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More Stick, Less Carrot – Prison For Not Complying With Energy Rules?

Climate Change Fanatics Upping Their Game

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | September 2, 2023

In a recent World Economic Forum discussion, it was acknowledged that governments will need to start using more sticks and less carrots.

“We’re going to need to change behaviours of individuals but also how our industries, corporations and also our governments work and practise. We’re going to need to do this through a mixture of carrots and hopefully, errr, perhaps not so many sticks… But we’re likely to see an increasing move towards a more stick-like intervention into the future, as things worsen, if we’re not able to act”.

The UK government seems to be taking the WEF’s advice seriously because, according to the Telegraph, they are looking to introduce new powers allowing new criminal offences to be created. This is in addition to increasing penalties for property owners who don’t comply with new energy rules.

Ministers want to grant themselves powers to create new criminal offences and increase civil penalties as part of efforts to hit net zero targets. Under the proposals, people who fall foul of regulations to reduce their energy consumption could face up to a year in prison and fines of up to £15,000.

The proposals will come before Parliament on Tuesday when MPs return back to work to discuss the Energy Bill.

It provides for “the creation of criminal offences” where there is “non-compliance with a requirement imposed by or under energy performance regulations”. People could also be prosecuted for “provision of false information” about energy efficiency or the “obstruction of… an enforcement authority”.

As seen with the Coronavirus legislation, ministers “are giving themselves broad umbrella powers to redraw and enforce the system before consulting on precisely which changes to make. Tory MPs have expressed alarm that ministers would be able to create new offences with limited parliamentary scrutiny under the update”.

The Bill is festooned with new criminal offences. This is just unholy, frankly, that you could be creating criminal offences… The ones we’ve found most offensive are where a business owner could face a year in prison for not having the right energy performance certificate or type of building certification.

Instead of undergoing scrutiny, criminal offences will be created using statutory instruments. These are still approved by Parliament but “typically nodded through”. There has not been a statutory instrument rejected in the last 35 years.

At the same time, Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ) in London have been causing controversy. The newly expanded scheme means that drivers of certain vehicles (i.e. poor people who can’t afford Teslas) are forced to pay £12.50 ($15.75) every day to drive in any of London’s 32 London boroughs. The fine for not paying on time is £180.

Whilst this might not sound a lot of money to some, an additional £400 per month just to drive to work, will be an absolute killer for a lot of families. Another tax on the poor in the name of climate change.

A vigilante group calling themselves “Blade Runners” are going round London disabling or destroying the new ULEZ cameras. According to some reports, 90% of cameras have already been “retired”.

Sales of angle grinders are through the roof and the usual suspects are all over social media congratulating the Blade Runners but is all that it seems?

Problem, Reaction, Solution.

As a result, London Mayor, Sadiq Khan has deployed fleets of camera vans to catch people on the go. Clearly these camera vans were ready and waiting to go, they just needed an excuse. And how long will it be until some legislation is brought in to deal with these climate change vandals!?

And when Labour wins the election next year, deputy leader Angela Rayner, confirmed that “this is coming to towns and cities across the whole of the United Kingdom”.

It won’t stop there either. Whilst rumours of pay per mile schemes have been branded conspiracy theory nonsense, on Transport for London’s website they confirm that this is planned for 2025/26.

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The climate change fanatics will do anything to reach their 2030 goals. The carrots haven’t been as effective as they’d hoped and with only 6.5 years left, get ready for more and more sticks.

September 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Sadiq Khan’s Green Globalist Gang Suggests Daily 44g Meat Allowance and Rations Lower Than Second World War

BY CHRIS MORRISON | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 31, 2023

London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Ulez punch-down on cars and vans owned by the less affluent is just one example of the attacks planned against town dwellers living in modern industrial societies. Khan is the current chairman of C40, a global network of city mayors backed by numerous hard-Left billionaire foundations. Removing cars from cities is just one of its aims. In a Headline Report published by the group in 2019 and re-emphasised earlier this year, a “progressive” target for 2030 was set of a daily per person allowance of 44g of meat (enough for two small meatballs), a daily limit of 2,500 calories, (less than the ration in the Second World War), one short haul flight every three years, eight new clothing items a year and private cars available for only one in five people. This “pioneering piece of thought leadership” was said to seek a “radical, and rapid, shift in consumption patterns”.

When the report about future urban consumption was first published in 2019, it received little publicity in the media. Some of its proposals looked a bit cranky even for mainstream publications. For instance, under an “ambitious” 2030 target, the mayors looked to ban meat and private vehicles altogether. But groundwork was clearly being laid. Mark Watts, executive director of C40, observed that average consumption-based emissions in the wealthier C40 cities must fall by “two thirds or more” by 2030. It was said that reducing vehicle ownership would lead to significant reclamation of roads and 25,000 kms of cycle lanes. This plan is now well advanced since the Covid lockdowns provided cover for mass street closures. Recent years have also seen large increases in cycle lanes, and of course the Ulez war on those driving older vehicles, not necessarily by choice.

Signatory cities are committed to “high impact accelerators”, which include creating low or zero emissions zones along with “implanting vehicle restrictions or financial incentives/disincentives such as road use or parking charges”. An early sighting here, perhaps of Khan’s suspected wish to implement road pricing after his Ulez infrastructure is in place.

There is also an early sighting of unsourced statistics with a claim that eating less meat and more vegetables and fruit could prevent 160,000 annual deaths associated with diseases such as heart attacks, diabetes and strokes in C40 cities. It is not immediately clear if these deaths actually occur in such precise numbers, or whether they are a Ulez-style ‘statistical construct‘.

Over 100 cities around the world are part of the C40 network and they are required to sign up to “performance-based requirements” based on a number of leadership standards. One of these standards specifies that they must innovate and start taking inclusive and resilient action, “to address emissions beyond the direct control of city government, such as associated with goods and services consumed in their city”. The largely unpublicised C40 operation is backed by finance and support from many well-known green foundations including Climate Works, Hewlett, IKEA, Oak, FR and Clinton. Three “strategic funders” are identified including Christopher Hohn’s Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, a major financial contributor to Extinction Rebellion. Another strategic funder is Bloomberg Philanthropies, whose controller Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, is president of the C40 board.

Of course interest is now growing in what all these people have been smoking over the last few years, as the Con/Lab green blob (different countries, different mainstream political combinations) organise to de-industrialise and cut human progress in the name of tackling a supposed ‘climate crisis’. The C40 Headline Report gives clear guidance of the scale of economic and societal change required under a collectivist Net Zero agenda. U.K. Fires is an academic project funded by the British Government, and it also gives a brutal assessment of life under what it terms absolute net zero carbon dioxide emissions. Again it is not discussed much in the public prints, but the Daily Sceptic has reported on its findings. These include no flying and shipping by 2050, drastic cuts in home heating, bans on beef and lamb consumption and a ruthless purge of traditional building materials such as bricks, glass, steel and cement. Such is the admirable honesty on display in their reports that they note these building materials can be replaced with “rammed earth” – mud huts for the lower classes in other words.

Sadiq Khan has been badly shaken by a popular uprising against his hated Ulez scheme. Backing in his own Labour party is wearing thin, not because most senior members are particularly anti-Ulez, but because after the Uxbridge by-election they can see a little more clearly that attacking the cars of the poor is a slam-dunk vote loser. For his part, Khan seems to have become more hysterical attacking those who oppose Ulez as conspiracy theorists. Earlier this year, reports the Daily Mail, Khan said that some of those who opposed the scheme’s growth across all London boroughs were “anti-vaxxers, Covid deniers, conspiracy theorists and Nazis”.

The evidence provided by Khan’s own C40 Headline Report, along with the work of U.K. Fires, shows clearly the actual agenda that is now being ruthlessly deployed. The only conspiracy rabbithole in sight would appear to be that occupied by a freaked Mayor Sadiq Khan.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

September 2, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

First Principles and Self-Controlled Opposition

By Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D. | NewZealandDoc | August 30, 2023

Being a psychiatrist certainly makes me no specialist in areas of immunology, cardiology, surgery or infectious disease. But having earned a doctorate in medicine I was provided an education in reasoning within this extraordinarily complex discipline from first principles. Therefore as an inquisitive physician throughout the covid operation, I could not help but be baffled by the response of institutional authorities.

Forgive me for repeating myself, but a ‘first principles’ approach would never have led to lockdowns, distancing, masks or the nefarious Jab. It would never have led to mandates or apartheid. And it would never have led to the promulgation of mRNA agents and the relentless push not only to inject all of humanity but, alas, all of the animal kingdom upon which humanity relies for food.

I repeat myself because with the whiff of yet another novel ‘variant’ restrictive measures are again in the news in America, whose so-called president has promised a yet more effective jab.

Effective at what, one may ask? At creating even more disastrous adverse effects and excess death? At degrading one’s natural immune system so as to render one more susceptible to infections and cancers?

Leaving aside the fact that I never believed a vaccine of any kind was necessary to manage the covid threat, for reasons I have laid out in many essays already, the description of the emergency-use instrument was proof enough for me that it would be a disaster. Flooding a body with millions upon millions of coronavirus spike protein antigens manufactured by the body itself, thanks to the integration of messenger RNA into cell machinery, did not seem like a very good idea — unless one wished to wreak havoc.

Even a psychiatrist like me could see that the potential for spike protein/antibody complexes in tremendous numbers could create autoimmune catastrophe via myriad mechanisms, and even a psychiatrist would suspect that somehow those pesky things would cross the blood-brain barrier despite assurances to the contrary. In short, I figured that they would go everywhere.

And so they have.

The greater looming question, a question that continues to vex me to this day, is why or how so many medical specialists — some of whom have now come to have changed their tune — initially insisted that the Jab would be advisable for the elderly and medically compromised, if not for all. And indeed I wonder how some of these specialists, prominent in the current opposition to the Jab, came themselves to have received it.

You see, to argue from another set of first principles — principles of psychological rationality — it simply made no sense then, nor does it make sense now. Nor does it make any conceivable sense that the astonishingly predominant majority of physicians could have touted the Jab, forgotten about informed consent and early treatment, and cheered the imprisonment of healthy people against all hitherto formulated pandemic guidelines.

That we have been betrayed by our institutional medical authorities, trans-nationally and intra-nationally — and here I am thinking not only of the infamously corrupt World Health Organisation and Federation of State Medical Boards but of entities such as the Medical Council of New Zealand and the American Board of Internal Medicine and many others — is no longer a surprise. We can see them for what they are, for the despicable agenda they have imposed, and for the scientific and ethical foundation they, by their actions, have destroyed.

That we have been betrayed by our governments also is no surprise, given their dismissal and oppression of the very citizenry from whom these governments are supposed to derive their power.

The fight against these powers is not easy, as we know; and as we also know these powers delight in confusing and dividing any concerted opposition, which they accomplish in many ways, so as to weaken us.

During ‘conventional’ wartime it is commonplace for adversaries to send out spies, to infiltrate each other, to play the game of double and even triple agents, and to mislead each other in every possible way. In this war — in this war of the Globalist Few against the Populist Many — the massive communications agency masquerading as ‘news’ and ‘trusted media sources’ has hammered away without pause. It’s an irregular and really unfair war, and a thoroughly unique one given its scale, even though the techniques themselves of artful deception and purposeful division and the combination of soft and hard force have been around forever.

That our enemy — the enemy of real science and human autonomy, the proponent of censorship and the persecution of dissent — will seek to control us is obvious. However, the notion of ‘controlled opposition’ is in vogue and proceeds too trippingly from the tongue. Strictly speaking it is only one of the various means and devices used to disrupt our clamoring.

I’ve never liked this designation because it can become another of those irrefutable assertions whenever a disagreement arises and can be made to cover so many scenarios that it loses usefulness. Surely there can be spies and traitors and infiltrators and the like, and there always will. That’s life.

I worry more about ‘self-controlled opposition’ — about people who need no higher official to pull their strings but who have an uncanny knack for knowing how to curry favor and when to keep from going ‘too far’.

A realist is compelled to acknowledge that within any group of people, on whatever side, personalities will arise whose fealty is more to themselves than to the common mission. These are the folks with the kind of pull that can bend a movement astray.

Vaccines have become a kind of black hole, sucking so much of our discursive energy into endless debate. I have learned over these past three and a half years that no vaccine can be trusted — just as no medication can be. It is sound and rational to demand to know about the ingredients and adjuvants of every vaccine, just as it is sound and rational to want to know how fluoxetine is supposed to work and how it might go wrong. But we are left with the choice to partake and receive, or not. A choice that is non-negotiable, no matter what our governments may say while brandishing their scepter of fear.

Which brings me back to first principles. When the rebellious crew of fifty-six Americans signed the Declaration of Independence, they made preeminently clear the principles of human autonomy, rights that were inborn rather then conferred. They were, naturally, creatures of their time, molded by its social and cultural and racial constraints. The first principles, however, that they espoused and enshrined, held with them the key to overcoming these constraints. It took a while for their reasoning to be extended to its logical end to include all men and women, regardless of color — but it got there thanks to the enunciation of these foundational principles.

Same for psychoanalysis. Whatever one thinks or knows or thinks he or she knows about Freud and analysis and the mores of fin de siècle Vienna, the principle of free association as a portal to the unconscious mind transcends the societal and cultural milieu of the age in which it was discovered.

As we fight this fight of our lives the surest sign of corruption within our midst is whether our leaders adhere to or stray from principle.

So, going forward, if I start hearing about a better mRNA vaccine or an improved method of masking or a friendlier way to limit our freedom to assemble; if I start to read about how the harsh measures imposed and the rationale for a lightning-quick jab had some merit, all in the name of the greater good of course, I’ll know whom I’m up against.

September 2, 2023 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Israel confiscates Palestinian schoolbooks in Jerusalem

MEMO | September 1, 2023

Israeli occupation authorities yesterday confiscated school textbooks printed according to the Palestinian curriculum in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Jerusalem Governorate said Israeli intelligence officers seized the textbooks from inside a car that was delivering them to one of the private schools that teaches the Palestinian curriculum in the Old City of Jerusalem. The officers detained the driver and a school staff member.

For years, Israel has been trying to prevent Palestinian children in Jerusalem from following the Palestinian curriculum, claiming they must follow the Israeli curriculum, which provides a distorted view of Israel’s illegal occupation of their land.

The Jerusalem Governorate slammed the measure as an attack on the rights of Palestinian people to education, calling on the international community and human rights organisations to confront these racist crimes.

It also called on the Palestinian people, especially in Jerusalem, to confront these crimes against students and the Palestinian national curriculum and to refuse the Israeli “forged, fake and distorted” curriculum.

September 1, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Louisiana Attorney General Files Amicus Brief in CHD’s Landmark Suit Against Trusted News Initiative

The Defender – August 31, 2023

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday filed an amicus brief in support of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) groundbreaking lawsuit against the legacy news media members of the Trusted News Initiative (TNI).

The lawsuit, filed May 31, alleges the TNI violated antitrust laws and the U.S. Constitution by colluding with tech giants, some of which also are members of the TNI, to censor online news.

An amicus brief is filed by non-parties to a lawsuit to provide information that has a bearing on the issues and to assist the court in reaching the correct decision.

According to Landry’s amicus brief:

“The scope of TNI group’s conspiracy is wide-ranging. Restricting disfavored information injures not merely the Plaintiffs, but also Louisiana residents and state officials.

“Louisiana officials need a free press to communicate with and understand the concerns of the State’s residents. Louisiana residents, in turn, need a free press to receive information and make up their own minds about what is true and what is false.

“The State has a strong interest in seeing the injuries the TNI group has inflicted on Louisiana officials and residents redressed.”

Jed Rubenfeld, lead attorney in CHD’s lawsuit, said Landry’s amicus brief “from the sovereign state of Louisiana is incredibly helpful to CHD’s historic case against TNI and in explicating Louisiana’s own compelling interests in its outcome.”

Landry in May 2022 helped bring a lawsuit against the Biden administration alleging key officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, colluded with social media giants to suppress free speech on topics like COVID-19 and election security.

CHD and its chairman on leave, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in March filed a similar lawsuit against Biden administration officials, in a Louisiana district court. A federal judge last month consolidated the two cases.

TNI describes itself as an industry “partnership” formed during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis. Its members include some of the world’s largest legacy news organizations including The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and the BBC.

Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft also are members of the TNI.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit include CHD, Jim Hoft (the Gateway Pundit), Dr. Joseph Mercola and seven others.

According to the complaint, one of TNI’s stated goals is to “choke off” and “stamp out” online news reporting that TNI or any of its members deems “misinformation.”

Federal antitrust laws prohibit companies from colluding to deny critical facilities or market access to rivals. Such agreements, known as group boycotts, are per se illegal.

Chief U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty for the Western District of Louisiana on Wednesday granted leave to file Landry’s amicus brief. The court’s decision on the defendants’ legal objections to the lawsuit is expected in the near future.

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.

August 31, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Bloomberg Finances and Coopts State Attorneys General

State AGs aid Bloomberg quest for ‘green’ energy that threatens planet, wildlife and people

By Paul Driessen | CFact | August 22, 2023

When you’ve built a financial information and media empire and become the world’s seventh richest person, you get to say dumb things, like suggesting that farming is easy: “You dig a hole, put a seed in, put dirt on top, add water – and up comes the corn.”

Being ultra-wealthy also shields Michael Bloomberg from any fallout from the climate and energy policies he pursues so zealously. He will doubtless be able to afford electricity at any price for his multiple mansions, from any source, backed up by thousands of battery modules to cover the repeated blackouts his policies will unleash. The other 99.9% won’t be so fortunate.

Mr. Bloomberg bankrolls campaigns against coal and natural gas; supports efforts to populate the Biden Administration with rogue regulators equally intent on “transforming” America’s energy system, society, and living standards; and champions ESG principles for financial firms, companies, and investors. His company even has Sustainability and ESG & Climate divisions. Mr. Bloomberg serves as UN Special Envoy on Climate Ambition and Solutions, enabling him to advance his agendas internationally.

ESG (Environmental Social Governance) helps unelected asset managers use their control over trillions of investment dollars to pressure companies, lenders, and consumers to embrace far-left activist versions of public welfare and justice, even if it causes clients’ portfolio values to decline. ESG is a subversive way to bypass legislatures, voters and democratic processes, to impose unpopular political and ideological agendas, often in violation of fiduciary obligations.

ESG opposes fossil fuels, insisting they are causing climate cataclysms. Any company in that business, or offering to finance a drilling project, gets blackballed. But companies building or financing “clean, green” energy score in the ESG stratosphere – even though most such projects destroy vast swaths of wildlife habitats, involve slave and child labor, and leave widespread toxic pollution in their wake. ESG human rights, ecological, and climate justice principles are duplicitous and hypocritical.

As New York City mayor, Mr. Bloomberg infamously advocated exorbitant taxes on large sugary drinks, claiming they lead to obesity and thus to diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and premature death. He simply wanted to help poor people live longer, he asserted, by making Big Gulps less affordable.

It’s thus puzzling that he now wants to banish reliable, affordable gas heat and coal- and gas-generated electricity for heating and air conditioning – in favor of pricey, weather-dependent wind and solar power backed up by outrageously expensive batteries. Those policies shorten lives.

Even if manmade or natural climate change causes average global temperatures to climb 2-3 degrees, modern technologies will keep us safely comfortable. But if laws, policies, and ESG pressures make heating and AC inaccessible or unaffordable, indoor temperatures can soar 15-25 degrees in summertime and drop as precipitously in wintertime. People die – and cold is far deadlier than heat.

When people, especially the elderly, cannot heat their homes properly, they can perish from hypothermia or illnesses they would likely survive if they weren’t so cold. The Economist calculated that expensive energy may have killed 68,000 more Europeans than Covid did last winter.

LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) will help the poorest families – until the subsidy money runs out – but not middle/working classes, and not small businesses.

Even worse, three billion people worldwide still do not have access to reliable, affordable electricity. Message to climate zealots like Mr. Bloomberg: Access to intermittent, unpredictable wind/solar electricity doesn’t count, especially if it’s only enough to charge a cell phone or power a lightbulb or one-cubic-foot refrigerator. Lack of access to sustained, affordable energy kills.

The billionaire’s legal power grab is even more insidious and dangerous to democracy.

In 2017 he began covertly funding New York University Law School’s State Energy and Environmental Impact Center, which provides grants to progressive (Democrat) state attorneys general, enabling them to hire “special assistant” AGs or “fellows.”

The Center’s mission is to provide “direct legal assistance” to interested AGs “on specific administrative, judicial or legislative matters involving clean energy, climate change and environmental interests of regional and national significance,” when AGs say they lack sufficient public funds to hire such help.

NYU now says, “the fellows’ sole duty of loyalty is to the attorney general in whose office they serve.” However, these partisan Bloomberg grants pay salaries and “generous benefits packages” to “special assistants” whose functions are dictated by the Center; address specified “regional and national” issues normally beyond the purview of state AGs; are routinely coordinated with energy and climate activists and donors to those causes; and often launch “public nuisance” or RICO litigation against oil companies, to the detriment of targeted industries and the consumers and ratepayers who depend on their products, within the AGs’ home states and in distant states and communities.

It is the Bloomberg agenda that is being served, by grants that effectively conscript and coopt the public authority and power of the attorney general’s offices.

As a 2022 report by the American Tort Reform Foundation notes, “These SAAGs are private attorneys placed in public positions to exercise government authority. Yet, they are not independent or impartial because their mandate is to carry out an overtly political agenda funded by wealthy private donors.”

This “unique” arrangement, the Foundation continues, “allows well-heeled individuals and organizations to commandeer state and local police powers to target opponents with whom they disagree, raising the specter of corruption and fundamental unfairness in what should be public enforcement of the law.”

Those same considerations also appear to raise fundamental ethical, legal, and constitutional issues. They certainly raise questions about laws governing gifts, campaign contributions, and bribes – and where Bloomberg-funded lawyers are involved in prosecutions, serious due-process concerns.

And yet the NYU Center has already placed at least 11 special assistants in eight state attorney general offices, which have filed at least 20 lawsuits against a few selected oil companies, charging them with “climate denial” or causing planetary warming, rising seas, more frequent and intense hurricanes and tornadoes, and other “offenses.”

This litigation ignores the actions of hundreds of other oil and gas companies across the globe; steadily rising emissions from China, India, and other rapidly developing nations; the role of natural forces and emissions from wind turbine, solar panel and battery mining, processing, and manufacturing; the lack of evidence to support claims of a climate “crisis” or more frequent and violent storms; and the fact that these issues should be litigated in federal courts or relegated to a democratic political process.

The US Supreme Court recently had an opportunity to quash this rampant litigation but chose not to review the state and local cases and send them to federal courts. The seemingly endless lawsuits and acrimony are creating a legal, constitutional, scientific and public policy nightmare for businesses, consumers, courts, states, and the nation.

Rest assured, billionaires like Bloomberg, Gates, Kerry, Zuckerberg, and Soros – who demand that we commoners give up our cars, gas stoves and furnaces, steaks, air travel, and suburban homes – don’t intend to give up anything.

Let’s hope the pro-America governors, AGs, legislators, judges, and business groups battling ESG and other woke campaigns tackle this NYU Impact Center hornets nest as well.

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

Another Soros-Funded Group Pushes For Social Media Platforms To Censor Election “Disinformation”

Election season will soon be in full swing. And so will censorship demands

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 30, 2023

An organization under the financial umbrella of outspoken billionaire George Soros is mounting a brazen bid to implement a perilous cap on free speech in America’s digital public square. Today, the battle lines are being drawn with Common Cause, a group bankrolled by Soros, gleefully trumpeting its success in nurturing a potent alliance with Big Tech to quash election “disinformation.”

Expounding on its tactics in a recent press release titled “Election Disinformation in 2022 and What We Learned for 2024,” Common Cause masterfully revealed its ironic contradiction: a group professing to be a champion of democracy while vigorously advocating for restrictions on free speech.

The last time social media platforms pushed for election related censorship, we all know how that turned out.

Proudly recounting its successful call for Big Tech to suppress political content it disagrees with, Common Cause outlined its anti-free speech strategy, stating that the “continuing threat of election disinformation” necessitated the silencing of certain voices via Twitter and Facebook.

The group proposed a timeline to moderate and downrank online discourse, especially focusing on the suppression of what they believe to be “false statements” two months ahead of an election, and showed glaring bias by repeatedly accusing Republicans of purveying election untruths.

In the document, the group points a finger at the January 6 event as evidence of misplaced election integrity concerns, attributing this to right-wing misinformation.

Common Cause detailed how it unilaterally flagged and removed alleged “election disinformation” across social media platforms, with no regard for the principle of open discourse.

While the boast is loud about influencing Big Tech’s actions for now, Common Cause ominously remarks that these platforms still need to increase their censorship efforts ahead of future elections, chillingly suggesting that the present censorship should be just the tip of the iceberg.

Elon Musk has pledged to initiate lawsuits against NGOs financed by philanthropist George Soros, claiming they violate free speech rights. This comes on the heels of Musk filing a legal case against the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), alleging that the organization is spreading inaccurate and deceptive information about X content with the aim of driving away advertisers through a manipulative “fear campaign.”

August 30, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Employers Walk Back Mask Mandates Amid Employee, Public Backlash

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 29, 2023

Kaiser Permanente and Lionsgate Studios in California reversed mask mandate policies last week, just a few days after imposing them.

Kaiser Permanente, the largest healthcare provider in California, on Aug. 22 announced it had “reintroduced a mask mandate for physicians, staff, patients, members, and visitors in the hospital and medical offices in the Santa Rosa Service Area,” in a statement obtained by The Press Democrat.

Kaiser said the mandate was in response to an increase in the number of patients testing positive for COVID-19.

But just two days later, on Aug. 24, Kaiser officials told The Press Democrat the mask reinstatement applied only to physicians and staff, not to patients and visitors.

“Our intent was to communicate that as of Tuesday, we have expanded the masking requirement for our employees and physicians to medical offices and clinic settings; we apologize for any confusion among Press Democrat readers,” Kaiser said in its latest statement.

It also said, “We have not changed our masking requirements in the hospital, which have been in effect since April: employees and physicians are required to wear masks and we ask visitors to wear masks when in the hospital.”

But Kaiser also confirmed to Becker’s Hospital Review on Aug. 23 that it had reintroduced the mask mandate.

The Press Democrat reported the reversal happened after people noticed many visitors to the hospital were not masking.

Local media reported that some Northern California residents supported the mask mandate policy when it was first announced, but others were skeptical and frustrated in response to the mandate announcement.

“I think it’s more political than anything, just think they’re trying to do what they did in 2020,” said Carmichael resident Craig Roberts.

Lionsgate also reverses mandate

Lionsgate on Friday also notified employees that the mask mandate it had imposed about a week prior for employees on the third and fifth floors of the studio’s five-story office building in Santa Monica was over, Deadline reported.

Lionsgate imposed the mandate after multiple people in its Santa Monica headquarters came down with COVID-19. The company told Deadline it imposed the mandate in compliance with rules set by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

Lionsgate told The Wrap the health department informed the company it could lift the mask requirement after several days of no new infections.

The company also distanced itself from responsibility for the mandate, stating that:

“Lionsgate never changed its own mask policy. The LA County Department of Health ordered us to institute the temporary masking requirement after we reported a cluster of COVID cases to them and we have an obligation to comply with their orders.”

In addition to mandating “a medical grade face covering (surgical mask, KN95 or N95),” every Lionsgate employee was required to perform a daily self-screening before coming to the office and was told to stay home if they exhibited any symptoms or had traveled internationally in the last 10 days.

Lionsgate was conducting contact tracing and providing at home COVID-19 test kits. It is unclear if those practices are still required.

Reversals come amid pushback and more evidence of mask failures

The mask policy reversals come amid pushback from critics after a growing number of businesses and hospitals in recent weeks reinstituted mask mandates and social distancing requirements, and a new report warned that broader mandates may be coming this fall.

Many doctors have also called for mask mandates to return to healthcare settings.

Meanwhile, documents recently released from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) revealed that public health officials privately questioned the effectiveness of masks and the guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promoting their use.

And an NIH study suggested surgical N95 masks, held up as the gold standard for COVID-19 protection, may expose users to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals, the Daily Mail reported.

The study found the chemicals released by these masks had 8 times the recommended safety limit of toxic volatile organic compounds, which can cause symptoms ranging from headaches and nausea to organ damage and cancer, with prolonged use.

Since the original mandates ended, several studies concluded the mandate policies failed to achieve their promised results.

The Wall Street Journal on Monday published an op-ed criticizing mask mandates.

And dissenters have taken to X (formerly Twitter), calling on people not to comply with mandates.

“This is what can be done when people stand together against tyrannical, unscientific and dangerous so-called public health policies,” author and health freedom activist Meryl Dorey wrote in a Substack post reporting on the policy reversals.

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.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Latvia’s Planned Expulsion of Russian Nationals ‘Grossly Contradicts’ UN, EU Norms

By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 29.08.2023

Russian human rights activists have condemned Latvia’s decision to expel about 6,000 Russian residents, who had lived in Latvia with a residence permit and did not pass the Latvian language exam. The process of expulsion will start as of September 1, 2023.

The members of the Commission for International Cooperation with the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights under the Russian President have sent a letter to the United Nations (UN), the Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in connection with the “threat of forced eviction of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia.”

One of the Commission’s members is Kirill Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, a parent company of the Sputnik News Agency.

The Commission’s message was delivered to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic, and OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Kairat Abdrakhmanov.

“We draw your attention to the gross violation of the rights of Russian-speaking residents of Latvia who have Russian citizenship and live on Latvian territory on the basis of a residence permit (RP) issued by the country’s authorities,” the letter reads.

The members of the Russian presidential human rights commission recalled that more than 6,000 such residents “are threatened with expulsion from Latvia as of September 1, 2023 due to last year’s changes in the country’s legislation and under the pretext that they did not pass the mandatory Latvian language exam.”

“They are mainly people of advanced retirement age who came to Latvia before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their long-standing work added to creating the economic basis of Latvia and until the autumn of last year, Latvian legislation did not oblige them to take any language tests so that they can live with Russian citizenship in the country. Moreover, the very fact that these people lived in Latvia for many years proved that their knowledge of Latvian language was enough to organize their own daily life,” according to the letter.

The Russian rights activists stressed that “especially cynical in relation to these people is Latvian authorities’ requirement to not only pass the language exam, but also fill out questionnaires indicating their attitude to Russia’s foreign policy.”

“In fact, these people are required to not only take language tests, but also reveal their political views and give documented condemnation of Russia’s actions,” the letter points out.

“We believe that such actions by Latvian authorities grossly contradict the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the UN and the European Convention on Human Rights. We urge you to intervene in the situation and prevent the forced eviction of those who have Russian citizenship and residence permits issued by Latvian authorities,” the document concludes.

The letter comes after Ingmars Lidaka, head of Latvia’s Parliamentary Commission for Citizenship, Migration and Public Mobilization, said that between 5,000 and 6,000 Russian citizens, who have a residence permit and have not passed the Latvian language exam, will receive official notifications to leave the country “within three months.”

He added that the decision is in line with Latvia’s legislation and that its implementation will be enforced by the country’s Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.

In September 2022, Latvia’s parliament passed a bill on the transition of all education to the Latvian language within three years, a document stipulating that the Russian can now only be studied as a “minority language”.

About 40 percent of Latvia’s 1.8 million population are Russian native speakers. The country’s state language is Latvian, while the Russian has the status of a foreign language.

August 29, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk to Sue George Soros-Linked NGOs For Spreading ‘Misinformation’ to Stifle Free Speech

BY DR FREDERICK ATTENBOROUGH | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 28, 2023

Elon Musk has announced that his company, X (formerly Twitter), will sue partner organisations of George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) after the NGO network was accused of spreading ‘hate misinformation’ to justify an unprecedented crackdown on lawful free speech.

Musk made the statement in response to an article by journalist Ben Scallan, in which he claims that OSF-linked leftist NGOs are manipulating the statistics to show a steep rise in hate crimes across Ireland – despite the government’s own data indicating the opposite is true – and helping to usher in a new hate speech law that will restrict free speech and open up new pathways for political persecution.

The article was reposted on X by Twitter Files journalist Michael Shellenberger, who added: “The reason politicians and Soros-funded NGOs are spreading hate misinformation is to justify a draconian crackdown on freedom of speech.”

To this, Elon Musk simply replied, “Exactly. X will be filing legal action to stop this. Can’t wait for discovery to start!”

It’s unclear which OSF-linked groups Scallan is referring to exactly or which NGOs will be the target of Musk’s suit – although interestingly the self-styled “free-speech absolutist” has recently threatened to sue the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), having accused the U.K.-registered NGO of using flawed methods to promote “misleading narratives” and of running a “scare campaign” that has driven away advertisers from the platform. Although the CCDH – which is listed in journalist Matt Taibbi’s report into the organisations comprising the “censorship-industrial complex” – doesn’t declare its funding on its site, Companies House information shows it received almost £1 million in 2022.

Despite an Ipsos survey commissioned by Ireland’s Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth showing that over eight in 10 Irish people feel “very comfortable” living next door to people with different nationalities, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, religious beliefs (and non), or marital statuses, the most up-to-date Garda Síochána data suggests the country has actually seen a 29% increase in reported ‘hate crimes’ in 2022 compared to the previous year.

Of course, an increase in reporting is not necessarily the same thing as an increase in actual hate crimes or incidents. As Scallan points out, the discrepancy between these two data sets is partly if not entirely explained by the fact that Soros’s NGO network has for many years been running campaigns to lower the threshold for hate crime reporting in Ireland, while encouraging citizens to report hate crimes and hate incidents to the police.

In fairness, the Garda does at least acknowledge this, having conceded that a “very low threshold of perception” currently applies to hate crime reporting. Yet methodological sophistication of this kind has been curiously absent from proposals put forward by Ireland’s governing classes that argue for a new, allegedly desperately needed, hate crime law. In those proposals the distinction between perceived and actual hate crimes has all but collapsed: ‘increased reporting’ is breezily conflated with ‘increased crime’ such that for politicians like Justice Minister Helen McEntee and Senator Pauline O’Reilly the need for intensified state censorship of perfectly lawful speech that certain sub-sections of Irish society happen to regard as ‘hateful’ now seems entirely unproblematic.

This confusion isn’t just to be found in the debating chambers of the Dáil and Seanad Éireann. It constitutes the underlying philosophy of the country’s draft Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill, in which a hate crime is defined as an episode “perceived by the victim, or any other person, to have been motivated by prejudice, based on actual or perceived age, disability, race, colour, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or gender”.

As Scallan points out, under this definition, you don’t even have to be the victim of an alleged crime to report it. “A random bystander who has nothing to do with the event can say, ‘I think it was based on prejudice,’ and it will be categorised as such.”

By and large, of course, it won’t be “random bystanders” with a priggish manner, flapping ears, and a little too much time on their hands that end up weaponising this definition of what constitutes a ‘hate crime’. The real damage will be done by activist groups and George Soros-funded NGOs bent on criminalising perfectly lawful views that they happen not to like for doctrinaire ideological reasons.

“Will mocking memes be tolerated?” asked independent senator Ronan Mullen during a debate on the proposed legislation in the Senate earlier this year. “Will carrying a placard stating, ‘Men cannot breastfeed’ warrant a hate-speech investigation or up to five years’ imprisonment, a lifelong label as a criminal hater, and all of the stigma and life limitation that goes with that? Nobody actually knows.”

Nobody actually knows, no. But each of Mr Mullen’s hypothetical scenarios could potentially lead to a reported ‘hate crime’, which would then feature in the Garda’s annual reporting dataset, which would then perpetuate the myth that Ireland is becoming less tolerant, which would then lead to calls for even more draconian hate speech laws, which would then… and so on and so forth, in an endless cycle of intensifying state censorship.

Perhaps the most shocking of all the authoritarian provisions in the Bill that flow from this vague, entirely subjective definition of ‘hate’, is one that will make it a criminal offense to possess material on one’s person or in one’s home likely to “incite hatred”.

With regard to the obvious question of how something saved on, say, a mobile phone could possibly “incite hatred”, the Bill simply reverses the usual burden of proof in criminal cases, presuming “that the material [is] not intended for personal use”, and that a suspect must be planning to disseminate it, unless they can prove otherwise.

If passed, this provision will allow police to raid homes and seize devices, with a potential penalty of a year in prison and a €5,000 fine just for refusing to give up your passwords. Possession of hateful material will carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Despite many critics calling the law “Orwellian” and campaigning against it, the Irish parliament’s lower house adopted it by a vote of 160 against 14 earlier this year. The legislation now only needs the approval of the upper house in October to become law.

Dr. Frederick Attenborough is the Communications Officers of the Free Speech Union.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Washington Post Calls For Reducing Free Speech To Improve Democracy

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | August 28, 2023

In very post-2016 fashion, The Washington Post last week published an article implying democracy might require curbs on freedom of speech. This unsettling approach suggests concerns around “misinformation” on social networks supersede freedom of speech, a move that has elicited intense debate and, rightly so; criticism.

In what appears to be a shift in public discourse towards further censorship, the widely-read Washington Post article critiqued Elon Musk’s reinstatement of former President Donald Trump on the social media platform, X, previously known as Twitter.

The article suggested that the proliferation of what it calls “political misinformation” disturbs democracy, sparking concern amongst proponents of free speech.

The perspective is reflected in the reporting by The Washington Post journalists Naomi Nix and Sarah Ellison. However, their piece lacks critical analysis of the ambiguity surrounding the term “misinformation” and fails to address the consequential question of how to moderate content in situations where politicians’ statements are arguably false or misleading.

The article’s glaring omission of any mention of the First Amendment – a core pillar of American democracy fostering media freedoms – also raised eyebrows amidst media and legal circles.

The Washington Post reporters worryingly suggest the retreat of social media companies from combating online falsehoods could impact the 2024 presidential election. They fault Musk, along with Facebook and YouTube, for taking a step back from reining in what they call misleading claims and conspiracy theories.

Nix and Ellison also critique X for permitting Tucker Carlson’s President Trump interview, which they deem as a platform for Trump to reiterate his allegations about the 2020 election. They contend that social media should only host political content if its accuracy can be proven, posing an unrealistic expectation that conceals underlying issues of censorship under the pretext of curbing “misleading” or “hateful” speech.

August 28, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Revisiting the Biden Legal Position on Masks

Brownstone Institute | August 26, 2023

Last year, it seemed that masks were gone for good. US District Judge Kathryn Kimball held that Biden’s national mask mandate on airplanes was “illegal.” Airlines and airports immediately revoked their mask requirements. Flight attendants sang in celebration, passengers cheered, and companies welcomed the change in policy.

While Americans rejoiced, the Biden Administration worked behind the scenes to ensure that it could reimplement mask mandates at any time, in any place, for any reason.

The humiliation exercise never had a scientific basis. Existing air filtration systems made the threat of viral transmission on aircraft negligible. Studies found that there was “no direct evidence” of Covid-19 being transmitted aboard aircraft.

Despite the data, President Biden issued nationwide mask mandates in his first hours in office. His administration appealed Judge Kimball’s decision last April. “Our focus here was seeing what power we had to preserve,” explained White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

The case was dismissed as moot because the court found, “there is not a grain of evidence that the CDC has any plans to promulgate an identical mandate.”

Recent news suggests that prediction may have been wrong. The Covid regime appears to be revamping for a resurgence of mandates and potential lockdowns. CNN ran a headline Wednesday urging readers to “break out the masks against Covid.” The federal government has entered into Covid-related contracts with consultants and medical equipment providers to enforce “safety protocols” beginning in the next two months.

The return of Covid hysteria begs the question: what “power” did Jen Psaki and the White House want to preserve? Their legal briefs appealing Judge Kimball’s decision offer clues.

In court, the Biden Administration argued that mask mandates should be permissible even if there is no evidence to support them. Further, government lawyers wrote that these mandates should be permissible to any extent that bureaucrats deem necessary, even if the risk of Covid is nonexistent.

That is not hyperbole. Opponents of the mandates argued that the government should have “controlled trials” to provide evidence of efficacy and potential negative side effects before implementing universal masking.

The Biden Administration responded that the government did not need to provide any evidence or rational basis for its orders. Instead, “the CDC’s determination that there was good cause” should be sufficient. Government edicts should not be subject to judicial scrutiny, according to the government’s brief.

Further, there should be no limit to that authority, according to the Biden Administration. “It was equally permissible for the CDC,” the brief argued, “to make the masking requirement applicable to all passengers… regardless of whether there is any indication that the plane is diseased or dirtied.”

It’s not difficult to discern what we might call the Biden Doctrine of administrative rule-making. It means that the agencies can order whatever they want, whether or not there is any plausible basis in law or whether or not there is any rational basis for it at all. It is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.

 

 

 

 

 

August 27, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

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