Full Spectrum Dominance

Is this the end of progressive America?

BY JOEL KOTKIN | UNHERD | JANUARY 4, 2022

Over the past several decades, the progressive Left has successfully fulfilled Antonio Gramsci’s famed admonition of a “long march through the institutions”. In almost every Western country, its adherents now dominate the education system, media, cultural institutions, and financial behemoths.

But what do they have to show for it? Not as much as they might have expected. Rather than a Bolshevik-style assumption of power, there’s every chance this institutional triumph will not produce an enduring political victory, let alone substantially change public opinion.

Even before Biden’s botched Build Back Better initiative, American progressives faced opposition to their wildly impractical claims about achieving “zero Covid” and “zero emissions”, confronting “systemic racism” by defunding the police, regulating speech, and redefining two biological sexes into a multiplicity.

Increasingly, the “march” has started to falter. Like the French generals in 1940 who thought they could defeat the Germans by perfecting World War One tactics, the progressive establishment has built its own impressive Maginot Line which may be difficult to breach, but can still be flanked.

That is not to deny the progressives’ limited successes. It has certainly developed a remarkable ability to besmirch even the most respected institutions, including the US military. But that is where its achievements stop.

While the Pentagon’s top brass focused on “domestic terrorists” and a progressive social agenda, it calamitously bungled its withdrawal from Afghanistan and appears utterly unprepared for Chinese or Russian competitors. And the effect of this progressive march is plain to see: the percentage of Americans who feel “a great deal of trust and confidence in the military” has dropped in just three years to 45% from 70%.

This decline in trust in major institutions, so evident in America, is also rife across Europe and Australia. In Europe, for example, young people express less pride in their cultural and religious heritage, and are almost three times as likely as their elders to believe that democracy is failing.

The great paradox of progressivism is that nowhere are its shortcomings more evident than in its geographic heartland: the dense urban centre. Conventional wisdom has dictated that America’s high-tech economic future will be shaped in dense urban areas, where superstar companies stand the best chance of recruiting superstar employees.

But while the upper crust of the labour force continue to head to the dense urban cores, on the ground people are moving in the other direction. Across the high-income world, not only in America but Europe as well, the vast preponderance of growth has taken place in suburbs and exurbs. In the last decade over 90% of all US metropolitan population growth and 80% of job growth took place on the periphery. On the ground, then, the progressive dream is withering.

The pandemic has greatly enhanced these trends, with downtown neighbourhoods recovering far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. But even if these changes are not permanent, at least not entirely, city residents will still have to contend with another pitfall of the progressive agenda: rising crime. Twelve American cities have experienced record homicides this year; all are ruled by Democratic, often progressive, leaders, many of whom explain away crime and excused, even praised, the looting and mayhem caused by protestors in the summer of 2020.

Yet despite this visceral impact on urban neighbourhoods, it is in education that our new hegemony could have its most long-lasting impact. The West’s new educational mandarins, increasingly strident and increasingly influential, have no use for our liberal inheritance, which they consider little more than a screen for racists and misogynists.

In Canada, we have seen an instance of “flame purification” for everything from old encyclopaedias and maps to Depression-era cartoons. In America, the disconnect between the professoriate and the people also keeps growing, as conservatives head towards extinction on many campuses: on some well-regarded campuses such as Williams, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans reaches between 70 and 132 to 1.

These trends have long been evident in the fading humanities and social sciences, but now even the sciences are becoming politicised. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that universities are losing credibility even among some traditional Leftists, who marvel at how they burnish their progressive credentials while making huge profits off their endowments and seriously underpaying most of their employees.

And just as with the growing disaffection for the military, teachers, students and parents are starting to push back. A number of teachers who have been “cancelled” or otherwise threatened for dissenting are now fighting back in the courts. There’s also considerable criticism from parents and alumni, some of whom are now pledging not to contribute to their schools, and instead support well-publicised and well-funded efforts to start new initiatives, such as the recently announced University of Austin. Even more importantly, would-be students are also voting with their feet: after decades of rapid expansion, the number of college students enrolments fell by 5% last decade, and dropped an additional 6.5% since 2019.

Likewise, only one in three Americans have confidence in their public schools, where the education establishment’s goal seems to be to obliterate merit. In my adopted home state of California, this “post-colonial” approach includes deemphasising the importance of tests, excusing bad behaviour, and imposing ideology on often ill-educated students. The San Diego Unified School District, meanwhile, is busily getting rid of mandates for such things as knowing course material, taking tests, handing in work on time, or even showing up; all these, the district insists, are inherently “racist”. This in a state that ranked 49th in the performance of poor, largely minority students. (Still, the situation could be worse: neighbouring Oregon no longer requires any demonstrable proof of competence to graduate.)

In the past year, this blindness has incited considerable public outrage. Criticism of Critical Race Theory buoyed the Republican win in Virginia in November, and has become a rallying principle for parents around the country, including a recall drive against San Francisco school board members.

Other parents are trying to opt out of the public system altogether. The pandemic saw the departure of more than one million American students from public schools, while 1.2 million families switched to home-schooling last academic year, bringing the total number of home-schooled students to 3.1 million, roughly 11% of the total. According to the Census Bureau, Black and Hispanic families now have the highest estimated rates of home-schooling, at 16% and 12%, respectively.

Meanwhile, the mass media, particularly its legacy outlets, constitute another progressive bastion losing credibility. One recent survey found that barely one in three Americans trusts the media, including a majority of Democrats, while only 15% of Americans have confidence in newspapers. Part of this surely stems from their bias: although there remain some powerful conservative voices, notably on talk radio and Newscorp properties, the vast majority of journalistic power lies with the Left. It’s the same story with social media, which increasingly dominates news access and is also widely distrusted.

But the media’s Maginot Line may prove more vulnerable than expected, and this breach is certainly a far better prospect than those that came with the German flanking. There is a definite challenge not just from the traditional Right but a plethora of new publications which offer intelligent analysis outside the establishmentarian party line, as well as from Substack. Unless the media oligarchs find ways to repress these elements, a resurgence of free thinking may rescue journalism from progressive editors and journalism schools.

The shift in the media parallels that in mass culture. As late as the Fifties, mass culture was seen as largely neutral. But in recent decades, it shifted towards a more monochromatic look — one which a significant portion of the public are fed up with. Gender flipping may excite progressive creatives, but politically correct remakes of household favourites have proved box offices disasters. Indeed, it’s striking that openly conservative presenters, such as Fox’s Greg Gutfeld, now do better in ratings than their more established network rivals like Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon.

Yet perhaps nothing is more ironic, and potentially dangerous, than the takeover of the corporate suite by progressive ideology. Traditionally, the dispersion of ownership and the conflicting views of entrepreneurs and inheritors fuelled the dynamism of democracy: you had far-Left businessmen like George Soros and doctrinaire Right-wingers like the Kochs in competition. They fought it out, and sometimes even aligned. But they came from diverse viewpoints.

