French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Scotland on Thursday 10th November. He is presently in an Edinburgh prison cell, awaiting a court hearing on 24th November to determine whether he should be extradited to France, where he would be jailed under that country’s laws restricting historical and scientific enquiry.
Vincent Reynouard built his scholarly reputation with a detailed re-examination of what had been termed the ‘Massacre of Oradour’, and went on to become one of the world’s leading sceptical investigators of the ‘Holocaust’. Francophone readers should visit his excellent website.
British and American readers might be shocked that a specialist squad of police from SO15 – the Counter-Terrorism Command, directed from London – swooped on a small Scottish village to arrest this 53-year-old scholar, who is not accused of anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Yet in fact this is simply the latest example – though an especially important example – of an increasing trend across Europe, where politicised courts and prosecutors, aided by politicised police forces and intelligence agencies, are seeking to crush any dissent and enforce a quasi-religious obedience to one particular view of 20th century history.
The question that should immediately occur to any educated European is: why?
Why should our rulers be so afraid of what remains a small minority of scholars who – inspired by revisionist pioneers Robert Faurisson in France and Arthur Butz in the USA – have persisted in raising serious questions about the alleged murder of six million Jews, in unfeasible homicidal gas chambers, on the undocumented alleged orders of Adolf Hitler?
Any other area of history with such blatant evidential problems would have attracted dozens of academic sceptics. Yet with a handful of honourable exceptions, the academic world has not only been cowed into silence, but has queued up to accept lucrative commissions and tenured positions promoting the new religion of Holocaustianity.
Our rulers approach has been the well-tried one of ‘carrot and stick’.
The carrot is the promise of well-remunerated posts in universities and charities, combined with fat cheques from publishers, newspapers, television stations and movie studios.
The stick (increasingly used during the last quarter-century) has involved heavy fines and prison sentences. In Germany, the 94-year-old Ursula Haverbeck has been sentenced to another year in prison, and is expected to begin her incarceration any day now. Her equally courageous compatriot Horst Mahler (now 86) has at the last count spent about fifteen years in prison since his 70th birthday, again for the ‘crimes’ of publishing articles and books, and giving interviews about this forbidden area of 20th century history. And in the USA the exiled German chemist Germar Rudolf faces determined efforts to have him extradited to Germany, where he would certainly be handed a long jail sentence.
Vincent Reynouard consulting his lawyer during one of his many court appearances in France. In the background can be seen one of Vincent’s most loyal supporters, Jérôme Bourbon, the editor of long-established journal Rivarol.
So far the UK has no such specific law criminalising historical revisionism, and several British historians, including leftists and liberals such as Timothy Garton Ash, have commendably condemned all such laws.
In 2008 a London court rejected the German government’s request for the extradition of Australian revisionist Dr Fredrick Töben under a European Arrest Warrant. Will a similar situation protect Vincent Reynouard?
New extradition arrangements post-Brexit have only been in force since 11 pm on 31st December 2020, so while we can see the statutory position, we have little in the way of case law (on either side of the border).
I am not a lawyer, but I was closely involved in research work for the Töben case, and have had good reason more recently to refresh my memory and understanding of the legal position regarding EU citizens travelling or resident in the UK.
Traditionally the UK’s position on extradition (as was once common internationally) was based on two essential principles. One was the existence of an extradition treaty with the country concerned, which entailed mutual respect for legal systems. For example, the lack of such a treaty with Spain (due to political embarrassment over the presence of numerous anti-Franco exiles, including terrorists, in the UK) meant that Spain became notorious for decades as a refuge for British criminals – i.e. non-political criminals such as bank robbers.
Despite Brexit, French prosecutors seem able to demand extradition from the UK of a man who has committed no crime under UK law.
Once such a treaty was in place, the essential principle was ‘dual criminality’, i.e. that the offence of which the requested fugitive was charged should also be an offence in the country from which extradition was sought. Naturally the criminal laws involved would rarely be identical, and it was up to the courts to resolve whether ‘dual criminality’ applied.
In a case such as that of Vincent Reynouard, this would once have presented a problem for the authorities. It would have been necessary to prove not only that he had committed ‘Holocaust denial’ (not in itself of course an offence in the UK), but that he had done so in a manner which also contravened some UK law (such as the laws against “inciting racial hatred”).
As readers can easily imagine, the “dual criminality” requirement allowed legal loopholes to be exploited in any number of criminal cases, especially those which involved wealthy crooks, or IRA terrorists who had a well-funded support network, and whose extradition from European countries (or the USA) to the UK was occasionally blocked.
So even setting aside our enemies’ broader political agenda, there were (from the general public’s viewpoint) apparent practical advantages to the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) system, which after long discussion replaced the traditional extradition laws, and took effect in the UK on 1st January 2004.
Under the EAW there was a fundamental assumption that all legal systems within the EU could trust each other to respect natural justice, etc.; and there was no need to establish “dual criminality”.
In place of the latter principle, the EAW established a list of “framework offences”. Once it could be shown that a fugitive was accused of anything that fell within these quite broadly defined “framework offences”, he would be extradited very swiftly in what amounted to a “rubber-stamp” procedure even though it formally took place in court. There was no provision in most cases for the courts to investigate the full circumstances of the alleged ‘crime’ before extradition under an EAW.
This is Baroness Scotland, the ‘British’ government minister who gave Parliament an assurance that the European Arrest Warrant would not be used as a back-door criminalisation of ‘Holocaust denial’. If Vincent Reynouard is extradited, it will be clear evidence that she lied to Parliament.
One of the framework offences was “racism and xenophobia”. However, so far as ‘Holocaust denial’ was concerned, there remained a potential loophole.
This loophole only existed because of objections that were raised in the House of Lords during passage of the legislation that wrote the EAW system into UK law.
Under repeated cross-examination by peers, the Home Office minister in the Lords (Baroness Scotland) gave a specific assurance that the EAW would not amount to a back door criminalisation of Holocaust denial in the UK.
The position was to be as follows. If any element of the ‘offence’ of ‘Holocaust denial’ had taken place in the UK, it would be deemed to fall under UK law and therefore (unless it could be shown that it also involved other existing crimes under UK law) extradition would not take place.
A ‘Holocaust denier’ would only be extradited under a European Arrest Warrant if it could be shown by the requesting country’s authorities that the ‘crime’ had been committed purely and simply within the jurisdiction of the country concerned.
The specific example given to Parliament was of someone who had made a speech in Cologne market place denying the ‘Holocaust’, and had then escaped to the UK before being apprehended. In such a case (provided other boxes were ticked, such as the offence potentially attracting a prison sentence of more than 12 months) the requested person would be extradited.
However, if someone had produced a magazine, or a book, or a website, or an online video, etc., ‘denying the Holocaust’, then such a person would not be extradited. Even though part of the ‘offence’ might have been committed in France, Germany or wherever, part of it would also have been committed in the UK.
The minister’s precise words to Parliament included the following assurance: “Holocaust denial …is a very particular offence. We would say that those engaging in that endeavour in part in this country would not be capable of being extradited as the offence would in part have allegedly been committed in this country, and in this country it is not an offence. So we would not extradite those involved in it.”
Dr Fredrick Töben, whose London lawyers defeated an extradition attempt by German prosecutors in 2008.
Such was the difficulty for the German authorities in the Töben case. They issued a European Arrest Warrant, and Töben was arrested while merely passing through London’s Heathrow Airport on 1st October 2008. He was jailed pending extradition, which at first was expected to be a ‘rubber-stamp’ process.
However, on closer examination (once Töben was represented by extradition specialist Kevin Lowry-Mullins rather than by a duty solicitor) it was found that the German request was insufficiently detailed. The reason for such vagueness was obvious: the authorities both in Berlin and London were well aware that Töben’s alleged criminal conduct did not fall within the very limited definition of ‘Holocaust denial crimes’ for which people could be extradited from the UK. To do so would be a flagrant betrayal of pledges to Parliament during passage of the EAW into UK law.
Consequently, the legal difficulty (and political embarrassment) was colossal. After the Westminster magistrate ruled against extradition, the British and German authorities swiftly dropped their appeal, resulting in Töben’s release.
So the question in 2022 becomes whether the new arrangements that have replaced the EAW post-Brexit, in relation to extradition from or to the UK, are in any way similar in their application to Vincent’s case.
Vincent Reynouard with two of his children: his case is a vital test of whether the UK still retains any respect for traditional liberties.
These new laws were agreed as part of the ‘Trade and Cooperation Agreement’ between the UK and the EU which regulates the whole spectrum of such relations post-Brexit. It passed into UK law in the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020, which took effect at 11 pm on 31st December 2020.
Broadly speaking this replicates the EAW, in that it is intended to fast-track extradition (in each direction) between the UK and EU countries, and is similar to the existing arrangements that the EU has with Norway and Iceland.
Specifically, there are very limited grounds on which it will be possible to argue that Vincent should not be extradited, and there is a presumption that the whole procedure should be completed swiftly.
It is potentially important that the new law – unlike the EAW system – does not specifically state that the UK and EU nations have “mutual trust” and “mutual confidence” in one other’s legal systems.
Moreover it is stated in the new law that any extradition should be “proportionate” and in particular should avoid long periods of pre-trial detention.
One potential argument is that the French legal system is so heavily politicised in respect of thought-criminals (especially ‘Holocaust deniers’) that there are serious grounds for believing that Vincent Reynouard’s fundamental rights would be imperilled by extradition.
There will be extensive updates here at the Real History blog on the Vincent Reynouard case as it develops. And we shall very soon be reporting on a broader new initiative to advance revisionist scholarship with the aid of a new generation of European intellectual adventurers (to use Professor Robert Faurisson’s celebrated term). — Peter Rushton
The front page of Scotland’s oldest newspaper (now owned by Americans) led with the Reynouard story on Tuesday 15th November. Contrary to the headline, there is no “anti-nazi law”: the French authorities are seeking Vincent Reynouard’s extradition under a law banning critical enquiry into ‘Holocaust’ history. No such law exists in the UK and it is shameful that Police Scotland collaborated in this arrest.The leading French nationalist journal Rivarol also has Vincent Reynouard’s arrest as its front page lead story, though unlike the Glasgow Herald, Rivarol defends traditional European freedoms.
The arrest of French revisionist scholar Vincent Reynouard last Thursday – for a ‘crime’ which isn’t even an offence under UK law – was accomplished thanks to lobbying by a notorious political fixer, whom a former Prime Minister once described as a “boot boy” because of his strong-arm tactics.
Despite Mr Reynouard having broken no UK laws, a Zionist pressure group in London was able to work with the French authorities to put pressure on British police officers to waste time and money pursuing him. A central figure in persuading the UK police to collaborate in this disgraceful arrest and extradition process is Lord Austin.
