Category: Hot Topics

VAX ALERT: Australia Now Issuing Fines to Citizens Who Refuse Vaccines for Their Kids

digigod

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/66973/australia-now-issuing-fines-to-citizens-who-refuse-vaccines-for-their.html

(Support Free Thought) – Australia’s Minister for Social Service, Dan Tehan, announced July 1st, the Australian Government will monetarily penalize any citizen whose children are not up to date on their vaccinations. The penalty, in the form of a reduction of government payments, amounts to $56 (AUD) monthly.

Called the “No Jab No Pay” program, Australia aims to increase compliance with government mandated vaccination programs by taking money away from its citizens. Parents who refuse to vaccinate their children may continue to do so under religious or medical grounds, but will not be allowed to keep the money they were previously receiving from the government.

No Jab No Pay appears to be working. According to Tehan’s press release:

Since the Turnbull Government introduced No Jab, No Pay in 2016 about 246,000 children and their families have taken action to ensure they meet the immunisation requirements.

Reasons for financially penalizing its citizens are for safety, according to the Minister of Social Service. Tehan writes:

Immunization is the safest way to protect children from vaccine-preventable diseases.

It is no question that the subject of vaccines is profoundly controversial. On both sides of the argument exists truth and lies that can hinder the ability of some to make rational decisions.

While we have everyone from attorneys to biologists, to political scientists who write for the Free Thought Project, none of us are doctors, so we do not make recommendations about what you and your family should do in regards to vaccination. It is important to note, however, that this information is almost always absent from the mainstream media which is why we find it necessary to report.

Fullly-funding the vaccination program, the Australian government provides over 14 million dollars annually to help parents catch-up on their vaccinations. Yet while Australia, as well as many governments around the world are more than happy to fund vaccinations, the practice of injecting the world’s children with inoculations manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry is disturbing to many, and they’re not antivaxer quacks as unscrupulous reporting by IFL Science purports them to be. Presumably comparing them to rats and cockroaches by slanted word choice, IFL Science writes:

Anti-vaxxers have infested the Southern Hemisphere

The characterization of antivaxers is likened to WWII-era caricatures of the Jew, a rat-like repulsive view of people who are sincerely trying to protect their children from potential adverse reactions. Even doctors who provide medical exemptions for the vaccination of certain susceptible patients are caught up in vaccination shaming and governmental penalization.

As TFTP reported last week, California’s Robert Sears, MD, was placed on probation last week after he provided his medical opinion vaccinations would be too risky for his patient, a 2-year-old boy whose mother said he suffered severe reactions to a previous vaccine.

As a consequence of his medical decision to exempt a patient from government-mandated vaccines, Sears was punished and is now subjected to intense scrutiny of every medical decision he makes, simply for standing up for the overall health of one of his patients. In a Facebook post he explained he agreed to the probation in lieu of a costly court case where he may have actually lost his license to practice medicine altogether.

Mocking antivaxers for refusing vaccines on the basis of religious or medical reasons, and penalizing doctors’ medical decisions runs counter-productive to preventing and minimizing actual risks associated with vaccines.

As TFTP has reported, the U.S. Government has paid out well over 3 billion dollars in damages to citizens who claim vaccines caused them harm and even death. Known as the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, the program lists a myriad of complications with which those who receive vaccines can become afflicted.

Those payouts have time-limits established from the time the onset of symptoms occurred to the time a payout can be requested. Often, the sick do not put two and two together, that their vaccine has made them sick, in time enough to file a request for compensation for damages.

Last year, an Arizona nurse we will call “Andy” took the flu vaccine. The hospital where she worked forced her to take the flu vaccine, even though she objected, and threatened her with the loss of her job if she didn’t kowtow to their demands.

Immediately after taking the flu vaccine she developed debilitating complications. Chronic pain, weakness, numbness tingling, and subsequent depression set in. She was diagnosed with Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy caused by the flu vaccine she contends. She can no longer work as a nurse but is not about to give up her fight. She’s suing the hospital as well as the manufacturer of the flu vaccine for the very real damages she’s sustained.

