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Canada passes online censorship bill

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 7, 2023

‘s Senate has passed Bill C-11 (Online Streaming Act), which critics refer to as “the internet censorship bill,” along with several amendments.

The bill passed in the third reading with 43 votes in favor and 15 against, which means it is now inching ever closer to becoming law since in the next step it goes back to the House of Commons, which will consider the amendments.

The government proposed the bill as a way to amend the Broadcasting Act by modifying Canada’s broadcasting policy, and giving the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) new powers as a regulator.

Opponents of the bill, including Conservative politicians and advocacy groups, however, see it as a way to increase the government’s ability to censor online speech it dislikes.

The effort to bring this legislation to life in Canada has quite a story behind it: initially, the Online Streaming Act, then known as Bill C-10, passed in the House of Commons in June 2021 but failed in the Senate.

It made a comeback as Bill C-11 in February 2022, got cleared by the House in June, and finally last week made it through the Senate.

Reacting to the latest vote on the bill, Conservative Senator Denis Batters took to  to slam both the legislative institution – calling it (Prime Minister) ‘s “fake ‘independent’ Senate,” while referring to the bill itself as “awful.”

Supporters believe that once it becomes law, the bill will be beneficial for legacy media competing with digital outlets, and improve the “discoverability of Canadian content” on major international platforms.

Opponents, however, think that the CRTC will gain broad new powers without proper oversight by either the government or parliament.

Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms founder and president John Carpay says that the goal of the bill, on the face of it, is not the issue, since it is supposed to give the CRTC authority over companies like Netflix, Disney, and similar giants.

However, that authority will not end there, Carpay said, trotting out the same statement that has been made for months.

“Rather, the OSA (Online Streaming Act) will empower the CRTC to assume jurisdiction via regulation over any ‘program’ (audio or audiovisual online content) that is ‘monetizable’ because it ‘directly or indirectly’ generates revenues” Carpay added.

And that, according to him, includes private citizens.

“In the long run, the CRTC could end up regulating much of the content posted on major social media, even where the content is generated or uploaded by religious, political, and charitable nonprofits,” Carpay commented.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine purges libraries of Russian-language books – official

RT | February 7, 2023

Ukraine has removed millions of copies of Russian-language books from its public libraries, Yevgeniya Kravchuk, a senior member of the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, said on Monday.

She stated that the Culture Ministry had provided recommendations on what titles should be taken off the shelves.

This comes amid an initiative declared by the Ukrainian government to “overcome the consequences of Russification,” which in practice means purging schools of certain literature, renaming streets, and dismantling monuments to Russian historical figures.

According to Kravchuk, the deputy chair of the Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy, 19 million copies of books had been removed as of November, including 11 million in Russian.

“Some Ukrainian-language books from the Soviet times are being removed as well,” Kravchuk said. The MP noted that there was not enough literature available in the Ukrainian language.

“The ratio of books in the Russian and Ukrainian languages in our libraries is very disheartening. We are talking about the need to update the stocks more quickly and procure books in the Ukrainian language.”

Ukraine has a sizable Russian-speaking minority, and many Ukrainian speakers are fluent in Russian as well.

In June, the Ukrainian Education Ministry proposed removing more than 40 books by Russian and Soviet authors from the curriculum. The list included the works of such renowned classical writers as Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Alexander Pushkin, as well as Boris Pasternak and Mikhail Sholokhov, both of whom won the Nobel Prize for literature. Ukrainian Culture Minister Aleksander Tkachenko urged the world in December to “boycott” Russian culture, arguing that Moscow has been using it for propaganda.

Since 2014, Kiev has adopted several laws aimed at restricting the use of the Russian language in the public sphere. Moscow, meanwhile, has described these moves as discriminatory. Last year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov condemned “Kiev’s policy of aggressive de-Russification and forced assimilation.”

Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine nearly a year ago, citing the need to protect the people of Donbass, a predominately Russian-speaking region, and Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk 2014-2015 peace accords.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Cochrane’s early and deliberate interference in the publication of efficacy of masking review results

Yet again, The Science follows politics.

There is zero evidence that this does anything
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | February 6, 2023

The Cochrane mask review I wrote about last week has hit Team Mask very hard, in fact much harder than I thought it would. They’ve been frantically coping for days now – combing through the fine print, seizing upon every moment of expressed uncertainty or caution in the paper to claim that population-wide masking might still be justified, somehow, because reasons.

The dim and eternally concerned Twitter epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo (who would be a disgrace to her field, if the field of public health weren’t already a disgrace) posted a hilarious nineteen-tweet thread that gathers all the typical excuses and cries to the heavens for more studies, because the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Intriguingly, as others have noted, Nuzzo used to think totally differently about the utility of masking. In 2006, our epidemiological luminary co-authored a paper on Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza, which flatly admits that “the ordinary surgical mask does little to prevent inhalation of small droplets” and that no data support using N95 or FFP2 respirators outside of healthcare settings. Like all pandemic authorities, Nuzzo had sensible ideas right up until the moment her ideas became important.

Tom Jefferson, the lead author of the Cochrane review, has added to the pain and embarrassment of Team Mask by granting this interview to Maryanne Demasi, in which he reiterates bluntly that “there’s no evidence that masks are effective during a pandemic,” no evidence that respirators do anything even in healthcare settings, blames misguided mask mandates on bad governmental advisers, and criticises the masking “craziness” that took root in 2020, in which “strident campaigners” – “activists, not scientists” – like “academics and politicians started jumping up and down about masks.” He also makes an observation that is often aired at the plague chronicle, namely that the failure of masks to do very much indicates that virus transmission itself is poorly understood, and far more complicated than we tend to assume. You should read the whole thing for yourself.

Here, I want to highlight one crucial point. Jefferson explains that he and his co-authors were ready to publish a review on the evidence for masking and other physical interventions in April 2020, but that Cochrane held up its appearance by “inexplicably” demanding a further peer reviewer. This effectively delayed publication by months, in precisely the period that novel mask mandates were emerging all across the world. When the review was finally cleared for publication in November – long after its chance to influence mask policies had passed – the authors were directed to insert all manner of language softening their conclusions, and Cochrane included an accompanying editorial on why “Policy makers must act on incomplete evidence in responding to COVID-19.”

Plainly, the conviction that mask mandates were necessary came first; The Science followed. All the while, though, the evidence didn’t go away. It was just suspended slightly out of view, diluted with weak excuses and deprived of influence over policy, until the ideological fervour dissipated and the plain truth could be spoken again. The lesson is that regime authorities, particularly when they enjoy the collaboration of the press and academia, can tell almost any lie, but suppressing the truth requires active effort, and sooner or later their myths come crashing down. The mask mythology was among the first to take shape, and it has been the first to fall.

In the coming months other pandemic fantasies will also begin unravel.

UPDATE: See also this interview with Tom Jefferson published today in the Daily Sceptic

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

World Health Organization zero draft pandemic treaty pushes for increased surveillance powers

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | February 6, 2023

The  (WHO) has released the latest zero draft of its international pandemic treaty which will give the unelected global health agency new sweeping surveillance powers if passed.

The treaty requires the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) to strengthen the WHO’s “One Health surveillance systems.”

One Health is a WHO system that aims to “optimize the health of people, animals and ecosystems” and “uses the close, interdependent links among these fields to create new surveillance and disease control methods.”

The WHO’s One Health fact sheet points to Covid-19 as one of the main reasons for expanding its One Health approach and states that it “put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance.”

The draft treaty also orders WHO member states to strengthen surveillance functions for “outbreak investigation and control through interoperable early warning and alert systems.”

Additionally, it requires member states to recognize the WHO as the “directing and coordinating authority on international health work, in pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems, and in convening and generating scientific evidence, and, more generally, fostering multilateral cooperation in global health governance.”

We obtained a copy of the zero draft of the WHO’s pandemic treaty for you here.

Although the draft treaty doesn’t mention surveillance tools that were used during Covid, such as contact tracing, testing, and vaccine passports, the WHO has previously confirmed that it’s a big supporter of vaccine passports. In the early stages of the pandemic, the WHO also lauded China’s Covid response, which utilized intense digital surveillance, before changing its position and criticizing China’s zero-Covid policy.

This draft treaty has been in the works since December 2021. A final report on the treaty is expected to be presented to the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), in May 2024.

If passed, this treaty will be adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution — an article that allows the WHO to impose legally binding conventions on the WHO’s 194 member states if two-thirds of the member states’ representatives vote in favor of the conventions.

Unlike the lawmaking process in most democratic nations, where elected officials implement national law, this WHO process allows a small number of global representatives, often unelected diplomats, to impose international laws on all of the WHO’s member states.

While some politicians have pushed back against this international pandemic treaty, it has the support of many powerful nations including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), , , New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states).

This treaty is just one of the global surveillance proposals with ties to the WHO that is being pushed by influential global figures. At Business (B20) 2022, a summit of business leaders from Group of 20 (G20) countries, numerous countries agreed on a digital health passport that uses WHO standards. This digital health certificate will track whether people have been vaccinated or tested.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ban on Russian media protects ‘freedom of expression’ – Borrell

RT | February 7, 2023

The EU’s crusade against Russian media does not seek to curb free speech but in fact pursues the opposite goal, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Tuesday. His remarks triggered criticism from Moscow, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova saying that Russia has viewed the media crackdown as a sign of a dictatorship.

Speaking at a conference dedicated to the EU’s response to foreign disinformation, Borrell said that the sanctions on Russian media “effectively banned them from operating” within the bloc.

“In doing that, we are not attacking the freedom of expression, we are just protecting the freedom of expression,” he argued.

Borrell also noted that the EU is trying to support those media organizations that Russia has classified as ‘foreign agents’, a designation meaning that an entity is either funded from abroad or is under “foreign influence.”

“What I’m saying is not just rhetoric. I cannot go into detail, but believe me, we try to support them in practical terms,” he said, adding that he would not say how in order not to do them “a bad favor.”

In an attempt to defend the EU’s media policies, Borrell claimed that Russia is using “manipulation and interference as a crucial instrument” in the Ukraine conflict. In light of this, the diplomat said that the EU would launch a platform called the Information Sharing and Analysis Center to combat falsehoods.

“We need to understand how these disinformation campaigns are organized … to identify the actors of the manipulation,” he stressed.

Commenting on Borrell’s remarks, Zakharova stated that in the past Moscow regarded the media crackdown as “a manifestation of liberal dictatorship.” But the way the diplomat described these policies in his latest speech made them “sparkle with fresh colors with a shade of delusion,” she added.

In recent years, the EU has unleashed a campaign against Russian media which only intensified when Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022. In March, the EU suspended the broadcasting activities of Sputnik and RT, with the number of blacklisted channels only growing in the following months as the bloc introduced new sanctions against Russia.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk accused State Dept. agency of being “worst offender” in government censorship

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 7, 2023

 owner  accused the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC) of being the “worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation.”

Musk’s comments came after the latest release of the Twitter Files which focused on GEC’s attempts to get Twitter to censor accounts and content.

“The GEC flagged accounts as ‘Russian personas and proxies’ based on criteria like, ‘Describing the Coronavirus as an engineered bioweapon,’ blaming ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute,’ and ‘attributing the appearance of the virus to the CIA,’” journalist Matt Taibbi wrote. “State also flagged accounts that retweeted news that Twitter banned [such as] the popular U.S. ZeroHedge, claiming the episode ‘led to another flurry of disinformation narratives.’ ZH had done reports speculating that the virus had lab origin.”

According to its website, the GEC’s role is to direct and coordinate the US government’s efforts to combat foreign state and non-state misinformation and propaganda.

Then-head of trust and safety Yoel Roth pushed back against GEC’s analysis based on data from Homeland Security that showed “nearly 250,000” Chinese accounts that were spreading propaganda about COVID-19.

February 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Columbia Journalism Review Russiagate Post-Mortem Is a Good Start

By Mark Hemingway | RealClearWire | February 6, 2023

Without much fanfare, earlier this week Jeff Gerth, a Pulitzer-Prize winning former New York Times investigative reporter, dropped a thorough and damning four-part article dissecting the media’s obsessive reporting on Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia. Even more surprising, Gerth’s report, “The press versus the president,” appeared at the in-house organ of America’s most prestigious journalism school, Columbia Journalism Review, which has long been regarded as something of an unofficial ombudsman for the media industry.

If CJR is finally comfortable admitting that the media’s Russiagate reporting was so scandalously bad that it damns the entire industry, that seems like a remarkable admission.

