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FREE SPEECH MAY BENEFIT MENTAL HEALTH: THE IMPORTANCE OF OPEN DIALOGUE

By PhD Dr. Chloe Carmichael, PhD | August 19, 2022

Free speech debates often focus on the mental health risks of bullying and hate speech- but they rarely consider the mental health benefits of freedom of expression. As a clinical psychologist, I believe that open dialogue is ultimately better than top-down censorship for those seeking wellness, authenticity, and individual as well as relational growth.

Caveat: Free speech does not prevent us from “censoring” certain voices in our own personal life: Whether it’s the proverbial toxic mother-in-law or a news website that seems rife with bias, none of us has an obligation to lend our ears to anyone or anywhere– but we also don’t need to stifle the ability of those voices to continue to exist. In fact, we may even benefit from talking with members of the communities where we live and work… even if (sometimes especially if) their viewpoints differ from our own.

If you’re curious about the potential mental health benefits of free speech, I invite you to consider three main points:

1. Free speech helps people learn and grow:

Humans develop (and sometimes discard) ideas based on social feedback. Our incredible gift of language is so powerful that evolutionary psychologists have speculated that language was an essential factor for humans to evolve into such a sophisticated species.

In addition to facilitating the exchange of information and development of ideas, free speech allows a healthy separation between a person’s ideas or beliefs and that person’s core self: Language lets us externalize our thoughts and feelings, recognizing them as separate from ourselves. Of course, our thoughts and beliefs are part of who we are–but a healthy person can retain a stable sense of self despite changes in their thoughts and beliefs over time.

When we can separate our thoughts from our core identity, we set the stage for growth– but when we experience them as a permanent part of our core identity, we become rigid and inflexible about noticing and discarding them– even if they are what psychologists call “maladaptive beliefs”. Learning to discard these inaccurate or distorted beliefs is key to mental health.

Ironically, being able to say “stupid things” actually helps us to realize how stupid they are; and potentially choose to change our minds. Have you ever noticed that there are certain things we need to “learn by experience”? Sometimes, that comes in the form of hearing ourselves say something aloud and realizing how foolish it sounds, and/or having our community provide feedback that generates a new perspective. Without free speech, we are less likely to examine our thoughts and get feedback on them, which actually leaves us more vulnerable to harboring inaccurate or distorted views.

2. Free speech helps Safe Spaces:

When speech is prohibited, the viewpoints underlying hateful speech do not disappear– instead, they become subverted. This makes it harder to trust we are accessing the true views of others. In fact, the “forbidden speech” model means that we can wisely assume that others are hiding certain “verboten” views. This undermines social trust, thereby ironically undermining the concept of a “safe space”. Conversely, when “haters” can make their views openly known, it’s much easier to avoid, challenge, or take steps to bolster ourselves with support whenever we encounter them. Personally, as a woman, I would rather know if a man automatically views me as less intelligent simply because of my sex. Rather than silencing his voice, I’d much rather know about him so that I could choose to challenge, avoid, or persuade him.

Free speech also helps “safe spaces” because security and stability increase when people understand that they are actually safe even if others voice abhorrent viewpoints that evoke a “mental earthquake” (compared, to say, an actual earthquake). Words are not violence–I say this as a clinical psychologist and as a woman who suffered extreme, life-threatening domestic violence before meeting my wonderful husband. Teaching people that “words are violence” is actually disempowering because it suggests that we should cower in fear or risk physical blows over words rather than reserving that type of retreat or attack for situations of actual physical danger. Instead, we should teach people to rise up, “answer back” vociferously, and not to be afraid in the least over words (unless of course those words are an actual credible threat of physical danger).

When clinical psychologists assess a patient, one of the areas we probe is whether the person has a history of violence, and we don’t mean verbal– we mean physical. This is because a physically violent person is a danger to others in a way that a nonviolent person is not. Yes, verbally abusive people are “flagged” by psychologists too– but not in the same way as a person who poses a physical danger to self or others.

3. Free Speech may reduce Anxiety and Depression:

Anxiety and depression can arise for many reasons, and there are multiple ways to be resilient against them. Here are some ways that free speech can help:

  • Verbalizing our thoughts and feelings increases our sense of control: The ability to put our thoughts and feelings into language has been proven to increase a sense of control, which likely increases our sense of self-efficacy and encourages what psychologists call an “internal locus of control”. Both increased self-efficacy and having an internal locus of control are protective factors against anxiety and depression. Moreover, research shows that labeling feelings helps prevent the amygdala from “hijacking” our thought process; this is partially why learning to label our thoughts sets the stage for more rational, clear-headed thinking.
  • Authenticity facilitates social support: Social support is a known protective factor for mental health. It helps to bolster us against anxiety and depression. When we feel forced to keep significant parts of ourselves secret, we are less authentic and more vulnerable to feelings of isolation. We are less able to fully experience social support because of fears that people might “cancel” us if they knew that perhaps some small component of our authentic self didn’t fit neatly into the bounds of whatever is considered to be “acceptable” speech. Social isolation can develop when social support is degraded by fears of being “canceled” over free expression and open dialogue.
  • Free Speech may increase self-awareness: The key to mental health often begins with self-awareness. When we habitually hide our thoughts from others, we tend to become less aware of them internally as well. We go into denial. When we aren’t addressing our thoughts in a straightforward, healthy manner, we may “let them out” in ways that make us vulnerable to anxiety or depression. For example, a person who felt afraid to voice any questions or concerns about political disagreements to the point where they stopped even mentally acknowledging their concerns to themselves might display a generalized sense of anxiety and say truthfully that they “really don’t know why” they’re so anxious. When we aren’t aware of important parts of our feelings and/or we can’t handle them directly, we’re more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.

Conclusion

As a clinical psychologist, I believe that suppressing freedom of expression deprives us of healthy discussions where people can persuade each other through intellectual exploration and develop ideas that help society. Social support that includes free speech allows people to put their thoughts and feelings on the table to examine them, reflect on them, and even change them in a gradual, authentic manner over time (rather than feeling compelled to pantomime a dramatic “change” immediately or risk being ostracized or deplatformed).

Mental wellness requires healthy boundaries. As a psychologist, if I were working with a client who generally expected it was the role of others to either stop having ideas that the client doesn’t like, or that it was always the role of the public square to eliminate voices that the client disliked, I would likely have a discussion with the client about building a sense of personal agency, boundaries, and resilience for his or her own benefit. In my book, Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety, I actually explore techniques to help empower people to use their anxiety or discomfort constructively, rather than becoming overly eager to destroy or deny whatever makes them nervous– it’s often a process that leaves them stronger and more empowered.

Obviously, there are times and places where certain dialogue is not appropriate– but the parameters of what speech is “permissible” even in college classrooms or neighborhood barbecues seems to be ever-shrinking to the point of “speech phobia” that results in unhealthy levels of suppression and repression. As a clinical psychologist, I think we would be a richer, healthier, more intelligent society if we welcomed more diversity of thought… even if some words feel like a figurative “slap in the face” (figurative being the key word). If you disagree, I would love to have an open discussion and learn or consider some new viewpoints – I’m truly open minded. I have even been known to change my mind now and then.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Outrage as Pakistan’s Media Watchdog Bans Channels From Broadcasting Ex-PM Imran Khan’s Speeches

Samizdat – 21.08.2022

Pakistan’s media watchdog, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA), has banned TV channels from broadcasting live addresses by former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The decision, effective immediately, was made on the eve of his rally in Rawalpindi on Sunday. According to the regulator, Khan is making “baseless allegations and spreading hate speech.”

“His provocative statements against state institutions and officers… is likely to disturb public peace and tranquility,” the PEMRA added.

The decision has been slammed by members of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party and his supporters.

Asad Umar, a senior PTI official, took to Twitter, saying that the ban would be challenged in court.

A local journalist said the watchdog’s decision actually had the opposite effect.

Since his ouster from power in April 2021, Khan has held massive rallies across the country, branding the government of his successor Shehbaz Sharif as “traitors” installed by a “foreign conspiracy” hatched in the US. He has also repeatedly said that Washington has made Pakistan a “slave” without invading it. Prior to the no-confidence motion that saw him voted out of power, Khan accused the US of seeking to have him removed.

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Another First Amendment lawsuit against Facebook censorship fails

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | August 20, 2022

The US judicial system has dismissed yet another lawsuit filed by censored users of Big Tech’s social media platforms, who allege First Amendment free speech violations.

This time it was the US District Court for the Northern District of California that granted a motion to dismiss filed by the defendant, Facebook (Meta). The plaintiff in this case, Richard Rogalinski, sued on First Amendment grounds after a number of his posts about Covid got censored on Facebook.

We obtained a copy of the decision for you here.

One of the posts expressed Rogalinski’s skepticism about the efficacy of masks, saying that he has not seen scientific evidence of their usefulness, but instead, “just talking heads who want to spread fear and control you.”

To this, Facebook’s “fact-checkers” reacted by adding a warning label claiming the post was “missing context.” The same warning was slapped on a post that saw the plaintiff criticize the Covid vaccine rollout.

Finally, a screenshot of a tweet posted by a doctor who promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine got labeled as “false information” by Facebook and removed.

Originally, the Florida resident filed a class action lawsuit in that state, but Facebook moved to either dismiss or transfer it, after which the judge transferred it to California.

In an attempt to fight against the usual defense that massive tech corporations have when censoring content and users – that they are private operations that have the right to do that, while the First Amendment applies only to state actors – Rogalinski mentioned statements made by former White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

In July 2021 – and the California judge noted in the ruling that this happened “after Meta took action against Rogalinski’s posts” – Psaki told a press conference that the Biden administration is “in regular touch” with major social media platforms, and actively flagging content posted on Facebook that the government thinks are “problematic” on misinformation grounds.

Rogalinski argued that the state “chose the targets and content of the statements that it deemed worthy of the defendant’s censorship” which then resulted in censorship by Facebook.

The plaintiff further accused the government and Meta of communicating directly and specifically about the censorship actions and engaging in the act together by sharing responsibility for the two-step process of censorship.

However, the court disagreed, citing several similar cases, including O’Handley v. Padilla, where the ruling reads that the government “can work with a private entity without converting that entity’s later decisions into state action.”

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

WOEFUL WEEK FOR THE CDC & WALENSKY

The Highwire with Del Bigtree | August 18, 2022

After 3 years of confusion, contradiction, and bad policy-making, CDC Director Rochelle Walenksy M.D., has announced ‘sweeping reorganization.’ This, coming on the heels of an announcement that the beleaguered agency’s Covid guidance no longer differentiates between the Vaccinated, and the Unvaccinated. What is really going on?

August 21, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

The media are (finally) admitting lockdown is worse than “Covid”… but why?

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | August 19, 2022

The latest figures from the UK’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) suggest that the knock-on effects of lockdown may be harming more people than “Covid” ever did, or so the press are saying anyway.

The ONS’s weekly data apparently shows over 10,000 more reported deaths than expected.

Since none of these excess deaths has been “linked with Covid”, the press is calling them the “true cost of lockdown”, with some papers suggesting lockdown is “killing more people than Covid”.

