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YouTube Deletes Years-Old Mike Tyson Interview With RFK Jr.

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 5, 2023

In another censorship move, YouTube has deleted several high-profile interviews with US Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Among the videos removed from the platform was an hour-and-a-half-long podcast featuring Kennedy in conversation with boxing legend Mike Tyson, as noticed by video journalist Matt Orfalea. This takedown occurred just ten days ago, following the disappearance of another RFK Jr. interview – this time with comedian Theo Von – from the video-sharing platform.

The two deleted interviews, both dating back to 2020, had garnered significant popularity among YouTube’s vast user base. The interview conducted by Von had received almost a quarter of a million views, while Tyson’s podcast with Kennedy had been viewed almost half a million times. This popularity underscores the wide reach these videos had and the potential impact of their removal.

YouTube’s justification for this sudden takedown remains unclear, particularly as Kennedy is currently running for President and the videos were safely on the platform for almost three years.

The only explanation provided to viewers was a vague notification stating, “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.” However, this statement offers no concrete details about which specific guidelines were violated, leaving users to speculate about the exact reasons behind the removal.

Some observers are questioning whether the takedown could be related to YouTube’s policy on COVID-19 misinformation. However, if this was indeed the case, the timing of the removal raises additional questions. Both interviews were initially posted during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and remained online throughout the period, Orfalea reported. It’s only now, in the wake of Kennedy’s escalating 2024 Presidential campaign, that the videos have been removed.

The timing is curious and might suggest that the removal is politically motivated, though this is purely speculation. If the deletion was due to violations of YouTube’s COVID-19 misinformation policy, why would it take effect long after the pandemic peak and just as Kennedy’s presidential campaign is gaining momentum?

In the video, Kennedy also says he believes the CIA was involved in the assassination of his father, Robert F. Kennedy.

While we await further clarification from YouTube on its actions, these events underscore the ongoing debate around digital content censorship and the power held by tech giants. It raises questions about the transparency of their content regulation processes and the potential for the exertion of political influence.

June 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Jacinda Ardern awarded “Damehood” for handling of the pandemic, as excess deaths mount amid media crackdown

2023 deaths are 25% above normal – but are hidden from the public

BY IGOR CHUDOV | JUNE 5, 2023

New Zealand’s government awarded “damehood” – the second-highest honor in the country – to its former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The award was given for “leading the country through the Covid pandemic.”

Who gave Jacinda this highest honor? Her new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins. Mr. Hipkins was Jacinda’s Health Minister during the pandemic, so by giving her the highest honor for handling the pandemic, he also implicitly “honored” himself.

Jacinda did some very unusual things during the pandemic. Her government forbade New Zealand citizens from returning to their own country. She also supported a “two-tier society,” basically robbing unvaccinated New Zealanders of their constitutional rights and laughing about it:

How is New Zealand doing? Take a look at the Short-Term Mortality database. In 2023, New Zealanders are dying at excess rates of around 25% of normal.

https://mpidr.shinyapps.io/stmortality/

A successful pandemic policy would not result in roughly 25% excess mortality in the fourth year of the pandemic. The officials insist that Covid is not responsible for most of these deaths, leaving the actual cause an unspoken mystery.

Most New Zealanders are unaware that their chances of dying increased by a quarter because their country’s press is silent on excess deaths. The silence and lack of public awareness are not accidental: the government is intensifying its crackdown on social networks and the media.

“Safer Online Services” Details New Censorship Plan

This June, the NZ government revealed its initiative for “Safer Online Services and Media Platforms.”

The government is proposing to create “A new industry regulator” armed with powers to punish “media platforms”:

The new regulator would make sure social media platforms follow codes to keep people safe. Media services like TV and radio broadcasters would also need to follow new codes tailored to their industry. The regulator would have the power to check information from platforms to make sure they follow the codes and could issue penalties for serious failures of compliance. This would ensure everyone is playing by the same rules and that consumer safety is prioritised.

While the proposal gives lip service to “protecting children,” it quickly advances to “hate speech,” the right of the government to remove and block content, and more:

Continuing to remove and block access to the most harmful content – government interventions to censor content and criminalise associated behaviour would remain at the extreme high end of harm. The new framework would continue criminal sanctions for dealing with ‘objectionable’ (illegal) material, including powers to issue takedown notices for this type of content.

There would still be a place for a censorship role, with powers to determine whether the most harmful content should be classified as illegal to create, possess, or share.

Failure to comply with the requirements could lead to authors, creators, and publishers being suspended, removed, or prevented from accessing the platforms’ services. They may also be blacklisted if they show repeated harmful behaviour.

Regulated Platforms would need to implement approved codes of practice that meet legislated core safety objectives and minimum expectations

NZ plans to use Artificial Intelligence to do censorship:

safeguards and barriers to deter the upload and creation of risky content – for example, time-lags or verification requirements for specific types of content

methods to identify harmful content and prevent how it is shared and amplified. This would include ways to remove this content, such as:

• through human and Artificial Intelligence (AI) moderation practices

• downgrading content visibility

• removing recidivist individuals and entities – such as identifying bots and troll accounts that routinely post unsafe content • using authenticity markers.

