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The US Condemned Stalin’s Prosecution of Journalists. Now It Uses His Playbook.

The prosecution of Julian Assange in 2023 mirrors the prosecution of journalist Bill Oatis during the Cold War.

By Charles Glass / Truthout 10 Dec 23

Two of my colleagues — Evan Gershkovich in Moscow and Julian Assange in London — languish in prisons for doing their job: keeping you informed. Russia and the U.S., knowingly or not, are following Joseph Stalin’s press playbook. A case in point: the Stalinist persecution of U.S. journalist William (Bill) Nathan Oatis in Cold War Czechoslovakia, which mirrors the contemporary prosecutions of my colleagues.

To Bill Oatis, as to Assange and Gershkovich, journalism was less a job than a vocation. He worked on school newspapers from the age of 12 and dropped out of college in 1933 to take a job at his hometown newspaper, the Marion, Indiana, Leader-Tribune. From there, he moved to the Associated Press (AP) bureau in the state capital, Indianapolis. (His managing editor, Drysdale Brannon, recalled, “He was a factual reporter and probably the most conscientious man who ever worked on the staff.”) Diverted from journalism to the Army for three years during World War II, he returned to the AP, first to its New York news desk, then to London and in 1950 to Prague, Czechoslovakia, as bureau chief…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The issue that unites Oatis, Gershkovich and Assange is not only the prosecution of journalists for doing their jobs. It is censorship of everything the state believes we have no right to know. Censorship by state and church has done more to deprive humanity of knowledge and to stunt creativity than any other method of control. Knowing that prison awaits you if you expose state crimes in the U.S. or propaganda lies in Moscow has an inhibiting effect. Many journalists will not, indeed do not, take the risk…………………………..

Historian Erin Maglaque has written how centuries of Catholic censorship in early modern Europe spawned self-censorship, lamenting “the art and literature that was never made, the religious and scientific ideas that remained unwritten — unthought, even — because of the existence of the Index [of Prohibited Books], the congregation [of the Faith], and the Inquisition tribunal.” Stalin’s secret police, and their contemporary incarnation in the Russian Federal Security Service and the U.S. national security state, stand in the Inquisitorial tradition of deciding what you and I may (and may not) read and therefore know. It is for that Gershkovich and Assange suffer the anguish of isolation in their dungeons. https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/10/the-us-condemned-stalins-prosecution-of-journalists-now-it-uses-his-playbook/

December 11, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties | Leave a comment

UN Launches Gates-Funded Global Digital ID Program as Experts Warn of ‘Totalitarian Nightmare’

“the reality is that these tools have the potential for furthering exclusion of political activists, whistleblowers, and other individuals who hold controversial opinions,”

With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations this month launched its “50-in-5” campaign to promote and accelerate the development of a global digital public infrastructure. One critic called the campaign “a totalitarian nightmare” designed to “onboard” small countries with “digital ID, digital wallets, digital lawmaking, digital voting and more.”

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. The Defender, 6 Dec 23

With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations (U.N.) this month launched an “ambitious-country-led campaign” to promote and accelerate the development of a global digital public infrastructure (DPI).

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said its “50-in-5” campaign will spur the construction of “an underlying network of components” that includes “digital payments, ID, and data exchange system,” which will serve as “a critical accelerator of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).”

“The goal of the campaign is for 50 countries to have designed, implemented, and scaled at least one DPI component in a safe, inclusive, and interoperable manner in five years,” the UNDP stated.

Critics of the campaign include Tim Hinchliffe, editor of The Sociable, who told The Defender he believes DPI “is a mechanism for surveillance and control that combines digital ID, central bank digital currencies [CBDC], vaccine passports and carbon footprint tracking data, paving the way for 15-minute smart cities, future lockdowns and systems of social credit.”

The UNDP is leading the “50-in-5” campaign along with the Center for Digital Public Infrastructure, Co-Develop, the Digital Public Goods Alliance. Supporters include GovStack, the Inter-American Development Bank and UNICEF, in addition to the Gates Foundation.

In September 2022, the Gates Foundation allocated $200 million “to expand global Digital Public Infrastructure,” as part of a broader plan to fund $1.27 billion in “health and development commitments” toward the goal of achieving the SDGs by 2030…………………..

California-based privacy attorney Greg Glaser described the “50-in-5” campaign as “a totalitarian nightmare” and a “dystopian” initiative targeting small countries “to onboard them with digital ID, digital wallets, digital lawmaking, digital voting and more.”…………………

Another California-based privacy attorney, Richard Jaffe, expressed similar sentiments, telling The Defender the “50-in-5” initiative “point[s] to the much bigger issue of the globalization, centralization and digitalization of the world’s personal data.”

“My short-term concern is bad actors, and that would be individuals and small groups, as well as state mal-actors, who will now have a big fat new target or tool to threaten the normal operation of less technologically sophisticated countries,” he said.

Jaffe said Gates’ involvement “scares the hell out of him.” Derrick Broze, editor-in-chief of The Conscious Resistance Network, told The Defender that it is “another sign that this renewed push for digital ID infrastructure will not benefit the average person.”

“Projects like these only benefit governments who want to track their populations, and corporations who want to study our daily habits and movements to sell us products,” Broze said.

Initiatives to promote DPI globally also enjoy the support of the G20. According to The Economist, at September’s G20 Summit in New Delhi — held under the slogan “One Earth, One Family, One Future” — India garnered support from the Gates Foundation, UNDP and the World Bank for a plan to develop a global repository of DPI technologies……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

According to Hinchliffe, Togo’s DPI system had seemingly benign origins, launching as a universal basic income scheme for the country’s citizens, “but shortly after that, they expanded the system to implement vaccine passports…………………….

Speaking at the G20 Summit in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “The trick is to build public digital infrastructure that is interoperable, open to all and trusted,” citing the EU’s COVID-19 digital certificate as an example.

Four of the “First-Mover” countries are African. Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, executive director of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Africa Chapter, told The Defender the “50-in-5” campaign will be used as a geo-political tool. “Africa is always a prime target because it is comparatively untapped digitally,” she said.

Along similar lines, Hinchliffe said, “The world doesn’t need ‘50-in-5.’ The people never asked for it. It came from the top down. What the people want is for their governments to do their actual jobs — to serve the people.”

A 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) report, “Advancing Digital Agency: The Power of Data Intermediaries,” said vaccine passports “serve as a form of digital identity.”

In 2020, WEF founder Klaus Schwab said, “What the Fourth Industrial Revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities.”

Digital ID intended to be ‘securely accessed’ by government, private stakeholders

According to The Economist, India is heavily promoting its digital ID technologies, first deployed domestically, for global implementation in “poor countries.” These technologies have garnered support and funding from Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation.

For instance, Lawson said Togo was issuing biometric digital ID “for all our citizens using MOSIP” — Modular Open Source Identity Platform — a system developed at India’s International Institute of Information Technology in Bangalore.

MOSIP, backed by the Gates Foundation, the World Bank and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is modeled after Aadhaar, India’s national digital ID platform — the largest in the world — which has been beset by controversy.

Launched in 2009, Aadhaar enrolled over 99% of all Indian adults, linking them with many public and private services. But according to The Economist, Aadhaar “suffers security breaches,” and though it “was supposed to be optional, it is hard to function without it.”

Glaser said Aadhaar “has been a nightmare for Indians. It is constantly hacked, including, for example the largest personal information hack in world history earlier this month, with personal information sold on the dark web.”

“Aadhaar is openly mocked in India,” Glaser said. “The only reason it is still used by the citizenry is because people have no practical choice. To participate meaningfully in Indian society, you need the digital ID,” he added.

Nevertheless, Gates has praised Aadhaar — describing it on his blog as “a valuable platform for delivering social welfare programs and other government services.” In October 2021, the Gates Foundation issued a $350,690 grant for the rollout of India’s Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, a digital health ID system linked with Aadhaar.

A Business 20 (B20) communique issued following this year’s G20 summit called on “G20 nations to develop guidelines for unique single digital identification … that can be securely accessed (based on consent) by different government and private stakeholders for identity verification and information access within three years.”

In April, Nandan Nilekani, former chair of the Unique Identification Authority of India, told an International Monetary Fund panel on DPI that digital ID, digital bank accounts and smartphones are the “tools of the new world.” He added that if this is achieved, “Then, anything can be done. Everything else is built on that.”

“The lesson of course for the rest of the world is to never let digital ID take root in your society,” Glaser said. “Once a nation’s consumer class adopts digital ID with global partners, as in India, it is basically checkmate for that nation.”………………………………………………………………..

“inclusivity” is one of the key narratives employed to promote DPI. The “50-in-5” campaign states, “Countries building safe and inclusive DPI … can foster strong economies and equitable societies” and that DPI “promotes innovation, bolsters local entrepreneurship, and ensures access to services and opportunities for underserved groups, including women and youth.”

Experts who spoke with The Defender warned DPI has the potential to be exclusionary.

“While the United Nations, the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation promote DPI as necessary for an ‘equitable’ world, the reality is that these tools have the potential for furthering exclusion of political activists, whistleblowers, and other individuals who hold controversial opinions,” Broze said.

Similarly, CHD Africa’s Mohamed claimed, “People, groups and organizations that pose a threat to the establishment will be targeted for digital surveillance and socio-economic isolation” via DPI. “This … is an easier way to control critical thinkers.”

Hinchliffe said DPI will “accelerate technocratic control through digital ID, CBDC and massive data sharing, paving the way for an interoperable system of social credit.”

Similarly, Glaser said, “With DPI, the U.N.’s plan is to issue everyone a social credit score in line with U.N. SDGs (Agenda 2030) … Your digital ID will become the new you. And from the perspective of governments and corporations, your digital ID will be more real than your flesh … required in various measures to travel, work, buy/sell, and vote.”

“When they say inclusive, they really mean exclusive, because the system is set up to exclude people who don’t go along with unelected globalist policies,” Hinchliffe said. “What they really want is for everybody to be under their digital control.”

Notably, a June 2023 WEF report titled “Reimagining Digital ID” concedes that “Digital ID may weaken democracy and civil society” and that the “greatest risks arising from digital ID are exclusion, marginalization and oppression.”

Making ID — digital or otherwise — mandatory may exacerbate “fundamental social, political and economic challenges as conditional access of any kind always creates the possibility of discrimination and exclusion,” the report adds.

Experts who spoke with The Defender said people must be given the choice to opt out.

“If the U.N. and its member states push the digital ID agenda, they must ensure that their respective populations have a simple way to opt out without being punished or denied services,” Bronze said. “Otherwise, the digital ID creep will eventually become mandatory to exist in society and we will see the end of privacy, and, in the long-term, liberty,” Broze said.

Jaffe said that while he does not oppose digital payment systems, he “would be vehemently opposed to the elimination of non-digital payment, like fiat paper currency,” calling this an issue of “freedom and privacy.”

Similarly, Hinchliffe said, “There should be non-digital alternatives available at all times and this should be a right of every citizen. Systems can fail. Databases can be breached. Governments can become tyrannical. Corporations can become greedy.”

The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists’

Many of the initiatives that are backing “50-in-5” are themselves interlinked — in addition to their connections to entities such as the Gates Foundation.

For instance, the Omidyar Network, one of the supporters of “50-in-5,” has provided funding to MOSIP — as has the Gates Foundation………………………………………………………………….

Glaser said that Gates attained wealth by “monopolizing his operating system into every home and business worldwide” and “is doing the same now at the U.N. level with vaccines and DPI applications.”

“DPI platforms essentially outsource sovereignty to international governing bodies that do the bidding of financial entities like Vanguard, BlackRock and State Street,” he said.

“Companies with that much information on citizens hold enormous power to sabotage infrastructure [with] very few ethics to stop them,” Mohamed said.

“The endgame is sovereignty by transhumanists,” Glaser added. “The reason digital ID is an existential threat to society is because it separates people from their local governments, who have always worked cooperatively to prevent tyranny.”

“DPI is being sold to authorities on the grounds that it will include them in the worldwide economy, when in reality it will commodify their people and remove the ability of local authorities to ever govern meaningfully again,” he said.

Hinchliffe also connected DPI to policies that purport to combat climate change………………………………………..

“If we can legislate and litigate to retain the right to traditional identification, then this categorically protects all of our rights,” Glaser added. “As long as the consumer classes of large nations like the United States resist digital ID, there is hope.”

“These schemes do little to nothing for the prosperity of the majority of Africans, but rather, they further the interests of a small economic and political class,” Mohamed said. “With growing economic disparity and anger, the attempt to waste more African resources on digital ID may lead to widespread revolt.”

“Generally, once Africans know what Bill Gates is about, they refuse to get involved in or support his activities,” she added.  https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/gates-funded-global-digital-id-program-totalitarianism/

December 7, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties | Leave a comment