Tag: wrongthink

JPMorgan Chase Is Up To Its Old Tricks…

At about the same time, it appears, Chase debanked, without warning, Drs. Syed Haider and Joseph Mercola. Wait, no. Not just them, but also Dr. Mercola’s employees – and his and their families. All without explanation.

These debankings don’t come without context.

You may recall that last fall Chase debanked Senator, Ambassador and Governor (so, you know, pretty well respected) Brownback’s religious liberty organization, after having debanked General Flynn and a series of other conservatives. Chase got called on the Brownback debanking and first stonewalled and then lied, a half dozen times, about the reasons for the debanking, and then went back to stonewalling.

That’s relevant again because, whaddya know, the debanked doctors turn out to be conservatives, too – or at least they’re sufficiently opposed to the woke big government/big business monolith that they were willing to question the efficacy of the lockdown regime. In fact, the New York Times wrote a story about him in the summer of 2021 calling him “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Information Online.”

Why? Because he’d dared to “publish[] over 600 articles on Facebook that cast doubt on Covid-19 vaccines since the pandemic began, reaching a far larger audience than other vaccine skeptics, an analysis by The New York Times found.” He also published “posts often ask[ing] pointed questions about [the vaccines’] safety and discuss[ing] studies that other doctors have refuted.”

Oh, the horror. Disagreement about scientific questions? Can not have. Especially if the right scientists have refuted some underlying positions.

You know, the way the right scientists refuted the lab-leak theory.

Mercola also helped to publicize a study that claimed that the “covid vaccines were ‘a medical fraud’ and said the injections did not prevent infections, provide immunity or stop transmission of the disease.”

Wait. That all turned out to be right, didn’t it? Wasn’t he right? Haven’t the Times and Mercola’s detractors been refuted about those claims of misinformation? Weren’t they the misinformants?

Haider similarly questioned the efficacy of the vaccines, and documented the slow admissions that he and other skeptics had been correct in their claims.

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Oregon medical group blames Libs of TikTok after being exposed for denying woman breast cancer treatment over her gender critical views

After an Oregon breast cancer patient was dismissed from the medical practice where she was getting treatment due to her refusal to believe men are women, the medical group doubled down and backed their initial reaction, which was to ban her from the practice. 

The Richmond Family Medicine Clinic, part of OHSU, in Portland, Oregon, said that they are taking “measures to guard against harassing behavior.”

In an email obtained by The Post Millennial, the medical clinic also complained that the account from their former breast cancer patient as to how she was dismissed was shared by Libs of TikTok.

Marlene Barbera, who was set to receive a mastectomy later this month due to her breast cancer, took issue with a trans flag displayed in the office and had asked if she could be treated in a place that did not have a trans flag. In response, she was banned from the practice. Barbera has also had trouble seeking treatment elsewhere, due to her objection to trans ideology.

Barbera shared the information on her own account as well.

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University to undergo free speech training, pay $80,000 in settlement for allegedly issuing ‘no-contact orders’ against student, instructing peers to report her ‘harmful’ Christian, political views

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville will pay $80,000 in a recent settlement agreement with a graduate student who accused the school of wrongfully issuing “no-contact orders” against her and instructing her peers to report her “harmful rhetoric.”

Maggie DeJong and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit against the school after the student claimed she was discriminated against for sharing her Christian and conservative political views.

Three of the school’s professors have been ordered to undergo First Amendment training as part of the settlement agreement. Additionally, the university has been required to revise its policies and student handbook to protect students’ political, religious, and ideological views.

In February 2022, school officials issued “no-contact orders” against DeJong after some of her peers reported her comments about religion, politics, critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, Marxism, censorship, COVID-related regulations, and the criminal justice system.

Students accused DeJong of “harassment” and “discrimination,” claiming her rhetoric had “harmed and offended” them, according to the ADF’s lawsuit.

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The Politicization of Banking and the End of Freedom

A major leader of the Brexit movement, Nigel Farage, has just had his decades-old bank accounts closed, allegedly for “commercial” reasons, while seven additional banks have apparently refused to have him as a customer.

Until we have independent evidence of what is really going on with Farage’s accounts, we cannot definitively rule out the possibility that the bank has closed his accounts for legitimate commercial reasons. But even if this particular account closure had nothing to do with political prejudice, there is no denying that the past couple of years have produced more than one isolated incident of banking services penalising customers for political or ideological reasons.

For instance, in Canada, we saw banks instructed by the Trudeau administration to freeze the accounts of protesters against vax mandates. In the United States, we saw PayPal briefly introduce a policy authorising it to close the accounts of customers it found guilty of “misinformation.” Among the victims of their new policy was Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, who saw three of his PayPal accounts abruptly suspended in 2022. A church minister recently reported on GB News that his bank account had been suspended for objecting to the transgender ideology being propagated by his bank.

These worrying precedents suggest that some providers of commercial services like credit cards and loans seem to think it is their job to make sure their customers have the “right” opinions on transgender ideology, the politics of vax mandates, and God knows what else.

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Germany Fines Woman For Saying Russia Isn’t ‘Aggressor’ And Invasion Of Ukraine Was ‘Necessary’

A Ukrainian national living in the western German city of Cologne has been ordered to pay a fine of around $964 (€900) for making comments in support of Russia’s brazen invasion of Ukraine.

Elena Kolbasnikova — a prominent face among people who support Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany — “posed a threat to public peace” by delivering a speech at a pro-Russian protest, a court in Cologne said Tuesday while issuing the verdict.

During a protest held last year, Kolbasnikova reportedly said the invasion of Ukraine was “necessary” and also told a television channel that “Russia is not an aggressor,” German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

A judge ruled that these comments by the 48-year-old woman were enough evidence to show that she had violated German laws. The woman “endorsed and supported” the Russian war “in a way that was perceptible to others,” the judge said, according to The Telegraph.

Kolbasnikova, nicknamed “Putin‘s fangirl” by German media, was facing a possible prison sentence of up to three years in Germany or a heavy fine. However, the judge only issued the fine after considering the fact that the mother-of-two was unemployed.

The state broadcaster called the fine lenient.

After the sentencing, Kolbasnikova said she was “innocent.”

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BIDEN EMBRACES ANTISEMITISM DEFINITION THAT HAS UPENDED FREE SPEECH IN EUROPE

DURING A GRADUATION speech at the City University of New York’s law school last month, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni American student, criticized “Israeli settler colonialism” and advocated for “the fight against capitalism, racism, imperialism, and Zionism.”

Her words, which the university administration condemned as “hate speech,” kicked off a new round of public debate about the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Republican members of Congress responded by introducing legislation that would deny federal funding to academic institutions that “authorize Anti-Semitic events.”

The bill cites a definition of antisemitism that the Israeli government and its supporters have been pushing in the United States and elsewhere, one that conflates prejudice toward Jews with criticism of Zionism and the state of Israel. And it comes on the heels of President Joe Biden nodding to the definition in the White House’s national strategy to combat antisemitism, released in late May.

In the 60-page document, the Biden administration referred to the IHRA definition — named after the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which promotes it — as the “most prominent” of several definitions of antisemitism and one the administration has “embraced.” But it emphasized that it has no legal value and does not supersede existing laws or constitute binding guidance for public agencies and local government.

Still, by providing neither a rejection nor a full endorsement of the definition, the Biden administration left room for further lobbying for its adoption. Indeed, conservative and pro-Israel groups hailed the strategy as a victory, even as the single reference fell far short of what they had lobbied for: a full-throated endorsement of the IHRA framework as the “sole definition” of antisemitism and as the foundation for federal policy.

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Congress To Investigate WHO Plans To Use “Listening Surveillance Systems” To Identify “Misinformation”

If you’ve been following our reporting on the issue, you’ll already know that the new World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic prevention initiative, the Preparedness and Resilience for Emerging Threats (PRET), recommends using “social listening surveillance systems” to identify “misinformation.” But as more people are learning about how unelected bodies are being used to suppress speech and potentially override sovereignty, it’s starting to get more pushback.

According to documents from the UN agency, PRET aims to “guide countries in pandemic planning” and work to “incorporate the latest tools and approaches for shared learning and collective action established during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The PRET document describes misinformation as a “health threat,” and refers to it as an “infodemic.”

“Infodemic is the overabundance of information – accurate or not – which makes it difficult for individuals to adopt behaviors that will protect their health and the health of their families and communities. The infodemic can directly impact health, hamper the implementation of public health countermeasures and undermine trust and social cohesiveness,” the document states.

However, it continues to recommend invasive methods of countering the spread of misinformation.

“Establish and invest in resources for social listening surveillance systems and capacities to identify concerns as well as rumors and misinformation,” the WHO wrote in the PRET document.

“To build trust, it’s important to be responsive to needs and concerns, to relay timely information, and to train leaders and HCWs in risk communications principles and encourage their application.

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Microsoft launches new AI tool to moderate text and images

Microsoft is launching a new AI-powered moderation service that it says is designed to foster safer online environments and communities.

Called Azure AI Content Safety, the new offering, available through the Azure AI product platform, offers a range of AI models trained to detect “inappropriate” content across images and text. The models — which can understand text in English, Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese — assign a severity score to flagged content, indicating to moderators what content requires action.

“Microsoft has been working on solutions in response to the challenge of harmful content appearing in online communities for over two years. We recognized that existing systems weren’t effectively taking into account context or able to work in multiple languages,” the Microsoft spokesperson said via email. “New [AI] models are able to understand content and cultural context so much better. They are multilingual from the start … and they provide clear and understandable explanations, allowing users to understand why content was flagged or removed.”

During a demo at Microsoft’s annual Build conference, Sarah Bird, Microsoft’s responsible AI lead, explained that Azure AI Content Safety is a productized version of the safety system powering Microsoft’s chatbot in Bing and Copilot, GitHub’s AI-powered code-generating service.

“We’re now launching it as a product that third-party customers can use,” Bird said in a statement.

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New Democrat Bill Calls For A Federal Agency To Create “Behavioral Codes,” Introduce “Disinformation Experts”

On May 18, two US senators introduced the Digital Platform Commission Act of 2023, a bill that seeks to give powers to a new federal agency that will set up a council to regulate AI, in the context of social platforms.

More precisely, the new body – the Federal Digital Platform Commission – would “rule” on what’s termed as enforceable “behavioral codes,” and among those staffing it will be “disinformation experts.”

The move by the two Democratic senators – Michael Bennet and Peter Welch – seems to have come in concert with congressional testimony delivered by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, since the bill was presented shortly afterwards, and backs Altman’s idea to form a new federal agency of the kind.

Altman had more thoughts on how all this should work – the new agency, according to him, might be given the power to restrict AI development via licenses or credentialing.

The speed with which the two senators picked up on this to announce their bill may owe to the fact Bennet “only” had to go back and update one he already introduced in 2022. This time around, the proposed legislation has been changed in a number of ways, most notably by redefining what a digital platform is.

The bill wants this definition to also cover those companies that provide content “primarily” generated by algorithmic processes. This is done by proposing that the future Commission be given the authority over how personal information is used in decision-making or content generation, which is thought to specifically refer to tech like ChatGPT.

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Radio Aryan: ‘Hitler fan’ James Allchurch who had ‘pro white ideology’ jailed for racist podcasts

A man who broadcast thousands of recordings containing racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic content has been jailed.

James Allchurch, who also went by the name of Sven Longshanks, from Gelli in Pembrokeshire, was found guilty of ten offences following a trial at Swansea Crown Court.

Podcaster James Allchurch, 51, made a series of episodes that were “highly racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist in nature”, Swansea Crown Court heard.

The name Sven Longshanks is in reference to King Edward I – who was responsible for expelling Jews from England in 1290.

Prosecutor Jonathan Rees KC said Allchurch was the owner of the website, the main host and responsible for distributing the audio recordings.

Allchurch was joined by guests including National Action co-founder Alex Davies, 27, of Swansea, South Wales, who was jailed in June last year for eight and a half-years for being a member of the banned far-right organisation.

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