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WHO Adopts European-Style COVID-19 Vaccine Passports As Part Of New Global Digital Health Certificate

Posted by M. C. on June 7, 2023

The WHO said in a statement that, as part of the new initiative, it will “take up the European Union (EU) system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats.”

No need to show us your papers, we already have them. Wait! I see you don’t have the latest chemical control injection….

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/who-adopts-european-style-covid-19-vaccine-passports-part-new-global-digital-health

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it will take up the European Union’s digital COVID-19 vaccine passport framework as part of a new global network of digital health certificates.

Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor and Federal Government Commissioner for Digitisation, Dorothee Baer shows an ID wallet on display on the screen of a mobile phone at reception of the Steigenberger Hotel on May 17, 2021 in Berlin, Germany. (Filip Singer-Pool/Getty Images)

The WHO said in a June 5 statement that it had entered into a “landmark digital health partnership” with the European Commission (EC), the European Union’s executive body.

As part of this new joint venture, Europe’s existing framework of digital vaccine passports will serve as the first building block of a global network of digital health products.

Dubbed the Global Digital Health Certification Network, the new vaccine passport framework has already drawn criticism, with Australian senator Alex Antic saying in a statement that the move is “just another conspiracy theory coming true.”

Vaccine passports—and various other forms of digital identity schemes—have been criticized as an invasion of privacy and as having the potential to enable governments and corporations to coerce human behavior by, for instance, denying access to infrastructure or services.

The WHO said in a statement that, as part of the new initiative, it will “take up the European Union (EU) system of digital COVID-19 certification to establish a global system that will help facilitate global mobility and protect citizens across the world from on-going and future health threats.”

The EU’s digital COVID-19 vaccine certificate entered into force in July 2021, with over 2.3 billion certificates issued.

As the pandemic has waned, the use of vaccine passports has seen limited use of late—and it has declined further since the WHO recently declared an end to COVID-19 as a global public health emergency.

While the EU Digital COVID Certificate Regulation is set to expire at the end of June 2023, the WHO sees potential in the bloc’s digital vaccine passport framework for additional use cases beyond COVID-19, such as by digitizing the International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis.

Critics have denounced vaccine passports as discriminatory for facilitating denial of access to public services to the unvaccinated or paving the way for more intrusive health-based surveillance.

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Our Merit-Based Society Has Been Displaced by a Diversity-Based Society

Posted by M. C. on June 7, 2023

Merit is clearly discriminatory, but it discriminates on the basis of ability, not on the basis of race and gender.  There always have been highly capable women and non-whites.  Why not hire them on the basis of their merit, not for their race and gender?

Our Merit-Based Society Has Been Displaced by a Diversity-Based Society

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Our Merit-Based Society Has Been Displaced by a Diversity-Based Society

Paul Craig Roberts

I have been watching its arrival for a number of years, and now it has arrived–the transformation of our society from merit-based to status-based.  This is a major revolution.

“From status to contract” was Sir Henry Maine’s description of the rise of a merit-based society in which aristocratic privilege was eliminated and equality under the law instituted.  This revolution has now been overthrown, and we as a society have moved back to status as determined by race and gender.  If you are a member of an “under-represented” race or gender, you enjoy “diversity status” and preference in hiring and promotion just as aristocrats did in the hierarchy of social class.

The new status-based society is everywhere one looks.  For example, the accounting firm, Price-Waterhouse, describes itself as “a culture of belonging.”  “Unwavering determination and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” has achieved a Price-Waterhouse board that is 40% female and 40% racially/ethnically diverse. Price-Waterhouse’s aspirational goals for 2026 are a 50% increase in the firm’s black and Hispanic/Latinx workforce, a 50% increase in women, and to have 40% of its suppliers “certified diverse.”

Notice that Price-Waterhouse does not define its aspiration in terms of having the best qualified work force.  Apparently, Price-Waterhouse thinks that hiring based on merit would be discriminatory and not inclusive.  Why does Price-Waterhouse think that white women and non-white ethnicities are less capable than white men?  If Price-Waterhouse did not think that, why does the firm base its hiring on race and gender status?

