Tag: police state

Now, the Feds Are Spying on Congress

“Those who have sown the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”
— Hosea 8:7

The federal antipathy to compliance with the Constitution is well known and well documented. Presidents have declared war in contravention of the constitutional command that only Congress may do so. Congress itself has enacted legislation in areas that the drafters of the Constitution reserved to the states — and it has done so using some of the more absurd linguistic contortions thinkable.

In one infamous case where the feds sought to regulate the amount of wheat a farmer grew — all of which his wife ground into flour from which she made baked goods that were all consumed by their family — the feds claimed that his wheat field constituted interstate commerce because by eating his own product instead of selling, he and others similarly situated commercially increased the demand for wheat, and the water that this Ohio farmer used emanated in Pennsylvania and thus the wheat was part of a continuous interstate movement and so was congressionally regulable. The late Justice Antonin Scalia called these arguments, which the court accepted, “hogwash.”

There are many of these. As deep into our pocketbooks as is the Federal Reserve, which is the economically disastrous and liberty-crushing central planner of the U.S. economy, and as invasive of personal freedom as is the Patriot Act, which permits one FBI agent to authorize another to search for private data in the custody of a third party, the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of either.

Now, one of these chickens is coming home to roost. Here is the backstory.

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Commie Kamala Harris Promises to Use DOJ to “Hold Social Media Platforms Responsible” for “Misinformation” as Defined by Those in Power

In 2019 Kamala Harris was invided to speak at the NAACP Fight for Freedom Dinner in Detroit, Michigan.

During her talk Kamala warned that she will prosecute social media for “misinformation’ as defined by those in power.

At heart, Kamala Harris is a stone-cold Marxist.

Kamala Harris: And we’ll put the Department of Justice of the United States back in the business of justice. We will double the Civil Rights Division and direct law enforcement to counter this extremism. 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. 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.

Under Kamala Harris speech in America will be a crime – just like it is in any tyrannical regime.

Charlie Spiering: Elon Musk, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard are raising concerns of free speech under Kamala Harris.

In 2019, Harris vowed to use the DOJ and law enforcement to ‘hold social media platforms responsible’ for ‘misinformation’ as part of the ‘fight against this threat to our Democracy’

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FOIA Files: How Academics Identified “Misinformation” Around COVID-19

Last month, Racket received a new series of disclosures from the University of Washington. This latest production clocks in at 836 pages, and it’s almost too dense to adequately summarize here. For that reason, we’ve divided the revelations into three categories: (1) communications that broadly concern UW’s crusade against “misinformation” and “disinformation,” (2) communications that concern UW’s relationships with government actors, and (3) communications that concern UW’s analysis of data from social media platforms. The most pertinent communications are summarized in this article. As usual, you can read the unabridged documents in the Racket FOIA Library.

Most of the emails regarding “misinformation” and “disinformation” pertain to COVID-19. On March 20, 2020, just days after states had started implementing lockdown orders, UW professor Jevin West emailed his peers an update on the school’s Center for an Informed Public. According to West, the CIP had put together a collection of 100 million COVID-related tweets, with much of the Center’s research centered around social media companies’ efforts to combat COVID “misinformation.” West credits co-author and biology professor Carl Bergstrom with popularizing the “flattening the curve” strategy in venues like the World Economic Forum.

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What a Carbon-Neutral, Socialist Digital Dystopia Would Look Like

Imagine a world where, the Green New Deal has given way to a grim existence where individual aspirations and family bonds are eroded by constant government intervention and an economy that no longer works for the people. The promised vision of a green, sustainable world has instead become a nightmare of scarcity, control, and despair, leaving society trapped in a Socialist cycle of dependency with little hope for the future.

This oppressive control stems from an executive order that granted the government sweeping, COVID-like powers to shut down the economy and impose severe restrictions on everyday life. The central government now controls essential resources such as power and water, with meters installed in every home to strictly limit usage. Each family is allotted a minimal amount of energy and water, barely enough to get by, and any attempt to exceed these limits is met with harsh penalties.

The state has also established a force of “climate police” who enforce these draconian laws. They regularly check for violators, looking for those who might disable the government-installed detectors in an attempt to take an extra shower or use more electricity than their ration allows.

Adding to this atmosphere of distrust, neighbors are encouraged to inform on one another. Those who report violations are rewarded, while those caught breaking the rules face public shaming or worse. The government even goes so far as to pit communities against each other by awarding a virtual certificate of achievement to the commune that uses the least water and power. This certificate, a meaningless digital token, is sent by the police as a so-called honor, but in reality, it serves as a tool to further divide and control the population.

Parents no longer have absolute rights over their children. The state has taken control of their education, with schools indoctrinating children into the government’s climate ideology, treating it as an unquestionable truth. It has become illegal for parents to provide their children with any information that contradicts the government narrative, labeled as “disinformation.” Although parents are closely monitored by government surveillance, this technology is almost unnecessary because children have been conditioned to believe that it is their duty to report any violations by their parents. The result is a society where the bond between parent and child is eroded, replaced by a climate of fear and distrust, with families living in constant anxiety over the possibility of being turned in by their own children.

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Democracy’s Damndest Defamation

In a democracy, people automatically become liable for whatever the government inflicts upon them. Many of the most deadly errors of contemporary political thinking stem from the notion that in a democracy the government is the people and vice versa, so there is scant reason to distinguish between the two—or to worry about protecting citizens from the government.

In 1798, President John Adams pushed through Congress the Alien and Sedition Acts, which empowered Adams to suppress free speech and imprison without trial any critic of the federal government. When the citizens of Westmoreland County, Virginia petitioned Adams with complaints, he responded by denouncing the citizens: “The declaration that Our People are hostile to a government made by themselves, for themselves, and conducted by themselves, is an insult.” Adams’ response to the people of Westmoreland County—few of whom had voted for him—was the classic trick of a would-be democratic tyrant. He declaimed that people were obliged to submit to oppression because the chief executive had been duly elected by other voters.

On September 4, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson declared, “In the last analysis, my fellow countrymen, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.” Wilson had campaigned for reelection three years earlier bragging that he had kept the country out of World War I. But shortly after he started his second term, he submitted to Congress a declaration of war against Germany. Were the people responsible for President Wilson’s 1916 peace promises or his 1917 declaration of war? How can they be responsible for both? Wilson campaigned for the presidency in 1912 as a progressive. Shortly after he took office, mass firings of black federal employees occurred. The chief federal revenue collector in Georgia announced, “There are no Government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro’s place is in the cornfield.” How were voters who opposed Jim Crow laws responsible for Wilson’s racist purge?

On July 8, 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt declared, “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a president and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” When Roosevelt ran for reelection in 1936, he never mentioned his plan (revealed in early 1937) to pack the nation’s highest court with new appointees to rubber-stamp his decrees. Yet, because he won in 1936, he effectively implied that the citizenry were somehow bound to accept all of his power grabs as if they themselves had willed them.

On October 28, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared, “Government is not an enemy of the people. Government is the people themselves.” But it wasn’t “the people” who deceived themselves regarding the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. It wasn’t “the people” who went to the voting booths the following week based on Johnson’s signals to keep the United States out of another land war in Asia—even though Johnson was already preparing to massively escalate the conflict.

On October 7, 1996, President Bill Clinton declared, “The Government is just the people, acting together—just the people acting together.” But, was it “the people” who invited wealthy businessmen to give $50,000 to the Democratic National Committee to come to White House coffee klatches? Was it “the people” who approved a plan to rent out the Lincoln bedroom for $100,000 a night? Was it “the people” who approved sending FBI tanks to spray toxic and flammable gas leading to the fiery Waco finale that left eighty civilians dead?

On April 3, 2013, President Barack Obama, championing new bans on gun ownership, declared that since America is a democracy, people had no reason to fear “the government is going to come take my guns. The government is us. These officials are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place.” But Obama scorned the Constitution to create a new presidential prerogative to assassinate (without trial) any American who the U.S. government secretly labels a terrorist suspect. Obama ravaged the Fourth Amendment by vastly expanding illegal federal surveillance of private citizens. And he sought to dismiss the uproar from Edward Snowden’s revelations by ludicrously claiming that “there is no spying” on Americans.

On October 23, 2015, Obama hit the same “us” theme at a Democratic fundraiser: “Our system only works when we realize that government is not some alien thing; government is not some conspiracy or plot; it’s not something to oppress you. Government is us in a democracy.” But it was not private citizens who, during Obama’s reign, issued more than half a million pages of proposed and final regulations and notices in the Federal Register; made more than ten million administrative rulings; tacitly took control of more than five hundred million acres by designating them “national monuments”; and bombed seven foreign nations.

On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden proclaimed, “We need to remember, the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital. No, it’s us. All of us. We the people.” Biden spoken in a Capitol building that was surrounded by high barbed wire and thousands of National Guard soldiers. Average citizens had long since been banished from the so-called Temple of Democracy. Six months later, Biden decreed that eighty-four million American adults working for private companies must get COVID vaccines even though the White House knew the shots failed to prevent infections or transmission. The president derided vaccine skeptics as murderers who only wanted “the freedom to kill you with my COVID.” The Supreme Court struck down that policy and many other Biden decrees as illegal or unconstitutional.

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Brazil’s $9,000 Fine For Accessing X Puts “Wall Of Censorship” Between Citizens And Unregulated Information

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9,000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information.

The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones.

The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information.

For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries.

The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it.

Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban.

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TSA Tyranny Goes Cutesy

In the glorious age of the Kamala Ascendency, the TSA is no longer restraining its contempt for American travelers. After squeezing millions of butts and boobs and never catching a terrorist, TSA decided to have fun by taunting its victims. 

After a traveler asked online, “Why does TSA need social media anyways?” TSA’s Instagram account taunted: “Idk Kyle, why do your friends keep bringing stuff they shouldn’t in their carry-on?” Almost 40,000 people liked that post (slightly fewer than the total number of TSA employees).

The TSA Instagram team added another smack at travelers who failed to devote their lives to pleasing federal agents: “You see how we don’t have 20 different things shoved in our pockets before airport security? Very cutesy, very demure.” Obviously, any American who does not approach a TSA checkpoint stripped down like a convict entering a prison shower bears all the blame for whatever problems he causes.

TSA officials pirouetted as if they had the moral high ground. But TSA has perennially relied on idiotic seizure statistics in lieu of competently protecting the American public.

A 2003 TSA press release proudly announced that it had “intercepted more than 4.8 million prohibited items at passenger security checkpoints in its first year, contributing to the security of the traveling public and the nation’s 429 commercial airports.” TSA chief James Loy bragged to a congressional committee: “We have identified, intercepted, and therefore kept off aircraft more than 4.8 million dangerous items.”

Except that TSA is Idiocy Incarnate. Every fingernail clipper that the TSA seized from a hapless grandmother became proof that the federal government is protecting people better than ever. TSA checkpoint seizures included frying pans, dumbbell sets, horseshoes, and toy robots—all of which presumably would have been used to carry out suicidal hijackings. Covert government tests showed TSA screeners were utterly inept at detecting firearms and mock bombs.

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Technofascism: The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users

“Internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability… Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were ‘deplatformed’ or otherwise injured.”
—Justice Samuel Alito, dissenting in Murthy v. Missouri 

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

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Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now To Confess?

Consider Mark Zuckerberg’s revelation and its implications for our understanding of the last four years, and what it means for the future.

On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes. 

And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so.

This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be. 

In his letter to Congressional investigators, he flat-out said what everyone else has been saying for years now. 

In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree….I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.

A few clarifications. The censorship began much earlier than that, from March 2020 at the very least if not earlier. We all experienced it, almost immediately following lockdowns. 

After a few weeks, using that platform to get the word out proved impossible. Facebook once made a mistake and let my piece on Woodstock and the 1969 flu go through but they would never make that mistake again. For the most part, every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels. 

The implications are far more significant than the bloodless letter of Zuckerberg suggests. People consistently underestimate the power that Facebook has over the public mind. This was especially true in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. 

The difference in having an article unthrottled much less amplified by Facebook in these years was in the millionfold. When my article went through, I experienced a level of traffic that I had never seen in my career. It was mind-boggling. When the article was shut down some two weeks later – after focused troll accounts alerted Facebook that the algorithms had made a mistake – traffic fell to the usual trickle. 

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RFK Jr: There Has To Be “A Reckoning” For “Immoral, Homicidal” COVID Criminality

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that individuals who engaged in “criminal” behaviour during the pandemic still need to be held accountable.

Kennedy, who is in line for a health related position in Donald Trump’s administration should he be elected, declared recently that there needs to be a “reckoning” brought upon those responsible.

Speaking at the Limitless Expo, Kennedy explicitly referenced Anthony Fauci, noting “I wrote a book about Fauci. It’s a great book. There are 2,200 footnotes in the book… I invited people to find problems with the book… And nobody ever told us any factual error in that book.”

He charged that Fauci and others used their positions during COVID to enforce “totalitarian controls that were not science-based.”

“It’s a story, really, of people involved in really terrible, immoral, homicidal criminal behavior,” Kennedy urged.

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