African governments are crushing opposition using Israeli spyware
By Suraya Dadoo | MEMO | February 24, 2021
As internet penetration and smartphone usage increases across Africa, digital spaces have become increasingly important for organising political uprisings and opposition movements. In response, several of the continent’s regimes have shut down the internet or blocked social media apps. To sidestep the economic costs and global criticism that these online shutdowns incur, governments have turned to digital surveillance technology as a shrewder way to crush all opposition.
In a recently-released report titled “Running in Circles: Uncovering the Clients of Cyberespionage Firm, Circles”, the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — which investigates digital espionage against civil society — details how government agencies in Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe are using the surveillance technology developed by Israeli telecom company Circles to snoop on the personal communications of opposition politicians, human rights activists and journalists. These seven African countries are among 25 around the world using Circles, which is affiliated with the notorious NSO Group whose invasive Pegasus spyware has been used to target human rights defenders and journalists around the world.
How does it work?
Circles technology is sold to nation states only, and intercepts data from 3G networks, allowing the infiltrator to read messages and emails, and listen to phone calls in real time. Using only the telephone number, a Circles platform can identify the location of a phone anywhere in the world within seconds.
Circles exploits flaws in Signalling System No.7 (SS7), the set of protocols that allows networks to exchange calls and text messages between each other. This allows government agencies to track individuals across borders without a warrant, bypassing international conventions.
In 2019, 3G became the leading mobile technology in Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for over 45 per cent of all connections. With the faster — and possibly more secure — 4G networks being at least five years away from becoming the standard for mobile connectivity on the continent, Circles’ 3G-manipulating technology is ideal for power-hungry African leaders looking to cling to power by spying on critics.
The spying revelations came as African governments — including some named in the Citizen Lab report — are cracking down brutally on protestors and opposition groups.
Nigeria
Recent #EndSARS protests triggered a deadly response from Nigeria’s state security apparatus, with the government able to infiltrate the movement’s organisational structures successfully.
Citizen Lab identified two Circles systems in Nigeria that both began operating in June 2015. One of them was being used by the Nigerian Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA). In 2016, the governors of Delta and Bayelsa states also purchased Circles systems to spy on political opponents and critics. The presence of Circles products in Nigeria goes back more than a decade, when former Rivers state governor, Rotimi Amaechi, became the first Nigerian politician to use the surveillance technology in 2010.
Circles’ government clients in Nigeria have a long history of abusing surveillance technologies to conduct mass surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications. Femi Adeyeye, a Lagos-based political activist who has been detained several times for criticising the Nigerian government, is not surprised that Muhammadu Buhari’s regime is using the invasive spying technology.
Adeyeye cited several cases where Nigerians were swiftly traced, arrested and detained after criticising the government. These include journalists Omoyele Sowore, Abubakar Idris Dadiyata and Stephen Kefas. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has also reported numerous cases of the Nigerian authorities abusing phone surveillance by targeting journalists’ phones to reveal and track sources for stories investigating government corruption.
“We are already in the worst stage of dictatorship,” warns Adeyeye. “Freedom of expression, media, and political association have been further weakened by this spying technology.”
He says that Nigerian political analysts now self-censor when commenting on national political issues, after witnessing the government’s infiltration of #EndSARS. “They have seen how people have been traced, their passports seized and bank accounts frozen, and how they have been forced to go into exile.”
Zimbabwe
In Zimbabwe — which has witnessed intense anti-government protests recently — Citizen Lab detected three Circles platforms, with one dating back to 2013. A second platform was activated in March 2018 and is still operating.
As in Nigeria, there has been a government crackdown on anyone exposing corruption. Investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, and Jacob Ngarivhume, the leader of the opposition group Transform Zimbabwe, were detained ahead of anti-government protests last year. Circles technology is facilitating this suppression.
Equatorial Guinea
A Circles surveillance system was also found in Equatorial Guinea, where dictator Tedoro Obiang has ruled for 40 years in a climate of torture, extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests and the persecution of political activists and human rights defenders. Obiang has crushed protests violently and ignored demands for electoral reforms and limits on terms of office.
Morocco
Morocco’s Ministry of the Interior has been a Circles client since 2018. Rabat has a history of leveraging digital technology to unlawfully target Moroccan human rights activists.
Eroding democracy in Botswana
It’s not just countries such as these facing protests, or those with a dismal record of human rights abuses, that are spying on their citizens. Even supposed democracies are involved. Botswana is hailed widely as one of Africa’s most stable democracies. Yet, the country’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) was linked to two Circles surveillance systems dating back to 2015. The targets were journalists investigating corruption by politicians.
According to Moeti Mohwasa, spokesperson for the opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), Israeli companies have been selling spyware to the Botswana government for years. Mohwasa says that some of this equipment has been used to eavesdrop on opposition politicians and union leaders in the country.
Enabling authoritarianism in Kenya
Citizen Lab also reported a Circles system in Kenya. While the East African nation is often lauded as a strong democracy, critics accuse the Uhuru Kenyatta administration of being an authoritarian regime.
“In Kenya, freedom of expression and media freedoms are under constant threat,” says Suhayl Omar, a policing, surveillance and militarism researcher from Nairobi. “The Kenyatta regime has waged a war against constitutionalism and any form of opposition in Kenya.”
Omar believes that the Kenyan government relies heavily on surveillance of its citizens to crack down on any form of opposition. “For this, they look to undemocratic and violent states — like Israel — to fund, equip and train their agents and armies for these unconstitutional missions.”
Zambia
Zambia is also a Circles client. In 2019, the Zambian authorities reportedly used a cyber-surveillance unit in the offices of Zambia’s telecommunications regulator to pinpoint the location of a group of bloggers who ran an opposition news site. They were duly arrested, with the authorities in constant contact with the police units on the ground throughout the operation. Given its capabilities, it is likely that a Circles system was used to do this.
Should the Israeli government be held accountable?
African governments will justify spying by claiming that it is a matter of national security. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has distanced itself from these anti-democracy purges. Israeli Minister Zeev Elkin denied any government involvement, telling Israeli radio, “Everyone understands that this is not about the state of Israel.” But it is.
The Israeli government, through its Ministry of Defence, implicitly sanctions such activities by providing tech firms with export licences. In January 2020, Amnesty International filed a lawsuit in Israel calling for the ministry to ban the export of invasive spying software, as it was being used to attack human rights activists by the governments purchasing them. Last July, an Israeli court denied Amnesty’s request.
“The Israeli regime has actively enabled the authoritarianism of Uhuru Kenyatta,” explains Suhayl Omar, commenting on the situation in Kenya. Moeti Mohwasa in Botswana agrees about official Israeli involvement. “In recent years, the Botswana government has increasingly been eroding civil rights, and becoming intolerant of political dissent. Israel is aiding these dangerous trends.”
Friends with benefits
Although developed by private companies, the spying equipment is also a key part of the Israeli government’s diplomatic charm offensive in Africa. By helping African governments cling to power through arming them with the weapons to wage cyber-warfare on their citizens, Tel Aviv is hoping to make more African friends. The aim is to dissolve African solidarity with Palestine, and capture African votes at the UN and so defeat resolutions that are critical of Israel’s brutal military occupation. Israel is also trying to find partners to lobby the African Union to grant the occupation state observer status.
In his book War Against the People, Jeff Halper writes that Israel is exporting its expertise in population control gained through its occupation of Palestine, and leading the “global pacification” industry, assisting state security agencies around the world. The danger, Halper warns, is that gradually we will all become like Palestinians, fearful of being tracked and detained for organising a protest, defending human rights or trying to hold the powerful to account.
As repressive African governments continue looking to Israel to help them shrink the safe space for human rights defenders even further, the danger is that Abuja, Nairobi, Gaborone and other capitals across the continent may end up under digital occupation just like Ramallah, East Jerusalem and Gaza City.
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Teacher: I Won’t Force Kids To Wear Masks & I Won’t Wear One Either
By Richie Allen | February 24, 2021
The Telegraph newspaper, to its credit, has published an opinion piece by a secondary school teacher who is based in Essex. The teacher believes that forcing kids to wear masks in the classroom is “Dystopian and abhorrent.”
The teacher has been reading “The Handmaid’s Tale with Year 11’s and described a class full of masked children as “like something out of Gilead.” Expressing concern that masks would make it seem to youngsters that schools are not safe when they desperately need some normality the teacher wrote:
They are already being flooded with messages in the media and the outside world which fill them with fear on a daily basis. The government’s whole campaign is built on fear and children have absorbed that. They have also faced a year of disruption to their learning and been kept apart from their friends. What sort of message does it send to them if we then make them wear a mask in the classroom too?
As well as being physically uncomfortable, it’s going to be almost impossible for them to communicate with me as their teacher. It will have a detrimental impact on their confidence, make them even more reluctant to put their hand up in class to ask questions and engage in the lesson. Many of them, especially those who were already struggling, have fallen massively behind during lockdown and will find it difficult or even impossible to catch up.
I’ve also seen very little evidence to suggest that masks are effective anyway. I am cynical about this idea of asymptomatic transmission. Schools aren’t necessarily the cleanest places in the world but children are meant to be exposed to a few germs to build up their immune systems.
The teacher is absolutely right. It’s dystopian and disturbing in the extreme. Of course it will unsettle children but it will also do them serious harm. Wearing masks for eight hours a day may have a seriously detrimental effect on their physical health. Dozens of studies have found that masks make breathing more difficult, especially for children.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that:
… inhaling high levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) may be life-threatening. Hypercapnia (carbon dioxide toxicity) can also cause headache, vertigo, double vision, inability to concentrate, tinnitus (hearing a noise, like a ringing or buzzing, that’s not caused by an outside source), seizures, or suffocation due to displacement of air.
Parents wise up and wise up fast. You must not allow your children be forced to wear a face covering when they return to the classroom.
US Supreme Court Backs Grand Theft Election 2020
By Stephen Lendman | February 23, 2021
On Monday, the US Supreme Court refused to hear legitimate challenges to the 2020 presidential election outcome.
In January ahead of Biden’s inauguration, the court denied requests by Trump and GOP supporters to hear and rule on lawsuits claiming brazen fraud in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Some lawsuits justifiably claimed unconstitutional changes to state election procedures.
In Pennsylvania, the state’s Supreme Court allowed election officials to count mail ballots that arrived up to three days after Election Day 2020.
The US Supreme Court voted 4-4 on whether to issue a stay of its ruling, short of a majority needed to block it.
In December 2020, GOP Senator Ted Cruz argued the following:
“The Pennsylvania Constitution requires in-person voting, except in narrow and defined circumstances,” adding:
“Late last year, the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a law that purported to allow universal mail-in voting, notwithstanding the Pennsylvania Constitution’s express prohibition.”
“This appeal argues that Pennsylvania cannot change the rules in the middle of the game.”
Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch agreed, one vote shy of four votes needed to grant a writ of certiorari — an order by the Supreme Court for a lower court to send up the record of a case in question for review.
Reviewing cases doesn’t automatically mean they’ll be heard and ruled on.
Of around 7,000 cases it asks to review annually, the High Court accepts 100 – 150.
In dissenting from the majority on the Pennsylvania case, Justice Thomas said the following:
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s “decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election.”
“But that may not be the case in the future. These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority non-legislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”
“One wonders what this Court waits for. We failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules.”
“Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections.”
“The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling.”
“By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.”
“Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”
In his dissent, Alito (joined by Gorsuch) said the following:
“Now, the election is over, and there is no reason for refusing to decide the important question that these cases pose.”
“Some respondents contend that the completion of the 2020 election rendered these cases moot and that they do not fall within the mootness exception for cases that present questions that are ‘capable of repetition’ but would otherwise evade review.”
That argument fails (because the issue in the case) is surely capable of repetition in future elections.”
Long before election day 2020, US dark forces decided the outcome. Voters had no say.
Trump challenged the system so was denied a second term.
Orchestrated January 6 events on Capitol Hill settled things, an anti-Trump false flag.
Wrongfully blaming him for what happened smoothed the way for Biden/Harris to replace him — illegitimately by brazen election fraud in key swing states.
Things worked as planned. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear legitimate challenges to the election outcome closed the books on the issue.
As long as Biden/Harris remain in office, they’ll serve illegitimately, not the other way around.
Election 2020 bears testimony to US fantasy democracy.
It’s by no means the only example.
US dirty politics and election rigging date from at least the early 19th century — at the federal, state and local levels.
Election 2020 perhaps was the most brazen example.
Trump won. Biden lost. DJT returned to private life. Selected, nor elected, Biden replaced him.
By refusing to rule on this core issue, the Supreme Court effectively OK’d election fraud over a free, fair and open system according to the rule of law.
North Dakota House Votes To Make Mask Mandates Illegal
By Steve Watson | Summit News | February 23, 2021
The House of Representatives in North Dakota has voted to make mandates on wearing face masks illegal.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jeff Hoverson who labelled the mask mandate instituted by the State governor last year as “diabolical silliness,” adding that “Our state is not a prison camp.”
The legislation outlines that “A state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state may not mandate an individual in this state use a face mask, face shield, or other face covering.”
It also “prohibits making use of a face mask, shield, or covering a condition for entry, education, employment, or services.”
The bill also notes that “If a state or local elected official, the state, or a political subdivision of the state recommends an individual in this state use a face mask, shield, or covering, the official or entity shall provide notice the recommendation is not mandatory.”
Hoverson said that the mask mandates are being enforced by “unelected, wealthy bureaucrats who are robbing our freedoms and perpetuating lies.”
The bill was approved 50-44 and will now advance to the state Senate.
Several states, including Iowa, Montana, and Mississippi have begun lifting mask mandates, despite Joe Biden’s attempts to instigate a nation-wide mask mandate, which he recently said could extend ‘through the next year’.
Dr Anthony Fauci also said Sunday he sees it as entirely possible that everyone will have to keep wearing face coverings throughout the entirety of 2021 and into 2022, prompting backlash.
Signs of life: Are the masses awakening from COVID psychosis?
By Jordan Schachtel | February 23, 2021
Over the course of the past year, a coalition including the corporate media, international “health” institutions, a maniacal mega billionaire, Big Pharma oligarchs, and power drunk governments consumed massive amounts of power left and right, with little to no observed resistance in sight.
With COVID mania in full swing, they moved the goalposts as they pleased. Free of any science, data, or logical reasoning, the ruling class had the terrified masses completely under their thumb. Under the spell of a mass social psychosis, we willingly surrendered our liberties and even happily enforced draconian edicts on our own peers, despite the global trampling of our basic rights.
The ruling class moved seamlessly from “15 days to stop the spread” to “30 days to stop the spread” to “Zero COVID.”
From “everyone needs to wear a mask” to “everyone needs to wear two masks” to “maybe we should wear three masks.”
From “lockdown to preserve healthcare capacity” to “lockdown to slow/stop the spread” to “lockdown until we have a vaccine.”
All of these aforementioned restrictions and guidelines were abided by without resistance. Across the globe, citizens remained firmly trapped in perhaps the most self-destructive mass social psychosis in human history, convinced that a respiratory virus (that causes a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate) was responsible for their economic and societal devastation. The authoritarians did as they wished, without a hint of pushback.
However, it seems we have finally reached one particular narrative that has been met with firm resistance.
Once you’ve gotten any COVID-19 vaccine, you still need to wear a mask, get tested, and watch your distance. Isolate if you have tested positive/have symptoms, and quarantine if you are a close contact or have traveled to another state or country. Visit c19vaccineri.org.
People are rightfully outraged by another ongoing narrative shift attempt led by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, countless government health bureaucracies, and other leaders of the corona hysteria movement. We’re now being told that the vaccine is not in fact a ticket to normalcy. Instead, we’ve been told that even with the vaccine, people still need to wear a mask, social distance, and act as if fellow human beings are nothing more than mere vectors of disease.
They initially told us lockdowns would solve our COVID problem. They then told us masks would end the pandemic. Soon after, the “experts” went all in on the vaccine narrative. It seems that the new narrative is one of “forever COVID,” or a permanent safety regime that stresses prioritizing avoidance of a virus over anything else in life. Fauci and the gang is now demoting the vaccine’s status as no longer a way out, but just another tool to help you mitigate the threat posed by the “deadly virus.”
WATCH: We spoke with @BillGates about the looming climate crisis and why research he funds suggests we may need a third vaccine dose to fight against new coronavirus variants More tonight on the @CBSEveningNews, watch at 6:30 p.m. ET 
And many finally seem to be pushing back against the ruling class plan for a permanent COVID state.
Excellent column by @karol deploring the rise of “forever pandemic” thinking, in which our lives will continue to be smothered in the name of overhyped public health threats. 
Will the vaccine rug pull attempt awaken the masses to the reality that they’ve been conned for an entire year? That is too soon to tell, but we are finally seeing signs of widespread pushback against the latest demands from the ruling class. Many of us wished this hopeful revival of rational thought had occurred a full year ago, but it’s more important right now to build a coalition around restoring our rights and quashing the power grab, even if that coalition includes the same individuals and groups that were once on the side of the totalitarians.
The Vaccine (Dis)Information War
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory Inc. | February 23, 2021
So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!
OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.
This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.
Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes” we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.” Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases, and emotional and behavioral disorders.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. The important thing at the moment is to defeat this common-flu-like pestilence that has no significant effect on age-adjusted death rates, and the mortality profile of which is more or less identical to the normal mortality profile, but which has nonetheless left the global corporatocracy no choice but to “lock down” the entire planet, plunge millions into desperate poverty, order everyone to wear medical-looking masks, unleash armed goon squads to raid people’s homes, and otherwise transform society into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare. And, of course, the only way to do that (i.e., save humanity from a flu-like bug) is to coercively vaccinate every single human being on the planet Earth!
OK, you’re probably thinking that doesn’t make much sense, this crusade to vaccinate the entire species against a relatively standard respiratory virus, but that’s just because you are still thinking critically. You really need to stop thinking like that. As The New York Times just pointed out, “critical thinking isn’t helping.” In fact, it might be symptomatic of one of those “disorders” I just mentioned above. Critical thinking leads to “vaccine hesitancy,” which is why corporations are working with governments to immediately censor any and all content that deviates from the official Covid-19 narrative and deplatform the authors of such content, or discredit them as “anti-vax disinformationists.”
For example, Children’s Health Defense, which has been reporting on so-called “adverse events” and deaths in connection with the Covid vaccines, despite the fact that, according to the authorities, “there are no safety problems with the vaccines” and “there is no link between Covid-19 vaccines and those who die after receiving them.” In fact, according to the “fact-checkers” at Reuters, these purported “reports of adverse events” “may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable!”
Yes, you’re reading between the lines right. The corporate media can’t come right out and say it, but it appears the “anti-vax disinformationists” are fabricating “adverse events” out of whole cloth and hacking them into the VAERS database and other such systems around the world. Worse, they are somehow infiltrating these made-up stories into the mainstream media in order to lure people into “vaccine hesitancy” and stop us from vaccinating every man, woman, and child in the physical universe, repeatedly, on an ongoing basis, for as long as the “medical experts” deem necessary.
Here are just a few examples of their handiwork …
- In Norway, 23 elderly people died after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. However, according to Reuters’ “fact-checkers,” it turns out, old people just die sometimes, especially in nursing homes, from a variety of causes … unless they haven’t been vaccinated, in which case they definitely died of Covid, regardless of what they actually died of. For example, a 99-year-old man suffering from dementia and emphysema, who tested negative for the virus three times, was added to the “Covid deaths” figures because a nursing home doctor “assumed” it was Covid (which GloboCap has expressly instructed him to do).
- In Germany, 13 of 40 residents of one nursing home died after being vaccinated, but this was just a “tragic coincidence,” which had absolutely nothing to do with the vaccine.
- In Spain, in another “tragic coincidence,” 46 nursing home residents who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine died within the course of one month. A further 28 of the 94 residents and 12 staff members subsequently tested positive.
- In Florida, a healthy middle-aged doctor died from an unusual blood disorder two weeks after receiving the vaccine, but, according to the experts, the sudden onset of this rare immunological blood disorder (i.e., immune thrombocytopenia) “should not be interpreted as linked to the vaccine,” and was probably just a total coincidence.
- In California, a 60-year-old X-ray technologist received a second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. A few hours later he had trouble breathing. He was hospitalized and died four days later. His widow says she’s not ready at this point to link her husband’s death to the vaccine. “I’m not putting any blame on Pfizer,” she said, “or on any other pharmaceutical company.” So, probably just another coincidence.
- A 78-year-old woman in California died immediately after being vaccinated, but her death was not related to the vaccine, health officials assured the public. “(She) received an injection of the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer around noon. While seated in the observation area after the injection, [she] complained of feeling discomfort and while being evaluated by medical personnel she lost consciousness.” Despite the sudden death of his wife, her husband intends to receive a second dose.
- A former Detroit news anchor died just one day after receiving the vaccine, but it was probably just a coincidental stroke, which the “normal side effects of the vaccine may have masked.”
- Also in Michigan, a 90-year-old man died the day after receiving the vaccine, but, again, this was just a tragic coincidence. As Dr. David Gorski explained, “the baseline death rate of 90-year-olds is high because they’re 90 years old,” which makes perfect sense … unless, of course, they died of Covid, in which case their age and underlying conditions make absolutely no difference whatsoever.
- In Kentucky, two nuns at a monastery died, and more than two dozen others tested positive, in a sudden “Covid-19 outbreak” that began two days after the nuns were vaccinated. The monastery had been completely closed to visitors and Covid-free up to that point, but the nuns were old and had “health issues,” and so on.
- In Virginia, a 58-year-old grandmother died within hours after receiving the vaccine, but, as Facebook’s “fact checkers” prominently pointed out, it had to be just another coincidence, because the “vaccines have been tested for safety extensively.”
And then there are all the people on Facebook sharing their stories of loved ones who have died shortly after receiving the Covid vaccine, who the Facebook “fact checkers” are doing their utmost to discredit with their official-looking “fact-check notices.” For example …
OK, I realize it’s uncomfortable to have to face things like that (i.e., global corporations like Facebook implying that these people are lying or are using the sudden deaths of their loved ones to discourage others from getting vaccinated), especially if you’re just trying to follow orders and parrot official propaganda … even the most fanatical Covidian Cultists probably still have a shred of human empathy buried deep in their cold little hearts. But there’s an information war on, folks! You’re either with the Corporatocracy or against it! This is no time to get squeamish, or, you know, publicly exhibit an ounce of compassion. What would your friends and colleagues think of you?!
No, report these anti-vaxxers to the authorities, shout them down on social media, switch off your critical-thinking faculties, and get in line to get your vaccination! The fate of the human species depends on it! And, if you’re lucky, maybe GloboCap will even give you one of these nifty numerical Covid-vaccine tattoos for free!
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House Democrats, Targeting Right-Wing Cable Outlets, Are Assaulting Core Press Freedoms
By Glenn Greenwald | February 23, 2021
Not even two months into their reign as the majority party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress, key Democrats have made clear that one of their top priorities is censorship of divergent voices. On Saturday, I detailed how their escalating official campaign to coerce and threaten social media companies into more aggressively censoring views that they dislike — including by summoning social media CEOs to appear before them for the third time in less than five months — is implicating, if not already violating, core First Amendment rights of free speech.
Now they are going further — much further. The same Democratic House Committee that is demanding greater online censorship from social media companies now has its sights set on the removal of conservative cable outlets, including Fox News, from the airwaves.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday announced a February 24 hearing, convened by one of its sub-committees, entitled “Fanning the Flames: Disinformation and Extremism in the Media.” Claiming that “the spread of disinformation and extremism by traditional news media presents a tangible and destabilizing threat,” the Committee argues: “Some broadcasters’ and cable networks’ increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”
Since when is it the role of the U.S. Government to arbitrate and enforce precepts of “journalistic integrity”? Unless you believe in the right of the government to regulate and control what the press says — a power which the First Amendment explicitly prohibits — how can anyone be comfortable with members of Congress arrogating unto themselves the power to dictate what media outlets are permitted to report and control how they discuss and analyze the news of the day?
But what House Democrats are doing here is far more insidious than what is revealed by that creepy official announcement. Two senior members of that Committee, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Silicon-Valley) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) also sent their own letters to seven of the nation’s largest cable providers — Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice — as well as to digital distributors of cable news (Roku, Amazon, Apple, Google and Hulu) demanding to know, among other things, what those cable distributors did to prevent conservative “disinformation” prior to the election and after — disinformation, they said, that just so happened to be spread by the only conservative cable outlets: Fox, Newsmax and OANN.
In case there was any doubt about their true goal — coercing these cable providers to remove all cable networks that feature conservative voices, including Fox (just as their counterparts on that Committee want to ban right-wing voices from social media) — the House Democrats in their letter said explicitly what they are after: namely, removal of those conservative outlets by these cable providers:
Congresswoman Eshoo boasted on her official site about these efforts, lauding herself and McNerney for “urging 12 cable, satellite, and streaming TV companies to combat the spread of misinformation and requesting more information about their actions to address misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies spread through channels they host.”
For the last four years, we were inundated with media messaging that Trump posed an unprecedented threat to press freedoms. The Washington Post even flamboyantly adopted a new motto to implicitly ratify that accusation (while claiming it was not Trump-specific). Other than the indictment of Julian Assange — which most Washington Democrats cheered — what did the Trump administration do in the way of attacking press freedoms that remotely compares to Democrats abusing their majoritarian power to force the removal of conservative cable outlets from the airwaves, just days after doing the same with dissident voices online?
There is not a peep of protest from any liberal journalists. Do any of the people who spent four years pretending to care so deeply about the vital role of press freedom have anything to say about this full frontal attack by the majority party in Washington on news outlets opposed to their political agenda and ideology?
Evidently not. While many conservative outlets are covering this story, it is difficult to find any liberal outlets writing about it at all. An article from The New York Times was one exception, though it largely attempted to justify these censorship efforts, with paragraph after paragraph purporting to demonstrate the dangerous misinformation spread by these channels. The only nods to the dangers for press freedoms in the article came from statements by Fox News and a GOP member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Revealingly, these same two members of Congress who sent this threatening letter to cable providers said during the Trump years that freedom of the press must be safeguarded at all costs. “The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws that abridge the freedom of the press, and we cherish our country’s culture of free expression,” they intoned when writing to the FCC in 2019 to complain that Russian news outlets were concealing their affiliation with the Kremlin. “We’re not requesting any press censorship,” they assured the FCC under Trump. Yet they are clearly doing exactly that now.
In a statement he emailed to me and publicly posted, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr denounced the Democrats’ actions as a “marked departure from First Amendment norms.” He said “it is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.” In response to my inquiries, Commissioner Carr added in a separate statement to me:
The greatest threat to free speech in America today is not any law passed by the government—the First Amendment stands as a strong bulwark against that form of censorship by state action. The threat comes in the form of legislating by letterhead. Politicians have realized that they can silence the speech of those with different political viewpoints by public bullying. The letter sent by two senior Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cable companies and other regulated entities, and the Committee’s own hearing this week on “disinformation in the media,” are the latest examples. They are singling out selected newsrooms for their coverage of political events and sending a clear message that these media outlets will pay a price if they do not align their viewpoints with Democrat orthodoxy. That is a chilling transgression of free speech and journalistic freedom. No government official has any business inquiring about the ‘moral principles’ that guide a private entity’s decision about what news to carry.
Carr’s GOP colleague on the FCC, Commissioner Nathan Simington, similarly accused House Democrats of seeking to “intimidate into silence those who would distribute on their platforms disfavored points of view.”
The way Democrats justify this to themselves is important to consider. They do not, of course, explicitly acknowledge that they are engaged in authoritarian assaults on free speech and a free press. Not even the most despotic tyrants like to think of themselves in that way. All tyrants concoct theories and excuses to justify their censorship as noble and necessary.
Indeed, the justifying script Democrats are using here is the one most commonly employed by autocrats around the world to silence their critics. Those they seek to silence are not merely expressing a different view, but are dangerous. They are not merely advocating alternative ideologies but are destabilizing society with lies, fake news, and speech that deliberately incites violence, subversion and domestic terrorism.
In her boastful posting, Rep. Eshoo says her efforts targeting these cable outlets are necessary because “misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts and rejects public health best practices, among other issues in our public discourse.” This is the rationale invoked by virtually every repressive state to imprison journalists and ban media outlets.
The Democrats sound a great deal like the Egyptian regime of Gen. Abdel el-Sisi. Just two weeks ago, Sisi’s regime finally released an Al Jazeera journalist who had been imprisoned for four years based on accusations that he had “spread false news” and was guilty of “incitement against state institutions and broadcasting false news with the aim of spreading chaos.” Sound familiar? It should, since that is precisely what House Democrats are saying to ennoble their multi-pronged assault on free expression.
International Federation of Journalists, Feb. 5, 2021
Accusing one’s domestic opponents of being subversives and domestic terrorists is by far the most common way that despots on every continent justify their censorship and silencing campaigns of oppositional media outlets. In 2014, the French journalist Valeria Costa-Kostritsky warned in the Index on Censorship that anti-terrorism laws and accusations of promoting subversion were becoming the primary means which authoritarian states from Turkey and Jordan to Russia and the UAE use to justify the silencing of journalists:
Anti-terror legislation seems to be the perfect tool for a state seeking to crack down on opposition. “It’s so elusive. You can [see] anything as terrorist propaganda. There needn’t be any evidence of violence, any praise of violence. Plus, if you blame someone for having a connection with the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] the public buys that argument easily, especially in a country that is suffering from terrorism, as Turkey is,” said Sevgi Akarçeşme, former editor-in-chief of Turkey’s Today’s Zaman (the English-language edition of daily Zaman), who had her newspaper taken over by the government in March 2016.
A similar means used by repressive governments to silence disfavored media outlets is to claim they are promoting “extremism.” As Costa-Kostritsky detailed:
There’s another word one can use to browse through reports published on the [Mapping Media Freedom] map: “extremism”. Anti-extremism legislation is used to intimidate journalists in post-Soviet countries, particularly in Russia. On the map, of the 35 incidents flagged with “extremism”, 11 took place in Russia, and seven in Crimea, others include Belgium, Italy, Hungary, France and Spain. Five reports connecting the media to “extremism” took place during the first half of 2016. They include website closures and journalists being put on a list of extremists. In Russia, most cases using anti-extremism legislations against journalists happen via Roskomnadzor, the national media regulator.
When China arrests journalists it typically justifies its actions by accusing them of fomenting extremism that jeopardizes national security.
And accusing journalists of spreading “fake news” — always a dangerously vague term from its inception — is equally commonplace when government authorities want to silence media outlets. The Washington Post reported that “as 2019 draws to a close, there are 30 journalists in jail worldwide on charges of ‘false news’ — or, as it’s also called these days, ‘fake news.’” In sum:
It has now become commonplace to throw around fake-news accusations in the United States. But in other countries around the world — like Egypt, Turkey, Somalia and Cameroon — such charges can have very chilling and stifling impacts on the press, according to an annual report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.
In Egypt — where General-turned-President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi has been overseeing a crackdown that human rights groups say is harsher than any before — there are 21 journalists in jail for allegedly publishing “false news,” according to the CPJ’s data. In practice, press freedom advocates say, these charges stem from a simple fact: The journalists published news that Sisi didn’t like.
In a passage that the Post would only publish about foreign countries but never about House Democrats, even though it now applies equally, they observed: “There is a serious global problem of disinformation spreading online and sowing distrust and sectarianism. The problem, say press advocates, is that the laws regulating fake news all too often are a means of stifling the media rather than fostering a more transparent environment online.”
This framework is hardly rare in the west either. When the Obama administration collaborated with the UK Government in 2013 to detain my husband David Miranda at Heathrow Airport in connection with the work he was doing in the Snowden reporting, they cited an anti-terrorism law to justify his detention, and repeatedly threatened to prosecute him for terrorism if he did not cooperate by providing all of his passwords to them. He ultimately prevailed in his lawsuit against the U.K. Government on the ground that it constitutes an illegal assault on press freedoms and human rights to abuse anti-terrorism frameworks to intimidate or silence journalists.
Justifying the silencing of journalists by accusing them of inciting domestic terrorism and extremism is now the most common means used globally for censorsing the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists in 2013 said they had “tracked a significant rise in journalist imprisonments.” The culprit, said the group, was “the expansion of anti-terrorism and national security laws worldwide” after the 9/11 attack, which had been repeatedly abused to criminalize media outlets. “The number of journalists jailed worldwide hit 232 in 2012, 132 of whom were held on anti-terror or other national security charges.” In sum: “CPJ’s analysis has found that governments have exploited these laws to silence critical journalists.”
Are there conspiracy theories and disinformation sometimes found on the conservative cable outlets which House Democrats want taken off the air? Of course there are: all media outlets disseminate conspiracy theories and fake news at times. MSNBC and CNN spent four years endorsing the most deranged conspiracy theory imaginable, one with very toxic roots in the Cold War: namely, the McCarthyite script that the Kremlin had taken over control of key U.S. institutions through sexual blackmail over the President, invasions into the nation’s heating system and electric grid, and criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign to hack into Democrats’ emails.
All of that was false, just as the one-month tale told over and over by the media about a pro-Trump mob murdering Brian Sicknick by bludgeoning him to death with a fire extinguisher was false — a story which remains unretracted or corrected by most who spread it.
Just imagine if, during the Trump years, the GOP Senate had abused its power to bully cable outlets into removing MSNBC from their platforms, or banning liberal journalists and activists from using social media platforms, on the grounds that they were spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. It is hard to overstate how extreme the rhetoric would have been that Trump and the Republicans were engaged in authoritarian measures to destroy free speech and a free press.
And I would have joined in those denunciations (as I did with the Assange prosecution): as much as I loathe so much of what those outlets do, it is not the role of the government to regulate let alone silence them. The corrective is for journalists to rebuild trust and faith with the public by exposing their misinformation and proving to the public that they will do accurate and reliable reporting regardless of which faction is aggrandized or angered.
But corporate media outlets and Democrats (excuse the redundancy) who spent the last four years posturing as virulent defenders of press freedoms never meant it. Like so much of what they claimed to believe, it was fraudulent. The proof is that they are now mute, if not supportive, as Democrats use their status as majority party to launch an assault against press freedoms far more egregious than anything Trump got close to doing.
Florida Wins the Lockdown Science War – Hands Down
Ivor Cummins | February 18, 2021
Self explanatory: Florida is an exemplar of applied scientific thinking.
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Democrats ask cable operators why they don’t CENSOR Fox News, OAN & Newsmax
RT | February 22, 2021
In a move condemned by Republicans as a “troubling” attack on free press, Democrats have asked cable and digital operators to justify carrying Fox News, OAN and Newsmax ahead of a hearing on media “disinformation and extremism.”
“Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date?” a letter sent Monday by California Democrats Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney asked major cable and digital TV providers in the US.
“If so, why?”
The letter was addressed to cable and satellite providers Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox and Altice, as well as digital carriers Amazon, Apple, Google, Hulu and Roku.
Eshoo and McNerney also asked what steps the providers took prior to and after the November 3, 2020 election and the January 6 Capitol riot “to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans?”
This was a reference to the three networks giving space to President Donald Trump and his supporters to make accusations of irregularities in the 2020 election, which the Democrats have blamed for what they claim was an “insurrection” at the Capitol.
McNerney and Eshoo sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, whose subcommittee on Communications and Technology is scheduled to hold a hearing on “traditional media’s role in promoting disinformation and extremism” on Wednesday. While the subcommittee did not name any names, they said the “increasing reliance on conspiracy theories and misleading or patently false information” at some networks “raises questions about their devotion to journalistic integrity.”
The letter attracted the attention of Brendan Carr, the lone Republican on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), who condemned it as “a chilling transgression” of free speech rights in the US.
Democrats are “sending a message that is as clear as it is troubling—these regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to Democrats’ preferred political narratives,” Carr added.
A newsroom’s decision about which stories to cover and how “should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” Carr argued, asking his FCC colleagues to “join me in publicly denouncing this attempt to stifle political speech and independent news judgment.” As of Monday afternoon, they have not done so.
Democrats are “saying it explicitly” that they want to “police and censor both social media and cable news,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted on Monday, as the issue came up during the Senate confirmation hearings of Merrick Garland, nominated to serve as attorney general in the Biden administration.
While the menacing letter to cable operators may not have said so explicitly, the lawmakers appeared to be contrasting their supposed inaction with the sweeping restrictions social media companies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube imposed on their users prior and following the election, including the ban on President Trump and pre-labeling any claims about election results or integrity as false.
Reporting on the Eshoo-McNerney letter, the New York Times approvingly noted that while “defamation lawsuits filed by private companies have taken the lead in the fight against disinformation promoted on some cable channels,” pointing to Dominion Voting Systems suing Trump lawyers who appeared on the three networks, as well as pillow manufacturer Mike Lindell.
The First Amendment of the US Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from restricting freedom of religion, speech, and press. Though this is presumably a fundamental American value, of the kind President Joe Biden said would guide his policies, the US embassy in Ukraine cheered earlier this month when the government in Kiev banned several local TV networks, saying it was a proper move to “counter Russia’s malign influence.”
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Villains of Judea
Samuel Zemurray
The ruthless businessman who financed coups in Central America and shaped Israeli statehood
José Niño Unfiltered | May 7, 2026
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Few figures in American business history wielded power as ruthlessly or as secretly as Zemurray. Born Schmiel Zmurri on January 18, 1877, to a poor Jewish family in Imperial Russia, this teenage immigrant would rise from peddling rotting bananas off railroad cars in Alabama to become the controlling force behind the United Fruit Company, the most powerful agricultural corporation on earth. Along the way he overthrew governments, bribed presidents, hired mercenaries, and played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the creation of the State of Israel. … continue
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