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Musk promises to help canceled workers sue their employers

RT | August 6, 2023

The billionaire owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, has offered legal help to users unfairly fired, canceled or otherwise mistreated by their employers over posts they had shared or liked.

“If you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill,” Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday evening. “No limit. Please let us know.”

Musk, who has championed himself as a “free speech absolutist,” was forced to follow through on his promise to acquire the company for around $44 billion last October.

Since then, he has fired around three quarters of Twitter’s staff and introduced a controversial paid subscription model in a bid to make the company profitable. He has also rolled back many of the company’s restrictive speech policies and released troves of documents detailing its collaboration under previous management with the US government and pro-censorship NGOs, to stifle anti-establishment content.

Critics have accused Musk of turning the social media giant into a haven for bigotry and hate speech by loosening its censorship policies.

However, the billionaire has struggled to convince some conservative Twitter users of his free speech credentials since hiring NBCUniversal advertising chief and World Economic Forum member Linda Yaccarino as the platform’s new CEO in June.

This comes despite his taking a swipe at liberal bogeyman and fellow billionaire George Soros, and hosting Republican presidential candidate and anti-woke crusader Ron DeSantis’ announcement of entry into the 2024 race.

Recently rebranded as X, Twitter has complied with 80% of all government takedown requests in the first six months since Musk took over as CEO, a significant increase from the 50% rate in the pre-Musk era.

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Brazil Censorship Regime: Popular Podcaster Criminally Investigated and Fined $75,000 For Online Speech

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 5, 2023

One of Brazil’s most popular podcasters, Monark (real name Bruno Monteiro Aiub), is under criminal investigation and has received a fine equivalent to $75,000 for his online conduct.

Critics of the authority’s behavior here – like Brazil-based investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald – see this as a way to completely silence the online personality known as the country’s version of Joe Rogan.

And do this without any due process, as well.

Reports in the Brazilian press say that the decision to fine Monark, whom they refer to as a digital influencer, came from Federal Supreme Court’s Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

Moraes is no stranger to taking an active part in controversial policies and decisions slammed for suppressing free speech on the internet.

In fact, he now has a fairly long history of involvement in this, dating back to the campaign to oust Brazil’s previous president.

In line with this reputation, Moraes’ decision was explained as the podcaster’s failure to comply with a court order, and in addition to the fine, includes blocking his bank account, suspending any new social media accounts, and demonetizing his channels.

In other words, a pretty thorough deplatforming and canceling. And the reason: Moraes says he’s fighting “disinformation” allegedly spread by Monark, as well as his tactic of trying to get his voice heard by creating a new account, once an old one gets banned.

Monark’s defenders, including his lawyer, say that the “crime” he committed is that of having an opinion that is not liked by the government, and that accusations of “instigation of anti-democratic acts” are not true.

On the other hand, the lawyer, Jorge Salomao, notes that in Brazil things like “disinformation and fake news” are not crimes at all, therefore cannot be criminalized, but must be dealt with in civil courts.

Salomao summed the situation up in a statement as, “summarily and unconstitutionally criminalizing thought.”

Meanwhile, Greenwald, who spoke about Monark’s case on his show “System Update,” asserted that censorship is now flourishing in Brazil, illustrated with this example of a podcaster who has over the past couple of years lost the ability to do his job and earn a living.

More than that, Greenwald believes that the West is (ab)using Brazil as a “censorship laboratory, learning how to implement and escalate their totalitarian assault on free expression.”

August 6, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Meta Will Unmask Anonymous Dutch Facebook User Accused of “Defamation”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 4, 2023

The Netherlands seems like a “land of the free” to some from the outside – at the very least, you are allowed to freely use narcotics still banned in most countries around the world.

So help yourself to that addiction – but if your “addiction” is to speak your mind, be “defamatory” (or accused of that online), and hope to remain anonymous – good luck.

Why people still use Facebook is up to them – but if they do, what the company is doing in this European country should dissuade them once and for all, if they have any notion of being anonymous online.

Sure, you can use a “nickname” – but if somebody wants to know who you are in the physical world, and have the habit of posting on Facebook – then those who want to know your actual name and address will get it from Facebook (Meta).

That’s the long and the short of a ruling of a Dutch court that ordered Facebook (specifically its European operation based in Ireland) to unmask a user, accused of “manipulating and making secret recordings of women he dated.”

Just like the “think of the children!” trope – this kind of justification is what most sane persons can get behind immediately. Fine – stop this guy – but then, where does it actually stop? For every other user, in a myriad other scenarios?

For the moment, that big picture perspective is what we don’t have from media reports. Instead, we know what the particular case, that could pave the way for a precedent of untold proportions, is about.

There are people in the world who go to Facebook to discuss their “dating experiences,” and the user, whose real identity has now been ordered to be “damasked,” was one of those. The comments the user posted appeared on “at least” two private groups on the platform.

The “subject” of these posts naturally disliked it, claiming reputation harm, but Facebook was not so sure. “It is not clear to us that the content you reported is unlawful as defamation,” is how the giant had put it.

Next, the claimant was told that perhaps, the issue should be resolved privately (this doesn’t seem to be a case of “revenge porn” or anything on that magnitude).

But then, the lawsuit came, despite Meta apparently “defending the anonymous user’s right to freedom of expression.”

And now, the court “ordered Meta to provide ‘basic subscriber information’ on the anonymous user, including their username, as well as any names, email addresses, or phone numbers associated with their Facebook account’,” – but not to remove the posts, “or flag any others that may have been shared in private groups,” say reports.

The cherry on the court order’s cake:

“According to settled case law, under certain circumstances Meta has an obligation to provide identifying data, even if the content of the relevant messages is not unmistakably unlawful.”

August 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

RFK Jr. Sues YouTube and Google, Alleges ‘Misinformation Policies’ Violated His First Amendment Rights

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 4, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children’s Health Defense founder and chairman on leave, this week filed a lawsuit against YouTube and its parent company, Google, alleging the social media giant violated his First Amendment rights.

According to Kennedy, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president of the U.S., YouTube engaged in a “censorship campaign” that included removing videos of his speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire and interviews he did with clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson and podcaster Joe Rogan.

The complaint, filed Aug. 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges the U.S. government has taken “extraordinary steps” under Joe Biden’s leadership “to silence people it does not want Americans to hear,” including himself and many others.

That censorship makes it difficult for Kennedy to reach millions of voters and also for his supporters to amplify his message, the complaint says.

The lawsuit predicts the censorship will continue throughout Kennedy’s campaign, intensifying as the primaries approach.

“Mr. Kennedy often speaks at length about topics people would like to ignore, including the negative health effects of toxic chemicals and potential safety concerns about the COVID-19 shots,” the complaint reads. Then YouTube uses its “medical misinformation” policies — developed in partnership with federal government agencies and the Biden administration — to justify removing his videos.

In doing so, the platform censored not only Kennedy’s comments on medical issues, but the entire content of his speeches and interviews, according to the suit.

Although YouTube is a private company, it is not simply a publisher, the complaint alleges — it has become “an important platform for political discourse in America, a digital town square that voters trust as a place to get news and opinions about the issues of the day.”

According to the complaint:

“YouTube operates as a public forum, the digital equivalent of a town square. As such, it cannot remove protected speech, especially political speech, based on its viewpoint. …

“There is a sufficiently close nexus between YouTube and the federal government such that YouTube’s actions may be fairly treated as that of the government itself.”

Although YouTube cited its own COVID-19 vaccine misinformation policies to censor Kennedy, those policies “rely entirely on government officials to decide what information gets censored,” according to the lawsuit.

For example, the suit says YouTube doesn’t allow content that “contradicts local health authorities’ (LHA) or the World Health Organization’s (WHO) medical information about COVID-19,” and the guidance on those policies only changes based on government decisions.

Kennedy also called YouTube’s medical misinformation policies “unconstitutional” because they are “vague” and “overbroad” and “because they give unnamed government officials, who the policies depend entirely on, the unfettered discretion to decide what information gets removed from YouTube.”

Kennedy is seeking injunctive relief to prohibit YouTube from further censoring his speech, and the restoration of any videos of his political speech removed during the campaign.

Kennedy also seeks a declaration that Google and YouTube violated his First Amendment rights and that its medical disinformation policies are unconstitutional.

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 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Jim Jordan Demands Answers From Pro-Censorship Activist Group

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 4, 2023

On an unanticipated front of the fight to uphold free speech, US Representative Jim Jordan recently entered the ring. Jordan, a staunch proponent of free speech and transparency, has launched a probe questioning the authority and influence of a certain digital entity, namely, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

Operating from the perspective that censorship stifles conversation and growth, Jordan aims to expose how the CCDH could have been instrumental in directing the Biden administration’s censorship policies.

At the epicenter of this is a damning report titled “The Disinformation Dozen.” The tract, according to Jordan’s probing letter, has been instrumental in encouraging the Biden administration’s campaign to apply pressure on social media platforms. This is in order to suppress and control content, a move that in the broader picture, clashes with the standard tenets of freedom of speech and open discourse.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Representative Jordan’s stance, while controversial to some, nonetheless positions him as a bulwark against what many consider an encroachment on constitutionally enshrined freedoms. Whilst dragging the CCDH into the spotlight, Jordan has made clear his commitment to ensuring that checks and balances are preserved in the increasingly murky waters of the digital age.

The decision to question the CCDH has served to underscore the often obscured mechanics of the Biden administration’s strategy, revealing the extent to which outlying groups could potentially be influencing federal policy decisions.

As this probe unfolds, it becomes increasingly evident that the crux of this matter extends beyond the CCDH, or even the Biden administration’s alleged censorship practices. This exploration by Jordan and his associates has made apparent the need for a deeper investigation into the structures that regulate digital discourse in order to safeguard the freedoms that lie at the heart of our democracy. The pivot point here is not just about who gets to decide what can and cannot be said, but also about the incalculable value of a society’s right to open and unrestricted dialogue, as well as for transparency.

This unexpected turn of events demonstrates the ongoing measures and countermeasures by political figures such as Jim Jordan, to ensure that the ideals of free speech and anti-censorship that the nation was built on, sustain in the rapidly evolving internet landscape.

The CCDH is also currently facing a lawsuit from X owner Elon Musk, who alleges that the work of the activist group has been a vindictive move to turn advertisers away from the platform.

August 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

“Darkness At Noon”

Eerie shades of Arthur Koestler’s classic 1941 novel

By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | August 5, 2023

This evening at dinner, Dr. McCullough talked about the troubling signs that the noose is tightening on the Medical Freedom movement, with Drs. Paul Marik and Pierre Kory recently receiving ‘Notice of Potential Disciplinary Sanction’ from the American Board of Internal Medicine. The once intellectually sound institution now resembles a Maoist Tribunal. Equally alarming was Chase Bank’s recent decision to shut down the bank account of Dr. Joseph Mercola, apparently for no reason apart from his unorthodox views of health and medicine.

Then there was RFK, Jr.’s abominable treatment at the hands of Democratic members of Congress at a hearing about the federal government’s flagrant violation of the First Amendment. As I watched the shocking rudeness, arrogance, and brutality of the Representatives, I was reminded of accounts I’ve read about so-called People’s Courts and Tribunals—i.e., Kangaroo Courts—that have been erected by various totalitarian regimes. Last but not least is the constant legal harassment of former President Donald Trump, who is accused of being “a threat to democracy,” even though he is apparently the preferred candidate of roughly half the electorate.

All of the above remind’s me of Arthur Koestler’s classic 1941 novel, Darkness at Noon, which he wrote in 1940 while living in France. A Hungarian Jew, Koestler studied at the University of Vienna, and then embarked on an adventurous life, residing in various European countries and in Palestine, working as a reporter and author. A socialist in his youth, he was discerning enough to recognize that for all of its idealistic promises, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia quickly became a corrupt and tyrannical regime.

Darkness at Noon is set between 1938-1940, after Stalin’s Great Purge of dissidents (real, perceived, and fabricated) and the Moscow Show Trials. The action takes place in an unnamed prison in which the protagonist — an old guard Bolshevik named Nikolai Salmanovich Rubashov — has been arrested as part of Stalin’s campaign to eliminate all potential rivals. Rubashov undergoes a series of interrogations, which initially have a strange air of affability, but then turn progressively more severe and doctrinal.

At no point is it clear what law Rubashov has allegedly broken, or why those who have arrested him perceive him to be a threat. For some mysterious and frightening reason, it seems that he simply cannot be tolerated.

When I first read Darkness at Noon as a junior in high school, I found it fascinating and terrifying, and it left an indelible impression on me. At the same time, I assumed (in the year 1988) that such a scenario could never happen in the United States.

Now I’m not so sure. The English title comes from Job 5:14: “They meet with darkness in the daytime, and grope in the noonday as in the night.” As Koestler recognized, evil may, at any moment, become ascendent and prevail. Unfortunately, most people fail to perceive the gathering darkness until it’s too late to stop it.

Is it too late to stop it now? I’m not sure, but Dr. McCullough and I are bracing for further reprisals against heterodox doctors like Pierre Kory, Paul Marik, and Joseph Mercola, and heterodox political candidates like RFK, Jr.

Dr. McCullough has already been stripped of his entire academic medical career, but he continues to communicate with the citizenry through Substack, Twitter, and independent media outlets. I continue to express my thoughts on Substack.

Will our few remaining free speech platforms be shut down? Will our bank accounts be frozen? Will we ultimately — like Rubashov — be arrested and imprisoned for reasons that aren’t really clear to us, apart from the fact that we express heterodox views?

At this moment it is difficult if not impossible to predict if the disturbing trend we are observing will abate, or if it is the early expression of a regime that will eventually obtain full dictatorial power. If history is any guide, we are justified in feeling very alarmed by what is going on.

Sept. 1, 2022: President Biden gives speech characterizing Donald Trump and his Republican supporters as a dangerous threat to American democracy.

August 5, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Intrepid Lawyer Sue Grey Wins One Against the Empire

By Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D. | New Zealand Doc | August 4, 2023

When a globalist mafia cartel — or a garden-variety tyranny — wish to silence dissent, they like to make ‘examples’ of those who resist. Here in New Zealand, under the sway of Jacinda Ardern’s ‘single source of truth’, a few doctors who three years ago raised their voices against the government’s woefully destructive covid measures — measures that included severe lockdowns, ineffectual masking, anti-social distancing, and the vehement suppression of early treatment, so that the one-size-fits-all death jab could be introduced as our salvation — found that their practising certificates were suspended by the FSMB-directed Medical Council of New Zealand. I was unfortunately one of these, as I discovered when I went to renew my certificate in November 2021.

If any other doctors dared to uphold the principles of their profession and inveigh against the demolition of informed consent, individualised treatment, and the Hippocratic Oath they swore when they received their medical degrees, they knew what was coming. Thus the silence of the sheep, which paved the way for the consequence of excess deaths and debilities thanks to the mandated jab, along with all of the other globalist paraphernalia, most of which I have described in many other essays.

As I write a number of good decent doctors who dared, for example, to prescribe Ivermectin, or who opposed the topsy-turvy institutional recommendations to jab as many people as possible so that we may all ‘stay safe’, are being persecuted and harassed when they should in fact be commended by the very Medical Council that purports to be protecting the public weal.

Suppressing dissent is something far more contagious than covid, and the New Zealand Law Society, taking a leaf out of the Medical Council’s playbook, decided to go after intrepid lawyer Sue Grey, hauling her before the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal​ for charges of misconduct and ‘unsatisfactory’ conduct.

Ms Grey represented herself at the Tribunal hearing and a decision has been rendered in her favour.

I frankly admit to being shocked by this decision — not because I questioned Ms. Grey’s fact-founded defense, but because I had resigned myself to believing that the fix was in.

Fortunately, we now have glimmers that truth will out, that not all institutions are irrevocably corrupt, and that standing tall in defense of the rights and principles of free speech can result in victory even within a system that is itself compromised.

This is our first real legal victory, in my opinion, a victory that paves the way for others, such as physician Peter Canaday who, fifteen weeks after his appearance at the Health Professionals Disciplinary Tribunal, has yet to receive a decision.

We’ve been fighting a long and irregular war in defense of freedom and good medical and legal sense, a fight against mandates and against the upending of professional duty and responsibility.

Sue Grey has been a beacon all along and her surprising triumph deserves accolades.

It reminds me, if you will permit a moderately hyperbolic analogy, of George Washington’s pivotal battle against British forces in Trenton on the day after Christmas 1776. Washington’s crossing of the Delaware was a highly risky enterprise that came after a string of woes; with it he turned the tide and the rest, as they say, is history.

Sue Grey has made history. Let us now go forward and press our rightful and truth-inspired advantage.

August 4, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Bernie Sanders Leads Calls To Prosecute “Illegal Misinformation” On Climate Change

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 3, 2023

Before there was the narrative pushed by the mainstream media that the 2016 US presidential election was rigged – there were the Democratic primaries, regarding which the evidence of actual rigging taking place has been much more solid.

The victim was hapless presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders – but now, this once great hope of left-wing citizens seems to be turning increasingly authoritarian, at least in his rhetoric.

He is, essentially, providing a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist (not in a democracy) – namely, what to do, legally, to stop political opponents?

In this case, it’s about corporate skeptics around the “climate change panic.” And Sanders has the answer – prosecute them, and if found guilty, put them in prison.

Sounds fairly extreme, but here we are.

In a letter co-signed by Senator Sanders, a group of his Democrat colleagues is asking the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to do just such a thing, aimed at what’s termed the fossil fuel industry.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

And although it seems careful to point the finger and demand retribution from companies that are accused of, basically, organizing campaigns to improve their business (shocking (NOT) – and, that business anyway is far from being illegal) – once a precedent of legally hounding dissenters is set, it can go anywhere.

ExxonMobile, Shell, and other giants are mentioned, perhaps as a way to soften the blow of that reality, but if what the senators are asking is to become reality, next up could be journalists, and then social media users, and just in general, it’s turtles all the way down.

Sanders and his companions would not want any of their actions to be seen that way, naturally. So they assert that, “the fossil fuel industry has had scientific evidence about the dangers of climate change and the role that burning fossil fuels play in increasing global temperatures for more than 50 years.”

The letter continues: “To coordinate their illegal misinformation campaign, the fossil fuel industry funded a multimillion-dollar plan through the American Petroleum Institute that sought to make climate change a ‘non-issue.’”

But the exact same argument could be used (in court) against any “regular Joe” not into the whole climate change – in court, down the line, should such extreme red lines as requested by the letter get established.

Of course, there’s no way to say that will happen – but also, that it won’t.

Kind of the same argument that climate change skeptics are trying to make about the climate change policy push.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Biden Regime Pressured Facebook To Suppress The Daily Wire, Boost Legacy Outlets Like The NYT

New internal documents reaveal

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 3, 2023

In a significant blow to the principle of free speech, recently disclosed documents reveal that President Joe Biden’s administration exerted considerable pressure on tech giant Facebook to constrain the reach of The Daily Wire and The New York Post, and promote content from established news outlets, within months of occupying the White House in January 2021. This revelation, coupled with the administration’s alleged intentions to alter the Facebook algorithm, has raised substantial concerns about government-sanctioned censorship.

These documents shed light on the Biden administration’s campaign to promote its Covid vaccine strategy, sidelining dissenting viewpoints.

The dialogues memorialized in the disclosed documents underline the charged interactions between then-White House Digital Director Rob Flaherty and Facebook representatives. The focus of these discussions was curbing The Daily Wire’s considerable influence on Facebook while simultaneously elevating legacy news outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

For context, The Daily Wire’s popularity on Facebook had outstripped that of both NYT and WSJ, drawing significantly more audience engagement, and casting a more amplified conservative alternative.

The meeting notes underline the Biden administration’s apprehensions about “misinformation” leading to vaccine hesitancy, sparking a quest to mold public sentiment using Facebook’s vast reach.

White House representative Flaherty’s frustration with Facebook’s inability to readily produce data to support the administration’s agenda becomes evident in the correspondence.

Highlighting the confrontational tone of these correspondences, Representative Jim Jordan, chairing the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, reinforced the troubling indication of the administration’s attempts to stifle free speech via social media control.

August 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

CIA moderating Wikipedia – former editor

RT | August 2, 2023

Wikipedia is one of many tools used by the US liberal establishment and its allies in the intelligence community to wage “information warfare,” the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, has told journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Speaking on Greenwald’s ‘System Update’ podcast, Sanger lamented how the site he helped found in 2001 has become an instrument of “control” in the hands of the left-liberal establishment, among which he counts the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies.

“We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” he said. “Do you think that they stopped doing that back then?”

Activity by the CIA and FBI on Wikipedia was first made public by a programming student named Virgil Griffith in 2007. Griffith developed a program called WikiScanner that could trace the location of computers used to edit Wikipedia articles, and found that the CIA, FBI, and a host of large corporations and government agencies were scrubbing the online encyclopedia of incriminating information.

CIA computers were used to remove casualty counts from the Iraq War, while an FBI machine was used to remove aerial and satellite images of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. CIA computers were used to edit hundreds of articles, including entries on then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China’s nuclear program, and the Argentine navy.

Some edits were more petty, with former CIA chief William Colby apparently editing his own entry to expand his list of accomplishments.

“[The intelligence agencies] pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community, learn the Wikipedia game, and then push what they want to say with their own people,” Sanger told Greenwald.

“A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online,” he continued, “on websites like Wikipedia.”

Earlier this year, Twitter owner Elon Musk released a trove of documents showing how the platform’s former executives colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also admitted that Facebook censored information damaging to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign at the direct request of the FBI.

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Australia’s Intelligence Agencies Are Instructed To Tackle Online “Misinformation”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | August 2, 2023

In a robust appeal for accountability, Australian intelligence agencies have been encouraged to counter online “misinformation” that potentially endangers national security. The recommendation comes from a parliamentary committee overseeing Australia’s six intelligence bodies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the Australian Signals Directorate, and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.

The committee’s chair, Peter Khalil, announced the recommendation during a parliamentary session. “The committee sees an opportunity for Australia’s intelligence agencies to take an increasing role in sharing information with the Australian public – where appropriate – on matters relating to misinformation, disinformation, and harmful propaganda,” Khalil stated, as reported by Perth Now.

This push follows a significant increase in misinformation during the turbulent years of 2020 and 2021, a period accompanied by COVID-19 lockdowns and a rapidly fluctuating security environment. Surprising to some, the parliamentary committee found that this wave of misinformation significantly amplified security concerns, necessitating its robust redressal.

The suggestion to publicly tackle misinformation, while controversial to many free-speech advocates who caution about overreach, is among four recommendations proffered in the committee’s recent annual review. These include enhancing inter-agency information sharing and finding effective solutions to workforce issues within the intelligence community.

Khalil remains steadfast in his conviction that this human-centric approach could be transformative. “The people who work in Australia’s intelligence agencies are our greatest asset,” he said. “By developing a whole of national intelligence community recruitment and retention strategy, Australia will be better positioned to deliver on its intelligence priorities.”

August 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US journalist missing after trying to flee Ukraine

RT | August 2, 2023

Chilean-American reporter Gonzalo Lira, who claimed to be about to attempt to flee Ukraine after being subjected to physical abuse and extortion in custody, has gone missing, a source confirmed to RT.

Lira, a vocal critic of the Ukrainian government, resurfaced this week, months after being arrested by the nation’s security service, the SBU. In a series of posts on Twitter and YouTube, he stated his intention to cross the border into Hungary and apply for political asylum there.

He claimed that since early May he had been kept incommunicado in pre-trial detention. He said he was deprived of sleep as well and beaten and tortured by other inmates on instructions from the prison authorities.

Lira apparently never made it to the other side of the border. Mark Sleboda, a political expert and frequent guest at RT, confirmed to the channel that Lira was stopped on the Ukrainian side and has not been heard from since.

Lira said that he had been released on bail and told not to leave the city of Kharkov. However he added he was given his passport back and an electronic shackle was not put on him, contrary to the formal terms of his conditional release.

“Maybe I’m being set up by them so they can justify putting me away in a labor camp – so no one will ever know about their sordid extortion scheme,” he said. “I simply don’t know.”

If he made it across the border, he said he expected Ukraine to issue an international arrest warrant for him for skipping bail and that he hoped that Hungary would be willing to defy Kiev and not hand him over, unlike other EU nations.

“If you don’t hear from me in the next 12 hours—whelp! I’m on my way to a labor camp!” he concluded. There have been no further updates on his social media since.

Lira has been accused by Ukraine of “publicly justifying” the Russian military operation and “disseminating fakes [false stories] about the war in Ukraine”. He said the charges were bogus and that he did nothing but explain his opinions about Kiev’s policies and report what was happening in Ukraine.

…

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August 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , | Leave a comment

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