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The UN is escalating its war against ‘conspiracy theories’ and ‘misinformation’ by creating an ‘internet of trust.’

A powerful United Nations agency has unveiled a plan to regulate social media and online communication while clamping down on what it describes as “false information” and “conspiracy theories,” sparking alarm among free-speech advocates and top U.S. lawmakers.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) outlined a series of “concrete measures which must be implemented by all stakeholders: governments, regulatory authorities, civil society, and the platforms themselves.” in a 59-page report released this month.

The approach includes the imposition of global policies, through institutions such as governments and businesses, that seek to stop the spread of various forms of speech while promoting objectives such as “cultural diversity” and “gender equality.”

In particular, the U.N. agency aims to create an “Internet of Trust” through a focus on what it calls “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech,” and “conspiracy theories.”

Examples of expression flagged to be stopped or restricted include concerns about elections, public health measures, and advocacy that could constitute “incitement to discrimination.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election," in Washington on Nov. 17, 2020. (Bill Clark-Pool/Getty Images) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies remotely during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on “Censorship, Suppression, and the 2020 Election,” in Washington on Nov. 17, 2020. (Bill Clark-Pool/Getty Images)

Critics have warned that allegations of “disinformation” and “conspiracy theories” have increasingly been used by powerful forces in government and Big Tech to silence true information and even core political speech.

Just this month, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee released a report blasting the “pseudoscience of disinformation.”

Among other concerns, the committee found that this “pseudoscience” has been “weaponized” by what lawmakers refer to as the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” the goal of which is to silence constitutionally protected political speech, mostly by conservatives.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Canada Launches UN Declaration Targeting Online ‘Disinformation’

September 28, 2023

Canada Launches UN Declaration Targeting Online ‘Disinformation’

Canada has launched a U.N. declaration that calls for action to protect what it calls “information integrity” and to tackle “disinformation.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly has launched a United Nations declaration that calls for action to protect what it calls “information integrity” and to tackle “disinformation.”

Ms. Joly launched the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online jointly with Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Hanke Bruins Slot during the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20.

“Information integrity is essential to help ensure the strength of democratic processes and to protect fundamental rights,” says a joint statement by Canada and the Netherlands.

“The erosion of information integrity, including the propagation of disinformation, weakens the strength of democratic engagement.”

In a speech on Sept. 20, Ms. Joly said the declaration is a “concrete step toward establishing global norms on disinformation, misinformation, and information integrity,” the National Post reported.

Speaking to the U.N. on the same day, Ms. Bruins Slot said the emerging online environment makes it difficult to determine what is and what is not truthful.

“Every day, the world is flooded with disinformation and misinformation. Rapid advances in technology—particularly generative AI—make it more and more difficult to tell fact from fiction,” she said.

Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Japan, and South Korea are among the 30 countries that have signed the declaration.

The declaration promotes concepts such as respect for “the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information.”

It says signatories need to “take active steps to address misinformation and disinformation targeted at women, LGBTIQ+ persons, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more

June 23, 2023

“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more

Late last month the office of the United Nation’s Secretary General published a policy document on aims for the future of the internet.A follow-up to the 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, the new report’s title says it all really, “A Global Digital Compact”. That’s the goal, international legislation that would seek to control and enforce the use of digital technology.

The proposed clauses promote everything you’d expect them to promote.

Digital identities linked with financial access:

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes

Environmental or climate change-based social credit systems:

Sensors and monitors connected to the Internet of things, cloud-based data platforms, blockchain-enabled tracking systems and digital product passports unlock new capabilities for the measurement and tracking of environmental and social impacts across value chains.”

Public-Private Partnership:

Partnerships between States, private sector and civil society leverage the capacity of digital tools to provide solutions for development across the Sustainable Development Goals. Examples include the Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance, the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability and public-private partnerships for disaster response.”

Countering online “harm”:

Disinformation, hate speech and malicious and criminal activity in cyberspace raise the risks and costs for everyone online […] we must strengthen accountability for harmful and malicious acts online.

Those are the obvious ones, there’s also more sneaky, insidious language regarding “equity” and “access”. The report is concerned there are many people in the world (mostly the developing world) who don’t have regular access to the Internet.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Russia Tells UN That Ukraine Crisis Is A “War With The West For Survival”

February 24, 2023

Russia Tells UN That Ukraine Crisis Is A “War With The West For Survival”

In two days of United Nations special sessions this week related to Ukraine as well as the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, Russia mounted a robust defense, arguing that it sees its ongoing military action in Ukraine is a matter of “survival”.

Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya voiced the stark perspective on Wednesday, casting the war as one against the collective West. “As for our country, we see all of this as a war with the West for survival, for the future of our country, for our children, for our identity,” he said.

He stated that “Ukraine is nothing but a bargaining chip in this plot” – part of a broader plan which was long in implementation, going back to 2014.

*Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Vasily Nebenzya, via AP*

The Russian diplomat’s words followed a surprise admission by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who in a Feb.14 press conference in Brussels described that “the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014.”

The day prior to Nebenzya’s remarks, the UN Security Council had convened at the urging of permanent member Russia to consider fresh allegations surrounding the Nord Stream sabotage. Nebenzia during that session called for establishing an independent investigation.

He specifically invoked Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report which said the pipelines were bombed as part of an elaborate covert CIA operation involving the US Navy and help from the Norwegians:

“This journalist is telling the truth,” Nebenzia said at the meeting. “This is more than just a smoking gun that detectives love in Hollywood blockbusters. It’s a basic principle of justice; everything is in your hands, and we can resolve this today.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

2023: Fourth Turning Meets Mass Formation Psychosis

January 24, 2023

2023: FOURTH TURNING MEETS MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS

“Four things need to exist or need to be in place if you want a large-scale mass phenomenon to emerge. The first thing is that there needs to be a lot of socially isolated people, people who experience a lack of social bonds. The second one is that there needs to be a lot of people who experience a lack of sense-making in life. And the third and the fourth conditions are that there needs to be a lot of free-floating anxiety and a lot of free-floating psychological discontent. So: meaning, anxiety, and discontent that is not connected to a specific representation.

So, it needs to be in the mind without the people being able to connect it to something. If you have these four things—lack of social bonds, lack of sense-making, free-floating anxiety, and free-floating psychological discontent—then society is highly at risk for the emergence of mass phenomenon.” – Mattias Desmet – The Psychology of Totalitarianism

“Try to unlearn the obsessive fear of death (and the anxious quest for death avoidance) that pervades linear thinking in nearly every modern society. The ancients knew that, without periodic decay and death, nature cannot complete its full round of biological and social change. Without plant death, weeds would strangle the forest. Without human death, memories would never die, and unbroken habits and customs would strangle civilization. Social institutions require no less. Just as floods replenish soil and fires rejuvenate forests, a Fourth Turning clears out society’s exhausted elements and creates an opportunity.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning

I recently finished reading Mattias Desmet’s fascinating and illuminating book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, where he examines the mass formation psychosis which swept over the world during the time frame of early 2020 until present day…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Global outrage as oil executive named head of UN climate talks

January 17, 2023

There is universal condemnation today on the breaking news that the United Arab Emirates has appointed a veteran oil industry insider to preside over the upcoming UN climate talks that will happen later this year in Dubai.

The news this morning that Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil, will be the new chair of the climate talks is a new low for the UN climate process.

The COP’s credibility was already battered by recent events in Egypt, with accusations of greenwashing, undue corporate influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, and attacks and intimidation of climate activists by the host nation.

The announcement ironically came the day after the journal Nature published an editorial saying that: “UN climate conferences are too beholden to oil and gas interests. Like-minded nations must come together to keep climate hopes alive.”

But the appointment of Al-Jaber, who is described as a “veteran technocrat” seems to be the final straw for many climate activists and experts.

The polluting oil-pumping fox has literally taken over the hen house. As Aljazeera points out this morning: Al-Jaber’s firm “pumps some 4 million barrels of crude a day and hopes to expand to 5 million daily, generating more of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that the UN annual climate negotiations aim to limit.”

Tasneem Essop, the executive director of Climate Action Network International, told the Guardian that if Al-Jaber, “does not step down as CEO, it will be tantamount to a full-scale capture of the UN climate talks by a petrostate national oil company and its associated fossil fuel lobbyists.”

She added: “As civil society we [will] demand that Al Jaber does the right thing and either stand aside or step down.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Ozone Layer Recovers, Limiting Global Warming: UN Report

January 10, 2023

Ozone Layer Recovers, Limiting Global Warming: UN Report

A UN-backed scientific panel tasked with assessing the effects of the 1989 Montreal Protocol – an international agreement to phase out Ozone Depleting Substances – has found that the ozone layer continues to strengthen, and as a result, the earth will avoid 0.3 – 0.5°C of global warming by 2100.

Under the 1989 agreement, 99% of ozone-killing chemicals, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that once kept fridges cool, were banned due to a thinning of the ozone – also known as an ozone hole – above Antarctica.

In around four decades, the thinning of the Antarctic hole will be completely reversed, according to the report. The much smaller hole above the Arctic is expected to repair much sooner, DW reports.

By 2066, the Antarctic ozone hole is expected to reduce to its size in 1980, while the Arctic hole will do the same around 2045. Thinning around other areas of the globe should recover around 2040.

Beyond CFCs, ozone-eating chemicals including halons, methyl chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and methyl bromide were once abundant in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosols, solvents and pesticides.

These compounds attack ozone by releasing chlorine and bromine atoms that degrade ozone molecules in the stratosphere.

Since the substances were banned, declining concentrations of chlorine and bromine have helped to limit human exposure to harmful UV rays from the sun that can cause skin cancer, cataracts and suppress the immune system. -DW

“Thanks to a global agreement, humanity has averted a major health catastrophe due to ultraviolet radiation pouring through a massive hole in the ozone layer,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last September 16, World Ozone Day.

Impacts on climate change?

Meanwhile, in a fringe benefit that won’t likely silence environmentalists, the panel affirmed the treaty’s positive impact on the climate.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The UN Reveals Plan To BAN All Fossil Fuels

November 9, 2022

The UN Reveals Plan To BAN All Fossil Fuels

I want to go over and address this climate change summit. The cop37 or whatever it’s called in Egypt has allegedly produced some extremely inflammatory rhetoric. Absolutely insane.

The scary reality is that if this rhetoric continues, it could kill hundreds of millions of people. I’m not being melodramatic, this is the cold hard truth.

I want to show you how these people are void of any cost-benefit analysis.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this is intentional, or they intentionally avoid a cost-benefit analysis, or they’re just too stupid. They’re just too emotional.

There’s a complete absence of any type of critical thinking whatsoever.

So a sinking Pacific Island nation issues a historic call for a treaty to phase out fossil fuels. And they did this at this COP27 convention, which we’ll get into later in the above video, where this UN chief comes out and basically calls for the end of all fossil fuels.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Not just gas, oil, diesel, and natural gas. And it’s not just about energy destruction. But also the death and destruction that comes with it. You’re talking about something that would likely eradicate the human race.

Without fertilizer, there would be no food. Buying necessities would be impossible.

How do you build a house that requires fossil fuels?

A tiny population, no greater than a couple of million people maximum, would know how to go back to living in caves and the Stone Age. They’d have to scrape by and find food for themselves where they could. These people would survive. Everyone else. You’re pretty much gone. And that’s not exaggerating.

It is clear that fossil fuels are not only essential to the economy, but to the continuation of civilization itself. These are just facts. Bottom line.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

November 2, 2022

World close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown, warn major studies

Key UN reports published in last two days warn urgent and collective action needed – as oil firms report astronomical profits

The climate crisis has reached a “really bleak moment”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has said, after a slew of major reports laid bare how close the planet is to catastrophe.

Collective action is needed by the world’s nations more now than at any point since the second world war to avoid climate tipping points, Prof Johan Rockström said, but geopolitical tensions are at a high.

He said the world was coming “very, very close to irreversible changes … time is really running out very, very fast”.

Emissions must fall by about half by 2030 to meet the internationally agreed target of 1.5C of heating but are still rising, the reports showed – at a time when oil giants are making astronomical amounts of money.

On Thursday, Shell and TotalEnergies both doubled their quarterly profits to about $10bn. Oil and gas giants have enjoyed soaring profits as post-Covid demand jumps and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The sector is expected to amass $4tn in 2022, strengthening calls for heavy windfall taxes to address the cost of living crisis and fund the clean energy transition.

All three of the key UN agencies have produced damning reports in the last two days. The UN environment agency’s report found there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” and that “woefully inadequate” progress on cutting carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries

October 29, 2022

UN Warns of ‘Total Societal Collapse’Due to Breaching of Planetary Boundaries

A landmark report by the United Nations concludes that ‘global collapse’ is becoming more likely. But was it watered-down before being published?

When the United Nations published its 2022 ‘Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction’ (GAR2022) in May, the world’s attention was on its grim verdict that the world was experiencing an accelerating trend of natural disasters and economic crises. But not a single media outlet picked up the biggest issue: the increasing probability of civilisational collapse.

Buried in the report, which was endorsed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, is the finding that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.

This stark conclusion appears to be the first time that the UN has issued a flagship global report finding that existing global policies are accelerating toward the collapse of human civilisation. Yet somehow this urgent warning has remained unreported until now.

The report does not suggest that this outcome is inevitable or specify how close to this possibility we are. But it does confirm that, without radical change, that’s where the world is heading.

Planetary Boundaries

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the Sendai Framework are a set of social, economic, legal, political and institutional measures to reduce “disaster risk and losses” – both involve targets to 2030 which the world is in danger of failing to meet.

That failure, however, is directly linked to the rate at which human activities are interfering with natural systems, in particular, ‘planetary boundaries’.

The planetary boundaries framework was developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2009 to provide what it calls a “science-based analysis of the risk that human perturbations will destabilise the Earth system at the planetary scale”…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’

October 29, 2022

Climate crisis: UN finds ‘no credible pathway to 1.5C in place’

Failure to cut carbon emissions means ‘rapid transformation of societies’ is only option to limit impacts, report says

A firefighter sets fire to land in an attempt to prevent wildfires from spreading in Gironde, south-west France. A rise in global temperature of 1C to date has already contributed to climate disasters. Photograph: Thibaud Moritz/AFP/Getty Images

There is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place”, the UN’s environment agency has said, and the failure to reduce carbon emissions means the only way to limit the worst impacts of the climate crisis is a “rapid transformation of societies”.

The UN environment report analysed the gap between the CO₂ cuts pledged by countries and the cuts needed to limit any rise in global temperature to 1.5C, the internationally agreed target. Progress has been “woefully inadequate” it concluded.

Current pledges for action by 2030, if delivered in full, would mean a rise in global heating of about 2.5C and catastrophic extreme weather around the world. A rise of 1C to date has caused climate disasters in locations from Pakistan to Puerto Rico.

If the long-term pledges by countries to hit net zero emissions by 2050 were delivered, global temperature would rise by 1.8C. But the glacial pace of action means meeting even this temperature limit was not credible, the UN report said.

Countries agreed at the Cop26 climate summit a year ago to increase their pledges. But with Cop27 looming, only a couple of dozen have done so and the new pledges would shave just 1% off emissions in 2030. Global emissions must fall by almost 50% by that date to keep the 1.5C target alive.

Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), said: “This report tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been telling us all year through deadly floods, storms and raging fires: we have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Climate change and the threat to civilization

October 22, 2022

Climate change and the threat to civilization

In a speech about climate change from April 4th of this year, UN General Secretary António Guterres lambasted “the empty pledges that put us on track to an unlivable world” and warned that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster” (1). Although stark, Guterres’ statements were not novel. Guterres has made similar remarks on previous occasions, as have other public figures, including Sir David Attenborough, who warned in 2018 that inaction on climate change could lead to “the collapse of our civilizations” (2). In their article, “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021”—which now has more than 14,700 signatories from 158 countries—William J. Ripple and colleagues state that climate change could “cause significant disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies, potentially making large areas of Earth uninhabitable” (3).

The consequences of climate change are likely to be dire—and in some scenarios, catastrophic. Scholars need to start discussing the mechanisms whereby climate change could cause the actual collapse of civilizations. Image credit: Flickr/Spencer.

Because civilization cannot exist in unlivable or uninhabitable places, all of the above warnings can be understood as asserting the potential for anthropogenic climate change to cause civilization collapse (or “climate collapse”) to a greater or lesser extent. Yet despite discussing many adverse impacts, climate science literature, as synthesized for instance by assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has little at all to say about whether or under which conditions climate change might threaten civilization. Although a body of scientific research exists on historical and archeological cases of collapse (4), discussions of mechanisms whereby climate change might cause the collapse of current civilizations has mostly been the province of journalists, philosophers, novelists, and filmmakers…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The $31 Trillion Dollar Question – Can The Fed Afford to Pivot?

October 8, 2022

The $31 Trillion Dollar Question – Can The Fed Afford to Pivot?

In my other role as a secret apologist for Russia and Vladimir Putin, I was contacted yesterday by Sputnik News to comment on the official US debt number surpassing $31 trillion. I’m always grateful for the opportunity to talk about these issues.

I am, after all, a fiscal hawk extraordinaire,.

At the same time, I’m completely hip to why Sputnik (and RT) wanted to discuss this issue. They are running their own framing campaign, propaganda if you will. I’m no one’s useful idiot when it comes to these matters.

They may have been looking for a dissident American voice to berate the US for its reckless spending, which fits the Russian media narrative that the US cannot sustain its current pressure campaign against Russia.

This is meant to counter the West’s narrative that Russia can’t sustain its military operations in Ukraine.

Hey, everyone’s got a truth to tell. I get it, it’s a war out there. All I can do is make the best use of the opportunities in front of me and tell my version of those truths. Because talking about things truthfully may actually get us one step back on the path towards peace rather than global war. That said, if I see no upside to the opportunity, the best thing to do is turn it down politely and wait for the next one.

At the same time we all have to realize that Russian media outlets have a hard time booking guests at this point due to the massive political pressure. So, as always, I see the opportunity as a way to talk to everyone to further understanding these things, not just feed one side’s attempt to shift the Overton Window.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Alarm Bells of Civilizational Collapse Are Ringing — But Are We Listening?

October 4, 2022

The Alarm Bells of Civilizational Collapse Are Ringing — But Are We Listening?

If Our Civilization Is Going to Survive, It’s Going to Have to Change Like This — Fast

Right about now, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed. With all the chaos out there. This is the Age of Too Much Chaos. Every day brings a new catastrophe, it seems, and with it, an ever-mounting sense of dread, urgency, anger, and helplessness — the weird, upsetting feelings of now. End Times Vibes.

How to make sense of all this? I bet you’re struggling, and that’s OK, because me and a friend are here to help.

My friend? He just gave the most important speech of the 21st century, containing the most crucial idea of the 21st century — only nobody was listening.

I know, I know. You doubt me. Don’t worry, by the end of this, I guarantee — you won’t. Instead, your mind will be blown.

Here’s what he has to say.

We have a duty to act. And yet we are gridlocked in colossal global dysfunction.

The international community is not ready or willing to tackle the big dramatic challenges of our age. These crises threaten the very future of humanity and the fate of our planet.

Got that? Let’s keep going.

Let’s have no illusions. We are in rough seas. A winter of global discontent is on the horizon. A cost-of-living crisis is raging. Trust is crumbling. Inequalities are exploding. Our planet is burning. People are hurting — with the most vulnerable suffering the most.

Hey, he sounds like a lot like…you, Umair, I bet you’re thinking. So who is my friend? Well, he’s not really my friend. He’s the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. Those are his opening remarks to the General Assembly, this year. Lol, and you think you have bad mornings.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

An Oil Supply Shock May Be Imminent

September 28, 2022

An Oil Supply Shock May Be Imminent

Oil demand has remained resilient in the face of a multitude of challenges.
OPEC+ has fallen behind more than 3.5 million bpd on its output goals.
The DoE has no immediate plans to start refilling the SPR.
The risk of a supply shock grows as China’s economy re-opens while Russian oil is being forced off the market.

When the chief executive of Aramco said earlier this week that years of underinvestment had damaged the balance between supply and demand in the oil market, it should have been a wake-up call to those in decision-making positions. Instead, the secretary-general of the UN bashed the oil industry once again for “feasting” on record-high profits and urged governments to make them pay for this.

Meanwhile, OPEC’s production shortfall last month reached 3.58 million bpd—a figure equal to some 3.5 percent of global demand—and the United States continued to sell oil from its strategic petroleum reserve.

These seemingly unrelated news reports do have something very important in common. Both clearly suggest a supply shortfall on a global level is imminent. Throw in the news that Russia’s oil exports could fall by some 2.4 million bpd after the EU embargo enters into effect in December, and an oil shortage becomes more or less unavoidable.

Oil demand has remained resilient in the face of a multitude of challenges, and even prices of over $100 per barrel failed to curb it in any significant way earlier this year. Now, prices are somewhat tempered, but the embargo is still about two months away. Once this kicks in, prices are bound to jump because alternative supply is limited. And the U.S. will need to start refilling its SPR at some point because it is getting depleted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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