American biological male spokesperson for Kiev threatens journalists, and now, election observers also
By Lucas Leiroz | September 18, 2023
Sarah Ashton Cirillo – also known as “Michael John”, an American biological male transgender citizen who works as spokesperson for Kiev, has made public threats on social media, promising to attack Russian and foreign civilian citizens who work as journalists and international observers. The case clearly shows the neo-Nazi and anti-humanitarian mentality of the Ukrainian regime, which openly states its intention to kill civilian and strategically irrelevant people.
In recent days, Sarah has threatened civilians several times. The first public statement of this kind was made on September 13, when the spokesperson promised to “hunt down” all Russian “propagandists” and punish them for the “war crimes” allegedly committed by Moscow. On that occasion, Sarah mentioned that in the “next week” – in this case the current one – “justice” would be “served” in Ukraine, suggesting that attacks against pro-Russian journalists could be close to happening.
“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes (…) Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” Sarah said at the time.
The case generated outrage among the Russians, who correctly interpreted Sarah’s threat as a risk to their lives. Officials reported the American-Ukrainian spokesperson’s words to international organizations and NGOs, in addition to calling on Russian security authorities to keep an eye on the case and avoid attacks on civilians.
However, as if threatening journalists were not enough, Sarah published on her social networks a few days later a list with the names of several foreign citizens who participated as observers in the recent elections in the four new Russian regions. According to Sarah, the list is made up of “of vultures feeding off the suffering of Ukrainians in temporarily occupied Ukraine.”
Considering the previously made threat to “hunt” journalists, it is possible to interpret the list of names as a true “hit-list”. Sarah appears to be creating her own “Myrotvorets”, exposing names and details of civilians so that Ukrainian intelligence and allied terrorists can find and kill them. This might seem “shocking” in other countries, but it already seems to be commonplace in Ukraine, as the neo-Nazi regime openly maintains a strategy of killing civilians.
Moscow reported the situation to the UN, with the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation in New York trying to draw the attention of diplomats from other countries to the serious threats made by the American citizen on behalf of the Ukrainian state. It is not yet known how the other diplomatic delegations will react to the case, but, considering that on previous occasions Russian reports had little effect, it is expected that the situation will not be resolved through diplomatic means.
Commenting on the case, Dutch journalist Sonja van den Ende, who also worked as an observer in the elections, stated that Sarah is practicing terrorism by putting the names of civilians on death lists. As a European-born citizen exiled in Russia, Sonja says Western Europeans do not care about what happens to Russian civilians. According to her, if something similar had happened in Europe, those responsible would certainly be punished appropriately.
“It’s a threat to us all, to Western journalists, and all who are already on the Peacekeeper list (Myrotvorets), which is actually a kill list (…) [If something like this were happening in Europe] it would be terrorism. They would say ‘this is a crazy guy, or a woman.’ She’d be jailed or at least tried”, Sonja told journalists during an interview.
In fact, considering Ukraine’s terrorist past and the murders of Daria Dugina, Maxim Fomin (“Vladlen Tatarsky”) and Rostilav Zhuravlev, as well as several failed attempts to kill other civilians, it is very likely that Kiev’s intelligence services are planning something against Russian journalists and international observers in the near future. In addition to Sarah’s words, this is also in line with the promise made by Ukrainian military intelligence chief General Kirill Budanov, who stated in May:
“We’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine (…) We have already gotten many, including public and media personalities.”
Clearly, for Kiev there are no ethical or humanitarian limits. All Russian citizens – or simply foreigners who dialogue with the Russian side – are “legitimate” targets for the regime. The terrorist and neo-Nazi mentality of the Kiev Junta allows it to target people without military involvement, which drives the Russian forces to seek more incisive means to protect their citizens.
Given the West’s connivance with these crimes and the omission on the part of the international organizations, the Russian side will have to defend its people through military means.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.
Update:
RFK Jr. demands Secret Service protection after assassination scare
RT | September 17, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were both killed on the campaign trail, had a tense moment at a rally in Los Angeles when a heavily armed man posing as a federal law enforcement officer was apprehended by his security guards.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Kennedy expressed his gratitude for his private security team.
“I’m very grateful that alert and fast-acting protectors from Gavin de Becker and Associates (GDBA) spotted and detained an armed man who attempted to approach me at my Hispanic Heritage speech at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles tonight” Kennedy said in an X post on Saturday, adding that he hopes the administration of US President Joe Biden will grant his request for Secret Service protection, noting that he is “the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection.”
According to a statement issued by his campaign, the man claimed to be part of Kennedy’s security team and told them that he “needed to be taken to the candidate immediately.” Spotting a gun, the security team removed the man from the area and notified the Los Angeles Police (LAPD).
The campaign also claims that there was a second man, who was arrested by the LAPD along with the prime suspect, who had a backpack that contained at least one other handgun, multiple knives, and extra ammunition.
The LAPD confirmed in a statement that they received a call at around 4:30pm on Friday reporting a man with “a loaded gun in a shoulder holster and a badge stating he was a U.S. Marshal.” The suspect, identified as Adrian Paul Aispuro, 44, was arrested and taken into custody. He is being held on $35,000 bond and is facing a felony charge for carrying a concealed weapon.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose uncle, former US President John F. Kennedy, and his father, a New York senator and presidential candidate, were both assassinated over half a century ago, filed an application for Secret Service protection in April, but despite several follow-ups, his requests were rejected by the White House.
In an X post last July, Kennedy claimed that since his father’s assassination in 1968, all candidates for president have been provided with Secret Service protection, “but after 88 days of no response and several follow-ups”, he received a letter from the Biden administration saying that “the protection is not warranted.”
Kennedy’s campaign manager, former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, called the decision “shocking and repugnant,” and accused Biden’s office of politicizing the Justice Department and security apparatus.
The UN’s New Political Declaration on Pandemics
By David Bell | Brownstone Institute | September 15, 2023
On September 20th our representatives meeting at the United Nations (UN) will sign off on a ‘Declaration’ titled: “Political Declaration of the United Nations General Assembly High-level Meeting on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response.”
This was announced as a ‘silence procedure,’ meaning that States not responding will be deemed supporters of the text. The document expresses a new policy pathway for managing populations when the World Health Organization (WHO), the health arm of the UN, declares a future viral variant to be a ‘public health emergency of international concern.’
The WHO noted in 2019 that pandemics are rare, and insignificant in terms of overall mortality over the last century. Since then, it decided that the 2019 old-normal population were simply oblivious to impending annihilation. The WHO and the entire UN system now consider pandemics an existential and imminent threat. This matters, because:
- They are asking for far more money than is spent on any other international health program (your money),
- This will deliver great wealth to some people who now work closely with the WHO and the UN,
- The powers being sought from your government will reimpose the very responses that have just caused the largest growth in poverty and disease in our lifetimes, and
- Logically, pandemics will only become more frequent if someone intends to make them so (so we should wonder what is going on).
Staff who drafted this Declaration did so because it is their job. They were paid to write a text that is clearly contradictory, sometimes fallacious, and often quite meaningless. They are part of a rapidly growing industry, and the Declaration is intended to justify this growth and the centralization of power that goes with it. The document will almost certainly be agreed by your governments because, frankly, this is where the momentum and money are.
Whilst the Declaration’s thirteen pages are all over the place in terms of reality and farce, they are not atypical of recent UN output. People are trained to use trigger words, slogans, and propaganda themes (e.g., “equity,” “empowerment of all women and girls,” “access to education,” “technology transfer hubs”) that no one could oppose without risking being labeled a denier, far-right, or colonialist.
The Declaration should be read in the context of what these institutions, and their staff, have just done. It is difficult to summarize such a compendium of right-speak intended to veil reality, but it is hoped this short summary will prompt some thought. Wickedness is not a mistake but an intended deception, so we need to distinguish these clearly.
Doing Darkness Behind a Veil of Light
Put together, the following two extracts summarize the internal contradiction of the Declaration’s agenda and its staggering shamelessness and lack of empathy:
“In this regard, we:
PP3: Recognize also the need to tackle health inequities and inequalities, within and among countries, …
PP5: “Recognize that the illness, death, socio-economic disruption and devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, …”
‘Recognition’ of devastation is important. SARS-COV-2 was associated with mortality predominantly within wealthy countries, where the median age of Covid-associated death was between 75 and 85 years. Nearly all of these people had significant comorbidities such as obesity and diabetes, meaning their life expectancy was already restricted. People contributing significantly to economic health were at very low risk, a profile known in early 2020.
These three years of socio-economic devastation must, therefore, be overwhelmingly due to the response. The virus did not starve people, as the Declaration’s writers would like us to believe. Deteriorating disease control was predicted by the WHO and others in early 2020, increasing malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Economic disruption in low-income countries specifically results in more infant and child deaths.
In Western countries, adult mortality has risen as expected when screening for cancer and heart disease are reduced and poverty and stress increase. Knowing this, the WHO advised in late 2019 to ”not under any circumstances” impose the lockdown-like measures for pandemic influenza. In early 2020, under the influence of their sponsors, they advocated for them for Covid-19. The Declaration, however, carries no note of contrition or repentance.
Undeterred by incongruity, the Declaration goes on to describe Covid-19 as “one of the greatest challenges” in UN history (PP6), noting that somehow this outbreak resulted in “exacerbation of poverty in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty…”. In fact, it acknowledges that this caused:
“… (a) negative impact on equity, human and economic development across all spheres of society, as well as on global humanitarian needs, gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, the enjoyment of human rights, livelihoods, food security and nutrition, education, its disruption to economies, supply chains, trade, societies and the environment, within and among countries, which is reversing hard-won development gains and hampering progress…” (PP6)
To restate the obvious, this does not happen due to a virus targeting sick elderly people. It occurs when children and productive adults are barred from school, work, healthcare, and participation in markets for goods and services. Economic, social, and health catastrophe inevitably results, disproportionately harming poorer people and low-income countries, conveniently far indeed from the halls of Geneva and New York.
No, we were not all in this together.
Not all were negatively impacted by this catastrophe. People and corporations who sponsor much of the WHO’s health emergency work, and that of its sister organizations such as CEPI, Gavi, and Unitaid, did very well from the policies they advocated so strongly for. Software and Pharma companies made unprecedently high profits, while this mass impoverishment played out. The international agencies have also gained; construction and recruitment are strong in Geneva. Philanthro-capitalism is good for some.
The main aim of the Declaration is to back the proposed WHO international health regulation (IHR) amendments and treaty (PP26), key to ensuring that viral outbreaks that have such a small impact can remain highly profitable. An additional $10 billion per year in new financing is requested to support this (PP29). There is a reason why most countries have laws against scams. The UN and its agencies, fortunately for its staff, are outside of any national jurisdiction.
Based on their sponsors’ assessments, the staff of these agencies are doing their job well. For the rest of humanity, their work is an unmitigated disaster. In 2019 they said never lock down, then spent 2020 defending top-down lockdowns and mandates. For three years, they theatrically pretended that decades of knowledge on immunity, disease burden, and the association of poverty with mortality did not exist.
Now they write this UN Declaration to fund their industry further through taxpayers they so recently impoverished. Once tasked to serve the world’s vast populations, particularly the poor and vulnerable, the UN vision has been consumed by public-private partnerships, the allure of Davos, and a fascination with high-net-worth individuals.
When Words are Used to Obscure Actions
While the Declaration underlines the importance of educating children during pandemics (PP23), these same organizations backed school closures for hundreds of millions of children at minimal risk from Covid-19. Among them, several million more girls are now being farmed off to nightly rape as child brides, others in child labor. Women and girls were disproportionately removed from education and from employment. They weren’t asked if they supported these policies!
The girls are being raped because the people paid to implement these policies did so. They know the contradiction, and the harm. But this is a job like many others. The only unusual aspects, from a business standpoint, are the sheer amorality and lack of empathy that must be engaged to excel in it.
To justify wrecking African children’s lives, the UN claims that the continent has “over 100 major public health emergencies annually” (OP4). Africa has a rising burden of endemic diseases that dwarfs mortality from such outbreaks – over half a million children die every year from malaria (increased through the Covid-19 lockdowns) and similar burdens from tuberculosis and HIV. By contrast, total Covid-19 deaths recorded in Africa over the past 3 years are just 256,000. The 2015 West African Ebola outbreak, the largest such recent emergency pre-Covid, killed 11,300 people. MERS and SARS1 killed less than 1,000 each globally. However, induced poverty does cause famine, raises child mortality, and wrecks health systems – is this the health emergency that the UN is referring to? Or are they simply making things up?
Through the IHR amendments, these agencies will coordinate the locking down, border closures, mandated medical examinations, and vaccination of you and your family. Their Pharma sponsors reasonably expect to make several hundred billion more dollars from these actions, so we can be confident that emergencies will be declared. By claiming 100 such events annually in Africa alone, they are signaling how these new powers will be used. We are to believe the world is such that only the abandonment of our rights and sovereignty, for the enrichment of others, can save us.
The UN and the WHO do recognize that some will question this illogic. In PP35, they characterize such skepticism as:
“health-related misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and stigmatization.”
The WHO recently publicly characterized people who discuss adverse effects of Covid vaccines and question WHO policies as “far-right,” “anti-science aggressors,” and “a killing force.” This is unhinged. It is the denigration and hate speech that fascist regimes use. The reader must decide whether such an organization should control their freedom of expression and decide what constitutes truth.
It is not helpful here to give details of all 13 pages of right-speak, contradiction, and fallacy. You will find similar rhetoric in other UN and WHO documents, particularly on pandemic preparedness. Straight talk is contrary to business requirements. However, the first paragraph in the Declaration’s ‘Call to Action’ sets the tone:
“We therefore commit to scale up our efforts to strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response and further implement the following actions and express our strong resolve to:
OP1. Strengthen regional and international cooperation, multilateralism, global solidarity, coordination and governance at the highest political levels and across all relevant sectors, with the determination to overcome inequities and ensure the sustainable, affordable, fair, equitable, effective, efficient and timely access to medical countermeasures including vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutics and other health products to ensure high-level attention through a multisectoral approach to prevent, prepare for and respond to pandemics and other health emergencies, particularly in developing countries;”
There are 48 more. You paid taxes so that someone could write that!
Those millions of girls suffering at night, the hundreds of millions of children who had their futures stolen, the mothers of those malaria-killed children, and all suffering under the increasing burden of poverty and inequality unleashed by this farce are watching. The Declaration, like the WHO IHR and treaty it supports, awaits the signatures of the governments that purport to represent us.
David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, is a public health physician and biotech consultant in global health. He is a former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), Programme Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA, USA.
Court Orders Facebook To Comply With Subpoena For Data On All Users That Broke “Covid-19 Misinformation” Rules
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2023
The District of Columbia (DC) Court of Appeals has rejected Meta’s appeal to quash a sweeping subpoena that demanded it hand over “documents sufficient to identify all Facebook groups, pages, and accounts that have violated Facebook’s COVID-19 misinformation policy with respect to content concerning vaccines” to the DC government.
Millions of users, many of whom made truthful statements that challenged the government’s Covid narrative, are likely to be swept up in this government data grab due to the scope of Facebook’s “Covid-19 misinformation” rules and the number of users that were impacted by them.
Facebook’s Covid-19 misinformation rules prohibited many truthful statements during the pandemic. For example, at one point claiming that “vaccines are not effective at preventing the disease they are meant to protect against” was banned — an assertion that health officials have now reluctantly admitted is true.
Even Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has acknowledged that Facebook censored truthful information.
And millions of people were impacted by these far-reaching censorship rules. In some quarters, Facebook censored over 100 million posts for violating these rules. Some of the groups Facebook took down under these rules also had hundreds of thousands of users.
Meta had challenged the subpoena on free speech and privacy grounds, arguing that it violated the First Amendment and that a warrant was required to compel disclosure of the requested data.
Specifically, Meta argued that the subpoena violated Meta’s own First Amendment rights by “prob[ing] and penaliz[ing]” its ability to exercise editorial control over content on its platform and also violated Meta users’ First Amendment rights because it would deter them from engaging in future online discussions of controversial topics.
Additionally, Meta cited the warrant requirements in the Stored Communications Act (SCA) — a law that sought to provide Fourth Amendment-like privacy protections by statute to communications held by third party service providers.
However, the DC appeals court rejected Meta’s arguments.
The court stated that Meta had not shown the subpoena will result in its free speech or associational rights being chilled. Additionally, it said Meta users’ First Amendment rights wouldn’t be chilled because “the users who made those posts have already openly associated themselves with their espoused views by publicly posting them to Facebook.”
The court also insisted that the warrant requirement in the SCA does not apply to public posts and that the subpoena “does not require Meta to ‘unmask’ any anonymous Users.”
Furthermore, the court characterized this mass request for user data as “reasonably relevant” to the DC’s investigation and said the subpoena is “narrowly tailored to the government’s asserted interest.”
We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.
Not only does the subpoena require Facebook to hand over the data of users that were banned for sharing dissenting opinions on Covid but the Covid-19 misinformation policy the subpoena centered around is starting to be rolled back by Meta.
Kiev orders closure of Christian churches
RT | September 15, 2023
Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko on Friday ordered the closure of 74 temples belonging to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), citing its alleged “direct ties” to the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Klitschko’s decree is using the same legal justification employed to seize the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, or Monastery of the Caves, which Ukrainian police stormed last month. The monastery, which is nearly 1,000 years old, was handed over to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, a rival organization set up by the government in 2018.
The Lavra is technically state property but the church administered it under a 2013 agreement, which Kiev declared null and void earlier this year, claiming that the UOC violated it by having ties to “enemy nation” Russia. Ukrainian courts rejected the UOC’s appeals.
The shuttered temples may be handed over to the OCU or the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is in communion with Rome, or could even be demolished as “illegal objects” given the government’s annulment of lease and use contracts.
Back in March, President Vladimir Zelensky called the seizure of the Lavra “a move to strengthen our spiritual independence” and accused the UOC of being a tool of Russia. A third of Ukraine’s regions have outrightly banned the UOC so far.
Moscow has accused Kiev of persecuting the canonical Orthodox church and Washington for tacitly approving Ukraine’s actions. The US State Department, which produces an annual “religious freedom” report, has not once commented on Kiev’s campaign against the UOC. The reports published so far contain references only to meetings with representatives of the government-backed OCU.
UN Human Rights Chief Criticizes Elon Musk For Pushing Back Against ADL Censorship Demands
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2023
The UN human rights chief Volker Turk rallied against criticism of attempts by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to suppress online speech, particularly on X.
Turk took the bull by the horns in his fervent appeal on Wednesday, levelling sharp criticism at tech tycoon, Elon Musk, who has rebranded Twitter as X, demanding a stauncher response to rampaging so-called “hate speech.”
Turk expressed concern over the criticism leveled against the ADL after the group campaigned for advertisers to pause spending on the platform.
Turk alluded to Musk’s criticism of the ADL’s tactics without explicitly dropping names, although it was clear he placed Musk’s platform X near the heart of his grievance.
Musk, who has painted the ADL in a harsh light, accusing it of pushing baseless claims which have frightened advertisers and inflicted financial damage, is currently in the eye of the media.
Turk made no bones about drawing attention to this matter, as he urged online media behemoths to step up the crackdown on the blitzkrieg of “offensive” language and “disinformation.”
Transparency over policies dealing with “hate speech,” their effective implementation, and accessible ways for average users to report such abuse were among Turk’s key demands.
“Social media platforms have played a terrible role in metastasizing of hatred from limited backwaters into multi-current mainstream trends,” he complained.
Turk demanded that social media platforms increase transparency about their hate speech policy.
“And they must much more effectively put these policies into practice, including by ensuring that people can report hate speech easily and that those reports will swiftly lead to appropriate action,” he added.
Weaponised definition of anti-Semitism is a ‘tool’ to undermine free-speech
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | September 15, 2023
The highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism has been repeatedly abused to suppress criticism of Israel and stifle pro-Palestinian activism at UK universities, a startling new report has found.
Produced by the European Legal Support Centre and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the report analysed 40 cases between 2017-2022 where spurious accusations of anti-Semitism were levelled against students and faculty members over speech related to Palestine/Israel.
In nearly every case, the accusations were eventually dismissed after prolonged, stressful investigative processes. However, the harm inflicted on the well-being and reputations of those falsely accused had already been accomplished through these malicious campaigns.
Based on the findings, the report concludes that the IHRA definition is inadequate and unfit for purpose. In practice, it undermines academic freedom and the right to lawful speech for students and staff. The reputation and careers of those falsely accused also suffer harm from such allegations. Overall, the definition is being used to stifle protected speech critical of Israel, in violation of the academic rights and freedoms that universities are legally obligated to protect.
“We have found that since its adoption in UK higher education institutions, the IHRA definition has been used to delegitimise points of view critical of Israel and/or in support of Palestinian rights, silencing political criticism and academic scrutiny of Israeli state policies” Programme Director of the European Legal Support Centre, Giovanni Fassina, told MEMO.
“University staff and students in the UK have been subjected to false allegations of anti-Semitism, unreasonable investigations based on the IHRA definition, or cancellations and disruption of events. These proceedings harm well-being and reputations, including possible damage to education and careers. The complaints have had an adverse effect on academic freedom and free speech on campuses and have fostered self-censorship,” Fassina added.
Despite concerns raised by academics, activists and legal experts over its chilling effect on free speech, the IHRA definition was adopted by a majority of universities. Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA, has himself warned that it is not appropriate for university settings where critical thought and free debate are paramount. Nevertheless, in 2020, the then Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson threatened university leaders with punitive financial consequences if their institutions did not adopt the IHRA. As a result, 119 universities (almost 75 per cent of UK universities) have adopted some version of the definition as a basis for campus policies.
Meanwhile, the UK government has rejected similar calls for protection against discrimination from other minority groups in the name of fighting ‘woke aggression’ and ‘cancel culture’.
For instance, Muslim advocacy groups have urged the adoption of an official definition of Islamophobia to tackle anti-Muslim hatred. But the government rejected this, claiming a singular definition could chill legitimate speech and debate.
In stark contrast to its position on the IHRA, the Tory government and the right in general have argued that a definition of Islamophobia could impact law enforcement and require legislative changes. Critics pointed out this rationale is inconsistent given the IHRA definition’s documented use to restrict speech, curtail events and initiate proceedings against students and faculty.
The contrast reveals not only a double standard in the government’s approach to addressing racism targeting different minority groups, but also a hierarchy of racism, where certain groups are granted greater protection and privileges over others. There is a reluctance to bolster protections for Muslims, even as accusations of anti-Semitism are readily weaponised to demonise certain speech.
A major flaw of the IHRA definition is that it conflates anti-Semitism with legitimate criticism of Israel and Zionism. Seven of the 11 illustrative examples do just that. One example states that “denying Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that Israel is a racist endeavour” is anti-Semitic. As the report authors explain, this example falsely equates Jewish self-determination solely with the political project of Israel – a contingent position unique to Zionist ideology. It further delegitimises Palestinian claims to self-determination and casts opposition to Israel’s discriminatory policies as anti-Semitic. Most concerning, it suppresses documented evidence of Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians by equating such criticism with bigotry. Through such examples, the definition chills free speech and makes it difficult to act in solidarity with Palestinians without facing accusations of anti-Semitism.
Several cases where students and teachers were “cancelled” on extremely dubious grounds were highlighted. In December 2020, an academic teaching on the Middle East received notification that a recent graduate had submitted complaints alleging their social media posts from 2016-2020 were anti-Semitic. The posts criticised Zionism, shared an article on the Nakba, and commented on anti-Semitism allegations against Labour.
The graduate argued these violated the IHRA definition. Despite the academic being cleared, they underwent a lengthy disciplinary process causing stress and requiring legal advice. The university referred to the IHRA definition in its policies.
Another example is the treatment of Dr Somdeep Sen. He was invited to deliver a lecture at the University of Glasgow on his book ‘Decolonizing Palestine: Hamas between the Anticolonial and the Postcolonial’. After the lecture was announced, the university received a complaint from its Jewish student society alleging that the event is anti-Semitic.
In response, the university demanded Sen provide details on his talk’s content in advance and confirm he wouldn’t contravene the IHRA definition. As these conditions undermined academic freedom, Sen withdrew and the event was cancelled.
The two examples are just the tip-of the iceberg. All the cases show how vague accusations of violating the IHRA definition have put pressure on universities to investigate or penalise faculty and students for speech related to Palestinian rights and Israeli policies. In all the cases, the burden of proof is on pro-Palestine students and critics of Israel. The presumption is that they are guilty until proven innocent; a perverse inversion of the universal principle that one is innocent until proven guilty.
Commenting on the findings, Neve Gordon, the chair of Brismes’s committee on academic freedom and a professor of human rights law in the school of law at Queen Mary University, said:
What has been framed as a tool to classify and assess a particular form of discriminatory violations of protected characteristics, has instead been used as a tool to undermine and punish protected speech and to punish those in academia who voice criticism of the Israeli state’s policies.
In his comments to MEMO, Fassina mentioned the vicious campaign to police free speech on Israel and Palestine and the ongoing efforts to weaponise anti-Semitism against critics of the apartheid state. “For us and our partners in the UK, it was time to expose a pattern we have been observing for too long: unfounded allegations of anti-Semitism made against academic staff and students after they criticised the policies of the Israeli government or just ‘liked’ some tweets about Palestine, Israel or about the Labour Party.” He explained that the latest report adds to the evidence already produced in Europe, in the US and Canada that demonstrate similar harmful consequences of the IHRA definition for the rights of advocates for Palestine. “This is not just a UK problem but reveals a wider trend of anti-Palestinian racism in Western countries, which is highly problematic for the respect of fundamental rights and democracy,” Fassina added.
Fassina called on UK higher education institutions to rescind the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism; halt its use in disciplinary proceedings or investigations; and more crucially, with the forthcoming UN report on combatting anti-Jewish racism to be released, recognise that the IHRA is an anti-democratic, authoritarian instrument weaponised against critics of Israel. “IHRA definition is a tool of anti-Palestinian racism that should not be adopted or used by any institution that aims to respect human rights. As we are waiting for the UN to release its plan to combat anti-Semitism, we hope it will take into account the multiple calls made against the IHRA definition,” Fassina stressed.
On Fact-Checkerism and the Mythology of Disinformation
Thoughts on what our discourse police are even trying to do
Pascal Siggelkow, state media “fact finder,” abysmal idiot.
eugyppius: a plague chronicle | September 14, 2023
Nobody in our corner of the internet could fail to notice the antics of those yapping bouncing frenetic chihuahuas who call themselves fact-checkers. Mostly they work in obscurity, misunderstanding internet jokes, recycling the vacuities of self-styled experts, debunking weird Twitter posts, and above all churning out prodigious walls of text filled with banalities that nobody reads. Occasionally, though, they manage to entertain us – as recently, when it emerged that BBC “disinformation specialist” and fact-checker-in-chief Marianna Spring had larded her very own CV with disinformation. Almost nothing is more amusing than finding oneself in the crosshairs of the fact-checkers, as has happened to me on at least one occasion.
My favourite checker of facts is the man-bun-sporting dimwit Pascal Siggelkow, who has been appointed top “fact finder” for the state media news service tagesschau. We last encountered Siggelkow when he mistook a noun for a verb in Seymour Hersh’s reporting, ultimately spending four amazing paragraphs debunking the thesis – unique to his own mind – that explosive seaweed destroyed Nord Stream. Before hunting facts at tagesschau, Siggelkow worked for Südwestrundfunk, another state media broadcaster, where he did daring undercover investigative reporting like snitching on “doctors who downplay Corona and issue unfounded mask exemptions.” This is really reporter-of-the-year material. In truth, we have before us here a whole genre of journalism conducted by an aggressively stupid tribe of Siggelkows, distinguished by their total lack of accomplishments, limited vision and minuscule persuasive capacities. That these small men should be entrusted with the project of policing our words is a strange thing indeed, and it suggests there is more going on in the world of fact-checking than we realise. Here, I propose to examine what it is that fact-checkers really do, and whether there is anything to say about them beyond the obvious fact that they are complete and utter idiots.
To explore fact-checking more concretely, I have ventured into the barren wastelands of the tagesschau “Fact Finder” page, where Siggelkow plies his trade and few before me have ever set foot. I’ve selected, mostly at random, a limited corpus of eleven recent discourse-policing items for closer analysis. I offer links to each of them below, in chronological order, providing their headlines and teasers in translation, together with sample quotations to give you an idea. This is a tiresome read indeed, so please skip ahead unless you are of particularly strong constitution.
1. Why is excess mortality so high?, by Pascal Siggelkow and Alexander Steininger
28 November 2022
In 2022, an unusually high number of people have died so far in relation to previous years. October in particular was an outlier. According to experts, this cannot be explained by Corona alone.
“As a scientist, I want to be open to all possibilities, but I just don’t see the connection [to vaccination],” [said Jonas Schöley, Research Associate in the Department of Population Health at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock]. Additionally, he said, the scientific evidence evaluating vaccines is much stronger than that available in population research. “We don’t have to rely on the error-prone search for causes in population data because of the very good body of studies on the efficacy and risks of vaccination.” If the vaccines led to an increased number of deaths, this would have been proven long ago in medical and epidemiological research.
2. A flood of fake videos and pictures, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
3 July 2023
In connection to the riots in France, numerous pictures and videos are being shared on social media. Many of them are not from the current protests, but are disinformation.
In right-wing extremist and conspiracy-theorist Telegram channels, posts containing the term “France” have seen marked increase since the end of June … The Austrian right-wing alternative channel AUF1, for example, speaks of “ethno-riots” and a “bloody multicultural illusion.”
“Whenever there are topics that lend themselves to populist or right-wing extremist instrumentalisation, they are used,” [Pia] Lamberty, [Social Psychologist and Executive Director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy] says … This could be current political debates such as the topic of heat pumps, crises such as climate, Corona, economic tensions, or even riots such as in France. “Such attempts at instrumentalisation are not always successful across society as a whole, but for supporters of right-wing extremist ideologies they are often an additional confirmation of their own world views.”
3. Doubts about the significance of the AfD “Einzelfallticker” 1, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
3 July 2023
With their “isolated case ticker,” the AfD purports to show the alleged “true extent” of crimes committed by migrants. But a random sample shows that in half of the cases, reports do not indicate the origin of the suspect.
In response to a request from ARD-Factfinder, the AfD writes that it is “interested in transparency regarding the official figures from the police crime statistics in 2022.” Pia Lamberty, social psychologist and managing director of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy … sees things differently. Launching a ticker with the intention of pointing out the danger posed by people considered to be non-Germans by the AfD by no means accords with the “role of an objective informer.” “This is the opposite of an open investigation and the opposite of objectivity,” says Lamberty.
4. How credible is the information on the [Ukrainian] counter-offensive?, by Pascal Siggelkow
7 July 2023
Ukraine’s counteroffensive to liberate territory occupied by Russia has been underway since June. Because Ukraine is keeping a low information profile, and the media often rely on Russian information. Experts are sceptical about this.
The fact that information on the counter-offensive comes primarily from Russia is due to the fact that Ukraine has mostly imposed a news blackout. The Russian Defence Ministry is trying to exploit this situation, says Julia Smirnova, senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in Germany (ISD). “This is a focus of Russian propaganda, and the numbers that are given are often massively exaggerated.” The Russian defence ministry is therefore not credible, she said.
The Dutch open source intelligence website (OSINT) Oryx wrote on Twitter of a total of six tanks abandoned in Zaporizhia oblast, including one Leopard tank, four Bradleys and one mine-clearing tank. “Left behind” howevewr is not synonymous with “destroyed.” In total, according to Oryx’s research, eight of Ukraine’s Leopard tanks have been destroyed or damaged so far since the Russian invasion began.
5. Increased agitation against queer people, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
17 July 2023
Whether it’s about homosexuals, drag queens or trans people: Disinformation about queer people is omnipresent in social networks. Experts believe this can have devastating consequences.
Trans people are particularly targeted by disinformation, says Kerstin Thost, press officer of the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany (LSVD). “In the past months around the debate on the Self-Determination Act [which would make it possible for Germans to change their official gender and first names], we have seen an increased attack on trans people in particular, not only in Germany but also internationally. There has been an increased mobilisation of hatred, agitation and “demonisation against LGBTQI*.” LGBTIQ* stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people.
6. Who finances the welfare state?, by Pascal Siggelkow
26 July 2023
It’s said time and again on the internet that 15 million people keep Germany running. The references is to “net taxpayers,” who pay more taxes than they receive in benefits. Experts, however, believe that this figure is wrong.
The figure of 15 million “net taxpayers” is justified … in this way: Of the approximately 46 million employed people in Germany, 27 million paid more taxes and contributions than they received in state benefits. Of these, however, 12 million are “directly or indirectly dependent on the state,” since they are paid by taxes … for example, as state employees. Thus … 15 million “net taxpayers” keep the system running.
Stefan Bach, a researcher … the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), believes this calculation is incomplete … “Basically, state taxes and levies are offset by services without which the modern economy cannot function either.” …
Social contributions such as unemployment insurance or health insurance should also be considered separately … The calculation holds that all pensioners are recipients of benefits [and] ignores the fact that the status of net tax payer and recipient changes … in the course of one’s life. …
7. Local weather phenomena do not refute climate change, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
10 August 2023
The last two weeks of July in Germany were cold and wet. Some use this fact to play down climate change. But experts believe this is wrong.
… Kevin Sieck from the Climate Service Center … believes that temporary local weather does not support arguments about climate change: “Robust statements about climate trends can only be obtained by looking at several decades,” says Sieck. “A rainy July in Germany doesn’t say anything about long-term trends.” It is therefore the long-term developments that are relevant when assessing trends in the climate.
Karsten Schwanke, meteorologist and ARD weather presenter, agrees: “There will always be very changeable summers.” But there is a clear tendency towards warmer summers with larger upward swings. “We see a tendency for heat waves to become longer. And we are currently getting heat waves that we definitely didn’t see 50 years ago. We’re also getting more droughts, especially in the summer.”
8. How China regards the Russian invasion, by Carla Reveland and Pascal Siggelkow
21 August 2023
In the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, China is trying to position itself as a mediator. At the same time, the US and NATO are portrayed as warmongers. Is China neutral?
“China stands for peace while the US prevents the peace process”, “The actions of US-led NATO have pushed Russia-Ukraine tensions to their peak” or “Ukrainian ‘neo-Nazis’ have opened fire on Chinese students.” These are all statements made by Chinese state media or government officials in relation to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
Although Beijing claims to be a neutral actor that respects the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations,” China has provided “rhetorical backing” to the Kremlin, according to a study by the US-based German Marshal Fund. “Chinese officials and state media have openly supported and promoted Kremlin-friendly accounts of the war.”
9. Why the record debt is not much to write home about, by Pascal Siggelkow
7 September 2023
Germany’s national debt is at a record high, many media reported. From a purely nominal point of view, this is true, but from the point of view of experts, this is not very meaningful.
Martin Beznoska, Senior Economist for Financial and Fiscal Policy at the Institute for the German Economy (IW) points out [that] a more suitable parameter for assessing a country’s debt is … the debt-to-GDP ratio. “The debt-to-GDP ratio is a better indicator because it puts the debt in relation to the potential that the state has in terms of revenue-generating capacity,” Beznoska says.
The debt-to-GDP ratio relates government debt to nominal gross domestic product. For Germany, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 66.3 per cent in 2022. This means that the total debt was 66.3 per cent of the gross domestic product. Compared to the two previous years, the debt-to-GDP ratio in Germany has thus improved: in 2020 it was 68.7 per cent, in 2021 69.3 per cent. Before the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, however, it was still 59.6 percent.
10. Spahn’s dubious figures, by Pascal Siggelkow
1 September 2023
Vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction Spahn has criticised the planned increase in unemployment benefits. He said this would mean that a family of four would receive on average as much as an average-income family. But this is not true.
Planned increases to unemployment benefits next year have caused heated debeated. The CDU/CSU have complained that the changes will raise benefits higher than the wages of many employees. Vice chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary facation Jens Spahn said this sent the wrong signal. Even now, a family of four are entitled to an average of 2,311 Euros a month, which he said is as much as an average-income family in Germany. But this is not quite correct.
According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), couples with two children had an average net household income of 5,490 euros in 2018. This is significantly more than the 2,311 Euros Spahn claimed. The gross household income was 7,435 Euros.
11. Fake videos and conspiracy claims, by Pascal Siggelkow
11 September 2023
Many false images and videos are circulating on social media about the devastating earthquake in Morocco that killed more than 2,000 people. Some of them are linked to well-known conspiracy narratives.
A look at the recent past shows that disinformation is often deliberately spread after natural disasters. In the case of the fires in Hawaii in August as well as the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria in February, videos were circulated that were supposed to show evidence of absurd causes.
In the case of earthquakes, the USA is often portrayed as the alleged cause – with their High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). HAARP is a research programme of the University of Alaska in the USA that has been in existence for decades. The aim is to research the upper atmosphere – the ionosphere – and also the propagation of radio waves. Radio waves are used for this purpose.
Now, as projects go, debunking the debunkers does not appeal to me very much, but we must get some read on Siggelkow’s accuracy and reliability. Remember that he should be almost totally right almost all of the time. After all, he or his managers choose what to debunk, so the very least we can expect of them is the judicious selection of easy targets. Alas, the only clean victory I can grant our Fact Enthusiast is 11), on the Moroccan earthquake. Few will believe this was caused by the American HAARP research programme, but it’s hard to know how many tagesschau fans needed to hear this in the first place.
Remarkably, in various of these pieces, Siggelkow doesn’t seem to be clearly debunking anything; 1) on excess mortality he tries to head off the dark conclusions of vaccine sceptics, but can only manage this very weakly, while 4) on the Ukraine offensive and 8) on China’s pro-Russia stance he merely offers helpings of reheated NATO propaganda to counter news and opinions from unapproved foreign sources. Also in this category is 5), which swipes at two pieces of allegedly anti-LGTBQ misinformation, but cannot clearly refute either of them, and beyond that offers little more than unsubstantiated hand-wringing about the violence and threats which gender minorities face.
Otherwise, we see a mix of disingenuous approaches, perhaps illustrated best by 7) on the fact that cool and rainy weather doesn’t refute climate change. While this is certainly true, the mainstream media – including tagesschau – have been confusing climate for weather deliberately in service of their environmentalist polemic for years. If hot summer days can indicate climate change, then cool summer days can contraindicate it, and if the press doesn’t like people making the latter argument, they should stop making the former one.
Number 6), on the precarious German welfare state, which allegedly depends on a mere 15 million net taxpayers to cover its liabilities, also belongs here. By selectively excluding entitlements – above all, pensions – you can make this figure more favourable, and if you want to count households instead of individuals things might look better too, but these prevarications and qualifications miss the point. As an objective matter, the German pension system faces collapse in the face of the retirement wave and demographic decline. Much the same applies to 9); it’s true that German debt is at a record high only in nominal terms, but even the preferred debt-to-GDP ratio which Siggelkow’s experts prefer paints an uncomfortable picture of government extravagance since the pandemic.
Particularly in these last two cases, we see Siggelkow reaching for a tactic that these complex cases don’t allow him to exercise fully. We might call this The Debunking of the Part to Discredit the Whole. This is the main stock-in-trade of fact checkers in general; indeed, it is baked into the very premise of their profession. It consists in leveraging a quite irrelevant but well-grounded objection for the purposes of casting a pall over broader arguments that the checkers would prefer not to assail, because the rest of the facts to be checked don’t run in their favour. Thus 2) denounces fake French riot videos on social media as a means of playing down, however implicitly, the very real violence which broke out in the wake of Nahel Merzouk’s killing, while 3) on the AfD Einzelfallticker ends up (after no little special pleading) actually confirming that migrants commit crime at higher rates than native Germans, while merely questioning migrant involvement in many of the catalogued cases. 2
Also in this category is 10): While Jens Spahn obviously understated the average income of the four-person German household, his broader argument – that in certain circumstances entitlements can exceed wages and are rising at a faster rate than income – appears to be totally correct.
You need read only a few of these exercises in ideological masturbation to find the primary explanation for fact-checker mediocrity. People like Siggelkow can afford to be stupid, because they’re not actually paid to think about anything. As a fact-checker, Siggelkow’s job consists mostly of calling up various “experts” and writing down what they tell him. Even this may overstate his agency, as very often I expect that it is the “experts” who call up Siggelkow and provide him with pre-digested material to print, but of course this is hard to prove. In those cases where Siggelkow interviews primarily midlevel academics not obviously connected to any advocacy groups, we might presume the reporting reflects his own initiative. Quite often, however, his sources hail from highly politicised think-tanks and NGOs, and in these instances I think we’re justified in suspecting he’s acting as a mere conduit.
Three of our eleven articles (2, 3 and 11) draw on the alleged expertise of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS), a “non-profit extremism monitoring agency founded in 2021.” Their heavy representation in my eleven-article corpus is no accident; CeMAS and other anti-extremism NGOs are a major pillar of Siggelkow’s production. Sometimes they crop up even where you wouldn’t expect them, as in 4) on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, which features a prominent quote on “Russian propaganda” from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue – a “think and do tank” (heavens preserve us) which concerns itself with “digital regulation, disinformation, extremism and digital civic education.”
Siggelkow’s forays into economic matters are rarer, but in our exploratory corpus, the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft (IW) plays an outsized role. This is an old progressive liberal operation that advocates redistributive economic policies. IW experts help Siggelkow defend the welfare state in 6) and play down German national debt in 9). Curiously, when it comes time to defend NATO, Siggelkow’s bench of personal informants runs a bit thinner, perhaps reflecting the fact that the Ukraine war has ceased to be a major focus of state media coverage. Thus for 8), Siggelkow performs no expert interview, and rips instead from a piece published by the German Marshall Fund, an Atlanticist think-tank whose name he misspells. In 4) on the Ukrainian counteroffensive, his major source is somebody with a master’s degree in “East Asian Economy and Society” from the small think-tank-cum-consultancy-operation known as the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy. This is a small den of Atlanticist Europhiles who are still awaiting the day when they will get their own Wikipedia page.
A broader survey of Siggelkow’s output, extending to the beginning of this year, reveals a split focus between the Russian war on the one hand, and identity politics and mass migration on the other. Somewhat surprisingly, climate topics have a mostly supporting role, and he thematises Covid and the vaccines only occasionally. The recent economic pieces are outliers.
The null hypothesis of the fact-checking industry would be something like this: “Threatened by the rise of alternative internet media, the establishment press have cultivated various discourse-policing operations to reclaim objectivity and reliability as their exclusive province.” In Siggelkow’s output, we certainly find much to support this view. It is the reason, for example, that he is so fond of writing about social media “misinformation” and internet “conspiracy theories.” The internet is a dangerous world of lies and disinformation, from which only the friendly tagesschau and their intrepid finders of facts can save you. This is basically his attitude, but as theses go, the null hypothesis is far too broad.
It cannot explain Siggelkow’s great selectivity, for example. There are absolute mountains of absurdity on the internet that he totally ignores, while often venturing into overtly political territory to fact-check the inconvenient arguments of the political opposition, which don’t involve internet social media at all. At the same time, the governing parties – especially the Greens – attract almost no Siggelkowian scrutiny, despite their long history of absurdly false statements. Fact-checking is clearly an enterprise devoted towards furthering a very specific political programme under the false cover of objectivity. This programme is directed primarily against “right-wing extremism,” particularly in its post-2015 incarnation. Secondary fronts on behalf of NATO, climate change sceptics, and the establishment CDU/CSU opposition emerge as the news cycle lends them relevance. Siggelkow, in other words, is quite plainly a propagandist who finds facts on behalf of the Scholz government, and in this he is funded by mandatory license fees levied from every German household.
That Siggelkow so often strays from his stated mission to correct falsehoods and publishes many pieces not clearly directed against any notional misinformation, merely reveals the tendency of the ideological mission to overwhelm tactical fact-finding entirely. Siggelkow is a conduit via which the preformulated output of regime-adjacent advocacy groups can find their way into the press and talk back to their critics even in the absence of any specific occasion for them to do so.
Siggelkow also has a broader purpose, independent of his rearguard actions on behalf of the regime. This is the construction of a mythology which binds the political right to internet ‘conspiracy theorising.’ His implicit polemic is not merely that legacy media like tagesschau have a lock on objective and reliable information, but that political views opposed to those which prevail among state media journalists arise from ignorance, disinformation and general internet insanity. The facts are on the side of the progressive liberals who steer the German state, and the only people opposed to them are online idiots who believe that secret US government programmes cause earthquakes.
While Siggelkow’s tricks are both tiresome and transparent, fact checking is anything but easy. His steady stream of but-ackshually-bro bothering depends like all other heavily politicised press reporting on the support of a dense web of NGOs, think tanks and other advocacy groups. Where these are lacking, for example in novel areas like Corona, Siggelkow really struggles. The great algal blooming of pro-Atlanticist “open-source intelligence” posters after the outbreak of war in Ukraine reflects an effort to supply the Siggelkows of the press with recycle-able content. Like everything else in our present, diffuse system of regime power and propaganda, the ideological behemoth moves slowly and struggles to react to new problems.
Ultimately, the significance of the fact-finders is obscure; it’s hard to believe Siggelkow has many readers. The lack of interest his tedious schoolmarmery attracts is probably one reason his ilk are so over-represented in state media operations, where nobody need worry about producing content that is profitable. His writing is dry and unpersuasive; at most, it is a kind of choir-preaching that reassures the the tagesschau audience that their views are grounded in facts, logic and science, and anyone who disagrees is a dangerous internet manic, or perhaps Russian.
An “Einzelfall” is an isolated case; the AfD Einzelfall-Ticker alludes to the older project “XY-Einzelfall,” which began documenting migrant crimes in Germany in 2016. The title is an ironic reference to the regime line that migrant infractions are “isolated cases.”
Because authorities often intentionally withhold the details of migrant perpetrators, whether specific cases actually involve migrants or not requires some surmising on the part of the reader. Probably whoever runs the Einzelfallticker should include only cases where migrant offenders are specifically identified or described (there is no shortage of those), but in my own less-than-casual study of the Einzelfallticker, I find that a) they’re generally clear when there’s uncertainty about the origins of the suspect, and b) in most of the unidentified cases, they’re probably right to suspect migrant perpetrators.
DHS Awards $20 Million To Program That Flags Americans As Potential “Extremists” For Their Online Speech
An overt way of policing speech?
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 14, 2023
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded 34 grants to as many organizations, worth a total of $20 million, whose role will be to undergo training in order to flag potential online “extremist” speech of Americans.
The money will be spent from the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) grant program for fiscal year 2023, while the recipients include police, mental health providers, universities, churches and school districts.
According to DHS, this program (administered by its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, CP3, and for some reason, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA) is the only federal one of its kind whose goal is “helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in combating targeted violence and terrorism.”
Those given the money from the grants fund are expected to develop prevention programming at the community level that would stop “targeted violence and terrorism,” as well as come up with innovative prevention ideas, and “identify prevention best practices that can be replicated in communities nationwide.”
In announcing and explaining the need for such spending, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas cited the Jacksonville shooting. As he remarked while justifying the awarding of grants, the event was racially motivated, and – “[it] made painfully clear, targeted violence and terrorism can impact any community, anywhere.”
DHS claims that the “current” environment is one of heightened – and lethal – threat, based on ideology or personal grievances of “lone offenders and small groups.”
The DHS announcement came on the anniversary of 9/11, but it showed that the focus is now on Americans rather than some foreign terrorist threat (or even foreign terrorist gangs in the habit of “invading” US soil).
And the way the terrorist threat is defined here looks more like a drive to suppress dissent to dominant narratives pushed by the government and large traditional and social media who work in concert with the federal authorities.
Specifically, what opponents of such policy single out as possible reasons to be branded a violent extremists or (domestic) terrorist could be disagreeing, and expressing that opinion online on anything from Covid, vaccines, gun rights, gender and LGBTQ policies, the war in Ukraine, or immigration.
Kiev’s trans spokesperson vows to ‘hunt down Russian propagandists’
RT | September 14, 2023
A threat to “hunt down” Russian “propagandists” which flagged an action “next week” and was made by a Ukrainian military spokesperson, should not be dismissed just because of its over-the-top presentation, a senior Russian official has argued.
On Wednesday, Sarah Ashton-Cirillo, who leads the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces’ purported outreach to English-speaking audiences, made some ominous predictions regarding Russia.
“Next week, the teeth of the Russian devils will gnash ever harder, and their rabid mouths will foam in uncontrollable frenzy as the world will see a favorite Kremlin propagandist pay for their crimes,” she said.
“Russia’s war criminal propagandists will all be hunted down, and justice will be served as we in Ukraine are led on this mission by faith in God, liberty and complete liberation,” she pledged.
Ashton-Cirillo, a trans woman who made headlines in the US in 2021 with a story of her infiltration of the American right-wing group Proud Boys, was given the spokesperson position in Ukraine in early August.
Her latest statement is part of her ‘Russia Hates the Truth’ series of minute-long videos, in which she delivers scolding condemnations of Russia.
While many Russian journalists have dismissed the unspecific threat as ridiculous, Valery Fadeev, the chairman of the Russian presidential human rights council, urged national law enforcement to take it seriously. The remark appears to be “a threat of murder or serious bodily harm” and thus a crime under Russian law, he argued on Thursday.
“Considering the lamentable record of attempts on the lives of Russian journalists and public figures … Russian security services should pay attention to it,” he added.
Moscow has accused Kiev of orchestrating the murders of journalist Darya Dugina in August 2022 and of military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in April this year. In July, the Federal Security Service reported busting a group believed to have intended to assassinate RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak on Kiev’s behalf.
Threads Is Already Blacklisting Covid Terms From Search, As Part of New Censorship Campaign
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 12, 2023
Meta is once again up to its old tricks. The new social networking app Threads, which was marketed as an alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter, is now limiting access to information and prohibiting searches related to key terms such as “coronavirus” and “vaccines,” as revealed by the Washington Post.
Despite only being a couple of months old, the platform has already been observed to deliberately muzzle certain search terms in its novel search functionality.
Meta has previously implemented search blackouts around Covid-related terms due to combating what it says is “misinformation.”
Offering an explanation for the obstruction, Meta conceded to the Washington Post, “The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content.”
They assured that they would reinstate search results for these terms when they believed the content quality was up to their standards. However, they declined to disclose a complete list of obstructed search terms, leaving users guessing.
Apparently, Meta has opted for strict keyword censorship, instead of engaging in complex debates about what content concerning the Coronavirus should be permissible.
This move is suggestive of their unwillingness to disclose more internal correspondences, many of which came to light during the ongoing inquiries on censorship stemming from COVID-related discussions.
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The Geopolitics behind the War in Yemen (I)
By Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 30.03.2015
The United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia became very uneasy when the Yemenese or Yemenite movement of the Houthi or Ansarallah (meaning the supporters of God in Arabic) gained control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa/Sana, in September 2014. The US-supported Yemenite President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi was humiliatingly forced to share power with the Houthis and the coalition of northern Yemenese tribes that had helped them enter Sana. Al-Hadi declared that negotiations for a Yemeni national unity government would take place and his allies the US and Saudi Arabia tried to use a new national dialogue and mediated talks to co-opt and pacify the Houthis.
The truth has been turned on its head about the war in Yemen. The war and ousting of President Abd-Rabbuh Manṣour Al-Hadi in Yemen are not the results of «Houthi coup» in Yemen. It is the opposite. Al-Hadi was ousted, because with Saudi and US support he tried to backtrack on the power sharing agreements he had made and return Yemen to authoritarian rule. The ousting of President Al-Hadi by the Houthis and their political allies was an unexpected reaction to the takeover Al-Hadi was planning with Washington and the House of Saudi. … continue
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