Still, advocates for the vaccinating of all humans contend the health risks associated with not vaccinating children and adults far outweigh the suffering associated with complications.

The story of the history of vaccinations demonstrate the power Big Pharma has over the people. Not only will CDC scientists lie, omit, and cover-up the fact some of these vaccines are not safe but they will demonize and penalize anyone who disagrees with their findings. All the while they quietly pay billions in damages to victims of bad medicine.

 

The LAPD Uses Palantir Tech to Predict and Surveil ‘Probable Offenders’

digigod

https://gizmodo.com/the-lapd-uses-palantir-tech-to-predict-and-surveil-prob-1825864026

Analysts with the Los Angeles Police Department are reportedly using Palantir software to direct officers to surveil “probable offenders” throughout the city, many of whom are not criminal suspects but have been spotlighted by the company’s predictive technology, according to LAPD documents.

In Justice Today reviewed internal LAPD documents from October 2017 that point to a persistent surveillance campaign compelling analysts to maintain rotating lists of targets selected by agency data-mining techniques and predictive policing tech pioneered by Palantir. The documents were obtained through a public records request filed by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which provides them to In Justice Today.

The In Justice Today report points to what the LAPD calls Chronic Offender Bulletins. Essentially, these bulletins are profiles, partially generated by Palantir software, for individuals who have had some contact with the LAPD. Violent crimes, gun crimes, suspected gang affiliation, and other designations increase a person’s Chronic Offender Score. A high score alone is not enough to justify detainment, but officers are given one-page summaries of a person’s arrest history, notable physical features (referred to as “physical oddities”), cars they own, and a list of where they’ve been stopped by police.

The LAPD used Chronic Offender Bulletins before Palantir’s involvement, but the report notes that the process is both increasingly automated by its software and per-infraction penalties are more severe. A spokesperson for Palantir disagreed with this characterization, telling In Justice Today that the CBO creation is “a human-driven process,” although Palantir software is used in the creation of CBOs, the spokesperson said.

As the report notes, a feedback loop emerges: the LAPD targets those with high scores for increased surveillance, but each stop by police further increases their score. Troublingly, analysts are directed to create a minimum of 12 Chronic Offender Bulletins, with five to 10 “back ups” to be switched in as people are arrested. To be removed from the list, an individual has to go two years without contact—a near impossibility if officers are being compelled to make constant contact with them. The LAPD tracks the number of high scoring “offenders” arrested, and officers are expected to report on COB arrests at weekly meetings, In Justice Today found.

The LAPD did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

UK Official Says It’s Too Expensive to Delete All the Mugshots of Innocent People in Police Databases

digigod

https://gizmodo.com/uk-official-says-its-too-expensive-to-delete-all-the-mu-1825388626

UK Official Says It’s Too Expensive to Delete All the Mugshots of Innocent People in Police Databases 4/19/18

A police officer watches a television monitor displaying a fraction of London’s CCTV camera network Photo: Daniel Berehulak (Getty)

In 2012, a ruling by Britain’s High Court found that keeping the mugshots of innocent people in police databases was unlawful. But almost six years later, the country’s Home Office has defended the continued retention of such images, saying, basically, the problem is too expensive to fix.

According to a report presented to Parliament, at least 19 million facial images are in contained in the UK’s Police National Database (PND), which is used to power facial recognition technology. Hundreds of thousands of these photos are believed to be of people who were never charged with or convicted of a crime. And as not every police force contributes photos to the PND, the total number of such images in the country is thought to be even higher.

After reviewing the matter, the Home Office said last year that mugshots of innocent people should be deleted by request. When pressed on why such images haven’t been automatically deleted from police databases, the Home Office recently asserted that doing so would “need to be done manually,” making the cost “difficult to justify.”

As explained in a letter by Baroness Williams of Trafford, the Home Office minister responsible for biometrics, mugshots are stored in local police databases, then uploaded to the larger PND. While deleting the image from local storage removes it from the PND, the reverse is not true. To coordinate deleting mugshots across the UK, “it would be necessary to upgrade all 43 local systems and the PND,” the letter asserts.

