Judge Orders Fauci to Cough It Up
BY JEFFREY A. TUCKER | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | SEPTEMBER 8, 2022
A lawsuit against the federal government – Anthony Fauci in particular – from the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana has been brewing for a good part of the summer of 2022. The issue concerns the censoring of certain high-level experts on social media, three of whom are senior scholars of the Brownstone Institute. We know for sure that this censorship began early in the pandemic response and included exchanges between Fauci and then head of NIH Francis Collins, who called for a “quick and devastating takedown” of the Great Barrington Declaration.
At issue is whether and to what extent the government itself has had a hand in encouraging tech companies to squelch speech rights. If so, this is unconstitutional. It flies in the face of the First Amendment. It never should have happened. That it did required arduous legal means to expose and, hopefully, stop.
The Framers guaranteed that Congress would make no law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The Constitution never allowed an exception for an administrative bureaucracy answerable not even to voters to collaborate with large-scale private corporations to obtain the same result by other means. It’s still a violation of free speech.
It is of course true that any private company can regulate itself and make terms of use. But matters are different when its managers directly collude with government agencies to distribute only information of high priority to administrative bureaucrats while censoring dissident voices at the behest of government and its interests.
In order to determine if that happened, courts need access to full information on precisely what was going in their circles of communication. On September 6, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty released a decision that orders the government to give up information relevant to the case and do so in 21 days.
Dr. Fauci’s communications would be relevant to Plaintiffs’ allegations in reference to alleged suppression of speech relating to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, and to alleged suppression of speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns. (Karine) Jean-Pierre’s communications as White House Press Secretary could be relevant to all of Plaintiffs’ examples.
Government Defendants are making a blanket assertion of all communications to social media platforms by Dr. Fauci, and Jean-Pierre based upon executive privilege and presidential communications privilege. Plaintiffs concede they are not asking for any internal White House communications, but only external communications between Dr. Fauci and/or Jean-Pierre and third-party social media platforms.
This Court believes Plaintiffs are entitled to external communications by Jean-Pierre and Dr. Fauci in their capacities as White House Press Secretary and Chief Medical Advisor to the President to third-party social media platforms…
The initial complaint was filed May 5, 2022 and can be read in full here. It includes vast evidence of collusion between government officials and social media companies. But the government answered by claiming some kind of executive privilege and would not fork over information.
An amended complaint added the fireworks: It documented that 50 government officials in a dozen agencies were involved in applying pressure to social media companies to censor users, reports Zachary Stieber of Epoch Times.
That second filing might have flipped the switch and resulted in the judge’s decision to pull no punches. Indeed, it is a remarkable document, reproducing vast amounts of correspondence between government agencies and Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
What you see here is not antagonism but obsequious friendship: ongoing, relentless, guileless, as if nothing could be wrong here. They knew what they believed to be the problem voices and were determined to stamp them out. And that target included the documented censorship of top scientists associated with Brownstone Institute along with thousands of other credible experts and regular citizens who disagreed with the government’s extreme policy response to Covid.
Martin Kulldorff, Aaron Kheriaty, and Jay Bhattacharya are represented in the filing by the New Civil Liberties Alliance with Jenin Younes leading the legal team for the scientists. Within weeks, we’ll have a better sense of whether and to what extent these individuals were the targets directly and how many other accounts were named in takedown orders. For example, we know for sure that Naomi Wolf, another writer for Brownstone, was directly named in correspondence between the CDC and Facebook.
All of this went on for the better part of two years, during which time the First Amendment was a dead letter insofar as it concerned Covid information on platforms that are overwhelmingly dominant on the Internet. Through those means, individual citizens were restricted in their access to a diversity of views and instead inhabit a world of censorship and tedious hegemonic exhortation that have seriously hurt the credibility of the platforms that cooperated.
Finally we see courts coming around to the view that government needs to be held accountable for its actions. It is happening far too little and far too late but at least it is happening. And at long last, we might gain a clearer look into the mysterious works of Fauci and its imperial reign over American public health during the worst crisis for constitutional rights in many generations.
Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press.
Judge orders Fauci and WH Press Secretary to hand over records related to online censorship pressure
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 7, 2022
The US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana issued a ruling, ordering Dr. Anthony Fauci and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to respond to document requests by the New Civil Liberties Alliance in conjunction with the Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general on behalf of plaintiffs in State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al.
