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Assange Freed, but Supporters Say Guilty Plea a ‘Big Blow to Freedom of the Press’

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |June 25, 2024

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. government and was released on bail, leaving Belmarsh maximum security prison and the United Kingdom (U.K.) on Monday morning WikiLeaks announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.

His wife, Stella Assange, an attorney who has worked for years for his release, celebrated the deal on X.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks wrote. “This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.”

A federal judge must still approve the plea deal.

Assange is en route to appear Wednesday in a U.S. federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands near Australia. He is scheduled to return to Australia after the hearing.

In exchange for his release, Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in violation of the U.S. Espionage Act, The New York Times reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence, which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served at Belmarsh while he fought his extradition to the U.S. The deal would credit that period as time served, which would allow Assange to return home, according to CNN.

The deal would also disallow him from later making any claim that his long prison time in Belmarsh, where he was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, was unjust, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

U.S. authorities were pursuing Assange for publishing classified materials shared with him by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2010 and 2011. He faced 18 counts from a 2019 indictment for his alleged role in the breach that carried a maximum of up to 175 years in prison, CNN reported.

“US officials alleged that Assange goaded Manning into obtaining thousands of pages of unfiltered US diplomatic cables that potentially endangered confidential sources, Iraq war-related significant activity reports and information related to Guantanamo Bay detainees,” CNN wrote.

‘A very courageous human being,’ and ‘a generational hero’

Journalists, politicians, press freedom organizations and countless supporters celebrated Assange’s release, although they remained outraged over what they believed to be his unjustified detainment and that he was forced to plead guilty, despite having committed no crime.

Greenwald tweeted:

There’s so much to say about the Assange case, the outrage of his being detained for almost 15 years, being forced to plead guilty despite committing no crime.
But on a human and personal level, it’s beautiful to watch him leave prison a free man, and finally leave the UK.

Independent presidential candidate and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chairman on leave Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Assange had to take the deal to get out of the life-threatening conditions under which he was being held, “but the security state has imposed a horrifying precedent and dealt a big blow to freedom of the press.”

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois, told The Defender that Assange is “a very courageous human being,” who “has suffered enough. He stood up and he did the best he could.”

Boyle said that the plea deal required Assange to agree to a conviction under subsection G of the Espionage Act but also to concede that he had violated other subsections.

“In the future, the federal government can use this as a precedent to go after journalists” for violating those subsections of the act. “In my opinion, this is a loaded gun cocked at the heads of all journalists in the future.”

Boyle said the Espionage Act was never intended to apply to journalists engaged in their trade under the First Amendment and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

“Basically what the feds are doing here is using the Espionage Act to set up a de facto United Kingdom Official Secrets Act,” which makes it a crime for government employees in the U.K. to leak information deemed “damaging” to the government.

It means that any journalist in the future who publishes classified information or stories based on classified information could be prosecuted for violating one or more provisions of the Espionage Act, Boyle said — even though the First Amendment is meant to protect the press.

Press freedom group PEN America, which has long called for the U.S. to drop the charges against Assange, called on Congress today in a press release to reform the Espionage Act to protect press freedoms. It wrote:

“Congress should seize this opportunity to immediately reform the Espionage Act to include an exception for information disclosures that advance the public interest. This move would send a strong signal in defense of press freedom, strengthening protections for journalists in the United States and reducing the risk of the law being wielded for political purposes in the future.”

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 as a nonprofit media organization to hold governments and political leaders accountable by publishing large datasets of censored and restricted official materials on war, spying and corruption.

The organization gained international attention in 2010 when it released the “Collateral Murder” video, showing classified raw footage shot from a U.S. Army Apache helicopter depicting the killing of over a dozen people in Iraq — including two Reuters reporters — along with other videos and documents leaked by Manning.

The organization also published other documents related to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The revelations became major global stories and led to intense scrutiny of American involvement in foreign conflicts.

Initially embraced by mainstream media organizations like The Guardian and the Times, Assange later became the target of critics in the mainstream, including those very outlets, Matt Taibbi reported on Substack. They alleged that WikiLeaks compromised national security by publishing classified material, tried to implicate him in Russiagate and said he wasn’t a journalist.

Assange spent almost 15 years in various forms of detention. In 2012, facing sex-related allegations from Swedish prosecutors — which were subsequently dropped in 2019 — Assange said he was willing to travel to Sweden for questioning. However, Swedish authorities wouldn’t guarantee that if he appeared for questioning he wouldn’t be extradited to the U.S.

He sought and was granted asylum by the Ecuadorian government and took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy from 2012-2018, where he stayed in a two-bedroom apartment with no outdoor space and the CIA spied on him.

In 2019, under pressure from the U.S. government, Ecuador ended Assange’s asylum.

The British police arrested him and put him in Belmarsh prison, which the BBC has called “Britain’s Guantanamo.” He has spent the last nearly six years fighting extradition to the U.S., where he was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 by allegedly committing conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defense information, following the massive WikiLeaks disclosure in 2010.

Brenda Baletti, Ph.D., is a senior reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

June 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Journalism under fire: Jailed for exposing Jordan

The Cradle | June 24, 2024

In Jordan, failing at self-censorship can land you in jail. Literally.

Freelance journalist Hiba Abu Taha, a passionate pro-resistance Jordanian of Palestinian origin, refused to self-censor. On 11 June, the Magistrate Court in Amman sentenced her to a harsh one-year prison term for violating the kingdom’s controversial Cybercrimes Law introduced last year.

This was due to an article she wrote for Lebanese news site, Annasher, criticizing “Jordan’s role in defending the enemy entity.” The article was published on 22 April, eight days after Jordanian, US, British, and French aircraft intercepted Iranian drones and rockets over Jordanian airspace heading towards Israeli targets.

However, Abu Taha was arrested on 13 May after Annasher published her investigative report on 28 April titled “Partners in extermination: Jordanian capital owners involved in Gaza genocide.” The timing of her arrest gave the impression that she was detained for exposing Jordanian companies transporting exports to Israel – a land corridor that government officials went out of their way to publicly deny amid growing popular outrage at Amman’s continued ties with Tel Aviv while it commits the Gaza genocide.

It is widely believed that her nearly 2,000-word investigative report, supported by a 15-minute video of evidence she gathered undercover, was the real reason for the journalist’s indictment.

Exposing government deception on Israeli trade routes

In her report, Abu Taha accused Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh and other officials of concealing the use of Jordan as a land route for UAE and Bahraini exports via Saudi Arabia to Israel to break the Yemeni Ansarallah blockade in the Red and Arabian Seas.

She cites transport and clearance company employees in Amman and Aqaba about their services to transport goods through the northern Sheikh Hussein Bridge or the southern Wadi Araba crossing. She went on to expose the names of the Jordanian companies and their influential owners, who have shown no qualms about doing business as usual with the occupation state as it commits unprecedented war crimes in both Gaza and the West Bank.

Abu Taha also identifies influential company owners acting as agents for Israeli or Israel-bound shipping companies. Resorting to official documents, she writes that Jordanian exports to Israel increased from $123 million in 2022 to $143 million in 2023, with a record monthly high of $17 million in December 2023, a month after Yemen began targeting Israeli-owned and Israel-bound cargo ships.

She notes that despite court evidence “recognizing the existence of the land bridge” as well as video footage and pictures of the movement of trucks at the Sheikh Hussein border crossing, Khasawneh insisted that:

The land bridge is a figment of imagination with no truth on the ground … The number of trucks entering and leaving Jordan for the entity has decreased, and what is being raised is nothing but self-flagellation.

Abu Taha details her exchange with government spokesman Muhannad Mubaidin, who fires back at “those accusing Jordan” of providing a land bridge for Israel as “shameful.”

She writes that he “initially tried to deny the government’s role” in this regard and “even tried to point the finger at West Bank merchants as deceiving their colleagues in Jordan by telling them that the exports are for the Arabs.”

When confronted with the facts she found, Mubaidin immediately referred to the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty with Israel and stressed that the government would not ban trade with the Zionist state because “such a decision is a populist one that appeases a certain party or faction.”

Meanwhile, Trade Ministry Spokesman Yanal Barmawi told Abu Taha that he was unaware of the “export issue” and that “the private sector would know.” She writes that official denials and blaming the private sector, which cannot operate without government approval, “confirms that the authorities are trying to contain the Jordanian street.”

Opinion prosecution

Despite the rigor of her investigative report, Abu Taha was prosecuted for her 22 April opinion piece. Nidal Mansour, co-founder of the Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists (CDFJ), noted that Abu Taha was convicted under the restrictive Cybercrimes Law, which was enacted shortly before 7 October 2023.

The Media Commission, a government-controlled regulatory body, filed a complaint against her, accusing her of “inciting sedition and discord among members of the community,” “threatening community peace,” “inciting violence,” and “spreading false news” through electronic media.

Abu Taha’s article accused Jordan of “treason,” among other derogatory terms, for intercepting Iran’s retaliatory strikes against Israel and giving the US, British, and French military forces a free hand in the country to defend the occupation state.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) quotes Media Commissioner Bashir al-Momani as saying that Abu Taha’s article contained “serious insults against Jordanian state institutions, incitement to the state’s positions, and stirring up discord among the components of the people,” which he added “necessitated her prosecution.”

According to a CDFJ statement, Abu Taha was convicted under Articles 15 and 17 of the 40-article Cybercrime Law of August 2023. Article 15 stipulates:

Whoever intentionally sends, resends, or publishes data or information through an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platforms that includes fake news targeting the national security and community peace, or defames, slanders, or contempt [sic] any person shall be imprisoned for a period of not less than three months or a fine of not less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.

Article 15 also gives the prosecutor the right to take legal action “without the need to file a complaint or claim a personal right if it is directed at one of the authorities in the state, official bodies, or public administrations,” which means that Abu Taha could have still been punished even if the Media Commission had not filed a complaint.

The court also invoked Article 17 to hand her a one-year sentence. It states that:

Whoever intentionally uses an information network, information technology, information system, website, or social media platform to spread what is likely to stir up racism or sedition, targets social peace, incites hatred, calls for or justifies violence, or insults religions, shall be punished by imprisonment from one to three years or a fine of no less than 5,000 dinars and no more than 20,000 dinars, or both penalties.

Draconian laws and legal challenges

Abu Taha’s opinion piece in Annasher undoubtedly lacked the self-censorship that Amman has successfully induced by imposing a series of restrictive press and media laws over the decades.

Mansour tells The Cradle that the press and publication laws have become more draconian with the evolution of information technology, beginning with restrictive laws on the independent weekly press back in the 1990s, to online news sites in the early 2000s, and social media with the most recent “fluid” Cybercrime Law that could effectively stifle any form of free speech on these platforms.

He notes that Abu Taha’s lawyer, Rami Odatallah, appointed by the leftist Jordanian Popular Unity Party (an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), is more experienced in defending political activists than journalists.

Abu Taha is not a member of the political party. Still, it stood by her ordeal and denounced her arrest and sentencing, demanding her release and other activists that had been “harassed and arrested” for supporting the resistance against Israel online or on the street.

Mansour reveals that the CDFJ plans to hire a lawyer specialized in the Cybercrime Law to appeal her sentence, which his organization described as “deeply concerning” and called for “abolishing imprisonment in cases related to publication and freedom of expression in accordance with international human rights standards.”

Abu Taha’s arrest and sentencing drew attention to Jordan’s crackdown on both journalists and rightfully enraged activists by using the Cybercrime Law. … Full article

June 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel targets US public with massive propaganda campaign: Report

The Cradle | June 24, 2024

Israel is covertly funding a massive propaganda campaign to target the US public, including through the passage of legislation to restrict US citizens’ right to free speech when criticizing Israel and its ongoing war on Gaza, The Guardian reported on 24 June.

The UK newspaper reported that there are 80 programs already underway as part of the massive propaganda campaign known as the “Voices of Israel.”

The program is funded and run by the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, led by MK Amichai Chikli.

The program was designed to carry out what Israel calls “mass consciousness activities” targeting the US and European public.

Voices of Israel is part of the “latest incarnation” of a “sometimes covert operation” by the Israeli ministry to censor students, human rights organizations, and other critics of Israel.

Known previously as “Concert” and before that, “Kela Shlomo,” the campaign previously spearheaded efforts to pass so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that penalize Americans for engaging in boycotts or other non-violent protests of Israel.

Voices of Israel works through non-profits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, the campaign spent about $8.6 million to target US citizens with pro-Israel propaganda.

The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) is one such organization receiving funding through the Israeli program.

The ISGP cited its success during congressional hearings in which Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard University, was grilled for allowing pro-Palestinian protests on campus.

Congresswoman Elise Stefanik confronted Gay during the hearing, accusing her of fostering antisemitism at Harvard. The confrontation was widely viewed on social media.

Gay, the prestigious university’s first African-American president, soon resigned amid the resulting negative media coverage. She was replaced as interim president by Jewish-American professor and Harvard provost Alan Garber.

The Guardian reported further that the ISGAP touted its “congressional public relations coup” at a 7 April Palm Beach Country Club event.

“All these hearings were the result of our report that all these universities, beginning from Harvard, are taking a lot of money from Qatar,” bragged Natan Sharansky, the ISGAP chair. Sharansky, a former minister of Diaspora Affairs, told the assembled supporters that 1 billion people had viewed Congresswoman Stefanik’s aggressive questioning of Harvard president Gay.

The ISGAP has also been deeply involved in the campaign to limit US citizens’ Second Amendment right to free speech by passing laws at the state and local levels that redefine antisemitism to include certain criticisms of Israel, The Guardian added.

The ISGAP lobbies governments to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which equates criticism of Israel as a ‘racist endeavor’ and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

“We shifted the focus to work at the local level,” said Brig Gen Sima Vaknin-Gill, a former intelligence officer now managing director of the ISGAP.

“We’ve found that mayors and states – it’s much easier to work with them and actually make the definition into something real.”

Another US group tied to Voices of Israel and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs campaign is CyberWell, a pro-Israel “anti-disinformation” group led by former Israeli military intelligence and Voices officials. CyberWell established itself as an official “trusted partner” to TikTok and Meta, allowing it to help screen and edit content.

A recent CyberWell report called for Meta to suppress the popular slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

The Guardian notes, “One struggles to find a parallel in terms of a foreign country’s influence over American political debate.”

US-based organizations producing propaganda or lobbying to influence US citizens are required by law to register as foreign agents.

However, none of the groups identified in The Guardian’s report have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

“There’s a built-in assumption that there’s nothing at all weird about viewing the US as sort of an open field for Israel to operate in, that there are no limitations,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

June 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

Former PM says Ukraine has no opposition: ‘They are in prison or abroad’

By Ahmed Adel | June 25, 2024

Currently, in Ukraine, there is no opposition and politicians challenging Volodymyr Zelensky as they are either in prison or abroad, according to the country’s former prime minister, Mykola Azarov. He also highlighted that Kiev would be forced to accept any agreement between Russia and the United States.

“There is no opposition in Ukraine now. [Pyotr] Poroshenko or [Yulia] Tymoshenko are not opposition. Their policy was no different from the current policy of the Kiev regime. The real opposition was eliminated. Some were killed, others are in prison, and some were forced to go abroad,” Azarov said in an interview with the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty published on June 24.

According to the former prime minister, the left-wing parties and opposition forces in Ukraine now do not exist.

“In addition, trade unions are absent, and there is strong persecution of the Church. The current conflict is often presented as a confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, but this is not true,” he added.

Azarov also mentioned that some people want to oppose Zelensky in Ukraine but do not speak out.

Zelensky was elected in 2019, and his first term was supposed to have ended in May. However, the regime introduced a new martial law, saying no election could be held during the war. The Ukrainian president is consolidating his power and has even purged political opponents.

It is recalled that the former head of Ukraine’s armed forces, Valeriy Zaluzhny, was appointed as the country’s ambassador to the UK only a few months ago after being touted as a potential rival to Zelensky. After being removed from Ukraine, Zaluzhny has now stayed quiet on the political front. The case of the former general is just one of many examples of individuals purged in Ukraine if they threatened Zelensky’s power.

The Ukrainian president has also jailed his political rivals, even Petro Poroshenko, shut down independent media outlets, such as ZIK, NewsOne and 112 Ukraine, and used the SBU state security agency to go after his critics, like Gonzalo Lira.

Azarov also stated that the US understands that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war, and Washington can start an informal dialogue with Moscow on this issue and influence Kiev.

“On the other side [USA], there are still some sensible ideas that the world cannot be subjected to the risk of a nuclear war. There are hopes that an informal dialogue could emerge that would result in some kind of concrete agreement,” he said.

According to the former prime minister, Zelensky’s regime will have to comply with this agreement between Moscow and Washington.

“There is no way around this. The Americans have one hundred percent influence over the current leadership of Ukraine. Just stop providing funding and weapons, and the regime will literally fall and physically disintegrate. The regime cannot exist without money when salaries are not paid to soldiers and the security service,” Azarov explained.

His comments on the nuclear issue come following a Ukrainian attack on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on June 21.

“As a result of the attack by the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Raduga substation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, work on the infrastructure facilities was interrupted,” the press service of the nuclear plant published on its Telegram channel.

Compounding the nuclear issue, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on the same day as the attack the intentions to modernise the nuclear triad, the three components of the country’s atomic arsenal, by adding the nuclear-capable Sarmat (RS-28) intercontinental ballistic missiles, with a range of 18,000 kilometres, to its arsenal.

“We plan to continue improving the nuclear triad as a guarantee of strategic deterrence,” Putin said, adding that the advances in the land, air and naval components of the nuclear forces guarantee balance in the world.

“Taking into account the difficult international situation, the emergence of new challenges and risks, we will continue to improve our Armed Forces,” he said.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on June 24, citing Putin’s statement, told a briefing that “work is underway to bring the doctrine in line with current realities.”

This was the inevitable course of action after the US allowed the Kiev regime to use American-made weapons to strike inside Russian territory. Besides the attack on the nuclear power plant, there was also the brutal attack with ATACMS missiles on civilian infrastructure in Crimea that left four people dead and 153 seeking medical help on June 23.

The Kremlin previously vowed to respond to any Ukrainian attacks with US-made weapons, and Azarov’s assessment that Kiev may be forced to accept any agreement made between Moscow and Washington could eventuate if the Americans feel that the situation is escalating in a way that cannot be controlled. Meanwhile, despite the escalation, the US will continue to hypocritically overlook that Zelensky is heading a regime that has subverted democracy and human rights whilst lying that liberalism and Western values are being defended in Ukraine.

Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

June 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , | 1 Comment

Rep. Thomas Massie on the Israel Lobby, foreign agents

If Americans Knew | June 18, 2024

Journalist Tucker Carlson interviewed Republican Congressman from Kentucky Thomas Massie on June 7, 2024. During the interview Massey went into detail about how the Israel lobby bullies US politicians and co-opts evangelicals into getting billions of US tax dollars for Israel. Massie attended MIT where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering. Before entering Congress, Massie was a successful businessman who holds 29 patents. (See https://massie.house.gov/about/)

This video excerpts Massie’s statements about the Israel lobby from the full Carlson interview, “Rep. Thomas Massie: Israel Lobbyists, the Cowards in Congress, and Living off the Grid”. This can be viewed at https://tuckercarlson.com/tucker-show…

Congress has given $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel in 2024 (https://www.cfr.org/article/us-aid-is…)

For info on the new definition of “antisemitism” see https://israelpalestinenews.org/iak-i…

More videos about the lobby: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list…

Articles: https://israelpalestinenews.org/lobby/ and https://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/i…

June 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | 4 Comments

EU accuses Telegram of hiding its reach

European Commission vice-president for values and transparency Vera Jourova, March 14, 2024. © Getty Images / SOPA Images / Contributor
RT | June 24, 2024

Telegram underreports its user numbers to avoid being targeted by EU regulators, the vice-president of the bloc’s Commission for Values and Transparency, Vera Jourova, has alleged. She also accused Moscow of using the platform to spread “disinformation” among Russian-speaking EU residents, claiming that the Baltic nations, Poland, and Bulgaria are among the most exposed.

“I don’t trust Telegram, I don’t think they only have 42 million users,” Jourova said in an interview with Suddeutsche Zeitung on Sunday. She added that the European Commission is convinced that Telegram’s audience amounts to more than 45 million people – the threshold for regulatory control.

The commission is currently examining whether it should investigate the platform, Jourova revealed.

Last month, Bloomberg cited anonymous sources as saying that EU lawmakers were considering listing Telegram, founded by Russian-born entrepreneur Pavel Durov less than ten years ago, as a “very large online platform.” The move would open the privacy-focused messaging app up to strict censorship regulation.

As of February 2024, Telegram had an estimated average of 41 million monthly active EU users over the preceding six months. The figure is lower than the threshold required for social media platform to be subject to more specific obligations under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). The regulation requires companies located outside the bloc to have legal representation in one of its member states.

The DSA, which came into force in February, allows the bloc’s regulators to fine platforms as much as 6% of their global annual turnover if they are found to have broken its rules. The regulation also provides the EU watchdog with the right to ban repeat offenders from operating in the bloc.

According to Durov, Telegram respects the rights of its users to privacy and freedom of expression. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this year, Durov said he had rejected requests from Washington to share user data with US authorities or to build so-called surveillance “backdoors” into the platform.

Brussels has already launched investigations into X (formerly Twitter) over alleged breaches of EU rules in areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency, and data access for researchers. Similar probes have been opened in relation to TikTok and Meta, the latter of which is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

June 24, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Max Blumenthal: ‘TARGETED FOR EXPOSING ISRAEL’S LIES’- The Washington Post Attacks The Grayzone

Afshin Rattansi’s Going Underground | June 21, 2024

June 24, 2024 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hey, Jim Jordan: Ask Fauci Who His Bosses Were!

To get to the bottom of Covid censorship, we must understand who was in charge of the global pandemic response.

llustration by Anthony Freda
By Debbie Lerman | June 13, 2024

As recently reported by Reclaim the Net, Anthony Fauci is being called to testify by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan for his “alleged role in the Biden White House’s censorship initiatives.”

Right away a glaring issue emerges: The censorship of dissenting COVID narratives started all the way back in late January-early February 2020, with Fauci implicated in the censorship as early as February 2, 2020. The Committee tacitly acknowledges this by requesting documents dating back to 2019, even as it frames the inquiry politically as a “Biden Administration censorship” problem.

In fact, the entire disastrous, unscientific lockdown-until-vaccine pandemic response was initiated and insidiously perpetrated by the Task Force, which was housed in the Trump White House, in the Office of the Vice President (OVP).

The group responsible for pandemic policy within the Task Force was not HHS or NIAID, where Fauci worked, or any other public health agency. It was the National Security Council (NSC).

All communications about Covid had to go through OVP/NSC.

We know from the Twitter files and subsequent investigations that the Intelligence Community (FBI, CIA, DHS, CISA) was heavily involved in censoring Americans on many issues, starting at least as far back as 2016. Foreign military/intelligence agencies of allied countries collaborated on censoring the U.S. population.

So if anyone is truly interested in who initiated and enforced censorship of dissenting Covid voices, they should ask the following questions of Fauci under oath:

Who was responsible for the US government’s Covid response policy, including censorship of dissenting views?

We know from official government documents that Covid pandemic policy was set by the National Security Council (NSC), NOT the public health agencies. But who exactly on the NSC was in charge? Who wrote the policy?

  • Dr. Fauci: Did you participate in crafting the pandemic response policy with the National Security Council, including censorship of dissenting views?

Why were Covid meetings classified?

On March 11, 2020 Reuters reported that “The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified.” Reuters sources said “the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification.”

Furthermore, government officials said “dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January.”

  • Dr. Fauci: Why were the Covid response meetings classified? Were you present in those meetings? Were censorship plans discussed in those meetings?

Who was in charge of government communications about Covid?

According to the US Government’s COVID-19 Response Plan, starting on February 28, 2020 “all federal communication and messaging” about the pandemic had to go through the Office of the Vice President, which housed the Task Force, which was led by the National Security Council.

  • Dr. Fauci: In your role on the Task force, were you in charge of crafting the communications about the pandemic? If not, who on the Task Force was in charge of messaging?
  • Were you in charge of efforts to censor messaging that questioned or contradicted Task Force/NSC policy?
  • If not, who was in charge of designing and enforcing the censorship efforts on behalf of the Task Force/NSC?

Why was the CDC forbidden from communicating about the pandemic?

Although it was supposed to play a leadership role in pandemic communications, starting on February 28, 2020 the CDC was actually “not permitted to conduct public briefings,” according to a Senate report.

It sounds like the agency that was supposed to be in charge of communicating with the public about the pandemic was itself being CENSORED by the Task Force/NSC.

  • Dr. Fauci, who forbade the CDC from conducting public briefings about the pandemic?
  • Why were CDC communications with the public completely shut down?
  • Was this part of the overall efforts by the Task Force/NSC to censor any messaging that contradicted their policy?

Why was the intelligence community so heavily involved in Covid censorship?

Many deeply and carefully investigated reports show extensive involvement of military/intelligence agencies and personnel in Covid censorship efforts.

Here are just a few examples:

How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate, by David Zweig

Pentagon Was Involved in Domestic Censorship Scheme, by Alex Gutentag

The Virality Project Was a Government Front to Coordinate Censorship, by Andrew Lowenthal and Alex Gutentag

  • Dr. Fauci, were you coordinating with the FBI, CIA, DHS, CISA or any other intelligence entity to censor messaging that questioned or contradicted Task Force/NSC policy?
  • Why were intelligence agencies involved in censoring Covid messaging?

Were international NGOs and the WHO involved in censorship of American citizens?

Here’s one of the earliest known instances of Covid censorship from all the way back in February 2020, in which the following international cast participated:

As reported by US Right To Know :

on Sunday, February 2, 2020 at 11:28am

Farrar flagged a ZeroHedge article [now archived] in an email to Fauci and Collins, raising the possibility of virus=bioweapon. In the email, he mentioned that the WHO leaders were in the process of making an important decision. He said they might “prevaricate” which means “avoid telling the truth.”

Regardless of whether they prevaricated or not, just two and a half hours later, at approximately 1:57pm ZeroHedge was suspended on Twitter.

  • Dr. Fauci, was your correspondence with Farrar, involving the leaders of the World Health Organization, in any way related to the suspension of ZeroHedge on Twitter?
  • If so, which of you was responsible for conveying the message to Twitter about the suspension?
  • Were international organizations like the WHO, and NGOs including the Wellcome Trust, involved in Covid censorship activities in coordination with U.S. officials/agencies?
  • Were you involved in any international Covid censorship activities?

June 23, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | 1 Comment

Google is Criticized As it Suspends Reform UK Ads During Election Campaign

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 22, 2024

Google has suspended the advertising account of Reform UK, a political party in the United Kingdom, formerly known as the Brexit Party. Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, took to Twitter to express his outrage, labeling the move as “election interference.”

Google’s suspension comes at the height of the election campaign with, less than two weeks to go until the country goes to a vote on July 4th.

In his tweet, Farage stated: “🚨 ELECTION INTERFERENCE ALERT 🚨 Big Tech giant @Google has BLOCKED our Ad Accounts. They are trying to stop the Reform message.” He also called on Matt Brittin, President of Google Europe, Middle East, and Africa, to address the issue urgently, indicating the party’s demand for immediate action.

This incident raises significant concerns about the role of Big Tech companies in political processes, particularly in the context of advertising and free speech, and during a campaign season where time is of the essence.

While Google has not yet publicly responded to Farage’s allegations or provided a detailed explanation for the suspension, such actions are typically justified by violations of the company’s advertising policies.

Reform UK, which has positioned itself as a critic of the establishment and advocate for major reforms in British politics, relies heavily on digital platforms to disseminate its message.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Columbia University students’ charges dropped after pro-Palestine protest arrests

MEMO | June 22, 2024

New York Criminal Court Judge Kevin McGrath decided to dismiss the cases filed against 30 people arrested during pro-Palestine protests in Hamilton Hall at Columbia University.

According to the Guardian: “Stephen Millan, a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, told the court on Thursday his office would not prosecute 30 protesters who were Columbia students at the time of the arrest, nor two who were Columbia employees, citing prosecutorial discretion and lack of evidence.”

The prosecutor added that no police officers were harmed during the arrests.

Judge McGrath confirmed that the cases filed against 30 detained protesters and university employees had been dropped.

On 18 April, 2024, students and academics who condemn the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip began a sit-in on the campus of Columbia University in New York, demanding that its administration stop its academic cooperation with Israeli universities and withdraw its investments from companies supporting the occupation of Palestinian territories.

After the intervention of the police and the arrest of dozens of protesters, the protests expanded to other universities and spread to countries such as France, the UK, Germany, Canada and India, all of which witnessed demonstrations in support of their American counterparts and demands to stop the Gaza war and boycott companies that supply weapons to Israel.

June 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

EU’s Mass Surveillance Faces Fierce Resistance

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | June 21, 2024

The European Union (EU) has managed to unite politicians, app makers, privacy advocates, and whistleblowers in opposition to the bloc’s proposed encryption-breaking new rules, known as “chat control” (officially, CSAM (child sexual abuse material) Regulation).

Thursday was slated as the day for member countries’ governments, via their EU Council ambassadors, to vote on the bill that mandates automated searches of private communications on the part of platforms, and “forced opt-ins” from users.

However, reports on Thursday afternoon quoted unnamed EU officials as saying that “the required qualified majority would just not be met” – and that the vote was therefore canceled.

This comes after several countries, including Germany, signaled they would either oppose or abstain during the vote. The gist of the opposition to the bill long in the making is that it seeks to undermine end-to-end encryption to allow the EU to carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of all users.

The justification here is that such drastic new measures are necessary to detect and remove CSAM from the internet – but this argument is rejected by opponents as a smokescreen for finally breaking encryption, and exposing citizens in the EU to unprecedented surveillance while stripping them of the vital technology guaranteeing online safety.

Some squarely security and privacy-focused apps like Signal and Threema said ahead of the vote that was expected today they would withdraw from the EU market if they had to include client-side scanning, i.e., automated monitoring.

WhatsApp hasn’t gone quite so far (yet) but Will Cathcart, who heads the app over at Meta, didn’t mince his words in a post on X when he wrote that what the EU is proposing – breaks encryption.

“It’s surveillance and it’s a dangerous path to go down,” Cathcart posted.

European Parliament (EP) member Patrick Breyer, who has been a vocal critic of the proposed rules, and also involved in negotiating them on behalf of the EP, on Wednesday issued a statement warning Europeans that if “chat control” is adopted – they would lose access to common secure messengers.

“Do you really want Europe to become the world leader in bugging our smartphones and requiring blanket surveillance of the chats of millions of law-abiding Europeans? The European Parliament is convinced that this Orwellian approach will betray children and victims by inevitably failing in court,” he stated.

“We call for truly effective child protection by mandating security by design, proactive crawling to clean the web, and removal of illegal content,  none of which is contained in the Belgium proposal governments will vote on tomorrow (Thursday),” Breyer added.

And who better to assess the danger of online surveillance than the man who revealed its extraordinary scale, Edward Snowden?

“EU apparatchiks aim to sneak a terrifying mass surveillance measure into law despite UNIVERSAL public opposition (no thinking person wants this) by INVENTING A NEW WORD for it – ‘upload moderation’ – and hoping no one learns what it means until it’s too late. Stop them, Europe!,” Snowden wrote on X.

It appears that, at least for the moment, Europe has.

June 21, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Feminist Accuses UK Police of “Harassment” Over Tweet Investigation

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 20, 2024

Maya Forstater, a feminist activist and head of the charity Sex Matters, has been targeted following a tweet she posted about Dr. Kamilla Kamaruddin, a transgender doctor. Forstater is currently under police investigation for what the Metropolitan Police has termed “malicious communication.” The tweet in question, posted on the social media platform X in June last year, criticized Dr. Kamaruddin for the manner of conducting intimate examinations, which Forstater claimed the doctor enjoyed doing without patients’ consent.

This investigation stems from Forstater’s response to a blog post by Dr. Kamaruddin, a former GP who became a transgender woman. Dr. Kamaruddin noted that patients allowed more latitude for intimate examinations compared to before Kamaruddin transitioned. Forstater’s tweet linked back to an earlier blog post where she had questioned the legitimacy of consent given by Dr. Kamaruddin’s patients.

The legal ramifications for the alleged offense could be severe, with potential imprisonment of up to two years. Forstater, who had previously won an employment tribunal case affirming her right to express gender-critical views without facing job discrimination, expressed her distress over the ongoing investigation.

In an interview with The Times, she disclosed receiving an email from the police in August, notifying her of the investigation but omitting the reasons. She was later interviewed under caution at Charing Cross police station.

During the interview, Forstater was questioned about the potentially “transphobic” nature of her tweet.

She defended her position, asserting, “My tweet isn’t even something that would get deleted by Twitter.” She described the experience as a form of “bullying and harassment” due to her beliefs and mentioned the possibility of legal action against the police for their handling of the case.

As of ten months after the initial contact from the police, Forstater’s situation remains unresolved despite her lawyer’s efforts to challenge the grounds of the investigation.

She lamented, “Despite my solicitor following up with written representations giving chapter and verse on the law, arguing that the investigation is unjustified and pressing for resolution, I remain under investigation.”

June 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

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