“Thus any weeding exercise will have significant costs and be difficult to justify,” Williams writes.

Norman Lamb, chair of the House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee, was less than satisfied with this explanation.

“Innocent people should rightly expect that images gathered of them in relation to a crime will be removed if they are not convicted,” said Lamb in response. “This is increasingly important as police forces step up the use of facial recognition at high profile events—including the Notting Hill Carnival for the past two years.”

Lamb said his committee will continue to push for automation, noting that, without it, many innocent people will have their faces retained in police databases—sometimes without even realizing it.

Across the globe, face recognition is transforming law enforcement. In the US, it’s being used in airports as passengers board flights, in arenas when people attend concerts, and even in some schools to deter school shooters. Police can use the technology to quickly find suspects, but civil liberties experts are wary of normalizing face recognition, which both identifies people in public places and matches them against criminal databases. Simply walking to the corner shouldn’t involve a police search. People are usually willing to bend this belief when it comes to convicted criminals, but, until these “upgrades” happen, everyone who has made contact with police is potentially caught in the dragnet in Britain.

DO NOT VOTE: Indigenous Mexicans spurn presidential vote with blockades, … a lesson for American’s

digigod

DO NOT VOTE:  Indigenous Mexicans spurn presidential vote with blockades, … a lesson for American’s

 
Excerpt:

 
“It’s all one big mafia. We having nothing but pure corruption here in Mexico and it’s 
 
proven,” he said. “Why pretend otherwise?”

 

http://news.trust.org/item/20180630120000-8illo

(Repeats for additional clients with no changes to text)

By David Alire Garcia and Berengere Sim

NAHUATZEN, Mexico, June 30 (Reuters) – Mexican voters will stream to the polls this Sunday in a pivotal presidential contest, but leaders representing tens of thousands of indigenous people have vowed to block voting in their communities to protest a system they say has failed them.

Polls say Mexico is on the verge of electing its first leftist anti-establishment president in modern history, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But the prospect of change has failed to resonate with inhabitants of small towns nestled in the lush, wooded countryside of southwestern Michoacan state.

Residents here have destroyed campaign signs and set up blockades to prevent the government from delivering ballots. Election officials have declared 16 towns here “unviable,” and will not likely risk confrontation to force polling stations to open.

Among the no-go zones is the impoverished hamlet of Nahuatzen, where Purepecha indigenous locals grow avocados and eke out a living on tiny plots. On Thursday, several dozen men, some in cowboy hats, stood vigil near the town’s entrance. They had laid a tree trunk across the road to stop outsiders from entering.

“The politicians haven’t done anything besides enrich themselves and they’ve left us behind,” said Antonio Arriola, a member of a recently-created indigenous council that has petitioned the Mexican government for autonomy.

After word spread on Friday that local party bosses may try to deliver ballots in their personal cars, indigenous leaders said they would use bulldozers to dig a trench in the main road to strengthen their blockade, a tactic already employed in a nearby town.

Arriola and other local leaders grudgingly acknowledged some common ground with Lopez Obrador, the 64-year-old former Mexico City mayor who got his start in politics decades ago advocating for indigenous rights.

But Arriola said the Purepecha have learned the hard way not to pin their hopes on promises coming from politicians, even ones that purport to have their best interests in mind.

“Our roads, schools and health care have been in the gutter for more than 40 years,” he said.

Nahuatzen is part of a growing movement among Mexico’s indigenous communities, who are seeking self-rule and turning their backs on mainstream elections.

Dissent in Michoacan ignited seven years ago, ahead of the 2012 presidential election, when just one jurisdiction, the municipality of Cheran, opted out of voting. This year, the boycott spread to six additional municipalities affecting dozens of polling stations across the 16 towns, home to at least 50,000 voters.

