Full Spectrum Dominance

‘Truly Frightening:’ Feds Give Tech Companies Until May 2 to ‘Turn Over COVID-19 Misinformation’

By Meryl Nass, M.D. | The Defender | March 4, 2022

Two news stories this week reveal how the federal government plans to treat COVID “misinformation” as a crime, and what role tech companies will play in rounding up the “criminal.”

This is truly frightening.

Two U.S. Senators this week introduced a bill to provide tech companies cover via legislation that could make it possible for Congress to “legalize” censorship and criminalize First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Here’s a press release describing the bill:

“U.S. Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), both members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, on Wednesday introduced legislation to counter the threat that misinformation and disinformation pose to public health as evidenced by the widespread false narratives throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The Promoting Public Health Information Act would support efforts across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with outside stakeholders to communicate effectively during a public health emergency and address health misinformation.”

Here is what Murphy had to say about the bill:

“Throughout this pandemic, the impact of misinformation has been devastating. Rumors and conspiracy theories about the efficacy of masking or the safety of vaccines still run rampant on social media and have caused thousands of deaths that could have been prevented.

“This legislation will help us get smart about how to tackle misinformation and effectively promote science-based health information, especially as we continue fighting COVID-19 and prepare for future public health emergencies.”

In other words, the feds are asking detailed information about the demographics “exposed to misinformation,” allowing them to determine who’s reading what, and to obtain their names.

Next, in the last paragraph of this New York Times article, “The surgeon general calls on Big Tech to turn over Covid-19 misinformation data,” we learn that the federal government wants citizens to start “sharing” information on “misinformation:”

“‘We’re asking anyone with relevant insights — from original research and data sets to personal stories that speak to the role of misinformation in public health — to share them with us,’ Dr. [Vivek] Murthy said.”

Isn’t that sweet?

This is how they dress up the Stasi in 21st-century euphemism to encourage ratting out your friends and neighbors: “Please share with the feds. They care what you think.”

Sure they do.

According to the Times :

“President Biden’s surgeon general on Thursday formally requested major tech platforms submit information about the scale of COVID-19 misinformation on social networks, search engines, crowdsourced platforms, e-commerce platforms and instant messaging systems.

“The request for information from the surgeon general’s office demanded tech platforms send data and analysis on the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation on their sites, starting with common examples of vaccine misinformation documented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The notice asks the companies to submit ‘exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of COVID-19 misinformation,’ as well as aggregate data on demographics that may have been disproportionately exposed to, or affected by, the misinformation.

“The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, also demanded information from the platforms about the major sources of Covid-19 misinformation, including those that engaged in the sale of unproven Covid-19 products, services and treatments.

“‘Technology companies now have the opportunity to be open and transparent with the American people about the misinformation on their platforms,’” Murthy said in an emailed statement. He added: “‘This is about protecting the nation’s health.’”

“Companies have until May 2 to submit the data. Denying requests for information does not carry a penalty, but the notice is the first formal request from the Biden administration of the tech companies to submit COVID-19 misinformation data, according to the surgeon general’s office.

“Six months ago, Murthy used his first formal advisory to the U.S. to deliver a broadside against tech and social media companies, which he accused of not doing enough to stop the spread of dangerous health misinformation — especially about COVID-19. He called the misinformation “an urgent threat to public health.”

“The request for information is part of President Biden’s National COVID-⁠19 Preparedness Plan, which the White House detailed on Wednesday and which is a road map for a new stage of the pandemic where COVID-19 causes ‘minimal disruption,’ according to the White House.

“Biden first revealed details of the plan during his State of the Union address Tuesday night.

“In addition to demanding misinformation data from the tech platforms, the surgeon general called on healthcare providers and the public to submit information about how COVID-19 misinformation has negatively influenced patients and communities.

“‘We’re asking anyone with relevant insights — from original research and data sets to personal stories that speak to the role of misinformation in public health — to share them with us,’” Murthy said.”

Meryl Nass, M.D., ABIM, is an internist with special interests in vaccine-induced illnesses, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War illness, fibromyalgia and toxicology.

© 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.

March 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Digital Brownshirts and Their Masters

BY DAVID SOUTO ALCALDE AND THOMAS HARRINGTON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | MARCH 3, 2022

We are under siege. A nihilistic fanaticism is running free among us thanks to the emergence of a journalistic “ethos” that establishes an almost complete equivalence between the “truth” and those utterances that support the strategic goals of the great economic and digital powers of our time.

A few months ago Facebook censored an article in the British Medical Journal that highlighted serious irregularities in Pfizer’s clinical vaccine trials. Then two weeks ago, fact-checkers from the Spanish websites Newtral and Maldita burst into the public square to accuse professor of Pharmacology, renowned expert in drug safety, and ex-WHO adviser, Joan Ramón Laporte of foisting lies and disinformation onto the Spanish populace. This, in reaction to Laporte’s testimony before a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the country’s vaccination effort.

Despite his towering credentials, his intervention was quickly tarred as problematic by the media and subsequently banned by YouTube. The crime of this new Galileo Galilei? Alerting the assembled parliamentarians to the existence of grave procedural irregularities in the trials for the vaccines, and questioning the wisdom of a health strategy that aims to inject every Spanish child over the age of six with a new, poorly tested, and largely ineffective medication.

This incident reveals that the fact-checkers will attack anyone who does not accept the truth as dictated by the great economic and government centers of the world. This is not the usual official media obfuscation to which we’ve become accustomed over the years, but rather a brazen McCarthyist intimidation device, designed to frighten citizens into submission by appealing to their lowest and most ignoble instincts, an approach lain bare in Maldita’s smug and Manichaean slogan: “Join and support us in our battle against lies.”

Under this harsh binary logic, an internationally famous scientist like Laporte is not even given the opportunity to be judged wrong or misguided in good faith. Rather, he is immediately accused of being a willful and dangerous liar who must be immediately banished from public view.

Fact-checkers as destroyers of science and the public sphere

Nowadays the word “fascist” is used so profligately that it has lost most of its meaning. But if we are really serious about describing the operational logic of fact-checking entities like Maldita and Newtral we must recur precisely to that term, adding the prefix “neo” to avoid confusion with the original version of this totalitarian sensibility.

Whereas the original model of fascism sought to enforce social conformity through physical intimidation, the new variant seeks to do so by aggressively enforcing the “acceptable” (to big power, of course) parameters of both scientific discourse and the idea of the public sphere, a direct product, like science, of the Enlightenment. Their objective is to liquidate these flawed but essential spaces of debate in all but name, and thus deprive us of two of the only remaining vehicles we have for defending ourselves against the abuses meted out by the liberal state and its corporate and military allies.

The fact-checking industry was born as a consequence of fake news, that great invented crisis whose sole objective was to provide a pretext for enhancing elite control over any democratic impulse that might arise in response to the sudden and often harsh imposition of neoliberalism and digital technologies in our lives.

But what initially began as a pathetic, overreaching and classist attempt to prevent the unwashed from even considering, say, that people in Hillary Clinton’s entourage might have prostituted minors in a pizza-house basement, quickly morphed, during the Covid era, into something much more sinister and consequential.

It is now the menacing cudgel of an ever-growing exercise in illegitimate corporate and state power, a weapon that allows elites to effectively disappear world-renowned experts like Laporte who dare to put the interests of society ahead of the economic interests and control agendas of Big Pharma and Big Tech.

These Digital Brownshirts are just the most visible and forward-leaning elements of a much broader effort to install the logic of the algorithm—a providential and vertically-imposed concept of truth that vitiates traditional fact-finding and admits neither human intelligence nor scientific debate—as a cornerstone of our human interactions and cognitive processes. Under this paradigm, a linear relationship between power and truth is presented as wholly and completely natural.

