Tag: joe biden

Who Are the COVID-19 Misinformation ‘Dirty Dozen’ WH Wants to Silence?

On July 15, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki disclosed the fact that the White House was flagging COVID-19 misinformation posts for Facebook. She continued to dig herself into a hole on Friday, discussing how the administration is in contact with the social media companies and arguing that they needed to work across platforms to ensure the companies coordinated to ban users. She claimed that 12 individuals were responsible for 65% of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook.

At some point on Friday, Twitter locked the account of journalist Alex Berenson, the author of the series Unreported Truths About COVID-19 and Lockdowns. When Psaki referred to the dozen users, it seemed logical to think that Berenson and others who have objected to the preferred narrative, like evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, would be on the list. Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have also given a platform to dissenting doctors. After following COVID-19 news very carefully for the last 18 months, I can say that all of these seem like logical targets for the administration.

As it turns out, none of them are on the list. The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) produced a report called “The Disinformation Dozen,” based on its analysis of anti-vaccine Facebook posts. The CCDH is the same group that pushed for Google to demonetize The Federalist and ZeroHedge and for Twitter to ban British firebrand Katie Hopkins. According to Influence Watch, it is a UK-based NGO made up of people tied to the Labour Party. From the CCDH report’s executive summary:

Analysis of a sample of anti-vaccine content that was shared or posted on Facebook and Twitter a total of 812,000 times between 1 February and 16 March 2021 shows that 65 percent of anti-vaccine content is attributable to the Disinformation Dozen.

Of the names on the list, one is easily recognizable, only because he is notoriously anti-vaccine and the son of a political dynasty:

  1. Joseph Mercola
  2. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
  3. Ty and Charlene Bollinger
  4. Sherri Tenpenny
  5. Rizza Islam
  6. Rashid Buttar
  7. Erin Elizabeth
  8. Sayer Ji
  9. Kelly Brogan
  10. Christiane Northrup
  11. Ben Tapper
  12. Kevin Jenkins

According to the report, social media users shared many of the posts and articles written by these 12 individuals in anti-vaccine groups that existed before COVID-19. The CCDH called for the social media companies to work together to deplatform all 12 of these individuals and organizations that oppose vaccines:

  • Children’s Health Defense (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
  • Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) (Del Bigtree)
  • National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) (Barbara Loe Fisher, Joseph Mercola)
  • Organic Consumers Association (OCA) (Joseph Mercola)
  • Millions Against Medical Mandates

Once you know the source of the users flagged by the White House, it blows up their message that this is a political issue driven by conservatives or confined to red states. The identified individuals are from all kinds of backgrounds. Some have been producing alternative health content and products for years. Almost all were opposed to vaccines before COVID-19, and some of them were so bold as to object to face masks. At least three base their opinion on past sins of the government in medical experimentation and speak specifically to those fears in the black community.

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“We’ve Got To Fight Disinformation,” Says Empire Made Entirely Of Disinformation

The weirdest thing about the Biden administration tasking itself with the censorship of “disinformation” on social media is that the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is built upon a foundation of disinformation, maintained by disinformation, and facilitated by disinformation.

If the propaganda engine of the US-centralized empire ceased actively deceiving the public about the world, it would collapse immediately. There would be mass unrest at home and abroad, status quo politics would be abandoned, alliances and coalitions would crumble, leaders official and unofficial would be ousted, and US unipolar hegemony would end.

The only thing keeping this from happening is the vast amounts of wealth and energy which are poured into continuously deceiving the people of America and its allies about what’s really going on in their nations and political systems, and in the world as a whole.

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Biden Nominee Edited Radical Ecoterrorist Newsletter Advocating Violence Against Government Officials

Tracy Stone-Manning, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), helped edit a radical environmental newsletter that advocated for violent action and sought to further the mission of the extremist group Earth First!, whose members committed acts of ecoterrorism in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stone-Manning testified that she “helped edit” a local Earth First! newsletter called the Wild Rockies Review while she was a graduate student at the University of Montana in Missoula 30 years ago.

Though the editors and contributors of the Wild Rockies Review at that time frequently used pseudonyms or just last names to avoid legal consequences for their writings, multiple issues listed a “Stone” under “Assistance” on their mastheads. Stone-Manning went by “Tracy Stone” before she was married.

One such issue was the “Autumnal Equinox Issue,” labeled Vol. 1, No. 3. Also named under “Assistance” on that issue’s masthead was Stone-Manning’s classmate Bill Haskins, who was one of seven, including Stone-Manning, who were subpoenaed in 1989 over a tree spiking crime.

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Biden Administration Completely Kills The “It’s A Private Company So It’s Not Censorship” Argument

In what’s surely the biggest “Imagine the outrage if Trump had done that” moment to date, the Biden administration has admitted that it is giving Facebook a list of accounts to censor for spreading “disinformation” about the Covid-19 response.

“We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the press on Thursday. “Within the Surgeon General’s Office, we’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts with people, who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content. So, we’re helping get trusted content out there.”

Psaki told the White House press corps that the administration has a list of accounts who produce most of the anti-vaccine information on Facebook, which civil libertarians are decrying as an obviously authoritarian government overreach.

“The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as ‘problematic’ so that Facebook can remove them,” Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter in response to the news. “This is the union of corporate and state power — one of the classic hallmarks of fascism — that the people who spent five years babbling about fascism support.”

“If you don’t find it deeply disturbing that the White House is ‘flagging’ internet content that they deem ‘problematic’ to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian,” Greenwald said. “No other information is needed about you to know that. There is no circumstance — none — in which it’s acceptable for the White House or any other agency of the government to be providing lists to Facebook of ‘problematic’ content it wants removed, yet that’s exactly what Psaki says they’re doing. The White House is admitting that they’re compiling lists of people who they claim are posting content they regard as ‘problematic’ and that constitute ‘misinformation’ and are demanding Facebook remove them. This is authoritarianism.”

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