With the October 26 deadline only two weeks from now on releasing the 60-year secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination, the silence from the mainstream press is deafening. The great mainstream defenders of transparency and openness in government, at least when it comes foreign dictatorships, cannot bring themselves to openly advocate for the release of thousands of records relating to the JFK assassination that the CIA still insists on keeping secret.
Why the silence? I will explain the reason, but first please permit me to restate the prediction I have made regarding this matter.
I predict that within the next weeks, President Biden will grant a request by the CIA for continued secrecy of its assassination-related records. I predict that Biden will order the release of some of the records for appearance’s sake, but he will cite “national security” to justify continuing the secrecy of the vast majority of the records.
Why do I make this prediction? Because the reason that the CIA needed to keep these records secret 60 years ago still exists. That same reason was why it it needed to keep them secret during the 1990s, when the Assassination Records Review Board was enforcing the JFK Records Act of 1992, which mandated the release of all federal records relating to the assassination.
Further, that same reason obviously caused the CIA, despite the law’s mandate, to continue keeping its records secret for another 25 years after the JFK Records Act was enacted. When that deadline came due in 2017, that same reason obviously motivated the CIA to petition President Trump for another extension of time for secrecy, which Trump dutifully granted. That deadline comes due on October 26, 2021 — two weeks from now — and mark my words: The same reason will cause the CIA to request that Biden grant another extension of time for secrecy, which Biden, like Trump, will dutifully grant.
What is the reason that has caused the CIA to want to keep these thousands of records secret from the American people. The reason, I am more convinced than ever, is that the CIA knows that those remaining records constitute more pieces to the overall puzzle of criminal culpability on the part of the CIA in the regime-change operation that took place on November 22,1963.
After all, let’s face it: No matter what definition is put on that nebulous and meaningless term “national security,” there is no possibility that anything bad will happen to the United States if those 60-year-old secret records are released to the American people. The United States will not fall into the ocean. The supposed international communist conspiracy to take over the United States that was supposedly based in Moscow, Russia (yes, that Russia!) during the Cold War won’t be reinvigorated. Communist Cuba will not invade the United States. The dominoes near North Vietnam will not fall to the communists. North Korea will not come and get us.
President Biden just ordered the release of President Trump’s secret records relating to the January 6 Capitol protests. Why not the same decision with respect to those 60-year-old secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination?
Why won’t the mainstream press call on Biden to enforce the JFK Records Act of 1992? They’re scared to do so. In a remarkably candid and direct statement made to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in 2017, New York Senator Charles Schumer explained why they are scared: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer said to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Schumer was referring to President Trump, but actually the admonition applies to everyone. The CIA, the Pentagon, the NSA, and the FBI — i.e., the entire intelligence community — has “six ways from Sunday at getting back” at anyone who takes it on, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors.
Most people know about Operation Mockingbird, the top-secret operation of the CIA to acquire assets within the mainstream press to advance the CIA’s propaganda. Does anyone really think that the CIA would stop there in the quest to expand its power and influence?
Not a chance! For example, the entire national-security establishment would concentrate on acquiring, installing, and grooming assets in Congress, which sets the budgets. Does anyone think it’s just a coincidence that Congress gives the national-security establishment whatever it wants plus sometimes even more than what it wants? There is good reason why President Eisenhower planned to use the term “military-industrial-congressional” complex in his Farewell Address. No one can reasonably deny that Congress is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the national-security establishment.
But they obviously would not stop there. They would also be acquiring assets within the IRS, one of the most powerful and tyrannical agencies within the federal government. There isn’t anyone, including newspaper owners, publishers, and editors, who isn’t afraid of receiving an audit notice from the IRS.
And if it happens, no one would ever be able to prove that it originated with the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment. It would just look like it was occurring at random. If any victim of an IRS audit accused the CIA or the rest of the national-security establishment of being behind the audit, they would be ready to hurl the infamous “conspiracy theorist” label at him.
What newspaper owner, publisher, or editor wants to take that chance? They all know that the national-security establishment frowns very seriously on any mainstream media outlet that even remotely suggests that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation, no different in principle from those in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and Chile both before and after the Kennedy assassination. But they also do not want to take the chance of upsetting the CIA by simply calling on it to release its 60-year-old still-secret records relating to the assassination.
After all, everyone knows that if an entity is powerful enough to regime-change presidents and prime ministers, both foreign and domestic, with impunity, it can easily destroy any mainstream media executive who dares to buck the CIA on the assassination.
It’s just the way life works in a national-security state. It’s why the mainstream media is maintaining strict silence on the upcoming October 26 deadline on the release of those 60-year-old still-secret records of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination.
October 13, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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So, the Great New Normal Purge has begun … right on cue, right by the numbers.
As we “paranoid conspiracy theorists” have been warning would happen for the past 18 months, people who refuse to convert to the new official ideology are now being segregated, stripped of their jobs, banned from attending schools, denied medical treatment, and otherwise persecuted.
Relentless official propaganda demonizing “the Unvaccinated” is being pumped out by the corporate and state media, government leaders, health officials, and shrieking fanatics on social media. “The Unvaccinated” are the new official “Untermenschen,” an underclass of subhuman “others” the New Normal masses are being conditioned to hate.
But it isn’t just a purge of “the Unvaccinated.” Anyone deviating from the official ideology is being systematically demonized and persecuted. In Germany, Australia, and other New Normal countries, protesting the New Normal is officially outlawed. The New Normal Gestapo is going around to people’s homes to interrogate them about their anti-New Normal Facebook posts. Corporations are openly censoring content that contradicts the official narrative. New Normal goon squads roam the streets, checking people’s “vaccination” papers.
And it’s not just governments and corporations carrying out the New Normal Purge. Friends are purging friends. Wives are purging husbands. Fathers are purging children. Children are purging parents. New Normals are purging old normal thoughts. Global “health authorities” are revising definitions to make them conform to New Normal “science.”
And so on … a new official “reality” is being manufactured, right before our eyes. Anything and anyone that doesn’t conform to it is being purged, unpersoned, memory-holed, erased.
None of which should come as a surprise.
Every nascent totalitarian system, at some stage of its takeover of society, launches a purge of political opponents, ideological dissidents, and other “anti-social deviants.” Such purges can be brief or open-ended, and they can take any number of outward forms, depending on the type of totalitarian system, but you cannot have totalitarianism without them.
The essence of totalitarianism — regardless of which costumes and ideology it wears — is a desire to completely control society, every aspect of society, every individual behavior and thought. Every totalitarian system, whether an entire nation, a tiny cult, or any other form of social body, evolves toward this unachievable goal … the total ideological transformation and control of every single element of society (or whatever type of social body it comprises). This fanatical pursuit of total control, absolute ideological uniformity, and the elimination of all dissent, is what makes totalitarianism totalitarianism.
Thus, each new totalitarian system, at some point in its evolution, needs to launch a purge of those who refuse to conform to its official ideology. It needs to do this for two basic reasons: (1) to segregate or otherwise eliminate actual political opponents and dissidents who pose a threat to the new regime; and (2) and more importantly, to establish the ideological territory within which the masses must now confine themselves in order to avoid being segregated, or eliminated.
The purge must be conducted openly, brutally, so that the masses understand that the rules of society have changed, forever, that their former rights and freedoms are gone, and that from now on any type of resistance or deviation from official ideology will not be tolerated, and will be ruthlessly punished.
The purge is usually launched during a “state of emergency,” under imminent threat from some official “enemy” (e.g., “communist infiltrators,” “counter-revolutionaries,” or … you know, a “devastating pandemic”), such that the normal rules of society can be indefinitely suspended “for the sake of survival.” The more terrified the masses can be made, the more willing they will be to surrender their freedom and follow orders, no matter how insane.
The lifeblood of totalitarianism is fear … fear of both the system’s official enemy (which is constantly stoked with propaganda) and of the totalitarian system itself. That the brutality of the system is rationalized by the threat posed by the official enemy doesn’t make it any less brutal or terrifying. Under totalitarian systems (of any type or scale) fear is a constant and there is no escape from it.
The masses’ fear is then channeled into hatred … hatred of the official “Untermenschen,” whom the system encourages the masses to scapegoat. Thus, the purge is also a means of allowing the masses to purge themselves of their fear, to transform it into self-righteous hatred and unleash it on the “Untermenschen” instead of the totalitarian system, which, obviously, would be suicidal.
Every totalitarian system — both the individuals running it and the system, structurally — instinctively understands how all this works. New Normal totalitarianism is no exception.
Just reflect on what has happened over the last 18 months.
Day after day, month after month, the masses have been subjected to the most destructive psychological-terror campaign in the history of psychological terror. Sadly, many of them have been reduced to paranoid, anus-puckering invalids, afraid of the outdoors, of human contact, afraid of their own children, afraid of the air, morbidly obsessed with disease and death … and consumed with hatred of “the Unvaccinated.”
Their hatred, of course, is utterly irrational, the product of fear and propaganda, as hatred of “the Untermenschen” always is. It has absolutely nothing to do with a virus, which even the New Normal authorities admit. “The Unvaccinated” are no more of a threat to anyone than any other human being … except insofar as they threaten the New Normals’ belief in their delusional ideology.
No, we are way past rationality at this point. We are witnessing the birth of a new form of totalitarianism. Not “communism.” Not “fascism.” Global-capitalist totalitarianism. Pseudo-medical totalitarianism. Pathologized totalitarianism. A form of totalitarianism without a dictator, without a definable ideology. A totalitarianism based on “science,” on “fact,” on “reality,” which it creates itself.
I don’t know about you, but, so far, it has certainly made quite an impression on me. So much so that I have mostly set aside my satirical schtick to try to understand it … what it actually is, why it is happening, why it is happening now, where it is going, and how to oppose it, or at least disrupt it.
The way I see it, the next six months will determine how successful the initial stages of the roll-out of this new totalitarianism will be. By April of 2022, either we’ll all be showing our “papers” to the New Normal Gestapo to be able to earn a living, attend a school, dine at a restaurant, travel, and otherwise live our lives, or we will have thrown a monkey wrench into the machinery. I do not expect GloboCap to abandon the roll-out of the New Normal over the longer term — they are clearly committed to implementing it — but we have the power to ruin their opening act (which they’ve been planning and rehearsing for quite some time).
So, let’s go ahead and do that, shall we? Before we get purged, or unpersoned, or whatever. I’m not sure, as I haven’t seen a “fact-check” yet, but I believe there are some commercial airline pilots in the USA who are showing us the way.
#
October 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Covid-19, Human rights |
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“Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health.” Such a rewording of the original 1965 warning on tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening to former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.
But before we embrace a new “ministry of information” model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.
Warnings over the “addiction” and “unhealthy” content of the internet have been building into a movement for years. In July, President Biden slammed Big Tech companies for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugen’s testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech. However, it continued to expand even further as the regulation of speech became an insatiable appetite for silencing opposing views.
In recent hearings with social media giants, members like Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) were critical of limiting censorship to areas like election fraud and instead demanded censorship of disinformation on climate change and other subjects. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) has repeatedly called for “robust content modification” to remove untrue or misleading information.
Haugen lashed out at what she said was the knowing harm committed against people, particularly children, by exposing them to disinformation or unhealthy views. Haugen wants the company to remove “toxic” content and change algorithms to make such sites less visible. She complained that sites with a high engagement rate are more likely to be favored in searches. However, the problem is that sites deemed false or harmful are too popular. Haugen said that artificially removing “likes” is not enough because the popularity or interest in some sites will still push them to the top of searches.
It was a familiar objection. Just the week before, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called for Amazon to steer readers to “true” books on climate change. Her objection was that the popularity of “misleading” books was pushing them to the top of searches, and she wants the algorithms changed to help readers pick what she considers to be healthier choices — meaning, more in line with her views.
Similarly, Haugen’s solution seems to be … well, her: “Right now, the only people in the world who are trained to analyze these experiments, to understand what is happening inside … there needs to be a regulatory home where someone like me could do a tour of duty after working at a place like [Facebook], and have a place to work on things like regulation.” Censorship programs always begin with politicians and bureaucrats who — in their own minds — have the benefit of knowing what is true and the ability to protect the rest of us from our harmful thoughts.
Ironically, I have long been a critic of social media companies for their rapid expansion of censorship, including the silencing of political critics, public health experts and pro-democracy movements at the behest of foreign governments like China and Russia. I am unabashedly an internet originalist who favors an open, free forum for people to exchange ideas and viewpoints — allowing free speech to be its own disinfectant of bad speech.
Facebook has been running a slick campaign to persuade people to embrace corporate censorship. Yet, now, even the Facebook censors are being denounced as too passive in the face of runaway free speech. The focus is on the algorithms used to remove content or, as with Haugen and Warren, used to flag or promote popular sites.
Haugen describes her approach as a “non-content-based solution” but it is clearly not that. She objects to algorithms like “downstream MSI” which tracks traffic and pushes postings based on past likes or comments. As explained by one site, it is “based on their ability to engage users, not necessarily its usefulness or truthfulness.” Of course, the objection to those “un-useful” sites is their content and claimed harm.
Like Warren, Haugen is calling for what I have criticized as “enlightened algorithms” to protect us from our own bad choices. Our digital sentinels are “non-content-based” but will magically remove bad content to prevent unhealthy choices.
There is no question that the internet is fueling an epidemic of eating disorders and other great social problems. The solution, however, is not to create regulatory boards or to reduce free speech. Europe has long deployed such oversight boards in removing what it considers harmful stereotypes from advertising and barring images of honey or chips — but the results have been underwhelming at best.
It is no accident that authoritarian countries have long wanted such regulation, since free speech is a threat to their power. Now, we also have U.S. academics writing that “China was right” all along about censorship, and public officials demanding more power to censor further. We have lost faith in free speech, and we are being told to put our faith into algorithmic guardians.
We can confront our problems more effectively by using good speech to overcome bad speech. When it comes to minors, we can use parents to protect their children by increasing parental controls over internet access; we can help parents with more or better programs and resources for mental illnesses. Of course, it is hard to advocate for restraint when the image of an anorexic child is juxtaposed against the abstract concept of free speech. However, that is the siren’s call of censorship: Protecting that child by reducing her free-speech rights is no solution for her — but it is a solution for many who want more control over opposing views.
Free speech is not some six-post-a-day addiction that should be cured with algorithmic patches. There is no such thing as a content-neutral algorithm that removes only harmful disinformation — because behind each of those enlightened algorithms are people who are throttling speech according to what they deem to be harmful thoughts or viewpoints.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University.
October 12, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, United States |
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It’s easy to see where this is going…
Apparently emboldened by a recent “Facebook whistleblower’s” congressional testimony and media tour, an op-end has surfaced on project-sindicate.org exploring how information could be further and more efficiently contained and obscured from users, beyond “old-fashioned” ways like censorship and downranking.
And Steven Hill, formerly of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) – an outfit dedicated to “radically reimagining our digital infrastructure” – has an appropriately radical idea: introduce digital operating permits and “protect people” by not allowing more than 1,000 to see a particular post.
To make the idea somewhat palatable, it was introduced under the guise of a novel way of dealing with what everybody seems to agree needs to be dealt with: tech monopolies. But the tech monopoly horse has left the barn a long time ago, and it seems that a degree of regulation will now be needed to rein it in and then allow natural ways of dealing with monopolies – fair competition and innovation to take care of the problem.
But Hill thinks the way to make them less dominant is by making major social media sites’ audiences artificially smaller. And since an average person hardly communicates with 1,000 people “in real life” (notwithstanding that people’s digital lives have very much become a part of their “real” one), Hill doesn’t think that users would be “deprived” by this limitation.
But right away, the true nature of this extraordinarily dystopian idea reveals itself to be not to truly limit the power of tech monopolies, but to make sure that the message that does get out to a lot of people (so, more than 1,000 at a time) is very controlled.
Namely, these new constrained, “digital camps” of allegedly “undeprived users,” would apply to everybody but what Big Tech decides are “legitimate news, information, music, and videos from leaders, artists, and thinkers.”
To a society that is reliant upon the internet, having access to information and communication constrained in this way would be unprecedented, even in some reviled authoritarian regimes. And who would act as the “front company” for this operation?
The report would like those to be human “moderators” like the kind social media giants already employ. They would “identify public-interest content” that would be exempt from the digital operating permits enforced on social media.
October 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights |
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Dr Robert Malone branded a “terrorist” by Italian media
Dr Robert Malone, the inventor of mRNA vaccines, says he was branded a “terrorist” by the media in Italy and warns that physicians who speak out are being “hunted via medical boards and the press.”
“I am going to speak bluntly,” tweeted Malone. “Physicians who speak out are being actively hunted via medical boards and the press. They are trying to deligitimize and pick us off one by one. This is not a conspiracy theory – this is a fact. Please wake up. This is happening globally.”
“I was labeled as a ‘terrorist’ in the Italian press when I was in Rome for the International COVID Summit. My crime? Advocating for early treatment of COVID-19 disease. I suggest that merits a bit of meditation,” he added.
Malone is one of many doctors who have been completely persecuted merely for discussing issues relating to COVID treatments and vaccine side-effects.
He has faced fierce opposition for his assertion that children shouldn’t be given COVID-19 vaccines and has also consistently highlighted concerns over links to myocarditis risk.
Those concerns are now being justified by Finland, Denmark and Sweden halting the Moderna jab for for younger males after reports of cardiovascular side effects.
Despite such concerns being regularly voiced by doctors, the Federation of State Medical Boards announced back in July that it would consider pulling medical licenses of doctors who traffic in “misinformation” about COVID.
In another stunning development, Malone’s IP address was blocked by the New England Journal of Medicine so he couldn’t read studies on their website.
The doctor said he was aware of how to get around the IP block, but called the move a “petty act.”
October 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, New England Journal of Medicine |
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Daughter of an experienced Australian Aged Care Registered Nurse released a video showcasing some shocking insider facts that have been hidden away from the public.
October 11, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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One of my recent posts on the Daily Sceptic was the subject of a ‘fact check‘ by Full Fact, which self-importantly describes itself as “the UK’s independent fact checking organisation” but is in fact funded by Google, Facebook and George Soros, among others, to help them suppress unapproved news and views. Even U.K. broadcasting regulator Ofcom has said it relies on the organisation to tell it what to censor regarding COVID-19, so unfortunately the dog has teeth and can’t just be ignored as one more absurd website with excessive faith in its own infallibility.
The post in question, from September 10th, simply reported on Public Health England’s latest Vaccine Surveillance report, which included infection rates by vaccination status for the previous month so allowed the calculation of an unadjusted estimate of vaccine effectiveness. Full Fact, however, took exception to the idea that vaccine effectiveness can be estimated in this way, because it wasn’t adjusted for confounders. Or used the wrong population data. Or because the article included the (entirely accurate) claim that the PHE report showed higher infection rates in the vaccinated in some age groups. Or because the heading didn’t include ‘caveats’. Or something. In any case, it was ‘incorrect’.
