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Why the Freedom Convoy is provoking unprecedented hysteria

By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 10, 2022

In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.

There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.

For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.

But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.

Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.

Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.

Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”

Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.

You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?

Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.

Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?

Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?

Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.

The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.

The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

DHS Issues Terrorism Bulletin Over “Conspiracy Theories” and “Misleading Narratives”

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 9, 2022

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a new terrorism bulletin in response to concerns over “conspiracy theories” and “misleading narratives.”

Yes, really.

“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” the DHS bulletin stated.

The advisory goes on to assert that the US is in a “heightened threat landscape” due to “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”

Apparently, lack of trust in the Biden administration and the legacy media represents a terrorist threat.

Under DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas, who thinks “white extremists” are the biggest terror threat to America, five separate bulletins striking a similar tone have now been issued.

One of the bulletins even suggested that Americans who are angry at COVID lockdown rules or who express concerns about election integrity are potential extremist threats.

“It’s clear as day these bulletins are pure political propaganda to demonize all white people as “domestic terrorists” ready to carry out terrorist attacks at any moment and justify using terrorism laws against them as part of the new Domestic War on Terror,” writes Chris Menahan.

Since Biden took office, his administration has intensified efforts to demonize its political adversaries, tens of millions of ordinary Americans, as domestic extremists.

Following the January 6 Capitol riot, Democrats ludicrously compared the events to September 11 in an attempt to justify using federal resources that would normally be focused on actual terrorists against American conservatives.

Last month, the Justice Department created a new “specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism” in response to an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.

As we also reported in January, the US Army conducted a “guerrilla warfare exercise” in North Carolina where troops engaged in mock battle against “freedom fighters.”

In September last year, the National Association of School Boards (NASB) sent a letter to the Biden administration claiming parents were engaging in domestic terrorism by fighting against CRT and mask mandates.

Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently announced the DOJ and FBI would establish a task force aimed at probing a “disturbing spike” in threats against school officials.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Four Attorneys General Claim Google Secretly Tracked People

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 9, 2022

If you’ve ever felt like Google’s watching you, it’s because they, quite literally, are. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data,” Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.1

He’s among four attorneys general who have sued Google for its deceptive practices in collecting location data from the public. The separate lawsuits allege that Google continued to track location data of its users even after they had disabled location tracking.

“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Racine said.2

Google’s Been Secretly Tracking People Since at Least 2014

Racine initiated an investigation into Google after a 2018 AP News report revealed Google was tracking people’s movements even when they’d opted out of such tracking.3 Google’s misleading claims to users regarding privacy protections available in their account settings have been ongoing since at least 2014, Racine’s investigation found.4

The AP investigation included a real-world example from privacy researcher Gunes Acar, whose location was tracked to dozens of locations over the course of several days, and the data saved to his Google account, even though he had turned “Location History” off on his cellphone.5

Location data collected by Google has been used in criminal cases in the past, including a warrant issued by police in Raleigh, North Carolina, to track down devices in the area of a murder.6 When you use an app like Google Maps, it will ask you to allow access to location, but it also tracks your location during use of apps that you might not expect. According to the AP investigation:7

“For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.”

Tracking You Even When ‘Location History’ Is Off

At issue is the company’s continued tracking of its users even when Location History is turned off. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Jonathan Mayer, a former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau, told the AP. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”8

Indeed, it states on Google’s Account Help webpage, “You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.” Only lower down on the page does it explain, however, that location data may still be saved even if Location History is paused:9

“If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.

For example, location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings.”

Aside from hiding location tracking under settings users wouldn’t expect, like Web & App Activity — which is turned on by default — Google is accused of collecting and storing location information via Google services, Wi-Fi data and marketing partners, again after device or account settings had been changed to stop location tracking.10

In addition to the District of Columbia, the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana have also filed lawsuits against Google for their deceptive data collection practices. The suits allege that Google also pressured users to use location tracking more often because it claimed — falsely — that its products wouldn’t function properly without it.11

“Google has prioritized profits over people,” Todd Rokita, Indiana attorney general, told The New York Times. “It has prioritized financial earnings over following the law.”12 Texas, meanwhile, has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google that alleges it has abused a monopoly over ad space auctions to marketers. The suit joins those from more than a dozen other states that claim Google has maintained and abused a monopoly over searches online.13

Google Is Even Tracking Children

Google has been called a dictator with unprecedented power because it relies on techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history, according to Robert Epstein, a Harvard trained psychologist who is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices.

They’re not only a surveillance agency — think about products like Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive and YouTube — but also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what you can and cannot see.

Google has also infiltrated education with its Google classrooms, usage of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, but many aren’t aware that even their children are being tracked. The attorney general of New Mexico filed a suit against Google for its educational tools in its classroom suite, helping to “break through the fog,” Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff said:14

“[The suit is] identifying the huge amounts of data that they’re taking about kids, how they track them across the internet are they integrate it with all the other Google streams of information and have it as a foundation for tracking those children all the way through their adulthood.”

The suit was later dismissed, but the attorney general filed an appeal, maintaining that Google’s G-Suite for Education products “spy on New Mexico students’ online activities for its own commercial purposes, without notice to parents and without attempting to obtain parental consent.”15

Google Force Installed COVID-19 Tracking Apps

In another sign of Google’s dictatorial tendencies, it partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Apple to create a smartphone app called MassNotify, which tracks and traces people, advising the users of others’ COVID-19 status.

While the tool claims to have been developed “with a focus on privacy,”16 the app suddenly appeared on Massachusetts residents’ Android phones out of nowhere, without consent. The feature must be enabled by the user for it to function, but it’s extremely disconcerting that the tool was automatically added to people’s cellphones, whether they intend to use it or not.

In China, COVID-19 tracking apps have been used as surveillance tools in collaboration with its social credit system, raising red flags that this force-installed app could be tracking residents’ movements and contacts without their knowledge and consent. The MassNotify app uses Google’s and Apple’s Bluetooth-based Exposure Notifications Express program.

