DHS wants to continue its “disinformation” work, flag “falsehoods” to social media platforms
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | August 29, 2022
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) controversial “Disinformation Governance Board” was recently shut down after First Amendment concerns but the DHS seemingly still intends to continue its “disinformation” work.
A recent report from the Homeland Security Advisory Council’s “Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee” states that while “there is no need for a separate Disinformation Governance Board… the Department must be able to address the disinformation threat streams that can undermine the security of our homeland.”
The report was produced after DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asked the subcommittee to make recommendations for how the DHS can “most effectively and appropriately address disinformation that poses a threat to the homeland while protecting civil rights and providing greater transparency across this work.”
In the report, the subcommittee provides a broad definition of disinformation, outlines how the DHS detects and mitigates information that falls under the scope of this definition, and provides the subcommittee’s recommendations.
The far-reaching definition of disinformation includes both deliberate and unintentional spreading of “falsehoods.” The subcommittee also deems the “intentional spreading of genuine information with the intent to cause harm” to be a form of disinformation and uses “moving private and personal information into the public sphere” as an example of this type of disinformation.
The report outlines how several US government agencies that fall under the DHS’s purview, including the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), surveil online messages, forums, and social media to identify disinformation, “rumors,” and “attitudes related to migration.”
It also notes that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which also falls under the purview of the DHS, flags “disinformation campaigns utilizing social media” to social media companies “for whatever action those companies see fit to take.”
In the recommendations section of the report, the subcommittee insists that the DHS’s work on disinformation is “critical” and that the DHS “needs the ability to identify, analyze, and, where necessary, address certain incorrect information.”
The subcommittee adds that the DHS should be able to flag disinformation to social media platforms:
“The Department can and should also bring such disinformation to the attention of other government agencies for appropriate action and to platforms hosting the falsehoods. It is for the platforms, alone, to determine whether any action is appropriate under their policies.”
While the report recommends that the DHS should maintain its broad powers to surveil disinformation and flag it to social media platforms, the subcommittee insists that these activities will be “consistent with the law and the relevant civil rights and privacy protections.”
We obtained a copy of this Disinformation Best Practices and Safeguards Subcommittee report for you here.
We obtained a copy of the appendix to this report (which contains examples of DHS products and activities that address disinformation) for you here.
This report and its recommendations were published on the same day that the DHS officially shut down its Disinformation Governance Board. This board was introduced in April but days after it was introduced, 20 states threatened legal action and branded it an “unacceptable and downright alarming encroachment on every citizen’s right to express his or her opinions, engage in political debate, and disagree with the government.”
While the DHS’s activities related to the Disinformation Governance Board generated mass controversy, the DHS was surveilling “misinformation” and accused of surveilling money transfers before the board was even introduced. It also has contracted with a social media surveillance company that provides surveillance software.
The recommendation that the DHS should flag alleged disinformation to social media was published one day before the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) use of this tactic in the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election came under fresh scrutiny.
The scrutiny began after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience Podcast and said the FBI had warned Facebook about a “dump” of “Russian disinfo” just before the New York Post published a story alleging that Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden had engaged in an alleged corruption scandal. This story was published a few weeks before the 2020 US presidential election and was censored by Facebook and other Big Tech platforms. At the time, many politicians and journalists blasted Big Tech for censoring a story that was unfavorable to then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. A recent poll found that 79% of Americans who followed the story believe that “truthful” coverage would have changed the outcome of the 2020 election.
Government agencies, such as the DHS and the FBI, defend this practice of flagging alleged disinformation to social media companies by insisting that they’re not directing the companies to censor and that it’s up to the platforms to decide whether they want to remove the information that’s flagged to them.
However, internal chats have revealed that when government agencies or officials flag information or accounts to platforms, they do sometimes apply pressure. For example, recently released internal Slack messages show Twitter employees discussing the White House branding journalist Alex Berenson “the epicenter of disinfo” and questioning “why Alex Berenson hasn’t been kicked off from the platform” four months before he was banned.
The only school district in the US to require public school covid vaccinations just caved
Muriel Bowser’s Washington DC stunt has imploded
By Meryl Nass, MD | August 27, 2022
The criminal imposition of mandates to force children to get COVID vaccinations was floated in many school districts, especially those on the woke west coast. The reason I say it is criminal is because neither the manufacturers nor the USG are willing to risk being held liable for injuries. So they have made none of the “licensed” vaccine available, and so while the vaccines are technically licensed for kids 12 and up, it is not possible to procure the licensed product. So instead kids (and adults) are being injected with the EUA product, which is shielded from virtually all liability. One hopes fraud will pierce the liability shield, but so far there has not been a single case in which this has happened.
Schools on the west coast that imposed these mandates either withdrew them in the face of legal challenge (LAUSD challenged by the Health Freedom Defense Fund) or announced a year’s postponement last spring.
But that did not stop tough girl Muriel Bowser, DC’s mayor, from threatening to kick kids out of school as recently as yesterday if they weren’t vaccinated. (See below). She also brought us vaccines for 11 year olds without parental permission. Where is this sister getting her advice?
Children’s Health Defense sued Muriel over her minor consent to vaccination scheme, and she lost on March 18, 2022. She didn’t learn her lesson then. So she had to get another lesson.
The local media started going after her, with the headline below.
40 Percent of D.C.’s Black Teens Will Soon Be Barred From School Because They Aren’t Vaccinated
Maybe she was scared of the lawsuits. Maybe someone told her the police had won a lawsuit against D.C.’s COVID vaccine mandate a couple of days earlier. Maybe she just found out the vaccine program was experimental. Maybe expelling 40% of teens from school did not seem like a winning slogan for her next campaign?
Whatever it was, yesterday she flipped. The vaccine mandate to attend public school was postponed till January. Maybe by then she will have been recalled. We can only hope.
Who owns your children’s bodies? This twisted sister or you?
Then, a few hours later, this happened:
DC public schools push back student immunization deadlines
D.C. public schools are pushing back enforcement deadlines for students who fail to receive their required vaccinations, including against COVID-19.
According to the new attendance guidelines issued Friday, students age 12 or older will have until Jan. 3, 2023, to have received all the needed doses of a COVID vaccine before facing exclusion from school.
Norwegian Schools Are Disseminating Government-Approved Covid Misinformation
BY KATHRINE JEBSEN MOORE | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | AUGUST 26, 2022
Who needs conspiracy theorists when you’ve got school books teaching children that Covid vaccines are “95% effective”?
This autumn, a new school book was introduced for the ninth grade in Norway. Fabel 10 was revised in 2021/22, but has only now been introduced in schools across Norway. Not only does the book overstate the effectiveness of the novel mRNA vaccines, it decries anyone questioning that as conspiracy theorists.
One excerpt reads:
Since the Covid pandemic broke loose, Covid deniers and vaccine sceptics have spread disinformation about coronavirus through social media. They claimed among other things that COVID-19 was no more deadly than the flu, that the vaccine was dangerous, and that restrictions were unnecessary. On Saturday March 20th 2021, 200 Covid deniers gathered in front of the Parliament. They burnt face masks to show that they thought they were unnecessary.
This short paragraph is easily debunked. Readers of the Daily Sceptic know that Covid now has an infection fatality rate about the same as influenza. We also know that side effects from the Covid vaccines – both the mRNA and the viral vector vaccines such as AstraZeneca’s – are more common than for other tried and tested vaccines. Remember when the Pandemrix vaccine rollout was halted because of a link to rare instances of narcolepsy? Multiple studies show Pfizer and Moderna’s Covid vaccines increase the risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in especially younger males – the demographic who make up precisely half the readership of Fabel 10. The German Government even admits that as many as one in 300 doses of the mRNA jabs produce serious injury. Compared to the danger that Covid poses to most people, does that make vaccines worth having?
And as for restrictions, a new consensus is gaining momentum. Whereas back in 2021, when the book was written, it was mainly agreed that lockdowns and other Covid restrictions were necessary to halt the spread, and countries with low Covid fatalities would credit these non-pharmaceutical interventions for their comparatively low excess mortality, studies later proved them incorrect. Lockdowns and excess mortality were not correlated. Whereas back in the early days of the pandemic, only a few, brave voices spoke up about their concerns, now even Rishi Sunak, who helped implement Britain’s lockdowns, admit they were detrimental to overall health and the economy and did little to stop infection. Yet in Norway, pupils are stuck in the reality curated more than a year ago, a reality that has now been revealed to most as bonkers.
And those 200 “Covid deniers” who burnt face masks deserve praise for being a tiny minority speaking up for science at a time where “the science” became an allegory for anything the authorities wanted us to do without having to prove why.
The book also states that vaccines are “95% effective against COVID-19 infections”. This is clearly nonsense, and doesn’t need further debunking. We all know of multiple-jabbed people getting infected several times over, and that infection rates in highly vaccinated countries went through the roof after the vaccine rollout.
Perhaps the book will serve as a test to pupils old enough to gather information from multiple sources. Some might agree with what they’re presented with, while others will see through this Government-approved misinformation. But that’s not really the sort of education you want in a free, democratic country. The book doesn’t invite 14-15 year-olds to question or discuss – it presents them with all the (wrong) answers. That’s bad enough in itself, but what’s worse is it tells them to ridicule those who don’t agree. The chapter on Covid and conspiracy theories could have been a great opportunity to teach children about academic freedom, online censorship, tolerance, debate, dissent and freedom of speech. Instead, it serves straight-up, Orwellian newspeak to young minds in a way the CCP would be proud of.
Ex-US Intel Chief: FBI Meddling With Biden Laptop Story’s Circulation is ‘Election Interference’
Samizdat – 27.08.2022
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed that his social media platform slashed the spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story due to the FBI agents showing up at the company and warning that it was a “Russian propaganda” – something that was later declared untrue despite Democrats peddling a different narrative.
Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has slammed the actions of the FBI directed at hushing the Hunter Biden laptop story on Facebook* as “election interference”. In his interview with Fox’s host Tucker Carlson, Ratcliffe said that in its internal discussions, the FBI, its chief Christopher Wray and the DoJ said they did not believe the claims that the story was a “Russian propaganda piece.”
Back at the time, major Democrats, including Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff, tried to drown the story in “Russia propaganda” allegations after it popped up just weeks ahead of presidential election in 2020. This narrative was picked up by the mainstream media outlets, many of which changed their tune almost two years later, admitting the story was legit.
John Ratcliffe says that to his knowledge the FBI did not believe the story was planted by Russia back in 2020 when it first broke.
And yet, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the bureau asked the social media platform to hush it up under the pretext of “Russian propaganda.”
“To hear that, contrary to what [FBI Director Christopher Wray] was saying, and the official position of the FBI that agents were acting in contradiction to that in dealings with Facebook or telling – if whistleblowers are to be believed – FBI agents to suppress information about Hunter Biden’s laptop and to amplify damaging information about then-President Donald Trump – that is entirely inconsistent with what we all knew,” Ratcliffe said.
Ratcliffe, who held the post of the Intelligence Director in the days the story unfolded, said he even made an official statement at the time dismissing the allegations regarding Russia’s involvement. Those statements were drowned in Democrats’ cries of Moscow allegedly trying to meddle in the US elections.
The ex-intelligence chief says he was shocked to hear that the FBI actually used the “Russian propaganda” claim to put the Hunter laptop story under wraps, at least on Facebook. Ratcliffe stressed that “a lot of folks” misled the American voters that year with regards to the laptop story, and suggested that what the FBI did might be considered interference in domestic politics.
“Yeah, it is election interference. And the troubling part about this, is the FBI is the primary domestic authority for enforcing election security; making sure that people don’t interfere with the American voters and American elections. And if they’re engaged in election interference, then we’ve got a real problem,” Ratcliffe said.
According to the latest poll, conducted by New Jersey-based Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics, an overwhelming majority of Americans believe that if the laptop story was not silenced in media and social media, the election outcome might have been different in 2020.
Some 79% thought the “truthful” coverage of the story would have tipped the scales in the 2020 election and a similar percentage say they believe the information on the laptop was authentic. Additionally, 81% of those interviewed believe US Attorney General Merrick Garland should appoint a special counsel, to investigate the trove of the documents found on the laptop and partially published since the story first broke in 2020.
Facebook Hushes Hunter Laptop Story at FBI’s Request
Zuckerberg confessed in “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast that the FBI agents visited the company after the laptop story broke and said it should be on “high alert” for a “dump [of] Russian propaganda.” The CEO said the company had no reason to doubt the concerns of “a very professional law enforcement” and hence took the warning seriously.
He, however, defended the social media platform, noting that it did not silence the story completely, like Twitter did, and instead slashed its circulation.
The files discovered on the laptop of Hunter Biden shed light on the murky business dealings of the US president’s son in Ukraine and China. One of the emails suggested that he organized an off-the-books meeting between his father and an employee at the Ukrainian company he was working for – Burisma – while Joe Biden was vice president. That contradicted the latter’s claims of never being involved in his son’s business affairs.
A set of stories about Hunter’s dealings in China also allege he held a stake in a joint venture with a Chinese energy company for his father. The stake was only referred to as bein held for “the Big Guy”, but several media alleged it was the US president, while one of Hunter Biden’s associate, Tony Bobulinski, publicly confirmed it was him.
Joe Biden himself never commented or confirmed on his son potentially holding the stake for him in the company tied to the Chinese government, with which Biden negotiated back in his days of vice presidency.
Maria Zakharova responds to Zuckerberg’s FBI revelations
Samizdat – August 26, 2022
The FBI and other US security agencies secretly control American social media giants, Russia’s foreign ministry press director has alleged. The high-level official cited a recent interview by Mark Zuckerberg, in which the Facebook CEO supposedly acknowledged such influence.
On Friday, spokesperson Maria Zakharova published a post on her Telegram channel devoted to Zuckerberg’s recent appearance on The Joe Rogan podcast. According to the Russian diplomat, Facebook’s first-in-command recounted how FBI operatives had visited him ahead of the 2020 US presidential elections, which ended in victory for Joe Biden, asking him to suppress stories revolving around the “unseemly contents” of Hunter Biden’s laptop on his platforms.
“The men in black ‘convinced’ Mark Zuckerberg… that these were all Russian fakes,” Zakharova added, referencing the podcast.
She went on to surmise that this kind of “excuse for censorship” was sufficient to have made Facebook’s CEO comply with the request. The subsequent suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story “helped pronounce Biden senior as the winner in the election,” Zakharova noted, remarking that many Americans are still unconvinced.
The diplomat went on to argue that, with the laptop story turning out to be true and with Zuckerberg’s revelations to Rogan, “the world has learned that the US social media played a decisive role in this performance.” She added that the suspension of then-President Trump’s accounts by the main social media platforms just goes to show that the US authorities collude with the “internet monopolies.”
Zakharova concluded that all this proves that the “FBI and other American security services manually control digital giants,” with social media platforms’ leadership only too happy to “participate in dirty political games in Washington.” The senior diplomat also made the claim that “there are no democratic standards in the American electoral system: neither in theory nor in practice.”
DC Mayor: No vaccine passport, no education – even for virtual learners
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | August 26, 2022
The District of Columbia mayor Muriel Bowser said kids who do not have a vaccine passport within the first 20 days when schools resume next week Monday will not be allowed to get educated, even for those doing virtual learning from home.
A press release on the District of Columbia Public School’s website states: “The Coronavirus Immunization of School Students and Early Childhood Workers Amendment Act of 2021, which the Council passed in 2021, requires students ages 12 and older to be vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to attend school.”
The vaccine mandate applies to staff and also private schools.
Asked by The Daily Signal what the plan was for unvaccinated students, Bowser said: “They can go to school on Monday. But they need to get their vaccinations… and their families will be alerted as to the dates.”
The Office of The State Superintendent of Education for the District of Columbia recently announced that “all students must have up-to-date immunization certification on file with the school within the first 20 school days or they will not be allowed to attend school or school activities until the immunization certification is secured by the school.”
“If the student does not come into compliance within a 20-school day period, the school must remove the student from school until the immunization certification is secured by the school,” the office added.
The vaccine mandate will likely affect the education of black students as 47% of black children aged 12-15 in DC have not received the primary vaccination needed to attend school, according to government data. And 42% of black kids aged 16 and 17 are not vaccinated.
Sanctions against Russia damage Western business
By Lucas Leiroz | August 26, 2022
The West itself appears to be the party most harmed by the sanctions it has chosen to impose against Russia. As well known, the US, UK and EU are facing a wave of inflation with all-time highs. And in the same sense, the business world is collapsing in Western countries. The business losses with the end of participation of some Western companies in the Russian market are extremely significant and are causing serious problems for the economy of many countries, with losses accumulating exorbitant amounts.
It is estimated that American, European, British, and Japanese companies have already lost more than 70 billion dollars since February. The losses are a consequence of the packages of sanctions imposed by Western countries on Moscow in response to the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. Many corporations withdrew from Russia or had their activities frozen, losing insertion in the powerful market of consumption, work and raw materials offered by Russia.
As expected, the most affected sector is the energy one, whose losses are estimated at almost 55 billion dollars, generating a series of problems for Western societies. Relations between Russia and Western Europe in the energy sector have always been a central strategic point in the international economic balance and now seem more threatened than ever. However, other sectors are also in similar situations.
Agricultural commodity, food and tobacco markets achieved losses of almost 8 billion dollars. In the same sense, in the technology and IT sector, 5 billion dollars of losses have already been accumulated. And there is also the vital banking sector, whose side effects of anti-Russian financial coercive measures have already led to a loss of 3,7 billion dollars – most of this amount belonging to Société Générale, the only banking group to have left Russia completely so far.
With regard specifically to the energy sector, the European and British companies most affected were BP, Linde, Uniper and Total Energies, whose billions of dollars in assets were harmed as a result of the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and other Russian-European projects of cooperation. The process of disintegration of the Russian and European energy markets will not be so easily completed, as it is necessary to reverse a scenario of decades of cooperation, which will undoubtedly take time.
For example, BP, which announced its unconditional withdrawal from the Russian market in February, still remains one of Rosneft’s main partners, owning 19.75% of its shares. However, the process of disintegration has progressively advanced. BP itself revealed a loss of more than 25 billion dollars due to the freezing of its activities in Russia, pointing to a scenario that indicates a path towards the end of the cooperation in the near future.
American and Japanese energy companies are heading in the same direction. ExxonMobil, Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi Corporation were some of the companies that had the most losses in recent months, mainly as a result of the effects that the coercive measures had on the Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-II projects. Obviously, other energy companies were also affected by the packages of sanctions, albeit on a smaller scale, showing a scenario of generalized losses for this sector’s businesses.
For Russia, however, the deficits are much smaller and almost never imply real losses, but market restructurings. In energy, Russian oil and gas production remains strong and active, unaffected by the departure of some Western companies. The withdrawal of these companies makes room for other markets, such as the Chinese and Indian, which are the ones that have stood out in the search for Russian oil and gas in recent months. Meanwhile, Western companies lose important sources of supply that will not be easily resolved.
As for market sectors in which Russian consumption was of interest to Western companies, there are even fewer losses. The corporations that withdrew from Russia left their physical production structures there, which could be used by Moscow, generating employment for the Russian population, internal circulation of capital and economic progress.
For example, McDonald’s lost more than one billion dollars with its adherence to anti-Russian measures, but its withdrawal from the local market made room for the nationalization of the company’s production structures, and a Russian national company was created to sell fast food for Russian citizens. The same is currently happening with other Western companies that have left the Russian market. In short, the West lost a rich consumer market and handed over to Moscow all the necessary means for Russians themselves to supply their population with such goods and services.
In practice, all these facts simply mean damage to Western business. Entrepreneurs do not appear to have been consulted by heads of state on whether or not sanctions were in their best interest. The measures were simply imposed unilaterally to meet NATO’s geopolitical plans, without considering the opinion of companies that generate jobs for Western citizens. Currently, there are still plans to completely ban the entry of Russian citizens into Europe, which according to estimates will generate losses of more than 20 billion euros, harming the entire European market.
In fact, western sanctions, if not reversed, will lead the world into a global recession in which the most affected will be the western countries themselves. To avoid this, the business sector must mobilize to demand an end to sanctions.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
CDC Director deflects blame for lockdowns towards predecessors
By Mike Campbell | The Counter Signal | August 25, 2022
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted organizational shortcomings on Fox News while deflecting blame toward predecessors for their lockdown recommendation.
“Many of those lockdowns pre-dated me at the CDC,” she said.
Walensky, who once used ‘Trust the science’ to persuade the public, carried a humbler tone while reflecting on her organization’s decisions.
“There were important decisions that we had to make in imperfect times, with imperfect data, and we always updated those decisions as those data were evolving…”
“So, I don’t really want to re-visit the questions of lockdowns that pre-dated me, but what I will say is, we’ve updated our guidance in the context of new information, and sometimes we have to make a decision before we have all the information that we want…”
Indeed, the CDC updated guidance by removing special quarantine recommendations for unvaccinated persons, effectively admitting that vaccination status is no longer relevant when it comes to infection or spread of the Covid virus.
In fact, on July 23, the CDC deleted a ‘fact’ from their “Facts about mRNA Covid-19 Vaccines”, and they did so without explanation. Last time I checked, facts don’t change — but apparently, they do for the CDC.
Walensky further stated that “[their] science” indicated hybrid immunity was superior to natural immunity. However, we’ve reported on a scientific study that accounted for more than 5.7 million people, which showed that natural immunity is just as effective as hybrid immunity.
To this point, Walensky’s usage of science in the possessive sense — by calling it “our science” — denotes a departure from “the science,” of which they’re either arbitrarily picking from or are completely unaware.
Between Fauci stepping down and Walenski pointing fingers, it appears the blame game has officially started.
Pakistan threatens to cut off digital ID of “hecklers”
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | August 23, 2022
Pakistan Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan warned supporters of recently-ousted prime minister Imran Khan whose behavior could be considered “harassment and heckling” that they could have their biometric ID apps blocked, according to a report by The Nation.
The political climate in Pakistan is tense, with supporters of Khan threatening to “take over” and harassing government officials.
The government is now threatening those engaging in heckling and harassment will have their Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC), which is biometric, blocked. CNICs are used to access bank accounts, government services, and to register SIM cards. Blocking the ID would make life rather difficult.
Khan’s supporters could also be arrested, the Interior Minister said. On Twitter, the minister encouraged people to send identifiable videos of Khan’s supporters heckling to the Federal Agency’s Cyber Crime Wing.
Meanwhile, TV stations have been banned from airing Khan’s speeches live. The former Prime Minister accused the government of censorship for temporarily blocking YouTube on Sunday amid his speech at a political rally.
US ices its ‘Ministry of Truth’
Samizdat – August 25, 2022
The US Department of Homeland Security finally shut down the Disinformation Governance Board on Wednesday, over a month after a review panel convened to rescue the idea advised doing just that – and months after widespread condemnation of the project forced the agency to reconsider.
Citing the “prior recommendation” of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which voted unanimously to dissolve the group last month, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas officially announced the termination of the Disinformation Governance Board and revoked its charter.
The committee’s final report affirmed that there was no need for a disinformation board, arguing the agency had fallen prey to mission creep. Instead, it was the DHS’ job to “address the disinformation threat streams that can undermine the security of our homeland,” speaking to the public in plain language and emphasizing “the importance of truth.”
Co-authored by former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, the report also blamed the use of the emotionally loaded term “disinformation” for sinking the project, arguing it had inflamed the public’s imagination regarding the new group’s ambitions. “The actual work of the department has been exaggerated, and the real work is extremely straightforward.”
“They don’t have a red pencil to correct everything in the world that’s not true,” Chertoff clarified.
Launched in April, the Disinformation Governance Board immediately came under fire from civil liberties and free speech advocates, who were already concerned about the Biden administration’s cozy relationship with social media and worried about the partisan leanings of its director, Nina Jankowicz. The author and self-styled disinformation expert previously worked for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and as a lobbyist targeting Russia and Belarus with “democracy assistance” programs while promoting disinformation of her own, including dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as a Russian fabrication. Leaked documents reveal she was also in the employ of the UK’s Integrity Initiative, a shadowy influence operation that meddled with the political process at home and abroad under the guise of “defending democracy.”
While the DHS initially tried to defend what critics were denouncing as Biden’s “Ministry of Truth,” it was ultimately forced to put the program on ice, bringing in Chertoff and Gorelick to attempt to salvage the idea. However, the HSAC determined last month there was “no need for a Disinformation Governance Board.”
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From the Archives
Mutually Assured Delusion (MAD)
By Judith Curry | Climate Etc. | November 5, 2013
Groupthink: A pattern of thought charaterized by self-deception, forced manufacture of consent, and conformity to group values and ethics.
Groupthink: Collective Delusions in Organizations and Markets, by Roland Benabou, published in the Review of Economic Studies. Benabou also has a talk (ppt slides) on this subject.
First, a definition of groupthink (from the ppt slides):
Janis (1972)’s eight symptoms [of groupthink]:
- illusion of invulnerability
- collective rationalization
- belief in inherent morality
- stereotyped views of out-groups
- direct pressure on dissenters
- self-censorship
- illusion of unanimity
- self-appointed mind guards
Sound like any groups that we know? … continue
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