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Ankara condemns arrest of Turkiye journalists by Germany, calls for immediate release

MEMO | May 17, 2023

Ankara, on Wednesday, called on Germany to release Turkish journalists arrested in Frankfurt after reporting on the Fetullah Terrorist Organisation (FETO), the group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Turkiye, Anadolu News Agency reports.

“The detention of Frankfurt Bureau representatives of Sabah newspaper by the German police today, without justification, is an act of harassment and intimidation against the Turkish press. We strongly condemn this heinous act,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“We expect the immediate release of journalists who were targeted by a false denunciation of a FETO member for their reporting on the terrorist organisation FETO’s activities in Germany,” it added.

Necessary initiatives have been taken in Germany regarding the issue, and our strong reaction is conveyed to the German ambassador to Ankara, Jurgen Schulz, who was summoned today, the Ministry said.

May 17, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Her Father Got COVID and Died — But She Believes the CDC, NIH and Hospital Protocols Are What Really Killed Him

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 16, 2023

Ralph Marxen Jr. had just turned 70 and was enjoying life with his wife of 49 years, Lynda, and his adult children and grandchildren. The Minnetonka, Minnesota, native was in good health and, according to his daughter, Nicole Riggs, walked long distances daily and wasn’t on any medications.

In August 2021, several members of Riggs’ household contracted COVID-19, including, presumably, her parents. A week later, while most family members were recovering, Marxen’s condition deteriorated leading him to be admitted to Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis on Aug. 23, 2021.

Marxen would never leave the hospital — he died there on Sept. 7, 2021.

During his stay, Marxen, who had not received a COVID-19 vaccine, was administered more than 50 medications, including remdesivir, vancomycin, fentanyl and midazolam, and in the days prior to his death, he was placed on a ventilator.

At the time of his death, Marxen had “multiple organ system failure including renal failure, endocarditis, hyperkalemia, MRSA [methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus] pneumonia, MRSA bacteremia and sepsis,” Riggs said.

Riggs told The Defender the treatments she and her family requested for Marxen, including ivermectin, monoclonal antibodies and vitamins, were refused.

She said she did not believe her father’s refusal of the COVID-19 vaccines played a role in his illness — in fact, she argued that her father’s non-vaccinated status — and the COVID-19 protocols prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — were factors in the treatment he received from the hospital and its medical staff.

‘Is this a hospital or a prison?’

“My dad went to the ER seeking help for dizziness and nausea,” Riggs said. “He was 70 years old and took no daily meds. He was unvaccinated and refused to take their unreliable PCR tests.”

In a separate interview with Minnesota’s Alpha News, Riggs said that two of her father’s friends had gotten vaccinated “and they both got vax-injured.” As a result, “He was adamant that he was not going to get the vaccine.”

“I think this played a part in him not getting good care,” Riggs told The Defender.

Riggs recounted the chain of events that led her father to end up in the hospital.

“In the middle of August 2021, my household of four, plus my parents, became ill with fever and fatigue, and a few of us had chest congestion,” Riggs said. “Myself, my husband and my two boys were spit-tested for COVID and were all told we were positive for COVID. We assumed my parents had the same.”

But after a week of being sick, she said they noticed that her father “didn’t seem to be bouncing back like the rest of us. He was having trouble walking to the bathroom because he was so weak and dehydrated.”

Due to his older age, his family “decided to call the ambulance and get him checked out,” Riggs said. Paramedics recommended Marxen go to the hospital for further evaluation, so he was admitted on Aug. 23, 2021, after an ER visit.

“From the beginning, the medical records indicate they wanted to get him on remdesivir even though they couldn’t get him to PCR test,” Riggs said.

“Within a day, a friend of the family who had been working with COVID patients for the past year told us to call the hospital and request that my dad be given monoclonal antibodies (a.k.a. Regeneron),” Riggs said. However, the nurse treating her father said he “had never heard of that before, and that was the end of that discussion.”

“That seemed strange to me, but I still trusted them at that time,” Riggs said.

The day after her father was admitted to the hospital, her mother also was admitted, after her oxygen levels dropped to the low 90s.

“My parents were soon hospital room neighbors,” Riggs said. “COVID medications were started, which we later learned was hospital protocol with remdesivir and dexamethasone.”

Despite being in neighboring rooms though, Riggs’ parents could not visit each other. “My mom wanted to go see my dad since he was in the room right next door, but she realized that her bed had an alarm that sounded when she tried to get up. She also learned that both of them were locked in their rooms as well,” Riggs said.

She added:

“My mom’s nurse thought ‘it wasn’t appropriate,’ and refused to let her go see my dad. They had to wait until that nurse was off her shift before the doctor would OK my mom to go into my dad’s room for a short visit.

“Is this a hospital or a prison?”

It wasn’t long before Riggs began to receive more disturbing updates about the treatment her parents were receiving in the hospital.

She told The Defender :

“My brother started a CaringBridge site to keep our whole family updated. It wasn’t long before I started to receive unsettling messages from people I knew and trust. One was from my dad’s old neurological chiropractor, saying ‘no remdesivir and no ventilator, that’s asking to die.’ He also sent me information on how to get a lawyer involved.

“It was then that I started to research and realize the dangers of the deadly hospital protocols put in place by the NIH and CDC, especially for those on Medicare, as the hospital is given a 20% bonus payment if certain steps are followed with those patients, starting with a positive COVID PCR test.”

According to Riggs, this was evident in her father’s medical records.

“One of the doctors actually wrote this in the medical records: ‘I don’t think it’s impossible to use remdesivir without a PCR positive,’” Riggs said, adding, “My dad initially refused a nasal PCR test because he knew they could be inaccurate and wanted to be treated by symptoms, not a PCR positive COVID test result.”

However, the hospital told Marxen and his family this was not possible. According to Riggs, the doctor said, “Certain treatments may not be available without PCR-proven COVID, and that if his condition worsened such that he required intubation, we would run the nasopharyngeal swab.”

“Basically, my dad was told he wouldn’t get access to ‘certain treatments’ until he submitted to their request to be PCR tested,” Riggs said. “And if he got bad enough, they would test him anyway.”

The hospital also told them if Marxen’s condition deteriorated enough that they needed to put him on a ventilator, they would do the test without his permission.

Her father finally “relented” and tested positive for COVID-19. That’s when the hospital administered remdesivir “and many other harmful drugs,” Riggs said, and denied their request for safer alternatives.

‘It all happened so fast’

From this point forward, “It all happened so fast,” Riggs said. Her father was transferred to progressive care on Aug. 26, 2021, and to the ICU the next day.

“My dad was denied visitation by anyone under the guise of ‘COVID isolation,’” Riggs said. “Even my mom, who was in the same hospital with COVID.”

Marxen’s condition quickly deteriorated. “My dad was told he needed to get on the ventilator so he could get relief and a feeding tube,” Riggs said. “By this time, my dad hadn’t slept in two days and hadn’t eaten in five days.”

“After two days in the ICU, he was freaking out, pulling off his mask and pulling out his IV,” Riggs said. “They got him ‘reoriented’ and brought in the doctor. If you knew my dad, you would know that this was totally out of character for him. He was the kindest, most loving man and father. He was one of my best friends.”

“Soon, he felt he had no other option but to be put on a ventilator,” Riggs said. “A decision he had to make scared and alone because we were kept from him … They had finally got him desperate enough to submit to getting on a ventilator.”

Marxen was intubated on Aug. 29, 2021, and placed on fentanyl and propofol, Riggs said, “even though, reading the records, they knew that wasn’t the solution, but they did it anyway.”

Riggs said she and her family again requested monoclonal antibodies be administered, “but were denied because it was too late in the progression of the disease to be a benefit.”

They also requested “vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin,” but were denied “and told they refused to go off of protocol, ‘because the one time we did that, the patient died,’” Riggs added.

“My dad’s medical records indicate vitamin D was ‘deemed not appropriate during this admission,’” Riggs noted. “We asked them to take him off vancomycin because that can make you retain fluid and he was already doing that. They told us no, and that the drug was ‘the gold standard.’”

‘He was kept from everyone that truly loved him’

According to Riggs, she would call the hospital every day at 6 p.m. for updates, and her brother would do so daily at 6 a.m. This continued until Sept. 7, 2021, the day her father would be placed “off quarantine” and allowed to see family members again.

However, “on Sept. 7, we were told that the ‘infectious disease team’ said he needed another seven days of quarantine,” Riggs said. “This decision was not even made by his ICU doctor.”

Instead, Riggs and her family were told “the nurses would set up a Facetime for us for the evening of Sept. 7,” Riggs said. “After that call, I was crying and pacing in my house. My thoughts were, ‘Are we going to just leave him in there to die alone?’ I needed to actually do something.”

Riggs said she decided to request her father’s medical records from the hospital, “so I could see exactly what was going on there.” However, she was told the records could not be released “unless he signed the release form” — even though her father was sedated and on a ventilator “and it wasn’t possible for him to sign anything.”

In response, the hospital told Riggs that she “would need to provide his death certificate for the records if we hadn’t already set up power of attorney.”

“So, he had to die before I could access his records?” Riggs asked. “How did this nightmare become our reality?”

Within a few hours of this exchange, Riggs received a call that her father was “actively dying” and if they wanted to see him, they needed to do it soon, because he would pass away during that night.

“Now that he was dying, we were able to come see him — but hours before we couldn’t? This made zero sense to me,” Riggs said.

On arriving at the hospital, she and other family members “were required to wear space-like soft helmets, which made it impossible to even kiss my dad goodbye.”

According to Riggs, she and her family “gave the OK to remove him from the ventilator so we could pray scripture over him through his transition.”

“I thought removing him from the ventilator would cause him to pass away because he couldn’t live without it,” Riggs said. “But I can’t help but wonder if that’s really how it went down. His records show that he was given fentanyl at 5:10 p.m. and midazolam at 5:32 p.m. He passed away at 6:22 p.m.”

Riggs said the “official” cause of death was determined to be “respiratory failure with underlying COVID-19.”

When her father died, he had multi-system organ failure. Riggs said she did not believe her father died of COVID-19, but instead due to the CDC- and NIH-approved protocols.

“He was isolated and kept from everyone that truly loved him for 16 days,” Riggs said. “Then, under the guise of ‘palliative care,’ he was finished off with fentanyl and midazolam.”

According to Alpha News, the price tag from the hospital for the treatment her father received during those 16 days was $1.2 million.

A statement provided by Abbott Northwestern to Alpha News said the following:

“Allina Health respects the privacy of its patients and is unable to comment on specific patient care.

“We have great confidence in the exceptional care our medical teams provide to our patients, which is administered according to evidence-based practices by our talented and compassionate care teams.”

‘To honor my dad, I have put my grief into action’

Riggs said her father’s death had knock-on effects on her and her family.

“Now my mom, who survived remdesivir, can’t afford to keep their home,” Riggs said. “She had to sell almost all of their possessions accumulated over 50 years to move into one of the bedrooms of my two-bedroom home. Two of my boys … now share a bedroom in our living room.”

“She can hardly make the bed without being out of breath and she struggles mentally with what they endured and getting a grasp on her new life without my dad in it,” Riggs added.

Despite these challenges, Riggs said that “to honor my dad, I have put my grief into action,” getting involved in activism for victims of hospital protocol deaths.

Riggs is now the Minnesota chair of the FormerFedsGroup Freedom Foundation, a national coalition that has documented cases involving COVID-19 care protocols at hospitals.

“I don’t want the families … to be isolated and alone in their pain of losing their loved one,” Riggs said, adding that she has launched weekly Zoom calls for Minnesota families and survivors of hospital protocols, and is also launching in-person meetups.

Riggs also recently attended the Halt Hospital Homicide rally, which she described as the “first national rally for hospital protocol deaths.”

She drew parallels with those who died of COVID-19 vaccine injuries. “The vax-injured are ignored and not believed, just like those of us who have had a family member die or get injured by the hospital protocols,” she said.

“My dad, Ralph, will go on in our memories as a wonderful husband of 50 years, dad, grandpa and great-grandpa, as well as a fun fisherman and the best homemade French fry maker around.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

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.

May 16, 2023 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Covid: The destruction of medical ethics and trust in the medical profession, Part 2

This is the second part of a discussion by a consultant surgeon of the damage done by the government’s irrational Covid policies. You can read Part 1 here. Part 2 focuses on the betrayal of informed consent.

By Ahmad K Malik | TCW Defending Freedom | May 13, 2023

It isn’t enough to get permission from a patient before you carry out an intervention. For consent to be valid it has to hold up to certain preconditions. Patients must be properly informed of all their options, including not having any treatment. They must be warned of the pros and cons of each choice. It has to be voluntary with no coercion, no intimidation and no threats. Patients should be allowed to ask questions. For example, what is in the vaccine? What are my individual risks of having it? (From Pfizer’s own data, serious adverse events were later reported at 1 in 800.) What is my absolute risk reduction from the intervention?

Other valid questions have remained the province of alternative media, raised only when they escaped censorship. Were aborted foetal cells used? Why was the spike protein (supposedly the most lethal part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus) produced for the vaccine? How much spike protein would be made? Would there be any risk to the body by its introduction?

At the time of the vaccine rollout we had been living under nine months of severe government restrictions, lockdowns, social distancing, mask mandates and bans on travel and even visits to a pub or restaurant. Sage’s SPI-B (Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours) and the ‘nudge unit’ had done a fantastic job along with the rest of Government and the MSM in scaring us, while dangling the freedom carrot on a vaccine stick. This was nothing if not coercive. Were the population clearly told that they would be receiving an experimental, novel, unproven gene therapy with no long-term safety data? No. They were told with a repetitive singularity that it was ‘safe and effective’ and anyone asking legitimate questions was labelled dangerous, a misogynist, a racist, an idiot, reckless and a danger to society. A ‘granny killer’. Against all the principles of medical ethics, a combination of fear, isolation, restriction of freedom, propaganda and information suppression was used to ‘persuade’ the population into signing up to being part of a mass experiment. Almost everyone I knew told me they had the vaccine only so that they could travel to see loved ones or go on holiday. If not coercion, it was certainly bribery. For the unvaccinated and unmasked it was difficult to access medical treatment. In some parts of the world a medical apartheid existed.

A further blow to medical ethics came with vaccine mandates, first for care home workers and then for all NHS and private healthcare workers, the latter rescinded only at the 11th hour. Mandates are anathema to medical ethics. They fly against the third pillar – the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and personal choice. Forty thousand care home workers lost their jobs in the UK for asserting this right and have never been compensated. Many, many more in the US lost their livelihoods or were coerced into mandatory vaccination.

Despite this systematic crushing of medical ethics, the vast majority of the 280,000 UK doctors stood silent. The Royal Colleges of physicians, surgeons, nurses etc went along with the Government narrative. The General Medical Council, which issues guidance to doctors on what it means to be a Good Medical Doctor, remained silent.

The few doctors who were bold enough to question the narrative and did raise concerns were investigated and suspended by the GMC. Doctors who were pro-narrative and stated incorrect facts were left unsanctioned by the GMC. The double standards were clear to see and set a warning to any dissidents of what lay in store if they questioned the narrative.

The GMC and disciplinary processes in hospitals were weaponised to create medical censorship, though the fightback is gaining strength.

When I published a video on Twitter questioning the safety of the Covid mRNA gene therapy shots, I was contacted by the national medical directors of two private hospital groups I work out of. They told me anonymous complaints had been made and I was to stop posting on Twitter and to take down my video, under threat of possible future action including review of my practising privileges. I argued that as a doctor it was my duty of care to speak up especially regarding patient safety issues. I was also following GMC guidance items 23 and 24 in the Good Medical Practice guide.

Guidance 23 states that to help keep patients safe you must: contribute to confidential inquiries, adverse event recognition, report adverse incidents involving medical devices that put or have the potential to put the safety of a patient, or another person, at risk, and report suspected adverse drug reactions and respond to requests from organisations monitoring public health, while always respecting patients’ confidentiality.

Guidance 24 says you must promote and encourage a culture that allows all staff to raise concerns openly and safely.

I haven’t stopped my social media posts and I will continue to raise awareness of the harms that I am seeing from these ‘therapies’. Referring to GMC guidance, other doctors should perhaps be braver about standing up to such attempted censorship.

Informed consent is not bound by one moment in time. Patients need to be made aware of new information that might affect their choice and future decisions, for example the emerging evidence that the shots do not remain in our arms only; that the lipid nanoparticles travel across the blood-brain barrier and throughout the body including reproductive organs. We were told the mRNA could not be written into our DNA, but a 2022 study shows that this can happen within six hours of taking the shot. Pfizer themselves produced a document listing hundreds of potential complications. Such risks are referred to by the MHRA but consistently downplayed or dismissed. Yet their Yellow Card reports show nearly 500,000 people impacted by adverse events, the majority seriously, despite which the MHRA repeats and insists on its ‘safe and effective’ mantra. Have patients being offered boosters been made aware of any of this?

It is hard to understand the MSM culture of silence and avoidance of anything that seems like a critique of either the mRNA ‘vaccines’ or of the government health agencies, who refuse to review the collateral health damage even though  informed consent and patient safety are at stake. The bodies that are meant to defend the patient and stand up for medical ethics remain quiet. The journalists, media outlets, celebrities, influencers and activists who speak out on ‘climate emergency’ or the UK getting there first on the vaccine remain deadly quiet when it comes to the greatest medical experiment inflicted on humankind.

Every week doctors tell me in whispered conspiratorial tones that they agree with me, that they support what I am doing, and that they won’t have any more shots. But when I ask them why they don’t go public, they shake their heads and look down at the ground. They are scared of losing their jobs and livelihood, of course. A neurologist mentioned to me how he had never been so busy; that he was seeing bizarre and rare conditions on an ever more frequent basis. When I asked what was driving this, he answered under his breath ‘the vaccines’, even though we were the only two in the room. I asked if he would go public, and he shook his head and walked away.

As a member of a private closed Facebook group for doctors numbering in the thousands, I witnessed the virtue signalling, professional hubris and groupthink and how they ridiculed colleagues and patients who chose not to have the vaccine. What I didn’t see was compassion, empathy and respect for people’s choices.

The fact that doctors, of all people, couldn’t see the hypocrisy and lies underlying the fear-mongering, manipulation and censorship is cause for grief.

Doctors have let their patients down badly. They have blindly followed the government narrative. They have abandoned any pretence at medical ethics. They now refuse or are reluctant to admit that there are mRNA gene injuries or see them for what they are, and help address them. This is medical gaslighting at its finest.

The public are not blind to this. Every day I get messages informing me that trust in the medical profession is dead, that it will never be regained.

If we, the medical profession, hope to regain that coveted position of most trusted profession, we need to first acknowledge a mistake was made (duty of candour), apologise, prevent it from happening again and seek to remedy and put to right the wrongs.

To stay silent is to be complicit to the greatest breach of our human rights and medical ethics in human history.

May 15, 2023 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Biden Misses Deadline To Hand Over Censorship Collusion Documents

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 15, 2023

The Biden Administration’s State Department has failed to meet the deadline to provide documents related to the “misinformation” and censorship efforts by its controversial Global Engagement Center (GEC). The House Foreign Affairs Committee demanded the documents in a letter sent on May 1.

The GEC has come under fire from Republicans after it was revealed that it funds the Global Disinformation Index, an organization that provides blacklists of media outlets to advertisers.

“State’s failure to meet the deadline continues a troubling Biden administration practice of noncompliance with congressional oversight and a lax attitude about its obligation to respond,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the committee’s chair, told the Washington Examiner. “The Foreign Affairs Committee will keep this in mind as it considers any and all State Department-requested legislative proposals.”

In the letter, which was addressed to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, McCaul accused the GEC of straying from its mission to “direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate” the government’s efforts to combat “foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation” by funding organizations like the Global Disinformation Index, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and Moonshot CVE.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, now led by Republicans, delayed reauthorizations of the GEC, which was founded in the Obama era. The GEC’s legal authority will end in December 2024 unless Congress reauthorizes it.

“Neither the State Department, nor the GEC, have come close to detailing for Congress the extent of their censorship activities or provided any confidence that the problem isn’t even worse than is known right now,” said Rep. Dareell Issa (R-CA), one of the signatories to the letter sent to the State Department on May 1. “This is the time to come clean.”

May 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Yes, you can yell “fire” in a crowded theater

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 24, 2020

The manner in which free speech has been coming under attack over the past several years makes it easy to forget that this is not the only era of the internet and social media when this has been happening.

Different approaches and debates about how to handle what is, or is seen as “misinformation” and “disinformation” (used by most censorship champions interchangeably these days) have existed in the past as well, as have attempts to justify limiting freedom of speech protections provided by the US Constitution’s First Amendment.

And in the US, the go-to “crutch phrase” used by those favoring the stifling of speech over promoting freedom of expression has been to explain it as the need to sanction those who are, proverbially, “shouting fire in a crowded theater.”

The expression is derived from a 1919 US Supreme Court case, US v. Schenck, during which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked that, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

The phrase would in the meantime all but inevitably appear whenever an argument is being made that censorship is acceptable and needed in order to prevent some type of harm. But the use of “shouting fire in a crowded theater” in this way is itself a form of disinformation.

Charles Schenck got himself in trouble, and in jail 100 years ago not by literally starting any fires, but by opposing the WW1 draft policy of his government, and putting together a pamphlet to this effect. Schenck v. The United States held that the defendant’s speech opposing the draft during World War I was not protected free speech under the First Amendment.

Some of the slogans he used are fairly universal, though, and can be applied to a variety of issues, including the present-day curtailing of online speech: messages like, “Do not submit to intimidation,” and, “Assert your Rights.”

Schenck was put on trial and found guilty under the Espionage Act, but in 1969, the US Supreme Court ruled on the issue of inflammatory speech in the Brandenburg v. Ohio case to annul the validity of that decision, when it established that the First Amendment does in fact protect free speech, all the way to the right of Ku Klux Klan members to advocate violence – unless there as a direct threat of “imminent lawless action.”

Although the expression about fires in crowded theaters never carried actual legal weight, the 1969 decision should have also made it less and less appealing to censorship proponents. However, it is still going strong.

There are several cases when the phrase was used in the last decade by officials and commentators, such as a Twitter user accused of spreading disinformation during Hurricane Sandy, WikiLeaks and its activities, and a pastor calling for the burning of Qurans.

In internet years, 2012 is today a distant past, however, the same issues concerning free speech and transparency around attempts to suppress it online were taking place at the time as well. What’s changed in the last eight years is the intensity of the argument that the only way to deal with misinformation or disinformation is to obliterate such suspected content in acts of, by and large, unaccountable censorship, particularly that taking place on social media.

In the US, this has become an often fear mongering campaign that promotes the notion that other approaches would directly and dangerously undermine democracy. In reality, though, it’s the rampant censorship that is more likely to achieve this; even Justice Holmes eventually came round to the idea that “free trade in ideas” was preferable to their suppression, when he later dissented in a case similar to Schenck’s.

The best, and likely the only truly legal and legitimate way to deal with false information on social media is to identify and expose it, rather than censor it, or prosecute its authors.

As for the “crowded theater” phrase, these days it is almost exclusively used in the media to heap criticism on US President Donald Trump, such as this recent Vanity Fair article that calls him “The Human Embodiment of Yelling ‘Fire’ in a Crowded Theater.”

This was said in the context of the coronavirus epidemic, and, of course, a particularly heated election campaign that is fertile ground not only for censorship but also for using strong and suggestive language like this – whether or not it has any legal, or ethical relevance.

May 15, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Germany mulls energy rationing – media

RT | May 12, 2023

Electricity rationing could become unavoidable in Germany as part of an energy transition strategy starting from next year, public broadcaster BR24 reported on Friday.

Germany’s Federal Network Agency is considering limiting the use of power in peak hours as local grids fail to cover rising demand, which is expected to surge by over 10% in the coming years driven by a shift to clean energy, the outlet said.

More e-cars and heat pumps mean greater demand for electricity but local networks are not always designed for high loads, the article stated. Another problem for the country’s power operators is insufficient network expansion which currently lacks around 14,000 kilometers of infrastructure.

The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Muller, suggested allowing German network operators limit the use of electricity at peak hours to avoid overload, from January 2024.

“If it is proven that this network overload could occur, then the distribution network operator has the right to dim,” he told BR24.

In addition to the EV transition, the German government also faces the challenge of switching heating systems from oil and gas. Abandoning hydrocarbons means they will have to be replaced with electric heating pumps, but the cables and transformers presently in use are not suitable for the increasing needs of the future, the outlet noted.

“So that there are no delays when connecting the heat pumps and charging devices, the distribution system operator also needs an instrument for control,” the Federal Network Agency told BR’s political magazine, Kontrovers.

The only feasible measure to maintain the stable operation of power networks is to take heat pumps and electric vehicles off the grid during peak load times, the outlet said, adding that the Federal Network Agency is now working out the details of the new regulation.

May 14, 2023 Posted by | Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

FBI Contractor Created Fake Online IDs to Join Chatrooms Run by Groups Organizing Against Vaccine Mandates

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 12, 2023

An FBI surveillance contractor infiltrated the chatrooms of two airline industry groups opposed to vaccine mandates to collect intelligence on the groups’ organizing activities, investigative journalist Lee Fang reported.

The contractor, Flashpoint, which in the past infiltrated Islamic terror groups, now focuses on “anti-vaccine” groups and other domestic political organizations, according to Fang.

In a webinar presentation for clients last year, which Fang analyzed on his Substack, Flashpoint analyst Vlad Cuiujuclu demonstrated his company’s methods for identifying and entering encrypted Telegram chat groups.

He explained how the company attempted to join chatrooms of transportation workers resisting the COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Fang described the presentation:

“‘In this case, we’re searching for a closed channel of U.S. Freedom Flyers,’ said Cuiujuclu. ‘It’s basically a group that opposed vaccination and masks.’

“As he clicked through a database, Cuiujuclu showed a chat group on Telegram sponsored by Airline Professionals For Justice, another group formed by airline industry workers opposed to the mandate. The forum, he added, provided useful insights, including Zoom links for meetings of the grassroots organization.

“‘Private chats,’ said Cuiujuclu, ‘require for you to have an invite link,’ which he noted can often either be found by scrolling through public forums or by ‘engag[ing] the admin of that channel.’”

Flashpoint also offers clients artificial intelligence and internet scraping tools.

According to Fang, the firm is a leader in the “threat intelligence industry,” a growing number of security and surveillance firms that create fake online identities to infiltrate Discord chats, WhatsApp groups, Reddit forums and dark web message boards to gather information for clients, including corporations and the FBI, to monitor potential threats.

Joshua Yoder, president of US Freedom Flyers, said he is aware that Flashpoint infiltrated private chat groups associated with his organization.

Yoder told The Defender :

“Tradecraft and other strategies are often used to gain inside knowledge of conservative organizations with the intent to disrupt, mislead and otherwise thwart effective campaigns.

“Infiltration is a tactic used by the deep state to prevent the truth from being told by attempting to destroy the advancement of the message. The team at US Freedom Flyers has been successful in recognizing these attacks and we have taken decisive actions to protect the organization and our members.”

Aviation industry workers were some of the most vocal and organized against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

They wrote an open letter to the aviation industry signed by thousands of organizations, physicians and pilots. They also organized research on the risks of vaccines for pilots, spoke publicly about the “culture of fear and intimidation” around the mandates in the industry, and filed multiple lawsuits in Canada, the Netherlands, and the U.S.

US Freedom Flyers brought a lawsuit against Atlas Air, one of the largest air cargo carriers in the aviation industry, in May 2022.

Fang told The Defender the targeting of American citizens resisting the vaccine mandates fits into a long history of surveillance being used to subvert democracy. He said:

“There is a long sordid history of informants and surveillance contractors working to undermine democratic engagement in this country.

“The push against regular citizens opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates has come in many forms: censorship, demonization and in this case, surveillance.”

The growing market for spying on domestic dissent

Flashpoint advertises its surveillance success on its website, providing examples of its work undermining environmental activism, G20 protests and protests against the aviation industry.

The webpages describing these activities were taken down after Fang published his investigation, but they can be found on the Wayback Machine internet archive.

For example, Flashpoint described its capacity to monitor activists organizing against pollution and the aviation industry. The website said:

“By monitoring the situation and assessing tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP’s), Flashpoint was able to assess the impact of upcoming protests, and determine that these groups would likely continue to protest and attempt to impede airport construction and expansion projects through direct action. …

“Based on this information, Flashpoint customers were able to take actions to help control the impact to business operations, and to ensure the safety of their employees and facilities as well as the safety of those protesting.”

Flashpoint was founded by Evan Kohlmann, former NBC News contributor who investigated Islamic terror groups and whom The Intercept described as “the U.S. government’s go-to expert witness in terrorism prosecutions.”

Jack Poulson of Tech Inquiry, a group that researches the surveillance industry, told Fang that “Flashpoint has been selling its chatroom infiltration services to companies and governments for years.”

But, he said, it has shifted its focus from “surveilling Muslims after September 11” and “followed the money into both the Pentagon’s information warfare programs and the business of monitoring domestic protest groups.”

Last year, Flashpoint acquired Echosec Systems, another intelligence contractor, and last month it formalized a partnership with Google Cloud.

These acquisitions come in addition to “a steady stream of contracts to Flashpoint in recent years from the FBI, the Department of Defense, Treasury Department, and Department of Homeland Security, among other agencies,” Fang wrote.

Fang also spoke to Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine at Stanford University, research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research and one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration.

Bhattacharya said:

“This kind of domestic spying violates the implicit protection Americans have in these kinds of settings.

“This isn’t terrorism, this doesn’t have anything to do with national security.

“This is a private set of employees, workers who are trying to maintain their jobs in the face of unscientific demands for COVID vaccinations.”

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.

May 12, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , , | Leave a comment

Brazilian Justice Will Punish Tech Companies That Criticize Government’s Censorship Law

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | May 11, 2023

Brazil’s Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, also the president of the country’s Superior Electoral Court, told tech platforms not to campaign against a proposed internet censorship bill.

If they do, he’ll punish them.

Moraes said that the tech companies were undermining Brazil’s democracy.

“The big tech platforms have been challenged and they will be penalized. They will be held accountable, to guarantee the voter’s freedom to vote,” Moraes said, speaking to judges and government employees studying electoral law.

He added that Big Tech platforms, “believe no jurisdiction in the world can oversee them.”

The proposed “Fake News Law” aims to put the responsibility of finding and reporting illegal content on internet platforms.

Non-compliance with the extreme measures would result in fines.

Tech platforms have obviously campaigned against the legislation, claiming it would lead to more censorship.

On Tuesday, Telegram Brazil posted to the Telegram app and said that “democracy is under attack in Brazil,” claiming that the bill would “kill the modern internet” and “put an end to freedom of expression.”

Moraes quickly went further and directly threatened messaging service Telegram with a nationwide ban unless it removed the post on its platform.

Telegram retracted the message and posted a state-ordered message.

Google recently deleted its criticism of the law after the legal threat of fines.

May 11, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Andrew Bridgen MP Joins Reclaim Party and Announces He is Suing Matt Hancock for Defamation

BY WILL JONES | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MAY 10, 2023

Ex-Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the party for criticising the Covid vaccines, has announced he’s joining Laurence Fox’s Reclaim Party, making him its first member of Parliament. At a press conference today Bridgen said he would be standing at his North West Leicestershire constituency at the next General Election. He also confirmed he would be suing Matt Hancock MP for defamation over an allegation of antisemitism.

At the press conference this morning Bridgen confirmed he has decided not to appeal his expulsion and blasted the Conservative Party. He said:

Even if I were to be given a fair hearing, which I doubt, I would not wish to rejoin the party after the treatment received by myself and my family over the past few years.

I feel now that the party no longer represents the people of this great country. If I am to represent my constituents and countrymen it must be from outside the party which I have served dutifully for many decades.

I will be standing again in North West Leicestershire at the next election. Not as a Conservative, but as a Member of the Reclaim Party. More than anything, the Reclaim Party stands for freedom of speech.

I will cross the floor today, Wednesday May 10th, and sit on the opposition benches as the first Member of Parliament for the Reclaim Party. I say first because I have no doubt I will not be the last. This is just the beginning.

If the Conservative Party wishes to contest my seat it can do so at the next General Election.

I have more confidence that I will win my seat than the vast majority of sitting Conservative MPs, so I welcome the challenge should the Prime Minister and Parliamentary Party wish to take it.

Bridgen was accused of antisemitism for agreeing in a tweet with an anonymous heart doctor he quoted that the Covid vaccine rollout was “the biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust”.

He has denied the allegation – which we at the Daily Sceptic agree is spurious and an example of a weaponised antisemitism allegation to achieve political ends. This morning Bridgen confirmed that he will be suing ex-Health Secretary Matt Hancock for defamation after the Conservative MP tweeted in January that he was spouting “antisemitic, anti-vax, anti-scientific conspiracy theories”.

In a YouTube video Bridgen said he has submitted a “defamation claim to the Royal Court of Justice against Matthew Hancock MP”. The basis of the claim is that Hancock’s accusation of antisemitism is “a false slur to deliberately try and shut down valid concerns raised by me on behalf of constituents and thousands of others around the world about the safety and efficacy of the experimental COVID-19 injections”.

Matt Hancock in the dock: that’s a court case to look forward to.

You can donate to Andrew Bridgen’s legal fund here.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Leaked Legal Analysis Of EU’s Private Message Snooping Plans Says It Interferes With “Fundamental Rights”

Undermining the EU’s self-described commitment to privacy

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | May 10, 2023

There are few things the EU Commission (the EU’s executive arm) would like to present more than the bloc and its institutions speaking with one voice, particularly on controversial topics, such as attempts to destroy encryption.

However, documents leaked from the EU Council Legal Service regarding the legality of a proposal known as “chat control” (formally, Child Sexual Abuse Regulation, CSAR), show that there may be “trouble in paradise.”

As digital rights advocate and European Parliament member (MEP) Patrick Breyer of Germany reports, the Service has warned the Commission that its idea probably runs contrary to the fundamental right to respect for private life – meaning that the European Court of Justice would likely annul it.

Summed up, the “chat control” scheme proposes forcing providers of chat, messaging, phone, and email services to screen all private messages in search for illegal content and then inform the police.

But the problem with this, as the Service has noticed, is that it very easily could be interpreted as general and indiscriminate, as well as permanent surveillance, given that the plan gives “generalized” access to every citizen, including those the analysis says are “not even remotely connected with child sexual exploitation.”

And with the high likelihood that CSAR’s “detection orders” would be considered a violation of the fundamental right to privacy and confidentiality of correspondence, the EU court is also highly likely to squash “chat control” as indiscriminate surveillance, the Service warns.

The analysis also notes that while if the justification for “communications metadata screening” is national security, the court allows it – the drastic measures proposed in the CSAR would probably not be considered proportional to their stated purpose.

There’s also the issue of the EU Commission making the dubious claim that the process, rather than generalized, is somehow “targeted” (it does target everyone – so perhaps that’s the sophistry those behind the CSAR chose to go with.)

But the Legal Service’s analysis fears this is actually a “contradiction” between what the Commission is saying, and what the proposal actually spells out.

The Service’s logical suggestion then is to actually target detection orders so that they apply to people “in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that they are in some way involved in, committing or have committed a child sexual abuse offense.”

Observers have noted that the analysis of the CSAR – whose UK counterpart is the Online Safety Bill, represents serious criticism of similar, encryption-undermining proposals on both sides of the Atlantic.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

US developed AI tool to battle ‘Russian disinformation’ – Blinken

RT | May 10, 2023

Washington has developed an artificial intelligence-based system to detect and gather ‘Russian’ disinformation online, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed on Tuesday at the Freedom House 2023 Annual Awards Ceremony.

The State Department has created “an AI-enabled online Ukraine Content Aggregator to collect verifiable Russian disinformation and then to share that with partners around the world,” the US top diplomat said.

The government is cooperating with scholars to be able to “reliably detect fake text generated by Russian chatbots,” he added.

Last year, social media analytics company Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory said hundreds of accounts disseminating pro-Western narratives over the past five were likely being run by the Pentagon’s Centcom unit. In March, news website The Intercept reported on federal contract documents, which suggest that the US Special Operations Command is planning to conduct propaganda and deception campaigns online using deepfake technology.

Last month, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the US of waging “an unprecedented information campaign” against Russia since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Washington and its allies “need war at any cost, and their favorite method of solving their own problems is provocations, disinformation and threats,” Zakharova argued.

Speaking about artificial intelligence in general, Blinken warned that the technology can backfire and “amplify discrimination and enable abuses.”

“It also runs the risk of strengthening autocratic governments, including by enabling them to exploit social media even more effectively to manipulate their people and sow division among and within their adversaries,” he said.

Since the release of the artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT last November, the debate over the dangers posed by AI has intensified in the industry and in academic circles. Geoffrey Hinton, who is known as one of the ‘godfathers’ of AI, warned last week that the technology could present a “more urgent” threat than climate change.

In March, several tech industry leaders, including Elon Musk, co-signed an open letter, urging a six-month pause in the development of AI technology more powerful than ChatGPT, and the appointment of an independent regulator to provide oversight in the field.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Paris to Block Websites Sharing News Content of Sputnik, RT France

Sputnik – 10.05.2023

PARIS – France will block websites that share information of sanctioned media, including RT France and Sputnik, under a new law on security of digital space, French Minister for Digital Transition and Telecommunications Jean-Noel Barrot said on Wednesday.

“As part of measures to protect democracy we will also begin blocking websites that share content of media under international sanctions like the ones the EU imposed against RT France and Sputnik. This measure will complement our existing tools to fight the propaganda of the enemies of democracy,” Barrot told a briefing after a cabinet meeting.

The French ministry has claimed the measure will allow the authorities to protect people from disinformation by expanding the powers of Arcom, the country’s media regulator, which will be authorized to impose restrictive measures against media.

The draft law will be submitted to the Senate in early July, Barrot stated.

Since the start of Russia’s special military operation, a number of jurisdictions, including the European Commission, have decided to censor Russian media and affiliated journalists. In early March 2022, the EU banned the broadcasting and distribution of content by RT and Sputnik as part of the sanctions against Russia, applying the restrictions to all means of content transmission and distribution, such as cable, satellite, IPTV, platforms, websites and apps. All relevant RT, Sputnik licenses and agreements are suspended.

May 10, 2023 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

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