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The Establishment Wants to Ban Germany’s Second Largest Party – for the Sake of Democracy

Free West Media | August 27, 2023

The rising popularity of AfD has raised strong concerns within the establishment. Despite lies and demonization in the media and isolation from the overall political establishment, the party continues to grow. Certain representatives of the party are accused of becoming increasingly “extreme,” and in an unusual move, the influential weekly newspaper Der Spiegel demanded that AfD be “banned.”

In mid-June, Alternative for Germany (AfD) surpassed the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to become Germany’s second-largest party in terms of public opinion. By August, they had garnered a substantial 21 percent of voter support, three percentage points ahead of the SPD and five percentage points behind the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Some individual opinion polls even showed AfD with as much as 23 percent support.

The growing public support for AfD, which has already been the dominant party in the eastern parts of the country for a while, but is now also growing in the western regions, has shaken the establishment. Both the coalition government composed of the SPD, the Free Democratic Party, and the Greens, as well as the Christian Democratic opposition outside the government, have continued to argue that the so-called “firewall” against AfD must be maintained: absolutely no cooperation of any kind whatsoever.

Recently, CDU’s chairman Friedrich Merz found himself in hot water after stating that practical cooperation on municipal matters was unavoidable and even required by law. After facing internal criticism, he had to backtrack and confirm that he naturally did not advocate cooperation at the “legislative” levels, meaning in state parliaments or the Bundestag.

AfD’s female spokesperson, Alice Weidel, stated during the AfD conference in Magdeburg that it’s hypocritical to speak in favor of democracy while isolating a party with significant popular support from influence.

“The firewall must be torn down. We are the largest in eastern Germany, and what we are witnessing now is just the beginning. No one will surpass us as the strongest force. The firewall is antidemocratic; millions of voters are excluded from influence. We speak with all parties; it’s our duty to the voters; otherwise, we’ll have excessive political polarization. We need to create a bulwark against the Green party, which advocates for banning us.”

The established parties have also invoked constitutional protection several times. In some federal states, AfD has been placed under “observation” for “suspected anti-constitutional efforts.” The focus has primarily been on ethnonationalist statements from certain representatives, where it’s considered unconstitutional to talk about “true Germans” in an ethnic sense as opposed to “Germans” who are immigrants and citizens.

AfD has taken “legal counteractions” by appealing such decisions, which have been successful in several cases. In one federal state, the term “extremism” was withdrawn by Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution after a decision by an administrative court.

Not surprisingly, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution faced significant criticism during AfD’s party conference at the end of July. The Office has “delegitimized itself,” among other things, according to statements made.

In an unusually bold move, the magazine Der Spiegel entered the debate on August 11 with an editorial titled “Ban Enemies of the Constitution!” Der Spiegel has a globalist profile and is the largest political weekly magazine in Europe. They argue that AfD has “become increasingly radicalized. It’s time to defend democracy with sharper weapons.”

SPD party leader Olaf Scholz has also expressed that a ban should be considered if it can be proven that AfD can be categorized as a “right-wing extremist group” by constitutional protection.

Many have reacted to the fact that the political establishment and its mainstream media believe that the best way to defend democracy is to undermine it.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | | Leave a comment

Top UK Journalist Isabel Oakeshott Gloated Over The US’ Role In Imran Khan’s Deposal

BY ANDREW KORYBKO | AUGUST 27, 2023

The Mainstream Media’s (MSM) narrative about former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s scandalous deposal in April 2022 has hitherto been that it supposedly represented a completely independent and purely democratic exercise that was entirely free of foreign influence. These analyses here and here argue that it was actually a US-backed post-modern coup carried out as punishment for his multipolar foreign policy, which readers can learn more about by reviewing the preceding pieces.

