Spy letter about Hunter Biden shows how Dems are undermining democracy
By James Bovard | April 21, 2023
In the closing address at last month’s Summit for Democracy, Secretary of State Antony Blinken piously proclaimed, “As President Biden has said, democracy doesn’t happen by accident.
“It requires constant effort.”
Or in the case of the 2020 election, it required deceiving American voters.
The House Judiciary Committee revealed that Blinken, then a top Biden adviser, orchestrated the letter from 51 top intelligence officials claiming that Hunter Biden’s laptop was nothing but a Russian disinformation campaign.
Blinken contacted former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, who swayed scores of other former top officials — including three ex-CIA chiefs — to sign that letter to debunk the biggest threat to the Biden presidential campaign.
In the final presidential debate on Oct. 22, Joe Biden invoked that letter from former intelligence officials to deflect Donald Trump’s attacks on Biden family corruption.
Polls show that Biden would have lost the election if the media had accurately reported the contents of that laptop.
Biden pretended that letter arose spontaneously from the patriotic sentiments of former officials.
But the letter was “triggered” by Blinken’s call to Morell, who then contacted his former colleagues.
Blinken’s ploy may have swayed Biden to appoint him secretary of state.
The media are mostly ignoring or downplaying the revelations of Blinken’s machinations.
If the roles were reversed, cable news and front-page headlines would be screaming about a villainous Trump operative pulling official strings to whitewash the Donald.
MSNBC would be howling about the death of democracy, and CNN hosts would be sobbing hysterically about the dirty deal.
But when Team Biden does it: nothing to see here, move along.
How many presidential elections can Democrats seek to dishonestly rig without suffering any penalty flags from media scorekeepers?
Shortly before the 2016 election, senior Hillary Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan peddled false claims linking the Trump Organization to Russia.
The Federal Election Commission last month levied a $113,000 fine on the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for their deceptive funding to cover up their role in the Steele dossier.
The FBI, which was apparently willing to pay any price to defeat Trump, offered former British spy Christopher Steele $1 million in cash if he could prove the charges in that dossier before the 2016 election.
There was no proof — but that didn’t stop the FBI from using the dossier to get warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Jake Sullivan is now Biden’s national security adviser.
Did he get that gig in part because of his willingness to lie for Democratic kingpins?
Avril Haines is Biden’s director of national intelligence.
Did signing the Hunter laptop letter help her snare that plum job?
The letter Blinken finagled would not have been so influential if journalists were not shamelessly docile to federal job titles.
Inside the Beltway, former intelligence kingpins are viewed like royalty or at least second-tier aristocracy.
But the CIA has a long record of secretly intervening in dozens of foreign elections.
In 2019, former CIA director Mike Pompeo summarized his agency’s motif: “We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses.”
Former CIA chief James Woolsey insisted in 2018 that the CIA intervenes in elections “only for a very good cause in the interests of democracy.”
Yet the letter from former spooks was instantly revered by journalists as if it were handed down from Mt. Sinai.
For the Washington political elite, defeating Donald Trump was the ultimate good cause to save democracy.
Biden talks as if his 2020 election victory was the result of practically a divine incarnation of the “will of the people.”
Unfortunately, presidential elections are irrevocable regardless of how many voters were conned.
How much official deceit can democracy survive?
Any notion of “informed consent” by voters is a mirage if federal agencies and former officials have the power to endlessly distort the news.
Shortly after he became secretary of state, Blinken boasted that the US government doesn’t sweep problems “under the rug. . . . We deal with them in the daylight, with full transparency.”
That pledge apparently did not extend to Blinken’s own tampering with the 2020 election.
What else is Blinken hiding, and when will the next shoe fall?
AOC Calls For Tucker Carlson to be Banned From Television
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 24, 2023
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called for Tucker Carlson to be banned from television over the nebulous accusation that he is ‘inciting violence’.
AOC made the comments during an interview with former White House press secretary Jen Psaki on MSNBC.
The lawmaker highlighted, “Federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.”
“And when you look at what Tucker Carlson and what of these other folks on Fox do, it is very very clearly incitement of violence, very clearly incitement of violence and that is the line that we have to be willing to contend with,” she said.
