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New York AG Letitia James Backtracks on Censorship Demands of Rumble

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | October 22, 2023

In the face of determined resistance in defense of free speech, New York Attorney General Letitia James has withdrawn her overreach in demanding that Rumble, the social media platform, censor expression related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

This move arrives in reaction to the advocacy of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), asserting that her initiative blatantly contravened the First Amendment and a federal court order restraining the enforcement of New York’s Online Hate Speech Law.

On October 12, James, orchestrated a drive against the freedom of expression, challenging multiple social media platforms, including Rumble, Meta, and Reddit. Her request to these platforms was for information on what steps they are taking to inhibit the dissemination of “hateful content” in relation to the escalating conflict in the Middle East and report back on their adopted policies regarding content administration.

One day later, following pushback, James climbed down from her position for FIRE plaintiff Rumble. This result was celebrated by FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner, who declared that “her letter was ill-advised and violated a court order.”

Related: Rumble wins injunction against New York’s online censorship law

October 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s ambassador pushes to shut down pro-Palestinian activism

By Yves Engler | October 21, 2023

Israel wants Canada to criminalize growing displays of solidarity with Palestinians.

In a bid to amplify calls to ban Palestine solidarity marches, Israel’s ambassador Iddo Moed told the Canadian Press on Thursday, “I don’t think that democracies allow people to hate and to incite, and I think that that is something that is looked at very carefully in many places, including Canada.” He added, “when is a line crossed that is between supporting a cause and between changing our values in a way that incites hatred and violence and even glorification of horrendous terrorist attacks.”

As a purported example of the “hatred” Moed is referring to, the CP story reported “One sign spotted at the Oct. 9 protest outside Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square read: ‘Occupation is a crime, resistance is a response.’”

Moed is seeking to boost a push to change Canada’s criminal code. Last week the Globe and Mail published “Rallies raise question of whether Canada should have a law against public cheering of terrorism” and the National Post’s John Ivison called for federal legislation to criminalize the protests in “Tolerating the glorification of terror and slaughter is societal suicide”. Similarly, the host of CBC’s Power & Politics David Cochrane asked foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly whether Canadians participating in Palestine solidarity rallies should be prosecuted for supporting terrorism while National Post reporter Tristin Hopper mused about banning the Palestinian flag. On Twitter Hopper noted, “So when do we declare the Palestinian flag a hate symbol? I’m not seeing a lot of them being waved by people who *don’t* support mass-murder.”

Taking a page from Hopper’s line of thinking, a principal at an Ottawa elementary school recently asked a student to remove the Palestinian flag as their profile picture. “We will follow up with your family because we want to keep all students feeling safe, welcome and included in our classrooms,” the principal is recorded saying.

This isn’t an isolated case. On Thursday prominent Toronto teacher Javier DaVila tweeted, “I’ve received dozens of reports from parents of children in Ontario education who’ve been targeted, attacked or suspended for wearing Keffiyehs, displaying Palestinian flags, expressing solidarity with or even saying Palestine.”

In a bid to blunt opposition to Israel’s genocidal policies, the media and politicians have hounded CUPE Ontario leader Fred Hahn and Hamilton NDP MPP Sarah Jama. They’ve also vilified student unions standing for Palestinian rights and called for them to be defunded.

While they obsess about one-sided student union statements, the media has all but ignored racism spouted by more influential pro-Israel actors. They are uninterested that the head of Montreal’s Federation CJA told an audience, which included multiple elected officials, that “the barbarians are at the gate” or that Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs hosted a speaker days after he tweeted an image of an Israeli military boot crushing a Palestinian cockroach. The leaders of the four main political parties spoke at the same CIJA conference.

Without a hint of awareness of the irony, organizations that proclaim Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” and condemn anyone who draws parallels between Nazi behaviour and Israel’s, as well as newspaper columnists who decry leftists when they “de-platform” right wingers, target the jobs of Palestine’s supporters.

Zionist campaigners have targeted multiple individuals’ livelihoods. Under outside pressure, a number of public servants are being “probed for anti-Israel posts” while a doctor who has done humanitarian work in Gaza and elsewhere, Ben Thomson, was suspended by Mackenzie Health for his Palestine advocacy. Air Canada even fired a pilot for posting Palestine protest photos on social media.

In response to the witch-hunt, Labour 4 Palestine has launched an action campaign titled “Defend free speech. Stop the attack on Palestine solidarity.” For its part, Scholar Strike Canada released a statement condemning “University Administrators and the Western media for their ongoing Threats against Scholars and Students in Solidarity with Palestinian People in Gaza.” In response to the Ontario premier’s smears, Jama formally threatened a defamation suit against Doug Ford.

Notwithstanding the witch-hunt, tens of thousands of Canadians have taken to the streets in recent days. On Tuesday night multiple thousands rallied and marched in emergency protests in Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Toronto against Israel killing hundreds at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza. A few days earlier more than 5,000 marched in Montréal against Canada’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal violence in Gaza.

More protests are planned Friday and this weekend. The best way to respond to repression of solidarity is to amplify Palestine solidarity work.

October 22, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

CDC Wants Pregnant Women to Get 4 Vaccines — More and More Women Are Saying ‘No’

By Mike Capuzzo | The Defender | October 18, 2023

NBC News on Tuesday led its online broadcast with what the network said was the biggest news in the world: “President Biden to visit Israel and vaccine hesitancy on the rise for pregnant women.”

As the winter respiratory illness season rapidly approaches, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the first time is recommending four vaccines during pregnancy: the flu vaccineTdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis, or whooping cough), RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine, and the COVID-19 vaccine.

But more women are saying “no” to their doctors who recommend COVID-19 and the other vaccines — even shutting down conversations with, “I’m not going to talk about it,” according to the NBC News report.

“We are meeting more resistance than I ever remember,” said Dr. Neil Silverman, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UCLA Health. “We didn’t get this kind of pushback on this scale before the pandemic.”

“Now all vaccines are lumped together as ‘bad,’” he said.

NBC based its report on a CDC study, “Influenza, Tdap, and COVID-19 Vaccination Coverage and Hesitancy Among Pregnant Women,” published in the agency’s Sept. 29 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Medical experts interviewed by The Defender criticized the CDC’s recommendations and its report on vaccine hesitancy.

One of those experts, Dr. James Thorp, a Florida physician, board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology who has practiced obstetrics for more than 42 years, urged more women to say no to COVID-19 vaccines, in particular, which he called “an abomination of science and an abomination of a corrupted health care system.”

By continuing to push dangerous mRNA COVID-19 vaccines on pregnant women, Thorp said, the CDC is breaking the “golden rule” of pregnancy.

“The golden rule of pregnancy is you don’t ever, ever use a novel substance in pregnancy, ever,” he said. “And you don’t have to be a physician or nurse, you don’t have to have any education, to know that.”

Only 27% of survey respondents took COVID booster shot

The CDC study analyzed data from an internet panel survey conducted from March 28 to April 16, 2023. The CDC surveyed 1,814 respondents who were pregnant at any time from October 2022 to January 2023.

Key findings include:

  • Only 27.3% of women chose to take the COVID-19 bivalent booster vaccine before or during pregnancy during the 2022-23 flu season, nearly half the percent who agreed to take some other vaccines, the signal in the study indicating fear of COVID-19 vaccines tainted other vaccines, public health experts said.
  • Skepticism about vaccines has ballooned to taint the flu shot in the eyes of pregnant women, though the flu shot has been given to millions of pregnant women over several decades. Last year, the CDC study found, 47.2% of expectant mothers got their flu shots, down from 57.5% who got their flu shots during the pre-COVID-19 2019-20 season.
  • Among most of the 2,000 women who were pregnant during the peak of last year’s cold and flu season, or when the survey was conducted in March and April, almost a quarter said they were “very hesitant” about getting a flu shot, a significant increase in “vaccine hesitancy” over the 17.2% who said they had reservations during the 2021-22 respiratory illness season.
  • 55.4% of women with a recent live birth elected to receive Tdap vaccination during pregnancy, a number inching back from pre-pandemic levels, but “self-reported hesitancy towards influenza and Tdap vaccination during pregnancy increased among pregnant women from 2019–20 to 2022–23.”

Dr. Denise Jamieson, vice president for medical affairs at the University of Iowa Health Care and a spokesperson for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told NBC News that “even prior to the pandemic, it was a struggle to get pregnant women vaccinated.”

She said she is dismayed that “Tdap is just barely recovering from pre-pandemic levels” and “the number of women vaccinated for Covid is disappointing.”

Dr. Linda Eckert, an OB-GYN and global health and immunization expert at the University of Washington, said more of her patients have “a bias … about how they feel about a vaccine.”

When Eckert recommends a vaccine, more pregnant women now reply, “I’m not going to talk about it,” she said.

Dr. Melissa Simon, an OB-GYN at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, decried the rise in vaccine “myths, what I would call blatant disinformation that is intended to be more politically charged, not based in science.”

Pregnancy ‘much safer’ without ‘risks of vaccination’

Thorp, a specialist in maternal-fetal medicine who sees 6,000-7,000 high-risk pregnant patients a year, said he was horrified by the unprecedented level of complications, miscarriages and fetal deaths among his pregnant patients and their unborn children after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are “the deadliest drug in the history of medicine, whether you call it a vaccine, a drug, a gene medicine, a medical intervention, whatever you call it,” he said. “And they knew it. The CDC knew it. HHS knew it. Pfizer knew it and tried to bury the data, which showed 1,223 deaths from its vaccine in the first 10 weeks, for 75 years.”

Thorp cited the more than 1 million illnesses and disabilities and thousands of deaths following COVID-19 vaccination reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), run by the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“If you take all the other vaccines in the U.S. in the last century and do a literature search,” he said, “the deaths and illnesses associated with the mRNA vaccines dwarf the dangers of all other vaccines combined.”

Captured government agencies and major media have for nearly three years continued to ignore the most dire vaccine impacts in U.S. history, which are especially tragic for pregnant women and their unborn children, Thorp said.

In December 2022, Thorp was the lead author of a groundbreaking preprint article on the dangers of COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women and unborn children. The article was peer-reviewed and published in spring 2023 in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

The study analyzed adverse events after COVID-19 vaccines experienced by women of reproductive age, focusing on pregnancy and menstruation. It used data collected by the VAERS database from Jan. 1, 1998, to June 30, 2022, to compare injury reports on flu vaccines versus COVID-19 vaccines.

The study found that COVID-19 vaccines, when compared to flu vaccines, are associated with a greater than double rate of reported “menstrual abnormalities, miscarriage, fetal chromosomal abnormalities, fetal malformation, fetal cystic hygroma, fetal cardiac disorders, fetal arrhythmias, fetal cardiac arrest, fetal vascular malperfusion, fetal growth abnormalities, fetal abnormal surveillance, fetal placental thrombosis, low amniotic fluid, preeclampsia, premature delivery, preterm premature rupture of membrane, fetal death/stillbirth, and premature baby death.”

“Pregnancy complications and menstrual abnormalities are significantly more frequent following COVID-19 vaccinations than Influenza vaccinations,” the authors concluded.

According to Thorp, when he first alerted the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology — the most powerful of the three medical boards in his specialty — about the signals in VAERS, the board threatened to decertify him for spreading “misinformation.”

The board has since backed off, Thorp said, because “they know they’re wrong and I’m right.”

Thorp said he proved, with documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, another one of the three major OBG-YN medical societies, took “large sums of money” from the federal government to participate in “the largest 5th generation psyops warfare in the history of the world, a massive propaganda program to bury the data,” and threatened 61,000 doctors with loss of board certification that would end their careers if they deviated from the government line that the vaccines were “safe and effective and necessary.”

