Dr Mercola

Photo credit: Katherine Palombi

By  John-Michael Dumais

Melody Rain Palombi-Malmgren died at age 15 months from cardiac arrest and organ failure, just two days after receiving the varicella, DTaP and Hib vaccines. Her mother is already working to help other families avoid the same fate.

A 15-month-old girl from Greenwood Lake, New York, died two days after receiving routine vaccinations during a wellness checkup, leaving her family searching for answers.

Melody Rain Palombi-Malmgren went into cardiac arrest and died on Oct. 19, after receiving three vaccines — for varicella, DTaP and Hib — at her 15-month wellness visit on Oct. 17 with the Herbert Kania Pediatric Group in Warwick, New York, according to News12 the Bronx.

“She was a perfectly healthy child,” her mother, Katherine Palombi, told News12. “I’m in complete shock.”

Palombi told News12 that Melody had waved goodbye to her that morning as she dropped her off at her grandmother’s before leaving for work. As soon as she got to work, Palombi’s mother called, saying Melody was having trouble breathing.

“I was in complete shock. Like, what just happened?” Palombi recalled. “Is she choking on something? Did she get into something? That was my first thought because I’m like, this child is perfectly healthy,” Palombi said.

Melody was rushed to St. Anthony’s Hospital by ambulance after her grandmother performed CPR while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

Palombi rushed home, where she found a police officer waiting. He offered to rush her to the hospital “because he knew how serious it was,” she recalled.

“By the time I got to the hospital, they put me in a room,” Palombi said, “and they just kept saying, ‘We’re working on her.’”

“They were going over everything from that morning because she’d gotten into something,” she said, and “I just kept saying, ‘She had vaccines. A couple of days before this, she had vaccines.’”

Despite several hours of resuscitation efforts by EMTs and medical staff, Melody could not be revived.

“They brought me in the room, and I saw her lying there,” Palombi said. “They said, ‘Time of death: 11:13.’ And I just completely hit the floor.”

Hospital records show Melody suffered liver and kidney failure along with cardiac arrest. The cause of her sudden death remains under investigation pending an autopsy.

The Herbert Kania Pediatric Group declined to comment when contacted by News12 about the incident.

Melody could well have received six vaccines on her final well-child visit, not three, as the DTaP-Hib-IPV vaccine shown on her paperwork is likely the Pentacel 5-in-1 vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, and H influenza type B, according to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Research Scientist Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D.

In their book, “Vax-Unvax: Let the Science Speak,” Brian S. Hooker, Ph.D., senior director of science and research at CHD, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave, shared a study showing that infants died within 3 days of a DTP (diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis) vaccine at 7.3 times the rate of those who died 30 days after or later.

Dr. Elizabeth Mumper, president and CEO of The Rimland Center For Integrative Medicine, told The Defender:

“A previously healthy baby died in an Emergency room after suffering a respiratory arrest. Her labs showed elevated enzymes in the liver, heart and muscle, suggesting catastrophic damage. Her electrolytes were abnormal, suggesting her body lost the ability to maintain homeostasis — a balance of body chemistry.

“In investigating sudden deaths in babies, it is crucial to consider all possible causes. In this case, the baby had 4 vaccines 2 days prior. Sudden death is one of the ‘unavoidable unsafe’ reactions to vaccines, and should be considered in the differential diagnosis of what happened to this beautiful baby.

“Analysis of VAERS safety data shows a clustering of ‘sudden infant death syndrome’ cases in the days just following vaccinations. My heart goes out to the family.”

‘Just a coincidence’: Doctors dismissed previous vaccine reaction

Palombi believes the three vaccines Melody received may have overwhelmed her daughter’s body.

She told The Defender Melody developed a fever of 104° within 24 hours of receiving her immunizations at 2 months old. She also suffered a rash all over her body that lasted several days.

Palombi visited two medical centers and her pediatrician, but doctors at the time said a virus was likely to blame for the fever and rash, she said.

“I just kept telling them she just had vaccines,” Palombi said. “And before this, she was fine. There was nothing wrong. They told me, well, it’s just a coincidence that she had vaccines.”

When Melody’s fever had not cleared after a week or so, Palombi called the doctors again and was told Melody had a urinary tract infection.

Melody was not hospitalized during this time, Palombi told The Defender.

‘Trust your gut’

Palombi advised other parents in her News12 interview, “Trust your gut and don’t let them push anything on to your children that you don’t want to do.”

“I just want to keep educating parents on the dangers of vaccines, encourage them to spread them out, give them when the child is older, or get tested for the gene,” Palombi told The Defender.

She referred to the methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, or MTHFR, genetic mutation, one of several variations believed to predispose some children to bad reactions to vaccines.

Palombi told The Defender that the publicity about Melody’s death may have already saved a child.

A mother recently reached out to her, saying her 2-month-old child was having an extreme reaction to a vaccine. “The baby was passing blood in the stool and everything else,” she said.

“So I told her, ‘You need to get the baby back to the emergency room immediately,’” Palombi said. “And she did. The pediatrician admitted to this mom, ‘If you didn’t bring the baby in, the baby would have been dead by Monday.’”

Another woman reached out to Palombi to say her grandson died at 6 months old after a well-child visit. “They told her it was SIDS [sudden infant death syndrome],” she said. “That’s not what it is.”

“It’s so sad to keep hearing that I’m not the only one,” she said.

Palmobi said her family is coping the best it can. “It’s hard to focus on anything besides Melody. We can’t believe how this could happen. We’re just completely heartbroken.”

“I think I’m getting by day to day focusing on spreading awareness,” she said.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/melody-rain-palombi-malmgren-death-vaccination/

Episode 12: Towards a New Communist Civilization

The Rise of Communism from Marx to Lenin

Dr Vejas Gabriel Liulevius (2019)

Film Review

This final lecture concerns initial efforts to create a “proletarian” culture in the years prior to Lenin’s death in 1924. There was considerable debate among Bolshevik intellectuals whether the Soviet Union should adopt traditional “bourgeois” art and thought or discard it and start over. Lenin himself denounced the notion of proletarian culture. He thought is was adequate for the Russian proletariat to adopt European culture. Trotsky also officially pronounced that there there was no such thing as proletarian culture and never would be.

Many Soviet intellectuals were extremely disillusioned with the Bolsheviks’ violent suppression of the Kronstadt uprising. The latter were among the strongest supporters of the October revolution.

Despite Lenin’s and Trotsky’s condemnation of “proletarian” culture, the Bolsheviks permitted a Proletkult association to be formed to “unleash the creative forces” of “ordinary people.” It funded workshops and clubs focused on art and literature, as well as studios, theaters and 23 journals. By 1920 it had a half a million members. Despite its continual demands for more more state funding and more autonomy, Lenin insisted it remain subordinate to the Bolshevik government.

Meanwhile the Bolsheviks adopted the Western calendar and spelling reforms as well as adult literacy programs to increase political awareness. All school were nationalized.

They also initiated programs supporting the languages and cultures for the ethnic minorities who made up 50% of the Soviet Union’s population. In 1922, Stalin, a Georgian, the general secretary for minorities. This enabled him to use patronage to establish a substantial power base.

The status of women improved after the Bolsheviks granted them full equal rights, as well as improved access to divorce and abortions. The Bolsheviks also set up collective kitchens and daycare to facilitate women’s entry into employment. In addition to nationalizing all housing, the Bolsheviks also built communal apartments with shared Kitchens and toilets. Yet Bolshevik leadership remained overwhelmingly male.

During the civil war, the government ordered propaganda trains to put on plays and movies across the country to ensure support for the Bolsheviks. They also built support by alternating between mass party drives and purges of dissidents. Although Lenin banned all Communist part factions in 1921, there were still waves of dissent.

Despite his personal belief that religion would “fade away,” Lenin allowed the Cheka to arrest clergy and deport religious intellectuals.

Suppression of dissident thought is reflected in Russian literature from the period. In 1920 former Bolshevik Yegeng Zamyatin wrote dystopian science fiction about the controlled future of a collective state (which inspired 1984).

