Telegram Founder Tells Tucker Carlson that Google and Apple Are Threats to Free Speech
In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Pavel Durov, the founder of the popular messaging app Telegram, accused tech giants Google and Apple of being the real enemies of free speech on the internet.
Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of the encrypted messaging platform Telegram, recently sat down for a rare in-depth interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. During the conversation, Durov shared his thoughts on the social media and tech industry, particularly focusing on the issue of free speech online.
Durov claimed that the biggest barriers to free speech on the internet are not governments, but rather Big Tech corporations, specifically Apple and Google. He argued that because these two companies own the world’s top app stores, it is their rules and regulations that ultimately control free speech online.
“I would say the largest pressure towards Telegram is not coming from governments. It’s coming from Apple and Google,” Durov stated. “So when it comes to freedom of speech, those two platforms, they could basically censor whatever you can read or access on your smartphone.”
Durov pointed out that almost everyone in the world who has ever downloaded a smartphone app has done so through either the Google Play Store or the App Store, giving these corporations an enormous amount of power. Governments are even trying to push legislation to remove some of this power from the likes of Apple and Google.
While Durov acknowledged that these companies have general guidelines that are “difficult to disagree” with, such as prohibiting violence, discrimination, or child sexual abuse material on platforms distributed through their stores, he revealed that Telegram has had to take down content that he believed was “a legitimate way of people expressing their opinions” in order to comply with Apple and Google’s regulations. Failure to do so would result in Telegram being removed from the app stores, which would mean “a big chunk of the world’s population will lose access to a valuable tool.”
Watch the full interview here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
Bruner: Social Media Censorship Is a ‘Huge Cash Game’
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/11/20/bruner-social-media-censorship-is-a-huge-cash-game/
Government Accountability Institute director of research Seamus Bruner said Monday on Newsmax TV’s “Wake Up America” that “controligarchs” were making money with censorship.
Veteran NPR Editor Uri Berliner Resigns After Calling out Network’s Left-Wing Bias
Veteran National Public Radio (NPR) editor and reporter Uri Berliner resigned from the broadcaster Wednesday after being suspended without pay for publishing a lengthy essay calling out the networks’ innate left-wing bias.
“I am resigning from NPR, a great American institution where I have worked for 25 years,” Berliner posted on his X social media account. “I respect the integrity of my colleagues and wish for NPR to thrive and do important journalism.”
Berliner further detailed he “cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay.”
As Breitbart News reported, the senior business editor took the broadcaster to task over its lack of diverse views and opinions bookended by left-wing bias earlier this month.
Berliner, in an op-ed published in the Free Press, wrote the rise of advocacy at taxpayer-funded NPR “took off” with the election of former President Donald Trump in 2016.
The news veteran said he could count 87 registered Democrats in editorial positions but zero Republicans in the same positions in its Washington, DC, headquarters.
NPR’s chief news executive, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff soon after the article appeared she and the news leadership team strongly reject Berliner’s assessment.
He was subsequently suspended without pay as a reprisal.
More to come…
TWO OF THE MOST DANGEROUS OF BIDEN'S LAWYER CRONIES WHEN IT COMES TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT IS MERRICK GARLAND AND MAYORKAS.
NEXT TO THE BIDEN PIG LAWYERS ARE JOE'S INTERNET CENCORS!
DEM DONOR PIGS (BILLIONAIRES FOR OPEN BORDERS):
He added, “The pandemic was a blueprint for the future and so we tracked the money. We followed it all the way to the top men like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, they added tens of billions of dollars to their net worth.”
Bruner’s book Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life is available now.
Beyond Orwell: The High-tech Lynching of America
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/beyond_orwell_the_hightech_lynching_of_america.html
A Massive Government-Censorship Industrial Complex
SCOTUS will rule in June 2024 on a First Amendment free speech case the federal judge called “the most massive attack against free speech in United States history” and the circuit court judge described as “fairly unsubtle strong-arming” by government officials using “mafiosi style” threats to increase regulation. Should government officials immediately cease contacting social media companies to censor content, with exceptions for illegal speech? The U.S. government attorney, Brian Fletcher, eloquently argues for SCOTUS to discuss the following theoretical legal issues regarding free speech censorship on social media rather than specifics of the case.
Should the government have privacy in speech moderation policies? The lawsuit discovery process exposed government pressure applied behind closed doors, with 24/7 badgering and profanity arising from the highest W.H., FBI, CDC, and CISA officials until Big Tech capitulation. The Twitter Files released by Elon Musk and the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee investigation uncovered a massive government-funded censorship-industrial complex that links third-party “trust and safety teams” within universities and foundations to social media platforms. These non-government organizations (NGOs), which include Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), had secret censorship strategy meetings against private corporations like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube where named plaintiffs were deplatformed, suspended, shadowbanned, or deleted.
