The State Department justified its funding of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an organization that provides blacklists of certain outlets for the purpose of demonetizing them.
In a letter sent in March, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) criticized the State Department for funding the GDI, and called for an investigation into the $100,000 grant the department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) awarded GDI in 2021. In a response sent last week, the department said it did not regret funding the GDI.
The letter to Rep. Issa, authored by the assistant secretary of the bureau of legislative affairs Naz Durakoglu, stated that reports that the “State Department funding may have been used to fund GDI’s work in the United States” are inaccurate.
The letter continued to state that Issa’s letter “raises several important points concerning free speech and the principles of democracy, both of which are fundamental to the Department’s representation of U.S. foreign policy and promotion of American ideals abroad,” Washington Examiner reported.
Durakoglu argued that the grant “focused on countering foreign disinformation overseas and, consistent with the GEC’s mission, no domestic-focused activities were included in the scope of work.”
“Funding under the award could not be used for any other purpose,” the letter added.
“America’s foreign adversaries and competitors have wielded information manipulation as a tool of statecraft for decades,” Durakoglu wrote. “The comparatively recent proliferation of global information and communications technology accentuates a contemporary national security risk. The Department stands by the work of the GEC and the crucial role it plays in helping to ensure that foreign disinformation operations do not undermine the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partners.”
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Rep. Issa said: “It is disappointing but not surprising that the Biden State Department hasn’t come close to offering a suitable explanation or corrective action for its role in the censorship of individual Americans and established conservative media. Make no mistake: Congress isn’t done holding State accountable.”
The GEC missed a deadline to hand over documents related to the GDI and other groups to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Congress is also considering whether or not to reauthorize the GEC in 2024. Last September, the State Department’s inspector general said that the GEC had failed to thwart foreign threats and failed to determine how foreign groups spent money provided by the US government.
The FBI has refused to provide records of its communication with Twitter, related to policing misinformation.
In December, as part of the Twitter Files, journalist Matt Taibbi published several emails between FBI officials and Twitter that showed that the FBI repeatedly contacted Twitter to flag alleged misinformation. The FBI’s National Election Command Post (NECP) and the Foreign Influence Task Force were in close contact with Twitter over election misinformation, according to the emails obtained by Taibbi.
In light of the Twitter Files revelations, watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all records of communication between the FBI and Twitter from January 2020 to November 2022.
The FBI refused to respond to the request, claiming it “will neither confirm nor deny the existence” of the records.
“The mere acknowledgment of the existence of FBI records on third-party individuals could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the FBI told Protect the Public’s Trust.
“The FBI’s response to these requests is nothing short of bizarre,” Michael Chamberlain, director of Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Washington Examiner. “They twisted the substance of the requests and then asserted the right to deny acknowledging if records even exist based upon their mangled interpretation, and even though they have already admitted that the records exist.”
Chamberlain added that the lack of transparency from the FBI increases “suspicion about what the agency’s officials may have been involved in.”
The watchdog plans to appeal the FBI’s decision, arguing there is “tremendous public interest in knowing how the FBI interacted with Twitter, particularly with respect to suppressing speech by American citizens.”
“There is no substantial privacy interest in the entirety of the requested records,” the watchdog wrote in the appeal.
Dan Hannan has written another piece reminding us how heroically outspoken he was during lockdown. He writes in the Sunday Telegraph: ‘A handful of columnists – and it really was a handful, you could count us on your fingers – had argued from the beginning that the restrictions were excessive. We were almost universally howled down as murderers who wanted to cull the population . . .’
I’m sure many of us will remain eternally grateful for Lord Hannan’s selfless courage. But rather than resting on his laurels over what he may or may not have written three years ago, might not the noble lord more usefully direct his talents towards addressing the much more pressing problems of the present?
Foremost among these problems, I would suggest, is the looming WHO Pandemic treaty and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). If implemented they would give the World Health Organisation unprecedented powers over sovereign states. These powers would include the right to mandate all manner of highly restrictive measures: lockdowns, masks, quarantines, border closures, travel restrictions, medication of individuals including vaccination and medical examinations.
For full details I recommend the excellent summary by Dr Elizabeth Evans of the UK Medical Freedom Alliance published by TCW under the headline ‘Fight this sinister power grab by the unelected, unaccountable WHO’. What becomes clear if you read the article and follow the links is that the threat posed by the WHO is very real. If its plans are implemented – as currently appears more likely than not – it will represent arguably the most egregious assault on human freedom in the history of the world.
Never before, after all, has an unelected, supranational body been given such power over the lives of pretty much every single person on the planet. The WHO won’t just be able to decide on freedom of movement (whether, for example, it is permissible to keep them under house arrest or in quarantine camps, as happened during lockdown) but even whether or not they live or die or spend the rest of their days as cripples as a result of a compulsory ‘vaccine’ programme.
So let’s read what that doughty freedom fighter Dan Hannan has to say on the subject, shall we? Here he is, further down his hero-of-the-lockdown article: ‘Even more incredibly, some leaders would suggest we set up an international ‘pandemic treaty’, potentially giving the World Health Organisation binding powers on such matters – almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists.’
Hmm. I’ve read that sentence a number of times and still I can’t quite make sense of what he is saying. Why is he trying to turn a real problem into a merely theoretical one? Surely, verifiably, unquestionably the case is that the World Health Organisation IS pressing ahead with its treaty, and that sovereign nations around the world will probably sign up to it. Yet instead of acknowledging this fact, Hannan has chosen to dress it up as something highly improbable – ‘incredibly’ – being mooted by certain, unidentified silly politicians or newspaper columnists. Then, as if to pull the rug from under the possibility that this nonsense should ever come to pass, he adds that curious, distancing phrase ‘almost as if they were trying to validate the conspiracy theorists’.
Well, yes, indeed, it would unarguably make ‘conspiracy theorists’ more credible because they have been warning of this threat for quite some time. But would their being proved right really be such a bad thing? In Hannan’s view, it appears, yes it would because – as he hints in a subsequent paragraph – he has a bit of an axe to grind on this score.
‘Two people I know have been pushed by all this into conspiracist paranoia. They went from asking (perfectly reasonably) why young people needed to be jabbed for a disease that posed no danger to them to doubting the efficacy of all vaccines. Then they started muttering about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab. Now they are parroting the Kremlin line on Ukraine.’