The CDC and other public health authorities, backed by major media, “targeted my patients with their propaganda,” Thorp said.

“They targeted women because women make all the healthcare decisions, not men,” he said. “And they went after women because pregnant women are the most vulnerable population in the world, not children, not the elderly. If you can capture pregnant women when you’re implementing a drug you can convince everyone in the world they should follow.”

Dr. Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, disputed that any of the four CDC-recommended vaccines during pregnancy is necessary, but he said the COVID-19 vaccine is especially dangerous.

“It is my belief that the safety of those vaccines have never been truly proven, especially in terms of them leading to increased rates of many chronic illnesses in childhood,” he said.

Kory said he was appalled by what he said was an ongoing propaganda campaign of misinformation. “This is both absurd and unsurprising,” he said. “The level of pharmaceutical industry influence is being revealed to more Americans on a daily basis.”

Kory pointed to the CDC’s “truly alarming,” maternal mortality data for 2021. “My recommendation to the CDC is to focus more on why so many American mothers died suddenly in 2021, rather than continuing to blindly recommend mass vaccination of that patient population.”

Using the CDC’s mortality data from its March 16, 2023, report, Kory created a chart breaking out mortality rates for pregnant mothers under 25 years old. It showed a 38% increase in deaths for all mothers of all races and more than an 83% increase for young Hispanic mothers.

Dr. Peter McCullough told The Defender he was “concerned that unnecessary vaccines during pregnancy will cause fever in some women.”

“Fever is one of the most common triggers for miscarriage, stillbirth and premature labor,” he said. “Pregnancy is much safer when left to the natural progression of gestation without the risks of vaccination.”

“As a mother, the first thing I did, the first thing all mothers do, is evaluate what you’re consuming because it’s going directly into your baby,” said Laura Sextro, CEO of The Unity Project, a California-based nonprofit that fights for medical freedom and parental rights. “Pregnant women cut out fish because of high levels of mercury and lead, or maybe stop drinking Diet Coke.”

While mothers “go to great lengths to protect their child in the womb,” she urged more to become aware of the dangers of “injecting yourself” with the mRNA vaccine, which poses risks, both proven and unknown, to mothers and children.

“It’s an atrocity we’re seeing,” she said. “We’re seeing a dramatic uptick in spontaneous abortion in certain trimesters after women are given this vaccine.”

Sextro advised pregnant women that “the best way to protect you and baby is always make sure you’re asking questions.”

“If you’re not getting answers, it’s your right as a parent — just because the baby is in the womb doesn’t mean you’re not a parent — it is your responsibility to make sure that you stay informed and protect your child.”


Mike Capuzzo is the managing editor of The Defender. He is a former prize-winning reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Miami Herald, a science writer, and a regional magazine founding editor and publisher who has won more than 200 journalism awards as a writer, editor and publisher.

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.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Rights groups push back against EU censorship chief Thierry Breton after he pressured platforms to censor “disinformation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 20, 2023

European (EU) Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton is asked to answer some tough questions after his (latest) escapade, now seen as a new attempt to pressure tech platforms to censor content – while he was explaining that as, combating “disinformation.”

Both politicians, and tech platforms, have been hearing this for a long time, many years now, from people opposed to the obvious censorship: don’t let it “find a home” in the heart of your governments and media, or political discourse – because once it does, it may never leave.

Sure, on any given day, it might feel great to suppress information about an election, a side you don’t like in a war, etc, by just labeling it as “disinformation.”

But what happens once those causes you do support start to get affected, as well? Unfortunately, that’s all there seems to be to it, regarding Breton’s latest outrageous moves – although one would hope and wish for a more universal understanding of the importance and need of protection of free speech, full stop.

Now groups like the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT Europe), Access Now, Article 19, and about two dozen others are expressing their extreme discomfort with Breton’s letter to X, TikTok, Google (YouTube) and Meta.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

It has to do with the latest Middle East escalation. The groups behind the initiative are attempting to influence Breton mainly by asserting that his actions – penning a letter pressuring tech platforms demanding the censorship of “disinformation” on this particular geopolitical issue – as essentially contravening EU’s own Digital Services Act (DSA).

The long and the short of the civil society groups’ attempt here is that Breton is creating “a false equivalency” between illegal content and disinformation – as per the DSA.

To be honest – the EU is such a winding and “blinding” bureaucracy, that it’s not entirely impossible that some of its scriptwriters don’t fully understand their own plot.

Regardless, the letter the CDT now joins claims that Commissioner Breton – in his “censor-right-now” letter to big platforms – “incorrectly and confusingly invoked obligations under DSA to make several demands from these online platforms to swiftly address this content, which are not in fact required by the law.”

Obviously, nobody from these groups is ready to address the EU’s core policy – it’s all procedural.

Or – maybe they do – just a little bit?

“The Commissioners’ (Breton’s) highly politicized engagement risks pressuring online platforms to take actions in ways that are not guided by the law and may undermine human rights, which in this case disproportionately affects human rights defenders, advocates, and journalists. His actions further risk undermining the authority and independence of the Commission’s DSA Enforcement Team,” CDT’s Asha Allen is quoted.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Journalist killed by Israeli gunfire in southern Lebanon

Palestine Information Center – October 20, 2023

BEIRUT – A journalist was killed and another injured by Israeli gunfire in a southern Lebanon border area, the Lebanese army said early on Friday.

The Lebanese army said that “a media team of seven people was covering the events near the Israeli enemy’s Al-Abbad site in the outskirts of Hula town when Israeli forces opened their machine gun fire at them, killing a journalist and injuring another.”

An official for the United Nations peacekeeping troops in the region, UNIFIL, stated a civilian was killed in an exchange of fire.

