A new law is about to kill free speech and democracy in Australia
By Augusto Zimmermann | RT | November 5, 2023
The Australian Government has recently introduced in Parliament a new law proposal to ban officially unapproved online content. Digital companies are expected to adopt a code of conduct which will see them censor speech based on broad, vague and far-reaching directives.
The Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023 foreshadows the imposition of a legal obligation on digital platforms to police alleged ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’. If that does not work, the law proposal provides for the full empowerment of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to directly intervene for the purpose of preventing ‘harm’.
Section 2 of the proposed legislation defines ‘harm’ as follows:
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(a) hatred against a group in Australian society on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or physical or mental disability;
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(b) disruption of public order or society in Australia;
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(c) harm to the integrity of Australian democratic processes or of Commonwealth, State, Territory or local government institutions;
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(d) harm to the health of Australians;
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(e) harm to the Australian environment;
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(f) economic or financial harm to Australians, the Australian economy or a sector of the Australian economy.
The concept of ‘harm’ peddled by the bill is illusory, and its content would be subjectively determined by a powerful government agency. The definition of what is and what isn’t harm is malleable and can expand and contract depending on ACMA’s prevailing views. Ultimately, any type of speech with which the government is uncomfortable could be deemed ‘harmful’. For example, describing “disrupting social order” as serious harm could be interpreted to stop the organization of legitimate political protests. This could certainly be used to suppress legitimate political speech that should be part of a functioning democracy.
Above all, ACMA would gain sweeping powers to require any person to appear at a time and place of its choosing to answer questions about misinformation or disinformation. These powers include infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, including fines of up to AU$550,000 (US$358,000) for individuals and AU$2.75 million for corporations. Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may also apply in cases of alleged “extreme harm.”
The provisions found in this law proposal put the communications and lives of free-thinkers, human rights defenders, independent journalists, and ordinary citizens under constant risk. They go in direct opposition to international human rights experts’ advice that “general prohibitions on the dissemination of information based on vague and ambiguous ideas, including ‘false news’ or ‘non-objective information’, are incompatible with international standards for restrictions on freedom of expression… and should be abolished.”
It is noteworthy that the Australian Government is exempted from the proposed legislation. Hence, the content issued by the government is never to be considered ‘misinformation’ but criticisms of the government by ordinary citizens can. It is certainly ironic that views incompatible with the government’s preferred narrative could be deemed to ‘harm’ the integrity of Australia’s democracy since it would disallow speech and expressive conduct that is integral to the maintenance of democratic processes.
In its 12-page submission to the Law Council, the Victorian Bar Association explains that this proposed legislation effectively creates an “unlevel playing field between governments and other speakers” that disadvantages government critics in comparison to government supporters. “The bill’s interference with the self-fulfilment of free expression will occur primarily by the chilling self-censorship it will inevitably bring about in the individual users of the relevant services,” says the Victorian Bar.
Above all, ACMA’s enforcement of the proposed legislation will inevitably stymie discussion of controversial topics, especially if they involve criticism of government policy and actions. This scenario is likely to unfold when the impugned speech is incompatible with the government’s official narrative. Thus, the proposed legislation targets those who, merely exercising their right to free speech, critically assess the desirability of government decisions and actions.
Other concerns with the proposed ‘misinformation’ legislation include the possibility of suspending the activities of internet companies in Australia if they fail to comply with the obligations created, as well as increased criminal penalties for libel and defamation which are incompatible with international human rights standards.
As can be seen, the proposed legislation constitutes a serious attack on the democratic right of Australians to free speech. Digital platforms will be legally obliged to police commentators’ discussion of controversial topics. Under this ‘misinformation’ legislation, any honest and robust debate about government policies will be effectively outlawed.
To conclude, our freedom of political communication is under attack in Australia. If the Misinformation and Disinformation Bill is enacted, then the free expression of ideas will be basically outlawed by the Australian Government. In short, the enactment of this law proposal will spell the end of authentic democracy in Australia. Australians are basically witnessing the transformation of their system of representative government into nothing more than a less open, or more disguised, form of elective dictatorship.
Augusto Zimmermann, Professor and Head of Law at Sheridan Institute of Higher Education in Australia, President of WALTA – Legal Theory Association, and former Law Reform Commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia
Grooming our children, Part 1: Getting parents out of the picture
By Belinda Brown | TCW Defending Freedom | November 2, 2023
Are parents aware of what children from four years old are being taught about sex in our schools? Belinda Brown thinks not. In a series of articles she makes the case that, with the agreement of the Department for Education, our children are being exposed to what is tantamount to a national grooming programme. The first step of this successful sex educators’ coup, she explains today, was to get parents out of the picture, to take over their role, and then deny them any access to lessons. Miriam Cates is one MP who is fighting back.
IN JUNE Conservative MP Miriam Cates introduced the ‘sex education transparency’ Private Members’ Bill, putting Rishi Sunak under pressure to give schools a legal duty to publish materials used in sex education lessons. Backed by 70 Conservative MPs, the aim of the Bill is to secure parents’ rights to see their children’s Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) lesson plans: rights which parents thought they had, only to find them being denied.
Cates had already called for an urgent Government review into what was being taught in RSE since this programme was rolled out in September 2020, of such concern were the materials and lessons parents gleaned from their children. RSE, it emerged, was the brainchild of the ‘progressive’ independent Sex Education Forum, a busy organisation with a stipend of £200,000 a year and a clear ‘beyond biology’ agenda. The Prime Minister responded to Cates’s call and ordered the review last March. Unaccountably, his Secretary of State for Education, Gillian Keegan, refused to publish the findings and has no plans to do so. Why, we do not know. MPs had claimed the Department for Education’s (DfE) most recent relationships and sex education guidance, produced in 2019 in consultation with the LGBT+ charity Stonewall, had allowed ‘activist groups’ to overly influence teaching materials. The guidance does not set age limits on what can be taught.
In the meanwhile, the position of parents has not changed. One story catalysed Cates’s most recent initiative. Two years ago, Clare Page found out that her daughter had been taught at school that ‘heteronormativity’ (preferring the opposite sex) was a bad thing and had been told that she should be ‘sex positive’. Like any decent mother, she wanted to know more. Her request to see the material used in her daughter’s classroom was turned down, first by the Information Commissioner’s Office and then by a first-tier tribunal. She was not even allowed to find out whether her daughter had been taught by the ‘master fetish trainer’ who worked for the School of Sexuality Education (SSE) employed by her daughter’s school.
Page’s case marks another step in the long march through the institutions whereby parents are being excluded from once personal and family-based aspects of their children’s upbringing, now inappropriately and dangerously taken over by schools.
Her experience is far from exceptional. In Wales, where children are being exposed to a mandatory diet of explicit and highly ideological sex education, parents are not allowed to remove their children from these classes. Attempts to do so are repeatedly turned down.
Likewise, parents such as those trying to protect their children from sexual extremism in the London Borough of Redbridge are portrayed as religious fundamentalists and radical homophobic Islamists.
Some schools and local authorities even have a policy of not informing parents when a child expresses what the school categorises as ‘feelings of gender distress,’ a study found, though this flies in the face of safeguarding rules. More recent research indicates that it could be that the school’s teaching that is the source of distress.
In theory, parents do have rights in law. Under the European Convention of Human Rights, ‘the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions’. The 2002 Education Act Guidance repeatedly emphasises the role of parents. ‘Teaching must be done with respect to the backgrounds and beliefs of pupils and parents . . . All schools should work closely with parents when planning and delivering these subjects. Schools should ensure that parents know what will be taught and when, and clearly communicate the fact.’
Yet this is not happening. Any criticism that teaching places insufficient emphasis on the value of traditional marriage between a man and a woman, for example, is ignored.
When the School of Sexuality Education complained that the Department of Education’s guidance gave ‘problematic credence’ to long-term relationships and marriage, they had the government’s ear (p10). These sex education activists ‘provide in-school workshops on consent, sexual health, porn and positive relationships’. Their approach, they say, is rights-based – whose rights they do not say. They proclaim themselves as ‘sex-positive, non-binary and trauma informed’.
When they criticised the guidance section that suggested that primary schools should only teach pupils about LGBT when it was ‘age appropriate’ rather than from reception, these phrases were obligingly removed by the DfE.
Gillian Keegan should ask herself who these sex education providers are and why they want the material they are pushing at our children to be unrestricted by age.
This contempt for parents was expressed early on in an ‘Educate and Celebrate’ guidebook foisted on schools. Their proposal was that rather than get parents’ permission for children to attend LGBT events, they would organise LGBT events in the school (p24). When parents tried to protect their children from all this, they were told they were breaking the law.
The result of the government’s inadequate guidance, Cates says, is ‘a permission slip for teaching almost anything that is loosely associated with gender, sexuality or sexual practice – often with an assumption of the earlier, the better’ (p71).
Without providing any apparent curriculum, and without parents able to monitor what was being taught, these so-called specialist sex ‘educators’, heavily funded by the government, with clearly articulated curricula and political agendas, have zealously filled the gap.
Foremost of these is the ideology of queer theory that asserts that ‘heteronormativity’ – the natural biological sex preference for the opposite sex, should be ‘smashed’. It rejects all ‘binaries’ including distinctions between homosexuality and heterosexuality, male and female, and even more disturbingly, between adult and child.
This is the ideology that’s the foundation of the RSE curriculum that a Conservative government has sanctioned. It will be explored in greater depth in the rest of the series. Parents have a right to know, reject it and protest.
To be continued.
Critics of Biden’s ‘Censorship Regime’ Say Government Dragging Its Feet on Lawsuit
By Aaron Kheriaty, MD | Human Flourishing | November 3, 2023
M.J. Koch over at the New York Sun has published a very good article on Missouri v. Biden and the Supreme Court’s decision to place a temporary stay on the injunction until they can rule on the case:
Next year’s presidential election may have something to do with the slow pace of Missouri v. Biden.
The Biden administration is said to be dragging its feet on an explosive free speech case against its alleged “Orwellian” censorship of social media platforms. Those leading the lawsuit say it’s because the government wants to continue its censorship regime as long as possible before the presidential election.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, Missouri v. Biden. In certifying it, the high court last week also approved the government’s request for a stay on a preliminary injunction from the Fifth Circuit. The injunction would’ve enjoined the government from continuing what two lower courts called a “coordinated campaign” by top federal officials and agencies to suppress undesirable opinions on public issues such as Covid lockdowns and election integrity.
The suspension of that injunction “is a green light for future censorship,” the founder of the civil rights group representing four of the plaintiffs in the case, Philip Hamburger, of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, tells the Sun. The high court appears to be siding with the executive branch in its latest legal action…. “Undoubtedly,” Mr. Hamburger says, “there’s deference, in the sense of political deference, to the government.”
Next year’s presidential election might have something to do with this “deference.” Oral arguments in Murthy will be heard in January or February, but the court won’t complete its review until late in the spring. Even if the ruling requires the government to immediately desist its behavior, several more months of the status quo will have passed as the contest for the U.S. presidency intensifies.
You can read the rest of the article, which includes my comments on this issue, here.
Palestine TV correspondent killed in Israel’s strikes on Gaza
Palestinian correspondent Mohammed Abu Hatab was killed in an Israeli strike on the besieged Gaza Strip on November 2, 2023
Press TV – November 3, 2023
A correspondent working for the Palestinian Authority’s television channel, Palestine TV, has been killed along with a number of his family members in an Israeli strike in the south of the Gaza Strip.
“Our colleague Mohammed Abu Hatab fell as a martyr along with members of his family in an Israeli bombardment against his home in Khan Yunis” on Thursday, broadcaster Palestine TV station said.
Palestinian media reports said the airstrike killed 11 of Abu Hatab’s family members, including his wife, son, and brother.
The Palestinian Official Media described the attack as “a deliberate assassination” of Abu Hatab, noting that his house was targeted shortly after he arrived home after covering Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.
“It’s a message in blood to terrorize Palestinian journalists to prevent them from reporting on our people’s suffering and exposing Israel’s crimes.” the Palestinian Official Media said in a statement.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) States Broadcasting Union also mourned the death of Abu Hatab and his family members.
Amr Al-Laithi, the OSBU President, also denounced the “heinous crime” committed against Abu Hatab.
The union also urged civil society organizations and human rights groups to immediately intervene to stop Israel’s “barbaric, criminal and systematic attacks” against media workers.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Tel Aviv has also blocked water, food, and electricity to Gaza, plunging the coastal strip into a humanitarian crisis.
The regime has further ordered 1.1 million people in the north of Gaza to evacuate and move south of the coastal sliver. However, it has continued to rain down bombs on the south.
Israel’s aggression on Gaza has so far killed more than 9,061 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured about 32,000 others.
50 press unions demand end to Israel’s systematic targeting of journalists in Palestine
MEMO | November 2, 2023
Fifty Arab and foreign media institutions, associations and trade unions have demanded the UN Secretary-General and the President of the International Federation of Journalists to take a quick and strong stance to protect journalists in Palestine, condemn the killing of media professionals as well as harassing them by Israel, and to implement the provisions of the Geneva Conventions related to the protection of journalists in times of war.
This came in a joint letter, which the signatories said has been issued “based on the public’s right to the media … and the right of media professionals to practise their work freely … and in view of the systematic targeting that media professionals in Palestine are experiencing, which has reached the point of direct killing and the targeted, and harassment that makes their continued work pose a danger to them.
The signatories called on the international community to “immediately investigate the killings and ensure that criminals do not escape punishment”.
They also called on all countries of the world to “guarantee the freedom of media professionals and to take the necessary field measures to protect them and to guarantee freedom of media practice.”
The President of the Federation of African Journalists (FAJ) and one of the signatories to the petition, Sadiq Ibrahim, has “strongly denounced the continued aggressive escalation against journalists in Palestine” and the murders and attacks targeting them mercilessly, saying this violent escalation constitutes a serious threat to freedom of the press and the public’s right to access information.
The Secretary-General of the Palestine International Forum for Media and Communication and one of the signatories to the document, Ahmed Al-Sheikh, said, “We stand with the brave Palestinian journalists who risk their lives in order to present the truth, and we express our full solidarity with them. We call on all concerned parties to stop the violence against journalists and work to end this type of crime.”
According to independent human rights institutions, as many as 25 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel since the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October, in addition to 13 workers in the media sector.
Moreover, the homes of more than 35 journalists were destroyed, and more than 20 journalists were injured, in addition to the arrests of 18 male and female journalists in the West Bank.
Since 7 October, the Israeli army has been waging a ruthless war on Gaza, killing more than 8,525 Palestinians, including 3,542 children and 2,187 women, wounding about 21,543. In the Occupied West Bank, Israel has killed 126 Palestinians, and arrested about 2,000 others, according to official Palestinian sources.
WHO Publishes Latest Draft of Pandemic Treaty To Combat “Misinformation”
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | November 2, 2023
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has published a new draft of its troubled pandemic agreement/accord/treaty – which the agency has complained is taking too long to finalize.
The latest draft of the negotiating text, released by the Bureau of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) on Monday must be considered until the INB session scheduled for November 6-10, when it should be formalized.
Some of the commitments contained in this version of the document have to do with combating “false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through effective international collaboration and cooperation” – which skeptics might easily dub, “cross-border censorship.”
And then there’s surveillance, too: something called One Health approach for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, which the draft wants to see promoted and implemented. Meanwhile, One Health is a surveillance tool that is supposed to create new methods of disease control.
Yet another point from the proposal is to “develop and strengthen pandemic prevention and public health surveillance capacities.”
Critics have many concerns and misgivings about all of this, including WHO setting up what’s known as a conference of the parties – an international convention’s top governing body – around the pandemic accord.
The fear here is that it would be one more instrument taking agency and consent away from national governments and people and transferring the decision-making processes, in this case related to health, to the world organization, specifically, WHO.
However, the draft’s chapter on institutional arrangements envisages establishing just such a conference of the parties as part of the accord’s scope.
A number of advocacy organizations from around the world have already expressed their dissatisfaction with the draft from different points of view, including how the treaty, if adopted, would impact less developed countries, while the draft itself is seen as “unbalanced.”
This last objection stems from the origin of the proposal – namely the discussions between INB Bureau and Secretariat, rather than drawing from the meetings of the INB itself.
Ignoring proposals from all countries that are supposed to implement the treaty, and allowing those with the most clout (in the Bureau) to set the tone is seen as one-sided in this sense as well.
How (not) to Relativize the Holocaust
By CJ Hopkins | Consent Factory | November 1, 2023
OK, I owe everyone an apology. I get it now. I’ve seen the light. I finally understand the true nature of my thoughtcrimes, and I take responsibility for them, and I stand ready to pay my debt to society.
I have to thank the State of Israel for bringing about this sudden epiphany. How it happened was, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and his delegation wore yellow Stars of David, i.e., the ones the Nazis forced the Jews to wear in public, at a Security Council session to make a statement. According to The Jerusalem Post, Ambassador Erdan then made remarks comparing the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel to the Holocaust.
“When Jewish babies were burned in Auschwitz, the world was silent, and today Jewish babies were burned in Be’eri and the towns of the South by the Nazi Hamas – and the world is silent again. I will make you remember the shame of your silence every time you look at me,” Arden said. “I will wear the yellow patch until the Nazi Hamas is eliminated and until the Security Council stops being silent and condemns the October 7 massacre. Some of you have learned nothing in the last eighty years! Some of you have forgotten why the United Nations was founded. So I will remind you. From today on, every time you look at me you will remember. When my grandfather and his children were sent to Auschwitz, the world was silent. When his wife and their seven children were sent to the gas chambers, the world was silent. When their bodies were burned alongside millions of other Jewish children, the world was silent,” Erdan said, comparing the silence of the UN about the Hamas massacre on October 7 to the silence of the international community regarding the horrors of the Holocaust.
Now, I’ll be honest, the first thought that went through my head when I read that Jerusalem Post piece was, “Great! Here’s an Israeli diplomat doing exactly what I’m being prosecuted for doing, and no one’s going to prosecute him! All I need to do is bring this to the attention of the Berlin District Court, and they’ll dismiss my case!”
But then I had my epiphany.
Basically, my epiphany was, I realized the two things are completely different, i.e., Israel’s use of a Nazi symbol to make a political statement and me doing the same thing … well, almost the same thing. I’ve never actually relativized or minimized or trivialized or compared anything to the Holocaust, as Gilad Erdan did at the UN. Actually, I’ve advised against doing that. But that doesn’t let me off the hook for my thoughtcrimes! No, I did what I did, and I will have to answer for it in January at the District Court of Berlin!
For readers unfamiliar with my case, what I did was, I tweeted these two Tweets featuring the the cover art of my book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich, which is banned in Germany, and referring to the medical-looking masks that everyone was forced to wear during 2020-2022 as “ideological conformity symbols.”
You can read the background on my case here, or here, or here, or listen to me talk about it here, or here, or here, so I won’t go on about it here.
The important thing is, I understand now how totally wrong (and criminal) it was to do that, and how what I did is completely different from what UN Ambassador Erdan just did!
For starters, it wasn’t just those two Tweets. No, on Twitter, Facebook, and in my essays, and interviews, and, basically, every chance I got, for two years, I compared the rise of the “New Normal” to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I noted the similarities between these two forms of totalitarianism: the declaration of a “state of emergency” as a pretext to justify the cancellation of constitutional rights and rule by decree; the propaganda; the censorship; the criminalization of dissent; the mandatory displays of ideological conformity; the invasion of bodily autonomy; the segregation, demonization, and persecution of a scapegoat underclass; and so on … all the classic hallmarks of totalitarian systems.
I understand now how wrong (and criminal) that was.
Watching the Israelis whip out their yellow Stars of David at the Security Council clarified for me when it is and isn’t appropriate to compare things to the Nazis.
Check me, but I think I’ve got it straight now.
When governments and non-governmental entities roll out a “New Normal” on account of a completely fictional “apocalyptic pandemic,” lock people down in their homes for months, terrorize them with official propaganda, force everybody to wear medical-looking masks to display their conformity to the new official “reality” and create the appearance of a deadly plague, outlaw political protests, censor dissent, segregate and demonize anyone refusing to conform to the new official ideology, and otherwise transform societies into pathologized de facto police states, those governments and global non-governmental entities are absolutely nothing like the Nazis.
On the other hand, Hamas, the Islamist political and military organization that governs the Gaza Strip, is definitely exactly like the Nazis … except that there are only around 25,000 of them, and their “Reich” is a tiny stretch of land that has been totally blockaded by Israel for years, and is completely surrounded by an “Israel-Gaza barrier,” and has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. But, otherwise, Hamas is exactly like the Nazis!
See, the thing I didn’t quite understand when I tweeted my thoughtcrimes in 2022 was that being “exactly like the Nazis” has nothing to do with the actual history of Nazi Germany or totalitarianism per se. I was operating under the assumption that it did. That’s no excuse. I should have known better. Obviously, no one should ever be allowed to compare the rise of Nazism in Germany to any other totalitarian system or movement, no matter how blatantly similar it may be. In fact, the history of the rise of Nazism in Germany is irrelevant to, well, basically everything, unless your discussion is strictly limited to the Holocaust, or if you’re relativizing the Holocaust in defense of Israel’s right to defend itself … in which case, sure, break out those yellow stars and go nuts with the Holocaust comparisons.
Seriously, check my reasoning on this, because I don’t want to get it wrong again and end up facing yet another prosecution. Based on my new post-epiphany understanding, questioning the details of the official account of the October 7 attack is “Holocaust denial.” Hundreds of thousands of people peacefully demonstrating in support of Palestinians is a “hate march.” “Hamas Holocaust denial is dragging us into a new Dark Age.” The October 7 massacre was “barbarism as consequential as the Holocaust,” or at least as barbaric as the Babyn Yar massacre!
How am I doing? Am I good so far? I haven’t relativized the Holocaust, have I?
OK, one more test, just to make sure I’ve got my mind right around this stuff. If I, or anyone, were to compare what the State of Israel is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza to, I don’t know, let’s say, just hypothetically, the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, that would be completely inappropriate, and anti-Semitic, and a hate crime, right? I mean, the IDF isn’t liquidating the strip. They’re defending Israel against Hamas, and are doing their best to protect civilians as they bomb whole neighborhoods into heaps of rubble, wiping out thousands of men, women, and children, entire extended families, who are trapped inside the “Israel-Gaza barrier,” and have nowhere to run or hide from the slaughter.
If anyone were to make that comparison, that would definitely be relativizing the Holocaust, right? That would be like calling for “the extermination of the Jews,” or literally dressing up like Hitler and walking around barking Nazi slogans in public. In fact, anyone comparing the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip to the Warsaw Ghetto, or to any other enclave of any other Nazi-occupied territory, is relativizing, minimizing, and trivializing the Holocaust, and should be fired from their job, blacklisted, and publicly condemned as “a Hamas-loving anti-Semite.”
Help me out. Am I getting the hang of this?
I hope so. All I can do at this point is apologize for leading people astray with all that stuff I wrote about “The New Normal Reich” and “pathologized totalitarianism” during 2020-2022. That, and try to make amends by humiliating myself on social media …
… which seems to be going pretty well so far.
Anyway, I am terribly sorry. No more “Holocaust relativizing” for me! I have seen how it is wrong, and terribly wrong, to compare anything to Nazi Germany, ever. I have learned my lesson. I’m cured! Praise god!
Former Jan 6th Prosecutor Runs For Congress, Focusing Campaign on Tackling “Conspiracy Theories” On Social Media
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 31, 2023
A counter-terrorism (national security) prosecutor who made a name for himself – or so he hopes – by going after participants in the January 6 riots is now hoping to capitalize on his previous career by switching directly to politics.
Will Rollins has announced that he is running for Congress in California, with his platform based on changing regulations that govern Big Tech’s social media, in order to combat what he considers to be conspiracy theories – such as QAnon and Covid-related issues – but also more vaguely, to take on “spreading division based on lies.”
In announcing the congressional run, Rollins revealed that his political efforts are based on the thinking that divisions in the US are not the result of, say, differing political and ideological beliefs within a free electorate, but of “democracy-eroding lies” that the media, Big Tech, and extremists, all help spread.
Apparently, there is such a thing as a democracy to erode, even if everyone gets corralled into the same place regarding some basic issues. And speaking of which, Rollins is warning that without his plan to hold said entities – media outlets, tech companies, and “extremists” – accountable, the US will be “exploited” by China and Russia.
This is his plan:
“Update regulations to break down information bubbles and propaganda networks to protect the public’s right to be informed; Require more transparency in advertising, so that we know whether what we’re consuming online was written by a human or a Russian bot; Create accountability for harmful lies and conspiracy theories amplified by Big Tech.”
From insisting on preventing “divisions” (but having to qualify his claims that “adversaries” from around the world tried to “capitalize” on those divisions post-January 6 by saying they reportedly tried this) – Rollings suddenly goes on to justify his policies by saying new rules around tech, etc., are needed in order to “incentivize the presentation of multiple views.”
But these will have to be “vetted” and approved of before being allowed to be presented, let alone incentivized, it appears from the musings Rollings is posting online.
Perhaps the most interesting thing that has come out of this candidacy so far is the revealing of the political and ideological profile of one of the January 6 prosecutors.
On Being a “PreBunked Malinformant”
BY JOHN LEAKE | COURAGEOUS DISCOURSE | OCTOBER 31, 2023
In recent years a vast industry has been created for the “detection, management, and correction of disinformation and misinformation.” Dozens of foundations, big tech companies, and government agencies are now disbursing hundreds of millions (in aggregate) to university departments to train young people for a career in misinformation and disinformation management.
Dr. Aaron Kheriaty mentioned this to me in an interview last summer, and a few nights ago, Dr. McCullough asked me to do some research on this new industry. My inquiry has led me into a Bluebeard’s Castle of horrors.
A quick Google search of “misinformation correction” results in countless reports of grant awards in this burgeoning industry. In other words, instead of acquiring a liberal education (based on the central principle of freedom of speech and expression) an army of college students are in training to become professional censors and propagandists.
How do graduates from university censorship programs conceptualize guys like Dr. Peter McCullough and (to a lesser extent) me?
We are, in the Orwellian language of the censorship schools, “Malinformants”— that is, guys who spread “harmful” information. Because we have been designated as such, we are suitable candidates for “PreBunking.” The following video is a sort of “PreBunking” manual. Note that the technique is explicitly and favorably compared to a vaccine.
The telltales that you’ve become a “PreBunked Malinformant” is when you run afoul of internet trolls who display some or all of the following identifiers:
- Express a zealous belief that vaccines are the saviors and redeemers of mankind.
- Display an icon of the Ukrainian flag on their profile.
- Use extremely disparaging, ad hominem, and sanctimonious language.
- Characterize you of being a “grifter.”
So, how does it feel to be a “PreBunked Malinformant”? Setting aside the feeling of vexation that I’m contending with kids who possess none of my education or experience, I’m left with the emotion of total amazement that American universities now have astoundingly well-financed schools of censorship.
How could this have possibly come about in the United States of America?
Israel has killed 133 babies under a year old since 7 October
MEMO | October 31, 2023
Since 7 October, at least 133 infants less than one year old have been killed in the Gaza Strip, which Israel has now been bombing for over 24 days, Anadolu Agency reports.
On 26 October, the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza released a 212-page report that lists the names, identification, and ages of those killed in Israel’s attacks on the strip since 7 October, when the current conflict began.
According to the report, 2,913 of the 7,280 people killed in the Israeli attacks were children.
In the Israeli attacks, 444 babies were killed, including 133 under one year old, 153 one-year-olds and 158 two-year-olds.
Israel’s bombing also killed 171 three-year-olds, 1,527 pre-school to primary school aged children (ages 4-13), and 523 high-schoolers, age 14 to 17.
Of the casualties, 2,262 were women and 462 were over the age of 60.
The report also said that the identities of 281 of the victims have not been confirmed.
63 UN employees and 36 journalists killed
The UN Agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA, announced on 30 October that 63 of its staff members had been killed in the Israeli attacks.
Since the start of the Israeli attacks on 7 October, 35 journalists have been killed in Gaza and one in Lebanon.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, launched a comprehensive attack on 7 October in response to ongoing Israeli violations against Palestinians and their holy sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Israeli army responded with a relentless campaign of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip and seems now to have started a long-expected ground offensive.
University of Arkansas imposes Israel ‘loyalty test’ on Jewish author and cancels event
MEMO | October 31, 2023
Academic freedom is under fire in the US as Jewish author silenced for stance on Israel. American- Jewish scholar, Nathan Thrall, has faced censorship from the University of Arkansas, which banned his speaking event over his refusal to sign a pledge affirming loyalty to Israel. Thrall was set to discuss his ground-breaking new book exposing Palestinian life under Occupation, before the University invoked a repressive anti-boycott law to cancel the talk.
“I was just told that I cannot speak at @UArkansas unless I sign a pledge that I will not boycott Israel or its occupation,” Thrall said on X yesterday revealing that he had refused the demand. “A 2017 state law requires @UArkansas to impose this McCarthyist requirement. A reminder that the current effort to quash free speech is not new.”
Thrall also revealed that events for the book were called off on NPR and the BBC’s American platforms due to listener complaints. “I’m quite sure that a book advocating for Israel would not have had its advertisements pulled,” Thrall added. “There’s an atmosphere that is wholly intolerant of any expression of sympathy for Palestinians under Occupation.”
Over 30 US states have adopted legislation aimed at suppressing the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. These anti-BDS laws, promoted by pro-Israel lobbying groups, prohibit state entities from contracting with or investing in any company that boycotts the apartheid state. Some even require individuals and businesses to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel as a condition of obtaining state contracts.
Critics argue that this amounts to an unconstitutional political litmus test that requires declaring loyalty towards Israel and its policies, at the expense of free speech and political dissent. The American Civil Liberties Union has called anti-BDS laws a “profound violation of the First Amendment” that chill activism by making people prove they do not support boycotts for Palestinian rights.
High-profile cases like the cancellation of author events over refusal to sign anti-BDS pledges highlight how the laws censor Israel critiques and activism. Rights groups contend basic democratic principles are undermined when states act as “enforcers” of Israeli policy, demanding ideological purity on this polarising issue as a prerequisite for contracts.
Despite the dubious legality of anti-BDS legislation, the trend continues spreading across states seeking to please pro-Israel interests by cracking down on activism.
In February, the US Supreme Court declined to review the law in the State of Arkansas requiring every government contractor to pledge loyalty to Israel. The justices turned away a challenge to the anti-boycott pledge by the Arkansas Times.
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Now Andrew Bridgen takes on the power-hungry World Health Organization
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | October 30, 2023
Hard on the heels of his excess deaths debate last Tuesday, the admirably energetic and purposeful Andrew Bridgen MP has been granted leave to bring in a Parliamentary Sovereignty (Referendums) Bill under the Ten Minute rule (which allows a backbench MP to make his or her case for a new Bill in a speech lasting up to ten minutes).
The purpose of this Bill is ‘to prohibit Ministers of the Crown from making or implementing any legal instrument which is not consistent with the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, unless it has been approved by a referendum; and for connected purposes’. It is directly relevant to the sweeping powers which the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty threatens to grab from us.
(The second reading of this Bill, set for November 24th, is crucial. Supporters should put massive pressure on their MPs to attend, and include in their emails, the powers the Treaty will give the WHO over us).
You can watch Mr Bridgen delivering his succinct but detailed explanation for why we need such a Bill here:
Here is the full text from Hansard:
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit Ministers of the Crown from making or implementing any legal instrument which is not consistent with the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, unless it has been approved by a referendum; and for connected purposes.
This Bill does what it says on the tin. The point of it is to uphold the integrity and sovereignty of this great House and this great nation. It would, for example, prevent a future Government from overturning the democratic will of the British people by taking us back into the European Union without consulting the public in a referendum. Indeed, it would stop the Government from taking us into any union without public consent, and it would move power closer to the people.
However, the Bill would also stop something that threatens the people of our great nation right now. It would stop the Government from blindly accepting the World Health Organization’s amendments to the International Health Regulations and the so-called Post-Pandemic Agreement, which they appear intent on doing without even consulting this House, never mind the public. The Government signed up to the WHO pandemic preparedness treaty negotiations without a single word being uttered in Government time. The only time we have even mentioned it in this Parliament was on 17 April this year in a Westminster Hall debate forced by over 156,000 members of the public signing a petition. A further petition to reject the amendments to the IHR has closed, having reached over 116,000 signatures, but no time has yet been allocated for a debate.
Those two instruments, if followed, will control how future Governments can prepare and respond to emergencies. In my view, that would amount to making this House redundant. If allowed to progress, that treaty and the amendments to the IHR will fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state, moving away from a parliamentary democracy that has been the envy of the world for centuries to an autocratic dictatorship led by the unelected and unaccountable director general of the WHO. That same organisation has been accused of undue Chinese influence, as well as of severely mismanaging and covering up the spread and origin of covid-19. That same organisation is mostly funded by commercial and private interests and has diplomatic immunity for its employees and families. What could possibly go wrong?
My North West Leicestershire constituents voted to leave the European Union in 2016—indeed, I campaigned for it, too—but they did not vote in their tens of thousands to leave the EU only to be subjected to an even more autocratic and unaccountable body that takes sovereignty away from this House and from our people. We voted to leave the European Union to take back control, not to give it away to the WHO or anybody else. We are all elected by our constituents to represent them and speak on their behalf, so when it comes to the matter of their sovereignty and protecting their freedoms and rights, surely it is our responsibility to defend those rights and privileges. We are custodians of that power and sovereignty only for a brief period, after which it must be returned intact to the people at the next election, so that they can again decide who will represent them for the next parliamentary period.
When it comes to giving sovereignty away, that decision must always go back to the people, and it requires a referendum. The people should decide whether they wish to give their sovereignty away, and, in this case, whether they want the director general of the WHO controlling their life, rather than the Government of the day. To give those powers away would be nothing short of a dereliction of our duties.
The WHO would like to paint a picture of the treaty and the amendments being all about nation states working together in harmony to fight deadly pathogens, when they are in fact a power grab by an unaccountable elite. They do not want a debate on that; they would quite happily see it passed through the back door without a word being mentioned. That is not my idea of an open parliamentary democracy. The director general of the WHO will have the ability to call a public health emergency of international concern—the acronym is PHEIC, Madam Deputy Speaker—and take absolute powers to control the lives of all citizens of our sovereign nation. That is a power grab not just in this nation, but in all nations around the globe who sign up.
The new powers that the WHO will gain include the freedom to declare a pandemic—or even the potential for a pandemic—at which point all decision-making powers fall under the control of the WHO. The powers would also include the ability to call an emergency owing to human pathogens, animal pathogens, a perceived environmental threat or even the risk of any of the above; and the freedom to impose lockdown restrictions on all individuals in member states and make vaccinations or other medications mandatory, such as vaccines made in 100 days by skipping human trials and shaving safety and efficacy testing down to the bare bones. Furthermore, the WHO would seek power on the right to specify the use of certain medications in medical emergencies, and ban others—to decide healthcare for every person, with local doctors being forced to follow WHO edicts. The power to require a global health passport to be carried would also be given to those unelected bureaucrats in Geneva. Nations would be required to surveil and censor the press and social media so that no dissenting voices can be heard. The removal of the clause relating to human rights is unforgivable.
The recommendations that the WHO issued during the covid-19 pandemic were exactly that: recommendations. They were advisory, and it was up to sovereign Governments and sovereign Parliaments to implement or ignore them—Sweden bravely and successfully chose to ignore them. This treaty would make the WHO’s recommendations mandatory without a debate in this House or, indeed, any other elected Chamber of nations that sign up to these flawed agreements.
As George Santayana said, those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. I have some severe worries that the lessons of the last pandemic have not been learned by the WHO itself, as it will not even have a review of its recommendations during the pandemic, so sure is it that its advice was absolutely perfect—when, in fact, we know from independently conducted reviews that it was a litany of disasters, lockdowns, mandatory experimental vaccines and masks, all of which caused our population and economy huge harm. We are in danger of giving this organisation even more powers to overreach itself and repeat those catastrophic mistakes.
Do we really want a repeat of the measures recommended by the WHO that resulted in £400 billion on the national debt, which has caused ravaging inflation, not to mention the huge NHS waiting lists, one million young people in need of mental health support and the damage to our children’s education and development? That begs the question, why on earth would anyone be willing to give away our sovereignty without consulting this House or the people? That is something I am not content with, and I suspect many colleagues here today share my concerns—or perhaps some of them think, rather like those who were deciding the regulations at the last pandemic, that the rules would not apply to them. I can assure hon. and right hon. Members that they will.
The very democracy that we have taken for granted all our lives is now under threat, but it is not under threat from invading armies hailing from hostile nations. No, our democracy is under threat due to the apparent corruption and decay of our own Government institutions, which are allowing this power grab to happen. Members in this Chamber should never forget that we are the servants of the people, not their masters, and the servants should never sell out their masters.
In my opinion, anyone who supports either of these WHO instruments—I refuse to call one of them an agreement, because I have not agreed to it, and neither have the people of North West Leicestershire; indeed, I think the majority of my constituents would never agree to these instruments—and any Member of this Parliament who would hand over these powers to a such discredited organisation as the WHO does not deserve a seat in this Chamber or any elected Assembly around the world.
In conclusion, to even contemplate giving away these sorts of powers to this sort of body, which affect not just the democratic rights but the human rights of every single man, woman and child in our nation, without a referendum would be quite simply catastrophic. People have said that this would lead to one world government. In fact, it is rather worse; it will be a one world dictatorship. Signing up to this treaty and binding ourselves to the WHO without a single debate on it, a single vote on it or asking the general public what they think would make being a member of the European Union look like a democratic paradise by comparison. That is why we need this Bill. I am aware that, with the looming prospect of Prorogation, even if the House supports my motion today, the Bill will fall in a few days’ time. However, as the phrase goes, I will be back.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Andrew Bridgen and Mr Philip Hollobone present the Bill.
Andrew Bridgen accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 November, and to be printed (Bill 377).
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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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