When the Disinformation Governance Board was rolling out in early 2023, public outrage led the Stanford NGO to form the Election Integrity Project (EIP) to create stories on Russian disinformation. While government purports to censor disinformation and enforce Big Tech data security, government became the #1 source of disinformation and engaged in massive personal data surveillance without a warrant.
Each federal agency demonstrated an escalation of demands until capitulation, direct access to data, and manipulation of content moderation policy. The White House achieved decreasing virality of content that lacked actionable “misinformation” like anti-vaccine posts while amplifying W.H. narratives. The FBI regularly monitored data, directly requested removal of speech from foreign and “state-sponsored actors,” and commandeered moderation policies. The intimate details of extensive government entanglement within each platform specific to each agency was repressive and intimidating — likely Fletcher would prefer to dwell on not intrusive government action, but rather theoretical issues like government rights and scenarios demanding urgent government oversight. Definitely, SCOTUS should not sanction the government right to monitor social media data and rewrite content moderation policy, nor enable secrecy in violating our freedom.
Can government officials contact social media platforms to remove unfavored by persuasion so long as coercive legal threats are not mentioned? Fletcher asserts that the government didn’t engage in coercion, but rather “significant encouragement” to censor misinformation.
Some background is needed to explain the tenuous position of social media platforms. Social media platforms are not classified as publishers, so they lack publisher First Amendment “freedom of the press” rights to free speech. They also lack common carrier protections afforded the telephone company or railroads. Instead, social media gain protection against lawsuits from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, without which Facebook (FB), Google, Twitter, YouTube, and all social media platforms could be sued for libelous user-generated content and effectively be unable to exist. When the White House asked FB to censor the “disinformation dozen,” for instance, FB leadership knew that the W.H. could pursue action against FB for non-action, very different from a W.H. request of a New York Times (NYT) journalist not to publish a story. The journalist could agree or publish without repercussions due to strong First Amendment protections. The W.H. can threaten FB with government litigation or loss of Section 230 protections for noncompliance, making any request from the government “unsubtle strong-arming.”
The threat of government litigation and loss of Section 230 are not theoretical. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DoJ) announced a broad antitrust review of “market-leading online platforms” different from individual targeting of Apple, Amazon, FB, and Google. The 2018 FTC/DoJ probe focused on platform online content moderation policy and requested that state attorneys general bring lawsuits against “digital platforms [not acting] in ways responsive to consumer demands.” The announcement coincided with FB’s Mark Zuckerberg paying a $5M fine for user privacy protection violations with the settlement requiring FB to establish an independent committee to oversee data and give a third-party organization access to FB’s data-collecting practices for 20 years. Despite no recorded violations by the FTC, regular meetings between FB and the FTC were established under threat of criminal penalties for noncompliance. Two weeks ago, the DoJ served Apple with an antitrust lawsuit, alleging anticompetitive behavior. The antitrust settlement that gave government oversight via third parties and access to FB data with regularly scheduled meetings sounds like the cozy government–social media relationship uncovered during discovery, the House Weaponization Committee hearings, and the Twitter Files release. By definition, communication by government agencies that have the power to litigate antitrust action or repeal Section 230 protections is coercive.
Should government censorship be permitted in certain circumstances, such as disinformation during public health threats or election season? Fletcher contends that government censorship should be permitted during a public health emergency. In reality, the declared emergency led to the evisceration of natural law–derived First Amendment constitutional rights, which enabled government to usurp power to force U.S. citizens into prolonged lockdowns, school closures, and business restrictions. The first U.S. lockdown began in the California Bay Area on March 16, 2020 after February 2020 communication among Bay Area public health county officers describe an atmosphere of chaos and non-data-driven decision-making as members strove “to operationalize the [CDC] quarantine plan.” The CDC outlined an untested quarantine plan, and jurisdictions throughout the U.S. followed it.
Lockdown began after seven California local public health officials (DPH) grasped their state-given “authority to control the spread of communicable disease” to mandate its counties’ 8.5 million citizens to shutter businesses, schools, and churches while healthy citizens were ordered to stay home. This first U.S. jurisdiction ordered police-enforced mandatory lockdown with censorship of dissenting voices with the following edict: “this [lockdown] Order is issued based on scientific evidence and best practices regarding the most effective approaches to slow the transmission of communicable diseases generally and COVID-19 specifically.” The published congratulatory self-reckoning explained their endeavor to ”control” the virus despite no knowledge of asymptomatic spread or efficacy of the mandated NPIs. By their self-reckoning, “face masks, physical distancing, and increased ventilation as prevention countermeasures had not been established yet.” They “recognized that SIP was a drastic measure with significant collateral social harm” yet implemented countermeasures “with no time for deliberation,” without known scientific benefit. Thus, DPH spread disinformation to get its residents to comply with CDC orders, fully aware that its draconian orders were untested strategies. To gain compliance, people were censored for criticizing harmful government mandates.
Because pandemic planning guides do not recommend lockdown, public health censored speech critical of the lockdown in the “hope” that their experiment on the U.S. population would work. With lockdowns indefensible and rigorous scientific evidence unavailable, the CDC failed to conduct important scientific trials and censored scientific scholarship that contradicted their mandates. During the discovery process of Missouri v. Biden, we learned that Big Tech, coerced by the highest levels of the Biden administration, censored speech — true speech — by the plaintiffs. They censored true information on the infection fatality rate, the low infection risk of the young versus the elderly, and protection by natural immunity.
When SCOTUS ruled in January 2022 to allow a CMS health care worker COVID-19 shot mandate, the justices claimed that “ensuring that providers take steps to avoid transmitting a dangerous virus to their patients is consistent with the fundamental principle of the medical profession: first, do no harm.” In making this decision, SCOTUS became the unwitting victims of censored speech, and believed “the vaccine is 100% effective” and Biden, who said that “[the unvaccinated] are killing people.” SCOTUS believed the CDC that sick patients would be safer from disease with vaccinated doctors and nurses as caretakers, making curtailing health care workers’ freedom worthwhile.
The public health threat, per Fletcher, required the government to censor speech promoting vaccine hesitancy due to the “hope that the vaccine would end the pandemic” despite Pfizer’s trial follow-up never tested for viral transmission or efficacy past two months. The government, who purportedly censored speech to combat misinformation, amplified CDC-sanctioned and W.H.-sanctioned health disinformation on social media, such as lock down at home to save Grandma, the mask is your best protection, the vaccine is 100% effective, and the Hunter Biden laptop is Russian disinformation. All these CDC public health missives turned out to be false — making the CDC and the W.H. #1 sources of misinformation — while censored speech by the five plaintiffs was true speech.
Ultimately, social media content should be designated either as a publisher, which can selectively censor certain viewpoints as a private entity or as a common carrier, which would be required to carry all viewpoints. By straddling both entities, the government can exert its regulatory power to coerce or “strongly encourage” censorship. Since the algorithms for posts to “go viral” lack transparency, the opportunity for the government to impose clandestine content regulation is significant. Fortunately, the public has a window into the extent of government intervention in monitoring, guiding, flagging, and modifying social media posts and algorithms.
The court system needs to uphold the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.” In times of public health threats, observed misinformation, or foreign election threats, public health and homeland security can use their websites, press conferences, and standard news agencies to warn the public without making government the arbiter of truth. By allowing the federal government to censor true statements that are inconvenient to government edicts, we lose “a republic, if you can keep it.”
Image via Picryl.
Has Our Government Erased the First Amendment?
The most important thing you will see this week is this interview of Mike Benz by Tucker Carlson: Benz is with the Foundation for Freedom, which tracks government censorship. In this interview he explains how our government rigged elections abroad and has now, through DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency), censored online communications, noting that its most substantial censorship involved blocking and limiting any critiques online respecting the government’s responses to COVID-19 and the security of the 2020 election.
It's a well-detailed account that I urge you in the strongest terms to view.
In short form, here’s a summary, but it cannot do this chilling interview complete justice:
THREAD:
speaks with
Mike Benz outlines how the government established a permanent domestic censorship office under the pretext of countering misinformation. and disinformation. Initially considered for the State Department, CIA, and FBI, the censorship office found its home in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), utilizing the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). DHS classified elections as critical infrastructure and online misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation as cybersecurity attacks. The original goal of countering Russian disinformation shifted to suppressing domestic dissent and the populist movement led by President Trump. Examining the 2020 election's censorship strategy, Benz details CISA's collaboration with Stanford University, University of Washington, Graphika, and the Atlantic Council through the Election Integrity Partnership. The censorship consortium employed coercive tactics, leveraging its deputized status to pressure tech companies through government threats. A critical element was the seven-month pre-censorship campaign before the 2020 election. The consortium compelled social media companies to introduce a new "delegitimization" violation, targeting content challenging faith in mail-in ballots, early voting, and ballot drop boxes. The overarching goal was narrative control, preventing doubts about a Biden victory and avoiding a crisis akin to the 2000 Bush-Gore election. Anticipating Biden's victory hinging on mail-in ballots, early voting, and ballot dropboxes, the consortium precensored any questioning of the election's legitimacy, particularly if Trump appeared to win on election night but later lost due to late-arriving mail-in ballots. The so-called "Red Mirage-Blue Shift event."
The DHS outsourced censorship to the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), comprised of four organizations: Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and Graphika. During the 2020 election: •120 analysts monitored 15 tech platforms •22 Million tweets labeled “misinformation” •Entire “misinformation narratives” targeted for platform-wide throttling The EIP claimed every "repeat spreader of election misinformation" was a supporter of President Trump.
Benz explains that in about 2016 the government could no longer count on its backdoor to the legacy media -- favor for favor and access -- to control communications across a broad spectrum, something that had served it well as a censorship tool for decades.
The internet had far wider reach and allowed independent voices to outcompete the legacy media, which had been the government’s reliable megaphones. The growth of huge social media platforms disrupted the government’s usual speech-control techniques and it scrambled to find new ways to control what we learned as legacy media was shrinking in reach and respect. Using the fraudulent Russiagate as a justification for their conduct, they were forced to seek new, less plausible justifications when the Mueller investigation established that pretext would be unavailing.
The extent of the government's meddling was revealed when Elon Musk took over and released internal files revealing much of the government censorship of what was then Twitter. The election of a Republican House willing to examine this overreach also exposed the scheme. While the government relies in large part on technology Musk has developed so it has less leverage over him than it has on other platforms, through a combination of lawsuits against him and the aid of the EU it enlisted to fine noncompliance with its censorship it still is trying to restrict free speech on X, presently the largest free speech platform in the world.
There are several cases now pending in the Supreme Court questioning whether the government can censor internet communications through proxies what it cannot do directly.
The most significant is Murthy v. Missouri. In July 2023 the District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, State Department, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the FBI from contacting social media services in order to urge, encourage, pressure or induce the “removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.” These same agencies were enjoined from communicating with three academic programs at Stanford University and the University of Washington which were engaged in censorship activities on behalf of the federal government which funded them. On appeal the Fifth Circuit upheld the district court ruling, but placed the injunction on hold pending Supreme Court action. (Subsequently, the Fifth Circuit expanded the injunction to include CISA. finding that agency interacted with social media platforms “to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on election-related speech.”) With Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch dissenting, the Court lifted the injunction while the case proceeds. Alito wrote, ”Government censorship of private speech is antithetical to our democratic form of government, and therefore today’s decision is highly disturbing.”
Murthy is not the only government censorship case pending decision in the Supreme Court. There’s NRA v. Vullo questioning whether the threats by New York’s Department of Financial Services against regulated banks and insurance companied to sever ties with the NRA violates the First Amendment.
And there are two companion cases, Net Choice v Paxton and Moody v Net Choice, involving formal legislation regulating social media content.
Two other free speech cases are pending in the Supreme Court -- Lindke v. Freed and O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, both of which concern when and whether a government official’s use of a social media platform becomes state action.
New technologies offer promise and challenges to the Deep State. Benz has made a persuasive historically accurate case demonstrating how techniques developed by government agencies to meddle with elections abroad have now metastasized online to interfere with domestic elections and policies. He has also persuasively shown how these agencies fear popular control, justifying their actions by confusing the concept of “democracy” with the preservation of existing institutions like NATO and the IMF. And, of course, their own power to continue to control public perceptions of government policies and elections.
Tulsi Gabbard Speech on President Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl9ymNhwGa4
JOE BIDEN is known as a serial liar, a "public servant" who has somehow managed to accrue tremendous wealth, a race-baiting opportunist, a Catholic-in-name-only, and a bought-and-paid-for politician in bed with criminal cartels and foreign foes. In another era, Joe Biden would have been run out of his country much the same way Benedict Arnold was two and a half centuries ago; in an era when integrity, honor, fortitude, fidelity, and grit have been jettisoned for immorality, unscrupulousness, weakness, betrayal, and craven pliability, however, he is elevated to king sleazeball in a city drowning in sleaze. JB SHURK
Biden lied about his undergraduate degree and his majors, lied about his rank in law school, lied about scholarships and educational aid he had received, lied about his stance toward the Vietnam war while in college, lied about his plagiarism of other politician's writings and speeches, lied about the circumstances around his first wife's fatal accident, lied about how he met his second and current wife, and lied about the affair they were having when they were both married. MARK CHRISTIAN
Most recently and dramatically, Biden lied about his knowledge of his son's shady dealings, lied about his own involvement in corruption and bribery, and lied about his current presidential agenda and what he wants to implement in regards to energy, fracking, court-packing, health care, education, and COVID among other issues.
MARK CHRISTIAN
Here is the problem in a nutshell. Most Democrat voters don't realize that leftist idealogues have hijacked the Democrat party, actively pushing traditional Democrat politicians out. They don't yet understand that the Democrat party they knew doesn't exist anymore. Almost all of the major news organizations work together to lie to Democrat voters and feed them misinformation constantly. Corrupted government entities like the FBI and the DOJ, and the leftists running all social media, have worked together to censor and silence any dissenting voices. The goal is to create a false reality in the eyes of Democrat voters and shield them from the truth. This is vital to ensure their continued support on Election Day.
IAN MacCONNELL
From Trump On Down, Democrats Are Silencing The Opposition
Following his historic federal indictment, Donald Trump correctly observed, “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you. I’m just in the way.”
Indeed, as the Democrat/Federal/Media cabal proceeds with its blatant lawlessness, banana republic indictments, frog march arrests, and kangaroo show trials, its members argue that all of this is both by the book and quite necessary—prompted by things like unprecedented, dangerous, and horrendous threats from MAGA extremists, white supremacists, terrorists, anthropogenic climate change, and attacks on democracy. Daring to speak truth about the COVID virus and treatments, about Hunter or Joe Biden, about the irregularities and illegalities that occurred in the 2020 election, the invasion of illegal aliens, mis-gendering someone, constitutes speech drawing punishments ranging from suspension or censorship, to IRS and FBI visits, to fines, or to imprisonment.
We see extensive news and analysis discussing how Republican and conservative conduct around elections (past and present) constitutes election interference, racketeering, soliciting a public official to violate his oath of office, conspiracy to commit forgery and file false documents, insurrection, making false statements, hate speech, threats to public safety, and more. President Trump and those around him, of course, receive much of this attention, but they are by no means the only ones suffering from the assault. In fact, as he has noted, he is not even the primary target.
Image: I’m in the way poster. Creator unknown.
A growing number of Americans is beginning to realize that there is another purpose to and message behind Democrats’ actions that extends to everyday people who might not like or support one or more of the things that the cabal is forcing upon them—things such as discriminatory CRT and DEI doctrines throughout our schools, weaponized federal agencies and the military, protection for BLM and Antifa violence, open borders for illegal and unvetted aliens, toxic and irreversible “gender affirming” treatments for minors, biological males in women’s spaces, costly and destructive “green” policies, massive taxpayer funds sent to Ukraine, student loan bailouts, mask and vaccine mandates, mandatory preferred pronoun usage, prevention or punishment of free speech, and so much more.
The debates regarding the constitutionality of given administration policies and actions, the validity and severity of the charges, the actual guilt or innocence of the accused, the likelihood of conviction, and the consequences of either acquittal or conviction are all popular headlines, all of which serve to distract from the central point behind these exercises: We Americans must understand that the cabal can and will use mob rule, lawfare, and bureaucratic fiats to effect its agenda, even when doing so is clearly politically motivated, invalid and unconstitutional, with the process itself often intended to ensure that political opponents yield to the cabal’s force. Nothing will stop them.
If you are an outspoken journalist, the IRS will be sent to your home. If you are a concerned citizen who shows up to silently protest one of the cabal’s pet missions, you will be arrested. If you speak up at a school board meeting because your daughter was sexually assaulted by a transgendered assailant, you might be tackled and cuffed. If a given school actually tries to remove damaging wokism from its system all together, the feds will investigate it for civil rights violations. If you produce effective conservative messaging for Google and YouTube (which together control some 90% of worldwide internet searches), the courts won’t stop Google and YouTube from restricting or banning you entirely.
It’s working. In their piece, “Keeping Your Mouth Shut: Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States,” researchers report that the percentage of Americans who say they feel “less free to speak their minds than they used to” has never been higher. It’s now at 46%—compared to just 13.4% during the red scare of 70 years ago.
With such a convincing display of sheer totalitarian power, the typical American now worries that a $100 donation to American Thinker, Hillsdale College, Judicial Watch, or his church may put him on a federal watch list—or that he may increase his chances of being fined or sued by a federal agency, audited, arrested, or otherwise harassed.
He now wonders about the impact of cabal soldiers watching his social media posts, his email, and his overall internet presence. He now refuses to click either “like” or “dislike” for any post for fear of ramifications.
In past years he may have displayed campaign signs in his yard for his preferred candidates, but he’d be terrified to do so today. He even worries about some of the political or group affinity literature that might be seen in his mailbox.
He wonders if showing up at a simple rally, presentation, or school board meeting could mean he ends up in handcuffs and/or jail.
He has become more hesitant to discuss any dissenting views in public or private, fearing that he may simply not know where the danger in doing so could lie.
He wonders if he is now being monitored because he purchased ammunition or joined the NRA.
He now leaves his baseball hat and t-shirt, both which have American flags on them, in the drawer for fear they could make him a target. After all, even Republicans thought better about displaying one as part of the recent debate stage.
He now realizes that the point of publicly targeting and punishing cabal dissidents is to send a very clear lesson to the rest of America. The power of the cabal is the point. Behold it. Fear it. Obey it.
Twenty years ago, such expressed worries might have produced laughs and suggestions for tin foil hats. No one is laughing today.
Russiagate was the pivotal event that helped the cabal become more comfortable with its power, with both its capabilities and invulnerability. We now know that Russiagate was nothing short of a soft coup attempt that involved a litany of audacious and illegal actions to significantly hobble or even overthrow a legitimately elected president. The second objective failed, but the first was wildly successful—with the icing on the cake being that not a single conspirator was punished. Neither key leadership members nor operatives paid a price. A solitary, FISA-falsifying lawyer with a suspended sentence was the extent of the “accountability.”
If a football team has had nothing but success with running to the left side of its opponents in a given game, what play might the coach call in the 4th quarter with the game on the line? We see the same play unfolding today, only Democrats aren’t just using Russiagate to attack the quarterback. They’re using January 6 to wipe out the whole team.
Many Americans have been waiting for the adults in the room to wake up and end the madness. But any such adults are either asleep or occupied with their own legal battles. At this writing, the cabal is up to indictment number four for President Trump, along with who knows how many civil suits, as well as attacking any prominent people who supported him.
In none of these cases does America have the backstop of the U.S. Senate to shield us from the travesty. President Trump is facing a brazen White House and chief executive, extreme leftist prosecutors, hopelessly biased judges, and stacked juries, along with a rabid and cheerleading media. The odds are better than not that at least one of these initiatives will see President Trump in jail sometime next year. In other words, it appears quite likely, at this point, that very soon, he will no longer “be in their way.” Then what?
Tulsi Gabbard Saves the Day for America – and for the GOP
Exposing the malice behind the Democrat agenda.
by Wayne Allyn Root 8 Comments
I never thought I’d be thanking an ex-Democrat former congresswoman and presidential candidate for telling the truth, exposing the evil Democrat agenda and saving the GOP. But former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard just broke the mold.
Tulsi, we all love and appreciate you. You are our hero. You may have changed the midterms. You may have just saved America!
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your courage, strength and raw honesty. You have done something that no one could even imagine before this week. You just broke with not only the entire Democrat Party, but also the D.C. swamp, the deep state and the evil cabal of Marxist Democrat donors like George Soros and Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum.
You just exposed the purposeful Democrat plan to destroy this country. Remarkably, you said it louder and with more truth than 99% of Republican officeholders and 99% of Republican candidates in this election.
Gabbard’s exit statement in leaving the Democrat Party sounded like I wrote it. It was word for word everything I’ve said on my national radio show, two national television shows and podcast for years. Word for word.
We finally have a true Democrat insider who has witnessed and exposed the evil of the Democrat Party.
Gabbard didn’t just say something short, sweet and meaningless, like “I’m not leaving the Democrat Party; the party left me.” She stuck a sword through their heart like a hero killing a monster. She destroyed the Democrat Party like no former Democrat officeholder has in history. She explained in detail their radical agenda.
Gabbard’s exit speech read like a Donald Trump or Wayne Allyn Root stump speech. She called Democrats an elitist cabal.
She admitted they have weaponized the government against conservatives.
She blames Democrats for wanting to kill free speech and send their political opponents to prison.
She reported Democrats are anti-white — in other words, she admitted Democrats are racists who hate white people.
She said Democrats are hostile to people of faith — and want to take away our God-given freedoms.
She admitted Democrats have purposely opened the borders to destroy America.
She reported Democrats hate and demonize the police and openly protect and support criminals.
She said Democrats are a cabal of warmongers intent on starting World War III and bringing us purposely to the brink of nuclear war.
She said Democrats don’t believe in government of, by and for the people, but rather a government of, by and for the powerful elite.
She warned of the woke direction these radical, extreme idealogues are taking our country.
And then she added in a media interview that Democrats are ushering in the “normalization of pedophilia.”
All true. But… WOW. My jaw is on the floor. No former high-level Democrat official has ever said these words in history.
I’ve reported and warned about every one of these threats to our country for many years. So, what’s the significance of Gabbard saying these same things?
No. 1: She is the first Democrat congresswoman and former Democrat presidential candidate to ever admit any of this. That’s credibility.
No. 2: She is giving an “insider” account of what is happening in the Democrat Party at the highest levels. She is a witness. She proves what I’ve always warned: These are not mistakes, ignorance or incompetence. This is all a purposeful, planned, coordinated, radical, extreme, communist, globalist, fascist attack on America.
