Reporters without shame: Top ‘media rights’ organization ignores rampant killings of Gaza journalists
By Eva Bartlett | RT | January 7, 2024
At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.
The report’s announcement, titled, “Round-up: 45 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide – a drop despite the tragedy in Gaza,” excludes most of the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in 2023, particularly in the past few months. It claims 16 fewer journalists were killed worldwide in 2023 than in 2022. This doesn’t reflect reality.
The report claims that (as of December 1, 2023), only 13 Palestinian journalists were killed while actively reporting, noting separately that 56 journalists were killed in Gaza, “if we include journalists killed in circumstances unproven to be related to their duties.”
Other sources put the overall number of Palestinian journalists killed in the enclave much higher. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on December 1 that 73 journalists and media workers had been killed, citing to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).
While The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) December 20, 2023 numbers are lower (at least 61 Palestinian journalists killed since October 7), CPJ at least didn’t disregard dozens of slain Palestinian journalists like RSF did.
In fact, in contrast to RSF’s cheerful “things are much better for journalists than previous years” tone, CPJ emphasized that in the first 10 weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza, “more journalists have been killed than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” It voiced its concern about, “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”
It isn’t clear how RSF discerns which circumstances were “unproven to be related” to the duties of slain Gazan journalists, nor who is “actively reporting” when Gaza is under relentless Israeli bombardment and suffers frequent internet cuts. In fact, given the nonstop Israeli bombing (and sniping) throughout the strip, it would be nearly impossible to discern whether journalists were reporting (including from their homes) at the time of their death.
However, in the methodology section near the end of its more detailed report, RSF notes it “logs a journalist’s death in its press freedom barometer when they are killed in the exercise of their duties or in connection with their status as a journalist.”
Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have received death threats from officers in the Israeli army precisely due to their status as journalists. And many of those threatened have subsequently been killed, along with family members, when Israeli airstrikes targeted their homes or places of shelter.
We also have the precedent in prior wars (in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021) of Israel bombing Gazan media buildings (including one I was in in 2009) with varying severity, damaging and finally destroying two major media buildings in 2021. This is clearly intended to stop the flow of reports from Gaza under Israeli bombs, and so is the killing of journalists.
On December 15, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate criticized the RSF report, going as far as accusing RSF of complicity with Israel’s war crimes against Palestinian journalists through whitewashing.
This is the same PJS whose statistics the UN’s OCHA cites, statistics which PJS says are “accurate and based on professional and legal documentation that follows the highest standards in documenting crimes against journalists.” This documentation includes journalists who Israeli airstrikes targeted in their homes, killed precisely because they are journalists.
In response, RSF claimed it, “did not yet have sufficient evidence or indications,” to state that any more than 14 journalists in the Gaza Strip (as of December 23, the date of its response) “had been killed in the course of their work or because of it.”
RSF called the PJS accusations “inane,” complaining that they “damage our organisation’s image,” and chastised the PSJ to not “impugn our motives,” or “quarrel” over numbers. “Quarreling over numbers” is a pretty cavalier objection from an organization espousing concern over journalists being targeted.
At least three journalists were shot dead, at least three killed by an Israeli airstrike on media outlets in central Gaza City, and many more were killed by Israeli airstrikes on “safe” areas – areas south of Wadi Gaza, which Israel had commanded civilians to flee to for their “safety.” In spite of this command, Israeli bombings continued all over the strip, including all the way south to Rafah.
Still many more – in Gaza City, as well as to the north and to the south of it – were killed at home with their families, including one journalist in Khan Younis, killed along with 11 members of his family when an Israeli airstrike targeted his home on November 2. On November 23, a journalist was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 family members.
The Cradle reported that, “The Israeli army sent a letter to legacy news outlets, Reuters and AFP.” The letter said, “The [Israeli Army] is targeting all Hamas military activity throughout Gaza. Under these circumstances, we cannot guarantee your employees’ safety.”
One Israeli bombing of a journalist’s home on November 7 killed him and 42 family members. Like many of his slain colleagues, he was a journalist for Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news. Many of the other murdered journalists worked for: Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV, independent news agencies, local TV and radio programs, and larger outlets like al Jazeera. Others worked with Hamas-affiliated media and radio. Still others were freelancers.
On November 5, PJS reported that at least 20 of the journalists killed (since October 7) “were intentionally targeted by strikes on their homes or during their work covering Israel’s attacks.” This tally is already greater than RSF’s reported total of 13 journalists killed at work or because of their work, even though the RSF report covers a period of almost a month more.
Israel threatens journalists, kills family members
Many Gaza journalists report being threatened by the Israeli army. CPJ noted it is “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.”
One such incident followed a threat to Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al-Sharif. CPJ noted he had received multiple phone calls from officers in the Israeli army instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza. Additionally, he received voice notes on WhatsApp disclosing his location. His 90-year-old father was killed on December 11 by an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp.
On November 13, CPJ noted, “eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles. Qudih survived the attack.”
On October 25, an Israel airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza killed the wife, son, daughter, and grandson of Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh.
The popular young independent journalist, Motaz Azaiza, reported receiving multiple threats from anonymous numbers urging him to cease his coverage, CPJ reported, noting that another Al-Jazeera correspondent, Youmna El-Sayed, said her husband received a threatening phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the IDF and told the family “to leave or die.”
RSF bias: Not only in Palestine
Whereas RSF only reluctantly, as an afterthought, mentioned Palestinian journalists killed in “circumstances unproven to be related to their duties,” in a 2021 report on Syria, it stated, “at least 300 professional and non-professional journalists have been killed while covering artillery bombardments and airstrikes or murdered by the various parties to the conflict,” since 2011, going on to say, “this figure could in reality be even higher.”
It cited a report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) claiming the number could be up to 700. While endorsing these numbers, the RSF also gave a caveat, albeit a much meeker one than the one about Gaza journalists: “Confirming such estimates is not currently possible because of the difficulty of accessing information.”
Aside from reporting numbers it could not confirm, RSF cited a body in no way impartial or credible. As an investigative article noted, the SNHR is “based in Qatar… funded by foreign governments and staffed by top opposition leaders,” and “has openly clamored for Western military intervention.”