The details are beyond the scope of the present piece, however, which focuses on how the MSM’s narrative has abruptly shifted in light of the provocative op-ed published by top UK journalist Isabel Oakeshott for the Telegraph. In her article titled “Imran Khan isn’t a martyr for freedom. He’s a friend of the West’s worst enemies”, she breaks ranks with her peers after being triggered by a recent video about IK’s plight in prison that includes footage of his meeting with President Putin in February 2022.

Here’s her initial reaction to that from the article:

“But hang on a minute! Who’s that lurking in the video? Do I spy an image of Khan gladhanding Vladimir Putin, even as the Russian president rained bombs on Ukraine? Of all the many pictures his spin doctors could have selected of their man on the world stage, they chose this one, as well as an image of their leader meeting Xi Jinping, the Chinese president. What a blunder – and what a disturbing insight into Khan’s new allegiances, now he has left his colourful playboy past behind.”

She then gloated over the US’ role in his deposal:

“A sensational report by The Intercept claims that a leaked Pakistani government document shows his deposal was actively encouraged by the US State Department. No wonder! As the West united to support Ukraine, what was he doing gravitating towards the Kremlin? While his supporters wring their hands over his plight, others may be relieved that this complex character no longer has his finger on a nuclear button.”

Oakeshott is entitled to her opinion, but it surprised many that a leading UK journalist would break the MSM’s narrative on this ultra-sensitive issue in an op-ed for one of the West’s leading outlets. It’s also curious that the Telegraph didn’t include the typical disclaimer that their contributors’ views don’t necessarily reflect their own. Considering this, the message being conveyed is that they – and elements of the Western elite by extrapolation – are proud of the US’ most successful regime change in years.

The silver lining is that anyone who tries to gaslight by claiming that it’s a so-called “conspiracy theory” to allege US involvement in IK’s deposal is now discredited since those who they’re attacking can simply point to how top UK journalist Oakeshott gloated over this in the Telegraph. Without realizing it, she just dealt a powerful blow to Western soft power by exposing the hypocrisy of its “rules-based order”, which in this context lends credence to many Pakistanis’ claims that their government is illegitimate.

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Google buries websites of Trump, RFK Jr, Republican challengers

RT | August 26, 2023

Google is suppressing the 2024 campaign websites of all serious challengers to Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden, a report from the Media Research Center claimed on Thursday.

Searching the web for ‘presidential campaign websites’ using Google returned results that did not include a single Republican candidate on the first page the day before the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 season, according to the MRC.

Not even former US President Donald Trump, who is polling neck-and-neck with Biden, appeared in the first few pages of results, the media watchdog observed.

Nor did Democratic challenger Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the chief threat to Biden’s candidacy from within his own party, appear in the results at all, even though a recent poll had him at nearly 20% in a matchup against Biden.

Indeed, the only non-Biden Democrat to feature on the first page was lifestyle guru Marianne Williamson, who has never polled above the low single digits.

However, the websites of prominent Democrats who are not running for president in 2024, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, were more prominently featured at 29th, 12th, and 9th place in the results, respectively.

“Google has erased every threat to Joe Biden,” MRC Free Speech America VP Dan Schneider said on Thursday, recalling how Google had “pulled out all the stops to put Hillary Clinton in the White House” and “has continued to interfere in our elections ever since.”

As of Saturday, the phenomenon appeared to have actually worsened. While Biden’s site was the fourth listed on the search engine and Williamson’s the fifth, Sanders remained at 12th, while Clinton had actually moved up to 13th.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s site was the highest-ranked Republican in a search run on Saturday morning – though even his page was listed several places behind an Atlantic article informing the casual browser that 1996 Republican candidate and now-deceased former Senator Bob Dole’s campaign website “is still online.”

Kennedy has been widely disparaged by the media establishment and online factcheckers for his work on vaccine safety. He sued Google earlier this month for violating his First Amendment rights, arguing its subsidiary YouTube had blocked his content on orders from the Biden administration.

Trump also sued Google in 2021 for infringing on his free speech after he was deplatformed from YouTube along with most other mainstream social media platforms following the January 6 Capitol riot.

Over a dozen government agencies were found to be issuing content-based censorship orders to social media platforms last year in Missouri v. Biden, leading a judge to issue a restraining order forbidding the administration from contacting the platforms.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Biden administration sought control over TikTok

RT | August 26, 2023

The Biden administration sought to gain control over nearly every aspect of the inner workings of social media behemoth TikTok as part of negotiations allowing its continued operation in the US, according to a draft agreement obtained by Forbes last week.

The agreement, which runs to nearly 100 pages, would reportedly give the White House a level of control over the Chinese-owned platform even greater than that which it was found last year to be exercising over US-based competitors like Facebook and Twitter, allowing government officials to not only monitor and influence the conversation on the platform but also to interfere in the day-to-day operations of TikTok in the US.

Government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense would have full authority to examine TikTok’s servers, equipment, records, facilities, and other properties, according to the draft. They could also block changes to the app’s US terms of service, privacy policy, and moderation policies and veto the hiring of any individual involved in data security for the US.

The agreement would also force TikTok and its parent company ByteDance to submit to outside audits, assessments, code inspections, and cybersecurity checks by supposedly independent entities chosen by the US government. The company would be required to foot the bill for these intrusions.

The platform’s US staff could even have been required to exclude ByteDance’s executives from security-related decisions, instead deferring to an executive security committee whose actions would also be concealed from ByteDance. This committee’s primary responsibility would be maintaining US national security first and TikTok’s profitability second.

The draft seen by Forbes, dated last summer, is the product of months of exchanges between ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which oversees foreign involvement in business deals that could potentially impact national security and has been investigating ByteDance for four years.

TikTok has repeatedly been threatened with a blanket ban or forced sale of its US assets to an American competitor as both President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump claimed the platform is used by Beijing for information warfare.

CFIUS renewed the call for a ban or sale in March after the DOJ launched an investigation into ByteDance employees using TikTok to spy on American journalists. A spokesperson for ByteDance confirmed the surveillance but attributed it to rogue employees who have since been fired.

TikTok has over 150 million American users spending 90 minutes or more on the platform. While the company pledged in 2021 to isolate US user data on servers owned by tech giant Oracle to assuage spying concerns, Biden prohibited its use by federal employees in December and dozens of state and city governments have followed suit.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

California Church Fined For Defying Covid Lockdowns Sues County For Tracking Worshipers Without Their Knowledge

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2023

A church in California punished during Covid lockdowns with a fine of $1.2 million is now suing over geofencing-based surveillance of its members.

The church, Calvary Chapel San Jose, along with Pastor Mike McClure, allege in the federal lawsuit filed this week that Santa Clara County engaged in warrantless and invasive surveillance, using the geofencing method and thus abusing location data harvested from the worshipers’ phones.

The filing is based on claims that both First Amendment related to free speech, and the Fourth Amendment, meant to protect against unlawful searches, were violated by the county as it resorted to spying via geofencing.

We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.

Advocates for Faith & Freedom, a group that filed the lawsuit, specified that the county turned to SafeGraph data company in order to carry out this activity, and accuses the officials behind the scheme as engaging in tracking of residents not only without appropriate warrants and in an invasive manner, but also keeping this activity a secret from the public.

“This type of expansive geofencing operation is not only an invasion of privacy but represents a terrifying precedent if allowed to go unaddressed,” the complaint states. “As it stands, Defendants assert that, as long as they call it research, any level of government can target and spy on any individual or group at any time for any duration.”

It is further alleged that the operation lasted more than a year, “with seemingly no oversight, boundaries, or limitations.” The implication of this is that those targeted by this controversial, dragnet-style surveillance weren’t safe from it anywhere – be it the prayer room or the bathroom.

Those behind the lawsuit also reject the arguments that the defendants have apparently chosen to go with, namely, that the whole operation was done for the sake of “research,” and is therefore justified.

But, argues Advocates for Faith & Freedom, accepting such logic would mean that there would be no real limits to how government entities at any level could use geofencing to track either groups or individuals. This lack of boundaries means that the spying could go on against anyone and for any amount of time – and potentially be used against opponents.

“This is not just un-American; it is downright Orwellian,” stated Advocates for Faith & Freedom.

Santa Clara County, meanwhile, had nothing to add to its previous comments on the matter, well before the lawsuit was filed. Back in March, the county reacted to a report about tracking of worshipers written by journalist David Zweig.

Related: Geofence Warrants Are Dangerous For Everyone

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

Will Scientific Evidence Ever Silence the Pro-Mask Cult?

Facial equity mask
BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 24, 2023

It is a long-established conclusion from the scientific world that face masks achieve no appreciable reduction in viral transmission. We knew this in 2015-16 with regard to surgeons and their patients (here and here). We knew this in 2020 from a gold-standard Cochrane review, an analysis of 14 studies on influenza and a healthcare investigation that concluded that masks “may paradoxically lead to more transmissions”. We knew this in 2021 based on the Danish mask study and two comprehensive evidence reviews (here and here). We knew this in 2022 in relation to primary schools and universities, and a debunking of premature pro-mask conclusions drawn from the Bangladesh study. And – as if more evidence was needed – at the start of 2023 we had the latest Cochrane review, yet again concluding that covering our faces with cloth and plastic does not significantly reduce the likelihood of contracting respiratory viral infections. Yet, despite this collective scream from the scientific community that the ‘MASKS DON’T WORK’, it seems that nothing will muzzle the strident protestations of the mask disciples, such as those at Independent SAGE.

A recent article in the Daily Mail led with the scary headline: ‘Scientists raise alarm over new Covid variant and call for return of face masks.’ Two of the scientists raising concerns were Professors Trish Greenhalgh and Stephen Griffin, the former announcing, “It’s, once again, time to mask up”, while the latter concurs – albeit more cryptically – with his recommendation of the re-imposition of a “mitigation-based approach”. Both Greenhalgh and Griffin are members of Independent SAGE.

When Independent SAGE was formed in May 2020, as an alternative to official SAGE, it claimed to be a group of multi-disciplinary experts whose mission was to offer the Government scientific advice on how to minimise deaths during the Covid crisis. In reality, it constituted a group of zero-Covid fanatics pushing extreme counter-pandemic measures: whatever non-evidenced, human-rights-infringing restrictions the Government proposed, Independent SAGE typically called for them to be longer and harsher.

A cursory inspection of the group’s membership explains a lot. The previously-mentioned Trish Greenhalgh is, undoubtedly, the most extreme spokesperson for the pro-mask cult, previously asserting that the search for rigorous scientific evidence was the “enemy of good policy“. The founding Chairman of the group, Professor David King, was the senior scientific advisor to the Government of Tony Blair, currently an influential advocate of globalist agendas promoting top-down control of the population. Another core participant is the lifelong member of the Communist party – Professor Susan ‘let’s-wear-a-mask-forever‘ Michie. Also, the current co-Chair of Independent SAGE is Anthony Costello, a Professor of Global Health and Sustainable Development at University College London and a former director at the World Health Organisation. Given the histories and affiliations of these group participants it was predictable that they would grasp the next available opportunity to call for the return of community masking.

Clearly, the use of the term ‘independent’ in relation to this group was a misnomer. In stark contrast, Dr. Ashley Croft – the independent expert commissioned by the Scottish Covid Inquiry – appears to be a much better fit for the role of supplier of impartial information, free from the shackles of groupthink and mainstream ideology. Dr. Croft is a Consultant Public Health Physician and Medical Epidemiologist. In his report he lists his conclusions about the  physical measures taken against COVID-19 as follows (emphasis mine):

In 2020 there was scientific evidence to support the use of some of the physical measures (e.g. frequent handwashing, the use of PPE in hospital settings) adopted against COVID-19. For other measures (e.g. face mask mandates outside of healthcare settings, lockdowns, social distancing, test, trace and isolate measures) there was either insufficient evidence in 2020 to support their use – or alternatively, no evidence; the evidence base has not changed materially in the intervening three years.

It has been argued that the restrictive measures introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in individual, societal and economic harm that was avoidable and that should not have occurred.

This genuinely independent voice was not well-received in some quarters. Unused to the expression of viewpoints that deviate from the dominant Covid narrative, the mainstream media predictably squealed disapproval about Croft’s perspective and resorted to attempts to smear him for his “vaccine scepticism”. And no doubt those ideologues at Independent SAGE will – as I write – be doing likewise.

As the year advances, the evidence against mass masking continues to accumulate. In April, researchers at London’s St. George’s Hospital reported that a mask mandate in 2020-21 in their healthcare settings “made no discernible difference to reducing hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections”. And – lest we forget – we purportedly live in a free and open society where coercive restrictions should only be imposed where there is unequivocal proof of a pronounced and widespread benefit from adoption of the behaviour targeted; we are a million miles away from that scenario, and that is even before we consider the harms of community masking.

But will this quieten the pro-mask cult? It seems these perpetual advocates of face coverings are driven by some supra cognitive construct that trumps the empirical evidence. Mass concealment of human faces appears to signify something sacred to groups like Independent SAGE: is it equality, egalitarianism, altruism? Or could their persistent pushing of masks be simply due to cognitive dissonance: they have stridently trumpeted the practice for so long that it would now be too psychologically painful, and damaging to their status and self-image, to admit their previous energies have been woefully misplaced? Whatever the underlying reason, we can expect escalating appeals from the muzzle mafia over the coming months.

Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

NEW VARIANTS TRIGGER CALLS FOR RETURN TO LOCKDOWNS

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | August 24, 2023

Mass media is calling for the reinstitution of COVID restrictions due to new variants, with no conversation about the efficacy or the harm they’ve caused. Jefferey Jaxen connects all the dots, which appears to be pointing to a Pandemic 2.0.

August 26, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Fauci declares lockdowns were ‘absolutely justified’ and suggests they should be used again to force vaccinations

Retired government bureaucrat says that tragedy in Maui was due to climate change

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | August 22, 2023

Recently retired government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci just appeared at a university virtual event titled, “Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” During the conversation, Fauci, who is now affiliated with Georgetown University, made it clear that he still supports locking down society in the name of a virus, adding that lockdowns are a great tool to forcibly “vaccinate” people.

I’ll save you 40 minutes of your life and quote some of the “highlights” from the interview, in which a Wayne State University professor asks Fauci about what he’s learned from his time overseeing a “pandemic response.” The video of the chat is available via YouTube below:

Fauci falsely claimed that New York City was overrun and had “cooler trucks outside because they had no places to put the bodies.”

“You had to have something to immediately shut down the tsunami of infection,” he states, adding, “that lockdown was absolutely justified.”

“Lockdown has a purpose,” the pseudoscientist continued. “One of the purposes, if you don’t have a vaccine, it’s to get more ventilators, get the hospitals better prepared … until you decompress the pressure on the hospitals.

Fauci wasn’t done yet. Here comes the truly evil insanity…

“If you have a vaccine available, you might want to lock down temporarily so you can get everybody vaccinated,” he suggests.

Rejecting the idea that lockdowns are a moral question, he added that “lockdowns have a place, but they are not a permanent solution.”

The conversation continued, with the longtime NIAID chief declaring that “climate change” is “playing a role” in causing outbreaks.

He then calls for an “international commitment to decrease the carbon imprint in society so you don’t have the kinds of crazy weather we’re having in this country.”

Yes, that’s a real quote.

He went on to blame the tragedy in Maui on climate change. “It’s completely, really amazing what’s happened with climate change,” he concludes.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The Royal Society Lockdown Report Authors Understand That by Ignoring the High Quality Evidence they Reach the Politically Acceptable Conclusion

BY DR CARL HENEGHAN AND DR TOM JEFFERSON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

This week saw the publication of a suite of systematic reviews by the Royal Society (RS) on the effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the pandemic.

Politico headlined with ‘Top review says Covid lockdowns and masks worked, period’. The Guardian led with ‘Lockdowns and face masks “unequivocally” cut the spread of Covid, report finds’, and the i newspaper stated: ‘Masks and social distancing did reduce Covid infections, new report shows, proving lockdown sceptics wrong.’

So there you have it, a slam dunk, sceptics, you were all wrong. You should have masked up and stayed in lockdown.

Even more so when you listen to the Chair of the report’s group, Mark Walport, who said: “There is sufficient evidence to conclude that early, stringent implementation of packages of complementary NPIs was unequivocally effective in limiting SARS-CoV-2 infections.”

Four systematic reviews informed the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions in the Covid pandemic. However, here is some of what these reviews report.

A systematic review on environmental control measures:

Many of these studies were assessed to have critical risk of bias in at least one domain, largely due to confounding factors that could have affected the measured outcomes. As a result, there is low confidence in the findings.

Testing, contact tracing and isolation interventions among the general population on reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2:

One study, an RCT, showed that daily testing of contacts could be a viable strategy to replace lengthy quarantine of contacts. Based on the scarcity of robust empirical evidence, we were not able to draw any firm quantitative conclusions about the quantitative impact of TTI interventions in different epidemic contexts.

Effectiveness of face masks for reducing transmission of SARS-CoV-2:

We analysed 35 studies in community settings (three RCTs and 32 observational) and 40 in healthcare settings (one RCT and 39 observational). Ninety-one percent of observational studies were at ‘critical’ risk of bias (ROB) in at least one domain, often failing to separate the effects of masks from concurrent interventions.

Effectiveness of international border control measures during the COVID-19 pandemic:

There is little evidence that most travel restrictions, including border closure and those implemented to stop the introduction of new variants of concern, were particularly effective.

The report makes the same errors that the UKHSA and Public Health England did. They ignored the critical biases and the confounders when drawing conclusions. Some of the comments misunderstand the evidence required for making healthcare decisions.

Chris Dye, Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, who led the review on masks for the Royal Society, said if they had only looked at randomised controlled trials, they would have come to the same conclusion as the Cochrane review. However, the researchers behind the paper released Thursday chose to analyse a larger body of studies and found strong evidence that masks work.

So, if we ignore high-quality evidence, we arrive at the conclusion we want – they fully understand the politics. Low-quality evidence means the estimated effect will differ substantially from the actual effect – we’ve known this for quite some time, and it is fundamental to the delivery of evidence-based interventions. An approach that uses low-quality evidence shouldn’t inform healthcare, and it doesn’t. That’s why we have NICE, which uses the best available evidence to develop recommendations that guide health, public health and social care decisions.

Did the reviewers, for instance, ask if there was a protocol for any of these studies – something we have previously pointed out. There were none, despite protocols being essential for robust research.

There is something we do agree with in the report, that the “future assessments should also consider the costs as well as the benefits of NPIs, in terms of their impacts on livelihoods, economies, education, social cohesion, physical and mental wellbeing, and potentially other aspects”. However this report looked at none of that.  The single focus on one outcome, ignoring harms, further hinders informed decision-making.

The RS report wants us to believe that RCTs are impossible during a pandemic: “While RCTs should not be discounted, it is highly likely that most information in a future pandemic will continue to be observational.”

Yet the pandemic has re-emphasised the importance of high-quality randomised clinical trials and highlighted the need for preparation, coordination and collaboration.

The Royal Society review shows that some academics are losing their ability to think critically. Instead of retrofitting evidence to preconceived conclusions, it would be much better to report the uncertainties and set out those questions that need addressing. Refusal to acknowledge uncertainties does a disservice to society and undermines public trust in research.

Staying at home decreases your risk of all sorts of hazards – in the short term, you won’t get run over and you’ll reduce the risk of an infection or an accident. But what matters is the costs of what happens when you reemerge.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The Digital Services Act Will Give the EU Sweeping New Censorship Powers, Forcing X and Facebook to Remove Content that Challenges Mass Migration, Transgender Ideology or Net Zero

BY DR FREDERICK ATTENBOROUGH | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) comes into force today, obliging “very large online platforms” to swiftly take down what unelected European Commission bureaucrats decide to define as ‘disinformation’.

As Laurie Wastell points out in the European Conservative, the DSA obliges online platforms to swiftly take down so-called disinformation. From today, the EC has at its disposal an aggressive enforcement regime, such that if Big Tech companies fail to abide by the EU’s ‘Strengthened Code of Practice on Disinformation’, which requires swift censorship of mis- and disinformation, then they can be fined up to 6% of their annual global revenue, investigated by the Commission, and potentially even prevented from operating in the EU altogether.

So, who is to say if something is misinformation? In the case of social media platforms operating within the EU, the EC is the arbiter of that, since it is the Commission that will decide if platforms like X and Facebook are doing enough to combat it. (It is the EU’s executive body, the EC, that is invested by the DSA with the exclusive power to assess compliance with the Code and apply penalties if a platform is found wanting.)

And what kind of speech is the DSA expected to police? The Code defines disinformation as “false or misleading content that is spread with an intention to deceive or secure economic or political gain and which may cause public harm”. That sounds innocent and apolitical enough. Yet the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), which was launched by the EC in June 2020 and aims to “identify disinformation, uproot its sources or dilute its impact”, appears to adopt a much broader, deeply politicised understanding of the term “misleading content”.

Consider, for instance, some of the key “disinformation trends” listed in the EDMO’s recent 2023 briefing on disinformation in Ireland. They include “nativist narratives” that “oppose migration”, “gender and sexuality narratives” that touch on drag queens and trans issues as “part of a wider ‘anti-woke’ narrative that mocks social justice campaigns”, and “environment narratives” that criticise climate-change policies and Greta Thunberg.

Clearly, what is common to such narratives is not that they constitute disinformation in the sense outlined in the Code — that is, “false information intended to mislead”. Rather, they represent opposition by members of the public to unpopular policies favoured by European elites — in this case, mass migration, transgender ideology and Net Zero.

In the words of EC President Ursula von der Leyen, it is vital that companies censor disinformation of this kind to “ensure that the online environment remains a safe space”. Safe for whom, one wonders — politicians or citizens?

Well worth reading in full.

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

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Free Speech Union Highlights New Risk to Free Speech in the Workplace: Carbon Literacy Training

BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 25, 2023

The Free Speech Union has just published a briefing on carbon literacy training by Thomas Harris, its Director of Data and Impact. The FSU is concerned that it will have a chilling effect on free speech in the workplace in the same way that unconscious bias training and anti-racism training does, with employees reluctant to challenge the ideas behind it for fear of jeopardising their careers.

Carbon literacy training is spreading rapidly across UK offices and places of study, with over 67,000 citizens certified as ‘carbon literate’ according to the Carbon Literacy Project (CLP), the main organisation behind the initiative. (Between financial year-end September 2021 and September 2022, CLP’s income grew from £183.8k to £637.7k, an increase of nearly 250%.) The training takes it for granted that we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ and recommends that employees embrace various radical solutions, including net zero.

The Free Speech Union is concerned that this training is embedding a particular orthodoxy about climate change in British workplaces, leaving employees feeling unable to challenge it. While it’s indisputable that average global temperatures have increased since the mid-19th Century people hold a range of views about the causes and severity of climate change and that in turn influences their opinion about the best way to tackle it – or, indeed, whether tackling it is possible or necessary. Different solutions to the problems created by climate change are informed by different values and recommending one approach over another inevitably involves making a political choice. There is no-such thing as an apolitical, ‘scientific’ solution. Consequently, employees should not be put under pressure to endorse a particular approach or threatened with disciplinary action if they fail to adjust their behaviour to follow this approach, particularly in their private lives.

In those companies seeking accreditation as a ‘Carbon Literate Organisation’ (CLO), up to 80% of staff are expected to become ‘carbon literate’. Carbon literate accreditation requires employees to embrace a particular view about climate change and identify at least one action they can take to reduce their own carbon footprint, as well as at least one action involving other people. The FSU fears that employees may be penalised if they refuse to comply with these requirements because they do not share a particular point of view.

The FSU first became aware of this new threat to free speech in the workplace when it was contacted by a member who is concerned about his career after he challenged the carbon literacy training provided by his employer. The FSU believes he was right to be concerned. To secure CLP’s platinum, gold, and silver CLO accreditation, companies are expected to embed carbon literacy in the annual targets of staff members and evaluate their performance accordingly. This means that employees who don’t subscribe to a particular view on climate change could find themselves missing out on pay awards or promotion unless they self-censor or pretend to hold convictions they don’t have.

If you’re being forced to undergo carbon literacy training in your workplace and are worried you might get into trouble for challenging the climate activist agenda behind it, you can contact Thomas Harris at the Free Speech Union here. And if you’re not already a member of the FSU, you can join here.

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

New York City Mayor seeks to incorporate Israel police drone technology into NYPD

MEMO | August 24, 2023

The Mayor of New York City is looking to potentially incorporate Israeli drone technology and methods to aid in law enforcement and emergency efforts, in the latest example of cooperation between American and Israeli police forces.

Eric Adams, the New York City Mayor, visited Israel this week in order to assess the country’s law enforcement technology and the possibility of incorporating it into the New York Police Department (NYPD), telling reporters during an online briefing in the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, yesterday that the Israeli police forces “are a little bit more advanced”.

Adams praised the drones used by Israeli law enforcement as being more durable and being able to fly for much longer than NYC’s current technological devices, clarifying that “the method in which they’re using them, the methods in which they are training to use them, is what caught my interest”.

Referring to himself as “a great fan of technology and all it can do to make our lives easier and safer”, the Mayor proclaimed that “Israel is on the cutting edge of exciting developments in technology that will benefit all of us.”

He also referred to Israeli police’s use of drones in coordination with police motorcycles, saying it could potentially be a tactic utilised by the NYPD to help response times for accidents or other emergencies.

The utilisation of drone technology by Israeli police and wider authorities has increased throughout the past year, with officials in the central Israeli city of Modi’in-Maccabim-Reut having begun deploying drones as first responders in traffic accidents last October.

Despite his praise for the NYPD’s Israeli counterparts, Adams acknowledged that a significant part of the drone technologies’ utilisation is directly opposed to laws practiced within the United States, making full implementation an issue. The NYPD “will not use any tool that is not in alignment with the laws of our city, in our state and in our country.”

One such method it will reportedly refrain from using is the facial recognition technology which is notoriously used by Israeli authorities to identify Palestinians. “So many police forces across the globe, they use various methods that are not suitable in our city, and we’re not going to use any methods that do not conform with our rights and the laws of our country”.

The Mayor praised some aspects of Israeli policing tactics, however, such as their ability to “strategically and successfully deal with a large crowd”. He claimed that “some methods we may not use, but there are other methods that they use that they’re really humane in nature.”

Such tactics like crowd control may be incorporated by the NYPD, he said, seemingly referring to recent riots that rocked the city last month. “As when we had a similar incident in our city, how do we do it in the correct way? And they’ve [Israelis] learned how to do it correctly. And we walked away with some of those tactics.”

Related article:

Data collected by Israel’s electronic wolves helps to terrorise the Palestinians

August 25, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

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