By Kevin Karp | RT | April 21, 2021
The PM’s proposals for a US-style Foreign Agents Registration Act and strengthening of powers under the Official Secrets Act claim to be about protecting against ‘foreign interference’, but really only stifle freedoms in Britain.
Boris Johnson is set to announce a raft of legislative proposals aimed at curtailing activities of foreign agents in Britain at the forthcoming Queen’s Speech on May 11.
Within the draft bill is a requirement for any individual working on behalf of a foreign government to register with British authorities or face criminal prosecution. This appears to be modelled after the foreign agent registry the United States brought in using the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The proposals also include an expansion of the Official Secrets Act to allow foreign cyberattackers targeting the UK to be prosecuted and a significant widening of what type of intelligence theft is punishable under law.
Though Johnson claims the reason for expanding these powers is the ever present spectre of Russia – the “most acute threat” to British security in Europe, apparently – the real threat to British citizens’ security comes from how the UK government and the governments of its allies are using, and could use, this type of legislation.
According to the current version of the Official Secrets Act, which traces its origins back to 1911, stealing “any sketch, plan, model or note which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be directly or indirectly useful to an enemy” is forbidden. The proposed new designation changes that to any “document, information or other thing” and replaces “enemy” with “foreign powers.” What the Johnson government is really doing here is diverting scrutiny away from its own stifling of individual freedoms under the pretext of battling foreign interference. Here’s how.
The House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee’s (ISC) report of 2020, which has formed the basis for much of Johnson’s recent proposals, probed claims of Russian state-supported interference in the British electoral process. This is exactly the type of alleged interference the new bill would presumably address. That report stated, “The UK is clearly a target for Russia’s disinformation campaigns and political influence operations and must therefore equip itself to counter such efforts.”
The problem is, British authorities have already shown themselves to be woefully biased and inept in assessing what is foreign-backed interference. For example, the ISC report alleges that “Russia’s promotion of disinformation and its attempts at broader political influence overseas” and included Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik in that bracket. But the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, referred to as a source in the report, merely cites examples of these outlets broadcasting content critical of the European Union. This coverage, which the Commons report documents as having occurred during the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum, was grouped under the heading “anti-EU bias” simply for presenting opinions that differed from those of then-Prime Minister David Cameron. This was the same David Cameron whose government so vociferously supported the Remain side of the referendum: he spent £9 million of public money sending out pro-EU propaganda pamphlets to every home.
By this spurious definition of ‘disinformation’ the views of a majority of Britain at the time – i.e., those who supported Brexit – could be considered to have been potentially “fomented by Russian subversion” for contradicting the then-government’s official stance. Johnson’s (who incidentally, supported Leave) proposals, if they used that definition, could open the door to classing any oppositional view as a piece of “information or other thing” useful to “foreign powers,” merely for dissenting with an official stance from Whitehall or Westminster.
But of course Johnson himself is no stranger to spreading the odd bit of ‘disinformation’. At the end of the last decade mainstream British papers and US government-funded troll artists smeared Jeremy Corbyn using tactics the prime minister hopes to enshrine in law. As public support grew for the supposedly socialist economic program of the then-Labour leader, media and government attempts to discredit him as a Russian agent intensified as the December 2019 UK General Election approached.
When in November of that year the Corbyn campaign revealed a lengthy dossier pointing toward the Johnson government’s alleged plans to privatize the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) as part of a Brexit deal – despite Johnson’s public promise to the contrary – both the Telegraph and the Guardian released stories that claimed Russian involvement in the dossier’s leak.
Their source for the allegation was Ben Nimmo, a former fellow at the NATO funded Atlantic Council, which has a long standing animosity toward Russia, and director of data-consulting firm Graphika, none of which qualifies him to espouse on where the NHS dossier may have come from.
Even Alba Party leader Alex Salmond – as Boris Johnson has already adamantly refused another referendum on Scottish independence even if nationalist parties win a majority in the Holyrood elections in May – could be classed an abettor of a foreign power under these new laws for working for RT. The 2020 ISC report also details a section on supposed Russian interference in the 2014 Scottish-independence referendum, citing a study by none other than the Russia-baiting Ben Nimmo as a dubious primary source.
Oppositional journalism itself would be under threat if these laws ever came into effect. For example, the British and US thumbscrews already being applied to WikiLeaks and its imprisoned founder Julian Assange could be twisted even tighter. Washington’s ongoing attempt to extradite him from London, on the basis of his leaking classified documents on American war crimes, comprises 18 charges under the US Espionage Act, which is a broadly similar law to the UK’s Official Secrets Act.
An expanded Official Secrets Act would make it even harder for whistleblowing organizations like WikiLeaks and individuals like Assange to conduct their work in the UK or even just while in contact with UK-based individuals. The judge who refused Assange’s extradition to the US on grounds it would exacerbate his mental distress has already indicated that, if Assange had been operating within the jurisdiction of the UK, he would have violated the Official Secrets Act as it currently stands.
Broadening the definition of an “official secret” could accordingly strengthen a British case against Assange and the operations of WikiLeaks, further undercutting what scant protections the British legal system currently offers him. Under the increased powers Johnson wants to go after foreign hackers, Assange and those like him could be grouped as cyberattackers operating from abroad against the UK, whether or not their operations took place on British soil.
Abroad, meanwhile, Johnson’s legal juggernaut is an attempt to smother Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of illegal British operations overseas by whipping up indignation over “foreign interference” in Britain. Johnson remarked in Parliament recently that “the Russian state used a chemical weapon in Salisbury” to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018, despite lacking substantiated evidence to prove the claim.
Johnson is launching verbal salvoes like these because Moscow and Beijing’s exposure of dirty Western tactics has been getting uncomfortable for leaders like him. The Western-backed opposition figure, Alexey Navalny, whose alleged poisoning by the Russian state led the UK, EU, and US to impose a fresh round of sanctions on Russia, was labeled by Vladimir Putin in December 2020 as having “the support of the special services, those of the United States in this particular case.”
In a joint statement delivered in March, Wang Yi and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign ministers of China and Russia, expressed solidarity against Western interference in the sovereign affairs of their respective countries. Wang made the statement even more explicit, noting that “[Western powers] should know that the days of inadvertently interfering with Chinese internal affairs by inventing lies have already passed.”
Russia and China released this statement right after the US, the EU, the UK, and Canada approved sanctions against Chinese state officials over alleged human-rights abuses of Uighurs in Xinjiang. Yet a slew of pro-Xinjiang organizations are actually funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is itself funded by the US government, making these movements, which call for Xinjiang to form a separatist state, effectively agents of Washington.
All of which points to the dangerous dichotomy being furthered in Johnson’s forthcoming bill: while presuming that all manifestations of “pro-Western” illegal activity against rivals like Moscow and Beijing are legitimate and lawful, the UK and US are recklessly smearing legitimate and lawful domestic dissent as criminal fifth-columnist subversion.
Kevin Karp is a commentator, screenwriter, and former political adviser in the House of Commons and the European Parliament. As an EU adviser based in Brussels and Strasbourg, he specialized in international trade, European populism, and Brexit. Find his website at moon-vine-media.com.
By Jonathan Turley | April 16, 2021
We recently discussed the move by Twitter to block the tweet of sports journalist Jason Whitlock criticizing the BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors for purchasing a $1.4 million home in a secluded area of Los Angeles. A self-professed Marxist, Cullors has reportedly purchased four homes worth more than $3 million and has looked at real estate investments in places like the Bahamas. As with the censoring of a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop story, Twitter was criticized for the censoring of the story and later said it was a mistake. Now, Facebook has reportedly blocked the underlying New York Post report about the controversy. In the meantime, BLM itself insists that the controversy is little more than terrorism from white supremacists.
Various conservative sites reported this week that Facebook users could not share the link to a story that shed light on Cullors’ multi-million-dollar splurge on homes. Fox News reported that “an error message appears whenever users try sharing the article on their personal Facebook page or through the Messenger app.”
Cullors has not denied the purchase or the real estate investments, including in her statement below to the controversy. The story was widely circulated because Cullors has long insisted that she and her BLM co-founder “are trained Marxists. We are super versed on, sort of, ideological theories.” She has denounced capitalism as worse than Covid-19.
Critics like Nick Arama of RedState pointed out: “[I]t’s interesting to note that the demographics of the area are only about 1.4% black people there. So not exactly living up to her creed there.”
Moreover, the head of New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter called for an independent investigation into the organization’s finances in the wake of the controversy.
The New York Post and other publications reported that Cullors is eyeing expensive properties in other locations, including the Bahamas. However, I noted earlier that there is no evidence that this money came from BLM, which has reportedly raised almost $100 million in donations from corporations and other sources. Indeed, Cullors seems to have ample sources of funds. She published a best selling memoir of her life and then a follow up book. She also signed a lucrative deal with Warner Bros to develop and produce original programming across all platforms, including broadcast, cable and streaming. She has also been featured in various magazines like her recent collaboration with Jane Fonda.
Cullors responded to the controversy but did not deny the underlying facts:
“This movement began as, and will always remain a love letter to Black people. Three words – Black Lives Matter – serve as a reminder to Black people that we are human and deserve to live a vibrant and full life. I worked multiple jobs across many organizations my entire life. I’m also a published author, writer, producer, professor, public speaker, and performance artist.”
She later denounced the coverage of her alleged hypocrisy as an effort to “take[] away from where the focus should be – ending white supremacy”.
The main issue for me is not the house or the claimed hypocrisy. It is the censorship of Twitter and now Facebook. Cullors is a public figure who is subject to public scrutiny and commentary. Twitter is rife with a such criticism over the lifestyle choices of figures on the right ranging from Donald Trump Jr. to Rand Paul. That is an unfortunate aspect of being in a high visibility position. I would be equally concerned if criticism of Trump Jr.’s big game hunting exploits or Giuliani’s lavish tastes were censored.
As stated recently in testimony before the House, I remain an unabashed “Internet Originalist,” favoring the free forum for speech that once defined these Big Tech companies. The expanding censorship of the Internet continues to show bias and contractions as politicians push for “robust modification” to silence opposing views of everything from climate change to social justice. Twitter and Facebook now actively determine what people should know and discuss on matters of public interest.
BLM however is denouncing the coverage as raw racism. In a statement, it insisted that Cullors has only made $120,000 from BLM. Once again, I see no evidence that Cullors has taken any money inappropriately from BLM. To that end, I can see why BLM would issue a strong statement to knock down any suggestions of fraud or self-dealing with BLM funds. For any such organization, suggestions of fraud can have a serious impact on corporate and individual donations. As for Cullors herself, her own corporate deals would give her ample money for these real estate investments if the story is accurate.
Yet, BLM added that the reporting about her properties “continues a tradition of terror by white supremacists against Black activists.” What is odd is that the head of NY BLM was that one of those calling for an investigation and presumably it is not part of that “tradition of terror by white supremacists.”
Most of the coverage concerned the irony of Cullors investing millions in real estate given her public persona as a dedicated Marxist. Indeed, some on the left have denounced her as a hypocrite after the disclosures of her investments and homes. Cullors has told followers that “While the COVID-19 illness is tragic, what’s more tragic is capitalism.” Nevertheless, BLM called the coverage of the Cullors investments as a familiar “tactic of terror time and again, but our movement will not be silenced.”
As noted earlier, the greatest irony may not be the home purchase but the corporate support. A professed Marxist, Cullors has not only been paid handsomely by corporations like Warner Brothers but is being actively protected by corporations like Twitter and now Facebook in blocking the underlying story.
21st Century Wire | April 12, 2021
Statement from the filmmakers:
A few days ago, Vimeo deleted our Documentary Feature “trustWHO”, directed by Lilian Franck, from their platform, stating that they do not support “Videos that depict or encourage self-harm, falsely claim that mass tragedies are hoaxes, or perpetuate false or misleading claims about vaccine safety.” This claim about our documentary is both misleading and false. “trustWHO” has been thoroughly researched for 7 years; it has been fact-checked and approved by lawyers, experts in the medical field and even by key executives of the WHO itself. The documentary simply investigates how efficiency and transparency of the World Health Organization are undermined by both corporate influences and a lack of public funding. It is a journalistic investigation based on facts – and far from what Vimeo makes it out to be.
This is our full statement on the matter, presented by Robert Cibis (Filmmaker, Co-author and producer of “trustWHO”).
Watch this brief statement and selected excerpts from the film:
To support our work and further investigations for the current Corona Crisis, please help us by donating here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/co…
You will find the links to our full-length documentary “trustWHO” below:
English:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/det…
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tru…
https://play.google.com/store/movies/…
Deutsch:
https://www.amazon.de/TrustWHO-OV-Lil…
Français:
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FW…
MEMO | April 15, 2021
The Spanish security services have allowed an Israeli agent from the Mossad spy agency to interrogate a Palestinian journalist seeking asylum, Wafa news agency has reported. The incident at the Civil Guard building in the capital has been condemned by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.
The syndicate called on the Spanish government to assume its responsibilities by ensuring the security of Muath Hamid and his family. It also called for the Spanish authorities to open an investigation into what happened during the interrogation.
Spain’s Civil Guard is the oldest law enforcement agency in the country and “military in nature”. The journalists’ union said that it is suspected of being “complicit” with Mossad in allowing the Israeli agent to interrogate Hamid in its building. “This was a gross violation of international law, a violation of Spanish sovereignty and a threat to the journalist’s security and safety,” the syndicate insisted.
It added that the case is being followed closely in conjunction with the Union of Spanish Journalists, the Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry, and the Spanish political and security authorities to ensure that Hamid is not subject to any harm or torture. The reporter for Al Araby TV and freelance contributor to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed is currently a refugee in Spain, where he lives with his wife and two children.
According to popular Spanish online newspaper Público last Friday, on 9 December Hamid received a telephone call from “Nicolás”, an officer on duty at the Civil Guard’s Spanish Information Services “Nicolás wanted to discuss Hamid’s work as a journalist, his past and his current life in Spain. This is a regular procedure for refugees and migrants.”
When the journalist went to meet “Nicolás” in Bilbao, he met another officer, Javier. “Hamid answered all the questions, explaining why he applied for asylum in Spain and describing his journey from Palestine to Europe through Turkey,” reported Público. “In early February, the young Palestinian journalist was summoned again by Nicolás… this time in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”
This time there was also another man in the room, allegedly named Omar, “who was introduced to him as a Palestinian. Hamid, however, immediately noticed his strong Israeli accent… and he decided to answer his questions in Hebrew.” Omar acknowledged that he was an Israeli, at which point Javier “left the room, leaving Muath in the hands of the supposed Mossad agent… who threatened the Palestinian journalist and his family, saying that they will never be allowed to go back to Palestine due to one of his journalistic investigations” related to the work of the Israeli spy agency.
Público sought comments and clarifications from the Israeli Embassy and the Civil Guard, as well as Spain’s Interior Ministry. It has received no replies.
RT | April 16, 2021
Despite whistleblower leaks casting doubts on the OPCW’s findings, the EU Parliament is determined to enforce the organization’s anti-Assad line on Syria. MEP Mick Wallace was accused of spreading “fake news” when he spoke out.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has taken an intense interest in Syria’s civil war, and has accused President Bashar Assad of deploying chemical weapons against his own people on several occasions. Its conclusions have twice been used to justify US military action against Syria, and a new OPCW report on Monday found “reasonable grounds” to suspect that a Syrian Army helicopter dropped chemical weapons on the town of Saraqib in 2018.
The OPCW’s reports are good news for Western interventionists, but the organization is not without its critics.
Mick Wallace, an Irish MEP, is among them. When OPCW Director-General Fernando Arias addressed the European Parliament Subcommittee of Security and Defence on Thursday, Wallace accused the OPCW of squashing evidence that Assad may not have been behind one particularly heinous 2018 attack in Douma, near Damascus.
“Why will you not heed calls from renowned international figures…to meet with all the investigators?” Wallace asked Arias. “This problem is not going away. Are you going to investigate all aspects in a transparent manner?”
He is far from a lone crank. Whistleblower testimony and internal documents suggest that the OPCW suppressed “key information about chemical analyses, toxicology consultations, ballistics studies, and witness testimonies” relating to the Douma attack, in order to “favor a preordained conclusion,” in the words of one panel of skeptics. A scientific paper challenging the OPCW’s conclusion was shelved following an outcry from Bellingcat, and one director within the OPCW worried that were the truth to get out, it could aid Russia, an ally of Assad. Furthermore, while multiple whistleblowers have come forward to dispute the OPCW’s findings, more have been “frightened into silence,” one claimed last year.
Wallace also accused Arias of ignoring a “false leak,” made to the BBC and the NATO-affiliated Bellingcat, which he claimed was used to discredit former OPCW Director-General José Bustani, who disagrees with Arias’ blaming of Assad for the Douma attack.
Yet before Arias could respond, subcommittee chairwoman Nathalie Loiseau stepped in to do his job for him. Loiseau apologized to Arias for Wallace’s tough questioning, and accused the Ireland South MEP of peddling “fake news.”
“I cannot accept that you can call into question the work of an international organization, and that you would call into question the word of the victims in the way you have just done,” she scolded Wallace.
“Is there no freedom of speech being allowed in the European Parliament any more,” Wallace shot back, “today you’re denying me my opinion!”
Wallace’s microphone was then cut, and Arias allowed to speak. However, the OPCW chief did not directly address his questions. Instead he thanked the other MEPs present for their “words of support,” and reiterated his claims that Assad’s government is responsible for “a humanitarian catastrophe of massive proportions.”
Though Loiseau apparently wanted to shield Arias from Wallace’s uncomfortable questions, skepticism within the OPCW goes all the way to the top. Former Director-General Bustani has accused the organization of “potentially fraudulent conduct in the investigative process,” a position that saw him banned from addressing the UN Security Council on the issue last year.
The whistleblower scandal has been mostly ignored by the mainstream media, with only a handful of alternative outlets picking up the story.
From Loiseau’s position though, dissent within the parliament is undesirable ahead of the OPCW’s ‘Conference of the States Parties’ in The Hague next week. Ahead of Wallace’s questioning, Loiseau reminded MEPs that a vote will likely be taken at the conference to suspend Syria’s voting rights within the organization, likely accompanied by other “punitive measures.”
Adalah Press Release | April 12, 2021
Court authorizes Cyber Unit to continue operating in the shadows, conducting quasi-judicial censorship without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content.
The Israeli Supreme Court on Monday, 12 April 2021, rejected a petition filed by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) giving a green light to the continued operations of the Israeli state attorney’s office Cyber Unit and its “alternative enforcement” model of censoring social media content.
Israel’s Cyber Unit uses an “alternative enforcement” mechanism to essentially censor social media platforms and muzzle users: it flags and submits social media posts – without legal proceedings and often without even the knowledge of the individual user – to social media giants and requests their removal.
This Israeli state practice is aimed at clamping down on social media dissent, and frequently even results in the suspension or removal of users. This censorship is conducted in collaboration and coordination with social media outlets, including U.S.-based giants Facebook and Twitter.
Similar units operating in countries around the world are known as Internet Referral Units (IRUs).
Adalah attorneys Fady Khoury and Rabea Eghbariah had filed the petition against the Cyber Unit to the Israeli Supreme Court on 26 November 2019. They stressed that the Cyber Unit’s “alternative enforcement” mechanism violates the constitutional rights of freedom of expression and due process, and that the unit is operating without any legal authority.
Israeli Supreme Court Justice Hanan Melcer announced the decision on Monday morning in Jerusalem, in his final ruling before retirement.
In its decision, the court granted unchecked and unauthorized power to the Israeli state, allowing it to govern online speech by using informal channels with social media corporations. The court essentially privatized the judicial process, allowing private corporations to decide upon censorship of social media content based on ostensibly unbinding requests from Israeli state authorities.
Adalah Attorney Rabea Eghbariah commented immediately following the Israeli Supreme Court ruling:
“The Israeli Supreme Court has just authorized the state to continue to use its Cyber Unit to conduct quasi-judicial censorship proceedings in cooperation with private corporations, without allowing social media users to defend their rights or even to know that the state has been involved in removing their online content. Israel’s Cyber Unit has operated in the shadows of the law to censor tens of thousands of social media posts every year. The Supreme Court has now, to our regret, given Israel a blank check to continue with this practice.”
Now you see it, now you don’t
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • APRIL 13, 2021
The popular narrative of plucky little Israel prevailing over hordes of bloodthirsty Arabs has captured the Western imagination even though it is manifestly false in almost every detail. But Israel’s greatest accomplishment might well be something else, it’s ability to make things disappear. It plausibly all began in June 1967 when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a lightly armed but well identified US naval vessel cruising in international waters under a large American flag. Fighter bombers and torpedo boats sought to sink the ship, destroying the lifeboats so no one would escape. In the engagement, 34 American military personnel were killed and a further 171 wounded, before a heroic defense by the crew managed to save the vessel. President Lyndon Johnson, who said he would rather see the ship sink than embarrass his friend Israel, started a cover-up which has lasted to this day. There has been no legitimate court of inquiry into the attack and when the ship’s captain received a Medal of Honor for his heroism, it was awarded secretly in the Washington Navy Yard rather than openly at the White House. Israel and its legion of apologists certainly know how to make potential embarrassments disappear.
Last week on this site I posted an article that I thought would prove to be extremely interesting to those who have been expressing concern about foreign interference in our government. It included a link to a series of computer screen texts provided by a credible independent source demonstrating that an employee of the Israeli Consulate General was deeply involved in what appears to be extorting millions of dollars from the father of a congressman based on assisting that congressman through some legal difficulties. The scheme being concocted also included discussion of arrangements for a commando raid on Iran to free a prisoner. The information conveyed in the screenshots that were provided of the texts has not been disputed by anyone involved in the venture, but as I thought the accompanying article was timid in its willingness to draw any conclusions, I wrote my piece attempting to connect the dots.
The Congressman involved was, of course, Matt Gaetz of Florida, who is now facing the House Ethics Committee, surely an oxymoron if there ever was one, concerning his primarily sexual exploits. To my surprise, however, there has been hardly a word in the mainstream media about looking deeper into the possible Israeli connection. One would have thought the copied texts would be newsworthy due to the extortion angle but even more due to the fact that an armed attack on a nation with which the US is not at war was being funded and planned by a foreign government’s diplomatic mission in New York.
To be sure my article did very well both on Unz and even Facebook, though I had to cut and paste it in the latter site due to its blocking of Unz. I did a bit more checking and noted something that has been occurring for some time: the piece, like others relating to Israel, was not coming up on search engines like Google, which means it was not getting the exposure that it merited. I search daily by my name assuming that my pieces if replayed elsewhere will be displayed. In the past I would sometimes get scores of hits on a popular article, but during the past year hardly anything has been appearing. I have to assume that deliberate and widespread censorship of articles critical of Israel is taking place, which was no surprise as friends of Israel are not exactly rare in the social media. Facebook’s censorship board, for example, includes a former Israeli government minister.
It all comes down to the power of the Israeli/Jewish lobby and its ability to make things that it does not like go away. And sometimes it can make things happen that are manifestly not in the interest of the United States. Jonathan Pollard, the most damaging spy ever in the history of the United States, was recently allowed to return to Israel. In an interview on March 26th he said that any American Jews working for US intelligence agencies must do their duty and spy for Israel because one’s real loyalty is to the Jewish state and one’s co-religionists.
Clearly Pollard is not alone and it was shocking to learn that outgoing president Donald Trump pardoned the Israeli agent who recruited and presumably helped “run” Pollard when he was stealing US secrets. Aviem Sella received a full pardon from Trump as part of hundreds of last minute pardons, many of which had been arranged through two Orthodox Jewish agencies favored by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Sella was a retired Israeli air force officer doing graduate studies and living in the US when he enlisted Pollard to spy for Israel. He fled the country after Pollard was arrested in 1985 and was charged in absentia on three espionage counts but Israel refused to extradite him to the US to stand trial. A White House statement noted that Sella’s request for clemency received support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli ambassador in Washington Ron Dermer, the American ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and Miriam Adelson, the widow of the Republican Party’s top donor and Trump supporter Sheldon Adelson. Would anyone expect otherwise?
The Sella pardon should be seen for what it is. It was a gift to the corrupt Netanyahu, who was at the time facing another national election. It served no US national interest at all and in fact sent the message to those who might be tempted a la Pollard that spying for Israel might be regarded as consequence free, in fact desirable and the right thing to do. Of course, the special “exemption” when dealing with Israel should also be regarded as a tribute to Jewish power in the United States, which relies on the corruption of those in leadership positions, using financial inducements or even blackmail backed up by smears of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial for those who cannot be bought.
And the power to corrupt governments and media is not limited to the United States. Nearly everyone in public office or who relies on the media for an income understands one does not cross the Israel Lobby. In Britain, former Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan has written a memoir that accuses pro-Israel lobbyists of “the most disgusting interference” in British politics while also distorting the country’s foreign policy in the Middle East to favor the Jewish state.
Duncan also claimed that Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) went “ballistic” and blocked him from becoming the Middle East minister at the Foreign Office. Duncan has long been a major target for the Israel lobby. In 2017, an Al Jazeera documentary exposed the maneuvering of pro-Israel groups working together with the Israeli Embassy in London to “take down” Duncan and also Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Per Duncan, Conservative Friends of Israel, which openly promotes the interests of a foreign country, had successfully promoted a “Netanyahu-type view of Israeli politics into our foreign policy.” In one chapter Duncan criticized Conservative MPs’ fawning over Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to Britain, a performance apparently similar to the time when Bibi addressed the US Congress and received 27 standing ovations.
The Duncan book appeared when another story broke about how a group called “UK Lawyers for Israel” acting on behalf of the Israeli government has been altering the material included in secondary school text books. Per a statement issued by Pearson, the largest publisher of school books in the UK, the company has suspended publication of two textbooks responding to “an eight-page report, by Middle East specialists Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, which found hundreds of changes to the textbooks overwhelmingly favoring an Israeli narrative and removing or replacing passages that support Palestinian narratives.”
Censorship of course materials as well as textbooks by Jewish groups to depict Israel in a certain way has certainly been going on in the United States for many years. And the corruption of our institutions to favor Israel and protect it from criticism is incessant. It will be interesting to see if the Gaetz story in all its aspects will ever be allowed to surface or whether the congressman will be offered some inducement to allow him to quietly resign. Somehow, it reminds one of the still unresolved Jeffrey Epstein case in which Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell obtained blackmail material relating to world leaders and celebrities having sex with young girls, somewhat similar to the claims regarding Gaetz.
Many including myself believe that Epstein was part of an Israeli intelligence operation, similar in scale to what was being run on 9/11, which sought to “influence” key figures on issues regarded as important by the Jewish state. Clearly, the game goes on with no one in Washington caring much about the damage being done. Do corrupted and intimidated Congressmen over their morning coffee ponder whether certain activities are “Good for Israel” and therefore not subject to further scrutiny? Judging from Epstein and Gaetz, one would have to believe that to be the case.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
By JOHN WRENN | Brown Daily Herald | March 28, 2021
In the past several years, it has been fashionable to gawk in horror at China’s “social credit system,” an all-encompassing integration of surveillance, finance and state. Writing for The Triple Helix, Brown’s student publication focused on science and society, Priya Bhanot ’23 called China’s surveillance apparatus “Black Mirror Brought to Life.” China’s reputation for ubiquitous surveillance isn’t unjustified; a 2020 review of surveillance camera research by Comparitech found that of the world’s top 20 cities by cameras-per-capita, 18 are in China. But ubiquitous surveillance is far closer to home than Americans might think. As of 2020, Brown University has deployed one surveillance camera for approximately every 18 community members, placing it just shy of London, but ahead of every Chinese city except Taiyuan and Wuxi. In other words, Brown has about as many surveillance cameras as it does full-time faculty, of which it currently has 816!
It wasn’t always like this. In the span of two decades, Brown University quietly deployed an expansive surveillance apparatus, unbeknownst to many in the community; it’s well past time we critically examined our University’s pervasive surveillance of College Hill.
In 2000, the University only had 60 surveillance cameras, which the University mostly used to surveil parking lots and computer labs; a smattering watched Faunce’s club storage area, too. That year, Brown overhauled its fragmented VCR-based recording system into a fully-digital one, enabling Public Safety to monitor its cameras en masse from a central command center. This infrastructure investment marked a paradigm shift in Brown’s capacity for video surveillance.
By 2003, the total had increased to 105 cameras, with some now watching Faunce’s game room and the Main Green. According to The Chronicle, this proliferation of cameras into recreation spaces drew students’ first complaints about camera surveillance:
At Brown University, students have not complained about the cameras that watch over areas such as the basement of a student center. But students did object to a proposal to place cameras facing the main green of campus — to help manage crowds during commencement and other major events — says David Cardoza, card-access manager for the university’s security department.
Nevertheless, Brown continued to deploy new surveillance cameras in public spaces. By 2007, Brown had deployed 185 cameras, with 16 newly-installed cameras monitoring the Friedman Study Center in the Sciences Library. By 2011, Brown had deployed 250 cameras.
From here, the rate of installation increased drastically. In December 2013, the Campus Safety Task Force touted that Brown had deployed 430 cameras and a new array of 47 storage units for their footage. As of February 2020, the latest date for which data is publicly available, Brown University operates approximately 800 surveillance cameras. Following a spree of hateful graffiti in Hegeman Hall, the University installed its first cameras inside a dormitory. At the time of writing, the cameras remain installed.
This explosive proliferation of surveillance cameras at Brown University has progressed virtually unchecked and without community input. University Chief of Police Mark Porter suggested that the proliferation of cameras may reduce students’ fear of crime, but campus sentiment is considerably less enthusiastic about surveillance. In fall 2010, Herald editorial cartoonist Evan Donahue ’11 posted hoax letters in Keeney for a class project that announced the installation of security cameras around Keeney and Pembroke. Dylan Field ’13, a Residential Counselor in Keeney, told The Herald he was worried about the possibility of camera installation. Richard Bova, then-senior associate dean of Residential and Dining Services, categorically rejected the letter’s premise: “There has never been a plan — never will be a plan — to install cameras in any residence halls.” Of course, there eventually was such a plan.
Statements from DPS staff suggest a position of seemingly-limitless surveillance. “When you’re getting into the investigative side, you couldn’t have enough cameras,” said DPS Technical and Support Systems Manager David Cardoza to The Herald in 2008. Yet, in a 2011 interview with The Herald, Porter estimated that only about six crimes had been solved with the help of cameras. These solved crimes included the theft of a laptop from the Brown Bookstore and the truly shocking case of a thrown soda can in Faunce.
The successful use of cameras as an investigative aid in these incidents fails to justify the monetary expense of the camera system (exceeding $300,000 in 2000), much less the cost of students’ privacy. So what good are they? Speaking to The Herald in 2011, Porter instead emphasized the cameras’ purpose to deter, rather than aid in investigations: “We know that when we install them, that people will know they’re there.” This troubling justification invokes the specter of pre-crime — the almost-unfalsifiable presumption that there are agents on College Hill who would terrorize our community if not for the thin blue line of ubiquitous surveillance.
This justification warrants skepticism. A 40-year systemic review and meta-analysis published in 2019 found that passively monitored surveillance camera systems — like that adopted by Brown University — had no significant effect of crime reduction. Nor is it credible that “people will know” that cameras are there. Katie Goddard ’12 remarked to The Herald in 2011, “I haven’t noticed them”; neither had Daniel Valmas ’12, also interviewed by The Herald. Indeed, DPS makes no effort to draw attention to its surveillance cameras.
Rather, Brown University outright obscures the extent of its surveillance of College Hill. In 2008, the University declined to release its policy governing surveillance cameras to The Herald, or to provide a list of camera locations, or comment on how long recorded footage is archived for. The University’s surveillance policy, location of cameras and data retention practices remain completely opaque.
How can the Brown community engage in an informed discussion about surveillance if they are unaware of the scope of the surveillance? Until the University embraces transparency, the practice of “sousveillance” — the monitoring of people and institutions of authority by ordinary citizens — provides a means by which we students can educate ourselves and our peers. Since 2017, my friends and I have marked the locations of approximately 150 surveillance cameras on College Hill. While this is only a fraction of Brown University’s more than 800 cameras, the scope of the surveillance is staggering: It is impossible to cross (or even approach) Brown University without being surveilled. I encourage you to try.
John Wrenn MS’18 PhD’21 is a fifth-year doctoral candidate. He can be contacted at me@jswrenn.com, where he would be delighted to instruct you in the sousveillance of Brown University. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
By James Corbett – Corbett Report – April 11, 2021
I posted Episode 398 of The Corbett Report podcast, “Science Says,” around 10 PM Japanese Standard Time on Friday, April 9th, 2021, and then went to bed. Sometime shortly after midnight, the main Corbett Report channel was removed from YouTube.
And, just like that, 14 years of work—some 1700+ videos, 569,000+ subscribers and 90 million+ video views—was erased from the digital ether. . . . Well, the GooTube portion of that digital ether, anyway.
Given that I’ve been promoting YouTube alternatives since at least 2009, and given that I have made video after video after video after video after video warning my audience that I would be banned from GooTube, and given that I even delivered a presentation last year noting that The Library of Alexandria is on Fire, it’s safe to say that this news did not catch me off guard. Learning about the banning after waking up on Saturday morning, my only thought was, “Well, that took longer than I expected.”
Indeed, it was not surprising in any sense that this was the report that led to GooTube purging my main channel. When you release a video on an account that already has two strikes for information that “contradicts the World Health Organization (WHO) or local health authorities’ medical information about COVID-19” and that video itself contains information calling those very authorities’ pronouncements into question, you better believe the thought that this might be your last YouTube upload crosses your mind when you push that publish button. Heck, the “offending” podcast even centers around an op-ed comparing COVID skeptics to terrorists and calling for the UN to mount a “counteroffensive” against them. Of course this video was going to be censored.
What’s more, this had been a particularly difficult report to post in the first place. After rendering and uploading to GooTube, the GooTube censorship copyright check flagged the 30-second clip of “Bill Nye Saves the World” embedded in my commentary on The Weaponization of Science and refused to post the video. So I had to cut the offending 30 seconds (specifically, the extremely scientific video for Rachel Bloom’s highly educational song, “My Sex Junk,” which can still be enjoyed in the audio version of the podcast), re-render the episode and re-upload it. Then, after that video processed, I performed one quick check before hitting “publish” and noted that the fancy transitions that Corbett Report video editor Broc West had used for this episode (which had worked perfectly fine in the previous two renders) were now suddenly glitching. Banging my head on the keyboard in dismay, I went back into the project, manually changed all of the transitions and rendered and uploaded the entire episode for the third time.
And in the span of those three renders, my initial excitement at the prospect that I would actually get a podcast episode rendered, uploaded and published before 5 PM on a Friday night evaporated. Venting my spleen at Broc over my bad luck, I made the obvious “joke”:
So, as you can see, this turn of events was not unexpected.
In a sense, it’s even more fitting that it was specifically a video about the philosophy of science that ended the channel. Not a documentary about the central banking system. Not an expose of false flag terrorism. Not a hard-hitting report on geopolitics or hidden history. No, a podcast about science that quotes Thomas Kuhn and highlights the growing politicization of science.
I say it’s “fitting” that such a report would be the one to do in the channel not only because I have been exploring this theme over and over in different ways since the very earliest days of The Corbett Report (since at least Episode 006 of the podcast, to be precise), but because in a sense the removal of The Corbett Report’s YouTube channel provides the ironically hilarious answer to a question that I had as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and naive undergrad over two decades ago.
You see, as I explained at the beginning of The Weaponization of Science video, I began my university career as an aspiring physics major. But after a semester spent in chemistry labs, applied mathematics courses and physics tutorials, I decided one day that I wanted to take my life in a completely different direction. So I dropped all my science courses for the upcoming semester and replaced them with English courses.
As one of the very, very few scientifically inclined students in the entire English department, I found that I was particularly on guard against all the eye-rollingly ignorant ways that those in the humanities attempted to add gravitas to their arguments by shoehorning inaccurate analogies about poorly understood scientific concepts (like “relativity” and “quantum mechanics”) into their lectures and papers. And so it was that I found myself approaching one professor during his office hours after he made a remark about how science was “politically determined.”
“How can science be politically determined?” I demanded of him indignantly. “If I drop this tape dispenser off your desk it’s going to fall at 9.81 m/s2 regardless of who is in political office.”
My professor, for his part, had only to prompt me to consider the inquisition’s investigation of Galileo for me to realize his point. Yes, scientists can be intimidated into proclaiming whatever the authorities—political, religious or otherwise—tell them to proclaim, even if it goes against their experimental results. The Galileo example may have been a particularly blunt one (and may or may not be apocryphal), but it hit the mark.
I never forgot that lesson. It is part of what has informed my work on the various pseudoscience fads, trends and hoaxes that have been foisted on the masses over the preceding century, from eugenics to Malthusian fearmongering to the catastrophic anthropogenic climate change myth.
Fast forward 20+ years and here I am daring to point out how the neo-inquisitionists are purging all criticism of their pseudoscientific pronouncements and . . . poof. Channel gone. Which kind of proves my point, doesn’t it?
Now, as I do not need to tell my regular audience, none of the videos are actually gone. Every single video has been backed up to LBRY. Years worth of videos are also backed up to BitChute, and, to a lesser extent, Minds and Archive.org. Every video since 2011 is downloadable directly from my servers. But if you don’t know that by this point, perhaps you’re not really ready to follow The Corbett Report into the Brave New (post-YouTube) Internet. Newsflash: this is 2021. If you’re still using YouTube to get your news, history and political information then you’ve got bigger problems than just the loss of The Corbett Report.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the “infowar” is not an analogy but a stone cold sober reality, and the fact that The Corbett Report was able to use a major enemy information platform to propagate the truth to the slumbering masses for 14 years is a major victory in and of itself.
So long, GooTube. Thanks for helping me to unlock so many minds. You will not be missed.
RT | April 10, 2021
Reporters for the right-leaning news outlet Rebel News have posted videos showing employees being detained by police at an Airbnb location where they were working covering Covid-19 lockdown measures.
In one video posted to Twitter on Saturday, Rebel News reporter David Menzies can be seen having a tense exchange with police officers, which eventually leads to him being hauled away and detained.
Another reporter for the outlet, Keene Bexte, tweeted that he had also been arrested.
Rebel News co-founder Ezra Levant promised he would be suing the officers for their conduct and in another video can be seen taking down one officer’s name.
According to a statement from the Canadian outlet, police arrived at an Airbnb where Rebel News journalists were staying to cover anti-lockdown protests and Covid-19-related arrests and forced everyone out and conducted a “room to room” search.
“When we asked them what the ‘crime’ was, all they could come up with was that our staying in the hotel was an illegal ‘gathering,’ contrary to Quebec’s lockdown laws,” they said.
The outlet added that they were staying in a “registered, legal hotel rental on Airbnb” and fewer guests than the place was built for.
Levant claims the outlet’s unflattering reporting on Montreal police and their enforcement of Covid-19 restrictions is what prompted the visit and search of the houseboat being utilized by the reporters.
“This is their revenge,” he said. “Because we report on their misconduct.”
Levant is already fundraising to support his lawsuit against police, alleging the search and arrests were unjustified and claiming officers have repeatedly harassed Rebel News reporters in recent weeks and made bigoted remarks.
The reaction to the arrests has been mixed at best. While many have expressed shock at the police behavior and allegations from Rebel News on social media, others have simply used the opportunity to blast the highly-controversial outlet, which is often dismissed in mainstream media as a “far-right” enterprise pushing misinformation.
Montreal on Saturday saw a mass protest against the strict Covid-19 measures recently imposed by the authorities in Quebec. An 8pm curfew has been reintroduced in the city, while all the non-essential businesses and schools have been told to shut down until at least April 19. According to the independent news outlet Westphalian Times, the organizers of the protest march sought to highlight the “negative impacts restrictions in schools have on the well-being & development of children.”
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By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
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