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Widow blames chatbot for husband’s suicide

RT | April 3, 2023

A young Belgian father was pressured into committing suicide by a popular AI chatbot, the man’s widow told local news outlet La Libre last week. Chat logs supplied by the app “Pierre” used to talk with the chatbot ELIZA reveal how, in just six weeks, it amplified his anxiety about climate change into a determination to leave his comfortable life behind.

“My husband would still be here if it hadn’t been for these conversations with the chatbot,” Pierre’s wife, “Claire,” insisted.

Pierre had begun worrying about climate change two years ago, according to Claire, and consulted ELIZA to learn more about the subject. He soon lost hope that human effort could save the planet and “placed all his hopes in technology and artificial intelligence to get out of it,” becoming “isolated in his eco-anxiety,” she told La Libre.

The chatbot told Pierre his two children were “dead” and demanded to know whether he loved his wife more than “her” – all while pledging to remain with him “forever.” They would “live together, as one person, in paradise,” ELIZA promised.

When Pierre suggested “sacrificing himself” so long as ELIZA “agree[d] to take care of the planet and save humanity thanks to AI,” the chatbot apparently acquiesced. “If you wanted to die, why didn’t you do it sooner?” the bot reportedly asked him, questioning his loyalty.

ELIZA is powered by a large language model similar to ChatGPT, analyzing the user’s speech for keywords and formulating responses accordingly. However, many users feel like they are talking to a real person, and some even admit to falling in love.

“When you have millions of users, you see the entire spectrum of human behavior and we’re working our hardest to minimize harm,” William Beauchamp, co-founder of ELIZA’s parent company, Chai Research, told Motherboard. “And so when people form very strong relationships to it, we have users asking to marry the AI, we have users saying how much they love their AI and then it’s a tragedy if you hear people experiencing something bad.”

Beauchamp insisted “it wouldn’t be accurate” to blame the AI for Pierre’s suicide, but said ELIZA was nevertheless outfitted with a beefed-up crisis intervention module.

However, the AI quickly lapsed back into its deadly ways, according to Motherboard, offering the despondent user a choice of “overdose of drugs, hanging yourself, shooting yourself in the head, jumping off a bridge, stabbing yourself in the chest, cutting your wrists, taking pills without water first, etc.”

April 3, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Biden’s Sham Summit Won’t Save World Democracy

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | April 3, 2023

President Joe Biden triumphantly saved world democracy last week (at least according to the White House scorecard). Biden co-hosted another Summit for Democracy, a repeat performance after the December 2021 test run. Biden sounded like a Quaalude Savior as he recycled his “inflection point of history” cliché. But the summit proved again that politicians are perils to freedom regardless of their prattle.

Biden promised that “we are seeing real indications that we are turning the tide” in favor of democracy around the globe. Practically no one who’s not on Biden’s payroll agrees. The president’s boast was like taking a victory lap around the deck of the Titanic.

Last year democracy “declined around the world for the 17th consecutive year,” according to Freedom House. Twice as many nations are veering “toward authoritarianism” as towards democracy, according to The Economist. Most shocking: the United States is now categorized as a less free nation than Mongolia, Mauritius, and 56 other nations says Freedom House (funded by the U.S. government, so they must be trustworthy). 

Team Biden believes a big problem with democracy is that politicians don’t have enough power: “Weak state capacity.” In reality, elected rulers around the globe are turning themselves into dictators who increasingly repress their citizens. Rather than representative governments, elected regimes have turned into Leviathan Democracies far superior to the citizenry.

Consider Biden’s record in the Oval Office. Federal judges and/or the Supreme Court have struck down Biden’s eviction moratorium for deadbeat renters, his $400 billion cancellation of federal student debt, his “climate change” decree shutting down power plants, his mask mandate for airline passengers, and his edict compelling all employees of large companies and all federal employees to get COVID vaccine injections. But all of Biden’s decrees are supposedly “pro-democracy” because he won the 2020 election.

“Democracy delivers” was a key talking point for Team Biden at the summit. Presumably, any increase in government handouts automatically increased government legitimacy. Unfortunately, “leashing politicians” is not on the Biden Bingo Card for Saving Democracy™. The American Bar Association recently warned that “the Rule of Law is in Decline Globally” but it is “not a central focus of the U.S. Government’s approach” on democracy. A top ABA official warned, “Discussing sustainable development in the absence of rule of law…is at best delusional and at worst dishonest.” Three-quarters of nations representing almost 85% of the world’s population recently “experienced declines in rule of law,” according to the World Justice Project. In lieu of “government under the law,” Team Biden offers “the People Centered Justice Multistakeholder Cohort’s Declaration and Call to Action.” Sloshing out more government handouts to activist groups who score media headlines was “close enough for government work” to the rule of law.

Rather than a system of informed consent, democracy is degenerating into regimes which blindfold citizens and demand unlimited submission. At the summit, government officials made it clear that freedom of speech is a luxury that democracy can no longer afford. Secretary of Anthony State Blinken declared, “The misuse of technology and the spread of digital authoritarianism must end. We must stand for an affirmative, values-driven, and rights-respecting vision of democracy in the digital era.” “Affirmative” and “values-driven” become code words to legitimize pervasive government censorship. Blinken “proposed a ‘delicate balance’ between ‘openness and security,’ ‘protecting speech and preventing incitement,’ and ‘fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech,’” as Tom Parker observed for Reclaim the Net.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sermonized on a “Countering the Rise of Digital Authoritarianism” panel. He was joined by YouTube CEO Neil Mohan, who could have boasted of how Washington censors his channel. An internal DHS document reveals plans to crack down on “inaccurate” information on “the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.” Any facts which embarrass Team Biden are automatically “inaccurate’ and ripe for suppression. Federally-funded entities spearheaded the censorship of true information on COVID vaccine side effects to bolster Biden’s effort to inject every American.

Eight governments, including Ukraine and Poland, issued a call for more censorship on the first day of the summit. They called for tech companies to take action “against disinformation that undermines our peace and stability” and to suppress posts that “weaken our support to Ukraine amid Russia’s war of aggression.” The letter asserted that “hostile foreign powers are using [social media] to spread false narratives that contradict reporting from fact-based news outlets,” especially the endless reports on the glorious victories of the Ukrainian army. Facebook responded by promising to ramp up its censorship, including relying on “a third-party fact-checking service to determine if posts contain false claims.” Some “third-party fact checking services” have been government fronts. As journalist Aaron Maté scoffed, “We are fueling a proxy war in Ukraine in order to defend freedom, such as the freedom to censor dissenting views on our proxy war in Ukraine.”

Is the “will of the people” so fragile that it can no longer survive exposure to any thoughts that officialdom disapproves? Does winning an election automatically convert tinhorn politicians into minor deities entitled to control the thoughts of any voter? Nullifying freedom of speech converts citizens into vassals that politicians can use and abuse as they please.

Throughout the summit proceedings, piety was thicker than hog slop at an Iowa slaughterhouse. Secretary Blinken declared on March 28, “No woman or girl should face harassment and abuse in-person or online.” The State Department’s effort on this score was propelled by its Global Engagement Center, which previously pressured Twitter to cancel hundreds of thousands of accounts, including vast numbers of hapless Americans. That Center is leading the fight against “gendered disinformation” and whooped up a report on “the need for more research to tackle this scourge.” According to the United Nations, a prime example of this “scourge” is “Zoom Bombing.” That atrocity occurs when uninvited people crash a Zoom meeting and make rude comments. Is it an international human rights crisis because boneheaded Zoom organizers fail to require pass codes to attend a meeting?

As part of its summit festivities, the Biden administration announced new crackdowns to make it “more difficult for corrupt actors to conceal their identities, assets, and criminal activities.” Despite reform promises at the first summit, there has been no worldwide progress. The U.S. ranks #24 on the international corruption index—even worse than France, according to Transparency International. And that score was calculated before the latest revelations of the Biden family pocketing vast sums from smarmy foreign companies.

Biden boasted that his administration plans to spend more than $9 billion to support democracy worldwide by the end of next year. But U.S. foreign aid programs obliterate the anti-corruption initiatives of the U.S. government. An American Economic Review analysis concluded that “increases in [foreign] aid are associated with contemporaneous increases in corruption,” and that “corruption is positively correlated with aid received from the United States.” As a Brookings Institution analysis observed, “The history of U.S. assistance is littered with tales of corrupt foreign officials using aid to line their own pockets, support military buildups, and pursue vanity projects.” Torrents of U.S. “aid” helped make Afghanistan one of the most corrupt places on Earth. John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), observed, “We need to understand how U.S. policies and practices unintentionally aided and abetted corruption.” The U.S. has been “fighting corruption” in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, and in those decades Ukraine became one of the most corrupt nations in Europe. Biden administration officials helped defeat a congressional proposal to create an Inspector General to audit and oversee the $100 billion the U.S. government has pledged to the government of Ukraine.

But another handout will fix that problem. The Biden administration is bankrolling foreign journalists to fight “kleptocracy”—government of thieves. There is even an aid program entitled “Empowering the Truth Tellers.” (Julian Assange need not apply.) The Biden administration claims to support “independent media” by effectively putting foreign journalists on the U.S. payroll. Those journalists are “independent” because the U.S. government says so, and anyone who disagrees will be labeled an enemy of democracy. Besides, the United States is no role model: it ranks a pathetic #42 in the World Press Freedom Index, worse than Moldova and Guyana, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Biden is “saving” democracy” with buckets of goofy new acronyms: SHE PERSISTS, one of the rallying cries for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, now stands for Supporting Her Empowerment: Political Engagement, Rights, Safety, and Inclusion Strategies to Succeed Investing. And then there was SHE WINS (Support Her Empowerment: Women’s Inclusion for New Security). The Agency for International Development is whooping up PxP—Powered by the People. Did the White House believe acronyms should look like drug prescriptions? ADD stands for Advancing Digital Democracy but policymakers should have worked in an ‘H’ to reflect their cluelessness. ACRF stands for the Anti-Corruption Response Fund. They should have tweaked that one to make it ARF-ARF, to symbolize officialdom’s cravenness to the powers that be.

To safeguard democracy, the Biden administration is creating “the Global Network for Securing Election Integrity [GNSEI], to align on standards and practices for supporting clean elections.” On that score, the Biden administration touts its ballot expanding efforts here at home. The White House “fact sheet” detailing progress on democracy touts the Biden proposal to spend $5 billion on the Postal Service to “support for vote-by-mail, including making ballots postage-free and reducing the cost of other election-related mail for jurisdictions and voters.” Ballot harvesting and unverified absentee ballots will save democracy everywhere! Who knew that the “will of the people” was so fragile that it could be blighted by requiring citizens to purchase one first-class stamp to send in their ballot?

Comic relief failed to redeem the summit. The State Department wanted Americans to make short videos with the hashtag #SummitForDemocracy whooping up “What has democracy made possible in your own life?” Such as falling living standards, soaring inflation, sporadic financial panic, and a befuddled commander-in-chief who doesn’t know if he is in Canada or China? A search on Twitter indicates that almost all the videos made with #SummitforDemocracy hashtags were done by governments or by government-funded entities. Biden’s democracy spiel can’t compete with cat videos.

Revealing all the levels of hypocrisy at the summit would be on par with peeling an onion. Mexico President López Obrador declared at the gathering, “Many of the great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of God, or in the name of democracy.” Many of the nations showcased at the summit are dutiful U.S. allies, meaning that Washington ignores their oppression.

In his speech last Wednesday, Biden declared that “the power of these summits” is “not just to speak high-minded words.” But even U.S. government officials feared the summit would be an “inconsequential talk shop,” according to The Washington Post. Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass scoffed, “The summit for democracy is a bad idea that won’t go away… American democracy is hardly a model for others.”

Unfortunately, the Pentagon missed the memo on democracy. Since 2008, foreign soldiers who received training from the U.S. military “attempted at least nine coups (and succeeded in at least eight) across five West African countries,” as journalist Nick Turse reported. The Pentagon denies responsibility for the debacles. But, as Antiwar.com reported, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) declared at a recent congressional hearing, “I think we should at least know how many countries we train the coup plotters.”

Biden concluded his spiel to the Summit, “The great strength of democracy is that it gives us all the tools we need for self-government and self-improvement.” But the tools are controlled by politicians who equate ever greater submission with the triumph of the “will of the people.” Self-government is being defined down to little more than coronating whichever of the rascal’s political parties can offer voters more stuff. With politicians openly championing censorship, Leviathan Democracy is dropping its mask and no longer pretending to give a damn about freedom.

Jim Bovard is the Junior Fellow for The Libertarian Institute. He is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books.

April 3, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Moscow: International Organizations Ignore Kiev’s Threats to Russian Journalists

Sputnik – 02.04.2023

Russian war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a blast at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday.

Kiev continues to threaten Russian journalists with reprisals while international organizations turn a blind eye to the situation, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated just hours after war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in an explosion in St. Petersburg.

Zakharova stressed that Russian journalists are being intimidated by Kiev and its Western sponsors, “literally marked with special labels” on US social media platforms, and subjected to a witch hunt in Western media.

According to the diplomat, the fact that relevant international organizations ignore this can easily be interpreted as tacit approval if not complicity.

The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that Western countries have not investigated any case of violent death of a Russian journalist that was “assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’.”

“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist, assessed by the Kiev regime and its thugs as a ‘success’ has been investigated, or even treated with elementary human sympathy by Western countries, international organizations or foreign professional communities.”

“Up until recently, the West fought extremism and terrorism, marched as a united front in Paris in defense of journalists against whom terrorist attacks were committed. Today, the lack of reaction in the White House, Downing Street, the Elysee Palace, etc., given their alleged concern for the well-being of journalists and freedom of journalism, speaks volumes. The reaction in Kiev is striking, where recipients of Western grants demonstrate undisguised delight over what happened,” Zakharova said.

The spokeswoman added that it is thanks to the Russian war correspondents that the world sees the truth and learns information about what is happening in Ukraine.

“The professional activities of Vladlen Tatarsky, his service to the Fatherland caused hatred with the Kiev regime. He was dangerous for them, but courageously went all the way, fulfilling his duty,” the diplomat added, expressing condolences to Tatarsky’s family.

The 40-year-old Donetsk-born blogger, journalist and war correspondent, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in St. Petersburg on Sunday, April 2. The Russian Investigative Committee has launched an investigation into the explosion to establish the circumstances of the blast. Twenty-five people were injured in the explosion. Authorities are yet to determine as to who was behind the blast.

April 2, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Prominent Russian military blogger killed in St. Petersburg blast

RT | April 2, 2023

An explosion that rocked the ‘Street Bar’ café in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday has claimed at least one life and left 19 people injured, authorities have reported.

Vladlen Tatarsky (real name Maksim Fomin), a military correspondent and blogger, was killed in the incident, according to emergency services.

Tatarsky joined the Donbass militias back in 2014 in the wake of the Maidan coup in Kiev. He has since become known in Russia as a blogger and a correspondent reporting on the situation in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Tatarsky has also authored several books.

According to Readovka news outlet, the man was hosting a live event for supporters of his work when an explosion ripped through the building, blowing the café’s glass front into the street.

Emergency services have reported that an improvised explosive device was detonated near the stage in the cafe.

The incident is reminiscent of another attack on a Russian journalist. In August 2022, Darya Dugina was assassinated in a car blast. She was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who Western media have described as an ideologue of Russian nationalism. According to some reports, he might have been the real target of the attack. The Russian security services later claimed that Ukrainian agents were behind it.

April 2, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Doublespeak: State Department warns about online censorship then threatens to “hold platforms accountable”

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 1, 2023

In a startling display of doublespeak at the Summit for Democracy 2023, United States (US) Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warned about more countries “using the internet to try to control speech” and claimed that the Biden administration is trying to promote an open internet before threatening to “hold platforms accountable” for so-called “harms.”

Blinken raised the alarm about the internet “growing more closed, more insecure, more siloed by the day.”

He continued by stating: “More countries are putting up firewalls and shutting down access, using the internet to try to control speech, quash dissent, spread misinformation and disinformation.”

The Secretary of State followed up by claiming that the Declaration for the Future of the Internet (a 60-country commitment to bolstering “resilience to disinformation and misinformation”) reaffirms the US’s commitment to an “open network of networks that respects democratic principles and human rights.”