Anyway, I am not a citizen of New Zealand, so I cannot tell that country how to govern itself.

What I can say, however, is that I am very sorry for the fine citizens of that remote land, who lost their constitutional protections, are dying at excessive rates, are largely unaware of the danger they are in, and have a government more interested in hiding the truth from the population and awarding highest honors to its members.

Does Jacinda deserve her “damehood”? Or does she deserve something else?

June 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

“Your Speech is Violence”: How the Mob is Using a New Mantra to Justify Campus Violence

By Jonathan Turley | The Hill | June 4, 2023

“Silence is violence.” When those words became a popular mantra years ago on college campuses, I wrote that the anti-free speech movement was moving toward compelled speech while declaring dissenting views to be harmful.

Today, it isn’t just silence that is considered violence on college campuses. It is also speech, as both faculty and students are actively shutting down opposing views on subjects ranging from abortion to climate change to transgender issues.

Recently, many people were shocked by a videotape of Hunter College professor Shellyne Rodríguez trashing a pro-life student display in New York. Most were focused on her profanity and vandalism, but there were familiar phrases that appeared in her diatribe to the clearly shocked students.

Before trashing the table, she told the students, “You’re not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You’re triggering my students.”

The videotape revealed one other thing. At Hunter College, and at other colleges, it seems that trashing a pro-life student display and abusing pro-life students is not considered a firing offense. Hunter College refused to fire Rodríguez.

The PSC Graduate Center, the labor organization of graduate and professional schools at the City University of New York, supported that decision and said Rodríguez was “justified” in trashing the display, which the organization described as “dangerously false propaganda” and “disinformation.”

Rodríguez later put a machete to the neck of a reporter, threatened to chop him up and then chased a news crew down a street with the machete in hand. Somewhere between the machete to the neck and chasing the reporters down the street, Hunter College finally decided that Rodríguez had to go.

Rodríguez denounced the school for having “capitulated” to “racists, white nationalists, and misogynists.” She explained that her firing was just a continuation of “attacks on women, trans people, black people, Latinx people, migrants, and beyond.”

The redefinition of opposing views as “violence” is a favorite excuse for violent groups like antifa, which continue to physically assault speakers with pro-life and other disfavored views.  As explained by Rutgers Professor Mark Bray in his “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” the group believes that “‘free speech’ as such is merely a bourgeois fantasy unworthy of consideration.”

As one antifa member explained, free speech is a “nonargument… you have the right to speak but you also have the right to be shut up.”

When people criticized antifa for its violent philosophy, MSNBC’s Joy Reid responded to the critics that “you might be the fascist.”

Faculty members have followed this sense of license to silence others. Former CUNY law dean Mary Lu Bilek even insisted that disrupting a speech on free speech was free speech. (Hunter is part of the CUNY system.)

The same week as the Rodríguez attack at the State University of New York at Albany, sociology professor Renee Overdyke shut down a pro-life display and then allegedly resisted arrest.

Just last week, the Pride Office website at the University of Colorado (Boulder) declared that misgendering people can be considered an “act of violence.”

This week, University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers declared that some of those boycotting the store Target over its line of Pride Month clothing were engaging in “literal terrorism.” (He insists that he was referring to those confronting Target employees.)

Faculty have also justified attacks on pro-life figures. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. 

She pleaded guilty to criminal assault, but the university refused to fire her. Instead, some faculty and students defended her, including claiming that pro-life displays constitute terrorism. The University of Oregon later honored Miller-Young as a model for women advocates.

Likewise, at Fresno State University, public health professor Dr. Gregory Thatcher recruited students to destroy pro-life messages.

Other faculty have called for or countenanced violence against Republicans and conservatives. Professors have shouted down speakers, destroyed property, participated in riots and verbally attacked students.

University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. He was later elevated to the position of director of graduate studies of history.

As faculty commit or support violence, students are assured that others are the violent ones. Recently, at the University of Texas at Austin, Professor Kirsten Bradbury tested her students on psychology by asking them “which sociodemographic group is most likely to repeatedly violate the rights of others in a pattern of behavior that includes violence, deceit, irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse?” Of course, the answer was wealthy white men.

The lesson took with students. A recent poll shows that 41 percent of college students now believe violence is justified to fight hate speech. At Cornell, a conservative speaker was shouted down, met with the common mantra that “your words are violence.” At Case Western, the student newspaper editorialized against university recognition of a pro-life group because its pro-life views are “inherently violent” and “a danger to the student body.” At Wellesley, student editors declared that it was time to shut down conservative speakers and that “hostility may be warranted.” They added, “The spirit of free speech is to protect the suppressed, not to protect a free-for-all where anything is acceptable, no matter how hateful and damaging.”

Those views did not spontaneously appear in the minds of these students. At one time, tolerance for free speech was the very touchstone of higher education and a common article of faith for students. These students are the product of years of being told that free speech is dangerous and harmful if left unregulated. From elementary school to college, they were taught that they did not have to be “triggered” by the speech of others.

We are still (thankfully) drawing the line at machete attacks. But it is the underlying views of Rodríguez that are the true threat, and they are being replicated throughout the country. We are raising a generation of censors and speech-phobics.

If we want to stop or reverse this trend, Congress must act. I have proposed legislation that would deny federal funding to schools that do not protect core free speech principles. We are funding schools that are taking a machete to the defining right of our democracy.

It is akin to the recent resolution of the case of an antifa member who took an axe to Sen. John Hoeven’s (R-N.D.) office in Fargo. Thomas “Tas” Alexander Starks, 31, was given probation… and his axe back.

We may not be able to deter people from speaking through machetes and axes, but we can at least stop subsidizing the hardware.

June 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

THE DURHAM REPORT, THE SPYGATE AND THE INEXTRICABLE TIE WITH THE ITALIAN DEEP STATE

By Cesare Sacchetti | The Eye Of The Needle | June 2, 2023

Fraud and treason. These are the first two words that come up to our mind when we read the Durham report.

In the report written by the special prosecutor appointed in 2019 by the then AG William Barr is narrated the plot to overthrow the Trump presidency.

When President Trump claims that this was the most subversive plot in the history of America, he’s certainly right.

An institution like the FBI, which was supposed to guard the regularity of the election, was the one who instead conspired to frame one of the candidates.

After the publication of the Durham report, the image of the FBI is definitely tainted.

And the most outrageous thing that shows how the FBI is a politicized institution is the fact that the latter acted on the orders of Hillary Clinton.

At page 98 of the report, we find the beginning of this conspiracy against Donald Trump.

Everything dates back to April 2016 when a legal firm that was working for the Clinton campaign was assigned a specific task.

Find, or better cook up, dirt to discredit Donald Trump. The legal firm hired Perkins Coie, a Washington based investigative agency.

Perkins Coie was tasked to find compromising information about Donald Trump in order to show that the Republican candidate was a sort of “Putin’s agent”.

This is the birth of the infamous Steele’s dossier named after his creator, Christopher Steele. Christopher Steele was a former agent of the British secret services, which apparently did not want to do anything with him.

Steel wrote a bogus dossier where he claims that Trump had intercourse in a Moscow hotel with Russian prostitutes whom were asked also to pee on the bed where Obama had supposedly slept years before.

This is the kind of outlandish garbage that was put into the dossier and this shows us, once again, the stunning proportions of this farce.

However, this “material” was the basis that allowed the FBI to launch the infamous Crossfire Hurricane probe.

Crossfire Hurricane is the beginning of the investigation where Trump was suspected of “Russian collusion”.

After the probe started, the FBI illegally wiretapped Carter Page, Trump’s former foreign consultant, and Paul Manafort, former director of Trump’s campaign.

And the Special Prosecutor is very clear in pointing out how their surveillance would have not been authorized without the Steele report.

The FBI and the intelligence community failed to do the proper due diligence of this information and the report, at page 96 of his report, points out this as well.

Durham writes that “neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

Evidence against Trump could not be founded because it was simply not there. And the institutions that were supposed to check Steele’s claims basically took his allegations at face value.

However, Crossfire Hurricane was launched also through the involvement of a foreign actor, which is Italy in this case.

In May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a former Trump consultant made some incautious revelations to Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat close to the Clintons.

Papadopoulos said to Downer that he had received some compromising information about Hillary Clinton from Joseph Mifsud when he had met him in Italy two months before.

Joseph Mifsud is an enigmatic character. He is a Maltese professor at the Link Campus University in Rome, which is a university known to be quite close to the Anglosphere environment.

Actually, Papadopoulos took the bait of Mifsud who is close to the American Democratic party as well.

The Maltese professor has disappeared ever since. Some sources claim that the Italian secret service are hiding him because of his crucial role in the conspiracy against Trump.

However, we will come back later on the role played by the Italian deep state.

Now we must go back to Crossfire Hurricane.

Obama green lighted Spygate

Once the investigation against Trump was launched, President Obama was immediately informed about it.

In the summer of 2016 the word was spread in the intelligence community about the “Clinton Intelligence plan”.

Obama was briefed by then CIA director, Joseph Brennan, who said to the President how the Clinton campaign was working to frame Trump by falsely associating him with the Russian government.

Obama did not stop the plot nor he tried to halt the illegal FBI investigation. On the contrary, he gave a green light to it.

The conspiracy against Donald Trump had the blessing of Barack Obama who chose to help Hillary Clinton in her plan.

Some months later after this summit, in October, former Italian PM, Matteo Renzi, paid a visit to Obama in the White House.

In that period, Renzi was busy in supporting his failed Yes referendum campaign to reform the Italian constitution and he was also seeking endorsements from international relevant figures, like Obama.

Obama backed Renzi’s constitutional reform with a public statement that it clearly looked a meddling into Italy’s political affairs.

However, according to Papadopoulos, when Obama hosted Renzi at the White House asked him to play a part in the conspiracy against Donald Trump.

And here we have to meet new characters, who are the Occhioneros siblings, Giulio and Francesca Maria.

In that period, the Occhioneros were accused of illegal espionage against Italian institutional figures. The probe launched by the DA of Rome is called “EyePyramid” and it floods the pages of the Italian media.

The two were arrested and they later started denouncing a plot against them.

Giulio Occhionero is a nuclear engineer with advanced IT skills. He wrote to the then US Ambassador, Lewis Eisenberg, and to the US Congress.

