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ZIONISM is a political movement that has nothing to do with the Jewish religion or Jewish ethnicity.
Zionism is promoted by Ashkenazim. Judaism is a religion that is historically associated with the Hebrew ethnicity. Hebrews are genetically related to the Palestinians that are being murdered in the Middle East.
The Ashkenazim are genetically distinct.
Public diplomacy of Israel
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This article may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (February 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Public diplomacy in Israel refers to Israel's efforts to communicate directly with citizens of other nations to inform and influence their perceptions, with the aim of garnering support or tolerance for the Israeli government's strategic objectives. Historically, these efforts have evolved from being called "propaganda" by early Zionists (when the term was considered neutral), with Theodor Herzl advocating such activities in 1899,[1] to the more contemporary Hebrew term "hasbara" introduced by Nahum Sokolow, which translates roughly to "explaining". This communicative strategy seeks to justify actions and is considered reactive and event-driven.
In recent times, Israel has shifted toward calling its efforts "public diplomacy", indicating a strategic move away from a defensive posture to a more proactive and comprehensive approach. This involves various forms of communication and interaction with foreign publics, including mass communication through social media and traditional media, as well as cultural diplomacy. Key Israeli government bodies involved in public diplomacy include the IDF Spokesperson's Unit, the Prime Minister's Office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and pro-Israeli civil society organizations.
The history of Israeli public diplomacy dates to the early 20th century, with notable efforts during the pre-statehood period, the establishment of the state, and significant developments in response to changing geopolitical challenges. Methods employed range from traditional media outreach to digital campaigns, with a focus on shaping foreign public opinion, particularly in the United States, and coordinating with diaspora Zionist organizations to promote a favorable narrative of Israel. This multifaceted approach reflects Israel's ongoing efforts to navigate complex international dynamics and bolster its global standing.
Terms and types Different terms have been used to describe Israel's and other actors' efforts to reach audiences abroad.
Among early Zionists it was common to label communicative efforts propaganda. Theodor Herzl used the term at the 3rd Zionist Congress in 1899, where he asked fellow Zionists in the audience "to engage in propaganda".[1] At the time the term "propaganda" was considered neutral. The term is now pejorative. Propaganda is now typically used for official government statements or by critics of pro-Israeli advocacy groups to portray the communication as misleading and manipulative.
Hasbara was formally introduced to the Zionist vocabulary by Nahum Sokolow.[1] Hasbara (Hebrew: ??????????) has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified".[2] As it focuses on providing explanations about one's actions, hasbara has been called a "reactive and event-driven approach".[3][4] In 2003, Ron Schleifer called hasbara "a positive sounding synonym for 'propaganda'".[5]
Today,[clarification needed] Israeli practitioners tend to label their communicative efforts "public diplomacy", not hasbara, indicating a shift in strategy. They consider a focus on "explaining" too defensive and prefer to actively determine the agenda by being less reactive and more proactive, moving to a more comprehensive, long-term strategic approach.[4][6][7][8][9]
Israeli public diplomacy encompasses different forms of communication and other forms of interaction with the public abroad. For instance, Israel engages in open and fully attributable, unidirectional mass communication that targets so far unaffiliated civil populations in other countries (a form of communication Hirschberger defines as "external communication"[4]), both via social media and traditional mass media. The Israeli government uses this type of communication especially to depict Israel positively (a communication strategy Hirschberger calls "branding").[4] The Israeli government and pro-Israeli groups also use interventive communication to counter what they see as attempts at delegitimisation of Israel, e.g., in the context of BDS. The Israeli government also engages in activities beyond communicative efforts in social media and the traditional mass media, e.g., in the form of cultural diplomacy. The communicative efforts of pro-Israeli civil society groups are partially also called "advocacy".
Sources for disseminating information Various branches of the Israeli government as well as pro-Israeli civil society organizations engage in public diplomacy efforts:
IDF Spokesperson's Unit: The spokesperson's unit of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) plays a central role in the Israeli government's public diplomacy.[10] The IDF's English-language Facebook page is one of the most-followed army social media worldwide.[10] The unit has become Israel's largest spokesperson unit, with more than 400 officers, civilians and soldiers. There is also a reserve unit of almost 1,200 soldiers and officers.[11][10] As of 2017, the unit has 15 staff members that are responsible only for the IDF's social media platforms to reach audiences abroad.[12] As of 2015, the IDF is active on 30 different social media platforms.[12][13] Spokesperson's Unit of COGAT: The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the IDF unit responsible for coordination and liaison with the Palestinian Authority,[14] has a spokesperson's unit of its own as well as its own social media channels in English and Arabic.[15] Prime Minister's Office (PMO): Within the Israel Prime Minister's Office, the Government Press Office (GPO), the Public Diplomacy Directorate and the National Information Directorate are involved in public diplomacy efforts.[16] The National Information Directorate is in charge of coordinating "the public diplomacy activities of various governmental bodies in foreign and security affairs, and on socioeconomic issues" (Israel PMO s.a.[further explanation needed]).[17][16] The Public Diplomacy Directorate is responsible for communicating the Prime Minister's and the government's policies and decisions.[16][17] The directorate is headed by the Prime Minister's Media Advisor.[16][17] Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA): The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs also has a Public Diplomacy Directorate. "The directorate consists of the Media and Public Affairs Division, the Division for Cultural Affairs and Scientific Cooperation and the Bureau for Religious Affairs and Relations with the Jewish Diaspora. The Media and Public Affairs Division comprises one department in charge of 'branding', a department in charge of collecting information, producing visual media content such as videos and drafting policy papers for briefing Israeli missions all around the world, as well as the spokesperson's bureau, which is in charge of the relationship with the press. Furthermore, the division also has an academic department and a small department dealing with issues of civil society affairs, especially the battle against BDS. Finally, the ministry has also a Digital Diplomacy Department, which is in charge of all digital channels of the ministry".[16][attribution needed] Pro-Israeli civil society organizations: Various civil society organizations and initiatives from Israel and abroad support the Israeli public diplomacy efforts.[18] Prominent examples are StandWithUs, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the Israel on Campus Coalition, the AMCHA Initiative and "The David Project".[19] Masbirim Israel: In 2010, the Israeli Ministry of Information and Diaspora Affairs launched the PR campaign "Masbirim Israel". The campaign intended to encourage Israeli citizens to contribute to improving Israel's image by talking with their international contacts about the country.[20] History Stand run by Chrétiens Amis d'Israël denouncing the "new antisemitism" at an exhibition in Lausanne, Switzerland An example of a Hasbara stand. IDF infographic titled "Gaza Strip Land Crossings Activity During Operation Pillar of Defense". It claims "64 trucks of food were transferred from Israel, 16 trucks of medical supplies were transferred from Israel, 26 patients in need of medical care entered Israel from Gaza" Hasbara efforts often use IDF posters.[citation needed] Poster showing a burned-out car on a street in Israel. Caption: "400 rockets from Gaza hit Israel in the last 3 days. This must stop. Israel Defense Forces" An example of a Hasbara poster. 1970–1999 Early mentions of the term hasbara in English mainstream print media[21][original research] date from the late 1970s and describe it as "overseas image-building".[22] According to The Washington Post, this work "is called hasbara when the purpose is to reshape public opinion abroad".[23] In the early 1980s, hasbara was defined as a "public relations campaign".[24] In Newsweek it was described as "explaining".[25] In 1986, The New York Times reported that a program for "communicating defense goals" was started in the late 1970s, and a 1984 implementation of a "Hasbara Project" to "train foreign-service officers in communications by placing them with American companies". Carl Spielvogel, chairman of Backer & Spielvogel, traveled to Israel to advise the government on communicating its defense goals. The trip led to the Hasbara Project, an internship program established to train foreign-service officers in communications by placing them with American companies.[26]
Shmuel Katz's book Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine, published in 1973, was described as "an encyclopedic source-book for those involved in Israel's hasbara (public relations) effort" by Moshe Phillips, a national director of Herut North America's U.S. section.[27] In 1977, Prime Minister Menachem Begin named Katz "Adviser to the Prime Minister of Information Abroad".[28][29]