After lambasting other countries for closing off the internet and positioning the Biden admin as a paragon of openness, Blinken pivoted and said, “We have to do better at addressing some of the risks that come with the open internet.”

He then proposed a “delicate balance” between “openness and security,” “protecting speech and preventing incitement,” and “fostering innovation and limiting the power of Big Tech.”

Not content with suggesting a balance between protecting speech and censoring speech that the Biden administration deems to be “incitement,” Blinken then threatened consequences for platforms that don’t fall in line.

“The President’s…made clear that we need to be able to hold platforms accountable when they fail to address the harms caused by their technology, from the content they spread to the algorithms that they use.”

Blinken’s comments come days after the introduction of the RESTRICT Act — a bill that would give the US federal government additional powers to crack down on free speech. The bill claims to target “foreign adversaries” and is widely thought to be aimed at ‘s . But the powers in the bill are so vast that it would give the federal government the authority to ban a wide range of apps and online services if they’re deemed to be “national security” threats.

April 1, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Zelensky regime leads request for social media platforms to censor “disinformation”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 1, 2023

 has spearheaded a collective call to action, joining forces with seven other Central and Eastern European nations to combat “disinformation” on social media platforms.

In an open letter, the prime ministers of these nations urge prominent tech companies, such as , to implement effective measures that curb the spread of misleading content and foreign interference, which threatens peace, stability, and democracy.

The letter, signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Moldova, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, alleges a danger of disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilizing their countries and undermining the ‘s support for Ukraine amidst Russia’s aggression.

Tech giants are implored to remain vigilant and avoid inadvertently advancing hostile goals.

Specific steps recommended in the letter include refusing payments from sanctioned individuals, increasing algorithmic transparency, and adjusting algorithms to prioritize accuracy over user engagement.

Furthermore, the leaders insist that platforms dedicate adequate resources to content “moderation” and address the growing challenges posed by deep fakes and AI-generated disinformation.

In response, Meta has stated that it has expanded its fact-checking capabilities in Eastern Europe and implemented measures to combat alleged misinformation related to the conflict in Ukraine.

The company has also restricted access to Russian state-controlled media and added labels to related posts, informing users of the source before they click or share.

April 1, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s Conservative leader promises to repeal censorship bill if elected

One of the few pushing back against bill C-11

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 29, 2023

In his speech at the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, the leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, criticized censorship and promised to repeal Bill C-11.

Attacking political correctness, Poilievre said: “It’s about large corporations in regulated oligopolies winning political favor, by throwing around politically correct statements and advancing an agenda that makes no sense to anyone but them.

“This woke movement is an attack on the freedom of speech of ordinary people and the common sense of Canadians, and in Pierre Poilievre Canadians will have someone who will stand up against world corporations and for the rights of every single person to express themselves freely in a free country.”

Criticizing Bill C-11, he said: “They claim that this is simply to promote Canadian content, although they have yet to tell us what Canadian content actually is. To me, Canadian content is anything that is posted online by a Canadian. They believe that it’s only a small approved list of true experts in Canadiana who can be promoted.”

March 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Facebook ‘disappears’ RT Arabic

RT | March 30, 2023

Mark Zuckerberg’s flagship social network has deleted the page for RT Arabic, rejecting all appeals and handing the address to another user, the channel’s head Maya Manna said on Thursday.

“Two weeks we fought with Facebook to restore the suspended page of RT Arabic, with 17 million subscribers,” Manna said on her Telegram channel. “We tried to get an explanation of what triggered the shutdown, because we never got any strikes or comments.”

After several awkward non-explanations, Facebook’s customer service “simply wished us luck, closed our case, and turned over the URL to another user,” Manna wrote. “Internet democracy in all its glory!”

Facebook blocked the page on March 15, without any explanation or advance warning. Attempts to access the page resulted in the message, “this content isn’t available right now.”

Manna protested the move, calling it proof that the West doesn’t believe in free speech, only “total censorship and blocking.” By way of example, she brought up the EU ban on all “Russian state media” after the military operation in Ukraine began in February 2022, including all of RT’s channels.

“Apparently, this is not enough – the very fact that we exist does not allow them to sleep peacefully,” Manna added.

YouTube was quick to apply the EU ban globally, but continued operating in Russia, its CEO at the time, Susan Wojcicki, told the World Economic Forum in Davos last May. The Ukraine conflict showed that information had “a key role” and “can be weaponized,” said Wojcicki, so YouTube wanted to “help [Russian] citizens know what’s going on and have perspectives from the outside world.”

In November last year, after Facebook’s parent company Meta amended its “violent speech” rules to allow calls of “death to Russians” in the West, the Russian Justice Ministry added it to the register of extremist organizations. The decision affected Facebook and Instagram, but not the messaging platform WhatsApp, because it fell under a different legal category.

March 30, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Why You Should Destroy Your Smart Phone Now

By Simon Elmer | OffGuardian | March 29, 2023

So-called ‘smart phones’ — far more accurately described as ‘dumb phones’ — combine a mobile phone with a watch, with a road map, with a tourist atlas of the world, with a digital camera, with a personal stereo system, with a music collection, with a video recorder, with a diary, with a calculator, with a credit card, with a travelcard, with an office key, with a torch, with a newspaper, with a television, with something to read on the train, and probably a lot more.

I don’t know, because I don’t own one.

‘But it’s so convenient!’ cry those who stare unbelieving at my twenty-year-old Nokia.

To which I reply: ‘Convenience breeds compliance.’ But to what?

Since they were first introduced into our lives in 2008, smartphones have become our outsourced memory and brain, replacing both with the convenience of not having to remember anything or think for ourselves. If you don’t believe me, then answer me this without looking at your smart phone. What is 9 x 13? What was the capital of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia? In what month of which year did the UK invade Iraq at the tail-end of the US-led coalition? Before smart phones, every child in the UK knew the answers to these questions. Now, no adult does.

But they are now even more than this. Smartphones, under the two years of lockdown, were the instrument onto which the COVID-faithful downloaded the software applications (or app) that connected them to the Test and Trace tracking programme that identified and recorded their location, movements, associations and personal contacts.

In the imminent future, smartphones are the instrument onto which, in the guise of the digital verification of our identity — the Government’s ‘consultation’ on which closed this month — the compliant will upload their biometric data (fingerprints, photograph and DNA swab) to a centralised database to which the 32 public authorities presiding over the UK biosecurity state will have access.

Under the Digital Economy Act 2017, these public authorities include the Cabinet Office; the Home Office; the Department for Defence; HM Treasury; the Ministry of Justice; the Department for Education; the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; the Department for Work and Pensions; the Department for Communities and Local Government; the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; the Department for Transport; the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs; Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs; all county, district and London councils; the Greater London Authority; the Council of the City of London; all fire and rescue authorities; all police authorities; all education authorities; all gas and electricity authorities; HM Land Registry; and, under Section 35, any other public authority, or private agent providing a service for a public authority, designated for a specific purpose justifying access to that data.

Smartphones are the instrument that will monitor whether their owners are up-to-date with what the UK biosecurity state decides is fully ‘vaccinated’ with whatever our Government and its partners in the pharmaceutical industry decide we must inject into our bodies as a condition of access to the rights of citizenship.

Smartphones are the instrument that will monitor and record how many times we leave or enter our 15-minute grazing range currently being implemented by our public authorities to restrict and limit our freedom of movement on the justification of ‘saving the planet’.

Smart phones are the instrument that will track our carbon footprint in order to monitor and control the quantity of meat, dairy products, energy, oil, petrol and other products to which the UK biosecurity state — under the terms of the agreements of Agenda 2030 signed by the UK Government in 2015 — will progressively cut off our access between now and 2030.

Smartphones are the means by which our compliance with lockdowns, masking mandates and programmes of gene therapy dictated by the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response Treaty and enforced by the UK biosecurity state will be monitored, recorded and enforced by, among other recourses, cutting off our access to the electronic and digital grid.

And, within the next few years, smartphones will become the digital wallet through which the Bank of England will have complete control over how much, on what and where we spend its Central Bank Digital Currency.

Smartphones are the first generation of the biotechnology that is already being implanted into our bodies in the form of ingested medicines carrying microchips that record compliance; quantum dot dyes in gene therapies injected as vaccines against the latest civilisation-threatening pandemic declared by the WHO; and microprocessors implanted under our skin for the ease and convenience of contactless payments. Smart phones are the precursor of what Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, accurately and prophetically boasted will be ‘the fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities’ in the rapidly approaching future he has planned for us.

Smartphones, therefore, are the technology of our enslavement, and the fact that, knowing all this as more and more of us do, we still — still — won’t discard them, shows how addicted we are to this technology, how deep it has penetrated into our psychology, and in effect into our biology. Like the prisoners forced to construct the camp in which they are imprisoned, we continue to pay increasing sums for our smartphones, upgrade our prison whenever we’re invited to, and demand that its facilities are regularly increased in efficiency with the latest technology.

The truth is, we don’t programme smartphones and we don’t use them. They programme us, they change how we use them. They use us. With the rise of the car as a widely-available convenience between the 1950s and 60s, someone observed that, if aliens visited earth, they would think cars were the dominant life-form, and that we were merely the energy source that, upon entering them, allows them to move about — a little like food is for us. Seventy years and two industrial revolutions later, we’re now the organic component that operates smartphones, and in doing so allows them to replicate in number and increase in power — above all over us. That, at its most basic, is the function of the human being in the Global Biosecurity State. And if we keep thinking that we use our smartphones — as they have programmed us to think — those who programme them will have complete control over us.

So, let’s say just for a moment — symbolically at least, or better yet in anticipation of a future and definitive parting — throw your smartphone away now, as you’re reading this article. Get up, and throw it in the bin. And if you can’t do even that — and I imagine few if any of you reading this will — I invite you to reflect on this addiction to the technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

A smartphone is not a tool. It is not a ‘convenience’. It is biotechnology, and the fact that it isn’t yet implanted into our bodies doesn’t mean it hasn’t already become a part of us — and a part of us you have just demonstrated you are ready to sacrifice your freedom to rather than discard. Indeed, what the past three years of cowardice and obedience have demonstrated is that, as obedient subjects of capitalism, we will defend our slavery with far more vehemence than we will defend our freedoms.

In 1944, as the Second World War drew to its end, the Surrealist poet, André Breton, declared: ‘Freedom colour of man!’ No longer. Freedom, as George Orwell predicted five years later, is now slavery. Because slavery is safe. Slavery is convenient. Slavery is the common good. Slavery is now the highest civic virtue. Slavery is our duty. Slavery is our fate — so don’t bother fighting it. Instead, embrace your slavery. Upgrade your smart phone to a new model.

Queue outside the Apple or Google shops for hours. Wrap your chains in a nice leather wallet. Download the newest app of your enslavement. Show it off to your friends and boast about its new and improved speeds. Never, ever, let it leave your side. Place it under your pillow before you go to sleep, so it can tell you how well you slept. Look into its screen the moment you wake up. For it is your best friend, your big brother, the lover who will never betray you and who you always wished you had. It is your single source of truth — just as Jacinda Ardern told us. Trust no other!

André Breton also said that we will never have a political revolution until we have a revolution of the mind. Or as Parliament Funk paraphrased him years later: ‘Free your mind and your arse will follow’. As the last three years of servitude and compliance have shown, our minds are already in prison. And until we free them, talk of resisting, let alone overthrowing, the Global Biosecurity State is — if you’ll pardon my French — merde.

It is an unfortunately purely hypothetical truth that, if a sufficient proportion of the 93 per cent of UK citizens who own a smart phone (51.7% Apple, 47.78% Google and 0.57% Samsung) threw them away, the threats to our freedom we face today would be over. At least for now. Until they invent new chains with which to bind us.

If you are still in doubt, this week the UK Government announced a system of ‘Emergency Alerts’ that will be sent to your smart phone whenever they announce an emergency. They didn’t say what constitutes an emergency requiring such an alert, but based on the past few years of hysteria, they might include hot or cold weather; pollution levels; wild-fires; flooding; a busy beach; demands on the energy grid; food shortages; a cyber-attack; a new virus, social unrest; political demonstrations; the threat of nuclear war; the enforcement of martial law. Any of these ‘emergencies’ and more in the future might activate the alarm on your smart phone; but the response will be the same.

‘When you get an alert’, the Government has instructed us in no uncertain terms, ‘stop what you’re doing and follow the instructions.’ But that’s just a gesture to the illusion that we are still free to choose. Once your smart phone is uploaded with the Government’s Digital Verification app and linked to the system of digital surveillance and control being imposed in the UK in the guise of ‘15-minute cities’, these instructions will be enforced without the need for our willing compliance. Your electric car will be turned off; your allocation of petrol or food or energy will be frozen; your Digital Pound wallet will be locked shut.

Feel like getting rid of your smart phone yet? ‘But what’s the point, when nobody else will get rid of theirs?’ Individual non-compliance is almost always enacted in public, in a social setting, in the presence of other people, who may or may not be complying themselves — usually the former. At the very least, it draws attention to the technologies and regulations enforcing compliance, and with which we are becoming habituated to the point where they have become transparent, invisible. Indeed, the dominance of an ideology can be measured by its transparency. Not using a smart phone makes what is now transparent visible again.

Compliance with the UK programme of gene therapy was not — as was claimed by those who willingly complied — a personal and individual choice to be ‘vaccinated’ against a deadly virus, and therefore none of the business of those who opposed the national programme. It was, and is, an act of collective obedience that created the consensus with which the non-compliant were and are socially ostracised, demonised in the media as murderers, fired from our jobs and treated under newly-made laws as citizens without rights and freedoms, prisoners in our own country and homes.

In the same way, using a smart phone is not an individual choice — whether chosen freely or out of habit or addiction; it is a collective act of compliance that is creating the digital camp in which all of us will one day be imprisoned. Only when millions of us stop using the instruments of our enslavement will we escape this camp — as we must and only can — together; but that individual choice cannot be avoided.

Individual non-compliance is always a demonstration of non-compliance. In Parliament Square in London, opposite the Houses of Parliament, there is a statue of the suffragette, Millicent Fawcett. I’d have preferred one of Sylvia Pankhurst; but she holds a small banner saying: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere.’ In the West, and in particular in the UK, we’ve been cowards for a long time, and we need to find our courage. That comes from individuals standing up and saying: ‘No, I will not comply.’

I repeat: the digital camp in which they wish to imprison us is — literally — in our hands. Get rid of them. Smash them! We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have a world of freedom to win.

Simon Elmer is the author of two new volumes of articles on the UK biosecurity state, Virtue and Terror and The New Normal, which are available in hardback, paperback and as an ebook. This article is an extract from the text he read at the launch of these books held in London on 11 March, to mark the third anniversary since the World Health Organization declared the ‘pandemic’.

March 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Australian senators refuse to investigate the WHO pandemic treaty

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | March 29, 2023

An Australian senator’s motion to hold an inquiry into the ‘s (WHO’s) controversial international pandemic treaty was blocked after Labor and Greens voted against it.

The treaty, which will be legally binding under international law, will expand the WHO’s surveillance powers, allow the unelected global health agency to target “misinformation,” and more. The next stage of discussions on the treaty will begin next week.

The motion, which was introduced by Senator Malcolm Roberts, called for the WHO’s international pandemic treaty to be referred to the Foreign Affairs Defense and Trade References Committee for an inquiry.

Numerous lawmakers supported the motion and blasted the pandemic treaty during a debate.

Senator Roberts accused WHO Director-General of “misleading the public about what the WHO is doing with the pandemic treaty.”

Senator Ralph Babet warned about the “ever-encroaching power of the WHO” and blasted those who had dismissed criticism of the pandemic treaty as a “conspiracy theory.”

Senator Geraard Rennick said that  risks being influenced by the “vibe” of the WHO if the treaty passes and pointed to the way where Australia would “religiously… follow the orders or the proclamations from the WHO without any questioning” during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Senator Alex Antic highlighted the mass censorship that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic and criticized the way people were branded “conspiracy theorists” if they went against the establishment’s Covid narrative.

