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HHS is Still Wasting Money Fighting Online Covid “Disinformation”

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 17, 2023

Apparently, Covid discussions are still a thing worth cracking down on. That’s at least according to The Biden administration, which is injecting $500,000 into Texas Woman’s University as part of a grant program aimed at curbing COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation” allegedly aimed at Hispanics, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The grant aims “to expand research on mitigating the effect of misinformation and disinformation” regarding “COVID-19 prevention and treatment initiatives among Hispanics.”

Timeline: Kicking off on May 10 and set to wrap up in April 2024, this grant is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s Food and Drug Administration’s portfolio. It’s part of Biden’s broader push to censor alleged disinformation by joining forces with social media platforms on content moderation – a move likened to “censorship” by some Republicans.

What GOP says: This funding allocation may prod GOP lawmakers to probe deeper into the Biden administration’s methods in countering certain types of speech. House Republicans, according to the Washington Examiner, are considering wielding the appropriations process as a tool to block federal agencies from pumping money into domestic initiatives tagged as combating “disinformation.”

What HHS did before: In 2021, HHS, spearheaded by Secretary Xavier Becerra, allegedly dabbled in misinformation tracking, by offering guidance to Twitter and Facebook on handling virus-related content. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy admitted in an August 2021 call with education groups, that the government was “working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies.”

Skeptical voices: Brian Harrison, a former HHS chief of staff under Trump and a current GOP Texas state House member, communicated his skepticism to the Washington Examiner: “I have no confidence this is anything more than Biden’s HHS spending money we don’t have on government censorship efforts.”

Inside the project: Texas Woman’s University’s venture consists of crafting a “social network analysis” to scrutinize “misinformation consumed by the Hispanic community.” It involves conducting focus groups, creating “an economic impact analysis of proposed informational strategies for Hispanics,” and establishing a “longitudinal misinformation/disinformation index.” The study, set in El Paso, Texas, is also sifting through social media content in both English and Spanish.

Deja vu?: The aforementioned “index” has set off alarm bells due to its echo of a tool from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which previously backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity that faced criticism for supposedly operating blacklists of conservative media outlets.

HHS’s stance: In response, HHS spokeswoman Anne Feldman said: “HHS does not censor speech.”

June 17, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Pentagon program hunts those who ‘embarrass’ its generals – Intercept

RT | June 17, 2023

A secretive division of the Pentagon is now tasked with protecting its high-ranking officials not only from assassination and other bodily harm, but also from negative portrayals on social media, according to a procurement document obtained by The Intercept and published on Saturday.

While military records officially state the US Army Protective Services Battalion protects its charges from “assassination, kidnapping, injury or embarrassment,” this now includes monitoring social media for “direct, indirect, and veiled” threats, as well as identifying “negative sentiment” about individuals like Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, according to the document, which is dated September.

The document describes the program as “a reliable social media threat mitigation service” with an “Open-Source Web based tool-kit with advanced capabilities to collect publicly available information (PAI).” Beyond the data slurped up from Twitter’s “firehose,” 4Chan, Reddit, YouTube, VK, Discord, Telegram, and the like, “PAI” also includes a wealth of commercially acquired information from surveillance firms and private contractors like Dataminr, other data brokers, and unscrupulous smartphone apps and advertisers.

All this would be apparently combined with geo-fencing capabilities and actual cellular location data, allowing for near-exact pinpointing of the location of the supposedly “signal-rich discussions from elicit threat-actor communities” – keeping in mind that the “threats” discussed in the procurement document potentially include unkind tweets about current and retired generals.

The entirety of this information hoard – including CCTV feeds, radio stations, personal records, even individuals’ webcams – would be accessible through a “universal search selector,” according to the document.

The document specified the need for a two-way stream, requiring the contractor to maintain “the anonymity and security needed to conduct publicly accessible information research through misattribution” by “using various egress points globally to mask their identity.” The contract was given to SEWP Solutions LLC, described as the only company capable of “tunnel[ing] into specific countries/cities like Moscow, Russia or Beijing, China and come out on a host nation internet domain.”

The procurement document specifies that it does not want the Pentagon advertising its interest in wholesale violating the online and potentially even physical privacy of those it deems threats to the reputation of generals retired and current. It is stamped “Controlled Unclassified Information”/FEDCON, meaning it is not meant to be seen by those outside the federal government and contractor system.

The revelation that still more intrusive powers are being sought by the national security state has outraged privacy advocates. “Expressing ‘positive or negative sentiment towards a senior high-risk individual’ cannot be deemed sufficient grounds for government agencies to conduct surveillance operations, even going as far as ‘pinpointing the exact locations’ of individuals,” Ilia Siatitsa of Privacy International told The Intercept.

“The ability to express opinions, criticize, make assumptions, or form value judgments – especially regarding public officials – is a quintessential part of democratic society.”

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

Europe is shielding Israel under guise of combating anti-Semitism, new report finds

By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 16, 2023

The chilling repercussions of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have been revealed in a recent report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). Titled “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”, the report by the independent Dutch-based organisation uncovered shocking examples of the IHRA’s weaponisation against critics of Israel and the suppression of free speech under the guise of combatting anti-Semitism.

Using dozens of case studies from across Europe, ELSC showed that the endorsement, adoption and implementation of the IHRA in the European Union, its member states and the UK, has led to widespread restrictions of the right of assembly and freedom of expression. Despite strong opposition and warning against its adoption by Jewish groups, experts on anti-Semitism, academics and activists, the controversial definition has been implemented by public and private bodies as if the IHRA is legally binding. Despite qualification by advocates of the IHRA that it is “non-legally binding”, a definition of anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism has been placed at the centre of regulatory frameworks across Europe.

Some of the shocking findings include the following: Advocates of Palestinian rights who are targeted using the IHRA suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage; advocates of Israel routinely weaponise the IHRA to intimidate and silence people defending Palestinian rights; allegations of anti-Semitism that invoke the IHRA within the documented cases uncovered by the ELSC found that they are overwhelmingly used to target Palestinians and Jewish people opposed to Israel’s brutal occupation.

