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At Davos, conformity is required, and debate is a cancel-worthy sin

If you’re watching the World Economic Forum’s annual ruling class confab in Davos this week, you might be surprised by the lack of disagreement among the rich and powerful there. Every panel in Davos acts as a reinforced echo chamber in which there is one problem, one objective, and only one solution. Regardless of who populates these panels and speeches, whether it’s invited corporate media, governmental officials, and/or business executives, there’s never any apparent dissent or difference of opinion expressed.

Given that the World Economic Forum is best understood as a narrative and ideas generator for the global ruling class, one might be under the impression that Davos would be a place for a healthy, robust debate. That’s why many new observers in the space have been understandably baffled by the incredible conformity expressed by speakers and attendees at the Swiss retreat.

Many noticed as former CNN host Brian Stelter, who claims to defend the importance of a free press, smiled and nodded at a co-panelist’s vicious attack on open speech. 

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Internews President to WEF: “Gendered disinformation” is “terrifying,” online platforms need to keep people safe

It’s entirely unsurprising that Brian Stelter, once of CNN, has gotten the gig of moderating a panel at this year’s World Economic Forum (WEF) Davos conference.

And it’s no shocker that stuff like the apparently extremely dangerous problem of “gendered disinformation” was what he got to discuss.

Stelter – a self-styled technology and “misinformation” expert, whose sometimes astonishing takes in support of censorship were given air on the cable channel during the worst days of the pandemic-and-elections-induced free speech crises of the past years – hosted a Davos event called, “Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation.”

Panelists included EU Commissioner Vera Jourova, New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, US Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton, and Jeanne Bourgault, CEO of Internews.

And Stelter wanted to know how the discussion related to “everything else” that was happening in the world elites’ stomping ground of Davos.

In response, Sulzberger voiced a dramatic warning: whatever he defines as disinformation is “the most existential problem” in the world, the publisher said – it is “attacking trust” and causing societies to “fracture.”

Now, those who might think “Internews” is a news organization would be mistaken; it is a nonprofit with as many as 30 offices around the world, where it supports “independent media” in 100 countries.

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Iowa Bill Would Ban SNAP Recipients From Buying Meat

A bill introduced earlier this month in the Iowa Legislature — the country’s top red meat-producing state — would ban people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from buying meat and a lot of other typical grocery foods as well.

The bill, House File 3, has 39 co-sponsors in the Iowa House and is led by House Speaker Pat Grassley, a Republican. Pat Grassley is the grandson of Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving member of the Senate Agriculture Committee — the committee that writes the farm bill, including SNAP rules, in Congress.

Under the bill, SNAP recipients would be restricted to buying foods that are approved under a separate USDA food-aid program, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program. WIC requires aid recipients to buy from a specific list of approved items that includes staples such as infant formula, cereal, milk, bread, juices, canned foods and baby foods.

WIC doesn’t allow people to buy products such as packaged meat, or frozen or processed foods.

“I don’t think the 39 co-sponsors of this bill know just how restrictive this is, and that it would ban meat,” said Luke Elzinga, chairman of the Iowa Hunger Coalition, and the policy and advocacy manager for a network of food pantries run by the Des Moines Area Religious Council. “Under this bill, no ground beef, no chicken, no pork in the state of Iowa. I just can’t believe that they knew that was what it was when the bill was introduced.”

According to USDA’s Livestock Slaughter report released Thursday, Iowa remained the No. 1 state for commercial red-meat production for December, largely because of its dominant position in pork processing. The Iowa Legislature bill would basically prohibit SNAP benefits in the state from being used to buy any pork products.

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Openly Communist Las Vegas Commissioner Admitted to Being a ‘Minor Attracted Person’

Clark County, Nevada Democrat Commissioner Tick Segerblom, who represents the county’s Las Vegas Valley district, admitted to being a “minor attracted person” outside of a county commission meeting, in a caught-on-video exchange that’s been completely ignored by the corporate media.

Tick Segerblom admitted to being a “minor attracted person,” a left-wing term for pedophiles, outside of a Clark County Commission meeting when directly asked by a constituent if he was one. Segerblom is an avowed communist who’s blocked election integrity and accompanies drag queens to hang out with children, as documented in photographs.

He’s also been an outspoken opponent of Nevada’s burgeoning election integrity movement.

“This guy’s a minor attracted person, aren’t you?” a constituent directly asks Segerblom who, without hesitation, nods his head and replies “yes” to the question.

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Hackable Humans at WEF: “We can decode faces in your mind, your PIN number to your bank account”

Thanks to AI and the Internet of Bodies (IoB) ecosystem, decoding the human brain is already well underway, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) presentation.

Five years after historian Yuval Noah Harari told the WEF that humans were hackable and that organisms were algorithms, Harari’s insights have been fully realized.

Thursday’s WEF Annual Meeting 2023 session on “Ready for Brain Transparency?” opened with a short video showing a dystopian scenario where employees’ brainwaves were not only decoded to determine their performance in the workplace, but also to determine whether they participated in illegal activity.

While the scenario in the video below is fictional, the technological framework is already in place.

“We can pick up and decode faces that you’re seeing in your mind — simple shapes, numbers, your PIN number to your bank account” — Nita Farahany, World Economic Forum, 2023

A dystopian glimpse at the potential future of Hackable Humans: “The government has subpoenaed employee brainwave data from the past year […] They are looking for co-conspirators through synchronized brain activity”: #wef23 ‘Ready for Brain Transparency?’ session pic.twitter.com/EtIwjzk4b2

— Tim Hinchliffe (@TimHinchliffe) January 19, 2023

“Artificial intelligence has enabled advances in decoding brain activity in ways we never before thought possible” — Nita Farahany, World Economic Forum, 2023

The above video illustrates just one of the many dystopian scenarios that can occur when the human brain is no longer autonomous.

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Cannibalism, Aliens, and Cartels: The Trial of Mexico’s ‘Supercop’ Just Got Weird

In the months leading up to the trial of Genaro García Luna, the highest-ranking Mexican law enforcement official ever to face charges of narco-corruption in the United States, federal prosecutors made it sound like they had a mountain of evidence. Court filings described more than 1.2 million pages of documents, thousands of recordings, and a roster of cooperating witnesses who could potentially testify about delivering multi-million dollar bribes.

But now, with opening arguments in the trial set to start Monday, the high-stakes case hardly seems like a slam dunk. In a ruling handed down Thursday evening, Judge Brian Cogan—who also presided over the trial of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán—delivered a blow the prosecution, restricting some types of evidence from being heard by the jury and revealing the names of several likely cooperating witnesses, some of whom appear to have major credibility issues.

Cogan’s ruling, first reported by VICE News, referenced cooperators (former high-ranking cartel members who cut deals with U.S. prosecutors to testify in exchange for reduced sentences) who were allegedly involved in acts of cannibalism, along with another who has expressed beliefs in aliens, witchcraft, and the Illuminati. 

The judge also granted a request by the defense to block evidence of García Luna’s “expensive lifestyle” after he left the Mexican government in 2012 and moved to Miami, where he worked as a private security consultant, lived in a waterfront mansion, had access to a yacht, and enjoyed other trappings of luxury. Cogan ruled that prosecutors had so far failed to present any proof that García Luna’s lifestyle was “financed with cartel money.”

García Luna’s attorneys, Cogan said, will be allowed to show the jury photographs of the defendant meeting with high-level U.S. officials during his time leading the Mexican equivalent of the FBI from 2000 to 2006, and later during his tenure as Mexico’s secretary of public security, which ended when he left office in 2012. The defense has said García Luna interacted with former President Barack Obama, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the late Sen. John McCain, along with former directors of the CIA, FBI, and DEA, among others.

On the flipside, Cogan ruled that the defense will not be allowed to tell the jury about all the ways top U.S. officials have publicly praised García Luna over the years. To present that evidence, Cogan said, García Luna would have to call the officials—who are now presumably less effusive in their praise now that he’s under indictment—to “testify as character witnesses,” which would then make them subject to cross-examination by the government.

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360-Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships To Spy On Americans

“We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.”

– Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover

In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.  

There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

Indeed, empowered by advances in surveillance technology and emboldened by rapidly expanding public-private partnerships between law enforcement, the Intelligence Community, and the private sector, police have become particularly adept at sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.

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CIA Director William Burns held secret meeting with Ukraine’s Zelensky on Russia moves

CIA Director William Burns made a clandestine trip to Ukraine last week to meet with the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and brief him on Russia’s anticipated next steps in its invasion, a US official told Reuters Thursday.

“Director Burns traveled to Kyiv, where he met with Ukrainian intelligence counterparts as well as President Zelensky and reinforced our continued support for Ukraine and its defense against Russian aggression,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official declined to say when the secret rendezvous took place, but the Washington Post, which first reported the meeting, said it happened at the end of last week.

In addition to discussing Burns’ expectations for Russia’s upcoming military plans, the paper said, the CIA chief also warned the Ukrainian leader that at some point US assistance would be harder to come by.

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