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Organized Chaos in South Central, Los Angeles

BY DANIEL NUCCIO | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 19, 2022

The LAPD’s 77th Division in South Central serves what some officers consider “pretty much the most violent area of the entire city and county of Los Angeles,” explained Officer Charles Simmering in a phone interview. “You’re just running and gunning all night. You’re just running. There’s never a dull moment. You’re just going from one call to the next to the next. ‘Organized chaos’ is the best way we describe it.”

Each night, he explained, the 77th Division puts out a minimum of 12 cars, usually two officers per car, all 24 officers feeling “beyond overwhelmed.” The 77th Division can’t afford to lose people, Simmering said. But, he continued, that’s exactly what’s happening.

“Last year at my division alone I think we lost roughly 40 officers – and that’s putting a hurt, putting a strain on everybody,” said Simmering.

“People are leaving,” he stated. “They’re tired. They’re fed up.” Their reasons vary according to Simmering’s account. Lack of support. Lack of trust on the part of the city. Frustrations over not being allowed to make their own decisions out on the job. Nonetheless, the departure of these officers only exacerbates some of the problems that drove them to leave.

“If you need a particular day off for something family-related, your mother’s birthday or kid’s birthday, or something important,” Simmering explained, “They deny you and say, ‘No, you can’t have the day off. Sorry. We’re undermanned. We need people here.’”

That is, they need people, assuming they are vaccinated for Covid-19 because to the city bureaucracy Covid-19 remains the greatest threat to the citizens of South Central, as well as the rest of Los Angeles. Hence, officers such as Simmering, who remain unvaccinated for Covid-19, are considered dispensable.

The Parallel Reality of LA’s City Workers

Announced in July of 2021 and later passed and approved that August at the height of the Pandemic Era’s mandate madness, Los Angeles’ vaccine mandate for city employees still remains in effect. Predicated on the continued threat of Covid-19 to public health, the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, and the danger posed by the unvaccinated, the mandate comes off as a relic from a bygone era, as do the protracted Byzantine processes to which employees seeking exemptions must submit and the testing protocols such employees must agree to follow.

According to the anti-mandate organization Roll Call 4 Freedom, the ordinance and the system it established are illegal. According to the unvaccinated employees living under the ordinance, the system often seems random and arbitrary. Yet, in October of 2022, when there appears to be little doubt that Covid vaccines do little to stop the spread of Covid and that the vaccinated can spread the disease as easily as the unvaccinated, vaccine mandates are alive and well in the city of LA.

By the account of James Greenfield, a manager in the sanitation department, “It’s like we’re living in a parallel universe… [we’re] just in a parallel reality.”

Looking back on the past year, Greenfield, who is unvaccinated for Covid due to religious reasons, described life under the ordinance in a phone interview, saying requirements for compliance are always changing, “the goal post is always moving.”

“It was originally, you know, submit an exemption…” he stated. “It later developed into like this four-page, unconstitutional questionnaire on your religious beliefs.”

The city also wanted employees to “have a pastor answer questions.” Greenfield added. “I mean it [was] just over the top on violating your, you know, your religious freedom.”

Greenfield said he filed for a religious exemption, but refused to fill out the four-page form.

As a condition of remaining employed while working through the exemption process, Greenfield said, he and other unvaccinated city employees were initially required to test twice per week, but that was later reduced to once per week. The city, he said, also threatened to deduct the cost of the tests from people’s paychecks. However, before the city could charge anyone’s paycheck, they first needed them to fill out paperwork giving them permission to charge their paychecks.

“I didn’t fill out the paperwork,” Greenfield said. “I’m not going to give [the city] permission to take money out of my paycheck.”

But, he noted, he believes “a lot of people were coerced” and the city managed to bill at least a couple of people before they had to stop.

More recently, said Greenfield, they tried to bill the tests to the insurance of unvaccinated employees but backed off from those attempts within a couple of weeks.

Yvette Smith, an animal control officer at the City of Los Angeles’ Harbor Animal Shelter in the San Pedro neighborhood, stated, “We just didn’t give our insurance information and then [the city] pulled away.”

Like Greenfield, Smith has been required to test for Covid for nearly a year as she works her way through the exemption process. During the past year, Smith said, she had submitted a request for a religious exemption, was informed that it was denied, and appealed the decision. Now, in October of 2022, she awaits a decision regarding her appeal.

In some ways, although frustrated and inconvenienced, she believes people in her department (or at least her corner of her department), have gotten lucky. “As long as you have submitted a religious exemption that [the city has] denied and it’s in some imaginary nebulous area and you agree to test, they’re pretty much leaving us alone. So I’m grateful for that.”

However, Smith noted, “Every department is treating [the ordinance] differently.”

The Autumn Purge

Currently, the Los Angeles Department of Transportation appears to be one of the departments in which a purge of the unvaccinated is in full swing.

Navy veteran and former wildland firefighter, Rene Ochoa, has been a traffic officer with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation for the past 19 years. “I’ve been grateful for my job,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s helped me to have a lifestyle [I wanted], permitted me to have my home and provide for my wife and my children.”

Last year, he said, he filed a request for a religious exemption due to concerns about potential side effects and the use of aborted fetal cell lines in the development of the Covid vaccines. After his request was denied in May 2022, Ochoa said he appealed the denial. That appeal, he explained, was denied in July.

“Then, September 13 of this year…” he said, “I was walked off the job, locked out of my station in front of all my fellow coworkers…”

“I am currently on administrative leave,” stated Ochoa. “I have a Skelly hearing scheduled for Friday November 4 at 10:00 am.”

Amongst city employees working their way through the process of attaining a religious exemption from the Covid vaccine mandate, Skelly hearings are generally seen as the final step prior to termination.

Reflecting on the strong likelihood that he will lose his job on November 4, Ochoa said, “I’m in a much better position than a lot of other people I know that are younger than me and with maybe say half the time [in a city job].”

Because of his time working other positions with the city and with LA County, Ochoa is eligible for retirement, although with an early retirement penalty if he takes it before he turns 55; Ochoa is currently 53.

Smith expressed similar sentiments, commenting on the possibility she might be terminated. “I’m in a different position than most people. I’m pretty close to retirement [in June 2023] and kind of don’t give a shit at this point. So, you know, I’ll just keep jumping through the hoops until it bothers me too much and then I just won’t do it any more.”

If the City of Los Angeles does try to proceed with her termination, Smith is optimistic that she can work within the system to delay its finalization through a strategic use of vacation time, family leave, and possibly agreeing to unpaid leave until she can retire at least sort of on her terms. She admitted she is morally conflicted about having to resort to these kinds of tactics, but will do what she needs to do.

Yet, most Los Angeles city employees do not find themselves in positions where they can retire early or maneuver their way through the system until they can run out the clock and retire on terms they find acceptable.

Pearl Pantoja, for example, an employee with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, who was interviewed previously for an article published by Brownstone Institute about the troubles faced by LA city workers, has five children, one of whom has special needs. She also serves as the caregiver for her disabled mother. She and her family depend on her paycheck and the benefits that come with her job.

However, she said, “Friday, September 16, I was in effect placed on, my supervisor used the word suspension. I know the city’s calling it administrative leave without pay.”

“They gave me a notice with an appointment…” she stated. “It says you’re being placed off for non-compliance.”

But, Pantoja holds, “I was compliant, except they refused to accept my religious exemption.”

“They also did not… attempt to see if there were any reasonable accommodations that could be made so that I could continue to work.” Pantoja claims these are “parts of the process [that were] just simply ignored.”

Currently, Pantoja, like her colleague, Ochoa, awaits her Skelly hearing. Based on what she has seen happen to other unvaccinated colleagues, she is not optimistic about the future. “I have a colleague who lost his job and he is now homeless…I have another colleague who is expecting his first child and he’s now out of work and [has] no healthcare.”

“I’m really worried,” she said. “I almost know with certainty that I’m going to lose my job.”

What Lies Behind the Curtain

Perhaps the City of Los Angeles’ mandate, exemption process, and the personal and professional devastation they wrought can best be described as a form of organized chaos.

Part of what makes this all so frustrating and demoralizing, according to Greenfield, is the way the whole system is set up. No one is really accountable for any of the decisions made regarding exemptions, testing, appeals, or terminations. Everything is done through third parties and anonymous emails.

“You’ll get an email… with no name,” he explained. “Nobody attached to it. Nobody personally to talk to about it.”

“It’s like they’re just hiding,” he said. “They’re hiding behind a shroud. You know, supposedly there’s this committee that’s reviewing and coming up with these policies except who would know who’s on this committee. Who the names are? When they meet? It’s just a blind process like the wizard behind the curtain. The Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. You know, and that’s the process.”

Moreover, Greenfield noted, he and other unvaccinated city employees live with this feeling that “the hammer can drop anytime.”

“So, you’re just living under this uncertainty,” he said. “When’s the carpet going to get pulled out from beneath you?”

Simmering, who is currently on medical leave due to an injury sustained on the job, said the decision regarding his exemption has been placed on hold until he can return to work, at which point he said he’ll have to “play the Russian roulette with whether not they’re going to approve [his] exemption.”

“It’s like so much of the country is going in a different direction and maybe backtracking,” Greenfield said. “You know, maybe they thought [mandates were] a good decision. But [in LA], there’s no backtracking. It’s like they’re doubling down. [They’re] sticking to [their] guns here even though nobody else is.”

October 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Canadian intelligence reported ‘no concerns’ about Freedom Convoy on day Trudeau invoked Emergencies Act

By Anthony Murdoch – Life Site News – October 17, 2022

OTTAWA – Documents show that the Canadian federal government received regular updates indicating the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa were non-violent in nature, despite the Trudeau administration’s claims otherwise.

According to Blacklock’s Reporter, Internal Department of Public Safety reports show that on the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act (EA) to clear out the protesters, a report stated the protests were peaceful.

“No concerns at this time,” noted a February 14 report from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Trudeau on the same day, however, claimed to reporters that the protests were “illegal and dangerous,” saying they could not be allowed “to continue.”

Multiple daily reports from the Department of Public Safety leading up to Trudeau enacting the EA show that there were no major concerns that the Freedom Convoy protests were violent.

A January 27 report said, “The Freedom Convoy so far has been peaceful and cooperative with police.”

Blacklock’s Reporter listed five such statements asserting there were no issues.

A January 29 report stated there were “No major incidents,” while a report from February 1 said, “no violence took place.”

A February 6 report concluded that disruption to “government activities is so far minor.”

A report from February 10 said that there was a “minimal” amount of people on Parliament Hill, while an update from the next day stated the “situation remains stable and planning is ongoing.”

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino also claimed the Freedom Convoy might be violent in nature, despite the internal reports stating otherwise.

Government staff even wrote that the “majority of the events have been peaceful,” noting that as most people were working from home, there was very little disruption to “government activities.”

Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs in a memo said that it had “not observed any significant indicators of foreign state involvement related to the truckers’ convoy.”

Canada’s draconian COVID measures were the catalyst for the Freedom Convoy, which took to the streets of Ottawa to demand an end to all mandates for three weeks in February.

The EA gave the Trudeau government unprecedented powers such as the ability to freeze bank accounts without a court order and deploy police at will.

While Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23, many who supported the Freedom Convoy were targeted by the federal government and had their bank accounts frozen without a court order.

Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission began public hearings last Thursday into Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act.

The hearings are open to the public livestream and will call forth at least 65 witnesses over six weeks.

Video footage showed police using what many said was disproportionate force

Many claims by government officials and mainstream media pundits that the Freedom Convoy would lead to violence never came to light.

After Trudeau had enacted the EA, scuffles only broke out after police directly intervened in the protests.

Video footage of police on horseback trampling an elderly protester went viral, as well as videos showing non-violent protesters being physically assaulted and pepper-sprayed by police.

Also, an independent journalist said she was beaten and intentionally shot at with a tear gas canister.

Just recently, former Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief Peter Sloly testified that Freedom Convoy protesters were permitted by the cops to park their vehicles outside Canada’s Parliament in the early days of the protest.

OPS interim chief Steve Bell recently acknowledged his department did not request that Trudeau invoke EA to take down the Freedom Convoy.

Even Sloly said he did not request the use of the EA. He resigned as OPS Chief on February 25.

Trudeau had made claims that the Freedom Convoy protesters were funded by foreign entities with ties to terrorist-linked financing. This reasoning was used as justification for Trudeau to use the EA against the Freedom Convoy.

Canada’s state broadcaster the CBC in March had to retract a story that falsely claimed most support for the Freedom Convoy came from foreigners.

October 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

‘Profiles of the Vaccine-Injured’: New CHD Book Exposes Life-Changing Impact of Vaccine Injuries

The Defender – October 17, 2022

Governments, public health experts and the media have so often repeated the false claims that vaccine injuries are “rare,” “almost nonmeasurable” or “one in a million,” that many people believe them — until they experience an injury.

The controlled messaging — together with censorship of vaccine injury stories in the public square and indecent gaslighting of injured individuals who speak up — have thrown a cloak of invisibility over vaccination’s potential to ruin health and torpedo financial security.

“Profiles of the Vaccine-Injured: ‘A Lifetime Price to Pay’” — a new book by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) with a foreword by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — exposes the official soft-pedaling of vaccine risks as a dangerous lie.

As the book takes pains to explain, vaccine injuries are common, not rare. They are “equal opportunity,” affecting all demographic groups, including young and old, rich and poor.

Vaccine injuries are, more often than not, profoundly life-changing, and they have significant ripple effects on family members.

And, with the advent of experimental COVID-19 injections, they are occurring on a scale never before seen.

Because nearly all vaccines, whether fully licensed or authorized for emergency use, are liability-free, in most cases, families are left holding the bag for the medical, educational, caregiver and other expenses that a serious vaccine injury generates — costs that have the potential to bankrupt not only individual households but the nation.

Nine stories

The heart of the book resides in nine vaccine injury stories, told by mothers of injured children and by persons injured as adults.

Their injuries, at ages ranging from 12 months to 49 years, followed receipt of “routine” childhood vaccines, travel vaccines or COVID-19 shots.

The interviews convey in vivid detail what it’s like to live with conditions such as severe autism, chronic pain or immune systems gone haywire — and, in one case, describe the tragic loss of a promising teenager’s life shortly after receiving a shot.

The nine individuals also describe experiences with gaslighting and obfuscation by the medical profession, strained family relationships and interrupted or curtailed careers, along with immense regret for “the worst decision of their life.”

Equally importantly, they identify a theme that, while common, is perhaps one of the most underrecognized facts about vaccine injury: “When it comes to vaccine injuries, there’s no help legally or financially — you’re on your own.”

Dollars and cents

Although the two pieces of legislation that established vaccines’ liability-free status have been in place for years or decades — the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (for most licensed vaccines) and the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act (for Emergency Use Authorization vaccines) — the laws and their financial ramifications remain unknown to large swaths of the public.

Both laws created mechanisms for vaccine injury compensation, but little more than one in four petitioners (28%) to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program have obtained anything — usually after years of wrangling with adversarial government attorneys — and no one has received compensation from the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) for a COVID-19 vaccine injury.

Just after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, The Associated Press described the CICP as “an obscure program with a record of seldom paying claims,” and interviewed worried experts who admitted the program could “get overwhelmed very, very quickly.”

Instead of getting “overwhelmed,” Forbes noted that relatively few individuals had, by November 2021, applied to CICP for compensation for COVID-19 vaccine-related injuries or deaths — around 1,360 — but the financial magazine speculated that the low number might be because “people don’t know the special fund exists.”

By September 2022, the landscape had shifted, with nearly 9,000 CICP petitions filed, though the program’s fiscal year 2022 budget contained funds sufficient to compensate at most three applicants.

As Wayne Rohde, a long-time analyst of U.S. vaccine injury compensation statistics, stated in an analysis of the CICP, “Our government really does not want to compensate those who have been injured.”

An unhealthy nation

In its introductory chapters, “Profiles of the Vaccine-Injured” also takes a comprehensive look at other sources of information on vaccine injuries, ranging from vaccine package inserts to published research.

Discussing the poor showing of U.S. children — and adults — in global health rankings, the book reiterates a point that CHD has emphasized in other books: namely, that vaccination must be considered a key “elephant in the room” linked to America’s chronic disease epidemics.

The recent forced release of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) V-safe app suggests that the COVID-19 injections are responsible for shocking numbers of debilitating symptoms, including severe pain as well as unprecedented rates of hospitalization and worse.

In fact, while Americans’ health disadvantage — which “begins at birth and extends across the life course” — had translated into plunging life expectancy even before the COVID-19 injections, premature deaths have become especially noticeable since the vaccines’ rollout.

Exposing the truth behind the vaccine safety myth, “Profiles of the Vaccine-Injured” is, as Kennedy writes in his foreword, ultimately a call to arms.

“When you are done weeping and tearing out your hair from fury, frustration and indignation, join Children’s Health Defense in doing something about it,” Kennedy wrote.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

October 18, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics | , | Leave a comment

Americans criticize US Middle Eastern policies

By Viktor Mikhin – New Eastern Outlook – 18.10.2022

The USA never misses an opportunity to present itself as an open and democratic society and a state in which the government authorities respect the will of the majority of the people and tailor their policies accordingly. That may have been the case in the past, but the facts no longer support this view – the President and his team are pushing through policies which favor their own interests and which are quite different from what they promised in their election campaigns.

There is a great deal of evidence to support this claim, but one particularly striking example is a new wide-ranging survey of Americans’ views on Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. The survey revealed that the majority of young Americans oppose their country’s policy in relation to Israel and, specifically against its sale of arms to the Israeli regime. The survey also shows that there is a great deal of support in American society for the Iran nuclear deal.

The survey, conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation (EGF), shows that young Americans are more politically aware than older generations in relation to Israel’s aggressive policies against the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. Most respondents aged between 18 and 29 were not in favor of continuing to supply arms to Israel. Older Americans (over sixty years old), on the other hand, tend to be in favor of the US providing military support to Israel.

The US supplies Israel with military aid worth some $4 billion a year. As a result, Israel is the biggest recipient of American military support in the world. But this support is being paid for by American taxpayers, many of whom are unaware that their taxes are being used to support the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians. Similarly, more than 80% of Americans support the Biden administration’s policy of negotiating in order to revive the Iran nuclear deal, as they consider that this will help improve the situation in the Middle East. Both in the region and at the international level there is a great deal of debate about how ready ordinary Americans are to criticize their government’s military support for dictatorships and authoritarian regimes enforcing policies of territorial occupation and ethnic segregation. Washington, in a bid to justify its actions, frequently claims that its support is made necessary by so-called security concerns, but many are skeptical of these arguments, dismissing them as cheap populism.

Mark Hannah, senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, describes the motivation behind the survey, “We began this survey five years ago because we believed lawmakers and foreign policy leaders conducting foreign policy on behalf of the American people would benefit from a window into their opinions and priorities.” He also expressed the hope that the survey results would be used by decision makers responsible for foreign policy in relation to the Middle East would study the survey “to make the activities they pursue more sensitive to – and informed by – the opinions of their constituents, and to bridge the gap between the concerns of policymakers and those of ordinary Americans.”

Unfortunately, the above hope is very naive: officials in Washington and in the Biden administration do not take the interests of ordinary Americans into account when making foreign policy decisions. It would suffice to cite Washington’s involvement supporting neo-Nazi groups in the war in Ukraine, thus threatening the world with nuclear war.

Or one could cite its offer to supply Israel – completely free of charge – with four Boeing military refueling aircraft over the next four years. Boeing signed a contract with the US Defense Department for the supply of four Boeing KC-46 Pegasus aircraft at a cost of $927 million. In effect, this means that the purchase price of $927 million will be paid by the US taxpayer, and Boeing will make a handsome profit from the transaction. According to Israeli media reports and also official government sources, Israel is already planning to use these state-of-the art aircraft to attack Iranian territory. It is obvious that the revival of the so-called Iran nuclear deal is in the interests both of the USA and of ordinary Americans, and that it would have a very positive effect on the highly tense situation in the Middle East.

