Are we Slipping Toward Dictatorship?
By John S Leake | The Kennedy Beacon | July 24, 2023
History teaches us that dictatorial power is rarely if ever achieved all at once. The aspiring dictator invariably begins with censorship. By controlling the flow of information to the public, he shapes public perceptions in his favor, and against his critics.
Facts, worldviews, and opinions that challenge his own are expunged from the marketplace of ideas. Individuals who communicate to the public about these facts and opinions are silenced, segregated, and ostracized.
Through this process of elimination, the aspiring dictator hones his craft and eventually becomes a complete dictator.
Enter the current Biden Administration. In a recent interview with Aaron Kheriaty, MD—a psychiatrist and medical ethics expert who is a plaintiff in Missouri v. Biden—Kheriaty told me about the censorship program that the White House and an array of federal agencies have erected in recent years. He and his co-plaintiffs knew that some such program was operational, but they were still shocked by the discovery of its size and scope. As Kheriaty described it, the program is a Leviathan—a vast and systematic apparatus for exerting pressure on social media companies to censor any opinion or content that displeases the government. There’s a name for such an apparatus—namely, DICTATORSHIP.
In other words, a program of widespread censorship is the creation and work of a dictator. By way of censorship, the fledgling dictator not only silences his critics, but also prevents his dictatorial powers, privileges, and activities from being detected and reported. Thus, censorship is the means by which an aspiring dictator becomes a complete dictator.
Missouri v. Biden shows us that the Biden Administration, its lackeys in Congress, and its electoral organ, the DNC, have not yet erected a full dictatorship. Nevertheless, their conduct reveals that they aspire to do so and have already done much to achieve their ambition. They therefore treat with withering contempt anyone who threatens their ambition.
We saw a shocking expression of this at the House Judiciary Committee (Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government) hearing that was held on Thursday, July 20, 2023. While the Committee’s chair, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and his fellow Republican members welcomed the testimony of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Committee’s minority (Democrat) members did everything in their power to censor the hearing.
The mind reels in trying to comprehend this strange and paradoxical reality, so I will restate it. Last week, a hearing was held to “examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech.” Instead of listening to the witness and considering his testimony, the Committee’s minority members tried to censor him.
Ranking Member of the minority, Stacey Plassket—a non-voting delegate to the House from the United States Virgin Islands’ (USVI)—began by asserting that presidential candidate RFK, Jr.’s speech is not protected by the First Amendment:
Many of my Republican colleagues across the dais will rush to cover that they have Mr. Kennedy here because they want to protect his free speech. This is not the kind of free speech that I know of.
Free speech is not an absolute. The Supreme Court has stated that. And others’ free speech that is allowed—hateful, abusive rhetoric—does not need to be promoted in the halls of the people’s house.
These folks have a plan. They want to give expression to the most vile sorts of speech here in this committee room because it prepares the ground for their own conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.
And they apparently don’t care how many people are hurt or die as a consequence of their actions.… Because nothing, nothing is more important to them than power.
Plaskett’s assertions are an expression of the same strategy deployed by every dictator in history—namely, to dehumanize a dissident by characterizing his opinions as vile and dangerous. By the dictator’s logic, the dissident is not free to express his opinions because they pose a threat to the body politic. While such assertions are couched in the benevolent sounding language of protecting the citizenry, the true threat the dissident poses is not to the citizenry, but to the dictator’s power.
Assuming the role of Grand Inquisitor at the hearing was Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). She began by motioning the Committee to move into executive session, thereby closing the hearing to the public. She made this motion on the grounds that RFK, Jr.’s remarks about COVID-19 at a recent press event are harmful to the public.
Readers who are interested in the reality of these remarks—as distinct from the mainstream media’s blitz of mendacious propaganda about them—may consider reading my Substack post about it. In a nutshell, RFK, Jr. mentioned the vast medical literature about genetic variations in the ACE-2 receptor that cause some ethnic groups, especially Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews, to be less susceptible to severe COVID-19 illness than other ethnic groups.
Following the Committee’s rejection of Rep. Wasserman Schultz’s motion, she characterized RFK, Jr.’s recent remarks as perpetuating a longstanding anti-Semitic trope that Jews are responsible for infectious disease outbreaks. She then claimed (with perfect humbug) that she wanted to give the witness “a chance to correct his statements and repair some of the harm that he’s helped cause” to the Jewish people.
Her idea of “giving the witness a chance” was making grossly distorted representations of what he has purportedly said in the past, and then interrupting him every time he tried to set the record straight. Such methods of interrogation have been employed by every dictator’s kangaroo court in history.
Readers of this Substack may recall that Schultz is the former chair of the Democratic National Committee. On July 28, 2016, leaked emails showed that she and other DNC staff had taken actions to favor Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries. The leaked e-mails indicate that she did this in exchange for funds for paying off the DNC’s remaining debt from the 2012 presidential campaign. After eliminating Sanders from the 2016 race, Schultz is now (in her capacity as member of the House) hard at work to eliminate Kennedy from the 2024 race.
Schultz’s conduct is another expression of the dictator’s spirit—that is, the conviction that the ends justify means. It doesn’t matter that she once resigned her chair at an institution governing the electoral process after her corrupt, duplicitous, and unfair conduct was exposed. Her party and its supporters are still giving her license to abuse and censor RFK, Jr., and to mislead the public about statements he has made about public policy.
To learn more about Missouri v. Biden, please see my interview with plaintiff Aaron Kheriaty, MD.
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on Censorship
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on the origin of the citizenry needs to be protected from itself.
John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty on the way to correct false ideas.
Full Interview
The Kennedy Beacon Podcast EP1: John Leake with Aaron Kheriaty, MD
The FBI Told Twitter The Hunter Biden Laptop Story Was Real The Day The Story Broke, New Testimony Shows
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 20, 2023
In newly unveiled testimony, Laura Dehmlow, section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), disclosed that the FBI was aware of the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop as early as 2019. However, the Bureau declined to affirm its legitimacy to major tech companies during the 2020 election period.
That was already known. But it turns out that on the day the New York Post broke its report about the laptop, the FBI confirmed its validity to Twitter, only to retract their statement with a hasty “no further comment” response. From that point forward, the Bureau withheld comment on the laptop’s veracity to other tech giants, leading to widespread confusion and speculation ahead of the 2020 election.
According to a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Dehmlow revealed in her testimony that FBI staff, who had been warning social media platforms of potential Russian interference via a “hack and leak” operation prior to the 2020 election, were aware that the Hunter Biden laptop story was not an instance of Russian disinformation.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
When Twitter inquired about the laptop’s legitimacy on the day of the New York Post’s release, an FBI analyst confirmed its authenticity. However, an FBI attorney swiftly interrupted, leaving the conversation with “no further comment.” Following suit, Facebook also received the same vague response from the Bureau.
As per Dehmlow’s account, Twitter, after receiving initial confirmation about the laptop’s legitimacy, joined Facebook in imposing a censorship campaign that significantly influenced the voting behavior of a large number of Americans. Sharing the link was prohibited on Twitter, and the New York Post account was locked for several weeks. Facebook reduced the story’s visibility as well.
The FBI reportedly had regular interactions with major tech companies leading up to the election but chose to avoid answering direct questions about the laptop’s authenticity after the initial admission to Twitter.
In the backdrop of this confusing narrative, Big Tech was led to believe, by the FBI and other influencers, including the Biden campaign, that the controversial information from Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation aimed at manipulating the election. When, in reality, many consider the censorship of the story to be the true attempt at election manipulation.
The FBI had possession of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop as early as December 2019, a fact confirmed in Gary Shapley’s testimony, an IRS whistleblower, to the House Ways and Means Committee. Yet the FBI chose to maintain its “no comment” narrative until after the 2020 election, further compounding the confusion.
A federal judge’s memorandum ruling in Missouri v. Biden demonstrated that this approach deprived millions of Americans from getting a clear understanding of an important issue in the 2020 presidential election.
Chairman Jordan is now demanding that Wray identify those within the FBI’s FITF who knew about the laptop’s authenticity yet still advocated for the agency to remain silent until after the election. He also demanded all documents, records, and communications related to the FBI’s meetings with Silicon Valley giants since 2017 be handed over by August 3 and that all FBI employees involved in this issue be available for transcribed interviews with the committee.
Report: FBI Analyst Conducted Improper Query of Senator’s Name in Surveillance Database
Sputnik – 21.07.2023
WASHINGTON – An analyst with the FBI conducted an improper search of a US senator’s name in a surveillance database, American media reported on Friday, as lawmakers weigh the future of the agency’s surveillance authorities.
The FBI analyst searched information collected using warrantless surveillance programs using the names of a US senator and a state senator, the report said, citing a recently declassified court document.
The June 2022 searches were reportedly conducted due to information indicating the lawmakers were potentially targeted by foreign intelligence agents. However, the analyst failed to receive approval from higher-ups before conducting a sensitive search involving public officials.
Moreover, the analyst failed to demonstrate the searches would be reasonably likely to produce foreign intelligence or criminal evidence, the report said.
It was also reported the declassified court document notes there is no reason to believe the FBI has improved its compliance with surveillance protocols.
The revelation comes as lawmakers in Congress weigh whether to extend the FBI’s surveillance authorities, following multiple allegations of misuse. US intelligence and national security officials have repeatedly defended the program and its importance to their missions.
The Free Speech Scare
By Jeffrey A. Tucker | Brownstone Institute | July 21, 2023
It was a strange experience watching the House hearing in which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was testifying. The topic was censorship and how and to what extent federal government agencies under two administrations muscled social media companies to take down posts, ban users, and throttle content. The majority made its case.
What was strange was the minority reaction throughout. They tried to shut down RFK. They moved to go to executive session so that the public could not hear the proceedings. The effort failed. Then they shouted over his words when they were questioning him. They wildly smeared him and defamed him. They even began with an attempt to block him from speaking at all, and 8 Democrats voted to support that.
This was a hearing on censorship and they were trying to censor him. It only made the point.
It became so awful that RFK was compelled to give a short tutorial on the importance of free speech as an essential right, without which all other rights and freedoms are in jeopardy. Even those words he could barely speak given the rancor in the room. It’s fair to say that free speech, even as a core principle, is in grave trouble. We cannot even get a consensus on the basics.
It seemed to viewers that RFK was the adult in the room. Put other ways, he was the preacher of fidelity in the brothel, the keeper of memory in a room full of amnesiacs, the practitioner of sanity in the sanatorium, or, as Mencken might say, the hurler of a dead cat into the temple.
It was oddly strange to hear the voice of wise statesmen in that hothouse culture of infantile corruption: it reminded the public just how far things have fallen. Notably, it was he and not the people who wanted him gagged who was citing scientific papers.
The protests against his statements were shrill and shocking. They moved quickly from “Censorship didn’t happen” to “It was necessary and wonderful” to “We need more of it.” Reporting on the spectacle, the New York Times said these are “thorny questions”: “Is misinformation protected by the First Amendment? When is it appropriate for the federal government to seek to tamp down the spread of falsehoods?”
These are not thorny questions. The real issue concerns who is to be the arbiter of truth?
Such attacks on free speech do have precedent in American history. We have already discussed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 which led to a complete political upheaval that swept Thomas Jefferson into the White House. There were two additional bouts of censorship folly in the 20th century. Both followed great wars and an explosion in government size and reach.
The first came with the Red Scare (1917-1020) following the Great War (WWI). The Bolshevik Revolution and political instability in Europe led to a wild bout of political paranoia in the US that the communists, anarchists, and labor movement were plotting a takeover of the US government. The result was an imposition of censorship along with strict laws concerning political loyalty.
The Espionage Act of 1917 was one result. It is still in force and being deployed today, most recently against former President Trump. Many states passed censorship laws. The feds deported many people suspected of sedition and treason. Suspected communists were hauled in front of Congress and grilled.
The second bout occurred after the Second World War with the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Army-McCarthy hearings that led to blacklists and media smears of every sort. The result was a chilling of free speech across American industry that hit media particularly hard. That incident later became legendary due to the exaggerations and disregard for the First Amendment.
How does the Covid-era censorship fit into this historical context? At Brownstone, we’ve compared the wild Covid response to a wartime footing that caused as much trauma on the homeland as previous world wars.
Three years of research, documents, and reporting have established that the lockdowns and all that followed were not directed by public health authorities. They were the veneer for the national security state, which took charge in the month of February 2020 and deployed the full takeover of both government and society in mid-March. This is one reason that it’s been so difficult getting information on how and why all of this happened to us: it’s been mostly classified under the guise of national security.
In other words, this was war and the nation was ruled for a time (and maybe still is) by what amounts to quasi-martial law. Indeed, it felt like that. No one knew for sure who was in charge and who was making all these wild decisions for our lives and work. It was never clear what the penalties would be for noncompliance. The rules and edicts seemed arbitrary, having no real connection to the goal; indeed no one really knew what the goal was besides more and more control. There was no real exit strategy or end game.
As with the two previous bouts of censorship in the last century, there commenced a closure of public debate. It began almost immediately as the lockdowns edict were issued. They tightened over the months and years. Elites sought to plug every leak in the official narrative through every means possible. They invaded every space. Those they could not get to (like Parler) were simply unplugged. Amazon rejected books. YouTube deleted millions of posts. Twitter was brutal, while once-friendly Facebook became the enforcer of regime propaganda.
The hunt for dissenters took strange forms. Those who held gatherings were shamed. People who did not socially distance were called disease spreaders. Walking outside without a mask one day, a man shouted out to me in anger that “masks are socially recommended.” I kept turning that phrase around in my mind because it made no sense. The mask, no matter how obviously ineffective, was imposed as a tactic of humiliation and an exclusionary measure that targeted the incredulous. It was also a symbol: stop talking because your voice does not matter. Your speech will be muffled.
The vaccine of course came next: deployed as a tool to purge the military, public sector, academia, and the corporate world. The moment the New York Times reported that vaccine uptake was lower in states that supported Trump, the Biden administration had its talking points and agenda. The shot would be deployed to purge. Indeed, five cities briefly segregated themselves to exclude the unvaccinated from public spaces. The continued spread of the virus itself was blamed on the noncompliant.
Those who decried the trajectory could hardly find a voice much less assemble a social network. The idea was to make us all feel isolated even if we might have been the overwhelming majority. We just could not tell either way.
War and censorship go together because it is wartime that allows ruling elites to declare that ideas alone are dangerous to the goal of defeating the enemy. “Loose lips sink ships” is a clever phrase but it applies across the board in wartime. The goal is always to whip up the public in a frenzy of hate against the foreign enemy (“The Kaiser!”) and ferret out the rebels, the traitors, the subversives, and promoters of unrest. There is a reason that the protestors on January 6 were called “insurrectionists.” It is because it happened in wartime.
The war, however, was of domestic origin and targeted at Americans themselves. That’s why the precedent of 20th century censorship holds in this case. The war on Covid was in many ways an action of the national security state, something akin to a military operation prompted and administered by intelligence services in close cooperation with the administrative state. And they want to make the protocols that governed us over these years permanent. Already, European governments are issuing stay-at-home recommendations for the heat.
If you had told me that this was the essence of what was happening in 2020 or 2021, I would have rolled my eyes in disbelief. But all evidence Brownstone has gathered since then has shown exactly that. In this case, the censorship was a predictable part of the mix. The Red Scare mutated a century later to become the virus scare in which the real pathogen they tried to kill was your willingness to think for yourself.
Deny, Deflect, Defend: The Censors’ Strategy on Display
Brownstone Institute | July 20, 2023
Despite the uproar surrounding the case, Judge Terry Doughty’s order in Missouri v. Biden was straightforward. It prohibited government actors from colluding with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech.”
In other words, the defendants – including the White House, the CDC, and the Department of Justice – must obey the Constitution they swore to uphold by adhering to the First Amendment. The censorship regime responded with familiar doublethink: denying the censorship exists while arguing that it must continue.
On Tuesday, the court held a hearing to consider whether Judge Doughty’s order should be reinstated. The oral arguments revealed the government’s three-part strategy: deny, deflect, and defend. Its lawyers denied the established facts, deflected from the controversy, and defended its actions through outlandish justifications.
In doing so, they demonstrated the censorship apparatus’s lack of remorse for stripping Americans of their constitutional liberties. Even worse, they insist that the totalitarian operations must continue.
- Deny: Blame the Facts
At the hearing, government defendants maintained that plaintiffs have manufactured the case. Like their allies in the media, they argued that allegations of censorship were nothing more than “an assortment of out-of-context quotes and select portions of documents that distort the record to build a narrative that the bare facts simply do not support.”
The censorship is nonexistent, they insist. It is a “thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory,” in the words of Larry Tribe.
Unlike issues of legal interpretation, this is a factual matter. Either government actors colluded with Big Tech to suppress Americans’ free speech rights or they did not. Discovery revealed extensive documentation proving that they did, and the defendants make no effort to explain how Judge Doughty’s 155-page order detailing dozens of violations of the First Amendment is merely “an assortment of out-of-context quotes.”
Journalists including Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Berenson have detailed the “censorship industrial complex,” the entangled web of government agencies, NGOs, and private-public partnerships that seek to control the free flow of information. But reviewing that series of connections and collusions is unnecessary – the defendants’ recorded statements contradict their denial.
“Thank you for the ongoing collaboration,” one bureaucrat wrote after a US Government “industry meeting” with Big Tech companies in October 2020.
White House Advisor Rob Flaherty took a different tack in his demands to Twitter: “Please remove this account immediately.” The company complied within an hour. “Are you guys fucking serious?” he wrote to company officials after they failed to censor critics of the Covid vaccine. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.” His boss was similarly direct regarding posts from RFK, Jr. “Hey Folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
There is no need to recreate Judge Doughty’s 155-page opinion, but the denial of the censorship regime is facially absurd. Alex Berenson’s case, the revelations of the Twitter files, and the undisputed facts of Missouri v. Biden refute the defendant’s premise.
- Deflect: Blame the Russians
Rather than address the case’s inconvenient facts, government lawyers quickly pivoted to their second tactic: deflection. They avoided the case and Judge Doughty’s ruling in favor of a hypothetical narrative.
At one point, they defended government agencies’ right to issue health advisories that say “the vaccines work or smoking is dangerous.” They argued, “There’s nothing unlawful about the government’s use of the bully pulpit.” That reasoning was uncontroversial, but it was not responsive to Judge Doughty’s order.
Under Doughty’s ruling, the White House can denounce journalists, deliver press briefings, publish on social media, enjoy the bully pulpit, and take advantage of the friendly media environment; it just can’t encourage private companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
The defense conflates free speech with control over information to deflect attention from the censorship at issue. The tactic is not limited to the government’s powers under the order.
During the hearing, the judge asked the defense attorneys whether saying “the COVID vaccine does not work” is constitutionally protected free speech. “That speech itself could be protected,” the attorney responded at one point. After repeatedly refusing to concede that the First Amendment protects political opinions that deviate from President Biden’s agenda, he resorted to Russian fear-mongering.
“Let’s say it was spoken by a covert Russian operative, that would not be protected by free speech,” he told the judge. Like the issue of the government’s “use of the bully pulpit,” restricting Russian operatives’ speech is unrelated to Judge Doughty’s order.
The attorney’s refusal to defend basic First Amendment liberties was telling. The defense instinctively changed the issue from free speech to national security, relying on an oft-used fear tactic to subvert the First Amendment.
These deflections deliberately obfuscated the purpose of the hearings. Defendants implied the plaintiffs sought to ban anti-smoking PSAs and fund Kremlin media campaigns. Like their strategy of denial, the goal was to avoid discussion of their extensive censorship operations.
- Defend: Blame the Virus
When the government was forced to address the case, it resorted to claiming that Covid justified the abolition of constitutional liberties. The pandemic-made-us-censor argument continued the pervasive Doublethink. Eradicating democratic norms was necessary to protect democracy, they reasoned. Previously, the Biden Administration told the court that reversing the order was necessary “to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Defendants argued that the evidence of the case vindicates the government actors. The attorneys said “It shows, in the face of urgent crises, a once-in-a-generation pandemic and bipartisan findings of foreign interference with U.S. elections, the government responsibly exercised its prerogative to speak on matters of public concern.”
They continued, “It promoted accurate information to protect the public and our democracy from these threats. And it used the bully pulpit to call on various sectors of society, including social media companies, to make efforts to reduce the spread of misinformation.”
Demonstrating no remorse, they remain proud of their efforts to usurp the First Amendment because of their self-professed noble aims. They expect this defense to evade judicial scrutiny.
When confronted with past censorship – including CISA’s “switchboarding” leading up to the 2020 election – defendants reasoned that prior conduct was not pertinent to the case because plaintiffs could not prove it will happen again.
They described the Department of Homeland Security’s unconstitutional censorship campaigns as “occurring long in the past.” They argued that health officials’ emails working to silence opponents should be disregarded because they were sent “more than two and a half years ago.”
The censorship apparatus is asking the courts to trust them to act responsibly despite repeatedly demonstrating its indifference, or perhaps disdain, toward the First Amendment.
While the government’s denials and deflections are insulting to the citizens they purport to represent, we must remain focused on their aim: they appealed Doughty’s order because they oppose constitutional restraints on their control of information.
We would hope that requiring the government to obey the Constitution would be uncontroversial; now, it may signify whether the rule of law still stands in the United States.
RFK Jr. Pleads with Fellow Democrats for More Civility and Less Censorship
By Dan Hart | The Washington Stand | July 20, 2023
A fiery hearing held Thursday by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” unexpectedly became an opportunity for Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reflect on civility and the seminal importance of free speech in the wake of Democratic committee members accusing him of being racist and anti-Semitic.
In his opening statement, Kennedy announced that he would be setting aside his prepared remarks so that he could address the accusations of racism and anti-Semitism leveled at him by ranking member Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-Fla.), and others. Kennedy’s testimony ended up becoming an impassioned plea for Americans of all political persuasions to become more empathetic of each other and to have greater respect for the free speech protections enshrined in the Constitution.
“Debate — congenial, respectful debate — is the fertilizer, it’s the water, it’s the sunlight for our democracy,” he said, after noting that his speech in April announcing his Democratic 2024 presidential bid was deplatformed by YouTube. “We need to be talking to each other.”
Kennedy then referred to a letter signed by 102 of his fellow Democrats in Congress that attempted to get him barred from testifying at the hearing because of his supposed “anti-Semitism,” noting that “this itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.”
“Censorship is antithetical to our [Democratic] party,” Kennedy continued. “It was appalling to my father, to my uncle [John F. Kennedy], to FDR, Harry Truman, Thomas Jefferson. … [Opposition to censorship] sets us apart from all the other forms of government. We need to be able to talk. The First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.”
He went on to observe that the Biden administration invented the word “malinformation” to censor him and others. “There was no misinformation on my Instagram account. Everything I put on that account was cited and sourced by peer-reviewed publications or government databases. … I was removed for something they called ‘malinformation.’ Malinformation is information that is true but is inconvenient to the government, that they don’t want people to hear. That’s antithetical to the values of our country.”
Kennedy further explained that after he announced his candidacy for the presidency, it was harder for the administration and social media platforms to censor him. “So now I’m subject to this new form of censorship which is called ‘targeted propaganda.’ … I am being censored here … through smears, through misinterpretations of what I’ve said, through lies, through association, which is a tactic that we all thought had been discredited and dispensed with after the Army-McCarthy hearings in the 1950s. But those same weapons are now being deployed against me to silence me.”
Kennedy then launched into a fervent appeal for the Democratic Party to turn away from polarization, censorship, and demonization.
“This toxic polarization is destroying our country today. How do we deal with that? This kind of division is more dangerous for our country than any time since the American Civil War. … Every Democrat on this committee believes we need to end that polarization. Do you think you can do that by censoring people? I’m telling you: you cannot. That only aggravates and amplifies the problem. We need to start being kind to each other. We need to start being respectful to each other. We need to start restoring the comity to this chamber and to the rest of America. It has to start here.”
After noting that his uncle, former Senator Ted Kennedy, was able to pass a record amount of legislation by reaching across the aisle, Kennedy discussed the cordial relationship between Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and former Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.
“There are no two people in the country who feel more differently about American politics than these two people, and yet they are friends,” he observed. “Dennis attended his children’s basketball games, attended his daughter’s wedding. This is how we need to start treating each other in this country. We have to stop trying to destroy each other, to marginalize, to vilify, to gaslight each other. We have to find that place inside of ourselves of light, of empathy, of compassion. And above all, we need to elevate the Constitution of the United States which was written for hard times. That has to be the premier compass for all of our activities.”
Immediately after Kennedy finished his statement, Wasserman Schultz moved to halt the hearing, claiming that his past statements on race violated the committee rules. Her motion was voted down. Later in the hearing, Wasserman Schultz refused to allow Kennedy to fully respond to her direct questioning of him regarding his reference to an NIH-funded study that suggested that the coronavirus may have been engineered to target particular ethnicities. Instead of allowing Kennedy to provide context for what he said, Wasserman Schultz repeatedly interrupted his attempted response by stating “reclaiming my time” over and over again.
Later in the hearing, Kennedy issued a stern warning about where government censorship of the citizenry can lead.
“A government that can censor its critics has license for every atrocity,” he underscored. “It is the beginning of totalitarianism. There’s never been a time in history when we look back, and the guys who were censoring people were the good guys. All of us grew up reading Arthur Koestler, Robert Heinlein, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, and they were all saying the same thing: once you start censoring, you’re on your way to dystopia and totalitarianism.”
Ireland’s public broadcaster – undeclared earnings bad, endorsing The Great Reset good?
By Gavin O’Reilly | OffGuardian | July 17, 2023
Over the past several weeks, Ireland has been rocked by a scandal related to the significant undeclared earnings of Ryan Tubridy, the most prominent presenter on the public broadcaster of the 26-County State, RTÉ, and the long-time host of its flagship talk show, The Late Late Show, until his departure earlier this year – prior to the revelations related to his salary becoming public knowledge.
In response, Director General of RTÉ Dee Forbes tendered her resignation, and both Tubridy and his agent Noel Kelly have been brought before a government tribunal to account for the undeclared earnings, something that has received significant media coverage across Ireland, including OJ Simpson-style live television coverage of the proceedings.
What has been noticeable however is how this extensive media attention lies in stark contrast to the virtually non-existent mainstream media coverage of RTÉ’s endorsement of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset initiative over the past three years, intended to usher in a totalitarian global corporate dictatorship, where technology is used to stifle and censor debate.
From the outset of the ‘Covid Pandemic’ in March 2020, Ireland, like numerous other countries, introduced stringent lockdowns under the guise of preventing the spread of an alleged virus. In reality, the forced closure of vast swathes of society served the purpose of making it virtually impossible for smaller businesses to operate, thus creating a greater dependence on corporate outlets such as Amazon.
As a result, the global lockdowns saw the greatest upwards transfer of wealth from the working and middle-classes in history, with corporate elements receiving upwards of $1tn in profit.
With Taoiseach Leo Varadkar being a WEF ‘Young Global Leader’, RTÉ was fully complicit in endorsing the ‘Pandemic’ narrative, WEF-linked scientist Luke O’Neill being a regular guest on The Late Late Show under Ryan Tubridy in order to further its promotion.
The public broadcaster would also condemn Irish anti-lockdown protests as being ‘organised by the far-right’ in lock-step with similar mainstream media descriptions being ascribed to protests in New Zealand, France and Canada – each country also being under the respective rule of WEF ‘Young Global Leaders’, Jacinda Ardern, Emmanuel Macron and Justin Trudeau.
What would be perhaps the most sinister aspect of RTÉ’s two-year promotion of the ‘Pandemic’ narrative however, was the use of children to promote uptake of the ‘Covid’ Vaccine during the 2020 edition of The Late Late Toy Show, a seasonal edition of the programme used to showcase that Christmas’s latest toy selection, one that is traditionally very popular amongst families with young children.
Indeed, Ryan Tubridy himself would later double down on his promotion of the vaccine by infamously using his radio platform to encourage listeners to disinvite guests from weddings who had not been vaccinated, his incendiary remarks coming amidst a time when access to bars, restaurants, hairdressers and gyms in the southern Irish state, was forbidden to those who had not yet received a ‘Covid’ jab and the resulting digital QR code that would subsequently be placed on their smartphone.
This enforced segregation, in Ireland and further afield, served as a dry-run for the introduction of mandatory digital ID, a key part of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ that the WEF envisages will come about as a result of the Great Reset, with the ultimate goal being a cashless society. One where the corporate-government alliance has full control over its citizen’s financial transactions, and can easily impose sanctions against those it deems to be dissidents.
Indeed, this very situation would play out during last year’s Freedom Convoy in Canada, when Justin Trudeau would use emergency legislation to freeze the bank accounts of Truckers protesting against his decision to mandate that truck drivers re-entering Canada from the US had to be vaccinated. A truly dystopian move, and one that could be far more easily implemented in a society with no physical cash.
RTÉ’s two-year endorsement of the introduction of such a totalitarian society has come in for little criticism since the sudden collapse of the ‘Pandemic’ narrative last January however, the undeclared earnings of its chief propagandist being a far more newsworthy item it would seem.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook and supported on Patreon.
Spending Bill Proposals Include Provisions To Limit Elements of The Censorship Industrial Complex
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | July 20, 2023
There is currently an unprecedented legal battle raging in the US between several state attorneys general, a judge who is siding with them, versus a court of appeals that is reluctant; and there’s the activities of the White House that prompted it all.
It’s the case of serious accusations leveled at the Biden administration and major social platforms of colluding to suppress free speech; and even though the developments in the lawsuit so far give some reason for optimism, those in Congress who are vocal about the need to separate the state and “the Church of Big Tech,” as it were, are not resting easy.
Whether or not the First Amendment case results in a resounding victory for the anti-censorship side in the battle, some Republicans are trying to make sure that there is actual legislation in place, rather than only a possible precedent set by a court ruling, to protect speech.
Currently, this is happening in the form of two House spending bills (here and here) that concern the likes of the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – but not exclusively – which basically seek to “defund state-driven censorship,” i.e., these federal agencies’ collusion efforts with Big Tech, the extent of which is shockingly documented in the Twitter Files.
One proposal is to ban the DHS and a group known as the Global Engagement Center from banding together to police online speech.
It comes as Congress is considering the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that is approved every year. A provision would now prevent the Department of Defense (DoD) from bankrolling organizations like NewsGuard, the Global Disinformation Index, and Graphika Technologies.
The wording of the bill is stark: if passed, the Pentagon (DoD) would be banned from giving money to groups that, “advise the censorship or blacklisting of news sources based on subjective criteria or political biases” – doing so under the guise of combating “misinformation,” “foreign propaganda,” and/or performing “fact checking.”
Similar provisions can be found in the House bill drafts that cover the said agencies, but also the Executive Office of the President, the Justice Department, the FBI – and many more.
The Global Engagement Center, meanwhile, is singled out as effectively the kingpin in what the bills refer to as the “censorship industrial complex.”
House Republicans Consider Holding Mark Zuckerberg in Contempt of Congress Over Failure To Disclose Censorship Docs
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | July 18, 2023
According to sources relaying information to Fox, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, a Republican representative from Ohio, is contemplating levying contempt charges against Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. The move may transpire as early as next week.
The center of the brewing controversy lies in Meta’s failure to disclose internal correspondences pertaining to its censorship policies. Ever since his rise to the helm of the influential House Judiciary Committee earlier this year, Jordan has been relentless in his pursuit of Meta’s internal documents. This scrutiny has intensified following the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in January.
Meta found itself on the receiving end of a subpoena from the Jordan-led Judiciary Committee back in February, demanding documentation related to the company’s censorship practices. Jordan reiterated his request in May, indicating that Meta’s response to the subpoena was inadequate and lacked the required internal communications among the company’s employees.
The letter from Jordan stated, “Meta’s rolling productions to date have not included material the Committee knows is, or has reason to believe may be, in the company’s possession and that is responsive to the subpoena […] If Meta fails to comply in full with the subpoena’s demands, the Committee may be forced to consider the use of one or more enforcement mechanisms.”
In his plea, Jordan specifically asked Meta to divulge any records that involve “internal meeting notes or discussions of government statements, requests, referrals, or recommendations related to content moderation, including certain documents commemorating findings and/or recommendations regarding whether to apply enforcement actions to purported disinformation.”
When FOX Business approached a Meta spokesperson for comment, they responded, “We have shared over 50,000 pages of documents in response to the committee’s request and have made nearly a dozen current and former employees available to discuss external and internal issues. We look forward to continuing to work with the committee moving forward.”
Nonetheless, a source with firsthand knowledge claims that none of the supplied documents or responses contain the specific internal communications requested by Jordan.
Mental Health Round-Ups: The Next Phase of the Government’s War on Thought Crimes
By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | July 18, 2023
Get ready for the next phase of the government’s war on thought crimes: mental health round-ups and involuntary detentions.
Under the guise of public health and safety, the government could use mental health care as a pretext for targeting and locking up dissidents, activists and anyone unfortunate enough to be placed on a government watch list.
If we don’t nip this in the bud, and soon, this will become yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the First and Fourth Amendments at will.
This is how it begins.
In communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, based solely on their own judgment, even if those individuals pose no danger to others.
In New York City, for example, you could find yourself forcibly hospitalized for suspected mental illness if you carry “firmly held beliefs not congruent with cultural ideas,” exhibit a “willingness to engage in meaningful discussion,” have “excessive fears of specific stimuli,” or refuse “voluntary treatment recommendations.”
While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with advances in mass surveillance technologies, artificial intelligence-powered programs that can track people by their biometrics and behavior, mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, precrime initiatives, red flag gun laws, and mental health first-aid programs aimed at training gatekeepers to identify who might pose a threat to public safety, they could well signal a tipping point in the government’s efforts to penalize those engaging in so-called “thought crimes.”
As the AP reports, federal officials are already looking into how to add “‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools,” to its surveillance toolkit.
Now, through the use of red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, and pre-crime policing prevention programs, the groundwork is being laid that would allow the government to weaponize the label of mental illness as a means of exiling those whistleblowers, dissidents and freedom fighters who refuse to march in lockstep with its dictates.
Of course, this is all part of a larger trend in American governance whereby dissent is criminalized and pathologized, and dissenters are censored, silenced, declared unfit for society, labelled dangerous or extremist, or turned into outcasts and exiled.
Red flag gun laws (which authorize government officials to seize guns from individuals viewed as a danger to themselves or others), are a perfect example of this mindset at work and the ramifications of where this could lead.
As The Washington Post reports, these red flag gun laws “allow a family member, roommate, beau, law enforcement officer or any type of medical professional to file a petition [with a court] asking that a person’s home be temporarily cleared of firearms. It doesn’t require a mental-health diagnosis or an arrest.”
With these red flag gun laws, the stated intention is to disarm individuals who are potential threats.
While in theory it appears perfectly reasonable to want to disarm individuals who are clearly suicidal and/or pose an “immediate danger” to themselves or others, where the problem arises is when you put the power to determine who is a potential danger in the hands of government agencies, the courts and the police.
Remember, this is the same government that uses the words “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” interchangeably.
This is the same government whose agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports using automated eyes and ears, social media, behavior sensing software, and citizen spies to identify potential threats.
This is the same government that keeps re-upping the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which allows the military to detain American citizens with no access to friends, family or the courts if the government believes them to be a threat.
This is the same government that has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state.
For instance, if you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you could be at the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.
Moreover, as a New York Times editorial warns, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the police if you are afraid that the government is plotting to confiscate your firearms, if you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law, or if you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car.
Let that sink in a moment.
Now consider the ramifications of giving police that kind of authority in order to preemptively neutralize a potential threat, and you’ll understand why some might view these mental health round-ups with trepidation.
No matter how well-meaning the politicians make these encroachments on our rights appear, in the right (or wrong) hands, benevolent plans can easily be put to malevolent purposes.
Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation.
The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on illegal immigration, the war on COVID-19: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the government’s hands. For instance, the very same mass surveillance technologies that were supposedly so necessary to fight the spread of COVID-19 are now being used to stifle dissent, persecute activists, harass marginalized communities, and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are moving fast down that slippery slope to an authoritarian society in which the only opinions, ideas and speech expressed are the ones permitted by the government and its corporate cohorts.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
Jim Jordan Calls on FBI Director To Amend Testimony on FBI’s Social Media “Misinformation” Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 19, 2023
Jim Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has raised questions regarding the veracity of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s recent testimony on the bureau’s role in curbing social media “misinformation.”
Jordan, along with Rep. Mike Johnson, who chairs the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, have sent a letter to Wray offering him a chance to clarify his statements which appeared to be contradicted by information possessed by the committee and federal court findings.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
Wray had previously stated that the FBI’s emphasis was on thwarting harmful disinformation stemming from foreign adversaries. He had stressed that the bureau doesn’t influence or control social media content, but instead may alert media companies about particular content. The decision of further action, according to Wray, remained within the purview of the respective social media companies.
However, Jordan and Johnson drew attention to Wray’s testimony conflicting with a federal court ruling in Missouri v. Biden. The ruling stated that the FBI had flagged domestic speech as potential misinformation and had significantly urged social media platforms to take specific content-related actions. The court had recently impeded key agencies of the Biden administration from liaising with social media companies, citing potential First Amendment breaches.
Jordan and Johnson also highlighted the court’s finding that the FBI did not attempt to distinguish the origin of misinformation reports related to the 2020 election. The court criticized the FBI for misleading social media platforms about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
The congressional duo also underscored their findings that the FBI had followed up with social media companies and asked for updates regarding flagged accounts. They also suggested that the FBI provided unsolicited advice on whether content would infringe the companies’ terms of service.
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Woolsey Fire started at Santa Susana Field Lab — where “radioactive materials released were never accurately measured”
By John Laforge | CounterPunch | November 30, 2018
In my Nov. 16 column, I reported on potential radiation risks posed by California’s Woolsey wildfire having burned over parts or all of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory—south of Simi Valley, Calif., 30 miles outside Los Angeles—site of at least four partial or total nuclear reactor meltdowns.
The field laboratory operated 10 experimental reactors and conducted rocket engine tests. In his 2014 book Atomic Accidents, researcher James Mahaffey writes, “The cores in four experimental reactors on site … melted.” Reactor core melts always result in the release of large amounts of radioactive gases and particles. Clean up of the deeply contaminated site has not been conducted in spite of a 2010 agreement.
Los Angeles’s KABC-7 TV reported Nov. 13 that the Santa Susana lab site “appears to be the origin of the Woolsey Fire” which has torched over 96,000 acres. Southern Calif. Public Radio said, “According to Cal Fire, the Woolsey Fire started on the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 8 … on the Santa Susana site.” … continue
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