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The EU adopts a ‘Media Freedom’ law, where ‘freedom’ doesn’t mean what you think it does

By Rachel Marsden | RT | March 16, 2024

The EU’s new Media Freedom Act has now been voted into law, with 464 votes for, 92 against, and 65 abstentions.

There are some news outlets whose coverage of the vote I’d like to see. Like RT’s, where you’re reading this right now. But anyone who’s viewing this from inside the European Union’s bastion of democracy and freedom is likely doing so via a VPN connection routed through somewhere outside the bloc, to circumvent its press censorship.

Nothing in this new law suggests that this will change, or that there will be increased access to information and analysis for the average person. Such improved freedoms might lead to people making up their own minds rather than having various flavors of a similar narrative served up for mass consumption. As has become par for the course in so-called Western democracies, inconvenient facts and analysis will still be dismissed as “disinformation” and criticism of the establishment still qualified as an effort to sow division – as though dissent itself wasn’t supposed to be proof of a healthy and vibrant democracy.

So, now that we’ve gotten out of the way any hope of lifting the EU’s top-down censorship in the absence of due process, exactly what kind of lip service does this new law pay to the lofty notion of media freedom?

No spying on journalists or pressing them to disclose their sources. Well, unless you’re one of the countries that lobbied to be able to keep doing this – like France, Italy, Malta, Greece, Cyprus, Sweden, and Finland – so basically, a quarter of EU countries. Oh, but they have to invoke national-security concerns in order to do so. Which, as we know, they’re very discerning about. Like, they didn’t at all implement a virtual police state and extend its powers under the guise of fighting a virus with which French President Emmanuel Macron kept saying they were “at war.” Nor did Amnesty International point out the sweeping “Orwellian” trend across Europe, at least as far back as 2017, of exploiting domestic terrorist attacks to permanently embed what were supposed to be extraordinary powers into criminal law, via measures like “overly broad definitions of terrorism.” So, no doubt they’ll be equally reasonable when slapping the “national security threat” label on a journalist whose work they want to peek at.

At least now, under this new law, they do have to fully inform any targeted journalist of the steps being taken against them.

Another thing that changes is that there’s to be a centralized database into which “all news and current affairs outlets regardless of their size will have to publish information about their owners,” according to an EU press release. May we propose a first candidate for that? The NGO Reporters Without Borders has praised this new law as a “major step forward for the right to information within the European Union.” The same NGO also just launched a “Svoboda” (Russian for “freedom”) satellite package eventually consisting “of up to 25 independent Russian language radio and television channels” aimed at Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltics. The launch took place at the EU parliament, in the presence of EU “values and transparency” commissioner (yes, that’s a real title), Vera Jourova, who has said in support of the new media law that “it is a threat to those who want to use the power of the state, also the financial one, to make the media dependent on them.” But she has also said about this new Russia-targeting initiative that the EU state needs to “use all possible means to ensure that their work, that facts and information can reach Russian-speaking people.” This is the same person who advocated in favor of banning Russia-linked media outlets in the EU.

Anyway, you first, guys. Show everyone else how it’s done. Also, does this mean that all financial interests in the form of advertising spending will also have to be declared by corporate media? Because state-backed media platforms are already transparent; it’s the much more discretionary interests underpinning the more commercial platforms that tend to be much less obvious to audiences. Audiences may not know or understand, for example, why a particular corporate media outlet might focus on a particular nation state with softball interviews, travel pieces, and fluffy documentaries, and treating it with kid gloves in news coverage, when in reality the same country is pumping a ton of ad revenues into the place.

In any case, Queen Ursula von der Leyen’s battalion of bureaucratic desk jockeys is set to grow in ranks now with a new “European Board for Media Services” coming online as a result of the new law. Because freedom isn’t going to police itself, pal.

The name itself Media Freedom Act really is the first clue that it’s probably not all that much about freedom. Kind of like how the “European Peace Facility” fund is used to buy weapons, or the “election” of the handpicked EU Commissioner is really just what any normal country would call a confirmation vote.

It’s a pretty safe bet that whenever the EU kicks the virtue-signaling into overdrive, using feel-good language to sell it, the reality is probably the opposite of what’s advertised.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

The frenzy to ban TikTok is another National Security State scam

By Michael Tracey | March 15, 2024

On November 20, 2023, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in a joint letter to the CEO of TikTok that the platform was guilty of “stoking anti-Semitism, support, and sympathy for Hamas” after the October 7 attack on Israel. “This deluge of pro-Hamas content is driving hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric and violent protests on campuses across the country,” McMorris Rodgers charged. A year ago, in March 2023, she had already declared: “TikTok should be banned in the United States of America.”

This week the plan came to fruition, with McMorris Rodgers and her colleagues orchestrating what could be best described as a legislative sneak attack: suddenly the House of Representatives, a notoriously dysfunctional body — particularly this Congressional term, with all the Republican leadership turmoil — took decisive, concerted, expedited action to pass legislation banning TikTok before most of the public would have even gotten a chance to notice. The bill was introduced March 5, 2024, advanced by a unanimous committee vote on March 7, 2024, then approved for final passage March 13, 2024. Almost nothing ever passes Congress at such warp-speed.

McMorris Rodgers facilitated the unanimous 50-0 vote out of the Energy and Commerce committee, a development which took many in DC off-guard, even those keenly attuned to the TikTok policy issue. As someone familiar with the process explained to me, before introducing the bill, the key sponsors “wanted to keep it quiet all around,” as they correctly surmised that once the details of the bill gained wider public exposure, opposition would mount — just as happened in March 2023 when a precursor bill got derailed after public awareness grew of provisions delegating enormous new powers to the President to control speech online.

This week, last-minute opposition continued to grow even during the final floor debate Wednesday morning, thanks to the quick-thinking of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who organized the opposition and later reported that the number of Republican House members voting no may have tripled as a result of the 40-minute floor debate he triggered — a rarity in the annals of Congress.

Republican opposition was still paltry though — just 15 voted no, compared with 50 Democrats. Even among the few no votes, some, like Matt Gaetz, made sure to clarify that on principle he was totally in favor of banning TikTok — he just objected to the particulars of this bill. The fact that Trump tentatively came out against the bill would also likely have been a factor for Gaetz, who likely would not have been so keen to stake out a different position from Trump on a major national policy issue. Whatever his precise stance, Trump has evidently not taken a major lobbying interest, as he has before with other legislative items. The little he’s said about the TikTok bill has been lukewarm and muddled — which makes sense given that it was Trump who first attempted to ban TikTok by executive fiat in 2020, and got held up by the courts. This current bill enumerates the powers Trump had unsuccessfully sought and codifies them in federal statute as a newly-assigned, discretionary presidential authority.

There is also the issue of what someone familiar told me was the “technical assistance” provided by the “Intelligence Community” during the reportedly “quiet” formulation of this bill — led by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL). The ranking member counterpart of McMorris Rodgers on the Energy and Commerce committee, Frank Pallone (D-NJ), said unnamed members of the so-called Intelligence Community had “asked Congress to give them more authority to act,” and this bill was intended to grant that request. As such, the bill was expressly crafted to enhance the power of the “Intelligence Community” to restrict Americans’ ability to consume and express speech online — as always, in the alleged name of “national security.”

The purveyors of TikTok-related fear within this vaunted “Community of Intelligence” also prefer to keep the underlying evidence for their claims hidden from public view, opting for highly confidential briefings with compliant members of Congress, most of whom emerged from these secret Pow-Wows in the past week excitedly eager to vest the Executive Branch with extensive new powers to Keep Us Safe from designated foreign foes. And not just China, as with the TikTok prohibition — but also an enormous array of other potential “applications,” which encompass everything from mobile apps to websites, that can be claimed as “foreign adversary controlled,” with “adversaries” defined as the standard rival bloc of China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.

To fight this great civilizational battle against China and its satellite states, the citizens of America must gratefully accept the abridgment of their own speech, and patriotically acquiesce to the government seizing the power to block a massive range of potential online applications and websites, so long as they can be claimed by the President to be “directly or indirectly” controlled by an official foreign adversary. What it means to be “controlled by a foreign adversary” is so malleable per the legislative text that it can include “a person” who is “subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity,” whatever that might mean in today’s parlance, when spurious charges of “Russian asset” and “Chinese influence” can be flung left and right like nothing. Given the subjective discretion that would necessarily have to be exercised in the making of such a determination, the president is being vested here with a huge amount of subjective, unilateral discretion.

There is likely a lesson to be gained from the March 2023 version of TikTok-related banning frenzy, which lost momentum when the details of the main legislative proposal became more widely known. Surmising that opposition could very well mount again, the House sponsors decided this time around to preempt the inconvenience of open debate, and hustle through the bill on a “quietly” expedited schedule before the provisions became widely known, which could prompt the always-annoying phenomenon of constituents contacting their representatives to express an opinion on the issue. This deliberate evasion of public scrutiny was unfortunately necessary for national security.

Another running theme in this mad legislative dash is the extent to which the Israel/Gaza war and hysteria over the October 7 attacks was a main driver. In November 2023, Israeli president Isaac Herzog blamed TikTok for “brainwashing” Americans who didn’t understand that Israel was pulverizing Gaza to defend not just Israeli security, but also the freedom of Americans to “enjoy decent, liberal, modern, progressive democratic life.” Apparently this logic would make more sense to people age 18-29 if they didn’t spend so much time on TikTok.

The heads of the Jewish Federations of North America, an agglomeration of American Jewish philanthropic interests, concurred with the need to terminate TikTok in a March 6 letter timed almost perfectly to the bill’s introduction just the previous day. Writing to Rodgers and Pallone, the authors said: “Our community understands that social media is a major driver of the rise in anti-Semitism, and that TikTok is the worst offender by far.”

“We have a major, major, major generational problem,” complained Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, in leaked audio of a private meeting last year. “And so we really have a TikTok problem.”

In this telling, the “TikTok problem” seems to boil down to TikTok’s insufficient alignment with US geopolitical interests, and the inability of the US government to exert the same coercive pressure on TikTok that it’s been able to exert on the likes of Google, Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, Twitter/X, and so on. TikTok therefore makes for a scapegoat on which to blame the increasingly “anti-Israel” and “pro-Hamas” attitudes of the youth, who supposedly absorb these malign beliefs in between synchronized dance videos, recipe tips, and makeup guides.

While it’s always difficult to assign precise causality in a multi-variable confluence of factors, here’s what we do know. There was a growing clamor to ban TikTok for the past several years. A bicameral legislative push was made almost exactly one year ago, in March 2023, but got derailed after public awareness grew of the main proposal’s speech-curtailing and executive-empowering provisions. Then after October 7, another round of scapegoating burst onto the scene, with TikTok furiously singled out and blamed by American and Israeli officials for fomenting impermissible discontent with Israel’s war of pulverization against Gaza — the naive youth could only view Israel’s military action in a negative light if they were having their brains nefariously infiltrated by the Chinese Communist Party. Certainly if they watched CNN, MSNBC, or FOX NEWS instead, their brains wouldn’t be turned to microwaved mush, and they’d be super well-informed and not at all propagandized.

“China is our enemy, and we need to start acting like it,” blustered Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) on the floor of the House before the vote this week. “I am proud to partner with Representatives Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi on this bipartisan bill to ban the distribution of TikTok in the US.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t recall ever agreeing to the proposition that China (or any other country) is my “enemy,” and I certainly would never have agreed to relinquish my core civil liberties to wage this allegedly existential battle. I have no particular fondness for the Chinese government’s speech-suppression practices, but the issue posed by this pending legislation is the power of the US government to control the speech of Americans. Being a citizen of the US, not China, that strikes me as the more pressing concern.

March 16, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Uber Alles?

Or is there finally a reckoning developing for its sins?

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • MARCH 15, 2024

There have been some interesting developments over the past few days relating to Israel’s demonstrated subjugation of the government at all levels in the United States as well as its domination of the entertainment and news media. Nearly everyone now accepts that the current situation is not due to ordinary Americans actually liking what Israel represents and is instead rather a consequence of the US Israel lobby’s deep pockets and the corruption that can be bought by being willing to spend billions of dollars to support a single highly focused cause. And there is also the tool used frequently to keep potentially troublesome politicians in line, which is the willingness to do whatever is necessary to discredit and marginalize any and all critics of the Jewish state, to include the liberal often bogus claims of the alleged crimes of antisemitism and holocaust-denial to demonize those who are targeted.

Both current and previous Israeli Prime Ministers have boasted that they control the United States and the evidence is there that they can in fact do so. Most dispiriting in the Zionist induced sturm und drang which is a covert war of sorts directed against the United States Constitution has been the impact on the actual rights of all Americans, including freedom of speech. Last week South Dakota governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate hopeful Kristi Noem boasted of new legislation in her state that would criminalize antisemitism. As criticizing Israel is considered to be ipso facto antisemitism and criminalized as a so-called “hate crime” it means, as some have observed, that Americans in South Dakota and also in Florida (thanks to Ron DeSantis) can criticize their own country, but not the self-declared Jewish state. Paul Craig Roberts puts it another way, observing that “I find it extraordinary that Jews alone among all ethnicities can control what can be said about them. The real threat is not anti-semitism. The real threat is the destruction of free speech and the rise of status based law that protects some chosen ethnicities and persecutes others. What is really needed is an alliance against those who are destroying the foundations of truth, freedom, and accountable government.”

Last week there was also an interesting vote in Congress, blocking or forcing the sale of the Chinese social media and networking site TikTok, which has become very popular among young people worldwide. What was not much discussed in the media in the lead-up to the vote, which claimed the site was a “national security threat,” was who was pushing for the bill. In reality, the story within the story was again all about Israel. “We have a major TikTok problem” complained the grotesque Anti-Defamation League chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt, apparently freaking out because global youth aren’t buying Israel’s propaganda anymore since the site has something like a “memory” that directs readers and viewers to new information or videos that they had previously expressed an interest in. Many users were, per Greenblatt, interested in what is going on in Gaza and were receiving information hostile to Israel. The passage of the bill overwhelmingly, which was rushed through Congress, demonstrates yet again the Israel Lobby power. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was reportedly heavily engaged in lobbying up until the voting took place. It unfortunately demonstrates how Israel is able to decide how Americans choose to communicate and socialize with one another and the world. Summarizing the Israel Lobby’s view on the issue was the ever-delightful ex-presidential candidate Nikki Haley who responded to the legislation with “We really do need to ban TikTok once and for all and let me tell you why. For every 30 minutes that someone watches TikTok every day they become 17% more antisemitic, more pro-Hamas based on doing that.” And there’s even more to the damage done. The bill doesn’t just ban TikTok. It also creates a new unilateral authority for any president to ban any app or website he or she deems to be a “national security threat” if its owned or controlled by a “foreign adversary,” which includes not just China but also Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Goodbye free speech and association!

So, in return for considerable pain and nothing tangible to benefit the United States and its citizens, Israel is celebrated as “America’s best friend and closest ally” while also getting a free ride of billions of dollars from the US taxpayer and complete political protection bestowed by the clowns that run Washington no matter what it does and how much damage it actually inflicts on American people or interests. Along those lines, the biggest story recently has been Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s denunciation of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a 40 minute speech delivered from the Senate floor followed up by an X tweet.

Schumer, who is the highest ranking elected Jew in the US government, accused Netanyahu of continuing the Gaza war and running it in such a fashion so as to demonstrate that he “has lost his way to allow his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.” Schumer observed that Israel’s government, whoever heads it, must make “course corrections” and that “[Netanyahu] has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah” among nations, which has already to a certain extent taken place. In light of that, Schumer recommended that “At this critical juncture, I believe a new election is the only way to allow for a healthy and open decision-making process about the future of Israel,” adding that it’s “a time when so many Israelis have lost their confidence in the vision and direction of their government.”

Schumer also criticized Netanyahu for rejecting the Biden administration’s proposal to discuss the establishment of a Palestinian state immediately after the war ends. “As a lifelong supporter of Israel, it has become clear to me: The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel after Oct. 7. The world has changed — radically — since then, and the Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.” He added that “As a democracy, Israel has the right to choose its own leaders, and we should let the chips fall where they may. But the important thing is that Israelis are given a choice. There needs to be a fresh debate about the future of Israel. In my opinion, that is best accomplished by holding an election.”

An election would not necessarily produce a change in Gaza policy, with most Israelis supporting the war by a large margin, according to opinion polls. But one survey released in January suggested that only 15% of voters wanted Netanyahu to remain in office after the conflict ends. War cabinet minister Benny Gantz, Netanyahu’s rival and most likely successor, basically supports the ongoing Gaza slaughter with only minor deviations from what the prime minister is currently doing.

Many congressional Democrats praised Schumer’s speech and a follow up X tweet but Republicans in the United States and leaders in Israel quickly responded negatively to his remarks. Israel’s Likud party saying Israel is not a “banana republic” while House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement “It is highly inappropriate and simply wrong for Senator Schumer to be calling for new elections in Israel.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed with that judgment: “It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about foreign interference in our own democracy to call for the removal of a democratically elected leader of Israel. This is unprecedented.” Opposing the Republican onslaught, some Democrats pushed back, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who observed that “Netanyahu has certainly not been shy about trying to interfere in American politics.”

Schumer’s speech must be placed in context. Schumer, who has been in the US Senate for 25 years, has always been a strong and uncritical supporter of what Israel does and how it manages its security. He has described his own surname as derived from the Hebrew word “shomer” which means “protector” or “guardian” and has elaborated on that theme to declare openly that he is “Israel’s protector” in the Senate. That said, it is quite possible that Schumer does believe that Israel’s ongoing slaughter of Palestinians with no end in sight is doing grave damage to the long-term viability of the Jewish state. Many other prominent American Jews and friends of Israel like Tom Friedman of the New York Times, are likewise warning that the Jewish state is acting recklessly, not in its own self-interests. Polls suggest that Israel is the most despised nation in the world due to its torturing, starving and outright killing of Palestinian civilians. Number two in those polls is the United States, which is paying the price of being Netanyahu’s political, financial and weapons supplier, enabling the deaths and making it complicit in the conflict, much of it being done in secret by Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and covered by a series of lies.

The impact of Israeli actions with elections coming up in the US might well have motivated Schumer to speak up now while there is still time to correct course and reduce both the Palestinian death toll and the damage being done to the White House. President Joe Biden almost certainly would have approved of the Schumer speech, but he characteristically did not want to get too far in front on the issue. The trick will be making the Gaza conflict look like it is Netanyahu’s war while also establishing one’s “humanitarian” principles in a way that does not actually blame Israel. It will be difficult and there is no certainty of success, but Schumer and Biden might be smelling electoral defeat in November with the margin of difference being the Gaza war and how the Democratic Party base and independent voters have responded to it.

The White House has powerful allies, interestingly enough, in the Republican Party, which has been transformed into a hardline Israel loving propaganda machine, as well as in the mainstream media, which continues to slant its coverage of Gaza to favor Israel. Indeed, Schumer’s remarks came, not coincidentally, a day after Senate Republicans invited Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at an upcoming party retreat in Washington. Voters who are genuinely antiwar might well vote Democratic as the lesser of two evils, particularly given Donald Trump’s advice to the Israelis to “finish the job” in dealing with the Palestinians. In any event, it is likely that such possibilities are currently swirling through the heads of Biden and Schumer as well as those who are directing the Democratic Party campaign.

And make no mistake that the Administration is currently making sure that those who want to continue the struggle against what is being consistently labeled the international terrorist threat, which justifies ongoing wars, will have something to promote. Top US intelligence officials last Monday at an annual hearing on global security threats held at the Senate Intelligence Committee offices warned that the war in Gaza could embolden terrorist groups, which are aligned in their opposition to the United States for its support of Israel. “The crisis has galvanized violence by a range of actors around the world. And while it is too early to tell, it is likely that the Gaza conflict will have a generational impact on terrorism,” said Avril Haines, who is of course Jewish, the director of national intelligence. At the meeting Senator Tom Cotton a Republican from Arkansas and a stalwart backer of Israel, prodded CIA Director William Burns and Haines to refute critics’ allegations that Israel is ‘exterminating the Palestinian people’ with its military campaign.” Indeed, Zionist apologists like Cotton aside, no one in the room suggested that putting an end to the Israeli genocide might be the best way to put an end to the proliferating terrorism threat.

And so the beat goes on. How to do everything Israel wants without appearing to do so has plagued every White House since Harry Truman, only it has gotten harder to execute as Israel behavior has worsened and American politicians have become more corrupted and openly dependent on Jewish political contributions. It will be interesting to see if the Schumer speech will actually have some resonance or will only serve to trick the public into believing that the US government has actually regained its independence. Only time will tell but it might become an interesting run politically speaking between now and November.

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.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

USAID’s “Disinformation Primer:” Documents Reveal Censorship Promotion Across Sectors

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2024

The authorities in the US are once again caught red-handed promoting censorship, this time via the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID is normally used by the US government to spread its influence around the world, but now, according to documents from a case against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), the agency also actively participates in analyzing and spreading various censorship methods.

The lawsuit in question was filed by America First Legal (AFL), alleging that the State Department, via GEC, engages with private media to advance what the non-profit believes is government/private sector censorship and propaganda collusion.

Now, USAID’s controversial activities have also been exposed thanks to the lawsuit, which revealed that one of the agency’s bureaus, the Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has come up with a “Disinformation Primer” – a 97-page document marked as being “for internal use only.”

The Disinformation Primer – in fact, a censorship primer, to sum up the Foundation for Freedom Online watchdog’s interpretation of the strategy – was “up and running” only one month after Joe Biden got sworn in, in February 2021.

The extensive “primer” seeks to exert influence on how private tech, but also media companies can increase the level of existing censorship; the already existing engagement with private entities is at the same time commended by USAID.

Other targets, more in line with USAID’s overall activities, include foreign governments, specifically education departments, and funding sources. Inevitably, more “partners” are NGOs, non-profits, and think tanks, often themselves with ties to the government.

Some of the censorship techniques that USAID likes and recommends are Advertiser Outreach, which is designed to cut off media and accounts on social platforms from ad revenue, if their speech is what’s known as “disfavored” (by those in power).

Another is propping up legacy media as these outlets steadily lose trust, with things like “prebunking” and the Redirect Method, developed by Google, which “relies on advertising using an online advertising platform such as Google AdWords, targeting tools and algorithms to combat online radicalization that comes from the spread and threat of dangerous, misleading information.”

One striking quote from the document is that gaming sites and gamers should be prevented from forming “interpretations of the world that differ from ‘mainstream’ sources.”

Worth noting is that this censorship, propaganda and indoctrination “handbook” – aimed at curtailing citizens’ freedom of expression and thought – was made using taxpayer money.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous

Did they tell you the part about giving the president sweeping new powers?

By Matt Taibbi | Racket News | March 15, 2024

It’s funny how things work.

Last year at this time, Americans overwhelmingly supported a ban on TikTok. Polls showed a 50-22% overall margin in support of a ban and 70-14% among conservatives. But Congress couldn’t get the RESTRICT Act passed.

As the public learned more about provisions in the bill, and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the legislative plan grew less popular. Polls dropped to 38-27% in favor by December, and they’re at 35-31% against now.

Yet the House just passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” by a ridiculous 352-64 margin, with an even more absurd 50-0 unanimous push from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. What gives?

As discussed on the new America This Week, passage of the TikTok ban represents a perfect storm of unpleasant political developments, putting congress back fully in line with the national security establishment on speech. After years of public championing of the First Amendment, congressional Republicans have suddenly and dramatically been brought back into the fold. Meanwhile Democrats, who stand to lose a lot from the bill politically — it’s opposed by 73% of TikTok users, precisely the young voters whose defections since October put Joe Biden’s campaign into a tailspin — are spinning passage of the legislation to its base by suggesting it’s not really happening.

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok, it’s an attempt to make TikTok better,” is how Nancy Pelosi put it. Congress, the theory goes, will force TikTok to divest, some kindly Wall Street consortium will gobble it up (“It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Steve Mnuchin told CNBC), and life will go on. All good, right?

Not exactly. The bill passed in the House that’s likely to win the Senate and be swiftly signed into law by the White House’s dynamic Biden hologram is at best tangentially about TikTok.

You’ll find the real issue in the fine print. There, the “technical assistance” the drafters of the bill reportedly received from the White House shines through, Look particularly at the first highlighted portion, and sections (i) and (ii) of (3)B:

As written, any “website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application” that is “determined by the President to present a significant threat to the National Security of the United States” is covered.

Currently, the definition of “foreign adversary” includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China.

The definition of “controlled,” meanwhile, turns out to be a word salad, applying to:

(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;

(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or

(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).

A “foreign adversary controlled application,” in other words, can be any company founded or run by someone living at the wrong foreign address, or containing a small minority ownership stake. Or it can be any company run by someone “subject to the direction” of either of those entities. Or, it’s anything the president says it is. Vague enough?

As Newsweek reported, the bill was fast-tracked after a secret “intelligence community briefing” of Congress led by the FBIDepartment of Justice, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The magazine noted that if everything goes as planned, the bill will give Biden the authority to shut down an app used by 150 million Americans just in time for the November elections.

Say you’re a Democrat, however, and that scenario doesn’t worry you. As America This Week co-host Walter Kirn notes, the bill would give a potential future President Donald Trump “unprecedented powers to censor and control the internet.” If that still doesn’t bother you, you’re either not worried about the election, or you’ve been overstating your fear of “dictatorial” Trump.

We have two decades of data showing how national security measures in the 9-11 era evolve. In 2004 the George W. Bush administration defined “enemy combatant” as “an individual who was part of or supporting Taliban or al Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States.” Yet in oral arguments of Rosul et al v Bush later that year, the government conceded an enemy combatant could be a “little old lady in Switzerland” who “wrote a check” to what she thought was an orphanage.

Eventually, every element of the requirement that an enemy combatant be connected to “hostilities against the United States” was dropped, including the United States part. Though Barack Obama eliminated the term “enemy combatant” in 2009, the government retained (and retains) a claim of authority to do basically whatever it wants, when it comes to capturing and detaining people deemed national security threats. You can expect a similar progression with speech controls.

Just ahead of Monday’s oral arguments in Murtha v. Missouri, formerly Missouri v. Biden — the case so many of us hoped would see the First Amendment reinvigorated by the Supreme Court — this TikTok bill has allowed the intelligence community to re-capture the legislative branch. Just a few principled speech defenders are left now. Fifty Democrats voted against the bill, which is heartening, although virtually none argued against it on First Amendment grounds, whis is infurating. Pramila Jayapal had a typical take, saying the ban would “harm users who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, many of whom are people of color.”

Contrast that with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who went after members of his own party, singling out Republicans encouraging a governmental power grab after years of fighting big tech abuses not just at TikTok but other platforms. These people claim to be horrified, he said, but actions speak louder than words.

“Look at their legislative proposals,” he said, noting many want to “set up government agencies and panels” on speech, effectively saying “If you’re not putting enough conservatives on there, by golly we’re going to have a government commission that’s going to determine what kind of content gets on there.”

These, he said, are “scary ideas.”

He’s right, and shame on papers like the New York Post that are going after Paul for having donors connected to TikTok. Paul has been consistent in his defense of speech throughout his career, so the idea that his opinion on this matter is bought is ludicrous. It’s a relief to be able to expect at least some adherence to principle on this topic from him or fellow Kentuckian Thomas Massie, just as we once could expect it from Democrats like Paul Wellstone or Dennis Kucinich.

I don’t often do this, but as Walter pointed out in today’s podcast, this bill is so dangerous, the moment so suddenly and unexpectedly grave, that we both recommend anyone who can find the time to call or write their Senators to express opposition to any coming Senate vote. It might help. Yes, collection of personal information and content manipulation by the Chinese government (or Russia’s, or ours) are serious problems, but the wider view is the speech emergency. As the cliché goes, forget the furniture. The house is on fire. Let’s hope we’re not too late.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

SXSW Is Accused of Using Copyright and Trademark Claims To Suppress Criticism

Copyright and trademark strikes are increasingly being used to force content takedowns

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2024

In a contentious battle over the use of copyright claims to suppress speech, South by Southwest (SXSW), an organizer of a popular annual conference and music festival in Austin, has found itself facing some backlash due to its connections with arms manufacturers that supply Israel.

Rather than responding to the criticism directly, or simply ignoring it, SXSW attempted to get the criticism hidden with questionable legal tactics against a local advocacy group, Austin for Palestine Coalition.

This group has been organizing protests against SXSW, employing strategies such as organizing rallies and spreading awareness through social media.

Austin for Palestine’s social media campaign notably includes altered versions of SXSW’s arrow logo, now featuring fighter jets stained with blood, and other images that mimic SXSW’s marketing style but juxtaposed with stark symbols like bombs or bleeding doves.

This bold visual commentary quickly drew a legal reaction from SXSW. The festival sent a cease-and-desist letter to the advocacy group, alleging trademark and copyright infringement, demanding the removal of these posts.

Additionally, Instagram notified Austin for Palestine about SXSW’s claim on their posts.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), SXSW’s copyright infringement claims are baseless. Fundamental elements like their arrow logo do not qualify for copyright protection. Even if SXSW’s allegations targeted the group’s adaptation of their promotional style, such mimicry is arguably not eligible for copyright protection.

Moreover, these posts exemplify non-infringing fair use. Notably, the advocacy group’s use of these materials serves a distinctly different purpose from their original intent, causing no harm to SXSW beyond potential reputation damage, which does not constitute a valid copyright complaint.

Read the EFF’s letter to SXSW here.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

German teen pulled out of classroom and questioned by police for TikTok post stating Germany is her home

BY THOMAS BROOKE | REMIX NEWS | MARCH 15, 2024

Three police officers stormed a German high school last month and took a 16-year-old girl out of class to question her about a TikTok video she posted in which she called Germany her home and not just a place on a map.

The incident occurred on Feb. 27 at the Richard Wossidlo High School in Ribnitz-Damgarten, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

In an interview with the German news outlet Junge Freiheit, the mother of the student explained how her daughter had been suspected of spreading “unconstitutional content on social media.”

The school principal had been made aware of her TikTok account and “informed the police about a possible criminal matter,” Marcel Opitz, the press spokesman for Stralsund police station, told the site.

The offensive content is understood to have been two posts. The first included a joke about how the Smurfs and Germany have something in common; they are both blue — an apparent reference to support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party whose primary color is blue. The AfD is now a mainstream party across Germany and sits second in national polls, much to the irritation of the German political and media establishment.

The second post saw the German teen seemingly innocuously refer to Germany as her home and not just a place on a map.

The 16-year-old was subsequently apprehended at her school in front of classmates and given what the police explained to Junge Freiheit when asked what they described as a “risk of harm” talk by officers.

“I am horrified,” the girl’s mother said. “This is such violent, if I may say so, Stasis shit, I would never have believed what was done to my daughter here possible in my entire life.

“My daughter posted a Smurfs video on TikTok a few months ago. It said that the Smurfs and Germany have something in common: The Smurfs are blue and so is Germany. That was probably a funny AfD advertising post. And then, she once posted that Germany is not a place, but a home.”

The mother explained how, according to her daughter, “three police officers suddenly appeared in the classroom and picked her up,” escorting her away “like she’s a criminal… That’s what made me so incredibly angry.”

The girl was reportedly told by police that “for her own protection” she should “refrain from posting such posts in the future,” but accepted that she had not committed a criminal offense.

However, the state interior minister, Christian Pegel, said he had “no problems” with the police’s behavior of coming to the girl’s classroom and pulling her, saying their approach to the threat was “proportionate.”

“I believe that proportionality was maintained,” he stated.

When the mother questioned the school principal and told him to contact her first if he thought there was a problem, he “told me that he wasn’t allowed to do that, he was told to inform the police immediately.”

Both the school and its principal declined to issue a statement to the German press on the matter, but the issue has now been brought by the AfD to the state parliament.

“This scandalous incident reveals that our schools are being used more and more to sniff out attitudes,” said Enrico Schult, the party’s education policy spokesman. “If there was actually an order from the Ministry of Education about this, it must have political consequences.

“A headmaster should stand in front of his students and at least take the parents into his confidence first, instead of calling three police officers because he receives an anonymous denunciation email about a student,” he added.

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

HOW THE 2020 ELECTION WAS REALLY WON – MIKE BENZ’S EXPLOSIVE REVELATION

Russell Brand | March 8, 2024

Mike Benz, is a former State Department official with responsibilities in formulating and negotiating US foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters. Mr. Benz founded FFO as a civil society institution building on his experience in the role of championing digital freedom around the world in the public sector.

We spoke about the power of the deep state, CIA in Ukraine, Rigged elections and How The US Deep State Infiltrated World Governments. PLUS much more…

March 15, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

UN probe finds Israel deliberately targeted journalists

Late Reuters visuals journalist Issam Abdallah
Press TV – March 14, 2024

A United Nations investigation singles out the preventability of an October 13 Israeli attack on a group of journalists in southern Lebanon that led to the death of a Reuters reporter.

The attack consisted of two tank strikes that claimed the life of the agency’s 37-year-old visuals journalist Issam Abdallah, and wounded six other journalists, including Agence France-Presse (AFP) photographer Christina Assi, 28, near the Lebanese village of Alma al-Chaab. Assi later had a leg amputated.

The investigation by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) found out that the attack targeted “civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists.”

The attack, it said, “constitutes a violation of UNSCR 1701 and international law,” the UNIFIL report said, referring to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended a 33-day-long Israeli military onslaught on the country in the summer of 2006.

The seven-page report dated February 27 said further, “It is assessed that there was no exchange of fire across the Blue Line at the time of the incident,” referring to a temporary line that was drawn after the withdrawal of the Israeli regime from Lebanon during an earlier war in 2000.

“The reason for the strikes on the journalists is not known,” the probe added.

At least 133 journalists and media workers have been killed since October 7, when the Israeli regime launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip that has so far claimed the lives of 31,300 Gazans, most of them women, children, and adolescents.

March 14, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Canadian, Irish, French Government-Attempted Speech Regulations Appear Like Desperate Censorship Power Plays

BY JEFFEREY JAXEN | MARCH 12, 2024

Following in the footsteps of UKs highly controversial Online Safety Act, now law, Canadian and Irish government officials are proposing legislation that would push the boundaries to further stifle online debate.

During the COVID response, the American government chose to erect a massive, top-down censorship industrial complex pulling in key White House officials, CDC heads, and the Department of Homeland Security.

In the UK, it was all-out military psychological operations using the British Army unit’s 77th Brigade and Specialist Group Military Intelligence. Both countries turned their security apparatuses, once used against foreign enemy combatants, to target its own public domestically in an aggressive move to shape public thought and neutralize independent voices.

Now, humanity is at an inflection point. A non-stop blitzkrieg of contentious issues are affecting the lives of many. The failed COVID response taught us that open conversation and investigation is critical to unwind industry talking points, government propaganda, and scientific falsehoods.

Perhaps more important, the new public square, that is the digital age of social media, serves as a steam valve to debate valid concerns surrounding charged issues like climate change and the net zero push, open migration, vaccine safety, reckless government monetary policy, election meddling, the surgical and pharmaceutical fast track of gender-affirming care for minors, intelligence agency run ‘disclosure,’ and so much more.

Meanwhile, power centers are desperate to take all the above issues and funnel vocal detractors from the dominant narrative into one category – hate.

Over the years, governments have gleefully began attaching the ‘hate’ label onto any person, topic, or explanation that runs counter to the single, myopic version of events, ideas, information, or even historical events they deem fact – despite valid evidence proving otherwise.

Socially, the ‘it’s all hateful except for our viewpoint’ worked for corporations, governments, and legacy media operations when they enjoyed narrative control.

Those days are fleeting now and major cracks have formed upon once-settled topics. Now we see the grip tightening from the legislative angle to create more bureaucracy and new powers to punish.

Canada’s Bill C-63 enacts what’s called the Online Harms Act, amends the Criminal Code, and the Canadian Human Rights Act among other things. It also attempts to define and legislate a human emotion stating:

hatred means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike

Meanwhile, C-63 states that an “Offense motivated by hatredunder this Act or any other Act of Parliament”…carries with a penalty of “imprisonment for life.”

Other goodies written into the bill are the creation of an extrajudicial government tribunal to rule on complaints of threats, intimidation or discrimination from people who can remain anonymous. That’s right, no need to face your accuser says Canada.

If one is accused by the government’s newly-created, extrajudicial group to be “engaging or to have engaged in the discriminatory practice,” they can be ordered, as the bill states, “to pay compensation of not more than $20,000 to any victim identified” and “to pay a penalty of not more than $50,000 to the Receiver General.

No room for abuse here. What could go wrong?

One would think this would be a one-off piece of speech-chilling legislation from a country that has lost its way under poor leadership. Yet Ireland is also attempting a similar move with mirrored legislative language.

Ireland’s Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill is currently before the upper house of the Irish legislature. The Critic writes the law, if enacted, “…would usher in a dangerous new standard for state-driven censorship. The expression or possession of content or even ideas deemed “hateful” would be illegal under the law, with serious implications for everyday people…”

An opinion piece published in The Hill writes:

As per the tentative legislation, people with “protected characteristics” which includes, inter alia, race, color, and nationality are afforded new legal protections against psychical and mentally inflicted harms, in which offenders are motivated by “hatred.”

It continues by stating:

As such, Ireland’s police force, An Garda Síochána, will have the authority under the bill to raid the home of the possessor of such material, demand their password and seize their devices. Failure to comply could result in a year-long prison sentence.”

The reason for the sudden Orwellian about face given by Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar was that Ireland needed to “… modernise our laws against incitement to hatred and hatred in general.”

Despite the weak cover stories governments are using to capture speech and attempt to regain narrative control, a clear pattern is being seen – open debate is dangerous to the dwindling control of power centers.

The fun doesn’t stop there.

Article 18 of the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty also stipulates that all countries signed on to the power-centralizing agreement are mandated to “… combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” and “inform policies on factors that hinder adherence to public health and social measures in a pandemic and trust in science and public health institutions.” 

Finally, a bill in the works in France appears to be a special gift for pharmaceutical companies. Article 4 of the bill specifically states:

Provocation, by means of repeated pressure or maneuvers, of any person suffering from a pathology to abandon or abstain from following medical treatment is punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros. therapeutic or prophylactic, when this abandonment or abstention is presented as beneficial for the health of the person concerned whereas it is, in the state of medical knowledge, clearly likely to cause for them, taking into account the pathology of which they is affected, particularly serious consequences for their physical or psychological health. 

As written, it appears that any criticism of vaccine products, SSRIs, statins, opioids, drugs and procedures used to transition children, or just about any other product or medical practice that has debatable concerns and unsettled science surrounding it – if currently accepted in ‘medical knowledge’ – is a protected class not to be spoken ill about.

When the provocation provided for in the first two paragraphs has been followed by effects, the penalties are increased to three years of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.” states the proposed French law.

The coincidental timing over the past few years of several pieces of legislation whose effect will be to essentially chill freedom of speech in the end equation must be taken seriously. The good news is that individuals at all levels of society are sounding the alarm to critically analyze and reject all attempts at overarching control over basic human rights – no matter how well packaged and intentioned they may initially seem.

March 13, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Cape Byron Lighthouse Declaration

Health Advisory & Recovery Team | March 12, 2024

In early 2023, three Australian health professionals who had all been ‘struck off’ for speaking out against their government’s pandemic response, decided they must speak up for medical ethics and freedom of debate. They met and set up the Cape Byron Lighthouse declaration. The declaration’s four aims would have been uncontroversial only a few years ago:

  • All silencing and censorship by bureaucrats and regulators, including of experienced practitioners and scientists, must stop. There must be respect for every individual’s right to freedom of opinion and expression.
  • The right to ‘informed’ consent must be upheld – and must include being fully informed of relevant risks, as well as any benefits (proven or presumed).
  • Mandates and other forms of medical coercion are unethical – and must cease. Bodily autonomy is the inalienable right of every individual – and must be respected.
  • There is an urgent need for transparency and reform in science and medicine and to halt the increasing globalisation of public health. We demand the restoration of voice and decision power to individual practitioners – and to those they serve.

A year later, they reached out to HART and other groups to start making this a world-wide campaign. Three HART members, Drs Clare Craig, Liz Evans and Ros Jones are now so-called ‘Lighthouse Keepers’, alongside Drs Sam White and Anne McCluskey. The aim is for the public to nominate citizens in all walks of life who are prepared to speak out against censorship in all its forms.  We do not necessarily all share the same views even on covid-19, let alone on other topics – it would be a dull life if we did! But we all share the belief that human interaction and discourse is vital to any society’s wellbeing.

Ros Neelon-Cook, one of the three founder members, has recently been interviewed by John Campbell – see COVID Psychological Manipulation: UnpackedShe very clearly covers the problem of fear interrupting critical thinking, as covered many times in various HART articles.

We encourage HART readers to sign. And please nominate people from around the world to act as lighthouse keepers for their area. Change is in the air.

READ & SIGN THE LIGHTHOUSE DECLARATION HERE

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Harvard Fires Professor Who Co-wrote Great Barrington Declaration

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | March 12, 2024

Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., an epidemiologist and professor of Medicine at Harvard University, on Monday confirmed the university fired him.

Kulldorff has been a critic of lockdown policiesschool closures and vaccine mandates since early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2020, he published the Great Barrington Declaration, along with co-authors Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D., and Stanford epidemiologist and health economist Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.

In an essay published Monday in City Journal, Kulldorff wrote that his anti-mandate position got him fired from the Mass General Brigham hospital system, where he also worked, and consequently from his Harvard faculty position.

Kulldorff detailed how his commitment to scientific inquiry put him at odds with a system that he alleged had “lost its way.”

“I am no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard,” Kulldorff wrote. “The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as I discovered, truth can get you fired.”

He noted that it was clear from early 2020 that lockdowns would be futile for controlling the pandemic.

“It was also clear that lockdowns would inflict enormous collateral damage, not only on education but also on public health, including treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health,” Kulldorff wrote.

“We will be dealing with the harm done for decades. Our children, the elderly, the middle class, the working class, and the poor around the world — all will suffer.”

That viewpoint got little debate in the mainstream media until the epidemiologist and his colleagues published the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by nearly 1 million public health professionals from across the world.

The document made clear that no scientific consensus existed for lockdown measures in a pandemic. It argued instead for a “focused protection” approach for pandemic management that would protect high-risk populations, such as elderly or medically compromised people, and otherwise allow the COVID-19 virus to circulate among the healthy population.

Although the declaration merely summed up what previously had been conventional wisdom in public health, it was subject to tremendous backlash. Emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health called for a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration and of the authors, who were subsequently slandered in mainstream and social media.

Collins and other figures, including Dr. Rochelle Walensky who would go on to head up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) during the pandemic, sought to undermine their credibility, Kulldorff wrote.

His tweets contradicting CDC policy that people with natural immunity must be vaccinated were flagged by the Virality Project, a government front group, and censored by Twitter.

“At this point, it was clear that I faced a choice between science or my academic career,” Kulldorff wrote. “I chose the former. What is science if we do not humbly pursue the truth?”

Kulldorff said he was also fired from the CDC COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical Work Group because he disagreed with the decision to completely pause the Johnson & Johnson adenovirus COVID-19 vaccine after a safety signal was detected for blood clots in women under 50.

He spoke out in op-eds and social media to argue the Johnson & Johnson shot should remain available for older Americans alongside the Pfizer and Moderna shots — the only other shots available in the U.S. market.

While Kulldorff’s arguments advocating the Johnson & Johnson vaccines may be flawed, investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel wrote today on his Substack, Kulldorff’s story reveals a “more powerful truth.”

“He found out the hard way that there is no crossing the tracks of the institutional freight train that is the Big Pharma-Government Health system of institutional capture that persists in America today,” Schachtel wrote.

“He threatened the gravy train that produced hundreds of billions of lawsuit-protected taxpayer dollars that were making their way to Pfizer and Moderna,” Schachtel added. “And for that sin, he was swiftly removed from his role on the CDC working group.”

Harvard also denied Kulldorff’s vaccine exemption requests. He publicly opposed the Harvard mandates and pushed for the university to rehire those who were fired and to eliminate its mandate for students.

The university last week dropped its COVID-19 mandate for students.

“Veritas has not been the guiding principle of Harvard leaders,” Kulldorff concluded. “Nor have academic freedom, intellectual curiosity, independence from external forces, or concern for ordinary people guided their decisions.”

To right the wrongs that have been done, he said, the broader scientific community must restore academic freedom and end “cancel culture.”

“Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it,” he wrote. “The scientific community will gradually lose public support and slowly disintegrate in such a culture.”

Harvard Medical School did not respond to The Defender’s request for comment.


Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a 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.

March 12, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment