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Fear, faith, hope and love…

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What is more powerful, love or fear?

Or are they two sides of the same coin?

In truth, biblically speaking, the opposite of love is fear, as it is written in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment.”

This year, like in any other civilization, in any country, in any regime, when a great and dangerous threat has reared its ugly head, fear leads the charge and love, faith and hope are often left aside and discarded. In our media obsessed world, faith, hope and love do not make good headlines, but words like Panic, Death, Pestilence and Fear have always spread faster than good news.

Even in biblical times, the phrase, “wars and rumors of wars,” is used to warn of the end of the age. Today, we are slightly more sophisticated, and use Pandemic…Escalation…Terrorist and other charged words rife with dramatic imagery we easily imagine.

Panic and a lack of balance in our media creates lies that are more powerful than the truth.

With the Covid 19 crisis, the spread of the latest respiratory ailment that seems to either be a fast-moving natural virus OR a well planned conspiratory illness designed to spread through the world for an un-defined purpose. Yet missing in the complete domination of our news cycle of the effect of Covid 19 on professional sports, conventions, shopping and employment is the subtle thread that speaks of patience, personal cleanliness and real facts that tell an important part of the story.

For instance, Covid 19 had been less dangerous than the influenza, smoking, cancer and abortion death rates. Where is the ban on cigarette and vape sales? With the millions of unborn children stilled, where is the outrage? Where is the absolute hysteria over ONE child that will never utter its first cry to waiting parents? Where is the statistical breakdown by age of deaths and infections of this life- threatening virus?

Why is this particular virus so special?

What is the role of pharmaceutical companies business model in prevention and treatment? Is profit driving response models?

What are the true facts about this hybrid virus that seems to possess symptoms influenza and a common cold share? In our world of genetically modified foods and cloning, it is not unreasonable to imagine a circumstance where it may indeed have been created in a laboratory, almost like gene editing.

While the illness can be deadly to those who already possess possible morbidities, those who are healthy will most likely wait out the two week period and move on with their lives, a little more cautious and perhaps with a longer term stressed immune system.

Culturally speaking, we have seen incredible repercussions such as stock market collapses, cancelation of sports leagues, school shut downs, travel bans, large group event bans, medical equipment and supply shortages, runs on toilet paper, near paranoia over simple coughs, self isolation of government leaders, tourists and amidst this rampant over-reaction, the economic implication of a fuel war between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Toss in the environmental extremism of Extinction Rebellion and there is no place to go where there is faith, hope and love to lean on!

However, that is indeed the subterfuge behind the headlines.

It is only in calm, confidence that truth is presented and listened to. Amidst the noise of the cacophonous crowds crying Wolf, the loudest of the loud are heard and responded to.

Until the dreaded Covid 19 fades away, just like SARS, the Swine Flu and other health scourges, we will be subject to over-reaction from the left and abuse being heaped on those who try to see down the middle with calmness.

Rush, Canada’s legendary rock band, penned a trilogy of songs that include the lyric, “And the things that we fear, are a weapon to be used against us,” a tactic that is seemingly on our doorsteps and computer screens.

In fact, a cursory survey of international headlines quickly validates the biological weaponization of Covid 19 with the near complete paralysation of the world.

The real casualty of Covid 19 is not the comparatively small fatality rate, but rather our society that has just now crawled down into a media driven hole fraught with false narratives, laser focused headline driven content that presents extremism as representative of society as a whole.

Just as I started this peace, the real victims just may be those who cling to faith, hope and love despite a world around them that is clinging to wars and rumors of wars, death and desperation so tightly that as their lifeboat bobbles in the Atlantic, they miss the fact that the son will indeed rise in the morning and it will be a grand new day.

Faith, Hope and Love to all of you.

Tim Lasiuta

Lost in the Pandemic

 

Tim Lasiuta is a Red Deer writer, entrepreneur and communicator. He has interests in history and the future for our country.

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Pentagon agency to simulate lockdowns, mass vaccinations, public compliance messaging

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From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

With lockdowns, mass vaccination campaigns, and social distancing still on the table from the last around, it appears that AI and Machine Learning will play a much bigger role in the next.

DARPA is getting into the business of simulating disease outbreaks, including modeling interventions such as mass vaccination campaigns, lockdowns, and communication strategies.

At the end of May, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put out a Request for Information (RFI) seeking information regarding “state-of-the-art capabilities in the simulation of disease outbreaks.”

The Pentagon’s research and development funding arm wants to hear from academic, industry, commercial, and startup communities on how to develop “advanced capabilities that drive technical innovation and identify critical gaps in bio-surveillance, diagnostics, and medical countermeasures” in order to “improve preparedness for future public health emergencies.”

As if masks, social distancing, lockdowns, and vaccination mandates under the unscientific guise of slowing the spread and preventing the transmission of COVID weren’t harmful enough, the U.S. military wants to model the effects of these exact same countermeasures for future outbreaks.

The RFI also asks participants “Fatality Rate & Immune Status: How are fatality rates and varying levels of population immunity (natural or vaccine-induced) incorporated into your simulations?“

Does “natural or vaccine-induced” relate to “population immunity” or “fatality rates” or both?

Moving on, the RFI gets into modeling lockdowns, social distancing, and mass vaccination campaigns, along with communication strategies:

Intervention Strategies: Detail the range of intervention strategies that can be modeled, including (but not limited to) vaccination campaigns, social distancing measures, quarantine protocols, treatments, and public health communication strategies. Specifically, describe the ability to model early intervention and its impact on outbreak trajectory.

The fact that DARPA wants to model these so-called intervention strategies just after the entire world experienced them suggests that these exact same measures will most likely be used again in the future:

“We are committed to developing advanced modeling capabilities to optimize response strategies and inform the next generation of (bio)technology innovations to protect the population from biological threats. We are particularly focused on understanding the complex interplay of factors that drive outbreak spread and evaluating the effectiveness of potential interventions.” — DARPA, Advanced Disease Outbreak Simulation Capabilities RFI, May 2025.

“Identification of optimal timelines and capabilities to detect, identify, attribute, and respond to disease outbreaks, including but not limited to biosensor density deployment achieving optimal detection timelines, are of interest.” ­— DARPA, Advanced Disease Outbreak Simulation Capabilities RFI, May 2025.

With lockdowns, mass vaccination campaigns, and social distancing still on the table from the last around, it appears that AI and Machine Learning will play a much bigger role in the next.

For future innovation, the DARPA RFI asks applicants to: “Please describe any novel technical approaches – or applications of diverse technical fields (e.g., machine learning, artificial intelligence, complex systems theory, behavioral science) – that you believe would significantly enhance the state-of-the-art capabilities in this field or simulation of biological systems wholistically.”

Instead of putting a Dr. Fauci, a Dr. Birx, a replaceable CDC director, a TV doctor, a big pharma CEO, or a Cuomo brother out there to lie to your face about how they were all just following The ScienceTM, why not use AI and ML and combine them with behavioral sciences in order to concoct your “public health communications strategies?”

When you look at recently announced DARPA programs like Kallisti and MAGICS, which are aimed at creating an algorithmic Theory of Mind to model, predict, and influence collective human behavior, you start to get a sense of how all these programs can interweave:

“The MAGICS ARC calls for paradigm-shifting approaches for modeling complex, dynamic systems for predicting collective human behaviour.” — DARPA, MAGICS ARC, April 2025

On April 8, DARPA issued an Advanced Research Concepts (ARC) opportunity for a new program called “Methodological Advancements for Generalizable Insights into Complex Systems (MAGICS)” that seeks “new methods and paradigms for modeling collective human behavior.”

Nowhere in the MAGICS description does it mention modeling or predicting the behavior of “adversaries,” as is DARPA’s custom.

Instead, it talks at length about “modeling human systems,” along with anticipating, predicting, understanding, and forecasting “collective human behavior” and “complex social phenomena” derived from “sociotechnical data sets.”

Could DARPA’s MAGICS program be applied to simulating collective human behavior when it comes to the next public health emergency, be it real or perceived?

“The goal of an upcoming program will be to develop an algorithmic theory of mind to model adversaries’ situational awareness and predict future behaviour.” — DARPA, Theory of Mind Special Notice, December 2024.

In December 2024, DARPA launched a similar program called Theory of Mind, which was renamed Kallisti a month later.

The goal of Theory of Mind is to develop “new capabilities to enable national security decisionmakers to optimize strategies for deterring or incentivizing actions by adversaries,” according to a very brief special announcement.

DARPA never mentions who those “adversaries” are. In the case of a public health emergency, an adversary could be anyone who questions authoritative messaging.

The Theory of Mind program will also:

… seek to combine algorithms with human expertise to explore, in a modeling and simulation environment, potential courses of action in national security scenarios with far greater breadth and efficiency than is currently possible.

This would provide decisionmakers with more options for incentive frameworks while preventing unwanted escalation.

We are interested in a comprehensive overview of current and emerging technologies for disease outbreak simulation, how simulation approaches could be extended beyond standard modeling methods, and to understand how diseases spread within and between individuals including population level dynamics.

They say that all the modeling and simulating across programs is for “national security,” but that is a very broad term.

DARPA is in the business of research and development for national security purposes, so why is the Pentagon modeling disease outbreaks and intervention strategies while simultaneously looking to predict and manipulate collective human behavior?

If and when the next outbreak occurs, the same draconian and Orwellian measures that governments and corporations deployed in the name of combating COVID are still on the table.

And AI, Machine Learning, and the military will play an even bigger role than the last time around.

From analyzing wastewater to learning about disease spread; from developing pharmaceuticals to measuring the effects of lockdowns and vaccine passports, from modeling and predicting human behavior to coming up with messaging strategies to keep everyone in compliance – “improving preparedness for future public health emergencies” is becoming more militaristically algorithmic by the day.

“We are exploring innovative solutions to enhance our understanding of outbreak dynamics and to improve preparedness for future public health emergencies.” — DARPA, Advanced Disease Outbreak Simulation Capabilities RFI, May 2025.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Business

Audit report reveals Canada’s controversial COVID travel app violated multiple rules

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Canada’s Auditor General found that government procurement rules were not followed in creating the ArriveCAN app.

Canada’s Auditor General revealed that the former Liberal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau failed multiple times by violating contract procurement rules to create ArriveCAN, its controversial COVID travel app.

In a report released Tuesday, Auditor General Karen Hogan noted that between April 2015 to March 2024, the Trudeau government gave out 106 professional service contracts to GC Strategies Inc. This is the same company that made the ArriveCAN app.

The contracts were worth $92.7 million, with $64.5 million being paid out.

According to Hogan, Canada’s Border Services Agency gave four contracts to GC Strategies valued at $49.9 million. She noted that only 54 percent of the contracts delivered any goods.

“We concluded that professional services contracts awarded and payments made by federal organizations to GC Strategies and other companies incorporated by its co-founders were not in accordance with applicable policy instruments and that value for money for these contracts was not obtained,” Hogan said.

She continued, “Despite this, federal government officials consistently authorized payments.”

The report concluded that “Federal organizations need to ensure that public funds are spent with due regard for value for money, including in decisions about the procurement of professional services contracts.”

Hogan announced an investigation of ArriveCAN in November 2022 after the House of Commons voted 173-149 for a full audit of the controversial app.

Last year, Hogan published an audit of ArriveCAN and on Tuesday published a larger audit of the 106 contracts awarded to GC Strategies by 31 federal organizations under Trudeau’s watch.

‘Massive scandal,’ says Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said Hogan’s report on the audit exposed multiple improprieties.

“This is a massive scandal,” he told reporters Tuesday.

“The facts are extraordinary. There was no evidence of added value. In a case where you see no added value, why are you paying the bill?”

ArriveCAN was introduced in April 2020 by the Trudeau government and made mandatory in November 2020. The app was used by the federal government to track the COVID jab status of those entering the country and enforce quarantines when deemed necessary.

ArriveCAN was supposed to have cost $80,000, but the number quickly ballooned to $54 million, with the latest figures showing it cost $59.5 million.

As for the app itself, it was riddled with technical glitches along with privacy concerns from users.

LifeSiteNews has published a wide variety of reports related to the ArriveCAN travel app.

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