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The “Wellness-to-Fascism Pipeline” Baffles Experts as Truth Marches On

Congregating and Caring about Your Health is Dangerous to our Democracy

BY IGOR CHUDOV | AUGUST 13, 2023

Be careful with your workouts! An article from the Guardian alerts us to a “wellness-to-fascism pipeline.”

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/02/everything-youve-been-told-is-a-lie-inside-the-wellness-to-facism-pipeline

“People who study conspiracy theories” are worried that joining gyms and trying to get healthy makes people descend into what these experts describe as fascism, explains author James Ball.

James has a peculiar idea of what fascism is, however:

According to James, only fascists question masks, lockdowns, or the BBC. Good people mysteriously become “fascists” when they join gyms or look after their wellness.

Some of the most dangerous people, believe it or not, are personal trainers!

Some people’s problems escalated when their personal trainer learned about their work. “I had three successive personal trainers who were anti-vax. One Belgian, two Swiss,” I was told by a British man who has spent most of the past decade working in Europe for the World Economic Forum, which organises the annual summit at Davos for politicians and the world’s elite.

The poor WEF chap above was even dropped by his personal trainer when his employment at the WEF was revealed:

When the trainer found out the man worked for the World Economic Forum, he was immediately cut off.

Most worryingly for the “conspiracy expert” Peter Knight, people of all political persuasions, right or left, end up in the same place when they realize that “everything is a lie”:

Peter Knight has the strangest explanation, by gender, as to why people “get sucked into conspiracy theories.”

He explains that men are drawn into conspiracies because of the “involuntary celibacy” movement.

It is not that difficult to imagine why young men hitting the gym might be susceptible to QAnon and its ilk. This group spends a lot of time online, there is a supposed crisis of masculinity manifesting in the “incel” (involuntary celibacy) movement and similar, and numerous rightwing influencers have been targeting this group.

Mind you, at the beginning of the article, James Ball discussed how personal trainers are the superspreaders of conspiracies. Have you ever seen an involuntarily celibate gym personal trainer?

His explanation of why women believe the same theories could not be more different! Women, it turns out, believe the same conspiracies as men because of the “female data gap”!

“Far too often, we blame women for turning to alternative medicine, painting them as credulous and even dangerous,” she says. “But the blame does not lie with the women – it lies with the gender data gap. Thanks to hundreds of years of treating the male body as the default in medicine, we simply do not know enough about how disease manifests in the female body.”

Are They Intentionally Blind?

There is a much simpler explanation as to why people believe the “Covid was lab-made” conspiracy theory, “Covid vaccine does not work” conspiracy theory, or “15-minute cities are promoted by the World Economic Forum” theory.

The explanation is that these theories are true. Both genders are capable of critical thinking, seeing the truth, and sharing it.

This simple explanation does not insult millions of thinking men by portraying them as “incels,” nor does it portray women as stupid creatures confused by the imaginary “gender data gap.”

Trying to find explanations for complicated but important events affecting us and not believing dishonest press is not fascism. God gave us brains for a reason – to think for ourselves! Critical thinking is the opposite of fascism, which requires uncritical obedience to the state ideology.

The Most Important Social Network Needs No Computers

Despite its stupidity, the Guardian’s article exposes the most important social network that the press, fact-checkers, and the powers-to-be cannot control.

This social network is people physically and directly interacting with each other and sharing news and opinions.

It cannot be suppressed by means other than drastic lockdowns, which kept people at home in 2020. The gyms, far from being uniquely instrumental in developing critical thinking, are simply places where people congregate and share stuff while doing something pleasant. Thus, not surprisingly, gym-goers share explanations of current events with their peers without any censorship or any algorithmic intermediary.

The Guardian recognizes this:

Society’s discussion of QAnon, anti-vaxxers and other fringe conspiracies is heavily focused on what happens in digital spaces – perhaps too much so, to the exclusion of all else. The solution, though, is unlikely to be microphones in every gym and treatment room, monitoring what gets said to clients.

The conspiracy experts are baffled by this development and ironically blame “isolation,” even though the phenomenon they observe is rooted in physical interaction between people:

Jane has her own theory as to why her wellness group got radicalised and she did not – and it’s one that aligns with concerns from conspiracy experts, too. “I think it’s the isolation,” she concludes, citing lockdown as the catalyst, before noting the irony that conspiracies then kick off a cycle of increasing isolation by forcing believers to reject the wider world.

“It becomes very isolating because then their attitude is all: ‘Mainstream media … they lie about everything.’”

I do not think of myself and my dear subscribers as isolated: we congregate here, we read newspapers, although critically, and we interact with friends or relatives. Anyone can say anything they want in the comments. Am I wrong?

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

The Jab Or Not The Jab

Tactics and strategy in our irregular war

By Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D. | August 11, 2023

Those of us in the ‘resistance’ or ‘opposition’ — we skeptics who question and have questioned the covidian debacle and all of its accoutrements — seem inevitably to fall into discussions about the Jab. Deaths, adverse events, excess mortality, turbo cancers, immune dysregulation — you name it — but it is almost as if the Jab is some kind of black hole with a gravitational pull that sucks us all in and, in the end, directs our tactics and strategy rather monomaniacally for dealing with the Covidian Onslaught.

Let me be clear about my own position. From the beginning, when Covid Mania swept across the world, I felt that there was never a need for a vaccine of any kind.

Why?

First, because the illness or conglomeration of symptoms that appeared to be the result of a contagious pathogen was never as lethal as the Corporate Media led us to believe. It was, in fact, no more lethal than a bad flu, as eminent epidemiologist John Ioannidis demonstrated relatively early. Second, because treatments for the illness had also been developed and appeared to have been quite successful. Third, because I had faith in sound preventive measures such as sunlight, exercise, nutrition, the vitamins C and D, among others, as well as the wisdom and strength of our natural immune response.

During one interview I said, in fact, that the only way I would receive the Covid Jab would be if I were shot dead first.

As events unfolded in 2020 and beyond, the push for the Jab as the only way out of the pandemic that never really was, became quite intense. Big Pharma could certainly smell the massive profits, profits guaranteed by agreements that absolved these manufacturers from any harms associated with their product, and governments around the world colluded by seducing, cajoling and then, ultimately, coercing people into receiving the one-size-fits-all solution.

At first they told us the Jab was our only way out, and that it prevented us from getting, transmitting and dying from Covid. The Jabs of course did nothing of the sort. Their mechanisms of action, which included tampering with our genome and manufacturing a spike protein in numbers far exceeding what could occur with a natural infection, bespoke disaster. And, indeed, disaster has befallen and disaster will, I am certain, only worsen, for those who were either naive, terrified, gullible, stupid or indifferent enough to queue up for inoculations, and for those who were coerced into receiving them upon pain of loss of income and loss of inclusion in society.

The Jab, however, disastrous as it is, is but one of a number of instruments employed to do us harm.

Let’s not forget the effects of the lockdowns, masking, ‘social’ distancing; let’s not forget the active suppression of early treatment; let’s not forget the demolition of small businesses and the upwards transfer of trillions to the already super-rich; let’s not forget the ceaseless and unremitting drumbeat of fear; let’s not forget how our medical and governmental institutions betrayed our trust; let’s not forget the intrusions upon our privacy and our bank accounts, and the stalwart push for universal health passes and digital identification.

We are, and have been, buffeted on many fronts, with a single end in sight for those in the Globalist Mafia Cartel who have been doing the buffeting: murder and enslavement.

How may we, who can see the agenda, best combat the onslaught? Is it by showing over and over the many instances of Jab-related adverse events and sudden deaths? Or is it by planting our stake in the ground in defense of basic human rights and freedoms?

I have argued and continue to argue that there will always be another Jab — in fact, there will be a plethora of Jabs in our future. The more fundamental and abiding issue is preservation of our unalienable rights to physical and mental sovereignty and freedom of expression.

We must understand that this massive and unique Covid psyops, global in scope and relentless in pressure, has been deviously constructed to be impervious to logical rebuttal. For example, a neighbour of mine who nearly died from a blood clot, was told by her doctors not that the Covid Jab may have been a causative factor, but that Covid itself was. In the face of our rightful assertions that the Covid Jab is dangerous, a Jab recipient who is healthy will think we’re crazy, thanks to fate, human individuality and resilience, and/or variable Jab batches.

It is now time for us to draw the larger picture for those who are sitting on the fence or wandering the pastures on its other side. The larger picture of how the Few are oppressing the Many, of how the rights we are born with — rights not conferred or bequeathed by governments — are being trampled, and how censoring dissident and questioning voices is never and has never been the work of democratically-oriented societies.

At the Parliament Protest of 2022 here in Wellington, New Zealand, people from all walks and echelons of the citizenry came together, in unity, against the unlawful and unjustifiable imposition of mandates, against the usurpation of our most cherished, fundamental and precious human inheritance: autonomy and freedom.

Directing our energies to this transcendent matter, the matter of preserving autonomy and freedom and choice, is paramount — and positive — and far more likely to breach the resistance of sleepwalkers than a focus on the perils of the Jab which they themselves have taken so readily, given their unshakable and unquestioning belief in the wondrous benevolence of vaccine medicine.

Let’s get started, let’s emphasize freedom and social connections and a new way of healing and let us, in so doing, lead by example.

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Sen. Ron Johnson Says Pandemic “Preplanned By An Elite Group Of People” Who Conducted “Event 201”

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | August 13, 2023

And now, better late than never, a US politician recognizes that all may not have been what it seemed with the pandemic – and its tyrannical response.