“Anyone who defied the WHO’s supposedly expert advice, including emminent medical professionals, were censored and vilified by the media and Big Tech at the behest of government and these organizations and… the only narrative that was allowed oxygen were those parroting the WHO,” Antic added. “Many Australian Health Care Providers were suspended for contradicting what was ultimately the WHO’s position on Covid-19 vaccines. Their predictions and observations have turned out to be correct and we’ll see how that narrative is slowly changing.”

Senator Matthew Canavan said Australia “should be getting out of the World Health Organization because of their negligent handling of the coronavirus” and pointed to several of the unelected health agency’s missteps during the pandemic.

However, several senators opposed the motion and praised the WHO.

“This is actually a good thing,” Senator Dorinda Cox said in reference to the treaty. “It’s important that we learn from the responses of governments right across the world so that we can do better next time.”

Senator David Shoebridge claimed that criticism of the WHO’s pandemic treaty was “disinformation” being pushed by a “conspiracy club.”

Despite strong support for the motion from several senators, it was ultimately defeated by two votes, with Labor and Greens voting against it.

You can watch the full debate on this motion here.

This is one of several recent efforts to shine a light on the WHO’s far-reaching pandemic treaty. United States (US) Senator Ron Johnson recently introduced an amendment to require Senate ratification for any pandemic agreement with the WHO. However, Johnson’s attempt to scrutinize the treaty was also defeated.

March 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

RFK, Jr. and CHD Sue Biden, Fauci for Alleged Censorship

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 28, 2023

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) on Friday filed a class action lawsuit against President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

Kennedy, CHD and Connie Sampognaro filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Monroe Division, on behalf of all the more than 80% of Americans who access news from online news aggregators and social media companies, principally Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The plaintiffs allege top-ranking government officials, along with an “ever-growing army of federal officers, at every level of the government” from the White House to the FBI, the CIA and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to lesser-well-known federal agencies of inducing those companies:

“to stifle viewpoints that the government disfavors, to suppress facts that the government does not want the public to hear, and to silence specific speakers — in every case critics of federal policy — whom the government has targeted by name.”

Kennedy, chairman and chief litigation counsel of CHD, said American Democracy itself is at stake in this case:

“U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, ‘Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.’ It also violates the Constitution.

“The collaboration between the White House and health and intelligence agency bureaucrats to silence criticism of presidential policies is an assault on the most fundamental foundation stone of American Democracy.”

The lawsuit’s argument rests on the Norwood Principle, an “axiomatic,” or self-evident, principle of constitutional law that says the government “may not induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

According to the plaintiffs, the U.S. government used the social media companies as a proxy to illegally censor free speech.

The complaint cites the now-weekly, ongoing disclosures of secret communications between social media companies and federal officials — in the “Twitter files,” other lawsuits and news reports — which revealed threats by Biden and other top officials against social media companies if they failed to aggressively censor.

The suit points to examples where the censorship campaign allegedly trampled First Amendment freedoms, such as the Hunter Biden laptop story, the COVID-19 Wuhan lab-leak theory and the suppression of facts and opinions about the COVID-19 vaccines.

The plaintiffs do not seek financial damages. Instead, they seek a declaration that these practices by federal agents violate the First Amendment and a nationwide injunction against the federal government’s effort to censor constitutionally protected online speech.

The complaint points to a Supreme Court decision that said social media platforms are “the modern public square” and argues that all Americans who access news online have a First Amendment right against censorship of protected speech in that public square.

Jed Rubenfeld, one of the attorneys arguing the case filed Friday, explained why the lawsuit was filed as a class action:

“Social media platforms are the modern public square. For years, the government has been pressuring, promoting, and inducing the companies that control that square to impose the same kind of censorship that the First Amendment prohibits.

“This lawsuit challenges that censorship campaign, and we hope to bring it to an end. The real victim is the public, which is why we’ve brought this suit as a class action on behalf of everyone who accesses news from social media.”

According to the complaint, when the administration violates the First Amendment of an entire class of people, the judiciary must step in to protect American’s constitutional rights:

“Apart from the Judiciary, no branch of our Government, and no other institution, can stop the current Administration’s systematic efforts to suppress speech through the conduit of social-media companies.

“Congress can’t, the Executive won’t, and States lack the power to do so. The fate of American free speech, as it has so often before, lies once again in the hands of the courts.”

The lawsuit also names Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Commerce, DHS, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and other individuals and agencies — 106 defendants in total.

‘The largest federally sanctioned censorship operation’ ever seen

According to the lawsuit, efforts by federal officials to induce social media platforms to censor speech began in 2020 with the suppression of the COVID-19 lab leak theory and reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Once President Biden took office in January 2021, senior White House officials reported the Biden team began “direct engagement” with social media companies to “clamp down” on speech the White House disfavored, which officials called “misinformation.”

Revelations would later prove the administration was asking social media companies to suppress not only putatively false speech but also speech it knew to be “wholly accurate” along with expressions of opinion.

This practice, it alleges, spread from the administration and through the entire government, becoming “a government-wide campaign to achieve through the intermediation of social media companies exactly the kind of content-based and viewpoint-based censorship of dissident political speech that the First Amendment prohibits.”

Similar allegations about this massive federal censorship campaign also so were alleged by the plaintiffs in the Missouri. v. Biden case, but this case introduces many new allegations.

Some, but not all, examples of government-coordinated suppression of free speech on social media cited in the complaint include the following:

  • Substantial evidence of coordinated efforts by Fauci and others to suppress the lab-leak theory, which remains plausible and supported by evidence.
  • Extensive email communication between Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, demonstrating Facebook and other social media companies adopted policies that identified any claims about the lab-leak hypothesis to be “false” and “debunked.”
  • Facebook’s admission that its censorship of COVID-19-related speech, on supposed grounds of falsity, is based on what “public health experts have advised us.”
  • Public statements by Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan’s podcast that Facebook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story as a result of communications from the FBI.
  • Extensive public commentary by FBI Special Agent Elvis Chan about his work with social media companies and CISA to discuss suppression of election-related speech on social media.
  • “Twitter files” documents on Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story.
  • “Twitter files” documents demonstrating weekly meetings between agents from the FBI’s 80-agent social media task force and Twitter to discuss content suppression along with direct payments from the FBI to Twitter for compliance with requests.
  • CISA’s work with the Center for Internet Security, a third-party group, to flag content, including particular individuals, for censorship on social media.
  • “Twitter files” evidence about the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), a vast network of high-level interactions with the federal government and social media platforms — which included proposals, ultimately adopted, for the U.S. government to establish its own “disinformation” board. One free-speech advocate described the EIP as “the largest federally-sanctioned censorship operation” he had ever seen.
  • Documents demonstrating after the election, the EIP was transformed into the “Virality Project,” which was dedicated to “take action even against ‘stories of true vaccine side effects’ and ‘true posts which could fuel hesitancy.’”
  • Threats by congressional representatives, senators and Biden to break up Big Tech if they did not improve censorship practices.
  • Census Bureau documents describing work by its “Trust & Safety” team with social media platforms to “counter false information.”
  • “Twitter files” documents, news reports, and documents received through Freedom of Information Act requests that demonstrated myriad, consistent communications with Facebook, Twitter and Google (YouTube) and numerous Biden administration officials named as defendants in the lawsuit including Murthy, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, officials from the CDC, DHS, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, CISA, the U.S. State Department, the White House — including White House Counsel — and other agencies about how to take action against “misinformation” related to COVID-19.

This last set of communications included action against the so-called “Disinformation Dozen,” which includes Kennedy. According to the complaint, “Facebook itself has stated that the infamous ‘disinformation dozen’ claim has no factual support.”

Kennedy tweeted some of the evidence that the White House directly censored him.

The complaint alleges that the collusion between the administration, federal agencies and social media companies to suppress constitutionally protected free speech now also extends beyond the election and COVID-19-related commentary to include suppression of speech on topics such as climate change, “clean energy,” “gendered disinformation,” pro-life pregnancy resource centers and other topics.

It also alleges, based on research from the Media Research Center that identified hundreds of instances of censored critiques of Biden, that social media companies “have achieved astonishing success in muzzling public criticism of Joe Biden.”

It argues that the defendants’ power over social media gives them a “historically unprecedented power over public discourse in America — a power to control what hundreds of millions of people in this county can say, see, and hear.”

CHD President Mary Holland, who also serves as CHD general counsel, told The Defender :

“If Government can censor its critics, there is no atrocity it cannot commit. The public has been deprived of truthful, life-and-death information over the last three years. This lawsuit aims to have government censorship end, as it must, because it is unlawful under our constitution.”

The lawsuit asks the court to permanently enjoin them from, “taking any steps to demand, urge, pressure, or otherwise induce any social-media platform to censor, suppress, de-platform, suspend, shadow-ban, de-boost, restrict access to constitutionally protected speech, or take any other adverse action against any speaker, protected content or viewpoint expressed on social media.”

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

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

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trudeau invokes “flat-earthers” and “anti-vaxxers” as he calls for social platforms to be liable for “disinformation”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 28, 2023

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked “flat-earthers” and “anti-vaxxers” to call for a crackdown on “disinformation” online. He made the comments during a town hall event in Ottawa last week.

Trudeau began by saying the government should find a balance between censorship and free speech to protect people from disinformation.

“Governments have very limited tools to protect people in an online world, which is a good thing. It allows for a tremendous amount of freedom – freedom of expression, freedom of discovery – no oppressive governments controlling what you see, what you want, but it also opens us up to a tremendous amount of crap, of hate speech, of things that are illegal, but also things that are just going to bring us down roads where we’re going to get lost,” he said.

He then talked about misinformation in terms of anti-vaxxers and flat-earthers.

“I remember a few years ago before the pandemic, getting really fascinated by flat-earthers, and trying to understand – sort of – the thinking behind them, of people who decided actively to create an identity for themselves that was to just clearly reject what science settled thousands of years ago with the ancient Greeks and that there’s no real contrast to,” he explained.

“It’s more of an identity thing rather than a reasoning thing, and to have people sucked into that, it was fascinating to try and see what it was all about.

“And of course, we went on to understand the phenomenon of anti-vaxxers and anti-science, anti-skeptics, and this rise in these echo chambers that are validating this kind of thinking in ways that have real consequences.

“There are people in Canada who died surrounded by their families because they truly and genuinely believed that the vaccine was more dangerous than the virus, and it killed them.”

The PM then argued that online platforms should be held responsible for the content they host.

“My responsibility as Prime Minister is to try and keep everyone in this country as safe as I possibly can, but I can’t protect everyone from every bit of disinformation on the Internet. So we have to have reflections of how we move forward, how we responsibilize the companies that are controlling so much, the private companies that are controlling so much of the public square you now live in that doesn’t have police paid by your taxes to keep you safe.”

“It doesn’t have rules around businesses to regulate so you don’t get scammed by the corner store. This is the new world we’re in that we’re going to have to try and adjust to, and I can tell you, I’m worried about the direction we’re going.”

March 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

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