Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Censorship Industrial Complex

Retired judge says Freedom Convoy organizers on trial represent all opponents to current government

Published

14 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

Hold the line

The marathon trial of Tamara Lich has resumed. This is definitely the most high-profile trial in Canada in years. Millions of our tax dollars have been spent to prosecute this Métis grandmother (and Chris Barber). Seasoned prosecutors have been seconded, and all of the resources of both the federal and Ontario governments have been employed to get a conviction. Seemingly at any cost.

So, the charges must be extremely serious? Surely, we are talking about some deadly terrorist attack, or something that involves multiple murders and mayhem – at the least!

Well…, no. That tiny, polite grandmother is charged, essentially, with……. mischief.

Mischief? Isn’t that a charge that is usually used to deal with a kid spray-painting graffiti on a wall, or an inebriated fellow doing something foolish while under the influence?

Not so, in the case of Tamara. They are going after her with everything at their disposal. They are pulling out all the stops – spending millions of dollars of our money to nail this gentle, former physical fitness trainer and bookkeeper on a tarted-up charge of mischief. They seem determined to make an example of her.

But an example of what? Here’s my answer: An example of what will happen to any of us if we express views that the government in power does not like -what our Prime Minister refers to as “unacceptable views” that conflict with his progressive vision. They aren’t just going after Tamara; they are going after us.

If you doubt this, think of any protest in memory that has the support of progressives, where any of the organizers have been prosecuted so vigorously just to teach that person a lesson.

After all, there are no shortage of protests. We have had dozens of indigenous, BLM, climate, and Palestinian protests in recent years. Every large protest attracts some undesirables, who participate in violence and mayhem. The BLM and antifa protests – the one our PM actively participated in despite all of his lockdown rules then in place – toppled statues and did much property damage. Surely at least one of the Canadian protest organizers could have been charged, as Tamara was. Not so.

But the vast majority of the people participating in these large protests simply want to make their point. That’s the purpose of protests. They allow people to have their say, and let off steam. Our western liberal democracies allow such things. In fact, without active citizen participation, our liberal democracies would wither and die. Citizens of liberal democracies must be free to peacefully protest when they feel the need to do so. Democratic governments must be robust enough to tolerate protests, and other forms of dissent.

In the trucker convoy protest the main point that the protesters wanted to make was about government overreach. They believed that the government reaction to the nasty Covid virus was extreme and overdone. The final straw was the imposition of a vaccine mandate on truckers at a time when everyone knew that the vaccine did not prevent a person from either becoming infected with, or transmitting, the virus. When the Trudeau government imposed its vaccine mandate this was known with certainty. The protestors were aware of that, and suspected that the decision to impose an unnecessary mandate was purely political. They insisted on their right to make a personal choice about what went into their bodies, and argued that the vaccine mandate was a denial of their basic freedoms. They wanted to state their case to the prime minister about it. But he had no time for them.

That’s what the convoy protest was all about. It was just one of many protests any liberal democracy has had, are having, and will have in the future.

But in how many of those protests do we find a Tamara – namely one person singled out as a sacrificial lamb? Shackled, dumped in a filthy cell, forced to share that cell with a mentally unstable person, and without even a book to read. And then hauled back and forth to court to be yelled at by openly hostile prosecutors. Followed by a year long trial. For a mischief charge. (Lich describes her ordeal in “Hold the Line.”

The answer is that where progressives rule – that’s here, folks – this only happens to people with “unacceptable views”. The authorities in progressive-run administrations only go after conservatives, because those are the people with “unacceptable views”. They leave progressives alone. Justin Trudeau will “take a knee” in protests he agrees with – but will bring the hammer down with thundering force on any “unacceptable fringe view” that he doesn’t like. Hamas protesters appear to be able do virtually whatever they want – even confining Jewish citizens to “ghettos”, and yelling vile, antisemitic slurs at them. The authorities will simply let it pass. Like Sergeant Schultz in “Hogan’s Heroes” they  “see nussing”.

