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 aletho |
Civil Liberties | European Union, Germany, Human rights |
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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 aletho |
Civil Liberties | Canada, Human rights, United States |
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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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics | Saudi Arabia, United States |
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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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | The Guardian |
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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 aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Australia, Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Pictured is the Federal President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, violating the Infection Protection Act, which requires masks in all local and long-distance trains. He pleads that he only took his mask off for a few seconds for the purposes of a short video message and some publicity photographs. Alas, the law provides for no such exception, and why should it? The official position of the German government is that unmasked people are a danger to themselves and others, particularly when they are on trains.
Now this is merely the latest in a string of similar incidents, including these barefaced mask mandate-happy Greens at Oktoberfest and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unmasked government flight to Canada. It’s long become clear that nobody—not even the politicians most in favour of mandates—believes that masking is worth the trouble. And when you think about it, that’s depressing indeed, because how can we ever get rid of these rules if they are this discredited, and yet they persist?
October 14, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Covid-19, Germany, Human rights |
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House Energy and Commerce Committee member Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA) proposed a resolution to ask The White House to submit documents on its efforts to coerce Big Telecom companies to censor certain media organizations and the pressure on the FCC to regulate Big Tech. The resolution was backed by ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA).
We obtained a copy of the resolution for you here.
The resolution states: “This resolution requests from the President certain information and documents that concern regulating the content of multichannel video programming distributors (e.g., cable operators), broadcast stations, and video streaming services. The resolution also requests information or documents in which the President asks the Federal Communications Commission to take action to regulate Big Tech.”
The resolution came after telecoms like AT&T’s DirecTV blocked One America News Network (OAN) after pressure from Democrats on the committee, which has oversight over tech companies and telecoms, voted against the resolution, Breitbart reported.
Following the vote, Rep. Carter blasted Democrat’s, accusing them of trying to hide the truth about the Biden administration’s censorship efforts.
“Unfortunately, the left is waging a war on our right to free speech,” said Rep. Carter. “Every single committee Democrat voted against my commonsense resolution to require the FCC be transparent about politically-motivated censorship.
“The Biden Administration and Washington Democrats are keeping information out of the hands of the American people – information we deserve to have. What do they have against transparency? What do they have to hide? Free speech is a First Amendment right for a reason. Without it, we don’t have a democracy.”
October 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Democrat Party, United States |
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Title says it all – the evil of Mandates, when they had to know they served no purpose but… totalitarianism and control! Great one to share with normies, as all the data is packed in here too.
NOTE: My extensive research and interviewing / video/sound editing, business travel and much more does require support – please consider helping if you can with monthly donation to support me directly, or one-off payment: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=69ZSTYXBMCN3W – alternatively join up with my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/IvorCummins
Ivor Cummins | October 5, 2022
I’ve just been included in a nonsense propaganda publication! A book no less – publishing tomorrow Oct 6th – “Web of Lies”. Unbelievable deceit dripping through the piece they decided to share with me before publication – and stunningly incorrect throughout. Btw if referring to this book or sharing thoughts, always use the hashtag #WebOfLies – and PLEASE don’t comment if talking depopulation, radio waves or any other such stuff – always stick to the pandemic response ‘science’, and to published science/data – I never associate with anything other than the latter, as you should well know… 😠
That said, this vid will give you and your friends/family an invaluable education on how these guys craft propaganda. Enjoy, while I blow their deceit out of the water with trivial ease – directly from the published data – as always 😉 p.s. the white paper I sent them – a key resource to download and share: https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Evidence-For-and-Against-the-Effectiveness-of-Lockdown-Policies-DRAFT-RevC.pdf
October 13, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe has begun drafting Alberta-style Sovereignty Act legislation.
Moe says it’s time to defend and assert Saskatchewan’s economic autonomy by “drawing the line.” He wants to take several steps, including introducing provincial legislation to clarify and protect Saskatchewan’s constitutional rights.
The proposal would give the province exclusive use over their resources like electricity and any emissions associated with fertilizer, oil and gas.
Like all provinces, Saskatchewan has exclusive areas of jurisdiction under the Constitution, but Moe’s government is accusing the Trudeau Liberals of infringement.
“Saskatchewan is taking action to unlock our economic potential and defend Saskatchewan’s economy, families and jobs from federal intrusion that could cost our province as much as $111 billion by 2035,” Moe wrote on Twitter.
According to the Saskatchewan government, new climate change policies could cost the province over $110 billion within the next thirteen years.
The Alberta government called proposed federal environmental laws a “Trojan Horse.”
Chief of Justice Catherine Fraser, who spent 30 years serving as the Chief of Justice for Alberta, described the proposal as an unconstitutional legislative scheme. Fraser retired shortly after providing her statement.
Saskatchewan’s SaskPower says the Canadian federal government proposed Clean Electricity Standard is not achievable.
While the Canadian government has debated additional energy costs, many EU countries face an ongoing energy sector supply crisis. Some people in Scotland have been burning their energy bills to protest aggressive energy price increases. Law enforcement in France has been refusing gas station access to some citizens.
October 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | Canada |
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On 7 October 2022, late in the evening, at around 11.30 pm, I was detained at Gatwick Airport in London by anti-terrorism police. I was not released until shortly before 1 am and my computer was taken from me. It has not yet been returned.
My passport and all my personal belongings – my wallet, my phone, my keys, everything – were removed. I was taken to a room where I was questioned for an hour by two anti-terrorism police officers, acting under powers given to the police (as I learned for the first time) by Schedule 3 of the 2019 Counter-terrorism and Border Security Act.
The Act is supposedly designed to allow the police to detain ‘hostile actors’ who are travelling to the country to ‘plan, prepare or carry out their hostile acts’ (according to the leaflet the officers gave me). But the Act itself says, ‘An examining officer may exercise the powers under this paragraph whether or not there are grounds for suspecting that a person is or has been engaged in hostile activity’ (my emphasis)[1]. So an Act ostensibly designed to allow hostile actors to be stopped in fact applies indiscriminately to everyone, according to its own explicit terms.
It is certainly surprising that the powers were wielded, in my case, against a British national. Nationals should not normally be questioned in this way about their reasons for entering the territory of their own country.
One of the officers opened the interrogation by saying that I was not being detained and that therefore I could not have access to a lawyer. But of course I was being detained, since it was impossible for me to leave the interrogation room and, even more so, the airport, without my passport and personal effects. (I was kept on the ‘air side’, i.e. before passing through passport control.) The word ‘detained’ has evidently been emptied of all meaning.
According to the leaflet, ‘Unlike most other Police powers, the power to stop, question, search and, if necessary, detain persons under Schedule 3 does not require authority or any suspicion.’ So the special powers enjoyed by the Police at UK ports are a ‘regime of exception’ in which the normal safeguards of the rule of law have been tossed aside.
It goes on, ’You can be searched, and anything you have with you … this includes electronic devices … where searches are conducted, there is no requirement for a written notice of search to be provided to you. Under certain circumstances, the officer can seize any property they find.’
What are these ‘certain circumstances’? When I protested at the fact that my computer was being taken from me, which would prevent me from working until it is returned, and when I offered to bring it to a police station the following day, the officer replied that it was out of the question that it would not be taken. In other words, there are no ‘certain circumstances.’ The seizure of such devices is, on the contrary, the rule.
In a state of law, the Police can search someone’s property only with a search warrant. This is a document signed by a judge which authorises private property to be searched and seized. If you look up ‘search warrant’ in Wikipedia, it says, ‘In certain authoritarian nations, police officers may be allowed to search individuals and property without having to obtain court permission or provide justification for their actions.’ According to this standard, the UK is now an ‘authoritarian nation.’
It is precisely what separates a legal state from a dictatorship that the work of the police is not abused for political purposes, yet this is what occurred to me.
The officers questioned me about my work at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris from 2008 to 2018 and about my work at the European Parliament since then, and more recently for FVD. All the information they wanted is available publicly, for instance on Wikipedia. The questioning was polite but amateurish.
I was asked about my political views. The officer said, ‘It is a free country, not everyone is so lucky.’ I believe this is what is called ‘the British sense of humour’.
The officers told me that they had had two or three hours to prepare. This means that they were alerted in London to my imminent arrival at the moment when my boarding pass was scanned in Budapest. Everyone should know this.
They spent those hours looking things up on the Internet. The officer questioning me seemed unsure of what he was really trying to find out. The Internet, as everyone should know, is a veritable cesspit of false information and there are endless claims on it about me which are untrue. Many of these have been repeated recently in the Dutch press, as journalists go online, find what they are looking for and repeat lies told earlier by others. In my case, they never tire of telling the same fairy tale.
It is bad enough when journalists do this but it is frightening to think that anti-terrorism police officers regard Google as a reliable source of information. One dreads to think how many genuinely hostile actors pass through the net if this is the Police’s idea of investigation. Unfortunately that is the state of the world today.
It is particularly symbolic that this should happen to me. Ever since I started to get interested in international criminal law over 20 years ago, I have criticised the way in which international tribunals toss aside the myriad rules and procedures which have accumulated over the centuries to ensure due process. The British are traditionally proud of these procedures which have protected citizens against abusive state power for centuries. I have repeatedly warned that these dictatorial practices would soon percolate down into national jurisdictions and destroy the precious inheritance known as the rule of law. This has now happened.
Ever since the EU announced its Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime in December 2020, moreover, I have also pointed out that the EU has given itself the power to punish individuals by executive order. This is a very dangerous development. Individuals are punished under this regime without any legal procedure (no trial) and without any means of defending themselves. So much for human rights! I have warned for two years now that citizens of Western states would themselves be the target of these sanctions. This duly happened in July when a British blogger, Graham Philipps, was sanctioned by the United Kingdom which has the same system as the EU and the US.
In other words I, who have been warning that these procedures, introduced at international level, would soon corrupt the criminal law in domestic jurisdictions, have now been proved horribly right by an example of this abuse of which I have now personally been a victim. It was a profoundly disturbing experience.
Shortly before it happened, FVD International tweeted its disapproval of the EU sanctions imposed on the philosopher, Alexander Dugin. As we showed with a screen shot of the relevant EU document, the European Council (i.e. the executive) sanctioned Dugin purely for his views. Nowhere it is alleged that he has actually participated in the invasion of Ukraine nor even that he is guilty of incitement. Instead, he is sanctioned for thoughtcrime.
Some people who do not like Dugin are pleased at this. But they should understand that these are seriously abusive powers which can easily, as in my case, be directed against totally innocent people. To such people I can find no better response than the famous remarks by Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me. And there was no one left to speak out for me.
Europe is sliding into dictatorship. In fact, it is already there.
October 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | European Union, Human rights, UK |
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On the day she was sworn in as Alberta’s new Premier, Danielle Smith said unvaccinated individuals have been the most discriminated against in the country since last year.
“I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a situation in my lifetime where a person was fired from their job, or not allowed to watch their kids play hockey, or not allowed to go visit a loved one in long-term care or a hospital, or not allowed to get on a plane to either go across the country to see family or even travel across the border.”
“So they have been the most discriminated group I have ever witnessed in my lifetime. That’s a pretty extreme level of discrimination that we have seen…”
Smith added that she isn’t dismissing the seriousness of other forms of historical discrimination. But over the past year, she says not one group experienced it worse than unvaccinated individuals.
“And I find that unacceptable,” she said.
“We are not going to segregate a society on the basis of a medical choice.”
Smith also noted that she will fire the province’s health minister, Deena Hinshaw.
“I appreciate the work that Dr. Deena Hinshaw has done, but I think that we are in a new phase where we are now talking about treating coronavirus as endemic, as we do influenza,” Smith said.
In August, The Counter Signal reported that during the height of lockdowns and mandates, when Albertans were fed daily fear propaganda, CMOH Deena Hinshaw received hundreds of thousands of dollars as a cash bonus.
Smith said she’ll assemble a team of health advisors in Hinshaw’s place. One issue she said will be improved are wait times for people in need of emergency help. Ambulance patient offloading times, and emergency room wait times are far too long, Smith said.
October 12, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
Aletho News 