Zuckerberg Defies the Borg | (A Report in 3 Acts)

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


Matt Taibbi • Reclaim the Net


Resize text-+=

(Act One)
MATT TAIBBI
Zuckerberg Defies the Borg


As governments everywhere tighten their grip on the Internet, Meta's CEO blows a hole in years of official lies. How authorities brought this on themselves


Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifying before Congress in 2018. The Democrats—the Deep State's "designated party"— led the charge. The politicians were after more robust censorship, even if they took pains not to say it so plainly.


Zuckerberg yesterday sent a letter that in a country with a functioning news media would have major ramifications. Not in direct response to Jordan’s April query, it appears to have been sent at Zuckerberg’s own volition, and is filled with passages deeply embarrassing to authorities. The first is about pressure to “censor” — specifically “censor,” not “moderate” or “exercise oversight”:

In 2021, senior officials from the Biden administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a bit of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree… I believe the government was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it…

Another was about Meta’s blocking of Miranda Devine’s 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden after being warned by the FBI:

The FBI warned us about a potential Russian disinformation operation about the Biden family and Burisma in the lead up to the 2020 election. That fall, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family, we sent that story to fact-checkers for review and temporarily demoted it while waiting for a reply. It’s since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we should not have demoted the story.

Zuckerberg’s letter is a stiff poke in the eye to authorities, who brought this on themselves.


(Act Two)
by Reclaim the Net

AN APOLOGY TOUR?
Mark Zuckerberg Confirms Biden Administration Pressured Facebook on Censorship, Admits to Throttling Hunter Biden Story
In a revealing letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has addressed significant controversies surrounding the platform's content censorship practices, especially concerning actions taken during the 2020 presidential election cycle and the COVID-19 pandemic.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

Zuckerberg confirmed that senior officials from the Biden Administration exerted "pressure" on Facebook to censor specific content related to COVID-19, criticizing the administration's approach. Despite the external pressures, Zuckerberg emphasized that the final decisions on content moderation lay with Facebook, admitting regret over some of the decisions made under this pressure.

"In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration...repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire," Zuckerberg stated, reflecting on the administration's actions which he now believes were "wrong." He expressed regret that Meta was not more outspoken against this pressure at the time: "Ultimately, it was our decision whether or not to take content down, and we own our decisions."

In a separate disclosure, Zuckerberg detailed interactions with the FBI, which had warned the company of a potential Russian disinformation campaign targeting the Biden family and their association with Burisma ahead of the 2020 elections. This led to the suppression of a New York Post story involving corruption allegations against Joe Biden's family, which was later determined not to be Russian disinformation. Zuckerberg expressed regret over this decision as well, noting significant changes in Meta's policy to avoid such actions in the future.

"It's since been made clear that the reporting was not Russian disinformation, and in retrospect, we shouldn't have demoted the story," Zuckerberg conceded, alleging a policy shift to prevent future such occurrences: "We've changed our policies and processes to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Additionally, Zuckerberg addressed his contributions through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support electoral infrastructure during the pandemic, aiming to assist local election jurisdictions. He defended these contributions as non-partisan, though acknowledged public skepticism about the impartiality of such support.

"My goal is to be neutral and not play a role one way or another," he affirmed, signaling a withdrawal from similar contributions in future electoral cycles.

LOSING CONTROL?
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Laments Decline in Big Tech Collaboration Since 2016
Participants in the Democratic National Convention (DNC) were comfortable speaking publicly about what Congress is investigating as conduct that eventually (after the 2020 ballot) turned into government-Big Tech collusion.

And they are doing this by reminiscing about "the good old days" after the 2016 election when major social platforms panicked and got cowed into "working" with Democrats.

"Election integrity" is how supporters of the practice frame the concern that was and is being addressed as platforms have their "calls" with officials.

A University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism panel heard that there is more "deceptive" content and "manipulating voter sentiment" than ever - and yet social media companies are "sharply downsizing election integrity departments," as one report about the event put it.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chief information security officer Jude Meche shared that the relationship with these companies is now allegedly not what it used to be.

"Following the 2016 election, we had calls with X and with Meta all the time. They were working with us. That no longer exists, that all faded quickly. We don't have counterparts in these companies anymore," said Meche, whose committee's job is specifically to get Democrat candidates elected to the US Senate.


What happened in 2016, of course, was Donald Trump's victory. Professor of ethics and finance at New York University Michael Posner cautioned the panel that "we're back to 2016."

Posner was referring to social media companies backtracking on their promises to increase "content moderation" made in the wake of that election and accused, or perhaps warned them, that they have been allowed to act "with impunity" since.

But, the Twitter Files, for example, say that those who have been acting with impunity during that time are actually Democrats, and their administration since 2020.

Posner is concerned about the number of people companies like X and Meta these days employ to police and censor speech (election integrity and content moderation are what he calls it) - compared to 2016, when "there was a sense that something had to be done."

If this DNC panel is anything to go by, there is once again "a sense that something has to be done" among Democrats - but roping in social platforms, particularly, it seems, X, to "cooperate" is now a very different proposition compared to what was doable only a few years ago.

CHEERING FROM THE SIDELINES
Establishment Voices Attack Telegram Over Free Speech Protections in Wake of Founder's Arrest
Legacy media and some establishment figures are busy justifying the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, attacking the platform, but also making not-so-veiled threats aimed at other platform owners.

Ukrainian-born former member of the US National Security Council Alexander Vindman, who played a key role in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, took to X (calling it "Twitter") - to warn the social site and its owner Elon Musk that there could be "broader implications" in the context of the Durov arrest.

To Musk specifically, Vindman's extraordinary message, which reads very much like a threat, is that he "should be worried." As ever, the accusation is that X is allowing "misinformation" - that is, not censoring enough. And the implication is that unless that happens, there could be more arrests.

In one post Vindman went through the Democrat keywords (mentioning "MAGA tech bros," "weirdos," referring to Trump as "sexual predator") and expressed admiration for the EU's way of "enforcing content moderation" - ostensibly, as opposed to his adoptive country.

Former Belgian PM Guy Verhofstadt was also on X to reiterate how EU elites see, and treat the issue of free speech while throwing around dramatically-worded accusations: "Telegram sits at the center of global cybercrime... Free speech is not without responsibilities!"

It follows that other platform owners could face a situation similar to Durov's.
Officials who no longer hold formal office often serve to express some extreme points of view that those in government would rather not say publicly, and other handy mouthpieces are always legacy media outlets.

Thus the Guardian sees Telegram as a platform for "information and disinformation" about the war in Ukraine, but then goes on to brand it as the favorite app of "racists, violent extremists, antisemites" - this is the Guardian giving life to claims made by a pro-censorship group.

Europeans and the war again, and the Washington Post decided to disseminate the accusation originating from a senior EU security official that Telegram is "a primary platform for Russia to disseminate disinformation in Europe and Ukraine."

According to CBS, the same is true of another war: "Encrypted messaging apps like Telegram and WhatsApp have been a huge source of misinformation and disinformation in the Israel-Hamas war. Misinformation experts say it's because they are difficult to moderate."

And the New York Times decided to hand-pick several of the worst examples among the hundreds of millions of Telegram users, to vilify apps in general and argue in favor of censorship.

BLURRED LINES
Government and Private Groups Still Unite to Target Election "Misinformation"
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) - a part of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - has been enlisting private entities to help achieve one of its goals.

According to CISA, it would be to combat election misinformation and secure "election infrastructure" - while according to critics, it is to continue with the mission of censoring lawful speech "disfavored" by the current authorities seeking to remain where they are after November - by hook or crook.

CISA doesn't feel the need to hide this activity that has been taking place since 2018 through a program called the Election Infrastructure Subsector Coordinating Council (SCC). It is here that US government entities - federal, state, and local - meet private groups ("partners" as CISA calls them).

We obtained the latest document for you here.

What's coordinated here, according to the agency, and as was reported by The Federalist, is the reduction of "cyber, physical, and operational security risks to election infrastructure." The coordination is done to the point where government and private sector have adopted "a unified approach."

Information sharing ahead of the presidential election is also happening as SCC works with the Government Coordinating Council (GCC).

According to CISA, this collaboration is now "unprecedented" while what is referred to as "private sector owners and operators" sit, as part of SCC, in meetings with the FBI and election officials.

But CISA has other partners - the Election Integrity Project (EIP), formed months before the 2020 election, which has been blasted by the House Judiciary Committee as a tool for the government to bypass the First Amendment and censor speech.

The CISA site has a document, "Mis-, Dis-, and Malinformation: Planning and Incident Response Guide for Election Officials," put together by CISA/GCC Joint Mis/Disinformation Working Group.

In it, CISA "defines" what each of its targets is supposed to be, and ends up doing what all "misinformation warriors" do - offer subjective and broad descriptions susceptible to interpretation, instead of clear definitions.

For example, "malinformation" is said to be information "based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate."

The document mentions "delegitimization of election results" as one form of mis, dis, and mal information.

It's unclear if CISA has both 2016 and 2020 elections in mind - or only one - but this is how the activity is described: "Narratives or content that delegitimizes election results or sows distrust in the integrity of the process based on false or misleading claims."


(Act Three)
By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead
Global Research

Techno-Fascism: The Government Pressured Tech Companies to Censor Users


“Internet platforms have a powerful incentive to please important federal officials, and the record in this case shows that high-ranking officials skillfully exploited Facebook’s vulnerability… Not surprisingly these efforts bore fruit. Facebook adopted new rules that better conformed to the officials’ wishes, and many users who expressed disapproved views about the pandemic or COVID–19 vaccines were ‘deplatformed’ or otherwise injured.”Justice Samuel Alito, dissenting in Murthy v. Missouri 


Mark

 

 

Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.

In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.

In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.

Image is from ABC News

Zuckerberg testifies about Meta’s child safety policies in Senate hearing

Welcome to the age of technocensorship.

On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.

In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.

Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.

By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.

This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.

The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.

Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’

This is the very definition of technofascism.

Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.

The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal:

“The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”

Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.

The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.

Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.

In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.

Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.

This is how it starts.

First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”

Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.

By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.

Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.

Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.

Watch and learn.

We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.

Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.

Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now willeventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.

As Glenn Greenwald writes for The Intercept:

The glaring fallacy that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one’s own views… Facebook is not some benevolent, kind, compassionate parent or a subversive, radical actor who is going to police our discourse in order to protect the weak and marginalized or serve as a noble check on mischief by the powerful. They are almost always going to do exactly the opposite: protect the powerful from those who seek to undermine elite institutions and reject their orthodoxies. Tech giants, like all corporations, are required by law to have one overriding objective: maximizing shareholder value. They are always going to use their power to appease those they perceive wield the greatest political and economic power.

Be warned: it’s a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.

Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.

If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry. [Which it already does to a truly alarming extent.—Ed]

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.

With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called “government speech.”

What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideas—legitimate or not—and the people who espouse them.

Seventy-plus years after Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 depicted a fictional world in which books are burned in order to suppress dissenting ideas, while televised entertainment is used to anesthetize the populace and render them easily pacified, distracted and controlled, we find ourselves navigating an eerily similar reality.

*

Click the share button below to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

One Month Before Global Research’s Anniversary 

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org.

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

 


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function() { if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") { sfsi_widget_set(); } });


Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS




Eurofash

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


Kit Klarenberg • Alex Rubinstein


Resize text-+=

An investigative journalism project by Kit Klarenberg and Alex Rubinstein. Decrypting the imperial media narrative matrix.

Eurofash

Active Measures discusses the arrests of journalist Richard Medhurst in the UK and Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France.

 


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function() { if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") { sfsi_widget_set(); } });


Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS




For Russia, recovering Kursk is no walk in the rose garden

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


GILBERT DOCTOROW
opinions


Resize text-+=

Apti Alaudinov Kursk


In my last appearance on Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano asked me whether the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region would be ended by the time of our next chat, two days from today. The implicit assumption behind this question is that the Russians were doing so well destroying all the NATO-supplied tanks, personnel carriers and other advanced equipment, they were killing and maiming so many Ukrainian troops by their carpet bombing and heavy glide bombing of the region, that none but a rag tag collection of invaders would be left to liquidate or take prisoner in the several days ahead.

This assumption was founded in the confident declarations of my peers in the Opposition or, shall we say, ‘dissident’ movement in the United States. And their certainty, which was reflected in the over-hyped titles given to the recordings of their interviews on youtube came from back channels in Russia that my peers have been using for their public statements.

For example, the very widely watched Scott Ritter revealed in a recent interview that he has been in touch with the commander of the Chechen forces now engaged in Kursk, Alaudinov. Such contact is entirely credible given the fact that Ritter visited Grozny earlier this year, met with the republic’s leader Kadyrov, participated in a review of the Chechen troops and surely met with some of their military chiefs.

Indeed, in view of the seeming consensus that the Russian recovery of Kursk is proceeding apace, with 4,000 of the estimated 12,000 invaders having been killed up to last Thursday,  I also foresaw an early end to the conflict, though not necessarily measured in one week. As I explained, the Russian Ministry of Defense only claims territorial gains when it has thoroughly combed the territory and assured itself there are no enemy forces hiding out here or there. The 1,000 square kilometers initially occupied by the Ukrainians are a lot of ground to comb

However, I have had my reasonable doubts about the value of using such back channels as Alaudinov. Back in the days of the battle for Bakhmut, we saw a lot of Alaudinov on the Sixty Minutes news and talk show. Each day presenter Olga Skabeyeva warmly welcomed him on air and he handled himself very well, speaking optimistically of Russia’s progress but giving no specifics that could be of use to the enemy. In short, his lips were sealed.  I find it hard to believe that such a professional soldier and patriot would give anything of use to a foreigner, however friendly he or she might be to the Russian cause.

Last night’s edition of the talk show The Great Game gave a very different picture of the state of conflict in Kursk from what my peers are saying and of where this proxy war may be headed NOW, not in some distant future.

See https://rutube.ru/video/f8abcf8a37c43568ef44089025726934/

The key personality in this discussion was Frants Klintsevich, identified on the video as leader of the Russian Union of Veterans of Afghanistan. His Wikipedia entry further informs us that after serving as a Duma member for many years he is now a Senator, i.e., a member of the upper chamber of Russia’s bicameral legislature. He has represented the city administration of Smolensk in the western part of the Russian Federation, where he is no stranger, having been born just across the border in what is now the independent state of Belarus.

For 22 years ending in 1997, Klintsevich was an officer in Russia’s Armed Forces, serving primarily with the parachutists, meaning that he has guts and knows what it means to face battle. He retired with the rank of colonel, but continued his military education in the Military Academy of the General Staff, graduating in 2004. He also has a Ph.D. in psychology and is a gifted linguist, with command of German, Polish, and Belarussian. He is a member of the steering committee of the ruling United Russia party. I bring this out to make the point that Klintsevich is no garden variety ‘talking head’ but a very authoritative source.

And his testimony on The Great Game is the kind of Open Source on which I rely to say what I do about current Russian affairs.

Klintsevich’s commentary last night was intended to sober up the television audience and explain why the fight in Kursk is far more complicated and challenging than anyone is saying either on Russian or on Western news. It also lays the foundation for a dramatic Russian escalation of the proxy war into a hot war threatening to become WWIII. Why?  Because the so-called Zelensky gambit in Kursk is fully enabled by the United States and its NATO allies, using skills, satellite and airborne reconnaissance, command and control resources in real time that are superior to anything the Russians possess. It also has Western including U.S. boots on the ground. And in conditions like this, the disadvantaged side faces a strong temptation to go for the great equalizer, nuclear arms, to defend itself and to assure its victory.

Klintsevich also said what I have not seen elsewhere, given the ubiquitous belief in Opposition interviews that the Ukrainians in Kursk are cut off from sources of supply: that Kiev has now raised the number of its forces sent to Kursk from 12,000 to 20,000.

In short, the Zelensky gambit that is being enabled fully by the United States is not a PR stunt but a full-blown invasion intended to be the vanguard of what will be an air assault on Russia’s strategic assets far in the rear using JASSM, Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles launched from F16s.

Zelensky has further intimated that the two U.S. aircraft carriers and their escorts now in the Eastern Mediterranean may be there not to contain Iran but for an all-out attack on Russia using their jets to deliver nuclear strikes.  I add to his analysis that this may explain the knock-out of Russia’s early warning radar stations in the south of the country by Ukrainian drones acting on orders from Washington.

So far, the Russian response to these gathering storm clouds has been two days in succession of massive missile and drone attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine. But let us not have any illusions: if the Russians sense that the United States is about to pounce on them, to use the assets in Ukraine and beyond not just against Russian planes, which have been moved back beyond the 900 km range of the , JASSM and Storm Shadows, but on critical civilian infrastructure to disable the war effort, then a preventive Russian attack on NATO, on the continental United States. not to mince words, is entirely conceivable. 

All of this is sure to play out in the weeks before 4 November and the U.S. elections.  The Biden administration is evidently committed to a struggle to the death. Who will flinch? Who will “win” is an open question.  Washington, you have been forewarned by Mr. Klintsevich, who is surely speaking on behalf of the Kremlin.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024


Armageddon Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.


 


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function() { if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") { sfsi_widget_set(); } });


Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS




The slow dying of American democracy

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


Alex Krainer
Alex Krainer's TrendCompass


Resize text-+=

DNC's selection of Harris as the party candidate is proof positive that they plan on cheating and stealing another election. Will the American voters shrug again?


Somehow, in 2020, a very unpopular Democratic party candidate who could not pass his own party's primary elections without industrial-scale rigging, ended up as the nation's president. Supposedly, he won the largest number of popular votes ever obtained by any candidate.

Not everyone is convinced that this is what actually happened. The party itself twice cheated their most popular candidate in the primaries: the pied piper of the American working class, turncoat Bernie Sanders. This year, the party boldly skipped the primaries altogether, anointing the staggeringly inept and even more unpopular Kamala Harris as the party's candidate. So far, all this has elicited waves of shrugs and feeble protests from much of the voting public.



The obvious question is, why. Why would they choose such a dismal candidate as Harris, unless they were planning to cheat again and steal the 2024 elections? Evidence that they are already doing so is already piling up. Fake polls show Kamala is as popular as Trump, and a few bizarre videos and photos of her political rallies emerged over the recent days. They seem a tad inauthentic:


Kamala Harris rally: her voters are all very special people.


The most extensive voter fraud organization in history

 

A partial, but still shockingly candid account of the way the DNC stole the 2020 election appeared in a long 2021 Time magazine article titled, "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign that Saved the 2020 Election." That history was never really secret, it was only viciously censored.

Time magazine described the “vast, cross-partisan campaign to protect the electionconsisting of “shadow campaigners,” whose “work touched every aspect of the election.” For example, the article explains that, “They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”

Time magazine revealed all this, and much more, but did so on the pretense that this vast conspiracy was organized not to steal the elections for Joe Biden, but to protect American democracy. For his part, Joe Biden was a bit more candid. He said this: “we have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”



Now, why would Joe say that? Was it just a case of Joe Biden misspeaking again (yawn!) or was it deliberate, in-your-face disclosure by the secret ruling establishment to the US voters: we did it, we told you that we did it, and you all acquiesced, so everything that follows is on you.

The British new normal for the U.S.?


Whatever the case may be, they got away with epic election fraud in 2020 and so, what's to keep them from doing it again in November, even more brazenly this time? If the people acquiesce again, will the practice of getting deeply unpopular politicians with almost zero public support into office become the U.S. democracy’s new normal? If so, this would be just the fake democracy that's been perfected by Great Britain.

The fact that the American political system seems to be evolving toward the model of its former colonizer, Great Britain is very significant. It suggests that like Britain, the U.S. is being ruled by a hidden oligarchy. Behind the establishment's self-serving facade, Britain is not a democracy at all, and that fact is obvious once you scratch below the surface. In his 1966 book, "Tragedy and Hope," professor Carrol Quigley had much to say about the British political system.

Joe Biden: "We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”

Quigley wasn’t just any old college professor: he was a trusted insider in the Western political establishment and a mentor to the future U.S. President Bill Clinton. As a privileged member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was allowed to peruse their archives (which are strictly closed to the public and to most CFR members) for two years which enabled him to write one of the most eye-opening accounts of our modern history (1890-1965). In fact, when the establishment finally understood the revealing nature of “Tragedy and Hope,” the book was abruptly withdrawn from sales and all remaining copies were destroyed, together with the printing-plates.

Here's what Dr. Quigley had to say about the British political system: 

  • “…the greatest difference between Britain and the US rests in the fact that the former has no constitution. This is not generally recognized (p. 461)” 

  • “… many of the relationships which are covered by conventions are based on precedents that are secret (such as relationships between monarchy and Cabinet, between Cabinet and political parties, between Cabinet and civil service, and all the relationships within the Cabinet) and in many cases, the secrecy of these precedents is protected by law under the Official Secrets Act… (462)” 

  • “It is seriously stated in many books that the Cabinet is responsible to the House of Commons, and controlled by it. In truth, the Cabinet is not controlled by the Commons but the reverse." (463) 

  • [This should sound familiar:] The fact that there are no primary elections in Britain and that party candidates are named by the inner clique of the party is of tremendous importance and is the key to the control which the inner clique exercises over the House of Commons, yet it is rarely mentioned in books on the English political system." (463)

  • “There is also no separation of powers. The Cabinet is the government and ‘is expected to govern not only within the law, but, if necessary, without law or even against the law’ There is no limit on retroactive legislation, and no Cabinet or Parliament can bind its successors. The Cabinet can enter into war without Parliament’s permission or approval. It can expend money without Parliament’s approval or knowledge… It can authorize violations of the law, as was done in regard to payments of the Bank of England in 1847, in 1857, or in 1931. It can make treaties or other binding international agreements without the consent or knowledge of Parliament…" (469) 

  • "The idea, widely held in the US, that the Commons is a legislative body and the Cabinet is an executive body is not true. Legislation originates in the meetings of the inner clique of the party, acting as a first chamber. If accepted by the Cabinet it passes the Commons almost automatically. The Commons, rather than a legislative body, is the public forum in which the party announces the decisions it has made in secret party and Cabinet meetings and allows the opposition to criticize in order to test public reactions. Thus all bills come from the Cabinet, and rejection in Commons is almost unthinkable…" (469)

  • “It is not generally recognized that there have been many restrictions on democracy in Britain… effectively curtailing the exercises of democracy in the political sphere. (470)” [things got a lot worse since 1966]

  • “Since the two chief parties in England do not represent the ordinary Englishman, but instead represent the entrenched economic interests directly, there is relatively little ‘lobbying,’ or attempting to influence legislators by political or economic pressure. (477)” 

This is only a small sampling of verifiable facts. These facts clash with the subtle propaganda that’s been diffused through our societies and which has by now become part of Western civilization’s cultural folklore. Britain, in spite of its imperialistic, colonial past somehow came to be regarded as the cradle of modern democracy and human rights in the West. Unfortunately, once such beliefs are embraced, they are extremely difficult to dislodge from the public mind, and this is where many of our difficulties take root.


Leveraging the groupthink


The fact that many people will embrace and defend false beliefs should not come as a surprise. If they can convince a large percentage of the population that men can get pregnant, then they can convince them that Great Britain is a model democracy and that Kamala Harris is so popular that the primary elections shouldn’t be required. Recall that a poll by WPA Intelligence found that among U.S. democrats, 22% believe that the statement, "Some men can get pregnant" was TRUE. Among white, college-educated female democrats, 36% deemed that the statement was true. That's more than one in three!!

If such a large proportion of people are willing to believe absurdities, why should the DNC stop cheating? Why not steal elections again and then brazenly state that they were won fairly and browbeat anyone who questions that as Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot? They’ve done it before, they reaped their rewards and they got away with it. Does anybody really believe that they’ll suddenly start abiding by the law and the Constitution, even to their own detriment?

Of course they won’t. They'll move the new normal to increasingly resemble the British fake democracy. Fortunately, today the facade around the British political system is crumbling, revealing Britain for what it is: a neofeudal oligarchy, still deeply attached to its colonial past, still keen on “ruling the waves,” and still contemptuous of its subjects. It is not the model to emulate, but to transcend and leave behind where it belongs: in the dustbin of history. Let us hope that the American people will be able to reclaim their democracy and their nation.


Alex Krainer's TrendCompass is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function() { if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") { sfsi_widget_set(); } });


Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS




U.S. Volunteer Fighter Against Russia Speaks

Please make sure these dispatches reach as many readers as possible. Share with kin, friends and workmates and ask them to do likewise.


Eric Zuesse


Resize text-+=

U.S. Volunteer Fighter Against Russia Speaks

NBC News on August 21st headlined “Ukraine launches massive drone attack on Moscow” and interviewed an anonymous U.S. veteran and now volunteer fighter against Russia who had participated in Ukraine’s attack against Kursk in Russia, and he said, “We didn’t start this. We are simply helping freedom-loving people against a totalitarian regime.”

Does he get his ideas from the battlefields in Ukraine and in Russia, or from somewhere else — maybe from the U.S. Government and its mainstream ‘news’-media?

On August 13th, the New York Times headlined an op-ed, “The West Clearly Doesn’t Want to Defeat Putin”, which argued that “Russia grows ever bolder, like a bully who realizes the teacher isn’t coming,” and, “By first casting its lot with Ukraine and then failing to follow through, America has lost its place as the bulwark of the West that can guarantee protection and peace to its allies.” It closed: “A small war far away from America’s borders has reshaped our world — and made America’s place in it smaller.”

Regardless of the viewpoints that are expressed, they might as well have been created in the PR agencies of Lockheed Martin and America’s other armaments manufacturers — whose sales are booming.

Some reports in America’s billionaires-backed media indicate that Russia will lose against Ukraine because Ukraine is a democracy whereas Russia is a dictatorship, and others report that Ukraine will lose against Russia because America is more like Neville Chamberlain than like Winston Churchill.

It is odd that throughout all of America’s billionaires-controlled media, the assumption is that America is a democracy — which is false — and that the war in Ukraine started on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, instead of in February 2014 when America’s coup grabbed Ukraine and started the war in Ukraine.


Lili News 029
  • In cynicism and power, the US propaganda machine easily surpasses Orwells Ministry of Truth.
  • Now the fight against anti-semitism is being weaponised as a new sanctimonious McCarthyism.
  • Unless opposed, neither justice nor our Constitutional right to Free Speech will survive this assault.


window.addEventListener("sfsi_functions_loaded", function() { if (typeof sfsi_widget_set == "function") { sfsi_widget_set(); } });


Print this article

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of The Greanville Post.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License • 
ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS