The Scottish government is silencing Palestinians

By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | May 24, 2022
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is facing a backlash after a group of Palestinian academics criticised her decision to embrace the working definition of anti-Semitism prepared by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance because the definition clearly contradicts a hate crime review commissioned by her own government.
The Holyrood government took the decision to follow Westminster in its adoption of the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which includes, as an example, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.”
Now Sturgeon’s government is in the embarrassing position of embracing two conflicting reports which openly contradict each other. To add to her woes, international human rights groups as well as a UN rights expert recently declared Israel to be an “apartheid state”.
The contents of the IHRA definition clash with the findings of Lord Bracadale, who was appointed by Scottish Ministers in 2017 to lead the Independent Review of Hate Crime Legislation. A group of Palestinian academics has now confronted Sturgeon’s government over this clear contradiction.
A few days ago, an open letter was published in the Scottish media about the dilemma facing Palestinians living in Scotland who accuse the Holyrood government of effectively gagging them from talking about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine during and ever since the Nakba.
“As Palestinians in Scotland we feel the need to be able to tell our story of being driven from our homeland in a programme of ethnic cleansing that built the state of Israel on the destruction of our villages and towns,” wrote the 26 signatories, including Amina Abdel-Khaliq, Dr Nur Abdelkhaleq, Waseem Abu Aghlain and Dr Kholoud Ajarma. “The Scottish Government’s adoption of the problematic IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of anti-Semitism limits that freedom by protecting the state of Israel from democratic critiques of its widely recognised apartheid structures.
“Responding in part to the question of the IHRA definition, Lord Bracadale’s 2018 Review of Hate Crime Legislation accepted the case put forward by Palestinians and others that legislation should not protect ‘political entities’ since that could lead to the ‘curtailment of freedom of expression and freedom of political debate’.”
In their letter, the signatories demand that the Scottish Government should act on the findings of Lord Bracadale’s hate crime review which it commissioned.
“The Palestinian community voice has been absent while the state that violates them has been armed and supported by our government and the entire UK political class,” commented the co-founder of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Mick Napier. “That Palestinian first-person voice is uniquely compelling in forcing acknowledgement of the blood-soaked record of Israel, its past and present record of violent ethnic cleansing that is concealed or justified by our politicians.”
Napier added the warning that, “The Scottish Government seems intent on burying Bracadale’s warning that the IHRA can muzzle free speech. It must not be allowed to do so.”
I’ve always believed that hate towards and the unfair treatment of Jews should be roundly condemned, opposed and met with zero tolerance. But to be frank, the IHRA definition, which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, does not serve to protect Jews; it is all about protecting the rogue state of Israel and its zealous supporters.
Towards the end of last year, I wrote about 82-year-old Diana Neslen who faced expulsion from the Labour Party after she was accused of posting “anti-Semitic” views on social media. The problem for Labour leader Keir Starmer and his party, though, was that Diana is a Jew.
After three investigations by the party she became so fed up that she employed lawyers, who fired off a warning letter telling Labour officials that her anti-Zionist viewpoint is a protected philosophical belief under the Equality Act in the UK. Furthermore, the lawyers at Bindmans said that she herself had been “subjected by the party to discrimination and harassment related to her protected philosophical belief.”
Predictably, the Labour Party backed down although it has yet to apologise to Neslen or abandon complaints against other party members under similar investigations. Jewish Voice for Labour, of which Neslen is a member, says that at least 46 Jewish Labour Party members, two of whom have since died, have faced or are facing disciplinary charges relating to allegations of anti-Semitism.
“To say that we are insulting Jews is wrong,” Neslen told the Guardian in February. “We are acting in accord with what we regard as Jewish values and Jewish ethics, and I’m not going to change that.”
So it seems that for most Palestinians and many Jews, the IHRA was designed to protect Israel, its racist policies and its Zionist supporters. Meanwhile, Lord Bracadale’s report makes it crystal clear that criticism of Israel and its racist policies is entirely legitimate.
There can be no doubt that anti-Semitism is a crime, but equally there can be no doubt that fighting Zionism is a duty for anyone who opposes apartheid. It’s time for Sturgeon and her government to get off the fence, scrap their support for the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism and allow Scottish Palestinians to tell their stories without let or hindrance.
Dutch Activists File Collective Complaint With European Court Over EU Ban on RT, Sputnik
By Sofia Chegodaeva | Samizdat | May 25, 2022
In March, access to several Russian media outlets, including Sputnik and RT, was suspended in the EU as part of sanctions against Russia over its special military operation in Ukraine.
A group of Dutch activists has filed a collective complaint with the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg over the EU’s ban on Sputnik and RT, a representative of the Bits of Freedom human rights organisation, Rejo Zenger, said.
Earlier this week, the Dutch Association of Journalists released a statement saying that together with several other organisations, it plans to challenge the EU’s ban on Sputnik and RT.
According to Zenger, the decision to block Russian media was “political” and not reviewed by “independent judges”.
Broadcasting and distribution of content of the Sputnik news agency and RT TV channel was banned in the EU in early March as part of anti-Russian sanctions over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly commented on such restrictions, saying that Moscow did not expect the West to impose sanctions on journalists, athletes, and cultural representatives. The head of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, Valery Fadeev, sent an appeal to the OSCE representative on freedom of the media, Teresa Ribeiro, asking her to take measures to comply with norms concerning freedom of the press due to the repression of Russian-language publications.
Biden Regime’s Ministry of Truth Stumbles
But it is only on “pause” and we will be seeing it again
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MAY 24, 2022
Finally some good news – maybe! The Department of Homeland Security’s recently launched Disinformation Governance Board has gone into what has been described as the “pause” mode and its controversial Director Nina Jankowicz has resigned, citing “vile personal attacks and physical threats.” Its status will reportedly be reviewed over the next 75 days and it will likely be rolled out more quietly next time around and under a different name.
The Board was developed to counter what was held to be unfair criticism of policies being promoted by the government. Ironically, however, it has recently become clear that the White House itself has been doing much of the lying. It uses the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government agencies to spread false information, referred to as disinformation, to dupe the public into believing that there is something good and noble about America becoming heavily involved in the war in Ukraine, with all that entails. And, of course, since the evildoers must be excoriated as that drama is playing out, good old Russia fits in admirably, particularly as the Democrats still like to pretend that it was Moscow’s interference that defeated Hillary in 2016.
A lie is a lie, but it is the ultimate irony when a government that is caught lying on a regular basis sets up an inquisition that seeks to identify and take action against ordinary citizens who are accused of spreading “disinformation.” Of course, critics on the right immediately discerned that the disinformation will consist of anything that challenges the official government line on various issues, up to including pandemics, white supremacist domestic terrorism, aborting unwanted babies, and even the march to war. Although the inept President Joe Biden Administration can rightly be accused of elevating deceit to a steady diet of malapropisms, one can trace the rise of egregious lying by heads of state to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and, more recently, to the criminal deceptions carried out by the George W. Bush Administration. Those lies led to the invasion of Iraq, which cost trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans, and which is still producing unrest in the region.
So now we were to be confronted by the Disinformation Governance Board, so designated under the august authority of the Department of Homeland Security to root out disinformation and those who are seeking to disseminate falsehoods about what our noble elected officials are doing to us in Washington. Followers of George Orwell inevitably, and almost immediately, dubbed the new creation the Ministry of Truth.
The official launch documents in late April claimed that the DGB would be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties” against the “threat of disinformation.” Its focus would be on “homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia,” meaning that it would be discrediting any source that complains about the flood of aliens crossing the US southern border or casting doubts on the necessity of supporting America’s Ukraine “allies.” In a follow-up briefing DHS elaborated that it would monitor threat “disinformation spread by foreign states such as Russia, China and Iran, or other adversaries such as transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations.”
And the board was to be headed by one Nina Jankowicz, a weird, highly politicized concoction who sang about her mission in a tweet entitled “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” while confirming that she would be the first executive director of the DGB. She has also written a book entitled “How To Be A Woman Online.” She has worked for the National Democratic Institute, the Democratic Party affiliate of the National Endowment for Democracy that promotes democracy worldwide. She has also been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
In an NPR interview responding to a question concerning Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Jankowicz ridiculously opined that “I shudder to think about, if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would be like for the marginalized communities around the world…” Glenn Greenwald further described the new Disinformation Czar as having “herself ratified and helped spread virtually every disinformation campaign concocted by the union of the Democratic Party and corporate media over the last five years. Indeed, the only valid basis for calling her a ‘disinformation expert’ is that she has spread disinformation with such gusto. The most notorious of those was the pre-election lie that the authentic Hunter Biden laptop was ‘disinformation.’ She also decreed falsely that the origins of COVID were definitively proven to be zoonotic and could not have come from a lab leak, was a frequent and vocal advocate of the fraudulent Steele Dossier, and repeatedly pronounced as true all sorts of Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy theories which Robert Mueller, after conducting an intense 18-month investigation, rejected as lacking evidence to establish their truth.”
Jankowicz’s boss Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas nevertheless claimed that she was “eminently qualified,” a “renowned expert,” and politically “neutral.” But to put that in context, her rather thin actual work history, heavy on being a Democratic Party apparatchik tied to the Clintons, oddly includes a stint as a Fulbright-Clinton fellow in 2017 serving as an adviser on disinformation to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. She sports the US and Ukrainian flags next to her picture on her twitter page.
Attempts by governments to shape their message by discrediting alternative viewpoints are not exactly new. Here in the US, suppressing contrary views is nearly as old as the republic. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 gave the president power to deport potentially “dangerous” foreigners and made it a crime to print “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government. President John Adams supported these laws because he wanted to prevent a war with France, quite the reverse of what the Biden regime is seeking to do as it mobilizes against Russia. Vice President Thomas Jefferson was openly disgusted by the unconstitutional acts, which probably contributed to his election as president in 1800.
The Acts were subsequently allowed to expire and were never reviewed by the Supreme Court, but there is also the later example of the Committee for Public Information which was used by the government to support the war party line in World War One. There followed the Espionage Act of 1918, which is still in effect, that was used liberally by President Woodrow Wilson to silence critics of American entry into the war. The definition of what constitutes “espionage” was deliberately made infinitely elastic and the Act is still in use against whistleblowers and presumably also Julian Assange.
Given the language connected with the launch of the Disinformation Government Board, it might reasonably be assumed that it would have surely sought to suppress “malicious writing” and speech relating to the Biden sponsored wave of illegal immigration along the country’s southern border that has driven America’s foreign-born population to a record 46.6 million people. And, in addition to an increase in arriving Afghans, which was actually written into the bill proposing $33 billion more for Ukraine, there will surely be more Ukrainian migrants. Jewish organizations in the US, Europe and Israel are already actively bringing in co-religionists. Given political realities, displaced Ukrainian Jews will likely be quietly given refugee status granting them full benefits to include housing and welfare payments.
Not surprisingly, the surging wave of immigration is highly unpopular among working people who are already established, even among many Democrats, and the Biden response will be to compel the bad vibes go away, literally, by openly labeling critics as liars peddling disinformation. Whether there will be actual criminal or civil penalties attached to the process remains to be seen when the board is most likely resurrected under another name.
And, of course, the likes of Senator Rand Paul, Congressman Tom Massie, journalist Tucker Carlson and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard would have their views on the developing catastrophe in Ukraine challenged and denigrated, to include possibly arranging for their banning from social media sites, which is already being done to some critics. The fact is that we do not know at this point exactly what the new Board will eventually be empowered to do, but one can count on the results being bad, destructive both of the First Amendment and of honest journalism in the United States.
The ability of the government to collude with corporate America to diminish personal liberty of the citizenry cannot be understated. We have already seen corporations that operate on the internet proactively terminating accounts that it considers politically unacceptable. Consortium News, a perfect respectable site of long standing that has a splendid record of investigative journalism, was recently delisted by PayPal, which took the further step of confiscating its nearly $10,000 of funds with the threat that the money might be retained by PayPal as an additional punishment.
The reality is that the government can unleash its thousands of lawyers to make a case against nearly every citizen who is politically active. Which is why the Biden Administration has already been criminalizing and/or sanctioning any foreign organization that has “interfered in or undermined public confidence in United States elections,” as if the two major parties are not already doing that quite effectively all by themselves. If that is truly a crime why aren’t Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell being sanctioned?
In my own experience, I have dealt with threatened punishment regarding my contributing to and participating in the activities of an Iranian NGO and a Russian information site. Neither organization can plausibly be regarded as a threat to the United States, though they both were highly critical of US government policies, as am I. In one case, American participants in a conference overseas organized by the Iranians were warned that they would be arrested upon return, which currently appears to be “due process” in the US. In the case of the Russian site, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) advised that any American writing for the site could be fined as much as $311,562!
The unfortunate reality is that the real damage is being done through the employment of government driven restrictions punishing ordinary citizens who are exercising their right of free speech and free association. It is easy to claim that a foreign news service or NGO is “undermining confidence in US elections” as it is a charge that one need not have to prove. Indeed, it is unprovable and it is a weapon that can be used to manage dissent and to narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse. The question becomes whether and to what extent the successor to the now paused Disinformation Governance Board will attempt to apply similar standards to Americans. One might suggest that the barring of dissident US journalists and political figures from social media sites and from funding mechanisms like PayPal is the first shot to be fired in a long struggle over what is “truth” that will play out over the next two years.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams says online platforms need to use AI to censor

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 22, 2022
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has used this month’s Buffalo shooting to call for more social media censorship.
Speaking live on PIX11’s Morning Show, Adams was asked by the host Hazel Sanchez what could be done about regulating social media.
“Governor Hochul, she was on PIX11, demanding social media platforms be held accountable. Now, you’ve been calling for that since the suspected Brooklyn subway shooter, Frank James, allegedly posted racist rants online,” Sanchez said. “But social media’s been around and unregulated for a long time. So what kind of change can you see happening?”
Mayor Adams responded, saying that it was time for social media platforms to start using “artificial intelligence to identify words, identify phrases, to immediately remove and censor some of this information.”
Mayor Adams likened the censorship techniques to the removal of President Trump’s Twitter account; “We did it to Donald Trump on Twitter. He was dangerous to the country. So why aren’t we doing it to the everyday people who are using it and is dangerous to our neighborhoods and communities?”
Likening his censorship demands to his similar demands for social media platforms to censor some forms of rap on social media, Adams stated, “The type of violence that’s being promoted on social media is beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed before.
“Particularly in some of the drill music that actually taunts and threaten people. There’s a direct correlation. That’s the type of social media monitoring we believe the social media companies should do.”
Earlier this year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams expressed concern about drill rap, a form of trap music popular in the city, because of its depiction of violence and firearms. Drill artists and rap writers have expressed concerns over the mayor’s remarks.
“We pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing,” Adams, a former NYPD officer, said at the time. “Yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence, we’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”
“We are going to pull together the social media companies, and state that you have a civic and corporate responsibility.”
Bill Gates’ media control dream

By Keean Bexte | The Counter Signal | May 19, 2022
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has doled out over $319 million in grants, awards, and charity to media organizations, including $38 million to so-called “investigative journalism” centres.
According to Mint Press News (MPN), which sorted through over 30,000 documents, Bill Gates has given roughly $38 million to investigate journalism centres aimed at training journalists. Of this sum, over $20 million has gone to the International Center for Journalists, which “builds the expertise and digital skills journalists need to deliver trustworthy news essential for vibrant societies.”
The generous donations given to the ICFJ over several years have been given with the express purpose of producing journalists who focus on “data-driven health and development news reports to help African media to better contribute to setting development agendas and furthering public accountability,” according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s website.
Producing health-obsessed investigative journalists is a common trend with Gates.
According to the Foundation’s website, the Premium Times Centre for Investigative Journalism received its grant ($3,800,357) to “support sustained high-quality, evidence-based, and solutions-oriented media coverage of global health and development issues in Primary Health Care systems, Agriculture & Financial Inclusion.”
Other recipients of over $1 million include The Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting ($2,432,552) to “support editorial projects focused on global health issues,” Fondation EurActiv Politech ($2,368,300), International Women’s Media Foundation ($1,500,000), Center for Investigative Reporting – $1,446,639, InterMedia Survey institute ($1,297,545), and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism ($1,068,169).
Put simply, it appears Bill Gates wants to install a personal army of professional scrutineers in various media outlets that disseminate his position on healthcare and propaganda about public officials who deviate.
Gates also, of course, funds the journalism programs of several universities, including Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, the University of California Berkeley, Tsinghua University, Seattle University, Rhodes University, and Montclair State University.
Harvard University (of which Gates is a dropout), the University of Southern California, Boston University, and Ahmadu Bello University have also received money from Gates’ Foundation to take on various media projects.
Producing new journalists isn’t the only area in media that Gates is focusing on, though. He also targets experienced journalists in legacy media organizations. According to MPN’s report, a total of $166.2 million has been given to well-known legacy media organizations.
“The money is generally directed towards issues close to the Gateses hearts. For example, the $3.6 million CNN grant went towards “report[ing] on gender equality with a particular focus on least developed countries, producing journalism on the everyday inequalities endured by women and girls across the world,” while the Texas Tribune received millions “to increase public awareness and engagement of education reform issues in Texas.” Given that Bill is one of the charter schools’ most fervent supporters, a cynic might interpret this as planting pro-corporate charter school propaganda into the media, disguised as objective news reporting,” reports MPN.
Just over one decade ago, Bill Gates was under fire for his attempt to control the media through spread-out donations, but this fire seems to have flickered out until recently.
“Beyond their subject matter, these [health report stories] have something else in common: They were all bankrolled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,” the Seattle Times wrote in 2011.
“Better-known for its battles against global disease, the giant philanthropy has also become a force in journalism.”
“The foundation’s grants to media organizations such as ABC and The Guardian, one of Britain’s leading newspapers, raise obvious conflict-of-interest questions: How can reporting be unbiased when a major player holds the purse strings?”
Unsurprisingly, the Seattle Times and the Blethen Corporation do not appear to have ever received money from Bill Gates.
Why the World should be very concerned about New Zealand under the Jacinda government
By Guy Hatchard | Waikanae Watch | May 19, 2022
The New Zealand government relies upon a science body known as Te Punaha Matatini (Centre for Science in Society) whose work is funded directly by the office of the Prime Minister and cabinet.
Yesterday, Te Punaha Matatini published a 21-page document entitled “The Murmuration of Information Disorders” (see attached release from the Science Media Centre) designating those opposed to the government’s pandemic policies as violent right wing insurrectionists planning the weaponised storming of parliament and the execution of public servants, academics, journalists, politicians, and healthcare workers.
This is an utterly false characterisation worthy of the worst excesses of historical propaganda.
This 21-page document, represented to the public as a scientific paper, contains not a single discussion of the scientific concerns being raised in opposition to government pandemic policy.
It omits for example analyses of the government’s own official figures which show that the vaccinated are more vulnerable to infection, hospitalisation, and death than the unvaccinated, a fact that has been deliberately hidden from the public.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern introduced yesterday’s Te Punaha Matatini report with the words:
“One day it will be our job to try and understand how a group of people could succumb to such wild and dangerous mis- and disinformation. And while many of us have seen that disinformation and dismissed it as conspiracy theory, a small portion of our society have not only believed it, they have acted upon it in an extreme and violent way that cannot stand. We have a difficult journey in front of us to address the underlying cause.”
Since when do reasonable scientifically-based questions asked of the government in good faith constitute violent insurrection?
I am tempted to think that Ardern could just as well be talking about her own government. The Prime Minister and the social scientists(?) working at Te Punaha Matatini might do well to read the New York Times, (although they probably don’t do so because the official policy of the New Zealand government is to discourage any information that is not sanctioned and edited by themselves).
A NYT article on 10 May 2022 entitled “Emergent Hid Evidence of Covid Vaccine Problems at Plant” reports that
“Emergent BioSolutions, a longtime government contractor hired to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses, hid evidence of quality control problems from Food and Drug Administration inspectors in February 2021 — six weeks before it alerted federal officials that 15 million doses had been contaminated.”
A reasonable observer might conclude that early (and later) concerns being voiced about vaccine safety were justified, but the New Zealand government is far from reasonable.
A succession of scientific papers published in reputable journals during recent weeks (which we and many others have reported extensively and communicated directly to the government) have in fact fully justified concerns about safety and efficacy, but unbelievably our government is in denial and still moving ahead with propaganda advertising of their mRNA vaccination agenda for all ages and, as today’s Te Punaha Matatini report shows, labelling any opposition as a conspiracy with violent aims.
How Did the Transformation of the NZ Government Come About?
New Zealand has a small population of 5 million, but it has been used to trial new products in order to gauge what the public reaction and acceptance might be in bigger markets overseas. Never more so than during the pandemic. Take up of the Pfizer mRNA Covid vaccination has reached up to 95% of the eligible population.
This has been achieved through a transformation in the style of government, media control, science funding, intellectual standards, and international relations unprecedented in the western world, along with the coercion of draconian employment mandates and the pursuit of dissenters through compliant courts.
This has been engineered under the leadership of a person with a bachelor’s degree in communication who grew up in a strict rural Mormon household and cut her political teeth under the Blair administration in London. In keeping with her upbringing and education, Ardern is a leader who is sure she is right and is prepared to enforce her orthodoxy against all opposition and reason.
Her international perspective is one of unquestioning acceptance of the authority and right to rule of global institutions. Her top confidant and mentor Helen Clark, former NZ Labour Prime Minister, is closely associated with this outlook. Ardern recounts that she begins her day with a discussion with Clark over breakfast.
Like Ardern, Clark is renowned for her iron fist management style. She ruffled feathers at the United Nations Development Programme, which she led from 2009 to 2017, reportedly undermining human rights and supporting China’s Belt and Road initiative.
On 9 July 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Clark as co-chair of a panel reviewing the WHO’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the response of governments to the outbreak. The Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR) examined how the outbreak occurred and how future pandemics can be prevented.
Nothing says more about the overt global agenda of Ardern and Clark than this 11 May 2022 statement of the New Zealand government:
“The establishment of a pandemic treaty/instrument was a key recommendation of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response and is one of New Zealand’s foremost global health priorities”
Like China, New Zealand’s fading international reputation for successful management of the pandemic was actually built on a single policy—control the borders, restrict entry, and impose lengthy quarantine.
The Current Situation in New Zealand is Deeply Concerning
Ardern controls the media and the science dialogue through a mixture of government funding and exclusion of dissent. The government has spent big on saturation advertising advising complete safety and efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine, and continues to do so.
It has instituted funding of cultural groups, GPs, and commercial organisations who promote vaccination. The level of funding is so generous that it has distorted prior long standing economic and political relationships.
So far the government has spent on the order of $100 billion on the pandemic in addition to normal expenditure. To put this in stark perspective, that is equal to the total annual government budget prior to the pandemic—more than $20,000 for every man, woman, and child. This is borrowed money which will have to be repaid through increased taxation of an already struggling population.
We Have No Constitution in New Zealand, the Power of the Government Is Absolute.
The control that Ardern’s government exercises over the courts, government agencies, parliament, media, independent regulators, and over the vast majority of the population is staggering and rigidly enforced. Dissenting medical professionals are excluded from practicing and in some cases prosecuted also. They are also mercilessly hounded and vilified by bought mainstream media.
In an atmosphere of strict government control, more worrying aspects of information control have emerged. In some cases noted by my scientific colleagues, policy and pronouncements that they have demonstrated are in conflict with published research have disappeared from the public record.
Even rare court rulings in favour of caution have been rapidly bypassed by simply passing new laws without debate. Court rulings about mandates have also been openly flouted, as happened when the military vaccine mandate was ruled illegal. With the support of the government, the military said the courts had no jurisdiction over its operation and went ahead anyway.
Ardern has introduced her policies in such a dedicated, persuasive, secretive, and complete way that almost the whole population of New Zealand has complied. They have accepted limitations on medical choice, judicial protections, human rights, press freedom, freedom of information, privacy, employment conditions and opportunities, standard of living, and social interaction.
Ardern’s successful efforts to persuade the population that government should be your only source of truth, have all but negated any of the longstanding mechanisms of government accountability. A majority of the population have all but concurred with Ardern that the unvaccinated may be safely blamed for every government failing and omission; and for all Covid case loads, hospitalisations, and deaths contrary to all evidence.
The opposition parties have apparently accepted that they will in future go about their business using the same Ardern doctrines and techniques. Accordingly they have failed to sound the alarm, investigate Covid science publishing deeply, or oppose draconian legislation. They have joined Ardern in labelling peaceful protest as unacceptable and illegal.
Ardern on the Global Stage
Ardern is about to deploy her international political capital to promote the globalisation of her policies and outlook. Her public persona can be deceptively mesmerising. You should be worried.
The world’s economy also has no constitution. So far Ardern appears to be happy to allow it to be controlled by global economic predators. Pfizer has been uncritically promoted by her, and the notion of WHO control over New Zealand’s sovereign rights is being welcomed with open arms. It fits with her strict hierarchical perspective.
Ardern may be viewed by naive foreign governments as a pandemic success story unfairly criticised in her own country. Stop for a moment and consider that she is about to lend her support to the promotion of a new world order on the global stage using her trademark persuasive techniques of propaganda, coercion, and control of information.
WHO wants to censor infodemic “misinformation” with pandemic treaty
By Keean Bexte | The Counter Signal | May 19, 2022
A World Health Organization White Paper advocating for expanding WHO powers through the pandemic treaty puts tackling “infodemic” COVID “misinformation” at the top of their list.
Under the guise of “Community protection,” the WHO writes, “Infodemic of COVID-19 misinformation – often combined with ineffective and inconsistent risk communication and public health messaging – eroded public trust in public health authorities and science and undermined the effectiveness of public health and social measures and the demand for countermeasures such as vaccines.”
“… New techniques for infodemic management can counteract some of the corrosive effects of misinformation on public trust in science and authorities, but enduring trust and resilience must be built through effective engagement with communities before, during, and after health emergencies.”
According to the WHO, national governments should receive support to “coordinate risk communication and infodemic management policies and strategies that ensure health and wellbeing at all times” to build “misinformation” resilience.
The WHO further states that public health institutes should work with “influential private companies” to communicate the risk of misinformation and that social media should “develop infodemic management and community engagement tools.”
In other words, the WHO expects social media companies to continue doing what they’ve done throughout the pandemic: censor people and media organizations who go against the mainstream narrative.
But what’s an infodemic?
According to the WHO’s website, “An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health.”
The WHO has further condemned infodemics for supposedly fomenting “conflict, violence, human rights violations and mass atrocities.” These are pretty serious assertions. Clearly, something must be done.
To this end, 132 Member States have signed a cross-regional statement to increase “societal resistance to disinformation” caused by infodemics.
As per the statement, “… We call on everybody to immediately cease spreading misinformation and to observe UN recommendations to tackle this issue, including the United Nations Guidance Note on Addressing and Countering COVID-19 related Hate Speech (11 May 2020).”
The statement continues, saying that the Member States should change their policies to align with the United Nation’s policies.
Despite the clear risk to freedom of expression posed by the WHO and UN’s recommendation, they say that their efforts are based “on freedom of expression, freedom of the press and promotion of highest ethics and standards of the press, the protection of journalists and other media workers, as well as promoting information and media literacy, public trust in science, facts, independent media, state and international institutions.”
The following Member States have signed the statement calling for a coordinated effort to end infodemics:
ALBANIA, ALGERIA, ANDORRA, ANGOLA, ARGENTINA, ARMENIA, AUSTRALIA, AUSTRIA, AZERBAIJAN, BANGLADESH, BARBADOS, BELARUS, BELGIUM, BHUTAN, BOLIVIA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA, BULGARIA, BURKINA FASO, CANADA, CHILE, COLOMBIA, COSTA RICA, CÔTE D’IVOIRE, CROATIA, CYPRUS, CZECH REPUBLIC, DENMARK, DJIBOUTI, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EGYPT, EL SALVADOR, EQUATORIAL GUINEA, ERITREA, ESTONIA, ETHIOPIA, FIJI, FINLAND, FRANCE, GAMBIA, GEORGIA, GERMANY, GREECE, GUATEMALA, GUINEA, HONDURAS, HUNGARY, ICELAND, INDIA, INDONESIA, IRAQ, IRELAND, ISRAEL, ITALY, JAPAN, JORDAN, KENYA, LATVIA, LEBANON, LESOTHO, LIECHTENSTEIN, LITHUANIA, LUXEMBOURG, MADAGASCAR, MALAYSIA, MALDIVES, MALTA, MARSHALL ISLANDS, MAURITIUS, MEXICO, MOLDOVA, MONACO, MONGOLIA, MONTENEGRO, MOROCCO, MOZAMBIQUE, MYANMAR, NAMIBIA, NEPAL, NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, NIGERIA, NORTH MACEDONIA, NORWAY, PAKISTAN, PALAU, PANAMA, PAPUA NEW GUINEA, PARAGUAY, PERU, POLAND, PORTUGAL, QATAR, REPUBLIC OF KOREA, ROMANIA, RWANDA, SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS, SAINT LUCIA, SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES, SAN MARINO, SAUDI ARABIA, SENEGAL, SERBIA, SEYCHELLES, SIERRA LEONE, SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA, SOUTH AFRICA, SOUTH SUDAN, SPAIN, SRI LANKA, SURINAME, SWEDEN, SWITZERLAND, THAILAND, TIMOR LESTE, TOGO, TONGA, TUNISIA, TURKEY, TURKMENISTAN, TUVALU, UGANDA, UKRAINE, UNITED KINGDOM, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, URUGUAY, UZBEKISTAN, VENEZUELA (BOLIVARIAN REPUBLIC OF), YEMEN, STATE OF PALESTINE, and the EUROPEAN UNION.
The DHS’ latest appointment to the Disinformation Board adds to its credibility problem
Michael Chertoff himself has pushed false claims about disinformation and is a prime example of how boards such as this shouldn’t exist
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 20, 2022
The US administration is getting further entangled in missteps, in an attempt to create a credible Disinformation Governance Board.
The latest addition to the outfit, former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff – now nominated as the board’s adviser by the same agency – is unlikely to add to the credibility or clear up “confusion” about the board’s role – given that he, too, in the past peddled misinformation, reports say.

The infamous case of the Hunter Biden laptop is at the center of it all, as more officials who have pushed the now-debunked theory that the emails retrieved from the device were not authentic but a Russian conspiracy are getting appointed to the board.
This new government body is often referred to by critics as the “Ministry of Truth” – a reference to Orwell’s “1984” where the said ministry served a purpose opposite of “truth” – its job was to falsify historical events in order to advance government propaganda.
Chertoff – along with former CIA director Leon Panetta and several others who also in the past broadcast what turned out to be false claims that the publishing of the Biden emails was “a Russian operation” are now joining the board in advisory roles.
The necessity to do something to save face shortly after this body was launched comes because of the actions of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz, who also believes that the emails coming to light were the result of “a Russian influence operation.”
Chertoff himself said in the wake of the 2020 election – ahead of which the Biden laptop story was suppressed and censored by Big Tech and Big Media – that it was the Russians who got their hands on the emails and that those saying they were recovered from Hunter Biden’s abandoned computer were “preposterous.”
Nearly two years later, however, there has been no evidence to prove otherwise. The authenticity of emails messages has been forensically verified, and the repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, said that Hunter Biden left the laptop there in 2019 and never came back.
Isaac first gave a copy of the hard drive to the FBI later that year, and then to President Trump’s associates, who forwarded the documents to the New York Post.
House passes antisemitism resolution calling for surveillance and censorship of online content
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 20, 2022
The House of Representatives has voted to pass a resolution that calls for increased surveillance and censorship of online speech, to help reduce antisemitism.
The resolution goes beyond condemning antisemitism; it goes into the realm of calling on social media platforms to do more to stop it.
We obtained a copy of the resolution for you here.
The resolution calls on social media platforms to “institute stronger and more significant efforts to measure and address online antisemitism” and, like most resolutions of this kind, pays lip-service to the idea of “protecting free speech concerns,” without providing details on how this is possible.
The resolution also calls for the house to work “in tandem with the cross-party Inter-parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Anti-semitism to help craft thoughtful global initiatives designed to address online antisemitism.”
The resolution names platforms specifically, saying there has been an uptick in “antisemitic language, conspiracy theories, and hatred has increased on multiple social media platforms—from Facebook and Instagram to Twitter and TikTok.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, was the only member of the House that recognized the implications of government once again trying to insert themselves into moderation on online platforms and voted against the bill on free speech grounds.
Massie made clear that his vote against the bill was not due to hating anyone “based on his or her ethnicity or religion” but on First Amendment grounds, that is designed to prevent the government from regulating speech. While the resolution is not a law that would force this speech regulation on platforms, the sentiment of the government pressure on platforms is evident.

“I don’t hate anyone based on his or her ethnicity or religion. Legitimate government exists, in part, to punish those who commit unprovoked violence against others, but government can’t legislate thought,” Massie wrote on Twitter.
“This bill promoted internet censorship and violations of the 1st amendment.”
The author of the resolution, Democrat Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, blamed the racially-motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York, on social media for amplifying “radicalizing content and conspiracy theories.” She argued that Section 230, which protects platforms from liability from content posted by users, should be removed.
“It’s past time to pass sane gun safety laws, but we also need to revisit Section 230 to remove social media company immunity if they amplify radicalizing content and conspiracy theories that promote violence like we saw in Buffalo,” she wrote on Twitter.

