Ukraine will not recognize rights of Russian citizens
By Lucas Leiroz | November 23, 2023
Apparently, not even with the catastrophic military results and serious consequences of the conflict, Ukraine is willing to change the way it treats ethnic Russian citizens. In a recent statement, a top Ukrainian politician made it clear that there will be no recognition of the rights of the Russian population in Ukraine. In practice, this is an admission that Kiev will continue to practice genocide against Russian speakers, further legitimizing Moscow’s military actions.
In an interview with Ukrainian state TV on November 20, Ruslan Stefanchuk, head of the country’s parliament, stated that there will be no concessions from Ukraine regarding the rights of Russian citizens. Stefanchuk claims that there are no ethnic minorities in Ukraine, which is why there should be no protection to Russians and other groups. Furthermore, he clearly states that the Russian population on Ukrainian territory can be legitimately persecuted now, as they are supporting Moscow’s military measures.
“There are no Russian ethnic minorities in Ukraine as of now and there can be none (…) If a people do not show respect but commit aggression against Ukraine, their rights should be infringed upon in this field”, he told journalists.
More than that, Stefanchuk said that Kiev has reached a “consensus” with its European partners on this topic. According to him, there is a common “understanding” between Ukraine and Europe regarding the non-existence of Russian minorities in the country. If this information is confirmed, the situation will become even more serious, as European leaders will be openly supporting the anti-Russian genocide practiced by the neo-Nazi regime.
Until now, despite the unlimited support of most European states for Ukraine, the institutional stance on minorities’ rights has been ambiguous. This year, Ukraine was requested to improve its ethnic policies, recognizing local minorities. The measure is a prerequisite in the process of joining the European Union, which was demanded by Kiev. In this sense, the Venice Commission asked Ukrainians to make some reforms, allowing, for example, the official use of other languages in regions with a non-Ukrainian majority.
As expected, Kiev never complied with European requests and continued its supremacist policy towards other peoples. Despite really wanting to enter the EU, the neo-Nazi regime is ideologically linked to the racist mentality and will not change this until the effects of the 2014 coup are completely reversed. In the same sense, the Europeans never vetoed the Ukrainian membership project because, despite publicly defending “democratic values”, they are geopolitically aligned with NATO’s proxies.
It is important to emphasize that Stefanchuk clearly lies when he says there are no non-Ukrainian ethnicities in the country. There are regions of Ukraine with a Russian majority, as well as significant Hungarian, Polish, Moldovan and other populations. All non-Ukrainian people have suffered racism to some degree since the neo-Nazi Junta came to power in Kiev. Undoubtedly, the people most affected are Russians, as Russophobia is a vital part of Ukrainian ultranationalist ideology. Since 2014, Russians have been massacred in a brutal process of ethnic cleansing, which resulted in Moscow’s decision to launch a special military operation to protect its people.
However, non-Russian people are also persecuted in Ukraine. One of the greatest evidences of this is the case of the Transcarpathia’s Hungarians. Kiev has persecuted the local people in recent years, closing Hungarian schools and reducing the population’s civil rights. As the conflict escalated, something even more brutal began to be done, as the regime launched a campaign of forced recruitment of ethnic Hungarians, sending them en masse to the front lines, while Ukrainians were kept as much as possible in the rear.
In fact, the Ukrainian reality is an example of what happens when xenophobic and ultranationalist groups are placed in power to serve selfish geopolitical interests. NATO strengthened Ukrainian neo-Nazism to carry out a prolonged war plan against Russia, consciously using racism and ethnic hatred as tools against Moscow. Now, even in the face of imminent military defeat, Ukrainian non-Nazis continue to insist on their racist mentality, which shows how long the conflict will take to end.
Without a voluntary willingness on the part of Kiev to abandon its neo-Nazi ideology, the Russians have no alternative but to continue fighting. The Russian population needs to be protected by Moscow by all possible means. If Kiev does not want to cooperate in reaching a diplomatic consensus, then Russian military efforts will continue.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
New World Dis-Order on CHD TV
Corbett • 11/21/2023
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
James Corbett and Dr. Meryl Nass return to “Good Morning CHD” to chronicle the latest Oct. 30 draft of the WHO Pandemic Treaty — now pegged the pandemic ‘agreement’. As the clock counts down until the May 2024 World Health Assembly, the time has come for free and sovereign individuals of the world to reclaim their sovereignty, and fast. James and Meryl elucidate what a “complete reimagination” of the world’s power structure looks like, walking us through the game plan of the opponent’s multi-angled attack to bring about their “New World Dis-Order,” and provide us with inspirational solutions to fight back. Learn their strategies and get a grasp of the bigger picture in this episode of “Good Morning CHD.”
