Musk: Twitter Counsel Fired Over Concerns About His Role in Information Suppression
Samizdat – 07.12.2022
Elon Musk said in a tweet that he had fired Twitter’s deputy general counsel over concerns about his role in information suppression under the previous management.
“In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today,” Musk said on Tuesday, referring to Jim Baker, who also served as former FBI general counsel.
Last week, journalist Matt Taibbi in collaboration with Musk published the so-called “Twitter Files” – Twitter’s internal communications to disclose links with political actors and with a focus on how the social network blocked stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election.
The published files alleged that the previous management of Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress reporting regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop ahead of the 2020 US presidential election.
According to the Twitter Files published by Taibbi, Baker played a role in the discussion about whether the laptop story fell under Twitter’s “hacked materials” policy.
“I support the conclusion that we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked,” the documents published by Taibbi cited Baker as saying in one of the emails. “At this stage, however, it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been and that caution is warranted.”
Hunter Biden reportedly abandoned his laptop at Isaac’s repair shop in 2019, while his father, Joe Biden, was running to become US president. The contents of the laptop were later made public. Emails obtained by Western media from the laptop proved Russia’s claims that the US president’s son helped fund bioweapon research in Ukraine.
The Bidens have faced scrutiny and criticism from Republicans and others for their alleged misconduct in Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, which came into the public spotlight following the release of the emails.
Read more about James Baker in an article by Jonathan Turley.
Trump Is Toast
Jewish Power will trump Trump
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 6, 2022
There is considerable irony in the fact that Donald Trump when president virtually crawled to do Israel’s bidding more than any of his predecessors. He moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he accepted brutal Israeli settlement and control of the Palestinian West Bank, approved of the Israeli annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and ignored repeated Israeli war crimes using US provided weapons. Yet for all his gifts to Israel, which did not serve any actual US interest, he is currently being crucified by the Jewish/Israel Lobby because of an idiotic dinner with a pair of alleged anti-Semites, one of whom has been labeled a “holocaust denier.”
And the extreme reaction of Jewish groups to the affront also itself possesses a certain irony in that it demonstrates how extraordinarily powerful promoters of Jewish and Israeli interests actually are, something that those selfsame groups take pains to deny at every opportunity, just as they deny having “dual loyalty” to Israel. The fact is that force majeure will prevail and we will now see the deliberate and methodical destruction of Donald J. Trump’s 2024 proposed presidential campaign by American Jewish and Israeli apologists.
Trump had already been taken out to the back woodshed for a good whipping once after he posted a comment on his Truth Social network on October 16th. He boasted how “No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the US… US Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!”
But the rage unleashed by folks like the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Jonathan Greenblatt, who labeled the October 16th comment as “insulting and disgusting,” combined with the attacks on three black celebrities, is already beginning to produce pushback, particularly from many normally apolitical blacks who are upset at the viciousness of the Jewish take-no-prisoners response due to its perceived racial overtones. Other observers also are concerned at how the Jewish groups and individuals are overstating the significance of some of the alleged anti-Semitic incidents (by their definition) in a self-serving effort to validate their view that Jewish suffering is unique and cannot be compared with other crimes against humanity.
Also, for those who choose to defend the First Amendment right to free speech, it is discouraging to observe how it is possible to say nearly anything as long as it does not offend Jewish sensibilities. There have already been moves in congress to criminalize criticism of Jews or Israel, making such actions the ultimate “hate crime.” Those specifically Jewish sensibilities absurdly include declaring anyone to be an anti-Semite who criticizes the behavior of Israel as it destroys schools and shoots a Palestinian teenager nearly every day. Indeed, the US media of late has been awash with stories about surging anti-Semitism which taken all together celebrate Israeli/Jewish victimhood while also ignoring Jerusalem’s war crimes and focusing instead on alleged conspiracies against Jews. Most despicable of all in the eyes of those protectors of all things Jewish are the few visible critics who have recognized that the standard holocaust narrative that has been artfully and deliberately shaped since the Second World War is full of inconsistencies and errors in demonstrable fact. So-called “holocaust deniers” are denigrated beyond all others because they attack the very raison d’etre that constitutes the “miraculous” Israel creation myth.
