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Mozilla suggests regulators issue laws that curb recommendations of “conspiracy theory videos”

Mozilla flirts with censorship as it flounders for a purpose

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | June 12, 2021

Mozilla Foundation used to do one thing, and do it well: lead the development of the free and open source Firefox browser. Sadly, that browser, once with a huge chunk of the market and representing a revolutionary step up from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, is falling by the wayside as Google’s Chrome has taken over.

Chrome and the giant behind it are riddled with (un)answered questions and concerns about privacy and safety; while Mozilla has always touted itself as the opposite, an organization that is all about promoting those values.

Why then, when Mozilla these days feels the need to “take on” a Google property, is the story not about all the drawbacks of using Chrome and promoting the use of Firefox? Why is Mozilla instead virtue signaling by joining the “war on misinformation” and calling out Google’s YouTube?

And of all the things YouTube can be criticized for, Mozilla chooses the way videos that it feels fall into the conspiracy theory category are recommended on the platform.

A blog post published in a section of the website that could be dubbed, “mozillasplaining,” talks about the well-known fact that YouTube’s massive revenues come from its advertising business model that requires more clicks and engagement to grow. Not to mention that Mozilla’s own (in truth, non-existent) “business model” depends directly on the hundreds of millions of dollars of Google money it receives each year through a search deal.

Perhaps that is why the post doesn’t go into the nature of the advertising business itself, which is one of the murkiest parts of the web today, or criticize the recommendation algorithm per se – but instead wants it to be tweaked in a way that would prevent “hatred and conspiracies” from surfacing in people’s YouTube app.

“Users can quickly fall prey to a domino effect, where one conspiracy video leads to another,” says the post, making bold claims such as that watching videos it deems to contain “hateful” content can lead people to radicalization. Neither terms are defined at any point in the write-up.

As for solutions – Mozilla wants its audience to share stories of YouTube recommendation algorithms “leading them astray.”

And – it would also like “regulators (to) step in and issue laws that begin to curb this.”

Related: 🛡  The fall of Mozilla

June 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

Biden DOJ’s proposal to stop surveilling members of the press appears to only apply to traditional media

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim the Net | June 12, 2021

Despite the fact that US [proclaimed] President Biden publicly denounced the practice carried out by his predecessor’s administration to obtain information about journalistic sources through court orders as “simply wrong” – his own Department of Justice (DoJ) continued with the same policy, reports have revealed.

The news that the Trump era DoJ was getting communications records from a number of journalists and only informing them later concerned those employed by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and CNN. But then the New York Times said the new DoJ was doing it, too – just as Biden was blasting Trump for the very same practice.

Backed into a corner like this, the DoJ said late last week that it would from now on stop seeking “compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from members of the news media doing their jobs.”

But while on the face of it this looks like a welcome step forward in ensuring a greater degree of freedom to journalists, observers are noticing some possible loopholes in the language used to announce the apparent policy shift.

Not only is the limitation of protecting reporters only while they are “doing their job” insufficiently precise, but a major question remains unanswered: who, to the Biden administration, qualifies as a member of “news media” these days? The new, updated guidelines do not provide this definition.

And the fear is that independent journalists of the digital era: bloggers, newsletter authors, owners of YouTuber channels, might be left in the cold – as the seemingly improved new policy undoubtedly applies to traditional media like CNN and the New York Times. Until further clarification, or cases of surveillance that reveal what the policy is, as things stand, it remains unknown how the DoJ will treat this type of journalism.

The update in question refers to the guidelines that came into force in the US in 1970, when the government decided that freedom of the press cannot be “broader than the freedom of the news media to investigate and report the news.”

For that reason, the DoJ of the time decided to protect members of the news media from some law enforcement tools such as subpoenas and court orders – in case those would “unreasonably impair newsgathering activities.”

June 13, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

Tony Blair Suggests Unvaccinated Should Remain Under Lockdown Restrictions

Says June 21st date can only be met if two groups are treated differently

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | June 11, 2021

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair implied that those who choose not to be vaccinated should be discriminated against by remaining under lockdown restrictions if the UK’s June 21st “freedom day” is to be accomplished.

During an interview with ITV News, Blair was asked if he would delay the June 21st deadline, when all social distancing, mask mandates and other lockdown rules are supposed to come to an end.

Blair said that if the data suggested the June 21st date was at risk, the government should “look again at distinguishing between those people who are vaccinated and those people who aren’t because it really makes no sense to treat the two groups as if they’re the same.”

The former Labour leader then attempted to offer a rebuttal to those who would describe this as discrimination, but only succeeded in affirming that he is advocating for discrimination against the unvaccinated.

“If someone simply chooses not to get vaccinated, I mean frankly that’s their choice, you’re not discriminating against them, they’ve chosen not to do it,” said Blair.

In other words, Blair is suggesting that people who haven’t taken the vaccine should be punished by remaining under lockdown rules while the rest of the population gets their freedoms back.

Blair’s agenda in advocating discrimination against the unvaccinated isn’t surprising given that he has been aggressively pushing the use of vaccine passports for almost a year.

Back in January, Blair asserted that Britain should take the lead in presiding over a global vaccine passport system.

“It’s going to be a new world altogether,” Blair proclaimed, adding “The sooner we grasp that and start to put in place the decisions [needed for a] deep impact over the coming years the better.”

June 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

How Fanatics Took Over the World

By Jeffrey Tucker | The Daily Reckoning | June 9, 2021

Early in the pandemic, I had been furiously writing articles about lockdowns. My phone rang with a call from a man named Dr. Rajeev Venkayya. He is the head of a vaccine company but introduced himself as former head of pandemic policy for the Gates Foundation.

Now I was listening.

I did not know it then, but I’ve since learned from Michael Lewis’s (mostly terrible) book The Premonition that Venkayya was, in fact, the founding father of lockdowns. While working for George W. Bush’s White House in 2005, he headed a bioterrorism study group. From his perch of influence – serving an apocalyptic president — he was the driving force for a dramatic change in U.S. policy during pandemics.

He literally unleashed hell.

That was 15 years ago. At the time, I wrote about the changes I was witnessing, worrying that new White House guidelines (never voted on by Congress) allowed the government to put Americans in quarantine while closing their schools, businesses, and churches shuttered, all in the name of disease containment.

I never believed it would happen in real life; surely there would be public revolt. Little did I know, we were in for a wild ride…

The Man Who Lit the Match

Last year, Venkayya and I had a 30-minute conversation; actually, it was mostly an argument. He was convinced that lockdown was the only way to deal with a virus. I countered that it was wrecking rights, destroying businesses, and disturbing public health. He said it was our only choice because we had to wait for a vaccine. I spoke about natural immunity, which he called brutal. So on it went.

The more interesting question I had at the time was why this certified Big Shot was wasting his time trying to convince a poor scribbler like me. What possible reason could there be?

The answer, I now realized, is that from February to April 2020, I was one of the few people (along with a team of researchers) who openly and aggressively opposed what was happening.

There was a hint of insecurity and even fear in Venkayya’s voice. He saw the awesome thing he had unleashed all over the world and was anxious to tamp down any hint of opposition. He was trying to silence me. He and others were determined to crush all dissent.

This is how it has been for the better part of the last 15 months, with social media and YouTube deleting videos that dissent from lockdowns. It’s been censorship from the beginning.

For all the problems with Lewis’s book, and there are plenty, he gets this whole backstory right. Bush came to his bioterrorism people and demanded some huge plan to deal with some imagined calamity. When Bush saw the conventional plan — make a threat assessment, distribute therapeutics, work toward a vaccine — he was furious.

“This is bulls**t,” the president yelled. “We need a whole-of-society plan. What are you going to do about foreign borders? And travel? And commerce?”

Hey, if the president wants a plan, he’ll get a plan. “We want to use all instruments of national power to confront this threat,” Venkayya reports having told colleagues. “We were going to invent pandemic planning.”

This was October 2005, the birth of the lockdown idea.

Dr. Venkayya began to fish around for people who could come up with the domestic equivalent of Operation Desert Storm to deal with a new virus. He found no serious epidemiologists to help. They were too smart to buy into it. He eventually bumped into the real lockdown innovator working at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico.

Cranks, Computers, and Cooties

His name was Robert Glass, a computer scientist with no medical training, much less knowledge, about viruses. Glass, in turn, was inspired by a science fair project that his 14-year-old daughter was working on.

She theorized (like the cooties game from grade school) that if school kids could space themselves out more or even not be at school at all, they would stop making each other sick. Glass ran with the idea and banged out a model of disease control based on stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions, business closures, and forced human separation.

Crazy right? No one in public health agreed with him but like any classic crank, this convinced Glass even more. I asked myself, “Why didn’t these epidemiologists figure it out?” They didn’t figure it out because they didn’t have tools that were focused on the problem. They had tools to understand the movement of infectious diseases without the purpose of trying to stop them.

Genius, right? Glass imagined himself to be smarter than 100 years of experience in public health. One guy with a fancy computer would solve everything! Well, he managed to convince some people, including another person hanging around the White House named Carter Mecher, who became Glass’s apostle.

Please consider the following quotation from Dr. Mecher in Lewis’s book: “If you got everyone and locked each of them in their own room and didn’t let them talk to anyone, you would not have any disease.”

At last, an intellectual has a plan to abolish disease — and human life as we know it too! As preposterous and terrifying as this is — a whole society not only in jail but solitary confinement — it sums up the whole of Mecher’s view of disease. It’s also completely wrong.

Pathogens are part of our world; they are generated by human contact. We pass them onto each other as the price for civilization, but we also evolved immune systems to deal with them. That’s 9th-grade biology, but Mecher didn’t have a clue.

Fanatics Win the Day

Jump forward to March 12, 2020. Who exercised the major influence over the decision to close schools, even though it was known at that time that SARS-CoV-2 posed almost no risk to people under the age of 20? There was even evidence that they did not spread COVID-19 to adults in any serious way.

Didn’t matter. Mecher’s models — developed with Glass and others — kept spitting out a conclusion that shutting down schools would drop virus transmission by 80%. I’ve read his memos from this period — some of them still not public — and what you observe is not science but ideological fanaticism in play.

Based on the timestamp and length of the emails, he was clearly not sleeping much. Essentially he was Lenin on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution. How did he get his way?

There were three key elements: public fear, media and expert acquiescence, and the baked-in reality that school closures had been part of “pandemic planning” for the better part of 15 years. Essentially, the lockdowners, over the course of 15 years, had worn out the opposition. Lavish funding, attrition of wisdom within public health, and ideological fanaticism prevailed.

Figuring out how our expectations for normal life were so violently foiled, how our happy lives were brutally crushed, will consume serious intellectuals for many years. But at least we now have a first draft of history.

As with almost every revolution in history, a small minority of crazy people with a cause prevailed over the humane rationality of multitudes. When people catch on, the fires of vengeance will burn very hot.

The task now is to rebuild a civilized life that is no longer so fragile as to allow insane people to lay waste to all that humanity has worked so hard to build.

Jeffrey Tucker is the Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.me. He’s also the author of Bourbon for Breakfast and the recently released Bit By Bit: How P2P is Freeing the World.

June 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

YouTube bans Senator Ron Johnson for seven days over hydroxychloroquine video

Another elected official censored by the tech giant

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | June 11, 2021

YouTube has removed one of Senator Ron Johnson where he criticized health agencies for their rejection of hydroxychloroquine and banned him from uploading to the platform for seven days.

In the removed video, Johnson shared his support of both Operation Warp Speed, which fast-tracked the development of COVID-19 vaccines, and early coronavirus treatments.

“I thought it was brilliant the way the Trump administration squeezed all of the economic efficiencies out of producing the vaccine, but I think we’re still going to need early treatments,” Johnson said in the video.

He added that “world-renowned experts… have come to a different conclusion than our health agencies” and said the health agencies had “pretty well sabotaged the ability for many doctors to even consider hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, or other of these multi-drug generic repurpose drug approaches here.”

Johnson’s comments follow a recent study that stated hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc can increase COVID survival rates by almost 200%.

But even with the publication of this study, YouTube insisted that what Johnson said violated its “medical misinformation” policies “which don’t allow content that encourages people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus.”

“YouTube’s ongoing COVID censorship proves they have accumulated too much unaccountable power,” Johnson told Fox News. “Big Tech and mainstream media believe they are smarter than medical doctors who have devoted their lives to science and use their skills to save lives. They have decided there is only one medical viewpoint allowed, and it is the viewpoint dictated by government agencies. How many lives will be lost as a result? How many lives could have been saved with a free exchange of medical ideas?”

Johnson is the latest of several elected officials to be censored by Big Tech for discussing hydroxychloroquine with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and US President Donald Trump also being censored for talking about the drug.

Outside of elected officials, numerous doctors have been censored by the tech giants for advocating for hydroxychloroquine.

And despite more evidence becoming available that vindicates those who were censored by Big Tech, the tech giants continue to stand by their rigid policies that prohibit support of hydroxychloroquine.

June 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

I’m on a ‘hit list’ Kiev allows to silence dissent & journalism. That’s all you need to know about Ukrainian ‘democracy’

By Eva Bartlett | RT | June 12, 2021

Address issues which Ukraine, the West’s client state, does not like and you could end up on a ‘hit list’. Because that’s apparently how flourishing democracies roll…

Last week, photojournalist Dean O’Brien participated in a United Nations meeting to give his perspective on the war in Donbass, Ukraine’s breakaway region in the east. Shortly after the discussion, O’Brien came under fire from the Ukrainian embassy in the UK.

However, smears from Ukrainian officials are nothing compared to what the controversial ‘enemies of Ukraine’ database, the Mirotvorets (Peacekeeper) website, could bring.

In May, O’Brien and I discussed this hit list, noting that we were both on it, with photos of us published on the witch-hunt website.

“It’s a website called ‘Peacemaker.’ It’s anything but, really. It seems to be a hit list, a target for journalists or anybody that goes against the grain in Ukraine. If you’re reporting on them, they see you as some kind of threat and put you on this list,” he said.

The platform was created in 2014, shortly after Crimea was reabsorbed by Russia and the Kiev government’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine was launched. As TASS noted in 2019, Mirotvorets “aims to identify and publish personal data of all who allegedly threaten the national security of Ukraine. In recent years, the personal data of journalists, artists or politicians who have visited Crimea, Donbass, or for some other reason have caused a negative assessment of the authors of the site, have been blacklisted by Peacemaker.”

Talking about the horrors that Donbass civilians endure under Ukrainian shelling is, according to this rationale, a threat to Ukraine’s national security. As is going to Crimea, maintaining that Crimeans chose to be a part of Russia (or, as many in Crimea told me, to return to Russia) and criticising the influence neo-Nazis wield in Kiev.

“The most worrying thing is that they seem to be able to get a hold of people’s passports, visas,” O’Brien told me. “The fact that they can get ahold of your passport photo, your visa photocopies, these can only come from official government offices in Ukraine. This is a governmental website, it’s been discussed in parliament, to close it down. They’re not interested in closing it down. This website is kind of like a hit list, really.”

That might seem like an exaggeration, but people listed on Mirotvorets have been targeted and even killed.

A report by the Foundation for the Study of Democracy titled “Ukrainian War Crimes and Human Rights Violations (2017-2020)” gave the example of a Ukrainian journalist assassinated in 2015 after his personal details were published on the website.

“A few days before his death, Oles Buzina’s details, including his home address, had been posted on the Canadian-based Mirotvorets website, created with the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, the Ukrainian deputy minister of internal affairs. The people listed on it are recommended for liquidation and arrest, and the total number of people listed are in the tens of thousands.

According to many experts, it was the listing on the site and the publication of the home address that prompted the murder of Oles Buzina, Oleg Kalashnikov, and many other opposition figures by members of the Ukrainian ‘death squads’.

Back in 2015, Georgiy Tuka, who participated in the creation and operation of the site, stated that, of the people listed on the site, “more than 300 were either arrested or destroyed,” the report states.

When in April 2015 the Ukrainian parliament’s Commissioner for Human Rights Valeriya Lutkovskaya launched an effort to shut the list down, the then-adviser to Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Gerashchenko threatened her position and stated that the work of the site was “extremely important for the national security of Ukraine.” He said that “anyone who does not understand this or tries to interfere with this work is either a puppet in the hands of others or works against the interests of national security.”

So the website remains active, with Ukraine’s security service reportedly stating that it did not see any violations of Ukrainian law in the activities of the Mirotvorets website.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, too, has refused to have the website shut down, ironically claiming that it’s wrong to interfere with the work of websites and the media.

Let’s remember that in Ukraine, untold numbers of journalists, activists and civilians have been imprisoned, and killed, for their crimes of voicing criticism of the government and neo-Nazi groups.

Ukraine isn’t the only country to host such a hit list. Although Stop the ISM (International Solidarity Movement) – the project of crazed US-based journalist, Lee Kaplan – named activists, including myself, for our crimes of reporting on Israel’s brutal bombardment of Gaza in 2008/09, the website has since changed format and is far less detailed. But cached versions show the extent of its insanity, including a clear call for our murders:

“ALERT THE IDF MILITARY TO TARGET ISM

“Number to call if you can pinpoint the locations of Hamas with their ISM members with them. Help us neutralise the ISM that is now definitely a part of Hamas since the war began.”

Others on the kill list were named for their crimes of reporting Israel’s systematic abuse and killing of Palestinians. Their personal details, including passport information, were published.

An article on this heinous website noted: “The dossiers are openly addressed to the Israeli military so as to help them eliminate ‘dangerous’ targets physically, unless others see to it first.”

Although arguably that website was the project of one lunatic and their allies, the fact that for many years it stayed active and called for the murders of international peace activists speaks volumes on America’s own values.

I’m sure these two hit-list examples are not isolated ones. Quite likely, there are similar lists targeting journalists reporting on the crimes of other countries. But they are the height of absurdity, and fascism: targeting people whose reporting aims to help persecuted civilians.

Meanwhile in Donbass, Ukraine reportedly continues its shelling of civilian areas. Recently in Gorlovka, a northern city hammered by Ukrainian bombing over the years, a mine blew off part of a woman’s leg as she gathered mushrooms.

In spite of the hit list, journalists, rightly, continue to report on these war crimes.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

June 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

At G7, Joe Biden and Boris Johnson sign charter committing to defend against “disinformation”

A sign of more censorship to come?

By Tom Parker | Reclaim the Net | June 10, 2021

At the 2021 G7 summit, an annual meeting attended by seven wealthy democracies, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed a charter that vows to collectively defend against a series of “new and old challenges” including “disinformation.”

The charter is a “revitalized” version of the original 1941 Atlantic Charter declaration that was released by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill on August 14, 1941 and provided a broad statement of US and British World War II aims.

This new version of the charter says that it will build on “the commitments and aspirations set out eighty years ago,” affirm the US and UK’s “ongoing commitment to sustaining our enduring values and defending them against new and old challenges,” and counter “the efforts of those who seek to undermine our alliances and institutions.”

It contains eight broad commitments with the third commitment containing a pledge against disinformation.

“We oppose interference through disinformation or other malign influences, including in elections, and reaffirm our commitment to debt transparency, sustainability and sound governance of debt relief,” the charter states.

We obtained a copy of the new Atlantic Charter for you here.

This new version of the Atlantic Charter doesn’t detail how the duo plan to fight what they deem to be disinformation but follows both countries signaling that they plan further crackdowns on online content based on censorship buzzwords such as disinformation and “misinformation.”

During a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters “the President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections.”

She added: “His view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public.”

In the UK, efforts to censor disinformation are coming through a new draft “Online Safety Bill” which intends to block social media sites in the country if they fail to take down disinformation or “legal but harmful content.”

June 11, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Poland wants to end political censorship online

Poland is one of the few countries pushing to support free speech on monopoly platforms

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim the Net | June 10, 2021

According to Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Big Tech corporations have amassed so much power that they control politics, and the solution is for governments around the world to introduce laws limiting that power.

Polish legislators are working on a bill that would make it illegal for online platforms to censor content that does not break Poland’s laws.

“Today, who sets these rules is really the master of destiny for society and for nation-states,” Morawiecki said in a recent interview with Newsweek. “So today, platforms and communication networks and intellectual property are even more important than the land and the buildings and the technology assembly lines and all the materials that go into creating these digital realms.”

The PM argued for a new approach focused on protecting the power of governments, as well as the well-being of society, accounting for the way the internet and social media has transformed the social, political, and economic environment.

“These dynamics do not make it easier to grasp the elements of the moving parts of the complicated interdependent economic jigsaw puzzle that is our modern age,” Morawiecki said.

“And this is why it is so much more difficult to understand who sets the rules today, because it is no longer the governments that can have this competence over the setting of the rules.

“Huge international corporations in the area of the digital world, in particular, are setting the rules very often that are suitable for themselves, which may not always be a social good.

“This is another form of dominance over the rest of the sectors they operate in, but it may also create dominance over other areas of the lives of citizens in a society.

“And this is why states should now be very active in eliminating censorship and eliminating monopolistic powers of those companies, as well. And this is one of the reasons we started to work on this anti-censorship regulation.”

Morawiecki and members of his political party PiS (Law and Justice Party) are pushing for the introduction of a new legislation to push back against Big Tech. They recently proposed a bill that would allow the government to fine social media companies for censoring legal speech in Poland. Additionally, the legislation would allow social media users in Poland to appeal censorship they deem unfair to the Free Speech Council, which will be formed when the bill passes. A social media platform found guilty of removing legal speech could be fined as much as $13.35 million.

In February, Hungary’s Justice Minister Judit Varga said she was working on a new law to “regulate the domestic operations of large tech companies.” She argued that mainstream online platforms “limit the visibility of Christian, conservative, rightwing opinions,” adding that the “power groups behind global tech giants” are so powerful that they can influence national elections.

In February, Poland’s Justice Minister Sebastian Kaleta echoed the conservative Hungarian government’s sentiments, saying the Polish government was focusing on protecting conservatives.

“We see that anonymous social media moderators often censor opinions which do not violate the law but are just criticism of leftists’ agenda,” he told the Financial Times. “This creates important risks of infringing freedom of speech.”

Morawiecki added that the new legislation is being discussed in parliament, and the government is not only looking at domestic legislation but also discussing it with the European Commission (the legislative arm of the European Union).

“We are in discussion with the European Commission in two aspects of this area. One is vis-à-vis the freedom of speech and eliminating the censorship issue,” said the Polish PM.

“The other one is in taxing companies where they do business—so not letting them go to tax havens like Luxembourg or Cyprus or Switzerland, and not paying taxes at all or very little taxes paid in these other tax haven countries, because I think that Big Tech companies minimizing their tax burden this way is not sustainable for our economies.”

June 11, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Nullifying the First Amendment

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 9, 2021

Whenever some foreign regime that is independent of the U.S. Empire goes after dissenters, U.S. officials trot out the First Amendment to show how different the United States is. Here, people are free to criticize government officials without fear of being put in jail or otherwise punished for exercising their free speech rights, they proudly point out. 

However, what goes unexplained in such pious proclamations is why so many leading executives in big American companies remain silent when it comes to America’s foreign wars, foreign interventions, coups, alliances with dictators, torture, mass secret surveillance, indefinite detention, denial of due process, Gitmo, state-sponsored assassinations, and other dark-side activities of the U.S. national-security establishment.

The reason is that every one of those executives knows that federal officials are able to retaliate against them in indirect ways for criticizing their policies and operations. Such indirect methods of retaliation can consist of IRS audits, regulatory harassment, denial of applications for mergers and acquisitions, non-renewal of radio and television licenses, and even the threat of disclosure of personal secrets acquired through secret surveillance of emails and telephone records. 

A good example of free speech nullification involved President Lyndon Johnson, soon after he became president after the assassination of President Kennedy. Johnson’s indirect nullification of the First Amendment is set forth in Robert Caro’s book The Passage of Power.

Prior to the assassination, a Dallas reporter named Margaret Mayer had begun investigating Johnson’s radio and television stations in Austin. On the evening of Saturday, January 4, 1964, Johnson telephoned her paper’s managing editor and spoke directly about what he was prepared to do if the paper didn’t stop Mayer’s investigation. 

Johnson mentioned by name the paper’s publisher and board owner, its president, and the president of radio and television stations owned by the paper. He then made it clear that he was prepared to use all the powers at his disposal against them if they didn’t stop Mayer’s investigation, including IRS audits, both personal and business, as well as non-renewal of FCC licenses for the radio and television stations. 

Johnson demanded a response by the next morning. The next morning — Sunday morning —  the editor telephoned the president and said, “We’ll take care of the thing tomorrow” and assured Johnson that his role would be kept secret. Mayer’s investigation was shut down.

Caro provides another example, one involving not just a reporter but rather an entire newspaper, which had been critical of Johnson before the assassination. Johnson set out to stop the criticism.

The paper’s president also served as president of a local bank that was trying to merge with another Texas bank. Such mergers require federal approval. Both the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department opposed the merger. Using presidential aide Jack Valenti as an intermediary, Johnson told the paper that if it wanted the merger to go through, it would have to cease criticizing him. According to Caro, the paper became a supporter of Johnson, even endorsing him in the 1964 race. Johnson overruled the Fed and Justice and ordered the approval of the merger.

Caro provides another example of this phenomenon, one involving a Washington, D.C., correspondent for a Texas newspaper. The reporter had been critical of Johnson. Johnson telephoned the paper’s owner and mentioned Fort Worth’s Carswell Air Force Base as well as the recent decision to close the Fort Worth Army Depot. He also mentioned a project to make the Trinity River navigable for barges from the Gulf of Mexico to Fort Worth.

The paper squeezed out the reporter. Carswell remained in operation and ended up playing a big role in Johnson’s war in Vietnam. Johnson also made sure that one billion dollars in federal money went to the Trinity River project, although the project was never finished. 

Today, it is hard to believe that a president, the Pentagon, the CIA, or the NSA would make these types of direct threats to any U.S. company or its executives. But they don’t have to. Everyone knows what can happen to them if they decide to publicly criticize the sordid, dark-side activities of the national-security establishment. Discretion is the better part of valor, which has to be one big reason why most executives choose to remain silent. 

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education.

June 11, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Lawmakers demand answers on Facebook censorship at behest of Biden administration

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim the Net | June 10, 2021

Following the revelation that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in email communication with the country’s top epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, House Republicans sent a letter demanding answers on why the company censored lab leak theories.

According to the Republican legislators, the emails suggest that Fauci advised Facebook to censor the lab leak theories.

Ranking members of the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee, Jim Jordan and James Comer wrote a letter addressed to Zuckerberg demanding answers on why his company censored content suggesting COVID-19 leaked from a lab.

The letter accuses the government of using a private company to violate free speech. It requested Facebook to provide all documents and communication between its employees and government officials.

“In light of Facebook’s subsequent censorship of certain COVID-19 content – including content about the pandemic’s origin – these communications with Dr Fauci raise the prospect that the federal government induced Facebook to censor certain free speech in violation of the First Amendment,” the letter states.

“Facebook’s censorship decisions did not occur in a vacuum, and there are indications that Facebook may have made content-moderation decisions regarding COVID-19 at the behest of certain government policies and positions,” the legislators added.

Until recently, most scientists dismissed the idea that the virus leaked from a lab in China. However, in recent weeks, evidence supporting the lab leak theory has emerged, forcing Facebook to review its COVID-19 misinformation policies.

In late May, after President Joe Biden announced that the lab leak theory needed more investigation, Facebook announced it would no longer flag content suggesting that COVID 19 was man-made.

The legislators gave Facebook two weeks to respond to the letter.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada becoming an actual death camp

By Jon Rappoport | No More Fake News | June 10, 2021

They’re called the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO).

As their home page states, they “regulate the practice of medicine in Ontario. Physicians are required to be members to practice medicine in Ontario.”

In other words, CPSO is THE medical board. They run the show. If practicing doctors make a wrong move or say the wrong thing, CPSO is there to step on their faces and discipline them and even cancel their licenses to practice.

But now a new rebel group of Canadian MDs has emerged. Why? Because CPSO has issued a fascist edict threatening practicing doctors. Read the threat carefully.

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario [CPSO] Statement on Public Health Misinformation (4/30/21):

“The College is aware and concerned about the increase of misinformation circulating on social media and other platforms regarding physicians who are publicly contradicting public health orders and recommendations. Physicians hold a unique position of trust with the public and have a professional responsibility to not communicate anti-vaccine, anti-masking, anti-distancing and anti-lockdown statements and/or promoting unsupported, unproven treatments for COVID-19. Physicians must not make comments or provide advice that encourages the public to act contrary to public health orders and recommendations. Physicians who put the public at risk may face an investigation by the CPSO and disciplinary action, when warranted. When offering opinions, physicians must be guided by the law, regulatory standards, and the code of ethics and professional conduct. The information shared must not be misleading or deceptive and must be supported by available evidence and science.”

WE’RE YOUR BOSSES. YOU DO WHAT WE TELL YOU TO DO. SHUT YOUR MOUTHS. MARCH STRAIGHT AHEAD. KILL YOUR PATIENTS IF YOU HAVE TO, BUT OBEY US.

The new rebels against this monster call themselves the Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth. This is a brief excerpt from their response:

“On April 30, 2021, Ontario’s physician licensing body, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), issued a statement forbidding physicians from questioning or debating any or all of the official measures imposed in response to COVID-19.”

“We regard this recent statement of the CPSO to be unethical, anti-science and deeply disturbing.”

“As physicians, our primary duty of care is not to the CPSO or any other authority, but to our patients.”

“The CPSO statement orders us to violate our duty and pledge to our patients…”

I wondered what medical treatments, in general, CPSO supports and tolerates. It took me three minutes to find a Toronto outfit called the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation (CAMH). They promote electro-convulsive therapy. In other words, shock treatment.

In other words, delivering electric shocks to the brain. As a cure for “mental illness.” I call it torture.

Apparently, this treatment is just fine and dandy, but telling patients the COVID lockdowns are criminal is forbidden by the Nazi bureaucrats at CPSO. Saying the vaccine is dangerous is forbidden. Saying masks are useless and harmful is forbidden.

What would happen if these medical rebels, the Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth—say, 10,000 of them—took this war to the wall?

Practiced non-harmful medicine, kept warning their patients about the sociopathic COVID regulations and the vaccine, refused to knuckle under to the Nazi bureaucrats, even to the point of having their licenses stripped and going to jail?

What would happen, as many thousands/millions of Canadians rallied to their side?

I’ll tell you what would happen. Sanity. Revolution. The downfall of the scum.

We’re at Nuremberg 2.0, people. If you don’t know what that means, look it up.

Doctors clear their vision and their brains and do their level best to HEAL, or they follow orders of the Commandants and maim and kill. It’s one side or the other.

In my 83 years, I’ve known a few very good doctors, and a number of The Cold Ones. The Cold Ones administer, without feeling or remorse, the Book of Death.

They’re ice on the outside, and rotting fungus and stench within.

Many of them sit at the top of medical boards.

They turn open societies into concentration camps.

REBEL.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Kentucky Judge Invalidates All of Governor Bashear’s State of Emergency Actions

By John H. Bryan | The Civil Rights Lawyer | June 8, 2021

Today my colleague from Kentucky, Chris Wiest, received an awesome ruling from the Circuit Court of Boone County declaring that all of Governor Andy Bashear’s emergency orders and actions are unconstitutional and void. The ruling was in the state-court challenge to the governor’s emergency powers executive orders, filed by Wiest on behalf of Beans Cafe’ & Bakery.

Dr. Stephen Petty, an actual expert in masks, testified at the trial about their uselessness under the circumstances in which they’re being idolized. Here’s an excerpt from the order pertaining to Dr. Petty. For those bureaucrats and social media tyrants who would censor this, this is from an actual court order issued today. Not that you care:

Stephen E. Petty, P.E., CIH, testified as an expert and was accepted as such without objection. Mr. Petty has served as an expert witness in approximately 400 cases relating to toxic or infectious exposure, personal protective equipment (“PPE”), and as a warning expert. He also served as an epidemiology expert for the plaintiffs in the Monsanto “Roundup” cases, and for those in the Dupont C8 litigation. In connection with his service as an expert, he was deposed nearly 100 times and has provided court testimony in approximately 20 trials. Mr. Petty holds nine U.S. patents, has written a book comprising nearly 1,000 pages on forensics engineering, is a certified industrial hygienist, and a recognized expert with the Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Mr. Petty helped write the rules on risk assessment for the State of Ohio and has trained Ohio’s risk assessors.

Mr. Petty explained that the field of his expertise is “to anticipate and recognize and control things that could hurt people, everything from making them sick to killing them.” He testified that, in this context, he has analyzed the use of masks and social distancing in connection with Covid-19. He testified that both the six-foot-distancing rule, and mask mandates, are wholly ineffective at reducing the spread of this virus. Masks are worthless, he explained, because they are not capable of filtering anything as small as Covid-19 aerosols. In addition, masks are not respirators and lack the limited protections that respirators can provide.

The N-95 respirator, which he states is in the bottom class of what may be classified as a respirator, is rated to filter 95% of all particles that are larger than .3 microns. However, a Covid-19 particle, which is only between .09 to .12 micron, is much smaller. Mr. Petty further explained that an N-95 will not even filter above .3 microns if it is not used in accordance with industry standards. Among the requirements, respirators must be properly fitted to seal along the face, and they also must be timely replaced. Mr. Petty stated that N-95 masks, which he said are often utilized as surgical masks, are “not intended to keep infectious disease from either the surgeon or from the patient infecting each other” but only to catch the “big droplets” from the surgeon’s mouth.”

According to Mr. Petty, masks have no standards, are not respirators, and do not even qualify as protective equipment. In contrast, respirators have standards, including rules that state respirators may not be worn by persons with facial hair, must be fitted to ensure a seal, and must be timely replaced—or, as in higher end respirators, the cartridges must be replaced to prevent saturation. In addition, standards for respirators also require users to obtain a medical clearance because the breathing restriction can impair lung function or cause other problems for persons having such limitations. Putting those persons in a respirator can harm their well-being.

Concerning the effectiveness of respirators, Mr. Petty explained that it comes down to “big stuff” versus “small stuff.” Big stuff can be taken out by the body’s defenses, such as its mucus tissue, where droplets can be caught and eliminated. The small stuff, however—like aerosols—are more dangerous. Masks cannot filter the small stuff. According to Petty, because Covid-19 particles are comprised of aerosols, it is really, really, small stuff. And, as he pointed out, an N-95 is designed to filter larger particles. Even for particles as large as .3 micron, Mr. Petty testified that an N-95’s effectiveness is in direct proportion to its seal. In fact, he stated it becomes completely ineffective if 3% or more of the contact area with the face is not sealed.

Mr. Petty testified that masks leak, do not filter out the small stuff, cannot be sealed, are commonly worn by persons with facial hair, and may be contaminated due to repetitive use and the manner of use. He emphatically stated that mask wearing provides no benefit whatsoever, either to the wearer or others.

He explained that the big droplets fall to the ground right away, the smaller droplets will float longer, and aerosols will remain suspended for days or longer if the air is stirred. Mr. Petty testified that the duration of time that particles remain suspended can be determined using “Stoke’s Law.” Based on it, for particles the size of Covid-19 (.12 to .09 micron) to fall five feet would take between 5 and 58 days in still air. Thus, particles are suspended in the air even from previous days. And so, he asks, “If it takes days for the particles to fall, how in the world does a six-foot rule have any meaning?”

Mr. Petty acknowledged that both OSHA and CDC have recommended that people wear masks. However, he called this “at best dishonest.”61 As an example on this, he pointed to CDC guidance documents where, on page 1, it recommends wearing a mask; but then on page 6, admits that “masks, do not provide . . . a reliable level of protection from . . . smaller airborne particles.”62 According to Mr. Petty, those agencies have smart individuals who know better. Mr. Petty points out that, even before March 2020, it was known that Covid-19 particles are tiny aerosols. And on this, he states that he insisted that fact early on. He also points to a more recent letter by numerous medical researchers, physicians and experts with Ph.D.s, asking the CDC to address the implications of Covid-19 aerosols. During Dr. Stack’s subsequent testimony, he also acknowledged that Covid-19 is spread “by . . . airborne transmission that could be aerosols . . . .”

Finally, Mr. Petty pointed to another recent study by Ben Sheldon of Stanford University out of Palo Alto. According to that study, “both the medical and non-medical face masks are ineffective to block human-to-human transmission of viral and infectious diseases, such as SARS, CoV-2 and COVID-19.”64 The Court finds the opinions expressed by Mr. Petty firmly established in logic. The inescapable conclusion from his testimony is that ordering masks to stop Covid-19 is like putting up chain-link fencing to keep out mosquitos. The six-foot- distancing requirements fare no better.

The judge summarizes the situation nicely:

It is obvious from even a cursory review that the orders issued over the past fifteen months “attempt to control” and seek “to form and determine future rights and duties” of Kentucky citizens. These included ordering the closure of all businesses, except those the Governor deemed essential. He ordered churches closed, prohibited social gatherings, including at weddings and funerals, prohibited travel, and through CHFS, even prohibited citizens from receiving scheduled surgeries and access to medical care. And then there is the order that everyone wear a mask. These are, undeniably, attempts to control, set policy, and determine rights and duties of the citizenry. Except in those instances where the federal courts have stepped in, Defendants assert authority to modify or re-impose these orders at their sole discretion. Consider, for example, the recent modification of the mask mandate. It orders persons who did not get vaccinated for Covid-19 to wear masks but lifts that requirement for others. That is setting policy and determining future rights and duties.

At the hearing, Defendants took exception to the Attorney General’s characterization of the Governor’s actions as a “lockdown,” and argued that prohibiting persons from entering those restaurants is not the same as ordering that they be closed. But that doesn’t minimize the impact on those who lost their businesses as a result, or those in nursing homes condemned to spend their final hours alone, deprived of the comfort from loved ones (or even any real contact with humanity), or those citizens who the Governor prohibited from celebrating their wedding day with more than ten persons, or those he forced to bury their dead alone, without the consoling presence of family and friends (and who likewise were deprived of paying their final respects), or those persons who were barred from entering church to worship Almighty God during Holy Week, and even Easter Sunday, or those persons who were denied access to health care, including cancer-screenings, or those denied entry into government buildings (which they pay for with their taxes) in order to obtain a necessary license, and who were forced to wait outside for hours in the sweltering heat, or rain, purportedly to keep them from getting sick.

What the people have endured over the past fifteen months—to borrow a phrase from United States District Judge Justin R. Walker—“is something this Court never expected to see outside the pages of a dystopian novel.” Yet, Defendants contend that the Governor’s rule by mere emergency decree must continue indefinitely, and independent of legislative limits. In effect, Defendants seek declaratory judgment that the Constitution provides this broad power so long as he utters the word, “emergency.” It does not. For this Court to accept Defendant’s position would not be honoring its oath to support the Constitution; it would be tantamount to a coup d’état against it.

Here’s the order itself:

View this document on Scribd

Yes, life is now a dystopian novel. Let’s hope this patriot judge’s order stands up on appeal in the state appellate courts in Kentucky. And thanks to Chris Wiest and the AG of Kentucky for fighting the good fight. The order notes that the permanent injunction against the governor goes into effect on June 10, 2021 at 5:00 p.m.

June 10, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

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