Tag: police state

The Disinformation Governance Board Couldn’t Clearly Define “Disinformation”

A deposition given by the former head of the former Disinformation Governance Board in April 2023 to the US House Committee on the Judiciary has revealed that the parent agency of the short-lived censorship entity, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), wasn’t even sure how to define “disinformation.”

No “good definition” of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation – collectively referred to as MDM – was anywhere in sight, even though DHS decided it needed a whole new entity, the Disinformation Board, to deal with it.

That is what transpired from Nina Jankowicz’s deposition, leading to the inevitable question of whether “countering disinformation” was ever supposed to be the Board’s task – or if setting it up was yet another example of mis/disinformation being used to cover up political bias and censorship.

After all, this kind of accusation was what eventually, and quickly, discredited and brought the Board down.

In turn, the tone of Jankowicz’s deposition reads like herself trying to discredit DHS for the way it handled the whole operation and treated her personally.

Even though the entity existed for three months before it was dissolved, and “disinformation” was in its very name, it never got around to settle on a “good definition” of what it was supposedly there to fight.

Jankowicz told the Committee that during her time at the helm of the Board, they did not “develop any protocols supporting the identification of MDM.”

When asked by Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to define “disinformation,” she said:

“Well, it’s interesting that you bring that up, Congressman, because there’s kind of a, I would say – not necessarily a difference of opinion within DHS of what constitutes disinformation, but CISA has one definition, and one of the things that occurred to me while I was at DHS is that different entities were dealing with different definitions. So that was one of the things that I had hoped to work on.”

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From COVID-19 To Campus Protests: How The Police State Muzzles Free Speech

The police state does not want citizens who know their rights.

Nor does the police state want citizens prepared to exercise those rights.

This year’s graduates are a prime example of this master class in compliance. Their time in college has been set against a backdrop of crackdowns, lockdowns and permacrises ranging from the government’s authoritarian COVID-19 tactics to its more recent militant response to campus protests.

Born in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, these young people have been raised without any expectation of privacy in a technologically-driven, mass surveillance state; educated in schools that teach conformity and compliance; saddled with a debt-ridden economy on the brink of implosion; made vulnerable by the blowback from a military empire constantly waging war against shadowy enemies; policed by government agents armed to the teeth ready and able to lock down the country at a moment’s notice; and forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

And now, when they should be empowered to take their rightful place in society as citizens who fully understand and exercise their right to speak truth to power, they are being censored, silenced and shut down.

Consider what happened recently in Charlottesville, Va., when riot police were called in to shut down campus protests at the University of Virginia staged by students and members of the community to express their opposition to the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.

As the local newspaper reported, “State police sporting tactical gear and riot shields moved in on the demonstrators, using pepper spray and sheer force to disperse the group and arrest the roughly 15 or so at the camp, where for days students, faculty and community members had sang songs, read poetry and painted signs in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.”

What a sad turn-about for an institution which was founded as an experiment in cultivating an informed citizenry by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and the nation’s third president.

Unfortunately, the University of Virginia is not unique in its heavy-handed response to what have been largely peaceful anti-war protests. According to the Washington Post, more than 2300 people have been arrested for taking part in similar campus protests across the country.

These lessons in compliance, while expected, are what comes of challenging the police state.

What was unexpected were the campus protests themselves.

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Childhood Vaccine Schedule Led to ‘Greatest Decline in Public Health in Human History’

A U.S. Senate roundtable discussion, hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson, tackled a taboo topic — why public health agencies have not studied the health outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children — and have refused to make data on the topic available to the public.1

“They do not publish the results [or] let any independent scientist in to look at that information,” Brian Hooker, chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said. “They refuse to publish the results and they really know why. It’s because the bloated vaccination schedule is responsible and is, I would say, in part responsible for the epidemic of chronic disorders that we see in children in the U.S.”2

In 1962, children received just five vaccine doses. As of 2023, children up to age 18 receive 73 doses of 16 different vaccines. The cumulative effects of this childhood vaccine schedule have never been tested.

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Question One Narrative, Question Them All

Igrew up with little food and without electricity near a national park in Southeast Asia after a devastating war. From time to time, the men in my village hunted wild animals like hogs, deer, and porcupines to get some meat for the children. The forests quickly became thinner as the local population grew fast. I had a typical third-world childhood. The first time electricity, although intermittent and expensive, came was in 1987, allowing us to enjoy the FIFA World Cup, store food in fridges, read books in the evenings and sleep under a fan. Some gold was found, shaking up the whole quiet town with its usual environmental and social problems for a while. A third of my female friends married quickly before finishing high school. 

Life gave me an opportunity to pursue university education abroad. When I arrived in the West, I eagerly embraced what I thought was free and independent media that constantly stuffed people with climate change problems and the doom of earth and humanity. Little did I know about scientific debates around the subject. I chose to study international public law and environmental law at a well-known European center. I love justice as much as forests and trees, and I even became an amateur mushroom hunter in temperate climates. 

It took me a long time to question the official climate narrative. After graduation, I was busy with successive jobs outside the environmental law field and founding a young family. That experience in international forums and private philanthropy later helped me understand how international conventions and consensuses were influenced and reached. 

The Covid-19 crisis came, imposing on me, like on billions of voiceless people, a personal toll. A few months in, when I saw a headline on “Covid deniers,” something clicked in my mind. I had known a similar term “climate deniers.” Why were those who disagreed with the narratives named deniers? That was how I went down the rabbit hole. 

Never had I imagined that I would publicly criticize the UN policies, but I did. Never had I imagined that I would sign the “There Is No Climate Emergency” Declaration and collaborate with Clintel‘s (Climate Intelligence) translational projects, but I did. I have been writing about the WHO (World Health Organization) pandemic text projects, and still nothing substantial on environmental issues. Deep down, I feel ashamed for having believed in the official climate narrative. It is difficult to make confessions about our mistakes and stupidity, unlike Dr. Patrick Moore did it publicly in his wonderful Confessions of A Greenpeace Dropout.

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UNDP: Why Legal Identity Is Crucial To Tackling The Climate And Energy Crisis

In an era where legal identity is the gateway to essential services, 850 million people worldwide lack the means to establish theirs. This global identity gap, however, finds a potential bridge in the embrace of digitalization, with a major side benefit, a blog post by UNDP claims.

Digital legal identity stands as a cornerstone of digital public infrastructure, offering a pathway to inclusion and efficiency through interoperability among diverse systems.

Foundational registries like civil and national ID databases provide data for evidence-based policymaking. Yet, the integrity of this data relies on protection measures for privacy and security.

UNDP authors say sectors such as environment, energy, and social security are poised to benefit from this data. It supports risk management strategies in the face of disasters and the climate crisis, improving access to information for citizens regarding disaster and emergency response.

Amidst climate-induced disasters, targeted interventions informed by data offer multiple benefits, including predictive capabilities, preparedness efforts, and streamline response mechanisms to mitigate uncertainties. Additionally, leveraging data contributes to emission reduction initiatives, aiding in climate mitigation endeavors.

During disasters, digital identity plays a crucial role in tracking impacts, facilitating relief efforts, and optimizing energy responses. It aims to aid in allocating energy resources efficiently, maintaining essential services, and supporting emergency response teams. Additionally, it helps identify displaced populations, prioritizing assistance to vulnerable individuals and coordinating efforts across different contexts.

According to the blog, five benefits underscore the indispensability of data derived from Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) and national ID systems in confronting the climate and energy crisis.

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UK Government Used Army “PsyOps” Division To Monitor Citizens And Then Lied About It

In January 2021, the UK government said that members of its infamous “77th Brigade do not, and have never, conducted any kind of action against British citizens.”

But it did. And thus it lied.

In 2022, the NGO I work for, Big Brother Watch, began investigating the UK government’s efforts to monitor social media posts and demand their censorship by the platforms. Over the next few months, we filed dozens of Freedom of Information requests, including for information on the 77th Brigade.

In other words, we discovered that the UK government had, in the name of fighting misinformation, spread disinformation.

The Army unit was not just involved in “countering misinformation,” it led the effort. The 77th Brigade monitored social media platforms throughout 2020 and worked alongside soldiers from the Royal Air Force (RAF).

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) did not respond to requests to comment for this piece.

MoD created the 77th Brigade in 2015 to serve as its “information warfare” or “psychological operations” unit. The 77th Brigade would consist of “a new generation of ‘Facebook warriors’ who will wage complex and covert information and subversion campaigns,” reported the Financial Times in 2015.

When the Army created the 77th Brigade, its leaders told British Members of Parliament (MPs) that its job was to “build stability overseas,” not spy on citizens at home.

How did the UK military evade the ban on spying on UK citizens? A whistleblower from the 77th Brigade, who spoke to Big Brother Watch on condition of anonymity, said it did so by pretending that the British citizens who UK soldiers were spying upon could, perhaps, be foreigners

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FBI Authorized ‘Deadly Force’ in Mar-a-Lago Raid

Documents reported on by American journalist Julie Kelly have revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation authorized using “deadly force when necessary” during its raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

“Tons of new unsealed filings on classified docs case,” Kelly posted to X on Tuesday, “I will try to post as much as I can (there goes the workout) but this is mind-blowing.”

In a subsequent post, Kelly wrote:

“Oh my God. Armed FBI agents were preparing to confront Trump and even engage Secret Service if necessary. They were going to go door to door to terrorize MAL guests and even pick the locks. Gestapo.”

Kelly further noted that the FBI apparently had a medic on standby and even pinpointed a local traume center in case anybody got “injured” during the raid.

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After Expanding Warrantless Surveillance The FBI Is Playing Politics With Your Privacy

A bombshell report from WIRED reveals that two days after the U.S. Congress renewed and expanded the mass-surveillance authority Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Paul Abbate, sent an email imploring agents to “use” Section 702 to search the communications of Americans collected under this authority “to demonstrate why tools like this are essential” to the FBI’s mission.

In other words, an agency that has repeatedly abused this exact authority—with 3.4 million warrantless searches of Americans’ communications in 2021 alone, thinks that the answer to its misuse of mass surveillance of Americans is to do more of it, not less. And it signals that the FBI believes it should do more surveillance–not because of any pressing national security threat—but because the FBI has an image problem.

The American people should feel a fiery volcano of white hot rage over this revelation. During the recent fight over Section 702’s reauthorization, we all had to listen to the FBI and the rest of the Intelligence Community downplay their huge number of Section 702 abuses (but, never fear, they were fixed by drop-down menus!). The government also trotted out every monster of the week in incorrect arguments seeking to undermine the bipartisan push for crucial reforms. Ultimately, after fighting to a draw in the House, Congress bent to the government’s will: it not only failed to reform Section 702, but gave the government authority to use Section 702 in more cases.

Now, immediately after extracting this expanded power and fighting off sensible reforms, the FBI’s leadership is urging the agency to “continue to look for ways” to make more use of this controversial authority to surveil Americans, albeit with the fig leaf that it must be “legal.” And not because of an identifiable, pressing threat to national security, but to “demonstrate” the importance of domestic law enforcement accessing the pool of data collected via mass surveillance. This is an insult to everyone who cares about accountability, civil liberties, and our ability to have a private conversation online. It also raises the question of whether the FBI is interested in keeping us safe or in merely justifying its own increased powers.

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Who is Winning the War of Information?

Recently, I made a stage presentation to a large crowd at the Calvary Chapel in Chattanooga, TN. The last time I was there was December, 2021, in the heat of the pandemic, and the crowd pressed me then for the best treatment protocols at home to survive acute COVID-19. I credited Pastor Frank Ramseur for being correct from the beginning on masking, lockdowns, early treatment, and vaccines. The community needs to know when their leaders made the right calls and had the courage to hold strong.

Now I was back in Chattanooga on May 17, 2024, but the conversation was much different. It was about what happened in the last four years and the “Art of War” in a time where we are looking for who to trust and what information to believe about health, geopolitics, and virtually every aspect of our lives.

The audience confirmed that not a single public health agency, medical school, or hospital system held public forums so people could ask questions and have their concerns addressed. I took over an hour to answer every question in the room from open microphones on both ends.

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Mayor defends NYPD response after officers seen punching pro-Palestinian protesters

New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended the police department’s response to a pro-Palestinian street demonstration in Brooklyn over the weekend, calling video of officers repeatedly punching men lying prone on the ground an “isolated incident.”

“Look at that entire incident,” Adams said on the “Mornings on 1” program on the local cable news channel NY1. He complained that protesters who marched through Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section on Saturday had blocked traffic, spit at officers and, in once instance, climbed on top of a moving city bus. “I take my hat off to the Police Department, how they handled an unruly group of people.”

“People want to take that one isolated incident that we’re investigating. They need to look at the totality of what happened in that bedroom community,” Adams added.

Footage shot by bystanders and independent journalists shows police officers intercepting a march in the street, shoving participants toward the sidewalk, and then grabbing some people in the crowd and dragging them down to the asphalt. Officers can be seen repeatedly punching at least three protesters, in separate incidents, as they lay pinned on the ground.

A video shot by videographer Peter Hambrecht and posted on X shows an officer in a white shirt punching a protester while holding his throat. Hambrecht said the arrests took place after police told the crowd to disperse.

“They were aware they might get arrested, but many times people use that to justify the beating which is obviously ridiculous,” Hambrecht told The Associated Press in a text message.

Independent journalist Katie Smith separately recorded video of an officer unleashing a volley of punches on a man pinned to the ground, hitting him at least five times with a closed fist.

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