PayPal Could Be Legally Prevented From Banning People For Their Political Views
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | September 26, 2022
Although PayPal has been banning conservatives and right-wingers for years, its recent move to terminate accounts operated by the Free Speech Union and other groups in the UK that opposed lockdowns and vaccine mandates has apparently been a step too far.
Following the controversy, dozens of Conservative Party MPs, including Michael Gove, David Davis and Sir Iain Duncan Smith, signed an open letter to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s Business Department demanding that PayPal be legally barred from imposing discriminatory practices.
The letter asserts that it is “hard to avoid construing PayPal’s actions as an orchestrated, politically motivated move to silence critical or dissenting views on these topics within the U.K.”
This morning, the London Times also published a powerful piece by Jawad Iqbal which highlighted the dangers of allowing PayPal to abuse such powers.
“This is censorship by corporate diktat: the company sets its own rules and interprets them as it sees fit. It appears oblivious to the notion that it is wrong in principle to withdraw vital services from people because of their political views. Would it be acceptable for a supermarket to refuse to serve a customer because of their politics or for a high street bank to refuse to make a payment to a company it deemed politically objectionable?” asked Iqbal.
After questions were asked in Parliament about the issue, a new law could be on the cards that would put an end to PayPal’s crusade against dissident viewpoints.
“Conservative backbenchers are considering launching an amendment to upcoming financial legislation in the House of Commons that would ban companies from freezing campaigners’ accounts,” reports the Telegraph.
“One source said ministers are likely to accept the amendment to the law because Conservative backbenchers will support it.”
The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has also demanded answers from PayPal.
The familiar old argument from leftists, who apparently now vehemently support monopolistic transnational corporations using their might and vast resources to impose censorship, is that “PayPal is a private company and can ban who it wants.”
However, at least in the UK, that isn’t strictly true.
PayPal is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which mandates “All firms must be able to show consistently that fair treatment of customers is at the heart of their business model.”
Fair treatment of customers clearly isn’t at the heart of PayPal’s business model, it’s literally the exact opposite.
PayPal shuts account of group who fought to keep schools open during pandemic
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 22, 2022
UsForThem, a UK parents’ group that campaigned to keep schools open during the pandemic, has been banned from PayPal because of “the nature of its activities.” The group says that after the ban, it is unable to access thousands of pounds in donations.
“We were completely taken aback to learn that PayPal was discontinuing our services ‘due to the nature of [our] activities’. No prior warning or meaningful explanation was given, and despite them saying we could withdraw our remaining balance, we cannot,” said the group’s co-founder Molly Kingsley to The Telegraph.
“UsForThem has only ever been fully transparent about the organization’s aims, and our mission statement is on a prominent page of our website for all to read. That makes clear that our core focus is campaigning for children to be prioritized in public decision-making.
“If something about that mission offends PayPal, why could they not be transparent about that? For a small volunteer organization, this has a significant impact on our ability to operate, as presumably was intended.
“It is extremely hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically motivated cancellation of an organization that in some way offends PayPal.”
Toby Young, Free Speech Union’s founder, also claimed PayPal banned his account for political motives. The Free Speech Union’s account was also banned, as well as the account of the non-profit Gays Against Groomers.
Don Quixote… de la Left!
By Jordan Henderson | OffGuardian | September 25, 2022
The pull of Right vs Left Politics is still so strong, at least here in the USA, that I feel the need to state at the outset that my motivation here is not to score any points for the Right. This painting – Don Quixote de la Left – is a picture of the Woke Left.
A few months ago I painted a similarly unflattering and honest portrait of the Christian Right. The intent of these paintings is to serve as open windows presenting clear views of dissenting perspectives.
Critically portraying both wings of the ruling class, makes it evident, I hope, that these works are not part of the Right/Left trap.
Early this year, lines of heavy trucks rumbled across Canada’s frozen north and converged on Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers. The protest swelled in number, expanding in scope to a protest against the Medical Police State in general.
The Ottawa Freedom Convoy was sufficiently monumental that even the mainstream “news” was eventually forced to acknowledge its existence whereupon they began slandering it. This coverage did not last long: the current thing changed, the Ukraine War was brought to the front of the world stage, and most everything else was shoved off the stage.
I’m revisiting the Freedom Convoy. I wish to spark additional conversation about it. So I created this artwork. I intend it as a tribute befitting the valorous deeds of the . . . counter protesters and Canadian police; I’ll immortalize their symbiotic relationship.
Like the knights of old, the counter protesters and police sallied forth to subdue the rabble of unruly peasants, putting them back in their proper place firmly under the thumb of the authorities.
The slander against the Freedom Convoy was not particularly sophisticated; it amounted to ignoring that the protest was obviously a protest against the Medical Police State, and instead making up stories about it being a vaguely racist/fascist/Nazi event where the racist/fascist/Nazis inadvertently brought anti-vax signs and forgot the racist/fascist/Nazi signs that they were supposed to bring.
The logic goes like this: If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is definitely a racist/fascist/Nazi.
If they look like, act like, and sound like, people protesting the Medical Police State, then they must really be racist/fascist/Nazis disguised as freedom advocates.
Any evidence that supported the racist/fascist/Nazi narrative was widely trumpeted, and any evidence that contradicted this narrative was discounted – if it was acknowledged at all.
For example: The Nazi flag guy at the Ottawa Trucker Protest, whoever he was, fits the Establishment Narrative, so he represents the Freedom Convoy.
However, Sikhs at the Freedom Convoy, some of whom brought the Sikh flag, were an inconvenient reality that directly contradicted the Establishment Narrative. So according to those who wish to see the Freedom Convoy in a negative light, the Sikh protesters do not represent the Freedom Convoy.
Apparently the Sikh protesters do not represent anything at all; they are just “a Token.”
1 Nazi Flag Guy = Emblematic of the Freedom Convoy.
100 Sikhs = Token/Not Emblematic of the Freedom Convoy.
How does Candice Sero, an Indigenous woman at the protest who was trampled by the RCMP, fit the narrative?
…Well let’s just pretend that didn’t happen; ignore her, ignore tens of thousands of other protesters, ignore why they were there, and what they were about, and let’s get back to focusing on that Nazi Flag Guy.
As a counter-protester helpfully explained:
I tried really hard to de-emphasize issues of vaccination/COVID restrictions that were being used, in my mind, as cynical ‘wedge’ issues, and to emphasize opposing the convoy as a political vehicle of the far-right,”
This determination to see the Freedom Convoy as a racist/fascist/Nazi event, reality be damned, reminded me of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha.
I built my painting around that famous knight, because tilting at windmills was the principal activity of the Counter Protesters and Police who suppressed the Freedom Convoy.
I present – Don Quixote…de la Left!
Don Quixote de la Left – Oil Painting by Jordan Henderson – 36×52 inches / 91×132 centimeters
Hated by the woke: The conservative woman who could be Italy’s leader tomorrow
By Dr Campbell Campbell-Jack | TCW Defending Freedom | September 25, 2022
According to the BBC ‘Italians are deciding whether to choose their most right-wing government since World War Two’ in their elections today. Giorgia Meloni, the woman at the helm of The Brothers of Italy party, has had pretty much everything flung at her. All but called facist by the BBC for her ’embrace’ of ‘God, Fatherland and Family’ her sins include condemning the world of LGBTQ and a tough stance on unfettered migration from Africa. Comparisons with Mussolini abound. Yesterday in the Telegraph David Selbourne put another slant on it, writing ‘that at the heart of Meloni’s strength in the poll ratings is the rejection by many people, decent and indecent alike, of today’s “progressive” orthodoxies, whether in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Sweden or elsewhere’.
In June, TCW’s own Campbell Campbell-Jack tracked Meloni’s rise and the reasons for it. He concluded that the woman who shouts out ‘I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am an Italian, I am Christian, and you cannot take that away from me!’ is a principled anti-globalist conservative. No wonder the media smear and hate her. We republish his considered article here.
THE Left is worried so be prepared to hear a great deal more about the ‘far-Right’, ‘hard-Right’, ‘Right-wing extremist’ Giorgia Meloni. Press mentions of Italy’s rising centre-Right star almost always include a reference to Mussolini or assertion of her Brothers of Italy party’s ‘neo-fascist origins’. She is characterised as a figurehead who ‘threatens to send Italy down a dangerous authoritarian path’. The Guardian warns, ‘Success of far-Right Brothers of Italy raises fears of fascist revival.’ It is clear that the prospect of her party gaining ground in Italy’s next general election is sending shock waves through the mainstream media.
Named after the opening words of Italy’s national anthem, the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) is a national conservative party which is growing in prominence and is being touted as having a good chance of leading the government after the election, which must take place next year. Meloni also chairs the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, an alliance of centre-Right parties in the EU.
In recent local elections the Brothers of Italy took 10.3 per cent of votes in nearly 1,000 local contests, significantly more than the 6.7 per cent won by the rival League party led by Matteo Salvini. This reverses the result of the 2019 European elections in which Salvini took 34 per cent and Meloni just 6 per cent.
Meloni is now in the driving seat in a Right-wing coalition alongside Salvini and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Polls make their Right-wing alliance favourite to win the 2023 election and if the Brothers of Italy takes more votes than the League, Salvini has agreed she will become prime minister.
Meloni is not the type of conservative to whom we have grown accustomed. She is a national conservative and this frightens the Euro-elites because her aim is to put conservatism back into its traditional sphere of national identity. She sees the nation state as the sole means of combating globalism and protecting freedom. ‘The Nation is the place where our values are safeguarded and transmitted.’
Globalism takes power from the people and transfers it to supra-national organisations run by and in the interests of the elites. Globalists thus see national identity as a hindrance to their totalising ambitions which has to be overcome. We see this in the continuing media and political stress on diversity with its consequent fracturing of communities through identity politics pitting one single identity group against another, each fighting for its own rights and caring little for the good of all. National identity is being continuously eroded throughout Europe.
National conservatism is the opposite of what we have fed to us by the mainstream parties of Right as well as Left. Most centre-Right parties favour liberal conservatism with free-market economic policies, deregulation and controlled spending the overriding priorities. Most European parties nominally of the Right, such as the UK’s Conservatives, are run by economically liberal conservative elites who have deliberately marginalised the social and cultural issues which concern their electorate. We are used to continual promises to cut immigration to ‘the tens of thousands’ yet it keeps growing, as this suits the economic interests of the establishment by keeping wages low and weakening opposition to globalist aims. What the people want is sidelined or ignored.
Meloni has gained support by demanding that the EU leaves the global compact on migration. Whilst welcoming immigrants who would be able and willing to integrate into a European country with a Christian heritage, she is staunchly opposed to taking in any more migrants and refugees who cross the Mediterranean from North Africa. The party advocates a naval blockade of North Africa to stop illegal immigration.
