Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition — which can be summed up as the world’s wealthiest person buying one of the most powerful social media and news platforms — underscores one of the big problems with Big Tech.
In the absence of modernized anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, Big Tech companies in the U.S. have amassed far too much economic and political control over society, and especially over the news and publishing industries.
The power at Big Tech companies with respect to their management of sites like Facebook News and Google News – is held by a few individuals who are often times more motivated by a desire to turn profits and promote their own ideology or world view, rather than by a genuine desire to guarantee a free and diverse press.
Due to Big Tech’s market manipulation in the news and publishing industries, thousands of local and smaller news operators — including many conservative publications — have been forced to shutter their doors in recent years.
This forsakes the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and thus, is a threat to our democracy.
Importantly, new survey research shows that the American public recognizes this threat, and wants their elected officials to act on it.
New polling by Schoen Cooperman Research — conducted among a representative sample of U.S. adults and commissioned by News Media Alliance — reveals widespread concern surrounding Big Tech’s power and manipulative practices, as well as strong support for reforms to rein in these monopolies.
Notably, strong majorities of Americans are concerned about the economic and political power of Big Tech companies (74%) and are supportive of increased government regulations on Big Tech companies in order to curb their economic and political power (63%).
With respect to news and publishing specifically, nearly 4-in-5 Americans are concerned that Big Tech companies have too much power over these industries (79%) and manipulate these industries for their own gain (78%).
To that end, three-in-four Americans agree that “Big Tech’s monopoly over the news and publishing industries is a threat to the free press and unfair to publishers, especially to small and local outlets.” (76%)
In addition to being broadly concerned about this problem, Americans are supportive of Congress taking action to restore fairness, balance, and freedom to the press.
Respondents were asked about a specific piece of legislation proposed in Congress known as the Journalism, Competition, and Preservation Act (JCPA). The JCPA would provide a legal basis for news publishers to negotiate fair terms for use of their content by Big Tech companies — and thus, would demonstrably curb the economic and political power of these companies.
Remarkably, 7-in-10 Americans support Congress passing the JCPA (70%) and believe it is important for Congress to pass the JCPA (64%) after reading a brief description of the bill. And by a four-to-one margin, U.S. adults would be more likely, rather than less likely, to back a candidate for Congress who supported the JCPA.
In my experience as a professional pollster who has worked in opinion research for over four decades, it is rare for an issue or piece of legislation to garner this level of public support.
Our findings present a clear call-to-action to Congress, and elected officials in both parties now have a mandate from the public to rein in Big Tech by pursuing the JCPA or similar reforms.
Moreover, the very survival of American democracy is contingent on our leaders safeguarding free speech and ensuring a fair economy.
Congress must fulfill its duty by passing legislation like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act into law.
Contributor. Douglas E. Schoen is a Democratic pollster and strategist. He is the author of “The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, From the Grass Roots to the White House.” The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-09 05:27:352022-05-09 05:30:03SCHOEN: Americans Are Sounding The Alarm Over Big Tech
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has quietly set up a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee what information is and isn’t “truthful”
Heading up this new “Ministry of Truth” is Nina Jankowicz, a “Russian disinformation expert” who in her spare time sings show tunes about disinformation and erotic Harry Potter songs on TikTok
Jankowicz is herself known for spreading disinformation. She called the Hunter Biden laptop story a “fairytale” and “Russian disinformation,” and she’s openly opposed to free speech and anti-censorship efforts
In her book, “How to Lose the Information War,” Jankowicz criticized Poland’s efforts to eliminate censorship of conservatives on social networks, and called for the U.S. government to regulate and conduct oversight of people who disagree with the Democratic party on Twitter
Every dictatorship and autocracy has had a ministry of truth, a department of propaganda, and Biden has now joined them. May 1, 2022, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to immediately defund and terminate the Disinformation Governance Board
By now, you’ve probably heard that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee what information is and isn’t “truthful.”1 This includes information relating to elections.2 It’s so incredibly Orwellian, you’d think it was pure fiction, yet here we are. It’s real.
This “Ministry of Truth” will reportedly operate under and receive funding from the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), created by President Biden to “curb radicalization in the U.S.”3 It appears those in the Biden administration must have thought “1984” was an instruction manual rather than a warning.
Known Disinformation Spreader Made Head of Truth Ministry
Heading up this new “Ministry of Truth” is Nina Jankowicz,4 a “Russian disinformation expert” who in her spare time makes a fool of herself singing made-up show tunes about disinformation and erotic Harry Potter songs5 on TikTok.
As noted by both Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and Jimmy Dore of “The Jimmy Dore Show” in the videos above, Jankowicz is qualified to do absolutely nothing. Independent journalist Glen Greenwald also highlighted Jankowicz’s obvious lack of real credentials in a May 4, 2022, Substack article:6
“The concept of ‘anti-disinformation expert’ is itself completely fraudulent. This is not a real expertise but rather a concocted title bestowed on propagandists to make them appear more scholarly and apolitical than they are …
There is no conceivable circumstance in which a domestic law enforcement agency like DHS should be claiming the power to decree truth and falsity … The purpose of Homeland Security agents is to propagandize and deceive, not enlighten and inform.
The level of historical ignorance and stupidity required to believe that U.S. Security State operatives are earnestly devoted to exposing and decreeing truth is off the charts … That nobody should want the U.S. Government let alone Homeland Security arrogating unto itself the power to declare truth and falsity seems self-evident.”
Surprisingly enough, even mainstream news outlets have pointed out Jankowicz’s role in the spreading of disinformation and outright lies. For example, as reported by the British Daily Mail:7
“The Russia disinformation expert previously called the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter a ‘Trump campaign product.’ This is causing questions over Jankowicz’s ability to accurately judge disinformation now that several sources have come out confirming the validity of Hunter’s laptop …
When stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop started emerging, several outlets, social media sites and left-leaning disinformation experts claimed that it was just misinformation coming from Trump and others on the right.
In an October 2020 report, Jankowicz shared her skepticism of the contents of the laptop and the claims it belonged to Hunter. ‘We should view it as a Trump campaign product,’ she told the New York Daily News at the time. Twitter repeatedly took down the Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented it from being spread on the platform.”
In one October 2020 tweet, she referred to the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “fairytale.”8 Jankowicz was also among those who insisted Trump had colluded with Russia to win the presidency in 2016, a claim we now know is patently false. In reality, it was Hillary Clinton and allies who colluded to fabricate this false narrative and derail Trump’s presidency.9
Over the past couple years, we’ve repeatedly seen how information censored on the grounds that it was “misinformation” turned out to be factual and true. In early 2020, YouTube betrayed its founding principles and started censoring and banning anything that contradicted the World Health Organization’s stance on COVID-19.
Yet, time and again, the WHO turned out to be wrong.10 No organization is infallible, and the WHO has a long history of corruption that makes its ability to discern what’s best for public health all the more suspect. Twitter followed suit, axing health experts, scientists and respected journalists like Tess Lawrie, Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Alex Berenson and many more.11
Jankowicz’s Hostile Stand Against First Amendment Rights
Jankowicz has also publicly opposed the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, saying free speech is bad for “marginalized communities.” Shortly after Elon Musk announced his takeover of Twitter, she told NPR:12
“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities …
We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well … the U.K. has an online safety bill that’s being considered right now where they’re trying to make illegal this currently, quote, ‘awful but lawful content’ that exists online where people are being harassed.”
Lack of censorship on social media will make abuse against marginalized groups worse, she claims. At the same time, she insists that “a HUGE focus” of the new disinformation board will be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.”13
This is clearly Orwellian doublespeak, where what’s being said is the complete opposite of reality. How can you have a board dedicated to dictating “truth,” which means censoring “untruth,” while simultaneously protecting free speech? Either all viewpoints are allowed, or only one viewpoint is permitted, and if only one viewpoint is tolerated, then there’s clearly no free speech.
In her book, “How to Lose the Information War,” she also criticized Poland’s efforts to eliminate rampant online censorship of conservatives on social networks by forming a Ministry of Digital Affairs.
In other words, she wants conservative views to be censored, not just in the U.S., but everywhere. In that book, she also called on the U.S. government to regulate and conduct oversight of people who disagree with the Democratic party on Twitter. As noted by Carlson, that’s likely why she was selected in the first place.
The future head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Ministry of Truth claims in this video that revolutions are an appropriate response to rigged elections. “Believe it or not, sometimes people get fed up with having their voices silenced for decades,” she explains. https://t.co/fJo2zxd0qQ
Not surprisingly, then, Jankowicz has expressed “dismay” at Musk’s decision to no longer censor posts discussing potential fraud in the 2020 election.14 Interestingly, in a September 2020 tweet, she defined the term “color revolution” and “why the U.S. isn’t a candidate for one.”15
In it, she noted that “Believe it or not, sometimes people get fed up with having their voices silenced for decades,” but she then insisted that a color revolution isn’t possible in the U.S. because “we are not an autocracy,” and color revolutions only occur in oppressive autocracy regimes.
Given an Inch, They’ll Take a Mile
Others disagree with that assessment. As noted by former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (video above), every dictatorship and autocracy has had a ministry of truth, a department of propaganda. And Biden just joined them.
Gabbard also accurately points out that the government has been working with media and Big Tech to censor for some time already. We’ve become increasingly aware of this covert backdoor influence over the past two years. Now, however, they’re formalizing that influence, which is, by the way, completely unconstitutional.
Moreover, the scary truth here is that the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” could cover absolutely anything. As noted by Carlson in the featured video, the DHS has not actually defined or given any clues as to what mis- or disinformation actually is.
“Would you declare war on a country you couldn’t name?” Carlson asks. “Would you sentence someone to death for a crime you couldn’t describe? Of course you wouldn’t, not if you were a sane and decent person. Because you can’t have justice without precise definitions …
But they’re not defining the core concept, the heart of what is effectively a new law enforcement agency. Maybe that is because [U.S. secretary of homeland security, Alejandro] Mayorkas doesn’t want justice, and neither does the president he serves. They want power. And to get power, they plan to control what you think.”
Carlson points out that the DHS has now publicly admitted they intend to punish people for merely thinking “the wrong way,” even if they’ve committed no actual crime worthy of judicial intervention. In short, anyone who disagrees with the Biden administration is now an enemy of the state. As noted by Carlson:
“You can’t make any of this up. It’s too grotesque. Would you believe a novel with this plot? No, you wouldn’t, but it’s happening, and that’s the bad news. The good news is, everyone involved in Joe Biden’s Ministry of Information is a buffoon. They may be evil, but they’re also ridiculous.”
He then airs one of Jankowicz’s undignified TikTok videos, where she’s singing about disinformation. “This is now one of our top law enforcement officials,” he dryly notes. Jankowicz has also, ironically, accused Republicans of dealing in “highly emotional rhetoric,” which proves nothing except the fact that she’s read George Orwell’s “1984” more than once.
In fact, Democrats accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing so regularly, you can be near-assured that any accusation is a veiled admission at this point. And, in his report, Carlson reviews how Jankowicz is guilty of this exact behavior. Carlson also points out that her falsehoods have by no means been inconsequential.
Her disinformation helped presidential candidate Biden to lie about an incredibly important story — Hunter’s laptop — that could have altered the outcome of the presidential election, had it been up for public discussion. Jankowicz has never apologized for dismissing what was in fact truthful, and neither has anyone else who insisted the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
An International Coordination Effort to Censor Free Speech
Now, some have pointed out that this Disinformation Governance Board didn’t come into existence until Musk bought Twitter, promising to turn it into a free speech platform.16,17 However, other evidence strongly indicates there’s international coordination taking place.
In mid-April 2022, the European Union approved new rules aimed at policing Big Tech platforms. As reported by the Financial Times:18
“The EU will force Big Tech companies to police content online more aggressively after approving a major piece of legislation that sets the rules for the first time on how companies should keep users safe on the internet …
Leading tech groups will be forced to disclose to EU regulators how they are tackling disinformation and war propaganda in order to curb the spread of fake information — an effort that has gained fresh momentum since the Russian invasion of Ukraine … Countries such as the U.S., Canada and Singapore are expected to follow with similar rules in the coming months.”
Some of the language used to describe this EU legislation sounds good — for example, it will ban the targeting of internet users based on personal information such as gender, religion and sexual preferences, and terms and conditions must be clearly understandable even to children.
However, there are also many reasons to suspect that these regulations will end up serving as a springboard for government-directed censorship. Among them is the fact that the EU is supporting the proposal to make the WHO into a global health authority, and the WHO, in turn, is setting up its own censorship network.
A key player in that network is NewsGuard,19 which entered into a partnership with the WHO in August 2020.20 As reported by Carlson, NewsGuard has also received funding from the U.S. Pentagon to blacklist any site that publishes “misinformation” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Time to Draw a Line in the Sand
Clearly, the shocking censorship we experienced during the COVID pandemic was only the beginning. It’s going to include all kinds of information. The creation of a DHS Disinformation Governance Board is truly a watershed moment in history, and we cannot allow it to stand. As noted by Carlson in the featured video at the top of this article:
“Just to be clear, this is a nightmare unfolding in slow motion. But this is the point where we’re just going to have to draw the line. No, Joe Biden, you cannot have a federally funded ministry of truth. And no, Nina Jankowicz can’t run it. Period. It’s not your country … and you don’t get to do this to a free people. Period. This can’t happen.”
May 1, 2022, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to immediately defund and terminate the Disinformation Governance Board. In an interview with Fox News, Boebert said:21
“This kind of stuff is terrifying. We in Congress have the power of the purse. It is our duty to shut down this department immediately. I’m calling on leadership in the Republican Party — Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and others — to join me in calling for this department to be shut down and defunded.
No tax dollars should go to where Biden can use the power of the federal government to silence truthful stories like Big Tech did with the Hunter Biden story. Democrats took [Orwell’s book ‘1984’] not as a warning, but as a guide.
This is really a department of propaganda. To say that the federal department has a say in what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s truth and what’s not — this is a very dangerous place that we’ve come to.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-05-09 04:59:482022-05-09 04:59:48Decoding the Latest Attack on Free Speech
The ‘New York Times’ has finally admitted that the laptop’s emails were genuine.
It is well known that Twitter makes a sport of censorship. There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the topic.
Typical of previous years, the 2022 log of Twitter suspensions is mostly a list of conservative commentators and Republican politicians — though refreshingly, a deranged Middle East dictator, one Ali Khamenei of Iran also made the cut this year.
Sharing “Covid-19 misinformation” (or at least what is presently considered such) is one of the more likely sins to get you banned in 2022, as is — gasp — calling male swimmers “men”.
What Twitter deems a transgression changes slightly from year to year but the themes and the political partisanship is consistent.
In 2020, what really put a bee in Twitter’s bonnet was sharing factual stories that threatened Joe Biden’s entry into the White House. Yes, Twitter interfered in the 2020 election. Egregiously.
The New York Times’s recent, glaring admission that Hunter Biden’s laptop is authentic, though 18 months late, has brought this fact to the fore once again.
We are yet to fully come to terms with Twitter’s misdeeds in those closing weeks of the 2020 contest, and the precedent they have set for public discourse in the West.
But first some background, if you are unfamiliar with what happened.
With all of America on seat’s edge and the world tuned in to the Trump-Biden contest, the New York Post broke a bombshell report on October 14, 2020.
Through intriguing circumstances, a laptop belonging to Joe’s son Hunter had made its way to the Post. On that hard drive were emails indicating that when the senior Biden was Vice President, he massaged US foreign policy in Ukraine to the benefit of his son’s business ventures there.
A follow-up story intimated that Joe Biden himself was making a ten percent cut from Hunter’s overseas dealings, despite Joe previously denying any knowledge of what his son was up to abroad.
The evidence strongly suggested that the millions in profit flowing to the Biden family estate from Ukraine, China and Russia were only made possible by the exclusive White House access it granted Hunter’s contacts in those countries.
Additionally, the laptop harboured a trove of debauched images and videos revealing Hunter’s prostitute- and drug-fuelled lifestyle — factors that made the Biden family more vulnerable to blackmail and other clandestine political influence.
So much for the story — what of the censorship?
Infamously, Twitter immediately locked two accounts: the New York Post’s, and that of Trump’s press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, who had tweeted out the report. Anyone else who tried to share the story were either suspended or unable to tweet the link, myself included. As Brendan O’Neill of Spiked has described that “truly extraordinary moment“:
Here we had the spokesperson for the democratically elected president of the United States and the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in America being cast out of social media for the crime of sharing a story that was true.
Not only was the story true — revelations of endemic Biden family corruption would doubtless have swung many undecided voters back to Trump in those dying days of the 2020 race, had they had access to it. This is a hypothesis made even more likely by poll after poll unearthing post-election Biden voter regret.
Twitter was the most flagrant partisan operative in the Hunter laptop saga, but far from the only one.
Facebook limited sharing of the New YorkPost’s piece until its “fact checkers” had a chance to assess the report. They never did. And they never apologised. In the years previous, however, Facebook did give free rein to flat-out lies about a Trump “pee-pee” tape and his being a Russian asset.
The conspiracy of the corporate press was one of silence. Had the same revelations emerged about Donald Trump Jr, there is no question the media would have reigned fire and brimstone on the Trump family.
But even a generous bribe wouldn’t have tempted most media outlets to report accurately on Hunter’s toxic laptop with a presidential election just around the corner. “The media world has largely ignored the Post’s Hunter Biden story,” one CNN reporter bragged at the time. “We don’t waste our time on stories that are not really stories,” taxpayer-funded NPR likewise scoffed.
Then came 50 former intelligence officials to denounce Hunter’s laptop as a Russian plant, part of a disinformation campaign to get Trump re-elected. They didn’t have any evidence for this, they admitted, just the feels. Now the media had its angle, one they amplified endlessly until Biden’s victory was secured.
With Hunter’s laptop now authenticated, the New York Post recently chased down every one of those 50 intelligence figures for a retraction. Most didn’t respond. A few couldn’t be reached. Several dug their heals in. Not one walked back their perfidious story. “Intelligence”?
Now, with the Russia-Ukraine war in full swing, even more Biden family misdeeds are coming to light. The Daily Mail reported just this week that, per emails on his laptop, Hunter helped secure millions in funding for a US contractor specialising in deadly pathogen research in Ukraine biolabs. The same company has also partnered with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, now acknowledged as the most likely source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
What else don’t we know about the Bidens? What else are we about to find out?
Most importantly, what is the future of political discourse in the West? Our democracies are rendered hollow if elites in Silicon Valley and on America’s coasts decide before an election what information can and cannot be seen by the public.
There has never been a more pressing need for regulation that will rein in Big Tech’s political partisanship and election interference. And never have everyday people needed more discernment as they assess the news stories put before them.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-03-30 07:11:222022-03-30 07:11:47Hunter Biden’s laptop and how Twitter tipped the scales of the 2020 election
What You Need to Know About the Transhumanist Agenda
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
According to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution is to change what it means to be human by merging man and machine
Humans are now “hackable,” in that technology now exists by which a company or government can know you better than you know yourself, and that can be very dangerous if misused
Professor Yuval Noah Harari predicts that algorithms will increasingly be used to make decisions that have historically been made by humans, either yourself or someone else, including whether or not you’ll be hired for a particular job, whether you’ll be granted a loan, what scholastic curriculum you will follow and even who you will marry
Harari warns that if we allow the establishment of a digital dictatorship, where the system, be it a corporation or a government, knows the most intimate details about each and every person, it will be impossible to dismantle it. Its control will be total and irreversible
If you believe that your thoughts and behavior are and always will remain under your own control, think again. We already have the technology to directly alter thoughts, emotions and behavior
According to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution1 is to change what it means to be human by merging man and machine. In short, while the term “transhumanism” is not being used, that’s exactly where the global cabal intends to take us, willing or not.
In a November 2019 interview with CNN,2 history professor and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari, a Klaus Schwab disciple, warned that “humans are now hackable animals,” meaning, the technology now exists by which a company or government can know you better than you know yourself, and that can be very dangerous if misused.
He predicted that algorithms will increasingly be used to make decisions that historically have been made by humans, either yourself or someone else, including whether or not you’ll be hired for a particular job, whether you’ll be granted a loan, what scholastic curriculum you will follow and even who you will marry.
Profound Dangers Ahead
There’s also an ever-increasing risk of being manipulated by these outside forces that you’re not even fully aware of. Looking back over the last two years, it’s rather easy to confirm that mass manipulation is taking place at a staggering scale, and that it’s phenomenally effective.
As noted by Harari in 2019,3 the available capabilities already go far beyond Orwell’s “1984” authoritarian vision, and it’s only going to become more powerful from here. He’s certain that in short order, there will be the ability to monitor your emotional state through something as simple as a wearable wristband.
You may dutifully smile and clap when listening to a speech by a government official, but they’ll know you’re angry or don’t agree with what’s being said, and could therefore take action against you based on your most personal, internal emotions rather than what you outwardly express.
Importantly, Harari warned that if we allow the establishment of this kind of digital dictatorship, where the system, be it a corporation or a government, knows the most intimate details about each and every person, it will be impossible to dismantle it. Its control will be total and irreversible. And, Harari believes we may have only a decade, at most two, to prevent this digital dictatorship from taking over.
Reengineering Life Itself
Harari also discussed the coming transhumanism at the WEF’s 2020 annual meeting in Davos (above), and in this speech, he went even further. Not only does the global elite have the technological capability to create a global digital dictatorship, but “elites may gain the power to reengineer the future of life itself.”
“For four billion years, nothing fundamental changed in the basic rules of the game of life,” he said. “All of life was subject to the laws of natural selection and the laws of organic biochemistry. But this is now about to change.
Science is replacing evolution by natural selection with evolution by intelligent design, not the intelligent design of some god in the clouds, [but] OUR intelligent design, and the design of our ‘clouds,’ the IBM cloud, the Microsoft cloud. These are the new driving forces of evolution.”
It’s hard to determine whether Harari is for or against transhumanism. He speaks of it as an inevitability, and something that can be used for tremendous good. But he also recognizes its profound dangers, and seems to believe we need to discuss how these technological capabilities can be used, and whether they should.
In the featured Davos speech, it sounds as though he’s a proponent of this human intelligent design venture, but in his 2019 interview with CNN, he also stated that “we must never underestimate the stupidity of humans.” The fact that we have the technology to design new life forms, including new kinds of humans, does not necessarily mean that we’re smart enough to design something better than what natural evolution has come up with thus far.
In his Davos speech, Harari also pointed out that science is now enabling us to create life not only in the organic realm but in the inorganic realm as well. We’re talking about “living” robots and the like. He also raises the question as to who “owns” your DNA, if it can be charted and hacked. Does it belong to you, a corporation, or the government?
‘The Days of Free Will Are Over’
Whatever Harari’s true feelings about transhumanism, he emphatically states that the idea that we have a soul and free will, those days “are over.” In other clips that have been inserted into the featured video, Harari predicts that in the future, people will be able to look back and see that the COVID pandemic was the turning point where biological surveillance took over and became norm.
The explanation for how that was able to occur is given by Schwab, who has publicly admitted (see featured video) that participants in the WEF’s Young Global Leaders program have “penetrated the cabinets” of many world governments.
In Canada, for example, about half the politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have taken Schwab’s training. Schwab is all about ushering in transhumanism and changing what it means to be human, and his minions of global leaders are sure doing everything they can to make those dreams a reality. This is a dystopian future WEF and its global allies are actively trying to implement, whether humanity at large agrees with it or not.
Changing What It Means To Be Human
Schwab dreams of a world in which humans are connected to the cloud, able to access the internet through their own brains. This, of course, also means that your brain would be accessible to people who might like to tinker with your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behavior, be they the technocratic elite themselves or random hackers.
If you believe that your thoughts and behavior are and always will remain under your own control, think again. We already have the technology to directly alter thoughts, emotions and behavior. Some of these capabilities are described in a 2021 project report by the U.K. Ministry of Defense, created in partnership with the German Bundeswehr Office for Defense Planning.
The report, “Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project,”4 reviews the scientific goals of the U.K. and German defense ministries, and they are precisely what the title suggests. Human augmentation is stressed as being a key area to focus on in order to win future wars:5
“Human augmentation will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behavior and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines.”
Key words I’d like to draw your attention to are the affirmation that human augmentation can “directly enhance behavior.” If you can enhance behavior, that means you can change someone’s behavior. And if you can change a person’s behavior in a positive way, you can also control it to the person’s own detriment.
Theoretically, absolutely anyone, any random civilian with a brain-to-cloud connection and the needed biological augmentation (such as strength or speed) could be given wireless instructions to carry out an assassination, for example, and pull it off flawlessly, even without prior training.
Alternatively, their physical body could temporarily be taken over by a remote operator with the prerequisite skills. Proof of concept already exists, and is reviewed by Dr. Charles Morgan, professor in the department of national security at the University of New Haven, in the lecture below. Using the internet and brain implants, thoughts can be transferred from one person to another. The sender can also directly influence the physical movements of the receiver.
Project Immortality
Historically, the striving for immortality has been a faith-based venture, based in the idea that the soul is immortal while the body perishes, which is a concept I am in complete alignment with. Transhumanists more or less reverse this idea. They discard the notion of soul altogether and aim for the preservation of the perceived personality, first through radical life extension of the physical body, and later through the transfer of brain data into a replacement form.
According to Dmitry Itskov, the Russian founder of the Immortality 2045 project,6 only 2% of people are ready to accept death — a statistic that he uses to justify the search for immortality through things like artificial organs, artificial body constructs, the simulation of mental processes and, ultimately, the transferring of one’s mind into an artificial carrier.
The goals of this project include not only the creation of the cybernetic technologies needed to achieve an immortal body, but also the creation of “a new philosophical paradigm for humanity.” Schwab has talked about the same thing, using the term “social contract” rather than “philosophical paradigm.”
The Immortality 2045’s vision, published in 2011, starts with the creation of the first robotic copy of a human body that can be remotely controlled by 2020. By 2025, they want an avatar into which the human brain can be transplanted at the end of life. By 2035, they want an avatar with a synthetic brain, into which the human personality can be transferred and, by 2045, they imagine a holographic-like avatar. Itskov says:7
“The aim of the first project, known as ‘Avatar,’ is the creation of a robot copy of a human being controllable through a ‘brain-computer’ interface. When I’m asked to give the gist of this project, I tell people to recall the film ‘Surrogates,’ which depicts a world in which every person has an artificial body that he controls remotely.
The makers of that blockbuster put an accent on the negative side of such a scenario. Nonetheless, the film’s highly graphic demonstration of the idea allows one to get an immediate sense of what it is.”
Does living through an avatar sound like a life devoid of spirituality to you? Not so, Itskov says, because by ending our dependency on our physical bodies, “many things will open up spiritually.” I have my doubts about that, as most spiritual adepts will tell you that being hooked on technology tends to hinder rather than elevate spiritual pursuits, which are most easily achieved by living simply, in close contact with the natural world.
I just don’t foresee being able to elevate spiritually when any number of outside parties can access your brain and dictate what you think, feel and believe. Transhumanists like Itskov tend to focus only on the perceived benefits of synthetic life. For example, he promises that his avatars will be affordable for everyone who wants them, regardless of income bracket.
Yet the WEF has clearly announced that by 2030, nobody will own anything, and while not clearly stated, that will likely even include your own body. So, to think that your avatar would be “yours” is probably unrealistic.
Looked at through the lens of the WEF’s Fourth Industrial Revolution, it seems the plan is for the elite to literally own all of humanity, which will be refashioned to their own liking. And, if people can be hacked and controlled remotely, then we can be sure they will be. That’s particularly true for synthetic or mechanical avatars that can’t “live” or remain “conscious” without a cloud connection.
Resource to Understand the Transhuman Agenda — Blockchained
Corey Lynn is a top-notch investigative journalist who covers topics the mainstream won’t touch, including the transhumanist agenda. On her website, Corey’s Digs,8 you can find select chapters from her book, “Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports.”
Chapter 4 in the book is titled “Blockchained,” which explains what digital identity is all about. Digital ID is not just a piece of identification, with which you can prove who you are. It will collect and monitor ALL of your data, from your personal finances, education, work history, GPS location 24/7, everything you’ve ever typed on your computer, your search history, social media presence, emotional status and physical biometrics, down to your DNA.
I will only cover a minor part of that chapter here, the part on human augmentation and artificial intelligence (AI), so for more, be sure to browse through her website or, better yet, read her book, which can be purchased on her site. The digital PDF is only $9.95 and a print copy is $19.95.
Big Data, Data Sharing and AI
Make no mistake, transhumanism is the ultimate goal of the technocratic elite, and both “big data” and AI are integral components of that. Without one or both of those, the transhumanist dream is dead in the water. The goal of transhumanism is undoubtedly why there’s been so much focus on those two areas in the first place.
So, remember, data gathering, data sharing and AI are not about making your life more convenient. They’re to make you obsolete. The intention is to replace you with a synthetic copy of you that can be remotely controlled.
In 2021, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization that consists of 38 countries that work with various working groups and policy makers, issued a report on the “State of Implementation of the OECD AI principles.” So far, 46 countries have adopted these AI principles.
The strategy is to develop centralized repositories of public datasets in each country, and then enable public-private data sharing to build a vast network where each dataset is connected with all the others.
Biosecurity Will Be Used to Justify Surveillance Tyranny
Another report, by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), founded “to advance the development of artificial intelligence” and “comprehensively address the national security and defense needs of the United States,” highlights the need to combat digital disinformation and prioritizing biosecurity.
To help with that, a U.S. government-funded supercomputer is being set up at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the direction of the Department of Energy. This AI supercomputer can do more than 1 quintillion calculations per second.
Some of this data sharing is already taking place. As noted by Corey, NATO launched an in-house biometrics system for data sharing between nations in November 2020, and in May 2021, the U.S. military merged its biometrics-enabled watch list with the Department of Defense’s automated biometric identification system (ABIS).
“They are working on multi-modal fusion matching and improving biometric face-matching capability through AI and machine learning, and have already improved their long-range infrared cameras,” Corey writes. “Looking toward the near future, they are also focused on palm print biometrics, faces in crowds, integration to identify threats online, and non-traditional latent DNA collection.”
We Need Biometric Privacy Laws NOW
While surveillance science is moving at lightning speed, regulations and privacy laws are trailing at a snail’s pace. A federal biometric privacy bill, the National Biometric Information Privacy Act, was introduced in 2020 but didn’t go anywhere. As noted by Corey, it could be resurrected if enough people speak up.
In the U.S., a handful of states do have biometric privacy laws, Illinois’ being one of the strictest, but the vast majority have no such protections in place. As reported by Corey:
“The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) requires private entities to inform people in writing that their information is being collected and stored, what the purpose is, and term for collection and storage, and must secure a written release from the person.
Those same private entities are not allowed to sell, lease, trade, or profit from a person’s biometric information. A person may file suit at $1,000 for each negligent violation or $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation, plus attorneys’ fees and costs. Actual harm is not required to establish standing.”
Clearly, we need these kinds of protections everywhere, in all states and all countries, because as it stands, the global cabal of transhumanist technocrats are building a data-sharing system that is intended to become global. The lack of legal protections against data collection, analysis and sharing is what allows this reckless expansion of surveillance. As noted by Corey:
“If it’s not crystal clear by now, globalists and eugenicists (sometimes one in the same) are running the show, and they are working very hard at achieving their ultimate desires of a controlled human race, evolution of transhumanism with a strong artificial intelligence taking the place of many humans, while they fly to Mars during their years of immortality, and observe humanity through endless surveillance systems. But their dream only becomes a reality if people allow it to.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-03-16 04:20:582022-03-16 04:27:53VIDEO: Transhumanism and How the Coming Digital Dictatorship Will Alter Your Life
We learned that in the final days of the 2016 presidential race, when the Clinton campaign came up with the Steele dossier — a collection of sensational and unsupported allegations about Trump and Russia — the FBI used the dossier to win approval to wiretap Carter Page, a low-level former Trump campaign adviser. Then we learned that also in 2016, the FBI used a confidential informant, a professor named Stefan Halper, to spy on Page and George Papadopoulos, another low-level Trump adviser.
Then we learned that in 2016, the FBI sent an undercover agent — a woman who used the alias Azra Turk — to secretly record conversations with Papadopoulos.
So there is ample evidence to say that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. Now we are learning about another type of spying — the Clinton campaign spying on the Trump campaign. The revelations are coming from the investigation of John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration, and retained by the Biden administration, to probe the origins of the Trump-Russia collusion investigation.
In a court filing Friday, Durham reported that in July 2016, a tech executive named Rodney Joffe (he is unnamed in the court papers, but his name has been widely reported) worked with the Clinton campaign’s law firm to “mine internet data,” some of it “non-public and/or proprietary” — that means secret — to search for information that could be used to claim a Trump-Russia connection. Among the secret data that was “exploited,” according to Durham, was internet traffic from Trump Tower, from Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building and — after Trump was elected — the executive office of the president of the United States, or EOP.
Democrats commissioned, payed for and distributed the Russian collusion story and the media picked up the ball and ran with it.
Today Biden and his administration are blaming Russia for our economic woes. Go figure. For Democrats it’s always never take the blame, shift it to someone else.
This is worse than Watergate. It is worse than anything see in America ever before.
It is a tragedy and sadly, under a Biden DOJ Hillary and those involved won’t be prosecuted.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-03-15 10:20:462022-03-15 10:22:31Save America Ad Targets Hillary: ‘Justice Is Coming!’
As I have often written in my decades long fight for free speech, beginning with the Danish cartoons, freedom of speech is the foundation of a free society. Without it, a tyrant can wreak havoc unopposed, while his opponents are silenced.
Putting up with being offended is essential in a pluralistic society in which people differ on basic truths. If a group will not bear being offended without resorting to violence, that group will rule unopposed while everyone else lives in fear, while other groups curtail their activities to appease the violent group. This results in the violent group being able to tyrannize the others
Inoffensive speech needs no protection. The First Amendment was developed precisely in order to protect speech that was offensive to some, in order to prevent those who had power from claiming they were offended by speech opposing them and silencing the powerless.
A free society is by its nature one in which people put up with others being uncivil and offensive. The alternative is a quiet authoritarian society in which only one opinion is allowed and the others are silenced, and ultimately sent to the camps.
My relentless fight was always to protect and defend us from what the Democrats are doing to us now. I was silenced. And the right stood by. Others were silenced and the right stood by. Now we are all be silenced ……
Former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social wants to make itself cancel-proof against leftist demands that Big Tech preemptively deplatform it.
So far, the increasingly popular free speech platform has already survived attacks from the corporate media hellbent on smearing anything associated with Trump. Now, leftists are wielding Jan. 6 as an excuse to demand Big Tech companies such as Apple thwart Truth Social before it even becomes fully operational at the end of the month.
In “Big Tech Could Save Us From ‘Truth Social,’” author Samuel O’Brient, who has a history of demanding censorship because he believes “Limiting Free Speech is Essential to Democracy,” argues that Big Tech companies should preemptively nuke the anti-political censorship platform simply because it is associated with the former president.
“Trump clearly wants to use Truth Social to rally his troops again and fire them up for another run at the White House. There’s almost no way that such a mission won’t include inciting violence in some form,” O’Brient wrote this week. “If Truth Social becomes a venue for hate-spewing and further insurrection-plotting, these big tech giants can buy themselves a lot of goodwill by honoring their credos and standing up to protect American democracy.”
While corporate media are still largely focused on downplaying the number of people abandoning propaganda sites run by the political actors in Big Tech, leaders at Truth Social know that a war on their attempt to offer a “family-friendly” social media site is coming and they are prepared to stop it in its tracks.
“The campaign by the left and the mainstream media to censor and suppress other viewpoints is a shocking threat to democracy,” Devin Nunes, CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) in charge of launching Truth Social, told The Federalist. “The fact that there’s even a need and a demand for Truth Social – a social media platform that won’t censor content based on viewpoints – is unsettling in itself. Once you begin censoring, the suppressions develop a momentum of their own. This naturally leads to demands for preemptive censorship, which until recently was a concept you only found in dystopian science fiction novels.”
Despite the difficulties presented by a market largely controlled by Big Tech monopolies, Truth Social built most of its platform from the ground up. Parler previously tried a similar strategy but was eventually nuked by dozens of companies who wanted the platform gone for political reasons. Unlike in Parler’s case, Apple is really the only Big Tech company that has the power to remove Truth Social from its app store and the new social media platform is already working to keep the illegal activity that censors use to justify suppression off of the platform.
While some are calling for Truth Social to be wiped off of the web, the leaders of the social media company are confident that their lack of reliance on corrupt, political actors for web services will guard them against sudden deplatforming.
“We’re building as much of our own infrastructure as possible from scratch. We won’t be relying on Big Tech firms to keep our website on the internet, and we’re partnering with companies that are fundamentally committed to free speech, such as Rumble,” Nunes said.
Big Tech is filled with political entities that have used their influence and authority to suppress narratives about Covid-19, biological sex, and political stances they dislike. During the 2020 election alone, social media oligarchs did their best to alter the election outcome in favor of now-President Joe Biden. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was caught red-handed funneling money into poor election practices that benefit Democrats and Twitter, aided by the corrupt corporate media, deliberately blacked out any coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. After the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Facebook, Twitter, and others justified wiping Trump off of their platforms for “inciting violence” but have let actual warmongers like Russia’s Vladimir Putin stay on.
Users are hungry for a social media platform that doesn’t threaten them when they think or speak differently than the regime desires and Nunes said they will find it with Truth Social.
“The Big Tech companies generally did not begin as leftwing propaganda projects. In fact, the founders of a lot of these companies were idealistic proponents of free speech. But over time, they got corrupted and transformed their platforms into appendages of the Democratic Party and the left,” Nunes said. “Truth Social won’t do that, no matter the pressure from the media, the government, the left, or anywhere else. President Trump, myself, and others here have spent years fighting back against the left’s ridiculous attempts to silence us.”
Nunes is all too familiar with political censorship that is strategically used to justify false narratives circulated by the corrupt corporate media. When he served as the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes was quick to call out the fraudulent stories about Trump colluding with Russia which were repeatedly promoted by the dishonest press. Nunes also helped expose Twitter for shadowbanning conservatives like him.
“You can’t eliminate one side from the public debate and expect to keep a healthy democracy. Everyone is entitled to have their say, and we’re not going to hire a bunch of Big Tech-style political enforcers and ideological goons to force-feed you the viewpoints we decide you should be reading. That’s condescending and unfair, and we won’t do it,” Nunes said.
Quick note: Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here. We will not waver. We will not tire. We will not falter, and we will not fail. Freedom will prevail.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here — it’s free and it’s critical NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America’s survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-03-07 07:31:442022-03-07 07:32:31Democrats Demand Big Tech Censor Trump’s Truth Social
February 21, 2022, the Canadian Parliament approved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s motion to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to the peaceful trucker protest against vaccine mandates
Under the Act, Canadian banks can seize the personal bank accounts of anyone suspected of participating in or supporting the protest, and these financial surveillance powers are intended to become permanent
February 14, 2022, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules to cover crowdfunding platforms and their payment service providers. The broadened surveillance power requires all digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (Fintrac)
What’s happening in Canada should be a sobering wakeup call for the whole world. Governments intend to control dissent through financial blackmail, which is why they’re also pushing for programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
Programmable currency is digital cash programmed to ensure it can only be spent on essentials or goods that an employer or government deems to be sensible. In other words, the issuer of the money would have complete control over how you spend your own money, and could punish you for undesirable opinions or behavior by restricting your purchasing ability or seizing your funds altogether
February 21, 2022, the Canadian Parliament approved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s motion to invoke the Emergencies Act, with 185 votes for and 151 against, in response to the peaceful trucker protest against vaccine mandates.1 While Trudeau in a February 14, 2022, press conference (above) promised the Act would be limited in time, geographical location and scope, he’s already reneging on that promise.
Financial Surveillance Powers Will Be Permanently Expanded
The act was invoked to allow the government to physically disperse the trucker convoy without actually listening to their complaint, and to punish anyone who has supported the protest.
Under the act, banks are empowered to seize the personal bank accounts of anyone suspected of participating in the protest, or supporting it with as little as a $25 donation. Disturbingly, the surveillance powers over financial transactions granted by the act are actually intended to become permanent. As reported by National Review:2
“In a February 14 news conference, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said that the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden ‘the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use.’
That broadened power requires all forms of digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (I.e., ‘Fintrac’).
‘As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with Fintrac, and they must report large and suspicious transactions to Fintrac,’ Freeland said.
She justified the move as a way to ‘mitigate the risk’ of ‘illicit funds’ and ‘increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrac and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement’ …
Freeland said the trucker convoy, which had assembled to protest coronavirus restrictions, had ‘highlighted the fact’ that digital assets and funding mechanisms ‘weren’t captured’ by the Canadian government’s pre-existing surveillance powers.
As a result, she said, ‘the government will also bring forward legislation to provide these authorities to FinTrac on a permanent basis.’”
As noted by the National Review, we can already tell what the Canadian government will do with those expanded surveillance powers. We’re seeing their intentions in action. By invoking the Act, Trudeau has given himself the unilateral power to destroy the lives of Canadians who happen to disagree with him, regardless of the issue at hand.
Without court order or due process, the government can now freeze bank accounts, cancel insurance policies and revoke drivers’ licenses, and the victims have no recourse or remedy.
“All this, of course, flies in the face of Trudeau’s promise that the Emergencies Act powers would be temporary,” National Review notes, adding:3
“When he announced his invocation of the order, he promised the Canadian people that his expanded authorities would ‘be time-limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.’ Not a single part of that sentence has proved to be true.”
Government Wants to Decide How You Spend Your Money
What’s happening in Canada should be a sobering wakeup call for the whole world. They’re showing us exactly what’s in store for all of us. Governments will basically control dissent through financial tyranny and blackmail.
The next step in that direction is the implementation of programmable digital currencies, worldwide. As reported by The Telegraph in June 2021, the Bank of England has already started moving on a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC), and there’s no doubt that this is the plan of all central banks worldwide.4
Executive board member of the European Central Bank, Fabio Panetta, mentioned it in his December 10, 2021, lecture on the future of digital money in Rome, Italy.5
What’s meant by a “programmable” currency? As explained by The Telegraph,6 “Digital cash could be programmed to ensure it is only spent on essentials, or goods which an employer or government deems to be sensible.” In other words, the issuer of the money would have complete control over how you, the recipient, spend it.
“Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference … that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency …” The Telegraph reported.7
“He said … what happens if one of the participants in a transaction puts a restriction on [future use of the money]? There could be some socially beneficial outcomes from that, preventing activity which is seen to be socially harmful in some way. But at the same time it could be a restriction on people’s freedoms.’”
Absolute Control Through Financial Slavery
That programmable currency might restrict freedom is probably the understatement of the century. It’s an absolute given. Imagine your employer, your government and the central bank itself having the privilege to dictate how you spend your own money!
Imagine a third party deciding how much you’re allowed to spend on rent, what kind of food or clothing you’re allowed to buy, or what hobbies you’re allowed to spend money on and when. That’s the power they intend to obtain, and current events in Canada prove it.
The “socially beneficial outcomes” Mutton is hinting at are basically that an unelected cabal will have the ability to micromanage your personal finances, and hence dictate your behavior in every area of your life. As noted by British activist and radio presenter Maajid Nawaz in the Joe Rogan clip above, with a programmable CBDC, the British government would have complete control over anyone who disagrees with their policies or activities.
For example, with other surveillance, they could determine that he was planning to appear on Rogan’s show and simply reprogram his CBDCs with the click of a button, such that he would not be allowed to purchase a plane ticket. So much for that plan then.
Of course, CBDCs will exist by themselves. They’re designed to be used together with digital ID and a social credit score, like that in China. The COVID vaccine passports are one type of platform that could be used for this, but even if a state or country rejects vaccine passports, don’t for a moment think you’re out of the woods, not by a long-shot. Chances are, they’ll introduce a digital ID system instead, which will serve the exact same function.
Global Leadership Has Been Infiltrated
In the full Rogan interview, Nawaz goes on to discuss how governments around the world have been infiltrated by World Economic Forum (WEF) members whose agenda it is to implement global authoritarianism. As reported by Life Site News:8
“… the WEF has installed its members in national leadership roles around the world to further the organization’s sprawling authoritarian agenda. Explaining that government leaders worldwide have begun lifting COVID-19 mandates and restrictions while leaving in place an apparatus of digital tracking and identification that forms the embryonic stages of a digital social credit score.
Nawaz said the WEF under Schwab has worked on ‘embedding people in government who are subscribed to’ the Great Reset agenda. ‘That’s what they say themselves,’ Nawaz said, pointing out that the so-called Great Reset, whose advocates have famously asserted that by 2030 people will ‘own nothing and be happy,’ is explained in detail on the WEF’s website.9
In a 2020 book entitled ‘COVID-19: The Great Reset,’ Schwab openly argued that the COVID-19 response should be used to ‘revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions’ …
The WEF has clearly articulated10its interest in pursuing a global digital ID system. ‘So this is going to be this never-ending process to slowly move the goal posts,’ Rogan surmised. ‘Towards more and more authoritarianism,’ Nawaz added. ‘Checkpoint society. It’s all there. They’ve told us this.’”
How exactly has the WEF infiltrated governments and leadership roles around the world? In part by getting members of its Young Global Leaders group elected or installed in key positions. Would it surprise you to learn that Trudeau went through Schwab’s Young Global Leaders program?
Other members whose dictatorial mindset cannot be disguised any longer are New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and French President Emmanuel Macron. Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have also gone through the program, and both are clearly supporting and promoting The Great Reset agenda through their respective business ventures.
Globalists Plan to Seize Control of Health Systems Worldwide
Your money isn’t the only thing the globalist cabal wants to control, however. In a February 18, 2022, article, Dr. Peter Breggin, author of “COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey,”11 warns that the next move in the globalists’ war on humanity is to seize control over the health care systems of the entire world:12
“We have discovered the next move of the global predators — already in progress — in their escalating assaults against individual and political freedom. The next big assault on human freedom involves a legalized takeover of national healthcare systems by the World Health Organization (WHO).
This stealth attack — with its initial plans already backed by many nations — will begin full implementation in 2024 if it is not quickly recognized and fought! … The Chinese Communist influence over WHO has been solid for more than a decade, and the party was able to install Tedros without any competition.
He became the first and only Director-General who is not a physician and instead is a communist politician. Now the Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — known simply as Tedros — has unveiled plans to take charge of all global health.
While addressing the WHO Executive Committee on January 24, 2022, Director-General Tedros spelled out his global health plan, including his final priority for his enormous scheme: ‘The fifth priority is to urgently strengthen WHO as the leading and directing authority on global health, at the center of the global health architecture.’
Tedros’s closing words to his report to the executive committee are chilling in their grandiosity and echo Marxist exhortations to cheering mobs by a Stalin, Mao, or Xi Jinping: ‘We are one world, we have one health, we are one WHO.’ Tedros seeks to become super-Fauci for the world, and, like Fauci, he will do it on behalf of the global predators.”
Health Fascism
As explained by Breggin, the global health care takeover really began with Gates’ Decade of Vaccines, announced in 2010 at the WEF’s annual meeting in Davos. At that time, Gates installed Dr. Anthony Fauci on his vaccine advisory board, thereby guaranteeing his plans would receive support from the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Fauci is the head of. Breggin continues:13
“A theme for the Decade of Vaccines was ‘Public-Private Partnerships Drive Progress in Vaccine Development, Delivery’ — essentially the precursor to the Great Reset establishing a world governance of public and private health united in the spirit of fascism.
By 2012, Gates achieved official UN approval for his scheme, establishing a broad network of global predators aimed at exploiting and dominating humanity through public health. Communist China would play a prominent role through its control over the UN and WHO and through its close relationships with global predators like Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Mike Bloomberg, Big Tech executives, and many other billionaires and world leaders.
A decade and more later, during COVID-19, WHO has proven its usefulness to the predators in orchestrating science, medicine, and public health in the suppression of human freedom and the generation of wealth and power for the globalists.”
Under the guise of a global pandemic, the WHO, the WEF and all of its installed leaders in government and private business, were able to roll out a plan that has been decades in the making. The pandemic was a perfect cover. In the name of keeping everyone “safe” from infection, the globalists have justified unprecedented attacks on democracy, civil liberties and personal freedoms, including the right to choose your own medical treatment.
Now, the WHO is gearing up to make its pandemic leadership permanent, and to extend it into the health care systems of every nation. “The idea is ‘the principle of health for all’ — universal health care organized by WHO as part of the Great Reset,” Breggin explains.
Pandemic Treaty Is Being Established
May 24, 2021, the European Council announced it supported the establishment of an international Pandemic Treaty, under which the WHO would have the power to replace the constitutions of individual nations with its own constitution under the banner of “pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”14
“The world has already seen how any pandemic emergency, real or concocted, now or in the future, could then justify WHO taking over the entirety of government operations of sovereign nations, robbing all individuals of their freedoms, and fully crushing the democratic republics of the world,” Breggin warns.15
“The spirit of Communism can be felt throughout the document. We are told that the ‘purpose’ of the new strategy will be ‘guided by a spirit of solidarity, anchored in the principles of fairness, inclusion, and transparency.’ Notice, as in all pronouncements by global predators; there is no mention of individual rights, political liberty, or national sovereignty.
The great engine of human progress, human freedom, will be replaced by the great destroyer of humanity, collectivism, under the rule of the elite. Tucked into the report were the real goals … Here are three main purposes or goals of the proposed treaty:
1.response to any future pandemics, in particular by ensuring universal and equitable access to medical solutions, such as vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics 2.a stronger international health framework with the WHO as the coordinating authority on global health matters 3.the ‘One Health’ approach, connecting the health of humans, animals, and our planet
The report adds, ‘More specifically, such an instrument can enhance international cooperation in a number of priority areas, such as surveillance, alerts, and response, but also in general trust in the international health system.’ Clearly, they were building support for Tedros’s January 24, 2022 announcement that WHO would take over the international health care system.”
Even Your Food Will Be Under Their Control
In addition to your finances and your health care, the global cabal also intend to control the food supply and dictate what you can and cannot eat, in the name of combating climate change and saving the planet. The Great Reset16 is indeed the reset of life and society as we know it. Not a single area will be left untouched.
Sustainable development, Agenda 21, the 2030 Agenda, the New Urban Agenda, the Fourth Industrial Revolution,17 “Build Back Better,”18 green economy, the Green New Deal, the Paris Climate Agreement and the global warming movement in general all refer to and are part of The Great Reset agenda and its resource-based economics.
The common goal of all these movements and agendas is to capture all of the resources of the world — the ownership of them — for a small global cabal that has the know-how to program the computer systems that will ultimately dictate the lives of everyone.
When they talk about “wealth redistribution,” what they’re really referring to is the redistribution of resources from us to them. The goal is for you to own nothing. Everything you need, from the shirt on your back to a roof over your head, you’ll have to rent from the globalist owners.
Even the food you put into your mouth is planned to be under their complete control. To this end, the WEF has partnered with the EAT Forum, which will set the political agenda for global food production. The EAT Forum was cofounded by the Wellcome Trust, which in turn was established with the financial help of GlaxoSmithKline.
EAT collaborates with nearly 40 city governments across Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia, and maintains close relationships with imitation meat companies such as Impossible Foods, which was cofunded by Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates.19 Gates has also been gobbling up farmland, becoming one of the largest private land owners in the U.S.20
EAT has developed a “Planetary Health Diet” that is designed to be applied to the global population and entails cutting meat and dairy intake by up to 90%, replacing it largely with foods made in laboratories, along with cereals and oil.21
Not surprisingly, Gates is on record urging Western nations to stop eating real meat altogether,22 and articles have been published in the past three years insisting people need to get used to eating bugs and drinking reclaimed sewage,23 all in the name of sustainability and saving the planet.
Being able to see the globalists’ plan as clearly as we can see it now, we have an obligation to future generations to resist, denounce and refuse any and all implementations of the technocratic agenda. We can win, for the simple fact that there are more of us than there are of them, but we have to be vocal about it — we need to join forces and present a united front, resisting peacefully, like the Canadian truckers.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-02-28 04:40:062022-02-28 04:43:59VIDEO: The Plandemic Enters Final Stage, Real Purpose Exposed
A key concern that vaccine passports bring to the fore is related to privacy. If implemented, they will strip us of most of the privacy we’re used to, as they are a precursor to digital identity and a far more invasive digital surveillance apparatus
Another key concern is that vaccine passports and digital IDs can force compliance in any area of life
The vaccine passport is a platform to which they can add a digital ID and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This would give them near-total control over your life, as they can “cancel” your existence and ability to live if you dissent
If we accept vaccine passports, we’re basically giving our consent to everything that comes after
Another global economic crisis is a mathematical inevitability, so work on improving your resiliency, food security and self-reliance through community
In my mind, there’s little doubt that the primary reason for the rollout of the COVID jabs was not for public health but to justify the rollout of vaccine passports, which in turn are just the first iteration of a much broader mechanism to surveil, track, manipulate and control the population of the world.
Corbishley has been a journalist, writing about politics, finance and privacy issues for the past decade. While based in Barcelona, Spain, he’s been contributing to two U.S. blogs since 2013.
“Israel was the first democratic country to launch digital IDs, in February, 2021, and when I started to see what was going on there, I began to get very concerned,” Corbishley says. “I wrote an article in April 2021, raising my concerns about the risks these vaccine passports posed.
Then, little by little, I began to see what’s happening in Europe. I began to see what was happening in Italy, in France, when the so called Green Pass was launched in June. This was a document that was supposed to be created to enable travel between countries in Europe.
Very quickly, it began to be used to control access to public services, access to public places within one’s own country. We were beginning to see restrictions that we’d never seen in our lifetime.
So, I began to write more and more and this brought me to the attention of the Vermont-based publisher, Chelsea Green. We had some conversations and we decided that there was an opportunity to write about something that everybody should know about. Even at this stage. It’s not being talked about anywhere near as much as it should be.”
Two Key Concerns
One of the primary concerns vaccine passports bring to the fore is related to privacy. If implemented, they will strip us of most of the privacy we’re used to. It’s quite clear that they are a precursor to digital identity and a far more invasive type of digital surveillance apparatus.
“The passports essentially function as a gateway to allow government to herd us into a totally new reality where our actions, our movements, our thoughts, our behavior are tracked and surveilled,” Corbishley says.
But it’s not just about surveillance. It’s also about forcing compliance, and that’s the second key concern.
“If we’ve learned one thing about the vaccine passport, this is about changing the way we relate to government, and it’s about changing the way government relates to us, the governed.
If you do not do exactly what the government says going forward, whether that is putting one jab inside your arm, whether is putting two jabs inside your arm, or however many jabs inside your arm, you will be deactivated. You will not be able to access the most basic services and the sort of places that we need to be able to participate in society and economy.”
Surveillance on Steroids
Of course, we’ve been under surveillance for many years already. All Google-related technologies are tracking and surveillance technologies. Our cell phones track and surveil us. Ditto for Facebook and other social media platforms. They’re all harvesting personal information and keeping tabs on everyone’s whereabouts.
We also know these technologies have been used to influence and manipulate people’s thoughts, beliefs and behavior. Up until now, however, all of that manipulation has been covert. The system that’s being erected now is unique and new in that the forced compliance will be, in many cases, overt — blatant and indisputable, as punishment will be tied to things like your personal finances and travel privileges.
Clearly, the vaccine passport is a platform to which they can add central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). So, as an example, the government could put out a political narrative, and if you vocalize disagreement, there goes access to your bank account. Or your travel privileges. Or your loan application.
With Google-based smart homes, it’s not even impossible to foresee a future in which you could simply be locked inside your home if you were to be labeled a dissenter. Or locked out of your home. Or they could shut off your utilities.
The possibilities to punish dissenters are endless when everyone and every THING is digitally identifiable, trackable and wirelessly connected. With a single keystroke, someone you don’t know can shut down your life, rendering you homeless and helpless.
Chances are, there won’t even be a live person anywhere for you to contact with your grievances. Much of the system will be run by artificial intelligence and various algorithms. It’s important to realize that if we accept vaccine passports, we’re basically giving our consent to everything that comes after, Corbishley warns. We’re accepting that this is our future.
Why We Must Reject Digital IDs and CBDCs
We must also remain alert to the rollout of other control mechanisms that are just as problematic as the vaccine passports, especially digital IDs and CBDCs, but also any number of other digital and biometric controls. As explained by Corbishley:
“Right now, in Canada, we’ve got the premier of Ontario saying that they are going to withdraw the vaccine passports. We’ve got Alberta saying it’s going to withdraw the vaccine passports.
This is the message we’re getting from all over the Western world. It’s like, ‘It’s time to take a step back. We are now going to let you live your life. We’re going to let some kind of normality return.’
You’re seeing Scandinavia talking about doing away with vaccine passports altogether. So, it’s interesting to see some countries using that language. But I think you have to be very careful because as they’re talking about doing this, they’re ushering in digital identity systems, which are going to be on a much grander scale than the vaccine passports …
They are instituting digital identity that is going to allow not just this kind of control of your vaccine status, but control of your tax records, control of your employment records … And they will include … your vaccine status. So, it’s extremely disingenuous. I think they are misleading their populations in a very dark way …
All of these things are happening, but the ultimate step is probably the central bank digital currencies, which are likely to come on board in the next three to five years.
The chairman of the Bank of International Settlements, Agustín Carstens, who used to be the chairman of the Bank of Mexico, openly said that the wonderful thing about central bank digital currencies is that it allows them to track everything you do.
What he didn’t say is that it allows them to deactivate an account. It allows them to stop people from being able to transact. They didn’t go that far. But he said that this is so different from cash. So yeah, people are not realizing just how this control grid is being built, little by little, piece by piece, but they need to start paying attention before it’s too late.”
They’re Building a Social Credit System
By now, many are familiar with the social credit system in China, or have at least heard of it. How does this system compare or relate to vaccine passports and digital IDs?
“I think that the social credit system in China is, to a certain extent, a template. It’s where governments probably want to go. They would like to be able to use the new technologies we have to nudge people into the right sorts of behaviors without having to use more overt punishment.
You can either reward people for doing the right sort of things, or you can give them a little digital spank every now and then when they’re doing the wrong sort of things. I think that that is where China is leading the way.
Ironically, in the research I did for my book, I found that while China’s ambitions with the credit social credit system are essentially unfettered — they want total control — they’re not there yet.
They’re still running quite a few pilot schemes. So, it depends where you are in China, the extent to which you are exposed to this kind of system, where you’re getting points for good behavior and where you’re getting points deducted for bad behavior.
But the template is there. You’ve also got companies like Ant Financial and Tencent. These are the equivalents of Google, Facebook, whatever, that are running their own social credits schemes within their own little universe. So, it’s a very complex situation in China. It’s not as complete as some might believe, but the intention, the ambition, is huge.
I would say that we are definitely seeing examples of this beginning to feed through into the West. We’re seeing banks talk about using our social media behavior to determine our credit score, which is very similar to what they’re doing in China. There’s clearly the means, and there’s clearly a desire to push in that direction.”
Unity Is the Challenge of Our Lifetime
The challenge we now face is that, to have any chance of preventing this control grid, we need to be unified. The problem is, many simply aren’t able to see the dangers. Most people under the age of 30 are used to doing just about everything on their phones, and the convenience of digital IDs and digital banking is alluring.
Organizations such as the World Economic Forum and many of the central banks that are pushing the rollout of this control grid can also make it impossible or near-impossible to live without a digital ID and CBDCs. Already, we’ve seen leaders saying, out loud, that their goal is to make life as difficult and inconvenient as possible for anyone without a vaccine passport. They’ll do the same for digital IDs and CBDCs.
“One of the best examples is Italy,” Corbishley says. “If you want to see a country that has really gone into sixth gear with the vaccine passports, it’s Italy. They’ve said, ‘Look, if you don’t have this document, you cannot work. You cannot get on a bus and go across town. You cannot get on the metro. You cannot access retail premises apart from supermarkets, pharmacies, petrol stations and pet stores.’
You have basically closed down, narrowed down the existence to such a limited one that most people end up just saying, ‘OK, let’s do it. I don’t have an alternative. I’m not going to survive this way.’
If you have a mortgage and your finances are already tight, and your government is telling you, you’re not going to be able to work, most people crumble, and so they’re able to do it …
A journalist in Canada was talking about the truckers, the Freedom Convoy. He was saying, ‘These guys don’t represent Canadians; 90% of Canadians have taken the vaccine and they’re all perfectly happy with the restrictions, the mandates.’ It’s like, how do you know how many of those 90% actually took the vaccine because they had no choice? It was a very disingenuous argument.”
How to Prepare for the Inevitable
While the situation is bleak and dire, Corbishley doesn’t believe vaccine passports, digital IDs and CBDCs are inevitable. “I think we’re in the midst of a major battle,” he says.
The question is, how can we win when all the cards seem stacked against us?
“I think that we have to, No. 1, inform as many people as possible. That’s why I wrote the book. I wrote the book hoping to reach people who maybe had been vaccinated, but were beginning to have certain doubts, people who were on the fence.
I mean, I know plenty of people who have had two shots, who are wary about having a third one. I know plenty of people who have had two shots, have had Omicron, and they’re now thinking, ‘Why the heck am I having to take a third shot?’ People are beginning to question this.
I think that we are in the midst of what can only be described as an existential battle. If we lose this battle, it can be very difficult, as individuals, to protect ourselves because the degree of control they will have over us is going to be huge.
I think there will be this creation of a parallel community, a parallel society, where people are able to function. We’re seeing signs of bartering beginning to take place within a community like that in Italy. They are surviving as best they can — and we’re talking about millions of people who haven’t crumbled. They’ve not given way yet.
That gives me a certain amount of hope. I think the fact that people have grown tired of the restrictions means that government is having to, to a certain extent, reconsider, but at the same time, they are pushing through digital IDs.
I think this is what is really important for people to understand. While they’re saying, ‘We are going to abandon the vaccine passports,’ in most countries where they’re saying this, that is not the case. In the U.K., they’ve not done that. They have simply shifted from a mandatory vaccine passport to a voluntary vaccine passport.
You’ve got vaccine passports very much in use for international travel. So, if you’re British, you want to travel to mainland Europe, if you’ve not got your vaccine passport, you’re not going to be able to go mainland. It’s the same if you’re European and want to go to the U.S.
So, there is so much happening it’s hard to keep track. That is coming from somebody who spends most of his day trying to keep track of these things. If you are just someone who is working a 9-to-5 job and you get home and you’ve got three kids to look after, it’s going to be much harder to keep abreast of these developments.
I have a certain amount of hope that they haven’t won yet. But it’s an immense amount of power they have. We are talking about organizations like the World Economic Forum, which represents hundreds of the most powerful companies on the planet. We’re talking about the most powerful governments on the planet.
So, it’s going to be a huge battle, and they’ve got most of the advantages in this battle. But I do think that what’s happening in Canada suggests a resistance can be formed. I think that resistance is growing in Germany. It’s certainly growing in Austria. The government is beginning to have second thoughts about the vaccine mandate.”
Expect Economic Collapse
There are also the growing economic risks, globally, to consider. The central banks around the world have painted themselves into a corner and they can’t get out. We are almost certain to see another financial crisis. It’s only a matter of when.
There is already clear evidence we are in the early stages of economic collapse, and that’s a parallel issue that needs to be taken into consideration when trying to predict what might happen with digital IDs and CBDCs, as they’re all connected. To prepare for an inevitable economic collapse, I would suggest focusing on improving your resiliency on a local level.
For example, make sure you have access to water supplies other than your tap, grow your own food and develop relationships with other local growers and farmers to build your food security.
These are very basic things that can save your life when everything collapses and your dollar, drachma or euro becomes fit for use as toilet paper. Having food, water, shelter and community makes you far more resistant to tyranny because if you don’t have these things, you need the government to provide them for you.
“I think the community is essential,” Corbishley says. “Having people who are of a similar mindset, of a similar worldview, people you can definitely count upon …
Resilience is going to be very tough. As a result of the lockdowns, small businesses are in serious straits. They’ve had to take on huge amounts of debt just to weather the lockdowns … There’s no doubt that large companies have much easier access to cheap debt than small companies …
This is tragic because small businesses are a fundamental cornerstone of the community. They’re a fundamental part of the global economy and, even more important than that, small businesses are run by independent people. If we begin to see a massive culling of small businesses, then we are going to see less independence and more dependence. So, that is one area which deeply concerns me …
I think the most important thing, and the hardest thing, is to maintain your humanity. I think that is fundamental and that is why having a community around you that you love and that loves you is absolutely essential to surviving this. I don’t think you can be an island and get through what’s coming.
Another thing I would suggest, if you do have money, if you have investments, is to diversify as much as possible — probably not best to have all your money in a bank, and especially not one bank …
If you look at countries like Mexico, going through the Tequila Crisis in the 1990s, or Brazil, going through the huge hyperinflation it had, how do you survive that relatively intact? When you own real assets, you own property. Maybe you own precious metals … In Turkey, inflation is absolutely surging and people are using gold, they are looking at cryptocurrencies. They are doing anything except keeping their money in Turkish lira.”
More Information
So, in closing, the best you can do right now is to educate yourself about the impending digital control grid, share information, resist and oppose any and all attempts to implement vaccine passports or digital IDs, take a stand for freedom, build community and prepare for deteriorating economic conditions by diversifying your monies and investments.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-02-27 06:34:482022-02-27 06:35:45What You Need to Know About Vax Passports, Digital IDs, CBDCs
Watch as David and his attorney expose all the school’s hypocrisy in this episode of Shout Out Patriots.
The only thing more upsetting than the suspension of David Stout Jr. at Plainwell High School for expressing his biblical views on homosexuality is how little attention this story has received!
Personally, I admire the courage of David and his legal team for fighting back against the Michigan school located just 30-minutes outside Grand Rapids. But I have so say, even the Christian community seems to be ignoring this important story.
David Stout Jr. was given a 3-day suspension after responding to a fellow student’s text message inquiring about his biblical views on homosexuality.
David wrote that the Bible teaches homosexual conduct is a sin.
That private text message (which was sent off school property) somehow ended up in the hands of school officials.
David was later cited with violating the school’s “Bullying/Cyberbullying/Harassment” policy.
David was also accused of “stealing other’s happiness” due to his Christian views.
With so little media attention given to this unquestionable violation of David’s free speech and religious freedom rights, I invited David and his lawyer to tell this story to our Shout Out Patriots’ audience.
You’ll probably learn about a few surprising school policies, such as “self-reporting.”
At one point, David heard a classmate tell an offensive homosexual joke. When he didn’t try to stop or prevent it, he should have “self-reported” himself to school officials. Not doing so, meant more trouble for him!
Apparently, students must now become Speech Monitors. If they hear something that would offend the LGBTQ community, for example, they should be proactive and stop it or else have that inaction be considered as an anti-gay.
David Jr. was reprimanded by the school’s vice-principal, Deb Beals, for failing to self-report and he was told “whatever you allow, is what your support.”
The school policy is meant to force students into becoming advocates for the LGBT movement and other progressive, woke ideologies…under the pain of suspension and being called a bully on your school record.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Martin Mawyerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMartin Mawyer2022-02-18 13:48:442022-02-19 05:17:24PODCAST: Christian Student’s Private Text Message Gets Him Suspended
Everyone at the Beijing Winter Olympics is expected to download an app to track their health. What else is it tracking?
On this date, Feb. 6 of 1936, the Winter Olympics opened in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria — the last time both the Winter and Summer Olympics were held in the same country in the same year.
The Olympics that year attracted some controversy in the US because of the nature of the German political regime under Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who had by then been in power only three years. But the argument that sports should be independent of politics won out, and so the US went on to participate in both sets of Olympic games.
Diplomatic boycott
Last Wednesday, the 2022 Winter Olympics kicked off in the Peoples’ Republic of China. The US is once again participating, although the Biden administration has enforced a diplomatic boycott of the event in protest of “the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
Britain, Australia, and Canada joined the US in the diplomatic boycott, which does not prevent athletes of those countries from participating in the games. Chinese government representatives fired back that the US was taking actions that “politicise sports, create divisions and provoke confrontation,” according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Data insecurity
If you are an athlete or anyone else attending the games, the Chinese government is requiring you to download an app to your smartphone called “My 2022”, two weeks before your arrival, and make daily reports of the state of your health.
Ostensibly, the app is supposed to help the government achieve a 100% COVID-free event. But when computer scientists examined the app, they found serious security flaws in it that can allow not only the Beijing government but random hackers to gain entry to your phone.
It’s no surprise to Chinese citizens that the My 2022 app is full of holes. The Chinese government explicitly reserves the right to access any information stored on an electronic device. My 2022 just makes it easier for them to do so.
According to the University of Toronto’s cybersecurity group Citizen Lab, the app can transmit confidential information such as passport and travel data with encryption that can be “trivially sidestepped.” So even before leaving the US, Olympic athletes and anyone else attending will be subject to the Chinese national security apparatus.
Unavoidable issue
Some people may not be bothered by this. After all, there is some weight to the argument that sporting events shouldn’t be politicised. But it seems to me that the only way to completely divorce politics from sports is to have all competitors hail from the same political entity.
Victor Cha, writing on the Center for Strategic and International Studies website about the U. S. diplomatic boycott, quotes famed anti-totalitarian author George Orwell as saying, “sport is war minus the shooting.” Any time you have competition, you’re going to have partisan cheering, even at the most humble level of small-town sporting events like the Ponca City Wildcats playing against the Enid Plainsmen in the wilds of northern Oklahoma.
So at the basic level of identification, all sporting events are politicised. What Beijing objects to is not mere identification with the participants, however, but any action that singles China out as being a less worthy player on the international political stage.
Are they? Consider the fact that for the last decade or more, China has been busily constructing a surveillance state that goes beyond the wildest dreams of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Big Brother is watching
One of the most chilling aspects of that book, which came out in 1949, was the omnipresence of “telescreens” which simultaneously broadcast state propaganda from “Big Brother” and spied on people. Back then, readers reassured themselves that this was rank science fiction, because no regime could possibly afford to hire half the population to spy on the other half, and so most of the time, nobody was watching on the other end.
That was before the Internet and the advent of artificial-intelligence (AI) systems that can recognise faces, voices, and certain words, such as the 2,422 terms in the “illegalwords.txt” file bundled with the My 2022 app. In it are phrases such as “Tiananmen Riot” and “Dalai Lama.” Woe unto anyone who uses those words at the Olympics this winter.
Scorecards
China‘s goal is to use any information it can get to establish social-credit scores that determine the degree of freedom allotted to each citizen. People who behave well, according to standards set by the government, can travel, hold jobs, visit certain places, and behave almost like free citizens.
Those lacking a high social-credit score find that their privileges are suddenly withdrawn, and may feel some sympathy with the Uighur people of Xinjiang Province, many of whom have disappeared into “reeducation camps” for no other reason than their identity.
If anyone happens to download this blog onto their My-2022-equipped phone, I will not be held responsible for the consequences. But it doesn’t matter, because the truth about the Beijing regime isn’t affected by what I say about it, or by what anybody else says or doesn’t say about it.
The Chinese surveillance state has to be one of the grandest violations of human rights, extended over time and space, that the world has ever seen. Because it has been put in place gradually and folded into the other routine malfeasances and wrongdoings of the regime, it hasn’t attracted that many headlines, and billions of people in China manage to go about their business without being seriously inconvenienced by it.
But it’s like living in a house with four-foot ceilings. Nobody would want to live there if the ceilings were dropped all in a day, but if they were moved down three inches a year, you might be able to get used to it. But it still wouldn’t be a good thing.
I can’t help but wonder what the endgame will be in China. Germany overreached its hand, and in 1936 the thousand-year reich actually had less than a decade of future left. China clearly covets world domination, and in some measures it is well on the way to achieving it.
But a world in which true freedom is vanquished by an AI-enhanced surveillance regime and every action is monitored and evaluated, is not a world I would care to live in, given a choice. So far, we still have a choice. Let’s learn from our experience with things like My 2022 that the choice is worth preserving.
Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-02-09 05:31:422022-02-09 05:34:27The Surveillance State of the Olympics
He calls it “the scariest investigation I’ve ever conducted.” And anyone reading through the bombshell revelations of Peter Schweizer’s new book are bound to agree. Most Americans knew the Chinese Communist Party was quietly trying to infiltrate our colleges, financial institutions, tech companies — even our military. What they didn’t know is who’s helping them: Big Tech. Turns out, Silicon Valley isn’t just sympathetic to the evil regime — they’re accessories to it.
There are a lot of jarring moments in Schweizer’s Red Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win, but the overall picture is deeply disturbing — young, Silicon Valley billionaires eager to indulge their friends at the highest levels of China’s government. Of course, that’s just fine with the regime, who would like nothing more than access to our technology so they can compete with and overtake us. “Science and technology is a national weapon,” Chinese President Xi Jinping has insisted. “We should seize the commanding heights of technological competition and future development.”
CEOs like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have been all too anxious to help — forging close relationships with the regime’s bad actors that could spell disaster for America. Zuckerberg is so infatuated with the communist leader that when he finally met the dictator face to face, he asked him to name their unborn baby. Taken aback, Xi said it was “too great a responsibility.” Over the years, the young mogul’s affection for the communist system has only deepened. He learned Mandarin, agreed to controversial projects with Beijing, and allowed himself to be seduced by men desperate to understand and surpass U.S. technology.
“They’re quite explicit about [their agenda],” Schweizer explained on “Washington Watch.” “They have a strategy called elite capture. And basically… their goal — and they’ve stated this openly — is to surpass the United States and to become the supreme power on the planet. And rather than going toe to toe with the United States and our powerful economic system, they simply want to co-opt elites. So they call it ‘elite capture.’ And their theory is if they can neuter our elites, they can effectively win this competition without having to go head-to-head with the United States.”
Thanks to pliant targets like Zuckerberg, China’s gameplan — wooing the Valley’s biggest players — seems to be working. Zuckerberg is so enamored with the regime that when a Chinese official named Lu Wei visited Facebook headquarters, Schweizer writes that he was surprised to see a copy of The Governance of China, a compilation of Xi’s speeches, sitting on the CEO’s desk. Why was it there, Wei asked? Zuckerberg replied that he wanted to educate his staff. “I want to make them understand socialism with Chinese characteristics,” he insisted.
And he’s not alone. Almost every Silicon Valley titan seems desperate to “suck up to Xi,” Schweizer says. “We know that Microsoft [and] Google are doing joint research projects where they are putting… intellectual capital into China — and those research projects are with institutions linked to the Chinese military.” In other words, top U.S. companies are helping to arm and inform America’s biggest rival. Along with research on artificial intelligence, “Bill Gates, for example, [has] personally invested in Chinese companies [like] BYD, which is involved in developing missile technology for China.” In the old days, that would be called treason. Today, it’s a flashing red sign that these tech executives don’t have an allegiance to the United States.
“They don’t seem to be particularly concerned that they are subsidizing and helping the Chinese military… In fact,” Schweizer pointed out, “Microsoft is a company that actually takes interns from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. I mean, it’s that blatant.”
And while some of the motivation is money — China is a major revenue stream for companies like the NBA, Disney, Apple, Hollywood, and others — there’s something much more dangerous at work. “… A lot of these executives in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street have an admiration for the dictatorial regime in China. They’ll use phrases like, ‘The Chinese government is so much more efficient than the United States. They make decisions so much more quickly.’ Well, of course, autocratic governments have that advantage, so it’s about more than just money. I think there is actually an attraction — not so much to the ideology, but to the efficiencies of an autocratic government. Plus, the fact that, of course, the Chinese government gives all kinds of awards and accolades to these business executives.”
The obvious problem — one that could haunt America for decades to come — is that these naïve tycoons are jeopardizing U.S. national security. America’s top brass has been sounding the alarm for years that these partnerships could be deadly. In 2017, Marine General James Dunford, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, bluntly told a U.S. Senate committee that “the work Google is doing in China is indirectly benefitting the Chinese military.” Then, thinking twice, he corrected himself. “Frankly, ‘indirect’ may not be a full characterization of the way it really is. It’s more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military.”
In one instance, Google and Facebook teamed up on an underwater cable that would run from San Francisco to Hong Kong. The two tech giants partnered with a Chinese company called Dr. Peng Telecom & Media Group that was financially backed by the Chinese government and reportedly worked closely with Huawei and military defense contractors in China. It was such a radical idea that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in a very rare move, blocked it after the FBI and Justice Department decided that it would be a gateway to Chinese espionage. The scary part, Schweizer points out, is that the people at Facebook and Google probably know “a lot more about technology than the DOJ. So if the Department of Justice knows that this has created an unprecedented opportunity for espionage, you can bet that Google and Facebook knew that from the beginning. But I think honestly, they just didn’t care because they’re blinded by their ambitions as it relates to China.”
Add that to the leverage the regime has over Joe Biden and family, and America has never felt more vulnerable. The villains who unleashed COVID on the world, who built a network of Uyghur torture chambers, who makes outspoken tennis stars vanish is on the verge of global dominance. And we have no one but ourselves to blame. It’s time to stop Big Tech’s anti-American elitists from undermining their own country. Our future security depends on it.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2022-01-29 08:33:122022-01-29 08:33:12Tech Mate: How Silicon Valley’s China Pals Compromise America
CHICAGO — A former Chicago college student was convicted Monday of attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State group.
Thomas Osadzinski, 22, wrote a computer code to help IS bypass programs designed to block the group’s propaganda, prosecutors said. The former DePaul University student, who was born in a Chicago suburb, was living in the city when he was arrested in 2019 during an FBI sting. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
His attorney, Joshua Herman, said during closing arguments that the case centered on the right to free speech and that Osadzinski had the right to watch and share the videos.
“Liking ISIS is not illegal,” Herman said in court.
But prosecutors alleged Osadzinski worked in coordination or at the direction of IS. Authorities said Osadzinski boasted in communications about his computer skills and ability to speak Arabic, and he bragged that he would use a gun and explosives to elude authorities if need be….
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2021-10-22 05:23:232021-10-22 05:26:13Chicago: Man converts to Islam, writes computer code for ISIS, his lawyer says ‘liking ISIS is not illegal’
Not exactly a winning appeal, but the hacking is intended to convey the impression that the hackers and the cause they represent are the strong horse. As Osama bin Laden famously said, people prefer the strong horse.
Hackers defaced former President Donald Trump’s presidential website Monday and redirected visitors to a page by Turkish hacktivist group RootAyyildiz who urged readers to “not forget Allah.”
“Do not be like those who forgot Allah, so Allah made them forget themselves. Here they really went astray,” the site read.
The message was in Turkish. The suspected hacker has been blamed for briefly defacing President Joe Biden’s official campaign website in November 2020.
Biden’s website displayed a message in Turkish with the country’s flag placed at the top with aliases and usernames such as “MarbeyliWerom,” “b4rbarøsas,” and “oneshot.”
A photo of the 34th Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Abdul Hamid II, was also on the site with a footer note saying: “We are the ones who stopped the tanks with their bare hands on the night of July 15.
“We are those who killed death that night. We have been waiting for Archers Hill for 15 centuries! We are the keepers of that golden banner that will never miss its shadow on us.”…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2021-10-21 05:29:272021-10-21 05:32:23Muslims hack Trump’s website, leave message ‘Do not be like those who forget Allah’
The Hawaii Department of Education is funneling student data to a company financed by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
Under a $478K annual contract with Hawaii Department of Education, Panorama Education, is building a permanent database of socio-political opinions, attendance, academic performance, and disciplinary infractions committed by Hawaii K-12 students. Panorama’s ‘ Social Emotional Learning Survey’ is a veritable roadmap to manipulate their minds via social media.
Panorama’s CEO states the firm contracts with school districts nationwide comprising about 25% of US K-12 students.
According to Hawaii DoE, the Panorama survey is completed during Grade 3-12 homerooms and imported onto Panorama’s servers. For younger K-2 students, teachers are surveyed about their impressions of each student so your child will have a data profile in Silicon Valley even before he knows how to log on.
Nobody at DoE is mentioning Zuckerberg’s funding of the scheme. His involvement is of course empirical proof that the data is being misused. And, yes, the DoE is actually paying Panorama to take the data.
Juvenile criminal transcripts are automatically sealed on the perpetrator’s 18th birthday — but what Hawaii DoE refers to as ‘Panorama’s National Dataset’ will continue into adulthood where it could be used to identify political supporters for a future Donald Trump-style campaign, just as Facebook data was used to help Trump in 2016.
Fairfax County Virginia schools, one of the largest districts served by Panorama, explains Panorama measures “how children and adults learn to understand and manage emotions, set goals, show empathy for others, establish positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”
A Hawaii DoE handout titled: “ Social Emotional Learning Survey: Fall 2020” cites Panorama program goals including, “Leverage social and emotional data to deepen the focus on key outcomes….”
The data from a June, 2020 Panorama survey was then used to bolster arguments against continuing distance learning, much to the chagrin of HSTA leadership.
Panorama CEO Aaron Feuer, quoted on TechCrunch, September 2, 2021, explains: “Since March 2020, Panorama has added 700 school districts to its customer base, nearly doubling the 800 it served just 18 months prior.” Feuer told Tech Crunch Panorama now serves 13 million students in 23,000 schools across the United States–25% of American students.
To paraphrase Ben Franklin, “Those who would give up Privacy, to purchase a little temporary Convenience, deserve neither Privacy nor Convenience.”
Zuckerberg’s financial backing begins with Panorama’s ‘Round A’ in 2013 which garnered $4M from investors including the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Zuckerberg was back in 2017 for ‘Round B’ which deposited $16M into Panorama’s coffers. Buoyed by its COVID success, Panorama came back for ‘Round C’ raising $60M from yet another Zuckerberg-led consortium in September, 2021.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Hawaii Free Presshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngHawaii Free Press2021-10-18 04:54:442021-10-18 04:56:28Panorama: Hawaii DoE Paying Zuckerberg Company to Collect Data on Students
In plain language: the jihadist regime of Iran has hacked into the private accounts of US, EU and Israeli defense tech companies, and however Iran chooses to use this information, no one is announcing what the fallout might potentially be. Microsoft only admitted that the breach “supports Iranian government tracking of adversary security services and maritime shipping in the Middle East.”
On a larger scale than this latest breach, much is falling into place in the “national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Not long ago, Iran was in a losing battle with the former US administration, but it is now enjoying a lucky break and the potential to expand its operations unimpeded. Furthermore, Biden is all too eager to continue stuffing Iran’s coffers with billions of dollars under the guise of a revived Iran deal, despite the fact that Iran is enriching uranium at rates only seen in countries making bombs. And in a gesture of humiliating disrespect, Iran recently “rebuked” Biden, and made further demands for “far more sanctions relief than it received under the 2015 nuclear deal,” a deal it has admitted to breaking.
The Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) announced on Monday that Iranian hackers successfully targeted US and Israeli defense technology companies.
More than 250 Microsft [sic] Office 365 accounts linked to the US, EU and the Israeli government were hacked into through extensive password spraying.
In addition, Persian Gulf ports of entry and global maritime transportation companies with business presence in the Middle East were also targeted.
The hacking “likely supports the national interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Microsoft said.
The companies hacked included defense companies that support US, EU, and Israeli government partners producing military-grade radars, drone technology, satellite systems, and emergency response communication systems…..
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2021-10-18 04:13:012021-10-18 04:16:02Iran Successfully Hacked Over 250 Microsoft Accounts Linked to U.S. and Israeli Defense Technology Companies
