Nigel Farage Announces He’s a Victim of Financial Deplatforming
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2023
Former leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, alleges that he is facing what he describes as “serious political persecution” by the banking sector in the UK, claiming that the pro-Remain establishment is making a concerted effort to exclude him from the banking system. Farage asserts that this has made him contemplate whether he will be able to continue residing in the UK.
In a video released on Twitter, Farage shared that seven banks had turned down his applications for both personal and business accounts, making him feel like a “non-person.”
He stated that his bank accounts at an undisclosed financial institution, where he has been a customer for over four decades, were on the verge of being terminated without any explanation provided.
Farage posited three theories to explain why he believes the banking establishment is distancing itself from him. Firstly, he asserts that his role in championing Brexit has made him a persona non grata in the banking circles. “The banks did not want Brexit to happen,” Farage said in the video. “The corporate world will never forgive me.”
Additionally, Farage speculates that his political standing might be a factor. The “politically exposed person” protocol requires banks to conduct additional scrutiny on accounts held by politicians and their families to guard against the possibility of foreign bribery. Farage acknowledged the rationale behind such precautions but emphasized that the additional compliance burden for the banks should be commensurate.
Thirdly, Farage raised concerns about allegations that were made by Labour lawmaker Sir Chris Bryant in the previous year.
Bryant claimed that Farage had received a substantial sum of money, specifically £548,573, from Russia Today television station in 2018, an assertion that Farage vehemently denies. Farage stated, “The truth is I’ve never received any money from any sources with any link to Russia.”
CISA Was Behind the Attempt to Control Your Thoughts, Speech, and Life
Brownstone Institute | June 30, 2023
Keeping up with the corruption of the Covid regime feels like drinking from a firehose. The volume of the fraud, the pace of new discoveries, and the breadth of the operations are overwhelming. This makes it imperative for groups like Brownstone Institute to digest the onslaught of information and communicate salient themes and dispositive facts, particularly given the dereliction of mainstream media.
On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “colluded with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans,” adding to the informational firehose we work to imbibe.
The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society.
- CISA’s Collusion to Overturn the First Amendment
The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis-, or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA’s censorship team, conceded that this process, known as “switchboarding,” would “trigger content moderation.”
Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. EI-ISAC worked to report and track “misinformation across all channels and platforms.” In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it “leverage[d] DHS CISA’s relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”
The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. “We don’t censor anything… we don’t flag anything to social media organizations at all,” Esterly told Congress in March. “We don’t do any censorship.” Her statement was more than a lie; it omitted the institutionalization of the practice she denied. The agency’s initiatives relied on a collusive apparatus of private-public partnerships designed to suppress unapproved information.
This should sound familiar.
Alex Berenson gained access to thousands of Twitter communications that uncovered concrete evidence that government actors – including White House Covid Advisor Andy Slavitt – worked to censor him for criticizing Biden’s Covid policies.
White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty privately lobbied social media groups to remove a video of Tucker Carlson reporting the link between Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and blood clots.
Facebook worked with the CDC to censor posts related to the Covid “lab-leak” hypothesis. Company employees later met with the Department of Health and Human Services to de-platform the “disinformation dozen,” a group including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
These were not cherry-picked examples – they were part of an institutional collusion to strip Americans of their First Amendment rights. Journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi exposed the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a collection of the world’s most powerful government agencies, NGOs, and private corporations that worked together to silence dissent.
The Supreme Court has held that it is “axiomatic” that the government cannot “induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Yet, CISA has joined the disturbing tendency of public-private partnerships designed to impede Americans’ right to information and freedom of speech.
- Political Operatives
Second, these programs were not idealistic attempts to promote the truth; they were calculated programs designed to quash inconvenient but truthful narratives.
The report outlines how CISA censored “malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead.” Journalist Lee Fang later wrote that the malinformation campaign “highlights not only the broad authority that the federal government has to shape the political content available to the public, but also the toolkit that it relies upon to limit scrutiny in the regulation of speech.”
In this system, uncensored information has a tacit government approval, amounting to a system of widespread propaganda.
“State and local election officials used the CISA-funded EI-ISAC in an effort to silence criticism and political dissent,” the report notes. “For example, in August 2022, a Loudon County, Virginia, government official reported a Tweet featuring an unedited video of a county official ‘because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of’ that official. The Loudon County official’s remark that the account she flagged ‘is connected to Parents Against Critical Race Theory’ reveals that her ‘misinformation report’ was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt.”
The officials supporting the operation remained unrepentant in their aim to advance political agendas. Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA’s “Misinformation & Disinformation” subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to “accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms.”
Of course, the program explicitly violated the Constitution. The First Amendment does not discriminate based on the veracity of a statement. “Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation,” the Supreme Court’s controlling opinion held in United States v. Alvarez. But CISA – led by zealots like Dr. Starbird – appointed themselves the arbiters of truth and worked with the most powerful information companies in the world to purge dissent.
This was part of a larger political campaign.
Hunter Biden’s laptop, natural immunity, the lab-leak theory, and side effects of the vaccine were all censored at the government’s behest. The truth of the reports were not at issue; instead, they presented inconvenient narratives for Washington’s political class, who then used the Orwellian label of “malinformation” to lend cover to eviscerating the First Amendment.
- The Terror of the Administrative State
Third, the report exposes the increasing power of the administrative state. Federal bureaucrats rely on anonymity and unaccountability. Private industry employees could never oversee a disaster like the Covid response and maintain their jobs. It’d be like if BP’s head of safety for the Gulf of Mexico received a promotion after the oil spill.
But unelected officilals like CISA officials enjoy ever-increasing power over Americans’ lives without having to answer for their calamities. Suzanne Spaulding, a member of the Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee, warned that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”
Spaulding’s comment reflects the power that CISA wields and the benefit it derives from its lack of public exposure. Most Americans have never heard of CISA despite its overwhelming influence over lockdowns.
In March 2020, CISA divided the American workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential.” Within hours, California became the first state to issue a “stay at home” edict. This began a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.
The House Report indicates that CISA was a central actor in censoring criticism of the Covid regime in the ensuing months and years. The agency is representative of the cabal of censorial and unaccountable officials engaged in public-private partnerships designed to keep us in the dark.
EU and UN Discuss How to Address “Disinformation” on Digital Platforms
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 30, 2023
In an apparent display of bureaucratic synergy, the European Union and United Nations have convened to muse over the implementation of new social media regulations, ostensibly in the pursuit of a more secure and transparent digital milieu. What stirs apprehension, however, is the overt enthusiasm of the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, who anticipates that the EU’s Digital Services Act will establish a “new de facto global regulatory benchmark.” The skepticism arises from the suspicion of veiled intentions to curb free speech under the guise of combating “disinformation.”
Platforms are constantly blamed for the proliferation of “disinformation” and “hate speech,” with detractors painting them as adversaries to science, democracy, and human rights. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres brandishes a doomsday brush, asserting that large-scale disinformation constitutes “an existential risk to humanity.”
What is crucial here is the essence of the dialogue and the response it seeks to galvanize. The UN is fervently plotting a Code of Conduct premised on a policy brief that stresses the imperative for an international clampdown on disinformation. It lays out what seems to be an ambitious and comprehensive framework, involving governments, tech companies, advertisers, and other stakeholders. All very fine, but what remains unaddressed is the question of who gets to define what is “disinformation,” and what criteria determine the line between free speech and misinformation.
The Code of Conduct, steeped in an aura of academic rigor and global research, envisages a change in the fabric of digital platforms. However, the aspects it emphasizes – detaching from engagement-driven business models, and ostensibly placing human rights, privacy, and safety at the forefront – are nebulous in terms of implementation and potential overreach. Furthermore, the UN’s admission of wielding moral authority without sanctions may be viewed as a tacit endorsement of soft power coercion.
While Melissa Fleming’s words convey a seeming commitment to protect human rights and access to information, the phraseology she employs – “human rights-based,” “multi-stakeholder,” and “multi-dimensional” – are threadbare buzzwords that do little to assuage the concerns over censorship and institutional overreach.
The concern is not with the stated objectives of fostering a safe and open digital environment, but rather with the specter of global entities like the EU and UN using the cloak of “disinformation” to infringe on the bedrock principle of free speech.
Religious Exemption Form for Parents of School-Age Kids in D.C. ‘Intentionally Misleading and Unlawful’
The Defender | June 27, 2023
A form provided by the District of Columbia Department of Health for parents seeking a religious exemption for mandated vaccines on behalf of their minor children is “intentionally misleading and unlawful,” according to Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Senior Staff Attorney Rolf Hazlehurst.
A letter from Hazlehurst and CHD Acting President Laura Bono to D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and school and health department officials states there is “no legal basis or requirement” for parents to use the newly revised “2023 Religious Exemption Request Process for Families” posted on the DC Health website.
According to the health department, “In consideration of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for eligible students, and the need to ensure all students in the District remain up to date with all necessary or required vaccinations to attend school,” health officials revised the religious exemption form “to include a section to document a strongly held religious belief opposing vaccination.”
Parents and guardians are instructed to request the form and return it directly to DC Health/Immunization Division after carefully reading and completing it in its entirety. “incomplete or non-compliant forms will be returned before being sent for review, the department said.
But the updated form contains at least two subsections that are “unlawful as written and applied,” Hazlehurst said.
In the first part of Section 2, parents and guardians are required to initial to acknowledge that “by not vaccinating their child for one or more of the listed vaccinations, they are placing their child at ‘increased risk,’ thus implying that they are unfit parents or guardians.”
And, according to the letter, the second part of Section 2 requires each parent or guardian to:
“Please provide a written statement on a) why you do not get vaccinations based on your sincerely held religious beliefs, b) the religious principles that guide your decision not to get vaccinated, and c) whether you are opposed to all vaccinations, and if not, d) the religious beliefs you follow that will not allow you to get the COVID-19 vaccination.”
In their letter, Bono and Hazlehurst said this language “intentionally misleads those parents or guardians seeking religious exemptions into believing they must comply with these instructions or their request will be denied.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” they wrote, adding that according to the law, Code of the District of Columbia §38-506, entitled “Exemption from Certification” states:
No certification of immunization shall be required for the admission to a school of a student:
(1) For whom the responsible person objects in good faith and in writing, to the chief official of the school, that immunization would violate his or her religious beliefs.
