Claim

A recent article from news punch on the 17th August 2022 reported that the WEF had announced the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of “information warriors” to control the internet.

Lead Stories Fact Check – False

Lead Stories say:

Did the World Economic Forum (WEF) announce the recruitment of “information warriors” to control the narrative on social media? No, that’s not true: The WEF has recruited no such people.

Melissa Fleming, who leads global communications for the UN, […] says “So far, we’ve recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first-responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels.”

Note her use of the phrase “information volunteers,” not “information warriors.”

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2022/08/fact-check-wef-did-not-announce-recruitment-of-information-warriors-to-control-narrative-on-social-media.html

Our Rating – True

Justification

So despite the weird timing of this source podcast popping up for media scrutiny nearly 2 years after it was published on Nov 26, 2020, the facts of this story are correct and Lead Stories is playing with semantics rather than reporting faithfully.

The WEF website published a podcast featuring Melissa Flemming along with the article called:

“There’s no vaccine for the infodemic – so how can we combat the virus of misinformation?”

It can be found here with the podcast embedded in it through soundcloud. This conclusively proves that the WEF did announce the recruitment activity.

Melissa’s words have been changed by News Punch from Information volunteers to Information Warriors by the writers using a technique common to many world media outlets, that of changing a slightly obscure term into one that is more widely used and understood, by putting it in quotes to denote that it is not the original term.

Here is an example from the BBC news site today where they put quotes around the term ‘hunger stones’:

The stones referenced in the article are not officially named hunger stones but this is a colloquialism that people understand. In the same way people know what an information warrior is, but who knows what an information volunteer is? Could it be someone that stands on a street corner offering direction information to passers by? Maybe it is someone who has committed a crime and was ordered by a judge to spend 200 hours in the community volunteering information about themselves and why they committed a crime?

News Punch also say that these recruited people will control the narrative on social media. While this is not directly stated by the WEF article, again we understand that when it is written “ask them to serve as kind of ‘digital first responders’ in those spaces where misinformation travels” this is an equivalent statement, and is again a common technique used by the media in general.

So Did the World Economic Forum (WEF) announce the recruitment of “information warriors” to control the narrative on social media?

Yes, they did. It was an article the WEF published on their website. There is a small error in the News Punch article that it was the WEF who recruited the people, however we know that the WEF and the UN recently signed a Strategic Partnership Framework in June 2019 because the WEF also published that as an article.

So is it a real stretch to think the two organisations work together on the topic of “the consultation, exchange of information and coordination required for effective collaboration”? which is a direct quote from the UN/WEF framework document.

The only odd thing about this WEF article is why is it being brought up now as an issue, two years later? What the significance of August 2022 is in relation to information warriors is not yet known, but watch this space!

Evidence

Claim

In a video interview by Policy Exchange on the 5th November 2021 Bill Gates tells Jeremy Hunt that Covid vaccines are not very good at stopping transmission of the virus and we need a new way of doing the vaccines.

Reuters Rating – False

Reuters say:

Missing context. Bill Gates’ words have been taken out of context. He did not say COVID-19 vaccines are not working very well

https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-coronavirus-gates/fact-check-bill-gates-did-not-say-covid-19-vaccines-are-ineffective-idUSL1N2S7292

Our Rating – True

Justification

Reuters write that a snippet of an interview with Bill Gates has been taken out of context by social media users. But if one watches the whole interview the realisation dawns that the context is correct in this claim circulating the internet.

The whole interview can be found here and the pertinent question from Jeremy is archived below:

The context is clear in that the vaccines have failed to stop transmission and this was one of their key selling points, and therefore the justification for Vaccine passports and mandates is logically also flawed.

Since the introduction of the vaccines for Covid, transmission has been central to the call for mandates, for we are sold on the idea that if you are vaccinated then you can get a vaccine passport to travel and go out and you are not a danger to others and are not going to be spreading the virus to anyone who is vulnerable. We are also repeatedly told that the country faces lockdown if people do not get their latest round of Covid vaccinations, for if you are not vaccinated then you are dirty and unclean.

On 3rd February 2021 UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this to say about the Astrazeneca Vaccine:

“research also shows that the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine seems likely to reduce transmission to others.”

And of course we are told that the pandemic will come to an end if we are all vaccinated, as this presumably kills it off through failure to transmit between individuals. Here is Matt Hancock on the subject from 30th December 2020:

Sky News on 23rd November 2020 said the following on the topic of transmission:

“Up to now there has been this question of whether vaccines reduce disease or reduce infection rates, and this vaccine does seem to be stopping the virus spreading.”

The other aspect of the sales pitch has been if you do not get a vaccination then you will lose your career. This is not done out of concern for an individual’s health and in case they might die on the job. Rather it is about the unvaccinated spreading the disease to others (who are already vaccinated).

The UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid said recently on the 9th November 2021:

“So whether it’s in our care homes or hospitals, or any other health or care setting. The first duty of everyone working in health and social care is to avoid preventable harm to the people that they care for. And not only that, they have a responsibility to do all they can to keep each other safe.”

“I have concluded that all those working in the NHS and social care will have to be vaccinated. We must avoid preventable harm and protect patients in the NHS, protect colleagues in the NHS, and of course protect the NHS itself.”

These words and actions only make sense if the vaccine prevents transmission, and thus the central claim above.

The final nail in Bill’s coffin is that his last words on the vaccine are :

“We need a new way of doing the vaccines”

Reuters then are guilty of misunderstanding what was said themselves and risk spreading misinformation to people on the internet. Their article was deceptive in telling people to think the way they themselves do, and to not look at the evidence on their own.

As a recent comparison from across the pond, Joe Biden on the 7th October 2021 said:

“At a health care facility you should have the certainty that the people providing that care are protected from Covid and cannot spread it to you”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/10/07/biden_vaccinated_protected_from_covid_cannot_spread_it_to_you.html?jwsource=cl

He’s wrong about transmission isn’t he, and Reuters know it. Come on man!

Also this, for giggles:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/11/17/fact-check-covid-19-vaccines-protect-against-infection-transmission/6403678001/

Evidence

Claim

During the Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on 11/11/21 Joe Biden was giving a speech and offered birthday wishes to Donald Lincoln – the father of the Secretary of state. As part of his wishes he gave an anecdote about Satchel Paige and referred to him as the great negro.

Snopes Rating – False

Snopes say:

While he did indeed utter the words “I’ve adopted the attitude of the great Negro,” and said them in that order, the context surrounding that sentence fragment does not support the claim or implication that Biden “called” or “referred to” Satchel Paige as “the great Negro.” 

https://www.snopes.com/news/2021/11/11/joe-biden-satchel-paige/

They offer this source as evidence:

“Joe Biden Did Not Refer to Satchel Paige as Negro in Speech.” Mediaite, 11 Nov. 2021, https://www.mediaite.com/online/no-joe-biden-did-not-refer-to-satchel-paige-as-a-negro-during-veterans-day-speech/. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.

Our Rating – True

Justification

Here is a link to the live recording of that speech at the time of the offending comments, and this is attached below also:

Joe clearly says the words reported and they are clearly about the Baseball player Satchel Paige.

Snopes say that the context is important and his words have been misinterpreted so let’s take a look at that. Theses words can be twisted around in terms of the context.

If Joe said instead “i’ve adpoted the attitude of the” :

• great pitcher in the negro leagues
• a great pitcher in the pros
• a great pitcher in major league baseball after Jackie Robinson

All of these contextual switches still mean he is referring to Satchel Paige. To say otherwise is incorrect and Snopes are covering for him.

If Joe had offered an apology and corrected himself, like he often does, then something like the above could make sense, but he did not offer an apology for what he said and did not correct himself in front of the audience.

Snopes are interpreting the speech themselves in a manner that is incorrect and are telling you the reader, to do the same. This is deceptive and dishonest of Snopes.

What remains is trying to understand what Joe was on about with this anecdote. The best I can understand is that he’s saying to the birthday boy that he’s adopted an attitude that age doesn’t matter and says “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” Meaning that age doesn’t matter.

However in this anecdote the ability to throw a ball does matter, and in Joe’s speech the ability to say what you mean is central to this issue, and to his ongoing Presidency. How can one trust the word of someone who doesn’t say what they mean?

Evidence

Claim

The COVID-19 pandemic was planned by the Rockefeller Foundation in “Operation Lockstep.”

Snopes Rating – False

Was the COVID-19 Pandemic Planned in Rockefeller’s ‘Operation Lockstep’?

Full Fact Rating – None

Fact Check .org – None

Our Rating – True

Justification

This one is impressively misleading on the part of “fact checkers”. Starting from the opening line from snopes

Diabolical plans for world domination aren’t normally posted as readily available PDFs.

It is well known psychology that bad things can be hidden in plain sight. The followers of an organisation need to be told what will happen ahead of time as they are “followers” and cannot be expected to think for themselves. Most organisations plan well in advance of anything becoming public, let alone anything been widely known. For example the Lockheed Martin SR-71 Blackbird was developed in the 1960’s and spotted by the public for years before it was publicly announced as real, people thought it was a UFO. Also their appears to be a metaphysical law of the universe that wicked plans must be published ahead of any action taken by wicked people, so as to give some warning to the public and absolve the wicked, and this also lessens the blow to the public when the event occurs as conspiracy theory becoming reality is less frightening. This is also like common law, where if you are told something is going to happen and you accept that without resistance, then the party acting is not liable for any damages.

In July 2020, several social media users started posting about “Operation Lockstep,” a document allegedly released by The Rockefeller Foundation that showed how global elites had planned to manufacture the COVID-19 pandemic for the last 10 years in order to implement a police state:

Snopes correctly classify the time period and the nature of the posts, but misattribute the information and claim to some low quality jpg as the source document. I have never seen this picture circulated before the snopes fact check article:

In reality the document being circulated was the Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development produced by the Rockefeller foundation in 2010, and included here as a local copy:

Snopes write:

In 2010, the Rockefeller Foundation funded a scenario-planning exercise that envisioned how hypothetical future events could impact the development of technology. This document, however, does not provide any sort of “operation manual” for how to manufacture a global pandemic

This document gives a hypothetical look at future events in order to envision possible problems that might arise. While this document does explore how the global population could react during a pandemic, it is in no way an “operation manual” for how to manufacture a virus in order to implement a police state. 

Let’s break these quotes down; snopes say that this is a “planning exercise” despite opening the article dismissing the allegation that the document “showed how global elites had planned to manufacture the COVID-19 pandemic”. They also say that it “is in no way an “operation manual””

Well, let’s look at what the document actually predicts will happen, and how things played out in the world from early 2020 onwards:

The document’s pandemic scenario is called “Lock Step”. A “scenario” is defined by Cambridge University Dictionary as:

a description of possible actions or events in the future

Well this does indeed describe the event that we have all lived through, and this term “lock step” has been used by world leaders during the last year over and over again in relation to the pandemic. Two such examples follow in this video:

Moving on in the document:

this new influenza strain—originating from wild geese—was extremely virulent and deadly

snopes snidely points out that the document does not predict the origin animal correctly, and that the virus is not a corona strain in the document, but instead influenza. However these are trifling details in the scheme of things and somewhat of a distraction from the main points. Nextrain.org have the origin animal as a Pangolin lineage anyway, so who knows!

The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.

Now the meat of the plan, and clearly we know these things happened to us in 2020, matching the plan in the Lock Step scenario:

COVID-19 to Plunge Global Economy into Worst Recession since World War II

Airlines cancel international flights ahead of national lockdown

You should avoid travelling in or out of your local area

Tourism sector ‘hardest hit’ by COVID-19

COVID-19 and shattered supply chains

Coronavirus drives shop closures to new record

Almost one quarter of all businesses have temporarily closed or paused trading due to the Coronavirus

The United States’s initial policy of “strongly discouraging” citizens from flying proved deadly in its leniency, accelerating the spread of the virus not just within the U.S. but across borders. However, a few countries did fare better—China in particular. The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter postpandemic recovery

The US and China did exactly this in 2020:

The United States’ failure to contain the spread of coronavirus has been met with astonishment and alarm

China seals off cities to contain coronavirus outbreak

China becomes first major economy to recover from Covid-19 pandemic

During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.

This is all so familiar to us, that I barely even need to find evidence, but for the record:

Government makes wearing face masks mandatory

Temperature Screenings Within the UK Workplace in the Wake of COVID-19

Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems—from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty—leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power

The creeping authoritarianism of the Covid-19 restrictions

Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty—and their privacy—to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability.

Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example

Covid passports are authoritarian, illogical, vile

In India, for example, air quality drastically improved after 2016, when the government outlawed high emitting vehicles

Reduced air pollution during COVID-19: Learnings for sustainability from Indian Cities

Future predictions:

While the above have already happened, at the time of writing the remainder of the lock step commentary is in the future for us. We will see in time whether these “predictions” come true as well

But more authoritarian leadership worked less well—and in some cases tragically—in countries run by irresponsible elites who used their increased power to pursue their own interests at the expense of their citizens

Scientists and innovators were often told by governments what research lines to pursue

By 2025, people seemed to be growing weary of so much top-down control and letting leaders and authorities make choices for them. Wherever national interests clashed with individual interests, there was conflict. Sporadic pushback became increasingly organized and coordinated, as disaffected youth and people who had seen their status and opportunities slip away—largely in developing countries—incited civil unrest.

In 2026, protestors in Nigeria brought down the government, fed up with the entrenched cronyism and corruption. Even those who liked the greater stability and predictability of this world began to grow uncomfortable and constrained by so many tight rules and by the strictness of national boundaries. The feeling lingered that sooner or later, something would inevitably upset the neat order that the world’s governments had worked so hard to establish.

Scanners using advanced functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology become the norm at airports and other public areas to detect abnormal behavior that may indicate “antisocial intent.”

New diagnostics are developed to detect communicable diseases. The application of health screening also changes; screening becomes a prerequisite for release from a hospital or prison, successfully slowing the spread of many diseases.

Tele-presence technologies respond to the demand for less expensive, lower bandwidth, sophisticated communications systems for populations whose travel is restricted.

It’s hard not to look at our own expereince of 2020 and to see how the the lock step scenario has played out word for word in reality, with the majority of the countries copying each other in their response like it had been a scripted event. Just take a look at this compilation video to show how every country is in lock step with each other over the testing and vaccination of people. It makes you think about how propaganda works when people don’t look outside of their own country and in this day and age ignorance is really a choice one makes:

The source video appears to have been removed, but here is local copy.

Evidence

PDF copies of the above links are as follows:

Claim

On 29/09/2020 at the 1st presidential debate in Cleveland, Joe Biden wore a wire that was enabling him to be told what to say by off stage advisors.

Snopes Rating – False

No, Biden Didn’t Wear a ‘Wire’ or ‘Smart’ Contact Lenses During 1st Debate

Full Fact Rating – None

Fact Check .org – False

No Evidence Biden Was ‘Wearing a Wire’ in Debate

Our Rating – False

Justification

There was a low quality video doing the rounds showing a line appearing above Joe Biden’s shirt and below his jacket when it was moved. This was suggested to be that of an electronic wire, which was connected to some device hidden under his jacket.

However when the higher quality video of the same moment is seen it is clear that this “wire” line is nothing more than a crease in his shirt.

Evidence

Link to the high quality video of this event:

Embedded video of the exact moment of the claim: