Soros Foundation Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 03.09.2023
The Soros family has waged a years-long political war against Donald Trump and his supporters, with George Soros calling Trump a “danger to the world” and characterizing his ideas as a “threat to democracy.” Trump has alleged that “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by” Soros are behind the ongoing effort to put him behind bars.
Last month, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations soft power empire announced a dramatic scaling back of funding for operations in Europe, sparking an outcry from liberal activists, NGOs, and think tanks regarding the impact the end of the financial gravy train will have on their operations.
Alexander Soros, the 37-year-old son of the Hungarian-born US billionaire who took the reins at the OSF in June, responded with a manifesto-style appeal this week explaining the shift in focus under his leadership, assuring that the OSF isn’t really “leaving Europe,” and that the region “remains of huge strategic importance.”
Shift in Focus to Eastern Europe and US
Rather, Soros indicated, the shift in funding is the result of a shift in focus, from Western to Eastern Europe and the United States.
“The future of accountable, democratic government in Europe is now being determined not just in Paris and Berlin but also in Warsaw, Kiev and Prague,” he wrote. “This isn’t about funding levels – it’s about priorities as the focus of funding shifts back to the continent’s east,” Soros Jr. noted, recalling that, after all, his father’s soft power meddling in nations’ political affairs began in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.
Spending in Ukraine won’t be affected by the cuts, Soros assured, recalling with “pride” the $250 million in cash funneled into the country since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and which played “such an important role in Kiev’s resilience” amid the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war against Russia.
The OSF will also continue to “support” operations in Moldova and the Western Balkans, per Soros, and Central European University – the Vienna-based school booted out of Budapest in 2019 amid allegations of meddling in Hungary’s politics.
The reorganization will also include a redoubling of Soros foundations’ efforts against Donald Trump and MAGA-style Republicans, Soros indicated, expressing concerns over the impact Trump’s possible return to power in 2024 would have on the OSF’s global agenda.
“As someone who spends up to half their time working on the continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump – or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies –will be the Republican nominee, I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s US presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the US. Such an outcome will imperil European unity and undermine the progress achieved on many fronts in response to the war in Ukraine,” Soros opined.
Accordingly, he noted, the OSF is being “adapted” to “be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Soros Jr. did not elaborate on concrete adjustments in OSF operations, nor the possible “scenarios” he mentioned. However, if the Soros soft power empire’s previously disclosed efforts are anything to go by, the strategy may include pouring even more of the estimated $1.5 billion per year that’s currently been shelled out from the financier’s hedge fund profits for OSF initiatives into US politics.
Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, which the billionaire began discussing decades before ever running for office, sparked alarm with Soros’ liberal globalist vision of world affairs in 2016, when he began pumping millions of dollars into Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and super PACs affiliated with her candidacy.
After Trump’s surprise victory, Soros and his allies began plotting an anti-Trump “resistance movement,” which soon manifested itself in a series of street protests, court challenges to his domestic policies, low key communications with members of his administration, support for hawks in Congress lobbying a neoliberal foreign policy, and cash to fuel the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Kremlin agent. Soros’ open meddling in American politics led to petitions from Trump’s supporters demanding that the financier be declared a “domestic terrorist,” stripped of his assets, and expelled from the country.
As the Trump presidency progressed, the Soros empire turned its focus to lower key soft power campaigns, like lobbying tech giants to regulate social media, and campaign funding to dozens, if not hundreds, of of liberal prosecutors, gubernatorial candidates, and various other state and local officials in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
The effort has apparently paid off, with Trump’s defeat in 2020 allowing Soros to push his domestic agenda through into the next administration. An investigation last year found that a Soros dark money-linked think tank had influenced Biden administration policy across nearly two dozen different policy areas.
Earlier this year, after Trump made clear that he would be running for president in 2024, an unprecedented four criminal indictments totaling close to 100 felony counts were leveled against him, with charges ranging from the mishandling of classified governments, to his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, to suspected falsification of records related to hush money payments to a porn star.
Trump, his supporters, and even some of his Republican primary challengers almost immediately connected Soros’ soft power influence operations to the historically unprecedented political “witch hunt” against the GOP frontrunner.
“Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who was hand-picked and funded by George Soros, is a disgrace. Rather than stopping the unprecedented crime wave overtaking New York City, he’s doing Joe Biden’s dirty work,” Trump said in March following his first indictment.
And although Soros has denied funding Bragg’s campaign, or even “knowing” the prosecutor, media investigations have confirmed that the billionaire donated at least a million dollars to the candidate, who had established himself as a Trump opponent, in 2021.
“I expect that Trump will be found guilty at least in some cases, and will be in jail by election day in November 2024, though that is not the general expectation today,” George Soros said in an interview last month. “If I am right, he is unlikely to win the election. But if I am wrong, the US will face a constitutional crisis that is likely to bring on an economic crisis as well,” he added.