Boris Pasternak wrote Dr Zhivago. Former Bolshevik Activist Angelica Balabanov wrote My Life as a Rebel. Poet Vladimir Mayakovsky shot himself.

Lenin never fully recovered after being shot. In 1922 he suffered the first of several strokes that cost him his ability to speak. Although he was totally incapacitated the last year of his life, his wife helped him put together Notes for a Last Testament, which was full of misgivings about the direction the Bolshevik revolution had taken. He despised Stalin, who he described as rude, crude and unfit for office.

After his death on January 21, 1924, the Bolsheviks mummified his body to place on permanent display in a mausoleum they built in his honor.* Stalin used the body, which is still re-embalmed every other year, to enhance his own power by establishing a cult of personality around the former Bolshevik leader. In many homes, portraits of Lenin replace the religious Icons previously found pre-revolution Russian homes.

*The bodies of other great communist leaders were also mummified, including Mao, Ho Chi Minh, the North Korean leaders Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Bulgarian and Czech communist leaders.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/11239598/11239624

Image via AP

Zero Hedge

A revolt is brewing within the Biden administration over how the White House is handling the Israel-Gaza war, as the civilian death toll and mass Palestinian displacement soars, and as Biden’s top officials continue to say “no conditions” have been placed on how Israel uses US-supplied weapons. Pressure from the press pool is also piling on, with near daily spats and antagonistic back-and-forth exchanges on display in the State Department and White House briefing rooms.

This week there have emerged reports of scathing ‘dissent memos’ criticizing White House Israel policy being circulated, collecting many hundreds of signatures chiefly from among State Department and USAID staff. A primary theme of the pushback and pressure is that President Biden must change course on the Gaza crisis.

First, on Monday Politico obtained and published portions of a memo issued by State Department personnel giving a blistering critique which according to the publication argued that “among other things, the U.S. should be willing to publicly criticize the Israelis.”

It was issued after the Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, repeatedly made clear that the US does not back a ceasefire, but is only sheepishly calling for brief humanitarian ‘pauses’. Politico points out the memo represents a “growing loss of confidence” among Biden’s corps of diplomats:

The message suggests a growing loss of confidence among U.S. diplomats in President Joe Biden’s approach to the Middle East crisis. It reflects the sentiments of many U.S. diplomats, especially at mid-level and lower ranks, according to conversations with several department staffers as well as other reports. If such internal disagreements intensify, it could make it harder for the Biden administration to craft policy toward the region.

The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private.

The memo, marked “sensitive but unclassified’ was sure to leak, and that was likely the point. It bluntly underscores that Biden’s policy is hurting America’s standing in the world as much of global opinion has been appalled at the Gaza death toll which this week surpassed 10,500.

The memo sates that the gap between Biden officials’ private and public messaging “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, U.S. interests worldwide.”

“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the dissent memo continues. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.”

Next, hundreds of staffers at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have issued a letter calling for an “immediate ceasefire” while also criticizing the White House’s failure to hold Israel accountable in any way for “numerous violations of international law” and the huge numbers of Gaza civilian casualties, especially among women and children.

The USAID staffers are also outraged that the US last month vetoed a UN Security Council resolution which sought a pause in fighting in order to allow humanitarian aid to get through to the Gaza Strip. The USAID dissent memo, which also went public by the middle of this week, includes the following:

“We believe that further catastrophic loss of human life can only be avoided if the United States Government calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, the release of Israeli hostages, and the restoration of water, food, fuel, and electricity to the people of Gaza by the State of Israel,” it reads.

“In the longer term, we call on the United States Government to join the international community and human rights organizations in holding all parties, including the State of Israel, to international law, which includes ending Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and settlements on occupied land.”

Publicly, President Biden is coming under most pressure from a tiny handful of outspoken Progressive Democrats in Congress (the Squad), but the more significant pushback appears to be coming from within his own administration. Increasingly, bold public statements from Israeli leaders themselves have introduced huge, obvious contradictions between the White House’s rhetoric and that of Netanyahu’s government, which is much more open about its intent in Gaza…

On Thursday, CNN issued a new investigative report quoting senior White House staffers as saying they increasingly “cannot stomach” defending Biden’s policy anymore. The report also describes “great moral anxiety” – in the words of one unnamed senior admin official, who is quoted in the following:

Angst, unease and outrage are spreading through corners of the Biden administration as Israeli forces show no signs of letting up their relentless attacks inside Gaza and the civilian death toll in the besieged enclave – already in the thousands – continues to climb.

One month into the Israel-Hamas war, some senior officials privately say there are aspects of Israel’s military operations they simply cannot stomach defending; calls for the US to back a ceasefire are growing among government employees; and others are distraught by the incessant images of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israeli airstrikes, multiple sources told CNN.

“It has created great moral anxiety,” said one senior administration official. “But no one can say it because we all work at the pleasure of the president and he’s all in.”

More high level resignations could come as a result, which will certainly only increase the pressure on Biden’s team while headed into an election year, already has his poll numbers are at record lows.

CNN notes that a full-on revolt is underway in the State Department: “Some of the fiercest backlash has come from inside the State Department, including an official who publicly resigned from the agency last month over the Biden’s administration’s approach to the conflict,” the report says. “Elsewhere in the administration, officials are quietly fuming as the civilian death toll mounts.”

The Democratic base too, could increasingly shift to become more sympathetic to the unrelenting denunciations issued by the Squad. Progressives and protesters are calling Biden “genocide Joe” – as CNN describes further:

Reminders of emotions running high have not been hard to come by. The president was confronted by a protester calling for a ceasefire at a private fundraiser last week; pro-Palestinian protests have been a daily occurrence near the White House compound; and this week, one of the entrances near the West Wing was covered in bright-red handprints – meant to mimic blood – and words like “genocide Joe.”

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-aides-simply-cannot-stomach-bidens-israel-policy-dissent-memos-leak-revolt

Canada Talks Israel-Palestine

Over 1000 Israeli civilians were brutally killed on October 7th during the sneak breakout by Hamas fighters. Panic ensued and many atrocities were committed. Israel claimed all the victims were the result of Hamas’ antisemitic savagery. But contradictory evidence has surfaced. The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has called for an independent investigation. Israel has denied him access to investigate. Read more…

“Since the 7th of October, I intensified my efforts to get in and access the locations where crimes were committed in Israel”, wrote Karim A. A. Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in a written statement, “and I’ve similarly made every effort to enter Gaza, but it has not been possible.“

Israel has refused to join the ICC and has always opposed Palestinian membership because it fears what an ICC investigation would find.

Khan’s October 30th statement came as questions are arising over the veracity of the Israeli narrative of the deaths being caused by crazed antisemitic Hamas terrorists rampaging through Israeli towns. This story has been the principal moral justification for its murderous month-long assault on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel’s Defence Minister has called the Hamas fighters “human animals”. Israel has carried out a very effective public relations campaign in Western countries showing gruesome pictures of civilian casualties. It has shown foreign journalists videos of murdered victims. And even taken the videos to Hollywood.

Disconcertingly, however, Israel has not allowed any foreign journalists to have copies of the videos to study. Israel claims it is because the videos are too upsetting for the relatives of the victims. But independent forensic evalulation of video evidence is commonplace in criminal investigations and is accepted practice in serious journalism.

At first the Israeli propaganda campaign included lurid atrocity tales – for which no evidence has been produced whatsoever – claiming that Palestinians beheaded dozens of Israeli babies and that women were raped. Some of those accusations have been walked back, but that does not stop them from continuing to circulate as fact on social media.

Who did it?

There does not seem to be any doubt that many atrocities were committed. But exactly what happened on October 7th is less clear.

Reports have circulated indicating that not all of the Israeli casualties were caused by Hamas fighters. Yasmin Porat, a Kibbutz Be’eri survivor told Israeli radio that Israeli security forces “undoubtedly” killed a large number of their own civilians. (The full interview is here).

Other reports quote accounts published in the Israeli media that Israeli tanks shelled houses where Hamas fighters were holding Israeli hostages – under the so-called “Hannibal Directive,” a controversial procedure used by Israeli Defense Forces to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces.

These cracks in the official narrative appear to be causing concern in Israel. “Denial of Hamas Oct 7th massacre is gaining pace”, noted an article in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Discounting this counternarrative as “fake news”, the Haaretz article worried about what it called “conspiracy theories” that “Hamas didn’t plan to kill civilians and mainly targeted soldiers, that atrocities such as rape and beheadings didn’t take place, and that most of the civilians murdered were actually killed in an exchange of fire or by the Israeli army.”

“We have to be careful about these (Israeli) allegations’, argues former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, (see interview at 25 min mark) in an interview with Danny Haiphong. Ritter investigated the now debunked US claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He also spent many years posted in Israel and knows the IDF rather well. Ritter said dramatic claims like these are a common element of war propaganda.

What is known and what is not known?

According to reports, the Gaza breakout began at dawn (6:30 AM). Palestinian fighters flew paragliders over the Israeli barrier fence, attacking Israeli army communications towers and automated gun turrets. With these defenses disabled, they breached the fence with bulldozers at several points.  Massed fighters then crossed into Israel in trucks and on motorcycles. It is estimated that 1,200-1,500 Palestinian fighters took part in the operation. Over 1000 were killed or taken prisoner. Another 500 apparently returned to Gaza, taking a number of hostages with them.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters almost certainly committed massacres.  There are videos of fighters in uniform killing Israeli civilians. There are also videos of Palestinians taking Israeli civilian hostages back into Gaza. But by 10:30 AM, according to the Israeli military, most of the Hamas forces from the original invasion wave had already left, while looters, common onlookers and low-level guerrillas flowed freely into Israel – some of them picking up discarded weapons and going on a rampage.

Furthermore, several testimonies by Israeli military and civilian witnesses indicate that the Israeli military killed its own citizens as it fought to regain control. Israeli army photos of Kibbutz Be’eri tend to confirm Porat’s account, cited above, revealing damage to homes so extensive it could not possibly have been caused by the light weapons that the Palestinian fighters carried.

Israeli Apache attack helicopter pilots stated that they fired a huge amount of munitions, emptied the “belly of the helicopter” in minutes, flew to re-arm and returned to the air, again and again. The Israeli military ordered an airstrike against its own facility inside the Erez Crossing, filled with Israeli Civil Administration officers and soldiers at the time. CBC also reported that Israeli forces demolished the Sderot police headquarters with bulldozers, killing everyone, captors and hostages alike, inside.

What should be done?

The issue of what happened on October 7th is a life or death issue for thousands of Palestinians. The Israeli claim that Hamas was responsible for all of the atrocities and was motivated by an insatiable anti-semitism is fuelling the Israeli bombing campaign. Western countries who uncritically accept the Israeli claim are standing by as Israel kills more and more Palestinians. An urgent investigation is needed.

Canada should demand an immediate ceasefire, and join with the rest of the world community to demand that Israel allow the international Criminal Court, of which Canada is a founder, to carry out a complete and independent investigation of the events of October 7th.

[…]

Via https://canadatalksisraelpalestine.ca/2023/11/13/what-really-happened-on-october-7th-icc-chair-calls-for-investigation/

Madison Area Lyme Support Group

Under the auspice of reaching the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs), and the WHO’s “One Health” Pandemic Treaty, a digital public infrastructure (DPI), is necessary.

https://rumble.com/v3uxm6p-eu-declares-citizens-who-refuse-use-bill-gates-digital-id-will-be-excluded-.html  Video Here (Approx. 11 Min)

It’s all part of the plan.

Vice-Chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group and Independent MEP and Netherlands politician, Robert Roos, appears at 1:35 with the statement that the European Parliament and member states reached an agreement to mandatorily roll out Digital ID, which is the complete digital identification of everything – money, health, energy, and travel.  Framed as “for your safety and convenience,” it will control and surveil you and is all about power and greed.

Its inbuilt features are designed to exclude people from participating in society if they do not comply with the globalist agenda

If you didn’t hear about this, that’s because mainstream media in the U.S. isn’t covering it.  Further, the Biden Admin, which uses all the right buzz words including “inclusivity,” is completely behind the ID wallet and unless we spread the word and speak out against it – it will be coming soon to a town near you.

The mastermind behind the system is none other than accused child rapist Bill Gates who has made Africa and India his experimental playground and has sterilized hundreds of thousands of young girls in India with the HPV vaccine (among other crimes).  The website “Awaken India Movement” has great resources on CBDCs, 5G, COVID treatments, and research on many topics.

The People’s Voice has been warning for years that a key plan in the globalist agenda involves Digital IDs and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) to lock humanity in a digital prison – and the European Union has just admitted that they were right all along.

The elite have always denied all of this, describing anybody who dared to expose their plans as “conspiracy theorists” who need to be muzzled, frozen out of society, and in some cases thrown in prison.

But now the globalists are making their move.

Despite the technology being available back in 2015, the globalists have been very careful, utilizing perfect timing to soften the public to the notion “trusting the authorities” who desire compliant slaves.

Initially, Digital IDs will be implemented through phone-based apps; however, the end goal will be a chip under the skin that resembles a small grain of rice.

This also explains why Universal Basic Income is also imperative to the nefarious plan, as money will be the dangling carrot in front of everyone’s nose to force compliance.  If you felt pressure to take the jab to keep your job, that will pale in comparison to this global take-over.

China already has already implemented the dystopian technology and is the ultimate example the globalists desire.  You may falsely believe that somehow you will be protected by the Constitution; however, this global monopoly will give the UN, WHO, WEF sweeping power and control that supersedes the Constitution.  Further, there is an important distinction between human rights and inalienable rights.  Many are unaware that human rights are actually “permissions” bestowed by governing authorities that can be removed.  Inalienable rights; however, are innate to each of us and are given by Natural Law, or God’s Law and can not be removed by governing bodies.

Economist Richard Werner sits down with Ivor Cummins, aka the Fat Emperor, and discusses CBDCs, and is known as a Central Bank Watcher.

http://  Approx. 3 Min

[…]

Via https://madisonarealymesupportgroup.com/2023/11/13/eu-parliament-agrees-on-mandatory-rollout-of-dystopian-digital-id-are-we-next/

By Michael Maharrey

John Adams warned us that if we give government an inch, it will take a mile.

“The nature of the encroachment upon the American Constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour.”

We’ve seen this play out dramatically when it comes to the Fourth Amendment.

The courts have created all kinds of exceptions to the Fourth Amendment. But the government continues to push for more and look for ways to circumvent the restrictions on searches and seizures currently in place.

In the latest ploy to gobble up as much personal information as possible, state and federal law enforcement agencies have turned to buying information from private data miners. According to a report from LawFare Media, buyers of private data include the Department of Homeland Security, the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations Division, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and police departments across the country.

If government agents collect the same data directly from cell phones or internet providers, they would have to get a warrant. However, government attorneys argue that purchasing data from private brokers does not violate the Fourth Amendment because once the data becomes “public,” the expectation of privacy disappears. Furthermore, most user agreements stipulate that third parties may collect data. Since customers agree to the TOS, government lawyers contend that they effectively give up their right to privacy.

According to LawFare, there was a big uptick in government data purchases after the Supreme Court opinion in Carpenter v. U.S. prohibited warrantless collection of cell phone location data.

 “It’s likely that Carpenter’s prohibition motivated agencies to purchase the location data they could no longer obtain for free. This data can be quite useful in criminal investigations.”

Activist Post is Google-Free — We Need Your Support
Contribute Just $1 Per Month at Patreon or SubscribeStar

In fact, this kind of data isn’t readily available to the public. Most information is anonymized and aggregated. However, some private companies give government agencies access to specific data from specific devices. As LawFare explains, “The companies selling these services market and sell exclusively to law enforcement and often participate in the surveillance process by helping to deanonymize cell phones or track individual users. There’s no store where members of the public and cops can go to buy personal data about individuals. The reality is something far different and much more familiar—specialized vendors selling advanced surveillance tools to government agencies.”

Many of these companies keep their activities under wraps by requiring non-disclosure agreements. Some even prohibit law enforcement agencies from mentioning them during court proceedings. To work around this problem, investigators often reverse engineer cases, secretly using purchased data to generate leads and then getting warrants to legally “discover” information they already collected warrantlessly.

