Secrecy has been the hallmark and curse of British government for centuries. Under it, evil can flourish without proper checks on official action. It breeds suspicion and paranoia when it is the default setting, and the all-pervasive obsession with secrecy makes it hard to see what when it really is essential for the preservation of life and national security.
Read more . . .While the executive in Germany systematically hunts down doctors who certify their patients as exempt from wearing masks for medical reasons, something essential is overlooked: Exemption from the mask-wearing obligation is part of the elementary tasks of medical practitioners. People who are not allowed to wear a mask for physiological or psychological reasons must be exempted from the mask obligation. If a doctor fails to do this, he is guilty because he then risks harming his patients’ health by failing to do so and thus violates his guarantor duty as a medical practitioner. A truly criminal behaviour by doctors, however, can be found in a completely different place and is not only tolerated, but is apparently desired: where doctors issue death certificates incorrectly. And this apparently happens in large numbers all over the world.
Read more . . .We are being told that everything is being done as per the guidelines of the WHO. Why are we not asking how credible the WHO is? Isn’t it true that WHO has been charged with protecting the interests of Big Pharma? After lockdown ruining the economies of many countries, the WHO is now saying that it had never advised lockdowns! Countries like Sweden, Japan, Tanzania, Belarus, Nicaragua and Yemen either did not go for lockdown at all or imposed restrictions that had the least impact on the liberty of the people. Why India did not tread this path?
Read more . . .We were none the wiser when the information war actually broke out at the global level towards the end of the last decade. Most of us don’t know that we have already became victims of that war. We are like soldiers who have got hit even before they could begin to fight. And the war which is being waged is invisible – unlike the earlier, conventional wars. The main reason behind this situation is that social media platforms and search engines have severely constricted the freedom of dissent.
Read more . . .The Macron government is threatening to lay charges carrying a five-year jail sentence against journalists who exposed its secret provision of arms for Saudi Arabia’s illegal war in Yemen, in which tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. The Macron government’s actions are part of a drive by capitalist governments around the world—assisted by the state stenographers in the corrupted corporate media—to criminalize whistleblowing and destroy the freedom of the press.
Read more . . .Australian Federal Police officers raided two separate news offices within 24 hours this week, in a chilling and blatant attack on the freedom of the press, aimed at intimidating journalists who report on government misconduct and war crimes.
Read more . . .Australian Federal Police (AFP) spent seven hours ransacking a News Corp political reporter’s home in Canberra, and eight hours poring over and seizing files at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Sydney headquarters.
In an extraordinary admission, the AFP’s acting commissioner Neil Gaughan blurted out that the real reason for the raids was to protect the information that the Australian police and intelligence agencies receive from their “Five Eyes” counterparts. Five Eyes is a top-level network of intelligence agencies dominated by the US that also includes Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Read more . . .In 2015, a number of journalists and journalism associations requested access from the Parliament to documents relating to the subsistence allowances, travel expenses and parliamentary assistance allowances of Members of the European Parliament (‘MEPs’). Those requests were all refused by the Parliament, as were the confirmatory applications which followed them. The General Court confirms the Parliament’s refusal to grant access to documents relating to MEPs’ subsistence allowances, travel expenses and parliamentary assistance allowances.
Read more . . .MI5 has refused to answer the claimants’ questions about the scope of the policy, including whether it could in principle authorise murder, torture, inhuman and degrading treatment, rape, kidnapping or false imprisonment. The security service’s lawyers said to answer such questions of law would reveal the facts of conduct they wish to keep secret.
Read more . . .Facebook, Google, Twitter and other giant social media companies—working closely with intelligence agencies and governments—are seeking to leverage their role as mechanisms of communication to become instruments of censorship and repression. In the process, they are turning one of the most important and liberating technological advances of the 21st century, the growth and expansion of artificial intelligence, into a mechanism for police control and dictatorship.
Read more . . .A proposal in the Israeli parliament calls for a maximum five-year prison term for anyone photographing, recording or distributing Israel Defense Forces activity on social media with the aim of hurting the “soldiers’ spirit.” The maximum term increases to 10 years imprisonment for those convicted of seeking to harm national security
Read more . . .Information we collect: your name, email address, telephone number or credit card to store with your account, when you watch a video on YouTube, visit a website that uses our advertising services, or view and interact with our ads and content. This information includes your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, and mobile network information including phone number. We collect your search queries, phone number, calling-party number, forwarding numbers, time and date of calls, duration of calls, SMS routing information and types of calls, Internet protocol address, device event information such as crashes, system activity, hardware settings, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request and referral URL, cookies that may uniquely identify your browser or your Google Account, your location, including IP address, GPS, and other sensors that may, for example, provide Google with information on nearby devices, Wi-Fi access points and cell towers. We may also store information on your device using mechanisms such as browser web storage (including HTML 5) and application data caches.
Read more . . .A growing number of leading left-wing websites have confirmed that their search traffic from Google has plunged in recent months, adding to evidence that Google, under the cover of a fraudulent campaign against fake news, is implementing a program of systematic and widespread censorship.
Read more . . .Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers? These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China.
Read more . . .The Dutch government has refused to reveal details of a secret pact between members of the Joint Investigation Team examining the downed Flight MH17. If the participants, including Ukraine, don’t want information to be released, it will be kept secret.
Read more . . .Israel bans radio advert listing names of children killed in Gaza Human rights group B’Tselem will petition Israel’s supreme court after advert was deemed to be ‘politically controversial’ Harriet Sherwood in Jerusale The Guardian, 24 July 2014 08.24 BST Aid … Read more . . .
On a leaked tape, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is heard to say that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees any attack as an “opportunity” to increase Turkish presence in Syria, where it has staunchly supported the anti-Assad rebels
Read more . . .In place of the need to deepen democratic openness and accountability in EU the Council has entrenched a system of secrecy based on its discretion to decide whether and when to make documents public. The result is that the European legislature – the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament – meet in secret trilogues to decide over 80% of new laws going through the EU
Read more . . .Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa At the 32nd Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights ( Banjul, The Gambia, 2002) African countries adopted a Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in … Read more . . .
FROM BARBARA W. WALL: LEGAL WATCH COURT MAY NOT POSTPONE RULING ON ACCESS TO SUBMITTED DOCUMENTS http://www.gannett.com/go/newswatch/2006/january/nw0120-5.htm A court may not postpone deciding whether documents submitted in connection with a request to dismiss a case should be open to the … Read more . . .