New Fakes about Russia-DPRK Military Cooperation
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 19.09.2022
More recently, the author analyzed misinformation that North Korean special forces were about to appear in the Donbass, but the global media soon encountered another misinformation launched from the West: it turned out that North Korea was preparing to supply Russia with shells and possibly military equipment on a massive scale. Or it is already supplying, but that is not certain.
It all started on September 5 with a New York Times article quoting “declassified intelligence reports” that “Russia is buying millions of artillery shells and rockets from North Korea, … a sign that global sanctions have severely restricted its supply chains and forced Moscow to turn to pariah states for military supplies.”
However, the newspaper immediately noted that there were few details about the exact weaponry, timing or size of the shipment, and generally, “there is no way yet to independently verify the sale”, but immediately went on to theorize as to why this was the case. It turns out that the Russian Federation now allegedly has no ability to buy advanced weapons or the electronics to produce them, as international sanctions on Moscow disrupt its supply chains, stocks of shells and missiles are running out and Russia is forced to look for suppliers. This, in particular, was stated by the quoted expert with the Ukrainian-speaking surname Kagan.
A little later, AP Agency gave some details and quotes, which, however, still did not clarify the situation. Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon Press Secretary, said “the information that we have is that Russia has specifically asked for ammunition” but had no other details, including whether money changed hands and whether any deliveries were continuing.
Asked why this information was declassified, Ryder said it was important to illustrate the state of Russia’s ongoing military campaign in Ukraine. And, the author would add, against the backdrop of Ukraine’s attempted counter-offensive.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also said there was no indication yet that the arms purchase had actually taken place or that any North Korean munitions had entered the battlefield in Ukraine. Nevertheless, the talks themselves are “just further evidence of how desperate Putin is becoming”, with US intelligence suggesting that Russia is buying millions of rounds of ammunition from the DPRK.
After that, the news spread around the world media and even reached South Korea, but discussion on the relatively objectivist website NKNews showed that assessments are directly dependent on both their bias and their distance from the Russian context.
For example, Jack Watling, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, confidently stated that since February 2022 Moscow had been buying up stocks of 152mm and 122mm shells “in any way they can. And that includes North Korea.” All this is said to be common knowledge in intelligence circles, but the source of this information is not in the public domain, and he is personally unaware of specific deliveries from North Korea to Russia. However, Watlig’s level of knowledge is better described by another quote: “Moscow had for some time pushed for Pyongyang to support its war effort,” which, he said, was not limited to supplying ammunitions.
For his part, Joost Oliemans, a specialist focused on DPRK military capabilities, expressed more restraint – Pyongyang certainly has a huge amount of old ammunition, and can produce new weapons for export, but “if this story is really true, we could expect to see video evidence of North Korean ammunition in Ukraine in the coming months.” In other words, he is not prepared to discuss the subject without evidence.
By the very next day on September 6, both Ryder and Kirby had already given up somewhat. The former said in a press briefing that “we do have indications that Russia has approached North Korea to request ammunition”, he could not provide more details, but in any case “it is indicative of the situation that Russia finds itself in, in terms of its logistics and sustainment capabilities.” And also that Moscow is asking for help precisely from those countries that the US has defined as “rogue”.
Kirby also conceded that the US doesn’t “have any indication that the purchase has actually occurred yet so it’s difficult to say what it’s actually going to end up looking like”, much less evidence that these weapons are being used in Ukraine.
The Russian side has also spoken out. According to Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya, “I have not heard about it and I think it’s just another spreading fake news.”
On September 7, 2022, NKNews specifically updated its piece to clarify that “there is no evidence in the public domain of Russian efforts to procure North Korean arms since February 2022”. By this time, both Russian and unbiased Western experts had formulated a set of theses indicating that the hype news was nothing more than misinformation.
- The DPRK’s arms exports to Russia are a violation of UN Security Council resolutions, which prohibit that country from exporting or importing arms from other countries. Moreover, back in the day Vladimir Putin banned the supply of small arms and light weapons to North Korea as part of the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2270 of March 2, 2016. An overt violation of this kind undermines Russia’s status as a permanent member of the UNSC, and from the author’s perspective even the hypothetical arrival of North Korean construction workers in the DLPR (a far less overt violation) is at best discussed. Perhaps this disregard for sanctions will happen later on the backdrop of a further breakdown of the old world order, but that time has not yet come.
- It is not at all clear how sending such a volume of cargo is compatible with “emergency anti-epidemic measures” and border closures. Especially considering that there is only one railroad bridge between the Russian Federation and the DPRK, which has limited capacity. How exactly Moscow will pay is also a good question in view of the sanctions.
- A comparison of Russia’s and DPRK’s weapons production capabilities also leads to the question of whether Russia does not have its own military and industrial complex at all, and whether the start of the SMO has not affected the rate of ammunition production. And also regarding the volume of Russian military stockpiles: as even Oliemans pointed out, Moscow must have a huge amount of old Soviet ammunition, which is unlikely to run out anytime soon.
- All right, let’s say that “the Russians don’t want to go below a certain level of reserves in case they face other threats”, but the same logic is all the more applicable to the DPRK, which is constantly on alert against a superior enemy. By that logic, Pyongyang needs the shells and missiles itself.
- Most importantly, there is no idea how exactly US intelligence could have obtained such data. But misinformation fits in well with the West’s propaganda mindset that the successes of Russian SMO in Ukraine are about to come to an end. It is known that these successes are largely due to technical rather than numerical superiority, and therefore the argument “we’ll talk when the Russians run out of shells” is very popular in the pro-Ukrainian environment.
Of course, if one considers this misinformation as a kind of “mental exercise”, North Korean military equipment and ammunition might well come in handy. Russian military expert Vladimir Khrustalyov lists a whole range of DPRK military equipment capable of showing off in Donbass – the arsenal turns out to be quite impressive.
But talk of “what would have been” is beyond the scope of the article, and the author is far more interested in how the US intelligence community knew about the ominous “signs”. The author has two options and the first one is that this information is not intelligence but military-psychological. In other words, the news was simply made up for propaganda purposes to cradle the “desperate Putin is trying to find a million missiles” picture, which will leave a certain residue even after the falsity of the data comes to light.
The second option is more amusing and, alas, more realistic: the source of the sensational information could be such an anonymous and specific medium as Russian politicized Telegram channels, in which the SMO is constantly discussed. However, Telegram’s anonymity often makes it impossible to identify the channel’s real author. This means that any high-school student with a glib tongue can easily portray himself as an “expert from those very structures” involved in the “secrets of the Kremlin court”, even if the information has no real basis in fact.
For the author, the validity of such anonymous channels amounts to reports of “secret informants in the DPRK” who “know the local life” and “report the truth”, but non-core or engaged experts easily cite such sources in case they fit their point of view. In addition, even a broken clock is right twice a day. On this basis, it can be assumed that a Russian-speaking US military intelligence official subscribed to a similar channel that discussed the notion that Russia would soon run out of bombs and missiles and need to buy them somewhere, probably even from North Korea.
Perhaps the scout did not distinguish the ironic context from the dramatic one. It is even more likely that he did not realize that the alleged foreign intelligence general or presidential administration official describing the secret talks was typing on his smartphone in algebra class. But the information has gone up the chain of command and in one way or another has “come in handy”.
To conclude the conversation, it is worth noting how the propaganda image of the DPRK has changed: before the SMO, the Western media presented North Korea as a starving third-world country, but now it is a superpower providing Putin with builders, soldiers and now also ammunition. Therefore, the fake about millions of missiles is clearly not the latest fake about the “Jucheans in the Donbass”.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia, and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Expectedly, new Bucha-like narratives spring up in Kharkov region

By Drago Bosnic | September 19, 2022
After the late March/early April withdrawal of Russian troops from the northern and northeastern areas of Ukraine, Western state and corporate-run mainstream media immediately constructed the so-called “Bucha massacre” narrative with the aim of damaging Russia’s international standing. Western governments and the media were unanimous – Russian Armed Forces were the alleged “perpetrators of the Bucha massacre”, while some even called it “genocide”. The Kiev regime claimed that the Russian military killed at least 412 people. Expectedly, the claims were unsupported by any actual official investigation by a party neutral to the conflict. The Kiev regime and the political West flatly refused to allow an international investigation, while any claims contrary to the official narrative were immediately suppressed. If anyone dared to question the narrative, they would be labeled “conspiracy theorists”, “genocide deniers” and “Putin’s propagandists”.
Taking into account the “Bucha massacre”, we can only say the new “Izyum massacre” narrative is a predictable joint propaganda stunt of the Kiev regime and the political West. The pattern is virtually the same. In only a few days, Western and Kiev regime’s alleged “investigators” found “undeniable evidence” that the “evil Russian occupiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians.” On September 15, the Kiev regime media reported: “The terrible footage of the graves of the victims of the Rashist [Kiev regime pejorative wordplay term meaning ‘Russian fascist’) occupation on the outskirts of Izyum. There are almost no names on the plates anywhere. Apparently, bodies are buried here from under the rubble of bombed houses, which have yet to be identified.”
Exactly like in the case of the Bucha narrative, the Kiev regime reports made no mention of the fact that Izyum and the surrounding areas and settlements have been under near-constant heavy shelling by the Kiev regime forces. Their artillery has been firing at the area indiscriminately for nearly half a year. Still, the very next day, on September 16, the Kiev regime started the exhumation of bodies from the alleged mass graves. According to the Kiev regime, 400 bodies were allegedly found at several mass burial sites. In addition, the Neo-Nazi junta claims that the bodies of civilians and even children supposedly “show signs of torture.”
The new Bucha-like narrative came only a day after the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen visited Ukraine and stated that she wanted to “see Russian President Vladimir Putin face the International Criminal Court” over alleged “war crimes.” The official head of the Kiev regime Volodymyr Zelensky also stated that the Neo-Nazi junta is in talks with its G7 backers to set up a “war crimes tribunal” which would “investigate and punish Russia and its top officials and military leaders for war crimes.” Again, expectedly, the idea was actively supported by the political West. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell stated that “the leadership of Russia and all those involved in this will be held accountable. The EU supports all efforts in this direction.” Earlier, Borrell has also called Russia a “fascist state”, which is quite ironic, given the openly Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev which the EU has been supporting for nearly a decade now.
Hundreds of Western reporters have already flooded Izyum and the surrounding areas. Some Kiev regime media claim that there are only civilians buried, but the photos which have been shared so far only show the bodies of men in military uniforms. This indicates that the bodies of conscripted soldiers, who have been used as cannon fodder by the Kiev regime forces, are now being used to stage another false flag with the goal of tarnishing Russia’s international reputation. After hundreds of (often forcibly) conscripted Ukrainians have been killed on the battlefield and abandoned by their military command, the Russian military buried their remains, because the Kiev regime refused to take them. As they remain unidentified, the Kiev regime accomplishes several goals – the military gets the chance to hide their real losses and also not pay money to the families of the dead, while the regime can use the soldiers’ remains to set up false flags and fake narratives which serve strategic propaganda purposes.
In addition, last week local sources reported that mercenaries and possibly the infamous Neo-Nazi units embedded with the Kiev regime forces have been deliberately targeting civilians in the Kharkov region. The head of Kharkov’s civil-military administration told TV Rossiya-24 that pro-Kiev regime forces fired on civilians during the so-called “counter-offensive” in the last few days. In addition to killings, the agents were also filming the events with the aim of spreading the videos and images on the internet claiming that the Russians were responsible. In addition, acts of torture were also taking place to make the allegations more gruesome, according to local administration.
If the false flag allegations prove to be true, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time the Kiev regime has used fakes to create a narrative that suits their interests. Back in late May and early June, Lyudmila Denisova, former Ukrainian Ombudsman for Human Rights, has been fired for spreading disturbing fake reports about perverted sex crimes against children, allegedly committed by Russian soldiers. Denisova’s reports were entirely fabricated, based on nothing but her twisted imagination and malicious desire to portray Russia as the virtual Mordor of our time. There is no reason to believe the Kiev regime and its backers from the West are doing anything different in this particular case.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
WHY Is Germany Committing Suicide?
The Same Reasons WHY the EU/UK is Being Deindustrialized!
BY DAVID CHU • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 17, 2022
Well that’s the real question, isn’t it? Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia. Keeps ’em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents ’em from asking the most important question, why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?
~ Mr. X in JFK movie
Why is Germany committing harakiri (or seppuku)?
Because the Americans ordered them to do so!
Recently, William F. Engdahl wrote a very interesting article titled, “Europe’s Energy Armageddon From Berlin and Brussels, Not Moscow” which was re-worked in Pepe Escobar’s “Germany’s Energy Suicide: An Autopsy”.
Both articles give a fascinating explanation of HOW Germany is committing suicide. Green Agenda 2030. The Great Reset. Etc.
I emailed Engdahl about the following statement that he wrote in his article and asked him, “What is the real reason for the complete deindustrialization of Germany? Besides the Green Energy or Great Reset bullshit.”:
It is not because politicians like Scholz or German Green Economy Minister Robert Habeck, nor EU Commission Green Energy Vice President Frans Timmermans are stupid or clueless. Corrupt and dishonest, maybe yes. They know exactly what they are doing. They are reading a script. It is all part of the EU plan to deindustrialize one of the most energy-efficient industrial concentrations on the planet. This is the UN Green Agenda 2030 otherwise known as Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset. [Bolded emphasis is mine.]
For whatever reasons, Engdahl didn’t reply to my email. But in my email to him, I basically answered my question when I asked the following:
Is it to emasculate Europe completely so as to make Europe completely dependent on the US for both energy and technology? The rest of the world is moving towards BRI and BRICS. The only block left to harvest aka rape and pillage for the Americans is Europe (plus Japan and South Korea).
That was September 5, 2022.
On September 16, 2022, RT (Russia Today) ran an article titled, “Elite US think tank dismisses EU plot report as ‘fake’”:
The story of an alleged US plan to drain EU resources to prop up its economy was reported on Tuesday by Nya Dagbladet, a Swedish news outlet, which describes itself as anti-globalist, humanist, pro-freedom, and independent. An English-language version was released later in the week.
The newspaper claimed that it obtained a classified document signed by the RAND Corporation, titled ‘Weakening Germany, strengthening the US’. The paper, which was allegedly produced in January, outlined a scenario for how the US could help its struggling economy by draining resources from its European allies.
The purported plot involved goading Russia into attacking Ukraine, which would force the EU to impose sanctions on Russia and decouple their economies from Russian energy.
Well, today (September 17, 2022) I contacted the two Swedish authors of Nya Dagbladet and asked them to provide me with the RAND document. Markus Andersson, one of the authors and chief editor, quickly replied and voila here is the “fake” RAND document:
https://nyadagbladet.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/rand-corporation-ukraina-energikris.pdf
You better save a copy of this PDF on your hard drive and pass it on to all your friends, especially those sheeple living in Germany, before the RAND people scream bloody murder and disappear this very important “fake” document!
Very soon now, the RAND people will call it a “forgery”.
The RAND report is titled, “Executive Summary: Weakening Germany, strengthening the U.S.”
It is dated January 25, 2022 and is labelled “Confidential”. The distribution list include WHCS (White House Chief of Staff), ANSA (Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs), Dept. of State, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), NSA (National Security Agency), and the DNC (Democratic National Committee).
Shall we take a little peek into this “fake” document?
The present state of the U.S. economy does not suggest that it can function without financial and material support from external sources [very definition of a parasitic empire!]. The quantitative easing policy, which the Fed has resorted to regularly in recent years,s as well as uncontrolled issue of cash during the 2020 and 2021 Covid lockdowns, have led to a sharp increase in the external debt and an increase in the dollar supply [the very definition of high inflation rates].
The continuing deterioration of the economic situation is highly likely to lead to a loss in the position of the Democratic Party in Congress and the Senate in the forthcoming elections to be held in November 2022. The impeachment of the President cannot be ruled out under these circumstances, which must be avoided at all costs. [Bolded emphasis is mine.]
There is an urgent need for resources to flow into the national economy, especially the banking system. Only European countries bound by the EU and NATO commitments will be able to provide them without significant military and political costs for us. [The USA has ran out of third-world and developing nations to rape and pillage.]
The major obstacle to it is growing independence of Germany. Although it still is a country with limited sovereignty, for decades it has been consistently moving toward lifting these limitations and becoming a fully independent state. This movement is slow and cautious, but steady. Extrapolation shows that the ultimate goal can be reached only in several decades. However if social and economic problems in the United States escalate, the pace could accelerate significantly. . . .
Vulnerabilities in German and EU Economy
An increase in the flow of resources from Europe to U.S. can be expected if Germany begins to experience a controlled economic crisis [bolded emphasis is mine]. The pace of economic development in the EU depends almost without alternative on the state of the German economy. It is Germany that bears the brunt of the expenditure directed towards the poorer EU members.
The current German economic model is based on two pillars. These are unlimited access to cheap Russian energy resources and to cheap French electric power, thanks to the operation of nuclear power plants. The importance of the first factor is considerably higher. Halting Russian supplies can well create a systemic crisis that would be devastating for the German economy and, indirectly, for the entire European Union. . . . [Bolded emphasis is mine.]
A Controlled Crisis
Due to coalition constraints, the German leadership is not in full control of the situation in the country. Thanks to our precise actions, it has been possible to block the commissioning of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, despite the opposition of lobbyists from the steel and chemical industries. However, the dramatic deterioration of the living standards may encourage the leadership to reconsider its policy and return to the idea of European sovereignty and strategic autonomy.
The only feasible way to guarantee Germany’s rejection of Russian energy supplies is to involve both sides in the military conflict in Ukraine. Our further actions in this country will inevitably lead to a military response from Russia. Russians will obviously not be able to leave unanswered the massive Ukrainian army pressure on the unrecognized Donbas republics. That would make possible to declare Russia an aggressor and apply to it the entire package of sanctions prepared beforehand. . . .[Bolded emphasis is mine.]
The RAND Executive Summary then goes on to detail the “Expected Consequences” with projections of financial and economic loses for Germany.
The rest as they say is . . . (almost) Mission Accomplished!
P.S. Adolf must be rolling in his Argentina grave now that Sergeant “I Know Nothing!” Scholz is in full command of the Fatherland . . . .
Alleged Discovery of Izyum Mass Graves a ‘Monstrous Provocation’, Russian Envoy to Canada Says
Samizdat – 17.09.2022
The reports of mass graves being discovered in Izyum, Ukraine is another “monstrous provocation” by Kiev which is trying to stage a fresh version of Bucha and mobilize public opinion in the West as the United Nations General Assembly prepares to meet next week, Russia’s Ambassador to Canada Oleg Stepanov told Sputnik.
“The Kiev regime supplies the media with lies about crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Russian troops in Izyum,” Stepanov told Sputnik on Friday.
“We are talking about another monstrous provocation, about an attempt to stage ‘Bucha’ in a new way. All this is being done on the eve of the opening of the High-Level Week of the UN General Assembly to try to manipulate a certain part of the western public on the subject of Ukraine.”
That western media and officials immediately pick up “fabrications of Kiev” about the alleged crimes against humanity in Izyum without double-checking is simply an indicator of how aggressive the information war against Russia is, Stepanov added.
He also said that he is optimistic that the truth about Izyum will come out, just as it did with the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.
On Friday, Ukrainian authorities alleged that mass burial sites were found in Izyum after Russian troops withdrew from the Kharkov region in early September, and that more than 400 bodies had been found so far.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has warned several times that the Kiev regime supported by the collective West has been preparing Bucha-style provocations to accuse Russia of war crimes.
On 24 February, Russia began a military operation in Ukraine, responding to calls for help from the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Moscow has said that the aim of its operation is the “demilitarization and de-Nazification” of Ukraine.
Western countries have responded by imposing comprehensive sanctions against Russia, while accusing Moscow of crimes against humanity, including alleged atrocities in the city of Bucha. The Kremlin has denied the allegations, and has accused Kiev of employing typical terrorist methods, such as hiding behind civilians and deploying weapons in civilian areas.
Illegal Collusion Between Government and Big Tech Exposed
By Dr. Joseph Mercola | September 15, 2022
In a September 1, 2022, article,1 the Post Millennial reveals how federal officials in the Biden administration have held secret censorship meetings with social media companies to suppress Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech, and to ban or deplatform those who share unauthorized views about COVID and vaccines.
The evidence for this comes out of a lawsuit2 brought by the New Civil Liberties Alliance and the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) against President Biden, filed in May 2022.
During the discovery process, the plaintiffs sought to identify “all meetings with any social media platform relating to content modulation and/or misinformation,” which is how we now know that such illegal meetings did, in fact, take place.
Illegal Collusion to Suppress Free Speech
Monthly, a Unified Strategies Group (USG) meeting took place — and may still be taking place — between a wide variety of government agencies and Big Tech companies, during which topics to be censored and suppressed were/are discussed.
Censored topics included stories involving COVID jab refusal, especially those involving military refusals and consequences thereof, criticism against COVID restrictions and their effects on mental health, posts talking about testing positive for COVID after getting the jab, personal stories of COVID jab side effects, including menstrual irregularities, and worries about vaccine passports becoming mandatory.3 According to the New Civil Liberties Alliance:4
“… scores of federal officials … have secretly communicated with social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech federal officials disfavor. This unlawful enterprise has been wildly successful.
Under the First Amendment, the federal government may not police private speech nor pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas. But that is precisely what the government has done — and is still doing — on a massive scale not previously divulged.
Multiple agencies’ communications demonstrate that the federal government has exerted tremendous pressure on social-media companies — pressure to which companies have repeatedly bowed …
Communications show these federal officials are fully aware that the pressure they exert is an effective and necessary way to induce social-media platforms to increase censorship. The head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency even griped about the need to overcome social-media companies’ ‘hesitation’ to work with the government …
This unlawful government interference violates the fundamental right of free speech for all Americans, whether or not they are on social media. More discovery is needed to uncover the full extent of this regime — i.e., the identities of other White House and agency officials involved and the nature and content of their communications with social-media companies.”
Jenin Younes, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance added:5
“If there was ever any doubt the federal government was behind censorship of Americans who dared to dissent from official COVID messaging, that doubt has been erased. The shocking extent of the government’s involvement in silencing Americans, through coercing social-media companies, has now been revealed …”
Federal Agencies Involved in Free Speech Suppression
Documents obtained so far have identified more than 50 federal employees across 15 federal agencies, who participated in these censorship meetings or otherwise engaged in illegal censorship activities.6 This includes officials from:
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team
- Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis
- The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce
- The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division
- The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)
- Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
- The Office of the Surgeon General
- The Census Bureau
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- The State Department
- The U.S. Treasury Department
- The U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Emails from a strategic communications and marketing firm called Reingold7 also reveals that outside consultants were hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media to censor Americans. For example, Reingold set up a “partner support portal” for the CDC so that CDC officials could link emails to the portal for easier flagging of content it wanted censored by social media companies linked to the portal.
Big Tech Companies Involved in Government Censorship
On the private industry side, notable tech participants in the censorship meetings include:
- YouTube
- Microsoft
- Verizon Media
- Wikimedia Foundation
While some social media companies may have “hesitated” to censor on the government’s behalf at times, Facebook was certainly an eager beaver from the get-go. As early as February 2020, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was in contact with the State Department, offering its services to help “control information and misinformation related to coronavirus.”8
Biden Administration’s ‘Executive Privilege’ Denied
As you might expect, the White House has not cooperated with discovery and have fought to keep communications secret — especially with regard to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s correspondence — claiming all White House communications as “privileged.”
However, executive privilege does NOT apply to external communications, so the plaintiffs called on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to “overrule the government defendants’ objections and order them to supply this highly relevant, responsive and probative information immediately.”
September 7, 2022, Judge Terry Doughty did just that. The Biden administration’s claim of executive privilege was rejected and Doughty ordered the White House to hand over any and all relevant records.9 That includes correspondence to and from Fauci, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and many others. According to the judge’s order, they have three weeks to comply.
Examples of Illegal Government Censorship
On Twitter,10 Missouri AG Schmitt has shared a long list of examples of government censorship, including one document in which Clarke Humphrey, COVID-19 response digital director at the White House, asked Facebook to take down the Instagram account “anthonyfauciofficial,” a parody account dedicated to making fun of Fauci.11 Facebook complied.
Schmitt also shared emails12,13 between a senior Facebook official and the surgeon general, stating, “I know our teams met today to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.” This email came on the heels of the surgeon general’s July 2021 “misinformation health advisory.”
The CDC also coordinated with Facebook, providing them with talking points to debunk various claims, including the claim that spike protein in the COVID shots is dangerous and cytotoxic. In a July 28, 2021, email, a CDC official provided Facebook with the following counter-narrative, taken straight from the “How mRNA Vaccines Work” section on the CDC website:14
“Messenger mRNA [sic] vaccines work by teaching our cells to create a harmless spike protein …” (Emphasis in the original.)
Fast-forward to mid-June 2022, and the CDC was suddenly less sure about the harmlessness of the spike protein.
Up until then, the words “harmless spike protein” had always been bolded, but in this June revision, they removed the bolding, along with an entire section in which they’d previously claimed that mRNA was rapidly broken down and spike protein did not last more than a few weeks in the body.15 Clearly, the truth was catching up to them and certain lies were getting too risky to hold on to.
CISA also reached out to Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft and Twitter for help, shortly after the DHS’s Disinformation Governance Board was announced.16 Fortunately, public outcry put an end to this Orwellian Ministry of Truth before it got started.
When Censorship Becomes Election Interference
According to The Washington Times :17
“Details about the Biden administration’s conduct raised the hackles of Republican lawmakers. ‘Confirming that this is the most dangerously anti-free speech administration in American history AND that Facebook … is nothing but an appendage of the deep state,’ Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Twitter as he shared news of the court filing.”
Other lawmakers are also getting involved. In an August 29, 2022, letter18,19 to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, Republican Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin requested records of the government’s contacts with social media companies to ascertain whether the FBI and/or DOJ did, in fact, instruct them to censor information about the Hunter Biden laptop scandal by falsely referring to it as “Russian disinformation.”20
Zuckerberg has also been asked21 to provide any correspondence involving the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop story, especially as it pertains to the FBI’s instructions to censor this political hot potato — something he openly admitted in a recent Joe Rogan interview (see video above).22
Lawmakers Pursue Legislation to Penalize Gov’t Censorship
Three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees — Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington — have also introduced the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act23 (HR.8752), aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.
The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.
While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool, as people might tend to think twice when they know there’s a real and personal price to pay.
Sources and References
- 1, 3, 8 Post Millennial September 1, 2022
- 2 State of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213
- 4, 5 New Civil Liberties Alliance September 1, 2022
- 6 NTD September 1, 2022
- 7 Reingold
- 9 Washington Times September 7, 2022
- 10, 13 Twitter Eric Schmitt September 1, 2022 thread
- 11, 16, 17, 20 Washington Times September 1, 2022
- 12 Twitter, Eric Schmitt, Emails Between FB and SG
- 14 Ago.mo.gov CDC emails to Facebook July 2021
- 15 AIER September 1, 2022
- 18 Chuck Grassley Letter to Garland and Wray August 29, 2022
- 19 Chuck Grassley August 30, 2022
- 21 Chuck Grassley Letter to Mark Zuckerberg August 29, 2022
- 22 Spotify Joe Rogan Experience, Episode 1863
- 23 HR 8752 — Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act
Yet another “whistleblower” means yet more censorship

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | September 13, 2022
A new Twitter “whistleblower” has come forward. Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, allegedly a former hacker and Twitter’s ex-head of security, testified in front of congress today, with dire warnings about the business practices of the social media giant.
Did he talk about the company’s egregious attacks on their users’ free speech under the guise of “protecting” the public?
Did he mention the suppression of alternative and independent journalism through practices such as “shadow-banning” and discretely removing followers?
Perhaps he told them about how, like all major social media platforms, it is so cross-pollinated with intelligence assets it may as well be considered just another branch of the Deep State.
No, none of that. His main concern is that Twitter’s security is too lax, and that the platform’s “cyber-security failures” leave it potentially open to “exploitation” that can “cause real harm to real people”.
NOW – Former Twitter security chief says the platform’s leadership “is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its own board of directors.” pic.twitter.com/rk5EulVid5
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 13, 2022
According to the write-up of his testimony in The Guardian, “Zatko said Twitter runs out-of-date and vulnerable software on more than half of its data center servers and that in “multiple episodes” the platform was breached by foreign intelligence agencies.”
Adding, “Zatko has also accused Twitter of doing little to combat problems with spam bots – an allegation that bolsters Elon Musk’s case for backing out of his Twitter acquisition.”
Do you see how this works? It’s gearing up the machinery to label anyone who dissents as either a “spy” or a “bot” (and perhaps reveals something of the purpose behind Elon Musk’s “revelation” about the number of “fake accounts” on twitter).
If this all sounds eerily familiar, don’t worry you’re not experiencing deja vu, you’re just remembering Frances Haugen, the facebook “whistleblower” from last year. She said very similar things in a very similar way.
We’ve seen this dance before, we know the steps. As I wrote only last year:
Like so many other testimonies before congress in the past, the entire event looks fake and probably is. A stage-managed exercise involving some “expert witness” telling a bunch of politicians exactly what they want to hear, so they can go ahead push the legislation they were going to push anyway. It’s all leading up to loud bipartisan calls for “regulation”, and that’s not a good thing.
They wheel out some person – who may or may not be real, and may or may not have an axe to grind – prop them up in a nice suit in front of some po-faced senators and have them reel off a few thousand serious sounding words.
Their pay-off is a few minutes of fame, a ghost-written book deal and being called “brave” by moist-eyed liberal pundits, their hands white-knuckling around their pearls.
While they prattle on at length about the supposed “problem”, the “solution” is already planned and ready to roll out. Such is the crushingly predictable nature of the Hegelian dialectic.
And, just in case any of you hadn’t already figured out what that was, The Guardian is more than clear [emphasis added]:
In his testimony, Zatko said there had not been enough government enforcement when it comes to the operations of big tech, and that the federal trade commission (FTC) is “in over its head” when going up against huge tech firms.
More “government enforcement”.
It’s all so tiresome.
Never Let A Good Crisis Go to Waste Relentless Ukraine reporting helps conceal other conflicts
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • SEPTEMBER 13, 2022
It is astonishing how many observers of war in Ukraine who should know better have been inclined to take at face value the assertions of “sources” that clearly originate among the various governments that are involved in the conflict. Those leaders who are engaged in the inexorable march by the US and its allies to turn the Ukraine crisis into World War 3 surely have learned the lesson that managing the narrative of what is taking place is the greatest weapon that the war hawks have in their possession. One recalls how post-9/11 and leading up to the Iraq War the George W. Bush White House and the neocons in the Pentagon lied about nearly everything to convince the public that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist supporting megalomaniac armed with weapons of mass destruction, inevitably describing him as a man in some ways comparable to Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, many observers of what was occurring were not fooled and there were large scale demonstrations in a number of cities prior to the invasion in March 2003, which, of course, were rarely reported in the mainstream media in order to control the message.
Iraq in some ways was a learning experience for those in government and also for those in the media who did the heavy lifting by propagating the deception to a largely unsuspecting public. What we are seeing now relating to Ukraine and Russia, however, makes the Iraq experience look like child’s play in terms of the sheer audacity of the alleged information that makes it, or does not make it, into the news. I note particularly the recent terrorist car bombing of Russian activist journalist Dalya Dugina by a Ukrainian assassin made the news for roughly forty-eight hours before disappearing, but not before the lie that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was responsible was firmly planted in a number of places in the mainstream media.
Now that Joe Biden is about to designate a two or three star general to head the Ukraine campaign and has pledged billions of dollars more in aid, Ukraine will be all the news all the time. The US involvement will also feature a catchy name. I would suggest Operation Empty Wallets, which is what Americans will soon be experiencing due to government bailouts and other profligate spending, or maybe Operation Give Me a Break. And it will also create a new dimension to the narrative-shaping in that Ukraine reporting’s domination of what comes out of the newsrooms already is effectively killing much of what else might otherwise be appearing on TV or in the newspapers. That selective management of information provides cover for neglecting stories that might prove embarrassing for those in power. It in effect means that there has been plenty of room for the usual players to engage in business as usual with hardly any scrutiny by the public over what is going on outside Ukraine in secondary theaters like the Middle East and Africa.
All of which leads one to examine what the two countries that have unilaterally declared themselves to be rules makers and enforcers have been up to. Those two countries are perhaps not surprisingly the United States and Israel. The US is, in fact, increasing its combat role in Africa featuring airstrikes in Somalia, all of which have taken place since US President Joe Biden approved the redeployment of hundreds of special forces troops to that country in May, reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump to reduce troop levels in AFRICOM. The two latest attacks killed at least twenty Somalis, all of whom were of course described as “terrorists” by the US command. Independent sources state that US forces have bombed Somalia at least 16 times under Biden, killing between 465 and 545 alleged al-Shabaab militants, including no less than 200 individuals in a single drone plus ground forces strike on March 13th.
Describing the paucity of reporting on the issue, Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, observed “If you were unaware that we were bombing Somalia, don’t feel bad, this is a completely under-the-radar news story, one that was curiously absent from the headlines in all of the major newspapers…”
And then there is Syria, where a paucity of information in the media reflects White House policy. The United States, which has possibly as many as a dozen illegal bases in Syria, has a major airbase located in the al-Omar oil field in Syria’s northeastern Deir Ezzor province. Several weeks ago, three US soldiers were reportedly slightly wounded in rocket attacks directed at the base by alleged “Iranian-backed militants.” The US responded to the claimed attacks by launching strikes from Apache helicopters against three vehicles belonging to an Afghan Shia militia, killing between six and ten “militants,” and there are reports that more tit-for-tat exchanges of fire are likely. CENTCOM afterwards claimed that President Joe Biden personally ordered the strikes in “self-defense” and justified them by citing Article II of the US Constitution. But the Constitution was never intended to cover illegal activity in a foreign land where US forces are occupying a country with which it is not at war and which has a functioning government that opposes the American presence. The US reportedly has its illegal bases mostly located in the oil producing and agricultural bread basket of the country. Both the grain and oil are routinely stolen by the US and much of the oil winds up in Israel.
So, one inevitably comes to Israel, which has used the cover provided by Ukraine not only to bomb Syria frequently but also to kill Palestinians both in Gaza and on the occupied West Bank. Recently the pace has accelerated with the Israeli Army and police killing on average several Palestinians every day, very little of which is reported in the US media, a fatality rate five times higher than that which prevailed in 2021. It is clearly a deliberate policy to step up the pressure on the Palestinians and a vital part of the process is to let it happen with minimal scrutiny by the media and public, so Israel is widely publicizing the support it is giving to Ukraine to draw attention away from what it does locally.
In short, Israel is increasing efforts to make the historic Palestine Palestinian-free by rendering life so miserable that many Arabs will decide to leave. The use of selective violence and constant harassment is all part of that effort and Palestinians have found that describing Israel as an “apartheid” state does not accurately describe the intensity of the indiscriminate punishments and killings by soldiers which have become all too common.
Israel meanwhile is also doing its best to delegitimize Palestinian national identity by labeling Arab human rights groups as “terrorists.” Israeli police recently raided the offices of seven such groups, confiscated their office equipment and communications, and ordered the premises to be shut down completely. Ironically, a CIA assessment of the groups determined that they were not in any way terrorist linked. The Joe Biden administration characteristically responded to the development by indicating that it was “concerned” but did not condemn the Israeli action.
So, if you open a newspaper or turn on the television and watch or read the international news, you will be told what to think about what is going on in Ukraine. And it will be from the Ukrainian/US government point of view. If you are interested in what the US and Israel are up to in the Middle East, you will most often be out of luck as “defending democracy” in Ukraine while also demonizing Russia is providing cover for Washington and Jerusalem to get into all kinds of mischief. It is a reality derived from how the media and government work collectively to shape policies that in no way benefit the American public. Instead, powerful interest groups with plenty of cash drive the process and are the ones who gain still more power and money through it. It is the sad reality of what has happened to our “land of the free and home of the brave.”
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.

