Biden Administration Files Notice of Appeal Against Social Media Censorship Collusion Ban
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | July 5, 2023
The US Justice Department has formally filed a notice of appeal against a court ruling that prohibits federal agencies and officials from engaging in discussions with social media companies to censor speech on their platforms.
The ruling in favor of free speech, justified by First Amendment rights, has been met with consternation by the Biden Administration, which says it poses a restriction on their efforts to counter the dissemination of what it says is “misinformation.”
The appeal was submitted to the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans this past Wednesday, in response to an injunction imposed by US District Judge Terry Doughty, alongside a lengthy opinion on the case.
Judge Doughty asserted in his detailed ruling that the manner in which federal officials communicated with technology giants such as Twitter and Facebook about the removal or restriction of content – specifically pertaining to Covid the 2020 election likely constituted a violation of First Amendment protections for US citizens.
Information, whether truthful or not, is not supposed to be in the purview of the government to police. Though, the Biden administration has attempted to defend its engagement with social media companies as a necessary approach to protecting public health and safety.
Conversely, the plaintiffs, who include the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, contend that the federal government’s communication with these companies amounted to a state-sanctioned censorship campaign.
In the initial ruling, Judge Doughty issued an injunction preventing a wide range of federal entities from engaging in communication with any social media company to urge, encourage, pressure, or induce the removal or suppression of speech.
However, the ruling does provide for certain exceptions. Notably, it permits government engagement with social media companies in instances involving criminal activity (including that which is election-related), national security concerns, or other threats to public security.
The appeal by the Justice Department marks a significant development in an ongoing legal matter that has far-reaching implications for the relationship between the government and social media platforms and the ability of the government to suppress speech.
GOP Pushes Back on White House Effort to Renew Intel Agencies’ Spying Tool
By Connor Freeman | The Libertarian Institute | July 5, 2023
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, particularly in the GOP, are pushing back against the renewal of a law authorizing a tool used by US spy agencies, in the post 9/11 era, to conduct warrantless surveillance on foreign targets and Americans with whom they may be interacting.
The New York Times has excoriated these conservatives for no longer being staunch supporters of the mass surveillance state.
Congressional leaders in both parties have warned the White House that the law which legalizes this unconstitutional surveillance of American citizens, Section 702, will not be renewed absent significant changes. For instance, such reforms would prohibit federal agents from obtaining phone, email, and other electronic communications records of Americans interfacing with targeted foreign individuals.
“There’s no way we’re going to be for reauthorizing that in its current form — no possible way,” declared Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), adding “we’re concerned about surveillance, period.”
Congress ostensibly granted the spy agencies this authority by creating Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act in 2008. Since then, it has been renewed twice with strong GOP backing. But for years, this law has faced opposition from Democrats over similar contemporary conservative concerns that it grossly violates Americans’ civil liberties.
The expiration date on the law is coming up in December, but growing animosity toward the spy bureaucracies’ abuse of power has led to a surge of resistance on the Republican side as well.
“You couldn’t waterboard me into voting to reauthorize 702,” insisted Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who supported the program’s reauthorization five years ago. The Congressman cited instances of the spy powers being used to infringe on the rights of political dissidents on both the left and right. “These 702 authorities were abused against people in Washington on January 6 and they were abused against people who were affiliated with the BLM movement, and I’m equally aggrieved by both of those things,” Gaetz said.
Even after nominal reforms in the past, the 2018 renewal enhanced the ability of the intelligence agencies to carry out its massive surveillance of Americans. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains,
The bill that was most recently passed, S. 139, endorses nearly all warrantless searches of databases containing Americans’ communications collected under Section 702. It allows for the restarting of “about” collection, an invasive type of surveillance that the [National Security Agency] ended in 2017 after being criticized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for privacy violations. And it includes a six-year sunset, delaying Congress’ best opportunity to debate the limits [of] NSA surveillance.
Supporters of the sweeping powers to spy on Americans speaking with foreigners in the spy agencies’ crosshairs are hoping to shift the conversation to China in order to gain the favor of Republicans who favor a more bellicose policy against Beijing.
In the Asia-Pacific, more than a decade ago, Barack Obama’s administration launched the largest military buildup since the Second World War eyeing a future war with Beijing. While Donald Trump substantially expanded the encirclement of China during his term, Joe Biden and his government have been vastly more aggressive than their predecessors.
This White House has doubled down on preparations for conflict and concurrently ramped up its economic war against China. However, many Republicans see Biden as weak and agitate for a more confrontational posture. With this in mind, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has implored this surveillance capability is “crucial” to counter China, as well as other supposed national security threats like Russia. The Biden team is busy making this case with lawmakers.
This strategy may not be successful, according to the Times, the Republicans in the opposition camp have “seized on official determinations that federal agents botched a wiretap on a Trump campaign adviser and more recent disclosures that FBI analysts improperly used Section 702 to search for information about hundreds of Americans who came under scrutiny in connection with the Jan. 6 attack and the Black Lives Matter protests after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer.”
Even some typically jingoist Democrats in the House are reluctant to go along with the administration. “We’ve been very clear with the administration that there is not going to be a clean reauthorization — there’s no path to that,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO). The ardent Russia hawk elaborated that there should be requirements for warrants in some situations and there must be limits on when agents query their databases for information regarding American citizens.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) says some GOP members may accept the reauthorization if there are “deep reforms,” although he said emphatically that “[there will] still be a number who are just never going to authorize this.”
“Orwellian Ministry Of Truth” Busted – Judge Bars Biden Officials, Agencies From Contacting Social Media Companies
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | July 5, 2023
In an order fittingly issued on Independence Day, a federal judge in Louisiana has forbidden multiple federal agencies and named officials from having any contact with social media companies with the intent to moderate content.
The preliminary injunction arises from a suit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with individuals that include two leading critics of the Covid-19 lockdown regime — Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya — and Jim Hoft, who owns the right-wing website Gateway Pundit.
“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote US District Judge Terry A. Doughty. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”
The dozens of people and agencies bound by the injunction include President Biden, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, the Treasury Department, State Department, the US Election Assistance Commission, the FBI and entire Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, who are among the originators of the Great Barrington Declaration that denounced the lockdown regime, have been victims of social media censorship. For example, the pair says their censorship-triggering statements included assertions that “thinking everyone must be vaccinated is scientifically flawed,” questioning the value of masks, and stating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine immunity.
While the case is dominated by Covid-19 censorship, it also encompasses the Justice Department’s efforts to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” in the run-up to the 2020 election. Doughty gave credence to that accusation.
The injunction represents a major validation of accusations that government officials have colluded with social media platforms to suppress speech that counters official narratives, with the restraints falling almost exclusively on conservative viewpoints.
“The evidence thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” wrote Doughty in a 155-page ruling. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’.”
“The White House defendants made it very clear to social-media companies what they wanted suppressed and what they wanted amplified,” wrote Doughty. “Faced with unrelenting pressure from the most powerful office in the world, the social-media companies apparently complied.”
Doughty quoted communications from administration officials to social media company employees, saying they represent “examples of coercion exercised by the White House defendants.” Here’s a small sampling:
- “Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately.”
- To Facebook: “Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
- “This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH”
- “Hey folks, wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed. ASAP”
The judge noted that the badgering came simultaneous with threats of changing the social media regulation scheme, and that those threats had extra credibility since they came as the Democrats controlled the White House and Congress.
The accusation that the social media platforms and government were acting in concert is substantiated by the communication and bureaucracy that surrounded the endeavor. “Many emails between the White House and social-media companies referred to themselves as ‘partners.’ Twitter even sent the White House a ‘Partner Support Portal’ for expedited review of the White House’s requests,” wrote Doughty, a 2017 Trump nominee.
A long list of agencies and people are now barred from contacting social media platforms with “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
“If there is a bedrock principal underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable,” wrote Doughty.
Countess “Absolutely Terrified” After Bank Accounts Closed Without Explanation
Richie Allen | July 5, 2023
More and more evidence is emerging that banks and building societies are closing the accounts of customers who hold controversial views.
Countess Alexandra Tolstoy told LBC’s Nick Ferrari this morning that she was left “absolutely terrified” after her accounts were closed without explanation.
Tolstoy claims that someone at her bank told her that they were not obliged to provide her with any explanation.
She was left wondering if her Russian sounding surname led to the closure of her accounts.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt have both criticised banks for closing the accounts of customers with controversial views.
Heavy Lies the Crown: POTUS Biden Totally Loses the Plot As NATO’s Narrative Implodes
By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | July 3, 2023
First off, hats off to young Hafez Bashar Assad, who recently aced a Master’s degree in Pure Mathematics from Russia’s prestigious Moscow State University which has, in the course of its long and glorious history, produced several Fields Medals winners. May young Hafez go on to similarly great things.
Hafez was, some years back, the subject of oceans of ire when he represented Syria in the Math Olympics, a competition I have some familiarity with, as friends of mine represented Ireland in years gone by. And though those young Irishmen went on to be awarded PhDs from the world’s most prestigious universities and land jobs with mouth-watering salaries from the world’s most prestigious companies, like young Hafez, they got nowhere at the Math Olympics because they lacked the in-depth 24/7 tutoring the United States’ Ivy League Professors give the young (generally Chinese) charges, who compete under the Yankee flag.
So well done, young Hafez and congratulations, too, to your beautiful, urbane, cosmopolitan, multi-lingual, great and gracious mother, Asma Assad, proudly hugging you after you were awarded your degree. I know of no current or former First Lady, who is in her league in terms of elegance, grace, brains or sheer good manners and your father, Syrian President Bashar Assad, certainly hit the jackpot when he landed that Damask Rose. He is a lucky and blessed man.
Moving from Moscow to Kiev, we see that former Irish President and serial grifter Mary Robinson and Swedish propagandist Greta Thunberg are on a jolly there to advise Clown Prince Zelensky on matters concerning the environment. As 20 year old Greta has only recently graduated High School, at an age when most others would be whistling through their undergraduate degrees, one wonders if this slow learner will stay as silent on NATO’s use of depleted uranium as she has been on the Nordstream terrorist attack, the greatest ecological crime of our era.
Not that I care as Greta, and Mary Robinson are, like Clown Prince Zelensky himself, media creations, all tinsel and no substance. NATO’s Zelensky regime must be really scraping the barrel if that is the best they can do.
But the bottom of the barrel is all NATO seems to have left. French dictator Macron spends his time attending Elton John 1970s’ retro concerts as France burns down around him. The best that Britain can do is to ban Nigel Farage from having a bank account and keep POW Julian Assange on ice for their American masters.
Stella Moris, Julian’s wife, was recently in Rome where, appropriately dressed, she met Pope Francis, who has also recently honoured British film-maker Ken Loach, who was recently expelled from the British Labour Party. Say what you like about Julian Assange and, irrespective as to whether the British will murder him or hand him over to the Yanks for further torture sessions, he is blessed to have such a woman standing foursquare beside him.
Although all of these singularities would have been noted in Washington, it is doubtful if they registered with Creepy Joe Biden, the Don Vittorio of the NATO organised crime gang. Don Vittorio, you may recall, is the senile Italian Mafia godfather, who appeared in The Sopranos a few seasons before fellow mafia mobster Junior also succumbed to dementia.
Although, as Biden claims Putin, in some parallel world, may be losing the war in Iraq, in this world Creepy Joe is most definitely losing the 2024 Presidential war to Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy. Although Oddslotter still has him favourite to be re-elected, Biden’s place is in the dock as a war criminal and then off to an old folks’ home to be heard from no more.
The threats that Trump and Kennedy pose are not so much personal threats to Creepy Joe as they are to the gangster system he presides over. Trump is a threat because he says what others will not say: that the United States is a predatory state that robs and loots at will. And Kennedy is a threat because he points out the threats Big Pharma’s greed pose to all Americans and Big Pharma’s spokespersons like notorious narcissist Dr. Peter Hotez, won’t even debate him on Joe Rogan’s show for over $1 million in cash.
Although neither of these challengers criticise Israel, such criticisms are inconceivable because of the nature of NATO’s gangsterism. Palestinians are little more than plastic ducks at a shooting arcade and heaven help any “anti-Semite” who might argue otherwise.
But even argument itself is now haram in NATOstan. Donald Trump, remember, was banned from social media when he was POTUS, supposedly the world’s most powerful position. Germany’s Greens, perhaps trying to reconnect to their Nazis past, have persecuted their own citizens for not being sufficiently Russophobic and Australia, Canada and Vichy Ireland are, as part of NATO’s plans of world conquest, introducing the most draconian hate speech laws that have drawn the ire of Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk.
And there is the rub. Rogan, Carlson and Musk are forming the backbone of an opposition that believe in such things as free speech and free, open and honest debate and such things present an existential threat to Biden and his fellow-fraudsters.
In my earlier paeon to Asma Assad, I used an abundance of adjectives to try to give Syria’s First Lady her well-earned due. However, at days’ end, she is a wife, a mother and a woman, a wonderful adult female in other words and not a cisgender or a transgender, phrases that Biden’s handlers have shanghaied from the British and Roman Empires where Transjordan and Cisjordan were, still are and will always be divided by the Jordan River and Gaul and Cisgaul were, still are and will always be divided by the mighty Alps. You do not need Hafez Assad’s Master’s Degree in Pure Mathematics to know no such demarcations apply to sovereign womanhood and nor do you even need Greta Thunberg’s hard-earned High School diploma. What you need is a degree of honesty and common sense and, because they are attributes Creepy Joe and his whore-bonking son Hunter cashed in years ago, all of Creepy Joe’s dodgy deals are now coming home to roost.
And, just as the Alps and the Jordan divide for all time the Cis from the rest, so also in our own time do the mountains and rivers of honesty and truth divide the Creepy Joe Bidens and Mary Robinsons from the great and the good, from Stella Moris, Gonzalo Lira, Hafez and Asma Assad, all of whom affirm the words of Irish martyr Terence MacSwiney that “it is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can endure the most, who will prevail”.
And, it is because of good, great and immortal people like Asma Assad that Damascus itself has prevailed against Biden’s Beast of the Apocalypse. Let us, as we conclude, recall Mark Twain’s recollections of that eternal city: “We shall remember… Damascus, the Pearl of the East, the pride of Syria, the fabled garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian Nights, the oldest metropolis on Earth, the one city in all the world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp, and then vanished and been forgotten.”
And, as Eternal Damascus and her eternally gallant allies prepare to consign Biden, NATOstan’s faux Little Caesar, to the trash bin of history, let us salute not only Hafez and Asma Assad on their recent fortune but all of the great and good people of Syria, Palestine, Serbia, China and Russia who, at great cost, defied NATO and carried the banners of humanity not only for the Assange and Lira families but for all of us in the face of the butchers Biden, Macron and Zelensky sent against them. May God bless them and their protectors, the heroic men and women of the Syrian Arab Army, now and forever.
The character assassination of Robert F Kennedy Jr
By Niall McCrae | TCW Defending Freedom | July 3, 2023
Will there be another dead Kennedy? I hope not to tempt fate, but as a Democrat nomination candidate for the US presidential election next year, Robert F Kennedy Jr is making himself a target. He rejects the official narrative on Covid-19 and Ukraine, and he rails against Big Pharma, corrupt federal authorities and militaristic foreign policy. The Democratic Party wants to keep the octogenarian and cognitively suspect incumbent Joe Biden, whom many people see as a puppet of the Deep State, struggling to read from an autocue.
Already being RFK is being attacked, albeit by the pen rather than the sword. Liberal-progressive media are troubled by his rise in the polls. First they ignored him; then they ridiculed him; now they are desperately denouncing him as a harmful interference in ‘democracy’ (a term that means something different to the elite than to you and me). Among the latest hit jobs, the Washington Post argued that RFK should be running as a Republican, as that’s where the anti-vaccine constituency lies. A Daily Mail column described him as a serial misogynist (journalists are less concerned with the sitting president’s proclivity for fondling little girls and sniffing their hair).
A recent diatribe in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Hiltzik is so bad that it’s good. RFK had appeared on a 90-minute ‘town hall’ programme on the cable channel News Nation on June 27. Hiltzik wondered why. A similar format featuring Donald Trump on CNN was supposed to be taken by broadcasters as a clear message that nothing can be gained from giving a platform to bombasts and conspiracy theorists. Trump had played to the gallery and taken control of the debate, interrupting and haranguing the weak presenter. Fact-checking ‘quackery’ on a live show is futile.
Although RFK is up to around 20 per cent in polling as a challenger to Biden, Hiltzik belittled him as ‘a fringe candidate for the Democratic Party nomination’. He suggested ulterior motives: ‘perhaps News Nation is trying to assume the mantle of Fox News as a dispenser of right-wing twaddle, or (to be more charitable) of CNN as a sober neutral voice’. To regard (actually, to disregard) CNN as a fair, unbiased medium shows how once-trusted organs such as the Los Angeles Times have become polarised.
RFK performed in a controlled setting, before a small audience in Chicago, but Hiltzik complained that moderator Elizabeth Vargas was ‘ill-equipped to counter Kennedy’s elaborate web of misinformation about vaccines’. Actually, Vargas did not raise the topic of vaccines until near the end of the debate. This should have come first, Hiltzik averred, ‘because Kennedy’s anti-vaccination stance is a major element of his presidential campaign . . . that’s what makes him a public health hazard’.
As a business editor, Hiltzik is unlikely to have a fraction of the knowledge gained by RFK on vaccines over decades of research. But he felt qualified to rebut the claims of the Democrat pretender. After denying that he is ‘anti-vaccine’, Kennedy asserted that vaccines should be tested like other medicines, but ‘of 72 vaccine doses mandated for American children, not one has ever been subjected to a prelicensing placebo-controlled trial’. ‘Yes, they have,’ Vargas responded. But Hiltzik was exasperated by the host’s failure to ‘catch Kennedy’s deceptive sleight of hand’. RFK is wrong, according to Hiltzik, as a placebo such as an inert saline injection would be unethical; instead, a new product needs only to perform better than an existing vaccine, not by depriving study participants of potentially life-saving immunisation. Naïve to this Big Pharma stitch-up, Hiltzik believes the propaganda that vaccines have ‘all gone through phased trials mandated by the Food and Drug Administration to determine their safety and gauge their efficacy.’
Quite reasonably, RFK told the New Nation audience that vaccines should be properly tested for long-term risks. Hiltzik scoffed: ‘Does he mean one year? Five years? Thirty years? Some diseases take that long after exposure to manifest themselves. Is 30 years an appropriate period to wait?’
Kennedy focused on two specific vaccines. There is considerable evidence of the chickenpox vaccine, mandated for children in every state of the US, causing outbreaks of shingles in adulthood. Googling it, Hiltzik found the predictable array of pro-vaccine medical authorities denying any link between the vaccine and this painful rash.
The second vaccine of concern was for hepatitis B, a disease transmitted through sexual contact or bodily fluids. RFK asked why this is mandated for young children, but Hiltzik glibly explained that a mother of unknown infection could pass the virus to her newborn. There will always be a reason to jab kids against every known pathogen.
As Hiltzik explained, ‘while speaking deceptively, he [Kennedy] comes off as earnest — a skill that Donald Trump hasn’t mastered’. The lesson that the media must learn is that ‘there’s no way that even a determined interviewer can fight back against deception and deceit when it’s dispensed by the torrent’. Doing their duty for the establishment, influential broadcasters and newspapers are demanding censorship of presidential candidates: in a functioning democracy this would be so intolerable as to justify removal of their licences. When the establishment threw everything but the kitchen sink at Trump, this proved to his supporters that the system is rigged.
Although best known for his views on vaccines, RFK is causing most trouble through his opposition to the military-industrial complex, a term coined by Dwight Eisenhower in a warning to the American people three days before leaving the White House in 1961. His successor John F Kennedy (RFK’s uncle) delivered his ‘Peace Speech’ in June 1963, conveying his intent to end the arms race and build peaceful stability with Russia. Such outspoken resistance to the generals and CIA may have been the final straw that led to his assassination five months later in Dallas. The US and Nato empire have been waging wars ever since.
Hiltzik had little to say about Kennedy’s contrary views on Ukraine. It is hard to discredit pacifism as ‘disinformation’, never mind ‘dangerous’. But as shown by the ferocity of establishment attacks on Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, the one topic that is definitely out of bounds is military interventionism. RFK is an imperfect but compassionate and conscientious man. It is grossly insensitive for journalists to describe the son of a murdered father and nephew of a murdered uncle as a mortal hazard.
Nigel Farage Announces He’s a Victim of Financial Deplatforming
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2023
Former leader of the Brexit Party, Nigel Farage, alleges that he is facing what he describes as “serious political persecution” by the banking sector in the UK, claiming that the pro-Remain establishment is making a concerted effort to exclude him from the banking system. Farage asserts that this has made him contemplate whether he will be able to continue residing in the UK.
In a video released on Twitter, Farage shared that seven banks had turned down his applications for both personal and business accounts, making him feel like a “non-person.”
He stated that his bank accounts at an undisclosed financial institution, where he has been a customer for over four decades, were on the verge of being terminated without any explanation provided.
Farage posited three theories to explain why he believes the banking establishment is distancing itself from him. Firstly, he asserts that his role in championing Brexit has made him a persona non grata in the banking circles. “The banks did not want Brexit to happen,” Farage said in the video. “The corporate world will never forgive me.”
Additionally, Farage speculates that his political standing might be a factor. The “politically exposed person” protocol requires banks to conduct additional scrutiny on accounts held by politicians and their families to guard against the possibility of foreign bribery. Farage acknowledged the rationale behind such precautions but emphasized that the additional compliance burden for the banks should be commensurate.
Thirdly, Farage raised concerns about allegations that were made by Labour lawmaker Sir Chris Bryant in the previous year.
Bryant claimed that Farage had received a substantial sum of money, specifically £548,573, from Russia Today television station in 2018, an assertion that Farage vehemently denies. Farage stated, “The truth is I’ve never received any money from any sources with any link to Russia.”
CISA Was Behind the Attempt to Control Your Thoughts, Speech, and Life
Brownstone Institute | June 30, 2023
Keeping up with the corruption of the Covid regime feels like drinking from a firehose. The volume of the fraud, the pace of new discoveries, and the breadth of the operations are overwhelming. This makes it imperative for groups like Brownstone Institute to digest the onslaught of information and communicate salient themes and dispositive facts, particularly given the dereliction of mainstream media.
On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “colluded with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans,” adding to the informational firehose we work to imbibe.
The 36-page report raises three familiar issues: first, government actors worked with third parties to overturn the First Amendment; second, censors prioritized political narratives over truthfulness; and third, an unaccountable bureaucracy hijacked American society.
- CISA’s Collusion to Overturn the First Amendment
The House Report reveals that CISA, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, worked with social media platforms to censor posts it considered dis-, mis-, or malinformation. Brian Scully, the head of CISA’s censorship team, conceded that this process, known as “switchboarding,” would “trigger content moderation.”
Additionally, CISA funded the nonprofit EI-ISAC in 2020 to bolster its censorship operations. EI-ISAC worked to report and track “misinformation across all channels and platforms.” In launching the nonprofit, the government boasted that it “leverage[d] DHS CISA’s relationship with social media organizations to ensure priority treatment of misinformation reports.”
The switchboard programs directly contradict sworn testimony from CISA Director Jen Easterly. “We don’t censor anything… we don’t flag anything to social media organizations at all,” Esterly told Congress in March. “We don’t do any censorship.” Her statement was more than a lie; it omitted the institutionalization of the practice she denied. The agency’s initiatives relied on a collusive apparatus of private-public partnerships designed to suppress unapproved information.
This should sound familiar.
Alex Berenson gained access to thousands of Twitter communications that uncovered concrete evidence that government actors – including White House Covid Advisor Andy Slavitt – worked to censor him for criticizing Biden’s Covid policies.
White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty privately lobbied social media groups to remove a video of Tucker Carlson reporting the link between Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and blood clots.
Facebook worked with the CDC to censor posts related to the Covid “lab-leak” hypothesis. Company employees later met with the Department of Health and Human Services to de-platform the “disinformation dozen,” a group including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
These were not cherry-picked examples – they were part of an institutional collusion to strip Americans of their First Amendment rights. Journalists Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi exposed the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a collection of the world’s most powerful government agencies, NGOs, and private corporations that worked together to silence dissent.
The Supreme Court has held that it is “axiomatic” that the government cannot “induce, encourage, or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” Yet, CISA has joined the disturbing tendency of public-private partnerships designed to impede Americans’ right to information and freedom of speech.
- Political Operatives
Second, these programs were not idealistic attempts to promote the truth; they were calculated programs designed to quash inconvenient but truthful narratives.
The report outlines how CISA censored “malinformation – truthful information that, according to the government, may carry the potential to mislead.” Journalist Lee Fang later wrote that the malinformation campaign “highlights not only the broad authority that the federal government has to shape the political content available to the public, but also the toolkit that it relies upon to limit scrutiny in the regulation of speech.”
In this system, uncensored information has a tacit government approval, amounting to a system of widespread propaganda.
“State and local election officials used the CISA-funded EI-ISAC in an effort to silence criticism and political dissent,” the report notes. “For example, in August 2022, a Loudon County, Virginia, government official reported a Tweet featuring an unedited video of a county official ‘because it was posted as part of a larger campaign to discredit the word of’ that official. The Loudon County official’s remark that the account she flagged ‘is connected to Parents Against Critical Race Theory’ reveals that her ‘misinformation report’ was nothing more than a politically motivated censorship attempt.”
The officials supporting the operation remained unrepentant in their aim to advance political agendas. Dr. Kate Starbird, a member of CISA’s “Misinformation & Disinformation” subcommittee, lamented that many Americans seem to “accept malinformation as ‘speech’ and within democratic norms.”
Of course, the program explicitly violated the Constitution. The First Amendment does not discriminate based on the veracity of a statement. “Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation,” the Supreme Court’s controlling opinion held in United States v. Alvarez. But CISA – led by zealots like Dr. Starbird – appointed themselves the arbiters of truth and worked with the most powerful information companies in the world to purge dissent.
This was part of a larger political campaign.
Hunter Biden’s laptop, natural immunity, the lab-leak theory, and side effects of the vaccine were all censored at the government’s behest. The truth of the reports were not at issue; instead, they presented inconvenient narratives for Washington’s political class, who then used the Orwellian label of “malinformation” to lend cover to eviscerating the First Amendment.
- The Terror of the Administrative State
Third, the report exposes the increasing power of the administrative state. Federal bureaucrats rely on anonymity and unaccountability. Private industry employees could never oversee a disaster like the Covid response and maintain their jobs. It’d be like if BP’s head of safety for the Gulf of Mexico received a promotion after the oil spill.
But unelected officilals like CISA officials enjoy ever-increasing power over Americans’ lives without having to answer for their calamities. Suzanne Spaulding, a member of the Misinformation & Disinformation Subcommittee, warned that it was “only a matter of time before someone realizes we exist and starts asking about our work.”
Spaulding’s comment reflects the power that CISA wields and the benefit it derives from its lack of public exposure. Most Americans have never heard of CISA despite its overwhelming influence over lockdowns.
In March 2020, CISA divided the American workforce into categories of “essential” and “nonessential.” Within hours, California became the first state to issue a “stay at home” edict. This began a previously unimaginable assault on Americans’ civil liberties.
The House Report indicates that CISA was a central actor in censoring criticism of the Covid regime in the ensuing months and years. The agency is representative of the cabal of censorial and unaccountable officials engaged in public-private partnerships designed to keep us in the dark.
EU and UN Discuss How to Address “Disinformation” on Digital Platforms
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 30, 2023
In an apparent display of bureaucratic synergy, the European Union and United Nations have convened to muse over the implementation of new social media regulations, ostensibly in the pursuit of a more secure and transparent digital milieu. What stirs apprehension, however, is the overt enthusiasm of the UN’s Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming, who anticipates that the EU’s Digital Services Act will establish a “new de facto global regulatory benchmark.” The skepticism arises from the suspicion of veiled intentions to curb free speech under the guise of combating “disinformation.”
Platforms are constantly blamed for the proliferation of “disinformation” and “hate speech,” with detractors painting them as adversaries to science, democracy, and human rights. The UN Secretary-General António Guterres brandishes a doomsday brush, asserting that large-scale disinformation constitutes “an existential risk to humanity.”
What is crucial here is the essence of the dialogue and the response it seeks to galvanize. The UN is fervently plotting a Code of Conduct premised on a policy brief that stresses the imperative for an international clampdown on disinformation. It lays out what seems to be an ambitious and comprehensive framework, involving governments, tech companies, advertisers, and other stakeholders. All very fine, but what remains unaddressed is the question of who gets to define what is “disinformation,” and what criteria determine the line between free speech and misinformation.
The Code of Conduct, steeped in an aura of academic rigor and global research, envisages a change in the fabric of digital platforms. However, the aspects it emphasizes – detaching from engagement-driven business models, and ostensibly placing human rights, privacy, and safety at the forefront – are nebulous in terms of implementation and potential overreach. Furthermore, the UN’s admission of wielding moral authority without sanctions may be viewed as a tacit endorsement of soft power coercion.
While Melissa Fleming’s words convey a seeming commitment to protect human rights and access to information, the phraseology she employs – “human rights-based,” “multi-stakeholder,” and “multi-dimensional” – are threadbare buzzwords that do little to assuage the concerns over censorship and institutional overreach.
The concern is not with the stated objectives of fostering a safe and open digital environment, but rather with the specter of global entities like the EU and UN using the cloak of “disinformation” to infringe on the bedrock principle of free speech.
House Weaponization Committee Concludes DHS Agency Colluded With Big Tech To Facilitate Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 28, 2023
With the publishing of a new report, a House Judiciary subcommittee disclosed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a division within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has been engaging in censoring online content and conducting domestic surveillance in conjunction with Big Tech companies and other private groups.
This report, released on Monday, is titled “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans.”
CISA, founded in just 2018, was originally envisioned as an auxiliary agency focused on safeguarding critical infrastructure and fending off cybersecurity threats.
The report asserts that CISA morphed into “the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media” by 2020. It accuses CISA of systematically reporting social media posts that it believed disseminated “disinformation.”
Adding to the alarming developments, the report unveils that by 2021, CISA established a formal “Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation” (MDM) team. In the ensuing years, the agency faced escalating criticism from both public and private quarters, which led it to clandestinely downplay its activities by portraying itself as solely informational in nature.
The report particularly highlights an instance in which, following lawsuits from Missouri and Louisiana contesting CISA’s censorship tactics, the agency allegedly sidestepped the allegations by transferring its censorship undertakings to a non-profit organization, the Center for Internet Security (CIS), which it financially supported.
Further, the report divulges an email from a CISA advisory board member and former assistant general counsel for the CIA, Suzanne Spaulding, to her colleague, revealing concerns about the potential public discovery and scrutiny of their activities.
CISA has been accused of attempting to obscure its activities in response to growing scrutiny, such as erasing mentions of its domestic surveillance and censorship operations from its website.
The report argues that CISA’s focus on “malinformation” is worrisome. The agency defines malinformation as factual information used out of context to mislead or manipulate, but the subcommittee report challenges whose context is being used, and questions the government’s role in deciding this context.
Despite these allegations, CISA denies any involvement in censoring or facilitating censorship.
With the unveiling of this report, questions surrounding the extent of CISA’s involvement in domestic surveillance and online censorship have become central in a broader debate on the role of government agencies in relation to civil liberties and constitutional rights.
Celebrities and Online Personalities Sign Letter, Telling Social Media Platforms To Crackdown On “Hate”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | June 29, 2023
The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has rounded up a bunch of celebrities to bolster a letter to social media platforms, asking them to censor “hate” towards the LGBT community.
With the signatures of over 250 celebrities and community leaders, the organization has directed its fervor toward the giants of the digital world. Addressing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
In the public letter the organization charged that the platforms were nurturing platforms where “high-follower anti-LGBTQ hate accounts” proliferated. A group of celebrities, including the likes of actors Elliot Page and Jameela Jamil, alongside singer Ariana Grande, lent their ink to this plea.
The offending content, as per the letter, was outlined as speech that makes what they allege are falsehoods about gender-based procedures for minors, specifically “content that spreads malicious lies about medically necessary healthcare for trans youth.”
“Directing hate toward queer and trans public figures online is a vehicle to promote hate and violence against all LGBTQ people,” the letter states. “This translates to real-world harm.”
GLAAD’s post elaborated, saying, “This is leading to real-life harm, like death threats against healthcare providers and violence against trans and LGBTQ people.”
The group also complained about “Anti-trans hate speech, including targeted misgendering, deadnaming, and hate-driven tropes.”
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