
Frederick Douglass on the limits of tyranny…


In 2016, after the horrifying attacks by extremists in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, on a Jewish supermarket, and on the Bataclan concert hall — which left 107 people dead — France made the decision to open reeducation camps. In these camps, alleged radicalized Islamists would “be taught their patriotic duties and forced to undergo psychological treatment in an attempt to counter jihadist indoctrination.”
The move was highly controversial and drew criticisms from human rights experts, including survivors of China’s reeducation camps for Uighurs. Though the criticisms were well-founded, the crimes of those they were trying to stop were well documented, and left a blood trail that shook the country to its core.
Fast-forward to 2021 and “experts” in the United Kingdom want to begin similar reeducation or “deradicalization” operations. This time, however, they aren’t trying to convert violent extremists responsible for the murder of over 100 people. This time, they are targeting those who refuse the vaccine.
The Independent interviewed one of these so-called experts who is advocating for “deradicalizing” folks who refuse the jab and his comments are certainly shocking.
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, thinks that those who refuse to take the jab are akin to batsh*t crazy tinfoil hat-wearing loons, who think Hilary Clinton is a lizard. Seriously.
“They’ll refuse anything – ‘I’m not going to wear a mask’, ‘I’m not going to get vaccinated’, ‘I don’t think climate change is happening’, ‘Covid is a hoax’, and, you know, ‘Hillary Clinton is actually a reptilian shapeshifter’,” he told the Independent, adding, “You’re getting to people who hold a cluster of very exotic beliefs – now, they’re very difficult to reach.”
Lewandowsky called this faction of folks who choose not to take the jab, “hardcore refuseniks” who cannot be reached through conventional means — so, they need to be treated like cult members or terrorists.
“In the ideal world, time and money permitting, you can engage even those people in a very slow, long-term process where you affirm their right to have those beliefs… rather than telling them something about themselves they don’t want to hear, let’s put it that way,” he said.
“So you tell them something positive, and then engage in what is effectively the same as a deradicalization process for former terrorists, or cult members.”
Facebook was recently raked over the coals by a former employee for having policies that give preferential treatment and protect high profile users only, but now it seems this is not such a rare occurrence among social media giants.
Take Twitter, for example, which just got exposed for running a secret program designed to give priority to its most prominent users, and protect them from what is perceived as attacks by “trolls and bullies.”
Twitter is carrying out its decision, Bloomberg reported, to protect the political elites and celebrities via a program called Project Guardian, that pushes reports about abusive content posted against these users to the front of the moderation queue.
Apart from shielding who Twitter picks as the most important people on the platform (reports about the secretive program say that many who are protected by it are unaware of this), the company is also able to control what content gets viral and has wide reach, and quickly stem the spread of tweets it disapproves of.
Schoolchildren in Germany are being subjected to ritual humiliation by being forced to divulge their vaccination status in front of their class on a daily basis, with unjabbed kids being questioned as to why they haven’t received it.
Yes, really.
The shocking development, which has been covered by German media outlets, was explained by journalist Alex Story.
“It’s essentially about the ritual humiliation of children who are asked to go to the front of the class and state their vaccination status daily,” Story told GB News.
“Those who are vaccinated are applauded, those who are not have to explain why they’re not,” he added, noting that such treatment “should raise an alarm bell” for people who are in favor of mandatory vaccines.
Story also described how authorities in Germany are rolling out wristbands for people to go shopping, with those who haven’t properly complied by getting jabbed and following other rules being banned from being able to go shopping “across a multitude of stores.”
The journalist also related a story that is “more reminiscent of 1930’s Germany,” namely how coffee shops in Berlin started giving out coffees for free in support of the unvaccinated, only to have corporate media outlets launch a demonization campaign against them.

Human rights and press freedom activists have fiercely condemned a UK court ruling paving the way for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be extradited to the US where he faces espionage charges.
The UK High Court on Friday granted the US’ request to extradite Assange, a request it had previously blocked due to Assange’s declining mental health. While the ruling is not final and can be appealed by Assange’s legal team, it brings the former WikiLeaks boss one step closer to a trial on US soil, where he faces a possible 175 years behind bars if convicted of espionage.
“These proceedings, and today’s ruling, are a black mark on the history of press freedom,” wrote Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. “That United States prosecutors continued to push for this outcome is a betrayal of the journalistic principles the Biden administration has taken credit for celebrating,” Timm, who previously testified in Assange’s defense, continued.
Reporters Without Borders joined in the condemnation, with Secretary-General Christophe Deloire stating that Friday’s ruling “will prove historic for all the wrong reasons.”
“We fully believe that Julian Assange has been targeted for his contributions to journalism, and we defend this case because of its dangerous implications for the future of journalism and press freedom around the world,” Deloire wrote.
Assange’s plight has long been recognized by free speech and press freedom activists, and the deprivations endured by Assange during his years in detention have been criticized by human rights organizations. Amnesty International’s Europe Director Nils Muiznieks described the court’s decision as “a travesty of justice.”
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper celebrated on Thursday the alleged discovery of a scientific process to create a “humanized pig” more susceptible to severe Chinese coronavirus cases, which scientists could infect and use for research.
The propaganda outlet attributed the scientific achievement to the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IMCAS). The CAS, a research institution, is the world’s largest organization of its kind and a formal arm of the Chinese government. The Times published an illustrative figure on the development of “humanized” pigs that appears to have first surfaced in a study published in August that promoted the use of genetically modified pigs for Chinese coronavirus research based on how rapidly scientists could generate them and their heightened similarities with the human body.
The August study – published in Cell Discovery, a journal sponsored by the CAS, revealed that Chinese scientists had attempted to use CRISPR gene-editing technology to remove the genetic protective shields that make Chinese coronavirus not a significant threat to most pigs. CRISPR technology became the source of global controversy in 2018 after a Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, claimed to have used the method to genetically modify unborn baby twins to make them immune to HIV. The Communist Party sentenced He to three years in prison for conducting the human experiment without the full approval of the Party.

Disgraced actor Jussie Smollett became a convicted felon on Thursday evening after a jury found him guilty on 5 out of 6 felony disorderly conduct charges stemming from a hate crime hoax that he staged on himself in 2019.
“He was found guilty of telling a police officer he was a hate crime victim, telling an officer he was a battery victim, telling a detective he was a hate crime victim, telling a detective he was a battery victim and then telling a detective again he was battery victim,” Fox News reported. “He was not found guilty on a sixth charge of telling a second detective he was an aggravated battery victim.”
Numerous top Democrats rushed to pounce on Smollett’s initial claims that he had been attacked by purported Trump supporters.
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