Tag Archives: Disinformation

Truth Cops, by Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang

Posted on November 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

So, the Department of Homeland Security is becoming the information Gestapo. From Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang at theintercept.com:

Leaked Documents Outline DHS’s Plans to Police Disinformation

The Department of Homeland Security is quietly broadening its efforts to curb speech it considers dangerous, an investigation by The Intercept has found. Years of internal DHS memos, emails, and documents — obtained via leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, as well as public documents — illustrate an expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platforms.

The work, much of which remains unknown to the American public, came into clearer view earlier this year when DHS announced a new “Disinformation Governance Board”: a panel designed to police misinformation (false information spread unintentionally), disinformation (false information spread intentionally), and malinformation (factual information shared, typically out of context, with harmful intent) that allegedly threatens U.S. interests. While the board was widely ridiculed, immediately scaled back, and then shut down within a few months, other initiatives are underway as DHS pivots to monitoring social media now that its original mandate — the war on terror — has been wound down.

Behind closed doors, and through pressure on private platforms, the U.S. government has used its power to try to shape online discourse. According to meeting minutes and other records appended to a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is also running for Senate, discussions have ranged from the scale and scope of government intervention in online discourse to the mechanics of streamlining takedown requests for false or intentionally misleading information.

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Biden Administration’s Ministry of Truth Stumbles, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on May 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s pretty easy to tell what the truth is just by listening to the government. The truth is the opposite of whatever it says. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

Finally some good news – maybe! The Department of Homeland Security’s recently launched Disinformation Governance Board has gone into what has been described as the “pause” mode and its controversial Director Nina Jankowicz has resigned, citing “vile personal attacks and physical threats.” Its status will reportedly be reviewed over the next 75 days and it will likely be rolled out more quietly next time around and under a different name.

The Board was developed to counter what was held to be unfair criticism of policies being promoted by the government. Ironically, however, it has recently become clear that the White House itself has been doing much of the lying. It uses the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other government agencies to spread false information, referred to as disinformation, to dupe the public into believing that there is something good and noble about America becoming heavily involved in the war in Ukraine, with all that entails. And, of course, since the evildoers must be excoriated as that drama is playing out, good old Russia fits in admirably, particularly as the Democrats still like to pretend that it was Moscow’s interference that defeated Hillary in 2016.

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‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts, by Luca Goldmansour

Posted on May 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

When you silence people, you usually end up hurting yourself worse than you hurt the silenced. Simon and Garfunkle wrote a song about it once. From Luca Goldmansour at fair.org:

‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts
NBC: In a break with the past, U.S. is using intel to fight an info war with Russia, even when the intel isn't rock solid

NBC (4/6/22) referred to making charges against Russia for which there is “no evidence” as having “blunted and defused the disinformation weaponry of the Kremlin.”

Disinformation has become a central tool in the United States and Russia’s expanding information war. US officials have openly admitted to “using information as a weapon even when the confidence and accuracy of the information wasn’t high,” with corporate media eager to assist Washington in its strategy to “pre-empt and disrupt the Kremlin’s tactics, complicate its military campaign” (NBC, 4/6/22).

In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as “disinformation” spread by Russia or its proxies.

The New York Times (1/25/22) reported that Russian disinformation doesn’t only take the form of patently false assertions, but also those which are “true but tangential to current events”—a convenient definition, in that it allows accurate facts to be dismissed as “disinformation.” But who determines what is “tangential” and what is relevant, and what are the guiding principles to make such a determination? In this assessment, Western audiences are too fickle to be trusted with making up their own mind.

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Touching: Disinformation Board Realizes The True Disinformation Was Inside Them All Along

Posted on May 18, 2022 | Leave a comment

From The Babylon Bee:

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a touching moment of clarity this week, personnel from the Department of Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board realized that the true disinformation they’ve been looking for was inside them all along.

“All of my life, I’ve been searching for disinformation, only to find out that everything I’ve been looking for was within me from the very beginning. So ironic!” said former Disinformation Czar Nina Jankowicz. “At last, my long journey has brought me full circle, right back to the source of disinformation that was under my nose this entire time. I was the one I was looking for!” Jankowicz then turned and wiped away a single tear.

Sources say the Disinformation Board is being shut down, having completed its 3-week mission to find the source of disinformation. The government will now return to censoring and silencing opposition in secret as they’ve always done.

According to eyewitnesses, Jankowicz and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas turned out the last lights in the DGB building, turning around one final time to look on their work with fondness and reflect on how our strange journeys often take us right back to where we started. “Goodbye, old friend. You’ve taught me so much,” said Mayorkas before turning and walking into the sunset.

According to sources, Jankowicz has been offered a full-time job fact-checking memes for Snopes.

https://babylonbee.com/news/touching-disinformation-board-realizes-the-true-disinformation-was-inside-them-all-along

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Naomi Wolf Eloquently Deconstructs the Terms Dis, Mis, and Malinformation, by Sundance

Posted on April 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

Truth is truth and lies are lies. How hard is that? From Sundance at theconservativetreehouse.com:

The first principle in battling against the Alinsky crew is to not to accept their terminology. Controlling language is a specific tactic of the professional political left. We used to call it labeling, but modern leftists moved beyond labels into the creation of new definitions. Modern leftists now use two different strategies depending on their target: (1) create new words, the traditional labeling; and (2) redefine existing words.

In this interview Naomi Wolf is one of the few people I have seen who correctly starts her discussion by dispatching the linguistics and framing her own baseline argument. All politicians and candidates for office should watch how Wolf responds to the first question from Tucker Carlson, and then makes the better argument.

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Fighting “Information Disorder”: Aspen’s Orwellian Commission On Controlling Speech In America, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on November 21, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Aspen Institute is one of those  “influential think tanks” that endlessly thinks up bad ideas. Here’s one of their worst. From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

The Aspen Institute has issued the results of its much heralded 16-person Commission on Information Disorder on how to protect the public from misinformation. The commission on disinformation and “building trust” was partially headed by Katie Couric who is still struggling with her own admission that she edited an interview to remove controversial statements by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The Aspen recommendations however are a full-throated endorsement of systems of censorship.

The findings and recommendations are found in an 80-page report on how to combat “disinformation” and “misinformation,” which are remarkably ill-defined but treated as a matter of “we know when we see it.”  From the outset, however, the Commission dismissed the long-standing free speech principle that the solution to bad speech is better speech, not censorship. The problem is that many today object to allowing those with opposing views to continue to speak or others continue to listen to them.  The Commission quickly tosses the free speech norm to the side:

“The biggest lie of all, which this crisis thrives on, and which the beneficiaries of mis- and disinformation feed on, is that the crisis itself is uncontainable. One of the corollaries of that mythology is that, in order to fight bad information, all we need is more (and better distributed) good information. In reality, merely elevating truthful content is not nearly enough to change our current course.”

In addition to Couric, the Commission was headed by Color of Change President Rashad Robinson and Chris Krebs, former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Robinson was also a notable choice since he has been one of the most outspoken advocates of censorship. While some of us have been denouncing the expanding system of censorship by companies like Facebook, Robinson was threatening boycotts if the companies do not “rein in” those considered racists or spreaders of misinformation.

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The Reason for the Indoctrination and Dumbing Down of Americans Is Now Obvious: There Is No Pandemic, Only Fear, by Gary D. Barnett

Posted on July 18, 2021 | 1 comment

Fortunately, once your eyes are opened, they tend to stay opened. From Gary D. Barnett at lewrockwell.com:

“We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.”

Peter Daszak, Eco-Health Alliance—Statement Made in 2015 and reported in the National Academies Press on February 12, 2016

This recent interview between Dr. David E. Martin and Reiner Fuellmich is so astounding as to be enough on its own to bring down the entirety of the major players perpetrating this ‘virus’ scam meant to destroy humanity. This is why the long-term dumbing down and indoctrination of the public has been so vital to the evil agendas of the controllers of the state and their political whores that enforce these horrendous and fake ‘pandemic’ policies. With this kind of solid evidence, all involved should be fully exposed, and prosecution of these criminals should be an easy task. I suspect however, that it will likely go nowhere due to the absolute indifference displayed by the sleeping masses, and the orchestrated censorship at every level of the mainstream ‘news’ sites and by the tech giants. This is of course a travesty, but so long as the people exist in a collective bubble of ignorance, the plot to depopulate the earth and reshape the world into a technocratic master/slave society, will continue to go forward.

From an ‘educational’ (schooling) point of view, the history of modern America has been one of total incompetence and purposely structured obsolescence. In addition, instead of stimulating the minds of the young, opening them up to the vast amounts of information available, and awakening the inner spirit at such a critical time of life, the opposite has occurred. With this plotted outcome also came extreme indoctrination and brainwashing, which was accomplished as a replacement for knowledge and free and individual thinking. At this juncture, critical thinking by the majority is nothing more than a pipedream, and something that existed only in the distant past.

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Liberals want to blame rightwing ‘misinformation’ for our problems. Get real, by Thomas Frank

Posted on March 21, 2021 | 1 comment

A rare liberal who believes that liberals’ problems may have more to do with liberals than conservatives. From Thomas Frank at theguardian.com:

In progressive circles these days, there is a palpable horror of the uncurated world, of thought-spaces flourishing outside the consensus

Large cursor over speech bubble on computer monitor. Image shot 2013. Exact date unknown.<br>E4NFH0 Large cursor over speech bubble on computer monitor. Image shot 2013. Exact date unknown.

‘American political culture is and always has been a matter of myth and idealism and selective memory.’ Photograph: Ikon Images/Alamy

One day in March 2015, I sat in a theater in New York City and took careful notes as a series of personages led by Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates described the dazzling sunburst of liberation that was coming our way thanks to entrepreneurs, foundations and Silicon Valley. The presentation I remember most vividly was that of a famous TV actor who rhapsodized about the wonders of Twitter, Facebook and the rest: “No matter which platform you prefer,” she told us, “social media has given us all an extraordinary new world, where anyone, no matter their gender, can share their story across communities, continents and computer screens. A whole new world without ceilings.”

Six years later and liberals can’t wait for that extraordinary new world to end. Today we know that social media is what gives you things like Donald Trump’s lying tweets, the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol riot of 6 January. Social media, we now know, is a volcano of misinformation, a non-stop wallow in hatred and lies, generated for fun and profit, and these days liberal politicians are openly pleading with social media’s corporate masters to pleez clamp a ceiling on it, to stop people from sharing their false and dangerous stories.

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The Sources who Lie and the Reporters who Protect Them, by Techno Fog

Posted on March 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

What happens when anonymous sources lie? Does that not become a newsworthy story, when the media gets played and used by someone in the government? From Techno Fog at techno.substack.com:

Protecting anonymous sources – or covering-up government misconduct?

Imagine you’re a major media outlet like The Washington Post or CNN. You have a huge platform on the web, in print, or on TV. You publish consequential stories with information from anonymous sources on Trump/Russia collusion, an email Donald Trump, Jr. received about a Wikileaks release, and President Trump’s instructions to a Georgia election investigator to “find the fraud.” Your stories shape agendas and become national news. They fuel conspiracies, divide Americans, and influence elections.

And then you realize you’ve been played. Your anonymous sources gave you false information. You have to issue a correction. Why should that be the end of the story?

Fake News and “Find the Fraud”

On January 9, 2021 The Washington Post published a story that President Trump ordered a Georgia election investigator looking into 2020 election irregularities to “find the fraud” in a late December phone call.

This purported call was pushed by Washington Post reporters to further allegations of criminal obstruction of justice. A serious crime, if true.

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The Vaccine (Dis)Information War, by CJ Hopkins

Posted on February 24, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Informed consent” used to be enshrined in medical ethics, but if information is censored or outlawed, the concept loses its meaning. How can people be said to be voluntarily receiving a vaccine if they’re prohibited from learning all the information about it? From CJ Hopkins at consentfactory.org:

So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made by corporations!

OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,” but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been “tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

This non-experimental experimental vaccine is truly a historic development, because apart from saving the world from a virus that causes mild to moderate flu-like symptoms (or, more commonly, no symptoms whatsoever) in roughly 95% of those infected, and that over 99% of those infected survive, the possibilities for future applications of messenger-RNA technology, and the genetic modification of humans, generally, is virtually unlimited at this point.

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