When analyzed in this light we could say that while the libels launched against Laporte by Maldita and Newtral are not strictly-speaking algorithmic in origin, they are profoundly algorithmic in spirit in that they are designed, like Neil Ferguson’s well-publicized if completely errant epidemiological models, to radically preempt the search for truth over time through empirical observation and informed debate.

The methods these fact-checkers use to dictate what is to be presented to the public as “true” operate under few, if any known, procedural standards. Rather, in forming their “arguments” it seems they simply cherry-pick the opinions of an expert or two who is known to be on board with the particular “algorithmic” project of social change or social mobilization.

This, regardless of the at times massive gap between the slim credentials and in-field experience of the project-compliant experts (not to mention the fact-checking journalists) and the demonstrated international skill and renown of the objects of their efforts in cognitive cleansing like Laporte, or earlier on in the Covid crisis, Michael Levitt and John Ioannidis.

In short, these fact-checking processes follow neither the basic principles of journalistic ethics—which requires that one enter into a given question without any unduly strong presuppositions—or the necessary back and forth of the scientific method, which insures, or is at least designed to insure, that dissident opinions be considered in the process of establishing operative, if still always provisional, notions of truth.

The only recognizable “strength” the new fact-checkers have—and here we see perhaps the clearest link to the thugs that were strategically deployed by Mussolini and Hitler— is their backing from the very highest levels of social and economic power.

The seriousness of the current situation lies in the way the fact-checkers have—before the often dumbfounded acquiescence of much of the academy itself—successfully arrogated to themselves the right, for all practical purposes, to smash the day-to-day freedom and epistemic authority of scientists, as well as the processes designed to insulate intellectual inquiry from the undue impingements of concentrated power, or to put it more simply, from the possibility that an oligarchy-sponsored mediocrity, or pack of mediocrities, can summarily cancel the widely institutionally recognized wisdom of a Joan Ramon Laporte.

The authoritarianism of the fact-checkers not only cripples science but effectively annuls the very idea of the public sphere by naturalizing the idea that the robust, and at times, conflictual exchange of ideas is in some way perverse. Is it any wonder that observing a world like this, many of our students, who should at their age be bursting with a desire for healthy conflicts in the service of growth, have confessed to us both in private how scared they are to express themselves freely and openly in class?

If the largely anonymous fact-checkers are the shock troops of this campaign to override both epistemological rigor and the idea of the public sphere, the media-anointed “science-explainers” are its field generals.

There is, of course nothing wrong with seeking to make often arcane fields of knowledge accessible to the general public. Indeed when done well by a real scientist like Carl Sagan it is a high art.

The problem comes, as is so often the case today, when the popularizer lacks a grasp of the fundamental debates in the field, and from there, the ability to confidently wade into them as a participant. Painfully aware that he or she is in over his head, they will do what most people unable to compete on their own merits in the field to which they have been assigned tend to do: seek the protection in the arms of power.

This produces a perverse reality, in which the people ostensibly tasked with introducing the public to the complexity of both science and public policy, end up shielding them from an acquaintance with either. And knowing their continued prominence depends on pleasing the powers who have elevated them to the spotlight and who are seeking to destroy existing epistemologies of knowledge in order to facilitate the imposition of their algorithmic logic, they take delight in mocking those few highly accomplished people who have decided not to relinquish their principles in the face of the constant propaganda onslaught.

A good example of this practice of hooliganism in Spain is Rocio Vidal, who works for La Sexta, the country’s most-watched TV network. From a swivel chair in her home office, she ridicules anyone, from the singer and actor Miguel Bosé to the head of Allergic Diseases at Ourense Hospital in Galicia who questions the official dogma of the unprecedented virulence of Covid, and the self-evident wonders of the vaccines. The specific crime of the doctor from Galicia? Stating that the not fully tested Covid mRNA vaccines are, in fact, not fully tested and thus are by definition experimental.

What these medical influencers are doing, no doubt with the full knowledge, approval and perhaps even training of the great financial, governmental and pharmaceutical powers is to effect—under the rubric of the freedom of the press—a rapid sorpasso of the institutions that, with all their faults, have long guaranteed a more or less reliable structure for adjudication of competing claims of scientific truth. Unaccustomed to the aggressiveness, relentlessness and speed of these attacks, most doctors have, sadly, reacted like the proverbial deer in the headlights to them, hoping against hope that this plague of intellectual vandalism will somehow, someway be brought to an end. But it would appear that no such relief is in the offing.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of this inquisitorial logic and praxis in the long run is that it tries to make citizens believe that there is no relationship between science and politics, and that politics—the art of dissent—is a dangerous practice that must be eschewed by every conscientious citizen.

The fact-checkers as the great landowners of the new virtual world

We must face the fact that the news verification agencies are part of the global control framework set in motion by those who claim for themselves the right to be the owners of all our time and and all of our actions. Behind information verification software services like Newsguard, we find fervent defenders of illegal spying on citizens like former CIA and NSA chief and congressional perjurer Michael Hayden, and US army assassination team leader Stanley McChrystal.

The International Fact-Checking Network to which the aforementioned Spanish fact-check agencies Maldita and Newtral belong is financed in part by Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and a major player in, among many other shady oligarchic pursuits, the NATO-linked Allegiance for Securing Democracy.

There is nothing politically neutral about these people. Nor has any of them ever shown a great predilection or support for disinterested intellectual inquiry. What all three have shown in abundance is an abiding delight in marshaling power for the present US-led global order and the exercise of often brutally administered schemes of control over others.

The prime objective of fact-checkers—as recognized, for example, by Newtral on its website—is to use algorithms to harvest and manage citizen information, and in this way, usher in a new era in which the minds of individuals will be so seamlessly “pre-directed” to “positive” and “benevolent” ends and behaviors (as so defined by the members of the enlightened classes) that politics in all its forms will come to be seen as superfluous.

This explains why, between them, Google and Facebook currently employ 40,000 “verifiers” who exercise an invisible censorship aimed at swaying our perceptions of the world in ways deemed to be “constructive” by the controllers of those firms and those with whom they have forged political and business alliances.

These efforts lie at the core of the post-humanist gospel as preached by people like Klaus Schwab and Ray Kurzweil. Their clear message to us about the coming world is that while you might be born free, your destiny and the design of your being—and what we used to call its unique sensibilities— will be firmly entrusted to others. Like who? Like the aforementioned gentlemen and their friends who, of course, have much more far-seeing minds than your own.

But if there is one thing that the Digital Brownshirts fear more than the Wicked Witch of the West fears water, it is real politics. Thus far, these informational terrorists have been able to exploit our natural indulgence of the value of free speech for their own ends. Let’s be clear. These censors are, in effect, engaging in mass consumer fraud. And if it is illegal to sell horse meat as beef, and refined sugar as a nutritional supplement, then it should also be illegal for hired guns to arrogate to themselves the right to define truth and destroy long-standing deliberative processes and institutions.

Sadly, however, we cannot wait for our deeply compromised political classes to take the lead on this necessary criminal prosecution. Rather we, as informed citizens, must take the lead in denouncing these vandals and the powers that have cynically unleashed them upon our shared scientific and civic spaces.

In this process, we must help our ever more present-minded citizens, enslaved to the idea—so useful to the elites— that the world is fundamentally entropic, that these nihilists did not just appear on their TV screens by accident, but rather that they were placed there to do someone else’s dirty work, and that our survival as free people depends on the tenacity with which we hunt down those “someone elses” and subject them to one of the more fundamental types political action: popular justice.

David Souto Alcalde is a writer and assistant professor of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College. He is specialized in the history of republicanism, early modern culture and in the relations between politics and literature.

March 3, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Facebook, Google | Leave a comment

The ‘free speech’ West shouldn’t hail Big Tech for gagging Russia

By Frederick Edward | TCW Defending Freedom | March 3, 2022

WHEN I was in China, it was a faff going on some of my favourite websites. Although the censors of Beijing have not yet, to the best of my knowledge, blocked TCW Defending Freedom, anyone sitting in the Middle Kingdom and hoping to get on YouTube, Facebook or Google will be disappointed.

Not long after my departure from that sprawling metropolis, the sneezing bats of Wuhan gave the world a nasty case of the sniffles. But at that time, it was still just about possible to confidently tell your average Chinese interlocutor of the relative freedom of the West.

Yes, we could state, the internet there is free. We do not ban foreign news sources: We believe in the free exchange of information and the battle of ideas. The disinfectant of broad daylight will worm out the idiotic and the unworthy – that kind of stuff.

Of course, it’s getting harder to say with a straight face (years of Trump Derangement Syndrome and Brexit-related hysteria having done so much to destroy residual faith in the media), but it was just about doable.

But as Dr David Starkey so presciently observed, with the arrival of the Chinese virus, we have adopted a Chinese society. An acquaintance sent to me a screenshot of what happened when they tried to access Russia Today’s YouTube channel from within the UK. Instead of getting the usual assortment of Kremlin-approved views, visitors are greeted with the words: ‘This channel is not available in your country’.

Google has taken it upon itself to block Russian state media on YouTube. As ever, this decision has been met with seeming widespread adulation, with everyone keen as mustard for the unchecked juggernaut of Big Tech censorship to thunder on.

As the central nexus of the internet in the modern day, Big Tech firms have all-encompassing power, even able to silence the President of the United States. Yet Google et al are not our elected government and they are accountable to nobody; the outsourcing of political power to Silicon Valley continues uninterrupted.

Many are happy that the channel is banned. These are, perhaps, the same kinds who greeted Big Tech suppression of alternative narratives over the last two years with open arms, combating Covid ‘disinformation’. And, just as the spectre of global pestilence has miraculously disappeared, they find themselves firmly on the bandwagon of war.

Elites across the West have done so much to discredit themselves in recent years. I can no longer see a meaningful difference between the censoriousness of Beijing and the constant efforts of our governments and their rulers in Big Tech to silence dissenting opinion. As I sat in Beijing trying to look at the BBC, circumventing the Great Firewall with a VPN, little did I know I would soon have to do the same in Europe.

‘Democracy dies in darkness’, they like to tell us. Yet, by cutting off access to information that goes against the politically acceptable narrative in the West, our institutions continue to do their best in snuffing out any contrary opinions. Don’t think this is the only example: everything you read and hear from official sources is vetted and filtered.

There is nothing good to see in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, as self-purported guardians of liberalism and freedom, I can see only double standards in our actions. How can the West claim to be protectors of intellectual and spiritual freedom after what has happened over the last two years? Does everyone, in their manic rush for war, not see what we have become?

March 2, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Facebook, Google, UK, YouTube | Leave a comment

Israel seizes 30 cryptocurrency wallets allegedly funding Hamas

MEMO | March 1, 2022

Israeli authorities have seized dozens of cryptocurrency wallets from accounts allegedly affiliated with the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, in what they claim is a crackdown on funding to the group through digital means.

The seizure of around 30 wallets from 12 accounts was approved by Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, who said in a statement that “We continue to expand our tools to deal with terrorism, and with companies that supply it with an economic oxygen pipeline.”

The wallets – reportedly owned by an exchange company named Al-Mutahadun in the Gaza Strip and having had an estimated value of tens of thousands of Israeli shekels – were confiscated in a joint operation by the Defence Ministry, police and military.

According to Israeli news outlets, the wallets were the result of Hamas’s efforts to acquire funds from international donors through the use of cryptocurrencies – an experimental project launched by the group around three years ago to help counter its financial troubles and circumvent the traditional banking system.

Al-Mutahadun is reportedly owned by the Shamlah family, prominent amongst the Hamas leadership, who Gantz said “assists the Hamas terror group, and especially its military wing, by transferring funds amounting to tens of millions of dollars a year.”

In 2020, Gantz authorised the seizure of $4 billion in funding allegedly transferred from Iran to Hamas and, last year, Israel claimed that it seized $121,000 sent to the group from members in Turkey.

While the Israeli reports cannot be verified, if true, then Tel Aviv’s seizure of the digital wallets signifies its advancing capability to counter alleged financial aid to Hamas in the form of cryptocurrencies – a commodity that has long been lauded by many as relatively safe from the reach of states and banking institutions. It was in July when the Israeli government launched its campaign to target crypto wallets it says is used by Hamas.

March 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Backed by Big Pharma, NewsGuard Brings ‘Fact Checking’ to Tens of Millions of Kids in Schools

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 28, 2022

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is partnering with NewsGuard — a for-profit “fact-checking” company with deep ties to Big Pharma — to help students in U.S. classrooms “navigate a sea of online disinformation.”

AFT is the second-largest teachers’ union in the U.S. It’s also a staunch advocate of mandatory COVID vaccination and masks for schoolchildren.

Under a deal announced last month, AFT agreed to purchase NewsGuard licenses for its entire membership of teachers — 1.7 million in total — making the NewsGuard tool available to tens of millions of public school students and their families.

Teachers will receive licensed copies of NewsGuard’s internet browser extension, providing access to its “traffic light” ratings and “nutrition label” reviews evaluating the purported reliability of news and information websites when those sites are visited.

Announced during “News Literacy Week,” AFT touted the agreement as an opportunity for its member teachers to play a bigger role in helping their students “navigate a sea of online disinformation.”

AFT stated:

“For years, educators have fought battles against suspect sourcing, with their students often misled by dubious outlets and spam sites posing as ‘news’. NewsGuard offers a practical solution, alerting students and educators to those sites while also providing a valuable lesson in media literacy.

“Students and their teachers will be able to see how NewsGuard applies nine criteria of journalistic practice to thousands of websites and will get an immediate read on the truthfulness and rigor of the information they encounter when searching online.”

Randi Weingarten, president of AFT, added:

“We are constantly trying to help our students, particularly our middle, high school and post-secondary students, separate fact from fiction, as we help them develop their critical-thinking and analytical skills.

“NewsGuard is a great tool in this regard. It is a beacon of clarity to expose the dark depths of the internet and uplift those outlets committed to truth and honesty rather than falsehoods and fabrications. This historic deal will not only help us steer clear of increasingly fetid waters—it will provide a valuable lesson in media literacy and a discussion point for teachers in class on what can, and can’t, be trusted.

“The hallmark of good journalism is fair, richly sourced reporting that gives citizens an insight into how the world works. Sadly, the foundational role of the fourth estate is in danger of being poisoned by torrents of trash. NewsGuard reminds us of the importance of an independent press that students can rely on to form their own views and opinions so they can participate as active citizens in our democracy.”

Axios described the deal as one in which American schoolchildren are getting “an internet librarian,” adding that “[t]he hope is that students with the skills to spot disinformation will grow into more thoughtful and better-informed citizens and voters.”

Drawing on the library analogy, NewsGuard stated:

“Imagine you walked into a library, and there were a trillion pieces of paper flying around in the air, and you grabbed one, and you didn’t know anything about it, or where it came from or who’s financing it.

“That’s the internet, that’s your Facebook feed, that’s your Google search.”

Helping children become more media literate and better able to spot misinformation online appears, at face value, to be a noble goal.

However, a closer look at NewsGuard’s advisers, partners and investors reveals a web of interests closely linked to the military, intelligence, media and political establishments, as well as to the world of corporate marketing — including an advertising agency sued for illegally marketing opioids.

How does NewsGuard work?

Launched in March 2018 as an effort to “fight fake news,” NewsGuard maintains a database of news and information outlets, which are ranked for their supposed “trustworthiness.”

These rankings then become available to the public via extensions that are available for mainstream browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge.

Once installed, the browser extension displays green or red warning labels next to a ranked website’s address, indicating whether the site is considered to be “trustworthy” or not.

As of January 2022, NewsGuard had evaluated and ranked 7,466 domains which it claims covers 95% of online news engagement.

Algorithms alone are insufficient for identifying “fake news,” according to NewsGuard:

“Our goal isn’t necessarily to stop [fake news] but to arm people with some basic information when they’re about to read or share stuff,” Brill said. “We’re not trying to block anything.

“Our goal is to help solve this problem now by using human beings—trained, experienced journalists—who will operate under a transparent, accountable process to apply basic common sense to a growing scourge that clearly cannot be solved by algorithms.”

How does this evaluation process take place?

NewsGuard uses nine weighted criteria to rate and analyze news websites along two broad categories: credibility and transparency.

The following five criteria are incorporated into the “credibility” category, listed alongside their respective “weights”:

Does not repeatedly publish false content (22 points).
Gathers and presents information responsibly (18 points).
Regularly corrects or clarifies errors (12.5 points).
Handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly (12.5 points).
Avoids deceptive headlines (10 points).

Under the “transparency” category are these four criteria:

Discloses ownership and financing (7.5 points).
Clearly labels advertising (7.5 points).
Reveals who’s in charge, including possible conflicts of interest (5 points).
Provides the names of content creators, along with either contact or biographical information (5 points).

It is unclear how the respective “weights” were determined and set, or how they are measured.

Connected to these nine criteria, NewsGuard implemented a “Nutrition Label” system, which it uses to rate news sites according to one of four categories: “Green,” “Red,” “Satire” or “Platform.” The corresponding icon then appears in browsers when a rated website is visited.

These categories are connected to the previously mentioned point system, such that sites with a “score” of 60 points or higher earn a “Green” label, while those below 60 points are given a “Red” label.

Specifically:

A “Green” label indicates the website “generally adheres to basic standards of credibility and transparency.”
A “Red” label indicates the website “generally fails to meet basic standards of credibility and transparency.”
Α “Satire” (yellow) label indicates the website is “not a real news website.”
A “Platform” (gray) label indicates the website “primarily hosts user-generated content that it does not vet” and the information on this site “may or may not be reliable.”

The “Nutrition Labels,” aside from the color-coded system indicated above, also include a more detailed analysis about each news site. As explained by NewsGuard:

“The labels will explain the history of the site, what it attempts to cover, who owns it, who edits it, and make transparent other relevant factors, such as financing, notable awards or missteps, whether the publisher participates in programs such as the Trust Project, which holds publishers to transparency standards, or has repeatedly been found at fault by one of the established programs that check individual articles.”

In other words, there is a direct connection between NewsGuard’s website-level rating system and the various “fact-checking” entities that evaluate the content of individual news stories.

Each website is initially “independently reviewed” by a NewsGuard analyst against the nine criteria. The analyst prepares the “Nutrition Label,” the website is contacted for comment, and then “at least one senior editor and NewsGuard’s co-CEOs review every Nutrition Label prior to publication to ensure that the rating is as fair and accurate as possible.”

In addition to its formal ratings process, a separate NewsGuard “SWAT Team” is “on call on a 24/7 basis to receive and act on alerts about sites that are suddenly trending, but that have not yet been rated — including because the site was just launched to promote a fictitious, sensational story.”

The “SWAT Team” then rates these websites in real time.

NewsGuard also works on social media platforms — specifically, on links to news articles on other websites that are posted on social media.

Additionally, NewsGuard maintains what it calls “advertiser inclusion lists.” As of January, these lists contained 4,247 so-called “quality news sites.” The lists are used to help online advertisers direct their advertising expenditures toward websites NewsGuard deems reliable.

NewsGuard, which received $6 million in seed funding from various investors and venture capitalists, is subscription-based.

A NewsGuard subscription costs $2.95 per month, which includes the browser extension and a mobile app for Android and iOS devices. (The browser extension is available for free on the Microsoft Edge browser, thanks to a licensing agreement with Microsoft).

AFT deal not first time NewsGuard has ventured into education arena

For some, fighting “fake news” on websites and social media isn’t enough — they believe the “battle” needs to reach educational institutions.

As stated in 2019 by Jonathan Anzalone, assistant director and lecturer at Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy:

“Our problems are much larger than identifying a bogus website or a piece of propaganda. It’s like we just invented fire, and we’re trying to learn how to deal with it. It will take more than a few tools, as valuable as they may be.”

As a solution, Anzalone recommended “large-scale educational intervention” and “constant reinforcement in class and at home that we have to be critical of the news.”

These calls for “educational intervention” in 2019 perhaps foreshadowed NewsGuard’s later turn toward educational institutions.

NewsGuard’s past educational collaborations may also provide more than a few hints as to the types of learning materials it will provide as part of its new agreement with AFT.

Prior to NewsGuard’s new agreement with AFT, it had maintained a collaboration with Turnitin, a tool commonly used in secondary and higher education to evaluate students’ written assignments and identify possible cases of plagiarism.

NewsGuard’s partnership with TurnItIn, announced May 4, 2020, was touted as an initiative “that will help many million students and teachers spot and avoid misinformation, improve their research abilities and develop critical media literacy skills.”

On its end, Turnitin promoted its collaboration with NewsGuard as a marriage between “academic integrity” and “digital literacy” that would enable students to “navigate 21st-century news with 21st-century skills” and to “imbue [their] work with integrity right from the source.”

Offering NewsGuard through the Turnitin service would allow “students and instructors, writers and researchers [to] confidently discern the legitimacy of digital news and information, using only the sources best suited for their needs.”

Commenting on this partnership in 2020, Crovitz described it as a “perfect match,” and stated:

“From the start, our mission has been to help people tell the difference between trustworthy sources and the many online sources that have hidden agendas, publish misinformation, or exist to promote hoaxes.

“We have heard from many teachers how valuable NewsGuard has been to help students in their research and writing find sources that publish with accuracy and integrity and to stay away from the others. To be able to provide that information to Turnitin’s millions of students and teachers is a tremendously important milestone in advancing that mission.”

Free access to NewsGuard via Turnitin appears to have ended with the conclusion of the 2020-2021 academic year. However, a series of NewsGuard learning materials developed as part of the partnership with Turnitin remain online, and provide a likely indication as to the nature and content of the resources NewsGuard will now make available to schools and teachers as part of its new collaboration with AFT.

These resources, which offer an eye-opening look at how students are instructed to identify so-called “misinformation,” include:

A NewsGuard lesson plan on the COVID-19 “Infodemic.”
A guide to Turnitin source credibility and how it can be aligned with NewsGuard lesson plans.
An implementation guide for school administrators.
A set of “best practices” for educators about using NewsGuard.
A student guide for using NewsGuard.
A complete collection of NewsGuard resources.

The lesson materials for the so-called COVID-19 “Infodemic,” which are targeted primarily to high school students, but also, middle school and university students, include the following statement:

“As misinformation about COVID-19 proliferates online, and as remote learning and social distancing cause students to spend even more of their time on social media and other platforms, media literacy skills have taken on greater importance.

“To address this need, NewsGuard has created a suite of plug-and-play resources for educators to teach a media literacy lesson through the lens of COVID-19 misinformation.”

A set of PowerPoint slides on “Coronavirus Conspiracies & Other Health Hoaxes,” includes a quiz wherein one of the questions asks students to identify which sources they would trust, out of the following list: Medicine-Today.net, MedicineNet.com, Vaccination.co.uk, Patient.info, HealthyChildren.org, and ChildrensHealthDefense.org (the ‘correct’ answers, we are told, are MedicineNet.com, Patient.Info, and HealthyChildren.org).

An accompanying “tip sheet” unironically advises students, educators, and parents to “be suspicious of requests for secrecy or pressure to take action quickly,” and to “teach yourself and your kids to ask the tough questions.”

In turn, the “best practices” recommended by NewsGuard and Turnitin include a suggestion that “students should reference NewsGuard throughout the semester/year,” whenever “they need to do research for a project or paper or any time they need to consult current events.”

As part of this, educators are advised to “have students annotate their bibliographies with explanations for why they selected each source, drawing from NewsGuard’s Nutrition Label reviews to provide evidence for why they deemed certain sources reliable.”

NewsGuard partnerships extend to businesses, ad agencies and the WHO

NewsGuard’s line of products extends beyond its browser extension, “Nutrition Labels,” and educational materials.

For example, it offers a product called “Misinformation Fingerprints,” a “catalog of all the top current hoaxes on the internet.”

According to NewsGuard, the product is “purpose-built for use by both human analysts and AI tools” which “provide a continuously updated view of the digital information environment — and a powerful way to track narratives that are emerging and spreading online,” specifically, the “top misinformation narratives spreading online.”

The users of “Misinformation FIngerprints” include the Pentagon’s Cyber Command and the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center.

For businesses, an “Insights Dashboard” helps clients access NewsGuard’s news reliability ratings and misinformation fingerprints “through a powerful, searchable web interface purpose-built for use by businesses seeking to identify and mitigate risks from misinformation and disinformation.”

“BrandGuard” targets advertisers and advertising agencies. It is touted as “the only humanly generated, constantly updated solution” to help such companies “avoid advertising on misinformation sites while finding valuable new inventory on trustworthy news sites.”

Similarly, NewsGuard’s “HealthGuard” product targets the healthcare industry and global public health authorities.

Described as “a vaccine against medical information,” HealthGuard, we are told, “helps patients, healthcare workers and anyone involved in the medical field identify trustworthy sources of health information — and avoid dangerous misinformation.”

How does HealthGuard purport to accomplish this?

It maintains a set of ratings for more than 3,000 online health information sources, as well as a catalog of “false health narratives — from bogus cancer cures to COVID vaccine myths,” through which it “provides a solution to the “infodemic” of rampant online health misinformation.”

The WHO said it relies on NewsGuard “to fight health hoaxes. Andy Pattison, head of the WHO’s Digital Channels Team, said:

“Though health misinformation circulates online, it causes real life consequences. We must put tools in the hands of people everywhere so they can better assess the credibility of health information online in order to make informed health choices in their life.

“NewsGuard has been instrumental in helping WHO and partners keep people safe by identifying and combating online COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.”

NewsGuard on Aug. 24, 2020, announced a partnership agreement, “to provide the WHO and the technology platforms that WHO advises on healthcare-related online safety with a variety of reports and data aimed at fighting online COVID-19 misinformation online.”

Dr. Sylvie Brand, director of the WHO’s infectious hazards management department, described the partnership with NewsGuard:

“WHO has been fighting an infodemic of misinformation on multiple fronts, working hand in hand with governments, the private sector and civil society.

“It is vital that people everywhere get the right information at the right time to protect themselves and their loved ones. That’s why we are looking forward to working with NewsGuard and other platforms to fight misinformation and disinformation.”

In turn, NewsGuard claims that, through the provisions of this agreement where it will provide information about health “hoaxes” to social media and search platforms, “digital platforms will finally be able to act before these new myths — whether it’s about a vaccine or another supposed source of the virus—spread on their platforms.”

As it turns out, NewsGuard since 2020 has filed at least 29 such reports with the WHO As described by NewsGuard, these reports have highlighted:

“… trending health hoaxes and conspiracies across Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which the WHO has been able to share with digital platforms to alert them to misinformation and hoaxes on their platforms.

“These reports identify large social media pages, accounts, and public and private groups that encourage the spread of false and often dangerous narratives about the virus and vaccines.”

One such report, dated Oct. 28, 2021, is titled “Despite NewsGuard’s prior warnings in reports to the WHO, Facebook and Instagram have allowed known anti-vaccine misinformation superspreaders to flourish on their platforms.

A June 22, 2021 report, “COVID-19 and Vaccine Misinformation Groups and Pages on Facebook” prominently features Children’s Health Defense (CHD), among other pages and groups.

NewsGuard included CHD on its list of websites that spread “vaccine myths,” lamenting that “[s]ome of the websites NewsGuard identified have become more popular online than trustworthy sources of information about COVID-19,” while specifically stating that CHD’s website “has received more engagement … than the CDC and the National Institutes of Health.”

A February 2021 NewsGuard interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was “annotated in italics in footnote form with fact checks debunking the dozens of arguments Kennedy employed to bolster his false claim that Pfizer and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous.”

NewsGuard’s involvement in health-related matters also extends to the creation of a “COVID-19 Misinformation Tracking Center,” which “reports on fake news, rumors and bad actors related to the Coronavirus Pandemic.”

What constitutes a “bad actor” does not appear to be defined.

Via this “tracking center,” NewsGuard compiled a list of 53 supposed COVID myths. The list appears in a September 2021 NewsGuard “special report” on “Top COVID-19 vaccine myths.”

In addition to partnering with the WHO, NewsGuard’s HealthGuard partners with the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

Described by Mercola as “a progressive cancel-culture leader,” CCDH has “extensive ties to government and global think tanks that has labeled questioning the COVID-19 injection as ‘threats to national security.’”

Who are the people behind NewsGuard?

NewsGuard was founded by two veterans of mainstream journalism: Steven Brill (who previously founded Court TV, the Yale Journalism Initiative and The American Lawyer), and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

When it launched, NewsGuard had a team of 25 professional journalists, purportedly to evaluate the reliability of news sources.

Two other key founding members of NewsGuard, who are still with the company, include James Warren and Eric Effron.

Brill and Crovitz are members of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, a highly influential U.S. foreign policy establishment think tank.

This stance is further reflected in the makeup of NewsGuard’s advisory board, which includes a who’s who of individuals from the political, intelligence, Big Tech and media establishments, including:

Don Baer, who served as White House communications director during the administration of Bill Clinton
Arne Duncan, who served as Secretary of Education during the administration of Barack Obama.
(Ret.) General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, former director of the NSA, and former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.
Leo Hindery, Jr., the former chairman of the National Cable Television Association.
Elise Jordan, a political analyst for NBC News and a former speechwriter for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, under the administration of George W. Bus.
Kate O’Sullivan, general manager for digital diplomacy of Microsoft.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former general secretary of NATO, former prime minister of Denmark, and founder of the Alliance of Democracies Foundation.
Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, under the administration of George W. Bush.
Richard Stengel, former editor of Time Magazine and former Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy under the administration of Barack Obama. He is the author of “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation and What We Can Do About It.”
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia.

NewsGuard says members of the advisory board play “no role in the determination of ratings or the Nutrition Label[s] … unless otherwise noted” and “have no role in the governance or management of the organization.”

However, members’ association with the military and intelligence community and their connections to major technology companies and media outlets that support COVID measures and mandatory vaccination cannot be overlooked.

Looking at NewsGuard’s team members, similar connections can be made to the media, political and intelligence establishments.

Two team members, Alex Cadier and Amy Westfeldt, have previous “fact-checking” experience. Cadier worked with Agence France-Presse’s AFP Fact Check Service since 2020, with a focus on “COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, 5G conspiracy theories and other myths.”

Westfeldt produced The Associated Press’ first fact checks, soon after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in conjunction with Facebook. She also founded the “Not Real News” fixture.

Two other team members, Nerissa Beekharry and Cynthia Brill, were previously associated with Verified Identity Pass, operator of the Clear Pass for airport security checkpoints.

And at least two team members, Sam Howard and Sruthi Palaniappan, were involved in presidential campaigns: Howard with the Obama 2012 campaign and Palaniappan with Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, the same year he was a delegate at the Democratic National Convention .

NewsGuard’s partnerships also reflect an affinity for entities associated with Big Tech, the military and intelligence establishments and government more broadly — even as a private initiative.