I’m not quite sure what the relevance of Ukraine is to lockdowns. But I think what Hannan is telling us from his lofty perch in the House of Lords is that there is a right way to think about things and a wrong way to think about things – and that he clearly knows which is which, whereas these paranoid conspiracists are so away with the fairies that their every argument can be dismissed.
But are they? Are they really? On the subject of vaccines, for example, there is a perfectly lucid and reasonable case to be made that they are not the medical miracle but a gigantic con trick which has done far more harm than good to the health of the public.
As for the dismissive line about Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab, this is plain dishonest. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the second-biggest funder of the World Health Organisation after the US. Klaus Schwab wrote and published a book in 2020 called Covid-19: The Great Reset, spelling out how the global pandemic was a beneficial crisis which political leaders groomed by his World Economic Forum could use to make a new world order in which we would own nothing and be happy. Using a dismissive word such as ‘muttering’ doesn’t magically vanish these men away into a paranoid fantasy world where they pose no threat to our real one. Rather, it suggests a writer who is using rhetorical tricksiness to lead his readers away from the truth.
On lockdown, he concludes: ‘It would be comforting to pin the responsibility on someone: autocratic politicians, cowardly bureaucrats, sensational broadcasters. But the horrible truth is that, as a country, we did this to ourselves; and, in all likelihood, we would do it again tomorrow.’
The deception here is worth of Iago. ‘Politicians’ pushed the lockdown and vaccine agenda not because they were ‘autocratic’ but because they were corrupt, spineless and under the thumb of supranational institutions such as the World Economic Forum and the WHO. Bureaucrats pushed it not because they are cowardly but because as Deep State functionaries that was precisely their job. Broadcasters and newspapers like the one Hannan writes for pushed it not out of sensationalism but because they were either bought and paid for – or bullied and cowed – by the government to pump out relentless Covid propaganda while suppressing inconvenient truths such as vaccine injury.
At no point in his piece does Hannan address the fact that the primary driver responsible for all those things he so laments about lockdown Britain (‘taped-off playgrounds’, ‘power-crazed coppers’, ‘listless moody teenagers’) was the military-grade, state-orchestrated propaganda campaign designed to brainwash the public into believing that a fairly routine flu bug was the worst thing since the Black Death. The public would never have overreacted in the way it did if it hadn’t been bullied, cajoled, bribed, blackmailed and tricked into doing so by the political class of which Lord Hannan is a card-carrying member.
UK counter-terrorism police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival in his home country from Belgrade, Serbia, on 17 May, subjecting him to an extended interrogation over his “political views” and his reporting.
Klarenberg has written extensively for The Cradle, exposing London’s many covertoperations in West Asia.
According to The Grayzone, six plainclothes police were waiting for him outside his plane, promptly moving him to a back room and informing him of his detention under Schedule Three, Section Four of the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act.
Klarenberg was questioned for over five hours about his journalistic work, including “his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
The counter-terrorism police seized his electronic devices and SD cards, took DNA swabs, fingerprinted him, and photographed him multiple times. He was threatened with arrest if he failed to comply.
Klarenberg’s most recent investigation for The Cradle exposed how UK government-affiliated contractors have been training Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces using US funding.
He made waves in recent months by exposing London’s use of Yemeni NGOs to covertly undermine the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa as well as Jordan’s use of UK intel techniques known as “digital media exploitation … used to monitor, manipulate, and disrupt dissent in the kingdom.”
Klarenberg has also ruffled feathers in London with his reporting for The Grayzone, exposing “major British and US intelligence intrigues,” including a report on how at least two of the hijackers who carried out the 11 September attacks in New York had been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation.
Another of his major exposés was a report revealing that journalist Paul Mason worked as a UK security state collaborator tasked with discrediting alternative media outlets, academics, and peace activists critical of NATO’s role in the Ukraine war.
Last year, The Cradle’s Arabic editor Radwan Mortada was sentenced in an irregular Lebanese military court hearing to one year and one month in prison for “the offense of insulting the military establishment.”
Moreover, one of our Turkish contributors, a former editor at Cum Hurriyet and a radio interview show personality, Ceyda Karan, has been eluding imprisonment for her journalism.
Another frequent correspondent, Hedwig Kuijpers, a Belgian national who often reports on contentious Kurdish issues in Iraq, Iran and Syria, has been missing for several months, sparking concerns about her safety.
Klarenberg’s detention sets a dangerous precedent for free speech in the UK, a country that since 2019 has kept Wikileaks founder Julian Assange locked up in a maximum security prison pending extradition to the US for reporting on the secret activities of western governments and their war crimes. US officials have even publicly encouraged his assassination.
… Klarenberg has been a regular contributor to Press TV, with one of his major exposes revealing how Britain used ambulances during the conflict in Syria to aid foreign-backed terrorists.
Among Klarenberg’s notable contributions are his pieces on the role of Western governments in the 2022 foreign-backed riots in Iran.
Protests erupted in September last year over the death of a young Iranian woman Mahsa Amini first in her native province of Kordestan and later in several cities, including the capital.
The foreign-backed violent riots claimed dozens of lives from both security forces and innocent people as the Western media and Persian-language news networks continued to induce riots in Iran. … Full article
… Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.
Because Klarenberg’s reporting on Mason relied heavily on leaked emails, Mason falsely accused him of “assisting a Russian state-backed hack-and-leak disinformation campaign.” Mason has also reported the leak of his emails to the British police.
Emma Briant, a self-styled disinformation expert who participated in Mason’s campaign to sabotage NATO critics, dispatched lawyers to demand Klarenberg remove all of his articles that mention her from the internet. The lawyer letters also threatened costly super injunctions to prevent further reporting, and challenged the “authenticity” of the emails’ content.
The cease-and-desist letters additionally leveled false and defamatory allegations against Klarenberg, including that he was personally involved in hacking her email and Twitter account.
Did the bogus and obviously malicious complaints by Paul Mason or Emma Briant prompt the UK police to detain and investigate Klarenberg?
Klarenberg’s reports contain neither falsehoods nor anything approaching “disinformation,” which is precisely why intelligence-linked figures like Mason are so frustrated by their existence. Despite Mason and Briant’s allegations, there is not even hard evidence that Russian hackers were the source of the leaks.
While reporting on leaked material, Klarenberg engaged in the same journalistic practice that the West’s most prominent legacy newspapers, from The New York Times to The Washington Post, depend on to break news themselves. In fact, Thomas Rid, a self-styled disinformation expert and professor of Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, has stated that journalists “should not shy away” from covering the leaks first reported by Klarenberg.
It therefore appears that British authorities did not detain Klarenberg for any legal breaches, but because he reported factual stories that exposed the national security state’s own violations of both domestic and international law, as well as the malign plots of its media lackeys. … Full article
Hillary knew. She knew her campaign paid for Russian disinformation (including the alleged pee tape accusations) to be washed through a report by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. She knew the information was false but could potentially allow her to win the election. Hillary lied to the FBI about all this, and lied to the American public. Such was her appetite.
The FBI knew. They knew none of the information in the Steele Report could be corroborated, and they knew most of it was false. They turned a blind eye, purposefully and with the intent to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election, to basic investigative and tradecraft rules to use the corrupt information to surveil the Trump campaign via the FISA court. When Trump won the election anyway, the FBI continued to use this information to assault the loyalty and viability of President Trump and ultimately tried to use the information via the Robert Mueller investigation to impeach or indict Trump.
Only one person went to jail for all this, a minor player named Kevin Clinesmith for provided false info to the FISA court. No changes are planned for the FBI. No charges are to be brought against Hillary Clinton. The Deep State came within an eyelash of bringing down an unwanted president as surely as they are believed to have done in Dallas ’63. Words were the weapon this time, not bullets.
These are the conclusions of the final Durham Report released last week. The report was written by former Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was chosen in 2019 to examine the FBI probe known as “Operation Crossfire Hurricane.” Durham provides the only comprehensive review of what came to be called Russiagate, and shows how close to the edge our democracy came to falling into the abyss at the hands of the Deep State. It all sounds dramatic, as those terms have been bandied about so often and in so many contexts they may have lost some of their meaning. But make no mistake about it — the FBI tried to shape the 2016 election and failing, tried to run Trump out of office. If you thought the “Hunter Biden Letter,” the one signed by dozens of intelligence professionals calling the Biden Diaries potential Russian disinformation was just wrong, you should find the conclusions of the Durham report a horror show.
There was nothing true in the Steele Report, for example, this key paragraph: “Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared.”
The FBI had no intelligence about Trump or others associated with the Trump campaign being in contact with Russian intelligence beyond Steele. Despite being unvetted and uncorroborated and coming from a single source with direct political ties to Trump’s opponent, the FBI used such accusations to justify a full-spectrum surveillance operation against the Trump campaign, the first known such operation in American history. The FBI omitted the fact from its FISA application that Carter Page was in fact not a Russian agent but a paid source for the CIA who had been vetted by the Agency as loyal and reliable. They just lied and even when the lie could not be ignored the FBI lied more times to keep the surveillance application alive before the FISA court.
Durham found investigators “ignored exculpatory evidence, put too much stock in information provided by Trump’s political opponents, and carried out surveillance without genuinely believing there was probable cause to do so.” “Throughout the duration of Crossfire Hurricane, facts and circumstances that were inconsistent with the premise that Trump and/or persons associated with the Trump campaign were involved in a collusive or conspiratorial relationship with the Russian government were ignored or simply assessed away,” Durham wrote. The FBI acted “without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power.”
It could not be more clear. The FBI knew what it was doing was wrong and did it anyway because the ends, defeating Trump, appeared to justify the means. No surprise, that has been the slogan behind every democratic election U.S. intelligence agencies have overthrown overseas, so why not follow the same logic when the tools of war came home to attempt to drive the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton.
We now know that almost all of the disinformation in the Steele Report came from one man, Igor Danchenko (whom the FBI had until 2011 investigated as a Russian spy.) Danchenko also fed disinfo to a Clinton supporter and registered foreign agent for Russia, Charles Dolan (who was known to but never interviewed by the FBI) to pass on the Steele to further obscure its origin. But according to the Durham report “The failure to identify the primary sub-source [Danchenko] early in the investigation’s pursuit of FISA authority prevented the FBI from properly examining the possibility that some or much of the non-open source information contained in Steele’s reporting was Russian disinformation (that wittingly or unwittingly was passed along to Steele), or that the reporting was otherwise not credible.”
Everyone knew. The Durham Report confirms on August 3, 2016, the Russiagate allegations were briefed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and FBI Director James Comey by CIA Director John Brennan at an Oval Office meeting. None of the men briefed, and none of the agencies involved, did anything to intercede in the FBI’s efforts alongside the Clinton Campaign to manufacture collusion between Trump and Russia. Indeed, everyone allowed the falsehoods to linger into the Mueller Report and when that document concluded publicly there was no collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, pivot the same pile of falsehoods to claim Trump somehow obstructed an investigation which actually exonerated him, concluding without indictment as it did.
As for the FBI, the Durham report brutally tells us “the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.” That they “displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness.” That the Bureau “disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination… there were clear opportunities to have avoided the mistakes and to have prevented the damage resulting from their embrace of seriously flawed information that they failed to analyze and assess properly.” And that “senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities.” That “important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient.” The Report concludes “although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time.” As for recommendations, the Report states “more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of “Protect[ing]the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.”
Without the help of the FBI Russiagate would have been nothing but a flimsy Clinton campaign scam. Thus the Durham Report offers one over-arching implied conclusion: Be skeptical of the FBI and watch accusations of collusion and foreign interference closely around the 2024 election. Treason is indeed a twisty path.
Let’s be clear about one thing: seditious conspiracy isn’t a real crime to anyone but the U.S. government.
To be convicted of seditious conspiracy, the charge levied against Stewart Rhodes who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for being the driving force behind the January 6 Capitol riots, one doesn’t have to engage in violence against the government, vandalize government property, or even trespass on property that the government has declared off-limits to the general public.
This is not about whether Rhodes deserves such a hefty sentence.
This is about the long-term ramifications of empowering the government to wage war on individuals whose political ideas and expression challenge the government’s power, reveal the government’s corruption, expose the government’s lies, and encourage the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.
This is about criminalizing political expression in thoughts, words and deeds.
This is about how the government has used the events of Jan. 6 in order to justify further power grabs and acquire more authoritarian emergency powers.
This was never about so-called threats to democracy.
In fact, the history of this nation is populated by individuals whose rhetoric was aimed at fomenting civil unrest and revolution.
Indeed, by the government’s own definition, America’s founders were seditious conspirators based on the heavily charged rhetoric they used to birth the nation.
Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, and John Adams would certainly have been charged for suggesting that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to protect their liberties and defend themselves against the government should it violate their rights.
Had America’s founders feared revolutionary words and ideas, there would have been no First Amendment, which protects the right to political expression, even if that expression is anti-government.
No matter what one’s political persuasion might be, every American has a First Amendment right to protest government programs or policies with which they might disagree.
The right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom.
Every individual has a right to speak truth to power—and foment change—using every nonviolent means available.
Unfortunately, the government is increasingly losing its tolerance for anyone whose political views could be perceived as critical or “anti-government.”
All of us are in danger.
In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”
The ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American with an opinion about the governmentor who knows someone with an opinion about the government an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.
Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes and truth-tellers.
For years now, the government has used all of the weapons in its vast arsenal—surveillance, threat assessments, fusion centers, pre-crime programs, hate crime laws, militarized police, lockdowns, martial law, etc.—to target potential enemies of the state based on their ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that might be deemed suspicious or dangerous.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
In other words, if you dare to subscribe to any views that are contrary to the government’s, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.
As The Interceptreported, the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have increasingly invested in corporate surveillance technologies that can mine constitutionally protected speech on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in order to identify potential extremists and predict who might engage in future acts of anti-government behavior.
And then there is the treatment being meted out to those such as Julian Assange, for example, who blow the whistle on government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
This is why the First Amendment is so critical. It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
Following the current trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, watched all the time, and rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
As promised, the White House hosted a virtual event followed by the issuance of a fact sheet and detailed strategic report last Thursday that described in some detail a sweeping plan that will be implemented to confront what it describes as surging antisemitism. I reported last week how the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, who participated in the ceremony, has articulated the Biden Administration’s somewhat hyperbolic view that “Antisemitism is not a niche issue…it is an existential threat to democracy.” She had also regretted that “America has never done something like a national plan to fight antisemitism.” It should be noted that Lipstadt’s brief as ambassador is to confront what she perceives to be antisemitism all around the world, though it is likely that her role will expand to include domestic authorities under whatever new arrangements emerge as the Biden plan is implemented.
The plan that was unveiled was developed by an interagency task force created by Joe Biden last December, which was headed by “Second Gentleman” Doug Emhoff, who is both Jewish and has the misfortune to be married to Kamala Harris. It reportedly incorporates contributions and insights from claimed discussions with no less than “more than 1,000 community leaders” including various Jewish religious denominations and also representing both Jewish and non-Jewish civic organizations in the United States. Prior to the virtual event and press release, President Biden promised that the plan would “include more than 200 measures that government agencies, social media platforms and elected officials can adopt to counter rising antisemitism.” The measures will reportedly include at least 100 “provisions” that will require congressional action.
That the plan will be considered a success by inter alia suppressing what once passed as free speech in the United States seems to have bothered none of the Jewish groups that applauded the development. Occasionally sensible liberal leaning J Street enthused how “In a period when the threats of antisemitism, far-right extremism and white nationalism are surging in the United States, it’s deeply encouraging to see the White House make this a top priority and adopt a nuanced, well-considered, comprehensive approach.”
J Street’s President Jeremy Ben-Ami, who describes George Soros as a “Jewish philanthropist,” misses the point that Israel, which will be a principal beneficiary from stomping down on the First Amendment as nearly any criticism of the Jewish state will become a “hate crime, is preeminently a country awash in “far-right extremism.” He slyly concludes that “The struggle against antisemitism and all forms of bigotry is far too important to become a mere proxy for debates over Israel,” making the entire issue vanish in typical J Street fashion. Nor does that particular irony appear to have bothered any Congressmen or anyone in the mainstream media, such is the power of the Jewish establishment over both the press and the two joined-at-the-hip on this issue political parties that alternately govern us.
Note how the Plan, relying on wildly exaggerated statistics relating to what are often contrived or alleged antisemitic incidents, not by coincidence, seeks to protect Jews from a malignant force which is presumed to be the “white supremacists” that Biden and his cohorts have been otherwise targeting and also labeling as “terrorists.” That accomplishes two things politically: it gets the powerful Jewish/Israel Lobby and their controlled media fully on board to reelect Biden and it also identifies the enemy as likely to be conservative Republicans. In so doing, you take highly visible steps to protect the Jews (whether or not they actually need protection) and you create a credible enemy that everyone can identify and attack.
So what does the White House’s May 25thpress release entitled “Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Administration Releases First-Ever US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism” tell us about what will be put in place to protect America’s wealthiest and already most powerful ethno-religious group? A sub-heading and the lead paragraphs summarize it this way: “[The] Administration announces over 100 new actions and over 100 calls to action to combat antisemitism, including new actions to counter antisemitism on college campuses and online; whole-of-society strategy includes new stakeholder commitments.
“Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is releasing the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. This strategy includes over 100 new actions the Administration will take to raise awareness of antisemitism and its threat to American democracy, protect Jewish communities, reverse the normalization of antisemitism, and build cross-community solidarity.
“While antisemitic incidents most directly and intensely affect the Jewish community, antisemitism threatens all of us. Antisemitic conspiracy theories fuel other forms of hatred, discrimination, and bias—including discrimination against other religious minorities, racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQI+ hate. Antisemitism seeks to divide Americans from one another, erodes trust in government and nongovernmental institutions, and undermines our democracy.”
The Fact Sheet and the full report explain in frightening detail how Biden is dedicating significant financial and human resources to essentially pander to Jews and Israel over their concerns that they are being perceived badly, something that might be attributed to their own behavior. Admittedly, some concerns were expressed that Israel would be immune from criticism in spite of the fact that it is widely recognized as an apartheid state that commits crimes against humanity and even war crimes on a nearly daily basis. Most recently this has included a Flag Day march in East Jerusalem in which settlers chanted “Death to Arabs.” The Times of Israelsubsequently printed an article calling for the extermination of the Palestinians. Willfully blind to that reality, the fact sheet has only this to say: “In addition, the strategy reaffirms the United States’ unshakable commitment to the State of Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, and its security—and makes clear that when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism.” In other words, because Israel is the self-designated Jewish state criticism of it will be ipso facto regarded as a hate crime, antisemitism.
I will not bore the reader by reviewing most of the 60 page long “Strategy” report’s more intrusive features, but it is worth observing that it commits itself to have “The US government…harness our collective resources to increase education about antisemitism and its threat to democracy, the Holocaust, and Jewish contributions to American society.” “Collective resources” of course includes taxpayer money, which will be flowing in the billions to Jewish businesses and facilities for “protection,” as is already happening with Department of Homeland Security discretionary grants, more than 90% of which support increased security for Jews and their organizations.
The “Strategy’s” four “Pillars” as elaborated in both the fact sheet and the full text are:
Pillar 1: Increase awareness and understanding of antisemitism, including its threat to America, and broaden appreciation of Jewish American heritage
Pillar 2: Improve safety and security for Jewish communities
Pillar 3: Reverse the normalization of antisemitism and counter antisemitic discrimination
Pillar 4: Build cross-community solidarity and collective action to counter hate
One should expect major initiatives in requiring educational courses in holocaust and other Jewish issues, compulsory training and re-education sessions both in government and the corporate world on the threat posed by antisemitism, and creating law enforcement mechanisms backed by new legislation that will provide empowerment to investigate and criminalize various antisemitic acts as “hate crimes.” One “Strategic Goal” that might be of particular interest to readers of this article might be “Tackling Antisemitism Online,” which includes “Ensure terms of service and community standards explicitly cover antisemitism. The Administration commends platforms with terms of service and community standards that establish ‘zero-tolerance’ for hate speech, including antisemitism. All online platforms are encouraged to adopt zero-tolerance terms of service and community standards” and “to permanently ban repeat offenders, both personal accounts and extremist websites.” It calls for “algorithms” to be employed on social media sites to block any and all antisemitic content. Somewhat bizarrely, it also calls for “Establish[ing] relationships with Jewish community organizations to share best practices related to reporting hate speech and utilizing platforms to lift up Jewish stories.”
So, in effect, the US government’s national security agencies would be answering to and propagandizing for “Jewish community organizations,” which one might think to be inappropriate. But the fact sheet and report itself do not mention what legislation will be in the works to penalize those who choose to be non-cooperative, though the model would likely be the laws that have been passed in 26 states and counting to punish or deny benefits to those who either support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) or are in favor of any nonviolent action directed against Israel. Note particularly that “college campuses” are explicitly mentioned as targets by the White House fact sheet since BDS, seen as a major threat by the Israeli government and by groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), is increasingly popular among students at a number of universities.
And speaking of BDS, where even Biden has perhaps hesitated to go too deep too directly, there is always a boneheaded congressmen who is ready to take up the pander to Israel mission. Senator Marco Rubio, who has never been bothered by having to think anything through, has introduced a bill that would prevent US companies and individuals from participating in boycotts of countries “friendly to the US.” Israel is not named in the legislation, but the Congressmen involved have freely admitted that it is directed particularly against BDS. Rubio claims that “The BDS movement is the single most destructive campaign of economic warfare against the Jewish state of Israel. This bill, which previously passed the Senate, would mark an important step toward bringing an end to the movement’s discriminatory efforts.” The bill’s cosponsor Republican Senator Bill Hagerty added that it would “Provide state and local governments [with] the tools they need to counter ‘the discriminatory and hate-inspired conduct of the anti-Semitic BDS movement aimed against Israel our closest ally in the Middle East.’”
Make no mistake, the “Strategy” and all that will develop from it is misguided, overkill, and the death of freedom to speak, write and associate. It is a consequence of the immense Jewish power over the United States government and is in no way justified by developments. One notes how conservative critics of the Biden Administration Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson have recently been called antisemites without any real evidence demonstrating that to be the case. Joe Biden’s plan of action will surely similarly open the door to what will quickly become an open season on alleged antisemites. It will subsequently be easy for politicians and the media to label critics of domestic issues like the state of the Mexican border or international issues like the pointless and highly dangerous war against Russia as “haters” and by a tortuous extension antisemites. Appropriate punishment will follow.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
President Maia Sandu announced during a press briefing that a new tax-payer-funded institution intended to supervise and limit press freedom in Moldova would be established. Amid the economic meltdown in the country, Sandu is trying to control the media narrative while also attacking Russia.
“The best antidote against the information war is the development of citizens’ resistance to the real facts. Today I am announcing the legislative initiative to create an institution to combat propaganda and defend citizens from manipulation. I will propose to the Parliament the creation of the National Center for Information Defense and Combating Propaganda, called Patriot. The institution will have two basic responsibilities: to transmit truthful information to citizens and to identify, evaluate and combat disinformation,” Sandu said on May 29.
According to the president, the legislation initiative will be sent to the Parliament by the end of June.
“I know that this announcement will stir the hornet’s nest working against the Republic of Moldova. They will invoke the right to freedom of expression. But this right cannot be a screen for lying and intoxication. I have confidence in the Republic of Moldova, I am sure that we have a chance to build a European state, I want the citizens to have confidence in the Republic of Moldova,” Sandu added.
Her ambition to limit Russian-friendly media to impose a Western narrative monopoly in a dictatorial manner comes as the EU steps up its support for Moldova. 46 EU and European leaders will be in Chisinau on June 1 to offer financial and political solidarity with Moldova and show strength against Russia.
French President Emmanuel Macron initially envisaged the European Political Community (EPC) as a platform for unity across the wider European front. The EPC will meet for the second time in Chisinau, only eight months after its inaugural meeting. The meeting brings together the leaders of the 27 EU member states and Ukraine, Turkey, the UK, and other countries in the Balkans, but not Russia or Belarus.
Security and energy supplies, which have been part-funded by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), are expected to be at the top of the agenda. The EBRD invested €525 million in Moldova in 2022, accounting for 4% of its GDP. The investment comes as Moldova struggles with high inflation and the economic repercussions of the war in neighbouring Ukraine, in addition to problems in Transnistria, a breakaway region and post-Soviet conflict zone with a majority Slavic (Russian-Ukrainian) population.
To assist Sandu’s ambition to sever Russian-Moldovan ties, the EU will provide financial muscle with the help of the EBRD and an €87 million EU contribution to so-called non-military logistical aid. This aid will include a mission in Chisinau, which will staff up to 50 officials. Opening on May 30, the office aims to build Moldova’s resilience against disinformation and cyber-attacks, with support at strategic and technical levels.
Sandu is expected to use the EPC summit to push for quicker EU access, which she claims is the only guarantee against becoming Russia’s next target, even though no such ambitions exist.
