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Australian MP blasts Facebook’s ‘interference’ after his OFFICIAL page was banned for Covid-19 ‘misinformation’

RT | April 26, 2021

After Facebook deleted the official page of Craig Kelly for spreading “misinformation” about the coronavirus and vaccines, the independent MP said the “book-burning” US social media giant was interfering in Australia’s democracy.

Kelly was informed of Facebook’s ban by text on Monday morning, he told the media, describing the move as “censorship.”

Banning the page with some 86,000 followers represents “interference in Australian democracy,” he said.

“This was the most popular, highly used political Facebook page in the country,” he said, in remarks quoted by ABC. “They have basically burnt and torched and incinerated and obliterated from the record, previous comments and previous things that I’d made.”

Kelly’s personal page and Instagram account remained active, for now. A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the Australian MP had “repeatedly” violated their policies.

“We don’t allow anyone, including elected officials, to share misinformation about Covid-19 that could lead to imminent physical harm or [Covid-19] vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts,” the spokesperson said.

“It is not misinformation if you have a difference of opinion,” Kelly shot back. “The idea that they are some purveyors of all truth is just absolutely outrageous.” The ban is not just outrageous but also violates the principles of free speech, he added.

Facebook did not just remove a few posts, but the entire page, he said, describing it as “like setting fire to a book, not just removing the pages they disagree with.”

These people are the heirs to those who used to go around burning books because that is effectively what they have done.

Kelly has represented Hughes, a parliamentary district south of Sydney in New South Wales, since 2010. He resigned from the ruling Liberal Party in February, after Facebook suspended him for “misinformation” about Covid-19 and someone from the office of Prime Minister Scott Morrison told him to “shut up” about the virus.

Flush from the success of “fortifying” the 2020 US presidential election, Facebook announced in December that it would ban any “false claims” and “misinformation” about Covid-19, even if posted by public officials.

In January, Mark Zuckerberg’s social media behemoth clashed with Canberra over a proposed law requiring social media to pay for news content. After a week-long Facebook ban on all news content in Australia, the government relented and proposed an amended law, which critics said favored major corporations over local and independent news outlets.

April 26, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

The Targets of Biden’s War on “Domestic Extremists” May Not Be Who You Think

By Leighton Woodhouse | April 26, 2021

Last May, several months into a global pandemic that had capsized the economy, hog farmers had a problem on their hands. With restaurants closed, demand for their product had evaporated. With outbreaks shuttering meat processing plants all over the country, they had nowhere to send their animals to be slaughtered. If kept alive, the pigs would quickly outgrow facilities designed to hold them only for highly abbreviated lives, and the costs of feeding and watering them would become astronomical.

So some major pork producers, among them Iowa’s largest, Iowa Select Farms, made a horrifying decision. They would mass exterminate their animals in one fell swoop, using a technique that promised efficiency for themselves but guaranteed incomprehensible suffering for the pigs.

The method was called “ventilation shutdown,” and it entailed, basically, roasting the pigs alive. Workers would close all of the vents into the barns, shut down the air conditioning, and pipe steam into the buildings until the animals died by asphyxiation or hyperthermia, a process that took several hours. Then a worker would walk through the piles of corpses with a captive bolt gun, shooting whatever stragglers had survived.

The company, however, was unaware that there was a whistleblower within their ranks. An ISF truck driver named Lucas Walker, who had long been appalled by the company’s treatment of its pigs, had informed an activist named Matt Johnson of the company’s plans. Johnson snuck into the barns, placed hidden cameras, and recorded video and audio of the massacre to later release to the news media.

An Iowa Select Farms worker on May 19, 2020, carrying a gun in a barn after ventilation shutdown has been used to kill “excess” pigs (credit: DxE still).

Neither Johnson nor Walker is what most people of conscience would consider a dangerous political extremist. They had no desire to bring any physical harm to anyone; on the contrary, they were moved by the cause of putting a halt to needless suffering. But both a new state law in Iowa and a bill currently being considered in Congress could render them such in the eyes of the criminal justice system. It is just one example of the moral hazard posed by the ongoing effort in Congress and within the Biden administration to erect a new domestic security state apparatus in response to the Trump years and the Capitol Riot — an effort the CIA has joined, while animal rights groups and environmental campaigners have been explicitly listed among its targets.


In 2011, Iowa Select Farms had been the subject of an undercover investigation by the animal rights group Mercy For Animals. Liz Pachaud, an animal rights activist with MFA, had taken a job at the farm and, over the course of four months, documented appalling conditions there with an undercover camera. When the gruesome footage was released, it caused a major crisis for ISF, with numerous grocery chains dropping the company as a supplier.

The following year, the animal agriculture industry successfully lobbied the Iowa state legislature to make what Pachaud had done a crime. The law was one of many so-called “Ag Gag” laws in agricultural states across the country, which make undercover investigations on factory farms by animal rights groups unlawful (an estimated 99 percent of animals raised for meat are factory farmed; the very few small family farms that are left are being systematically driven out of business by the industrialization and economic consolidation of the industry). As Ag gag laws effectively criminalize speech, some of the more sloppily written among them have been subject to successful constitutional challenges; Iowa’s 2012 law was among them. In 2019, a federal judge struck down Iowa’s 2012 law.

That same month, a new Governor took office in Iowa. Kim Reynolds had won her office in 2018 with the conspicuous help of Iowa Select Farms. ISF’s co-owners, Jeff and Deborah Hansen, have donated nearly $300,000 to Governor Reynolds. During the 2018 race, Deborah was the Governor’s biggest individual campaign contributor. Kim Reynolds had been the guest of honor at the Hansens’ family foundation.

Governor Reynolds had barely been in office a month before a newly re-written Ag Gag bill was introduced into the legislature. By summer, she had signed it into law.

Now, Johnson has become the first person to be charged under the 2019 Ag Gag law for attempting to enter one ISF facility. He is facing a separate wiretap charge for the hidden cameras in the barn where the company carried out its ventilation shutdown. In the meantime, yet another Ag Gag law has passed through the Iowa legislature, which increases penalties for the crime of planting hidden cameras in animal agriculture facilities. Governor Reynolds is expected to sign the new bill into law any day now.

As should surprise nobody who lived through the political aftermath of 9/11, these laws were passed under the pretext of combatting “terrorism.” Radical animal rights and environmental activists have, in fact, long been among the FBI’s top “domestic terrorism” targets, as well as targets of draconian new legislation. In 2006, at the behest of the pharmaceutical and animal agriculture industries, Congress passed a law specifically defining animal rights activism aimed at “damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise” — whether or not violence was involved — as “terrorism.” Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), the group Johnson belongs to (I used to cover DxE as a reporter and have since become a member myself), was the subject of a major FBI investigation over the “theft” of two dying piglets from a factory farm. After he was discovered, the FBI interviewed Walker, asking him if DxE sells drugs or guns to finance their activism, and tried to recruit him as an informant into their activities.

This dismal history should be an obvious cautionary tale about the hazards of enhancing the state’s power to surveil and prosecute people for politically motivated activity, beyond the ample criminal laws already on the books. But in the wake of the January 6 MAGA Capitol Riot, progressives, in particular, have gained an appetite for more.

Currently, a bill with 196 Democratic co-sponsors (and 3 Republicans) is before Congress, which would begin to build the legal and bureaucratic architecture for an interagency domestic terrorism response unit within the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. The legislation is explicitly a response to the Capitol Riot and is pointed particularly at “White supremacist” and “neo-Nazi” groups — a particularly unsympathetic and uncontroversial cast of culprits.

But the PATRIOT Act was also purported to target only the most hateful, murderous people in the world — Islamic terrorists — before it metastasized into a massive surveillance state infrastructure that spied on literally every single American with an internet connection. Are we to expect that a domestic analogue to the PATRIOT Act will draw the line at violent sociopathic racists? The intelligence community demonstrably does not: a recently declassified report lists animal rights and environmental activists, abortion activists on both the pro-life and the pro-choice sides, anarchists, and anti-capitalists as potential domestic terrorist threats.


If we’ve learned anything from the last few years, it’s that corporations are all too eager to co-opt the progressive rhetoric du jour, whether to sell sneakers or to protect themselves against workplace discrimination lawsuits. And the FBI has been more than willing to investigate activists engaged in non-violent activities as terrorists under the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. A new domestic federal law enforcement bureaucracy dedicated to surveilling and investigating anyone the government claims to suspect is a “terrorist” would be a bonanza to industries facing concerted activist pressure, whether animal agriculture or fossil fuels, or a company in any industry facing a unionization drive. What possible reason is there to believe that corporations won’t lobby the Biden administration and future administrations to use their new powers to ensnare activists who campaign against them, all in the name of ridding the country of violent political extremists and “insurrectionists”?

The answer is that there is no reason to believe it, and every reason to believe the hunt for “domestic terrorists” could eventually be turned against anyone with the will and the means to effectively confront those who hold concentrated political and corporate power — including through strictly non-violent means. A demonstrated willingness to use violence has never been a requisite for law enforcement agencies to brand those they wish to malign as “terrorists”, as DxE activists know all too well. All that’s required is their willingness to use the label.

After 9/11, passage of the PATRIOT Act was enabled by the bullying of dissidents in a climate of enforced jingoism. It was dangerous to ask critical questions then; safety was found only in conformity. We’re in such a moment again, but this time from within a liberal rather than a right-wing consensus. But the outcome will be the same: the hardening of state power, made possible through organized collective hysteria.

April 26, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

Russian Media Watchdog Demands That Google Remove Restrictions on RT’s YouTube Channel

Sputnik – 24.04.2021

MOSCOW – Russia’s Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) on Saturday demanded that Google lift restrictions on the English-language YouTube channel of the RT broadcaster.

“Roskomnadzor sent a letter to the leadership of Google LLC demanding that all restrictions be lifted from the RT YouTube Channel as soon as possible”, the statement said.

YouTube previously made a number of videos on RT’s English YouTube channel inaccessible to viewers, and also restricted the channel’s ability to make live broadcasts, citing alleged COVID-19 disinformation.

According to Roskomnadzor, such actions by YouTube’s administration violate the key principles of free distribution of information and constitute an act of censorship against the Russian media outlet.

The watchdog has repeatedly pointed to restrictions that YouTube imposes on access to certain Russian video content. Last autumn, the watchdog sent several letters to Google, demanding that it stop censoring videos published by Russian media, including a documentary about the 2004 Beslan tragedy.

April 24, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Facebook deletes 120,000-member group where people posted stories of alleged adverse vaccine reactions

By Tom Parker – RECLAIM THE NET – April 23, 2021

Facebook has removed a popular, rapidly growing group where members would post stories about alleged negative COVID-19 vaccine side effects.

The group, “COVID19 VACCINE VICTIMS AND FAMILIES,” had over 120,000 followers when it was shut down and had been gaining more than 10,000 followers per week.

The shutdown of the page follows Facebook introducing a ban on a wide range of claims about the coronavirus vaccine in February. The list of prohibited claims includes claims that the vaccines cause blood clots and claims that the coronavirus vaccines change people’s DNA (something that even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Facebook staff during a July 2020 internal meeting).

Not only is Facebook restricting a wide range of vaccine-related claims but it’s also adding labels to all posts about coronavirus vaccines. These labels state that vaccines are safe and direct users to sources that Facebook has deemed “authoritative” such as the World Health Organization (WHO).

Facebook’s actions are similar to those of other Big Tech platforms which have also cracked down on vaccine-related conversations over the last few months. YouTube prohibits videos that go against the WHO “consensus” on coronavirus vaccines and adds information panels to some videos that direct viewers to the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Twitter also bans “harmful misleading” posts about vaccines.

Politicians have actively encouraged this Big Tech crackdown on vaccine skepticism. Days ago, Democrats pushed Facebook and Twitter to “address” 12 prominent vaccine skeptics. State Attorneys General also told Facebook and Twitter to kill vaccine skepticism earlier this month.

These crackdowns on vaccine skeptic conversations come amid mass pushes from global governments to introduce digital vaccine passports that force people to prove their vaccination or test status to enter business premises.

April 24, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Criminalizing Safe and Effective Non-Drug Covid Treatments

By Stephen Lendman | April 24, 2021

According to the US Federal Trade Commission:

“For the duration of the (covid) public health emergency (sic)” — what’s invented, not real — the (1944) Public Health Service Act makes it unlawful…for any person, partnership, or corporation to engage in a deceptive act or practice in or affecting commerce associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation, or diagnosis of (illness) or a government benefit related to (it).” 

“The Act provides that such a violation shall be treated as a violation of a rule defining an unfair or deceptive act or practice prescribed under Sec. 18(a)(1)(B) of the FTC Act.”

The above applies to the (Covid) Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) (December 2020).

Alternative treatments for various health issues are safe and effective.

Yet US dark forces want information about them suppressed in pushing hazardous to health covid mass-jabbing.

According to Professor of Internal Medicine/Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School Dr. Paul Marik, he and medical colleagues are effectively treating seriously ill flu patients — now called covid.

Their therapy involves intravenous use of vitamin C, corticosteroids and the anticoagulant heparin to mitigate lungs inflammation, the main cause of death from flu/covid.

Vitamin D and zinc are also therapeutically effective in treating the illness.

According to Boston University School of Medicine’s Dr. Michael Holick, a study he and colleagues were involved in “provide(d) direct evidence that vitamin D sufficiency can reduce (covid) complications, including cytokine storms and ultimately death.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola maintains that vitamin C and D, zinc, selenium, and other natural supplements can help prevent, treat and cure covid.

On April 15, the Biden regime’s Justice Department and FTC “announced a civil complaint  against defendants Eric Anthony Nepute and Quickwork LLC (for) alleg(ed) violations of the (Covid) Consumer Protection Act (CCPA).”

“Defendants” are wrongfully charged with recommending vitamin D and zinc supplements to prevent or treat covid.

The DOJ and FTC seek “civil penalties and injunctive relief to stop the defendants from” recommending safe, effective alternative treatments in lieu of experimental, hazardous, unapproved mRNA technology and vaccines for covid.

CCPA “prohibits deceptive acts or practices associated with the treatment, cure, prevention, mitigation or diagnosis of” covid or other illnesses.

Instead of protecting US consumers, CCPA aims to criminalize health professionals who prescribe or recommend alternative treatments for covid instead of toxic drugs that risk irreversible harm to health when taken as directed.

There’s nothing remotely safe and effective about experimental covid drugs that don’t protect, risk contraction of the illness they’re supposed to prevent, along with any number of other serious diseases over the near-or-longer-term that can be lethal.

CCPA should be called the Pharma Protection Act — promoting what’s harmful to health, not beneficial.

Vitamins and minerals promote health. For many years, I’ve taken daily vitamin C, D and zinc supplements.

Along with no adverse effects, I haven’t had a common cold or flu in decades.

I strongly believe these readily available, low-cost supplements help protect and preserve health.

They’ve certainly done no harm.

I believe what helps me can be beneficial for others.

From what I learned from medical and scientific experts — information covered in my writing — experimental covid mRNA technology and vaccines are high-risk, potentially deadly, with nothing beneficial from taking them other than possible mitigation of covid symptoms somewhat if one contracts the illness.

They don’t prevent or cure it.

Everyone willing to be jabbed for covid is playing Russian roulette with their health — a foolhardy risk no one should take.

It’s notably so when safe, effective, low-cost drugs and alternative treatments are effective in preventing, treating, and curing covid.

April 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

YouTube censors RT for entertaining unapproved thoughts, but tyranny won’t build confidence in the prescribed narrative

By Tony Cox | RT | April 23, 2021

It’s bad enough that YouTube’s latest censorship move against RT reflects disregard for free speech and scientific principles. It’s also horrible strategy if Big Tech is trying to build public confidence in its favored narratives.

YouTube on Friday disappeared four videos from RT’s channel and assessed a strike, which will sanction the news outlet for one week. If it happens again, the next round of penalties will last for two weeks (as just hit RT’s German channel, RT DE). Eventually, enough alleged violations of community guidelines can get a channel evicted from the public square permanently.

And YouTube apparently can make that happen just about anytime it wants. The four offending videos were spread out over a period of several months, some dating back to last year, but they were rounded up at once, providing the four violations of community guidelines needed to assess a strike against the channel. And given how little it apparently takes for a video to be deemed in violation – and the lack of transparency around YouTube’s decision-making – there’s little that RT can do to failsafe against being censored again. It would have to follow CNN and other mainstream media outlets in producing only ruling-class propaganda, if even that would be safe.

The topics of the videos varied, but the common thread was that they revealed the existence of contrarian viewpoints. For instance, one was a livestream of an anti-lockdown protest in London, while another showed Covid-19 skeptics holding a demonstration in Birmingham, England.

RT didn’t endorse the views of the protesters, though in a free society, that should be allowed. According to YouTube, merely showing footage of these protests violated its policy against “medical misinformation,” showing content that “explicitly disputes” the guidance of local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).

Another video was found to have violated the same policy, showing an interview with legendary Soviet virologist Dmitry Lvov about the dangers of the coronavirus outbreak and the efficacy of masks.

In our increasingly dystopian society, only one set of beliefs on certain key topics is allowed to be discussed. Disagreeing with those beliefs is forbidden. Even showing someone or a group of people who disagrees with those beliefs is prohibited.

Then again, it may depend partly on who shows it. YouTube removed another RT video in March because it showed former President Donald Trump talking about another forbidden topic, alleged fraud in the 2020 election. Videos of the same speech posted by mainstream outlets, such as Reuters and ABC, were initially allowed to stay up, although some were removed later. Different livestreams of the same speech were treated as either “problematic misinformation” or “authoritative news” by YouTube, depending on who posted them.

That kind of arbitrary and capricious application of the rules makes authoritarianism all the more scary. Incidentally, the other RT video that was taken down in the latest purge by YouTube, an episode of the “Wayne Dupree Show,” also somehow crossed the line with YouTube’s election sensitivities.

The platform’s attempts at thought policing betray an incredible level of contempt for humanity. People whom no one elected and who aren’t always right, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci and the WHO, will prescribe how we all must think about a life-and-death topic. Fauci can flip-flop on his edicts and even admit to purposely misleading the public – as he did on the topic of herd immunity – but we all must follow his orders and pretend that no other ideas are worth even considering exist.

That level of arrogance is astounding. Our rulers keep talking about “following the science” – except biology, the science that is outlawed when it comes to transgender propaganda – but think about all the great scientists who would have been forever silenced if they had tried to make themselves heard in the era of Big Tech. Eratosthenes, Galileo Galilei and Sir Isaac Newton would have been thrown into social media prison, never to be heard from again, and they’d never get booked on CNN.

Good and honest science can stand up to being challenged, and when it loses an argument and is amended, it becomes better science. Likewise, free societies that respect human rights don’t try to cover up ideas that might conflict with a favored narrative.

When authoritarians try to crush open discussion, they send up red flags in the minds of thinking people. If your lockdown advice is so wise, why can’t we discuss it and examine the research? If your vaccines are so safe and effective, why force them on anyone or try to manipulate public opinion, as Fauci admitted to doing when he misled the public about herd immunity? If the election was won fair and square, why can’t we thoroughly investigate and then dismiss the allegations of fraud?

Going the censorship route, the best that Big Tech, the media and the billionaire globalists can hope for is to scare most people into obedience. Perhaps they want a world full of NPCs, non-player characters, to walk around like soulless drones, buying their products and shouting down the few free thinkers on command. But NPCs aren’t true believers, and real humans tend to push the boots off their faces eventually.

Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.

April 24, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Americans alarmed over social media snooping reportedly carried out by USPS

RT | April 23, 2021

Internet users are fuming over a report detailing an alleged covert program run by the US Postal Service which monitors Americans’ social media posts for activity deemed unsavory, including political rallies.

Known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), the program tracks social media platforms for “inflammatory” content  and shares that information with government agencies, according to Yahoo News, citing internal documents. The initiative is run by the law enforcement arm of the USPS, the US Postal Inspection Service.

A March 16 government bulletin obtained by the news outlet details how iCOP monitored “significant activity” regarding anti-lockdown protests that were planned in cities around the country and internationally on March 20. The document, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, said that information about the demonstrations was being shared on multiple social media platforms, including “right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”

The memo flagged several posts discussing how the protests could be used as an opportunity to engage in a “fight,” but concluded that there was no intelligence to suggest they were legitimate threats.

The US Postal Inspection Service declined to answer questions about the program submitted by Yahoo News, but explained that iCOP “[assesses] threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information.” It said that it works with law enforcement agencies to “proactively identify” such threats, but does not discuss its “protocols, investigative methods, or tools,” in order to maintain “operational effectiveness.”

While the Postal Service remains tight-lipped about the program, many on social media have demanded accountability from the government agency.

“This is ridiculous and dangerous. It must end immediately!” tweeted conservative pundit Robby Starbuck.

“How can this possibly be under their purview?” asked another outraged observer of the Postal Service.

Others described iCOP as Big Brother “brought to life.”

Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie described the alleged snooping as “disturbing” and suggested that it was unconstitutional. He also wondered how the agency could afford the surveillance program, given its recent budgetary issues.

There were some commenters who seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with the practice, though, and that only people engaged in illegal activity should worry about public social media posts being monitored by government workers. Several replies to the story noted that the current postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, was appointed by Republican Donald Trump, making those who blame Democrats for the snooping look absurd.

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

NYU Professor Fights Back Against the Academic Crybullies

Mark Crispin Miller teaches a course on Mass Persuasian and Propaganda at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development for 20 years. He is now suing 20 department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the dean of his school demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. Today we talk to Miller about his course, his views, his libel suit, and the state of free speech in the era of increasing COVID tyranny.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:

MarkCrispinMiller.com

“Masks Don’t Work” by Denis Rancourt

Change.org petition: Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom

MCM’s libel lawsuit, complete (thus far)

Help Mark Crispin Miller sue for libel (GoFundMe)

Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without….”

Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance Dehaven-Smith

Masking ourselves to death: Part 1 of 3

The Gray Lady Winked

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Johnson’s proposed spy-law reveals an unsustainable double standard in how dissent is treated at home and abroad

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.

April 22, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

The War on Pubs is Being Waged by Puritans Against Joy

By Sean Walsh | Lockdown Sceptics | April 19, 2021

Hugh Osmond and Sacha Lord are back in court this week to argue that the Government’s refusal to reopen indoor hospitality is inconsistent with the opening up of “non-essential” retail. I wish them luck, I really do. But I fear that they are battling not against SAGE evidence but against the miserable assumptions on which that “evidence” is based.

Why has this Government gone to war on pubs when the hospitality industry was last year responsible for fewer that 3% of Covid infections? It’s tempting to conclude that the SAGE types are not worried that pubs are possible vectors of transmission, but that they are concerned that hospitality venues are potential theatres of dissent. Or, worse, that they are places where people have the temerity to enjoy themselves.

Heaven forfend.

The Lockdown Sanhedrin, the SAGE clerisy, is itself infected with the virus of puritanism. It’s impossible to look at Chris Whitty without concluding that other people’s enjoyment presents itself to him as a sort of personal Kryptonite. Boris’s self-announced “libertarianism” seems to amount to little more than the thesis that he gets to do what he wants and the rest of us can go hang. But I think it goes deeper than that – the Government and in particular its advisers are in thrall to a metaphysics of joylessness.

At the start of this crisis, the Government decided that it was qualified to make a distinction between those activities which are essential and those which are not. The latter were consequently eliminated from the list of what was permitted. To put it another way, it took upon itself the right to decide what counts as work, and what counts as mere “play”.

But it is not clear that any such distinction exists, and if it does then it does not follow that we should prioritise work over play, even in a pandemic. Aristotle claimed that the “first principle of activity is leisure”: that we work in order to play; that play is a more valuable activity than work because it is something that is done for its own sake. The vulgar utilitarianism which has shaped SAGE’s pandemic response is a crude sanitisation of our understanding of the human soul. Not every worthwhile thing that we do as human persons can be reduced to the requirements of a Downing St data slide.

Pubs matter for reasons that go further than the economics of the hospitality sector, important though those are. They matter because they are playgrounds for adults. They are important because they remind us that not everything has to be geared to the puritanical assumption that we work only to get up and repeat the same day.

And they matter because they have their own internal social grammar, one which has been handed down from generation to generation. The pub has its own set of protocols (the “round”) and its own systems of internal conflict resolution (“let’s take this outside”).

It is in the pub that people can whisper conspiracy against a Government narrative. And conspiracies always require that the like-minded are allowed to gather. It is over a drink that the millionaire and the pauper can come together and compare notes.

Johnson is currently offering us a sinister inversion of what a pub is, one in which you are tracked, traced, audited, judged, and humiliated. The “road map”, in this industry at least, is one that leads you not into “normal” but into a “Twin Peaks” version of it.

This Government needs to be careful. I am not persuaded that it has gone to war against us. But it’s starting to give that impression. Why? Because if you were given carte blanche to construct a police state this is how you’d do it: you would stamp on the enjoyment of the great unwashed and confiscate all mechanisms of dissent. The Government’s war on pubs is ticking both those boxes.

Sean Walsh is a writer and former university teacher.

April 20, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

“Terror by White Supremacists”: BLM Denounces Coverage of Co-Founder’s R.E. Purchases while Facebook Censors Story

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.

April 18, 2021 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Vimeo Removes Film “trustWHO” Which Exposes Corruption at W.H.O.

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:

trustWHO – Full Documentary

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…

April 17, 2021 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Film Review, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | | Leave a comment