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Climate lockdowns coming? You will be tracked in your suburb and happy about it.

By Jo Nova | December 3, 2022

The 15 Minute City is a UN and WEF plan, because they care about you want you to drive less.

A cartoon from the WEF just for you good girls and boys:

15 Minute City, WEF, UN.

In the WEF’s own words — this rearrangement of cities is absolutely about climate change:

As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.

And the solution was the pandemic (they really say that):

The obvious, yet incomplete, answer is the pandemic… with COVID-19 and its variants keeping everyone home (or closer to home than usual), the 15-minute city went from a “nice-to-have” to a rallying cry. Meeting all of one’s needs within a walking, biking or transit distance was suddenly a matter of life and death.

And then the dark hand of the totalitarian managers appears, as James Woudhuysen, warned in Spiked in late October:

The madness of the ‘15-minute city’

The green agenda is taking inspiration from the illiberal days of lockdown.

To this end, Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, wants to divide the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts. In these districts, it is said, most household essentials will be accessible by a quarter-of-an-hour walk or bike ride, and so residents will have no need for a car.

On the surface, these 15-minute neigbourhoods might sound pleasant and convenient. But there is a coercive edge. The council plans to cut car use and traffic congestion by placing strict rules on car journeys.

Residents will have to register their cars with the council and they will be tracked to count their journeys through the key gateways. It’s the social credit scheme that starts with your car and works like anti-frequent-flyer points.

Under the new proposals, if any of Oxford’s 150,000 residents drives outside of their designated district more than 100 days a year, he or she could be fined £70.

The concept of the 15-minute city was born with ‘C40’. Chaired today by London mayor Sadiq Khan, C40 calls itself a ‘network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis’.

Climate lockdowns? Seriously?

It all sounds a bit ridiculous to suggest a lockdown “for the climate” but listen to the BBC.  They’re working awfully hard to persuade us — they obviously think voters won’t want this. Here they are connecting the “15 Minute City” to the fun of covid lockdowns, and setting this up as though it’s totally normal for the government to decide who your friends are:

How ’15-minute cities’ will change the way we socialise

And furthermore lockdowns in Paris were great social moments where we all made friends. Who knew how much fun it would be to be told you couldn’t drive far?

… for Fraioli, the two-month lockdown that began on 17 March – confining her to a 1km radius of her home – gave her a nuanced, enriching view of her neighbourhood. “I discovered it’s possible to feel like you’re in a small village in Paris,” she says. “To get to know your neighbours, to maintain good links with shopkeepers, to favour local craftsmen and shops over large supermarkets. I even joined a citizens’ movement where people prepare food baskets for homeless people. I thought I would have a hard time living the lockdown, but I was perfectly at home, in a quiet place.”

I don’t seem to recall “getting to know neighbours” as being part of any lockdown anywhere?

And lookout —  the 15 minute city is not just Oxford, but turning up in Brisbane, Melbourne, Barcelona, Paris, Portland and Buenos Aires. It’s everywhere.

UN Climate Change logo

Oxford City Council is moving faster than the rest

Apparently, not enough people are catching buses or riding bikes. But instead of making that more appealing, the totalitarians will force it through tracking and fines. Oxfordshire has just approved on November 29th, the “traffic filters” trial which will turn the city into a “fifteen minute city”. The Trial will start in Jan 2024.

It’s a crowded area, Oxfordshire, and no one likes traffic congestion, but in a free world the problem is self-limiting as drivers get fed up with delays and exorbitant parking costs, and they car-pool or choose to catch the bus or ride a bike. But in Big Nanny State the local rulers start making rules about who can and can’t visit and how often, and they want your car registered on their own special list with cameras to track you and fines to punish you. They offer exemptions of course, but then you have to apply for them and get permission.

Oxfordshire County Council Pass Climate Lockdown ‘trial’ to Begin in 2024

Vision News, November 30th

Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.

Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.

Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras.

In the end, these aggressively overmanaged schemes mean more paperwork, more tracking, more jobs for bureaucrats and more free passes for “friends” of Big Government.

The more rules you have the more corrupt the system gets. For example, some city blocks are included in the favored list with 100 passes, while others get just 25 — so the property values of the inner circle addresses rise. As a bonus, in years to come property developers “in the know” and on the favoured list with certain councilors can arrange for rezoning on the right day (the one after they buy the property) and voila — that’s a nice capital gain for them

“Reconnecting Oxford” wants to end these artificial blockages

From “Reconnecting Oxford” –– a protest movement to stop filters and road closures.

The councilors held a major consultation process but apparently knew the outcome. It says rather a lot about the attitude of one councilor who said it was going ahead whether people liked it or not.

Traffic filters will divide city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, agrees highways councillor

Oxford Mail, October 24

ROAD blocks stopping most motorists from driving through Oxford city centre will divide the city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.

And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.

Businesses in Oxford are not impressed:

Hotelier Jeremy Mogford, who owns the Old Bank Hotel in High Street and the Old Parsonage Hotel and Gees, both in Banbury Road, described the plan as disastrous for business.

He previously told the Oxford Mail : “What we have is people making decisions that don’t live in the city centre or spend much time in the city.

“The council has adopted the position that climate change is real”

Skeptic and long range weather forecaster Piers Corbyn spoke to the council to warn them:

[Piers Corbyn said] “The point is that the basis of these documents are false – man-made climate change does not exist and if you don’t believe me, look at the sky. You should have a special meeting to discuss whether man-made climate change exists or not.”

Responding to Mr Corbyn’s claims, councillor Andrew, the council’s cabinet member for highways management, said: “Mr Corbyn said climate change is not real – this council has formally adopted a position that climate change is real.

“Mr Corbyn you are wrong, we are right.”

Well that’s it then. Councils control the weather. If this had nothing to do with climate change they could have said “we’ll see” and dismissed him anyway. But they have to believe…

Oxfordshire council has already infuriated local businesses earlier this year with road closures and traffic calming measures which have reduced the customer base significantly. Drivers destroyed 20 bollards in less than three weeks, and one frustrated cafe owner put up a giant billboard in protest saying “So much for democracy”. Even cyclists don’t like the traffic slowing measures, saying their road trips are more dangerous.  There is at least one Oxford protest group that seems to have some success in stopping the road closures.

So who does want the traffic filters? Oxford University and the bus companies, and the council which expects to make £1.1m from fining errant drivers.

From the Oxford City Council Consultation page we see the plan is to reduce journeys that you think are necessary but the councilors don’t.

Why are we introducing trial traffic filters?

Across our county, we want to reduce unnecessary journeys by private vehicles and make walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice.

This will help us deliver an affordable, sustainable and inclusive transport system that enables the county to thrive whilst protecting the environment and making Oxfordshire a better place to live for all residents.

And it is about “protecting the environment” by tracking you and resisting your movement.

Canterbury is planning something spookily similar –– dividing up the city into five different districts with drivers unable to cross between zones without being fined. The old grid system of cities made for shorter distances and more choices. The new system offers only more obstacles and less freedom.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk says PayPal is moving in the “direction of social credit”

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 5, 2022

“ seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions – that’s concerning,” PayPal co-founder, and now Tesla and  CEO, , said in a recent Spaces.

Last month, Twitter filed registration paperwork to pave the way for it to process payments, according to a filing with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which was obtained by The New York Times.

Following that, Musk said that he envisioned users connecting their online bank accounts to the social media service, with the company moving later into “debit cards, checks, and whatnot.”

Following public backlash, PayPal recently abandoned a proposed update to its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that would have led to penalties of $2,500 for spreading “misinformation.” However, the company still maintains a policy carrying similar penalties for “intolerance.”

The AUP prohibits the “promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance.” Free speech advocates feel that the policy is vague and is left to the interpretation of PayPal staff.

Aaron Terr, a senior program officer of the rights group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said at the time that the policy “suffers from the same defect as a lot of the other proposed prohibitions on speech, in that it’s vague.”

Terr added: “And it’s left open to interpretation by PayPal employees, and because of its vagueness, that gives them a lot of discretion to essentially just enforce that provision against disfavored speakers, and to do so in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner.”

The revoked misinformation policy update was condemned by PayPal founders. Co-founder Elon Musk said the update “goes against everything I believe in.”

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Repeal All Laws Against the Phony Crime of ‘Seditious Conspiracy’

By Ryan McMaken | Mises Wire | December 3, 2022

On Tuesday, a District of Columbia jury convicted Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs of seditious conspiracy in relation to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol building. Three other defendants were acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of other felonies. Convictions of seditious conspiracy represent a political victory—not just a legal one—for those who have long insisted that the January 6 riot was no mere riot, but an organized armed rebellion of some sort. This claim has been key in the administration’s ongoing vague claim that “democracy”—however defined—is somehow “at risk.”

Yet, few of the legal proceedings arising out of the Justice Department’s prosecutions of rioters have done much to forward this narrative. Out of the approximately 850 people charged with crimes of various sorts, only a small number have been charged with anything close to treason or violent insurrection. Specifically, the closest the Justice Department has come is the charge of “seditious conspiracy” applied to 11 defendants total. So far, only 2 have been convicted of the charge.

Seditious conspiracy must not be confused with the act of treason legally defined in the US Constitution, however. Generally speaking, while treason requires an overt act of some kind, seditious conspiracy is a charge that a person has said things designed to undermine government authority. In other words, it is a “crime” of intent as interpreted by state authorities. This is fundamentally different from picking up a weapon and using it against agents of a government.

Of course, as we’ve noted here at mises.org before, the very idea of treason is itself problematic since it assumes that violence against a government agent is somehow worse than a crime against a private citizen. Governments love this double standard because it reinforces the idea that the regime is more important than the voluntary private sector. Ultimately, however, violence against a person or property should be prosecuted as exactly that, and not as some separate category of crime against the “special” human beings who work for a regime.

Seditious conspiracy suffers from this same problem but is even more problematic because it relies primarily on circumstantial evidence to “prove” that a person was saying things in favor of obstructing or overthrowing a government. Indeed, the supposed necessity of such a “crime” is belied by the fact that no such crime even existed in federal law between the repeal of the hated Alien and Sedition Acts, and the advent of the Civil War. Nor did seditious conspiracy laws play an important role in the U.S. regime’s military success against the secessionists in the Southern Confederacy.

Instead, what we find is that seditious conspiracy is a crime that is both prone to abuse by state authorities and is unnecessary in terms of preventing violence to life and property. In cases such as the January 6 riot, crimes against persons and property ought to simply be considered violent crimes and property crimes of the usual sort. Contrary to absurd romantic notions that the January 6 rioters struck some sort of blow against “democracy” the fact is that any disruptions against Congressional proceedings can be addressed as assault, trespassing, and other related crimes. Seditious conspiracy, in contrast is merely a type of “thoughtcrime.”

The Origins of Seditious Conspiracy 

When the framers of the United States constitution wrote the document’s text, they defined treason in very specific and limiting terms:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

Note the use of the word “only” to specify that the definition of treason shall not be construed as something more broad than what is in the text. As with much of what we now find in the Bill of Rights, this text stems from fears that the US federal government would indulge in some of the same abuses that had occurred under the English crown, especially in the days of the Stuart monarchs. Kings had often construed “treason” to mean acts, thoughts, and “conspiracies” far beyond the act of actually taking up arms against the state. Instead, in the US constitution, the only flexibility given to congress is in determining the punishment for treason.

Naturally, those who favored greater federal power chafed at these limitations and sought more federal laws that would punish alleged crimes against the state. It only took the Federalists ten years to come up with the Alien and Sedition Acts which stated:

That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty, and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor.

Note the references to “intent,” “counsel,” and “advise” as criminal acts so long as these types of speech are employed in a presumed effort to obstruct government officials. This part of the Act however, was never used by the regime. Those prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition Acts were charged under the section on seditious libel which were heartily opposed for being obviously and blatantly against basic rights of free expression. Nonetheless, the Sedition Act was allowed to expire thanks to the election of Thomas Jefferson and the Republicans (later known as Democrats).

For sixty years, the United States government had no laws addressing sedition on the books. But the heart of the 1798 Sedition Act would be revived. As passed on July 1861, the new Seditious Conspiracy statute stated

That if two or more persons within any State or Territory of the United States shall conspire together to overthrow, or to put down, or to destroy by force, the Government of the United States, or to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States; or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States; or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States against the will or contrary to the authority of the United States; or by force, or intimidation, or threat to prevent any person from accepting or holding any office, or trust, or place of confidence, under the United States . . . shall be guilty of a high crime

Given the timing of the legislation—i.e., in 1861 following the secession of several southern states—it is assumed the origins of the legislation at the time was in addressing alleged Confederate treason. This is not quite the case. Indeed, the legislation enjoyed considerable support from those who were especially militant in their opposition to the confederacy. For example, Rep. Clement Vallandigham of Ohio—who would later be exiled to the Confederacy for opposing the war—supported the bill precisely because he thought it would help in punishing those engaged in “conspiracies to resist the fugitive slave law.” Indeed, the Congress had initially become serious about punishing “conspiracies” not in response to southern secession, but in response to John Brown’s 1859 raid in Harper’s Ferry.1

Southern secession and fears of rebellion helped enlarge the coalition in favor of a new sedition law. The new sedition law represented a significant expansion of the idea of “crimes against the state” in that the sedition law did not require overt acts against the government, but merely “conspiring” vaguely defined. Douglas understood this perfectly well, explaining the benefits of his bill as such:

You must punish the conspiracy, the combination with intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in advance. There is no principle more familiar to the legal profession than that whenever it is proper to declare an act to be a crime, it is proper to punish a conspiracy or combination with intent to perpetrate the act. . . . If it be unlawful and illegal to invade a State, and run off fugitive slaves [for example] why not make it unlawful to form conspiracies and combinations several States with intent to do the act?

Others were more suspicious of expanding federal power in this way, however. Sen. Lazarus Powell and eight other Democrats presented a statement opposing the passage of the bill.2 Specifically, Powell and his allies believed the new seditious conspiracy law would be a de facto move in the direction of allowing the federal government to effectively expand the definition of treason offered by the federal constitution. The statement read:

the creation of an offense, resting in intention alone, without overt act, would render nugatory the provision last quoted, [i.e. the treason definition in the Constitution] and the door would be opened for those similar oppressions and cruelties which, under the excitement of political struggles, have so often disgraced the past history of the world.

Even worse, the new legislation would provide to the federal government “the utmost latitude to prosecutions founded on personal enmity and political animosity and the suspicions as to intention which they inevitably engender.”

Seditious conspiracy legislation gives the federal government far greater leeway to punish political opponents. Certainly, such legislation could have indeed been used against opponents of the fugitive slave acts, as well as against opponents of federal conscription. After all, opponents of both the Civil War draft and the Vietnam War draft—as with the heroic draft-card burnings of the Catonsville Nine, for example — ”conspired” to destroy government property. It would be far harder to prove in court that such acts constituted treason. Unfortunately, the new legislation was ultimately approved in 1861, and the United States government had its first permanent laws against seditious conspiracy.

We now have the same reasons to fear seditious conspiracy laws as Powell did in 1861. Such measures allow the federal government to construct laws addressing intent, thoughts, and words, rather than overt acts. This greatly expands federal power and allows for prosecution of mere inflammatory rhetoric against the federal government. Indeed, prior to his conviction this week, Rhodes’s attorneys reminded jurors that Rhodes never even entered the capital on January 6. They also noted that Rhodes had expressed verbal opposition to entering the capital. Yet, he was apparently convicted because “conspiracy” can encompass so many acts, especially in the minds of jurors.

A common-sense foundation for addressing violence in the Capitol building, however, would be to simply prosecute those who engage in actual violence and trespass. It is clear, however, that gaining convictions for seditious conspiracy has been an important goal for the administration because it assists in the narrative that Donald Trump’s supporters attempted some sort of coup. Unfortunately, These sorts of political prosecutions are just the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from the Justice Deptrtment. While the FBI can’t be bothered with investigating sex criminals such as Larry Nassar, they’ll pull out all the stops to prosecute hundreds of those who entered the Capitol on January 6, many of whom simply stood around gawking at the scenery. But when Congress gives the FBI a near carte blanche as it has done with seditious conspiracy laws, we should expect as much.

  • 1. Catherine M. Tarrant, “To ‘Insure Domestic Tranquility’: Congress and the Law of Seditious Conspiracy, 1859-1861,” The American Journal of Legal History 15, no. 2 (April 1971): 112, 119.
  • 2. Ibid., p. 119.

Ryan McMaken is the editor of Mises Wire and The Austrian. Ryan has degrees in economics and political science from the University of Colorado, and was the economist for the Colorado Division of Housing from 2009 to 2014. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Israel ‘afraid’ to reveal looted Palestinian documents fearing debunked Zionist myths

MEMO | December 5, 2022

Israeli historian Shay Hazkani has said that the Israel State Archive’s refusal to release written material looted from the Palestinians on the pretext that this would “undermine national security” is actually “cover for a completely different fear”. He believes that the tens of thousands of documents looted by Israel during the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population in 1947/48 will, if made available, completely undermine the Zionist narrative about the founding of the occupation state.

Writing in Haaretz, the associate professor of Jewish Studies also described the impossible hurdles he has had to jump through to obtain access to tens of thousands of pages of yet to be declassified Arabic documents looted by Israel.

One of the many false claims spread by Israel’s founders was that the Palestinians wanted to “throw the Jews into the sea.” Hazkani has found no calls for murdering Jews just because they were Jews in either Arab propaganda or the educational material aimed at Palestinians and Arab fighters in 1948.

“Judging by the documents I collected for my latest book, the claims about an Arab plan to ‘throw the Jews into the sea’ are actually rooted in official Zionist propaganda,” he explained. “This propaganda began during the [Nakba], perhaps to encourage Jewish fighters to leave as few Palestinians as possible in the areas that would become part of Israel.” A comparison of Arab and Jewish propaganda issued in 1948 revealed that the propaganda of the Israeli army and its precursor, the Haganah, was much more violent.

Hazkani was only granted permission to view documents five years after he had sought permission to examine several files that were looted from Palestinian institutions during the fighting that took place in the wake of Israel’s creation and whose existence had been concealed. Nevertheless, full details of the information that would reveal what Palestinian intentions were, including those of the much-maligned Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husseini, remain classified until 2040. While Al-Husseini’s correspondence with senior Nazi officials was made available, the official policy and motives of the leader of the Palestinian national movement during World War Two will remain classified for another two decades.

“There are not and cannot be any state secrets in Arabic documents written by Palestinians, such as their plans for an independent Palestinian state or documents from an orphanage in Jaffa,” argued Hazkani. Indeed, he said that the biggest secret is the very existence of these documents, which are a memorial to a destroyed Palestinian civilisation. The reason why they remain a “secret” and why Israeli officials responsible for declassifying the documents want to keep them locked away is because they might undermine the official Zionist narrative and raise doubts among people willing to examine history with a critical eye.

December 5, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Ye on Alex Jones: Christian Carnival King and Truth-Telling Holy Fool

BY KEVIN BARRETT • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 3, 2022

Video Link

Was it a terrifying display of anti-Semitism? A PR disaster? A plot to undermine what’s left of free speech? Or something else entirely?

Mainstream media reports on Kanye “Ye” West’s three-hour interview alongside Nick Fuentes on last Thursday’s Alex Jones show—just days after West and Fuentes dined with former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago—reported it as a Nazi hatefest. Consider these headlines:

“Masked Kanye West Praises Hitler in Alex Jones Interview.” – Washington Post

“Kanye West to Alex Jones: ‘I Like Hitler.’” – Rolling Stone

“Biden Condemns Antisemitism After Ye Praises Hitler.” – CNBC

“Virulently antisemitic comments by Kanye West spark new GOP criticism.” – Politico

Mainstream conservatives lapped up the MSM headlines and declared a PR disaster. “Kanye West is a deranged antisemite. I want absolutely nothing to do with that lunatic” snarled Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY). Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) called Ye’s performance “disgusting.” Zio-con journalist Ben Shapiro seemingly tried to set West up to be suicided, saying “I would not be surprised, God forbid, if something should happen—if Ye should do something to himself.”

Investigative journalist Whitney Webb also saw West’s performance as a PR disaster: “It seems like Kanye West, because of his visibility, and the outrageousness of his behavior, is going to be part of the pretext” (for eliminating what remains of free speech in America).

Elon Musk, that self-styled free speech absolutist, quickly caved in to pressure and banned Ye’s Twitter account on a transparently ludicrous pretext. Musk absurdly claimed that Ye’s tweet of an image of a superimposed Star of David and swastika was an incitement to violence.

If I had only read the media coverage, and not watched the actual interview, I would have come away with the impression that Ye had spent three hours snarling and frothing at the mouth and demanding the mass murder of Jews. But as usual, the reality was the exact opposite of the media reports. Far from spewing hate, Ye spent the whole three hours spreading love. When Alex Jones kowtowed to contemporary Western culture’s obligatory demonization of Hitler, Ye escalated from “love everybody, even Hitler” to “love everybody, especially Hitler.”

And that, of course, is the only possible Christian response. A cornerstone of Jesus’s teaching was “love your enemies.” In Matthew 5:43-45 Jesus basically says that it’s easy to love your friendly neighbor—anyone can do that—but you need to go further and love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. So when Ye expressed love for everyone, including his Zionist persecutors, and made the point that Christians must not just love “even Hitler,” they must especially love Hitler, he was simply following the teachings of Jesus.

So who exactly are these mainstream media witch hunters and lynch mob leaders who are driven into a frenzy of satanic hatred when they hear Ye spreading the Christian gospel of universal love? Hint: They are not Christians. The Jewish religion, and post-religious Jewish culture, are both characterized by a rabidly ethnocentric fear and loathing of the perceived enemies of their tribe. Rather than loving their enemies, they are taught to fear and hate and persecute them, and to demand “a pound of flesh” and never display mercy when they gain the upper hand.[*] And since they see Hitler as their ultimate enemy symbol, anyone who extends Christian love to Hitler, as Ye did, becomes a target of their fanatical vindictiveness.

So Ye was walking in the footsteps of Jesus, not Hitler. And he was doing so in a touchingly hilarious carnivalesque manner by embodying two ancient archetypes: the truth-telling holy fool and the fool-king of carnival. You might even say Ye was just fool-king with us. (And if you doubt Ye is a fool, consider this: What else can you call someone who trades a billion dollars for truth?)

Ye as truth-telling fool echoes the Fool character in Shakespeare’s King Lear by blurting out the hard, even horrific truths that no smart, sane person would ever dare tell. This “truth-telling holy fool” archetype also exists in Moroccan Sufism, where such Sufi saints as the wild illiterate mountain peasant Abu Yi’zza, beloved of God, could get away with denouncing the tyrannical king to his face—an act reminiscent of Ye’s “foolish” denunciation of tyrannical Jewish-Zionist power in America.

But Ye has ambitions beyond being a mere garden-variety billion-dollar holy fool. He says he is running for president. But the office he is really running for is fool king.

Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century, explains in Rabelais and His World that much of the best of European literature and culture is steeped in the ethos of carnival: a holiday period during which ordinary social rules are suspended in favor of wild, anarchic, supremely creative joy and celebration. The carnival typically begins with the election of a fool king to preside over the revelry, as recounted in the famous scene of Qasimodo’s coronation in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Ye presided over the anarchic carnival he unleashed on Alex Jones with soulfully royal aplomb. His Nettin’ Yahoo ventriloquism mocking the squeaky little prime minister of Israel was precisely the sort of thing that fools used to do to entertain their audiences. And his repeated violation of the most sacred rules of polite American society—never take the J-word in vain, speak of the Holocaust only with cringing and bathetic reverence, never raise even the slightest questions about its historicity, and always hold up Hitler as the avatar of ultimate evil—marked off the three-hour interview space as a carnivalesque world in which the mendaciously mundane values of ordinary reality could be mocked, inverted, and transcended.

So Kanye was simultaneously channeling Jesus and the fool king archetype. And that isn’t a contradiction. For the Jesus of the Gospels is a very special type of fool king. Though billed as the King of the Jews, Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem in a gilded chariot surrounded by the high and mighty. Instead, he rides into town on an ass, surrounded by lowborn outcasts. That decidedly un-regal entry symbolizes Jesus’s inversion of the normal values of pomp and hierarchy and the rule of the strong over the weak, in favor of humility and love.

The irony, of course, is that the Jews were waiting for a world-conquering hero, an arrogant, strutting vanquisher of the goyim. And what they got was a hippie peacenik spiritual healer riding into town on a donkey, surrounded by even scruffier followers. No wonder they rejected, insulted, and killed him,[**] and have been rejecting and insulting and killing him ever since.

So Kanye’s method-acting tribute to Jesus and the holy fool and fool king archetypes, though hilariously joyful and liberating, has put him on the Road to Calvary and laden him with a heavy cross to bear. May Allah protect and guide him, and bless him and all of the truth-telling justice-seeking saliheen.

Notes

[*] These are of course generalizations or “truthful tropes,” and they are roughly accurate in general terms, but of course do not apply equally to all Jewish people or interpreters of Jewish religion.

[**] Or at least imagined they killed him—but the Qur’an places that notion sous rature.

December 4, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Macron wants more Twitter censorship to stop people saying “crazy things” about vaccines, pandemics, and war

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022

French President Emmanuel Macron criticized ’s owner  for relaxing content censorship policies on the platform, arguing that content on Twitter needs more regulation. Macron made the comments in an appearance on ABC News ahead of his visit to The White House.

Macron said that democracies are under “very strong pressure” from forces like social media where users can say “crazy things about a vaccine, a pandemic, the war.”

This week, Musk said he would relax content moderation policies surrounding topics like the coronavirus.

Good Morning America and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “He’s making it worse, isn’t he?”

“I think this is a big issue,” Macron responded. “I think it deserves to be largely engaged. What I push very much for, want, is exactly the opposite – more regulation.”

Macron further argued that speech in a democracy has to be “based on respect and political order.”

The French President added: “You can demonstrate, you can have free speech, you can write what you want – but there is responsibilities and limits. The limits is you cannot go in the streets and have racist speech, or antisemitic speech, you cannot put at risk the life of someone else. Violence is never legitimate in democracy.”

Macron also criticized former US President , whose Twitter account was recently restored after an almost two-year ban after the January 6, 2021, riot at the US capitol.

“When in one of the biggest democracies and oldest democracies in the world, you can have a leader and supporters deciding on purpose to refuse the results because this is the one they didn’t want to see, this is just the beginning of the end of the democracy,” Macron said.

Earlier this week, regulators in the European Union warned Musk that Twitter could be banned in the region or face fines if it does not enforce content censorship policies. Musk was also warned about the arbitrary reinstatement of previously banned accounts. The new owner said he would grant “general amnesty” to banned accounts that had not broken the law or spammed.

December 3, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

New Zealand admits it has direct access to Facebook takedown portal where it can flag content for censorship

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022

New Zealand’s government has officially admitted that it has partner access to ’s controversial content takedown portal.

This portal is designed specifically for government agencies to flag content to Facebook for censorship. According to The Intercept, which reported on the portal in October, government partners can also use the portal to “report disinformation directly” to Facebook.

And in a recent response to a New Zealand Official Information Act (OIA) request, which asked whether the government has partner access to Facebook’s takedown portal, the New Zealand government confirmed that the Department of Internal Affairs has access. While this was the only government department that was confirmed to have access to the portal, the OIA response also said “we cannot advise if any other government agency has access to the takedown portal.”

We obtained a copy of the OIA response for you here.

The OIA response didn’t detail how much content had been censored via this Facebook takedown portal. However, other reports on similar types of backdoor content takedown arrangements between governments and Big Tech have shown that governments regularly use them to target legal content such as parody accounts, accounts questioning the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, and so-called election misinformation.”

Publicly, the New Zealand government has endorsed the censorship of legal content with Prime Minister  saying “disinformation” should be regulated like guns, bombs, and nuclear weapons. Big Tech companies have also agreed to a censorship pact in the country where they suppress “misinformation” and “harmful content.”

Most other governments haven’t admitted that they have access to these portals. However, last year The White House did admit that the United States (US) Surgeon General’s Office is flagging posts for Facebook to censor.

The Intercept’s report on this Facebook content takedown portal claimed that several other United States (US) government agencies have access to the portal, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Documents released as part of 2021 lawsuits suggest that the  Secretary of State’s Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC) also has access to the Facebook takedown portal and a similar type of portal on Twitter.

December 2, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Rumble files lawsuit to challenge New York’s social media censorship law

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 1, 2022

Free speech video sharing platform  and its subscription platform  have sued New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James to challenge a social media censorship law that they say would force platforms to target constitutionally protected speech.

Rumble and Locals are being represented by the free speech nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and are joined in the lawsuit by constitutional law professor Eugene Volokh, the co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

“The law is titled ‘Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited,’ but it actually targets speech the state doesn’t like — even if that speech is fully protected by the ,” FIRE said in a statement.

The law forces a wide variety of internet platforms to publish a policy detailing how they’ll respond to posts that are deemed to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” based on protected classes such as religion, gender, or race.

It also requires platforms to create a way for visitors to complain about “hateful content” and requires them to respond to complaints directly. Platforms that refuse to comply can be investigated by the AG’s office, subpoenaed, and fined up to $1,000 per violation.

It comes into force on Saturday, December 3, 2022.

As is often the case with censorship laws, this Social Media Networks; Hateful Conduct Prohibited law doesn’t define “vilify,” “humiliate,” or “incite.”

Rumble suggested that this means it would “cover constitutionally protected speech like jokes, satire, political debates, and other online commentary.”

FIRE noted that the law’s scope is “entirely subjective” and suggested that it could target a wide range of First Amendment-protected speech such as “a comedian’s blog entry ‘vilifying’ men by mocking gender stereotypes” and most comments on almost any website “that could be considered by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, as ‘humiliating’ or ‘vilifying’ a group based on protected class status like religion, gender, or race.”

FIRE added: “Bloggers, commenters, websites, and apps around the country are ensnared by the New York law due to its broad definition of ‘social media networks’ as for-profit ‘service providers’ that ‘enable users to share any content.’ This vague wording means that the law can impact virtually any revenue-generating website that allows comments or posts and is accessible to New Yorkers — but no government entity can legally compel blogs or other internet platforms to adopt its broad definition of ‘hateful conduct.’”

“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” Volokh said. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”

Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski added: “New York’s law would open the door for the suppression of protected speech based on the complaints of activists and bullies. Rumble will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so I’m delighted to work with FIRE to help protect lawful online expression.”

This law is one of several attempts by New York to encroach on the First Amendment and push for the censorship of constitutionally protected speech. Other laws and proposals from the state have pushed to ban the sharing of violent crime videos online, ban gendered language in law, and allow officials to sue platforms that are suspected of “contributing” to the “knowing or reckless” spread of “misinformation.

December 2, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

US federal government pays $5M for software to turn citizens into online “misinformation” responders

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022

Journalism group Hacks/Hackers was awarded $5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop software that would encourage ordinary Americans to warn their friends and family about misinformation in their online speech. Users of the software would confront alleged misinformation by replying with text recommended by the software.

Hacks/Hackers has been tasked with developing the “Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), a suite of expert-informed resources that are intended to provide guidance and encouragement to individuals and communities as they address contentious or difficult topics online,” the NSF group said in an October 24 article.

According to a video demonstration of the software, the tool will tell users if a social media post is “harmful” and, if it is, it “suggests relevant responses through tailored response examples or templates” that users can copy and paste as responses.

“Every day there are motivated citizens, like librarians, health communicators, and amateur volunteers, who engage with the misinformation that is posted by their peers and make efforts to share reliable information to empower their communities,” the video said.

Another video by ARTT claimed that social media efforts to fight misinformation are not as effective in influencing users’ views as efforts made by friends.

“That’s why we want to focus on these peer connections when it comes to having these conversations online … Instead of coming to you from the platform, it’s actually coming to you from a friend,” the video said.

The group led by Hacks/Hackers is also working on Wikipedia tools, which will determine those that are a “credible source” on Covid vaccines and prevent sources that are not credible from being cited on Wikipedia.

The list of credible sources has started to be organized, with outlets like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian classified as “reliable,” and outlets like The Federalist and The Daily Wire classified as “unreliable” or “conspiracy.”

December 2, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Doctors who are accused of spreading “misleading information” could be jailed under new British Columbia law

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | November 29, 2022

During the pandemic, several doctors in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) hit the headlines for opposing Covid measures. State-sanctioned medical authorities responded by warning physicians that if they “put the public at risk with misinformation,” they may face investigations and regulatory action. Now, just 18 months later, these threats from medical authorities have evolved into a sweeping piece of legislation that includes two-year jail sentences for doctors who are deemed to be spreading certain types of “false or misleading information.”

The new legislation, Bill 36 — Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA), was approved by the legislature last Thursday and immediately received Royal Assent. A Cabinet order will determine when it comes into force.

According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that defends the freedoms of Canadians, the bill will permit BC’s Health Minister to appoint College Boards who have the power to enforce many of the bill’s provisions. The bill also gives the Health Minister powers to enforce some provisions.

These combined powers can be used to jail, fine, and suspend doctors who are deemed to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and force doctors to get vaccinated as a condition of being eligible to practice. These powers are outlined in sections 259, 514, 518, 506, 511, and 200.

You can see the full text of Bill 36 here.

Powers to suspend and impose limits on health practitioners

Section 259 (“Summary protection orders”) states that health practitioners can be suspended or have limits imposed on their practice authority if they provide “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and it’s deemed that “a person who acts on the information is significant risk of harm” or providing the information is deemed to be a “health hazard” under the Public Health Act.

The Public Health Act classifies any activity that “is likely to interfere, with the suppression of infectious agents or hazardous agents” as a health hazard. This definition is broad and could easily be applied to criticism of vaccines, masks, lockdowns, thermal surveillance, lateral flow tests, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, antibody tests, and any other measures that authorities claim are necessary to stop the spread of Covid or another infectious disease.

Bill 36 also doesn’t define “false or misleading information” which raises the possibility that doctors could be suspended for sharing something that challenges the current narrative and later turns out to be true.

During the pandemic, multiple statements that were branded false later turned out to be true, such as those related to vaccines. Initially, high-ranking public health officials praised the purported 90% Covid-19 vaccine efficacy rate and said the vaccine will protect against the delta variant. Big Tech platforms made questioning the effectiveness of the vaccine a bannable offense. Yet this year, high-ranking health officials have reversed their stance and admitted that they “knew” Covid-19 vaccines wouldn’t prevent infection.

Powers to jail and fine health practitioners

Section 514 (“Offences”) and Section 518 (“Penalties”) permit fines of up $200,000 per individual or $500,000 per company and prison terms of up to two years for those that “knowingly” disclose information that contravenes a provision of Bill 36.

This seemingly suggests that someone who “knowingly” violate’s Bill 36’s rules on false or misleading information can be jailed or fined.

Just like the term “false or misleading information,” the term “knowingly” isn’t defined in Bill 36 and there’s no methodology or test in the bill that describes how courts will determine whether someone knowingly violated the rules.

Section 506 (“Search and seizure order”) permits judges to authorize a person to search and seize items from a health practitioners’ premises on the pre-crime-esque premise that the target will “likely contravene” a provision of Bill 36.

And section 511 (“Warrantless search”) allows those petitioning the judge for a search and seizure order to perform warrantless searches if they deem there to be “grounds for a search and seizure order” and “the delay necessary to obtain the order would result in the loss or destruction of evidence.” Those performing warrantless searches are also allowed to prevent the lawful owner of the premises from entering and seize items if they deem there to be “reasonable grounds” for it.

This seemingly means that if a health practitioner is deemed to be “likely” to break the bill’s false or misleading information rules or “likely” to push back against the bill’s mandatory vaccine provisions, even when they haven’t actually done any of these things, they could have their premises searched and items seized without a warrant if the person performing the search decides that there are grounds and that evidence could be destroyed.

Powers to force health practitioners to get vaccinated

Section 200 (“Eligibility to practise”) allows the Health Minister to introduce regulations that make being “vaccinated against specified transmissible illnesses” a condition of eligibility to practice. This means that doctors could be forced to get the Covid vaccine and any other vaccines specified by the Health Minister in order to continue practicing.

“An end run around democratic checks and balances”

Bill 36 has been blasted by legal groups and political parties.

“The legislation represents an end run around democratic checks and balances,” the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms wrote in a statement on Bill 36.

BC lawyer Charlene Le Beau added: “The enactment of Bill 36 would evidence a further erosion of the rights and freedoms our Charter is supposed to protect, particularly individual liberty. As Aristotle posited, ‘The basis of a democratic state is liberty.’”

David Leis, the vice president of engagement and development at the public policy think tank the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, called the bill “a full-frontal assault on the professional integrity and freedom of the health-care professions” and said the bill is “entirely inappropriate.”

November 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Tensions grow between Apple’s censorship practices and Elon Musk’s Twitter

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 29, 2022

 has claimed that  has threatened to “withhold”  from the App Store without giving a reason.

“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted on Monday.

The announcement came after Musk said that the iPhone maker had “mostly stopped advertising” on Twitter. He also posted a poll asking users if Apple should “publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.”

Apple is yet to respond to Musk’s claim. It is unclear what “withhold” means. In most cases, it could mean refusing updates to the app or even removing the app from the App Store completely until Twitter obeys its demands.

There have been various clues about Musk’s growing annoyance at Apple’s monopolistic practices. The Twitter owner criticized the App Store’s in-app purchases fee, calling it a “hidden 30% tax.”

Musk has said he is going to loosen the platform’s content censorship guidelines, and has already begun reinstating banned accounts.

November 30, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Twitter quietly changes Covid-19 policy

RT | November 29, 2022

Twitter has said it will no longer enforce its coronavirus misinformation policy, according to an update on the platform’s Covid-19 transparency page that went largely unnoticed since it was posted last week. The move came as its new owner Elon Musk announced a “general amnesty” for previously suspended accounts.

The misinformation policy was initially developed in 2020 amid the outbreak of Covid-19 and was meant to combat “harmful” misleading posts about the coronavirus, government policies aimed at curbing its spread, and related vaccines.

Users who violated the rule received strikes. After two or three strikes, their accounts were suspended for 12 hours. After four, they would be locked out for a week, while offenders with more than five strikes were permanently banned from the platform.

According to statistics published by Twitter itself, between January 2020 and September 2022, the platform’s moderators challenged over 11.72 million accounts and suspended more than 11,000 for violating the rule. They also scrubbed nearly 100,000 pieces of content worldwide under the policy.

The extensive moderation policy became a topic of heated debate. Some called for more censorship of posts deemed to be harmful, while others argued this constituted suppression of free speech.

Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion last month, he has made a number of dramatic changes at the company, including laying off nearly two-thirds of its staff and significantly cutting the site’s moderation and management teams.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, the billionaire also vowed to extend a “general amnesty” to an unspecified number of suspended accounts after holding a Twitter poll, in which more than 72.4% out of 3.1 million respondents supported the move.

Critics have argued that the social networking service could soon become a hotbed for misinformation, right-wing extremism and hate speech. Musk, however, has insisted that he wants Twitter to become a level playing field and a bastion of free speech where people can peacefully exchange their views on a wide range of topics.

November 29, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

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