Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court (STF) has turned to contractors to keep an eye on social media and smoke out main critics – including by identifying them, and their location.

Other judicial institutions that are said to have contracts of a similar nature are the Superior Court of Justice, the Superior Labor Court, the Superior Electoral Court, and the National Council of Justice.

Reports out of Brazil about the contracting of outside entities to perform online surveillance is based on a public call for bids (the closing date was June 14), where STF looked to hire a company that will monitor, in real-time, what’s referred to as “the digital presence of the Federal Supreme Court” on social media.

The contractor will also have to provide alerts via instant messages, daily, weekly, and monthly – both quantitative and qualitative – analytical reports, as well as “occasional bulletins and preparation of a monthly action plan strategy for acting on social networks.”

This is yet another move by the country’s judiciary branch (the Superior Electoral Court’s activities offer more examples) that tests the boundaries of its powers. And, it’s a move that is explained as the need to protect democracy from “disinformation.”

But it didn’t stop there, as the Supreme Court’s lengthy investigations would at times cover not only “fake” but also real news – the kind that, in one example, exposed a former justice as having links with a company accused of corruption.

Contractors will now not only carry out “continuous monitoring” of social platforms (in search for “main detractors”), but also propose to the Court how it may “improve communication” with citizens.

In the past, Supreme Court justices and even a prosecutor general launched legal battles against people because of their online speech, but when these officials were allied with former President Balsonaro…

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

Our Propagandized Society Is Like A Sick Man Who Doesn’t Know He’s Sick

June 20, 2024

Our Propagandized Society Is Like A Sick Man Who Doesn’t Know He’s Sick

I write a lot more about the problems our society faces than I do about solutions. I do this because we are so far from being able to implement real solutions that most people don’t even really know the problems exist yet.

I could spend my time talking about the need for a giant people’s revolution to dismantle the US-centralized empire, end capitalism and replace the competition-based systems which are driving us to our doom with collaboration-based systems where all of humanity cooperates with each other and with our ecosystem, but those solutions aren’t going to emerge anytime soon because public consent for the status quo order is still being manufactured with a very high degree of success. At this point in history’s unfolding I may as well say we should solve all our problems by inventing free energy and living in the sky like the Jetsons.

Right now our society is like a sick man who (A) doesn’t know he’s sick, (B) refuses to believe he is sick, (C) believes the medicine is poison, (D) has no health insurance and can’t afford the medicine anyway, and (E) also has no means of transportation to get to the doctor. The very first step in that long list of obstacles to his health is to get him to understand that he is sick. That’s why I spend so much energy showing evidence that the media are lying to us, that we are ruled by psychopaths, and that our status quo systems are driving us toward annihilation.

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

US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

June 9, 2024

US Targets Journalists Who Criticize Administration’s Foreign Policy

State-ordered Purge of Truth-Tellers in Time of War. Scott Ritter Passport Seized, WaPo Smears Indy Journalists

Scott Ritter was pulled off a NY-to-Istanbul flight yesterday by US officials and his passport confiscated in a startling new development in the government’s open drive to censor and silence critics of the Administration’s foreign policies at a time when the United States is supplying billions of dollars in arms to foment wider war in Russia, accelerate the attacks on Gazans and set the stage for war with China over Taiwan.

A Marine veteran and true American patriot, Mr. Ritter is also a noted former Chief UN weapons inspector, author and journalist. He was enroute to Russia to attend an international conference in St. Petersburg.

Mr. Ritter first came to my attention when he testified at a Capitol hearing I sponsored to inquire into the Bush Administration’s plans to attack Iraq. Ritter warned in August of 2002 that a case had not been made for attacking Iraq.

Had Congress listened to Mr. Ritter, the US would have been spared the loss of thousands of our soldiers and the waste of trillions of tax dollars. Over one million Iraqis died as a result of the US attack on their country. America’s financial and moral debt will never be able to be repaid, but would not exist if we had simply looked at the evidence he presented.

Mr. Ritter’s passport was confiscated yesterday by U.S. authorities without explanation.

There are several Constitutional issues at stake here:

The taking of his passport was an illegal seizure, prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Mr. Ritter asked for, but did not receive a receipt, for the seized passport.

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

They Can’t Control the Gaza Narrative Because Too Much Has Been Seen

June 9, 2024

They Can’t Control the Gaza Narrative Because Too Much Has Been Seen

A lot of mainstream-adjacent progressives act like Gaza is some radical deviation from normal US behavior, which is infantile nonsense.

The US inflicts similar horrors on the world all the time; the only major difference is

(A) this one’s being live-streamed and

(B) there was a pro-Palestine movement in place before it began.

With regard to (B), Gaza is really illustrating how much the US empire benefits from moving through its foreign military violence relatively quickly.

When it can move from propagandizing the population about Evil Dictatorship X to destroying the country in question to moving on to its next war in the span of a few short years, there’s not enough time for public awareness to grow of exactly how evil the empire is being. It was years before a mainstream consensus developed that the invasion of Iraq was wrong, and it will probably be decades before there’s mainstream consensus about the evil shit the empire did in Syria from 2011 onwards.

With Gaza, people saw this one coming and were calling it what it is from the moment it began, because there was already a widespread political understanding — at least on the left — that Israel is a murderous settler-colonialist project and that the Palestinians are a colonized people. This widespread understanding occurred because the Israel-Palestine debate has been raging for generations, so the collective has had enough time to really examine the facts and circulate its arguments through public consciousness. Those facts and arguments were there ready to be picked up and understood and used — even by young people who are new to the situation — after October 7.

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

Quantitative Brainwashing

May 27, 2024

Quantitative Brainwashing

We’re all familiar with the term, “quantitative easing.” It’s described as meaning, “A monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply.”

Well, that sounds reasonable… even beneficial. But, unfortunately, that’s not really the whole story.

When QE was implemented, the purchasing power was weak and both government and personal debt had become so great that further borrowing would not solve the problem; it would only postpone it and, in the end, exacerbate it. Effectively, QE is not a solution to an economic problem, it’s a bonus of epic proportions, given to banks by governments, at the expense of the taxpayer.

But, of course, we shouldn’t be surprised that governments have passed off a massive redistribution of wealth from the taxpayer to their pals in the banking sector with such clever terms. Governments of today have become extremely adept at creating euphemisms for their misdeeds in order to pull the wool over the eyes of the populace.

At this point, we cannot turn on the daily news without being fed a full meal of carefully- worded mumbo jumbo, designed to further overwhelm whatever small voices of truth may be out there.

Let’s put this in perspective for a moment.

For millennia, political leaders have been in the practice of altering, confusing and even obliterating the truth, when possible. And it’s probably safe to say that, for as long as there have been media, there have been political leaders doing their best to control them.

During times of war, political leaders have serially restricted the media from simply telling the truth. During the American civil war, President Lincoln shut down some 300 newspapers and arrested some 14,000 journalists who had the audacity to contradict his statements to the public.

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

Lawmakers Push for the Censorship of “Harmful Content,” “Disinformation” in Latest Section 230 Reform Push

May 27, 2024

Lawmakers Push for the Censorship of “Harmful Content,” “Disinformation” in Latest Section 230 Reform Push

Section 230 of the Communications Act (CDA), an online liability shield that prevents online apps, websites, and services from being held civilly liable for content posted by their users if they act in “good faith” to moderate content, provided the foundation for most of today’s popular platforms to grow without being sued out of existence. But as these platforms have grown, Section 230 has become a political football that lawmakers have used in an attempt to influence how platforms editorialize and moderate content, with pro-censorship factions threatening reforms that force platforms to censor more aggressively and pro-free speech factions pushing reforms that reduce the power of Big Tech to censor lawful speech.

And during a Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing yesterday, lawmakers discussed a radical new Section 230 proposal that would sunset the law and create a new solution that “ensures safety and accountability for past and future harm.”

We obtained a copy of the draft bill to sunset Section 230 for you here.

In a memo for the hearing, lawmakers acknowledged that their true intention is “not to have Section 230 actually sunset” but to “encourage” technology companies to work with Congress on Section 230 reform and noted that they intend to focus on the role Section 230 plays in shaping how Big Tech addresses “harmful content, misinformation, and hate speech” — three broad, subjective categories of legal speech that are often used to justify censorship of disfavored opinions.

And during the hearing, several lawmakers signaled that they want to use this latest piece of Section 230 legislation to force social media platforms to censor a wider range of content, including content that they deem to be harmful or misinformation.

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

Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media

May 25, 2024

Exposing The CIA’s Secret Effort To Seize Control Of Social Media

While the CIA is strictly prohibited from spying on or running clandestine operations against American citizens on US soil, a bombshell new “Twitter Files” report reveals that a member of the Board of Trustees of InQtel – the CIA’s mission-driving venture capital firm, along with “former” intelligence community (IC) and CIA analysts, were involved in a massive effort in 2021-2022 to take over Twitter’s content management system, as Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag report over at Shellenberger’s Public (subscribers can check out the extensive 6,800 word report here).

According to “thousands of pages of Twitter Files and documents,” these efforts were part of a broader strategy to manage how information is disseminated and consumed on social media under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ and foreign propaganda efforts – as this complex of government-linked individuals and organizations has gone to great lengths to suggest that narrative control is a national security issue.

According to the report, the effort also involved;

a long-time IC contractor and senior Department of Defense R&D official who spent years developing technologies to detect whistleblowers (“insider threats”) like Edward Snowden and Wikileaks’ leakers;
the proposed head of the DHS’ aborted Disinformation Governance Board, Nina Jankowicz, who aided US military and NATO “hybrid war” operations in Europe;
Jim Baker, who, as FBI General Counsel, helped start the Russiagate hoax, and, as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, urged Twitter executives to censor The New York Post story about Hunter Biden.

Jankowicz (aka ‘Scary Poppins’), previously tipped to lead the DHS’s now-aborted Disinformation Governance Board, has been a vocal advocate for more stringent regulation of online speech to counteract ‘rampant disinformation.’ Jim Baker, in his capacity as FBI General Counsel and later as Twitter’s Deputy General Counsel, advocated for and implemented policies that would restrict certain types of speech on the platform, including decisions that affected the visibility of politically sensitive content.

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

Medical Elites’ Disgrace Over Ivermectin

May 19, 2024

Medical Elites’ Disgrace Over Ivermectin

“We know there is an important (but untransparent) list of who is responsible for misrepresenting published data, but will anyone be held accountable?”

In the wake of the FDA settling a lawsuit brought against it for wantonly and aggressively smearing ivermectin, the agency has deleted its postings. That’s good, but we shouldn’t forget how egregiously it mischaracterized the drug, ignored copious evidence in its favor, and portrayed its proponents as dangerous crackpots.

About 30 months ago, America’s FDA was publishing articles with headlines like this: “Should I take ivermectin to treat COVID?” Answer: No. The agency also told Americans not to use ivermectin to prevent Covid. Then, in what became known as its infamous “horse tweet,” the FDA even patronizingly told Americans: “Seriously, y’all. stop it.”

Prescribers who advocated for alternate treatments like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine were mocked online by America’s “trusted journalists” as being part of a “right-wing conspiracy” and labeled “hucksters.” Those who didn’t demure to the Covid mRNA or other Big Pharma treatment narratives were banned, fired, and spoken harshly about around the world and into the reaches of the stratosphere in what seemed like coordinated messaging.

Many clinicians lost their jobs – at best. At worst, their reputations, practices, finances, and careers were shattered. If that was not bad enough, after losing their jobs, state medical and pharmacy boards initiated legal proceedings against their licensure, singling out their “off-label” Covid treatments, despite other off-label treatments being a near-ubiquitous component of pharmacy and medical practice.

A screenshot of a social media post

Description automatically generated

Within days of FDA’s initial postings above, the American Pharmacist’s Association (APhA) the American Society of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP), and the American Medical Association (AMA) all collaborated to release a joint press release condemning doctors who prescribed ivermectin to treat Covid, but it appears that these organizations…

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

The Proof of Censorship is…Censored

May 10, 2024

The Proof of Censorship is…Censored

It’s not been a good week for the Censorship Industrial Complex.

The machine has been built and put into action over nearly a decade but largely in secret. Its way of doing business has been via surreptitious contacts with media and tech companies, intelligence carve-outs in “fact-checking” organizations, payoffs, and various other clever strategies, all directed toward boosting some sources of information and suppressing others. The goal has always been to advance regime narratives and curate the public mind.

And yet, based on its operations and insofar as we can tell, it had every intention of remaining secret. This is for a reason. A systematic effort by government to bully private sector companies into a particular narrative while suppressing dissent contradicts American law and tradition. It also violates human rights as understood since the Enlightenment. It was a consensus, until very recently, that free speech was essential to the functioning of the good society.

Four years ago, many of us suspected censorship was going on, that the throttling and banning was not merely a mistake or the result of zealous employees stepping out of line. Three years ago, the proof started to arrive. Two years ago, it became a flood. With the Twitter files from a year ago, we had all the proof we needed that the censorship was systematic, directed, and highly effective. But even then, we only knew a fraction of it.

Thanks to discovery from court cases, FOIA requests, whistleblowers, Congressional inquiries thanks to the very narrow Republican control, and some industrial upheavals such as what happened at Twitter, we are overwhelmed with tens of thousands of pages all pointing to the same reality.

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

CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says

May 10, 2024

CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. (L) speaks with NightDragon Founder and CEO Dave DeWalt (R) at the 2024 RSA conference in San Francisco, California. DAVID DIMOLFETTA/STAFF

SAN FRANCISCO — Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said.

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

Israel’s Battle Against Free Speech: The Shuttering of Al Jazeera

May 9, 2024

Israel’s Battle Against Free Speech: The Shuttering of Al Jazeera

***

“Politics,” as the harsh, albeit successful German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck claimed, “is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.”

To that should be added the stark awareness of being prudent, gingerly wise, appropriately cautious. Mind how you go in avoiding any foolishness on the way.

Going after the motley press and news outlets while claiming to be a card-carrying member of the democracy club is far from prudent and more than a touch foolish, bound to make the critics croak and other fellow members decry. And this is exactly what has happened in the context of Israel’s decision to shut down the Qatar-backed station Al Jazeera.

On May 5, police raided the offices of the network at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem. According to Israeli Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, equipment had been seized in the raid.

Al Jazeera duly released a statement strongly condemning and denouncing “this criminal act that violates human rights and the basic right to access of information.” The network went on to affirm “its right to continue to provide news and information to its global audiences.” Oddly enough, the ban is far from being a watertight one, as the channel remains accessible in Israel via Facebook.

Al Jazeera has had a troubled relationship with Israel. Sounding like paranoid family members who have imbibed a bit too much, accusations frothed from various politicians accusing the network of being a Hamas front. In a dubious honour, the network’s name became associated with a law passed by the Israeli Knesset on April 1.

The instrument authorises the Minister of Communication, with the consent of the Prime Minister and the Ministerial Committee on National Committee, to shut down foreign news outlets operating in Israel deemed a national security threat…

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

Al Jazeera’s Israeli HQ Raided By Police After Netanyahu Called It “Hamas Mouthpiece”

May 8, 2024

Al Jazeera’s Israeli HQ Raided By Police After Netanyahu Called It “Hamas Mouthpiece”

On Sunday the offices of Al Jazeera in Jerusalem were raided by Israeli police, after the Knesset voted unanimously voted to ban the Qatar-based news network.

The Israeli order effectively shuts down all Al Jazeera broadcasts in Israel and the West Bank. To implement the ban, authorities confiscated equipment at the channel’s Jerusalem HQ inside the Ambassador Hotel.

Additionally Israel will block Al Jazeera’s website after PM Netanyahu alleged that it is a “Hamas mouthpiece.” He has further claimed that the outlet’s coverage of Gaza has put Israeli troops in danger.

“Al Jazeera reporters harmed Israel’s security and incited against soldiers,” Netanyahu said previously. He has for weeks been mounting a public campaign against it.

Al Jazeera has responded by calling the claim a “dangerous and ridiculous lie” and further said “pursue every legal step” to fight being shut down by Israel.

Interestingly, last year the Biden administration also began complaining about the channel’s coverage, with an October Axios report saying that Secretary of State Antony Blinken requested that the Qataris “turn down the volume on Al Jazeera’s coverage because it is full of anti-Israel incitement.”

The outlet has said in a statement, “Israel’s ongoing suppression of the free press, seen as an effort to conceal its actions in the Gaza Strip, stands in contravention of international and humanitarian law.”

According to a review by Axios:

Israel’s legislative body, the Knesset, passed a measure last month that empowers Israel’s communications minister to take action against any foreign media network that it can prove poses a national security risk.

The law gives senior government officials power to temporarily shutter foreign news networks on national security grounds for at least 45 days, but that period can be extended.

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

Flashback: When Newt Gingrich Demanded Internet Censorship For Terror War

May 8, 2024

Flashback: When Newt Gingrich Demanded Internet Censorship For Terror War

The neocon faction of the permanent ruling class, which permeates both parties, is eternally dangerous and must be perpetually kept in check, if not purged entirely.

The year was 2006, in the middle of a decade that cemented my hate for the state, probably forever.

The terror induced by government’s War of Terror propaganda was at its apex.

Jingoistic “Freedom Fries” were on offer at various patriotic establishment because “French fries” were faggy and soft.

The neocons had their guy, literally minus a beating heart, Dick Cheney, strategically placed as the real president, playing his moronic nominal boss like a fiddle.

The PATRIOT Act was in full effect and American civil liberties had never been more broken — although they would be in subsequent years.

And one Newt Gingrich, the viscerally repulsive, bloated embodiment of the rot in the overfed GOP establishment, wanted to censor the internet… because ‘Merica.

It went without saying at the time that, if you oppose state control of the web, you support terrorism.

In order to defend America, once must undermine all of the fundamental founding principles that made it great in the first place.

Via Politico (emphasis added):

“Back in 2006, Gingrich argued censoring the Internet would be the right thing to do when it comes to Islamic radicals who use the web to organize jihad against the U.S.

‘We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we’re unfortunate,’ Mr. Gingrich said during a speech in New Hampshire, according to a story I wrote at the time for The New York Sun. ‘We now should be impaneling people to look seriously at a level of supervision that we would never dream of if it weren’t for the scale of the threat.’…

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

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