The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene set up a “Misinformation Response Unit” to monitor what it would determine to be “dangerous misinformation” posted on social media, non-US sites, and non-English media in the US.
This “misinformation” mostly had to do with Covid vaccination – the Department was determined to drive vaccination rates up by spreading its word, and in this gathered over 100 partners whose job was to craft positive messaging around the controversial subject.
Among those the dedicated new unit is working with is Public Good Projects, otherwise known for receiving funding from a lobbying group representing two major Covid vaccine manufacturers, Pfizer and Moderna.
Their “good” work here also included sending Twitter, on a weekly basis, lists of posts slated for censorship.
In an article published by the NEJM Catalyst journal, those behind the effort are now assessing the Unit’s work as successful, what with it being able to “rapidly identify messages” deemed as containing inaccurate information about the virus, vaccines, treatment, etc.
And although admitting that “vaccine hesitancy” remains high around the world even two years after the vaccines were first introduced – and this is something attributed to “disinformation and misinformation” and continues to worry the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Surgeon General, as well as “medical experts” – the New York City Health Department thinks that it did well in getting its own narrative out, particularly in traditional media.
However, it needed help on the internet and so, in 2021, the NYC Health Commissioner penned a letter to the largest social networks asking them to engage in “broader efforts to curtail deliberate disinformation, particularly from the most notorious spreaders of disinformation and from non-English language sources.”
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
This is also where the Public Good Projects came in, to enlist social media “microinfluencers” to spread pro-vaccine messages, and train others to come up with campaigns.
The email Dave A. Chokshi, New York City health commissioner, addressed to then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, with the subject line reading, “Vaccine Misinformation,” urges the pair to “take immediate action to stop the spread of fraudulent and inaccurate information about COVID-19 vaccines” on their platforms.
Chokshi wanted this action to be “effective and vigorous” and asserted that misinformation on these sites, as understood by the city’s Health Department, was “costing New Yorkers their lives.”
Twitter and Facebook were then urged to do the following: “Consistently and promptly remove all misinformation regarding COVID-19 vaccines from your platforms and ban any user that repeatedly posts misinformation, including the Dirty Dozen; redesign the algorithms used by your platforms to avoid amplifying misinformation, particularly among non-English languages; provide greater transparency to your data to allow health departments to better identify, track and understand the spread of misinformation, and amplify messaging from trusted public health experts and local partners.”
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, New York City, Public Good Projects, United States |
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In future, it will no longer be enough for the EU to censor and silence undesirable alternative media only in its own area of responsibility. The EU also wants to fight unwelcome opinions and competing media in the rest of the world.
To this end, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has announced that he intends to use alleged “disinformation experts” in EU offices around the world. Their task would be fighting Russian and Chinese spreaders of alleged “fake news”.
Borrell announced the deployment of official censors to this end: “All our delegations will be equipped with experts in countering disinformation in many parts of the world so that our voice is better heard.”
A particular thorn in the side of the EU is the Russian and Chinese media and their multipliers, for example on platforms such as Telegram.
More international solidarity with allies is also required here, said Borrell. “We need to address this issue politically at the highest level.” The EU and like-minded partners should create their own way of sharing data and analysis of foreign disinformation campaigns, but also work more with authorities around the world to ban competing voices.
Borrell did not give any specific information about what this should look like in the future and how the EU broadcasters should act against “fake news”. So far, the EU has not come up with anything other than censorship when it comes to unwanted competition but that could be difficult in foreign countries.
From the point of view of Borrell and the EU authorities there is no reason whatsoever to doubt the official narrative, and every expressed doubt will now be given a new label: “Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference”, abbreviated FIMI.
The unelected preach ‘democracy’
The EU Commission is not a democratic structure, its members are appointed, not elected, and most of them lack any understanding of democracy. EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Josep Borrell could virtually serve as Exhibit A.
Not long ago, Ursula von der Leyen deleted her mobile phone communication with Pfizer about the purchase of millions of doses of a pharmaceutical preparation and while it raises the suspicion of corruption, this could be presented as FIMI simply because it was also reported by a Russian broadcaster.
Borrell’s grasp of the English language is at least as bad as that of Ursula von der Leyen’s. Yet both insist on proposing these far-reaching measures in English, no longer an EU language. Do they understand the subtleties of their proposal?
Ignoring facts
The Chinese state media, according to the EU report, “have reinforced selected pro-Kremlin conspiracy narratives, for example about alleged US military biorepositories in Ukraine”.
This is a clear example of how to dispose of truth or factual information as a criterion. These labs are not only found as budget items listed in the US defence budget (a document over which the Kremlin presumably exercises no control), but individual collaborations, such as the research projects of the Bernhard Nocht Institute or the Friedrich Löffler Institute with these Ukrainian labs, can also be found on their websites, as well as the financier of these projects, the German Ministry of Defence.
It must therefore be stated that these laboratories existed, that they were financed from the military budget and that the research was carried out on behalf of the military, and not only on behalf of the US. Nevertheless, the EU has declared the very existence of the labs to be a “conspiracy narrative”.
In connection with protests under the title #StopKillingDonbass, the EU report stated that it was “falsely claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ‘paramilitary units of neo-Nazis’ were committing atrocities against civilians, including children” while the Soros NGO Human Rights Watch recently actually admitted that Ukraine had distributed butterfly mines in Donetsk, an outlawed munition in residential areas.
According to their rationale, any “disinformation” accusation by FIMI does not have to take into account whether the statement is true, but only that it contradicts the EU narrative.
Therefore, the report noted: “The information disseminated by these networks does not have to be provably false or misleading to constitute a FIMI incident, which FIMI applies more broadly than the classic definition of disinformation.”
February 13, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | European Union, Human rights |
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Wednesday, Congress held a hearing on Twitter’s censorship of The New York Post and its coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop. While House Republicans focused on issues like shadowbanning and government collusion with Big Tech, Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats advocated for increased censorship from Silicon Valley companies.
Raskin argued that the committee would be better served focusing on “the real threats of massive Russian disinformation and white nationalist violent incitement on social media.”
Like the Biden Administration’s usurpation of the First Amendment, Raskin’s cohort’s goal is censorship and the accompanying augmentation of state power, not challenging the veracity of opponents’ arguments or claims.
In “Shouting Covid in a Crowded Theater,” I discuss how officials in the Biden Administration use wartime rhetorical strategies to slander dissidents. In doing so, they conflate dissent with threats to public safety to censor critics.
When discussing public health, the regime consistently uses labels of “misinformation” and “disinformation.” But the more we learn about government operations, the more it appears that these labels are references to inconvenience, not falsity.
This strategy extends beyond the country’s COVID response.
Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”
The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.”
The sabotage presented a major energy crisis for the United States’ European allies. Europe imports nearly 40% of its gas from Russia, and the Nord Stream 1 was responsible for delivering approximately one third of that supply.
Now, Hersh reports that “the United States executed a covert sea operation” with Navy divers to sabotage Russia’s pipelines with explosives.
For a less obsequious press corps, this should have been an easy story to crack.
In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Biden announced his intention to act against the pipelines in the event of war.
“If Russia invades… there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” he told reporters. “We will bring an end to it.”
“How will you do that exactly?” a reporter asked.
“I promise you we will be able to do it,” President Biden said with a slight smile.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland was equally as explicit.
“I want to be very clear to you today,” she told reporters in January 2022. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed “Anglo-Saxons” in the West for “terror attacks” on the pipelines. “Those who profit from it have done it,” Putin told the press.
President Biden chastised Putin’s accusation for “pumping out disinformation and lies.”
“Just don’t listen to what Putin’s saying,” Biden added. “What he’s saying we know is not true.”
White House National Security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson backed up Biden’s claim, referring to Putin’s accusation as “Russia’s disinformation.”
Russia’s U.N. ambassador also implied that the United States had been involved in the sabotage. Richard Mills, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., responded by calling the claims “conspiracy theories and disinformation.”
Despite the Commander and Chief’s explicit announcement that he would take action against the Nord Stream pipeline, a credulous press corps has dutifully parotted government talking points that accusations of western involvement in the sabotage are “baseless” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theories.”
This all follows a similar pattern to the informational warfare of the Covid era: an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true (or at least highly plausible).
Arguments over natural immunity, vaccine efficacy, masks, the lab leak hypothesis, school shutdowns, lockdowns, and the scientific basis of social distancing are just a few examples that followed this cycle of reporting.
This was the same pattern as The New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop. Now, at hearings to investigate corruption that implicated Big Tech, intelligence officials, and the federal government, Raskin and his cohorts return to their familiar censorship ploys.
For censors, augmentation of power, not truth, remains the chief objective. To achieve this goal, they conflate dissent with domestic terrorism.
For example, the Department of Homeland Security’s “National Terrorism Advisory Service” listed misinformation and disinformation as terrorism threats in February 2022. The memo identified these threats as efforts to “undermine public trust in government.”
Regarding both Covid and Ukraine, the most powerful forces in the country have repeatedly lied and misled the American public. They censor critics to protect their delicate narratives of fiction, and they attack others for the public’s waning trust in government.
Hersh’s article pierces through the hegemonic narrative; hopefully, exposing their lies and warmongering will disrupt their ploys for censorship and power.
William Spruance is a practicing attorney and a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center. The ideas expressed in the article are entirely his own and not necessarily those of his employer.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, United States |
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After I won my landmark “quarantine camp” lawsuit against Governor Hochul and her Department of Health a few months ago, people from around the globe started reaching out to me. Some wanted to simply send congratulations on a job well done, and thank me for giving them hope that this tyranny that somehow magically took hold contemporanously in countries around the world, could be defeated.
But many others wanted more than that. They wanted actual help. They wanted to know how they could fight back against the intense tyranny in their countries. So, I started doing interviews and presentations to groups based in the UK, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. I shared with them my legal theory behind my case, the separation of powers argument, and all about my courageous plaintiffs (Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Assemblyman [now Congressman] Mike Lawler, and a citizens’ group called Uniting NYS).
I told them about the other wonderful group of NYS Legislators that supported us with an Amicus Brief (Assemblymen Andy Goodell, Will Barclay and Joseph Giglio), and the battles that we fought and won along the way, as the Attorney General tried tactic after tactic to stall, derail and destroy our case. I shared all that I could with them in the hopes that it would assist them in their countries, as they pushed back against their government abuses.
At first I was taken aback by the response from those who reached out to me from abroad. It was hard for me to imagine that all those foreigners were watching our quarantine case so intently. Many told me they’d heard about it through “alternative media” sources, and had been quietly cheering me on and praying for a win. This made me realize that the utter helplessness brought on by the flagrant despotism of so many nations’ governments was eerily simultaneous – and equally frightening to all citizenry, no matter which country one called home.
Our quarantine camp lawsuit win against New York’s governor was almost akin to the proverbial shot heard around the world. Almost. Not quite. One big difference is that my lawsuit was (and still is today) heavily censored. Mainstream media barely covered it when we won, except for an article here and there in the New York Post and my interview on OAN Network. Epoch Times TV did a deep-dive interview with me on their wildly popular show, American Thought Leaders, but still yet, the Epoch Times is not legacy, mainstream media that continuously pours over the airwaves day in and day out.
Local and alternative media were covering it, but not mainstream media. I previously wrote an article about the censorship of my quarantine case which you can read here.
With my exposure to citizens from countries far and away, I was hearing tales of horrific happenings. Things that I simply could not believe governments would do their people, especially in countries that were supposedly “free”. And yet, here they were, telling me stories, sending me news articles or photos or actual video footage of atrocities I could not wrap my head around.
Some of the images are forever burned into my memory, no matter how hard I try to erase them. And at the end of each story that someone recanted, or each video that I watched, I thought to myself, “Thank God we won our quarantine camp lawsuit here in New York.”
I realized that we had not only stopped this complete totalitarianism from taking place in my home state, but we had likely stopped it from spreading across the nation to the point where quarantine camps would become the “new norm” as a way to (supposedly) stop the spread of a disease – or to punish someone the government didn’t like. (Remember, the languange in the reg we got struck down said the government did NOT have to prove you actually had a disease)! For more details on the reg and our lawsuit, go to www.UnitingNYS.com/lawsuit
Through my connection with Brownstone Institute, I was introduced to a wonderful and brave Australian who had spent two weeks in a quarantine camp in northern Australia. Let’s refer to her as “Jane”. I share with you now her first hand account that she shared with me of what happened and what it was like, replete with photographs from inside the camp.
At the time Jane was in the camp, Dan Andrews was (and still is) the Premier in Australia. The country had very strict COVID19 policies, which Jane points out, were constantly changing. Literally, the government would change a policy whilst people were flying mid-air, and upon landing at their destination, they’d be arrested because they now suddenly were in violation of a new COVID policy just issued!
The rule at the time was that no Australian was allowed to leave their state, unless you had a “legitimate reason” to do so, and in order to actually leave, you had to first quarantine for 2 weeks. Not in your home. No, don’t be silly! You had to quarantine in a facility that was run by the government. Some people got to choose which facility, others did not. There was a large camp in the Northern Territory near Darwin, and then there were many quarantine hotels scattered throughout the country.
Reportedly, the quarantine hotels were a total nightmare where you were shut into a room for 2 weeks, no exiting your room, no going outdoors allowed, and some rooms didn’t even have windows! But living in Melbourne, a large city in southest Australia, was just as bad. The government would only let you out of your home for ONE HOUR/day, with a mask on, and you couldn’t stray more than 5 kilometers from your house. You not only couldn’t leave the city, you couldn’t leave the country!
Forget having anyone visit – no guests were allowed in your home. The government set up a hotline so that Australians could call and report any of their neighbors who were disobeying the COVID mandates. The police would often check on the citizens to see if they were complying. They’d phone you, and if you didn’t respond within 15 minutes, they’d come knock on your door! The camp where Jane was quarantined seemed almost like a holiday, comparatively speaking. Well, not really.
So how it worked was that, if you had family or friends or business in another state, you had to first go to a government facility to quarantine for 2 weeks. Again, only if you had what the government deemed to be a legitimate reason. Jane needed to leave Melbourne, so she packed up her bags, booked an absurdly expensive flight to the Northern Territory, and off she went to the quarantine camp in Darwin for 2 weeks. Did she go “voluntarily”, of her own free will? That’s a very fine line of semantics there folks. Yes, she herself booked her flight and packed her bags to go, but it was only because the government told her that was the only way she could leave Melbourne. I don’t consider that free will. I hope you share my view.
The quarantine camp:
The camp had rows of trailer-like buildings that housed the inmates – I mean the there-of-their-own-free-will Australians. Jane was put into a unit that had a bedroom and a bathroom. Each unit had a small front stoop, sort of like a porch (see photo below). You were allowed to sit outside and talk to a neighbor, through a face mask of course, if you could stand the sweltering heat. Police were constantly patroling the camp, walking past the trailers, ensuring everyone was complying with the “social distancing” requirements and the forced masking, etc.
You weren’t allowed to do anything other than sit on your front stoop, or walk “laps” through the camp… as long as you stayed the proper distance from others, wore your mask, and didn’t try to do anything else. There was a swimming pool, but you were only allowed a dip in the pool twice during your 2 week stint there, and that was only if you were going to do some laps… no games allowed!
The food was terrible. No alcohol allowed. Cell phones and internet were allowed, at least when Jane was there. She said one woman tried to escape, but she was caught and then put into solitary confinement.
