Tag: censorship

The frenzy to ban TikTok is another National Security State scam

On November 20, 2023, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in a joint letter to the CEO of TikTok that the platform was guilty of “stoking anti-Semitism, support, and sympathy for Hamas” after the October 7 attack on Israel. “This deluge of pro-Hamas content is driving hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric and violent protests on campuses across the country,” McMorris Rodgers charged. A year ago, in March 2023, she had already declared: “TikTok should be banned in the United States of America.”

This week the plan came to fruition, with McMorris Rodgers and her colleagues orchestrating what could be best described as a legislative sneak attack: suddenly the House of Representatives, a notoriously dysfunctional body — particularly this Congressional term, with all the Republican leadership turmoil — took decisive, concerted, expedited action to pass legislation banning TikTok before most of the public would have even gotten a chance to notice. The bill was introduced March 5, 2024, advanced by a unanimous committee vote on March 7, 2024, then approved for final passage March 13, 2024. Almost nothing ever passes Congress at such warp-speed.

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USAID’s “Disinformation Primer:” Documents Reveal Censorship Promotion Across Sectors

The authorities in the US are once again caught red-handed promoting censorship, this time via the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID is normally used by the US government to spread its influence around the world, but now, according to documents from a case against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), the agency also actively participates in analyzing and spreading various censorship methods.

The lawsuit in question was filed by America First Legal (AFL), alleging that the State Department, via GEC, engages with private media to advance what the non-profit believes is government/private sector censorship and propaganda collusion.

Now, USAID’s controversial activities have also been exposed thanks to the lawsuit, which revealed that one of the agency’s bureaus, the Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has come up with a “Disinformation Primer” – a 97-page document marked as being “for internal use only.”

The Disinformation Primer – in fact, a censorship primer, to sum up the Foundation for Freedom Online watchdog’s interpretation of the strategy – was “up and running” only one month after Joe Biden got sworn in, in February 2021.

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23 States and District of Columbia File Amicus Briefs in Favor of Joe Biden and Government Censorship and Regulation of Speech in America – via the MO v. Biden Case

Twenty-three Democrat run states and the District of Columbia, the home of our nation’s capital, filed amicus briefs in support of government censorship and banning of free speech in the United States.

These 23 states and the District of Columbia filed amicus briefs in support of the Biden administration in the SCOTUS case is Murthy, et al v. Missouri, et al, 23-411 (Missouri v. Biden) case.

The states essentially argue that they have an interest in collaborating with tech companies to “encourage” the public to behave themselves and “discourage” the public from believing alleged “disinformation” or engaging in online predatory behavior. The clear message is that they believe that the government has the right to shut down and censor speech.

The list of un-American states that support government censorship include:

New York
Colorado
Arizona
California
Connecticut
Vermont,
Washington,
Washington, D.C.
Wisconsin
New Jersey
New Mexico,
Oregon
Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island,
Delaware,
Hawaii,
Illinois,
Maine,
Maryland,
Massachusetts,
Michigan,
Minnesota,
Nevada

HOWEVER, a number of courageous states filed an Amicus Curiae brief in SUPPORT of Gateway Pundit and the Free Speech Respondents. These (16) heroic states include:

Montana,
Alabama,
Alaska,
Florida,
Georgia,
Iowa,
Idaho,
Tennessee,
Kansas,
Nebraska,
Ohio,
South Carolina,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Virginia,
West Virginia,
and the Arizona Legislature

The “most important free speech case in a generation” Missouri v. Biden (Murthy v. Missouri), is set to be heard by the Supreme Court on Monday, March 18th.

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Banning TikTok is a Power Grab for the Deep State 

Legislators have made exceedingly clear that the intent of the bill they’re currently fast-tracking through Congress is “to finally ban TikTok in the United States,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), chair of the House Republican conference, proudly put it.

“TikTok must be banned,” concurred Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), the Republican chief deputy whip.

“I applaud the strong bipartisan effort to ban TikTok,” added Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“No one is trying to disguise anything,” clarified Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). “We want to ban TikTok.”

Some of the bill’s proponents, like Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), have been less forthcoming than their colleagues. Sherrill strangely repeats the common yet obviously specious claim that the bill “doesn’t ban TikTok,” which is just pure politician sleight-of-hand: No, the text does not specifically provide for an immediate, automatic, blanket ban of TikTok, but it does provide for a fatal ultimatum to effectuate the ban of TikTok within six months, requiring TikTok to comply with U.S. demands for divestiture from its parent company, ByteDance, or face federal prohibition. So while the legislation would not impose the ban right away, it does create the exact statutory mechanism by which TikTok is named and targeted for banning in the very near future.

Ultimately, the desired end-result is the same one that has been long sought by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the bill’s leading sponsor: “To ban TikTok … before it’s too late.” The forced divestiture is merely a mechanism to achieve this predetermined outcome.

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Social media platform X bans account promoting a forthcoming documentary about FBI’s role in Whitmer ‘kidnapping plot’

In yet another example of how alleged “free speech” platform X (formerly Twitter) is anything but, a small team of independent documentary filmmakers have had their account “permanently” suspended this week as they prepare to release a documentary that they’ve been working on for over a year.

The topic: The 2020 “plot to kidnap and kill” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and the FBI’s extensive involvement therein.

The account was set up to promote the film, entitled Kidnap and Kill: An FBI Terror Plot, 14 months ago, in January of 2023.

“I paid for the account for over a year and even paid to promote the trailer on X buying twitter ads,” said director Christina Urso (also known as Radix Verum) in a post on Saturday.

“No email – nothing saying we violated TOS. We only used it to promote the trailer for the documentary.”

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Dept. of Justice pays out nearly $1 million to public university to track spread of ‘Mis-, Dis- and Mal-Information’

As the presidential election approaches, the Biden administration is expanding its controversial initiative to control information and censor Americans by funding a new project that tracks the spread of “mis-, dis-, and mal-information (MDM)” by internet users.

A public university in South Carolina is getting nearly $1 million from the government to map the spread of MDM in real time and create an online dashboard with an MDM tracker.

The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is doling out the funds to researchers at Clemson University to meet its reported mission of “improving knowledge and understanding of crime and justice issues through science.” The NIJ claims it provides objective and independent knowledge and tools to inform the decision-making of the criminal and juvenile justice communities to reduce crime and advance justice.

The government is giving Clemson researchers a bunch of taxpayer dollars to identify information and opinions it does not like by conducting the “first real-time mapping of the spread of MDM campaigns around contentious public events,” according to the grant announcement.

The venture has been named “Networks and Pathways of Violent Extremism: Effectiveness of Mis/Disinformation Campaigns” and researchers assure their work will not be biased even though a leftist administration is funding the work, and most academics are themselves on the left politically.

The research is essential, the Biden administration asserts, to avert “violent extremism.” This is the explanation offered in the DOJ’s grant document: “Nationally publicized political events often become focal points of MDM, which are exploited by various individuals and groups to launch disinformation campaigns and trigger spontaneous or crowd-sourced diffusion of disinformation and violent extremism.”

Clemson researchers will use the public funds to develop specialized algorithms to identify the creation of MDM campaigns and capture event-level characteristics of real-life events that trigger MDM, the grant announcement explains.

The academics will also help determine what characteristics of high-profile events are more likely to trigger online MDM campaigns and what are the common characteristics of organizations and other actors engaged in MDM campaigns.

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“Banning Books Is Never The Answer”: RuPaul’s “No Censorship” Bookstore Lasted Just Three Days

It took just three days.

After drag performer RuPaul announced the creation of a “no censorship” Allstora bookstore, censorship was back with a vengeance after many on the left learned that free speech meant that opposing views might be sold at the site.  While the sentiment was appealing, it became intolerable when activists noted that a “no censorship” store would mean that they could not censor others.

In the rollout, RuPaul stood in a blue suit before a flag to defy the censors and embrace access to works of different authors and viewpoints. For many of us, it was an exciting moment. The anti-free speech movement on the left has grown exponentially. Now, this iconic figure from the left was taking a bold stand for free speech.

With ten million titles, readers could buy most any book, including writers like Riley Gaines who have challenged transgender theories.

Various sites like National Review have covered the rise and rapid fall of the free speech initiative.

The rollout was promising. Like many of us, the founders objected to book bans across the country. Such bans have been implemented by both the left and the right.

Allstora was founded on the pledge that “We’re a marketplace for all books and all stories, with a focus on elevating marginalized voices.” Co-founder Eric Cervini and drag performer Adam Powell, welcomed visitors to the website with a pop-up message that warned “you may find books you disagree with.”

The site declared “censorship of any book, perspective, or story is incompatible with the survival of democracy.” After all, “banning books is never the answer.”

The pledge was heralded in the media. Many viewed it as a jab at conservatives to show that there is nothing to fear in access to opposing views.

Then someone thought about what free speech means.

Liberal critics raised the alarm that the bookstore would be selling “homophobic,” “transphobic,” and “anti-woke” works.

Drag performer “Lady Bunny” noted that the store would be selling works by figures like Mike Huckabee, Chaya Raichik, and Matt Walsh.

Lady Bunny asked “Why not just stop selling what many on the left consider to be hate speech?”

That is all that it took.

Allstora first implemented a flagging system for offensive books and then just got rid of the no censorship pledge.

While some sites state that Allstora only moved to add disclaimers, it appears that the no censorship pledge is gone and various authors are missing.

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Veteran Affairs Official Who Tried to Ban V-J Photo Has Controversial Past

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) official who attempted to ban the iconic photograph of a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day from VA hospitals has a controversial history of hospital mismanagement, reports have revealed.

Assistant Under Secretary for Health Operations RimaAnn Nelson became the center of a national controversy for sending out a memo to VA health providers demanding the “removal and replacement of ‘V-J in Times Square’ photographs” on February 29.

The letter leaked to social media earlier this week, prompting backlash from thousands who don’t agree with Nelson’s assertion that the nearly 80-year-old image violates “the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards domestic violence, sexual harassment, and assault.”

Nelson’s censorship bid caused such a firestorm that VA Secretary Denis McDonough made a statement rescinding the rule change.

“Let me be clear: This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities,” he wrote on X Tuesday.

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There Is A War On Free Speech, And They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated

The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society.  If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well.  So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before.  Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection.  Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate.  That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely.  That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.

It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want.  People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me.  And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue.

But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want.  So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.

That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming.  A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…

Senate Bill 5427, after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note: this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*” (see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation.

The Progressives & Marxists who sponsored this bill say it is intended to help “victims of hate crimes” before a crime even happens. Say what? In reality, SB 5427 would create a “tattletale hotline,” undermine legitimate criminal investigations, and freeze, not just chill, speech & the press in Washington State. People will stop talking to others and writing to others except very close friends & relatives, for fear a greedy “Karen” will report them to Washington’s version of the Gestapo.

This is crazy.

Do we live in East Germany now?

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Why CISA’s Censorship And Election Interference Work Is The ‘Most Insidious Attack on American Democracy’

West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner last month eviscerated the Big Brother censorship operation known as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

“When we have our own federal agencies lying to the American people, that’s the most insidious thing that we can do in elections,” the election integrity champion told officials from the FBI and CISA on a panel at the winter meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) in Washington, D.C., according to Wired’s Eric Geller. While Geller did his best to defend the federal agency — under the suggestive headline, “How a Right-Wing Controversy Could Sabotage US Election Security” — its history of censorship and election interference validate Warner’s concern.

The agency’s work, particularly the extracurricular business CISA has conducted in recent years, has been rightly criticized for its massive overreach. A report released last fall by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government details just how CISA “Colluded With Big Tech And ‘Disinformation’ Partners To Censor Americans.”

“Although the investigation is ongoing, information obtained to date has revealed that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—an upstart agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has facilitated the censorship of Americans directly and through third-party intermediaries,” the congressional report states. 

The report goes on to assert that the shadowy agency has “metastasized into the nerve center of the federal government’s domestic surveillance and censorship operations on social media.” 

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