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
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.
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 CO2 is 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 CO2 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.
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 Hill, said 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.
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]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/GettyImages-1126740088.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1)
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.
Russia announces retaliation over RT DE ban in Germany
RT | February 2, 2022
Russia has repeatedly warned the German authorities that it considers any “politically motivated pressure” on the Moscow-based broadcasting company “unacceptable,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
“A decision by the German media regulator is a clear signal [showing] that Russia’s concerns have been demonstratively ignored,” it said, adding that such a step leaves Russia no choice but to take “reciprocal measures” against the German media certified in Russia, as well as internet platforms that deleted RT DE accounts “in an arbitrary and baseless way.”
The ministry did not specify what particular measures will be taken. Earlier, it repeatedly warned Berlin about an “inevitable” response in the case that Germany refuses to find a “constructive solution” to the issue around RT DE broadcasting “created by [Germany] itself.”
The statement comes as Germany’s Commission on Licensing and Supervision (ZAK) – the central organ of Germany’s Medienanstalten agency – sided with the regional media regulator MABB, which sought to shut down RT DE’s media operations citing an absence of a valid German license.
RT DE has been operating on a license secured in Serbia in 2021, which allowed it to broadcast in various European countries, including Germany, under the European Convention on Transfrontier Television (ECTT), of which both Berlin and Belgrade are signatories. The German authorities, however, dismissed the license as worthless.
The broadcaster has not seen the level of opposition it faced from the German authorities in any other country in the world, RT’s deputy editor-in-chief, Anna Belkina, said on Wednesday.
“It appears as if the German authorities, politicians and even media are really afraid of something, afraid of an alternative point of view that the German-speaking audience can get access to on RT DE channel.”
She added that the Moscow-based German-language channel would continue its broadcast despite the German authorities demanding it stop doing so not only via TV but also via online streaming and mobile apps.
“The channel does have a license obtained in a fully legitimate way,” she added. RT DE Productions GmbH, a Berlin-based production studio, which itself does not broadcast anything but only creates content for the Moscow-based channel, will challenge the regulator’s decision in court, according to the deputy editor-in-chief. “We believe we have good grounds to win this fight,” she said.
Facebook bans American trucker convoy group
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | February 2, 2022
Facebook has booted the rapidly growing “Convoy to DC 2022” group from its platform after it gained 137,000 members.
The group had been gaining tens of thousands of members per day and was calling on all truckers in the US to form a convoy to protest COVID-19 mandates. Organizers were planning to begin the convoy in California and end in Washington DC.
According to congressional candidate Tyler Lee, who was helping organizers of Convoy to DC 2022 and was planning to join the convoy, Facebook claimed that the group was banned for “repeatedly violating our policies around QAnon.”
However, Lee described Facebook’s actions as a “stunt” and added that this “is exactly why Americans are fed up.”
The QAnon policies that Facebook cited when banning Convoy to DC 2022 were blasted when they were first introduced with lawyers, journalists, and authors warning that they were arbitrary and gave Facebook an unchecked license to censor.
“Facebook just shut down our page,” Brian Brase, one of the organizers of Convoy to DC 2022 tweeted. “Apparently we don’t fit their agenda. People United is scary I guess. Convoy is still on.”
Facebook’s decision to boot the Convoy to DC 2022 group follows another convoy that’s protesting vaccine mandates, the “Freedom Convoy” in Canada, going viral on social media after mainstream media outlets downplayed the convoy and suggested that Russia was behind it.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has banned a rapidly growing grassroots protest movement that’s being shunned or disparaged by the mainstream media. Anti-critical race theory groups, anti-lockdown groups, groups supporting exceptions to COVID vaccine mandates, and more have also been booted from the platform as they gain traction and attract lots of new members.
In addition to banning specific groups, Facebook has introduced new censorship rules that make it harder for group members to see each other’s content.
“Medical boards get pushback as they try to punish doctors for Covid misinformation”/ Politico
Meryl Nass, MD | February 1, 2022
The medical boards are getting in trouble for swallowing the malarky from the Federation of State Medical Boards and other bloated medical nonprofits. These organizations somehow worked in concert during the second half of 2021 to terrorize doctors who failed to hew to the current medical narrative. Presumably they got paid to do so. Presumably those trying to cement control over Americans felt it necessary to act extrajudicially to use threats to enforce only ‘approved’ medical speech.
The clueless Medical Licensing Board members, a mix of medical professionals and citizens, rely on attorneys on their staff to get the legal details right. Instead, the attorneys never told the Board members that none of them them had any authority to legislate new crimes, that misinformation is not a crime under US law, that Freedom of Speech is a foundational principle of law that may not be abrogated, ever, especially not by any state or state agency.
A few Medical Boards, including my own, got too far out over their skis, and now it is starting to sink in what they have done. Their legislators are saying, “Whoa, Nellie! You guys were supposed to protect the citizens from drunkards, druggies and rapists. We never asked you to trash the 1st and 14th Amendments.”
From Politico,
… the responses from some medical boards and state officials have been stymied by political backlash. States like Tennessee and North Dakota, for example, have restricted state medical boards’ powers. And now legislators in 10 other states — including Florida and South Carolina — have introduced similar measures.
Some state boards also lack the legal tools to discipline doctors for sharing unreliable information via social media. They believe the precedents in their states for unprofessional or unethical behavior more narrowly apply to actions or speech made directly to patients under their care…
Meantime, my license remains suspended while the Maine Medical Licensing Board hopes against hope that if they keep fishing, they might someday be able to find a crime with which to charge me. It’s your taxpayer dollars they are spending to destroy my career and silence my voice. They think it is free money. What do you think?
Justice For the Hyde Park One
By Andrew Rootsey | The Daily Sceptic | February 1, 2022
As you may recall, we secured Debbie’s acquittal at Cheltenham Magistrates Court on the December 20th 2021 for offences relating to organising/being involved in organising a gathering of more than 30 people during a period of national lockdown or alternatively for participating in the gathering.
The relevant gathering was a protest held in Stratford Park in Stroud in November 2020 against the restrictions imposed on the British public under the Coronavirus Regulations. The protest was called the ‘Freedom Rally’ and was attended by more than 50 people.
The Stroud ‘Freedom Rally’ was held two days into the second national lockdown and therefore at the time it was illegal to organise a gathering of more than 30 people or to meet in groups of more than two people. A conviction would have left her liable for a £10,000 fine.
Ms. Hicks was acquitted of both offences after the court accepted our argument that her arrest and prosecution was a disproportionate interference with her human rights – namely the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, given that she was engaging in a legitimate protest.
The court found that Ms. Hicks had organised the ‘Freedom Rally’ and had breached the Coronavirus Regulations in force at the time by doing so. However, she had a reasonable excuse because she was attending a legitimate, peaceful and well-organised protest. The officers on the ground at the protest had been labouring under a misapprehension of the law – that protesting was not lawful under the Regulations – and were essentially imposing a blanket ban on protesting. Therefore, their actions in arresting her were not rational or proportionate.
In complete contrast – and a perfect example of how this contentious piece of legislation is flawed and open to misinterpretation – on the November 16th 2021 the City of London Magistrates Court convicted Debbie of breaching similar coronavirus regulations by protesting in Hyde Park against the imposition of lockdown restrictions during the pandemic. The District Judge in this case found that Debbie did not have a ‘reasonable excuse’ for protesting and found that the interference with her Human Rights was proportionate. Debbie was convicted and sentenced to a financial penalty.
The case raises important issues on freedom of expression and assembly, as well as the chilling of the right to protest. We wish to appeal this case to the High Court in order for the High Court to settle the important questions of law raised.
A fundamental consideration for the High Court is the ambiguity of the right to protest during the Coronavirus pandemic during periods of national lockdown and the operation of the ‘reasonable excuse’ jurisdiction in this regard.
The Government has made it clear, as have the courts, including in Debbie’s case before the Cheltenham Magistrates Court, that protesting during the Coronavirus pandemic was never illegal. Yet that was not always clear from the Coronavirus regulations nor was it the understanding of most police officers. How the reasonable excuse defence is to operate in these circumstances requires clarity and we are confident that the High Court will settle the issue in our favour and set a precedent for future cases and those seeking to appeal against their own convictions.
Debbie Hicks is probably best known for filming within the Gloucester Royal Hospital in December 2020 during Tier 3 restrictions. Debbie did so, exercising her freedom of expression, in order to highlight that Government restrictions were having a devastating effect upon access to healthcare across the board and to investigate mainstream media reports that hospitals were overflowing with patients.
Despite her efforts to avoid confrontation, she was challenged at the hospital by two employees. During the exchange, which lasted less than a minute, Debbie did not film the staff members. She explained the purpose of her visit and her views as to the provision of NHS services during lockdown. Staff members took offence at her comments and subsequently made a complaint to the police. Debbie immediately left the hospital voluntarily and was subsequently arrested at her home in front of her family and charged with using abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour.
Debbie was not at the hospital deliberately seeking an encounter with staff. She has in the past been a vociferous supporter of the NHS and has supported NHS staff in respect of vaccine mandates.
In connection with this episode, Debbie stood trial for an offence under Section 5 of Public Order Act on January 6th 2022 and having adjourned the case in order to hand down his judgement the District Judge convicted Debbie of a S5 Public Order Act offence on January 19th 2022 at Cirencester Magistrates Court.
We wish to appeal this conviction as well and ask that the High Court settle this case on the basis that the District Judge was wrong in law to convict Debbie of this offence. We are firmly of the view that the Prosecution case simply did not cross the threshold of what constitutes abusive, threatening or disorderly words or behaviour. The District Judge’s analysis was flawed and did not properly interpret Supreme Court authorities nor give appropriate weight to Debbie’s rights of freedom of expression and assembly as enshrined in the European Convention for Human Rights, nor give appropriate weight to the political nature of Debbie’s views when the case law makes clear political freedom of expression should be given special protection.
Debbie is trying to raise £10,000 to take both cases to the High Court. She hopes that those who continue to believe in freedom of speech and the the right to protest will continue to support her. Our hope is that if we can get these convictions overturned, it will set a legal precedent for those convicted of similar offences and who may face prosecution in the future.
Debbie needs to raise funds in order to pay her legal costs and any help is hugely appreciated. Her fundraiser can be found here.
Andrew Rootsey is a solicitor at Murray Hughman.
They’re Coming to Take You Away
Biden Administration steps up its war on the American People
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • FEBRUARY 1, 2022
What would a completely unscrupulous chief executive whose sole purpose in life is to seize power and never relinquish it do to conceal his evil intentions? He or she would use deception to change the narrative. Many are beginning to recognize that that is precisely what the Democrats are doing and their game plan includes demonizing both Russia and China to create plausible external enemies while also generating fear and uncertainty around alleged domestic threats as well as the COVID menace, to include initiating mandates designed to make the people submissive and fearful of legal and personal consequences for defying the government. Well, be that as it may, the penny has finally dropped and it is now clear that Biden-Pelosi-Schumer are intent on changing the rules and using lawfare and other tools to create a permanent governing majority.
The key to power in this case has been exploiting the legal system to criminalize many forms of dissent. For the past year President Joe Biden and his Department of Justice sidekick Attorney General Merrick Garland have been making noises about all the terrorists running around loose in the country. And they have not been shy about suggesting that the alleged terrorists are nothing less that “white supremacists” who are allegedly promoting violence to address their grievances against the new administration in Washington. Well, it has now become official. The Biden government has mobilized and has finally declared “war on the American people,” most particularly the third or so of the population that has concerns about the conduct and results of the 2020 election as well as over the “woke” racial preference policies that the government has been aggressively promoting.
On January 11th, Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, revealed to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI has now created a special unit that will deal exclusively with “domestic terrorism,” which it further describes as constituting an “elevated threat” to American democracy. Olsen claimed that there has been a large increase in “domestic extremism” reports having doubled in 2021 compared with the previous year. The new unit will “augment the existing approach” by way of additional resources that have been made available to identify the dissidents, track them down, arrest them and try them under the authority of various laws that were originally conceived as a legal tool to combat the perceived international terrorist threat after 9/11.
Olsen, citing what he referred to as the January 6th 2021 “riot” at the Capitol in Washington, elaborated how the Department of Justice believes that the nation now faces a serious threat from “domestic violent extremists — that is, individuals in the United States who seek to commit violent criminal acts in furtherance of domestic social or political goals.” He also suggested a racist motive behind some of the violence, adding that “We’ve seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus…,” and observed that the “terrorists” often are “anti-Authority,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
Olsen did not mention that the war on dissent has even included monitoring the social media of America’s military personnel lest they harbor dangerous thoughts. To be sure, the driving force behind the government’s campaign to criminalize the actions of the many citizens who object to the Biden Administration policies appears to be Olsen’s boss Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is very well placed to engage in mischief that will potentially affect all Americans. In fact, he has proven to be a more than willing accomplice in the social engineering that the Biden Administration is engaged in, to include his declaration last year that white supremacists are the single greatest terrorist threat the United States faces today.
Garland and others in the Biden Administration unashamedly propose that America’s governmental bodies and infrastructures are racist and supportive of “white supremacy” and must be deconstructed. “Building Back Better” requires everything to be examined through a value system determined by identity politics and race and it views both whites and their institutions as hopelessly corrupted, if not evil.
If there were any doubts about Biden’s intentions, they were dispelled in a speech made in Georgia on the same day that Olsen was addressing the Senate. Biden issued a call to arms that was full of race-baiting, claiming that those who are resisting the voting “reforms” that he is promoting are little better than notorious civil-rights era racists like George Wallace and Bull Connors. In reality, however, the voting changes that the Administration is promoting by fiat are, in fact, licenses to steal votes and commit large scale electoral fraud as they will strip states of the right to demand that voters prove both that they are citizens and legal residents.
On January 26th the Department of Homeland Security got into the game, releasing a memo suggesting that the “domestic extremists” are seeking to make the lives of all Americans more difficult. The dissidents “have been developing plans to attack the US electric sector… since at least 2020.’” The report stated that extremists “adhering to a range of ideologies will likely continue to plot and encourage physical attacks against electrical infrastructure” but it did not provide even a single piece of evidence that the “threat” had ever proceeded beyond the talking stage, suggesting that the report was generated to create fear on the part of the public regarding the “domestic terrorism” issue.
In yet another instance demonstrating how the White House is interpreting its national security mandate in a highly partisan fashion, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated last week that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) works closely with the Bureau to identify and investigate instances of anti-Semitism in the United States. That should raise questions about a private group with an agenda working as a source for the police and intelligence services and it suggests in particular that critics of Israel and its policies will find themselves increasingly targeted by law enforcement under “hate crime” legislation. Such statements citing rising anti-Semitism and “holocaust denialism” also generate more fear among the public to justify “protection” by a dominating and intrusive national security apparatus.
Witness how this has already played out in Europe where “holocaust denial” has been widely criminalized by way of so-called “memory laws [which] prohibit the denial, justification, or trivialization of the crimes committed by the Nazis during World War II… France has had a ban on Holocaust denial in place since 1990. Austria’s ban was adopted in 1992, and Belgium’s is from 1995. Germany itself did not adopt an explicit ban until 1994, though it countered Holocaust denial before then through laws against defamation, incitement, and disparaging the memory of the dead… Holocaust denial laws were also approved in the 1990s by the European Court of Human Rights (under the Council of Europe), which stated that the negation or revision of ‘clearly established historical facts — such as the Holocaust — … would be removed from the protection’ of free speech under the European Convention on Human Rights.”
Eliminating free speech, the most fundamental right, would allow government and a compromised media to gain control of the narrative of government that prevails in the United States and would be a significant step towards totalitarian control. Going beyond that, the Administration is even reported to be considering devastating proposals to make all illegal immigrants citizens to allow them to vote. New York City has already declared that all residents will be able to vote on local issues, whether they are in the country legally or not. More to the point, the discussion comes at a time when the nation’s southern border has become an out-of-control entry point for anyone who can reach Mexico.
Even though the Biden Administration’s enemies list admittedly features white supremacists regarded ipso facto as extremists, it is now notoriously also including those parents who do not support the various formulae being employed to install programs seeking to establish what is referred to as “equity” in the nation’s public schools. That the agenda is both reverse racism and detrimental to good educational practice is why parents are protesting. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has observed how “The Department of Justice’s fight against angry parents is a real testament to the authoritarian nature of the Biden administration and indeed, the entirety of the left. It takes a lot of hubris to declare that you know how to raise someone’s child better than them and send authorities to shut you down when you protest that.”
Senator Paul’s father former Congressman Ron Paul has also responded to the threat coming from a government that he perceives as trending towards totalitarianism by way of a single state model for education, commenting how “If government can override the wishes of parents in the name of ‘education’ or ‘protecting children’s health’ then what area of our lives is safe from government intrusion?”
If it is indeed true that Joe Biden is not completely in control of what his administration appears to be doing, one then has to wonder who is directing his appointed officials to pursue policies that are destructive of all the freedoms and other positive things that this nation once represented. One thing for sure, the mask is now off and the Democratic Party plan to create something like a totalitarian state with one party rule in perpetuum is right there for everyone to see.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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Book Review
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
… Groupthink was extensively studied by Yale psychologist Irving L. Janis and described in his 1982 book Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes.
Janis was curious about how teams of highly intelligent and motivated people—the “best and the brightest” as David Halberstam called them in his 1972 book of the same name—could have come up with political policy disasters like the Vietnam War, Watergate, Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, in 2008 and 2009, we saw the best and brightest in the world’s financial sphere crash thanks to some incredibly stupid decisions, such as allowing sub-prime mortgages to people on the verge of bankruptcy.
In other words, Janis studied why and how groups of highly intelligent professional bureaucrats and, yes, even scientists, screw up, sometimes disastrously and almost always unnecessarily. The reason, Janis believed, was “groupthink.” He quotes Nietzsche’s observation that “madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups,” and notes that groupthink occurs when “subtle constraints … prevent a [group] member from fully exercising his critical powers and from openly expressing doubts when most others in the group appear to have reached a consensus.”[2]
Janis found that even if the group leader expresses an openness to new ideas, group members value consensus more than critical thinking; groups are thus led astray by excessive “concurrence-seeking behavior.”[3] Therefore, Janis wrote, groupthink is “a model of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”[4]
The groupthink syndrome
The result is what Janis calls “the groupthink syndrome.” This consists of three main categories of symptoms:
1. Overestimate of the group’s power and morality, including “an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, inclining the members to ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their actions.” [emphasis added]
2. Closed-mindedness, including a refusal to consider alternative explanations and stereotyped negative views of those who aren’t part of the group’s consensus. The group takes on a “win-lose fighting stance” toward alternative views.[5]
3. Pressure toward uniformity, including “a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgments conforming to the majority view”; “direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group’s stereotypes”; and “the emergence of self-appointed mind-guards … who protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their shared complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decisions.”[6]
It’s obvious that alarmist climate science—as explicitly and extensively revealed in the Climatic Research Unit’s “Climategate” emails—shares all of these defects of groupthink, including a huge emphasis on maintaining consensus, a sense that because they are saving the world, alarmist climate scientists are beyond the normal moral constraints of scientific honesty (“overestimation of the group’s power and morality”), and vilification of those (“deniers”) who don’t share the consensus. … Read full article
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