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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 8/24/21

It's Time For Our Freedom Passports!

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Message Thom Hartmann
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Reprinted from hartmannreport.com


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Now that the Pfizer vaccine has received full approval and is widely available across the US, it's time to back it up with a vaccine passport.

Those of us who did the right thing and got vaccinated are sick and tired of living a half-life because of all the covidiots out there who refuse to get vaccinated. Let them"stand on the outside" of American business and society "looking in" for a change.

No shoes, no shirt, no vaccine passport, no service.

Several states, including California and New York, have put into place their own "certificates of vaccination" that work on a smartphone, and Clear - that company that speeds you through the airport by checking biometrics like your fingerprints - has been offering a vaccine passport for months that is recognized by major sporting and entertainment venues, cruise lines and the State of Hawaii.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is already more than halfway down this road with their V-Safe program, which, with the smallest of tweaks and the addition of an inexpensive IOS and Android app, could almost instantly become a single national vaccine passport.

I got my first vaccine passport in 1979 when I traveled to Kenya, Uganda and had an onward ticket to Somalia on behalf of the Salem international relief organization.

To get on a plane to those countries, and then to get through their own passport control, I had to prove that I was immunized against cholera, yellow fever and typhoid, as I recall, and there might have been a few others (tetanus?); I remember the shots hurt like hell and made me sick as a dog for a day or two.

But that yellow card, with the proof of vaccination stamps in it, periodically updated, sat inside my passport for the next 20+ years and not only got me into multiple Third World countries on three continents, but also got me through US border stations and back into the United States from them.

The idea of vaccine passports is nothing new.

Although my kids didn't need them to get into school 40+ years ago (the schools just took your word for it), my grandchildren do today. There's pretty much not a school or summer camp in America that'll let a kid in without proof of vaccination against, at least, measles and a few other childhood diseases.

Right now the Biden administration is reportedly working with 17 different organizations and private companies to come up with some sort of vaccine passport that'll work for America, which is apparently why Newsmax's White House Correspondent calls the idea "totalitarian communism."

(Want to "own the cons"? Put photos on the passports and require states to allow them as voter ID. But, seriously")

IATA, the International Air Transport Association, which licensed the travel agency Louise and I owned in the 1980s and oversees international travel, is working on one, as is the office of World Tourism with the United Nations. IBM is developing a digital vaccine passport, and Clear's probably defines the state of the art (and they have a free version as well).

Israel rolled them out several months ago, and Denmark has announced they'll soon be doing the same.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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