Category Archives: Media

Western Governments Keep Assigning Themselves The Authority To Regulate Online Speech, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 2, 2023 | 3 comments

Tyrannical governments and a free and open Internet cannot coexist. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

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Depending on what political echo chamber you’ve been viewing it from, the ongoing release of information about the inner workings of pre-Musk Twitter known as “the Twitter Files” might look like the bombshell news story of the century, or it might look like a complete nothingburger whose importance is being wildly exaggerated by the far right.

From where I’m sitting, the Twitter Files look like entirely newsworthy revelations which add new detail to information that had already been spilling out about the way government agencies have been inserting themselves into Silicon Valley’s processes of regulating online speech. Right wing punditry has of course been exaggerating the significance of the releases and spinning them in all kinds of disingenuous ways, and Musk himself plainly has a partisan agenda in releasing the information in the way that he has been, but it’s not actually difficult to separate that from the value of the information being released.

Many liberals and leftists have struggled to grasp this (in my view simple and obvious) distinction, but we’re now seeing articles coming out in publications like The Guardian and Jacobin explaining to their respective audiences that it should actually concern anyone who opposes government tyranny to see secretive agencies taking it upon themselves to control the way people talk to each other on the internet.

“Make no mistake: while some criticisms of the project coming from left of center certainly have merit, that doesn’t mean the disclosures aren’t important, or that the accuracy of the information contained in the files is somehow undermined by the political slant of some of those reporting on it,” writes Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic. “The Twitter Files give us an unprecedented peek behind the curtain at the workings of Twitter’s opaque censorship regime, and expose in greater detail the secret and ongoing merger of social media companies and the US national security state.”

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What Is CISA and Why Does It Matter? By Jeffrey A. Tucker

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Here’s a good introduction to Big Brother’s cyber arm. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:

What is CISA?

n October 27, 2022, Elon Musk fired Vijaya Gadde from her job at Twitter where she was general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust. It became quickly obvious to him and others on his team that it was she who drove the censorship policy within the company, including that which blocked all information about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 election and otherwise shut down critics of government Covid policy.

Her termination from Twitter did not leave her unemployed and homeless. A year earlier, she had already been tapped as an advisor to CISA, which is the government’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency headed by Jen Easterly, who was chosen to head the new agency (created in 2018) out of her tenure at the National Security Agency. As Freddy Gray puts it in the UK Spectator, “That seems fishy, to put it mildly.”

Easterly was called to give a deposition in the case brought by the Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana but the government rejected the idea. Fauci and others could be called but not the head of CISA. According to Epoch Times, the judge “ruled that three of the individuals—Murthy, Easterly, and Flaherty—will no longer be required to appear for a deposition after a federal appeals court blocked the move last month, stating that the judge had failed to consider whether alternative and less ‘intrusive’ means could be used to obtain the information being sought.”

Don’t want to be intrusive, right? That would be inhumane. Can’t make such a demand of the head of CISA.

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Elon Musk Announces New Twitter Science Policy, Blasts Dr. Anthony Fauci: ‘Cannot Be Regarded As A Scientist’, by Daily Wire News

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Elon Musk wants science to get thrashed out on Twitter, as science has been thrashed out for centuries. From the Daily Wire News at dailywire.com:

Elon Musk arrives for the 2022 Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 2, 2022, in New York.
ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images

Twitter CEO Elon Musk announced Wednesday that the social media company’s new official policy will not penalize users for legitimately questioning scientific claims and narratives that are promoted in the media.

The statement from Musk comes as he has taken multiple shots at leftists this week for buying into mainstream media narratives.

“New Twitter policy is to follow the science, which necessarily includes reasoned questioning of the science,” Musk said.

In a subsequent tweet, Musk responded to professor Gad Saad, who posted a video mocking Dr. Anthony Fauci and his decision to retire as Republicans are set to take over the House of Representatives next week.

“Anyone who says that questioning them is questioning science itself cannot be regarded as a scientist,” Musk said in response to the video about Fauci.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Government, Media, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda, Science

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Why it isn’t mad to oppose the World Economic Forum, by Samuel Gregg

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

It isn’t mad to oppose an organization that wants to destroy what’s left of your freedom and ruin your life. From Samuel Gregg at spectator.co.uk:

Klaus Schwab (photo: Getty)

The World Economic Forum (WEF) and its long-serving founder and Executive Chairman, Professor Klaus Schwab, are the subjects of many insane conspiracy theories. This NGO, which again this January will bring together politicians, business leaders, journalists, academics, and assorted celebrities in Davos, has been accused, among other things, of being a secret cabal of paedophiles who used the Covid-19 pandemic to harvest children’s blood so as to hasten in a Satanic New World Order.

It isn’t mad, however, to regard the WEF as a dangerous force in global politics. The WEF is a dangerous force in global politics. To adapt Joseph Heller, just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean the WEF isn’t after you. A shared distrust of the WEF brings together anti-capitalists on the left and culture-warriors on the right. But that distrust is based on a misunderstanding of what the WEF is these days really all about.

For many WEF critics, the vileness of the organisation can be encapsulated in one word: ‘neoliberalism.’ It’s a term that conjures up images of plutocrats and untrammelled markets ravaging the planet and exploiting blue-collar folk in the name of profit. Funnily enough, Chairman Schwab agrees with that assessment of the world’s ills. Once upon a time, the WEF prioritised the necessity and benefits of economic globalisation. That has not been the case for many years, however. In October 2020, Schwab stated that:

[S]hibboleths of our global economic system will need to be re-evaluated with an open mind. Chief among these is the neoliberal ideology. Free-market fundamentalism has eroded worker rights and economic security, triggered a deregulatory race to the bottom and ruinous tax competition.

Precisely how and where ‘free-market fundamentalism’ has run amuck remains a mystery. After all, we live in a world in which most governments in developed nations routinely control 40 per cent or more of their nation’s GDP.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Education, Energy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

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Awakening From The Narrative Matrix: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Those who truly desire understanding and who earnestly seek it will find it, but it’s a struggle. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

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Western analysts spent years warning that western actions would provoke a war in Ukraine, westerners spent four years being propagandized into hating Russia, then Russia invades and now western imperialists say the war is advancing US interests. But remember: it was an “unprovoked invasion”.

The official narrative is that western aggressions played no role in provoking the invasion of Ukraine, but if that’s true then how come so many western experts spent years warning that western aggressions would provoke an invasion of Ukraine?

Then in the years leading up to the invasion, westerners were hammered with media-induced panic about Russia, a nation they hadn’t thought much about since the early nineties. These mass media narratives all had their origins in the US intelligence cartel, which happens to have sought the destruction of the Russian Federation since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Oh, and don’t forget the 2019 Pentagon-funded RAND paper which found that US geostrategic interests could be advanced by provoking Russia into overextending itself in areas like Ukraine. And now western imperialists are merrily boasting that this war is being used to advance longstanding US strategic interests.

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Posted in Geopolitics, Governments, History, Horseshit, Intelligence, Media, Military, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny, War

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2022 Same Shit, Different Year: 55 Years Of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions, by Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

Consistently wrong environmental apocalyptic prognosticators  are cut even more slack than consistently wrong economic prognosticators. From Myron Ebell and Steven Milloy at zerohedge.com:

Thanks go to Tony Heller, who first collected many of these news clips and posted them on RealClimateScience. 

SUMMARY

Modern doomsayers have been predicting climate and environmental disaster since the 1960s. They continue to do so today.

None of the apocalyptic predictions with due dates as of today have come true.

What follows is a collection of notably wild predictions from notable people in government and science.

More than merely spotlighting the failed predictions, this collection shows that the makers of failed apocalyptic predictions often are individuals holding respected positions in government and science.

While such predictions have been and continue to be enthusiastically reported by a media eager for sensational headlines, the failures are typically not revisited.

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’

Source: Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 1967

1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’

Source: New York Times, August 10 1969

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Happy New Year 2023: Technocommunism, Pandemics, Climate Change & The Great Reset, by 2nd Smartest Guy in the World

Posted on January 1, 2023 | Leave a comment

It is important to realize that the dysfunctional mayhem happening now has antecedents stretching back many decades. From 2nd Smartest Guy in the World at 2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com:

Interconnecting some of this substack’s greatest hits of 2022.

What’s past is certainly prologue, and to see the revolution of the future means that we must look into these transhumanist seeds of recent times.

Nearly three decades after funding the NAZI eugenics program, the very same Rockefeller crime syndicate established their Club of Rome organization under the false pretense of “climate change” alarmism. Club of Rome’s slogan was, “The common enemy of humanity is man.”

Two decades prior to the founding of Club of Rome, Major George R. Jordan testified in front of Congress and exposed the One World Government. He detailed his role in the unconstitutional and anti-American wartime Lend-Lease program. As the Lend-Lease control officer with the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Air Corps, Major Jordan had been responsible for the shipments of plates, inks and paper to the Soviet Union two full years before WW2 ended. The Russians promptly printed up hundreds of millions of US dollars that had served to not only rebuild the Soviet empire, but had deliberately further devalued the dollar, and thus further impoverished the average American through the stealth tax of inflation. Those very same American communists that had funded Hitler and then the Soviets were by then entrenched in the all of the various American governmental agencies as well as within the highest echelons of the military.