Mr. Occhionero in his letters reveals the plot of the Italian authorities against him. According to him, his servers were hacked by the Italian postal police along with their respective IT division, the CNPAIC.

The goal of this operation was to plant some of Clinton’s email on the servers of his firm in the United States and then trying to associate these emails to Trump because of Occhionero’s relations with the Republican party.

So Occhionero in this story played the role of the classical patsy, chosen to frame someone else.

If his version is correct, the plot against Trump proceeded on two parallel ways: on the one hand, there was the American side of the FBI that was illegally spying on Trump campaign; on the other, there were the Italian authorities that were acting jointly with the US institutions to associate Trump with the Russian government.

In the first months of the conspiracy, we find tangible trace of this collaboration between the US and Italian authorities.

In April 2016, Kieran Ramsey, former legal attaché of the US embassy, wrote a letter to Nunzia Ciardi, director of the Italian postal police.

Ramsey’s letter to the Italian postal police

Ciardi is an interesting character because her name surfaced in the Italian mainstream media in 2021 when she was interviewed about the surveillance of the “no vax” activists.

It is still not clear to this day what was the extent of this surveillance and who authorized it considering the fact that the “no vax” activists were not committing any crime.

However, Ramsey wrote to Ciardi and he thanked her for the collaboration of her office in identifying the location of Occhionero’s emails.

It was April and Occhionero was still not investigated by the DA of Rome. Nevertheless, his name was in an official letter signed by the legal attaché of the American embassy and addressed to the Italian authorities.

The Italian engineer thinks that the kind of cybernetic attack that was enforced against his servers could not be operated without an ISP, Internet Service Provider, TIM, in this case.

And only a government could force to participate an ISP in this kind of hacking operation.

This also explains the visit paid by William Barr in Rome. Barr came to Italy to investigate Italy’s role in the Spygate case.

And here we can see once again the deep tie between the American and the Italian deep state. A “special relationship” that dates back to 1945 when after the loss of WW2, Italy has been living in a condition of limited sovereignity.

Italy has not been enjoying an autonomous foreign policy like the other countries who joined NATO. Italy’s foreign policy was mostly dictated by Washington and when Rome did not want to comply was threatened and harassed like what happened to former Italy’s PM, Aldo Moro, who was warned by Henry Kissinger to halt his policy.

Therefore, the Italian deep state finds itself in a condition of subordination to Washington. US governments used Italy as a strategic platform to keep up the old unipolar order of the past century.

This probably explains why Washington chose Italy to carry out its subversive plans against Trump. The Italian deep state is a sort of rogue agent, or just muscle for the US side to use in these kinds of “tricky” situations.

This also explains why Italy, once again, played a fundamental role in another subversive plot against Trump whose name is “Italygate”, which we exposed in this blog in December 2020.

After all, the Italian establishment can rule Italy only with the protection of the Washington guarantor and it must execute the orders of the latter.

When Trump stepped into the political arena, both sides saw a lethal treat. Trump had no interest in pursuing that relationship with the Italian establishment.

His mission was to free America from the rule of the Washington lobbies, which had been controlling Italy for decades.

Trump ended this axis. He severed the umbilical cord that tied the Italian deep state to the American one.

This is why the Durham report closed a cycle. A cycle where the walls were closed in on those who committed treason against the President of the United States.

Although the report does not explicitly mention Italy’s role, Trump has probably the proof about the involvement of everyone in this coup d’état. And this not only haunts the nights of the several people in Washington.

It haunts the nights of several people in Rome too.

June 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Europe’s Digital Services Act Puts Free Speech at the Mercy of Eurocrats

BY DAVID THUNDER | THE FREEDOM BLOG | JUNE 3, 2023

The European Union’s Internal Market Commissioner, Thierry Breton, was apparently miffed that Elon Musk withdrew Twitter from the EU’s “voluntary code of practice against disinformation.” He was sufficiently put out by Twitter’s withdrawal from the “voluntary code” that he felt the need to publicly reprimand Twitter for not gratefully submitting to the European Union’s expert guidance: “You can run but you can’t hide… Beyond voluntary commitments, fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under Digital Services Act as of August 25th.”

The declared aim of the new Digital Service Act is “to contribute to the proper functioning of the internal market for intermediary services by setting out harmonised rules for a safe, predictable and trusted online environment that facilitates innovation and in which fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter, including the principle of consumer protection, are effectively protected.”

Who can argue against a “safe, predictable and trusted online environment”? Who would argue against “consumer protection”? And who would argue against Mr Breton’s commitment to the fight against “disinformation”? I certainly would, because when a person or institution in a position of great power endorses values like “predictability,” rails against “disinformation,” and promises to keep us all “safe” on the internet, you can be sure that it will be “safety,” “predictability,” and “disinformation,” as viewed from their self-serving ideological and political perspective.

I am just as worried as Mr Breton about “disinformation,” but my chief concern is with disinformation coming from official sources, which can do an extraordinary amount of harm due to the extraordinary reach and prestige of official organisations. It is these same organisations that Mr Breton would like to put in charge of policing “disinformation”: organisations like national governments, that have been among the most frequent perpetrators of false and misleading information, on matters of no small moment, from the efficacy and safety of Covid vaccines, masks and lockdowns to the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the true standing of climate “science,” and the potential harms to the economy and food supply chain of aggressive climate interventions such as the expropriation of farmland.