“We do believe that Russia will continue to be a big source of instability for the years to come and we need to protect ourselves,” said Sandu, on the sidelines of a Council of Europe summit in Iceland earlier in May. “We do believe that this [EU membership] is a realistic project for us and we are looking forward to see this happening as soon as possible.”
Although accession could take years to achieve, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia won official candidate status to join the EU. For this reason, Sandu is taking advantage of heightened Russophobia in the West to project it in Moldova, which has a high level of Russophilia. However, this path of serving Western interests to oppose Russia is significantly affecting the economy.
In May, Moldovan Prime Minister Dorin Recean said that before the Ukraine war, his country was 100% dependent on Russia for its gas, but “Today Moldova can exist with absolutely no natural gas or electricity from Russia.”
Moldova is currently struggling to deal with the spillover effects of the war in Ukraine, which has significantly impacted households, the economy, and public finances. The war also oversees a considerable drop in Moldova’s GDP due to the disruptions in trade, remittances, and the energy crisis. Therefore, ordinary Moldovans suffer despite Recean’s boasting of cutting Russian gas.
As Valeriu Ostalep, former diplomat and ex-Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration for Moldova, said: “Sandu and her Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) are involved completely in the Western geopolitics of the region; they just copy and paste the West’s rhetoric. It would not be a problem (to take) a position like that, but Sandu and PAS have lost the connection to the real problems of Moldova and the population. They are concentrated exclusively on the ‘fight against Russia’.”
“So we have total support by the West for Sandu and PAS and a complete disaster in the realities on the ground in Moldova, including the growing disdain of the population against Sandu and PAS,” he added.
By establishing Patriot, Sandu attempts to control the media narrative and criticism against her government by inadvertently targeting Russophile media. In fact, for Sandu’s supposed defence of liberalism and universalism, it is proven beyond doubt that these are not values that she defends but only buzzwords used to secure funding and support from the West.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Polish President Andrzej Duda from the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS) party just signed into a law a bill mandating the creation of a commission for investing alleged “Russian influence” in the country from 2007-2022 according to Reuters. Associated Press added that this newly formed body will have “powers to ban people from public positions and to reverse administrative and business decisions”, which the “Civic Platform” (PO) opposition believes will be used against them.
Former Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk hopes to return to office during this fall’s elections, but he and leading figures in his erstwhile government could potentially be barred from doing so if they’re implicated in an alleged “Russian influence” plot by this commission. Considering that PiS only narrowly won re-election in summer 2020 by just around 2%, it’s possible that they might exploit this latest law to carry out a witch hunt against PO in order to ensure that they don’t lose power.
These moves only ever had the chance of appealing to PiS’ conservative-nationalist base, however, and not PO’s liberal–globalist one. Both parties are anti-Russian, but the former is much more so when compared to the latter, whose embrace of Western socio-cultural causes like abortion and LGBT+ takes precedence over their followers’ hatred of Russia. Moreover, PO is considered to be a German proxy whose return to power could resubordinate their country to its western neighbor.
Their pollsters presumably only just realized that these policies and their recent stunts haven’t succeeded in giving PiS a comfortable edge over PO, but there isn’t enough time left to try changing the socio-cultural views of the latter’s base, which has always been a long shot anyhow. Out of desperation to remain in power, the ruling party therefore decided to devise the pretext for possibly banning the opposition, including its leader Tusk.
The only possible way of deflecting Western criticism from this is to claim that it’s directed against Russia, but even that might not be sufficient since PO is much more popular among Poland’s partners than PiS is and their media are already skeptical of the official reason behind this move. Had the ruling party realized long ago that they might have to resort to this form of election meddling to win, then they could have cooked up a more plausible reason for investigating and possibly banning Tusk if need be.
Implying that the period of comparatively better Russian-Polish relations under his tenure was the result of a conspiratorial Kremlin influence campaign ignores the political reality of practically every EU country following Germany’s lead to improve ties with Moscow around that time. If anything, Tusk was either going along with the latest trend since he and his team calculated that it was in their country’s best interests to do so or they were operating under some degree of German influence.
Whichever of these two explanations was the case, neither of them extends any credence to PiS’ innuendo that “Russian influence” was responsible for the renaissance in bilateral relations back then. The ruling party knows that declaring an investigation into German influence would immediately prompt unprecedented condemnation from the EU’s de facto leader and likely result in it leveraging all agents of influence across the continent to do their utmost to ensure that PiS loses this fall’s elections.
Even if they win, they’d probably then be shunned by the entire bloc and possibly even sanctioned on whatever pretext Berlin concocts since it would regard PiS as an adversarial political force that threatens the EU’s unity at its most decisive moment since conception. Aware of how strategically disadvantageous it could be to directly challenge Germany for leadership of Central & Eastern European amidst theirheatedrivalry over this region, PiS decided to persecute PO on a ridiculous anti-Russian basis instead.
It’s too early to tell whether the “Russian influence commission” will ban Tusk and his allies from politics, but it’s difficult to imagine any other practical reason why the ruling party created this body, let alone at this particular time. At the very least, PiS’ investigation into PO appears aimed at manipulating on-the-fence voters’ perceptions of the opposition. This spectacle risks backfiring, however, if undecided voters turn against PiS to protest their tactics and/or the EU doesn’t recognize the election if Tusk is banned.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) has announced that the incidence of atrial fibrillation has increased by 50 per cent over the last decade. Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a condition which causes an irregular and often rapid heart rate. It can lead to stroke and heart failure. The BHF did not release any supporting figures by year which might point to a potential cause. Here Dr John Campbell describes both the huge rise in AF and the lack of detailed data as ‘astonishing’.
Here in New Zealand heart disease is at record levels, but politicians of all parties are repeating again and again that there are no excess deaths. As if repeating a lie will make it come true. However the official tally of OECD statistics shows that in 2023 New Zealand deaths are running at an astonishing 18.2 per cent above the long-term average – the second-highest rate among 31 OECD nations.
This doesn’t appear to matter one whit to our politicians, who remain confident they are the one source of truth, fully in control of mainstream media, backed by the medical establishment, able to censor social media, protected from the courts by parliamentary privilege and not required to answer any questions.
It probably hasn’t escaped your notice that all these are recognised characteristics of cult leaders who systematically manipulate their followers and seek to exercise total control. To say that cults do not end well would be an understatement. Once your followers are sufficiently prepped to ignore fact, any crooked and perverted manipulation becomes a possibility.
Once indoctrinated, it is difficult to persuade cult followers they have been duped. Leaders ensure that every event that runs counter to their ideology is neatly fitted into their world view whether based on fact or not. It becomes especially damaging when the force of law is used to ensure compliance and eliminate redress.
You can hardly avoid news of sudden-onset illness or unexpected deaths in the daily newspapers or among friends, but there is always an innocuous-sounding cause on offer. If considered rationally, the unprecedented number of unusual deaths would render these excuses implausible. However, cults don’t do rational.
This brings us to a rather sad realisation: with all the elected political parties complicit in Covid policy, it is almost ludicrous to believe that the coming election will change anything. Prepandemic, our current situation was almost inconceivable, but quietly disaster has been creeping up on us.
Published in 2020, an article in Harvard University Health Publishing gives us a hint. Senior Editor Robert Shmerling argues that it is not possible or even practical as a medical practitioner to be guided by ‘do no harm’ as the Hippocratic oath suggests, instead saying: ‘You can’t tell ahead of time whether a test or treatment will “do no harm”.’ In other words, it has become widely accepted in medical practice that adverse events are inevitable and unpredictable. This is an argument which seeks to justify the irresponsible push for risky and dangerous biotech medicine and experimentation at any cost.
So what will change minds? When you look at Ponzi schemes, dictators and cults, the answer is always the same. They end when total disaster strikes. Just how high will excess deaths have to rise before the powers that be accept that a giant mistake has been made?
Inside the Covid cult there are a few cracks appearing in the ‘safe and effective’ narrative. It has quietly become acceptable for doctors to advise their patients privately that they might be vaccine-injured, for pathologists to advise the children of friends that they should avoid Covid vaccination, for vaccinologists to say they won’t be getting any more boosters. These are small steps which indicate a direction of change and that those at the health front line know something has gone radically wrong.
However, the political and media endorsement of biotechnology remains near-total. Given the weight of Covid science publishing, there is no justification for this.
The suggestion that New Zealand’s pandemic policy has been world-beating is a hollow lie, pandering to notions of national pride and allegiance. Like the medicos who think it is impossible to ‘do no harm’, politicians are denying the obvious. By doing so they are tacitly endorsing inevitable deaths in the course of policy. This is a militaristic, self-obsessed and flawed way to think – glorious sacrifice, ‘Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die’.
Pandemic policy has stolen our bodily autonomy, our right of medical choice. It has overruled nature’s design of immunity and health. It has debased truth, substituting government pronouncement. It has seized control of children from families. It has inserted propaganda into education. It has rendered employees subservient. It has cancelled dialogue.
In short, it has taken the world in which we thought we lived and turned it upside down. It is no good thinking this is a battle between right and left. That too is a story to keep everyone distracted from the real issues. It is a question of what kind of fundamental individual rights can we retain? Rights that we previously took for granted.
By framing the world as vaccinated vs unvaccinated, political power backed by pharmaceutical money has redrawn ideological boundaries along the lines of novel biotechnologies. This is a giant act of deception.
When I was growing up, we gave thanks for the harvest. The modern age has joined in the cult of biotechnology which seems to offer supremacy over nature, but it hasn’t worked. To succeed, to know, to enjoy, you have to work with nature.
I have just finished reading The History of the World in 100 Plants by Simon Barnes. Barnes concludes that we are descended from the biodiversity and bioabundance of plants: ‘Look at this planet and its uncountable plants. We owe them everything.’ We depend entirely on the natural world around us, yet biotechnology is seeking to overthrow this mutual interdependency and substitute an ephemeral figment of man’s imagination and pride – an impossible dream and a hideous nightmare that puts our continued existence at risk.
Voting for today’s crop of politicians is a forlorn hope. It is a blank cheque for continued biotechnology experimentation on ourselves. This is not a time to give up our rights, and hand them to the same politicians who have already laughed at medical choice and mocked those suffering serious adverse events. They don’t deserve our vote. Under their leadership it could all begin again.
A surprise popped up on my Twitter feed last week – the launch of BBC Verify, as announced by BBC journalist Marianna Spring. Apparently, the state broadcaster is now going to verify what is fact and what is fake news. Better late than never, I suppose, given the BBC’s relentless promotion of pro-lockdown and pro-vaccine misinformation during the Pandemic. However, as the presentation went on it revealed a somewhat different agenda – less of the fact-checking and more of the “searching for conspiracy theories from the far-right”. This was in support of the noble goal of protecting the British people from outbreaks of civil disorder supposedly linked to ‘conspiracy theories’, like the Jan 6th brouhaha. And Spring herself is going to get her hands dirty, at least as much as can be done using such tools as Google Maps and Facebook, along with 60 other BBC journalists. (How much is this costing?)
There was something very familiar about Ms. Spring for U.S. audiences. We had a ‘disinformation tsar’ just like her a year ago in the form of Nina Jankowicz.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) decided last year that it had fulfilled its primary mission of securing our borders by throwing them wide open, and instead decided to take on real issues such as rooting out disinformation to protect the homeland. In April 2022, DHS Top Man, Alejandro Majorkas, announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) and the hiring of disinformation ‘expert’ Nina Jankowicz to run it.
Ms. Jankowicz was not exactly well qualified for the job of rooting out fake news. She agreed with the 51 former Intelligence officials who proclaimed the laptop owned by Hunter Biden was Russian disinformation, when in fact the officials’ statement turned out to be disinformation. Ditto the Steele dossier procured by the Hilary campaign to trash Trump in the 2016 Presidential race. She believed this dodgy dossier was true even after reporting in 2017 showed it was not, and after 2019 when the Mueller Report confirmed this beyond doubt. In an unfortunate Tik Tok video, Jankowicz channeled Mary Poppins with an updated version of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ which referenced Democrat Party talking points on Ukraine and Covid. None of this is surprising as Jankowicz’s professional career up until that point had been spent in traditional Democrat Party training grounds such as the National Democratic Institute.
The brief of the DGB (one letter different from the KGB as the Wall Street Journalpointed out) was remarkably similar to that of BBC Verify, although it was based in a state agency as opposed to the state broadcaster. It intended to put a government imprimatur on what was fact and what was disinformation. To most Americans outside of Washington DC this is anathema. Americans believe the arbiter of truth is the individual, not the state, and that belief is enshrined in our Constitution as well as our laws.
Within three weeks of being born, the Disinformation Board was dead. The battle was not won on philosophical or constitutional grounds, but because of the ridicule inspired by Jankowicz’s antics. She came across as a less sympathetic version of Elizabeth Warren, if such a thing is possible, with the icing on the cake being the Mary Poppins video. Although in the minority in both the House and the Senate, Republicans killed the Board by mostly playing or referring to the video.
But a word of warning to those thinking that laughing at Spring and the rest of the BBC Verifiers will bring about another easy victory for free speech. The DHS may have ‘paused’ the Board and got rid of Ms. Jankowicz in May 2022, but the need to fight against certain points of view under the guise of protecting the American people from ‘far-right’ extremism is still being pursued only in more devious ways.
Last week, for example, the Media Research Center published some interesting reporting on the DHS. The DHS has changed the focus of the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention Grant Program (TVTP) from real terrorism to the political Right. In the last two years, it has provided $40 Million in funding for 80 projects by various public institutions and private organisations that seem to be operating under the assumption that ‘far-right’ includes 50% of the American population, and that it is directly tied to white supremacy. One particularly disgraceful chart, taken from material developed by one of the grantees – the University of Dayton – shows the Republican Party, Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, Prager U and Quillette, among other perfectly respectable organisations, linked directly to Nazi-supporting fringe organisations.
Given that the organisations at the top of this pyramid supposedly pose the biggest threat to the homeland since Al-Qaeda, it’s remarkable that no-one seems to have more than a hazy idea of who they are. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center has acknowledged that the number of these supposedly dangerous, far-right organisations is down and identifies the threat as follows: “as organisational loyalty has dwindled and the internet has become white nationalism’s organising principle, however, the ideology is best understood as a loose coalition of social networks orbiting online propaganda hubs and forums.” Of course, such vagueness is ideal for the anti-disinfo grant applications – the vaguer things are, the easier it is to conjure up far-right conspiracies. No need to bother with real terrorists coming through our open borders when shadowy people linked to right-of-centre media companies and free speech organisations represent the real threat.
This is BBC Verify’s view as well, if their launch video is anything to go by. Spring defines their journalistic approach as setting up fake accounts on social media, aka ‘trolls’, to monitor sinister stuff going on in chat rooms, FB groups, and no doubt Twitter, now Elon Musk has gone over to the dark side with his support for free speech, a tool of white supremacy. Spring is promising a podcast called ‘Marianna in Conspiracyland’ inspired by Alice In Wonderland (she has to go down various alt-media rabbit holes to chase the conspiracy theorists).
The predilection of these two young women an ocean apart for using children’s literature to articulate their concerns about disinformation is not a coincidence. Our real problems in both the U.S. and the U.K. are largely the responsibility of our dysfunctional governments – porous borders, high inflation, rampant crime, Net Zero, the blowback from the disastrous lockdown policy. The narrative that the real threat to our prosperity and well-being is lurking in dark corners of the Internet is essentially a fairy story.
NATO forces attacked a group of demonstrators in the majority-Serb town of Zvecan in Kosovo, RT Balkan reported on Monday. Stun grenades and tear gas were deployed, and around 50 people were injured.
Serb demonstrators staged a sit-down protest outside municipal buildings in Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic on Monday morning, preventing ethnic Albanian officials from taking office after elections boycotted by the Serb population as illegitimate.
Kosovo police officers arrived on the scene in Zvecan, backed up by members of NATO’s Kosovo Force (KFOR). The heavily-armored NATO troops surrounded the demonstrators, who refused to disperse, RT Balkan’s journalist on the scene reported.
KFOR then threw stun grenades and tear gas into the crowd, provoking a riot. The Serb demonstrators pelted rocks at the NATO troops, and received baton strikes and rubber bullets in return. Fifty people went to a hospital in nearby Mitrovica, and two were admitted to the emergency room.
25 KFOR soldiers were injured in the melee, Italy’s ANSA news agency said. 11 of those reportedly hurt were Italians.
The protesters broke up shortly after the clashes, vowing to return and continue their demonstration on Tuesday.
The latest flareup in tensions began when local mayors in four majority Serb towns in northern Kosovo resigned last year after authorities in Pristina announced plans to force residents to switch their Serbian identity documents for Kosovo-issued ones. The Serb population of these four towns boycotted elections in April in which four ethnic Albanian mayors won with a turnout of less than 4%.
Nevertheless, the government in Pristina treated the votes as legitimate and the mayors were installed on Friday amid fierce opposition from the Serbs, who view the debacle as a naked power grab aimed at driving them from the breakaway province.
Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 with the support of the US and many of its NATO allies. Kosovo was historically a province of Serbia, and Belgrade – along with many world governments – does not recognize Kosovo as an independent state.
While NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and a number of Kosovo’s Western backers have urged Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leader, Albin Kurti, to de-escalate the situation in the north of the province, he has apparently not heeded their warnings. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Sunday that Kurti “longs and dreams of being a [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky.”
Due to the clashes, Serbia placed its army on high alert, moving some units closer to the region’s border. Defense Minister Milos Vucevic said that “it is clear that terror against the Serb community in Kosovo is happening.”
UNESCO says it is seriously concerned about the increase in “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories”. And they plan to put an end to it through a network of informants.
“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous,” the UN agency warned. “Often they ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with dire consequences. This has to stop.”
Unesco’s director-general warned that “conspiracy theories” could cause damage to people as well as to their health. “They reinforce misconceptions about the pandemic, reinforcing stereotypes that can fuel violence and violent, extremist ideologies,” said Audrey Azoulay.
The UN agency has launched a campaign to help people identify, debunk and report “conspiracy theories” to prevent them from spreading further.
This campaign is being carried out in collaboration with the European Commission, Twitter and the World Jewish Congress. The UN has created a toolkit to “debunk” such theories and smear anyone who dares to claim that governments are not fair and transparent.
The UN also warned that George Soros, the Rothschilds and Israel should not be linked to “alleged conspiracies”.
World events “are not secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful players with malicious intent,” the UN agency maintained.
And if anyone therefore comes across someone who believes that the world elite is plotting to consolidate power or direct events, then that person needs to take action. According to the UN agency, when meeting a “conspiracy theorist”, under no circumstances should one enter into a discussion. … continue
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