{"id":163475,"date":"2020-06-29T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-06-29T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=163475"},"modified":"2020-06-24T09:36:55","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T08:36:55","slug":"intimidation-and-suppression-of-inconvenient-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/06\/intimidation-and-suppression-of-inconvenient-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Intimidation and Suppression of Inconvenient Knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

23 Jun 2020 – <\/em>These comments follow on the disappointing failure of Prof Kaye \u2018UN Special Rapporteur for the Promotion and Protection of Freedom of Opinion and Freedom of Expression\u2019 \u00a0to respond to two respectful letters<\/a> complaining about the arbitrary use of terms like \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201cdisinformation\u201d for information which is likely just inconvenient for corporate global interests, global agencies and the policies of governments. I also protested at \u00a0the use the of term \u201canti-vaccinationist\u201d as catch-all hate speech for anyone who criticises vaccine products, programs or the lobby.<\/p>\n

I was moved to write to Prof Kaye because he seemed to be displaying signs of intellectual fastidiousness last year when he asked Mark Zuckerberg to be more precise about how he defined \u201cvaccine misinformation\u201d. In my second letter I expanded this to include public and expert concern about 5G radiation \u2013 also coming to be classified expediently as \u201cmisinformation\u201d, as with a recent communique by the Council of Europe (which I understand to be the committee of the 27 heads of government of the European Union). I wrote, it will be recalled:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems now that at \u201cwarp-speed\u201d global citizens are having their rights to discuss their future stripped away from them by politicians using Orwellian strategies. Now, every time that global corporate interests are called into question, governments only have to wheel out terms like \u201cmisinformation\u201d or \u201cdisinformation\u201d and they are safe from public scrutiny or accountability. This bodes ill both for democracy and the safety of citizens.\u201c<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It may be said that I was genuinely surprised when he did not reply to me the first time, and that a United Nations office did not even have the courtesy to provide an acknowledgment, even when repeatedly requested. It should also be obvious that this is just the sort of sensitive issue which his office should be attending to: \u00a0even if Kaye thinks I am absolutely wrong it ought to be within his grasp to explain why. The idea that there are increasing areas where governments should never have to be called to account is both absurd and menacing.<\/p>\n

In the absence of a reply I went to Kaye\u2019s 2019 book \u2018Secret Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet\u2019 for illumination. The critical passage is found on page 91 where he writes favourably of the work of the Oxford Internet Institute (OII):<\/p>\n

\u201cOII has shown how all sorts of actors try to manipulate public opinion, from whether to vaccinate your children to whom to vote for in contested elections\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is interesting to note here how once legitimate subjects of free speech have now fall under the heading of \u201cmanipulation\u201d. In particular, he mentions OII\u2019s Samantha Bradshaw, with whom I took issue at the House of Commons\u2019 Digital, Culture, Media & Sports Committee Inquiry into FAKE News in 2017-18. I wrote to the Committee<\/a> following her evidence:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the light of\u00a0all of\u00a0this\u00a0I was dismayed to see the comments\u00a0of\u00a0Samantha Bradshaw of the Oxford Internet Institute\u00a0in the first oral hearing of the inquiry\u2026\u00a0talking about \u201cundermining research\u201d as\u00a0an\u00a0issue under consideration including prejudicial talk about \u201canti-vax campaigns\u201d as if governments have a monopoly on\u00a0truth: there may in fact be an awful lot wrong with government science which ought to be talked about. You cannot have an\u00a0a priori\u00a0view on that and believe seriously in freedom of speech.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So where does it all come from? It turns out that the Institute\u2019s founder is Dame Stephanie Shirley<\/a>, also founder of Autism Speaks UK<\/a> (renamed Autistica) which has been so obstructive in researching the causes of autism, and involved in covering up the rise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A recent Project of OII \u2018Alternative News Networks \u2013 Understanding the spread and influence of disinformation, propaganda, and divisive political news content in the UK online information ecosystem\u2019 discloses three sources of funding<\/a>: the Omidyar Network, the British Government and the Oxford Martin School. About the Omidyar Network I know little, that the British government long ago abandoned<\/a> anything but the merest lip-service to freedom of speech is evident, while the Oxford Martin School is a promoter of vaccines and vaccine compliance, with such luminaries as Andrew Pollard, among many other things<\/a> director of \u00a0Oxford Vaccine Group, and Alberto Giubilini, a philosopher who advocates for vaccine compulsion, and works on their programme<\/a>, \u2018Collective Responsibility for Infectious Diseases\u2019. Recently, when I and others took Giubilini to task over vaccine safety he sat by while a web troll graffitied<\/a> the conversation and made it unintelligible (rather like the sheep chanting \u201cFour legs good, two legs bad\u201d in Orwell\u2019s \u2018Animal Farm\u2019\u2019). Along with Bradshaw, Kaye also mentions Prof Philip Howard<\/a>, director of OII and the Oxford Martin School program \u2018Science, Misinformation and the Media\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We are, let us face it, in a dangerous circle. When OII complain to a parliamentary committee about the social media \u201cundermining research\u201d it not only sounds like a sinister appeal to authority it is also the research of an associate body which is much at issue. Why \u2013 if it is any good \u2013 cannot \u201cresearch\u201d withstand the scrutiny of social media? \u00a0\u2018Freedom of opinion and expression\u2019 David Kaye? I don\u2019t think so somehow. Secret police, maybe.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

John Stone is UK Editor for<\/em> Age of Autism.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – childrenshealthdefense.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

23 Jun 2020 – These comments follow on the disappointing failure of Prof Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur to respond to two respectful letters complaining about the arbitrary use of terms like \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201cdisinformation\u201d and \u201canti-vaccinationist\u201d as catch-all hate speech for anyone who criticises vaccine products, programs or the lobby. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":163477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2003,887,1829,1868,1102,888],"class_list":["post-163475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","tag-autism","tag-big-pharma","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-public-health","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}