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Members of Congress threaten to hold Big Tech “accountable” if they don’t censor “misinformation”

During a Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce of the Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing titled “Holding Big Tech Accountable: Legislation to Protect Online Users,” several members of Congress pushed Big Tech companies to do more to purge content that they deem to be “disinformation.”

The purpose of the hearing was to consider five bills: the “Banning Surveillance Advertising Act of 2022,” the “Algorithmic Accountability Act of 2022,” the “Cooperation Among Police, Tech, and Users to Resist Exploitation Act,” the “Increasing Consumers’ Education on Law Enforcement Resources Act,” and the “Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act of 2022.”

None of the bills contain the phrase “misinformation” or disinformation but these phrases were used multiple times during the hearing to complain about online misinformation and warn tech companies that they would be held accountable if they didn’t remove more disinformation.

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Children Allege North Carolina Bus Driver Offered Them $5 to Swab Their Cheeks With Q-tip

A North Carolina news outlet has reported an incident on Tuesday in which children alleged that a middle school bus driver has been offering them $5 to swab their cheeks with a Q-Tip.

The director of communications for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School (CMS) system told The Epoch Times that CMS can’t provide details while the incident is being investigated.

“The driver involved in the incident was suspended pending the results of an ongoing investigation,” the director said. “The alleged incident appears to be an individual acting outside of assigned duties and done without the knowledge of the district or school administrator.”

John Paul with WSOC-TV reported that several parents told him that a CMS bus driver for the Ridge Road Middle School in Charlotte offered their children $5 to swab their cheeks.

Paul said that parent Mone Davis reported to the news outlet that her daughter said, “She gave me the Q-Tip thing and made me swab my mouth, and when I was done, I put it in the cylinder and gave it to her. Then she gave me $5.”

The allegations date back to Feb. 15, Paul said, with one report alleging that the bus driver took samples from 10 kids on the bus as well as personal information.

Paul said one child reported to the parent that the bus driver said it was a COVID-19 test, while another child reported to the parent that there were two other adults on the bus who weren’t identified.

Paul said Ridge Road Middle School sent out a statement to parents in connection with the allegations in which the school principal said he reported the incident “to the appropriate parties for investigation,” but that he could not provide further information because it’s under investigation.

Ridge Road Middle School didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times for comment.

“Why would someone take a mouth swab from a kid and their personal information—and maybe more importantly—what could they do with that information,” Paul asked in his report.

Jason Stoogenke, also with WSOC-TV, pointed to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fraud alert that involves a similar procedure in which someone offers “free cheek swabs” for the purpose of obtaining that person’s personal information “for identify theft or fraudulent billing” in Medicare scams on senior citizens.

However, because this case involves children, it “makes this case even more mysterious,” Stoogenke said.

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South Africa enforces sweeping internet censorship law to tackle “hate speech”

The South African government has enforced a controversial internet censorship law that was passed in 2019. Legal experts have raised concerns about the law being abused.

On March 3, South Africa’s Film and Publications Board (FPB) announced that the law had come into effect on March 1. Internet users violate the law if they post prohibited content, which is defined as content that could be deemed incitement of violence, war propaganda, child pornography, and hate speech.

The law has raised concerns among legal experts as it could be used to restrict free speech and was became law surprisingly quickly.

From My Broadband:

“However, media and civil society only learned that this had happened on the day the law came into effect because the Film and Publications Board (FPB) invited the press to attend a media briefing about it on 3 March.

This is because the Government Printing Works has not published gazettes to its website since mid-January, effectively cutting citizens off from essential information about what their government is doing.”

Dominic Cull, the founder of legal consultancy firm Ellipsis Regulatory Solutions, said: “One of my big objections is that if I upload something which someone else finds objectionable, and they think it hate speech, they will be able to complain to the FPB.”

“If the FPB thinks the complaint is valid, they can then lodge a takedown notice to have this material removed.”

Cull also pointed out that the FPB does not have elected officials; it is composed of government appointees, people who should have no authority to make decisions on constitutional and free speech issues.

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BBC Pulls All Reporters From Russia After Moscow Criminalizes “Disinformation”

Following earlier news that Russia will criminalize “disinformation” about military in crackdown on “fake information”, not that different from the wholesale “canceling” and deplatforming of any western media outlets that do not parrot the official narrative, moments ago the BBC announced that it would “temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation” while the news agency assesses the full implications of this unwelcome development.

Full Statement from Tim Davie, BBC Director-General:

“This legislation appears to criminalise the process of independent journalism. It leaves us no other option than to temporarily suspend the work of all BBC News journalists and their support staff within the Russian Federation while we assess the full implications of this unwelcome development.

“Our BBC News service in Russian will continue to operate from outside Russia.

“The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs. I’d like to pay tribute to all of them, for their bravery, determination and professionalism.

“We remain committed to making accurate, independent information available to audiences around the world, including the millions of Russians who use our news services. Our journalists in Ukraine and around the world will continue to report on the invasion of Ukraine.”

Is that an admission that The BBC produces ‘fake news’?

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Russia reacts to US senator’s Putin assassination plea

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham pleaded on Thursday for “somebody in Russia” to “step up to the plate” and assassinate President Vladimir Putin, and who would thus do the country and the world “a great service.” The Russian ambassador to Washington has rebuked the remarks, calling them “unacceptable and outrageous.”

The South Carolina senator advocated assassinating Putin during an appearance on Fox News, and cited historic examples of plots to kill famous political leaders, including Julius Caesar and Adolf Hitler. 

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” Graham inquired. “The only way this … ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

Commenting on the remarks, Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov called them “unacceptable and outrageous.” He said it showed that “Russophobia and hatred in the United States towards Russia” had gone off-scale and asserted that Graham was de facto advocating an act of terrorism to further Washington’s political goals. 

Moscow was fearful for the future of the American nation, considering that people like the senator are at its helm, the Russian diplomat added.

Attempts to kill foreign leaders are not unheard of in US foreign policy. Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was arguably the most famous example. He was targeted by multiple plots hatched by the CIA, as revealed by the Church Committee in the 1970s.

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Jackie Speier Works With Groups Tied To Pedophilia And Men Who Were Caught In A Child Brothel Bust

Democrat congresswoman Jackie Speier praised a group tied to pedophilia on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Jackie Speier congratulated Jim Fox on his work with the group now known as First 5 San Mateo County, where Fox worked directly with a monstrous pedophile named Dr. William Ayres. Speier praised First 5 San Mateo County on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives using names that represented the group including San Mateo “Family First Commission” and “First 5.” As we reported: Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi personally rents office space to a child welfare group, First 5 San Mateo County, that was set up by a convicted pedophile. The group partners with a nonprofit that ran a group house where child molestation occurred and partners with a conflict resolution center that had a volunteer convicted for storing hundreds of images of child porn. NATIONAL FILE has exclusively obtained the lease documents showing that Nancy Pelosi is the group’s landlady dating back to 2002, the same year monstrous pedophile Dr. William Ayres was given an award by city politicians for his work with the group. By that time, numerous pedophilia allegations including a police report had been made against Ayres, who was later convicted on pedophilia charges in 2007 and died in prison.

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Whilst you’ve been distracted by Russia’s Invasion, the UK Gov. released a Report confirming the Fully Vaccinated now account for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 Deaths in England

The latest data published by the UK Health Security Agency confirms deaths are rising dramatically among the triple vaccinated population whilst declining steadily among the not-vaccinated population in England.

With the most recent figures showing the fully vaccinated accounted for 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over the past month; and the triple vaccinated accounted for 4 in every 5 of them.

These are dark days for the citizens of Ukraine, but if you were to watch mainstream news or read a mainstream newspaper you could be forgiven for thinking the plight of the Ukrainians is currently the only event taking place in the world.

The Russian invasion is being aired in an endless 24/7 loop via BBC News and Sky News, with not a word about Covid-19 to be heard, despite airing nothing but propaganda and lies on the pandemic for the past two years.

It’s times like these that you ought to watch what bad news is being quietly published in the background in the hope that it won’t receive much attention, because there’s nothing better than an international crisis to distract the public from what’s going on at home.

With that being said, let’s take a look at what the UK Government have “quietly” published in the past week in regards to the Covid-19 situation in England.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) publish a weekly Covid-19 Vaccine Surveillance Report, the most recent of which was published Thursday 24th Feb 22, and it can be viewed here.

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Why Aren’t U.S. Labs Required to Inform Public About High-Risk Experiments on Coronaviruses?

At the end of 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly added “chimeric viruses” — viruses that contain genetic material derived from two or more distinct viruses — to its list of most dangerous pathogens.

The CDC designated this type of research as a “restricted experiment” that requires approval from the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — an executive branch department of the federal government created to protect the health of Americans. 

The CDC believes that immediate regulatory oversight of these experiments is essential to protect the public from the potential consequences of a release of these viruses.

It is possible that at least one lab in the U.S. is interested in conducting experiments to produce a more dangerous version of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID. 

The experiments would add genetic material from the original SARS virus, which first emerged in 2003, to the SARS-CoV-2 strain to create an aggressive “chimeric virus.”

We say it is “possible” that chimeric coronaviruses have been made because we simply do not know for sure. U.S. labs are not obliged to publicly report, explain, or justify such experiments. And this highlights a larger issue.

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Booster Shots Causing More Injuries Than Previously Thought, Israeli Survey Shows

More Israelis are experiencing injuries and reactions following COVID-19 booster shots than the country’s passive reporting system indicates, according to a survey conducted by the Israeli Ministry of Health (MOH).

The MOH conducted an active survey of booster shot recipients to collect data on adverse events associated with booster doses, then compared the survey data to the data available from the country’s passive reporting system. 

The survey concluded Israel’s passive reporting system was grossly underreporting adverse events.

The data from the Israeli survey could provide some insight into the extent of the underreporting occurring in the U.S.

It also could corroborate safety signals the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is ignoring.

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