Tag: police state

Congressionally Chartered National Conference on Citizenship Recruits Volunteers To Monitor and Flag “Misinformation”

You probably couldn’t pay a lawsuit a bigger compliment than a bunch of activists and their umbrella organization involved in censorship complaining that it has had “a chilling effect” on their work.

But that’s what a recent panel, hosted by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCoC), heard regarding Missouri v. Biden (now Murthy v. Missouri). The lawsuit is “infamous” in those circles for putting some brakes on the government pressuring tech companies to do its censorship bidding.

And, those gathered went into how they recruit what one report calls volunteer censors whose task is to monitor social media and flag content as “misinformation.” (When working to set the tone and steer the narrative on platforms, they call themselves, “trusted messengers.”)

The National Conference on Citizenship, however, is a congressionally chartered organization, and yet it is part of a network that is looking for “misinformation” in private messages.

Back during the highly contested 2020 US elections, online censorship was essentially government business, with its public “face” being the Election Integrity Partnership, that originated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Having in the meantime received various levels of pushback from not only citizens but also lawmakers and even tech firms, “the censorship industry” is looking for ways to reinvent itself.

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U.S. Military Told Pharma Exec the Virus “Posed a National Security Threat” on February 4th 2020 – Weeks Before a Single Death Occurred

A leaked recording obtained by investigator and writer Sasha Latypova features an executive at the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca stating the following:

It wasn’t a surprise to me when I got a call on February 4th from the Defence Department here in the U.S. saying that the newly discovered SARS-2 virus posed a national security threat.

This is an astonishing, major-newspaper headline-worthy revelation.

Here’s what was happening on February 4th 2020:

Virus activity in the U.S.:

  • According to CNN, on February 4th there were 11 “confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus” in the United States. 
  • There were zero reported deaths from the virus in the U.S.
  • As documented in my recently launched Covid Timeline Wiki Project, the New York Times had two headlines about the virus focused on China and travellers from Wuhan. There were no op-eds on the virus.

Virus activity internationally:

  • Approximately 490 reported deaths.
  • The disease caused by the virus had not even been named “COVID-19” yet.
  • The WHO said the outbreak “was not yet a pandemic”.

Behind-the-scenes virus-related activity: EUA & PREP Act:

  • Crucially, the FDA and HHS declared the first emergency basis for issuance of Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA) for Covid on February 4th. 
  • EUA is an authority that was granted to the FDA “to strengthen public health protections against biological, chemical, nuclear and radiological agents”.
  • As explained in a previous article, EUA powers were granted to the FDA to be used in situations of grave, immediate emergencies involving weapons of mass destruction. They were intended to allow the use of countermeasures against biological, chemical, nuclear or radiological (CBRN) agents without going through all the usual steps of ensuring safety and efficacy, because the immediate threat of the CBRN attack would be so much greater than any potential risks caused by the countermeasure.
  • In conjunction with EUA, PREP Act protection was also granted retroactively to February 4th (announced March 17th). The Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, as noted in a previous article, legally indemnifies from all liability anyone who does anything related to a product that receives Emergency Use Authorisation. Again, this was intended for very extreme emergency situations involving CBRN agents, so that if a countermeasure caused harm while being used during the attack, no one would get sued.

Origins cover-up:

  • Anthony Fauci, Jeremy Farrar, Francis Collins, Eddie Holmes and others in the international group of gain-of-function funders and researchers were conspiring to publish multiple documents denying the possibility that the virus could have emerged from the virus lab they were funding and working with in Wuhan, China.
  • Emily Kopp at U.S. Right to Know has compiled a detailed timeline of these activities, many of which occurred on the days just before and just after February 4th 2020.

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South Dakota Governor Signs Bill Requiring Medical Marijuana Patients To Acknowledge Federal Gun Ban

The governor of South Dakota has signed a bill into law that will require patients to check off a box on medical marijuana card applications affirming that they’re aware that federal law prohibits cannabis consumers from buying and possessing firearms.

Gov. Kristi Noem (R) gave final approval to the legislation on Monday—about two weeks after it cleared the legislature. The measure represents a slightly dialed-back version of the original bill from Rep. Kevin Jensen (R), as it previously would have required prospective patients to sign their name on the application to acknowledge the federal gun rule.

Last month, a South Dakota Senate committee rejected a separate, more controversial House-passed bill that would have required medical marijuana dispensaries to post notices at their businesses warning patients about the federal gun ban for cannabis consumers. Those that failed to post the warnings would have faced daily fines.

The House advanced both gun-related cannabis measures last month, but the Senate committee only passed the amended version of the bill to mandate that patients fill out the checkbox for the firearm disclosure on their applications.

“It does nothing but inform the people,” Jensen said of his bill at last month’s committee hearing.

The governor said the gun legislation, as well as four other unrelated public health-centered measures she signed on Monday, “will keep South Dakotans safe and healthy.”

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Propaganda Looney Tunes

Iremember my history textbooks explaining the use of cartoonish figures as propaganda during the two World Wars. Imagine, for a moment, the inspiring Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam contrasted against the overbearing, dull, and cartoonish displays of the fascists and communists.

I was inspired by Rosie, and at the same time, I viewed the cartoons of our enemies out of context and wondered, How could anyone be influenced by cartoonish, pastiche, caricatures?

Today, the information war of cartoonish potpourri completely overwhelms us. We are awash with memes, short-form video content, tweets, posts, reposts, likes, etc. We have all viewed this content, and when it inspires some emotional response — joy, laughter, anger, indignation, surprise — we forward it onto the next person. Virality is now an everyday feature of life.

Virality with this ease of spread is a fairly novel psychic phenomenon for the human race. So, when a novel physical pathogen came along, both the disease and the memes, cartoons, and propaganda began to spread. Confronted on both physical and psychic fronts, some incredibly bizarre and often vindictive behavior resulted. It isn’t the first time this has happened.

In China, after the communist revolution, farming was collectivized. Newly mandated agricultural practices were disruptive, and food production began to falter. One of the new mandates during the Great Leap Forward was the commencement of the Four Pests Campaign.

Rather than go back to what had worked before, or allow markets to work, the authorities settled on a seemingly sensible solution. Rats, mosquitos, flies, and sparrows — yes, the small bird — would be eliminated. With these pests eradicated, the models projected food production would exceed all of the previous levels in every metric.

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Government Funds AI Tools for Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship

Ifeel scared. Very scared.

Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.

This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.

Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet.

This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea. 

 What’s happening is that a tool powerful enough to surveil everything that’s said and done on the Internet (or large portions of it) is becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time. And, based on that monitoring, the government – and any organization or company the government partners with – can then use the same tool to suppress, silence, and shut down whatever speech it doesn’t like. 

But that’s not all. Using the same tool, the government and its public-private, “non-governmental” partners (think, for example: the World Health Organization, or Monsanto) can also shut down any activity that is linked to the Internet. Banking, buying, selling, teaching, learning, entertaining, connecting to each other – if the government-controlled AI does not like what you (or your kids!) say in a tweet or an email, it can shut down all of that for you. 

Yes, we’ve seen this on a very local and politicized scale with, for example, the Canadian truckers. 

But if we thought this type of activity could not, or would not, happen on a national (or even scarier – global) scale, we need to wake up right now and realize it’s happening, and it might not be stoppable.

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DEA Failed To Explain Rejection Of Psilocybin Waiver To Treat Cancer Patients, Federal Appeals Court Challenge Says

Lawyers for a doctor in Washington State seeking to legally use psilocybin for end-of-life care argue in a new federal appeals court filing that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) failed to explain a key decision when it denied him access to the psychedelic. They’re asking judges to reverse that move, calling it arbitrary and capricious, and order the government to review the matter anew.

The opening brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week is the latest development in what’s become a years-long effort by Dr. Sunil Aggarwal and the Advanced Integrative Medical Science (AIMS) Institute to treat terminally ill cancer patients with psilocybin.

The new action takes aim against DEA’s decision in 2022 to deny Aggarwal’s requests to access psilocybin under state and federal right-to-try (RTT) laws, which give patients with terminal conditions the opportunity to try investigational medications that have not been approved for general use.

Washington State adopted a right-to-try law in 2017, and then-President Donald Trump signed the federal Right to Try Act the following year. Dozens of other states have enacted their own right-to-try policies.

Over the years, Aggarwal has presented DEA with multiple proposals in order either to legally cultivate or otherwise obtain psilocybin to treat his patients, arguing that the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) must accommodate a path to legally accessing the substance under RTT laws.

“DEA has rejected each request,” the new brief says, “but has never addressed the arguments that Dr. Aggarwal has raised in support of them.”

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EU Officials Start Crafting Censorship Guidelines for Big Tech Companies Ahead of 2024 Elections

The European Union has announced that it has started putting together what it calls “guidelines for election integrity” – but what critics will describe in plain language as censorship guidelines that Big Tech is supposed to follow.

The process of drafting these instructions, a part of the Digital Services Act (DSA), was initiated with a public consultation that will last until March 7, and the EU said these will be the first guidelines under the DSA.

Social media and services covered by it are referred to as Very Large Online Platforms and Search Engines, and they are the ones who will be expected to implement what the EU thinks are “best practices and possible measures to mitigate systemic risks” related to elections.

The concept of free and fair elections is long-standing, but the EU has managed to work the term “resilient elections” in there as well, as the ultimate goal of the new guidelines.

The draft also gives examples of what the bloc considers to be good ways to censor unwanted content – where censorship is referred to as “mitigating measures.” Particular attention is paid to generative AI, i.e, deepfakes.

The platforms are supposed to stick to the guidelines before, as well as after the voting, and for once, “billions of people all around the world going to the polls this year” are not mentioned as the justification for the “measures.”

At least the EU does not do it while announcing the drafting of the guidelines, although legacy media do, while reporting about it. Executive Vice-President for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager is quoted as saying that the concern here are elections at various levels in EU nation-states, as well as those for the European Parliament.

According to Vestager, voters must discuss issues online “in a safe way.”

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CDC’s 2024 Child Vax Schedule: All Risks, No Liability

Childhood vaccines stand as a unique consumer product, enjoying unparalleled liability protection from the government. Given the corruption of the healthcare apparatus, it is no wonder that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) keeps expanding the list of recommended childhood vaccines, as happened in early 2024, says attorney Aaron Siri.

In his interview with The New American, Siri explains how the number of vaccine doses recommended for children under one year, including in-utero, surged from three to ninety over thirty-seven years, now including three doses of Covid-19 genetic therapy. This increase stems directly from the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, which granted legal immunity to vaccine manufacturers for injuries and deaths caused by CDC-recommended childhood vaccines.

Despite the CDC’s claims of rigorous safety trials, the truth is starkly different, according to the openly available information provided by the vaccine makers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Shockingly, most safety trials last for only several days, in contrast to the several years spent on drugs that are liable to lawsuits. Furthermore, trials for childhood vaccines are conducted against other vaccines, not placebos, raising questions about the reliability of the results. Thus, a complete safety profile for these products is unknown, as highlighted by the attorney.

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Ex-school officer accused of raping 2 teens in West Richland. One was a former student

A former Yakima school resource officer is now facing charges for a sexual relationship with a teen girl and for raping her drunk friend. Prosecutors filed charges on Thursday against Elias Huizar, 39, of West Richland, for second-degree rape, third-degree child rape, as well as two counts of providing alcohol to minors. Huizar is out of the Benton County jail after posting a $200,000 bond. He is expected to back in court Feb. 15 to enter a plea to the charges. Police began investigating the claims when Huizar’s 17-year-old girlfriend, their 9-month-old son and her teenage friend approached Benton County sheriff’s deputies in Benton City on Feb. 3, according to court documents.

They claimed that Huizar sexually assaulted the younger teen while she was unconscious after drinking at his home. When West Richland police went to his home on Highlands Boulevard, he refused to open the door and triggering a two-hour standoff until the Tri-Cities Regional SWAT team forced their way into the house. His girlfriend’s age raised questions from prosecutors, who felt it was likely that they had a sexual relationship before she could legally consent. But according to court documents, this wasn’t the first time rumors about a sexual relationship between the couple had surfaced. When he was a school resource officer at her school, he got a protection order against the then 13-year-old girl after she allegedly told others they had a sexual relationship.

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PROTECT Act Could Require Removal of All Existing Porn Online

Is Congress really trying to outlaw all sex work? That’s what some people fear the Preventing Rampant Online Technological Exploitation and Criminal Trafficking (PROTECT) Act would mean.

The bill defines “coerced consent” to include consent obtained by leveraging “economic circumstances”—which sure sounds like a good starting point for declaring all sex work “coercive” and all consent to it invalid. (Under that definition, in fact, most jobs could be considered nonconsensual.)

Looking at the bill as a whole, I don’t think this is its intent, nor is it likely be enforced that way. It’s mainly about targeting tech platforms and people who post porn online that they don’t have a right to post.

But should the PROTECT Act become law, its definition of consent could be used in other measures that do seek to target sex work broadly. And even without banning sex work, it could still wreak major havoc on sex workers, tech companies, and free speech and internet freedom more widely.

There are myriad ways it would do this. Let’s start by looking at how it could make all existing online porn against the law.

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