Having had finally started to make the connections in realizing that there had been a silent communist takeover of America, Major Jordan to his great horror began to keep a detailed diary itemizing the wholesale transfer of nuclear technology and materials, weapons, and top secret military patents to the Soviets.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Civil Liberties, Crime, Cronyism, Education, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Science, Technology, Tyranny, War

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How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives, by Jeffrey Tucker

Posted on December 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

The Covid and vaccine dissidents who were shut out or suppressed by Twitter and other social media were mostly right, far more right than the official narratives. And that brings up the monstrous question: how many lives were ruined or lost because of the suppression of scientific inquiry and accurate information? From Jeffrey Tucker at brownstone.org:

Twitter files

From the beginning of the Covid panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights.

What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very recently when Elon Musk finally bought the platform Twitter, fired all the embedded federal agents, and has started to release the files.

As Elon said, every conspiracy theory about Twitter was true and then some. And what applies at Twitter pertains equally to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all platforms associated with those companies (YouTube, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp).

The proof is all there. These platforms colluded with the federal government’s administrative arm to craft a particular Covid narrative, throttling and censoring dissidents and boosting any credentialled expert who was willing to toe the line.

At this point, it is wise to trust no one and nothing but those who fought against this nonsense. As the crisis began, I was blessed with an unusually large reach on most platforms. But I sat by and watched it dwindle to nothingness as the months went on. Yes, I had posts pulled but I was never banned. It’s just that my channels of communication shrunk dramatically by the months and weeks.

This was tragic for me simply because I watched the population gradually fall into a medieval-style disease panic that tore families apart, kept loved ones from traveling, wrecked businesses and churches, and even violated the sanctity of the homes. This “invisible enemy” about which everyone in government was going on about shredded the whole social fabric.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Economy, Governments, History, Media, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda, Psychology, Science

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The Twitter Files: Just the Beginning, by Jeffrey Tucker

Posted on December 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

The surface has only been scratched on the government’s collusion with Big Tech to unconstitutionally stifle freedom of expression. There’s a long way to go. From Jeffrey Tucker at brownstone.org:

twitter files

Last night was quite the ride.

Bari Weiss, who left the New York Times in protest against the culture of that paper, had been given access to another tranche of inside information about the operation of Twitter before Elon Musk took over. She found vast confirmation of what we’ve suspected for years now: the platform was censoring people who objected to lockdowns and vaccine mandates among the whole litany of coercion and compulsion that swept the world from March 2020.

The first person highlighted here is Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya, who only joined the platform in the summer of 2021. During this entire time, Twitter spokespeople had said repeatedly that it did not shadowban but of course all of us knew otherwise.

It turns out that the company had an elaborate system for deboosting, shadowbanning, trending topic bans, search bans, and other fancy tricks all designed to minimize as much as possible the reach of a person’s account.

You can see some of the controls imposed from the admin panel. He was treated lightly compared with others. More than 10,000 were banned.

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Modeling Gone Bad. By Robert W. Malone, MD, MS

Posted on December 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

From the fatality rates of Covid, the fear and paranoia generated by the disease is akin to the fear generated by a mouse in an elephant. However, unlike elephants, you’re supposed to be able to reason with human beings. From Robert W. Malone, MD, MS, at rwmalonemd.substack.com:

A new paper documents that the pre-vaccination case fatality rate was extremely low in the non-elderly population.

Age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly population

Environmental Research, Volume 216, Part 3, 1 January 2023, 114655

Abstract

The largest burden of COVID-19 is carried by the elderly, and persons living in nursing homes are particularly vulnerable. However, 94% of the global population is younger than 70 years and 86% is younger than 60 years. The objective of this study was to accurately estimate the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 among non-elderly people in the absence of vaccination or prior infection. In systematic searches in SeroTracker and PubMed (protocol: https://osf.io/xvupr), we identified 40 eligible national seroprevalence studies covering 38 countries with pre-vaccination seroprevalence data. For 29 countries (24 high-income, 5 others), publicly available age-stratified COVID-19 death data and age-stratified seroprevalence information were available and were included in the primary analysis. The IFRs had a median of 0.034% (interquartile range (IQR) 0.013–0.056%) for the 0–59 years old population, and 0.095% (IQR 0.036–0.119%) for the 0–69 years old. The median IFR was 0.0003% at 0–19 years, 0.002% at 20–29 years, 0.011% at 30–39 years, 0.035% at 40–49 years, 0.123% at 50–59 years, and 0.506% at 60–69 years. IFR increases approximately 4 times every 10 years. Including data from another 9 countries with imputed age distribution of COVID-19 deaths yielded median IFR of 0.025–0.032% for 0–59 years and 0.063–0.082% for 0–69 years. Meta-regression analyses also suggested global IFR of 0.03% and 0.07%, respectively in these age groups.

The current analysis suggests a much lower pre-vaccination IFR in non-elderly populations than previously suggested.

Large differences did exist between countries and may reflect differences in comorbidities and other factors. These estimates provide a baseline from which to fathom further IFR declines with the widespread use of vaccination, prior infections, and evolution of new variants.

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