Agitation has likewise spread to traditional Maya communities in the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Guerrero. Indigenous leaders in at least six towns and small cities in those states are also pledging to block balloting on Sunday. That could impact tens of thousands more voters.

Electoral authorities may set up polling stations outside towns that have rejected them, allowing those who want to vote to do so, said Erika Barcenas, a lawyer based in Morelia, Michoacan’s capital, who advises communities that want more autonomy.

“But I think the view of the majority is a more global rejection, a rejection of political parties and of the kind of democracy we have right now,” she said.

The growing complaints of indigenous Mexicans appear to track a broader restlessness in the country, where widespread political corruption, drug violence and entrenched poverty have fueled discontent.

Support for democracy among Mexicans plummeted from slightly more than 70 percent in 2004 to just under half last year, according to data from the Latin America Public Opinion Project.

NEVER CONQUERED

Resistance to far-away masters goes back centuries for the Purepecha of Michoacan. Known for their fierce independence and closely guarded metal-smelting skills before the Spanish conquest of 1521, they were one of the few kingdoms in central Mexico that Aztec armies never subdued, despite repeated attempts.

On a federal highway near the town of Zirahuen, about 22 miles (35 km) southeast of Nahuatzen, several hundred locals set up another blockade with a big yellow truck, cutting off transit in both directions.

Many in the crowd said they were determined to repel any attempt by election authorities to deliver ballots or set up polling stations.

As of Friday evening, authorities had made no such efforts.

Young indigenous men in baseball caps walked down long lines of idled vehicles, telling drivers if they wanted to pass they must remove any visible campaign advertising. In a couple of instances they peeled political party stickers from windshields.

But the cradle of Michoacan’s movement is Cheran, home to 18,000 mostly Purepecha residents. The municipality proudly displays it indigenous heritage on its police vehicles, where the town’s name is written in the indigenous language, rather than Spanish.

Anger over widespread illegal logging believed to be organized by drug gangs sparked the unrest in Cheran. Outraged residents expelled their mayor and the local police force, whom they accused of being complicit. In 2012, citizens began to set up a new governing council based on indigenous customs.

During mid-term elections in 2015, 11 polling stations in four more municipalities joined Cheran in blocking balloting.

Pedro Chavez, president of Cheran’s indigenous governing council, said he is pleased that the movement has expanded yet again during this presidential election year.

“We can be an inspiration for free self-determination and a lesson about the rights of native peoples,” said Chavez, speaking outside his nearly-completed traditional wood-plank home.

The rights of Mexico’s indigenous poor last commanded the nation’s attention just after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994 and the Zapatista National Liberation Army issued a “declaration of war” against the government.

A 12-day battle ensued, claiming at least 140 lives.

“Free determination (for indigenous communities) is something that’s now being discussed for the first time since the Zapatista revolt,” said Barcenas, the attorney.

Some election officials say a solution to rising resistance among indigenous communities lies in more local control over public finance.

“We think the crux of their struggle is the push for direct funding to address the marginalization these communities face,” said David Delgado, the national electoral institute’s delegate for Michoacan.

Marco Banos, an official with the national electoral institute, said Mexico needs to find ways to fuse indigenous customs with the country’s existing election laws in communities where resistance to voting is playing out.

Still, he said resistance to voting is not as widespread as activists assert.

But, in Arantepacua, another restive Michoacan community which is boycotting the election, Dionisio Lopez said he is finished casting ballots.

“It’s all one big mafia. We having nothing but pure corruption here in Mexico and it’s proven,” he said. “Why pretend otherwise?” (Reporting by David Alire Garcia in Michoacan and Berengere Sim in Mexico City; Editing by Marla Dickerson)

Comcast’s machineQ Enterprise IoT Service Announces Next Wave of Customers | Business Wire

digigod

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180626006065/en/Comcast

Comcast’s machineQ Enterprise IoT Service Announces Next Wave of Customers

IoT Connectivity and Service Platform Continues to Make Progress Adding Multiple new IoT Industry Solution Providers

Comcast’s enterprise IoT service, machineQ™, announced new customers spanning a broad range of industries. (Photo: Business Wire)

