The World Economic Forum has surveyed the world’s experts and issued its 2024 “Global Risks Report.” The international elite of experts have declared that the number one threat to humanity is not terrorism or pandemic or even climate change (which is second), but “misinformation and disinformation.” Of course, that means that the only hope for humanity is censorship and speech controls. The report shows just how engrained this anti-free speech movement has become among the world elite from media to business to politics.
The absurd finding is consistent with the warning of other international figures and groups. We previously discussed how WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has supported censorship to combat what he calls the “infodemic.”
So “1,490 experts across academia, business, government, the international community and civil society” looked at all of the world’s military, economic, and environmental threats and concluded that the greatest threat to humanity is too much free speech. A “global risk” is defined as “the possibility of the occurrence of an event or condition which, if it occurs, would negatively impact a significant proportion of global GDP, population or natural resources.”
We have seen how during the Covid crisis “experts” supported censorship and blacklisting when their views were challenged by colleagues and the public. Earlier positions treated as gospel in the press have been discredited. For example, a recent scientific review by 12 researchers from leading universities found little support for the claims that masks reduced Covid exposures.
The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged. In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children.
The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”
For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her with a “pants on fire rating.”
The extensive censorship and blacklisting that has occurred over the last four years protected such experts from scrutiny and criticism. Many of those same experts are now listing what they deem disinformation to be the world’s greatest threat. The obvious solution to this existential threat is, of course, to allow “experts” to control or regulate what people read or hear to eliminate harmful disinformation. The question is whether the public can be, again, spooked into surrendering this core human right by world elite.
the WEF is laying the foundation for censorship by the wealthy elite and globalists. This is an outrageous power-grab by the Left and a clear violation of the freedom of speech provision…the First Amendment…of our Constitutiona!
“The absurd finding is consistent with the warning of other international figures and groups. We previously discussed how WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has supported censorship to combat what he calls the “infodemic.”
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At least they got off the “the world is going to fry/freeze/flood/deforest” scam they used to push. Where the Hell is Al Gore with the “World ends in ten years” mantra he coined in 2006. That’s ‘o6.
The WEF engages in the mother of all projections.
Denying that God exists is the ultimate hate speech and the ultimate disinformation.
It can cause people to lose faith in God.
It should be a capital offense to deny God!
If they meant anything other than disagreeing with their narrative, and subsequently squashing that opposition like Hitler, I might not be in fits of laughter right now. 😂 These aristocrats can go screw themselves, they are a joke, and it never stops being funny. We don’t want it, we don’t think they are special, enlightened, wise, or educated (no matter how much money they spent, or which strings they pulled), and they can basically go to h***. That the WEF is proclaiming this for the entire planet is telling in such an important election year; they can bite me. Go **** yourselves, we don’t need you, never did, and without us or your ‘immigrant’ servants/slaves you’d all last about a week in the wild. The level of privilege at work here is something to see, that’s for sure. Don’t kid yourselves.
What these idiots don’t seem to understand is that if the rest of us were left to our own resources, we’d be just fine, they would be the ones stumbling in the dark, trying to find their shoes or something to eat that doesn’t come in a box or an environmentally friendly pouch. Plllbbbt. 🤪 The privileged idiots that did CHAZ proved that with their ‘agriculture’ which was followed by going back to mom and dad’s to sleep for the night for some chocolate milk. This is f****** ridiculous, absurd, preposterous, mad, and the trash WILL be taken out. That is guaranteed. Clutch those pearls tight, modern dems and whatever preposterously fragile brethren you have, because we have all had just about enough of you, and we are about to prove it with our votes.
“World Economic Forum Declares “Disinformation” to be the World’s Greatest Threat”
– Professor Turley
_____________________
U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights Declare the World Economic Forum to be Freedom, Free Enterprise, and Free Markets’ Greatest Threat.
WORLD DICTATORSHIP
World Economic Forum Declares the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Freedom, Free Enterprise, and Free Markets to be the World’s Greatest Threat.
World Economic Forum Declares the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” the Dominion of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and the Supremacy of the World Economic Forum.
Mohammed Bin Mahfoodh Bin Saad Al Ardhi, Mikhail Iakobachvili, Abdulla Al Khalifa, Bruktawit Tigabu Tadesse, Chandrajit Banerjee, Mohammad Ali Al Shorafa Al Hammadi, Abdulaziz Al-Jarbou, Lin Jun, Chansak Fuangfu, Waleed Al Mokarrab Al Muhairi, Shaima Hamidaddin, Greta Thunberg, Barack Obama, Suzy “Q” Rice, Valerie Jarrett et al. wholeheartedly agree to the preeminence of the World Economic Forum.
Beware experts, especially self appointed ones. Common sense is still a great way to navigate through the world. Experts are like the wizard of oz. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. If you like to listen to experts then do so but never trust them for the decision but make your own decisions. Get opposing experts and get best, middle and worst case scenarios and then make you decisions. Also never forget you can change you mind or decision when the outcome increasingly is obviously worse than planned. Starve failure but reinforce success. Old cliches but they are cliches because they work.
Study, common sense, detachment , experience, careful observation and skepticism. Use them all most of the time you’ll be right.
What we need is a great reset on trust. Trust should be more difficult to earn the further removed entities are from our lives, our liberty and our property.
@Olly
Don’t disagree, but in the 21st century, to most, particularly the young, ‘trust’, very much wrongly, is the number in the followers column. We are going to have to break through the tech hypnosis before we even think about anything else registering. Direct your ire to modern Silicon Valley and negligent parents; and if one checks their Facebook status for non-business related reasons more than a couple of times in a day; if you are over 45 and posting selfies ad nauseam to make yourself feel better – you can blame yourself, too. Then we can talk about the rest. I hear ya, OLLY, but you seem to presume this is a conversation with rational grown ups, broadly; it isn’t, not anymore.
I hear ya, OLLY, but you seem to presume this is a conversation with rational grown ups, broadly; it isn’t, not anymore.
James, that would be an incorrect assumption about me. Years ago, back when JT posted his updates identifying his top 5 contributors, I would look forward to my name being on that list. I spent a lot of time debating the liberals on this blog. Today, I would be embarrassed to be in the top 50. There is no rational reason to ever reply to the Leftists here. They don’t need to be corrected. The blog is not improved because someone replied to them with some “witty” comment. It’s not improved because someone was inspired to write 10 paragraphs of their own interpretation of the law. 99% of the time, the rational approach to this blog is to not comment at all. JT typically has his facts correct. His opinion about those facts is normally reasonable and rational. There is very little to be learned from the comment section today, because as you say, rational grownups are broadly uninterested.
Jonathan: When the world economic elites–more than 600 CEOs and 50 heads of state speak in one voice about the threat of “misinformation and disinformation” people listen and you have lost the narrative.
But you start your column with your own “misinformation”. You falsely state the WEF 2024 Report declares that AI generated “misinformation and disinformation” is the number one threat. The Report clearly states that “Extreme Weather” is No. 1 at 66% followed by “Misinformation and Disinformation at 53%. So why start out by misinforming your readers?
So why is the WEF concerned about the treat of “misinformation and disinformation”? Because countries around the world are facing important election this year and next. As the WEF Report points out: “an AI generated campaign video could inflame voters and fuel protests, or in more extreme scenarios, lead to violence…If the legitimacy of elections is questioned, civil confrontation is possible–and could even expand to internal conflicts and terrorism, and state collapse in more extreme cases”. We saw these concerns play out in our own 2020 elections when DJT spread misinformation and disinformation that led to the attack on the Capitol.
But you seem to think that concerns about AI generated misinformation and disinformation is an attack on “free speech”. The WEF Report doesn’t call for censorship to counter misinformation or disinformation. Nor is this happening here in the US. DJT keeps spreading misinformation and disinformation every day on Truth Social and in public appearances. No one has censored him. In fact, Judge Engoron allowed DJT to speak in his closing arguments yesterday in the NY civil fraud case where DJT misstated the facts and attacked Letitia James and the Judge. Engoron allowed DJT to go on and on with misinformation despite a clear rule that closing arguments are restricted to the facts. Further evidence that disproves your claim there is an attempt to “control or regulate what people read or hear to eliminate harmful disinformation”.
The best disinfectant for misinformation and disinformation is the facts and the truth. Unfortunately, we won’t find much of this in your columns!
@Dennis
Every single word of your toxic boosheet is false, and provably so; easily provably so. That must be some dang good Kool-Aid. Delicious. Modern dems are impossible to take seriously; they sound like children whistling in the dark, worse yet, children raising children, all of them/you. If you didn’t have ‘righteous’ indignation/lying to yourself, you’d pretty much be an inert blob, waiting around for someone to give you a spine again. If you aren’t congenitally stupid, see how the wind is blowing, and who gave the first push. You are a tool, Dennis. You poison and you pollute, and contribute nothing of value. Either you are very privileged and live in a privileged bubble, or you are paid to annoy us. Neither of those are going to help. You are impossible to take seriously for those of us that are actually grown ass adults, and we are going to hand you that ass, handily, in the coming electoral months. Grow the eff up, already.
James: Back at ya, Jimmy! When you have nothing to offer in way of rebuttal you resort to personal invective–like so many others on this blog. Socrates said it best: “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser”. And you are definitely a loser! And, yes, I am paid to annoy you. So if you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen get out!
So then disprove.
“The Report clearly states that . . .”
That is false.
The rest of your comment is bootlicking for tyranny.
Does anyone recall that the legitimacy of Trump’s election was questioned by Democrats, the media and the “intelligentsia” immediately after the election and throughout his term as president?
World disinformation is one of the biggest threats. However, the threat comes from organized groups such as the WEF because they have the money and the ability to change opinions based on AI (artificial intelligence) and prevail.
This danger is not only from economic groups but also from the enemies of the US, terrorists, and many other parties with sufficient interest. As I pointed out yesterday, terrorists (likely Iran-sponsored) are mapping out the location of Jewish homes, businesses, occupations, etc. That was done in Boston and elsewhere, and such mapping was started at Dartmouth University.
We should have learned from the Nazis. IBM’s computer systems were involved in the extermination of 6 million Jews before, during and after the war. Computer systems were in the death camps. Watson, CEO of IBM, had a deal, and in addition to his compensation from IBM, he was paid 1% of the profits on the punch cards used to murder the six million efficiently. Some have said that the deaths of Jews would have radically decreased had the punch cards not been made available. They controlled the flow of Jews from their homes to the railroad and ultimately to their deaths. The Nazis used the data from government agencies, NGOs, and other places, quickly entering the data onto computers of conquered land all the way into the death camps.
At this moment, I fear Democrats will use AI to swamp the system in 2024and that might lead to their victory. Republicans are always behind, first tending to their jackets and ties, unwilling to get their hands dirty. If the Democrats win, we will quickly enter into despotic oligarchal rule greatly influenced by information technology. We might see Jews become second-class citizens.
If one questions what I am saying, look at anti-Semitism in this country and across the world as people come out supporting Hamas terrorists who kill and rape women, children and even their own. Many minds can quickly be polluted by AI, even those at the highest risk. What would happen if a Hamas-supporting LGBT set one foot in Gaza? They would be thrown to their deaths from a rooftop.
JT: “…the number one threat to humanity is not terrorism or pandemic or even climate change (which is second), but “misinformation and disinformation.” Of course, that means that the only hope for humanity is censorship and speech controls.”
No, JT. A claim beginning with “the only hope” shows a lack of imagination.
You’ve been a supporter of Defamation Law — an existing example of how an advanced legal system can discourage an extreme of speech where a disinformation campaign is waged that injures reputation. Would you call the sobering impact of being successfully sued for Defamation “censorship”?….”speech controls”? Would you consider interviewing Nicholas Sandmann about his legal victory?….JT, people are wondering if you sided with CNN and WaPo, defending their “freedom” to paint Nick as an Indian-hater.
JT, are you blind to Civil Torts as the “go to” alternative to govt. censorship? You seem to be foreclosing a whole range of options to discourage the intentional use of public falsehoods that would be based on lawsuits (citizen vs. citizen).
Public Frauds lawsuits deserve serious consideration — unless you are comfortable with a polemically-fragmented infospace (virulently warring echo-chambers), and don’t care that this type of reality-fracture sets the stage for civil war. Courts — with juries as finders-of-fact — are the place where lies go to die. And civil court is the place where dishonest govt. officials can be held accountable by the average citizen.
Your position leaves no breathing room for the truth — and truth seekers — to prevail over those who shamelessly dupe society for advantage. The dupers hold first-strike advantage — in lead time, dramatic value, clarity of heroes and villains, simplicity — racing around the globe 7 times while the truth is tying its sneakers. I don’t generally agree with the Davos globalists, but this time, they’ve identified a huge threat.
PbinCA, what the professor said was, “but “misinformation and disinformation.” Of course, that means that the only hope for humanity is censorship and speech controls. The report shows just how engrained this anti-free speech movement has become among the world elite from media to business to politics.”
Turley is against such censorship used by the powerful against the people. His views are clear. He is for more speech, and from what I garner, you are for less. We presently have laws against libel, and they can be tweaked, but the danger is that social media and powerful companies get to speak while preventing others from responding.
As I said above, AI is being used in the wrong fashion by the government and NGOs. You support more government when you should be supporting less.
I’m committed to free public speech balanced with responsibilities. I can list those responsibilities:
– not to deceive others to your own advantage (fraud)
– not to intentionally intimidate others (trying to scare them into backing off with threats)
– not to urge lawless behavior
Could someone explain why they think these limits too burdensome? Give examples. What freedom comes 100% unencumbered by responsibilities?
Enforcement should not privilege one voice over another. That rules out govt. being given even the smallest powers for censorship and prosecution.
Enforcement should be modeled after Defamation Law….civil lawsuits. Anyone can sue for defamation. The DOJ cannot block civil lawsuits from being filed. Govt. officials can be the ones sued. The govt’s role is to provide a neutral Judge, a courtoom, and a pool of jurors.
Public Frauds lawsuits would be fast-tracked (rapid due diligence) so that deceitful infowarriors are denied the time advantage for their false narrative to nudge public thinking before the truth comes out.
These are modest, incremental changes to our legal system. It doesn’t give govt. any new powers over information — just the opposite, it gives citizens new power to hold govt. officials accountable when they cook up a whopper (e.g., Hunter’s laptop cover-up, the race to invade Iraq).
Nor is it a heavy-handed approach. The accusers in a Public Frauds lawsuit have the burden of proof. They get equipped with rapid subpoena and discovery to compel testimony. They have perjury law and rules of evidence on their side. These tools have been honed over centuries to dig down and expose the truth in the fog of misperceptions and lies.
Public Frauds lawsuits give the public a tool to counter false narratives in realtime. This is essential. Political falsehoods only have to “work” temporarily while public decisions are being made (elections, going to war). We all know the rationale for the War in Iraq was fabricated by infowarriors, but it came out too late to prevent launching that unnecessary war. Timeliness is the crux of the matter in fighting disinformation. We need fast-response systems to quell the beast.
And don’t say “pbinCA want govt. censorship” because that’s a tell you didn’t bother to read my entire post.
PbinCA, we are probably in agreement with most of your more limited desires but not the means you seem to take. The communists talk about their end product, which is fantasy, but the means they use to get there deprive the individual of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
“not to deceive others to your own advantage (fraud)”
We agree and have laws that can be tweaked. Earlier, you wanted to place government controls on deception and suggested a government misinformation committee. That falls directly into the hands of the leftists, plutocrats, and all other despots.
“not to intentionally intimidate others (trying to scare them into backing off with threats)”
It appears you want total government protection. I have been threatened many times in the financial world. If you can’t take the heat, get out. However, if one threatens your life, that is already illegal. If one threatens to open a restaurant near yours, you cannot ask for protection. We have contract law and criminal law to help us out, which can also be tweaked. If you rely on the government, you might get more safety at the expense of your liberty.
“And don’t say “pbinCA want govt. censorship” because that’s a tell you didn’t bother to read my entire post.”
I carefully read your posts because I like some of the ends but dislike your means. Today Trump is being persecuted by government agencies. Let us look at the most obvious. The Trump opinion valued Mar a Lago at a price much higher than Judge Engoron. Let us deal with this and work our way up to the more complex cases.
You dislike Trump, which is fine, but you aren’t fair to him, and the expression of your ideas shows you would use the government to prevent him from running for President in 2024.
Steaming turd from pbin
After watching the last GOP Debate, I still just can’t trust Her (Nikki Haley) and I’m trying too. To not think of Her as a Neocon.
Ron (Ron DeSantis) has a strong Domestic program in his message that was trustworthy, but my commitment would be made if I knew who was going to be His’ Secretary of State and FIB Director. It may be early to talk about Cabinet choices but it should be obvious to all by now that the Directors of the; DOJ, FBI, CIA, DHS are very central (Key) to how the manipulation of the Media (Propaganda – The Disc Jockeys of Orwellian Disinformation) steers the Presidency, Congress, and the SCOTUS.
They have already, all but ‘Disappeared’; Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Sen. Tim Scott, ….
We are living with the “existential-‘Domestic’-threat” everyday, and it’s spreading to the other Governments as well: Canada, Europe, Australia, ….
This feeling of The Powers To Be are pushing all the buttons to launch World War III. is getting stronger by the Day, and soon to be by the minute.
The honesty is gone and naivety is fading into the reality.
The best answer we have today is Donald Trump. We also have DeSantis, who has demonstrated that states can take action against the Federal Government. He should continue in that position, which, with a Trump Presidency, might push other states to follow DeSantis. That, too, is needed to save our Republic from those who push leftist policies and now lead the Democrat Party.
Professor Turley writes on this topic nearly to the exclusion of all others. He calls himself a “Madisonian scholar” so perhaps his interest in this topic is understandable. He also believes that freedom of speech is a core human right — essentially saying that this right is (or at least should be) universal around the world.
The obvious truth is that this right is not — and for some countries never has been — accepted as a human right. Even in the core Anglosphere nations of the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand there has been a retrenchment from formerly-held positions of free speech and this indeed is unfortunate. Nowhere in the world exists a constitution like ours that enshrines the freedom of speech as the most fundamental right a citizen has and then zealously criticizes attempts to infringe upon it or takes action to preserve it. Why should we be surprised to learn that other nations’ governments without the protections a constitution like ours gives act in a way completely contrary to the US experience? We should not be surprised.
It is sad — and indeed unfortunate — that this is happening around the world, not just in those nations mentioned above, but also in many nations in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Accept the fact that freedom of speech is seen as a threat to those in power nearly everywhere. Rather than all this caterwauling and pearl-clutching that it IS happening, I would prefer to know only WHERE it is occurring so that I don’t travel there.
“I would prefer to know only WHERE it is occurring so that I don’t travel there.”
One doesn’t have to look far. Look at the radical leftist revolutionaries and then those power-seeking foes that fill up the vacuums created.
@juan
I am assuming you are an American citizen (perhaps incorrectly; correct me if I am wrong). You need to go beyond that and defend your rights, these things do not just ‘happen’ matter of factly. A laissaiz-faire attitude, hoping ‘someone else’ will fix it is pretty much what the the folks in question want. Wake up. What you have written, even if it wasn’t the intent, is precisely what got us here in the first place. We *do*, we do not capitulate and hope for a change of heart on the part of those doing against us. Societies are not won by spitting in one hand and wishing in the other. Do you want a free society, a life that you can pursue yourself? Then prove it at the polls.
He also believes that freedom of speech is a core human right — essentially saying that this right is (or at least should be) universal around the world.
The obvious truth is that this right is not
Backwards reasoning
Free speech is a universal right.
It just that lots of countries refuse to protect the right
Even our nation does not declare speech a basic human right. The founders wisely just prohibited the Federal govt from restricting speech.
The answer to the question in the last sentence is not No but Hell No!
The only reason that elites have not thoroughly discredited themselves, is that a substantial segment of the public are neither misinformed nor disinformed, but profoundly uniformed.
Disinformation is anything that contradicts the opinions of the people shouting “DISINFORMATION!!!” We rely on “experts” like Klaus Schwab, an entitled academic living off the largesse of his Nazi father, who have never held a real job, worked on a farm, or in a factory, or in construction, and never served in the military. They are a bunch of pampered prima Donas with no clue how the real world actually works. Yet they call themselves “experts” and we are supposed to believe it.
I respectfully disagree. Under our highly-evolved and principled system of law in the U.S., we have Courts of Law where juries of 12 citizens sort out fact from fiction. It’s a highly structured infosystem. It’s an adversarial competition, with powers of subpoena and discovery to strip away the veil of clandestine activity, with strict rules of evidence to weed out opinions and hearsay from verifyable facts.
Juries are the finders-of-fact under this system, not govt. bureaucrats.
So, we can do much better than a battle of deceitful infowarriors to see whose narrative prevails. We can get to the truth in clashes between opposing beliefs — in Court.
The Court of Public Opinion is a Disneyland for skilled, professional flaks and zealots. We don’t have to cede control to the most compelling liars, and the consequences of doing nothing will be a slew of bad public decisions (nudged by lies). This is a downhill path to decline. Our greatness is closely linked to a thirst for truth and candor in the public sphere.
Do you want to become like Russia, Iran, NK, China….then sit back and just accept that the most compelling liars gain control over the US. The only difference will be government lies to remain in power, and challengers lie to replace them. Meet the new boss — same as the old boss.
WEF was founded and is led by Professor Klaus Schwab. His formative education began in Nazi Germany, then continued at Harvard. (And, yes, his father’s company did support the Nazi war machine, and did use forced labor.)
Schwab peddles stakeholder “capitalism” and, now, worldwide censorship. Those policies stem from the essence of German philosophy — collectivism and statism: The group is everything; the individual is dispensable. The state as leviathan. That German philosophy was imported into American universities starting in the late 19th century. It is now infected institutions such as Harvard.
Germany has learned nothing from its fascist history. More ominous is that American academics use that history and philosophy as a blueprint.
If disinformation is such a serious threat, then silence all government communications. After all, the biggest purveyor of disinformation is the government. Start with the President’s spokesliar.
We’re not going to solve the disinformation challenge by picking the worst offender. That would hand unfair advantage to the worst offender’s opponents. We have to be blind to “cause” or political persuasion, and have a set of responsibilities expected of everyone in public communications, and blind enforcement.
That way, nobody gets a “pass”. You never want a double-standard to develop.
PbinCA, though this reply wasn’t to me, we again agreed on the endpoint. Do we disagree on the means?
I want less federal government involvement. Do you wish more or less?
Its the age old question, uttered at the formation of our Great Nation.
Are you willing to trade safety for liberty and freedom.
Sadly, today, a substantial number, exceeding 50%, are more than willing to eagerly abdicate their freedom, trading that freedom in return for the illusion of safety.
The media and BIG government have convinced many that we must believe the ‘hair on fire’ gang: Fauci, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc. Sorry, I will not be on board that train. Anti-human America-haters, all of them.