The appropriations committee marked up their bill and the budget for the WHO remains at zero!
MERYL NASS | JULY 13, 2023
Furthermore, there is also in the bill no money for operationalizing the Pandemic Treaty unless it goes through the Senate for approval:
The War on ‘Misinformation’: Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny
Judge Terry A. Doughty’s Defense of the Right to be Wrong
Michael Hoffman’s Revelation of the Method | July 12, 2023
“Misinformation” [noun]: Any data that contradicts Establishment dogma
Fittingly, on Independence Day, July 4, U.S. Federal Judge Terry A. Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana, issued a preliminary injunction in the case of Missouri v. Biden, documenting and excoriating the Federal government’s abrogation of the First Amendment with regard to policing social media.
The patricians assigned exalted status as “First Amendment experts” by their cronies in the legacy media, have lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling and presume to explain it to the rest of us mere plebians in the hope that we will not read the 155 pages of his decision.
Thus, His Eminence Laurence Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard University, together with Leah Litman, professor of law at the University of Michigan, contemptuously dismiss Justice Doughty’s decision as buncombe. They rely on their prestige to convince us of their evidence-free claim that, “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.”
Words Intended to Trigger our Obeisance
Notice the words intended to trigger our obeisance to the anathema which Tribe and Litman have pronounced: “thoroughly debunked,” and the old reliable put-down, “conspiracy theory.”
No respectable true believer in the stature and renown of the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus will dare to think otherwise than as prescribed.
Tribe and Litman add to their pejorative-laden rant, stating, “the absurdity of different aspects of the decision…….Each step in the reasoning of the decision manages to be more outlandish than the last…”
“Absurd.” “Outlandish.”
They go further: “There is no shortage of errors in this opinion, which is trying to make the infamous ‘Twitter files’ into constitutional law. Who knows whether the equally infamous U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will correct any of these mistakes…”
“Infamous.” “Equally infamous.”
A heretical thought occurs to the reader of Tribe and Litman’s invective: prove it. They can’t, so they don’t bother.
Ah, but there’s the rub, fellow plebe. This legal duo need not prove anything. They are famous legal scholars.
Musk’s Twitter file revelations are “infamous” and Justice Doughty is “absurd.” Therefore, predicated on their ad hominem adjudication, Tribe and Litman don’t stoop to offering a refutation because none is necessary. Their ipse dixit is sufficient. We are in the realm of the blind faith required of people by the secular religion that enforces a fundamentalist intellectual conformity which brooks no dissent.
Witness the 155 pages of Doughty’s decision dismissed without a single factual reply concerning the Federal government illegally threatening and pressuring social media which publish disfavored authors and data on the Internet.
But is misinformation really the crux of the issue? Witness the misinformation that pours forth daily from the presses of the sacrosanct New York Times. We need look no further than Michael Shear and David McCabe’s report July 5 in the Times regarding Judge Doughty’s ruling. The issue of government censorship, which concerns all civil libertarians across the political spectrum, is reduced to an “effort by conservatives to document what they contend is a liberal conspiracy.”
That’s not just misinformation, it’s a lie. Two victims of the government crackdown on social media who are plaintiffs in the case of Missouri v. Biden, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, are infectious disease epidemiologists, not conservative Republican politics wonks.
The Great Barrington Declaration of October 4, 2020, criticized lockdown policies and expressed concern about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of lockdowns. Shortly after being published, the Great Barrington Declaration, which was signed and endorsed by numerous health science personnel holding a variety of political views, was censored on social media by Google, Facebook and Twitter under the threat of reprisals from the Biden administration.
Jill Hines is Co-Director of Health Freedom Louisiana, a consumer and human rights advocacy organization. Hines was censored because she advocated against the use of mask mandates for young children. Health Freedom Louisiana’s social-media page was suspended on Facebook in January 2022 for sharing a display board that contained Pfizer’s preclinical trial data. Facebook did the government’s bidding.
There are dozens of examples like these. The New York Times is misinforming its readers into believing that Missouri v. Biden is mainly an issue of Republican partisanship, with no wider significance for all liberty-loving Americans. The Times expects us to believe that Justice Doughty ruled in favor of the victims of government-inspired viewpoint censorship because, in the words of Shear and McCable, he is “favorable to right-wing lawsuits.”
The New York Times is determined to engage in misinformation by falsely characterizing the paramount issue, interdiction of freedom of the press by agents of the Federal government, as something of concern to right-wingers who see “liberal conspiracies” under every bed.
As of July 12, in almost every instance of legacy media misinformation related to the judge’s ruling that we have encountered, at no time were readers provided a link to Justice Doughty’s decision, which is published online, in order to facilitate the now out-of-fashion principle that the people should be encouraged to decide for themselves, rather than being told what to think.
Instead, the Times referred its readers to Litman and Tribe’s splenetic fulmination, in which government censorship is “content moderation,” and ensuring the Biden administration doesn’t threaten online news media if they don’t submit to their censorship orders, becomes, “a huge blow to vital government efforts to harden U.S. democracy against threats of misinformation.”
Without apprehension, we ought to call a thing by its accurate description. In their report, which appeared on New York University’s website, JustSecurity.org, we regret to say that the University of Michigan’s Litman, and Harvard’s Tribe, lied about Judge Doughty’s ruling—as follows:
“… the district court made no effort to identify circumstances where the government came even close to coercing social media companies into doing something they didn’t want to do…”
How does one parse a mendacity that is so transparently false it is beyond chutzpagh? The duo who put forth the preceding statement are insulting the intelligence of their readers on the assumption that they are too lazy to find and study Justice Doughty’s ruling—in which he clearly “identifies” the points at which the Federal government coerced social media companies into censoring scientists, activists and vital alternative information.
Judge for yourself:
Excerpts from Missouri v. Biden documenting Government Coercion of Social Media Companies
“On May 5, 2021, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki (“Psaki”) publicly began pushing Facebook and other social-media platforms to censor COVID-19 misinformation. At a White House Press Conference, Psaki publicly reminded Facebook and other social-media platforms of the threat of ‘legal consequences’ if they do not censor misinformation more aggressively.
“Psaki further stated: ‘The President’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19 vaccinations and elections.’ Psaki linked the threat of a ‘robust anti-trust program’ with the White House’s censorship demand: ‘He also supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program. So, his view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometime life-threatening information, is not going out to the American public.”
“On January 23, 2021, three days after President Biden took office, Clarke Humphrey (“Humphrey”), who at the time was the Digital Director for the COVID-19 Response Team, emailed Twitter and requested the removal of an anti-COVID-19 vaccine tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.2 Humphrey sent a copy of the email to Rob Flaherty (“Flaherty”), former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Digital Strategy…
“On February 7, 2021, Twitter sent Flaherty a ‘Twitter’s Partner Support Portal’ for expedited review of flagging content for censorship. Twitter recommended that Flaherty designate a list of authorized White House staff to enroll in Twitter’s Partner Support Portal and explained that when authorized reporters submit a ‘ticket’ using the portal, the requests are ‘prioritized’ automatically. Twitter also stated that it had been ‘recently bombarded’ with censorship requests from the White House and would prefer to have a streamlined process. Twitter noted that ‘[i]n a given day last week for example, we had more than four different people within the White House reaching out for issues…”
“On March 15, 2021, Flaherty…demanded a report from Facebook on a recent Washington Post article that accused Facebook of allowing the spread of information leading to vaccine hesitancy…Flaherty followed up by making clear that the White House was seeking more aggressive action on ‘borderline content.”
“On March 22, 2021, Flaherty responded to this email, demanding more detailed information and a plan from Facebook to censor the spread of ‘vaccine hesitancy’ on Facebook. Flaherty also requested more information about and demanded greater censorship by Facebook of ‘sensational,’ ‘vaccine skeptical’ content.”
“On April 13, 2021, after the temporary halt of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine…Flaherty also requested that Facebook monitor ‘misinformation’ relating to the Johnson & Johnson pause and demanded from Facebook a detailed report within twenty-four hours. Facebook provided the detailed report the same day.”
“On April 14, 2021, Flaherty demanded the censorship of Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Tomi Lahren because the top post about vaccines that day was ‘Tucker Carlson saying vaccines don’t work and Tomi Lahren stating she won’t take a vaccine..”
“Two days later, on April 16, 2021, Flaherty demanded immediate answers from Facebook regarding the Tucker Carlson video…Facebook…gave the video a 50% demotion for seven days and stated that it would continue to demote the video.”
“…examples of posts that did not violate Facebook’s policies but would nonetheless be suppressed included content that originated from the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit activist group headed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.” (Mr. Kennedy’s group was abeled by the government as one of the “Disinformation Dozen”).
“On April 21, 2021, Flaherty, Slavitt, and other HHS officials, met with Twitter officials about ‘Twitter Vaccine Misinfo Briefing.’…Twitter discovery responses indicated that during the meeting, White House officials wanted to know why Alex Berenson (“Berenson”) had not been ‘kicked off’ Twitter. Slavitt suggested Berenson was ‘the epicenter of disinfo that radiated outwards to the persuadable public.’ Berenson was suspended thereafter on July 16, 2021, and was permanently deplatformed on August 28, 2021.”
“On April 23, 2021, Flaherty sent Facebook an email including a document entitled “Facebook COVID-19 Vaccine Misinformation Brief” (“the Brief”)…The Brief recommended much more aggressive censorship of Facebook’s enforcement policies and called for progressively severe penalties.”
“From May 28, 2021, to July 10, 2021, a senior Meta (Facebook’s parent) executive reportedly copied Andrew Slavitt (‘Slavitt’), former White House Senior COVID-19 Advisor, on his emails to Surgeon General Murthy (‘Murthy’), alerting them that Meta was engaging in censorship of COVID-19 misinformation according to the White House’s ‘requests’ and indicating ‘expanded penalties’ for individual Facebook accounts that share misinformation…”
“Eric Waldo (‘Waldo’) is the Senior Advisor to the Surgeon General and was formerly Chief Engagement Officer for the Surgeon General’s office…Waldo and the Office of the Surgeon General received a briefing from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (‘CCDH’) about the “Disinformation Dozen.” The Center for Countering Digital Hate gave a presentation about the Disinformation Dozen and how they (CCDH) measured and determined that the Disinformation Dozen were primarily responsible for a significant amount of online misinformation.”
“At the July 15, 2021 press conference, Murthy described health misinformation as one of the biggest obstacles to ending the pandemic; insisted that his advisory was on an urgent public health threat; and stated that misinformation poses an imminent threat to the nation’s health and takes away the freedom to make informed decisions….Murthy also stated that people who question mask mandates and decline vaccinations are following misinformation, which results in illnesses and death. Murthy placed specific blame on social-media platforms for allowing ‘poison’ to spread and further called for an ‘all-of-society approach’ to fight health misinformation. Murthy called upon social-media platforms to operate with greater transparency and accountability, to monitor information more clearly, and to ‘consistently take action against misinformation super-spreaders on their platforms.’ Notably, Waldo agreed in his deposition that the word ‘accountable’ carries with it the threat of consequences.” (Emphasis supplied)
“…on July 20, 2021, at a White House Press Conference, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield (‘Bedingfield’) stated that the White House would be announcing whether social-media platforms are legally liable for misinformation spread on their platforms and examining how misinformation fits into the liability protection granted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which shields social-media platforms from being responsible for posts by third parties on their sites). Bedingfield further stated the administration was reviewing policies that could include amending the Communication Decency Act and that the social-media platforms ‘should be held accountable.’ The public and private pressure from the White House apparently had its intended effect. All twelve members of the ‘Disinformation Dozen’ were censored, and pages, groups, and accounts linked to the Disinformation Dozen were removed…”
“Murthy made statements on the following platforms: a December 21, 2021 podcast threatening to hold social-media platforms accountable for not censoring misinformation; a January 3, 2022 podcast with Alyssa Milano stating that ‘platformers need to step up to be accountable…”
“In addition to ‘misinformation’ regarding COVID-19, the White House also asked social-media companies to censor misinformation regarding climate change, gender discussions, abortion, and economic policy. At an Axios event entitled ‘A Conversation on Battling Misinformation,’ held on June 14, 2022, the White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy (‘McCarthy’) blamed social-media companies for allowing misinformation and disinformation about climate change to spread and explicitly tied these censorship demands with threats of adverse legislation regarding the Communications Decency Act.”
“On June 16, 2022, the White House announced a new task force to target ‘general misinformation’ and disinformation campaigns targeted at women and LBGTQI individuals who are public and political figures, government and civic leaders, activists, and journalists. The June 16, 2022, Memorandum discussed the creation of a task force to reel in ‘online harassment and abuse’ and to develop programs targeting such disinformation campaigns. The Memorandum also called for the Task Force to confer with technology experts and again threatened social-media platforms with adverse legal consequences if the platforms did not censor aggressively enough.”
End quote of excerpts from Missouri v. Biden, July 4, 2023. This judicial freedom document is worthy of study and publication in its entirety.
The War on “Misinformation” — Outlawing Dissident Data on the Road to Tyranny
The question of who is qualified to arbitrate what constitutes misinformation is seldom discussed and mostly neglected, for obvious reasons. If it were deliberated, the bias of the legacy media’s anointed “misinformation experts” (Stanford Internet Observatory, Virality Project, Center for Countering Digital Hate, etc.) would be apparent, along with a larger question: why is “misinformation” supposedly lethal to the commonweal?
In the claustrophobic corridors of conformity where roost our supposed intellectual superiors, there is little historical memory of ideas once denounced as the vilest heresy having been proved right over the course of time, unless those views were on the “progressive” side of the ideological scale.
A truly non-partisan recollection of the past would lead to tolerance and judicious latitude for ideas which the 21st century consensus considers outside the limits of acceptable belief.
Error Has Rights
The precept that error has rights is as old as the Jeffersonian democracy which the Biden administration and its friends in high places, claim to defend. The battle for this principle was successfully fought in the 1780s, and again in the 1960s and ‘70s. It has since been nearly overturned in the new millennium, where it now hangs by a thread.
“Free Press” Smokescreen
The free press debate is mostly a smokescreen for an ideological conflict in which one side of the political spectrum seeks to gain an advantage over the other. Concerning censorship, the Left and the Right are often partners in slime. Trying to find an authentic Jeffersonian on either side is like searching for a Baptist in Mecca. The right of scholars who analyze flaws in the Talmud and the atrocities of the Israeli government to be free of censorship and cancellation, has zero support among most of the Republican legislators, jurists and pundits who are indignant over the suppression of their viewpoints by Biden’s bureaucrats.
In America, much of the interdiction of ideas and obstruction of free inquiry is perpetrated by private companies, and more specifically, the usury industry, which monopolizes online payment systems. In resistance to their monopoly, dissident writers are paid and sustained by readers rather than corporations, which helps to encourage the widest possible diversity of opinion, as well as independent investigative reporting which is vital to the democracy which Prof. Tribe and our would-be Overlords cynically extol with seigneurial conceit, and simultaneously thwart.
In 1789 the Catholic idea that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without sin and assumed bodily into heaven was considered a depraved belief in the eyes of the majority of the Protestant population of the United States. Had it not been for the liberty of conscience enshrined in the Bill of Rights that year, those Catholic beliefs may very well have been outlawed.
234 years later, modern science has discovered that babies in the womb share the cells of their mothers: “Mothers around the world say they feel like their children are still a part of them long after they’ve given birth. As it turns out, that is literally true… Fetomaternal transfer… occurs in all pregnancies and in humans the fetal cells can persist for decades. Microchimeric fetal cells are found in various maternal tissues and organs including blood, bone marrow, skin and liver” (cf. here and here).
Consequently, the Son of God who was of one flesh with the humble Israelite girl we know as His mother Mary, shared his very tissue with her. In light of that discovery by avant-garde science, it seems far less likely that God would have allowed the body that contained within it the flesh of Jesus Christ, to rot on earth. In 1950, when Pius XII declared the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, it seems he was prescient indeed.
Nowadays, with the desacralization of our society, where the outcome of the colosseum sports game is of infinitely greater interest than the corporeal fate of the human that served as the vessel for the incarnation of God, the once hotly disputed veracity or falsehood of the pontiff’s declaration doesn’t necessitate First Amendment protection. Other controversies however, are ablaze in the white hot fire of zealotry and the certitude that one side is right and the other is not only wrong, it has no right to be wrong. For example, disputing trans claims and COVID orthodoxies are subject to intense proscription.
The Left pretends to want libraries free of censorship. Some of them support trans books in children’s libraries because they have faith in the inherent value of that literature as drivers of transformative thinking in children, not due to any allegiance to the civil libertarian tenets of the First Amendment. Not for a minute would most Leftists countenance the introduction of holocaust denial or white supremacist books in a library under their control. For these folks “freedom of the press” is a pretext for overcoming the censorship demands of one’s adversaries while practicing it oneself.
The Right wants libraries stocked with writings by Karl Rove, Ludwig von Mises, Glenn Beck, John Bolton, Hannity and O’Reilly. A majority actively oppose the presence of books in public libraries by Noam Chomsky, Margaret Atwood, Edward Said, Alexander Cockburn, and Maureen Dowd. Like the Left, the Right mainly operates by a dual standard.
Knowledge of the history of the struggle for intellectual freedom and the life stories of John Lilburne, Michael Servetus, John Tyndale, Edmund Campion, Ignaz Semmelweis, Eugene V. Debs, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Harry Elmer Barnes, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Norman Finkelstein, are instrumental in kindling a commitment to the American Way: •rights of conscience, •the necessity of a free press, and •toleration of opinions designated as “misinformation.”
The debate turns on whether or not a free people require intervention by “expert authorities” like fallible Fauci, who filter what would otherwise be unfettered access to information.
To prove his points in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson stated, “… let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” The Founders of our nation were unequivocal in proclaiming their confidence in the people judging for themselves, without a king, commissar or president—backed by propaganda conglomerates in New York and Hollywood— preventing them from undertaking this sacred civic responsibility and divine right.
That the interdiction of information online is termed by Lucifer’s lexicographers “a defense of democracy,” is among the most egregious evocations of doublethink since George Orwell put pen to paper.
Distilled to its first principle, the defense of democracy depends on the defense of the right to be wrong.
The New York Times, Laurence Tribe, Leah Litman, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Alex Berenson and Tucker Carlson, all have a right to be in error. Without that Constitutional liberty guaranteed to every individual — whether heretic or grandee — Fascism from the Right or Communism from the Left will inevitably take control and sift our nation like wheat.
“This country is planted thick with laws… And if you cut them down… do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.” —Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons
FOR THE ADVANCEMENT TO KNOWLEDGE CONTRA CANCEL CULTURE
Michael Hoffman is the author of Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare (2001), The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome (2017) , Twilight Language (2021), six other books published in the United States, as well as overseas in Japanese and French translation, and 122 issues of Revisionist History® newsletter, 1997-2022. Since January, twenty-eight of his essays have been published on Substack. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press. His podcast, Michael Hoffman’s Revisionist History,® is heard around the world.
Twitter: @HoffmanMichaelA
Copyright ©2023 Independent History and Research, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho 83816-0849
Targeted for Tyranny: We’re All Suspects Under the Government’s Precrime Program
By John & Nisha Whitehead | The Rutherford Institute | July 12, 2023
We’re all being targeted now.
We’re all guilty until proven innocent now.
And thanks to the 24/7 surveillance being carried out by the government’s spy network of fusion centers, we are all now sitting ducks, just waiting to be tagged, flagged, targeted, monitored, manipulated, investigated, interrogated, heckled and generally harassed by agents of the American police state.
Although these precrime programs are popping up all across the country, in small towns and big cities, they are not making us any safer but they are endangering individual freedoms.
Nationwide, there are upwards of 123 real-time crime centers (a.k.a. fusion centers), which allow local police agencies to upload and share massive amounts of surveillance data and intelligence with state and federal agencies culled from surveillance cameras, facial recognition technology, gunshot sensors, social media monitoring, drones and body cameras, and artificial intelligence-driven predictive policing algorithms.
These data fusion centers, which effectively create an electronic prison—a digital police state—from which there is no escape, are being built in partnership with big tech companies such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, which helped to fuel the rise of police militarization and domestic surveillance.
While these latest expansions of the surveillance state are part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to combat domestic extremism through the creation of a “precrime” crime prevention agency, they have long been a pivotal part of the government’s plans for total control and dominion.
Yet this crime prevention campaign is not so much about making America safer as it is about ensuring that the government has the wherewithal to muzzle anti-government discontent, penalize anyone expressing anti-government sentiments, and preemptively nip in the bud any attempts by the populace to challenge the government’s authority or question its propaganda.
As J.D. Tuccille writes for Reason, “[A]t a time when government officials rage against ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ that is often just disagreement with whatever opinions are currently popular among the political class, fusion centers frequently scrutinize peaceful dissenting speech.”
Indeed, while the Biden Administration was recently dealt a legal blow over its attempts to urge social media companies to do more to combat so-called dis- and mis-information, these fusion centers are the unacknowledged powerhouses behind the government’s campaign to censor and retaliate against those who vocalize their disagreement and discontent with government policies.
Already, the powers-that-be are mobilizing to ensure that fusion centers have the ability to monitor and lockdown sectors of a community at a moment’s notice.
For instance, a 42,000-square-foot behemoth of a fusion center in downtown Washington is reportedly designed to “better prepare law enforcement for the next public health emergency or Jan. 6-style attack.” According to an agency spokeswoman, “Screens covering the walls of the new facility will show surveillance cameras around the city as well as social media accounts that may be monitored for threatening speech.”
It’s like a scene straight out of Steven Spielberg’s dystopian film Minority Report.
Incredibly, as the various nascent technologies employed and shared by the government and corporations alike—facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on—are incorporated into a complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior, the dystopian visions of past writers is fast becoming our reality.
What once seemed futuristic no longer occupies the realm of science fiction.
The American police state’s take on the dystopian terrors foreshadowed by George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick have all been rolled up into one oppressive pre-crime and pre-thought crime package.
In this way, the novel 1984 has become an operation manual for an omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state in which ordinary Americans find themselves labeled domestic extremists for engaging in lawful behavior that triggers the government’s precrime sensors.
With the help of automated eyes and ears, a growing arsenal of high-tech software, hardware and techniques, government propaganda urging Americans to turn into spies and snitches, as well as social media and behavior sensing software, government agents are spinning a sticky spider-web of threat assessments, behavioral sensing warnings, flagged “words,” and “suspicious” activity reports aimed at snaring potential enemies of the state.
It’s also a setup ripe for abuse.
For instance, an investigative report by the Brennan Center found that “Over the last two decades, leaked materials have shown fusion centers tracking protestors and casting peaceful activities as potential threats. Their targets have included racial justice and environmental advocates, right-wing activists, and third-party political candidates.”
One fusion center in Maine was found to have been “illegally collecting and sharing information about Maine residents who weren’t suspected of criminal activity. They included gun purchasers, people protesting the construction of a new power transmission line, the employees of a peacebuilding summer camp for teenagers, and even people who travelled to New York City frequently.”
This is how the government is turning a nation of citizens into suspects and would-be criminals.
This transformation is being driven by the Department of Homeland Security, the massive, costly, power-hungry bureaucracy working hard to ensure that the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful.
Yet here’s the thing: you don’t have to do anything illegal or challenge the government’s authority in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal.
In fact, all you need to do is live in the United States.
It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score.
Without having ever knowingly committed a crime or been convicted of one, you and your fellow citizens have likely been assessed for behaviors the government might consider devious, dangerous or concerning; assigned a threat score based on your associations, activities and viewpoints; and catalogued in a government database according to how you should be approached by police and other government agencies based on your particular threat level.
Combine predictive policing with surveillance, overcriminalization and precrime programs, then add in militarized police trained to shoot first and ask questions later, and as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, you’ll be lucky to escape with your life.
If you’re not scared yet, you should be.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
‘Covid Censorship Proved to be Deadly’
BY BILL RICE, JR. | JULY 8, 2023
I wanted to make a quick post to recommend an exceptional and important essay published by The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion section.
In a brief essay (“Covid Censorship Proved to be Deadly”) author Brett Swanson shows how the Censorship Industrial Complex – or what he perfectly describes as “full spectrum censorship” – has effectively caused the unnecessary deaths (and misery) of huge numbers of world citizens.
As the essay makes clear, “truth” and “facts” have become “false narratives” or “dangerous misinformation” …. while false beliefs have become accepted as gospel/infallible truths.
Claims that are wrong, dangerous or dubious cannot be challenged.
As Swanson points out, the masses on social media quickly gleaned the speech they could not make (this shows the toxic effects of “self censorship.”)
The opinions of those who believe the “experts” might be “ignorant” were censored or not allowed to reach large numbers of people. Because of this, “falsehoods” could NOT be “dispelled.”
Swanson points out such a surreal template is the exact opposite of real science, which exists to challenge dubious claims.
A technology (the Internet) that could and should have been used to save many lives – and rebut many falsehoods – was instead used to bully and silence skeptics, who were really just trying to save lives and prevent outcomes that ultimately produced mass misery and devastating consequences for billions of world inhabitants.
The censored, bullied and demonetized skeptics are the real altruistic heroes, not the villains.
Theme fits perfectly with my next big story ….
I’m currently working on a story regarding the Covid outbreak aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier.
The true/vital lesson from this case study should have been that Covid does NOT threaten “everyone.” Per the lessons of the Roosevelt outbreak, this virus certainly doesn’t pose any real mortality risk to the young and middle aged.
But the “false narrative” quickly became that Covid threatens “everyone” … that younger adults and children were also “vulnerable.”
The truth – which would have eliminated irrational fear in most people – could NOT be disseminated as it would threaten the most important (false) narratives/initiatives.
As Swanson points out, the real goal in all of this “full spectrum censorship” is to PROTECT “authority.”
It would have constituted a “crisis” for those in authority if their pronouncements were exposed as “ignorance.”
The bottom line is that the massive and coordinated Censorship Industrial Complex was created to protect the power, wealth and continued control of those in authority.
At least The Wall Street Journal published this essay ….
… Also, The WSJ op-ed section deserves kudos for publishing this piece.
The author didn’t have the space to document the evidence of the huge spike in all-cause (non-Covid) excess deaths, but he still worked those points into his essay.
This by itself is a “win” for our side.
Shocking numbers of “vaccine” deaths/injuries and iatrogenic deaths/injuries are the giant elephants in the room in the mainstream media.
The reason most every-day citizens aren’t shocked by these scandals/truths … is that this story has been … censored. That is, this is NOT a “story.”
But at least The WSJ acknowledged this by publishing Swanson’s superlative essay.
Maybe the “news” division of the WSJ will follow-up on the author’s points and do some real journalism on these taboo topics?
Somehow I doubt this … but, still, the needle exposing the false narratives is moving in the right direction.
Judge Denies Biden Administration’s Attempt To Halt Injunction Against Censorship
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | July 11, 2023
On Monday, a federal judge from the Western District of Louisiana, Terry Doughty, upheld his ruling, preventing the Biden administration from engaging in specific types of communication with key social media entities.
The initial request to lift the ban on these interactions came from the administration on July 6th, but has now been met with refusal by Doughty. The judge had previously instituted this ban in response to a lawsuit by the Republican state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, who are challenging the manner in which government agencies cooperate with social media behemoths to curb the propagation of inaccurate or misleading information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and election security.
Judge Doughty reasoned that the chances of success for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were high, and therefore upheld his order. The judge also rejected the notion that the administration would suffer any “irreparable injury” due to the communication restrictions between government agencies and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
“The First Amendment free speech rights of Plaintiffs by far outweighs the Defendants’ interests,” Doughty said in his judgment.
Doughty also dismissed the administration’s assertion that his preliminary injunction issued on July 4 was too extensive. He held that the injunction was specifically designed to block only those types of collaboration with social media companies that could infringe upon users’ “protected free speech.” He further opined, “Defendant officials can be and should be trained to recognize what speech is protected and what speech is not prior to working with social-media companies to suppress or delete postings.”
While the ruling restricts certain types of interaction, it does not ban all communication between the government and social media corporations. Doughty’s injunction allows for the continuation of meetings between the government and social media companies, specifically on subjects like cyberattacks.
US House Panel Reportedly Concludes FBI Helped Ukrainian Intel Censor US Accounts
Sputnik – 11.07.2023
WASHINGTON – The FBI helped the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) censor social media accounts based in the United States as part of an effort to combat alleged Russian disinformation, US media reported, citing a US House Judiciary Committee report.
The FBI forwarded Meta an SBU-provided list of accounts flagged for removal, based on their alleged involvement in spreading disinformation, the Monday report detailed. However, the list included some US-based accounts, including the US State Department’s own Russian-language Instagram account.
The FBI and SBU marked authentic accounts belonging to the US government and journalists in an effort to have them censored, the report said.
The Judiciary Committee’s allegations are reportedly based on information gained through subpoenas sent to Meta and Alphabet – the parent company of Google and YouTube.
Google was inundated with censorship requests following the launch of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the report said, citing a senior Google cybersecurity official. The requests primarily came from the Ukrainian government, other Eastern European governments, the EU and European Commission, the employee reportedly said.
The judiciary panel’s report was developed alongside the subcommittee on the weaponization of the US government, which is investigating governmental abuse of authority and collaboration with private companies to suppress certain viewpoints.
The FBI’s actions constitute unconstitutional misconduct and endanger national security, the lawmakers’ report said. The subject is expected to arise during a committee hearing with FBI chief Christopher Wray later this week.
The allegations mirror those made earlier this year in the so-called “Twitter Files” release, which featured an email demonstrating collaboration between the FBI and SBU to forward censorship requests to Twitter.
Blueprint for the New World Order
MERYL NASS | JULY 10, 2023
The UN has put out a number of concerning policy briefs and documents in the past 2 years and I will share them with you. This is the first :
First, now is the time to re-embrace global solidarity and find new ways to work together for the common good. This must include a global vaccination plan to deliver vaccines against COVID-19 into the arms ofthe millions of people who are still denied this basic lifesaving measure. Moreover, it must include urgentand bold steps to address the triple crisis of climate disruption, biodiversity loss and pollution destroying our planet.
Second, now is the time to renew the social contract between Governments and their people and within societies, so as to rebuild trust and embrace a comprehensive vision of human rights. People need to see results reflected in their daily lives. This must include the active and equal participation of women and girls, without whom no meaningful social contract is possible. It should also include updated governance arrangements to deliver better public goods and usher in a new era of universal social protection, health coverage, education, skills, decent work and housing, as well as universal access to the Internet by 2030 as a basic human right. I invite all countries to conduct inclusive and meaningful national listening consultations so all citizens have a say in envisioning their countries’ futures.
Third, now is the time to end the “infodemic” plaguing our world by defending a common, empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge. The “war on science” must end. All policy and budget decisions should be backed by science and expertise, and I am calling for a global code of conduct that promotes integrity in public information.
Fourth, now is the time to correct a glaring blind spot in how we measure economic prosperity and progress. When profits come at the expense of people and our planet, we are left with an incomplete picture of the true cost of economic growth. As currently measured, gross domestic product (GDP) fails to capture the human and environmental destruction of some business activities. I call for new measures to complement GDP, so that people can gain a full understanding of the impacts of business activities and how we can and must do better to support people and our planet. [So clever how the wordsmiths portray the globalists’ desire to get rid of measures of economic activity as if this is linked to preventing environmental destruction!—Nass ]
Fifth, now is the time to think for the long term, to deliver more for young people and succeeding generations and to be better prepared for the challenges ahead. Our Common Agenda includes recommendations for meaningful, diverse and effective youth engagement both within and outside the United Nations, including through better political representation and by transforming education, skills training and lifelong learning. I am also making proposals, such as a repurposed Trusteeship Council, a Futures Lab, a Declaration on Future Generations and a United Nations Special Envoy to ensure that policy and budget decisions take into account their impact on future generations. We also need to be better prepared to prevent and respond to major global risks. It will be important for the United Nations to issue a Strategic Foresight and Global Risk Report on a regular basis, and I also propose an Emergency Platform, to be convened in response to complex global crises.
Sixth, now is the time for a stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system, anchored within the United Nations. Effective multilateralism depends on an effective United Nations, one able to adapt to global challenges while living up to the purposes and principles of its Charter. For example, I am proposing a new agenda for peace, multi-stakeholder dialogues on outer space and a Global Digital Compact, as well as a Biennial Summit between the members of the Group of 20 and of the Economic and Social Council, the Secretary-General and the heads of the international financial institutions. Throughout, we need stronger involvement of all relevant stakeholders, and we will seek to have an Advisory Group on Local and Regional Governments.
For 75 years, the United Nations has gathered the world around addressing global challenges: from conflicts and hunger, to ending disease, to outer space and the digital world, to human rights and disarmament. In this time of division, fracture and mistrust, this space is needed more than ever if we are to secure a better, greener, more peaceful future for all people. Based on this report, I will ask a High-level Advisory Board, led by former Heads of State and Government, to identify global public goods and other areas of common interest where governance improvements are most needed, and to propose options for how this could be achieved…
How HART was discredited on no basis
Government funded take-down looks increasingly ridiculous
Health Advisory & Recovery Team | July 9, 2023
In summer 2021, the private messaging forum that HART used was illegally hacked and our private conversations downloaded. Within 24 hours we were contacted by a small company called Logically AI who told us they were going to publish the conversations. This small company had a contract with the government worth over a million pounds of taxpayer’s money. The government may have thought it got its money’s worth when MPs who had been talking to members of HART decided they needed to keep a wide berth. However, the basis of the ‘discrediting’ was laughable.
On 27th July 2021, this article was published concluding with the following “factcheck”:
Figure 1: Concluding figure from Logically AI’s attempt to discredit HART
Let’s see how each of those “facts” have held up over time.
1. mRNA vaccines cannot be considered vaccines
A vaccine has a particular meaning in the minds of the public as an injection that teaches the immune system in order to prevent an infection. Official definitions have changed the meaning so that it could include these novel products. The CDC changed the definition twice since 2015.
In early 2015 a vaccine was an “Injection of a killed or weakened infectious organism in order to prevent the disease.” That year it changed to,“The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
Overnight the requirements that the intervention be inert and prevent disease were removed. By September 2021 the definition was changed again to: “The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.” Any internal treatment for any disease now fits the CDC definition of vaccine. However, whatever official definitions say does not change public understanding of a word.
While it was claimed that the covid vaccines could prevent infection which led to their regulatory approvals, these claims have all been abandoned in light of the real world evidence.
What the manufacturers say about their products in documents filed in accordance with financial regulatory requirements is instructive.
Moderna said, ““mRNA has been characterised as a Gene Therapy Medicinal Product… the association of our investigational medicines with gene therapies could result in increased regulatory burdens, impair the reputation of our investigational medicines, or negatively impact our platform or our business.” BioNTech also described their products as gene therapies.
Being a gene therapy does not mean that it will interfere with cellular DNA but it does mean that certain specific and more stringent testing is required. Instead, the shortened regulatory pathway designed for influenza vaccines (developed via a well-established egg based platform) was used. This pathway should never have been used for a novel platform like the covid vaccines.
2. Vaccine trials on children and young people were ‘rushed’
This point can be extended to all vaccine trials. The programme was, if you remember, referred to as “operation warp speed”. How can you have “warp speed” without rushing?
Basic medical ethics includes the principle that children are never given new drugs until there is a well established safety record in adults. For the covid vaccines the number needed to vaccinate in order to prevent a single death was a hundred thousand or more for young people, however the rate of serious adverse events, even in the trials, was 1 in 800.
The trials that were done on children were extremely small, with only 1131 adolescents vaccinated and followed for a minimum of 1 month from their second dose before approving for this age group. Efficacy calculations excluded all covid infections occurring prior to 7 days after the second dose. Antibody levels were also assumed to be a marker for likely efficacy, despite there being no antibody level which ensures protection against covid infection. The government wording says, the product aims “to generate neutralising antibodies, which may contribute to protection against COVID-19.” This is not based on any scientific evidence, merely hope.
The worst children’s trial was the one for under 5 year olds where approvals were pushed through using antibody levels only, as a marker of success rather than expending more time to measure an impact on actual levels of covid. They also changed the efficacy requirement for approval from 50% to 30%. When the two planned doses failed to induce antibodies, they simply added a third dose in just a fraction of the children. This elicited an antibody rise, but also apparently resulted in more significant covid infections in those vaccinated. 97% of the covid cases in the study were ignored in the FDA presentation from Pfizer.
3. Lockdown policies are ineffective against covid
With the passage of time it is now clear that every covid wave rises and peaks naturally. The peaks fall at predictable times of year. The claims that all spread was through close contact, everyone was susceptible and asymptomatic spread was a key driver were all false assumptions.
Having considered the reality about these three claims it is clear that long distance aerosol transmission was a key driver of spread. Lockdowns can do nothing to prevent that. Since Logically AI wrote this article, it has become obvious that even the most brutal lockdowns, leaving people starving at home and killing their pets, did not stop the spread of covid in China. In fact every attempt at lockdown suppression in South East Asia and Australasia failed in January 2022.
A meta-analysis of 32 papers by a group at John Hopkins University analysed the effect of lockdown, concluding that “lockdowns during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic have had devastating effects. They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, loss of life quality, and the undermining of liberal democracy. These costs to society must be compared to the benefits of lockdowns, which our meta-analysis has shown are little to none.”
4. Vaccine can make the recipient magnetic
Don’t rush to think this must be imaginary. Here is a video where unsuspecting recently vaccinated people were tested to see if their arms were magnetic. Most were not, but a surprising number were – 6 out of 15 tested. You can watch full video here.
Some HART members experienced this themselves and there was no question that this was magnetism – with a genuine pulling force.
So what was the cause of this? There are various steps to the manufacturing process including one in which separation of the mRNA is necessary. Some manufacturers used tiny magnetic beads to carry out this step, although which manufacturers used which techniques and to what extent is hard to know.
All that it would take to make someone’s arm magnetic would be for contamination of the vaccine vial with some of these beads. It is now well established that there was significant contamination with bacterial DNA and likely endotoxins. Is it possible that magnetic beads were also contaminants in some vials?
No-one in HART claims to be omniscient and we are constantly challenging and testing each other’s viewpoints. We believe in open scientific debate and that can only happen if people are allowed to occasionally be wrong. However, looking back at the reviews that we wrote in March 2021, they have all stood the test of time (see our 2022 revisits for what changed).
Even the private, more speculative conversations that were had in private have also stood the test of time. The reason this is the case is that all were based on well-established basic science and on real-world evidence. It is a travesty that the same cannot be said for the official narrative. Powerful people claimed that fantasy modelling and beliefs based only on assumptions were “The Science” and when those proved to be baseless, they resorted to complaining that people had lost their trust in science. They have no-one to blame but themselves.
Former head of Disinformation Governance Board: Government flagging content has “nothing to do with censorship”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | July 9, 2023
Last week, in a significant victory for free speech, a federal court stepped in to curb potential overreach by the Biden administration in its collaboration with social media platforms to suppress online content. The court ruling, issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana on Tuesday caused critics to complain that it hinders the administration’s efforts to counter online conspiracy theories and “disinformation.”
But in the usual doublespeak in an interview with MSNBC, the former head of the government’s controversial Disinformation Governance Board Nina Jankowicz claims that the government flagging content that goes against Big Tech’s policies has “nothing to do with censorship” and “is not about removing speech.”
“This is a weaponization of the court system. It is an intentional and purposeful move to disrupt the work that needs to be done ahead of the 2024 election, and it’s really chilling,” she said to the Guardian.
The ruling inhibits key federal agencies and officials from intervening in the content posted on tech platforms. It has been suggested that without such a check in place, the government’s efforts could easily spill over into manipulating public discourse and controlling information, with potentially dangerous effects on free speech and political balance.
The injunction comes as conservative leaders and groups have been vocal in their opposition, accusing the Biden administration of collusion with social media companies in an attempt to suppress conservative viewpoints.
Judge Doughty supported the arguments of Republican attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri who filed the lawsuit. They contend that the Biden administration’s tactics infringe on First Amendment rights to free speech. He expressed the sentiment that the government seemed to be exploiting its power to stifle opposing voices, and he ominously compared the handling of social media content by the administration during the COVID pandemic to the “Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”
Nina Jankowicz, a former government appointee to lead a new Department of Homeland Security unit aimed at countering online misinformation, has defended the government’s actions, insisting that they do not amount to censorship. However, critics might question her impartiality, considering she was initially named as a defendant in the case but was later removed due to no longer holding a governmental role.
Adding to the controversy, this unit was swiftly disbanded after facing intense criticism from conservatives who claimed it was stifling conservative speech. This has led some to question whether the government’s efforts to fight misinformation are truly unbiased or, as many suspect, are a veiled attempt to suppress dissenting opinions.
The ruling, which temporarily bars several agencies and officials from pressuring social media companies to remove or delete “protected free speech,” sends a strong message that government interference in the digital public square must be carefully scrutinized. This order stands as an affirmation of the fundamental right to free speech.
Revenge of the Praetorian Guard
Brownstone Institute | July 9, 2023
There was no censorship, but it’s good that they censored misinformation.
Defenders of the Covid regime have adopted this Doublethink in response to Judge Terry Doughty’s recent injunction against the government’s collusion with Big Tech. As Orwell describes in 1984, they “hold simultaneously two opinions which cancel out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.”
Consider the language of the Biden administration’s call for an “emergency stay” of the injunction from Missouri v. Biden that stops the government from telling social media companies what they should and should not allow their users to post. The appeal says government is not censoring but must have the power to continue “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”
Grave harm… from free speech!
Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe exemplifies this authoritarian advocacy. For decades, Tribe built a reputation as a legal scholar. He authored the country’s leading constitutional law treatise, advised presidents, and appeared on television as a legal commentator.
But age has a way of eroding veneers. Tribe is a defender of a political regime, a member of a Praetorian Guard comfortable with abolishing constitutional liberties when it advances his political preferences.
In the last three years, Tribe has argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin rigged the 2016 presidential election for “Thief in Chief, Donald Trump,” led the Justice Department to argue that the CDC eviction moratorium was constitutional, and successfully lobbied President Biden to unilaterally cancel student loans.
If he were on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Tribe might be accused of spreading misinformation and unconstitutional theories that threatened our democracy. Instead, he continues to serve as a mouthpiece for the country’s most powerful forces.
On Wednesday, Tribe co-authored an article with Michigan Law Professor Leah Litman attacking Judge Doughty’s injunction against the federal government’s collusive censorship of its political opponents. Their argument is notable for its false assertions of fact and improper implications of law. They remain obtuse to the allegations in the case, the principles of the First Amendment, and the historical ploys to overturn civil liberties. All the while, they maintain a posture of moral superiority that the Biden White House has mimicked.
A “Thoroughly Debunked Conspiracy Theory”
The professors begin their article with a false premise: “The impetus behind the case is the now thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory that the government is somehow strong-arming Big Tech into censoring conservative speech and speakers in violation of the First Amendment.”
They don’t offer an explanation for this description. They fail to address the documented censorship of Alex Berenson, Jay Bhattacharya, the Great Barrington Declaration, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and others. There is no mention of Facebook banning users who promoted the lab-leak hypothesis after working with the CDC, the Biden Administration’s public campaign urging social media companies to censor dissent in July 2021, or the Twitter Files’ documentation of the US Security State’s influence on Big Tech.
Instead, Tribe and Litman dismiss censorship as a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. They didn’t need to look far for examples – the opinion documents multiple instances of the coordination between Big Tech and the Biden White House in silencing opposition.
“Are you guys fucking serious?” White House Advisor Rob Flaherty asked Facebook after the company failed to censor critics of the Covid vaccine. “I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today.”
At other times, Flaherty was more direct. “Please remove this account immediately,” he told Twitter about a Biden family parody account. The company compiled within an hour.
His boss demanded Twitter remove posts from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., writing: “Hey Folks-Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on the process of having it removed ASAP.”
There are too many incidents to list, but it is clear that censorship was more than a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory. Either Tribe did not read the decision, or his ideology blinded him from reality.
“A cesspool of disinformation”
The professors’ debunked conspiracy theory premise contradicts their position later in the article.
Like many of their peers, Tribe and Litman hold an incompatible set of views: on one hand, they argue that allegations of censorship are illusory. At the same time, they argue that the government is justified in suppressing speech because of the dangers of “disinformation.”
Censorship doesn’t exist, but it’s good that it does.
They write that the ruling incorrectly defends Americans’ right of “existing in a cesspool of disinformation about election denialism and COVID.” They hold that this is an incorrect application of the First Amendment. The natural corollary to their argument would be that the government is justified in censoring “disinformation.”
But the First Amendment does not discriminate against false ideas. Labeling speech “disinformation” or smearing it with associations about “election denialism” does not take away its constitutional protections.
“Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea,” the Supreme Court held in Gertz v. Welch. “However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries, but on the competition of other ideas.” Tribe and Litman wouldn’t defer to the conscience of judges and juries – they would leave corrections to unelected White House bureaucrats.
“Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation,” the Court held in United States v. Alvarez. The Framers knew the dangers of central government acting as arbiters of truth, so they banned that form of informational totalitarianism. Now, Tribe and Litman advocate to overturn that system of liberty.
It “will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day”
The professors resort to the familiar campaign of conflating dissent with danger. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes compared handing out leaflets opposing World War I to “shouting fire in a crowded theater.” The Bush Administration eroded civil liberties in the War on Terror through the false dichotomy: “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Now, Tribe resorts to national security hysteria in defending the assault on the First Amendment. “If left standing,” he writes, the injunction “will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day.”
The professors explicitly accuse Judge Doughty of endangering Americans. So what does the judgment demand that calls for this accusation? Judge Doughty’s order prohibits government actors from communicating with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech.” The Biden Administration can denounce journalists, give its own press briefings, and take advantage of the friendly media environment; it just can’t encourage private companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.
“It is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish,” the Court held in Norwood v. Harrison. Judge Doughty applied that axiom to the digital age, and defenders of the regime have accused him of assaulting the republic.
The Biden Administration has adopted the same view as Tribe, writing in its appeal that the injunction hinders its ability to pursue “initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.” Again, the language mimics Orwell’s description of Doublethink: “to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.”
The appeal rests on the argument that the “immediate and ongoing harms to the Government outweigh any risk of injury to Plaintiffs.” Considering what Judge Doughty’s order prohibits, the Biden Administration is saying that the inability to work with social media companies to censor “content containing protected free speech” creates “immediate and ongoing harms” that outweigh Americans’ First Amendment liberties.
The Praetorian Guard
In sum, Tribe and Litman’s arguments are divorced from the facts of the case and the protections of the First Amendment. Their work is not legal scholarship; it is a defense of the regime. They advance unconstitutional agendas to pursue their political interests. More alarmingly, the White House has adopted their point of view.
Tribe is familiar with this tactic. He has promoted clearly unconstitutional programs related to the debt ceiling, student loans, and COVID because he agrees with their progressive aims. President Biden has enjoyed and followed Tribe’s advice in each initiative.
Tribe is not unfamiliar with the ramifications of censorship. “It would be a mistake to leave judgments about the ‘proper’ distribution of speech to politicians. Arming them with a roving license to level the playing field by silencing or adjusting the volume of disfavored speakers is an invitation to self-serving behavior and, ultimately, tyranny,” he wrote eight years ago. Now it is clear that he accepts, perhaps demands, tyranny provided it advances his political beliefs.
Maybe the tyrannical impulse is benign – Tribe may think abolishing the country’s constitutional guardrails would be best for the nation. The law, however, does not have a carve out for claims of moral pursuit.
In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More asks his son-in-law, William Roper, if he would give the Devil the protection of the law. Roper responds that he’d “cut down every law in England” to get to the Devil.
“Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?” More asks. “This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down… do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”
Tribe and the Biden Administration may think that they have a divine mission in censoring alleged misinformation, that the Devil’s reincarnation has taken multiple forms in the bodies of Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., Alex Berenson, and Jay Bhattacharya. Woodrow Wilson had a devout certainty in his persecution of dissidents, as did George Bush in his War on Terror. The self-professed nobility of their missions, however, does not excuse violations of Constitutional rights.
None of us ever wanted to live in a country in which the ruling regime openly expresses opposition to core constitutional rights that many generations of Americans thought were guaranteed by law. The injunction of Missouri v. Biden does nothing other than remind the government of those rights. And this is precisely why the Biden administration so strongly objects.
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From the Archives
The toxic legacy of nuclear weapons testing serves as a stark warning of the danger these weapons pose
By Scott Ritter | RT | March 11, 2021
Millions of people suffer and die from the effects of radiation exposure from decades of nuclear weapons testing. Their experience should give serious pause to those who continue to embrace the viability of a nuclear deterrent.
A dust storm originating in the Sahara Desert swept across parts of Spain, France, the UK, and Ireland last month. In addition to bringing a red tinge to the sky, the dust caused a slight, yet noticeable, spike in radiation in the areas it reached. This radiation spike was caused by the presence of cesium-137, a radioactive isotope produced through the nuclear fission of uranium-235 in nuclear weapons. A legacy of French nuclear weapons testing that occurred in Algeria during the 1960s, the cesium-137 contamination is a reminder that while the testing of nuclear weapons may have been halted for the time being, the consequences of these tests live on through the poisoning of the planet mankind calls home.
The Saharan radioactive dust cloud is but the most recent visible phenomenon of a plague that has infected much of the world. … continue
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