For example, NewsGuard partners include:

Microsoft (including Microsoft Bing, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Education and MSN).
The WHO.
The U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. State Department.
The U.S. National Security Innovation Network.
The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
The News Media Alliance (a U.S.-Canada newspaper trade association).
The German Marshall Fund of the United States.
GumGum (a “contextual intelligence” company).
Dartmouth University, Northeastern University and the University of Michigan.
Advertising and marketing firms such as IPG, Peer39, TripleLift and the Publicis Groupe.

Backed by Big Pharma?

As mentioned above, NewsGuard received approximately $6 million in venture funds for its launch.

One of its major early investors was the Publicis Groupe, a multinational advertising agency and communications conglomerate.

Publicis, the third largest communications group in the world, divides its businesses into four “solutions hubs”: Publicis Communications, Publicis Media, Publicis Sapient and Publicis Health.

It is Publicis’ health division that has generated significant controversy. The company names “40 clients in the life sciences industry,” including “being a preferred partner with 13 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.”

These clients include Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, Bayer, Abbot, Allergan, Biogen, Eli Lilly, Genentech, Gilead, Sanofi and Purdue Pharma.

In October 2018, GlaxoSmithKline sent its $1.5 billion media account to the Publicis Group, then added an additional $400 million account — for its new portfolio of Pfizer Consumer Healthcare brands such as Advil, Caltrate, and Centrum, as part of a joint venture with Pfizer.

In August 2019, Publicis secured the account of another pharmaceutical giant, Novartis, worth $600 million.

However, it was its partnership with Purdue Pharma that directly generated controversy and legal trouble for the Publicis Groupe.

In May 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against Publicis Health, accusing it of helping Purdue Pharma develop deceptive marketing materials and advertising campaigns, used to mislead doctors into prescribing OxyContin, a widely-abused opioid.

According to the lawsuit:

“From 2010 until 2019, Publicis worked with opioid companies, particularly Purdue Pharma, to increase sales of dangerous opioids like OxyContin, including in Massachusetts, in ways that increased the risk to patients and the public of opioid use disorder, overdose, and death.

“Publicis devised and deployed unfair and deceptive marketing campaigns designed to push doctors to prescribe opioids to more patients, in higher doses, and for longer periods of time.”

So while NewsGuard purports to be fighting against online misinformation and deception pertaining to public health — it has no problem taking money from a major advertising and communications conglomerate that has itself been accused of deceptive practices relating to health care.

Maurice Lévy, chairman of the Publicis Group, made the following remarks on the occasion of NewsGuard’s launch:

“Advertisers are increasingly concerned about their brand safety and do not want to help finance and appear alongside fake news.

“NewsGuard will be able to publish and license ‘white lists’ of news sites our clients can use to support legitimate publishers while still protecting their brand reputations.”

As noted by Dr. Joseph Mercola:

“Seeing how Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world and funded the creation of NewsGuard, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites.

“Being a Google partner, Publicis also has the ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele.”

Publicis is a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and, indeed, appears as a partner of the WEF’s “Great Reset” (as are pharmaceutical companies and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers such as AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer).

What appears to be a common thread connecting NewsGuard employees, investors and partners is connections to organizations that have a vested interest in promoting COVID vaccination and pandemic countermeasures;

And now NewsGuard is coming to children’s schools.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

March 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Microsoft, Microsoft Edge, NewsGuard, United States | Leave a comment

Czechs Could Face 3 Years in Prison For Supporting Russia on Social Media

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | March 1, 2022

People in the NATO-member state of Czechia have been warned that they could face up to three years in prison if they express support for Russia on social media.

Yes, really.

The country’s Attorney General Igor Stríž announced in a press release that it was “necessary to inform citizens that the current situation associated with the Russian Federation’s attack on Ukraine may have implications for their freedom of expression.”

The limitations are being imposed under the umbrella of criminal code measures that make it a crime to approve a criminal offence or deny, question, approve or justify genocide.

“[F]reedom of speech also has its limits in a democratic state governed by the rule of law,” asserted Stríž, announcing that anyone who “publicly (including at demonstrations, on the Internet or on social networks) agreed (accepted or supported the Russian Federation’s attacks on Ukraine) or expressed support or praised the leaders of the Russian Federation in this regard, they could also face criminal liability under certain conditions.”

The official Czech Police website also announced that they were “closely monitoring” the content of “dozens of comments in internet discussions approving the Russian invasion and the activities of the Russian army.”

According to a report by Radio Prague International, someone found in breach of the criminal code could be imprisoned for up to three years, although it would be difficult to bring charges.

Breitbart’s Jack Montgomery asked if “someone might be open to prosecution for merely questioning NATO’s eastward expansion, the West’s decision to back the Euromaidan coup in 2014, or the extent to which claims the Ukrainian government has mistreated civilians in Donbas might be true.”

As we previously highlighted, before the outbreak of war, Czech President Miloš Zeman said Russia would be “crazy” to invade Ukraine.

One wonders how far governments working in cahoots with Big Tech will try to milk the war for more domestic censorship.

Will simply pointing out brazen examples of war propaganda pushed by the pro-NATO political media class also be characterized as ‘Russian disinformation’?

Leftist blue checkmark journalists on Twitter must be licking their lips.

March 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | Czechia, European Union, Human rights | Leave a comment

Netflix refuses to carry Russian TV channels

All major streaming services making a profit in the country are required by law to include them on their platform

RT | March 1, 2022

US streaming giant Netflix will not comply with a Russian law that requires all video content providers with over 100,000 daily views to add 20 free-to-air TV channels to their platform. “Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service,” a Netflix spokesperson told Variety on Monday.

The entertainment news website called the required package “propaganda channels,” and stated that one of them was “Spa, a channel operated by the Russian Orthodox Church.” The religious outlet it was referring to is called Spas, which means ‘Savior’ in Church Slavonic. The two packages comprising the obligatory set also include several entertainment channels, a children’s cartoon channel, and a music channel.

Netflix localized in Russia over a year ago. Its Russian subsidiary was added to the official list of content providers in late December, after pressure that its competitors put on media regulator RKN. The service had two months to comply with the rules about the 20 must-have channels after that, with the deadline expiring on Tuesday.

Unlike many other Western companies that pledged to stop doing business in Russia due to the ongoing military operation against Ukraine, Netflix will continue to provide services to Russian subscribers, “while monitoring the situation closely,” Variety reported.

March 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | Netflix | Leave a comment

Is the Internet being censored?

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | March 1, 2022

We know social media platforms have been censoring information for a while. Today, YouTube announced that it is blocking channels linked to Russia’s RT and Sputnik across Europe. Facebook has said it would restrict access to RT in the EU and Twitter will reduce the visibility of Russian media. Furthermore, the EU have announced a ban on Russian state-backed channels.

However, is the actual Internet now being censored? I have been trying to read the translated versions of Vladimir Putin’s recent speeches which have been available on the Kremlin website. Now, all I get is this.

We need to be able to read both sides of the story to understand the nuances of the situation. Yes, invasion of another country is never acceptable, yes war is never justifiable but I want to be able to understand why the person ordering it, thinks that it is. Without nuanced discussion the situation is likely to go from bad to worse.

Can anyone else access the website in your country or through a VPN?

UPDATE – You can access the website via a VPN set to Russia.

March 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Russia, Ukraine, United States | Leave a comment

Google suppresses America’s Frontline Doctors in search results

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 28, 2022

More evidence is emerging of Google manipulating algorithms powering its mammoth and highly influential search service to give certain results (much) more visibility than others.

And now, reports say, Google is not even trying to hide that this is the case, as America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) has been informed its reach on the internet is being artificially limited.

This organization says it is dedicated to improving doctor-patient relationships that are jeopardized by what it calls politicized science and biased information. The AFLDS would also like to provide patients with access to “independent, evidence-based information” that will inform people’s decisions regarding their healthcare choices.

Well, meeting that goal might prove to be quite difficult since Google Search, on which a huge majority of US-based users rely for their internet queries, says it is deliberately deranking information coming from the AFLDS.

This transpires from alerts Google has been sending the organization, which state that an “issue” has been detected, which can be “fixed;” after that, the AFLDS can “request review.”

And when an “issue” has been detected, Google spells it out that “Pages affected by manual actions can see reduced display features, lower ranking or even removal from Google Search results.”

So what “issues” have been detected, you might ask next. Google’s “explanation” is the usual hodgepodge of vague language and qualifiers, in line with the giant’s now well-established censorship style.

The AFLDS is informed that its site “appears to violate” Google’s medical content policy, which is not allowed – and neither is content that “contradicts or runs contrary to scientific or medical consensus and evidence based best practices.”

That’s according to Google’s rules. What consensus, reached by who, and what best practices, determined by who, and at what time – none of this information is provided in the notices.

Google’s rigid, authoritarian style of promoting one-sided content and eliminating different arguments and positions would in this case work by first deranking (and eventually removing) AFLDS links – unless the group agrees to self-censor.

And that means deleting content from the site, and then clicking on “‘Request Review’ button which is prefaced with the question, ‘Done fixing?’,” the AFLDS explains.

The organization also takes issue with Google’s (deliberately) broad and ambiguous wording and lack of proper, or any definition of scientific and medical consensus and best practices – to ask why, “In a time when celebrities and computer programmers are allowed to express their views on virology, but actual doctors and scientists are censored, including the hundreds of doctors comprising AFLDS, such clarity is elusive.”

February 28, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Google, Human rights | Leave a comment

Facebook restricts EU users’ access to RT and Sputnik

RT | March 1, 2022

Social media behemoth Meta will restrict access to Russian state-backed media outlets on its Facebook and Instagram platforms throughout Europe, the company’s vice president Nick Clegg announced Monday, citing “requests from a number of governments.”

“Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will be restricting access to RT and Sputnik across the EU at this time,” Clegg tweeted, vowing to continue to “work closely” with governments on the matter.

The ban comes just days after Facebook barred Russian state media outlets from monetizing on its platform anywhere in the world, citing the attack on Ukraine and declining a request by Russian authorities to discontinue the deployment of biased fact-checking and warning labels on Ukraine-related content. Moscow responded by partially restricting access to the platform in Russia.

Facebook is one of several social networks that has pledged to squelch Russian media amid the ongoing offensive in Ukraine. On Sunday, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen vowed to block Russian state-owned media transmissions across the EU, announcing “we are developing tools to ban their toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”

EU officials have also spoken with the CEOs of Google and its subsidiary YouTube, requesting the social media platforms step up their efforts to block access to Russian state media. Google and YouTube demonetized Russian state channels over the weekend, but the EU has insisted this is not sufficient, arguing for a ban on the content itself, which it has denounced as “war propaganda.”

Twitter, which already warns users when they are looking at Russian state-backed media, announced on Monday that it would add warning labels to tweets sharing content from such outlets, even if the poster is not a Russian state-owned media account.

Offending tweets now carry an orange exclamation point alerting the user that “This Tweet links to a Russia state-affiliated media website.” The new label will not be applied to RT, Sputnik or other media already carrying the “state-affiliated media” scarlet letter. However, tweets sharing content allegedly affiliated with the Russian state will not appear on the platform’s “top search” function.

February 28, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | European Union, Facebook | Leave a comment

UK pushes forward with plans to reduce online anonymity

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 27, 2022

The government has added new provisions to the upcoming Online Safety Bill, requiring social media companies to allow users to block anonymous users and block “harmful” content.

The new rules are supposed to fight “abuse” by anonymous users and to give users control over the type of content they see but will have massive implications for free speech in the country.

“Tech firms have a responsibility to stop anonymous trolls polluting their platforms,” said Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport, Nadine Dorries.

“We have listened to calls for us to strengthen our new online safety laws and are announcing new measures to put greater power in the hands of social media users themselves.

“People will now have more control over who can contact them and be able to stop the tidal wave of hate served up to them by rogue algorithms.”

If the bill passes, large social media companies will be required to verify the identity of some users. However, verification will be optional. But, users will also be given the option to block users with unverified accounts.

While some like the Chartered Institute for IT believe ID verification will solve online abuse, others note that there are citizens and journalists under increasingly authoritarian regimes, sexual assault victims, and even those who are going against the status quo who rely on anonymity.

The bill will also require large social media companies to include filters allowing users to block harmful but legal content, such as “racism, health misinformation, and eating disorders.”

February 27, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | UK | Leave a comment

Vaccination – silencing doctors in the UK

By Dr. Malcolm Kendrick | February 27, 2022

My last blog discussed the possibility that mRNA COVID19 vaccines significantly increase the risk of myocarditis. Following this, a fellow doctor reached out to tell me about what has happened to them. They too, had questioned some aspects of the safety and efficacy of the vaccines.

As a result, they have been sent two threatening letters, which are both of the ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ variety. I asked their permission to reproduce them here. One is from the General Medical Council (GMC). The other from their responsible officer – I shall explain what this title means a bit further on.

Below is the letter from the GMC:

Dear Dr….

The GMC have received several complaints regarding your recent social media posts.

All doctors have a right to express their personal opinion regarding the Covid-19 vaccine, and while the GMC in no way supports this opinion, we don’t consider your comments are sufficiently strong to open a fitness to practice investigation at this stage.

However, we are referring this matter to your Responsible Office for your reflection through the appraisal process.

We ask that you consider what implications this complaint might have for your practise when you are discussing this with your appraiser. We would also like to remind you of GMC guidance, in particular ‘Doctors’ use of social media, and of the requirement of doctors to act with honesty and integrity to justify the public’s trust in them

What we will do now

We will share the complaint with your responsible officer for them to consider in the wider context of your practice and revalidation.

‘The wider context of your practice and revalidation.’ Which means what, exactly? I sometimes wonder if there a special training scheme where you learn to write creepy and threatening phrases that can later be denied as being creepy and threatening? ‘I was only trying to be nice. They just took it the wrong way.’

‘Your children look charming. However, you may want to consider their continued existence on the planet in the wider context of your practice.’

The GMC, as mentioned before, have the powers to investigate complaints made against doctors in the UK, and impose various punishments (they call them sanctions, which sounds far prettier). Ranging from nothing very much to permanent erasure from the medical performers list.

The latter means that you cannot work as a doctor ever again. Anywhere in the world. The GMC will communicate your erasure to other national statutory bodies, upon request. They do it gladly… and speedily.

On the face of it, in this case, the GMC have decided to do nothing. ‘We don’t consider your comments are sufficiently strong to open a fitness to practice investigation at this stage.’

Jolly good.Nothing to see here, move along. Although they add the rider … ‘at this stage.’ Well, what other stages are left, after deciding to take no action? The … I have changed my mind and I am going to have you guillotined, stage?

However, in reality they have not done nothing – have they dear reader? The GMC have decided to refer the complaint to this doctor’s responsible officer. A responsible officer is a doctor who is ‘responsible’ for ensuring that other doctors working in their area have met the necessary requirement for revalidation.

Revalidation is a five-year cycle whereby a doctor has to meet various requirements. A few hundred hours of medical education, keeping up do date with mandatory training. Carrying out an audit, and a patient satisfaction questionnaire, getting sufficient colleague feedback, and suchlike.

There is also a need to have a yearly appraisal. Which is a meeting with an allocated appraiser, to discuss how things have gone. A look through any complaints about you, work you have done, audits that have been completed, actions to take in the next year to improve your practice – a personal development plan. Release of thumbscrews – or a tightening.

If all this is done successfully, over a five-year period, the responsible officer ‘signs you off’ and you are now able to continue work. If not, you are removed from the performers list, and you cannot work as a doctor until you are successfully re-validated. No-one has ever explained to me how you actually do get revalidated. In fact, there is no system in place for this to happen.

If you manage to fulfil the re-validation cycle, and attend appraisals, in theory there can be no grounds for removal. You cannot actually ‘fail’ an appraisal. You simply have to turn up, and ‘reflect’ on your practice. I have never heard of a responsible officer stepping in to remove a doctor from the performers list any time they so wish.

Bearing all that in mind, here is the follow up letter from the responsible officer.

Dear Dr….

I have today received a communication from the GMC regarding an ‘incident that occurred on social media.’ The GMC have advised that they have reviewed the complaint and that it does not meet the threshold for investigation.

However, I understand that you have been asked to consider what implications this complaint may have for your practise and there is a requirement for you to reflect on this matter at your next appraisal meeting.

As your Responsible Officer I have a statutory duty to ensure that any concern or complaint about your practise is responded to and dealt with appropriately.

I would be grateful if you could let me have your views on this issue, by completing the attached form and returning it as a matter of urgency.

Can you also complete the attached Monitoring of Clinical Practise for your file, please.

Your co-operation with this process is vital in order for us to come to an acceptable resolution as soon as possible, minimising impact to your practice and cost in time and money.

If you have any questions regarding this process, please to contact me to discuss further.

Kind regards

Dr X

Responsible Officer for X region.

I love the ‘Kind regards’ sign off. For this is a letter dripping with unspoken menace. Just to highlight one phrase ‘An incident that occurred on social media…’ An ‘incident’. You mean, someone wrote something that someone didn’t like, they then complained about it. This was not an incident, in the sense that anyone would normally choose to use this word.

[I also note that the GMC spells practice, practice. The responsible officer spells it practise – maybe they need to reflect on their spelling between them].

If you look up the word ‘incident’ on the Cambridge Dictionary it gives an example of its use:

‘A youth was seriously injured in a shooting incident on Saturday night.’¹

It does not say. ‘Someone wrote a blog post that upset someone, somewhere, for a bit. But it’s alright now, they are looking at pictures of kittens to recover.’

Words. Words, words, words. They can be used in so many different ways. Their true meaning hidden behind layers of sophistry. But we all know what the word ‘incident’ means in this case. Someone was badly damaged by your actions on that day – do not attempt to deny it, comrade.

Then we move on to the real threat. The responsible officer wants to ensure an acceptable resolution, thus … ‘minimising impact to your practise and cost in time and money.’

What the responsible officer here is saying is that I have the powers to stop you practising medicine in the UK. If I find that your answer to this complaint – which was not strong enough to open a fitness to practice investigation by the GMC – does not satisfy me. Indeed (subtext), I do not actually care what answer you give, I may remove you anyway. This will certainly maximise the impact on this doctor’s ‘practise and cost in time and money’.

If you think this is not what is being threatened. Then ask yourself what else it could mean? There is nothing that needs to be ‘resolved’. A complaint has been made, but the GMC didn’t think it was serious enough to take forward. No patient was harmed, no laws broken … no wrecks and nobody drowned, in fact nothing to laugh at, at all. (small prize for who knows where that came from).

At this point you may have begun to allow the thought to enter your mind that the GMC have quite deliberately handed this complaint down to the responsible officer to carry out the required sentence and execution. Whatever the accused doctor says, the responsible officer can simply respond. ‘Sorry, not satisfied with your answer. I am now going to stop you working – for as long as I wish.’ No hearing, no possibility of review, no accountability. Bosh.

In truth I have always known that responsible officers possess this amazing and unrestrained power. I tried, and failed, to stop this happening years ago – when I was on various British Medical Association (BMA) committees. I found it incredible that the legislation in this area was going to hand over, to one individual, the ability to destroy someone’s career, with no regard to anyone else, or anything else.

Yes, we live in a democracy that has created a form of local tyranny.

Tyranny (noun) def: government by a ruler or small group of people who have unlimited power of the people in their country or state and use it unfairly, and cruelly.

You could say that this situation suits the GMC very well … Very well indeed. Because, you see, the GMC has tried to remove other doctors from the medical register for criticising vaccination. [The medical register is not quite the same thing as the performer’s list, but you need to be on both of them to work as a doctor in the UK].

These punishments were quashed in the High Court. Here from a legal firm that works in this area:

‘On Friday, the High Court handed down a judgment quashing the GMC interim order of conditions previously imposed on a GP, Dr Samuel White, as a result of his actions arising from the pandemic. Dr White came to the GMC’s attention as a result of “spreading misinformation and inaccurate details about the Coronavirus and how it is diagnosed and treated”. His comments have included assertions that the COVID-19 vaccine “inserts a code”, masks do “absolutely nothing” and hydroxychloroquine, budesonide inhalers and ivermectin are “safe and proven treatments”.

The interesting point arising from Dr White’s High Court appeal is the technical point on which he won. The High Court found that the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS – the adjudication wing of the GMC) panel made an error of law in not properly considering the test required by section 12(3) of the Human Rights Act 1998 when deciding whether to impose an interim order.’²

As this company also says:

As time goes on, we’re seeing more fitness to practise cases arising from COVID-19-related activities. We’ve previously posted about the Irish GP interim suspended after describing COVID-19 as a hoax and the first UK nurse struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as a result of COVID-19 denial activities.

‘COVID denial activities’ – what a deliciously Soviet phrase.

I have to say that I very much enjoyed the lawyers’ assertion that the GMC interim order was quashed on a ‘technical point’. Namely that the GMC had failed to consider the small matter of the Human Rights Act 1998. Riding roughshod over someone’s human rights is now a technical point of law. How quaint.

However, undeterred, the GMC have not been deterred from their vital work in punishing COVID-19 vaccine deniers – to ensure that they can never work again. They have just found another, simpler, far cheaper, and far quicker route to obliterate a doctor’s career. Call the responsible officer. No-one expects the responsible officer.

Who needs time consuming and costly hearings, where you might have to bear in mind the Human Rights act 1998 – and other such woolly liberal nonsense? When you can alert the local ‘tyrant’ to a doctor’s non-comradely Soviet ‘denial’ activities. Sorry, COVID19 ‘denial’ activities.

They will know precisely what to do, and they have the powers to do it. Why on earth did the GMC not think of this of this before? I could have told them about the ridiculous, frightening, and untrammelled powers of a responsible officer, but they never asked me.

Of course, you could argue the following. If the local responsible officer does obliterate someone’s medical career and does this without paying any heed to such things as well, the law, for example, then their actions will be over-turned in court. Well, I certainly hope so, in fact I would expect so. This may act as a deterrent … maybe.

However, during the months, or years, that it takes to get such a case to court, the doctor will be out of work and unable to earn. They will almost certainly end up bankrupt, and their reputation (have been struck off the performers’ list) will lie shattered in the gutter.

As for the responsible officer. Their punishment ‘please don’t do it again,’ would just about cover it. This is very much asymmetric warfare. I can punish you, terribly, but you can do absolutely nothing to me in return.

In the financial world they call this moral hazard. A banker can bankrupt you, and your family, and half the country, making stupid and risky decisions – that will earn them huge short-term bonuses. If, as a result, their bank goes bust, the Government simply bails them out and they keep their job, and their bonus. All gain, no pain.

As a sign off, the responsible officer (washing his hands of any personal responsibility of course) wrote this ‘I have a statutory duty to ensure that any concern or complaint about your practise is responded to and dealt with appropriately.’ Kind regards … Pontius.

However, one thing that has not happened, so far, is to actually take the time and effort to forward a copy of the complaints to the doctor concerned. Still, they must be guilty of something or other. So, it is clearly critical that they respond to these unknown complaints, of some sort or another, in some-way or other. ‘Here is a bottle of whisky, and a revolver…. You know what you must do.’

What a world this has become. I had hoped I would not live to see such a time in this country, but I have.

1: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/incident

2: https://www.brabners.com/blogs/high-court-quashes-doctors-gmc-interim-order-arising-covid-19-activities

February 27, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, UK | Leave a comment

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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.

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New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.

A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.

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