Obama and Bush to present seminars about tackling online “misinformation”
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 14, 2022
Former US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are to hold conferences encouraging more online censorship.
According to Axios, the conferences by the two former presidents will “highlight rising threats from authoritarianism and disinformation — and how to combat them globally and at home.”
On November 16, the George W. Bush Institute will hold a conference called “The Struggle for Freedom.” The conference will address revitalizing democracy globally. The conference’s third panel is titled “Emerging Technology and the Future of Freedom.”
The conference will be attended by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine.
Bush’s conference only subtly hints at tackling “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Obama’s conference, the Democracy Forum, more broadly states disinformation will be a topic.
The first panel of the conference is titled “Tackling Disinformation, Protecting Democracy.” Anil Dash, CEO of Glitch, a platform that claims to be “the friendly place where everyone builds the web, is listed among the key speakers.”
The second panel is titled “Lightning Talk: Dismantling Hate in the Digital Age.” One of the key speakers is Vidhya Ramalingam, CEO of Moonshot, a company dedicated to developing tech solutions to “expose threats, disrupt malicious actors and protect vulnerable audiences online.”
Obama has been a vocal supporter of content moderation and has called “disinformation” a threat to democracy.
“Solving the disinformation problem won’t cure all that ails our democracies or tears at the fabric of our world, but it can help tamp down divisions and let us rebuild the trust and solidarity needed to make our democracy stronger,” Obama said at an event at Stanford University earlier this year.
Despite most Republicans calling for less censorship, Bush has encouraged content moderation.
Did Federal Censors Swing the 2020 Election?
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | November 14, 2022
Did the Russiagate conspiracy entitle the federal government to censor Americans forever? Did federal shenanigans swing the 2020 election? A new report reveals how a new federal agency and federal grantees exploited a 2016 scam to launch the greatest covert censorship campaign in U.S. history.
In 2016, top FBI officials and the Obama administration fueled a conspiracy that the Trump presidential campaign was colluding with the Russian government. Numerous false FBI claims spurred a massive wiretapping operation approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The allegations led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who spent two years investigating before admitting that there was nothing to prosecute for his primary charge. But by that point, Trump had been irredeemably tainted and the Democrats had exploited the controversy to capture control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018.
Thanks to Russiagate, Congress created a new federal agency in 2018—the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). CISA was purportedly intended to fight foreign threats to election security and U.S. infrastructure. But the agency quickly shifted its target to American citizens. As a report last week from the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO) revealed, “Any U.S. citizen posting what DHS considered misinformation’ online was suddenly conducting a cyber attack against US critical infrastructure.”
CISA and DHS realized that they could not directly muzzle Americans so they colluded with a number of federal grantees who comprised the Election Integrity Project, a coalition formed in mid-2020. The result was “censorship by proxy,” as law professor Jonathan Turley observed, bludgeoning social media companies into submission. The DHS-spurred crackdown in 2020 resulted in the suppression of “22 million tweets labeled ‘misinformation’ on Twitter” and “hundreds of millions of individual Facebook posts, YouTube videos, TikToks, and tweets impacted” thanks to changes that would not have occurred without “‘huge regulatory pressure’ from government,” FFO reported.
Once the government claims a prerogative to censor “misinformation,” the definition of misinformation mushrooms to serve political purposes. The Election Integrity Partnership bragged about how social media posts were targeted that were merely purportedly guilty of offenses such as “exaggerate issue,” “misleading stats” and “out of context.” Many of those alleged factual infractions were piddling compared to the sweeping falsehoods continually uncorked by presidential candidates Trump and Biden.
Prior to the 2020 election, “the censorship focus was always and consistently foremost targeted at speech casting doubt on mail-in ballots,” FFO reported. Democrats exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to push through electoral changes that opened the floodgates to unverified mail-in ballots. Some states like Michigan sent absentee ballots to all voters, violating the Election Clause of the Constitution (which specifies that state legislatures make the rules for federal elections).
