Ukrainian MP placed on state-backed ‘kill list’
RT | July 16, 2024
Notorious Ukrainian website Mirotvorets has blacklisted MP Mariana Bezuglaya for repeatedly targeting the country’s senior military officials.
The database was created to collect and track personal data on people whom anonymous moderators consider enemies of Ukraine. Some of the individuals have been killed after being doxxed by the website.
Bezuglaya, who is a member of Vladimir Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, was added to the “kill list” on Monday along with a list of accusations against her. These included “interference with the lawful activities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” “discreditation and demoralization” of the army, and working to cause a “split” in Ukrainian society.
Mirotvorets also claimed that the MP had leaked state secrets that Russia could use to its benefit. The website added that Bezuglaya had deliberately projected an image of an “irredeemably stupid f**king fool” as part of her subversive ploy.
Days earlier, the MP, who sits on the National Security, Defense and Intelligence committees, accused Ukraine’s top general, Aleksandr Syrsky, of mismanaging the army. The lawmaker claimed that the senior military official wanted to capitulate to Russia and prevent more competent officers from stopping that.
Bezuglaya has a record of verbally attacking Ukrainian generals, including Syrsky’s predecessor, Valery Zaluzhny. Zelensky fired the top commander in February, after he publicly acknowledged that attempts to push Russian forces back had resulted in a “stalemate,” contradicting the Ukrainian leader.
Following her allegations, Bezuglaya was stripped of her role as the head of a parliamentary subcommittee, but remains the deputy chair of the security committee. She has described the development as irrelevant and an attempt to punish her for “telling the truth.” Her inclusion on Mirotvorets was part of the same pressure campaign, she claimed.
The controversial online project was launched in 2014 and is strongly associated with Anton Gerashchenko, a former Ukrainian MP and adviser to the Interior Ministry. The database features a number of prominent journalists and other public figures, including citizens of Western nations, as well as many ordinary people.
Colombia Professor Faces Firing After Pro-Israel Social Media Pile-On
By John Miles – Sputnik – 14.07.2024
Pro-Israel lawmakers and Zionist accounts on social media caused a firestorm after law professor Katherine Franke questioned the conduct of ex-IDF members on Columbia’s New York City campus.
A tenured professor at New York’s Columbia University faces firing after a pro-Israel online campaign criticizing comments the academic made on behalf of pro-Palestine demonstrators at the Ivy League school.
“There’s a very good chance that they will fire me,” said law professor Katherine Franke after being subjected to questioning she characterized as hostile as a part of Columbia’s investigation into the incident.
The controversy stems from an interview Franke granted to Democracy Now! on January 25. The professor sharply criticized Columbia’s response to an incident in which pro-Palestine protesters were sprayed with an unknown chemical substance by two alleged veterans of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
University administrators initially blamed the students for conducting an “unsanctioned” protest before finally banning the perpetrators from campus while police conducted an investigation of the incident.
“Columbia has a program, It’s a graduate relationship with older students from other countries, including Israel,” Franke noted on the radio program. “It’s something that many of us were concerned about because so many of those Israeli students who then come to the Columbia campus are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus, and it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past.”
“The university waited three or four days to actually even say anything about it,” she added. “They have not reached out to the students who were sick… some of whom are still in the hospital.”
The comment was subsequently mischaracterized by pro-Israel accounts on social media, who alleged that Franke advocated banning Israeli citizens from the Columbia campus.
“This @Columbia professor has a problem with former IDF soldiers being on campus,” read one post typical of the outrage, shared by Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai, who identifies on the X platform as “Jewish Israeli” and “Zionist.”
“She doesn’t have a problem with ex-soldiers from any other place,” he complained. “Her only problem is with Israelis. @ProfKFranke – I served in the IDF. Do you think I also shouldn’t be allowed on campus?”
Davidai publicly criticized a wave of pro-Palestine protest on US college campuses earlier this year, calling the students “Nazis” and “terrorists” and calling for the National Guard to be deployed to break up the demonstrations. The demand implies a deadly threat against protesters in the United States, where National Guard troops shot and killed several antiwar demonstrators at Ohio’s Kent State University in 1970.
The business professor’s comments have been shared by official Israeli government accounts online as the country has invested significant effort in defending its cause on social media. It emerged last month that Israel has set up fake accounts online to lobby US lawmakers to continue supporting its military operation in the besieged Gaza Strip, which a study recently claimed could kill as many as 186,000. In 2013 it was revealed the country pays students to defend it on Facebook and Twitter.
Columbia administration released a statement defending Israeli students in response to the firestorm, which was championed by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The following month Franke was informed a complaint had been lodged against her by two Columbia law professors for “discrimination,” and in April Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik called for disciplinary action against her during a House hearing with controversial Columbia University President Minouche Shafik.
A number of college professors and other faculty have been fired or faced disciplinary action in the United States for expressing pro-Palestine sentiments. Dr. Ameer Loggins is filing a defamation suit against California’s Stanford University after being fired for giving a lecture that discussed Israel in the context of historical acts of settler colonialism.
“What’s of greatest concern is not really my 20-year-plus career at Columbia, but what this says about peaceful protest on our campuses around the lives and dignity of Palestinians,” Franke said about the investigation into her comments, which remains ongoing. “What’s happening to me is happening to our students, it’s happened to people on many other campuses.” … Full article
Supporting Israel Is Big Business in the United States
Government and elite institutions work together to protect and empower the Jewish state
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JULY 12, 2024
In a recent article discussing how US Treasury Department tax breaks are exploited by groups that raise money in America in support of the Israeli so-called Defense Forces (IDF), I concluded that it does not require any particular brilliance on the part of even a casual observer to realize that both politically and economically Israel and Israelis are not treated like everyone else by governments at various levels in the United States, quite the contrary in many cases. Nevertheless, some key questions must be asked even at risk of being repetitive about Israel’s clearly privileged status. One must consider how is it possible that organizations that are committed to financially supporting war crimes and even genocide by a foreign nation are allowed to have tax breaks that enable them to collect more money which in turn helps them to corrupt the system that feeds them while also empowering those foreign militaries? How is it possible that the foreign army carrying out the war crimes is also allowed to benefit directly from the US laws that have created exemption from taxation? In short, is there no sense of responsibility and/or consequences on the part of American government when it comes to the behavior of the pariah apartheid Jewish state?
In the event, comments and insights from some readers both on my posting and privately in emails and on Facebook have convinced me that I have greatly understated the case. Those who argue, perhaps somewhat in jest, the Congress is the Knesset West and that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are in fact Israeli puppets are very close to being on the mark, making Israel and its all-powerful billionaire funded lobby indisputably in control of many key aspects of American government beyond the obviously targeted foreign policy. Combine that with control over the media and entertainment industries that shape the Israeli preferred narrative at all times, and you have a situation where when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says “jump” 95% of Congress and everyone in the White House begin hopping. We will no doubt see that in play when the monstrous Netanyahu arrives in Washington to address a joint session of Congress on July 24th. The performing monkeys who will appear on television leaping up and down while cheering Bibi will definitely be something to see, though one hopes that at the same time there will also be a million demonstrators surrounding Capitol Hill calling for the head of the world’s leading war criminal.
One thing that should be completely clear is that the United States gets absolutely nothing out of the relationship with Israel, which all flows in only one direction to the tune of what probably amounts to more than a billion dollars a month if all the extras and the inevitable fraud are taken into account. And that does not even include special donations like the $14 billion recently granted by Congress and President Joe Biden to fund Israel’s never-ending war of extermination against the Palestinians. In my recent piece, I took particular aim at 501(c)(3) non-profits set up in New York City and in Massachusetts which exist to provide funds to the Israeli army. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF), based in New York but with twenty branches in the US, boasts on its website that it has provided tens of millions of dollars to the Israeli military. The money contributed is federal income tax exempt and most of the donors are able to write the contributions off on their own federal taxes as an inducement to give. Such non-profits are generally granted that special status through demonstrating that they are religious, charitable or educational. Sending money to the Israeli army satisfies none of those requirements.
Not only does Israel take advantage of a tax break on money coming from groups that are ostensibly US-based, one of my correspondents advised me that the corruption goes far deeper than that, consisting of the fact that 501(c)(3) organizations must be registered through what is referred to as a “domicile.” Most are in the United States but domiciles in Canada and Mexico are also accepted given the economic realities of the North American market. Only one other country has an acceptable domicile and that is, of course, and, inevitably, Israel. In other words, an allowable exemption and the related deductible contribution for US tax purposes, might uniquely consist of US taxpayer money that goes to a charity registered in Israel. As Israeli charities have no reporting requirements vis-à-vis the US Treasury and no mechanism exists to validate their function and activity, they only answer to the government of the state of Israel.
And of course the pandering to Israel includes much more in the way of manipulating the political process to provide benefits to the Jewish state. It has long been a cliché in Washington that any long bill like defense appropriations that passes through the Congress will inevitably have some goodies for Israel inserted in it. Recent and current legislation reflects the perceived need by Congressmen to show the flag, which would be the Star of David rather than the Stars and Stripes, given the Israeli engagement in the military extermination of Palestinians that has no sign of ending as it is entering into its tenth month. The United States is not only funding and arming the Israelis, it is also providing political cover by vetoing nearly every United Nations proposal that would have led to a cease fire accompanied by some kind of exchange of hostages and prisoners. Along the way, no excess by Israel is considered to be too outrageous to require an objection coming from Congress and/or the White House, including Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s proposal that he would relieve the overcrowding in the prisons with Palestinians who are being held without charges by taking them out and killing them, one pistol shot to the head each. Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman has gone one step farther, calling on his country to use its nuclear weapons to obliterate Iran, presumably with full US approval. Israel has also been charged with killing journalists, humanitarian workers, medical workers including doctors, and torturing and starving Palestinian prisoners, but hey, that all constitutes minor stuff when one is best friends with the “Chosen” in Israel.
And there is much more. The International Criminal Court ruling that Israel’s Prime Minister and Defense Minister should be on the receiving end of arrest warrants over war crimes and possible genocide in Gaza was responded to by US Congress with a letter threatening the jurors and their families if the court were to proceed. The US also cut off all funding and even cooperation with the United Nations’ UNWRA which, Israel has declared to be a terrorist organization, but which has been the major source of what food and medicine was actually getting through to Gaza in spite of Israeli efforts to block it. Congress also has moved to ignore any reports coming from the remaining Gazan authorities revealing the casualties resulting from the Israeli bombing and other killing, as if hiding the death toll will make it go away. The respected British medical journal The Lancet is now reporting that as many as 186,000 Gazans might be dead, mostly among the rubble of their homes, uncounted because the Gazan officials who would have performed that task are dead and whole families are wiped out so no one is reported missing. It is a far larger number than the ca. 37,000 that keeps appearing in the western media in an attempt to mitigate what Israel is up to.
And there is also the really petty stuff that surfaces regularly from the pro-Israel message control network. Three Columbia University senior officials have been removed from their positions because of comments and private emails they have written deriding the claims of “surging” antisemitism at colleges. Among the “evidence” was an intercepted message suggesting that a panelist could have used recent campus protests as a fundraising opportunity and another that appeared critical of a campus rabbi’s essay about antisemitism. The university will also launch a “vigorous” antisemitism and antidiscrimination training program.” Meanwhile a leading New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, headed by an Orthodox Jew, is setting up an index that will identify law students who have been demonstrating against Israel, creating a “do not hire” list of the names so they will not be offered employment after graduation. “The firm is scrutinizing students’ behavior with the help of a background check company, looking at their involvement with pro-Palestinian student groups, scouring social media and reviewing news reports and footage from protests. It is looking for explicit instances of antisemitism as well as statements and slogans it has deemed to be ‘triggering’ to Jews.” And then there is Donald Trump using the word “Palestinian” as a slur in his debate with Joe Biden and efforts by politicians like Governor Ron DeSantis to reject the arrival of any refugee Palestinians as immigrants to Florida as they are all “terrorists.” You know, little stuff like that and the efforts at criminalization of free speech if it comes to criticizing either Israeli or Jewish group behavior. You know, minor stuff. Pretty soon we Americans will all be terrorized into dancing to the same tune that Congress and the White House dance to. Then it will be too late.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Ukrainian children still speaking Russian – regulator
RT | July 12, 2024
Ukrainian children don’t know their official state language well enough because they’re still using Russian in their daily lives, Kiev’s Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language Taras Kremin has complained, urging citizens to report violations of language restrictions.
The commissioner said there are also many violations being recorded in the sphere of education, as well as on the internet and in the service industry. He cited a recent study that suggested one-third of children in some Ukrainian regions prefer to speak Russian.
“A child outside of school uses services, visits shopping and catering establishments, sees external advertising and signboards in non-state language, hears non-state at home,” Kremin wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
He suggested that many schoolchildren were therefore prone to bilingualism and do not have sufficient knowledge of the Ukrainian language.
Kremin said Kiev should strengthen control over compliance with the law on state language, which defines Ukrainian as the only language approved for education, and called on citizens to be more involved in recording and reporting violations of the law.
Since gaining its independence in 1991, Ukraine has largely been a bilingual nation, with most citizens able to speak or understand both Russian and Ukrainian, particularly in the eastern half of the country. After the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, however, Ukraine’s new authorities abolished Russian as an official regional language and have adopted policies aimed at suppressing and outlawing it, arguing that it represents a threat to national unity and security.
In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business and the service industry, obliging all Ukrainian citizens to know the language. It also requires that 90% of TV and film content produced in the country be made in Ukrainian. From July 17, the use of the Russian language in Ukrainian media will be virtually outlawed, Kremen has said.
This forced Ukrainization was one of the reasons why Russian-speaking residents living in the east of the country rejected the post-coup authorities in Kiev in 2014. Many of these regions, namely the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, have since joined Russia after overwhelmingly voting to do so in public referendums in 2022.
Kremin, however, has denied that the term ‘Russian-speaking’ could be applied to any Ukrainian citizens, stating in an interview last year that the word is a “marker introduced by Russian ideology,” and declaring that “everyone in the country must have command of the Ukrainian language.”
The War on Free Speech: Biden Adds Another Advocate for Censorship to the White House
By Jonathan Turley | July 10, 2024
I have previously written how President Joe Biden is the most anti-free speech president since John Adams. For his part, Biden has continued to double down on his anti-free speech policies with the appointment of figures who have long supported bans and other speech controls. The latest such appointment is Andy Volosky, who was made deputy director of platforms for the White House’s Office of Digital Strategy. Volosky has been outspoken in support of banning former president Donald Trump from social media platforms.
In my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage, I lay out the chilling comparisons between the Adams and Biden Administrations in the crackdown of free speech. For Adams, that led to defeat in 1800 when Jefferson ran in part on restoring free speech. To my surprise, Trump and his fellow challengers in this election have not made free speech a central issue to force Biden to defend the massive censorship system supported by his Administration.
The public does not support censorship. This is a movement that originated in higher education and has been pushed by the political and media establishment, not the voters.
Volosky will now help direct digital strategies for the White House. He previously praised the banning of Trump, asking “What took them so long?” in a 2021 blog post.
In Volosky’s blog post, titled “A New, and Hopefully Welcome, Standard,” he warned that “Twitter still allows the accounts of various world leaders, governments, and spokespeople, who use Twitter for what one can only describe as propaganda as cover for autocracy, to continue to use their platform.”
He praised how Democrats have “long advocated for regulating the [social media] platforms” and emphasized how active social media users like himself and others can “keep the platforms honest.”
He added that:
“we can play a role in keeping the platforms honest and improving the positive role of social in people’s lives… It’s past time for the platforms to take content moderation and user safety seriously; as social media professionals, we should be ready and eager to make that happen, and we hope that [banning Trump] can be a small step in getting that ball rolling.”
Again, with the White House doubling down on censorship, Trump and others need to force him to defend his overwhelmingly anti-free speech record. The 2024 election can give voters the same choice that they faced in 1800. Democracy is not on the ballot, but free speech is.
French government fines TV news for allowing a skeptic to speak without being challenged
We know what secrets they fear the most, by how they overreact
By Jo Nova | July 13, 2024
In France, the second largest news network let an economist go on air and declare he thought global warming was a lie and a scam used to justify State intervention. He even went on to say it is a form of totalitarianism. Shockingly (to the regulators Arcom*), the CNEWS TV* hosts did not contest this, and nor did anyone else in the studio. For this, 11 months later, the TV channel is being fined €20,000.
Too close to the truth then?
A popular French rolling news channel has been fined for broadcasting climate scepticism unchallenged
By Saskia O’Donoghue, EuroNews
During the programme, prominent economist Philippe Herlin shared personal climate scepticism – but was not contradicted by anybody else in the TV studio, including the hosts.
“Anthropogenic global warming is a lie, a scam… Explaining to us that it is because of Man, no, that is a conspiracy, and why does that have so much weight?”, Herlin said. “Because it justifies the intervention of the State in our lives, and it absolves the State from having to reduce its public spending… It is a form of totalitarianism.”
Apparently, the real crime here is not that he said the unthinkable, but that the TV crew didn’t correct him:
After investigation, Arcom found that CNews’ lack of reaction was a “failure” to meet the obligations of the channel …
Perhaps if they’d laughed at him, called him petty names, and treated him like a leper it would have been OK? (No, seriously, there is a razor point here. There are bound to be past examples where the only response to a skeptic was to call them a climate denier, and Arcom was apparently happy with that, since they’ve never used this fine before.) Does Arcom approve of namecalling or social approbation as a “balanced response”? Oh. Yes. They. Do.
The regulators go on to explain that the channel:
“… is required to ensure an honest presentation of controversial issues, in particular by ensuring the expression of different points of view”.
Which must be a new requirement since French TV has relentlessly hammered the establishment line in a one sided way for thirty years without needing any balance at all. And Arcom didn’t fine them for shamelessly promoting government propaganda. Perhaps a French skeptic could ask Arcon if controversial government opinions need to be balanced “in an honest presentation” or whether it’s only critics of the government who need to be held to account?
Arcom found that the views shared “contradicted or minimised” the scientific consensus on climate change “through a treatment lacking rigour and without contradiction”.
Since when was it the job of journalists to promote government approved “science”?
The regulator is going out on a limb and sawing off the branch…
Officially, the regulators are trying to pretend they are not punishing the TV channel for putting on a skeptic, which would be a free speech issue, but it’s clearly what they are doing. So they dress this up as a lack of balance, which accidentally exposes that they’ve never cared a jot about balancing opinions before. Immediately, this opens up all kinds of interesting doors: for one, skeptics can start asking where the balance is on controversial government propositions? In most countries about half the population doesn’t agree that mankind is solely responsible for “climate change”. Where is their voice? The government is suggesting that solar panels can stop storms, and EV’s will control floods, why isn’t this a failure of the obligations of a news channel?
Secondly, skeptics can ask when this rule started and why the regulator missed so many past examples. Why aren’t breaches the other way being fined too?
The overreaction IS the news story
Ponder how afraid the believers must be if the mere opinion of an economist is so dangerous. This man is a not a scientist and every person in France has heard the evidence is overwhelming, climate change is real, and 130% of all scientists who ever lived know that CO2 threatens life on Earth. For three decades children have been trained to say that skeptics are funded by Big Oil, and motivated by money, and yet here is one guy who used the word “totalitarian” and they all go off their rocker.
Why, perhaps because it suggests that believers are motivated by a bigger pot of money and power than skeptics ever could be.
* BACKGROUND
Arcon stands for theRegulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication
CNews is controlled by billionaire business magnate Vincent Bolloré and has been compared to FOX in the US.
‘Dangerous, Anticompetitive Behavior’: Big Brands Colluding to Control Online Speech
By John-Michael Dumais | The Defender | July 12, 2024
A congressional investigation uncovered allegations that some of the world’s largest brands and advertising agencies are colluding to control online speech through coordinated boycotts and content demonetization schemes.
A 39-page interim staff report, released Wednesday by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, claims that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) — an initiative of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) — is using its market power to silence disfavored voices in possible violation of antitrust laws.
“Through GARM, large corporations, advertising agencies, and industry associations participated in boycotts and other coordinated action to demonetize platforms, podcasts, news outlets, and other content deemed disfavored by GARM and its members,” the report states.
The committee’s investigation, which focused on GARM’s activities since its creation in 2019, examined its influence over major social media platforms, news outlets and content creators.
The report suggests that GARM’s actions may have far-reaching implications for online discourse and consumer choice in media.
‘Sounds a lot like a cartel to me’
GARM was established in 2019 by the WFA, which represents over 150 of the world’s biggest brands and more than 60 national advertiser associations globally.
According to this week’s congressional report, GARM’s influence stems from the collective power of its members. “WFA members represent roughly 90% of global advertising spend, or almost one trillion dollars annually,” the document states.
The alliance includes major players in the advertising industry:
- Every major advertising agency holding company.
- GroupM, the world’s largest media buying agency, on its Steer Team.
- Four large corporations — Unilever, Mars, Diageo, and Procter & Gamble — that together spend billions annually on advertising.
GARM’s Steer Team, which acts as a board of directors, is closely involved in day-to-day operations. The initiative reports to the WFA Executive Committee, which includes representatives from major corporations such as AB InBev, L’Oréal, Nestlé and IBM.
Robert Rakowitz, GARM’s initiative lead and co-founder, plays a central role in the organization’s activities. The report cites internal emails in which Rakowitz expressed views on free speech, describing an “extreme global interpretation of the US Constitution” as problematic.
GARM claims to focus on “content monetization” rather than “content moderation.” However, the report argues that these areas are “inextricably linked,” suggesting that GARM’s work effectively influences what content appears online.
In Wednesday’s congressional hearing on GARM, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), while questioning the CEO of GroupM and GARM board member Christian Juhl, said that GARM “sounds a lot like a cartel to me.”
Alleged antitrust violations and examples
The congressional report alleges that GARM’s activities may violate Section 1 of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which prohibits unreasonable restraints of trade. The committee report cites several examples of GARM’s alleged coordinated actions:
1. Twitter boycott after Elon Musk acquisition. Following Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now known as X) in October 2022, GARM allegedly orchestrated a boycott of the platform. According to the report, GARM recommended its members “stop … all paid advertisement” on Twitter in response to the takeover.
Internal documents show that GARM held “extensive debriefing and discussion around [Musk’s] takeover of Twitter,” providing opportunities for the boycott to be organized. The report claims that GARM later boasted about “taking on Elon Musk” and noted that Twitter was “80% below revenue forecasts” as a result.
2. Pressure on Spotify over Joe Rogan podcast. In early 2022, GARM and its Steer Team allegedly pressured Spotify over content on Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience.” The report states that GARM members urged action against Spotify due to alleged misinformation on Rogan’s show, particularly regarding COVID-19 vaccines after Rogan said that young, healthy people didn’t need them.
Rogan later featured Dr. Robert Malone on his podcast, which prompted GroupM to reach out to Spotify after musician Neil Young removed his content from the platform in protest over vaccine-skeptical material.
Internal emails cited in the report show Rakowitz coordinating with member companies to formulate responses to Spotify. In one instance, he wrote that he “can’t publicly advise all clients to do X — that gets us into hot water by way of anticompetitive and collusive behaviors.”
3. Efforts to demonetize certain news outlets. The report alleges that GARM and its members discussed strategies to block certain news outlets, including Fox News, The Daily Wire and Breitbart News.
An internal email from a GARM Steer Team member describes monitoring these outlets closely. The email states that as much as he “hated their ideology and bulls**t,” his company “couldn’t really justify blocking them for misguided opinion[s]” but that it “watched them very carefully and it didn’t take long for them to cross the line.”
The congressional committee argued that these coordinated actions if proven, could constitute illegal restraints of trade that harm consumers by limiting their choices and access to diverse viewpoints online.
GARM’s influence on political content and elections
Through their content moderation efforts, GARM and its members attempted to influence political discourse and election outcomes — including pushing for coordinated action around the 2020 U.S. presidential election, according to the report.
In an October 2020 email, Rakowitz suggested telling Facebook it was “at a crossroads for the platform and fence sitting on content curation and moderation” and that it should apply its COVID-19 content moderation policies to election-related content.
The report cites an instance of GARM members pressuring Facebook to label a then-President Donald Trump campaign advertisement as misinformation. When Facebook refused, citing its policy of not fact-checking political candidates’ ads, Rakowitz allegedly described the decision as “honestly reprehensible” in an internal email.
The report also claims that GARM members expressed concerns about Musk’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story on Twitter. After Musk released internal Twitter documents about the platform’s suppression of the story, a GARM member reportedly described Musk’s actions as an “overtly partisan take.”
Misinformation definition and application. In 2022, GARM added a definition of misinformation to its framework, describing it as “verifiably false or willfully misleading content that is directly connected to user or societal harm.”
The report suggests this broad definition could be weaponized against disfavored political views.
Committee members said Wednesday that these actions demonstrate GARM’s potential to influence political discourse and election outcomes by controlling which content receives advertising revenue and visibility on major platforms.
GARM’s partnerships with ad-tech companies and AI integration
The congressional report delves into GARM’s relationships with advertising technology companies and plans to integrate its framework into artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools.
According to the report, GARM partnered with several “ad-tech partners” that offer solutions to help brands understand where their advertisements appear and what content surrounds them.
The report alleges that membership in GARM was conditioned on these partners agreeing “to make commensurate changes to business operations in pursuit of GARM’s goals.”
According to the congressional committee, this arrangement allowed GARM’s biases to be “baked directly into the solutions, allowing brands to seamlessly integrate GARM’s censorship.”
AI and machine learning integration
GARM’s plans for the future involve pushing its framework into AI solutions, according to the report. The committee said it was concerned that GARM’s partners are developing AI tools that will integrate GARM’s standards seamlessly across social media platforms.
“Such an automated censorship effort could result in the demonetization of any views or voices that GARM’s advertising cartel dislikes, potentially without any human involvement at all,” the report states.
Specific examples cited in the report include:
1. Zefr, a GARM ad-tech partner, which claims its “proprietary discriminative AI is powered by years of training data on platforms, and goes beyond keyword and text-based analyses, combining AI and ground truth data from global fact checking organizations that is mapped to the industry standards” set by GARM.
2. YouTube’s incorporation of Zefr-powered solutions to prevent advertisements from appearing next to content that violates GARM’s standards.
The combination of GARM’s framework with AI-powered content moderation tools could lead to opaque and potentially biased decisions about which content receives advertising revenue, ultimately limiting consumer choice and diverse viewpoints online, according to the report.
Connections to government agencies and censorship efforts
The congressional report alleges connections between GARM’s partners and government agencies involved in content moderation efforts. Specifically, it points to collaboration between GARM ad-tech partner Channel Factory and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
According to the report, Channel Factory worked with CISA to develop a “common lexicon” for discussing misinformation.
An email cited in the report shows Channel Factory’s global chief strategy officer sharing this lexicon with GARM’s initiative lead, stating, “The industry will need a common lexicon and detailed definitions in order to make progress … attached is the lexicon we developed with CISA/DHS … which may provide” a useful starting point.
This type of collaboration could lead to government influence over private-sector content moderation practices, the committee report stated.
The report noted that Channel Factory is also a member of YouTube’s Measurement Program, suggesting that these connections could have far-reaching implications for online content moderation.
Former U.S. Department of State official Mike Benz in a video posted on X Wednesday, alleged that U.S. government-linked efforts to control online content with groups like GARM go back at least to 2017.
GARM engages in ‘dangerous, anticompetitive behavior’
The House Judiciary Committee concluded that GARM’s actions may violate antitrust laws and threaten free speech and consumer choice online.
According to the report, GARM’s members’ collective power allows them to achieve through coordination what they could not accomplish individually.
The report states:
“If collusion among powerful corporations capable of collectively demonetizing, and in effect eliminating, certain views and voices is allowed to continue, the ability of countless American consumers to choose what to read and listen to, or even have their speech or writing reach other Americans, will be destroyed.”
The committee emphasized that antitrust laws still apply even if GARM claims to have good intentions. It states that federal antitrust laws “do not diminish because GARM or its members claim to have good intentions.”
The committee said it will continue its oversight of GARM and evaluate the adequacy of existing antitrust laws. It suggested that legislative reforms may be necessary to address what it describes as “dangerous, anticompetitive behavior.”
Watch the House Judiciary Committee’s July 10 hearing:
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.
Pro-Israel Group Censoring Social Media Led by Former Israeli Intelligence Officers
By Lee Fang and Jack Poulson | July 11, 2024
CyberWell, an Israeli nonprofit with deep ties to the intelligence arm of an Israeli government propaganda effort, has been influential in shaping social media content since October 7. The group, which purports to be independent, has lobbied Meta, X, and TikTok to remove social media posts under the banner of fighting hate and antisemitism.
The group claimed a major victory regarding Meta’s decision on Tuesday to expand its definition of antisemitic hate speech to include many criticisms of “Zionists” – those who call for an independent state in the Middle East that privileges Jews over other ethnic groups. “CyberWell intends to leverage its technological tools and analysis efforts to ensure this policy is implemented efficiently and fully, and that Meta’s moderation tools are trained to effectively bar this content,” the organization claimed in a press release.
The success is the latest string of victories to shape permissible speech when it comes to Israel and its actions.
In January, CyberWell reported that it had pushed to censor accounts that disputed the false allegation that Hamas had slaughtered dozens of babies during the October 7th attack. Any accounts disputing claims around babies killed during the attack, CyberWell argued, are akin to “content denying or distorting the Holocaust.” President Joe Biden and leading Israeli figures have falsely claimed that Hamas beheaded or burned forty babies during the assault into Israel.
That claim has been widely debunked. Despite repeated false assertions to the contrary, only one baby was killed during the Hamas assault: a 10-month-old infant named Mila Cohen, who was killed at Kibbutz Be’eri. In more recent months, CyberWell has lobbied TikTok and Meta to censor social media posts with the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” claiming that the slogan constitutes hate speech.
CyberWell is one of many agenda-driven nonprofits now censoring social media discourse, including benign or true information, under the cover of fighting hate and misinformation. The pharmaceutical industry, for instance, funded a nonprofit that worked to censor tweets critical of pandemic-related policies. The U.S. government funds several think tanks that work to moderate social media content critical of NATO’s policies impacting Ukraine.
We briefly mentioned the organization in our recent exclusive on the rebirth of an Israeli government influence effort to counter critics in the United States. After ignoring our detailed request for comment by email, CyberWell recently contacted The Guardian, our publishing partner, and falsely claimed that we never contacted the group for comment.
CyberWell has not received “government funding whatsoever from any country,” wrote Stan Steinreich of Steinreich Communications in a statement to The Guardian, which included a request for a correction. “CyberWell’s leadership is neither affiliated with nor compensated by Voices for Israel,” he continued, in reference to the joint venture created by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs roughly eight years ago under the name Kela Shlomo before renaming to Concert in 2018 and adopting its current name in 2022. In response to Hamas’s October 7 attack, the organization formally rebooted to focus on winning the online war of narratives surrounding Israel’s ongoing invasion of Gaza, which has so far killed roughly 13,000 women and children.
But CyberWell’s attempts to portray itself as independent obscures its deep ties to Israeli intelligence officials and the government-backed influence operation we wrote about.
CyberWell, as we originally reported, maintains close ties to the Israeli government ministries involved in covert advocacy in the U.S. and to the Voices for Israel group now at the center of a sprawling influence campaign. Since reaching out for comment for our investigation, CyberWell has scrubbed the biographies of its executives and advisors, such as former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin and a current spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces.
When CyberWell was reached for comment regarding why the biographies of its staff and advisors were removed, they stated: “Highlighting the danger of generating false and misleading information, we were forced to remove the ‘Our Team’ page for safety reasons. Following the publication of your story, our analysts were attacked and identified by name on X. Users shared your article and our employees’ names with a wider network and we became concerned for our staff’s safety.”
Despite CyberWell’s denial of ties to Voices of Israel, the organization’s 2022 annual report listed its Chief Financial Officer as Sagi Balasha, the first CEO of the organization now known as Voices of Israel. The list of CyberWell advisors in the report also included Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, who Israeli corporate records reveal to be a director of the research and intelligence arm of Voices, known as Keshet David, which is Hebrew for “David’s Rainbow.” Keshet David was initially headed by Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of research in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, widely known as Aman, and an ex-director general of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. Another advisor to CyberWell, Amos Yadlin, previously led Aman.
“Proud to support @CyberWell_org,” Mr. Lerner posted on X on Wednesday, in response to CyberWell’s celebration of Meta’s new policy on criticisms of Zionism.
Voices of Israel chairman Micah Avni explained the history of Keshet’s aliases in a December 2018 interview, including the previous name of Israel Cyber Shield and the official English name Innovative Collaboration Strategies. “Concert [Voices of Israel] funds Keshet David and we get all the information. That’s one leg of what we’re doing,” said Avni. But, unlike Voices, Keshet David Research and Information Ltd., its legal Israeli entity, maintains no directly attributed public website.
Peter Lerner, an Israeli Defense Forces spokesperson and advisor to CyberWell, as well as former head of international relations at the Israeli labor federation Histadrut, is listed as both a shareholder and director of Keshet David. (As reported by Calcalist, the Histadrut was apparently a customer of the online campaigning firm STOIC, which Haaretz reported to have beat out Voices of Israel for a contract with Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to covertly influence U.S. lawmakers.)
Formed in 2021 under the name Global Antisemitism Research Center (Global ARC), CyberWell shared a $30,000 donation that year with Keshet David through a foundation run by the wife of CyberWell board member Adam Milstein, who co-founded the influential Israeli-American Council (IAC) in 2007 under the direction of Israel’s then-consul general in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch, before pleading guilty to two felony counts of tax evasion. Keshet David received an earlier donation through IAC in 2016 under its previous name of Israel Cyber Shield, just as future CyberWell CFO Sagi Balasha transitioned from chief executive of IAC to chief executive of Voices.
The chief executive of Keshet David since 2018, former Israeli police officer Eran Vasker, disclosed on his LinkedIn profile that he has simultaneously led the private intelligence firm Argyle Consulting Group since April 2017. The head of CyberWell, Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor, similarly noted in a January podcast interview and on LinkedIn that her immediate previous job was working at Argyle as head of business development circa January to October 2021, the same year as the joint donation to Keshet David and CyberWell. Tal-Or’s manager at the time was Argyle Chief Operating Officer Zohar Gorgel, who became a founding board member of CyberWell. Gorgel co-founded a solar power company in early 2021 with Arik Becker, a member of CyberWell’s audit committee who was, according to Becker’s LinkedIn profile, head of strategic operations at Argyle circa 2018 to 2020.
In other words, the chief executive of CyberWell and two of its board members previously worked at the same private intelligence spin-off from Voices of Israel, a director of the spin-off is an advisor to CyberWell, and the CEO of Voices became the CFO of CyberWell.
Israeli corporate records further show that CyberWell shares the same accountant as Keshet David and Voices of Israel, Yakov Pal (פאל יעקב) of Yakov Pal & Co. Certified Public Accountants. (CyberWell and Voices have also shared the same fiscal sponsor, Central Fund of Israel, which reportedly donated $700,000 to Voices in 2017.)
Letterhead of Yakov Pal CPA from the 2017 financial statements of Voices of Israel, then known as Kela Shlomo, as revealed by the Israeli independent investigative site The Seventh Eye.
A recently-deleted page on CyberWell’s website noted that it was founded as a result of Tal-Or’s time working in private intelligence at an unnamed firm (Argyle), as a result of “her then-manager and IDF intelligence veteran, Zohar Gorgel, [suggesting] that Tal-Or use her open-source expertise and deep understanding of social media” to combat online antisemitism.
Tal-Or’s biography in her podcast interview also noted that she had “provided analysis” to Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the agency that founded Voices of Israel. CyberWell’s 2022 annual report further disclosed that the nonprofit partnered with Act-IL, a failed online propaganda effort partly run by IAC and closely affiliated with the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, noting that “CyberWell served as the data provider to Act-IL’s community for their end of year call to action on the state of online antisemitism.”
According to 2018 reporting from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Israel Cyber Shield (Keshet David) surveilled the prominent Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour as part of compiling a dossier for Act-IL.
CyberWell CEO Tal-Or Cohen and founding board member Zohar Gorgel did not respond to repeated questions regarding their previous positions at the private intelligence firm Argyle Consulting Group or on Argyle’s relationship to Keshet David. Instead, CyberWell blocked one of our accounts on X.
Argyle and Keshet David CEO Eran Vasker similarly did not respond to a request for comment through Argyle. Neither CyberWell nor Adam Milstein and his wife, Gila, responded to requests for comment on MERONA Leadership Foundation’s receipt of a joint donation for Keshet David and CyberWell.
***
CyberWell’s primary focus has been to pressure social media companies to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) redefinition of antisemitism, which has been described by one of its core contributors as designed to combat growing international human rights criticisms of Israel as an apartheid state, beginning with the United Nations’ 2001 Durban declaration. In reference to the now-defunct advocacy organization known as the Adopt IHRA Coalition, CyberWell’s 2022 annual report noted that “On the heels of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter,” CyberWell “served as the [Adopt IHRA Coalition] data provider, demonstrating our value through collecting, vetting, and leveraging a dataset of over 1,200 recent antisemitic Tweets.”
The IHRA definition has come under fire as an attempt to criminalize and suppress First Amendment-protected speech critical of Israel and its occupation of Palestine. Pro-Israel lobbyists have pushed to encode the IHRA definition into hate crime statutes and official speech codes for hundreds of institutions and have succeeded in advancing legislation on the state and federal level. The IHRA definition of antisemitism includes “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” If enacted, such a definition would mean that an American can call any government, including his own, racist, except for Israel.
CyberWell’s high-level influence on social media policy arose during a meeting of the Israeli legislature’s immigration committee on June 21 of last year, which included representatives of Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter.
Matthew Krieger, a representative of Twitter and Elon Musk at the hearing, bluntly refused to answer questions from the committee chairman about a report from the Israeli advocacy organization Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA), which accused Twitter of only removing 14% of antisemitic content, in contrast to TikTok allegedly removing 100%. Immediately after, Facebook policy manager Yehuda Ben Yaakov noted his relationship with FOA, CyberWell, and Tal Or-Cohen, stating: “The activity of non-profit organizations in this context is important and non-profit organizations like FOA and CyberWell, just last week Tal-Or [Cohen] and I met and had the ability to exchange things.” “Tal-Or told us about a new way of linking the theory of Freemasons and the theory of anti-Semitism,” Ben Yaakov added.
During the same hearing, Ella Saban, an official in Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption, noted that “We work with ADL [Anti-Defamation League], we work with civil society organizations, CyberWell and [FOA] are based here, we also have a good relationship with the social networks in Israel.”
Images from a pair of posts on X on June 17 and on June 25 by CyberWell.
“VICTORY: TikTok is the first social media platform to publicly recognize denial of sexual violence on October 7 as prohibited content,” CyberWell boasted on June 17 through a post on X, which further implied that the decision was a result of CyberWell’s status as a trusted partner of TikTok.
A subsequent post claimed that: “Thanks to CyberWell’s data, TikTok is leading the way in recognizing and actioning this new form of antisemitism, and we urge all other social media platforms to follow suit.”
The image coupled with the post praising TikTok accused X user @HadiNasrallah of “Encouraging Violence” and “Denying that well-documented violent events took place” for claiming that “Hamas did not rape anyone on October 7th and Israel killed their own people with tanks and helicopter shelling.”
The degree to which Hamas committed sexual violence during its attack, and the scale of Israeli usage of the so-called Hannibal Directive preference of killing its own troops and citizens rather than let them be taken hostage, are perhaps the central narrative battles surrounding October 7.
More than 50 tenured journalism professors signed a letter in April asking The New York Times to investigate the reporting process behind its flagship publication on alleged sexual violence on October 7, “Screams Without Words,” and the Associated Press argued the next month that two “debunked” allegations had created a fog over credible evidence presented by organizations such as the United Nations.
Following a late October article from the independent American news site The Grayzone, Times journalist Ronen Bergman reported in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in January that the country’s military had invoked the Hannibal Directive, indeed firing on any vehicle approaching Gaza, including those that may have carried hostages. Haaretz provided further detail on Sunday, reporting the usage of the Hannibal Directive by the Gaza Division of the Israeli military’s Southern Command in three army facilities. The number of potential casualties remains a matter of ongoing controversy in Israeli papers.
Whether controversial debates relating to the Israeli military should be refereed by a de facto spin-out of a covert Israeli government intelligence effort is perhaps an easier question.
In a series of posts on the social media platform X crediting CyberWell with Meta’s recent decision to classify many criticisms of “Zionists” as hate speech, CyberWell board member Adam Milstein bragged that: “all content targeting Zionists with claims about running the world or controlling the media, plus more, WILL BE REMOVED!” “Will @elonmusk and @X follow suit?” Milstein then asked.
But Meta’s policy update on Tuesday noted that it has not yet decided on how to handle critical speech such as “Zionists are war criminals” and has forwarded the question to its oversight board. Meta argued that “the term ‘Zionists’ can be used to refer to people on the basis of their nationality (i.e., Israeli people), [and] commentary about ‘Zionists’ may also refer to government or military actions.” “We look forward to any guidance the [Oversight] Board may provide,” Meta added. “
Microsoft shuts Palestinian accounts used to contact relatives in Gaza
MEMO | July 12, 2024
Microsoft has been accused of shutting down email accounts belonging to Palestinians using Skype to call Gaza, according to a BBC investigation.
The report found that several Palestinians living abroad had their Microsoft-owned voice and video chat accounts terminated without warning, “destroying their digital lives.”
Salah Elsadi, a Palestinian living in the US, told the BBC: “I’ve had this Hotmail account for 15 years. They banned me for no reason, saying I violated their terms — what terms? Tell me.”
The investigation revealed at least 20 cases where Palestinians had their accounts suspended without any explanation. Those impacted explained that a paid Skype subscription allowed them to make affordable mobile calls to Gaza, providing a vital service for many Palestinians during Internet outages.
In some cases, these email accounts were over 15 years old, leaving users unable to access emails, contacts, or memories. Moreover, some reported that their email accounts were connected to their work.
Eiad Hametto, who has been calling his family from Saudi Arabia, said: “We are civilians with no political background who just wanted to check on our families.”
“They’ve suspended my email account that I’ve had for nearly 20 years. It was connected to all my work. They killed my life online,” he added.
Another Palestinian, Khalid Obaied, told the BBC that he no longer trusted Microsoft. “I paid for a package to make phone calls, and then, after 10 days, they banned me for no reason,” he said. “It has to be because I’m a Palestinian calling Gaza.”
A Microsoft spokesperson clarified that the company does not block calls or ban users based on the calling region or destination. Adding: “Blocking in Skype can occur in response to suspected fraudulent activity.”
Pro-Pentagon Media Calls on DoD to Step Up Anti-Houthi Info War Amid Blows to US Navy’s Reputation
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 11.07.2024
The Houthis resumed their attacks on suspected Israel and US-affiliated merchant ships Tuesday after a ten-day pause. Armed with mostly older missile designs and cheap drones and possessing no blue water navy to speak of, the militants have managed to effectively shut down the Red Sea to Western interests, humiliating the Pentagon in the process.
The US Navy’s inability to lift the Houthis’ self-imposed partial blockade of the Red and Arabian Seas or to meaningfully degrade the militia’s missile and drone capabilities in six months of air and missile strikes has given rise to embarrassing questions from allies and adversaries alike about whether the US military is a mere “paper tiger,” and not the “all powerful,” global and “omnipotent force” it’s cracked up to be.
In testimony by senior Pentagon officials on the state of America’s air and missile defenses earlier this year, Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces chairman Angus King complained that the US has proved not only unable to defend against peer competitors like Russia and China, but ineffective against smaller adversaries, including Iran and the Houthis, as well.
His concerns were echoed by media reports that the US has already spent over a billion dollars fighting the Houthis, with the USS Eisenhower supercarrier’s Super Hornet jets racking up tens of thousands of flight hours, and US warships firing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of interceptor missiles to target the militia’s simple missiles, UAVs and maritime drones.
Amid the Houthis’ successes in humbling the American goliath, panicky voices have emerged in Washington and US military-affiliated media calling for something to be done to stop the Yemeni militia’s humiliation of the US Empire in the Middle East from spreading online.
The “Navy should hit back harder against Houthi online disinformation,” Max Lesser, a senior analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a DC neoconservative think tank, wrote in an op-ed that appeared in the Navy Times on Wednesday.
“While the US military and allies regularly hit back with airstrikes against Houthi missile launchers and other assets in Yemen, the Pentagon is less prepared to defend against the online lies and disinformation that the Houthis are spreading,” Lesser complained.
The think tank analyst pointed to a series of social media posts from late May shared by “Houthi supporters” of digitally altered images and videos of damage purportedly done to the USS Eisenhower in one of the militia’s attempts to retaliate to US-UK strikes into Yemen.
The manipulated images apparently proved prolific enough for the carrier’s captain, Captain Christopher Hill, to invite journalists to inspect the warship’s flight deck to show it had not in fact suffered any damage in Houthi attacks.
Lesser suggests that the “deluge of deceptively labeled images” spread by “pro-Houthi accounts” has generally not been sufficiently challenged or debunked by the Pentagon, despite the operation of a DoD Joint Maritime Information Center stood up specifically to report on the situation in the Red Sea region. The analyst urged the military to include any “Houthi disinformation” it finds into its weekly updates, noting that for now, “debunking” the false images is falling to lone “independent” OSINT analysts.
“The challenge is not limited to the Red Sea or the Middle East,” Lesser stressed. “Military forces in every command should have public affairs and open-source intelligence personnel working together to debunk false and exaggerated claims of enemy success on the battlefield.”
Lesser’s calls for the US to step up its game in online disinformation warfare are the latest in a long-running effort by Western officials, media and corporations to rein in the free-flow of information, whether through outright broad brush censorship like the scrubbing of entire websites, comments and social media posts, or ‘softer’ means, like private ‘fact checking’ organizations set up explicitly and exclusively to challenge anti-establishment narratives.
Given the US military’s proven track record of covering up information the Pentagon finds inconvenient, there’s no guarantee that any DoD-led campaign to combat Houthi “disinformation” online won’t result in the creation of new falsehoods spread by the Defense Department.
Canada Allocates $146.6M for New Censorship Commission to Enforce Online Harms Act
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2024
Canada’s government has decided to spend some $146.6 million (CAD 200 million) and employ, full-time, 330 more people to be able to implement the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63).
That is the monetary cost of bureaucratic red tape necessary to make this bill, which has moved for a second reading in Canada’s House of Commons, eventually happen.
At the same time, the cost to the country’s democracy could be immeasurable – given some of this sweeping censorship legislation’s more draconian provisions, primarily focused on what the authorities choose to consider to be “hate speech.”
Some of those provisions could land people under house arrest, and have their internet access cut simply for “fear” they could, going forward, commit “hate crime” or “hate propaganda.”
If these are found to be committed in conjunction with other crimes, the envisaged punishment could be life in prison. Meanwhile, money fines go up to $51,080. And, to make matters even more controversial, the proposed law appears to apply to statements retroactively, namely, those made before Bill C-63’s possible passage and enactment as law.
The new body, the Digital Safety Commission, Ombudsperson, and Office will be in charge, and this is where the money will go and where the staff amount to 330 people. The spending estimate that has recently come to light covers the five years until 2029.
The office’s task – if the bill passes – will be to monitor, regulate, and censor online platforms, as per the Online Harms Act.
Critics of the law are making a point of the distorted sense of priorities among Canada’s currently ruling regime, where a large amount of money is to be spent here, while vital sectors – such as combating actual, real-life serious crimes face funding restrictions.
Some of the purely pragmatic opposition to the bill has to do with the belief that it will – while violating citizens’ freedoms and rights – actually, prove to be unable to tackle what it is supposedly designed to do – various forms of online harassment.
And that’s not all. “Canadian taxpayers will likely be stuck footing the bill for a massive bureaucracy that will allow Big Tech companies to negotiate favorable terms with non-elected regulators behind closed doors,” is how MP Michelle Rempel Garner articulated it.
COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines”: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Part 1
Mead et al Deliver Counter-Punch after Springer Nature Unethical Retraction of High-Impact Paper
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse™ | July 8, 2024
Every major development in medicine evolves over years with peer-reviewed manuscripts and published correspondence along the lines of arguments and scientific discourse. Never had we seen a new technology and mass mandated line of medical products be introduced with no allowance for proper scientific discourse. Not until mRNA.
Mead and co-workers found themselves at the center of a controversy when Springer Nature CUREUS Journal of Biomedical Sciences retracted their paper calling for global market withdrawal of mRNA vaccines. The retraction violated the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics Guidelines) for retraction and became a news story garnering even more attention. Other papers continued to cite Mead creating a stinging reverberation for Springer who was hoping to silence the paper.
Now epidemiologist M. Nathaniel Mead and six co-authors have punched back with the manuscript divided into two parts for a greater depth of data and analysis on the safety and theoretical efficacy of modified mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. In Part I, Mead discloses censorship of the first paper by the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, a working syndicate that is hell-bent on suppressing any scientific information on COVID-19 side effects.
You may ask what should have occurred? Springer Nature should have never retracted the paper. Rather letters to the editor and responses to the letters from authors should have been published as proper scientific interchange. The new normal is now unethical retraction, massive publicity, and republication with greater amplification of the message—precisely what the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex is trying to squelch.
Mead MN, Seneff S, Wolfinger R, Rose J, Denhaerynck K, Kirsch S, McCullough PA. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines: Lessons Learned from the Registrational Trials and Global Vaccination Campaign. Cureus. 2024 Jan 24;16(1):e52876. doi: 10.7759/cureus.52876. Retraction in: Cureus. 2024 Feb 26;16(2):r137. doi: 10.7759/cureus.r137. PMID: 38274635; PMCID: PMC10810638.
COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines” Part 1: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex. (2024). International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research , 3(1), 1112-1178. https://doi.org/10.56098/fdrasy50
Featured Video
Laith Marouf: Hezbollah’s position on US-Iran ceasefire
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Is Israel to blame for the Iraq War?
American Goy | March 10, 2008
I am so tired of this old canard that “Israel had nothing to do with USA’s war with Iraq – in fact, it officially advised America against it”.
Bullshit. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Laith Marouf: Hezbollah’s position on US-Iran ceasefire: What you’re not being told
- Israel’s priority lies in destroying chances of peace between Iran, US: Ex-UN nuclear chief
- Ceasefire for all or for none: Iran shuts Hormuz over Lebanon attacks
- Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s ‘nuclear weapon’ that forced US retreat: Medvedev
- Energy crisis will last for months – Kremlin envoy
- Europe’s quiet role in the war on Iran
- Forty days that shook the Empire: How Iran turned the tables on US and prevailed
- Netanyahu unilaterally declares Lebanon outside of ceasefire deal
- Israeli leaders: ‘Not a single goal’ achieved in war with Iran
- What on earth just happened? Trump, Iran, and the unlikely ceasefire
- If Americans Knew
- Gazans face a triple crisis: severe shortages of water and bread, healthcare in tatters
- NY Times reports how Netanyahu took the US into Iran War
- A sigh of relief over Iran, but Gaza and Lebanon in dire straits – Daily Update
- Thousands dead and neighborhoods razed to the ground: Aid agencies fear southern Lebanon is becoming the new Gaza
- The war the US is fighting for Israel could cost trillions
- ‘Cigarette Burns, Nail Wounds’: Toddler Tortured in Gaza to Coerce Father
- Trump Says US Sent ‘a Lot of Guns’ to Protesters in Iran
- Israeli forces destroy 17 UN peacekeeper cameras in south Lebanon
- US-Israeli strikes ‘completely destroy’ synagogue in Tehran
- Archbishop for US Military Says Iran War Is Unjust Under Catholic Teaching
- No Tricks Zone
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
- Energy Expert: Germany’s Nuclear Phaseout Was A “500 Billion Euro Mistake”
- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
Aletho News 