The vaccine cajolers, Part 3: Recruiting trusted sales staff
By Paula Jardine | TCW Defending Freedom | May 13, 2022
This is the third instalment of Paula Jardine’s five-part investigation into the planning behind ensuring vaccine acceptance and countering vaccine ‘hesitancy’. You can read Part 1, published on Wednesday, here, and Part 2, published yesterday, here.
IN 2018 the Wellcome Trust reported that vaccine scepticism is highest in high income industrialised countries where over 80 per cent of all global vaccine sales occur. Months before Covid-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency, the World Health Organisation had listed vaccine hesitancy as one of ten threats to global health, threatening to reverse progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases: ‘Given that the majority of parents accept vaccines, pro-vaccine messages may be needed to reinforce and support positive sentiment and help prevent emerging hesitancy from expanding.’
In fact they had been working for years trying to shore up positive sentiments, in 2003 establishing the WHO endorsed global network of websites called the Vaccine Safety Net to provide ‘trustworthy’ information to ‘counterbalance websites that provide unbalanced, misleading and alarming information on vaccine safety’.
A decade later, in 2013, this counterbalancing programme had not proved enough for some. David Ropeik, who taught risk communication at Harvard School of Public Health, chillingly said, ‘What’s dangerous about widely broadcast vaccine debates, in a sense, is the debate itself: by putting out misleading information to people with little fundamental understanding of the performance and value of vaccines, the anti-vaccine movement and its social media echo chambers create doubt when, in fact, there is not a true scientific debate.’
So certain was Ropeik of the absence of a debate that he called for punitive measures, including restricting the ability of the unvaccinated to participate fully in community activities, to be used as a means of achieving full vaccination, long before Covid saw countries introduce such restrictions by way of vaccine passes.
Dr Emily Brunson, an anthropologist who like Dr Heidi Larson, referred to yesterday, studies vaccine confidence issues, was less absolutist than Ropeik. ‘I think we need to avoid the trap of thinking that information or knowledge is enough, because for a lot of the people, and when you look at hesitancy and parental vaccine hesitancy in the US, the group who is most likely to purposefully choose to not vaccinate are highly educated . . . these are people who have read the primary literature themselves, and they’re correctly interpreting it, so it’s not a misunderstanding. They have other concerns that go beyond the traditional public health message of “This is what you should be doing”.’
Communications strategies that are ‘vaccine positive’ and developed with input from the vaccine confidence teams are disseminated around the world today. Larson and Brunson were both members of the expert panel convened by the US National Institute of Health (NIH) to develop communications guidance as the Covid-19 vaccines rollout under emergency use authorisations began. They both contributed to a Vaccine Communications Principles guide published by the Centre for Public Interest Communications which describes its mission as ‘building communications strategies for the common good’.
Larson was also a member of the WHO Scientific Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) working group on vaccines that developed a model to address hesitancy based on what it calls the three Cs: confidence, complacency and convenience. The key to confidence, they observed, lies with health workers, who are trusted by the public and able to influence vaccination decisions.
Over recent years, seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccine uptake has become the bellwether for vaccine confidence amongst health care workers. One lesson learned from the 2009 swine flu pandemic was that many of these workers began to exhibit less than universal enthusiasm for vaccines. In the United States fewer than half accepted the swine flu vaccine. Of course, if they were not taking the vaccines themselves, they couldn’t be relied upon as recruiting sergeants for the War on Microbes. Some needed more than education, they needed pressganging. So health departments and employers began mandating vaccines as a pre-condition of employment. Others stopped short of mandates, requiring instead that unvaccinated staff wear masks so that they could be more easily identified.
In England, where annual flu vaccine uptake by NHS staff hovers around 64 per cent overall with a wide variation in uptake between trusts, a different ‘inducement’ approach was introduced. In 2016, NHS England began offering financial incentives to the trusts linked to the number of staff inoculated. Behavioural modification tactics courtesy of the behavioural psychologists were deployed including ‘social norming’, that is creating peer pressure to make people think ‘if everyone else is doing it, I should too’. As NHS England explains, ‘Even something as simple as a sticker to show they have had their jab can be worn as a sign of pride and signal to others that they should have the flu vaccination.’
Whether volunteers or conscripts for the War on Microbes, the job of these trusted voices is to sell to the public products that are meant to be a long-term investment in their own health or their children’s health. The 2019 Global Vaccination Summit said more could be done to support them to provide ‘trusted, credible information on vaccines’ by giving more prominence to vaccination and communication skills in medical curricula and by increasing continuing professional training on vaccination issues.
The question is, what exactly are they being taught?
Google introduces new wallet with support for digital IDs and vaccine cards
Digital ID cards are being normalized by Big Tech
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | May 11, 2022
Google will be integrating digital ID cards and proof of vaccination cards into a new Google Wallet app that’s set to be released in a few weeks.
Google revealed the new digital wallet app at its Google I/O ‘22 keynote. Sameer Samat, Google’s Vice President of Product Management, said the tech giant is working with US states and governments around the world to bring digital IDs to Google Wallet and that driver’s licenses will be the first type of ID to be digitized in the app.
Samat noted that items with highly personal information, such as vaccine cards, are stored on device and “not shared with anyone, not even Google.”
Google’s embrace of digital IDs and vaccine cards follows Apple introducing the tech last year when it partnered with several US states and the Transport Security Administration (TSA) to digitize driver’s licenses and then stuck taxpayers with part of the bill for the rollout.
When it started digitizing driver’s licenses, Apple insisted that users could present their ID without needing to unlock, show, or hand over their device. Samat made similar claims at Google I/O ‘22 and said users can share information from driver’s licenses that are stored in Google Wallet without having to give the phone to another person by either using near-field communication (NFC) or a quick response (QR code).
Digital vaccine cards have also started to be normalized by two of the world’s biggest phone manufacturers – Apple and Samsung.
As these powerful tech companies embrace digital IDs and vaccine cards, national governments and influential international organizations are also pushing for greater adoption of this tech.
Nina Jankowicz, Disinfo Board chief, voiced support for UK government setting standards for acceptable speech
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | May 11, 2022
The head of the Department of Homeland Security’s new controversial Disinformation Governance Board recommended the idea of the government setting speech standards during testimony in the UK Parliament last year.
When asked by a lawmaker if the government should set minimum speech standards, like banning misogyny on the internet, Nina Jankowicz agreed.
Read the transcript here.
She went on to suggest that the communications watchdog should set the standards and fine tech platforms for non-compliance.
“For Ofcom [the UK’s communications regulator] to be able to establish the minimum standards that would be applied to all platforms and incur fines would be a useful starting point,” Jankowicz said. “That could be based, again, on the preexisting terms of service.”