National conservatism emphasises patriotism, nationalism, cultural conservatism and monoculturalism. Meloni sees national conservatism as the only real democracy because only by defending the nation state do we defend the political sovereignty of the people who belong to that state. Nations composed of people sharing the same historical and cultural memory are the bedrock of democracy.
Meloni is quite clear on the dangers of political correctness. ‘You see, political correctness is a shockwave, a cancel culture that tries to upset and remove every single beautiful, honourable and human thing that our civilisation has developed. It is a nihilistic wind of unprecedented ugliness that tries to homogenise everything in the name of One World. In short, political correctness – the Gospel that a stateless and rootless elite wants to impose – is the greatest threat to the founding value of identities.’
Meloni sees the protection of ‘religious and moral values, the noblest purpose of all political action’. Democracy without cultural values degenerates into a free-for-all plunge into decadence, something we can see around us in ‘Pride Month’ where a Pride march can be little more than a celebration of perversity.
Meloni is dedicated to the freedom of the individual. Although she had a Covid vaccination herself, she was vehemently opposed to the Green Pass scheme by which all Italians over the age of 12 were banned from most enclosed public spaces and many open-air ones as well, unless they could prove they had received at least one jab.
‘The idea of having to use this Green Pass to be able to participate in communal life is chilling, and the ultimate step towards the realisation of an Orwellian society,’ she tweeted when Mario Draghi, Italy’s technocratic non-elected Prime Minister, announced the policy. ‘It is an unconstitutional act of madness that Fratelli d’Italia rejects outright. For us individual liberty is sacred and inviolable.’
National conservatives are painted as obtuse nationalists, thinking only of the good of the home nation. Modern national conservatism defends the identities of nations as the basis for new forms of co-operation. It does not want to impose its own interests at the expense of other nation-states. What it actually wants is co-operation between independent nation-states once again able to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their peoples. Brothers of Italy defends Viktor Orban’s Hungary and Kaczynski’s Poland, nations under attack from the European progressive mainstream. The aim is to build a true, real Europe of peoples and identities, not an abstract Europe run by nameless bureaucrats.
Meloni sees Europe facing challenges today that will shape the future and the very survival of our shared civilisation, challenges which we have to face together. No wonder the established elites vilify her.
Ottawa cop charged with donating to civil liberties protests
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | September 21, 2022
An officer of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) is facing discreditable conduct charges because she donated to the Freedom Convoy protest in February. If found guilty, Constable Kristina Neilson could be demoted or fired.
According to a report by the CBC, the OPS claims that on February 5 Neilson donated to the Freedom Convoy, a protest against Covid mandates in February. According to the OPS, the donation was an act of “disorderly manner,” and that she did it knowing that the OPS was against the “illegal occupation.”
In March, the OPS announced that it would investigate any member of the force who contributed to the protest.
Last week, Neilson was summoned to a disciplinary hearing and was charged with one count of disorderly conduct. She did not make a plea and she awaits another hearing later this month.
The Freedom Convoy protest was brought to an end after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. The act gave the government the authority to target anyone who contributed to the protest. Ottawa sued to shut down the protest’s donation pages on GoFundMe and GiveSendGo, and Chrystia Freeland, the finance minister, froze the accounts of all those linked with the protest.
“Political Protest Is Not a White Collar Crime”
By Diana West | OffGuardian | September 23, 2022
On July 30, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a post-Enron law “aimed at fraud in corporations,” as summed up in a headline in the New York Times.
The newspaper elaborated:
The bill, an extensive overhaul of corporate fraud, securities and accounting laws, creates a regulatory board with investigative and enforcement powers to oversee the accounting industry and punish corrupt auditors. It also establishes new standards for prosecuting wrongdoing and gives corporate whistle-blowers broad new protections. Executives who deliberately defrauded investors would face long prison terms.
Did you know that this same bill crafted to stop white-collar-crime is being used as a big stick felony charge against January 6 protestors?
I refer to the provision of the law against “obstruction of an official proceeding.” It’s a crime, the DOJ website tells us, which carries “a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, fine of $250,000 or twice the monetary gain or loss of the offense.”
The financial penalty — that fine of $250,000 “or twice the monetary gain or loss of the offense” — really gives it all away. That is, the crime this law is meant to prohibit is inextricably connected to financial activity, not political protest.
This provision already has an infamous and unjust past.
Perhaps its very first application was by mad-dog-prosecutor Andrew Weissman, who was able to convince a jury to convict and thus bankrupt the accounting firm Arthur Andersen for its business-as-usual, internal-policy-perfect destruction of Enron documents in the period before the company ever received a subpoena.
The Supreme Court overruled the lower court verdict, 9-0.
Now the misbegotten provision is being totally and willfully misapplied to political protest.
Indeed, in President Bush’s brief remarks on signing the bill twenty years ago, he singled out this one section of the lengthy law to reassure the American people that it would not be used to infringe on the People’s right to protest.
As Bush put it:
To ensure that no infringement on the constitutional right to petition the Government for redress of grievances occurs in the enforcement of section 1512(c) of title 18 of the U.S. Code, enacted by section 1102 of the Act, which among other things prohibits corruptly influencing any official proceeding, the executive branch shall construe the term “corruptly” in section 1512(c)(2) as requiring proof of a criminal state of mind on the part of the defendant.
It’s well worth remembering that the right to petition the Government for redress of grievance, as attorney Joseph D. McBride explains, was continually exercised across the country for much of the year 2020 during the George Floyds protests which preceded the January 6 protest.
“January 6 did not happen in a vacuum,” McBride recently told the Blaze’s Daniel Horowitz. “In the year or so that preceded January 6, you had all the BLM and Antifa riots all over the United States of America. We saw the burning down of cities, the attacking of police officers. Members of antifa out there in black bloc covered head to toe in full riot gear going at it with police, the looting of stores—you name it, we saw it.”
As reported by Deborah Heine in American Greatness :
McBride posited that the left-wing agitators got a pass in 2020 because of new and expanded definitions of “civil disobedience, and political protest” which allowed government entities to view even violent riots “as grounded in the First Amendment, not criminality.
In the wake of this, he explained, the pro-Trump protesters showed up in Washington, D.C. on January 6 with the impression there was this “new and modern definition of political protest.” Of course, most of the January 6 rioters came nowhere near the levels of violence the nation saw during the George Floyd riots, McBride was careful to point out.
Because of who they were, however, (that is, mainly white, middle-class, patriotic, pro-Trump Americans) they were targeted, persecuted, and not given the constitutional protections the much more violent and destructive left-wing rioters were routinely given, he argued.
“For the first time in U.S. history, the political party in power is hunting down and jailing members of the opposition party for political dissidence, and not only that, they’re torturing them in jail,” McBride said. “This is the stuff of dictatorships.”
It is also the stuff of dictatorships to twist the law, hold show trials, and criminalize the state of mind of the political opposition.
Failed Zero Covid Policy Cost Australia Over $938 Billion, Report Finds
BY MORGAN BEGG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 22, 2022
The danger in the post-lockdown era is that in our rush to move on we forget the hard lessons that have been learned about this catastrophic public policy failure.
On the basis of alarmist modelling, often commissioned by governments and amplified by sensationalist media, panicked politicians discarded all basic ideas about proportionality and the rule of law to criminalise everyday life and exert unprecedented controls over the citizenry.
From the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, all Australian governments adopted the attitude that any public health mitigation measure was on the table, and little to no consideration was given to the costs of the measures that were adopted.
This is the subject of new research published by the Institute of Public Affairs, which for the first time in Australia calculates many of the costs of the nation’s Covid zealotry up to June 2022. In the report, Hard Lessons: Reckoning the Humanitarian, Economic, and Social Costs of Zero-Covid, we find that the total economic and fiscal cost of the Australian COVID-19 response was no less than A$938.4 billion (£550.6 billion) to June 2022. This report identifies:
- $595.8 billion in state and federal Government to enforce Covid policies and stimulate the economy;
- $259.8 billion in lost economic activity because of the restrictions and economic shutdowns;
- $82.8 billion in inflation related costs due to expansive monetary and fiscal policies, a cost which is set to only increase more and more over the next couple of years.
The research also calculates how much children suffered in terms of schooling. Despite being the safest cohort in society when it comes to COVID-19, children were routinely sent home to learn remotely or not learn at all. We estimate children in the state of Victoria would have lost about 12 weeks of reading skills and 17 weeks of numeracy skills, something which for many will never be recovered.
Even on the most basic metric, lockdowns failed. In terms of the number of years of life, the costs of joblessness because of the initial nationwide lockdowns in March and April 2020 were about 31 times more costly than the maximum possible years of life saved by lockdowns throughout 2020 and 2021.
Even in the state of Victoria, whose Labor Government enthusiastically established a world-renowned Covid police state, politicians are no longer touting their pandemic response in the lead up to the state election in November.
Likewise, the former federal Liberal/Nationals Coalition Government, which was voted out of office earlier this year, rarely boasted of its Covid response.
Governments of the Covid era appear to have accepted the failure of the Covid-elimination approach, but rather than confront the reality of this failure are just pretending that it never happened.
This is not about living in the past, because the reality is we are still bearing the costs now. In terms of the resulting mental health crisis, lost learning, shuttered businesses, Government debt and inflation, we are not likely to know the full costs of the Covid response for many years to come.
Our future wellbeing as a society also demands that we remember the hard lessons of the Covid response.
We will need to deal with pandemics in the future, and it is critical to know what went wrong, and how these failures came to be.
Australians were subject to the harshest restrictions on their way of life in their history, and we should be demanding not that it should be forgotten, but that it should be remembered so that it doesn’t happen again.
Morgan Begg is the Director of the Legal Rights Program at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Australia.
No, Lockdown Instigators Do Not Deserve the Benefit of the Doubt
The damage that lockdowns would cause was far too well known, uneven, and catastrophic to assume their chief instigators must have had good intentions.
By Michael P Senger | The New Normal | September 20, 2022
In the United States, some 2,000,000 people—over 1% of adult men—currently reside in prisons and jails. In America’s poorest cities, crime and law enforcement are intertwined with life to such a degree that many children grow up more familiar with the justice system than the education system. For kids who grow up in these circumstances, getting through school while staying out of jail is a feat worth celebrating.
Some of this is, of course, necessary to maintain a peaceful society in a country as open and unequal as the United States. But the American political-prison-industrial complex is also riddled with perverse incentives. As Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch put it: “We live in a world in which everything has been criminalized. And some professors have even opined that there’s not an American alive who hasn’t committed a felony under some state law.” We’ve even developed an Orwellian lexicon for this system; the term “crime of moral turpitude” is a tacit admission that America’s statutes are riddled with crimes that do not actually involve “moral turpitude”—it’s puzzling why these should be considered crimes at all.
Worse yet, an estimated 5% of convicts are actually innocent. That means there are currently some 100,000 Americans in prisons and jails who didn’t even commit the crimes for which they were charged. The sad truth is that just living in one of America’s poorest neighborhoods comes with some risk of incarceration; the more people around who are convicted, the greater the odds of becoming an innocent convict oneself. Juries do their best, but they’re beset by the usual human biases. Judges know all too well that verdicts often come down to such irrelevant factors as the defendant’s charisma, physical attractiveness, or even what the jury had for breakfast that morning.
Mass incarceration is one sad byproduct of inequality and community deterioration in the 21st century. But an even worse byproduct of that inequality is an entire caste of western elites who’ve begun to manipulate the system to exempt themselves and their supporters from the rule of law to a degree not seen since the rise of the fascist regimes of the 1930s. And in no instance has this been made more clear than in the promulgation of Covid lockdowns into policy in early 2020.
Lockdowns, or the shutting of businesses and community spaces with the force of law, were unprecedented in the western world prior to Xi Jinping’s lockdown of Wuhan and weren’t part of any democratic country’s pandemic plan; rather, these pandemic plans suggested only voluntary social distancing measures. While lockdowns bore some facial resemblance to the voluntary social distancing measures contemplated in pandemic plans, this similarity was no coincidence, as the concept of “social distancing” in its origin was lifted by the US CDC straight from the Chinese Communist Party policy of “lockdown” as imposed during SARS in 2003. Further, some leading federal officials have disclosed that at the time they recommended temporary social distancing measures for Covid, they did so with the intent that state governors would enforce them as indefinite forced lockdowns.
As former UN Assistant Secretary-General Ramesh Thakur has documented in scrupulous detail, the harms that lockdowns would cause were all well-known and reported at the time they were first adopted as policy in early 2020. These included accurate estimates of mass deaths due to delayed medical operations, a mental health crisis, drug overdoses, an economic recession, global poverty, hunger, and starvation.
Yet regardless, for reasons we’re still only beginning to understand, some key scientists, health officials, national security officials, media entities, international organizations, billionaires and influencers advocated the broad imposition of these unprecedented, devastating policies from the earliest possible date, ostensibly to stop or slow the coronavirus as the CCP claims to have done in Wuhan, while censoring any contrary opinions, spinning a false illusion of consensus amongst an unknowing public. A report later revealed that military leaders saw this as a unique opportunity to test propaganda techniques on the public, shaping and “exploiting” information to bolster government messages about the virus. Dissenting scientists were silenced. Psyops teams deployed fear campaigns on their own people in a scorched-earth campaign to drive consent for lockdowns.
These early advocates of lockdowns inverted the definitions of key public health principles in sophisticated, Orwellian fashion. While the lockdowns they advocated were deliberately intended to overturn existing public health practices, they instructed the public to “follow the science,” leading the public to believe that their policies were grounded in established scientific practice. They used the rhetoric of equity and vulnerability to advocate policies that disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable and increased existing economic divides. They then retroactively cited the broad public support for lockdowns that had been sown by their own propaganda as justification for their propaganda in support of those lockdowns.
Ultimately, these lockdowns failed to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus and killed tens of thousands of young people in every country in which they were tried. We now know the virus had already begun spreading undetected all over the world by fall 2019 at the latest and had an infection fatality rate under 0.2%.
However, the lockdowns caused the public to believe that the virus was hundreds of times deadlier than it really was. Simultaneously, the World Health Organization issued global PCR testing guidance—using tests later confirmed by the New York Times to have a false positive rate over 85%—pursuant to which millions of cases were soon discovered in every country. Additionally, the WHO issued new guidance on the use of mechanical ventilators to member nations; over 97% of those over age 65 who received mechanical ventilation in accordance with this guidance were killed.
Terrified by this surge of deaths and the psychological terror campaigns deployed by governments on their own people, populations across the western world proceeded to impose an ever-darker swathe of illiberal mandates including forced masking and digital vaccine passes for everyday activities. Young children, who were at virtually no risk from the virus, lost years of primary education in the worst education crisis since the end of the Second World War. An indefinite state of legal emergency was imposed which continues to this day. The global fight for human rights and the end of poverty was set back decades.
Over $3 trillion in wealth was transferred from the world’s poorest to a tiny number of billionaires and their supporters, predominantly in China and in the tech and pharmaceutical industries. Several key early lockdown proponents indicated that they saw Covid as an opportunity to “entrench a new idea of the left … reconstructing a cultural hegemony on a new basis.” Authoritarian regimes grew more autocratic, and democratic governments took on authoritarian characteristics.
Worst of all, a norm was grafted onto western democracy that the fundamental rights to movement, work, association, bodily autonomy, and free expression, for which our forebears fought so tirelessly, can be suddenly and indefinitely suspended, without precedent, analysis, or logic, based on nothing but vague promises that doing so will “save lives” — rendering them all but moot.
Meanwhile, the lockdowns and mandates led to the deaths of over 170,000 Americans and proportionate numbers in countries that imposed them across the western world. By 2021, lockdowns had killed over 228,000 children in South Asia. Studies of excess deaths indicate that lockdowns led to several million deaths in India and proportionate numbers in other developing nations.
A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking real atrocities.
These numbers do not even begin to count the total damage that will ultimately ensue due to the economic devastation of lockdowns, which we will continue to witness for many years to come. Many early lockdown proponents may never be among the 2,000,000 Americans currently residing in jails and prisons, but we can be sure that thousands more would-be innocent children will one day be added to the prison rolls as a result of the economic destruction their policies unleashed.
Ladies and gentlemen, this case ultimately comes down to whether, unlike the other 2,000,000 Americans currently in state custody, we can be sure that by virtue of their socioeconomic position and the panic over a virus which panic they deliberately stoked with their own policies, this handful of key early lockdown proponents acted in good faith when they convinced the world to adopt these unprecedented, catastrophic policies based on the belief that China eliminated the virus from an entire country by shutting down one city for two months—so sure that the question demands no further inquiry. I leave that for you to decide.
PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic
BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 21, 2022
If you’re a regular donor to the Daily Sceptic and got an email from me in the small hours of the morning telling you that PayPal had closed our account and urging you to set up a new donation with a link to our donate page, don’t panic. It wasn’t a scam. PayPal really has shut down our account and the email really was from me.
I’ll tell you the full story in a moment, but just to be clear – this won’t affect the majority of people making regular donations, just those whose donations are processed by PayPal. So unless you’ve received an email from me with instructions about how to donate without using PayPal, please don’t cancel your recurring donation. I repeat: Please don’t cancel your donation. This just applies to people whose donations are being processed by PayPal and I’ve written to all of you.
The first I heard about this was on Thursday afternoon last week when I received a notification from my personal PayPal account informing me that it was being shut down because I’d violated the company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked at that policy and it covers things like fraud and money laundering so my first thought was it must be a mistake. Then, a few minutes later, I got another notification, this one from the Daily Sceptic’s PayPal account. That, too, had been shut down and for the same reason. Eh? That was odd. Then, another email, this one from the Free Speech Union’s PayPal account. Same story – the Acceptable Use Policy.
Now call me a cynic, but the chances of all three accounts violating the same policy within minutes of one another struck me as a bit implausible. Was something else going on?
I contacted customer services and asked what I’d done, exactly, on my personal account that ran afoul of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. I’ve had it since 2013 and use it, at most, four times a year, usually to receive money from a Swiss weekly magazine I occasionally write for.
The person I spoke to said she had no idea, but if I wanted I could “escalate“ the matter and someone higher up the food chain would get back to me. I did that, obviously, and a couple of days later received a notification that my appeal has been unsuccessful. No explanation offered beyond the original one. Oh, and by the way, it would be keeping the money in that account for up to 180 days while it decided whether it was entitled to “damages” for my yet-to-be-explained breach of its Acceptable Use Policy.
It was the same story with the other two accounts. The only clue as to what might be going on was a message sent a couple of days ago from PayPal on the now closed Daily Sceptic account. The crucial passage read:
PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance. We regularly assess activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.
That message was a bit weird since it didn’t explicitly accuse the Daily Sceptic of promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance”, or say that that was how we’d violated its precious policy. But it certainly implied it. To which my response is: How exactly? Or, more profanely: What the f*** are you talking about?
Even if the Daily Sceptic is guilty of that sin – and I defy anyone to point to an article we’ve published that promotes “hate, violence or racial intolerance” – why is that a reason to shut down my personal account or the FSU account? I still haven’t received any indication of why that’s happened. And for what it’s worth, I’ve written to the CEO of PayPal UK – Vincent Belloc, you can email him here – and the Corporate Affairs Department of PayPal US and PayPal UK (you can email them here and here), asking for some kind of explanation. No reply, obviously. Laughably, it says on the media contact page of PayPal‘s website above the email addresses: “Reporter on a deadline? Looking to book an interview or need a comment for a story?” The implication is that someone from its crack Corporate Affairs team will get back to you immediately. But I emailed them last Thursday and still haven’t heard back.
I suspect what’s really going on is that someone at PayPal – possibly the entire C-suite – doesn’t like what the Daily Sceptic or the Free Speech Union stands for. The company has form in this area. As Matt Taibbi wrote earlier back in May:
In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress.
Those sites – Consortium News and Mint Press – are both left wing and they’re opposed to the war in Ukraine, which is presumably why PayPal cancelled them. Is the fact that the Daily Sceptic has published articles critical of the mainstream narrative about that war – including one in which we linked to Mint Press – the reason we’ve been cancelled? Seems a bit harsh, given that we’ve also published several articles defending Ukraine and its war effort and debunking some of the criticisms of the current Ukrainian regime.
A number of sites that have raised questions about the Covid vaccines have also been demonetised by PayPal in the past few months, including the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance. Liz Evans, the head of the UKMFA, also had her personal PayPal account closed at the same time.
Is that fact that we’ve published data suggesting the mRNA vaccines aren’t as efficacious or as safe as we were initially led to believe why we’ve been cancelled?
Colin Wright, a former colleague of mine at Quillette and a staunch critic of trans rights dogma, was deplatformed by PayPal in June, presumably because some people in the company didn’t approve of his gender critical views. We’ve expressed similar views on the Daily Sceptic. Was that the issue?
My hunch is it’s all of the above. PayPal just doesn’t like free speech, which is why it has shut down the FSU account at the same time. There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine. Dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in any of those areas is no longer permitted.
This is the new front in the ongoing war against free speech: the withdrawal of financial services from people and organisations that express dissenting opinions on those topics. And not just those who express them, but those who defend them, too, like the FSU. That‘s what makes this an escalation in the war on free speech. Until now, companies like PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon and CrowdJustice have only demonetised individuals and groups whose views they disapprove of. Now, PayPal has closed the account of an organisation that defends people’s right to free speech, without taking sides on the issues they’re speaking about. Even that is no longer allowed, according to this Silicon Valley behemoth.
Fear not, comrades. I may not be able to use PayPal again in a personal capacity, but I’m confident the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union will survive. Yes, we’ll take a hit, but I hope people who still believe in free speech and the importance of casting a sceptical eye over the prevailing orthodoxy will show their support by joining or donating.
