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[Update: How do we know Matt and crew are over the target? Facebook won’t allow this post…]

Introduction by Matt Taibbi

On January 17, 1960, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power eve he could not overcome.

Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new sector, Eisenhower said, was building up around itself a cultural, financial, and political support system accruing enormous power. This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said, adding:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

This was the direst of warnings, but the address has tended in the popular press to be ignored. After sixty-plus years, most of America – including most of the American left, which traditionally focused the most on this issue – has lost its fear that our arms industry might conquer democracy from within.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

April 21, 2023

Facebook Censors Seymour Hersh’s Article About US Involvement in Nord Stream Pipeline Attack

Using a biased ‘fact check’ with direct links to the Norwegian government.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Facebook is censoring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s story about US involvement in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines using a ‘fact checker’ with links to the Norwegian government in what represents a clear conflict of interest.

Earlier this year, Hersh published a report asserting that the pipelines were destroyed by the US as part of a covert operation which was organized with the aid of the Norwegian government, Norwegian Secret Service and Navy.

Journalist Michael Shellenberger first noticed the issue when he tried to post Hersh’s article to Facebook, but saw the social media giant had slapped a warning label on the link stating, “False information. Checked by independent fact-checkers.”

Except the ‘fact-checkers’ in question aren’t independent at all.

As Shellenberger notes, “Hersh is infinitely more independent than Facebook’s Norwegian fact-checker. The fact-checking organization is a partnership with a Norwegian government-owned media company, NRK, which has a direct self-interest in censoring the story.”

By censoring the article with a dubious ‘fact check’, Facebook is preventing it from reaching a much wider audience, relegating it in the algorithm.

This is yet another example of how the ‘fact-checker industrial complex’ serves to censor legitimate information at the behest of governments by posing as an independent, non-bias actor when in reality it is merely a front for state control.

Facebook’s claim, made a few years ago, that it cannot act as “the arbiter of the truth” for any contentious issue, has been proven dishonest once again.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Inside the Facebook Files: Emails Reveal the CDC’s Role in Silencing COVID-19 Dissent

January 19, 2023

Inside the Facebook Files: Emails Reveal the CDC’s Role in Silencing COVID-19 Dissent

Throughout the pandemic, the CDC was in constant contact with Facebook, vetting what users were allowed to say on the social media site.

Emails between the CDC and Facebook (Lex Villena / Reason)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.

For a broader analysis of the federal government’s pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech—and whether they violated the First Amendment—see Reason‘s March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails. This article provides screenshots of the emails themselves.

After Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he permitted several independent journalists to peruse the company’s previous communications with the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and government officials elsewhere. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, reveal that government bureaucrats put substantial pressure on Twitter to restrict alleged misinformation relating to elections, Hunter Biden, and COVID-19.

The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri’s lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram.

The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta’s moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.

For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Of Economic Crises and Pandemics: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God

December 30, 2022

Of Economic Crises and Pandemics: Facebook as Fact, Government as Truth, Big Pharma as God

If events since March 2020 have shown us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces.

Author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

…if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course.”

No panic because the controlling interests of the global food system have long profited from a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy that ensures people unnecessarily go hungry when corporate profit rather than need dictates policies.

US social commentator Walter Lippmann once said that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and must be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ – the public. He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from destruction.

During COVID, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern urged citizens to trust the government and its agencies for all information and stated:

Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

In the US, Fauci presented himself as ‘the science’. In New Zealand, Ardern was ‘the truth’. It was similar in countries across the world – different figures but the same approach.

Like other political leaders, Ardern clamped down on civil liberties with the full force of state violence on hand to ensure compliance with ‘the truth’. Those who questioned the COVID narrative – including world-renowned scientists – were smeared, shut down and censored.

It was an internationally orchestrated campaign involving governments, the big tech companies, media and the WHO, among others.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘We live in an Orwellian hell-scape’: Facebook fact-checks top economist for stating America IS in a recession after Biden refused to admit it

August 1, 2022

‘We live in an Orwellian hell-scape’: Facebook fact-checks top economist for stating America IS in a recession after Biden refused to admit it

Phillip Magness, the research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research, believes the U.S. is in a recession
Economists usually say it is a recession when two successive quarters have seen negative growth: data on Thursday showed the definition had been met
The White House is instead relying on an ‘official declaration’ from the the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which can be very slow
Magness’s post on Facebook about the U.S. being in a recession was fact-checked by Facebook and a warning posted online
‘We live in an Orwellian hell-scape,’ he tweeted. ‘Facebook is now ‘fact checking’ anyone who questions the White House’s word-games’

Facebook placed a ‘fact-checking’ label on a post written by a top economist stating that the United States is now in a recession – a move he termed ‘Orwellian’.

Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is the standard definition of a recession, and Phillip Magness, the research and education director at the American Institute for Economic Research, posted on Facebook a commentary about the country now being in a recession.

The post – which is no longer visible – was marked by Facebook’s fact checkers as being misleading.

‘We live in an Orwellian hell-scape,’ he tweeted.

‘Facebook is now ‘fact checking’ anyone who questions the White House’s word-games about the definition of a recession.’

Biden on Thursday (pictured) insisted that the country was not in a recession, despite new data showing a second consecutive quarter with negative growth

Phillip Magness, an economic historian, believes the U.S. is in recession – but the White House disagrees

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Digital Brownshirts and Their Masters

March 3, 2022

Digital Brownshirts and Their Masters

We are under siege. A nihilistic fanaticism is running free among us thanks to the emergence of a journalistic “ethos” that establishes an almost complete equivalence between the “truth” and those utterances that support the strategic goals of the great economic and digital powers of our time.

A few months ago Facebook censored an article in the British Medical Journal that highlighted serious irregularities in Pfizer’s clinical vaccine trials. Then two weeks ago, fact-checkers from the Spanish websites Newtral and Maldita burst into the public square to accuse professor of Pharmacology, renowned expert in drug safety, and ex-WHO adviser, Joan Ramón Laporte of foisting lies and disinformation onto the Spanish populace. This, in reaction to Laporte’s testimony before a Spanish parliamentary commission investigating the country’s vaccination effort.

Despite his towering credentials, his intervention was quickly tarred as problematic by the media and subsequently banned by YouTube. The crime of this new Galileo Galilei? Alerting the assembled parliamentarians to the existence of grave procedural irregularities in the trials for the vaccines, and questioning the wisdom of a health strategy that aims to inject every Spanish child over the age of six with a new, poorly tested, and largely ineffective medication.

This incident reveals that the fact-checkers will attack anyone who does not accept the truth as dictated by the great economic and government centers of the world. This is not the usual official media obfuscation to which we’ve become accustomed over the years, but rather a brazen McCarthyist intimidation device, designed to frighten citizens into submission by appealing to their lowest and most ignoble instincts, an approach lain bare in Maldita’s smug and Manichaean slogan: “Join and support us in our battle against lies.”

Under this harsh binary logic, an internationally famous scientist like Laporte is not even given the opportunity to be judged wrong or misguided in good faith. Rather, he is immediately accused of being a willful and dangerous liar who must be immediately banished from public view.

Fact-checkers as destroyers of science and the public sphere.

Nowadays the word “fascist” is used so profligately that it has lost most of its meaning. But if we are really serious about describing the operational logic of fact-checking entities like Maldita and Newtral we must recur precisely to that term, adding the prefix “neo” to avoid confusion with the original version of this totalitarian sensibility.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

British Medical Journal Exposes the Facebook ‘Fact Check’ Scam

January 6, 2022

British Medical Journal Exposes the Facebook ‘Fact Check’ Scam

In a relatively rare break from COVID orthodoxy by the British Medical Journal, it went nuclear on the Facebook “fact check” scam. But you won’t see it in your Metaverse© NewsFeed©.

A Brief Recap of the Pfizer Fraud Backstory

We previously chronicled the under-reported Pfizer “vaccine” trial fraud, which the multinational corporation used to rush its experimental mRNA gene therapy (deceptively marketed as a “vaccine”) through the regulatory hoops.

In the exposé, a whistleblower (a regional director of Pfizer’s partner contracting firm, Ventavia Research Group, named Brook Jackson) detailed the abuses. She explained how Ventavia and Pfizer systematically skirted regulatory protocols and doctored data to cover up the mRNA shots’ side effects.

You can read the BMJ’s original piece here.

Pfizer, of course, ultimately got approval rammed through despite its criminal malfeasance. As a consequence, pharmacies across the US and the world (which largely follows the American lead) have injected billions of doses of its dangerous genetic material with no long-term safety data. Meanwhile, the corporation generated $131 billion in revenue for itself.

The Facebook ‘Fact Check’ Hitpiece

Instead of going after the Pfizer fraudsters in light of the above revelations, Facebook and the corporate media instead sicced their “fact check” attack dogs on the medical journal that outed the fraud.

(This is the highly ineffective “hammer the whistleblower, bury the crime” model of building public trust in institutions. It harkens back to the Bush-era targeting of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for blowing the whistle on US government war crimes while prosecuting none of the actors who perpetrated the crimes they exposed.)

Here are a few lowlights from Lead Stories’ flimsy hitpiece:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Facebook Fact Checkers getting Fact Checked

December 19, 2021

Facebook Fact Checkers getting Fact Checked

We really have desperate need of independent investigation of both government and Facebook. But the likelihood of an honest investigation is up there with admitting that climate always changes and there is no global warming. The Office of Inspector General is really the ONLY hope of ever having anyone investigate the government. People ask all the time what can we do? The Biden Administration is as corrupt as it can possibly be and I am not talking about Biden and his family. I believe they use that to ensure that they get to do whatever they want and Biden will look the other way or find himself and id son the first criminally charged President in history.

The Office of Inspector General should be inundated with demand to investigate the connection between BigPharma, the government, and the fact-checkers of Facebook who are costing people’s lives. One of the more respected medical journals that called into question Pfizer’s questionable trial data had their articles black-listed by Facebook. Anything that questions this agenda is black-listed. There is something seriously wrong here and the corruption runs very deep. Without overthrowing the Biden Administration, there is ZERO chance of the Department of Justice doing anything to protect the people against this corruption.

Stunning: Facebook court filing admits ‘fact checks’ are just a matter of opinion

December 10, 2021

Stunning: Facebook court filing admits ‘fact checks’ are just a matter of opinion

Surprisingly little attention is being paid to a bombshell admission made by the attorneys representing the corporation formerly known as Facebook, Inc., which has now transitioned into Meta Platforms, Inc.

In a court filing responding to a lawsuit filed by John Stossel claiming that he was defamed by a “fact check” Facebook used to label a video by him as “misleading,” Meta’s attorneys assert that the “fact check” was an “opinion,” not an actual check of facts and declaration of facts. Under libel law, opinions are protected from liability for libel.

Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat explains:

Opinions are not subject to defamation claims, while false assertions of fact can be subject to defamation. The quote in Facebook’s complaint is,

Meta’s attorneys come from the white shoe law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dore, with over a thousand attorneys and more than a billion dollars a year in revenue. They obviously checked out the implications of the matter for Section 230 issues, the legal protection Facebook/Meta have from liability for what is posted on their site. But at a minimum, this is a public relations disaster, revealing that their “fact checks” are not factual at all and should be labeled as “our opinion” or some such language avoiding the word “fact.”

As an amateur, it seems to me that if Facebook inserts its opinions into posts or blocks them because of its opinion, then that does make it a publisher with legal responsibility for what appears on its website.

Technically speaking, Facebook farms out its “fact-checking” to outside organizations, usually left-wing groups. In the case of Stossel’s video that was defamed, the outside website is called “Climate Feedback,” which is also named a defendant in the lawsuit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pierre Omidyar’s Financing of the Facebook “Whistleblower” Campaign Reveals a Great Deal

October 29, 2021

Pierre Omidyar’s Financing of the Facebook “Whistleblower” Campaign Reveals a Great Deal

The internet is the last remaining instrument for dissent and free discourse to thrive outside state and oligarchical control. This campaign aims to put an end to that.

Pierre Omidyar, Founder of eBay, and Publisher of the Intercept looks on during the final session of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. (Photo by Ramin Talaie/Corbis via Getty Images)

It is completely unsurprising to learn, as Politico reported last Wednesday, that the major financial supporter of Facebook “whistleblower” Frances Haugen’s sprawling P.R. and legal network coordinating her public campaign is the billionaire founder of EBay, Pierre Omidyar. The Haugen Show continues today as a consortium of carefully cultivated news outlets (including those who have been most devoted to agitating for online censorship: the New York Times’ “tech” unit and NBC News’s “disinformation” team) began publishing the trove of archives she took from Facebook under the self-important title “The Facebook Papers,” while the star herself has traveled to London to testify today to British lawmakers considering a bill to criminally punish tech companies that allow “foul content” or “extremism” — whatever that means — to be published.

On Sunday, Haugen told The New York Times that her own personal Bitcoin wealth means she is relying on “help from nonprofit groups backed by Mr. Omidyar only for travel and similar expenses.” But the paper also confirmed that the firm masterminding Haugen’s public campaign roll-out and complex media strategy, a group “founded by the former Barack Obama aide Bill Burton,” is “being paid by donors, including the nonprofit groups backed by Mr. Omidyar.”…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Learning To Fear Free Speech: How Politicians Are Moving To Protect Us From Our Unhealthy Reading Choices

October 11, 2021

Learning To Fear Free Speech: How Politicians Are Moving To Protect Us From Our Unhealthy Reading Choices

Below is my column in the Hill on the increasing calls for censorship and speech regulation on the Internet. The most recent push on Capitol Hill surrounds the testimony of former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen who alleges that Facebook has been knowingly harming children through promotion and access to certain sites. For some, the testimony follows a type of Trojan Horse pattern where anti-free speech measures are packaged as public safety measures. Before embracing the proposals of these senators, the public needs to think long and hard over what is being lost in these “reforms.”

Here is the column:

“Caution: Free Speech May Be Hazardous to Your Health.” Such a rewording of the original 1965 warning on tobacco products could soon appear on social media platforms, if a Senate hearing this week is any indicator. Listening to former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, senators decried how Facebook is literally killing people by not censoring content, and Haugen proposed a regulatory board to protect the public.

But before we embrace a new “ministry of information” model to protect us from dangerous viewpoints, we may want to consider what we would lose in this Faustian free-speech bargain.

Warnings over the “addiction” and “unhealthy” content of the internet have been building into a movement for years. In July, President Biden slammed Big Tech companies for “killing people” by failing to engage in even greater censorship of free speech on issues related to the pandemic. On Tuesday, many senators were enthralled by Haugen’s testimony because they, too, have long called for greater regulation or censorship. It all began reasonably enough over concerns about violent speech, and then expanded to exploitative speech…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

October 7, 2021

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

“Whistleblower” Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.

Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifies at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing entitled ‘Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower’ on Capitol Hill October 5, 2021 in Washington, (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Much is revealed by who is bestowed hero status by the corporate media. This week’s anointed avatar of stunning courage is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager being widely hailed as a “whistleblower” for providing internal corporate documents to the Wall Street Journal relating to the various harms which Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) are allegedly causing.

The social media giant hurts America and the world, this narrative maintains, by permitting misinformation to spread (presumably more so than cable outlets and mainstream newspapers do virtually every week); fostering body image neurosis in young girls through Instagram (presumably more so than fashion magazines, Hollywood and the music industry do with their glorification of young and perfectly-sculpted bodies); promoting polarizing political content in order to keep the citizenry enraged, balkanized and resentful and therefore more eager to stay engaged (presumably in contrast to corporate media outlets, which would never do such a thing); and, worst of all, by failing to sufficiently censor political content that contradicts liberal orthodoxies and diverges from decreed liberal Truth. On Tuesday, Haugen’s star turn took her to Washington, where she spent the day testifying before the Senate about Facebook’s dangerous refusal to censor even more content and ban even more users than they already do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

October 5, 2021

Democrats and Media Do Not Want to Weaken Facebook, Just Commandeer its Power to Censor

“Whistleblower” Frances Haugen is a vital media and political asset because she advances their quest for greater control over online political discourse.

Much is revealed by who is bestowed hero status by the corporate media. This week’s anointed avatar of stunning courage is Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager being widely hailed as a “whistleblower” for providing internal corporate documents to the Wall Street Journal relating to the various harms which Facebook and its other platforms (Instagram and WhatsApp) are allegedly causing.

The social media giant hurts America and the world, this narrative maintains, by permitting misinformation to spread (presumably more so than cable outlets and mainstream newspapers do virtually every week); fostering body image neurosis in young girls through Instagram (presumably more so than fashion magazines, Hollywood and the music industry do with their glorification of young and perfectly-sculpted bodies); promoting polarizing political content in order to keep the citizenry enraged, balkanized and resentful and therefore more eager to stay engaged (presumably in contrast to corporate media outlets, which would never do such a thing); and, worst of all, by failing to sufficiently censor political content that contradicts liberal orthodoxies and diverges from decreed liberal Truth. On Tuesday, Haugen’s star turn took her to Washington, where she spent the day testifying before the Senate about Facebook’s dangerous refusal to censor even more content and ban even more users than they already do.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Free Speech Inc.: How Democrats Have Found A New But Shaky Faith In Corporate Speech

May 10, 2021

Free Speech Inc.: How Democrats Have Found A New But Shaky Faith In Corporate Speech

Below is an updated version of my column in The Hill on Facebook’s decision to uphold the ban on former president Donald Trump. Notably, this weekend, Twitter took it upon itself to add a gratuitous response to an observation made by Donald Trump Jr. after he tweeted “Biden isn’t the next FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] he’s the next Jimmy Carter.” Twitter took it upon itself to say that many are “confused” by the remark since Carter was a great humanitarian and noble prize winner. It was a telling moment. These companies now act as either censors as officious intermeddlers when it comes to comments made on the platforms. They view themselves as a party to any postings and that viewpoints must be corrected or clarified to advance the corporate position.

Here is the column:

After Facebook’s oversight board this week upheld the social media giant’s continuing ban of former President Trump, the response of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) captured the visceral joy of many on the left: She posted a series of laughing emojis.

Welcome to Free Speech, Inc.: the Democratic incorporation of free speech built around the a presumption of corporate censorship (for some).

Of course, Democrats insist they are not attacking free speech, just combating “disinformation.” After all, they say, private companies have every right to control speech — unless you are, say, a bakery opposed to preparing a cake for a same-sex wedding, or a company contributing to political causes. The current mantra defending Facebook’s corporate speech rights seems strikingly out of sync with years of Democrats and political activists demanding the curtailment of such rights.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Congressional Testimony: The Leading Activists for Online Censorship Are Corporate Journalists

March 14, 2021

Congressional Testimony: The Leading Activists for Online Censorship Are Corporate Journalists

A hearing of the House Subcommittee focused on anti-trust and monopoly abuses examines the role of the corporate media in these growing pathologies.

Hearing of the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law, Mar. 12, 2021

There are not many Congressional committees regularly engaged in substantive and serious work — most are performative — but the House Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law is an exception. Led by its chairman Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) and ranking member Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), it is, with a few exceptions, composed of lawmakers whose knowledge of tech monopolies and anti-trust law is impressive.

In October, the Committee, after a sixteen-month investigation, produced one of those most comprehensive and informative reports by any government body anywhere in the world about the multi-pronged threats to democracy posed by four Silicon Valley monopolies: Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple. The 450-page report also proposed sweeping solutions, including ways to break up these companies and/or constrain them from controlling our political discourse and political life. That report merits much greater attention and consideration than it has thus far received.

The Subcommittee held a hearing on Friday and I was invited to testify along with Microsoft President Brad Smith; President of the News Guild-Communications Workers of America Jonathan Schleuss, the Outkick’s Clay Travis, CEO of the Graham Media Group Emily Barr, and CEO of the News Media Alliance David Chavern. The ostensible purpose the hearing was a narrow one: to consider a bill that would vest media outlets with an exemption from anti-trust laws to collectively bargain with tech companies such as Facebook and Google so that they can obtain a greater share of the ad revenue…

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