Comcast’s enterprise IoT service, machineQ™, announced new customers spanning a broad range of industries. (Photo: Business Wire)

  • Comcast’s enterprise IoT service, machineQ™, announced new customers spanning a broad range of industries. (Photo: Business Wire)

PHILADELPHIA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Building on the momentum from its March customer announcement, Comcast’s enterprise Internet of Things (IoT) service, machineQ™, today announced the addition of several customers spanning a broad range of industries and use cases – including asset tracking, utility and water metering, facilities management, and agriculture. MachineQ is a scalable, B2B IoT platform that uses Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology to offer enterprise-grade solutions for businesses and municipal organizations. The service is deployed using the globally adopted LoRaWAN™ protocol.

“There is clearly demand for connecting people and equipment assets across large, open environments like golf courses, sports venues, universities, municipalities and resorts using a more reliable and less costly network than cell-based networks”

Tweet this

“There is clearly demand for connecting people and equipment assets across large, open environments like golf courses, sports venues, universities, municipalities and resorts using a more reliable and less costly network than cell-based networks,” said David Vanslette, CEO, FAIRWAYiQ. “The value of FAIRWAYiQ’s golf course management solution is being demonstrated across private golf courses like Sharon Heights in Silicon Valley, public courses like Potomac Shores, multi-course operators and the PGA TOUR. With machineQ’s ability to deliver localized connectivity and cloud-based network and device on-boarding and monitoring software, we can scale our business to meet the needs of our customers in a very short period of time.”

The following IoT providers are a sampling of the growing list of customers leveraging machineQ’s network and platform:

FAIRWAYiQ (Asset Tracking)

Massachusetts-based FAIRWAYiQ provides real-time monitoring and management for golf courses and adjacent organizations, like sports stadiums, municipalities, universities, and resorts that are reliant upon small, motorized equipment and labor productivity. The company is leveraging machineQ’s network platform to wirelessly deliver data to managers about common golf course issues like pace of play, employee scheduling and task benchmarking, and the performance and location of maintenance equipment. Using that data, managers are empowered to make more informed decisions about how to more effectively allocate budget and deploy resources.

H2O Degree (Utility Metering)

For over a decade, H2O Degree has manufactured a broad line of wireless utility sub-metering products for multi-family dwelling and commercial facilities. The systems are ideal for tenant billing, water leak detection and energy analytics. The integration of the LoRaWAN based sub-metering system with the expansive and secure machineQ™ IoT platform provides a scalable enterprise-grade network for H2O Degree to expand its customer base.

Seco Sys (Water Metering)

The Seco Sys HydraCommunity is a platform used by mining operations, campuses, and utilities to manage water. Beyond automatic meter reading, the company’s IoT platform reads sensors measuring water quality, temperature, pressure, and tank levels. All sensor data is transmitted through its HydraLink Edge Computing Devices that leverage the Comcast machineQ™ IoT network.

SteamIQ (Facilities Management)

Steam energy is a major part of modern businesses and used to power wide range of things including; radiators, water heaters, industrial kettles, refineries, sterilizers and turbines. A steam trap is an integral device that removes condensate moisture (water) from a steam system without losing any significant steam energy. Massachusetts-based SteamIQ provides facilities with real-time data on steam trap performance and by leveraging the machineQ LoRaWAN network, can now wirelessly transmit data from deep indoor and underground locations.

Vinduino (Agriculture)

California-based Vinduino helps agriculture communities, specifically in the vineyard and wine-making industry, more effectively manage water usage through open source technologies. The company’s LoRaWAN irrigation valve controller and mobile app, operating on the machineQ IoT network, allows growers to remotely operate irrigation systems and autonomously adapt crop management to changing climate conditions; ultimately optimizing their fruit quality yield and saving money by using water more efficiently.

“We’re helping break down barriers to entry for B2B-focused IoT solution providers because our cloud-based, scalable and secure IoT hardware and software solutions have the ability to extract device data from hard to reach locations with low power requirements – that traditional wireless connectivity options can’t offer,” said Alex Khorram, General Manager of machineQ. “These qualities, are opening up a whole new world of use cases and vertical industries for our customers, leading to new market opportunities and helping them to quickly scale their business to meet their customers’ demands.”

In addition to these new customers, machineQ is providing LoRaWAN based IoT hardware and software for solution providers that serve a wide range of industries, including; energy, healthcare, life sciences, retail, pest control, smart cities, and more. For more information, visit www.machineQ.com.

About machineQ

MachineQ™ is a scalable, B2B IoT platform that uses Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology to offer enterprise-grade solutions for businesses and municipal organizations. The service is deployed using the globally adopted LoRaWAN™ protocol.

About Comcast

Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA) is a global media and technology company with two primary businesses, Comcast Cable and NBCUniversal. Comcast Cable is one of the nation’s largest video, high-speed internet, and phone providers to residential customers under the XFINITY brand, and also provides these services to businesses under the Comcast Business brand. It also provides wireless and security and automation services to residential customers under the XFINITY brand. NBCUniversal operates news, entertainment and sports cable networks, the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, television production operations, television station groups, Universal Pictures and Universal Parks and Resorts. Visit www.comcastcorporation.com for more information.

 

Blue Zone – Living Longer and Better . . . an interesting method to bring in UNAgenda 21 policies . . .

digigod

BLUE ZONE

Blue Zone – Living Longer and Better . . . an interesting method to bring in UNAgenda 21 policies . . .

Definition of a “Blue Zone”

Blue Zones are places with high concentrations of 100-year-olds along with clusters of people who have grown old without diseases like heart problems, obesity, cancer or diabetes (non- communicable diseases measured with objective health measures). People living in Blue Zones not only live longer lives, but live better lives filled with good health, meaning and love (Buettner, 2015).

National Geographic Fellow and freelance writer, Dan Buettner, coined the term after a decade-long study of these longevity hotspots across the globe. The Blue Zone team consisted of leading medical researchers, anthropologists, dietitians, demographers, and epidemiologists. His findings were documented in The Blue Zones Solution, which is analyzed in this paper.

The 5 Blue Zones include:
1. Ikaria, Greece
2. Okinawa, Japan
3. Ogliastra Region, Sardinia, Italy 4. Loma Linda, California

5. Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica

Definitions of Health and Livability Terms

Primarily due to the interdisciplinary nature of this research, I found it important to first focus on getting a clear understanding of key health and livability terms that were common in most of the public health readings. There is a disconnect between the jargon used in healthcare, planning and design with expectations from the author that these terms are just understood. It became necessary to understand these definitions and their relationships to each other before attempting to understand the larger research itself. These were the definitions found to be most useful for this particular research.

Human well-being and GDP:

Human well-being is generally the state of being comfortable, happy and healthy, but is a broad term that includes access to basic services, livelihoods, safety, security from disasters, “feeling well”, etc. In the conceptual framework, the constituents of well-being are materials, security, health, good social relations and enhancing human capabilities. GDP is the total value of the goods and services produced by the people of a nation during a year not including the value of income earned

7 Blue Zones

in foreign countries (Merriam-Webster). Both terms are connected because they measure the “health” of a certain sector of life, but GDP does not take into account the objective and subjective measures of human well-being and whether the people living in each country are healthy and happy with their lives. There is an interesting link between well-being and GDP shown in the Cantril Self Anchoring Survey (Cantril, 1965) in the World Happiness Report showing that often poor areas are categorized as low on life evaluation (suffering), while rich areas are often categorized as high (thriving) (Gallup, 2009). Some of the Blue Zones research shows otherwise and often middle income is the healthiest of all.

Objective and Subjective measures of Health and Well Being

Objective measures of health are direct measures of an individual or population such as blood pressure, life span or infant mortality rates. Subjective measures of well-being directly survey people on their assessment of their life and well-being typically through three types of surveys: life evaluation (think), emotional well-being (feel) or life satisfaction.