Ukraine plans unprecedented attack against its own Hungarian minority
Remix News | October 1, 2024
Despite fighting and dying on the front for Ukraine, the country’s ethnic Hungarian minority is facing further persecution, with a new draft bill moving forward that will ban them from speaking in Hungarian in schools, even on breaks between classes. The bill would stipulate that all lessons must be delivered in Ukrainian and that even the language used in personal conversations in the school would have to be in Ukrainian.
Natalija Pipa, a representative of the Rada, submitted the bill, according to a report from Mandiner.
The rights of the Hungarian minority were already being curtailed long before the Russian invasion of the country, with Ukrainian nationalists often targeting the population, which numbers approximately 150,000 in the Transcarpathia region.
The adoption of the bill may have a negative impact on relations with Hungary, and Budapest will block all EU aid packages to Ukraine in response. Language rights for Hungarians have been eroded over the years despite protests from the Hungarian government.
Notably, Ukraine amended its laws to comply with EU membership requirements, which included restoring many of the language rights stripped from minorities, an action demanded by Budapest, but Hungary’s government has indicated it is not fully satisfied. This new move by Ukraine appears to be a new salvo against Orbán’s government if it passes.
“Both Hungary and Ukraine are interested in the development of neighborly relations, they share the intention to do so, the government is doing everything to achieve this, but it expects Kyiv to restore the rights of the Hungarian national community,” said Péter Szijjártó Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade when he met with the new Ukrainian minister a day earlier.
“We expect Ukraine to restore the rights of the Hungarian national community in terms of access to the mother tongue, in the fields of education, culture and public administration.”
There have been numerous reports that ethnic Hungarians are being drafted in large numbers and often sent to frontline positions as “cannon fodder.“
“If this continues, there won’t be any Hungarians left in Transcarpathia,” said Füssy Angéla during a report from the region for Hungarian news portal Pesti Srácok.
Hungarian news outlet Magyar Nemzet reports that the “Transcarpathian morgues are also full, and they are deliberately slowing down the release of victims.”
According to Hungarian news portal Pesti Srácok, which delivered its report from the Hungarian-inhabited Ukrainian town of Munkács (Mukachevo in Ukrainian), there are rumors circulating that Ukraine is looking to recruit tens of thousands of men in the region. It is likely that a new brigade is being formed because the largest brigade of trained soldiers, the 128th Mountain Assault Brigade, suffered huge losses at Soledar. The Russian occupation of the eastern Ukrainian settlement was announced on Jan. 12, 2023.
Facebook Gave CDC ‘Backdoor’ Access to Help Remove Millions of Social Media Posts
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 30, 2024
Facebook provided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “backdoor” access to its platform so the CDC could submit requests to remove COVID-19 “misinformation,” according to an internal Facebook document made public for the first time as part of an ongoing legal case.
America First Legal filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2021, after then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the Biden administration was flagging purported “disinformation” on social media platforms, including content posted by members of the so-called “Disinformation Dozen.”
When the Biden administration didn’t comply with the FOIA request, America First Legal sued, leading to the release of the documents as part of the discovery process.
According to Reclaim the Net, in 2021, Facebook developed a “Content Request System” (see pages 54-72) — also called a “Government Reporting System” — accessible to CDC staff. The documents show Facebook “was operating as the de facto enforcement arm of the US government’s thought control initiative.”
The Facebook-CDC partnership helped Facebook remove millions of posts, the documents show.
Gene Hamilton, executive director of America First Legal, told The Defender, “These documents show precisely how one of the social media platforms facilitated the federal government’s engagement in unconstitutional censorship activities.”
“The federal government cannot violate the First Amendment by outsourcing censorship to the private sector, yet these documents clearly show that Facebook and the Biden-Harris administration collaborated and colluded on removing speech that did not comport with the federal government’s preferences,” Hamilton said.
Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, told The Defender that following the release of the “Twitter Files,” it should not come as a surprise “that the government has been actively trying to censor citizens through back doors and loopholes.”
“This censorship effort is yet another example of a public-private collaboration that fuses corporation and state,” Hinchliffe said. “Where the government can’t legally censor, it has the private sector to do its bidding. The question here is how much coercion was needed for Facebook to provide the backdoor?”
These latest revelations come as other entities ramp up their own efforts to target purported “misinformation” and “disinformation.”
On Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) and TikTok announced a new partnership to promote “science-based information.” Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a Big Pharma lobbying group, this month urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products.”
‘Red-carpet treatment’ for government to ‘silence critics and manage dissent’
Calling it a “fast lane for speech suppression,” Reclaim the Net reported that Facebook “built a slick ‘end-to-end workflow’ tailored to the White House’s censorship needs,” which provided CDC staff with a four-step process to flag COVID-19 “misinformation” for removal.
“This was the red-carpet treatment for anyone in the Biden Administration looking to silence critics and manage dissent,” Reclaim the Net reported. “The system could handle up to twenty censorship requests simultaneously.”
The Facebook document stated, “We empower and safeguard users with policies that are: Principled, Operable, Explicable.” These policies were aligned with Facebook’s “community standards” and adopted “a multi-pronged approach to combating COVID-19 and vaccine misinformation.”
The policies — aimed at “bringing 50 million people a step closer to vaccinations” — included the removal of “false information that has been debunked by public health experts.”
Other types of content Facebook explicitly targeted include claims that COVID-19 is no more dangerous to people than the common flu or cold, and content discouraging “good health practices” — such as wearing a face mask, social distancing, getting tested for COVID-19 and getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Claims about the COVID-19 vaccines’ safety, side effects and efficacy also were targeted for removal, as were “widely debunked vaccine hoaxes” — including claims that vaccines cause autism.
The document also revealed that as of 2021, Facebook and Instagram had removed “more than 16 million pieces of content … for violating our COVID-19 and vaccine policies.”
Repeat offenders faced restrictions, including (but not limited to) reduced distribution, removal from recommendations, or “removal from our site.”
The platform also allowed government officials to bypass federal transparency laws.
“By using this specialized portal, and not email, the government could skirt those pesky federal record-keeping laws. FOIA requests? Public oversight? Forget about it. The new system made sure government actions were neatly tucked away in proprietary software,” Reclaim the Net reported.
‘The closest thing to a Ministry of Truth’
According to Reclaim the Net, Robert Flaherty, then-White House director of Digital Strategy and now a member of Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, was “barking orders at Facebook to tighten the leash.”
“Twitter Files” documents have shown that Flaherty pressured social media platforms to censor the accounts of public figures such Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then-chairman and chief litigation counsel of Children’s Health Defense (now chairman on leave). Kennedy was one of the figures named in “The Disinformation Dozen” report.
“The bureaucratic whims of entrenched CDC personnel and leadership determined what Americans could and could not say — the closest thing to a Ministry of Truth you can imagine in the United States,” Hamilton said.
Author Naomi Wolf, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of DailyClout, told The Defender, “This shocking new revelation of still more unlawful pressure by the U.S. government on social media companies to strip Americans of First Amendment rights, also fails to shock as it is evidence added to a mountain of documentation of such collusion.”
According to Hamilton, these and other documents may affect several ongoing lawsuits against the Biden administration on First Amendment grounds.
“As more records are uncovered through our lawsuit and other open records requests, as well as discovery in litigation, we are confident that courts will have the definitive links necessary to show the government’s facilitation of an unconstitutional censorship enterprise,” Hamilton said.
The latest revelations came just a month after Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta — parent company of Facebook and Instagram — admitted that Biden administration officials pressured Meta to censor content related to COVID-19 during the pandemic.
“If the government can exert that much pressure on one of the largest platforms and its CEO, then it can do it to anybody,” Hinchliffe said.
In an interview earlier this month on “The Kim Iversen Show,” former U.S. State Department official Mike Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said the U.S. government coerced social media platforms to use “weapons of mass deletion” to censor content and as a workaround to the First Amendment.
According to Benz, this includes government coercion obliging these platforms to adopt automated censorship tools which employ artificial intelligence to sweep platforms for specific keywords or narratives. Benz said many of these tools were initially developed a decade ago for the fight against ISIS.
Benz said the U.S. government urged authorities in the United Kingdom and European Union (EU) to pass censorship laws, in order to then sidestep the First Amendment at home by obliging social media platforms to comply with more restrictive foreign laws.
Dutch attorney Meike Terhorst told The Defender the EU uses legislation such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) “to stop free speech outside EU borders.”
“According to the EU, the DSA prevents illegal and harmful activities online and protects fundamental rights,” Terhorst said. This means that the EU Commission can decide what is right and what is wrong, including ‘harmful disinformation.’”
TikTok ‘a propaganda arm’ of the United Nations?
TikTok and the WHO on Sept. 26 announced a new collaboration targeting health-related “misinformation.” The year-long partnership is “aimed at providing people with reliable, science-based health information.”
According to the WHO, the new collaboration will promote “evidence-based content and encourage positive health dialogues.”
The WHO quoted Chief Scientist Jeremy Farrar, who said, “This collaboration can prove to be an inflection point in how platforms can be more socially-responsible.”
Farrar collaborated with Dr. Anthony Fauci and key virologists to draft “The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2,” published March 2020 in Nature Medicine. The paper has been used by media and the U.S. government to debunk the lab-leak theory of the COVID-19 outbreak and accuse its proponents of being “conspiracy theorists.”
According to public health physician Dr. David Bell, partnerships like the one between the WHO and TikTok are inappropriate. He told The Defender :
“WHO, as an organization subject to member states and with no direct standing over their citizens, should not be involved in such direct messaging. This is a clear infringement of the rights, role and sovereignty of the states themselves.
“WHO acts increasingly like a tool of colonialist corporate interests as it pushes their messages over the top of legitimate authorities and interferes in the running of health systems within countries.”
According to Hinchliffe, this is not the first TikTok partnership with the United Nations (U.N.). As part of a previous project, Team Halo, “the U.N. trained scientists and doctors on TikTok and worked with TikTok to boost their profiles in an effort to combat ‘misinformation’ while promoting ‘authoritative sources’ during the pandemic.”
“This latest partnership shows that TikTok is honored to once again be a propaganda arm for the U.N.,” Hinchliffe said.
The WHO previously established similar partnerships with other social media platforms, including YouTube, which last year revised its “medical misinformation” policy to allow for the deletion of content that contradicts WHO guidance.
The announcement of the TikTok partnership with the WHO — a U.N. agency — comes just days after U.N. member states passed the Pact for the Future.
The pact’s “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms” policy brief addresses “threats to information integrity,” such as so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation,” calling for the promotion of “empirically-backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge” — without clarifying how this “consensus” would be determined.
The TikTok partnership with the WHO also comes before the January 2025 legislative deadline for TikTok to divest its U.S. operations or face shutdown in the U.S.
Pharma wants expanded powers to ‘correct misinformation’
In another related development lobbyists for Big Pharma earlier this month asked the FDA “to expand drug manufacturers’ powers to correct misinformation about their products, including by allowing them to respond to opinions, value judgments or personal experiences and communications made offline,” Fierce Pharma reported.
The call was a response to the FDA’s draft guidance on “Addressing Misinformation About Medical Devices and Prescription Drugs.” Released in July and now open for public comment, the guidance would allow pharmaceutical companies to issue “tailored” responses to internet-based posts about their products, and “general medical product communications” that would address “misinformation.”
According to Fierce Pharma, “The FDA proposed prohibiting companies from posting tailored responsive communications in response to misinformation spread offline and in response to an individual’s posts about their own experience, opinion and value judgments. PhRMA wants the FDA to lift those restrictions.”
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.
UN Official’s Battle With “Toxic Information” Raises Censorship Fears Ahead of US Election
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 30, 2024
United Nations (UN) Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming’s focus is “disinformation” and “toxic information systems” – and she presents those as standing in the way of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
SDGs are the UN’s plan that opponents say is “toxic” in itself since it seeks to promote such controversial things as censorship and digital ID and, to make matters worse, that’s supported by major countries.
Now, Fleming seems to be keen to add to the avalanche of pressure on Big Tech – even though the term she no doubt carefully uses instead is “domination of public discourse” in places where this alleged disinformation is most present.
Coincidentally or not this is coming right before a US presidential election, but Fleming is framing her parroting of the “disinformation” narrative in terms of the social platforms, as purely an “SDGs and UN” issue.
She is even trying to link this with the UN’s purpose, which is (rather, should be) peacekeeping and humanitarian missions, but from which the world organization has been disconnecting for a while.
Responding to a question lumping disinformation, climate change, and conflict resolution into one, Fleming asserted that disinformation and “toxic information systems” are damaging humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts, not to mention SDGs (she doesn’t quite explain this assertion).
Fleming’s official UN bio says one of her roles is “far-reaching efforts to address mis- and disinformation, and hate speech,” while supposedly simultaneously promoting “free and independent media.”
However, she started her career with an outlet that’s anything but free and independent: Fleming used to work for “Radio Free Europe,” funded by the US authorities (originally through the CIA).
Now, no doubt thanks to Fleming, the UN has something called DG Media Zone and it is there and during this year’s UN General Assembly that Fleming sounded her alarm bells, going as far as to say that “every single one” of UN’s priorities is these days under threat due to disinformation. (“Climate change” is now proudly listed among those priorities, in case you missed that.)
Fleming’s solution: collusion. This time (and publicly) “merely” with “civil society and people” who need to “work on our information ecosystems together.”
A word of warning about “civil society,” though: it’s often a moniker behind which groups implementing censorship through “fact-checking” etc, like to hide.
Free speech makes US ‘hard to govern’ – John Kerry
RT | September 30, 2024
The freedom for individuals to choose their sources of information makes it difficult to govern effectively, former US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.
Speaking at a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel on Green Energy last week, Kerry criticized the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which protects freedom of speech and the press.
“It’s really hard to govern today,” he remarked, arguing that social media poses challenges for building consensus in democracies.
“The referees we used to have to determine what is fact and what isn’t have kind of been eviscerated,” Kerry stated, adding that individuals now decide where to get their news.
“If people go to only one source… and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to simply hammering it out of existence,” added Kerry, who served as secretary of state under Barack Obama.
As long as Democrats can “win ground” and “win the right to govern,” they will be “free to implement change,” the former senator stated.
“I think democracies are very challenged right now and have not proven they can move fast enough or big enough to address the challenges we face. To me, that is part of what this race, this election, is all about,” he added.
At another WEF event earlier this year, Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker lamented the loss of the corporate media’s monopoly on information.
“We owned the news. We were the gatekeepers, and we very much owned the facts as well,” she said, noting that customers now have access to a broader array of sources.
Amid increasingly divisive election rhetoric, research suggests that Americans trust the media even less than they are willing to publicly admit. While 24% of Americans claim to trust the media to tell the truth, only 7% believe it privately, according to a study completed in June by the think tank Populace, in cooperation with Gradient and YouGov.
UK ministers tried to sway police to stifle anti-‘Israel’ activists
Al Mayadeen | September 30, 2024
Home Office ministers and staff attempted to influence UK police and legal prosecutors to take action against activists targeting the facilities of Elbit Systems, a major Israeli arms manufacturer, campaigners revealed after obtaining internal documents as proof, The Guardian reported.
Briefing notes obtained by Palestine Action through freedom of information requests reveal discussions held prior to October 7 and the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which aimed to “reassure” Elbit Systems UK, the main target of an action campaign by the network.
The prosecution of Palestine Action activists, who have relentlessly protested the Israeli genocide and war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, has resulted in some convictions for charges like burglary and criminal damage.
Briefing notes, though heavily redacted, reveal that Home Office ministers attended meetings with representatives from Elbit Systems, and one meeting included a director from the Attorney General’s Office reportedly representing the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). These notes also indicate that Home Office officials reached out to the police regarding Palestine Action.
Tim Crosland, coordinator of Defend Our Juries, which argues that judges are undermining jurors’ absolute right to acquit based on conscience by restricting defendants from discussing their motivations, stated, “These disclosures, despite the extensive redaction, are the smoking gun on what has been obvious for a while: the government has been trying to put a stop to juries acquitting those who expose and resist corporate complicity in violations of international law and mass loss of life.”
He further asserted that the political intervention constitutes a “national scandal that implicates those at the highest levels”, indicating that the matter is also tantamount to the corruption of democracy and a breach of law by the UK’s elite.
Details
A private secretary note from March 2, 2022, detailing a meeting between then Home Secretary Priti Patel and Martin Fausset, CEO of Elbit Systems UK, noted, “Palestine Action’s criminal activity is for the police to investigate and though they are operationally independent of government meaning we cannot direct their response, my officials have been in contact with the police about PA.”
Another briefing from April 19, 2023, framing a session between Chris Philp, then a Home Office minister, and Elbit, revealed that a director from the Attorney General’s Office will attend to represent the CPS, as the CPS opted not to participate in the meeting to maintain their operational independence.
Meanwhile, the content of a section titled “past lobbying” was redacted.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action stated that claims of independence were undermined within the same sentences where they were made.
“What is happening behind closed doors is clear evidence of collusion between the government, a foreign private arms manufacturer, the CPS, the Attorney General’s Office, and the police,” they said, asserting that it was a flagrant abuse of power that asserts how the state prioritizes the interests of Elbit Systems “over the rights and freedoms of its own citizens.”
On the other hand, a police spokesperson said, “We fully respect the operational independence of the police and the independent judiciary, which remains the bedrock of our policing model. These meetings took place under the previous government.”
Previous documents obtained through FoI requests indicated that Israeli embassy officials in London sought to have the Attorney General’s Office intervene in UK court cases involving the prosecution of protesters.
Labour continues arming ‘Israel’
Since its election, the new Labour government has been at the center of demands to halt all arms sales to “Israel”.
Although it announced that it would continue funding UNRWA following a baseless global defunding campaign and that it would not contest the International Criminal Court’s authority to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Security Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes, the government was yet to completely commit to the more significant shift that the public is calling for, which is the cessation of arms shipments to “Israel”.
Mark Smith, a counterterrorism official at the British Embassy in Dublin, relayed to his colleagues after submitting his resignation, “Each day we witness clear and unquestionable examples of War Crimes and breaches of International Humanitarian Law in Gaza perpetrated by the State of Israel.”
“There is no justification for the UK’s continued arms sales to Israel, yet somehow it continues. I have raised this at every level in the organization … As a fully cleared officer raising serious concerns of illegality in this Department, to be disregarded in this way is deeply troubling. It is my duty as a public servant to raise this,” he added.
Earlier this month, the British government announced the immediate suspension of 30 out of its 350 arms export licenses with the Israeli occupation, citing concerns that the equipment might be used in ways that violate international humanitarian law, Foreign Minister David Lammy announced after a review of arms sales to the occupying regime, particularly in the context of the ongoing war on Gaza.
Lammy emphasized that this suspension does not amount to a blanket ban or an arms embargo but is a targeted measure. “It is with regret that I inform the House of Commons today that the assessment I have received leaves me unable to conclude anything other than that for certain UK arms exports to Israel, there exists a clear risk that they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” Lammy stated.
Journalist Wafa al-Odaini and her family martyred in Israeli airstrike in Gaza
Palestinian Information Center – September 30, 2024
GAZA – Noted Palestinian journalist and activist Wafa al-Odaini was martyred along with her family following an Israeli airstrike on her home at dawn Monday in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, according to local media reports.
Her husband, Munir al-Odaini, and her two children, Balsam and Tamim, were also killed in the airstrike.
“The occupation forces assassinated journalist Wafa al-Odaini, a prominent activist in conveying the Palestinian narrative to the foreign media. She and her family (her husband and two children) were killed in a treacherous Israeli attack on their home in Deir al-Balah City in the central Gaza Strip,” the Forum of Palestinian Journalists (FPJ) said in a statement on Monday.
According to FPJ, journalist Odaini devoted her life and time to conveying the suffering of her oppressed people through international and Palestinian media, especially through her involvement in writing English articles, conducting interviews with foreign activists, and holding online conferences and different activities in English language.
“With her martyrdom, the Palestinian national media has lost a free voice full of love for Palestine and her people — who fight for freedom and self-determination,” the forum said.
Since the war on Gaza started, the Israeli occupation army has killed 174 journalists and media workers.
For its part, the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) mourned journalist Odaini, saying she wrote distinguished articles for its English website.
The following are links to articles she wrote recently for PIC :
There is no such thing as protective attire for journalists in Gaza
What does Back-To-School look like in battered Gaza?
A Lifeline in Starving Gaza: The role of Tekiyyah amidst the ongoing Israeli genocide
Israeli occupation authority razes seven commercial facilities in northern Jerusalem
Palestinian Information Center – September 30, 2024
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – The Israeli occupation authority demolished on Monday seven commercial facilities belonging to Palestinian citizens in Shuafat refugee camp, north of Jerusalem, at the pretext of unlicensed construction.
Eyewitnesses said that bulldozers escorted by police forces stormed at dawn Shuafat camp and embarked on knocking down seven commercial structures with no prior notice.
They added that the Israeli police did not allow the storekeepers to remove the contents of their facilities, which were four construction supply stores, one café, one restaurant and one grocery store.
Meanwhile, the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem said that the Israeli police closed the road barrier that connects Shuafat camp with the holy city and obstructed the movement of local residents as they tried to reach their workplaces and schools in the morning.
In a separate incident, employees from the Israeli municipality delivered demolition and stop-work orders against a number of Palestinian homes in the east Jerusalem district of Issawiya.
Israeli occupation forces attack Palestinian family, arrest foreign activists in al-Khalil
Palestinian Information Center – September 29, 2024
WEST BANK – The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) assaulted a Palestinian family and arrested foreign peace activists in Masafer Yatta, south of al-Khalil, in the southern West Bank on Sunday.
Activist Osama Makhamreh reported that the IOF stormed Al-Tuwani village in Masafer Yatta, and assaulted the Al-Harini family.
He added that the IOF arrested foreign peace activists after preventing them from filming and documenting settlers’ violations and attacks against local citizens.
In August 2024, the Israeli army and settlers carried out 1,228 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank.
These attacks included field executions, armed attacks on Palestinian villages, vandalism, bulldozing of land, uprooting of trees, property confiscation, movement restrictions, and the erection of military checkpoints.
Big Brother Banking? UK’s New “Fraud Bill” Sparks Fears of Financial Snooping
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 26, 2024
A considerable scandal broke out in the UK under the previous government over a practice dubbed, “debanking” – which saw various public, but not only, figures cut off from financial services as a way of punishing them for their political views.
That also faced a considerable backlash, but the Labor government that took over earlier in the year doesn’t seem to be willing to give up on the core postulates: it appears to be just trying to go about achieving the same end goal in a more “subtle” manner.
The policy is this: give banks spying powers over everybody, but call that a requirement for banks and financial institutions to “share data that may show indications of potential benefit overpayments.”
In order to achieve the stated goal, the whole population’s bank accounts are likely to be monitored.
So one can think of this as the financial sector version of the “online age verification” push. In that scenario everybody (“the whole population”) loses their right to anonymity for no good reason – but a reason, nonetheless. Opponents say it’s to surveil and control as many people, in as many ways possible, at one time.
The UK government naturally keeps its messaging on this legislative initiative as “clean” as possible – it’s to crack down on fraud in the social security system, they say.
Remember what it’s called, because it is sure to crop up in the future, and not in a good way: “Fraud, Error and Debt Bill.”
The government plays not only on people’s natural aversion to fraud but also on sensibilities around spending taxpayer money – the sponsors promise not to waste £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) of public money over the next five years, just thanks to this bill.
But, to get there, they need to “extend and modernize DWP (Department for Work and Pensions) powers.”
Like this: “Better investigate suspected fraud and new powers of search and seizure so DWP can take greater control investigations into criminal gangs defrauding the taxpayer. (…) Require banks and financial institutions to share data that may show indications of potential benefit overpayments.”
Hold the phone, rights groups are basically saying at this point. And then some are blasting this as (PM) Keir Starmer’s “benefits bank spying plans.”
“A financial snoopers’ charter targeted to automate suspicion of our country’s poorest is intrusive, unjustified, and risks Horizon-style injustice on a mass scale,” said Big Brother Watch, adding that his was “an assault on the presumption of innocence.”
EU country firing ‘pro-Russia’ civil servants – media
Lithuanian soldiers at the presidential palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, July 12, 2024. © SOPA Images / Getty Images
RT | September 29, 2024
Lithuania is actively investigating and dismissing “disloyal” officials who are reportedly being accused of having pro-Russian views, local broadcaster TV3 has reported.
According to a report aired on Saturday, several police officers and firefighters have been dismissed from their posts or warned about their views and labeled ‘vatniks’ – a derogatory term used to insult supporters of the Russian government, which derives from a jacket once worn by Red Army soldiers.
The report claimed that “pro-Russian statements lead to job losses,” warning that public servants “should think carefully” before openly expressing their views on social media.
“After the start of the war in Ukraine… nine police officers were identified as possibly pro-Russian,” Ramunas Matonis, the head of the police communication division, told TV3, adding that while most of the officers denied holding these views during “preventative talks” conducted by the department, one of them “was not granted an extension to work with classified information.”
It quoted the minister of internal affairs, Agne Bilotaite, as saying that the authorities “are closely monitoring the situation,” adding that only “loyal officials” who hold Lithuania’s official pro-Kiev position are suitable to serve the state.
“We certainly do not tolerate cases where officials demonstrate disloyalty through their actions and behavior,” Bilotaite told the outlet, warning that these “individuals lose the right to work in service, and this is understandable, as officials must be loyal to their country.”
The TV channel highlighted the case of Genadijus Rogacius, a former Lithuanian army soldier who was investigated by the prosecutor’s office after he “criticized Lithuania and glorified Russia” on the internet.
It also claimed that pro-Russian sentiments were revealed in the former Soviet republic when people laid flowers by a Russian tank that was hit during the Ukraine conflict last year and later displayed in Vilnius. The significant support for anti-establishment candidate Eduard Vaitkus in the presidential election also indicated pro-Russian sentiments, according to TV3.
Lithuania has been a staunch supporter of Ukraine since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022. It has pursued a number of hardline anti-Russia policies and advocated for increased military aid to Kiev by NATO and the EU.
The authorities have previously ordered the demolition of Soviet war memorials and stripped several Russian-born celebrities living in the country of their citizenship for alleged pro-Kremlin views.
African Energy Chamber Calls Western Funding Withdrawal From Key Projects ‘Immoral’
Sputnik – 27.09.2024
The withdrawal of Western funding for key projects in Africa is outrageous and constitutes “financial apartheid,” NJ Ayuk, the executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, told Sputnik.
“One of the key things you have to see is that the exclusionary rule, which we call financial apartheid, that you’ve seen from Western countries when it comes to financing Africa and really providing funds, it is wrong. It is immoral. It is outrageous what they’re doing,” Ayuk said on the sidelines of the Russian Energy Week International Forum.
The official pointed to energy projects, saying that natural gas powering Europe was described as green, which was not the case for Africa.
“Africa is still the country where you have so many millions of people without electricity and without access to clean cooking,” Ayuk added.
The Russian Energy Week is taking place in the Russian capital from September 26-28.
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Book Review
The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
By Jeb Smith | The Libertarian Institute | April 20, 2026
In Collective Illusions: Conformity, Complicity, and the Science of Why We Make Bad Decisions, Professor Todd Rose explains that to belong to a group, people “keep twisting [themselves] into pretzels, trying to conform to what we falsely believe everyone else expects of us.” Seeking acceptance from the group, we conform in language, behavior, beliefs, and practices. As a result, we lose our individuality and aggregate into herds. Within our group we create an alternate reality to fit whichever collective mindset we attach ourselves to, and interpret the world through those lenses—our innate desire to belong overrides reality.
Rose says these illusions “have become a defining feature of our modern society.” In other words, the collectivist mindset is a great conduit for spreading illusions; thus, it is the politician’s favored form of governance.
Rose points to studies in psychology and neuroscience showing we delude ourselves into believing what the majority does, even if it is not what we desire or know to be accurate. … continue
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- IRGC seizes Israeli ship, second vessel for violations in Strait of Hormuz
- US Embargo on Iran Undermined as 34 Tankers Slip Through, Vortexa Says
- Trump’s erratic behavior signals US deadlock: Ansarullah
- US nuclear official accused of leaking data on Iran, nerve agents
- The Voters’ Self-Induced Matrix
- If Americans Knew
- Final Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment
- Zionist Doxxing Campaigns Upended Their Lives. Now They’re Suing for Damages.
- Eyes on Gaza, as trends reveal increased Israeli violence – Daily Update
- Israeli soldiers using sexual assault to force Palestinians out of West Bank, report says
- Top Biden Official Supports Trump Iran Attack, Says Biden May Have Done The Same
- A history of Israel’s invasions of Lebanon
- How the powerful pro-Israel lobby keeps controlling Democrats in the US
- Replay: Israel’s slow ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Holy Land
- 5 times Israelis desecrated Christian sites in the past two years
- US running out of weaponry for Israel’s war; Iran has plenty – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
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