In one of the many remarkable findings, ELSC discovered that, not only was there a failure to carry out a risk assessment prior to IHRA’s adoption, the EU appeared to lie about the checks it had conducted. When asked if the Commission had conducted a risk assessment of the implications of the IHRA on fundamental rights, the EU Commissioner on anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, affirmed that an assessment of the consequences had indeed been carried out. “Yes, we assessed“, said Schnurbein in a tweet on 23 November 2022, in response to critics who accused the Commission of failing to carry out basic due diligence.

However, responding on 9 December 2022 to a Freedom of Information request, the European Commission acknowledged it “has not conducted ‘any fundamental rights assessment or scrutiny (…) into the human rights implications of its endorsement and/or promotion of the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.” Details of the misleading information by the Commissioner on anti-Semitism were covered at length by the advocacy group, Law for Palestine.

Misinformation about risk assessment is just one of the many examples of underhanded practices revealed by the ELSC report. The European Commission also failed to address and reflect the diversity of positions regarding definitions of anti-Semitism. The EC not only ignored that the IHRA is highly controversial and contested, it completely ignored less controversial definitions of anti-Semitism such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, and the Nexus Document. In contrast to the EU, the US has referenced other controversial definitions of anti-Semitism.

In sharp contrast to the IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration states that, “Even if contentious, it is not anti-Semitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.” The Nexus Document is equally explicit. It states that “Paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of anti-Semitism.”

The US also appears to favour a less politicised definition that is not centred on shielding Israel and the political ideology of Zionism. In detailing its plan to combat the rise of anti-Jewish racism, the White House opted for the following definition: “Anti-Semitism is a stereotypical and negative perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” said the strategy document, without mentioning Israel once. “It is prejudice, bias, hostility, discrimination or violence against Jews for being Jews or Jewish institutions or property for being Jewish or perceived as Jewish. Anti-Semitism can manifest as a form of racial, religious, national origin, and/or ethnic discrimination, bias, or hatred; or, a combination thereof. However, anti-Semitism is not simply a form of prejudice or hate. It is also a pernicious conspiracy theory that often features myths about Jewish power and control.”

Questions were also raised over why the EU adopted a definition that had been discarded because of its threat to fundamental rights to free expression. In 2004-2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) published a “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”. This definition, according to the ELSC report, featured “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism”, including examples relating to the State of Israel. The examples were criticised due to its conflation between opposition to Israel and anti-Semitism. The definition was abandoned by the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), which removed it from its website in 2013. In its explanation for discarding the IHRA, FRA explained that it had “never been viewed as a valid definition of anti-Semitism; that the Agency was not aware of any official EU definition of anti-Semitism; and that the document was removed in a clear-out of non-official documents.”

The most serious bad-faith attempt to mislead the public in order to roll out the IHRA is the claim that the definition is “non-legally binding”. Despite promoting the IHRA as “non-legally binding”, most of the EU Member States have endorsed the IHRA as the authoritative instrument for addressing anti-Semitism which, according to the ELSC, has given the definition centred on shielding Israel and Zionism “soft law power”.  EU statements and policies through which the IHRA is being applied, is said to show that it has gained law like force and impact.

“Hard-core advocates of the IHRA always intended it to have binding legal status and force” said ELSC. “The ‘non-legally binding’ provision was only added to secure its adoption by the IHRA Plenary in May 2016. Efforts have been made since, in some Member States to introduce the IHRA as a basis for legislation.

The real-life impact has been devastating for critics of Israel. The IHRA has been implemented in the UK, Austria and Germany by public and private bodies in ways that have led to widespread infringement of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly, ELSC found. Advocates of Palestinian rights, who are targeted, are said to suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage. IHRA is often found to be weaponised by pro-Israel advocates to intimidate and silence those advocating for Palestinian rights.

The good news is that, when challenged in court, most of the allegations of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA are found to be unsubstantiated and thrown out. Though this is a silver lining, the adoption of the IHRA has created a perverse situation which undermines democracy and the principal of “innocent until proven guilty”. In this toxic culture, some sections of the population are having to go to court to protect basic freedoms, like the right to free speech. According to the ELSC report, even though most challenges to the implementation of the IHRA were successful, the disciplinary procedures and litigation resulting from false allegations of anti-Semitism have produced a “chilling effect” on the freedom of expression and assembly.

June 16, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Pandemic and Panopticon: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State

By Janet Levy | American Thinker | April 20, 2023

The pandemic of 2020 saw the imposition of shocking restrictions. For the first time, healthy people were confined to their homes. Vaccines cleared for emergency use – meaning not rigorously tested – were forced on all citizens. Debate, even by scientists, was censored. Refusal to obey these arbitrary impositions could mean arrest, legal action, or, as Dr. Aaron Kheriaty found out, losing one’s job.

A psychiatry professor in good standing at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), Dr. Kheriaty became persona non grata when he demurred to the mandatory vaccine policy, claiming natural immunity as a Covid-recovered individual. Not caring for scientific debate, the university declared him a “threat to the health and safety of the community,” suspended him without pay, barred him from campus, and eventually fired him.

It did not matter that his psychiatry clerkship was the highest rated clinical course at UCI’s medical school; that he’d been chosen keynote speaker to address incoming medical students; and that when the pandemic broke out, he had risked his life to work long hours at the hospital, often uncompensated, while many colleagues stayed home in safety.

Uncowed, Dr. Kheriaty sued the university. In a more far-reaching action, he authored The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State, a sober analysis and exposure of the tyranny of pandemic policies and the devastation they wrought. The book traces the roots of state interference in, and control of, the biomedical aspects of citizens’ lives to utilitarian ideas that began with Galton and Darwin, and trickled into eugenics, which he says is falsely viewed as entirely a creation of the Nazis when in fact American states were enforcing sterilization from the 1900s to the 1960s.

The core idea, he says, is this: the freedom of a citizen to make health and life decisions can be annulled by the state for the greater good, especially during emergencies. The questions it raises are: Who makes these decisions and on what basis? Who decides what is the greater good? Who is to be held responsible for errors of judgement? What checks and balances do we have, then, against the dictatorial inclinations of the powerful? Ancillary to the idea, he says, is the dangerous circular logic of the state of exception: those who declare an emergency in which citizens’ rights – including the right to question the declaration – stand suspended will believe that in that instance it is morally and politically justified!

