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PayPal Demonetises the Daily Sceptic

BY TOBY YOUNG | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | SEPTEMBER 21, 2022

If you’re a regular donor to the Daily Sceptic and got an email from me in the small hours of the morning telling you that PayPal had closed our account and urging you to set up a new donation with a link to our donate page, don’t panic. It wasn’t a scam. PayPal really has shut down our account and the email really was from me.

I’ll tell you the full story in a moment, but just to be clear – this won’t affect the majority of people making regular donations, just those whose donations are processed by PayPal. So unless you’ve received an email from me with instructions about how to donate without using PayPal, please don’t cancel your recurring donation. I repeat: Please don’t cancel your donation. This just applies to people whose donations are being processed by PayPal and I’ve written to all of you.

The first I heard about this was on Thursday afternoon last week when I received a notification from my personal PayPal account informing me that it was being shut down because I’d violated the company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’. I looked at that policy and it covers things like fraud and money laundering so my first thought was it must be a mistake. Then, a few minutes later, I got another notification, this one from the Daily Sceptic’s PayPal account. That, too, had been shut down and for the same reason. Eh? That was odd. Then, another email, this one from the Free Speech Union’s PayPal account. Same story – the Acceptable Use Policy.

Now call me a cynic, but the chances of all three accounts violating the same policy within minutes of one another struck me as a bit implausible. Was something else going on?

I contacted customer services and asked what I’d done, exactly, on my personal account that ran afoul of PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. I’ve had it since 2013 and use it, at most, four times a year, usually to receive money from a Swiss weekly magazine I occasionally write for.

The person I spoke to said she had no idea, but if I wanted I could “escalate“ the matter and someone higher up the food chain would get back to me. I did that, obviously, and a couple of days later received a notification that my appeal has been unsuccessful. No explanation offered beyond the original one. Oh, and by the way, it would be keeping the money in that account for up to 180 days while it decided whether it was entitled to “damages” for my yet-to-be-explained breach of its Acceptable Use Policy.

It was the same story with the other two accounts. The only clue as to what might be going on was a message sent a couple of days ago from PayPal on the now closed Daily Sceptic account. The crucial passage read:

PayPal’s policy is not to allow our services to be used for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance. We regularly assess activity against our long-standing Acceptable Use Policy and carefully review actions reported to us, and will discontinue our relationship with account holders who are found to violate our policies.

That message was a bit weird since it didn’t explicitly accuse the Daily Sceptic of promoting “hate, violence or racial intolerance”, or say that that was how we’d violated its precious policy. But it certainly implied it. To which my response is: How exactly? Or, more profanely: What the f*** are you talking about?

Even if the Daily Sceptic is guilty of that sin – and I defy anyone to point to an article we’ve published that promotes “hate, violence or racial intolerance” – why is that a reason to shut down my personal account or the FSU account? I still haven’t received any indication of why that’s happened. And for what it’s worth, I’ve written to the CEO of PayPal UK – Vincent Belloc, you can email him here – and the Corporate Affairs Department of PayPal US and PayPal UK (you can email them here and here), asking for some kind of explanation. No reply, obviously. Laughably, it says on the media contact page of PayPal‘s website above the email addresses: “Reporter on a deadline? Looking to book an interview or need a comment for a story?” The implication is that someone from its crack Corporate Affairs team will get back to you immediately. But I emailed them last Thursday and still haven’t heard back.

I suspect what’s really going on is that someone at PayPal – possibly the entire C-suite – doesn’t like what the Daily Sceptic or the Free Speech Union stands for. The company has form in this area. As Matt Taibbi wrote earlier back in May:

In the last week or so, the online payment platform PayPal without explanation suspended the accounts of a series of individual journalists and media outlets, including the well-known alt sites Consortium News and MintPress.

Those sites – Consortium News and Mint Press – are both left wing and they’re opposed to the war in Ukraine, which is presumably why PayPal cancelled them. Is the fact that the Daily Sceptic has published articles critical of the mainstream narrative about that war – including one in which we linked to Mint Press – the reason we’ve been cancelled? Seems a bit harsh, given that we’ve also published several articles defending Ukraine and its war effort and debunking some of the criticisms of the current Ukrainian regime.

A number of sites that have raised questions about the Covid vaccines have also been demonetised by PayPal in the past few months, including the U.K. Medical Freedom Alliance. Liz Evans, the head of the UKMFA, also had her personal PayPal account closed at the same time.

Is that fact that we’ve published data suggesting the mRNA vaccines aren’t as efficacious or as safe as we were initially led to believe why we’ve been cancelled?

Colin Wright, a former colleague of mine at Quillette and a staunch critic of trans rights dogma, was deplatformed by PayPal in June, presumably because some people in the company didn’t approve of his gender critical views. We’ve expressed similar views on the Daily Sceptic. Was that the issue?

My hunch is it’s all of the above. PayPal just doesn’t like free speech, which is why it has shut down the FSU account at the same time. There are five issues in particular where it’s completely verboten to express sceptical views and if you do you can expect to be cancelled, not just by PayPal but by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.: the wisdom of the lockdown policy and associated Covid restrictions, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA vaccines, Net Zero and the ‘climate emergency’, the need to teach five year-olds that sex is a social construct and the war in Ukraine. Dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in any of those areas is no longer permitted.

This is the new front in the ongoing war against free speech: the withdrawal of financial services from people and organisations that express dissenting opinions on those topics. And not just those who express them, but those who defend them, too, like the FSU. That‘s what makes this an escalation in the war on free speech. Until now, companies like PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon and CrowdJustice have only demonetised individuals and groups whose views they disapprove of. Now, PayPal has closed the account of an organisation that defends people’s right to free speech, without taking sides on the issues they’re speaking about. Even that is no longer allowed, according to this Silicon Valley behemoth.

Fear not, comrades. I may not be able to use PayPal again in a personal capacity, but I’m confident the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union will survive. Yes, we’ll take a hit, but I hope people who still believe in free speech and the importance of casting a sceptical eye over the prevailing orthodoxy will show their support by joining or donating.

To join the FSU, click here. To donate to the FSU, click here. And to donate to the Daily Sceptic, click here.

And rest assured, PayPal has been expunged from all our payment systems. There‘s zero risk that if you give money to either of those organisations it will be pocketed by the fintech Death Star.

I thought about launching a campaign to get PayPal to restore its services to the three accounts, but then decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with the wretched company. Even if it did a reverse ferret, what guarantee is there it won’t demonetise us again? No, from now on I will have nothing more to do with PayPal and if you’re a customer of the company I hope you’ll follow suit. (Here is a handy YouTube video explaining how to close your PayPal account.)

Stop Press: If anyone reading this is a donor to the Daily Sceptic or a member of the FSU based in Texas, please get in touch. In Texas, it’s illegal for large social media companies to ban users’ posts based on their political viewpoints. Is PayPal a social media company? Users can send messages to each other so… maybe. Worth exploring.

September 23, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Dr. Bridle vindicated after Moderna CMO’s confession

By Mike Campbell | The Counter Signal | September 21, 2022

A June interview with the Moderna Chief Medical Officer has surfaced where he concedes the spike protein from the COVID vaccine can interact with and damage heart cells, vindicating Dr. Byram Bridle, a Canadian doctor who warned about the vaccine over a year ago.

“We know so much more about myocarditis today than we did a year ago,” said Dr. Burton.

“I do believe that it is the spike protein . . . that either causes a little bit of direct damage to the heart, or antibodies that are produced that react with the heart cells,” he said.

Dr. Bridle, a defamed viral immunologist professor at Guelph University in Ontario, responded in his substack on Monday.

“Are people going to accuse the manufacturer of spreading misinformation?” he asked.

In June of 2021, Bridle expressed concerns that the spike protein in the COVID vaccine could travel throughout and damage the body.

Subsequently, “my life exploded into a storm of harassment, accusations, and censorship,” Bridle said.

Bridle is still unable to practice in his research lab at Guelph University. He must work from home and is an outcast at his university.

A slanderous website was launched to pop under search results for Bridle. The website claims “the mRNA vaccine is injected into the upper-arm (the deltoid) muscle. There is no spike protein in the mRNA vaccines.”

Canadian health officials accused experts who raised safety concerns about the COVID vaccine of spreading disinformation. Those claims went largely unchallenged by mainstream media, who pushed for more lockdowns and restrictions in their questioning.

Bridle said being vindicated with the Moderna admission comes with “mixed emotions” since he’s suffered “irreparable damage” to his career and reputation.

“I wonder if the naysayers will listen to the COVID-19′ vaccine’ manufacturers as they now confirm this 1.5-year-old message.”

In July, Ontario Chief Medical Officer Kieran Moore announced that a fourth vaccine is now available for everyone 18+ but said not everyone should get it due to the risk of myocarditis.

Vaccines continue to be recommended for healthy babies in Canada and children, even though many countries have stopped offering vaccines to kids.

September 23, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

I just received a 30 day Facebook ban for this bit of satire

By Toby Rogers | September 18, 2022

“Position switching” is the basis of empathy. So I’ve been trying to put myself in the shoes of our adversaries to understand their world view. But the more I do this, the more alarmed I become. The mainstream position on the pandemic and vaccines is literally insane.

So this morning I got up and tried to jot down The Official Narrative — from the perspective of the people who believe it. The more I wrote, the more absurd and untenable it became. I posted it to Facebook and was promptly banned for 30 days for “violating community standards.” Again.

I’m not sure what part the Stasi objected to. I did not use the word vaccine. I said that Pharma Loves Us(TM). Apparently the Stasi are feeling raw and triggered because they are always wrong about everything and their friends now all have myocarditis.

Here’s the offending post:

The Narrative(TM)

I want to make sure that I understand The Narrative(TM) correctly so that I can remain a Respectable Citizen(TM) in Good Standing(TM) with mainstream society:

1. The pharmaceutical industry is all-knowing. They are the source of all that is good and true in the world including life itself. The pharmaceutical industry is infallible.

2. The fact that all of the major pharmaceutical companies are in fact felons is unimportant. What? Did that even happen? I don’t know. Why are we even talking about this? What matters now is injecting as many of their products as possible.

3. The 30,935 reports of death after the thing are A Coincidence(TM). The HHS report showing that this system undercounts harms by a factor of 100 is… What? I never heard of that. I think I saw a warning label about that on social media. Pharma and the government Love You(TM) and Would Never Hurt You(TM). One. That’s how many people died after the thing. And that’s less than 1 in a million. Because.

4. The fact that Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Lancet Commission on the origins of Covid, after reviewing all of the available evidence, has come to the conclusion that SARS-CoV-2 came from a U.S. bioweapons lab is what? Why does anyone care where it came from? Everyone knows that the strange eating habits of the Chinese people are to blame. Nature: dangerous. Chinese peasants: guilty. Bioweapons labs: do they even exist? We need an international treaty to protect the pangolins or the bats or frozen food or whatever.

5. The first four xhots saved 20 million lives even though they have negative efficacy, fuel the evolution of variants, and cause antibody dependent enhancement that leaves one more vulnerable to infection. Miracles are like that — contradictory, paradoxical, and nonsensical. The important thing is just to believe.

6. Tony Fauci is perhaps the greatest American who ever lived — a cross between Jesus, the Buddha, and Einstein. The fact that he killed over 6 million people by funding gain-of-function research just proves his heroism.

7. During the AIDS epidemic, Fauci blocked access to Bactrim and funded the development of AZT that was expensive, toxic, and deadly. During Covid, Fauci blocked access to hcq and ivm and funded the development of Remdesivir and xhots that are expensive, toxic, and deadly. This proves that he loves us and is the world’s greatest scientist.

8. Authorizing the xhots for kids who already have natural immunity, are not at risk from the virus, and thus can only experience harms, is benevolent and kind. Why do kids exist? Do they even pay taxes? Robots could do a much better job. Dogs are so great. Do you follow my Instagram?

9. Bill Gates, who never finished college, once he acquired more money than he could ever spend in a lifetime, devoted his free time to hanging out with a pedophile sex trafficker. Clearly he is the best person to inform global health policy which is why he’s on CNN every Saturday night giving advice to an actual doctor, Sanjay Gupta.

10. The failures of the last two years are in fact an incredible success which is why the Biden administration is doubling down to create a Bioeconomy(TM) based on the failed genetic engineering strategies that caused the global pandemic. Only good things can come from this. We live in the best of all possible worlds.

September 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

WEF publishes ideas on a carbon allowance system where surveillance tech is used to track personal emissions

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 15, 2022

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is publishing ideas about yet another reason, or excuse, to deploy more surveillance technology: this time it’s climate change, and specifically, monitoring carbon emissions – at the individual level.

This is generally referred to as “My Carbon initiatives” and according to a post on the group’s website, penned by the director of India’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Smart Cities Mission, it’s all about “inclusivity of citizens” in reducing carbon emissions in urban areas.

However, “My Carbon” and what’s dubbed as “personal allowance programs” have apparently not been a success, although the push has been there for years; but now, with tracking and surveillance technology continuing to, technically speaking, improve and become more and more ubiquitous, the idea is to start bringing those into the climate change story.

And since the share of emissions attributed to individuals in cities is 40%, the proposal is to tackle those things that are now identified by WEF and its cohorts as standing in the way of personal allowance programs taking root: social and political resistance, a lack of awareness, and, of “fair mechanisms” to track individual emissions.

The post, which says the views are “those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum,” sees “an improved” world not only when it comes to technology, but also society, and mentions the catastrophic pandemic restrictions in a positive tone, as proof that billions of people can effectively be trained to show “individual social responsibility.”

Good old Covid was a test for that. “A huge number of unimaginable restrictions for public health were adopted by billions of citizens across the world,” the WEF blog piece says approvingly.

The implication is that billions are also now more likely to accept restrictions regarding their lifestyle in other contexts. Then there’s the technology, “AI,” blockchain, digitization, “smart home” devices – all useful in advancing this specific dystopian agenda.

And the plan is to use surveillance tech to track in detail personal carbon emissions, along with giving “individual advisories on lower carbon and ethical choices for consumption of product and services.”

Further, costs for “carbon-intensive” activities and goods should be increased, while offering economic incentives to reduce demand – another way of saying, “low carbon emissions social credit system.”

And then, creating new social norms is also recommended. These would impose a new definition of what “a fair share” of personal emissions is, and set “acceptable levels” of personal emissions.

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Court upholds Texas’ anti-censorship social media law

The case will likely go to The Supreme Court

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 17, 2022

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a law that was passed in Texas that prohibits large social media platforms from censoring users based on political viewpoints.

The law was passed in September 2021. It was challenged by industry trade group NetChoice and was blocked by a federal district court in December 2021.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

Critics of the law argued that it violates the First Amendment rights of social media companies by forcing private companies to publish content they don’t want to. The First Amendment protects both people and companies from censorship by the government intervention in speech.

The state of Texas appealed the decision by the district court in the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Writing the ruling on behalf of a three-judge panel, Judge Andrew Oldham said the court “rejects the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say.”

“The Platforms are not newspapers,” he continued. “Their censorship is not speech.”

The ruling argues that the Texas social media law doesn’t violate the First Amendment because “Section 7 does not regulate the Platforms’ speech at all; it protects other people’s speech and regulates the Platforms’ conduct.”

The order adds, “Our decision is reinforced by 47 U.S.C. § 230, which reflects Congress’s judgment that the Platforms are not ‘speaking’ when they host other people’s speech. Our decision is still further reinforced by the common carrier doctrine, which vests the Texas Legislature with the power to prevent the Platforms from discriminating against Texas users.”

NetChoice expressed disappointment with the ruling and plans to appeal in the Supreme Court.

“We are disappointed that the Fifth Circuit’s split decision undermines First Amendment protections and creates a circuit split with the unanimous decision of the Eleventh Circuit,” said Carl Szabo, NetChoice vice president and general counsel.

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit blocked a similar law passed in the state of Florida.

“We remain convinced that when the U.S. Supreme Court hears one of our cases, it will uphold the First Amendment rights of websites, platforms, and apps,” Szabo added.

The Supreme Court will now likely hear the case and, based on precedent, will likely overturn the ruling.

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Biden doubles down on demanding Big Tech censor “hate”

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 16, 2022

Some of the world’s biggest tech companies and their social media platforms are ramping up censorship policies, once again under – this time public – pressure from the White House, as President Biden urged them to show accountability for what he said was spreading of hate and fueling of violence.

Biden addressed Big Tech in this way on Thursday, during a White House-hosted event – “United We Stand“- dubbed to be a summit dedicated to combating “hate-based violence,” particularly that targeting minorities or religious groups.

Addressing an audience made up of members of his administration, activists, and lawmakers, the president – who observers say is himself under political pressure to live up to the campaign promises regarding the handling of social media – also made a reference to Section 230, when he said that he believes special immunity for social media needs to be “gotten rid of” by Congress.

“And I’m calling on Congress to get rid of special immunity for social media companies and impose much stronger transparency requirements on all of them,” said Biden.

Reports say that both the remark about “holding social media accountable” and getting rid (of Section 230) were supported enthusiastically at the summit, with cheers and standing ovations.

The speech came shortly after the White House announced that Microsoft, Facebook (Meta), YouTube, and Amazon’s Twitch were all “updating” their rules in order to counter “hateful rhetoric” which is treated as violent extremism online.

The page set up for the summit detailed new actions to help prevent “hate-fueled violence” to be undertaken by various actors, including the federal government, and non-federal public and private institutions – among whom the Biden administration listed “commitments from the technology sector.”

YouTube said that it will add videos identified as extremist – for glorifying acts of violence in order to “inspire others or fundraise or recruit” – to its long list of content slated for censorship, and start removing these videos. And this will be happening regardless of whether content is linked to designated terrorist groups.

YouTube also committed to launch its educational media literacy campaign targeted at young users, that is supposed to help them recognize misinformation and manipulation by identifying “emotional language” and “cherry picking information.” This campaign will start in the US but according to the announcement, other countries will not be spared either.

Twitch is preparing to release a new tool that should counter “hate and harassment” by allowing streamers and communities to “further individualize the safety experience of their channels.” Twitch is also getting in the “educational” game with initiatives that are supposed to help communities identify misinformation, and “deter hateful violence.”

Microsoft said it will bake in what it calls online safety education into Minecraft via an “Education Edition” of the game, but more notably also deploy violence detection and prevention “AI” and machine learning (ML)- something eerily reminiscent of the concept of “pre-crime.” The White House announcement said there would be “appropriate” privacy protections.

And Microsoft also intends to sell “a basic, more affordable” version of these tools to schools and other organizations – cynics would say, should they show interest in detecting “pre-crime.”

Meanwhile, Meta is coming up with a research partnership with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies’ Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.

The purpose would be to analyze violent extremism trends, but also tools that “help communities combat it.” Another partnership is in Meta’s future – with Search For Common Ground (a US-based NGO established by a former US Department of State diplomat). Here, Meta’s “community-based partners” will be provided with training and skill building in order to counter “hate-fueled violence.”

Whether or not any of these new announced rules and initiatives go beyond the declarative and may merely be produced to appease the Biden administration will become clear in time, if and when their effects are revealed in transparency reports.

What is of greater interest now is the stance of the White House toward Section 230, and the angle from which it is gunning for this decades-old legislation giving internet platforms, specifically social media, free rein in deciding which content to allow, while at the same time shielding them from legal liability given that this is user generated content.

Democrats have consistently claimed that Section 230, essentially, stands in the way of putting more pressure on Big Tech to censor content they don’t like.

Republicans, on the other hand, believe Section 230 gives Silicon Valley a “get out of jail free card” to censor conservative voices at will.

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Facebook reported ‘anti-authority’ users to FBI

Samizdat – September 16, 2022

Facebook has been reporting users to the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit for nothing more than anti-authority sentiment, the New York Post reported on Wednesday, citing Justice Department (DOJ) sources.

“Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena,” the sources claimed, explaining this is done “outside the legal process and without probable cause.”

Merely expressing concern about the legitimacy of the 2020 US election results was enough to get users flagged, they said.

Excerpts from those messages, often highlighting the “most egregious-sounding comments out of context,” were offered to nearby FBI field offices as “leads.”

Upon receiving them, the local offices could request subpoenas from their partner US attorney’s office in order to legally obtain the private messages they had already been shown by Facebook outside the legal process, the Post’s sources claimed.

None of the subsequent FBI investigations turned up any criminal or violent activity, the sources said.

“It was a waste of our time,” one source complained, describing a “frenzy” of subpoena requests and other activity over the last 19 months aimed at backing up the claims made by the administration of President Joe Biden about the threat posed by domestic terrorism in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot.

The users targeted by Facebook for this kind of surveillance were all “gun-toting, red-blooded Americans who were angry after the election and shooting off their mouths and talking about staging protests,” the source said, adding there was “nothing criminal, nothing about violence or massacring or assassinating anyone.”

Facebook initially called the DOJ sources’ claims “false” before releasing a second statement to the Post an hour later characterizing them as “wrong,” insisting the company’s relationship with the FBI was “designed to protect people from harm” rather than to “proactively supply” law enforcement with the names of users expressing anti-government sentiment.

“We carefully scrutinize all government requests for user information to make sure they’re legally valid and narrowly tailored and we often push back,” Erica Sackin, a spokesperson for parent company Meta, said in the statement.

The FBI admitted it receives information “with investigative value” from social media providers and that it “maintains an ongoing dialogue to enable a quick exchange of threat information,” but would neither confirm nor deny the specific allegations made by the DOJ whistleblowers.

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Senators use hearing to criticize Big Tech for not censoring enough “disinformation”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | September 16, 2022

The Senate Homeland Security Committee questioned executives from social media companies about allowing “disinformation” to go viral.

Watch the hearing here.

Former executives from these companies appeared during the hearings and accused their former employers of allowing misinformation to spread because it has more user engagement.

Committee chair Senator Gary Peters (a Democrat from Michigan) told Twitter, Meta, YouTube, and TikTok that by pushing “the most engaging posts to more users, they end up amplifying extremist, dangerous, and radicalizing content. This includes QAnon, Stop the Steal, and other conspiracy theories, as well as white supremacist and anti-Semitic rhetoric.”

Last September, a former Facebook employee, turned 🛡“whistleblower,” claimed that the company allows “disinformation” to spread to boost growth and called for more censorship.

During the hearing, former head engineer at Twitter, Alex Roetter, said that social media companies do not want to rein in disinformation because it is profitable.

“Regulators must understand these companies’ incentives, culture, and internal processes to fully appreciate how resistant they will be to changing the status quo that has been so lucrative for them,” he said.

Roetter went on to say that Twitter uses an experimental system to test how to get the most engagement from users.

“This system logs a slew of data for every live experiment,” he said. “Teams use this data to show per-experiment effects on various user and revenue metrics. Noticeably absent were any values tracking impacts on trust and safety metrics.”

Former vice president for product engineering, marketing, strategic operations, and analytics at Facebook, Brian Boland, testified about his former employer prioritizing user engagement. He said that Facebook acquired CrowdTangle, a company that provided “industry-leading transparency” into the platform’s newsfeed content. The company showed that Facebook was amplifying political and racial divisions in 2020. According to Boland, Meta “attempted to delegitimize the CrowdTangle-generated data.”

“What finally convinced me that it was time to leave was that despite growing evidence that the newsfeed may be causing harm globally, the focus on and investments in safety remained small and siloed,” Boland said. “Rather than address the serious issues raised by its own research, Meta leadership chooses growing the company over keeping more people safe.”

Boland also noted that Facebook disbanded its Responsible Innovation team last week. He added that social media companies should be regulated because their algorithms will only get better at targeting vulnerable users.

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Illegal Collusion Between Government and Big Tech Exposed

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 15, 2022

In a September 1, 2022, article,1 the Post Millennial reveals how federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines.

The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit2 brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022.

During the discovery process, the plaintiffs sought to identify “all meetings with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation,” which is how we now know that such illegal meetings did, in fact, take place.

Illegal Collusion to Suppress Free Speech

Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed.

Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.3 According to the New Civil Liberties Alliance:4

“… scores of federal officials … have secretly communicated with social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech federal officials disfavor. This unlawful enterprise has been wildly successful.

Under the First Amendment, the federal government may not police private speech nor pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is precisely what the government has done — and is still doing — on a massive scale not previously divulged.

Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media companies — pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed …

Communications show these federal officials are fully aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the need to overcome social-media companies’ ‘hesitation’ to work with the government …

This unlawful government interference violates the fundamental right of free speech for all Americans, whether or not they are on social media. More discovery is needed to uncover the full extent of this regime — i.e., the identities of other White House and agency officials involved and the nature and content of their communications with social-media companies.”

Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance added:5

“If there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased. The shocking extent of the government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social-media companies, has now been revealed …”

Federal Agencies Involved in Free Speech Suppression

Documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, who participated in these censorship meetings or otherwise engaged in illegal censorship activities.6 This includes officials from:

  • The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team
  • Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis
  • The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce
  • The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division
  • The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
  • White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)
  • Health and Human Services (HHS)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
  • National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
  • The Office of the Surgeon General
  • The Census Bureau
  • The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • The State Department
  • The U.S. Treasury Department
  • The U.S. Election Assistance Commission

Emails from a strategic communications and marketing firm called Reingold7 also reveals that outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to censor Americans. For example, Reingold set up a “partner support portal” for the CDC so that CDC officials could link emails to the portal for easier flagging of content it wanted censored by social media companies linked to the portal.

Big Tech Companies Involved in Government Censorship

On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings include:

  • Google
  • Facebook
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While some social media companies may have “hesitated” to censor on the government’s behalf at times, Facebook was certainly an eager beaver from the get-go. As early as February 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in contact with the State Department, offering its services to help “control information and misinformation related to coronavirus.”8

Biden Administration’s ‘Executive Privilege’ Denied

As you might expect, the White House has not cooperated with discovery and have fought to keep communications secret — especially with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s correspondence — claiming all White House communications as “privileged.”

However, executive privilege does NOT apply to external communications, so the plaintiffs called on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to “overrule the government defendants’ objections and order them to supply this highly relevant, responsive and probative information immediately.”

September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty did just that. The Biden administration’s claim of executive privilege was rejected and Doughty ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.9 That includes correspondence to and from Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and many others. According to the judge’s order, they have three weeks to comply.

Examples of Illegal Government Censorship

On Twitter,10 Missouri AG Schmitt has shared a long list of examples of government censorship, including one document in which Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19 response digital director at the White House, asked Facebook to take down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” a parody account dedicated to making fun of Fauci.11 Facebook complied.

Schmitt also shared emails12,13 between a senior Facebook official and the surgeon general, stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email came on the heels of the surgeon general’s July 2021 “misinformation health advisory.”

The CDC also coordinated with Facebook, providing them with talking points to debunk various claims, including the claim that spike protein in the COVID shots is dangerous and cytotoxic. In a July 28, 2021, email, a CDC official provided Facebook with the following counter-narrative, taken straight from the “How mRNA Vaccines Work” section on the CDC website:14

“Messenger mRNA [sic] vaccines work by teaching our cells to create a harmless spike protein …” (Emphasis in the original.)

Fast-forward to mid-June 2022, and the CDC was suddenly less sure about the harmlessness of the spike protein.

Up until then, the words “harmless spike protein” had always been bolded, but in this June revision, they removed the bolding, along with an entire section in which they’d previously claimed that mRNA was rapidly broken down and spike protein did not last more than a few weeks in the body.15 Clearly, the truth was catching up to them and certain lies were getting too risky to hold on to.

CISA also reached out to Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft and Twitter for help, shortly after the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board was announced.16 Fortunately, public outcry put an end to this Orwellian Ministry of Truth before it got started.

When Censorship Becomes Election Interference

According to The Washington Times :17

“Details about the Biden administration’s conduct raised the hackles of Republican lawmakers. ‘Confirming that this is the most dangerously anti-free speech administration in American history AND that Facebook … is nothing but an appendage of the deep state,’ Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Twitter as he shared news of the court filing.”

Other lawmakers are also getting involved. In an August 29, 2022, letter18,19 to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin requested records of the government’s contacts with social media companies to ascertain whether the FBI and/or DOJ did, in fact, instruct them to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by falsely referring to it as “Russian disinformation.”20

Zuckerberg has also been asked21 to provide any correspondence involving the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, especially as it pertains to the FBI’s instructions to censor this political hot potato — something he openly admitted in a recent Joe Rogan interview (see video above).22

Lawmakers Pursue Legislation to Penalize Gov’t Censorship

Three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees — Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington — have also introduced the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act23 (HR.8752), aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.

The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.

While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool, as people might tend to think twice when they know there’s a real and personal price to pay.

Sources and References

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Yet another “whistleblower” means yet more censorship

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | September 13, 2022

A new Twitter “whistleblower” has come forward. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, allegedly a former hacker and Twitter’s ex-head of security, testified in front of congress today, with dire warnings about the business practices of the social media giant.

Did he talk about the company’s egregious attacks on their users’ free speech under the guise of “protecting” the public?

Did he mention the suppression of alternative and independent journalism through practices such as “shadow-banning” and discretely removing followers?

Perhaps he told them about how, like all major social media platforms, it is so cross-pollinated with intelligence assets it may as well be considered just another branch of the Deep State.

No, none of that. His main concern is that Twitter’s security is too lax, and that the platform’s “cyber-security failures” leave it potentially open to “exploitation” that can “cause real harm to real people”.

According to the write-up of his testimony in The Guardian, “Zatko said Twitter runs out-of-date and vulnerable software on more than half of its data center servers and that in “multiple episodes” the platform was breached by foreign intelligence agencies.”

Adding, “Zatko has also accused Twitter of doing little to combat problems with spam bots – an allegation that bolsters Elon Musk’s case for backing out of his Twitter acquisition.”

Do you see how this works? It’s gearing up the machinery to label anyone who dissents as either a “spy” or a “bot” (and perhaps reveals something of the purpose behind Elon Musk’s “revelation” about the number of “fake accounts” on twitter).

If this all sounds eerily familiar, don’t worry you’re not experiencing deja vu, you’re just remembering Frances Haugen, the facebook “whistleblower” from last year. She said very similar things in a very similar way.

We’ve seen this dance before, we know the steps. As I wrote only last year:

Like so many other testimonies before congress in the past, the entire event looks fake and probably is. A stage-managed exercise involving some “expert witness” telling a bunch of politicians exactly what they want to hear, so they can go ahead push the legislation they were going to push anyway. It’s all leading up to loud bipartisan calls for “regulation”, and that’s not a good thing.

They wheel out some person – who may or may not be real, and may or may not have an axe to grind – prop them up in a nice suit in front of some po-faced senators and have them reel off a few thousand serious sounding words.

Their pay-off is a few minutes of fame, a ghost-written book deal and being called “brave” by moist-eyed liberal pundits, their hands white-knuckling around their pearls.

While they prattle on at length about the supposed “problem”, the “solution” is already planned and ready to roll out. Such is the crushingly predictable nature of the Hegelian dialectic.

And, just in case any of you hadn’t already figured out what that was, The Guardian is more than clear [emphasis added]:

In his testimony, Zatko said there had not been enough government enforcement when it comes to the operations of big tech, and that the federal trade commission (FTC) is “in over its head” when going up against huge tech firms.

More “government enforcement”.

It’s all so tiresome.

September 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Israel’s Predator spyware rivals NSO’s Pegasus

MEMO | September 10, 2022

The US and the Israeli Ministry of Public Security have imposed restrictions and sanctions on Israeli spyware company NSO. It was placed on the US blacklist, resulting in a decline in its deals and income.

However, it wasn’t the politicians, opposition activists and journalists who were spied on who benefitted from these restrictions, but rather another cyber-attacker Tal Dilian, a former combat fighter in an elite Special Operations Unit of the Intelligence Corps in the Israeli army and held a senior position in the Israeli Military Intelligence Division “Aman”.

One of the spyware companies that Dilian founded is Intelexa, which developed the Predator software. Dillian focused on selling this spyware programme to countries where the Israeli Defence Ministry does not issue permits to export cyber-attack software, such as Bangladesh, Sudan and Ukraine, according to a report in Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published on Friday.

Unlike cyber-attack companies registered and operating in Israel, which are subject to the supervision of the Security Export Supervision Division in the Ministry of Defence, Dilian believes he is not under the Ministry of Security’s supervision and can supply his goods to any country or entity.

About a year ago, the phone of Greek journalist Thanasis Koukakis was behaving oddly, as his battery began to die quickly and phone calls were being disconnected. The journalist, who criticised the Greek prime minister’s economic policy, became suspicious that he was being watched. A month later, a Canadian cyber security research institute, Citizen Lab, discovered that the Predator programme had hacked Koukakis’ phone.

It was also found, following the formation of a commission of inquiry into the matter by the European Parliament and after examining 200 of its members’ phones, that an unsuccessful attempt had been made to hack the phone of the head of the Greek opposition, Nikos Androulakis, which caused a scandal described as the “Greek Watergate”.

Citizen Lab published a report last December confirming that two Egyptian dissidents in exile, politician Ayman Nour and a popular programme host who wishes to remain anonymous, had been hacked by the Predator spyware.

The newspaper added that investigations into the Greek scandal revealed the source of the Predator programme as Israel. Several weeks ago, members of the investigation commission set up by the European Union secretly visited Israel and met with officials in the Ministries of Justice and Public Security, as well as with Director General and founder of NSO Shalev Julio. The investigation committee announced that it had not found evidence linking Pegasus to a spying scandal in Spain.

While the US and Israeli authorities imposed sanctions and restrictions on Israeli cyber companies, an official in the Israeli cyber intelligence company Verint, Sam Rabin, resigned to appoint the deputy general manager of Intelexa, based in North Macedonia. However, most of its employees and director, as well as the hackers, are individuals dismissed from Israeli intelligence services. Dilian held the rank of colonel in the Israeli army and was the commander of the 81st Technological Unit and a senior officer in the army’s special operations unit.

September 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Western media continues to ignore Ukraine’s public ‘kill list’ aimed at those who question the Kiev regime

By Eva Bartlett | Samizdat | September 10, 2022

This week, a number of international and Russian journalists convened in Moscow – with more joining by video link – to discuss the now-infamous Ukrainian Mirotvorets “kill list.” Many of them are included themselves.

While some don’t take it seriously, the horrific car-bombing murder of Darya Dugina on August 20 and the subsequent marking on her Mirotvorets entry as “liquidated” makes it fairly clear the people behind the list do, in fact, want people dead.

The same thing happened to the entry of Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin and many others listed and subsequently killed, including the Italian Andrea Rocchelli.

What it feels like to be on the list

The head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, Mira Terada, who convened the panel, noted that of the thousands of names entered on the site, 341 are journalists and, shockingly, 327 are minors.

“Publishing personal data on minors is a crime. It’s like a menu for pedophiles or people doing human trafficking.”

While her concern is for the children, journalists, activists, political figures and even ordinary Ukrainians who have somehow angered the Kiev regime and those behind the list, Terada now needs to exercise some caution after she herself was added to the database.

An hour and a half after a July 21 press conference about children being placed on Mirotvorets, Mira found herself listed. “This changed my life. I have to be vigilant 24/7,” she said.

Christelle Néant, a French war correspondent reporting from Donbass for the past six and a half years, mentioned to me before the panel began that some of the information on the site is not disclosed to the general public, and is password-locked.

Néant, who said she’s been receiving death threats for years, spoke of how it impacts her: “Every time I use my car, I check underneath it for any unpleasant surprise,” referring to a potential car bomb. “I don’t publish any photos with people I live with or love. I have to be vigilant at all times.”

“I’m not a terrorist, not a criminal, I’m just a correspondent. This list must be closed and all of those involved must be held accountable.”

German journalist Thomas Röper rightly noted that Western media outlets prefer to look the other way. “They could have reported on this, but they’re saying nothing.”

He also pointed out the silence of the German government, even when asked at press conferences.

“A state has a duty to protect its citizens, but I haven’t seen anything from my government to condemn the fact that Germans are on this list and one German national has been killed.”

And, in fact, rather than protect German journalists, the government is persecuting them, as is the case with Alina Lipp, whose bank account, and that of her mother, was closed after the German government launched a criminal case against her for her reporting from Donbass.

Russian journalist Veronika Naydenova, originally from Crimea but living in Germany, was added to the list in January, also after raising the inclusion of children, including 13-year-old Faina Savenkova, from the Lugansk People’s Republic.

“The same day my article was published, I was added to the list. But this hasn’t stopped me, I’ve written many articles since.”

She highlighted an additional, very real, threat: that of the refugees who’ve come to Germany from Ukraine, it isn’t possible to know who is merely a refugee and who holds Ukrainian nationalist extremist views. This is a very real fear for Naydenova, whose address is listed on Mirotvorets.

Dutch journalist Sonya van den Ende likewise fears returning home. “I’m labeled an ‘enemy of the state’ now in the Netherlands. I cannot go back, it’s very dangerous for me to do so.”

Janus Putkonen, a Finnish journalist who has been living in Donbass since 2015, pointed out how the risk extends globally.

“Because the Mirotvorets kill list has not been stopped, people around the world are now in danger of falling victim to the state terrorism of Ukrainian Nazism, comparable to ISIS terrorism.”

But, most of all, it threatens Ukrainians within Ukraine, something British journalist Johnny Miller emphasized.

“If you’re a journalist, blogger, political figure, or a citizen in Ukraine who wants to criticize extremism in Ukraine, which there is a lot of, or if you want to criticize Ukrainian government policies, most likely you’re going to be put on that list. And be under serious threat of death.”

Miller, who has reported from areas of western Ukraine, raised another important point:

“There are so many people in Ukraine who want to push for peaceful negotiations with Russia. But if anybody in Ukrainian society wants to stand up and push this line, they’re most likely going to be put on that list. Mirotvorets is very much a symbol of the extremist elements in Ukraine at the moment.” 

For myself, I’ve been on the list since 2019, after going to Crimea and reporting from areas of the DPR where civilians were being terrorized by Ukrainian shelling, houses destroyed “street by street” as a local told me.

Complicit media

For various reasons, I haven’t been in my native Canada since February 2020, and at this point, don’t know what fate I would face were I to go back.

Ottawa unconditionally supports the Kiev regime, including its war against the civilians of Donbass, which the country has abetted by sending money and weapons to Ukraine for years before Russia’s military operation began in February.

Canada has spent nearly a billion dollars to train Ukrainian forces since 2014, including Neo-Nazi Azov fighters.

But in addition to that, the Canadian government knows about Mirotvorets. The state-run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in July ran a smear piece on me, using information apparently gleaned from my Mirotvorets entry, though it doesn’t mention the kill list by name.

How do I think I know CBC was aware of the kill list entry on me? Their producer emailed me for an interview (which I did not concede to), mentioning my April participation in a Moscow-based panel on Ukraine’s war crimes. Except it wasn’t April, it was on March 11. The only other source for my participation being in April was, you guessed it, Mirotvorets.

Of course, there was no condemnation or call to shut down Mirotvorets (which independent Canadian media outlets previously interviewed me about and subsequently contacted the CBC about). Instead, they tried to spin my multiple reports on Ukraine’s war crimes in Donbass as a way to smear me as a Russian propagandist.

And now, the CBC has flagged my name to Ukrainian Nationalists in Canada who might otherwise not have known of me, and to Canadians who went to fight in Ukraine, became radicalized and indoctrinated, and could commit Azov-style crimes against journalists like me who have been reporting from the other side.

Journalists already have enough reasons to fear being targeted – one example is the August 4 bombing by Kiev’s forces of a Donetsk hotel that multiple journalists, including myself, were in. There is no conclusive proof that the hotel and the journalists were the intended targets, but given everything mentioned above, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility

A terrorist database

After the panel, I chatted again with Néant, who said she’d been appealing to international organizations about Mirotvorets for years.

“I’ve written to organizations like the OSCE, Amnesty, etc. None reacted, even when I discovered that children are on this list.” All she got was an automated confirmation of receipt.

During a Q&A after the panel, an American man in the audience suggested that Russia should have its own “hit force” going out and doing the same thing to the Ukrainian side.

In reply, Johnny Miller noted:

“When I tell people here in the UK about this kill list, one of the first things that people reply to me is,

‘Well, I’m sure Russia has a similar list.’  And I have to explain to them that, no, Russia does not have a list published on the internet with the names and home addresses of journalists and children and promote their killing. That’s the distinction between a civilized government and extremism and barbarism.”

According to Mira Terada, her foundation transferred documents and the evidence it collected to Russia’s Federal Security Service and is asking the service to recognize Mirotvorets as a terrorist organization.

Former US Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter likewise described Mirotvorets as “an instrument of terror” that “should be taken down at the insistence of the US Government.”

Note the irony: We are listed as terrorists for the work we do to highlight the suffering of civilians under the Kiev regime’s actual terrorism.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). 

September 10, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

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