Scott Ritter: US Complicit in Ukraine’s War on Journalists
By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 03.04.2023
On Sunday, April 2, 2023, the well-known Russian journalist/blogger, Vladlen Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, was killed in what appears to have been a targeted assassination.
At the time of his murder, Tatarsky had over 560,000 followers on his Telegram channel, making him one of the most influential voices when it came to covering the ongoing Russian special military operation in Ukraine.
The Russian government has publicly condemned the attack, with Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemning the role played by the West, noting that the harassment of Russian journalists by the West constitutes a veritable “witch hunt” that represents an acquiescence, if not outright complicity, in the murder of persons like Tatarsky and Daria Dugina, the daughter of the noted Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin, and a journalist in her own right.
“Not a single case of the violent death of a Russian journalist hailed as a ‘success’ by the Kiev regime and its thugs, has been investigated by Western countries, international organizations, or foreign professional communities, and not even basic human sympathy has been shown,” Zakharova noted.
The double standard of the collective West, and in particular the United States, which prides itself for its ostensible support of a free press, has been put on display for all the world to see. In 2012, Marie Colvin, a war correspondent for The Sunday Times, was killed while covering the conflict in Syria.
In February 2019, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, of the US District Court in Washington, DC, awarded Marie Colvin’s estate damages in the amount of $300 million, claiming that Colvin had been “specifically targeted” by the Syrian government “because of her profession.” Judge Jackson further stated that “The murder of journalists acting in their professional capacity could have a chilling effect on reporting such events worldwide,” adding that “a targeted murder of an American citizen whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of war zones and of wars generally, is outrageous.” [Note: The Syrian government denies that Marie Colvin was specifically targeted. She died when a so-called “media center” in a rebel-held town that doubled as a command center was struck by Syrian artillery. Colvin was operating in Syria without the permission of the Syrian government, in an active war zone.]
The murder of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky clearly represents the deliberate targeting of journalists operating in their professional capacity. Both Dugina and Tatarsky provided reporting that was “vital to our understanding of war zones and war,” and yet, because this “understanding” came with a Russian slant, the US government remains silent.
The “chilling effect” which Judge Amy Jackson warned about is, it seems, to be embraced when those chilled speak Russian, or whose facts sustain a Russian narrative.
The compassion shown Marie Colvin by the US government, in the defense of a free press, is exposed as a lie when confronted by the silence that followed the deaths of Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. But this was to be expected — after all, the US is seeking the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange so he can be prosecuted for the crime of publishing so-called “secrets” that exposed war crimes and other official malfeasance on the part of the US government and military in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Putting a journalist in jail for 175 years (the maximum sentence Julian Assange would face if found guilty) is the same thing as a death sentence. Free speech, American-style, is not free — it comes with a heavy price, especially if one publishes material that runs against the US-backed official narrative.
Both Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky were included on the notorious “Myrotvorets” “kill list,” purportedly promulgated by the Ukrainian Security Services, along with hundreds of others—many of them minor children—similarly marked for death for the crime of speaking out against the policies of the Ukrainian government.
I, too, am on that list, along with scores of other Americans and non-Ukrainians.
To date, the US government has yet to condemn the Ukrainian government for targeting US citizens to die for exercising their Constitutionally protected right of free speech.
If the US government won’t protect its own citizens, one cannot expect it to speak out in the defense of the lives of non-US citizens designated for speech-related assassination.
But this isn’t simply a case of remaining silent in the face of crimes being committed by others. The US government is an active participant in the Ukrainian government’s campaign to silence dissenting voices using whatever means possible, including targeted assassination. The US government funds, helps organize, and actively supports the work of the Center for Countering Disinformation, or CCD, a Ukrainian agency operating under the auspices of the Office of the President of Ukraine. The CCD publishes a so-called “black list” containing the names of persons designated by the Ukrainian government as facilitating “Russian propaganda,” and designates those whose names appear on this list as “information terrorists” and “war criminals” who must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Just to be clear, the US actively hunts down and kills persons designated as terrorists. To fund and support similar designations of its own citizens by a foreign government — Ukraine — known to arrest, torture, and murder dissenting voices means the US, implicitly, supports marking them for death.
This is the truth behind the US silence in the face of the murders of Russian journalists like Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky. A nation founded on the principles of free speech cannot tolerate free speech when it is practiced by those who oppose the US-backed narrative. Rather than engaging these dissenting voices in fact-based debate, dialogue, and discussion, the US —cognizant of the fact that their side could not prevail in such a contest — opts to silence these voices forever. For Julian Assange, this means life in prison.
For Daria Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, this meant death.
This is how you kill a free press. Hopefully the voices of dissent that remain will not be “chilled” by this result, but rather opt to double down on their commitment to pursue the truth, whatever the cost.
I know I will.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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 China‘s TikTok. 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.
Zelensky regime leads request for social media platforms to censor “disinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | April 1, 2023
Ukraine 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 Meta, 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 European Union‘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.
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.”
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.
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’.
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 World Health Organization‘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 Australia 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.
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NATO Sanctions and the Coming Global Diesel Fuel Disaster
By F. William Engdahl – New Eastern Outlook – 11.04.2022
Amid the ongoing global inflation crisis, NATO heads of state and mainstream media repeat a mantra that high energy prices are a direct result of Putin’s actions in Ukraine since end of February. The reality is that it is the western sanctions that are responsible. Those sanctions including cutting SWIFT interbank access for key Russian banks and some of the most severe sanctions ever imposed, are hardly having an impact on the military actions in Ukraine. What many overlook is the fact that they are increasingly impacting the economies of the West, especially the EU and USA. A closer look at the state of the global supply of diesel fuel is alarming. But Western sanctions planners at the US Treasury and the EU know fully well what they are doing. And it bodes ill for the world economy.
While most of us rarely think about diesel fuel as anything other than a pollutant, in fact it is essential to the entire world economy in a way few energy sources are. The director general of Fuels Europe, part of the European Petroleum Refiners Association, stated recently, “… there is a clear link between diesel and GDP, because almost everything that goes into and out of a factory goes using diesel.” … continue
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