Tag: censorship

Missouri v. Biden UPDATE: Judge Orders ‘Jurisdictional Discovery’ to Settle Govt’s Bad Faith Arguments

Experts have said that the Missouri v. Biden case is “the most important free speech case in a generation.”

The case involves the federal government wholesale deleting and deplatforming millions of Americans from social media based entirely on their truthful political statements.

Just this past week, the trial court has issued a new order in the case, after an appeal to the Supreme Court was successful for the Biden administration, which sought to undo a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the censorship regime.

Now, the trial court is ordering the two sides to conduct “jurisdictional discovery” so that it can prove one issue critical to the case moving forward: whether the Plaintiffs on the side of free speech have enough legal ‘standing’ to move forward. What this means is that the parties are now going to fight about whether the specific Plaintiffs in the case can prove that they were specifically harmed.

You can read the court order here.

Whereas previously the parties could show the massive censorship regime and show that they were deplatformed, now the parties must show the connection and demonstrate that the specific Biden speech suppression complex deplatformed these specific Plaintiffs.

Thus the court is allowing both parties to issue ‘discovery’ to primarily third parties right now, meaning demand evidence, documents, and depositions from people, organizations, and companies, in order to build the record of evidence both parties need to make their arguments.

The claims in the case cannot rest on mere speculation, the parties need to be able to get tangible evidence to back up their claims. Lawyers involved in the case say the critical issue at this juncture is: proving that the federal government targeted a specific Plaintiff, and that the Plaintiff’s speech was harmed as a result.

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German Economics Minister renews calls for widespread internet censorship, claims that an “axis of autocrats” is using domestic “populists” to poison democratic discourse via social media algorithms

Our Green Minister of Economic Affairs, Robert Habeck, is increasingly a deranged and dangerous man, obsessed with unusual conspiracy theories. He believes that an “axis of autocrats” have instrumentalised TikTok and X to wage “hybrid warfare” on liberal European democracies. Specifically, he holds that these autocrats are directing domestic populists to poison public discourse with the help of Evil Algorithms. To beat back this nefarious influence, the European Union should comprehensively regulate – that is, censor – social media. Once again, we must much abridge central democratic freedoms, like the freedom of expression, to protect democracy from itself.

Habeck has been saying things like this for a while now, but his ominous Saturday speech in the Schinkel Church at Neuhardenberg Castle broke new ground in both detail and emphasis. Habeck’s remarks followed the twin political catastrophes of Trump’s election and the collapse of the traffic light coalition, and they came just as Habeck announced his intention to stand as Chancellor candidate for the Green Party. This was just not any speech, in other words, but rather a major policy statement by one of Germany’s most prominent politicians in advance of the approaching elections.

Habeck will never be Chancellor, but chances are high that the Greens will return to government when we vote again in February, and Habeck is a dominant voice in his party. Green policy statements also bear significance extending well beyond Green circles, reflecting as they do the general political outlook of the German elite. Demoralised by Trump’s election and their growing domestic unpopularity, our rulers are determined as never before to find some way of shutting up those inconvenient people who disagree with them. If only they can get us to stop sharing our unfiltered views on the internet, we can get back to the halcyon days of 2019 again, when the child saint Greta Thunberg was leading the children of the world on a glorious crusade against carbon dioxide and the Greens were polling stronger than ever before.

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A License to Censor? The Fierce Fight Over the GEC’s Renewal

What happens when an agency meant to protect Americans from foreign propaganda starts tiptoeing over the line into the realm of domestic censorship? Enter the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a charming creation of the US State Department that was originally tasked with combating foreign disinformation. It sounds like something out of a spy novel: shadowy entities sowing chaos through whisper campaigns and disinformation dumps. But now, the real drama lies in how this agency has extended its reach beyond foreign threats and into the murky waters of the internet’s free speech landscape.

Of course, the GEC would prefer to be seen as a benevolent referee, helping social media giants like Facebook and YouTube play the good guys in the battle against digital deception. In theory, this agency is all about countering Russian bots and Iranian trolls. But somehow, along the way, its mission stretched to a point where the average American scrolling through a feed can almost feel the government’s fingers tapping on their shoulder, cautioning them about what’s “trustworthy.” It’s no wonder people are starting to worry.

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MIT suspends student and bans magazine for article opposing Gaza genocide

Last Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) issued an immediate “interim” suspension of graduate student Prahlad Iyengar for penning an article titled “On Pacifism” in an MIT student magazine, Written Revolution, opposing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. The publication itself has been banned from campus.

Zionist groups and the MIT administration have falsely claimed the article incites violence and have attempted to paint Iyengar as a terrorist. The article, which appeared in the fifth edition of the magazine, which is an American Sociological Association-recognized publication, does nothing of the sort as is obvious from the text of the article itself which is academic in character.

The World Socialist Web Site opposes this flagrant attack on free speech and academic freedom and calls on workers, students and youth to demand the immediate rescinding of all administrative measures against Iyengar.

As Iyengar wrote in a statement opposing the ban, “The administration has also banned Written Revolution outright, meaning students who disseminate or read this publication on campus may face discipline.” Some students reading the magazine were approached by the police. According to a recording of the call made to police, it was to stop the handing out “banned pamphlets.” Students face Orwellian disciplinary actions for distributing or merely reading the article on campus. 

The suspension and ban represent an escalation of the bipartisan campaign led by the Biden administration and Democratic Party against opposition on the campuses to the Gaza genocide. It takes place after over 186,000 people in Gaza have been massacred by Israel, according to an estimate by The Lancet from July. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that everyone in northern Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying,” while there is a massive and unprecedented amount of photographic and video evidence both from the victims and killers themselves on social media documenting the genocide, which could correctly be described as the first live-streamed genocide in history.

Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering Ph.D. student, was summarily banned from campus under the bogus justification that he presented an immediate risk of violence, with the administration falsely claiming his article supports “terrorism.” This was done solely on the basis of anonymous allegations by Zionist students’ claims that statements in the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.” The rule for interim banning of students is ostensibly aimed only at those who actually present a risk of violence, like those suspected of rape, murder or assault. This is clearly not the case.

Essentially no evidence has been presented beyond a People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine poster being used as an illustration in Iyengar’s article. The administration falsely used this to claim that the article supported terrorism. The banning opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of avenues for censorship, meaning all manner of media from textbooks and dictionaries which have pictures of real or supposed “terrorist” organizations to documentaries and non-fiction books and even news articles in the mainstream press could be banned.

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US Lawmakers Investigate Biden White House-Affiliated UK Censorship Group’s Plot To “Kill” Elon Musk’s X

Among the investigations currently carried out by the US House Committee on the Judiciary and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is the one into a case involving UK-based “censorship group” – the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

In a letter dated November 7, Committee chairman Jim Jordan is asking CCDH CEO Imran Ahmed to, by November 21, comply with a subpoena issued on August 30, 2023.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

According to Jordan, it covers the group’s activities as well, including documents showing the Biden-Harris administration’s alleged collusion with Big Tech to censor Americans’ lawful online speech.

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UN Wants Digital IDs To Combat “Hate Speech,” “Misinformation”

A United Nations (UN) committee has adopted two resolutions, one of them aimed at the World Organization’s Department of Global Communications establishing and strengthening “partnerships with new and traditional media to address hate speech narratives.”

The Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) also adopted a resolution further promoting the UN’s “Our Common Agenda” plan, which, among other points, proposes bank account-linked digital ID – as well as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN Pact for the Future, and Global Digital Compact – also pushing for digital IDs, censorship, and surveillance, with major countries as the schemes’ key backers.

Ahead of the adoption of the documents, representatives of a number of countries spoke in favor of expanded censorship under the UN umbrella, with Italy’s delegate advocating for the use of AI in combating “misinformation and disinformation.”

UK’s representative reiterated the country’s commitment to the UN Pact for the Future and Global Digital Compact, highlighted the far-reaching censorship law, Online Safety Act, and noted that it forces companies “to remove illegal online content, including illegal mis and disinformation generated by AI.”

Another thing the UK remains committed to, the address revealed, is digging its heels in when it comes to characterizing “misinformation” as a major threat.

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Book banning, cover-ups and censorship: Understanding the “AIDS” crisis

The history behind the “AIDS” crisis is fraught with coverups, deceptive narratives and censorship.

The first cases of “AIDS” reported by the CDC were based on pneumocystis pneumonia infections of previously healthy gay men. This infection is caused by the normally harmless fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii, but the infection became severe in these individuals. Instead of asking why these infections were more severe in these individuals, medical authorities dismissed further inquiry into underlying factors. No attempt was made to investigate these cases through the perception of the terrain theory of disease, which addresses the whole individual and the conditions that breed disease. By only seeing disease through the perception of the germ theory, medical authorities played right into the hands of the pharmaceutical industry and snuffed out scientific progress on the matter.

Controversy behind the emergence of the term AIDS and its sole causative agent, HIV

By September of 1982, the medical establishment coined a new medical condition called AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). This umbrella term was used as a cover for many different types of infections, malnutrition, the negative effects of immunosuppressant drugs and other personal health decisions that damage the blood. The underlying causes exacerbating immunosuppression could easily be ignored for individuals who struggled with these different infections, because the umbrella term AIDS covered up the underlying causes of their health conditions.

By 1982, medical authorities claimed that AIDS had affected 335 people, killing 136 of them. Remarkably in 1983, scientists discovered human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). By 1984, HIV was attributed as the sole cause of AIDS, and many medical coverups began from here. Because the condition overwhelmingly affected men who practiced homosexuality, the disease was often referred to as gay-related immune deficiency, or GRID.

Since then, billions of dollars in research money has been awarded to scientists who uphold the HIV-AIDS connection. Today, medical authorities continue to postulate that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, and discussion about the underlying factors of immunosuppression are disregarded as conspiracy theory. One of the first books to be censored was “The Health Scandal” written by Dr. Vernon Coleman in 1988.

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To Fight Donald Trump, the Media Contemplates Vast Censorship

The sheer impressiveness of Donald Trump’s Election Day victory continues to grow, with the former president winning not just all of the swing states, but probably the popular vote, the Senate, and possibly even the House of Representatives. Trump also exercises much greater control over his party than he did previously. This is an utter rout for the Democratic Party, and one that will clear the way for the implementation of GOP policy goals on a scale hitherto undreamt of (at least since 2004).

Democratic officials and pundits know that this is bad, though not all of them are willing to admit that the main fault lies with their candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. If she does not deserve all of the blame, it is only because she shares it with President Joe Biden, whose stubborn decision to seek reelection despite his advanced age and declining cognitive abilities compromised both of their candidacies. Various commentators have lashed out, not at Harris, but at Americans.

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Hands Off My Social Media!

Democrats have found a new superstar to help get out the progressive vote: Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan. Khan has done town halls with Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) and Mark Pocan (D-WI), Senate candidate and current Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Khan’s appearances are official government events—not campaign rallies. However, politicians would not appear at an event in an election year unless they where sure it would appeal to a key constituency. It may seem odd that politicians would consider it helpful to appear with an FTC chair. However, Lina Khan is no ordinary agency head. Khan has been a star in progressive circles since, while still a law student, she penned “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” This article argued that the rise of Big Tech companies like Amazon and Google required government to take a more aggressive approach to antitrust. Khan has brought high-profile antitrust cases against Amazon and META (parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and What’s App), as well as attempts to block mergers and acquisitions in areas ranging from  handbags to grocery stores.

Khan advocates a “holistic” approach to antitrust that recognizes how “workers and independent businesses, in addition to consumers, can be harmed by antitrust and consumer protection violations.” She has also called for the FTC to consider how certain business practices can help facilitate antitrust violations. This holistic approach gives federal antitrust enforcers justification for second-guessing almost any decision made by almost any American business.

The FTC chair has a number of fans on the “populist-nationalist” right. These “Khanservatives” want Republicans to embrace a Lina Khan-like approach to antitrust. Khanservatives want to use antitrust to punish Big Tech for manipulating their algorithms to suppress conservative news and opinions. Some Khanservatives believe the Big Tech companies influenced the outcome of the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.

The most prominent Khanservative is Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. Senator Vance (R-OH) has publicly praised Khan and, before being picked as Donald Trump’s running mate, suggested that if Trump returns to the Oval Office he should “use the administrative state” to advance a conservative agenda. Senator Vance has also called for the government to break up Google because “the monopolistic control of information in our society resides with a progressive company.”

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‘Kill Musk’s Twitter’: British Intel Again Targets Donald Trump

On October 22nd, independent journalists Paul D. Thacker and Matt Taibbi published a bombshell investigation, exposing how the intelligence-adjacent Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) hatched a covert plot at the start of 2024 to “kill [Elon] Musk’s Twitter.” This highly politicised attack on ‘X’ is just one component of a wider British invasion of the US political sphere, designed to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, guarantee the election of Kamala Harris, and keep Washington embroiled in the Ukraine proxy war quagmire.

CCDH was founded by Morgan McSweeney, a British political svengali widely credited with masterminding Keir Starmer’s landslide July general election win, now closely advising Harris’ presidential campaign. The organisation, which targets both left and right dissident voices for censorship and deplatforming, was spun out of Labour Together, a “think tank” McSweeney led 2017 – 2020. In this position, he drew up Machiavellian plans for Starmer’s seizure of power, and neutralising then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his party support base, much of which subsequently came to fruition.

CCDH was a key element of McSweeney’s anti-Corbyn crusade. Officially founded in early 2019, its first act was to launch Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). Initially operating without any clarity on who or what was funding and running the endeavour, it promoted boycotts of independent English-language news outlets. Resultantly, major businesses were pressured into withdrawing their adverts from target websites, to starve them of revenue. The approach was devastatingly effective, shutting down several websites and forcing others, like The Canary, to downsize.

Fast forward to today, and McSweeney is leading a pack of veteran British political strategists Stateside who, in the words of Politico, are teaching Harris and her campaign “how to win.” Multiple mainstream reports indicate this unprecedented support is concerned with maintaining the “Grand Atlantic Alliance” between London and Washington, and ensuring Starmer isn’t left “alone” in backing Kiev. Given the Machiavellian histories of McSweeney and CCDH, it is beyond doubt these efforts are but the visible tip of something far larger, and more destructive.

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