The software framework was first released in April 2020,17 with the goal of allowing users who test positive for COVID-19 to report their results, which then sends out an alert to anyone whose phone crossed paths with the positive case and may have been exposed. The Exposure Notifications Express program acts as a blueprint from which states can implement their own tracking systems without having to develop their own individual apps.

While other states have required users to download an app to use the system, MassNotify was integrated directly into the operating system of Android phones.18 Such apps are based on technology developed by Apple and Google that was previously known as the “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project”19 and is now referred to as the Exposure Notifications API (application programming interface).

In a May 2020 Forbes article by Simon Chandler, he pointed out that while contact tracing apps “may be cryptographically secure,” they still “threaten our privacy in broader and more insidious ways,”20 namely encouraging you to keep your cellphone with you at all times and tracking your whereabouts while you do, and further “normalizing” the constant use of technology to dictate your freedoms and behavior.

Using ‘Trickery for Profits’

The attorneys’ general lawsuits against Google are seeking fines and an end to Google’s use of “dark patterns” that influence users to give up more and more personal data in order for the company to increase its profits. The suits allege that Google’s products are designed to pressure users to allow location tracking “inadvertently or out of frustration,” in violation of state consumer protection laws.21

“Google uses tricks to continuously seek to track a user’s location,” Racine said. “This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states.” The more data that Google collects about individual users, the more advertising dollars it can generate. But, Racine noted, “The time of trickery for profits is over.”22

In a similar lawsuit filed in 2020, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich also alleged that Google used deceptive practices to track its users’ locations. That suit stated:23

“This case concerns Google’s widespread and systematic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users, including its users in Arizona, which Google then exploits to power its lucrative advertising business. Google makes it impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google’s collection of location information, should the users seek to do so.”

Location data, meanwhile, can be used to reveal your gym memberships, health care visits, stores and restaurants you frequent or where you go to church. It may also be used to provide personalized ads on digital billboards as you pass by, and Google tracks and provides to its customers information about how well online ads work to drive people into brick-and-mortar stores.24

In addition to disabling as many location tracking apps as possible, and deleting your location history from your Google accounts, you can avoid additional Google products — and the privacy invasions they entail — using the following tips:

  • Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo and Startpage
  • Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
  • If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service instead such as ProtonMail, an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
  • Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25
  • If you’re a student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

Sources and References

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Joe Rogan shows us the real purpose of cancel culture

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | February 7, 2022

Joe Rogan has just been cancelled. Again. It’s not about covid “misinformation” this time.

No, now he’s a racist.

Some enterprising young mind combed through 13 years and hundreds of episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience, and cut together around twenty instances of Rogan using “the n-word”.

This video was shared by award-winning musician India Arie, and used to explain her pulling her music from Spotify’s platform in protest of Rogan’s continued presence there.

Rogan claims that these clips are all taken out of context in his recent apology video, and none were ever intended to be racist. This may well be true… we can’t check for ourselves, because Spotify removed all the episodes.

These important bits of context were, naturally, removed from the viral video. Besides, it has since been said that context doesn’t even matter.

And you know what, they’re right. The context doesn’t matter, perhaps the intention doesn’t even matter, what matters is “Why now?”

Some of these clips are over twelve years old, and yet there have never been any calls to boycott Spotify or cancel his show until just the last couple of days.

Were they not racist before? Or was everyone just OK with the racism? Could there be something else behind this?

… but why bother pausing the hate-fest to ask questions, right?

The only message that matters is – Joe Rogan is a racist now, and streaming giant Spotify have pulled over seventy episodes of his show from their platform as a result.

Of course the cyber-torches and internet-pitchforks coming for Joe Rogan is nothing new. Having preached the tenets of a healthy lifestyle, promoted alternate Covid treatments, and invited dissenting experts onto his show, Rogan has obviously been on the establishment’s hit list for a while.

This reached a peak in January when ageing rock royalty Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum: Remove Joe Rogan’s “misinformation”, or take my music down.

Despite adding a weasely disclaimer to the beginning of the podcast’s episodes, Spotify essentially sided with Rogan, probably because they couldn’t be seen to bow to that kind of pressure, and because they figured most people had forgotten Neil Young was still alive.

In short, and despite other musicians like Joni Mitchell adding their voices to Young’s, the gambit failed and Rogan remained on the air.

Then, just last week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki added fuel to the fire by announcing the President would like to see “more done” by tech companies to “limit the amount of misinformation” on their platforms.

Within days of that press conference, the viral video compilation of racial slurs had appeared, and Rogan is now a racist as well as an “anti-vax covidiot” or whatever they are calling us these days.

He’s also an object lesson in the entire purpose of cancel culture, and extreme identity politics in general.

I don’t know how many of our readers are gamers, or remember Half Life 2, but go with me here…

Around two-thirds of the way through the game you encounter giant insect-like aliens called Ant Lions, and soon afterwards get a special attack: The ability to “paint” enemies with pheromones which cause an unending swarm of Ant Lions to attack them.

Of course, the giant insects don’t know WHY they are attacking your enemies, they don’t sympathise with your aims and are not capable of understanding your plans, all they know is the chemical signals driving them to fits of rage.

You probably don’t need me to explain the metaphor.

This is the purpose of rampant, hysterical identity politics. You can paint your enemies as a target and watch the mindless swarm do its work.

As much as “cancel culture” is portrayed as a totally organic process, without any top-down control, this is simply not the case.

It is almost NEVER organic, and seemingly ALWAYS contrived.

If you need to be persuaded of that, simply look at who is immune to it.

Both Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have got enough racist (or at least racist-seeming) scandals to get them cancelled if the process really was anything but a covert tool of maintaining the status quo. And yet still they stand.

To show how selective it is, we have examples of the same exact behaviour eliciting complete opposite responses depending on the person involved.

When Gina Carano compared the hatred of the unmasked and unvaccinated to the way Jews were treated in Nazi Germany, she lost her job and her agent.

When Margaret Hodge made similar comments about Corbyn’s Labour party, there was no rebuke at all.

It seems only people outside the establishment, or promoting the ‘wrong’ opinions, are ever in real danger of falling victim to ‘organic’ cancellation.

Indeed, one can be a totally white-bread member of the entertainment industry for years and be safe in the knowledge your racism/homophobia/misogyny etc will never really come to light, but step out of line on the wrong subject at the wrong time, and you will suddenly find yourself facing a tidal wave of past “sins” about to wash over you.

Look at Donald Trump, an insider to the bone when he was just a billionaire reality TV host, but then he ran against Hillary and became “literally Hitler” overnight.

Rogan is a perfect examplar of this phenomenon. Spend ten years going on about legalising weed, taking DMT and talking about martial arts and you can say “the n-word” as much as you want and nobody notices or cares. But the minute you even mildly interrogate an important media narrative, then the mob ‘organically’ remembers you were a racist the whole time.

The evidence of contrivance is obvious. Simply ask yourself: where did this video compilation of racial slurs actually come from? Who made it?

Rogan’s uses of “the n-word” are not new. They are all several years old and from 23 separate episodes, all multiple hours long. And there are almost 1800 episodes of the show to plough through if you decide to go searching. So making this video is at least two days’ work of simply watching the episodes – and that’s assuming you know where to start looking.

And that’s before editing or trying to make it “go viral”.

Was all this done on a whim by some bored pro-vaxxer?

Does that sound likely?

Far more likely is that it was created and deployed to discredit Rogan’s COVID-questioning without having to engage with the Covid sceptic evidence or arguments.

It’s even possible the video may even have already existed before the current controversy. After all, why create this climate of stifling sensitivity if you don’t have the tools to use it?

Perhaps most authors, actors, comedians etc. have a “tape” in the vault somewhere. A database of racism, homophobia or transphobia just waiting to be released when needed. A collection of neo-kompromat that works best as a deterrent, but is always ready to be loosed if needed.

Those people who do step too far out of their box are taken down, and act as an example to others. Ensuring everyone on the public stage is singing from the same hymn sheet.

Because that, it seems, is what cancel culture is for.

February 8, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

J&J tried to block publication of story about its secret plan to limit baby powder lawsuit payouts

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 6, 2022

Johnson & Johnson has been accused of trying to suppress speech by asking a judge to block the Reuters news agency from publishing a story about the pharmaceutical giant’s legal strategy to counter lawsuits claiming that its Baby Powder is a cause of cancer.

“The First Amendment is not a license to knowingly violate the law,” J&J said in a court filing in New Jersey this week.

The filing was made at the US Bankruptcy Court where the Big Pharma giant is trying to get protections from “bankruptcy” from 38,000 lawsuits alleging the company’s baby powder product was advertised as safe but had long-term cancer risks.

This week, Reuters reported that J&J had a secret plan to shift the liability from the lawsuits to a new subsidiary which would then declare bankruptcy to limit having to pay up over the cancer lawsuits.

J&J attempted to stop Reuters from publishing the story by requesting the judge intervene and issue a restraining order.

See the court filing here.

J&J accused Reuters of obtaining documents that were protected from public disclosure, demanding that Reuters return the documents and not publish any information.

The request asks for an order:

“(1) precluding the Reuters news agency from using or relying upon any documents designated as “Confidential” in this proceeding;

(2) requiring the return of any such documents; and

(3) ordering each attorney who has made an appearance in the above-captioned proceeding to submit to the Court a declaration under penalty of perjury stating whether he or she disclosed any materials designated as “Confidential” in this proceeding to Reuters (the “Motion”).”

Lawyers for Reuters, in a court filing, said that Johnson and Johnson’s request to stop the publication was “among the most extraordinary remedies a litigant can request under the law” and that the request was a “prior restraint of speech on a matter of public interest.”

After Reuters published its story, J&J withdrew their request for an immediate hearing but was “not prepared to agree” that the request about the documents was moot.

February 7, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

How the Biomedical State Maintains the ‘All the Experts Agree’ False Consensus

 

The Daily Bell | February 4, 2022

We’ve previously explored the mind-numbing “experts say” mantra that the corporate media parrots non-stop. Talking heads incessantly implore the peasant class to “respect the science.”

The purpose is to create a mirage of consensus in order to discourage real journalists or normal people from looking into matters themselves. This tactic is pervasive, but nowhere has it been more widely employed than in the COVID era.

Because, if three key facts were permitted to infect the public consciousness, they would inevitably result in mass upheaval of the ruling class that perches on top of society, feeding on it like vultures:

At every turn, the “experts” got it wrong.

So how does the biomedical establishment maintain the façade of legitimacy?

The biomedical state uses multiple mechanisms to discourage scientists from dissenting from the approved narrative

You’ve heard the talking point ad nauseam: “99% of scientists agree the vaccines are safe and effective.”

First of all, that figure is not vindicated by any actual polling; it’s just an offhand catchphrase.

Second, what happens to scientists who deviate from the “safe and effective” slogan?

JFK Jr. explains:

“As director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), Dr. Anthony Fauci dispenses $6.1 billion in annual taxpayer-provided funding for scientific research, allowing him to dictate the subject, content, and outcome of scientific health research across the globe. Fauci uses the financial clout at his disposal to wield extraordinary influence over hospitals, universities, journals, and thousands of influential doctors and scientists—whose careers and institutions he has the power to ruin, advance, or reward.”

  • You’ll get smeared in the corporate media

Exhibit A:

Epidemiologists at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford – three of the most highly-regarded mainstream institutes of higher learning in the world – authored the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020.

The gist of the document (which you can read here) is that a COVID Zero policy (the elimination of the SARS-CoV-2) virus in the population is a pipe dream. The social distancing and lockdown orders had devastating effects on public physical and mental health. Those at risk of severe illness or death from infectious disease should be protected while the non-vulnerable (the vast majority of the population) should resume normal life.

Those rational, science-based propositions should have been aired publicly in a healthy national debate.

But, predictably, open debate is not how Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, NIH Director, do things. Instead of debating the merits of the Barrington Declaration, Collins sent an email to Fauci on Oct 8 (later leaked) that read:

“This proposal from three fringe epidemiologists… seems to be getting a lot of attention – and even a co-signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt and Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don’t think like that on line yet – is it underway?”

Does that sound like the language of a public health servant doing God’s work to protect the people from a deadly virus – or that of a cynical political operative?

Is coordinating a media hitjob on ideological opponents part of the NIH Director’s job description?

More importantly, though, if they can orchestrate a smear campaign against three “fringe” epidemiologists from Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford, what signal does that send to a run-of-the-mill MD in Wisconsin who might be inclined to ask critical questions?

The message is obvious: “shut your mouth or we’ll come for you.”

 

They don’t even have to go after everyone. All they need is to bag a few high-profile scalps to set the example.

February 6, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The ‘Science’ of Manipulation: Researchers Craft Messages of Guilt, Shame to Foster Vaccine Compliance

By Ann Tomoko Rosen | The Defender | February 4, 2022

There’s an entire field of research dedicated to developing messaging designed to persuade “vaccine-hesitant” individuals to get the COVID-19 vaccine.

None of the messaging examined by researchers involves conveying factual evidence that supports the claims — widely disseminated by Big Pharma, Big Media and public health agencies — that the vaccines are “safe” and “effective.”

Researchers last month published the results of a clinical trial involving two survey experiments on how to manufacture consent for COVID vaccines.

The Yale-sponsored study, “Persuasive messaging to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions,” examined how different persuasive messages affected 1) intentions to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, 2) willingness to persuade friends and relatives to get the vaccine, 3) fear of those who have not been vaccinated, and 4) social judgment of people who choose not to vaccinate.

According to the study’s authors:

“Given the considerable amount of skepticism about the safety and efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine, it has become increasingly important to understand how public health communication can play a role in increasing COVID-19 vaccine uptake.”

The paper did not address the underlying reasons someone might have concerns about the safety or efficacy of COVID vaccines but focused instead exclusively on how to persuade them to get the vaccine.

From the paper:

“We conducted two pre-registered experiments to study how different persuasive messages affect intentions to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, willingness to persuade friends and relatives to receive one, and negative judgments of people who choose not to vaccinate.

“In the first experiment, we tested the efficacy of a large number of messages against an untreated control condition … In Experiment 2, we retested the most effective messages from Experiment 1 on a nationally representative sample of American adults.”

The messages tested by the researchers have been woven into mainstream media narratives and public health campaigns throughout the world. But the study completion date for part 1 was July 8, 2020, which means all of these messages were created prior to the release of any science to support them.

The baseline information control message states:

“To end the COVID-19 outbreak, it is important for people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 whenever a vaccine becomes available. Getting the COVID-19 vaccine means you are much less likely to get COVID-19 or spread it to others. Vaccines are safe and widely used to prevent diseases and vaccines are estimated to save millions of lives every year.”

In order to establish which messaging strategies elicited an inclination to get vaccinated, 10 additional messages were added to bring context to the baseline message.

These messages incorporated themes of self-interest, community interest, guilt, embarrassment, anger, bravery, trust in science, personal freedom, economic freedom and community economic benefit.

“We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators,” the researchers wrote.

To study the impacts of guilt, embarrassment and anger, researchers prompted people to think about how they would feel if they did not get vaccinated and then spread the virus to others.

“Emotions are thought to play a role in cooperation, either by motivating an individual to take an action because of a feeling that they experience or restraining them from taking an action because of the emotional response it would provoke in others.”

The “not brave” and “trust in sciences” messages were designed to evoke concerns about reputation and social image. The “not brave” message “reframed the idea that being unafraid of the virus is not a brave action, but instead selfish, and that the way to demonstrate bravery is by getting vaccinated because it shows strength and concern for others.”

The “trust in science” message suggested, “those who do not get vaccinated do not understand science and signal this ignorance to others.”

Personal freedom, economic freedom and community economic benefit messages drew on concerns linked to COVID restrictions.

Overall, it was a message that appealed to community interest, reciprocity and a sense of embarrassment that proved most persuasive, resulting in a 30% increase in intention to vaccinate, a 24% increase in willingness to advise a friend to get vaccinated and a 38% increase in negative opinions of people who decline the vaccines relative to the placebo message.

Community interest messages that incorporate embarrassment were determined to be most effective in getting people to encourage others to get the vaccine, while “not brave” messaging showed the most promise in creating negative judgments of non-vaccinators.

The Yale study findings are consistent with another recent paper, “Vaccination as a Social Contract,” which demonstrated people view vaccination as a social contract and are less willing to cooperate with those who refuse vaccination.

The study stated:

“The experiments consistently showed that especially compliant (i.e., vaccinated) individuals showed less generosity toward nonvaccinated individuals … It is concluded that vaccination is a social contract in which cooperation is the morally right choice.

“Individuals act upon the social contract, and more so the stronger they perceive it as a moral obligation. Emphasizing the social contract could be a promising intervention to increase vaccine uptake, prevent free riding, and, eventually, support the elimination of infectious diseases.”

Forget the facts, appeal to ‘values’

Saad Omer, one of the authors of the Yale study, has an extensive interest in public health messaging.

His efforts to combat vaccine hesitancy earned him a spot on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts working Group on COVID-19 Vaccines, the Sabine Vaccine Institute’s Board of Trustees and the WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety.

In 2020, Omer initiated a “Building Vaccine Confidence Through Tailored Messaging Campaigns” project involving randomized trials in five countries using social media messaging to increase COVID and childhood vaccine coverage.

In his keynote address at the first WHO Global Infodemiology Conference in June 2020, Omer referenced “moral foundation theory” and suggested appealing to values could change decision-making behaviors.

Omer provided details about a messaging study for the HPV vaccine and discussed how similar strategies could be applied to create compliance for COVID measures:

“We wanted to test out, can we have a purity-based message? So we showed them pictures of genital warts and described a vignette, a narrative, a story, talking about how someone got genital warts and how disgusting they were and how pure vaccines are that sort of restore the sanctity of the body.

“So we just analyzed these data. This was a randomized control trial with apriori outcomes. We found approximately 20 percentage point effect on people’s likelihood of getting an HPV vaccine in the next 6 months …

“We are trying out liberty-based messages or liberty-mediated messaging around this behavior related to COVID-19 outbreak. That wearing a mask or taking precautions eventually make you free, regain your autonomy. Because if the disease rates are low, your activities can resume.”

The ‘science’ of infodemiology, infoveillance and infodemic

Omer is one of many prominent voices in what is known as the field of “infodemiology,” a term coined in 2002 by Dr. Gunter Eysenbach.

As the first infodemiologist and founder of the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Eysenbach defines infodemiology as ”the science of distribution and determinants of information in an electronic medium, specifically the Internet, or in a population, with the ultimate aim to inform public health and public policy.”

Eysenbach also coined the terms “infoveillance,” defined as “a type of syndromic surveillance that specifically utilizes information found online,” and “infodemic,” which refers to “an overabundance of information” that generally includes deliberate attempts to disseminate wrong information to undermine the public health response and advance alternative agendas of groups or individuals.”

Using just three words, Eysenbach created a scientific niche, identified a problem and proposed at least part of a so-called solution.

The WHO readily embraced this language during the pandemic. An editorial in the August 2020 issue of The Lancet began with a quote from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: “We’re not just fighting a pandemic; we’re fighting an infodemic.”

The WHO hosted several infodemiology conferences throughout the pandemic. Asserting that “misinformation costs lives,” the WHO, the United Nations and other groups created the perfect justification for social media surveillance and the suppression of dissent.

In 2020, the WHO created a resolution asking member states to take measures to leverage digital technologies to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” and worked with more than 50 digital companies and social media platforms, including TikTok and even Tinder, to support these efforts.

The efforts to eliminate “misinformation” resulted in unprecedented censorship of virtually anything that steps outside of state-sanctioned consensus and the creation of a captive audience primed to accept a singular narrative.

A National Defense Authorization Act amendment in 2012 that legalized the use of propaganda on the American public makes it easier for governments to create self-serving narratives.

And thanks to a multi-billion dollar budget from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we are under the influence of the best messages money can buy — whether or not those messages are true.

This is likely why the CDC, public health departments and mainstream media can make broad assertions like this: “COVID-19 vaccines were developed quickly while maintaining the highest safety standard possible,” and this: “Hydroxychloroquine shouldn’t be used to treat COVID-19,” and claim they are “fact.”

Articles and posts that challenge those assertions are regularly removed if they’re even permitted to be published in the first place.

Public health compliance: A cottage industry

Yale is not the only university researching the science of compliance. Academic institutions and government agencies throughout the world are immersed in this emerging behavioral science.

In February 2021, the University of Pennsylvania newsletter, Penn Today, published, “When the Message Matters, Use Science to Craft It,” covering behavioral scientist Jessica Fishman’s Message Effects Lab (MEL) initiative and research related to “what sways decision-making,” particularly with regard to COVID vaccination and testing.

MEL currently has partnerships and ongoing projects with the World Bank, the National Institutes of Health, the CDC, Penn Medicine, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Independence Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the Government of Canada to address health-related behaviors.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, a branch of HHS, also sponsored research to explore influences on COVID vaccine decision-making. The study, “Attitudes Toward a Potential SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine: A Survey of U.S. Adults,” concluded:

“We found that a substantial proportion (42.2%) of participants in a national survey conducted during the coronavirus pandemic would be hesitant to accept vaccination against COVID-19. Black race was one of the strongest independent predictors of not accepting vaccination; this is especially alarming, given the outsized impact of COVID-19 among African-Americans.

“Our findings suggest that many of the individuals who responded ‘not sure’ may accept vaccination if given credible information that the vaccine is safe and effective. As vaccine development proceeds at an unprecedented pace, parallel efforts to proactively develop messages to foster vaccine acceptance are needed to achieve control of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Behavioral scientist Dr. Rupali Limaye took the messaging a step further. She teaches a free online training course, offered by Johns Hopkins University, that “prepares parents of school-age children, PTAs, community members and school staff to be Vaccine Ambassadors and promote vaccine acceptance in their communities.”

Limaye will be a panelist for an interactive webinar “Making COVID-19 vaccines APPEALing: Pilot message testing in India,” later this month.

Changing messages, same goals

While government agencies and the scientific community cling to unsupported beliefs about vaccine safety and efficacy, they appear to recognize the importance of constantly revisiting their understanding of the impacts of messaging.

UPenn’s updated research found intentions around vaccination have changed. The university’s Annenberg School for Communication reported:

“The researchers found that trust in scientific institutions and health authorities was central to individuals’ intentions to be vaccinated, especially in the early part of the pandemic. However, as the pandemic continued, other factors related to trust emerged …

“The evidence, the researchers wrote, ‘documents the need for the public health community to redouble its efforts to preemptively and persistently communicate not only about how vaccines in general work but also about their benefits, safety, and effectiveness.’”

Research from Civics Analytics, a technology company that creates data-driven audience campaigns, seconds the notion that effective messaging must evolve.

With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the company explored COVID concerns among different demographics and determined that a “one-size-fits-all” message would not work. The company said:

“In the spring of 2021, before the Delta variant emerged in the U.S. and when vaccine mandates had not yet been implemented, we found that messages highlighting experiences that are off-limits to unvaccinated individuals (such as concerts or international travel) or emphasizing personal choice were most persuasive…

“As you’ll see in this research, the most persuasive messages have changed.”

According to Civics Analytics, FOMO (fear of missing out) and “personal decision” messages were the most impactful. But more current data indicates the “protecting children” message has become more effective at persuading people to get vaccinated.

From the study:

“For general messaging targeting all unvaccinated people, focus on protecting children from COVID-19 and on the financial ramifications of contracting the virus.”

The company found “vaccine safety,” “scary COVID statistics” and “personal story” messages were inclined to backfire and could decrease the likelihood of vaccinating.

Perhaps some good scientists will advance the learning curve and study what happens when the public discovers that “proven messages” lack supporting scientific data.

©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.

February 5, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Around 70 more Joe Rogan episodes have disappeared from Spotify

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | February 4, 2022

Around 70 episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience have today disappeared, according to JREMissing, a tool that uses the Spotify API to detect episode deletions.

Reclaim The Net has confirmed that the episodes have indeed been deleted at the time of writing.

The missing episodes include interviews with Gad Saad, Michael Malice, Theo Von, Aubrey Marcus, Russell Peters, Tim Ferriss, and more.

The deleted episodes are separate from the batch of episodes that Spotify deleted when Rogan first joined the platform on an exclusive basis.

Spotify has yet to confirm if the deletions are intentional and has put out no statement on the matter.

Joe Rogan has been a target of outrage in recent weeks, with demands for censorship coming from Twitter all the way to the White House. The legacy media accuses Rogan of promoting “misinformation” about the Covid-19 vaccines for interviewing doctors who disagree with mandates and promote early treatments for Covid-19.

Spotify has been contacted for comment and this story will be updated when more information is available.


See also:

TUCKER HAS A MESSAGE FOR POLITICIANS TRYING TO CENSOR BROADCASTERS

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

Volunteers’ group targets Facebook for suppressing Palestinian content

MEMO | February 4, 2022

A Palestinian group of volunteers that monitors Facebook has raised an alarm that the social media platform was increasingly blocking and suppressing the content posted by Palestinian journalists, activists and influencers, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report, the volunteers’ group, Sada Social, has mentioned that Facebook had limited the reach of the accounts of the Palestinian influencers recently when they were highlighting the issues of Shaikh Jarrah neighbourhood and Gaza Strip.

According to the statistics issued by the group, Facebook had banned the users from reaching the hashtag “Al-Aqsa” in 2021, where many activists were writing about the events happening in Palestine.

“Facebook and Instagram had blocked as many as 1,500 posts in 2021. Almost 44 per cent of posts were posted by journalists and authentic media institutions,” said Iyad Refai, a social media specialist and the Director of Sada Social.

He said that access to the accounts that covered the incidents was restricted through algorithms that identify the digital content, adding that new words were added to expand the restrictive practices.

Facebook catches the words like “to support the Palestine cause” and other words like these, and then blocks the account. In addition, the restrictive practices have been expanded to the names of Palestinian factions, leaders, or martyrs, in addition to any pictures or videos related to this.

“After each violation, we contact Facebook to clarify that we have the right to tell our story. All the discussions with them are about the importance to have a clear and certain adoption of standards of the concepts about violence and hatred since Facebook policies do not follow the UN standards about violence and hatred,” said Refai.

In its annual statement, Sada Social said, in contrast to the efforts of defenders of the right to free expression and a sense of security in digital space, in 2021 there was a growing tendency to impose coercive powers on people’s practices in digital space.

Refai emphasised that, despite repeated calls to Facebook to put an end to the bias shown against the Palestinian content, there has been an increase in attacks on media platforms during the coverage of the recent war and events in Jerusalem. Palestinian news pages like Maydan Al Quds were finally pulled down last year in November.

“It is a US company and US law defines the Palestinian struggle as acts of terrorism,” he added.

According to the annual statistics released by the Sada Social, more than 390 Palestinians were detained by the Israeli forces and exposed to interrogation because of highlighting issues related to Palestine on Facebook.

February 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Jordan Peterson Compares Climate Model Errors to Compounding Interest

By Chris Morrison | The Daily Sceptic | February 2, 2022 

It’s been all Canada on Joe Rogan’s popular Spotify podcast of late. First, crinkly rockers Neil and Joni threw their guitars out of the pram when Rogan dared to broadcast a number of different opinions on Covid and vaccines. Then fellow Canadian Dr. Jordan Peterson said climate models compounded their errors, just like interest. Green activists and zealots (often known in the climate change business as ‘scientists’) clutched their responsibly sourced pearls and whined, “Lawks a-mercy, it’s outrageous!” and “Banning’s too good for them!”. The septuagenarian songsters briefly found themselves out of the headlines as the mainstream media rushed to quell a growing sceptical climate debate and rubbish a troublesome competitor.

Dr. Peterson suggested that the climate was too complex to be modelled. Such notions were said to be a “word salad of nonsense,” reported a distraught Guardian. Dr. Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick of the University of Canberra added Peterson had “no frickin’ idea”. Professor Michal Mann of Penn State University said Peterson’s comments – and Rogan’s “facilitation” of them – was an “almost comedic type of nihilism” that would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.

This of course is the same Michael Mann who produced the infamous temperature hockey stick that was at the centre of the 2010 Climategate scandal. The graph was used for a time in IPCC reports and showed a 1,000 year straight temperature line followed by a recent dramatic rise. This startling image was helped by the mysterious disappearance of the medieval warming period and subsequent little ice age. Discussion about the graph led to Mann pursuing a U.S. libel suit against the broadcaster and journalist Mark Steyn. In court filings, Mann argued that it was one thing to engage in discussion about debatable topics, but it was quite another to “attempt to discredit consistently validated scientific research through the professional and personal defamation of a Nobel Prize recipient”. He is not himself a Nobel Prize recipient, but perhaps he was referring to someone else.

Independent minded communicators like Joe Rogan and take-no-prisoner intellectuals such as Dr. Peterson command a worldwide audience and they are difficult to cancel. The battle between Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and Joe Rogan, sitting on a $100m Spotify contract, had only one free speech winner – at least for the moment. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s default position when faced with something unsettling like the ‘settled’ science of anthropogenic climate change is to declare it will not “lend” its credibility to its critics by engaging in debate. That was obviously not possible with Peterson’s remarks being plastered all over social media, although it could be argued that the Guardian reporting the vulgar abuse users posted in response is not much of a substitute for the usual lofty disdain.

Dr. Peterson attacked climate models on a number of fronts. In particular, he noted that as you stretch out the models across time “the errors increase radically”. In its way, this refers to the biggest problem that lies at the heart of the 40-year track record of climate model failures. To make a prediction, climate models are fed a guess of the increase in the global mean surface temperature that follows a doubling of atmospheric CO2. Nobody actually knows what this figure is – the science for this crucial piece of the jigsaw is missing, unsettled you may say. The estimates run from 1°C to as high as 6°C and of course the higher the estimate, the hotter the forecasts run.

As they don’t say in the climate and Covid modelling business – Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Meanwhile back in the real world, global warming has been running out of steam over the last two decades. Satellite temperatures, which have been available since 1979, provide a more accurate measurement of global warming (or cooling) than flawed and frequently massaged surface measurements.

The graph above from Remote Sensing Systems demonstrates the lack of warming measured by satellites and is displayed by the black line. Forecasts from climate models, contained within the yellow area, started to diverge significantly from the late 1990s, backing Dr. Peterson’s claim that over time they magnify their own errors. As with epidemiological models, there seems little incentive to tone down the inputs – it’s difficult to make a reputation, and secure grants, by saying that few people will die. In the case of climate models, there are also 204,000,000,000,000 reasons to exaggerate – this being the £204 trillion that McKinsey recently said must be spent to achieve the political goal of global Net Zero by 2050.

The ‘pure’ science around climate change is thin on the ground in the fast-growing Earth Science university faculties, more often than not a rebranding of the old Geography departments. The real science surrounds the effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere, where an advanced knowledge of chemistry and physics is essential. Within such academic circles, there are growing doubts about the unproven hypothesis that humans cause all or most global warming by burning fossil fuel. While CO2 has been rising recently from a geologically ultra-low base, there is little correlation between the gas and temperature movement in almost any timeframe. Again Dr. Peterson is right to note that the climate is too complex to model accurately since there are almost countless other natural factors at work in a chaotic atmosphere.

Professor William Happer of Princeton has suggested that CO2 becomes “saturated” once it reaches a certain level, since it reflects heat back to Earth only within certain bands of the infrared spectrum. Increases in CO2 beyond current levels will have little effect on future warming, or cooling. Far from being harmful, the extra COis highly beneficial for plant growth and food.

Recently, a group of physics professors from the University of Massachusetts led by Kenneth Skrable examined the carbon isotope trail released by fossil fuel burning. They found the amount of CO released was “much too low to be the cause of global warming”. The German physicist Dr Frank Stefani looked at the effect of the Sun and geomagnetic forces on the planet and concluded that the Sun alone accounted for between 30-70% of recent planetary warming.

About two years ago, 48 Italian science professors wrote an open letter to their Government noting that the “advanced alarmist forecasts” of climate models “were not credible”. Natural variability, it was said, “explains a substantial part of global warming observed since 1850”. Catastrophic predictions “are not realistic”. The letter was signed by a number of distinguished academics including Antonino Zichichi, Emeritus Professor of Physics, a past president of the World Federation of Scientists and the discoverer of nuclear antimatter. Not that the folks who write for the Guardian would ever “lend” their credibility by talking about the climate with these 48 ‘denier’ scientists.

February 3, 2022 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Joe Rogan Up Against ‘Powerful Interests,’ as More Musicians Threaten to Remove Music From Spotify

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | Februry 1, 2022

Joe Rogan in an Instagram video Monday addressed the growing controversy surrounding his podcast — “The Joe Rogan Experience” — telling fans he’s not interested in talking to people who have only one perspective. He also said he has a problem with the term “misinformation.”

Rogan’s statement came as the streaming platform Spotify on Sunday announced new rules designed to “combat” the spread of COVID “misinformation” on its platform.

The new rules came after a handful of musicians, including Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen’s guitarist Nils Lofgren and Joni Mitchell, pulled their music catalogs from Spotify, in an effort to force Spotify to choose between their music or Rogan’s podcast. Author Brené Brown also joined the protest, stating she won’t release new episodes of her Spotify-exclusive podcasts “until further notice.”

Spotify last week agreed to remove Young’s music.

“We have detailed content policies in place and we’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to covid-19 since the start of the pandemic,” a Spotify spokesperson told The Washington Post in a statement. “We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Saagar Enjeti, Washington correspondent at The Hillsaid there could be more going on behind the scenes. Investment firms who own the music catalogs — and who also have ties to pharmaceutical companies — may be calling the shots.

“The people speaking out may be doing so organically, but it also happens to coincide with the financial or oligarchic interests of some very, very rich people,” Enjeti said in a “Breaking Points” episode that took a “deep dive into the hedge funds behind the campaign by Neil Young and others to cancel Rogan and boost other music services such as Amazon music.”

Rogan, Spotify’s star podcaster, signed a $100 million deal in 2020, giving the streaming service exclusive rights to his show. The podcast, available only on Spotify, reached No. 1 globally last year, the company said last month.

What used to be misinformation, now accepted as fact

According to Rogan’s 10-minute video, his podcast was accused of “spreading dangerous misinformation,” citing specifically his interviews with Dr. Peter McCullough and one with Dr. Robert Malone.”

Rogan said:

“Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist and he’s the most published physician in his field in history. Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partly responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines.

“Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people and they have an opinion that’s different than the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is.

“I had them on and because of that those episodes, in particular, those episodes were labeled as being dangerous, they had dangerous misinformation in them.”

Rogan said the issue he has with the term “misinformation” is that “many of the things we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.”

Rogan explained:

“For instance, eight months ago if you said if you get vaccinated you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID, you would be removed from social media. They would ban you from certain platforms. Now that’s accepted as fact.

“If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned on social media. Now that’s openly, repeatedly stated on CNN.

“If you said, I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you would be banned from many social media platforms. Now, that’s on the cover as Newsweek.”

Rogan said all of those theories that “at one point in time” were banned, were openly discussed by McCullough and Malone who were accused of spreading dangerous misinformation.

Rogan said he wanted to make the video because he feels “people have a distorted perception” of what he does.

“I’m not trying to promote misinformation,” Rogan said. “I’m not trying to be controversial. I’ve never tried to do anything with this podcast other than just talk to people and have interesting conversations.”

Are Amazon and Hedge Funds trying to cancel Rogan?

In a video posted Jan. 31 on YouTube, Enjeti said there is more than meets the eye when it comes to musicians like Young pulling their catalogs from Spotify.

“The original impetus for Neil Young’s demand was a letter he posted on social media saying Spotify could either have Neil Young or Joe Rogan, but that letter was almost immediately deleted after it was posted,” Enjeti said.

“Who is demanding this? Enjeti asked. “Is it Neil Young or is it the people who own his music?”

Enjeti explained:

“You see a recent trend in the music business it that iconic artists such a Neil Young sell their catalogs to big-money groups who then reap the profits in perpetuity. Young actually sold his catalog in Jan. 2021 to a company called Hipgnosis. Now Hipgnosis is a $1 billion company that recently announced an ownership agreement with Blackstone.”

Enjeti said Blackstone is focused on taking over single-family housing and turning America into a nation of renters, but it also has interests everywhere.

“Blackstone, BlackRock and these big private equity giants are ruthless in their pursuit of profits and they’re savvy political players who know how to play the game,” Enjeti said. “They have all sorts of ties to the pharmaceutical industry, including announcing the former CEO and chairman of Pfizer would be joining Blackstone as a senior advisor.”

“Do you really think it’s a coincidence that days after Neil Young’s music was pulled off of Spotify he debuts a 4-month free trial to any person who wants to sign up for Amazon music — who has struggled to gain market share and has long-standing connections with all of the big money people in the game?” Enjeti asked.

“Open your eyes to see possibilities you may not have imagined,” Enjeti said. “At first it was simple, just Neil Young taking a stand.”

Now a lot of people with big money and a big agenda who would just so happen to profit if Rogan went down are speaking out, Enjeti added. “Joni Mitchell has come out and said she is going to stand in solidarity with Neil Young.”

Mitchell on Sept. 13, 2021, struck a publishing deal with Reservoir Media, Inc. (RMI). The top 10 owners of RMI are large private equity and investment firms.

Lofgren, who on Jan. 30 announced he was joining fellow musicians Mitchell and Young in their Spotify boycott, also does not own his music catalog.

Lofgren’s catalog was purchased on Dec. 16, 2021, by Sony Entertainment. The top 10 owners of Sony Group Corp. are large investment firms.

Enjeti said:

“You give into the mob, you give them an inch, they will keep coming. Will Spotify really be able to withstand up to the pressure? Who knows? Principles are not going to save you in this instance. Only money will.”

Enjeti said people better hold on to their seats and “hope that Joe prevails on this one,” as he is up against more powerful interests than many realize.

New Spotify rules don’t define ‘misinformation’

As part of its new rules, Spotify said it would add a content advisory to any podcast episode discussing COVID amid accusations it was allowing misinformation to spread on its platform.

The advisory will direct listeners to a “dedicated COVID-19 Hub,” which is described as a “resource that provides easy access to data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world, as well as links to trusted sources.”

Spotify said this is the first content advisory of its kind and will roll out in the next few days.

The streaming giant also announced it will begin testing ways to highlight its platform rules to raise awareness around “what’s acceptable” and to help creators understand their accountability for the content they post on the platform.

The statement did not say who determines what is and is not misinformation and what is considered a “trusted source.”

Rogan said he supports Spotify putting a disclaimer on controversial podcasts about COVID and encouraging listeners to speak to their physicians.

© 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.

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

46 Israel violations against Palestinian journalists in January

Journalists flee after being attacked with grenades in the West Bank on 22 February 2019 [HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images]

MEMO | February 2, 2022

An Arab journalists’ rights group has recorded 46 Israeli violations of Palestinian media freedoms in January, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a report on Wednesday, the Journalists’ Support Committee which documents media violations across the Palestinian territories, said the Israeli violations varied between “arrest, extortion and direct field assault” of media personnel among other forms of harassment.

According to the NGO, four Palestinian journalists were arrested by Israeli forces last month.

It noted that the Israeli army and settlers committed “17 cases of assault and injury against journalists” during their coverage of the demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and rallies in the West Bank.

The Israeli army often used rubber bullets and gas bombs against Palestinian journalists, the report said.

The NGO also documented 18 cases of journalists being blocked from covering Israeli violations against the Palestinians.

According to the report, Israeli forces raided the house of one journalist, threatened two female journalists, while restricting the social media accounts of four others for “violating publishing instructions.”

Last month, the NGO said that 17 Palestinian journalists and media workers were held in prison by Israel.

February 2, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment