Meryl Nass, MD | April 8, 2022
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By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 8, 2022
Former US President Barack Obama railed against social media platforms for supposedly prompting “white supremacists, insurrectionists, misogynist behavior, bullying behavior,” accused these platforms of undermining democracy, and called for them to be regulated during Wednesday’s “Disinformation and Erosion of Democracy” conference.
At the conference, Obama described himself as “close to a First Amendment absolutist” who believes that you “deal with bad speech with good speech.”
“We don’t want to be policing… everything that’s said on the internet,” Obama added.
However, when it came to speech that Obama deems to be “misinformation” or “disinformation,” he didn’t propose more speech as a solution.
Instead, he framed the weaponization of “information, disinformation, misinformation” as one of the things that he’s “most concerned about” and something that he “underestimated the degree to which democracies were as vulnerable to.”
Obama also claimed that social media product design “monetizes anger, resentment, conflict, division, and, in some cases, makes people very vulnerable” and “can lead to violence.”
“If you are… a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are a trans person right now in certain parts of this country, what’s said matters,” Obama said. “What you now have is…these product designs that are… in a non-transparent way, that we don’t have much insight to, a series of editorial choices are essentially being made that undermine our democracy and oftentimes, when combined with any kind of ethnonationalism misogyny or racism, can be fatal.”
Additionally, the former President invoked the January 6 Capitol riot and complained that social media platforms “have some insight into what’s more likely to prompt white supremacists, insurrectionists, misogynist behavior, bullying behavior” but haven’t been forthcoming about their product designs.
Obama’s proposed solution to his complaints about misinformation and social media is to regulate social media algorithms and subject these platforms to federal inspections.
“I think it is reasonable for us as a society to have a debate and then put in place a combination of regulatory measures and industry norms that leave intact the opportunity for these platforms that make money but say to them that… there’s certain practices you engage in that… we don’t think are good for our society and we’re gonna discourage,” Obama said.
He continued by arguing that “a democracy can rightly expect” social media platforms to share their insights with the public and be subject to a level of scrutiny from federal inspectors that is similar to the safety standards and inspections imposed on producers of meat, cars, and toasters.
Interestingly, when Obama was asked to provide examples of misinformation and disinformation during the conference, his stance varied wildly depending on how these examples affected him.
He branded the first example that he provided, media speculation about his birthplace, as agenda-driven promotion of “a clearly false fact.”
Yet when he provided the second example, the media’s accusations that he’d shared false information and lied about the Affordable (sic) Care Act, Obama admitted that what he’d said was “technically” false but justified it by claiming that “the basic principle I’d laid out, I meant and was true.”
This isn’t the first time Obama has pushed for government oversight of Big Tech. In 2020, the former President called for regulations that curb “crazy lies and conspiracy theories.”
By William Bowles | THE NEW DARK AGE | April 7, 2022
This is the latest outrage inflicted on our right to access information and it goes one step further in the war on freedom of expression!
Previously, intercepts like the one below, only happened when you clicked on a link in your Browser but Google have taken censorship onto an entirely new level. Google now intercepts your PRIVATE EMAIL, allegedly to protect you against phishing and other online scams.
This is how it works:
The email in question arrives in your Inbox and looks normal until you click on it to open it when this message appears, replacing the content of the email!
There are two live links in the offending message, one asks you to report the ‘offending’ site by saying “This isn’t a web forgery…”
Clicking on the link: ‘This isn’t a web forgery…” takes you to the page below:
You can submit a report, either for or against. Once you have submitted the report, you are presented with the following page:
If you reply, which I did, cursing the bastards for interfering with my right to information. ‘Google Safe Browsing’ [sic] but not safe from Google! The algorithm even intercepts mail from Google!
If you click on the link, “Ignore this warning”, the message disappears and the original Email message is revealed but Google have another trick up their sleeve, as any links in the message, DON’T WORK! There is however, a workaround as the actual link is there it just doesn’t work! If you can, copy the link and paste it directly into your browser (Windows and Macs use a different method to reveal the link) and you’ll get to the site in question.
This is insidious censorship masquerading as protecting the user and it reveals the true nature of Google because it means that Google is not only scanning your PRIVATE EMAIL for ‘questionable’ links but of course, for ‘questionable’ content, which means Google is actually reading the contents of your formally, private Email!
Given the ubiquitous nature of Google’s role in ALL electronic communications, short of returning to actual, physical letters, I’m not sure what can be done about this outrage but at least let’s make the world aware that this kind of outrageous interception of our communications is going on. Frankly it’s the final nail in coffin of any kind of democratic control over communications.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 7, 2022
The UK’s latest attempt to clamp down on free speech online, the 225 page Online Safety Bill, will give sweeping new censorship powers to the UK’s Secretary of State and its communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom), if passed.
It gives the UK Culture Secretary the power to decide on and designate “priority content that is harmful.”
Once the Secretary of State has designated this content, social media platforms and search engines that fall under the scope of the bill’s regulations have to “use proportionate systems and processes” to prevent children from encountering this priority content.
These platforms are also required to specify in their terms of service how they’ll tackle priority content that’s deemed to be “harmful to adults” and apply these measures consistently.
Additionally, the Culture Secretary gets the power to decide the user number and feature thresholds that determine whether a company falls under the scope of these requirements to remove and tackle priority content.
Collectively, these provisions give the Culture Secretary unprecedentedly broad powers to not only choose the types of speech that is allowed but to also set the rules around which platforms have to censor content.
Under the bill, Ofcom will be granted the power to issue harsh punishments to platforms that fail to meet the Secretary’s censorship demands.
These punishments include applying for court orders that restrict access to platforms in the UK and fining platforms up to £18 million ($23.78 million) or 10% of their revenue (whichever is higher).
In another authoritarian turn, if Ofcom decides that a platform is failing to comply with any aspect of the Online Safety Bill, it can also demand information from the platform via an “information notice” and require the platform to name a senior manager who can be fined or imprisoned for up to two years if they’re found guilty of failing to comply with the requirements.
The grounds that determine whether a senior manager is guilty are as broad and far-reaching as the rest of the bill. Ironically, they include being “reckless” as to whether the information they hand over is false and handing over encrypted information with the intention “to prevent OFCOM from understanding such information.”
These Ofcom powers to punish platforms and potentially jail senior managers create a strong incentive for platforms to fall in line with the Secretary of State’s censorship demands. However, Ofcom also has other powers under the Online Safety Bill that it can wield to directly or indirectly push platforms to censor.
Ofcom can require platforms to take further steps to remedy their “failure to comply” and these steps can include requiring the use of “proactive” content moderation, user profiling, or privacy-invasive behavior identification technology, incentivizing platforms to collect even more data on users.
Even if Ofcom doesn’t directly require platforms to take additional steps, the Online Safety Bill grants it other powers that can be used to make life difficult for platforms that aren’t deemed to be meeting the government’s censorship demands.
Following the playbook of the Chinese Communist Party censors, these powers include the ability to enter and inspect a platform’s premises without a warrant, perform audits, demand documents and interviews, and compel platforms to appoint a “skilled person” that has to provide Ofcom with reports about “relevant matters.”
In a nod to George Orwell’s idea of the Ministry of Truth, the Online Safety Bill requires Ofcom to set up an “advisory committee on disinformation and misinformation.”
This committee will advise Ofcom on “how providers of regulated services should deal with disinformation and misinformation” and how Ofcom can exercise its powers under the Communications Act “in relation to countering disinformation and misinformation on regulated services.”
Not only does the Online Safety Bill give unprecedented censorship powers to government departments that voters have no direct influence over but some of these powers can be exercised with limited Parliamentary scrutiny.
For example, the Secretary of State can lay regulations for harmful content for up to 28 days without any Parliamentary approval and the Secretary of State’s power to designate priority content that is harmful will be set out in secondary legislation that reportedly requires less scrutiny from Members of Parliament (MPs) than the main bill.
Additionally, the codes of practice issued by Ofcom are laid before Parliament but get approved by default after 40 days.
These increased state censorship powers are far from the only negative aspect of the Online Safety Bill. It also introduces new criminal “harmful communications” and “false communications” offenses, further empowers Big Tech, and more.
By Tom Luongo | Gold Goats N’ Guns | April 5, 2022
Fungal President Joe Biden openly declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” in a recent outburst while speaking at NATO. He’s repeated this in the wake of the initial images coming out of the town of Bucha, Ukraine where an alleged massacre of civilians by Russian soldiers took place.
Like many incidents similar to this in the past it is hard to take any of these claims of blame seriously. The US and UK have staged many a ‘false flag’ operation in the past at convenient times to gin up diplomatic outrage to advance a particular political agenda.
That agenda is always to justify more war to deal with the villain du jour. Today it’s Putin. In the past it’s been Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Bashar al-Assad. The playbook is always the same. Shocking images and film of honest-to-god atrocities against civilians and an endless back and forth of accusations and suppression of real information about the event.
Sadly, that becomes the focus not the fact that civilians were murdered for political gains.
Bucha seems to fit this pattern quite well, if more crudely implemented than events like this in the past.
The censorship is nearly total to support the ‘current thing,’ in this case Bucha. But it is no different than the campaigns against certain medications to fight COVID-19.
When it comes to foreign policy objectives, there is always a common denominator in these events to frame that villain and Putin, in particular, as some evil madman… British intelligence.
From the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, to the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, to the ammonia gas attack in Douma, at the center of these allegations is always some arm of the Brits.
All the roads to RussiaGate lead through Ukraine and British Intelligence. At some point you just have to face the face of the agitator. Every one of those stories have logical inconsistencies wide enough to drive a column of tanks through.
These are painstakingly worked through by investigative journalists pushed to the fringe by the technocrats’ willing partners in Silicon Valley to minimize their influence over the narrative.
That, in itself, should be considered prima facia evidence of malfeasance but sadly it isn’t.
From the moment Russia’s troops crossed the border into Ukraine on February 24th there has been a clear strategy by the Russian Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to head off potential false flags publicly before they could be pulled off.
The Russian Foreign Ministry singled out the UK for its histrionics saying if they wanted to lead the charge, they’ll get the worst treatment.
With the pullout of Russian troops from around Kiev however, they have little control over the preparing of the stage. You believe what you want to believe about Bucha, I don’t care.
Given the track record of Russia’s accusers here I’m taking the position that these allegations have to be incontrovertibly proven publicly for me to believe a word of them. Here’s one version of the story (warning: very graphic).
That is how low the credibility of the sources on this are. The UK government has been, along with Biden’s Dept. of State and National Security Council, the most belligerent in their response to Russia’s military operation. Their history and naked hatred of all things Russian stretches back multiple centuries.
In short, they have motive, means and opportunity to stage a false flag to push public sentiment further towards NATO’s intervention into Ukraine officially, therefore a false flag is the most likely scenario.
Complaints about how Russia waged the initial part of this war have centered on their unwillingness (but not opposition) to target civilians. Kiev could have easily been taken if the Russians wanted to commit massive atrocities against civilians.
They did not do so. That flies in the face of what’s being alleged about Bucha. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen the way it is being alleged, but the burden of proof lies with the accuser (Ukraine) and their allies (The US and UK).
And the main amplifier of this story, the UK, blocked not one but two proposals by the Russian Federation to investigate what happened in Bucha. We can’t have that, there’s a war to escalate.
Remember this story is only possible because the Russians first got repulsed from taking Kiev and then pulled back from the areas surrounding it. They are redeploying forces and regrouping for a major push against Ukrainian forces trapped in the eastern part of Ukraine.
That operation will likely wipe out what’s left of the UAF troops there and push the next phase of this war on the ground to its natural state of equilibrium for the next few months.
There are so many people whose crimes in Ukraine would be exposed by a Russian win there that it is truly existential to keep that from happening. It goes deeper than even the ideology of the West which needs to subjugate Russia if the Davos plan for global governance is going to have any hope of succeeding.
This is also personal for everyone from Joe Biden himself to hundreds, if not thousands of people complicit in the various schemes, plots and crimes committed in the petrie dish of corruption they’ve staged their attacks on common decency from.
So, when I say they have motive, means and opportunity, I mean it. These are the same people who impeached Donald Trump over a phone call. Of course they will say the quiet parts out loud about what they want to do to Putin for screwing up their grand plans.
This brings me back to my article from the other day handicapping the Hungarian elections. Because Hungary is now in a very strong position I posited they’d be in if Viktor Orban won the election, which he did, emphatically. And that means the EU is in a very precarious position to continue supporting an anti-Russia policy stance.
With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.
In anticipation of any resistance to the EU’s new set of draconian and frankly insane sanctions on Russia the European Commission wasted no time in announcing they are beginning ‘rule of law’ procedures against Hungary to cut them out of any monetary distributions within the bloc.
The European Commission will soon trigger a powerful new mechanism to cut funding to Hungary for eroding the bloc’s rule-of-law standards, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday.
The announcement comes two days after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán won a fourth consecutive term in an election that international observers said was marred by an uneven playing field benefiting the ruling Fidesz party…
… Von der Leyen said her team informed Hungary of its decision on Tuesday after reviewing Budapest’s responses to an informal letter the Commission sent last November asking for information on its rule-of-law concerns.
“We’ve carefully assessed the result of these questions,” von der Leyen said, speaking to the European Parliament. “Our conclusion is we have to move on [to] the next step.”
There’s nothing ‘careful’ about the EU’s assessment here. Hungary and Poland were forced to accept these new rules in a major political battle with the EU in 2021 over their Green New Deal. He wasn’t in a strong enough position to stop this and it meant then we would wind up here today if he won re-election.
The EC’s formal charges against Hungary over their furry law is just like other such moves, namely against Poland for its hated Supreme Court recall law. They are forcing the ultimate choice on Hungary because all the EU really has is Article 7 censure and expulsion from the Union as a threat.
The amount of money they are holding as a carrot to Orban in COVID relief funds is just 30 pieces of silver and he knows it.
So, if you play this out to the end, this is where Orban has to go. He must force the EU to do what Mark Rutte said last month, kick them out or back down.
Today the European Commission is staring at the real threat: that Hungary has no intention of going along with the new sanctions and Orban actually welcomes Von der Leyen’s move to censure and cut off Hungary’s funds from the EU budget.
They will be a country that now pays in but gets nothing in return other than the stick.
But as long as they are a member of the European Commission they can and will veto anything else Von der Leyen cooks up to punish Russia with as a political cudgel to beat vulnerable EU members into going along with.
The EC thinks they will be making an example of Hungary but what they will really be doing is giving Orban an even stronger hand to play on the European Council. Now he can stay in Budapest and tell Hungarians that the EU no longer works for Hungarians and they would be better off free from their yoke.
Hung-exit, anyone?
Elections have consequences when you don’t control the outcome of them. This is why the neocons and war criminals like Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham and Joe Biden are all screaming that something or someone has to do something to stop Putin whose operation in Ukraine still has the potential to expose everything.
It’s why Bucha was so haphazardly staged and ham-fistedly packaged up to us.
The blow out results in Hungary on Sunday were a major blow to EU confidence and solidarity. Twelve years of calling Orban a Nazi while supporting real 4th generation Nazis in Ukraine landed with a whimper.
Von der Leyen is a certifiable idiot for invoking the ‘rule of law’ weapon against Orban here using the alleged events at Bucha. She’s using it as an excuse to purposefully destroy the European economy per the directive of her Davos handlers. Their calculus is simple, burn the entire global economy down to punish Putin, Xi and everyone else not down with the Comintern.
It exposes the EU’s complicity in the war on Russia as willing partners with the US and UK because if they wanted to continue virtue signaling they would propose crazy new sanctions and let Hungary veto them.
But now we can only conclude this is exactly what they wanted.
That puts things into stark relief as we look ahead to the increasingly likely probability that French President Emmanuel Macron loses to Marine LePen in France who would be in a far stronger position to break up EU solidarity, freezing it politically at a time when Europe’s financial vulnerability has never been higher.
Meanwhile Putin keeps saying “Got Gold or Rubles?” and Orban is preparing a cold dish of political revenge on the nastiest people in Europe. When this mouse roars, they may finally have to listen.
By Todd Hayen PhD | OffGuardian | April 6, 2022
Stop the party, folks, it’s not over until the fat lady sings, and she is only taking a break.
I’ve written about this premature euphoria several times, warning that we really haven’t won a thing, not even one battle, until some heads roll. And there are no rolling heads to be seen. Not even a cursory fall guy having his career destroyed due to all the blame thrown his way.
I thought at first Fauci was going to get this honour with his mysterious disappearance as a precursor to his public fall from grace. But I was wrong. He is only off somewhere private to lick his wounds, assuming he even considers himself wounded, which I rather doubt.
No, we have won no battle, not even a skirmish. The enemy just backed off a bit. We woke up one morning and they were gone. The hill we were supposedly fighting for was ours.
Really? It doesn’t seem like both sides were fighting for the same hill.
So what happened? I know I am preaching to the choir here. I think most of us have a pretty good idea what happened. The Ukraine/Russia incident makes clear the conditioning that Covid has accomplished over the population of the world.
Suddenly all of the focus shifted, suddenly a new enemy was in sight, much like enemies of old—at least an enemy we could see. It was actually quite astounding how quickly all the profile photos on Facebook changed from “I Got Vaccinated!” to the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine.
As we stand on our deserted Covid hill, waving our own flag, and wanting the enemy to at least acknowledge how clever we were to see through their lies and subterfuge we wonder where everyone has gone. “Yea!!” we shout, “we’ve won!!”
No, we haven’t, and not only have we not won, we have lost—big time. Sorry to break it to you (and like I said, I think most readers of OG know this, maybe you can share this article with all those who don’t even know we were in a fight).
It is beyond the scope of this article to list all of the things they have won, and all of the things we have lost, but I will take a stab at the ones that stand out to me. First of all I think it is important to point out the things many of us think we have won—like the rescinding of mandated mask wearing as the first example.
Most states, provinces, and even whole countries have removed mask wearing in public as a “rule, law, or regulation” or whatever you want to call it. In Canada this is true as well. However, you still must wear a mask on public transit, in medical facilities, and quite a few other places. Why? That’s a “ha ha” question. There never has been a reason why, and there isn’t now. And even as this restriction has been “removed” many people are still wearing masks—everywhere.
I am not sure how it is in other parts of the world, but here in Canada there is quite a large percentage of people still wearing masks, even those walking outdoors, or riding alone in their cars. This is the first example of “what they got”—blind obedience to the cause, even when the cause has officially been announced as being no cause at all.
The fear was created; the high morality of “following the authority for the good of the people” has been established. A superstitious effect follows the fear—wear a mask the same way one wears a talisman to ward off evil spirits (although that is probably more effective). A blind obedient habit follows the bowing down to authority. Soon people won’t even know why they first started wearing them, it is just a thing you do, like shaking hands when you meet someone (which we no longer do).
Of course the normies will say “why not? Why is wearing a mask so difficult to do?” Need I explain why? When it is used as a form of compliance to authority, when wearing one obliterates one of the prime ways humans communicate and socialize, when it is actually medically dangerous to wear one, and when there is absolutely no reason to—then we should get rid of them as soon as we can and should never have worn them to begin with.
The powers that ought not to be have won a very effective form of blind compliance, ready to implement at full force again with a snap of a finger. Not only are people still wearing them, it will take no effort at all to get the majority of the world’s population to don them en masse again.
They have also won, and we have lost, a sense of unsubstantiated fear of our fellow humans.
Social distancing has forced us into an unconscious avoidance of other people. I have not seen much handshaking going on, or even hugging. People now avoid each other, and I doubt if most of these avoidances are even conscious. This has established a deep sense of fear and loss of trust, which again makes us all easily manipulated. It will only take small insertions in the culture through media to basically push us anywhere they want us pushed.
The breakdown of social psychology is clearly part of the agenda, and I believe they can indeed count that as a “win”—a big one. The implications of this sort of thing are unconscionable, and range from a general disconnect from human interaction to massive unrest, impatience, and lack of tolerance—more violence, road rage, disputes, and tribal dissonances, not to mention higher rates of depression, anxiety, drug use, and suicide.
If we think of Orwell’s 1984 as any sort of playbook for this agenda, we can see the foundations laid for many of the more atrocious aspects of Big Brother’s world. The idea of continuous war raging somewhere in the world is certainly in place along with the confusion of which side to be on at any given moment. The propaganda is relentless and leaves us all in a sticky syrupy mess. Hate is an all-powerful stimulator for extreme nationalism and compliance to a singular narrative.
During Covid we were trained to accept nothing but one clearly defined truth, different perspectives were not allowed, as anything with a different view was immediately labeled as “misinformation,” “fake,” and “dangerous.”
There are no “second opinions” anymore, either a source of information is in line with the mainstream, or it is simply degraded as insanity, moronic, or “anti science.” There is no grey—only black and white.
During Covid we learned, through a very conscious manipulation, that there was only one way to see truth, and that polarized thinking can apply to anything the narrative wishes to apply it to. First, “all about Covid and vaccines” now “all about Ukraine and Russia.” Two very different events in nearly every way, yet each with one mainstream view that we all must be in alignment with.
The ease of applying censorship to nearly any situation is a huge win for them. Any contrary opinion has been all but obliterated—if information is labeled “mis” by the mainstream it is blocked. Contrary ideas and opinions on social media are deleted, those who are brave enough to speak out lose their jobs and their reputations are ruined.
Once we start marching to this drum—that anything that challenges the main stream narrative is false, fake, misinformation, dangerous or “anti science”—we are quite literally walking into a totalitarian state. After Covid this sort of censorship will just be that much easier to implement, and it will be that much easier to just go along with it, or worse, advocate it.
In more subtle areas we see the foundation firmly set for other agenda items such as Central Bank Digital Currency and digital ID’s, obviously the way having been paved by the infamous “vaccine passport.” The ground they have acquired through the Covid manipulation is clear, and substantial.
Anything they wish for in the future has been normalized by the events of the past two years, any radical demand made in the future has had its path greased by these events such as travel restrictions, bank closures (as punishment for supporting any sort of protest against the main stream narrative), forced medical intervention with no substantial medical purpose or reason, restrictions on gathering, redefining words in order to fit the agenda, on and on and on.
Depending on how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go, the “powers that ought not to be” could possibly have accomplished the initial stages of ridding the world of millions of “useless eaters” through the wholesale injection of god knows what into billions of bodies.
We may be seeing only the tiny tip of the iceberg with the thousands of deaths and injuries undoubtedly caused by the “vaccines”—probably effects the makers of the injections see as a minor annoyance when the major event could very well be the deaths of millions spread out over generations (or much less!)
If true, that’s a BIG win for them!—and an equally big loss for us. There is no turning this one around, no stopping it, as it has already been done and all we can do is sit and await the results.
So we have really won nothing, and we have lost an awful lot. In many regards what they have won is really just the beginnings of the foundation of what is yet to come. No one builds a nice foundation to a house without the intention of building the rest of the house that sits upon it. Even though a concrete slab isn’t usually much to look it, it has all the preparations built into it that allow a very complex structure to sit on it. The detail of that structure is yet to be built.
I am afraid it is going to be a very big and complex house and with its eventual erection the beautiful view we used to enjoy will be blocked—a view of freedom and creativity.
These two ingredients have always been necessary to ensure a future that all humans have the right to pursue—a future of life, liberty and happiness, all things surely worth fighting for. Stay on that hill; the battle has only just begun.
Todd Hayen is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 6, 2022
The UK’s current effort to censor online speech, the Online Safety Bill, will give the government broad powers to dictate content that the tech giants have to censor and empower the police to arrest people over what they post online.
While these new powers are chilling, they are at least still tied to the UK justice system which guarantees citizens the right to a fair trial and the right to appeal.
But some provisions in the Online Safety Bill skip the police and the courts entirely and instead require the tech giants, some of which are monopolies, to act as enforcers of speech.
The bill deputizes Big Tech to seek out and prevent their users from encountering “illegal” and “fraudulent” content without any oversight from the police or the courts. This gives these powerful tech platforms the freedom to brand something illegal or fraudulent without any of the checks and balances of the justice system.
The bill also gives these tech giants additional powers that aren’t granted to police and the courts, such as the power to set their own rules around how they’ll deal with harmful content. All they have to do is state how they’ll tackle harmful content in their terms of service and then apply these provisions in their terms consistently.
These Big Tech companies already censor millions of posts each year for supposedly being harmful. With their additional powers and the threats of punishment in the Online Safety Bill, the number of censored posts is likely to be even higher if the bill comes into force.
Although the Online Safety Bill does require platforms to give users the right to appeal content takedowns, these appeals are far more centralized than the right to appeal a UK judicial decision. Under the UK justice system, citizens have the right to appeal decisions and have them reviewed by independent judges. Under the Online Safety Bill, citizens have to appeal to the tech companies that took down their content.
By deputizing Big Tech, the Online Safety Bill also creates a dystopian censorship alliance between these powerful companies and the UK government. The government can dictate its censorship requirements directly to its Big Tech enforcers without the police gathering any evidence of an alleged offense and without prosecutors gaining a conviction in a court of law or even a court order.
These provisions that skip the police and the courts and give the tech giants new enforcement powers in the UK are just one of the many aspects of the Online Safety Bill that throttles UK citizens’ civil liberties. Other provisions in the bill take aim at privacy and give large media companies benefits that aren’t afforded to regular citizens.
You can get a full overview of all the free speech and privacy threats posed by the Online Safety Bill here.
You can see a full copy of the full Online Safety Bill here.
The bill is currently making its way through Parliament and you can track its progress here.
By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | April 4, 2022
Another month has been added to the standstill in global temperature, according to accurate satellite measurements compiled by the University of Alabama and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer (see above). The pause is now 90 months long. In fact a small downwards movement is now discernible, since the trend measured over the last 90 months is minus-0.01°C, which equates to minus-0.14°C a century. It must be noted, however, that such small movements, although widely used by climate alarmists in the upwards direction, are within the margin of error.
As I have noted in recent articles, the Spencer data has been kicked off Google AdSense for “unreliable and harmful claims”. The move demonetised Dr. Spencer’s monthly satellite update page by removing all Google-supplied advertising. Google says it will ban all sites that are sceptical of “well established scientific consensus”. Agenda-driven commentators almost invariably ignore satellite data, which has consistently shown less warming than surface measurements.
Satellite temperature measurements of the atmosphere are generally considered more accurate, because they avoid the urban heat distortions common to surface measurements. It is suggested that such measurements have been pushed higher over time as stationary measuring stations are enclosed by growing urban development. For instance, temperature measurements are common at busy airports. Before the planes arrived at Chicago O’Hare, one of the world’s busiest airports, it was rural orchard fields (as indicated by its IATA code, ORD).
Interestingly, however, the global temperature standstill is starting to show up in the surface record, as measured (above) by the Met Office HadCrut database. Here we see almost no movement over the last 96 months. The 0.04°C century rise is most definitely within the margin of error! But it would seem that the Met Office is failing to discuss these significant trends. This might be considered surprising, since in the U.K. we know that local temperatures have been plateauing for some time. The average temperature in the 2010s at 9.17°C was colder than the 2000s at 9.31°C.
Writing about the latest standstill in Watts Up With That?, the journalist and former political adviser Christopher Monckton described the pause as “one of the best kept secrets” in journalism. Monckton was a former lead writer on the Evening Standard and these days rarely minces his words. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic dare not lose face over the politics of climate change, he suggested. “They cannot bring themselves to admit that they have been wrong, that they have been fooled, and that they have needlessly and expensively ended the free market in energy supply,” he added.
Two months ago, the seven-year satellite record was still showing a tiny warming trend with the Net Zero 1.5°C target achievable in 400 years’ time. Alas, for Thermogeddonites everywhere, even that small consolation is no longer available.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic‘s Environment Editor.
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 5, 2022
The UK’s Online Safety Bill, a sweeping online censorship law that’s currently making its way through Parliament, will force Big Tech platforms to censor some categories of content that the government has deemed to be “harmful” and will introduce new criminal offenses for posts that are deemed to cause “harm” without a “reasonable excuse.”
The bill gives the Secretary of State new powers to brand some content as harmful and platforms that fall under the scope of the bill’s regulations have to prevent children from encountering this content and allow adults to “increase their control over harmful content.”
Not only does the badly-written Online Safety Bill base most of its censorship requirements and these new criminal offenses on the vague term harm but it also ambiguously extends beyond the idea of physical harm to the realm of what it calls “psychological” harm.
As if the definitions are not far-reaching enough, it further demands that simply the “risk” or “potential” of harm is to be treated “in the same way as references to harm.”
The examples of harm that are listed in the bill are equally ambiguous – such as; when “individuals act in a way that results in harm to themselves or that increases the likelihood of harm to themselves.”
Another badly-worded and wide-ranging example includes; “where, as a result of the content, individuals do or say something to another individual that results in harm to that other individual or that increases the likelihood of such harm (including, but not limited to, where individuals act in such a way as a result of content that is related to that other individual’s characteristics or membership of a group).”
These unclear and far-reaching definitions not only trample over the free speech rights of the British public, but also make it impossible for platforms to determine how to comply with the bill. That’s because many posts could be considered harmful under such broad and flighty definitions, especially when combined with the postmodern idea that speech can be psychologically harmful and with increasing sections of the public that expect to be coddled.
Adding to the lack of clarity, just days before the final bill was published, the UK Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) Secretary of State Nadine Dorries, one of the main proponents of the bill, has contradicted the bill’s own wording.
Dorries tried to defend the bill by saying those who fear that “the Government wants to ban legal content if it ‘upsets’ or ‘offends’ someone” have a “complete misunderstanding” of the bill.
Dorries even tried to argue that some of the bill’s provisions would actually reduce the risk of platforms being pressured into removing legal content by activists “who claim that controversial content causes them psychological harm.”
However, in the era of safe spaces, the vague definitions leave the notion of determining psychological harm open to wide interpretation, likely causing platforms to play it safe and over-censor speech to avoid facing the whims of whichever government is in power.
This lack of clarity around the definition of harm also extends beyond the censorship requirements in the bill. There are two new criminal offenses in the Online Safety Bill that reference this term – a “harmful communications offence” and a “false communications offence.”
The harmful communications offense defines harm as “psychological harm amounting to at least serious distress” and describes a harmful communication as intentionally sending a message to “cause harm to a likely audience,” – ominously adding; when there’s “no reasonable excuse.”
It comes with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
The false communications offense describes a false communication as sending a message that contains “information that the person knows to be false” with the intention of causing “non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience” when there’s “no reasonable excuse.”
It comes with a maximum penalty of 51 weeks in prison.
The UK’s police forces are already internationally infamous for using another vague and subjective term, “hate,” to justify adding people’s podcasts and tweets to their register of over 120,000 “non-crime hate incidents.” And with these new criminal offenses outlined in the bill, the police would have the power to arrest and charge UK citizens who are accused of causing someone “psychological harm” with speech that would be legal if it was communicated offline.
The censorship requirements and new criminal offenses related to harmful content are some of the many threats to civil liberties posed by this Online Safety Bill. It also threatens privacy and gives larger media outlets special exemptions that aren’t afforded to regular UK citizens.
You can get the full overview of all the free speech and privacy threats posed by the Online Safety Bill here.
You can see a full copy of the full Online Safety Bill here.
The bill is currently making its way through Parliament and you can track its progress here.
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 4, 2022
Officials in the Netherlands on April 3 re-arrested Willem Engel, a prominent campaigner against COVID-19 restrictions, claiming Engel violated the terms of his bail by discussing his case on social media.
Engel is co-founder of the Dutch organization “Viruswaarheid” (“Virus Truth”), which is challenging the legality of COVID restrictions implemented in the Netherlands.
He first was arrested last month and detained for two weeks before being released on bail.
Engel is one of two well-known European activists arrested recently for speaking out against COVID mandates and lockdowns. The other, French attorney Virginie de Araujo-Recchia, serves on the international grand jury convened as part of the People’s Court of Public Opinion, co-founded by German attorney Reiner Fuellmich.
The People’s Court aims to reveal “crimes against humanity” committed in the name of public health and combating COVID.
Araujo-Recchia, in a press release, and Engel, in an interview with The Defender, said they will continue their efforts to fight COVID-related restrictions and vaccine mandates.
French lawyer detailed on suspicion of connections to ‘terrorism’
Araujo-Recchia was arrested by French police at her home in the early morning hours of March 22 and held until March 24 by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) in Paris.
Mainstream media reports said she was arrested, along with six other individuals, including a member of the French “Yellow Vests” movement, in connection with an ongoing “terrorism” investigation.
According to Libération :
“[T]he lawyer [Araujo-Recchia] is one of the seven people arrested yesterday ‘in a terrorist case linked to the figure of the conspiracy circles Rémy Daillet.’
“A judicial source confirmed … that seven police custody [sic] were in progress at the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) ‘for acts of association of terrorist criminals with a view to preparing crimes against persons.’ They are five men and two women, aged 36 to 62.
“Among those arrested would also include Sylvain B., a ‘yellow vest’ author of a ‘manual of peaceful insurrection’. AFP [Agence France Presse] specifies that searches were carried out during the arrests.”
French newspaper Libération described Daillet as a “neo-Nazi” and “a figure in conspiratorial circles already implicated and imprisoned” in a kidnapping case, who is also accused of being the mastermind of a group “planning violent actions … against 5G antennas, vaccination centers, but also against journalists and various personalities.”
In addition to serving with Fuellmich on the People’s Court grand jury, Araujo-Recchia is involved with similar issues domestically within France, working with three organizations that are attempting to levy criminal charges against politicians who, in 2021, voted for legislation strengthening COVID-related restrictions.
Working with three other lawyers, Araujo-Recchia filed a complaint on behalf of three associations: BonSens.org, AIMSIB [International Association for Independent and Benevolent Scientific Medicine] and the Collectif des Maires Résistants [Collective of Resistant Mayors], targeting French members of parliament who, on Aug. 5, 2021, voted for legislation implementing vaccine passports and requiring French workers to receive a COVID vaccine.
Araujo-Recchia and her legal team alleged these parliamentarians received favors in exchange for their vote and that the law itself violates French and international law. They presented a series of arguments against this legislation.
She also was said to be working on a new complaint, to be filed against French political parties and some of their members, at the time of her arrest.
In November 2020, Araujo-Recchia authored the Dictatorship Report 2020, published by France’s Genocide Observatory. This report was said to be intended to form part of a new set of criminal charges to be filed against members of the French government.
Following her arrest, Health Freedom Defense Fund posted an online petition calling for her release.
On March 30, Araujo-Recchia issued a press release describing her ordeal and time in detention. She clarified she is not facing any charges at this time, stating:
“[O]n 22nd March 2022 at forty minutes past six in the morning (06:40), twelve individuals including hooded commando officers, entered our residence on board six vehicles and pounded at the front door.
“The team was made up of various security-agency members, notably from the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure (DGSI, more or less equivalent to MI5), a representative of the Paris Bar (Bâtonnier du Barreau de Paris), a Clerk of the Court and two investigation-magistrates. Without striking a blow, they entered our residence and searched each and every room including our children’s room, our vehicle and the garden.
“On suspicion of being an accomplice to terrorism, I was then removed to DGSI premises at Levallois-Perret.
“There, I was held for roughly sixty hours under conditions that can only be described as inhuman. For reasons of personal dignity I shall refrain from elaborating further.
“On being released from custody, I found that not a single charge would be raised against me, nor was I even a suspect (témoin assisté). In a word, I am no party to the matter.
“Apart from being amongst the lawyers instructed by an individual who has been charged, my involvement with the case is nil.
“Would it not have been simpler to call me in, rather than carrying me off in front of the children and detaining me under grotesque conditions – when at the end of the day, there being nothing to reproach me with, it proves to be but a fishing expedition?
“Innocent until proven guilty did you say?”
In the press release, Araujo-Recchia also claimed that during her interrogation, which lasted 10 hours, she was asked the following questions in an apparent attempt to smear her as a “conspiracy theorist” and racist, and to connect her to alleged “terrorist” activity:
Responding to this line of questioning and media reports about her connections to “terror” suspects, Araujo-Recchia wrote:
“Various press outlets have referred to a ‘terrorist file’, and to my name as a ‘lawyer representing individuals in conspiracy-theorist circles’ or ‘extremist cells,’ The libelous nature of that particular mixture being perfectly plain to all and sundry.
“Trust that I shall not let the business drop: we are dealing with outright libel and intent to harm. I shall moreover exercise my right to respond.
“The investigator asked me to set out my ‘ideology’ in broad strokes. I replied that it has nothing to do with an ideology, but rather with plain facts backed by evidence which I have been at pains to collect over the past two years.
“The International Court of Public Opinion and the Grand Jury, inter alia, have held hearings at which there testified acknowledged international specialists in science, medicine, psychology and psychopathology, economics, geostrategy, as well as victims past and present.
“For my part, I have taken testimony from victims, health-care workers, French firemen and present[ed] it to the Grand Jury.
“No ideology is being served up here, but rather expert opinion, professionals, witnesses and victims.
“Truth alone is the goal we seek.”
Araujo-Vecchia also noted that lawyers and doctors, as well as activists such as members of the Yellow Vests, “are subjected to similar forms of intimidation, as they attempt to raise the alarm over certain measures designed to manage the public-health ‘crisis’ or harm incurred through the experimental gene-therapy shots,” adding:
“[T]here are those of us who, having confronted the State and major financial interests such as the pharmaceutical-, finance- and MSM multis, find ourselves being in custody without cause.
“None of this will prevent my fighting for civil rights and liberties.”
France, beginning in 2020, enacted some of the most stringent COVID-related restrictions in Europe, including vaccine passports to enter most public and private venues.
In January, French President Emmanuel Macron, who is running for re-election, said he is continuing implementation of such passports because he wanted to “piss off” the unvaccinated.
Dutch activist detained for 14 days on charges of ‘incitement, sedition’
In an incident remarkably similar to Araujo-Vecchia’s arrest, Dutch activist Willem Engel, co-founder of the “Viruswaarheid” (“Virus Truth”) movement, on March 16 was arrested on charges of “incitement” and “sedition.”
Engel was outside a polling location immediately after he had voted in that country’s elections. His lawyer, Jeroen Pols, immediately confirmed the arrest in a tweet, while Engel’s girlfriend captured the arrest on video.
Mainstream media reports, which described Engel as a “COVID denier,” reported he is “suspected of posting seditionist coronavirus-related statements on social media over an extended period,” quoting statements from the Public Prosecution Service (OM) of the Netherlands.
The OM in January announced that Engel was being investigated following a petition, signed by nearly 23,000 individuals, calling for him to be charged with sedition, spreading medical misinformation, fraud and making threats.
The petition was launched by an “activist,” Norbert Dikkeboom, in 2021.
The initial investigation into his actions led to Engel’s arrest, the OM said in a statement.
The investigation identified seven social media postings, made by Engel between June 2020 and June 2021, which “were considered to be incitement,” and which, according to the OM, “led to other people committing criminal offenses or incited them to do so.”
The OM did not name the specific social media posts or the alleged criminal offenses that the posts allegedly incited.
As stated by the OM, while freedom of speech is a “fundamental right” that is enshrined under Dutch law, “there are limits to that freedom.”
In January, Engel characterized the investigation as a “smear campaign” against him and proclaimed his innocence. “I try to keep the debate sharp but never cross the line,” Engel said. “I’ve never threatened anyone.” He went on to accuse Dikkeboom, the activist who launched the petition against him, of stalking him.
Engel’s lawyer, Jeroen Pols, called Engel’s arrest “a frontal attack on critics and opponents” of the “Rutte regime,” referring to Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He added in later statements that Engel’s arrest is part of an ongoing pattern of arresting individuals who “criticize the regime.”
“The Rutte regime is fully attacking critics and opposition,” Pols said. “Meanwhile, they have a big mouth about democracy in Russia.”
In turn, the group Viruswaarheid (Virus Truth) described the arrest as an instance when “the Dutch government crossed a new line in its war against unwanted opinions and expressions.” The group accused the OM of, along with Dutch police, actively assisting Dikkeboom in his petition against Engel.
Viruswaarheid claimed that, in the past year, more than 420 articles and media reports smeared Engel “with slanderous lies,” as a result of “[a]n unprecedented hate campaign from the entire written and spoken media” that contributed to the collection of the more than 22,000 signatures on the petition against Engel.
In a separate statement, Viruswaarheid wrote that Engel “had drawn attention to [the Dutch government’s] Corona policy with his ‘Virus Truth’ initiative and has successfully fought the government measures in court on several occasions.”
Viruswaarheid in April 2020 launched petitions and demonstrations against the Dutch government’s COVID restrictions.
The group also filed two successful lawsuits “against the illegal corona measures,” which led to the laws in question being amended, in an effort by the Dutch government to sidestep these legal defeats.
Following Engel’s arrest, a demonstration took place in Amsterdam on March 20 calling for his release.
Engel, who holds a master’s degree in biopharmacy and biotechnology and operates a dance school in Rotterdam, was released on March 30 after being detained for 14 days.
He faces two upcoming court cases. He spoke to The Defender about his experience and the charges he is now facing.
Engel told The Defender he was arrested “in front of the voting booth … right after I cast my vote, two thugs with masks handcuffed me and told me I am under arrest for sedition … this is in clear violation [of Dutch law] on so many angles.”
According to Engel, he was not informed about the specific social media posts that led to the charges against him. Instead, “they [the authorities] just named the offense.”
Engel described Dikkeboom, the organizer of the petition against him, as “a sad person that stalks me,” adding, “I have made multiple charges against him … as he is openly calling for violence against me.”
Engel said the OM “shared a lot of information” about his case with Dikkeboom, describing this as “crazy” in light of Dikkeboom’s alleged threats against him.
As a potential motive for his arrest, Engel points out that Viruswaarheid has filed “over 20 cases against the government and its institutions,” adding that “there is a spree of arrests, all [with] the same signature, people being accused of threatening violence or vandalism or sedition,” and who are facing “vague charges.”
According to Engel, “almost all of the arrests are against people who have a following and who vlog regularly about demonstrations and COVID.”
Engel said such arrests and crackdowns are “happening also in Germany and Canada and probably all western countries.” He described this as “clearly the next phase of oppression, trying to take out the resistance in preparation for the next COVID ‘wave’ set for September 2022.”
However, according to Engel, the authorities “got more than they bargained for” as a result of his arrest, pointing out that “lots of people were rallying … more than 10,000 physical postcards were sent to the prison [where he was held] … #Freewillem was trending on Twitter [on] multiple days.”
Engel said he now faces two separate court cases with the “same line of charges,” which he describes as “very vague.” Court hearings are scheduled on June 13 and June 20 in The Hague and Rotterdam, respectively.
Despite his ordeal, Engel said he is “in good health and the fight has just begun.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | April 3, 2022
On YouTube channels, apps, and websites, Google will no longer run ads on content that condones or dismisses the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The move is in line with Google’s policy that says it wants to prevent the monetization of content that denies tragic events and incites violence.
“We can confirm that we’re taking additional steps to clarify, and in some instances expand our monetization guidelines as they relate to the war in Ukraine,” a Google spokesperson said.
In an email to publishers, obtained by Reclaim The Net, Google said it would not run ads alongside content with “claims that imply victims are responsible for their own tragedy or similar instances of victim blaming, such as claims that Ukraine is committing genocide or deliberately attacking its own citizens.”
Russia has been accusing western media and online platforms of spreading fake news about the war, which it calls a “special military operation.”
On Wednesday, Russian media reported that internet watchdog Roskomnadzor had blocked Google News, for spreading fake news.
In early March, Google said it had stopped the sale of online ads in Russia.
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By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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