Election regimes that scrutinized mail-in ballots routinely had a high rejection rate. New York City relied on mail-in ballots for a June 2020 primary that the New York Daily News derided as a “dumpster fire.” Up to 20% of ballots “were declared invalid before even being opened, based on mistakes with their exterior envelopes,” The Washington Post noted, thanks largely to missing postmarks or signatures. Trump claimed that the shift to mail-in ballots could result in “the most corrupt vote in our nation’s history.”
But federal string-pulling minimized controversies. FFO noted, “Pre-censoring U.S. citizen debate about mail-in ballots five months before an election has the impact of devastating the ability of concerned citizens to pressure their state representatives to take legal action on changing voting procedures.” Rather than the traditional scrutiny for mail-in ballots, many locales defaulted to accepting practically any piece of paper with a mark. Mail-in ballots determined the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump received more votes on Election Day but 43,000 mail-in ballots in three states sealed Biden’s victory—a minuscule portion of the tens of millions of mail-in votes he received.
In a July 28, 2020 article for the American Institute for Economic Research, I warned that the controversies over mail-in ballots could lead to “the death of political legitimacy…Deep State federal agencies are a Godzilla that have established their prerogative to undermine if not overturn election results.”
Until I read the new FFO report, I did not realize that “the biggest category for [2020] censorship was ‘delegitimization’… defined to mean any speech that ‘casts doubt’ on any kind of election process, outcome or integrity issues [which] made all conservative and populist criticism of the administration of the election pre-banned at the narrative level, five months in advance of Election Day.” Damn, no wonder that article of mine got so little traction on Twitter and Facebook! “Delegitimization” resulted in “72% of its censorship tickets and targeted over 99% of the posts throttled by narrative during the 2020 election.”
The entire process looks like a Monty Python parody of democracy. As Mike Benz, the former State Department official who heads FFO, observed, “The same obscure DHS subagency tasked with election security also gained the power to censor any questions about election security.”
How much impact did federal censorship and suppression have on the most recent elections? The Election Integrity Project browbeat tech companies to accept “that social media posts about the 2022 elections be censorable under a low bar of simply ‘misleading,’” according to FFO. For the midterm elections, “the Election Integrity Project is tightly monitoring and working to censor ‘discussions surrounding the delays in counting ballots’ being ‘framed as fraud,’” FFO reported. Damned convenient considering the debacle in Arizona—which was foreseen if not foreordained. In a Washington speech just before the election, President Biden told listeners that “in some cases we won’t know the winner…until a few days after the election. It takes time to count all legitimate ballots in a legal and orderly manner.” Biden stressed that citizens must be “patient. That’s how this is supposed to work.”
But it never consistently worked that way before in American history. Arizona’s voting machines dismally failed on Election Day and Democrats are vehemently resisting a hand recount of all ballots.
The real goal is to control Americans’ minds—and not just on Election Day. Jen Easterly, the NSA honcho who Biden chose to run CISA, declared that “the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation… is incredibly important.” And the most important cognitive “fix” is to train Americans to never doubt Uncle Sam. In a March 2022 meeting with top Twitter executives, FBI official Laura Dehmlow “warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government,” The Intercept recently reported. The FBI has 80 agents on a task force to curb “subversive data utilized to drive a wedge between the populace and the government.”
“Disinformation” is often simply the lag time between the pronouncement and the debunking of government falsehoods. If the feds can censor most if not almost all of their online critics, their cons become almost irrefutable. Perhaps that is the only way that many federal policies can retain any shard of legitimacy. As Mike Benz warns, “DHS is carrying out an official state policy that if public trust is not earned, it must be installed.” That is a recipe for the death of democracy.
Jim Bovard is the author of Public Policy Hooligan (2012), Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994), and 7 other books. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and has also written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and other publications. His articles have been publicly denounced by the chief of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC and numerous federal agencies.
Eventbrite could face lawsuit after banning debate on trans ideology
By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | November 13, 2022
A British lawyer plans to sue US-based ticket-selling firm Eventbrite for banning her from selling tickets to a debate event because it alleged the event would create a platform for “dangerous” views.
Sarah Philimore is fundraising legal fees to sue Eventbrite for pulling tickets to the launch of her book “Transpositions: a personal journey into gender criticism.” Comedy writer Graham Linehan co-authored the book.