Now, sit down for this next part. The government restricted you from leaving your town, your state, your country, forced you into quarantine hotels or a camp if you were able to convince them that you had a real reason to cross a state border, treated you like a criminal, and get this – YOU had to pay for it!! And it was not cheap. The price tag was $2,500 for an individual, $5,000 for a family at the camp. The “hotels” apparently were more costly at $3,000 for the 2 weeks.
There were more details that Jane shared with me, but I cannot cover all here. At this point, I’m going to close out this story with a part of my conversation with Jane that really struck me. She could tell that I was flabbergasted by the things she was telling me. She could hear it in my voice, but also in the long pauses in between my questions after she would answer the litany of inquiries I was throwing at her.
My underlying astonishment was obvious… “How could your government do these things to its people?!”
Her response was immediate and direct, “We don’t have your Second Amendment. If we had, our government never would have treated us this way.”
Let that sink in for a minute.
Lawsuit update:
As I mentioned above, we defeated New York’s quarantine camp regulation when we won our lawsuit last July against Governor Hochul and her DOH. The Attorney General filed a notice of appeal, and had 6 months to appeal the win. Elections were November 8th. Not surprisingly, no appeal was filed, until…
The first week of January, just days before their 6 month deadline was up, the Attorney General asked for an additional 2 months to appeal our victory over quarantine camps! Unfortunately, the Court granted the request, despite our objection.
For more information about the case, the timeline, or if you’d like to support our lawsuit against the Governor and her quarantine camp regulation, go to www.UnitingNYS.com/lawsuit
Together, we win this!
Bobbie Anne is an attorney with 25 years experience in the private sector, who continues to practice law but also lectures in her field of expertise – government over-reach and improper regulation and assessments.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Australia, Covid-19, Human rights, New York, United States |
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The term ‘moral injury’ is a new one for me, as it probably is for most. It’s more commonly applied in a military context and only recently in health and social care, since 2020 to be precise. Indeed, the literature gently, knowingly or unknowingly, nudges us into believing that moral injury, reframed as occupational moral injury, isn’t a new concept but an inevitable consequence of working in an ethically challenging health and social care system.
Moral injury is understood as the damage done to an individual’s conscience or moral compass when they perpetrate, witness or fail to prevent acts that transgress their own moral beliefs, values or code of ethics. The term is thought to have originated after the Vietnam war when returning veterans and their carers struggled to make sense of high levels of anguish, anger and alienation that couldn’t be explained in terms of a mental health diagnosis such a post-traumatic stress disorder. It doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to understand why veterans were morally injured but the Moral Injury Project at Syracuse University in New York cites examples such as using deadly force in combat and inadvertently causing harm or death to civilians and colleagues, giving orders which result in the injury or death of colleagues, failing to provide medical aid to civilians or colleagues and failing to report incidents such as sexual assaults.
When lockdowns were implemented in 2020, the health and social care workforce faced insurmountable and intolerable challenges when it was deemed unsafe in many situations to have close contact with fellow human beings who were in need of assistance. In essence, a workforce who function on the need for human contact could endanger life by simply doing their job. Subsequently, care and support was withdrawn or compromised through almost non-existent face-to-face interactions or time limited, with minimal physical contact if they took place at all.
Moral injury therefore makes sense in the context of health and social care. Staff were forced to deny medical and compassionate care to the injured and dying, leave adults and children in risky situations which in some cases led to death and injury, isolate frail older people from the life-giving company of family and friends and ignore or dismiss situations that previously justified urgent attention; all done while hiding smiles and humanity behind useless and potentially dangerous masks.
Moral injury during the pandemic can surely be applied across most professions and indeed the population: the police officer investigating a peaceful family gathering, the funeral director separating distressed relatives, the religious leader closing the door of a place of worship or the teacher who forced children to wear masks for hours on end. There were also the children who isolated their parents and parents who isolated their children, neighbours and community groups who withdrew essential help and support, and friends and family who got angry or fell out with those they disagreed with. Emotions and tensions ran high, leading me to think that many of us are morally injured to some degree or another. Is it any wonder that so many are struggling with poor mental health?
The growing number of articles drawing attention to moral injury, the most significant in the BMJ in July 2020 and a reference point for further articles, all focus on reassuring staff that a conflict of morals and the potential for injury is a normal consequence of doing what was necessary to prevent illness and death from Covid-19. At no point are the logic and morality of the rules called into question, which is surprising because the Moral Injury Project makes reference to two other potential causes of moral injury that are not referred to in recent literature:
‘Following orders that were illegal, immoral, and/or against the Rules of Engagement or Geneva Convention’;
‘A change in belief about the necessity or justification for war, during or after one’s service’.
As the realisation slowly dawns on the world that the inhumane actions which staff were forced to take were in fact unnecessary and based on flawed concepts with no robust evidence base, are we facing a rising tide of the morally injured? All measures were applied in the absence of risk/benefit analysis, despite common knowledge that blanket approaches to managing risk are likely to cause more damage than the presenting problem. Yet the whole population was terrified into believing we were all at equal risk of severe illness or death from a lethal virus, to which we had no natural immunity and was quietly spread from those with no symptoms, especially children. Lockdowns, school closures, testing, mask wearing, social distancing, mass vaccination programmes and subsequent passports were said to be necessary but in reality were unjustified and immoral. Dismissing the question of the necessity and morality of these measures and normalising moral injury as a natural consequence of a warlike situation places accountability solely on those who enforced the polices and vindicates those who created them.
A morally injured workforce is evidence that the response to Covid-19 was morally wrong. None of us know how we would have behaved in the shoes of the workers who enforced immoral policies that contravened their conscience and moral compass. However, we can be sure of one thing: many of the injured will need support to come to terms with the realisation they have inadvertently played a part in injuring some of the very people they intended to protect.
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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It’s time to courageously stand up to the self-serving politicians, corporate media, and Big Tech who are weaponizing our tax-payer funded institutions against us, undermining our freedom and democracy. Our love for America can give us the strength to win this battle.
Press TV – February 11, 2023
Former Democratic US Representative Tulsi Gabbard has said Hillary Clinton is a “dangerous character” who is “envious” of President Joe Biden because she believes Biden is “channeling her warmongering ways.”
Gabbard made the remarks following the ex-secretary of state’s recent visit to India where she visited salt pan workers in Gujarat where and announced a $50-million initiative aimed at empowering women and communities to fight against climate change.
Gabbard told Fox News that the trip served little purpose and said that Clinton’s visit to drum up support for alternative clean energy shows that she still covets diplomatic authority and is “envious” of Biden’s presidency.
“Her desire to be commander-in-chief that she’s had for a very long time has nothing to do with ensuring the safety and security of the American people,” Gabbard said. “It has everything to do with the fact that if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.”
She added that she believes Biden to be “channeling her warmongering ways.”
Clinton has previously called Gabbard a “Russian asset,” which incited the former Hawaii Democrat to launch a defamation lawsuit.
Gabbard also stated that Clinton’s visit to India did nothing to address India’s more pressing issues and that its only purpose was to increase her own public profile.
“This is what makes her such a dangerous character,” Gabbard said. “She feels that she’s not accountable to anyone because she’s not suffering those consequences.”
The 42-year-old Gabbard served as a congresswoman in the US House of Representatives between 2013 and 2021, and as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) between 2013 and 2016. She quit DNC’s vice chairwomanship to protest the Democratic Party’s presidential primary process, blaming then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz for rigging the vote in favor of former Obama secretary of state Hillary Clinton against Vermont’s progressive Senator Bernie Sanders.
She quit the Democratic Party in October last year, blasting its leadership for being an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”
Gabbard said that today’s Democratic Party is “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers.”
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party,” she tweeted.
Gabbard also served two tours of war in the Middle East, including a tour in Iraq as a member of the Hawaii National Guard, and ran for president in 2020, where her evisceration of former California Attorney General – and current US Vice President — Kamala Harris by pointing to the latter’s record of incarcerating African Americans on petty drug offenses forced Harris to drop out of the presidential race before any primaries or caucuses were held.
She has long been among the top critics of US military interventions across the globe. She traveled to Syria in 2017 and censured Washington’s attempts at regime change there, and also slammed US military aid for Ukraine, pointing to the risk of the conflict escalating into a Third World War with Russia.
Gabbard has called Clinton the “embodiment of corruption” and “the queen of warmongers.”
Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, has repeatedly spoken against neoconservative war hawks with a history of supporting regime change wars. On the contrary, Clinton has supported America’s imperialist wars.
American writer Stephen Lendman once said Clinton is “a war goddess” who has supported all of the United States’s “imperial wars from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria.”
February 12, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Video | Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Tulsi Gabbard, United States |
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Germany is one of the most censorship-prone in the European Union
In a Digital Committee hearing of German’s federal parliament (the Bundestag) Twitter was accused of failing to provide answers about the implementation of German’s Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG) and efforts to comply with the upcoming censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Twitter’s head of Europe Global Government Affairs Ronan Costello said that even before Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, AI identified 65% of all content flagged for removal.
However, he could not say, among other things, the number of Twitter employees still remaining in Germany and the number of accounts unblocked since Musk took over. Costello said the answers would be provided later, reports stated.
The members of parliament were skeptical about Twitter complying with the requirements of NetzDG, especially because of Musk’s decision to lay off about half of Twitter’s staff. However, Costello insisted that Twitter was committed to complying with the law. He insisted the platform was more transparent, noting that the latest transparency report contained more data required by the NetzDG than in the same period the previous year.
Costello also said that the “Community Notes” tool, which allows other Twitter users to fact-check misleading content by providing more context, will soon launch in Europe. In the US, the tool has over 20,000 users.
February 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties | Digital Services Act, Germany, Human rights, Twitter |
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The US Biden administration has reportedly presented a plan to cool tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, which have dramatically escalated since the formation of Israel’s new right-wing government.
As reported by Axios, following up on a request made by US secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his visit to the Middle East late last month, his Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Barbara Leaf, stayed behind and worked on presenting a roadmap towards preventing a violent escalation in the region. Antony Blinken had urged both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to “pause” provocative steps in order to avoid further hostilities.
The requests made by the Biden administration were originally geared towards the Palestinian Authority (PA) taking significant steps, whilst minimal requirements were put on the Netanyahu government. Antony Blinken urged Mahmoud Abbas to implement a “security plan” presented by US security coordinator Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, who proposed creating a special PA Security Force wing that would be trained by the US to fight Palestinian militias that have formed over the past two years in the Jenin and Nablus areas. Later on, the US also requested that Israel reduce the number of raids on Palestinian towns and refugee camps, in addition to halting their plans for significant settlement expansion; both of which Israel refuses to follow through on.
Rogue militias
In September of 2021, the Jenin Brigades armed group announced its formation out of the Jenin refugee camp, later growing and expanding its areas of operations to the wider Jenin area. The armed group does not have any traceable command-and-control structure. It consists primarily of men between the ages of 18 and 25, mostly formed of members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) movement and Fatah Party members who are no longer loyal to the ruling clique in the party that commands the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Later, in September of 2022, the Lions’ Den armed movement also announced its formation in the old city of Nablus, claiming to belong to no political party. Due to the rise of newly formed armed groups, which hasn’t happened in the West Bank since the early 2000s, the Palestinian Authority’s security forces have lost control of much of the northern West Bank.
The US proposal for the Palestinian Authority to form a special force to fight against the armed militias is an extremely dangerous intervention in the affairs of the region. It is reminiscent of the UK-backed “peace bands” formed under the British Mandate in the late 1930s, when the British took the initiative to use Palestinians to fight each other. However, unlike then, there is no support for anti-militia activities from the Palestinian public today. In fact, the overwhelming majority support the Jenin Brigades, Lions’ Den and other armed groups, according to all available polling data. The PA has been significantly weakened over the past three years due to a financial crisis, corruption, the lack of any diplomatic breakthroughs, the postponement of national elections, and the killing and detention of Palestinians for the sake of Israeli security.
Third Intifada coming?
The Palestinian Authority has even been engaged in limited armed exchanges with the newly formed militias in the West Bank over the past year, triggering mass protests from angry West Bank residents. The number one issue that Palestinians in the West Bank have with the PA is its ‘security coordination’ with Israel, which essentially means that the PA’s security forces work with the Israeli military, intelligence and border police, in order to combat Palestinian threats against Israelis, but not the other way around. When Israel raided the Jenin refugee camp last month, killing 10 Palestinians, including three civilians, one of whom was an elderly woman, the PA announced the suspension of security coordination in response.
The US assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs met last week with Israel’s National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi, and President Abbas’ senior advisor, Hussein al-Sheikh, to propose that the Palestinian Authority return to security coordination with Israel, in exchange for Israel slowing down settlement expansion. The US also sought for the PA to pause its attempts to take Israel before the International Court of Justice and the UN for alleged war crimes – a move for which the PA has been punished with Israeli sanctions.
Last Thursday, CIA director Bill Burns expressed his concern over the possibility of a ‘third intifada’ [Palestinian uprising] erupting inside the West Bank, stating that “a lot of what we’re seeing today has a very unhappy resemblance to some of those realities that we saw then [during the Second Intifada] too”. His concern is congruent with the reality on the ground, where last year was the deadliest for West Bank Palestinians since the end of the Second Intifada in 2005, according to the United Nations. Palestinian attacks against Israeli settlers and soldiers are also a daily occurrence now.
Two-state solution blocked
Despite the US government clearly identifying the nature of the escalation, it shows complete ignorance of its own role in creating the current hostilities. The bulk of the US secretary of state’s visit to Palestine-Israel was tailored to forwarding Arab-Israeli normalization efforts and to expanding the ‘Negev Forum’, which Morocco, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt form with Israel, in order to advance their own ties. At the same time, Antony Blinken spoke of reaching a “two-state solution” between Palestinians and Israelis as being the only path to any lasting peace.
Under the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 (also known as the Saudi Initiative), a “two-state solution” (meaning the recognition by Israel of a Palestinian state and the end of occupation of Palestinian territories) is a precondition for the normalization of ties between Israel and Arab states. By pushing for normalization without that precondition, Blinken effectively seeks to deprive the Palestinian Authority of its best bargaining chip and leaves it powerless to extract any concessions from the Israeli government, whose officials will not even consider sitting down for meetings with their Palestinian counterparts.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already stated that he is not willing to halt settlement expansion, as proposed by the US government, with Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, openly announcing that there will be no freeze on settlement construction, which is considered illegal by the UN and most world powers. Israel has also announced its intention to increase raids and further military activities in the West Bank, in what it deems to be a preparation for likely hostilities during the Muslim Holy month of Ramadan.
Hope for Palestinians is the only way to peace
Despite the PA having announced the end of its security coordination with Israel, it is clear that some coordination is still occurring and that the announcement was more of a public relations move for President Abbas, who is feeling the pressure from a disgruntled Palestinian population. This in itself is a key indicator that the PA is feeling the pressure from Palestinian society at large and a sign that any US-trained PA force to combat the militia groups could lead to a disaster, whereby the Ramallah-based authority could even be overthrown due to the outrage such a step would cause. When the CIA worked to create the “new PA security force” during the latter years of the Second Intifada, it only worked after the PA itself had participated in the fight against the Israeli military and still maintained some degree of popular support. In addition to this, the Israeli army had conducted ‘Operation Defensive Shield,’ which led to the assassinations or arrests of the most prominent militia leaders inside the West Bank.
The only way the PA could possibly regain control of Jenin and Nablus is by proving to the Palestinian people that it is on their side, and not fighting for the US and Israel. It is also the reality that many of the leading fighters in the militia groups, especially in Jenin, are actually members of the PA’s security forces that have gone rogue. Armed militias also seem to be forming in areas like Bethlehem, al-Khalil and even Jericho, which proves that the re-emergence of the armed struggle in the West Bank is not only limited to the north of the territory.
The only way to properly combat the escalation and to stop this from growing into a much larger confrontation, is to provide hope for the Palestinian people inside the West Bank, something that the US will not even consider. Instead of the US working as an objective mediator, it works solely for Israel’s immediate interests and accepts the political restraints of each Israeli government as an excuse for repeatedly violating its own red lines. The US considers every single Palestinian political party as a terrorist organization, other than the mainstream branch of the Fatah Party, meaning that they will not even talk to any Palestinian representatives other than those that adhere to their own demands. The obsessive pursuit of Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel, seemingly for political gain on behalf of the Biden administration, also contributes to robbing Palestinians of any hope for peace.
The situation inside the West Bank cannot be resolved using bombs and bullets. Even if every single member of all the armed groups were to be killed, the same problem would again emerge for Israel in the future. Despite this, Washington will never look critically at what is going on and realize that there are two sides to this conflict. At this time the US government is dealing with the escalation as if Israel has a termite problem and not that there are people who are rising up in an ongoing struggle for statehood.
Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News.
February 11, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Austrian physician: vaccine has to be avoided, especially when “a corrupt state and an even more corrupt medical association, made up of puppets of the pharmaceutical industry, coerce people into a potentially lethal vaccination.”
Physician Dr. Andreas Sönnichsen was accused in 2022 of issuing digital exemption certificates for the Covid 19 vaccine for 20 euros to patients who did not want the new controversial medical mRNA technology injected into their bodies.
Despite the privacy rights between patient and doctor, Austrian authorities dragged Sönnichsen to a Salzburg court on charges of fraud and usurpation of authority.
Yesterday, the Salzburg court ruled in favor of Sönnichsen. The acquittal is viewed as a major victory by proponents of patient-physician rights, medical privacy and bodily autonomy.
Compulsory vaccination was introduced in Austria in February, 2022, but was suspended already in March before being dropped altogether in the summer after heated protests.
Story at the derstandard.de here.
The courageous Sönnichsen was an outspoken critic of the Austrian government’s harsh COVID measures and used scientific arguments to refute the charges against him.
“Sönnichsen pleaded his innocence in the trial. The judge could not recognize a subjective factual element or an intent to enrich,” Der Standard reports. Prosecutors claimed the doctor’s certificates “were issued via the Internet without the patients having been conscientiously examined”, but the defendant “argued that the certificates very much had a medical value”.
The court agreed and acquitted
“According to the judge, the physician had wanted to issue a medical certificate as a doctor to help people not to have to go vaccinate,” Der Standard reports. “After the acquittal, Sönnichsen strongly criticized the Covid policy in an interview with ORF Salzburg. Those who had not been vaccinated had been severely defamed and discriminated against.”
“Biggest medical scandal” and “a crime”
At the end of 2021 in a press conference, Sönnichsen called COVID 19 the “biggest medical scandal of all time”, and at a press conference in Salzburg in November 2021, he warned that the risk-benefit ratio of vaccination against Corona was “highly likely to be negative for most healthy people and especially for children.”
In an open letter to the Salzburg Medical Association at the end of October 2022, Sönnichsen called the Covid vaccination of healthy people “a crime because the harm is much greater than the benefit”.
“Puppets of the pharmaceutical industry”
And now that the overwhelming evidence for the harmfulness of vaccination has come to light, Sönnichsen says the Hippocratic Oath “obliges” him to issue vaccination exemption certificates, especially “when a corrupt state and an even more corrupt medical association, made up of puppets of the pharmaceutical industry, coerce people into a potentially lethal vaccination.”
February 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | Austria, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is aware of recently-emerged footage apparently showing the execution of Russian soldiers who had surrendered by Ukrainian troops, a spokeswoman for the UN watchdog, Marta Hurtado, has said.
“We have raised concerns about the treatment of prisoners of war, including alleged killings of POWs by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense,” Hurtado told TASS in a statement on Friday.
The graphic video in question surfaced earlier this week, filmed by an armed individual speaking Ukrainian and demanding answers from three men in military uniforms lying on the ground. After failing to elicit a coherent response from them, the man shoots one of the men in the head multiple times at point blank range.
One of the men, lying motionless on the ground, also has visible blood around his head, apparently getting shot and killed before the video started. A fellow Ukrainian soldier appeared to try to reason with the gunman, pointing out that the third captive was holding a grenade. The killer briefly showed his face at the very end of the video, concluding it with an obscenity and ‘Glory to Ukraine’ slogan, which is commonly associated with World War II-era Nazi collaborators but is widely used in present-day Ukraine.
Russia to probe alleged POW executions by ‘Ukrainian nationalists’READ MORE: Russia to probe alleged POW executions by ‘Ukrainian nationalists’
Additional footage seemingly filmed in the immediate aftermath of the incident showed the killer trying to provide excuses to justify his actions. The UN is aware of this footage as well, Hurtado said, adding that none of the excuses actually have merit.