But if you happen to drive a truck, and insist on your right to decide what drugs will be injected into your body, you are fair game. There will be no shortage of police chiefs and other government officials willing to go after you.

That’s where we are now, with the trial in its final stages. There’s a good chance that Tamara will be acquitted. She is in front of an experienced and independent judge, and the evidence against her is contrived.

But there are many lesser-known people prosecuted during the lockdown and convoy protest who do not have Tamara’s high profile that gives her the ability to raise the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has needed to defend herself. Many ordinary Canadians have been convicted of offences relating to the lockdown and convoy protests for the simple reason that they couldn’t afford the time and money to defend themselves against often unfair charges.

Something similar is happening in Britain right now, where widespread dissatisfaction with government failure to limit and regulate mass immigration – particularly of immigrants who have no intention of integrating- has resulted in both protests, and out-of-control rioting. Mass immigration, like lockdown legislation, is a topic on which conservatives and progressives tend to disagree sharply. The Starmer government’s one-sided reaction to the protests and riots – as in the case of our lockdown regulations and convoy protest – is causing both unfairness and injustice for many ordinary Brits. There is general agreement that the thugs who participated in violence in the riots deserve their fate, and are rightly being jailed. But the vast majority of ordinary Brits, who are appalled at what uncontrolled immigration is doing to their country, are being silenced by threats of prosecution and jail.

People are being prosecuted simply for making intemperate comments on social media.  Some who did not even participate in the protests are being jailed.

Those Britons are receiving the same threat that our prime minister has given to us – if you have an “unacceptable view” you had better not share it. Leaders, like Starmer and Trudeau, who choose to shame and silence half of their populations are playing with fire. They can only survive by becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Their brute message takes many forms. “Two tier policing” is one – namely, the police treating lockdown, or immigration protestors in a completely different way than they do pro-Hamas or BLM type protestors. “Lawfare” is another – weaponizing the law to go after those you disagree with. The Online Harms Act pushed by the Trudeau government will do exactly that. All involve the bullying of people who do not agree with the progressive views now in fashion.

These illiberal tactics threaten the rule of law that has evolved in western civilization through Magna Carta, and on to the present. The rule of law is fragile, and it is not compatible with opportunistic politicians who tamper with it by weaponizing the law to crush dissent, and to destroy their enemies. Those leaders risk seriously damaging our basic institutions with their cynical experiments in authoritarianism.

Canada, like Britain, also sees tension rising over the immigration issue. Most Canadians welcome  controlled immigration. But they want immigrants who intend to integrate into the Canadian mosaic. This issue will become increasingly contentious, and Canadians who are opposed to what the current federal government is doing with immigration must be allowed to voice their opposition. That opposition includes the right to protest peacefully.

We are going to see many contentious issues arise over the next few decades. It is very likely that the government of the day will not like some of the views that are voiced by dissenters. The point is that Canadians must have the right to peacefully present their views, as Tamara Lich has done, without being treated the way dissidents are in authoritarian regimes. Conservative thinkers must not allow themselves to be intimidated into silence by progressives.

And we must be able to rely on our courts to protect those rights. The courts largely failed to protect the freedoms of lockdown dissenters in the COVID years. This has to change, or our individual freedoms will not be worth the paper they are written on. Overreaching governments must be held to account.

There is much to think about as the longest and most expensive mischief trial in Canadian history finally heads to its conclusion. The trial judge will tell Tamara if she is guilty or not guilty. But the Trudeau and Ford government are effectively on trial as well. Was their treatment of this one small lady something that should happen here? Is this what Canada has become? The Lich decision has the potential to be an important turning point for this country.

Tamara Lich did not lie down in front of a tank. She did not spend years in the Gulag. But she has been treated shabbily by the Trudeau and Ford governments. And in her gentle and respectful response to this Big Brother bullying she has taught us something. It is this: Stand up for your beliefs. Hold the line.

At some point the Trudeau Liberals will be relegated to the history books. What will they be remembered for? Trudeau’s imposition of The Emergency Act will certainly be on the top of that list. That is – without doubt – one of the low points in the history of this great country. But surely, the trial of Tamara Lich will be right up there on that list as well. A polite Métis grandmother, imprisoned and relentlessly persecuted for daring to stand up for what she believes in, has become an inspiration for those of us who cherish freedom.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Business

Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

Published on

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Andi Shae Napier

Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.

Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.

Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech. 

Dear Readers:

As a nonprofit, we are dependent on the generosity of our readers.

Please consider making a small donation of any amount here. Thank you!

“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”

Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”

Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as RumbleTikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.

“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”

Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.

Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.

Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.

Continue Reading

Censorship Industrial Complex

CIA mind control never ended – it evolved and went mainstream

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By James Corbett

From the CIA’s MKUltra to Britain’s COVID fear tactics, governments have spent decades perfecting psychological operations against their own people.

Surveying the battlefield

For thousands of years, military strategists have understood that an army’s success often depends not on its size or even on its armaments but on its knowledge of the opponent.

After all, as Sun Tzu observes:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

It follows, then, that the success of the globalists in their fifth-generation war on us all depends on their knowledge of humanity itself.

What makes people tick? What motivates and demotivates them? What stimuli do they respond to, and in what way do they respond?

From the viewpoint of those wishing to manipulate, control and subdue humanity, the knowledge of the human mind that can be gleaned from the answers to these questions is the most prized knowledge of all.

So, it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that not only scientific researchers but military planners and government officials have spent centuries trying to better understand humans and their behaviors – and, more importantly, how to mold, influence, shape, or outright control those behaviors.

Everyone knows about Ivan Pavlov’s experiments in conditioning. Any high schooler could tell you how Pavlov was able to condition dogs to salivate upon hearing the ringing of a dinner bell.

But how many know that Pavlov’s research didn’t end with his observation of canines? That he next began duplicating his experiments on human subjects? That those human experiments saw Pavlov and his protégé, Nikoli Krasnogorsky, scooping orphans off the streets, drugging them, surgically fitting them with salivation monitors and force-feeding them food so that these children, like Pavlov’s dogs, could be trained to salivate on command?

Source: “Ivan Pavlov Mechanics of the Brain 1926”

READ: Is the US Intelligence Community hiding secret weapons from the American public?

How many are familiar with the experimenters who followed in Pavlov’s footsteps? How many have seen the footage of John B. Watson’s “Little Albert” experiments, where the psychologist deliberately traumatized an 11-month-old baby in an attempt to refine the techniques of conditioning humans?

How many have read Watson himself bragging that “[a]fter conditioning, even the sight of the long whiskers of a Santa Claus mask sends the youngster scuttling away, crying and shaking his head from side to side”?

Source: Psychological care of infant and child by John B. Watson

How many have followed the thread from Pavlov and Watson and the “classical conditioning” researchers to the “radical behaviorists” like B. F. Skinner and his work in perfecting operant conditioning?

How many have read Skinner’s Walden Two, in which he proposes a scheme for creating a utopian society by conditioning children from birth to assume specific roles in society?

By this point, it’s fairly common knowledge that the CIA conducted mind control experiments like Project MKUltra, using operatives like Sidney Gottlieb and Dr. Ewan Cameron to administer LSD to unwitting subjects and conduct other ghoulish experiments in mental manipulation. But how many have heard of MKSearch or MKChickwit or MKOften or any of the other spin-offs of this nightmarish research?

How many know these experiments “were designed to destabilize human personality by creating behavior disturbances, altered sex patterns, aberrant behavior using sensory deprivation and various powerful stress-producing chemicals, and mind-altering substances” and were carried out on so-called “expendables” – i.e., “people whose death or disappearance would arouse no suspicion”?

How many have heard of George Brock Chisholm, who served as the first Director-General of the World Health Organization and helped spearhead the World Federation for Mental Health? How many have read the transcript of his 1945 lecture, “The Reestablishment of Peacetime Psychiatry,” in which he declared, “If the race is to be freed from its crippling burden of good and evil it must be psychiatrists who take the original responsibility”?

And how many are aware that Chisholm’s call to action was heeded by men like British military psychiatrist Colonel John Rawlings Rees, the first president of Chisholm’s World Federation of Mental Health and chair of the infamous Tavistock Institute from 1933 to 1947?

How many know the story of how Dr. Jim Mitchell – a military retiree and psychologist who had contracted to provide training services to the CIA – took the findings of Dr. Martin Seligman on the psychological phenomenon of “learned helplessness” and weaponized them for the CIA in the service of the agency’s post-9/11 illegal torture program?

Whether the general public is aware of this documented history or not, the record shows that the last 125 years of research into the human psyche has been conducted – or at least weaponized – by Machiavellian manipulators and secret schemers whose intent is to socially engineer the masses.

And, as the science of the mind progresses in the 21st century, these social engineering schemes are only getting more effective.

The information war

The alternative media has certainly had cause to note that we here in the 21st century are the (largely unwitting) targets of a large-scale information war. This war is being waged upon us largely (though not exclusively) by our own governments.

Occasionally, stories of some of the campaigns in this war break through the information blockade, and the public catches a glimpse of the battle that is being waged against them on all fronts.

Bemused Canadians, for example, were able to read about the Canadian military’s bizarre “wolf letter” psyop in the pages of The Ottawa Citizen back in 2021. But any concerns that might have been raised by this psyop and its wild story of forged government letters and recorded wolf noises were soon quelled by the usual establishment lapdog journalists.

The whole thing, we were told, was caused by “a handful of military reservists testing psychological tactics at a weekend exercise” and “new control measures are now in place to ensure psychological operation exercises and influence activities do not reach unintended audiences” – so, obviously there’s nothing more to worry about!

Residents of the U.K., meanwhile, got their own glimpse of the infowar in 2021 when members of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour (SPI-B) – a group providing “independent, expert, social and behavioural science advice” to the U.K. government – admitted they were guilty of “using fear as a means of control.”

Tasked with providing insight on how to make Britons compliant with their government’s lockdown, social distancing, masking, and other restrictions at the beginning of the scamdemic, the SPI-B experts urged the government to increase “the perceived level of personal threat” from COVID-19. Multiple members of the SPI-B team later expressed regret about the scheme, calling it “totalitarian” and unethical.

One SPI-B member confessed: “You could call psychology ‘mind control.’ That’s what we do.”

Another put it even more bluntly: “Without a vaccine, psychology is your main weapon … Psychology has had a really good epidemic, actually.”

But to the extent that these operations ever come to public light, it is almost always in disconnected and decontextualized stories like these. Those Canadians who learned about the “wolf letter” psyop, for example, likely never read about the SPI-B scamdemic psyop, let alone connected the events together as evidence of the all-out infowar.

In recent years, however, the existence of the infowar has not only become undeniable. It is undenied.

The cognitive domain of the information battlespace

In 2022, the Associated Press published “‘Pre-bunking’ shows promise in fight against misinformation,” an article touting new research that claims to show progress in the creation of new weapons in the information war.

After detailing the usual examples of the scourge of “misinformation” – i.e., observations that erode public faith in “democratic institutions, journalism and science” – the article then reports uncritically on new techniques that are being developed to trick the public into once again trusting these demonstrably untrustworthy institutions:

New findings from university researchers and Google, however, reveal that one of the most promising responses to misinformation may also be one of the simplest.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, the researchers detail how short online videos that teach basic critical thinking skills can make people better able to resist misinformation.

The researchers created a series of videos similar to a public service announcement that focused on specific misinformation techniques – characteristics seen in many common false claims that include emotionally charged language, personal attacks or false comparisons between two unrelated items.

Researchers then gave people a series of claims and found that those who watched the videos were significantly better at distinguishing false information from accurate information.

Although research like that touted by the AP is ostensibly civilian in nature, the fact that this information campaign is part of a literal military battle that is being waged against us is now starting to be admitted, as well.

In 2023, for example, the Japanese military officially added the “cognitive domain” as the latest new battle domain added to Japan’s National Defense Program Guideline. In addition to the traditional domains of territorial land, water, and airspace, and to newly added domains like space, cyberspace, and the electrogmagnetic domain, Japan’s defense authorities now claim the cognitive space as part of their remit.

According to The Global Times:

The building of such cognitive capability would also be written into the National Security Strategy, one of the three major diplomatic and security documents to be amended before the end of 2022, VOA Chinese reported, citing the theory that the Japanese defense authorities and the Self-Defense Force attach great importance to the “misinformation” released by Russia and China, consider that information spread in the Chinese language is a global trend and that cognitive warfare by the island of Taiwan against the Chinese mainland provides valuable experience for research and study.

[…]

Analysts said that cognitive warfare is a combination of digital information, media and spy technology that leads public opinion to extremes in order to affect the basis of diplomacy between countries and to realize the goals of political manipulation, citing the U.S.’ infamous “peaceful transfer of power” strategy in other countries as an example.

The recognition of the “cognitive domain” as a literal battlefield is not limited to the Japanese defense forces, however.

In 2019, the Chinese State Council Information Office released a white paper on “China’s National Defense in the New Era,” arguing that “[w]ar is evolving in form towards informationized [sic] warfare, and intelligent warfare is on the horizon.”

In 2022, Motohiro Tsuchiya, a professor at Keio University, wrote an article on “Governing Cognitive Warfare” for Governing the Global Commons: Challenges and Opportunities for US-Japan Cooperation (a publication of the German Marshall Fund of the United States!) in which he warned that the threat of “intelligentized warfare” by China and other U.S. State Department bogeymen necessitated U.S. cooperation to “create and promote rules and norms that can effectively govern cyberwarfare.”

And, perhaps inevitably, it wasn’t long before it was discovered that the real threat in this new “cognitive domain” isn’t the ChiComs or the CRINKs or any other outside force, but… *drumroll, please*… online conspiracy theorists!

That’s right, in 2023, Tomoko Nagasako, a research fellow at The Sasakawa Peace Foundation, penned “The Threat of Conspiracy Theories in the Battle for the Cognitive Domain – A Consideration of the Status of Conspiracy Theories in Japan Based on Attempts at Regime Destruction Overseas.” As you might guess from that title, the article provides “an overview of the state of conspiracy theories overseas and in Japan,” details how these dastardly conspiracy theorists present a threat to national security “[f]rom the perspective of cognitive warfare,” and proposes countermeasures to address these grave dangers to the nation.

And what “conspiracy theories” does Nagasako cite in her piece? That there exists a “deep state” over and above the surface-level government, that the COVID vaccines were harmful, that the U.S. has conducted biological weapons research in Ukraine in recent years… you know, the usual harebrained ideas that only kooky conspiracy realists would even entertain.

Yes, for those who haven’t received the memo yet: there most certainly is a war for your mind. It certainly is taking place right now. It is being waged by militaries around the world. The target of these wars is, more often than not, these very militaries’ fellow countrymen.

To those who are just waking up to this war, you have my deepest sympathy. Realizing that you are a target in a battle you didn’t even know you were fighting in a “cognitive domain” you never even knew existed must be wildly disorienting, to say the least.

But here’s the bad news: new technologies are being developed that will make all of this history – from Pavlov to Skinner to Mitchell to SPI-B – and all of these secret operations – from MKUltra to MKChickwit – and all of these military campaigns – from Chisholm and Rees and the machinations of the Tavistock minions to the ChiComs and the Japanese and the development of cognitive warfare – seem like small potatoes.

As we shall see in a follow-up article, the technology to rewire the brain – quite literally – is already being tested and deployed. And, once these technologies are ready to be unleashed on the public, they may bring the age-old dream of the dictators for total domination of the human population to reality.

Reprinted with permission from the Corbett Report.

Continue Reading

Trending

X