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Brazil Censorship Regime: Popular Podcaster Monark Criminally Investigated and Fined $75,000 For Online Speech

August 8, 2023

Brazil Censorship Regime: Popular Podcaster Monark Criminally Investigated and Fined $75,000 For Online Speech

Troubling news from Brazil.

One of Brazil’s most popular podcasters, Monark (real name Bruno Monteiro Aiub), is under criminal investigation and has received a fine equivalent to $75,000 for his online conduct.

Critics of the authority’s behavior here – like Brazil-based investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald – see this as a way to completely science the online personality known as the country’s version of Joe Rogan.

And do this without any due process, as well.

Reports in the Brazilian press say that the decision to fine Monark, whom they refer to as a digital influencer, came from Federal Supreme Court’s Minister Alexandre de Moraes.

Moraes is no stranger to taking an active part in controversial policies and decisions slammed for suppressing free speech on the internet.

In fact, he now has a fairly long history of involvement in this, dating back to the campaign to oust Brazil’s previous president.

In line with this reputation, Moraes’ decision was explained as the podcaster’s failure to comply with a court order, and in addition to the fine, includes blocking his bank account, suspending any new social media accounts, and demonetizing his channels.

In other words, a pretty thorough deplatforming and canceling, and Monark said he also lost his Rumble contract over the incident. And the reason: Moraes says he’s fighting “disinformation” allegedly spread by Monark, as well as his tactic of trying to get his voice heard by creating a new account, once an old one gets banned.

Monark’s defenders, including his lawyer, say that the “crime” he committed is that of having an opinion that is not liked by the government, and that accusations of “instigation of anti-democratic acts” are not true.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Investigating The Pro-Censorship UK Group Expanding Across The US

July 22, 2023

Investigating The Pro-Censorship UK Group Expanding Across The US

Freedom of information requests to hit government agencies for its association with pro-censorship group.

AFL, a non-profit often described as “an alternative to ACLU,” is starting the probe into CCDH – which it refers to as a pro-censorship group that is a party to anti-free speech collusion with the government – by filing several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

We obtained an example of one of the FOIAs for you here.

They are addressed to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of State, and the goal is to obtain any communications they may have had with CCDH, headed by Imran Ahmed.

The basis for looking into the group’s activities in the US is that although based in the UK, it has expanded its “censorship encouraging,” as AFL put it, work to the US as a 501(c) non-profit.

As far as CCDH is concerned, the group is a non-profit and an NGO (non-governmental organization) with nothing but noble intentions – fighting online hate and disinformation.

Ahmed’s professional profile gives a good idea of what exactly CCDH means by that. As per the organization itself, Ahmed is an “authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories.”

As is often the case with those that like to add a layer of opaqueness to their work, “the organization of the organization” here is rather complicated: there are ties with top Labour Party officials, the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a “merger” with another online disinformation crusader called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN).

…click on the above link to read the rest…

‘Once You Start Censoring, You’re on Your Way to Dystopia and Totalitarianism,’ RFK Jr. Tells House Committee

July 21, 2023

‘Once You Start Censoring, You’re on Your Way to Dystopia and Totalitarianism,’ RFK Jr. Tells House Committee

In a hearing marred by contentious interruptions and attempts by House Democrats to remove him as a witness, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense testified before a U.S. House hearing organized by the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

In a hearing marred by contentious interruptions and attempts by House Democrats to remove him as a witness, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., CHD chairman on leave from Children’s Health Defense (CHD) testified before a U.S. House hearing organized by Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

The subcommittee, operating within the House Judiciary Committee, said today’s hearing was intended to “examine the federal government’s role in censoring Americans,” “Big Tech’s collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech” and the ongoing Missouri v. Biden lawsuit alleging government censorship.

Other witnesses who testified today included D. John Sauer, special assistant attorney general for Louisiana, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Missouri v. Biden case, Breitbart journalist Emma-Jo Morris, who in 2020 first revealed the now-infamous “Hunter Biden laptop story,” and Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Government censorship and alleged First Amendment violations on the part of the federal government featured prominently in today’s hearing. “We need to be able to talk,” Kennedy told the committee. “And, the First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.”

Morris testified about the threats to a free press, saying:

“What this relationship between the U.S,government officials and American corporations represent is, is an unprecedented push to undermine the First Amendment, the right to think, write, read, say whatever we want, and how we respond will determine whether we see a free press as inalienable or as optional.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Fact-Check Racket Finally Unravels

July 16, 2023

The Fact-Check Racket Finally Unravels

Before the COVID lockdowns, social media companies had started contracting with new third-parties organizations called fact-checkers to assist in “content creation.” Getting a pass meant the post or story was amplified but getting dinged for inaccuracy meant that the post would be throttled or deleted.

For a while we believed it but certain revelations changed that. We came to realize that the posts labeled false were typically contrary to regime narratives. And a close look at the supposed refutation revealed that many points were very much in dispute. The companies developed a talent for seeming to reveal something false that was actually still debatable and interesting to consider. In most cases, what was declared false was still under consideration.

As time went on, the attempts to censor became more brazen and obvious. Then the Twitter files and other FOIAs generated proof of what many suspected all along. These entities were funded either directly or indirectly by government or by other dark-money sources as quid pro quos for other relationships they had cultivated with interested parties.

In other words, they were not some independent, science-based entities at all but rather hit squads with a hard political agenda. What was actually happening here was a form of censorship laundering. Government wants to censor but cannot so it turns to the social-media company to do the dirty work. To make this hand-in-glove racket less obvious, the companies would outsource to a fact-checking organization, making the lines of control even more blurry.

Sometime within the last several months, the whole racket seems to have unraveled. I rarely see the fact-checks cited at all. Or maybe they are cited ironically: what is declared false came to be seen as a badge of honor, a confirmation of core truth. That might seem crazy but these are the times in which we live. Nothing is as it seems.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“Shut up — or Else!”

July 16, 2023

“Shut up — or Else!”

Certain establishment types consider my ideas extreme. They accuse me of being a conspiracy theorist or some kind of kook, way outside the boundaries of acceptable consensus.

That’s fine, I expect that. If you threaten powerful interests, you can expect that they’ll try to discredit you.

The fact is people are conditioned to accept whatever the authorities tell them. It’s a powerful urge that actually goes back to evolutionary biology.

If you challenge what the authorities say, you become a threat to group cohesiveness, and, therefore, a threat to group survival.

In that vein, I’ve been warning my readers for over a year about the dangers of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that are being rolled out by central banks around the world.

In the U.S., I’ve called them “Biden Bucks.” I’ve warned that they could quite possibly lead to a total surveillance state in which the government can track your every purchase — and regulate the most minute aspects of your life.

Total Control

CBDCs are programmable. They allow central banks (or regulated commercial banks) to monitor your purchases.

In conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI), purchases and other uses of money (charitable contributions, political contributions, travel, etc.) can create a profile that identifies you as an enemy of the people as described by the government.

CBDCs can be used to freeze your account, require you to spend money at the risk of confiscation in the form of a “fiscal penalty” or to impose withholding tax on professionals and independent contractors who are not currently subject to withholding.

Your “Biden Bucks” could also be made to stop working at the gas pump once you’ve purchased a certain amount of gasoline in a week. Or you could be banned from buying a steak at the grocery store if you’ve exceeded your weekly quota of meat consumption.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Judge Bars Biden Officials, Agencies From Contacting Social Media Companies

July 5, 2023

Judge Bars Biden Officials, Agencies From Contacting Social Media Companies

In an order fittingly issued on Independence Day, a federal judge in Louisiana has forbidden multiple federal agencies and named officials from having any contact with social media companies with the intent to moderate content.

The preliminary injunction arises from a suit filed by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with individuals that include two leading critics of the Covid-19 lockdown regime — Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya — and Jim Hoft, who owns the right-wing website Gateway Pundit.

“If the allegations made by plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history,” wrote US District Judge Terry A. Doughty. “The plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the government has used its power to silence the opposition.”

The dozens of people and agencies bound by the injunction include President Biden, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control, the Treasury Department, State Department, the US Election Assistance Commission, the FBI and entire Justice Department, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Bhattacharya and Kulldorff, who are among the originators of the Great Barrington Declaration that denounced the lockdown regime, have been victims of social media censorship. For example, the pair says their censorship-triggering statements included assertions that “thinking everyone must be vaccinated is scientifically flawed,” questioning the value of masks, and stating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine immunity.

While the case is dominated by Covid-19 censorship, it also encompasses the Justice Department’s efforts to suppress reporting about Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” in the run-up to the 2020 election. Doughty gave credence to that accusation.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more

June 23, 2023

“A Global Digital Compact” – UN promoting censorship, social credit & much more

Late last month the office of the United Nation’s Secretary General published a policy document on aims for the future of the internet.A follow-up to the 2021 report “Our Common Agenda”, the new report’s title says it all really, “A Global Digital Compact”. That’s the goal, international legislation that would seek to control and enforce the use of digital technology.

The proposed clauses promote everything you’d expect them to promote.

Digital identities linked with financial access:

Digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts can improve the delivery of social protection coverage and serve to better reach eligible beneficiaries. Digital technologies may help to reduce leakage, errors and costs in the design of social protection programmes

Environmental or climate change-based social credit systems:

Sensors and monitors connected to the Internet of things, cloud-based data platforms, blockchain-enabled tracking systems and digital product passports unlock new capabilities for the measurement and tracking of environmental and social impacts across value chains.”

Public-Private Partnership:

Partnerships between States, private sector and civil society leverage the capacity of digital tools to provide solutions for development across the Sustainable Development Goals. Examples include the Digital Public Infrastructure Alliance, the Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability and public-private partnerships for disaster response.”

Countering online “harm”:

Disinformation, hate speech and malicious and criminal activity in cyberspace raise the risks and costs for everyone online […] we must strengthen accountability for harmful and malicious acts online.

Those are the obvious ones, there’s also more sneaky, insidious language regarding “equity” and “access”. The report is concerned there are many people in the world (mostly the developing world) who don’t have regular access to the Internet.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

UN Secretary-General Proposes ‘Global Digital Compact’ to Push Laws Against Online ‘Hate’

June 16, 2023

UN Secretary-General Proposes ‘Global Digital Compact’ to Push Laws Against Online ‘Hate’

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres deliver remarks to reporters outside the U.N. Security Council at U.N., headquarters in New York City, on April 20, 2023. (Mike Segar/Reuters)

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, proposed a “Global Digital Compact,” (GDC) to push sweeping international laws against “hate and lies” online.

“The proliferation of hate & lies in the digital space is causing grave global harm. This clear & present global threat demands clear and coordinated global action. We don’t have a moment to lose,” he wrote in a tweet announcing the compact.

The UN policy brief, which was released on June 12, called for handing control of the internet to international bodies, as part of the UN’s 2030 Agenda.

Guterres also referred to another UN brief, “Information and Integrity on Digital Platforms” (IIDP), which he said will be used as a guide to coordinate global efforts against “hate.”

The IIDP warned about what it calls, the “darker side of the digital ecosystem,” which could enable “the rapid spread of lies and hate, causing real harm on a global scale.”

Guterres said that the internet is being misused to deny science and spread disinformation and hate to billions of people, in a veiled reference to vaccine skeptics and growing populist movements.

“The proliferation of hate and lies in the digital space is causing grave global harm. This clear and present global threat demands clear and coordinated global action. We don’t have a moment to lose,” he declared in his call for global censorship.

UN Calls for Nations to Suppress Online Disinformation

The GDC is focused on eliminating the “divide across regions, gender, income, language, and age groups” regarding internet access and decries the fact that “some 89 percent of people in Europe are online, but only 21 percent of women in low-income countries use the internet.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know

May 11, 2023

The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know

[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…

The Censorship Industrial Complex

March 11, 2023

The Censorship Industrial Complex

I think something is seriously wrong with my brain. Yesterday, I hallucinated that Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives about the Censorship Industrial Complex, i.e., the US arm of the global official propaganda and disinformation apparatus that has been waging an all-out war on dissent for the better part of the last six years.

I know this couldn’t have actually happened, and was just an extended hallucination (probably the result of the copious amount of drugs I consumed in my misspent youth, or the effects of a Commie bio-weapon with a fatality rate of less than one percent, because I’ve been writing about The War on Dissent (2018), and The Criminalization of Dissent (2021), and the global Corporate COINTELPRO op (2017), and The War on Reality (2021), and The Manufacturing of Reality (2021), and Manufacturing Truth (2018), and Manufacturing Normality (2016), and The Road to Totalitarianism (2022), and The Gaslighting of the Masses (2022) … well, for quite some time. So, I’m sure it was just an hallucination, because there’s no way Matt and Shellenberger were actually sitting there talking about how …

“We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA. For every government agency scanning Twitter, there were perhaps 20 quasi-private entities doing the same, including Stanford’s Election Integrity Project, Newsguard, the Global Disinformation Index, and others, many taxpayer-funded.” (Matt Taibbi’s Statement to Congress)

… and documenting the coordinated censorship of sources that interfered with certain official narratives, like “Russiagate” and “The Apocalpytic Virus” …

… because that’s just a crazy “conspiracy theory.”

…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’

February 25, 2023

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

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, delivers remarks during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, on Feb. 01, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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…

The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony

February 13, 2023

The Pain of Listening To Twitter Censorship Testimony

Nasty, Ill-Dressed Technocrats, I Want My Life Back

As I type, I am undergoing the excruciating experience of listening to C-SPAN, which is airing “Twitter’s Response to Hunter Biden Laptop Story.” The larger issue is: who censored Twitter, and why, and whether there was illegal collusion (there was) between Twitter and the US government.

So I finally am seeing them — up close, in real life, in person. I am finally able to look at the faces of the heretofore faceless technocrats who took it upon themselves to try to destroy my life and ruin my name.

I am witnessing, as I see them seated primly in rows in a Congressional hearing room, the very faces — the somber, ill-cut but costly blue suits, the bad wire-rimmed glasses, the judgmental expressions — of those who were personally responsible for the misery, trauma, reputational damage, shattered dreams, and loss of income, in my one life, over the course of last two and a half years.

Here at last are the very people who took it upon themselves, or who oversaw their colleagues, to single me out, to collude with the White House, and with Carol Crawford of CDC, and with DHS perhaps, to suspend me — following an accurate tweet of mine that warned women of menstrual harms following mRNA injection.

The positions of these people, the views of them — their self-regarding, self-satisfied, smug certainty that their rightness is the only rightness that could ever be — do not remind me of the testimony or views of actual Americans. They remind me rather of the affect of functionaries in a Stalinist show trial, or of the nameless bureaucrats in Kafka’s The Trial.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Congress is Set to Expose What May be the Largest Censorship System in U.S. History

February 8, 2023

Congress is Set to Expose What May be the Largest Censorship System in U.S. History

Below is my column in the Hill on the first hearings this week to be held by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It could be one of the most consequential investigations for free speech in decades if it pulls back the curtain on government censorship programs. After the historic release of the Twitter Files by Elon Musk, questions remain on any similar coordination with other social media companies with federal agencies like the FBI to target views considered “disinformation” or “misinformation.”

Here is the column:

This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible “weaponization” of government agencies. A variety of such controversies have contributed to plunging public trust in government and the FBI in particular.

The role of the FBI in prior scandals will remain a point of heated debate in Congress. However, members of both parties should be able to agree on the need to investigate one of the most serious allegations: Censorship by surrogate.

Many of the allegations of FBI bias are worthy of investigation. Some of those allegations are problems of personnel who can be removed. But a far more menacing problem has emerged in recent months with the release of information from Twitter.

The “Twitter files” revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content — an effort so overwhelming and intrusive that Twitter staff at one point complained internally that “they are probing & pushing everywhere.” The reports have indicated that dozens of FBI employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their requests.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

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