The ongoing war between the US Security State and the First Amendment is perhaps the most underreported development of the 21st century. Now, Missouri v. Biden may bring it to the Supreme Court.
Just two decades ago, the internet promised liberation as dictatorships would cave to the emerging swell of information. That was the hope, at least.
“There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet,” President Clinton said in 2000. “Good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.”
That optimism did not come to fruition. Instead of Westernizing the Orient, technology laid the foundation for the US Security State to pursue unprecedented social control.
At first, the conflict appeared to be between rank-and-file military members and transgressive cyber actors. Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seemed like mere hackers, not harbingers for the impending suspension of American liberty.
The battle suddenly became a civilizational struggle in 2020. A highly efficient technocracy declared war against the Bill of Rights. The US Security State shut down American society, eradicated due process, and captured the public health apparatus. The CIA bribed scientists to cover up the origins of Covid, and the Department of Homeland Security dictated what Americans could and could not see in their newsfeeds. The FBI helped banish the country’s oldest newspaper from Twitter for reporting on its preferred candidate’s son.
When Clinton made his “Jell-O” comment, few of us could imagine that we’d live in such a country. We trusted our courts and our elected government to protect us. We thought the rule of law was sacrosanct. We were wrong.
Now, however, the judiciary has the opportunity to reclaim the First Amendment from the tyranny of the Security State in Missouri v. Biden.
Missouri v. Biden and the CISA Injunction
Tuesday, the Fifth Circuit reinstated an injunction against CISA, an agency in the Department of Homeland Security, that prohibits its agents from colluding with social media companies to promote censorship of any kind.
The case demonstrates how far the United States has strayed from its former free speech ethos. CISA held ongoing meetings with social media platforms to “push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech,” according to the Fifth Circuit. This included criticism of lockdowns, vaccines, and the Hunter Biden laptop. Through a process known as “switchboarding,” CISA officials dictated to Big Tech platforms what content was “true” or “false,” which became Orwellian euphemisms for acceptable and prohibited speech.
CISA’s leaders reveled in their usurpation of the First Amendment. They overturned hundreds of years of free speech protections, appointing themselves the arbiters of truth. Without freedom of “election-related speech,” we no longer live in a democracy. They pursued a faceless dictatorship.
They sought to eradicate dissent surrounding the policies that they imposed. CISA had been responsible for dividing the workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential” in March 2020. Hours later, the order became the basis for the country’s first “stay-at-home” order, a process that quickly spiraled into a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.
CISA betrayed the country’s founding principle. A group of unelected bureaucrats hijacked American society without ever having a vote cast in their names. They disregarded the First Amendment, due process, and elected government in their pursuit of power.
The Framers understood that liberty relied on the free flow of information. They were well aware of the dangers of widespread lies and an incendiary press corps, but tyranny presented a far greater risk to society. Government could not be trusted to wield power over the minds of men, so they enshrined freedom of press, worship, and speech in our Constitution.
The Security State unwound those liberties. White House officials used the power of the federal government to suppress dissent. The Biden Administration launched an interagency attack on free speech. The Covid regime’s coup d’etat continued unimpeded until Judge Terry Doughty’s July 4 injunction.
Now, the Fifth Circuit has remedied its previous error by reinstating the injunction against CISA. The case may now head to the Supreme Court, where the Justices would have the opportunity to dismantle the technocratic censorship operation at the heart of the Covid response.
The war is far from won. Julian Assange remains in jail alongside terrorists for publishing news reports that undermined the Security State’s deceit surrounding the War on Terror. Edward Snowden is banished from his homeland for exposing the lies of James Clapper.
President Biden’s “misinformation” crusade shows no signs of retreat entering the 2024 election cycle. Social media is still censored. Your Google results are still gamed at the behest of powerful state actors. YouTube has proudly announced that it will censor content based on the diktats of the World Health Organization. Say the wrong thing on LinkedIn and you are toast.
Among the large players, only X, formerly known as Twitter, is eschewing routine takedowns of speech deemed oppositional to regime priorities. That is truly only because one man had the means to buy and the drive to liberate it from the Censorship Industrial Complex, for now.
Tuesday’s decision reaffirmed what the Supreme Court called the “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment” in 1989: “that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
Rebuilding from the wreckage of Covid will require reclaiming those fundamental pillars of American society. The freedom to speak was not the first right earned by a people in revolt against ancient-world forms of statism but it might be the most essential. That’s why it is instantiated in the very first amendment to the Bill of Rights.
If the regime can control the public mind, they can control everything else too. A loss here is a loss everywhere.
October 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | CIA, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights, United States |
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In Part 1 we contrasted the popular misconceptions about so-called “conspiracy theorists” with the well-grounded demographic research done on the individuals who, collectively, have had that pejorative label slapped on them.
The research reveals that there is no such thing as an identifiable group of people who can legitimately be called “conspiracy theorists.”
The research also finds no credible evidence that people branded “conspiracy theorists” are prone to hold extremist views or have underlying psychological problems or pose a threat to democracy. These claims are all canards levelled against anyone who questions the Establishment and the power it has amassed.
We noted that political scientist Joseph Uscinski, who is perhaps the foremost scientist in the field of “conspiracy theory” research, cited the work of philosopher Neil Levy as a “simple and consistent standard” by which academics could “demarcate between conspiracy theory and [real or “concrete”] conspiracy.”
Professor Levy’s “simple and consistent standard” was first outlined in his article “Radically Socialized Knowledge and Conspiracy Theories.” In it, he pointed out that “conspiracies are common features of social and political life, common enough that refusing to believe in their existence would leave us unable to understand the contours of our world.” Levy therefore proposed that academics need a way to differentiate between the rational acceptance of acknowledged conspiracies and the supposedly irrational claims made by people who suspect conspiracies that haven’t been officially approved for discussion.
Levy suggested that “[r]esponsible believers ought to accept explanations offered by properly constituted epistemic authorities.” As we explained in Part 1, he defined the epistemic authorities as:
[. . .] the distributed network of knowledge claim gatherers and testers that includes engineers and politics professors, security experts and journalists.
In his listing of “journalists” as epistemic authorities, Levy was almost certainly referring to journalists who work in the corporate-owned legacy media (LM), not to journalists in the independent media, who are frequently labelled conspiracy theorists.
Independent media is broadly defined as:
[. . .] news media that is free from influence by the government or other external sources like corporations or influential people.
Similarly, in Levy’s view, only the “right” scientists and engineers are “epistemic authorities.” For example, he categorically stated:
Few responsible intellectuals reject the explanation of 9/11 that cites the conspiratorial actions of a group of terrorists under the direction of Osama Bin Laden[.] [. . .] [M]ost of us have little doubt that it is true.
Dr. Leroy Hulsey, a now-retired professor and department head of structural engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, led a multi-year study in which he and his team of engineer PhDs examined the structural collapse of World Trade Centre 7 (WTC 7). The conclusions they arrived at in their peer-reviewed report thoroughly contradicted the official 9/11 narrative. It seems unlikely that Prof. Levy would consider Dr. Hulsey to be a responsible intellectual or one of the “epistemic authorities.”
In his article, Levy opined that allegedly irrational “conspiracy theorists” could be identified by virtue of the fact that they disagree with the properly constituted epistemic authorities. Therefore, he claimed, their arguments and any evidence they presented should be dismissed. He wrote:
[K]nowing that a proffered explanation conflicts with the official story (where, once again, the relevant authorities are epistemic) is enough for us rationally to reject the alternative.
But there is nothing “rational” about rejecting an explanation simply because it is offered by people with whom you disagree.
Presumably, like Levy, Uscinski would consider himself an “epistemic authority” in the field of conspiracy theory research. Thus, it is not surprising that, when he spoke of Levy’s “simple and consistent standard,” Uscinski concluded:
[P]roperly constituted epistemic authorities determine the existence of conspiracies. [. . .] If the proper authorities say something is a conspiracy, then it is true; if they say it is a conspiracy theory, then it is likely false.
That is to say, “official” narratives are considered true by default, and anything that calls them into question is, by default, a “conspiracy theory.” The term signifies to other intellectuals—to one’s fellow high-brow “epistemic authorities”—that evidence which potentially undermines official narratives is, by definition, false. This conclusion is, of course, a load of nonsensical, fallacious gibberish.
Unfortunately, the conspiracy theory label is so widely applied these days that it has stuck. The legacy media (LM), in particular, has successfully deployed it as a tool of propaganda. Simply by spouting the words “conspiracy theory,” the LM have convinced the public to ignore any and all evidence that questions power.
Here’s one such example. Following serious allegations of rape and sexual misconduct it brought against the comedian, author and political commentator Russell Brand, the LM immediately exploited the situation by criticising Brand’s opinions and everyone who shared them.
Rachel Schraer
The BBC published Rachel Schraer’s article Russell Brand: How the comedian built his YouTube audience on half-truths just four days after the allegations were first reported by, among others, the BBC.
The opening paragraph to the article reads:
The first time Russell Brand really dipped his toe into the water of conspiracy theories, in early 2021, the effect was swift [. . .]. It won him a new income stream and a fresh army of fans.
We are told that Brand discusses “conspiracy theories.” This is a coded social signal from Schraer and the BBC to their readers and audience that everything Brand says should be discounted without examination—including any evidence he may cite. This should be done for no other reason than Schraer and the BBC have labelled Brand a conspiracy theorist.
In addition, the BBC casts the people who share Brand’s views as conspiracy theorists who should be equally ignored.
Furthermore, the suggestion is made that Brand is peddling “conspiracy theories” as some sort of grift. According to Schraer, the idea that independent media, such as Brand’s “Stay Free” channels, can be directly funded by its audience without compulsion is “evidence” of his dubious motives. (Apparently the BBC is vehemently opposed to the free market of ideas.)
Schraer explained what got the Brand ball rolling:
The door to this new fan base might have creaked open when Brand first discussed “the Great Reset” — a vague set of proposals from an influential think tank to rebuild the global economy after Covid.
The lame evidence Schraer cited to support her contention that the Great Reset is just some “vague set of proposals” was another BBC article. Five journalists contributed to this piece, which was published in 2021 as part of the BBC’s “Reality Check” series.
Collectively, the five BBC Reality Check “journalists” exposed their own deceit in the second and third paragraphs:
Believers spin dark tales about an authoritarian socialist world government run by powerful capitalists and politicians — a secret cabal that is broadcasting its plan around the world.
Despite all the contradictions in the last sentence, thousands online have latched on to this latest reimagining of an old conspiracy theory [. . .].
The problem is that no one accused by the Reality Check team of being a “Great Reset” conspiracy theorist has ever alleged that the Great Reset plan was a “secret” or that the planners are a “secret” organization. The fact that the well-known World Economic Forum (WEF) has broadcast its plans around the world obviously excludes the possibility that the plans were “secret” or even that the planners were acting secretively.
The contradiction between the two aforementioned sentences was a fabrication of the BBC Reality Check journalists’ own making. It was seemingly inserted to support their subsequent allegation that those who criticised the WEF’s Great Reset were alluding to a “secret cabal.” In reality, the critics were openly pointing their fingers directly at the WEF and its partners. No suggestions of a “secret cabal” or “secret plans” were ever made.
The BBC’s evident intention was to impugn critics of the Great Reset by falsely claiming that their views were illogical, speculative assumptions and were therefore “conspiracy theories.” The BBC propagandists created this myth themselves in order to deliberately mislead their readers. This is the very definition of disinformation.
The Reality Check team then reported that the Great Reset initiative was launched by King—then Prince—Charles as a plan to remodel the global economy. They talked about the WEF’s undemocratic “power to lobby [. . .] for ideas which could potentially transform the global economy.” They added that the WEF and its Davos delegates have “huge influence on world events.” They even raised the point that there are legitimate concerns about the potential impact of digital technology—vigorously pushed in the Great Reset—”on civil liberties and jobs.”
In short, the BBC Reality Check team gave a reasonable account of the arguments put forward by those whom they then dismissed out of hand by labelling them “conspiracy theorists.” The BBC “journalists” performed this trick by making up a reported opinion about “secret cabal[s]” and then falsely ascribing it to Great Reset critics.
In order to deter their readers from any further examination of the Great Reset, the BBC’s alleged journalists claimed that the Great Reset itself was “light on specific detail.” This, again, was pure disinformation.
The same journalists had to admit the existence of a published book called The Great Reset. In it, co-authors Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret wrote:
[O]ur objective was to write a relatively concise and simple book to help the reader understand what’s coming in a multitude of domains. [. . .] The reference information appears at the end of the book and direct attributions have been minimized [in the text].
The references include links to WEF documents such as “COVID-19 Risks Outlook A Preliminary Mapping and Its Implications.” This is just one document that forms part of the WEF’s extensive alleged risk-mapping program. The mapping program, in turn, informs the WEF’s highly detailed Strategic Intelligence, which the WEF claims will enable it to “make sense of the complex forces driving transformational change across economies, industries, and global issues.”
There really isn’t any facet of economy, industry, or indeed any global issues or aspects of our lives for which the WEF doesn’t already have a detailed, self-serving, transformational plan. The BBC’s claim that the Great Reset lacks “specific detail” is absurd. The plan couldn’t be more detailed or specific.
Rachel Schraer’s subsequent claim—that the Great Reset represents a “vague set of proposals”—is complete nonsense based upon the BBC’s own propaganda. It is self-evident that both Schraer’s and Reality Check’s articles served as a defence of the WEF’s Great Reset.
We have still other good reasons to question Schraer’s judgment.
Dr Simon Goddek, a scientist who turned to journalism and has questioned the safety and efficacy of the COVID jabs—thereby excluding himself from Uscinski and Levy’s “epistemic authorities”—shared a black-humoured joke as a social media meme. It showed the ageing physical decline of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden. Goddek quipped, “[w]as it her shots, mRNA or Meth?”
This joke was subsequently picked up by BBC Verify propagandist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who re-shared it with the comment: “4 million views for this nonsense from a blue tick conspiracy theorist.” It was indeed “nonsense”—because it was a joke.
Yet when Schraer re-posted Sardrizadeh’s comment, she displayed a woeful lack of comprehension and no sense of humour. She added her own inane interpretation with this absurd headline:
Breaking: Conspiracy theory-peddlers blame the Passage of Time on Vaccines.
This may seem like a trivial matter. But it’s not. Like Marianna Spring, Rachel Schraer is another BBC specialist disinformation reporter. That Schraer apparently can’t tell the difference between a joke and “disinformation” certainly brings her alleged “specialism” into question.
To fully appreciate how the “conspiracy theory” label is deployed by the legacy media (LM), we can look at the recent video by journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil, who is a former editor of the Sunday Times, an ex-BBC presenter, and the current chairman of the Spectator. When he left the BBC, Neil, was reported to have been “at the heart of the BBC’s political coverage for the best part of three decades.”
In a discussion with Sam Leith, the Spectator’s literary editor, about the Russell Brand allegations, Neil lamented that social media had enabled too many people—most of whom he considered to be stupid—to express their opinions. Based on this comment, we can contend that, if Neil is familiar with the work of Uscinski and Levy, he would probably consider himself a journalist member of the so-called “epistemic authorities.”
Neil spoke about the four-year investigation conducted by the legacy media that eventually produced the Brand allegations. He described it in glowing terms and noted that the independent media—which he called “the alternative media”—had neither the “resources nor the expertise to do” such an exhaustive investigation.
The Spectator YouTube channel that Neil heads has 304K subscribers. By comparison, Russell Brand has 6.6M YouTube subscribers. Consequently, his channel had considerably more resources than does the Spectator. However, following the alleged LM investigation of Brand, YouTube demonetised his account, so now Brand’s channel resources are flagging by comparison.
Unlike the independent media, which is almost entirely funded by reader and audience donations, the legacy media (LM) is funded by either corporate advertising or, in the case of the BBC, coercive license fees. UK print news media has been declining for years as people increasingly consume news online. In addition, state broadcasters, such as the BBC and Channel Four, are shedding UK viewers in their millions.
Nonetheless, as Neil observed, LM budgets are enormous compared to the shoestring income cobbled together by the independent media. That stark contrast hasn’t stopped the Establishment, which relies on the LM for its propaganda and owns most of it, from panicking.
Their panic explains the commissioning of the Cairncross Review—intended to provide some sort of rationale for propping up the LM.
Ironically, the Cairncross Review concluded that the LM needed “new sources of funding, removed from direct government control.” Of course, genuinely independent news media have already achieved new sources of funding by going directly to their audiences, some of whom value the independent viewpoint enough to support it financially.
Dame Cairncross (DBE, FRSE, FAcSS) apparently considered the independent media funding model to be rubbish. She ruled it out because, as she put it, “the stories people want to read may not always be the ones that they ought to read.” Instead, “the creation of a new Institute for Public Interest News” was needed, she determined. To ensure this new overseeing body would be “independent,” Dame Cairncross recommended that it “build strong partnerships with the BBC” and be funded by the UK government.
Her suggestion meant that, just like the independent media, the LM of the future would be funded by the public. The difference being that this would not be voluntary but achieved through enforced taxation. Through the new body she envisioned, instead of the public choosing which media outlets they want to support the “epistemic authorities” and the government would decide for them.
What Frances Cairncross ultimately recommended was state regulation of the internet as a means of protecting the LM from public opinion. These regulations would tell the people which media outlets they should “trust” and, hopefully, prevent them from supporting the “wrong” media.
Dame Cairncross’ review dovetailed perfectly with the progress of the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) through parliament. In her Review, she wrote:
The government will want to consider these recommendations in the context of its parallel work on online harms, disinformation and digital competition, to determine whether the recommendations set out here should be pursued separately or as part of broader packages of measures. In particular, it is for government to determine how best to design and execute policy relating to the activities of the online platforms, including any regulatory oversight. This Review is neutral [. . . .]
Neutral?
The OSA has passed all UK parliamentary reading stages and should receive Royal Assent any day now. It has established Ofcom as the internet regulator. The purpose of the Act is supposedly to improve public safety online—especially child safety. But it is patently obvious that the real objective of the OSA is to stop people from sharing information on social media that the government wishes to prevent from being shared—the article you are reading, for example.
The OSA will limit the online reach of the independent media. Accomplishing this aim is of vital importance to the Establishment—all the more so because public interest in the LM’s online news reporting is also plummeting.
In addition, the OSA provides significant protection for each of the regulated media organisations that the state controls and categorises as a “recognised news publisher.” This means every legacy outlet plus favoured “independent” media outlets such as Bellingcat, which is also funded by the Establishment.
So, given its protective care and vast resources, what alleged “expertise” did the LM bring to its investigation of Russell Brand, do you suppose? For a full account of that claimed journalism, you can read this article. But perhaps I should warn you in advance that, while the allegations against Brand are very serious and should be investigated by the police, the LM “team” disappointingly didn’t present a shred of real evidence to support those reported allegations.
Worse, the LM evidently fabricated purported evidence to mislead its readers and viewing audience, thereby undermining the accounts of the potential victims.
Yet, according to our Andrew Neil over at the Spectator, for the legacy media to have expended its considerable resources over a period of four years to produce this voluminous research (which we can call hamfisted detritus) requires great “expertise.”
In the Spectator interview, Leith asked Neil for his opinion about the possibility that the LM had launched a coordinated attack on Brand. Here is how Neil replied:
There’s no virtue to it at all [,] and the people who are pushing this line, that there’s a kind of conspiracy to do him down, are the very people who believe in all sorts of conspiracies as well. That vaccinations put little microchips into our bodies, that the Bush administration was really behind 9/11, and all the other nonsense. Of course, naturally we live in a world run by lizard people. We all know who they are [the lizard people], the mainstream media knows who they are, we’re just too frightened to point out the lizards among us. They’re conspiracists on everything now.
It is possible, though hard to substantiate, that a tiny minority of people labelled as conspiracy theorists believe there are microchips in the COVID shots. While the advent of motes makes this claim at least feasible, the vast majority of people who questioned the jabs—and who were also labelled as conspiracy theorists by the “epistemic authorities”—were more concerned about the experimental status, the potential unknown risks and the questionable efficacy of the jabs, not to mention the absence of any completed trials.
Neil’s tiresome “lizards” refrain was based solely on the opinion of one prominent so-called “conspiracy theorist,” David Icke, whose extremely speculative hypothesis of the “Sumerian Anunnaki” was based upon his interpretation of a few Gnostic texts—the Nag Hammadi, the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.—and the work of scholars such as Zecharia Sitchin.
No one who seriously questioned the COVID jabs, including tens of thousands of UK doctors and nurses, did so because they thought the royals were lizards. Nor, for that matter, did the structural engineers at the University of Alaska Fairbanks question the official account of 9/11 because they imagined that former US President Bush is a shape-shifting, pan-dimensional reptile.
Let us step back and ask: If Andrew Neil is, as he claims, the intellectual superior of anyone who suggests there may have been a coordinated LM attack on Brand, then why does he overlook the clear-as-day fact that the allegations against Brand were reported simultaneously by almost the entire legacy media on both sides of the Atlantic? Doesn’t such an absolute fact, such irrefutable evidence, point to at least the possibility of planned coordination?
And because that is the case, we are left with only one conclusion: Neil deliberately used a tried-and-true propaganda technique called the straw man argument. That is, he attributed preposterous beliefs to people he disagrees with in order to falsely “debunk,” with contrived ease, arguments they had never made. This technique is also called logical fallacy.
He then used a related technique termed “composition fallacy” to manipulatively claim that the opinion of one person whom he labels a conspiracy theorist (he is referring to Icke without naming him) represents the views of everyone he labels a conspiracy theorist. This is an extremely common LM tactic.
Did Neil say anything about the common suspicion of a possible coordinated attack on Brand? Yes, he did:
[Conspiracism] is a defence that is quite hard to deal with, because it is so ludicrous. It is a defence that doesn’t need facts. It is a culture in which Russell Brand lived and profited, or at least did until YouTube pulled the plug on his revenues. So that’s what they deal in, they don’t deal in the gathering of evidence. [. . .] All these conspiracy theorists can have their absurd opinions about what’s really going on here with Russell Brand, but to establish what’s going on, to produce the evidence, takes investigative journalism.
It is worth reiterating yet again that the investigation into the Brand allegations provided nothing but allegations. This does not mean that the allegations aren’t true. But the LM journalists have not provided anything approaching the “evidence” that Neil claims exists.
Notice that Neil used the word “ludicrous” to signal to his audience that the people he calls “conspiracy theorists” hold ludicrous beliefs. But think about it: His claim was based on his own ludicrous assertions and logical fallacies—not on any actual evidence.
So, if we are to take Neil at his word and “establish what’s going on,” then we need to look at the “evidence” in the hope of establishing some “facts.”
OK, let’s do that. It is a fact that, following publications of the allegations, the LM did not immediately set about finding further evidence to support the possible victims’ claims. Instead, the LM turned its attention to attacking the “conspiratorial” views of Brand and his followers.
Example #1. As soon as the allegations against Brand were published, the BBC wrote that he had “developed a cult following” and had “dabbled in conspiracy theories.” To those charges the BBC added the scintillating “fact” that Brand had built a following during the alleged COVID-19 pandemic because he “discussed conspiracy theories surrounding the disease.”
Example #2. Two days later, using the same alleged “cult” theme, the Metro published an article titled “From Covid denial to mainstream media hatred – Inside Russell Brand’s conspiracy-fuelled cult online following.”
Example #3. A couple of days after that, on the other side of the planet, Australia’s ABC News claimed that Brand’s followers respond to his “rants” simply because he is “controversial” and that his audience is comprised of “people chasing conspiracy theories.”
Example #4. Following the allegations against Brand, the UK government decided that it should express its opinion on a potential criminal investigation. No less than the Prime Minister’s office issued an official statement declaring that “these are very serious and concerning allegations.”
The examples are endless. We don’t have space to cite them all. How odd, then, for Andrew Neil to have claimed in his interview that no one “could give a monkey’s _ _ _ _” about Russell Brand. The “evidence” thoroughly contradicts Andrew Neil. It appears that the entire LM, from all four corners of the globe and the UK government, are very interested in the Russell Brand allegations.
The UK government’s publicised opinion was followed up by emailed letters from Dame Caroline Dinenage DBE MP to numerous social media and online news sites, including the Chinese-owned TikTok and the video hosting service Rumble, requesting that Brand be demonetised on those online platforms.
Caroline Dinenage is Baroness Lancaster of Kimbolton, a leading member of the Establishment and a member of the House of Commons’ Culture, Media and Support Select Committee. It is no surprise that this very committee was instrumental in creating the Online Safety Act. Moreover, when the baroness was the Minister of State for Digital and Sport from February 2020 to September 2021, she had ministerial responsibility for guiding the passage of the Online Safety Bill toward becoming the Online Safety Act.
The common law concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” which Neil conceded was an important principle of UK liberal democracy, seems to mean practically nothing to Dinenage.
The notion is bandied about in some quarters of the LM that Dinenage was acting independently. That may be true. But why, then, did she use the official House of Commons letterhead for her correspondence?
As yet, there has been no official statement from the Culture, Media and Support Select Committee on the allegations against Brand. Reportedly, it has merely acknowledged that only “some” of the letters sent out under its name were approved. Considering that all the letters under its letterhead were shameful examples of rank authoritarianism, the fact that any of them were apparently approved indicates the dictatorial tendencies of the Select Committee as a whole.
What actual facts have been established?
First, it is a fact that the LM has exploited the allegations and has deployed the composition fallacy to discredit both Brand’s and his social media followers’ opinions.
Second, it is a fact that the allegations about Brand emerged at the same time that the Online Safety Bill passed its final reading stage. The Brand allegations grabbed all the headlines, leaving virtually no room for prominent coverage of the imminent UK censorship law by the LM. Thoroughly distracting the UK public.
Third, it is a fact that the purpose of the Online Safety Act is to shore up the dwindling reach of the LM and censor its independent media competition.
Fourth, it is a fact that Brand and his followers are considered part of the independent media, which the LM accuses of being conspiracy theorists.
Fifth, it is a fact that formative figures in the UK government have used the allegations published by the LM to attempt to limit the reach of someone who has millions of followers and whom they accuse of being a conspiracy theorist.
Sixth, it is a fact that limiting the reach of popular conspiracy theorists is exactly what the Online Safety Act is designed to achieve.
There is solid evidence supporting each of these facts. So, what did Andrew Neil, a presumed member of the “epistemic authorities,” make of the facts and supporting evidence that he insists he and the entire legacy media he champions hold so dear? In his Spectator interview, Neil had this to say:
I think because Russell Brand’s position, in terms of a variety of conspiracies, is very similar to their conspiracies, they regard him as he’s one of us. So, regardless of what he’s accused of, we need to rally behind him. We need to get behind him, they’re trying to pick us off. I mean, don’t forget, they’re conspiracy theorists so therefore they are paranoid. They’re not just paranoid, they do know most sensible people are against them. And I think it’s a kind of rallying defence to look after one of their own.
The Spectator interview was posted on the September 23rd, after the Dinenage letters and the LM reports we’ve just discussed were published. In other words, Neil had mounds of material at his fingertips, but he chose to discard all the evidence and ignore the numerous facts pointing to a possible political motive for the global legacy media’s and UK government’s pursuit of Brand. Instead, he simply cast all the evidence and facts aside and dove into his “conspiracy theory” accusations.
This is a classic case of how the “conspiracy theory” label is applied by people, such as Neil, who do not wish to acknowledge contradictory evidence or facts. The “conspiracy theory” charge enables Neil and his legacy media cohorts to create what they pretend are unquestionable narratives, which they expect their readership and viewership to “trust” on the flimsy basis of their laughable, self-aggrandising claim to be “epistemic authorities.” It should be noted that this is precisely what “the Science™” of conspiracism decrees.
When Sam Leith, Neil’s interviewer, pointed out that so-called conspiracy theorists cannot be categorised by any single political ideology, Neil didn’t pause to consider the implications of his underling’s accurate statement.
Rather, he embarked on an anecdotal reminiscence as if trying to justify his bizarre conspiracy theory view. Having dismissed all evidence to the contrary, he falsely asserted that conspiracy theory lies only on the extremes of politics and that the far left and the far right (conspiracy theorists) all believe essentially the same thing.
He opined that both alleged extremist wings, and therefore all of the conspiracy theorists he imagines, hate liberal democracy. His conclusion:
People like Russell Brand are no friends of liberal democracy and neither are his supporters.
As we discussed in Part 1, this is mindless proselytising. Entrenched Establishment elitists seriously expect us to accept that the people who most fiercely protect and seek to exercise our democratic right to question power are all extremist conspiracy theorists.
Neil apparently believes that liberal democracy is embodied by the public’s trust in the Establishment’s “epistemic authorities.” Consequently, in his evident view, anyone who challenges the “authorities” and their pronouncements and edicts is undermining liberal democracy. But what he is describing is actually the polity of a totalitarian fascist state—a complete inversion of liberal democracy and the principles it is supposedly based upon.
It is evident that, from Neil’s perspective, only stupid people—conspiracy theorists—question epistemic truth, as presumably defined by his narrow, authoritarian class. He views all such stupid people as unintelligent extremists who seek to destroy the social order he disingenuously calls liberal democracy.
Anyone who uses the “conspiracy theory” label does so, not because they value the evidence, the facts or the dialectic, but because they will not countenance any challenge to their worldview or any dissent from their claimed authority.
The “conspiracy theory” charge is an authoritarian propaganda construct, intentionally created to censor legitimate, fact-based opinion.
It is time we stand up to the “epistemic authorities” and reject their elitist, authoritarian pretence of intellectual superiority.
It is time to insist that all evidence is discussed, that all the facts are established and reported to the public.
It is time to reject the state propagandist’s “conspiracy theory” canard.
October 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | UK |
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A medical examination of Tino Chrupalla, the co-chair of the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD), has confirmed the politician was attacked with a syringe, the party said in a statement on Friday.
Citing a letter from the Ingolstadt Clinic, the party said the politician sustained a syringe puncture on his “right upper arm.” The medical examination also indicated the politician was injected intramuscularly with a “yet unknown substance.”
“Forensic toxicology analysis is ongoing,” the party added.
The incident occurred at a campaign event in Ingolstadt on Wednesday, when the politician collapsed after taking selfies with the participants of the rally. The AfD immediately alleged Chrupalla had been assaulted during the event. The politician ended up in the intensive care unit of Ingolstadt hospital.
Shortly after the alleged attack, sources confirmed it to RT.de, claiming the party’s co-chair suffered anaphylactic shock, apparently caused by the substance from the syringe. A party spokesperson further elaborated on the matter on Thursday, stating that Chrupalla had sustained a “puncture wound” and was being tested for “substances in his body.”
That account of events, however, has been disputed by German authorities, who stated on Thursday that there was “no evidence” of an attack on Chrupalla.
“At this time, there is no evidence that Mr. Chrupalla was tackled or attacked,” the Ingolstadt public prosecutor’s office and police said in a joint statement.
Chrupalla’s personal security detail did not witness any physical assault on the politician, authorities claimed. Local media reports also said no needles or similar objects were recovered from the scene by police except for two push-pins.
October 6, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Germany |
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Last Thursday it was announced that the southern Irish state would roll out Flu jabs to all schoolchildren under its jurisdiction, despite the fact that children are an age group at absolute minute risk of becoming seriously ill from seasonal illnesses such as Flu and colds.
This comes less than three months after an effectively identical announcement was made by the British government, regarding the rollout of the Flu jab to upwards of three million children in English schools.
A similar announcement was made by the British government in October 2019, however that plan was scrapped due to lack of supplies.
AstraZeneca, the manufacturer of the nasal-spray that was to be given to schoolchildren in England, blamed this on a hold-up of an analysis of that year’s Flu season by the WHO, which was to be then given to pharmaceutical firms in order to determine how many products were to be developed.
The timing of this announcement in 2019, and the new announcements that Flu jabs would be rolled out to schoolchildren in Ireland and Britain, arouses suspicion.
On the 18th of October 2019, the same day it was announced that plans had been scrapped to provide schoolchildren in England with Flu jabs, Event 201 was held in New York. Organised by John Hopkins University, in conjunction with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum, Event 201 was a simulation exercise which envisaged a coronavirus pandemic sweeping the globe, the effects of which could only be mitigated by even greater integration between the public and private sector worldwide, including giving social media outlets sweeping powers to deal with what the exercise termed ‘disinformation’ amidst the hypothetical pandemic .
In what can only be described as an outstanding coincidence, less than a month later, the world’s first case of the alleged ‘COVID-19’ virus was discovered in Wuhan, the capital city of China’s central Hubei province. In even further coincidence, Wuhan was home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based NGO with links to the Gates Foundation, was conducting research on the transmission of coronaviruses from bats to humans, using funds granted by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Several months later in March 2020, the WHO, an organisation with a history of corruption and undisclosed ties to pharmaceutical giants, announced the official beginning of the ‘COVID-19 Pandemic’. What followed next was unprecedented.
Vast swathes of society were closed down across the world, ostensibly to protect the sick and vulnerable from an alleged virus, the mortality rate of which made it no more dangerous than the seasonal illnesses which coincidentally disappeared for two years in all countries following WHO procedures, only to be ‘replaced’ by a ‘virus’ with the exact same symptoms.
In reality, lockdowns would do far more to flatten small businesses than to save lives, with the dependency on corporate outlets created as a result of these measures leading to the upwards transfer of more than $1tn in wealth.
In yet another coincidence, this example of governments and the private sector working in lockstep bore a striking similarity to what was outlined in Event 201, and also aligned perfectly with the WEF’s Great Reset initiative, launched in June 2020, which again reiterated that the only way to mitigate the effects of the ‘Covid Pandemic’ was to give the corporate class even greater sway over public life worldwide.
One of the key facets of the Great Reset is the introduction of a Digital ID, one which would give the government-corporate alliance an authoritarian level of control over its citizens should it be made mandatory, which during the ‘Covid Pandemic’, is effectively what happened.
Following the announcement of the ‘Covid Vaccine’ on the first business day after the 2020 US Presidential election (again, more coincidental timing), 2021 would see multiple countries around the world introduce legislation requiring their citizens to have been jabbed before they could participate in everyday life. To implement this, the standard practice was to place a QR code on their smartphone once they had been jabbed, one which would grant them access to restaurants, bars, gyms and other amenities prohibited to those who had chosen to not take part in a global medical experiment.
Essentially, this was a dry-run for the rollout of a mandatory digital ID, using an alleged ‘Pandemic’ as the pretext.
The introduction of jab passports however, would lead to a worldwide protest movement in defence of human rights. In response, the corporate media would begin a demonization campaign against these protesters, labelling them as ‘far-right’, and WEF-aligned governments would launch a brutal crackdown; perhaps most notably in Canada, where the government of WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Justin Trudeau would attack demonstrators with teargas and mounted Horses, and freeze their bank accounts using emergency legislation.
The impact of this global protest movement likely played a part in the sudden collapse of the ‘Pandemic’ media narrative in early 2022, shortly after the WEF’s Davos Agenda virtual event. The Russian operation that began in Ukraine shortly after, following almost nine years of western provocations, would serve as a convenient cover story by the mainstream media for the global inflation caused by lockdown measures.
However, with lockstep announcements that Britain, under the rule of WEF member Rishi Sunak, and the southern Irish state, overseen by WEF ‘Young Global Leader’ Leo Varadkar, will be rolling out a product to schoolchildren, for an illness that poses an absolute miniscule risk to their age group, it may only be a matter of time until the ‘Pandemic’ narrative is repeated for schoolchildren in both countries, with it being made mandatory for them to have a Flu jab before they are granted an education.
Gavin O’Reilly is an Irish Republican activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism; he was a writer for the American Herald Tribune from January 2018 up until their seizure by the FBI in 2021, with his work also appearing on The Duran, Al-Masdar, MintPress News, Global Research and SouthFront. He can be reached through Twitter and Facebook and supported on Patreon.
October 5, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, Ireland, UK |
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A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.
Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.
The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.
This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.
This persistent governmental interference has been described by Judge Doughty as perhaps “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.” Indeed, it beautifully mirrors a dystopian reality, where a government body, akin to an Orwellian Ministry of Truth, suppresses intellectual discourse and emulation.
The suppression campaign under the Biden administration is far from prejudiced; it has methodically targeted any view conflicting with government narratives. Subjects like natural immunity to Covid-19, vaccine efficacy, origins of the virus, and the effectiveness of mask mandates have become taboo, leading to a wilful silence of experts and common citizens alike.
Such tactics have seen CISA act as a bridge between third parties, flagging potentially problematic content. Having regular interactions with social media platform representatives, they have exploited their authoritative position by pushing them to adopt practices aligned with their censorship agenda.
This has led the Fifth Circuit Court to reassess their previous position. Contrary to their September ruling which stated that communication between CISA and social media companies was constitutional, they now acknowledge that CISA had crossed the line of mere information sharing and actively influenced content moderation policies, leading to the demotion and removal of posts.
While the court order stands, a 10-day stay allows the government to seek permission for a review of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.
October 5, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | Human rights, United States |
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In a story that has virtually been ignored by the global media, UK police arrested an independent journalist for posting “malinformation” and misinformation about Ukraine.
Under the new UK censorship law called the Online Safety Act, the government can order the arrest or detention of anyone said to be “hateful” or judged by fact checkers to be posting “misinformation.”
Warren Thornton was literally in the midst of streaming an edition of his podcast The Real Truth on Sept. 24 when Bristol police officers came to his front door and demanded he speak with them.
The Liberal government of Canada is preparing its own version of this legislation that will target “disinformation” on the internet without even defining what disinformation is.
Thornton is a critic of NATO’s escalation of the war in Ukraine and has posted several videos about Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians and the secret existence of biolabs in Ukraine. He was also quick to report how a former Waffen-SS Nazi soldier was allowed to sit in the Canadian House of Commons Gallery during a speech by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Yaroslav Hunka acknowledged plaudits from former House Speaker Anthony Rota and waved as all Members of Parliament rose from their seats and gave the 98-year-old SS veteran a standing ovation.
Thornton had just broadcast news of Canada’s international embarrassment when the police arrived.
Thornton was interviewing guest Fiona Ryan when the host just “vanished” about 20 minutes before the program was expected to end, she told The People’s Voice. Ryan was conversing with Johnee, who hosts the Café Revolution, a YouTube channel that reports from the front of the Russia-Ukraine War in Donetsk.
Ryan discovered in a WhatsApp exchange that Thornton had been arrested by the police.
At the police station, Thornton said the officers became “flustered” during his interrogation because they were unable to say exactly what video posts led to his arrest, according to The People’s Voice. Thornton soon had his lawyer on-scene who ‘ripped them to bits’. He added that his lawyer told them to “charge him or release him.”
Thornton, after spending a night in jail, was released Monday. The police decided not to charge him.
In a post on Rumble, Thornton described his ordeal with police as “jolly interesting” and said he asked if he was being charged with anything except spreading “malinformation.” The police said he was not.
October 5, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Human rights, UK |
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The Killingly Board of Education in Connecticut has been under fire since March 2022 when it refused to sign a five-year contract to install a federally funded school-based health center (SBHC) that would provide mental health services to minors without parental consent.
Instead, the board contracted for a similar center, but with month-to-month terms and parental consent required for treatment — and without federal grants or the rules they might impose.
The board’s rejection of the initial proposal, approved by the superintendent, led to the board and its members being slammed in local media, personally attacked, and subjected to a state investigation and a lawsuit.
Kelly Martin, vice chair of the Killingly Board of Education, and Sheila Matthews, founder of the nonprofit AbleChild, shared the board’s story with CHD.TV host Stephanie Locricchio on Monday’s “Good Morning CHD.”
Next week, the Killingly board faces a hearing, following a report last month — by attorney Michael McKeon, director of legal and governmental affairs for the Connecticut State Department of Education — criticizing the board’s actions.
The Killingly board rejected McKeon’s report as a “position statement,” and underscored the work they have taken to support Killingly children’s mental health.
The recent push by the U.S. federal government to rapidly expand the use of SBHCs across the country — largely justified as an intervention into a mental health crisis among young people —- has critics concerned children will receive unnecessary or unwanted medical interventions without their parents’ knowledge or consent.
School board beset by two-year battle including pandemic policies
Martin told Locricchio the controversy began when the school superintendent presented the school board with a proposal to put an SBHC in the school. The proposal provided only one possible service provider: Generations Family Health Center, which explicitly provided services without parental consent.
But many board members objected.
“The problem was never [with providing] mental health treatment,” Martin said. “We recognized that post-COVID children really, really need help. The problem was with the parents never being informed that the child was going to be treated.”
She added, “And that was something that was important to us — the parent doesn’t need to know what’s being discussed, [but they do] need to know that the child has a problem and is being treated and that they can actually keep a watchful eye on that child.”
The board voted down the SBHC, and a battle began. A group of parents represented by attorney Andrew A. Feinstein filed a complaint against the board seeking to overturn its vote, Martin said.
Once the board turned down the initial proposal, it interviewed alternative mental health services providers and set up a mental health clinic in the school where parents must opt-in to their child’s treatment.
But the state is not happy with that, she said. “They want that very first option, so it’s been an uphill battle since the lawsuit was actually filed,” she said.
The board had already come into conflict with the superintendent because it voted against an in-school COVID-19 vaccine clinic and then ended the in-school mask mandate.
Martin described the blowback:
“We have had people attack us constantly for the last two years. They’re making accusations that we don’t care about the mental health of children, [that] we don’t care about children at all. They’ve accused us of being racist, of being white supremacists. You name it, we’ve been accused of it.
“It’s been a very long two years. It all started when we started to give a little bit of pushback on some of these things.”
She said the group of people attacking them is small, “but they’re very vocal, they’re very loud,” and their actions have made board supporters afraid to speak out.Every Dollar has
Superintendent and attorney suing the board have conflicts of interest
The school board investigated the origins of the proposal and found the superintendent had put in a request for funding a mental health clinic without ever informing board members.
Martin said over the last few decades, power over schools has slowly been transferred from school boards to superintendents.
Because the clinic was to be grant-funded, they combed through the school board history to find which board policies had been changed to give power over grants to the superintendent — and reversed them.
In this case, the grant was part of ESSER II funding (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief) — $54.3 billion made available by the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 — with the requirement that it be awarded by September 2023.
She said the argument being made publicly and to parents was that this was a completely free, grant-funded clinic that would provide children with immediate assistance — so it was seen as a great idea all around.
But the clinics aren’t actually free, Martin pointed out. Once the grant ends, the cost burden shifts to the district.
Martin said children with mental health issues, of course, do need support as quickly as possible, but the only proposal made was for a clinic with a contract that was five years long and no parental consent.
She said the board wanted to review a variety of proposals, but they were only given that one.
In its investigations, the board also learned the superintendent sat on the board of the Northeast Early Childhood Council together with members of Generations — the one clinic he brought to the board.
After the board interviewed several other proposed clinics and selected one, she said Feinstein and a dissenting board member launched a media campaign smearing the clinic they selected, accusing it of bending to the board’s political agenda, which it implied was right-wing or “tea party.”
The selected clinic pulled out of the agreement with the board for fear its reputation would be ruined.
The board finally found another school-based mental health care provider, but the entire process dragged on for two years.
Little school board ‘up against Goliath’
Matthews, who works on national issues surrounding children’s mental health, became involved when she saw news stories that gave a disproportionate amount of negative attention to one small school board.
She began researching the issue and found that Feinstein is a registered lobbyist in the state of Connecticut and has received payments from a law firm dedicated to mergers and acquisitions in Big Pharma and to government grants that fund school-based clinics.
Matthews explained how government funding is funneled to different behavioral health vendors to set up clinics or provide medications, which make millions from children’s suffering.
Matthews and Martin said the school assessed students’ mental health by having them fill out anonymous surveys in school, without parental knowledge or consent, which is a common practice.
The surveys ask serious questions — such as whether the children are experiencing suicidal ideation — without any follow-up.
Instead of addressing students’ mental health, the questionnaires are simply evidence-gathering mechanisms to justify funding requests, Matthews said.
Both women encouraged parents to talk to their children about these surveys and to exercise their parental rights to opt out of them. Mathews’ organization AbleChild provides a sample letter parents can use to do this.
According to Matthews, $258 billion has come into the states from these ESSER funds overall. States are compelled to distribute the funds quickly before deadlines pass, but involving parents and community organizations slows down that process, she said.
“And these vendors smell the money,” she added.
Matthews, who studies how federal funds are directed to distribute potentially dangerous medications to children — particularly among children in foster care and on Medicaid — said the funds are lining the pockets of industry, not supporting children’s mental health.
“These block grants, this is the Achilles heel we have to take a look at. We have to look at these behavioral health vendors that have already set up shop in our school system.”
She said at minimum there needs to be a way to track the grants awarded so that parents can research what is happening in their schools and make informed decisions.
She added:
“This little town in Connecticut, they are up against Goliath. Okay? They are up against the drug companies. They are up against the behavioral health vendors. They’re up against the state. They’re up against the federal government. They are swimming in, I want to say, an ocean of corruption when it comes to these grants.”
Martin said the next step in the school board’s case is an inquiry hearing at the state building in Hartford on Oct. 11 at 10 a.m. It is open to the public.
Locricchio appealed to CHD.TV’s audience to show support for the board, especially because local supporters have been scared into silence by the public attacks.
“We would love to see some of our CHD [Children’s Health Defense] supporters there to stand with Kelly and Sheila and all the people that are involved in this because it could be your school district tomorrow that’s going through it,” Locricchio said. “And we know that we are so much stronger together.”
CHD video program
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
October 4, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | United States |
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Most media services must now “register for regulation”
On Friday the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission published new guidelines requiring media outlets to register with the service so their content can be “regulated”.
Under the new regulations all streaming services, social media companies and platforms that host podcasts would be [emphasis added]:
required to provide the CRTC with information related to their content and subscribership
This is the culmination of a “public consultation” launched back in May. For those unfamiliar with “public consultation”, it is a process by which government agencies use members of the public to tell them what they want to hear.
CRTC’s press release couches the move in faux-liberal talking points, referring to it as “modernising Canada’s broadcasting framework” and “ensuring online streaming services make meaningful contributions to Canadian and Indigenous content”, but that is clearly camouflage for an obvious power-grab.
It’s noteworthy that podcasting services are made a specific focus.
After all, these days anyone with a microphone and internet connection can start broadcasting whatever they want to whoever they want, with little to no “regulation” of their content. That’s a no-no for a burgeoning global dictatorship fixated on the world’s subjugation through the control of information.
Don’t be surprised if the Canadian government starts “reviewing content” from podcast services and saying things like…
“Podcast X is broadcasting hate speech/propaganda/misinformation about subject Y, you cannot stream any podcasts in Canada until X is removed from your service.”
That’s supposition, but hardly a stretch given the huge surge in censorship of all kinds from governments all around the world since the “pandemic”.
In fact, you can almost see this as a direct response to some of the propaganda failures of the mainstream media during the “pandemic”.
The alternative media was able to win a lot of battles during the Covid roll-out, and a push to “regulate” podcasts is a quasi-admission of this. As are the words of CRTC Chair Vicky Eatrides:
We are developing a modern broadcasting framework that can adapt to changing circumstances.
“Adapting to changing circumstances”… deliciously vague, but also fairly clear. They don’t have the power they need to regulate the growing voice of non-mainstream sources given rise by the internet.
The three measures announced on Friday are unlikely to be the last, the end goal is a fully “modernized” Broadcasting Act to be passed in late 2024.
What will that include? Who knows.
But considering the Canadian government has already blocked all news-sharing on social media, unpersoned and unbanked peaceful protesters, enforced “vaccines” and given a standing ovation to a literal member of the SS, you’d be forgiven for fearing the worst.
October 2, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Canada, Human rights |
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I am, admittedly, no expert in artificial intelligence, quantum entanglement, computer programming or computation.
In fact, my enemies would say I am no expert in anything, and they would be mostly right. My domain of self-proclaimed expertise resides in the world of fantasy, illusion and unfathomable mental processes, whose signature and traces I have spent a lifetime teasing out in the intense one-on-one work of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, and also in the creative work of poetry and theatre.
No doubt I may be deluding myself even with this allusion to personal talent, but to sum it all up I’d say that my professional training and career, my abiding creative interests, and my own art all meet at a common interface — that border between fantasy and reality, deception and truth, notwithstanding the inherent ambiguities.
Looking back over the Coronavirus Epoch, now in its fourth year, I am struck not only by the savage and slavish devotion of many to the pompous dictates of States, but also by the craven renunciation, by once-honored institutions of health and governance, of accepted foundational principles. Thus Medicine conveniently forgot about natural immunity, treatment and the dangers of new untested interventions, and Medical Institutions, global and national, embarked on a jihad against practitioners who remained faithful to such principles. In New Zealand, I am disheartened to say, the authorities are still harassing doctors who had the temerity to try to help patients by prescribing Ivermectin or suggesting Vitamin D, Zinc, and Vitamin C as promising protective and ameliorating agents.
Governments, empowered by the populations they purport to represent, conveniently seized upon drastic measures to control, while neglecting truly beneficent and sensible measures to mitigate fear and address a threat of illness.
Sacrosanct boundaries have been serially violated throughout, borders have been transgressed, and privacy has been desecrated — all, ostensibly, in the name of our good common cause of safety.
Under the shadow of fear we allowed ourselves to be masked, contained, and inoculated. At times we were prevented from visiting our elderly and sick and beloved, or paying respects to our loved ones’ mortal remains when they died. Coincidentally the line between genders began to be blurred, and the barriers between impulse and action taken down. All because of the putative emergency that ‘necessitated’ a suspension of ordinary safeguards and customs in favor of hastily adopted and inadequately debated dictates and untested procedures that engulfed most of our known world.
The monies we earned and banked, and banked upon — they too became prey to the grasping and lawlessly invasive arm of governmental entities. And those who dared to opine against the prevailing dogma on the ‘commons’ offered by social media found themselves disappeared.
We learned over these past years that our freedoms, our monies, our bodies and our souls were all now ‘fair game’ in this manufactured emergency. It was quite the trick to convince so many to go so fully along with these sacrifices. And the neatest part of this trick was for the Organizers and Rulers to have created a vast bureaucratic interface that not only did their bidding but also absorbed responsibility for anything that went awry — like sudden deaths and excess deaths and horrific adverse effects of the unnecessary Jabs.
And as for censorship, well, this too could be relegated to AI-mediated algorithms, as if the hand of Man had given way to this novel and peculiar Deity of impersonal computational complexity. It is a marvel of moral sanitizing.
Many of my friends and colleagues continue to be puzzled by these developments as aberrations of rationality, while others have long concluded that these actions have been purposefully deceptive and malevolent.
I believe we have entered a new phase, a phase facilitated by astonishing advances in physics and mathematics, a phase that has given birth to a transcendent technological web that is as vast as it is impersonal, as cold as it is efficient. It is, nonetheless, a tool that has been devised and is wielded by the relatively Few in their ceaseless war against the Many.
Perhaps some of the Few believe and worship at the altar of the False Idol they have created, while others are content simply to profit from their sleight of hand. But both camps are united, I suspect, by the thought that they are cheating Death. Whether it is a transhumanist future and/or the imaginary protection of boundless wealth and power, both parties are vying for an illusionary immortality.
Which brings us back full circle to the sad Achilles heel the propagandists knew to strike so well when they launched their Operation: the universal fear of death. How many of my neighbors accepted the destruction of their rights to save their skins? How many became ogres of apartheid and accused the unjabbed of reckless endangerment?
I’m tired of repeating myself, but repeat I must because the danger — the real one, not the feigned — hasn’t gone away. And it is this: the danger that we refuse to accept our deaths and cling to the wildly absurd quest for living our physical lives forever and ever.
In Plato’s Phaedo, the philosopher and gadfly Socrates, who has been condemned to death by the Athenian democracy, confronts his fate with equanimity. The demise of the physical self becomes the portal to the greater life of the Soul.
The Soul, in our times, resides in a Machine, a gigantic faceless and bureaucratically impartial one — or so would the overlords like us to believe. Perhaps that is why they are so frantically despotic in censoring, quashing, silencing, harassing and persecuting any shreds thereof.
But the harder they try the less they will succeed. They, in their smug sadistic ignorance, don’t truly know what they are really up against.
October 1, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | COVID-19 Vaccine, Human rights |
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‘A Panopticon of Epic Proportions’
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to establish a national “public-private” network to sweep up unprecedented amounts of individual and community data and develop artificial intelligence (AI)-driven models to predict disease outbreaks.
That infrastructure will then help local, state and national health officials identify and implement appropriate “control measures” to manage potential disease outbreaks.
As part of this effort, the agency last week announced an estimated $262.5 million in grant funding over the next five years to establish a network of 13 infectious disease forecasting and analytics centers to coordinate this work across the U.S.
The funding provides roughly $20 million each to 11 universities that were actors in COVID-19 modeling and response. The list includes the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, which oversaw the Event 201 simulation and the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health, where Ralph Baric initiated gain-of-function research.
Two of the centers will be private entities — Kaiser Permanente Southern California and a “disaster preparedness organization” called International Responder Systems LLC, whose relevant experience includes running tabletop exercises for weaponized Anthrax outbreaks and helping to manage the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Some centers will work with U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) researchers and bioengineering firms to develop new AI and machine-learning-based modeling tools and platforms to track and predict disease outbreaks across the country.
Others will work with insurance companies, healthcare providers, local health departments and others to collect data from people’s search histories, personal communications, social media posts, wastewater, health records and more.
They will also pilot new tracking and prediction tools in adjacent neighborhoods or among specific demographic groups and scale up “successful” pilot projects.
The grantees will form the Outbreak Analytics and Disease Modeling Network (OADM) through cooperative agreements with the CDC, which will be an active partner in the work.
Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” told The Defender :
“What they’re constructing is a panopticon of epic proportions, which will be inescapable in the future and will make for surveillance, not only of people’s behaviors, but also, as they’ve said themselves, of their very thoughts.”
He said the COVID-19 pandemic response provided a paradigmatic example of the dangers of predictive modeling.
“The use of modeling is a very poor predictor of infectious disease, and it has been abused in the past, in particular with reference to COVID-19.”
Rectenwald, who is also a presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, cited the work of Neil Ferguson, the physicist at Imperial College London who, along with his team, created the epidemiological model in early 2020 that predicted the catastrophic global death toll from COVID-19.
Ferguson’s model was used to justify social distancing, masking and lockdowns.
But his predictions — which were criticized at the time by experts such as Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, Ph.D. — turned out to be wildly exaggerated in real-world tests.
“I would anticipate further abuses with this CDC modeling network being set up,” Rectenwald said.
‘A National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases’
The network is spearheaded by the CDC’s new Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics (CFA), set up by the Biden administration to model, predict and control the course of disease outbreaks across the country.
“We think of ourselves like the National Weather Service, but for infectious diseases,” Caitlin Rivers, Ph.D., a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist and associate director for science at CFA told The Washington Post last year when the White House formally launched the initiative.
“Much like our ability to forecast the severity and landfall of hurricanes, this network will enable us to better predict the trajectory of future outbreaks, empowering response leaders with data and information when they need it most,” the CDC said in its funding announcement for the initiative.
Just as the weather forecast helps people to decide whether to take an umbrella with them when it predicts rain, for example, a disease forecast can help people decide if they should bring a mask, or have a birthday party inside or outside, Rivers told the Post.
In July, Eric Rescorla, former chief technology officer at Mozilla who was tapped to be chief technologist for CFA, told Politico it is “a startup in government” that will need a lot of government funding and that will work very closely with private industry.
The surveillance ‘the American people want and deserve’?
CFA was formally established as part of the CDC in January of this year, but it has been in the works at least since January 2021, when Biden announced plans for the agency in the administration’s first national security memorandum.
CFA received its first $200 million in August 2021 from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Then-CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, who consistently pushed for legislative and other changes to “modernize the public health data policy framework” when she was in office, said at the time:
“This new center is an example of how we are modernizing the ways we prepare for and respond to public health threats. I am proud of the work that has come out of this group thus far and eager to see continued innovation in the use of data, modeling, and analytics to improve outbreak responses.”
CFA began making grants in Oct. 2021, awarding $21 million to five academic institutions — including Johns Hopkins and Harvard — and $5 million to the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy to develop disease modeling capabilities.
CFA worked with academic partners to model, predict and “warn” the government of the omicron spread from November to December 2021.
In December 2022, the CDC renewed its partnership with Peter Theil’s CIA-linked data mining firm Palantir, signing a $443 million contract “to employ scalable technology to plan, manage, and respond to future outbreaks and public health incidents” — an award meant, in part, to “help support innovation” for CFA.
Earlier this year a GOP House subcommittee tried to cut funding to the center, but CDC Director Mandy Cohen told STAT News she was fighting for the funding. She said:
“Folks want us to be ready to know of threats and to respond quickly. Well, we need data and visibility to do that. And so that is money that will help us to see threats and respond to threats faster. And that’s what I think the American people want and deserve.”
But Rectenwald warned that rather than protecting people this system will be a threat to anyone who doesn’t comply with coercive public health directives. He said:
“The surveillance that they’re unrolling here has great potential for infringement on privacy and also for targeting individuals and groups for non-compliance, and as such, abuses of their civil rights and liberties.
“This system will be capable of locating individuals and communities that are not abiding by the coercive measures being ‘recommended.’ And then they can impose even harsher restrictions on these same people. So this is a very, very pernicious prospect.”
CFA reveals ‘a revolving door’ between biotech, government health agencies and the DOD
Rectenwald told The Defender that the CFA collaboration reveals a revolving door phenomenon that we see in government more generally.
“We have government officials being drawn from the private sector and then granting awards that go back to the companies for which they worked, or to which they’re headed. There’s a lot of collusion underway here,” he said.
CFA is headed by Dylan George, Ph.D., who has spent his career moving between U.S. government health agencies, and the DOD and just prior to being tapped to head up CFA, he had a five-month stint at biotech firm Ginko Bioworks.
Ginkgo Bioworks is one of the only private firms explicitly named as a partner on one of the CFA grant awards, with Northeastern University. It is also a key partner in developing other global pandemic surveillance and predictive programs, such as the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute.
Besides Ginko and Palantir, CFA’s website indicates it partners with “many” public and private organizations. In April 2022, CFA convened a conference called “CFA: 101 for Industry.”
At the conference, George, along with representatives from Databricks, Peraton, Microsoft, RTI, Dell Technologies Redhat/Carahsoft, Optum Serve and Maximus Public Health Analytics, gave presentations on the importance of “public-private partnerships” to CFA’s work.
The industry representatives also discussed their current and past collaborations with CDC to develop the tracking and analytic tools and platforms CFA hopes to ramp up.
Panelists included Michelle Holko — formerly of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), principal architect scientist at Google Cloud for healthcare and life sciences at the time of the conference in 2022, and currently chief strategist for Defensive BioTech — who spoke on the origins of CFA’s disease forecast research in DARPA.
Holko, also a former fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Johns Hopkins Center for Biosecurity, talked about the value of Google search histories and personal digital interaction data to affect public health outcomes.
They provide key information, she said, “because, you know, a person’s desire and willingness to get vaccinated has a huge impact on what’s to happen with a public health crisis,” she said.
‘A new age of public health’: example data collection, prediction and control projects
Data can be used to understand people’s desire, but also “everything that’s going on in their environment, and in their thoughts and in their circle,” Holko said, which has serious implications for public health.
To illustrate how such data could be used, she explained how Google collaborated with the state of California during the COVID-19 pandemic to mine people’s search data and other personal data. They developed a “vaccine willingness score” for each individual person whose data they analyzed.
Then they positioned mobile vaccine vans in neighborhoods with low vaccine rates but some willingness to be vaccinated.
“They were able to take a 25% gap between the lowest quartiles of the Healthy Places index and the highest quartiles and just flip that right upside down,” she said, adding that such targeting addresses a health equity issue.
Holko also talked about the value of wearables in capturing biological data, which, she said, might make it possible to detect a pathogen inside of a person’s body even if they aren’t experiencing symptoms.
Rivers added that it would be important for public health agencies like CFA to get the things they need — like the ability to go out and swab anyone whose data they need directly — rather than having to depend on other adjacent data sources like biometric data, social media data, etc.
Researchers at RTI presented their RTI Synthetic Population project where they have modeled a “synthetic population” of over 300 million individuals, each representing a U.S. person, with their attributes, age, race gender, income, education attainment, job and whatever other data they can glean, which they then use to project epidemiological events.
There were many such presentations.
The overall takeaway was that the contemporary availability of massive amounts of data has created a “new age of public health” and a mandate for new tools to capture and analyze data using novel applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
George said many of the people in the room had been dreaming of a forecasting network like CFA for almost a decade, and they had been “right to be opportunistic” about the “window of opportunity” that presented itself for them to finally set it up.
The ‘extremely ironic’ list of grantees
The OADM is the first major initiative by CFA and sets up its infrastructure across the country. The 13 centers in the network will act as networks themselves.
As the CDC put it:
“In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, CDC has worked collaboratively with state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments, public health organizations, academia, and the private sector to improve and scale outbreak response and provide support to leaders to prevent infections and save lives.
“This national network will build on these collaborations and improve outbreak response using data, modeling, and advanced analytics for ongoing and future infectious disease threats and public health emergencies.”
Awardees include:
- Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security received $23.5 million for its project, “Toward Epidemic Preparedness: Enhancing Public Health Infrastructure and Incorporating Data-Driven Tools.” It will create partnerships with “public health stakeholders” and it will train students, practitioners and modelers — including meteorologists — to use modeling and analytic tools.
- The University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health was awarded $22.5 million to support the creation of the Atlantic Coast Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and Analytics, which will develop methods, tools and platforms for disease modeling and coordinate them among the 13 funded partners in the network.
- Northeastern University won $17.5 million for an “innovation center” called “Epistorm: The Center for Advanced Epidemic Analytics and Predictive Modeling Technology.” Epistorm will coordinate efforts among ten healthcare systems, research organizations and private companies to use data from wastewater surveillance, social media, and hospital admissions and apply AI and machine learning tools and other predictive analytics. The consortium’s academic members include Boston University, Indiana University, the University of Florida and the University of California at San Diego. Other members include Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, MaineHealth, Northern Light Health and Concentric Ginkgo Bioworks.
- The University of California at San Diego (UCSD) won $17.5 million to “develop innovative tools and networks” that analyze data sources to determine their predictive power. Data sources will include molecular epidemiological data, wastewater and air surveillance; exposure notification systems (smartphones and contact tracing), internet searches and posts, “legally available clinical data,” and scenario-based simulations. The team will pilot test their innovations among vulnerable populations in San Diego, including homeless people and drug users. UCSD will also partner with other California universities and LANL.
- A team of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and University of Massachusetts Amherst was awarded $27.5 million to scale up decision-support tools that have been used in previous outbreaks. They will partner with two dozen other entities, including local public health agencies. Northwestern University received $1.7 million in funding to support these efforts.
- Carnegie Mellon University will receive $17.5 million to expand on work it did during the COVID-19 pandemic, gathering daily data “from health care systems, technology companies, medical test results, insurance claims and surveys” to steer policy and public health decisions by applying machine learning and AI tools. It will work with public health agencies and with healthcare providers like Optum to make healthcare data available to researchers.
- The University of Michigan School of Public Health won approximately $17.5 million to establish the Michigan Public Health Integrated Center for Outbreak Analytics and Modeling, which will develop modeling and data analytics tools and pipelines to be integrated into the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services systems.
- The University of Minnesota School of Public Health and the Minnesota Department of Public Health (MDH) will receive $17.5 million to develop predictive tools by surveying individual community interactions and developing machine-learning algorithms to identify symptom clusters. They will work closely with the Minnesota Electronic Health Record Consortium, a partnership between the MDH and the 11 largest health systems in the state.
- A team of researchers at Emory University will receive $17.5 million to “innovate” new analytical methods, tools and platforms to inform public health decisions.
- Clemson University will work with the University of South Carolina, Medical University of South Carolina, Prisma Health, South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control, Clemson Rural Health, and South Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Health Care to integrate forecasting and decision-making tools.
- The University of Utah received $17.5 million for its new ForeSITE (Forecasting and Surveillance of Infectious Threats and Epidemics) center, which will “provide data and tools” to guide decisions about emerging public health threats. It will do this through partnerships with the national Veterans Affairs health system and hospitals and health departments in Utah, Washington, Idaho and Montana.
- Kaiser Permanente Southern California will work in partnership with academic modeling teams based at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, using its 4.7 million members as a basis to “develop and test strategies to improve use of public health data.”
- International Responder Systems will work with the University of California, Los Angeles, and Primary Diagnostics “to deliver an enhanced outbreak analytics diagnostic system and a continuous education program to upskill our public health workforce.
Rectenwald said:
“It’s extremely ironic that these universities and institutions have been chosen to undertake the research and modeling. For example, the University of North Carolina Gilling School of Global Public Health initiated gain-of-function research, which was then undertaken in Wuhan, but funded by the NIH through EcoHealth Alliance.
“So isn’t it ironic that this school, the university research center that had a great deal to do with the gain-of-function research that led to COVID-19, is now getting 4.5 million annually for five years?
“It’s an outrage.
“And the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security is receiving $23.5 million from the CFA to conduct its project. Curiously, the same center was also the host and organizer of two major events, the CLADE X simulation and the Event 201 simulation, both of which forecasted, in advance of COVID-19, almost the exact scenario that unfolded.
“I wouldn’t trust that Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins with this kind of money and this kind of power to direct the behavior of governments, health organizations, localities, and states in response to anything because they forecasted the kinds of draconian lockdowns, masking, and forced vaccinations that took place in response to COVID-19.
“Likewise, in this scenario, I would expect them to advocate the exact same kinds of measures.”
Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
September 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | CDC, Human rights, United States |
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The U.S. Supreme Court today said it will hear cases challenging Texas and Florida laws that prohibit social media companies from censoring content posted on their platforms, in what The New York Times said will lead to “a major ruling on how the First Amendment applies to powerful tech platforms.”
The two laws, both passed in 2021, and the Supreme Court’s decision to consider them, “could have nationwide repercussions for how social media — and all websites — display user-generated content,” CNN reported.
If upheld, the laws could open the door to more state legislation with similar obligations for social media sites.
Texas House Bill 20 (HB 20) and Florida Senate Bill 7072 (SB 7072) allow users to “sue social media platforms over allegations of political censorship” and “restrict companies from taking down or demoting certain kinds of content even when the platforms may decide it violates their terms of service,” according to CNN.
The laws also could make it harder for platforms to remove what they determine is “misinformation, hate speech or other offensive material,” CNN added.
According to USA Today, the laws “limit” platforms’ ability to regulate content, “even if those posts spread a foreign government’s misinformation or provide false medical advice.”
Two tech industry trade groups, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, challenged the laws in 2021, saying that tech companies enjoy First Amendment protection which prevents the government from telling them “whether and how to disseminate speech,” the Times reported.
Both states’ laws were temporarily blocked by federal courts pending the completion of the appeals process.
According to The Associated Press (AP), the court’s announcement came three days before the start of its new term. A decision is expected in 2024, according to USA Today.
W. Scott McCollough, an Austin, Texas-based technology attorney, welcomed the news.
“I’m glad the Supreme Court picked up the case, because what both Texas and Florida were doing is, they required individualized protection — a consumer protection measure,” he said. “It required them to inform the parties that ‘we’ve done something to you.’”
McCollough added:
“The two states here recognize that these platforms have immense power. They purport to have the right to act unilaterally and subjectively to restrict posts as part of content moderation. So, the states are requiring them to give notice to the people they are censoring and tell them why they did it. This is reasonable at its face.
“If nothing else, I’ve always believed that these aspects of these two state statutes, in theory, should not have a First Amendment problem. States have forever engaged in consumer protection matters. Every state has consumer protection statutes.”
Laws intended to ‘combat Silicon Valley censorship’
Texas HB 20 regarding “censorship of or certain other interference with digital expression, including expression on social media platforms or through electronic mail messages,” passed on Sept. 9, 2021, and was set to take effect on Dec. 2, 2021.
According to Politico, HB 20 “would allow both the state of Texas and individual Texans to sue companies if they ‘censor’ an individual based on their viewpoints or their geographic location by banning them or blocking, removing or otherwise discriminating against their posts.” It would apply to platforms with at least 50 million active users.
Florida SB 7072, Social Media Platforms, also known as the Stop Social Media Censorship Act, was to take effect July 1, 2021. It sought to regulate the content moderation policies of social media platforms, barring them from banning users based on their political ideology.
According to the Times, “The sites in question are largely barred from removing posts based on the viewpoints they express, with exceptions for the sexual exploitation of children, incitement of criminal activity and some threats of violence.”
Supporters of the Florida and Texas laws “argue that the measures are needed to combat what they called Silicon Valley censorship,” including on issues like COVID-19 and claiming election fraud, the Times also reported.
Challenges to both laws resulted in conflicting rulings in federal courts.
In May 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit largely upheld a preliminary injunction freezing enforcement of the Florida law.
Also in May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of the Texas law pending completion of the appeals process. However, in September 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed earlier court rulings that had blocked the law.
Judge Andrew S. Oldham of the 5th Circuit wrote, “Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. The platforms are not newspapers. Their censorship is not speech.”
McCollough agreed, saying that prior legal precedent holding that “newspapers don’t have to post everybody’s letter to the editor” was based on the rationale that “there is not enough space in a newspaper to post everybody’s letter.”
The 5th Circuit is considering two other cases with First Amendment and free speech implications: Missouri et al. v. Biden et al. and Kennedy et al. v. Biden et al., in which Children’s Health Defense (CHD) is a plaintiff. The 5th Circuit heard oral arguments in Missouri et al. v. Biden et al. last month.
In July, the two cases were consolidated.
Legal experts said the consolidated case is likely headed to the Supreme Court after Associate Justice Samuel Alito earlier this month lifted an injunction that temporarily blocked certain Biden administration offices and officials from contact with social media giants.
The injunction, requested in the Missouri v. Biden case, on July 4 was granted by Judge Terry Doughty of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Monroe Division and was later upheld under a Sept. 8 ruling by the 5th Circuit.
Justice Alito paused it after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) submitted an emergency filing asking the Supreme Court to stay the injunction while the high court considers whether to hear the case.
The Supreme Court’s alignment in its 5-4 vote temporarily blocking the Texas law, was “unusual,” according to the AP, with liberal justice Elena Kagan joining three conservative justices — Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — in the dissenting opinion that would have allowed the law to remain in effect.
In the dissent, Justice Alito wrote, “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news. At issue is a groundbreaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”
Kim Mack Rosenberg, CHD’s acting general counsel, highlighted the significance of the constitutional issues the Supreme Court will consider:
“We will be watching the two First Amendment cases out of Texas and Florida carefully. In these two cases, the social media companies are claiming their First Amendment rights are violated by these laws.
“In several cases in which CHD is involved, we argue that the social media platforms and the U.S. government violated the First Amendment rights of those posting to social media and the consumers of the posts.”
U.S. government claims First Amendment protects its ‘bully pulpit’
One of several legal matters at hand in the two cases pertains to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Passed in 1996, Section 230 gives internet providers legal protections for hosting, moderating and removing most user content.
According to the New York Post, Section 230 was designed to prevent internet companies from being treated as publishers by shielding them from lawsuits by anyone claiming to be wronged by content posted by another user — even though the platforms typically engage in moderation of user-posted content.
In his dissent, Justice Alito wrote, “It is not at all obvious how our existing precedents, which predate the age of the internet, should apply to large social media companies.”
Social media platforms have long argued that they are not publishers, in order to avoid legal liability for content posted by their users. However, in other instances, these same companies have claimed, in court, that they are publishers and have the right to exercise editorial control over content on their platforms.
For instance, Facebook’s parent company, Meta, recently argued that a subpoena from the District of Columbia’s attorney general interfered with its ability to exercise editorial control over content on its platform.
“Facebook has long had the same public response when questioned about its disruption of the news industry: it is a tech platform, not a publisher or a media company,” as the Guardian reported in 2018.
But in legal arguments, Facebook has repeatedly argued, it’s “a publisher, and a company that makes editorial decisions, which are protected by the First Amendment.”
Social media platforms “claim that they are not publishers and that they should not be liable for the information that shows up on their platforms,” McCollough said.
“You’re either a publisher or you’re not a publisher, and they’ve always said they’re not publishers. So why are they saying they’re publishers now? Are they publishers for the First Amendment and not publishers for Section 230? Explain that one,” he added.
Social media platforms’ First Amendment rights are also at issue. In a brief submitted to the Supreme Court, the State of Texas argued that HB 20 does not affect social media platforms’ free speech rights because “no reasonable viewer could possibly attribute what a user says to the Platforms themselves.”
“Given the Platforms’ virtually unlimited capacity to carry content, requiring them to provide users equal access regardless of viewpoint will do nothing to crowd out the Platforms’ own speech,” the brief also stated.
According to McCollough, “the big sexy issue” in this case involves content moderation. “Can a state basically prohibit discrimination based on viewpoint? And it ultimately comes down to whether, when these platforms are engaging in so-called content moderation, whether that is them ‘speaking’ — if that is a form of speech,” he said.
“We have always contended that that is not speech. It’s conduct. It’s the consumer, the one who is doing the posting, that is engaging in speech. By taking down speech that the platform may not approve of, that is not speech by the platform,” he added.
A policy principle known as common carriage is also implicated. The Communications Act of 1934, for instance, classifies telephone companies as “common carriers,” requiring those companies to make their services available to the public at affordable rates and regardless of viewpoint or other factors.
In a previous legal brief, Texas argued that social media platforms are “the twenty-first century descendants of telegraph and telephone companies: that is, traditional common carriers” — that must generally accept all customers without viewpoint discrimination.
In 2021, Justice Thomas compared social media platforms to communication utilities that are regulated under common carrier laws, on the basis that concentration in the industry gives these companies “enormous control over speech.”
McCollough said, “When you hold out to indiscriminately serve the public on uniform terms and conditions — in other words, if you say I’ll cover it if you just accept my pre-published terms and conditions, then that basically makes you a common carrier.”
The federal government has also asserted its own purported First Amendment rights.
Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar argues that lawsuits challenging government attempts to regulate social media content violate the First Amendment on the basis that the office of the president has a “bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans … to act in ways that the President believes would advance the public interest.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Supreme Court asked the DOJ for its views regarding the Florida and Texas laws “as is typical in cases involving federal interests.” In a brief, Prelogar urged the court to hear the cases.
“When a social-media platform selects, edits and arranges third-party speech for presentation to the public, it engages in activity protected by the First Amendment,” she wrote, adding that “the act of culling and curating the content that users see is inherently expressive, even if the speech that is collected is almost wholly provided by users.”
Chris Marchese, litigation director for NetChoice, said “Online services have a well-established First Amendment right to host, curate and share content as they see fit.”
And Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, said, “It is high time that the Supreme Court resolves whether governments can force websites to publish dangerous content. … Telling private websites they must give equal treatment to extremist hate isn’t just unwise, it is unconstitutional, and we look forward to demonstrating that to the court.”
Tech companies, government using variation of ‘too big to fail’ argument
McCollough told The Defender that what the parties will be briefing and arguing is whether the two state statutes’ content moderation restrictions comply with the First Amendment — in other words, each state’s prohibition against viewpoint discrimination and whether that violates the First Amendment.
The Supreme Court will also hear arguments related to the “individualized explanation requirements” and the extent to which they “comply with the First Amendment.”
“What the solicitor general argued is that these platforms are just way too big,” McCollough said. “They have so many posts that it would be so burdensome on them to be reasonable with their consumers, and that this violates the First Amendment.”
McCollough called this “a variation of the ‘too big to fail’ argument … They’re too big, they do so much, that they just can’t be bothered with an individualized explanation.”
According to McCollough, the Supreme Court’s decision will have major implications for contemporary understandings of free speech and First Amendment rights.
“If you look at the position of the solicitor general and, therefore, the U.S. government, they are saying that the government has a right to free speech, the platforms have a right to free speech, but the people do not have a right to free speech.”
“From a policy perspective, what is the message being sent to Americans? Sit down, shut up, there’s nothing you can do about it, there’s nothing the state legislature can do about it,” he said. “And if they are right about the First Amendment, there’s nothing Congress can do about it.”
“Don’t sit down, don’t shut up, and yes, there is something you can do about it,” he said.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
September 30, 2023
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Florida, Human rights, Texas, United States |
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