Senator Ron Johnson on Friday told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that Covid-19, and its response, were “preplanned by an elite group of people” who conducted “Event 201” – a joint exercise conducted by John Hopkins, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum – which envisioned the spread of a coronavirus pandemic in South America which included over 65 million deaths worldwide.

The simulation concluded that national governments are nowhere near ready for a pandemic.

“We are going down a very dangerous path, but it is a path that is being laid out and planned by an elite group of people that want to take total control over our lives, and that’s what they are doing, bit by bit,” said Johnson, who sits on the Senate Homeland Security Committee and is a ranking member of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

To which Bartiromo responded: “It is just extraordinary to me that the government was working with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth and has been doing so repeatedly. We just saw the Facebook story, the Twitter files, all of the all the way, government officials from the CDC, FBI, you know CIA, a thousand people according to the reporters working on the Twitter files, worked with social media to amplify lies and suppress truth.

Why couldn’t the American people know that, you know, there were other alternatives to treat Covid why can’t American people know there were side effects with the vaccine?

Johnson then said: “This is all preplanned by an elite group of people, that is what I am talking about, Event 201 occurred in late 2019, prior to the rest of us knowing about the pandemic. Again — this is very concerning in terms of what is happening, what continues to be planned for our loss of freedom,” adding “ It needs to be exposed but unfortunately, very few people even in Congress are willing to take a look at this. They all pushed the vaccine, they don’t want to be made aware of the fact that vaccines might have caused injuries or death, so many people simply just don’t want to admit they were wrong and they’re going to do everything they can to make sure they’re not proven wrong.”

“We are up against a very powerful group of people here, Maria.”

Watch:

August 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

No US Presidential Election in 2024

The Automatic Earth | August 11, 2023

In January 2023, US special counsel Jack Smith applied for -and received- a subpoena for Twitter, specifically for all of Donald Trump’s utterances at the site through the years, including the ones he may have never published. Note: the subpoena came long after Trump left Twitter. And no, it wasn’t X then, and therefore it is not now. He wrote it when it was Twitter. Important. Trump left Twitter (was cancelled) on Jan 8 2021, Elon Musk bought it on October 27 2022, and renamed it “X” in late July 2023. Just so we get our horses and dogs in line.

Special counsel Jack Smith received his Twitter/Trump subpoena with the added provision that it had to be entirely secret, not even Twitter or Trump could know. US District Court Judge Beryll Howell gave Smith what he wanted, agreeing that if Trump’s years-old Twitter past was known, he would become a flight risk. But both Smith and Howell knew this was absolute nonsense. Not only is Twitter the last place you turn to when you have nefarious secrets to hide (it’s the opposite!), but the man is running for President, for God’s sake! And because of some 5 year old -or so- tweets he would pack in the family and disappear to an -underground- bungalow on Vanatua, never to be heard from again?

I would put this down as the moment when it became impossible for the US to have a presidential election in 2024. We’ve had some 8 years of this anti-Trump circus now, non-stop, Hillary, Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Robert Mueller, yada yada yada, but I don’t think we’ve reached the point before where the elections might as well be cancelled. We’re there now though. And that is a BIG point. We’ve let it come far too far. We’re in slapstick territory.

Think of it as a boxing match. In the one corner, we have the former champion/president, wearing the slightly widened red trunks. At age 77, he looks somewhat bruised and battered, but he doesn’t look beaten- yet. What’s noticeable though is that his corner is empty, except for Melania cleaning his brow, not even his own party is there to support him. There are some 90 million Americans behind him, but they are at home.

In the other corner, the defending champion, in blue trunks, weighing in at about 25 pounds and falling, looks a little lost. But behind him in his corner he has thousands of operatives: his entire party, plus the CIA and NSA and FBI and DOJ. And all the newspapers and TV channels and social media in the country. And all the judges and prosecutors, the DAs and GAs, it’s a veritable love-in. The guy in the blue trunks could be braindead and he’d still win. And I wish I was a cartoonist, and could capture the entire image in one frame. I can see it in front of my eyes, but I can’t draw it.

Where the boxing analogy goes astray is that in this case the blue side is allowed to harass the red side before, during and after the (preparations for) the fight, and during the fight itself. You can’t a have a free and fair fight, and a level playing field, if some “blue operatives” can put shackles on the ankles and wrists of the red candidate, or even lock him up while he’s preparing for the bell to ring. If the system allows him to be a candidate, it must also allow him to prepare for his candidacy, in the same way that his opponent can. That is not happening.

US special counsel Jack Smith has announced that the US plans to drag Trump before court after court starting January 2 2024. At least 3 major indictments (will be a dozen) , likely many more, and at my last count, 82 charges (it’s impossible to keep up). Smith can then finger pick any of these charges to put Trump in custody, whenever he feels like it. The judges are almost all “blue”, and so are the jury pools: New York and DC. And this is while he’s supposed to be campaigning!

And also: Trump allegedly already spent $40 million on legal expenses. But what if Trump doesn’t have $40 million? We could argue the $40 million should be spent on his campaign. Look at Imran Khan, guys, who was just convicted to a 3-year prison term in Pakistan on US directives. Like Trump, he is the most popular political candidate in his nation, and they got him on selling necklaces when he was PM.

That is Trump’s future too. And hence, the end of American democracy. He doesn’t stand a chance. And if he doesn’t, the system doesn’t, and you don’t. You’re fine as long as you agree with the boot stomping on your neck, and you maybe even enjoy it. But if you don’t, Jack Smith and his ilk – and Obama, Hillary, Adam Schiff, Pelosi, the whole gang, will come with charges and indictments directed at you.

You’re on the verge of the abyss. if you want to take your chances with what you might find down there, fair enough. But always know that you have a choice. And that, if somehow they do manage to stage a presidential election in November 2024 as things stand now, it’ll be fake from A to Z. Grow a pair, people, grow a backbone. You’re going to need them.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

AZ Governor Katie Hobbs Asked Twitter To Censor Her Critics, Emails Show

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 11, 2023

In a controversial blend of politics and social media censorship, it has been revealed that Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has intervened with Twitter, now X, in an effort to silence critics of her tweet where she equated Trump supporters to neo-Nazis. This revelation raises critical concerns about free speech and political bias in the era of Big Tech censorship.

Hobbs had targeted Trump and his supporter base in a contentious 2017 tweet during her tenure in the Arizona state legislature. “Trump has made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in pandering to his neo-nazi base than being president for all Americans,” she stated, an assertion that drew widespread condemnation from her digital audience. This criticism wasn’t taken lightly by Hobbs, who ascended into her role as Arizona secretary of state while these contentious debates raged on.

Hobbs’ contentious social media posting subsequently ignited debates over her impartiality in administering elections, upon which the Democratic leader demanded the censorship of online judgments against her.

Leaked emails confirmed by Arizona Capitol Oversight, a conservative political entity, revealed Hobbs officially contacted Twitter in November 2020 to sanction her online critics.

However, when Twitter demanded further details to justify Hobbs’ request, she was unable to produce the required evidence. Instead, she laid claim to being “harassed” by political opponents for her comments labeling them as Nazis. Hobbs went on to argue that they had weaponized a three-year-old tweet to spread threatening messages.

Despite countless appeals for responses from X and Hobbs regarding the censorship requests, reactions have yet to surface. In the shadow of these unfolding revelations, there is mounting evidence that many more federal departments than expected could be deliberately downplaying their engagement in online censorship.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Free Speech To The Supreme Court — And Beyond!

Historic Missouri v. Biden Censorship Lawsuit Likely Headed To Supreme Court

BY ALEX GUTENTAG | PUBLIC | AUGUST 11, 2023

Yesterday the Fifth Circuit court heard oral arguments in the Missouri v. Biden case, and the judges did not hold back. One judge suggested the government “strongarms” social media companies and that their meetings had included “veiled and not-so-veiled threats.”

Another judge described the exchange between the Biden administration and tech companies as the government saying, “Jump!” and the companies responding, “How high?”

“That’s a really nice social media company you got there. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,” the judge said, describing the government’s coercive tactics.

Attorney John Sauer, representing Louisiana, masterfully argued that the government had repeatedly violated the First Amendment. He pointed to specific evidence of coercion in the Facebook Files.

“You have a really interesting snapshot into what Facebook C-suite is saying,” Sauer explained. “They’re emailing Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg and saying things like… ‘Why were we taking out speech about the origins of covid and the lab leak theory?’” The response, Sauer said, was, “Well, we shouldn’t have done it, but we’re under pressure from the administration.”

He also cited an email from Nick Clegg, Facebook President of Global Affairs, that pointed to “bigger fish to fry with the Administration – data flows, etc.”

On Monday, Public reported that these “data flows” referred to leverage the Biden administration had over the company; Facebook needed the White House to negotiate a deal with the European Union. Only through this deal could Facebook maintain access to user data that is crucial for its $1.2 billion annual European business.

But Sauer also made it clear that coercion was not the only basis on which the court could rule against the Biden administration. Joint activity between the White House and social media platforms would also be unconstitutional.

Sauer compared what the government had done to book burning. “Imagine a scenario where senior White House staffers contact book publishers… and tell them, ‘We want to have a book burning program, and we want to help you implement this program… We want to identify for you the books that we want burned, and by the way, the books that we want burned are the books that criticize the administration and its policies.”

Daniel Tenny, the attorney for the Department of Justice, was left nitpicking and misrepresenting the record. In one instance, he denied that Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins had hatched a plan to orchestrate a “takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration. Why? Because, Tenny said, according to their emails, they actually planned a takedown of “the premises of the Great Barrington Declaration.”

Tenny also stated that social media companies had not removed any true content. From the case’s discovery as well as the Facebook Files we know that is far from true. Facebook, against internal research and advice, did remove “often-true content” that might discourage people from getting vaccinated. Facebook’s own emails clearly suggest that the company only did this due to pressure from figures within the Biden Administration.

Tenny also claimed that when Rob Flaherty, the White House director of Digital Strategy, dropped the F-bomb in an exchange with Facebook it was not about content moderation. In fact, it was precisely about content moderation and occurred during a conversation about how Instagram was throttling Biden’s account. Ironically, the account couldn’t gain followers because Meta’s algorithm had determined that it was spreading vaccine misinformation.

Later, Sauer demolished an earthquake hypothetical that Tenny had introduced to justify state-sponsored censorship. “You can say this earthquake-related speech that’s disinformation is false, it’s wrong,” Sauer said. “The government can say it’s bad, but the government can’t say, ‘Social media platforms, you need to take it down.’ Just like a government can’t stand at the podium and say, ‘Barnes and Noble, you need to burn the bad books, burn the Communist books, whatever it is.’ They can’t say take down speech on the basis of content.”

Based on this hearing, the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden may have a strong chance of winning. Biden’s DOJ simply had no valid arguments to present. The evidence is clear: the administration brazenly engaged in an unlawful censorship campaign and instrumentalized private companies to do its bidding. This total disregard for fundamental civil liberties will be a stain on the Democratic Party for years to come.

The Supreme Court will be the supreme victory in the US, but our free speech work won’t be done after we win there. No nation enjoys free speech protections like ours. And so, after we win in the US, you can expect to see us helping our allies abroad achieve similar protections from government strongarming, aka censorship, in their own nations.

August 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Preprint Servers Censored Research That Contradicted Government’s COVID Narrative

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 9, 2023

Preprint servers are being used to censor scholarly papers critical of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and policy errors made by the Biden administration, according to Vinay Prasad, M.D., MPH.

Prasad, hematologist-oncologist, professor and director of a medical policy lab at the University of California San Francisco said his lab has submitted hundreds of papers to preprint servers — but only those that deviate from the official COVID-19 narrative have been rejected.

The basis for rejecting those papers is inconsistent with standards applied for other topics or with the fundamental rules of the servers, Prasad explained in a recent Substack post and YouTube video on the topic.

“All [rejected papers] are consistent with scientific practices and norms, and similar papers not critical of the CDC or Biden administration have been accepted,” Prasad wrote.

“If only papers that praise the CDC are acceptable by preprint servers,” he added, “then the role of science as a check and balance on incorrect policy is subverted.”

Preprint servers were established to address inefficiencies in academic publishing. The peer-review process typically takes months or more, delaying the real-time sharing of scientific findings with the public.

Also, many journals are proprietary and can only be accessed through expensive personal or institutional subscriptions.

Preprint servers offer a location for scientific reports and papers to be available to the public while the paper goes through peer review — making scientific findings available immediately and for free and opening them up to broader public debate.

There is no peer-review process for preprints, although there is a vetting process.

Prasad said preprint servers are supposed to be neutral and supposed to post all research conducted with a clearly explained and reproducible methodology. The goal, Prasad said, is to be inclusive and make scientific debate possible.

But instead, Prasad said, several of the preprint servers have become “gatekeepers” for what science gets published.

“When the people who work there are rabid, politicized and biased,” he said, “I think that’s a problem.”

‘The preprint servers are really a disgrace’

To test the bias of preprint servers, Prasad’s lab did a comprehensive analysis of its own preprints. Lab staff analyzed outcomes for all preprints they submitted to SSRN, medRxiv (pronounced “med archive”) and Zenodo servers — which he noted is a “reproducible systematic methodology.”

They found “a startling pattern of censorship and inconsistent standards from preprint servers. Preprint servers appear to be playing politics,” Prasad wrote.

Specifically, MedRxiv and SSRN have declined to post articles critical of the CDC, mask and vaccine mandates and the Biden administration’s healthcare policies.

“Preprint servers are not supposed to be journals — they are not supposed to reject articles merely because the people running them disagree with the arguments within.”

But the analysis suggests they are doing just that. Even the preprint of Prasad’s analysis was rejected by both medRxiv and SSRN.

“They don’t want to post a preprint that makes their own preprint server look bad,” he said, adding, “That’s pathetic. You have to post it because it’s factually true.”

Examples of censored articles demonstrate the bias behind the servers’ decisions.

One paper re-analyzed a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found cloth masks reduced the rates of COVID-19 transmission in some Massachusetts schools.

Prasad’s lab found that by simply lengthening the timeframe of the data analyzed in the observational analysis, the paper’s conclusion was invalidated. The data showed instead that masks did not slow the spread.

The servers didn’t post their paper, he said, citing “the need to be cautious about posting medical content.”

Prasad said the article was censored, “because it calls into question something that, frankly speaking, is pretty stupid, which is masking children with cloth masks — a stupid intervention derived by someone who cannot read randomized controlled trials and then pushed with the full force of the federal government — with no credible evidence and no randomized data.”

The servers censored Prasad’s lab’s comprehensive analysis of preprint bias using the same justification — “the need to be cautious about medical content.”

He said, “No one could possibly believe that this paper would require the need to be cautious — it merely documents your [preprint server’s] prior screw-ups.”

Another censored preprint reported on the lab’s systematic review and meta-analysis of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination in 5 to 11-year-olds. The paper critiqued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the drug for that age group.

The SSRN also removed that preprint citing, again, “the need to be cautious about medical content.”

SSRN used the same “boilerplate language” to remove the lab’s review of methodologies and conclusions in Cochrane reports. Those findings supported the controversial conclusion of the Cochrane review that community masking had no impact on slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Another article, rejected by medRxiv, which documented statistical and numerical errors made by the CDC during the pandemic, was already accepted by a journal and is one of the 10 most downloaded articles of all time on SSRN.

“Here’s the point,” Prasad said, “You don’t have to agree with me, but this preprint server is not even letting the audience of scientists decide. Who gave them this authority? They don’t get to peer review the article. That’s not their purview.”

Overall the team found that 38% of their submissions to preprint servers were rejected or removed. Yet, these rejected articles eventually were published and extensively downloaded.

“The median number of downloads for a rejected/removed article that was later accepted by a different server was 4,142 vs. 300 for articles submitted and accepted without rejection or removal,” he said.

Their analysis found that overall, Zenodo does not censor articles, but SSRN and medRxiv do.

So, he said, these organizations, established to make science transparent and uncensored have become gatekeepers “for their friends, for the views that they like.”

He also said their policies were inconsistent, with no clear scientific principles guiding rejection.

“They’re rejecting 38[%] of our articles because these are critical of establishment COVID-19 policies,” he said, adding:

“The COVID-19 pandemic is in fact a great example of … how people in power suppress minority views even when those views are meritorious — like toddlers shouldn’t mask, school should be open, you don’t need to mandate boosters, you shouldn’t mandate boosters for young men, nobody who had COVID should have to get the vaccine — those are sensible medical policies that are correct.

“History will vindicate them. They were all censored at one time or the other… The preprint servers are really a disgrace.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

August 11, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , | Leave a comment

X CEO Linda Yaccarino: “Lawful But Awful” Content To Be Hidden

Who gets to decide what’s awful?

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 10, 2023

Linda Yaccarino, X CEO and a former NBC advertising executive, underscored her autonomy in managing the day-to-day operations of X, previously known as Twitter, and shed some light on the shadowbanning operation at Twitter.

Appointed CEO by Elon Musk, she reasserted her independence from the entrepreneur, placing him firmly in a tech-based role. Her remarks have reignited debates surrounding freedom of speech and the direction online platforms should take in moderating content.

During a CNBC interview, Yaccarino discussed the demarcation of duties between herself and Musk, with the latter focusing on “product design” and leading “a team of extraordinary engineers [focusing] on new technology.”

However, it is her stance on the website’s content policies that has raised eyebrows among free speech enthusiasts.

In clarifying X’s approach to moderation, Yaccarino introduced the concept of “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” a policy where users, when posting narratives that are not in line with approved standards, are labeled, possibly demonetized for that content, and have their visibility reduced on the platform.

“If it is lawful but it’s awful, it’s extraordinarily difficult for you to see it,” she remarked, insinuating that even legally permissible content might be obscured if deemed undesirable by the company.

Some free speech advocates are concerned that this strategy of content labeling and demotion can quickly escalate into censorship. They argue that the distinction between “awful” and “lawful” is often a subjective one and fear the potential for misuse.

The decisions and comments made by Yaccarino might seem like a strict stance against divisive or hurtful rhetoric but critics may see it as an alarming move away from the ethos of open dialogue and free speech.

Video interview

August 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Orthodox Christian Priest Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison by Zelensky Regime

By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | August 8, 2023

A Ukrainian Orthodox Christian priest was sentenced to 5 years in prison on Monday after being accused of “justifying” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

From OrthoChristian, “UKRAINIAN HIERARCH SENTENCED TO 5 YEARS IN PRISON”:

A hierarch of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been sentenced to 5 years imprisonment and the confiscation of property for various supposed crimes against the state.

His Eminence Metropolitan Jonathan of Tulchin was sentenced in a Vinnitsa Court today, reports the Tulchin Diocese.

[…] His Eminence has repeatedly denied all charges against him and will file an appeal “against the clearly illegal verdict of the Vinnitsa City Court.”

Met. Jonathan was found guilty of crimes under four articles of the criminal code:

  • justification, recognition as lawful, denial of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, glorification of its participants
  • actions aimed at forcibly changing or overthrowing the constitutional order or seizing state power
  • encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine, distribution of materials calling for changing the borders of the territory and state border of Ukraine
  • violation of equal rights of citizens depending on their race, nationality, regional affiliation, religious beliefs, disability, and other grounds

The state persecution of Met. Jonathan has been going on for nearly a year already, beginning with the search of his home last October, during which the Ukrainian Security Service claims to have found “pro-Kremlin” leaflets.

His Eminence even had to undergo open-heart surgery last November, in the midst of the state persecution against him.

Zelensky seized control of the media, rounded up his opposition en masse and is now talking about suspending Ukraine’s elections under martial law.

“If we have martial law, we cannot have elections,” Zelensky told the Washington Post in May. “The constitution prohibits any elections during martial law. If there is no martial law, then there will be.”

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August 9, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

How long before all browsers are required by law to prevent users from opening allegedly infringing sites?

BY GLYN MOODY | WALLED CULTURE | AUGUST 4, 2023

Mozilla’s Open Policy & Advocacy blog has news about a worrying proposal from the French government:

In a well-intentioned yet dangerous move to fight online fraud, France is on the verge of forcing browsers to create a dystopian technical capability. Article 6 (para II and III) of the SREN Bill would force browser providers to create the means to mandatorily block websites present on a government provided list.

The post explains why this is an extremely dangerous approach:

A world in which browsers can be forced to incorporate a list of banned websites at the software-level that simply do not open, either in a region or globally, is a worrying prospect that raises serious concerns around freedom of expression. If it successfully passes into law, the precedent this would set would make it much harder for browsers to reject such requests from other governments.

If a capability to block any site on a government blacklist were required by law to be built in to all browsers, then repressive governments would be given an enormously powerful tool. There would be no way around that censorship, short of hacking the browser code. That might be an option for open source coders, but it certainly won’t be for the vast majority of ordinary users. As the Mozilla post points out:

Such a move will overturn decades of established content moderation norms and provide a playbook for authoritarian governments that will easily negate the existence of censorship circumvention tools.

It is even worse than that. If such a capability to block any site were built in to browsers, it’s not just authoritarian governments that would be rubbing their hands with glee: the copyright industry would doubtless push for allegedly infringing sites to be included on the block list too. We know this, because it has already done it in the past, as discussed in Walled Culture the book (free digital versions).

Not many people now remember, but in 2004, BT (British Telecom) caused something of a storm when it created CleanFeed:

British Telecom has taken the unprecedented step of blocking all illegal child pornography websites in a crackdown on abuse online. The decision by Britain’s largest high-speed internet provider will lead to the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy.

Here’s how it worked:

Subscribers to British Telecom’s internet services such as BTYahoo and BTInternet who attempt to access illegal sites will receive an error message as if the page was unavailable. BT will register the number of attempts but will not be able to record details of those accessing the sites.

The key justification for what the Guardian called “the first mass censorship of the web attempted in a Western democracy” was that it only blocked illegal child sexual abuse material Web sites. It was therefore an extreme situation requiring an exceptional solution. But seven years later, the copyright industry were able to convince a High Court judge to ignore that justification, and to take advantage of CleanFeed to block a site, Newzbin 2, that had nothing to do with child sexual abuse material, and therefore did not require exceptional solutions:

Justice Arnold ruled that BT must use its blocking technology CleanFeed – which is currently used to prevent access to websites featuring child sexual abuse – to block Newzbin 2.

Exactly the logic used by copyright companies to subvert CleanFeed could be used to co-opt the censorship capabilities of browsers with built-in Web blocking lists. As with CleanFeed, the copyright industry would doubtless argue that since the technology already exists, why not to apply it to tackling copyright infringement too?

That very real threat is another reason to fight this pernicious, misguided French proposal. Because if it is implemented, it will be very hard to stop it becoming yet another technology that the copyright world demands should be bent to its own selfish purposes.

GLYN MOODY, journalist, blogger on openness, the commons, copyright, patents and digital rights.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Watchdog or lapdog? West’s blatant hypocrisy on media freedom

By Shabbir Rizvi | Press TV | August 7, 2023

The last few weeks have seen dramatic shifts in geopolitical alignment in Africa, especially in Niger. Growing resentment over Western meddling has led to the overthrow of West-friendly President Mohamed Bazoum and the establishment of a military junta.

But that’s not all. Anti-Western sentiment has grown with demonstrators burning French flags and chanting slogans outside the French embassy in Niger’s capital Niamey.

The West has condemned the country’s junta takeover. For centuries, France has maintained colonial control over countries such as Niger. A vast amount of resources are extracted from the landlocked West African country and brought to France, fueling its economy while keeping Niger’s stagnant.

The military junta has now banned the movement of these precious resources to France.

France is naturally furious – the EU is already suffering a major economic setback due to its dogged insistence to let the Ukraine war drag on, throwing billions of dollars into weapons and resources.

Now, it’s facing the additional burden of keeping its crisis-hit industries running – a glaring admission of the country’s colonial practices to this day.

With Niger banning the export of key natural resources like Uranium to France – French and other Western media are taking to the internet and airwaves to smear the junta.

The anti-Western sentiment has come to a boiling point from decades of Western abuse and hyper-exploitation of African countries. It is a completely organic phenomenon, and so the West will need to use its media apparatuses to counter and stifle the sentiments.

Western media outlets have unleashed an aggressive campaign to accomplish this task. Parroting the narratives of Western regimes, French media such as France 24 and Radio France Internationale condemned the junta while using fear-mongering tactics to draw support for Western intervention.

They also sought to reaffirm support for French and other colonial structures within Niger – all while threatening the very people wishing to break the shackles of colonialism with military intervention.

In response, the junta leadership in Niger moved to ban the hostile French media outlets.

French officials blasted the move: “France reaffirms its constant and determined commitment to press freedom, freedom of expression, and the protection of journalists,” the French foreign ministry stated.

A European Union spokesperson joined in: “This step is a serious violation of the right to information and freedom of expression. The EU strongly condemns these violations of fundamental freedoms.”

These statements should be a textbook study of hypocrisy. Time and time again, the EU and the collective West have unleashed mass censorship campaigns, banned outlets, and arrested journalists.

It was only last year when the EU outright banned Russia’s RT and Sputnik news.

European Union satellite providers have also directly collaborated in media censorship campaigns. It has been less than a year since French satellite company Eutelsat removed Press TV from the air.

Western countries brazenly allow media outlets that affirm their own imperialistic goals to remain on air and uncensored. This includes outlets that outwardly promote foreign meddling and violence.

“Iran International” – which has significant funding from Saudi Arabia – played a large role in drumming up Western support during the failed foreign-backed riots in Iran last year.

Based in Washington D.C, the outlet pushed anti-Iran narratives, reporting misleading information or withholding context. It is an open-propaganda outlet created specifically to attack a sovereign country.

However, it is welcomed by the West with open arms. Not a single sanction has been placed on it.

If an outlet carries water for the US and EU, it will be allowed to operate without a single hurdle. If you criticize the goals of the empire in any way, you may be sanctioned. Shadowbanned. Censored. Labeled “state media.” Your very website may be seized entirely, as has been the case with Press TV.

For the crime of journalism in the West, you can be locked up in horrific conditions, fearing for your life.

Does the West seem to have completely forgotten about their ongoing treatment of Julian Assange, who exposed the war crimes of the United States – only to be smeared and pushed into solitary confinement?

If you are aligned with the American Empire’s goals, then you can even get away with killing journalists – and Western officials will try to brush it under the rug.

When Israeli occupation forces deliberately murdered Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the US dragged its feet to release a statement, ultimately claiming they can’t say for certain how the shooting death occurred – though all evidence affirms that she was targeted by regime soldiers.

And who can forget Jamal Khashoggi, an American journalist who actually did carry water for the West – only that he angered Saudi Arabia, so he was tortured, murdered, and dismembered on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS).

Instead of demanding any explanation or even condemning the act, the US granted the Saudi leader immunity over the killing.

“Freedom of the Press” is a mockery in the West. A joke with no punchline. Freedom of the press in the EU and the US does not exist – not really. Through loopholes, shadowy dealings, and outright hypocrisy Western regimes always have the final say in what media can operate and what can’t.

It boils down to the simple goal of advancing its own interests.

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that Niger banned France’s colonial media outlets. Their specific function is to carry France’s interests in foreign lands. Their goal is not honest and objective journalism or asking difficult questions. Their goal is to maintain and push public opinion of their own regime. A more honest classification of their work would be regime stenography.

France and the rest of the EU can condemn Niger’s actions all they want, but ultimately they have set the precedent of banning media outlets. The West will go as far as killing journalists, and then point a finger using that same bloodied hand at countries that refuse to give them a podium.

Ultimately, the world can expect more of the same double standards from the West.

The question is: if Western media’s role is to carry out its imperialistic missions rather than question and report, then why should anyone allow hostile media to operate in their country?

Shabbir Rizvi is a Chicago-based political analyst with a focus on US internal security and foreign policy.

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

COVID QUESTIONERS DEEMED ‘DOMESTIC TERRORISTS’

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | August 3, 2023

A trip down memory lane chronicling how Homeland Security labeled us all ‘domestic terrorists’ for trying to warn people about the harms of the COVID shots, masking kids, warnings and attacks meant to achieve COVID compliance. Will the same op be run during a climate emergency?

August 7, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

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