In other words, parents and guardians are not required to complete the updated form — they can simply write a letter to the chief official of the child’s school certifying that in accordance with the Code of the District of Columbia §38-506, they object in good faith that immunization(s) violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.
If DC Health officials wanted to create a new process in which parents and guardians must comply to receive a religious exemption, the agency is required by law to promulgate the new rule by complying with the administration process and allowing the public the opportunity to respond — neither of which were done, Hazlehurst and Bono wrote.
D.C. Council weighs bill to remove COVID vaccine mandate for schools
Hazlehurst and Dr. Elizabeth Mumper last week submitted written testimony to D.C. Council members in support of Bill 25-0278, the School Student Vaccination Amendment Act of 2023, which would remove the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for students attending D.C. schools.
Both commended the council members for introducing the amendment. In his written statement, Hazlehurst called on the council to expedite passage of the bill “to avoid parents unnecessarily getting their children the COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend school.”
He also outlined his legal objections to the health department’s newly revised religious exemption form.
Mumper, a pediatrician, also showed support for the bill. In a lengthy written statement, she said:
“As a pediatrician with 43 years of experience in pediatrics and 24 years of experience identifying and treating children with vaccine injuries, I oppose giving COVID-19 vaccines to infants and children.
“Having carefully studied the risks and benefits, I conclude unequivocally that the risk of harm outweighs any potential benefit. Multiple sources of scientifically sound data support my position.”
In July 2022, The Washington Post said the district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schoolchildren was “among the strictest in the nation.”
CHD last year represented a group of parents challenging the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccination Act, which would have allowed children as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge or consent.
CHD fought, and the court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the law and the district was forced to repeal it.
In his ruling, Judge Trevor N. McFadden said:
“States and the District are free to encourage individuals, including children, to get vaccines. But they cannot transgress on the Program Congress created. And they cannot trample the Constitution.”
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.
House Weaponization Committee Concludes DHS Agency Colluded With Big Tech To Facilitate Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 28, 2023
With the publishing of a new report, a House Judiciary subcommittee disclosed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been engaging in censoring online content and conducting domestic surveillance in conjunction with Big Tech companies and other private groups.
This report, released on Monday, is titled “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans.”
CISA, founded in just 2018, was originally envisioned as an auxiliary agency focused on safeguarding critical infrastructure and fending off cybersecurity threats.
The report asserts that CISA morphed into “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media” by 2020. It accuses CISA of systematically reporting social media posts that it believed disseminated “disinformation.”
Adding to the alarming developments, the report unveils that by 2021, CISA established a formal “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation” (MDM) team. In the ensuing years, the agency faced escalating criticism from both public and private quarters, which led it to clandestinely downplay its activities by portraying itself as solely informational in nature.
The report particularly highlights an instance in which, following lawsuits from Missouri and Louisiana contesting CISA’s censorship tactics, the agency allegedly sidestepped the allegations by transferring its censorship undertakings to a non-profit organization, the Center for Internet Security (CIS), which it financially supported.
Further, the report divulges an email from a CISA advisory board member and former assistant general counsel for the CIA, Suzanne Spaulding, to her colleague, revealing concerns about the potential public discovery and scrutiny of their activities.
CISA has been accused of attempting to obscure its activities in response to growing scrutiny, such as erasing mentions of its domestic surveillance and censorship operations from its website.
The report argues that CISA’s focus on “malinformation” is worrisome. The agency defines malinformation as factual information used out of context to mislead or manipulate, but the subcommittee report challenges whose context is being used, and questions the government’s role in deciding this context.
Despite these allegations, CISA denies any involvement in censoring or facilitating censorship.
With the unveiling of this report, questions surrounding the extent of CISA’s involvement in domestic surveillance and online censorship have become central in a broader debate on the role of government agencies in relation to civil liberties and constitutional rights.
Celebrities and Online Personalities Sign Letter, Telling Social Media Platforms To Crackdown On “Hate”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2023
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has rounded up a bunch of celebrities to bolster a letter to social media platforms, asking them to censor “hate” towards the LGBT community.
With the signatures of over 250 celebrities and community leaders, the organization has directed its fervor toward the giants of the digital world. Addressing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
In the public letter the organization charged that the platforms were nurturing platforms where “high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts” proliferated. A group of celebrities, including the likes of actors Elliot Page and Jameela Jamil, alongside singer Ariana Grande, lent their ink to this plea.
The offending content, as per the letter, was outlined as speech that makes what they allege are falsehoods about gender-based procedures for minors, specifically “content that spreads malicious lies about medically necessary healthcare for trans youth.”
“Directing hate toward queer and trans public figures online is a vehicle to promote hate and violence against all LGBTQ people,” the letter states. “This translates to real-world harm.”
GLAAD’s post elaborated, saying, “This is leading to real-life harm, like death threats against healthcare providers and violence against trans and LGBTQ people.”
The group also complained about “Anti-trans hate speech, including targeted misgendering, deadnaming, and hate-driven tropes.”