SHOW NOTES:
The Corbett Report – Open Source Intelligence News
Oct 30. Latest WHO “Agreement”
Conference Of The Parties (COP) | UNFCCC
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – Twitter
Missouri V. Holland 252 U.S. 416 (1920) Justia US Supreme Court Center
United States V. Belmont 301 U.S. 324 (1937) Justia US Supreme Court Center
United States V. Pink 315 U.S. 203 (1942) Justia US Supreme Court Center
“The Great Taking”: How They Can Own It All
Sen. Ron Johnson, Advocates Brief On WHO’s Transformation ‘From Health Advisor To Dictator’
German News Report on Covid Vaccines and ‘Turbo Cancer’ Withdrawn in “Frontal Assault on Freedom of the Press”
BY ROBERT KOGON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | NOVEMBER 21, 2023
This past September 21st, the German news agency epd – the news agency of the German Protestant Church – published a potentially explosive report titled ‘Coronavirus Vaccines: Doctors and Researchers Express Concerns.’ The concerns in question were, more precisely, about a possible link between mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines and rapidly-developing or “turbo” cancers.
Thus, we read, for instance:
The Munich-based immunologist Peter Schleicher is currently treating 1,000 patients in his medical practice. Around 30 of them have “turbo cancer”, as he says. This means that “the cancer grows incredibly quickly,” Schleicher told the Evangelischer Pressedienst (epd). He has never before had so many “turbo cancer patients” at the same time, he added.
According to Schleicher, all 30 patients were diagnosed with cancer within three months of their last coronavirus vaccination. He has long suspected that mRNA vaccines can impair the immune system, so that diseased cells in the body can no longer be effectively combated: “In my view, this explains why the tumours grow at lightning speed.”
And further on in the article:
“As early as autumn 2021, I suspected that the coronavirus vaccines could give rise to turbo cancer,” Ute Krüger told epd. The cancer epidemiologist, who specialised as a breast cancer pathologist at the Breast Cancer Centre of Oskar Ziethen Hospital in Berlin in 2004, is currently conducting research at Lund University in Sweden.
For some time now, she has been dealing with cancer patients the course of whose illness has been extremely strange, she says. The cancer specialist points, for instance, to a 70-year-old woman who had been living with metastatic breast cancer for several years: “Shortly after being vaccinated against COVID-19, the tumour growth in her liver exploded.” The patient died within a month.
The article also cites chemistry professors Andreas Schnepf of the University of Tubingen and Martin Winkler of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, who likewise expressed their worries about the dangers of the vaccines.
Within one week of publication, however, the report had been quietly withdrawn. The article has been preserved on the Wayback Machine here. But it has disappeared from the original URL on the website of the German Protestant Church newspaper, the Evangelische Zeitung. Under the same title, ‘Coronavirus Vaccines: Doctors and Researchers Express Concerns’ – even with the same publication date and time! – we now find a brief disclaimer instead of the article. This disclaimer begins as follows:
Here, there was previously a text about coronavirus vaccinations and alleged possible links to cancer illnesses. It was an agency text which came directly from the agency and which had not been edited [by us]. The editors had already distanced themselves from the text and the repeatedly-used term ‘turbo cancer’, which has gained notoriety from its use by so-called ‘Querdenker‘.
The term Querdenker is widely used in German public discourse to refer to opponents of Covid measures such as lockdowns and mass vaccination. ‘Quer-denker‘ literally means ‘oblique’ or ‘transverse’ thinker and has the connotation of non-conformist or dissident, i.e., someone who ‘thinks differently’. (Thus, the English ‘queer’ appears to be derived from the German quer or to share a common etymological root with it.) The term has somehow become a term of disparagement in contemporary German usage.
It should be noted that Germany’s “Protestant Newspaper”, needless to say, regularly runs articles from its Protestant news agency.