Judge Terry A. Doughty made the order, which has great importance for the millions of Americans experiencing censorship on social media – which is allegedly at the pressuring of government bodies and officials and would therefore be a violation of the First Amendment.
We obtained a copy of the order for you here.
The judge’s ruling was on “whether the White House Defendants, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre and Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci should be compelled to respond to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories and document requests” and “[w]hether Dr. Fauci, in his capacity as National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (“NIAID”) Director, should be required to provide additional responses to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories and document requests.”
The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and the defendants have no legal right to refuse to comply with the order.
“In accordance with the previous expedited discovery order, Plaintiffs served interrogatories and document requests upon White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and upon Dr. Anthony Fauci in his capacity as Chief Medical Advisor to the President,” the ruling states. “Government Defendants have refused to provide any interrogatory responses or responsive documents, maintaining that these would be internal communications that would implicate serious separation of powers concerns, that Plaintiffs are required to exhaust other avenues for the discovery first, and that it would be unduly burdensome and disproportional to the needs of the case.”
“The breadth and extent of the government’s censorship activities has turned out to be massive and far exceeded that disclosed by the federal government in response to initial court-ordered discovery made public last week,” the NCLA said in a statement to Reclaim The Net.
Much light has recently been shed on the Federal Government’s role in calling for direct censorship on social media platforms, as a result of the documents obtained during the lawsuit. Collusion between social media platforms and the CDC was also evident.
NCLA is representing several plaintiffs, some of which are prominent and well-respected epidemiologists who were censored by Big Tech platforms for diverging from the White House’s narrative on COVID-19.
The US district court judge Terry A. Doughty ruled on Tuesday:
“First, the requested information is obviously very relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims. Dr. Fauci’s communications would be relevant to Plaintiffs’ allegations in reference to alleged suppression of speech relating to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, and to alleged suppression of speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns,” the ruling continues. “Jean-Pierre’s communications as White House Press Secretary could be relevant to all of Plaintiffs’ examples.
“Government Defendants are making a blanket assertion of all communications to social media platforms by Dr. Fauci, and Jean-Pierre based upon executive privilege and presidential communications privilege,” the order adds. “Plaintiffs concede they are not asking for any internal White House communications, but only external communications between Dr. Fauci and/or Jean-Pierre and third-party social media platforms.”
Biden’s New War on Extremism (and Liberty)

By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | September 7, 2022
President Joe Biden believes that hysterical denunciations of extremism will save the Democratic Party in the upcoming congressional midterms. Despite media portrayals of Biden as a good-natured moderate, the president has relied on sweeping castigations of opposition throughout his political career. Worse, Biden’s rhetoric on extremism could signal an attack on any limits on presidential power.
Last Thursday in Philadelphia, Joe Biden overheated in a primetime speech with a backdrop seemingly inspired by a mix of the movie “V for Vendetta” and Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. The harsh red atmospherics perfectly complimented Biden’s attempt to portray ex-president Donald Trump and his Republican supporters as the Anti-Christ waiting to crucify American democracy.
Biden declared that, “Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” But he didn’t confess to the audience that he considered almost half of all Americans to be “extremists.”
A few hours before Biden’s speech, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre asserted, “When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.” Is this wacko definition of extremism designed to vilify anyone who doubts Biden will save America’s soul?
Four days later, speaking in Wisconsin, Biden declared, “Extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress have chosen to go backwards—full of anger, violence, hate, and division… Extreme MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and our economic security, they embrace political violence.” A week before the Philadelphia speech Biden denounced Republicans for “semi-fascism.”
To vanquish extremism, Biden called for everyone to “unite behind the single purpose of defending our democracy.” In other words, everyone must support Joe Biden or democracy will be destroyed. But Biden’s version of democracy is a parody of the Constitution. He believes that thanks to 43,000 votes in three swing states, he has unlimited power to dictate how Americans must live.
In his Philadelphia speech, Biden invoked the “Rule of Law” five times, notwithstanding his twenty months of dictatorial decrees. Law Professor Jonathan Turley observed, “President Biden has arguably the worst record of losses in [federal court] the first two years of any recent presidential administration.” The only limits on his power that Biden recognizes come from his pollsters, not from the Constitution.