Palestinian journalist wins wrongful termination appeal against DW
The Cradle | June 29, 2023
Palestinian-Jordanian journalist Farah Maraqa on 28 June announced winning an appeal filed by Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) media network over her unlawful dismissal for alleged “antisemitism.”
The decision comes nine months after the German judiciary ruled that her dismissal by state-owned broadcaster DW on charges of anti-Semitism was “legally unjustified,” which the German broadcaster appealed.
“It is a relief that the judge ruled in Farah’s favor and held Deutsche Welle accountable for this illegal dismissal,” Giovanni Fassina, director of the European Legal Support Center (ELSC), which advocates for the legal rights of Palestinians in Europe, said at the time.
In February 2022, DW fired Maraqa alongside five other Arab journalists – all Palestinian or Lebanese – accusing them of “antisemitism” in social media posts and articles they had written for outside publications.
The charges were based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) controversial extended definition of antisemitism, which includes criticism of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land and the system of apartheid imposed on Palestinians.
The definition, which Germany adopted, has been criticized as a means of silencing pro-Palestinian support and dissent against Israeli policies.
In May 2021, DW reportedly sent an internal two-page memo to employees banning them from using terminology such as “colonialism” and “apartheid” when describing Israel.
Over the past few years, western outlets have come under fire for firing or suspending Arab journalists over alleged “antisemitism.”
In March, France24 suspended four journalists from their Arabic branch at the behest of the pro-Israel media monitoring organization, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).
Last October, the New York Times (NYT) fired Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salam over social media posts supporting Palestinian resistance factions.
The freelance journalist was dismissed after the Israeli lobby organization Honest Reporting alerted the NYT of his posts.
Social media giants like WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok have also been accused of silencing or “purging” Palestinian journalists in Gaza and the occupied West Bank who report on Israeli war crimes.
Furthermore, Google employees accused the tech giant of censuring them for protesting against a controversial $1.2 billion contract signed with Israel to provide the country with advanced artificial intelligence (AI), which many fear will worsen human rights abuses in Palestine.
The disgrace of Australia’s pandemic betrayal
By Paul Collits | TCW Defending Freedom | June 27, 2023
What exactly do you do when your country betrays you and disgraces itself before the world? When you find out that it is run by thugs and goons? When just about no one in the political class has the moral compass and the spine to stand up for you? When your fellow citizens turn on you if you dared to question things?
If you are John Stapleton, a retired Aussie journalist, you write a 450-page book about it. You call it Australia Breaks Apart. You write uncomprehendingly, elegantly, passionately, even elegiacally, ashamed, still shaking your head in disbelief, three years after a ho-hum virus called by the powers-that-be ‘Covid’ reached our shores.
Surely these words could be written about just about every country in the world, you might think. Two quick responses – we were the worst, and surely we, of all places, should have been above all this.
Whether the book explains to international readers how this all happened, I’m not sure. I am far from certain that anyone could explain it. But let us explore what the book does do.
The title suggests one of the main themes, that of division and enmity. There were members of the dobber class, the Covid winners (largely in the employ of government or corporates), the lap-top class, the blatherers. People on ‘the other side’ were routinely demonised. Granny killers, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis and so on. Many of these folks were morally upright, seasoned professionals, not rent-a-crowd ideologues. Australia did indeed break apart, literally as well as socially. State and territory borders were closed by spooked politicians on a whim and for very few Covid cases. Fear and derangement were everywhere. Subjugation.
There are things in the book that even those who lived through the nightmare will not have known. These matters should have been known, and most likely would have been, if not for the cover-ups and the wilful non-reportage of stories in the interest of defending ‘the narrative’.
The book tells not only the story of Covid policy excesses, but also of a resistance movement that grew into something astonishing. This underground, though in plain sight, movement of angry men and women became hundreds of thousands, if not millions. It has remained invisible only because the quisling Covid class and their corrupt media puppets refused to acknowledge that it even existed, other than being a ‘tiny’ bunch of anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorists to be ignored.
John Stapleton doesn’t ignore them. He tells their story. This makes his book unique. The expected villains are all there, in graphic detail – Victoria premier Daniel Andrews, a truly appalling political figure, the thug police, the slippery bob-each-way villain-prime minister Scott Morrison, the other premiers and chief ministers, the unaccountable bureaucrats, the public health gauleiters, the Pharma-funded academics, the media shills. But what emerges in the book is an account of how resistance to tyranny can form and grow. This will be an invaluable resource when the medical totalitarians come for us next time, as surely they will.
The story is told through the eyes of Old Alex (the author), an old-time ‘pressman’ with a nose for a story and an unquenchable desire to unearth the truth. And, importantly, an open mind and no corporate constraints. Like many Covid dissidents, Stapleton made new friends during the Covid years, just about all of them independent truth-tellers. Citizen journalists. And he lost all sense of mainstream journalism having a soul and a purpose. Silent journalists were high up on Stapleton’s list of Covid criminals to be despised. But the stories of new voices and new connections among the refuseniks show the book to be about heroes as well as villains.
Journalism had very few dissidents who spoke out. Nor did the public servants or politicians or the police, but there were a few brave souls among the latter (for example) who broke ranks and saw Covid police brutality as a hill on which (professionally) to die. There was Andrew Cooney in New South Wales and Krystle Mitchell in Victoria.
These brave hearts were not willing to go along to get along, as rubber bullets penetrated backs, grandmothers were shoved to the pavement then pepper-sprayed, and the heads of mentally challenged innocents were smashed against concrete floors in downtown Melbourne. These stories of fascist policing were systematically smothered by the legacy media and the protesters pilloried and defamed.
The book details so much more. The scandal of the quarantine camps, for example. Those gazillion-dollar, Orwellian white elephants. The bullshit Covid-speak pronouncements from on high. The thousands upon thousands of (often massive) fines for Covid misdemeanours. The National Cabinet mutual protection narratives. All based on lies. Deadly lies. Some of the Covid class still promote the shots. Amid the ever-rising, murky waters of excess deaths. Including, perhaps, that of the Australian legend Shane Warne. Deaths still unexamined by the Covid class.
We need this book, and those like it. More straight history than exposé, but no less significant for this. True crime reporting, if you will. And if you didn’t hate the Covid class before you open the book, I guarantee you will by the end, if not sooner.
There are those who might say, why dredge it all up again since we have ‘moved on’? Well, among those that Covid refuseniks detest the most, the ‘let’s just move on’ types rank pretty high. This book should be for them to read and to reflect upon. To contemplate the massive pain caused, and to ponder the fact that it is all likely to happen again, what with the great reset people and the pandemic planning industry already on high alert for the first opportunity to crank up the machine again. Moving on, not holding ‘them’, the Covid class, to account, will only make the next instalment all the more likely.
Oh yes, for those who lived through the nightmare, John Stapleton’s gripping book, while reviving painful memories in great detail, is a must-read account of the evil that men (and women) do. It is a thundering reminder, too, of the need for Covid accountability, and a spur to further action among a new Coalition of the Willing minded to pursue it, and who simply must not give up the fight in the face of performative Covid class insouciance. It is ironic, too, that Australia Breaks Apart has been published just as the stampede for the exit door by Covid’s decision-makers has reached a crescendo.
In the dying days of the narrative, there was a national election, with one party of despised Covideers replaced by another, and around a third of now largely unrepresented voters, many of them the deplorables featured in Stapleton’s book, refusing to support either major party. The great political escape raises the question, was all the protesting worth it? I recently put a similar question to Ian Plimer, the doyen of Australian climate sceptics – why does he keep writing books when the climate writing seems to be on the wall? He replied that it was critical that when the history of all this comes to be written one day, there will be a record of the madness.
Buy this book, this chronicle of the new totalitarianism, the definitive account of Covid Australia, then circulate it widely among those might think it didn’t really matter what they did to us. A short review cannot do justice to this deeply authentic, often transcendent and, indeed, magisterial work. An astonishing achievement. An Australian story.
See also:
Essential Reading for the Dissident, the Disenfranchised, the Disillusioned
I try to use logic in my articles
This has led to some very disturbing conclusions
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JUNE 28, 2023
In my last article, I tried to use deductive reasoning or “logic” to explain how I knew the spike in all-cause deaths would NOT be exposed.
As I understand it, logic is simply an intellectual exercise where someone says “If A or B is true – or if one thinks these are true – then C, D or E must also be true.”
In layman’s terms, someone can make confident predictions based on some “known knowable(s).”
I use such deductive reasoning/syllogisms all the time in my writing (or try to). This is what probably makes me a “contrarian” and has allowed me to pen some fairly-original articles.
There’s another example that allows me to make another bold prediction with a pretty high degree of confidence.
Recently, a flurry of stories in the alternative press has shown conclusively that the government pressured social media companies to be much more aggressive in their censorship of users’ comments that do not align with the “authorized” Covid narratives.
(See my article on Missouri et al vs. Biden).
In reading legal documents from the Missouri v Biden lawsuit, I found a few comments from people who pointed out that the big social media companies like Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Google and YouTube are still censoring un-authorized comments at the same rate they have for the past 40 months.
I know this is true because Facebook keeps suspending my account and/or censoring or shadow-banning or restricting the reach of my Facebook posts.
Anyway, it would qualify as a “known knowable” to me that companies like these have NOT curtailed their censorship programs even after serious plaintiffs filed this lawsuit.
From this simple observation, several “logical” inferences occur to me. These include:
* These companies are NOT afraid of any terrible consequences happening to their companies if they don’t stop this censorship.
* Said differently, they seem to be very confident such a result will NOT happen.
* These companies must have concluded that nothing damaging to their companies is going to happen as a result of this lawsuit and investigation.
- In other words, executives at these companies have concluded they are “safe” to continue to censor like Big Brother.
- In fact, they probably realize they’ll be rewarded for “playing ball” with the legions of censors, “fact checkers” and “disinformation warriors” who are now omnipresent in myriad organizations.
Again, from these “logical” conclusions, I’ve deduced that, somehow, these executives must know that nothing significant or damaging to their companies is going to result from this lawsuit.
This conclusion/observation prompts this question: How do they know this?
Here, I circle back to the point I tried to make in my last column: These executives probably know this because they are all members of the same “club” …. and these club members happen to be the most powerful people and organizations on the planet.
Apparently, one iron-clad rule of said club is that members protect each other. They all benefit from sticking together.
Conversely, they all probably recognize they could be exposed and disgraced and lose their wealth, influence, benefits and power if they do NOT stick together and act together.
To use one example, my guess is that Mark Zuckerberg of Meta somehow knows nothing bad is going to happen to his company even if his army of “content moderators” and the platform’s algorithms continue to suppress my free speech (which the company continues to do).
Here, one has to state that if Missouri v Biden was successfully litigated, the conclusion would surely qualify as an epic scandal.
It would tell the world that many agents of our own government have conspired with companies like Meta to censor free speech.
Basically, the First Amendment to the U.S.Constitution would now be null and void.
Put it this way: If the U.S. government can compel partners in the media world to censor speech the government doesn’t like, we all now live in a dystopian, Orwellian world.
Well, that’s the “bet” that Zuckerberg, Google et al have apparently made. This is our “New Normal” world and these social media and Big Tech companies have no problem with this whatsoever. (Nor does the legacy press.)
It’s also possible these companies have made a more prosaic observation. For example, they have no doubt taken note of what’s happening at their competitor, Twitter, since Elon Musk bought this social media company.
According to comments Musk made in his recent conversation with Robert Kennedy, Jr., there seems to be a conspiracy of corporate advertisers to boycott Twitter now that it’s allowing far more free speech.
One doesn’t know if any memo went out to all these companies (and their ad agencies) to punish Twitter by withholding advertising spends on this platform. Here, one guesses these executives aren’t stupid enough to put any message like this in writing.
Still, we can observe what’s actually happened – “a known knowable” … as Musk, who would know, has told us.
One strongly suspects that corporate executives work in “pack” fashion just like corporate journalists do. In “journalism,” all the editors and reporters intuitively know what stories they can write and, perhaps more importantly, what stories they can’t write. Or what investigations they can’t pursue.
The same approach seems to apply to which companies are allowed to receive advertising dollars and which media companies should never receive advertising dollars.
We saw the same dynamic with the “case study” of one Tucker Carlson, formerly the star talking head at Fox News.
Yes, Tucker had the No. 1-rated TV news talk show in the world. However, his time slot at Fox News probably ranked last in “advertising revenue” from Coca-Cola, GM, IBM, Pfizer, Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, J.P. Morgan Chase and any company with scores of branded products or services.
Here’s the lesson even a caveman would get: If you want to air “dissident” commentary or journalism, you are not going to get any advertising dollars from our club members.
As you might have heard, Tucker Carlson was finally fired from Fox News. Today, I imagine the “memo” has gone out – It’s okay to once again advertise on Fox News between 8 and 9 p.m. EST.
I think this is called the “carrot-and-stick” approach to compelling compliance. (This approach seems to work in media as well as when it comes to promoting official propaganda such as “the vaccines are safe and effective.”)
Anyway, Meta and Google must have taken note of this “real-world” reality as well.
Regarding my “logical” belief that most social media companies are now completely captured (and are “all in” with Big Brother), I can make even more logical inferences.
As noted, censoring social media and Big Tech companies must not be too worried about the plaintiffs winning Missouri vs. Biden, which suggest to me that they know the U.S. Court system is also captured and will not allow any verdict that would disgrace their companies.
Here, I would opine that some lower court might rule in favor of the plaintiffs, but when this case finally gets to the Supreme Court, the Bad Guys perhaps know they have the vote of John Roberts in the bag?
They must also know that the leaders of Congress aren’t going to hold any Watergate-type hearings and expose their complicity and convince the citizens of our nation that, say, Facebook is evil and despises the First Amendment (which would mean the company despises and rejects everything the Founders of this nation stood for).
I’ll go even further. I think “club members” must know that “Joe Biden” is going to be re-elected president (or, if “Joe Biden” has to be replaced, another political clone who also hates and rejects the Constitution).
Think about it for a second. If these companies thought that Missouri v Biden might prevail – and the public might rise up against their companies – these companies would probably be throttling back on their censorship programs right now.
In fact, they’ve shrugged off these legal proceedings and are doubling, tripling and quadrupling down on the censorship of “misinformation” and “disinformation” of all varieties (not just dissident Covid speech).
This makes me think our “rulers behind the curtain” must know that they’ve also captured and control elections … and that “their” candidates will always win (even if their candidate is obviously suffering from worsening dementia, which is perhaps one reason they love this particular politician so much).
In other words, I think club members somehow know that Donald Trump, Robert Kennedy, Jr. or Ron DeSantis are not going to become the next president of the United States.
Any of these candidates, if elected, might push for hearings and prosecutions that could expose these companies for what they really are.
It seems pretty clear to me that this possibility doesn’t concern these people. Perhaps because they know this is NOT going to happen?
In my last article, I tried to explain why the “club members” aren’t worried about any of the Covid truths being exposed to the citizens of the world.
They know they hold all the key cards and that their not-so-little fraternity isn’t going allow this to happen.
This is probably the same reason Facebook and Google aren’t worried about being humiliated and possibly facing financial ruin from their roles in attacking the Bill of Rights.
Somehow they know this is not going to happen.
Again, the most important known-knowable seems to be the knowledge that club members control all the levers of power … And so they act accordingly.
I know the above might sounds like wild conspiracy stuff to many people, but Mr. Spock would probably reach the same “logical” and deeply-disturbing conclusions I’ve reached.
I’m thinking about putting aside this “logic tool” in future articles. It’s starting to interfere with my sleep.
YouTube Escalates Its Attack on Robert F Kennedy Jr., Censors Another Interview
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | June 27, 2023
YouTube has taken down another interview featuring Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr., raising eyebrows and fueling debate over the role of tech giants in controlling information. The interview, a spirited chat with Al Guart, a former New York Post reporter, was removed for allegedly breaching the platform’s “community standards.”
This has further ignited concerns over censorship and its potential ramifications on democratic dialogue.
The episode marked the launch of a podcast in which Kennedy, an environmental attorney and presidential aspirant for the 2024 election, discusses an array of subjects. From his meditation routine to his ambition of overhauling federal health agencies and the Democratic Party, the conversation traversed numerous topics. Other issues covered included handling environmental concerns and the middle class.
Al Guart expressed dismay over the removal in a statement, remarking, “YouTube just banned my interview with RFK Jr. for allegedly violating ‘community standards.’ RFK Jr. and I covered many topics of public interest and there was no threat or harm contained in the hour-long discussion.” Guart also highlighted that the podcast was gaining traction and popularity on other platforms.
During the interview, Kennedy made noteworthy remarks concerning censorship, a topic he himself has encountered on platforms such as Instagram and YouTube. He opined that, if elected President, he would engage with tech giants to explore ways to put an end to what he perceives as the unAmerican practice of censorship. He further asserted that if a satisfactory resolution could not be reached, he would consider transforming these companies into common carriers.
Kennedy, who has previously faced the ax on YouTube for violating its policy on vaccine “misinformation,” voiced his concerns over the platform’s removal of the video. He drew a parallel with concerns over foreign intervention in elections through information manipulation, stating, “People made a big deal about Russia supposedly manipulating internet information to influence a Presidential election. Shouldn’t we be worried when giant tech corporations do the same?”
In an earlier instance, YouTube removed a video featuring Kennedy in conversation with podcast host Jordan Peterson, citing a violation of its policy against “vaccine misinformation.” A YouTube spokesperson explained that content alleging vaccines cause chronic side effects, beyond the “rare” side effects acknowledged by health authorities, is not permitted on the platform.
‘Journalism is Not a Crime’: Experts Lambast EU Media Freedom Act
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 26.06.2023
The European Media Freedom Act envisages installing spyware on journalists’ phones for the sake of “national security”. Sputnik sat down with some international observers to discuss how the provision correlates with the act’s name and basic European principles.
“There is no legitimate reason to spy on journalists,” Lucy Komisar, an investigative journalist based in New York, told Sputnik.
“Remember, this law targets people identified as journalists, not as spies or terrorists or criminals. Journalism is not a crime, unless Julian Assange does it. The real reason is to protect government officials from journalists reporting on officials’ misguided policies, abuses and corruption. It’s quite ironic in view of the EU’s self-congratulatory rules trumpeted as protecting peoples’ data from tech companies. Stealing data when a company does it is bad, stealing audio and written text when a government does it is just fine.”
Tightening Screws on Free Press
The bloc’s new media regulation was proposed by the European Commission (EC) in September 2022. The initial draft stipulated that European governments could deploy spyware on journalists’ devices “on a case-by-case basis” to ensure national security or to investigate “serious crimes,” such as terrorism, human or weapons trafficking, exploitation of children, murder or rape.
However, in May 2023, Politico obtained a document penned by French policy-makers who called to narrow journalists’ immunity under the new EU rules and strike what they called “a fair balance between the need to protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources and the need to protect citizens and the state against serious threats.”
According to the media, Paris’ argument was accepted by the EC. As a result, the draft legislation was amended to loosen safeguards for the journalists’ immunity. The EC’s original list of “serious crimes” allowing surveillance on reporters was replaced by a broader 2002’s Council Framework Decision of the European arrest warrant consisting of 32 offenses.
The development triggered a storm of criticism from European journalist organizations, NGOs and activist groups. In particular, the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), representing over 300,000 members, denounced the EU’s move as a “blow to media freedom”. The EFJ warned that empowering EU governments to install spyware on journalists’ devices under the guise of “national security” would in particular have a “chilling effect on whistleblowers” and confidential sources.
“Since the eighteenth century when newspapers began to circulate, the secrecy of sources has been sacrosanct,” Professor Ellis Cashmore, the author of Screen Society and an independent media analyst, told Sputnik. “Journalists have, over generations, respected this and steadfastly refused to reveal sources. As recently as 2005, Judith Miller, a New York Times journalist, was sentenced to prison for not revealing sources. So, it is an extremely important principle in the media.”
For their part, the British media warned that despite the UK leaving the EU, the bloc’s legislation in its current form poses a surveillance risk to British journalists residing in the EU. European Digital Rights (EDRi), a network of digital rights advocates, urged the European Council to reconsider the legislation’s spyware provisions.
The proposed legislation will not only infringe the freedom of press but contribute to the further erosion of the public trust in the Western mainstream media which is increasingly merging with the government and elitist structures, according to Sputnik’s interlocutors.
“The two cataclysmic events of the COVID pandemic and the Ukraine conflict have changed the media’s relationships with governments,” explained Cashmore. “One important effect is what we might call a neutering of the media. I mean by this that news organizations are now so reliant on governments for intel that they have been deterred from being critical of administrations. In the West, the phrase is ‘do not bite the hand that feeds you’.”
One shouldn’t delude oneself into believing that those proposing the spyware provision are really concerned about “national interests,” echoed Lucy Komisar: “The security they are protecting is not that of European nations but of themselves,” she pointed out.
According to Komisar, much of the Western media “already walks in lock-step with their governments.” The newly proposed bill “aims at the few courageous ones left, to keep the public from finding out about officials’ abuses and lies” and “to intimidate the few Julian Assanges who are left in European media that reach the broad public.”
Once the legislation is passed “real journalists will have to do what other critics of repressive governments do: user burner phones, have computers not connected to the internet, have secret meetings with brave sources,” the investigative journalist projected.
“Democracy is distorted when citizens are prevented from getting the information they need for informed choices,” Komisar warned.
Bans and Censorship Do More Harm Than Good
Meanwhile, the latest developments don’t seem surprising against the backdrop of the West’s steady attack on freedom of speech over the last several years. One glaring example is WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who has been persecuted for exposing the US-NATO criminal conduct in Afghanistan and Iraq and the CIA’s cyber-spying techniques. Assange is indicted on 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act in the US. The WikiLeaks founder has been held in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison for more than four years and is now facing extradition to the US.
Likewise, Washington charged former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden under the Espionage Act for shedding light on the US global surveillance program and spying on American civilians in a clear contradiction with the nation’s constitution. Snowden evaded Assange’s fate by finding asylum in Russia. In September 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship to the whistleblower.
Most recently, the collective West has ramped up pressure against Russian media outlets by resorting to censorship and outright bans after the beginning of Moscow’s special military operation to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.
In particular, in March 2022, the EU slapped sanctions and suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT thus stripping Europeans of any alternative news about the Ukraine conflict and imposing a one-sided vision of what’s going on in the Eastern European military theater. Concurrently, the UK passed legislation ordering social media, internet services and app store companies to block content from RT and Sputnik.
Remarkably, some Western human rights advocates warned at the time that banning Russian media “does more harm than good”: “History offers numerous examples of emergency speech restrictions threatening the very democracies they were supposed to protect,” wrote Danish lawyer and free speech activist Jacob Mchangama in August 2022.
“I am not a conspiracy theorist, but any sentient person can see a systematic removal of the media’s ability to operate without fear or favor – that is, impartially,” said Cashmore. “A dependency has been cultivated: the media have been encouraged to rely on political powers for information and, if they don’t, they face expulsion. The ejection of Sputnik and RT from the UK illustrates the measures governments are prepared to take to eliminate not just critical but alternative commentary. So, I believe the EU is seeking a closer compliance with mainstream or dominant narratives and the minimization of perspectives that challenge or criticize.”
The value of the concept of the freedom of speech is fading given that just a handful of European parliamentarians have shown any independence or courage to uphold this basic principle of the EU, according to Komisar. She expects that the draconian legislation may be passed, apparently with a meaningless disclaimer “this should not be used to attack a free press.”
“Calling this ‘Orwellian’ becomes a cliché,” Komisar concluded.
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From the Archives
Wartime internment camps in Australia
National Archives of Australia
World War I
During World War I, for security reasons the Australian Government pursued a comprehensive internment policy against enemy aliens living in Australia.
Initially only those born in countries at war with Australia were classed as enemy aliens, but later this was expanded to include people of enemy nations who were naturalised British subjects, Australian-born descendants of migrants born in enemy nations and others who were thought to pose a threat to Australia’s security.
Australia interned almost 7,000 people during World War I, of whom about 4,500 were enemy aliens and British nationals of German ancestry already resident in Australia.
Records of World War I internment camps
World War II
During World War II, Australian authorities established internment camps for three reasons – to prevent residents from assisting Australia’s enemies, to appease public opinion and to house overseas internees sent to Australia for the duration of the war.
Unlike World War I, the initial aim of internment during the later conflict was to identify and intern those who posed a particular threat to the safety or defence of the country. As the war progressed, however, this policy changed and Japanese residents were interned en masse. In the later years of the war, Germans and Italians were also interned on the basis of nationality, particularly those living in the north of Australia. In all, just over 20 per cent of all Italians resident in Australia were interned. … continue
Blog Roll
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- Trump Says US Naval Blockade in Strait of Hormuz Will Begin Shortly
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- US IRAN TALKS: Who Are the Crazy Ones Here? /Lt Col Daniel Davis
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- Iran Has Won the War, It Will Be Up to the US to Secure the Peace: Mohammad Marandi
- If Americans Knew
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- Pro-Israel ‘Thinktanks’ and Individuals who Influence U.S. Foreign Policy
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