Canada Liberal’s Assault on Press Freedom: The Plot To Censor ‘Untraceable Sources’
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 7, 2023
During the Party National Convention, the Canadian Liberals discussed a proposal for online news publications whose sources cannot be verified to be censored. The proposal was titled “Combatting Disinformation in Canada.”
A section of the proposal read, “BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Liberal Party of Canada: Request the Government explore options to hold on-line information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.”
We obtained a copy of the proposals for you here.
The relevant section is here:
It also suggested that the government “provide additional public funds to support advertisement-free news and information reporting by Canadian media through an arm’s-length non-partisan mechanism.”
The chair of the internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, Michael Geist, warned that the proposal is an attempt by the government to restrict “freedom of expression.”
“Liberal Party policy proposal calls for online information services ‘to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.’ An obvious violation of freedom of expression was voted as one of the top 20 policy resolutions for party discussion,” Geist wrote in a tweet.
In a blog post, he explained that while it is unclear what the Liberal Party means by “online information services,” the resulting “outcome is dangerous no matter the scope.”
“Is this all news outlets with a focus on their online presence? Is it online-only news sources? Is this far broader and designed to encompass Internet platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok (note the reference to “platforms”) with requirements that they be held accountable for posts without traceable sources,” Geist said.
“The implications of the government engaging in this form of heavy-handed speech regulation are dangerous in all of these circumstances. Sourcing is an important issue in the media and the government cannot claim to support press freedom and simultaneously back policies that intervene in sourcing.”
More:
An Open Letter to Ella Irwin, Head of Twitter’s Trust and Safety (and Censorship) Department
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory, Inc. | May 7, 2023
The following is an open letter to Ella G. Irwin, Head of Twitter Trust and Safety, and Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, and anyone else at Twitter, Inc. who is responsible for censoring political speech and defaming people with fake “advisory” labels, among other such “visibility-filtering” tactics.
I am publishing it as an open letter, not to bore everyone to death with my personal problems, but because the censorship and defamation I have suffered at the hands of Twitter for at least two years is an example of how the decentralized network of global corporations, Intelligence agencies, governments, non-governmental governing entities, “anti-disinformation” outfits, and other parties that together comprise what Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi have dubbed the “Censorship Industrial Complex” are evolving into an Orwellian Ministry-of-Truth-type apparatus “with the power to control the information environment in ways that determine what people believe to be true and what is false.”
Twitter, Inc. has been censoring my political commentary and maliciously defaming me (i.e., damaging my reputation and income as an author) for approximately two years. Twitter has been doing this by concealing the Tweets of my “Consent Factory” account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels, deceiving Twitter users into believing I have been tweeting content depicting “adult nudity and sexual behavior,” or “excessively gory content, sexual violence and/or assault, bestiality or necrophilia.” Twitter’s actions have damaged both my book sales and my reputation, globally. Defamation is a tort. I could sue the corporation for damages in several jurisdictions.
I have no interest in doing that, currently. What I do want, however, is a real explanation of why and exactly how Twitter, Inc. censored and defamed me for approximately two years. I want this explanation — a real explanation with documentation, not self-serving corporate-speak — not for personal reasons, primarily, but because I believe people need to be able to understand how powerful corporations like Twitter (and Facebook, and Google, and all the other entities and parties I mentioned above) are “visibility filtering” our collective reality.
The fact that these powerful corporations (and other entities) are doing this, not just on the macro level, but also on the micro level, to writers like me, who, let’s face it, are not exactly world-famous “influencers,” and to “non-public persons” who are basically just using social media to talk to their friends, does not bode well for the future of our societies. This kind of micro-perception-manipulation, this “visibility filtering” of our collective reality, goes way beyond traditional censorship. It is a hallmark of all totalitarian systems, which attempt to control, not only what people say, but what they think, how they think, how they perceive events, and facts, and each other.
Totalitarian systems do not spring into being fully formed. They develop slowly, gradually, unrecognized at first, and then ignored, usually until it is too late. We do not recognize the formation of new totalitarian systems because we are forever looking backwards instead of forwards, preparing for the storm that has passed, expecting history to repeat, rather than rhyme. Blinded by hindsight, we do not recognize the monster that is taking shape right in front of us. We glimpse a claw here, a tooth there, the flash of a pitiless blue eye, but fail to assemble the bits into an image of the beast entire, until it is inexorably upon us.
Anyway, here’s my open letter … one more bit, for the record.
To: Ella G. Irwin, Head of Trust and Safety, Twitter, Inc.
cc: Elon Musk
Dear Ms. Irwin,
This open letter is further to our brief correspondence on May 3, 2023 (on Twitter) regarding Twitter’s censorship and defamation of my @consent_factory Twitter account with fake “age-restricted adult content” labels for approximately two years.
First, thank you for taking action to cease and desist from further censorship and defamation. From what I can tell, it appears that Twitter is removing or has removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from the @consent_factory Twitter account’s Tweets (or at least going back to late 2021). I trust that these fake “age-restricted adult content” labels will be removed from all of the account’s Tweets in due course, and I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Please accept my apology for claiming that you had lied about taking action on this. I admit, after two years of being censored and defamed, and having my complaints ignored by Twitter, I have become rather skeptical regarding your company’s behavior and statements. That said, it is clear now that you were not lying, and that you have taken action to have the fake, defamatory labels in question removed, and I apologize for publicly claiming otherwise.
Assuming the process is eventually completed and all of the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels that Twitter has been censoring the @consent_factory Twitter account with are in fact removed, I would appreciate substantive answers to the following questions:
(1) Why and exactly how did Twitter start censoring and defaming my Consent Factory account with these fake, defamatory “adult content” labels? When I asked you to explain that in our correspondence, you replied:
Clearly, the account did not “post multiple tweets containing sensitive content (nazi imagery) that resulted in the sensitive content label being applied,” because Twitter has now removed the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels from those Tweets, which contain the same “Nazi imagery” they originally contained. As I am sure you have noted, the so-called “Nazi imagery” contained in those Tweets was simply historical photos of the Nazi Germany era, which were used to illustrate critical points I was making in opposition to totalitarianism, and not at all any type of celebration or approval of totalitarianism or fascism. Any rational adult, seeing those Tweets, could not possibly mistake the anti-fascist/totalitarian intent behind them. Also, the fact that the fake, defamatory “adult content” labels are being removed gradually, in stages, rather than all at once, suggests that the application of the fake labels (or “interstitials”) in question was not the result of a blanket algorithm applied to the account. Additionally, not every Tweet (or every Tweet containing an image) by this account was censored with a fake “interstitial,” which suggests that something other than a blanket algorithm was at work.
In any event, having been censored and defamed for two years by Twitter, Inc., I think I am entitled to an actual explanation of how this started, including documentation of any intra-company discussions or “log” notes in connection with the decision to begin censoring and defaming the account. Your substantive response to this request will demonstrate that the “new” Twitter is, in fact, committed to transparency, and free speech, and not just another element of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” as Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi dubbed it, before Mr. Musk cut off access to the “Twitter Files.”
(2) What, if any, other restrictions/visibility filtering tactics have been applied to my @consent_factory Twitter account from 2020 to the present? Again, I would appreciate documentation of any such “visibility filtering” or other “restrictions” and/or the removal thereof. Having been censored and maliciously defamed by Twitter for years, I believe I am entitled to know how my “visibility” is being and/or has been “filtered.”
(3) What steps is Twitter, Inc. now taking to cease and desist from the type of malicious defamation the company has been engaging in to suppress political speech and damage the reputation and income of writers, like me, and independent media outlets, like, for example, OffGuardian? Twitter blocks links to all OffGuardian articles with a different fake, defamatory “interstitial” warning.
There is nothing “unsafe” about OffGuardian, or any content published on the website that could possibly “lead to real-world harm.” It is a small, independent news and commentary outlet. Twitter, Inc. is using the fake “interstitial” warning above to discourage users from visiting the site, and thus damaging OffGuardian’s reputation and income. This is just one further example (i.e., in addition to my case). Twitter’s continued use of fake, defamatory, “interstitial” labels to suppress political views is relatively widespread, as far as I can tell. Moreover, recent updates to Twitter’s Platform Use Guidelines make it clear that Twitter intends to continue using these “interstitials,” which is worrying, given the fact that the company has been using them to deceive people, and to suppress political speech, and to damage the reputations and incomes of small businesses and sole proprietors.
That’s it for my questions, for now.
Again, thank you for finally putting an end to the defamation that Twitter, Inc. has been subjecting me to, for the last two years. I must say, it is a bit disappointing that it took a happenstance encounter on Twitter to connect with someone with the power to do that. Frankly, given Mr. Musk’s initial and ongoing publicity campaign to portray himself as a champion of free speech, and a stalwart opponent of censorship, and Twitter under his leadership as the antipode of “old, bad, censorship-happy Twitter,” I had expected that immediate steps would be taken to … you know, stop deceiving people, and maliciously defaming people, and manipulating the “visibility” of political views according to some unarticulated ideological schema, but I guess these things take time.
I look forward to your substantive response to the above questions.
Very truly yours,
C. J. Hopkins
P.S. Should you happen to run into Mr. Musk there at Twitter HQ, you might also want to suggest that he resume providing access to the “Twitter Files” to reporters like Matt and Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag (if I can put a word in for her). Doing so would demonstrate that the “Twitter Files” thing was not just a limited hangout, and a PR stunt designed to whitewash the company and kill public interest in the nefarious activities of Twitter, Inc., and other powerful global corporations, and their partners at the FBI, DHS, whatever that CIS or CISA acronym stands for, and … well, you know, “other agencies.”
WHO Denies Pandemic Treaty Will Reduce Sovereignty of States – But it’s Pure Propaganda
BY DR DAVID BELL | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 6, 2023
The Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO) reassures us that the WHO’s ‘pandemic accord’ (or ‘treaty’) won’t reduce the sovereignty of Member States. The WHO trusts that these words will serve as a distraction from reality. Those driving the perpetual health emergency agenda are planning to give WHO more power, and states less. This will happen whenever WHO designates a ‘Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ (PHEIC), or considers we may be at risk of one.
The WHO’s proposed treaty, taken together with its ‘synergistic’ amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR), aim to undo centuries of democratic reform that based sovereignty with individuals, and by extension their state. The discomfort of facing this truth and the complexities it raises is providing the cover needed to push these changes through. This is how democracy, and freedom, wither and die.
Why it’s hard to acknowledge reality
Our society in the West is built on trust and a feeling of superiority – we built the institutions that run the world and they, and we, are good. We consider ourselves humanitarians, the public health advocates, the unifiers, and anti-fascist freedom-lovers. We consider our system is better than the alternatives – we are ‘progressive’.
It takes quite a step for comfortable, middle-income, Left-leaning professionals to believe that the institutions and philanthropic organisations we have admired all our lives might now be pillaging us. Our society relies on having ‘trusted sources’, the WHO being one of them. Among others are our major media organisations. If our trusted sources told us we were being misled and pillaged, we would accept this. But they are telling us these claims are false, and that all is well. The WHO’s Director General himself assures us of this. Anyone who thinks rich corporate and private sponsors of WHO and other health institutions are self-interested, that they might mislead and exploit others for their own benefit, is a conspiracy theorist.
We are all capable of believing the rich and powerful of past ages would exploit the masses, but somehow this is hard to believe in the present. For proof of their benevolence, we rely on the word of their own publicity departments and the media they support. Somehow, malfeasance on a grand scale is always a figment of history, and now we are smarter and enlightened.
Over recent decades we have watched individuals accumulate wealth equivalent to medium-sized countries. They meet our elected leaders behind closed doors at Davos. We then applaud the largesse they bestow on the less fortunate, and pretend all this is fine. We watch as corporations expand across national borders, seemingly above the laws that apply to ordinary citizens. We allowed their ‘public-private partnerships’ to turn international institutions into purveyors of their commodities. We ignored this descent because their publicity departments told us to, becoming apologists for obvious authoritarians because we want to believe they are somehow doing a ‘greater good’.
Whilst a schoolchild might see through this facade to the conflicted greed beyond, it is much harder for those with years of political baggage, a peer network, reputation and career to admit they have been duped. The behavioural psychologists that our governments and institutions now employ understand this. Their job is to keep us believing the trusted sources they sponsor. Our challenge is to put reality above right-think.
The remaking of WHO
When the WHO was set up in 1946 to help coordinate responses to major health issues, the world was emerging from the last great bout of fascism and colonialism. Both these societal models were sold on the basis of centralising power for a greater good. Those who considered themselves superior would run the world for those less worthy. The WHO once claimed to follow a different line.
Since the early 2000s WHO’s activities have been increasingly dictated by ‘specified funding’. Its funders, increasingly including private and corporate interest, tell it how to use the money they give. Private direction is fine for private organisations promoting their investors’ wares, but it is obviously a non-starter for an organisation seeking to mandate medicines, close borders and confine people. Anyone with a basic understanding of history and human nature will recognise this. But these powers are exactly what the amendments to the International Health Regulations and the new treaty intend.
Rather than consider alternate approaches, WHO is seeking censorship of opinions not fitting its narrative, publicly denigrating and demeaning those who question its policies. These are not the actions of an organisation representing ‘we the people’, or confident in its ability to justify its actions. They are the trappings we have always associated with intellectual weakness and fascism.
WHO’s impact on population health
In its 2019 pandemic influenza recommendations, WHO stated that “not in any circumstances” should contact tracing, border closures, entry or exit screening or quarantine of exposed individuals be undertaken in an established pandemic. It wrote this because such measures would cause more harm than good, and disproportionately harm poorer people. In 2020, in conjunction with private and national sponsors, it supported the largest wealth shift in history from low to high income by promoting these same measures.
In abandoning its principles, WHO abandoned millions of girls to nightly rape through child marriage, increased teenage pregnancies and child mortality, reduced childhood education, and grew poverty and malnutrition. Despite most of these people being too young to be troubled by Covid and already having immunity, they promoted billions of dollars of mass vaccination whilst traditional priorities such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS deteriorate. Western media have met this with silence or empty rhetoric. Saving lives does not turn a profit, but selling commodities does. The WHO’s sponsors are doing what they need for their investors, whilst WHO is doing what it needs to keep their money flowing.
The new powers of WHO
The IHR amendments will reduce the sovereignty of any WHO Member State that fails to actively reject them, giving a single person (the Director General) direct influence over health policy and the freedom of its citizens is indisputable. It is what the document says. Countries are required to “undertake” to follow the WHO’s “recommendations”, which are no longer simply suggestions or advice. Whilst the WHO does not have a police force, the World Bank and IMF are on board, and control much of your money supply. The U.S. Congress passed a bill last year recognising that the U.S. Government should address countries that do not comply with the IHR. We are not witnessing toothless threats; most countries, and their people, will have little choice.
The real power of the WHO’s proposals is in their application for any health-related matter they proclaim to be a threat. The proposed amendments state this explicitly, whilst the ‘Treaty’ expands the scope to ‘One-Health‘, a hijacked public health concept that can mean anything perceived to be affecting human physical, mental or social well-being. Inclement weather, crop failures or the promulgation of ideas that cause people stress – everyday things that humans have always coped with, now become reasons to confine people and impose solutions dictated by others.
In essence, those sponsoring WHO are manufacturing crises of their own desiring, and are set to get wealthier from other’s misery, as they did during Covid. This under the guise of ‘keeping us safe’. As WHO implausibly insists, “no one is safe until all are safe”, so removal of human rights must be broad and prolonged. Behavioural psychology is there to ensure that we comply.
Facing the future
We are building a future in which compliance with authoritarian dictates will win the return of stolen freedoms, whilst censorship will suppress dissent. People who wish to see evidence, who remember history or insist on informed consent will be designated, in WHO parlance, far-Right mass killers. We have already entered this world. Public figures who claim otherwise are presumably not paying attention, or have other motivations.
We can meekly accept this new disease-obsessed world, some may even embrace the salaries and careers it bestows. Or we can join those fighting for the simple right of individuals to determine their own future. At the very least, we can acknowledge the reality around us.
Dr. David Bell is a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and background in internal medicine, modelling and epidemiology of infectious disease. Previously, he was Programme Head for Malaria and Acute Febrile Disease at FIND in Geneva, and coordinating malaria diagnostics strategy with the World Health Organisation. He is a member of the Executive Committee of PANDA.
Unrepentant Corona arch-villain Christian Drosten re-emerges to give the vaccines credit for ending the pandemic
Insists that lockdowns and school closures remain policy options in the future
Virus-understander-in-chief Christian Drosten posing as a scrappy compassionate avatar of The Science, rather than the conniving and perpetually wrong loser that he is.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 6, 2023
That eternal turd who will not flush, Christian Drosten, has resurfaced with an odious media interview, demanding that the vaccines receive credit for ending the pandemic and that oppressive non-pharmaceutical interventions like lockdowns and school closures remain on the table for future pandemics.
From Tagesspiegel :
The measures taken by the federal and state governments in the Corona pandemic proved highly controversial and triggered fierce debates. The Berlin Charité virologist Christian Drosten, among the advocates of harsh restrictions, has now warned against drawing the wrong conclusions. The “fundamental, ideological exclusion of lockdowns and school closures” is foolhardy, Drosten told the newspapers of the Funke Mediengruppe.
“Not all pathogens have the same characteristics. A virus could surface that is especially dangerous for children, for example, or that triggers insidious sequelae despite a harmless initial infection.”
“The school closures in 2020 and 2021 were a mistake, but please don’t take away our power to close schools again in the future! The next virus might really be dangerous to children! We don’t always cry wolf, except when we do!”
Infections such like mumps and measles have caused brain inflammation, diabetes or infertility, the director of the Institute of Virology added. “If such a virus developed into a highly transmissible pandemic pathogen, politicians would inevitably have to take measures. You can’t categorically rule out things like lockdowns and school closures, that’s neither realistic nor responsible.”
Yes, you can categorically rule out lockdowns and school closures. We literally never did any of this before at this scale or for this duration in response to any virus, nor were lockdowns or other invasive measures ever even contemplated until the Chinese gave you guys a bunch of evil ideas three years ago. What’s more, all of your interventions were utter, abject failures; they did nothing.
Drosten also criticised the public debate on Covid vaccinations, which “is often still destructive.” The fact that further Covid vaccinations for children and many adults are now no longer recommended “does not prove that vaccines have always been unnecessary,” the Charité professor emphasised.
“Rather, with the help of vaccinations, we have mitigated the impact of infections and developed a high level of immunity in the population. This is the only reason that the vaccine recommendations could now be changed.”
Had we vaccinated not a single soul, we’d have identical levels of immunity in the population right now from Omicron. We also wouldn’t have all those awkward vaccine injury headlines.
In case you’re not yet angry enough, though, it gets worse:
The director of the Institute for International Health at Charité, Beate Kampmann, warned against vaccine scepticism. “Vaccination is not only about the well-being of the individual, but also about the health of society as a whole, that is public health, and that also means solidarity,” she told the newspapers.
“Sometimes people forget that they contribute to the protection of everyone with their personal decision. That was true for Corona, but it’s also true for measles, for example.”
Why are these assholes always lying, I want to know. The vaccines were not intended to stop transmission, the trials weren’t designed to show whether they would stop transmission, and we’ve known beyond all doubt since the summer of 2021 that they don’t stop transmission. Nobody who was vaccinated against Corona contributed to anybody else’s health at all, this is all just a straight-up untruth.
The pandemicists aren’t going away. They have amassed a great toolkit of new powers, and they will be slinking around for decades waiting for the next opportunity to try them out all over again. Now that the virus hysteria has boiled off and some minimal standards of rationality have returned to the discussion, it should be a priority to discredit every last one of these virus pests, Corona astrologers, modellers, and panic mongerers, now and for all time. Otherwise we’re at great risk for getting the same thing all over again.
Odessa Massacre 9 Years On… West’s Shameful Silence
Strategic Culture Foundation | May 5, 2023
This week saw the ninth anniversary of a shocking massacre of 42 civilians in Odessa by Ukrainian fascists. Only weeks prior to that, the fascists’ political leaders had carried out a violent coup in Kiev.
The barbarity of the Odessa atrocity was unspeakable but emblematic of the NATO-backed fascist regime that seized power illegally in February 2014.
Significantly, and shamefully, the Western media and governments hardly mention that horror, or if they do, they tend to distort the incident and typically, yet baselessly, accuse Russia of disinformation.
On May 2, 2014, hundreds of protesters in Odessa against the fascist Kiev regime became embroiled in violent clashes with supporters of the regime. Thousands of far-right paramilitaries belonging to the NeoNazi Right Sector had been transported from the north to the southern port city of Odessa on the Black Sea under the guise of attending a football match.
Street battles ensued all day with cobblestones, Molotov cocktails and gunfire exchanged by both factions. By evening, the more numerous pro-regime crowds turned their focus on a tent encampment of anti-regime protesters near the Soviet-era Trade Unions building in the center of Odessa. The encampment was a peaceful gathering which included women and children. It had been set up for several weeks to demonstrate opposition to the Maidan events in Kiev.
The anti-regime protesters were opposed to the coup that had taken place in Kiev weeks earlier by the so-called EuroMaidan movement. On February 20, a gruesome sniper massacre in Kiev (later found to have been carried out by CIA-backed fascists) led to the overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych. The latter had maintained friendly relations with Russia which far-right Ukrainian factions abhorred. Yanukovych’s government was strongly supported by Ukrainians of ethnic Russian heritage mainly in the south and eastern parts of the country.
The fascist regime that came to power in Kiev in February 2014 and which prevails till this day – albeit with a president, Vladimir Zelensky, who is nominally of Jewish ancestry – was opposed from the outset by many Ukrainians. They viewed the new rulers as unelected and illegitimate. They were also fearful of the NeoNazi factions that openly glorified Ukrainian figures like Stepan Bandera who had collaborated with Nazi Germany during the Second World War in the mass murder of their own compatriots.
That is why the people of the Crimea peninsula voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. In other parts of Ukraine, the southeast Donbass region also repudiated the Kiev regime and its “anti-Russian” hostility. In May, 2014, the Kiev regime proceeded to launch its so-called Anti-Terror Operation on the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk with the backing of then CIA chief John Brennan on a visit to the country. The U.S. vice president at the time was Joe Biden who served as Washington’s point man for the new regime. That aggression marked the beginning of the civil war in Ukraine which culminated in the present conflict with Russia, and the joining last year of the Donbass and neighboring regions with the Russian Federation.
This was the context in Ukraine in May, 2014. The country was in turmoil and splitting into ethnic and political divides. Cities like Odessa had strong historical and cultural connections with Russia. The city known as the Pearl on the Black Sea owing to its storied trading economy was founded in 1795 by Catherine the Great, the empress of Russia.
When the NATO-backed putschists seized power in Kiev in a bloody coup and began organizing Nazi-style torchlit processions, many ethnic Russian people in Ukraine and others were horrified. Odessa was one such city with a large Russian population. The city had suffered mass killings by Nazi Einsatzgruppen SS death squads and their local henchmen.
When the Kiev regime fascists targeted the protest camp in Odessa on the evening of May 2, some 300 of the protesters took refuge inside the Trade Unions building. The mob outside bombarded the historic building with incendiary devices setting it ablaze. The deliberate intention was to incinerate all those inside. The hatred shown by the Right Sector attackers towards the trapped victims was appalling. Several of the people in the building tried to escape the flames by jumping out of high-rise windows. As their bodies smashed the ground below, frenzied crowds clubbed them to death.
In all, 42 people were murdered in the Trade Unions building massacre. Not one attacker was ever prosecuted. The Kiev regime refused to carry out any adequate investigation.
However, the horror of that day was a turning point for many Ukrainians and Russians. It revealed the hideous nature of the regime that had seized power over the country and its vile fascist hostility toward Russia.
This is the regime that was brought to power by Washington and its NATO partners. Since 2014, it has been armed and built up to be a war machine to aggress Russia and obliterate all cultural connections with Russia.
The massacre in Odessa should be remembered for the sake of the victims that day. But also remembered because it helps explain the background of how the present U.S.-led NATO proxy conflict in Ukraine with Russia has come about.
For that reason, Western news media and their governments chose to studiously ignore the Odessa massacre. Their shameful silence is necessary in order to conceal the criminal complicity of the West in Ukraine’s deadly turmoil.
The Galician genocide: How Russian identity was wiped out in what is now Western Ukraine
By Dmitry Plotnikov | RT | March 15, 2023
Galicia, a historical region in the West of Ukraine, is currently the center of the country’s nationalist movement. However, things were once very different. A little over a hundred years ago, representatives of opposing Russophile and pro-Ukrainian political movements competed for the loyalty of the local Ruthenian population, also known as Rusyns. Galicia’s Russophiles welcomed the beginning of the First World War as a step toward an anticipated reunion with Russia. However the Ukrainian movement remained loyal to Austria-Hungary. With the help of the latter, Vienna killed off the Rusyn intelligentsia, which it considered a “fifth column”. To accomplish this, the Hapsburgs set up concentration camps.
What happened next amounted to a genocide.
The beginning of the tragedy
By the start of the First World War, the Russophile movement in Galicia was experiencing tough times. As a result of the “divide and rule” policy implemented by the Austrians, the movement suffered a split. The oldest and most respected organizations ended up in the hands of pro-Austrian leaders who advocated Ukrainian, not Rusyn, identity.
After the army of the Russian Empire crossed the border on August 18, 1914, and launched an offensive in Galicia, mass repressions swept through the region. People fell victim to the rage of the Austrian authorities over trifling matters – like possessing Russian literature, being a member of a Russian society, having a Russian education, or just sympathizing with Saint Petersburg. In some cases, people were arrested just for calling themselves Russians. Prisons were full of “enemies of the state” and “dangerous Moscow agents”, and the streets were lined with gallows.
“Those suspected of ‘Russophilia’ were hung on these trees in front of the windows. People were hung right on the trees. They would hang there for a day, then would be taken off and others would take their place… ” recounted one of the peasants in the Gorodetsky district. The repressions primarily affected the intelligentsia and Orthodox priests, most of whom completed spiritual studies in the Russian Empire.
Austro-Hungarian servicemen pose against the background of three hanged men executed on August 30, 1914 in Mukachevo. © Wikipedia
Repressions against the intelligentsia were followed by those against the general public. Anyone who was thought to sympathize with Russia or Russian culture became a suspect. This included people who had once visited Russia, read Russian newspapers, or were just known as “Russophiles.” Military courts worked around the clock and a simplified procedure of legal proceedings was introduced for cases of suspected treason.
Members of Galicia’s Rusyn movement who chose the “Ukrainian way” actively participated in the repressions. Pro-Austrian politicians prepared lists of “unreliable” suspects and based on mere accusations, and arrested anyone who sympathized with Russia. As Russophile public figure Ilya Terekh described, “At the beginning of the war, the Austrian authorities arrested almost the entire Russian intelligentsia of Galicia and thousands of peasants, based on the lists handed over to the administrative and military authorities by the Ukrainophiles.”
“People who recognized themselves as Russian or simply had a Russian name were seized indiscriminately.
Anyone who possessed a Russian newspaper, book, sacred image, or even a postcard from Russia was grabbed, abused, and taken away. And then, there were gallows and executions without end – thousands of innocent victims, seas of martyr blood and orphan tears,” said another Russophile, Julian Yavorsky.
Talerhof in 1917, the place where the camp executions were carried out. © Wikipedia
In October 1914, the Russian writer Mikhail Prishvin, who served as a medical assistant at the front, wrote in his diary: “When I got to Galicia … I felt and saw the living images of the times of the Inquisition.” Prishvin described the feelings of the Galician Rusyns toward Russia as follows: “Galicians dream of a great, pure, and beautiful Russia. A seventeen-year-old schoolboy walked with me around Lvov [now Lviv, then Lemberg] and spoke Russian without an accent. He told me about the persecution of the Russian language. Students were not even allowed to have a map of Russia, and before the war he was forced to burn books by Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.”
Hell on earth
The prisons of Galicia were not big enough to accommodate all the repressed. On August 28, 1914, there were two thousand prisoners in Lviv alone. It was then that the Austrian authorities decided to establish concentration camps. In September 1914, the huge Thalerhof place of incarceration was set up in Styria. The first prisoners were delivered on September 4. According to the testimony of one of the survivors, priest Theodor Merena, prisoners were “people of different class and age”. They included clergy, lawyers, doctors, teachers, officials, peasants, writers, and students. The age of the prisoners ranged from infants to 100-year-olds.
Occasionally, Ukrainian activists who were loyal to the Austrian regime were accidentally placed into Thalerhof. Most of them were removed quickly. One later recalled that all prisoners had a chance to escape by giving up their Russian name and registering as “Ukrainians” in the “Ukrainian list.”
Up to the winter of 1915, there were no barracks in Thalerhof. People slept on the ground in the open air despite the rain and frost. The camp’s sanitary conditions were awful. The latrines were uncovered and used by twenty people at a time. When the barracks were built, they were overcrowded, housing 500 people instead of the intended 200. The prisoners slept on straw beds which were rarely replaced. Naturally, epidemics were widespread. In just two months following November 1914, over three thousand prisoners died of typhus.
“In Thalerhof, death rarely came naturally – it was injected through the poison of infectious diseases. Violent death was commonplace in Thalerhof.
There was no question of any treatment of the sick. Even doctors were hostile toward the prisoners,” wrote imprisoned Rusyn writer Vasily Vavrik.
The prisoners weren’t provided with any adequate medical care. In the beginning, Thalerhof didn’t even have a hospital. People died on the damp ground. However, when the hospital barracks were finally built, the doctors gave almost no medicine to the patients.
Talerhof. Cemetery “under the pines” in 1917. © Wikipedia
To instill fear, prison authorities constructed poles throughout the camp and regularly hung “violators” on these poles. The violation could be a mere trifle, like catching someone smoking in the barrack at night. Iron shackles were also used as punishment, even on women. Moreover, the camp was supplied with barbed wire, observation towers with sentries, barking dogs, posters with slogans, propaganda, torture facilities, a moat for executions, gallows, and a cemetery.
The camp operated for nearly three years and was closed down in May 1917 on the order of Charles I of Austria. The barracks stood on the site until 1936, when they were finally demolished. 1,767 corpses were then exhumed and reburied in a common grave in the nearby village of Feldkirchen.
The exact number of victims in Thalerhof is still disputed. The official report by Field Marshal Schleer dated November 9, 1914, stated that 5,700 Russophiles were imprisoned there at the time. According to one of the survivors, in the autumn of the same year there were about 8,000 prisoners. Twenty to thirty thousand Russian Galicians and Bukovinians passed through Thalerhof in total. In the first year and a half alone, about 3,000 prisoners died. According to other sources, 3,800 people were executed in the first half of 1915. Overall, in the course of the First World War, the Austro-Hungarian authorities killed at least 60,000 Rusyns.
Remembering the forgotten
In the period between the two world wars, the former prisoners strived to preserve the memory of the tragedy that affected Galicia’s Ruthenians and to perpetuate the memory of the victims of Thalerhof. The first monument was erected in 1934, and soon similar memorials appeared in other parts of the region. In the years 1924-1932, the Thalerhof Almanac was published. It provided documentary evidence and eyewitness accounts of the genocide. In 1928 and 1934, Thalerhof congresses, which gathered over 15 thousand participants, were held in Lviv.
The procession of the participants of the Talerhof Congress on the occasion of the opening of the monument to the victims of Talerhof, 1934. © Wikipedia
Galicia became part of the USSR in 1939. Even before Soviet times, there was an unspoken ban on the topic Thalerhof, because the very fact of Russian existence in Galicia was seen as an impediment to Ukrainization, which was actively cultivated in Western Ukraine following World War Two. After Galicia and Volhynia became part of the USSR, most Russophile organizations in Lviv were closed. However, memorial services by the monuments continued. As the eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the events grew older and died, a new generation of Galicians was brought up in the spirit of atheism and took on a Ukrainian national identity. As a result, fewer and fewer people came to the memorials.
In modern Ukraine, the Rusyn genocide isn’t publicly discussed. Thalerhof is not mentioned in any school textbooks on the history of the country. The idea that Russians once lived in Galicia – the proud center of “Ukrainian culture” – does not fit the nationalistic ideology of contemporary Ukraine. Most young people have never even heard of Thalerhof.
The tragedy marked the end of the Russophile movement in Galicia. All those who did not submit and did not take on a Ukrainian identity were physically annihilated. Just a few years after the tragic events, public views changed. The region came under the influence of other movements and politicians. When Austria-Hungary fell apart after the First World War, Galicia turned into a powerful center of the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
Bird’s-eye view of the Talerhof concentration camp. © Wikipedia
Dmitry Plotnikov is a political journalist exploring the history and current events of ex-Soviet states.
Chilean journalist arrested in Ukraine
RT | May 5, 2023
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on Friday confirmed the arrest of Gonzalo Lira, a Chilean national living in Kharkov, suspecting him of pro-Russian sympathies. Lira was detained in April 2022, but released after a week and ordered not to leave the city.
According to a SBU statement quoted by Ukrainian media, Lira “publicly justified the armed aggression” of Russia, denied or glorified alleged Russian war crimes, and “engaged in discrediting the top military and political leadership and the Defense Forces of our state.”
The SBU filmed Lira’s second arrest by heavily armed agents, blurring out the faces of everyone involved.
He is suspected of “producing and distributing materials justifying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, committed repeatedly.” A court ordered him jailed pending the outcome of the investigation.
The SBU has reportedly seized Lira’s computer and multiple cell phones as evidence.
Lira, 55, is a writer and filmmaker who used to work in the US. Several years ago, he moved to Kharkov, where he got married and began blogging as ‘Coach Red Pill’.
This is the second time he has been detained by the SBU. He was first arrested in April 2022, but was released after a week. No charges were pressed at the time, and Lira would not discuss the details of what happened, saying only that he was not allowed to leave Kharkov.
He blamed the US outlet Daily Beast for directing Kiev’s attention to his work, accusing the outlet of trying to get him killed. The tabloid had reported on Lira’s activities in March 2022, calling him “sleazy” and a “pro-Putin shill,” and noting its reporters had reached out to Ukrainian authorities.
While Lira kept a low profile for several weeks after his release, he eventually returned to social media and continued voicing criticism of Kiev’s policies. Since then, Ukraine has enacted laws criminalizing dissent and allowing President Vladimir Zelensky to ban opposition political parties, nationalize the media and even persecute the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for being in canonical communion with Moscow.
Documents show how CBC leaned on Twitter to censor content
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 5, 2023
Journalist Matt Taibbi has corroborated claims made by Rebel News that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) coerced Twitter to suppress voices and organizations it found disagreeable, even going as far as threatening litigation if the social media platform failed to oblige.
Earlier this week, Rebel News released documents indicating that the CBC exerted pressure on Twitter to silence specific individuals and groups, many of whom have been criticized by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
These documents contained correspondence between Michele Austin, former Director of Public Policy for Twitter in the US and Canada, and key figures within the CBC, including President Catherine Tait and Cam Gordon, who at the time headed communications for Twitter in Canada. Austin’s communication with Gordon revealed that the CBC had explicitly threatened legal action during a call with the pair, prompting them to terminate the conversation.
Austin further deliberated on whether they should respond to a letter sent by the CBC or simply ignore it, while also mentioning that she had already escalated the case.
Another email highlighted by Taibbi was sent by Claude Galipeau, a CBC executive, addressed to several Twitter executives and Tait. The email contained a follow-up letter regarding the issue they had previously discussed on May 26, 2021.
Additional documents obtained by Rebel News showed that Tait warned Twitter that the CBC would cease advertising on the platform if it failed to suppress the voices that the publicly-funded media organization wanted censored.
THOUGHT CRIME
Computing Forever | May 3, 2023
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After years of mandates, German Health Ministry admit they have no idea whether or to what degree masks work at all
Pandemic mythology continues its slow decay
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | May 3, 2023
As on several prior occasions, liberal Bundestag vice-president Wolfgang Kubicki has used his parliamentary prerogatives to put a question to the German Health Ministry, and compel an answer. He asked what study results the Ministry could cite to demonstrate the efficacy of face masks. Lauterbach’s crack team of virus understanders responded that, uh, it is a very complicated problem, and, in truth, well, actually, nobody really knows what effect masks really have. This is because “the effectiveness of individual measures … cannot be examined in isolation, but only in conjunction with the other measures in place at any given time.”
In other words: they got nothing. After years of making kids mask for hours on end in school, and imposing arbitrary but quite obnoxious mandates on airplanes and public transit and clinics, they have no idea whether it did anything, and no plans even to find out whether it did anything. Suddenly all that manic masking enthusiasm has just evaporated.
The response comes several weeks after Anthony Fauci’s statement to the New York Times that “at the population level, masks work at the margins, maybe 10 percent.” This is itself a baseless claim, but it’s another important walk-back of the insane doctrines that medical bureaucrats have been spinning about masks since 2020.
You have to think of propaganda like a big machine. Somebody has to plug it in and it draws a lot of electricity, but with the right inputs it can dazzle a lot of people. The problem is that sooner or later the deception isn’t worth anybody’s time or energy anymore, and so somebody must also shut it off. It looks like nobody bothered with any kind of messaging exit strategy, and so we’ve entered a very weird period, wherein the public health leviathan has ceased rehearsing its crazy pandemic myths, leaving the ever-shrinking minority of deranged Covidians to their own devices.
Now and again the fact-checkers still throw them a bone, so there’s that.
Ireland wanted public input on proposed censorship bill… Until the majority said they actually prefer free speech
Pushing ahead with censorship
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 4, 2023
The Irish government has decided to move forward with the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offenses) Bill 2022, despite the fact that a majority of public consultation responses were against the proposal. The bill, which was initiated in October 2022, aims to address “hate speech” in the country.
The public consultation, held in 2019, offered individuals the chance to express their views on the matter through either letter submissions or survey responses. Gript, a news outlet, conducted an analysis of the 3,597 submissions received during the consultation process. The results indicated that 73% of the respondents opposed the implementation of a hate speech law in Ireland.
Many respondents felt that free speech should only be restricted in cases involving incitement to violence or credible threats. One individual commented, “I’m offended by the government quite often – but they are entitled to their opinion like I am.” Another stressed the importance of free expression over safeguarding the feelings of sensitive individuals.
Despite the clear opposition, the Irish government chose to proceed with the bill, citing the sheer number of responses as justification for moving forward. The Justice Department stated, “Hate Speech can lead to hate crime,” and announced the development of new hate crime laws in Ireland, following the release of the consultation findings.
This week, the bill received a significant majority of support in the lower house, with 110 votes in favor and only 14 against. The decision to move forward with the legislation, despite widespread public disapproval, raises questions about the effectiveness of public consultation and the government’s commitment to addressing the concerns of its citizens.
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Woolsey Fire started at Santa Susana Field Lab — where “radioactive materials released were never accurately measured”
By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
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