BLOODLETTING

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Paul Edwards

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'Gaza and Ukraine: These repugnant bloodlettings share one great similarity: both are funded by The Empire. Americans pay for the Zionist genocide, and the proxy “war” in Ukraine, and seem glad to do it. They feel justified, sure that these shows of organized mass murder deserve their support...'

Bloodletting at the barber-surgeon's salon in the mid-17th century. The occasion was often accompanied by drinking and merrymaking.

I’ll bet you thought this was going to be about Gaza and Ukraine, right?  Well, it is.  Those two hideous, psychopathic exercises in mass murder can’t be avoided in any discourse now.  Even in essays about gender dysphoria or oyster farming, those ghastly, nouminous horrors hang behind them, loom over them.

Bloodlettings are what these horrors are.  We know what we mean by that.  We mean wholesale slaughter of human beings.

The term originally described removing blood from a patient to cure a condition, a foolish, and frequently fatal, piece of medical hocus pocus, solemnly practiced in its benighted era.  Only recently has it come to refer to organized military murder.

The abattoir of The Somme in WWI, in which thousands of men were fed into an imbecilic mass death machine popularized it.  Since then it has been applied to any grand disaster in war.  Of course, Gaza is not a “war”at all, nor is Ukraine a real one.

The Empire calls them “wars”, because that designation makes them acceptable to our morally zombie public, apathetic to the point of catatonia.  “Wars”, it tells its vacuous masses, are waged to defend The Empire, and since people have to die in them, it’s better it’s someone else instead of you.  All you slugs need to do is to support our killing.

Gaza, as all the cowardly world knows, is a simple massacre.  It is the indiscriminate murder of civilian people because of their race.  Nazi Zionist Israel—the 4th Reich, the avatar of Hitler’s Germany—is murdering Gaza’s people, and those in the West Bank, because they are Palestinians from whom they stole the land their sick, vicious, illegal state is built on.

Israel did an extensive, but not sufficiently thorough, job of exterminating Palestinians in establishing their Ganif state in 1948.  They left many of them alive and have lived to regret it.

Six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab was cold-bloodedly murdered along with five relatives and two medics sent to rescue her during an Israeli tank attack in Gaza City on January 29, 2024. Besides being shelled routinely to smithereens, or buried under rubble, numerous Palestinian children are shot deliberately in the head by IDF snipers, a depraved practice the world continues to ignore. 
(Photo: family photo)

Palestinians—those left—were not reconciled to being raped of their land.  They clung to life and organized efforts to regain it.  They have failed repeatedly, but never given up, regardless of the immense suffering inflicted on them by sick, subhuman Nazi Israel, which is now attempting to eradicate them altogether.

"Seldom does an entire country merit dissolution, but the rabid fanaticism of the vast majority of Israelis demands it.  With few dissenters, its evil racist mentality is ubiquitous and ineradicable..."

For more than 80 years Palestinians have been forced to live like perennial migrants in their own homeland, while being deprived of the most elementary human rights.

It will fail, and destroy itself in the effort, which will be justice.  Seldom does an entire country merit dissolution, but the rabid fanaticism of the vast majority of Israelis demands it.  With few dissenters, its evil racist mentality is ubiquitous and ineradicable.

Barring a war it is insanely seeking, that will leave it a pulverized inferno, its end will come from its own raging poison, as when a wasp or scorpion, believing itself attacked, stings itself to death.

Ukraine’s story, very different, is comparably ugly. Precipitated, by The Empire’s anxiety over its displacement as world hegemon, it aimed to defeat Russia by driving supine NATO’s expansion to its borders, using Ukraine as its latest pawn of choice.  If this is not clear to you by now, it’s because you refuse to know it.

They share one great similarity: both are funded by The Empire.  Americans pay for the Zionist genocide, and the proxy “war” in Ukraine, and seem glad to do it.  They feel justified, sure that these shows of organized mass murder deserve their support.

Both our Presidential candidates support the genocide.  One is running a campaign of “joy'”, the result of her endorsement of it, perhaps.  The other agrees, but won’t pay for Ukraine’s suicide.  Americans will be shocked when both horrors end badly for The Empire, after having invested in them so much idiot emotion.

The process of maintaining one’s ignorance is difficult when it means flatly ignoring facts.  That it is also contemptible, only becomes clear when events make it impossible to pretend.  Then, one has to admit to being the egregious ass one is.

This is what awaits most vacant, oblivious Americans.  In the best case, we will be seen as the most despicable herd of moral defectives since Germany under the Nazis.  Far greater danger exists in the potential each horror presents for world war.  If it comes, Americans will find their own suffering much harder to take than that of the people of Gaza and Ukraine they funded.

Bloodletting as a treatment, though useless, fooled all Europe in its time.  The same can be said about The Empire’s propaganda.  For decades the stream of exceptionalist bullshit has inundated Americans, reinforcing their stupidity, and compounding their ignorance.  Like bloodletting, though pernicious, it has continued for generations, doing immense harm to the body politic.

It is now, at last, being exposed, by the principled and heroic, for what it is: a hollow, dangerous, debilitating sham.  There is a great race now underway between the awakening of a morally torpid people, and the destruction and dissolution of their sick and evil state.  How ironic to awaken to the sound of your own explosive demise.


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The German mainstream is collapsing

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Thomas Fazi

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The German mainstream is collapsing

Fazi notes that a new left-right populist spectrum is emerging in Germany, but the phenom is not seen just in Germany, but hroughout the collective West, including, quite possibly, the United States.

AfD leaders in Germany

The imperialist-aligned establishment is throwing a "quarantine" fence around AfD to keep them from forming coalitions, a phenom also seen in France and possibly other countries in the EU and beyond. The AfD, however, is staunchly pro-capitalist, so this is not a party with an ultimate solution to Germany's long-term problems.

This weekend’s regional elections in Saxony and Thuringia have revealed significant shifts in the German political landscape, reflecting a country grappling with multiple crises. Although these were only regional elections, their outcomes carry national implications, particularly given the participation of nearly three-quarters of the five-million electorate. Here are the main takeaways:

The political mainstream has collapsed

The main opposition party, the centre-right CDU, maintained its dominant position in Saxony by a tiny margin. But the party now faces a choice: change or continue to shed votes to the AfD. The CDU’s involvement in centrist coalitions, driven by the necessity of excluding the AfD, has diluted its political identity. Also quite paradoxically, the rise of the AfD has been fuelled precisely by the migration policies of former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel.

The CDU now finds itself weakened, unable to form coalitions without compromising its traditional stances, and without striking alliances that would have been unthinkable a few years ago, such as with the newly formed left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — an option that is currently being explored by both parties. Incredibly, the BSW is now the third-largest party in both states — an impressive feat for a party that was launched just a few months ago.

For a deep dive into the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, and how her blend of old-school leftist economics, pro-peace and anti-NATO foreign policy, and conservative cultural outlook is redefining populism — and upending German politics — see this recent article of mine. (It is reproduced as an addendum below.—Ed)

The transplantation of the FRG’s economic order into the former GDR was the most brutal neoliberal shock therapy ever implemented in a European country...The first instrument of this shock therapy was monetary integration, which involved the former GDR’s adoption of the West-German mark, which was highly overvalued relative to the fundamentals of the East-German economy.

Migration and war: the central issues

The vote has confirmed that migration remains the “mother of all domestic policy problems”. The inability to manage migration effectively has eroded public trust in traditional parties. The AfD’s success can be attributed largely to its hardline stance on immigration, a position that has gained traction even among former left-wing voters who now support the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. This development suggests that migration will dominate the upcoming federal elections, turning them into a de facto referendum on Germany’s immigration policies. But opposition to war and to the government’s belligerent approach to the Russia-Ukraine crisis clearly also played a role, especially among young people. Sahra Wagenknecht, in particular, has put opposition to NATO and to the deployment US long-range missiles on German territory, and the question of détente with Russia, at the centre of her party’s platform. 

A new left-right populist spectrum  

The most interesting takeaway from the elections is probably the emergence of a new, and unique in the European panorama, left-right populist spectrum, in the form of the AfD and the BSW, which collectively make up almost 50 percent of the votes. This underscores that dissatisfaction with the established parties is even larger than what right-populists parties alone are able to capture: a lesson for other countries as well. For now the BSW has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, which is understandable from a tactical standpoint: many disaffected voters from the centre and the left are turning to the BSW precisely because it is not the AfD. But in the future the mood might shift: if the establishment refuses to respond to popular concerns, the demand for a left-right populist front could grow. Meanwhile, the fact that both ends of the political spectrum are converging on similar migration policies suggests that this issue may hopefully be approached more pragmatically, rather than through the lens of morality.

An increasingly divided country

One cannot understand the populist uprising sweeping eastern Germany without understanding the economic, social and political trauma that reunification — or better, the East’s annexation by the West — was for many eastern Germans, and how this legacy continues to this day. As I recently wrote in Compact:

The transplantation of the FRG’s economic order into the former GDR was the most brutal neoliberal shock therapy ever implemented in a European country.

The first instrument of this shock therapy was monetary integration, which involved the former GDR’s adoption of the West-German mark, which was highly overvalued relative to the fundamentals of the East-German economy. This shattered the profitability of East-German firms, which quickly became insolvent, resulting in the immediate collapse of GDP and a sharp rise in unemployment. Most ominously, it kicked off what one study described as a “dramatic process of de-industrialization”.  

The second instrument was the mass privatization of state-owned firms, houses, and land by the infamous Treuhandanstalt, a West-German government-controlled trust agency that took control of almost all the assets of the former GDR with the aim of privatizing them as quickly as possible. By 1992, more than 80 percent of firms had already been privatized or closed. The overwhelming majority of the firms were sold to West German investors and companies—at bargain prices, of course. 

In other words, virtually the entire economy of the former socialist state passed into the hands of West-German capitalists.

[This is reflected in] the stark economic disparities that persist between West and East Germany more than three decades after reunification, when the territories of the GDR were incorporated into the FRG in 1990. The states that make up the former East Germany generally have lower GDP per capita and wages, higher unemployment and poverty rates, and poorer infrastructure and public services than those in the West. In 2017, net national income per capita in East Germany was still only 73 percent of what it was in West Germany. 

A wake-up call

In conclusion, the recent regional elections serve as a wake-up call for Germany. They highlight the urgent need for political realignment and the dangers of ignoring the concerns of significant portions of the electorate. The implications extend beyond Germany, affecting its role in the European Union and the broader geopolitical landscape.

This is a longer version of an article that appeared in UnHerd.

Thanks for reading. Putting out high-quality journalism requires constant research, most of which goes unpaid, so if you appreciate my writing please consider upgrading to a paid subscription if you haven’t already. Aside from a fuzzy feeling inside of you, you’ll get access to exclusive articles and commentary.

Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope 

Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)


Addendum
Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Germany's 'left-conservative' has redefined populism
Sahra Wagenknecht

Sahra Wagenknecht: her inteligent political formula may actually represent salvation for Germany and the continent—if the US-aligned satrap establishment will allow.

AUGUST 31, 2024

Few would have predicted that Germany, long known for having the continent’s most boring politics, would become the epicentre of Europe’s new populist revolt — let alone one coming from both the Right and the Left. And yet, that is exactly what is happening.

In the recent European elections, as amply expected, the Right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party overtook the centre-left SPD for the first time, becoming the country’s second-largest party after the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance. Meanwhile, the two major parties between them gained less than 45% of the votes — down from 70% just 20 years ago. It was the biggest collapse of the German political mainstream since reunification.

More than anything, the elections revealed that post-reunification Germany remains neatly divided along its former border: while western Germans are also signalling growing dissatisfaction with the current SPD-Greens-FDP coalition, but remaining within the bounds of mainstream politics, eastern Germans are revolting against the political establishment itself.

Thus, with state elections taking place in three eastern states over the next month — in Saxony and Thuringia this weekend, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — it’s no wonder the German centre is bracing itself for collapse. But while it’s a foregone conclusion that the AfD will make massive gains, with the party leading the polls in two of the three states, the real surprise may prove to be, once again, Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party, which is currently polling between 11% and 19%.

For now, Wagenknecht has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, as well as with any party that supports arms deliveries to Ukraine (which means most mainstream parties). But her mere presence on the ballot will further erode support for the ruling coalition — and make it very hard, if not impossible, for the latter to form centrist coalition governments at the state level.

The Wagenknecht phenomenon is fascinating — and unique — for several reasons. Not only has she managed to establish the BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months, but she’s also running on a platform that is unique in the Western political panorama, at least among electorally relevant parties. Though Wagenknecht tends to avoid framing her party in tired Left-Right terms, its platform can best be described as left-conservative.

In short, this means it mixes demands that would once have been associated with the socialist-labour Left — interventionist and redistributive government policies to regulate capitalist market forces, higher pensions and minimum wages, generous welfare and social security policies, taxes on wealth — with positions that today would be characterised as culturally conservative: first and foremost, a recognition of the importance of preserving and fostering traditions, stability, security and a sense of community.

Flailing Germany is the future of Europe

This inevitably entails more restrictive immigration policies and a rejection of the multiculturalist dogma, in which minorities refuse to recognise the superiority of common rules, threatening social cohesion. As the party’s founding text reads: “Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be enriching. However, this only applies as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overburden our country and its infrastructure, and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful.” What this looks like in practice became clear in 2015, when Wagenknecht strongly criticised then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, invoking the mantra “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). A year later, after a series of terror attacks perpetrated by migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do it!’.”

More recently, following a fatal knife attack in Mannheim, Wagenknecht again lashed out at the government’s immigration policies: “We basically financed [the migrant attacker’s] radicalisation as well. He lived off us, off the money of the citizens.” Her focus on benefits here is crucial. For Wagenknecht, the promotion of social cohesion, including by restricting immigration flows, shouldn’t just be seen as a positive end in and of itself, such as for reasons of public safety, but also as a precondition for the pursuit of economically redistributive policies, and even of democracy itself. Only a political community defined by a collective identity — a demos — is capable of committing itself to a democratic discourse and to a related decision-making process, and of generating the affective ties and bonds of solidarity that are needed to legitimise and sustain redistributive policies between classes and/or regions. Simply put, if there is no demos, there can be no effective democracy, let alone a social democracy.

This is also why Wagenknecht places a strong emphasis on the importance of national sovereignty, and is highly critical of the European Union: not only because the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic and prone to oligarchic capture [actually captured ab initio by the globalist oligarchy.—Ed] , but because it cannot be otherwise, given that today the nation-state remains the main source of people’s collective identity and sense of belonging, and therefore the only territorial institution (or at least the largest) through which it is possible to organise democracy and achieve social balance. As she has said: “The call for ‘an end to the nation-state’ is ultimately a call for ‘an end to democracy and the welfare state’”.

In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist. Now, this is partly to do with the fact that she was born on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in former East Germany in 1969. She became interested in philosophy and Marxist economics as a teenager, but the end of the socialist GDR, in 1989, was, according to her biographer Christian Schneider, “the moment in time when the politician Wagenknecht was born”. She experienced it as a “unique horror”: like many East Germans, she believed in a reformed socialism, not in embracing West Germany’s capitalist path.

 

“In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist.”

That same year she joined the East German communist party, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then, following reunification, became one of the leading figures of the party’s successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Even back then, she stood out as being both more radical and more conservative than her communist peers. “There was now this young woman who desperately wanted to go back to the old days” of the GDR, as one former leader of the PDS put it.

When, in 2007, the PDS merged with a splinter of the SPD to give birth to Die Linke (The Left), Wagenknecht quickly emerged as one of the party’s leading voices — and the face of the German radical Left. Die Linke’s support rocketed to 12% of the vote in 2009’s elections to the Bundestag, and remained close to there for nearly a decade. Wagenknecht also became a key figure in the German parliament, serving as parliamentary co-chairwoman of her party from 2015 to 2019 and as leader of the opposition (against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition) until 2017. It was there that she earned a reputation for her powerful rhetoric and ability to challenge mainstream political narratives.

Her relationship with Die Linke, however, grew increasingly strained over the years: while the party became captured by the kind of “progressive neoliberalism” that has infected, to one degree or another, all Western Left-wing parties, Wagenknecht remained true to her old-school socialist roots. Her views on immigration and other issues — which would once have been completely non-controversial in socialist circles — were quickly becoming anathema on the Left. Eventually, in November 2019, Wagenknecht announced her resignation as parliamentary leader, citing burnout. Two years later, in the federal elections, Die Linkegarnered less than 5% of ballots and lost nearly half its seats — its worst result ever. For Wagenknecht, this was not a surprise.

Will East Germans ever feel at home?

For Wagenknecht, this new movement’s authoritarian shade became clear during the pandemic. Unlike virtually all her colleagues — and most of the German Left — Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns” and coercive mass vaccination programme (she refused to take the vaccine herself). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagenknecht has also emerged as the most vocal critic of Germany’s military support for Ukraine and the sanctions regime. This escalated her rift with Die Linke, which voted in favour of economic sanctions against Russia.

At that point, their break-up became inevitable — and finally, late last year, Wagenknecht announced the launch of her new party. The choice led to the unravelling of Die Linke, which was forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, and has now virtually disappeared from the political map, receiving only 2.7% of the votes in June’s European elections.

Since the launch of BSW, Wagenknecht has put the question of détente with Russia at the centre of her party’s platform. On several occasions, she has highlighted how Germany’s subordination to the US-Nato proxy war strategy in Ukraine, and refusal to engage in diplomatic talks with Russia, is self-defeating from an economic as well as a geopolitical standpoint. Not only is the oil and gas embargo against Russia the main reason for Germany’s collapsing economy, but the government is, she told the Bundestag, “negligently playing with the security and in the worst case the lives of millions of people in Germany”. More recently, she has strongly condemned the government’s plan to deploy US long-range missiles on German territory and, perhaps most dramatically, challenged the omerta surrounding the Nord Stream attack. Indeed, following recent revelations about the German government’s possible cover-up of Ukrainian involvement, she called for a public inquiry, saying that, “should German authorities have known in advance about the attack plan on Nord Stream 1 and 2, then we would have the scandal of the century in German politics”.

It’s important to note that Wagenknecht views opposition to the proxy war against Russia as part of a much deeper rethinking of Germany’s geopolitical strategy. Its aim, as Wolfgang Streeck has written, is to “free it from the geostrategic grip of the United States, guided by German national survival interests instead of Nibelungentreue, or loyalty, to America’s claim to global political domination”. This necessarily entails re-establishing long-term political and economic relations with Russia, which could potentially lay the groundwork for a new Eurasian security architecture, and even a Eurasian community of states and economies.

Elsewhere, Wagenknecht has criticised the government’s “green” and gender-affirming policies, arguing that “Germany’s energy supply cannot currently be ensured by renewable energies alone”, and voting against a bill passed by the German parliament earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender. “Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby,” she said.

Germany's authoritarian turn

If that seems blunt, that’s because it is. But taken together, Wagenknecht’s old-school leftist economics, pro-peace and anti-Nato foreign policy, and conservative cultural outlook is resonating with voters. And as a result, she now finds herself in the crosshairs of both the establishment and her populist competitors. Indeed, on the Right in particular, the common criticism levelled at her is that, by drawing voters away from the AfD, she is weakening and dividing Germany’s populist front.

Yet the evidence for this is somewhat shaky. Rather, opinion polls show that the emergence of the BSW does not seem to have overly affected the AfD, which continues to maintain a 30% vote share in several eastern German states and 20% nationally. In fact, according to a recent study by the Hans Böckler Foundation, the BSW is actually drawing voters mostly from the centre and the Left — Die Linke and the SPD — rather than the AfD. The BSW’s staunchly Left-wing economic agenda, which puts it at odds with the neoliberal economic policy of the AfD, would appear to be key here: the study shows that the BSW draws support mainly from socially marginalised and low-income groups — traditionally, the classic target group of social-democratic parties. It also explains why she enjoys much stronger support in eastern Germany, which has significantly lower GDP per capita and wages, and higher unemployment and poverty rates than western Germany.

This suggests that Wagenknecht’s left-conservative agenda is filling a political space that was previously vacant, hoovering up German voters who are disillusioned with mainstream politics, and even very critical of immigration, but nonetheless feel uncomfortable voting for a party that has undeniably xenophobic or racist traits. The BSW, by contrast, represents a much more palatable “non-extremist” option for these would-be populist voters. This is further confirmed by the fact that, despite its tough stance on immigration, the BSW appears to be winning over an above-average number of voters from migrant backgrounds, a demographic that has traditionally voted for centre-left parties. In short, the evidence suggests that Wagenknecht is actually broadening the populist front rather than simply crowding out the existing populist pool.

It is this, along with the fact that Wagenknecht is among the top three most popular politicians in Germany, that explains why the establishment has decided to go on the attack. In recent weeks, the media there has launched a relentless campaign against Wagenknecht and the BSW, predictably focused on claims that she is a “Russian propagandist” — or “Vladimir Putinova”, as one article called her. Even more desperately, some have attempted to paint Wagenknecht, a literal communist, as a “far-Right extremist”. Only this week, Politico, which is owned by German media titan Axel Springer, unironically asked: “Is Germany’s rising superstar so far-Left she’s far-Right?”

The answer, of course, is a boring nein. And no doubt a far more interesting question will be thrown up by this weekend’s results: with a general election scheduled for next year, has Germany finally found a politician capable of breaking through its ideological wall?

Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

THOMAS FAZI
 
SELECT COMMENT
Gpcus

2 hrs ago

"Uno spettro si aggira per l'Europa: lo spettro del populismo destro-sinistro. Tutte i leader della vecchia Europa si sono coalizzati in una sacra caccia alle streghe contro questo spettro: da Mario Draghi a Ursula Von der Layen, da Macron a Scholz, liberali francesi e centristi tedeschi"... non si vedeva tanta agitazione nelle nostre elites politico-accademico-mediatiche dai moti del 1848 e la stesura del Manifesto, ahahaha!
 


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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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Why AI ‘misinformation’ algorithms and research are mostly expensive garbage

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By Norman Fenton
WHERE ARE THE NUMBERS?
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Why AI 'misinformation' algorithms and research are mostly expensive garbage

The Hunter Biden laptop story is just one of many stories which were deemed by the Main Stream Media (and most academics) to be 'misinformation' but which were subsequently revealed as true. Indeed Mark Zuckerberg has now admitted that Facebook (Meta), along with the other big tech companies, were pressured into censoring the story before the 2020 US election and also subsequently pressured by the Biden/Harris administration to censor stories about Covid which were wrongly classified as misinformation.

 

The problem is that the same kind of people who decided what was and was not misinformation (generally people on the political Left*) were also the ones who were funded to produce AI algorithms to 'learn':

b) what new claims were 'misinformation'.

Between 2016 and 2022, I attended many research seminars in the UK on using AI and Machine Learning to 'combat misinformation and disinfomation'. From 2020, the example of Hunter Biden's laptop was often used as a key 'learning' example, so algorithms classified it as 'misinformation' with subclassifications like 'Russian propaganda' or 'conspiracy theory'.

adamant that such videos were misinformation 'cheap tricks'.

Biden kissing little girls

But the academics presenting these Trump, Biden, and other political, examples ridiculed anybody who dared question the reliability of the self-appointed oracles who determined what was and was not misinformation. At one major conference taking place on zoom I posted in the chat: "Is anybody who does not hate Trump welcome in this meeting". The answer was "No. Trump supporters are not welcome and if you are one you should leave now". Sadly, most academics do not believe in freedom of thought, let alone freedom of expression when it comes to any views that challenge the 'progressive' narrative on anything.

In addition to the Biden and Trump related 'misinformation' stories which turned out to be true, there were also multiple examples of covid related stories (such as those claiming very low fatality rates and lack of effectiveness and safety of the vaccines) classified as misinformation that also turned out to be true. In all these cases anybody pushing these stories was classified as a 'spreader of misinformation', 'conspiracy theorist' etc. And it is these kinds of assumptions which drive how the AI ‘misinformation’ algorithms that were developed and implemented by organisations like Facebook and Twitter worked.

Let me give a simplified example The algorithms generally start with a database of statements which are pre-classified as either ‘misinformation’ (even though many of which turned out to be true), or ‘not misinformation’ (even though many of which turned out to be false). For example, the following were classified as misinformation:

  • “Hunter Biden left a laptop with evidence of his criminal behaviour in a repair shop”

  • “The covid vaccines can cause serious injury and death”

The converse of any statement classified as ‘misinformation’ was classified as 'not misinformation'.

A subset of these statements are used to “train” the algorithm and others to “test” the algorithm.

So, suppose the laptop statement is one of those used to train the algorithm and the vaccine statement is one of those used to test the algorithm. Then, because the laptop statement is classified as misinformation, the algorithm learns that people who repost or like a tweet with the laptop statement are ‘misinformation spreaders’. Based on other posts these people make, the algorithm might additionally classify them as, for example, 'far right'. The algorithm is likely to find that some people already classified as 'far right' or 'misinformation spreader' – or people they are connected to - also post a statement like “The covid vaccines can cause serious injury and death”. In that case the algorithm will have ‘learnt’ that this statement is most likely misinformation. And, hey presto, since it gives the ‘correct’ classification to the ‘test’ statement, the algorithm is ‘validated’.

Moreover, when presented with a new test statement such as “The covid vaccines do not stop infection from covid” (which was also pre-classified as ‘misinformation’) the algorithm will also ‘correctly learn’ that this is ‘misinformation’ because it has already 'learnt' that the statement “The covid vaccines can cause serious injury and death” is misinformation and that people who claimed the latter statement- or people connected with them - also claimed the former statement.

The way I have outlined how the AI process is designed to detect 'misinformation', is also the way that 'world leading misinformation experts' set up their experiment to "profile" the "personality type" that is susceptible to misinformation. The same methods are also now used to profile and monitor people that the academic 'experts' claim are 'far right' or racist.

Hence, an enormous amount of research was (and is still) spent on developing 'clever' algorithms which simply censor the truth online or promote lies. Much of the funding for this research is justified on the grounds that 'misinformation' is now one of the greatest threats to international security. Indeed, in Jan 2024 the Word Economic Forum declared that "misinformation and disinformation were the biggest short term global risks". European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also declared that “misinformation and disinformation are greater threats to the global business community than war and climate change”. In the UK alone, the Government has provided many hundreds of millions of pounds of funding to numerous University research labs working on misinformation. In March 2024 the Turing Institute alone (which has several dedicated teams working on this and closely related areas) was awarded £100 million of extra Government funding - it had already received some £700 million since its inception in 2015. Somewhat ironically, the UK HM Government 2023 National Risk Register includes as a chronic risk:

Yet it continues to prioritise research funding in AI to combat this increased risk of 'harmful misinformation and disinformation'!

As Mike Benz has made clear in his recent work and interviews (backed up with detailed evidence), almost all of the funding for the Universities/research institutes world wide doing this kind of work, along with the 'fact checkers' that use it, comes from the US State Dept, NATO and the British Foreign Office who, in the wake of the Brexit vote and Trump election in 2016, were determined to stop the rise of 'populism' everywhere. It is this objective which has driven the mad AI race to censor the internet. Look at this video in which Mike Benz walks us through an event that took place in 2019:

it was hosted by the Atlantic Council (a NATO front organisation) to train journalists from mainstream organisations all around the world on how to 'counter misinformation'. Note how they make it clear that 'misinformation' includes for them 'malinformation' which they define as information that is true but, but which might harm their own narrative. They explain how to muzzle such 'malinformation’, especially from the (then) President Trump's social media posts in advance of the 2020 election. Despite claims that this did not happen (and indeed any such claims were themselves classified as misinformation) the journalists involved in this subsequently boasted very publicly that they not only did it but that it prevented Trump's re-election in 2020.

TIME mag

Update: Two highly relevant articles from colleagues:

* Note: Due to the prevailing instigated confusion in the political culture of the United States, what media, politicians and the public in general call "the left" is not the left by any criteria—definitional, economic, historical, or even cultural—but simply US corporatist interventionist liberals (usually Democrats), and an aggregation of fake leftist groups such as the establishment-supported anti-communist "breadtubers," anarchists, and other hard to classify currents objectively collaborating with the system.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Norman Fenton, PhD (with Martin Neil) are pioneers in exposing the flawed science and statistics behind the COVID-19 event. Their book Fighting Goliath, is available on Amazon. 


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  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
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American-Israeli Settler JUSTIFIES Colonialism in STUNNING Interview

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Keaton Weiss • Russell Dobular
DUE DISSIDENCE

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American-Israeli Settler JUSTIFIES Colonialism in STUNNING Interview
Due Dissidence

Aug 31, 2024
Massive, maybe even wilful, ignorance underlies the attitudes of many colonialist setters, suggests this interview with a true believer in the cause of Israel.

Support the show:
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Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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Zuckerberg Defies the Borg | (A Report in 3 Acts)

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Matt Taibbi • Reclaim the Net

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(Act One)
MATT TAIBBI
Zuckerberg Defies the Borg

As governments everywhere tighten their grip on the Internet, Meta's CEO blows a hole in years of official lies. How authorities brought this on themselves

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in 2018. The Democrats—the Deep State's "designated party"— led the charge. The politicians were after more robust censorship, even if they took pains not to say it so plainly.

On April 9th, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a Facebook Files” series, revealing documents showing Meta executives worrying about “continued pressure… including from the White House” to remove content.

Zuckerberg yesterday sent a letter that in a country with a functioning news media would have major ramifications. Not in direct response to Jordan’s April query, it appears to have been sent at Zuckerberg’s own volition, and is filled with passages deeply embarrassing to authorities. The first is about pressure to “censor” — specifically “censor,” not “moderate” or “exercise oversight”:

In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a bit of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree… I believe the government was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it…

Another was about Meta’s blocking of Miranda Devine’s 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden after being warned by the FBI:

The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have demoted the story.

Zuckerberg’s letter is a stiff poke in the eye to authorities, who brought this on themselves.

(Act Two)
by Reclaim the Net

AN APOLOGY TOUR?
Mark Zuckerberg Confirms Biden Administration Pressured Facebook on Censorship, Admits to Throttling Hunter Biden Story
In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform's content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted "pressure" on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration's approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.

"In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration...repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire," Zuckerberg stated, reflecting on the administration's actions which he now believes were "wrong." He expressed regret that Meta was not more outspoken against this pressure at the time: "Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions."

In a separate disclosure, Zuckerberg detailed interactions with the FBI, which had warned the company of a potential Russian disinformation campaign targeting the Biden family and their association with Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. This led to the suppression of a New York Post story involving corruption allegations against Joe Biden's family, which was later determined not to be Russian disinformation. Zuckerberg expressed regret over this decision as well, noting significant changes in Meta's policy to avoid such actions in the future.

"It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," Zuckerberg conceded, alleging a policy shift to prevent future such occurrences: "We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Additionally, Zuckerberg addressed his contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support electoral infrastructure during the pandemic, aiming to assist local election jurisdictions. He defended these contributions as non-partisan, though acknowledged public skepticism about the impartiality of such support.

"My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another," he affirmed, signaling a withdrawal from similar contributions in future electoral cycles.
LOSING CONTROL?
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Laments Decline in Big Tech Collaboration Since 2016
Participants in the Democratic National Convention (DNC) were comfortable speaking publicly about what Congress is investigating as conduct that eventually (after the 2020 ballot) turned into government-Big Tech collusion.

And they are doing this by reminiscing about "the good old days" after the 2016 election when major social platforms panicked and got cowed into "working" with Democrats.

"Election integrity" is how supporters of the practice frame the concern that was and is being addressed as platforms have their "calls" with officials.

A University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism panel heard that there is more "deceptive" content and "manipulating voter sentiment" than ever - and yet social media companies are "sharply downsizing election integrity departments," as one report about the event put it.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief information security officer Jude Meche shared that the relationship with these companies is now allegedly not what it used to be.

"Following the 2016 election, we had calls with X and with Meta all the time. They were working with us. That no longer exists, that all faded quickly. We don't have counterparts in these companies anymore," said Meche, whose committee's job is specifically to get Democrat candidates elected to the US Senate.

What happened in 2016, of course, was Donald Trump's victory. Professor of ethics and finance at New York University Michael Posner cautioned the panel that "we're back to 2016."

Posner was referring to social media companies backtracking on their promises to increase "content moderation" made in the wake of that election and accused, or perhaps warned them, that they have been allowed to act "with impunity" since.

But, the Twitter Files, for example, say that those who have been acting with impunity during that time are actually Democrats, and their administration since 2020.

Posner is concerned about the number of people companies like X and Meta these days employ to police and censor speech (election integrity and content moderation are what he calls it) - compared to 2016, when "there was a sense that something had to be done."

If this DNC panel is anything to go by, there is once again "a sense that something has to be done" among Democrats - but roping in social platforms, particularly, it seems, X, to "cooperate" is now a very different proposition compared to what was doable only a few years ago.
CHEERING FROM THE SIDELINES
Establishment Voices Attack Telegram Over Free Speech Protections in Wake of Founder's Arrest
Legacy media and some establishment figures are busy justifying the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, attacking the platform, but also making not-so-veiled threats aimed at other platform owners.

Ukrainian-born former member of the US National Security Council Alexander Vindman, who played a key role in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, took to X (calling it "Twitter") - to warn the social site and its owner Elon Musk that there could be "broader implications" in the context of the Durov arrest.
To Musk specifically, Vindman's extraordinary message, which reads very much like a threat, is that he "should be worried." As ever, the accusation is that X is allowing "misinformation" - that is, not censoring enough. And the implication is that unless that happens, there could be more arrests.

In one post Vindman went through the Democrat keywords (mentioning "MAGA tech bros," "weirdos," referring to Trump as "sexual predator") and expressed admiration for the EU's way of "enforcing content moderation" - ostensibly, as opposed to his adoptive country.

Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was also on X to reiterate how EU elites see, and treat the issue of free speech while throwing around dramatically-worded accusations: "Telegram sits at the center of global cybercrime... Free speech is not without responsibilities!"
It follows that other platform owners could face a situation similar to Durov's.
Officials who no longer hold formal office often serve to express some extreme points of view that those in government would rather not say publicly, and other handy mouthpieces are always legacy media outlets.

Thus the Guardian sees Telegram as a platform for "information and disinformation" about the war in Ukraine, but then goes on to brand it as the favorite app of "racists, violent extremists, antisemites" - this is the Guardian giving life to claims made by a pro-censorship group.

Europeans and the war again, and the Washington Post decided to disseminate the accusation originating from a senior EU security official that Telegram is "a primary platform for Russia to disseminate disinformation in Europe and Ukraine."

According to CBS, the same is true of another war: "Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have been a huge source of misinformation and disinformation in the Israel-Hamas war. Misinformation experts say it's because they are difficult to moderate."

And the New York Times decided to hand-pick several of the worst examples among the hundreds of millions of Telegram users, to vilify apps in general and argue in favor of censorship.
BLURRED LINES
Government and Private Groups Still Unite to Target Election "Misinformation"
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - a part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - has been enlisting private entities to help achieve one of its goals.

According to CISA, it would be to combat election misinformation and secure "election infrastructure" - while according to critics, it is to continue with the mission of censoring lawful speech "disfavored" by the current authorities seeking to remain where they are after November - by hook or crook.

CISA doesn't feel the need to hide this activity that has been taking place since 2018 through a program called the Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council (SCC). It is here that US government entities - federal, state, and local - meet private groups ("partners" as CISA calls them).

We obtained the latest document for you here.

What's coordinated here, according to the agency, and as was reported by The Federalist, is the reduction of "cyber, physical, and operational security risks to election infrastructure." The coordination is done to the point where government and private sector have adopted "a unified approach."

Information sharing ahead of the presidential election is also happening as SCC works with the Government Coordinating Council (GCC).

According to CISA, this collaboration is now "unprecedented" while what is referred to as "private sector owners and operators" sit, as part of SCC, in meetings with the FBI and election officials.

But CISA has other partners - the Election Integrity Project (EIP), formed months before the 2020 election, which has been blasted by the House Judiciary Committee as a tool for the government to bypass the First Amendment and censor speech.

The CISA site has a document, "Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation: Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials," put together by CISA/GCC Joint Mis/Disinformation Working Group.
In it, CISA "defines" what each of its targets is supposed to be, and ends up doing what all "misinformation warriors" do - offer subjective and broad descriptions susceptible to interpretation, instead of clear definitions.

For example, "malinformation" is said to be information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate."

The document mentions "delegitimization of election results" as one form of mis, dis, and mal information.

It's unclear if CISA has both 2016 and 2020 elections in mind - or only one - but this is how the activity is described: "Narratives or content that delegitimizes election results or sows distrust in the integrity of the process based on false or misleading claims."

(Act Three)
By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
Global Research
Techno-Fascism: The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users

“Internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability… Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were ‘deplatformed’ or otherwise injured.”—Justice Samuel Alito, dissenting in Murthy v. Missouri 

Mark

 

 

Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

Image is from ABC News

Zuckerberg testifies about Meta’s child safety policies in Senate hearing

Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

This is the very definition of technofascism.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal:

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

This is how it starts.

First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”

Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.

By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Watch and learn.

We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now willeventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

Be warned: it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry. [Which it already does to a truly alarming extent.—Ed]

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.

With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.

Seventy-plus years after Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a fictional world in which books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled, we find ourselves navigating an eerily similar reality.

*

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One Month Before Global Research’s Anniversary 

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org.

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Global Research, August 28, 2024
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Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.

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Facebook
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Telegram
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS