Sacked Bristol professor case: UK judge says anti-Zionist views ‘worthy of respect’
Press TV – October 16, 2024
An employment tribunal in the UK has concluded that holding the belief that Israel’s actions against Palestinians amount to apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide are “worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
In February, a UK judge ruled in a landmark decision that David Miller, the producer of Press TV’s ‘Palestine Declassified’ show, who was fired from the University of Bristol in 2021 for anti-Zionist views, was unfairly dismissed and subjected to discrimination.
This week, the tribunal published its 120-page judgement, which sets out why Miller’s views were protected under anti-discrimination laws.
“Although many would vehemently and cogently disagree with [Miller]’s analysis of politics and history, others have the same or similar beliefs,” Judge Rohan Pirani said in the judgement.
“We find that he has established that [the criteria] have been met and that his belief amounted to a philosophical belief.”
Miller was dismissed in 2021 after accusing Israel of wanting to “impose [its] will all over the world.”
Following his dismissal, he launched employment tribunal proceedings claiming unfair dismissal, breach of contract and discrimination or victimization on grounds of religion or belief.
At his hearing, he made clear that anti-Zionism was not the same as anti-Semitism, and was not a “racist set of ideas.” He also described Gaza as an “open air prison.”
He said that Zionism was “ideologically bound to lead to the practices of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide in pursuit of territorial control and expansion.”
Zillur Rahman, who represented Miller, called it a “landmark case” which “marks a pivotal moment in the history of our country for those who believe in upholding the rights of Palestinians.”
The judgement noted that Miller had expertise on the subject of Zionism.
On the academic’s anti-Zionism beliefs, Pirani said, “We conclude that they have played a significant role in his life for many years. We are satisfied that they are genuinely held.”
“He is and was a committed anti-Zionist and his views on this topic have played a significant role in his life for many years.”
The panel said his beliefs were “worthy of respect in a democratic society, [are] not incompatible with human dignity and [do] not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”
“[Miller]’s opposition to Zionism is not opposition to the idea of Jewish self-determination … but rather, as he defines it, to the exclusive realization of Jewish rights to self-determination within a land that is home to a very substantial non-Jewish population,” Pirani added.
The judgement was criticized in February by the London-based Union of Jewish Students (UJS), a body representing university Jewish societies and Jewish students.
“UJS believes this may set a dangerous precedent about what can be lawfully said on campus about Jewish students and the societies at the center of their social life. This will ultimately make Jewish students less safe,” it said.
Tim Walz Ducks Free Speech Debate in Evasive Interview Over Misinformation Crackdown

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | October 14, 2024
In an interview with Fox News Sunday’s Shannon Bream, Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Tim Walz found himself in the hot seat over his stance on free speech, particularly regarding so-called “misinformation” and “hate speech.” Walz, who has previously expressed a desire to limit certain forms of expression, gave an evasive and meandering response when asked to clarify his position.
Walz’s comments have been the subject of concern, especially following his assertion that “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech” if he and Kamala Harris win the upcoming election.
When Bream pressed him on who would ultimately have the power to define “misinformation,” Walz sidestepped the question. Instead, he launched into a lengthy discussion about book bans and violent threats, avoiding the central issue of free speech restrictions.
Bream’s attempt to distinguish between threats and misinformation resulted in yet another detour from Walz, who again brought up book banning without offering any substantive answer on misinformation. His unwillingness to engage directly on the topic of free speech raised further concerns that under a Harris-Walz administration, the government itself could become the arbiter of what constitutes “misinformation.”
The implications of Walz’s remarks are troubling for advocates of free speech. In his convoluted responses, Walz seemed to blur the lines between genuine threats and dissenting opinions, a tactic that has left many questioning the true intent behind his push to regulate speech. By conflating hate speech with misinformation, Walz opens the door to potential government overreach that could infringe on the First Amendment rights of Americans.
While Walz insists that he supports the First Amendment, his reluctance to differentiate between dangerous threats and controversial speech raises red flags about the future of open discourse in America.
Related: Walz’s War on Words: A Blatant Distortion of the First Amendment
Israeli Military and Police Raid International Home in Qusra
International Solidarity Movement | October 13, 2024
At about 20:00 Friday night, the Israeli army and police raided the international volunteers’ home in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus. This raid was conducted at gunpoint by a heavily armed force.
Leading the raid was the same military officer who had commanded a squadron that forced Palestinian harvesters out of their land in the village of Duma earlier in the day. During the raid, he pointed out specific volunteers to the police, saying he recognized them from earlier in the day.
The police broke into the house by destroying the door using a pneumatic hammer, and proceeded to search the premises without a search warrant, as well as the car of a Palestinian resident of Qusra who was there at the time. They demanded all the international activists present to show their passports, and photographed them.
Israeli law and police regulations only allow for police to require identification on the basis of suspicion of having broken the law, or for several specific reasons, which must be stated to those identified. The police had refused to state their grounds for either the search or identification, even declaring before they left, “You have done nothing wrong; we were only here to see who you are.”
The raid on the international volunteer quarters directly followed the forced removal of harvesters from their lands in the village of Duma earlier in the day, under the claim that it is forbidden for Palestinians to access their lands anywhere in Area C – which comprises around 60% of the West Bank – without prior coordination.
Democrat Congresswomen Tell Social Media Platforms to “Quickly and Decisively” Censor Hurricane “Misinformation”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | October 11, 2024
Despite recent pushback for politicians encouraging social media platforms to increase censorship online, in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, a cadre of Democratic House representatives from the affected regions have appealed to major social media platforms to intensify their efforts to censor alleged “misinformation” related to the storms.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
“We write to your platforms with an urgent request on behalf of states affected by the devastation of Hurricane Helene and those currently being impacted by Hurricane Milton,” the letter states. “In the aftermath of Helene, we have witnessed a troubling surge in misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and scams that are hindering recovery efforts and exploiting vulnerable individuals and families.”
The representatives say that they are concerned about the proliferation of false claims and blame these reportedly false claims for the hindering of recovery efforts. The congresswomen also say that social media posts are undermining public confidence in institutions.
The call for a crackdown on misinformation was articulated in a letter addressed to seven major social media entities, including Meta, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, Snap, and Instagram. Authored by Representatives Deborah Ross (D-N.C.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), and Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.), the letter alleges that misinformation is having a dire impact.
The letter doesn’t directly demand censorship of alleged misinformation, but it does put pressure on platforms to police speech, saying that they have the “power and the responsibility” to “improve the digital spaces.”
The congresswomen say that they “strongly encourage” platforms to act “quickly and decisively.”
In a press conference today, President Biden dismissed some of the criticism of the response to the hurricane as “lies” and said, “Those who have been spreading these lies to try to undermine the opposition, they are going to pay a price for it.”
The political pressure on social media platforms to step in regarding a major event echoes what happened during the Covid pandemic.
During the pandemic, the call for online censorship by politicians and health authorities under the guise of combating misinformation became a contentious issue. This initiative, aimed at preventing the spread of allegedly harmful or misleading information about the virus, its transmission, and treatments, led to a wide array of interventions by social media platforms and tech companies.
As part of these efforts, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube introduced policies to flag, remove, or demote content that contradicted the evolving understanding of health authorities such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The intent was supposedly to protect public health; however, the execution of these policies often resulted in the suppression of legitimate discourse and the removal of content that later proved to be accurate.
Israel’s war on journalism continues: American Jeremy Loffredo arrested, faces severe punishment for accurate reporting
By Iara Modarelli | 21st Century Wire | October 11, 2024
Israeli authorities have arrested American journalist Jeremy Loffredo, intensifying their assault on press freedom and extending their war on journalism by targeting independent American reporters working in Israel.
Loffredo, 28, is an investigative journalist known for his work with The Grayzone, and was arrested shortly after publishing his recent report on the Iranian missile retaliation which reportedly struck several Israeli military and intelligence sites, including one missile landing next to the Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv, as well as multiple impacts in and around Israel’s most important air operations sites located at Nevatim Air Base.
According to colleagues, Loffredo was with a group of four other journalists when they were blindfolded, beaten, and detained by the Israel security forces, allegedly for exposing the Israeli regime’s military activities, according to Russian-Jewish reporter Andrey X.
Jeremy is currently the only journalist still being detained from the group, and his arrest is sparking widespread concerns of a potential diplomatic catastrophe between the U.S. and Israel after representatives from the U.S. Embassy attended court hearings in Jerusalem regarding his continued detention. Loffredo’s lawyer, Leah Tsemel, has argued that Loffredo had acted transparently and publicly and challenged the claim put against the journalist. claims that he was aiding the enemy.
Overall, his on-the-ground reporting shed light on the comprehensive damage caused by Iran’s Operation True Promise II, a retaliatory strike following a series of high-profile assassinations carried out by Israel which targeted key leaders in Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC. The Grayzone journalist was arrested on charges of endangering national security with allegations that he was “aiding the enemy during wartime” by disclosing sensitive information.
Loffredo also explains how airstrikes on Gaza were launched from the Nevatim base, information which had largely been omitted from western mainstream coverage of the event. He also reported how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private jet may also have been located at the base.
A campaign on X has gone viral under the hashtag #FreeJeremyLoffredo, with thousands of people seeking to bring attention to Jeremy’s arrest and intensify pressure on the U.S. State Department, as the Israeli charges against Loffredo intensify, where he faces the potential of life behind bars, or even the death penalty – all for the crime of doing journalism.
Interestingly, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal revealed on X how US mainstream media outlet PBS had already reported from one of the same ‘sensitive’ locations as Loffredo – with no repercussions whatsoever from Israeli authorities.
UPDATE: Blumenthal broadcast this morning that the Israel authorities have now released Jeremy Loffredo from custody, but he is forbidden from leaving the country for the time being.
Israel’s crackdown on the free press and journalism has escalated dramatically over the past 12 months, with the killer of over 180 journalists, many of them Palestinian, including a number of targeted murders in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon since hostilities increased October 2023. This unprecedented death toll marks the highest number of journalists killed over a 12 month period of any war zone in history.
Currently, dozens of other reporters remain imprisoned without official charges as Israel intensifies its efforts to suppress any media coverage which exposes a mounting list of warcrimes carried out in the occupied territories.
To date, there has been no official statement by the U.S. government regarding the status of Jeremy Loffredo.
VIDEO: View Jeremy Loffredo’s most recent video report from Israel.
Israel hopes to put American on death row for doing journalism
He must be punished for telling the truth about Israel
Laura and Normal Island News | October 11, 2024
This is going to come as upsetting news, but I must inform you a number of terrorists have been attempting to do journalism in Israel. This has prompted fears the truth might reach the public and they might be informed about what is really going on. I know, it doesn’t bear thinking about…
Following the recent rocket attack by Iran that was the most terrifying thing in history, but also embarrassingly pathetic and a massive failure, Israel sensibly decided no one is allowed to report the truth. Unfortunately, several individuals decided it was their right to pollute your mind with facts and evidence.
The officially authorised version of events is that almost all of those Iranian rockets were intercepted by the iron dome, the ones that exploded did no damage, and Iran embarrassed itself by even trying to attack Israel, but it’s also such a massive threat that it must be nuked out of existence. Only an idiot would see a contradiction here.
Sadly, several so-called journalists decided to visit the sites of the rocket impacts and show you what really happened. These people had the audacity to tell you to believe your own eyes and ears, instead of letting smart people like myself program your brain.
Jeremy Loffredo and his terrorist friends found an unexploded rocket near Mossad HQ and showed it just sitting on the road. Disgustingly, Loffredo pointed out Mossad embedded its HQ among civilian infrastructure as though this is somehow relevant. Just imagine if a rocket landed near MI5 HQ and journalists decided you had a right to know. Obviously, we would have to bring back the death penalty for journalists like that.
Somehow, Loffredo managed to make things even worse. He mentioned that Mossad HQ is located near a hospital, implying any potential victims could be considered human shields. What kind of monster would use language like this? Does Loffredo not know Israelis are human beings?
Thankfully, Loffredo and his accomplices were caught by the IDF, and naturally, they were beaten up and blindfolded before being taken to a military base. How else would the Middle East’s only democracy arrest someone? While most of the terrorists have inexplicably been released without charge, Loffredo is thankfully being detained. I understand there is a campaign in Israel to send him to that rapey place in the Negev desert.
The country that has murdered 128 journalists in the past year demonstrated it’s better than all those Arab countries by charging a man with journalism, leaving him facing a life sentence, or even the death penalty, for the crime of reporting the truth.
Loffredo’s reporting was mirrored by outlets like PBS, however, only Loffredo is getting punished because we don’t like the Grayzone, and finally, we have an excuse to execute its journalists. I yearn for the day we can do this in the west. Until we’ve taken care of Declassified UK, we can’t sensibly call ourselves a democracy, can we?
Personally, I don’t understand why any journalist would feel uncomfortable repeating Israel’s authorised version of events. It’s so much better for your career to gloss over the build up to World War III and the possible extinction of the human race. All you have to say is “Yup, that school was definitely exploded by a stray Hamas rocket” or “Sure, Israel sniped that toddler, but it has a right to defend itself”. You see how easy that was? Anyone who can’t lie for Israel gets no sympathy from me.
If Israel doesn’t want people to know that rockets are reaching Tel Aviv, it’s because that information is not in the public interest. You’re not allowed to know the truth about Israel because the truth would make Israel look bad.
I’m sure you will agree that journalists who don’t comply with Israeli censorship demands should be jailed for the rest of their lives, or even sent to death row. Jeremy Loffredo must be punished in the strongest way possible for telling the truth about Israel. It’s time to make an example of him so no one ever makes this mistake again.
If you’re American, do not under any circumstances call the US embassy in Israel on +011-972-2-630-4000 or email them at JersusalemACS@state.gov to demand Loffredo’s release because this would make you a decent person who cares about journalistic freedom and human rights and we don’t do those things anymore, do we?
Arizona State University Caught in Free Speech Tug-of-War Over Gov-Funded “Disinformation” Battle
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 9, 2024
Arizona State University (ASU) is a public school and therefore undisputed subject to the US Constitution’s free speech rules. Yet a new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) demonstrates that it was prominently involved in working with, and on behalf of the US government. To affect free speech.
That would be a blatant example of what Congress is investigating and what the critics are calling Big Tech-(Big) Government collusion, given that the target of the “collaboration” the university was involved in was online “disinformation.”
The thing to remember when talking about this collusion is that the current White House had enough wits about it to never make a “beeline” reaching the end result of censorship. From what is known from the congressional probe and the Twitter Files alone, this was always instead a meandering effort that included many seemingly intermediary and/or legitimate actors.
According to James Rushmore for Racket News, in this case, ASU was the recipient of grants (and, in line with the overall “process” – the purpose of the one given in January 2024 and reported by the Washington Examiner is not clearly stated). The grant though did come from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC).
In and of itself, not ring many alarm bells – until the reason behind it, and the activities of GEC are taken into account. Those activities, in the case of ASU’s involvement, meant working with government agencies to flag what was decided to be disinformation, but also something referred to as “falsified media.”
The obsession with “Russian disinformation” featured here as well, a hallmark of “arguments” of the political party that came to power in 2020 in the US. But also a hallmark that had been introduced into public discourse with the party’s defeat four years earlier. The claims have since, but it seems to no avail, been thoroughly debunked.
ASU’s role was to contribute by developing “or refining” automated tools and techniques to pinpoint the specter of “fake news,” “disinformation,” and, “(foreign) propaganda.”
The public university’s involvement didn’t stop there, since another project saw it become a US Department of Defense DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) subcontractor.
“Falsified media” was once again supposed to be the target, with ASU teaming up with Kitware software company based in New York to give spies a system capable of detecting how media, branded as such, work, and what algorithms they use.
Imam to Be Expelled From Italy for Sermons Supporting Hamas – Reports
Sputnik – 09.10.2024
The Italian Interior Ministry intends to expel Bologna imam Zulfiqar Khan from Italy for reasons of national security in connection with his support for Palestinian movement Hamas, the Adnkronos news agency reported, citing Khan’s lawyer.
The imam has repeatedly expressed support for Hamas in the context of the war in the Gaza Strip and praised the militants’ actions during the clashes with Israeli troops, the report said on Tuesday.
The imam was taken to the Bologna police department, Italian media reported. The Interior Ministry’s decision can be appealed in the regional administrative court. His lawyer reportedly called the authorities’ actions a return to a police state and the persecution of opinions.
Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression.”
Khan has lived in Italy since 1995 and held a residency permit that was revoked by the Interior Ministry’s order.
Khan is not the first imam to be expelled from Italy due to his speech. In 2008, Tuirin imam Mohamed Kohaila was deported to his native Morocco for what authorities claimed was inciting “violently anti-Western behavior” after his sermons were secretly recorded. And in 2005, imam Bouriki Bouchta, also from Morocco, was expelled from Italy after he gained notoriety for saying that Osama bin Laden did not commit the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Danielle Smith celebrates two years as Alberta Premier – my letter to Premier Smith about her failures
By Dr. William Makis MD | COVID Intel | October 6, 2024

Alberta Health Services & the Colleges have murdered 10,000s of vulnerable Albertans and not one person has been held accountable by your govt.
AHS murdered over 2500 Cancer patients in Edmonton at Cross Cancer Institute and continues to do so daily, like 41 year old Steven Wong who was murdered by AHS on July 19, 2024 and was denied Cancer Care (and so many others whom I can name to the Police).
AHS murdered over 5818 COVID-19 patients, almost all of which were preventable deaths, AHS is still using Remdesivir (which was recalled in the US) and lethal hospital protocols & continues to kill vulnerable Albertans in the hospitals. Doctors who killed COVID patients like Edmonton ICU doctor Dr.Darren Markland, continue to do so with impunity and with no accountability.
No one in the AHS COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Group, led by AHS bureaucrats Lynora Saxinger, Braden Manns and your Public Health Chief Mark Joffe, which blocked all early treatments including Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Vitamin D, etc, that lead to 5818 COVID-19 deaths, was held accountable. Not one person was arrested or even criminally investigated. Not one person was fired. Dr.Saxinger continues to push mRNA jabs.
NDP MLA Dr.Luanne Metz murdered over 1600 COVID-19 patients by blocking Alberta’s largest Hydroxychloroquine Trial (on the basis of the Lancetgate fraudulent HCQ paper) and not only was she not held accountable, she laughs about it at the Alberta Legislature while calling for doctors who raise concerns about mRNA jabs to be CENSORED.
AHS & the Colleges have murdered over 10,000 Albertans who died as “excess deaths”, most of them being COVID-19 Vaccine Deaths. There are 4000-6000 unexplained deaths each year.
AHS continues to illegally block proper autopsies from being done (with staining for COVID-19 vaccine spike protein). Proper autopsies would have solved the mystery of the #1 cause of death in Alberta (COVID-19 Vaccines) which is killing 4000-6000 Albertans each year since 2021. You have taken no steps to address either the deaths or AHS’ cover up of these deaths.
AHS continues to push DNA contaminated COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines on children and pregnant women, despite the fact that you were informed 100s of children died from the mRNA injections and the jabs were never approved for use in pregnancy (we don’t know how many pregnant Alberta women have died after taking mRNA jabs, but AHS certainly does).
You had a chance to protect Alberta’s children from harms of contaminated mRNA injections after the “An Injection of Truth” Event on June 17, 2024 and chose to stay silent instead and not protect children.
In fact, the Alberta Minister of Health AdrianaLaGrange publicly lied about the event and came out in defense of pedophiles and child sex abusers (AHS Executives & College Presidents like Dr.Albert De Villiers & Dr.Fred Janke) who had been arrested by RCMP for sexually assaulting and trafficking children as young as 5 years old but were given their medical licenses back by the College during the pandemic. You didn’t fire Adriana LaGrange for this and she didn’t fire anyone on her staff for supporting sex crimes against children.
You haven’t restored a single doctor who was persecuted by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta during the pandemic. Doctors like Dr.Roger Hodgkinson, Dr.Daniel Nagase, Dr.Gary Davidson and myself continue to be illegally persecuted by College leaders Dr.Scott McLeod and Dr.Michael Caffaro whom Adriana Lagrange does photo-ops with.
You haven’t restored a single nurse who was persecuted by AHS and the College of Nurses, 100s of whom reached out to me with horror stories of persecution that should land AHS CEOs Verna Yiu, Mauro Chies and Athana Mentzelopoulos in prison for life.
You haven’t restored a single healthcare worker, 1000s of whom had to leave the medical profession after being bullied & abused by their AHS Managers.
You haven’t restored INFORMED CONSENT which was illegally destroyed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta who threatened 11,000 Alberta doctors into not informing Albertans about the risks of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines. You also didn’t hold College leaders Scott McLeod & Michael Caffaro responsible for this act of destruction of all medical ethics in Alberta. They continue to threaten doctors with impunity.
You haven’t dissolved the thoroughly corrupt and private Corporation that is the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, even though you had run on the promise to do so. In fact, now you say at Town Halls we need to have a corrupt College to continue persecuting good doctors, because who else will police them? This is unforgivable.
You haven’t dissolved the top 2-3 layers of corrupt Alberta Health Services Leadership that is run by NDP millionaire bureaucrats including Dr.Jennifer Bestard, Dr.Sid Viner, Sean Chilton, Dr.Peter Jamieson, Karen Horon, Michael Lam, Ronda White, Andrea Beckwith-Ferraton, Kerry Bales, all of whom are AHS Executives hired by Rachel Notley’s Government during 2015-2019 and who became millionaires pushing paper and mismanaging $26 billion AHS yearly budget.
You installed a corrupt NDP/Notley AHS Executive – Dr.Mark Joffe – as the Public Health Chief of Alberta. This is the AHS Executive who said “don’t walk, run to get your booster shot” in Dec.2021, when AHS & Deena Hinshaw were aware that 1000s of Albertas were dying or had damaged immune systems after their first 2 COVID-19 Vaccines and Deena Hinshaw deleted crucial government data showing mRNA Vaccine injury.
You allowed AHS to bury 1000s of reports of COVID-19 Vaccine injuries that were reported by Alberta doctors but rejected & covered up by AHS bureaucrats. You have not pushed for those reports to be made public or for any transparency in vaccine injury reporting at AHS.
You installed former Alberta Liberal Party leader Raj Sherman as Chair of the Health Quality Council of Alberta, who had fully expressed support for COVID-19 Vaccines and AHS’ corrupt leadership.
You allowed Tyler Shandro to be installed on the Board of Covenant Health, even though he was Health Minister who stayed silent when AHS CEO Verna Yiu implemented an illegal COVID-19 Vaccine mandate on Alberta’s 105,000 healthcare workers
You didn’t investigate AHS CEO Verna Yiu DrYiu_Verna who signed a deal with the World Economic Forum in 2020 and implemented an illegal vaccine mandate on Alberta’s 105,000 healthcare workers in Aug-Oct.2021 while violating medical privacy of AHS employees as AHS spied on their medical records to see if they were vaccinated. She was paid $700,000 at AHS, is now Vice President at UAlberta and was never investigated for her crimes.
There are now criminal charges pending against AHS CEO Athana Mentzelopoulous, AHS Board Chair Lyle Oberg, AHS CEO Mauro Chies and AHS CEO Verna Yiu for threats & extortion being inflicted on my family.
Criminal charges are also pending against College leaders Scott McLeod, Michael Caffaro and their lawyer Craig Boyer who have been repeatedly threatening me and my family at our home.
There are many more reasons than the above why you should not be proud of your last 2 years as Alberta Premier and I will continue to expose this and much more to millions of Albertans, Canadians and those around the world who are watching very closely.
The 10,000s of Alberta victims will not be silenced and everyone has to be held accountable for the crimes committed against Alberta’s most vulnerable citizens.
You have much work to do, Premier Smith, and time is running out.
I can only look at your last 2 years as an abysmal failure to do the right things, on the level of failures of former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.
Fearful of the Public, Western Leaders Turn to Censorship
By Ian DeMartino – Sputnik – 07.10.2024
On Saturday, former US First Lady Hillary Clinton called for increased federal regulation of the internet and repealing Section 230. “If the platforms… don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control,” she said, raising the question of who “we” represents in that statement.
From the recent purge of YouTube accounts, including those from Mark Sleboda, Rachel Blevins, Glenn Diesen, DD Geopolitics, Fiorella Isabel, Larry Johnson, and Eva K. Bartlett, it is clear that the Western leaders are scared of their populations finding out the truth about their policies and actions.
“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people,” Former US President John F. Kennedy.
“That’s what they’re afraid of,” Sleboda, an expert in geopolitical relations and a frequent guest on Sputnik Radio, told The Final Countdown. “They don’t trust you to hear an alternate view from the official US government narrative and come to what they consider the right political conclusions.”
Many Americans were taught that freedom was proof-positive that Western-style democracies were superior to other systems.
In separate interviews, Sleboda and Blevins both said that their channels were taken down without warning or strikes. Both were accused of violating YouTube’s policies on hate speech and said their appeals were denied within minutes.
“Just anyone who is critical of a US foreign policy, of hegemony, has had their YouTube channels deleted,” Sleboda contended.
While the censorship technically came from Alphabet, the mega-monolith tech company that owns both Google and YouTube, a comprehensive program between the US government and large social media companies has slowly been revealed over the past couple of years making the line one without distinction.
“My lawyer called that First Amendment censorship via proxy, or government censorship via proxy,” Political cartoonist and The Final Countdown co-host Ted Rall explained. “The US government has reached out to big tech companies, talked to people like [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and so on, and said, ‘we want you to control and squish what we call misinformation and disinformation.’”
With the internet practically ubiquitous in modern society, an expansion of the First Amendment to public and private sectors of the internet is needed to protect our speech rights.
“What does the First Amendment actually mean in today’s age when just about everyone is on social media or on the internet in some way, and it has become sort of the new public square?” asked Blevins, an independent journalist, and host of The Backstory on Radio Sputnik. “What are we okay with when it comes to the ongoing censorship? Because I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon.”
Even if the government were removed from the equation, and censorship came exclusively from the tech companies themselves they have become so powerful that acts of self-censorship would be indistinguishable from government-ordered censorship, especially during wartime.
In post-9/11 America, large media companies kept dissenting voices off the air, limiting the reach of those who, for example, opposed the war in Iraq.
“And you get that corporate mentality of what will the advertisers think?” legendary Gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson argued in an August 2002 interview with Media Report.
“A kind of we’re all in this together thinking.” The consolidation of the internet from disparate groups of message boards and newsgroups into a handful of omnipresent tech companies raises that specter again.
“As we saw this weekend, YouTube can come in and just delete your channel and take your life’s work away from you,” decried Blevin, noting that her channel was backed up on the free speech platform Rumble.
The majority of the deleted accounts offered views that opposed the NATO-led proxy war in Ukraine and/or Western support of Israel. As the war drums beat ever louder in Europe, the Middle East, and the South Pacific, not to mention the US Presidential election next month, the crackdown is likely to increase.
“They haven’t really thrown out the term election interference just yet, but I have a feeling that’s coming in some way,” warned Blevins.
“We’ll tell our grandchildren about the golden age of a global internet,” before censorship took it over, predicted Sleboda. “I think we’re going to see our internet fractured into either individual states’ internets or geopolitical block’s internets. And I think the process has already begun,” he warned.
Fact-Checking or Fact-Shielding? Twitter Files Journalist Slams PolitiFact’s Defense of Government Pressure on Big Tech
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | October 7, 2024
Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact, a Meta fact-checking partner, has decided that the Biden-Harris administration is not engaged in censorship at an industrial scale.
This claim made by vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is false, PolitiFact has asserted, because the Biden-Harris White House “contacting” (according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, they were contacted to be pressured) social media companies to flag content for removal “didn’t cross the line into coercion.”
Not only that but pressuring these companies (yet allegedly never coercing) to censor online speech is not a threat to democracy, PolitiFact was told by a Colombia professor – if the censors decide that speech is disinformation about Covid or election results.
The scale and nature of the way the US government leaned on tech companies to stifle speech that did not suit its political agenda is, to date, best revealed in the Twitter Files.
One of the journalists who worked on publishing the internal documents, Michael Shellenberger, now examined this PolitiFact “verdict” and the arguments the organization used. He rejects the notion that suppressing voters’ free speech is somehow “not a threat to democracy.”
Shellenberger was equally unimpressed by PolitiFact trying to explain its opinion regarding Vance’s claim by referring to the Supreme Court, which they said ruled it was not unconstitutional for the government to exert the kind of pressure it did.
“But the Court did not consider the US government’s pressure of Meta or many other cases of government demands for censorship,” Shellenberger writes and notes that the ruling (in the Murthy v Missouri case) was based on the judges deciding there were no legal grounds to bring the case.
To the question – as old as the rise of the fact-checking industry – why did a fact-checker (in this case, PolitiFact) get things wrong, the journalist suggests it’s more a case of “playing on the same team”.
PolitiFact, he writes, is “part and parcel of the Censorship Industrial Complex.”
Shellenberger goes into the many instances of those, either while they were in power, such as Hillary Clinton, or with a lot of power, like Bill Gates, openly advocating for censorship.
As for how the US government, despite the country’s constitution, became prone to stifling speech and manipulating public opinion at home, the answer could be the “lesson learned” from decades of doing the same abroad.
Namely, it works.