With a little more than a year between now and election day, it remains to be seen what tricks Alexander Soros and the revamped OSF may be able to pull to stop Trump from entering the White House a second time.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith Says He is “Happy” for ‘Blade Runner’ Ulez Vandals to Destroy Cameras Because They Have Been “Lied To”
BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
Conservative MP and former party leader and Government minister Sir Iain Duncan Smith has said he backs the ‘blade runners’ who are disabling Ulez cameras. The Mail has more.
Usually he prides himself on being tough on crime, but the former cabinet minister said today he was ‘happy’ for the residents of his Chingford and Woodford Green constituency to destroy cameras because they have been “lied to”.
Sir Iain said: “A lot of people in my constituency have been cementing up the cameras or putting plastic bags over them.
“I am happy for them to do it because they are facing an imposition that no-one wants and they have been lied to about it.
“The actions you are seeing show how angry people are at what is being imposed on them. Sadiq Khan has gerrymandered all the information – people have had enough.”
Since his comments were first published, Sir Iain told the Evening Standard that “I do understand the frustrations of the people in my constituency who are being hit by these charges and who feel like they are not being listened to by the mayor. These sort of actions show how angry people are. But I don’t condone law breaking of any kind.”
It’s notable that no one besides Khan seems willing to defend the scheme or even state their opposition to the vandalism of the cameras. At this point it feels like it’s Khan versus the whole of London.
Meanwhile, the Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, told GB News this morning that he would stop the rollout if he had the power to do so and highlighted his reservations about the true motives behind the expansion.
I don’t have the power to stop it coming into force. That’s a decision for the Mayor of London backed by the Labour leader. I think he should think again.
He says this has to do with air quality, his own impact assessment says this will only have a minor to negligible effect on air pollution.
It’s not about air pollution, it’s about a money-raising exercise and this is absolutely not the time to be putting all those costs on hard-pressed and hard-working Londoners and those in the area outside London.
What Harper didn’t mention, though, is that the reason he doesn’t have the power to stop it is because the Government’s lawyers have said it would be contrary to the Government’s own policies on air pollution. That’s despite the impact assessment showing it will have a negligible impact on air quality! In truth, the Government could challenge it if it wished, either by changing its own policies (perhaps via legislative amendment) or by arguing that the impact is too negligible to contravene its commitments.
Harper also told LBC’s Nick Ferrari programme that the Government will be backing an amendment to the Levelling-Up and Regeneration Bill to make changes to the 1999 law that created the role of Mayor of London. According to the Mail:
Under the amendment, brought forward by Tory peer Lord Moylan, London boroughs would be able to opt out of future Transport for London (TfL) clean air schemes if they are meeting air quality targets.
The Transport Secretary said: “One of the problems here is that a number of London local authorities don’t support this scheme coming into force, so for the future, we are backing an amendment, a backbench amendment to a piece of legislation which will mean in future any road user charging schemes like this would have to be also backed by London boroughs.
“And that’s important because if you look at the Mayor of London’s own website for his Project 2030 scheme, he wants to roll out more road user charging schemes, pay-per-mile schemes across London.”
Sadiq Khan countered on BBC Breakfast this morning that it wasn’t about the money:
This is about helping our air be cleaner. In a couple of years’ time, TfL has predicted there will be no additional money made because the number of non-compliant vehicles (will decrease).
But if it’s not expected to make money and it won’t make the air appreciably cleaner, what’s the real motive for forcing through such an electorally disastrous policy? Could it be because, as highlighted in yesterday’s Daily Sceptic, Khan is Chair of C40 Cities, an organisation committed to “reducing car ownership” and cutting travel by car? Is it, in other words, the latest move in the global war on the motorist and the crazed scramble to ‘cut emissions’ at the expense of humanity?
More Stick, Less Carrot – Prison For Not Complying With Energy Rules?
Climate Change Fanatics Upping Their Game
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | September 2, 2023
In a recent World Economic Forum discussion, it was acknowledged that governments will need to start using more sticks and less carrots.
“We’re going to need to change behaviours of individuals but also how our industries, corporations and also our governments work and practise. We’re going to need to do this through a mixture of carrots and hopefully, errr, perhaps not so many sticks… But we’re likely to see an increasing move towards a more stick-like intervention into the future, as things worsen, if we’re not able to act”.
The UK government seems to be taking the WEF’s advice seriously because, according to the Telegraph, they are looking to introduce new powers allowing new criminal offences to be created. This is in addition to increasing penalties for property owners who don’t comply with new energy rules.
Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.
The proposals will come before Parliament on Tuesday when MPs return back to work to discuss the Energy Bill.
It provides for “the creation of criminal offences” where there is “non-compliance with a requirement imposed by or under energy performance regulations”. People could also be prosecuted for “provision of false information” about energy efficiency or the “obstruction of… an enforcement authority”.
As seen with the Coronavirus legislation, ministers “are giving themselves broad umbrella powers to redraw and enforce the system before consulting on precisely which changes to make. Tory MPs have expressed alarm that ministers would be able to create new offences with limited parliamentary scrutiny under the update”.
The Bill is festooned with new criminal offences. This is just unholy, frankly, that you could be creating criminal offences… The ones we’ve found most offensive are where a business owner could face a year in prison for not having the right energy performance certificate or type of building certification.
Instead of undergoing scrutiny, criminal offences will be created using statutory instruments. These are still approved by Parliament but “typically nodded through”. There has not been a statutory instrument rejected in the last 35 years.
At the same time, Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) in London have been causing controversy. The newly expanded scheme means that drivers of certain vehicles (i.e. poor people who can’t afford Teslas) are forced to pay £12.50 ($15.75) every day to drive in any of London’s 32 London boroughs. The fine for not paying on time is £180.
Whilst this might not sound a lot of money to some, an additional £400 per month just to drive to work, will be an absolute killer for a lot of families. Another tax on the poor in the name of climate change.
A vigilante group calling themselves “Blade Runners” are going round London disabling or destroying the new ULEZ cameras. According to some reports, 90% of cameras have already been “retired”.
Sales of angle grinders are through the roof and the usual suspects are all over social media congratulating the Blade Runners but is all that it seems?
Problem, Reaction, Solution.
As a result, London Mayor, Sadiq Khan has deployed fleets of camera vans to catch people on the go. Clearly these camera vans were ready and waiting to go, they just needed an excuse. And how long will it be until some legislation is brought in to deal with these climate change vandals!?
And when Labour wins the election next year, deputy leader Angela Rayner, confirmed that “this is coming to towns and cities across the whole of the United Kingdom”.
It won’t stop there either. Whilst rumours of pay per mile schemes have been branded conspiracy theory nonsense, on Transport for London’s website they confirm that this is planned for 2025/26.
The climate change fanatics will do anything to reach their 2030 goals. The carrots haven’t been as effective as they’d hoped and with only 6.5 years left, get ready for more and more sticks.
Sadiq Khan’s Green Globalist Gang Suggests Daily 44g Meat Allowance and Rations Lower Than Second World War
BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 31, 2023
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ulez punch-down on cars and vans owned by the less affluent is just one example of the attacks planned against town dwellers living in modern industrial societies. Khan is the current chairman of C40, a global network of city mayors backed by numerous hard-Left billionaire foundations. Removing cars from cities is just one of its aims. In a Headline Report published by the group in 2019 and re-emphasised earlier this year, a “progressive” target for 2030 was set of a daily per person allowance of 44g of meat (enough for two small meatballs), a daily limit of 2,500 calories, (less than the ration in the Second World War), one short haul flight every three years, eight new clothing items a year and private cars available for only one in five people. This “pioneering piece of thought leadership” was said to seek a “radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns”.
When the report about future urban consumption was first published in 2019, it received little publicity in the media. Some of its proposals looked a bit cranky even for mainstream publications. For instance, under an “ambitious” 2030 target, the mayors looked to ban meat and private vehicles altogether. But groundwork was clearly being laid. Mark Watts, executive director of C40, observed that average consumption-based emissions in the wealthier C40 cities must fall by “two thirds or more” by 2030. It was said that reducing vehicle ownership would lead to significant reclamation of roads and 25,000 kms of cycle lanes. This plan is now well advanced since the Covid lockdowns provided cover for mass street closures. Recent years have also seen large increases in cycle lanes, and of course the Ulez war on those driving older vehicles, not necessarily by choice.
Signatory cities are committed to “high impact accelerators”, which include creating low or zero emissions zones along with “implanting vehicle restrictions or financial incentives/disincentives such as road use or parking charges”. An early sighting here, perhaps of Khan’s suspected wish to implement road pricing after his Ulez infrastructure is in place.
There is also an early sighting of unsourced statistics with a claim that eating less meat and more vegetables and fruit could prevent 160,000 annual deaths associated with diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes and strokes in C40 cities. It is not immediately clear if these deaths actually occur in such precise numbers, or whether they are a Ulez-style ‘statistical construct‘.
Over 100 cities around the world are part of the C40 network and they are required to sign up to “performance-based requirements” based on a number of leadership standards. One of these standards specifies that they must innovate and start taking inclusive and resilient action, “to address emissions beyond the direct control of city government, such as associated with goods and services consumed in their city”. The largely unpublicised C40 operation is backed by finance and support from many well-known green foundations including Climate Works, Hewlett, IKEA, Oak, FR and Clinton. Three “strategic funders” are identified including Christopher Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a major financial contributor to Extinction Rebellion. Another strategic funder is Bloomberg Philanthropies, whose controller Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is president of the C40 board.
Of course interest is now growing in what all these people have been smoking over the last few years, as the Con/Lab green blob (different countries, different mainstream political combinations) organise to de-industrialise and cut human progress in the name of tackling a supposed ‘climate crisis’. The C40 Headline Report gives clear guidance of the scale of economic and societal change required under a collectivist Net Zero agenda. U.K. Fires is an academic project funded by the British Government, and it also gives a brutal assessment of life under what it terms absolute net zero carbon dioxide emissions. Again it is not discussed much in the public prints, but the Daily Sceptic has reported on its findings. These include no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating, bans on beef and lamb consumption and a ruthless purge of traditional building materials such as bricks, glass, steel and cement. Such is the admirable honesty on display in their reports that they note these building materials can be replaced with “rammed earth” – mud huts for the lower classes in other words.
Sadiq Khan has been badly shaken by a popular uprising against his hated Ulez scheme. Backing in his own Labour party is wearing thin, not because most senior members are particularly anti-Ulez, but because after the Uxbridge by-election they can see a little more clearly that attacking the cars of the poor is a slam-dunk vote loser. For his part, Khan seems to have become more hysterical attacking those who oppose Ulez as conspiracy theorists. Earlier this year, reports the Daily Mail, Khan said that some of those who opposed the scheme’s growth across all London boroughs were “anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, conspiracy theorists and Nazis”.
The evidence provided by Khan’s own C40 Headline Report, along with the work of U.K. Fires, shows clearly the actual agenda that is now being ruthlessly deployed. The only conspiracy rabbithole in sight would appear to be that occupied by a freaked Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
GoFundMe Censors Grayzone Fundraiser
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 1, 2023
GoFundMe, the online fundraising platform, has come under fire for what appears to be an overt politicization of its services. In what is being broadly interpreted as an act of economic censorship, GoFundMe terminated a campaign organized by The Grayzone, a leftist and antiwar website led by Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté.
The campaign aimed to generate funds for the reporting of Kit Klarenberg, Wyatt Reed, and Alex Rubenstein, had garnered $90,000 from over a thousand well-meaning individuals before GoFundMe abruptly pulled the plug.
The Grayzone reported it had garnered support from over 1,100 donors before GoFundMe decided to halt the disbursement of funds. An email from a member of the site’s Trust and Safety Team, known only as “Sabrina,” cited “external concerns” as the reason for the review of the fundraiser. Despite this, GoFundMe has provided no further details or updates since the initial communication on August 19.
“Our number one goal here is ensuring that the money from GoFundMe fundraisers always gets to the right place, so we really appreciate you helping us to make sure GoFundMe is a safe place to give,” Sabrina wrote in the email to The Grayzone.
The timing of this financial freeze is noteworthy, as it comes on the heels of sanctions imposed on The Grayzone’s managing editor, Wyatt Reed, by digital payment services Venmo and PayPal.
The incident spotlights the increasingly politicized nature of economic mechanisms, with GoFundMe emerging as an archetype of this unsettling trend.
By this point, GoFundMe is becoming renowned for its censorship. Last year, it extensively censored the civil liberties protests in Canada, and has even shut down campaigns from parents and students.
UN Publishes Final Draft of Declaration That Targets “Misinformation,” Backs WHO Pandemic Treaty
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 31, 2023
The United Nations (UN) is no fan of free speech and one of its plans to “address” so-called “misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization” is on the verge of being finalized.
This unelected intergovernmental organization, which wields significant influence over its 193 member states, recently published the final draft of its Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.
The final draft contains several agreements from heads of state and government to crack down on lawful speech. Additionally, it contains pledges from these heads of state and government to back two instruments that will give the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) enhanced powers to target “misinformation” and build out its surveillance networks.
These instruments, the international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), have been in the works since 2021 and despite facing major pushback, are on track to be completed by May 2024.
The final draft of this political declaration is being developed for the UN’s High-Level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response which will take place on September 20, 2023 in New York. The political declaration outlined in this draft will be finalized at this meeting.
While UN political declarations aren’t usually legally binding, they do wield significant legal influence. According to the UN, declarations “represent the dynamic development of international legal norms and reflect the commitment of states to move in certain directions, abiding by certain principles.”
The proposed speech crackdowns are outlined in several sections of the final draft of this political declaration.
In section OP35, the heads of state and government agree to “take measures to counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms” and counter “vaccine hesitancy in the context of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.” Additionally, section OP42 includes an agreement to combat “misinformation.”
The UN member states back the pandemic treaty in section OP15 and agree to encourage the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (the group that’s responsible for drafting and negotiating the pandemic treaty) to conclude their negotiations on the “WHO convention, agreement or other international instrument on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response” (the full name of the WHO’s pandemic treaty).
Not only do UN member states give explicit backing to the pandemic treaty and push for it to be finalized but they also encourage the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) to prioritize the “need for equity.” Equity is framed by its proponents as something that encourages fairness but critics have warned that equity policies can lead to bias and the injection of “radical ideology.”
The support for the amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) is contained in section OP16 of the final draft. This section encourages the working group that’s focused on these amendments to continue its work with respect to the intended finalization date of May 2024.
This political declaration is one of the many ways the UN is tightening its grip on speech. This year alone, it has started building a “digital army” to fight against “deadly disinformation”, encouraged people to snitch on each other for “hate speech”, and claimed that censoring “disinformation” and “hate speech” will protect “free speech.”
The UN has also consulted with several governments and blocs on their censorship work. Specifically, it has attended multiple “disinformation sessions” with a UK government censorship agency and held discussions with the European Union on how to address “disinformation” on digital platforms.
Related:
Louisiana Attorney General Files Amicus Brief in CHD’s Landmark Suit Against Trusted News Initiative
The Defender – August 31, 2023
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday filed an amicus brief in support of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) groundbreaking lawsuit against the legacy news media members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI).
The lawsuit, filed May 31, alleges the TNI violated antitrust laws and the U.S. Constitution by colluding with tech giants, some of which also are members of the TNI, to censor online news.
An amicus brief is filed by non-parties to a lawsuit to provide information that has a bearing on the issues and to assist the court in reaching the correct decision.
According to Landry’s amicus brief:
“The scope of TNI group’s conspiracy is wide-ranging. Restricting disfavored information injures not merely the Plaintiffs, but also Louisiana residents and state officials.
“Louisiana officials need a free press to communicate with and understand the concerns of the State’s residents. Louisiana residents, in turn, need a free press to receive information and make up their own minds about what is true and what is false.
“The State has a strong interest in seeing the injuries the TNI group has inflicted on Louisiana officials and residents redressed.”
Jed Rubenfeld, lead attorney in CHD’s lawsuit, said Landry’s amicus brief “from the sovereign state of Louisiana is incredibly helpful to CHD’s historic case against TNI and in explicating Louisiana’s own compelling interests in its outcome.”
Landry in May 2022 helped bring a lawsuit against the Biden administration alleging key officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, colluded with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.
CHD and its chairman on leave, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in March filed a similar lawsuit against Biden administration officials, in a Louisiana district court. A federal judge last month consolidated the two cases.
TNI describes itself as an industry “partnership” formed during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. Its members include some of the world’s largest legacy news organizations including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC.
Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft also are members of the TNI.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Jim Hoft (the Gateway Pundit), Dr. Joseph Mercola and seven others.
According to the complaint, one of TNI’s stated goals is to “choke off” and “stamp out” online news reporting that TNI or any of its members deems “misinformation.”
Federal antitrust laws prohibit companies from colluding to deny critical facilities or market access to rivals. Such agreements, known as group boycotts, are per se illegal.
Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty for the Western District of Louisiana on Wednesday granted leave to file Landry’s amicus brief. The court’s decision on the defendants’ legal objections to the lawsuit is expected in the near future.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Another Soros-Funded Group Pushes For Social Media Platforms To Censor Election “Disinformation”
Election season will soon be in full swing. And so will censorship demands
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 30, 2023
An organization under the financial umbrella of outspoken billionaire George Soros is mounting a brazen bid to implement a perilous cap on free speech in America’s digital public square. Today, the battle lines are being drawn with Common Cause, a group bankrolled by Soros, gleefully trumpeting its success in nurturing a potent alliance with Big Tech to quash election “disinformation.”
Expounding on its tactics in a recent press release titled “Election Disinformation in 2022 and What We Learned for 2024,” Common Cause masterfully revealed its ironic contradiction: a group professing to be a champion of democracy while vigorously advocating for restrictions on free speech.
The last time social media platforms pushed for election related censorship, we all know how that turned out.
Proudly recounting its successful call for Big Tech to suppress political content it disagrees with, Common Cause outlined its anti-free speech strategy, stating that the “continuing threat of election disinformation” necessitated the silencing of certain voices via Twitter and Facebook.
The group proposed a timeline to moderate and downrank online discourse, especially focusing on the suppression of what they believe to be “false statements” two months ahead of an election, and showed glaring bias by repeatedly accusing Republicans of purveying election untruths.
In the document, the group points a finger at the January 6 event as evidence of misplaced election integrity concerns, attributing this to right-wing misinformation.
Common Cause detailed how it unilaterally flagged and removed alleged “election disinformation” across social media platforms, with no regard for the principle of open discourse.
While the boast is loud about influencing Big Tech’s actions for now, Common Cause ominously remarks that these platforms still need to increase their censorship efforts ahead of future elections, chillingly suggesting that the present censorship should be just the tip of the iceberg.
Elon Musk has pledged to initiate lawsuits against NGOs financed by philanthropist George Soros, claiming they violate free speech rights. This comes on the heels of Musk filing a legal case against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), alleging that the organization is spreading inaccurate and deceptive information about X content with the aim of driving away advertisers through a manipulative “fear campaign.”
Latest Biden coverup — 5,400 emails he sent under secret names
By James Bovard | New York Post | August 29, 2023
In Washington, conning the American people is always considered a victimless crime. The latest DC shellshocker is the National Archives blocking release of 5,000+ emails Vice President Joe Biden wrote using a pseudonym to shroud Biden family graft.
In ancient Rome, the consul Scipio was accused of abusing his power. He stood in front of the Senate, pulled out the written records of his reign and tore them to pieces. Scipio’s reputation was so impeccable that the audience cheered him, regardless of his destruction of evidence.
Bizarrely, this is the same template the liberal media use to whitewash President Biden. Americans don’t need to know the facts of how Biden has used his power because his intentions are good.
But the only reason his intentions appear good is because we don’t have the facts.
Consider the latest wacky revelations on the nom de crook. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the National Archives admitted there are 5,400 emails Biden apparently sent under fake names including robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.
A few of those emails have trickled out from other sources, revealing messages tied to Hunter Biden’s Ukraine hustle. But the Archives is refusing to reveal thousands of other messages despite disclosure demands from the House Oversight Committee.
Biden declared in 2019 that there was “an absolute wall” between Biden family foreign schemes and his own role as vice president. Apparently, the “absolute wall” only applied to the specific name “Joe Biden.”
Did Biden take a class in law school on Incognito Influence Peddling or what?
This is the second Biden scandal recently exposed. In 2018, Biden bragged to a Council on Foreign Relations audience that he threatened to withhold a billion dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine unless that government immediately fired its chief prosecutor in December 2015.
Biden claimed the prosecutor was corrupt, yet State Department and other documents released last week reveal that the Ukrainian prosecutor had Washington’s trust. But that prosecutor was closing in on Burisma, threatening the million dollars a year in payoffs pocketed by Hunter Biden.
If those documents had surfaced during the first Trump impeachment case in late 2019, Donald Trump’s behavior would have appeared less conniving and Biden would have looked more conniving. (Both of them would still have looked like hell.)
Two years after Biden finagled that firing to purify the US ally, Ukraine was ranked the most corrupt nation in Europe except for Russia.
Biden owes his 2020 presidential election victory to pervasive, perpetual federal coverups. The Hunter Biden laptop coverup was only the tip of the bureaucratic iceberg.
How many other Biden scandals are scattered like unexploded cluster bombs throughout federal filing cabinets inside the Beltway?
How many other FBI memos exist on potential Biden bribes that we have not heard about?
How many Treasury Department Suspicious Activity Reports on massive wire transfers from squirrely foreign entities to Biden Inc. have not surfaced?
Are there other IRS investigations that were squelched without a trace?
Federal secrecy and coverups switched more votes in 2020 than Trump’s antics in Georgia and elsewhere ever could have flipped. Biden’s yammering about how his election was “the will of the people” looks more deranged with each new exposé of his pre-election abuses.
Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared in 2019, “If people don’t have the facts, democracy doesn’t work.” Why bother having a national election if the result merely reveals how many voters were hornswoggled by secrets the feds kept from them?
Politics has rarely been an honest business, but the combination of pervasive secrecy and perpetual deceit makes a mockery of every high-school civics-class lesson.
Will the National Archives go to the barricades to defend the privacy interest of Joe Biden’s imaginary friends? Will dogged investigators, congressional committees and whistleblowers obliterate the tattered remnants of Team Biden’s credibility? Will the liberal media cease invoking the president’s good intentions to expunge his crimes?
Employers Walk Back Mask Mandates Amid Employee, Public Backlash
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 29, 2023
Kaiser Permanente and Lionsgate Studios in California reversed mask mandate policies last week, just a few days after imposing them.
Kaiser Permanente, the largest healthcare provider in California, on Aug. 22 announced it had “reintroduced a mask mandate for physicians, staff, patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area,” in a statement obtained by The Press Democrat.
Kaiser said the mandate was in response to an increase in the number of patients testing positive for COVID-19.
But just two days later, on Aug. 24, Kaiser officials told The Press Democrat the mask reinstatement applied only to physicians and staff, not to patients and visitors.
“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.
It also said, “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”
But Kaiser also confirmed to Becker’s Hospital Review on Aug. 23 that it had reintroduced the mask mandate.
The Press Democrat reported the reversal happened after people noticed many visitors to the hospital were not masking.
Local media reported that some Northern California residents supported the mask mandate policy when it was first announced, but others were skeptical and frustrated in response to the mandate announcement.
“I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020,” said Carmichael resident Craig Roberts.
Lionsgate also reverses mandate
Lionsgate on Friday also notified employees that the mask mandate it had imposed about a week prior for employees on the third and fifth floors of the studio’s five-story office building in Santa Monica was over, Deadline reported.
Lionsgate imposed the mandate after multiple people in its Santa Monica headquarters came down with COVID-19. The company told Deadline it imposed the mandate in compliance with rules set by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
Lionsgate told The Wrap the health department informed the company it could lift the mask requirement after several days of no new infections.
The company also distanced itself from responsibility for the mandate, stating that:
“Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”
In addition to mandating “a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95),” every Lionsgate employee was required to perform a daily self-screening before coming to the office and was told to stay home if they exhibited any symptoms or had traveled internationally in the last 10 days.
Lionsgate was conducting contact tracing and providing at home COVID-19 test kits. It is unclear if those practices are still required.
Reversals come amid pushback and more evidence of mask failures
The mask policy reversals come amid pushback from critics after a growing number of businesses and hospitals in recent weeks reinstituted mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and a new report warned that broader mandates may be coming this fall.
Many doctors have also called for mask mandates to return to healthcare settings.
Meanwhile, documents recently released from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that public health officials privately questioned the effectiveness of masks and the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoting their use.
And an NIH study suggested surgical N95 masks, held up as the gold standard for COVID-19 protection, may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, the Daily Mail reported.
The study found the chemicals released by these masks had 8 times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds, which can cause symptoms ranging from headaches and nausea to organ damage and cancer, with prolonged use.
Since the original mandates ended, several studies concluded the mandate policies failed to achieve their promised results.
The Wall Street Journal on Monday published an op-ed criticizing mask mandates.
And dissenters have taken to X (formerly Twitter), calling on people not to comply with mandates.
“This is what can be done when people stand together against tyrannical, unscientific and dangerous so-called public health policies,” author and health freedom activist Meryl Dorey wrote in a Substack post reporting on the policy reversals.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
‘Manipulation’ keeps Imran Khan in prison despite bail, lawyers say
Press TV – August 29, 2023
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has remained in prison despite the Islamabad High Court suspending his recent conviction on corruption charges, with his lawyers claiming that a “manipulation of justice” is keeping him behind bars.
Khan’s legal team said on Tuesday afternoon he remained in detention because of a previous arrest, made in secret, over a case alleging he had leaked classified state documents.
One of his lawyers told reporters outside the prison that Khan was “on judicial remand” and would appear before a special court in Islamabad on Wednesday.
“He was arrested prior to today’s court ruling. The exact date of his arrest remains unclear,” another lawyer, Gohar Khan, was quoted as saying.
Another, Muhammad Shoaib Shaheen, said that “his legal team was intentionally left uninformed and kept in the dark”. “This constitutes a manipulation of justice,” he said.
Pro-PTI lawyers held banners and chanted “Release Imran Khan!” and “Khan your devotees are countless!” outside the court as initial news of his sentence suspension broke.
Khan ally and former Speaker of National Assembly Asad Qaiser has said today’s verdict in the graft case was evidence Khan’s sentence and imprisonment were carried out in “haste”.
“If an attempt is made to arrest Chairman Imran Khan in other cases after his release, it will be an attempt to push the country towards anarchy. At this time, the only way to save the country from further crises is to have clean and transparent elections as soon as possible,” Qaiser posted on social media platform X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
The Islamabad High Court overturned a lower court’s decision to jail him for three years, a judgment that kept him from contesting upcoming elections.
His lawyers said he was granted bail and they were initially hopeful he would be released from Attock Jail, a century-old prison around 60 kilometers west of Islamabad, where the 70-year-old has been held for three weeks.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party later said nine activists had been arrested outside Attock Jail.
The sentence was handed down this month by a judge who found him guilty of failing to properly declare gifts he received while in office.
The ex-PM’s legal team lodged the appeal against his conviction on the grounds that he was put to jail without being given the right to defend himself.
That was only one of more than 200 legal cases that have embroiled Pakistan’s most popular politician since he was ousted by a parliamentary vote last year.
The Islamabad High Court’s decision to suspend the conviction marks another victory for Khan and comes on the heels of the Balochistan High Court’s decision to dismiss sedition charges against him.
The 70-year-old cricketer-turned-politician lost a confidence vote in the parliament in April 2022. Since then, his ouster has been at the centre of political turmoil across Pakistan.
Khan believes that the cases lodged against him were politically motivated to keep him out of power. He alleges the country’s powerful military is behind these cases.
In the past months, Pakistani authorities have made widespread arrests targeting the PTI party in an attempt to allegedly crush his grassroots support.
No date for the polls has been announced. Khan surged to power in 2018 on a wave of popular support, through an anti-corruption manifesto.
Did the US ask for Khan’s removal after he visited Russia?
The US-based news outlet The Intercept earlier this month published what it claims to be the details of a diplomatic “cypher” – or a secret cable – that suggests the US administration wanted to remove Khan from power last year.
Khan alleged he knew of the “cypher” while he was in office which, according to him, proved the US hatched a conspiracy with the help of his political opponents and the Pakistani military to remove him.
The Intercept published purported details of a conversation between Pakistan’s then-ambassador to the US, Asad Majeed, and Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, on March 7 last year.
In the meeting, Lu reportedly told Majeed the US and Europe were “quite concerned” about Khan visiting Russia and Pakistan taking an “aggressively neutral position” on Russia’s military operation against Ukraine
The conversation, according to the report, took place less than two weeks after Khan visited Moscow on February 24, the day Russia launched the operation.
Latvia’s Planned Expulsion of Russian Nationals ‘Grossly Contradicts’ UN, EU Norms
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.08.2023
Russian human rights activists have condemned Latvia’s decision to expel about 6,000 Russian residents, who had lived in Latvia with a residence permit and did not pass the Latvian language exam. The process of expulsion will start as of September 1, 2023.
The members of the Commission for International Cooperation with the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the Russian President have sent a letter to the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in connection with the “threat of forced eviction of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia.”
One of the Commission’s members is Kirill Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, a parent company of the Sputnik News Agency.
The Commission’s message was delivered to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov.
“We draw your attention to the gross violation of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia who have Russian citizenship and live on Latvian territory on the basis of a residence permit (RP) issued by the country’s authorities,” the letter reads.
The members of the Russian presidential human rights commission recalled that more than 6,000 such residents “are threatened with expulsion from Latvia as of September 1, 2023 due to last year’s changes in the country’s legislation and under the pretext that they did not pass the mandatory Latvian language exam.”
“They are mainly people of advanced retirement age who came to Latvia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their long-standing work added to creating the economic basis of Latvia and until the autumn of last year, Latvian legislation did not oblige them to take any language tests so that they can live with Russian citizenship in the country. Moreover, the very fact that these people lived in Latvia for many years proved that their knowledge of Latvian language was enough to organize their own daily life,” according to the letter.
The Russian rights activists stressed that “especially cynical in relation to these people is Latvian authorities’ requirement to not only pass the language exam, but also fill out questionnaires indicating their attitude to Russia’s foreign policy.”
“In fact, these people are required to not only take language tests, but also reveal their political views and give documented condemnation of Russia’s actions,” the letter points out.
“We believe that such actions by Latvian authorities grossly contradict the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights. We urge you to intervene in the situation and prevent the forced eviction of those who have Russian citizenship and residence permits issued by Latvian authorities,” the document concludes.
The letter comes after Ingmars Lidaka, head of Latvia’s Parliamentary Commission for Citizenship, Migration and Public Mobilization, said that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian citizens, who have a residence permit and have not passed the Latvian language exam, will receive official notifications to leave the country “within three months.”
He added that the decision is in line with Latvia’s legislation and that its implementation will be enforced by the country’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.
In September 2022, Latvia’s parliament passed a bill on the transition of all education to the Latvian language within three years, a document stipulating that the Russian can now only be studied as a “minority language”.
About 40 percent of Latvia’s 1.8 million population are Russian native speakers. The country’s state language is Latvian, while the Russian has the status of a foreign language.
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UN declares war on ‘dangerous’ conspiracy theories
‘World is not secretly run by elites’
Free West Media | August 5, 2022
UNESCO says it is seriously concerned about the increase in “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. And they plan to put an end to it through a network of informants.
“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous,” the UN agency warned. “Often they ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with dire consequences. This has to stop.”
Unesco’s director-general warned that “conspiracy theories” could cause damage to people as well as to their health. “They reinforce misconceptions about the pandemic, reinforcing stereotypes that can fuel violence and violent, extremist ideologies,” said Audrey Azoulay.
The UN agency has launched a campaign to help people identify, debunk and report “conspiracy theories” to prevent them from spreading further.
This campaign is being carried out in collaboration with the European Commission, Twitter and the World Jewish Congress. The UN has created a toolkit to “debunk” such theories and smear anyone who dares to claim that governments are not fair and transparent.
The UN also warned that George Soros, the Rothschilds and Israel should not be linked to “alleged conspiracies”.
World events “are not secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful players with malicious intent,” the UN agency maintained.
And if anyone therefore comes across someone who believes that the world elite is plotting to consolidate power or direct events, then that person needs to take action. According to the UN agency, when meeting a “conspiracy theorist”, under no circumstances should one enter into a discussion. … continue
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