“The Lebanese Army requested UNIFIL’s help for seven people stranded near the Blue Line during an exchange of fire across the Blue Line,” UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti stated. He said one person lost his life while the others were successfully rescued,” the spokesperson confirmed.

The Lebanese army described the seven people as media personnel, saying that Israeli forces targeted them with machine guns, killing one and wounding another. It did not provide their identities.

The incident came nearly a week after a Reuters journalist was killed, and other journalists injured, in an Israeli bombing in southern Lebanon.

October 20, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Internet Censorship, Everywhere All at Once

By Debbie Lerman | Brownstone Institute | October 19, 2023

It used to be a truth universally acknowledged by citizens of democratic nations that freedom of speech was the basis not just of democracy, but of all human rights.

When a person or group can censor the speech of others, there is – by definition – an imbalance of power. Those exercising the power can decide what information and which opinions are allowed, and which should be suppressed. In order to maintain their power, they will naturally suppress information and views that challenge their position.

Free speech is the only peaceful way to hold those in power accountable, challenge potentially harmful policies, and expose corruption. Those of us privileged to live in democracies instinctively understand this nearly sacred value of free speech in maintaining our free and open societies.

Or do we?

Alarmingly, it seems like many people in what we call democratic nations are losing that understanding. And they seem willing to cede their freedom of speech to governments, organizations, and Big Tech companies who, supposedly, need to control the flow of information to keep everyone “safe.”

The locus for the disturbing shift away from free speech is the 21st-century’s global public square: the Internet. And the proclaimed reasons for allowing those in power to diminish our free speech on the Internet are: “disinformation” and “hate speech.”

In this article, I will review the three-step process by which anti-disinformation laws are introduced. Then, I will review some of the laws being rolled out in multiple countries almost simultaneously, and what such laws entail in terms of vastly increasing the potential for censorship of the global flow of information.

How to Pass Censorship Laws

Step 1: Declare an existential threat to democracy and human rights 

Step 2: Assert that the solution will protect democracy and human rights

Step 3: Enact anti-democratic, anti-human rights censorship fast and in unison

Lies, propaganda, “deep fakes,” and all manner of misleading information have always been present on the Internet. The vast global information hub that is the World Wide Web inevitably provides opportunities for criminals and other nefarious actors, including child sex traffickers and evil dictators.

At the same time, the Internet has become the central locus of open discourse for the world’s population, democratizing access to information and the ability to publish one’s views to a global audience.

The good and bad on the Internet reflect the good and bad in the real world. And when we regulate the flow of information on the Internet, the same careful balance between blocking truly dangerous actors, while retaining maximum freedom and democracy, must apply.

Distressingly, the recent slew of laws governing Internet information are significantly skewed in the direction of limiting free speech and increasing censorship. The reason, the regulators claim, is that fake news, disinformation, and hate speech are existential threats to democracy and human rights.

Here are examples of dire warnings, issued by leading international organizations, about catastrophic threats to our very existence purportedly posed by disinformation:

Propaganda, misinformation and fake news have the potential to polarise public opinion, to promote violent extremism and hate speech and, ultimately, to undermine democracies and reduce trust in the democratic processes. – Council of Europe

The world must address the grave global harm caused by the proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space. – United Nations

Online hate speech and disinformation have long incited violence, and sometimes mass atrocities. – World Economic Forum (WEF)/The New Humanitarian

Considering the existential peril of disinformation and hate speech, these same groups assert that any solution will obviously promote the opposite:

Given such a global threat, we clearly need a global solution. And, of course, such a solution will increase democracy, protect the rights of vulnerable populations, and respect human rights. – WEF

Moreover, beyond a mere assertion that increasing democracy and respecting human rights are built into combating disinformation, international law must be invoked.

In its Common Agenda Policy Brief from June 2023, Information Integrity on Digital Platforms, the UN details the international legal framework for efforts to counter hate speech and disinformation.

First, it reminds us that freedom of expression and information are fundamental human rights:

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 19 (2) of the Covenant protect the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, and through any media.

Linked to freedom of expression, freedom of information is itself a right. The General Assembly has stated: “Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and is the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” (p. 9)

Then, the UN brief explains that disinformation and hate speech are such colossal, all-encompassing evils that their very existence is antithetical to the enjoyment of any human rights:

Hate speech has been a precursor to atrocity crimes, including genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide prohibits “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.

In its resolution 76/227, adopted in 2021, the General Assembly emphasized that all forms of disinformation can negatively impact the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. Similarly, in its resolution 49/21, adopted in 2022, the Human Rights Council affirmed that disinformation can negatively affect the enjoyment and realization of all human rights.

This convoluted maze of legalese leads to an absurd, self-contradictory sequence of illogic:

  • Everything the UN is supposed to protect is founded on the freedom of information, which along with free speech is a fundamental human right.
  • The UN believes hate speech and disinformation destroy all human rights.
  • THEREFORE, anything we do to combat hate speech and disinformation protects all human rights, even if it abrogates the fundamental human rights of free speech and information, on which all other rights depend.
  • Because: genocide!

In practice, what this means is that, although the UN at one point in its history considered the freedom of speech and information fundamental to all other rights, it now believes the dangers of hate speech and disinformation eclipse the importance of protecting those rights.

The same warping of democratic values, as delineated by our international governing body, is now occurring in democracies the world over.

Censorship Laws and Actions All Happening Now

If hate speech and disinformation are the precursors of inevitable genocidal horrors, the only way to protect the world is through a coordinated international effort. Who should lead this campaign?

According to the WEF, “Governments can provide some of the most significant solutions to the crisis by enacting far-reaching regulations.”

Which is exactly what they’re doing.

United States

In the US, freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution, so it’s hard to pass laws that might violate it.