No. 3: Her words should embolden moderate and RINO Republicans to tell the truth about how bad this attack on America really is — 99% of Republican candidates have never gone this far, never used words like this. They are cowards, scared of their own shadows. They’re worried about what the media would say about them. Hopefully Gabbard’s words will embolden (or shame) them to start telling the raw truth about what what’s really happening to America. Gabbard gives them cover.
No. 4: Gabbard’s brave words and action could inspire moderate, non-insane Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona to leave the Democrat Party to become either Republicans or independents.
My hope is that Tulsi Gabbard is the canary in the coal mine. She is the model. She has started a trend. She has started a tsunami away from the radical, insane, extreme, America-hating Democrat Party.
Gabbard then backed up her words by immediately endorsing two MAGA, America-First Republican candidates: Joe Kent for Congress in Washington and GOP Senate candidate Dan Bolduc in New Hampshire. I don’t know if Gabbard is officially joining the GOP, but it’s a darn good start!
Tulsi, it’s great to have you on my team. Welcome to “Wayne’s World.” You may have just changed the direction of America. You may have just saved the GOP with your raw truth. God bless you.
Manchin and Sinema, are you listening? If you’re not radical traitors, intent on destroying America, hating white people, supporting criminals and pedophiles, killing free speech and starting a nuclear war, Tulsi Gabbard says it’s time to leave the Democrat Party. America needs you.
Here is the problem in a nutshell. Most Democrat voters don't realize that leftist idealogues have hijacked the Democrat party, actively pushing traditional Democrat politicians out. They don't yet understand that the Democrat party they knew doesn't exist anymore. Almost all of the major news organizations work together to lie to Democrat voters and feed them misinformation constantly. Corrupted government entities like the FBI and the DOJ, and the leftists running all social media, have worked together to censor and silence any dissenting voices. The goal is to create a false reality in the eyes of Democrat voters and shield them from the truth. This is vital to ensure their continued support on Election Day. IAN MacCONNELL
I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to undeclared nuclear war. TULSI GABBARD
Google, which controls 90% of Internet searches, utilizes an AI-driven search ranking that can manipulate not only consumer preferences but also election outcomes. According to Robert Epstein, a Harvard Ph.D. who has studied Google for more than decade, Google’s ability to manipulate its search ranking algorithms has the power to change the choices of 15% of undecided voters, more than enough to change many recent close election outcomes.
Beyond Orwell: The High-tech Lynching of America
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/beyond_orwell_the_hightech_lynching_of_america.html
Just a few generations ago, most Americans understood that George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm and 1984 were written as a warning about how freedom is lost to the tyranny and intolerance of totalitarianism.
Animal Farm and 1984 were particularly apt for teaching young people at a time when the shocking revelations about Nazism and Soviet communism that were coming out in the 1950s and 1960s were hard to digest. Most important, what these works revealed was that a defining feature of totalitarianism is mind control. First, propaganda warps and destroys people’s grasp on reality. Second, propaganda is designed to foster groupthink, conformity, and collectivism, which marginalizes critical and independent thinking.
Orwell described the scope of the totalitarian enterprise, noting in one section of 1984 that, “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, and every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
In 1984, Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future.” Orwell’s introduction of concepts and terms such as “newspeak, doublethink and thought police” are what we now experience as political correctness, misinformation, and cancellation. The analogs of “thought police” in 1984 are now the enforcers of political correctness and closed political narratives.
As Orwell notes, “the whole aim of newspeak and doublethink is to narrow the range of thought.” Political correctness has the same goal and that’s why its adherents are so intolerant -- seeking to silence, cancel, and delegitimize people with whom they disagree.
As it turns out, social media and information technology have great power to narrow the range of acceptable thought. Google, which controls 90% of Internet searches, utilizes an AI-driven search ranking that can manipulate not only consumer preferences but also election outcomes. According to Robert Epstein, a Harvard Ph.D. who has studied Google for more than decade, Google’s ability to manipulate its search ranking algorithms has the power to change the choices of 15% of undecided voters, more than enough to change many recent close election outcomes.
The COVID-19 lockdowns and the death of George Floyd in May 2020 created an environment of fear. And fear of going to the polls gave Democrat activists and lawyers the opportunity to change election laws and protocols in key swing states to expand the utilization of mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, and lengthening vote counting deadlines. These initiatives enabled paid activists to manipulate voter registration and the vote count through fraudulent ballots -- undertaken to deny Donald Trump a second term.
Simultaneously, a full-blown cultural revolution came to America. What had been going on at many college campuses for decades came to cities across the country. With activism that created division, fear, and people turning on each other, it was as if Mao’s Chinese Communist Cultural Revolution 1960s and 70s had come to America.
First came hordes instigated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter smashing windows, looting, and burning down neighborhoods resulting in the destruction of $2 billion of urban property across America. Then, as if on cue or following a plan, marauding mobs appeared with ropes seeking to topple historic statues and monuments. Columbus and Confederate Civil War heroes were the first to go, but no one should doubt that the Founding Fathers -- the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution -- will be next. No history, no borders, no country.
Future historians may well look back and mark 2020 as the year America’s greatest threat began, for what happened that year and continued over the two and half years radically changed the country, effectively depriving American citizens of their First Amendment rights more completely than ever before, resulting in a questionable presidential election and the subsequent foreign invasion across the southern border.
In 2020 the main issues for Deep State influence and control of the American people were the COVID-19 pandemic and the November national election. The CIA, FBI, and DHS, which all had personnel who were hired by such social media companies as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, also had information-and-influence portals to these social media companies. However, directly influencing the election through censorship was perceived to be constitutionally problematic.
In June of 2020, the Election Integrity Project was formed by Alex Stamos, who was then a “research professor” at Stanford University, after resigning his role at Facebook as chief security officer in 2018. Stamos’ first endeavor at EIP was to meet with the Chris Krebs, the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) at the Department of Homeland Security to identify what EIP needed to do to influence the upcoming election, particularly regarding censorship, which CISA was reluctant to do.
Although Stamos had a staff of some 120 at EIP, keeping up with flagging and censoring the tens of millions of social media posts deemed to have “misinformation” would be impossible. His solution was for Stanford’s EIP to undertake persuading all the major social media companies to change their customer terms of service policies to incorporate language about “delegitimization,” which would enable mass censorship and cancellation.
Within six weeks of getting its operation up and running, EIP succeeded in getting Facebook to change its terms of service to adopt delegitimization. On September 10th, Twitter also incorporated delegitimization into its terms of service. Other social media platforms followed suit.
Once the new terms of service that included delegitimization were in place, EIP had a two-fold approach to bring all social media companies into compliance to deplatform and cancel discussion/coverage of delegitimized topics: 1) Remind social media firms that there could be consequences from government regulatory agencies if they were noncompliant with their terms of service; and 2) Noncompliance with their written terms of service would also likely result in negative PR for the company.
There were slight changes to the words and subjects identified for delegitimization before and after the November national election. Mike Benz, Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, has itemized a partial summary of prohibited subjects for discussion on social media that would trigger cancellation or deplatforming: new election protocols and processes; issues and outcomes; mail-in ballots; early voting; drop boxes; “Stop the Steal”; “Sharpiegate”; Poll Watcher; Postal Service; dead voter rolls; and Antifa. And when the Hunter Biden laptop story broke in mid-October, it was immediately delegitimized.
By EIP’s own admission, Twitter was forced to cancel 22 million tweets that contained “misinformation” that violated the company’s terms of service prior to the November 2020 election. After the election, when many Americans felt disenfranchised and had many questions about perceived irregularities, they found that social media effectively checked discussion about election fraud, just as social media had done with COVID-19 policy abnormalities.
In many ways social media has taken the place of the town hall, the marketplace, and traditional media. Whatever the cause, whether government agencies who have direct portals to convey one-sided information to social media, or NGOs like the Election Integrity Project, when they block, cancel, or deplatform voices and information, the result is a narrowing of the range of acceptable thought. This censorship is of course a violation of First Amendment free speech. Worse, it is an assault on the Constitution and a betrayal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute, and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. His recent book, Rediscovering America, was #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Reach him at scottp@discovery.org
Image: Mike Licht
Bruner: Social Media Censorship Is a ‘Huge Cash Game’
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/11/20/bruner-social-media-censorship-is-a-huge-cash-game/
Government Accountability Institute director of research Seamus Bruner said Monday on Newsmax TV’s “Wake Up America” that “controligarchs” were making money with censorship.
Anchor Rob Finnerty said, “What was your reaction to reports that that Facebook has been censoring people since the war started in Ukraine, it’s now happening in Israel and profiting to the tune of billions of dollars.”
Bruner said, “Yeah that’s right.”
He continued, “Everybody knows that censorship is kind of on the rise on these big tech platforms but the figure $11 billion industry for the trust and safety, that kind of blew me away. But then you go and look at the advertising revenues that companies like Google make $230 billion. It’s a huge industry and using the trust and safety as a censorship to scare advertisers. You see this on twitter with Elon Musk filing this thermonuclear lawsuit. It’s a huge cash game.”
He added, “The pandemic was a blueprint for the future and so we tracked the money. We followed it all the way to the top men like Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, they added tens of billions of dollars to their net worth.”
Bruner’s book Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, Their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life is available now.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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