Ian Austin – now Lord Austin of Dudley – was a Labour MP for fourteen years and previously an aide to Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown. In 2006 he was described by Tory leader David Cameron as one of “the Chancellor’s boot boys”, after persistently loutish behaviour in Parliament.
Ian Austin – the key lobbyist who facilitated Vincent Reynouard’s arrest – seen here at a march organised by Jewish lobby groups against his own party leadership. He was raised to the House of Lords by his nominal Tory opponents and now writes a column for a Tory newspaper.
And in March 2022 Austin was forced to apologise to Laura Murray, an ex-aide to former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, after he had accused her of being an “anti-Jewish racist” and part of Corbyn’s “anti-semitic” leadership team. By this point Austin had betrayed his own party and had been ennobled as ‘Lord Austin of Dudley’ by Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His libellous attack on Ms Murray came in an article for a Tory newspaper, the Daily Telegraph: Austin and the Telegraph had to pay Ms Murray £40,000 in damages and issue an unreserved apology.
Is this really the sort of man on whose word police officers should be persuaded to spend UK taxpayers’ money and on whose advice the British authorities should be persuaded to abandon our traditional freedoms?
For years, both as an MP and in the House of Lords, Austin has prioritised Zionist campaigns including ‘Holocaust’ remembrance. The parliamentary register shows repeated cash donations to Austin (even looking solely, for example, at the period 2015-2019) from two well-known Zionist businessmen, Sir David Garrard and Sir Trevor Chinn. Garrard is a London property developer who in 2005 gave a secret loan of £2.3 million to the Labour Party (despite having previously backed the rival Conservative Party): by a strange coincidence Labour nominated him for a peerage at the same time as this secret ‘loan’, but he withdrew his nomination when a ‘cash for honours’ scandal hit the headlines. Garrard chose not to demand repayment until the party elected an anti-Zionist leader ten years later. In 2019 he gave £1.5 million to the so-called ‘Independent Group’, a pro-Zionist faction of MPs who set out to undermine Corbyn’s leadership.
Sir David Garrard, Zionist tycoon and regular cash donor to Vincent Reynouard’s accuser Lord Austin
For several years Garrard was a trustee and patron of the Philip Green Memorial Trust, a charity set up by Cyril Paskin, veteran leader of the violent ‘anti-fascist’ 62 Group. Garrard was involved in an unsavoury court case in 2014 when serious allegations of financial misconduct were levelled by his own son-in-law. Garrard’s donations to Austin included: £10,900 in 2016; £10,000 in 2017; and £10,000 in 2019.
Sir Trevor Chinn is also a regular donor to pro-Zionist politicians and sits on the board of several Zionist lobby groups. His donations to Austin included: £7,500 in 2015; £5,000 in 2017; and £5,000 in 2019.
In addition to these gifts from Garrard and Chinn, the register shows many payments from Zionist organisations, ‘Holocaust’ remembrance groups, and even Israeli government entities who have regularly flown Austin around the globe, all expenses paid.
In 2019 the then Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May appointed him as Trade Envoy to Israel, a post he has continued to hold under Mrs May’s three successors.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that such a committed Zionist fanatic spends his time trying to arrange the arrest of a man who has broken no UK laws. But we really ought to be surprised that the police in England and Scotland have taken any notice of self-interested, lavishly-funded lobby groups and their parliamentary allies. — Peter Rushton
Most of you will know me. For those who don’t, I am Peter Rushton, assistant editor of the magazine Heritage and Destiny and author of the new Real History blog at the link below. I have been involved on the UK political scene for more than thirty years (as a writer, speaker, election agent and many other capacities) and my main focus now, as will be seen with the ongoing development of the blog, is to take historical revisionism into new areas and levels, with the aid of newly released and newly discovered documentary evidence.
My recent articles below refer to the case of Vincent Reynouard, the great revisionist scholar who was arrested in Scotland last Thursday and is now imprisoned awaiting extradition. I have learned that his present address for correspondence is:
Mr. Vincent REYNOUARDPrisoner Number 160071 HMP Edinburgh Scottish Prison Service 33 Stenhouse Road EH11 3LNEDINBURGHScotland United Kingdom
Please bear in mind that Vincent faces an extradition hearing on 24th November. It is entirely possible that the whole process will be expedited, so especially if you are writing from outside the United Kingdom, this might mean that he has already left the UK by the time your letter arrives. Please also bear in mind the following excerpt from regulations regarding letters to UK prisoners
You can write to an individual in custody as often as you like and there is not usually any restriction on the number of letters they can receive. When you write, remember to put the person’s prison number and name on the letter. Your family member/friend can write back to you and will be allowed to send one free letter each week. If they want to write more often they can, but will have to pay for the postage themselves.
From 13 December 2021, new legislation will come into force which may impact on correspondence you are sending to your loved one. The legislation provides Prison Officers and employees with powers to photocopy the correspondence. The individual in custody can be provided with the photocopy and the original correspondence retained and either returned to them on release or destroyed with their consent. In regards to confidentiality, the Prison Rules and Directions remain unchanged. Prison Officers and staff are not routinely able to read correspondence.
Photographs and cards are considered as general correspondence. Governor’s will have discretion to decide how these should be managed locally. Consideration should be given in the first instance to testing all cards and photographs using the Rapiscan Itemiser drug detection machine and issuing the original copies.
Further updates on Vincent’s case will be posted to the Real History blog. For those of you have Twitter accounts, the issue is being quite widely discussed there and I have been posting regularly in reply to Scottish journalists and others. The whole matter is potentially giving revisionism very wide publicity in the UK. Best wishes
David Icke has been banned from all 26 Schengen countries in Europe by the Dutch government. Icke was to participate in a peace demonstration in Amsterdam. The Jewish organization CIDI (Centre of Information and Documentation Israel) objected to the arrival of David Icke and requested the mayor of Amsterdam to prevent him from speaking during this demonstration. The mayor hopped to it and soon Icke was banned. Once again we see the inordinate and anti-free speech power of some Jewish organizations, just as Kanye West noted.
WE The signatories of this petition and concerned citizens of Europe OBSERVATION that David Icke is unlawfully denied entry to 26 Schengen countries for two years, and that as a result, among other things. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights [1] and Article 7 of the Dutch Constitution are being violated [2]. IT HAS BEEN OBSERVED AND SHOWN THAT David Icke is not a Holocaust denier [3] David Icke is not an anti-Semite [3] David Icke has no criminal record.
David Icke was invited at the end of October 2022 to speak at a peace demonstration in the Netherlands on November 6, 2022.
The Jewish organization CIDI (Centre of Information and Documentation Israel) objected to the arrival of David Icke and requested the mayor of Amsterdam to prevent him from speaking during this demonstration [4].
mayor of Amsterdam subsequently requested the Immigration and Naturalization Service (IND) to investigate whether it would be possible to prohibit David Icke from entering Dutch territory [5]. After appeals from a number of members of the House of Representatives, the State Secretary for Justice and Security decides on Thursday 4 November, late in the afternoon, to deny David Icke access to the Netherlands and 26 Schengen countries for a period of two years [6].
Statements by the government, politicians, the CIDI and the media can be regarded as libel and slander towards David Icke [7]. INVITE THE IMMIGRATION AND NATURALIZATION SERVICE AND THE DUTCH GOVERNMENT To respect the fundamental freedoms of David Icke and to remove the alert from the Schengen Information System II [8].
CAFE Participates in Weekly Victoria Freedom Rally in Front of B.C. Legislature
CAFE Participates in Weekly Victoria Freedom Rally in Front of B.C. Legislature
“|Victoria is now my 18th city,” said CAFE Director Paul Fromm as he joined the weekly Saturday Freedom Rally in front of the B.C. Legislature. “This is the 18th city, in two provinces, where I’ve joined End the Lockdown/freedom rallies since April, 200,” he added. Several CAFE associates regularly attend the Victoria rallies.
“It is such a joyous atmosphere. People hug old friends and complete strangers,” Mr. Fromm added. “And not a mask to be seen anywhere!”
Two carloads of people came down from Nanaimo. A Chinese man who is a strong supporter of Taiwan comes over every weekend form Vancouver. One man handed out peanut butter and jam sandwiches to anyone who wanted one.
Members of the same group picket the offices of CHEK, the local Fake News television channel, every Wednesday.
If a “round up” can be defined as corralling a collection of animals into enclosures for a particular purpose then Canadians can easily imagine themselves as the new livestock. It’s an easy analogy to make given the past almost-three-years of incessant whining by authorities of all stripes to “follow the science” as they concurrently prod us away from each other and into enclosures dispensing one-size-fits-all vaccination programs. It’s this or suffer the consequences of your, supposedly, uncoerced choices and lose your job, your ability to travel or even your kids as you obstinately put the public good and the public health at risk. To make matters worse, those livestock that have the temerity to wander off away from the cattle drive are left defenseless as attempts to justify their well-considered, but contrary, ways are met with obfuscation and outright ad hominem attack by controlling authorities and agencies alike. These strays are cancelled and belittled.
Some “strays” in present-day Canada refuse to be corralled
The fact that the roundup has been continuing apace for some time now is evidenced by C3RF’s own “One Stop Tyrant Shop”. This chronicling of overreaching dictates, edicts and mandates that work to carve out traditional, freedom-minded citizens from the herd of their more pliant counterparts is compiled from C3RF “Update” observations extending from 2018 to the present day. The current version, version 15, is a stunning 42 pages long and is growing as we speak. Indeed, the latest additions to this ever-expanding compilation of draconian measures and insults aimed at everyday Canadians include:
a recognition of the fact that, according to both Saskatchewan and Alberta officials, the Emergencies Act was invoked illegally as the declaration lacked the required consultations with provincial authorities.
For the strays that refuse to be rounded by self-declared wranglers for whatever reason, the size and accelerating growth of the “One Stop Tyrant Shop” comes as no surprise. They believe what their own eyes see and have long recognized the current Canadian regime to be unconstrained by any check or balance. They see their executive, legislative and judicial bodies arrayed against them to pursue political power over and above any need to enable a “representative democracy”. They see a juggernaut that has lost all respect for the individual Charter rights of a formerly free people. For those moving along in the midst of the cattle drive, the mere size of the “Shop” comes as a shock to the system as, like a frog in pot of gradually heated water, they are beginning to see bubbles roiling around them.
Is it too late for the Canadian frog in a pot?
Canadian authorities have tried to play the long game by gradually cranking up the heat on Canadian civil liberties. In doing so, they likely perceived it was the best way to achieve the desired outcome of moving the country away from the individual liberties, meritocracy and free markets characteristic of a Western liberal democracy towards one that is centrally controlled by an “expert” class. This process has been facilitated by the creation of a supporting superstructure of legislation girded by judicial pronouncements that act to curtail any opposition, let alone debate. And so we see Bills C-11, C-18 and C-261 promulgated to curtail and shape what you can say in the public square even as the authors of such legislation give themselves the arbitrary power to define just what is acceptable when it comes to thinking and communicating. As if this wasn’t bad enough, the same NDP-sponsored government is floating a new law by way of Bill C-23 that would see climate cops given the power to conduct warrantless searches and seizures in the name of protecting the environment. Is it all becoming just a little too obvious? Even to those in the midst of the cattle drive?
Is Canada’s descent into despotism getting just too obvious?
The rising
The rising sense that all is not going in accordance with “rule of law” principles that purport to dispense justice equally is being fuelled by a consistent barrage of biased and divisive actions foisted upon the public, and individual citizens, by the powers-that-be. The sheer number of these edicts, mandates and decrees, many of which escape any legislative process as noted in the “One Stop Tyrant Shop”, prompts the question: is it all about rewarding friends and punishing enemies? What to think when:
Tamara Lich is shackled and denied bail for “mischief” charges related to the Freedom Convoy 2022 protests while the return from Syria of alleged ISIS terrorists is celebrated by Canadian media and public safety officials. Tamara is chopped liver while the latter have Charter rights and must be removed from “sub-human conditions” in Syria;
The Canadian legal and political systems move heaven and earth to patriate a self-confessed terrorist from American POW detention, and then award him $10.5 million in the name of Charter rights, even as these same systems can only muster efforts “at the margins” when it comes to judicially reviewing the constitutionality of pandemic measures.
It would seem that Canadian governance systems are operating on a divide and conquer basis to favour certain voting blocs while intimidating others into submission. This might be a good way to secure power and control over the short term but, as more and more Canadians become aware of the discriminatory measures at play, a backlash looms. How long will Canadians stand by and allow Section 1 of their Charter to be ignored? The section that demands limitations on their fundamental rights be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”.
Shackles for Tamara, dollars for the more-favoured when it comes to Charter rights?
The fact that some Canadians have come to see the writing on the wall when it comes to the evaporation of their civil liberties is now playing out as an embarrassing exodus. C3RF stalwart, Debbie, has chosen to rise up and vote with her feet by packing up her Canadian possessions, selling her house and hitting the road for Mexico. She now reports that she is at a U.S./ Mexican border town where other Canadians are amassing and coordinating a united crossing. Other Canadians are looking closer to home for relief from government and “expert” overreach and moving to provinces that are more amenable to protecting their individual rights and freedoms. Top of the list is Alberta under its new Premier, Danielle Smith. She has promised to push back against such unsupported tyranny and has already apologized to the unvaccinated for the discriminations they have suffered in her province until now. All this in conjunction with nurses moving en mass to free regimes, such as Florida, to get away from a Covid-only medical system that is resulting in “negative outcomes” for patients. Should it be a surprise when good people move away from oppressive jurisdictions to better their lives? Wasn’t that once the calling card for those seeking to land on the shores of a “strong and free” Canada?
Canadians surging to Alberta for a better chance of securing their civil liberties?
Not all Canadians are voting with their feet though. Some, like Greg Hill, have accepted the gauntlet thrown down by bullying governments and “cancel culture” to declare “fight’s on”. Greg lost his job as a Canadian airliner pilot due to vaccine mandates and is now a Director at the “Free to Fly Canada” organization. Free to Fly has expanded rapidly to comprise more than 2000 aviation professionals and 40,000 passengers all dedicated to retrieving lost mobility rights guaranteed under the Charter. They note that such restrictions may have been “suspended” but that they stand to be re-initiated in line with predictions from our own Prime minister. As part of his in-place fight, Greg has penned a “Declaration for the Promotion of Truth and Individual Rights and Freedoms”. This avowal proposes that Canadians of all stripes commit to legal, civil disobedience measures to resist the onset of tyranny in Canada.
Greg Hill, Director at Free to Fly Canada declares, “fight’s on”
The reckoning
Try as it might, the efforts of governments, courts, the media and “cancel culture” to obscure and justify the dissolution of individual rights and freedoms in Canada, both through fluffed up emergencies and legislation, cannot escape eventual judgement by the public-writ-large. This will be a certainty as the alternate outcome, in the form of a deep dive into the loss of all such rights, is just too depressing to even consider. The process brought to bear will need to be independent in nature given the enormity and power of the agencies and authorities, both public and private, that have been involved in the lifting and restricting of civil liberties over the course of the Wuhan virus pandemic. As it stands now, the failure to enact such a review and move on its recommendations ensures the same will happen over and over again until the very nature of Canadian society is irrevocably impacted to leave a hellscape for our progeny.
Does a hellscape await a Canada disinterested in its descent into despotism?
Another C3RF stalwart, Barry, has joined the conversation on the matter of a Canadian drift into a dystopic future by noting that it is being promulgated by an “overbearing central government devoid of principle or restraint intent on controlling our behavior and thoughts, even on-line”. Certainly, if we are to shut down such overreach now and into the future we will not only have to take Greg Hill’s Declaration to heart but go beyond such civil disobedience measures to make some concurrent structural changes. We have to realize that we got to where we are now, a country operating at odds with the principles that so many have fought and died for before us, through a dearth of checks and balances required to slow down, let alone halt, such illiberal excursions. Barry suggests that the problem lies in the fact that cultural and societal changes have taken us to a place where we have outgrown our British-style parliamentary system.
Has Canada outgrown its British-style parliamentary system?
As Barry also notes, “Canada’s British style parliamentary system only works so long as the central government acts with reasonable prudence and restraint”. Unfortunately, and in a day and age that lacks the servant-leaders required to propel such an honourable enterprise forward, we are left with a governance system that affords far too much power to a select few. We see this full force in the Canadian parliamentary system where the Prime Minister has the power to handpick his or her executive in the form of a Governor General and Cabinet and then go on to appoint, through a proxy Governor General, Senators and Supreme and Federal Court judges. In the hands of an individual driven by modern-day ideologies that lionize “the end justifies the means”, the nation can easily find itself being held hostage by a “kid in a candy store”. Is it any wonder that Canadians see their liberties being zapped by the legal and political ministrations of a system crafted to suit a person at the center of the power structure – a person who suffers no constraints from a compliant media or political opposition in the form of NDP-type support. If any country needed structural change to its governance systems, perhaps in the form of recall and term limit legislation, it would be Canada. Either that or vote in a slate of servant-leaders capable of measuring up to the required standard of integrity and honour demanded by a parliamentary system?
Does Canada need more servant-leaders and less “end justifies the means”?
Thanks for your continued support
Your patronage makes a world of difference in the ability of C3RF to educate, advocate and act in service of preserving the individual and fundamental rights of all Canadians. It is truly unfortunate that such efforts are required but the fact remains, these rights and freedoms are coming under increasing attack from all quarters including our own legislative, judicial, media, academic and security authorities. Please know that the funds you so generously donate go directly into campaigning, events, bookkeeping, technology costs and legal advice. When these basic services are met, we use excess funding to assist other groups in advancing the cause of Canadian individual rights within a strong and free Canada. We also contribute to related legal proceedings and charitable activities when able. If you missed the call, click here to support C3RF today!
Knights of Columbus volunteers in 2021 pose for a photo of the nativity scene they had just put up at city hall. The city is banning the practice this year. (Contributed photo)
Northern B.C. officials ban nativity scene from Terrace city hall roof
The move reflects a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada decision
The City of Terrace is banning the placing of a nativity scene on top of the covered entrance to city hall this holiday season, ending a decades-old Christmas observance.
The nativity scene belongs to the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s charitable group, and is usually put up in early December.
The city is invoking a Supreme Court of Canada decision arising from a 2007 complaint filed against the City of Saguenay, Quebec for its council’s practice of holding a prayer prior to each meeting.about:blank
That complaint by atheist Alain Simoneau was upheld by the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal but then rejected by the Quebec Court of Appeal, whereupon Simoneau took his case to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court backed up the decision of the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal in a 2015 unanimous ruling, finding that “the prayer was, when considered in light of its context, religious in nature and that the city and its mayor, by having it recited, were showing a preference for one religion to the detriment of others, which constituted a breach of the state’s duty of neutrality.”
City of Terrace spokesperson Tyler Clarke, who provided a summary of the Saguenay decision, said all the city was doing was following the Supreme Court of Canada decision.
“The need to separate religion and government has been the subject of numerous court decisions in Canada,” he said.
“The decision was made by the Supreme Court of Canada, it wasn’t made by any single individual with the city. We’re simply following what the laws tell us.”
There was no immediate response as to why the city waited seven years since the 2015 court decision to ban the nativity scene and Clarke acknowledged there had been no complaints or challenges made to the city.
He indicated that the previous city council whose term ended this month was not involved in the matter and that it fell to city administrators.
Legal experts have, however, pointed out that the Supreme Court’s Saguenay ruling relates only to the practice of prayer, not to symbols that might be regarded as religious in nature.
Simoneau, who filed the original complaint, had also wanted symbols removed but the original Quebec Human Rights Tribunal decision focused only on prayer.
Terrace did, however, respond favourably to a request from the B.C. Humanist Association to stop holding a prayer at the inaugural meeting of a newly-elected council.
The practice was stopped when the council for the next four years was sworn in Nov. 7.
Last month the association, which states, on its website, “you can be good without god” told 23 B.C. municipalities who held prayers at 2018 inaugural meetings that they should follow the Saguenay decision.
Terrace was one of those 23 municipalities and among the 21 who told the association this year they would not hold a prayer at their 2022 inaugural meeting.
Clarke said that decision, as with the nativity scene, was made without council involvement.
In 2019 Quebec took its notions of religious neutrality a step further by passing Bill 21 that bans civil servants in ‘positions of authority’ from wearing religious symbols like hijabs, crucifixes or turbans while at work.
TIME TO WEAR MASKS ‘ONCE AGAIN,’ OTTAWA PUBLIC HEALTH URGES
The narrative is shifting now from restrictions to privacy violations – especially medical
Druthers Pick Up Assistance Required
Hi everyone. Up until now, Sarah has diligently picked up the new editions of Druthers each month for people to distribute. CLEAR has been actively involved in distributing these weekly in Kelowna, with the assistance of wonderful volunteers.
HELP!!
Sarah needs someone to pick up the Druthers from the Diamond delivery depot at 2805 Acland Rd, Kelowna
Around the first week of each month.
We need someone to pick them up now, in November and drop them off at Sarah’s place.
Can you please help? Delivery of Druthers is critical to supporting freedom in British Columbia and provides Canadians with unprecedented information and articles that MSM simply won’t touch!
Please email us at: clear2012@pm.me if you can help pick them up. There will be about 200 bundles, with 100 to a bundle.
Thank you!
JOIN THE COALITION FOR A GEOENGINEERING FREE CANADA Contact Bettina
This group is to educate people and try to put a stop to the geoengineering and poisonous chemtrails they spray in our skies.
Remembrance Day
This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Remembrance Day many of us will never forget. Although I’ve been chomping at the bit to share the truth about what happened, it would not benefit me to reveal details before this goes to trial. However, having this bogus charge laid against me has turned into a great opportunity for gathering “intel.” As an accused, you are entitled to something called “disclosure” which comprises all the evidence they have against you. And if you’re not satisfied with all the information provided, you can request more. I am currently still waiting for this further disclosure which Crown has requested from the RCMP.
What I have received so far has been quite revealing. I have now identified the culprits who instigated the disruption that day. If you were present, you were probably just as perturbed as I was as to why certain veterans stormed the stage and desecrated a ceremony designed to honour them and our fallen soldiers. They earned a badge of shame that day for their disgraceful behaviour. As individuals who promised to serve & protect Canadians, they demonstrated utter ignorance of the meaning of the word “freedom.” Considering the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of veterans across Canada were kicked out of their legions and denied entry to their own Remembrance Day ceremonies last year due to unlawful mandates, there is no better expression to describe these people’s mental state than “Cognitive Dissonance.”
I will set the record straight on a couple of points. This was planned to be a respectful, albeit unconventional, ceremony to acknowledge the danger to our freedom and honour the soldiers who fought and died to preserve it. Our poster boy was Leo’s Uncle Charles who was an airman shot down and killed in Germany during WW2. The Resistance had NOTHING to do with any of this. They were merely there as part of the audience and were targeted by MSM because of their identifiable gear. Those who disconnected the sound system did not care about freedom. And the Veterans who yelled, stormed the stage and bullied me with their sanctimonious venom were insulting the memory of every fallen soldier in Canada’s history.
I stand by every word in my speech that day and here it is again, just as valid as it was one year ago:
Remembrance Day Speech 2021
“This is obviously not a conventional Remembrance Day ceremony. Because our city and local legion have dropped the ball.” The West Kelowna legion, however, IS hosting a Remembrance Day Ceremony. Want to know how they are showing appreciation for the freedom our soldiers died for? People who want to attend have to be double-vaxxed, show their VaxPasses, wear a Mask, AND practice social distancing! Ladies and Gentlemen, the levels of Cognitive Dissonance have shot through the roof!
I believe this particular Remembrance Day has more significance than ALL the ones we’ve had since WW2. As many of us here realize, we ARE in the midst of WW3. But it’s been a quiet, sneaky, devious war based on lies. No shots were fired. No bombs have exploded. There’s no Sherman Tanks rumbling down our highways. But we have been attacked.
The tactics being used are old, tried and true. Our families and friends have fallen prey to the propaganda trick. They fell for the narrative, “hook, line and sinker.” By using fear as a tool, our enemy has taken away people’s ability to reason and to acknowledge common sense. When you’re gripped by fear, you find yourself in “fight or flight” mode. Only, the “foe” they are so scared of is invisible. You’ve got to hand it to them, the enemy is brilliant, you can’t deny that. But we ARE winning this war. Because Truth always trumps Lies, Good always trumps Evil, Right always trumps Wrong and God always trumps Satan.
Every war waged in history was manufactured by the elite to create more power and money for themselves on the backs and blood of innocent soldiers. These brave men and women didn’t realize what they were really signing up for. But their intentions were good and they were committed. There was no turning back. Wars leave scars. Psychological trauma, mutilated bodies, lost lives. The fear these soldiers felt during battle WAS real. And the freedom they sacrificed their lives for has been ours to enjoy ever since. They have passed us the “freedom” baton and it is our responsibility to ensure we take it to the finish line.
There is no “sitting on the fence” in this war. You don’t get to be a spectator and watch the match to see who’s gonna win. You’re either on God’s side or the Devil’s side. Our families and friends still have time to choose the right side. Because, if you’re not listening to your heart, your gut and your soul right now, you are part of Satan’s army. God’s army is forgiving. We accept and love Turncoats! They WILL be welcomed with open arms! When you fill your heart with love, fear disappears!
We want to invite people to tell their stories starting with Leo, so he can get back to videotaping this ceremony. If you want to share your wartime story or that of a loved one who perished, please line up by the stage and everyone will get their turn. Afterwards, we can just mingle and talk FREEDOM!”
Leo’s Speech for Pilot Officer Charles Beauregard
Leo never got to properly honour his uncle last year due to the mayhem caused by the disrupters. So we, will do it here:
My uncle Charles was born in 1916 in Courval, Saskatchewan to a family of 9 kids.
He started off his military career as a Rocky Mountain Ranger in 1940.
He then enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in Vancouver in 1942 at the age of 26.
He got his Air Gunner’s Badge in 1943 and then headed overseas.
He joined the 101 Squadron on April 6, 1944.
On May 21st, he was appointed Pilot Officer.
Two days later, he was functioning as a Special Wireless Operator on a Lancaster Bomber when his plane was shot down in Dortmund, Germany. The pilot survived but the crew didn’t make it.
On his obituary, it stated that he wanted to be a Pilot and was prepared to die for God, Country, Friends and Family.
“Thank you for your sacrifice, Uncle Charles. We’ll make sure it’s not in vain!”
We need a truly independent inquiry – not some committee where the arbitrator is appointed and the terms and conditions set out by the Prime Dictator of Canada.
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The Constitutionality, Definition & Types of Property
Interpretation of the Income Tax Act
Years in the making…
Next Webinar is on Nov. 10, 5:00 pm PST
Many myths and much disinformation have circulated for
years about our common law, our Constitution, our rights and freedoms, and other important topics.
This incredible Webinar series will finally provide irrefutable documentation confirming the true source of our property rights and the supremacy of God in our Constitution – and why we should be thankful they are NOT in the Charter!!
If you want answers to what your common law and Constitutional rights and freedoms are
Definitions and applications of the most important words in our law
Where your Constitutional right and power of civil disobedience to all unlawful statutes and orders originates
How Gov’ts and judges use “legal fictions” to steal your fundamental rights and freedoms from you
What limited rights, powers, and duties Gov’ts truly have
And much, much more…this is the Webinar series you have been waiting for!
We provide all sources of our research for verification purposes!!
By registering to this Webinar series, you will have
downloadable access to each presentation you have registered to watch!
All webinars have a password that is provided to you to access each show you wish to receive, or if you register for the series, all webinars.
Commissioner Paul Rouleau said in a statement that he intends to hold the government to account and wants the inquiry to be as “open and transparent” as possible.
Hearings will be livestreamed online and members of the public will have opportunities to share their views, with a final report expected early next year. For live streaming, see:
Lawyer collapses during Emergencies Act inquiry, delaying proceedings
Interesting how they won’t release info due to respect for the family – they can’t hide this any longer!
We still pray he will be ok.
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REMINDER
New Credit Card Fees & Lack of Privacy
Recently it has been announced that as of Oct. 6, merchants will be allowed to charge customers a fee for paying by credit cards.
The dangers of digital gov’t ID and currencies are here… you need to use cash.
Withdraw money on Sunday from the bank machine, and then leave your money at home if you are scared to carry it with you, and just carry the amounts of cash for each day’s purchases for the week.
NO MORE CARDS!!!! NO EXCUSES!
USE CASH!!!
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Hands-on Help!!!
Each Sunday, for as long as we can, we are delivering Druthers/Pandemic Papers Publications, including CLEAR rally cards and other important inserts such as our Masks/PCR brochure, and the recently released UNITY Health & Sciences brochure, for door-to-door delivery to all the mail boxes in Kelowna
See these inserts below
Though labour intensive, the outings are enjoyable and productive
But we need YOUR help!
There is simply no other way we can reach so many people who have believed the Gov’t/MSM narrative/lies
Join us each Sunday by signing the CLEAR Newspaper Delivery Sign Up Sheet at the CLEAR table & providing your EMAIL address to Linda & Nikki.
We need about 8-10 people to deliver about 100 flyers each – only about 90 min.
Each Sunday we will meet at a specified location to be announced by email on Saturday night. Start times will be 11:30 a.m.
Many recipients continue to thank us for delivering these to their doorsteps!
Contact Unity Health & Sciences Team to volunteer to distribute their professional brochures and Medical Doctor Packages throughout your home area, and to your medical doctor!
Not every doctor, analyst, and specialist is on the gov’t side and many have strong science and personal experiences opposing the gov’t narrative.
Even though COVID-19 restrictions are, for the most part, no longer in effect, other freedom issues have arisen as gov’ts use the cover of COVID-19 to introduce other more formidable liberty restrictions, including privacy violations.
Freedom is a multi-generational struggle – our legacy is to leave a better place for our children, not simply to quit after an issue appears to be over and anger diminishes; and of course, it rarely is truly over.
We urge you to provide designs (clear2012@pm.me) and/or your own signs for upcoming threats, including Digital ID
Alfred North Whitehead, a philosopher and mathematician who taught at various institutions beginning with his alma mater, Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and ending with Harvard University at the other academic Cambridge, said a lot of things over his long career, most of them being forgettable, lamentable, or pure rot. He did, however, produce one gem when he characterized the entire Western philosophical tradition as being “a series of footnotes to Plato”. There would have been no Plato, however, had there not been a Socrates. It was Socrates, the legendary teacher of Plato and Xenophon as well as a number of individuals who are otherwise most famous for the various ways in which they disgraced themselves in the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath, who laid the foundation for Platonic and all subsequent Western philosophy. He did so by asking questions. To this day the didactic trick of getting someone to assert something and then picking away at it with questions is known as the Socratic Method.
The best account of that method remains that which Plato placed in the mouth of Socrates himself in his Apology. The title of this dialogue is the source of our English word apology although it had nothing to do with apologizing in the sense of saying that you are sorry for something. Apologetics, which in Christian theology is the art of making arguments for the faith against the objections of unbelievers (and originally against those in the state who thought the faith ought to be illegal), is much closer to the original meaning of the word which was “defence” and more specifically the legal defence of the accused at a trial. When Athenian democracy was restored after the short-lived rule of the hundred tyrants following the Spartan victory that brought the Peloponnesian War to an end, Socrates was charged with a number of offences such as corrupting the youth of Athens and put on trial before the Athenian assembly. Plato’s Apology purports to be an account of the speech Socrates gave in his defence on that occasion and indeed, the full title is Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους (“The Defence of Socrates”).
Early in the dialogue Socrates gives an account of how he came have the reputation that landed him on trial. He discusses Chaerophon, who had been a friend of his since his youth and who also, not incidentally, was a friend of the Athenian democrats, i.e., Socrates’ accusers, and one who had shared in their recent misfortunes. Chaerophon had gone to Delphi and asked the Pythian priestess of Apollo whether there was anyone σοφώτερος (wiser) than Socrates and had received the answer μηδένα σοφώτερον εἶναι (there is no one wiser). Socrates, when he had heard this, had thought to himself:
(“Whatever is the god saying and why ever does he speak in riddles? For truly I know myself to have wisdom neither great nor small and so whatever is he saying in asserting me to be the wisest? For surely he is not lying, at any rate, since that is not his custom.”)
This launched Socrates on his quest to find someone wiser than himself so as to rebut the oracle. He began by going to a politician with a reputation for wisdom. After having a dialogue with him he concluded:
(I am wiser than this man, for indeed it is likely that neither of the two of us knows even one good and beautiful thing, but whereas this man thinks that he knows something he does not know, I, on the other hand, as I do not know, neither do I think I know. I seem, at least then, in this little thing at any rate, to be wiser than him, that what things I do not know, neither do I think that I know.)
He repeated this procedure with others reputed to be wise with the same result every time. Later in the dialogue – apart from this it would more properly be called a monologue – he provides a demonstration when he cross-examines his accuser Meletus.
The Apology presents to us the two major failures of Socrates. The obvious one is his failure to persuade the assembly, which resulted in him losing his case, being convicted, and then largely because of his own flippant attitude when asked to propose an alternative sentence, condemned to death. The other is his failure in his self-appointed task of rebutting the oracle of Delphi. In failing to find someone wiser than himself and demonstrating that those reputed to be wise lacked both knowledge and an awareness of their own ignorance Socrates confirmed the oracle’s judgement – Socrates’ awareness of his own ignorance, a self-awareness that his interlocutors lacked, made him indeed, the wisest man of his day. This awareness of a lack of knowledge, willingness to acknowledge it openly, and to seek out knowledge by asking questions, became the starting point and foundation of the long philosophical tradition of Western Civilization.
Is it not then perverse that in academe, that is, the collective of institutions of higher learning which takes its name from the olive grove outside of the walls of Athens dedicated to that city’s patron goddess where Socrates’ greatest disciple Plato taught his own pupils, this spirit of acknowledging one’s ignorance, asking questions and being willing to learn is no longer welcome?
In the academe of today the idea is almost ubiquitous that the campus ought to be a “safe space” for groups which in progressive ideology deserve special rights and protections now because of past wrongs done to them, real and imagined. What this means in practice is that such groups are to be protected on campus from acts and, more importantly, words, that, in their opinion at least, are hostile or offensive to themselves. This translates into all criticism of these groups or even of individual members of these groups being forbidden because any such criticism could be and often is taken by these groups as being hostile or offensive. This in turn means that members of these groups cannot be questioned when sharing their “lived experience” (the progressive term for a member of a designated victim group talking about having experienced discrimination, marginalization, and whichever of the growing list of forbidden isms or phobias happens to apply) or “their truth” (when the word truth is modified by a possessive pronoun this is an progressive euphemism for claims made about one’s – usually sexual or gender – identity that are backed only by one’s experience and interpretation of such and not by conformity with objective reality), because such questioning is taken as criticism which is taken as hostility.
This is only one of many ways in which asking questions, at least if they are questions pertaining to progressive sacred cows, is discouraged, frowned upon, or outright forbidden on academic campuses.
Asking questions is fundamental not only to the philosophical tradition that began with Socrates and Plato but to something that if it were properly regarded would be considered but one branch of that tradition. That something is what we call science today. It would be better if we still called it natural philosophy. The term science is the Anglicized spelling of the Latin word for “knowledge” and its limitation, as in most contemporary English usage, to natural philosophy, its methodology, and its discoveries, has materialistic connotations. Science or natural philosophy, is that branch of knowledge-seeking that has as its subject matter the physical or natural world and how it works. It has greater utility than many other branches of philosophy which is why Modern man whose thinking is permeated by liberalism which places an exaggerated value on utility tends to think of science as something other than and superior to philosophy rather than one of its branches. It would have no utility whatsoever, however, were it not for asking questions and/or activities that are the equivalent of question asking. From Thales, Pythagoras and Aristotle in the Ancient world to Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Benjamin Franklin, Michael Faraday, Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Francis Crick, et al. in the Modern, none of these would have discovered anything had they not asked questions and especially questions about what was already being taught as science.
For the past three years we have had to listen to politicians, government bureaucrats, the majority of media commentators and even many clergy speak of “the science” as something to be “believed” and “followed”. Questioning “the science” was declared to be “misinformation” and “disinformation” and “conspiracy theory” by these same people and treated as such by the censorious tech companies who operate the major social media platforms. The vile and odious twit whom we have been saddled with as Prime Minister here in Canada since 2015, around the time of last year’s Dominion Election equated people who according to him “don’t believe in science” with “racists” and “misogynists” said that their views were “unacceptable” and that we ought to be asking ourselves whether we should continue to tolerate such people in our midst. All of this pertained to the “scientific” arguments that were being claimed in support of draconian government measures such as the enforced closing of schools, churches, businesses etc. that came to be known as “lockdowns”, mandatory masking, and ultimately compelled vaccination introduced in the panic over the bat flu. Anybody who has dared to question the doomsday predictions coming from Green activists masquerading as climatologists over the last three decades or so will have already been familiar with this sort of talk long before the pandemic. Regardless, however, of whether this talk about how we are under some sort of moral imperative to “believe” and “follow” “the science” and how those who do not are evil “deniers” comes up in the context of pandemic policy or climate policy it betrays the speaker as being thoroughly unscientific in the way he views science. Real scientists who make real discoveries that benefit mankind in real ways do not place a definite article before science and treat it as an object of unquestioning faith and obedience. Those who do speak about “the science” this way are speaking about something that is not really science. It is interesting, is it not, that what those who spoke this way in the pandemic and those who speak this way about “climate change” have in common, is that they all want more powers for the government, more limitations on personal rights and freedoms, and for the ordinary middle class people in Western countries to accept a severe reduction in their standard of living?
Asking questions is fundamental to yet another important discipline, that of history. Indeed, the very name of the discipline refers to the process of asking questions. Herodotus, who was about fourteen years older than Socrates, was born in Halicarnassus, a Greek city in Anatolia or Asia Minor, which at the time was part of the Persian Empire. A man of means, he travelled much throughout the Mediterranean world and about five years before he died, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War between Athens and her allies and Sparta and her allies, wrote a ten book account of the peoples, customs, and past events of the region, concentrating on the Greco-Persian Wars fought in the first half of the fifth century BC, i.e., the century in which he lived. He introduced the first book and the entire work with the words “Ἡροδότου Ἁλικαρνησσέος ἱστορίης ἀπόδεξις ἥδε” which mean simply “This is the publication of the inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassus”. The word which means “inquiry” or “investigation” here is ἱστορίης which put in Latin characters is histories. It has ever since served not only as the title of Herodotus’ magnus opus but as the name of the entire field of looking into the events of the past to determine what happened and why of which Herodotus is quite properly remembered as the father.
The remainder of the opening sentence provides us with the subject and purpose of Herodotus’ investigation:
This means: “so that the things done by men do not become forgotten with time, nor the works both great and marvelous, some performed by Greeks others by foreigners, become inglorious, and with these other things also the reason for which they went to war with each other.”
To this day the historical discipline remains summed up well in this introduction. The methodology of historical inquiry is most comparable to that of the courtroom and this, of course, means asking plenty of questions of first hand witnesses to events if available and of others who have relevant knowledge. For Herodotus this meant asking the λόγιοι (learned men) of the various countries he visited for their accounts of their own customs, past events, and of various local natural, geographical, and architectural phenomenon. As an example, the very first thing that follows the opening sentence given above is his record of the account given by the Persian λόγιοι of that matter emphasized at the very end of his introduction, i.e., the cause of the Greco-Persian Wars. According to him the Persians traced the ultimate cause to the Phoenicians, who in the abduction of Io, princess of Argos, started a series of reciprocal abductions of women of rank (Europa, Medea, Helen) that culminated in the Greek onslaught of Troy, which event, judged to be gross overreaction by the Asians, was the immediate cause of the hatred and enmity of the Asians for the Greeks.
It has been suggested by subsequent historians, including his own contemporary Thucydides that Herodotus was less critical than he ought to have been towards his sources. Evidence, however, continues to accumulate to this very day that he was far more accurate than he has often been given credit for. For example, until very recently the prime example pointed to by his critics of his utterly credulity was his account in Book III of his History of a region in India where furry, fox-sized, ants, dig up gold dust which is then harvested by the locals, long ridiculed as outlandish and absurd. It was essentially confirmed by a French ethnologist four decades ago when he published his findings about a species of marmot (big squirrels who live in burrows rather than trees) in a particularly difficult to reach part of the Karakoram mountains on the side of the range belonging to Pakistan that does exactly what Herodotus said these “ants” do with the locals, the Minaro or Brokpas, continuing to harvest the gold. The Persians called these marmots “mountain ants”, presumably because of the similar habit of digging and making mounds, a rather more obvious basis of comparison that that which the person who gave the same species the alternative name “Tibetan snow pig” had in mind, although whatever that happened to have been was apparently also evident to whoever was the first to call the creature’s North American cousin the “groundhog”. The relevance of this to our point regarding history is simply this – it was by asking questions, first by those who questioned Herodotus’ account where it contained elements that seemed fanciful and for which they could find no other evidence and then by those who dug deeper, questioned the original questioners, and found evidence supporting his claims, that his work has been vindicated as being far more accurate than had been previously thought.
History then, like Socratic philosophy and empirical science – real empirical science, which never takes a definite article, is never settled, is not an object of faith to be believed or a leader to be followed – has truth as its end, and asking and seeking as its means and method. It is therefore rather disturbing or comical or both that our Parliamentarians seem to have adopted the attitude that historical truth is not something that is out there to be discovered by those who seek it but rather something to be declared and decided by their own authoritative fiat.
Earlier this year, in a shameless attempt to deflect public attention away from their own fascist behavior in declaring the equivalent of martial law in order to brutally crush a peaceful protest against their cruel vaccine mandates and other draconian health measures – this description has been borne out completely by the testimony in the inquiry over the last month or so – the evil Prime Minister Trudeau and his Cabinet of knuckle-dragging, simian, louts and thugs declared their intention to make “Holocaust denial” into a crime in Canada. Since in the progressive lexicon asking a valid and important question about something progressives have declared to be a sacred cow constitutes “denial” this meant in effect that asking tough, challenging, questions about the Holocaust was to be criminalized. As a sleight of hand it was rather impressive. “Yes, I just suspended everyone’s civil rights and freedoms in order to crush people who were embarrassing me” the Prime Minister was essentially saying “but it’s these other people who are Hitler, not me, therefore I am going to make it so that they go to prison for saying things and asking questions that I don’t like, just like in Germany.”
More recently, the member of the official socialist party (the ones propping up the current government) who represents Winnipeg Centre in the House of Commons introduced a motion calling upon the government to recognize the Indian Residential Schools as a “genocide”. The motion passed unanimously. Now, a motion of this nature does not by itself actually do anything except send a message about who in the House has signed on to an asserted narrative. This is bad enough, however, because a) we elect Members to represent us in the House to look out for our interests on matters pertaining to the taxes we pay, the laws we live under, the wars, heaven forbid, that we fight, and the like and not to affirm or deny some narrative or another, b) the truth or falseness of such narratives is something that cannot possibly be affected by government pronouncements one way or another – to assert otherwise is to attribute to government a power closely akin to that which those who believe in magic spells attribute to spell-casting, to alter reality by uttering words – and c) the truth or falseness of these narratives is something that can only be discovered through open and honest inquiry and government proclamations of this nature, while they don’t actually forbid such, tend to discourage it. It is much worse that this motion passed unanimously, that not a single Member of Parliament could be found with the courage to challenge it. What makes this even worse is that the narrative in question is a claim which a) even apart from the evidence seems palpably absurd on the face of it, i.e., that the cooperative efforts of Canada’s government and churches to provide the education requested by the Indian bands and agreed to in the treaties, whatever might have gone wrong with them in practice, amounted to something that is categorically identical to or comparable with what the Hutus did to the Tutsis in 1994 Rwanda, b) has had its evidentiary basis crumble into nothing under scrutiny (see the essay “Kamloops Update: Still Not One Body” by Jacques Rouillard, Professor Emeritus in History at the Université de Montréal, in Dorchester Review, Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring/Summer 2022, pp.27-36, and the article “Canada’s ‘Genocide’ – Case Closed?” by Michael Melanson and Nina Green posted on the same journal’s website on October 27, 2022), and c) has been heavy-handedly protected by those asserting it against the very sort of questioning which it would need to withstand to establish its truth-claims from the very beginning. The firing, last December, of Mount Royal University’s tenured Frances Widdowson for questioning woke ideology in general, and the Residential Schools narrative in particular, is but one example that could be given of the latter point. It is unlikely to have escaped your attention if you have remained with us this far that in each of these cases where a cold, hostile, forbidding attitude towards those who ask questions has taken over an intellectual institution or disciple that had been built upon a foundation of seeking and asking the culprit has been the same each time, at least in terms of it being the same way of thinking (or avoiding thought) although often the same individuals have been involved as well. Progressivism has never been as tolerant towards differing viewpoints as it professed to be under its liberal guise but what we are seeing in this latest incarnation of progressivism is the most illiberal face it has ever shown outside of regimes such as Cromwell’s, the French Reign of Terror, and the People’s Republics of Communism. The new progressivism is exemplified by our idiot Prime Minister who likes to sanctimoniously lecture people in the first person plural about the need to listen to others who disagree with us even though everyone who hears him knows that he ought to be using the second person because he has no intention of ever listening to anyone who disagrees with him and that what he really means is that everyone who disagrees with him needs to listen to what he has to say and change their views accordingly. This man frequently makes false affirmations of his belief in “free speech” and the need to defend such but never does so without including a qualifying provision that completely negates the affirmation and he has made it abundantly clear that he thinks the public need to be protected from speech that might “harm” which he calls by such terms as “hate”, “misinformation” and “disinformation” all of which merely mean speech that he disagrees with. His attitude towards questioning is what is most relevant, however, and it is quite instructive. Towards the end of the first term of his premiership, as his government was rocked by scandal, he bought off most of the private media companies in Canada with a $600 million bailout. To further ensure that he never faces questions tougher than what colour of socks he is wearing he has repeatedly sought to ban reporters representing the handful of independent media companies that had refused his money from his press conferences. Having gone to such lengths to ensure that he is only asked friendly questions, he never actually answers any of them, but instead only replies with pre-written remarks which may or may not have something to do with what he was asked. If the reporter recognizes that he has not gotten an answer and repeats the question, the Prime Minister merely repeats his initial response, usually almost verbatim as he lacks the intelligence required to reword it on the spot. The academic progressive thinks that members of designated victim groups should be protected from having “their truth” and their “lived experience” questioned, lockdown enthusiasts and Green activists think that “the science” should not be questioned but blindly believed and followed, and many, including members of our Parliament, think that certain historical assertions ought not to be questioned. In a Prime Minister who avoids questions that he has not approved in advance like the plague and who sidesteps answering those that are put to him these foes of what is most basic and foundational to any genuine intellectual pursuit have found their champion. Gerry T. Neal
Students at the Israeli military’s Computing and Cyber Defense Academy. Israel is also “scouring Jewish communities abroad for young computer prodigies willing to join its ranks.”
Numerous well funded, organized projects by and for Israel work to flood social media with pro-Israel propaganda, while blocking facts Israel dislikes. The projects utilize Israeli soldiers, students, American teens and others, and range from infiltrating Wikipedia to influencing YouTube. Some operate out of Jewish Community Centers in the U.S.
By Alison Weir
Recently, YouTube suddenly shut down the If Americans Knew YouTube channel. This contained 70 videos providing facts-based information about Israel-Palestine.
People going to the channel saw a message telling them that the site had been terminated for “violating YouTube guidelines”—implying to the public that we were guilty of wrongdoing. And ensuring they didn’t learn about the information we were trying to disseminate.
When we tried to access our channel, we found a message saying our account had been “permanently disabled.” We had received no warning and got no explanation.
After five days, we received a generic message saying YouTube had reviewed our content and determined it didn’t violate any guidelines. Our channel became live once more.
So why was it shut down in the first place? What happened and why?
As it turns out, Israel and Israeli institutions employ armies of Internet warriors—from Israeli soldiers to students—to spread propaganda online and try to get content banned that Israel doesn’t want seen.
Perhaps like our videos of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.
What happened
A few days before the termination of our channel, we received a form email from YouTube, telling us we had gotten “one strike” for a short video about a Palestinian man killed by Israeli soldiers. The video was part of our series of videos to make Palestinian victims, usually ignored by US media, visible to Americans.
It takes three minutes to view the video and see that it contains nothing objectionable, unless revealing cruelty and oppression is objectionable:
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YouTube’s email claimed we had somehow violated their long list of guidelines but did not tell us which one, or how. It simply stated:
“Your video ‘Ahmad Nasser Jarrar’ was flagged for review. Upon review, we’ve determined that it violates our guidelines. We’ve removed it from YouTube and assigned a Community Guidelines strike, or temporary penalty, to your account.”
Such a penalty is not public and does not terminate the channel.
Three days later, before we’d even had a chance to appeal this strike, YouTube suddenly took down our entire channel. This was done with no additional warnings or explanation.
This violated YouTube’s published policies.
YouTube policies say there is a “three-strike” system by which it warns people of alleged violations three times before terminating a channel. If a channel is eventually terminated, the policies state that YouTube will send an email “detailing the reason for the suspension.”
None of this happened in our case.
We submitted appeals on YouTube’s online form, but received no response. Attempts to find a phone number for YouTube and/or email addresses by which we could communicate with a human being were futile.
YouTube’s power to shut down content without explanation whenever it chooses was acutely apparent. While there are other excellent video hosting sites, YouTube is the largest one, with nearly ten times more views than its closest competitors. It is therefore enormously powerful in shaping which information is available to the public–and which is not.
We spent days working to upload our videos elsewhere, update links to the videos, etc. Finally, having received no response or even acknowledgment of our appeal from YouTube, we decided to write an article about the situation. We emailed YouTube’s press department a list of questions about its process. We have yet to receive any answers.
Finally that evening we received an email with good news:
“After a review of your account, we have confirmed that your YouTube account is not in violation of our Terms of Service. As such, we have unsuspended your account. This means your account is once again active and operational.”
Our channel was visible once more. And YouTube had now officially confirmed that our content doesn’t violate its guidelines.
Ultimately, the YouTube system seems to have worked, in our case. Inappropriate censorship was overruled, perhaps by saner or less biased heads. In fact, we felt that there might at least be one positive result of the situation—additional YouTube employees had viewed our videos and perhaps learned much about Israel-Palestine they had not previously known.
But the whole experience was a wakeup call that YouTube can censor information critical of powerful parties at any time, with no explanation or accountability.
Israeli soldiers paid to “Tweet, Share, Like and more”
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Israel and partisans of Israel have long had a significant presence on the Internet, working to promote the Israel narrative and block facts about Palestine, the Israel lobby, and other subject matter they wish covered up.
Opinionated proponents of Israel post comments, flag content, accuse critics of “antisemitism,” and disseminate misinformation about Palestine and Palestine solidarity activists. Many of these actions are by individuals acting alone who work independently, voluntarily, and relentlessly.
In addition to these, however, a number of orchestrated, often well-funded projects sponsored by the Israeli government and others have come to light. These projects work to place pro-Israel content throughout the Internet, and to remove information Israel doesn’t wish people to know.
One such Israeli project targeting the Internet came to light when it was lauded in an article by Arutz Sheva, an Israeli news organization headquartered in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
The report described a new project by Israel’s “New Media desk” that focused on YouTube and other social media sites. The article reported that Israeli soldiers were being employed to “Tweet, Share, Like and more.”
The article noted, “It is well known nowadays that what happens on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has great influence on events as they occur on the ground. The Internet, too, is a battleground.” It was “comforting,” the article stated, to learn that the IDF was employing soldiers whose job was specifically to do battle on it.
Israeli students paid to promote Israel on social media
Screen shot from a video about student program to spread pro-Israel content on the Internet and social media.
Another project to do battle on the Internet was initiated in 2011 by the 300,000-strong National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS). The goal was “to deepen and expand hasbara [state propaganda] activities of students in the State of Israel.”
Under this program, Israeli students are paid $2,000 to work five hours per week to “lead the battle against hostile websites.”
An announcement for the program (translated here into English) noted that “many students in Israel master the Internet and are proficient at using the Internet and social networking and various sites and are required to write and express themselves in English.” Students can work from the comfort of their own homes, points out the announcement.
“Students work in four teams: Content, Wikipedia, Monitoring and New Media,” according to the program description. It details the responsibilities for each team:
The content team is responsible for creating original content in a news format.
The monitoring team is responsible for “monitoring efforts while reporting and removing anti-Semitic [sic] content from social networks in a variety of languages.” (The program conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism; see below.)
The New Media team is responsible for social media channels, “including Facebook accounts in English, French and Portuguese, Twitter, YouTube channels, and so on.”
The Wikipedia team is “responsible for writing new entries and translating them into languages that operate in the program, updating the values of current and relevant information, tracking and preventing bias in the program’s areas of activity.”
This program sometimes claims it is working against antisemitism, but it conflates antisemitism with criticism of the state of Israel. This is in line with an Israel-backed initiative to legally define “antisemitism” to include discussing negative facts about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.
Campaign to infiltrate Wikipedia
The pro-Israel organization CAMERA infiltrated Wikipedia for a time. (Illustration by Electronic Intifada.)
Several years ago, another project came to light that targeted Wikipedia. While manipulating Wikipedia entries doesn’t directly impact YouTube, it provides a window into some of these efforts to manipulate online content.
A 2008 exposé in the Electronic Intifada revealed: “A pro-Israel pressure group is orchestrating a secret, long-term campaign to infiltrate the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.”
While it is common and appropriate for individuals to edit Wikipedia entries to add factual information and remove inaccurate statements, this project was the antithesis of such editing. As EI, reported, its purpose was “to rewrite Palestinian history, pass off crude propaganda as fact, and take over Wikipedia administrative structures to ensure these changes go either undetected or unchallenged.”
Author Ali Abunimah reported that a source had provided EI with a series of emails from members and associates of the pro-Israel group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) that showed the group “was engaged in what one activist termed a ‘war’ on Wikipedia.”
CAMERA Senior Research Analyst Gilead Ini organized a project to infiltrate Wikipedia.
CAMERA called for volunteers to secretly work on editing Wikipedia entries. It emphasized the importance of keeping the project secret. Volunteers were schooled in ways to elude detection. After they signed up as editors, they were to “avoid editing Israel-related articles for a short period of time.”
They were also told to “avoid, for obvious reasons, picking a username that marks you as pro-Israel, or that lets people know your real name.”
CAMERA also warned them: “Don’t forget to always log in… If you make changes while not logged in, Wikipedia will record your computer’s IP address.”
A Wikipedia editor known as Zeq helped in the effort, telling volunteers: “Edit articles at random, make friends not enemies—we will need them later on. This is a marathon not a sprint.” He emphasized the importance of secrecy: “You don’t want to be precived [sic] as a ‘CAMERA’ defender’ on wikipedia that is for sure.”
Zeq recommended that they work with and learn from an independent, pro-Israel Wikipedia editor known as Jayjg, but directed them to keep the project secret even from him.
When this all came to light, Wikipedia took measures against such manipulation of its system and the CAMERA program may have ended.
If it did, others stepped into the breach. In 2010 two Israeli groups began offering a course in “Zionist editing” of Wikipedia entries. The aim was “to make sure that information in the online encyclopedia reflects the worldview of Zionist groups.” A course organizer explained that the use of the word “occupied” in Wikipedia entries “was just the kind of problem she hoped a new team of editors could help fix.”
Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reported: “The organizers’ aim was twofold: to affect Israeli public opinion by having people who share their ideological viewpoint take part in writing and editing for the Hebrew version, and to write in English so Israel’s image can be bolstered abroad.”
There was to be a prize for the “Best Zionist Editor”—the person who over the next four years incorporated the most “Zionist” changes in the encyclopedia. The winner would receive a trip in a hot-air balloon over Israel.
High tech millionaire Naftali Bennett, a right-wing minister close to the settler movement, describes the program:
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The UK Guardian reports: “One Jerusalem-based Wikipedia editor, who doesn’t want to be named, said that publicising the initiative might not be such a good idea. ‘Going public in the past has had a bad effect,’ she says. ‘There is a war going on and unfortunately the way to fight it has to be underground.’”
Again in 2013, there was evidence of pro-Israel tampering with Wikipedia. Israel’s Ha’aretz reported that a social-media employee of NGO Monitor edited articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in an allegedly biased manner. “Draiman concealed the facts that he was an employee of NGO Monitor, often described as a right-wing group, and that he was using a second username, which is forbidden under Wikipedia’s rules,” according to the paper.
Such actions have had an impact. A website critical of Wikipedia said in 2014 that there were “almost ten times as many articles about murdered Israeli children as there are articles about murdered Palestinian children,” even though at least 10 times more Palestinian children had been killed.
The website also pointed out: “While editors like Zeq (T–C–L) and CltFn (T–C–L) may get banned in the end, the articles theystarted remain.”
If YouTube reviewers and others use Wikipedia in their determination about whether content should be removed or not, these efforts to censor Wikipedia could adversely affect their decisions.
Social Media Missions for Israel
Title image from Forward article about the Act.IL campaign.
In 2017 yet another project to target Internet platforms was launched. Known as Act.il, the project uses a software application that “leverages the power of communities to support Israel through organized online activity.”
The software is a joint venture of three groups: Israel’s IDC University; the Israeli American Council, which works to “organize and activate” the half million Israeli-Americans who live in the U.S.; and another American group called the Maccabee Task Force, created to combat the international boycott of Israel, which it terms “an anti-Semitic movement.” Maccabee says it is “laser focused on one core mission—to ensure that those who seek to delegitimize Israel and demonize the Jewish people are confronted, combatted and defeated.”
In addition, the project is supported by Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry and Israel’s intelligence community. Its CEO is an eight-year veteran of Israeli army intelligence.
Israel’s Jerusalem Post reports that Act.IL is “a wide-ranging grassroots campaign app that lets individuals combat BDS in the palm of their hand” or, as we will see, from public computers in the US.
“Act.IL is more than just an app,” the Post article explains. “It is a campaign that taps into the collective knowledge of IDC students who together speak 35 languages, hail from 86 countries and have connections to the pro-Israel community all over the world.”
The article claims: “A platform like Act.IL offers world Jewry an opportunity to fight for one thing the majority can rally behind: Israel.” (This ignores the fact that there are many Jewish individuals who oppose Israeli policies.)
Israel partisans around the world download the app, and then “in this virtual situation room of experts, they detect instances where Israel is being assailed online and they program the app to find missions that can be carried out with a push of a button.”
An organizer notes: “When you work together, with the same goals and values, you can be incredibly powerful in the social media landscape.”
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Some missions ask users to report videos. Israeli government officials say that the Act.il app “is more effective than official government requests at getting those videos removed from online platforms.”
The project is led by former Israeli intelligence officers and has close ties to American casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Another funder is the Paul R. Singer Foundation, funded by the Republican hedge fund billionaire.
The Forward calls Act.IL a new entry into the “online propaganda war” that “has thousands of mostly U.S.-based volunteers who can be directed from Israel into a social media swarm.”
According to the Forward, “Its work so far offers a startling glimpse of how it could shape the online conversations about Israel without ever showing its hand.”
The Forward reports: “Act.il says that its app has 12,000 sign-ups so far, and 6,000 regular users. The users are located all over the world, though the majority of them appear to be in the United States. Users get ‘points’ for completed missions; top-ranked users complete five or six missions a day. Top users win prizes: a congratulatory letter from a government minister, or a doll of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding prime minister.”
Photo of group that participated in Act.IL training
Act.IL’s CEO, a veteran Israeli army intelligence officer, said the Israeli military and its domestic intelligence service “‘request’ Act.il’s help in getting services like Facebook to remove specific videos that call for violence against Jews or Israelis.” This according to the Forward report.
The officer later tried to walk back his statement, “saying that the Shin Bet [intelligence service] and the army don’t request help on specific videos but are in regular informal contact with Act.il. He said that Act.il’s staff is largely made up of former Israeli intelligence officers.”
Teens in American JCCs carry out missions assigned from Israel
New Jersey “Media Room,” a project of IAC New Jersey in partnership with Act.IL.
The project recruits Jewish teens and adults and sometimes operates out of local Jewish community centers, the Forward says. The paper describes one example:
“The dozen or so Israelis sitting around a conference table at a Jewish community center in Tenafly, New Jersey, on a recent Wednesday night didn’t look like the leading edge of a new Israeli government-linked crowdsourced online propaganda campaign.
“Tapping on laptops, the group of high school students and adult mentors completed social media ‘missions’ assigned out of a headquarters in Herzliya, Israel.”
In addition to the Tenafly “media room” another operates in Boston in cooperation with the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. There are also regular Act.il advocacy-training sessions at The Frisch School, a Jewish day school in Paramas, New Jersey. Other media rooms are reportedly in the works, with one in Manhattan, hosted by The Paul R. Singer Foundation, scheduled to open soon.
The Forward reports: “In November, the Boston media room created a mission for the app that asked users to email a Boston-area church to complain about a screening there of a documentary that is critical of Israel. The proposed text of the email likens the screening of the film to the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and calls the film’s narrator, Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, a ‘well-known anti-Semite.’”
Photo of Boston Media Room published by Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which states: “Media Room Ambassadors are students and adult mentors who are trained with the knowledge, skills, and tools to positively influence public discourse by developing pro-Israel social media campaigns.”
According to the Forward, Act.il also produces “pro-Israel web content that carries no logo. It distributes that content to other pro-Israel groups, including the Adelson-funded Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi and The Israel Project, which push them out on their own social media feeds.”
The Forward predicts: “Initiatives in cyberspace seem likely to increase.”
Screenshot from video promoting the project, posted on the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston website.
Israeli media report that the Israeli military “has begun scouring Jewish communities abroad for young computer prodigies” to recruit for its ranks.
An Israeli official described the process: “Our first order of business is to search Jewish communities abroad for teens who could qualify, Our representatives will then travel to the communities and begin the screening process there.”
Israeli Government Ministry backs secret online campaigns
General Sima Vaknin-Gil told Israeli tech developers to “flood the Internet” with pro-Israel propaganda. As Israel’s Chief Censor, she said: ” “We censor information that is critical to our enemies, who have no capabilities like us, do not have a Jewish brain, and therefore our enemy relies to a large extent on open information…”
Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry, which is behind this and similar projects, has mobilized substantial resources for online activities.
Israel’s Ynet news reports that the Ministry’s director “sees it as a war for all intents and purposes. ‘The delegitimization against the State of Israel can be curbed and contained through public diplomacy and soft tools,’ she says. ‘In order to win, however, we must use tricks and craftiness.’”
The director, General Sima Vaknin-Gil, told a forum of Israeli tech developers at a forum: “I want to create a community of fighters.” The objective is to “curb the activities of anti-Israel activists,” and “flood the Internet” with pro-Israel content.
An Israeli report in December stated that the ministry has acquired a budget of roughly $70 million to “stand at the forefront of the battle against delegitimization, adopting methods from the fields of intelligence and technology. There is a reason why ministry officials define it as ‘a war on consciousness terrorism.’” [‘Delegitimization’ is a common Israeli term for criticism of Israel. See here for a discussion of the term.]
A Ha’aretz article reports: “The Strategic Affairs Ministry’s leaders see themselves as the heads of a commando unit, gathering and disseminating information about ‘supporters of the delegitimization of Israel’—and they prefer their actions be kept secret.”
The article reports that the Ministry includes a job role entitled “Senior official—new-media realm,” responsible for surveillance and activities “in the digital realm.”
This individual head is responsible for analyzing social media and formulating a social media campaign against sites and activists who are deemed a threat to Israel.
Among the job’s responsibilities are:
“Analysis of the world of social media, in terms of content, technology and network structure, emphasizing centers of gravity and focuses of influence, methods, messages, organizations, sites and key activists, studying their characteristics, areas, realms and key patterns of activities of the rival campaign and formulating a strategy for an awareness campaign against them in this realm and managing crises on social media. That is, surveilling of activities mainly in the digital arena.”
Officials at the ministry are charged with “construction and promotion of creative and suitable programs for new media.”
The unit works to keep its activities secret from the public. For example, a program to train young Israelis for activities on social media was exempted from publishing a public bid for funding. Similarly, the ministry’s special unit against delegitimization, “Hama’aracha” (The Battle), is excluded from Israel’s Freedom of Information Law.
The 29th floor of Tel Aviv’s Champion Tower is the nerve center of a 24-7 ‘war’ in which Israeli agents working behind the scenes advance U.S. legislation, torpedo events, organize counter-protests, & close bank accounts.. The Director says: ‘In order to win we must use tricks and craftiness.’
Its activities reportedly include a “24/7 operations room monitoring all the delegitimization activities against Israel: Protests, conferences, publications calling for an anti-Israel boycott and international bodies’ boycott initiatives. The operations room will transfer the information to the relevant people to provide a proper response to these activities, whether through a counter-protest or through moves to thwart the initiative behind the scenes.”
Other programs include a 22-million-shekel project to work among labor unions and professional associations abroad “to root out the ability of BDS entities to influence the unions,” and a 16-million-shekel program focused on student activities throughout the world.
Israel’s UNIT 8200
Photo from article about Unit 8200 on Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre website.
Another Israeli entity that plays a role in covert Internet activity is the Israeli military’s legendary high-tech spy branch, Unit 8200. This unit is composed of thousands of “cyber warriors” primarily 18 to 21 years of age; some even younger. A number of its graduates have gone on to top positions at tech companies operating in the U.S., such as Check Point Software (where the spouse of the Jewish Voice for Peace head is employed as a solutions architect).
In 2015 Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced plans “to establish a special command to combat anti-Israel incitement on social media.” The command would operate under the foreign ministry’s hasbara [propaganda] department and would especially recruit from graduates of Unit 8200.
An article in the Jewish Press about the new command reports that Unit 8200 “has developed a great reputation for effectiveness in intelligence gathering, including operating a massive global spy network. Several alumni of 8200 have gone on to establish leading Israeli IT companies, including Check Point, ICQ, Palo Alto Networks, NICE, AudioCodes, Gilat, Leadspace, EZchip, Onavo, Singular and CyberArk.”
Check Point Software headquarters in Tel Aviv. Founded by a former Unit 8200 member, it also has offices throughout the U.S. Israeli tech companies sometimes assist in online spying efforts.
Numerous Israeli tech companies, many of them headed by former military intelligence officers, assist in these online spying efforts, sometimes receiving Israeli government funding “for digital initiatives aimed at gathering intelligence on activist groups and countering their efforts.”
According to the ministry’s statement, among the Command’s activities is “finding videos with inflammatory content and issuing complaints to the relevant websites.”
To be clear, this is an occupying military working covertly to achieve censorship of reporting on its atrocities.
YouTube & Google officials meet with Israeli Minister
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki speaking to the Israel Collaboration Network’s Israeli Women in Tech Group on August 25, 2016.
Major Internet companies have reportedly been cooperating in this effort.
In 2015 Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely announced that she had visited Silicon Valley and met with YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Google’s Director of Public Policy (it is unclear whether this was was Jennifer Oztzistzki or Juniper Downs; Hotovely’s announcement referred to “Jennifer Downs”).
“At the end of the meeting,” Israeli media reported, “it was agreed that Google would strengthen bilateral relations with the Foreign Ministry and build a collaborative work apparatus.”
Another Israeli news report about the meeting states: “…it was agreed that the companies would strengthen ties with the Foreign Ministry and build a regular mechanism of control to prevent the distribution of those incendiary materials on the network.”
Google, which owns YouTube, denied the Foreign Ministry’s report. The Ministry accordingly “clarified” its statement somewhat, but continued to say that Israeli officials would be in “regular contact with Google’s employees in Israel who deal with the problematic materials.”
Such officials often have close ties to Israel. For example, Facebook’s Head of Policy in Israel, Jordana Cutler, had previously been employed for many years by the Israeli government. (More about Facebook can be found here.)
The Linkedin page for Facebook’s Jordana Cutler
The meetings seem to have had a significant effect.
In 2016 Fortune magazine reported: “Facebook, Google, and YouTube are complying with up to 95% of Israeli requests to delete content that the government says incites Palestinian violence, Israel’s Justice Minister said on Monday.”
More recently, the Israeli Ministry of Justice said that its cyber unit handled 2,241 cases of online content and succeeded in getting 70 percent of it removed.
According to a 2017 report, Google, in its capacity as the operator of Youtube, announced that it was updating the steps it was already taking on this score.
Among other things, Google said it would increase the number of members of the “Trusted Flagger program,” which enables certain organizations and government agencies to report content. It also said it would “increase support for NGOs and organizations working to present a ‘corrective voice.’”
Given the record of infiltration and orchestrated activities described above—many financed by a combination of certain influential billionaires and the Israeli government itself—it’s hard to imagine that Israeli organizations and partisans are not thoroughly embedded in this program. In fact, one of the NGOs already working with YouTube as a “trusted flagger” is the Anti-Defamation League, whose mission includes ‘standing up for Israel.’
Anti-Defamation League celebrates Israel at 2017 New York City parade.
A leaked secret January 2017 ADL strategy paper detailed how to counter the pro-Palestine movement. Among its many strategies were some focused on the importance of efforts in cyber space.
The paper was produced in collaboration with the Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, and included an endorsement by Sima Vaknin-Gil, who stated that “the correlation between the Ministry’s mode of operation and what comes out of this document is very high, and has already proven effective… ”
Strategy paper about how to counter the Palestine solidarity movement. (Full document posted here.)
The document’s executive summary noted: “Cyberspace, broadly defined, stands out as a crucially important arena (for monitoring and counter and pro-active strategies) which requires more resources and attention due to its current influence, rapid growth and growing complexity.”
The paper called for “a mix of policy advocacy and industry engagement with corporations such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter in a manner consistent with the ADL Center for Technology and Society and its Anti-Cyberhate Working Group.”
An illustration in the ADL-Reut working paper on improving Israel advocacy. It noted: “While the pro-Israel network increasingly is active in this domain, much more can be done.”
The paper also recommended: “‘Bottom-up efforts’ of crowd-sourcing to enhance the adaptive capacity of the pro-Israel network.”
At the same time, it urged:
“Strengthening pro-Israel organizations that mobilize and coordinate a network of ‘nodes’ e.g. Jewish Community Public Affairs (JCPA) and its network of Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRCs) in the USA; Hillel, which is present in nearly five hundred locations in the U.S. and globally; the Israel Action Network (IAN) that reaches nearly 160 federations in the U.S.; or the Jewish Congress (WJC) that represents dozens of Jewish communities around the world.”
The detailed, 32-page document reported that in recent years “a massive investment of resources and talent” had been directed against the pro-Palestine movement. One of the results, the paper said, was to create a “world-wide pro-Israel network.” It was this network that the report wished to mobilize. One of the paper’s concerns was that since Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza “a growing number of Jews have become more critical of Israel.”
The document recommended a degree of stealth, noting: “high-visibility response by the pro-Israel side can be counterproductive.”
What this means
Nevertheless, despite all these forces arrayed against information about Palestine reaching the American public, our channel is back up on YouTube. In fact, we’ve just uploaded a new video:
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This one is about the death of a nine-year-old boy. [Perhaps the Israeli government would consider this incitement to Palestinians to rebel against occupation; we see it as incitement to the world in general, and Americans in particular, to care.]
In other words, Israel’s efforts at censorship don’t always succeed.
But sometimes they do, and other YouTube users have not always been so fortunate. For example, YouTube has terminated several Palestinian news organizations.
One was the al-Quds network, which, according to a report in Middle East Eye, “relies on young reporters and volunteers using phones and other digital devices to cover local news across the Palestinian territories.” They would often report Israeli soldiers committing various human rights violations.
Its YouTube channel was terminated in 2011, and its editor says they had to “to create a new channel from scratch.” By 2017 its new channel had gained almost 10 million views before it was suddenly suspended without warning again last October. It now, however, appears to have a YouTube channel in operation.
According to the MEE report, YouTube also suspended the Filisten al-Youm TV channel last August, and in 2013, apparently following complaints by the Anti-Defamation League, YouTube closed down Iran’s PressTV channel. (A Press TV YouTube channel now also appears to be available again.)
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Palestinian social media users risk even greater consequences.
The Israeli government has arrested Palestinians for videos, poems, and other posts it dislikes. A 2016 report estimated that “more than 150 arrests took place between October and February 2016 based on Facebook posts expressing opinions on the uprising. A recent video posted on social media led to the imprisonment of a 16 year old girl, her mother and cousin.
In addition, Palestinian access to social media is somewhat controlled by Israel. As a Huffington Post article reports, ”Palestinians’ digital rights and access to the Internet are compromised in very basic ways, because Israel controls the infrastructure and services of Palestinian telecommunication companies in the West Bank.”
While the situation has greatly improved in recent years – the Israeli government finally announced in 2016 that it would allow Palestinians in the West Bank to access 3G wireless networks, making this one of the last regions in the world with such access after years of Israeli restrictions – it is important to remember the enormous power Israel wields over this largely captive population.
While Israel is able to organize entire campaigns to filter and flood social media, its immense control over Palestinians impedes their access to the same media.
Given these facts, it is extremely important for people to search out information for themselves, go directly to our websites and others, subscribe to diverse email lists, and not rely on social media for information. [Please subscribe to our news posts here.]
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others are private companies. In the end, they have the power to censor information, and they periodically do so. For a few days, we felt acutely what that was like. If Facebook had joined the ban, as has happened with others, we would have been even more cut off from what is essentially today’s “public square.”
The Internet and social media give us far more access to information and tools for communication and activism than ever before, but they, too, can be controlled—and they are.
* The section on the ADL was expanded on March 9. The ADL-Reut is posted here.
* After publishing this article, we produced a video with the information and posted it on YouTube. YouTube then removed it. However, the video can still be viewed on Vimeo.
(subject to change without notice!!! Lol – dress warm – NO SNOW!!!!)