To join the FSU, click here. To donate to the FSU, click here. And to donate to the Daily Sceptic, click here.
And rest assured, PayPal has been expunged from all our payment systems. There‘s zero risk that if you give money to either of those organisations it will be pocketed by the fintech Death Star.
I thought about launching a campaign to get PayPal to restore its services to the three accounts, but then decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the wretched company. Even if it did a reverse ferret, what guarantee is there it won’t demonetise us again? No, from now on I will have nothing more to do with PayPal and if you’re a customer of the company I hope you’ll follow suit. (Here is a handy YouTube video explaining how to close your PayPal account.)
Stop Press: If anyone reading this is a donor to the Daily Sceptic or a member of the FSU based in Texas, please get in touch. In Texas, it’s illegal for large social media companies to ban users’ posts based on their political viewpoints. Is PayPal a social media company? Users can send messages to each other so… maybe. Worth exploring.
EU Commission head issues veiled threat to Italy
Samizdat | September 23, 2022
The EU has “tools” to respond if the political situation in Italy goes in a “difficult direction,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. She hinted that the country could face punishments such as those recently leveled against Hungary and Poland if the upcoming election results in the predicted right-wing sweep.
“My approach is that whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” she said in response to a question over whether she had “concerns” about Sunday’s Italian parliamentary vote, in which the conservative Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) are projected to take first place.
“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,” von der Leyen explained.
While EC spokesman Eric Mamer was quick to clarify that von der Leyen was merely “stressing the role of the Commission as guardian of the [European] treaties with regard to the rule of law,” not everyone interpreted her words that way.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the populist League party, denounced von der Leyen’s “shameful arrogance” and called on the EC to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!” In the last round of polls earlier this month, the League was projected to take home 12% of the vote.
The EC earlier this month recommended suspending €7.5 billion ($7.5 billion) in funding to Hungary – a third of the money it receives from Brussels – over alleged “erosion of the rule of law.” Brussels leveled a similar punishment at Poland last year after the country’s constitutional tribunal found that some Polish laws override those of the EU.
Italy’s snap parliamentary election was triggered by the resignation of PM Mario Draghi in July after his partners in the ruling coalition abandoned him. As of September 9, when the blackout on publishing election polls took effect, the Fratelli d’Italia were estimated to take 25% of the vote. In addition to the League’s 12%, coalition partner Forza Italia is predicted to garner 8%, meaning a victory for the conservative bloc is easily within reach. Fratelli d’Italia barely won 4% of the vote in 2018.
Like the rest of the EU, Italy has been wrestling with a cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by bloc-wide sanctions on Russian oil and gas. A general election had previously been set for next year.
A Failed Globalist Experiment
By Eamon McKinney | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 22, 2022
European unity was always a questionable concept between a collection of diverse countries who have historically distrusted and disliked each other. The strength of that always questionable unity is now being tested as the EU is facing its greatest challenge. The initial enthusiasm among EU leaders for the conflict with Russia has waned considerably in recent months as the reality of its ludicrous and self-destructive war on Russia continues to backfire spectacularly on them.
With the long hot European summer now behind them the citizens of Europe are rising up in protest against their governments in huge numbers. While national leaders continue to lecture their people on the necessary sacrifices they must make to support Ukraine, fewer and fewer agree with them. With rapidly rising costs of living and the prospect of a winter without heat, anger against national governments is rapidly reaching breaking point. Germany, France, The Czech Republic, Austria and Italy have witnessed immense angry demonstrations that are seriously panicking their governments. To the extent that many are now trying to backtrack and seek solutions outside of EU directives, Hungary and Serbia have refused to tow the party line and have secured their energy interests with Russia. While the EU has demanded an energy sharing scheme among its member states, only energy-starved Germany seems keen.
Germany was the main economic beneficiary of the EU and it used its considerable influence to impose harsh conditions on the weaker EU states, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain in particular. Understandably these countries are reluctant to share their energy reserves with a country that showed little compassion for them following the 2008 financial crisis. German industries have benefited from low-cost energy from Russia for years which has greatly contributed to their global competitiveness. It was enthusiastically looking forward to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline until America intervened and forced its cancellation. Now German energy giants are seeking government bailouts to avoid bankruptcy, the once dominant manufacturing sector is facing complete destruction unless a rapid rapprochement with Russia is made. Even in that unlikely event, the damage to the German economy is done and any recovery could take years.
In a widely distributed talk, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (who no surprise is another WEF graduate) said that she will stand with Ukraine regardless of what the German voters think. A more honest translation would be that she stands with the WEF Globalists’ agenda and that the German people’s interests are not a consideration. If she gave a damn about the Ukrainian or the German people she would be trying to stop the war, but peace and the preservation of European lives are not the objectives. However repulsive her statement, it echoed exactly the sentiments of all the EU leaders, she represents her constituency perfectly, but that constituency is not the German people, it’s the Globalists.
An example of just how ridiculously inept and detached from reality the EU is can be found in their call for a price cap on Russian energy imports. Exactly how they think Russia will respond to that requires us to credit them with thinking at all, as several nations rightly pointed out, Russia will just stop all energy supplies. Many, among them France’s Macron has called for a price cap on all energy imports, not just the Russian ones. While America is fine with a European price cap on Russian energy, it strongly opposes it on U.S. energy imports. The destruction of its valued friend and ally Europe is just fine with America as long as there is a buck in it from them.
While increasingly angry citizens are demanding that their governments put national interests above those of Ukraine, they are largely missing the point. The interests of the Ukraine were never a consideration, the conflict was always about America’s obsession with the destruction of a rising Russia. The people of the Ukraine are just collateral damage in what is essentially just another bankers’ war for the interests of the Globalist financial powers. As Europeans are now belatedly beginning to understand, they are also just being considered more collateral damage in the furtherance of that Globalist agenda. None of the European leaders have any solutions to the crisis which they so enthusiastically led their countries into just a few months ago. Cold showers and Spartan energy rationing are not the solutions to the problem that the people want to hear. Preaching that they must sacrifice their futures for the Ukraine works better in the hot summer months than in the imminent cold, very cold European winter. Platitudes from Klaus Schwab’s puppet leaders are not going to placate cold hungry European people any longer. A brutal winter of discontent is inevitable for Europe, as temperatures drop the heat will rise against the politicians who sold out their countries’ interests to the Globalists. We can expect to see governments falling across Europe as public anger becomes uncontrollable.
The panic is not just being felt in European circles, The U.S. is also deeply concerned about the strength of European unity, or rather the lack of it. Biden has on more than one occasion called for Europeans to stay united in its proxy war against Russia. Biden is worried that any diversion from its sanctions against Russia will cause a split in the bloc. A rare moment of clarity from the senile U.S. President. The U.S. is very closely monitoring the unrest in Europe. While examining the results of its handiwork it might notice that while among the Western puppet leaders fractures are indeed increasing, unity among the peoples of the European nations is only growing stronger in common cause. The recent farmers’ protest in Holland was supported by farmers from all the European nations in a demonstration of true unity against the Globalist agenda. A unified cross border, anti-government movement is not the European unity Biden or the NATO warmongers had in mind. They will find that controlling corrupt Globalist European politicians is easier than controlling millions of angry, cold and hungry citizens.
Demonising Putin as the author of all Europe’s woes may have worked at the outset of the conflict, but no more. None of the many demonstrations being witnessed are aimed at Putin or Russia, the target of the ire is firmly against the governments that sold out their nations sovereignty to a globalist/U.S. elite. It is likely that Putin is more popular among Europeans in the know than the incompetent puppets running their own countries into the dirt. While Putin has now stopped the energy flow into Europe he has more cards yet to play. Uranium, fertilisers and foodstuffs among many other essentials are all still supplied to Europe, for now. The destruction of Europe is not in Russia’s interests, Putin doesn’t blame the people, he just hopes that they will wake up and recognise the true enemy.
The coming months will be a time of immense turmoil in Europe, great suffering is inevitable for millions of people sacrificed by their governments on the altar of globalisation. How long the EU can keep it together is the big question, few in Europe would be sad to see its demise. What many first considered a noble enterprise has now been exposed as an undemocratic institution that answers not to the people, but to a corporate oligarchy that owes no affiliation to any nation. In the tragedy that is the Ukrainian conflict some good may yet emerge. If European countries can restore their national sovereignty by exiting the widely despised EU they would be liberated from globalist control and be free to peacefully pursue their own legitimate national self-interest. The way it is supposed to be, the way the majority of European people want it to be. Strong “Exit” movements have existed in all of the member nations for years, Italy and Holland’s movement in particular had huge public support. The UK’s “Brexit” showed it can be done despite immense anti-Brexit propaganda, in a referendum, the people voted to leave. In light of more recent events, a referendum on exiting the EU would likely succeed in most countries.
The EU is a failed Globalist experiment, it never offered more than the pretence of a true democracy, at the unelected top, it was always a technocracy of hand-picked corporate frontmen. It has destroyed the economies of all its members through incompetence and corruption. It has caused chaos and social unrest in communities through forcing mass immigration on unwilling countries. It has interfered in the internal affairs of member states way beyond any powers granted them. It has presumed to write new laws which take primacy over a nation’s own justice system. It has created absurd new layers of bureaucracy and regulations which make European business’s largely uncompetitive globally. It is now dominated by the WEF and Klaus Schwab’s minions who are pushing the Great Reset and consider the Ukraine conflict as a step towards it. Statements made, such as that delivered by Annalena Baerbock on where her loyalties lie, should outrage all Europeans, it should also enlighten them.
Events this winter may well determine the future of Europe for the next century. Whether it is a Europe united with Russia as a peaceful trading partner, or a Globalist Third World hell hole, the European peoples’ actions in the coming months will decide which.
Featured Video
Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- How Cognitive Science Explains Our Looming Nuclear Crisis
- Have the US and Israel killed non-proliferation?
- Moscow, Tehran to support each other amid US aggression: Russia’s defense minister
- Iran says EU’s insistence on sanctions hastens its ‘embarrassing descent into irrelevance’
- Argentina’s Javier Milei sells out his country for Israel
- Putting Nukes in Finland Won’t Make Country Safer, Finnish Politician Cautions
- Ukrainian drone strike kills worker at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
- What the West Hides About Soviet Role in De-Colonization
- Villains of Judea: Douglas Feith
- US pension fund invests hundreds of millions in weapons firms supplying Israel
- If Americans Knew
- Palestinians in Gaza Want to Rebuild Food Systems. Israel Isn’t Letting Them.
- Under Trump, Green Card Seekers Face New Scrutiny for Views on Israel
- Sheep Theft Sent Shockwaves Through a Palestinian Village. Then, a 12-year-old Boy Was Shot Dead
- Trump alum helps Israel mount AI influence campaign
- Dispatches From Catastrophe
- Despite Denials, AIPAC Is Now Funding Campaign of Ala Stanford In Philadelphia
- Israel’s neighbors are irate about its treatment of religious sites
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
Aletho News 