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GoFundMe Censors Grayzone Fundraiser

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 1, 2023

GoFundMe, the online fundraising platform, has come under fire for what appears to be an overt politicization of its services. In what is being broadly interpreted as an act of economic censorship, GoFundMe terminated a campaign organized by The Grayzone, a leftist and antiwar website led by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté.

The campaign aimed to generate funds for the reporting of Kit Klarenberg, Wyatt Reed, and Alex Rubenstein, had garnered $90,000 from over a thousand well-meaning individuals before GoFundMe abruptly pulled the plug.

The Grayzone reported it had garnered support from over 1,100 donors before GoFundMe decided to halt the disbursement of funds. An email from a member of the site’s Trust and Safety Team, known only as “Sabrina,” cited “external concerns” as the reason for the review of the fundraiser. Despite this, GoFundMe has provided no further details or updates since the initial communication on August 19.

“Our number one goal here is ensuring that the money from GoFundMe fundraisers always gets to the right place, so we really appreciate you helping us to make sure GoFundMe is a safe place to give,” Sabrina wrote in the email to The Grayzone.

The timing of this financial freeze is noteworthy, as it comes on the heels of sanctions imposed on The Grayzone’s managing editor, Wyatt Reed, by digital payment services Venmo and PayPal.

The incident spotlights the increasingly politicized nature of economic mechanisms, with GoFundMe emerging as an archetype of this unsettling trend.

By this point, GoFundMe is becoming renowned for its censorship. Last year, it extensively censored the civil liberties protests in Canada, and has even shut down campaigns from parents and students.

September 1, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

UN Publishes Final Draft of Declaration That Targets “Misinformation,” Backs WHO Pandemic Treaty

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 31, 2023

The United Nations (UN) is no fan of free speech and one of its plans to “address” so-called “misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization” is on the verge of being finalized.

This unelected intergovernmental organization, which wields significant influence over its 193 member states, recently published the final draft of its Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.

The final draft contains several agreements from heads of state and government to crack down on lawful speech. Additionally, it contains pledges from these heads of state and government to back two instruments that will give the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) enhanced powers to target “misinformation” and build out its surveillance networks.

These instruments, the international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), have been in the works since 2021 and despite facing major pushback, are on track to be completed by May 2024.

The final draft of this political declaration is being developed for the UN’s High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response which will take place on September 20, 2023 in New York. The political declaration outlined in this draft will be finalized at this meeting.

While UN political declarations aren’t usually legally binding, they do wield significant legal influence. According to the UN, declarations “represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and reflect the commitment of states to move in certain directions, abiding by certain principles.”

The proposed speech crackdowns are outlined in several sections of the final draft of this political declaration.

In section OP35, the heads of state and government agree to “take measures to counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms” and counter “vaccine hesitancy in the context of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” Additionally, section OP42 includes an agreement to combat “misinformation.”

The UN member states back the pandemic treaty in section OP15 and agree to encourage the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (the group that’s responsible for drafting and negotiating the pandemic treaty) to conclude their negotiations on the “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response” (the full name of the WHO’s pandemic treaty).

Not only do UN member states give explicit backing to the pandemic treaty and push for it to be finalized but they also encourage the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to prioritize the “need for equity.” Equity is framed by its proponents as something that encourages fairness but critics have warned that equity policies can lead to bias and the injection of “radical ideology.”

The support for the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) is contained in section OP16 of the final draft. This section encourages the working group that’s focused on these amendments to continue its work with respect to the intended finalization date of May 2024.

This political declaration is one of the many ways the UN is tightening its grip on speech. This year alone, it has started building a “digital army” to fight against “deadly disinformation”, encouraged people to snitch on each other for “hate speech”, and claimed that censoring “disinformation” and “hate speech” will protect “free speech.”

The UN has also consulted with several governments and blocs on their censorship work. Specifically, it has attended multiple “disinformation sessions” with a UK government censorship agency and held discussions with the European Union on how to address “disinformation” on digital platforms.

Related:

The UN Human Rights Council Turns Its Back on Free Speech

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Louisiana Attorney General Files Amicus Brief in CHD’s Landmark Suit Against Trusted News Initiative

The Defender – August 31, 2023

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday filed an amicus brief in support of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) groundbreaking lawsuit against the legacy news media members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI).

The lawsuit, filed May 31, alleges the TNI violated antitrust laws and the U.S. Constitution by colluding with tech giants, some of which also are members of the TNI, to censor online news.

An amicus brief is filed by non-parties to a lawsuit to provide information that has a bearing on the issues and to assist the court in reaching the correct decision.

According to Landry’s amicus brief:

“The scope of TNI group’s conspiracy is wide-ranging. Restricting disfavored information injures not merely the Plaintiffs, but also Louisiana residents and state officials.

“Louisiana officials need a free press to communicate with and understand the concerns of the State’s residents. Louisiana residents, in turn, need a free press to receive information and make up their own minds about what is true and what is false.

“The State has a strong interest in seeing the injuries the TNI group has inflicted on Louisiana officials and residents redressed.”

Jed Rubenfeld, lead attorney in CHD’s lawsuit, said Landry’s amicus brief “from the sovereign state of Louisiana is incredibly helpful to CHD’s historic case against TNI and in explicating Louisiana’s own compelling interests in its outcome.”

Landry in May 2022 helped bring a lawsuit against the Biden administration alleging key officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, colluded with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.

CHD and its chairman on leave, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in March filed a similar lawsuit against Biden administration officials, in a Louisiana district court. A federal judge last month consolidated the two cases.

TNI describes itself as an industry “partnership” formed during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. Its members include some of the world’s largest legacy news organizations including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft also are members of the TNI.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Jim Hoft (the Gateway Pundit), Dr. Joseph Mercola and seven others.

According to the complaint, one of TNI’s stated goals is to “choke off” and “stamp out” online news reporting that TNI or any of its members deems “misinformation.”

Federal antitrust laws prohibit companies from colluding to deny critical facilities or market access to rivals. Such agreements, known as group boycotts, are per se illegal.

Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty for the Western District of Louisiana on Wednesday granted leave to file Landry’s amicus brief. The court’s decision on the defendants’ legal objections to the lawsuit is expected in the near future.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Another Soros-Funded Group Pushes For Social Media Platforms To Censor Election “Disinformation”

Election season will soon be in full swing. And so will censorship demands

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 30, 2023

An organization under the financial umbrella of outspoken billionaire George Soros is mounting a brazen bid to implement a perilous cap on free speech in America’s digital public square. Today, the battle lines are being drawn with Common Cause, a group bankrolled by Soros, gleefully trumpeting its success in nurturing a potent alliance with Big Tech to quash election “disinformation.”

Expounding on its tactics in a recent press release titled “Election Disinformation in 2022 and What We Learned for 2024,” Common Cause masterfully revealed its ironic contradiction: a group professing to be a champion of democracy while vigorously advocating for restrictions on free speech.

The last time social media platforms pushed for election related censorship, we all know how that turned out.

Proudly recounting its successful call for Big Tech to suppress political content it disagrees with, Common Cause outlined its anti-free speech strategy, stating that the “continuing threat of election disinformation” necessitated the silencing of certain voices via Twitter and Facebook.

The group proposed a timeline to moderate and downrank online discourse, especially focusing on the suppression of what they believe to be “false statements” two months ahead of an election, and showed glaring bias by repeatedly accusing Republicans of purveying election untruths.

In the document, the group points a finger at the January 6 event as evidence of misplaced election integrity concerns, attributing this to right-wing misinformation.

Common Cause detailed how it unilaterally flagged and removed alleged “election disinformation” across social media platforms, with no regard for the principle of open discourse.

While the boast is loud about influencing Big Tech’s actions for now, Common Cause ominously remarks that these platforms still need to increase their censorship efforts ahead of future elections, chillingly suggesting that the present censorship should be just the tip of the iceberg.

Elon Musk has pledged to initiate lawsuits against NGOs financed by philanthropist George Soros, claiming they violate free speech rights. This comes on the heels of Musk filing a legal case against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), alleging that the organization is spreading inaccurate and deceptive information about X content with the aim of driving away advertisers through a manipulative “fear campaign.”

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Latest Biden coverup — 5,400 emails he sent under secret names

By James Bovard | New York Post | August 29, 2023

In Washington, conning the American people is always considered a victimless crime. The latest DC shellshocker is the National Archives blocking release of 5,000+ emails Vice President Joe Biden wrote using a pseudonym to shroud Biden family graft.

In ancient Rome, the consul Scipio was accused of abusing his power. He stood in front of the Senate, pulled out the written records of his reign and tore them to pieces. Scipio’s reputation was so impeccable that the audience cheered him, regardless of his destruction of evidence.

Bizarrely, this is the same template the liberal media use to whitewash President Biden. Americans don’t need to know the facts of how Biden has used his power because his intentions are good.

But the only reason his intentions appear good is because we don’t have the facts.

Consider the latest wacky revelations on the nom de crook. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Archives admitted there are 5,400 emails Biden apparently sent under fake names including robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.

A few of those emails have trickled out from other sources, revealing messages tied to Hunter Biden’s Ukraine hustle. But the Archives is refusing to reveal thousands of other messages despite disclosure demands from the House Oversight Committee.

Biden declared in 2019 that there was “an absolute wall” between Biden family foreign schemes and his own role as vice president. Apparently, the “absolute wall” only applied to the specific name “Joe Biden.”

Did Biden take a class in law school on Incognito Influence Peddling or what?

This is the second Biden scandal recently exposed. In 2018, Biden bragged to a Council on Foreign Relations audience that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless that government immediately fired its chief prosecutor in December 2015.

Biden claimed the prosecutor was corrupt, yet State Department and other documents released last week reveal that the Ukrainian prosecutor had Washington’s trust. But that prosecutor was closing in on Burisma, threatening the million dollars a year in payoffs pocketed by Hunter Biden.

If those documents had surfaced during the first Trump impeachment case in late 2019, Donald Trump’s behavior would have appeared less conniving and Biden would have looked more conniving. (Both of them would still have looked like hell.)

Two years after Biden finagled that firing to purify the US ally, Ukraine was ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe except for Russia.

Biden owes his 2020 presidential election victory to pervasive, perpetual federal coverups. The Hunter Biden laptop coverup was only the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg.

How many other Biden scandals are scattered like unexploded cluster bombs throughout federal filing cabinets inside the Beltway?

How many other FBI memos exist on potential Biden bribes that we have not heard about?

How many Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports on massive wire transfers from squirrely foreign entities to Biden Inc. have not surfaced?

Are there other IRS investigations that were squelched without a trace?

Federal secrecy and coverups switched more votes in 2020 than Trump’s antics in Georgia and elsewhere ever could have flipped. Biden’s yammering about how his election was “the will of the people” looks more deranged with each new exposé of his pre-election abuses.

Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared in 2019, “If people don’t have the facts, democracy doesn’t work.” Why bother having a national election if the result merely reveals how many voters were hornswoggled by secrets the feds kept from them?

Politics has rarely been an honest business, but the combination of pervasive secrecy and perpetual deceit makes a mockery of every high-school civics-class lesson.

Will the National Archives go to the barricades to defend the privacy interest of Joe Biden’s imaginary friends? Will dogged investigators, congressional committees and whistleblowers obliterate the tattered remnants of Team Biden’s credibility? Will the liberal media cease invoking the president’s good intentions to expunge his crimes?

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Employers Walk Back Mask Mandates Amid Employee, Public Backlash

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 29, 2023

Kaiser Permanente and Lionsgate Studios in California reversed mask mandate policies last week, just a few days after imposing them.

Kaiser Permanente, the largest healthcare provider in California, on Aug. 22 announced it had “reintroduced a mask mandate for physicians, staff, patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area,” in a statement obtained by The Press Democrat.

Kaiser said the mandate was in response to an increase in the number of patients testing positive for COVID-19.

But just two days later, on Aug. 24, Kaiser officials told The Press Democrat the mask reinstatement applied only to physicians and staff, not to patients and visitors.

“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.

It also said, “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”

But Kaiser also confirmed to Becker’s Hospital Review on Aug. 23 that it had reintroduced the mask mandate.

The Press Democrat reported the reversal happened after people noticed many visitors to the hospital were not masking.

Local media reported that some Northern California residents supported the mask mandate policy when it was first announced, but others were skeptical and frustrated in response to the mandate announcement.

“I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020,” said Carmichael resident Craig Roberts.

Lionsgate also reverses mandate

Lionsgate on Friday also notified employees that the mask mandate it had imposed about a week prior for employees on the third and fifth floors of the studio’s five-story office building in Santa Monica was over, Deadline reported.

Lionsgate imposed the mandate after multiple people in its Santa Monica headquarters came down with COVID-19. The company told Deadline it imposed the mandate in compliance with rules set by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Lionsgate told The Wrap the health department informed the company it could lift the mask requirement after several days of no new infections.

The company also distanced itself from responsibility for the mandate, stating that:

“Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”

In addition to mandating “a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95),” every Lionsgate employee was required to perform a daily self-screening before coming to the office and was told to stay home if they exhibited any symptoms or had traveled internationally in the last 10 days.

Lionsgate was conducting contact tracing and providing at home COVID-19 test kits. It is unclear if those practices are still required.

Reversals come amid pushback and more evidence of mask failures

The mask policy reversals come amid pushback from critics after a growing number of businesses and hospitals in recent weeks reinstituted mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and a new report warned that broader mandates may be coming this fall.

Many doctors have also called for mask mandates to return to healthcare settings.

Meanwhile, documents recently released from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that public health officials privately questioned the effectiveness of masks and the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoting their use.

And an NIH study suggested surgical N95 masks, held up as the gold standard for COVID-19 protection, may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, the Daily Mail reported.

The study found the chemicals released by these masks had 8 times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds, which can cause symptoms ranging from headaches and nausea to organ damage and cancer, with prolonged use.

Since the original mandates ended, several studies concluded the mandate policies failed to achieve their promised results.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday published an op-ed criticizing mask mandates.

And dissenters have taken to X (formerly Twitter), calling on people not to comply with mandates.

“This is what can be done when people stand together against tyrannical, unscientific and dangerous so-called public health policies,” author and health freedom activist Meryl Dorey wrote in a Substack post reporting on the policy reversals.

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

‘Manipulation’ keeps Imran Khan in prison despite bail, lawyers say

Press TV – August 29, 2023

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has remained in prison despite the Islamabad High Court suspending his recent conviction on corruption charges, with his lawyers claiming that a “manipulation of justice” is keeping him behind bars.

Khan’s legal team said on Tuesday afternoon he remained in detention because of a previous arrest, made in secret, over a case alleging he had leaked classified state documents.

One of his lawyers told reporters outside the prison that Khan was “on judicial remand” and would appear before a special court in Islamabad on Wednesday.

“He was arrested prior to today’s court ruling. The exact date of his arrest remains unclear,” another lawyer, Gohar Khan, was quoted as saying.

Another, Muhammad Shoaib Shaheen, said that “his legal team was intentionally left uninformed and kept in the dark”. “This constitutes a manipulation of justice,” he said.

Pro-PTI lawyers held banners and chanted “Release Imran Khan!” and “Khan your devotees are countless!” outside the court as initial news of his sentence suspension broke.

Khan ally and former Speaker of National Assembly Asad Qaiser has said today’s verdict in the graft case was evidence Khan’s sentence and imprisonment were carried out in “haste”.

“If an attempt is made to arrest Chairman Imran Khan in other cases after his release, it will be an attempt to push the country towards anarchy. At this time, the only way to save the country from further crises is to have clean and transparent elections as soon as possible,” Qaiser posted on social media platform X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The Islamabad High Court overturned a lower court’s decision to jail him for three years, a judgment that kept him from contesting upcoming elections.

His lawyers said he was granted bail and they were initially hopeful he would be released from Attock Jail, a century-old prison around 60 kilometers west of Islamabad, where the 70-year-old has been held for three weeks.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party later said nine activists had been arrested outside Attock Jail.

The sentence was handed down this month by a judge who found him guilty of failing to properly declare gifts he received while in office.

The ex-PM’s legal team lodged the appeal against his conviction on the grounds that he was put to jail without being given the right to defend himself.

That was only one of more than 200 legal cases that have embroiled Pakistan’s most popular politician since he was ousted by a parliamentary vote last year.

The Islamabad High Court’s decision to suspend the conviction marks another victory for Khan and comes on the heels of the Balochistan High Court’s decision to dismiss sedition charges against him.

The 70-year-old cricketer-turned-politician lost a confidence vote in the parliament in April 2022. Since then, his ouster has been at the centre of political turmoil across Pakistan.

Khan believes that the cases lodged against him were politically motivated to keep him out of power. He alleges the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.

In the past months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting the PTI party in an attempt to allegedly crush his grassroots support.

No date for the polls has been announced. Khan surged to power in 2018 on a wave of popular support, through an anti-corruption manifesto.

Did the US ask for Khan’s removal after he visited Russia?

The US-based news outlet The Intercept earlier this month published what it claims to be the details of a diplomatic “cypher” – or a secret cable – that suggests the US administration wanted to remove Khan from power last year.

Khan alleged he knew of the “cypher” while he was in office which, according to him, proved the US hatched a conspiracy with the help of his political opponents and the Pakistani military to remove him.

The Intercept published purported details of a conversation between Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, and Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, on March 7 last year.

In the meeting, Lu reportedly told Majeed the US and Europe were “quite concerned” about Khan visiting Russia and Pakistan taking an “aggressively neutral position” on Russia’s military operation against Ukraine

The conversation, according to the report, took place less than two weeks after Khan visited Moscow on February 24, the day Russia launched the operation.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Latvia’s Planned Expulsion of Russian Nationals ‘Grossly Contradicts’ UN, EU Norms

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.08.2023

Russian human rights activists have condemned Latvia’s decision to expel about 6,000 Russian residents, who had lived in Latvia with a residence permit and did not pass the Latvian language exam. The process of expulsion will start as of September 1, 2023.

The members of the Commission for International Cooperation with the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the Russian President have sent a letter to the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in connection with the “threat of forced eviction of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia.”

One of the Commission’s members is Kirill Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, a parent company of the Sputnik News Agency.

The Commission’s message was delivered to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov.

“We draw your attention to the gross violation of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia who have Russian citizenship and live on Latvian territory on the basis of a residence permit (RP) issued by the country’s authorities,” the letter reads.

The members of the Russian presidential human rights commission recalled that more than 6,000 such residents “are threatened with expulsion from Latvia as of September 1, 2023 due to last year’s changes in the country’s legislation and under the pretext that they did not pass the mandatory Latvian language exam.”

“They are mainly people of advanced retirement age who came to Latvia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their long-standing work added to creating the economic basis of Latvia and until the autumn of last year, Latvian legislation did not oblige them to take any language tests so that they can live with Russian citizenship in the country. Moreover, the very fact that these people lived in Latvia for many years proved that their knowledge of Latvian language was enough to organize their own daily life,” according to the letter.

The Russian rights activists stressed that “especially cynical in relation to these people is Latvian authorities’ requirement to not only pass the language exam, but also fill out questionnaires indicating their attitude to Russia’s foreign policy.”

“In fact, these people are required to not only take language tests, but also reveal their political views and give documented condemnation of Russia’s actions,” the letter points out.

“We believe that such actions by Latvian authorities grossly contradict the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights. We urge you to intervene in the situation and prevent the forced eviction of those who have Russian citizenship and residence permits issued by Latvian authorities,” the document concludes.

The letter comes after Ingmars Lidaka, head of Latvia’s Parliamentary Commission for Citizenship, Migration and Public Mobilization, said that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian citizens, who have a residence permit and have not passed the Latvian language exam, will receive official notifications to leave the country “within three months.”

He added that the decision is in line with Latvia’s legislation and that its implementation will be enforced by the country’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

In September 2022, Latvia’s parliament passed a bill on the transition of all education to the Latvian language within three years, a document stipulating that the Russian can now only be studied as a “minority language”.

About 40 percent of Latvia’s 1.8 million population are Russian native speakers. The country’s state language is Latvian, while the Russian has the status of a foreign language.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Pakistan court drops sedition case against ex-PM Khan: Lawyer

Press TV – August 28, 2023

A Pakistani court dismissed a sedition case lodged against Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday, according to a court order and his lawyer.

Khan, 70, a former cricket player, was jailed on corruption charges earlier this month.

In March, he was charged with sedition on a complaint that alleged one of his speeches amounted to sedition. The case was registered in the southwestern city of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province.

Following an appeal by the former prime minister, the Balochistan High Court said prosecutors had failed to obtain the required consent from the federal or provincial government to lodge the charges of sedition.

Hence the court ruled that the charges are “without lawful authority and are of no legal effect,” meaning that the authorities should quash the case.

Khan’s lawyer Naeem Panjutha also made this announcement in a post on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter.

“God be praised,” she wrote on X celebrating the dismissal of the case.

A US publication has obtained a classified document, suggesting Washington pushed for the removal of Imran Khan from office over his neutrality on the Ukraine war.
Khan, who lost power after being defeated in a parliamentary confidence vote in April 2022, is also currently serving a three-year jail term after being convicted of corruption.

He is expecting a high court in Islamabad to overturn his conviction and jail sentence.

He said the cases lodged against him were politically motivated to keep him out of power. He says the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.

The three-year jail sentence issued by a lower court disqualifies him from taking part in elections scheduled for November, though it is likely to be delayed until at least early next year.

Khan has been barred from holding political office for five years.

In past months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party in an attempt to crush his grassroots support, causing nationwide anger against the country’s military for ordering the crackdown.

According to several independent surveys, the PTI will win a landslide victory in the next elections if the party is allowed to run a political campaign without restrictions.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Elon Musk to Sue George Soros-Linked NGOs For Spreading ‘Misinformation’ to Stifle Free Speech

BY DR FREDERICK ATTENBOROUGH | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 28, 2023

Elon Musk has announced that his company, X (formerly Twitter), will sue partner organisations of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) after the NGO network was accused of spreading ‘hate misinformation’ to justify an unprecedented crackdown on lawful free speech.

Musk made the statement in response to an article by journalist Ben Scallan, in which he claims that OSF-linked leftist NGOs are manipulating the statistics to show a steep rise in hate crimes across Ireland – despite the government’s own data indicating the opposite is true – and helping to usher in a new hate speech law that will restrict free speech and open up new pathways for political persecution.

The article was reposted on X by Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger, who added: “The reason politicians and Soros-funded NGOs are spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on freedom of speech.”

To this, Elon Musk simply replied, “Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!”

It’s unclear which OSF-linked groups Scallan is referring to exactly or which NGOs will be the target of Musk’s suit – although interestingly the self-styled “free-speech absolutist” has recently threatened to sue the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), having accused the U.K.-registered NGO of using flawed methods to promote “misleading narratives” and of running a “scare campaign” that has driven away advertisers from the platform. Although the CCDH – which is listed in journalist Matt Taibbi’s report into the organisations comprising the “censorship-industrial complex” – doesn’t declare its funding on its site, Companies House information shows it received almost £1 million in 2022.

Despite an Ipsos survey commissioned by Ireland’s Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth showing that over eight in 10 Irish people feel “very comfortable” living next door to people with different nationalities, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, religious beliefs (and non), or marital statuses, the most up-to-date Garda Síochána data suggests the country has actually seen a 29% increase in reported ‘hate crimes’ in 2022 compared to the previous year.

Of course, an increase in reporting is not necessarily the same thing as an increase in actual hate crimes or incidents. As Scallan points out, the discrepancy between these two data sets is partly if not entirely explained by the fact that Soros’s NGO network has for many years been running campaigns to lower the threshold for hate crime reporting in Ireland, while encouraging citizens to report hate crimes and hate incidents to the police.

In fairness, the Garda does at least acknowledge this, having conceded that a “very low threshold of perception” currently applies to hate crime reporting. Yet methodological sophistication of this kind has been curiously absent from proposals put forward by Ireland’s governing classes that argue for a new, allegedly desperately needed, hate crime law. In those proposals the distinction between perceived and actual hate crimes has all but collapsed: ‘increased reporting’ is breezily conflated with ‘increased crime’ such that for politicians like Justice Minister Helen McEntee and Senator Pauline O’Reilly the need for intensified state censorship of perfectly lawful speech that certain sub-sections of Irish society happen to regard as ‘hateful’ now seems entirely unproblematic.

This confusion isn’t just to be found in the debating chambers of the Dáil and Seanad Éireann. It constitutes the underlying philosophy of the country’s draft Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, in which a hate crime is defined as an episode “perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.

As Scallan points out, under this definition, you don’t even have to be the victim of an alleged crime to report it. “A random bystander who has nothing to do with the event can say, ‘I think it was based on prejudice,’ and it will be categorised as such.”

By and large, of course, it won’t be “random bystanders” with a priggish manner, flapping ears, and a little too much time on their hands that end up weaponising this definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime’. The real damage will be done by activist groups and George Soros-funded NGOs bent on criminalising perfectly lawful views that they happen not to like for doctrinaire ideological reasons.

“Will mocking memes be tolerated?” asked independent senator Ronan Mullen during a debate on the proposed legislation in the Senate earlier this year. “Will carrying a placard stating, ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate-speech investigation or up to five years’ imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater, and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows.”

Nobody actually knows, no. But each of Mr Mullen’s hypothetical scenarios could potentially lead to a reported ‘hate crime’, which would then feature in the Garda’s annual reporting dataset, which would then perpetuate the myth that Ireland is becoming less tolerant, which would then lead to calls for even more draconian hate speech laws, which would then… and so on and so forth, in an endless cycle of intensifying state censorship.

Perhaps the most shocking of all the authoritarian provisions in the Bill that flow from this vague, entirely subjective definition of ‘hate’, is one that will make it a criminal offense to possess material on one’s person or in one’s home likely to “incite hatred”.

With regard to the obvious question of how something saved on, say, a mobile phone could possibly “incite hatred”, the Bill simply reverses the usual burden of proof in criminal cases, presuming “that the material [is] not intended for personal use”, and that a suspect must be planning to disseminate it, unless they can prove otherwise.

If passed, this provision will allow police to raid homes and seize devices, with a potential penalty of a year in prison and a €5,000 fine just for refusing to give up your passwords. Possession of hateful material will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Despite many critics calling the law “Orwellian” and campaigning against it, the Irish parliament’s lower house adopted it by a vote of 160 against 14 earlier this year. The legislation now only needs the approval of the upper house in October to become law.

Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officers of the Free Speech Union.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

A New Covid ‘Variant’… Just in Time for Election Season!

By Ron Paul | August 28, 2023

Just four and a half months since President Biden declared an end to the Covid “emergency,” the media is suddenly full of stories about the return of Covid. This time a new “variant” is being rolled out and the media, in collusion with big Pharma and the fear-industrial complex, are churning out stories about how forced masking is making a comeback.

Also, the “unvaccinated” are again to be denied basic human rights in the name of fighting a virus that the vaccine demonstrably does not protect against.

In short, they are desperately trying to revive the tyranny, insanity, and utter irrationality of the two-year Covid scare. And they are pretending none of us remembers how they destroyed society with their lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine mandates. They are hoping that none of us will remember the suicides, lost jobs, broken marriages, increased alcoholism and drug abuse, and the rest of what went along with the world’s experiment with global lockdown.

Even Fauci himself is back – like a moth drawn to the light of publicity. Despite all the scientific evidence that the lockdowns were a disaster, that they did far more harm than good, Fauci has re-emerged with his trademark arrogance and claimed that they were the right thing to do and should be done again if that’s what it takes to force people to take the vaccine. A vaccine that does not work.

They won’t even allow us to mention the spike in all-around mortality or the millions who may have been vaccine-injured the first time around. They want us to think that 20-year-old world-class athletes have always just dropped dead of heart attacks out of the blue. It’s all normal! Don’t question it! What are you, some kind of conspiracy theorist? Are you a science-denier?

Yes, look for a renewal of all those old hollow phrases used to attack those of us who can see with our own eyes and hear with our own ears. Their slogans are meant to silence any debate. The same “experts” like Fauci who claimed “I am the science” are back and they shamelessly demand to silence us again.

The big question is… why? Why are they doing this and how do they think they can get away with it a second time? One reason they believe they can get away with it again is that no one has ever been punished for what they did the first time. The Federal Government made sure that the pharmaceutical companies would not be liable for vaccine damages.

The public figures who openly became monsters, demanding the unvaccinated be drummed out of society and maybe even off the face of the earth have not been shamed or shunned. Politicians who displayed cowardice and worse have not been voted out of office for their treachery.

Why are they coming back around for another round of Covid tyranny? Fear is a weapon to gain control. Last time around they generated fear to radically change how America voted. Suddenly everyone was mailed ballots. How closely were they checked? No one knew and no one dared ask. The people who did ask about the election are now facing jail terms.

They want us to shut up while they do it again. Will we?

Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

The Washington Post Calls For Reducing Free Speech To Improve Democracy

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 28, 2023

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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