The disclaimer goes on to cite a ‘fact-check’ from Germany’s public health authority, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), which virulently rejects any link between the vaccines and cancer and indeed goes on the attack against those suggesting there is one:
Alluding to such fears is a targeted strategy of opponents of vaccination, which is used again and again. They try to create an association between vaccinations and cancer using invented notions like ‘turbo cancer’.
“There is no scientific basis whatsoever for this supposed relationship,” the RKI concludes. Oddly enough, the RKI ‘fact-check’ makes no specific reference to mRNA vaccines here, even though it is obviously such vaccines which are at issue in this context. It only mentions the mRNA vaccines in passing later on, in order to praise the “ingenious idea” of using mRNA technology to fight cancer.
It should be noted that the original epd article already included contrary opinion, including from the German regulatory agency, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, which told the epd, somewhat elliptically, that it “has no indication that the COVID-19 vaccines authorised in Germany altered the human genome”.
Although the German public health authority is cited in the disclaimer, in response to a recent query by the German regional newspaper the Nordkurier, epd Editor-in-Chief Karsten Frerichs insisted that the agency had not come under any pressure from Government officials to withdraw the article, but merely reconsidered the wisdom of its publication after receiving inquiries from “private individuals”.
Peter Schleicher, the Munich-based immunologist cited in the article, calls its withdrawal “outrageous”, describing it as a “frontal assault on freedom of the press”. There is “a great deal of absolutely serious [scientific] literature which undergirds the suspicion” of a link between mRNA vaccines and cancer, he told the Nordkurier.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on X.
Moderna’s ‘Disinformation Department’ Monitors 150 Million Websites for ‘Anti-Vaccine’ Narratives
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | November 21, 2023
Moderna’s “disinformation department” partnered with an industry-backed nonprofit, the Public Good Projects (PGP), to monitor and suppress dissenting voices on COVID-19 vaccine policy, according to a new report by investigative journalists Lee Fang and Jack Poulson published Monday in UnHerd.
Over the last year, the “Twitter Files,” two lawsuits against the Biden administration and other investigations have exposed instances of collusion among government, social media and universities to suppress dissenting speech about COVID-19 policies, election fraud allegations and other topics.
This new report sheds light on Moderna’s behind-the-scenes strategy within this new media landscape. It exposes key actors and how they worked to monitor 150 million websites for the purpose of censoring speech that undermines the company’s COVID-19 vaccine narrative and actively shaping public discourse to benefit Moderna’s bottom line.
Great Barrington Declaration co-author and Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who was blacklisted by Twitter, praised the new report in a tweet.
Moderna had never successfully advanced any product to market prior to the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine and was teetering on the edge of collapse when the pandemic was announced.
Its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine transformed the drugmaker into a $100 billion company almost overnight and turned its CEO, chairman and co-founders into billionaires.
Today, as public interest in taking yet another booster shot tanks and federal subsidies for the shot are disappearing, so are profits, leading the company to invest in new strategies — like a flashy marketing campaign — to stay afloat, Fang and Poulson reported.
Moderna also is doubling down on work started during the pandemic to attack dissent about vaccines and to direct vaccination policy, they found.
In fact, Moderna today employs former law enforcement agents, like Nikki Rutman, a 20-year FBI veteran who worked for the agency in Boston during Operation Warp Speed where her job was to conduct weekly cybersecurity meetings with Moderna.
Now she runs Moderna’s global intelligence division — part of the department spearheading Moderna’s work to stop “disinformation” — producing reports that flag “anti-vaccine narratives” online and recommending whether and how to address them, they wrote.
The department works with the PGP, largely funded through a $1.27 million donation from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, a biotech lobbying group that represents Pfizer and Moderna.
Through PGP and Talkwalker, a “social listening” company, Moderna’s team monitors everything from mainstream news outlets to gaming sites, deploying artificial intelligence to monitor 150 million websites across the world for vaccine-related conversation.
The team issues reports to Moderna staff that color-code the “anti-vaccine narratives” by level of risk. Low-risk narratives “don’t currently warrant any action.” For the higher-risk narratives, the team “will notify the appropriate stakeholders with recommendations,” Lee and Poulson wrote.
