Who suspected that Big Brother would come wearing a medical mask?
The British-based Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) claims it will “reserve the right” to cancel the accounts of customers who refuse to wear masks inside its U.K. branches.
HSBC, founded in 1865, has a policy of requiring masks within its premises unless visitors have a medical exemption.
The bank’s threat came when a spokesman for The Mirror told the outlet: “If you do visit us, please wear a face covering and maintain a safe distance from others. If individuals put themselves or our colleagues at risk, without a medical exemption, we reserve the right to withdraw their account.”
This is far from the first time HSBC has clamped down on account holders in a politically motivated way. In December, it froze the account of a church in Hong Kong that supported the pro-freedom movement there. The very same month, the bank froze the accounts of exiled Hong Kong lawmaker Ted Hui, along with those of his wife and parents. It is believed they took those actions under the orders of Chinese communist police.
Actions such as those prompted Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, to criticize HSBC for its enabling of China’s communist government.
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All of the major British supermarkets have also said they will refuse service to customers not wearing a mask unless they have a medical exemption. Some supermarkets, such as Tesco, also require visitors to do their shopping alone.
Coronavirus vaccine passports are currently being trialed in the U.K., with thousands of Britons receiving them. The passport comes in the form of a smartphone app developed by the biometric firm iProov in partnership with the cybersecurity company Mvine.
Breitbart News noted:
The trial is expected to be completed by March and will be overseen by two directors of public health in a local authority, yet to be announced. The stated goal of the project is to see how health passports can function as a means of tracking how many people have received the first or second dose of the vaccine.
… The chief executive of iProov, Andrew Bud claimed that it was “very important” that vaccination programmes should be tied with Britain’s socialised healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS).
The concept of coronavirus health passports was first floated by Health Secretary Matt Hancock in April, who said at the time: “We are looking at an immunity certificate. People who have had the disease have got the antibodies and then have immunity can show that and therefore get back as much as possible to normal life.”
European governments are showing increasing support for travel passes or vaccine passports. Denmark, for example, announced last week that it plans to roll out travel passes early this year.
On Wednesday, SchengenVisaInfo reported that Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, calling for the bloc to introduce a standardized vaccine passport for travel among member nations.
“The lengthy experience we have had on developing a common PLF [Passenger Locator Form] has shown us that there is an urgent need for a high-level EU-wide mobilization to move things forward,” Mitsotakis said.
The plight of the British is not very different from the situation that confronts Americans. In the aftermath of the Capitol Breach last week, the major social-media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, censored or outright banned President Trump and have purged the accounts of conservatives.
Meanwhile, Google and Apple combined to take Twitter-alternative Parler off their app stores, while Amazon finished the platform off by pulling the plug on their web hosting.
In light of such unabashed action by these corporations against the Right, the left-wing media has called for making corporations the “4th branch of government,” as they can act more swiftly to fight “extremism” than the existing government.
The western world is spiraling toward a global technocracy in which multinational corporations work hand-in-hand with the government and wipe out dissidents by employing a “social credit” system similar to the one used in Communist China. Anyone who does not go along with the ruling regime will be blocked from engaging in society, losing access to financial and food services, public utilities, telecommunication, and more.