Here follows my correspondence with them, attempting to explain that the factual errors lay entirely in their ‘fact check’, not in my piece.
September 27th 2021
To: The Editor
Incorrect claim that report from Public Health England shows COVID-19 vaccines have “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s: Full Fact correction request
I’m writing to you from Full Fact, the U.K.’s independent fact checking organisation. I have seen an article you published on Friday September 24th so I know you are already aware of a fact check we published earlier last week, but I wanted to send an email to explain why we wrote that fact check.
The article you published on September 10th had the headline “Vaccines Have NEGATIVE Effectiveness in the Over-40s, as Low as MINUS 38%, Shows New PHE Report”
This headline falsely claims that a report from Public Health England (PHE) shows COVID-19 vaccines having “negative effectiveness” in the over-40s. It is not true that the PHE report shows this.
You note in your article that PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness. However your headline makes a claim about vaccine effectiveness based on it.
As you will know we have published a fact check on these claims which is available on our website here:
“Vaccines do not raise your risk of catching Covid”
We are asking that you issue a correction on this article in line with the above. We would also ask that you bear this in mind when writing future articles about this data, including the one you published on Friday. We hope our fact check is helpful in this regard.
Please let me know if you’d like to discuss this further.
Many thanks,
Bethan Davies
Policy and Impact Manager
Full Fact
October 5th 2021
Good afternoon,
I just wanted to follow up on an email I sent last week about a fact check we have written on an article you published on 24th September. I will be updating this fact check on our website this week with details of what action we have taken so I wanted to check in with you before I do this. If you are planning to amend this article I’d be very grateful if you could let me know.
Many thanks,
Bethan
October 5th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your email.
Apologies – I appear to have missed your first email.
As you are aware, I have written in response to your piece ‘fact-checking’ my article of September 10th (here and now also here).
Your piece wrongly implies that people had been confused by PHE’s report as it “seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t”. However, the report doesn’t “seem” to show that, it plainly does show that. Can you explain why your piece attempts to cast doubt on this correct understanding of the data in PHE’s report, and thus misinform the public about the infection risk among vaccinated and unvaccinated people during that month? Will you be amending your piece to ensure it does not confuse or mislead in this way and makes clear that in fact the PHE report does show that vaccinated people in those age groups were more likely to test positive for Covid during that period?
Your piece’s discussion about population estimates is interesting but I hope you will agree that people are entitled to present data and make calculations based on the population data PHE presents in its reports?
You say in your email: “PHE says its data cannot be used on its own as a reliable measurement of vaccine effectiveness.” Those are your words, not theirs. They say: “The vaccination status of cases, inpatients and deaths is not the most appropriate method to assess vaccine effectiveness…” (emphasis added).
However, regardless of what PHE say is the “most appropriate method”, the fact is that vaccine effectiveness is defined as the reduced risk of infection in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated (see here). I am clear in the piece that the VE figures given are unadjusted (though they are controlled for age). I explain the limitations of the estimates and address the reason PHE gives for the sample being biased. This is a perfectly valid approach to presenting an estimate of vaccine effectiveness, provided the limitations are clear. It also needs to be kept in mind that studies which do attempt to adjust for various confounders can come with significant problems of their own (see e.g. this and this).
A study in the Lancet published yesterday confirms that vaccine effectiveness has been declining fast against Delta and over time – and that study used data only up to the start of August. This indicates that the VE figures you quote in your ‘fact check’ to counter mine are out of date. The point of estimating unadjusted VE from real-world data is to try to keep up with how vaccines are faring now, not six months ago. We are not trying to denigrate vaccines – that’s why we are sure to make clear their continued effectiveness against serious illness and death. We are only interested in reporting up-to-date factual information about them.
My question for you is why you appear to be attempting to cover over the fact that infection rates in the vaccinated are very high – on PHE data, higher than in the unvaccinated, with the gap increasing week-on-week? Would fact-checking energies not be better spent on those who continue to claim that the vaccines are highly effective against infection, a claim which looks less and less accurate with each passing week?
I would be grateful for confirmation that you have amended your piece to ensure it does not mislead about current infection rates in vaccinated people (according to PHE data) and about the latest vaccine effectiveness estimates.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic
October 7th 2021
Dear Will,
Thank you for your response to my email.
We disagree with your point that we have misunderstood the PHE report.
We acknowledge in our fact check that your article mentions PHE’s caveats, but our fact check and the email we sent you initially are related to your headline, which has no caveats in it.
We are happy with information we included on vaccine effectiveness and we have made it clear to readers where this came from.
We very much appreciate you setting out your position. In conclusion however, after consideration, we will not be amending our fact check.
Kind regards,
Bethan
October 7th 2021
Dear Bethan
Thank you for your reply.
You say your ‘fact check’ is related to our headline. Please can you spell out more precisely for me what you object to in the headline? Is it because it doesn’t include the word ‘unadjusted’ before ‘vaccine effectiveness’? Or is it something else? Unadjusted vaccine effectiveness is still a form of vaccine effectiveness so the headline is not inaccurate on that point (and the caveats are explained in the piece). Part of the problem is that you seem to regard vaccine effectiveness as something which can only be calculated in a formal study, rather than a quantity representing the reduced proportion of infections in a vaccinated group versus an unvaccinated group which may be calculated on any such data set (with limitations acknowledged). It is therefore not ‘incorrect’, as you claim, for me to calculate vaccine effectiveness from population data and report on it.
I appreciate that you are happy with the information you have included on vaccine effectiveness. However, the important point is it is not valid to claim that an article using more up-to-date data on real-world infection rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated groups is ‘incorrect’ by citing out-of-date estimates from studies using data from earlier periods, even if they come from government sources. You can point out that the new estimates disagree with the old estimates, but that doesn’t invalidate the new estimates or make them ‘incorrect’. What you are doing amounts to attempted censorship of reporting on emerging data, rather than ‘fact-checking’.
You say you disagree that you have misunderstood the PHE report. But you clearly imply that the PHE report does not show infection rates higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. To quote:
This data had already caused widespread confusion, because it seemed to show for the month in question (August 9th to September 5th) that people in their 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s were more likely to test positive for Covid if they had been vaccinated than if they hadn’t. In particular, a chart displaying the data seemed to give this impression.
This is a patently misleading section as you completely fail to acknowledge that the report plainly does show infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups and instead attempt to make it sound like it does not and that this was a matter of ‘confusion’ on the part of others. The PHE report even explicitly states: “In individuals aged 40 to 79, the rate of a positive COVID-19 test is higher in vaccinated individuals compared to unvaccinated.”
I urge you again, as a matter of professional integrity and for the sake of the credibility of your site, to amend the ‘fact check’ so that it is not misleading in this way and makes clear that the PHE report is correctly understood as showing infection rates higher in the vaccinated in these age groups during this time period.
Kind regards
Will
Will Jones
Associate Editor – Daily Sceptic
October 9, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, UK |
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Facebook has not had a shortage of whistleblowers over the past years, but most have been ignored and sometimes vilified by mainstream media and the authorities; however, they now have a “star” one, Frances Haugen, who seems to finally be telling them exactly what they want to hear.
And now European countries seem ready to use Haugen’s claims and her testimony this week before the US Congress as an excuse to promote more regulation that would force tech giants to come up with risk assessments every year regarding issues such as misinformation and hate speech.
The gist of Haugen’s testimony, and the reason why she revealed a number of internal Facebook documents prior to that, is the accusation that the social media giant has a negative and harmful effect on society.
So high is the profile now of this former product manager that straight after the congressional testimony, she was on the phone with European Commissioner Thierry Breton, and he was the one to inform the public about their conversation.
Breton, who is known for advocating very far reaching and strict new regulation of US tech giants, said Haugen “confirmed the importance and urgency of why we are pushing to rein in the big platforms.”
The leaked documents that were first reported in the Wall Street Journal – some of which had to do with the practice of white-listing celebrities and their content – now seem to be used as a catalyst in the EU to speed up the process of adopting new rules that aim to deal not only with the platform’s alleged anticomeptitive behavior stemming from their market dominance – but also make to go for more stringent ways of policing their networks – often a euphemism for unchecked moderation and even censorship.
Reports suggest that Haugen and EU officials drafting this legislation are having something of a meeting of minds, since a number of ideas she now has on how to contain Facebook are in agreement with what Brussels has been deliberating and debating for a year.
One of them, the Digital Services Act, would require transparency and disclosure both to regulators and researchers of services, algorithms and content moderation – but in the same breath, “force Facebook and other tech giants to conduct annual risk assessments in areas such as the spread of misinformation and hateful content,” writes the New York Times.
October 8, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | European Union, Human rights |
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Before we take Frances Haugen’s testimony at face value, it would be useful to know more about her career history – in particular her time working alongside former elite US spies in Facebook’s Threat Intelligence division.
Ever since Haugen testified to the Senate, the media and social media have been abuzz with praise for the Facebook “whistleblower”, endlessly repeating her words and allegations without critique, and enthusiastically endorsing her proposals for greater surveillance, censorship and control of social media and the internet more widely by the US government.
Haugen, who offered ostensible first-hand testimony about her time working for and with Facebook’s counterterrorism and counterespionage teams, has almost universally been taken at face value by journalists, pundits, politicians, and average citizens. Some have nonetheless been surprised to learn that Facebook maintains dedicated units of that kind at all.
Many would likely be similarly shocked to learn that these units form part of the social network giant’s Threat Intelligence division, which is staffed by former Pentagon, CIA and NSA spies.
Little information on the division can be found on the web, although its strategy is known to be led by Ben Nimmo, a former NATO propagandist and alumnus of Integrity Initiative, a secret UK Foreign Office information warfare operation itself staffed by military intelligence veterans.
A paywalled report by elite industry outlet Intelligence Online nonetheless names David Agranovich, ex-Pentagon analyst and intelligence director for the White House National Security Council; Nathaniel Gleicher, former Council cybersecurity chief and Justice Department senior counsel for computer crime and intellectual property; and Mike Torrey, previously NSA and CIA cyber analyst, as occupying senior positions in Threat Intelligence.
Agranovich and Torrey were key authors of Facebook’s State of Influence Operations 2017-2020 report, published in May. The document repeatedly alleged that China, Iran and Russia sought to weaponize the social network for malign purposes. Western cyber warfare operations known to target social media, such as the British Army’s 77th Brigade and Washington’s Operation Earnest Voice, were unmentioned, which is entirely unsurprising when one considers who wrote it.
Job listings for positions in Threat Intelligence make abundantly clear that an extensive espionage background is mandatory for all employees. An ad for an analyst role, posted mere days before Haugen testified to the Senate, states “5+ years of experience working in intelligence (either government or private sector), international geopolitical, cybersecurity, or human rights functions,” and “experience prioritizing tasks, projects, and analytical or investigative needs…with minimal direction or oversight” are absolute “minimum qualifications” for anyone wishing to apply.
A university qualification in “computer science, information systems, intelligence studies [or] cybersecurity,” and “regional knowledge and/or language skills, especially East or Southeast Asia,” are listed as “preferred qualifications”, the latter indicating precisely where the unit’s crosshairs are, and aren’t, trained.
It’s somewhat puzzling, then, that Haugen came to work for this elite, spy-dominated unit. While an extensive clean-up of her web history was conducted prior to going public, her still-extant LinkedIn profile – which somewhat amazingly reveals she helped found dating app Hinge, and served as its Chief Technical Officer – makes no mention of any experience remotely relevant to counterespionage.
Incongruously, though, the listing for Haugen’s Facebook role, unlike all other entries on her CV, offers no details on her responsibilities or achievements, and only the vague job title of ‘Product Manager’. Then again, a cumulative seven years spent at Google may have been sufficient to impress her recruiters.
The search engine monopoly’s own origins trace back to a US intelligence program in the 1990s, under which academics were financed to create a system whereby vast quantities of data on private citizens could be monitored, collected and stored, and individual users identified and tracked.
Throughout the search engine’s development, company cofounder Sergey Brin met regularly with research and development representatives of defense contractors and the CIA – one has since recalled how he would “rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out.” Moreover, Pentagon, CIA and NSA contracts have been absolutely pivotal to transforming Google and other tech giants from small start-ups, literally operating from basements, into the global behemoths they are today.
Still, the composition of Threat Intelligence raises serious questions about Haugen’s narrative – first and foremost, how can Facebook be said to not be doing enough to act against alleged foreign-borne threats? It’s somewhat inconceivable that the best intelligence veterans money can buy, who have a clear and demonstrable bias against Western state-mandated “enemy” countries, are asleep at the wheel.
At the very least, it’s indisputably a strange situation indeed when an individual spends two and a half years in extremely close quarters with former high-ranking spies with an avowed focus on China, Iran and Russia, then very publicly declares that the US government needs greater censorship and surveillance powers – which the very agencies from which her co-workers hail have similarly demanded for years – in order to battle the threat to democracy posed by these countries.
One can’t help but be reminded of 15-year-old Kuwaiti citizen Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥa tearfully addressing the US Congress’ Human Rights Caucus in the lead up to the Gulf War.
“I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital… While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where… babies were in incubators,” she attested. “They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”
Her words travelled the world over, were repeated endlessly on all major Western news networks, endorsed by Amnesty International, and cited repeatedly by US lawmakers and President George H. W. Bush as a rationale for waging war on Iraq, which occurred three months later.
It would not be until 1992 that Nayirah was revealed to be the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington, and her story to be completely untrue. Her Congressional appearance was a publicity stunt organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, run by US propaganda merchants Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the Kuwaiti government.
It’s been said that if Nayirah’s lies had been exposed for what they were at the time, it might’ve prompted the public, journalists and politicians to consider whether they were being manipulated into supporting military action. Given the degree to which Haugen is preaching to the converted, even such a discrediting, debilitating exposure surely won’t hamper the US national security state’s inexorable push to take over the internet for good.
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | CIA, Human rights, United States |
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Three US medical certifying boards have warned doctors that they risk losing their certification and licence if they spread covid vaccine misinformation.
Internists, family doctors, and paediatricians received an email on 9 September that quoted a warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards in July1 which read: “Providing misinformation about the covid-19 vaccine contradicts physicians’ ethical and professional responsibilities, and therefore may subject a physician to disciplinary actions, including suspension or revocation of their medical licence.”2
Richard Baron, president and chief executive of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), told The BMJ that the move was an attempt to establish a standard of care. “As standard setting organisations, we thought it was important to be on record, in a public way, to make clear that putting out flagrant misinformation is unethical and dangerous during a pandemic.” Baron said that the statement has been well received—“4 to 1 positive.” But community physicians contacted by The BMJ thought differently.
“When I got that email I thought I’d better not put anything on social media about vaccines,” said Shveta Raju, a community physician in the Atlanta, Georgia, area, who has treated covid patients and led the vaccination effort at her outpatient clinic.
“The email was sent more as a veiled threat to keep doctors on the official, established narrative, and that’s what I find chilling,” said a paediatrician who pseudonymously blogs under the name Elizabeth Bennett. “Pandemic or no, there is a problem with having an ill defined concept of misinformation that’s tied to public health messaging that hasn’t been consistent. How are physicians supposed to figure out what is misinformation when public health messaging swings so wildly?” Bennett asked.
Undefined offence
Baron said that the statement was also intended to signal the certifying boards’ support for physicians “trying to do the right thing.”
“We wanted to support that group and say ‘hey, we do have a standard of care here and you are doing the right thing when you uphold it,’” he said.
Raju responded, “If that was their intent, they should have defined misinformation. By leaving it undefined, the message was that we can’t talk about this at all.” She said that physicians are, by and large, a conservative group. “If they’re not sure what can be deemed misinformation, physicians would rather be quiet.”
Bennett concurred: “The thing I find most alarming is that they don’t define misinformation, but if they strip you of your board certification, you would lose your means of earning a living.”
Doctors spreading misinformation?
Official and social media company efforts to target “vaccine misinformation” predate the pandemic.3 But the new statement from ABIM, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the American Board of Paediatrics is one of several recent statements putting doctors in the spotlight for the first time.
In Canada, warnings about physician information began earlier, when in April the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario declared that physicians “have a professional responsibility not to communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing, and anti-lockdown statements or promote unsupported, unproven treatments for covid-19.”4
The Canadian statement triggered an outcry, leading to a clarification that the statement was “not intended to stifle a healthy public debate about how best to address aspects of the pandemic.” But concerns continued. In June, a Canadian member of parliament held a press conference on censorship of Canadian clinicians and scientists. YouTube removed the video of the meeting.56
The BMJ asked ABIM about the size of the problem of board certified physicians spreading misinformation.
“We don’t have a sense of numbers of physicians spreading misinformation,” Baron said. “We’re at the beginning.” He believed it was only a “small number of doctors.” The medical boards opted to send the statement to all doctors, he said, because focusing on just the offending individuals would “miss the impact they’re having because of how much their voices are being amplified.”
As an example of “unprofessional or unethical behaviour,” Baron cited the case of a Florida doctor offering medical exemptions from mask wearing for $50 (£37; €43).7
Personalised medicine—or one-size-fits-all?
The BMJ asked whether physicians expressing doubt about the need for booster doses or vaccination of patients with natural immunity—two matters that have been the subject of debate and changing official guidance—would qualify as misinformation.8 “I don’t think we have concerns with doctors wrestling with areas where the science is unclear,” Baron said, “but there is no debate about whether people should get a primary vaccination series.”
Raju worries about the impact on personalised care. “The job of physicians is to take guidelines and apply them to the patient in front of them.” But now “physicians are basically being told that when it comes to covid vaccines it’s one-size-fits-all.”
Baron said, “We’re not trying to stifle conversations between doctors and patients. We understand that different people may look at evidence in different ways, but when you have an overwhelming preponderance of medical consensus in a certain area, you need at least to tell patients that there is an overwhelming professional consensus here.”
Cautious approach
Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that in the context of the pandemic, he was “not opposed to certain levels of misinformation triggering a decision to question somebody’s licence.” He said, “I can see this being an appropriate remedy at a time of public health emergency.
“But this is not how the system for licensure and certification has traditionally worked, and creates many opportunities for mistaken judgment about what is and is not misinformation, and those decisions would have to be rendered with extreme caution.”
Flier added, “We have to remember that there are legitimate areas of debate, and such matters should not fall within the scope of disciplinary actions.”
“There are reasons to be concerned that state boards might be unprepared for these kinds of decisions at a time when so many aspects of covid policy have been enmeshed with political views.”
Footnotes
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This article was updated on 4 October to make clear that it was medical certifying boards, rather than licensing boards, that emailed physicians. The email quoted an earlier warning from the Federation of State Medical Boards.
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Competing interests: PD gave a public statement at a 17 September 2021 FDA advisory committee to discuss covid-19 vaccines, where he highlighted the joint statement. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position of the University of Maryland.
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Provenance: commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.
This article is made freely available for use in accordance with BMJ’s website terms and conditions for the duration of the covid-19 pandemic or until otherwise determined by BMJ. You may use, download and print the article for any lawful, non-commercial purpose (including text and data mining) provided that all copyright notices and trade marks are retained.
https://bmj.com/coronavirus/usage
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October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, War Crimes | Canada, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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Facebook suffered a massive outage on Monday. At the same time a high profile “whistleblower” has come forward to dish the FB dirt. These two things have combined to create a perfect storm of narrative portraying Mark Zuckerberg’s company as a monster in desperate need of slaying by some deft government intervention.
But to what extent is that story contrived? Is Facebook willingly going along with it? And what does it mean for the rest of the internet?
WHAT HAPPENED?
For several hours on Monday afternoon Facebook – and its subsidiaries Instagram and Whatsapp – were completely offline. Rumours circulated that large portions of the social media giant had been totally deleted. Others suggested it was a cyber attack.
Facebook itself insists there was no attack, and that it was purely an engineering error, but of course no tech company would ever admit to being vulnerable to a hack.
There’s always the possibility the whole event was staged of course. Either way, the timing is very suspicious.
WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?
For weeks an anonymous “whistleblower” has been “leaking” documents to the Wall Street Journal allegedly showing Facebook is utilising highly unethical business practices.
The leaker of the so-called “Facebook Files” finally revealed her true identity as Frances Haugen, a data scientist, in an interview with 60 Minutes this past Sunday.
The massive Facebook outage then happened on Monday, with Ms Haugen’s scheduled testimony in front of Congress happening the following morning on Tuesday.
If it is all a coincidence, then Facebook has had a very unfortunate week.
SO WHAT DID THE “WHISTLEBLOWER” SAY?
What didn’t she say? In her hours of testimony on Tuesday, she tore the company apart. Alleging everything from being a danger to children’s mental health to outright breaking the law.
In her 60 Minutes interview, she told the reporter “again and again Facebook has chosen profits over safety”.
Drug cartels, hate speech, genocide, anorexia… Haugen laid the blame for all of that and more at Facebook’s feet.
FACEBOOK IS A MONSTER… SO ISN’T THIS A GOOD THING?
No, not at all.
For one thing, we should always be sceptical in the face of any narrative so meticulously planned and rolled out.
An ‘anonymous whistleblower’ coming forward with a team of lawyers, and coordinated interviews on primetime TV just before her testimony to congress looks a lot too much like a glitzy PR campaign or a promo for a new movie.
For another, consider what Facebook is actually being accused of. It’s not mass surveillance, censorship or abuse of its monopoly that’s making the headlines, but rather being too lax in what it allows people to say and see.
Facebook “enables hate speech”, “can’t effectively police vaccine misinformation” and is “damaging democracy”.
These are all mainstream talking points designed to stifle debate and control the conversation.
Yes, many people hate Facebook (with good reason), but that hatred is now being deliberately cultivated so that people will cheer on its break up or regulation, without realising that other, smaller companies would be hit much harder by any new “standard rules for the internet”.
Like so many other testimonies before congress in the past, the entire event looks fake and probably is. A stage-managed exercise involving some “expert witness” telling a bunch of politicians exactly what they want to hear, so they can go ahead push the legislation they were going to push anyway.
It’s all leading up to loud bipartisan calls for “regulation”, and that’s not a good thing.
WHY NOT?
Let me answer that question with a couple of my own. Do think the political conversation on Facebook is too controlled? And do you think that will get better if it becomes subject to governmental oversight?
Of course not, “regulating” facebook will take what small amount of freedom still remains on the platform, and crush it entirely. And it won’t just be about Facebook, it’s not even really about Facebook now, it’s just that they’re being used as a stalking horse to come after the smaller, less controlled platforms.
There’s a good chance Facebook is actively playing heel here, and are willingly going along with this narrative. Just check what their spokesperson Lena Pietsch said on Tuesday [our emphasis]:
Today, a Senate Commerce subcommittee held a hearing with a former product manager at Facebook who worked for the company for less than two years, had no direct reports, never attended a decision-point meeting with C-level executives — and testified more than six times to not working on the subject matter in question. We don’t agree with her characterization of the many issues she testified about. Despite all this, we agree on one thing; it’s time to begin to create standard rules for the internet. It’s been 25 years since the rules for the internet have been updated, and instead of expecting the industry to make societal decisions that belong to legislators, it is time for Congress to act.”
Despite discrediting and disagreeing with absolutely everything the “whistleblower” said, they still concede Congress needs “to act” and produce “standard rules for the internet”. Why would they do that?
Facebook is clearly falling in line to bring in stricter regulation of the web.
OK, SO WHAT WILL THIS NEW “REGULATION” LOOK LIKE?
Well, that’s a harder question to answer. Having just been presented with the problem, the media are still very much in the reaction phase of the narrative (see this whiny specimen in the Guardian ) – “solutions” are being talked about but only in very vague terms.
An article on MSNBC headlines “Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back up. But their outage is an opportunity.“ and echoes Ms Pietsch almost word for word: Regulators should do better, but Congress should also act. It ends with a link to an article from this May in Politico calling for a “public internet”.
A “public internet” means, essentially, breaking down the big tech firms and publicly funding “community guided” platforms that focus on more local concerns.
Or, more cynically, compartmentalizing the internet to limit the field of potential communication.
The supposed aim of a “public internet” would be to “bring us back together” and remove “hate”, but that will mean stopping people from disagreeing with the consensus.
The “public internet” might be the long-term goal, but it’s still only a foetus of an idea.
For the more immediate “regulation” ideas, we can turn back to Ms Haugen, who after so keenly defining the problem, enthusiastically recommended a list of solutions.
These include, but are not limited to, a new “independent” overseer for Facebook (perhaps a new government agency), and the “reform” of Article 230.
Article 230 is the law that says social media platforms have no liability for the content their users create, “reforming it” could open up social media companies to a lot of lawsuits.
Interestingly, some policy organizations have argued that “stripping this law away could entrench reigning tech giants because it would make it harder for smaller social media platforms with fewer content moderation resources to operate without facing costly lawsuits.”
So at least one of Ms Haugen’s proposed solutions would potentially benefit Facebook, whilst almost certainly crippling their smaller competitors.
Funny that.
CONCLUSION
Since its inception the internet has been a digital wild west and, despite numerous attempts to seize control of it, it remains a place of relative freedom.
Facebook, Google, Amazon and their ilk are corporate monsters, no question, but we still need to be careful when applauding calls for their regulation or break up. Especially if the companies themselves seem to actively cooperate.
Much of the time any mooted “regulation” is not aimed at the corporate giants, who have the connections and resources to survive it, but their smaller competitors. In that way it both secures the monopoly of a handful of gigantic businesses, and further centralises the power of the state.
Remember that corporate giants and the Deep State are not in opposition to one another, they work together in mutual self-interest.
Facebook might be notionally in the media crosshairs, but that is a pantomime. The real targets are alternate platforms like Telegram, Gab and Parler, or as yet unborn independent outlets.
More broadly, it’s part of an ongoing campaign against the ability of millions of people to freely communicate with each other, because that is a genuine threat to both the power of the state the and greed of corporate monoliths.
So, when big government and big tech fight, refuse to pick a side and don’t believe a word of it.
They like each other really, but they hate you.
October 7, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance |
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The European Commission is set to incorporate the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism as part of Europe’s strategy to combat anti-Jewish racism. Details of the Commission’s plan were outlined yesterday in a 26-page programme. The three central goals are to prevent anti-Semitism in all its forms; protect and foster Jewish life; and promote Holocaust research, education and remembrance.
None of this, of course, is particularly controversial. Indeed, we would expect the Commission, if it were likewise to adopt a programme for combating Islamophobia, to include the protection and fostering of Muslim life as a goal while also promoting research and education to expose groups peddling anti-Muslim bigotry.
“We want to see Jewish life thriving again in the heart of our communities,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “This is how it should be. The strategy we are presenting today is a step-change in how we respond to anti-Semitism. Europe can only prosper when its Jewish communities feel safe and prosper.”
European Union member states are encouraged to develop national strategies by the end of 2022 to tackle anti-Semitism, or include measures in their national action plans against racism and provide sufficient funding to implement them.
More controversially, but unsurprising nonetheless, the EU said that it will strengthen its cooperation with Israel and use the IHRA “working definition” to determine what constitutes anti-Jewish racism. It will also encourage local authorities, regions, cities and other institutions and organisations to do the same.
Putting aside the obvious contradiction in working with a state practicing apartheid and promoting Jewish supremacy, in order to combat racism, the incorporation of the highly contested IHRA definition of anti-Semitism into a programme as important as this risks undermining the very goal that the Commission has set out to achieve.
The problem with the IHRA is not the actual definition. No one opposes the text at the heart of the document: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Nevertheless, the IHRA and the European Commission’s strategy are good examples of how well-meaning endeavours are hijacked for use as weapons in someone else’s propaganda war.
Seven of the 11 illustrative examples within the IHRA definition conflate racism towards Jews with criticism of the state of Israel. It is this that is having a chilling effect on free speech across Europe and elsewhere, despite the insistence by its supporters that the IHRA text has no legal force and is meant to serve only as a guide. If the Commission were to adopt a programme to combat Islamophobia, would it incorporate a definition that included criticism of “Islamism” or any so-called “Islamic” countries as examples of anti-Muslim racism? I doubt it. Just as it would reject China’s insistence that criticising Beijing is in any way anti-Chinese.
Recent high-profile cases illustrate why critics are right to fear that the IHRA has been weaponised for Israel’s benefit. The University of Bristol, for instance, has dismissed a leading British critic of Israel and its lobby, Professor David Miller, following a long “pressure campaign by Israel’s assets in the UK.” An expert in propaganda and political pressure groups, Miller has been a key critic of the pro-Israel lobby for the past decade, as well as of Zionism, the state’s racist official ideology.
Some 200 academics and public intellectuals signed an open letter to the university in support of Miller and his work. Denouncing the attack against him as the “weaponisation” of anti-Semitism, the signatories said: “We oppose anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all forms of racism. We also oppose false allegations and the weaponisation of the positive impulses of anti-racism so as to silence anti-racist debate. We do so because such vilification has little to do with defeating the harms caused by racism. Instead, efforts to target, isolate and purge individuals in this manner are aimed at deterring evidence-based research, teaching and debate.”
Bristol University claimed that it was committed to an environment preserving “academic freedom” and admitted that Miller’s anti-Israel remarks did not constitute “unlawful speech”. Nonetheless, the university apparently caved in under pressure from groups describing themselves as “proud” Zionists that have been leading the campaign to have him sacked. The very same groups are also pushing for the blanket adoption of the IHRA definition in order to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.
In America, the latest example of the chilling effect of the IHRA definition has seen Israeli diplomats reportedly put pressure on the dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to have Kylie Broderick, a teacher critical of the occupation state, removed from her job. The intervention by the Israeli officials followed a campaign by right-wing, pro-Israel websites and an advocacy group who highlighted Broderick’s Twitter account and posts which criticised Israel and Zionism. They cited the posts as evidence of anti-Semitism. The university said it followed guidelines in the IHRA definition to assess whether Broderick’s remarks were anti-Semitic or not.
These are just two of the most recent examples of how the IHRA definition has been used to crackdown on free-speech. It has had the impact about which its many critics have warned, including the drafter of the IHRA text, Kenneth Stern. “Jewish groups have used the definition as a weapon to say anti-Zionist expressions are inherently anti-Semitic and must be suppressed,” wrote Stern in a sensational article in the Times of Israel. He claimed that pro-Israel lobby groups have weaponised the definition in an attempt to silence critics of Zionism.
As the European Commission was busy adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the Senate in France, which in recent years has adopted a number of laws slammed by critics as Islamophobic, duly adopted the working definition. The decision has been applauded by anti-Palestinian groups, which have urged other European parliaments to follow suit.
Freedom of speech is often described as one of the pillars of liberal democracy but not, it seems, when that freedom is used to express legitimate criticism of the Zionist state of Israel and its pernicious, racist ideology. As many pro-Palestine activists have said, “Anti-Semitism is a crime; anti-Zionism is a duty.” The two should never be conflated.
October 6, 2021
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Human rights, Israel |
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