Tag: police state

Who Determines What’s ‘Disinformation’?

Why are we being bombarded by fact-checks and “anti-disinformation” efforts in our timeline scrolls? When reading the news, we too often find that so-called experts are behind whatever claim media professionals make, no matter how outlandish or disconnected from reality such claims may be.

Through his concept and exploration of spectacle, a totalizing, negating force over our lives that results in what is really “unlife,” French Philosopher Guy Debord’s famous Society of the Spectacle (1967) and his follow-up booklet, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), provide insights into these and related phenomena. 

When it comes to “fact-checks” and “experts,” Debord is clear: in a society subjugated by the economy, where “everything that was once directly lived has faded into representation,” such professionals do not exist to provide us the truth — they exist to serve the state and media through lies and distortions spun into what appears as true. If the “experts” lose influence, it will be because the public learns and articulates that their job is to systematically lie.

“Disinformation” appears as one of the biggest bogeymen in today’s increasingly online world. Governments warn of the dangers it apparently poses to society and democracy, and mainstream media organizations in turn direct resources to counter-disinformation and to fact-checking. In the name of “being informed,” people cannot often go online without being bombarded by fact-checks or warnings about what content to consume and share with their social and professional networks.

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A Top HHS Official Blocked Release of Long-Delayed Fluoride Toxicity Review, Internal Emails Reveal

Newly released emails reveal that leadership within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) acted to prevent the release of long-delayed review of fluoride’s toxicity by the National Toxicology Program (NTP).

The emails specifically claim that Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine intervened to stop the release of the NTP review, also known internally as a monograph.

An email dated June 3, 2022, shows Nicole Johnson, associate director for policy, partnerships and strategic communication in CDC’s Oral Health Division contacting Jennifer Greaser, a senior public health policy analyst in CDC’s Washington office.

Johnson states:

“The latest we heard (yesterday) is that ASH Levine has put the report on hold until further notice.”

ASH Levine refers to the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine.

The emails were released as part of the ongoing legal dispute between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and plaintiffs Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network and others who are seeking an end to water fluoridation.

Throughout the historic lawsuit, the plaintiffs have argued that the practice violates the EPA’s Toxic Substances Abuse Act.

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Cliven Bundy-FBI Debacle: Another Example of Why the Feds Need to be Leashed

The Justice Department was caught in another high-profile travesty last month that continues to reverberate through the western states. On Dec. 20, federal judge Gloria Navarro declared a mistrial in the case against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and others after prosecutors were caught withholding massive amounts of evidence undermining federal charges. This is the latest in a long series of federal law enforcement debacles that have spurred vast distrust of Washington.

Bundy, a 71-year old Nevadan rancher, and his sons and supporters were involved in an armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) beginning in 2014 stemming from decades of unpaid cattle grazing fees and restrictions. The Bundys have long claimed the feds were on a vendetta against them, and 3,300 pages of documents the Justice Department wrongfully concealed from their lawyers provides smoking guns that buttress their case.

A whistleblowing memo by BLM chief investigator Larry Wooten charges that BLM chose “the most intrusive, oppressive, large scale and militaristic trespass cattle (seizure) possible” against Bundy. He also cited a “widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical and legal violations” by BLM officials in the case. BLM agents even “bragged about roughing up Dave Bundy, grinding his face into the ground and Dave Bundy having little bits of gravel stuck in his face” while he was videotaping federal agents. Wooten also stated that anti-Mormon prejudice pervaded BLM’s crackdown.

The feds charged the Bundys with conspiracy in large part because the ranchers summoned militia to defend them after they claimed that FBI snipers had surrounded their ranch. Justice Department lawyers scoffed at this claim in prior trials involving the standoff but newly-released documents confirm that snipers were in place prior to the Bundy’s call for help.

The feds also belatedly turned over multiple threat assessments which revealed that the Bundys were not violent or dangerous, including an FBI analysis that concluded that BLM was “trying to provoke a conflict” with the Bundys. As an analysis in the left-leaning Intercept observed, federal missteps in this case “fueled longstanding perceptions among the right-wing groups and militias that the federal government is an underhanded institution that will stop at nothing to crush the little guy and cover up its own misdeeds.”

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Police in America: An Awkward Truth

It’s very difficult to talk about this in polite company, or in any company really in most of the nation, but there’s an awkward truth about cops that most people kinda sorta know, but still won’t take to its obvious conclusion.

Generally speaking, the police are a right-wing force in this country. They support right-wing causes individually, they act on behalf of right-wing elements of the society, and frequently stand down when right-wing forces are engaged against left-wing (or merely populist) forces in street battles.

Yes, they solve crimes. Even relatively nonpropagandistic, cop-focused shows like The Wire (which was produced by a police reporter and a veteran detective) show that aspect of their work. (Merely propagandistic shows, on the other hand, like Law & Order, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five-0 and myriad others, exist to only glorify that aspect of the job.)

But police departments were formed not to solve crimes, but to “maintain order” in the immigrant-unrest and labor-resistance world of the 19th and early 20th centuries — a role they inherited from the infamous Pinkertons, thugs-for-hire from an earlier day. 

And they have remained a force of social repression — repression of unrest — ever since. (If you click the Pinkertons link above, skip the History Channel’s glorification and read point 8: Pinkertons as “the paramilitary wing of big business”).

Most people fall somewhere on this spectrum in their thinking about cops — that they’re either our crime-solving friends from CSI or they’re somewhat problematic, but still a force for order in a troubled and violent world (The Wire, Hill Street Blues, True Detective).

But what if they’re a force for disorder? What if they’re too closely allied with the right-wing-terror problem the nation is trying, though not hard enough, to fix? What if our police are creating the problem we also want them to solve?

I don’t have an answer to those questions because I don’t have an answer about degrees — the degree to which cops solve problems vs. the degree to which they are problems. But there’s a lot of data to mull.

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“Project Censored” List: Top 25 Most Censored News Stories Of The Year

“Published each year by Seven Stories Press, featuring dispatches from the ongoing revolution in independent journalism, each book reports the year’s top-25 independent news stories, which corporate media have ignored, misrepresented, or censored; analyzes corporate “junk food” news and “news abuse;” highlights organizations that exemplify media democracy in action; and investigates hot topics in journalism and politics.” – Source

The presentation of the Top 25 stories of 2021-2022 extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across North America has made the Project even more diverse and robust. The Top 25 stories of 2021-2022 have been selected from several hundred candidate stories submitted by 207 student researchers from ten US college and university campuses. – Source

About Project Censored

 “Project Censored educates students and the public about the importance of a truly free press for democratic self-government. We expose and oppose news censorship and we promote independent investigative journalism, media literacy, and critical thinking. Through our website, weekly radio program, annual book, and other programs, we provide this service to the United States, Canada, UK, and the world.

2021-2022 Theme: Billionaire’s Press

Writing for the Santa Fe reporter, “Project Censored, The billionaires’ press dominates censorship beat” Paul Rosenberg explained “Since its founding in 1976, Project Censored has been focused on stories—like Watergate before the 1972 election—that aren’t censored in the authoritarian government sense, but in a broader, expanded sense reflective of what a functioning democracy should be, censorship defined as “the suppression of information, whether purposeful or not, by any method—including bias, omission, underreporting, or self-censorship—that prevents the public from fully knowing what is happening in society.” It is, after all, the reason that journalism enjoys special protection in the First Amendment: Without the free flow of vital information, government based on the consent of the governed is but an illusory dream.”

“Yet, from the very beginning, as A.J. Liebling put it, ‘Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.’”

“In their introduction to Project Censored’s annual State of the Free Press, [ ] Mickey Huff and Andy Lee Roth [ ] observe, “History shows that consolidated media, controlled by a handful of elite owners, seldom serves the public interest.”

“Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet)”.

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Another Facial Recognition Snafu Leads to False Arrest, Wrongful Imprisonment; ACLU Asks Lawmakers to Ban Police Use

Instead of enjoying a late Thanksgiving meal with his mother in Georgia, Randal Reid spent nearly a week in jail in November after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities using facial recognition technology.

That’s according to Monday reporting by NOLA.com, which caught the attention of Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that has long advocated against law enforcement and private entities using such technology, partly because of its shortcomings and the risk of outcomes like this.

“So much wrong here,” Fight for the Future said Tuesday, sharing the story on Twitter. The group highlighted that many cops can use facial recognition systems without publicly disclosing it, and anyone’s “life can be upended because of a machine’s mistake.”

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Jordan Peterson ordered to enter ‘re-education’ program in Canada over his comments, speech that ‘may cause harm.’ He’s refusing to comply.

Jordan Peterson has been ordered by a Canadian psychology governing body to enter what Peterson called a “re-education” program reportedly over his past comments and speech that “may cause harm.”

Not surprisingly, Peterson said Wednesday he “formally indicated” his “refusal to comply” with the demands of the College of Psychologists of Ontario.

What are the details?

Peterson posted to Twitter parts of a document from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that outlined its concern over his “public statements made on social media and during a January 25, 2022, podcast appearance” that “may have lacked professionalism.”

The document indicates that Peterson is to work with another professional to “review, reflect on, and ameliorate [his] professionalism in public statements” and complete a “Coaching Program.”

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Summaries Of All ‘Twitter Files’ To Date

It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who’ve found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I’ve included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.

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Former FBI Agent Seeking Probation After Admitting to Destroying Evidence

A former FBI agent is requesting that an Arkansas federal judge give him a year of probation after he pleaded guilty to destroying evidence while investigating a corruption case against Republican Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods.

In August, the Department of Justice announced former FBI Special Agent Robert Cessario pleaded guilty in the Western District of Arkansas to erasing the contents of his government computer hard drive. Cessario was one of the agents who investigated Woods, who was convicted on 15 corruption-related charges and was sentenced to more than 18 years in federal prison in 2018.

The charge that Cessario pled guilty to carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. As part of the plea deal, Cessario’s defense team and the prosecution have both requested he receives probation. Cessario suggested the probationary period should be for one year.

A judge will ultimately determine Cessario’s sentence in court on Thursday. Both Cessario’s team and federal prosecutors estimated the sentencing hearing should take about an hour, with neither side planning to call witnesses or present testimony.

Cessario’s plea agreement states that he obtained recordings from a cooperating defendant as part of the federal prosecution against Woods in a corruption and money laundering case.

As questions arose in the case about how Cessario had obtained the audio recordings, the court ordered Cessario to submit his computer for a forensic examination on or about Dec. 4, 2017. Before submitting his computer to the forensic examination, Cessario instead took the device to a commercial computer business and paid the business to erase the contents of his computer’s hard drive.

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Top Cop Gets 100 Years for Feeding Semen to Wife’s Students, Raping Kids & Filming It

As TFTP reported in 2019, a high-level Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office deputy — who commanded the SWAT team — and his wife, were indicted on more than 150 felonies for unspeakable crimes against children and animals. Dennis Perkins and his wife Cynthia Perkins were accused of multiple counts of child rape and the production of child pornography, among other disturbing charges — including secretly feeding Dennis Perkins’ semen to children who were students of Cynthia Perkins.

On Tuesday, this vile disgraced cop took a plea deal, and although he didn’t admit to all 150 charges, he pleaded guilty to enough of them that he will be going to jail for the rest of his life. Perkins was sentenced to 100 years in prison after pleading guilty to one count of second-degree rape, two counts of sexual battery of a child, one count of video voyeurism, two counts of production of child porn of children under the age of 13, and one count of the mingling of harmful substances.

Cynthia took a plea deal in 2022 and received a 41-year sentence after agreeing to testify against her husband. The case that dragged on for years has finally come to an end and the victims will be spared the horrific experience of reliving the events in the courtroom.

“Not just for the victims but for the jurors who had to watch it, it would have been very disturbing,” prosecutors said after the sentencing. “That’s why we’re so happy that we were able to achieve what we did today without having to go through that.”

“No one has to worry about Dennis Perkins hurting anyone ever again,” one prosecutor added. “The victims were consulted and were all OK with this.”

WARNING: The details in the story below are exceedingly disturbing and contain extremely graphic descriptions of the alleged crimes.

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