Since Biden took office, his appointees have exploited “extremism” to sanctify stretching his power. Last year, the Biden administration revealed that guys who can’t get laid may be terrorist threats due to “involuntary celibate–violent extremism.” The White House did not disclose whether self-abuse was the latest terrorist warning sign. A senior administration official (speaking anonymously to the media) said the new program would encourage people: “If you see something, say something.” The Biden report stressed that federal law enforcement agencies “play a critical role in responding to reports of criminal and otherwise concerning activity.”
“Otherwise concerning activity”? This is the same standard that turned prior anti-terrorist efforts into farces.
Refusing to get injected with an experimental vaccine is another badge of extremism according to Biden scorekeepers. On August 13, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrorist alert, warning that “anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists could exploit…potential re-establishment of public health restrictions across the United States as a rationale to conduct attacks.” Anyone who loudly objects to being locked back under house arrest thus became the moral equivalent of the Taliban, or maybe Hezbollah.
The following month, Biden gave a primetime address which dictated a COVID vaccine mandate for more than 80 million private employees and also portrayed the unvaccinated as public enemies. By the time Biden codified his decree in a November Federal Register notice, the efficacy of the COVID vaccine had fallen to less than 50%. But Biden apparently believed he was entitled to force people to get injected no matter how badly Pfizer shots failed. In January, the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s vax mandate for private companies.
The Biden administration won’t let the Constitution impede its war on extremism. As part of this new priority, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may exploit a “legal work-around” to spy on and potentially entrap Americans who are “perpetuating the ‘narratives’ of concern,” CNN reported last year. But federal informant programs routinely degenerate into “dollars for collars” schemes that reward scoundrels for fabricating crimes that destroy the lives of innocent Americans. The DHS plan would “allow the department to circumvent [constitutional and legal] limits” on surveillance of private citizens and groups. Federal agencies are prohibited from targeting individuals solely for First Amendment-protected speech and activities. But federal hirelings would be under no such restraint. Private informants could create false identities that would be problematic if done by federal agents.
One DHS official bewailed to CNN, “Domestic violent extremists are really adaptive and innovative. We see them… couching their language so they don’t trigger any kind of red flag on any platforms.” DHS officials have apparently decided that certain groups of people are guilty regardless of what they say (“couching their language”). The targets will likely include gun owners who distrust the politicians who vow to seize their guns. Any excesses by the new informants will be excused because they are for the sacred cause of saving democracy (or at least crippling Biden’s opposition).
Anyone who vigorously opposes federal power can get tarred as an extremist. On the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated, former CIA chief John Brennan announced on television that federal intelligence agencies “are moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about” about extremists, libertarians, and other malefactors. Federal entrapment operations may have already harvested a heap of hapless individuals who could be indicted when politically convenient.
The definition of “extremism” is a flag of convenience for the political establishment. The definition of “extremism” has forever been in flux. The only consistent element in definitions of extremism is that politicians always win. A 2013 Pentagon training manual explained, “All nations have an ideology, something in which they believe. When a political ideology falls outside the norms of a society, it is known as extremism.” In other words, beliefs that differ from prevailing or approved opinions are “extremist” by definition. And who gets to say what is acceptable to believe? The same politicians and government agencies and their media allies whose power is buttressed by prevailing opinions.
“Extremism” is even more vaporous than “terrorism.” With terrorism, at least the individual or group is purportedly committing (or planning to commit) some violent act. An extremist, on the other hand, is someone with a bad attitude who might do something unpleasant in the future. Crackdowns on potential extremists provide the perfect tool to demonize dissent.
Will the Biden crackdown on extremists end as ignominiously as Nixon’s crackdown almost 50 years earlier? Nixon White House aide Tom Charles Huston explained that the FBI’s COINTELPRO program continually stretched its target list “from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.” At some point, surveillance became more intent on spurring fear than on gathering information. FBI agents were encouraged to conduct interviews with anti-war protesters to “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox,” as a 1970 FBI memo noted. Is the Biden castigation campaign an attempt to make its opponents fear that the feds are tracking their every email and website click?
The Biden administration could be expanding the federal “Enemies List” faster than any time since the 1970s. Will Biden’s war on extremism succeed in radically narrowing the boundaries of respectable American political thought? Permitting politicians to blacklist any ideas they disapprove won’t “restore faith in democracy.” What if government is the most dangerous extremist of them all?
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.
Social media giants ‘purge’ Palestinian journalists reporting on Israeli war crimes
The Cradle | September 6, 2022
Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip and occupied East Jerusalem say social media giants like WhatsApp, Facebook, and TikTok have closed the accounts of those reporting on Israeli war crimes.
“WhatsApp is now the latest app owned by Meta to conduct a purge of accounts owned by Palestinian journalists, activists, public figures, official spokespersons, and other Palestinian voices,” journalist Jalal Abukhater tweeted on 5 September.
Speaking to Lebanese organization SKeyes, freelance journalist Omar Abu Nada said that the social media platforms “accused me of breaching their publishing standards [for posting pictures] detailing the civilians killed by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.”
In the wake of Israel’s most recent aerial blitz of Gaza, dozens of accounts belonging to Palestinian activists, journalists, and media institutions were restricted and deleted.
The accounts targeted last month had published pictures of Israel’s victims and praised the resistance operations and targeting of Israeli cities.
Earlier in August, social media giant Meta launched a censoring campaign on posts referencing the killing of Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a senior commander of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
Meta also censored videos of Al-Nabulsi’s mother speaking to crowds and carrying her son’s body during his funeral.
Meta owns Facebook, as well as Instagram and WhatsApp.
According to Sada Social Centre (SSC) – a “non-profit Palestinian youth initiative” that monitors the suspension of Palestinian content – within 24 hours of Al-Nabulsi’s death, at least 75 activist and journalist accounts were restricted or deleted on various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.
In December of 2020, SSC revealed that as many as 80 percent of Palestinian social media posts had been suppressed by social media companies.
A follow-up investigation revealed that the platforms had been only publishing content in Arabic that highlighted the normalization agreements between a handful of Arab states and Israel.
Last week, employees from tech giant Google accused the company of censoring them for protesting against a controversial $1.2 billion contract that provides Tel Aviv with advanced artificial intelligence (AI), which many fear will worsen human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.
Australian Painter Forced to Remove His Mural Showing Russian, Ukrainian Soldiers Hugging

‘Peace before Pieces’ by Peter Seaton, AKA CTO. Image from http://www.ctoart.com
Samizdat – September 5, 2022
Australian artist Peter Seaton was forced to paint over his latest work, dubbed “Peace Before Pieces” showing a Russian and a Ukrainian soldier hugging each other, after pressure from the local Ukrainian community and Ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko, who branded the work “offensive”. The mural, was painted on a building in Melbourne, just a couple days ago, but the artist has been forced to remove his creation.
Seaton apologized for painting the mural and explained that his intention has always been to emphasize the importance of reaching peace. He noted that he has dedicated a lot of thought to the issue before coming up with the painting and said he discussed it a lot with other people.
“The original intention was to focus our efforts on this war towards a negotiation of peace, to avoid nuclear disaster […] I felt it was the best way I could portray a message of peace which is something I am fundamentally about,” Seaton said.
His efforts, however, did not impress Ambassador Myroshnychenko, who claimed the peace-promoting work of the artist was “utterly offensive to all Ukrainians” and he said that Seaton should have “consulted the Ukrainian community in Melbourne” before painting the mural. Myroshnychenko demanded that the work be promptly removed.

The Russian embassy in Australia reacted to the news of mural’s removal sarcastically:
“A mural recently unveiled in Melbourne was slammed for not reflecting the concept of fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. The artist had to destroy his work. New normal for freedom of artistic expression in Australia: check with Ukrainian Embassy before painting,” the embassy said.
Russia proposed a diplomatic resolution to the conflict to Ukraine soon after the start of the special military operation on February 24th, but after a month of talks, Kiev halted the process for good.
Instead, the Ukrainian leadership has since been claiming it would fight Russia until it seizes the territories it sees as theirs and will hold talks only after that. Moscow maintains that it is always ready to return to the negotiations table but sees no initiative on the Ukrainian side.
Fauci’s Red Guards: Lawsuit Reveals Vast Federal Censorship Army
By Michael P Senger | The New Normal | September 2, 2022
One aspect of dictatorships that citizens of democratic nations often find puzzling is how the population can be convinced to support such dystopian policies. How do they get people to run those concentration camps? How do they find people to take food from starving villagers? How can they get so many people to support policies that, to any outsider, are so needlessly destructive, cruel, and dumb?
The answer lies in forced preference falsification. When those who speak up in principled opposition to a dictator’s policies are punished and forced into silence, those with similar opinions are forced into silence as well, or even forced to pretend they support policies in which they do not actually believe. Emboldened by this facade of unanimity, supporters of the regime’s policies, or even those who did not previously have strong opinions, become convinced that the regime’s policies are just and good—regardless of what those policies actually are—and that those critical of them are even more deserving of punishment.
One of history’s great masters of forced preference falsification was Chairman Mao Zedong. As László Ladány recalled, Mao’s decades-long campaign to remold the people of China in his own image began as soon as he took power after the Chinese Civil War.
By the fall of 1951, 80 percent of all Chinese had had to take part in mass accusation meetings, or to watch organized lynchings and public executions. These grim liturgies followed set patterns that once more were reminiscent of gangland practices: during these proceedings, rhetorical questions were addressed to the crowd, which, in turn, had to roar its approval in unison—the purpose of the exercise being to ensure collective participation in the murder of innocent victims; the latter were selected not on the basis of what they had done, but of who they were, or sometimes for no better reason than the need to meet the quota of capital executions which had been arbitrarily set beforehand by the Party authorities. From that time on, every two or three years, a new “campaign” would be launched, with its usual accompaniment of mass accusations, “struggle meetings,” self-accusations, and public executions… Remolding the minds, “brainwashing” as it is usually called, is a chief instrument of Chinese communism, and the technique goes as far back as the early consolidation of Mao’s rule in Yan’an.
This decades-long campaign of forced preference falsification reached its apex during the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao deputized radical youths across China, called Red Guards, to purge all vestiges of capitalism and traditional society and impose Mao Zedong Thought as China’s dominant ideology. Red Guards attacked anyone they perceived as Mao’s enemies, burned books, persecuted intellectuals, and engaged in the systematic destruction of their country’s own history, demolishing China’s relics en masse.
Through this method of forced preference falsification, any mass of people can be made to support virtually any policy, no matter how destructive or inimical to the interests of the people. Avoiding this spiral of preference falsification is therefore why freedom of speech is such a central tenet of the Enlightenment, and why it is given such primacy in the First Amendment of the US Constitution. No regime in American history has ever previously had the power to force preference falsification by systematically and clandestinely silencing those critical of its policies.
Until now. As it turns out, an astonishing new release of discovery documents in Missouri v. Biden—in which NCLA Legal is representing plaintiffs including Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty against the Biden administration for violations of free speech during Covid—reveal a vast federal censorship army, with more than 50 federal officials across at least 11 federal agencies having secretly coordinated with social media companies to censor private speech.
Secretary Mayorkas of DHS commented that the federal Government’s efforts to police private speech on social media are occurring “across the federal enterprise.” It turns out that this statement is true, on a scale beyond what Plaintiffs could ever have anticipated. The limited discovery produced so far provides a tantalizing snapshot into a massive, sprawling federal “Censorship Enterprise,” which includes dozens of federal officials across at least eleven federal agencies and components identified so far, who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation, disinformation, and the suppression of private speech on social media—all with the intent and effect of pressuring social-media platforms to censor and suppress private speech that federal officials disfavor.
The scale of this federal censorship enterprise appears to be far beyond what anyone imagined, involving even senior White House officials. The government is protecting Anthony Fauci and other high level officials by refusing to reveal documents related to their involvement.
The discovery provided so far demonstrates that this Censorship Enterprise is extremely broad, including officials in the White House, HHS, DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General; and evidently other agencies as well, such as the Census Bureau, the FDA, the FBI, the State Department, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. And it rises to the highest levels of the U.S. Government, including numerous White House officials… In their initial response to interrogatories, Defendants initially identified forty-five federal officials at DHS, CISA, the CDC, NIAID, and the Office of the Surgeon General (all within only two federal agencies, DHS and HHS), who communicate with social-media platforms about misinformation and censorship.
Federal officials are coordinating to censor private speech across all major social media platforms.
The third-party social-media platforms, moreover, have revealed that more federal agencies are involved. Meta, for example, has disclosed that at least 32 federal officials—including senior officials at the FDA, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the White House—have communicated with Meta about content moderation on its platforms, many of whom were not disclosed in response to Plaintiffs’ interrogatories to Defendants. YouTube disclosed eleven federal officials engaged in such communications, including officials at the Census Bureau and the White House, many of whom were also not disclosed by Defendants. Twitter disclosed nine federal officials, including senior officials at the State Department who were not previously disclosed by Defendants.
Federal officials are granted privileged status by social media companies for the purpose of censoring speech on their platforms, and officials hold weekly meetings on what to censor.
These federal bureaucrats are deeply embedded in a joint enterprise with social-media companies to procure the censorship of social-media speech. Officials at HHS routinely flag content for censorship, for example, by organizing weekly “Be On The Lookout” meetings to flag disfavored content, sending lengthy lists of examples of disfavored posts to be censored, serving as privileged “fact checkers” whom social-media platforms consult about censoring private speech, and receiving detailed reports from social-media companies about so-called “misinformation” and “disinformation” activities online, among others.
Social media companies have even set up secret, privileged channels to give federal officials expedited means to censor content on their platforms.
For example, Facebook trained CDC and Census Bureau officials on how to use a “Facebook misinfo reporting channel.” Twitter offered federal officials a privileged channel for flagging misinformation through a “Partner Support Portal.” YouTube has disclosed that it granted “trusted flagger” status to Census Bureau officials, which allows privileged and expedited consideration of their claims that content should be censored.
Many suspected that some coordination between social media companies and the federal government was occurring, but the breadth, depth, and coordination of this apparatus is far beyond what virtually anyone imagined. And the scale of this censorship apparatus raises troubling questions.
How could so many federal officials be convinced to engage in the clandestine censorship of opposition to tin-pot public health policies from China which have killed tens of thousands of young Americans and—let’s be honest—were never really that popular to begin with? The answer, I believe, is that high-level White House officials such as Anthony Fauci must have been simultaneously threatening social media companies if they did not comply with federal censorship demands, while also threatening entire federal bureaucracies if they did not toe the Party line.
By simultaneously threatening both the federal bureaucracy and social media companies, a handful of high-level officials could effectively transform the federal government into a sprawling censorship army reminiscent of Mao’s Red Guards, silencing any opposition to tin-pot public health policies with increasing detachment and certitude as this systematic silencing falsely convinced them that the regime’s policies were just and good. A few of these federal employees must have eventually let slip to the Republicans that this jawboning was taking place, which appears to have been how this suit began.
In plaintiff Aaron Kheriaty’s words:
Hyperbole and exaggeration have been common features on both sides of covid policy disputes. But I can say with all soberness and circumspection (and you, kind readers, will correct me if I am wrong here): this evidence suggests we are uncovering the most serious, coordinated, and large-scale violation of First Amendment free speech rights by the federal government’s executive branch in US history.
Michael P Senger is an attorney and author of Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World.
Israel wants foreigners to report falling in love with Palestinians
Samizdat | September 4, 2022
According to new guidelines coming into force on Monday, foreigners will be required to inform the Israeli Defense Ministry if their romantic relationship with a resident of the West Bank gets serious – including plans to live together, get engaged or marry – to receive or extend an entry permit. The restrictions do not apply to those visiting Israeli settlements.
The new set of rules was originally drafted by the Defense Ministry’s agency for Palestinian civil affairs, COGAT, back in February, but its implementation faced several delays due to legal challenges. The lengthy 97-page document stipulates the procedure for entry and residence of foreign nationals in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian territories.
Foreign citizens, even those of Palestinian descent living abroad and officially married to a West Bank resident, will no longer be able to obtain a visa on arrival in Israel, and will have to file an application for an entry permit at least 45 days in advance, the Times of Israel reports. Additional requirements are also introduced for those who fall in love and “form a couple” after the arrival.
“If the relationship starts after the foreigner arrived at the Area, then the authorized COGAT official must be informed in writing… within 30 days of the relationship’s start,” the rules state. The “starting date” of the relationship is defined as the day of the engagement ceremony, wedding, or the start of cohabitation – “whichever occurs first.”
The couple must also “formalize” their status with the Palestinian Authority, and a failure to do so within 90 days will result in “immediate” expulsion. But even if the relationship status is formalized, the Israeli permit cannot be extended for more than 27 months, after which a foreigner will have to leave the country for at least 6 months.
COGAT officials said this “two-year pilot” program, which does not apply to those visiting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, is intended to make the entry process “more efficient and more suited to the dynamic conditions of the times,” according to AFP.
Australian Academy of Science demands social media platforms ban climate “misinformation”
By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | September 3, 2022
In a public submission to tech giants in the 2022 review of the Australian Code of Practice on Misinformation and Disinformation, the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering called on online platforms to crack down on “climate denialism misinformation.”
The academies want online platforms to fight what it calls “climate denialism” by “actively promoting reliable, peer-reviewed, and appropriately labeled material from trusted sources.”
The academies’ submission noted that the Code of Practice on Misinformation and Disinformation “excludes professional news content that is published under a publicly available editorial code.” It adds that the exclusion “allows climate science denialism and other misinformation to flourish, either through lack of enforcement of the disinformation provision of the code or failure of news outlets’ misinformation to meet the higher bar of being considered disinformation.”
The submission singles out Sky News Australia as a “key source of climate misinformation globally,” citing a recent report from the UK titled “Deny, Deceive, Delay.”
The paper refers to “political right-wing top influencers” as being part of an “intellectual dark web.” It names prominent staff at Sky News Australia, including Rita Panahi, as well as other skeptics from Europe, the UK, and North America.
“While climate issues are not part of their [conservative pundits] main content strategy, they nevertheless engage in frequent criticism of their respective governments’ environmental policies, attack or ridicule prominent climate activists, or employ narratives outlined in the previous section of this report,” the paper reads.
The Toxic Ten paper attacks online platforms for failing to censor climate change denialism and taking money from organizations that profit from fossil fuels.
“It is the greatest crisis ever faced by our species… We are calling on Facebook and Google to stop promoting and funding climate denial, start labeling it as misinformation, and stop giving the advantages of their enormous platform to lies and misinformation. As long as Facebook and Google carry on doing business with climate deniers, they cannot claim to be ‘green.’ They owe it to us and the planet we all share, to deliver.”
The academies also called on online platforms to crack down on health misinformation, even though health experts have continued to change their minds on what is actually “misinformation,” especially information related to COVID-19.
YouTube will censor election “misinformation” that doesn’t break any rules
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | September 1, 2022
YouTube has detailed how it will scale up its censorship efforts in the run-up to the 2022 US midterm elections by removing election “misinformation” and suppressing content that doesn’t break any rules but is considered to be “borderline.”
YouTube claims that its election misinformation policy applies to any past US presidential election, the 2021 German federal election, and the 2014 and 2018 Brazilian presidential elections. Under this policy, alleging that “widespread fraud, errors, or glitches” occurred in these elections or claiming that “certified results of those elections were false” is banned.
Despite YouTube’s claim that this policy applies to any past US presidential election, numerous videos questioning the 2016 US presidential results and alleging that Russia hacked the election are still on the platform. By contrast, the policy was used to remove more than 8,000 channels for making “harmful and misleading” claims about the 2020 US presidential election. And YouTube said it’s already removed several videos related to the 2022 US midterms.
In addition to removing content that breaks its election misinformation rules, YouTube will also prevent “borderline” content from being widely recommended. According to YouTube, borderline content doesn’t break any rules but is suppressed because it comes close to breaking the rules.
Finally, YouTube will amplify mainstream media outlets that it deems to be “authoritative” by:
- Prominently recommending their content
- Promoting their election night live streams on the YouTube homepage
- Adding labels from these sources below videos about the midterms and in search results about the midterms
YouTube said that PBS NewsHour, The Wall Street Journal, Univision and local ABC, CBS and, NBC affiliates are some of the authoritative sources that will receive additional amplification.
In 2020, YouTube’s artificial amplification of mainstream media outlets gave them a huge advantage over independent creators. Independent creators were 14x less likely to be recommended on election-related content and mainstream media outlets had an 88% chance of ranking in the top 10 search results for election-related content.
This year, YouTube has censored several videos about the 2022 Brazilian general election including a video from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and multiple videos from journalists.
YouTube is one of several Big Tech platforms to announce increased election censorship measures in the run-up to the 2022 US midterms with Facebook and Twitter recently describing how they plan to censor what they deem to be election misinformation as the midterms approach.
Related:
🛡 The subtle (and not so subtle) ways Big Tech has the power to influence elections
Suspension of visa agreement unnecessary sanction against Russian citizens
The decision harms the interests of European business sector
By Lucas Leiroz | September 1, 2022
The West continues to advance with its anti-Russian coercive measures, despite the opinion of several analysts to stop sanctions. In a recent meeting, European authorities agreed to suspend the visa facilitation agreement between Russians and Europeans, taking a new step towards the unrealistic objective of “isolating” Russia. The measure tends to harm Europeans themselves, as well as exacerbating global tensions amid the current security crisis.
In one of the main retaliations against Russian citizens due to the special operation in Ukraine, the EU decided on August 31 to restrict the access of tourists from Russia to visas to enter any country in the bloc. The measure, which although radical was already expected, suspends the validity of an international visa facilitation agreement between the EU and Russia, creating a scenario of international instability and diplomatic frictions.
Contrary to what happens between Americans and Europeans, who can travel mutually without a visa, Russians need this type of authorization to enter the EU. The bureaucracy and application costs were facilitated by an agreement between Brussels and Moscow, which made the process of obtaining a European visa for Russian citizens easier than the usual procedure for citizens of other regions of the planet. However, now it will be much more difficult and, above all, more expensive for a Russian citizen to cross the borders of the European bloc.
Commenting on the case, the head of the European Union foreign policy Josep Borrell emphasized that there was a political agreement between the European authorities on the need to review the visa policy and suspend the visa deal, but that the launch of new legal guidelines on the procedure is yet to be done. He further commented that the suspension of the agreement will allow the implementation of a system of individual analysis for the selection of eligible Russian citizens. In other words, Europeans will analyze all Russian individuals who are entering the bloc and will or will not authorize them to travel based on personal data, which will very likely result in a biased and ideological selection system, in which only Russian citizens who do not support the operation in Ukraine will be allowed.
“We agreed politically, this is not a legal text but it is a political agreement, we agreed that something has to be done and therefore let me try to summarize in concrete terms what we politically agreed on. Firstly the full suspension of the EU Russia visa facilitation agreement (…) This will significantly reduce the number of new visas issued by the EU member states. It’s going to be more difficult, it’s going to take longer (…) [but] This will [also] allow for visas to be granted on individual basis on a thorough statement on each individual case and especially for specific groups of people”, he said.
The European measure was not so well received among Western thinkers. Many analysts see this type of measure as unnecessary and ineffective, as well as anti-strategic, considering that it punishes innocent Russian citizens for decisions made by their government, having no real effect on the Ukrainian military scenario.
For example, Swiss politician and journalist Guy Mettan, former director of the Geneva Press Club, commented on the case saying: “This decision marks a new step in the European waves of sanctions against Russia as it strikes an entire people indiscriminately. Several countries and European leaders had expressed serious doubts about the moral and philosophical justification of a collective punishment that strikes both the innocent and the supposed guilty”.
In the same sense, Paolo Raffone, director of the Brussels-based geopolitical think tank CIPI Foundation, stated: “EU measures to unilaterally suspend the EU-Russia Visa Facilitation Agreement [speaks to] the lack of standing of EU foreign policy. Such a measure is insignificant on the strategic ground, as it mostly penalizes ordinary Russian citizens. Such EU anti-Russian hysteria [brings to mind] the Catholic kings against the Muslims (and the Jews) some centuries ago”.
It is also necessary to emphasize the strategic sense of facilitating the granting of visas to Russian citizens. Russia and Europe share the same continental landmass, which is why it is normal for there to be a large flow of travelers. The Russian consumer market is very strong, as Moscow is an emerging nation with a rising middle class. So, it is common for Russian consumers to travel to Europe and shop, which favors both sides in a strategic business relation.
However, European leaders seem no longer interested in mutually beneficial agreements, but in radical and Russophobic measures whose sole purpose is to unconditionally isolate Russia. Obviously, the European business community, which has an interest in the Russian consumer market, may not share this same opinion, which tends to generate conflicts of interest between businessmen and politicians on the European scenario in the near future.
Furthermore, it is unacceptable that Europeans want to monitor the opinions of Russian citizens, creating a system of individual selection of eligible travelers. In practice, the EU will be inciting political dissent and anti-government militancy in Russia, which is an affront to Moscow’s sovereignty, demanding measures in response.
Once again, Western leaders take truly irrational measures to achieve the goal of “canceling” Russia. Sooner or later, however, these leaders will realize that it is impossible to cancel the biggest country on the planet and will have to retreat in their measures.
Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

According to her claims to the police and her testimony at the Grand Jury hearing, and according to the New York Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Wall Street Journal and many others:



