Melissa Fleming is the UN's Undersecretary General for Global Communications, a pretty senior post, and she gave this speech a few months ago at the Nobel Prize Summit. So, this isn t a leaked conversation, a hot mic situation, it s not a gaffe or a mistake. It s a public statement approved by the UN, in a speech called, Healing Our Troubled Information Ecosystem. Did you know that our information ecosystem was troubled, and that the United Nation was going to be the healer?
00:00:53.340It's her planned public statement approved by the UN.
00:00:57.300It's a speech called, Healing Our Troubled Information Ecosystem.
00:01:03.800Did you know that our information ecosystem was troubled, and that it needed healing, and that the United Nations was going to be the healer?
00:01:10.960Her speech is about 10 minutes long, and I'm going to show you most of it, and I'm going to stop every once in a while to give you my thoughts.
00:01:22.520Well, I've been in this communications business for the United Nations for a long time.
00:01:26.780I remember when social media burst onto the scene, we communicators were really excited because we were used to working only through journalists, getting a little diluted what came up.
00:01:39.720But then we could communicate with people directly at scale.
00:01:44.000So, there's a lament, information can't be controlled by her friends anymore.
00:01:49.520She used to only have to deal with friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post and other elite organizations that were all basically on the same page.
00:01:57.820Now, she has to do with independent media, and worst of all, individual citizens.
00:02:11.860Before long, we saw a dark side, and I had myself a few personal aha moments.
00:02:18.800I was spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and I remember in 2015 when a million refugees came to Europe, and we saw such an outpouring of welcome on our social media platforms, on our TVs.
00:02:37.040I witnessed the best of humanity there.
00:02:39.700But soon, bad actors started spreading ugly lies online to frighten the public, and the welcome soon soured.
00:02:56.840So the UN has decided that individual countries that chose not to bring in unvetted, military-aged migrant men claiming to be refugees, that that's bad.
00:03:09.860The UN certainly has a lot of opinions for an organization that is supposed to simply be a middleman, a meeting place amongst nations.
00:03:16.860She's saying that social media is the reason people don't want unlimited, unvetted mass migration, that if it weren't for those pesky voices on Twitter, everyone would simply agree with her.
00:03:40.160And a year later, I had my own wake-up call.
00:03:43.080I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, and the course I was told to take, chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, was kind of scary, and I did what most of us do.
00:04:48.280If I had taken their advice, I would not be standing here with you today.
00:04:53.340And the reason I raised this is because that same group is still going strong on Facebook and Twitter and other platforms with The Truth About Vaccines.
00:05:06.020They're trying to convince people to refuse life-saving vaccines.
00:05:11.360And during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the couple behind both of these pages were part of what they coined the disinformation dozen.
00:05:26.060Just 12 accounts that were responsible for 65% of the disinformation that was spreading across the world on social media, infecting the minds of millions.
00:05:38.540Boy, that moved pretty quickly from cancer to big pharma COVID vaccines, didn't it?
00:05:43.140Look, of course there are kooky websites out there with bad advice on everything, including cancer.
00:05:48.260But she moved pretty quickly from conventional treatments for breast cancer to equating that with experimental vaccines, hastily rushed to market using emergency use authorizations without being fully tested.
00:06:06.040I'm surprised she didn't use the phrase safe and effective.
00:06:08.600And by the way, if you are skeptical of forced vaccines, take it or lose your job vaccines, well, then you're guilty of digital hate, she says.
00:06:29.240But my experience is that the hate comes from those trying to force things on people like vaccines and threatening people with punishments if they made a different personal choice.
00:06:37.980Like Justin Trudeau, asking if we should even tolerate people who made a different choice than us.
00:07:08.100If you don't want to get vaccinated, that's your choice.
00:07:11.600But don't think you can get on a plane or a train beside vaccinated people.
00:07:16.380Well, a government-funded smear group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate was paid to smear the top 12 skeptics of the COVID vaccine.
00:08:00.960The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alone is responsible for over 88% of the total amount donated by philanthropic foundations to the World Health Organization.
00:08:10.360Yeah, so it's a bit weird, but also completely predictable to see the United Nations move so quickly to trying to silence skeptical voices about vaccines.
00:08:24.180Well, when we finally got the vaccines to other parts of the world, in Africa in particular, which had publics that were very vaccine-positive, we were finding people refusing to take them.
00:08:39.400They had been so infected by these conspiracies that they weren't only refusing the COVID-19 vaccines, but also childhood vaccines as well.
00:08:50.560The weird thing is that, in fact, Africa has one of the lowest rates of vaccination and, by coincidence, has one of the lowest death rates from COVID.
00:08:59.920I think you call what she just said disinformation.
00:09:52.700And banning or censoring Facebook or whatever she wants to do to stop mean thoughts, that doesn't work when it's those same murderous regimes doing the censoring.
00:10:01.420It would be like saying, well, if only Germany had a censorship law to stop Hitler.
00:10:05.960Well, they did have a censorship law, in fact, and it didn't stop Hitler, but he sure used it when he got to power, didn't he?
00:13:10.960As we've heard by many other speakers, social media is also being harnessed to undermine and distort and abuse those who are promoting the science around climate change.
00:13:22.780The goal, to silence the scientists and the activists and secure a livable future for the planet.
00:13:30.920So the United Nations wants to stop people from undermining global warming plans.
00:13:35.640Not from doing anything illegal, nothing unethical, nothing even rude.
00:13:38.820But if you undermine, say, a carbon tax or a climate lockdown, you need to be shut up.
00:16:24.460The United Nations just confirmed, yeah, there is.
00:16:27.840Our new slogan that we want to have everybody have in their ear when they're online is pause, take care before you share.
00:16:36.060But yet we do feel like we are in an information war and that we need to massively ramp up our response.
00:16:45.880So we're creating at the UN a central capacity to monitor and also have the ability to rapidly react when mis- and disinformation and hate speech is threatening not just our people, our operations, but also the issues and the causes that we're working on.
00:17:05.300They mention disinformation and then immediately add in hate and violent threats because they have to scare you.
00:17:12.740There really are very few actual threats out there.
00:17:16.120The threats typically come from the United Nations types, threatening to fire you from your job if you don't get a jab, threatening to take away your property, threatening to take away your freedom.
00:17:48.780We're going to be gearing up our verified initiative around climate change and developing this UN code of conduct on information integrity on digital platforms, hoping to set global standards that we can all advocate around so that we can collectively work for a more humane Internet.
00:18:07.920A UN code of conduct, a UN code of conduct, a UN code of conduct for information integrity, really, for a more humane Internet.
00:18:30.620So we obviously can't do this alone, and it is so inspiring to have all of you here in the room who are working in so many different ways to create a more humane information ecosystem.
00:18:46.060I think that we vastly outnumber the haters altogether, right?
00:18:53.520And if we do join forces, I think we can also together heal our troubled information ecosystem.
00:19:46.380You can see behind me about 100-plus people who were slightly larger earlier who were outside the court here in Lethbridge to hear a sort of victory speech from Pastor Arthur Pawlowski.
00:19:59.480We just got out of the court where, starting at 9.30 a.m. today, both the prosecutor and the defense lawyers made their final submissions as to Arthur Pawlowski's sentence.
00:20:10.500Just to recap, he was already convicted of two criminal offenses a few months ago relating to his sermon that he gave to the trucker convoy at the Coutts border blockade last February.
00:20:24.640So let me just give you a little bit of a taste of that sermon.
00:20:28.280And so you can see it was just sort of classic Arthur Pawlowski talking about freedom.
00:20:42.320I'm talking about peaceful resolution.
00:20:44.320I'm not talking about guns and swords.
00:20:46.660You see, this image, this image right here, it was the most powerful thing I could ever do.
00:20:53.860And it went viral all over the world because it showed simply me on my knees on a middle, in the middle of the highway, being taken by SWAT team.
00:21:15.120In fact, that video clip was the sole piece of evidence in the hearing.
00:21:19.300I was shocked, as many were, that he was convicted of a crime for giving that sermon.
00:21:25.060My own view is if what he said in that sermon is a crime simply for inciting the blockade by saying things like hold the line and don't give in and fight for freedom,
00:21:34.580well, then all of us are in jeopardy, especially those of us in the punditing business, like myself or, say, Rex Murphy.
00:21:40.240If you can't say to peaceful protesters, hold the line, keep up the fight, if that in itself is a crime, well, I'm not sure if we're in Canada or for Iran or China.
00:21:49.780Anyways, the hearing, which I live-tweeted, I just stepped out.
00:21:52.840It went back and forth, but in the end, here's how the judge decided in the end.
00:21:58.320The judge said that Arthur needed a sentence, a prison sentence, to steer him straight.
00:22:07.100But he also took into account the fact that Arthur has done a long time in jail pre-trial.
00:22:14.060And, of course, you get extra credit, so to speak, for time served before a trial.
00:22:18.800So Arthur Pawlowski was sentenced to 60 days in prison, but given credit for 60 days already served.
00:22:27.780So, as you can see, he walked straight out.
00:22:29.900I met with him earlier today, and he said he was worried he would be leaving this courthouse in handcuffs straight to jail,
00:22:36.820which is how they do it when you're sentenced.
00:22:38.460So there's a bit of a jubilant feeling here today by his supporters, because he won't serve one extra day in jail.
00:22:46.780He won't pay one extra dollar or have any more punishments.
00:22:50.160However, he still has that criminal conviction on his record.
00:22:55.100And so Sarah Miller and the law firm that is being crowdfunded by viewers will be appealing that conviction.
00:23:03.160It's good that Arthur's not in sentence to any more jail time.
00:23:08.460But it's atrocious that that sermon has been called a criminal act.
00:23:36.020And for that reason, and the important free speech precedent it sets, we will be hoping to crowdfund his appeal to the Court of Appeal.
00:23:44.920And I have reason to be optimistic in that you might recall that Arthur Pawlowski received another odious sentence at the hands of a judge named Adam Germain.
00:23:53.340That was because Arthur kept his church open and he ordered Arthur to renounce his views on the vaccine and things like that.
00:24:00.440It was an atrocious trial level ruling and sentence.
00:24:04.200But when that was appealed to the Court of Appeal, Arthur won three to zero.
00:24:21.720Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the greatest examples of civil rights movement recorded in history, speaks again from the past, warning this society.
00:24:34.820A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.
00:24:42.820A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice.
00:24:47.980A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.
00:24:56.380Edward Armour said, we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
00:25:04.820I find it fascinating that every year, every propaganda news network will say, lest we forget, and yet at the same time, they are part of this greatest attack on our freedoms ever recorded in the history of mankind.
00:25:59.060Abraham Lincoln said, those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
00:26:05.740And I absolutely adore the words of our Prime Minister from a few years ago, John Diefenbaker.
00:26:19.260This is what he said in the House of Commons on the 1st of July in 1960.
00:26:25.480I am Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think is right, free to oppose what I believe wrong.
00:26:47.540Free to choose those who govern my country.
00:33:07.080I mean, Arthur, your case is important for you, but it's important for the whole country.
00:33:15.080Nobody can afford the process that you've been put through.
00:33:21.080Even a rich person would just pay a settlement and apologize.
00:33:26.080Only the unique combination of your principled stand and the crowdfunding of thousands of people, only that has strengthened freedom of speech.
00:33:35.080And although you were sentenced today and convicted a few months ago, I'm very pleased that your excellent lawyers are appealing that conviction.
00:33:43.080And just like you lost at trial with the church opening case and later won 3-0 at the Court of Appeal, I believe that you will be vindicated in the course of time.
00:33:56.080And although it stings now to have the criminal conviction, I believe that when a Court of Appeal overturns that, and it is a binding precedent on the entire province, that will be a greater victory than to have won a trial.
00:34:12.080So thank you for the courage. And it's been more than once that the Poles and stubborn Poles have saved the world.
00:34:19.080As recently as Pope John Paul staring down the Stalinists and Jan Sobieski, you are in that tradition of Polish freedom fighters.
00:34:29.080And it is that very stubbornness that will keep the rest of us free. So thank you for being such a courageous fighter and thanks to your family as well.
00:34:39.080On behalf of all the grassroots crowdfunding donors, we will be with you to the end.
00:34:44.080And a big clap for every person. For every person that has donated. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
00:35:00.080And I want you to remember the fight will continue. This is not over. We are appealing it immediately.
00:35:08.080And we will face the three judges in the near future. And we will do town halls. And we will do meetings with Bob, his wife and others that are willing to participate.