Joe Biden’s officials have been temporarily banned from meeting with social media company executives due to what the judge agreed appeared to be a “massive” effort to censor dissent on Covid vaccines. The Telegraph has more.
A judge backed claims that the U.S. President’s administration, including the White House, had engaged in a “massive” attempt to stop Americans questioning the efficacy of vaccines online.
The injunction came after it was revealed last month that U.K. ministers set up a Counter-Disinformation Unit, which was used to target lockdown critics and those questioning the mass vaccination of children.
The U.K. Government used an artificial intelligence firm to monitor social media sites and flag opposition to vaccine passports.
Prosecutors in the Republican states of Louisiana and Missouri brought the case and accused the federal Government of being involved in a “censorship enterprise“.
They claimed that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by trying to block social media users exercising their right to free speech.
Thousands of communications between Government officials and technology companies during the pandemic have been collected and presented in the court case, which is known as Missouri v. Biden.
Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed during the Donald Trump administration, issued an injunction which stops Mr. Biden’s officials talking to social media companies about “protected speech”.
In his ruling, the judge banned Government departments from contacting social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech”.
A final ruling in the case has yet to be made by the judge.
In the injunction, he said that the Attorneys General from Louisiana and Missouri had “produced evidence of a massive effort by defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content”.
Social media and other technology companies have in the past communicated regularly with the Government, including during elections and in the pandemic.
In his injunction, the judge said there could still be communication if the Government needed to issue warnings about a national security or criminal threat.
Worth reading in full.
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Scholz holds first call with Putin in two years in bid to ‘end Ukraine war
‘Putin said the current crisis is a direct result of NATO’s aggressive policies’
German armed forces are the same size as those of Britain, in other words the same size as the U.S. Marine Corps, on its own.
Today’s U.S. Marine Corps has recently been described as ‘useful only as an adjunct to the U.S. Army or for small, crisis-response missions like reinforcing an embassy.’
Dakota L. Wood (USMC ret’d.) Senior Research Fellow Defense Programs.
The German Army is 60,000 strong, enough to deploy one Brigade or three battalions in order to, say, patrol a ceasefire buffer zone of, maximum, one hundred kilometres….at a stretch. As for aggression……at best aggressive camping……maybe.
For perspective, Moldova, population and size roughly similar to Wales, has an army of one Brigade.
So Scholz talking to Putin is likely to have the same impact as Eluned Morgan(?) talking to Putin……Precisely……..
That is just how silly the idea of NATO aggression being of concern to Putin is.
Only a complete halfwit could think that would represent any kind of ‘casus belli’.
Oh! Hang on……….
Mind you, the way the Russian Army has performed, is performing, The Welsh Guards could probably give them a severe handling……possibly the Welsh Guards mascot on its own……
Given the incompetence of Western European political leadership, this bears endless repetition:
‘Modern strategy, is….concerned with war-prevention……Modern strategy deals with the use of military forces in peace as well as in war, and also in all those ambiguous conditions in between…..
Making a distinction between an “air” battle and a “land” battle is not possible except at the lower tactical or procedural levels, certainly not at a strategic level……
Military forces, including land forces, have two important effects on an adversary. One is the physical, the other is psychological…..
Modem strategy includes preventing the outbreak of conflict, (so) the psychological effect of military force during periods of nonactive conflict becomes all-important.
In a modern strategy the (NATO European) army must provide for the West a sense of security to a degree that will encourage it to act and react in respect to global events with confidence.
That forecloses to (Russia) the options of intimidation, blackmail, and political leverage.’
LAND FORCES IN MODERN STRATEGY, LIEUTENANT GENERAL DE WITT C. SMITH, JR. US ARMY
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-42919144
‘Russian military reporter Sladkov: “And how sad it is that many [of our soldiers] hide [their faces] behind pieces of cloth, as if they are doing something shameful…ordinary guys… They will tell their grandchildren: look, this is me, your grandfather. And the grandchildren will wonder: this is someone hiding their face, denying their involvement in the events…”
Russian soldiers, on some subconscious level, know that they are participating in a mass crime. That’s why they hide their faces.’
“Modern strategy, is….concerned with war-prevention…”
What, like not interfering in other countries’ elections? That sort of thing?
Asking for my friend Victoria.
Nuland was/is not a strategist. She acted contrary to U.S. strategy. Her blunders have contributed in no small measure to where we find ourselves today.
‘What was remarkable about the episode was the utter confidence with which Nuland seemed to speak for the United States and its policy. From the start of his administration, President Barack Obama had tried to lower tensions with Russia and refocus American attention on a rising China; he had made clear he wanted no part in the problems of the post-Soviet periphery. Yet in the middle of the uprising in Kiev, there was Nuland, encouraging protesters and insulting European allies.’
The U.S. Defense Secretary is the President’s senior adviser on Military Strategy. Nuland had nothing to do with defence.
If you want a concise guide to Western Military Strategy in Europe, have a look at General DeWitt Smith’s excellent presentation that I reference above.
So speaks the militarist. The alternative is called diplomacy. It would have been so easy to prevent the war in Ukraine but the militarists always want war.
I was missing your referneces to Smith, but you seem to be back on that same old track again.
I wonder if he is talking to me. You never know if he addressed me directly I might read what he said.
“If you want a new idea, read an old book.”
Deterrence has been central to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) strategic concepts since the beginning. The first such concept, “Strategic Concept for the Defense of the North Atlantic Area,” known as DC 6/1 and approved in December 1949, declared as its main objective: “To coordinate, in time of peace, our military and economic strength with a view to creating a powerful deterrent to any nation or group of nations threatening the peace, independence and stability of the North Atlantic family of nations.”
NATO’s foremost task is to ensure the military protection of its geographically most exposed members. The Alliance’s new “Readiness Action Plan” (RAP) foresees increasing the readiness-level of NATO’s reaction forces, and holding increasingly complex exercises in Central and Eastern Europe. The RAP includes a “spearhead” force capable of deploying within a matter of days, the establishment of a multinational NATO command and control and reception facilities on the territories of several eastern Allies, and the updating of defence plans. Although NATO’s emphasis remains on the rapid projection of reinforcements rather than on the permanent stationing of substantial combat forces in Central and Eastern Europe, the RAP reflects the reaffirmation of a principle that for some time had been receiving short shrift: in order to communicate deterrence through credible defence one needs to match one’s rhetoric with the appropriate military posture.
A photo of an American armoured vehicle on a highway in Lithuania in 2015 was shared by many Lithuanians on their mobile phones. The caption: ‘Awesome….’
Lithuania is similar in population to Wales. The idea that Lithuania might be about to invade Russia, or be party to an invasion of Russia sums up so much of the silliness to be found on here.
The latest bleak figures regarding the UK and immigration;
”The U.K. saw the sharpest increase in immigration among developed countries last year, as new data from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows 746,900 individuals moved to Britain in 2023 — a 52.9 percent surge from the previous year’s total of 488,400.
The dramatic rise, which outpaces every other OECD member nation, occurred under the Conservative government, though the trend is expected to persist with Labour’s Keir Starmer now in office.
The figures highlight that the U.K. experienced the second-highest raw number of arrivals, trailing only the United States, which recorded 1.2 million migrants. In comparison, South Korea’s growth, at 50.9 percent, saw just 87,100 arrivals. This significant influx follows a 110 percent rise in U.K. immigration since 2019, reflecting a growing trend in family-linked migration and work visas.
A key driver of the U.K.’s immigration spike was family reunification, which climbed by 60 percent in 2023 to 373,000. This accounted for 70 percent of the rise in family-linked permits, largely tied to health and care worker visas. Policy shifts this year now prevent new care workers from bringing relatives, a move intended to curb numbers, but Brits are skeptical after experiencing all-time highs for consecutive years.
The U.K. also issued more student visas than any other OECD country, with nearly 450,000 granted in 2023.”
https://rmx.news/uk/immigration-into-britain-growing-more-rapidly-than-any-other-developed-nation-says-oecd/
”One swallow does not make a summer”, springs to mind, although this single arrest doesn’t stop Starmer from milking it for all that it’s worth;
”Labour prime minister Keir Starmer is wrong to suggest that the arrest of an alleged “significant supplier” of small boat equipment used for illegal Channel crossings shows “our approach to smashing criminal gangs is already having an impact.”
With close to 20,000 migrants having made this perilous journey since Starmer entered office just four months ago, SDP leader William Clouston dismissed the one-off arrest as “a trifling matter compared with the colossal incentives Starmer’s Labour offers illegals,” including “the British social wage and welfare system for life.”
Indeed, reports suggest that for every pound the British state spends on immigration enforcement, it spends £9 (€11.78) on supporting and accommodating asylum seekers.
Dominic Cummings, who was chief advisor to former Tory PM Boris Johnson, went further, describing Starmer as a “clown” for claiming that the nabbing of “one irrelevant middleman” will make a difference while “the government is [also] handing out private medical care to illegal immigrants.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/labours-plan-to-halt-illegal-migration-is-not-working/
We are truly screwed
The boilers will be going out all across Europe!
The international energy situation seems to be getting more edgy with Gazprom looking to end Gas supplies to Austria;
https://www.energyintel.com/00000193-30b0-de51-a19b-7ab22d310000
Will Trump still be willing to ship out the USA’s Natural Gas? Europe and the UK do start to look rather vulnerable as far as energy is concerned. Just recently dull windless days have seen a poor generation of so called renewable energy. It is going to be galling in the UK if we end up sitting shivering with energy restrictions knowing that we are sitting on huge reserves of coal, gas etc.
There’s no cure for stupidity …
A dose of reality helps but it takes time and total emiseration for it to sink in with too many people.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c206dyxkg01o.amp
‘News from Abkhazia, the protesters have not dispersed. Earlier, the opposition gave President Aslan Bzhania an hour to resign, but he refused and then allegedly fled to a Russian military base. Video from a few hours ago.
Officially, the president’s press service reported that he left Sukhumi after the opposition’s ultimatum for his resignation.’
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1857553697338765647?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
And your point is?
To search the internet high and low for any possibility to slag Russians.
David Miller is correct..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/15/essex-police-allison-pearson-antisemitism-israel/
Police refused to investigate academic who said Starmer works for ‘genocidal Jewish supremacists’
So we can guess that it was the police themselves that were upset by the hurty words. This is beyond disturbing.
So could the other two police forces that are cooperating with Essex be Greater Manchester and the Met?
In what mad world does the opinion of a city mayor on the US President matter or deserve attention? Jumped up prat. He’s just there to make the bloody trains run on time. Talk about delusions of grandeur.
“U.K. must treat Trump like a ‘best mate’ who needs correcting, says Sadiq Khan”
‘Maaaaate…!’
How very presumptuous of our mayor to imagine that they are the moral check and balance on The Don.
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind“ Hos. 8.7
He is entitled to his opinion as a private citizen but why is his opinion being quoted as if he had any authority on the subject in his role as Mayor of London? Unless he’s in training for Foreign Secretary…
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a London radio station to report what the Mayor of London has said about a President of the United States who is likely to visit London (again), especially given the history between them, including Khan calling Trump a “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “Islamophobic”, and giving permission to anti-Trump protestors to fly a giant inflatable “Trump baby” blimp when Trump visited London, and Trump accusing Khan of doing “a terrible job”, “a very bad job on crime” and “a very bad job on terrorism”, and called Khan “very dumb”, “pathetic”, “incompetent”, “a disaster”, “a national disgrace who is destroying the City of London”, “a terrible mayor who should stay out of our business” and a “stone-cold loser who should focus on crime in London”.
If nobody reported what Khan said about Trump, how would Trump know what Khan said about him, and how would we know that Khan suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome?
I think we could all have guessed what they think of each other.
I don’t care what Trump thinks of Khan and what he says about him- he really ought to just say he has much more important things to worry about
I think public political discourse would be better served by a focus on policies and actions rather than sound bites, and expecting people in the public eye to state their opinion on everything and anything
He is not just a city mayor, he is Co-Chair of C40 Cities (https://www.c40.org/) leading the “Global climate fight”: a very important person of international repute.
I’m sure he thinks he is of international importance
JFK’s labelling as a dreaded ‘anti-vaxxers’ over his concern about the linking of autism with vaccines is entirely misplaced, but is no coincidence whatsoever. The evidence that there is indeed a clear link between the use of an apparently insignificant but crucial substance in some (but nor all) older vaccines, it is now impossible to dismiss.
Many older vaccines (but not the new mRNA pseudo-vaccines) use aluminium-based chemical ‘adjuvants’ to stimulate a strong response by the immune system. Invariably dismissed by the industry as harmless, these chemicals have now been shown to precipitate severe reactions in brain tissues, indicating that these vaccines are a likely cause in the recent explosion in the rates of infant autism.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X17308763
Chris Exley and his colleagues at Keele University found irrefutable evidence of the direct linkage between the environmental toxin, aluminium, and autism. This linkage is also apparent in Alzheimer’s Disease and some other apparently unpreventable neurological conditions. Yet, for the management at Keele, having a prominent ‘anti-vaxxers’ on the staff was just too embarrassing, so they manufactured an excuse to get rid of him. Entirely consistent with efforts to discredit JFK as a vaccine denier, Exley was forced out of his post, his research team disbanded, and his world-class lab closed down. Yet their research is recognized as world-leading, and their reports cited many thousands of times in the scientific literature.
Effectively, at a stroke, Big Pharma influenced the eliminated one of the most powerful obstacles to its potentially lucrative market expansion in the neuromedical field. If there is indeed a probable environmental cause of autism, Alzheimer’s Disease, and some other apparently recalcitrant neurological conditions, then lucrative pharmacological products could be irrelevant.
So stop branding those who are sceptical about some vaccines as ‘anti-vaxxers’. Scepticism is the very essence of science: without sceptics, there can be no science. They deserve our respect, not ignorant (or worse, deliberate) condemnation.
Chris Exley’s book “Imagine you are an aluminium atom” is well worth reading and not too technical. The use of adjuvants is just one of the many questions I now have about vaccines and their impacts. I have learned a lot from presentations on The Highwire and testimonies by Aaron Siri in particular. And, as the great Charles Kovess says, I’m “proud to be an anti-vaxxer” because we need to have a grown up discussion about them and the monstrous vaccine industry that cares nothing for the children it harms.
Getting a good press again, perhaps? https://www.gbnews.com/news/essex-body-woman-found-car-boot-border-police-probe However, we’re three days on from the supposed real crime; a cynic might ask, why publish it now, by Essex Police, no less?