Analyzing sample reports, the journalists discovered that examples of “high-risk” posts included a video posted by Elon Musk mocking myriad claims that the vaccines were “100% effective” along with a number of posts made by comedian and political commentator Russell Brand, whom they flagged in September for his “anti-vaccine” beliefs.
The Moderna team also raised concerns over the optics when tennis star Novak Djokovic, who refused the COVID-19 vaccine, won the Moderna-sponsored U.S. Open.
Lee and Paulson reported that Moderna was unconcerned with the truth of any of the claims made in the posts it flagged, only with their effects.
“None of the reports that we have seen makes any attempt to dispute the claims made,” they wrote. “Rather the claims are automatically deemed ‘misinformation’ if they encourage vaccine hesitancy.”
Moderna first began working with PGP in 2021-2022 on a program called “Stronger,” where the nonprofit “identified misinformation and shaped content decisions on social media.”
PGP could do this effectively because it had “backdoor access” to Twitter data, through a “firehose,” which provides real-time access to all tweets on the platform for large-scale data analysis and data mining.
PGP, which worked directly with Twitter to develop its policies around the pandemic, would send Twitter lists of accounts to amplify or censor.
Twitter’s general counsel also advised the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s task force on combating misinformation to work with PGP on COVID-19 speech-related issues.
Lee and Poulson also found that PGP distributed talking points and advice on how to respond to vaccine misinformation to a network of 45,000 healthcare professionals.
“[Moderna’s] intention, as we have gleaned from the emails exchanged, was not only to combat misinformation, but also to affect the content and tenor of public debate,” Fang and Paulson wrote.
This year, as the COVID-19 booster uptake numbers have collapsed, Moderna and PGP launched a new collaboration, this time working with the American Board of Internal Medicine, to develop a training program called the “Infodemic Training Program,” to train healthcare workers to identify “medical misinformation.”
Despite public outrage regarding social media censorship, a clear lack of interest in continuing to take booster shots and the official end of the pandemic announced in May by the Biden administration, Moderna continues to grow its surveillance operation.
Internal alerts analyzed by Fang and Poulson reveal the company is closely monitoring laws and politicians seeking to restrict vaccine mandates and that it continues to flag messages posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, by Musk, who Moderna notes, “increasingly uses that platform to elevate fringe vaccine opponents and conspiracy theorists.”
The authors wrote:
“The network of fact-checking nonprofits has grown at an industrial pace, providing opaque opportunities for private and public interests to take subtle control over the public discourse. Such sophistication in blending public-health messaging and corporate advertising should concern anyone with an interest in how government controls free speech.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul Announces Plans to Implement Pre-Crime Surveillance, Target Online “Hate”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | November 21, 2023
In a press conference today, New York Governor Kathy Hochul outlined her administration’s aggressive new strategy for combating online “hate” and implementing pre-crime-esque online surveillance.
As part of this approach, New York’s Threat Assessment and Management Teams (TAM teams), which were established in August 2022 in response to the Buffalo mass shooting, will extend their efforts and start targeting speech surrounding the conflict in the Middle East, with a focus on preventing crimes before they occur. TAM teams will be given an additional $3 million investment for their implementation across New York State college campuses.
“We’re creating strategies, first time ever, to help identify hate at the source and prevent crimes before they occur,” Hochul said.
The TAM teams, primarily focused on tracking and stopping violent acts of hate, work in collaboration with mental health professionals. They establish reporting systems for red flags and provide training to identify early warning signs of radicalization. This initiative, while seemingly noble in its intent to protect New Yorkers, raises significant privacy and First Amendment concerns.
In addition to expanding the scope of the TAM teams, Hochul also demanded that social media companies take more aggressive steps to reduce hate on their sites, specifically by expanding their moderation teams and providing greater transparency.
Critics of Hochul’s approach argue that it toes a dangerous line between ensuring public safety and infringing on free speech. The First Amendment, a cornerstone of American democracy, guarantees the right to free expression, including the expression of unpopular or controversial views. While the governor insists that the TAM teams are not targeting innocuous content like Instagram sunset posts or tweets about favorite football teams, the scope of what constitutes hate remains ambiguous.
These concerns are particularly pertinent in relation to Hochul. She has previously claimed that “hate speech” is not protected speech, despite the US Supreme Court unanimously reaffirming that there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. Hochul also signed a controversial “hateful conduct” law last year, which is currently facing legal challenges and injunctions over free speech concerns.
The focus on surveillance and intervention, especially in the digital space, is also reflective of the ever-expanding specter of mass government surveillance of everything we say and do online.
Hochul has been a big proponent of this constant monitoring. Earlier this month, she revealed that New York had started conducting social media “surveillance efforts” to monitor hate. And the governor is also an advocate of digital IDs — a type of technology that has numerous privacy concerns.
Governor Hochul’s approach reflects a growing trend among policymakers to address the dark side of digital platforms. However, the effectiveness and legality of such measures in protecting citizens while respecting their constitutional rights remain to be seen.
BitChute Asks Jim Jordan to Investigate the Deplatforming of Parler
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 20, 2023
BitChute, a platform for video hosting and social media, has reached out to Representative Jim Jordan, requesting an investigation into the removal of Parler, a social media platform once favored by free speech supporters, from online platforms. This request is part of a broader inquiry by Jordan’s House panel into possible misuse of government power to pressure online companies to suppress speech.
The Chief Policy Officer at BitChute, Amy Peikoff, who previously held the same position at Parler, addressed a letter to Jordan. In it, she suggested that the actions taken against Parler might be similar to the coordinated efforts outlined in a report by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. This report focused on the Censorship-Industrial Complex.
Parler, which prided itself on minimal content moderation, was deplatformed by key service providers in early January 2021. This move came in the aftermath of January 6th.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the platform’s hosting provider, suspended service on January 10th, citing a violation of its terms of service due to inadequate content moderation systems. This action followed closely on the heels of both Apple and Google removing Parler from their respective app stores, thereby significantly limiting the platform’s accessibility to new users. These moves by major tech companies effectively cut off Parler from a significant portion of its operational infrastructure and user base, sparking a widespread discourse on the role of large technology companies in moderating content and their impact on public discourse.
In her letter, Peikoff remarked, “Perhaps your focus on the 2020 election caused you to overlook the contemporaneous deplatforming of millions of ‘everyday Americans of all political affiliations’ in one fell swoop.”
She went on to question whether the neglect of Parler’s situation, which she considers crucial for maintaining competitive balance in a free market, might have been overlooked to maintain legislative harmony.
Peikoff concluded her correspondence by urging Jordan and his committee to examine the Twitter Files and to include the Parler deplatforming in their investigation.
We Must Demand Justice for the January 6th Protestors!
By Ron Paul | November 20, 2023
New US House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a blow for liberty and justice last week when he finally authorized the release of all the tapes from the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.” We were told by no less than President Biden himself that this was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
The FBI was unleashed by the Biden Administration to hunt down hundreds of participants in this “insurrection” and lock them up in the gulag where they awaited trial in torturous conditions – many in solitary confinement.
A Congressional Committee was set up under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “get to the bottom” of the “Trump-led insurrection.” It did not include a single Representative nominated by the opposition Republican Party, but rather two “Republicans” – Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – who could be relied on by Pelosi and the Democrats to toe the line.
In short, the whole thing was an old-fashioned Soviet show trial, where the evidence was kept secret and the pre-determined verdict – guilty – was to be used to tighten the grip of the ruling regime and intimidate any further dissenters into silence. The message was clear: “speak out against the ‘perfection’ of the 2020 election and you may find yourself in the gulag along with the insurrectionists.”
It was terrifying and profoundly anti-American.
And, as we finally can see for ourselves thanks to Speaker Johnson, it was a huge lie. The new video shows demonstrators shaking hands with police officers once they entered the Capitol Building. They were welcomed into the building by officers who even held the doors for them to enter! They had no way of knowing that they would soon be rounded up and locked away.
Does that mean no crimes were committed on January 6th? Not at all. The tapes already released were carefully chosen to single out examples of violence and other possible criminality. But the full release of the tapes demonstrates beyond a doubt that the endless propaganda that this was a coordinated attempt to overthrow the government was false.
And as for that violence and mayhem on January 6th? How much of it was instigated by undercover FBI agents? New footage clearly shows officers outside the building firing on protestors with no warning. That must be why, in hearing after hearing, Biden Administration officials like Attorney General Merrick Garland have refused to tell Congress the number of federal agents present and their roles in instigating violence.
The release of this evidence should immediately result in the release of all non-violent protestors awaiting trial or serving their sentences. Those in power responsible for promoting this lie should take their places in the jail cells.
This delayed justice will not help protesters like Matthew Perna, however. Though the new video release clearly shows him calmly walking inside the Capitol in the presence of unconcerned police officers, when Merrick Garland’s Department of “Justice” announced they would seek terrorism charges against him, Perna, in despair, decided to hang himself in his garage.
Yes, there was an insurrection of sorts. Those in power hated Donald Trump so much that they were willing to torture and even murder their fellow Americans to keep him from the presidency. Unless these people are brought to justice, we will have no Republic left to defend.
Canada: censoring pro-Palestine voices triggers backlash at university
MEMO | November 20, 2023
The University of Ottawa is under fire for suspending a medical student over pro-Palestine social media posts. A petition signed by nearly 50,000 people has accused the faculty of misusing its authority, and intimidating residents and students through censorship. The signatories have urged people to call on the university to investigate associate professor of family medicine Dr Yoni Freedhoff.
A resident physician in his 4th year of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Dr Yipeng Ge, is said to have been suspended after Freedhoff, who appears to be an ardent support of Israel according to his profile on X, accused Ge of anti-Semitism. In a blog, Freedhoff targeted Ge for his pro-Palestinian social media posts. He also called out Ge on X, claiming that he was spreading anti-Semitism. Ge was suspended shortly after the publication of Freedhoff’s blog.
A petition demanding Ge’s reinstatement has been signed by 48,365 people. The petition expresses solidarity with Ge and calls on the university to reverse his suspension and apologise for failing to follow due process. It demands a thorough investigation into the decision to suspend Ge and condemns the rise in anti-Palestinian discrimination and censorship at the university, arguing that the suspension violates university policies on free expression, student rights and occupational health and safety.
Ge should have the chance to challenge the suspension with impartial oversight, insist the signatories, who call on the university to protect him from harassment by a faculty member, Freedhoff, that puts him at physical and reputational risk without repercussions. Furthermore, it criticises the university administration for failing to provide a safe learning environment and enable Palestinian advocacy on campus through actions like Ge’s suspension.
This suspension is another example of the growing crackdown on pro-Palestine voices on campuses and social media platforms. Pro-Israel groups have doubled their efforts to silence criticism of the apartheid state. Members of the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London were suspended by the university last month, following a solidarity rally for Gaza. Moreover, a chilling threat to student free speech has emerged across US campuses. Rights groups have warned that pro-Israel donors are seeking to crush pro-Palestine activism through intimidation and threats.
A glimpse into the scale of Israel’s crackdown on social media users was given earlier this year with the revelation that the occupation state is one of the world’s leading countries in demanding the removal of videos from social media giant TikTok. Last week, the site came under pressure from pro-Israel celebrities and “Jewish influencers” to crack down on pro-Palestine voices and content, according to a shocking new report by the New York Times.
Israeli army detains dozens, including women, journalists, in West Bank raids
Israeli soldiers raid the Balata camp for Palestinian refugees, east of Nablus in the occupied West Bank on November 19, 2023 [JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images]
MEMO | November 19, 2023
UK government keeps secret files on critics – Observer
RT | November 18, 2023
At least 15 British government departments have been engaged in a deliberate social media and internet profiling campaign against public experts in various fields to ensure that none of its critics are allowed to speak at the cabinet-sponsored events, the Observer reported on Saturday, citing a trove of data it had seen.
The government officials in each department had specific guidelines regulating what exactly they should look for and requesting them to compile and keep “secret files” on the speakers deemed to be critical of the cabinet, the paper said.
The profiling usually involved checking a person’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn accounts as well as doing a Google search on such individuals using specific keywords like “criticism of the government or prime minister.” The officials were then advised to look through up to 10 pages of the search results or a period of between three and five years, the report said.
The UK Education Department – one of those engaged in the profiling campaign, according to the Observer – outright denied resorting to such practices in a response to the freedom of information request filed by the Privacy International group last year. The group was investigating social media monitoring by the government at that time.