Examining what Kanye West and Donald Trump did and said suggests that there has been considerable overreaction from the Greenblatts of this world and their allies in the media and in government. Starting with Kanye West, currently going by the name Ye, one finds that his initial comments made were not particularly startling, suggesting that Jews directly own or control and manage the entertainment industry in the United States, which is manifestly true. As the criticism of Ye, who believes that blacks are descended from the ancient Hebrews, intensified, he responded with some heat, eventually coming out with an incoherent tweet to “go death con 3 ON JEWISH PEOPLE.”
The comedian Dave Chappelle followed up on the controversy by delivering a stinging monologue on “Saturday Night Live” on “the Jews” and their numbers in the entertainment industry saying that it’s “not a crazy thing to think” that Jews exert outsized influence in Hollywood and the media. He also suggested that Kanye had violated Hollywood’s “rules of perception,” saying, “If they’re Black, then it’s a gang. If they’re Italian, it’s a mob. But if they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.”
If Greenblatt had ignored Ye it is likely that his poorly expressed comments would have been quickly forgotten, but that is not how the Greenblatts of this world operate. Every offense against the standard narrative of Jewish victimhood requires full scale war. Reports early last week suggest that the efforts by ADL and others to convince businesses associated with Ye to cut off all ties with him have been successful, meaning that he is no longer a billionaire and likely has a fortune reduced to something in the $400 million range.
There have been similar responses to basketball player Kyrie Irving’s recent tweet supporting the so-called Black Hebrew Israelite theory that he shares with Ye which asserts that blacks are in fact Jews while black comedian Dave Chapelle making fun of the ADL overreaction on Saturday Night Live is under the gun from that organization, which has accused him of “popularizing” and “normalizing” anti-Semitism. Kyrie Irving, who also believes the earth is flat, was denounced as a “person unfit to associate with” by his team owner and was suspended for eight games without pay by the Brooklyn Nets even though he characteristically offered several abject apologies.
This all led up to the dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Ye and a so-called white supremacist Nick Fuentes. It is not clear what was discussed at dinner, but Ye states that Trump was impressed by Fuentes. In the aftermath of the meal, when news of it appeared in the media, a shit storm erupted. Trump claimed both that he did not know Fuentes and that he had been tricked by Ye, that the man was brought to the meal as Ye’s guest. Those assertions, most likely lies, have been assailed all over the media and also by the usual suspects like Greenblatt who announced that “The normalization of antisemitism is here.” On the following day, Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader and himself a Jew who fancies himself the “Protector of Israel in the Senate” went to the Senate floor to denounce Trump’s actions as “disgusting and dangerous,” before calling them “pure evil.”
Prominent Republicans like Kevin McCarthy and Marco Rubio have also piled on, suggesting that Trump will find little support even among those politicians that he would normally consider to be favorable to his reelection. Notably, the Republican Jewish Coalition has joined in the attacks, which means that campaign money will not be flowing to Trump from that usually reliable source. And even Trump’s former lawyer and the man he named ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has condemned his old boss and patron, saying “Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable.” Ironically, Friedman, whose loyalty to the United States might be considered questionable, was a persistent apologist for Israel during his time in that country rather than a promoter of US interests.
I have to confess that I had never heard of Nick Fuentes, so I did a little checking on the claim that he was a “holocaust denier.” Fuentes is well-documented as making comments reflecting his rather intense dislike for Jews, but concerning the holocaust all I could come up with was a comment allegedly made by him attacking the claim that six million Jews died in what have been described as death camps, with a suggestion that it was more likely 200,000 to 300,000 as a realistic figure supported by official and other records. He described those deaths as “cookies,” which are baked in the oven and which may have angered critics more than the comment about the numbers. Interestingly, the six million number is one of the more ridiculous assertions that are part and parcel of the holocaust narrative as it appears to have been arbitrarily arrived at as “acceptable” and there has been considerable disagreement over its reliability.
So, Fuentes, it seems, is not a holocaust denier, rather he appears to be skeptical regarding the standard narrative, as am I and many others who have bothered to look into the verifiable historical record. But that does not mean that anyone in power will be standing in line to excuse his behavior. And his dinner partner Donald Trump has evidently now outstayed his welcome by the standards of the noble protectors of Jewish and Israeli interests. The large dollops of campaign cash will not be coming in, those willing to endorse his candidacy will be far fewer, and the media will turn on him even more than it has done over the past six years. Indeed, it is doing so already. There are numerous articles in the mainstream every day telling over and over again the tale of the fateful dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Trump has clearly crossed the notorious red line on Jewish issues. The only remaining question is what will it do to people like Greenblatt? If he keeps hammering away, which he will because that is how he is wired, could the worm turn and will Americans begin to wonder how 2% of the population has obtained so much power? That would be a really interesting development.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
World Health Organization meets to discuss granting of increased surveillance powers under pandemic treaty
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 6, 2022
The unelected global health agency the World Health Organization (WHO) is currently meeting to consider a draft version of a controversial international pandemic treaty that will give the WHO increased surveillance powers.
The new surveillance powers are detailed in Article 10 (“Strengthening and sustaining capacities for pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems”) and Article 17 (“One Health”) of the draft treaty. They include requirements for the WHO’s member states to “build and reinforce surveillance systems” across both the public and private sector and to strengthen the WHO’s “One Health surveillance systems.”
In its fact sheet on One Health, the WHO cites Covid-19 as one of the main drivers for expanding its One Health approach and notes that the COVID-19 pandemic “put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance and a more holistic, integrated system.”
While the draft treaty doesn’t mention contact tracing and testing, these were two of the main surveillance tools that were used to track the spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic and create a mass surveillance dragnet. Not only did this result in many citizens being forced to use surveillance apps and devices but the data was often abused by governments and third parties.
Not only does this treaty grant the WHO new surveillance powers but it also recognizes “the central role of WHO” and deems it to be “the directing and coordinating authority on international health work.”
We obtained a copy of the draft international pandemic treaty for you here.
The three-day meeting to discuss this draft treaty began on Monday (December 5) and ends Wednesday (December 7). Members of an intergovernmental negotiating body (INB) that was created by the WHO’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly (WHA), are in attendance and have been tasked with drafting and negotiating this international pandemic treaty.
The INB is projecting that it will finalize this international pandemic treaty by May 2024 and present a final report to the seventy-seventh WHA meeting.
We obtained a copy of the INB’s current proposed timeline for you here.
If it passes, the treaty will be adopted under Article 19 of the WHO Constitution. This provision allows the WHA to impose legally binding conventions or agreements on the WHO’s 194 member states (which represent 98% of all the countries in the world) if two-thirds of the WHA vote for them.
Unlike the lawmaking process within many democratic nations, where officials are elected to implement national laws that reflect the will of the people in the country and voted out if they fail to achieve this goal, the WHO empowers a small number of global representatives, who are often unelected diplomats, to decide on international laws that are imposed on the WHO’s 194 member states.
Before these meetings took place, the WHO demonstrated its love of mass surveillance. It has publicly supported vaccine passports multiple times. The WHO also initially commended China’s response to Covid, which relies heavily on digital surveillance, and only recently changed its stance to criticize China’s zero-Covid policy.
Many powerful nations support this WHO power grab including the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the European Council (EC) (which represents 27 European Union (EU) member states).
While some politicians in these countries have opposed this treaty, the pushback has so far failed to stop or slow down the progress of this international pandemic treaty and the May 2024 finalization is still very much in play.
Climate lockdowns coming? You will be tracked in your suburb and happy about it.
By Jo Nova | December 3, 2022
The 15 Minute City is a UN and WEF plan, because they care about you want you to drive less.
A cartoon from the WEF just for you good girls and boys:
In the WEF’s own words — this rearrangement of cities is absolutely about climate change:
As climate change and global conflict cause shocks and stresses at faster intervals and increasing severity, the 15-minute city will become even more critical.
And the solution was the pandemic (they really say that):
The obvious, yet incomplete, answer is the pandemic… with COVID-19 and its variants keeping everyone home (or closer to home than usual), the 15-minute city went from a “nice-to-have” to a rallying cry. Meeting all of one’s needs within a walking, biking or transit distance was suddenly a matter of life and death.
And then the dark hand of the totalitarian managers appears, as James Woudhuysen, warned in Spiked in late October:
The madness of the ‘15-minute city’
The green agenda is taking inspiration from the illiberal days of lockdown.
To this end, Oxfordshire County Council, which is run by Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party, wants to divide the city of Oxford into six ‘15 minute’ districts. In these districts, it is said, most household essentials will be accessible by a quarter-of-an-hour walk or bike ride, and so residents will have no need for a car.
On the surface, these 15-minute neigbourhoods might sound pleasant and convenient. But there is a coercive edge. The council plans to cut car use and traffic congestion by placing strict rules on car journeys.
Residents will have to register their cars with the council and they will be tracked to count their journeys through the key gateways. It’s the social credit scheme that starts with your car and works like anti-frequent-flyer points.
Under the new proposals, if any of Oxford’s 150,000 residents drives outside of their designated district more than 100 days a year, he or she could be fined £70.
The concept of the 15-minute city was born with ‘C40’. Chaired today by London mayor Sadiq Khan, C40 calls itself a ‘network of mayors of nearly 100 world-leading cities collaborating to deliver the urgent action needed right now to confront the climate crisis’.
Climate lockdowns? Seriously?
It all sounds a bit ridiculous to suggest a lockdown “for the climate” but listen to the BBC. They’re working awfully hard to persuade us — they obviously think voters won’t want this. Here they are connecting the “15 Minute City” to the fun of covid lockdowns, and setting this up as though it’s totally normal for the government to decide who your friends are:
How ’15-minute cities’ will change the way we socialise
And furthermore lockdowns in Paris were great social moments where we all made friends. Who knew how much fun it would be to be told you couldn’t drive far?
… for Fraioli, the two-month lockdown that began on 17 March – confining her to a 1km radius of her home – gave her a nuanced, enriching view of her neighbourhood. “I discovered it’s possible to feel like you’re in a small village in Paris,” she says. “To get to know your neighbours, to maintain good links with shopkeepers, to favour local craftsmen and shops over large supermarkets. I even joined a citizens’ movement where people prepare food baskets for homeless people. I thought I would have a hard time living the lockdown, but I was perfectly at home, in a quiet place.”
I don’t seem to recall “getting to know neighbours” as being part of any lockdown anywhere?
And lookout — the 15 minute city is not just Oxford, but turning up in Brisbane, Melbourne, Barcelona, Paris, Portland and Buenos Aires. It’s everywhere.
Oxford City Council is moving faster than the rest
Apparently, not enough people are catching buses or riding bikes. But instead of making that more appealing, the totalitarians will force it through tracking and fines. Oxfordshire has just approved on November 29th, the “traffic filters” trial which will turn the city into a “fifteen minute city”. The Trial will start in Jan 2024.
It’s a crowded area, Oxfordshire, and no one likes traffic congestion, but in a free world the problem is self-limiting as drivers get fed up with delays and exorbitant parking costs, and they car-pool or choose to catch the bus or ride a bike. But in Big Nanny State the local rulers start making rules about who can and can’t visit and how often, and they want your car registered on their own special list with cameras to track you and fines to punish you. They offer exemptions of course, but then you have to apply for them and get permission.
Oxfordshire County Council Pass Climate Lockdown ‘trial’ to Begin in 2024
Vision News, November 30th
Oxfordshire County Council yesterday approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones to ‘save the planet’ from global warming. The latest stage in the ’15 minute city’ agenda is to place electronic gates on key roads in and out of the city, confining residents to their own neighbourhoods.
Under the new scheme if residents want to leave their zone they will need permission from the Council who gets to decide who is worthy of freedom and who isn’t. Under the new scheme residents will be allowed to leave their zone a maximum of 100 days per year, but in order to even gain this every resident will have to register their car details with the council who will then track their movements via smart cameras round the city.
Every resident will be required to register their car with the County Council who will then monitor how many times they leave their district via number plate recognition cameras.
In the end, these aggressively overmanaged schemes mean more paperwork, more tracking, more jobs for bureaucrats and more free passes for “friends” of Big Government.
The more rules you have the more corrupt the system gets. For example, some city blocks are included in the favored list with 100 passes, while others get just 25 — so the property values of the inner circle addresses rise. As a bonus, in years to come property developers “in the know” and on the favoured list with certain councilors can arrange for rezoning on the right day (the one after they buy the property) and voila — that’s a nice capital gain for them
“Reconnecting Oxford” wants to end these artificial blockages
From “Reconnecting Oxford” –– a protest movement to stop filters and road closures.
The councilors held a major consultation process but apparently knew the outcome. It says rather a lot about the attitude of one councilor who said it was going ahead whether people liked it or not.
Traffic filters will divide city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, agrees highways councillor
Oxford Mail, October 24
ROAD blocks stopping most motorists from driving through Oxford city centre will divide the city into six “15 minute” neighbourhoods, a county council travel chief has said.
And he insisted the controversial plan would go ahead whether people liked it or not.
Businesses in Oxford are not impressed:
Hotelier Jeremy Mogford, who owns the Old Bank Hotel in High Street and the Old Parsonage Hotel and Gees, both in Banbury Road, described the plan as disastrous for business.
He previously told the Oxford Mail : “What we have is people making decisions that don’t live in the city centre or spend much time in the city.
“The council has adopted the position that climate change is real”
Skeptic and long range weather forecaster Piers Corbyn spoke to the council to warn them:
[Piers Corbyn said] “The point is that the basis of these documents are false – man-made climate change does not exist and if you don’t believe me, look at the sky. You should have a special meeting to discuss whether man-made climate change exists or not.”
Responding to Mr Corbyn’s claims, councillor Andrew, the council’s cabinet member for highways management, said: “Mr Corbyn said climate change is not real – this council has formally adopted a position that climate change is real.
“Mr Corbyn you are wrong, we are right.”
Well that’s it then. Councils control the weather. If this had nothing to do with climate change they could have said “we’ll see” and dismissed him anyway. But they have to believe…
Oxfordshire council has already infuriated local businesses earlier this year with road closures and traffic calming measures which have reduced the customer base significantly. Drivers destroyed 20 bollards in less than three weeks, and one frustrated cafe owner put up a giant billboard in protest saying “So much for democracy”. Even cyclists don’t like the traffic slowing measures, saying their road trips are more dangerous. There is at least one Oxford protest group that seems to have some success in stopping the road closures.
So who does want the traffic filters? Oxford University and the bus companies, and the council which expects to make £1.1m from fining errant drivers.
From the Oxford City Council Consultation page we see the plan is to reduce journeys that you think are necessary but the councilors don’t.
Why are we introducing trial traffic filters?
Across our county, we want to reduce unnecessary journeys by private vehicles and make walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice.
This will help us deliver an affordable, sustainable and inclusive transport system that enables the county to thrive whilst protecting the environment and making Oxfordshire a better place to live for all residents.
And it is about “protecting the environment” by tracking you and resisting your movement.
Canterbury is planning something spookily similar –– dividing up the city into five different districts with drivers unable to cross between zones without being fined. The old grid system of cities made for shorter distances and more choices. The new system offers only more obstacles and less freedom.
Elon Musk says PayPal is moving in the “direction of social credit”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 5, 2022
“PayPal seems to be moving in the direction of social credit and restricting transactions – that’s concerning,” PayPal co-founder, and now Tesla and Twitter CEO, Elon Musk, said in a recent Spaces.
Last month, Twitter filed registration paperwork to pave the way for it to process payments, according to a filing with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, which was obtained by The New York Times.
Following that, Musk said that he envisioned users connecting their online bank accounts to the social media service, with the company moving later into “debit cards, checks, and whatnot.”
Following public backlash, PayPal recently abandoned a proposed update to its Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that would have led to penalties of $2,500 for spreading “misinformation.” However, the company still maintains a policy carrying similar penalties for “intolerance.”
The AUP prohibits the “promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance.” Free speech advocates feel that the policy is vague and is left to the interpretation of PayPal staff.
Aaron Terr, a senior program officer of the rights group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said at the time that the policy “suffers from the same defect as a lot of the other proposed prohibitions on speech, in that it’s vague.”
Terr added: “And it’s left open to interpretation by PayPal employees, and because of its vagueness, that gives them a lot of discretion to essentially just enforce that provision against disfavored speakers, and to do so in a viewpoint-discriminatory manner.”
The revoked misinformation policy update was condemned by PayPal founders. Co-founder Elon Musk said the update “goes against everything I believe in.”
Ye on Alex Jones: Christian Carnival King and Truth-Telling Holy Fool
BY KEVIN BARRETT • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 3, 2022
Was it a terrifying display of anti-Semitism? A PR disaster? A plot to undermine what’s left of free speech? Or something else entirely?
Mainstream media reports on Kanye “Ye” West’s three-hour interview alongside Nick Fuentes on last Thursday’s Alex Jones show—just days after West and Fuentes dined with former President Trump at Mar-a-Lago—reported it as a Nazi hatefest. Consider these headlines:
“Masked Kanye West Praises Hitler in Alex Jones Interview.” – Washington Post
“Kanye West to Alex Jones: ‘I Like Hitler.’” – Rolling Stone
“Biden Condemns Antisemitism After Ye Praises Hitler.” – CNBC
“Virulently antisemitic comments by Kanye West spark new GOP criticism.” – Politico
Mainstream conservatives lapped up the MSM headlines and declared a PR disaster. “Kanye West is a deranged antisemite. I want absolutely nothing to do with that lunatic” snarled Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY). Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA) called Ye’s performance “disgusting.” Zio-con journalist Ben Shapiro seemingly tried to set West up to be suicided, saying “I would not be surprised, God forbid, if something should happen—if Ye should do something to himself.”
Investigative journalist Whitney Webb also saw West’s performance as a PR disaster: “It seems like Kanye West, because of his visibility, and the outrageousness of his behavior, is going to be part of the pretext” (for eliminating what remains of free speech in America).
Elon Musk, that self-styled free speech absolutist, quickly caved in to pressure and banned Ye’s Twitter account on a transparently ludicrous pretext. Musk absurdly claimed that Ye’s tweet of an image of a superimposed Star of David and swastika was an incitement to violence.
If I had only read the media coverage, and not watched the actual interview, I would have come away with the impression that Ye had spent three hours snarling and frothing at the mouth and demanding the mass murder of Jews. But as usual, the reality was the exact opposite of the media reports. Far from spewing hate, Ye spent the whole three hours spreading love. When Alex Jones kowtowed to contemporary Western culture’s obligatory demonization of Hitler, Ye escalated from “love everybody, even Hitler” to “love everybody, especially Hitler.”
And that, of course, is the only possible Christian response. A cornerstone of Jesus’s teaching was “love your enemies.” In Matthew 5:43-45 Jesus basically says that it’s easy to love your friendly neighbor—anyone can do that—but you need to go further and love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. So when Ye expressed love for everyone, including his Zionist persecutors, and made the point that Christians must not just love “even Hitler,” they must especially love Hitler, he was simply following the teachings of Jesus.
So who exactly are these mainstream media witch hunters and lynch mob leaders who are driven into a frenzy of satanic hatred when they hear Ye spreading the Christian gospel of universal love? Hint: They are not Christians. The Jewish religion, and post-religious Jewish culture, are both characterized by a rabidly ethnocentric fear and loathing of the perceived enemies of their tribe. Rather than loving their enemies, they are taught to fear and hate and persecute them, and to demand “a pound of flesh” and never display mercy when they gain the upper hand.[*] And since they see Hitler as their ultimate enemy symbol, anyone who extends Christian love to Hitler, as Ye did, becomes a target of their fanatical vindictiveness.
So Ye was walking in the footsteps of Jesus, not Hitler. And he was doing so in a touchingly hilarious carnivalesque manner by embodying two ancient archetypes: the truth-telling holy fool and the fool-king of carnival. You might even say Ye was just fool-king with us. (And if you doubt Ye is a fool, consider this: What else can you call someone who trades a billion dollars for truth?)
Ye as truth-telling fool echoes the Fool character in Shakespeare’s King Lear by blurting out the hard, even horrific truths that no smart, sane person would ever dare tell. This “truth-telling holy fool” archetype also exists in Moroccan Sufism, where such Sufi saints as the wild illiterate mountain peasant Abu Yi’zza, beloved of God, could get away with denouncing the tyrannical king to his face—an act reminiscent of Ye’s “foolish” denunciation of tyrannical Jewish-Zionist power in America.
But Ye has ambitions beyond being a mere garden-variety billion-dollar holy fool. He says he is running for president. But the office he is really running for is fool king.
Mikhail Bakhtin, one of the greatest Russian thinkers of the 20th century, explains in Rabelais and His World that much of the best of European literature and culture is steeped in the ethos of carnival: a holiday period during which ordinary social rules are suspended in favor of wild, anarchic, supremely creative joy and celebration. The carnival typically begins with the election of a fool king to preside over the revelry, as recounted in the famous scene of Qasimodo’s coronation in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ye presided over the anarchic carnival he unleashed on Alex Jones with soulfully royal aplomb. His Nettin’ Yahoo ventriloquism mocking the squeaky little prime minister of Israel was precisely the sort of thing that fools used to do to entertain their audiences. And his repeated violation of the most sacred rules of polite American society—never take the J-word in vain, speak of the Holocaust only with cringing and bathetic reverence, never raise even the slightest questions about its historicity, and always hold up Hitler as the avatar of ultimate evil—marked off the three-hour interview space as a carnivalesque world in which the mendaciously mundane values of ordinary reality could be mocked, inverted, and transcended.
So Kanye was simultaneously channeling Jesus and the fool king archetype. And that isn’t a contradiction. For the Jesus of the Gospels is a very special type of fool king. Though billed as the King of the Jews, Jesus doesn’t enter Jerusalem in a gilded chariot surrounded by the high and mighty. Instead, he rides into town on an ass, surrounded by lowborn outcasts. That decidedly un-regal entry symbolizes Jesus’s inversion of the normal values of pomp and hierarchy and the rule of the strong over the weak, in favor of humility and love.
The irony, of course, is that the Jews were waiting for a world-conquering hero, an arrogant, strutting vanquisher of the goyim. And what they got was a hippie peacenik spiritual healer riding into town on a donkey, surrounded by even scruffier followers. No wonder they rejected, insulted, and killed him,[**] and have been rejecting and insulting and killing him ever since.
So Kanye’s method-acting tribute to Jesus and the holy fool and fool king archetypes, though hilariously joyful and liberating, has put him on the Road to Calvary and laden him with a heavy cross to bear. May Allah protect and guide him, and bless him and all of the truth-telling justice-seeking saliheen.
Notes
[*] These are of course generalizations or “truthful tropes,” and they are roughly accurate in general terms, but of course do not apply equally to all Jewish people or interpreters of Jewish religion.
[**] Or at least imagined they killed him—but the Qur’an places that notion sous rature.
Macron wants more Twitter censorship to stop people saying “crazy things” about vaccines, pandemics, and war
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Twitter’s owner Elon Musk for relaxing content censorship policies on the platform, arguing that content on Twitter needs more regulation. Macron made the comments in an appearance on ABC News ahead of his visit to The White House.
Macron said that democracies are under “very strong pressure” from forces like social media where users can say “crazy things about a vaccine, a pandemic, the war.”
This week, Musk said he would relax content moderation policies surrounding topics like the coronavirus.
Good Morning America and ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “He’s making it worse, isn’t he?”
“I think this is a big issue,” Macron responded. “I think it deserves to be largely engaged. What I push very much for, want, is exactly the opposite – more regulation.”
Macron further argued that speech in a democracy has to be “based on respect and political order.”
The French President added: “You can demonstrate, you can have free speech, you can write what you want – but there is responsibilities and limits. The limits is you cannot go in the streets and have racist speech, or antisemitic speech, you cannot put at risk the life of someone else. Violence is never legitimate in democracy.”
Macron also criticized former US President Donald Trump, whose Twitter account was recently restored after an almost two-year ban after the January 6, 2021, riot at the US capitol.
“When in one of the biggest democracies and oldest democracies in the world, you can have a leader and supporters deciding on purpose to refuse the results because this is the one they didn’t want to see, this is just the beginning of the end of the democracy,” Macron said.
Earlier this week, regulators in the European Union warned Musk that Twitter could be banned in the region or face fines if it does not enforce content censorship policies. Musk was also warned about the arbitrary reinstatement of previously banned accounts. The new owner said he would grant “general amnesty” to banned accounts that had not broken the law or spammed.
New Zealand admits it has direct access to Facebook takedown portal where it can flag content for censorship
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
New Zealand’s government has officially admitted that it has partner access to Facebook’s controversial content takedown portal.
This portal is designed specifically for government agencies to flag content to Facebook for censorship. According to The Intercept, which reported on the portal in October, government partners can also use the portal to “report disinformation directly” to Facebook.
And in a recent response to a New Zealand Official Information Act (OIA) request, which asked whether the government has partner access to Facebook’s takedown portal, the New Zealand government confirmed that the Department of Internal Affairs has access. While this was the only government department that was confirmed to have access to the portal, the OIA response also said “we cannot advise if any other government agency has access to the takedown portal.”
We obtained a copy of the OIA response for you here.
The OIA response didn’t detail how much content had been censored via this Facebook takedown portal. However, other reports on similar types of backdoor content takedown arrangements between governments and Big Tech have shown that governments regularly use them to target legal content such as parody accounts, accounts questioning the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, and so-called election misinformation.”
Publicly, the New Zealand government has endorsed the censorship of legal content with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying “disinformation” should be regulated like guns, bombs, and nuclear weapons. Big Tech companies have also agreed to a censorship pact in the country where they suppress “misinformation” and “harmful content.”
Most other governments haven’t admitted that they have access to these portals. However, last year The White House did admit that the United States (US) Surgeon General’s Office is flagging posts for Facebook to censor.
The Intercept’s report on this Facebook content takedown portal claimed that several other United States (US) government agencies have access to the portal, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Documents released as part of 2021 lawsuits suggest that the California Secretary of State’s Office of Elections Cybersecurity (OEC) also has access to the Facebook takedown portal and a similar type of portal on Twitter.
Rumble files lawsuit to challenge New York’s social media censorship law
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | December 1, 2022
Free speech video sharing platform Rumble and its subscription platform Locals have sued New York Attorney General (AG) Letitia James to challenge a social media censorship law that they say would force platforms to target constitutionally protected speech.
Rumble and Locals are being represented by the free speech nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and are joined in the lawsuit by constitutional law professor Eugene Volokh, the co-founder of the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog.
We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.
“The law is titled ‘Social media networks; hateful conduct prohibited,’ but it actually targets speech the state doesn’t like — even if that speech is fully protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE said in a statement.
The law forces a wide variety of internet platforms to publish a policy detailing how they’ll respond to posts that are deemed to “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” based on protected classes such as religion, gender, or race.
It also requires platforms to create a way for visitors to complain about “hateful content” and requires them to respond to complaints directly. Platforms that refuse to comply can be investigated by the AG’s office, subpoenaed, and fined up to $1,000 per violation.
It comes into force on Saturday, December 3, 2022.
As is often the case with censorship laws, this Social Media Networks; Hateful Conduct Prohibited law doesn’t define “vilify,” “humiliate,” or “incite.”
Rumble suggested that this means it would “cover constitutionally protected speech like jokes, satire, political debates, and other online commentary.”
FIRE noted that the law’s scope is “entirely subjective” and suggested that it could target a wide range of First Amendment-protected speech such as “a comedian’s blog entry ‘vilifying’ men by mocking gender stereotypes” and most comments on almost any website “that could be considered by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, as ‘humiliating’ or ‘vilifying’ a group based on protected class status like religion, gender, or race.”
FIRE added: “Bloggers, commenters, websites, and apps around the country are ensnared by the New York law due to its broad definition of ‘social media networks’ as for-profit ‘service providers’ that ‘enable users to share any content.’ This vague wording means that the law can impact virtually any revenue-generating website that allows comments or posts and is accessible to New Yorkers — but no government entity can legally compel blogs or other internet platforms to adopt its broad definition of ‘hateful conduct.’”
“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” Volokh said. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”
Rumble Chairman and CEO Chris Pavlovski added: “New York’s law would open the door for the suppression of protected speech based on the complaints of activists and bullies. Rumble will always celebrate freedom and support creative independence, so I’m delighted to work with FIRE to help protect lawful online expression.”
This law is one of several attempts by New York to encroach on the First Amendment and push for the censorship of constitutionally protected speech. Other laws and proposals from the state have pushed to ban the sharing of violent crime videos online, ban gendered language in law, and allow officials to sue platforms that are suspected of “contributing” to the “knowing or reckless” spread of “misinformation.
US federal government pays $5M for software to turn citizens into online “misinformation” responders
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | December 2, 2022
Journalism group Hacks/Hackers was awarded $5 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop software that would encourage ordinary Americans to warn their friends and family about misinformation in their online speech. Users of the software would confront alleged misinformation by replying with text recommended by the software.

Hacks/Hackers has been tasked with developing the “Analysis and Response Toolkit for Trust (ARTT), a suite of expert-informed resources that are intended to provide guidance and encouragement to individuals and communities as they address contentious or difficult topics online,” the NSF group said in an October 24 article.
According to a video demonstration of the software, the tool will tell users if a social media post is “harmful” and, if it is, it “suggests relevant responses through tailored response examples or templates” that users can copy and paste as responses.

“Every day there are motivated citizens, like librarians, health communicators, and amateur volunteers, who engage with the misinformation that is posted by their peers and make efforts to share reliable information to empower their communities,” the video said.
Another video by ARTT claimed that social media efforts to fight misinformation are not as effective in influencing users’ views as efforts made by friends.
“That’s why we want to focus on these peer connections when it comes to having these conversations online … Instead of coming to you from the platform, it’s actually coming to you from a friend,” the video said.
The group led by Hacks/Hackers is also working on Wikipedia tools, which will determine those that are a “credible source” on Covid vaccines and prevent sources that are not credible from being cited on Wikipedia.

The list of credible sources has started to be organized, with outlets like the Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian classified as “reliable,” and outlets like The Federalist and The Daily Wire classified as “unreliable” or “conspiracy.”