The Digital Services Act is an endless maze of complicated regulations worthy of a team of lawyers. Seeing as I don’t have a budget to hire a team of lawyers, I decided to skim through the Act for myself. It does not make for pleasant bedtime reading, not only because it is a morass of complicated legalese, but also, because what hides behind this legalese is an attempt by EU politicians to get social media platforms under their thumb, through

  • the obligation on the part of social media companies to periodically submit content moderation and “risk mitigation” reports to EU bureacrats
  • EU supervision of social media platforms’ policing of “harmful” information, which could potentially include health misinformation as well as “illegal hate speech”
  • the creation of new emergency powers in the European Commission to “require” social media platforms to take actions to “prevent, eliminate or limit” any use of their services that might “contribute” to a “threat” to public security or public health

… and all backed up by crippling fines of up to 6% of a company’s worldwide turnover for non-compliance. Yes, you heard that right: up to six percent of a company’s worldwide turnover.

At bottom, the Digital Services Act is an attempt to ramp up the level of control that EU bureacrats have over the flow of information on social media platforms. You would have to have a very short historical memory to think that broad powers of censorship will generally be used to advance the cause of truth and justice. Whether Mr Thierry Breton and his colleagues will be successful in forcing social media companies to do their bidding, this much is clear: the Digital Services Act creates a European legal environment that is increasingly hostile to free speech.

June 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The bureaucrats & science retards responsible for the last three years of destruction and mass medical experimentation are unrepentant and eager to do the same thing all over again

eugyppius: a plague chronicle | June 3, 2023

While I travel and work on a longer piece, I thought you might enjoy some outtakes from this recent article in Welt, about the complete lack of self-reflection exhibited by German pandemic Science-Followers even after the failure of their policies:

Helge Braun … the former head of Angela Merkel’s Chancellery, was invited to Berlin’s Futurium to discuss science and politics. Behind the scenes, Braun was a key figure in the German Corona response. Time for a few awkward questions? The CDU politician need not fear them – despite his vehement advocacy of school closures and lockdowns …

He was joined by three members of the Leopoldina [that is, the German National Academy of Sciences] – climate researcher Gerald Haug, its president; paediatrician and adolescent physician Jutta Gärtner and sociologist Armin Nassehi. The Academy became known during the pandemic not for its balanced scientific advice, but primarily for its politicised demands for tougher measures. And as often as its members emphasised institutional independence from the government that evening, you could tell their intellectual independence was notably lacking.

“Team Caution,” as members of the Leopoldina members still like to call themselves, was full of praise for their own work … “The pandemic was a good example of science-based policy advice,” Haug explains – and by “good” he really does mean that the Academy advised well … “Team Caution” always did everything right … The sensible majority followed the recommendations of the government, the Leopoldina and the RKI. Everything else is nasty fake news from the internet.

Yet Haug himself is a good example of the Leopoldina’s convoluted self-perception. On the one hand, he insisted repeatedly that science only represents “the facts”; that is, he claims objectivity for his profession. On the other hand, Haug freely admits that the Leopoldina aimed to “really hit it out of the park” and “make a splash” with their recommendations. “We’re often too soft…”

A real problem with the technocrats, is that they only have relevance in one direction. As soon as the National Academy of Sciences issues an opinion that the virus isn’t much to worry about and people should continue to live their lives as before, their political relevance is finished. For this reason alone, technocratic systems will be biased towards intervention, even in harmless situations, and nothing they tell you to do can ever be trusted.

The damage inflicted by lockdowns, the vaccines, social exclusion and attendant social conflicts – nobody wanted to talk about that. Nor did anyone want to discuss Braun’s role as one of the main instigators of the German pandemic response, distinguished internationally especially by the long school closures. As is well known, Braun’s promise that all measures would end “as soon as we have made an offer of vaccination to everyone in Germany” turned out to be empty talk. His threat that the vaccinated should receive “more freedom” than the unvaccinated, on the other hand, became brutal reality. No matter. For Braun, the Corona era represents a positive interaction between politics and science, which serves as an important example for the future.

Braun claimed that “Citizens don’t like arguments in politics. The strange democratic understandings of this unassuming Merkel confident could be summed up as “Dare to demand more expertocracy …

At the end, they moved on from Corona to discuss climate change. A scientist in the audience suggested that the Leopoldina should … take to the streets. The opinionated moderator suggested that, when it comes to climate, fear is rational; and that, in consequence, the rational mandate of science would be to spread fear …

Apparently, the politicians and academics who set the tone in the Corona crisis now feel encouraged to extend the Corona model to future grand programmes …

Mark my words: Should they ever be allowed to get the public panic juggernaut up and running again, what they do next will make Corona seem like a mildly rough case of cultural and political indigestion. They’ve learned that the hard limits on their power are far weaker than they ever imagined. Their dark ambitions will hang over us like a Sword of Damocles for decades now.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

The UK’s “Chilling” Secret Unit That Monitored Lockdown Dissent

More revelations about the secretive Counter Disinformation Unit

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023

A clandestine UK Government unit dubbed the Counter-Disinformation Unit (CDU) has been implicated in a troubling endeavor to curb and control online discussions about the controversial Covid-19 lockdown policies. The covert operation allegedly involved the collaboration of social media companies in a strategic bid to quell supposed domestic “threats.”

According to revelations from Freedom of Information requests and data protection requests from The Telegraph, posts critical of Covid-19 restrictions, including those questioning mass vaccination of children, were systematically removed.

Social media companies are now under scrutiny following allegations that their technologies were deployed to thwart the wide circulation or promotion of posts tagged as potentially problematic by the CDU or its Cabinet Office equivalent.

The files revealed the surreptitious monitoring of critics of the Government’s Covid plans. Artificial intelligence firms were reportedly enlisted by the government to search social media platforms, flagging any discussions opposing vaccine passports.

In a startling revelation, the BBC was implicated in clandestine government policy discussions regarding this alleged misinformation.

The CDU, hosted by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), operated a “trusted flagger” system with major social media companies. This mechanism expedited requests for content removal. The CDU, still operational, was formed in 2019, initially focusing on the European elections, later shifting its attention to the pandemic.

Critics, including MPs and freedom of speech campaigners, have labeled the revelations as “truly chilling” and a strategy tantamount to “censoring British citizens” — a tactic likened to those of the Chinese Communist Party.

“Any attempt by governments to shut down legitimate debate is hugely concerning, but to discover that DCMS actively sought to censor the views of those who were speaking up for children’s welfare is truly chilling,” said Miriam Cates, a Conservative MP to The Telegraph.

A government spokesman refuted the allegations, stating that the unit was designed to track narratives and trends using publicly available information to safeguard public health and national security. The spokesman insisted that the unit never monitored individuals and had a strict policy against referring journalists and MPs to social media platforms.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The EU Plans To Test Twitter To See How Fast It Responds To Censorship Demands

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023

The European Union will stress test Twitter and other platforms to see how well they comply with the upcoming censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), whose enforcement will begin in August. In a similar style program to that created by the Chinese Communist Party, where government enforcers visit tech companies directly, a team of 10 digital specialists will visit the companies later this month, said Thierry Breton, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market.

The test will help companies learn how the DSA will be enforced. Breton, who will also visit the companies, said the team will review how platforms respond to what is problematic content under the law including content that has been flagged by the EU and content that has not been flagged.

The team will also review why some content is not flagged, citing an example of “fake news that caused disturbances but was promoted because it generated virality and advertising.”

“Did you have enough moderators beforehand? Was it promoted by the algorithm?” Breton said. “We want to do this for real, in the real world, so they see how it happens, and above all so they prepare,” Breton said.

Some of the findings from the test will be made public while some will only be communicated to the companies.

In an interview where he talked about the visits to the social media companies, Breton said: “I’m not threatening anyone. We are here to help companies comply with our new law.”

Last week, after Twitter withdrew from the voluntary Code of Conduct on Disinformation, Breton warned: “You can run but you can’t hide,” adding that “fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA as of August 25.”

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

New CDC Director Is Another Lockdowner

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | June 2, 2023

In the old Soviet Union, citizens were not required to be a member of the Communist Party. But if you were not, you could never expect to rise far professionally or socially. You would never be the head of a department in university, a factory manager, much less the General Secretary. They were always recruited out of the party.

Party membership was proof of loyalty. It was a demonstration that you were willing to put loyalty over morality. Rising high in the party also meant that others in the ruling class likely had something on you. No one gained power without other powerful people knowing of your grim deeds. That way there was mutual trust, or, to put it another way, mutual blackmail.

Honor among thieves only holds true for those who are guilty of thievery.

The system was the same in Nazi Germany. You didn’t have to join the party but if you refused, you could not rise in academia, military, or government. And everyone knew the rules. The party controlled the state, and members of the party controlled you. Only the members of the party were trusted with responsibility and rewarded with emoluments.

We are headed this way in the US today.

The party in question is the lockdown party. Far from having repudiated this brutal, rights-violating, and ineffective method of pandemic management, the ruling class is doubling down. Even more than that, those who participated in the fiasco are being rewarded. Indeed, participation is now seen as proof of loyalty and a demonstration that one can be trusted by the people who matter.

That’s my best read on why Mandy Cohen is being pulled away from her perch in North Carolina, where she led a catastrophic pandemic response, to be the replacement for Rochelle Walensky as head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a faithful member of the lockdown party and thus demonstrates her willingness to do it again should the occasion arise.

This is not going to help the CDC recover from its terrible reputation.

Going through her timeline is a strange blast from the past of heartbreaking fear-mongering, pseudo-science, and propaganda. She passed with flying colors all three tests of compliance: closures, masking, and vaccine mandates.

If you believed there was ever any science behind any of this, Mandy inadvertently revealed otherwise. They made decisions based on some weird club of lockdowners that gained a feeling of power and control simply by chit-chatting on the phone with each other. It was all arbitrary and completely disregarding of human rights.

She also took the lead in broadcasting bad information from the CDC that has since been repeatedly debunked.

Of course she was also nuts for masks despite no evidence that they achieved anything in mitigating virus spread. To show what a faithful party member she is, she even wore a mask with Fauci’s picture on it.

There is no mystery about why Biden tapped her. Politico spills the beans:

The CDC is also in the midst of a strategic overhaul launched by Walensky last year; a longer-term project that Cohen would be tasked with managing in an effort to better prepare the agency for the next public health emergency.

Biden officials involved in the search came away from discussions with Cohen impressed by her broad range of health experience at the federal and state levels, two of the people said, and convinced she had the ability to manage the nearly 11,000-person agency and the broader political dynamics of an administration gearing up for Biden’s re-election run.

The same is true for the National Institutes of Health. Biden has tapped ​​Monica Bertagnolli, who has deep ties to Big Pharma and a public record of obsequious deference to her boss.

We are all hoping for a clean repudiation of these policies, and even a flip of the narrative such that participating in this disaster would be a mark against people in terms of career development. We are nowhere near that point yet.

It’s the opposite. The regime is still hiring and promoting out of the lockdown party for the future. They cannot admit error and are working to make sure they never have to do so.

And that’s how Khrushchev became Brezhnev who became Andropov who became Chernenko who became Gorbachev. Finally, it all fell apart. Let us hope we don’t have to wait 50 years this time.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Exposed: The UK Company Subjecting Your Social Media Posts To State Surveillance

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 3, 2023

A UK government-funded artificial intelligence (AI) firm based in an unassuming industrial estate in Yorkshire, England, has been engaged in state surveillance, monitoring the social media posts of citizens, a recent revelation suggests.

Logically, the firm in question, has earned over £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) from government contracts to identify and analyze “disinformation” and “misinformation” spread across social media.

The AI company was started by Lyric Jain, a 27-year-old Cambridge engineering graduate, who launched the technology first during Indian elections. With one of the largest dedicated fact-checking teams globally, the company sifts through material from hundreds of thousands of media sources and all public posts on major social media platforms.

Logically has bagged lucrative deals, including a £1.2 million (1.49 million USD) contract with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and another worth up to £1.4 million (1.7 million uSD) with the Department of Health and Social Care to monitor threats to high-profile vaccine service individuals, The Telegraph reported. Its client list includes US federal agencies, the Indian electoral commission, TikTok, and Facebook.

While Logically asserts that it does not share evidence collected for the UK Government with Facebook, this partnership has ignited concerns among freedom of speech campaigners.

The company’s responsibilities grew over time, aiding in building a comprehensive picture of potentially harmful misinformation and disinformation. Documents revealed that it produced regular “Covid-19 Mis/Disinformation Platform Terms of Service Reports” for the Counter-disinformation Unit – a secretive operation within the DCMS.

A public document titled “Covid-19 Disinformation in the UK” disclosed Logically’s perspective, referring to “anti-lockdown” and “anti-Covid-19 vaccine sentiment”, along with hashtags “#sackvallance” and “#sackwhitty” as evidence of “a strong disdain for expert advice.”

Logically defended its actions, stating that it is possible for content not specifically mis- or disinformation to be included in a report if there is a potential for a narrative to be weaponized.

The firm denied limiting freedom of speech, stating: “We do not specifically monitor individuals and their behavior, nor do we make any recommendations that limit their right to free speech… We monitor content, including narratives and trends across public information environments online, to help tackle the proliferation of online harms, mis- and disinformation, and prevent real-world harms.”

The company’s practices have raised questions about freedom of speech and privacy rights. Critics argue that this case illuminates the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by the powerful convergence of artificial intelligence and big data.

June 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

WHO Initiative Would ‘Promote Desired Behaviors’ by Surveilling Social Media

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 30, 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) is proposing a set of recommendations for “social listening surveillance systems” designed to address what it describes as a “health threat” posed by online “misinformation.”

The WHO’s Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET) initiative claims “misinformation” has resulted in an “infodemic” that poses a threat — even in instances where the information is “accurate.”

PRET has raised eyebrows, at a time when the WHO’s member states are engaged in negotiations on two controversial instruments: the “pandemic treaty” and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR).

The latest draft of the pandemic treaty contains language on how WHO member states would commit to “social listening.” Under article 18(b), WHO member states would commit to:

“Conduct regular community outreach, social listening, and periodic analysis and consultations with civil society organization and media outlets to identify the prevalence and profiles of misinformation, which contribute to design communications and messaging strategies for the public to counteract misinformation, disinformation and false news, thereby strengthening public trust and promoting adherence to public health and social measures.”

Remarking on PRET’s “social listening” proposals, Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom” and a former New York University liberal studies professor, told The Defender :

“The WHO’s PRET initiative is part of the UN’s attempt to institute global ‘medical’ tyranny using surveillance, ‘social listening’ and censorship. PRET is the technocratic arm of the WHO’s proposed pandemic treaty, which, if accepted by nation-states, would amount to the surrendering of national and individual sovereignty to this ‘global governance’ body.

“What better way to establish a one-world government than by using so-called global crises that must be addressed by nothing short of ‘global governance’? I remind readers that you cannot comply your way out of tyranny.”

WHO could use artificial intelligence to monitor social media conversations

A WHO document outlining the PRET initiative — “Module 1: Planning for respiratory pathogen pandemics, Version 1.0” — contains a definition of infodemic:

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information — accurate or not — which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities.

“The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness.”

The document recommends that in response to the “infodemic,” countries should “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to the WHO document, this can be done if governments “establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation.”

Such resources include “new tools and approaches for social listening … using new technologies such as artificial intelligence to listen to population concerns on social media.”

According to the document:

“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs [healthcare workers] in risk communications principles and encourage their application.”

Risk communications “should be tailored to the community of interest, focusing on and prioritizing vulnerable groups,” the WHO said.

“Tailored” communication was a hallmark of public health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For instance, in November 2021, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Social Science Research Council launched the Mercury Project, which aimed “to increase uptake of COVID-19 vaccines and other recommended public health measures by countering mis- and disinformation” — in part by studying “differential impacts across socio-demographic groups.”

Similarly, PRET states that it will “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

These “tools and approaches” could be deployed during “acute respiratory events,” according to the document, which recommends that governments:

“Develop and implement communication and behavior change strategies based on infodemic insights, and test them during acute respiratory events including seasonal influenza.

“This includes implementing infodemic management across sectors, and having a coordinated approach with other actors, including academia, civil society, and international agencies.”

This is not the first time the WHO has addressed the so-called “infodemic.”

A WHO review published Sept. 1, 2022, titled “Infodemics and health misinformation: a systematic review of reviews,” found that “infodemics and misinformation … often negatively impact people’s mental health and increase vaccine hesitancy, and can delay the provision of health care.”

In the review, the WHO concluded that “infodemics” can be addressed by “developing legal policies, creating and promoting awareness campaigns, improving health-related content in mass media and increasing people’s digital and health literacy.”

And a separate, undated WHO document advises the public on how we can “flatten the infodemic curve.”

WHO, Google announce collaboration targeting ‘medical misinformation’

The WHO’s PRET proposals coincided with a new multi-year collaboration agreement with Google for the provision of “credible health-related information to help billions of people around the world respond to emerging and future public health issues.”

The agreement was announced on May 23 by Dr. Karen DeSalvo, Google’s chief health officer, on the company’s blog. She wrote:

“Information is a critical determinant of health. Getting the right information, at the right time can lead to better health outcomes for all. We saw this firsthand with the COVID-19 pandemic when it was difficult for people worldwide to find useful information online.

“We worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) on a range of efforts to help people make informed decisions about their health — from an SOS alert to surfacing locally relevant content about COVID-19 to YouTube policies on medical misinformation.”

One way Google will collaborate with the WHO is through the creation of more “knowledge panels” that will prominently appear in search results for health-related questions on the platform.

“Each day people come to Google Search looking for trustworthy information on various health conditions and symptoms,” DeSalvo wrote. “To help them access trustworthy information our Knowledge Panels cite content from reliable sources covering hundreds of conditions from the common cold to anxiety.”

“Working closely with WHO, we’ll soon expand to cover more conditions such as COPD [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], hypertension, type 2 diabetes, Mpox, Ebola, depressive disorder, malaria and more,” she added.

Google will make these Knowledge Panels available in several languages, including English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.

DeSalvo’s May 23 post also addressed an ongoing collaboration between Google and the WHO, Open Health Stack (OHS), which “help[s] accelerate the digital transformation of health systems around the world” and “lower[s] the barrier to equitable healthcare.”

Google also awarded the WHO with more than $320 million “in donated Google Search advertising via ad grants” allowing the agency “to publish health topics beyond COVID-19, such as Mpox, mental health, flu, Ebola, and natural disasters.”

Google is slated to provide an additional $50 million in ad grants to the WHO this year.

According to Google, the ad grants to the WHO represent the company’s largest such donation to a single organization.

Separately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tweeted on May 22 about the agency’s own efforts at combating purported “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

The tweet contains a 35-second video, which claims “misinformation” travels “six times faster than the facts,” while promoting the FDA’s “Rumor Control” initiative.

A top priority of FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf, “Rumor Control” was launched in August 2022 and joins other agency initiatives to fight “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

“The growing spread of rumors, misinformation and disinformation about science, medicine, and the FDA, is putting patients and consumers at risk,” according to the FDA’s Rumor Control webpage. “We’re here to provide the facts.”

The initiative asks the public to do “three easy things” to “stop rumors from spreading”: “don’t believe the rumors,” “don’t pass them along” and “get health information from trusted sources like the FDA and our government partners.”

“Rumor Control” appears to have been inspired by an initiative developed by the Virality Project, “a coalition of research entities” from six institutions “focused on supporting real-time information exchange between the research community, public health officials, government agencies, civil society organizations, and social media platforms.”

Documents released as part of the “Twitter files” in March revealed that the Virality Project, based out of the Stanford Internet Observatory, also called for the creation of a disinformation board just one day before Biden announced plans to launch his government-run Disinformation Governance Board.

Similar to PRET’s recommendations to target “accurate” information that nevertheless contradicts establishment public health narratives, the Virality Project worked with Twitter and other social media platforms, recommending they “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”

These censorship efforts included at least one tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., chairman on leave of Children’s Health Defense.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

June 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

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