In a formal statement on the decision to supply Israel with the refueling planes, Benny Gantz, Israel’s Minister of Defense, said, “This is further proof of the alliance and the strategic relations of the Israeli and American defense establishments.” In line with their standard practice, the Minister of Defense and other Israeli officials, along with their counterparts in Washington, all falsely name Iran as the justification for their huge military aid budget. This military aid has support from both parties in Congress, and is approved each year by a majority of lawmakers, even though this support goes against the interests of ordinary Americans.

According to a study by Maryland University, less than 1% of respondents consider Israel to be one of Washington’s two main allies. Many other surveys conducted over a number of years confirm the findings of the Eurasia Group Foundation. Earlier this year a survey by Pew Research also found that Americans under 30 tended to have a negative view of Israel. 61% of respondents in that age group felt sympathy towards the Palestinians. Maryland University also found that only a small proportion were in favor of stronger links with Israel, and that Israel is able to manipulate these links to favor its own interests.

In an interview with Middle East Eye, Dr. Zuri Linetsky, a Research Fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, explained that many American respondents who stated that they were against arms sales to Israel explained that they saw Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory as a violation of human rights. That last survey also found that many Americans are against their government’s continuing arms sales to Saudi Arabia, with 70% of respondents critical of Washington’s policy in relation to Riyadh.

That is despite the fact that rights groups are deeply concerned about the Biden administration’s continuing approvals of new arms sales to countries such as Israel, which have a record of invading other Arab nations. In August President Biden approved a $5 billion sale of rocket technology to Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The survey also shows that respondents are in favor of reining in US military involvement abroad, and, conversely, want to see the US administration make more efforts in the field of diplomacy, especially in relation to US rivals.

One of the key findings of the survey conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation is that respondents attach a lot of importance to the Iran nuclear deal. It revealed that, irrespective of whether they vote Democrat or Republican, most Americans are in favor of talks with Tehran. Almost 80% of them support Joe Biden’s administration engaging in talks to revive the nuclear deal. To a great extent, support for the talks cuts across party divisions, with more than 70% of Republicans believing that the USA should continue with the talks.

However, approximately 80% of respondents also feel that Congress should more strictly control the President’s powers and authority in military matters, and that such decisions should be made by Congress. The USA has invaded many countries, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, and its military continues to be involved in combat operations in Syria. Washington is also still illegally “occupying” a number of Arab countries, and has military bases in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. And the Pentagon does all this without consulting Congress – it prefers to take action and present the legislature with a fait accompli.

When asked about Afghanistan, almost two thirds of respondents consider that the most important lesson to be learned from the Afghan war is that the USA should not be involved in nation-building, or that it should only send troops into harm’s way if its vital national interests are threatened.

As for nuclear weapons, almost 75% of respondents said that they were concerned about this problem. Those respondents who have served or currently serve in the armed forces were less concerned than those with no military experience. “For the vast majority of the 21st century, the United States has been involved in conflicts in far-flung parts of the world. So the question is, is this what the American people want? Does this represent their interests?”, asked Zuri Linetsky, in his interview with Middle East Eye.

In conclusion, the author can confidently state that the survey is a good test to determine the areas in which respondents are dissatisfied with American policies in relation to the Middle East, and what they consider should be their leaders’ priorities, whether concerning international or domestic matters. The survey shows that in relation to many questions, the White House’s policies are inconsistent with the views of the majority of respondents. The survey sample was made up of a highly diverse group of Americans from all parts of the country, with different religions, political affiliations, drawn from every age group and representing all income levels.

What kind of democracy is that?

October 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Submission to Canada’s Public Order Emergency Commission

Fearless Canada | October 16, 2022

As a non-partisan, volunteer activist group, Fearless Canada was present at the beginning and on several other occasions during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. As such, many of our members witnessed first-hand what the situation looked like on the ground and how it all began. We took extensive video footage of the events during the first weekend from the moment when truckers were being directed toward Parliament by Ottawa police. We have decided to submit our evaluation of the events as well as our strongly held view that the invocation of the Emergency Measures Act (hereafter referred to as “EMA”) by the Trudeau government was not only inappropriate, but also unlawful and unconstitutional.

We must first unequivocally state that, in our view, the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the EMA in no way met the legal threshold to do so. The usage of the EMA is reserved for exceptional circumstances in which a serious foreign or existential threat imperils the security of the nation. Such security threats would be typically related to war, as the older, subsequently replaced War Measures Act aimed to address. In no conceivable way could the temporary discomfort or inconvenience borne by Ottawa citizens or businesses justify the use of an Act that is meant to aid the government in protecting the nation against threats of an incalculably larger scale. As such, the purpose of the Commission is not to determine whether the invocation of the EMA served the Trudeau government in its objective to deescalate the so-called “occupation” of Ottawa’s downtown core, but rather to assess whether the legal threshold for its invocation was met.

The Early Days in Ottawa

Our group arrived in Ottawa in the early afternoon of January 28, 2022. The first thing we noticed was Ottawa police directing truckers and their rigs onto Wellington Street towards Parliament. The atmosphere was festive and light despite the frigid weather. As more protesters arrived in Ottawa over the course of the weekend, we would quickly observe that the crowds were both peaceful and diverse. Men, women, and children from all different backgrounds and walks of life gathered in the capital with a common goal. They demanded that the Trudeau government lift measures that, in their view, were both unjustified and discriminatory in nature. As a result of those measures, the majority of protesters in Ottawa were themselves directly impacted in profound and often irreversible ways.

In talking with dozens of truckers and protesters, we learned that many had lost their jobs, connections to loved ones, access to essential services, and much more. While speaking with police officers, we learned that many felt they were unlawfully coerced into taking a COVID vaccine in order to keep their jobs. Our impression on the ground was that the majority of police officers were in fact aligned with the goals of the protest. They, too, wanted to see an immediate end to damaging and ineffective policies that divided our nation along medical lines previously acknowledged as a matter of private and personal concern.

Legacy Media and the Trudeau Government’s Portrayal of the Freedom Convoy

While in Ottawa, our group kept an eye on the news coming out of legacy media outlets such as the CBC, CTV News, and Global News. It became impossible not to notice that a concerted narrative had quickly taken shape to misrepresent the situation and characterize protesters as far-right extremists, racists, antisemites, and more. The unjustified slander of protesters directly conflicted with our experience on the ground. What we saw was a festive and peaceful rally, replete with volunteers offering food and shelter from the cold, routinely cleaning streets and sidewalks, and organizing fun activities for the kids. At no time did we spot a single racist or Nazi in the vast crowds, as was incessantly suggested by both the Liberal government and the mainstream media. From what we could tell, these characterizations were fabricated in order to serve a narrative that aimed to discredit the legitimacy and lawfulness of the protest.

As time went on, the media’s portrayal of the situation continued to unhinge itself from reality. The press published stories about imminent violence, a van loaded with illegal firearms, and more. None of these allegations turned out to be true. Yet, the misrepresentation of the situation had already reached the eyes and ears of Canadians from coast to coast, very few of which witnessed the event themselves. But by then, the damage had already been done, just as it seemed to have been intended.

The Invocation of the EMA

At the moment the Trudeau government invoked the EMA, it must be noted that the protest in Ottawa was already in the process of de-escalation. The protest organizers and their lawyers had already brokered a dismantlement deal with the Ottawa mayor and police services. Truckers were already on their way out of the downtown core and the blockades at two Canadian points of entry had already long-since been dismantled. Yet rather than follow an organized de-escalation plan agreed to by all factions, Ottawa police and the Trudeau government instead opted to escalate the situation by using violence and propaganda against Canadian citizens. The impacts of the invocation of the EMA were profound and unwarranted.

Immediately ensuing the invocation of the EMA, police and governmental authorities froze protesters’ bank accounts and deployed violent anti-riot squads all over the downtown core of Ottawa. Several protesters were injured as police again escalated tensions using all manner of crowd dispersal techniques. In the days following the invocation of the EMA, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland wasted no time in announcing that certain aspects of the EMA would be written into law, granting broad and unconstitutional powers to government without the requisite EMA enacted. It had become clear that the Trudeau government had a predetermined objective in enacting the EMA, one that would grant greater leverage over political dissidents and, more broadly, Canadians that disagreed with its ideology. This in itself represents an egregious misuse of the EMA in order to further a political agenda.

Conclusion

The volunteer activists at Fearless Canada include Canadian scholars, lawyers, professors, small business owners, and artists. We unanimously and unequivocally feel that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the EMA as a response to ongoing protests in Ottawa was both unlawful and unconstitutional. We submit that the government manipulated public opinion by fabricating evidence of unlawful activity in Ottawa and invoked the EMA under false pretenses in order to abet their predetermined agenda. We believe that the evidence overwhelmingly supports our position, and we look forward to seeing all of it brought to light during the Commission’s discovery process.

This statement was authored by the executive of Fearless Canada and endorsed by members.

The statement has been submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission of Canada, which began public hearings on Thursday, October 13, which will run every weekday until November 25. Live hearings can be viewed here, and True North Centre publishes a recap for each day.

October 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Court: Facebook “fact-check’ label does not mean that the assessment is “objective fact”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 15, 2022

US TV host and journalist John Stossel sued Facebook (Meta) and its third-party “fact-checkers” – specifically, Science Feedback, as several of these groups’ parent companies, and its site Climate Feedback – for defamation.

But the US District Court, Northern District of  has granted both ’s motion to dismiss the defamation complaint with prejudice (meaning that it cannot be refiled), as well as Meta’s and Science Feedback’s anti-SLAPP motions.

We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.

One of Stossel’s videos, “Government Fueled Fires,” got labeled as “missing context,” and then deliberately downranked by ’s algorithms, resulting in traffic and revenue loss from his account with more than a million followers.

The video was seen as “downplaying” climate change as the decisive factor and primary cause of the 2020 California wildfires, asserting instead that although the phenomenon plays a role, it was bad policies that contributed the most to the scale of that natural disaster.

In April 2021, Stossel published another video, “Are We Doomed?”, that discusses what the journalist calls environmental alarmists and their claims. This one received the “partly false information” from Facebook’s “fact-checking partner.”

Stossel’s failed lawsuit sought to prove that Facebook and the “fact-checker” in question defamed him in the first instance by falsely inferring that he made a statement he says he never did, and in the other, by accusing him of making false statements.

The court explained its decision by saying that, although called a “fact-check program” what Facebook is actually doing – and has the right to do – is “reflect a subjective judgment about the accuracy and reliability of assertions made.”

Therefore, the use of the term “fact” isn’t to say that Facebook is under an obligation to establish actual facts, and apply its censorship accordingly. “Simply because the process by which content is assessed and a label applied is called a ‘fact-check’ does not mean that the assessment itself is an actionable statement of objective fact.”

The defamation complaint was dismissed based on CDA’s Section 230 and the protections it affords Facebook in crafting (and wording) its policies.

Facebook’s and “fact-checker’s” motions to dismiss based on anti-SLAPP (Anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) rules were granted because Facebook is a public forum, the court said.

October 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Et Tu, PayPal? The EU’s Role in Defunding Dissent

BY ROBERT KOGON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | OCTOBER 15, 2022

PayPal appears unsure whether it should participate in the current crusade against online “disinformation” or not.

First it closed the PayPal accounts of The Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, and even the personal account of their founder Toby Young, and then, two weeks later, it restored them. Then it announced that it would be docking $2,500 from anyone who uses its services in connection with “promoting misinformation” and then, two days later, it again reversed course and announced that this language was never intended to be included in its new Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

It was not intended to be included? Well, where did it come from then?

Could the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation and its Digital Services Act (DSA), about which I wrote in my last Brownstone article, have something to do with PayPal’s skittish forays into “combatting disinformation?” Well, yes, they could, and you may rest assured that EU officials or representatives have already had a word with PayPal about them.

As discussed in my previous article, the Code requires signatories to censor what is deemed by the European Commission to be disinformation on pain of massive fines. The enforcement mechanism, i.e. the fines, has been established under the DSA.

PayPal is not, for the moment, a signatory of the Code. Furthermore, since it is neither a content platform nor a search engine – the potential channels of “disinformation” targeted in the DSA – it is obviously not in a position to censor per se. But the very first commitment in the “strengthened” Code of Practice unveiled by the European Commission last June is dedicated precisely to demonetization.

Unsurprisingly, given the nature of the business models of the most prominent signatories – Twitter, Meta/Facebook and Google/YouTube – this commitment and the six “measures” it comprises are mostly related to advertising practices.

But the “Guidance” that the Commission issued in May 2021, prior to the Code’s drafting, explicitly calls for “broadening” efforts to defund alleged purveyors of disinformation and contains the following highly pertinent recommendation:

Actions to defund disinformation should be broadened by the participation of players active in the online monetisation value chain, such as online e-payment services, e-commerce platforms and relevant crowd-funding/donation systems. (p. 8; emphasis added)

PayPal, the online e-payment service par excellence, was thus already in the Commission’s sights.

Somewhat illogically, given their own emphasis on advertising and the fact that an advertising-based revenue model and a donation or pay model would ordinarily be regarded as alternatives, the signatories of the “strengthened” Code thus pledged to

… exchange best practices and strengthen cooperation with relevant players, expanding to organisations active in the online monetisation value chain, such as online e-payment services, e-commerce platforms and relevant crowd-funding/donation systems. … (Commitment 3)

But the outreach to PayPal has not only occurred via third parties like the Code signatories.

In late May, shortly after the text of the Digital Services Act had been finalized – but before the European Parliament had even had the opportunity to vote on it! – an 8-member delegation from the parliament was dispatched to California to discuss the DSA and the related Digital Markets Act (DMA) with relevant “digital stakeholders.”

In addition to Code signatories Google and Meta, the “host list,” so to say – since the parliamentarians were to be the guests and they were inviting themselves! – also included PayPal. (See the delegation report here.)

Curiously, Twitter was not included among the companies and organizations to be visited, perhaps because of the turmoil unleashed by Elon Musk’s takeover bid. But, as touched upon in my prior article, Thierry Breton, the EU’s Internal Market Commissioner, had already paid a visit to Musk in Austin, Texas earlier in the month to have a word with him about the DSA.

No less than three of the delegation’s eight members – Alexandra Geese, Marion Walsmann and delegation head Andreas Schwab – were German, whereas Germans only account for around 13% of the total members of the parliament. This stark overrepresentation is telling, since Germany has undoubtedly been the prime mover behind the EU’s censorship drive, having already adopted its own online censorship law in 2017 with the express motivation of “combatting criminal fake news in social networks” (p. 1 of the legislative proposal in German here).

The German legislation, commonly known as “NetzDG” or the Network Enforcement Act, threatens platforms with fines of up to €50 million for hosting content that infringes any of a variety of German laws that restrict speech in ways that would be unthinkable and unconstitutional in the United States. It is also the source of the Twitter notices that many Twitter users will have received informing them that their account had been denounced by “a person from Germany.”

As noted above, PayPal is not presently a signatory of the Code of Practice on Disinformation. On July 14, however, just nine days after the passage of the DSA, the Commission issued a “Call for interest to become a Signatory” of the Code. The call is explicitly addressed to, among others, “e-payment services, e-commerce platforms, crowd-funding/donation systems.” The latter are identified as “providers whose services may be used to monetize disinformation.”

Evidently not satisfied merely with “deplatforming,” the Commission has thus made clear that the next frontier in its combat against “disinformation” is attempting to defund dissenters who, despite their discrimination by or banishment from the major online platforms, have managed to preserve a place in the online discussion thanks to platforms of their own.

PayPal, moreover, will know that the “exclusive” – in effect, dictatorial – powers that the DSA confers on the European Commission include the power to designate the “very large” online platforms that are susceptible to incurring the massive DSA fines of up to 6% of global turnover. PayPal will easily satisfy the “very large” size criterion of having at least 45 million users in the EU, but it is obviously not a content platform.

Nonetheless, this appears not to be so obvious to the European Commission. For the Commission press release on the call for signatories treats it precisely… as a content platform! Thus, the press release refers to “providers of e-payment services, e-commerce platforms, crowd-funding/donation systems, which may be used to spread disinformation.” Huh?

In the meanwhile, on September 1, the EU has opened a specially-dedicated office or “embassy” in San Francisco to conduct what it itself describes as “digital diplomacy” with US tech firms. The “ambassador,” Commission official Gerard de Graaf, is reportedly one of the drafters of the DSA. Perhaps he will be able to explain the intricacies of the DSA to PayPal – or even already has. PayPal headquarters are, after all, just a stone’s throw away in Palo Alto.

In any case, PayPal has been put on notice, and, with it, so too have dissident websites that depend on user support for their survival. Ignore the EU at your peril.

Robert Kogon is a pen name for a widely-published financial journalist, a translator, and researcher working in Europe. He writes at edv1694.substack.com.

October 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

PayPal is acting like a feudal overlord

By Josie Appleton | Notes On Freedom | October 13, 2022

In the past, if a government wanted a bank to close or freeze a customer’s account it would have to come banging on the door with a court order. Now, governments have shown that they can close private accounts at the drop of a hat. During the Freedom Convoy protests, the Canadian government drew up a list of individuals – on grounds that were never made clear, although the Justice Minister said that Trump supporters should be ‘worried’ – and banks immediately froze their customers’ accounts, no questions asked.

Indeed, payment companies are taking the lead and freezing their own customers’ accounts, because of vague offences such as perceived ‘misinformation’. PayPal recently closed the accounts of lockdown sceptics, doctors for informed consent, critics of trans ideology, even the Free Speech Union (perhaps for defending trans critical feminists). Other companies such as GoFundMe, MasterCard, Stripe, Etsy, and Patreon have closed the accounts of gender campaigners, right-wing campaigners and critics of vaccine mandates.

PayPal’s recent threat to fine its customers up to $2500 for ‘misinformation’ was a new step. Now they are not only closing accounts but also potentially seizing funds. Although PayPal implausibly claimed that the new ‘acceptable use policy’ was published in error – it was up for several days as a link from its Policy Updates page – the principle of PayPal potentially seizing customers’ funds had already been established. When it closed recent accounts, PayPal stated that it would be holding funds for 180 days to see if any ‘damages’ were due. The idea of holding and perhaps seizing customers’ money was already established in practice.

Similarly, during the truckers’ protests in Canada, GoFundMe decided that it was not going to pass on 9 million Canadian dollars of donations to the Freedom Convoy, since the protests had violated its ‘terms of service’. Instead, it would pass the money to ‘credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe’ (donors could get a refund if they filled in a form). Millions of dollars that had been donated by the public for a particular cause were reappropriated and used for some other cause.

Companies are violating the rules of their own market system. Private property rights are supposed to be sacred, protected with a single-minded obsession that outweighs almost everything else. The sociologist Max Weber said that the operation of the market requires that all authorities work according to ‘calculable rules’ and ‘without regard for persons’ (1). When you put money in an account you need to know that it is safe; when you make a payment you need to know that it will go to its intended beneficiary and not someone else.

Now, governments and companies are randomly freezing people’s accounts and they often won’t even tell you why they have done it. They are lording it over private interests. This has something of the Middle Ages about it, when all lands were nominally held from the king and could be seized at any time if a vassal was not sufficiently loyal; the lands would then be given to a more loyal follower. Now, the bureaucratic-corporate elite nominally holds the wealth of the world; we are graciously allowed to use it, so long as we do not use it for misinformation, in which case it will be taken back and reappropriated to a cause of its choice.

Here is another form of that nefarious principle that your ability to take part in public life is a privilege dependent upon good behaviour. With vaccine passports, you could only take part in society if you had obediently received the correct sequence of vaccines and boosters. If you didn’t get a booster on time, your QR code was deactivated and when you tried to buy a cup of coffee it would not work: ‘This code is no longer valid.’ Now, companies are taking it upon themselves to police the marketplace, so that you can only receive funds and make donations if you express the correct opinions on their flagship issues.

Public life is increasingly becoming subject to an ‘acceptable use policy’. If digital currencies go ahead, the potential for authorities to close accounts, freeze and reclaim funds and refuse purchases will be taken to a new level.

The public backlash against PayPal’s latest account freezes was phenomenal. Thousands of people sent complaints to Paypal and cancelled their PayPal accounts in solidarity, a pressure that led to some of these frozen accounts to be reinstated. The lordly presumption of the new corporate elite is terrifying; we must be prepared to fight it every step of the way.

(1) Max Weber, Economy and Society, Vol 2, Uni California Press, p975

October 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Americans should know if US pressured Middle East ally – congressman

Samizdat – October 16, 2022

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should look into whether the White House pressured Saudi Arabia to delay OPEC+’s promised oil production cut, Republican Tom Tiffany demanded in a letter to the congresswoman on Thursday.

The Saudi government had claimed earlier that day that the US government had requested a one-month delay in the 2 million barrels per day production cut announced earlier this month. Putting off the cut, it implied, would postpone the surge in energy prices expected to accompany the move until after the US midterm elections. However, “postponing the OPEC+ decision by a month… would have had negative economic consequences” for Riyadh, a statement from the Kingdom read.

The administration of US President Joe Biden responded by accusing its sometime Arab ally of attempting to “spin and deflect.” The Saudis “knew [the production cut] would increase Russian revenues and blunt the effectiveness of sanctions,” White House spokesman John Kirby reminded Americans.

However, Kirby did not deny their claim outright. He suggested that “other OPEC nations” had “privately” approached the US to support its bid to postpone the reduction, implying that it could not have been solely motivated by the desire to keep control of Congress in November.

“If the Biden administration did attempt to pressure a foreign government to influence the outcome of the US election, that’s something Americans deserve to know,” Tiffany tweeted on Thursday alongside his letter to Pelosi.

If the Saudis’ claims are to be believed, he wrote, the administration’s efforts to postpone the cut amounted to an “illegal solicitation of a foreign in-kind contribution by the White House on behalf of Democrats’ midterm campaign efforts.”

In addition to investigating whether calls took place between the Biden administration and the Saudis about potentially delaying the production cut, Tiffany urged Pelosi to obtain the transcripts of those calls. He also insisted that US administration officials who may have asked Saudi officials to delay the cut be identified.

Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, confirmed on Sunday that the president would act “methodically” to re-evaluate the US relationship with Saudi Arabia. The administration has been threatening to “reassess” the partnership ever since the price cut was announced. However, while the president warned there would be “some consequences” for the Saudis, their nature has yet to be publicly revealed.

Inflation and the high cost of living are the chief issues on voters’ minds heading into the midterms next month, casting the Democrats’ ability to hold onto both the House and Senate into doubt as polls indicate few voters trust Biden to effectively manage the economy.

October 16, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics | , | Leave a comment

CA DOCTORS FIGHT BACK AGAINST ‘MEDICAL MISINFORMATION’ BILL

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | October 14, 2022

Dr. Jeff Barke, a founding member of America’s Frontline Doctors, joins Del to discuss California’s new law enacted with the passage of AB2098, which effectively makes it illegal for doctors to disagree with politicians.

October 15, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The Alex Jones verdict is a declaration of war on independent media

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | October 14, 2022

A Connecticut court has handed down a 1 billion dollar fine on radio host and independent journalist Alex Jones, for “spreading misinformation” about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting.

This is a travesty, and that any could call such an absurd penalty “justice” is sickening. Especially when it is so obviously designed as warning to everyone in the independent media.

Indeed, outside of the specifics of this case, the potential fallout for everyone in the alt-media sphere is terrifying, because already the Jones precedent is being used as an argument for “regulation” of the internet.

Forget about Sandy Hook. Maybe it happened or maybe it didn’t, experience teaches us that virtually nothing happens exactly as the media reports, but even if it did – even if every single word Alex Jones ever said about Sandy Hook was a deliberate lie – you cannot “regulate” that, you cannot make it a crime, and you cannot silence people’s future for words they have said in the past.

That is censorship.

People have the right to free speech. And that includes – MUST include – the right to lie and the right to simply be wrong.

If you take away those rights, you put the power to regulate speech in the hands of those with enough influence to create official “truth” or hold the “right” opinions. And that has nothing to do with objective truth, or real facts.

The media, and the establishment it serves, do not care about truth or facts.

To take a recent example, a Pfizer executive recently reported the pharmaceutical giant never did any research to ascertain if their Covid “vaccine” halted transmission of the “disease” commonly called Covid.

There was never any trial data showing the “vaccines” prevented transmission of “covid”, and that means every outlet, channel or pundit who claimed the vaccine “stopped the spread” was actively “spreading misinformation”.

What’s more this misinformation has likely led to literally thousands of deaths. That is far more harmful than anything anyone could say about a ten-year-old school shooting, real or not.

Will CNN or The Guardian or the NYT face a billion-dollar fine?

Of course they won’t. Because this is not about “misinformation”, this is about uncontrolled information. It is about regulating – even criminalising – the free flow of ideas and opinions.

Even if this kind of rule were equally applied to all media on every topic, it would be still awful… and we all know it won’t be.

Instead, it will be applied to the independent media, to alternative and anti-establishment voices, and to the internet.

If you doubt that, check the media reaction.

One argument against the need for any new regulation of free speech is that we already have legal systems in place to protect people from “harmful speech” – threats, libel and defamation.

Indeed, Jones’ fate here could be held up as a prime example of “the system working”.

But that is not enough, according to this article on NPR which bemoans the “limits” of de-platforming and defamation suits.

That opinion is shared by this article on NBC, which headlines “Alex Jones’ lawsuit losses are not enough”, and concludes:

Defamation lawsuits are an important tool in the quest to reduce harm from harassment and abuse. But they are not a solution to the lie machines built by incredibly savvy, incredibly cynical pundits like Alex Jones. This week’s verdict, coupled with whatever else happens next, will certainly make conspiracy theorists think twice before they inflict pain on private individuals in the future. But it will not solve the bigger problem, which is our world’s dangerous, pervasive flood of misinformation.

That line about “making conspiracy theorists think twice” is the most honest sentence in the article, and confirms one of the major aims of the Jones trial narrative is to set an example.

But while the point of the article could not be clearer, the author never actually uses the words “regulation”, “legislation” or “censorship”. He chooses to play a more subtle game than that.

The same cannot be said for Simon Jenkins in yesterday’s Guardian, who eschews subtlety completely:

Only proper online regulation can stop poisonous conspiracists like Alex Jones

“Proper online regulation”. We all know what that means, it means censorship. He’s not even hiding it in coy language, but openly arguing for a global censorship programme.

He begins by pining for the days when nobody could get a scrap of the public’s attention without going through approved channels:

There have always been Alex Joneses spreading poison from the world’s soap boxes and pavements. As a boy I used to listen to them at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park […] Their lies never made it into newspapers or on to the airwaves. Free speech went only as far as the human voice could carry. Beyond that, “news” was mediated behind a wall of editors, censors and regulators, to keep it from gullible and dangerous ears.

Imagine the kind of mind that is nostalgic for an age when “News” – he is right to use quotes – had to pass through a “wall of editors, censors and regulators”. Imagine being able to simply dismiss the multitude of the public as “gullible and dangerous”.

From there he moves on to praise the verdict against Jones, and the state-backed censorship exhibited by the major social media platforms, but laments it does not go far enough, even hinting that people should have their own private websites confiscated:

The main social media outlets have accepted a modicum of responsibility to monitor content […] attempts are made to keep up with a deluge of often biased and mendacious material, but […] by the time it is taken down it re-emerges elsewhere. Jones has been banned by Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but he can still reach audiences on his own website […] Justice is meaningless without enforcement or prevention.

Next, he tells us who exactly will be in the crosshairs of this suggested global censor. It’s a predictable list:

victims may have the rule of law on their side, but that does not curb the climate deniers, anti-vaxxers, trolls and QAnon followers or the appalling and anonymous abuse that now greets the expression online of any liberal – I might say reasonable – point of view.

Alongside a “no true Scotsman” fallacy altering the definition of free speech:

No one seriously believes free speech is an absolute right.

Like all censors before them, modern censors such as Jenkins seek to codify their desire for control in the language of concern. Proselytizing about the need to “protect people” and “the greater good”. They would, they claim, only censor harmful lies.

Such is the call of the censor through the ages. We’re only censoring heresy, we’re only censoring blasphemy, we’re only censoring treason.

Jenkins is aware of this, even as he uses special pleading to argue his version of censorship would be different:

Historians of the news media can chart a progress from early censorship by the church and crown to state licensing and legal regulation. This control was initially employed to enforce conformity, but over the past century it has also sought to sustain diversity and suppress blatant falsity.

The hypocrisy is rank. “Maybe they used to enforce conformity, but of course we would never do that…we just want to silence people who disagree, for society’s sake.”

Of course, none of those who seek to control the speech of their fellow humans ever claim to want to censor the truth. They call it “sedition” or “propaganda”, and claim to be safeguarding “the truth” even as they pull out tongues or break their victims on the rack.

Now they call it “Misinformation”. It’s all the same in the end.

One more time, for the people at the back.

  • Free speech is NOT reserved for people who are “right”.
  • Free speech is NOT only for people who tell “the truth”.
  • Free speech is NOT to be moderated by “a wall of editors and regulators”.

Free speech is not a privilege in the gift of the state, a commodity to be regulated by the government or a child’s toy to be punitively confiscated by grown-ups who know better.

It is a right. For everyone. Everywhere. Always.

And if it is removed from one of us, it is removed from all of us.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

A Look Back at the Demonization of the Unvaccinated

By Michael P Senger  | The New Normal | October 13, 2022

Social media has been in an uproar since a member of European Parliament posted a video of a hearing in which a Pfizer director admitted the company never tested whether its Covid mRNA vaccine prevents transmission prior to its approval for emergency use.

Though the fact that Covid mRNA vaccines do not prevent transmission was, of course, abundantly clear from the data soon after their implementation, this myth was a primary justification for vaccine passes and a primary cause of the unprecedented venom launched at those who refused Covid vaccines throughout 2021 and continuing through today.

Not only did governments exert this pressure through policy, but in many cases politicians and officials used their office to deliberately stoke the social stigmatization of the unvaccinated. Here’s a look back at some of the unprecedented vitriol that was launched at those who refused Covid vaccines from 2021 and beyond.

Officials in many jurisdictions proposed making the unvaccinated pay more for healthcare.

 

In Victoria, Australia — where lockdowns were longer than in perhaps any other city in the world—one politician proposed cutting the unvaccinated out of the national health system entirely.

 

A particularly disturbing idea that began to gain serious traction among the elite commentariat was to have hospitals triage emergency care to serve the unvaccinated last, or even deny healthcare to the unvaccinated entirely—a fairly clear-cut crime against humanity.

 

One vocal proponent of the idea of triaging emergency care to disfavor the unvaccinated was David Frum, Senior Editor of the Atlantic, most famous for his outspoken support for the invasion of Iraq. When his infamous tweet on the subject sparked an uproar, Frum doubled down.

Piers Morgan agreed that the unvaccinated should be denied emergency care.

 

Shockingly, this appalling idea of triaging emergency care based on vaccination status is still being proposed to this day.

 

The demonization of the unvaccinated was, of course, far from limited to healthcare. Vilifying the unvaccinated became a kind of illiberal fad among the elite commentariat. The US CDC even paid screen writers and comedians to promote Covid vaccines, which in some cases involved paying them to mock the unvaccinated.

In a bout of recidivism to the early 20th century, Austria and Germany introduced the chilling concept of “lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

“Lockdown for the unvaccinated” gained traction in the English-speaking world as well.

Most countries, cities, and states across the western world introduced vaccine passes that their own citizens had to show in order to partake in daily life. The World Health Organization published an extensive document on implementing a digital vaccine-pass system, including an international vaccine status registry and instructions on how to later revoke someone’s vaccine pass.

 

The most dystopian of these vaccine pass systems was in Lithuania, where the unvaccinated were banned from nearly all public spaces and employment outside their homes; the few shops where they could purchase essentials had to post large red signs on their doors indicating that unvaccinated persons could be present.

And of course, who could forget Justin Trudeau’s classic fuhrer-style rant about having to share public transportation with the unvaccinated, despite government documents later revealing that he had no science to back any of these claims.

Like so much of the response to Covid, these vaccine passes and the illiberal fad of stigmatizing the unvaccinated were unscientific, unprecedented, ineffective, totalitarian, brutal, and dumb.

It was never remotely realistic for any government to expect every single person to get vaccinated, especially when the vaccine in question involved a novel genetic-based therapy. Thus, these proposals to impose draconian hardships on those who refused Covid vaccines would inevitably involve the state imposing draconian hardships on a sizable portion of the population.

According to Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, one of the most credible voices on the subject, Covid vaccines likely yielded benefits for the elderly and vulnerable, but it remains entirely unclear whether Covid vaccines have yielded any benefit at all for healthy adults and especially for children. Coupled with the still-unknown risks associated with mRNA technology and the now well-documented cases of death and serious injury from these vaccines, for governments across the world to have exerted extreme pressure on children and healthy adults to get these vaccines is absolutely sickening.

That some healthy young people were surely coerced into receiving an injection that led to their death or serious injury, when the data showed that the benefits did not outweigh the risks, is an unconscionable tragedy.

October 14, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

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