7 Apple suppliers in China have links to forced labor programs, including the use of Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang, according to a new report

Seven of Apple’s suppliers were found to be linked to suspected forced labor of Uyghur Muslims and other persecuted groups sourced from the Xinjiang region, according to an investigation by The Information.

Apple has previously denied using suppliers that rely on the forced labor of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group that has faced persecution in China. The Information’s investigation suggests the use of forced labor by some of Apple’s largest suppliers is more widespread than previously reported.

Apple did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

As the Information notes, just one of the suppliers is in Xinjiang, the western region of China that consists predominately of the Uyghur Muslim population, which is native to the area. Other workers were shipped from Xinjiang to companies like Luxshare, which is one of Apple’s biggest Chinese suppliers, according to records viewed by the outlet.

Keep reading

An army of Big Biotech companies is using psych tactics to ‘create vaccine demand’

“[P]ublic health experts know that the last inch – getting the vaccine from vial to arm – can be the hardest,” according to the Vaccination Demand Observatory

Launched last week, the Observatory runs a “beta dashboard” of data and resources “intended for select global public health professionals.”

The Observatory was established by a group called the Public Good Projects (PGP) which “designs and implements large-scale behavior change programs for the public good,” UNICEF – which has received $86.6 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2020 – and the Gates-subsidized Yale Institute for Global Health. .

PGP was founded by Joe Smyser, a public health academic who trained at the CDC and has partnered with Google and Facebook. Its board members include executives from Merck pharmaceuticals, Pepsi, Levi-Strauss, the Advertising Council, Sesame Street, Campbell’s, and TikTok.

PGP’s website says that through “media monitoring and bots, grassroots social media organizing, or thought leadership, we deploy our considerable resources and connections to communication for change.”

Bots – or internet robots, also known as crawlers – can scan content on webpages all over the internet and create automated conversations and comments.

“PGP is monitoring coronavirus-related media conversations 24/7 to provide organizations with real-time public health expertise and messaging guidance.”

The group has promoted vaccines before. It developed the #StopFlu campaign, recruiting 120 “‘micro’ social media influencers” in the “African American and Latinx communities across eight states” and giving them prompts to sell their audiences the ideas that flu is a serious problem and that healthy people need flu shots.

Keep reading

Twitter Will Now Call Out ‘Mean Tweets’ – Before They Are Even Sent

To combat toxicity on the platform, social media website Twitter is reportedly developing a feature to makes users reconsider sending messages that its system detects as “mean” or offensive. Initial tests show that 34 percent of users who received the warning chose to revise their message or not send it at all.

NPR reports that Twitter is attempting to make its users more conscientious about the language they use on the platform and is encouraging positivity by implementing a new feature that will detect “mean” replies on its service before a user presses send.

When Twitter detects that a user is about to post something that could be seen as offensive, an automatic prompt will be displayed that states: “Want to review this before tweeting?” The user is then offered three choices: tweet, edit, or delete.

Keep reading

Donald Trump’s New Blog Is Riddled With Facebook and Google Trackers, Share Buttons For Big Tech

As Donald Trump’s new blog launched this week, Facebook’s ADL-supported “Oversight Board” upheld the corporate monopoly’s decision to permanently ban Trump from the platform. Despite this, the President’s new blog is loaded with trackers from Facebook and Google, and features prominent share buttons for Facebook and Twitter while ignoring the free speech platforms used by the majority of Trump supporters, such as Gab, Telegram, and Parler.

Gab CEO Andrew Torba was among the first to uncover the tracking pixels embedded in the new blog that Trump launched on Tuesday called “From The Desk Of Donald J. Trump.”

Despite the fact that the new blog has zero user-oriented features aside from allowing Trump to post his email messages from the Save America 45 PAC directly to the site, the blog features many prominent donation buttons that encourage supporters to donate up to $5,000, including a $250 button that is prominently animated and jumps around the screen.

No indication is given as to where the donations will go, other than a vague message that states “President Trump is calling on you to step up and become a founding member of his Save America team.” Donators are apparently supposed to become ecstatic at the thought of President Trump potentially seeing their name on a “Founding Member Donor List.”

Keep reading

Silicon Valley Algorithm Manipulation Is The Only Thing Keeping Mainstream Media Alive

The emergence of the internet was met with hope and enthusiasm by people who understood that the plutocrat-controlled mainstream media were manipulating public opinion to manufacture consent for the status quo. The democratization of information-sharing was going to give rise to a public consciousness that is emancipated from the domination of plutocratic narrative control, thereby opening up the possibility of revolutionary change to our society’s corrupt systems.

But it never happened. Internet use has become commonplace around the world and humanity is able to network and share information like never before, yet we remain firmly under the thumb of the same power structures we’ve been ruled by for generations, both politically and psychologically. Even the dominant media institutions are somehow still the same.

So what went wrong? Nobody’s buying newspapers anymore, and the audiences for television and radio are dwindling. How is it possible that those same imperialist oligarchic institutions are still controlling the way most people think about their world?

The answer is algorithm manipulation.

Keep reading

Facebook’s ‘independent’ fact checker on vaccines is funded by … you guessed it

Accurate information about the vaccines and other vital COVID-related topics hinges upon the ability to disseminate the facts on major social media platforms like Facebook. In turn, Facebook relies on FactCheck.org, among other shady organizations, to rule on what information is admissible. FactCheck.org is funded by a grant from an organization run by Obama’s former CDC director, whose assets contain Johnson & Johnson stock. In other words, the vaccine companies control the flow of information about vaccines. Welcome to the world of “independent fact checkers.”POLL: What scares you the most?

Over the past year, Facebook has censored nearly every one of my articles and commentaries questioning the science behind lockdowns or mask mandates. More recently, it has placed a blockade on any information raising questions about the vaccines. Facebook has also blocked people from sharing my articles promoting cheap, lifesaving drugs, such as ivermectin, or even studies showing how sufficient doses of vitamin D and zinc can prevent critical illness from SARS-CoV-2.

In each instance of censorship, Facebook has posted a notice misleading anyone who wishes to share the article into thinking that the particular points raised in the article were independently fact-checked and found to be false. First, it’s critical to note that almost no article Facebook employees censor is fact-checked by anyone; they merely rely on an initial fact-check of one person’s article critical of masks — just to give an example — and then trot out that same fact-check as an excuse for zapping any article questioning the wisdom of mask-wearing, even if the points raised in said article are completely different from the issues addressed in the first fact-check.

However, there is something much more insidious going on with the fact-checking industry. The inmates are running the asylum and the foxes are guarding the henhouse. When the vaccines began to be dispensed to the public in December, FactCheck.org started “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project” to specifically focus on the flow of information pertaining to the vaccines. The site has a disclaimer on the top of the website stating: “SciCheck’s COVID-19/Vaccination Project is made possible by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

Comically, the next sentence reads, “The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the foundation.”

In fact, the views expressed almost assuredly do reflect the views of the foundation. FactCheck.org claims, “The goal is to increase exposure to accurate information about COVID-19 and vaccines, while decreasing the impact of misinformation.” Yet have you ever seen the organization offer balanced coverage or flag a single post on the other side of this debate as false, no matter how outlandish the claim might be, including articles advocating experimental emergency use authorization vaccines for little children?

Keep reading

Big Tech Colluded With California Democrats To Censor Americans

Big Tech colluded with California Democrats to censor Americans posting about the 2020 election on social media, a new report from Judicial Watch states.

According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, the California Secretary of State reportedly leveraged the state’s relationship with communications firm SKDK, which Judicial Watch noted “lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020,” to get videos and other social media posts the state deemed “misinformation” removed or flagged. Most of the time, the Big Tech companies lent ear to the “misinformation” concerns brought to them by the state and either removed the posts or applied contextual labels to them.

Not only did the Secretary of State receive “briefings” from SKDK cautioning the state about certain social media posts and YouTube videos that they deemed unacceptable, but the Office of Election Cybersecurity, which is housed under the Secretary of State, also kept a database of posts “coded by threat level” that the state eventually requested be forcibly removed by Big Tech companies. Of the 31 requests for removal, Silicon Valley giants such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube either nixed or flagged 24. 

Judicial Watch was allegedly targeted in some of these purges by YouTube and Twitter which prompted the organization to inquire with the state.

These new documents suggest a conspiracy against the First Amendment rights of Americans by the California Secretary of State, the Biden campaign operation, and Big Tech,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These documents blow up the big lie that Big Tech censorship is ‘private’ – as the documents show collusion between a whole group of government officials in multiple states to suppress speech about election controversies.”

Keep reading

The State-Corporate Convergence In Our State Of Emergency

The signals could not be any clearer. In addition to the swath of executive orders, clearly composed by executive committee members and aimed at either ingratiating and expanding the Democratic Party’s base or extending federal power, the Democrats have initiated a growing body of laws which would, if passed, ensure uniparty rule for the foreseeable future.

These include especially H.R. 1, or the For the People’s Act, passed by the House. Should it pass the Senate (with the eradication of the filibuster), H.R.-1 would grossly favor Democratic candidates in federal elections. Notwithstanding the expansion of the Democratic base through various means, including overriding existing voter ID laws in many states and mandating that all states allow mail-in ballots without IDs, it would further centralize federal election oversight and, according to the Institute for Free Speech, “[e]xpand the universe of regulated online political speech (by Americans) beyond paid advertising to include, apparently, communications on groups’ or individuals’ own websites and e-mail messages.”

The legislative maneuverings include the ‘‘Judiciary Act of 2021,’’ which would simply expand the Supreme Court to twelve members plus the chief justice. This move, which would amount to adding four Democrat-approved justices, would essentially effect a legislative takeover of the Supreme Court, as the Democratic-controlled Supreme Court would increasingly “legislate from the bench” and likewise expand the power of the Democratic-controlled legislative and executive branches beyond official perimeters. The odds of its passage, as is, are slim, but the overture is indicative of an attempted power grab not seen since FDR.

But the most conspicuous sign of the nearing consolidation of totalitarian government is the effective merger of corporate and state functionaries, with corporations and other organizations acting as appendages of the government and enforcing corporate-state desiderata. The indications of this merger are so many and sundry that any exhaustive recounting of them would entail a book-length treatment.

Keep reading