In May 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that American Jewish leaders hardly reacted to news that the Foreign Ministry's hasbara department would be eliminated as part of a sweeping reorganization of the ministry. Malcolm Hoenlein noted there had been talk of streamlining the ministry's hasbara functions for some time. He said that merging the hasbara department's functions with those of the press department did not portend any downgrading in the priority the Likud government gives to hasbara abroad. Abe Foxman reacted similarly, saying he was "not distressed or disturbed", and noted that disseminating hasbara has always been the responsibility of every Foreign Ministry staff officer, especially those working abroad; if eliminating one department means everyone will assume greater responsibility for his or her own efforts in distributing hasbara, then he is all in favor. It also reported that personnel in foreign hasbara departments would be shifted to press departments, which is where much of the work currently done by hasbara officials properly belongs. He explained that Israel's efforts to provide hasbara abroad would focus on media communications.[30]
2000–2009 In 2001, Shmuel Katz published a retrospective of Israeli hasbara efforts and said that hasbara "must be tackled not by occasional sudden sallies but by a separate permanent department in the government."[31] Sharon did increase hasbara efforts, but did not create a cabinet-level ministry for that purpose.[32]
Also in 2001, the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry,[33] the diplomatic arm of the Government of Israel, was a co-sponsor of the Hasbara Fellowships activities of Aish HaTorah.[34] In May 2007, the Fellowships' website called for volunteers for a team of Wikipedians to make sure Israel is presented fairly and accurately".[35][non-primary source needed]
In 2002, the Israeli State Comptroller's office issued a report critical of Israel's PR efforts. "A lack of an overall strategic public relations conception and objective" and lack of coordination between the various organizations were mentioned. Funding levels are modest; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spent about US$8.6 million on these efforts in 2002, and the Government Press Office was budgeted at US$100,000.[36]
In 2008, the Jewish Agency for Israel's Department for Jewish Zionist Education had a webpage titled "Hasbara, Israeli Advocacy, Your Guide to the Middle East Conflict".[37][non-primary source needed][undue weight? – discuss]
In 2008, Yarden Vatikay was appointed to coordinate Israel's domestic and foreign media policy.[38]
In 2009, Israel's foreign ministry organized volunteers to add pro-Israeli commentary on news websites.[39][40][41] In July 2009, it was announced that the Israeli Foreign Ministry would assemble an "internet warfare" squad to spread pro-Israel messages on various websites, with funding of ?600,000 (about $150,000).[42][unreliable source?]
2010 to present A 2010 report produced for the Israeli cabinet by the Reut Institute and cited by the newspaper Haaretz exemplifies the common Israeli view that hasbara efforts are needed to respond to what it describes as a diffuse "delegitimization network" of anti-Israel activists. As Haaretz put it, "The network's activists—'delegitimizers' the report dubs them—are relatively marginal: young people, anarchists, migrants and radical political activists." The newspaper also cites the report as saying this network promotes pro-Palestinian activities in Europe as "trendy", and calls for it to be monitored by Israeli intelligence services, and for the cabinet to treat the network as a strategic threat. It concludes that Israel was not prepared to meet the threat this network posed and that a counter-effort must be more vigorously undertaken to respond to it.[43]
Neil Lazarus said in 2012 that what he calls "low budget, grassroots Hasbara 2.0" has come of age, and commends websites that keep track of what supporters see as anti-Israel media bias, and that promote email campaigns on Israel's behalf. He observes that "Israel's hasbara seems to be becoming more dynamic, as the Diaspora takes responsibility", and that "Even day schools and MASA programs have been conscripted to the task."[44]
Methods An article once on the World Union of Jewish Students website described methods it attributed to Palestinian activists, and offered advice on how to respond. Describing demonstrators as "youths", for example, creates a different impression from calling them "children". The article drew attention to the subtle differences of meaning between words such as demonstration and riot, terror organization and Palestinian political organization. It advised against name-calling and point-scoring.[45][non-primary source needed][undue weight? – discuss]
Edward Said wrote in 2001 that hasbara methods used during the Second Intifada included lunches and free trips for influential journalists; seminars for Jewish university students; invitations to congressmen; pamphlets and donation of money for election campaigns; telling photographers and writers what to photograph or write about; lecture and concert tours by prominent Israelis; frequent references to the Holocaust; advertisements in the newspapers attacking Arabs and praising Israel.[46]
In 2007, the Israel Citizens Information Council (ICIC) said its purpose was "to assist efforts to explain Israeli life from the vantage point of the average Israeli citizen. Towards that end, the ICIC enlists Israelis from all walks of life to participate in its various projects ... One of our major activities is the production of special Powerpoint presentations which we post on our website. These presentations review specific aspects and issues related to Israel and the Middle East."[47][non-primary source needed][undue weight? – discuss]
In 2012, the Israeli Foreign Ministry published new guidelines on the appropriate use of social media methods by its diplomatic staff. There have been multiple instances of embarrassing and inappropriate tweets and posts by Israeli embassies, such as one in Ireland criticizing a Knesset member.[48][undue weight? – discuss]
Shaping foreign public opinion Israeli officials have emphasized the importance of molding American public opinion to influence U.S. foreign policy favourably toward Israel. For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said, "In the last 30 years, I appeared innumerable times in the American media and met thousands of American leaders. I developed a certain ability to influence public opinion." Netanyahu made this statement in the context of the Israeli government's decade-long effort to pressure for military action against Iran. He added that this "is the most important thing: the ability to sway public opinion in the United States against the regime in Iran."[49]
Coordination with diaspora Zionist organizations Main article: Israel lobby in the United States According to The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, major American Jewish organizations have played a significant role in advancing an Israeli state narrative to the American public. They quote Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, saying "The Presidents' Conference and its members have been instruments of official governmental Israeli policy. It was seen as our task to receive directions from government circles and to do our best no matter what to affect the Jewish community." Similarly, they quote Hyman Bookbinder, a high-ranking official of the American Jewish Committee, as saying "Unless something is terribly pressing, really critical or fundamental, you parrot Israel's line in order to retain American support. As American Jews, we don't go around saying Israel is wrong about its policies."[50]
Mitchell Bard has written, "by framing the issues in terms of the national interest, AIPAC can attract broader support than would ever be possible if it was perceived to represent only the interests of Israel. This does not mean AIPAC does not have a close relationship with Israeli officials; it does, albeit unofficially. Even so, the lobby sometimes comes into conflict with the Israeli government".[51]
According to Shivi Greenfield and Nachman Shai, the Israeli government (particularly the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the former Ministry of Public Diplomacy & Diaspora Affairs, and the Ministry of Tourism) has worked with various Israeli and international non-government organizations to promote Israeli public diplomacy within the global Jewish diaspora and international community. Notable Israeli NGOs involved in public diplomacy have included the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israel Project, HonestReporting, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), and Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). The Israeli government has also partnered with several Jewish and Christian Zionist NGOs in the U.S. and abroad, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).[52][53]
According to Greenfield and Shai, the Israeli government and sympathetic NGOs, including Hillel International, B'nai B'rith, Israel at Heart, and StandWithUs, have sought to promote sympathy for Israel among university students through study tours (such as Birthright Israel and Masa Israel, talks, meetings, distributing educational materials, distributing educational materials, gift packages, fundraising, and blood donations. These campus outreaches seek to strengthen ties between Israel and the Jewish diaspora and support efforts by Jewish students to combat so-called "anti-Israel" activism on campus such as Israeli Apartheid Week.[54][52][55] Shai identifies the "Israel on Campus Coalition" as the umbrella organization for most pro-Israel American campus organizations. It is funded by the Schusterman Foundation and Hillel.[55]
According to Shahar Burla, the Israeli Foreign and Public Diplomacy ministries worked with local Australian Jewish community and Zionist organizations such as the local chapter of the United Israel Appeal, the Australasian Union of Jewish Students, the Zionist Council of New South Wales and the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies to mobilize Australian Jews into supporting Israeli hasbara efforts during the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid. The Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs established a "Communications Room" to circulate pro-Israel information to the global Jewish diaspora. These mobilization efforts via email messages, websites, traditional media, meetings and demonstrations. Pro-Israel sympathizers were encouraged to share pro-Israel videos and articles on social media platforms, respond to blogs and TV shows, and write editorial letters.[56]
See also Act.IL Israeli Military Censor Jewish Internet Defense Force Media coverage of the Arab–Israeli conflict Media Watch International New antisemitism Pallywood We Con the World
Too bad folks don't understand that ethnic Jews are Semitic. They have more in common with the Palestinians than the Ashkenazim who are promoting and executing a policy of genocide in the Middle East....
The Occupation of Water The legacy of Israel’s 50-year occupation of the Palestinian territories has been systematic human rights violations on a mass scale. One of its most devastating consequences is the impact of Israel’s discriminatory policies on Palestinians’ access to adequate supplies of clean and safe water.
Soon after Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, in June 1967, the Israeli military authorities consolidated complete power over all water resources and water-related infrastructure in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). 50 years on, Israel continues to control and restrict Palestinian access to water in the OPT to a level which neither meets their needs nor constitutes a fair distribution of shared water resources.
In November 1967 the Israeli authorities issued Military Order 158, which stated that Palestinians could not construct any new water installation without first obtaining a permit from the Israeli army. Since then, the extraction of water from any new source or the development of any new water infrastructure would require permits from Israel, which are near impossible to obtain. Palestinians living under Israel’s military occupation continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this order until today. They are unable to drill new water wells, install pumps or deepen existing wells, in addition to being denied access to the Jordan River and fresh water springs. Israel even controls the collection of rain water throughout most of the West Bank, and rainwater harvesting cisterns owned by Palestinian communities are often destroyed by the Israeli army. As a result, some 180 Palestinian communities in rural areas in the occupied West Bank have no access to running water, according to OCHA. Even in towns and villages which are connected to the water network, the taps often run dry.
Editor OilPrice.com Tue, October 17, 2023 at 1:01 AM GMT+2·29 min read
American investors have been taken for a trillion-dollar ride by naked short sellers, in what could turn out to be the biggest financial regulatory scandal in North American history.
While what is now an all-out war on naked short sellers intensifies, there is a new flashpoint on the front line–a potentially devastating ruling targeting those who are alleged to make illegal naked short selling possible: The Facilitators: bankers and brokers.
On September 29, Federal District Court Judge Lorna Schofield of the Southern District of New York issued a ruling that has the potential to significantly disrupt Wall Street compliance, and is a major first step towards protecting retail investors from fraud.
In Harrington Global Opportunity Fund Ltd. v. CIBC World Markets, Inc et.al, Judge Schofield found that broker-dealers may be primarily liable for manipulative trading initiated by their customers because they serve as “gate-keepers” of trading on securities exchanges.
These broker-dealers have a “continuing responsibility to ensure that their customer’s order flow ... is in compliance with all applicable rules, regulations and laws and detect and prevent manipulative or fraudulent trading … under the supervision and control of the firm,” the judge ruled.
The defendants in the case had motioned to dismiss Harrington’s claims of market manipulation and spoofing (when traders place market orders and then cancel them before the order is ever fulfilled, manipulating prices in the meantime). Judge Schofield denied the motion after hearing arguments that broker-dealers are not responsible for “their customers’ trading”.
Instead, the ruling recognizes that not only are broker-dealers the gate-keepers who can enable illegal naked short selling, but they are responsible, and thus liable for their customers’ actions. Schofield described broker-dealers as “reckless in not knowing that the trades being executed at their customers’ direction were manipulative”.
Naked Short Selling: ‘Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction’
Naked shorting creates a dangerous minefield for retail investors. But it’s a minefield that dealer-brokers may now be held liable for thanks to the recent ruling.
Short-selling itself isn’t illegal. In order to legally sell a stock short, traders must first secure a borrow against the shares they intend to sell. Where the September 29 ruling comes into play is at the point of the broker-dealer. Any broker who enters into a stock short on behalf of a trader must have assurances that his client will make a settlement.
As opposed to a “long” sale (where the seller owns the stock), a “short” sale can be either “covered” or “naked”.
If it’s covered, then there is no issue: the short seller has already borrowed or arranged to borrow the shares when the short sale is made.
When things get naked, the regulatory environment becomes riddled with compliance holes. With a naked short, the short seller is selling shares it doesn’t own and has made no arrangements to buy. That means the seller cannot cover or “settle” in this instance. More profoundly, it means they are selling ghost shares that simply do not exist without their further action. The ability to sell an unlimited number of non-existent shares in a publicly-traded company gives a short seller the ultimate power: To destroy and manipulate a company’s share price at will.
This illicit practice artificially dilutes share prices and then companies find themselves in a position where they have to scramble for capital, Bryan Barkley points out in in-depth research published by the Medium.
That scramble then leads to shareholder dilution in more capital raises, in the best cases, and bankruptcy, in the worst cases. If things get to bankruptcy, Barkley writes, then short sellers win big because they no longer need to close out their short positions.
Following the 2008/2009 financial crisis, naked short selling was classified as illegal in the United States, though that labeling has done nothing to thwart this lucrative game.
What makes the September ruling so impactful is this: Without the big banks and financial institutions’ complicity, this highly destructive form of naked short selling could never happen. Instead, they actively facilitate the destruction of shareholder value.
The reason some big banks allow it, despite their sizable compliance departments, appears quite simple: These illegal transactions are highly lucrative. The short-term windfall profits associated with the creation of counterfeit shares are too tempting to resist.
“[...] brokers will place a marker or pledge to deliver the shares on the investors’ accounts, which are made by the seller’s clearing firm”, Barkley explains. “Abusive and unchecked naked shorting can lead to a loss of shareholder rights, including disenfranchisement by overvoting and the resulting throwing out of votes by brokers to conceal the breadth of the naked shorting problem, which could also lead to fraudulent vote results orchestrated by broker-dealers instead of shareholders.”
It often goes well beyond “ghost” shares, too. The most nefarious of short sellers target companies with negative reports–sometimes with legitimate information, and sometimes with falsehoods or half-truths–to drive down share prices with maximum impact, thus ensuring that the companies lose their ability to obtain financing. Once that process is completed, naked shorters then begin to offer those same companies alternative financing (predatory debt), which they have no option but to accept.
When broker-dealers are complicit in this, the system is broken. And complicity takes many forms, including willful booking of client shares as “long” when they are actually “short”.
Gaps in the regulatory environment have continued to fail to subdue these illegal activities.
Now they're really bringing out the high level MKUltra psyop tactics with the murder of babies in the Israel and Gaza conflict to really get people behind the war machine. Where have we seen this before?
HORRIFYING Our Food Is About To Be Poisoned With NEW “Transgenic Edible Vaccines”
They’re Being Funded Right Now BY TAXPAYERS, mRNA Food Vaccine FACTORIES
“The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky.
Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment, which states that none of the funds made available by this act may be used to fund any grant related to any transgenic edible vaccine. Does the term transgenic edible vaccine sound far-fetched? Well, it's not. We're funding it.
In fact, scientists from the University of California, Riverside, funded with your taxpayer dollars, have been studying whether they can turn edible plants such as lettuce and spinach into mRNA vaccine factories, thereby creating a transgenic edible vaccine. One associate professor at UCR explained that, ideally a single plant would produce enough mRNA to vaccinate a single person. We are testing this approach with spinach and lettuce and have long-term goals of people growing it in their own gardens. Farmers could also eventually grow entire fields of it. I don't think this is a good idea.
I don't think the American people should be funding this. And I think, and I would hope, that we've learned something from the COVID experience with SARS-CoV-2, that some of our science projects aren't the best ideas. And with that, I reserve. Gentlemen from Kentucky is recognized. My colleague on the other side of the aisle talks about keeping prices low. I think there's more to it than that for the American people.
He also speaks as if these vaccines, these transgenic edible plant vaccines, are only used for livestock. Well, in fact, they have been used for livestock. I'll get to that in a second. But they're also being used for people. That is the intended outcome of many of these programs that we are funding, funding with money from the USDA. What could possibly go wrong with this research? Well, we found out a few years ago when a biotech company was experimenting growing in corn a vaccine to keep pigs from getting diarrhea. What happened? Well, the next year where the corn was grown, the prior year the corn came up, and it got co-mingled with soybeans that were being grown there. It contaminated 500 bushels of soybeans, which were then co-mingled with 500,000 bushels of soybeans. And those all had to be recalled and destroyed. Luckily, they caught it.
Do we want humans eating vaccines that were grown in corn meant to stop pigs from getting diarrhea? I don't think we want that to happen. Yet that almost happened, and it could happen. There's another case where the pollen cross-contaminated another crop of corn, and 155 acres of corn had to be burned. What are the cases where we're not discovering this? I think it's dangerous to play God with our food.
I think we need a safe food supply. And this is about food safety. Ultimately, the people in this country need to know what's in their food. And if we start contaminating the DNA of our food with DNA from other animals or viruses, the pollen could spread, and we don't know what could happen. And I would hope we've learned a lesson from the Wuhan lab that sometimes things escape sometimes things don't go as you plan and so that's why i think it's a bad idea to fund transgenic edible plant vaccine research from the u.s. day i urge adoption of my amendment and i yield back the balance of my time the question is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from kentucky those in favor say aye those opposed say no in the opinion of the chair the ayes have it the amendment is agreed to”
Swiss Cardiologist forcibly hospitalized for speaking up against mRNA vax:
Swiss cardiologist Dr. Thomas Binder says he was forcibly hospitalized – and required to take psychiatric medications – for speaking out against pandemic panic and the narrative surrounding COVID-19. He joins Ask Dr. Drew to discuss the weaponization of psychology and how truth is suppressed by force in the age of Covid. ••
Dr. Thomas Binder: The entire modified RNA platform must be banned immediately BY RHODA WILSON ON JUNE 12, 2023 • ( 18 COMMENTS )
Print Friendly, PDF & Email Thomas Binder, a Swiss medical doctor, warned in a video he tweeted yesterday that the pharmaceutical industry is currently working on transferring all vaccinations onto using the mRNA platform. “Even having a trace of intelligence, is enough to realise that the modified RNA vaccine platform is totally nonsensical and life-threatening,” he said. “The entire modified RNA platform must be banned immediately.”
Dr. Binder studied medicine at the University of Zurich, obtained a doctorate in immunology and virology, specialised in internal medicine and cardiology and has 35 years of experience in the diagnosis and therapy of acute respiratory infections, in hospitals, intensive care units and his medical practice.
Along with others, Dr. Binder has been speaking out about the unscientific, unlawful, inhumane covid narrative and measures since February 2020. “For doing this, we were censored, labelled or, like me at Easter 2020, even brutally arrested by a counter-terrorist unit in my doctor’s office and shipped off to the looney bin because of alleged ‘self endangerment in covid insanity’,” he said. “Today we are totally vindicated.”
“The corona narrative and the modRNA vaccination platform are such obvious utter unscientific nonsense and deadly that every doctor who hadn’t instantly informed the populace is a total dead loss who shouldn’t have passed the exam, sorry to say,” he tweeted yesterday and attached the video below. It is his message to the public:
“Others and myself who had a minimal basic medical and immunological knowledge, had read the pivotal studies, and have some common sense and spine had already explained the futility, ineffectiveness and insecurity of the modified RNA injections before their criminal emergency approval.
“Today, we know that they are even negative effectiveness, promote illness and death from covid, and have already killed over 10 million people through side effects, prevented millions of fertilisations and induced millions of stillbirths – in the absence of evidence that they save even one single human life.
“While there has never been a pandemic of a killer virus, there was a pandemic of cowards … This modified RNA genocide is the greatest medical crime in human history, a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions.”
The House Judiciary Committee Thursday subpoenaed Citibank over allegedly providing the FBI with private customer data in the wake of January 6th.
Documents obtained by the committee show that a Citibank representative was included in an email from the FBI on January 29, 2021 requesting “information sharing, both strategic and operational, related to the Capitol Riots.” Citibank employees also attended a Zoom call with the FBI ostensibly following that email.
Also included in the email was JPMorgan Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, HSBC, PayPal, Barclays and Bank of America.
Bank of America was revealed to have shared private customer data with the FBI following January 6th without being prompted by the bureau. The bank provided the FBI with data on its customers who made transactions in Washington, DC during those 24 hours. Customers who had previously purchased firearms were moved to the top of the list provided by Bank of America.
“These documents suggest that the executive branch was brainstorming informal methods— outside of legal process—for obtaining private customer information from financial institutions,” wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a letter to Citibank executives. “Federal law enforcement’s use of back-channel discussions with financial institutions as a method to investigate and obtain private financial data of Americans is alarming,”
Jordan noted that Citibank had refused to comply with earlier requests from the committee for documentation and said that it would only provide the requested documents under subpoena.
The subpoena comes as concern grows over the unchecked power wielded by banks over customers with certain political views.
In May 2022 Chase Bank abruptly closed the account belonging to the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), a nonprofit aimed at safeguarding freedom for all religions. No transactions had raised any red flags. NCRF made some calls and discovered the decision had come from the “corporate office” and that a note in their file forbade staff from providing any clarity as to why their account was closed.
Chase eventually told NCRF that it would restore the organization’s account, but only if it divulged its donors, the political candidates it planned to support, and other unnecessary information.
In 2021 a Chase-owned credit card processor notified the pro-life organization Family Council that “we can no longer support your business” because it was considered “High Risk”. But the nonprofit met none of the qualifications for the High Risk category.
Spycraft developed by defense contractors are now being sold to employers to identify labor organizing. Regulators must step up to protect workers’ privacy.
Gabriel Grill and Christian Sandvig Wired June 22, 2023
IT’S PROBABLY HARD to imagine that you are the target of spycraft, but spying on employees is the next frontier of military AI. Surveillance techniques familiar to authoritarian dictatorships have now been repurposed to target American workers.
Over the past decade, a few dozen companies have emerged to sell your employer subscriptions for services like “open source intelligence,” “reputation management,” and “insider threat assessment”—tools often originally developed by defense contractors for intelligence uses. As deep learning and new data sources have become available over the past few years, these tools have become dramatically more sophisticated. With them, your boss may be able to use advanced data analytics to identify labor organizing, internal leakers, and the company’s critics.
It’s no secret that unionization is already monitored by big companies like Amazon. But the expansion and normalization of tools to track workers has attracted little comment, despite their ominous origins. If they are as powerful as they claim to be—or even heading in that direction—we need a public conversation about the wisdom of transferring these informational munitions into private hands. Military-grade AI was intended to target our national enemies, nominally under the control of elected democratic governments, with safeguards in place to prevent its use against citizens. We should all be concerned by the idea that the same systems can now be widely deployable by anyone able to pay.
FiveCast, for example, began as an anti-terrorism startup selling to the military, but it has turned its tools over to corporations and law enforcement, which can use them to collect and analyze all kinds of publicly available data, including your social media posts. Rather than just counting keywords, FiveCast brags that its “ commercial security” and other offerings can identify networks of people, read text inside images, and even detect objects, images, logos, emotions, and concepts inside multimedia content. Its “supply chain risk management” tool aims to forecast future disruptions, like strikes, for corporations.
Network analysis tools developed to identify terrorist cells can thus be used to identify key labor organizers so employers can illegally fire them before a union is formed. The standard use of these tools during recruitment may prompt employers to avoid hiring such organizers in the first place. And quantitative risk assessment strategies conceived to warn the nation against impending attacks can now inform investment decisions, like whether to divest from areas and suppliers who are estimated to have a high capacity for labor organizing.
It isn’t clear that these tools can live up to their hype. For example, network analysis methods assign risk by association, which means that you could be flagged simply for following a particular page or account. These systems can also be tricked by fake content, which is easily produced at scale with new generative AI. And some companies offer sophisticated machine learning techniques, like deep learning, to identify content that appears angry, which is assumed to signal complaints that could result in unionization, though emotion detection has been shown to be biased and based on faulty assumptions.
But these systems’ capabilities are growing rapidly. Companies are advertising that they will soon include next-generation AI technologies in their surveillance tools. New features promise to make exploring varied data sources easier through prompting, but the ultimate goal appears to be a routinized, semi-automatic, union-busting surveillance system.
What’s more, these subscription services work even if they don’t work. It may not matter if an employee tarred as a troublemaker is truly disgruntled; executives and corporate security could still act on the accusation and unfairly retaliate against them. Vague aggregate judgements of a workforce’s “emotions” or a company’s public image are presently impossible to verify as accurate. And the mere presence of these systems likely has chilling effect on legally protected behaviors, including labor organizing.
The corporations purveying these services are thriving in a context of obscurity and regulatory neglect. Defenses of workplace surveillance are made of the thinnest tissue. Industry apologists proclaim that their software, sold to help employers “ understand the labor union environment,” isn’t anti-union. Instead, they brand themselves as selling “corporate awareness monitoring” and prominently mention that “ every American is protected by federal, state, and local laws to work in safe conditions.” It’s apparently not the manufacturer’s fault if a buyer uses this software to infringe on a legally protected right to organize or protest.
Surveillance firms also deflect criticism by claiming that they only use publicly available information, like social media data and news articles. Even when this is true, their argument ignores the consequences of using everyday military-grade surveillance against the citizens of a free society. The same tools that track the movements of Russian tanks in Ukraine should not be given to your supervisor to track you. Intelligence software providers seem to hope that the practice of letting bosses look deeply into the lives of their workers will become so standard that employers will get to do so continuously, as a proactive measure. As capabilities have improved and the costs of gathering and analyzing data have plummeted, we are now facing a future in which any middle manager can mobilize the resources of their own CIA.
This kind of surveillance industry is fundamentally incompatible with a democracy. Companies that deploy such tools must be forced to disclose this use publicly so that existing laws can be enforced. And new regulations are urgently needed. Last year, the National Labor Relations Board announced that it would seek to outlaw “intrusive” and “abusive” labor surveillance, an important step. In addition, workers and unions should be testifying in legislative hearings about the future regulation of AI and workplace surveillance. We need specific rules that state which uses of AI, data sources, and methods are permissible
These technologies are already being sold and deployed across the globe and used for cross-border surveillance. In the best case, an active regulator needs to become a global leader in responsible AI and work to establish international standards for workplace technologies. Without doing this work, multinational companies with global supply chains will find it easy to flout or finesse country-specific protections.
Ultimately, our society may conclude that regulation is not enough: It’s the existence of this market that should be illegal. We may declare that there should be no place where anyone can buy an AI’s profile of your associations, intentions, emotions, and thoughts. Your life outside of work should be protected from your employer by default. ---------------------------
Gabriel Grill is a researcher at the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing at the University of Michigan. Christian Sandvig is Director of the Center for Ethics, Society and Computing and the McLuhan Collegiate Professor of Information at the University of Michigan.
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