FTC faces ethics complaint after alleged retaliation against Twitter over censorship revelations
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | March 14, 2023
America First Legal (AFL) has filed federal ethics and Inspector General complaints and launched a probe into the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliation against Twitter owner Elon Musk and Twitter for exposing the Biden administration and federal agencies for pressuring Twitter to censor content.
Last week, the House’s Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report detailing how the FTC has been harassing Musk and Twitter over the past few months.
Read the FOIA request, IG investigative request, and Senate ethics request here, here, and here.
AFL filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics requesting an investigation into several Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, for violating Senate Rule 43, which prohibits partisan communications in an unconcluded federal proceeding. AFL accuses these senators of encouraging the FTC to investigate Musk and Twitter, which further solidifies conservatives’ claims of the Biden administration weaponizing federal agencies.
AFL filed another complaint with the FTC’s Inspector General requesting an investigation into the agency’s chair Lina Khan and other officials for abusing power.
The organization also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records that would reveal the reasons for the FTC’s abuse of power.
“The Biden Administration is steadfastly focused on weaponizing the federal government to advance its radical, left-wing political agenda,” said AFL’s general counsel Gene Hamilton. “Most Americans are now aware of politicization at the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security. And now, the Biden Administration has turned to the Federal Trade Commission to exact harm on those who oppose their radical agenda–particularly regarding free speech on social media platforms. Weaponizing the FTC to retaliate against Elon Musk and Twitter for exposing the truth about Deep State censorship is reprehensible, and we will not stand by idly.”
I Read Richard Haass’ New Book (So You Don’t Have To!)
Corbett • 03/13/2023
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
Have you ever thought that the Bill of Rights was a bit lacking? Did you ever wish there was a list of obligations detailing those things we owe to the government for the privilege of being born into a certain political jurisdiction? Then, boy, do I have the perfect book for you! Join James for today’s dissection of The Bill of Obligations, the latest turgid tome of trash from Richard Haass, the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Watch on Archive / BitChute / Odysee / Rokfin / Rumble / Substack / Download the mp4
For those with limited bandwidth, CLICK HERE to download a smaller, lower file size version of this episode.
For those interested in audio quality, CLICK HERE for the highest-quality version of this episode (WARNING: very large download).
DOCUMENTATION
| Episode 188 – Listening to the Enemy | |
| Time Reference: | 00:30 |
| Episode 225 – Still Listening to the Enemy | |
| Time Reference: | 00:36 |
| Episode 412 – I Read The Great Narrative (So You Don’t Have To!) | |
| Time Reference: | 00:41 |
| Episode 418 – I Read Bill Gates’ New Book (So You Don’t Have To!) | |
| Time Reference: | 00:48 |
| The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens | |
| Time Reference: | 01:06 |
| Richard Haass: “No,” CFR members are not New World Order architects (Feb 11, 2021) | |
| Time Reference: | 01:21 |
| Richard Haass on ‘The Bill of Obligations’ | |
| Time Reference: | 04:23 |
| Wall Street and FDR by Antony Sutton | |
| Time Reference: | 07:48 |
| FLASHBACK: You Are Being Programmed to Accept Global ID | |
| Time Reference: | 08:15 |
| Corbett Report Radio 050 – Deconstructing Pearl Harbor with Robert Stinnett | |
| Time Reference: | 08:22 |
| What Is The Average Global Temperature? | |
| Time Reference: | 17:24 |
| Episode 430 – The Media Are the Terrorists | |
| Time Reference: | 27:30 |
| Episode 382 – Your Body, Their Choice | |
| Time Reference: | 32:06 |
| Jacobsen v. Massachussetts | |
| Time Reference: | 32:20 |
| Buck v. Bell | |
| Time Reference: | 32:26 |
| How & Why Big Oil Conquered the World | |
| Time Reference: | 32:30 |
Leaked Documents Show ‘Vaccine’ Conspiracy in Austria
Thanks to German-speakers’ orderliness, we now have written proof of collaboration between gov’t, doctors, and legacy media–time for tribunals!
By epimetheus – Die Fackel 2.0 – March 13, 2023
This is literally ‘hot off the ‘presses’: Austrian alternative media outlet Der Status published leaked documents from the Austrian Chamber of Physicians (Ärztekammer ) that show, beyond reasonable doubt, the grand conspiracy between government, the Chamber, and its protagonists.
Without much further ado, here’s my translation; as always, emphases and bottom lines mine. The below text has been lightly edited for clarity.
The Austrian Medical Association, under the ousted red [i.e., Social-Democratic] president Szekeres and its current president Steinhart, worked closely with the Health Ministers for years. And in doing so, it betrayed the interests of doctors. [to say nothing about patients]
Spring 2020: Collaboration with the Politicians Commences
In April 2020, Szekeres, Steinhart, and Minister Anschober [Greens, since retired] signed a ‘Memorandum of Understanding Concerning COVID-19 Vaccinations’. That is, at a time—more than half a year—before the conditional approval of these injectable products, this Memorandum dealt with, among other things, advertising campaigns by doctors for the vaccinations, the vaccination of health-care workers and their family members, vaccinations in homes and schools, and reimbursement agreements.
Yet, secretly, an additional deal was also negotiated: it was literally agreed that ‘clear blanket vaccination recommendations will be made via the National Immunisation Consortium (Nationales Impfgremium, or NlG) on the suitability of the various vaccines and their applicability, esp. for various high-risk groups’.
Explosive: the Minister of Health and the Austrian Medical Association leadership signed a contract in which they go over the head of the National Immunisation Consortium—and they did so long before the injections were even available—to determine what the National Immunisation Consortium will recommend.
[this means, in other words, that the NIG never had anything to say about the data or the underlying clinical trials; this much we already knew, but now we have the receipts: these people have failed the public, betrayed the trust of patients, and soiled themselves]
It was never about Facts or Truth
Until now, the public was not aware of any document that so clearly showed that various ‘expert panels’ and ‘commissions’ obviously only served to obligingly recommend what politicians and the medical association leadership wanted. It was never about expertise, about advice, about objective science, about health.
Long before the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign, when vaccines did not even exist (!), it was only about one thing: vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate! The various ‘expert committees’ and doctors served only as Komparsen [extras, in German, one may also use the term Statisten, which literally implies undue influence of the state]. And it is obvious that the medical association leadership was ‘bought’ off with the reimbursement fee agreement [I’ve omitted the screen shots of some original documents, which can be checked out, if you read German, in the original article; it suffices to say that the fees are extraordinarily high, esp. in light of the incidence of injection: 25 Euros for the first jab and 20 Euros for every successive jab; this piece of evidence is reproduced below in the same position as in the original article]. April 2020 thus was the decisive moment in the history of the Medical Association in which its leadership handed the soul of the medical profession to politicians for the equivalent of thirty pieces of silver.
The Persecution of Doctors is Decided Upon
That was not all: in an ‘Amendments to the Memorandum of Understanding on COVID-19 Vaccinations between the Austrian Chamber of Physicians and the Ministry of Health, concluded in April 2020’, dated 2 Sept. 2021, the medical association leadership ‘promised action with respect to the services rendered by the medical profession’. These, too, signed off by both parties:
The Chamber of Physicians will conduct a media campaign as well as a campaign among the medical profession to increase the willingness of the population to be vaccinated. This includes raising the vaccination issue at other medical appointments (e.g., regular health check-ups) and the promise to take stronger action against doctors who spread misinformation.
As is well known, what constituted ‘misinformation’ was left to the arbitrary whims of the leadership of the Chamber of Physicians. This disgraceful agreement formed the basis for the persecution of critical doctors, which continues to this day. The medical disciplinary law was, in fact, misused for intimidation and propaganda purposes. In doing so, the leadership of the Chamber of Physicians had turned against its paying members [membership is mandatory in Austria as the Chamber also certifies physicians, much like these boards and associations in the U.S.], which cemented into place the persecution of doctors in the style of the Inquisition.
Highlighted passages are translated above; source: https://derstatus.at/politik/aerztekammer-diktierte-impf-empfehlung-466.html
Disciplinary Proceedings by the Medical Association Were (Are) Illegal
The behaviour of the leadership of the Chamber of Physicians’ leadership in recent years is now coming back to haunt them. For months, the medical association has been attacked, ridiculed, and had its very existence openly questioned by politicians. Having done their duty for politicians in the last three years without a peep, the Chamber is apparently no longer needed and may well be let go of. The Chamber of Physicians is sinking more and more into political insignificance. According to insiders, it is now even regarded as a political opponent, a situation that can also be seen in legacy media. After having served as a ‘doormat’ for politicians of all stripes for years, the Chamber of Physicians is now also being treated as such. Various scandals internal to the medical association reinforce this tendency. [talk about Karma, eh? Those who don’t have self-respect will have a hard time getting others’ respect… ]
In the meantime, the Regional Administrative Courts of Vienna, Lower Austria, and Vorarlberg have petitioned the Constitutional Court to repeal parts or the entire Disciplinary Law in the Physicians’ Act [Ärztegesetz, these parts of the Act permit the Chamber of Physicians to enforce standards] on grounds of their suspected unconstitutionality; it is possible that the Constitutional Court will rule even the entire Physicians’ Act unconstitutional. The Chamber of Physicians is a self-governing body. All its committees are to be selected from among its members, i.e., from medical professionals. However, the Disciplinary Commission consists of two medical assessors and a ‘judicially competent chairman’ who is appointed by the Minister of Health in agreement with the Minister of Justice, i.e., someone who must not be a trained physician and who does not come out of the Chamber of Physicians. Thus, the composition of the Disciplinary Commission is a violation of the Federal Constitution. This is the unanimous legal opinion of three state administrative courts [Verwaltungsgerichtshof] and countless jurists.
[I’ll have more to say about this particularity below, for time being: this is potentially huge—and it would be akin to completely re-writing the rules of medicine]
The Chamber of Physicians has unintentionally awakened sleeping dogs with its wave of ill-advised disciplinary hearings against critical doctors. The consequence may be that it now has to be completely re-imagined. But this could also be an opportunity for the medical profession after all the repression of doctors in recent years. For in its current form, the Chamber of Physicians is a politically superfluous enemy and, for its members, the doctors, a very expensive mandatory association whose dues are used to finance the functionaries’ luxury salaries.
From time immemorial, we’ve all known that a man’s—or woman’s—price is about, in purely monetary terms, 30 pieces of silver, to say nothing about the amorality and, yes, cowardice of most physicians everywhere.
The notion of buying off support has been well-established in the U.S. (see, e.g., here).
Here, we’re talking individual doctors who are paid handsomely for jabbing people.
Yet, this isn’t even the worst part of this.
The Three Axioms of Governance-by-Bureaucracy
You’ve gotta love them German-speakers for being so stupid to actually put these things into writing.
We now have definitive proof that the subsequent shenanigans—first and foremost the obnoxious Covid Passports — were based on the unholy trinity of questionable medical ethics (ahem), government coercion, and arbitrary definitions.
Remember that ‘fully vaccinated’ used to be two injections? Now it’s at least three, with the fourth jab ‘optional’ (haha, see above), and the Covid Passports come with expiration dates varying from 3-6 months, irrespective whether you’re ‘vaccinated’ or ‘recovered’.
Thus, we may formulate whatthe first axiom of governance-by-bureaucracy is: everything leaks.
In other words: arbitrary categories by government fiat, arrived at with the collaboration of the overwhelming majority of the medical profession.
If history is any guide, the Covid Passports are the functional equivalent of the Aryan Certificate deployed by Nazi Germany: both documents were clearly politically motivated and based on sham ‘The Science™’.
Yet, Covid is revelatory: we’ve seen the abject lack of integrity, morality, and compassion on part of the political caste, its willing executioners in legacy media, and its perpetrators among medical professionals.
Don’t ask what’s wrong with individuals. It’s the bloody ‘system’ that stands exposed.
Thus, we may formulate the second axiom of governance-by-bureaucracy: everyone has his or her price.
We’ve known this for quite some time; sure, I could cite the Nazi and Stalinist atrocities here, but I’d like to point you also to the Asch Conformity, the Milgram, and the Stanford Prison Experiments. Or the book The Wave.
And yet, despite all of this, there’s also a bright spot in all of this: contrary to the claims of postmodernist woke-fied agents-provocateurs, not everything in human society and relations is ‘socially constructed’ or about ‘power’.
A sizeable share of people everywhere has resisted the pressure to ‘get vaccinated’.
A group of doctors have resisted the pressures and temptations—remember the 30 pieces of silver—of collaboration and compliance with government tyranny.
If ‘booster’ uptake is any guide, more and more people are realising that they’ve been had.
Thus the third axiom: incentives and coercion work, until they don’t.
Our highly complex societies are, of course, more than the sum of their moving parts. Yet, given the highly integrated structures, it would be far-fetched to believe that anyone is able to control everything.
True, a lot can be dominated, but in the end, the ‘normative power of the factual’ (Georg Jellinek), in combination with individual experiences, is a powerful antidote to tyranny.
Still, this ain’t over yet, far from it.
If history is any guide, all that humans have ever been able to do is punish the perpetrators in the (vain) hope of establishing deterrence.
It has happened before, it is happening again, and it will happen again.
The next step is to see this through, re-establish the rule of law, and hold these people to account.
This is the moment. This is the time.
US House Passes Bill Prohibiting Government Workers From Censoring Speech in Official Role
Sputnik – 10.03.2023
WASHINGTON – The US House of Representatives passed a bill to prevent federal government employees from censoring speech in their official capacity, amid hearings by congressional committees on the collusion between tech companies and the government to “moderate” content online.
House lawmakers passed the Protecting Speech From Government Interference Act along partisan lines on Thursday in a vote of 219-206.
The bill prohibits employees of executive agencies or those otherwise in the competitive service from using their official authority to influence or advocate for a third party, including private entities, to censor speech.
“Government agencies such as the FBI and the State Department have been working behind-the-scenes with Big Tech to silence American citizens expressing conservative views online,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a statement on the bill. “Americans have the right to express themselves lawfully online without the government controlling the narrative.”
Earlier on Thursday, a House select subcommittee held a hearing with authors of the so-called Twitter Files to hear testimony on the collusion between Big Tech, government agencies and private organizations – dubbed the Censorship-Industrial Complex – to moderate, suppress and censor online content.
The Twitter Files have revealed how the US government collaborated with Big Tech companies such as Twitter to suppress information related to COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden laptop story, among others.
Aspen Institute’s Censorship Commission
Katie Couric, Prince Harry, et al. recommended restrictions on free speech
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | March 10, 2023
Matt Taibbi continues his Twitter reporting on what he calls the CENSORSHIP-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. His report yesterday on the Aspen Institute’s activities caught my eye. As he put it:
14. The Woodstock of the Censorship-Industrial Complex came when the Aspen Institute – which receives millions a year from both the State Department and USAID – held a star-studded confab in Aspen in August 2021 to release its final report on “Information Disorder.”
15. The report was co-authored by Katie Couric and Chris Krebs, the founder of the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Yoel Roth of Twitter and Nathaniel Gleicher of Facebook were technical advisors. Prince Harry joined Couric as a Commissioner.
16. Their taxpayer-backed conclusions: the state should have total access to data to make searching speech easier, speech offenders should be put in a “holding area,” and government should probably restrict disinformation, “even if it means losing some freedom.”
In other words, a group of extremely wealthy, privileged, half-educated, self-important people assemble in North America’s swankiest mountain retreat, at an institution heavily financed by taxpayer money, to discuss censoring and correcting the plebs’ “information disorder.” A naive outsider might wonder if this sort of activity was conceived as an intentional insult of the middle class, taxpaying citizenry.
The mental habits of the participants are perhaps best expressed by their choice of Prince Harry—a descendent of King George III, who once publicly characterized the U.S. First Amendment protection of free speech as “bonkers”—as a Commissioner. How strange that a young man who seems unable to manage his personal and family affairs was commissioned with making recommendations to U.S. policymakers about governing the American people.
Matt Taibbi’s Twitter reporting on censorship is very interesting and illuminating.
Ukrainian Opposition Leader: Zelensky Regime Won’t Be Able to Destroy Orthodox Faith
By Viktor Medvedchuk – Sputnik – 11.03.2023
The Zelensky regime has once again demonstrated that it holds nothing sacred, this time in the literal sense. Today, the authorities have begun a gangster-style takeover of the main shrine of Orthodoxy – the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra.
On March 10, the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received an ultimatum, being informed that the National Preserve is breaking its lease agreement for the Lower Lavra of the Holy Assumption Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and requiring monks to vacate the territory before March 29, 2023.
We remember from history that even during the Nazi occupation, the parishes of the canonical Orthodox Church were not closed by the Nazis. But today, their ideological heirs are taking away from the people of Ukraine that which gives them their spiritual core, strengthens them in trying times, consoles them in their grief and unites them in the joy of Easter.
The Ukrainian people have been robbed of their tongue, both Russian and Ukrainian. Russian, native to millions of Ukrainians, was declared the language of invaders and traitors. Ukrainian has been perverted to such an extent that it has lost its roots, musicality and meaning.
The Ukrainian people had their rights and freedoms taken from them, with deceitful, thieving and criminal authorities placed above all laws, with the people given over into the hands of demented Nazi bandits, spawning informers and extremists. Today, a Ukrainian not only has no right to have an opinion that differs from that of the authorities, but is obliged to support this government at any opportunity, since even silence is considered a crime.
The Ukrainian people have been robbed of peace and prosperity, since the Zelensky government does not want to admit its mistakes and its lies to voters. They preferred to lead their people to the slaughter, receiving unlimited finances and NATO weaponry. The current government does not hide that it is going to fight a long and bloody conflict. It is not interested in the lives of ordinary Ukrainians.
Today, the people are being robbed of the last thing they’ve got – their faith. Orthodoxy is the basis of the culture and spiritual life of the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church has called the people to peace, unity and conscientiousness. But peaceful, God-fearing and conscientious people have been declared enemies by the Zelensky government.
Ukrainians are being robbed of their souls, their language, their hearts, their minds and their conscience. The Ukrainian state has turned into a man-made Frankenstein, a monster that hates everything living and natural, that wants to destroy peace in the world. But the authorities in Kiev will not succeed in turning Ukraine into a corpse, a dangerous zombie. Ukrainians are a living, spiritual, righteous people.
Ukrainians aren’t zombies. There is Another Ukraine – the genuine, true, Slavic, Orthodox one, which will not allow Satanism and lawlessness to be imposed upon it. And today the traitors of the Ukrainian people, Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian faith hear our voice, and understand that their sinister, black core is becoming more and more obvious each day. Everyone will receive their just deserts. The attempt to destroy the true Orthodox faith only strengthens the people. The Orthodox faith, like the people, cannot be destroyed!
Viktor Medvedchuk is a former Ukrainian opposition leader.
Now is the Time to Oppose the WHO’s Globalist Pandemic Treaty
BY ADAM CROSS | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | MARCH 10, 2023
On February 1st this year, the World Health Organisation released the first draft of its much heralded pandemic response treaty. The draft treaty, snappily titled the ‘Convention or Agreement on Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response’, is proposed as a solution to what the WHO calls the “catastrophic failure of the international community in showing solidarity and equity” during the “coronavirus pandemic”.
A supposed lack of solidarity amongst national governments will not be the “catastrophic failure” uppermost of many readers’ minds when thinking back on Government health policy over the last three years. Despite this, the WHO’s draft treaty proposes preventing a recurrence of this alleged failure by substantially enhancing the powers of the WHO relative to those of national health authorities.
It does this despite initially affirming “the principle of sovereignty of States Parties in addressing public health matters” in its opening recital, and despite recognising the principle of state sovereignty as one of the guiding principles of the treaty in article 4. Yet notwithstanding these reassuring nods to the notion of state sovereignty, the WHO’s real attitude towards state autonomy can be gauged by a quick glance at the rest of the recitals and provisions in the agreement.
In setting out the WHO’s interpretation of the factual background to this draft agreement, many of the other recitals focus on the purported practical inability of individual sovereign states to respond adequately to the unique health challenges of the modern world. Hence other recitals note that “a pandemic situation is extraordinary in nature, requiring States Parties to prioritise effective and enhanced cooperation”; that “the international spread of disease is a global threat with serious consequences… that calls for the widest possible international cooperation”; and that “the threat of pandemics is a reality and that pandemics have catastrophic health, social, economic and political consequences”. These recitals strongly imply that state sovereignty can be of limited importance in the face of such extraordinarily grave threats.
Similarly, while recognition of state sovereignty is given as one of the guiding principles of the agreement, it is somewhat overshadowed by the raft of other guiding principles, which include abstract things like “equity”, “solidarity” and the “right to health”. Indeed, article 4 goes on to ominously assert that “previous pandemics have demonstrated that no one is safe until everyone is safe”, strongly suggesting that adherence to the principle of national sovereignty during a pandemic is not just an outdated approach to take, but a positively selfish one.
The draft agreement therefore goes on to assign considerable power to the WHO to influence and shape the responses of national health authorities to any future pandemic. The breadth of ambition of the agreement is made clear in article 5, which applies the agreement in a far-reaching way to “pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and health systems recovery at national, regional and international levels”.
Subsequent articles go on to prescribe the policies to be followed by States Parties to the agreement in each of these areas. As examples of what is intended, articles 6 and 7 set out steps to be followed to improve logistics and the workings of the global supply chain for quicker dispersal of what are euphemistically termed “pandemic-related products” (read pharmaceuticals), after which article 8 of the agreement addresses “regulatory strengthening”. Sadly, the regulatory strengthening envisaged in this agreement is not the strengthening of the accountability of national health regulators to the public, but rather the strengthening of those regulators’ accountability to the inter-governmental blob. Article 8 therefore requires signatory states to “strengthen the capacity and performance of national regulatory authorities and increase the harmonisation of regulatory requirements at the international and regional level”. In layman’s terms, more funding and powers for the regulators, yet concurrently less independent decision-making from them as well.
Subsequent articles further limit the discretion of national health authorities in responding to future WHO designated pandemics. Article 11 requires signatory states to “adopt policies and strategies… consistent with… the International Health Regulations” (themselves the target of amendment by the WHO), while article 15 stresses “the need to coordinate, collaborate and cooperate, in the spirit of international solidarity” with the various bodies active in the international healthcare space in the formulation of policies and guidelines. There are references to “establishing appropriate governance arrangements”, presumably well away from potentially meddlesome interference by elected representatives. These governance arrangements are to be complete with “mechanisms that ensure global, regional and national policy decisions are science and evidence-based”. Think blanket mask and vaccine mandates.
Signatory states will also have to take part in “multi-country or regional tabletop exercises every two years” to prepare them for the next pandemic, presumably to ensure that all health authorities remain fully briefed on the acceptable line to take in the event of any such new pandemic being declared, and to deter any of the signatory states from being tempted to go off-script as Sweden did in 2020.
Last but not least, a plethora of comfortable sinecures will be created for the international administrative class, by way of the creation of a governing body for the agreement under article 20, a consultative body for input into decision making by amorphous inter-governmental stakeholders under article 21, and a secretariat under article 24.
Conspicuously lacking in the agreement is any reference to democracy, elected legislatures, or the necessity of regulators and health authorities being accountable to national electorates. Instead, the treaty represents a brazen attempt to further move health policy away from regional or national governments and into the hands of a rarefied class of globalist administrators.
It should be stressed that the current text is only a draft, and that it may be subject to amendments following discussion between the WHO and member states. Further, even if the U.K. does sign this agreement, it will likely require ratification by Parliament under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, and will also require implementation via domestic legislation before it will have any domestic legal effect in the U.K. Sustained pressure now on ministers and MPs might just influence any U.K. Government proposals to amend the treaty at draft stage, or alternatively such pressure might conceivably prevent the U.K. Government from signing an unacceptably worded agreement in the first place. Either way, now is the time for action to prevent the crystallisation at international level of the very policies and approaches many of us have railed against at national level for the last three years.
Adam Cross (a pseudonym) is a U.K. qualified barrister specialising in international trade law, with both public and private sector experience.
Twitter Files expose ‘censorship-industrial complex’ – journalist
RT | March 9, 2023
Social media platforms colluded with non-governmental organizations and the US government to suppress information they did not like in the name of fighting “disinformation,” journalist Matt Taibbi testified at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Taibbi appeared alongside Michael Shellenberger, another journalist who has covered the “Twitter Files” for the past several months, before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, led by Congressman Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio.
Taibbi described what he called the “censorship-industrial complex,” calling it “a bureaucracy willing to sacrifice factual truth in service of broader narrative objectives,” and the exact opposite of a free press envisioned in the US Constitution.
Right before his testimony, Taibbi also published a lengthy thread on Twitter, laying out the evidence he entered into the congressional record.
According to Taibbi, Twitter acted “more like a partner” to the government, censoring based on requests it received from federal agencies as well as taxpayer-backed NGOs. Intelligence agencies, dubious “disinformation researchers” and corporate executives effectively worked as a team, he argued.
Taibbi’s thread described an “incestuous self-appointed truth squad moving from law enforcement/intelligence to the private sector and back,” with the same agencies inviting the same “experts” funded by the same foundations and covered by the same reporters to every panel and every conference.
He identified the key players in the censorship-industrial complex as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Atlantic Council’s DFR Lab, and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, authors of the infamous Hamilton 68 dashboard. Many of the NGOs involved received funding from the US government, while legacy media outlets acted as their proxies, demanding censorship.
Taibbi described the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) and its “Election Integrity Partnership” – renamed the Virality Project after the 2020 election – as “perhaps the ultimate example of the absolute fusion of state, corporate, and civil society organizations.” By its own admission, it labeled 22 million tweets during the 2020 election campaign, and was then given access to Twitter’s JIRA ticketing system, which is able to tackle 50 million tweets a day.
SIO is run by Renee DiResta, who helped design Hamilton68 and worked at New Knowledge – a group caught creating fake “Russian bots” to help Democrats in the 2017 Alabama special election for the US Senate. That did not stop them from advising the Senate Intelligence Committee on “Russian interference” in US elections, and the US legacy media from not questioning any of their conclusions.
“Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, [the CIC] is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality,” Taibbi wrote. “Without real oversight mechanisms, there is nothing to prevent these super-empowered information vanguards from bending the truth for their own ends.”
During the hearing, multiple Democrats tried to pressure Taibbi into revealing his sources, insinuating Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, was behind the disclosures.
The US military plans to use deep fakes and take over appliances for propaganda
By Rachel Marsden | RT | March 9, 2023
Can you create cutting edge “deep fake” videos, spy on people using household appliances, and make massive data dragnets? If so, the Pentagon wants to hear from you so it can amp up its manipulation efforts.
US Special Operations Command (US SOCOM) has issued proposal requests for a whole host of dodgy services, according to new documents obtained by The Intercept.
Specifically, the Pentagon is looking for “next generation capability to ‘takeover’ Internet of Things (IoT) devices in order to collect data and information from local populaces to enable a breakdown of what messaging might be popular and accepted through sifting of data once received.”
For what purpose? “This would enable MISO [Military Information Support Operations] to craft and promote messages that may be more readily received by the local populace in relevant peer/near peer environments,” according to the document.
Despite publicly obsessing over others’ foreign interference and propaganda, Washington is now openly admitting that it is actively seeking these new technologies for its own “influence operations, digital deception, communication disruption, and disinformation campaigns at the tactical edge and operational levels.” You know, exactly the same kind of thing, over which it drums up fear as a threat to freedom and democracy among the general public.
Earlier this year, a Washington-based advisory firm OODA published a report warning that Chinese-made household items could not only be spying on you, but basically fronting for the Chinese government. The report’s author called for the British government to act on claims that Chinese-made Internet of Things appliances, and even car components, can collect and transmit data through cellular 5G networks to Chinese companies, which could then be ordered to pass it on to the government. The story was hysterically splashed across British media.
OODA describes itself as a “global strategic advisory firm with deep DNA in global security, technology and intelligence issues.” The genetics run deep, indeed: straight to the Pentagon and Western intelligence communities where its executives, experts and advisers have past or current working relationships.
So now it looks like calls to ban Chinese household appliances for their spying potential have turned into Washington wanting to get in on the action by obtaining the best possible front row seat as you stand in front of your refrigerator at midnight, chugging chocolate milk straight from the carton.
The Pentagon also wants to be able to create “deep fake” videos that can realistically portray fake events as real, in an attempt to manipulate the target viewer(s). Or, as the Pentagon puts it, to “generate messages and influence operations via non-traditional channels in relevant peer/near peer environments.” It’s hard to imagine a more glaring example of actual fake news, yet the Pentagon wants to produce it in the way that Netflix makes movies and TV shows.
Finally, the Pentagon says that they want to get their hands on “a next generation capability to collect disparate data through public and open source information streams such as social media, local media, etc. to enable MISO to craft and direct influence operations and messages in relevant peer/near peer environments.”
Some might be tempted to just shrug this off as conventional practice because, when the military is tracking down bad guys, they’re obviously going to want to use every possible tool available at their disposal – and constantly seek to expand that tool box. But recent evidence suggests that military-grade collection and subversion tools targeting online and conventional information platforms have largely been turned on the average citizen for the purpose of protecting the establishment and its various narratives from dissent rather than for reasons of national security.
Last December, for example, Twitter CEO Elon Musk worked with a journalist to reveal the collusion between US government authorities and the social media platform to manipulate and censor public debate over the Covid-19 pandemic. According to internal Twitter documents, one of the first meetings that the Biden Administration requested with Twitter executives was on the topic of Covid vaccines and specific high-profile accounts that deviated from the official narrative. According to the journalist, David Zweig, “Twitter did suppress views – many from doctors and scientific experts – that conflicted with the official positions of the White House. As a result, legitimate findings and questions that would have expanded the public debate went missing.” He added that, “With Covid, this bias bent heavily toward establishment dogmas,” and cited examples of various experts, including prominent epidemiologists, whose views were censored as a result of being qualified by the Twitter staff as Covid “misinformation.”
Earlier this year, a British whistleblower also revealed that critics of Covid-19-related lockdowns and vaccine mandates – including prominent journalists and politicians – were monitored by the UK army’s information warfare brigade. The 77th Brigade, created in 2015 and described by the media at the time as composed of “warriors who don’t just carry weapons, but who are also skilled in using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, and the dark arts of ‘psyops’”.
The Canadian military was also caught using propaganda techniques honed on the battlefield in Afghanistan to shape the Covid debate by boosting the government’s narrative and attempting to head off any civil unrest over the harsh mandates.
The Pentagon’s latest wish list raises concerns that these tools will also be deployed on average Americans or Westerners for purposes of control and manipulation. Last September, the Pentagon vowed to review its secret psyops, but only after public outrage when a group of researchers suggested collusion between US government entities and American online platforms like Twitter and Facebook to control online narratives with fake accounts. Was the lesson learned to stop deploying psyops on average citizens? Or was it just to do a better job of keeping it secret?
Not that there’s any shortage of Western establishment cheerleaders demanding even more psychological manipulation efforts by the US government, if only to counter “disinformation” from foreign adversaries.
It seems that we’ve now come to the point where sticking it to Russia and China means actively cheerleading the increasingly militarized efforts by our self-styled defenders of freedom and democracy to brainwash their own people.
‘We Just Showed the Truth’: Russian Pranksters Vovan and Lexus React to YouTube Ban
Sputnik – 06.03.2023
One of the pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), said he does not believe that their videos on YouTube violated the digital platform’s guidelines, suggesting instead that the “truth” the prankster duo shared “probably was not convenient for western officials.”
Western Big Tech has once again demonstrated just how much it “cares” about freedom of speech as video-hosting platform YouTube, which is owned by Google, banned the channel of Russian prankster duo Vovan & Lexus over alleged violation of community guidelines.
During an interview with Sputnik, one of the pranksters, Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), pointed out that the ban came shortly after they pranked William Hague, the UK’s former foreign secretary.
“We got a letter that we have broken the rules of YouTube because of the prank with the ex-Foreign Secretary William Hague,” Stolyarov said. “And they wrote that they had to remove it, but probably after 2 hours they removed the whole channel without explanation.”
He noted that this is far from the first time their channel has been blocked on YouTube, and that the last time they got banned, the British government and the UK Ministry of Defense actually sent a letter to the video hosting’s management, naming the pranksters as “real threats to the UK national security.”
“This time we have pranked ex-Foreign Secretary William Hague. It was in all Russian media, but it wasn’t in the UK media. Because since the last prank call with the defense secretary, they noted in the letter that other contributors of information have already agreed not to spread our pranks,” he said. “At first, YouTube kept silent for about three days. And then they blocked us.”
The prankster also expressed his skepticism about allegations of their pranks violating YouTube’s community guidelines.
“We just spread the statements of their western officials. It’s not our words. It’s their words,” he said, referring to the admissions those officials made during prank calls with Vovan and Lexus. “We just showed the truth and this probably was not convenient for western officials.”
Stolyarov added that they have already moved to platforms such as RuTube, Telegram and VK, over which Western governments and tech corporations hold no sway.
“It’s good that it works in Russia and nobody could ban it because of political reasons but also we have a reserve channel on the Reddit platform. It’s also available in the West.” Stolyarov a.k.a. Lexus remarked.
Vovan and Lexus have gained considerable fame in recent years as they prank a number of prominent western politicians, including current UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, tricking them into making rather frank admissions about poignant geopolitical matters.
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From the Archives
The New Baghdad Pact
By Dr Bouthaina Shaaban | February 23, 2017
A recently declassified CIA document prepared in 1983, and released on 20 January 2017, shows that the United States had at the time encouraged Saddam Hussein to attack Syria, which would have led to a vicious conflict between the two countries, thus draining their resources.
The report, which was then prepared by CIA officer Graham Fuller, indicates that the US tried adamantly to convince Saddam to attack Syria under any pretense available, in order to get the two most powerful countries in the Arab East to destroy each other, turning their attention away from the Arab-Israeli conflict. … continue
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