Despite accusing Carlson of “very clearly” inciting violence, AOC failed to provide one single example.
Commentators responded by asserting that AOC was simply using a nebulous justification to completely silence her political adversaries.
“Their goal is the criminalization of political opposition,” said Auron MacIntyre. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar or a fool.”
Journalist Glenn Greenwald argued that AOC was essentially calling for a form of fascism.
As we previously highlighted, Ocasio-Cortez has a history of making fake claims about people supposedly inciting violence.
She previously accused Ted Cruz of “almost” having her “murdered” during the January 6 riot, one of a number of claims about what happened that day that subsequently turned out to be false.
Some pointed out that AOC herself has legitimized violence before in the context of “marginalized communities” being encouraged to riot.
It’s okay when we do it!
UK minister calls for tech execs to be jailed if they ignore censorship demands
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 23, 2023
UK’s Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has recommended jail time for social media bosses who refuse to remove “harmful” content from their platforms. The proposal is part of the authoritarian Online Safety Bill.
The bill would give broadcasting regulator Ofcom regulatory authority over social media platforms. The platforms would be required to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on protected characteristics like race, religion, gender, disability, and gender identity.
Citing the protection of children, Donelan said that social media executives who ignore the requirement and restrictions of the Online Safety Bill should go to jail, The Telegraph reported.
The measure would be used as a last resort for executives that “have consented or connived in ignoring enforceable requirements” to remove content such as “disinformation” by a foreign state.
Currently, the bill would see companies fined up to 10% of global turnover for failing to comply with the censorship demands.
Jewish Organizations Are Close To Legally Ending Free Speech On The Internet
By Joseph Jordan | National Justice Party | April 19, 2023
The Supreme Court is currently authoring its opinion on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, an enormously consequential decision that could radically change how we use the internet.
The decision, which could be released any time from now to July due to the complex and politically fraught nature of the case, has pit several Jewish organizations against a dwindling number of civil liberties groups willing to defend the Constitutional right to free speech.
The case combines Gonzalez v. Google LLC and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, two lawsuits which assert that social media platforms are legally liable for acts of violence committed by groups or individuals that utilize their services to promote their ideas.
SCOTUS’ decision to grant certiorari to Gonzalez shows the immense political pull Zionist groups — foreign and domestic — have inside the American system.
Gonzalez is a brazen display of foreign interference by an Israeli NGO called Shurat HaDin, which seeks to challenge the standing of Section 230 in the name of Nohemi Gonzalez, a California exchange student who was killed during a 2015 ISIS terrorist attack in Paris.
Shurat HaDin has made strategic lawsuits seeking to undermine American laws protecting free speech its central cause, though previous attempts by the group to attack Section 230 have been dismissed or defeated in courts. The Supreme Court typically reserves certiorari for cases with mixed rulings, but they have made a special exception for Gonzalez, which was defeated in lower courts and beaten again in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The argument in Taamneh is similar to Gonzalez, though this case is being argued in the name of a Jordanian national who was killed in a 2017 Islamic State attack in Turkey. Taamneh was able to achieve victory in the same Ninth Circuit court, which curiously ignored Section 230 in Twitter’s case and instead found them liable under the Anti-Terrorism Act. Twitter’s relative tolerance for free speech compared to the Jewish-owned Google monopoly in the biased Ninth Circuit is likely to have played a role in the creation of drastically different rulings on similar facts.
Amicus briefs in these Supreme Court proceedings have brought together a united Jewish front against the First Amendment. The Zionist Organization of America, which supports Gonzalez, is playing the role of “bad cop” on Google, while other Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League are staying “neutral” in the case, stating that any ruling should merely encourage the company to continue its good work engaging in strict censorious and editorializing practices against right-wing speech. Google put content moderation in the hands of the ADL as early as 2017, though the Zionist lobbyists have still complained that current technology is not thorough enough when it comes to censoring their political opponents on Youtube.
On the Twitter leg, the landscape is different, with Jewish litigants showing far less patience by unleashing a furious legal onslaught attacking the company.
The Zachor Legal Institute, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Simon Wiesenthal Center and others are arguing that Twitter and other social media companies deliberately and knowingly recruit for violent terrorists and are thus responsible for the harm caused by the activities of criminal users.
The ADL’s amicus brief reiterates many of these points, but with supplements generated through its questionable in-house data collection practices, where the Jews cite themselves as an authoritative source supporting the idea that Twitter and Youtube are co-conspirators in the financing and spread of terrorism. The filing goes after the real target of these lawsuits by emphasizing the supposed availability of “white supremacist” content on social media platforms to make its point.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed in favor of leaving Section 230 untouched, explaining that even the most advanced algorithms can’t always distinguish between illegal calls to imminent violence and First Amendment protected content, thus opening up infinite possibilities for crippling litigation. In its public statement, the EFF wrote that “if the plaintiffs in these cases convince the Court to narrow the legal interpretation of Section 230 and increase platforms’ legal exposure for generally knowing harmful material is present on their services, the significant protections that Congress envisioned in enacting this law would be drastically eroded.”
So far, SCOTUS’ engagement with this case has exposed the limitations of having a small group of judges do work that is the responsibility of the US Congress. The consensus among legal observers on the oral argument phase of this case, which was streamed, is that the justices were flustered and confused. SCOTUS judges have even admitted that they are out of their depth, while previous supporters of altering Section 230 like Clarence Thomas appeared much more tepid on the question as of late.
Experts believe that the Supreme Court is leaning in favor of keeping Section 230, though this view should be questioned. If SCOTUS wants to keep the status quo, why did they agree to hear this case in the first place?
Watching First Amendment safeguards for online speech being debated, and thus threatened, could further encourage companies already engaging in widespread censorship. Virtually all major social media companies already have FBI operatives controlling their speech compliance departments, making the private-public distinctions being discussed farcical.
Even if big tech is able to escape from this case unscathed, the willingness of our judicial system to entertain repealing Section 230 will strongly accelerate the ongoing campaign to suppress journalists, erode free thought and interfere in the open exchange of ideas even further.
No matter what SCOTUS’ final verdict looks like, the era of unprecedented freedom to think, read and believe what we want that the internet once provided is never coming back.
Facebook Should Keep Removing COVID ‘Misinformation,’ Oversight Board Says
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | April 21, 2023
The oversight board for Facebook’s parent company, Meta, on Thursday recommended the social media giant “maintain its current policy” of removing COVID-19 “misinformation” from its platform until the World Health Organization declares an end to the global pandemic.
The board made the recommendation despite widespread outcry about social media censorship after the Twitter Files and several ongoing lawsuits revealed collusion between state actors and social media companies to censor dissenting opinions and factual information that contradict official narratives, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The recommendation came in response to a request by Meta in July that the oversight board — an independent panel of tech and legal experts selected by Meta to weigh in on content policy issues — assess whether “a less restrictive approach” to censoring misinformation might “better align with its values and human rights responsibilities.”
Meta’s current misinformation policy sets different categories of harm content might cause, making that content subject to removal. Content is censored if the platform deems that it contributes to the “risk of imminent physical harm,” could cause “interference” with the functioning of political processes or contains “certain highly deceptive manipulated media.”
But the board didn’t find inconsistency between Meta’s “misinformation policy” and its “values and human rights responsibilities.” Instead, it said Meta’s current “exceptional measures” of eliminating disinformation are “justified.”
The board also urged Meta to “begin a process” to reassess which “misleading claims” it removes, to be more transparent about government requests for information, to consider making its “misinformation” policies more localized and to investigate how the architecture of the platform facilitates the spread of misinformation.
Meta said Thursday it will publicly respond to the board’s non-binding recommendations within 60 days.
Suzanne Nossel, a board member and CEO of PEN America, told The Washington Post that the board’s recommendations are not just relevant to COVID-19, but could shape Meta’s approach to anticipated future global health emergencies.
“The decision is less perhaps about the COVID pandemic per se or exclusively than about … how Meta should handle its responsibilities in the context of a fast-moving public health emergency,” she said.
How Facebook and Instagram censor COVID ‘misinformation’
The recommendation specifically assessed Meta’s “misinformation about health during public emergencies” policy, under which it removes 80 distinct “COVID-19 misinformation claims” posted on its platforms, such as claiming masking or social distancing lack efficacy or that the vaccines can have serious side effects.
Between March 2020 and July 2022, Facebook and Instagram, also owned by Meta, removed 27 million instances of COVID-19 “misinformation,” 1.3 million of which were restored on appeal.
The social media giant also designates a second type of COVID-19 “misinformation,” which does not reach the standard of removal, but is still subject to manipulation by the platform.
For example, information in that category is “fact-checked” where it is labeled as “false” or “missing context,” and then linked to a fact-checking article. That content is then also demoted so that it appears less frequently and prominently in users’ feeds.
Meta also treated other information with what it calls “neutral labels,” where it labeled posts with statements such as “some unapproved COVID-19 treatments may cause serious harm” and then directed people to Meta’s COVID-19 information center, which provides approved information from public health authorities.
Last July, the company said it had connected more than 2 billion people across 189 countries to “trustworthy information” through the portal. But it decided to stop using the neutral labels in December 2022, to ensure they would remain effective in other health emergencies, according to the oversight board’s report.
The basis for determining what is misinformation is whether the information conforms to what public health authorities deem to be true, according to the board’s recommendation and the Facebook policy page.
But throughout the pandemic, public health authorities have had to concede they were wrong about things — and that they lied about things — they had previously pronounced to be science-backed facts.
These “facts” include, for example, flip-flopping on masks, the lab-leak hypothesis, the effectiveness of natural immunity and numerous claims about vaccine efficacy, including that it stops transmission.
That means the platforms eliminated and demoted facts and information that were true. Even CNN conceded that “the company applied the labels to a wide range of claims both true and untrue about vaccines, treatments and other topics related to the virus.”
‘This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us’
The board recommendations don’t mention the events that led Meta to consider changing its policies — controversy over recent revelations about how government officials coerced social media companies into toeing the government line.
In 2021, President Biden directly criticized Facebook and other platforms, saying they allowed “vaccine misinformation” to spread and they contributed to deaths from COVID-19.
He said they were “killing people” and that the pandemic was only “among the unvaccinated.”
Biden’s accusation was accompanied by threats of regulatory action from from high-ranking members of the administration — including White House Press Secretary Jennifer Psaki, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — if the social media companies did not comply.
Psaki said government officials were in regular touch with social media platforms, telling them what — and in some cases whom — to censor, Jenin Younes reported.
DHS even created a video in 2021, since removed from youtube, encouraging children to report their own family members to Facebook for ‘disinformation’ if they challenge U.S. government narratives on COVID-19.
Writing in Tablet Magazine this month, civil liberties attorney Jenin Younes recounted the story of a Facebook support group for people who experienced adverse events related to the COVID-19 vaccines being shut down for spreading harmful “misinformation.”
Last month, in the Twitter Files release about Stanford University’s Virality project, Matt Taiibbi revealed that Stanford, with the backing of several government agencies, had created a cross-platform digital ticketing system that was processing censorship requests for all of the social media platforms, including Meta’s.
The Virality Project claimed its objective “is to detect, analyze, and respond to incidents of false and misleading narratives related to COVID-19 vaccines across online ecosystems.”
Taibbi said the Virality Project was “defining true things as disinformation or misinformation or malformation,” which he said signifies “a new evolution of the disinformation process away from trying to figure out what’s true and what’s not and just going directly to political narrative.”
That reflects Meta’s policy to censor statements that don’t conform to official public health authority doctrine as “misinformation.”
Meta’s policies do not mention the tips and directions it receives from government agencies about misinformation.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on Tuesday published an op-ed in The Hill calling for an end to censorship practices, pointing out that statements about COVID-19 made on platforms like Facebook that are now supported by evidence were flagged as disinformation.
”Statements including my own, that our government once labeled as ‘disinformation,’ such as the efficacy of masks, naturally acquired immunity, and the origins of COVID-19, are now supported by evidence,” he said.
“In reality, the most significant source of disinformation during the pandemic, with the most influence and greatest impact on people’s lives, was the U.S. government,” he added.
Rand pointed to critiques of DHS’s “abusive practices” by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union and highlighted a Brennan Center for Justice report published last month that found at least 12 DHS programs for tracking what Americans are saying online.
“This kind of abuse of power should terrify all of us regardless of which side of the aisle you are on,” he said.
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
The Tower for Twitter? UK Minister Calls for Jailing Social Media Bosses Who Do Not Censor Speech
By Jonathan Turley | April 21, 2023
As previously discussed, after Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans. The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.
Donelan is seeking speech arrests under the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a draconian censorship bill that would effectively ban end-to-end encryption for private internet users.
The bill uses Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism. So the government can censor anyone who it views as promoting or justifying hatred against virtually any group. Those who do not censor can now be rounded up by Donelan and her minions.
According to a report by The Telegraph, companies will also face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue should they dare to ignore Britain’s demands to preemptively delete or obscure posts violating its coming censorship regime.
The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”
Recently we discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech.
Donelan is only the latest voice of a rising generation of censors. These officials proudly parade their intent to silence or jail those with dissenting views. Yet, they do so in the name of tolerance. This is why free speech is in a free fall in Europe and why we must remain vigilant in this country to resist figures like Clinton who want to bring European censorship to our shores.
Canadian Medical Association Journal article calls for governments to “address the risks of misinformation” online
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 21, 2023
An article published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) has undertaken a formidable task: to engage in lockdown revisionism – while stating that it is fighting lockdown revisionism.
The lockdown here refers to the radically restrictive, invasive and long-lasting measures the authorities put in place during the Covid pandemic, but the article believes that the very word “lockdown” has now gained not only a powerful, but also “perverted” meaning.
Talk about “perverted” use of language – this development which worries CMAJ has taken place not only during the pandemic, but during “the infodemic.”
For those not in the know, “infodemic” is a pandemic-era neologism pushed by the likes of the World Health Organization (WHO) et al., meant to signify “an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and Access to the right reliable guidance when they need it.”
In other words, people don’t know what’s good for them, and in come all sorts of “trustworthy sources” to sort “the truth” out for them; the CMAJ article in particular wants to deal with “misinformation on lockdowns” and calls that – “lockdown revisionism.”
It is this – rather than any actions taken by governments – that has eroded trust in public health initiatives over the past three years, the journal is convinced.
The article’s authors also curiously insisted on peppering it with the mention of “democratic governments” engaging in these initiatives, possibly to bolster the “trustworthiness” of their own argument here (in reality, all sorts of governments did this – and some viewed as democratic then, did not emerge from the pandemic with that image unscathed.)
The CMAJ wants these “good” governments to now do more controversial things, such as, put euphemistically, “address the risks” of what is seen as misinformation amplification on social media.
Some of this “misinformation,” specifically regarding lockdowns as a tool of repression, not only physical, but also intellectual (considering censorship faced by those expressing their skepticism on those social sites), is defined pretty well – although, clearly from CMAJ’s point of view, as a negative phenomena (“elements of outlandish conspiracies”).
Things like this: “Lockdowns have been framed as reckless and unscientific, as junk science, as an excuse to permanently oppress populations, as gaslighting with ever-shifting goalposts.”
If that sounds about right, the CMAJ considers you a misinformation peddler with possibly a knack for outlandish conspiracies.
And now, how to fix that?
“Governments could consider strategies — including increased regulatory scrutiny — to address the risks of misinformation being amplified on social media,” is one of the ideas presented in the article.
Rep. Stacey Plaskett threatens journalist Matt Taibbi with jail over his Twitter Files testimony
A chilling letter that’s a further attack on free speech
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 20, 2023
Rep. Stacey Plaskett, the Democratic delegate representing the Virgin Islands in the US Congress, has intensified her attack on independent journalist Matt Taibbi.
Previously, during a House Judiciary Select Subcommittee hearing on the Federal Government’s Weaponization, Plaskett had dismissed Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger as “so-called journalists” and attempted to discredit their testimony on government pressure influencing speech restrictions on Twitter.
Plaskett sent a letter to Taibbi accusing him of perjury and hinting at a potential five-year imprisonment sentence. The letter was obtained by investigative journalist Lee Fang. In the letter, Plaskett highlights that giving false testimony to Congress carries a penalty of up to five years in prison.
The basis for Plaskett’s perjury accusation lies in several alleged errors Taibbi made during the publication of the Twitter Files. These alleged inaccuracies were brought to light by MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan, who criticized Taibbi during an interview and used them to claim that the entire Twitter Files project was fundamentally flawed.
While Taibbi did make a mistake, such as confusing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a federal government entity, with the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a nonprofit organization, Hasan failed to explain how this error invalidated the basis of the Twitter Files revelations.
Taibbi acknowledged the honest mistake in a tweet, pointing out that both organizations were part of the Election Integrity Partnership, a Stanford University initiative aimed at monitoring election-related social media discourse.
Nevertheless, Plaskett’s claim that Taibbi intentionally made the error and committed perjury is unfounded. “Taibbi has admitted mistaking CIS for CISA in a single tweet in one of his many threads, but his testimony to Congress was entirely different,” Fang wrote.
“Hasan deceptively conflated this quickly corrected tweet with Taibbi’s testimony.”
Fang went on to say, “… the evidence shows that Taibbi’s congressional remarks were correct. CIS and CISA collaborated with EIP on moderation requests, with both organizations directly appealing to Twitter for censorship, making Taibbi’s overall point and particular argument completely accurate.”
Fang has written more about this here.
Plaskett alleges that the mistake in confusing CISA and CIS was “intentional,” attempting to undermine the idea that the government is stifling speech, while, at the same time, threatening a journalist with imprisonment, effectively weaponizing her power against a member of the free press.
UK police condemned over arrest of French publisher
RT | April 20, 2023
London’s Metropolitan Police has come under fire for its treatment of a French national who was arrested under anti-terrorist legislation earlier this week. Publisher Ernest Moret was reportedly told that his involvement in protests in his homeland were behind his detention in the UK capital.
Moret’s employer, French publishing house Éditions La Fabrique, issued a press release with fellow publisher Verso Books on Thursday in which they described the actions of British police officers as “scandalous.”
“We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of the freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism laws,” the statement added.
The publishers further claimed that Moret’s arrest was the latest example of a “slide towards repressive and authoritarian measures taken by the current French government in the face of widespread popular discontent and protest.”
According to the statement, Moret had arrived in London on Monday to take part in the London Book Fair. While at St. Pancras Station, he was allegedly “pulled aside by police officers acting under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and detained for questioning without a lawyer present.”
The arresting officers reportedly explained that Moret was taken into custody because he had participated in recent anti-government protests back in France.
The two publishing houses insisted that the case proves there is “complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”
The formal reason for Moret’s arrest was stated as obstruction of police duties. His colleagues alleged that officers had demanded that Moret hand over his cell phone and unblock it, which he supposedly refused to do.
Pamela Morton from the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) wrote: “It seems extraordinary that the British police have acted this way in using terrorism legislation to arrest the publisher who was on legitimate business here for the London Book Fair.”
The Metropolitan Police confirmed in a statement that “at around 1930hrs on Monday, 17 April, a 28-year-old man was stopped by ports officers… under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
The AFP news agency later reported that Moret had been released on bail.
France has been gripped by mass protests in recent weeks as people vent their dissatisfaction at a retirement age increase pushed through by President Emmanuel Macron.
Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 20, 2023
Facebook is censoring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s story about US involvement in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines using a ‘fact checker’ with links to the Norwegian government in what represents a clear conflict of interest.
Earlier this year, Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation which was organized with the aid of the Norwegian government, Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger first noticed the issue when he tried to post Hersh’s article to Facebook, but saw the social media giant had slapped a warning label on the link stating, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”
Except the ‘fact-checkers’ in question aren’t independent at all.
As Shellenberger notes, “Hersh is infinitely more independent than Facebook’s Norwegian fact-checker. The fact-checking organization is a partnership with a Norwegian government-owned media company, NRK, which has a direct self-interest in censoring the story.”
By censoring the article with a dubious ‘fact check’, Facebook is preventing it from reaching a much wider audience, relegating it in the algorithm.
This is yet another example of how the ‘fact-checker industrial complex’ serves to censor legitimate information at the behest of governments by posing as an independent, non-bias actor when in reality it is merely a front for state control.
Facebook’s claim, made a few years ago, that it cannot act as “the arbiter of the truth” for any contentious issue, has been proven dishonest once again.
“Whether Hersh is wrong or right, his reporting should be debated publicly, not censored. Facebook’s actions are antithetical to America’s tradition of free and open debate and its rejection of secretive, authoritarian censorship,” writes Shellenberger.
“The American people have given Facebook broad liability protections under Section 230 that other media companies don’t get. And yet Facebook is acting like a media company, not a platform. As such, Facebook is putting its Section 230 protection at risk. And censoring Hersh may only attract more attention to it.”
Texas State University is sued over speech restrictions
Publicly funded universities are bound by The First Amendment
By Ben Squires | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2023
Free speech nonprofit Speech First has sued Texas State University over its “harassment” and computer policies, alleging they violate students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The university’s harassment policy bans “unwelcome verbal, written, graphic, or physical conduct” deemed “sufficiently severe or pervasive” targeted at people based on factors like sex, gender, and race.
The lawsuit argues that the policy chills the speech of students by discouraging them from “expressing views that are outside the mainstream about the political and social issues of the day.”
The computer policy bans students from using “informational resources” provided by the university to “affect the result of a local, state, or national election.”
The lawsuit argues that the policy bans students from using university email accounts to send political emails, and describes it as a “vague, content-based, and overbroad restriction of protected speech.”
The lawsuit claims that three students are suffering “concrete injuries” as a result of the harassment policy and they fear that the expression of their deeply held views is prohibited.
The students also cannot send political emails for fear of punishment, the lawsuit alleges.
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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
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Feeling Better, Getting Worse: How Psychiatric Drugs Create the Illusion They Cure
- ‘Nobody Told Me’: Former Mental Health Patient Calls Out Dangerous Side Effects of Psychiatric Drugs
- Dr. Abu-Sitta: Beirut ‘felt like a day in Shifa Hospital’
- Iran Has Won the War, It Will Be Up to the US to Secure the Peace: Mohammad Marandi
- Iran condemns assassination threats against Iranian negotiators amid US talks
- Brussels cannot say where its own pipeline inspectors are as Hungary’s oil lifeline remains shut
- Israel’s Iran War: Myth and Reality
- Between war and industrial breakdown: The US-Israeli attrition crisis
- Pressure builds on Iran to ‘drop’ Lebanon ceasefire demand as Islamabad talks hang in balance
- In another clash report, US denies agreement to release Iran’s assets
- If Americans Knew
- Pro-Israel ‘Thinktanks’ and Individuals who Influence U.S. Foreign Policy
- Mearsheimer reveals how Israel dictates US policies on Iran, Gaza – video
- After killing 350+, Israel still has a “score to settle” with Lebanon before ceasefire – Daily Update
- Military aid to Israel emerges as the latest political litmus test for Democrats
- The only Palestinian children’s rights organization closes following years-long Israeli campaign against it
- ‘I Can’t Forget the Smell’: Lebanese Reel After Israel Kills Over 300 in Single Day
- DNC Shoots Down Resolutions Calling Out AIPAC and Limiting Arms to Israel
- TCN: Is Israel Blackmailing President Trump?
- Israel killed at least 303 Lebanese yesterday – who were they? Daily Update
- Amnesty: Urgent – Protect Lebanese civilians from brutal escalation in Israeli attacks
- No Tricks Zone
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
- New Study Finds Warming Saves Lives…Cold Temperatures 12 Times More Deadly Than Excess Heat
- German Science Blog Accuses PIK Climate Institute Of Hallucinating Climate Tipping Points
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
- New Study: CO2 Is ‘Effectively Negligible’ As An Explanatory Climate Change Factor Since 2000
- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
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