy & Respiratory Disease at Pfizer Global R&D. He holds Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology and a PhD in Pharmacology. He is an Independent Consultant and Cofounder & CEO of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.
Yeadon opened his presentation by speaking of the complete suppression of those who do not share the dominant narrative. There is an obvious international plan which is at work, as evidenced by the fact that many countries simply threw away their preexisting pandemic preparedness plans, and replaced them with what he has called The Eight Covid Lies. He insists: gene-based “vaccines” are neither safe nor appropriate. Vaccines—proper vaccines—provide immunity and usually offer protection either for years, or for life. The current round of so-called “vaccines” do neither. Specifically, the mRNA treatments do two things: (1) they make our bodies manufacture spike proteins, which causes blood to clot, and this means they are toxic; (2) using a genetic code means there will be differences among individuals in how they take up the code and copy the code. What the manufacturers did was to leave essential steps out of testing, such as determining the right dosages—and in this we see the failure of state regulatory processes. The manufacturers also do not know how or where the spike proteins are distributed around the body, and for how long they are produced. They have no idea about the safety of their injections in pregnancy—adding that you should never give something new to pregnant women, especially not since the Thalidomide crisis of the 1960s. Yeadon emphasized that “emergency use authorization” (EUA) is not normal approval, because the injections have not undergone the normal process of development. All we have for now is interim analyses, performed roughly a third of the way into the development process.
Yeadon—someone with decades of high-level experience in pharmaceutical companies—a former Pfizer executive, declared: “Never have I been so ashamed of my industry”. He described his colleagues as “reckless idiots” (and not just once).
Yeadon returned to the subject of the EUA. The very concept of EUA requires an emergency—it assumes that an emergency exists. However, Yeadon argued that by the end of 2020, there no longer was any justifiable emergency: by then, the worst was already over, particularly in the countries which offered emergency use authorizations. Also, for an EUA to hold, there must be no other treatments, and that too is false. He cited Dr. Peter McCullough who has discussed several alternative treatments. Thus when regulatory bodies state that there are no other treatments, other than the authorized “vaccines,” Yeadon says this is an utter lie. In addition, risk-benefit analyses have not been properly conducted. Tests have not been reliable, and data has been kept from both researchers and regulators. The very elderly and the ill were not included in trials. Moreover, in addressing the issue of mandatory vaccination, Yeadon reminded us that complete informed consent means there can be no coercion in any form, no pressure, and no penalties for refusal. The virus itself is nowhere near as lethal as many people initially feared—it has always been a lesser threat to the working age population than a normal influenza. Yeadon also noted that, all over the UK, deaths spiked in nursing homes once again, all at the same time, all after having been vaccinated at the same time. Public data has already indicated a range of severe adverse events. He strongly urged viewers not to get “vaccinated”.
“Pharmacokinetics and Toxicity of mRNA Vaccines” by Professor Michael Palmer (introduced by Sucharit Bhakdi) followed next. As Palmer explained to those of us who are unfamiliar with his field, pharmacokinetics is about where a vaccine ends up in the body, how it is distributed (I have read others referring to this as “biodistribution”). Proper trials of the vaccines have not been done on this front. However, Pfizer was obligated to provide at least some data to Japanese authorities—and though the data were limited, Palmer finds them to be gravely troubling. Pfizer studied the pharmacokinetics of its “vaccine” on rats. What was discovered was that the “vaccine” was released into the liver, the spleen, the ovaries, the testes, and the adrenal glands—which is exactly what he was worried about.
Repeat injections suggest long-term accumulation in these sensitive organs. The distribution of mRNA itself was not traced, even though it could have been traced easily, Palmer noted. Regulatory bodies failed to raise these questions, which demonstrates that they are not protecting the public. What Palmer noted was the rapid appearance of spike proteins in organs. His research examined the spread of catiotonic lipids, used in the injectables, which are cytotoxic.
Among the effects of their spread are muscle fibre degeneration and scarring, subcutaneous inflammation, and damage to embryos. There is also toxicity spread from vaccinated mothers to breastfed infants. In other words, Pfizer’s own tests on animals presaged all of the feared risks and dangers with such injectables.
“The End of the Narrative” by Sucharit Bhakdi was among the most impressive and important presentations in this symposium, which is why the complete video clip is included below. “The vaccine narrative has ended!” Dr. Bhakdi declared. We were told that SARS-CoV-2 was new, so that everyone—young, old, pregnant, healthy—had to be vaccinated. This has been put to the test, and the narrative has failed. What Dr. Bhakdi noted from recently published research is that “recall antibodies”—those antibodies which were formed out of encounters with past exposure to infections, and which usually form part of the second wave of antibodies that appear in response to any new infection—were in fact the first wave of response from people’s immune systems. The recall antibodies—IgG and IgA—were produced faster than immunoglobulin, IgM. Those who were studied, and were infected by Covid-19, 202 out of 203 such individuals had IgG and IgA, which were immediately produced. These individuals thus had an updated immune response which prevented the virus from entering cells. This then, as he said, was “the end of the narrative”. That should be “good news” because it proves that vaccines are redundant, and that natural immune responses work. Yet, there is a “dark side,” he noted. What has been found about mRNA injections is the presence of spike proteins in blood vessels, where killer lymphocytes attack the blood vessels that become encrusted with spike proteins. The result is clot formation, which varies from individual to individual—but at least this helps to explain why blood clotting has happened often enough that the two main mRNA treatments on the market now come with warning labels about the risk of blood clotting. Bhakdi, in a statement that is bound to earn him even more persecution, emphatically pleaded: “Do not get the second shot!” The effects of a second dose will form the basis for auto-immune disease.
What followed was a Panel Discussion on Vaccinations with Mike Yeadon, Sucharit Bhakdi, Michael Palmer, and Taylor Hudak. Among the comments I noted were Yeadon’s where he explained that governments have blatantly lied about the unavailability of treatments other than “vaccines” and they have suppressed information about those treatments. Yeadon thus added the next bold statement of the symposium: “Don’t get vaccinated”. For his part, Professor Palmer argued that the injectables are simply not needed because the coronavirus is treatable. That it is not treated is something that is useful for goosing up fear. However, as he observed, the overall number of fatalities does not justify vaccines. Palmer also noted that the idea of producing a vaccine for coronaviruses is not a new one, but no approval was ever granted before. Bhakdi re-entered the discussion reaffirming that he is “horrified by repeat vaccinations”. Yeadon noted that in Sweden, with schools not closed during the “pandemic,” not a single child died from Covid. The risk of death among children is actually much higher from the “vaccines” than from the virus itself. Palmer also expressed grave concern for fertility, as thus far no grounds have been provided for ruling out such damage. Yeadon argued that the variants (or “samiants” as he called them) are being overplayed: there are only minor differences, roughly in the order of 0.3%, and that one can expect a 0.3% drift with each passing year. Yeadon said he knows that all his industry colleagues know that people do not need top-up injections, implying that the newly emerging narrative from pharmaceutical companies about the need for “booster shots” is a calculated scam.
Following this was a Debate on Vaccine Passports moderated by Patrick Henningsen. Hennigsen remarked on the acceleration of the “vaccine passport” agenda, that is, plans that some governments had previously rejected and denied would ever be instituted, are instead now being mandated in a wide range of countries. These “pass” systems involve contracts with large tech firms in order to produce what could easily become a globalized digital ID system. Henningsen very appropriately called this emerging system, “medical apartheid”. Driving the plan for passes is what seems to be a “Zero Covid” policy—of endless restrictions until not a single “case” of infection is registered. Such a pass system would produce vaccine borders that limit travel. Entering the discussion at this point was another name not in the published program, Dr. Michel Chossudovsky (a Professor Emeritus in Economics at the University of Ottawa, director of the Centre for Research on Globalization, and its associated website, GlobalResearch.ca). Chossudovsky agreed with those who argue that this is not a “public health crisis,” as much as it is a political and economic one. Under pressure from their corporate sponsors, governments have engaged in systematic lying and manipulation of political apparatuses. He argued that “vaccine passports” are the product of lobbying by powerful interest groups, hence their deployment as Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), a favourite tool of neoliberals. Chossudovsky specifically referenced the ID2020 program, and the World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab and his ideas for digitalizing people. Thus Chossudovsky warned of the formation in progress of a “digital tyranny”. We live in times of unprecedented dictatorship, he argued as one who lived through dictatorships in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s. That dictatorship has engineered a process of destruction.
Yeadon also re-entered discussion, explaining that “vaccine passports” are nonsensical and illogical. The fact that such passes are meant to be digital, he commented, is to produce a global, interoperable, common format. This is a remarkable response to a single coronavirus, when right now in circulation there are at least 40 other viruses that can affect the respiratory tract. Yeadon sees the coming of vaccine passports as “humanity’s event horizon,” which is just weeks, maybe months away.
Session 4: The Hour of Justice “Reviving the Nuremberg Codex” featured Vera Sharav (a Holocaust survivor and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection). Among the more memorable presentations during this symposium, this one was perhaps the most impressive—I have thus extracted the entire segment of her talk from the symposium (see below). Sharav recounts emerging from the Holocaust and wondering, “Where was everybody?” How could people have known and done nothing? Or, how could they not have known? The experience obviously left a very deep mark on her, and she says: “When I see wrong, I can’t keep quiet”. Part of her presentation focused on informed consent. She traces the legal evolution of informed consent from a US court case in 1914, which mandated informed consent for medical procedures. Moving on to the Nuremberg Code, she argued that this is the most important legal instrument in the history of medicine. The Nuremberg Code affirms the rights of individuals over the State; these rights are universal; they operate in times of war and peace; and, informed consent includes the testing of drugs and vaccines. The Nuremberg Code is a valid basis for litigation—doctors and government officials can be prosecuted under the Nuremberg Code.
Sharav agreed that what we are witnessing is a collapse of democracy, and the rise of dictatorship. States of emergency, the suspension of constitutions, the use of fear as a psychological weapon, and the magnitude of propaganda emanating from official sources and the media, are all facets of this dictatorship. The virus is merely an instrument, or a cover, which is used to subvert ethical, moral, and legal apparatuses. Vaccine passports are the product of a policy of discrimination which creates a two-tiered society. The unvaccinated are demonized as “spreaders of disease,” which is how Jews were demonized by the Nazis, she recalls. We are also witnessing minimally tested genetic technology being used on children. Agreeing with Paul Craig Roberts, she says that Covid-19 is a tool used in the profit-making agenda of corporate giants and for expanding the power of states allied to those corporations, a conspiracy against health and life.
Sharav closed by observing that most people simply do not believe that the evil that is upon us is true. She also warned that, this time, there will be no rescuers who will come to release us.
“The Hour of Justice” featured Reiner Fuellmich (an attorney at law since 1993 in Germany and since 1994 in California, with over three decades of experience as a consumer protection attorney, particularly against banks). He was joined by Vera Sharav and Patrick Henningsen. Fuellmich, in agreement with others in the symposium, argued that this “pandemic”—produced by deeply flawed PCR tests—is not about “public health”. He argued that “our government is not ours”; governments are increasingly features of public-private partnerships (PPPs, as mentioned earlier). They have set out to destroy small and medium-sized enterprises, to make room for the expansion of powerful corporations.
For Fuellmich, the most important legal issue is to attack the use of PCR testing, which has been relied upon to create a fiction or an illusion of a pandemic. In addition, lawyers can contest the constitutionality of lockdowns. Courts in Portugal, Austria, and Germany have ruled that PCR tests are not reliable and should not be used, or they have found the lockdowns to be unconstitutional. The point is that there is value in their fact-finding discoveries, which can be used in other jurisdictions. Fuellmich later added that what should be explored is the value of launching an international class action lawsuit.
Sharav joined the discussion and made several more points, including that gain-of-function research is used in developing biowarfare weapons. She commented on the recent announcement by the CDC that it would be withdrawing the use of PCR tests, suggesting that the CDC is increasingly being embarrassed by the large numbers of fully vaccinated persons testing positive. Sharav also condemned masking: masks prevent people from engaging in normal interactions, to gather, to compare notes (so to speak). Masks are a technology that creates a human-hostile atmosphere.
Henningsen closed this session by returning to the discussion of Klaus Schwab. He argued that his ideas for digitalization of humans are an expression of transhumanism, which is itself an outgrowth of the much older eugenics movement.
The Final Panel Discussion with Sucharit Bhakdi, Thomas Binder, Catherine Austin Fitts, Reiner Fuellmich, led by Michael Palmer, was a long session that ended the day with an assortment of ideas and suggestions. On the question of what we can do, Austin Fitts recommended that we visit the website of Doctors for Covid Ethics, particularly their Resources page, and make use of their consent forms.
Commenting on the variants, used to scare up more restrictions and mandates, Binder reminded us that we are essentially being told that a seasonal cold virus is undergoing aberrant mutation into more dangerous forms that only vaccines can stop—nonsense, he said. Bhakdi agreed with him, that much of the talk about variants consists of nonsensical lies. Binder explained how viruses adapt and evolve: a virus seeks ideal conditions that allow it to reproduce and spread—dead hosts are not advantageous. Viruses thus adapt to human hosts, just as we adapt to viruses. With time, mutations become less dangerous, not more. (Example: the Spanish Flu is still with us today—having lost its real virulence by the 1920s, it became less and less deadly and is now present in most of the seasonal influenzas that circulate.)
Fuellmich, returning to the issue of legal challenges, pointed to courts in India and South Africa, that are not on the radar, as possibly being the loci of some of the most striking challenges to come next. Again, the fact-finding produced in such cases will be available for the purposes of litigation in other jurisdictions around the world. The media can also be held liable, he argued.
Bhakdi argued that it is the duty of doctors to speak out and fight back. What is happening now is the effective abolition of science. Doctors no longer feel comfortable in seeing their patients as they used to, under this smothering fog of mandates, orders, and state surveillance.
Henningsen closed with a range of comments, not all of which addressed the “What can we do?” question. He remarked that public health systems are likely to collapse and then be dismantled as a result of a crushing backlog of delayed medical procedures. He referred to the oversized influence of pharmaceutical companies, and referred us back to the book, Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine, as part of his criticisms of the alliance between governments, the media, and the pharmaceutical industry. We are also seeing the creation of a digital dystopia, the opposite of what we were told life would be like with the advent of the Internet. Addressing the main question, he urged us to connect in the real world. He added that the first real challenges to this emerging order, the first key struggles, will be local.
Evaluation Yeadon is the closest we have to a Julian Assange in this whole conflict, in terms of helping fellow doctors to gain the courage to come forward and speak out, and yet Yeadon is also effectively a whistleblower, a former insider who is far better acquainted with his industry, and with Pfizer in particular, than any of those who presume to “fact check” him. Yeadon’s contribution was thus invaluable. Bhakdi’s “end of the narrative” very strangely seemed to attract not a single comment from any of his colleagues in the symposium, when one would have expected it to become the focus of discussion. This made little sense to me, unless they have detected a problem with Bhakdi’s analysis and are not telling us. Sharav’s presentation had a strong impact on me.
For me personally, what was lacking was broad enough international participation, or even the participation of some equally prominent medical critics, such as Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, or Dr. Byram Bridle, and doctors from France and especially Sweden. There is no reason not to have a follow-up symposium. In addition, there ought to be more social scientists taking part as well.
What would also be very relevant right now is a similar symposium featuring doctors and medical practitioners from different parts of Africa, India, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Given the prevailing notion in the UK and North America, that “poor and Black” persons and communities are the most vulnerable to the virus—then why has Africa not occupied the centre of global attention as a zone of vast human destruction caused by the virus itself? What are doctors on the ground doing, especially since “vaccines” are very limited in supply? In the Caribbean—in fact, in all of the Americas—Haiti had no lockdowns, no effective masking nor distancing, and absolutely no “vaccines” (until the US recently sent a batch immediately after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, who rejected prior offers of vaccines). Yet Haiti has been far from the worst case in the Americas, despite what the dominant narrative would call “zero protection”. Haiti may have many serious problems, but Covid-19 was not one of them. A number of Haiti’s Caribbean neighbours have in fact suffered much worse, among them Cuba, the Dominican Republic (right next door), and Trinidad & Tobago. It would be especially useful to hear from Haitian medical practitioners. Of course, such a broad international symposium would pose a difficult technical challenge, of simultaneous translation into other languages.
Symposia, articles, videos—all of these are of crucial importance for raising awareness. Without them, I would probably still believe and write the kind of inadvertent rubbish I was writing in the Spring of 2020. One needs to be curious, have an open mind, and not give in to that quasi-allergic reaction one has when encountering something radically different from what you heard or read on MSNBC, CNN, The Washington Post, the BBC, Reuters, or rag mags like TruthDig. Being established and secure, having money, and basking in the approval of officialdom, can never be conflated with truth, accuracy, honesty, integrity, and a commitment to knowledge, health, and democracy.
Join us on the Zero Anthropology Telegram Channel for an assortment of daily briefings, videos, reports, documents, and blog posts.
A brief note before the main content for this report: since last publishing to this site I have been occupied with preparing a long and detailed series of articles which will begin to appear here within a few more weeks. Articles posted here will deal with the so-called “pandemic” from a perspective rooted in Political […]
A brief note before the main content for this report: since last publishing to this site I have been occupied with preparing a long and detailed series of articles which will begin to appear here within a few more weeks. Articles posted here will deal with the so-called “pandemic” from a perspective rooted in Political Anthropology. While this site appears to be quiet in the meantime, we are quite busy every single day on our Telegram Channel, which features short essays, blog-like commentaries, reports, extracts from books and journal articles, and key documentary resources—mostly devoted to the various facets of this ongoing “pandemic”.
Thursday, July 29, 2021 was Day #1 of an online international and interdisciplinary symposium organized by Doctors for Covid Ethics. The symposium is titled, “Call for Immediate Intervention: Gold Standard Covid Science in Practice” (full program PDF, flyer PDF), and the five hour period for the first day was divided into two sessions: “Session 1: The False Pandemic,” and “Session 2: The Going Direct Reset”. For those interested in watching Day 2 live, the event is livestreamed on UKColumn (for North Americans, the event starts at Noon, Eastern Standard Time). Those who missed Day 1, and would like to view the recording, it is available below and on Rumble.
This event represents some of the key science, and scientists, censored, suppressed, de-platformed, and marginalized by those dominating the authoritarian system that is currently being expanded. In other words, it was very refreshing to hear from them.
What were the shortcomings? The first day, particularly the first session, was plagued with some really awful technical disorganization, leading one speaker to apparently walk away from the event. The second session, involving speakers in the US, was considerably better and almost flawless by contrast. The natural scientists in the first session sometimes forgot that they were not speaking to disciplinary colleagues, and as a result the language, the graphs, the diagrams, and the explanations were almost impenetrable—this was made worse by their launching into extended descriptions without any opening thesis statement, nor a conclusion. It was really left to patient and attentive listeners to salvage what was best. Otherwise, the sessions were loaded with useful and important information, and many valuable insights.
Session 1: The False Pandemic Appropriately, Professor Sucharit Bhakdi (Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Former Chair of the Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Johannes at Gutenberg University of Mainz) opened with sombre commentary about the current war against scientists, with many individuals losing status, reputations, incomes, possessions, and friends. Those who dare to dissent against the kind of science being sold/force-fed to an unknowing public, are up against a power that is awesome: fear. Being a basic survival mechanism, fear is a force that defies rational challenges. Dr. Bhakdi noted that Day 1 would essentially review what we have learned over the past year, focusing on “a staggering array of blatant untruths”. Indeed, there are so many of these untruths that the speakers could only scratch the surface and clearly each one had much more to say.
“The SARS-CoV-2 Genome: Evidence of its Artificial Origin” saw Dr. Michael Palmer (Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo, Canada) introducing Session 1 with some especially pointed comments: the Covid-19 virus was designed in a lab. There is a one in 24 million chance that it was the product of natural evolution. This virus was, from the very start, made to bind perfectly with human receptors. In fact the virus contains multiple mutations, not found in nature, that make it especially adept at binding with human cell receptors. The virus’ natural lineage is fictitious and is the basis for some of the fraudulent science that has come to dominate mainstream literature.
“The Laboratory Pandemic” by Professor Ulrike Kämmerer (a molecular virologist and immunologist, and an Associate Professor of Experimental Reproductive Immunology and Tumor Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany), was one of the more empirically dense presentations. The essence of it was that for the PCR method commonly in use, there is no intact virus or complete viral genome that is analyzed, but just a segment of RNA. In other words, the “test” cannot tell us if the virus is active and can replicate. Speaking of the (infamous) Corman-Drosten paper used as the basis for PCR “testing” for Covid-19, Dr. Kämmerer explained that it was poorly designed, filled with mistakes, and would inevitably produce false positives. Early on, the majority of test results would have been false given the deeply flawed design. The PCR method, she noted, cannot be used to classify persons as infectious. In general, she found that the PCR method is not useful for testing purposes for this disease. (The CDC would seem to now be in agreement, given that it is pulling RT-PCR tests at the end of this year.)
“The False Pandemic” by Dr. Denis Rancourt (former Full Professor of Physics at the University of Ottawa and currently researcher at the Ontario Civil Liberties Association and a member scientist at Pandemics Data and Analysis [PANDA]), was perhaps one of the more memorable and penetrating presentations for the day. Before ascribing any death to Covid-19, autopsies were needed—but were not usually done. Dr. Rancourt noted that pandemics should cause between five and 50 times the normal number of deaths when compared to the kinds of viruses that are normally in circulation, but we saw no such rise in mortality during this “pandemic”. (Of course the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic” in time for the last non-pandemic pandemic, H1N1, in 2009, removing severity of illness as a key benchmark.)When looking at all-cause mortality, Denis Rancourt found that it was not exceptionally high, as would be expected once a pandemic has swept through a population. Dying with or from Covid-19 thus entered the discussion. That is why we need to examine all-cause mortality, Rancourt explained, because there has been a clear bias in attributing causes of death to Covid-19. The case of Portugal was raised, and a court finding that only 0.9% of verified cases of those dead with Covid-19 infection, actually died from the disease which dramatically dropped the Covid-19 death toll to a statistically negligible number. Rancourt noted that in some US states, there were sharp peaks in mortality (otherwise absent in about 30 US states), and the reason for that he felt was due to a “war against people”: severe restrictions, lockdowns, job losses, and increases in suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and so forth. In socio-economic terms, the majority of workers in North America today have been reduced to the conditions that were found immediately after the end of World War II.
Speaking of the Canadian case, Dr. Rancourt argued that fear, as propagated by governments and the media, kept many nursing home workers away from their jobs. The result was an extensive range of deaths in nursing homes caused by severe neglect (with numerous cases of starvation and dehydration among very frail residents). They were denied antibiotics. Their deaths were then attributed to Covid-19. The Canadian military, called in to staff nursing homes in Quebec and Ontario, produced some scathing reports of the situations they encountered.
Finally, in line with Dr. Rancourt’s recurring theme of a “false pandemic,” he noted that a pandemic normally would respect no borders or boundaries, and yet outcomes during this past year were highly uneven geographically. This “pandemic” was very jurisdictional, with differences found between neighbouring counties, or even within counties.
In “The Power of Masks” we watched a conversation between Dr. Josef Thoma (a specialist in ear, nose and throat medicine) and Professor Martin Haditsch (a specialist in hygiene and microbiology and in microbiology, virology, epidemiology/infectious diseases and tropical medicine). Professor Haditsch performed in the role of moderator during Session 1, asking each presenter very useful and highly productive questions. In this conversation, Dr. Thoma presented research that found it was harmful to mask young children: the carbon dioxide content inhaled as a result of masks worn by young children was significantly higher than for adults. The amount of carbon dioxide was found to be clinically significant—exceedingly high after just three minutes of wearing a mask. Not surprisingly then, 68% of 25,000 children surveyed in Germany complained of regularly suffering symptoms such as recurring headaches, nausea, and anxiety. In the conversation, Dr. Thoma and Prof. Haditsch commented on how papers that went against mainstream prescriptions pushed by governments, were regularly rejected, or published and then retracted. Dr. Thoma observed that there has been a complete “breakdown in scientific discourse”. Political barriers, and the maintenance of such barriers, is what now passes for peer review. This leads us to understand that this “pandemic” is not so much a medical one, as one that is political.
“The Powerless Doctors” involved Dr. Sam White (a UK-based General Practitioner whose license was suspended by the NHS in 2021 after he spoke out about the official lies surrounding Covid-19), Dr. Thomas Binder (a Swiss specialist in cardiology and internal medicine with 32 years experience in diagnosis and treatment of acute respiratory illness), Dr. Charles Hoffe (a practising physician in British Columbia for 28 years, he faced disciplinary measures for writing a letter to the provincial public health officer detailing vaccine-related injuries he witnessed in his patients) and Prof. Martin Haditsch again. This was easily the most hair-raising part of the day’s proceedings. Listening to their personal accounts really brought the notion of a “war against scientists” to life.
Dr. White criticized the indiscriminate use of the PCR method to test people, in the absence of any clinical diagnosis—a point on which even the WHO cautioned health practitioners. White also objected to the pairing of lockdowns and vaccination—as if no other courses of action are even remotely thinkable. The implication of his argument is that as “vaccines” fail, as they are doing now, then that reopens the door to further lockdowns (and, we could add, as Covid-19 mutates into forms that evade all vaccines, then that creates the prospect of permanent forms of locking down). Dr. White also pointed out that in the UK (as in Canada), the sale of Ivermectin is actively restricted by the authorities—even if one can find a doctor with the courage to dissent from the governing norms who would be willing to write a prescription, Ivermectin is subject to “special order” and is thus very expensive. Dr. White strongly condemned the lack of informed consent in the the “vaccination” program, when informed consent is a right enshrined in law. To be able to give informed consent, one must be made aware of not just benefits, but the full range of risks (which means studies must be completed), and the range of alternatives. Otherwise, the process is an illegal one.
Dr. Thomas Binder’s case was the most alarming, involving both his arrest and being forced to undergo psychiatric treatment over public posts he wrote condemning the official narrative about Covid-19. All of his online accounts were shut down as well. He has not been silenced, however: he continues to speak out against the unscientific, and non-medical narrative that the authorities have produced around Covid-19. He was thus critical of the preeminence in the formation of this narrative of journalists, politicians, and even lab technicians—people without any experience treating patients with respiratory problems.
Dr. Charles Hoffe’s comments were particularly illuminating, especially about the repression visited on medical scientists across Canada this year. Dr. Hoffe was publicly reprimanded for expressing ethical concerns over the incidence of harm from the experimental “vaccines”. He has also advocated for natural immunity, because it is long-lasting, broad, and can meet any variant (whereas the injectables in the marketplace are made to address one primary strain, the original Covid-19). He was suspended from practising in hospitals for being “anti-vaccine,” but he still practises privately (meaning that he has suffered a 50% drop in income). He is currently under investigation by the British Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, which he is fighting against with a legal team. Meanwhile, all doctors in the province have been ordered not to contradict the Public Health Office. In other words, doctors are being commanded—with the threat of severe penalties—to follow politics, and not science. The prevailing politics are anti-free speech, and anti-science. While the majority of Dr. Hoffe’s colleagues have been cowed into submission, Dr. Hoffe refuses to be silenced. He was emphatic that the Hippocratic Oath instructs medical practitioners to do no harm—and it is this oath that is being roundly violated by current Public Health directives. Under current conditions, Dr. Hoffe noted, informed consent has been made impossible.
Dr. Hoffe also pointed out that the current injectable treatments have already killed tens of thousands worldwide—according to officially released data—but that in the past even 50 deaths would have been sufficient for getting a vaccine cancelled (as happened with the US swine flu vaccine in 1976). Now it seems that no number of deaths, not to mention many more that have already been injured, is now enough to stop injections. Dr. Hoffe personally has nine patients who have been disabled by the Moderna mRNA medical product.
Dr. Hoffe also had some critically important findings to share: studies he has done with consenting patients of his found that D-dimer levels (indicating the presence of blood clots), were elevated immediately following injection, in 62% of his injected patients. Those affected had thus developed microvascular blood clotting as a result of receiving one of the dominant Covid-19 “vaccines”. He noted that most doctors in Canada are simply unaware of this, and thus do not perform their own D-dimer tests on their patients.
Hoffe condemned the media for terrifying people. He urged us not to ignore natural immunity. He specifically objected to the widespread practice of testing people for Covid-19, and sending those testing positive back home, without any treatment, to wait until they may literally turn blue. (This was precisely what happened to a relative of mine: he tested positive, was forced to isolate at home—which spread Covid-19 to his entire family—and only once his blood oxygen level had fallen below 80% was he admitted to hospital.)
Session 2: The “Going Direct” Reset The second session focused primarily on the economic and financial pandemic. The session was smoothly and professionally chaired by Taylor Hudak, an independent journalist focusing on free speech, press freedoms, whistleblowing, and US foreign policy.
“The Going Direct Reset: The Pandemic is a Monetary Event” by John Titus (a lawyer focusing on Wall Street crime and cronyism in the financial system, and a co-producer and co-host of Money & Markets with Catherine Austin Fitts), brought to light information with which I personally was unfamiliar. My notes were not extensive, partly because I was too busy listening, and partly because I was exhausted by this point. The main thrust of his presentation was that the pandemic is being used as cover for a sweeping transformation of the financial system that aims at the complete global centralization of monetary control. The implications of such a system is that no person could buy anything, spend anything, or save any money without absolute surveillance by a central bank; in addition, taxes could be levied directly, assets could be seized with the greatest ease, and one could be stripped bare of all earnings and savings, if the authorities should so choose. In making his case, Titus pointed to an August 22, 2019, publication by the BlackRock Investment Institute, titled: “Dealing with the Next Downturn: From unconventional monetary policy to unprecedented policy coordination” (PDF also here). Titus also discussed the formation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which would facilitate not just the distribution of retail money by a central bank such as the US Federal Reserve, but its tight control. Backing this program was the head of the Bank of International Settlements himself (BIS), Agustín Carstens (who discusses CBDCs in this video). Several BIS publications on the subject are available.
Continuing this theme, “UK Central Bankers & the Economic Drivers” was a discussion involving Professor Richard A. Werner (a professor in banking and finance), Catherine Austin Fitts (President of Solari, Inc., publisher of the Solari Report, and managing member of Solari Investment Advisory Services, LLC; she also served as managing director and member of the board of directors of the WallStreet investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc., and was the Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Bush Administration, and was the president of Hamilton Securities Group, Inc.), and Taylor Hudak. Professor Werner’s contribution revolved around the total centralization of the monetary system, an agenda that has been accelerated during the “pandemic”. Austin Fitts said we should witness the leveraged buyout of assets as more money has poured into banks from the Federal Reserve, and a massive number of businesses have been shut down. She warned of an engineered poverty. Speakers also cautioned that “vaccine passports” would greatly expand digital centralization and control, creating a system where the authorities could seize personal assets on whatever pretext they choose.
Catherine Austin Fitts also signalled that the recession marking this past year, was strictly speaking an engineered one (it was made to happen, through active and deliberate decision-making). The point of an engineered recession would be to bring about structural reform of a system. Useful for the aims of those seeking to engineer a new system is to get millions of small and medium-sized enterprises and working people trapped in either debt, or trapped into dependency on financial relief from a state that is carving out more domains of exclusive control. Austin Fitts also made the point that governments have very little information sovereignty, and little monetary sovereignty, which means that powerful external interests have room for imposing themselves. What we have seen with this “pandemic,” Austin Fitts argued, is a coup d’état.
At this point we had seamlessly slipped into the closing panel discussions for the day, under the heading of “How to Decentralize Control”. Professor Werner, adding to Austin Fitts’ commentary, said that we are now seeing the rise of an excessive centralization, which opens the door to central planning and diminished personal freedoms. This is where Dr. Mark Skidmore entered (Skidmore is Professor of Economics at Michigan State University where he holds the Morris Chair in State and Local Government Finance and Policy). Skidmore focused on the social and economic aspects of lockdowns and related restrictions. He discussed the various types of capital that have been destroyed in the process—pausing to focus on the destruction of social capital which has been brought about by distancing, distrust, and fear.
Patrick Wood (an expert on Sustainable Development, the Green Economy, Agenda 21, 2030 Agenda and historic technocracy, and author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation [2015]) provided one more scintillating presentation to the series for the day. He began by outlining the rise of technocracy as such, which he said was rooted in the Great Depression of the 1930s, with one of its key loci of conception being Columbia University. What technocracy then did was to rethink the economy as primarily and ultimately an energy-based system, thus rethinking economics in terms of resource bases. To govern and guide such an economic system, “science” was the key to controlling everything and everyone in a society. “Science” (or more accurately, scientism) is not just the calling card of technocracy, it is the basis for its theological dogma. Wood defined technocracy as “the science of social engineering”. As examples, Wood cited Christiana Figueres, chair of the UN’s Climate Change program, as calling for the world to “change the global economic model”; the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”; G7 leaders simultaneously echoing “Build Back Better,” which was also Biden’s campaign slogan (after many others). The problem with “Build Back Better,” Wood argued, is that it has to first assume that there has been a campaign of scorched-earth destruction. It is the clearest possible expression of disaster capitalism.
Wood agreed that technocrats have staged a coup d’état under the cover of a pandemic. The primary weapon has been the calculated promotion of fear—building on global warming alarmism, and using computer models and their encoded biases to create an aura of scientific legitimacy. The end result is the formation of a “scientific dictatorship” with a plan for the inventory and control of all land, food, resources, etc.
John Titus entered the discussion again, targeting the arbitrary, capricious, and whimsical lockdowns that occurred, which only benefited the billionaire class—he too supported the argument that what has happened is a coup d’état. What we have known as the “rule of law” has been effectively abolished.
Professor Michael Palmer closed the proceedings for the day, repeating the classification of the events of the past year as constituting a false pandemic. To make the false pandemic more real, many scientists had to be censored, or punished and threatened until they were intimidated. Palmer pointed out again that, already at this stage, there have been tens of thousands of deaths from the injectables—and that is while the overwhelming majority of the world is still unvaccinated. Not only are the injectables not proven to be safe (in both the short-term and especially in the long-term), their efficacy is clearly being disproven.
Coming next: the proceedings for Day 2.
In Part 1 we ended with the documentary’s discussion of the type of business model that has been created around COVID-19, or to match the title of the film, a system. The system consists of interlocking and mutually enforcing actors, institutions, and processes:
- Government, working in tandem with establishment scientists, transnational business interests and the media;
- The dominant parts of the scientific establishment working with policy-makers, major pharmaceutical companies, and the media;
- The media, which exclusively repeat only what government sources say, without question normally, and which only feature establishment scientists who push the same agenda as government;
- Transnational corporations, whether retailers or pharmaceutical giants, who directly benefit from the government policies which they themselves shaped via supporting scientists and the media.
This is just the most basic outline. What follows is a more complete and detailed picture.
Pharmaceutical Profiteers Dick Bijl, President of the International Society of Drug Bulletins, a doctor and epidemiologist as well, appears next to Nico Sloot in a conversation about the profit model of the pharmaceutical industry. Of course pharmaceutical companies are driven to maximize profit, Bijl agrees, but, “if that benefited people’s health, you’d say: fair enough, who cares”. The problem Bijl notes is that one cannot make a strong case that medicines are having a positive impact:
Dr. Dick Bijl, epedimiologist, President of the International Society of Drug Bulletins
“there are increasing signs that medicines play a key role in the falling life expectancy in the United States and stagnating life expectancy in the European Union. We’ve seen big scandals around Vioxx, Rofecoxib, a simple painkiller. The medication for diabetes: rosiglitazone, Avandia. Countless medications have cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives. It just keeps on going. You would think that after all of those tragedies the rules would be tightened. They’re not. In fact, they’re being relaxed”.
Bijl faults the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for doing too much to facilitate drug companies and not enough to put citizens first. He notes how the FDA says very clearly that it wants to help manufacturers to bring their products to market.
He then goes through an extensive list of prohibitively expensive drugs (produced at low cost), and their negative side effects, or, their proven inability to cure sickness. Here Bijl singles out Remdesivir and notes how it had been given provisional approval during the coronavirus pandemic, despite the notoriously shoddy research on which the manufacturer, Gilead, based its claims. Notably, Anthony Fauci openly promoted Remdesivir, hailing as “proven” that “a drug can block the virus,” adding that Remdesivir set a new “standard of care”. Fauci used the White House itself as a photo opportunity to make this promotional announcement. Shares in Gilead immediately rose 5% in value. Remdesivir’s trials were sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) led by Fauci, under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Separate from this film, yet directly relevant, is a powerful catalogue and cutting analysis of the deeply troubling facts about the UK that answers the question of cui bono? Bijl above might not be the one to make such an argument, but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to avoid missing some classic parallels between today’s state “protecting citizens” and basic racketeering of the kind described by Charles Tilly.
“…but my doctor said I should get vaccinated…” Bijl also targets companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and in particular AstraZeneca, for their scandal-strewn histories. In the background we see a news report about AstraZeneca being fined $5.5 million for bribing doctors in Russia and China. (AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer also donated massive campaign funds to key members of the US Senate Finance Committee.) Key names of pharmaceutical companies that are today leading in COVID-19 vaccine sales, have also been found guilty of healthcare fraud. Shown in the documentary is this New York Times article, which opens with this:
“AstraZeneca, the large pharmaceutical company, pleaded guilty today to a felony charge of health care fraud and agreed to pay $355 million to settle criminal and civil accusations that it engaged in a nationwide scheme to illegally market a prostate cancer drug….”
AstraZeneca was found guilty of bribing 400 doctors across the US to induce them to prescribe Zoladex. “Those inducements included thousands of free samples of Zoladex, worth hundreds of dollars each,” which the physicians then billed to Medicare. AstraZeneca also “gave doctors financial grants, paid them as consultants and provided free travel and entertainment”.
Doctors, for their part, often do not have sufficient expertise to evaluate research behind particular products, and Bijl says that doctors are often susceptible to marketing by pharmaceutical companies. Doctors often take at their word the various medical sales representatives sent out by these companies. Medical opinion leaders also play a key role in marketing particular drugs, and they have a reach that extends into ministries of health, parliaments, and so on.
Nico Sloot criticizes the lack of liability for pharmaceutical companies—particularly for vaccine producers today—and the secret deals that they previously signed with governments. In The Netherlands, incredibly, the government has agreed to pay any claims that may be lodged by people who suffer severe effects from vaccines. In other words, taxpayers are covering liability for vaccine producers.
Vaccine Hesitancy or Vaccine Rationality? Nico Sloot Today, too many in the media and academia, not to mention the WHO, treat “vaccine hesitancy” as a problem. The WHO, which receives funding from vaccine producers, even listed “vaccine hesitancy” as one of the top ten public health “threats”.
For Sloot, what is called “vaccine hesitancy” is not a problem, but really more of a solution. As I understand, it is a solution because it can involve a heightened awareness, and rationality, of the secretive and profit-motivated complex that binds vaccines to state-directed policy. Reducing “vaccine hesitancy” to “fear,” or to some amorphous “life experience,” is simply a way of insulting people while pretending to “understand” them. More importantly for Sloot, vaccination is simply not needed for healthy people with functioning immune systems, for all of the reasons listed in Part 1.
Contrary to Bill Gates, and his calls for the total vaccination of the world, Sloot argues that “we don’t need vaccinations, but a solution to the coronavirus problem”. The problem is not vaccine hesitancy, but an overreaction that generalizes from people with low immunity, to all people.
To make his argument, Sloot points to statistics that are almost perfectly mirrored in Quebec, as almost everywhere else. Here are some relevant statistics for Canada, Quebec specifically, and then Trinidad & Tobago (the three that personally interest me the most):
Canada, with a population of 35 million (in 2016), has had to date a total of 1.374 million cases and 25,440 deaths. In other words, 3.92% of Canadians had COVID-19 at some point, according to test results. Deaths accounted for 1.85% of all COVID-19 cases, thus 0.072% of the total Canadian population.
In Quebec, 32.2% of all COVID-19 deaths were people aged 90 or more; another 39% were those aged 80-89; and 19.3% were those aged 70-79—the combined total of these three age brackets is 90.5% of all deaths.
Also of special interest to me, Trinidad & Tobago, does not even now represent an extreme picture: with a total population of 1.4 million, it has had to date 22,620 cases—or just 1.6% of the population has been infected at some point. Of all persons tested for COVID-19, 12.6% tested positive . The number of deaths, at the time this was written, was 458. Deaths account for 2.02% of everyone infected with COVID-19. Of the total population of the country, COVID-19 deaths count for 0.0327% of the population. Thus even in Trinidad, where hospitals are under severe strain and treatments are limited, death among the infected is still extremely rare—which nonetheless is surely no consolation to their loved ones.
Sloot argues that, instead of vaccines, the effort should have been directed at protecting the most vulnerable, and to have the right medication for them. Meanwhile, take all the time needed to develop a safe vaccine. As he says: “Surely we won’t use a pressure-cooker situation and business models to quickly produce a vaccine for the whole of The Netherlands, for healthy people? I don’t get it. It’s not right”.
The Media and the System that Manipulated a Crisis The media come in for much needed criticism. In The Netherlands, as in Canada, the US, and apparently most other countries, the situation is best described in the film by the endocrinologist, Evelien Peeters: “Over the past months the media have headed in a very specific direction. We’re being told news in a very one-sided way”. One-sided editorializing is not usually called “news,” but is more commonly understood to be propaganda.
Sloot plays back an interview with the editor-in-chief of the biggest newspaper in The Netherlands, who asserts that it is the duty of the press in a pandemic not to question, not to critically analyze decisions and consequences, not to dispute statistics. Sloot here refers to Pieter Klok of De Volkskrant newspaper. On Radio 1, Klok stated:
“With so much fear around, we need to speak with one voice….when society is so afraid, we need to agree with each other….You can’t expect everyone to make up their own minds….It’s wise for a country to choose one path, and for us to support it”.
Klok was clear that now was not the time for the media to raise questions either about the consequences of policies, nor to even mention the fact that disagreement prevails among virologists. Members of the public should not have a wide range of information, and be left to make up their own minds. This was “journalism” during the pandemic—whether private or state-owned media, it made no difference.
Dr. Cees Hamelink, Emeritus Professor of International Communications at the University of Amsterdam Those with an active interest in the field of cultural imperialism will be happy to see Cees Hamelink, Emeritus Professor of International Communications at the University of Amsterdam, appearing in this documentary. Hamelink agrees with Sloot that the media today have failed miserably in acting as an independent and critical source of information, and that press conferences typically feature journalists as willing accomplices of the state. He then adds: “We, the vast majority, the ordinary citizens, are not represented. There’s no lobby for us”. This is a comment on the diminished state of democracy in the West. The impoverished quality of the media is to be found in its lack of knowledgeable, well-informed, and critical professionals. With an impoverished media, democracy is impoverished because the “media” are intermediaries between reality and the people, as Hamelink explains in the film.
Hamelink presents a useful theoretical perspective on the systemic manner in which this crisis has been produced, and it consists of two parts. One part has to do with rationality: reflecting on decision-making in areas such as politics and economics, what prevails is what psychologists call a “bounded rationality,” that is, a limited ability for rational thought and action. The result is that either the political decisions were irrational, or when they were occasional rational they failed to move a public which had a similarly limited capacity for rationality. This reminded me of Pierre Bourdieu’s approach, noting that what prevails is not rationality as such (with all the conscious self-reflection and calculation that implies), but rather “reasonableness” (what seems “right” within the cultural confines of a specific society).
The second part of Hamelink’s quick excursion into theoretical analysis in this film involves the triangle that constitutes what he sees as the COVID-19 system. Hamelink explains what makes up this triangle: “It consists of the cartels, clearly defined and with a clear agenda, and the political decision-makers, and the helpers”. The cartels in this case are the large transnational firms, pharmaceutical companies, online retailers, and financial interests. The cartels exercises influence on politics through lobbyists. The politicians, in Hamelink’s view, “muddle along” and work in a “grey zone” of determined ambiguity, of claiming to know less than they do. “And then there are the helpers, the assistants,” the third leg of Hamelink’s triangle: “those are the think-tanks, the lobbyists. Politics is driven mainly by lobbyists”. Hamelink singles out one group of “helpers”: “the key helpers in this case have especially been the media. Helpers are needed because decisions are made, not in the interests of the vast majority, but of the small minority”.
(Helpers of course include technocrats, actors such as Anthony Fauci—scientist and bureaucrat—whose connections span the political and corporate worlds. Fauci was constantly in front of the camera, speaking as if he were an elected political leader and had the final say on what hundreds of millions of people would be allowed to do, or not. Such overlaps inevitably produce a now routine phenomenon: the conflict of interest. One of the best representatives of this, in the present context, is Peter Daszak and his EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak has been responsible for both “investigating” the virus’ alleged origins as the only US member of the WHO team that went to China earlier this year, and yet he was also responsible for funding gain-of-function research at the same Wuhan Institute of Virology at the epicentre of the pandemic. Daszak insists that the virus was not even accidentally leaked from a lab [which has happened several times in the last 20 years in China], but rather spread from animals to humans. He has made these claims without offering any evidence, and despite serious evidence to the contrary. Allegations of a cover-up now seem to stand on more solid ground than ever and, at the very least, such a cover-up ought to have been expected.)
Ignoring the extent of know-how that exists in a society, Sloot observed that it has been the case that governments speak to the public as if it consisted entirely of pre-schoolers; addressing them as irrational creatures is not something that can be sustained (thus somewhat departing from Hamelink’s approach). I was worried that this phenomenon, of officials lecturing the public as if it consisted of infants, was one that prevailed mostly in North America. It is disappointing to see that the pattern of infantilizing citizens, in order to rationalize discipline and punishment, is one that stretched across the globe. The message was always fear. Nico rightly observes that a particular kind of regime specializes in fear-mongering: a dictatorship.
He then asks his central question: “Ultimately, taking into account everything that’s going on here, you might wonder: is this really about public health?”
Politicians should trust society, Sloot says on reflecting on his personal experiences during the crisis. Governments need to respect people’s autonomy, and understand that we are capable of doing a great deal for ourselves and each other. Instead of trust and autonomy, governments restricted freedom. In the end, governments did massive damage: people amassed mountains of debt, lost jobs, and all of us have essentially lost at least a year of real living.
Nico asks another key question: “Why is it our policy that the only hope is a vaccine?” In making this the only hope, what other powers are at play?
Locking Down, Removing Self-Determination, Accumulating Capital Ad Broere, an economist and author who collaborated with Sloot, appears in the film, and he shares his view on what is really happening at present:
Ad Broere, economist and author
“I think the coronavirus is just one part of an action that has now been set in motion that really just pulls the strings tighter from the position of those who are in power at the moment and who want to retain that power whatever the cost and who have certain ideas about what to do with that power. Who have a vision of humanity and the future of humanity which they want to bring about in reality. A few people are going to determine our future effectively taking away our right to self-determination, effectively leading us towards a goal set by them with no regard for us”.
Broere observes that in The Netherlands, where roughly 10% of the people own 75% of “everything there is to own”, such inequality has greatly increased during the lockdown and it is set to increase further as a result. As small businesses collapsed, and the self-employed were ruined, big business made enormous gains and will likely expand as a result of the termination of their many smaller competitors.
Sloot then mounts a very effective presentation, showing the distribution of wealth in the European Union. Focusing specifically on The Netherlands, he notes how it took eight years to deal with the aftermath of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, with the bailout of the financial sector costing the country about 50 billion Euros and the cost was borne primarily by working citizens and small- and medium-sized enterprises. However, The Netherlands has now added about 100 billion Euros in debt to deal with the effects of the lockdown. The last crisis (2008-2009) resulted in hospital beds being cut from 2,200 to 1,100 in the country. One can only imagine what the next set of cuts will bring. If the last crisis took eight years to pay off, then it’s possible that the latest one could take 16 years (more or less).
The biggest winners are the massive corporations that have hoarded most of the wealth in the world, Broere explains, and that essentially pay no tax because they have countless ways of avoiding taxation. The new debt acquired by states will be paid by workers and small- and medium-sized businesses—and therefore, as Broere states, citizens themselves have “been given as security for the repayment of the debt”. No wonder the state now suddenly seems so desperately concerned about our state of health.
Broere then presents a broader argument:
“If that money were freed up we’d have no more poverty in the world. That poverty is deliberately maintained. It is maintained based on the fact that we have a system in which self-interest and greed and power-seeking are rewarded, facilitated. I don’t see the people in those positions who are so incredibly rich, with a few exceptions voluntarily giving up that position. It’s not even about the money. It’s purely about the position of power. Because power corrupts and a lot of power corrupts massively”.
Yet here were the media, featuring Bill Gates as if he had special expertise in managing viral outbreaks, speaking without anyone demanding to know if he would surrender a portion of his many billions to make sure that the mass of the global population would not suffer immense loss from the lockdowns. The same Bill Gates, with his investments in healthcare and biotech companies. Think of Amazon: people who did not know any better, or did not stop to think, flooded Amazon with orders during the lockdowns thus feeding the very monster that was rising as one of their greatest enemies.
Ultimately, Broere’s argument is a revolutionary and historical one. He emphasizes the need to end the current financial system that was set up at least three centuries ago to benefit the ruling class, particularly the nobility:
“We need to get rid of this system. This financial system took shape over three centuries ago. It was set up in the interests of the ruling class. It was set up as a system to make money available for the kings and the nobility so that they could finance their operations and finance their lifestyle. It was never actually meant for the people. The people were the ones who had to pay off the debts incurred by the king and the nobility. We need to get out of this system and move to a different one. Because the system we’re in now is simply not good for us. It’s a destructive financial system. I think people should do their own research and make the link between what we’ve discussed now about money and power and positions of power and what’s done with them and the effect that has in society and in politics”.
Who Rises Victorious from this Rubble? Bob De Wit, Professor of Strategic Leadership and Digital Transformation at Nyenrode Business Universiteit Another intriguing point conveyed by Sloot involves the idea that, “we’re transitioning to biotech and data technology….when you move into a new age a power vacuum of sorts occurs”. He argues that the powers pushing the latter, the new system of accumulation, are also looking to create a new social structure. In this vein Sloot converses in the film with Bob De Wit, Professor of Strategic Leadership and Digital Transformation at Nyenrode Business Universiteit. De Wit’s argument is that we are currently in a vacuum, an intermediate zone between the industrial age and the digital age. In the process we can already discern the outlines of emerging “corporate states,” as De Wit calls them. De Wit’s argument is that because they have amassed such spectacular wealth, these global giants also have more power than states. Then De Wit modifies his argument, and says that such corporate giants are more powerful than most states (clearly implying not all states). This is an important, but too subtle concession: his argument is that “in the past,” rules were made by countries, societies, and politicians, and corporations had to adapt to the laws of states—but apparently that is less true now.
De Wit explains that in this age of transition, there is heightened turmoil and instability as new rules are being created—and the coronavirus is the least of our problems, he adds. De Wit cautions that as long as we allow ourselves to be divided, we will not be able to challenge these new powers and create a better society. But he also speaks of the extreme inequality that exists in societies around the world, and how it is increasing, and that this can lead to a revolution. So it is not the case that “corporate states” will automatically achieve hegemony.
The other outcome is hegemonic corporate states, that resemble feudalism. In other words, a society exclusively dominated by elites, with ordinary “citizens” left to fend for themselves.
What The Netherlands shows, however, is a situation where bottom-up citizens’ movements have formed (Sloot’s own team is an expression or nucleus of such a movement), uniting workers and entrepreneurs in a counter-movement against domination by new elites. De Wit is fairly confident that a civil majority will win in such a struggle, if an anti-elite counter-movement forms of sufficient size. Some people, even those who consider themselves “leftist,” are blindly denouncing such movements using the elitist, derogatory label of “populist” to name such movements. To overcome such divisions, De Wit offers a refreshing, very human perspective:
“if we can create a civil movement that says: ‘We don’t want this. We want to get back to what matters: to friendship, being close, having fun, having parties, normal human things. If we all agree that we want to go back to a humane society, that movement can provide opposition. The good news in all this is that the technology we’re talking about—digital technology, biotech, a number of technological developments—the platforms you mentioned, blockchains, artificial intelligence…they can make the elite more powerful but they can also empower the citizens. The technology is neutral, it depends on how we use it. We can use technology to create a decentralized, local economy”.
De Wit also ends up calling for a new economic model, one that supersedes the old industrial model—the passage of which Sloot appeared to bemoan as he took us to meet De Wit.
De Wit’s explanation can prompt us to ask a number of questions. Instead of Hamelink’s triangle, De Wit essentially has a single line, where “helpers” assist in the formation and maintenance of what is now a fusion of cartels and governments. Two other issues raise questions.
First, is there an opposition between industrialism and digital technology? Is there synergy between the two? Digital technologies cannot even materialize without infrastructure, energy, mining, and manufacture. On the other hand, there are differential levels of remuneration for value added activities, which appear to tilt in favour of digital enterprises (yet this documentary shows that pharmaceutical companies have the highest rates of return). It may be the case that what De Wit is implying is that industry (mining, manufacturing, etc.) as we have known it in the past, is no longer a securely autonomous and commanding economic force that can be relied on to stabilize a social order; instead, industry now serves in a subservient position as an adjunct to the digital economy.
Second, one could well argue that until we meet a corporation that is itself a military superpower, no corporation has any real power to impose itself over all states, to exercise coercion as a last resort. To make new rules, corporations have to lobby and purchase access to politicians and governments—they have to plead with “old” states. Corporate giants have to essentially rent the power of states to enforce a world order that favours corporations. Even a corporate behemoth (like Amazon) lives in mortal terror at the prospect of even limited unionization; it has not transcended the rules of the old state.
Large corporations certainly can “behave like states,” to use De Wit’s words, and create their own rules and conditions—but is that new? Some African nations were colonized first by corporations (backed by imperial states). As I posit in my Political Anthropology course, we can discern two major formats for power in our society, that is, two institutional pillars that parallel each other and often work in tandem: political parties and corporations. Political parties are the corporations of the public sector; corporations are the political parties of the private sector. Hamelink’s “helpers” usually mediate between the two.
Where De Wit’s arguments seem to work best is when corporations deal with very weak states of the Periphery, states that have been already weakened by the rules, conditions, and pro-business impositions of powerful states in the Centre. In the aftermath of structural adjustment programs, of course a Jamaica or a Fiji will look significantly weaker when dealing with a Unilever, ExxonMobil, or Facebook. But as Facebook and Google are learning, even semi-peripheral states can impose their demands (even when their actions fall far short of nationalization); states can impose limits, regulations, and fines—and in recent cases Facebook and Google have been forced to concede to states.
Where De Wit’s argument could have been strengthened is if he noted that corporations are no longer satisfied with renting or purchasing access to state power: they now actively seek direct power in existing states. Hence the various “Goldman Sachs administrations” in the US, where an inordinate number of executives of that firm have won key positions in cabinets. The same could be said for numerous other revolving doors, such that it is hard to tell where the state ends and where Google or Raytheon begin. But is this new? Think of the extensive overlap between the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s, and the United Fruit Company—and even before then, stretching back at least to the mid-1800s, the dominant influence of railroad, tobacco, cotton, and oil magnates. If, as some Marxists have held, the state exists to serve and protect capital—then we have never had modern states that were insulated, protected from, or autonomous from capitalist interests.
In the end, De Wit and Broere are certainly onto something essential here, which puts the coronavirus much lower in our list of concerns, and refocuses our attention on capitalism.
Ruling Workers and Ruining Workers Angelo van Schaik Sloot then goes to Italy to speak with Dutch correspondent Angelo van Schaik. He begins by speaking of how hundreds of thousands of people unemployed because of the severe lockdowns in Italy, either never received promised financial support from the state, or it came months later—their money was “lost” in the bureaucracy, and many had to make do without unemployment benefits. During the “second wave,” many Italians—quite reasonably—became impatient with new restrictions, because their financial situation caused much more anxiety than the virus itself. Demonstrations occurred almost daily, and some became violent—the desperation was palpable. There has even been a rise in hunger. (In the US, some particularly insensitive, callous, and obviously comfortable pro-lockdown activists called such concerns “selfish”.)
The Science/The Silence Toward the end of the documentary Sloot points out a very basic and crucial fact: doctors and scientists without connections to big pharmaceutical companies were generally those we did not hear or see in the media—they were routinely sidelined, ignored, or worse if they had contrary perspectives. We must remember that this happened in this “pandemic,” especially whenever dominant elites invoked “THE SCIENCE”.
“The science” was really the silence: the silencing of a much needed diversity of expertise to inform and guide our decisions. THE SILENCE has been far more oppressive, a smothering force, than the virus itself ever could be. Here Sloot lists in quick succession the names we typically heard, all with connections and interests vested in the pharmaceutical industry: Christian Drosten (PCR testing); Anthony Fauci; Neil Ferguson (discussed in a previous review); Ab Osterhaus in The Netherlands (also mentioned before here). Sloot then points to how questionable this situation is: “I don’t understand why, when we seek advice about public health, our health, these are the kinds of people that are chosen to tell us what we should do”.
Nico Sloot almost closes the documentary with these vital observations:
“If you scare people enough, they can’t think straight. This experiment in fear has been going on for seven months now. It will be a big problem trying to reverse that in due course. It’s not going to be easy. If we’d acted on what we found out at the end of April, we would have incurred under a third of the debt we have now, maybe even less. We would have had fewer deaths too. We would have protected care homes right away, where most deaths occurred. They’re doing it again in this second wave: fear, panic, a kind of experiment—just because the ray of hope is a vaccine. That’s the cause of all the trouble”.
When a Syndemic is Treated as a Pandemic Sloot, citing an article in The Lancet which made an argument similar to that of his team’s, noted that what we have now is not exactly a “pandemic,” but rather a syndemic. A syndemic involves two coexisting conditions that can interact with and even exacerbate each other. On the one hand, we had COVID-19, but on the other hand there was the force of existing underlying conditions or comorbidities such as: cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and lifestyle diseases mainly related to obesity. It has been a case that the nearly all deaths were a result of COVID+comorbidities, i.e., a syndemic.
This is a problem: we have been treating a syndemic as if it were a pandemic. In this syndemic, only about 2% of people, at most, are truly vulnerable. The concept of “pandemic” generalizes; the concept of “syndemic” specifies. A pandemic suggests general danger, a universal threat, and it inflates numbers (its favourite statistic being “case numbers”)—thus Dutch Prime Minister Rutte described Holland as “gripped by coronavirus,” and he predicted “a large part of the population will be infected”. A syndemic, on the other hand, demands more rationality and precision, and its numbers are far lower (focusing on hospitalizations and deaths). Not having properly identified the problem to begin with, we could only arrive at the wrong conclusions based on erroneous assumptions, and disastrous policies were the result.
Again we have a case of a system dominated by a minority (the so-called 1%—in reality, the top 10%), that catered to a minority, the 2% who were most vulnerable. The rest, the 98% would barely be affected, if at all, by the virus—and thus all the measures and the vaccines are unnecessary. Vast sums of money have been wasted.
Sloot’s final message is to the point: “We must stop this right now and get back to normal”.
Concluding Assessment
This is another documentary where the presenter is an “actor” within the presentation, and I really welcomed having Nico Sloot act as our tour guide, lead questioner, explorer, and advocate. His self-presentation can vary from innocent, vulnerable, and dumbfounded, to inquisitive, incisive, and critical.
Surprisingly beautiful was the cinematography that draws in viewers and sustains attention. However, something was at work here, I suspect: Holland is shown as an almost picture-perfect postcard of a country, with lovely homes, artistic architecture, cooling green countryside, and a deep dark ocean. In a way then it visually suggests what is at risk, what is at stake, and what is worth defending. This kind of filming achieves, in a very subtle way, a reaffirmation of our sensations of the deep tragedy of the past year, and everything that was grim, suspicious, and tense about this lockdown experience. Indeed, a brief succession of footage stands as a painful reminder of the ghastly atmosphere of this ongoing situation.
The filming is serene and calm, which also means there are long pauses between different people speaking so that ideas, information, observations, and reflections can properly sink in. During these pauses, long, slow, rolling scenes of urban landscape unfold. Unless Nico is meeting with an individual, or a group of people, he is shown totally alone in the cityscape, reminding us of the melancholy and sometimes the sheer desolation we experienced.
Participants in multiple dialogues in this film (made during the height of the “pandemic”), are shown speaking in close quarters: on a shared sofa, at a table, walking side by side in a park, etc. Nobody in the film is ever masked. The filming itself defies fear.
It is an elegantly done film, but to be clear it is also a simple construction. The film consists of people conversing, making very intelligent, incisive, and thought-provoking points. Yes, this film could well be used in a university classroom setting (it won’t be though, it rubs too much against the grain of elitist ideology), but in such a setting it should be used primarily to stoke discussion and debate, to form questions, and a teacher would need to bring in additional, complementary resources to deepen what is said in the film.
This film could/should be used in any university course that either wholly or partly incorporates study of “the pandemic”. One could see this film being relevant to courses in Communications, Public Administration, Political Science, Psychology, Economics, Sociology, or Anthropology. Personally, I am asking my university library to order it so that I can use it in the next delivery of my Political Anthropology course.
What impresses me is that this was not just a collection of opinions, instead it brought forward the kind of historical and scientific information that was neglected or sidelined over this past year. In addition, rather than just disjointed interpretive remarks, this film goes to some length to provide a basic and efficient theoretical analysis, on which one can build. This was perhaps one of the benefits of having some key academics participating in Sloot’s project.
A few negative reviews have been posted to IMDB, but they in no way reflect the actual contents of this film. Instead, they seem to be motivated by a knee-jerk political reaction, or even just hysteria and fear, thus leading some to misrepresent the film as one spreading “misinformation” (presumably because “the science” as always is “settled,” and total consensus reigns). To say that “on YouTube you would be booted off,” may not only be a repulsive sucking up to the power of Big Tech, it could also be an example of the steadfast ignorance that has ruled/ruined so many, thus proving precisely why this film is very much needed.
Overall, I genuinely appreciated this film and sympathized with its main speakers and their arguments. I feel compelled to rate this film 8.5/10.
(This documentary was viewed three times over the past month, in preparation for this review. This review forms part of the Biology and Culture, Health and Lifestyle series of Documentary Reviews on Zero Anthropology.)
In Part 1 we ended with the documentary’s discussion of the type of business model that has been created around COVID-19, or to match the title of the film, a system. The system consists of interlocking and mutually enforcing actors, institutions, and processes: Government, working in tandem with establishment scientists, transnational business interests and the […]
On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19’s spread was now a pandemic, and on March 13, 2020, when here in Quebec a total lockdown went into effect, most people would have had many questions. Then at some point the very act of questioning, of finding certain alleged facts and explanations to be questionable, was deemed to be belligerent. Officials grew visibly impatient with some questions; particular questions were dismissed outright; we were not supposed to question the answers that we were given. “Facts” were facts, until the facts suddenly changed. Political leaders, public health officials, doctors, scientists, media personalities—all were certain about the facts, and viewed questions as a form of unacceptable hostility, and then they changed the facts.
A new documentary about the personal, political, and economic effects of the lockdowns encourages the right approach which is to ask many questions, and never stop asking. Questions asked include all of the following: How dangerous is this coronavirus to most people? What does the virus do to the body? Who is likely to get sick and who is likely to die? How many will end up dying, and how many will just get sick? Why do the healthy need to be locked down, effectively quarantined? When is herd immunity achieved? Were/are the current restrictive measures in proportion to the dangers of the virus? What impact do these lockdowns have on our society? Was public policy really about public health? Why is it the policy that the only hope is a vaccine? In making this the only officially-approved hope, what other powers are at work? What does our future look like? What really are the facts here?
COVID-19: The System is a new documentary directed by Belgin Inal that was released in The Netherlands on November 11, 2020. The duration of the film is 109 minutes. The main language of the film is Dutch (the Dutch version is free), but most online versions will have English subtitles (including one that is free to view for a limited time). At the very least, we gain some insight into what happened in one country—The Netherlands—and we can compare it with our respective national situations. There is remarkable global homogeneity, and it is pretty depressing.
This documentary is so extensive, compacting numerous questions, loads of information, and several cross-cutting critical analyses, that it became impossible to produce a single report. Thus for the first time that documentaries have been reviewed on this site, this one will be published in two parts.
Meet Nico Sloot: A Citizens’ Advocate Who Interrogates Power The published synopsis effectively encapsulates the film:
“The whole world is in Lock Down. There is panic in society. What is going on here? After the Prime Minister’s speech about the highly contagious ‘Corona’ virus, Nico Sloot, an international entrepreneur, joined forces with scientists, doctors, and experts to find answers to the questions surrounding the coronavirus. How dangerous is this virus? What does our future look like? Are the current measures in proportion to the virus? And what impact does this have on our society? During Nico’s quest, he makes shocking findings. Is this actually about our public health?”
Nico Sloot
The documentary itself establishes its lead questions at the outset. Nico Sloot, described as an international entrepreneur, acts as the main voice in the film and our lead detective. What struck me from the start was how he framed the central problem that provoked his investigative journey: when would herd immunity be achieved? On the question of risk: who is going to get sick and who is going to die?
Sloot formed an independent research team that grew to include up to 20 scientists in four countries, across a range of specialties. This was something of an ad hoc think tank. The team encompassed doctors, economists, accountants, data specialists, among other specialties, and each member of the team had his/her own specific research task. It is quite impressive to see such an independent citizens’ initiative form, and it is a welcome antidote to the authoritarian, top-down, ask no questions, just follow orders approach involved with state proclamations and directives by top public health officers. Such independent initiatives should serve as a refreshing reminder—because apparently one is needed—that it is not wrong to ask questions and challenge assertions.
What or who provoked Nico Sloot? In part, he admits, it was a speech given early in the crisis by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. This compelled Sloot to conduct what he estimates is about 1,000 hours of research, added to others who joined him, totalling at least 5,000 hours. I suspect he is providing a low estimate. On his motivation, Sloot explains: “In business you always work with risk…so the first thing I looked at was: What are the facts here? How many will die and how many will fall victim to COVID-19?”
We hear and view the same speech by Prime Minister Rutte to which Sloot refers at the opening, and it is the standard kind of dramatic announcement that we all heard in our respective locales (it is included in the trailer I created, in the absence of an English-language trailer).
Is Public Policy About Public Health? From the start, Nico Sloot accuses The Netherlands’ National Institute for Public Health (the RIVM) of telling “half-truths” and presenting the public with “half-science”. Nico Sloot adds:
“I’m a citizen and I want very much to trust the government. I want to believe that what I read in the media is correct and isn’t censored. But when they tell so many lies and half-truths, what am I supposed to think?”.
We sympathize immediately. It has been atrociously indefensible to witness the degree of iron-fisted totalitarian censorship, suppression, and even misinformation and propaganda that has been the primary stance of publicly-funded media, corporate media, and US “social media” during this time. People have been treated as infants and inferiors, who are to be prevented from seeing, hearing, or reading a wide variety of views because unlike us—their superiors and their betters—they could not handle such material. The other assumption has been that people are to be treated as a dangerous threat themselves, the public is a menace to itself. We must save the masses from themselves: this is classic elitist fear of the masses. It is the essence of all missionary programs, of liberal imperialism, of humanitarian abduction as I call it.
Sloot is baffled, like we are, by a policy that was pursued when there were vast numbers of non-COVID victims than there were COVID victims. And if that is the case—which it was/is—then Sloot is right to ask: was public policy really about public health?
Nico Sloot took note of the fact that when the Dutch government set up its Outbreak Management Team, it actually spoke little of public health as such, and instead emphasized virology—which made sense to him, except that public health is about much more than just a virus. Also, Nico noticed that the social and economic side of the crisis was not represented by relevant experts on the OMT. This problem of a one-dimensional approach has been highlighted here recently, and has been observed by others as well.
We have been asked to not only trust governments (that are secretive, dishonest, harsh, and sometimes corrupt), but also to trust the media (which have been homogeneous, one-sided, and served to under-educate and overly alarm us at every step), and then to trust a scandal-plagued pharmaceutical industry whose main goal is profit.
People who out of good sense lacked trust, needed to be hammered by the system: they were to be insulted as deranged “conspiracy theorists” who were “anti-science”; as irresponsible “populists”; as right-wing “extremists; or even, somehow, as “white supremacists”.
Disproportionality The documentary states its conclusion from early on: the measures that have been taken, and the consequences of those measures, are entirely out of proportion with the virus itself. If I was onto something in last year’s series, it was this sense of disproportionality caused by the virus. However, I did not yet understand exactly how the proportions would be messed up, and in which way: “A tiny invisible virus is leaving a massive visible global footprint. All of its proportions look out of order, and in turn the virus calls all of our proportions into question as it disorders them”. No, we disordered the proportions all by ourselves; the virus did nothing but act as a virus.
Nico Sloot was not, apparently, predisposed to viewing the crisis in terms of its disproportional measures and their consequences; after all, he approvingly lists Yuval Harari (let me say: I am not a fan) as central to his education, while Harari himself has been very much on board with the establishment during this crisis, and had praise for the measures taken by governments, except for “populist” ones.
Yet Sloot himself apparently disagrees: the “collateral damage” of the measures taken were worse than the virus. He mentions that, for The Netherlands alone, around 300,000 hospital procedures had to be postponed. In Canada it was reported that many crucial cancer treatments, colonoscopies, and important surgeries that had been scheduled, were all pushed back thus creating a massive backlog. Even more: Canadian media reported the common occurrence of people suffering from heart problems, or even actual heart attacks, and not going to the hospital (either out of fear of getting infected by the virus, or because they knew hospitals were already dedicated almost exclusively to COVID-19 patients).
Sloot defines his stance as follows:
“I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I’m not on the left or right politically. I have no interest in this, no financial interest, not at all. I was looking primarily at my children’s future. If you build up lots of debt you know someone will have to pay”.
People ready to scoff at this should first inform themselves about what debt crises do to healthcare systems, and the health of individuals in general, particularly those who always bear the worst brunt of such crises: the working class.
T-Cells and the Virus: What Did Cruise Ships and Italy Teach Us? Dr. Koos Biesmeijer, Professor of Natural Capital at Leiden University
The documentary begins its journey by situating this as a human crisis, within a very long evolutionary natural history in which viruses have always existed and long preexisted the appearance of our first ancestors. Dr. Koos Biesmeijer, Professor of Natural Capital at Leiden University, explains in basic terms that viruses are a constant of human existence: they adapt and mutate in close relationship with us. The broader point made by Biesmeijer is that humans and viruses have always evolved in collaboration with each other. Our immune systems have developed as a result of that relationship. Yet our contemporary attitude is that viruses must be wiped out altogether, in order to preserve the primacy of an increasingly artificial human. Viruses, however, will not be easily wiped out, Biesmeijer adds, since it is very difficult to develop any kind of effective vaccine or treatment given that viruses constantly mutate in unexpected directions. Pinning all of our hopes on vaccines, which cannot predict let alone match the mutation rates and directions of virus mutations, can prove to be very disappointing. Witness the present: even as vaccines are being administered, the virus is spawning multiple new mutations, with some proving less vulnerable to the vaccines.
Willem Sloot (left) is a doctor and brother of Nico Sloot (right)
Nico Sloot is shown with his family, and that includes his brother and co-researcher, Willem Sloot, who is a doctor and toxicologist with work experience that involved SARS-CoV-1. Like families everywhere around the world, they received the first announcements of the pandemic with dazed bewilderment, wondering how bad this virus was, how serious was the situation, what would happen, what did it all mean.
Willem Sloot
Willem Sloot’s approach to studying the virus did not involve the Internet or the news media: he studied medical publications instead. Knowing that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is a SARS virus, and a substantial amount of research was published about SARS-1 in 2003 and after, he had a base where he could start. Willem’s main interest had to do with immunity.
What struck Willem Sloot almost immediately was how public medical pronouncements, “really talked at first exclusively about immunoglobulin, immunity as it is measured in the blood,” following the lead of studies informing national policy. “That astonished me,” Willem exclaims, “because it’s just one element of immunity that you can measure. But there’s much more. The immune system is wide-ranging”. He also observed how in news reports “only immunoglobulin was mentioned, which is made by B-cells that are measured in the blood”. Willem then mentions T-cells, and more broadly, the fact that bodies also have “a first defence response that can make a big difference”. Willem reminds us: “you want to know how all the pieces fit into the picture,” in order to have an informed view.
The team looked at a range of early, prominent cases of infection—Italy, the cruise ships—and noted that there were a large number of infections, but with very few actually becoming seriously ill. Cruise ships in particular, with all their elderly vacationers, acted as Petri dishes, floating worst-case scenarios. That fact alone—that extremely few became ill—suggests that bodies must have some degree or form of natural defence against the virus.
In closely studying data taken in the case of the town of Vò Euganeo in the Veneto region of Italy, the team found that most persons’ bodies had a form of natural protection against the virus. The town became famous because it was the site of Italy’s very first known fatality from COVID-19 (Adriano Trevisan, a pensioner). A substantial number of those tested positive, circa 50%, did not even show symptoms. Willem Sloot found that the presence of T-cells played a key role. These T-cells developed from prior exposures to related coronaviruses (many of which are normally in circulation, including those that cause common colds). Thus most people that encounter COVID-19, did/do so with a certain degree of T-cell immunity already in place. Yet, we continued to hear about “herd immunity” as something to be achieved at some point in the future, with the goalposts constantly shifted.
Research that was published by the Karolinska Institute, Sweden’s top medical university, was also studied by Willem Sloot who speaks about it in the film—and that research demonstrated that natural immunity, based on T-cell responses, was higher than antibody tests have shown. In fact, twice as many people were found to have T-cell immunity compared with those with detectable antibodies. Thus researchers in Sweden found that, “public immunity to COVID-19 is probably significantly higher than antibody tests have suggested”. This independent team’s conclusion was, therefore, that there is a natural resistance to coronaviruses.
Such studies found that while B-cell immunoglobulin was found only to a limited degree, in about 5%-10% of those tested, T-cell responses were instead found in the range of 40%-60% of people. In other words, a focus on immunoglobulin in common antibody tests will paint a much more dramatic picture of viral danger to humans. When results are so skewed, setting a low bar for natural resistance, then the policy that resulted emphasized extreme measures. Worse yet was if policy came first, and the supporting science (appropriately skewed) came second.
For Nico, one of the big questions was, what does the virus do to the body? What actually happens to the body? In addressing such questions, the research team basically found that what was being implemented by the state was an overreaction.
Nico Sloot then turns back to the assertion made by Dutch Prime Minister Rutte (and we have heard this in North America too), that about “95% of people have no defence against the virus”. That figure rests on an argument that only about 5% of people have antibodies, B-cells. However, the large number of asymptomatic cases shows that a level of herd immunity had or has already been achieved—and backed up the Swedish T-cell research, this argument rests on proven scientific fact.
The argument that we do not yet have herd immunity can therefore only be a political argument. It is certainly not based on scientific fact, as much as it wants to cloak itself in “science”. The argument that we have/had not reached herd immunity, and that virtually an entire country needs to be vaccinated, is also not a policy based on scientific fact. It’s about something else altogether.
Nico Sloot details his discussions with Feike Sijbesma, the government’s special voluntary envoy for dealing with the coronavirus, who agreed in private with Sloot about our already existing T-cells, but that he could not bring this up with cabinet because he did not want to “get into the politics”. What Sloot learned is that the government by then had already signed a deal with AstraZeneca on vaccine production. Sijbesma’s own brother was the CEO of a German company that would be producing the vaccines. Once that became news, Feike Sijbesma’s role as special envoy was terminated.
Global Panic, Swedish Calm Seemingly the entire world followed the same containment measures. Nico Sloot, as discussed in the previous documentary review, squarely blames the World Health Organization (WHO) for that: “There’s a lot of pharma money in the WHO, so they’re not impartial”.
He too turns to the case of the 2009 swine flu, and how the WHO declared it a life-threatening pandemic—except that it barely affected anyone. It was, however, a convenient trigger for pharmaceutical companies to produce and sell vaccines: “it was just pharma money pulling the strings”. Nico Sloot thus laments that we do not seem to have learned anything, and the situation is being repeated.
Interestingly, what is team found was a WHO position paper from 2019 that advocated against lockdowns and social distancing, which the WHO then dropped.
The second problem identified by the team, aside from the WHO effectively deciding policy for 193 countries, was the globalized panic and imitation of lockdown measures. We witnessed this for ourselves: the severe Wuhan lockdown was largely imitated by Italy, then it came to New York, then it came to Quebec, and so on.
Sloot’s research team advocated to politicians that The Netherlands should follow the Swedish model: look after the most vulnerable, and recognize the fact that most people already had sufficient immunity. The team was, of course, ignored by their political “representatives”. The news media also would not touch their story.
What everyone saw (or should have seen) during and just after the first wave, is who were the most vulnerable groups, and then contrast that knowledge with the nature of the measures taken thereafter. As Sloot puts it in the case of The Netherlands:
“Elderly people with an illness were the ones who fell ill and were hospitalized. And a very big group of healthy people, the economic workforce…really weren’t very much affected. Some were, but far fewer than victims of road accidents. The strange thing is that [Prime Minister] Rutte told us we all had to go into lockdown”.
How does that make sense? Why do the healthy need to be locked down, effectively to be quarantined? A nation could keep almost everything going as normal, with a few protective measures in place. Meanwhile, in The Netherlands, the state’s management team (the OMT), and the national public health institute (the RIVM), were consulting virologists mainly. Social and economic aspects of public health were ignored, there as almost everywhere else.
In Canada what has been almost maddeningly unexplained was the fact that the deadliest wave, and the only real wave in terms of deaths, was the first one. The two subsequent so-called waves were primarily based on numbers of people testing positive (using highly flawed tests)—regardless of the outcomes of testing positive (which in the vast majority of cases meant nothing at all). Yet the measures became stricter and stricter. We had such drastic measures in Quebec for the alleged “third wave” (commonly described by the media as a “horrific” wave), that we did not even have for the first wave: curfews and extreme restrictions on even private family gatherings. Masks were not even worn during the first wave—but even before the “second wave” they had become recommended, then mandatory, and then police went on a frenzy of fining. Yet, during this so-called “third wave,” we typically saw in Quebec on average maybe one death per day—while in the first wave, that number was between 150 and 170 deaths per day. Indeed, there was no second or third wave in terms of deaths: it has all been one big decline since April of 2020. Canadian hospitals developed an effective cocktail of drugs that drastically shortened hospital stays and greatly reduced mortality. Nevertheless, news talkshow hosts in our homogeneous mass media cried out, and this is verbatim in the case of CTV’s Evan Solomon: “We’re dying here!”. His even shriller colleagues on CJAD Radio simply demanded a blanket shutting down of all travel anywhere in Canada, as if it was a rational and logical response, while tensely and aggressively putting down any callers who disagreed.
Censoring the Public, Censoring Scientists Sloot’s research partners make similar observations about the media. It seems that the media, everywhere, have been caught in yet another “epic failure”: anti-democratic and anti-scientific, they instead operated as organs of fear-mongering propaganda, censorship, and surveillance. At their basest, they became mere sales representatives for transnational pharmaceutical giants. The public, in the view of the media, was something to be more shamed than respected. If this is not “the enemy of the people,” then one dreads to think what would count as such. One of Sloot’s partners rightly observes: humanity has been abused during this year of lockdowns.
Evelien Peeters, internist and endocrinologist
Evelien Peeters, an internist and endocrinologist, makes an observation that like others I continually share: “It seems to me that we’re in one big behavioural experiment. And that we’re damaging people”. She prefaces this by saying, “I feel I’ve reached my moral limits in the way we’re treating public health and humanity at the moment”.
Her contribution to the documentary offers much needed commentary about freedom of speech. She notes that questions, doubts, and debates are to be seen as normal in a proper scientific community—but once one works for a hospital, speaking to the media can often highlight the name of the hospital. She has to always proclaim that she speaks for herself as an individual, and not the hospital, to be able to exercise her right to free speech.
Peeters does not minimize the virus. She acknowledges that it is nastier than most that we have experienced in recent years/decades: “It’s a new virus, much more infectious and many people are getting sick. It can be a very nasty illness and we have to provide much more care”.
However, even here the problem is not primarily one of virology, but of government policy that has underfunded healthcare thus reducing its capacity to meet this challenge—with predictable negative results which then feed back into the perception that the virus is some mighty, unstoppable ogre. The situation she described in The Netherlands, perfectly mirrors that of Quebec, with the common thread being the globalization of neoliberal programs: “The problem is bedside care. Massive cuts have been made there. And in nursing care. There’s debate about salaries, overtime and breaks”. One of her most memorable statements is that if lockdowns were implemented to spare hospitals, then that is the worst possible reason for a lockdown. The emergence of a parallel, private healthcare system in Quebec has not helped matters either: it has drawn away many overworked and underpaid nurses and doctors—thus again magnifying the perceived effects of the virus.
The Business Model of Governments: Who Wins? The strict lockdown measures—and in Quebec this has always been openly admitted—was to prevent (underfunded and neglected) hospitals from being overwhelmed. That’s all. That was always the first and the last point. The lockdowns have not been because the virus is massively deadly (which, demonstrably, it is not), but because capacity to meet the virus has been diminished, by design. This is why, as I stressed, we should not be talking about “the pandemic,” but about the lockdown. Peeters argues that doctors and nurses should never be used to justify lockdown measures, because it turns them into mere products that are part of a business model.
The system is about preserving itself, with “saving lives” used as a pretext. Whether it is about preserving neoliberal healthcare, with the reduction of resources for the public, paid by the public; or, whether it is about expanding the profit margins of pharmaceutical companies—either way, the system wins. Nico Sloot makes these very points and, as a businessman, I credit him with understanding how these things work.
Indeed, what this documentary repeatedly discusses is how the biggest winners in this crisis—those that reaped the greatest monetary rewards—have been biotech and data technology companies. These are the ones that had an active interest in governments expanding the power to tighten the strings on people. Small and medium-sized businesses were shut down. To take up the artificially-created slack, online retailers and big transnational box stores continued to function.
Answering the question of “Who wins?” (which was not asked directly in this film, oddly enough), can also help to explain the kinds of actors that played a prominent role and were able to exercise tremendous influence throughout the pandemic lockdowns.
We continue with related themes in Part 2.
On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19’s spread was now a pandemic, and on March 13, 2020, when here in Quebec a total lockdown went into effect, most people would have had many questions. Then at some point the very act of questioning, of finding certain alleged facts and explanations […]
If this was a good time for Canadian academia, you would not be able to tell from the blanket of almost absolute silence that has been pulled over universities. There is no euphoria, no celebratory mood, no applause for the changes that are happening. There is, however, a degree of infighting, mutual suspicion, recrimination, and a palpable tension that divides faculty and also pits them against students and administrations. Against a backdrop of publicized cases of ostracism, real worry exists that expressing a perspective that has not been authorized could lead to termination or at least media-driven defamation. University administrations are all-too-quick to proclaim that what Professor X said or wrote, “does not represent the values of this institution”. Why would it? Why should it? These are not private religious colleges; Canada’s universities are public and secular. When applicants go through the hiring process, are they ever once presented with a list of the university’s “values”—a manifesto—and are they then told that if they do not agree with the document they can apply elsewhere, or else sign at the bottom line? No, that never happens (to my knowledge), and yet we work under the dictates of a party line—a decidedly partisan thrust that is distinctly and clearly a carbon-copy of the ideology of the ruling Liberal Party. This is far from the only instance where copy-and-paste has displaced academic reasoning, questioning, and debating.
Imported Goods and Fear Cycles Through a continual succession of fear campaigns, Canadian universities are being intellectually sanitized to suppress, marginalize, and ideally to banish contrary thought. It is all done under the banner of familiar “good intentions”. In 2018, the panic was about “rape culture”. In 2019, it was about the “climate emergency”. In 2020, it was of course about “the pandemic”. In 2021, it is about “systemic racism”. What will it be next year? An outbreak of neo-fascist cannibalism?
At least in a formal way, since 2007 (when ZA was launched as “Open Anthropology”) I have been studying the history and political-economy of academic knowledge production. When turning to the Canadian university, one learns of the “Canadianization” movement that gathered steam and strength in the 1970s and 1980s, which emphasized Canadian content in research and teaching, and Canadian hiring. At that time, Canadians were very aware of the country’s status as a dependent appendage of the US. It is a dependency that is enforced, from the top down, and where the dependency turns into cultural and political forms it can be most acutely observed in Anglophone Canada. That dependency has in fact increased: the law requiring that qualified Canadian applicants should get first preference, is routinely skirted by university departments and administrations. Our content is directly imported from the US: we are mere retail sales staff; we are spectators to knowledge production; we are, essentially, just an audience. To be deemed a serious and respectable academic in Canada, one must show advanced imitation skills in knowing how to synthesize and combine pieces of work produced by this or that prominent American/British/French scholar. Preparing a “literature review” is our favourite sport. We excel as consumers—much like regular Starbucks customers who invent complex and convoluted demands for how their “coffee” (i.e., liquid dessert) should be mixed. Our “signature” contribution involves the creative mixing of elements we had no hand in creating in the first place.
Living in an officially approved “Monkey See, Monkey Do” culture, I would inevitably become attuned to patterns of importation and imitation sweeping “Canadian academia”. It is a determined mimesis; just as it banishes integrity and originality, it now silences dissent…where what one would expect academics to do as part of their job (doubt, question, debate) is what now constitutes “dissent”. We are meant to act as bobbleheads, perpetually nodding to uphold this virtual reality of uniformity, to pretend unanimity lest the spectre of “disagreement” should rear its ugly head.
So what effect will the recent emergence into preeminence of campaigns against “anti-Black racism,” of organized salutes to “Black Lives Matter,” and the imposition of “equity, diversity, and inclusivity” have on Canadian universities? To what crimes are Canadian universities pleading guilty? What future is being prepared, and how well will its participants fare in that future? What does “university autonomy” mean in an environment where autonomy is banished on all levels?
Hunting Skin Just about a decade ago, it would have been rare to find a Canadian university department seeking Aboriginal or Métis candidates for specific positions (outside of Native or First Nations studies, and maybe not even then). It was rare even if persons with such backgrounds would have been best suited to speak on specific topics of interest, from personal experience. Thus, typically, Canadian anthropologists studying Indigenous peoples, were not themselves Indigenous—and sometimes not even Canadian. This was not a problem for the average department back then. What was a problem was anyone who even slightly questioned the practice of a department using hiring events as cloning exercises, under the pretext of finding “someone who is a good fit for the Department”. Academics were so satisfied with themselves that hiring worked as self-affirmation: “I am so great, so why not hire yet another person just like me?” Perhaps it was also self-defence: you do not invite a challenger or competitor into your home, or someone so good that they make you look bad.
Then something changed a few years later. What was it? Could it have been the fact that Donald Trump became a political reality? That had to be a key factor, because a collective freak-out or nervous breakdown erupted on campuses across the US, with his election likened by some professors to a “terrorist attack”. The world that academics preferred, shattered. By extension (always by extension), Canadian universities borrowed, imported, and copied—the freak-out came because it was transferred here. Now, suddenly, in the average social science or humanities department in a Canadian university, the realization finally dawned on its members: “We don’t have anyone who’s Black!” Thus The Safari began. They started hunting skin. They call it “equity, diversity, and inclusivity”—so legal sounding that it almost demands to be respected for its authoritative tone. But it’s about hunting skin, and the hunters are themselves “white”. In the most paradoxical of possible outcomes, “white privilege” now extended to creating its visual opposite, but still privileged.
It was also about “resistance”. Surely, one way to stop “Trump,” to get back at him and his supporters, was to go Black and never look back. This change was a tangible, observable one, and I have witnessed it like every other Canadian academic who either admits or denies the same. The change occurred at a specific moment in time—and it did not predate late 2015. The makeover took its first steps in 2016, and by 2021 it was sprinting and stomping over everyone as a diversity stampede was now afoot.
And now we have a coterie of “diversity consultants” and “equity trainers” lined up to tell professors which words they can and cannot say. (Please continue, I enjoy having you tell me how to do my job. Besides, as an anthropologist, what would I know about this thing you call diversity?) E-mail signature areas now feature pronouns: “she/her”. Am I, in my response to your email, really supposed to call you “she” when I am addressing “you”? If not, then what is the purpose? The same e-mail signature areas often contain a pointless acknowledgement of how the university was built on unceded/occupied land belonging to the X or Y nation—pointless, because these universities have no intention whatsoever of returning stolen property. There are no plans to physically move the university. It is, quite obviously, mere virtue signalling. Like a copycat audience—and not like academics—they mimic these signs to display their inherent goodness. It’s a shield against criticism. “Yes, we stole your land, but at least credit us for admitting it”. (Also, “join us in supporting even more immigration to settle your stolen lands”.)
The diversity consultants and equity trainers are themselves, usually, intellectual lightweights that are heavy on self-branding. There are their websites, where in the first sentence they manage to state—three times, in case you miss it—that they are “Black”. “As a Black activist with long experience as a Black management consultant, I bring my Black perspective to university affairs”—might be one such opening statement. And in case you missed the “Black” part, the writing is framed by four photographs of the consultant/trainer. In one photo, her head is tilted back as she laughs uncontrollably (no doubt urged to do so by a professional photographer, and it looks strained). In another, she is making a face, showing that she can be playful, so you can just relax. In the other photos, she sits on a tall stool at an elegant counter in her hyper-modern condo, in various poses. This is to make you feel comfortable, like you just connected—and it makes her feel special and in control.
Personally, I have never seen victims of oppression behave in this manner. Nor have I seen them reap so many rewards in return for so little.
What we have done, at the very least, is to facilitate the emergence of new addition to the bourgeois class. These are bureaucrats, regulators, adjudicators, arbitrators, trainers, and in some cases, professional shit-stirrers. Their previously worthless little BAs and MAs, are suddenly paying off (for the lucky few). “Workshops” abound. They speak in the name of a whole “people,” while pursuing their narrow self-interest.
Students in a politics course might look quite doubtful if you relate to them the words of Gaetano Mosca, about how ruling classes can revitalize themselves by seeking new recruits—and the university is one such medium for attracting new recruits. They might even resent it, and protest that “change from within” is possible. Yes, I know all about that so-called “change from within” (it’s a load of garbage). What few will admit is that they chose to enter university because they basically love the ruling class, and they want to join it. They fear the masses: they hold “stupid voters” in contempt; they condemn “conspiracy theories” promoted by the “ignorant”; they may even admit there is an “over-population problem”. They are the better ones; they need and want to feel better. And that is why they want that university degree—it is a matter of the cultural capital of distinction. Learning for the love of learning? Oh come on now.
But what we have done, and are now doing, goes much further than these problems, I am sorry to say.
Some Implications of ‘Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity’ The sudden enthusiasm for “diversity” (reduced to bodily features) in Canadian universities might produce worries on two related counts. On one count, how do new hires evaluate themselves and experience academic life if or when they start to realize that a majority group of “white” academics chose to hire them because of their appearance or sexual orientation? Might they feel somehow cheapened, objectified, placed in the shop window as a new kind of cultural commodity, an exotic consumer good that is used to refurbish the credentials of the university and placate the demands of clients (students)? Might they privately suspect that students view them with disrespect, as being “less-than” academics, the equivalent of substitute teachers in a high school? Might such new hires grow to resent the possibility that, maybe, they were hired because they self-identified as members of an “underrepresented racialized minority” and not because of their actual or potential academic achievements—so that they are incorporated (“included”) yet still essentially marginal?
The second count that might worry some, is about everyone else in academic positions gained prior to this period. Were we hired because of “racism”? A group of “white” people chose to hire yet another “white” person, someone who somehow reminded them of themselves, and so they felt safe that they were hiring someone who might be a “good fit for the Department,” as was commonly explained? If this is the case, then it also cheapens everyone else, not just the new hires. Are you convinced that the risk of cheapening another person—as a so-called “token diversity hire”—makes anything better, for either the new hire or for yourself?
There is an even more troubling, even terrible implication. If a university practiced racism in its hiring choices, then that was clearly illegal. Racist discrimination has not just recently become illegal in Canada—it has been illegal for a long time. If racism was practiced, then someone has to be held accountable. The racists should not be currently occupying positions in the university—if we follow this logic. In the same vein, government should intervene whenever a university openly admits it needs to institute “equity, diversity, and inclusivity”—because it suggests that the opposite was the norm before, it admits there was a problem, and therefore the university violated a series of laws and legal provisions. That is not a light matter. If people really mean what they say, then it needs to be put to the test.
Aside from this, what does it say about democracy when success in the achievement of positions of privilege is based on the facts of one’s birth (sex, skin colour, etc.)? This is a derivation of the aristocratic principle, of hereditary privilege, only modified in this case to privilege perceived hereditary lineages of victimhood. Either way, what is privileged is a physical characteristic that one inherits at birth (if we are speaking of skin colour). Such characteristics are ascribed, not achieved.
In cases where universities hire young “diversity” candidates, who push politically-charged teaching and writing that emphasizes various doctrines about “race,” such universities could be in deep trouble over the medium- and long-term. It will take a generation or more for universities to shift past the present sweep. In other words, if societies move past the culture wars and the campaigns of the present (because nothing is permanent), universities will be stuck with a commitment to such efforts, in the form of a new battery of academics who know nothing else. At a minimum, it will be 30 years or more before they retire. Fewer prospective students, meanwhile, will be willing to pay vast sums, even going into debt, to pursue an outmoded, irrelevant, and entirely one-sided political education. In short, universities risk dooming themselves. You never plan for the future based exclusively on the politics of the moment—do they not teach this in Management schools?
Solutions: Suicide, Renew Past Commitments, or Privatization Solutions to such problems are no longer simple. For certain, we need universities that are less of an “old boys club,” but the diversity must be a diversity in research, teaching, and thinking. Rather than thin diversity (fixated on visible surfaces), it should be a deep diversity(grounded in intellectual content). Universities, and particularly the social sciences and humanities, fall woefully short of such deep diversity—and it’s killing their collective mind. Strengths and successes of past generations of research and teaching must be valued, recognized, and even reproduced through continued teaching—and this should happen alongside new, more heterodox research and teaching programs. The ultimate values to which universities must aspire is to be centres where people enjoy the privilege of exploring knowledge and creating new knowledge, of constantly learning by relentlessly questioning, debating, and experimenting. Academic freedom, in our professional practice, needs a new commitment as does respect for free speech, our inalienable right as citizens. Ultimately, courts need to be called upon to uphold these rights.
Unless the aim is to perform a protracted suicide, universities absolutely cannot afford to become mere representational gadgets immersed in the moment, always chasing after the latest “viral” trend in “social media,” or accentuating the latest fear-based campaign, the newest media-driven moral panic of the day. Others warned long ago about blurring the line between the university and the media, and in Canada we see the results of universities chasing headlines in a quest for heightened visibility (and greater payouts from donors). University autonomy should mean the autonomy to think and communicate without being beholden to the powers that be—that is, the exact opposite of what they are doing today.
Why should the public continue to subsidize public universities that are anti-democratic and do not answer to the public? One solution is to ensure they are 100% public funded (commonly it is now between 50% and 57%), ban private donations, and then have the state ensure that university administrations abide by norms that serve the public interest. That is unlikely to happen. No government, no party, and no popular movement is calling for this renewal of public investment to happen—nor is anyone even uttering a phrase like “public control” over universities. The average Canadian has no emotional attachment to universities. It’s over; unless it becomes a trend in the US, it will not happen here.
Thus the other solution is to let these universities slide into full privatization, and cancel all public funding. Let them compete in the marketplace, and let’s see how many of them survive. We are told that university presidents—remunerated at levels two and three times higher than the Prime Minister of Canada—are paid so much because that is what they would earn in the private sector. Good, let them and their universities join the private sector. They want to imitate Harvard (“best practices”), now let them take that imitation to its logical conclusion: become private like Harvard. Let’s see how well they do in sustaining their fictions in actual practice.
Note that even with public financial support, Ontario’s Laurentian University recently declared insolvency. Almost all remaining universities in Canada are now operating significant budget deficits, and plan to continue doing so, in the aftermath of the lockdowns.
Look out for the coming privatization, which could become an increasingly “reasonable” outcome of the post-pandemic “new normal”: austerity, “the likes of which have never been seen before”.
If this was a good time for Canadian academia, you would not be able to tell from the blanket of almost absolute silence that has been pulled over universities. There is no euphoria, no celebratory mood, no applause for the changes that are happening. There is, however, a degree of infighting, mutual suspicion, recrimination, and […]
Over the past twenty years or so, what has been the record of the World Health Organization when it comes to major public health crises? Has the WHO itself invented at least some of those crises? Was there in fact a H1N1 “pandemic”? What counts as a “pandemic,” according to the WHO? What are the relationships between the WHO and scientists, large pharmaceutical transnational corporations, powerful member states, and private donors? ...
Over the past twenty years or so, what has been the record of the World Health Organization when it comes to major public health crises? Has the WHO itself invented at least some of those crises? Was there in fact a H1N1 “pandemic”? What counts as a “pandemic,” according to the WHO? What are the relationships between the WHO and scientists, large pharmaceutical transnational corporations, powerful member states, and private donors? Is the WHO a reliable “partner” in meeting the demands of serious public health crises? Has the WHO amplified the threats in some cases, while downplaying proven harm in others? What can we learn from this history that can shed light on the WHO’s role during the current COVID-19 “pandemic”? Who trusts the WHO? The WHO can be trusted to do what?
We have the aid of an important documentary to help us answer these questions. Directed by Lilian Franck, TrustWHO is a 2016 documentary about the Geneva-based World Health Organization, and the documentary has gained new attention in the past year. It runs for 85 minutes. Like a number of the other compelling documentaries reviewed on this site, this one was also made in collaboration with Arte.
To be succinct, the documentary aimed at uncovering some of the obscured influences at work in producing the WHO’s decisions on public health, particularly the growing role of private donors. Franck examines the roles of tobacco, pharmaceutical and nuclear industries on the organization. Ironically (or perhaps it was intended), Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal of the US from the WHO would only have helped to make the organization even more dependent on private donors, and could have made room for China to acquire a greater voice in the WHO. In fact, the withdrawal never took effect. If the US’ withdrawal had happened, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would have become the top donor to the WHO.
The subject of the World Health Organization could not be more timely, especially after a bruising year which saw its international reputation badly damaged once more, particularly by first downplaying the risks of the novel coronavirus, and then praising China’s efforts at containment (which clearly failed). The WHO initially criticized the closure of international borders, and then countered itself; it also diminished the need for wearing masks, before again countering itself. For many nations in the “developing” world, the WHO stands as a de facto International Ministry of Health, on which they rely for information and advice. As the voice of a reporter states in the documentary, “recommendations of the WHO influence governments around the world,” and another explains, “it determines the medical norms which are applied around the world”.
As with other in-depth documentary review essays that appear on ZA, this one goes beyond a summary. Key details are related to the public who may not have a chance to access this documentary. There is also a dialogue with the contents of the film, and an application of certain ideas and observations to the current situation. As with previous reviews, this one will also end with a conclusion that offers a rating and advice on its appropriateness for classroom use in different university subjects.
Suspecting the WHO TrustWHO begins by the third minute to drop increasingly striking hints that the WHO has displayed serious weaknesses in its crisis responses, and may also have been involved in a high-level official cover-up around the events involving contamination from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant. A barrage of criticisms then grows into a chorus, just before the title of the documentary appears on the screen—clearly suggesting that no one can trust the WHO, and in the US few did so.
Lilian Franck explains that she travelled to the WHO headquarters in Geneva, in the company of US journalist Robert Parsons who has written about the WHO for two decades. Parsons explains—and this is shown with accompanying footage—how large private companies, such as the transnational pharmaceutical giant, Merck, host private receptions within the folds of the WHO to exercise influence on WHO members, officials, and key political figures who formulate and implement public health policy.
The WHO and the Tobacco Industry: Conflicts of Interest The standard history of the WHO is that it was founded in 1948 by 61 nation-states, who also financed the organization. Parsons, on the other hand, shows that from the very start the WHO was penetrated by private industry.
Even though from as early as 1950 published medical research showed some of the serious dangers of smoking, for decades the WHO did little to oppose the tobacco industry (this will be relevant later). Philip Morris International, in an effort to subvert anti-tobacco advocates that existed within the WHO, financed institutes and networks of scientific research such as the Catholic University of America’s Institute for International Health and Development, financed with an annual grant of $240,000. That institute was led by the US lawyer, Paul Dietrich—who, at the same time, was a consultant for the WHO Regional Office in the United States. This was the same story with six other consultants who played dual roles. Lilian Franck speaks to one of them, the British toxicologist Frank Sullivan. Sullivan explains that “it wasn’t a big issue” for the WHO, and he clearly indicated on forms that he played a dual role, i.e., consulting for the WHO while being financed by a tobacco company. Even after Sullivan’s collaboration with the tobacco industry became public in 2000, he continued to advise the WHO.
Lilian Franck then went to the WHO, and spoke on camera with the two department leaders combating tobacco under the auspices of the WHO. They seem to become very uncomfortable when reminded of Sullivan’s continued role after 2000. Douglas Bettcher, the Director of the WHO’s Department for Noncommunicable Diseases, loudly proclaims that tobacco is “our number one enemy,” but he becomes rather tight-lipped when asked about Sullivan, and claims to have no knowledge of his continuing role in the WHO after 2000. Vera da Costa e Silva, head of the WHO Framework Convention of Tobacco Control, explains that the WHO performs no background checks for conflicts of interest, even now, “you cannot just start by already being suspicious about people and their capacity to do things”—in other words, a policy of wilful blindness. This interview was not conducted freely, however: Franck indicates that three WHO officials remained in the room, and conducted the responses with frequent gestures. In addition, Franck was never able to obtain archival documents from the WHO concerning Sullivan’s conflict of interest forms.
The WHO and H1N1: Fabricating a Pandemic Franck observes how in 2009 the WHO pushed H1N1 (“swine flu”) as a major threat, and was wrong. It should be noted that H1N1 was accidentally released from a research laboratory. There have also been six escapes of SARS alone after the 2003 epidemic, and four of them escaped from the same lab in Beijing. This is added to a list of several other known cases of viruses escaping from labs.
The WHO declared a pandemic for H1N1. I was supposedly infected and can attest that, if it really was H1N1, it was a very strong flu, one that kept me away from class for four weeks (at no point requiring anything other than typical flu medication and lots of sleep). The media in the US repeated “estimates” that up to two billion people worldwide would be infected with H1N1. A rising chorus of increasingly alarmed voices spread the messages of threat and fear, even more rapidly than the virus itself spread. The documentary replays some of this quite well. The reality was that far fewer people died from H1N1 than from a normal flu outbreak—the kind of outbreak, incidentally, where most people treat flu shots as optional without being hysterically labelled as “anti-vaxxers” and browbeaten into conformity.
At the time, the WHO changed its definition of “pandemic,” just as critics were publicizing the many business deals between pharmaceutical companies and individual countries. Companies signed secret agreements with states on acquiring vaccines for H1N1, which the WHO then triggered by declaring a pandemic. An extract of one such contract involving Italy is shown in a still taken from the documentary (see below). Germany, Italy, France, and the UK, among other countries, signed these secret deals that obligated them to purchase swine flu medications in the event of an outbreak—but only if the WHO issued a Pandemic Level 6 alert.
Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the WHO in 2009, declared the pandemic. The WHO then spent over $18 billion on health measures worldwide for the pandemic, according to Wolfgang Wodarg, former delegate to the European Council, who is also featured in this documentary. On screen, Wodarg plainly accuses giant pharmaceutical transnationals—naming GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Sanofi—of manufacturing a pandemic:
“They had all launched new production programs to produce the vaccine for this pandemic. They had all made agreements with nation-states. And since they had invested so much in this but couldn’t sell the vaccine because there was no pandemic and no sign of a flu outbreak—they fabricated a pandemic”.
Gregory Hartl, the WHO’s press spokesman was interviewed for the documentary by Franck, since the organization’s swine flu specialist was somehow not available. Hartl’s defense is that everyone would have been outraged if a very lethal pandemic happened, and there was no vaccine ready. Minus extreme lethality, that is exactly what happened with COVID-19, only this time the pharmaceutical giants seem to have learned an important public relations lesson: do not sign agreements and go to production in advance of a declared pandemic.
Also appearing on screen is German Velasquez, who at the time of H1N1 was the WHO General Secretary in the Department of Public Health, Intellectual Property and Medication. His admissions are stark:
“Nobody there [at the WHO] was afraid. I didn’t know anyone at the WHO who had himself vaccinated. Including the Director General [Dr. Margaret Chan], who told journalists in response to their questions that she hadn’t had time but would get herself vaccinated later”.
Yet at the same time Lilian Franck, who was pregnant during H1N1, admits to being very afraid of large crowds, airports, and travel. Why? Public media exaggerated the level of danger—see the clip below and note how it appears to be from this year rather than 2009:
German Velasquez notes also that it was commonly publicized at the time that the WHO changed its guidelines for declaring a pandemic, and the old guidelines vanished from their website. The key point is that the WHO could not have declared a pandemic using the old definition: the severity, the number of deaths, would have been a key factor under the previous definition. It was now easier to declare a pandemic.
Franck confronts Gregory Hartl on screen, showing him a copy of the previous guidelines and the key phrase that is highlighted reads, “severity of illness”. That criterion is absent in the new guidelines. Next we hear Hartl defending the need for the WHO to work with pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines—only “working with” goes much further than dialogue and advice: the WHO’s own director of vaccines, Marie-Paul Kieny, came straight from a large French pharmaceutical company, TransGene.
Franck is denied an interview with her by Hartl (the WHO press spokesman), so she confronted her at a public event. Kieny appears in the documentary in her capacity as the WHO Assistant Director-General. When asked why the criterion of “severity of illness” had been dropped by the WHO, she responds rather reasonably that it was a difficult concept to ever pin down since it relies on many factors, including the conditions of an individual’s health. Instead, the WHO began to emphasize whether community transmission was taking place, and in how many countries it was happening. Confusingly, Kieny appears to say that such definitions will change again.
Following the Science…of the Pharmaceutical Industry From where does the WHO’s scientific knowledge, and its own scientists, come? As Wodarg explains, the WHO’s scientists are delegated to it by the countries and organizations that finance the WHO. Many of these persons have a track record of giving advice that profited the pharmaceutical industry.
In this regard, Franck reports the following:
“The WHO working group on Swine flu consists of 13 external consultants. Two of them report conflicts of interest. Neil Ferguson declares consultancy fees from GlaxoSmithKline, Baxter and Roche, the manufacturers of the swine flu vaccines and medications. Not a problem for the WHO”.
This is the same Neil Ferguson who famously exaggerated the threat of COVID-19 in 2020, with a model that predicted millions of deaths in the US and UK. Ferguson also advised the UK government, pushing its harsh lockdown strategy for COVID-19. Ferguson has a proven track record of making wild predictions that grossly exaggerated the number of expected deaths from a series of outbreaks preceding COVID-19. For example, in 2005 Ferguson predicted that the bird flu outbreak would match the Spanish Flu of 1918, and result in 200 million deaths—instead only 457 individuals worldwide died from the bird flu. In 2002, Ferguson predicted that as many as 50,000 deaths would occur from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD)—instead only 178 deaths were recorded, and no one has died from it since 2016.
When speaking of Ferguson, the WHO made an effort to use subjective words such as “small” and “limited” when describing the funding he received from pharmaceutical companies—but no objective figures were provided.
Franck continues:
“In 2007, Albert Osterhaus loses his voting right on the Dutch heath commission due to his conflicts of interest. He declares to the WHO that he has shares in the pharma company Viroclinics, which is suspected of profiting from Swine flu. He also declares that he is the chairman of ESWI, describing it as a group of independent scientists. In fact it is partly financed by vaccine manufacturers [including AstraZeneca]”.
Osterhaus appears in the film saying: “I can tell you there’s no scientific meeting today organized that is not being sponsored by industry”—and he defends this. He continues to consult with the WHO despite his declared conflict of interest, which he redefines not as a conflict, but as an interest. Eventually Osterhaus stands up and walks away from the interview, not wanting to share any hard facts about how much money his “independent” group received from pharmaceutical companies.
Neoliberal Health Politics What is also interesting, as shown in the film, is that the WHO Director-General (Dr. Margaret Chan at the time) set up a private meeting with vaccine manufacturers that excluded staff from the WHO itself, including top-level department heads with a direct interest in vaccine development, such as German Velasquez. The European Council issued a reprimand to the WHO for its lack of transparency and for the heightened role played by experts who were paid for by the pharmaceutical industry. The WHO essentially ignored the Council of Europe. The WHO thus effectively began to operate as a clandestine organization.
In footage of a public briefing featuring Dr. Chan, shown in the documentary, she explains that she is against conflicts of interest (because she has to say this in public)—but she makes one other important point: “we must recognise that in this 21st century, no government can provide everything to their people”. And why is that? It is largely the result of neoliberal ideological programs put into policy, either through structural adjustment imposed by multilateral financial institutions, or by choice through public-private partnerships. It has nothing to do with the date, as if this is the weather for the day. It is a fact produced by austerity regimes, of deregulation that has rolled back the state, and the consequent privatization of work that was previously done by the state.
Lobbying thus becomes a critical feature of public administration, and of course health policy too. In the documentary we see a range of public political critiques of the influence of lobbyists, from the German parliament where Angela Merkel has been lambasted as the “chancellor of lobbyists,” to the UK parliament where Prime Minister David Cameron was described as being in Pfizer’s pocket by the opposition, to Bernie Sanders denouncing Hillary Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, and then Donald Trump loudly declaring the following:
“My whole life I’ve been a business man. I’ve contributed to most of them [politicians]. I’ve given to Democrats, I’ve given to Hillary, I’ve given to everybody! Because that was my job. I gotta give to them because when I want something I get it. When I call…they kiss my ass. Ok, it’s true, they kiss my ass”.
The Political Economy of the WHO In the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, most WHO member states froze their contributions. One result has been that now UN organizations, foundations, NGOs and industry contribute almost 40% of the WHO’s annual budget. The second largest source of financial support, right after the US, is the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. No wonder then that, until a recent scandal and the divorce of Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill Gates was regularly featured in the top corporate media as if he were an expert on COVID-19, its mitigation, and vaccination—even as he planned to dim the sun in a dangerously deranged effort to counter the “climate emergency”.
The documentary shows Bill Gates addressing the WHO where he declares, in a possible slip: “Our priorities are your priorities,” not the other way around. The WHO, contrary to what one might have expected, is a relatively underfunded organization, with an annual budget of $2 billion, which Franck tells us is just half of what Coca-Cola spends on advertising alone, and one third of what nearby hospitals in Geneva have as a budget. In addition, the WHO cannot dedicate its money as it sees fit; instead, particular sums are tied to particular projects and specific countries. Money for malaria cannot be used to meet a sudden Ebola outbreak. This means that, in the words of a German Minister of Health (Hermann Gröhe) appearing in the film, the WHO “does not have the operational capacity or culture to deliver a full emergency public health response”.
Margaret Chan’s office put off Lilian Franck for almost a full year when asked for an interview. Eventually, Franck gave up. Franck instead met with one of her close advisers, Gaudenz Silberschmidt, the WHO Director for Partnerships. Speaking of the independence of its scientists (the lack thereof), he argues that there can never be any such thing as an “independent external review” of the WHO, because ultimately nobody is independent, by definition. In the meantime, Silberschmidt maintained that all companies were welcome into the WHO, thus precluding even an attempt at any sort of independence, as a matter of policy.
Private companies use WHO meetings as a means of approaching health officials from developing countries, in the hope of expanding markets for the companies’ products. Those companies that have purchased influence in the governments of developed countries, have double the leverage in the WHO: they represent themselves, and their interests are represented by member governments as well.
The WHO and Fukushima While disturbing enough already, the documentary takes an even darker turn when it comes to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. We learn that in the area of the accident, over a year after more than 42% of children had nodules or cysts in their thyroid glands—whereas the corresponding data for Chernobyl was between 0.5% and 1%. We are then introduced to Professor Shunichi Yamashita, who works with the WHO on nuclear catastrophes, and we hear him trivializing the data, stating: “If you laugh, the radiation doesn’t have any effect. If you don’t laugh, it has an effect. This theory has been proven in animal experiments”. One has to ask: how many irradiated laughing mice and chickens has this man studied?
Lilian Franck asks if the WHO is downplaying cases of nuclear radiation in Fukushima, and the rise of thyroid cancer. She still cannot get to speak with Dr. Margaret Chan, and is told by WHO officials that she prefers to have others speak.
Franck meets with Dr. Keith Baverstock, a member of staff at the WHO. He is important in this story because of work that he did on the aftermath of Chernobyl, and his studies of the rise of thyroid cancer among children. Along with several other colleagues, he published two papers in Nature that reported their findings. He was then ordered by a WHO official to withdraw those papers from Nature, with the explicit threat that otherwise his career would be “shortened”. He refused to bend.
It thus seems that the WHO was interested in minimizing the impact of the Fukushima disaster, and in this it was not alone. Japanese public health authorities did not respond adequately. Experts commissioned by the government faulted the government itself for underestimating the dangers, for failing in its crisis management efforts after the reactor accident, and that the nuclear power company (TEPCO) attempted to conceal the real extent of the accident. Japan’s then prime minister, Naoto Kan, bore considerable responsibility for the situation that unfolded—he personally believed that no radioactivity would emerge from the reactor accident, even though raised levels of radioactivity were officially documented as far as 200km from the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Gregory Hartl of the WHO appears on screen, and in WHO video footage, defending the practice of not administering iodine tablets immediately to those in the proximity of the nuclear plant after the disaster. He even appears to warn that taking iodine could be harmful, if it doesn’t match exposure to nuclear radiation, as if such exposure was debatable in the case of Fukushima. Hartl seems to get emotional and even impatient with Franck’s questions, telling her that she is wasting her time with this topic and that they should move on to other topics. For more on this, see the clip below:
We are then introduced to Independent WHO, which consists in part of former WHO staff members who are dedicated to expose the complicity of the WHO in major cover-ups such as Fukushima. This organization appears to have halted its activities in 2017. During its time it also highlighted how the WHO downplayed Chernobyl, claiming only 52 people died from the meltdown of the nuclear reactor and its aftermath, when the New York Academy of Sciences found about 985,000 deaths resulted between 1986 and 2004. The WHO considered only cancer to be a health effect of radiation, ignoring other severe effects. The documentary then presents us with absolutely painful footage of very young children who speak of heart defects, multiple heart attacks, and other heart problems—and we hear from a tearful 14 year-old girl who appears to be no older than a child half her age.
The WHO’s Gregory Hartl appears downright hostile to the very idea that radiation could cause health problems beyond cancer, and dedicates special effort to rejecting the report of the New York Academy of Sciences. Lilian Franck then telephones Douglas Braaten, the editor-in-chief at the New York Academy of Sciences. He tells Franck that they never repudiated the book, completely contradicting the WHO’s Hartl (we do not hear him say this). But here it seems that Franck lands in some hot water, as the book she references has been strongly disputed and even the NYAS itself, on its own website, explains why it does not endorse the book even though it published it. From this point, Hartl refuses any more interviews with Franck, even refusing to take her calls.
For my part, I found that the time spent on the Independent WHO and the NYAS book, was not time well spent for this documentary. It does not solve any of the major issues raised by the documentary, and it seems to create more problems. As a filmmaker, I probably would have dropped this material altogether, but I do commend Franck for her honesty in putting her process on clear display.
What remains an important question, raised by Franck, is the extent of the influence of the nuclear industry, which if anything has been rejuvenated by “climate emergency” calls for rapid “decarbonization”.
Franck’s presentation shifts the spotlight to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and its support for the peaceful use of nuclear technologies. The IAEA collaborated, in a dominant role, with the WHO. The IAEA had a number of high-level meetings with the WHO, and according to a critic interviewed in the film (Dr. Ian Fairlie, a radiation biologist), the IAEA dictated the line that the WHO would take. While Fairlie does not repeat the claims of the NYAS book, he does estimate tens of thousands of deaths worldwide from Chernobyl, because the radioactive plume from Chernobyl spread around the world and particularly impacted Europe and its 700+ million people.
While increased radioactivity was indeed found across Europe—and Franck presents news footage from the time—the WHO continued to downplay the impact, limiting it to the Soviet Union. When it came to Fukushima, the WHO simply reprised its role from Chernobyl and claimed the impact would be minimal. The documentary presents a stack of media articles, quoting the WHO, that stressed that there would be little in the way of increases in the incidence of cancer after Fukushima, and that most such fears were unfounded.
It has to be noted that the documentary does not actually demonstrate or prove that the nuclear industry influences decision-making at the WHO in any direct, cause-and-effect chain. There is no mention of any nuclear power companies that are major donors to the WHO. Instead, what we have is a series of pro-nuclear statements from a range of European leaders (and a succession of French presidents), which suggests at least indirect influence by the nuclear industry via states who are key members of the WHO. In other words, the material is suggestive rather than conclusive.
“Vaping Alert!”: How the WHO Fabricates Fear Here I want to take a detour from the documentary, into a topic that is related and current. Not having much if any need to ever consult the website of the WHO (the accidental wisdom of indifference), my first real encounter came with a report of the WHO’s position on vaping. I was astounded by the degree of outright fear-mongering and misinformation, the shoddy logic, and the unsubstantiated assertions. It was thanks to vaping that I personally quit smoking outright, and I have been vaping since 2014 without any problem. Already poor at delivering nicotine when compared to cigarettes, I nonetheless reduced the vaping nicotine content even further, down to negligible levels—and nicotine is not what causes cancer. Some even dispute whether nicotine is harmful. In fact it was a cardiologist who recommended to me that I switch to vaping, calling it a “no brainer”. As he explained: an unlit cigarette contains at least 400 dangerous chemicals, many of them carcinogenic; when lit, that number increases to over 6,000 chemicals. Vapes contain at most two questionable chemicals, and one of them is sprayed in the air throughout most hospitals.
It was thus difficult to understand on exactly what grounds the WHO was condemning vaping before it had even ascertained the facts. But what we do know is that at the end of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic overtook, the WHO and national and provincial governments in countries such as Canada and the US, were firing up a mass panic that vaping was unsafe and was resulting in a mass of deaths—which then mysteriously stopped and the issue just went away. Some users were vaping a cannabis derivative and using a Vitamin-E oil, for which vaporizers are not designed, and thus clogging their lungs—the harm was not vaping as such, but the misuse of vaping. Nevertheless, some provincial “health officials” in Canada declared all vaping to be harmful. Universities, eager to latch onto the latest fear campaign or moral panic, quickly promoted whatever little research they were doing about the alleged/imagined “harms of vaping”. The WHO seemed to be echoing this fanciful, foolish, and potentially dangerous trend.
To underscore the absurdity of the WHO’s position, an analogous argument would have gone like this: vaping devices contain batteries, and some people find that by disassembling those devices and ingesting the batteries, they can end up in hospital. Vaping is therefore dangerous and a threat to public health.
Others also took note of the WHO’s strident arguments and its loose grip on facts. One writer noted the poor timing of the WHO’s statements: “At the same time the World Health Organization (WHO) was dithering about the dangers of the coronavirus, it was perpetuating another public health threat of greater magnitude”. The former head of UK Action on Smoking and Health, Clive Bates, went into great detail and produced a scathing step-by-step critique of the WHO’s (changing) positions on vaping, that really denuded the organization of even a shred of credibility. Peter Hajek, who directs the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London, also denounced the WHO’s statements: “The WHO has a history of anti-vaping activism that is damaging their reputation. This document is particularly malign”. Hajek added: “There is no evidence that vaping is ‘highly addictive’….Less than 1% of non-smokers become regular vapers. Vaping does not lead young people to smoking—smoking among young people is at [an] all-time low….There is clear evidence that e-cigarettes help smokers quit”. John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies and a consultant in respiratory medicine at the University of Nottingham, plainly stated: “[the] WHO misrepresents the available scientific evidence”. Public Health England maintains that vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking, and also reminds us that nicotine is relatively harmless.
The WHO bases most of its arguments on the dangers of nicotine addiction—nicotine is a dangerous threat, in their view. Nicotine is found in nature, including in many common vegetables, teas, and potatoes. The WHO also claims—despite a lack of any evidence presented—that vape liquids containing nicotine can so addict teenagers that they transition to smoking. Why would they? Why would they transition to something that can be ten times more expensive, that stinks, that stains teeth, fingers, and clothing, and that is known to cause many deaths every year? Exactly which studies show this transition to be a fact? There are one or two such studies, that at best are suggestive of such a trend, even if tobacco use among teenagers in North America and Europe has shown a consistent decline.
To be clear, not all scientists agree that nicotine is dangerous: some, discussed in Scientific American, even insist that it’s time to stop demonizing nicotine, and they urge us to understand its benign effects. Some published health research also indicates that “nicotine significantly improves short-term memory”. Other studies have examined the neuroprotective potential of nicotine, noting that nicotine use can lessen the incidence of Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Lynn Kozlowski, a professor of community health at SUNY-Buffalo, also maintains that, “nicotine may be a useful drug for some people and help them function better,” since it can reduce anxiety and stress (and stress can itself be quite deadly).
Such nuance is entirely missing from the WHO’s proclamations. Like most other fear-based opinions, the WHO conflates nicotine use and smoking. The logic of their argument follows a common pattern of displacement, found typically today in the demonizing narratives of politicians and the media, applied to a wide range of topics. It goes like this:
- Assert that X is a potential problem, therefore make X sound suspicious;
- Introduce horrendum obiectum Y, and then link X to Y through at least one shared trait;
- Focus heavily on all the known and proven dangers of Y, indeed, let Y become the main content of the narrative;
- Relink X to Y, thus making it seem that the dangers of X stem from, or are identical to the dangers of Y.
The result is a basic non sequitur: because smoking is dangerous for your health, it follows that so-called “e-cigarettes” (the name is arbitrary, but usefully suggestive) are also dangerous to your health. The fact remains, however, that vaping ended my experience as a smoker, period. No more coughing, no excessive phlegm, no wheezing, no more shortness of breath, no damage to teeth and gums. I have had two chest x-rays, and doctors found no damage.
What explains the lack of nuance, the lack of scientific substantiation, the paltry evidence, and the harsh tone of the WHO on vaping? Part of the reason, some of the sources linked to above explain, is the disproportional influence on the WHO of one of its top private donors, US billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who is wholeheartedly in favour of banning vaping. It is not a surprise for some that with the issue of vaping, the WHO has reached another milestone in a growing track record of bungled responses, misinformation, and outright fear-mongering. Though Trump ostensibly opposed the WHO, he shared the organization’s exact same position on vaping, and he added to the fear-mongering.
The Documentary’s Conclusions The documentary begins to close with some potential conflict-creating conclusions. We hear from a top official of the WHO arguing for a powerful and heavy role for a global public health agency. Franck might appear to support this, as she then features a medley of voices lamenting how underfunded is the WHO, how it is pressured and constrained, and frankly weak. But then at least one voice points to the fact that the WHO prioritizes economic interests, rather than health interests.
However, here Franck misses the chance to offer us a key lesson that can answer a number of our opening questions.
If the WHO downplays the health effects in one crisis area, and greatly amplifies them in another, it is not a paradox. The WHO follows where money leads: in one case (a virus), maximizing the dangers benefits pharmaceutical companies; in another case (radiation), minimizing the dangers benefits powerful industrialized countries and the nuclear industry.
Franck makes one more effort to speak with the Director-General of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan. It fails. At every point, the WHO denies Franck access to the Director-General. Unsurprisingly, the WHO also shuts down any criticisms of the WHO, or key member states, that might appear in papers submitted for publication in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, even if by staff like Keith Baverstock. Baverstock was invited to write an editorial on the psychological impact of Fukushima on evacuees—and it was rejected. He was told that his article was rejected because “the Bulletin will not be a platform for such criticism, no matter how valid”. US journalist, Robert Parsons, had his press accreditation cancelled for all WHO sponsored events, because he asked too many pointed questions. Staff who protest corruption and especially nepotism in the WHO, such as Alison Katz, were fired and their positions were abolished. Transparency? Not so much.
Franck had to find a way into joining the press at a World Health Summit in 2015 in order to finally ask Dr. Chan a single question, one that could even be read as supportive of the WHO:
“Lilian Franck, OVALmedia. It’s a question to Dr. Chan. We just learned that refugee health and climate change are huge global health challenges. But I’m asking myself how can we meet them if WHO is constantly losing power. Important donor nations, they want a weak WHO, one could even compare WHO to the Titanic I would say. So isn’t it your responsibility, Dr. Chan, to step down before the end of your second term in order to signal to the world that your organization, your ship, is sinking?”
The film ends with Chan’s message that the WHO needs more autonomy in its spending decisions—and it is a disappointing end. Sand has been kicked into our eyes.
Dr. Margaret Chan, former Director-General of the WHO Conclusion: Criticisms and Recommendations The ending of Franck’s documentary reminds one of much of the content of “progressivist” critiques of existing state institutions: they are failing us, even betraying us, so it’s time to save them by funding them more and making them even stronger. (Of course, in some cases the opposite is true: there has been a call for outright “defunding” of specific institutions, but this echoes “conservative” calls for abolishing the US Federal Reserve or taking down the CIA and FBI.)
Franck does not waiver from the position that, ultimately, it is the self-seeking, profit-oriented influence of powerful corporations that is to be blamed for the mismanagement (or worse) of public health emergencies. The question that lingers though, is whether international governmental organizations could ever be free of such influence in an international system that is still capitalist. In addition, she does not consider the issue of centralized power in a so-called public institution, and the abuses that can ensue from that degree of amassed power. The assumption might be that if it’s public, it’s good, it’s democratic—but how many existing public institutions live up to such expectations? How many publicly-funded institutions actually serve the public interest, or even answer to the public? How do you prevent a large bureaucratic machine from functioning to serve its own goals? Financial autonomy certainly is a problem for the WHO, but so is a lack of democracy, accountability, or even a reflection of a broad range of scientific inputs.
Indeed, as we have seen, even the assumption that a “public health crisis” is one to be addressed by the natural sciences (particularly biology, medicine, etc.), is a flawed one. Anything involving human behaviours must call upon a broader range of sciences, including the social sciences and even the humanities. When locking down, in the name of “following the science,” it was usually an overly restrictive and thus profoundly flawed notion of “science” that politicians adopted. A doctor of medicine is not someone you let lead where issues of social relationships, political legitimacy, business, finance, and production are concerned.
At no point does the documentary explain why a “world health organization” is even necessary. One might just as well conclude that something like the WHO exists as a neo-imperial means of exercising tutelage over the newly decolonized states that joined the UN from the 1950s to the 1980s, and lacked sufficient means to erect a public health infrastructure of their own—thus some of the very tools of independent statehood were, ironically, imported.
Franck seems to know what her truth is, and she tenaciously clings to it in her presentation of footage. Where her grasp seems shaky, or is shaken, is when she tries to articulate her ideas in dialogue with people who do not support her version of the truth—and sometimes we can hear a rising level of frustration, exasperation, disbelief, or even resignation in her voice during interviews. One wishes that she had been more assertive and less polite, but perhaps she refuses to let a situation take anything away from her desire to be a pleasant and decent person. Nevertheless, it is inexplicable why she remains so devoted to an organization that coldly stonewalled her at every turn.
Lilian Franck makes the story personal: she connects her story as a mother, and the life of her daughter, to outcomes conditioned or created by the WHO’s intervention in global public health. She is thus frequently present in front of the camera, as is her daughter. I do not mind this at all, and some might especially value this method, but other reviewers have complained about the film’s “maternalist” tone.
Clearly this documentary could be useful for not just sparking and even furthering debate, but also for the amount of information that it presents. This is one of the very few documentaries I have ever seen that actually has a “References” section in its ending credits—where nearly every second of the film is accounted for by noting the sources of footage or other information. This documentary could clearly be relevant to almost any course that deals with the subject of the political economy of public health policy, in International Relations, Sociology, and Anthropology. My rating for this documentary is 7.5 out of 10.
(This documentary was viewed four times over the past year, in preparation for this review. This review forms part of the new Biology and Culture, Health and Lifestyle series of Documentary Reviews on Zero Anthropology. Look out for more titles to come in this series.)
Nobody (as far as I know) has commented on how hard this year of lockdowns has been on university professors. That’s good: nobody should. Many millions of workers at home and abroad, and those who have lost employment, or their health, have had a far worse time. In part because of COVID-19, and in even larger part because of the disproportional political responses that were rooted in neither science nor logic, but rather an effort to criminalize and distract populations, the world has experienced an infernal year. It is not yet over, even as a couple of countries in the Centre/the First World/the Global North begin to reopen. In most other countries, the situation remains dire, and in quite a few it is even worsening. New states of emergency, new curfews, and some particularly virulent strains of the virus (particularly the Brazilian and Indian mutations), combined with porous borders and inept state management, result in Year Two of misery. If one has faith in the efficacy and safety of mRNA treatments called vaccines, then one should note how uneven and unequal the global distribution of these products has been, a fact that brings back to life what never really went away: a worldwide division between Centre and Periphery. “The coming year could be a story of two worlds undermining each other,” as explained in an article in The Atlantic. It will be 2022 already when vaccines will become available to more than just 20% of the world’s population, and in the meantime populations in most of the world are dealing with sometimes monstrous mutations.
Trinidad & Tobago, now under a state of emergency, is one such state in the Periphery, in a region witnessing a strong surge of the virus. Trinidad is where I also lived, studied, conducted my field research, and have a large number of in-laws and friends. Already, several family members in different parts of the world (including Trinidad), have recently suffered from COVID-19, or one of its variants. Some have suffered badly. Trinidad has barely received any vaccines, at a time when it has been swept by the Brazilian variant, which badly afflicts even much younger and healthier people compared to those suffering the worst in places like Canada. This is not to excuse the gratuitous punishments and reckless endangerment practiced by the Trinidadian government: shutting down beaches and exercise in public (when outdoor transmission has been proven to be a minimal threat, at worst); banning restaurants from delivering meals (how many people were infected that way?); and never once recommending sunshine and emphasizing the importance of taking vitamin D. “The science” in Trinidad seems to be even more medieval than “the science” of Faucian control freaks in the Global North. Like in Quebec, where I live under nightly curfews, the state has decided that enhanced police powers will address the root problems of this crisis—when they are the crisis. Both Quebec and Trinidad have nightly curfews right now, despite the existence of zero scientific evidence to support the notion that curfews have any significant impact on limiting infections.
Trinidad thus struggles, and yet continues to receive refugees from Venezuela who are likely the prime carriers of the potent Brazilian variant. Geopolitics, never out of the picture, re-imposes itself more forcefully: a refugee crisis, whose origins are political and economic, and in large part shaped by the extreme collective punishment (sanctions) imposed by the US on Venezuela, is added to the pressure placed on countries such as Trinidad to take in refugees even when a large mass of the population is suffering from new unemployment, drastically reduced incomes, and new illness. What a disaster.
The crush of events, the confusion, the contradictory arguments, and the vastly increased workload combined, in my case, to produce silence. Never have I seen, or imagined possible, the amount of work that I have done in this past year. It was extreme: almost nine full months of working, on average, 11 hours per day, seven days a week. Even with sleep drastically reduced, I was always behind schedule. I had to effectively subsidize the cost of my own courses, since none of the “compensation” (whether by the state or the employer) was sufficient, and I thus experienced a net reduction in income. However I again need to stress that this is not a cry of self-pity, but just an explanation of the constraints that worked to keep me offline. Hundreds of millions worldwide, however, lost their jobs outright—and in many cases their homes, their marriages, their physical or mental health—so I am far from being in the worst groups of victims of the endlessly stretched lockdowns.
Zero Anthropology has been put on pause before, but never for so long nor so continuously (in the past, I might have paused writing here but continued writing and publishing elsewhere). As of the day this essay was started, I had spent 425 days in a state of lockdown, as the university shut its doors on March 13, 2020. Apart from a series articles about the COVID-19 crisis (or “Corona-crisis” as I called it) that appeared on ZA around this time last year, I have been totally absent from online publishing. That in itself is not so bad.
Writing, Stress, and Silence What was bad for me was the absence from writing. Writing is such a critical part of my learning experience, that being taken away from the practice inevitably did some damage. For me, as for many others, writing is my number one method of learning, even when (or especially when) I make (big) mistakes. Far more than reading, writing teaches me what I do not know, and ought to know. Whole courses of mine have been spun out of my writing. A year without writing has not been a year without learning so much, but it felt like that.
On the other hand, not writing but still reading vast amounts and listening to others can make up for the damage. At the very least, absence from writing can help one to avoid the embarrassment of producing articles about the corona virus, like mine from a year ago—so steeped in a fear that I refused to recognize. What has stuck with me for all this time, was one comment in particular in response to one of those articles last year—a comment from “Brad”. Brad is apparently one of those few people with rare wisdom: he saw through my articles what I myself ought to have seen, but could not. Since then, Brad’s observations about overwrought fear have only snowballed, accumulating almost countless new layers of events, evidence, analysis, interpretations, and real outcomes. Brad should do more to take credit for his insights, and post using his full name. In the meantime, many thanks to you Brad.
I have now had to post disclaimers at the top of each of those articles from last year, about COVID-19, something which I have never felt the need to do before. While it is true that I have taken almost every possible position on the “pandemic,” at one point or another, I still feel that there has been a sea-change in my thinking about the so-called pandemic compared to a year ago. I say “so-called” pandemic because what we have been dealing with is not exactly or even mostly an epidemiological problem, but a political-social-economic problem. I prefer to say “lockdown” rather than pandemic, not to disproportionately medicalize and naturalize what we continue to live through/under. I will have more to say about this in upcoming articles.
It’s now more than three years since I withdrew from both Twitter and Facebook, and it was first sparked precisely by censorship which has now become the norm on both platforms, rendering them utterly useless, irrelevant, and therefore uninteresting. Yet, even while I do not even slightly miss my time in Twitter and Facebook, what I did appreciate was how both forced me to learn to write succinctly (not apparent on ZA). That also taught me to find ways to speak succinctly and get straight to the point, an ability which also translated into improved teaching techniques.
Thus I consider all forms of writing to be beneficial, given my line of work. While I cannot promise more than an article per week (if that much) in the coming months, I am glad to be writing again and to renew my learning.
What Comes Next? Rest assured, I have been paying very close attention all year: whether it was about rising unemployment in Canada; the undermining of social institutions in Canada and elsewhere; rising poverty, in Canada and internationally; the dramatic upgrade of the authoritarian powers of the corporate-oligarchic imperial state; George Floyd; Black Lives Matter protests; riots, looting, and burning; Donald Trump’s unforgettable COVID press briefings; the US election and its aftermaths; the Gamestop rebellion; the unrelenting persecution and torture of Julian Assange; “withdrawal” from Afghanistan; the militarization of domestic politics and the full-blown coming to life of precisely the kind of domestic counterinsurgency we warned about here and elsewhere for many years; (social) media censorship and surveillance; the accelerating suppression of academic freedom; “cancel culture”; the expediency and instrumentality of “identity politics”; the imperial, neoliberal, and corporate entanglements of “woke culture”; “intersectional” imperialism; Canadian dependency expressed through importation and imitation of every one of the latest woke trends in the US; China’s attempts to ascend and secure its status as a global state-capitalist hegemon; anti-lockdown protests and riots; real questions and concerns about “science,” about “vaccines” and “vaccine passports,” and about the origins of a virus-induced meltdown; obsessions about “conspiracy theories”; the hacking of a key pipeline; the deliberate rupture of a border, while elsewhere all travel is banned—I have been doing my best at keeping abreast.
What struck me is how all of these were bits and pieces that ultimately were interconnected, and formed a larger pattern. It is not about fanning the flames of “conspiracy theory”—which originally, and at Mae Brussell’s time, was a badge of distinction for an investigative journalist who poked holes in official explanations by uncovering suppressed evidence, i.e., a critical thinker—it is about avoiding something far, far worse than what people call conspiracy theory. It is about avoiding absolutely idiotic “coincidence theory” which posits a world where people never meet, never interact, have no intentions, and share no common interests, and where everything always happens by accident, i.e., fatalism. Conspiracy theory involves questions about a world that might exist; coincidence theory is about a world that never existed.
While liberalism has well and truly died, and it was a miserable death involving self-mutilation until the result was a post-liberal or illiberal corpse barely recognizable for all its decomposition, and unbearable for its stench, we now see what flew in to start picking at the corpse. The vulture, posing as interim leader, was born of an ultra-authoritarian association or convergence of giant corporations, supporting states, the establishment media, academia, and in Anglophone North America, “the left”. Neoliberalism has been curbed, by necessity, but also because it has been an utter failure even on its own terms. In its place: an uber-progressivism that has erased social reform and planted “social justice” in its place, but catering only to the smallest groups possible (less expensive), and calling it “equity”. The result has not been a correction of past or current wrongs, but rather hypercorrection, mostly limited to surface appearances and the creation of a new bureaucratic bourgeoisie. What follows is the production of new wrongs, born of extreme positions, that generate the kind of backlash that will eventually dominate.
As if living in a planned experiment, elites praised us repeatedly for our “resilience”—where resilience apparently means the ability to suffer endless bullshit, corruption, and cheating, and just carry on. At the worst heights of the so-called pandemic, instead of the mutual support and solidarity promised by Justin Trudeau’s repeated slogan “we’re all in this together,” what we saw instead of unity was the rabid and calculated deployment of divide and rule tactics under the umbrella of “equity, diversity, and inclusivity”. It was deliberate rule by division and subtraction, by a system ruled by a tiny minority, and ostensibly catering to (minor fractions of) minorities.
Elitism and minoritarianism have replaced democratic majoritarianism (rule by addition if not multiplication)—and it is the form that an assault on the working class majority can be expected to take. The hope was that the mass would resign to being distracted, distraught, drugged, dumb, and divided—the reality has been tenacious resistance. The “new normal” is a fear-based political economy of mass exclusion, and resistance to it. It’s not that new, and probably should not be called normal.
Curfews and outright states of emergency were declared in many countries, or parts of countries, for obvious reasons. One of them being that the rulers feared that otherwise we might rise up and kill them, as one student put it to me in class.
Quebec boasted a massive budget surplus just a few years ago. Where did it go? Where did the massive amounts of tax money paid by all Canadians for healthcare go? Why were hospitals so badly neglected and underfunded, that emergency rooms operated far above capacity well before the “pandemic”? Why were those who paid taxes covering healthcare, suddenly denied the right to access healthcare unless sick with COVID-19? What happened to their human rights? The answer: curfews, and even banning protests.
What has been a major source of relief is seeing how much has been written this year that is truly excellent. Everything I would have said, or wanted to say, was said abundantly and perfectly well by others. Links to their works will be featured regularly in upcoming articles on ZA.
Admittedly, it was a relief not to feel compelled to churn out an endless number of words about everything—that will not change. Times when the world seems to be burning more hotly, things here will seem cool and serene by contrast—or vice versa. I cannot and will not write about everything of interest or relevance to this project: I simply lack the time, resources, and energy. In any case, I have no faith in the belief that ideas and words produce change.
In that frame of mind, here is the plan for the coming weeks and months. I will start with two documentary reviews, while they are still of greatest relevance, dealing with the World Health Organization, and another dealing with COVID-19. I will then focus on the disproportional responses to the virus, done in the name of saving lives (a familiar refrain), such that the world as a whole has been abducted by a humanitarian dictatorship—and as readers will know, for numerous years now “abduction” has been one of my key concepts. This will move to review and analysis of domestic counterinsurgency, militarization, and the everyday enculturation of “security”. Inevitably there will also have to be an assessment of US populist nationalism after Trump, looking ahead at 2022 and 2024. And then, because this is essential and it is just too inexcusable that so many people are carrying on without taking notice—we must ask questions and discuss the officially documented appearances of ostensibly extraterrestrial vessels and their behaviours.
This is probably why, aside from news reports and a few interviews, there is a shocking lack of the transformative eruption that, in the past, we all thought would happen once intelligent alien life had either been confirmed or appeared too probable to dismiss. Whole paradigms would collapse, we were told. Faith in social, religious, and political institutions would be shaken, we were told. Authority might be threatened, was an especially welcome promise. The reality is that people have instead fussed over “what Trump said” and grew outraged at some imagined “microaggression” by a celebrity, or some unknown worker in a pizza joint, to even bother. It is astounding to see how profoundly and fundamentally conservative are the vast majority of people everywhere, persisting in carrying on as normal, even when confronted head on by a UFO. Something must really be in the water.
In the coming weeks, and certainly during this summer, ZA will feature an open-ended series of ongoing articles and discussions about leaked and declassified reports and video documentation of what are—for lack of any plausible alternative explanation—numerous and different UFOs. The main point of the exercise will be to ask questions, and to come up with a range of plausible speculations about what we are witnessing.
What is needed is that anthropologists start to engage in at least informed speculation about the behaviours, motives, and possible outcomes of documented alien engagements. One has to also wonder if our responses and reactions are being catalogued and analyzed, right now, by alien anthropologists. What conclusions are they reaching? What do the patterns of behaviour of their vessels suggest about what they are studying, how they study it, and why they are studying it?
Remember, anyone speaking of seeing UFOs in the past, even recently, was immediately treated as “crazy” or dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. Lo and behold, there was a substantial amount of evidence to support their claims, and it has been known for decades. If it is still “crazy” to discuss UFOs, then Zero Anthropology will have to invent a new variation to suit the facts: crazy anthropology. In any event, I would still be happier to be called “crazy” because your “normal” frankly scares me.
Nobody (as far as I know) has commented on how hard this year of lockdowns has been on university professors. That’s good: nobody should. Many millions of workers at home and abroad, and those who have lost employment, or their health, have had a far worse time. In part because of COVID-19, and in even larger part because of the disproportional political responses that were rooted in neither science nor logic, but rather an effort to criminalize and distract populations, the world has experienced an infernal year. It is not yet over, even as a couple of countries in the Centre/the First World/the Global North begin to reopen. In most other countries, the situation remains dire, and in quite a few it is even worsening. New states of emergency, new curfews, and some particularly virulent strains of the virus (particularly the Brazilian and Indian mutations), combined with porous borders and inept state management, result in Year Two of misery. If one has faith in the efficacy and safety of mRNA treatments called vaccines, then one should note how uneven and unequal the global distribution of these products has been, a fact that brings back to life what never really went away: a worldwide division between Centre and Periphery. “The coming year could be a story of two worlds undermining each other,” as explained in an article in The Atlantic. It will be 2022 already when vaccines will become available to more than just 20% of the world’s population, and in the meantime populations in most of the world are dealing with sometimes monstrous mutations.
Statement released by Chief Ricardo Bharath Hernandez, Santa Rosa First Peoples Community, Arima, Trinidad & Tobago, June 16, 2020. As Amerindians/Indigenous Peoples in the Caribbean, we are historically well acquainted with a series of epidemics and pandemics. We therefore have a lot of historical experience in suffering and surviving from both local epidemics and regional […]
Part 5 of 5 of the COVID-19 Series. Some are openly proclaiming, “you don’t want to waste a crisis,” as they calculate how the crisis could become a series of opportunities to “change things”. We have to question whether strategic pre-positioning to shape the “post-COVID normal,” might end up even unconsciously shaping the authorities’ responses […]