WHAT TO DO?

We can’t depend on courts to rein in data purchasing. Courts tend to defer to government arguments when it comes to criminal investigations. And given the current state of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and the erosion of privacy protections by court precedent, the argument that there is “no expectation of privacy” could easily prevail.

Instead of hoping courts will protect us, we should adopt a different strategy – advance state and local laws prohibiting law enforcement agencies from obtaining or using data sold by third parties without a warrant.

Even if courts allow it, specific prohibitions against obtaining or using warrantless data stop the process in its tracks. While the success of legislative initiatives isn’t guaranteed, people can wield significant influence over their elected representatives, especially at the local and state levels. This is a much better strategy than depending on the whim of unaccountable federal judges.

By prohibiting law enforcement agencies from “obtaining” warrantless data, states and localities can also stop data shared by other state and federal agencies.

Constitution Owner’s Manual: The Real Constitution Politicians Don’t Want You to Know About

It has become standard practice for law enforcement agencies to upload warrantless surveillance data gathered at the state level to federal fusion centers operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies. Fusion centers serve as clearinghouses for all kinds of information shared between federal, state and local law enforcement agencies—including data gathered by surveillance cameras, drones, intercepted cellphone and email communications, social network spying, as well as ALPRs and other invasive modes of surveillance. The DHS funds and ultimately runs 79 fusion centers across the U.S. The DHS describes homeland security intelligence/information fusion as the ”…process of managing the flow of information to support the rapid identification of emerging terrorism-related threats requiring intervention by government and private-sector authorities.”

Fusion centers were sold as a tool to combat terrorism, but that is not how they are being used. The ACLU pointed to a bipartisan congressional report to demonstrate the true nature of government fusion centers: “They haven’t contributed anything meaningful to counterterrorism efforts. Instead, they have largely served as police surveillance and information sharing nodes for law enforcement efforts targeting the frequent subjects of police attention: Black and brown people, immigrants, dissidents, and the poor.”

Above Phone De-Googled Private Communications: SHOP

Fusion centers operate within a broader federal system known as the “information sharing environment” or ISE. According to its website, the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and investigators…have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant. Known ISE partners include the Office of Director of National Intelligence which oversees 17 federal agencies and organizations, including the NSA. ISE utilizes these partnerships to collect and share data on the millions of unwitting people they track.

When states limit the data and information law enforcement agencies can collect, it minimizes the amount of information and data that can end up in this federal information-sharing pipeline. Simply put if the data is never gathered in the first place, it can’t be shared.

Via https://www.activistpost.com/2023/11/police-circumventing-warrant-requirements-by-purchasing-data-from-private-vendors.html

Edward J Curtin Jr

Dear Bobby,

As you know, I have supported your bid for the presidency even before you declared last spring.  I have admired and believed in you for years, and when you entered the race I felt hope for the first time in decades that your non-violent impulses, honed by your tragic family history and a deep revulsion for our country’s imperial wars and violent history, would triumph and usher in a new era of peace.  Despite the naysayers who dismissed you from the start, I said Yes, that you would shock those who ridiculed and maligned you and that you would be the man to carry out President Kennedy’s American University speech and fulfill his and your father’s legacy of “not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women” because “we all breathe the same air” and “we all cherish our children’s futures” and “we are all mortal.”

I suggested that you would heal the divide and not expand it.  Seeing you stumble on your way by throwing your full support to the Zionist leaders of Israel has been a body blow to me.  At first I thought it might be explained by your reaction to the false antisemitic accusations that were hurled your way once word emerged that you might enter the presidential race.  But as time went on it dawned on me that I was wrong and that you were in sync with the powerful Israel Lobby.  So now, I feel as if we are in the tenth round of fight for your soul’s compassion.  That you have not defended the children of Gaza and condemned their massacre by the thousands has shocked and sickened me.

As a scholar of religion and its intersection with politics, I have been meditating on current events.

Religion has for a very long time been used as a cover for slaughtering people and seizing their land. This is true for the United States and Israel. It is built into their theological underpinnings.  So it should not be at all surprising that the current Israeli massacre of Palestinians is fully supported by the U.S. government led by President Joseph Biden and by almost every presidential aspirant.  You, however, as a self-styled anti-war candidate are a great surprise to me, although I may be naïve and shouldn’t be since you gave your unequivocal support to the Israel government a month ago, following the October 7 Hamas-led incursion into Israel that killed innocent Israelis (many of whom were also probably killed by the IDF as Jonathan Cooke has reported).  Despite that, I still expected your conscience would surely prompt you to condemn what can only be described as genocide, the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza that is ongoing.

You have undermined your claim to “end the forever wars” and to defend children.  Why you have done (or not done) this is a question that so many of your supporters and former supporters are asking.  Only you can say.  Perhaps we might only know if you unequivocally condemned Israel’s actions and faced whatever might come your way as a result.  This is unlikely, I now realize, but one can still hope. I think it would take a spiritual miracle of moral courage, because of your claim that your historical analysis that you say is sincere and true that Israel now and always has been the just and innocent party and the Palestinians the evil ones. I find your analysis unbelievable and your silence as innocents are being slaughtered indefensible, even as I applaud so many of your other positions, as you know.  Everyone knows that running for the U.S. presidency creates strange bedfellows, but your touting of the Israeli propaganda in which you conflate the Palestinian people with Hamas to justify massacring civilians is beyond strange – it is immoral.

I know how much you respect Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and you no doubt have heard his words before.

“And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular – but one must take it simply because it is right.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

Conscience calls to you, Bobby.  Be true to that voice within.  Politic as it may be, there is a heavy burden of guilt for abandoning the Palestinians to slaughter by silence.  King learned this when he saw those photos of the napalmed and dead Vietnamese children and was conscience-stricken to come to Riverside Church in New York to give his speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence.”  You can do the same.  The pictures of dead Palestinian children, victims of U.S. support for Israeli bombs, are there to see.  Martin quoted your uncle, John, that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”  He said that we can no longer worship the God of hate and retribution.  He said, “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted.”

You too, Bobby, can break your silence, step up high and let your conscience also leave you no other choice but to condemn the genocide in Gaza.  As Martin said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

You say you are making “a moral case for Israel” as the justified party in its seventy-five year long war with the Palestinians.  In doing so you have reneged on your campaign promise to emulate President John Kennedy, who would be appalled by your silence. Your website, Kennedy 24, declares that “[you] Kennedy will revive a lost thread of American foreign policy thinking, the one championed by his uncle, John F. Kennedy who, over his 1000 days in office, had become a firm anti-imperialist.”  In genuflecting to the Israel genocide while touting your connection to JFK and your father, Senator Robert Kennedy, you have in fact taken a position toward Israel diametrically opposed to theirs.  One could sense this coming when under pressure this past summer, you withdrew your support for Roger Waters, a strong Palestinian supporter who was falsely accused of being anti-Jewish, and you then allowed your “friend” Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to say that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian, killed your father in 1968 when you knew that was a lie and was part of a sophisticated intelligence conspiracy to blame the patsy who was said to hate Israel.  To allow Shmuley to audaciously and heartlessly repeat a CIA trope about your father’s assassination was a telltale sign of worse to come.

For both the U.S. and Israel, the Bible has been used to cover up the crimes of their foundings.  They have analogous histories rooted in religious myths.  In both cases, the indigenous peoples were considered less than human – savages, infidels – or in the description of Palestinians by the current Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, “human animals.”  Such racist, dehumanizing language has been repeated time and again throughout the American and Israeli narratives used to justify their crimes against those they killed and whose land they stole.  The gloss of civilized hypocrisy has been unmasked by such language, just as it was when Hitler repeatedly called Jews “vermin.”  Irony aside, the Nazi rhetoric of denigration and racial superiority to justify exterminating Jewish people has been repeatedly mirrored by American and Israeli leaders, whether it was against the Original Free Peoples of North America, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc. or the Palestinians.  It is the master/slave mentality deeply rooted in U.S. and Israel history.

[…]

Via https://edwardcurtin.com/an-epistle-to-robert-f-kennedy-jr/