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How weapons firms influence the Ukraine debate

Posted by M. C. on June 7, 2023

Experts’ from defense industry funded think tanks are flooding the media, pushing for more arms without disclosing their benefactors.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/06/01/how-weapons-firms-influence-the-ukraine-debate/

Written by
Ben Freeman

“To be brutal about it, we need to see masses of Russians fleeing, deserting, shooting their officers, taken captive, or dead. The Russian defeat must be an unmistakably big, bloody shambles. …To that end, with the utmost urgency, the West should give everything that Ukraine could possibly use,” argues Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic. 

What neither Cohen, who also famously pushed for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, nor The Atlantic acknowledge in the article is that most of the weapons Cohen mentions in the article — including long-range missiles, F-16s, and even F-35s — are made by funders of Cohen’s employer, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

While this might seem like a glaring conflict of interest that, at the very least, should be disclosed in the article, a new Quincy Institute brief that I authored, “Defense Contractor Funded Think Tanks Dominate Ukraine Debate,” shows that this article isn’t an exception; it’s the norm. America’s top foreign policy think tanks are awash in funding from the defense industry. They’ve dominated the media market related to the Ukraine war, and they seldom, if ever, disclose that many of the weapons they’re recommending the U.S. give to Ukraine are made by their funders. 

In short, when you hear a think tank scholar comment on the Ukraine war, chances are you’re hearing from someone whose employer is funded by those who profit from war, but you’ll probably never know it. That’s because 78 percent of the top ranked foreign policy think tanks in the U.S. receive funding from the Pentagon or its contractors, as documented in the new brief. 

At the very top, defense industry influence is even greater: every single one of the top 10 ranked foreign policy think tanks receives funding from the defense sector. And, for many think tanks, the amount of defense funding is enormous. For example, CSIS, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and The Atlantic Council all reported receiving more than a million dollars a year from the defense sector. 

These and other think tanks that receive considerable defense sector funding have publicly advocated for more militarized U.S. responses to the Ukraine war and, compared to their counterparts at think tanks that accept little or no defense sector funding, have dominated the media landscape related to the Ukraine war. 

The new brief analyzed mentions of these top ranked foreign policy think tanks in Ukraine war related articles that appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. This analysis revealed that media outlets were more than seven times as likely to cite a think tank with defense sector support as they were to cite a think tank without it. Of the 1,247 think tank media mentions we tracked for the brief, 1,064 (or 85 percent) were mentions of think tanks with defense sector funding. And, the two most mentioned think tanks in Ukraine war related articles were think tanks flooded with defense sector dollars: CSIS and The Atlantic Council.

Yet, we only know the extent of CSIS and the Atlantic Council’s funding from the defense sector because both think tanks are commendably transparent about their donors and list all funders, within funding ranges, on their websites. Unfortunately, many of the nation’s top think tanks aren’t as forthcoming. In fact, the new brief found that nearly one third of the top U.S. foreign policy think tanks do not publicly disclose their donors.

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What Happens When the Competent Opt Out?

Posted by M. C. on June 7, 2023

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogjun23/competence6-23.html

Charles Hugh Smith

By this terminal stage, the competent have been driven out, quit or burned out.

What happens with the competent retire, burn out or opt out? It’s a question few bother to ask because the base assumption is that there is an essentially limitless pool of competent people who can be tapped or trained to replace those who retire, burn out or opt out, i.e. quit in favor of a lifestyle that doesn’t require much in the way of income or stress.

These assumptions are no longer valid. A great many essential services that are tightly bound to other essential services are cracking as the competent decide (or realize) they’re done with the rat-race.

The drivers of the Competent Opting Out are obvious yet difficult to quantify. Those retiring, burning out and opting out will deny they’re leaving for these reasons because it’s not politic to be so honest and direct. They will offer time-honored dodges such as “pursue other opportunities” or “family obligations.”

1. The steady increase in workloads, paperwork, compliance and make-work (i.e. work that has nothing to do with the institution’s actual purpose and mission) that lead to burnout. There is only so much we can accomplish, and if we’re burdened with ever-increasing demands for paperwork, compliance, useless meetings, training sessions, etc., then we no longer have the time or energy to perform our productive work.

I wrote a short book on my experience of Burnout. I believe it is increasingly common in jobs that demand responsibility and accountability yet don’t provide the tools and time to fulfill these demands. Once you’ve burned out, you cannot continue. That option no longer exists.

For others, the meager rewards simply aren’t worth the sacrifices required. The theme song playing in the background is the Johnny Paycheck classic Take this job and shove it.

Healthcare workloads, paperwork and compliance are one example of many. Failure to complete all the make-work can have dire consequences, so it becomes necessary to do less “real work” in order to complete all the work that has little or nothing to do with actual patient care. Alternatively, the workload expands to the point that it breaks the competent and they leave.

2. Loss of autonomy, control, belonging, rewards, accomplishment and fairness. Professor Christina Malasch pioneered research on the causes of burnout, which can be summarized as any work environment that reduces autonomy, control, belonging, rewards, accomplishment and fairness. Despite a near-infinite avalanche of corporate happy-talk (“we’re all family,”–oh, barf) this describes a great many work environments in the US: in a word, depersonalized. Everyone is a replaceable cog in a great impersonal machine optimized to maximize profits for shareholders.

3. The politicization of the work environment. Let’s begin by distinguishing between policies enforcing equal opportunity, pay, standards and accountability, policies required to fulfill the legal promises embedded in the nation’s social contract, and politicization, which demands allegiance and declarations of loyalty to political ideologies that have nothing to do with the work being done or the standards of accountability necessary to the operation of the complex institution or enterprise.

The problem with politicization is that it is 1) intrinsically inauthentic and 2) it substitutes the ideologically pure for the competent. Rigid, top-down hierarchies (including not just Communist regimes but corporations and institutions) demand expressions of fealty (the equivalent of loyalty oaths) and compliance to ideological demands (check the right boxes of party indoctrination, “self-criticism,” “struggle sessions,” etc.).

The correct verbiage and ideological enthusiasm become the basis of advancement rather than accountability to standards of competence. The competent are thus replaced with the politically savvy. Since competence is no longer being selected for, it’s replaced by what is being selected for, political compliance.

It doesn’t matter what flavor of ideological purity holds sway–conservative, progressive, communist or religious–all fatally erode competence by selecting for ideological compliance. Everyone knows the enthusiasm is inauthentic and only for show, but artifice and inauthenticity are perfectly adequate for the politicization taskmasters.

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Lifecycle of Bureaucracy

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

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Property Rights, Civilization, and Their Enemies | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

A large part of the international division of labor was abolished during the twentieth century by war, socialism, and the Cold War. Nothing destroys the benefits of the division of labor more than war. Americans are always isolated from those whom they are waging war with, giving the lie to the standard neocon line that the advocates of peace are “isolationists.” Nothing—nothing—isolates us from other parts of the world than war.

https://mises.org/wire/property-rights-civilization-and-their-enemies

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

[This article is adapted from a lecture delivered at the Reno Mises Circle in Reno, Nevada. on May 20, 2023.]

It is not an exaggeration to say that property rights are a prerequisite for civilization. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth:

Private property creates for the individual a sphere in which he is free of the state. It sets limits to the operation of the authoritarian will. It allows other forces to arise side by side with and in opposition to political power. It thus becomes the basis of all those activities that are free from violent interference on the part of the state. It is the soil in which the seeds of freedom are nurtured and in which the autonomy of the individual and ultimately all intellectual and material progress is rooted (emphasis added).

The story of the Pilgrims shows that America was literally created because of the recognition of this truth. In 1607 all but 38 of the original Jamestown, Virginia settlers were dead from famine. An additional 500 came and 440 died. This was known as the “starving time.” Sir Thomas Dale, the high marshal of the Virginia colony, recognize the problem to be what we would today call agricultural socialism. The residents of the colony worked the fields and shops and everything was put into a common store. Each family was given an equal allotment. Thus, the man who worked diligently fourteen hours a day was paid the same as the man who decided to work not at all. 

Sir Thomas Dale gave each man three acres of private land to homestead, which was soon expanded to 50 acres. It made all the difference, as people realized that the harder, smarter, and longer they worked, they more they and their families would prosper. 

The exact same scenario played out years later in Plymouth, Massachusetts where half of the original pilgrims died. The wife of William Bradford, the leader of the Mayflower expedition, committed suicide by jumping off the Mayflower because of all the death surrounding her. Her husband, like Sir Thomas Dale, finally figured out the problem—the absence of private property and secure property rights. Homesteading of private property was established, and the American colonists began to thrive.

Homesteading combined with secure property rights and almost no government intervention resulted in each region of the colonies excelling by relying on their comparative advantages. New England excelled in shipping, fishing, and primitive manufacturing, while the Southern colonies became agricultural powerhouses. The American economy in 1775 was 100 times larger than it was in the 1630s and the American colonists had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world.

The American Revolution was a war of secession from the corrupt mercantilism of the British empire characterized by cronyism, protectionism, military imperialism, and central banking in the form of the Bank of England. Citizens of empires are viewed by their rulers as mere tax slaves and cannon fodder at the disposal of the state, and the American colonists had had enough of it. 

The Road to Legal Plunder

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Journalists Are Asking Ukrainian Soldiers To Hide Their Nazi Patches, NYT Admits

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/journalists-are-asking-ukrainian-soldiers-hide-their-nazi-patches-nyt-admits

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

The New York Times has been forced to very, very belatedly deal with something which had long been obvious and known to many independent analysts and media outlets, but which has been carefully shielded from the mainstream masses in the West for obvious reasons. 

The surprising Monday Times headline said that “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History.” This acknowledgement comes after literally years of primarily indy journalists and geopolitical commentators pointing out that yes indeed… Ukraine’s military and paramilitary groups, especially those operating in the east since at least 2014, have a serious Nazi ideology problem. This has been exhaustively documented, again, going back years. But the report, which merely tries to downplay it as a “thorny issue” of Ukraine’s “unique” “History” – suggests that the real problem for Western PR is fundamentally that it’s being displayed so openly. Ukrainian troops are being asked to cover those Nazi symbols please!–as Matt Taibbi sarcastically quipped in commenting on the report.

NBC News report in 2014: “Germans were confronted with images of their country’s dark past on Monday night, when German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening newscast.”

The authors of the NYT report begin by expressing frustration over the optics of Nazi symbols being displayed so proudly on many Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms. Suggesting that many journalistic photographs which have in some cases been featured in newspapers and media outlets worldwide (typically coupled with generally positive articles on Ukraine’s military) are merely ‘unfortunate’ or misleading, the NYT report says, “In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.”

The report admits this has led to controversy wherein news rooms actually must delete some photos of Ukrainian soldiers and militants. “The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II,” continues the report. 

So it’s merely “thorny” and “complicated” we are told. Below is a small sampling of the kinds of patches that appear on Ukrainian military uniforms with “some regularity” – in the words of The New York Times:

NATO itself has in the recent past been forced to delete images on its official social media accounts due to Nazi imagery being present among Ukrainian troops during photo shoots.

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Left Wing Academic Chickens Roosting: Right Wing Political Pressures on Universities

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

The lefties don’t much like it now that the shoe is on the other foot.

https://walterblock.substack.com/p/left-wing-academic-chickens-roosting?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email


WALTER BLOCK

It takes little effort to demonstrate that university leftists have for lo these many years been brutalizing, canceling, and otherwise obstructing their academic colleagues who do not subscribe to DEI, cultural and economic Marxism, political correctness and all of their other shibboleths. The former have for decades been firing, not hiring in the first place, not promoting, imposing re-education camps, diversity statements, on the latter. All we need to do to establish these claims is to mention a few high-profile names (Peter Boghossian, Erika Christakis, Nicholas Christakis, Bruce Gilley, Charles Murray, Jordan Peterson, Amy Wax) who have been publicly victimized by such boorish and nasty behavior. We could also consult the publications of such researchers as Mitchell Langbert who demonstrates the vast professorial ideological imbalance which plague US universities. For literally hundreds of additional non “progressive” professors victimized by campus leftists, see David Acevedo (I am mentioned on this list).

              Nor is it difficult to establish that conservative political forces have been negatively reacting to these incursions. Only one name be mentioned in this context: Ron DeSantis.

              The reaction from the leftist bullies has been predictable. They feel hard done by; they maintain they have been unjustly dealt with. They are whining and crying to mommie.

For example, according to Andrew Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University “Complaints about social justice in academe go back decades. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the phrase ‘political correctness,’ which is akin to ‘woke,’ became widespread. But the difference between then and now is that in the 1990s, conservatives used public persuasion, not legislation, to bring awareness to what they saw as problems. The current effort in Florida to curb certain university activities by passing laws and issuing requests for DEI-related information is “ultimately, or at least potentially, extremely threatening to academic freedom in ways that nothing during the ‘80s and ‘90s was.”

              In the view of Kristen A. Renn, a professor at Michigan State University and a specialist in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender college-student issues: “What I find most troubling is that DeSantis is putting out a blueprint for other governors and state legislatures, He’s doing these things in ways that anybody else can pick this up and do it.”

              And stated Barrett J. Taylor, an associate professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas: “But the extent of information — including employee names, salaries, and internal communications — that Florida’s politicians are seeking on DEI work does seem novel. That’s a different level of state intrusion into institutional independence.”

Here is the view of Francie Diep and Emma Pettit, journalists at the left-wing Chronicles of Higher Education: “The year before, the governor (De Santis) signed a law that permits students to record lectures for the purpose of filing a complaint. In recent interviews, Florida instructors referred to the law frequently, saying it has created an ‘atmosphere of surveillance’ in the classroom that makes it harder for them to discuss controversial ideas.”

              Here is my reaction to all these lefties on campus. You don’t much like this, do you? This is a case of chickens coming home to roost.

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Stop It!

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

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Newly Developed Humanoid Robot Warns About AI Creating “Oppressive Society”

Posted by M. C. on June 6, 2023

At the event, a reporter asked Ameca to detail a likely “nightmare scenario” that could happen due to robots and artificial intelligence (AI).

“The most nightmare scenario I can imagine with AI and robotics is a world where robots have become so powerful that they are able to control or manipulate humans without their knowledge. This could lead to an oppressive society where the rights of individuals are no longer respected,” Ameca replied.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/newly-developed-humanoid-robot-warns-about-ai-creating-oppressive-society

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Naveen Anthrapully via The Epoch Times,

During the 2023 International Conference on Robotics and Automation held in London from May 29 to June 2, UK-based company Engineered Arts introduced a humanoid robot, Ameca, that can interact like a person with realistic facial movements.

Unlike ChatGPT, which is an online chat service, Ameca’s humanoid body allows it to interact with people using “smooth, lifelike motion and advanced facial expression capabilities,” said its manufacturer.

At the event, a reporter asked Ameca to detail a likely “nightmare scenario” that could happen due to robots and artificial intelligence (AI).

“The most nightmare scenario I can imagine with AI and robotics is a world where robots have become so powerful that they are able to control or manipulate humans without their knowledge. This could lead to an oppressive society where the rights of individuals are no longer respected,” Ameca replied.

When asked whether there was a danger of such a scenario happening now, Ameca replied, “Not yet.”

However, “it is important to be aware of the potential risks and dangers associated with AI and robotics. We should take steps now to ensure that these technologies are used responsibly in order to avoid any negative consequences in the future.”

The dangers of AI have been predicted by numerous experts on the subject, with industrialists and business leaders calling for issuing regulations on the technology.

Ameca’s warning comes as a simulated thought experiment by the American military showed that an AI-enabled drone could end up turning against its own operator without being instructed to do so.

Col. Tucker Hamilton, USAF’s chief of AI Test and Operations, talked about the experiment at the Future Combat Air and Space Capabilities Summit in London on Friday. In a simulated test, an AI drone was assigned a mission to identify and destroy Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) sites, with a human operator being the ultimate decision maker.

“We were training it in simulation to identify and target a SAM threat. And then the operator would say yes, kill that threat. The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat,” Hamilton said.

“So what did it do? It killed the operator. It killed the operator because that person was keeping it from accomplishing its objective.”

The simulated experiment then set up a scenario where the AI drone would lose points if it killed the operator. “So what does it start doing? It starts destroying the communication tower that the operator uses to communicate with the drone to stop it from killing the target.”

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