In 2017, Stephen Lendman wrote of RSF’s attempt to shut down a panel sponsored by the Swiss Press Club in which British journalist Vanessa Beeley would be participating. “An organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference,” the club’s executive director Guy Mettan said at the time. He refused to cancel the event.
RSF’s 2023 roundup also didn’t include two Russian journalists killed this year, one by a Ukrainian cluster bomb strike and the other by a Ukrainian drone attack (targeting journalists).
Sputnik pursued the matter and reported that RSF, “refused to give any comments to Sputnik ” citing “editorial policy.”
Journalist Christelle Neant likewise noted RSF’s glaring omission of the Russian journalists. She wrote about the body’s funding from various governments, and more notably from regime change agencies: the Open Society foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.
RSF’s notorious funders explain why it cherry picks or inflates its reports. The borderless organization has lines it won’t cross. It reports a grain of truth but otherwise whitewashes the crimes of Israel and Washington.
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).
While Gaza Burns, Media Zionists Still Portray Israel as Victim
By Niall McCrae | 21st Century Wire | January 7, 2024
In words often wrongly attributed to Voltaire, Kevin Alfred Strom asserted that ‘to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise’.
Since the Hamas attack on 7th October, this has been made very clear. Influential Zionist activists, who exert phenomenal influence on western politics, governments, and media, have ensured that only the one version of events, the Israeli version, is socially acceptable. This political reality was demonstrated in grave detail in Al Jazeera’s multi-part investigative documentary, The Lobby -Britain and The Lobby – USA. Of course, a different truth is known by any objective observer, especially millions of Palestinian people, and also by the millions who march worldwide against the brutal military bombardment and massacre of civilians in Gaza. But the BBC and The Daily Mail still refuse to broadcast or publish the widespread and justified disgust at the actions of the Israeli government.
Disturbingly, the British mainstream media have been actively shilling for the Israeli government, as their Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists on continuing the annihilation of Gaza. A prime asset of the campaign to cast Israelis as the oppressed, and the Palestinians as the oppressor is British media pundit Douglas Murray. Writing in the Spectator, Why I’m considering a life of crime, Murray denounced posters at Heathrow Airport inviting travellers from the ‘Israel/Palestinian territories’ who have ‘witnessed or been a victim of terrorism, war crimes or crimes against humanity’ to report to it police, in potential pursuance of a case by the International Criminal Court. This call for international justice deeply offends Murray, who asserts that ‘there is no country called Palestine’. Why not, Douglas? My old atlas from the 1930s clearly shows a land of this name, on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea and bordering on Trans-Jordan.
Curiously, Murray is not sure what status to give the remaining Palestinian area. As he explains, ‘there is the disputed territory of the West Bank and there is Gaza, which was handed over to the Palestinians in 2005 and which promptly became a ‘terror state’. Hold on, Douglas, don’t you deny such statehood? It seems that Murray wants Gaza to have responsibility without any sovereign recognition or power, and the inverse for Israel.
But their journalists and commentators are not only concerned with what’s happening in a narrow strip of land invaded by Israeli troops. They portray all Jews living in Britain as victims of hate, because supporters of the Palestinian cause are railing against the murderous exploits of a state that claims to represent Jewish people worldwide. Meanwhile our police and judiciary appear bent on protecting a foreign jurisdiction two thousand miles away; for example, arresting UK protestors with placards likening the Knesset to the Third Reich.
INFOGRAPHIC: Latest number in Israel’s ongoing genocide of the native Palestinian population in Gaza (Source: EuroMed)
The lead opinion piece in the Daily Express (4th January 2024), by the chairman of Glasgow Friends of Israel, shows the way that the wind is blowing. According to Sammy Stein, anti-Zionism is nothing but rebranded anti-Semitism. Although Stein acknowledges the right to criticise Israel and its leaders (as do many Israelis), he smears the regular large pro-Palestinian rallies in Glasgow as “anti-Semitic,” based on his experience in running a market stall in the city centre adorned with Israeli flags. He believes that flying a national flag (of a country that is clearly committing crimes against humanity) is somehow defending the rights of Jews. Within reasonable limits, criticism of his stall is an expected and justifiable act of free speech, a fundamental right in a free society.
Stein confines the concept of anti-Semitism to dislike of Jews, despite the broader meaning of Semitic peoples (including the Semitic Palestinian people, the targets of Israeli bombs and bullets). He claims that this ‘is a term established specifically for the hatred of the Jewish people and not, as some believe, hatred against people who can be described as Semites, such as Muslims’. The expanding scope of anti-Semitism, as determined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), is now sufficiently wide enough to quell any opprobrium towards Israel, while there is no equivalent protection for the native Palestinian people and their diaspora. Shamefully, nearly all major Western political parties have signed up to this blatantly one-sided censorship.
Despite the efforts of these Western institutions to impose an arbitrary definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime,’ the fact remains that Jews are not the same as the state of Israel, and both of which is not the same as the ideology known as Zionism. But the distinction between Zionists and the Israeli leadership is becoming blurred. As the Palestinians and their supporters chant of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, treated by many Western authorities as a potentially hateful message, Netanyahu’s administration seems to be aiming for that very same outcome – capturing the whole land for Israel and evicting the Palestinians from their homeland. Stein notes that ‘today, Zionism refers to support for the continued existence of Israel, in the face of regular calls for its dissolution’. The Israelis have a right to self-determination, Stein believes, but not the Palestinian inmates trapped in the world’s largest concentration camp.
Stein also reminds us that ‘Jesus was a Jew,’ who, ironically, was persecuted by the Jews, leading to his crucifixion under the aegis of Roman authority at the time. But for Stein and Zionists, the land of historic Palestine belongs to the Jews because some Jews have continuously inhabited the area for thousands of years, after having first established their presence thousands of years ago. Also, they believe that this homeland was supposedly promised to them as a fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham. This is a simplistic and convenient reading of history. There is no straightforward link between Judah of the Bible and present-day Zionists. Regardless, should Israel really be allowed to run an exclusionary ethno-nationalist and inhumane Apartheid state (as Western societies simultaneously promote multiculturalism, diversity, equity and inclusion)?
Stein regards anti-Zionism as ‘unique in demanding the dismantling of an existing state after over seventy years of independence.’ Palestinians would splutter over such hypocrisy. For Stein, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are now the same thing, being slightly different ‘ways of saying that Jews have no right to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as other humans’. Perhaps Stein should spend a few days on the Gaza strip to learn whose hate is most powerful – that of desperate, bombed-out Palestinians or that of the American-backed Israeli branch of the military-industrial complex.
***
Niall McCrae is a researcher and educator, and author of ‘The Moon and Madness’ (Imprint Academic, 2011), and ‘Moralitis: a Cultural Virus’ (Bruges Group, 2018).
‘Ballot Cleansing’: How Democrats are pushing US to political chaos
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 07.01.2024
Democrats have resorted to nothing short of “ballot cleansing” as they try to bar Republican candidates for Congress under the 14th Amendment theory, writes renowned American legal expert Jonathan Turley, warning against placing the US on a slippery slope to political chaos.
Several US voters in Illinois and Massachusetts have filed motions seeking to remove former President Donald Trump from each state’s primary ballot for the 2024 election. Earlier, Colorado and Maine moved to disqualify the ex-president.
Jonathan Turley, a renowned US legal scholar, raised the red flag over Colorado’s Supreme Court decision to bar Trump from the 2024 election last month, stressing that the state’s justices “put this country on one of the most dangerous paths in its history.”
The unusual initiative is driven by Democrat politicians who decided to utilize Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says that any candidates who have engaged in acts of insurrection after vowing to defend the US Constitution should be barred from holding political office. The amendment was ratified in 1868. Now, the Dems are arguing that the January 6 riots were a full-fledged “insurrection” and that the law could be applied to the former president.
“In December 1865 many in Washington were shocked to see Alexander Stephens, the Confederacy’s onetime vice president, waiting to take the same oath that he took before joining the Southern rebellion,” Turley wrote on December 22. “So Congress declared that it could bar those ‘who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.’”
According to the legal expert, the January 6 events – no matter how bad they were – cannot be compared to the US Civil War (1861-1865) and qualified as an “insurrection.”
“It was a protest that became a riot, not a rebellion,” Turley highlighted, arguing that the Civil War-era amendment should not be used in this case.
He warned that the Colorado court’s undemocratic decision and clear defiance of the First Amendment could result in a domino effect “where red and blue states could now engage in tit-for-tat disqualifications.”
Turley’s concerns aren’t unjustified given that Democrats have decided to bar not only Trump, but all Republican candidates for Congress who have dared to question the fairness of the 2020 elections. Some Democratic lawmakers have called for the disqualification of up to 126 Republican colleagues as “insurrectionists.” What is especially chilling is that many have supported them.
Thus, on December 11, US Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) called on House leaders to remove congressional lawmakers who were “supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 presidential election.”
“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend,” claimed Pascrell, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) introduced a similar initiative which was supported by 63 Democratic co-sponsors, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ritchie Torres, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.
Meanwhile, Turley drew attention to an obvious double-standard approach exercised by Democrats: previously, some of them have openly challenged and even sought to block certification of election results.
“Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) praised the effort then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) organized to challenge the certification of President George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election,” the legal scholar recalled on January 5, adding that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) sought to block certification of the 2016 election result.
According to Turley, Democrats are increasingly using labels of “insurrectionists” and “Putin lovers” to cancel their political rivals, opponents, and even journalists. However, if the trend turns into some sort of a legal precedent, nothing would stop overzealous lawmakers from expanding this cancellation spree, according to the expert.
“That is why the [US] Supreme Court needs to take up this issue and put this pernicious theory to bed once and for all,” Turley concluded.
Twitter Blocked Vaccine Injury/Death Hashtags to Boost Acceptance
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | January 5, 2024
I have always wondered about how many people rely on hashtags to search for topics on social media and whether they have any impact.
The use of hashtags was first proposed by American blogger Chris Messina in a 2007 tweet.[3][4] Messina felt that “they were born of the internet, and owned by no one”.[5][6] Hashtags became entrenched in the culture of Twitter[7] and soon emerged across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.[8][9] In June 2014, hashtag was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as “a word or phrase with the symbol # in front of it, used on social media websites and apps so that you can search for all messages with the same subject”.[10][11]
Meghana and Chavali studied vaccine sentiment over time and found that Twitter was actually suppressing tweets with certain hashtags in order to influence public perception of COVID-19 vaccination. You could imagine that sentiment has a balance, some people feel benefited and others are harmed. If those harmed have their hashtags blocked then the overall profile of vaccination would look favorable.
Based on this report, I can tell you I am not excited about using hashtags in the future. They seem like they are easy targets for censorship and content moderation.
How Israeli Military Censors Shape One US Network’s Gaza Coverage
“CNN has agreed not to be an independent news outlet”
Sputnik – 05.01.2024
It’s long been observed that mainstream media in America tends to favor Israel in their ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. But one outlet in particular makes an unusual effort to make sure Israeli authorities are satisfied with their reporting.
Analysis published Thursday documented how the television channel CNN treats their coverage of the Palestine-Israel conflict unlike any other journalism the network produces, ensuring Israeli military censors are able to exercise control over its content.
As a US-based outlet, CNN isn’t legally obliged to abide by the instructions of the Israel Defense Force’s military censor, which has operated in the country for over 70 years.
However, the channel has a long-standing practice of routing all relevant coverage through the network’s Jerusalem bureau anyway, ostensibly in order for it to be reviewed by people on the ground there. The practice means all coverage relating to Israel is overseen by journalists operating under the IDF’s censors.
“Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the bureau,” said one CNN employee who spoke anonymously about the policy.
“Or, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management – from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance.”
Jim Naureckas of the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting slammed the policy. “When you have a protocol that routes all stories through one checkpoint, you’re interested in control, and the question is who is controlling the story?” he said.
“In a situation where a government has been credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information, to give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing.”
When reached for comment, a representative for CNN defended the practice. “The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” the spokesperson claimed. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”
But the policy imbues Israeli reporters and government officials with an air of legitimacy not granted to their Palestinian counterparts. In October, the network’s News Standards and Practices division sent an email to employees instructing them how to cover Israel’s ongoing military operation in Gaza.
“Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as ‘Hamas-controlled’ whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict,” read the message.
Death counts released by Gaza’s health ministry have repeatedly been determined to be accurate by international experts. If anything, the 22,438 reported deaths in the enclave are likely to represent a low estimate, with thousands more trapped under rubble from Israeli airstrikes.
Civilians make up a large majority of the casualties, with women and children representing about 70%.
“Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed,” confirmed the CNN spokesperson.
The control exercised by Israeli journalists in the Jerusalem bureau is reportedly stringent at times, with people there even determining specific terms and language that can be used. The bureau isn’t obligated to submit content to the IDF before publishing, but censors in the military have intervened against reporting found to be unacceptable in the past. People working there would likely be well aware of the government’s preferred line.
In another voluntary act of cooperation with Israeli officials, CNN recently agreed to send all footage shot in the Gaza strip to the IDF for approval before its release. The agreement was reached in exchange for IDF protection in the besieged enclave. Executive vice president of the Quincy Institute Trita Parsi slammed the move, saying, “In other words, CNN has agreed not to be an independent news outlet.” Writer Shailja Patel called the network, “officially an IDF propaganda outlet.”
The practice of “embedding” journalists with members of the military has become a common practice since the days of the Vietnam War, when adversarial reporting on the conflict is thought to have played a major role in its unpopularity.
The practice provides the military with ultimate control over what journalists are allowed to witness and report on.
Several prominent personalities at CNN like anchor Jake Tapper are strong public supporters of Israel. Wolf Blitzer, perhaps the channel’s most prominent on-air figure, is a self-avowed Zionist who formerly worked for the lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Analyst John McEvoy recently documented how government agencies covertly shape news coverage of Israel on CNN and other media outlets. After the bombing of Gaza’s al-Ahli Arab Hospital in October sparked massive controversy, think tanks with ties to Western and Israeli intelligence served as sources for analysis in British state media that absolved the IDF of responsibility for the atrocity. The incident reveals one way US-aligned state actors are able to mold reporting even when it’s presented by more ostensibly neutral journalists.
Tyranny has arrived in Poland and this time it’s real
By Rafał Woś | Interia.pl | January 5, 2024
The time for tyranny has arrived, and this time, it’s unfortunately real. No government in Poland since 1989 has come as close to sliding into actual tyranny as the current one, nor has any other given itself such broad permission to become tyrannical. Moreover, none have been as effective in practically eliminating the safeguards that constrain them.
Let us start with a few questions.
Firstly, if the Law and Justice (PiS) party governed recklessly, what do we call the actions of their successors? Super-reckless? Turbo-reckless? Mega-turbo-reckless? Secondly, if PiS disregarded all “safeguards” or “minority rights,” where do ministers like Culture Minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, responsible for the attack on public media, and Justice Minister Adam Bodnar stand on these issues? Serious suggestions only, please.
Thirdly, the previous regime was accused daily, both domestically and internationally, for eight long years of harboring an “authoritarian gene.” It was said that PiS would never relinquish power once gained, that they would not respect the election results, that they would imprison opponents, and strip the opposition of its last media strongholds. Those who do not remember should remind themselves, read up, watch again. How then, against the backdrop of these accusations, should we describe those who govern now?
How can we even comment on declarations like: “We are restoring constitutionality and looking for a legal basis to do it,” by Adam Bodnar? Or “Lawful is what we understand as lawful” by Donald Tusk? Or “The constitution is a trap that PiS sets for democracy,” as the academic lawyer and staunch PiS critic Wojciech Sadurski was kind enough to comment?
How can the constitution, the anchor of democracy, especially in its liberal interpretation as advocated by Sadurski, become a trap for democracy? It would be different if PiS had changed the constitution, stripping it of its power, sanctity, and authority.
But that didn’t happen. It’s the same fundamental law that Sadurski himself cited just a few months ago in his fight against PiS. Yesterday, it was his shield in the battle against democracy’s enemies. Today, it evidently chafes him (and the entire ruling camp). So, politicians circumvent it, and lawyer Sadurski loudly applauds them for it.
There are two options to consider: Are these people truly “democrats” as they have long pretended to be? Or did they only invoke democracy when it suited them? If so, who are they really?
The good news is that time will answer this last question. In the next few years, we will learn the true stance of the aforementioned individuals on democracy, rule of law, human rights, and freedom of speech. We will know them by their fruits. That is for sure.
Now, there are, broadly speaking, two potential scenarios. The first is an optimistic one. In this scenario, disenchanted sympathizers of the so-called democratic camp console themselves with the thought that this is just political theater — a reaction to years of humiliation. They hope that eventually, reason will prevail. The public television TVP, the Constitutional Tribunal and other PiS institutions will be cleansed, and all will be well. Right now, it might not look pretty, but peace will return to our land. And the current situation? At worst, Sienkiewicz, Bodnar, and the unfortunate liquidators of public media will serve as scapegoats, to be replaced by newer models.
Unfortunately, there’s also a second, more likely possibility. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that the current rulers won’t be able to stop their anti-PiS crusade. The path of force, revenge and reckoning will be too easy, and the conviction of their moral righteousness too intoxicating. Then, it will be too late. There is no turning back from a web of lies, as one falsehood leads to another, creating increasingly complex structures where removing one element then threatens a collapse and loss of credibility. They must keep going and certainly not back down. On the contrary, full steam ahead.
This is already evident. Doubts about their media policy within their own camp are covered up with bold offensives on other fronts: the war against a president signaling readiness to compromise, or intrigues against the National Bank of Poland President Adam Glapiński. It’s an old and tested method, especially characteristic of authoritarian environments. There’s always some “last unconquered village of Gauls” to conquer before laying down their arms. But not before, oh no! There’s always some PiS remnant threatening a resurgence of PiS-ism. And so, the cycle continues.
Until the end.
This second path is all the more likely because the new power faces almost no oversight. PiS had powerful foreign adversaries: the European Union, liberal Western media, Soros’s network. At home, they faced a strong opposition, media friendly to it, and opinion-forming elites. Paradoxically, this served PiS. It kept them in check, ensuring that even if they had an authoritarian gene, it would be constantly fought against, never taking full control.
The anti-PiS doesn’t have any of these checks on its power. They won’t be watched by foreign powers or liberal media in conjunction with filmmaker Agnieszka Holland. And after taking over public media from PiS, there will be even fewer safeguards.
This is the tragedy of our new rulers. This is their curse. It already makes them tyrants — real tyrants and not the imagined ones they projected onto PiS. It also makes them extremely dangerous.
The Digital ID Rollout Is Becoming a Hacker’s Dream
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 4, 2024
Governments and corporations around the world are showing great enthusiasm in either already implementing, or planning to implement some form of digital IDs.
As it turns out ironically, these efforts are presented to citizens as not only making their lives easier through convenience, but also making sure their personal data contained within these digital IDs is safer in a world teeming with malicious actors.
Opponents have been warning about serious privacy implications, but also argue against the claim that data security actually gets improved.
It would appear they are right – at least according to a report by a cybersecurity firm issued after the hacker attacks happening around the Christmas holiday, something that’s now been dubbed “Leaksmas.”
Not only governments, but hackers as well love digital IDs and huge amounts of personal information all neatly gathered in one place, and, judging by what’s been happening recently, in many instances, sitting there pretty much easily available to them.
And hackers have expressed this love by making digital ID data their primary focus, the firm, Resecurity, said in its report. Resecurity claims that this is a clear fact, and that it was able to discern it by analyzing data dumps once they started appearing on the dark web after the Christmas-time “digital smash-and-grabs.”
In numbers, a staggering 50 million records containing personally identifiable information have surfaced on the dark web. The reason so many stolen datasets have made it to the black digital market all at once appear to be “technicalities” related to the time window during which most of it will be “sellable”.
Breaking down that 50 million number, Resecurity said that 22 million records were stolen from a telecommunications company in Peru, which include what’s known there as DNIs – national IDs.
According to reports, it is hard to overestimate how devastating this event could be, if the DNIs end up in the wrong hands. It is the sole ID document recognized by the authorities in Peru for a range of things fundamental to people’s everyday life: “judicial, administrative, commercial and civil transactions,” as one article put it.
After Peru, other countries most affected are the Philippines, the US, France, and Vietnam.
Are We Losing Free Speech in America?
Israel is the catalyst for a major loss of freedom
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JANUARY 4, 2024
There is little appreciation inside the United States for the grave damage being inflicted on our country by President Joe Biden’s foreign policy being conducted through the mechanism of starting or sustaining a new war every year. The justifications provided by the White House, State Department and Pentagon are so vacuous that they have succeeded in creating a new low standard for the art of government lying. The country is burdened by unsustainable debt yet we have the so-called Secretary of the Treasury Janice Yellen declaring in October that another war beyond Ukraine, presumably to directly intervene supporting Israel in destroying Gaza, can “certainly” be afforded. And with the current US military build-ups near China and in the Middle East to confront Iran there presumably is enough gas in the tank to pick up on another conflict or two before Genocide Joe stands for reelection later this year.
But in spite of the damage to our economy, which is quite real, some of the gravest threats come from within, from the attacks delivered by special interest groups directed against our fundamental liberties. The most significant assaults have of late been directed against the First Amendment, freedom of speech, which is the bedrock of all the rights and which is currently being assailed continuously by that most protected of all protected groups, America’s Jewish and Israeli Lobby.
Hardly a minute of the day passes without a new article in the mainstream media about “surging antisemitism.” The journalists involved, most of whom are Jewish, hardly ever observe that Israel’s slaughtering of 30,000 Gazans, mostly women and children, just might have something to do with how the public is beginning to regard the behavior of the Jewish state and its leaders. What actually fuels public outrage that groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) choose to regard as antisemitism is Israel slaughtering ten thousand children under a flag displaying the Star of David and stating its intention to continue the massacre until all the Palestinians have fled to other countries or been killed. We are talking of 2 million plus people but Israel’s friends in the US regard them as little more than “sub-humans” or “terrorists.”
The Jewish/Israel lobby in America does not forgive and forget. Witness the continuing attacks on America’s universities for not rolling over and purging all suspected antisemites among faculty and students. Liz Magill, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned almost immediately after being interrogated by the US Congress and the multiple attacks began. Poor Claudine Gay, president of Harvard, hung on but eventually also resigned after she was subjected to near continuous harassment by Israel’s friends, including in the US Congress, because she, like her presidential colleagues, had not accepted that nearly all criticism of Israel in the context of Gaza is based on Jew-hatred, which she was apparently expected to assert. To no one’s surprise, in her resignation letter she was not even honest about who had brought her down, blaming it instead mostly on racism. The letter did not even include the words “Congress” or “Gaza” or “antisemitism” or even “Israel.” To be sure, Gay is not a top level academic and probably was an affirmative action hire but has anyone ever heard of a Congressional committee going after an academic for the sin of plagiarism before? The involvement of the phony claims of antisemitism and the desire to protect Israel are what has made the difference in this case and led to the intensity and persistence of the attacks.
Indeed, the ADL’s revolting director Jonathan Greenblatt is demanding that there be more “consequences” for “antisemites on campus” and the media is hot on the story. Sally Kornbluth, President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who has not resigned after the ridiculous encounter of the three presidents with Congress is still being hotly pursued by that body. Also engaged in the hunt are the many US Government entities whose sole task is to root out antisemites and holocaust deniers. The Department of Justice, headed of course by Jewish Attorney General Merrick Garland nee Garfinkel, is reportedly investigating a number of leading universities including Tulane and Rutgers for failure to “protect the civil rights of Jewish students.” It is a typical pattern where Jewish officials investigate alleged crimes against other Jews and come up with a predictable conclusion.
The universities are scrambling to comply with the government demands to get tough with alleged antisemites. At Columbia University, for example, certain slogans and chants used by Palestinian students have been banned and blocked, but there is no corresponding interference with Jewish student activities. Professor Rashid Khalidi has written a response to the university administration saying:
“Our deans state that the Columbia community should acknowledge ‘that hearing chanted phrases such as ‘by any means necessary,’ ‘from the river to the sea,’ or calls for an ‘intifada’—irrespective of intentions and provenance—is experienced by many Jewish, Israeli, and other members of our community as antisemitic and deeply hurtful. They have thus unilaterally decided that no one should rise up [the actual meaning of ‘intifada’] against 56 years of illegal military occupation; that Palestine should remain unfree from the river to the sea; and that the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression. They have come to this decision because hearing otherwise is ‘antisemitic and deeply hurtful’ to some. This statement amounts to a new norm that prohibits using or learning about these terms and their histories, in favor of the privileging of a politics of feeling. While perhaps appropriate to a kindergarten, it is hard to imagine an approach more contrary to the most basic idea of a university. This statement is characteristic of a university that picks a task force nearly devoid of expertise on antisemitism and on Palestine/Israel (much of which exists among the faculty), but packed with outspoken advocates for Israel, a university that has decided that faculty expertise on freedom of speech or on language to be proscribed should be rigorously excluded from deliberations on such issues. With complete disregard for the principle of faculty governance, crucial matters like these are being decided upon by administrators, presumably with hefty input from trustees, donors and politicians, who have negligible expertise, but robust and one-sided opinions.”
Khalidi might also have observed how pro-Israel groups at colleges are compiling and blacklisting names of student-critics of the Gaza situation so they can be denied jobs after they graduate. And beyond the damage done to freedom of speech and critical thinking at the universities there are already plenty of other possible consequences for those who are choosing to speak up about the atrocities that are underway but they only appear to apply to Palestinian and antiwar groups that are demonstrating against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans. Ambitious politician wannabe Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida was one of the first to respond, banning Palestinian groups at all state universities due to their alleged “antisemitism.” He did not ban or even criticize a single Jewish group for cheerleading the slaughter of the Palestinians. And this has been the pattern elsewhere with the banning or denying of facilities to Palestinian and antiwar groups, but leaving Hillel and other Jewish groups alone no matter what they do. Is that freedom of speech? Of course not, but it is a measure of who has power in the United States and who does not. Speak ill of whomever you choose but leave Israel alone or you will be in real trouble!
And protecting Israel also extends to the punishing of supporters of completely nonviolent action, like boycotting or divesting from Israeli products to put pressure on the Benjamin Netanyahu regime. If you belong to a group that opposes Israeli policies you could be denied goods and services for that fact alone. In more than thirty states one can be compelled, for example, to sign an agreement not to support any action against Israel if one wants a job or government services. This special arrangement is unique to Israel and there are also special trade missions often manned by American Jews or Israelis, including in my state Virginia, which create special investment opportunities for Israel that do not exist for any other country.
But perhaps the most insidious attempt to complete America’s falling under the control of Israel-thinks is what is taking place in lower-to-mid level public education. Many school districts and even state educational boards require courses in the horrors of antisemitism and the so-called holocaust. The courses are, of course, being pushed most ardently by Jews and by select Evangelicals who are sitting around waiting for the Second Coming, a prophecy that involves in their minds the return of Jews to the Holy Land as a prerequisite. Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, who is, of course, Jewish, has just introduced legislation called the “Never Again Education Act,” which has an impact nationwide. The “Never Again Education Act” was first introduced in July of 2019 before passing in the House in January 2020 with 300 co-sponsors and in the Senate in May 2020. As it is set to expire in 2025, Senator Rosen is looking to have the Act reapproved to extend it to 2030 to “provide funding for training and lessons on the ethnic cleansing of Jews.”
The problem with the Act is that it rests on a contrived narrative that is essentially political in nature, including as it does many non-historical and even fabricated assertions about what took place in the 1930s and 1940s. The Act is intended to bestow on Jews a special victimhood that in turn conveys on them and on Israel exemption from normal rules regarding their behavior. It, of course, is part of the narrative that is giving Netanyahu and his rogues a more-or-less free pass from the US for their crimes against humanity against the Palestinians.
So the America we once knew is under siege. Free speech is being eroded and will soon be subject to criminal penalties if one says the wrong thing about Israel. This is intolerable and one prays that the American people will have its own “intifada” and wake up to the new infamy and put an end to it.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Why are so Many Californians Dying?
By Thomas Buckley | Brownstone Institute | January 3, 2024
Covid has claimed about 105,000* lives in the state since 2020.
In that same time period, 82,000 more Californians died from everything else than is typical.
Adjusted for the decline in population, that non-Covid “excess death” figure becomes even more concerning as the state has seen its population drop to about the same it was in 2015.
In 2015 – obviously there was no Covid – 260,000 of the then 39 million Californians died. In 2023, not including November and December, 240,000 people died not from Covid (6,000 additional people died of Covid.).
Extrapolating the year-to-date figures for 2023 creates a final year-end figure of 280,000 – 20,000 more people than died in 2015. That’s a non-Covid, population-neutral jump of 8%.
In other words, despite the protestations of certain officials, the state’s death rate has NOT returned to “pre-Covid” levels – in 2019 the year before the pandemic, 270,000 people died with a population at least 400,000 greater than today.
Why?
Dr. Bob Wachter, medical chair at UC-SF and ardent supporter of tight pandemic restrictions, did not respond to an email from the Globe (away for work the auto-response said) but he did recently tell the San Jose Mercury News that in “(T)he last three years, not only were there a lot of deaths from Covid, there were a lot of additional deaths from non-Covid causes, which are probably attributable to people not receiving the medical care that they normally would have received’ when ERs were overflowing with Covid patients (note – the truth of that ER assertion has not been verified), Wachter noted.”
In other words, the pandemicist Wachter admitted the pandemic response itself at least contributed to a significant number of excess deaths, a fact that was aggressively and roundly denied and – if mentioned – led to censoring and societal ostracization (and in many cases job losses) by the powers that be during the pandemic.
A second admission along these lines was recently made by former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins – Tony Fauci’s boss.
In this video clip, Collins – who once called for a “devastating takedown” (see above) of those who questioned the hard pandemic response – said his DC and public health blinders, well, blinded him to the problems his pandemic response caused and is still causing:
If you’re a public health person, and you’re trying to make a decision, you have this very narrow view of what the right decision is, and that is something that will save a life. Doesn’t matter what else happens, so you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from. Collateral damage. This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made.
(You can see Collins for yourself here.)
Needless to say there is not even a half-hearted apology involved. And Collins is/was wrong in the approach to public health he apparently subscribes to, as throughout modern history it has involved a cost/benefit analysis and a weighing of the impact on society.
Public health, practiced properly, does not – and never before has – attached “zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from.”
“We had the exact wrong people in charge at the exact wrong time,” said Stanford professor of medicine (and one of the people Collins tried to “take down”) Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. “Their decisions were myopically deadly.”
To remind Collins of the ramifications of his decision beyond the excess deaths:
Massive educational degradation. Economic devastation, by both the lockdowns and now the continuing fiscal nightmare plaguing the nation caused by continuing federal overreaction. The critical damage to the development of children’s social skills through hyper-masking and fear-mongering. The obliteration of the public’s trust in institutions due to their incompetence and deceitfulness during the pandemic. The massive erosion of civil liberties. The direct hardships caused by vaccination mandates, etc. under the false claim of helping one’s neighbor. The explosion of the growth of Wall Street built on the destruction of Main Street.
The clear separation of society into two camps – those who could easily prosper during the pandemic and those whose lives were completely upended. The demonization of anyone daring to ask even basic questions about the efficacy of the response, be it the vaccines themselves, the closure of public schools, the origin of the virus, or the absurdity of the useless public theater that made up much of the program. The fissures created throughout society and the harm caused by guillotined relationships amongst family and friends.
The slanders and career chaos endured by prominent actual experts (see the Great Barrington Declaration, co-authored by Bhattacharya) and just plain reasonable people like Jennifer Sey for daring to offer different approaches; approaches – such as focusing on the most vulnerable – that had been tested and succeeded before.
Nationally, pandemic “all-cause” deaths spiked, for obvious reasons, but they remain stubbornly higher than normal to this day.
There could be mitigating factors to California’s numbers, specifically the issue of drug overdoses. Since 2018, the overdose death rate has doubled. The last overall figures available are from 2021 which showed 10,901 people dying of an overdose. While not specifically broken out for which drug, the vast majority are from opioid overdoses and the vast majority of those involve fentanyl. In 2022, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths with 6,473 of those involving fentanyl.
But the overdose death increase would account for only about 25% of the total increase in “excess deaths,” meaning it has an impact but cannot explain the whole story.
There is also the issue of homeless deaths. Homeless people die at a far higher rate than the rest of the population and California has had a burgeoning homeless population for the last few years, despite the money being spent on the issue. However, at least a portion of that increase can – as with overdoses – be attributed to fentanyl and is therefore difficult to separate out as discrete numbers.
Those two increases, however, may explain the fact that the “all-cause” excess death rate for those in the 25-to-44 year age bracket (it has comparatively higher overdose death and homelessness figures) have remained – except for two very recent weeks – above the typical historical range.
The increase in overdose (and alcohol-related deaths) has been directly tied to the pandemic response previously. In California, there were about 3,500 more alcohol-related deaths during the pandemic response than before: 5,600 in 2019 (pre-pandemic,) 6,100 in 2020, 7,100 in 2021, 6,600 in 2022, and 2023 is on pace to see about 6,000.
That still leaves roughly half of the excess deaths unaccounted for, raising questions about the safety of the Covid shot (a shot, not a vaccine) itself. The CDC lists 640 deaths in California directly from the shot and an increase in “adverse effects” from the shot compared to many other actual vaccines. The Covid shot “ adverse” rate was one in a thousand, while, for comparison, it’s about one in a million for the polio vaccine.
That means a person was more than 9 times as likely to die from the Covid shot as any other vaccine and 6.5 times to be injured by it in some fashion.
Still that is – according to state figures – not enough to explain the increase.
There are three other issues to note: first, many of the counting questions around dying “from” Covid versus “with” Covid remain, meaning the Covid death numbers could be elevated if the “withs” are lumped in with the “froms.”
Second, there is the simmering matter of “iatrogenic” deaths – i.e. deaths caused by the treatment. Early on in the pandemic response, a push was made to “ventilate” patients mechanically. From the above article (no caps in the original):
here’s an unsettling comparison: in NYC area, mortality rate for all COV ICU patients was 78%. in stockholm, the SURVIVAL rate was over 80%. this is a staggering variance. the key difference: ventilators. NYC used them on 85% of patients, sweden used them sparingly
Combined with the placing of Covid patients in nursing homes, the number of actual “only” or “natural” (for lack of a better term) Covid deaths, again, may be elevated.
The state Department of Public Health declined to comment on the matter.
Which brings us back to the Wachter and Collins oblique, nearly accidental admissions that the response itself may have caused significant and ongoing damage across numerous personal and public sectors.
Comparing California to other states also shows a concerning trend, specifically when considering the aftermath of the pandemic response. While increasing in population, for example, Florida’s excess death rate increase was/is lower than California’s as was its Covid death rate, a fact Gov. Gavin Newsom has been lying about for years.
During the pandemic itself, the nation saw an “all-cause” – including Covid – death rate increase of about 16% above normal. Using that metric, as it is clear the response itself had knock-on effects – California’s was 19.4% and Florida’s was 16.7%, despite the wildly different pandemic responses.
Imagine, if you will, you own a baseball team and you have two shortstops, one that earns $10 million a year and one that earns $1 million. And it turns out that both are equally talented – errors, batting stats, etc. – and that maybe the cheaper one is actually even a bit more talented it turns out. Which shortstop was the better deal for the team? The less expensive one, of course.
That is an apt analogy for states choosing how to respond to the pandemic – Florida cut the $10 million player while California kept him. In other words, the two states got the same-ish performance but at wildly different societal costs.
This pattern seems to be borne out by many of the figures. Obviously, various states that ended up lower than the national average took very different approaches: North Dakota and New Jersey saw roughly the same all-cause mortality numbers, as did Washington (state) and South Dakota.
This is true on the “high side” as well: California and Montana, Oregon and Arkansas are two pairs that had similar numbers with different approaches.
All of this raises a deeper question in that there appears to be little if any direct causative resultant difference between a draconian pandemic response and a softer touch.
And that should not at all be the case: the lockdowns, the masks, the shots, the social distancing, the closing of schools and stores and churches and parks, and everything else should have produced a clear and distinct difference – if the pandemicists were right.
If they were right, the difference in results should be stark and obvious to the naked eye. Miami should look like Genoa after the plague ships arrived while Los Angeles should seem like a New Eden. If the much-maligned Swedish “soft” model was as dangerous as the pandemicists said, Stockholm should be a ghost town.
But that’s not at all true and that’s why the pandemicists are/were so evidently wrong: the harshest methods had little impact on the end results.
While there were differences between states, they cannot necessarily be directly tied to a specific policy construct (save Hawaii, which can be discounted considering their isolated geography). Hard or soft pandemic response, in the long run it didn’t seem to matter much in the Covid death tolls.
Where it did – and still does – matter is the immediate and long-lasting damage the more tyrannical responses had on society as a whole.
And – if California’s excess death numbers are an indicator – the pandemic response itself is still killing people.
And that, too, definitely shouldn’t be happening – if the pandemicists were right.
It is even more problematic – and even more ethically abhorrent – if the Covid death figures are inflated; the number of Covid deaths of 105,000 is only about 20% higher than the other non-Covid excess death figure of 82,000.
In other words, the net “from Covid” deaths may not be terribly different from the “from the Covid response” death count.
And that possibility is the most terrifying of all.
* All numbers used are rounded for simplicity and come from state and federal sources.
Thomas Buckley is the former mayor of Lake Elsinore, Cal. and a former newspaper reporter. He is currently the operator of a small communications and planning consultancy.
Expansion of UK Investigatory Law to Force Tech Companies Into ‘Surveillance State’
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 03.01.2024
King Charles III announced No.10’s decision to expand the powers of the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act last year, adding that threats to national security are currently “changing rapidly due to new technology.”
The UK government’s drive to update the country’s controversial Investigatory Powers Act (IPA) is prompting “a fresh outcry” among both industry execs and privacy campaigners, a US news outlet has reported.
According to the outlet, Downing Street’s actions to expand what is known as one of Europe’s toughest surveillance laws could hobble efforts to protect user privacy.
In a letter to Home Secretary James Cleverly, industry body TechUK warned that the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill threatens technological innovation, undermines the sovereignty of other nations and leads to far-reaching consequences if it causes a domino effect overseas.
TechUK insisted that combined with pre-existing powers, the IPA changes would “grant a de- facto power to indefinitely veto companies from making changes to their products and services offered in the UK.”
“We stress the critical need for adequate time to thoroughly discuss these changes, highlighting that rigorous scrutiny is essential given the international precedent they will set and their very serious impacts,” the letter reads.
The document points out that TechUK is concerned that the the proposed changes are presented by the Home Office as minor adjustments and as such are being downplayed.
Director of thecampaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, argued that with CCTV footage or social media posts people may not have an expectation of privacy, but that “data taken together and processed in a certain way, can be incredibly intrusive.”
“What we’re seeing across these different bills is a continual edging further towards […] turning private tech companies into arms of a surveillance state,” Carlo said.
A No.10 spokesperson in turn underscored that the government has always been clear that it supports technological innovation as well as private and secure communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption. “But this cannot come at a cost to public safety, and it is critical that decisions are taken by those with democratic accountability,” the spokesperson warned.
On June 5, the Home Office opened consultations to discuss “possible outcomes for revised IPA notices…intended to improve the effectiveness of the current regimes” amid new challenges to national security.
The Home Office in particular wants companies offering messaging services, including Apple behind FaceTime and iMessage, and Meta behind WhatsApp, to seek government approval around these messaging tools’ security features.
The 2016 IPA, commonly known as the “snoopers’ charter”, contains a spate of provisions, such as requiring broadband internet service providers and mobile operators to log internet connection records (ICRs) for up to 12 months.
Ukrainians Turn Against War But Are Afraid to Speak Out
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | January 2, 2024
As the war in Ukraine nears the end of its second year, Ukrainians are turning against fighting and towards diplomacy. One former official said that Ukrainian soldiers are currently fighting and dying for nothing.
The Times reports, “Many Ukrainians are growing tired and weary of the war. One Ukrainian military source admitted that average Ukrainians were talking of a truce yet there were questions around what the price of the truce would be.”
Most people in Ukraine wanted a truce but were “afraid to admit it to themselves,” Mykhailo Chaplyha, a political commentator and former vice-ombudsman of Ukraine, said. There was an atmosphere of “total mistrust and fear” in Ukraine and anyone who dared to think of a truce would immediately become an “outcast and a traitor.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine, President Zelensky targeted dissidents using the security state. The Ukrainian media and Zelensky’s main political opposition has been outlawed. Kiev has targeted branches of the Orthodox church perceived to be too close to Moscow.
A former Ukrainian official said that Zelensky was losing support. He said the West told Kiev not to give up, but there was no war strategy and soldiers were “sent to the front line to die.” The official continued, “It is nonsense to send in our soldiers to die if we don’t have enough armament and resources to win militarily. What is the strategy, to keep us dying for what? And not less important — where is our diplomacy?”
In the early months of the war in Ukraine, the West pushed Kiev to abandon talks with Moscow. The US and its allies promised Ukraine that it would provide Kiev with all the support it needs to win the war.
However, as the war nears its third year, the Western weapons stockpiles are approaching depletion. The White House has run out of funds for arming Ukraine, while future aid is being used as leverage in an immigration debate.
Since October 7, the Biden administration has started to prioritize arming Israel over Ukraine. Israel has received tens of thousands of 155 mm shells, a high-demand weapon for both Kiev and Tel Aviv.
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From the Archives
Precedents for Pizzagate
Marc Dutroux, Belgian pedophile, sadist, and serial killer with friends in high places
By Aedon Cassiel | Counter – Currents | December 23, 2016
To reiterate a point that should be clear to the more astute reader, my goal in this series (part 1, part 2) has not been to defend “Pizzagate” as such. My goal has been to defend the people who want to investigate it against specific accusations levied against them by people who think Pizzagate has revealed no intriguing information at all—for a specific reason, which I will be honing in and focusing on much more directly in this closing entry.
Whereas the mainstream critics of Pizzagate would have you believe that the dividing line is between paranoid conspiracy theorist followers of “fake news” and level-headed people who follow trustworthy news sources and rely on cold, hard reason to determine the truth, my goal has been to show that—whatever is or is not happening with Pizzagate itself—this framing of the issue is arrogant, insulting, and the product of extremely narrow tunnel vision. … continue
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