To which the only proper response is: “No shit.”

Even for those who still cling to the orthodoxy that “Covid” actually exists, the fact lockdown was going to do more damage than it prevented was obvious from the moment early mortality studies showed “Covid” had a 99.5% survival rate, back in the spring of 2020.

Many experts in economics, statistics, epidemiology and virology voiced this opinion, and were vilified and abused for their trouble.

And, really, anyone with the smallest shred of common sense could figure it out for themselves. Shutting down the health service and crashing the economy is never going to end well (unless you want to kill people, then it’s a great plan).

Even Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, described lockdowns as a “global catastrophe” in October 2020:

We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…] it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

So the question is not “Is lockdown worse than Covid?” The answer to that is “yes”, and we’ve known that for over two years.

The real question is: why are they finally admitting it?

It’s not just this week’s excess deaths either. Elsewhere the media is concerned about the mental health impacts of lockdowns, delays in cancer treatments, the “lockdown drinking”, the impact on children missing school, teenagers self-harming and so and so on.

Professor Karol Sikora – one of those vilified experts I mentioned earlier – has even been given space in the Telegraph to write a 2000 word “I told you so”.

Why?

Perhaps the answer to that lies not in what they’re talking about, but in what they are most pointedly not talking about.

The excess deaths are being very definitely laid at the feet of lockdowns, not the experimental “vaccines”.

Now, were the deaths really caused by the lockdown? Or by the “vaccines”? Or a mix of both? We don’t know, and can likely never know.

At this point our collective trust in institutions and official figures should be low enough to question if there were any excess deaths. Maybe they just made them up. They do that.

Regardless of the truth of it, the narrative is certainly shifting to highlight “the true cost of lockdowns”.

This could be about disguising the harm done by untested vaccines, admitting to potentially deleterious effects of lockdown to spare Pfizer’s blushes.

There’s a lot more invested in the vaccines than the lockdown – in every sense of the word – and if something has to be blamed it makes sense they would much rather it be lockdowns than jabs.

That’s a decent explanation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more to it.

This narrative could be about setting up the public for the next “covid” wave or some new “pandemic”.

Consider how quickly the “true cost of lockdown” story could be parlayed into a new mainstream consensus that “Lockdown was so damaging, we must do whatever it takes to avoid another“.

Then consider how “Whatever it takes” could take the form of quarantine camps for the unvaccinated, vaccines mandates, enforced testing and surveillance…or whatever the hell else they want.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Crisis Government

eugyppius |  August 20, 2022

To reduce energy consumption in the face of the looming German gas crisis, Economics Minister Robert Habeck has proposed a bizarre set of indoor temperature ordinances that continue the pattern of direct state interventions in the everyday life first established by mass containment.

Workspaces where hard physical labour is performed are not to be heated above 12 C, under the new rules. Those involving moderate labour while standing will have their temperatures capped at 16 C, and moderate labour while sitting at 17 C. Places where light labour is performed standing, will be permitted temperatures as high as 18 C, while white-collar office spaces where everybody sits and types will be permitted nothing warmer than 19 C. The heating of hallways and other common spaces will be outlawed, as will certain kinds of restroom water heaters. There will be a general ban on using electricity or gas to heat private pools, and shops will be ordered to keep external doors closed at all times. Political pressure is growing for similar ordinances limiting gas consumption in residences.

While some doubt that these rules can be enforced, German police have already proven effective at enforcing pandemic-era contact limits in private homes. And even if indoor temperatures are never systematically checked by authorities, I’m pretty sure that the simple prospect of unannounced inspections and fines will be enough for most employers to declare a third season of home office, with the added prospect of offloading higher gas prices onto their employees.

It is most curious, how this totally new catastrophe should call forth some of very same measures demanded by the Corona pandemic. Not only will home office return, but municipal pools will close again and cities will be kept dark at night, a de facto limitation on evening mobility that might well encourage some places to reimpose the curfews last seen in the winter of 2020/21. Meanwhile, some of the very same spaces recently commandeered for excess hospital capacity and mass vaccination will be repurposed as heated shelters for the old, the sick and the poor.

Not any unified plan, but rather a long series of contingencies, have caused the German gas crisis. Yet the steadfast refusal of the Scholz government to consider any course of action that might ameliorate the shortage, always with a new excuse, grows every day more unsettling.

There’s the obvious explanation, that the Greens in government are merely taking advantage of this opportunity to achieve their higher goal of restricting fossil fuel consumption, as they’ve always wished. But I think there might be another, deeper way to understand this too. I suggest that we’re seeing here the emergence of a new political style, which you might call Crisis Governance—or, as a friend put it, “the continuation of Corona policy by other means.” One of my core themes here has been the deepening demobilisation of western states, as power is diffused downwards from the political apex into the bureaucratic institutions, the press and major corporate enterprises. The great advantage of this power-sharing is a near-total uniformity of political views that it has inspired across the socio-cultural elite, but it comes at the cost of initiative, coordination and strategy. Crises seem to be one of the only ways our new, demobilised states can overcome their paralysis and act to further any kind of positive political programme.

More at A Plague Chronicle.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , | Leave a comment

FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation

By Paul Sperry | RealClearInvestigations | August 18, 2022

The FBI division overseeing the investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified material at his Mar-a-Lago residence is also a focus of Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation of the bureau’s alleged abuses of power and political bias during its years-long Russiagate probe of Trump.

The FBI’s nine-hour, 30-agent raid of the former president’s Florida estate is part of a counterintelligence case run out of Washington – not Miami, as has been widely reported – according to FBI case documents and sources with knowledge of the matter. The bureau’s counterintelligence division led the 2016-2017 Russia “collusion” investigation of Trump, codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Although the former head of Crossfire Hurricane, Peter Strzok, was fired after the disclosure of his vitriolic anti-Trump tweets, several members of his team remain working in the counterintelligence unit, the sources say, even though they are under active investigation by both Durham and the bureau’s disciplinary arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility. The FBI declined to respond to questions about any role they may be taking in the Mar-a-Lago case.

In addition, a key member of the Crossfire team – Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Brian Auten – has continued to be involved in politically sensitive investigations, including the ongoing federal probe of potentially incriminating content found on the abandoned laptop of President Biden’s son Hunter Biden, according to recent correspondence between the Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI Director Christopher Wray. FBI whistleblowers have alleged that Auten tried to falsely discredit derogatory evidence against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign by labeling it Russian “disinformation,” an assessment that caused investigative activity to cease.

Auten has been allowed to work on sensitive cases even though he has been under internal investigation since 2019, when Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred him for disciplinary review for his role in vetting a Hillary Clinton campaign-funded dossier used by the FBI to obtain a series of wiretap warrants to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz singled out Auten for cutting a number of corners in the verification process and even allowing information he knew to be incorrect slip into warrant affidavits and mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court.

In congressional testimony this month, Wray confirmed that “a number of” former Crossfire Hurricane team members are still employed at the bureau while undergoing disciplinary review. In the meantime, Wray has walled off the former Russiagate investigators only from participating in FISA wiretap applications, according to the sources.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked Wray for copies of recent case files and reports generated by Auten and whether he is included among the team the FBI has assembled to determine which of the seized Trump records fall within the scope of its counterespionage investigation and which fall outside of it.

Some former FBI officials worry that Auten, a top bureau expert on Russia and nuclear warfare, will have a hand in analyzing the boxes of documents agents seized from Trump’s home on Aug. 8 to help determine if any of the alleged Top Secret material he kept there might have been compromised, potentially putting national security at risk.

“It is a disgrace that Auten is still even employed by the bureau,” said 27-year FBI veteran Michael Biasello. “I would substitute other analysts and agents.”

An examination of the bureau agents involved in the Mar-a-Lago raid reveals other connections between them and FBI officials who played key roles in advancing the Russiagate hoax.

Sources told RealClearInvestigations that Jay Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in Justice’s national security division, who happens to be a Democratic National Committee donor, has been coordinating the Mar-a-Lago investigation with Alan Kohler, who heads the FBI’s counterintelligence division.

Kohler replaced Bill Priestap in that post after Priestap stepped down from the bureau amid criticism of his role in the Russiagate probe. Kohler had worked at FBI headquarters under Priestap, specializing in countering Russian intelligence threats.

Before that, he worked in London as the FBI’s liaison with British intelligence and law enforcement. The sources say Kohler was close to Stefan Halper, an academic and longtime FBI contractor whom the bureau ran as an informant in a failed effort to suborn Trump campaign officials. He also worked closely with Stephen Somma, a lead case agent in the Crossfire Hurricane probe whom Horowitz said was “primarily responsible” for some of the worst misconduct in the FISA warrant abuse scandal. Somma is a counterintelligence investigator in the FBI’s New York field office, where he has been reassigned to the China desk.

In 2019, Kohler was promoted to special agent in charge of the counterintelligence division at the FBI’s Washington field Office, where he worked alongside then-assistant agent-in-charge Timothy Thibault, who was reassigned by Wray just days prior to the Mar-a-Lago raid, after whistleblowers raised questions about political bias. They asserted that Thibault, who has taken aim at Trump and Republicans on social media, worked with Auten to falsely discredit evidence of alleged money laundering and other activities against Hunter Biden and prevent agents from investigating them.

The Washington field office’s counterintelligence division is now run by Anthony Riedlinger, who previously worked at FBI headquarters as a section chief under Priestap. Some of the agents involved in the raid on Trump’s home came from that Washington field office, according to the sources and FBI case documents.

Bratt, the top counterintelligence official at Justice, traveled to Mar-a-Lago in early June and personally inspected the storage facility while interacting with both Trump and one of his lawyers. Trump allowed the three FBI agents Bratt brought with him to open boxes in the storage room and look through them. They left with some documents. After leaving, Bratt made a request to Trump’s lawyer for increased security at the facility and asked to see surveillance footage from the security cameras. The lawyer complied with the requests. Months went by before the Justice Department took the politically explosive step of sending FBI agents unannounced to Trump’s home, seizing documents, photos, and other items not just from the storage facility but from multiple rooms on the property, including the former president’s office.

Former assistant FBI director Chris Swecker said the search warrant that agents obtained is quite wide-ranging. He pointed out that it authorized the seizure of any information in any form related to “national defense information,” which he said “does not necessarily include classified material.”

“This is a huge, broad search warrant and a huge, broad investigation leveled against the former president,” Swecker said.

What’s more, he said the physical search of the former president’s residence was far more sweeping than first reported and included unsupervised snooping in several dozen bedrooms, as well as numerous storage rooms and closets, including those of the former first lady. FBI agents took numerous boxes and containers of documents and other material, including several binders of photos and even three passports held by the former president.

Although Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that the DOJ seeks to “narrowly scope any search that is undertaken,” details of the warrant reveal agents had the authority to seize entire boxes of records – including those potentially covered by attorney-client privilege and executive privilege – if just a single document inside the container were marked with a classified marking.

Agents were allowed to also seize any containers or boxes “found together with” ones containing classified papers, according to ATTACHMENT B (“Property to be seized”) of the warrant. In addition, the FBI agents were given the authority to confiscate “any government and/or presidential records created between Jan. 20, 2017, and Jan. 20, 2021,” which covers Trump’s full term in office. That meant they were able to take any item related to the Trump administration.

All told, dozens of boxes and containers were removed from Trump’s residence, very few of which actually contained classified information, the sources said.

According to Federal Election Commission records, Bratt has given exclusively to Democrats, including at least $800 to the Democratic National Committee. The sources said he is close to David Laufman, whom he replaced as the top counterintelligence official at Justice. An Obama donor, Laufman helped oversee the Russiagate probe, as well as the Clinton email case, which also involved classified information.

A Senate investigator told RCI that Laufman was the “mastermind” behind the strategy to dust off and “weaponize” the rarely enforced statutory relic – the Foreign Agents Registration Act – against Trump campaign officials, a novel legal move that the investigator noted is similar to the department’s current attempts to enforce the Presidential Records Act against Trump – which is a civil, not a criminal, statute – by invoking the Espionage Act of 1917.

Laufman signed off on the wiretapping of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, which the Department of Justice inspector general determined was conducted under false pretenses involving doctored email, suppression of exculpatory evidence, and other malfeasance.

Suddenly resurfacing as a media surrogate for the Justice Department defending the Mar-a-Lago raid, Laufman has been a key source for stories by the Washington Post, CNN, and other outlets.

On CNN, for instance, he claimed the documents seized from Trump’s storage were “particularly stunning and particularly egregious,” and their discovery “completely validates the government’s investigation” into the former president – though he quickly added, “Whether this investigation transforms into an outright criminal prosecution remains to be seen.”

Swecker said that there is strong reason to fear that the FBI’s counterintelligence division might politicize this case.

“For sure, the FBI has dug themselves into a huge hole because of how they handled the Clinton (email) case and then Crossfire Hurricane and Hunter Biden,” Swecker said. “Myself and many of my colleagues think they are treading on very thin ice here.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “you can’t recuse an entire FBI division.”

Patel: ‘It’s Just Insane’

Former federal prosecutor and Trump administration official Kash Patel said the FBI may have a personal interest – and a potential conflict – in seizing the records stored by Trump.

He noted that Trump in October 2020 authorized the declassification of all the investigative records generated from the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane as well as the Clinton email investigation, codenamed “Midyear Exam,” and he said that the FBI may have confiscated some of those records in its raid, ensuring they won’t be made public. In addition, he said, the agency may be digging for other documents to try to justify, retroactively, their questionable, politically-tinged 2016 opening of the Trump-Russia “collusion” case, which came up embarrassingly short on evidence.

“Tragically, the same FBI characters that were involved in Russiagate are the same counterintel guys running this ‘national security investigation’ against Trump,” said Patel, who deposed Crossfire Hurricane team members as a former House Intelligence Committee investigator.

Patel noted that the Horowitz report indicated FBI analyst Auten hid exculpatory information about Trump’s adviser Page from other investigators and the FISA court, which should be more than enough to keep him at arm’s length from other investigations involving Trump.

“And to top it all off, this guy admits [to Horowitz’s investigators] he’s unrepentant about his role in making up the biggest hoax in election history, and Wray still lets him be a supervisor at the FBI,” he said. “It’s just insane.”

The Justice Department’s national security division has ultimate authority over the grand-jury probe of Trump for possible violations of the Espionage Act, including alleged mishandling of classified material – the same statutes invoked in the Clinton email investigation. (In that case, in contrast, the FBI never searched the former secretary of state’s Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion, where she set up an unsecured basement server to send and receive at least 110 classified emails and where she also received government documents by fax.)

Former FBI counterintelligence official and lawyer Mark Wauck said he is troubled by signs that the same cast of characters from the Russiagate scandal appears to be involved in the Mar-a-Lago investigation.

“If these people, who were part of a major hoax that involved criminal activity and displays of bias and seriously flawed judgment, are still involved, then that’s a major scandal,” he said in an interview.

August 20, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

WEF Proposes Globalized Plan to Police Online Content Using Artificial Intelligence

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 19, 2022

Warning about a “dark world of online harms” that must be addressed, the World Economic Forum (WEF) this month published an article calling for a “solution” to “online abuse” that would be powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and human intelligence.

The proposal calls for a system, based on AI, that would automate the censorship of “misinformation” and “hate speech” and work to overcome the spread of “child abuse, extremism, disinformation, hate speech and fraud” online.

According to the author of the article, Inbal Goldberger, human “trust and safety teams” alone are not fully capable of policing such content online.

Goldberger is vice president of ActiveFence Trust & Safety, a technology company based in New York City and Tel Aviv that claims it “automatically collects data from millions of sources and applies contextual AI to power trust and safety operations of any size.”

Instead of relying solely on human moderation teams, Goldberger proposes a system based on “human-curated, multi-language, off-platform intelligence” — in other words, input provided by “expert” human sources that would then create “learning sets” that would train the AI to recognize purportedly harmful or dangerous content.

This “off-platform intelligence” — more machine learning than AI per se, according to Didi Rankovic of ReclaimTheNet.org — would be collected from “millions of sources” and would then be collated and merged before being used for “content removal decisions” on the part of “Internet platforms.”

According to Goldberger, the system would supplement “smarter automated detection with human expertise” and will allow for the creation of “AI with human intelligence baked in.”

This, in turn, would provide protection against “increasingly advanced actors misusing platforms in unique ways.”

“A human moderator who is an expert in European white supremacy won’t necessarily be able to recognize harmful content in India or misinformation narratives in Kenya,” Goldberger explained.

However, “By uniquely combining the power of innovative technology, off-platform intelligence collection and the prowess of subject-matter experts who understand how threat actors operate, scaled detection of online abuse can reach near-perfect precision” as these learning sets are “baked in” to the AI over time, Goldberger said.

This would, in turn, enable “trust and safety teams” to “stop threats rising online before they reach users,” she added.

In his analysis of what Goldberger’s proposal might look like in practice, blogger Igor Chudov explained how content policing on social media today occurs on a platform-by-platform basis.

For example, Twitter content moderators look only at content posted to that particular platform, but not at a user’s content posted outside Twitter.

Chudov argued this is why the WEF appears to support a proposal to “move beyond the major Internet platforms, in order to collect intelligence about people and ideas everywhere else.”

“Such an approach,” Chudov wrote, “would allow them to know better what person or idea to censor — on all major platforms at once.”

The “intelligence” collected by the system from its “millions of sources” would, according to Chudov, “detect thoughts that they do not like,” resulting in “content removal decisions handed down to the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and so on … a major change from the status quo of each platform deciding what to do based on messages posted to that specific platform only.”

In this way, “the search for wrongthink becomes globalized,” concludes Chudov.

In response to the WEF proposal, ReclaimTheNet.org pointed out that “one can start discerning the argument here … as simply pressuring social networks to start moving towards ‘preemptive censorship.’”

Chudov posited that the WEF is promoting the proposal because it “is becoming a little concerned” as “unapproved opinions are becoming more popular, and online censors cannot keep up with millions of people becoming more aware and more vocal.”

According to the Daily Caller, “The WEF document did not specify how members of the AI training team would be decided, how they would be held accountable or whether countries could exercise controls over the AI.”

In a disclaimer accompanying Goldberger’s article, the WEF reassured the public that the content expressed in the piece “is the opinion of the author, not the World Economic Forum,” adding that “this article has been shared on websites that routinely misrepresent content and spread misinformation.”

However, the WEF appears to be open to proposals like Goldberger’s. For instance, a May 2022 article on the WEF website proposes Facebook’s “Oversight Board” as an example of a “real-world governance model” that can be applied to governance in the metaverse.

And, as Chudov noted, “AI content moderation slots straight into the AI social credit score system.”

UN, backed by Gates Foundation, also aiming to ‘break chain of misinformation’

The WEF isn’t the only entity calling for more stringent policing of online content and “misinformation.”

For example, UNESCO recently announced a partnership with Twitter, the European Commission and the World Jewish Congress leading to the launch of the #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign, to “stop the spread of conspiracy theories.”

According to UNESCO:

“The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked a worrying rise in disinformation and conspiracy theories.

“Conspiracy theories can be dangerous: they often target and discriminate against vulnerable groups, ignore scientific evidence and polarize society with serious consequences. This needs to stop.”

UNESCO’s director-general, Audrey Azoulay, said:

“Conspiracy theories cause real harm to people, to their health, and also to their physical safety. They amplify and legitimize misconceptions about the pandemic, and reinforce stereotypes which can fuel violence and violent extremist ideologies.”

UNESCO said the partnership with Twitter informs people that events occurring across the world are not “secretly manipulated behind the scenes by powerful forces with negative intent.”

UNESCO issued guidance for what to do in the event one encounters a “conspiracy theorist” online: One must “react” immediately by posting a relevant link to a “fact-checking website” in the comments.

UNESCO also provides advice to the public in the event someone encounters a “conspiracy theorist” in the flesh. In that case, the individual shold avoid arguing, as “any argument may be taken as proof that you are part of the conspiracy and reinforce that belief.”

The #ThinkBeforeSharing campaign provides a host of infographics and accompanying materials intended to explain what “conspiracy theories” are, how to identify them, how to report on them and how to react to them more broadly.

According to these materials, conspiracy theories have six things in common, including:

  • An “alleged, secret plot.”
  • A “group of conspirators.”
  • “‘Evidence’ that seems to support the conspiracy theory.”
  • Suggestions that “falsely” claim “nothing happens by accident and that there are no coincidences,” and that “nothing is as it appears and everything is connected.”
  • They divide the world into “good or bad.”
  • They scapegoat people and groups.

UNESCO doesn’t entirely dismiss the existence of “conspiracy theories,” instead admitting that “real conspiracies large and small DO exist.”

However, the organization claims, such “conspiracies” are “more often centered on single self-contained events, or an individual like an assassination or a coup d’état” and are “real” only if “unearthed by the media.”

In addition to the WEF and UNESCO, the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council earlier this year adopted “a plan of action to tackle disinformation.”

The “plan of action,” sponsored by the U.S., U.K., Ukraine, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, emphasizes “the primary role that governments have, in countering false narratives,” while expressing concern for:

“The increasing and far-reaching negative impact on the enjoyment and realization of human rights of the deliberate creation and dissemination of false or manipulated information intended to deceive and mislead audiences, either to cause harm or for personal, political or financial gain.”

Even countries that did not officially endorse the Human Rights Council plan expressed concerns about online “disinformation.”

For instance, China identified such “disinformation” as “a common enemy of the international community.”

An earlier UN initiative, in partnership with the WEF, “recruited 110,000 information volunteers” who would, in the words of UN global communications director Melissa Fleming, act as “digital first responders” to “online misinformation.”

The UN’s #PledgeToPause initiative, although recently circulating as a new development on social media, was announced in November 2020, and was described by the UN as “the first global behaviour-change campaign on misinformation.”

The campaign is part of a broader UN initiative, “Verified,” that aims to recruit participants to disseminate “verified content optimized for social sharing,” stemming directly from the UN communications department.

Fleming said at the time that the UN also was “working with social media platforms to recommend changes” to “help break the chain of misinformation.”

Both “Verified” and the #PledgeToPause campaign still appear to be active as of the time of this writing.

The “Verified” initiative is operated in conjunction with Purpose, an activist group that has collaborated with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the World Health Organization, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Google and Starbucks.

Since 2019, the UN has been in a strategic partnership with the WEF based on six “areas of focus,” one of which is “digital cooperation.”

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

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.

August 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

White House “Climate Adviser” Banned from the National Academy of Science for Science Fraud

… while White House Officials Beg Social Media to Silence Opponents

By Igor Chudov | August 18, 2022

Climate change is a very important topic! According to Bill Gates-sponsored scientist Kari Nadeau, climate change is responsible for the recent rise in heart attacks, stillbirths, and cardiovascular disease, especially in children. So, knowing how important climate change is, I am paying attention to news about it, though with lesser intensity than I devote to Covid news.

Finally, we have a great climate change story! White House “climate official” Jane Lubchenco was just banned by the National Academy of Science (archive link) for science fraud. She was an editor of a paper written by her brother-in-law. Jane did not disclose this family relationship and promoted her brother-in-law’s article. The article itself contained false data that was known to be out of date at the time the article was written, and thus the paper was fraudulent.

Jane is now not allowed to participate in many scientific activities due to violating ethics rules meant to prevent fraud in science.

What is the White House’s biggest priority right now, when it comes to climate change? Perhaps it is cleaning up the place and making sure that we have honest science? Not really. The priority is demanding that major social networks silence climate change skeptics. Watch this video at 11:10:

The White House adviser says in the interview:

And frankly, the tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.

I am not a big climate change skeptic — I do not care about climate change all that much right now — but coincidentally, Twitter recently suspended my dog’s account for 7 days.

So, I am not allowed to spread misinformation. The White House, on the other hand, has climate change advisors who perpetrate scientific fraud.

On a more serious note, my dog’s Twitter account was not alone and was suspended among hundreds of others last week, ostensibly for antivax misinformation. Why is this happening now? Why the urgency? It certainly is NOT about helping to vaccinate the public, as COVID vaccine uptake is at historic lows and everyone made up their mind already. Censorship would not help much with vaccination! Why, then, is it intensifying?

My own guess is that these suspensions are not so much related to Covid, but are happening due to the fact that the White House and the woke social networks are preparing for the November elections and want to silence dissent in advance. Why?

  • to influence the election, and
  • to prevent people from questioning election conduct and fairness afterward

They — the White House, Twitter, Facebook and Google — know that they will have to face very uncomfortable questions about their role in forcing the so-called “Covid vaccine” onto young people, as they “own” the outcome of this. They want to postpone that moment of reckoning and thus are deleting as many dissenting voices as they can.

August 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

The CDC Failed, So Spin It Off and Make It More Powerful?

BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | AUGUST 17, 2022

The failure of the CDC to manage Covid-19 was baked in from the first moments of its response. A government agency was never going to mitigate much less get rid of this sort of pathogen. This is because the virus never cared a whit about prestige degrees, job descriptions, big budgets, high-end connections, media agitprop, or polls. It went on its merry way, hit everyone, and immune systems adapted as they always have done.

The great experiment was an enormous flop.

The costs of the experiment we know: it is the catastrophe that Donald Henderson predicted it would be in 2006.

Thus does it make sense that the present overlords of the agency have admitted at least partially to have made some errors. The question is what were these errors. From the latest news concerning some impending shakeup, I see no evidence of any serious rethinking of the crazed and cockamamie lockdown orders it issued from March 2020 onward. Not even preposterous mandates like plexiglass at retail counters, two years of school closures, “six feet of distance,” one-way grocery aisles, band members in bubbles, mask mandates, and limits on how many people you can have in your home have prompted remorse.

Instead, every indication is that the CDC believes the real problem was that it did not have a high-enough budget and enough power. Plenty of lawmakers are willing to go along – not that anyone is asking them. Therefore, its tremendous pandemic powers need to be tweaked and invested mainly in a division known as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR.

Says The Washington Post :

The Biden administration is reorganizing the federal health department [HHS] to create an independent division that would lead the nation’s pandemic response, amid frustrations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Joy!

The new head of this high-level division (same level as FDA/CDC) is Dawn O’Connell who has a background in literature (Vanderbilt) and law (Tulane), not science or medicine. She is a political appointee who took the reins as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Preparedness and Response, as confirmed by the Senate in 2021. She is now elated to report that her division will be elevated to become just as important as the CDC and the FDA.

Here is her memo to the staff:

ASPR Team:

As you know firsthand, ASPR is at the forefront of many of HHS’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s top priorities. Whether your work involves strengthening our core preparedness and response capabilities, tackling new and emerging challenges, or providing essential support services to the team, please know that the work that you do matters and that it is making a big difference.

In recognition of the tremendous value this team brings to the Department and the American people – and due to the increasing size and scope of what we do – I asked Secretary Becerra to consider making us an Operating Division and I am pleased to report that Secretary Becerra has made the critically important decision to elevate our team from a Staff Division to an Operating Division (OpDiv)!

This change allows ASPR to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities. As an OpDiv, we are now in the same category as other large HHS teams with core operational responsibilities such as CDC, NIH, FDA, CMS, and ACF. This change is an important next step for our organization which has continued to grow and evolve since its creation in 2006 – the pace of which has quickened over the past year. This change is also a recognition of the good work you all have been and continue to do on behalf of the American People…

Along with this reclassification, moving forward we will be known as the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). The adjustment to our name signals our elevation to an OpDiv, while maintaining the equity and brand recognition we have built with key internal and external stakeholders, particularly over the course of the pandemic.

Thus must we ask: what the heck is going on here? The Biden administration has no idea. Indeed the Washington Post reports that “some senior Biden administration officials said they were unaware of the plan to reorganize the department, which was approved by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and has been held close by his deputies.”

This point is crucial. This is how the administrative state works. It cares nothing for the elected officials who come and go. It moves on its own, fueled by money baked into the budgets and with power hardly anyone dares to challenge. There is never any accountability. There is only one path forward: more power. Elections be damned.

The most important part of the memo here is the idea of mobilizing a “coordinated national response.” It drove these people utterly bonkers that during the pandemic, several states went their own way. South Dakota never shut down. Georgia opened a month after the shutdowns. Florida and Texas were next. Finally all the states with Republican governors opened while most states with Democratic governors remained closed to some degree.

The empirical results are incredibly obvious. The open states performed as well and often better on disease demographics. Meanwhile their economies did not suffer nearly as much. The kids stayed in school. The churches functioned. There were live musical performances. The museums, libraries, and playgrounds opened. People are less traumatized.

The migration of people from blue to red tells the whole story. Masses of people fled the lockdown states for the open states.

A “coordinated national response” would make such federalist solutions impossible. Forget the 9th and 10th Amendments. These agencies and these people care nothing for them, nor actual science which would encourage a plethora of experiments in the management of a pathogen. These bureaucrats in Washington think they have all the answers, and they demand complete compliance.

Meanwhile, the CDC itself is being reorganized. But don’t be fooled by any appearance of contrition. They still have a legal appeal in process that would put a mask back on your face when traveling. The new agency to which some of its pandemic responsibilities will be transferred will have a 1,000-person staff to start, people paid the big bucks to sit around coming up with new ways to whip up disease panic and start another crackdown.

A better solution would be to abolish the CDC. States can handle all its responsibilities. It did not even exist until 1947. Its purpose was mosquito control, spraying a now-banned chemical (DDT) everywhere. These days we handle that by going to Home Depot.

The CDC as an agency grew out of the 1944 Public Health Services Act that permitted nationally ordered quarantines for the first time. The legislative history of that thing remains a mystery to me. Regardless, it is nowhere justified in the US Constitution. This act needs to go too. So too all the federal agencies to which it gave rise. This is the only real solution.

Certainly creating a new agency is not the answer. And note that ASPR has its roots in 2006 as an outgrowth of the Bush administration’s obsessive panic over bioterrorism. It was also the first year that anyone imagined that lockdowns could be an appropriate path for any free society. It was the year that “social distancing” was invented by a cabal of computer scientists with zero experience in infectious disease.

These fanatics need to be out of power completely, and the regulations, laws, and agencies that enabled them to ruin the country and its freedoms must be ended. This is what any responsive government in a modern society would do. It would see failure and call it and then do something about it. It certainly would not go in this new direction and reward the disease planners with more power and money!

We must learn real lessons and act on them.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

August 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

German Official Trashes Cost of Living Protesters as “Enemies of the State”

Says they’re extremists who want to overthrow the government

Getty Images
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | August 17, 2022

A top German official has trashed people who may be planning to protest against energy blackouts as “enemies of the state” and “extremists” who want to overthrow the government.

The interior minister of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Herbert Reul (CDU), says that anti-mandatory vaxx and anti-lockdown demonstrators have found a new cause – the energy crisis.

In an interview with German news outlet NT, Reul revealed that German security services were keeping an eye on “extremists” who plan to infiltrate the protests and stage violence, with the unrest being planned via the Telegram messenger app, which German authorities have previously tried to ban.

“You can already tell from those who are out there,” said Reul. “The protesters no longer talk about coronavirus or vaccination. But they are now misusing people’s worries and fears in other fields. (…) It’s almost something like new enemies of the state that are establishing themselves.”

Despite the very real threat of potential blackouts, power grid failures and gas shortages, Reul claimed such issues were feeding “conspiracy theory narratives.”

However, it’s no “conspiracy theory” that Germans across the country have been panic buying stoves, firewood and electric heaters as the government tells them thermostats will be limited to 19C in public buildings and that sports arenas and exhibition halls will be used as ‘warm up spaces’ this winter to help freezing citizens who are unable to afford skyrocketing energy bills.

As Remix News reports, blaming right-wing conspiracy theorists for a crisis caused by Germany’s sanctions on Russia and its suicidal dependence on green energy is pretty rich.

“Reul, like the country’s federal interior minister, Nancy Faeser, is attempting to tie right-wing ideology and protests against Covid-19 policies to any potential protests in the winter.”

“While some on the right, such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD), have stressed that the government’s sanctions against Russia are the primary factor driving the current energy crisis, they have not advocated an “overthrow” of the government. Instead, they have stressed the need to restart the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, end energy sanctions against Russia, and push for a peaceful solution to end the war.”

Indeed, energy shortages and the cost of living crisis are issues that are of major concern to everyone, no matter where they are on the political spectrum.

To claim that people worried about heating their homes and putting food on the table this winter are all “enemies of the state” is an utter outrage.

As we highlighted last week, the president of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Stephan Kramer, said energy crisis riots would make anti-lockdown unrest look like a “children’s birthday party.”

“Mass protests and riots are just as conceivable as concrete acts of violence against things and people, as well as classic terrorism to overthrow it,” Kramer told ZDF.

August 18, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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