Philimore argued that Eventbrite has to obey UK laws, adding that gender critical belief should be respected in a democratic society. She sent several letters asking for clarification on why her event violated Eventbrite’s terms. She has not received any meaningful reply, so she decided to sue.
“I want the court to confirm that what Eventbrite have done is unlawful.
“I think there is a clear breach of the Equality Act here, in that my event was removed from the platform because it was decided it promoted ‘violent’ or ‘hateful’ content.
“It does not. It was removed because people complained – falsely – that it was ‘transphobic,’” Philmore told The Telegraph.
She added: “My point is simple. If Eventbrite wishes to operate in the UK, it must obey UK laws.
“In particular it cannot ignore the will of Parliament which has made it clear via the Equality Act and the EAT decision in Forstater, that ‘gender critical’ belief is worthy of respect in a democratic society.
“I believe my claim raises interesting and important issues that go beyond just the Equality Act.
The event will go ahead as scheduled, on December 2, and tickets will be sold at the door.
Linehan, a critic of gender ideology and is also scheduled to speak at the book launch, said: “This is the latest attempt to make feminism a hate crime. For some time, people have been attempting to reframe feminist statement as hate crimes; as attacks on transgender people.’
“The companies just follow along because they are cowards, or because they are in the grip of ideological capture, and believe truly in this stuff. The problem is we’re having our morality dictated to us by companies in the US according to their prevailing obsessions.”
Band of Brothers
Dr. Paul Marik and his fellows in the FLCCC fight for patients’ rights. All have paid a heavy price for taking care of patients and telling the truth.
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | November 12, 2022
Part I in a series on Dr. Paul Marik—a magnificent doctor who was fired from his job and professorship because he successfully treated his COVID-19 patients with FDA-approved drugs and high-dose Vitamin C.
The following post is from The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, by John Leake and Peter A. McCullough. MD, MPH.
Dr. Paul Marik is to critical care medicine what Dr. McCullough is to cardio-renal medicine. The 65-year-old native of South Africa has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers and books, which made him the second most published critical care doctor in the history of medicine.
Dr. Paul Marik with Dr. Peter McCullough and John Leake at the Nurses Freedom Network Conference in Franklin, TN, June 12, 2022
Upon meeting Dr. Marik, one is overwhelmed by the impression of his vast physical stature. His gentle manners and elegant South African accent conjure accounts of 19th century British gentleman explorers. Since the early days of his career, he’d been keenly interested in discovering how to treat sepsis—the body’s extreme, life-threatening response to an infection. Well into the 21st century, sepsis continued to be a major cause of death. According to the CDC, approximately 1.7 million American adults fall ill with sepsis every year, of which approximately 270,000 die in hospital. Globally, the sepsis burden is estimated at 15 to 19 million cases annually, with a mortality rate approaching 60% in low-income countries.
Dr. Marik knew the literature on sepsis treatment. Several studies had indicated that large doses of IV-administered Vitamin C and Vitamin B1 (thiamine) showed some benefit. Other studies indicated that hydrocortisone showed promise. Dr. Marik reasoned that combining the three into a cocktail could amplify their benefit. As had often been observed in medicine, combining agents seems to affect multiple pathways, causing an overlapping and synergistic effect.
In 2016, he and his colleagues conducted a study in which they compared 47 sepsis patients who received the cocktail to a control group of 47 patients who received sepsis standard of care at the time. The mortality rate of the treatment group was 8.5% compared to 40.4% of the control group—a stunning difference. Skeptics claimed the study was too small and nonrandomized. Nevertheless, what became known as the “Marik Cocktail” was adopted by critical care units all over the world, which reported excellent results with the therapy.
When COVID-19 struck and Dr. Marik’s critical care unit at the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital received its first patients, he observed they were suffering from an inflammatory lung reaction, and he suspected this could be treated with a corticosteroid. He contacted four other critical care specialists—Professor Joseph Varon at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston (who, in the year 2020, would work 268 days straight treating COVID-19 patients in his ICU) Professor Gianfranco Umberto Meduri at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Professor Jose Iglesias at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in Seton Hall, New Jersey, and Professor Pierre Kory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As author Michael Capuzzo pointed out in his marvelous story about these doctors, it would be hard to imagine a more experienced and scholarly team of pulmonary critical care doctors.
Together they formed the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium (FLCCC) and got to work on a protocol for saving hospitalized patients. They started their work by focusing on the extreme inflammation they were observing. Often called “cytokine storm” after the proteins produced by the immune system, this was an extreme and maladaptive immune response that had often been observed in other viral illnesses, including virulent influenza. It was this inflammation of the lungs, kidneys, and other organs that killed the patient, and not the virus itself. Thus, the key to treating the syndrome was reducing this inflammation.
Professor Meduri was a leading expert on corticosteroid therapy in critical illness. He conducted an exhaustive review of corticosteroid use against SARS-CoV-1, MERS, and H1N1 and found significant evidence that these agents had been lifesaving in their reduction of extreme inflammation. For decades the corticosteroid methylprednisolone had been the standard medication for suppressing cytokine storm. And yet, despite this glaring fact, every US federal health agency recommended against using corticosteroids against COVID-19 from the outset of the pandemic.
Unlike these agencies, the FLCCC concluded that their best bet for tackling the disease in hospitalized patients was a combination of Methylprednisolone and the antioxidant Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). To these they added Thiamine (Vitamin B1) to optimize cellular oxygen utilization and energy consumption, and the anticoagulant Heparin to prevent and help in dissolving blood clots that appear with high frequency.
There is nothing experimental about these drugs. Methylprednisolone and heparin had long been FDA-approved for treating inflammation and blood clotting. Vitamin C and B1 were available over the counter, though in the hospital setting they were IV-administered in high doses. The FLCCC doctors began giving this “MATH Protocol” to ICU patients and tracked their progress for a case study. By the end of April, they had treated 100. Of these, 98 survived. The two who died were in their eighties and had other advanced chronic illnesses. None of the patients had long durations on ventilators, were ventilator dependent, and or had long hospital stays.
During this period, Dr. Pierre Kory was in daily communication with ICU doctors in his native New York City, where he’d worked in multiple hospitals. His colleagues reported that they turned the tide in the ICUs as soon as they started using methylprednisolone. Other ICU doctors in hard hit New Orleans reported the same. Kory and colleagues therefore sent letters to the White House, the CDC, and the NIH, presenting their real-world evidence of the corticosteroid’s efficacy—all to no avail.
Dr. Kory’s efforts were drawn to the attention of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who was chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Since his daughter had been born with a congenital heart defect—successfully corrected by an innovative operation—Senator Johnson had believed that if citizens were faced with a life-threatening condition for which there was no proven treatment, they should have the right to try drugs or operations that seem to offer some benefit, even if these had not yet passed the conventional FDA-approval process. The alternative was to do nothing and accept the high probability of death.
Critics of the right to try claim that unless procedures and medications are carefully regulated by the FDA, unscrupulous doctors will create false hope by offering them to desperate patients, even if there is little trial data to prove their efficacy. Senator Johnson did not find this argument persuasive and he introduced his federal right to try bill in 2017. A companion bill was introduced in the House, ultimately passed in both houses, and was signed into law by President Trump in 2018.
Upon Senator Johnson’s invitation, Professor Kory addressed the Senate Homeland Security Committee on May 6, 2020. Speaking via WebEx, Kory stated the credentials of the FLCCC doctors, and then explained the rationale for using their protocol. He then reported the success they and other doctors were having with it. This was excellent news, and a naive viewer would likely assume that it would be welcomed by the entire medical profession.
And yet, despite the FLCCC’s well-founded rationale for their therapy, broad consensus for the efficacy of its components in related conditions, and their success with it, they continued to get pushback from the CDC and NIH, which refused to change their advisory against using corticosteroids to treat COVID-19. On four occasions, the FLCCC tried to notify the White House of their favorable results, but they received no reply.
Much Ado About Nothing
By Todd Hayen | OffGuardian | November 12, 2022
Do any of you think we are over-reacting? I don’t think so, but the sheep-folk certainly do. They claim they are willing to let bygones be bygones and just put it all in the past and get on with life.
I am sure everyone reading this is aware of the bombshell editorial The Atlantic dropped recently with their amnesty nonsense. I don’t think I have been more livid reading an article since the days of seeing piece after piece about how effective masks are against viral transmission.
I won’t comment on The Atlantic blather directly here, as there have been many fine responses to it, but wow, what a piece. So typical of a bully trying to pretend he loved his victims all along when he knows he is cornered and about to be punished. One last punch disguised as a kiss.
I just got back from a little cruise. Major ports were Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Monaco, and a smattering of little French and Italian hideaways. I had mixed feelings about going, but realized that if this tsunami we all see coming a few miles off the shore has the potential of wiping out most travel in the foreseeable future, I figured I might as well get something in before the onslaught.
It was nice in a lot of ways, as would be expected, but in other ways unusually disconcerting. For one thing, very, very few people had masks, and thus there was a palatable scent in the air of “Covid is a thing of the past.”
One would think this was a good thing, but instead it exuded a very clear vibe of denial.
Oddly enough, not wearing masks, and believing Covid to be over, to me is just another example of compliance to authority.
I know that seems a stretch, but if Covid were real, coupled with the truth that the vaccines do not work, and we were told again and again that there would be no natural herd immunity without a working vaccine, and we still hear of infections rising, variants being created, and hospitals becoming over crowded, why would people think the disease just died and disappeared? The reason is because we were told it was over.
We were told we suddenly didn’t need masks, that we could party with friends, vaxxed or unvaxxed, that we could gather in huge crowds, get on cruise ships (no one even cared that I was unvaccinated.) We were told what was true, what was real and what to worry or not worry about. And like sheep, most people blindly followed.
So shouldn’t I be happy? If I were, it would be for all of the wrong reasons. It is true we are all happy when the slave owner puts down the whip. Whip or not, however, we are still slaves.
I, too, bask in the sun of my controlled freedom—I went on a cruise didn’t I? After two years of not being “allowed to” — so I am just as guilty of this sort of compliance. I am one step closer to truth though; I know this offer of freedom is a tactic, a ploy, and a ruse.
I’ll take a scrap of bread when it is offered, but I will not succumb to complacency and forgive my master for his cruelty when he behaves, albeit for just a moment, as my friend. Most everyone else seems fine to let bygones be bygones.
I am not, and I suspect most of you reading this are not as well.
The great danger I see here in the masses just carrying on in complacent forgiveness is that they are encouraged to stay blind. Surely if they speak out against the atrocities that the world has experienced over the past three years they would quickly be categorized as a trouble maker, a pariah, and a misfit.
“Just get over it, man, it’s all over.”
Is it? No, of course not, you and I know that, and it is all still going on in various ways under the covers now, in the dark recesses of the culture: persecutions, continued efforts to vaccinate, and particularly vaccinate children, warnings of an “upcoming dark winter” where restrictions will come back into the mainstream. On and on, you know what I am speaking of.
However, the mass attitude now, as per The Atlantic piece, is “nothing all that much really happened.”
No one died unnecessarily due to the Covid response, no one got sick, no one lost their job or their livelihood, no one suffered socially (particularly children wearing masks in school), no one suffered educationally, nothing bad really happened.
If you are still pissed about all that DID happen, then you are overreacting… much ado about nothing.
So get over it, forget and forgive.
Not everyone in the world has read that article, but what I saw in Europe, it seems that most people, at least on physical observation, are basically taking on that attitude.
It breaks my heart.
I think about the countless mothers sitting by their children in countless hospitals nurturing them through a totally unprecedented heart incident.
I think of the countless families standing together at the funeral of a loved one, dead prematurely from a heart attack, blood clotting, or cancer—cause unknown, unless you want to apply the newly created diagnoses, “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.” What the hell is that?
A novel disease and now a common cause of death? Easy peasy explanation, eh? I think of the countless numbers of people suffering from a myriad of strange afflictions, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
I think again of countless people having suffered unconscionably, and pointlessly, after losing their jobs, their businesses, their life savings, and their livelihood—the countless children with lower IQs, and those who have suffered social retardation due to the mask mandates, social distancing, and mandatory online teaching at home with no socialization at all.
I could write 100 pages describing all of this—but most people don’t know, and if they do, don’t care, or just attribute all of this horror to the “cost of living—some are lucky in life, some are not.”
During my recent cruise not a word was uttered about any of this, thousands of people were encountered walking the streets of Rome, Florence, Barcelona, all laughing, eating, drinking, playing. While just beneath their feet, hidden a foot underground, there are skulls and bones of the fallen—all forgotten, and the perpetrators all forgiven.
When I was occasionally shaken from my self-induced and compliant vacation reverie, my heart ached talking to all of the young vibrant crewmembers on our ship.
I would hear of their plans to be married, create families, further their careers and live fully their vibrant lives—followed with the admission that they all had to be vaccinated to get their current jobs on the ship.
What really lies ahead for these beautiful children of God so innocent and full of life? I would shake my head, “maybe none of this is true, and maybe I am making more of it than it really is. Maybe they are right, and it really wasn’t that bad, just a mistake made here and there that we really could get over. It is all fine… let’s move on.”
Then a bone cracks under my foot—just a few inches from the surface of awareness—the truth. And I slip back into reality.
Department of Homeland Security CISA
US Government Office of Medical Censorship and Propaganda
By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH | Courageous Discourse | November 11, 2022
The US Department of Homeland Security (HSA) is conducting medical censorship while hiding in plain sight. The website for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has resources to engage vigilante “disinformation” police to assist HSA in their mission of silencing opinions on COVID-19 and pandemic response. The main stated target is disinformation defined as information deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country. Their toolkit allows any user to use “products” and tailor them with official logos to spread the government propagandized message:[i]
“COVID-19 DISINFORMATION TOOLKIT
These Toolkit resources are designed to help State, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) officials bring awareness to misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories appearing online related to COVID-19’s origin, scale, government response, prevention and treatment. Each product was designed to be tailored with local government websites and logos.
Download and share these resources—talking points, FAQs, outreach graphics, and posters—to help spread awareness.”
The toolkit directs well-intended users to use images, talking points, and documents to deliver a message. There is only ONE source of trusted information — you guessed it — state and local agencies who rely upon the CDC!
So, the picture is becoming more clear on how the US government operationalized a propaganda campaign on its own people from the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. They took these steps:
1) establish a single source of truth — the CDC,
2) weaponize CISA to declare “disinformation” their target,
3) enlist a legion of volunteer deputies without any official authority or accountability to operate within social media and all walks of life, giving public service messages telling Americans the CDC is the only trusted source of information. The converse of this assertion–anything else must be considered untrue and up for being nailed as “misinformation,” “disinformation,” or “malinformation.”
Don’t be surprised if FOIA-obtained documents demonstrate CISA and CDC were operating as partners in established campaigns with social media, mainstream television, print media, corporations, schools, and every aspect of life. Nothing can be more dangerous to public health. Directing all trust to a single source of medical information that is not contemporary, has no regular schedule of review or public briefings, is not transparent with data (e.g., the withheld V-Safe dataset), and has woefully lagged on major scientific developments (contagion control, testing, vaccine safety).
It’s a mind-blowing reality that our government agencies, in a planned and coordinated manner, have operationalized a plan to control information and spread propaganda in order to influence behavior. They pitted agencies against citizens and individuals against one another and set social media as the main battleground. The CDC and DHS CISA should be prime targets of US Senate and Congressional Investigations into our disastrous pandemic response.
[i] DHS CISA Publication: “We’re in This Together. Disinformation Stops With You.”
FBI Lobbying Congress For New Laws That Allow Them To Pursue Children As “Domestic Terrorists”
By Eric Striker | The Main Street Tribune | November 5, 2022
The FBI is calling on Congress to pass laws giving federal agents greater authority to prosecute children in relation to what it categorizes as domestic terrorism, according to the Bureau’s recently released Strategic Intelligence Assessment and Data on Domestic Terrorism.
The report, which was presented to lawmakers last month, focuses primarily on the alleged threat landscape regarding what federal officials have dubbed “Domestic Violent Extremism,” or DVE.
The assessment points out that federal domestic terrorism investigations grew to record highs during the relevant year of analysis, largely due to the mass classification of Donald Trump supporters arrested for entering the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021 as Domestic Violent Extremists.
Tucked away in the 44-page report’s “Legislative Initiatives” section, the Department of Homeland Security and FBI contend that existing federal law sets the bar for arresting and prosecuting juvenile investigative targets too high:
“The FBI is actively working with DOJ on some broader legislative initiatives that can benefit both federal investigations and prosecutions, including those relating to DT. For example, there are ongoing discussions about adjusting legislation in response to the challenges in disrupting juvenile threat actors via federal law enforcement actions. We will inform and work with the Congress in the event we identify any critical gaps in our authorities that may have negative effects on our ability to accomplish our mission.”
The topic of “disrupting juvenile threat actors via federal law enforcement actions” is not extrapolated upon further, but a recent forum featuring intelligence operatives from multiple agencies revealed the depth of the FBI’s fixation on children it perceives as holding a domestic violent extremist political ideology.
At an October 24th discussion hosted by the Homeland Security Experts Group (HSEG) — a privately controlled information sharing consortium overseen by former DHS secretary, PATRIOT Act co-author and Israeli citizen Michael Chertoff — the assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division Robert Wells stated that many children his agency identifies as DVE’s are not breaking any federal or state laws, but he believes they still require law enforcement intervention.
Wells goes on to state that the FBI is currently working with its Behavioral Analysis Unit to analyze children who are expressing a belief or sentiment that does not violate any laws in order to formalize a procedure for federal agents to take it upon themselves to intervene in their lives.
The FBI and Department of Justice’s war on domestic terror has been racked with controversy. Critics hold that the FBI and Department of Justice are using the pretense of fighting terrorism as a means towards the end of suppressing political opposition.
A 1,000 page report released earlier this week by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee details allegations of bias, incompetence, rampant corruption and statements made by several FBI whistleblowers that the Bureau’s campaign against “domestic terrorism” is nothing more than a naked political crackdown against Constitutionally protected right-wing and religious beliefs.
Among the specific charges made by over a dozen conscientious FBI agents, they contend that they were compelled by supervisors to manufacture fraudulent domestic terrorism data in order to justify increasing the federal government’s power to crush legitimate political activity the powerful people disagree with.
The civil liberties question of whether FBI agents have the legal right to monitor or interfere in the activities of minors who are not breaking any laws was not examined in its official assessment, nor was it raised in discussions hosted at the HSEG conference.
Germany wants more scrutiny of Twitter after Elon Musk takeover
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 10, 2022
Germany’s ruling party the Social Democrats (SPD) has called for more scrutiny of Twitter, following the takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
There have been mixed reactions to the new ownership of Twitter. Some politicians are complaining about a potential rise in “misinformation” and “hate speech,” while some are anticipating the changes he plans to make to make the platform more free-speech-friendly.
Some members of SPD have called on the relevant regulators and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann to put Twitter under tighter scrutiny to make sure it follows EU’s rules on content.
“For me, the fact that Twitter is being taken over by somebody who wants to use the network for political purposes even more strongly is highly problematic,” SPD party chief Lars Klingbeil said, speaking to a local newspaper, Handelsblatt.
“Should the variety of opinion be limited further, authorities will have to take resolute action.”
Jens Zimmermann, the party’s digital policy spokesperson, was also critical of the new ownership of Twitter. He noted that the recent mass layoffs will make it difficult for Twitter to fulfill the EU rules on content moderation and fail to respond to complaints related to harmful content.
He said that the federal justice office should “put Twitter under strict scrutiny.”
Former Greek soccer player Vassilis Tsiartas is sentenced over Facebook post accused of being transphobic
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | November 10, 2022
Former Greek soccer player Vassilis Tsiartas was fined 5,000 euro ($5,008) and given a 10-month suspended prison sentence for criticizing the legalization of gender transition surgery in children.
Tsiartas was taken to court by the Transgender Support Association, which accused him of violating a law against “racism” that contains provisions against inciting violence or hatred based on gender ideology.
In 2017, responding to a law legalizing gender identity, the former soccer player posted on Facebook that he hoped “the first sex changes are carried out on the children of those who ratified this abomination.” He added, “Legitimize pedophiles too, to complete the crimes.”
Tsiartas is the first person to be convicted under the law against incitement to violence or hatred. The Transgender Support Association called the conviction “particularly important for the transgender community.” It added that it will continue fighting “all forms of intolerance, racism, and incitement to discrimination, hatred, and violence.”
The LGBT group also wants to “fully safeguard the human rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ and especially transgender people in every sector of the public and private sphere.”
Tsiartas plans to appeal the ruling, according to the Greek Reporter.
Facebook launches new tools to “combat climate misinformation”
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | November 9, 2022
The world’s largest social network, Facebook, has announced plans to increase its elevation of “authoritative climate information” and expand its “fact checking” of content that it deems to be climate misinformation.
Facebook will expand its fact-checking tools by increasing the availability of its “Climate Science Center” (a page that contains “factual resources from the world’s leading climate organizations and actionable steps people can take in their everyday lives to combat climate change”) to 165 countries and expanding its “Climate Inform Labels” (labels that are added to Facebook posts and link to posts from the Climate Science Center).
The tech giant has also launched a “Climate Science Literacy Initiative” that will “pre-bunk climate misinformation” by running ads that “feature five of the most common techniques used to misrepresent climate change.”
To boost “authoritative” climate information, Facebook is testing a new “Climate Pledges” feature in Groups and has committed to amplifying the voices of “trusted organizations in the climate space.”
This new Climate Pledges feature was developed with inputs from the United Nations (UN) and contains what it calls “expert-backed climate solutions” that “spark conversation” within Groups and “help people understand the most impactful actions they can take.”
Facebook is also working closely with several climate change groups such as Monash Climate Change Communication Research Hub, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory, and Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Facebook will boost these organizations by “providing ad credits, insights and support to help them share reliable information about climate change, and inform users about common techniques used to spread myths about climate science.”
Facebook’s announcement of these changes follows it and other tech giants facing mounting pressure to censor content that challenges the mainstream climate change narrative as climate groups, science groups, and even tech employees demand more censorship.
Not only has there been an increased push for Big Tech platforms to censor climate content that deviates from the mainstream narrative but influential groups, banks, and executives are also pushing for increased tracking and surveillance of individual carbon usage as a proposed strategy for combating climate change.
Featured Video
Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- China blames US for diplomatic impasse with Iran, urges it to show ‘sincerity’ in talks
- Iran announces new Hormuz restrictions after US ceasefire violations
- After Islamabad: How the Global South Is Reshaping Eurasian Geopolitics
- Is Trump Going for Armageddon?
- Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
- Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone
- Hamas dismisses US-backed disarmament plan as ‘collective suicide’
- Israel’s war obsession and the urgency of Palestinian leverage
- Supply chains breaking: The hidden bottlenecks threatening to bring the global economy to a standstill
- Israel’s Expansion Means An Unraveling of Middle East Stability
- If Americans Knew
- 5 times Israelis desecrated Christian sites in the past two years
- US running out of weaponry for Israel’s war; Iran has plenty – Daily Update
- Israel is (still) killing aid workers in Gaza
- Catholics finally splitting with Trump over Iran war and Israel
- Israel’s “Black Wednesday” Massacre Leaves Lebanese Families Giving DNA To ID Loved One’s Remains
- ‘I Felt I Was a Monster’: IDF Soldiers Talk About the ‘Moral Injury’ – and the Silence
- ‘I thought I might die’: A Palestinian mother’s account of Israeli detention
- Mom whose daughter was killed by Israeli bulldozer 23 years ago pleaded with Congress to finally stop funding
- Israeli soldier takes sledgehammer to Jesus statue in Lebanon – Daily Update
- Israel employs ‘Gaza tactics’ in Lebanon, destroying 1,000 homes per day – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
- New Study: No Linear Warming Or Glacier Retreat Along Northern Antarctic Peninsula Since 1980s
- An Inconvenient Tree: Uncovered In Alps… Europe Much Warmer Than Today 6000 Years Ago
- New Study Reports A 60% Slowdown In Greenland’s Ice Loss Rate In The Last Decade
- Low Intensity Tornado Wrecks Major Solar Farm, Creating A Potential Toxic Dump
Aletho News 