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“UK Files” Reports Show: Both Left and Right Can Be Targets of Censors

“UK Files” Reports Show: Both Left and Right Can Be Targets of Censors

American audiences may struggle with the particulars, but leaked Labour Party documents detail how “anti-disinformation” can be weaponized in all directions

Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn was undone, among other things, by accusations of antisemitism

Just as some denizens of George Orwell’s Animal Farm were more equal than others, Britain’s Center for Countering Digital Hate stands out among the fast-growing list of organizations dedicated to the global elimination of wrongthink, commonly described using terms like disinformation, hate, and lies.

Recently the target of a lawsuit by X, the CCDH was and is a conspicuous recurring character in the Twitter Files, where among other things it organized a relentless campaign against Robert Kennedy, Jr. and others deemed purveyors of vaccine disinformation. Recently, they also appeared in articles bemoaning a judicial decision enjoining the government from engaging with platforms on digital censorship.

CCDH reports and correspondence are distinguished by a unique tone of fevered indignation, as if members were consumed with rage at a world that hadn’t yet deleted disfavored accounts. Their methods, issuing bullhorn demands for total social defenestration through a vast and cleverly courted network of mainstream press allies, represent a perfected template for the modern “anti-disinformation” organization: moral absolutists unafraid to use accusations of bigotry as a political weapon.

When British investigative journalist Paul Holden approached Racket with a story based on leaked documents showing the secret history of the CCDH, I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until I saw the first drafts that I realized the story’s importance. Holden is in possession of a wealth of internal correspondence about Britain’s Labour Party, in character and politics a near-exact analog to our Democratic Party…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Westminster Declaration

“Open discourse is the central pillar of a free society”

We write as journalists, artists, authors, activists, technologists, and academics to warn of increasing international censorship that threatens to erode centuries-old democratic norms.

Coming from the left, right, and centre, we are united by our commitment to universal human rights and freedom of speech, and we are all deeply concerned about attempts to label protected speech as ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and other ill-defined terms.

This abuse of these terms has resulted in the censorship of ordinary people, journalists, and dissidents in countries all over the world.

Such interference with the right to free speech suppresses valid discussion about matters of urgent public interest, and undermines the foundational principles of representative democracy.

Across the globe, government actors, social media companies, universities, and NGOs are increasingly working to monitor citizens and rob them of their voices. These large-scale coordinated efforts are sometimes referred to as the ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex.’

This complex often operates through direct government policies. Authorities in India[1] and Turkey[2] have seized the power to remove political content from social media. The legislature in Germany[3] and the Supreme Court in Brazil[4] are criminalising political speech. In other countries, measures such as Ireland’s ‘Hate Speech’ Bill[5], Scotland’s Hate Crime Act[6], the UK’s Online Safety Bill[7], and Australia’s ‘Misinformation’ Bill[8] threaten to severely restrict expression and create a chilling effect.

But the Censorship Industrial Complex operates through more subtle methods. These include visibility filtering, labelling, and manipulation of search engine results. Through deplatforming and flagging, social media censors have already silenced lawful opinions on topics of national and geopolitical importance. They have done so with the full support of ‘disinformation experts’ and ‘fact-checkers’ in the mainstream media, who have abandoned the journalistic values of debate and intellectual inquiry.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

US Special Operations Command Will Deploy Argus AI Program to Scour Social Media for Disinformation, Misinformation and Malinformation, National Security Authority to Protect U.S. Internet from “Pain Points”

Annnd… Here we go.  If you have not read the background {Go Deep}, you will not have the appropriate context to absorb the latest revelation about how the Dept of Defense will now conduct online monitoring operations, using enhanced AI to protect the U.S. internet from “disinformation” under the auspices of national security.

Gee, who would have predicted that U.S. internet operations would suddenly have a totally new set of enhanced AI guardians at the gateways? ????

Read Carefully – Eyes Wide Open:

The US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has contracted New York-based Accrete AI to deploy software that detects “real time” disinformation threats on social media.

The company’s Argus anomaly detection AI software analyzes social media data, accurately capturing “emerging narratives” and generating intelligence reports for military forces to speedily neutralize disinformation threats.

“Synthetic media, including AI-generated viral narratives, deep fakes, and other harmful social media-based applications of AI, pose a serious threat to US national security and civil society,” Accrete founder and CEO Prashant Bhuyan said.

“Social media is widely recognized as an unregulated environment where adversaries routinely exploit reasoning vulnerabilities and manipulate behavior through the intentional spread of disinformation.

“USSOCOM is at the tip of the spear in recognizing the critical need to identify and analytically predict social media narratives at an embryonic stage before those narratives evolve and gain traction. Accrete is proud to support USSOCOM’s mission.”

But wait… It gets worse!

 

[PRIVATE SECTOR VERSION] – The company also revealed that it will launch an enterprise version of Argus Social for disinformation detection later this year.

The AI software will provide protection for “urgent customer pain points” against AI-generated synthetic media, such as viral disinformation and deep fakes.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

Thirteen ways of looking at disinformation

Adam Maida

ADAM MAIDA

PROLOGUE: THE INFORMATION WAR

In 1950, Sen. Joseph McCarthy claimed that he had proof of a communist spy ring operating inside the government. Overnight, the explosive accusations blew up in the national press, but the details kept changing. Initially, McCarthy said he had a list with the names of 205 communists in the State Department; the next day he revised it to 57. Since he kept the list a secret, the inconsistencies were beside the point. The point was the power of the accusation, which made McCarthy’s name synonymous with the politics of the era.

For more than half a century, McCarthyism stood as a defining chapter in the worldview of American liberals: a warning about the dangerous allure of blacklists, witch hunts, and demagogues.

Until 2017, that is, when another list of alleged Russian agents roiled the American press and political class. A new outfit called Hamilton 68 claimed to have discovered hundreds of Russian-affiliated accounts that had infiltrated Twitter to sow chaos and help Donald Trump win the election. Russia stood accused of hacking social media platforms, the new centers of power, and using them to covertly direct events inside the United States.

None of it was true. After reviewing Hamilton 68’s secret list, Twitter’s safety officer, Yoel Roth, privately admitted that his company was allowing “real people” to be “unilaterally labeled Russian stooges without evidence or recourse.”

The Hamilton 68 episode played out as a nearly shot-for-shot remake of the McCarthy affair, with one important difference: McCarthy faced some resistance from leading journalists as well as from the U.S. intelligence agencies and his fellow members of Congress. In our time, those same groups lined up to support the new secret lists and attack anyone who questioned them.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Comer Launches Probe into State Department’s Alleged Funding of Group Blacklisting Conservative Media ‘Under the Guise of Combatting Disinformation’

Comer Launches Probe into State Department’s Alleged Funding of Group Blacklisting Conservative Media ‘Under the Guise of Combatting Disinformation’

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter on Thursday to the U.S. State Department demanding records and a briefing by the agency regarding its alleged funding of a “disinformation tracking group” that is blacklisting conservative-leaning news outlets.

The letter (pdf) cites as evidence the Washington Examiner’s series of investigative reports uncovering the State Department’s alleged partnership with activist organizations, specifically one “foreign organization,” to “suppress lawful speech and defund disfavored news outlets under the guise of combatting disinformation.”

“The Committee is disturbed by recent reporting that taxpayer money ended up in the hands of a foreign organization running an advertising blacklist of organizations accused of hosting disinformation on their websites, including several conservative-leaning news organizations,” Comer wrote.

The letter goes on to detail the Washington Examiner’s findings.

According to the outlet, major ad companies look to “nonpartisan” groups that claim to detect and fight “disinformation” online to help determine which news outlets and websites they should avoid.

Some of these “disinformation monitors,” the Washington Examiner went on to explain, “are compiling secret blacklists and feeding them to ad companies, with the aim of defunding and shutting down disfavored speech.”

One such group is British Global Disinformation Institute (GDI), which has compiled a “dynamic exclusion list” of 2,000 websites and rates those outlets based on their “alleged disinformation ‘risk’ factor,” according to the Washington Examiner.

GDI’s website further explains its purpose. Calling itself an “independent, non-profit, open source, intelligence hub,” GDI “tracks disinformation and extremism across platforms online” to “serve a broad array of governments, NGOs [non-governmental organizations], online platforms, and media.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation”

disinformation

How New Zealand Dealt with “Disinformation”

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is spectacular, with Orcs, Elves and breathtaking scenery filmed on location in New Zealand. The special effects were good too – the eye of Sauron looked very realistic – perhaps it is.

We have come across a minimally redacted 28-page draft of a Kiwi Government document entitled “Communications approach to managing disinformation, online harms and scams” dated 10 Dec 2021 (Available here).

The document’s aim appears to be coordinating countering disinformation seeking to harm “by threatening public safety, fracturing community cohesion and reduced trust in democracy.” All well and good then; it’s a bit like saying, do not open fire on the Red Cross.

Except that the object is “disinformation” relating to the Kiwi government’s response to the Covid pandemic. The definition of disinformation in the document is on page 5:

We will not summarise the complex and superficial content of the document other than to note that this is precisely the attempt at normalising the message of the pandemic that we have reported. The government has put out a message, and its credibility must be defended at all costs, with tech media partners, academics, the community and, of course, the armies of Sauron.

One consideration is that the Covid narrative in Middle Earth (as elsewhere) is based on the misuse and misinterpretation of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the death of clinical medicine, as we have made clear.

Cases may not have been active cases, hospitalisations may not be due to SARS-CoV-2, and deaths may be due to various causes related or unrelated to SARS-CoV-2. We will never know for sure. Why? Because the PCR cycle threshold for testing PCR “positive” in Middle Earth was 40 to 45, ensuring that most tested people would test positive even in the total absence of contamination (a very tall order).

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Sulzberger: Disinformation is the “Most Existential Problem” Facing the Planet Today

Sulzberger: Disinformation is the “Most Existential Problem” Facing the Planet Today

There has been much coverage over the resurfacing of former CNN host Brian Stelter as the host for a panel at the World Economic Forum on alleged disinformation and “hate speech.” Stelter previously called for censorship under a “harm reduction model” and led a panel at a conference where Democrats discussed how to shape the news. He was confronted over his own dissemination for false stories targeting Republicans on CNN. Yet, I was most struck by a statement from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger who described “disinformation” as the “most existential” problem the world is facing today. Sulzberger insisted that disinformation is the reason why there is a loss of “trust” today. He ignores his own history in eroding that trust in the media through flagrantly biased decisions at the New York Times.

Former  NYT editor Jill Abramson also slammed the participation of Sulzberger and the New York Times at Davos, denouncing it as a “corrupt circle-jerk” between media and business. She said that “the coverage was a sweetener to flatter the CEOs by seeing their names in the NYT.”

The panel was titled, “Clear & Present Danger of Disinformation” included panelists: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, Vice-President of the European Commission Vera Jourová, CEO of Internews Jeanne Bourgault, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. The entire conference was notable in its omission of free speech advocates while inviting long advocates for censorship like Stelter.

Stelter asked his panel, “How does this discussion of disinformation relate to everything else happening today in Davos?”

Sulzberger responded:

“Well, first, thanks for having me is as part of this conversation. As you can imagine, this is something I really care deeply about. So, I think if you look at this question of disinformation, I think it maps basically to every other major challenge that we are grappling with as a society, and particularly the most existential among them…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

institutions lied

How Can We Trust Institutions That Lied?

Trust the Authorities, trust the Experts, and trust the Science, we were told. Public health messaging during the Covid-19 pandemic was only credible if it originated from government health authorities, the World Health Organization, and pharmaceutical companies, as well as scientists who parroted their lines with little critical thinking.

In the name of ‘protecting’ the public, the authorities have gone to great lengths, as described in the recently released Twitter Files (1,2,3,4,5,6,7) that document collusion between the FBI and social media platforms, to create an illusion of consensus about the appropriate response to Covid-19.

They suppressed ‘the truth,’ even when emanating from highly credible scientists, undermining scientific debate and preventing the correction of scientific errors. In fact, an entire bureaucracy of censorship has been created, ostensibly to deal with so-called MDM— misinformation (false information resulting from human error with no intention of harm); disinformation (information intended to mislead and manipulate); malinformation (accurate information intended to harm).

From fact-checkers like NewsGuard, to the European Commission’s Digital Services Act, the UK Online Safety Bill and the BBC Trusted News Initiative, as well as Big Tech and social media, all eyes are on the public to curtail their ‘mis-/dis-information.’

“Whether it’s a threat to our health or a threat to our democracy, there is a human cost to disinformation.” — Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC

But is it possible that ‘trusted’ institutions could pose a far bigger threat to society by disseminating false information?

Although the problem of spreading false information is usually conceived of as emanating from the public, during the Covid-19 pandemic, governments, corporations, supranational organisations and even scientific journals and  academic institutions have contributed to a false narrative.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

YouTube Censors Reality, Boosts Disinformation: Part 1

YouTube Censors Reality, Boosts Disinformation: Part 1

YouTube censored this site for accuracy, yet new news today underscores that they continue to hype fake news.

As subscribers by now are aware, I’m very upset about YouTube’s recent decision to censor a factually accurate video about “rigged election” comments produced for this site by Matt Orfalea. The company has given Matt a strike and labeled his/our work “misinformation,” an insult I’ve decided not to take lying down. I’m going to search for new ways to embarrass the company until they reverse their decision. As it happens, today offers an excellent opportunity.

CBS This Morning today came out with a story claiming they obtained a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop, sent for an “independent forensic review,” and determined it “appears genuine.” This follows up confirmation from The New York Times back on March 16th, and more importantly, the exhaustive earlier work of Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger confirming key emails in his book, The Bidens.

Matt did an exceptional job back in March in the video above, compiling clips of people who went on air and with absolute certainty proclaimed the laptop “a lie,” “altered or fake,” “pure distractions,” and of course, “RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION.”

Whether or not you thought the actual content of the story was important, the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop affair was a crossroads moment in the history of modern censorship. YouTube played a major role in this event.

This was a case in which major news media — including CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, and countless other outlets — actively embraced disinformation, in the form of a group letter from 50-plus former intelligence officials saying the laptop story (they referred to a “laptop op”) had the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”…

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Leaked FBI Pamphlet Lists ‘Misinformation’ And ‘Disinformation’ As ‘Election Crimes’

Leaked FBI Pamphlet Lists ‘Misinformation’ And ‘Disinformation’ As ‘Election Crimes’

An FBI “2022 Midterm Elections Social Media Analysis Cheat Sheet” leaked to Project Veritas by an agency whistleblower lists misinformation and disinformation as ‘election crimes.’

The ‘crimes’ are are defined as;

“DISINFORMATION” – False or inaccurate information intended to mislead others. Disinformation campaigns on social media are used to deliberately confuse, trick, or upset the public.

“MISINFORMATION” – False or misleading information spread mistakenly or unintentionally.

Does a Hillary Clinton-approved media blitz disinformation campaign to smear her political opponent as a Russian asset count?

What about “MSM censorship campaigns to suppress damaging information about a candidate” such as Hunter Biden’s laptop?

More via Project Veritas;

Recently, the Biden administration attempted to create the “Disinformation Governance Board” under the Department of Homeland Security. After severe pushback from the public due to free speech concerns, the federal government pulled the plug on this idea.

In another section of the leaked document labelled “Things to Consider,” the FBI reminded its agents that the First Amendment and Fourth Amendment exist. Both amendments are in the Bill of Rights and protect Americans’ rights to free speech and against “unreasonable” searches or seizures.

The Bureau also flagged the potential for “Voter/Ballot Fraud” in this election, an activity that some have attempted to rule out as a threat to the American electoral system.

Turkey Adopts Legislation That Could Jail Journalists for ‘Disinformation’

Turkey Adopts Legislation That Could Jail Journalists for ‘Disinformation’

Measure heads to president for final approval

Turkish lawmakers have voted to adopt a law that aimed at preventing “disinformation” in the media and online, despite widespread concerns about the measure’s potential to quash free speech.

Lawmakers from President Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which together have a majority, voted in parliament on Thursday to approve the legislation. The bill now goes to Erdogan for final approval.

While government officials have said the highly controversial bill is needed to combat fake news and disinformation, opposition members of parliament as well as European countries and media rights activists have called to scrap it.

Many have taken issue with article 29 in the measure, saying that it may be used to enforce censorship and quash free speech, as well as threaten independent journalism, since the Turkish government currently controls a majority of major news outlets in the country.

Article 29 says that people who are found guilty of spreading false information online intended to “create fear and disturb public order” could be punished with a prison sentence of one to three years. The measure also stipulates that if anonymous accounts are used to spread the alleged disinformation, sentences can be increased by up to half.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System

C-Span screengrab

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then?

This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old.

We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

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

Who Is Really Spreading Misinformed Disinformation?

Who Is Really Spreading Misinformed Disinformation?

Ne’er has there been more fertile ground that exemplifies how those in charge of the narrative are either (1) grossly incompetent, (2) saying what they need to simply to suit their own agenda, or (3) both – than the topics of Covid, inflation, Trump’s non-existent Russian collusion and Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Because I have written extensively about these issues over the last year, I had been putting aside a collection of quotes from the “authorities” on each topic. I thought this morning I would release all the quotes I had put aside as one giant compendium showing just how important it is to automatically agree with whatever our masters in the mainstream media/government suggest to us.

Given that we now know almost definitively (in my opinion) that Covid came from a lab, that inflation is here to stay, that Trump didn’t collude with Russia and that the laptop was definitely authentic, enjoy this trip down memory lane.

  • “You’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” – Joe Biden, July 2021
  • “Fact: Covid-19 is NOT airborne.” – World Health Organization, March 2020
  • “Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person. A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus cannot then use that person to go anywhere else,” she added with a shrug. “It cannot use a vaccinated person as a host to go get more people. [Vaccines] will get us to the end of this.” – Rachel Maddow, March 2021
  • “When people are vaccinated they can feel safe that they won’t get infected, whether they’re outdoors or indoors.” – Dr. Anthony Fauci, May 2021
  • “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a secondary individual. It’s very rare.” – Maria Van Kerkhove, PhD, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, March 2020

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

What’s Really Happening in Ukraine? The Rules of Disinformation During Wartime

What’s Really Happening in Ukraine? The Rules of Disinformation During Wartime

The front page from the Italian newspaper “La Stampa” on Oct 12, 1941. A good example of wartime propaganda.  

War is a complicated story with plenty of things happening at the same time. Not for nothing there is the term “fog of war,” and it may well be that even generals and leaders don’t know exactly what’s going on on the battlefield. Then, imagine how the media are reporting the situation to us: it is not just a fog that separates the news from the truth: it is a brick wall. Yet, the media remain a major source of information. Can we use them to learn at least something about what’s going on, discarding the lies and the exaggerations?

To start, we can look at how wartime news was reported in historical cases. As an exercise in applied history, I examined how Italians were (dis-)informed by their government during World War 2. I used the archive of “La Stampa” one of the major Italian newspapers of the time, still existing today. The other national newspapers weren’t reporting anything really different. Another advantage is that the archive of La Stampa is free to peruse.

The archive contains a huge amount of material (all in Italian, sorry). I don’t claim that I examined everything, but I did go through the decisive moments of the war, in 1941/43. It is a fascinating experience to imagine people reading the news of the time and trying to understand what was really going on. Could they figure it out? Probably not, at least for most of them. But let’s go into the details.

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

“The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation”: Nicolle Wallace. Nobody Spreads it More Relentlessly.

“The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation”: Nicolle Wallace. Nobody Spreads it More Relentlessly.

From her days as Bush/Cheney propagandist, to her stint on The View, to her role as beloved-by-Democrats MSNBC host, Wallace has perfected the art of sociopathic lying. Watch our original video.

Screen shot from our new original video about Nicolle Wallace, “The Typhoid Mary of Disinformation” (credit: Matt Orfalea)

The most blatant and shameless liars from the first term of the Bush/Cheney administration have, revealingly, enjoyed great success in media and journalism. That is because serial deceit is not a liability for a thriving career in corporate journalism but rather a vital asset — provided that the lies are in service of ruling class policies. Tawdry propagandists who helped drive post-9/11 America into a bottomless pit of lies and self-destruction have become the most highly-paid and beloved stars of liberal media. They include:

  • Former Bush White House speechwriter David Frum of The Atlantic and CNN;
  • Bush/Cheney CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden of CNN;
  • Ubiquitous amoral neocon warmonger Bill Kristol of MSNBC and various #NeverTrump groups;
  • Al-Qaeda/Saddam conspiracy theorist Jeffrey Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic;
  • The various scumbagscon artistspredator-protectors and fraudsters of the Lincoln Project, drowning in #Resistance cash and frequent MSNBC appearances;
  • Pro-war Florida GOP Congressman Joe Scarborough, now a multi-million host of MSNBC’s flagship morning show and anchor of its corporate brand; and,
  • Rep. Liz Cheney, long-time vocal supporter of her father and now a literal “hero” to American media liberals.

But few Bush-era propagandists have thrived more, made more money, and developed a more devoted and swooning liberal fan base than the official Communications Director of the Bush/Cheney White House and 2004 Bush/Cheney-reelection campaign, Nicolle Wallace…

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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