“Making a concerted effort to search for negative information in this way is directed surveillance,” the Privacy International legal director, Caroline Wilson Palow, told the Observer.
The data on the practice were shared with the paper by a law firm, Leigh Day, that is currently pursuing legal action against the government on behalf of at least two persons affected by such practices.
“This is likely to have impacted large numbers of individuals, many of whom won’t know civil servants hold secret files on them. Such practices are extremely dangerous,” Tessa Gregory, partner at Leigh Day, told the Observer. The lawyer maintained that such hidden checks are in violation of data protection laws and potentially of equality and human rights laws as well.
One of those who hired Leigh Day was Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), one of the UK’s leading security think tanks. “The full extent of this is shocking and probably not fully known. I was lucky enough to be given clearcut, obvious evidence,” he told the paper, adding that he was also aware of 12 other experts who had found out that the government had been blacklisting them.
According to Kaszeta, he received a public apology from the government in July and was informed in August that the 15 departments in question had withdrawn those guidelines pending a Cabinet Office review.
A spokesman for the Cabinet Office told the Observer that the government was “reviewing the guidance and have temporarily withdrawn it to prevent any misinterpretation of the rules.”
“I Want Everybody’s Name.” Nikki Haley Ignores the First Amendment As She Demands an End to Online Anonymity
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | November 14, 2023
Presidential hopeful from the Republican party, Nikki Haley, has come out in favor of removing online anonymity, recruiting all social media account holders to verify their accounts with a government ID.
Haley said anonymous social media accounts and “misinformation” are a “national security threat.”
However, her sentiments have fueled concerns surrounding censorship and freedom of speech.
Haley, in an interview with Fox News, emphasized her demand for transparency in social media algorithms. The understanding of algorithms, she believes, would reveal the reasons behind certain content delivery on these platforms.
Haley voiced her concerns over the surge in unidentifiable accounts on social media and the alleged misinformation she says they disseminate. She affirms these as potential threats to national security that need to be addressed swiftly and decidedly. She expressed her viewpoint, maintaining that “Every person on social media should be verified by their name. It’s a national security threat.”
“I want everybody’s name,” Haley said on the Ruthless podcast.
Haley also proposed a strategy to mitigate bot activity originating from Russia, Iran, and China by implementing stringent verifications for social media accounts. She believes this measure would improve conduct on these platforms, positing that the knowledge of their posts being seen by known relations would lead to a rise in “civility.”
In oppressive regimes, anonymity is often a shield for dissidents and activists. It allows them to speak out against government abuses, organize protests, and share information without immediately revealing their identity. Mandatory ID verification would strip away this layer of protection, making it easier for authoritarian governments to identify, track, and prosecute individuals who oppose them.
Knowing that their identities could be easily uncovered, many would-be dissidents might choose to remain silent rather than risk their safety. This chilling effect on free speech would be detrimental to the fight for human rights and democracy. In countries where dissent is already dangerous, further suppression of free speech can strengthen authoritarian rule.
Authoritarian regimes often employ extensive surveillance to monitor and control their citizens. Mandatory ID verification on social media would hand these governments another tool for surveillance. This could lead to more targeted repression, as governments could more easily identify and monitor the activities of dissidents when social media platforms are compelled to hand over the information they hold on users.
The Constitutional Implications of Haley’s Demands
The First Amendment of the US Constitution protects freedom of speech and expression. Mandatory ID verification on social media could be seen as a form of censorship, limiting individuals’ ability to speak freely online. Historically, the Supreme Court has been protective of anonymous speech as a vital part of the freedom of expression, as seen in cases like Talley v. California (1960) and McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995). These cases underscore the right to distribute anonymous literature and the protection of anonymous speech, respectively.
Related to the First Amendment, there’s a historical precedent for the right to anonymity in political speech. In the Federalist Papers, for example, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote under the pseudonym “Publius” to argue for the ratification of the Constitution itself. Without the right to anonymity, there would be no America as we know it.
This anonymity allowed for the free exchange of ideas without fear of retribution. Requiring ID verification could discourage individuals from expressing unpopular or dissenting opinions, thus stifling democratic discourse.
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Woolsey Fire started at Santa Susana Field Lab — where “radioactive materials released were never accurately measured”
By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
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