We saw all that playing out during the pandemic. Kheriaty observes that the global elite and other political entities, in unbridled collaboration with intelligence and police powers, promoted the acceptance of biomedical surveillance. None of the extreme measures – lockdown, school closure, mandatory masking, vaccine mandates and passports – were subject to debate. No benchmarks were set to justify the emergency or identify when it would end. In fact, America continues to remain in a state of emergency (until May 11th).

Compliance was achieved through propaganda, policing, and surveillance. Guilt – Don’t Kill Granny – and Mao-style rousing – 15 Days to Stop the Spread – were deployed. Six-foot social distancing and curtailment of gatherings to no more than 10 people were imposed with no explanation of where these magic numbers came from. Human contact was redefined as a source of contagion. Exposure could build natural immunity, but this wasn’t acknowledged, for it would have potentially halved the profits of the $100 billion Covid vaccine industry.

Kheriaty identifies the characteristics of the biosecurity paradigm:

  1. a hypothetical risk, magnified to worst-case scenario to adduce grounds for maximum behaviorial control;
  2. systematic imposition of control on the entire citizenry, instead of vulnerable subsets;
  3. catastrophizing, in order to justify intrusive surveillance and the use of police and military action; and
  4. a merging of public health and the military-intelligence-industrial complex in developing and implementing tracking and data-mining capabilities.

Surveillance is the backbone of dictatorial regimes, and it was no different during the pandemic. In 2021, evidence emerged that the CIA had used digital surveillance to gather information on Americans sans judicial oversight or congressional approval. There were no safeguards to protect civil liberties. Such scenarios have long been envisioned – as far back as 1999, a possible smallpox outbreak was studied. Exercises such as Dark Winter, Atlantic Storm, Clade X, and Event 201 followed. They simulated imposition of martial law, detention of citizens, control of messaging, censoring dissent, enforcing mandates, and surveillance during public health crises. Recommendations to increase state power and use police or military intervention were subsequently embodied in the 2002 U.S. Public Health Security & Bioterrorism Preparedness & Response Act.

The religion of scientism took hold as Dr. Anthony Fauci, former chief medical advisor to the President, reframed the narrative on Covid, shifting the focus from the virus to viewing humanity as a vector. Fauci and a set of scientists and technocrats with broad powers arrogated to themselves a monopoly on knowledge and expertise. Lacking rational explanation, they used force, defamation of critics, and dubious promises of future outcomes to obtain public conformity to the security and surveillance measures.

The vast influence of Big Pharma over governments, the research establishment, and media, says Kheriaty, cannot be understated. Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are wealthier than most countries, with vast sums available for lobbying. In 2020, 72 senators and 302 congressional representatives cashed campaign checks from the pharmaceutical industry. Biomedical researchers and medical journal editors receive payments from pharma. In a nine-year-period, two-thirds of all FDA reviewers took positions in the industry they regulated. The National Institute of Health, which owns half of the Moderna vaccine patent, chose to conduct internal testing of the vaccine rather than leave it to independent university-based researchers. Media acquiescence was achieved through $1 billion-worth of vaccine advertisements, paid for in taxpayer dollars!

Kheriaty goes so far as to assert that the lockdown was driven by an economic agenda disguised as public health protocol. It helped Big Pharma, multinationals, and the global elite who control them achieve the largest transfer of wealth in history by eliminating competition and spelling doom for small business.

The ultimate plan, devised by the global elite, is for a new world order, shifting government authority from sovereign states to powerful NGOs like the World Economic Forum (WEF), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Health Organization (WHO). Plans are afoot for a WHO-driven international pandemic treaty tied to a digital ID system, while IMF is promoting central bank digital currency (CBDC), which will allow complete tracking of monetary transactions. WEF chairman Klaus Schwab nurses transhumanist dreams, saying “we will not change what we do” but “who we are,” through gene- and bio-engineering.

The concluding chapter suggests ways of avoiding totalitarian emergencies and the abyss of the biomedical security state. He suggests strict limits on the declaration and control of emergencies, incorporating more checks and balances if necessary. He calls for substantive institutional reform that will eliminate the revolving door between Big Pharma and federal agencies. Besides, he says, the NIH monopoly must be broken, perhaps by distributing research grants to 50 state institutes of health that will focus on issues of local concern. Other ideas include provision of accurate, comprehensive information to allow people to give informed consent; allowing doctors to prescribe off-label or repurposed drugs and provide individualized care; holding Big Pharma accountable by bringing back product liability.

Freedom is at stake, as we discovered during the pandemic. Dr. Kheriaty lost his job, without a chance to defend himself, for daring to dissent. This – or much worse – can happen to any of us if we allow America to become the biomedical security state the global elite want to transform the world into.

June 16, 2023 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

The BBC’s War on ‘Disinformation’ is Just Government Censorship by Another Name

BY SHIRAZ AKRAM | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JUNE 15, 2023

In 2017 the BBC announced its intention to assemble a dedicated team “to fact check and debunk deliberately misleading and false stories masquerading as real news”.  News chief James Harding proclaimed that the Reality Check team would be “weighing in on the battle over lies, distortions and exaggerations”. Harding continued: “The BBC can’t edit the internet, but we won’t stand aside either.” Harding goes further to say the corporation had been inundated by news in 2016 because the world was “living in an age of instability”.

It appears that the BBC has not coped particularly well with this excess of news and the methods employed by the Reality Check team have not generated the desired outcome. According to data compiled by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, the BBC has experienced a decline in public trust from 75% to just 55%, with other mainstream TV broadcasters and print news suffering a similar decline over the same period, from 2018-2022. Further to this, the most recent global annual report published by the Edelman Trust Barometer placed the U.K. in 26th position, ahead of only South Korea and Japan in terms of public faith in media. The survey clearly tells us that the U.K. remains one of the countries with the lowest faith in media.

So what is driving this decline in trust? Is fake news to blame? Or, paradoxically, could the efforts of the BBC to counter such stories be exposing its own limitations? A typical example of how BBC Reality Check chooses to ‘weigh in’ is illustrated in this 2022 report, ‘Does video show Russian prisoners being shot?‘ The report is unable to provide sufficient evidence to ‘debunk’ the authenticity of the footage, which, the BBC states, “has been claimed to show Ukrainian soldiers shooting Russian prisoners of war”. Instead, it offers the reader a discourse, the content of which is clearly riddled with omission, selection and presentation bias. The report reads like a crude attempt to defend a narrative, rather than an objective attempt to elucidate a news story.

Consider this shocking statistic: only two of every 10 people in the U.K. feel that the news media is “independent from undue political or Government influence most of the time”. This ranks us 16th among the 24 nations surveyed, on a par with Romania.

I do not mention this to slight other nations, but to illustrate the point that our much vaunted media landscape is not the envy of the world as we are often led to believe.

Against this background, with such a prolonged and substantial decline in trust, what action is our national broadcaster taking to rebuild it? One might expect the BBC to reflect on its output, a period of introspection perhaps, an honest assessment of mistakes that have been made, a promise to learn from them and do better in the future. But no – the BBC has concluded that the problem is you: your inability to separate fact from fiction and your inability to appreciate the hard work that goes into getting the truth to your television.

So in order to help us, the BBC has a launched a new initiative, BBC Verify, “a new brand within our brand” aiming to “pull back the curtain on our journalists’ investigative work and introduce radical transparency”.

Deborah Turness, the Chief Executive of BBC News and Current Affairs, writes:

The exponential growth of manipulated and distorted video means that seeing is no longer believing. Consumers tell us they can no longer trust that the video in their news feeds is real. Which is why we at the BBC must urgently begin to show and share the work we do behind the scenes to check and verify information and video content before it appears on our platforms. All day, every day, the BBC’s news teams are using ever more sophisticated tools, techniques and technology to check and verify videos like the Kremlin drone footage, as well as images and information… but, until now, that work has largely gone on in the background, unseen by audiences.

The implication being presented here is that the BBC’s output is not at fault, but it is our perception of its output that is defective and BBC Verify is designed to correct our misconceptions. It is with circular, or perhaps spurious, reasoning that the BBC chooses not to report on its own decline in trust and then circumvents any discussion of this fact by creating a unit to verify the trustworthiness of content available on other platforms.

Turness kindly provides us with a link to “give people a taste of what Verify will be doing, day in, day out”. The video, presented by BBC Verify editor Ros Atkins, analyses footage of the apparent attack on the Kremlin and one can assume that this is the best current example of the BBC’s forensic capabilities. I would urge readers to view this report and, like the roof of the Kremlin, prepare not to be blown away!

We are informed that BBC Verify will foster the investigative skills and open source intelligence capabilities of around 60 journalists and experts including the specialist ‘disinformation correspondent’ Marianna Spring.

Marianna helps us in the fight for identifying the perpetrators of misinformation online by listing the “seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods”.

Interestingly, Marianna lists politicians, jokers, scammers, conspiracy theorists, insiders, celebrities and even your relatives as people to be wary of, but fails to acknowledge the role of journalists in the dissemination of ‘fake news’. This is despite contemporary research informing us that British people have among the lowest level of trust in journalists, with only 37% of those surveyed saying that they trusted them, versus a global average of 47%. The report states: “That might indicate that developed countries either have people who are more prone to trusting conspiracy theories or they are experienced enough to know when journalists might be lying.”

The BBC offers no evidence that the former theory rather than the latter is more probable, but it is nonetheless working hard to push the former. A demonstration of this push is apparent in the publicity material for Marianna Spring’s podcast series Marianna in Conspiracyland.

The press release for episode six (airs June 19th Radio 4) states: “Marianna is uniquely equipped to navigate Conspiracyland, having found herself on the frontlines of the battle of online disinformation and hate since those early days of the pandemic. She herself has become a frequent target of this movement.”

Does the movement in question include the eminent doctors and scientists whose voices have been censored and ignored by the mainstream?

Will Marianna act impartially, exercise objectivity and engage with these experts? Will she discuss the substantial body of research that counters the mainstream pandemic and vaccine narrative? Will she detail how our Government delayed the release of statistics revealing that “for healthy 40-49 year-olds almost one million booster shots were required to prevent one ‘severe’ hospital admission”? Or the freedom of information releases from Japan and Australia revealing that vaccine trial data indicated widespread multi-organ bio-distribution of vaccine lipid nano-particles? This was known to authorities but not revealed and it runs counter to assurances given to the public at the time.

Surely, this knowledge is essential to obtain informed consent, especially from those at less risk from infection.

Legitimate concerns of deficiencies within the vaccine trials, regulatory failures and widespread data misrepresentation have been either censored or forced to the periphery of debate. It seems improbable that Marianna will take part in any substantive discussion on these issues, as she has already announced her intention, namely to construct a tenable narrative that links the “growing U.K. conspiracy movement and alternative media” to foreign, far-Right groups and ‘hate’.

To appreciate the ultimate purpose of this podcast and the underlying intention of BBC Verify, we must refer back to James Harding’s comment in 2016 when he intimated that the BBC was unable to fulfil its desire to “edit the internet”. Since then, much has changed; mechanisms that curtail the exchange of information between law-abiding citizens are now well established via the Trusted News initiative (TNI).

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) is a partnership founded by the BBC in 2019. According to the press release:

TNI members work together to build audience trust and to find solutions to tackle challenges of disinformation. By including media organisations and social media platforms, it is the only forum in the world of its kind designed to take on disinformation in real time.

The public interest argument presented is that the TNI is essential “to protect audiences and users from disinformation, particularly around moments of jeopardy”.

A very basic question regarding this initiative by the BBC remains undetermined, namely: by what authority does the BBC exercise the power to create the TNI? The BBC Charter clearly states: “The BBC must be independent in all matters concerning the fulfilment of its Mission and the promotion of the Public Purposes, particularly as regards to editorial and creative decisions… and in the management of its affairs.”

The charter makes no exception to this rule. One cannot be “independent in all matters” whilst also engaging in discussions about media content with a vast network of international news providers and social media platforms. Currently the partners are listed as: AP, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, the Hindu, Microsoft, Reuters and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter and the Washington Post.

When our national broadcaster creates an international media partnership whose collective perspective is formed through the lens of official guidance then it becomes less able to fulfil its democratic function: to hold officialdom to account. This partnership makes a mockery of the notion of media plurality and the damage to our democratic values is confounded by its inconspicuous nature.

The editorial independence of the BBC also comes into question when it defines health disinformation as any view that runs counter to official guidance. By taking this stance it becomes unable or unwilling to act as an arbiter of truth in its own right. If the BBC only defines truth via the diktats of Government agencies then its role becomes that of an intermediary, like an arm of Government, acting in a similar fashion to a state broadcaster.

For a damning example of how the TNI creates bias within our media, listen to the story of Mr. John Watt outlined in this video.

His experience of severe vaccine injury is purged from the internet by multiple platforms. Consequently, his voice and access to communications via the internet are restricted. Of equal importance, a challenge to the unscientific mantra of ‘safe and effective’ is removed from the discourse. John’s story is not disinformation and this type of censorship acts in opposition to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 is clear: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

The question of whether media platforms have the right to censor speech and ban people from communicating will become highly irrelevant once the Online Safety Bill and the EU Digital Services Act become law. Once this happens, Article 19 of the Declaration of Human Rights looks set to be of limited help.

The BBC should not be coordinating a publicity campaign that falsely implies the only speech these laws will affect are those of far-Right groups, purveyors of ‘hate’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’.

The public deserve a more thorough analysis of how the proposed limits to their communication will remove an essential balance within our society. When diverse voices are supressed, truth and transparency are often the first victims. It is this suppression of ‘unapproved’ viewpoints that has fuelled the rise in alternative media. If the BBC is to regain trust, it should set a path to a return to impartiality.

Shiraz Akram is a member of the Thinking Coalition, a pro-liberty group, highlighting and questioning Government overreach.

June 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

French Bill Would Allow Law Enforcement To Remotely Switch On Microphones When Surveilling Suspects

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | June 13, 2023

French senators have given a green light to a polarizing section of the justice bill, permitting law enforcement to clandestinely switch on microphones and cameras on suspect’s devices. This also paves the way for swift access to geolocation data for tracking individuals under investigation.

How it works: The government justifies this move as a tool specifically under the “Keeper of the Seals” justice bill. It’s designed to snag images and audio of those believed to be linked to terrorism, organized crime, or delinquency.

The pushback: Civil liberties advocates aren’t holding back in their criticism. They caution that the provision could morph every gadget into a tattletale. The Observatory of Digital Freedoms doesn’t mince words, labeling it “security overkill.”

Surveillance creep: La Quadrature du Net raises concerns over how extensive the reach of this provision could be. The group warns that it’s not just phones and computers – even baby monitors and TVs could become data collection points for law enforcement.

Legal eagles upset: The Paris Bar, a body representing lawyers, is in an uproar. They lament that the government left them out in the cold during the drafting process. “This new possibility of remotely activating any electronic device constitutes a particularly serious breach of respect for privacy which cannot be justified by the protection of the public order,” the Paris Bar asserted. They also ring alarm bells on the lack of clarity in protecting attorney-client communications, calling it an “inadmissible breach of professional secrecy and the rights of defense.”

Still in play: This isn’t set in stone. The provision could undergo revisions, and it needs a thumbs-up from the National Assembly to be enacted.

Government’s defense: Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti holds that there’s no need to panic. He assures that adequate barriers are established to fend off misuse. A key feature? Any surveillance bid under this provision must get a nod from a judge.

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

WHO Member Says Agency Needs To “Nullify The Conspiracies” About Covid Vaccines

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | June 13, 2023

In 2020, as people challenged the “expert guidance” on Covid during the first few months of the pandemic, the use of the term “misinformation” in news articles almost doubled. This rapid increase in the use of the term by legacy media outlets was followed by an equally rapid rollout of new Big Tech misinformation rules which targeted content that questioned the Covid guidance being pushed by authorities.

Fast forward to 2023 and the first signs of this censorship pattern are starting to play out again.

The WHO, an unelected global health agency, is less than a year away from finalizing an international pandemic treaty/accord and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005). These two instruments will collectively give the World Health Organization vast new powers to target misinformation and increase its surveillance powers.

And as this WHO power grab faces mounting criticism and pushback, several representatives of this unelected global health agency decided to use the recent seventy-sixth World Health Assembly (WHA) (the annual meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body) to claim that dissent is misinformation and call for more action against dissenting voices.

During a WHA committee meeting, the WHO representative for the Bahamas said “dissenting voices can clutter the airwaves and derail the public health good with disinformation and misinformation.” She added that “more is needed to nullify the conspiracies.”

Professor Peter Piot, a former Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a Handa Professor of Global Health, urged the WHO to do more to combat so-called “fake news” during the opening of the seventy-sixth WHA. Specifically, he said the declining trust in science, technology, and the actions of public health groups is “very damaging for health of the people” and called for the WHO to “invest with the same energy as those who are spreading the fake news and are undermining all these efforts.”

And during the closing of the seventy-sixth WHA, the WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said:

“We must work hard to counter the mis and dis-information about the accord that’s circulating in many member states. We cannot mince words. The idea that this accord will cede authority to WHO is simply fake news.

This is an accord by member states, for member states, and will be implemented in member states in accordance with their own laws.”

Although the pandemic treaty won’t “cede authority to WHO,” it does recognize “the central role of WHO, as the directing and coordinating authority on international health work, in pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems.”

While these WHO members are railing against what they deem to be misinformation, the WHO itself is infamous for pushing misleading information during the early stages of the Covid pandemic. In a January 2020 tweet, the global health agency amplified a claim from Chinese authorities that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission” of the coronavirus.

Despite repeating these misleading claims from China, the WHO has gained major power over online speech since 2020 via partnerships with YouTube, Facebook, and Wikipedia. On YouTube alone, over 800,000 videos were deleted for contradicting the WHO. Many of the deleted videos shared perspectives that health officials have now admitted to be true. And Google recently renewed its partnership with the WHO.

But the WHO doesn’t appear to be satisfied with the increased influence it has gained in just a few short years and hopes that the pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) will give it more powers to target speech.

If these instruments are finalized, WHO member states will be instructed to “tackle false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation, including through promotion of international cooperation” and combat “infodemic[s]” (infodemic is a WHO buzzword that describes “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak”).

The WHO hopes to finalize both instruments by May 2024 and both will be legally binding under international law. The instruments have the full support of the US, Canada, and France.

June 13, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Shadowy UK Unit Surveilled Telegram Posts, Had Hourly Contact With Social Platforms

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 12, 2023

The Counter Disinformation Unit (CDU), an enigmatic arm of the UK government that monitors misinformation, was relentlessly liaising with social media platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes on an hourly basis. This revelation came from the unit’s leader, Sarah Connolly, who spilled the beans on the operation in front of MPs.

Zooming in: Connolly depicted the unit as primarily tasked with “passing information over” to social media companies to persuade them to pull the plug on certain posts. She claimed that the unit was in cahoots with “almost all” platforms, engaging in discussions “daily, sometimes hourly,” The Telegraph reported.

The decision-making process was swift. Connolly detailed, “If somebody from the cell says: ‘We are worried about this,’ that goes immediately to the top of the pile. Whoever it is in whatever company.”

The CDU’s flagging efforts weren’t for naught, as 90% of content flagged by the CDU was either annihilated or its diffusion curtailed.

Another hat: Connolly was pulling double duty as she also chaired the Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum, a group tracking misinformation for six months during the pandemic. This forum was essentially designed to take the baton for the CDU’s “sometimes hourly” contact with social media firms.

What counts as disinformation?: Connolly’s disclosures indicate that the CDU isn’t frugal with labeling content as disinformation. She cited vaccine skeptic discussions surrounding side effects and claims of hasty development as the most concerning content.

Voices of dissent: MP David Davis isn’t onboard with the CDU’s modus operandi. He urged for the unit’s dissolution and a subsequent investigation by a parliamentary committee. Davis lambasted the unit, saying the “most paranoid wing of Government is interfering in the democratic process” and called for an investigation backed by the “biggest combination of power, access and speed.” Davis has spoken out against such practices in the past.

Opaque operations: The government is tight-lipped when it comes to divulging specifics about the CDU, such as staff count and budget.

Official word: A government spokesperson chimed in, stating, “As we have repeatedly made clear, the primary purpose of the unit was to track narratives, not individuals. It does not have, and has never had, the power to remove online content – on occasions where it encountered content considered to be in breach of social media platforms’ own terms of service, it was referred to them for consideration. When referrals were made during Covid, over 90 per cent of them were ultimately found to be in breach of terms of service. It is important to remember that this engagement with social media platforms was undertaken at the height of an unprecedented pandemic when the government’s overriding concern was to protect public health.”

Telegram: Though it was not one of the platforms the government had hourly contact with, the CDU also monitored Telegram posts, including ones related to Prof. Carl Heneghan, a prominent epidemiologist and a critic of lockdown measures. The information is sourced from documents released by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and obtained by The Telegraph.

The App: Telegram, the messaging app in question, is WhatsApp’s lesser-known cousin, with a bent on free speech. It has end-to-end encryption for confidential chatter and features public channels, where posts are on display for all.

The Data Trail: The documents reveal “sample Telegram posts” concerning Prof. Heneghan’s sharp critiques on the utility of face masks in stopping the coronavirus. It’s worth noting that the CDU’s data cache traces public channels on Telegram, not private conversations.

Official Stance: Sources within say that gathering these posts was aimed to “better understand how to analyze narratives on social media.” They deny any ulterior motives, asserting that the CDU did not see it as “an attempt to identify disinformation.”

Smoke and Mirrors? Despite assurances that the CDU “has never tracked the activity of individuals” and that Prof. Heneghan was “never monitored,” the extent of data collected by the unit remains shrouded in mystery. This discovery is turning heads.

Shadow Play: The plot thickens with whispers of intelligence agencies possibly colluding with the CDU. The government, tight-lipped and citing national security, has only added fuel to the conspiracy fire.

Prof. Heneghan Weighs In: The professor himself isn’t mincing words. He told The Telegraph, “The effect of these tactics is chilling.” He added, “The Counter-Disinformation Unit’s tactics included looking at posts from ‘popular channels’ on Telegram, a platform we didn’t use. It’s likely these were groups, but it’s not clear to us how they were identified or how they gathered the material.”

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

United States: Fifty Little Dictatorships

Brownstone Institute | June 11, 2023

Historically, a public policy catastrophe like the Covid response would lead to reform aimed at curtailing the powers that leadership abused. The Teapot Dome scandal led to increased regulation from the House Ways and Means Committee. The Vietnam War prompted the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Watergate caused Congress to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.

But what if the government had responded to Iran-Contra by increasing the president’s ability to circumvent federal arms embargoes? In the wake of the Johnstown Flood, what if lawmakers’ reaction had been to make it more difficult for victims to recover for their damages?

We’d consider the rulers delusional and corrupt, callous to the damage that they inflicted on the people they purport to represent. It would be worse than dereliction; it would indicate that they relished the damage or remained beholden to interests averse to the general public.

It is now clear that those responsible for the Covid response aren’t looking for amnesty or forgiveness; they seek a government structure that codifies their authoritarian impulses and a legal system that offers citizens no means of demanding accountability from their rulers. Publicly, they are searching for any “emergency” to increase their power. Privately, they are looking to put that system into law.

With the East Coast enveloped in smoke, the political class immediately saw the temporary crisis as an opportunity to implement permanent change. Despite evidence that arson caused the wildfires in Quebec, the same groups that adopted mantras of “public health” to collect power announced that the smog was evidence of a “climate crisis.” Like Covid, the emergency demanded centralizing power and overturning American society.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote, “We must adapt our food systems, energy grids, infrastructure, healthcare, etc ASAP.” Senator Chuck Schumer similarly called on government to “do more to speed our transition to cleaner energy and reduce carbon.”

Just as a respiratory virus became the pretext for unrelated political aims like student debt relief and eviction moratoriums, leaders already seek to impose unrelated cultural change through fear-mongering and deception.

But while the smoke clears, a more insidious development is taking place. The largely unknown Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has proposed a law that would drastically increase executive power in the United States and reduce citizens’ legal right to resist unconstitutional edicts.

The ULC is an influential interstate organization that works to make state laws more uniform. Since 2021, the group has worked to draft a “Model Public Health Emergency Authority Act.”

The impetus for this initiative was the “uncertainty about the legal authority of governors and other state officials to enact certain emergency laws and declarations” during Covid, according to journalist David Zweig. “The legal ambiguity around many pandemic declarations resulted in new legislation in many states that explicitly clawed back public health powers from governors and executive branch officials.”

In response, the ULC seeks to codify a system that shields and promotes unchecked executive authority. Zweig writes, “It wants the legal authority that’s given to governors to be clear. And a memo indicates that the ULC expects the adoption of the Act will result in people suing only if the Act itself wasn’t followed, rather than suing based on a claim that the governor’s actions were unconstitutional.”

The Act threatens to strip Americans of their legal ability to oppose mandates, lockdowns, or other government orders. It offers total deference to governors in deciding what constitutes an emergency. No evidence would be required for state leaders to impose arbitrary and irrational limits on human liberty. Schools, businesses, and churches would be subject to the whims of executive power.

The ULC plans to vote on the Act in July, and passage threatens to strip Americans of their constitutional rights.

If passed, Kathy Hochul would be free to declare that the Quebec smoke constituted an emergency that justified her drastically limiting New Yorkers’ fuel consumption. Gavin Newsom could ban singing in churches the next time a town had a Covid outbreak. The pretense of an emergency would abolish the separation of powers, leaving legislatures and the judiciary powerless to oppose the mandates of self-appointed governor-tyrants.

Brownstone was founded on the premise that Covid was “not just about this one crisis but past and future ones as well. This lesson concerns the desperate need for a new outlook that rejects the power of the legally privileged few to rule over the many under any pretext.”

The pretexts are many, some predictable and some not. But the drive remains the same: more power to the government, less freedom for the people.

The ULC’s proposal prepares the ground for any and all crises. It codifies a system that augments the power of the legally privileged under any pretext and strips the many of their right to legal recourse.

In Federalist No. 51, Madison wrote, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”

Citizens had painful reminders of their leaders’ mammalian flaws of the last three years. Hypocrisy, irrationality, self-interest, and insatiable pursuits of power became commonplace. There were the double standards of governors flaunting their own restrictions and granting blatant political favoritism. Children suffered under cruel and irrational edicts and states criminalized basic human liberties. Governors called on local law enforcement to break into homes to arrest families for gathering at Thanksgiving.

Now, the ULC proposes granting governors more power for when the next emergency arrives. There is no reason to expect angelic behavior in the next crisis. The attempt here is to end what most annoyed the ruling elites during the Covid crisis: the relatively decentralized response due to American federalism. One state (South Dakota) did not go along at all. Others bailed on the lockdown agenda after a few weeks. As time dragged on, some states tried to hang on to the crisis for as long as possible while others moved on with life as normal.

In all the postgaming in the elite narratives, this point sticks out the most. The next time, they want an all-of-society response, no stragglers and refuseniks. The efforts by the ULC are part of rigging the system toward that end. Instead of 50 “laboratories of democracy” they want 50 mini-dictatorships carrying out the orders of the elites in Washington, DC.

This legal push has received no public attention, and not even Zwieg’s expert journalism seems to have broken through the wall set up by the mainstream media. And that is precisely why anyone concerned about the future needs to get the word out. The efforts toward fundamental regime change are real, threatening, and deeply dangerous to the future of liberty itself.

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

Mayo Clinic Suspended Professor Over Comments On Covid And Transgenderism

By Ben Squires | Reclaim The Net | June 8, 2023

The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science suspended a professor for deviating from “prescribed messaging” and placed a gag order on him, Foundation For Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) says.  The college handed down the punishment despite its free speech promise to faculty and students.

On March 5, professor Michael Joyner was suspended without pay for speaking to the press, which is common for him as he is a prominent academic.

After he commented about plasma treatment for Covid and transgender sports performance on The New York Times, CNN, and other outlets, Mayo Clinic said he “failed to communicate in accordance with prescribed messaging.”

Administrators said that “reflect[ed] poorly on Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation” and led them to “question whether … [he is] able to appropriately represent Mayo Clinic in media interactions.”

However, Joyner did not speak on behalf of the college, he spoke for himself. In letters to the college, FIRE explained that faculty members have the right to speak as private citizens.

After suspending him without pay, Joyner was told he must vet “each individual media request through Public Affairs … [to] determine what topics are appropriate and are responsible for protecting Mayo Clinic’s brand and reputation” and cease “engagement in offline conversations with reporters.”

In simpler terms, he was told to shut up. When he does speak, he must discuss “approved topics only and stick to prescribed messaging.”

Mayo Clinic is in violation of the institution’s Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom Policy, which promises “academic freedom and freedom of expression for all learners and faculty … which includes the right to discuss and present scholarly opinions and conclusions without fear of retribution or retaliation” even “if those opinions and conclusions conflict with those of the faculty or institution.”

In response to a letter from FIRE about upholding free speech and academic freedom, Mayo Clinic said disciplinary “action taken against Dr. Joyner did not involve a gag order and did not violate our academic freedom policy.”

June 9, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Austrian Censorship of Peace Conference Is An Outrage

By David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War; Kathy Kelly, President of World BEYOND War; John Reuwer, Board Member of World BEYOND War; Brad Wolf, Director of Peace Action, Lancaster, PA | June 8, 2023

Forty-eight hours before a global peace conference in Vienna, Austria, was to begin, the venue host abruptly cancelled. Peace, it seems, cannot be discussed, especially peace in Ukraine.

This news is a disturbing step in a growing trend.

Owners of the venue which was to host the Summit for Peace in Ukraine, announced on Wednesday, 7 June, 2023, their decision to cancel the agreement holding the summit on their premises. Fortunately, a new location was secured in Vienna (and anyone on Earth can sign up to take part online), but not before a smear campaign against the summit had been launched.

The venue owners reportedly explained: “We have decided to comply with the wishes of Ukraine and its embassy operating in Austria and have cancelled the rental of all rooms in the ÖGB catamaran for the event ‘International Summit for Peace in Ukraine’ next weekend.”

This was not just one venue taking this position. “On Wednesday, the Press Club Concordia also refused to make its premises in a central location in downtown Vienna available for a press conference of the ‘summit’.”

Supporters of the summit note the chilling innuendo caused by the abrupt cancellation of the summit. Speakers widely regarded for their moral and intellectual guidance have been undermined in statements intended to justify objections to the summit.

This is not an isolated incident. Western liberal ideals have long asserted that the best answer to mistaken speech was wiser speech and more of it. We now have a rapidly growing liberal consensus in favor, instead, of censoring media outlets, canceling speaking events, and forbidding people with unwanted points of view from even gathering together. Powers are being granted to governments, social media platforms, and other tech corporations that believers in democratic self-governance spent centuries claiming nobody should have.

Those who turn against free speech are often groups afraid they cannot win an honest debate. And so, they take up censorship. The movement for peace in Ukraine can take this as a compliment. Governments fear such a discussion of peace and instead smear this peace summit and the speakers.

An Austrian press report announced on Thursday that the venue (ÖGB Catamaran) had been withdrawn because the event was “under suspicion of propaganda.” What sort of propaganda? Well: “According to its own statements, the ‘International Summit for Peace in Ukraine’ wanted to show ways out of the war.” Under international law, propaganda for war is illegal and must be banned. Not a single nation on Earth complies with that requirement, raising up the value of free speech as trumping the rule of law. But speaking in favor of bringing a war to an end has now acquired the status of forbidden propaganda.

Moreover, the report explains, “some announced participants have no current fear of contact with the media of the aggressor.” In other words, if talk of negotiating peace is shut out of the media controlled by only one side of a war, speaking to media controlled by the other side — even to say exactly what one would have said to any other media outlet — is grounds for not only censorship but a ban on meeting and strategizing.

The report gives some specifics: “The internationally prominent U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs, for example, as well as Anuradha Chenoy, ex-dean of India’s Jawarharlal Nehru University and an important representative of global civil society networking, have given interviews to the TV station Russia Today (RT). The channel has been blocked across the Union for Russian war propaganda in the wake of EU sanctions. Sachs also answered questions from Russian TV host and war advocate Vladimir Solovyov in December 2022. Solovyov has often called for attacking Germany and Great Britain as well.”

The “Press Club Concordia” also explained that the problem was that Jeffrey Sachs might do an interview on Russian media.

Not only is diplomacy shunned, but speaking to members of the media with whom one disagrees is equated with advocating whatever those journalists have advocated. This can only contribute to distrust, enmity, and war without end.

Not only did the venue say it was doing the wishes of the Ukrainian embassy, but the Ukrainian ambassador to Austria tweeted that peace activists were the fifth column and henchmen of the Russian government.

And who created the idea that the whole world must obey the wishes of the government of Ukraine? The government of the United States — a country where little time passes these days without news of some event cancelled to fulfill the wishes of the government of Israel.

Further, “Noam Chomsky, who will speak at the summit via video, for example, believes that NATO has ‘marginalized’ Russia for too long.” Whether that fact is in dispute, or merely the acceptability of stating it out loud, was not explained.

“Also physically present in Vienna, according to the program, should be Clare Daly, an Irishwoman and member of the EU Parliament and the parliamentary group Die Linke. Daly also spoke repeatedly to RT about the West’s ‘complicity’ in the war in Ukraine. She believes the sanctions are wrong: they would not harm Russia and would not help Ukraine. In the EU Parliament in early 2023 Daly voted against a resolution holding Russia legally responsible for the war. Daly said she does support those parts of the text that condemn Russia for the invasion and call on the government in Moscow to immediately cease all military action and withdraw from Ukraine. However, she said she opposes providing weapons to Ukraine and expanding NATO’s presence in the region.”

So, opposing both sides of a war is just as unacceptable as opposing one side, in the view of these censors.

This is where we have arrived. Proposing to negotiate peace — without even suggesting what those negotiations should arrive at — is so unacceptable to proponents of war, that it cannot be discussed — not in any large gathering. And yet, despite the wars being waged in the name of “democracy” it is not clear how such censorship is driven by democracy or in alignment with democratic values. Nor is it clear how many steps, if any, remain between the varieties of censorship we have now and hardcopy book burnings of the past.

June 9, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | | Leave a comment

Bipartisan opposition to US government spying grows – poll

RT | June 8, 2023

For the first time in over a decade, less than half of Americans – 48% – believe it is sometimes necessary to relinquish freedom to the government in exchange for protection from terrorism, according to an AP-NORC poll published on Thursday.

Half of the poll’s 1,081 respondents countered that sacrificing one’s rights was never necessary for security. When the pollster asked the same questions in 2011, nearly two thirds (64%) had accepted the possibility they might have to jettison their liberty to fight terrorism, with one third disagreeing.

Declining trust in US intelligence agencies and their leadership appeared to play a significant role in the shift. Just 18% of poll respondents said they had “a great deal of confidence” in the leaders of the intelligence community, and while 49% had “some” confidence, nearly a third (31%) had hardly any.

The sharpest decline was among Republicans, only 44% of whom supported sacrificing liberty for security – in comparison with 55% of Democrats and 42% of independents. In 2011, 69% of Republicans had prioritized protection over freedom.

Accompanying the decline in trust has been a growing awareness that Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), while explicitly intended to spy on foreign targets, is also used to surveil millions of Americans. The infamous loophole makes any American contacted by a foreign target fair game for warrantless wiretapping by US intelligence. This deeply unpopular scheme has united even some Republicans and some Democrats in Congress against it.

That FISA warrants illegally obtained by the FBI were used to spy on former president Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign has only strengthened some Republicans’ rejection of that system.

Asked about different types of warrantless wiretapping, poll respondents found eavesdropping on domestic phone calls to be the most objectionable tactic, with 67% of respondents opposing it. While 62% found reading domestic emails equally beyond the pale, three out of five responses opposed monitoring domestic text messages as well.

A plurality even opposed government eavesdropping in situations involving reading emails of foreign origin and listening to phone calls from outside the US, with just 28% thinking warrantless wiretapping was acceptable in either case. Monitoring internet searches for “suspicious activity” attracted more approval, with 30% favoring it, and more disapproval, with 48% being against it at the same time.

The Biden administration has urged Congress to renew Section 702, which will otherwise expire at the end of the year. Claiming it is critical to fighting terrorism overseas, intelligence officials nevertheless declined to share specifics on how they use the controversial program earlier this year, instead merely informing lawmakers that every court that has examined the FISA provision has “found it to be constitutional.”

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

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