Instead, the government can work with academic and nongovernmental organizations to strong-arm social media companies into censoring disfavored content. The result is the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a vast network of government-adjacent academic and nonprofit “anti-disinformation” outfits, all ostensibly mobilized to control online speech in order to protect us from whatever they consider to be the next civilization-annihilating calamity.

The Twitter Files and recent court cases reveal how the US government uses these groups to pressure online platforms to censor content it doesn’t like:

Google

In some cases, companies may even take it upon themselves to control the narrative according to their own politics and professed values, with no need for government intervention. For example: Google, the most powerful information company in the world, has been reported to fix its algorithms to promote, demote, and disappear content according to undisclosed internal “fairness” guidelines.

This was revealed by a whistleblower named Zach Vorhies in his almost completely ignored book, Google Leaks, and by Project Veritas, in a sting operation against Jen Gennai, Google’s Head of Responsible Innovation.

In their benevolent desire to protect us from hate speech and disinformation, Google/YouTube immediately removed the original Project Veritas video from the Internet.

European Union

The Digital Services Act came into force November 16, 2022. The European Commission rejoiced that “The responsibilities of users, platforms, and public authorities are rebalanced according to European values.” Who decides what the responsibilities and what the “European values” are?

  • very large platforms and very large online search engines [are obligated] to prevent the misuse of their systems by taking risk-based action and by independent audits of their risk management systems
  • EU countries will have the primary [oversight] role, supported by a new European Board for Digital Services

Brownstone contributor David Thunder explains how the act provides an essentially unlimited potential for censorship:

This piece of legislation holds freedom of speech hostage to the ideological proclivities of unelected European officials and their armies of “trusted flaggers.”

The European Commission is also giving itself the power to declare a Europe-wide emergency that would allow it to demand extra interventions by digital platforms to counter a public threat.

UK

The Online Safety Bill was passed September 19, 2023. The UK government says “It will make social media companies more responsible for their users’ safety on their platforms.”

According to Internet watchdog Reclaim the Net, this bill constitutes one of the widest sweeping attacks on privacy and free speech in a Western democracy:

The bill imbues the government with tremendous power; the capability to demand that online services employ government-approved software to scan through user content, including photos, files, and messages, to identify illegal content.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to defending civil liberties in the digital world, warns: “the law would create a blueprint for repression around the world.”

Australia

The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 was released in draft form June 25, 2023 and is expected to pass by the end of 2023. the Australian government says:

The new powers will enable the ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] to monitor efforts and require digital platforms to do more, placing Australia at the forefront in tackling harmful online misinformation and disinformation, while balancing freedom of speech.

Reclaim the Net explains:

This legislation hands over a wide range of new powers to ACMA, which includes the enforcement of an industry-wide “standard” that will obligate digital platforms to remove what they determine as misinformation or disinformation.

Brownstone contributor Rebekah Barnett elaborates:

Controversially, the government will be exempt from the proposed laws, as will professional news outlets, meaning that ACMA will not compel platforms to police misinformation and disinformation disseminated by official government or news sources.

The legislation will enable the proliferation of official narratives, whether true, false or misleading, while quashing the opportunity for dissenting narratives to compete.

Canada

The Online Streaming Act (Bill C-10) became law April 27, 2023. Here’s how the Canadian government describes it, as it relates to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC):

The legislation clarifies that online streaming services fall under the Broadcasting Act and ensures that the CRTC has the proper tools to put in place a modern and flexible regulatory framework for broadcasting. These tools include the ability to make rules, gather information, and assign penalties for non-compliance.

According to Open Media, a community-driven digital rights organization,

Bill C-11 gives the CRTC unprecedented regulatory authority to monitor all online audiovisual content. This power extends to penalizing content creators and platforms and through them, content creators that fail to comply.

World Health Organization

In its proposed new Pandemic Treaty and in the amendments to its International Health Regulations, all of which it hopes to pass in 2024, the WHO seeks to enlist member governments to

Counter and address the negative impacts of health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization, especially on social media platforms, on people’s physical and mental health, in order to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, and foster trust in public health systems and authorities.

Brownstone contributor David Bell writes that essentially this will give the WHO, an unelected international body,

power to designate opinions or information as ‘mis-information or disinformation,’ and require country governments to intervene and stop such expression and dissemination. This … is, of course, incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but these seem no longer to be guiding principles for the WHO.

Conclusion

We are at a pivotal moment in the history of Western democracies. Governments, organizations and companies have more power than ever to decide what information and views are expressed on the Internet, the global public square of information and ideas.

It is natural that those in power should want to limit expression of ideas and dissemination of information that might challenge their position. They may believe they are using censorship to protect us from grave harms of disinformation and hate speech, or they may be using those reasons cynically to consolidate their control over the flow of information.

Either way, censorship inevitably entails the suppression of free speech and information, without which democracy cannot exist.

Why are the citizens of democratic nations acquiescing to the usurpation of their fundamental human rights? One reason may be the relatively abstract nature of rights and freedoms in the digital realm.

In the past, when censors burned books or jailed dissidents, citizens could easily recognize these harms and imagine how awful it would be if such negative actions were turned against them. They could also weigh the very personal and imminent negative impact of widespread censorship against much less prevalent dangers, such as child sex trafficking or genocide. Not that those dangers would be ignored or downplayed, but it would be clear that measures to combat such dangers should not include widespread book burning or jailing of regime opponents.

In the virtual world, if it’s not your post that is removed, or your video that is banned, it can be difficult to fathom the wide-ranging harm of massive online information control and censorship. It is also much easier online than in the real world to exaggerate the dangers of relatively rare threats, like pandemics or foreign interference in democratic processes. The same powerful people, governments, and companies that can censor online information can also flood the online space with propaganda, terrifying citizens in the virtual space into giving up their real-world rights.

The conundrum for free and open societies has always been the same: How to protect human rights and democracy from hate speech and disinformation without destroying human rights and democracy in the process.

The answer embodied in the recent coordinated enactment of global censorship laws is not encouraging for the future of free and open societies.

Debbie Lerman, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, has a degree in English from Harvard. She is a retired science writer and a practicing artist in Philadelphia, PA.

October 19, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

New York Attorney General Letitia James Demands Censorship of Speech Regarding Israel-Hamas Conflict

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 19, 2023

New York’s state attorney general, Letitia James, has learned nothing after the state was sued for its “anti- hate” law that was an affront to free speech and the First Amendment.

James is demanding social media companies shed light and provide clarification on their actions regarding “hate speech” and calls for violence posted on their platforms.

James has dispatched letters to a host of tech giants including Google and Meta, along with others such as X, TikTok, Reddit, and neutral video platform Rumble. The letters contain probing questions on their handling of calls for violence that have become rampant across their platforms recently.

We obtained a copy of the letters for you here.

The pro-censorship AG seeks to understand the platforms’ strategy about content moderation policies and how these are applied to mitigate the propagation of alleged hate-filled threats.

James wrote: “In the wake of Hamas’ unspeakable atrocities, social media has been widely used by bad actors to spread horrific material, disseminate threats, and encourage violence. These platforms have a responsibility to keep their users safe and prohibit the spread of violent rhetoric that puts vulnerable groups in danger.”

Analyzing this through a lens of censorship and free speech becomes all the more critical now. This is not merely a question of inflammatory content but also concerns the elasticity of these platforms’ policies, which could potentially threaten the core tenets of free speech.

It forces one to question what might be classified as “hate speech” under these policies and what could potentially be deemed a permissible expression of personal beliefs.

James has called on these companies to explain their tactics for combating such threats and their plans to ensure online platforms are not misused for promoting terror activities, concluding: “I am calling on these companies to explain how they are addressing threats, and how they will ensure that no online platform is used to further terrorist activities.”

FIRE, who is already part of a lawsuit against James for a previous New York censorship law that has been accused of violating the First Amendment, wrote to James and requested that she retract her letter.

FIRE, writing in its capacity as counsel for neutral video platform Rumble, demanded the “immediate and unequivocal retraction of [James’] October 12, 2023 investigation letters to six internet platforms, including Rumble.”

In the letter seen by Reclaim The Net, FIRE’s attorneys say James’ demand letters “violate (1) a federal district court’s injunction against the enforcement of New York General Business Law § 394-ccc (the Online Hate Speech Law); (2) the active stay of all proceedings in that case as to Rumble; and (3) the First Amendment rights of the Investigated Platforms and their users.”

James has until the end of the day today to respond.

October 19, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

Former ambassador and Assange advocate Craig Murray detained under UK terror laws

By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · October 17, 2023

On the morning of October 16, counter-terror police in Glasgow Airport detained journalist, whistleblower, human rights campaigner, and former British diplomat Craig Murray upon his return from Iceland. After grilling him intensively about his political beliefs, officers seized Murray’s phone and laptop.

Murray, a proud Scottish nationalist, flew back to Glasgow after several days in Reykjavik, where he attended a popular Palestine solidarity event, and also met with high-ranking representatives of the Assange Campaign, which raises awareness about the plight of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Once his travel documents were processed at passport control, the officer informed him he would be detained for questioning. They then led him to a small backroom to be grilled by three nameless British counter-terror agents.

Murray told The Grayzone that British police warned him he would be committing a criminal offense and would be prosecuted if he refused to answer questions, answered untruthfully, deliberately withheld information, or refused to provide passcodes for his electronic devices. After his phone and laptop were seized for analysis, the interrogation began.

“First, they grilled me about the private Assange Campaign meeting,” Murray told The Grayzone. “You might think they would ask who was there, but they didn’t,” he said, adding, “my guess is they somehow knew already.”

Instead, “all the questions were financial,” Murray says. According to the former British ambassador, officers wanted to know “whether I get money for my contributions to the Campaign, if I get paid by WikiLeaks, Don’t Extradite Assange, even Julian’s family.”

“The answer each time was ‘no,’” Murray says, explaining: “My sources of income and where my money comes from were of particular interest to the officers.”

The one-time diplomat’s popular personal blog was also of interest to the officers, who reportedly demanded Murray tell them whether anyone else had access to it or could publish content on the platform, and if anyone other than himself authored any of its posts.

Strangely, Murray said he was not asked about a single article published on his website. Equally puzzling, he remarked, were the questions about the Palestine solidarity event he attended.

Officers apparently wanted to know why Murray had attended in the first place — “a strange question to ask of someone attending a protest,” he told The Grayzone. Nonetheless, he made it clear that he had gone because he was friends with one of the speakers, a former Icelandic interior minister.

Police reportedly also demanded details on the content of various speakers’ addresses at the event — information which Murray says he could not offer as he doesn’t speak Icelandic. When asked if he planned to attend any similar pro-Palestine events in Britain, he told them, “probably.”

“The weirdest question was, ‘how do I judge whether to share a platform with someone or not?’” Murray says, adding: “I do so based on who’s organizing the event.”

In this particular case, Murray continued, “it was [the] Palestine Solidarity Committee, so I was confident I was in safe hands.” Still, it struck the former ambassador as a bizarre line of questioning.

“My lawyer has never heard of such a question being asked during interrogations before,” Murray said, adding that “they speculate police have a surveillance photo of me in the proximity of someone they consider a ‘terrorist.’”

“I’ve no idea who that could be,” the outspoken human rights campaigner admitted. But, as he quickly observed: “If you attend a rally where 200,000 people are present, you can’t know who everyone is!”

Murray has since consulted with lawyers, who informed him that according to Section 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act — the draconian legislation under which he was subjected to the intensive questioning — he would be legally entitled to consult a lawyer if the interrogation lasted longer than an hour.

‘A sledgehammer to crack a nut’

Once the hour of questioning was up, the officers sent him on his way, but failed to return his phone or laptop. “I’m used to the idea of British and American spies having my computers,” Murray said.

On a trip to Germany at the end of 2022, two laptops belonging to Murray were stolen in separate locations. The second laptop happened to have been a locally-bought replacement for the first. He believes the thefts were “probably” carried out by “security services,” an interpretation reinforced by the fact the first laptop was stored in a bag containing a large sum of cash, along with vital heart medicine. The culprits inexplicably ignored the former, while pocketing the latter.

When probed by counter-terror cops about the contents of his laptop, Murray says he openly disclosed that device contained copies of leaked private emails of Stewart McDonald, a hawkish, deep state-connected Scottish National Party.

But “I’m not worried about any content on there,” he explained, so “it’s not a problem they have it.”

“I told the officers I pitied whichever poor bastard has to wade through McDonald’s emails,” he joked.

“Interestingly,” Murray notes, “one of them volunteered in response that the contents of seized digital devices are sifted electronically, rather than an individual going over the whole contents.”

“Presumably, algorithms run by keyword searches do the legwork, and whatever that throws up is studied and shared with different agencies,” he speculates.

Murray’s lawyers are now looking into the stop, with an eye on whether his interrogators told him the truth before his questioning began.

This April, British counter-terror police detained the French publisher and political activist Ernest Moret, who had led large protests in Paris against the neoliberal reforms of President Emmanuel Macron. Moret was detained under the same powers as Murray, then arrested when he refused to hand over passcodes to his electronic devices. He was ultimately held in British custody for almost 24 hours.

In July, a damning report by Britain’s terror legislation watchdog concluded the officers who detained Moret had made “exaggerated and overbearing” threats when they claimed that he would never again be able to travel overseas if he didn’t disclose information, as he’d be listed as a terrorist in international intelligence databases. The report also found police grilled him illegitimately regarding legally privileged conversations he had with his lawyer during the interrogation.

Schedule 7 is “powerful” and “must therefore be exercised with due care,” the reviewer said, before ultimately comparing police’s usage of the legislation to interrogate Moret to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”:

“This was an investigation into public order for which counter-terrorism powers were never intended to be used,” the report noted, concluding “the rights of free expression and protest are too important in a democracy to allow individuals to be investigated for potential terrorism merely because they may have been involved in protests that have turned violent.”

But when it comes to carrying out political detentions, the legislation in question is not the only one in British officers’ arsenal.

Absent from the report was any reference to Schedule 3, Section 4 of Britain’s 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, which was used to authorize the detention of this journalist at London’s Luton Airport this May. The provision grants authorities sweeping powers to delve into the personal and professional affairs of dissidents. According to Murray, British counter-terror cops appear to have approached him using “the same playbook” they employed with me.

Under the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, which has been harshly criticized by the UN, an individual can be said to be serving “hostile” foreign powers without even knowing or intending to — or the powers in question being aware they are. This Orwellian precept was reinforced by London’s new National Security Act, which was passed in July 2023.

Anyone who has agitated the British national security state and plans on traveling to the UK may want to be careful what they keep on their devices. As one of Ernest Moret’s interrogators boasted to him, Britain is “the only country where authorities can download and keep information from private devices” forever.

October 18, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Canadian Government Wants To Boost Opinion Monitoring, Under The Guise of Reducing “Misinformation”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 18, 2023

The Canadian Department of Heritage appears to be aligning itself with a potentially alarming stance, according to a recent write-up by Blacklock’s Reporter. Liberals within the administration have expressed the need for a significant boost in funds to target what they deem as “incorrect” political perspectives. This request is centered around the Digital Citizen Initiative (DCI), a program set into motion by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals in 2018 under the tagline of combating online disinformation to aid democracy and social inclusion.

The DCI appears to outstretch its reach. The program puts forth that its resources are insufficient and demands more financial backing. It claims that disinformation right now poses extensive damaging potential, affecting Canadians’ health, safety, political beliefs, trust in media, and their civic and democratic engagement. However, upon raising these grave concerns, it offers no substantial evidence or instances to back them up.

This widening net also engulfs various societal groups, claiming that disinformation creates an environment rife with discrimination, stigma, and marginalization, possibly fueling social divisions. Groups like people with lower digital competency and those from minority backgrounds, it maintains, might be susceptible to this so-called disinformation campaign.

In response, Canada’s government granted DCI $7.5 million for two years, intending to fund activities centered around digital, news, and civic literacy.

But the appetite of DCI seems insatiable. An additional $19.4 million was given to DCI and the Digital Citizen Contribution Program (DCCP) for research correlated with the government’s aim of understanding, tackling, and revisiting online misinformation.

Several key universities, non-profit organizations, and policy forums, amongst other institutions, across Canada have been the beneficiaries of DCI’s grants.

October 18, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Dear American College of Clinical Pharmacy:

By Lori Weintz | Brownstone Institute | October 17, 2023

I just sent this letter off to the Board of Regents of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy:

October 12, 2023

Dear Executive Director Maddux and Board of Regents,

During the past 3 1/2 years, I have observed the troubling pattern of silencing viewpoints that depart in any way from the official Covid narrative. Your cancelation of Dr. Vinay Prasad as a keynote speaker at the upcoming ACCP Conference is an example of this inappropriate trend.

This is America. The founding principle of America is the freedom of speech, without which none of the other rights enumerated in the Constitution matter, because they cannot be pursued. Healthy, vigorous, oppositional debate is essential to innovation and problem-solving.  Without debate there is no progress and people become afraid, first to speak, and then to think for themselves.

Alicia Lichvar states she “cannot – in good conscience – share a platform with an individual who promotes such harmful rhetoric.” Ms. Lichvar claims there is a role for critical discourse, but not as the Keynote speaker. Why not? Since when is it assumed that the speaker at a conference, or graduation ceremony, or civic event represents the viewpoint of all?

In this instance, ACCP appears to have sided with the false ideology recently stated at Twitter (X) that people are entitled to “freedom of speech, not reach.” In Ms. Lichvar’s world, people like Dr. Prasad have the right to their views, just not in public, which is no right at all.

This was the moment to clarify that your group values varied viewpoints by inviting Ms. Lichvar to share her side in a debate with Dr. Prasad, or in her own presentation. It was not a moment to say you will be “revisiting the keynote speaker vetting and selection process to ensure alignment with the expectations and values of ACCP members.” There were obviously ACCP members who wanted to hear from Dr. Prasad, or he would not have been selected as a keynote speaker in the first place.

People who are so fragile they cannot even hear a differing viewpoint to their own, especially one presented by a licensed and credentialed colleague, need a wakeup call, not coddling.

You, Mr. Maddux, Mr. Olsen, Ms. Farrington, Ms. Phillips, Ms. Blair, Mr. Hemstreet, Ms. See, Ms. Finks, Ms. Parker, Ms. Ross, Ms. Clements, and Ms. Badowski, are listed on the ACCP webpage under the dropdown menu of “Leadership.”

The role of real leaders is not to “ensure alignment with the expectations and values” of the vocal few, but rather to preserve the ability to approach problems and issues in a manner that allows for consideration of all sides. People cannot make informed, adult decisions, if they’re awash in a culture of “safety” where “words are violence,” and differing viewpoints are “harmful.”

I invite you to reconsider your roles, and the bigger picture of what is happening in our country today, so as to ensure that free speech and thought are the elevating principles of enlightenment in your organization.

Sincerely,

Lori Weintz

October 17, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Israeli Minister Calls For Arrest of Journalists and Citizens That Share Information That Harms “National Morale”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 17, 2023

In a moment where the essence of free speech is under scrutiny worldwide, a controversial move by Israel’s Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi has sparked profound concern among proponents of free expression and the principles of a democratic society. Karhi is in the process of advancing regulations, authorizing the arrest of individuals and seizure of property based on the subjective judgment that their communication undermines “national morale” or aids enemy propaganda.

These proposed rules, known as “Limiting Aid to the Enemy through Communication,” were crafted in coordination with National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Broad in their scope, these regulations aren’t confined to potential misinformation or enemy rhetoric but extend to factually accurate statements and mainstream media coverage, both domestic and international. It would allow Israeli police to arrest Israeli citizens, including journalists, for sharing information that is critical of Israel.

This move stands in stark contrast to its initially declared goal – curbing the influence of Al Jazeera in Israel.

Derived under the aegis of Section 39 of the Basic Law: The Government, these draft regulations explicitly characterize “aiding the enemy through communication” as not just direct assistance to adversaries, but any information dissemination that the authorities perceive as weakening Israel’s societal or military morale or that echoes enemy propaganda.

The reach of these regulations is comprehensive, encompassing all forms of audio and visual communication. The power vested in the communications minister is extensive; it allows for the cessation of broadcasts, confiscation of broadcasting equipment, and even the physical removal of individuals from certain locales, all under the subjective banner of national security.

In totality, these developments represent a troubling trend towards the erosion of journalistic freedom and the sanctity of free speech, pivotal pillars of any democratic establishment and some that often get undermined in times of war.

October 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Great Travel Reset

Corbett • 10/17/2023

Are you aware of the Great Travel Reset that is already underway? You should be! Are you outraged about the fact that one of your most basic human rights is being stolen from under your very nose? You ought to be! Are you willing to spend more than a few minutes a week informing yourself about this issue? You’d better be! If you want a two-minute explainer on this topic, go to TikTok. For everyone else, this is The Corbett Report.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee / Rokfin / Rumble / Download the mp4

DOCUMENTATION

Own Nothing, Be Happy
Time Reference: 00:00

 

Schwab on “automatically guided cars”: The New Global Context and Its Impact on the Role of Government
Time Reference: 02:26

 

Accenture World Economic Forum Known Traveller
Time Reference: 03:18

Airport of the Future
Time Reference: 03:45

France bans short domestic flights to cut carbon emissions
Time Reference: 04:18

 

Virtual Reality: The Future of Travel?
Time Reference: 04:35

 

Flight-Shaming Is Now A Thing – Will It Keep You From Traveling?
Time Reference: 09:24

 

Why ‘flight shame’ is making people swap planes for trains
Time Reference: 09:29

 

41% of French population favors restricting EVERYONE to ONLY 4 airplane flights in their ENTIRE LIFE to ‘fight against global warming’
Time Reference: 09:58

 

Carbon Passports Are The Next Dystopian Surveillance Threat
Time Reference: 13:05

 

A Sustainable Future for Travel: From Crisis to Transformation
Time Reference: 14:17

 

CLEAR’s new Health Pass service to help screen for coronavirus: CEO
Time Reference: 16:51

 

Finland tests world’s first digital passport | Tech it Out
Time Reference: 17:40

 

“Get to Know the Known Traveller Digital Identity” In Partnership With Accenture
Time Reference: 18:20

 

No gas cars by 2035?
Time Reference: 19:32

 

‘These deeply illiberal, unBritish 15-minute cities are beyond the pale’ | Mark Dolan
Time Reference: 20:12

 

London mayor’s climate crackdowns are about ‘controlling our lives,’ says Nigel Farage
Time Reference: 21:12

 

The B20 calls on the G20 to adopt vaccine passports using WHO standards #bali
Time Reference: 26:23

 

WHO global digital health certificate (REJECT DIGITAL ENSLAVEMENT)
Time Reference: 28:44

 

UPDATE: WHO Approves Extension of Amendment Working Group Deadline
Time Reference: 33:59

 

Interview 1839 – A Million People Need to Share This Video on CHD TV
Time Reference: 35:07

 

October 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment