Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 572

Has Globalisation Ended?

The Next Recession

Apart from inflation and war, what grips current economic thought is the apparent failure of what mainstream economics likes to call ‘globalisation’.  What mainstream economics means by globalisation is the expansion of trade and capital flows freely across borders.  In 2000, the IMF identified four basic aspects of globalisation: trade and transactions, capital and investment movements, migration and movement of people, and the dissemination of knowledge.  All these components apparently took off from the early 1980s as part of the ‘neoliberal’ reversal of previous national macro-management policies adopted by governments in the environment of the Bretton Woods world economic order (ie US hegemony).  Then the call was to break down tariff barriers, quotas and other trade restrictions and allow the multi-nationals to trade ‘freely’ and to switch their investments abroad to cheap labour areas to boost profitability.  This would lead to global expansion and harmonious development of the productive forces and resources of the world, it was claimed.

There was nothing new in this phenomenon.  There have been periods of increased trade and capital export before since capitalism became the dominant mode of production in the major economies by the mid-19th century.  In 1848, the authors of the Communist Manifesto noted the increasing level of national inter-dependence brought on by capitalism and predicted the universal character of the modern world society: “The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed…. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.”

Indeed, we can distinguish previous periods of ‘globalisation’.  There was the period of 1850-70 which saw trade and investment expand sharply in Europe and the US (after the civil war), under the auspices of the British hegemony.  The depression of the 1870s to 1890s saw the end of that wave.  But another wave of global expansion took place in 1890s through to WW1, as new capitalist powers usurped British hegemony.  No one power established hegemony and that globalisation wave was stopped in its tracks by world war and continued to reverse through the Great Depression of the 1930s and up to WW2.  Then there was a new wave of global expansion under Bretton Woods and US hegemony, before the profitability crisis of the 1970s led to slumps and retraction.  From the mid-1980s and through 1990s, there was the largest expansion of trade and cross-border investment in the history of capitalism, with the US and European capitalism spreading its wings further and China entering global manufacturing and trading markets.

Indeed, according to the World Trade Organisation, a key indicator of ‘globalisation’, the ratio of world exports to world GDP, was broadly flat between 1870 and WW1, fell by nearly 40% in the interwar period; rose 50% from 1950-70; then stagnated until the 1990s, taking off until the Great Recession of 2009; after which, in the Long Depression of the 2010s, the ratio fell by about 12%, a decline not seen since the 1970s.

The latest globalisation wave started to wane as early as the beginning of the 2000s when global profitability slipped back.

[…]

Via https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2022/04/27/has-globalisation-ended/

Ivermectin Thrust Back Into Spotlight on Twitter After Elon Musk Takeover

 

Newsweek reported:

Just hours after the news broke of billionaire Elon Musk‘s $44 billion purchase of Twitter, ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug touted as a possible treatment for COVID-19, is once again trending on the social media platform.

Ivermectin was the sixth most popular topic on Twitter in the U.S. on Tuesday afternoon, with more than 46,000 tweets, suggesting that many users were under the impression that the term had been previously censored on the platform.

In fact, the name of the treatment has never been banned, although it has been just one of a number of popularly cited treatments for COVID-19 that has remained controversial throughout the global pandemic.

[…]

Via https://www.newsweek.com/ivermectin-trends-again-elon-musk-covid-1701115

How to Reclaim Our Power From Corrupt Global Corporatists

By Dr Robert W. Malone M.D., M.S.

The corruption of political systems by global corporatists has filtered down to our science, medicine and healthcare systems.

Because science, medicine and politics are three threads woven into the same cloth of public policy, we have to work to fix all three simultaneously.

The corruption of political systems by global corporatists has filtered down to our science, medicine and healthcare systems and must be exposed.

Furthermore, the perversion of science and medicine by corporate interests is expanding its reach; it is pernicious and intractable. Regulatory capture by corporate interests runs rampant throughout our politics, governmental agencies and institutes.

The corporatists have infiltrated all three branches of government, and it is up to us, the people, to take control back. Corporate-public partnerships that have become so trendy have another name, that name is fascism — the political science term for the fusion of the interests of corporations and the state.

Basically, the tension between the interest of the republic and its citizens (which Jefferson felt should be primary), and the financial interests of business and corporations (Hamilton’s ideal) has swung far too far to the interests of corporations and their billionaire owners at the expense of the general population.

The nation and its governing arms (including the entrenched bureaucracy often referred to as the “deep state”) now primarily serve the interests of multinational corporations, their managers and owners, instead of the other way around — serving the people.

The term that best describes this system of government is called inverted totalitarianism. This term was first coined in 2003 by Dr. Sheldon Wolin, a political theorist and writer. Inverted totalitarianism is what the government of the United States has devolved into, as he had warned might happen many years ago in the book “Democracy Incorporated.”

The United States has been co-opted into a managed democracy. This democracy was placed into the hands of oligarchs by bureaucratic imperatives and managerial principles and practices, which have created a creeping form of totalitarianism.

Now we can clearly see the liberties and freedom of this democracy being eroded rapidly just as Wolin predicted.

The ending result is this new form of totalitarianism, that (unlike classical totalitarianism) does not have an authoritarian leader, but instead is run by a non-transparent group of managers and elites who run the country from within. What President Trump might call the “deep state.” Or what Steve Bannon originally called the “Uniparty.”

In effect, our democracy has been turned upside down while being captured by corporate interests that endorse authoritarian policies — hence “inverted totalitarianism.”

The infiltration of this version of fascism has gone so far that even routine aspects of the political sphere are determined by corporate interests.

This was cemented in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. the Federal Elec­tion Commis­sion, a decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restric­tion laws.

This ruling has enabled corpor­a­tions and other outside groups to spend unlim­ited funds on elec­tions.

As a nation, we are once again confronted by a historic conflict that goes back to Jefferson and Hamilton and the founding of this country. Simply stated this is the old issue of whether capitalism is a tool of (representative constitutional) democracy or is democracy a tool of capitalism.

Will democracy control capitalism or will capitalism control democracy? Two of our founding fathers, Jefferson and Hamilton, represent the two sides of the coin in this tension, and awareness of this dynamic conflict was built into our constitution.

In theory, the people, through democratic representation, are empowered to elect leaders and pass laws, but when corporate financial interests become too powerful they are able to overthrow this relationship and capture political control by exerting financial power and influence over the political process.

In the 21st Century, a new threat to democracy and the people’s rule has emerged.  That is the party of Davos, the alliance of transnational corporations, and their representatives as the leaders and managers of global governance.

This has yielded an emerging system of inverted totalitarianism on a global scale.

Transnational corporate rule is not limited by national rules and regulations, and its tentacles are everywhere.

At the national level, we see its effects on the judicial, legislative and executive branches.

On the international level, the money and power from the transnational organizations have bought off entities like the World Health Organization.

The nominal head and coordinating body of this globalized effort to control the world through capitalism has become the World Economic Forum, whose primary belief is that national boundaries are less important than global connectivity and management through corporatism.

Here we are today. In many ways, the hidden head of this unelected corporatist government structure is now the leadership of the World Economic Forum which meets annually in Davos Switzerland, where the heads of corporations and the apex predator financial firms come together to decide the governing decisions of the world (including the practice of medicine), and politicians and other influencers travel as supplicants akin to courtiers approaching an emperor or a pope.

So, if inverted totalitarianism is smashed together with the development of such a global corporatist ruling elite, the question becomes who is running the United States?

With the largest brush strokes possible, it comes down to the World Economic Forum and the party of Davos.

And what we have seen develop, worldwide, during the time of COVID is gross overreach, managerial incompetence and a reflexive tendency toward authoritarianism that has resulted in an appalling loss of life, liberty and ability to pursue happiness here in America.

What somehow must be accomplished, if we wish to retain the U.S. Constitutional form of government and the freedoms guaranteed by the founding documents, is to return to the primacy of the individual, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

It is people that should control the levers of government — we must return the balance between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian ideals.

Capitalism is in the service of representative democracy, not the other way around. That is what this great nation was founded on.

Resistance is almost the only way that this can be fought. It has to be organized — funding and the effort must have professional organizers.

Resistance has begun, largely in church communities and self-assembling social media aggregates, with people organizing to form autonomous groups outside of the formal power structures which include the two main political parties — both of whom have been significantly captured by corporate interests (the Uniparty).

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/reclaim-power-corrupt-global-corporatists/

All risk, no benefit? COVID jabs do not prevent severe illness, transmission or deaths

by: Sara Middleton, staff writer

(NaturalHealth365)  My, how the “science” (narrative?) has changed.  First, we were told that the novel gene-based tech called mRNA COVID-19 shots – produced at an unprecedented lightning speed, bereft of the bureaucratic red tape that virtually all other drugs navigate to make it to the market – were the only way to end the pandemic.  We were also told the injections were “highly effective” at preventing COVID-19.  Getting vaxxed, we were told, would prevent infection, transmission, and the death of everyone’s grandmas.

Then, as real-world evidence revealed itself, we were told that these shots were actually never intended to prevent transmission – but only meant to reduce the likelihood that someone infected with SARS-CoV-2 would become severely sick and end up in the hospital.  It was all about reducing pressure on the “overwhelmed” U.S. healthcare system (as if hospitals around the country haven’t already experienced “overwhelming” pressure in past flu seasons).

But a look at recent data now shows that even the claim that the shots prevent severe illness, hospitalization, and death isn’t based on fact.

A COVID shot castle built on sand?  Big picture view of recent data reveals that mRNA jabs aren’t doing what officials claim they do

In a recent article, Children’s Health Defense pulled together COVID shot data from sources including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics.  The article nicely summarizes some important trends that seem to suggest COVID shots are NOT preventing hospitalizations and deaths as well as CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky claimed they did back in August 2021 (when she admitted that the shots “can’t” prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission).

Here are a few of the findings summarized in the article:

Natural immunity surpasses vaxxes alone in terms of preventing infection (even before the more infectious variant Omicron allegedly came around) and even appears at least somewhat better at preventing severe illness and hospitalizationIn England, unvaxxed individuals appeared less likely to die with a COVID diagnosis than double vaxxed individuals during the Omicron waveAny potential benefit of prevention of severe illness and death from the jab seems to precipitously decline within a matter of months following a third dose (and yet somehow, officials have used this as justification for encouraging people to roll up their sleeves for yet another dose of the same drug)Are COVID shots worth the risk?

Here’s the bottom line (again):

Only individuals should be able to decide whether the potential benefits of medical treatment or intervention are worth the potential risks for themselves and their children – not governments, not employers, and not public opinion.

Individuals should be fully informed of all the possible risks of said treatment or intervention before consenting to or declining it.

And if it were to turn out that the potential risks of treatment were likely to outweigh the potential benefits for a given individual – based in large part on their age, overall health, and lifestyle – then one would be hard-pressed not to see how a coercive, propagandized push to take the drug would create even more distrust in the pharmaceutical and political industries.

[…]

Via https://www.naturalhealth365.com/all-risk-no-benefit-covid-jabs-do-not-prevent-severe-illness-transmission-or-deaths.html

Cardiologist says 30 percent of vaccinated pilots would fail health screenings due to vaccine injuries

Dr Eddy Betterman

(Article by Debra Heine republished from AMGreatness.com)

Joshua Yoder, an airline pilot and co-founder of the U.S. Freedom Flyers said during an interview Wednesday that a cardiologist told him that if the airlines were conducting certain health screenings, 30 percent of the pilots currently flying would probably be disqualified due to vaccine-induced heart conditions.

Yoder told tech millionaire and Vaccine Safety Research Foundation founder Steve Kirsch that his group has received hundreds of reports about pilots flying planes while suffering from adverse side effects from the COVID vaccines.

The most prominent health issues being reported, the pilot noted, include chest pains, myocarditis, and pericarditis. Yoder said that three vaccinated pilot called him yesterday and said that they’re “currently flying with chest pains,” and another one said he is being treated by a cardiologist. He noted that the pilots want to remain anonymous because they don’t want to lose their jobs.

Yoder said the U.S. Freedom Flyers would like to find a solution for these pilots, and work with doctors, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), airlines, and unions to come up with a protocol so they have “some kind of immunity” that would allow the pilots to talk openly about what is happening to them.

The USFF formed last fall to help employees in the transportation industry oppose the federal laws surrounding vaccinations.

“I’m afraid if we keep going down this path, at some point it’s going to end in catastrophe,” he said.

“If passengers actually knew what was going on at the airlines and the FAA, they would be livid, and everyone would be jumping on a class action suit against all of them,” he said.

Yoder said that world renowned cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told him that if the pilots were regularly tested, a significant number of them would probably have to be grounded.

“He [McCullough] said that if every vaccinated pilot were to be screened, there would be somewhere around a 30 percent loss in manpower,” Yoder told Kirsch.

McCullough, along with Idaho pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole, Robert Kennedy Jr, Lt. Col Teresa Long M.D., Lt. Col. Peter Chambers D.O. and other experts signed letter to the Federal Aviation Administration and the major airlines on Dec. 15, 2021, urging them to flag all vaccinated pilots, and administer EKGs, D-dimer tests, troponin tests, and cardiac MRIs to assess their health.

The doctors warned that adverse events from vaccination could cause “a pilot (to lose) control of his aircraft” and lead to “untold devastation.”

As American Greatness reported on Wednesday, an American Airlines pilot recently suffered a cardiac arrest six minutes after landing his airbus at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Captain Robert Snow nearly died when his heart stopped on April 9, according to Yoder. “They had to shock him three times with the AED [automated external defibrillator] to bring him back,” he said.

Yoder noted that Snow was taken to Baylor, Scott and White Health Center, which is only ten minutes from both American Airlines, and the union (the Allied Pilots Association), yet no one from the airline or union called Snow while he was in the hospital, or stopped by to visit him. The only thing the airline did was fly his family to the hospital to meet with him.

Snow called the U.S. Freedom Fliers for help, and the group assembled a “world-class” team of doctors and lawyers to assist him. Snow is now recuperating at home, Yoder said.

Yoder acknowledged that it is pretty clear that Snow’s cardiac arrest was caused by the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, but the pilot has been undergoing a series of tests to confirm it.

Yoder told Kirsch that the airline industry does not seem to want to deal with the potentially dangerous incident.

“American Airlines is trying to create as much distance between themselves and this incident as humanely possible,” he said. “So is the FAA, and so are the unions. We can’t even get a response.”

Yoder said that Snow would be speaking out soon, and when he does “you’re going to hear some very interesting details that are going to be very damning for American Airlines, the Allied Pilots Association, the FAA, and everyone else involved.”

Yoder also mentioned two other pilots who have bravely come forward to talk about their vaccine injuries.

Pilot Greg Pierson has spoken out against the COVID vaccines ever since he suffered a stroke after getting the jab under duress, last year. Pierson said during an interview last December that if he had had his stroke while piloting a plane, he could have caused a crash.

WATCH AND SHARE Brave Pilot Greg Pearson Speaks Out About The Dangers Of The #Vaccine #ClotShot #Booster #vaccineinjury #VaccineSideEffects #VaccineAdverseEffects #VaccineAdverseReaction pic.twitter.com/MficeyMOu0

— information Chaser (@tsubject) December 31, 2021

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2022/04/26/vaccinated-pilots-fail-health-screenings-vaccine-injuries/

 

How Civilization Collapsed in the Late Bronze Age

Episode 18: The Late Bronze Age and End of Peace

Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization

Dr Amanda H Podany

Film Review

This lecture concerns the mysterious collapse of all Near East civilizations during the 12th and 11th century BC.

Podany begins by describing the vast Near East trade network established by 1300 BC. The immense wealth of this is clear from the remains of a ship sunk off the coast of Turkey around 1250 BC. Departing from the kingdom of Alashiya (Cyprus), from its cargo it had clearly visited several Mediterranean ports before sinking off the coast of Anatolia.

In its hold were 10 tons of copper ingots from Alashiya, glass ingots and a ton of tin from Canaan, 150 enormous jars of terebinth resin (used as incense and in perfumed oils), ebony, ivory, three ostrich eggs, spices and olives from Africa, Mycenaean* drinking vessels and swords, 800 pounds of Egyptian gold, glass and shell Murax (a vivid purple dye) from Syria.

The Late Bronze Ange diplomatic/trading alliance first started to break down when Hittite invaded Canaan, which was under Egyptian control. The result would be a a direct confrontation between Egyptian and Hittite armies at the Battle of Qadesh in 1274 BC. The outcome was a stalemate, with the Hittites continuing to control the territory they conquered at Qadesh.

A century later the Hatti (Hittite) empire would collapse (1185 BC). Babylonia collapsed in 1155 BC, after being invaded by the Elamites (from Syria). The Alashyian kingdom on Cypress collapsed around the same period, as did the Assyrian empire (formed when eastern Hatti declared independence from Hittite-controlled western Hatti) shrinking back to the single city-state Assur. In 1070 BC, Egypt’s New Kingdom collapsed after 400 years of rule.

The root cause of these simultaneous collapses is obscure. There are  written accounts (the most complete by pharaoh Ramses III) of unidentified Sea Peoples* in kilts attacking major cities and destroying palaces and citadels. Some historians blame grain shortages famines and others a flurry of earthquakes and fires that destroyed several cities.

The explanation Podany (and I myself) seems to prefer relates to popular anger and civil unrest stemming from the heavy oppression and exploitation the opulent elite of these empires imposed on their impoverished populations. This is supported by evidence that 1) only palaces and citadels were destroyed in most cities, with private dwellings left untouched 2) only some cities were attacked while others remained intact and 3) many inland cities beyond the reach of the “Sea Peoples” were destroyed.

This theory is consistent with research David Graeber and David Wengrow present in The Dawn of Everything reveal that (prior to the last 500 years) humankind has had an extremely low tolerance of extreme exploitation. See https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/12/14/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-so-called-civilization/

*Evidence, along with two Mycenaean ambassadors on board prior to the shipwreck, that the Mycenaean Greek city-states (which preceded the classical Greek city-states by several hundred centuries – see https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2021/11/16/the-prehistoric-phoenician-hebrew-minoan-and-mycenaean-civilizations/) participating in the large Near East trading and diplomatic network established in the Late Bronze Age (1600 – 1200 BC).

**Believed to originate from Mediterranean island near Cyprus, Anatolia and Mycenaea), these Sea Peoples have been identified as originating from Pelest (origin of the name and the ancient Philistine people), Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh. Egypt repelled them, though some settled north of Egypt in Caanan. Podany raises the possibility that the Trojan War described by Homer in the Iliad was a Sea Peoples war.

This film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5754238

Why Bill Gates Wants Africa to Adopt Failed Industrial Farming Practices

By  Susan C. Olmstead

A three-part video series, “Rich Appetites,” examines the motives of powerful organizations that continue to push the U.S. industrial agriculture model on African farmers, despite decades of failure.

Powerful groups — including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) — insist African farmers should follow the U.S. industrial agriculture model.

The organizations have been trying to shape Africa’s food policies for decades, despite proof their intervention is doing more harm than good.

But Africans are pushing back and trying to empower local farmers. “The future of African food systems must be in African hands,” said a representative of the Uganda-based Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA).

A three-part video series “Rich Appetites: How Big Philanthropy Is Shaping the Future of Food in Africa” explains why exporting the U.S. agribusiness model to Africa is a “grave mistake.”

Industrial agriculture causes biodiversity loss, hurts small-scale farmers and causes environmental harm — all while failing to solve hunger, according to AFSA and AGRA Watch, which created the short-film series.

The series exposes how “Big Philanthropy” — namely the Gates Foundation — is destroying farming and food in Africa by seizing control from local interests.

It also reveals what the BMGF gains from its so-called philanthropic work in Africa.

Together, the BMGF and Rockefeller Foundation in 2006 founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).

The foundations claimed AGRA would bring about a “Green Revolution” in Africa by increasing the productivity of small farms, thus lifting people out of poverty and alleviating hunger.

AGRA promised this through the use of “improved inputs” including fertilizer and “advanced seeds.”

AGRA Watch, founded to respond to and challenge AGRA’s policies, calls BMGF’s efforts “philanthrocapitalism based on biopiracy.”

Although the BMGF and AGRA claim to be “pro-poor” and “pro-environment,” their alignment with transnational corporations such as Monsanto, and foreign policy groups such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), makes their motives suspect, according to AGRA Watch:

“[BMGF] takes advantage of food and global climate crises to promote high-tech, market-based, industrial agriculture and generate profits for corporations even while degrading the environment and disempowering farmers.”

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‘Rich Appetites: The Foundation’

The first short film in the “Rich Appetites” series, “The Foundation,” outlines the shifts in U.S. agriculture that have been going on for more than a century:

“Government policies, big infrastructure, and corporations have forced U.S. farmers into a vicious cycle of expensive inputs, low crop prices, and increasing debt.

“Faced with mounting pressures, many [farmers] have been forced to sell their land. Rural landscapes have shifted from a mosaic of small family farms to large-scale industrial operations, many owned by agribusiness companies.”

Agribusiness practices, including the use of pesticides and fertilizers, have harmed the environment and farmworkers, and fallen short of their promised goal of reducing food insecurity and malnutrition, the film claims.

Yet powerful groups exported U.S. farming practices first to Asian and Latin American countries, then to Africa.

With the goal of improving and modernizing African agriculture, AGRA encouraged the use of commercial seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and weedkillers, while also encouraging farmers to focus on growing commodity crops such as corn.

But many years and more than $1 billion later, AGRA has failed, according to studies.

The film claims that not only have things not improved under AGRA, but also:

Productivity gains have remained at the same level as they were pre-AGRA.Farmers have taken on debt they can’t pay back.Hunger increased by 30% in AGRA’s focus countries.

“This model will not solve hunger, help farmers or address climate change. In fact, it is making these problems worse,” according to the film.

Million Belay, Ph.D., general coordinator of AFSA, said pesticides and weedkillers not only cause health problems among African farmers, they also cause farmers to be “locked in” to a system of dependency on chemical solutions.

So while these farming practices do not help farmers, they do benefit corporations — including the BMGF.

This is “philanthrocapitalism,” claims the film, which furthers the interests of corporations and harms African farmers and communities, all while claiming to advance the humanitarian goal of feeding the world.

Watch part 1 of “Rich Appetites” here:

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill-gates-africa-industrial-farming/

Elon Has Bought Twitter: Here’s What He Should Do

By Jillian C. York, Gennie Gebhart, Jason Kelley, and David Greene
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter highlights the risks to human rights and personal safety when any single person has complete control over policies affecting almost 400 million users. And in this case, that person has repeatedly demonstrated that they do not understand the realities of platform policy at scale.

The core reality is this: Twitter and other social networks play an increasingly important role in social and political discourse, and have an increasingly important corollary responsibility to ensure that their decision-making is both transparent and accountable. If he wants to help Twitter meet that responsibility, Musk should keep the following in mind:

Free Speech Is Not A Slogan

Musk has been particularly critical of Twitter’s content moderation policies. He’s correct that there are problems with content moderation at scale. These problems aren’t just specific to Twitter, though Twitter has some particular challenges. It has long struggled to deal with bots and troubling tweets by major figures that can easily go viral in just a few minutes, allowing mis- or disinformation to rapidly spread. At the same time, like other platforms, Twitter’s community standards restrict legally protected speech in a way that disproportionately affects frequently silenced speakers. And also like other platforms, Twitter routinely removes content that does not violate its standards, including sexual expression, counterspeech, and certain political speech.

Better content moderation is sorely needed: less automation, more expert input into policies, and more transparency and accountability overall. Unfortunately, current popular discourse surrounding content moderation is frustratingly binary, with commentators either calling for more moderation (or regulation) or, as in Musk’s case, far less.

To that end, EFF collaborated with organizations from around the world to create the Santa Clara Principles, which lay out a framework for how companies should operate with respect to transparency and accountability in content moderation decisions. Twitter publicly supported the first version of the Santa Clara Principles in its 2019 transparency report. While Twitter has yet to successfully implement the Principles in full, that declaration was an encouraging sign of its intent to move toward them: operating on a transparent set of standards, publicly sharing details around both policy-related removals and government demands, making content moderations clear to users, and giving them the opportunity to appeal. We call on Twitter’s management to renew the company’s commitment to the Santa Clara Principles.

Anonymous and Pseudonymous Accounts Are Critical for Users

Pseudonymity—the maintenance of an account on Twitter or any other platform by an identity other than the user’s legal name—is an important element of free expression. Based on some of his recent statements, we are concerned that Musk does not fully appreciate the human rights value of pseudonymous speech.

Pseudonymity and anonymity are essential to protecting users who may have opinions, identities, or interests that do not align with those in power. For example, policies that require real names on Facebook have been used to push out Native Americans; people using traditional Irish, Indonesian, and Scottish names; Catholic clergy; transgender people; drag queens; and sex workers. Political dissidents may be in grave danger if those in power are able to discover their true identities.

Furthermore, there’s little evidence that requiring people to post using their “real” names creates a more civil environment—and that doing so can have for some of the platform’s most vulnerable users.

Musk has recently been critical of anonymous users on the platform, and suggested that Twitter should “authenticate all real humans.” Separately, he’s talked about changing the verification process by which accounts get blue checkmarks next to their names to indicate they are “verified.” Botnets and trolls have long presented a problem for Twitter, but requiring users to submit identification to prove that they’re “real” .

There are no easy ways to require verification without wreaking havoc for some users, and for free speech. Any free speech advocate (as Musk appears to view himself) willing to require users to submit ID to access a platform is likely unaware of the crucial importance of pseudonymity and anonymity. Governments in particular may be able to force Twitter and other services to disclose the true identities of users, and in many global legal systems, do so without sufficient respect for human rights.

Better User Privacy, Safety, and Control Are Essential

When you send a direct message on Twitter, there are three parties who can read that message: you, the user you sent it to, and Twitter itself. Twitter direct messages (or DMs) contain some of the most sensitive user data on the platform. Because they are not end-to-end encrypted, Twitter itself has access to them. That means Twitter can hand them over in response to law enforcement requests, they can be leaked, and internal access can be abused by malicious hackers and Twitter employees themselves (as has happened in the past). Fears that a new owner of the platform would be able to read those messages are not unfounded.

Twitter could make direct messages safer for users by protecting them with end-to-end encryption and should do so. It doesn’t matter who sits on the board or owns the most shares—no one should be able to read your DMs except you and the intended recipient. Encrypting direct messages would go a long way toward improving safety and security for users, and has the benefit of minimizing the reasonable fear that whoever happens to work at, sit on the board of, or own shares in Twitter can spy on user messages.

[…]

Via https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/twitter-has-new-owner-heres-what-he-should-do

Ukraine Defector: CIA Behind Secret Plots to Kidnap, Torture and Assassinate Ukrainian Dissidents for President Zelensky

[Source: ainhoaristizabal.wordpress.com]Jeremy KuzmarovCovert Action Magazine

Techniques of Torture and Assassination Deployed by the SBU (Ukraine’s CIA) Recall the U.S.’s Brutal “Operation Phoenix” in Vietnam

Vasily Prozorov, a former officer with the Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) stated soon after his defection to Russia in 2018 that the SBU had been advised by the CIA since 2014.

“CIA employees [who have been present in Kyiv since 2014] are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

Prozorov’s revelations take on extremely ominous implications in light of a new report by The Grayzone Project detailing the SBU’s participation in a campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture overseen by Ukrainian President and Western media darling Volodymyr Zelensky.

The campaign bears comparison with Operation Phoenix in South Vietnam, which resulted in the killing, imprisonment and torture of thousands of South Vietnamese, including civilian officials accused of being loyal to the left-wing, anti-imperialist National Liberation Front (NLF).

In the Ukrainian case, one of the targets of the SBU death squads was the mayor of the eastern city of Kreminna in the Ukrainian-controlled side of Luhansk, Volodymyr Struk.

On March 1, Struk was kidnapped by men in military uniform and then shot in the heart, with his tortured body displayed before the public. Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to compromise and negotiate with pro-Russian officials.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page: “There is one less traitor in Ukraine.”

Gerashchenko has compiled a “blacklist of enemies of the state.” It includes journalists who have been murdered by state-backed death squads, such as prominent columnist Oles Buzina, whose name had appeared on the list.[2]

As of today, eleven mayors in Ukrainian towns are missing. On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylypko, was found murdered. Prylypko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents—a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office. (The Ukrainians claim that Prylopko was killed by Russian soldiers while distributing food and medicine)

Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kyiv after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”

President Zelensky stated that “there would be consequences for collaborators,” indicating his support for the Phoenix-style operations.

Police State

Currently, Zelensky is promoting a bill that would expand the SBU’s powers.

[…]

On April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by the SBU. In a photo released to the public, Medvedchuk’s face appeared to be swollen and bruised, the likely result of beatings by SBU goons.

[…]

‘Rampage Against Any and All Iterations of Internal Political Opposition”

The Grayzone Project reported that, since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, “Ukraine’s SBU security service had been on a rampage against any and all iterations of internal political opposition,” which indeed sounds a lot like Phioenix. “Leftist Ukrainian activists have faced particularly harsh treatment, including kidnapping and torture.”

On March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the homes of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda.

While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”

“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the German publication Junge Welt.

The Azov members and SBU agents recorded the torture session and published images of Matjuschenko’s bloodied face online.

[…]

In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavovna, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism”; and an untold number of others.

[…]

Fascist Lineage

According to the World Socialist website, the SBU—a successor of the Stalinist secret service KGB in Ukraine—has long-standing ties to the Ukrainian far right, including the neo-fascist Azov Battalion.

It has been heavily involved in efforts by the Ukrainian state to rehabilitate the Nazi collaborationist organizations, the Ukrainian Insurgency Army (UPA), and the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was headed during World War II by fascist Stepan Bandera.

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime-change operation of 2013-2014, declared in 2015 that the SBU “does not need to invent anything new, it is important to build on the traditions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and UPA in the 1930–1950 years.”

During World War II, Ukrainian fascists of the OUN-B were involved in the massacres of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles, as well as of Ukrainian opponents of fascism. After the war and well into the 1950s, both the OUN-B and UPA were engaged in an insurgency against Soviet rule, with backing from the CIA, during which the UPA killed another 20,000 Ukrainian civilians.

Phoenix Always Rising from the Ashes

According to Valentine, the disaster now unfolding in Ukraine has long been in the works. Starting in 1991 with the fall of the USSR, the CIA began buying property and setting up organizations and businesses in Ukraine so it would have fronts and safe houses.

[…]

Via https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/04/25/cia-behind-secret-plots-to-kidnap-torture-and-assassinate-ukrainian-dissidents-for-president-zelensky-says-ukraine-defector/

Even the U.S. Congress Tried to Stop Funding to Ukrainian NAZIS

Christchurch shooter was trained by Ukraine’s Nazi Azov battalion. This is recorded in 2019 letter by 40 members of US Congress.

Political Film Blog

"Siri, show me a collapsing narrative."

In 2019, 40 House Democrats signed a letter asking the U.S. State Department to designate #Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion as a terrorist organization.https://t.co/Yz0xm1e4oApic.twitter.com/XLxAq0NTHo

— Anabel V. (@Anabel_Villeroy) April 24, 2022

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