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Former Biden “Disinfo” Board Chief Urges EU to Resist Criticism on Censorship Laws

In Strasbourg, Jankowicz rewrites the script, casting Washington as the villain in Europe’s censorship push.
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 24, 2025

Former head of former President Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, has found a new audience for her political and ideological narratives – and it’s EU institutions.

Jankowicz – known by her critics as “Biden’s disinformation czar” (or at least, would have been one, had the Disinformation Governance Board not been so short lived) – this week spoke at a meeting of a European Parliament committee dedicated to EU Commission’s latest censorship initiative, “the European Democracy Shield.”

The meeting was called to discuss risks to democracy, in this case, what the bloc considers to be Russian disinformation campaigns, but Jankowicz focused on the US administration, referring to her country as “another autocracy” that she wants the EU to “stand firm against.”

Jankowicz took the opportunity to warn that the US administration is “undoubtedly preparing a pressure campaign” to make the EU abandon (censorship) rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA). In the same breath, she also claimed that Washington will pressure Brussels to “end support for Ukraine, to stop holding Russia to account.”

Jankowicz had trouble keeping to the theme of the meeting, namely, “Russian hybrid threats,” and kept returning to her anti-Trump agenda, stating that just as Russia, China, Iran, and others are busy with their “interference campaigns” – in the US, “homegrown anti-democratic forces have launched a coordinated campaign to undermine researchers, journalists, advocates and civil servants who work to expose their lies.”

She was also critical of US tech giants accusing them of being complicit in creating “global instability” and again went back to Trump, his administration’s supposed “capture” of major social networks, only to conclude that neither are interested “in preserving democracy.”

Jankowicz singled out US Secretary of State Marco Rubio for his decision to shut down the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R/FIMI) Hub, which was a rebrand of the also disbanded Global Engagement Center (GEC), a State Department entity involved in flagging social media posts for censorship.

But to Jankowicz, the steps the current administration has been taking to dismantle the intricate and documented system of online censorship is done merely “under the guise of protecting free speech.”

Jankowicz also told the EP commission that she supported 51 former intelligence officials who penned a letter suggesting the Hunter Biden laptop story was “disinformation” – a claim that has since been debunked, but at the time, just before the 2020 election, led to widespread censorship of the New York Post article on the subject.

“A valid expression of free speech,” is how Jankowicz views the letter.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Are You Tired of Hearing About Antisemitism?

Simply stop killing Gazans and the anger directed at Jews might end

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 26, 2025

One might well ask how a group composed of little more than 3% of the US population has managed to gain control of the nation’s foreign policy, its legislature and executive branches, its media, its entertainment industry, its financial institutions, and its elite universities while also making the United States subservient to the wishes of a monstrous small state located seven thousand miles away and composed of its coreligionists? Well, it helps to have a great deal of money liberally applied to corrupt the existing political and economic systems, but that is not necessarily a good place to start as one might reflexively be accused of wielding a trope much favored by antisemites when discussing Zionist Jews, the group of which we are speaking. Alternatively perhaps, one might take an oblique approach by observing how the highly privileged and protected Zionists in question get rich living in America while having true loyalty to apartheid Israel, something that normally might be considered untenable if not borderline treasonous.

Recent reports suggest that there are upwards of 23,000 Americans serving in the Israeli Army (IDF), most of whom are presumably dual nationals with Israeli citizenship. Under existing law, they should all lose their US citizenship but that will not happen as Congress and the White House have both been bought. Indeed, they are being given a golden handshake by the US Congress with a new bill currently in Congress which would extend some US military benefits to the notional American citizens who are currently carrying out the Gaza genocide as members of the IDF. One such clown Congressman Brian Mast, who served in the IDF, even parades around Congress in his Israeli military uniform and no one says squat.

Beyond the Americans in the IDF, there have been several odd appointments at high levels in the US civilian bureaucracy, including the latest naming of a former Israeli Defense Department and UN Israeli Embassy employee whose husband still works at the embassy to a top position on the National Security Council. Merav Ceren will be the Director for the development of the relationship between Israel, Iran and the US. It is a highly sensitive position and one can only speculate on how she got a clearance, though it is presumed that she is a dual national, which in and of itself should have been a warning sign. Her appointment gives Israel an unusual advantage in internal policy discussions just as the Israeli government has launched a new campaign to pressure the American government to start a war with Iran rather than continue with negotiations toward a nuclear deal. Ceren previously worked at Senator Ted Cruz’s office in Washington, which may have been her stepping stone to the job as Cruz’s loyalty to Israel and all that pertains to it should be unquestioned and he is the recipient of millions of dollars in pro-Israel political “donations.” She also worked for the neocon Iran-hating Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. How she was named to the position she now holds should be considered in itself a huge security breach, one of many already experienced in Trump’s first hundred days, where loyalty to Israel trumps all other factors, as the expression might go.

The trajectory of Meyav Ceren reminds one of another Israeli woman dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. Sigal Pearl Mandelker might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI) under the first Trump administration. She handed out the punishment and cranked up the economic pain up for countries like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Russia during her time in office from June 2017 until October 2019 when she finally resigned after being under pressure from people like me.

OFTI’s website proclaims that it is responsible for “safeguarding the financial system against illicit use and combating rogue nations, terrorist facilitators, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferators, money launderers, drug kingpins, and other national security threats,” but it has from its founding been really all about safeguarding Israel’s perceived interests. Grant Smith notes how “the secretive office has a special blind spot for major terrorism generators, such as tax-exempt money laundering from the United States into illegal Israeli settlements and proliferation financing and weapons technology smuggling into Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons complex.”

To be sure most of the Jews with whom I am in touch are appalled by that activism of the Mandelkers and the Cerens and even more so by what is happening in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon at the hands of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist enablers, but what we are talking about here is institutional and tribal Jewry which together have the distinction of being referred to as the Israel Lobby, which an increasing number of observers have to come to believe to be something like all powerful and the unofficial government of the United States in many relevant areas.

Ron Unz’s recent article recent article Trump vs. Harvard in a Political Wrestling Match examines the issue of Jewish supremacism and, among other factors, identifies the various mechanisms used by Jews to enhance their enrollment at top universities. He mentions in passing how Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner got into Harvard without having the level of academic achievement that normally would have been a prerequisite. It was possibly accomplished through an institutionalized “Harvard Price,” an under the table donation of several million dollars from the wealthy Kushner family. I personally recall attending an elite university in the 1960s and hearing Jewish classmates boast of how “they” comprised 40% of the first-year students. A friend of mine at Yale told me of similar boasting among the “Sons of Eli.” Forty per cent participation for 3 per cent of the population is certainly an astonishing rate of success.

Unz uses available educational data bases to demonstrate that the disparity was not due to greater intelligence or academic performance among the Jewish applicants. He concludes that “Based on these figures, Jewish students were roughly 1,000% more likely to be enrolled at Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League than white Gentiles of similar ability. This was an absolutely astonishing result given that under-representation in the range of 20% or 30% is often treated by courts as powerful prima facie evidence of racial discrimination.”

Based on my own contact with Jews in the academic world and in government, I would prefer to describe the Jewish success with universities as a product of gaming the system, i.e. producing incentives outside academia itself to make the candidates more attractive. Whether such maneuvering might be described as corruption of the process depends pretty much on where someone stands outside the system, but the fact is that it is far easier for a Jewish high school graduate to get into an elite university than it is for a comparably educated and intelligent white Christian. And if you throw into the hopper all the “minority” other applicant groups that get preferential treatment, white males who are not Jews are definitely at the bottom of list when acceptance time comes around.

Beyond cash incentives, one might also conclude that Jews are exceptionally good at self-promoting and on translating their largely fictional collective victimhood into a sympathy vote that gives them a considerable edge as they move through education and high-profile careers. The problem is that that aggressive self-promotion does not stop at the level of personal aggrandizement and opens the door to large scale group interference in both foreign and domestic government policies that run strongly contrary to the interests of most Americans. I am of course referring to groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) which serve as lobbies and support structures for the apartheid Jewish state Israel, which is currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza, without any accountability or consequences as required by current US law under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA). President John F. Kennedy was trying to get such groups to register when he was assassinated in 1963.

Other Jewish national organizations are also on board in supporting Israel as are the numerous Christian Zionists, which means that killing tens of thousands of people in the Middle East is a matter of no consequence, except that once more the Israeli Jews must be and are widely portrayed as the victims. The US is complicit in the arming of Israel and the killing and actually condones it even though a majority of American voters do not support the Jewish state. Likewise, the Jewish dominated press and other media looks the other way as the slaughter goes on, as it no doubt will, and one expects that upwards of 2 million Palestinians will eventually be deported to whatever shithole is willing to accept them under pressure from the US. Otherwise, the “Justice” recommended by Israel’s Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who is now in the United States on a “visit,” will likely be pursued, i.e. a bullet to the back of the head of every Palestinian.

And then there is the issue of the “crime” of antisemitism, which is the only thing that the Justice Department seems to think is worth addressing, to the point where people who have done nothing beyond expressing their concern over what is going on in the Middle East are being arrested without any charges being filed and detained while being processed for deportation. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly announced that he has authorized the arrest and deportation of 300 students for their criticism of Israel. The US House of Representatives has obligingly passed a measure equating criticism of the racist, Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism with what they describe as a hate crime “antisemitism.” Meanwhile the Israel Lobby and its politician choral society are constantly using the Jew-controlled media to sing about how Hebrew students fear going to school due to the presence of all the “antisemites.”

This is, of course, largely a convenient fiction largely created by the media, and it is rather Jews who have been beating up peaceful demonstrators. And it is extremist Jewish-funded groups that have been stirring the pot, going after anyone who is perceived as anti-Israeli. One of the groups, Canary Mission, has run a massive disinformation operation for years, publishing the names and photos of thousands of alleged pro-Palestine activists, while another group, Betar, openly encourages targeting of student activists and brags that it has “provided names of hundreds of terror supporters” to the Trump administration. Ross Glick, the head of Betar’s US branch, believes that “Foreign students on visas in the US shouldn’t have the right to free speech.” Jews, however, should be allowed to behave with complete freedom to include carrying out murder, war crimes, and human rights violations targeting those it sees as opponents.

To be sure, protesting against any of the horrors that Israel is engaged in is regarded to be one symptom of “antisemitism” which is ipso facto considered to be something like a capital offense, even though it is pretty much generated in America by the impunity and savagery with which Israel behaves towards the rest of the world. And the parameters of what might constitute a legitimate search for “antisemites” is expanding. The US State Department will now demand from foreigners wishing to travel to the United States information on their social networking sites. Those sites will be screened for anti-Israel content and the visas will be refused. This is an extension of the anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policies now in place in 38 states in the US where a job or services will be denied to citizens if they will not sign a pledge or promise not to support the movement to boycott or punish Israel. The situation is even worse for those foreigners who are currently going through screening to become US permanent residents as it is the issue of one’s views of Israel alone that could easily determine who is allowed to become a future citizen and who is rejected.

Indeed, protecting Jews is a full-time job of the Trump Administration, even more so that under Genocide Joe Biden. Antisemitism comes up in speech after speech and fully ninety per cent of the discretionary Homeland Security Agency grants already go to Jewish groups or buildings, to the tune of more than $400 million. Interestingly, the government also appears to be constructing a data base of Jews to protect them further. The personal cellphones of dozens of current and former Barnard College employees rang last Monday evening with a text message that said it was from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, part of a review of the employment practices of Barnard. A link led to a survey that asked respondents if they were Jewish or Israeli, and if they had been subjected to harassment.

Another attack on free speech in America that is Israel related, apart from what is going on at the universities which are being destroyed from within by the government demands to protect Jews, is the role of how research institutes have traditionally been able to engage in fraternal discussions to seek action and share information with any country or government entity in the world. But researchers and university employees who engage in certain nonviolent protests or political expression over human rights conditions in Israel and Gaza may now risk loss of employment and other civil and criminal penalties, according to a new policy unveiled by the National Institutes of Health on April 21st. The agency, the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, touches virtually every corner of the scientific community but it will now be silent over what is happening in Gaza, where every hospital has now been destroyed by Israeli-American bombs.

So there you have it. Let’s stop making excuses for Israeli behavior that depicts Jews as the perpetual victims while seeking to falsely label Israel’s enemies as the war criminals and racists. We will leave those attributes to Israel itself. Better still, arch-Zionist Donald Trump should pick up the phone in the Oval Office and call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him that America has become tired and the game is over. America will no longer be sacrificing its own interests to support a genocide and no longer will be footing the bill and providing the weapons to carry out the slaughter. “Goodbye Bibi! And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Battle Space Advancing To Decide Fate of America’s Covid-19 Shot

By Jefferey Jaxen | April 24, 2025

Corporate media articles are now buzzing about the possibility of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) narrowing, and even reversing, some of its previous Covid vaccine recommendations.

CNN’s commentary from health experts give an impression that even a consideration of narrowing the shot recommendations would be a dangerous endeavor. Yet under their article’s opening paragraph, they let slip the obvious:

“The change would more closely align the US with guidance given in other countries. Unlike countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, the US alone recommends an annual Covid-19 vaccine for healthy younger adults and children.”

The U.S. appears to be the anti-scientific outlier in pushing these shots on adults and children.

The move would be made by the CDC’s ACIP committee which is scheduled to meet in June.

POLITICO is warning that the Covid shot may be removed from the childhood vaccine schedule… according to “two people familiar with the discussions.”

The Politico-CNN tag team to shape the battle space on this topic ahead of the anticipated June ACIP meeting is weak at best.

In a recent interview with FOX NEWS host Jesse Waters, HHS head RFK Jr responded by stating:

“The recommendation for children was always dubious because kids had almost no risk for Covid-19.”

He continued:

“We need to give people informed consent and we shouldn’t be making recommendations that are not good for the population.”

There is a real, rapidly growing call from the American public to outright ban the mRNA Covid vaccine from use. Much like ending water fluoridation, states have not waited for the federal government to act on this as 11 are now seeking a formal ban.

The removal of recommendations represents a midrange target on the continuum of potential actions concerning this injectable, liability free mRNA product line.

The bottom line effect if CDC makes good on their recommendation removal for health children and/or adults would secure a near guarantee that any form of school or business Covid vaccine mandate would be a nonstarter.

The recommendation removal would not in any way change the broken compensation program surrounding the Covid shot. The mRNA Covid vaccine, along with other ‘countermeasures’ is covered from legal liability by the PREP Act until 2029.

Currently the ‘black hole’ program those harmed or killed by the shot are funneled into is called the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP). It has a 1 year statute of limitations, not from the time one recognizes their vaccine injury, but from the day of injection.

Author of Vaccine Court 2.0 The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Wayne Rohde writes of the latest CICP injury payouts:

“Of the 4,111 decisions related to COVID-19, nearly all 4,044 have been denied.”

April 24, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

FIGHT OVER FLUORIDE HEATING UP IN FLORIDA

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | April 17, 2025

The national conversation around fluoride in drinking water has shifted and Florida is currently the hotbed of this effort. Hear how the EPA is actively reviewing the recent studies on the dangers of fluoride and the legal changes moving forward on state and federal levels.

 

April 24, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

NSF terminates hundreds of “misinformation”-related grants, impacting research tied to online speech flagging

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 23, 2025

A large wave of funding cancellations from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has abruptly derailed hundreds of research projects, many of which were focused on so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Late Friday, researchers across the country received emails notifying them that their grants, fellowships, or awards had been rescinded; an action that stunned many in the academic community and ignited conversations about the role of the government in regulating research into online speech.

Among those impacted was Kate Starbird, a prominent figure in the “disinformation” research sphere and former Director of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.

The Center, which collaborated with initiatives like the Election Integrity Partnership and the Virality Project, both known for coordinating content reporting to social media platforms, had ties to federal agencies and private moderation efforts.

Starbird expressed dismay over the NSF’s move, calling it “disruptive and disheartening,” and pointed to a wider rollback in efforts to police digital content, citing reduced platform transparency and the shrinking of “fact-checking” operations.

Grants that were cut included studies like one probing how to correct “false beliefs” and another testing intervention strategies for online misinformation. These projects, once backed by taxpayer dollars, were part of a growing field that often overlaps with content moderation and speech policing; a fact acknowledged by even Nieman Lab, which admitted such research helps journalists “flag false information.”

The timing of the cancellations raised eyebrows. The NSF’s action followed a report highlighting how the Trump administration was reevaluating $1.4 billion in federal funding tied to misinformation research. That investigation noted NSF’s involvement in these programs but did not indicate the impending revocations.

The NSF stated on its website that the grants were being terminated because they “are not aligned with NSF’s priorities,” naming projects centered on diversity, equity, inclusion, and misinformation among those affected.

A published FAQ further clarified the agency’s new direction, referencing an executive order signed by President Donald Trump. It emphasized that NSF would no longer support efforts aimed at combating “misinformation” or similar topics if such work could be weaponized to suppress constitutionally protected speech or promote preferred narratives.

Some researchers, like Boston University’s Gianluca Stringhini, found multiple projects abruptly defunded. Stringhini, who had been exploring AI tools to offer users additional context about social media content; a method akin to the soft content warnings platforms deployed during the pandemic—was left unsure about the full scope of consequences for his lab.

Foundational to many early studies in this space, the NSF had long played a key role in launching initiatives that shaped how digital discourse was studied and potentially influenced. According to Starbird, about 90% of her early research was NSF-funded. She cited the agency’s vital support in forging cross-institutional collaborations and developing infrastructure for examining information integrity and technological design.

The mass termination of these grants signals a pivotal shift in the federal government’s stance on funding initiatives that blur the lines between research and regulation of public speech. What some see as necessary oversight to prevent narrative enforcement, others view as a dismantling of essential tools used to navigate complex digital environments. Either way, the message from Washington is clear: using federal dollars to police speech, even under the guise of scientific inquiry, is no longer a priority.

April 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Ireland’s War on Dissent Gets a Digital Upgrade

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | April 22, 2025

Ireland’s authorities have published the National Counter Disinformation Strategy, recommending a number of censorship tactics such as “fact-checking” and “pre-bunking.”

At the same time, a potentially powerful demonetization tool – the online advertising system – is to be used against whatever is branded as “disinformation.” Even if these are, in reality, often simply dissonant policies and voices.

Yet the Irish government’s plan is to make this a broad “collaboration” between itself, the private sector, and other participants.

While turning online advertising into a tool for suppressing speech has at this point been recognized as unacceptable in the US (as the GARM saga illustrates well) – in Ireland, this is still clearly considered a viable option to control online narratives.

Media outlets long since positioned as government sidekicks, namely, legacy media, are branded “high quality” – while those that can be financially stomped out (i.e., demonetized) for supposed “disinformation” include voices exercising that top democratic principle – free speech.

Free speech includes lawful political and social dissent – while another key value defining democracy is the ability to express that dissent without fear of repercussion or discrimination.

And so, never formally banned, and therefore the cases not raising too much dust – dissenting online sources would be easy to shut down. Cutting off revenue (through “collaboration” with the advertising industry) would become a way to continue flying the authoritarianism flag on the radar.

Another requirement the strategy seeks to impose is that platforms comply with legal obligations – including laws that enact censorship by any other name.

In order to cement the “disinformation” narrative, civil society and research organizations are to be given access to platform data – which then often becomes the basis for low-stakes campaigns disguised as research, aimed against policies, parties, and media outlets.

These “non-binding” papers may never end up holding any professional water – but what does that matter, once “high quality” legacy media pick them up and work them into their “news” narratives.

Ireland inevitably seeks compliance with the EU bureaucracy. One of those rules is the “EU Code of Practice on Disinformation” – to fight anyone harming “our society by eroding trust in institutions and media.”

Both the EU and the Irish government still pretend they don’t know the ones doing that particular “harm and eroding” work here – are in fact, themselves.

More: Ireland Enacts Hate Offenses Act, Dismissing Concerns Over Free Speech and Censorship

April 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Our 2002 Redux

By Matt Wolfson | The Libertarian Institute | April 22, 2025

In the detention of Mahmoud Khalil and the ensuing crackdown on pro-Palestinian activism by Donald Trump’s administration, a recognizable model for governance is emerging. The model is from 2002. During that year, as American citizens were distracted by the aftermath of a recession and energized from a terrorist attack, the Geoge W. Bush administration and its allies took actions to mute opposition to its Global War on Terror. These moves provoked charges from a vocal minority of Americans that the administration was acting in an unconstitutional, even a fascistic, way; and that U.S. citizens would be next to be detained or even disappeared.

What happened instead was a subtler and more insidious silencing of speech. This silencing would have been familiar to the Founders, who limited America’s government in order to encourage speech, since they knew that the mere awareness of menacing state power might be enough to forestall citizens’ willingness to speak openly in dissent. In 2002, America’s research universities and establishment media proved the Founders right. They noticed the Bush administration’s hard line and self-policed. Their silence smoothed the way for the invasion of Iraq, warrantless wiretapping, and much else we still live with today.

The 2002 plays occurred mostly behind the scenes. But they have been extensively documented by journalists sorting through their detritus.

Between September 2001 and August 2002, the Justice Department detained 762 aliens, some of them based on “minor immigration offenses,” often without proof of any actual ties to terrorism, and held them in indefinite detention rather than deporting them. To try these detainees, it set up special military courts that legal thinkers from different political persuasions, including Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia, believed usurped congressional power and the writ of habeas corpus. The administration created an Information Awareness Office in the Pentagon focused on “story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance” and “biologically inspired algorithms for agent control”: e.g. on the surveillance of American citizens for spreading government narratives. The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans began releasing narratives through more traditional channels, including leaking to The New York Times about purported links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The players pushing these policies and narratives were deeply linked to Israel and Saudi Arabia, which had interests in American involvement in the Middle East as a bulwark against Iraq and Iran. Powerful supporters in the media echoed them.

The Weekly Standard vociferously attacked those urging a cautious response after 9/11, including by offering “Susan Sontag awards.” These amounted to a regular bludgeoning of America’s foremost leftwing intellectual, after she argued in a 450 word article in The New Yorker that “a few shreds of historical awareness” might help prevent future 9/11s. The New Republic, whose literary editor publicly dropped his friendship with Sontag, began publishing an “Idiot Watch” about opponents of the rumored invasion of Iraq. Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe, who had just represented Al Gore in his losing litigation before the Supreme Court over the 2000 election, argued in The New Republic in favor of detaining prisoners via military tribunals, the position later argued against by Justice Scalia. New Republic contributor and Harvard president Larry Summers argued that petitions for American divestment in Israeli settlements, arguably a key driver of Islamic anger at America, could be “anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

In the face of the push, knowledge producing institutions cooperated. The New York Times, dependent on White House sources, reduced a series of reports that cast doubt on the connection between Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) to one back page story. (The story’s author, James Risen, said later that “It’s like any corporate culture, where you know what management wants, and no one has to tell you.”) The Washington Post, similarly dependent on White House sources, backed the invasion of Iraq. University presidents and many eminent professors held a generally skeptical view as to the Iraq War’s plausible success—but they kept their dissent private.

Together, these operators created a bipartisan intelligentsia invested in or at least acceding to the Bush Administration’s “democracy agenda” in the Middle East, the “hope and change” agenda of its day.

The people resisting these moves were undone by either their even-handedness or their attention-seeking. The late Ronald Dworkin, one of America’s most eminent legal minds, wrote lucid critiques of these policies that were nonetheless unlikely to bring people to the barricades. The filmmaker Michael Moore aimed his hit documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, as its title suggests, to cash in on provocation at the expense of crossover appeal. Instead of making a difference in the debate, Moore made money as a cult hero, which he poured into progressive identity politicking. Meantime, the majority of the country supported the invasion of Iraq.

Within three years of the invasion—even before the loss of $3 trillion dollars, 7,000 Americans, and at least 80,000 Middle Eastern civilians—almost all of the liberal centrists who had backed it had bailed out, sort of. They expressed their “regret—but no shame” as well as their “pain” at their “mistake”: a mistake that was nonetheless “impossible” for them “to denounce,” since they had made the mistake for good reasons. They also expressed their disappointment with the Bush administration—and were duly featured in the pages of The New Republic, Slate, and The New Yorker. They turned their support to the Democratic Party and Barack Obama’s hope and change agenda. Obama’s Democrats, afraid of being called soft on terror, continued most of Bush’s policies, most of which continue to this day.

Since the beginning of March 2025, we appear to be in a 2002 repeat.

The Trump Administration has revoked the visas of 300 visa holders, among them college students and medical students who have expressed their opposition to American policy in the Middle East. It has equipped the State Department with artifical intelligence (AI) tools that scan the social-media posts of foreign students for posts that equate, in the administration’s view, support for Hamas. It has cancelled the appointment of a prominent anti-interventionist to the Department of Homeland Security and stalled the appointment of another to the Department of Defense. It has deepened ties with Saudi Arabia, and has likely committed to the project of razing, relocating, and rebuilding Gaza. It has started bombing the Saudis’ and Israelis’ enemies in Yemen—even though the trade benefits from this bombing mostly accrue, as Vice President J.D. Vance said, to Europe. The president has also taken a hard line on Iran, threatening bombings.

Powerful media players, like in 2002, have lent their support to these moves. The prime driver is The Atlantic, which has succeeded The New Republic as establishment Washington’s go-to magazine—and the promoter of many new bad ideas from psychological racism to restorative justice. Not only does the magazine’s majority investor have ties to Saudi Arabia but its editor is a former Israeli Defense Forces guard who, as a journalist in the 2000s, reinforced the Bush administration’s case for the Iraq War. Recently it’s become clear that The Atlantic has a line to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, the Trump Administration’s resident interventionist. Echoing The Atlantic’s line are its contributors: many former government operators who teach at international schools of prestigious American research universities and appear at the Aspen Institute.

Universities are taking the hint. Columbia University set up an Office of Institutional Equity which has investigated students under a troublingly sweeping definition of anti-semitism. Columbia also “placed the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies department and the Center for Palestine Studies under review.” And it fired its interim president, Katrina Armstrong, for failing to propitiate the Trump administration. Meantime, reportedly under similar pressure, the two leaders of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies left their positions. New York University canceled a speech by a medic from Doctors Without Borders about Gaza which included images of injured children because these “slides about Gaza could be perceived as anti-Semitic.”

Unlike in 2002, there is broad resistance to these moves on the left and on the right. But the resisters are making many different arguments which entail complex questions; about the rights of citizens versus non-citizens; about the use of judicial review. The real issue remains what it was in 2002: the shutting down of debate inside knowledge-producing institutions with major influence over information flows. Democracy, as Susan Sontag said in 2001, promotes “candor” and “disagreement.” At least it should.

Like then, today’s shutting down is not widespread enough to provoke widespread resistance. But it’s enough to create a chill. That chill can persuade a third year college student, after a call home to worried parents, not to write an op-ed about campus speech for a school paper. It can persuade a Middle Eastern studies professor, mindful of Washington’s new interest in her classroom, to water down her lesson plan. It can persuade a second-year columnist at The Washington Post, now owned by recent Trump accomodator Jeff Bezos, not to touch the Yemen issue in her column that week or month or year. It can lead an influencer on Instagram, owned by other recent Trump accomodator Mark Zuckerberg, not to talk about Saudi human rights abuses. Anti-intervention protests will likely get smaller; the space for doubt in establishment newspapers will likely shrink. All of this amounts to the insidious silencing the Founders imagined. It probably already is.

[Some of] Trump’s genuinely populist supporters support this crackdown on the same logic as they support other Trump policies: Trump is silencing voices who aren’t citizens, who don’t seem to like America, and who are extracting resources—in this case education—from Americans. But this operation is not like the others. It affects American citizens by casting a chill on speech; and its function is to shut down opposition to an American involvement abroad.

What’s more, the people backing this play are no friends to America First. They are liberal and neoconservative centrists who, when the administration runs into difficulty, will repeat their play from the early 2000s. They will use the failure to usher into power a set of Democratic politicians who are already moving to the political center. Larry Summers is already making the play clear. Even as he applauds Harvard for changing its approach to the Middle East in response to Trump, he accuses Trump of being “dictatorial” towards universities and predicts “catastrophic” economic results from Trump’s presidency.

These centrists are dedicated above all to the maintenance of institutional power. Their rising influence in a presidency that was a referendum for popular constitutional government is cause for alarm, and for public pushback, and for debate—all of the things the institutions are trying to deny.

April 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Deporting dissent: The dangerous precedent set by the persecution of pro-Palestine activists

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | April 22, 2025

“Rights are granted to those who align with power,” Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student, eloquently wrote from his cell. This poignant statement came soon after a judge ruled that the government had met the legal threshold to deport the young activist on the nebulous ground of “foreign policy”.

“For the poor, for people of colour, for those who resist injustice, rights are but words written on water,” Khalil further lamented. The plight of this young man, whose sole transgression appears to be his participation in the nationwide mobilisation to halt the Israeli genocide in Gaza, should terrify all Americans. This concern should extend even to those who are not inclined to join any political movement and possess no particular sympathy for – or detailed knowledge of – the extent of the Israeli atrocities in Gaza, or the United States’ role in bankrolling this devastating conflict.

The perplexing nature of the case against Khalil, like those against other student activists, including Turkish visa holder Rumeysa Ozturk, starkly indicates that the issue is purely political. Its singular aim appears to be the silencing of dissenting political voices.

Judge Jamee E. Comans, who concurred with the Trump Administration’s decision to deport Khalil, cited “foreign policy” in an uncritical acceptance of the language employed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio had previously written to the court, citing “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” stemming from Khalil’s actions, which he characterised as participation in “disruptive activities” and “anti-Semitic protests”.

The latter accusation has become the reflexive rejoinder to any form of criticism levelled against Israel, a tactic prevalent even long before the current catastrophic genocide in Gaza.

Those who might argue that US citizens remain unaffected by the widespread US government crackdowns on freedom of expression must reconsider. On 14 April, the government decided to freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding to the University of Harvard.

Beyond the potential weakening of educational institutions and their impact on numerous Americans, these financial measures also coincide with a rapidly accelerating and alarming trend of targeting dissenting voices within the US, reaching unprecedented extents. On 14 April, Massachusetts immigration lawyer Nicole Micheroni, a US citizen, publicly disclosed receiving a message from the Department of Homeland Security requesting her self-deportation.

Furthermore, new oppressive bills are under consideration in Congress, granting the Department of Treasury expansive measures to shut down community organisations, charities and similar entities under various pretenses and without adhering to standard constitutional legal procedures.

Many readily conclude that these measures reflect Israel’s profound influence on US domestic politics and the significant ability of the Israel lobby in Washington DC to interfere with the very democratic fabric of the US, whose Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and assembly.

While there is much truth in that conclusion, the narrative extends beyond the complexities of the Israel-Palestine issue.

For many years, individuals, predominantly academics, who championed Palestinian rights were subjected to trials or even deported, based on “secret evidence”. This essentially involved a legal practice that amalgamated various acts, such as the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), among others, to silence those critical of US foreign policy.

Although some civil rights groups in the US challenged the selective application of law to stifle dissent, the matter hardly ignited a nationwide conversation regarding the authorities’ violations of fundamental democratic norms, such as due process (Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments).

Following the terrorist attacks [events] of September 11, 2001, however, much of that legal apparatus was applied to all Americans in the form of the PATRIOT Act. This legislation broadened the government’s authority to employ surveillance, including electronic communications and other intrusive measures.

Subsequently, it became widely known that even social media platforms were integrated into government surveillance efforts. Recent reports have even suggested that the government mandated social media screening for all US visa applicants who have travelled to the Gaza Strip since 1 January 2007.

In pursuing these actions, the US government is effectively replicating some of the draconian measures imposed by Israel on the Palestinians. The crucial distinction, based on historical experience, is that these measures tend to undergo continuous evolution, establishing legal precedents that swiftly apply to all Americans and further compromise their already deteriorating democracy.

Americans are already grappling with their perception of their democratic institutions, with a disturbingly high number of 72 percent, according to a Pew Research Centre survey in April 2024, believing that US democracy is no longer a good example for other countries to follow.

The situation has only worsened in the past year. While US activists advocating for justice in Palestine deserve unwavering support and defence for their profound courage and humanity, Americans must also recognise that they, and the remnants of their democracy, are equally at risk.

“Our defence is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere,” is the timeless quote associated with Abraham Lincoln. Yet, every day that Mahmoud Khalil and others spend in their cells, awaiting deportation, stands as the starkest violation of that very sentiment. Americans must not permit this injustice to persist.

April 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian-British academic Makram Khoury-Machool detained in London

Al Mayadeen | April 22, 2025

British border authorities detained Palestinian-British academic Professor Makram Khoury-Machool on Friday evening upon his return from Paris to London, subjecting him to a four-hour interrogation under the UK’s 2019 “Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act.”

Devices seized, personal belongings searched

During the investigation, British police confiscated Professor Khoury-Machool’s mobile phone and personal laptop, thoroughly searching all his belongings, including identification and credit cards. No formal charges were presented, raising concerns over the basis and implications of the detention.

Authorities also took his fingerprints, captured multi-angle photographs, and collected DNA samples from inside his mouth.

No official clarification yet

UK border police indicated that they may contact Professor Khoury-Machool again within the next seven days. So far, no official statement has been issued to explain the reasons behind his detention or the content of the interrogation.

The incident occurred in the presence of his 8-year-old son, who witnessed the extended questioning and detention of his father until midnight on Good Friday.

Professor Khoury-Machool, who is of Palestinian origin, is a well-known intellectual and media figure. His recent public activity includes participation in a pro-Gaza demonstration in Paris on April 16, 2025, where he shared a photo of himself at the event via his X account.

April 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Interpol rejects ‘red notice’ for Polish MP who sought asylum in Hungary

Marcin Romanowski’s arrest (Source: X@Magda Grajnert, RMF, video picture grab).
Remix News | April 22, 2025

Marcin Romanowski, former deputy minister of justice and PiS MP, will not be covered by Interpol’s red notice. According to Salon24, notwithstanding an earlier request to supplement its file on Romanowski, Interpol rejected the application of the Polish prosecutor’s office for a red notice.

The Polish MP is suspected of participation in an organized criminal group and defrauding Poland’s Justice Fund, accusations he has denied. He was granted asylum in Hungary in December last year, with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán saying, “This is a legal process, not a political decision.”

Hungary, however, in its decision stated that it had found evidence that the charges against Romanowski were politically motivated, enough to determine he would not stand a fair trial in Poland. This marked the first time an EU member state offered asylum to a Polish politician since the fall of communism.

The MP had been arrested in July but was released due to his immunity as a member of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. The current justice minister, Adam Bodnar, then called on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to revoke Romanowski’s immunity, which it did in October.

Although rulings by both a district and regional court in Poland subsequently upheld his immunity, Romanowski is wanted by Polish authorities, with a European Arrest Warrant and a European Investigation Order both issued against him.

Failing to secure a red notice from Interpol, the Polish government says it is pursuing other options.

A red notice is given to criminals classified as the most dangerous. Only four wanted Poles have such a designation so far: Kamil Żyła, wanted for the murder of a TVN journalist in the Silesian Park in Chorzów in 2022; Jakub Jakus, accused of participating in the terrorist organization ISIS, illegal possession of weapons and theft of documents; Krzysztof Pomorski, wanted for distributing child pornography; and Rafał Zabłocki, listed on the Interpol list for serious crimes.

April 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Where have Europe’s pacifists gone – the ones who once opposed NATO?

By Sonja van den Ende | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 22, 2025

Where are they now—Europe’s pacifists? Why do they no longer gather in Belgium, in Brussels, NATO’s headquarters, where large demonstrations against the alliance once took place? These protests, led by pacifists, denounced NATO, war, militarization, and nuclear arms.

The Belgian newspaper Le Soir recently posed an intriguing question: Why have the pacifists vanished? “The arms race has begun,” the article argues. “Like its European neighbors, Belgium is preparing to significantly increase military spending this year—without facing any opposition.”

“We keep our word,” declares Francken, Belgium’s former Defense Minister. “Belgium will become a solidary ally with extra defense budgets for personnel, equipment, and infrastructure.” He claims the spending will also boost jobs and innovation. Belgium, after all, is a NATO founding member, alongside the Netherlands.

Some Belgian (former) pacifists have reacted sharply to the government’s plans: “Retirees must accept lower pensions, unemployment benefits are being slashed, the sick languish in poverty, nurses earn less and work longer for diminished pensions, hospitals lose subsidies—all to enrich that corrupt Zelensky gang in Kiev.” The same measures, they note, are being imposed in the Netherlands.

But as the article points out, criticizing NATO now invites ridicule. Or does it go further than mockery? Across Western Europe—Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany—and in the Baltic states and Poland, dissent is met with more than scorn. People are arrested, elections are overturned, and societies drift toward totalitarianism—or worse, a resurgence of militarism and fascism unseen since 1945.

Europeans once insisted America should not meddle in their affairs. But it’s too late for that. EU governments, radicalized by waning U.S. interest in Europe, have already been co-opted. They should have spoken up years ago, when it became clear Europe was being used to wage wars in distant lands its citizens barely knew. Instead, they absorbed refugees (often unwillingly) and fell under what some call American colonization.

Yet America wasn’t entirely wrong. In Munich last February, Vice President J.D. Vance called Europe a “totalitarian society,” singling out Germany. I can confirm his assessment was accurate—but it barely scratched the surface. The reality is far worse and deteriorating daily.

Consider these examples:

  • A 16-year-old German girl was expelled from school by police for posting a pro-AfD TikTok video featuring the Smurfs (the right-wing party’s color is blue).
  • An AfD politician was fined for stating that migrants commit more gang rapes than German citizens. (The court didn’t dispute her facts but ruled they incited hatred.)

Germany once had a robust pacifist movement. In the 1970s and 80s, activists—many from what is now the Green Party (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen)—protested NATO and nuclear weapons. Today, those same Greens, led by Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, champion war and arms shipments.

Their party program declares Germany must lead Europe, offering a “global counterweight” to China and Russia. The anti-war, anti-NATO movement has been absorbed into a party now pushing for war—especially against Russia, as Baerbock’s rhetoric makes clear.

Or take a 2023 case where the EU’s High Representative expressed concern over “extrajudicial sentences against Serbs” who protested NATO in Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo’s Foreign Minister defended the arrests, claiming police had “clear evidence” the demonstrators participated in an “attack on NATO.”

So where have Europe’s pacifists gone—the ones who marched against war, militarization, and nuclear arms for decades? The Friedrich Naumann Foundation (banned in Russia) claims to have the answer. In an article, they declare: “The end of pacifism (as heard in a Bundestag debate) was historic. Hopefully, it marks the end of a moral and political error.”

Has pacifism become a “political mistake”? Millions who oppose war have been misled for years by their own politicians—like the Greens, who traded peace for militarism. The world is upside down, yet Europe’s docile masses seem content as their pensions fund weapons.

New Eastern Europe takes it further, arguing “Pacifism kills.” The outlet claims: “The problem isn’t pacifism itself, but its manipulation for purposes contrary to its ideals. While pacifist appeals to Russia (the aggressor) are justified, targeting Ukraine or both sides aids Moscow.”

In short: Pacifism helps Russia. The “hippies” of the 1960s live in a fantasy where peace is impossible, Russia is the villain, and Europe must defeat it. The campaign against pacifism mirrors the EU’s push for militarization.

Europe is silencing pacifists—and dissidents—just as pre-WWII Germany did under fascism. New laws are emerging. In Germany, the proposed CDU/CSU-SPD coalition plans to “fight lies,” per their “Culture and Media“ working group. If you “lie” by government standards—say, by advocating peace with Russia or denying its “aggression”—you risk jail, fines, or online erasure.

“The deliberate spread of false claims isn’t covered by free speech,” they assert.

Le Soir asked: Where are the pacifists? They’re still here—for now. But once Germany’s new government takes power, once the digital ID and CBDC (mandatory across Europe) launch this October, protests—online or in streets—will be surveilled. Small demonstrations in Germany and Amsterdam show resistance lingers. But soon, fear will silence them: fear for jobs, pensions, benefits, even children.

Because CBDC and Digital ID mean governments can monitor “fake news” and freeze dissenters’ funds. Europe is birthing the very totalitarianism it accuses Russia, China, or America of. Militarization, fascism’s revival—all while Europeans dread a war that isn’t theirs, yet one their leaders enable.

April 22, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

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