“We are also aware of another video that has appeared on social media platforms that includes additional footage of the original incident and also appears to show a Ukrainian soldier confessing [to] the killing and trying to justify it by alleging that the victims refused to surrender or that they were part of the Wagner Group military and security contractors fighting on behalf of the Russian Federation,” the spokeswoman said. “These excuses do not provide justification for the soldier’s actions under international humanitarian law.”
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the killing of unarmed soldiers who surrendered is a “widespread practice” by Kiev’s troops, and multiple incidents of this sort have occurred amid the ongoing conflict, with some of them published online by the killers themselves. The Russian Investigative Committee said on Thursday that the footage appeared to show the recent murder of three Russian POWs by “Ukrainian nationalists,” pledging to investigate further and identify the perpetrators.
February 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
War Crimes | Human rights, Ukraine, United Nations |
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Moldova’s prime minister has stepped down amid allegations of crackdowns on dissent
Moldovan Prime Minister Natalia Gavrilita resigned on Friday, which means that the entire cabinet of the economically-troubled and politically-unstable nation will have to change.
Gavrilita did not divulge the reasons behind her decision in her farewell speech, which focused on what she described as the achievements of her team during her short-lived tenure.
“I am proud to have accelerated infrastructure projects that were stagnating due to incompetence and corruption,” the politician said. Her government “preserved peace and economic stability” despite efforts by “agents of destabilization,” she added.
Gavrilita announced her resignation after holding a meeting with Moldovan President Maia Sandu, who accepted it immediately. In a Facebook post, the president thanked the former PM for her efforts in governing Moldova at a time of “unprecedented challenges.”
The outgoing cabinet took the helm in August 2021, after the Sandu-founded Party of Action and Solidarity won a snap election a month earlier. Rumors about the government’s imminent collapse have been swirling in Moldova since Monday.
For months last year, the government in Chisinau faced mass protests over rising energy prices and worsening standards of living, which followed a feud with Russian gas giant Gazprom over the terms of fuel supplies. The demonstrations also had a political aspect, as the government was accused of cracking down on the opposition.
Former president Igor Dodon, whom Sandu beat at the ballot box in 2020, is facing a number of criminal charges, ranging from corruption and illegal campaign financing to falsifying medical documents. His supporters believe the investigations are politically motivated, since Dodon, an advocate of good relations with Russia, has been criticizing Sandu’s pro-Western stance.
Amid the protests, the government forced several Russian-language media outlets to go off air when it refused to renew their broadcasting licenses in December. Since October, Moldova has been living in a state of emergency, which the opposition claims is just a method of preventing mass gatherings of discontent citizens.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov assessed last week that Moldova may become “a new Ukraine” in the sense of adopting anti-Russian policies despite how much they may hurt the country. He said Sandu was a major factor, because she was ready to do “practically anything” to further her pro-Western agenda.
Last June, the EU granted Moldova a candidate status alongside fellow applicant Ukraine.
February 10, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Economics | Human rights, Moldova |
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The State of Maryland has introduced a bill for consideration (Senate Bill 378) that would allow healthcare workers to vaccinate a child who is deemed “able to understand the benefits and potential consequences of getting vaccinated” without parental consent. The determined age of consent for a child to “choose” to be vaccinated is 14, though, such laws are often a slippery slope as guidelines and goalposts can be adjusted once a bill is passed to include even younger people.
It should be noted that Maryland law prevents children of 14 or older to refuse vaccination ordered by parents. In other words, they are considered competent enough to get vaccinated without parent’s knowledge, but not competent enough to refuse vaccination with parent’s knowledge. The push among some states to provide or legalize medical procedures on minors without advising parents has been growing in multiple sectors of healthcare the past few years, from abortions to gender affirmation surgeries.
It sounds like a remnant from two years ago when Democrat run states like New York were talking seriously about the forced internment of people who were “potential dangers” to public health. The concept of constitutional rights were going out the window and the US barely dodged an Orwellian end. Parental rights are often considered a vital barrier to state interference with vulnerable children who are easily manipulated into accepting procedures that could affect their rest of their lives.
The potential consequences are obvious – Schools and other government institutions could very easily exploit medical personnel to convince children that they MUST submit to vaccination. They could also influence minors to believe it was “all their idea.” The same scenario could involve overzealous doctors or nurses in a hospital setting. With the informed parental shield removed, the sky is the limit in terms of what the state can do to the younger generation.
Though the bill mentions that decisions by minors be made “without coercion”, a child may not be able to identify coercion when it happens. Not all manipulation requires open and obvious threats.
Democratic State Sen. Cheryl Kagan introduced Bill 378 on Wednesday. The bill is set to go before a hearing in the Senate Finance Committee on Feb. 22. The language is broad and seems to include all possible vaccinations rather than a set list.
Even in the case of a child voluntarily asking for medical treatments without deception, it is the job of parents to sometimes protect their kids from themselves. Without developed critical thinking skills minors require guidance to avoid rash decisions. When pressure is coming from officials with perceived authority, children are less likely to say no. The Maryland bill ignores these factors and opens the door to a wide range of abuses.
February 9, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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