UK police condemned over arrest of French publisher
RT | April 20, 2023
London’s Metropolitan Police has come under fire for its treatment of a French national who was arrested under anti-terrorist legislation earlier this week. Publisher Ernest Moret was reportedly told that his involvement in protests in his homeland were behind his detention in the UK capital.
Moret’s employer, French publishing house Éditions La Fabrique, issued a press release with fellow publisher Verso Books on Thursday in which they described the actions of British police officers as “scandalous.”
“We consider these actions to be outrageous and unjustifiable infringements of basic principles of the freedom of expression and an example of the abuse of anti-terrorism laws,” the statement added.
The publishers further claimed that Moret’s arrest was the latest example of a “slide towards repressive and authoritarian measures taken by the current French government in the face of widespread popular discontent and protest.”
According to the statement, Moret had arrived in London on Monday to take part in the London Book Fair. While at St. Pancras Station, he was allegedly “pulled aside by police officers acting under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and detained for questioning without a lawyer present.”
The arresting officers reportedly explained that Moret was taken into custody because he had participated in recent anti-government protests back in France.
The two publishing houses insisted that the case proves there is “complicity between French and British authorities on this matter.”
The formal reason for Moret’s arrest was stated as obstruction of police duties. His colleagues alleged that officers had demanded that Moret hand over his cell phone and unblock it, which he supposedly refused to do.
Pamela Morton from the UK’s National Union of Journalists (NUJ) wrote: “It seems extraordinary that the British police have acted this way in using terrorism legislation to arrest the publisher who was on legitimate business here for the London Book Fair.”
The Metropolitan Police confirmed in a statement that “at around 1930hrs on Monday, 17 April, a 28-year-old man was stopped by ports officers… under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.”
The AFP news agency later reported that Moret had been released on bail.
France has been gripped by mass protests in recent weeks as people vent their dissatisfaction at a retirement age increase pushed through by President Emmanuel Macron.
Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack
By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | April 20, 2023
Facebook is censoring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s story about US involvement in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines using a ‘fact checker’ with links to the Norwegian government in what represents a clear conflict of interest.
Earlier this year, Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation which was organized with the aid of the Norwegian government, Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.
Journalist Michael Shellenberger first noticed the issue when he tried to post Hersh’s article to Facebook, but saw the social media giant had slapped a warning label on the link stating, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”
Except the ‘fact-checkers’ in question aren’t independent at all.
As Shellenberger notes, “Hersh is infinitely more independent than Facebook’s Norwegian fact-checker. The fact-checking organization is a partnership with a Norwegian government-owned media company, NRK, which has a direct self-interest in censoring the story.”
By censoring the article with a dubious ‘fact check’, Facebook is preventing it from reaching a much wider audience, relegating it in the algorithm.
This is yet another example of how the ‘fact-checker industrial complex’ serves to censor legitimate information at the behest of governments by posing as an independent, non-bias actor when in reality it is merely a front for state control.
Facebook’s claim, made a few years ago, that it cannot act as “the arbiter of the truth” for any contentious issue, has been proven dishonest once again.
“Whether Hersh is wrong or right, his reporting should be debated publicly, not censored. Facebook’s actions are antithetical to America’s tradition of free and open debate and its rejection of secretive, authoritarian censorship,” writes Shellenberger.
“The American people have given Facebook broad liability protections under Section 230 that other media companies don’t get. And yet Facebook is acting like a media company, not a platform. As such, Facebook is putting its Section 230 protection at risk. And censoring Hersh may only attract more attention to it.”
Texas State University is sued over speech restrictions
Publicly funded universities are bound by The First Amendment
By Ben Squires | Reclaim The Net | April 19, 2023
Free speech nonprofit Speech First has sued Texas State University over its “harassment” and computer policies, alleging they violate students’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
The university’s harassment policy bans “unwelcome verbal, written, graphic, or physical conduct” deemed “sufficiently severe or pervasive” targeted at people based on factors like sex, gender, and race.
The lawsuit argues that the policy chills the speech of students by discouraging them from “expressing views that are outside the mainstream about the political and social issues of the day.”
The computer policy bans students from using “informational resources” provided by the university to “affect the result of a local, state, or national election.”
The lawsuit argues that the policy bans students from using university email accounts to send political emails, and describes it as a “vague, content-based, and overbroad restriction of protected speech.”
The lawsuit claims that three students are suffering “concrete injuries” as a result of the harassment policy and they fear that the expression of their deeply held views is prohibited.
The students also cannot send political emails for fear of punishment, the lawsuit alleges.
The RESTRICT Act will usher in a new era of censorship under the guise of “national security”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | April 17, 2023
45 days after 9/11, the United States government passed the PATRIOT Act — a chilling law that used the guise of “national security” to greatly expand the federal government’s secret surveillance powers.
Almost 23 years later, another far-reaching bill, the “Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act,” better known by its acronym, the RESTRICT Act, is using the same national security talking point to justify further federal government encroachment on Americans’ rights.
Although the bill doesn’t mention TikTok, its authors, Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator John Thune, have framed it as “the best way to counter the TikTok threat.”
However, the impact of the bill extends far beyond TikTok and gives the US government sweeping powers to ban a wide range of apps and services.
The bill authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit “current, past, or potential future transactions” involving technology products or services with more than one million US-based annual active users that:
- Are deemed to pose an “undue or unacceptable risk” in various areas (such as national security and election interference)
- Involve anyone determined to be “owned, directed, or controlled” by a “foreign adversary” (a term that can currently be applied to China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela but can be extended to other nations by the Secretary)
The Secretary of Commerce can also refer these tech products and services to the President who can take action to “compel divestment of, or otherwise mitigate the risk” associated with them.
Caitlin Vogus, the deputy director of rights group the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project, warned that these powers target the free speech rights of Americans. In a statement to Motherboard, she said:
“The RESTRICT Act could lead to apps and other ICT [information communication technology] services with connections to certain foreign countries being banned in the United States. Any bill that would allow the US government to ban an online service that facilitates Americans’ speech raises serious First Amendment concerns.”
Rights groups have also sounded the alarm about the RESTRICT Act’s threats to fine or imprison those who attempt to “evade the provisions” of the bill — a threat that they fear could be aimed at US citizens who attempt to access banned apps or services.
The RESTRICT Act states: “No person may engage in any transaction or take any other action with intent to evade the provisions of this Act.”
The bill even makes it unlawful to “approve” of “any act” that tries to evade the provisions of the bill.
People that violate these rules can be fined up to $1 million and imprisoned for up to 20 years.
Senator Warner has insisted that these penalties won’t be used to target individual users.
However, digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has noted that the bill doesn’t actually prevent individual users from being targeted. In an article about the RESTRICT Act, the EFF warned:
“Due to undefined mitigation measures coupled with a vague enforcement provision, the bill could also criminalize common practices like using a VPN or side-loading to install a prohibited app.”
Another concerning aspect of the RESTRICT Act is that it allows the Secretary of Commerce to form technical advisory committees without them being subject to Chapter 10 of part 1 of title 5 of the United States Code.
This section of the law aims to reduce “the undue influence” of special interests and lobbyists. It allows Congress to review the proposed activities of advisory committees before they’re formed and ensure that these committees aren’t being “inappropriately influenced” by special interests. It also requires advisory committees to report their activities and goals to Congress, make their meetings open to the public, make transcripts available to the public, and file reports with the Library of Congress.
Excluding RESTRICT Act advisory committees from this section of the law opens the door for lobbyists representing US tech giants to serve on these committees, push for their competitors in other countries to be banned, and further cement their dominance.
And the problems don’t end here. The RESTRICT Act also limits judicial, congressional, and public scrutiny of the government’s actions.
Actions taken by the Secretary of the Treasury under this act are exempt from sections 551, 553-559, and 701-707 of title 5 of the United States Code — sections that require federal officials and agencies to provide public notice when proposing rule making, allow interested persons to participate in the rule making, and give those who suffer legal wrong as a result of government action the right to judicial review.
The scope of judicial review under the RESTRICT Act is limited to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the court is prohibited from disturbing “any action taken” by the Secretary or the President when they review or prohibit transactions or take action against tech products and services, unless a petitioner demonstrates that the action is unconstitutional or violates a statutory command.
Additionally, Americans have “no right of access” to the information that the government uses when deciding whether to prohibit transactions involving technology products or services under this bill. The Freedom of Information Act also doesn’t apply to any information submitted by affected parties or created by the government when reviewing such transactions.
We obtained a copy of the RESTRICT Act for you here.
Despite the glaring problems with the bill, its architects are blaming TikTok for the criticism and claiming that the owners of the app are “spreading false claims about the Restrict Act in an effort to continue operating with impunity.”
According to Warner, the RESTRICT ACT has more than 20 bipartisan cosponsors.
The bill also has the full support of the Biden White House which has already demonstrated that it’s no fan of free speech and is currently being sued for alleged First Amendment violations.
If the RESTRICT Act passes, the Biden admin and any future pro-censorship administrations will be handed new powers to continue their crackdowns on online speech.
Iran slams world’s inaction on deteriorating rights situation in West
Press TV – April 15 2023
Iran’s vice-president of the judiciary for international affairs has criticized international mechanisms for failing to take a position regarding the deteriorating human rights situation in Western countries, saying international rights bodies are duty-bound to support and promote the key issue across the world.
In a Saturday letter to Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kazem Gharibabadi said the world suffers from fundamental challenges and dilemmas regarding human rights which are mainly caused by those countries that “claim to be defending human rights and see themselves in the position of making demands from others and being immune from any criticism and responsibility.”
“The responsibility of the international human rights mechanisms in such conditions is fundamental to support and promote human rights, which must be fulfilled by respecting independence, impartiality, professionalism, and non-selectivity,” said Gharibabadi, who also served as the Secretary General of Iran’s High Council for Human Rights.
He warned of adopting “politically-motivated and selective” approaches that does a great disservice and is detrimental to human rights, and erodes public trust in human rights mechanisms.
He drew the commissioner’s attention to situations in several countries, including France, Britain and Germany, over the last six months regarding the “right to freedom of assembly and of association.”
Pointing to massive public demonstrations in France in protest against the government’s policies, the Iranian rights official said, “Instead of listening to the protesters’ demands and trying to improve the situation, the French government resorts to large-scale violence to deal with the gatherings.”
Gharibabadi censured the French government for using anti-riot equipment, assaulting people, and arresting thousands of protesters as only part of the countermeasures.
Referring to Britain’s introduction of amendments to the Public Order Bill to increase police powers to deal with protesters at rallies, he said the “repression bill” leads to a “significant and unprecedented increase in the powers of the police force to impose undue restrictions on peaceful protests and … it criminalizes assemblies under the pretext of deprivation of public comfort and provides a sentence of up to 10 years of imprisonment.”
Gharibabdi pointed to a sit-in protest in Germany. He said over 3,000 German police and security forces arrested hundreds of political opponents under the pretext of plotting to stage a coup d’état.
“In yet another move, the German government seeks to pass a law that will expel its opponents from all government jobs under the pretext of extremism.” The top Iranian rights official said most European countries have been the scene of peaceful protests over the past months which were “suppressed and dispersed with the most severe attacks by law enforcement forces.”
Referring to the recent riots in Iran, Gharibabadi said,” Egged on by incitement and backing of particular states, media outlets and terrorist groups, the recent gatherings in the Islamic Republic of Iran deviated from their peaceful nature and morphed into riots, causing violations of the fundamental rights of citizens.”
On the contrary, he said, Iran took a responsible policy, and established an investigative committee to launch inquiries into the possible physical and financial damages and the violations of the rights of all parties.
The Iranian vice-president slammed the West and the United States for pursuing a politically-motivated approach and exploiting the Human Rights Council by establishing a so-called mechanism to investigate the riots in the country.
“The same countries that consider themselves supporters of the rioters in Iran are – both in law and in practice – committing the most heinous crimes to systematically violate the right to peaceful assembly.”
The Orwellian RESTRICT Act is a chilling echo of ‘1984’ and an erosion of American freedom
Far beyond cracking down on TikTok, the bill envisages frightening powers to control citizens’ access to ‘unwanted’ information
By Ian Miles Cheong | RT | April 15, 2023
In an eerie semblance to George Orwell’s ‘1984’, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act, or RESTRICT Act, looms as a dark cloud over American liberties.
Branded as a mere “TikTok ban,” this act possesses a sweeping reach that would empower the federal government to designate any nation a “foreign adversary,” ban online services and products even indirectly controlled by an entity within their jurisdiction, and severely punish Americans who engage in almost any transaction with them.
Sponsored by Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the RESTRICT Act not only targets the Chinese-linked TikTok platform but also has the potential to dismantle the very foundations of American freedom. One cannot help but draw comparisons to Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, where pervasive government surveillance and control are the norm. In a frightening twist, this proposed legislation could make such nightmarish fiction a stark reality.
The chilling provisions of the RESTRICT Act would impose a civil penalty of up to $250,000 by the Secretary of Commerce on individuals who conduct transactions that violate the act. The bill’s definition of a transaction is disturbingly broad, encompassing activities such as acquisitions, importation, data transmission, software updates, repairs, data hosting services, and other transactions designed to evade or circumvent the act’s application.
However, as in the oppressive world of ‘1984’, the $250,000 fine is only the beginning. American citizens found to be in violation of the act could face a criminal fine of up to $1 million and a jail sentence of up to 20 years.
The parallels to Orwell’s vision are striking, as the RESTRICT Act essentially serves as a tool of control and punishment. It is a sobering reminder of the dystopian fate that awaits the public if it allows government unchecked power in the name of security from foreign nations.
Moreover, the bill allows the federal government to seize and access various devices and services belonging to American citizens, including phones and computers, internet access points, e-commerce technology and services, cryptocurrencies, and even advanced technologies like quantum computing, post-quantum cryptography, advanced robotics, and biotechnology.
To add insult to injury, the government is granted immunity from public oversight by restricting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the enforcement of the bill. In this regard, the RESTRICT Act resembles an American version of China’s “Great Firewall,” which isolates its citizens from a significant portion of the World Wide Web.
However, unlike in China, where VPN usage does not automatically lead to imprisonment and many citizens use it to access popular apps and video games without repercussions, the RESTRICT Act imposes much more severe penalties on those who violate its provisions.
Already, conservatives are sounding the alarm on the dangers of the bill, including Tucker Carlson, who dedicated a monologue warning that it would provide the government the ability to “punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate on the Internet.”
Donald Trump Jr. wrote on Twitter: “Nothing is ever as it seems. The uniparty wants more power to control what we do and see. And now we’re going to give the Biden goons the ability to throw us in jail for 20 years if they decide we’re in violation of this craziness? No thanks.”
The US House Committee on Financial Services issued a warning to other members of the Republican party to reject the bill, stating that the RESTRICT Act “is using TikTok as a smokescreen for the largest expansion of executive power since IEEPA.”
“The US can’t beat China by becoming more like the Chinese Communist Party,” it added.
It remains to be seen whether Americans will be able to wake up to the dystopian reality that looms just beyond the horizon should the ratification of the RESTRICT Act proceed. For their sake, and everyone else’s, let’s hope so.
Ian Miles Cheong is a political and cultural commentator. His work has been featured on The Rebel, Penthouse, Human Events, and The Post Millennial.
Testing the system
XYMPHORA | APRIL 15, 2023
The affidavit used to establish the probable cause to get an arrest warrant for the patsy. Two things of interest: 1) whatever the experts might think is likely, Teixeira had a Top Secret security clearance, and 2) whatever Bellingcop might say, he was identified easily without recourse to fancy internet sleuthing of the granite countertop.
The standard model is that the authorities get a young, idealistic, patriotic guy (Lee Harvey Oswald, perhaps even Timothy McVeigh), and convince him that he needs to do some seemingly odd things in order to save his country from real peril. For example, he may be working to stop illegal sales of weapons by mail, or even protect the President from assassination (both options in the case of LHO). Given the current controversy over Presidents and classified documents, it would not be hard to convince a guy like Teixeira that he had to ‘test the system’ by posting documents on relatively obscure social media platforms, and talk up these documents on discussion groups, in order to determine how long before the government is aware of the risk. It is a plausible ‘stress test’ of the government’s ability to protect secrets. The oddity of using photos of previously folded documents may be because the team using the patsy was lazy and that was the easiest way to do it, particularly as it didn’t leave a computer trail the patsy might use in his defense, or perhaps it was just supposed to remove identifying marks that could be found by specialized search engines (or so he might have been told). In any event, none of this was true.
The reasons for the operation:
- to get the open-ended RESTRICT Act passed by producing a phony security crisis (‘the Chinese are using their apps to suck out all our secrets!’);
- to further integrate and normalize the (((media))) as a full part of the national security state;
- to publicize the utility of using British intelligence assets like Bellingcop, a method of getting US PR accepted as fact due to the ‘objective’ magic of ‘computer sleuthing’;
- to get out of the war in Ukraine, now generally considered to be a lost and embarrassing War For The Jews, damaging to the reputation of the hegemon, to turn to the war against China; and
- possibly, but it is a stretch, to use the lies revealed by the documents to replace Brandon with somebody more capable of facing the Deep-State-threatening Trump candidacy.
Of course, as is standard in these cases, the patsy will say various things in his defense, but his lawyers will tell him to shut up as: 1) everybody involved will deny everything, 2) he will have no concrete proof, and 3) raising these issues will just anger the judge and increase his sentence for slandering the good name of the Deep State and the patriotic people who do its bidding. He’ll be told to keep his head down and he may come out of this, older, but alive.
Washington’s Crackdown on Whistleblowers Poses Danger to Free Speech
By James Tweedie – Sputnik – 14.04.2023
The US government is tightening its grip over the internet, social media and free speech. Facebook* whistleblower Ryan Hartwig and former Google and YouTube software engineer Zach Vorhies reveal the dangers and implications.
A US bill targeting the TikTok app is really a wider crackdown on online privacy and public scrutiny of government, two Big Tech whistleblowers have told Sputnik.
The Restrict Act, currently working its way through the US Congress, has been touted as an attack on Chinese software developer ByteDance — whose US CEO Shou Zi Chew was hauled before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March.
The legislation would allow the government to restrict access to apps from any firm it chooses — raising the prospect of its use to protect US firms from foreign competitors. But tech experts and free speech advocates fear it will open the door to a widespread crackdown against online critics of the White House.
Ryan Hartwig said the legislation was “essentially the Patriot Act online” — referring to legislation passed in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that allowed unwarranted government wiretapping of US and foreign citizens’ phone lines.
“It’s a horrible piece of legislation. Basically it’s not only banning TikTok, it’s giving the government authority to arrest people for anything they say online. It’s definitely clear that the government wants to continue to restrict free speech online,” Hartwig said. “It is really a problem. They are going to crack down.”
The bill is ostensibly aimed at protecting children and teenagers from harmful content, which the former Facebook employee said had some validity. “But the Restrict Act does a lot more than just censor a few bad posts. It basically gives them blanket authority… and criminalizes any kind of political speech.”
“If I just attack them, if I say bad things about the president, it gives the government authority to arrest me.” Hartwig stressed. “The Restrict Act can punish people for whistleblowing on an illegal government action.”
Just this week, 21-year-old US Air National Guard enlisted Airman Jack Teixeira was arrested as the suspect in the embarrassing Pentagon leaks of Ukrainian plans for its yet-to-materialize spring counter-offensive. Teixeira was traced through an online chat group for video gamers on the Discord app. The whistleblower said its users should “be concerned.”
The ‘blockchain’ technology used by Bitcoin and other concerns — essentially a variant of mass file-sharing for online data — could protect users’ rights, he said.
“There are websites that are using blockchain technology to avoid censorship, which is great. So there’s one called Bastion that is Blockchain-based and cannot be deleted off the internet,” Hartwig explained, calling the technology “the future of the Internet.”
But protecting oneself from government snooping is difficult for the average casual web surfer.
“Unless you’re a tech nerd, and you have all kinds of things for it,” Hartwig says. “It starts with using a different operating system, because most people use Microsoft Windows. So a lot are moving over to Linux, which has less vulnerabilities,” he said.
Using a virtual private network (VPN) protects users from advertisers gleaning their web history, but “it’s hard to prevent that from tracking us because I’m sure the NSA has tools that can bypass pretty much anything,” he added. “They probably know exactly what we’re talking about.”
“People are waking up to government censorship and surveillance,” Hartwig insisted. “It’s important for us to realize that the government is not our friend… If that bill passes, then the United States will have become essentially a police state. We will no longer be a free country.”
Zach Vorhies emphasized that the point of online snooping was not to eavesdrop on citizens, but to tar them by association with known suspects.
“We know from the Snowden leaks that the NSA tracks by default the endpoints of communication. It turns out that the most valuable part of a communication is not the content that is said but identifying who is talking to who in order to build a relationship graph.”
Even AI assistants like Amazon Alexa have been used to record their users’ conversations. “Police have used court orders to grab audio content from these Alexa’s when they were supposedly not in active recording mode,” the tech expert noted.
Vorhies agreed that users of internet chats like Discord and 4Chan should be “concerned”, because “no corporate or public space is safe for private speech anymore. That ship has sailed long ago.”
He said the government and major tech corporations were “strong-arming companies to employ AI monitoring of content.”
“We saw this in the 2020 election when the iPhone app store kicked off Parler for not integrating content-approved moderation,” Vorhies noted. “It looks like the government is going to play a soft hand for the meantime and let the big tech organizations employ massive censorship through their terms of service.”
The tech guru said it would take about a day for someone with the coding know-how to write software for a “private space” on the internet, which government agencies would be unable to crack.
“It’s my expectation that the elite families that control governments and military are using such obscure private spaces to communicate,” he ventured. “I can’t stress enough what an exciting time we are entering. It’s also terrifying as we are entering an age of so many unknowns. It’s obvious that Pandora’s box has been opened, and the elites are putting both hands in and grasping tightly.”
Pentagon ‘leak’ theatrics continue as US finds scapegoat
By Drago Bosnic | April 14, 2023
The pseudo-WikiLeaks 2.0 has just been stepped up a notch as the FBI arrested the perpetrator who shared the “secret docs” through a Discord server. The 21-year-old Airman First Class Jack Douglas Teixeira of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was apprehended on April 13 for his involvement with the “top-secret leak”. The controversial “Pentagon docs” contain what the US mainstream propaganda machine claims is “an array of national security secrets, including the breadth of surveillance the United States is able to conduct on Russia”.
Apparently, Teixeira posted the “classified documents” in an invitation-only Discord (mainly gaming-focused platform) chat group called “Thug Shaker Central”. According to the Washington Post, which reportedly talked to other members of the group, “classified Pentagon documents containing intelligence collected by the US and several other countries were posted by a man claiming to be a ‘military base’ worker”. The chat room apparently had no more than 20 members, mostly young men, who discussed video games, memes, movies and politics. It also included users from both Russia and Ukraine.
At some point during 2022, a user known as OG posted “a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon” and claimed to “know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people”. One of the unnamed members of the chat group told the Washington Post that “at the time, few people read the note” and added that “OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility of a ‘military base’ that prohibited cell phones and other electronic devices and copied the classified documents”, but insisted OG wasn’t hostile to the US or working for any foreign government.
The Washington Post report also presented OG as somewhat of an anarchist, since he supposedly “thought US law enforcement and intelligence were a sinister force that sought to suppress citizens and keep them in the dark” and complained about “government overreach”. The claim could very well be an attempt to portray OG as “a disgruntled serviceman who simply wanted to share dirty state secrets with the American people”. This would reinforce the idea that OG was supposedly acting on his own, further covering up the role of US intelligence in the so-called “leak”.
The Washington Post report never mentioned OG’s real name, but other media later revealed that he was indeed Jack Teixeira. Despite their own claims that he wasn’t involved with foreign intelligence, the US propaganda machine, never the ones to let a perfect opportunity for Russophobia slip by, were quick to blame Russia for the “leak”. Reuters insists that three “anonymous” US officials “confirmed that Russia or pro-Russian groups could be behind the leak”. Expectedly, no evidence whatsoever was presented to back up such claims. But then again, why worry? Who could possibly even contemplate the idea that any US official would ever lie about anything?
The New York Times also reported extensively on Teixeira’s case. According to NYT, Airman Teixeira was trained as a cyber transport systems specialist, a job that could also entail keeping his unit’s communication networks running. He was assigned to the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base. The NYT report admits that “military officials refused to disclose information on what in Airman Teixeira’s duties would necessitate him having access to daily slides about Ukraine, much less the daily deluge of intelligence reports from the CIA, NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence”.
Some US officials told NYT that Teixeira could also have gained access to “secret docs” through daily emails on a classified computer network, where those emails might’ve been automatically forwarded to other people. On the other hand, members of the Discord group chat told NYT that the aforementioned documents were “purely informative”, but started to get wider attention only when one of the teenage members of “Thug Shaker Central” took them and posted a few dozen “secret documents” to a public online forum where they were picked up by several Russian-language Telegram channels.
In short, the US propaganda machine wants us to believe that a 21-year-old intelligence technician who just graduated and held the rank of airman (equivalent of private in the US Army) was privy to top-secret intelligence on the Kiev regime’s offensive plans, Russia, South Korea, China and other global hotspots. NYT itself also reluctantly admitted that “the arrest raised questions about why such a junior enlisted airman had access to such an array of potentially damaging secrets, why adequate safeguards had not been put in place after earlier leaks and why a young man would risk his freedom to share intelligence about the war in Ukraine with a group of friends he knew from a video game social media site”.
US media claim that the Pentagon was completely unaware of the “leak” and learned of it only after the documents began surfacing on Telegram and Twitter. Apparently, the Pentagon even tried to hack and delete some of the posts about the documents, “but was ultimately unsuccessful”. Again, it’s quite bemusing that an institution wasting well over $850 billion every year is incapable of removing such “crucial information” from several Telegram channels almost exclusively run by civilian enthusiasts with no budget. The sheer amount of logical disparities indicates that this particular case is highly controversial (at best), while there’s an extremely strong possibility it’s all an elaborate counterintelligence operation.
Apart from the more obvious geopolitical benefits such as pressuring countries like Egypt to distance themselves from Russia or further disrupting Moscow’s relations with the traditionally pro-Russian Serbia (once again accused of weapons shipments to Kiev), there is a very strong domestic incentive to push the “leak” narrative. For instance, the infamous CNN argues that “the leak spotlights major ongoing US intelligence vulnerabilities“, which can hardly be interpreted as anything else but an attempt to strengthen government control in the US. The “leak” could also be used to accelerate the adoption of the truly totalitarian RESTRICT act that the disillusioned former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard described as PATRIOT Act 2.0, only worse.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Biden Administration is sued, accused of pressuring Twitter to censor journalist Alex Berenson
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | April 13, 2023
Independent journalist Alex Berenson has filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden, a Pfizer board member, and others for pressuring Twitter to ban his account.
His account was banned after posting a tweet questioning COVID-19 vaccines.
Initially, Twitter resisted the calls to ban Berenson. However, eventually the social media platform caved to the pressure.
Berenson sued Twitter in a federal court in California, accusing the company of violating its contract with him. The lawsuit resulted in a settlement and Twitter admitting it should not have banned him.
The defendants in the new lawsuit, filed on April 12, are President Biden, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, former White House COVID-19 official Dr. Andrew Slavitt, Pfizer board member Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and the White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty.
In a meeting with Twitter, Slavitt and other White House officials asked why Berenson had not been “kicked off” Twitter. Slavitt has previously called Berenson a conspiracy theorist.
Flaherty recently said that he remembered Slavitt “expressing his view that Twitter was not enforcing its content guidelines with respect to Alex Berenson’s tweets, and that employees from Twitter disagreed with that view.”
Gottlieb also asked Twitter to suspend Berenson. He has also previously called for the suspension of other people, including former acting FDA commissioner Dr. Brett Girior.
In the offending tweet, Berenson wrote, “It doesn’t stop infection. Or Transmission. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”
According to his lawsuit, the defendants violated his First Amendment rights.
We obtained a copy of the complaint for you here.
“The government Defendants specifically targeted Mr. Berenson’s constitutionally protected speech and journalism,” the suit states.
“Members of [the Biden] administration engaged in a nearly unprecedented conspiracy to suppress Mr. Berenson’s First Amendment rights.
“Through 2021, they—and a senior board member at Pfizer, Inc. which has made more than $70 billion selling COVID-19 vaccines—worked together to pressure Twitter to suspend Mr. Berenson’s account and mute his voice as a leading COVID-19 vaccine skeptic. The White House and the Biden Administration did this at the same time government officials promoted their views on the necessity of COVID19 vaccination on Twitter, effectively blocking Mr. Berenson from commenting on their own statements or making his own.”
It adds that the permanent suspension “harmed both Mr. Berenson and a clearly identifiable class of nearly 100 million Americans whose interests he helped represent—Americans who either had questions about the vaccine or did not want to be forced to take a shot that they feared had been rushed through development and lost its ability to prevent COVID-19 infections within months.”
The suit is asking the court to stop the government from targeting the journalist and to award him damages.
UK newspaper removes interview with Russian ambassador
RT | April 13, 2023
Russian Ambassador to the UK Andrey Kelin has accused The Times of “caving in” to outside forces after it removed an interview with the diplomat from its website. Kelin warned that the move does not bode well for the newspaper’s readers.
The story in question was published last Sunday, but as of Thursday it was no longer available on The Times’ web page. Instead, readers receive a notice that the article “has been removed.” An online service that records the content of popular internet links dates Tuesday morning as the latest snapshot of the article.
The Russian Embassy released a statement from Kelin on Thursday condemning the removal of the interview. The message, which was addressed to Times Chief Editor Tony Gallagher, described the decision as “deeply revealing” and suggested that the newspaper had taken the step after “[coming] under fire from the influential local anti-Russian troupe.”
“Your newspaper has sadly caved in to outside pressure or, highly likely, instructions from the authorities,” Kelin argued.
“Hardly the hallmark of a courageous independent editorial policy. And bad news for your readers, who have been deprived of a balanced hearing of viewpoints and, consequently, the ability to make their own judgment about the crisis in Ukraine.”
The original article in The Times, titled ‘Russia is ready for ceasefire but not defeat, says ambassador to UK’, explained Moscow’s stance on the conflict with Ukraine, as well as the possibility of peace talks.
The ambassador commented on Ukrainian domestic issues, such as the poor economic situation and the crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by President Vladimir Zelensky. The discussion also covered Russia’s relations with China.
The Russian Embassy has published a copy of the article in full, in protest against its removal by the newspaper.
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Fact File : Civilian Internment 1939 – 1945
BBC – Compiled in 2003
Internment of civilian nationals belonging to opposing sides was carried out in varying degrees by all belligerent powers in World War Two. It was also the fate of those servicemen who found themselves in a neutral country.
At the outbreak of war there were around 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain who, it was feared, could be spies, or willing to assist Britain’s enemies in the event of an invasion. All Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were called before special tribunals and were divided into one of three groups… continue
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