Tag: police state

Behind Closed Doors: The UK and US Plot Global Speech Crackdown

America First Legal (AFL) has pulled back the curtain on yet another government meeting that makes “free speech” sound like some quaint idea from the past. AFL has released documents from a 2021 interagency get-together where the UK’s top experts on “disinformation” offered a master class in censorship, all under the guise of “protecting democracy.” And because nothing screams transparency quite like a secret strategy session on silencing opposing voices, the revelations come with just a hint of irony.

On August 10, 2021, the Biden-Harris National Security Council (NSC) hosted a cozy little chat with the United Kingdom’s “Counter Disinformation Unit” (CDU). The occasion? An instructional session on how to manage—read: censor—COVID-related speech in the US. But why stop at the pandemic when there’s so much more to control? This wasn’t just about virus talk; it was a step-by-step guide on how to choke off the flow of any inconvenient truth that might muddy the government’s preferred narrative.

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Hemp And CBD Groups Threaten To Sue California Over Governor’s New Rules Restricting Cannabinoid Products

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) plan to crack down on hemp-derived cannabinoids in the state is rankling some in hemp industry, who now say they’re exploring lawsuits to challenge the governor’s proposed emergency rules unveiled last week.

On Friday, the advocacy group One Hemp said it’s considering a court challenge “with the intent to hold Newsom accountable to the normal democratic process.”

The organization, which has ties to the hemp CBD industry, notes the governor’s proposal was never approved by the state legislature and would severely restrict access to hemp products already legal under federal law.

“These are products that the disabled, chronically ill and veteran communities cannot live without to help support seizures, pain and mobility management, sleep and more,” One Hemp said in a press release about the possible lawsuit.

Jared Stanley, a founding member of One Hemp and a co-founder of the CBD company Charlotte’s Web, said Newsom’s plan to target hemp-derived cannabinoids is overbroad and would severely harm families who rely on CBD products.

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California Attorney General Bonta Pressures Top Social Media and AI Executives to Address “Misinformation”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has penned a letter to major social media and “AI” companies. And Bonta’s not urging them to “do better” on innovation, competition, and the like.

No – the letter is all about “election misinformation.”

It’s becoming almost pathological at this point, but the entire ruling apparatus in the US (and that includes not only officials but also politically and ideologically affiliated media outlets) is hammering in the message of that being an actual “threat to democracy.”

As if the largest companies in the said industries didn’t hear all this already dozens of times, Bonta goes out of his way to repeat the message to Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI, Reddit, TikTok, X, and YouTube – (wouldn’t that one fall under the Alphabet category? But Bonta lists the video platform separately).

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

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Florida Based ‘International Fact Checking Network’ – a Prominent Censorship Group – Is FUNDED BY STATE DEPARTMENT and Operates in US to Silence Independent Media and American Voices

Investigative reporter “Bad Kitty Unleashed” on X released a BOMBSHELL REPORT on the US State Department funding the international censorship group International Fact Checking Network (IFCN).

IFCN, despite being funded by the State Department, operates in the US.

Bad Kitty Unleashed reported:

This is a massive scandal! The State Department, who legally can’t operate in the US, has been funding US fact checking since 2015! Yes, it’s earliest days!

The news orgs that operate under the IFCN flag, such as the Washington Post, do the leg work. Which then results in posts on Facebook etc being labeled and the algorithms throttling the post.

This official International Fact Checking Network is also partnered with Google. Poynter’s IFCN was funded by the CIA linked, State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy and Omidyar grants.

Recall Google initiated the first ever US censorship program and expanded it globally by using the First Draft Consortium. First Draft also worked hand in hand with the IFCN. Poynters Politifact was in the First Draft network.

Here’s more on the recently discovered US government-funded censorship programs.

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FLASHBACK: Kamala Harris vows to use DOJ to ARREST people exercising FREE SPEECH

Daily Mail political reporter Charlie Spiering has unearthed a speech of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, vowing to have the Department of Justice(DOJ) move against “misinformation” and “hate” on social media platforms.

During a 2019 speech at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Dinner in Detroit, Michigan, Harris promised that, if given the power, she would hold social media companies responsible for spreading what she termed “misinformation” using the DOJ as a key tool.

The resurfacing of the said video on X, formerly Twitter, came amid a growing number of free speech advocates raising the alarm over what the vice president would do to censor social media platforms if she wins the election.

“We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy,” Harris said, emphasizing the DOJ’s role in enforcing accountability. “We’ll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy.”

She told technocrats that she would double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to address the spread of extremist ideologies and misinformation. “If you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don’t police your platforms we are going to hold you accountable as a community,” Harris added.

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Government Refuses to Publish Data on Crime and Welfare By Immigration Status or Nationality

The Government is refusing to publish data on crime and welfare claims by immigration status or nationality, making it impossible to ascertain the impact of immigration on society and the economy, says Matt Goodwin on Substack. Here’s an excerpt.

There was a truly remarkable revelation in the U.K. Parliament this week and one you probably missed. … [It] was quietly made by a renegade Conservative Member of Parliament during a committee discussion about immigration, with Nigel Farage and Reform MPs looking on. What was the revelation? Well, brace yourself because there wasn’t one but a series of bombshells, each one more mind-boggling than the last and each one underlining how it’s not populists who are stoking misinformation — it’s the elite class.

The revelations — by the respected and rigorous Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston — really are devastating.

He pointed to not just a Government but an entire political system that is either deliberately concealing masses of information from voters about the impact of immigration, or is doing so through sheer incompetence.

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Free Speech and the Department of Political Justice

In 1966, two famous Russian literary dissidents, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, were tried and convicted on charges of disseminating propaganda against the Soviet state. The two were authors and humorists who published satire abroad that mocked Soviet leaders for failure to comply with the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which guaranteed the freedom of speech.

Their convictions sparked international outrage. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and then America’s U.N. ambassador, Arthur Goldberg called the charges and the trial “an outrageous attempt to give the form of legality to the suppression of a basic human right.” When a secret transcript of the trial was circulated in the West, it became clear that Daniel and Sinyavsky were convicted of using words and expressing ideas contrary to what Soviet leaders wanted. They were sentenced to five and seven years, respectively, of hard labor in Soviet prison camps.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Political Justice took a page from the Soviets and charged Americans and Russians with disseminating anti-Biden administration propaganda in Russia and here in the U.S. What ever happened to the freedom of speech?

Here is the backstory.

The Framers who crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, both under the leadership and the pen of James Madison, were the same generation that revolted violently against King George III and Parliament and won the American Revolution. The revolution was more than just six years of war in the colonies. It was a radical change in the minds of men – elites like Thomas Jefferson and Madison, as well as farmers and laborers generally untutored in political philosophy.

Untutored they may have been, but they knew they wanted to be able to speak their minds, associate and worship as they pleased, defend themselves, and be left alone by the government. The key to all this was the freedom of speech. Speech was then, as it is today, the most essential freedom. The late Harvard Professor Bernard Bailyn read and analyzed all the extant speeches, sermons, lectures, editorials and pamphlets that he could find from the revolutionary period and concluded that in 1776 only about one-third of the colonists favored a violent separation from England. By the war’s end in 1781, around two-thirds welcomed independence.

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CBDCs Will Allow Police To Collect, Store Personal Data For Surveillance State, IMF Paper Reveals

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report recently that warns about the very serious privacy risks associated with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

According to the paper, entitled “Central Bank Digital Currency Data Use and Privacy Protection,” any central bank can use its CBDC system to collect all sorts of private information about users. It could then turn that private information over to the authorities for mass surveillance and possibly persecution reasons.

“CBDC data allows for commercial exploitation while also raising the possibility of state surveillance,” the IMF warns.

The way CBDCs work is that every time a transaction is made, all sorts of private information is transferred and uploaded into the blockchain as proof. That information is then open game for government authorities and anyone else to exploit it for ulterior purposes.

“Central bank digital currency (CBDC), as a digital form of central bank money, may allow for a ‘digital trail’ – data – to be collected and stored,” the paper explains.

“In contrast to cash, CBDC could be designed to potentially include a wealth of personal data, encapsulating transaction histories, user demographics, and behavioral patterns. Personal data could establish a link between counterparty identities and transactions.”

The paper goes on to explain that there is economic value in CBDCs due to the data trail it creates. Data is considered an “infrastructural resource that can be used by an unlimited number of users and for an unlimited number of purposes as an input to produce goods and services.”

“CBDC data could potentially be harvested by financial institutions that, in turn, could help develop data-driven businesses,” the paper continues.

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Signs of Resistance – A Distinct Minority

“A distinct minority of Americans, supported by a distinct minority of elected officials, are keeping us from turning the corner..This is not about freedom or personal choice..” ― Joe Biden (9/9/2021), announcing tyrannical plans to coerce millions of Americans into getting an experimental and undertested gene therapy.

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

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Revealing Questions

Underlying a number of the images below are a series of questions. If viewing on a desktop or laptop computer, hover over an image and then move off to uncover. On tablets and smart phones, tap on an image and then tap again outside. Refresh the page to see the originals. Please note that some of the underlying graphic files make take several seconds to load.

Questioning the Orthodoxy

In the city of Athens, in the year 399 BC, one of the world’s greatest thinkers is sentenced to death, condemned to drink the poisonous hemlock.

His alleged crime: “Corrupting the youth of Athens” by “refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state”.

His real crime: encouraging the youth of Athens to think independently, to challenge orthodoxy, and to question, always to question.

The namesake of the Socratic Method and teacher of Plato, this lover of wisdom is known to us as Socrates.

Fast forward to the modern age. Not much has changed, it would seem, for in our advanced, technical, and supposedly secular world it is demanded that we worship a new pantheon of gods. In the modern incarnation the state itself has become a god, perhaps even “the” god. As always, though, the citizen has the subservient role: to accept the absolute authority of the state, to embrace its symbols of power, and to obey, always to obey.

The State: Destroyer of Lives, Enemy of Freedom and Truth

Over the centuries philosophers, teachers and other guides have endeavored to share the tools of reason and evidence, intellectual gifts from our ancestors, to further the discovery of truth. Unfortunately, there have been many times in our history they have been violently and irrationally opposed. Our modern world seems to be one of those times as we are encouraged to reject these tools, to hate the truth, and to submissively wait for the ever changing “truth” of the State to be revealed.

The attack on truth is a part of a larger attack on personal freedom. It is a sickness that has infected societies many times through the ages. It is the dark and monomaniacal desire to rule over others.

Most of us seek only to rule ourselves, and thus have a difficult time imagining the levels of depravity that some will go in their lust to dominate (libido domanandi). We should always understand that any of us can become the next target. Unfortunately, as with war, the most likely victims will be the young and innocent.

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Overthrowing The Constitution: All Sides Are Waging War On Our Freedoms

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” — Abraham Lincoln

It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to overthrow the Constitution, occurs the week before the anniversary of the day the U.S. Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787.

All sides are still waging war on our constitutional freedoms, and “we the people” remain the biggest losers.

This year’s presidential election is no exception.

As Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, warns in a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, “In November, the American people will have a choice between Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance. But they will not have a choice between an Empire and a Republic.”

In other words, the candidates on this year’s ballot do not represent a substantive choice between freedom and tyranny so much as they constitute a cosmetic choice: the packaging may vary widely, but the contents remain the same.

No matter who wins, the bureaucratic minions of the Security/Military Industrial Complex and its Police State/Deep State partners will retain their stranglehold on power.

Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have the greatest of track records when it comes to actually respecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution, despite the rhetoric being trotted out by both sides lately regarding their so-called devotion to the rule of law.

Indeed, Trump has repeatedly called for parts of the Constitution to be terminated, while both Harris and Trump seem to view the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech, political expression and protest as dangerous when used to challenge the government’s power.

This flies in the face of everything America’s founders fought to safeguard.

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