Today this diversity of viewpoints is being obliterated by design, with corporate behaviour now married closely to the notion of the “great reset” and “de-growth”: an economy where improving conditions for the masses is replaced with lowering carbon emissions and diversity tokenism. Such standards, of course, do not apply to snotty private schools attended by their offspring, or areas that are home to their mansions.

The oligarchs may feel they deserve dispensation from the masses by their “good deeds”, but people are not as stupid or malleable as the ruling elites believe. Trust in major corporations, never too robust, is below 20%, less than one third that for small businesses. It is slowly becoming apparent that ‘woke capitalism’ will never solve divisions which are essentially economic. The key, notes Richard Parsons, former President of Citigroup, lies not with racial quotas or hiring transgender workers but the economic growth and opportunity. There will never be “unity”, he suggests, until people “feel it in their pockets”.

The question now is whether there will be sufficient pushback to turn the tide. Unlike local school boards, online magazines, and even alternative colleges, it’s difficult to replace or challenge an Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, or Morgan Stanley. Yet fortunately these institutions do not yet control all wealth. Big companies may have shamed themselves out of oil and gas, but investors are ramping up due to the soaring price of these assets.

So, here’s the good news. On what sometimes seems the inexorable course towards progressive capture, we can see multiple fronts of resistance, and the early congealing of independent-minded forces, from the rational Right to the traditional liberal-left. Our society may never regain the feistiness of previous eras, and our new elites might continue marching through our institutions. But as they become increasingly discredited, they would be unwise to forget that all long marches one day come to an end.

Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His new book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is now out from Encounter.

January 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Progressive Hypocrite, Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular | Build Back Better, Great Reset, United States | Leave a comment

The Shadowy CIA Data Firms Behind the Creation of Digital Vaccine Passport IDs

Daily Veracity | December 17, 2021

In January 2021, tech giants such as Microsoft, Oracle, and MITRE Corporation announced their launch of the Vaccination Credential Initiative (VCI) in partnership with healthcare companies.

On their website, the VCI describes itself as an alliance of private and public organizations dedicated to the development of the ‘issuance of verifiable health credentials’ bound to an individual digital identity.

The VCI idea depends upon a common platform from which digital wallets can be created, and on the VCI website they call for “participating organizations to commit to implementing, testing, and refining the SMART Health Cards Framework within their sphere of influence.”

According to VCI, their ‘SMART Health Cards’ are meant to “work across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries.”

SMART health cards as of now include a person’s name, gender, birth date, phone number, and email address, as well as vaccination status. Developers hope, however, that these cards will eventually become all-encompassing universal digital identities that reside within a universal digital wallet.

Josh Mandel, one of the main developers behind VCI’s SMART health cards system, said once that a complete universal digital identity is ‘essential’ to the effort of creating digital vaccination passes.

On their website, the group uses the term ‘digital wallet’ often and notes that SMART Health Cards could soon be used as digital IDs for all activities, including travel and every purchase an individual makes during commercial activity.

According to the ‘about’ section on their website, the group’s members section includes corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and the MITRE Corporation.

Along with the MITRE Corporation, one of the groups listed in the governance section on the website is the Commons Project Foundation, which is the main backer of the VCI and also hosts the VCI website.

The Commons Project Foundation also describes itself as a ‘private and public alliance.’

Listed on the leadership board of the Commons Project Foundation is the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Head of Performance at BlackRock, the senior managing director at the Blackstone Group, and Julie Gerberding, the former director of the CDC. Gerberding once wrote an op-ed in Time Magazine calling for an ‘International Pandemic Surveillance Network.’

There are many other heads of multilateral development banks (MDBs), former Goldman Sachs partners, UN advisers, and other multinational corporations listed on their assembly.

With the help of the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Commons Project Foundation runs the Common Trust Network. Like the Vaccination Credential Initiative and the Commons Project Foundation, the Commons Trust Network describes itself as a ‘private and public alliance.’

The World Economic Forum’s website lists the CEO and CMO of the Commons Project Foundation as Paul Meyer and Bradley Perkins respectively. Following his career at the US Center for Disease Control, Perkins was on the advisory board for the RAND Corporation, and his Partner Paul Meyer wrote President Clinton’s speeches while attending Yale.

In partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Rockefeller Foundation — as well as an almost endless list of corporations and government agencies — the Commons Project Foundation created the CommonPass.

According to the World Economic Forum’s website, just like the VCI, the Commons Project Foundation seeks to “develop and launch a standard global model to enable people to securely document and present their COVID-19 status to facilitate international travel and border crossing.”

The site states that their ‘CommonPass‘ is powered by their “CommonTrust Network™ Registry and VCI™ Directory.” and will allow individuals to document their “COVID-19 status to satisfy country or state entry requirements,” and “access lab results and vaccination records when you need it.”

January 5, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | CommonPass, Commons Project Foundation, Covid-19, Rockefeller Foundation | Leave a comment

Why RFK, Jr.’s Latest Book Didn’t Hit No. 1 on New York Times Best Sellers List

By Tony Lyons | The Defender | January 4, 2022

The New York Times reportedly bases a book’s position on its bestseller list on what they call a proprietary algorithm. Whatever their method, they favor specific books, ignore others, and rankings are often disconnected from how many copies of a book were actually sold to consumers.

You probably thought the New York Times Best Sellers list reflected book sales, but it doesn’t. It’s an engine of censorship, corruption and misinformation.

How do we know this? Follow the numbers.

Can a book outsell every other book in the U.S. and not be the #1 New York Times Bestseller? Sure. Is that perhaps a form of censorship? Yup.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s latest book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” was published Nov. 16, 2021, by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

The New York Times reportedly bases a book’s position on its bestseller list on what it calls a proprietary algorithm. Whatever the method, the Times favor specific books, ignore others, and rankings are often bizarrely disconnected from how many copies of a book were actually sold to consumers.

As every publisher in America knows, you can’t make the Times’ list without selling a substantial number of books through Barnes & Noble, as well as “the independents.”

But what if Barnes & Noble decides to buy very few copies of a book based on its subject matter? And what if some independents exhibit similar bias by boycotting the book, refusing to carry it and telling customers that they won’t even special order the book?

That’s what happened in the case of Kennedy’s “The Real Anthony Fauci”: Barnes & Noble purchased an unusually small quantity, and they kept the book invisible in most of their stores.

Independent booksellers, such as the San Francisco-based City Lights, don’t list the book on their website, tell customers they “don’t carry the book” and refuse to order it, even upon request. These decisions have nothing to do with customer demand or interest in the book.

Perhaps because of the trend toward politicization by bookstores that report sales to the Times, Amazon now accounts for an increasingly large percentage of book sales in the U.S.

On the one hand, the Times’ list is inaccurate because it applies an outdated, and increasingly irrelevant, view of how books are sold. On the other hand, it appears the Times’ bestseller list intentionally misrepresents actual consumer sales and demand.

Let’s see that in action by using “The Real Anthony Fauci” as a case study. The book boldly challenges mainstream narratives. It’s a serious work that makes legitimate, meticulously researched arguments.

With more than 2,000 citations and references, the book asks readers to engage in dialog and debate. At the end of each chapter, there’s a QR code that links to a website containing updates, critiques and new information.

“The Real Anthony Fauci” was carefully vetted by doctors, scientists and lawyers. It has received substantial support from leading scientists, including at least one Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

This type of book cannot possibly be what any reasonable person has in mind when they seek to protect the public from “misinformation.”

Kennedy’s tour de force resonates so strongly with the American public that, despite epic censorship, “The Real Anthony Fauci” is one of the bestselling books in America.

It has achieved this status despite a total media blackout. There hasn’t been a single review in a major newspaper, online platforms have rejected advertising — some calling it “misinformation” before anyone could actually have read it — and bookstores are boycotting it.

In the past, people perused the New York Times Best Sellers list because they believed it represented an honest account of what people across the country were reading.

Today, alas, the New York Times Best Sellers list represents a political point of view and has become a way to encourage Times readers to buy and read books that the newspaper owners approve of — and to avoid books they don’t approve of.

The playbook from major newspapers and other media outlets is transparent: Attack the author, ignore the book.

In Kennedy’s case, the hit pieces have come from Town & Country, The New York Post, Vanity Fair, The Associated Press and others. (The Times hasn’t reviewed the book, of course, but describes it as a new book by an “anti-vaxxer.”)

Again, despite the epic censorship, there has been enormous grassroots demand for this book, and it’s burst through the blockade to hold the #1 spot on Amazon Charts and also become the #1 USA Today, #1 Publishers Weekly, and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller.

The New York Times, however, listed it at #7 in the first week and #8 in the second. That must mean the book sold fewer copies than the books with higher rankings on the list, right? Wrong.

Few people ever see the actual numbers of books sold, so let’s break that tradition and share it all: The week Kennedy’s book was ranked #7 by the Times, it sold more than 92,000 hardcover copies.

That’s four-and-a-half times as many copies as two of the books ranked ahead of “The Real Anthony Fauci,” and more than double the average of all the books ranked ahead of it.

The fact is no book anywhere on the list sold more copies than “The Real Anthony Fauci.” (The book that earned the coveted #1 slot was the Times’ own “1619 Project,” which sold thousands fewer copies than Kennedy’s book.)

New York Times Best Sellers List

Nov. 21, 2021 (Reported Dec. 5)

The week after that, the Times again placed the “1619 Project” in the #1 position, as if it had sold the most books, even though it undersold Kennedy’s book by more than 20%.

And they moved “The Real Anthony Fauci” down to the #8 position — even though it outsold every other book on the list. It sold nearly three times as many copies as the book the Times listed as #3.

New York Times Best Sellers List

Nov. 28, 2021 (Reported Dec. 12)

The Times obviously doesn’t want its readers to know how well Kennedy’s book is selling, likely hoping that’ll stymie demand.

But Americans are smarter than the New York Times gives them credit for — in less than four weeks, “The Real Anthony Fauci” sold more than 400,000 copies in all formats.

Americans clearly don’t like to be told what to think or what to read — or what not to read. Buying “The Real Anthony Fauci” has become a vote, sort of like a straw poll, against the increasingly insidious censorship in America.

Tony Lyons, president and publisher at Skyhorse publishing, and an attorney, was publisher at The Lyons Press between 1997 and 2004. He founded Skyhorse Publishing in 2006 and has been involved with every aspect of the book publishing process.

© 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.

BUY TODAY: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s New Book — ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’

January 4, 2022 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, New York Times | Leave a comment

CBP reviews secret division that kept databases on journalists and politicians

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | January 1, 2022

In early December, Yahoo News reported on Operation Whistle Pig, a leaked investigation into Senate staffer James Wolfe and Politico reporter Ali Watkins, who were dating at the time. The investigation was conducted by members of the CBP’s Counter Network Division to determine whether Wolfe provided classified intel to Watkins and other journalists.

Following the report by Yahoo News, the CBP has launched a review of the Counter Network Division. According to Yahoo News, the secretive division “uses some of the country’s most sensitive databases to investigate the travel and financial records and personal connections of journalists, members of Congress and other Americans not suspected of any crimes.”

A DHS Inspector General investigation determined that about 20 national security reporters were targeted by the Counter Network Division. The investigation into Watkins and Wolfe was launched by Jeffrey Rambo.

After the two year investigation, Rambo, a colleague Charles Ratliff, and his supervisor Dan White were referred for potential criminal charges, including misuse of government resources. However, prosecutors did not charge them because there were no policies governing their work.

The division regularly investigated potential contacts such as journalists in a process they called vetting. A subject undergoing vetting was run through several databases, including terrorism watch lists. The division “vetted” journalists “to determine personal connections,” Dan White told investigators.

Charles Ratliff, Rambo’s colleague, used the databases and resources available to the division to create what investigators called a phone tree of contacts, by “mapping out connections between people to identify a hidden network.” His work was used to monitor terrorists, but was also used to target Americans, including journalists, Congressional members, and their staffers.

“When Congressional “Staffers” schedule flights, the numbers they use get captured and analyzed by CBP,” Rambo’s supervisor, White, told investigators. He added that Ratliff “does this all the time – inappropriate contacts between people.”

According to Yahoo News, Ratliff compiled such reports on members of Congress with alleged connections to individuals in the

Terrorist Screening Database. The reports were also used to identify the confidential sources of reporters.

Other reporters that were targeted included AP’s Martha Mendoza, for reporting on forced labor, and Huffington Post’s founder Arianna Huffington.

“There is no specific guidance on how to vet someone,” Rambo later told investigators. “In terms of policy and procedure, to be 100 percent frank there, there’s no policy and procedure on vetting.”

An unnamed source told Yahoo News that new procedures and trainings have been put in place to ensure that the division is not violating the First and Fourth Amendments.

Meanwhile, Congressional oversight committees have begun probing the activities of the division.

Chairs of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and House Homeland Security Committee Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Benny Thompson wrote to the DHS requesting the investigation report. Chair of the Senate Finance Committee Sen. Ron Wyden also wrote to the DHS requesting the report. None of them have received a copy.

In a statement, the DHS said that its secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “is deeply committed to ensuring the protection of First Amendment rights and has promulgated policies that reflect this priority.”

“We do not condone the investigation of reporters in response to the exercise of First Amendment rights,” the statement continued. “CBP and every component agency and office in the Department will ensure their practices are consistent with our values and our highest standards.”

January 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Former Ontario privacy chief says never trust the government with coronavirus cell phone tracking

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | December 31, 2021

Ontario’s former privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian has warned that the government cannot be trusted with cellphone tracking amid the pandemic. The warning came after it was revealed last week that a federal agency has been using cellphone data to track the movements of Canadians since the beginning of the pandemic.

“It concerns me enormously that this would enable the government to collect more and more information,” Ann Cavoukian told The Epoch Times.

“I do not want to [see] a trend where the government is consistently doing this and starting now. You can’t trust the government.”

Last week, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) confirmed it has been using cellphone data to analyze movements for the purposes of pandemic policies. The agency plans to continue with the data analysis until 2026, expanding it to other health issues.

“In March 2020, [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau said that tracking cell phone users was not being considered. Well, they did it, PHAC’s been doing it, and they want to do it even more,” Cavoukian said.

“[Officials] say ‘as soon as the emergency is over, we’re going to return to privacy.’ They don’t. The privacy invasive measures that are introduced during emergencies, pandemics, etc., often continue well after the emergency is over,” she added.

According to the former privacy commissioner, who served from 1997 to 2014, PHAC kept the data collection a secret because “they know people do not want their mobile devices tracked.”

Cavoukian was particularly concerned with the PHAC partnering with other unknown data providers, like the Communications Research Center (CRC).

“In partnership with CRC, PHAC has been producing report summaries to look at how movement trends of the Canadian population have changed over the course of the pandemic, including identifying new patterns to help direct public health messaging, planning and policy development,” PHAC said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

The agency insisted that it did not “receive or collect any individual mobility data” and that it has not stored or acquired individual level data.

On December 16, the PHAC posted a Research for Proposal for a contractor that could “provide it with a steady flow de-identified cell phone data,” reported The Epoch Times.

In a statement, the agency said it “requires access to cell-tower/operator location data that is secure, processed, and timely in addition to being adequately vetted for security, legal, privacy and transparency considerations to assist in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

According to Cavoukian the language in the RFP “reflects an intention to collect this data and retain it.”

She is concerned that the de-identification of data could be done so poorly that it could easily be re-identified.

“At the very least, the Privacy Commissioner’s Office should be all over this, and saying we need to examine exactly what measures you introduced to do this and how you’re going to protect privacy and de-identify data such that it cannot be re-identified,” she said.

“Examine this from end to end. Look under the hood.”

January 1, 2022 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Canada, Covid-19, Human rights | Leave a comment

Twitter Suspends mRNA Inventor Dr. Robert Malone

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | December 29, 2021

After months of providing valuable Covid-19 information that runs counter to the official narrative, Twitter has finally banned Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA technology.

Malone, who will appear on the Joe Rogan show Thursday according to associate Ed Dowd (one of four contributors to the Malone doctrine), had more than 520,000 followers. He has been an outspoken critic of both mRNA vaccines, as well as the abysmal failures of policymakers worldwide in responding to the pandemic.

He was not warned or provided an opportunity to delete any offending tweets – instead he was “just suspended,” Dowd continued.

Here’s Malone’s last tweet – sharing an article which claims that the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine does ‘more harm than good.’

This is what got him banned. There wasn't even any misinformation – the video verbatim went line through line on the data. This is nothing short of gross censhorship at the behest corporate interests. pic.twitter.com/62c4D4AWAj

— ˡᵒᶰᵍ ᵒᶰ $ᵃᵐᶜ #KenGriffinLied (@xw33bttv) December 29, 2021

Malone can still be followed via his substack page.

December 29, 2021 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Twitter | Leave a comment

New York Democrat introduces new social media censorship bill

The bill aims to curb people’s speech by targeting platforms

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021

If a state senator got his way, the state of New York could soon get a new law aimed at regulating what content can appear on social media. The bill is designed to circumvent existing federal-level solutions in some instances and is reportedly inspired by internal documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.

But many legal experts believe that the bill, if passed, would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional for preventing dissemination of protected content.

The bill sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman wants to tackle what’s referred to as unlawful online content such as “misinformation” (particularly around Covid/vaccines), and posts that might allegedly lead users to develop eating disorders or engage in self-harm.

Envisaged in the bill is an amendment to New York’s penal code that lets citizens, the state attorney general and city corporation councils sue tech companies behind social media networks, or individuals, if they are suspected of “contributing” to spread of misinformation in a manner that’s “knowing or reckless.”

And while the bill is worded in a way that states content seen as endangering people’s safety or health should be clamped down on if it is “promoted” – including (but not exclusively) by means of algorithms and other methods of recommendation, experts say the distinction between that and any post created by users is not clear enough to stand up to legal scrutiny.

“The distinction between ‘hosting’ and ‘amplifying’ content is incoherent,” Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman has told the New York Post, adding that Hoylman has taken that “incoherent” idea – “and embraced its most censorial option.”

According to Goldman, content that Hoylman’s bill takes aim at, such as, but not limited to, what’s considered false or harmful information that concerns Covid or political issues is in fact protected free speech under the First Amendment.

And for that reason, this expert believes, the draft legislation is unconstitutionally overbroad.

Commenting on the bill, David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation concurred that the law would face First Amendment hurdles, and noted that because of the rapidly changing official guidance regarding the pandemic, it is very hard to even define what qualifies for Covid misinformation (when so much “expert” information has turned out to be false.)

“It’s really very difficult to impose liability in an environment where the truth can be hard to grasp at any point in time,” this attorney remarked.

December 27, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Dr. Tess Lawrie Interview | Oracle Films

Oracle Films | August 15, 2021

⁣⁣If you like what Oracle Films does, you can support us here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/oraclefilms

Dr. Tess Lawrie is a world-class researcher and consultant to the World Health Organisation. Her biggest clients happen to be those who are involved in the suppression of repurposed drugs. She has decided to speak out in protest against the current medical establishment at considerable personal risk. She co-founded the BiRD Group; an international consortium of experts dedicated to the transparent and accurate scientific research of Ivermectin, with particular emphasis on the treatment and prevention of Covid-19.

December 27, 2021 Posted by aletho | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights | Leave a comment

Health agency spied on millions during Covid lockdowns

RT | December 26, 2021

Canada’s Public Health Agency has admitted to secretly tracking location data from at least 33 million mobile devices to analyze people’s movements during Covid-19 lockdowns.

The agency earlier this year collected data, including geolocation information from cell-towers, “due to the urgency of the pandemic,” a PHAC spokesperson told the National Post, essentially confirming a report by Blacklock’s Reporter. The tracking data was allegedly only used to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures and identify possible links between the movement of people and the spread of Covid-19.

PHAC obtained the information, which was “de-identified and aggregated,” through an outside contractor, Canadian telecommunications giant Telus. The contract ran from last March to October, and PHAC said it no longer had access to the data after the deal expired.

However, the agency plans to similarly track the movements of citizens over the next five years toward such ends as preventing the spread of other infectious diseases and improving mental health. PHAC last week posted a notice to prospective contractors seeking anonymous mobile data dating as far back as January 2019 and running through at least May 2023.

Critics argued that government tracking of citizens is likely more extensive than has been revealed and may become more troublesome in the years ahead.

“I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over—and afterwards,” privacy advocate David Lyon told the Post. He noted, too, that “de-identified” data can easily be “re-identified.”

Author Julius Reuchel said the tracking initiative smacks of a surveillance state spying on citizens “for your safety.” Another author, Paul Alves, said that with its new contract, PHAC will have direct access to all mobile location data, and expressed fear that “contact tracing will no longer require permission or a warrant.”

December 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Canada, Covid-19, Human rights | Leave a comment

Leaked files expose Syria psyops veteran astroturfing BreadTube star to counter Covid restriction critics

BY KIT KLARENBERG AND MAX BLUMENTHAL · THE GRAYZONE · DECEMBER 24, 2021

By covertly recruiting popular YouTube influencer Abigail Thorn to counter growing opposition to UK gov’t Covid restrictions, psy-ops pros are bringing home the tactics they honed in the Syrian dirty war.

Leaked documents have revealed a state-sponsored influence operation designed to undermine critics of the British government’s coronavirus policies by astroturfing a prominent founder of the BreadTube clique of “anti-fascist” YouTube influencers.

The project aims to conduct psychological profiling on British citizens dissenting against policies such as mandatory vaccination and lockdowns, then leverage the data to establish a YouTube channel that portrays these critics as dangerous “superspreaders” of “disinformation.”

Designed “to curb the influence of pseudoscience material online, with specific emphasis on Coronavirus-related ‘anti-vaxxing’ sentiment,” the operation is run by the UK’s Royal Institution, and dubbed “Challenging Pseudoscience.”

Its top patron is Charles, the Prince of Wales, next in line to the British throne, who recently hit out at supposed “conspiracy theories” surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. The organization received a substantial cash injection in 2020 from the UK government’s Culture Recovery Fund earmarked for video production.

Leaked files obtained by The Grayzone indicate that the Royal Institution has enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a “social change” communications firm founded by a public relations operative previously involved in the UK Foreign Office’s campaign for violent regime change in Syria. Valent has also been sponsored by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a US intelligence cut-out, for a project aimed at “investigating disinformation.”

Valent’s central role in the operation highlights the trend of information warfare specialists bringing the techniques they honed against targets like the Syrian government back home to the West, where increasingly unpopular governments confront masses of citizens ever-bristling at coronavirus restrictions.

As in Syria, where communications firms like Valent created, trained and instrumentalized media organizations to further regime change objectives, they have covertly recruited a famed British YouTube influencer to lend their carefully calculated messaging campaign an authentic flavor.

According to internal documents, Valent plans to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” the founder of Philosophy Tube. Valent’s research on British citizens who reject official policy on COVID-19 “will be used to devise a campaign that utilises YouTuber Abigail Thorn’s existing platform to achieve a measurable cognitive shift in the target audience,” the files state.

Boasting over one million subscribers to her YouTube channel and more than 7000 Patreon supporters, Thorn has established a potent vehicle for any communications campaign. She is also a core member of BreadTube, an assortment of left-branded social media influencers that has attracted intense establishment interest for its purported ability “to pop YouTube’s political bubbles to create space for deradicalisation.”

While top BreadTubers are best known for employing memes and theatrical ploys to counter right-wing narratives, they have also dedicated intense energy to attacking the anti-imperialist left as “tankies” engaged in a secret “red-brown alliance” with right-wing extremists.

In his book, “BreadTube Serves Imperialism: Examining the New Brand of Internet Pseudo-Socialism,” socialist organizer Caleb Maupin likened BreadTube to the “counter-gangs” deployed by British and US intelligence to infiltrate and dismantle insurgent forces from Kenya to Southeast Asia.

BreadTube “speaks in the name of left-wing sounding ideals. In reality, it is likely serving one section of the American ruling elite and the intelligence agencies,” Maupin wrote.

The covert relationship between BreadTube’s Abigail Thorn, Valent Projects, and the Royal Institute appears to validate Maupin’s thesis.

“It does not surprise me at all to find out there is documented evidence that the British Royal Family and an intelligence contractor is bankrolling the work of Abigail Thorn,” Maupin told The Grayzone. “It lines up with everything I have observed about her and the BreadTube trend overall.”

Maupin continued, “BreadTube’s ‘socialism’ is not really socialism, it is mobilizing young liberals to keep dissident elements in line. It’s securing the rule of British and American corporations over the planet by trying to silence those who get in its way.”

The national security establishment’s favorite socialists

Since launching Philosophy Tube in 2013, Abigail Thorn’s YouTube channel boasts over 7000 paying Patreon fans and well over one million YouTube subscribers. By probing complex philosophical and political issues in a highly accessible, engaging manner and deploying elaborate, artisanal audio and visual effects, she has emerged as a social media celebrity. A lengthy profile video produced by the BBC refers to her as “one of the most high-profile transgender figures in the UK.”

Thorn is among the most prominent figures within the loosely knit collective of YouTube influencers known as BreadTube. Inspired by the title of anarchist Peter Kropotkin’s tract, The Conquest of Bread, BreadTube advances a hyper-identitarian, imperialism-friendly interpretation of socialist politics that has earned its creators enthusiastic promotion from establishment interests.

The New York Times, for example, published a lengthy 2019 profile of a young man named Caleb Cain who supposedly “fell down the alt-right rabbit hole” on YouTube. Cain claimed he was de-radicalized through exposure to videos by Thorn and other popular BreadTubers like Natalie Wynn of Contrapoints. During the Trump era, as the Google-owned YouTube implemented a raft of stringent speech codes, it began amplifying BreadTube influencers through its algorithm.

Other popular BreadTube figures include Vaush, a video gamer from Beverly Hills, California named Ian Koshinski. Known for his superficial understanding of Marxism, crude invective against Trump supporters (“they disappear, or we all do”), female high school athletes who complain about being forced to compete against biological males (“sorry you fucking suck, dumb bitch”), and imprisoned journalist Julian Assange (“I want Assange to die in a CIA black site just because it would trigger all the worst people on Twitter”), the self-described “libertarian socialist” has earned the moniker “Vaush Limbaugh” from his critics.

BREAKING NEWS!!
TRIGGER WARNING!!
Small brain pro CIA @VaushV advocates for the torture of #JulianAssange in a sad attempt to hurt those who support him.
Please donate to and disseminate @wikileaks documents. pic.twitter.com/vyF0yD6oBa

— Properganda Live (@QuinnPetersen14) December 13, 2021

Then there is Shaun, a British BreadTuber whose recent attack on left-wing political comedian Jimmy Dore’s criticisms of government Covid restrictions contained echoes of the “Challenging Pseudoscience” project prepared for Thorn by intelligence-related outfits. Shaun’s arguments relied heavily on statements by official experts and US government bodies like the FDA and CDC. While Dore has been limited by YouTube’s sweeping speech codes, Shaun’s viral video appears to have benefited from an algorithmic boost.

“All the key signs of infiltration are there,” Caleb Maupin said of BreadTube. “Since when does US mainstream media highlight the work of Marxist revolutionaries? Why are people who seem so unfamiliar with basic elements of socialist ideology suddenly elevated to the position of respected experts by the algorithms? Why do their foreign policy views seem to line up so closely with the US State Department? I have had no doubt they were being covertly supported by powerful entities with goals other than overthrowing capitalism.”

Unlike some fellow BreadTubers, Thorn comes across as amiable and trustworthy, fostering a personal bond with her viewers and regularly publishing thank you notes to patrons, listing them each by name. These qualities have attracted support for Philosophy Tube by both public and private backers.

Thorn’s April 2021 dismantling of the politics of right-wing culture warrior Jordan Peterson has racked up almost two million views and was sponsored by Curiosity Stream, a US media streaming service. The video opens with a black screen disclosing the support provided by the company and claiming Thorn would donate her fee to the feminist campaign group, Sisters Uncut. The video is also emblazoned with YouTube’s “paid promotion” logo.

Yet no such disclaimer referring to support from the Royal Institution can be found on any of her other uploads. And that may be because the Covid campaign was intended to be covert.

Astroturf campaign seeks to achieve ‘measurable cognitive shift’

The “Challenging Pseudoscience” operation designed for Thorn was launched in February 2021 by liberal science journalist Angela Saini. The author of several popular titles and a forthcoming book on “the origins of patriarchy,” she is also part of The Lancet Covid-19 Commission’s Task Force on Global Health Diplomacy.

The commission’s chief, Peter Daszak, a zoologist who serves as president of the US-based NGO known as EcoHealth Alliance, was forced to resign in June over conflict of interest issues.

In the years leading up to the outbreak of Covid-19, Daszak worked extensively on bat coronaviruses and gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. His organization received tens of millions in funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division “[countering] weapons of mass destruction and improvised threat networks.” In December 2019, Daszak warned that coronaviruses can “get into human cells,” one can “manipulate them in the lab pretty easily,” and “you can’t vaccinate against them.”

The host of Saini’s project, the Royal Institute, was founded in 1799 by British scientists of the day “with the aim of introducing new technologies and teaching science to the general public.” Landed gentry and royalty have always occupied the Institution’s highest levels. Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin, Field Marshal Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, has served as president since 1976.

The files indicate that the Royal Institution enlisted the services of Valent Projects, a communications firm “[working] with clients in the UK and all over the world to counter disinformation and strengthen the bonds between people.”

Valent was founded by Amil Khan, a former Reuters and BBC reporter who officially left journalism “to help good causes navigate the new information landscape.”

From February, Valent Projects proposed a “two-phase” project to “develop an understanding of the psychological drivers behind the generation and spread of anti-vaxxer narratives.” It planned to exploit this data “to develop and test public messaging responses.”

The findings would “inform other programming by Challenging Pseudoscience… as well as other stakeholders including the science community and concerned governments and public health bodies.”

In the campaign’s first phase, extensive online interviews were to be conducted, along with “ethnographic research” to secure “comprehensive understanding of the key online audiences driving anti-vaxxing mis/disinformation around the Coronavirus pandemic.”

Valent Projects then planned to “draw together insights” from these findings, developing “comprehensive audience profiles” – including “demographic information” – to design a “mass appeal social media campaign fronted and owned by prominent social media figure Abigail Thorn,” who runs online channel Philosophy Tube.

Valent indicated its intent to exploit Philosophy Tube’s sizable platform to “achieve a measurable cognitive shift [emphasis added] in the target audience.”

Reaching the intended viewers was forecast to be a significant task in itself, however. Valent noted most Philosophy Tube viewers are within the 18 to 35 age range, but “existing research” suggested the “most prolific consumers of pseudoscience material” were over the age of 45.

The firm felt the “best topic to address this issue is probably along the lines of ‘the thing about expertise’ [sic].” Fittingly, in August 2020 Thorn uploaded a video, “Who’s afraid of the experts?” Featuring comedian Adam Conover of the popular show, “Adam Ruins Everything,” the 45 minute-long defense of the scientific consensus on the HIV/AIDS debate is the first result in any search for the term “vaccine” on Philosophy Tube’s channel.

The leaked documents thus expose what had long been suspected by critics of BreadTube: the popular social media collective has been instrumentalized by powerful interests with connections to Western intelligence agencies.

An astroturfed information warfare campaign hiding in plain sight

Multiple requests for comment from The Grayzone to Abigail Thorn’s agent and Angela Saini have gone unanswered.

When quizzed about the leaked files on Twitter, Valent Projects CEO Amil Khan flew into a rage, angrily asserting they were “obtained through hacking and then doctored,” in the manner of “classic doxing,” and threatened legal action against this journalist for publicizing them.

Khan later pumped out a series of tweets aimed at controlling the damage of his imminent exposure. In one, he falsely claimed that a co-author of this piece would publish their reporting in “Russian state affiliated media.”

Russian info ops arent what they used to be. Someone going by the name @KitKlarenberg is about to publish an article in [insert Russian state-affiliated media] accusing me of being a terrorist propandist etc etc. So far, so yawn. Heres a short #thread on why I expected better 1/:

— Amil Khan (@Londonstani) December 17, 2021

Yet when challenged about his claim of doctoring, Khan did not respond.

Subsequent requests for clarity on which elements of the documents were maliciously altered and how that might have taken place have also gone unanswered. But evidence of the secret project’s existence was hiding in plain sight.

For example, Valent Projects lists the Royal Institution on its website as a client. An accompanying writeup notes it “developed and implemented a data-led behaviour change campaign [emphasis added] aimed at understanding and working with the psychological drivers behind anti-vaxer sentiment in the UK” for the organization.

Similarly, a post on the company’s official LinkedIn page refers to an “analysis of tens of thousands of UK-based social media users “posting/sharing anti-vax content online” it conducted for Countering Pseudoscience, which would “be used to inform ethnographic research designed to understand ‘why’ people hold these views.” In other words, a specific programming strand outlined in the documents.

From Valent Projects’ LinkedIn page

Moreover, none other than Abigail Thorn was guest-of-honor at Challenging Pseudoscience’s launch event in February, “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers,” which featured a debate on “how vaccines work, why people are skeptical despite the evidence, and how disinformation about vaccines spreads online.”

Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube participating in the Royal Institution’s “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers” event

Also on the event’s panel were an immunologist named Zania Stamataki and Marianna Spring, the BBC’s first “specialist disinformation reporter.” She has repeatedly perpetuated falsehoods about the size of anti-lockdown protests in 2020 and nature of their participants. In a bizarre experiment, she furthermore personally set up numerous “fake troll” accounts on assorted online platforms that “engaged” with “misogynistic” content, allegedly for academic purposes.

In May, Thorn published a characteristically ornate video, “Ignorance & Censorship,” which touched on the topic of “disinformation” and vaccines. The next month, Challenging Pseudoscience convened a similarly named panel discussion, “Misinformation or Censorship.”

Then, the newly-launched Challenging Pseudoscience podcast shared two prior Royal Institution debates – the aforementioned Vaccines: Warriors and worriers, and “Disinformation and how to counter it,” which featured none other than Amil Khan as a speaker. It would be entirely unsurprising if this deluge was a coordinated effort.

A wide-ranging, long-running, cross-platform propaganda campaign involving multiple actors requires substantial resources. Until 2020, however, the Royal Institution struggled financially despite its royal patronage and elite trustees.

The organization has been forced to rent out its grand central London headquarters for conferences, corporate bashes and weddings. To plug a multimillion pound budget deficit in late 2015, the Royal Institution auctioned off treasured first editions of works by Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton and other eminent scientists. The fire sale prompted the BBC to ask whether the organization was on the verge of collapse.

Miraculously though, in October 2020, the Institution received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the UK government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund “to help face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and ensure it has a sustainable future.”

An accompanying press release noted the Royal Institution had over the course of the pandemic “[developed] a successful programme of weekly science talks online” broadcast via its “well-established” YouTube channel, which today boasts 1.11 million subscribers. The cash injection would “increase the number of livestreamed science talks” hosted by the organization, and help it develop “new digital content.”

Valent Projects staffer Hamish Falconer has disclosed that the “exciting” Challenging Pseudoscience campaign has also received “generous support” from the Open Society Foundations of CIA-adjacent billionaire George Soros.

As the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported in 1991, Soros was at the heart of a network of “overt operators” helping US intelligence carry out “spyless coups” against former Soviet satellite states.

In July 2021, Soros teamed up with fellow billionaire Bill Gates to purchase a UK-based Covid-19 test developer for $41 million.

Three months later, as Alex Rubinstein documented for The Grayzone, Soros partnered with tech oligarch Reid Hoffmann to found Good Information Inc, a social media censorship operation marketed under the aegis of “countering disinformation.”

Hamish is the son of Charlie Falconer, a longtime friend and former roommate of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Following Blair’s May 1997 election victory, Falconer senior was elevated to the unelected House of Lords, and served in a series of high-ranking government posts throughout his pal’s tenure.

Along the way, he applied “huge pressure” to Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to change his view that invading Iraq would be illegal. His intervention may have played a decisive role in greenlighting the war of aggression.

Valent founder “embedded into terrorist organizations,” ran Syria psy-ops for armed extremists

Hamish Falconer’s hiring at Valent Projects in March 2021 highlights the firm’s deep ties to the UK’s intelligence apparatus. At the time, he was ostensibly on leave from the UK Foreign Office.

Khan trumpeted Falconer’s hire on LinkedIn, declaring that “he brings the action end to our work – experimenting and innovating with digital influence for good.” Having met in Pakistan “over a decade ago,” the pair “have not stopped talking and comparing notes since.”

Falconer’s spartan online résumé sheds little light on his professional history, noting only a spell at the UK government’s Department for International Development, followed by a seven-month gap, before he joined the Foreign Office as a ‘Diplomat’ until August 2020.

No detail is offered either on where Falconer has been posted, or what his role entailed at any point. He is a graduate of Yale University’s Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program, named for the AIG founder who nearly became CIA director. The Greenberg fellows program identifies and grooms prospective future influencers, including no shortage of US-backed would-be coup leaders. Among the most famous alumni of the program is jailed Russian opposition figure Alexey Navalny.

The Greenberg program’s profile of Falconer states, “he has led the Foreign Office’s Terrorism Response Team, UK efforts to start a peace process in Afghanistan and served in Pakistan and South Sudan,” and served a stint at the National Crime Agency – London’s equivalent of the FBI.

Counter-terror is not a stated Foreign Office purview, but just one of “three core areas of focus” for the UK foreign intelligence service MI6. It may just be a coincidence the agency’s spies typically pose as ‘diplomats’ overseas.

By contrast, Khan’s activities between December 2008, when he left his position as ‘hostile environments reporter’ for the BBC, and October 2017, when he joined elite UK national security think tank Chatham House as an ‘associate fellow’ – the next entry on his public CV – can be pieced together with much greater certitude, but still only approximately.

Valent Projects founder Amil Khan

A leaked document indicates that he first crossed paths with Falconer while managing a ‘countering violent extremism’ propaganda campaign for the UK government in Islamabad. The file relates to a Foreign Office funded effort to train “articulate Syrian armed and civilian grassroots opposition entities,” and promote them to “Syrian and international audiences” as a credible alternative to the government of Bashar al-Assad.

The project was delivered by ARK, a shadowy intelligence contractor founded by the likely MI6 operative, Alistair Harris, which has raked in innumerable lucrative contracts from waging covert information warfare operations on behalf of the UK government.

Khan was heavily involved in ARK’s Syrian efforts. Another leaked file, outlining some of the company’s work inside Syria shows that it oversaw a “rebranding” of the CIA-armed Free Syrian Army to portray it as a moderate, secular force unconnected to the hardcore jihadist factions that dominated the armed opposition. Khan is named as one of three operatives managing the media office of the parallel Syrian National Coalition government controlled by London through intelligence cutouts like ARK.

This work placed Khan in extremely close quarters with members of violent ‘rebel’ factions implicated in hideous crimes against humanity. That he “[provided] political and media support to opposition political and military groups” in Syria has been openly confirmed. A scathing internal Whitehall review of the Foreign Office’s information warfare operations in the country concluded they were “poorly planned, probably illegal, and cost lives.”

It wasn’t the first time Khan been in such murderous company. At some point after leaving ARK in August 2014, he joined InCoStrat, another contractor that conducted destabilizing psy-ops on the UK government’s behalf throughout the Syrian crisis. InCoStrat delivered “strategic communications support” to a variety of armed groups on-the-ground, including the notoriously brutal, Saudi-backed militia known as Jaysh al-Islam.

Khan also played a central role in this dubious initiative. In a document discussing its ability to “[develop] contacts in Arabic-speaking conflict affected states,” InCoStrat bragged how, “in his previous career as a journalist,” Khan “established relationships with, and embedded himself into terrorist organizations in the UK and the Middle East,” gaining “unique insight into their narratives, communication methods, recruitment processes and management of networks” as a result.

InCoStrat was founded by ex-Foreign Office political officer Emma Winberg and UK military intelligence journeyman Paul Tilley, a former director of Strategic Communications for the UK Ministry of Defence in the Middle East and North Africa. Winberg left to join Mayday Rescue, parent ‘charity’ of the fraudulent humanitarian group known as the White Helmets. She later married its founder, James Le Mesurier, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2019 after damaging revelations of financial corruption came to light.

A broad landscape of state-backed Covid propaganda ops

It’s probable the “Countering Pseudoscience” project is just one part of a wider landscape of online astroturf initiatives designed to restore cratering public trust in authorities around Covid policy.

Valent Projects has also conducted work for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a neoconservative think tank, researching “violent actors using the ‘dark web’ to mobilise recruits and threaten public figures in Europe.” This initiative was likely also aimed at countering lockdown opposition.

Back in April 2020, Khan appeared on a panel discussion convened by the organization, “Countering Disinformation in a Time of COVID19.”

At the start of December, the Institute released a brief report, “Between conspiracy and extremism: A long COVID threat?”, which attempted to frame the “radicalization” of anti-lockdown protesters as a terrorist threat. What input Khan may have had in this publication was unclear.

Valent Projects is just one of an array of companies that have brought psy-ops techniques honed in Syria and other theaters of Western information warfare back home with them, like soldiers returning from battlefields marketing their deadly skills to private security and intelligence firms. And Abigail Thorn is just one YouTuber, at a time when the British state is known to be maliciously recruiting digital personalities to further its interests across the globe.

For example, Foreign Office contractor Zinc Network maintains a clandestine nexus of Russian-speaking social media influencers throughout the former Soviet Union, to promote “media integrity, democratic values [and] complex social issues,” a campaign so intensive its relationship with these individuals necessitates “daily management.” This squadron of undercover psy-ops warriors are supported by an expert “in-house team of Russian speaking producers, researchers and digital growth strategists” in London, helping them create, edit and promote their output.

Coincidentally, Zinc has been engaged in efforts since the onset of the pandemic to concoct a link between extremist activities and anti-lockdown, vaccine hesitant views. It has also published research on how to best market a test-and-trace app to UK citizens, “as part of a broader research project on public understanding of and support for Artificial Intelligence.”

It is simply inconceivable that similar operations have not been enacted elsewhere in the world, or that this phenomenon is exclusive to the UK. Further, it is impossible to know if the next slick viral video countering grassroots dissent of an official narrative is state or quasi-state propaganda, cleverly crafted to induce a “cognitive shift” in viewers, in which the star of the online show is effectively an intelligence asset rattling off a script drawn up by full-time spooks.

December 26, 2021 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, Syria, UK | Leave a comment

Delicensing Doctors for ‘Harmful Misinformation’

By Jane M. Orient, M.D. | Assosiation of American Physicians and Surgeons | December 17, 2021

In addition to being subjected to various forms of censorship, for the first time in living memory American doctors are getting threat letters from licensure boards warning them against distributing “harmful misinformation.” Medical boards in 12 states have disciplined doctors because of this allegation. While it is claimed that there’s an epidemic of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the warnings don’t spell out what that means.

We don’t have an epidemic of patients dying because doctors told them to refuse treatment or to drink Clorox or aquarium cleaner.

In fact, no patients need to have suffered any harm at all for the medical board to investigate a doctor’s no-longer-free speech. All it takes is an anonymous complaint.

Pharmacists who were converted into the overseers of physicians’ prescribing practices will complain that a doctor had prescribed ivermectin for COVID-19.

Or an employer might complain that a doctor supported a worker’s request for a medical exemption that wasn’t on the CDC’s list of acceptable reasons.

Or the doctor might have spoken at a political meeting at which mask mandates were being challenged.

Or a patient might complain that a doctor wasn’t wearing a mask in his private consulting room, even when no COVID-19 patients were anywhere near and the doctor had demonstrated immunity.

Or a pathologist might have stated publicly that his busy lab was seeing a higher percentage of cancers in vaccinated patients.

“Harmful misinformation” appears to mean anything that contradicts or asks questions or raises doubt about the dogma that “vaccines are safe and effective,” or suggests a treatment not endorsed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and their corporate sponsors.

One source of the allegedly “harmful misinformation” is a database created and maintained by the CDC, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Anybody can enter a suspected vaccine adverse reaction, and the public can access it. So, “it can be abused by people trying to sow fear,” write Shayla Love and Anna Merlan in VICE News. One person filed a fraudulent report, promptly removed, claiming that an influenza vaccination had turned him into the “Incredible Hulk.”

Flawed as it is, VAERS is the best CDC has to offer for looking for “danger signals.” Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causality. As Lindy McGee from Texas Children’s Hospital correctly pointed out, “I can report if I get hit by a truck after I’ve gotten a vaccine and that would be reported as associated with a vaccine. It does not make any implication of causality.” However, there is a double standard. If you get hit by a truck, but test positive for COVID-19, the hospital will get paid for counting you as a COVID death.

Adverse reports to VAERS are many times higher for COVID-19 vaccines than for all other vaccines combined since the database was established in 1988. The website vaers.hhs.gov clearly states: “Knowingly filing a false VAERS report is a violation of Federal law (18 U.S. Code § 1001) punishable by fine and imprisonment.” So, presumably most of the approximately 20,000 reports of death concern people who really did die soon after getting the jab, most within a few days. It could be 20,000 coincidences, but the count is not “misinformation.”

Love and Merlan call the compilers of VAERS information at openvaers.com/covid-data “dumpster divers.” Matt Motta of Oklahoma State University and Dominik Stecuła of Colorado State University refer to that January article favorably in their Aug 25 essay that says VAERS is only good for researching “vaccine hesitancy.” They don’t mention that the featured VAERS death count of 329 from Jan 22, 2021, has steadily increased.

Also viewed as “misinformation” is the opinion of physicians and researchers that hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, and other “repurposed” drugs are beneficial in COVID-19, as shown in more than 1,000 studies. Reports of dying patients who recovered when hospitals were legally forced to step aside and allow off-protocol treatment are ignored.

The safe option for doctors is to promote the jab or keep silent, and not to suggest anything different from what Anthony Fauci approves. By silencing doctors who are ethical professionals, one opens the gates for the reckless charlatans.

Recall that in Orwell’s Newspeak, the meaning of words is inverted. The Ministry of Love is in charge of torture; the Ministry of Plenty, of starvation; and the Ministry of Truth, of propaganda.

Is the Minitrue defining “misinformation” today?

December 23, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States | Leave a comment

Australia’s new Online Safety Act will fine platforms that don’t remove content when ordered

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | December 22, 2021

Australia has passed a new law that will force Google and other search engines to remove content or risk huge fines.

The Online Safety Act will come into effect on January 23. Sites will have only 24 hours to remove harmful content. The penalty for non-compliance is $110,000 for individuals and $550,000 for companies.

The act also applies for apps on both Android and iOS devices.

The eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant also has the authority to name and shame platforms that do not comply with content takedown requests.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Inman Grant Said: “There aren’t powers like these anywhere in the world. We will use them judiciously. But we feel emboldened to tackle the worst of the worst content.”

Enforcement will apply to both local and international sites.

The Commissioner said that the focus of the act is content with the potential to cause “serious psychological or physical harm.”
Insulting someone might not meet the threshold, unless it is something that will “do more than hurt a person’s feelings.”

Before eSafety can get involved, someone has to make a complaint to the platform hosting the content.

In 2020, eSafety received about 21,000 complaints, a 90% increase from 2019.

“With these new powers, we will now be able to take real action to disrupt the trade in this distressing material and if online service providers fail to comply with our removal notices, they will face very real and significant consequences,” Inman Grant said.

December 22, 2021 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Australia | Leave a comment

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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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From Valent Projects’ LinkedIn page

Abigail Thorn of Philosophy Tube participating in the Royal Institution’s “Vaccines: Warriors and Worriers” event

Valent founder “embedded into terrorist organizations,” ran Syria psy-ops for armed extremists

Valent Projects founder Amil Khan

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