Jankowicz said that alternative platforms, which are pro-free speech would be a problem, and blasted them for supporting “freedom of expression and fairy dust.”
Another idea she sold to UK lawmakers was social media companies being forced to hand over data to the government for censorship purposes.
“The social media platforms can do that if they are compelled to,” she said. She added that “you or Ofcom would need to determine exactly what measures you would like to see and compel the social media platforms to hand over that data.”
Jankowicz also promoted the idea of content demotion and shadow banning saying it, “… is not only about taking down content. It can be about demoting content to and saying ‘You can shout in the black void, but you do not get a huge audience to do that,’” she said. She continued to explain that demoting content would “allow us to get around some of the free speech concerns.”
EU, UK join US in launching online ‘disinformation’ policies, ‘one-world governance’ of social media
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | May 11, 2022
The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the U.K.’s proposed Online Safety Bill are among the latest government policies designed to hold social media companies responsible for hate speech and “disinformation” posted by users.
Experts interviewed by The Defender expressed concerns about the potential slippery slope of regulations — in the U.S. and overseas — which, under the guise of “combating disinformation,” stifle the spread of information deemed inconvenient for governments and other powerful actors.
As reported by The Defender, in the U.S., these proposals include a government “disinformation board” and a bill pending before Congress, the Digital Services Oversight and Safety Act.
The EU’s new regulations, experts said, may have far-reaching impacts beyond Europe.
Michael Rectenwald, author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” said he can foresee a future in which such regulations might affect all speech — not just speech on social media platforms.
Rectenwald told The Defender :
“[T]he EU’s DSA represents a major step toward one-world governance of social media and Internet search and one step closer to global government.
“Since the distinction between ‘on-line’ and ‘off-line’ activity will lose all meaning as the Internet includes the Internet of Things and Bodies, the DSA may become the law of the land.”
Is EU’s Digital Services Act on collision course with Musk’s Twitter plans?
In timing that coincided with Elon Musk’s intent to purchase Twitter, the EU announced April 23 the passage of the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA seeks to tackle the spread of “misinformation and illegal content” and will apply “to all online intermediaries providing services in the EU,” in proportion to “the nature of the services concerned” and the number of users of each platform.
According to the DSA, “very large online platforms” (VLOPs) and “very large online search engines” (VLOSEs) — those with more than 45 million monthly active users in the EU — will be subject to the most stringent of the DSA’s requirements.
Big Tech companies will be obliged to perform annual risk assessments to ascertain the extent to which their platforms “contribute to the spread of divisive material that can affect issues like health,” and independent audits to determine the steps the companies are taking to prevent their platforms from being “abused.”
These steps come as part of a broader crackdown on the “spread of disinformation” called for by the Act, requiring platforms to “flag hate speech, eliminate any kind of terrorist propaganda” and implement “frameworks to quickly take down illicit content.”
Regarding alleged “disinformation,” these platforms will be mandated to create a “crisis response mechanism” to combat the spread of such content, with the Act specifically citing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the “manipulation” of online content that has ensued.
The DSA also will ban certain types of advertising on digital platforms, including targeted ads tailored to children or to people of specific ethnicities or sexual orientations.
Tech companies also will be required to increase transparency in the form of providing regulators and researchers “access to data on how their systems recommend content to users.”
This latter point appears similar to Musk’s plans to make Twitter’s algorithms “open source to increase trust.”
Companies violating the provisions of the DSA would risk fines of up to 6% of their total global annual revenue, while repeat offenses may result in the platforms being banned from the EU — despite the “open internet” principle professed by the principle of “net neutrality” enshrined in EU law.
According to Techcrunch, the DSA will not fully come into effect until early 2024. However, rules for VLOPs have a shorter implementation period and may be enforced by early 2023.
A spokesperson for the European Commission — the EU’s executive branch — said the new regulations will ensure Big Tech’s “power over public debate is subject to democratically validated rules, in particular on transparency and accountability.”
Margrethe Vestager, the vice president of the European Commission, added, “With today’s agreement we ensure that platforms are held accountable for the risks their services can pose to society and citizens,” and, “With the DSA we help create a safe and accountable online environment.”
Directly addressing Musk, the European Commission’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, tweeted, “Be it cars or social media, any company operating in Europe needs to comply with our rules — regardless of their shareholding. Mr. Musk knows this well,” adding, “[Musk] is familiar with European rules on automotive [referring to Musk’s ownership of Tesla Motors], and will quickly adapt to the Digital Services Act.”
Separately, Breton stated, “We welcome everyone. We are open but on our conditions. At least we know what to tell him: ‘Elon, there are rules. You are welcome but these are our rules. It’s not your rules which will apply here.’”
Breton’s warning to Musk bears a striking resemblance to the statements of then-German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who in 2015 warned the newly elected left-wing Greek government not to entertain thoughts about renegotiating the austerity measures imposed on the country by the EU and International Monetary Fund, stating, “Elections change nothing. There are rules.”
Voice of America, a media outlet reflective of official U.S. government policy, reported “the job of reining in a Musk-led Twitter could fall to Europe,” referring to the DSA.
According to Gizmodo, the EU’s new legislation “could have global reverberations,” adding, “Lawmakers are also hoping it could serve as a model for other countries like India and Japan.”
However, Gizmodo warns the success of the DSA in accomplishing its objectives is far from guaranteed, referring to the example of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): “Some predicted [the GDPR] would fundamentally shift online privacy protection worldwide, and instead [it] basically just gave us those insufferable cookie permission pop-ups.”
While the DSA would apply to all 27 EU member states, some of these countries have already enacted similar domestic legislation. For instance, Germany has regulations in place that require digital platforms to remove hate speech within 24 hours or face fines of up to €50 million ($56 million).
Techcrunch, in reporting on the passage of the DSA, referred to legislation in countries not frequently noted for their democratic traditions or respect for free speech, such as China, Turkey, India and Nigeria.
As Techcrunch stated, platforms in these countries found to be “non-compliant” with domestic mandates may face fines, police raids, shutdowns and prison sentences for their executives.
Similar regulations pending in U.K.
Legislation similar to the DSA, the Online Safety Bill, is pending in the U.K. It would require Big Tech platforms to moderate “illegal” and “harmful” content in order to be allowed to operate in the U.K.
The bill would require digital platforms to protect users from such “harmful” content, with the threat of fines of up to 10% of global turnover for companies found in violation, as well as potential prison time for senior managers of these companies in cases of non-compliance.
A spokesperson for the U.K. government said:
“Twitter and all social media platforms must protect their users from harm on their sites.
“We are introducing new online safety laws to safeguard children, prevent abusive behaviour and protect free speech.
“All tech firms with users in the U.K. will need to comply with the new laws or face hefty fines and having their sites blocked.”
Max Blain, a spokesperson for U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson, said, “Regardless of ownership, all social media platforms must be responsible” for “protecting” users.
As The Defender recently reported, Damian Collins, a member of the British parliament with the British Labour Party who led a parliamentary committee that developed the Online Safety Bill, is a board member of the Center for Combating Digital Hate, which partners with prominent “fact-checking” firm NewsGuard.
As previously reported by The Defender, NewsGuard, in turn, closely collaborates with the World Health Organization (WHO), which also recently expressed concerns about Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
As U.S., EU sign commitment to ‘democratic values’ on the internet as they prepare policies to regulate online speech
Overshadowed by the news of Musk’s Twitter purchase and developments such as the DSA and the Biden administration’s “disinformation board,” several dozen countries quietly signed the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet” April 28.
Fifty-six countries and entities, including the U.S. and the EU, signed this declaration, described as “a political commitment to push rules for the internet that are underpinned by democratic values” and a response to Russia “wielding internet disruptions as a part of its escalating attacks on Ukraine.”
U.S. News reports that the declaration — which is not legally binding — is the first of its kind globally, and “protects human rights, promotes free flow of information, protects the privacy of users, and sets rules for a growing global digital economy among steps to counter what two Biden administration officials called a ‘dangerous new model’ of internet policy from countries such as Russia and China.”
According to the U.S. State Department, the declaration’s principles include:
- Protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people.
- Promote a global Internet that advances the free flow of information.
- Advance inclusive and affordable connectivity so that all people can benefit from the digital economy.
- Promote trust in the global digital ecosystem, including through protection of privacy.
- Protect and strengthen the multi-stakeholder approach to governance that keeps the Internet running for the benefit of all.
In turn, the declaration was described by the EU as being “in line with the rights and principles strongly anchored in the EU.”
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, known for her strong support of digital “vaccine passports” throughout the EU, stated:
“Today, for the first time, like-minded countries from all over the world are setting out a shared vision for the future of the Internet, to make sure that the values we hold true offline are also protected online, to make the Internet a safe place and trusted space for everyone, and to ensure that the Internet serves our individual freedom.
“Because the future of the Internet is also the future of democracy, of humankind.”
Thierry Breton remarked:
“This Declaration will ensure that the Internet and the use of digital technologies reinforce, not weaken, democracy and respect for human rights.”
According to the State Department, “[t]he Declaration remains open to all governments or relevant authorities willing to commit and implement its vision and principles.”
What does all this mean for Musk, Twitter and the future of free speech online?
Social media analysts and experts expressed varying opinions and predictions as to what regulations such as the DSA may mean for the global operations of digital platforms such as Twitter — especially if Musk attempts to make good on his pledges to “restore free speech.”
Vasilis Vasilopoulos, data protection officer with Greek public broadcaster ERT and a Ph.D. candidate in journalism and mass media studies at Greece’s Aristotle University, told The Defender there are some positive elements to the DSA.
However, the boundaries of what is considered free speech should also be expanded, albeit within certain limits, he said.
Vasilopoulos added:
“The DSA is not the only means through which the problem of unethical [social media] algorithms with deceptive motives, or the unethical use of social media platforms, can be solved.
“[I]t is obvious that these platforms have surpassed the limits to democracy that we believed existed, and therefore, it is important that instead of imposing restrictions, we expand these boundaries, in favor of humanity and not capital or power.”
Matthew Spitzer, professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, said the EU’s proposals in particular may clash with Musk’s stated goals for Twitter, telling The Defender :
“[The DSA] may interfere with one of Elon Musk’s stated goals for buying Twitter. He seems to want less content moderation. But this regulation requires a lot of it.
“Second, this regulation dovetails with Musk’s stated desire for increased transparency. He had promised more transparency.”
Spitzer added his view that the DSA will likely increase the cost of operation for all social media companies, especially if they must also conform to domestic laws passed by various EU member states.
He added that U.S. tech companies may represent an easy target for European regulators, telling The Defender :
“[T]here will be conflicts between the USA and Europe … all of the target companies started in the USA. They are easy political targets in Europe.”
Referring specifically to Elon Musk and Twitter, Rectenwald said:
“If Musk is to have his way, the platform would no longer discriminate against content based on ‘wokeness,’ political beliefs, or the adherence to official state narratives and dictates.
“This could include the restoration of banned accounts on request by users and dramatic changes to Twitter’s discriminatory, leftist algorithms.”
According to Rectenwald, the EU’s regulations may “hamstring” Musk’s vision for Twitter and lead to a one-size-fits-all approach to content moderation, resulting in a “slippery slope” wherein “any information and opinion that differs from WHO-established official narratives regarding pandemics or other health-related crises” would be restricted.
Rectenwald said:
“Most likely, in order to meet the EU’s regulatory requirements and to streamline their efforts, VLOPs and VLOSEs will simply apply one set of rules to all online content.”
He also added that further pressures on platforms like Twitter may come not from EU regulators, but from the tech industry itself:
“[P]ressure to conform to ‘woke’ dictates will come from the Big Tech ‘woke’ cartel, including threats to remove the Twitter app from the Apple Store for failure to censor ‘hate speech,’ and the flight of ‘woke’ advertisers.
“Most likely, Musk’s purchase of Twitter will make no difference as free speech is further curtailed.”
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
Biden Disinformation Czar Demands Power to Edit Other People’s Tweets
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 11, 2022
In a newly released video clip, Biden disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz demands that “trustworthy verified people” like her be given the power to edit other people’s tweets, making Twitter more like Wikipedia.
Yes, really.
Asserting that she was “eligible for it because I’m verified,” Jankowicz then bemoaned the fact there are people on Twitter with different opinions to her who also have the blue tick but “shouldn’t be verified” because they’re “not trustworthy.”
“So verified people can essentially start to edit Twitter the same sort of way that Wikipedia is so they can add context to certain tweets,” said Jankowicz.
She then provided the example, which she claimed was non-political, of President Trump tweeting about voter fraud.
“Someone could add context from one of the 60 lawsuits that went through the court or something that an election official in one of the states said, perhaps your own Secretary of State and his news conferences, something like that,” said Jankowicz.
“Adding context so that people have a fuller picture rather than just an individual claim on a tweet,” she added.
Of course, Twitter already slaps warning labels on such tweets, but now Jankowicz wants approved regime propagandists to be empowered to insert their narrative on an individual basis.
Also note how two of the other participants in the conversation were wearing face masks, despite it being a remote Zoom call.
As we previously highlighted, Jankowicz was handed the role of overseeing Biden’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ despite revealing that free speech makes her “shudder” while also promoting the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
Jankowicz also ludicrously cited Christopher Steele as an expert on disinformation. Steele was the author of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Trump ‘peegate’ dossier’ that turned out to be an actual product of disinformation.
But yeah, a person with a proven track record of pushing disinformation and hyper-partisanship should totally be given the power to edit tweets she disagrees with.
FDA Chief Claims “Misinformation” is Leading Cause of Death in the United States
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | May 9, 2022
During an appearance on CNN, FDA chief Dr. Robert Califf asserted that the leading cause of death in the United States is online “misinformation.”
Yes, really.
Califf spoke about his remarks during an interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, which were originally made at a health conference in Texas last month when he said online misinformation was “now our leading cause of death.”
After admitting that there was “no way to quantify this,” before mentioning heart disease and cancer (actual killers), Califf went on to bolster the claim anyway.
Claiming that there has been “an erosion of life expectancy,” Califf went on to say that Americans were living an average of 5 years shorter than people in other high income countries.
Califf said that anti-virals and vaccinations meant “almost no one in this country should be dying from COVID,” before going on to explain that there was also a “reduction in life expectancy from common diseases like heart disease.”
“But somehow … the reliable, truthful messages are not getting across,” he said, adding, “And it’s being washed down by a lot of misinformation, which is leading people to make bad choices that are unfortunate for their health.”
The FDA chief did not explain how ‘online misinformation’ was causing more deaths from heart disease, but went ahead and made the claim anyway without being challenged by the host.
As we have exhaustively highlighted, “online misinformation” is indistinguishable from information the regime doesn’t like.
As we previously noted, the woman picked to head up the Department of Homeland Security’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ said free speech makes her “shudder” while also promoting the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
Nina Jankowicz also ludicrously cited Christopher Steele as an expert on disinformation. Steele was the author of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Trump ‘peegate’ dossier’ that turned out to be an actual product of disinformation.
The contrived moral panic over “misinformation” has become more pronounced following Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, with CNN guests recently complaining about how it might impact their monopoly on controlling “the channels of communications.”
It’s Time We Get Answers About the FBI’s Involvement In the OKC Bombing
By John Kline | The Libertarian Institute | April 27, 2022
This past week marked the 27th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. As the worst terrorist act committed on U.S. soil at the time, we all know the reported facts of the horrific event well: a 27-year-old Desert Storm-vet, Timothy McVeigh, acting with minimal help from Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, detonated a 7,000-pound fertilizer bomb from a parked Ryder truck outside the federal Alfred P. Murrah building, killing 168 people, 19 of them children.
Two years later, in 1997, McVeigh was convicted of “Using a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death,” among other federal charges. For a time, he was held on the same cell block as the Unabomber and WTC-bomber Ramzi Yousef (who tried to convert him to Islam), before being put to death by lethal injection in 2001.
There is much we still don’t know about the case, however. Thanks to years of heroic work by people like Salt Lake City-based attorney Jesse Trentadue, writer and researcher J.M. Berger, and independent investigative reporter Wendy S. Painting, the American public is slowly learning more and more key (and disturbing) facts about the case. Facts involving the FBI’s possible incitement of McVeigh and the subsequent cover-up of these facts by Newsweek magazine.
FBI incitement is more topical than ever, of course. Reports of the FBI being involved in Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer’s kidnapping plot and of FBI agents and assets being involved in the January 6th events has collapsed whatever level of trust the public had with federal law enforcement, not to mention the mainstream media whose related coverage rarely digs deeper than the government’s official line.
What other crimes have been committed or conspiracies planned, the public wonders, where the initial momentum was actually created the FBI? How much have FBI infiltrators pushed constitutionally protected “heated talk” into the unlawful planning and execution of deadly crimes? To what extent has the FBI been, as the saying goes, arsonists posing as firefighters? These are especially important questions when it comes to the OKC bombing.
Operation PATCON
As most know, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have conducted surveillance and infiltration operations against right-wing groups for decades. Chief among them being the “Patriotic Conspiracy” or “PATCON” operation. Despite its official ending in late 1993 (although some say it was carried forward in some form), PATCON only became public in 2007 thanks to a public records request.
Partly citing internal FBI documents, Painting in her explosive 2016 book about PATCON and McVeigh, describes how the former’s secret operatives and paid informers “were given license to engage in provocateur activities and instructed to make known their willingness to commit violence and advocate for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government.”1 She quotes one informer who went public about the operation, John Matthews, saying he realized that although initially told “the objective was to infiltrate and monitor,” he would later come to understand that its real objective was to “to infiltrate and incite.”2 This, says Matthews, included providing “the ideas, detailed instructions, and even live C4 explosives and automatic weapons to targeted individuals as a way of entrapping them into terrorist plots, so the FBI could capitalize on foiled and actualized plots.”3 According to Trentadue, through PATCON, the FBI was actually trying to sow a full-on rebellion.
While the FBI has indeed infiltrated hard-left and Islamic groups in the past, the extent and complete failure of the FBI’s overreach when it comes to right-wing groups (which diversely included pro-gun, ultra-libertarian, survivalist, and white racist or advocacy groups) makes this area especially alarming. For instance, there was just one minor conviction over stolen military night-vision goggles that was ever made through PATCON, and it relied on army, not FBI, intelligence. As Oklahoma City journalist J.D. Cash said about PATCON and certain precursor programs of the 1980s, “there isn’t a neo-Nazi or racist group in the country that isn’t operationally controlled by the FBI.” This seems to concur with what a former young Aryan Nation-member told Painting for her book4:
It was well known that at any Aryan Nation event, in a crowd of 300 people, there’d be at least 30 undercover federal agents in attendance to monitor us, and another third of the crowd were informants… It was rampant, just like cops at a Grateful Dead show trying to sell people LSD.
One of those assets was Vietnam War veteran John Matthews. Up until 1986, the government had been supporting U.S. civilian groups conducting operations in Nicaragua for anti-communist contra forces; a cause which Matthews chose to serve. When such efforts turned into a political scandal, however, the government broke-off ties with these groups and refused to help its members. This included people like Matthews’ fellow soldier Tom Posey who would later be indicted on weapons-smuggling charges.5 While he beat the rap, Posey felt cheated and shifted his efforts to anti-U.S. government organizing. When he revealed plans to break into a federal armory, however, Matthews contacted the FBI, establishing a relationship with law enforcement that led him to infiltrate over 20 militia, libertarian, gun-rights, and racist groups over a 20-year period.
Matthews, who has long been suffering from an Agent-Orange-related cancer, is key to what understanding we have about PATCON’s connection to the OKC bombing. In the early nineties, Matthews was assigned to attend a PATCON-infiltrated, militia-training camp in Texas. While there, he met Timothy McVeigh. After the bombing and when McVeigh was arrested, Matthews immediately recognized him and called his FBI handler, Don Jarrett, to tell him this was the same man he saw at the Texas training camp. Jarrett assured Matthews they knew this already and told him to “forget about it.”
In interviews with Painting, Matthews says he was disturbed by this for a few reasons, a major one being, she paraphrases, that “if they were watching McVeigh and friends back then, they had likely continued watching them throughout the bombing plot.”6 “I felt Don knew more about this,” he said elsewhere.
What other items he knew may have been what came out later in Trentadue’s public records suit against the FBI. Dozens of witnesses to the bombing had apparently reported to police and the FBI they had seen someone in the passenger side of McVeigh’s truck while parked outside the Murrah building. Other witnesses reported seeing McVeigh with several people at his motel the night before, including someone sitting at some point behind the wheel of the truck—And Nichols himself (who was in Kansas when the bombing took place) told journalists in 2007 that FBI provocateurs had lent their support to McVeigh’s plans.7
Also disturbingly, using a fertilizer truck to blow up a federal building had been an idea Matthews had actually heard a few times before, including from suspected FBI infiltrators. For instance, he had heard it raised by two militia members he met who later became part of a busted plot to rob a bank, but who never got arrested, let alone jailed for it.
All of this would seem to point to the OKC bombing being something like 2010’s Operation Fast and Furious, in which the FBI intentionally put guns into the hands of criminals, but failed to close the loop leading to a border agent being killed by a Mexican cartel. Was OKC a similar ‘gunwalking case gone awry’? Only one, far, far deadlier? Someone who McVeigh contacted two weeks before the bombing, Andy Strassmeir, later told a journalist it is possible the FBI was “going to arrest McVeigh at the site with the bomb in hand, but he didn’t come at the right time.” “[M]aybe he changed the time”, he said, “you never know with people who are so unreliable.”8
Newsweek’s Complicity
In 2011, wishing to tell his story before he died, Matthews was put in touch with former Associated Press-writer and then-editor of Newsweek, John Solomon. At the time, Newsweek was still foremost in the U.S. media field, coming in second in circulation only to Time magazine. It was an important and respected news source. Over months, Solomon and article-author Ross Schneiderman worked with Matthews and other sources, including former FBI officials, to confirm everything he told them about the murky workings of PATCON, including the unanswered questions about its operatives’ possible involvement in the OKC bombing.
Enter Newsweek managing editor, Tina Brown. Above the heads of Solomon and Schneiderman, Brown (who left in 2013 and has been blamed for the periodical’s collapse) took what may have been a Pulitzer-worthy piece of journalism and cut away virtually all detail that could directly or indirectly impugn the government for the fallout of its PATCON operations. In the process, she reduced the original 7,000-word draft (found here) down to a mere 4,000 words (found here). As the since-defunct Examiner detailed at the time, all of the aforementioned suspicions Matthews aired about the FBI’s hand in the OKC bombing were cut.
Brown’s puzzling decision had real consequences for Matthews. As Painting recounts in her book, the dying Matthews had taken a lot of risk by coming forward. He was now Newsweek’s cover story, but for reasons that had been omitted. Now, he was still a target but “for no good reason and he regretted coming forward.”9
More broadly, by keeping such information away from the public, Brown was confirming the existence of a state-media axis in America. While examples of such direct state-interventions into our otherwise free media system are rare (although certainly plentiful enough), media analysts like Noam Chomsky have long posited that, yes, news outlets do profit off the circulation of their stories and are thus incentivized to objectively report on events potentially embarrassing to the powerful elite. But, the big media houses still need government access and wish to maintain good relations with major power centers; hence, their occasional compliance with direct government demands—One might add the promise of future political jobs as an incentive for compliance or, in cases such as this where right-wing groups were clearly being mistreated, plain old liberal media bias (consider, for instance, the fairly wide–reporting on the FBI’s infiltration of Islamic extremist groups).
It seems without a doubt that the FBI did get to Brown. At the time Matthews approached Newsweek, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Operation Fast and Furious-debacle was still in the news. How could the Obama Administration handle yet another and far bigger scandal involving the FBI helping dangerous people do harm against innocent Americans?
More Alarming Questions about FBI Conduct
Elsewhere, the FBI has demonstrated a serious interest in keeping any questions about the OKC bombing firmly under wraps. When Matthews was slated to testify in Trentadue’s 2014 public records case over the release of Murrah building surveillance footage, his fear of retaliation led to the judge allowing him to testify at a secret location by video—Trentadue thought what Matthews had witnessed while a PATCON operative would help provide a motive for what had become the FBI’s ongoing, unlawful refusal to provide the footage under public records law.
And despite the judge’s precautions, Matthews’s testimony still never took place. At the last minute, Matthews was supposedly threatened with having his VA medical benefits cut off and told to “stand down” by Jarrett and another FBI agent, Adam Quirk. Such a rank case of witness tampering, in fact, led to the judge ordering the FBI to reveal what exactly they had communicated to Matthews; an investigation that has been strangely ongoing since 2015.
At the heart of Trentadue’s marathon public records case certainly has the FBI worried. Someone who did manage to testify early on in the case was an Oklahoma police officer and first responder to the OKC bombing. He told the court he witnessed the FBI actually stop the beginning of the recovery process while victims were still under piles of rubble in order to remove a surveillance camera from the Murrah building. Some believe the camera would have recorded anyone else besides McVeigh who left the truck after it was parked and, in fact, did so.
Finally, there’s the questions about the FBI’s conduct vis-à-vis Trentadue himself. Why Trentadue got involved with the OKC case is because six weeks after the bombing, his brother Kenneth, another war vet, was taken into custody after a traffic incident triggered a parole violation relating to a minor event from years previous. Soon after, he was found hanging in a cell of a federal detention center.
Photos released to Trentadue following a subsequent lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons, however, showed his brother’s throat having been cut and his body covered in bruises—authorities had apparently tried to cover his wounds with make-up before releasing it to Kenneth’s family. The theory behind his death is, having shared a close resemblance with someone called Richard Guthrie, a white supremacist who the FBI thought had information about the OKC bombing, Kenneth was mistaken as Guthrie and taken in by the FBI for interrogation. McVeigh himself called and advised Trentadue of this, telling him he heard that the FBI had indeed mistaken Kenneth for Guthrie and that his death was the result of a botched interrogation session.
Adding to suspicions, the DOJ formed a special team to handle media inquiries and the Trentadue family’s immediate requests for information. It apparently obstructed and delayed the Trentadue’s right to know what happened to Kenneth in every way it could, even when it came to releasing his corpse. Who happened to be the head of this operation (dubbed internally as “the Trentadue Mission”)?10 Then-Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder.
Finally, there are the other related and mysterious deaths. After Guthrie himself was arrested, he told the LA Times he had “a couple grand juries to talk to” about what really happened with the OKC bombing, and was also later found hanging in his cell.11
And later in 1999, a supposed inmate and witness to Kenneth’s murder, Alden Gillis Baker, threatened to come forward about what he saw. He too was later found hanging in his cell.12
Conclusion
The details surrounding the OKC bombing show it to have all the elements of a “perfect,” post-war American tragedy: Vietnam vets disrespected by the liberal-media class and tossed aside by a government they loyally served; an unhinged federal bureaucracy using its sprawling resources to violate the civil rights of poor and ignored Americans; and, a state-liberal media-axis willing to cover up for government when the “cause” was right.
And consider the following. Even if we ignore the aforementioned evidence about the FBI’s hand in the OKC bombing, remember that the twin motivations for McVeigh’s crimes were Waco and Ruby Ridge—McVeigh chose April 19 as his bombing date because it was the same day as the Waco massacre two years previous. Matthews has actually expressed the view that both massacres had PATCON fingerprints all over them. That’s certainly the case with Ruby Ridge. There, a federal agent/infiltrator pushed former Green Beret Randy Weaver into selling him an illegal sawed-off shotgun. This led to his attempted arrest and an eventual standoff, which then led to the shooting deaths of his 14-year-son by federal marshals and his unarmed wife (baby in hand) by an FBI sniper.
In public and in private correspondence, McVeigh tore into the federal government over these events, expressing fear of a state that was at war with its own citizens. Without federal law enforcement acting so heinously in these events, it’s likely McVeigh would not have carried out the crime that he did.
Further, these rank FBI abuses ironically pushed “right-wing terror groups” to become the threat we were warned about all along. As the original Newsweek article rightly said about Ruby Ridge, the FBI’s conduct “quickly galvanized the radical right like never before” with talks between “various white supremacists, Neo-Nazis and anti-government groups… about joining forces… quickly turn[ing] to action.”
And as Painting writes, even more absurd perhaps, Ruby Ridge was used by federal law enforcement as a justification for increased PATCON resources and investigatory powers.13
So, we have FBI abuses leading to organized rage and resistance, which is then given even more momentum by FBI infiltration and incitement. And with the help of a media sphere that refuses to do its job, all of this works to amp up yet more fear, anxiety and division among the public. It’s a spinning wheel which loyal, patriotic Americans never asked for and certainly want off of.
While we should certainly hope these allegations can be explained away, it’s high-time the OKC victims and the American people generally get the transparency they deserve about what really happened that fateful day.
Bill Seeks to Muzzle Doctors Who Tell the Truth About COVID
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | May 5, 2022
One of the most stunning parts of this pandemic has been the denial of basic science, and one of the most shocking developments from that has been the attack on medical doctors who try to set the record straight.
As reported by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — professor of health policy at Stanford, research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and coauthor of the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for focused protection of the most vulnerable1 — a California bill is now threatening to strip doctors of their medical licenses if they express medical views that the state does not agree with.2
Bhattacharya’s Personal Battle
Bhattacharya has first-hand experience with this kind of witch hunt. He was one of the first to investigate the prevalence of COVID-19 in 2020, and found that by April, the infection was already too prevalent for lockdowns to have any possibility of stopping the spread.
Bhattacharya has called the COVID-19 lockdowns the “biggest public health mistake ever made,”3 stressing that the harms caused have been “absolutely catastrophically devastating,” especially for children and the working class, worldwide.4
After Bhattacharya co-sponsored the Great Barrington Declaration, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and his former boss, now retired National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, colluded behind the scenes to quash the declaration from day 1.5
To that end, they set out to smear and destroy the reputations of Bhattacharya and the other coauthors of the declaration. In one email, Collins referred to the three highly credentialed and respected scientists as “fringe epidemiologists” and called for a press “takedown” of the trio.6,7,8,9 I detailed this treachery in “Authors of Barrington Declaration Speak Out.”
“Big tech outlets like Facebook and Google followed suit, suppressing our ideas, falsely deeming them ‘misinformation,’” Bhattacharya writes.10 “I started getting calls from reporters asking me why I wanted to ‘let the virus rip,’ when I had proposed nothing of the sort. I was the target of racist attacks and death threats.
Despite the false, defamatory and sometimes frightening attacks, we stood firm. And today many of our positions have been amply vindicated. Yet the soul searching this episode should have caused among public health officials has largely failed to occur. Instead, the lesson seems to be: Dissent at your own risk.
I do not practice medicine — I am a professor specializing in epidemiology and health policy at Stanford Medical School. But many friends who do practice have told me how they have censored their thoughts about COVID lockdowns, vaccines, and recommended treatment to avoid the mob …
This forced scientific groupthink — and the fear and self-censorship they produce — are bad enough. So far, though, the risk has been social and reputational. Now it could become literally career-ending.”
Do You Want Your Doctor To Be Muzzled by the State?
California Assembly Bill 209811 — introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low, a Silicon Valley Democrat, and coauthored by Assembly members Aguiar-Curry, Akilah Weber and Wicks, and Sens. Pan and Wiener — designates “the dissemination or promotion of misinformation or disinformation related to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, or ‘COVID-19,’ as unprofessional conduct” warranting “disciplinary action” that could result in the loss of their medical license.
Misinformation or disinformation related to SARS-CoV-2 includes “false or misleading information regarding the nature and risks of the virus, its prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.” But as far as what might constitute “misinformation” or “disinformation” is unclear and basically left open for interpretation — by the state. As noted by Bhattacharya:12
“Doctors, fearing loss of their livelihoods, will need to hew closely to the government line on COVID science and policy, even if that line does not track the scientific evidence.
After all, until recently, top government science bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci claimed that the idea that COVID came from a Wuhan laboratory was a conspiracy theory, rather than a valid hypothesis that should be open to discussion. The government’s track record on discerning COVID truths is poor.
The bill claims that the spread of misinformation by physicians about the COVID vaccines ‘has weakened public confidence and placed lives at serious risk.’ But how significant is this problem in reality? Over 83% of Californians over the age of 50 are fully vaccinated (including the booster) …
What is abundantly clear is that this bill represents a chilling interference with the practice of medicine. The bill itself is full of misinformation and a demonstration of what a disaster it would be to have the legislature dictate the practice of medicine.”
The Shanghai Model
We don’t have to guess at what life might look like if this and other bills like it are implemented, Bhattacharya warns. The drama currently playing out in Shanghai offers a clear look into what can happen when public health is dictated by the state rather than by qualified medical professionals rooted in sound science.
“Shanghai is the model for the terrifying dangers of giving dictatorial powers to public health officials,” Bhattacharya writes.13 “The harrowing situation unfolding there is a testament to the folly of a virus containment strategy that relies on lockdown.
For two weeks, the Chinese government has locked nearly 25 million people in their homes, forcibly separated children from their parents, killed family pets, and limited access to food and life-saving medical care — all to no avail. COVID cases are still rising, yet the delusion of suppressing COVID persists.
In America, many of our officials still have not abandoned their delusions about COVID and the exercise of power this crisis has allowed. As the Shanghai debacle demonstrates, of all the many terrible consequences of our public health response to COVID, the stifling of dissenting scientific viewpoints by the state might be the most dangerous.”
The Science Deniers Are in Power
As stressed by Bhattacharya, the California bill includes a number falsehoods and fails to acknowledge basic science, starting with natural immunity. High-quality studies have repeatedly shown that natural immunity is equivalent or superior to the COVID shots. Were this bill to pass, a California doctor could lose his license for taking a patient’s COVID history into account when recommending the shot.
It also negates doctors’ ability to prescribe off-label drugs for the treatment of COVID, even though this has been a common and uncontroversial medical practice for many decades. It’s not uncommon for a drug intended for one condition to be used off-label for another. But for some reason, when it comes to COVID, this practice is now deemed hazardous and unprofessional.
The bill also falsely asserts that the “safety and efficacy of COVID vaccines have been confirmed through evaluation by the federal Food and Drug Administration.” Anyone who has followed this circus over the past year realizes that the FDA has completely ignored loud and clear warning bells showing the shots are far from safe and nowhere near as effective as initially claimed.
The bill also ignores the fact that the safety depends on the individual patient’s medical history and current state of health. “For example, there is an elevated risk of myocarditis in young men taking the vaccine, especially with the booster,” Bhattacharya notes.14
Doctors have an ethical obligation to treat each patient as an individual, and to ensure each patient receives the safest and best care. Bill 2098 will turn doctors into government agents, leaving no one to advocate for patients’ health.
“The false medical consensus enforced by AB 2098 will lead doctors to censor themselves to avoid government sanction. And it will be their patients, above all, who will be harmed by their silence,” Bhattacharya warns.
Californians, Vote NO on COVID Tyranny Bills
California Bill 2098 isn’t the only bill seeking to enshrine tyranny into law. Other pending California bills include:15
Senate Bill 1390,16 introduced by Sen. Pan, which seeks to criminalize “amplification of harmful content” on social media platforms.
Assembly Bill 1797,17 introduced by Assembly member Weber, which calls for the creation of a centralized vaccination registry.
Senate Bill 1464,18 introduced by Pan, which would strip state funding from any law enforcement agency that “publicly announces that they will not follow, or adopts a policy stating that they will not follow, a public health order.”
Those funds would instead be reallocated to the county public health department. Essentially, this bill would coerce sheriffs and police officers to violate their conscience or the law, or both, in the name of “public health policy.”
Senate Bill 871,19 introduced by Pan, which would mandate all school children, ages 5 and older, be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19. The bill would also repeal exceptions to mandatory hepatitis B vaccination to attend school, and would remove the personal belief exemption against vaccination.
Senate Bill 866,20 introduced by Wiener and Pan, which would authorize minors, 12 years and older, to consent to vaccines without the consent of a parent or guardian.
Senate Bill 1479,21 introduced by Pan, which would expand “contagious, infectious, or communicable disease testing and other public health mitigation efforts to include prekindergarten, onsite after school programs, and child care centers,” and require each school district, county office of education, and charter school to create a COVID-19 testing plan, and report testing data to State Department of Public Health.
If you live in California, please review these bills and VOTE NO. In a Substack article, Margaret Anna Alice, offers the following guidance to Californians:22
“If you are a resident of California, please consider taking the additional step of contacting your respective senators and assembly members in addition to filling out the online portal. See Californians for Medical Freedom for step-by-step instructions on how to contact your local legislators as well as what to say if you decide to call (which is recommended).
The PERK website is also a very helpful way to track the hearing dates and status of these bills. In the comments, Donald Tipon has provided additional links for opposing AB2098 and AB1797 from A Voice for Choice Advocacy.”
Front Groups Marshal the Ignorant
Regulating the medical views a doctor can and cannot have is dangerous in the extreme, and hopefully the Californians who are left to vote in that state will quash such efforts. On the national level, we must also stay vigilant against similar legislative proposals, and push back against phony front groups that promote this kind of medical tyranny.
This includes the No License for Disinformation23 (NLFD) group, which promotes the false information disseminated by the dark-money group known as the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
As most now know, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a medical doctor in his own right, has been the primary challenger of Fauci’s lies, and the NLFD has been instructing individuals to report him to the Kentucky Medical Board, with the aim of getting his medical license revoked.24
An Open War on the Public
We find ourselves in a situation where asking valid questions about public health measures are equated to acts of domestic terrorism. It’s unbelievable, yet here we are. Over the past two years, the rhetoric used against those who question the sanity of using unscientific pandemic countermeasures, such as face masks and lockdowns, or share data showing that COVID-19 gene therapies are really bad public health policy, has become increasingly violent.
Dr. Peter Hotez, a virologist who for years has been at the forefront of promoting vaccines of all kinds, for example, has publicly called for cyberwarfare assaults on American citizens who disagree with official COVID narratives, and this vile rhetoric was published in the prestigious science journal Nature, of all places.25
Doctors and nurses are now facing the untenable position of having to choose between doing right by their patients and toeing the line of totalitarianism. This simply cannot go on. It’s profoundly unhealthy and dangerous in a multitude of ways.
While frustrating and intimidating, we must all be relentless in our pursuit and sharing of the truth, and we must relentlessly demand our elected representatives stand up for freedom of speech and other Constitutional rights, including, and especially, the rights of medical doctors to express their medical opinions.
Sources and References
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-
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- 1 Great Barrington Declaration
- 2, 10, 12, 13, 14 Bariweiss.substack.com April 12, 2022
- 3 Newsweek March 8, 2021
- 4 Rumble, Ron DeSantis March 7, 2022, 32:00
- 5 Wall Street Journal December 21, 2021
- 6 YouTube Liberty Report, 7:13 minutes
- 7 The Blaze December 18, 2021
- 8 Daily Mail December 18, 2021, Updated December 19, 2021
- 9 ZeroHedge December 20, 2021
- 11 California Assembly Bill 2098
- 15, 22 Margaret Anna Alice Substack April 12, 2022
- 16 California SB1390
- 17 California AB1797
- 18 California SB-1464
- 19 California SB-871
- 20 California SB-866
- 21 California SB-1479
- 23 Twitter No License for Disinformation
- 24 Twitter Chass October 11, 2021
- 25 Nature April 27, 2021
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20 states threaten legal action over DHS disinformation board
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | May 6, 2022
Attorneys General from 20 conservative states are threatening legal action against the Department of Homeland Security’s newly formed Disinformation Governance Board, which they said will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and described as “un-American.”
Virginia’s AG Jason Miyares and 19 other attorneys general sent a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, demanding the dissolution of the Disinformation Governance Board.
We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.
“This is 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,” the attorneys general wrote.
The Republicans are taking issue with the timing of the new board, as it comes after it was revealed that the White House was flagging posts on behalf of social media platforms. Additionally, it comes just after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist, made a bid for Twitter.
“Suddenly, just as Elon Musk prepares to acquire Twitter with the stated purpose of correcting the platform’s censorship of free speech, you announce the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board. As the Biden Administration apparently loses a critical ally in its campaign to suppress speech it deems “problematic,” you have created a new government body to continue that work within the federal government,” the letter says.
“The contemporaneous occurrence of these two events is hard to explain away as mere coincidence. It instead raises troubling questions about the extent of the Biden Administration’s practice of coordinating with private-sector companies to suppress disfavored speech.”
The Republicans also expressed concern about the leader of the board, Nina Jankowicz, noting that she is “often in error but never in doubt.” She claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian propaganda, a theory that has since been proven wrong.
The attorneys general argue the board is illegal because there is “no statutory authority” supporting its creation.
“Unless you turn back now and disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately, the undersigned will have no choice but to consider judicial remedies to protect the rights of their citizens,” the letter concludes.
Missouri and Louisiana Attorneys General sue Biden over Big Tech ‘collusion’
Samizdat | May 6, 2022
Attorneys General from two Republican-led US states, Missouri and Louisiana, have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, Fox News reported on Thursday. The states are accusing high-ranking officials, including President Joe Biden, of having “pressured and colluded” with social media companies to censor and suppress information on a number of big stories over the past two years.
Among the officials named as defendants are White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and the President’s Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci. They, and others, are accused of exerting undue pressure on, or working together, with a number of Big Tech companies such as Meta, Twitter and YouTube to suppress information regarding the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, the origins of Covid-19, and security concerns associated with mail-in voting during the pandemic.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry claim the Biden Administration has been doing so “under the guise of combating misinformation.”
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, describes the administration’s supposed efforts to hush up certain information as “one of its greatest assaults by federal government officials in the Nation’s history” on Americans’ constitutional right to free speech.
The filing goes on to claim that “Having threatened and cajoled social-media platforms for years to censor viewpoints and speakers disfavored by the Left, senior government officials in the Executive Branch have moved into a phase of open collusion with social-media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content on social-media platforms under the Orwellian guise of halting so-called ‘disinformation,’ ‘misinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’.”
In an exclusive statement to Fox News Digital, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt explained the decision to file the lawsuit by saying that he would “not stand idly by while the Biden Administration attempts to trample on the First Amendment rights of Missourians and Americans.”
His colleague from the state of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, went so far as to characterize Big Tech as an “extension of Biden’s Big Government,” which is busy “suppressing truth and demonizing those who think differently.” Landry compared Joe Biden to Joseph Stalin over the president’s policies that allegedly aim to “censor free speech and propagandize the masses.” The Attorney General said the lawsuit was seeking to “ensure the rule of law and prevent the government from unconstitutional banning, chilling, and stifling of speech.”
Among the cases brought up in the filing are Twitter’s decision to disable the sharing of a 2020 New York Post story revolving around the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that was recovered from a repair shop in Delaware. The report was later found to be accurate by the Washington Post and the New York Times, the two Attorneys General pointed out.
In a separate instance, Facebook supposedly censored posts suggesting that Covid-19 may have accidentally leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The Attorneys General claim that it was Anthony Fauci who orchestrated an effort to “discredit” the narrative while “exchanging emails with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, regarding the control and dissemination of Covid-19 information.” The campaign only began to wind down after more media outlets started reporting on the viability of the theory, the lawsuit alleges.
In addition, according to the filing, YouTube effectively censored Republican Senator Rand Paul and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for calling into question the effectiveness of wearing cloth masks during the Covid pandemic.
Another major case where “social-media platforms aggressively censored” speech, as Schmitt and Landry allege, was the run-up to the November 2020 presidential race. The Attorneys General claim that Donald Trump’s concerns regarding the security of mail-in voting were stifled by Big Tech at the time. Trump’s tweets were flagged, with a notice directing users to the facts surrounding the practice.
As further proof that the Biden administration has been exerting undue pressure on social media platforms to suppress free speech, the filing mentions Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s statement back in June 2021, where he said “we expect more from our technology companies… We’re asking them to monitor misinformation more closely.” Moreover, the latest launch of the new DHS disinformation board just goes to show that the current US political leadership is intent on ramping up its “campaign of censorship,” the Attorneys General warn.
Fox News, which covered the lawsuit filing, reached out to Meta, Twitter, YouTube as well as the White House for comment, but apparently none of them have replied so far.
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Book Review
The Greatest Threat to World Peace? A Review of Daniele Ganser’s ‘USA: The Ruthless Empire’
Review by Marilyn Langlois | November 10, 2023
If you regard the United States as perhaps flawed but overall a force for good in the world . . .
If you scoff at the notion that the US, a republic founded on principles of freedom and democracy, has morphed into a world empire, perpetrating assassinations, coups d’état, acts of terror and illegal warfare . . .
If you want to promote peace but haven’t yet explored deceptive events that precipitate US warmongering . . .
. . . here is a volume that will clear the air and paint an honest picture of the significant, not-so-rosy impact US foreign policy and actions have had in the world around us.
USA: The Ruthless Empire, by Swiss historian and peace researcher Daniele Ganser, is the newly published English language translation of his book Imperium USA, originally written in German and published in 2020. Here is a summary of key points — including some lesser-known ones — along with remedies for a more peaceful future, that are covered in the book. … continue
Blog Roll
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- If Americans Knew
- Israel escalates in Gaza: killing, torture, hunger – Daily Update
- Six Months into Gaza Ceasefire, Setting the Record Straight About Aid
- ‘Silent suffering’: Why children in Gaza are losing their ability to speak
- In Gaza, 17,000 infections linked to rodents and external parasites – Daily Update
- Lobby group taking journalists on propaganda tours of Israel
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- Israel’s idea of ceasefire includes killing 21 in one day – Daily Update
- Christians in Israel and Palestine, past and present
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- Meet the Top “Content” Producers Linked to Canary Mission
- No Tricks Zone
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- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
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- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
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- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
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