On Twitter, Glenn Greenwald, a left-leaning reporter who made some significant career sacrifices for calling out the media’s bogus reporting on this topic, declared Gerth’s reporting “absolutely devastating on how casually, frequently, recklessly and eagerly the press lied on Russiagate.” Gerth lays out what happened so clearly that it’s hard to imagine fair-minded readers who make it through all 24,000 words of Gerth’s report would conclude any differently. Personally, I’m proud to say that the work of RealClearInvestigations – and my colleagues there, Tom Kuntz, Aaron Mate, and Paul Sperry – are all cited favorably by Gerth as one of the few media outlets that consistently got the story right.

However, as someone who spent much of his time during the Trump years engaged in substantive reporting that questioned and debunked the Russia collusion narrative, my reaction was, well, anger. It’s an emotion not directed at Gerth, who has done courageous work. But the fact that this piece is appearing two years after Trump left office and nearly five years after special prosecutor Robert Mueller failed to substantiate years of anonymously sourced speculation about Russia collusion is a searing indictment in itself.

To start, Gerth demonstrates the media still won’t grapple with the truth. His piece is peppered with big-name reporters and major publications refusing to comment on basic errors or dubious or unethical judgments. Gerth did manage to get Bob Woodward, the dashboard saint of journalism, on the record condemning the media’s failures here. While that’s a notable concession, if respected figures such as Woodward harbored doubts about the media’s conduct, they should have been a lot more vocal – and much earlier.

It’s also understandable why Gerth would want to keep his report narrowly focused on the facts of what transpired. But without any substantive discussion of the media’s motives it’s hard to draw any important lessons from this sorry saga. Gerth does point out that Russiagate has led to an erosion of trust in the media and offers a pallid warning that the media’s “failure will almost certainly shape the coverage of what lies ahead.”

But this is inadequate. Devoid of any broader context about the long history manipulations of America’s national security state or the corporate media’s evolution into ham-fisted left-wing ideologues, one can read Gerth’s dry reporting as a comedy of errors: A bunch of well-intentioned reporters, faced with the challenge of covering a problematic president – and disingenuous Democrats and partisan law enforcement officials – kept bungling the reporting, by getting key facts wrong  and committing serious sins of omission.

However, the missing motive suggests something far more sinister. The media’s Russiagate coverage hinged on being extremely trusting of officials in national security and law enforcement agencies that have historically undermined the press and been hostile to civil rights. There’s a saying in traditional journalism – “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” Yet, when “deep state” actors with an obvious animus for Donald Trump pushed the narrative that a sitting U.S. president was compromised by a foreign power, a story so explosive it demanded to be thoroughly vetted every step of the way, the mainstream media instead decided to become stenographers.

The blizzard of details necessary to explain the Russia collusion story might also make it seem like discerning the truth was more difficult than it was. If your willingness to believe that Trump was compromised by Russia started out as a political Rorschach test, it quickly became an IQ exam.

Starting before Trump was even inaugurated in January 2017, it was reported that the Logan Act was being used as a predicate to investigate Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn. The Logan Act is to national security laws what phrenology is to medical science – it’s a never-enforced 1799 statute that says it’s illegal for private citizens to negotiate with foreign governments. Laughed at by constitutional scholars, it’s routinely violated and invariably ignored.

Except that several major media outlets credulously reported on Flynn’s alleged Logan Act violations as if they were a potentially serious transgressions, when it should have been obvious that invoking this ancient and discredited statute was a desperate attempt to justify a politically motivated investigation. What happened to Flynn is just one example out of many where the press inexcusably disregarded glaring truths.

Gerth, to his credit, does a fine job unpacking the story of how Flynn was railroaded by the Justice Department, as well as the absurd credulity of the press regarding the so-called “dossier” on Trump, an obviously untrustworthy document produced by partisan political enemies of the president. Nonetheless, most of Gerth’s examples of questionable interactions between the press and government sources require reading between the lines to assess just how willfully blind the press was to the possibility of law enforcement officials abusing their power.

And given that the key players of the story were Democratic partisans, current and former spies, and shady opposition researchers, it’s also worth asking to what extent the press was being overtly manipulated and deliberately fed bad information. Although Gerth’s reporting suggests a conscious conspiracy, he doesn’t really go there.

Finally, no accounting of the media’s faulty Russia reporting would be complete without seriously evaluating the consequences. Once again, much of this discussion is outside Gerth’s narrower focus on how the sausage was being made in newsrooms. However, he gets close to identifying the gravity of the problem when he notes a fateful coincidence. The FBI’s dubious White House briefing to Trump and Obama on the dossier’s absurd allegations involving Trump and Moscow prostitutes – a made-up event that was promptly leaked to CNN, catalyzing the Russiagate hysteria – occurred on Jan. 6, 2017, four years to the day before the infamous riot at the U.S. Capitol.

These two events aren’t unrelated. Obsessively gaslighting tens of millions of Trump voters with a transparently false narrative that the president was a traitor who pundits openly agitated to remove from office didn’t just badly erode trust in the media. It also made it impossible for the media to summon the institutional trust necessary to persuade Trump supporters – and Trump himself – that Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 election victory was legitimate.

The result is that the shoddy reporting during Trump’s presidency contributed heavily to the frenzied and distrustful atmosphere that undermined Americans’ faith in elections, shook the very foundations of the Republic, and has left us all worried about political stability in the future.

So while Gerth’s careful reporting is noted and appreciated, it is unlikely to produce the kind of self-examination and reckoning necessary to restore trust in the media and the vital role they play in the democratic process. By getting away with it, the media learned all the wrong lessons. My fear is that when asked about the media’s colossal failures in the Trump years, Gerth’s article will be used an excuse instead of an indictment. The members of the press still seeking to dodge accountability will simply be able to point to his article and say, “It’s old news.”

February 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Health chiefs admit vaccine link to heart and kidney damage – and the MSM say nothing

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | February 1, 2023

A preprint paper has just been published in the Lancet authored by the New Zealand Ministry of Health, ‘Adverse Events Following the BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine (Pfizer-BioNtech) in Aotearoa New Zealand’. The paper reveals that there is a statistically significant association between Pfizer mRNA vaccination and both myocarditis and acute kidney injury (AKI). Here in little New Zealand, you wouldn’t know it though. MSM has not covered it, anywhere.

AKI, also known as acute renal failure (ARF), is an episode of kidney failure or damage which happens within a few hours or days. It causes a build-up of waste products in the blood and makes it hard for the kidneys to keep the right balance of fluid in the body. AKI can affect other organs such as the brain, heart and lungs.

The study examined the comprehensive medical records of 4million people. There were 1,778 more cases of AKI than predicted from historical pre-pandemic rates – an alarming incidence of one case for every 2,200 vaccinations. In addition to AKI and myocarditis, researchers also found elevated rates of blood clots and platelet damage. The finding of AKI is new and concerning, but incredibly the study concludes that its findings provide assurances about the safety of mRNA vaccines. How could they say that? I am not reassured, I am alarmed – and so should you be.

The study compared the background rates of 12 adverse events of special interest (AESI) with their incidence following Covid-19 vaccination. The study included only events that occurred within 21 days after Covid vaccination which resulted in hospitalisation. Therefore the study specifically ruled out effects of Covid vaccination resulting in hospitalisation or death any time after 21 days and also discounted adverse events for which those affected did not immediately seek hospital treatment.

Was this a credible cut-off point? No. Studies have detected markedly elevated levels of full-length spike protein, unbound by antibodies, in the plasma of individuals post-vaccine which can persist well beyond 21 days. For example see here. This indicates that injected mRNA sequences can actively produce spike protein for extended periods. Spike protein is known to be associated with the development of myocarditis for example and is believed to have toxic effects on other organs including the liver.

Was the hospitalisation data a completely reliable measure of the extent of the effects? No, absolutely not. We are a small country and we talk to one another. Multiple people have publicly reported presenting to hospital with concerning symptoms following mRNA vaccination such as tachycardia, chest pains or neurological dysfunction, and being sent home without any investigative tests and a diagnosis of ‘vaccine anxiety’ and an ibuprofen prescription. My daughter-in-law was one of these. My neighbour developed a kidney injury subsequent to vaccination but didn’t report it to a doctor for weeks. She now has difficulty digesting most foods.

GPs and hospital staff have been deliberately manipulated by government propaganda into believing that the mRNA vaccine is safe. GPs who advised their patients that there were risks associated with the jab were told they might be struck off if they persisted – some actually were.

The NZ Ministry of Health did not warn district health boards of the risk of myocarditis until mid-December 2021, near the end of the period covered by the study. This MoH advice described vaccine-induced myocarditis as rare and generally mild. Prior to this there was an obvious incentive to disbelieve and dismiss patients reporting cardiac symptoms. Because GPs were afraid to make any association between the jabs and health conditions, they were also disincentivised to order tests or advise hospitalisation.

There has been no general advice of the risk of renal failure post mRNA vaccination. My local school received a visit from a GP informing staff and students that there were no safety issues with the vaccine and that it had been rigorously tested for over 30 years, a downright lie. As a result, a teacher friend with persistent chest pains had no idea it might be connected with vaccination and did not seek medical help until he unburdened himself to me.

When Jacinda Ardern wrote on her Facebook page that people could comment on adverse effects, expecting a few replies about mild discomfort, 33,000 comments were posted within a matter of hours. Ardern’s staff famously stayed up all night to delete them. As of November 2022, the government has acknowledged only two deaths associated with mRNA vaccination. There are persistent third-party reports circulating that the Ministry of Health made some payments to families whose children died following vaccination on condition that they would not make public comments. As a result, these reports cannot be reliably confirmed or ruled out. If true, possibly these were aimed at reducing vaccine hesitancy among the young.

A concerning issue here is the attitude of the media to reports of vaccine injury. They are ignoring them. Even published studies such as this one are receiving no attention whatsoever. MSM appears to have relinquished its investigative role, leaving the public in the dark.

It is clear that detailed knowledge of adverse effects of mRNA vaccines would enable GPs and hospital staff to deal appropriately and sympathetically with injury. It would also enable doctors and medical staff to relay factual informed consent to patients. This has not happened.

So how far are reporting errors and the 21-day cut-off skewing the authors’ invalid conclusions of vaccine safety? How can we find out? We currently have record rates of excess all-cause mortality, but despite having the data to do so, the MoH has not undertaken any investigation to determine if there is any correlation between all-cause deaths and vaccine status. This simple procedure would settle any controversy, but a mistaken faith in vaccine efficacy has prompted MoH investigators to turn a blind eye to the obvious.

This is exactly the same obfuscation, hiding of data and failure to investigate that governments have promoted around the world. UK Health Minister Maria Caulfield in the House of Commons brushed aside concerns about, and investigation of, excess deaths as if rapidly rising death rates are an entirely ordinary and uninteresting feature of post-pandemic life. Similar requests put to the Minister of Health in New Zealand have been met with silence. Facts don’t count for much when it comes to modern democracy.

February 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Returning to COVID19

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | January 31, 2023

With the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, my thoughts were dragged back to Covid once more. Jacinda, as Prime Minster of New Zealand was the ultimate lockdown enforcer. She was feted round the world for her iron will, but I was not a fan, to put it mildly. Whenever I heard her speak, it brought to mind one of my most favourite quotes:

‘Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.’  C.S. Lewis

At one point she actually said the following:

“We will continue to be your single source of truth” “Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.’

If I ruled the world, anyone who said, that, or anything remotely like that, would be taken as far as possible from any position of power, never to be allowed anywhere near it again. Ever.

Yet, there are still many who believe her to have been a great and caring leader. She certainly hugged a lot of people with that well rehearsed pained/caring expression on her face.

Enough of that particular woman. But it got me thinking about lockdowns again and the whole worldwide madness of Covid. This was a time of such blundering idiocy that I find increasingly difficult to believe it ever happened. A bad dream.

‘The sky is falling, the sky is falling…’ Cue, everyone running about in panic. People, allegedly, dropping dead on the streets. Mortuaries, allegedly, overflowing. Freezer lorries, allegedly, stacked with dead bodies. Bring out your dead!

I worked with doctors who strode around the wards in positive pressure protective gear. There were GPs who simply refused to visit elderly residents in nursing homes. On my patch this was all GPs and all nursing homes. Meanwhile I happily visited away with a mask stuck to the top of my head.

During the Covid pandemic I travelled far past angry, to reach a point of utter weariness. Instead of becoming outraged by the latest rubbish that was being pronounced, I very nearly washed my hands of it. However, after learning of Jacinda’s resignation I roused myself to have another look at what actually did happen. Or to be more specific, what was the impact of Covid on overall mortality. The only outcome that really matters.

Rid your mind of the numbers claimed to have died of Covid. The, never to be clarified distinction between those who died ‘of’ or ‘with’ Covid. Or those who read an article on Covid and then, overwhelmed with fear, stepped out in front of a bus. Thus, becoming a Covid related… associated, something, anything to do with Covid, death.

Over time the Covid figures became so ridiculous and unreliable as to become meaningless. I should know, I wrote some of the death certificates myself. Let me think… ‘She died of COVID, she died of COVID not. Eeny, meeny, miney mo…’

I am not saying that Covid did not kill a large number of people. But the fact that deaths from influenza disappeared completely for two years tells me all I need to know. ‘Roll up, roll up, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see the amazing lady influenza disappear before your very eyes.’ An astonishing trick, all the way from La La Land. ‘You expect me to believe that?  Ho, ho, ho, very funny…. Oh, sorry, you actually do.’

Anyway, to clear my internal database of horribly unreliable figures, I went back to look at my favourite graphs on EuroMOMO. This website looks at overall mortality, and only overall mortality. Their data comes from countries who do know how to record deaths, honestly. Unlike some others, who shall be nameless … China.

However, the main reason to focus on EuroMOMO is that overall mortality is something you cannot fake. About the only thing you can do to manipulate the figures is hold back data for a month or two – which has been done, but not to any great degree. So, without further ado, let us move onto EuroMOMO. Below is a recent graph. I have deliberately removed most of the information you need to know what it is showing. I wanted people to avoid jumping to conclusions … that they might then find it difficult row back from.

I found myself examining this graph idly and thought. Imagine if you had no idea what you were looking at here. What would you think? It’s a squiggly line, yes. Very good, gold star. What else?

To give you a bit more detail. This is a graph of overall mortality, across a large number of European countries. All of those who provide data to the EuroMOMO database anyway. Norway, the ultimate European lockdown champion, has mysteriously disappeared from the database. Maybe they shall return …. I have begun to see everything as a conspiracy nowadays.

The graph itself begins in January 2017 and finishes in January 2023. As you can see (if not terribly clearly) there are two wavy dotted lines. These lines rise up in the winter, and then fall back down in the summer. Something seen every year. This is because, every year, more people die in the winter than in the summer.

Everyone thinks they know the reason for this winter summer effect, but I am not so sure they do. But that is an enormously complicated topic for another time.

The lower, dotted lines represent the ‘average’ mortality you would expect to see [with upper and lower ‘normal’ limits] year on year. Above those wavy dotted lines sits a solid spikey line. This represents the actual number of deaths that occurred. Not just from Covid, but from everything.

This does raise an immediate question. If we keep seeing more deaths than we would expect in the winter, year on year, then the ‘average’ number of deaths should rise? Thus, the wavy dotted lines ought to be going up and up, in the winter. But they don’t.

I am not entirely sure why this is not the case. But it is a statistical question of such mind-boggling complexity that I am, frankly, unable to answer it. I have looked into it, but I was scared off by the sheer scale and difficulty of the mathematics involved. Too many equations for my poor wee brain.

Anyway, this graph starts in the winter of 2017 and ends about now. The vertical lines are drawn at midnight on Dec 31st each year. Which means that we have almost exactly six years of data. Excellent data, not manipulated in any way. I say this because, whilst the diagnosis of ‘Covid death’ may be disputed, the diagnosis of death cannot.

What stands out? Well, there was a very sharp peak of deaths in early 2020. This, as you have probably worked out, was when Covid first hit. I find it fascinating that it was so transient. It came, it went… gone. For a bit anyway.

Was the precipitous fall due to strict lockdowns? Some will doubtless argue this. However, we all locked down again in autumn 2020 and the death rate went up, and stayed up, for about six months. Until, that is, January came along, and it all settled down again. Which follows pretty much the pattern of 2017, 2108 and 2019. And the pattern of all pandemics. They come, and they go. Some a little earlier, some a little later.

What else do you see – now that we are all pretty much fully vaccinated? I think another thing that stands out is the sudden and sharp rise in mortality in November 2022. Which is virtually identical to the spike in 2020. Strange?

However, to my mind, the thing that shouts most loudly about this graph is that the years of Covid pandemic panic really do not look that much different from the previous three years. Half close your eyes, and there is almost nothing to see. The Covid peaks were a little higher, and a little longer – maybe.

If you knew nothing about the Covid pandemic I don’t think you would exclaim. ‘My God, look at these vast waves of death in 2020, 2021. What amazing, never seen before thing, happened here?’ Yes, first spike of early 2020 was certainly sharp, and unusual, but it was short. And very little different to the spike at the end of 2022. As for the rest?

Now, I would like to turn your attention to Germany. The most populous country in Europe. Here it is even more clear that the years of the Covid pandemic are not remotely unusual. If I had removed the calendar years off this graph, you would be hard pressed to spot the Covid pandemic. In truth, you would be more than hard pressed. You couldn’t.

The 2018 influenza spike was equally dramatic to Covid peak of 2021, if not more so. [You may have noticed that there was no peak in 2020] In addition, at the end of 2022, we have the highest peak of all. Future historians might well look at this graph and ask. ‘Tell me, why did the world go mad in 2020, and remain mad through 2021? Why did everyone lockdown in March 2020, and then do nothing whatsoever in December 2022?’

It almost goes without saying that, had we locked down again in November 2022, it would have been claimed that lockdown saved us all. Look at how quickly it came, then went. Well, they could have claimed it. But we didn’t lock down again, did we? In direct contrast to Germany. What of the people living in Luxembourg?

Luxembourg is surrounded by Belgium France and Germany. People move freely from one to the other, always have done, and still do. The ‘deadly’ Covid pandemic raged all around them. Here, absolutely nothing happened. Mind you, they also seem to have been unaffected by influenza.

Whilst the Germans were dying in large numbers in 2018, the Luxembourgians carried on serenely, not an extra death to be seen. Why? Discuss. [It seems that most/all countries unaffected by Covid, were also unaffected by earlier flu epidemics].

I know some of you may be thinking that Germany is much bigger than Luxembourg so … so what? If you are going to see an effect on mortality, you are more likely to see it happen, more dramatically, and rapidly, in a country with fewer people.

I should explain that the figures on the left axis, on the German and Luxembourg graphs (unlike the first one), do not represent total deaths, they are the ‘Z score’. That is, the deviation from the mean.

The upper dotted line represents a Z score of five. That means, five standard deviations above the mean. It has been decreed that if you hit more than five standard deviations above the mean, for any length of time, this is a signal that ‘something bad’ is happening. The alarm starts goes off, and epidemiologists run around bumping into each other. ‘The sky is falling… etc.’

If you use the Z score it makes no difference how large the population is. It has been specifically designed to make it possible to compare changes in overall mortality, in populations of very different sizes. I feel the need here to make it clear that Luxembourg is not that small. It has more than twice the population of Iceland, for example.

Enough of the maths already.

So, deep breath, and trying to bring all these random thoughts together. What does EuroMOMO tell us? It tells us that Covid was a bit worse than a bad flu season, with 2018 being a good reference point. [There have been far worse flu epidemics than 2018, and I am not talking about 1918/19].

What EuroMOMO makes most clear, at least to me, is that Covid was not, repeat not, a pandemic of unique power, and destructiveness. It could have never remotely justified the drastic actions that were taken to combat it.

Belatedly, this is becoming recognised, as has the damage associated with lockdowns. Here is the abstract of an article from 2022. A bit dry, but worth a read. ‘Are Lockdowns Effective in Managing Pandemics?’

‘The present coronavirus crisis caused a major worldwide disruption which has not been experienced for decades. The lockdown-based crisis management was implemented by nearly all the countries, and studies confirming lockdown effectiveness can be found alongside the studies questioning it.

In this work, we performed a narrative review of the works studying the above effectiveness, as well as the historic experience of previous pandemics and risk-benefit analysis based on the connection of health and wealth. Our aim was to learn lessons and analyze ways to improve the management of similar events in the future.

The comparative analysis of different countries showed that the assumption of lockdowns’ effectiveness cannot be supported by evidence—neither regarding the present COVID-19 pandemic, nor regarding the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu and other less-severe pandemics in the past.

The price tag of lockdowns in terms of public health is high: by using the known connection between health and wealth, we estimate that lockdowns may claim 20 times more life years than they save. It is suggested therefore that a thorough cost-benefit analysis should be performed before imposing any lockdown for either COVID-19 or any future pandemic.’ 1

In the face of such evidence, the argument for lockdown seems to be transforming into a somewhat pathetic whinge. ‘We didn’t know. It’s all very well people saying we shouldn’t have locked down now. We didn’t hear you saying it at the time. We were just following The Science, don’t blame us. Better safe than sorry. Don’t blame us … I think you’re being very nasty to us.’

This, of course, is nonsense. There were plenty of scientists arguing against lockdown at the time. However, they were all ruthlessly censored, attacked, and silenced. Experts such as Prof. John Ioannidis, Prof. Karol Sikora, Prof. Sunetra Gupta, Prof. Carl Heneghan. These last two UK professors argued very strenuously against lockdowns. They were ignored, then vilified. Here from an article written in January 2021:

‘… Sunetra Gupta. She’s been getting flak from the mob for months but it reached a crescendo yesterday when she was on the Today programme. Why is the BBC giving space to a nutter, people asked? She isn’t a nutter, of course. She’s an infectious disease epidemiologist at Oxford University. But she bristles against the COVID consensus and that makes her a bad person, virtually a witch, in the eyes of the zealous protectors of COVID orthodoxy. Professor Gupta has written about the barrage of abuse she receives via email. ‘Evil’, they call her.’

‘… her chief crime, judging from the hysterical commentary about her, is that she is critical of harsh lockdowns. She is a founder of the Great Barrington Declaration, which proposes that instead of locking down the whole of society we should shield the elderly and the vulnerable while allowing other people to carry on pretty much as normal. It is this perfectly legitimate discussion of a social and political question — the question of lockdown — that has earned Gupta the most ire.’ 2

I would like to point out that I was arguing against lockdown, right from the very beginning. Yes, I do enjoy saying, ‘I told you so’ from time to time. It is one of the few satisfactions I get in life nowadays. Here is a section from a blog I wrote in March 2020. Once again, right from the start:

‘… However, there is also a health downside associated with our current approach. Many people are also going to suffer and die, because of the actions we are currently taking. On the BBC, a man with cancer was being interviewed. Due to the shutdown, his operation is being put back by several months – at least. Others with cancer will not be getting treatment. The level of worry and anxiety will be massive.

Hip replacements are also being postponed and other, hugely beneficial interventions are not being done. Those with heart disease and diabetes will not be treated. Elderly people, with no support, may simply die of starvation in their own homes. Jobs will be lost, companies are going bust, suicides will go up. Psychosocial stress will be immense.

In my role, working in Out of Hours, we are being asked to watch out for abuse in the home. Because we know that children will now be more at risk, trapped in their houses. Also, partners will suffer greater physical abuse, stuck in the home, unable to get out. Not much fun.

Which means that we are certainly not looking at a zero-sum game here, where every case of COVID prevented, or treated, is one less death. There is a health cost.

There is also the impact of economic damage, which can be immense. I studied what happened in Russia, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the economic and social chaos that ensued. There was a massive spike in premature deaths.

In men, life expectancy fell by almost seven years, over a two to three-year period. A seven-year loss of life expectancy in seventy million men, is forty-nine million QALYs worth. It is certainly a far greater health disaster than COVID can possibly create…’ 3

And lo, the damage is coming to pass. Maybe not so many people dying of starvation as I predicted, at least not in the West. In poorer countries, however …

Another terrible thing that happened during lockdown was the vilification of anyone who dared question the official narrative. Yet almost everything they predicted has come true. Have the likes of Professor Gupta been forgiven and welcomed back into the fold? Have a wild guess on that one.

What of those who deliberately whipped up the panic and led the dreadful behavioural psychology teams. They quite deliberately frothed the population into a state of terror. What of those, whose ridiculous models kicked the whole damned thing off? The Professor Neil Fergusons of this land? Yes, you.

These people are all still comfortably ensconced, advising away. Their positions fully secure. In the UK they were mostly given knighthoods, damehoods, and other shiny gongs to impress their friends with. This, I find hard to swallow.

More worrying is that there will never be an honest review on the pandemic. Why, because so many people in positions of power would be seriously threatened by it. Which means that any such review will end up as a completely bland whitewash.  ‘In general the actions taken were reasonable, and in a situation where so much was unknown, it was better to try and protect the public … blah, blah.’ Case closed.

The reality is that these lockdowns were a complete disaster. A complete disaster. The fact that we will never have a proper debate about them, means that we will learn nothing from what happened. This, in turn, means that another disaster is on the way. Those who should be listened to will be attacked, silenced and censored, again.

Those who got it all horribly wrong last time will be handed even greater powers … next time. The reason why lockdowns did not work, they will argue, is because they were not strict enough, or long enough. We need proper lockdowns next time. You have been warned. Cast your eyes over China.

I will leave you with the conclusion of the paper ‘Are lockdowns effective in managing pandemics?’

  • Neither previous pandemics nor COVID19 provide clear evidence that lockdowns help to prevent death in pandemic
  • Lockdowns are associated with a considerable human cost. Even if somewhat effective in preventing COVID19 death, they probably cause far more extensive (an order of magnitude or more) loss of life
  • A thorough risk-benefit analysis must be performed before imposing any lockdown in future.

Which can probably be summed in in the words: Primum non nocere. First, do no harm.

The central guiding principle of medicine that was hurled out of the window in March 2020 by people who seem not to exhibit a scrap of humility, or humanity. Nor apology.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9368251/

2: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-censorious-war-on-lockdown-sceptics/

3: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2020/03/29/a-health-economic-perspective-on-covid-19/

February 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Congressman Thomas Massie Obliterates Vaxx Mandate Against Healthcare Workers

By J.D. Rucker • The Liberty Daily  • February 1, 2023

The House of Representatives is very different than it was a year ago. Back then, any notion of ending vaccine mandates was shuffled into a memory hole. Anyone who opposed them was dismissed as an anti-vaxxer. Today, we may be seeing progress. Finally.

On Tuesday, Congressman Thomas Massie gave a speech explaining the reasons the vaccine mandate against healthcare workers must end.

“I rise in support of this resolution because it would facilitate the passage of HR 497, the Freedom for Healthcare Workers Act,” he said. “What does that bill do? It ends the unscientific, illogical, immoral, unconstitutional, unethical vaccine mandate on healthcare workers that is predicated on lies.”

He listed the five predicates for the mandate that turned out to be lies:

  • The vaccine prevents spread
  • The vaccines don’t cause any harm
  • The mandates are scientific
  • Natural immunity should be ignored
  • Nobody’s liable for the damage the mandate can cause

As he put it, “We’re living under medical malpractice martial law right now under the PREP Act and the EUAs.”

He concluded by dropping the ultimate truth bomb. “This is the epitome of hypocrisy. Nobody in this room was mandated to take a vaccine, and we’re voting on whether we’re going to force people who want to take care of people whether they have to take the vaccine.”

February 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Gmail’s Czech Election Campaign Interference

By Přemysl Janýr | February 5, 2023

On 18 January, a few days before the presidential election, I received an email from a non-political group of friends with an anti-Babiš pamphlet. I replied with an anti-Petr picture that I had received shortly before. Out of a group of forty recipients, seven emails were returned to me as undeliverable because “This message does not pass authentication checks” (SPF and DKIM both 5.7.26 do not pass).

This has never happened to me in decades of assiduous email communication. From time to time some mail is undeliverable, the address no longer exists, it has overflowed, etc., but so far no one has ever blocked the delivery of my message and withal to such an extent. I checked all seven error messages, all of them gmail.com addresses. So a few minutes later I sent out another email to the group informing that gmail.com was blocking Petr Pavel’s picture. It was delivered to all of them, including the seven.

So the difference in deliverability was clearly not related to authentication requirements, but to Petr Pavel’s picture. I pasted it directly into the email body without any comment, not as an attachment. I don’t know how long it had been circulating on the Internet, but gmail.com knew it, recognizes it in emails by the content, and takes it into account in its algorithms to determine which messages to deliver to its clients and which to hide from them. Gmail is owned by the US corporation Google. And since Czech elections have to be irrelevant to it from a business point of view, it is obviously accommodating other entities for which they are not irrelevant. Of course, someone familiar with the Czech conditions had to evaluate Petr Pavel’s picture for them.

Mail, like a letter or any verbal or telephone conversation, is a private communication between two or more persons. The censorship of content described is analogous to the post office unsealing letters and deciding whether to deliver them based on their content. Or to a telephone provider listening to what you are talking about and cutting the connection if the subject matter is inappropriate. According to Czech law, it is a criminal offence.

This is compounded by the delicate fact that our private communications concerned electoral preferences, and that gmail.com was apparently disturbed not by a pamphlet disparaging Andrej Babiš, but by a picture disparaging Petr Pavel. This corresponds to a manipulation of the Czech election campaign by a foreign entity in favour of one of the candidates. And if we consider that Google offers not only an e-mail server, but also a virtually monopolistic search portal and a number of other services used by Czech citizens, it can covertly influence electoral preferences to a considerable extent. Even this is a criminal offence.

On the same day, I filed a criminal complaint with the prosecutor and a notification of election manipulation with the Ministry of the Interior. I published both submissions, including the suppressed image, in a posting on my blog http://www.janyr.eu and sent out a notice to my readers with a link, but forgot to release the posting before doing so. The notifications reached all recipients without any problems.

In no time, the first responded that the posting was unavailable. I immediately corrected that and sent out the notification again with an apology. Twenty addresses on gmail.com denied the delivery. I sent another email to those affected informing them that they had not received the link to the posting together with a link to my blog where they could find it. It went through to all twenty.

Thus over a course of hours, I‘ve accumulated a lot of material to analyze. In the first case, gmail.com recognized the suppressed image in the message body. In the second, it had to double-check the contained link and determine that the image was located at the destination address.

A statistical recap:

– I sent a total of 220 emails to recipients on gmail.com. 90 of them contained the suppressed image or a link to the posting where it was used.

– Of the emails with the image or link, 27 were undeliverable.

– All emails without the image or link, including those to “undeliverable” addresses, were delivered without issue.

Thus, the dependence of delivery on content is evident, but at the same time, gmail.com also delivered most of the emails with a link to my posting. So how is the decision actually made?

I sent out the notification in five batch emails. So I listed the recipients and marked those undelivered. In fact, the censorship affected only one of the five emails and consistently blocked all twenty gmail.com addresses contained. So apparently the censorship check is done randomly. If I add the original email with the picture, which just as consistently blocked all of the gmail.com addresses, only two, or one-third, of the six emails were censored. So if you get mail returned to a recipient on gmail.com with the reasoning that it doesn’t meet the authentication requirements, it will probably bypass censorship when resent.

If the reader is communicating with friends about topics that may contain a critical political charge, I can only recommend that he use a mail server other than gmail.com. Out of over a hundred servers, it is the only one I have encountered this behavior on.

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

What looks, acts and smells like a Global News Cartel and just got hit by an Antitrust lawsuit…

By Jo Nova | February 5, 2023

What if the news media formed a global monopoly to control the news?

Imagine if the media and tech giants of the world banded together behind-the-scenes to rule certain stories were “misinformation” and all their agencies thus reported the same “news”?

That’s what the Trusted News Initiative aimed to do — decide what ideas were and were not allowed to be discussed.

It’s like “free speech” but without the free part.

Not only could the media bury things but they could get away with it if no upstart competitor could red-pill their audience.

It would be the death of the Free Press

In a world like that the people would be ruled mostly by whomever it was that decided what was “misinformation”. Those controllers would be the defacto Ministry of Truth.

We all saw it happen over the last three years, so it’s good to put a name on the beast, but even better, Robert F Kennedy is suing them for anti-trust violation.

Trusted News Initiative, TNI

The Trusted News Initiative is everything journalists should hate. It’s basically there to “protect” voters from hearing about things like the Hunter-Biden Laptop, good climate news and bad vaccine reactions. TNI practically told us that in 2020:

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) was set up last year [2019, just in time, eh?] to protect audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around moments of jeopardy, such as elections.

Nearly everyone’s on board:

Core partners in the TNI are: AP, AFP, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, Information Futures Lab, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta [Facebook], Microsoft, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, The Washington Post, Kompass – Indonesia, Dawn – Pakistan, Indian Express – India, NDTV – India, ABC – Australia, SBS – Australia, NHK – Japan.

Which is a handy list of “where not to get your news”.

It’s a news cartel begging to be busted

Tony Thomas at Quadrant not only alerted me to the TNI but also to the news that a lawsuit has been filed in the US for damages and to break it up:

… on January 10 President John Kennedy’s nephew, Robert F Kennedy Jr,  in a Texas District Court launched an anti-trust lawsuit for treble damages from TNI’s biggest news providers, namely the BBC, Washington Post, and global news syndicators Reuters and Associated Press. He wants TNI disbanded as an unlawful cartel. He cites the BBC because of its TNI lead role and US commercial operations involving millions of users.[1] The Kennedy lawsuit is here.[2] His brief says “It is also an action to defend the freedom of speech and of the press.”

This is rather like the Big Money Cartel of bankers and asset managers like BlackRock who are now facing anti-trust legal action all of their own.

The suit names the BBC because they were “the leaders” in at the start. But Thomas points out that the consequences are uncertain for the ABC, SBS and others. Though they are not named in the suit, they can still be liable:

The suit says,

Each participant in an antitrust conspiracy is jointly and severally liable for all the damages (including treble damages and attorneys’ fees) caused by the conspiracy, and the victims of an unlawful antitrust conspiracy are not required to sue all participants therein. (My emphasis, p93).

Thomas sent questions to the ABC and SBS in Australia asking them if they are involved in the lawsuit; whether they had advised their Minister about the potential legal exposure, and for details of how they had been implementing TNI policies. None have so far replied.

Perhaps it’s time for an FOI?

By the way, this is an actual BBC header, not a satirical dig.

The only thing “beyond” fake news  is 100% managed propaganda.

By combining the major news and social media outlets, little competitors could be crushed

Even the media outlets that are not members of TNI would get this message — stray from the line and Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter (pre Elon Musk) will hurt you:

Robert  Kennedy’s own newsletters had 680,000 followers before being de-platformed, censored and shadow-banned by Google/YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook/Instagram. His writ says BBC’s Jessica Cecil, TNI’s head in 2020-21, took evident pride in the assertion that the TNI’s suppression of others’ online reporting did not “in any way muzzl[e] our own journalism”. He adds, “It was apparently of no consequence that the TNI muzzles other news publishers’ journalism.” (p44). Cecil spoke of TNI’s “clear expectations” for members to “choke off” alleged online misinformation. This incidentally prevents any one member gaining traffic by publishing “prohibited reporting” the others have binned.

Kennedy says TNI’s Big Tech members collectively have a gatekeeping power over at least 90 per cent of online news traffic. De-platforming a small news publisher typically costs at least 90 per cent of its traffic. Even well-known major online news publishers can lose up to 50 per cent of their traffic from a  seemingly minor change to Google’s search algorithms.  Smaller online news publishers have been destroyed completely when shadow-banned, throttled, de-monetized, or de-platformed.

The real free press are the bloggers now

The big threat to the legacy media and corruptocrats everywhere was the rise of the independent bloggers and influencers who could easily outscore the boring media bloc that repeated the same tedious lies. Ten years ago an army of blogs like this were growing every year and getting front page in many searches:

Kennedy’s lawsuit, less kindly, claims TNI’s commercial goal is to deplatform and crush  the myriad of upstart online publishers who are contradicting the official lines and reducing trust in big media, along with its ad revenues.  The legacy, high-cost media are smarting over competition from bloggers in the shift to digital publishing, with 85 per cent of Americans now getting their news online. US newspapers’ ad revenue between 2000 and 2020 plummeted from $US48.7 billion to only $US9.6 billion, Kennedy says (p28).

A further motive for the TNI censorship, Kennedy says, is to placate governments that are threatening adverse new regulations, potentially costing Big Pharma billions in fines, liabilities and lost revenue. US conservative pundit Tucker Carlson has satirised the Big Media censorship as: “We have a monopoly on telling lies. No one else can talk.”

In a free market for news, the same players compete with each other to get to the truth the fastest. In the TNI cartel, all the decisions about what “the truth is” are played out behind closed doors. The ABC News Director Justin Stevens claims the TNI is just a system of “fast alerts” about disinformation and “information sharing” about things like “how audiences react to disinformation”. But in a free market all that happens all the time. Stupid ideas get crushed by great responses. That’s how it works.

The best answers win in the court of public opinion. It’s democratic, people vote with their remotes, their wallets and on their ballots. TNI wants to hide that debate, take it away from the people, and put it in the hands of The Ministry of Truth.

Nice racket you have there

Read it all at Quadrant — as Tony Thomas tells it, it’s a profit making cartel. The Kennedy suit explains how the TNI members were promoting vaccines while silencing all the cheaper medicines. And Big Pharma was sending money back to TNI members in advertising.  The conflicts of interest are brazen — the President of Reuters News, James C Smith, sits on the board of Pfizer. When someone pointed this out on Linked In they were banned for life.  See how this works?

Why is a single dollar of our tax money supporting a news service that doesn’t know what journalism is? If cartels like this are not exactly the kind of thing we pay the ABC to expose, why pay them at all?

February 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

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