Orwell, again. 1984 was prescient on so many concepts that it seems it was written for the Biden era. Underlying it all is the concept of disinformation, the root of propaganda and mind control. So it is in 2023. Just ask FBI Director Chris Wray. Or Facebook.
George OrwellтАЩs novel explores the concept of disinformation and its role in controlling and manipulating society. Orwell presents a dystopian future where a totalitarian regime, led by the Party and its figurehead Big Brother, exerts complete control over its citizensтАЩ lives, including their thinking. The Party employs a variety of techniques to disseminate disinformation and maintain its power. One of the most prominent examples is the concept of тАЬNewspeak,тАЭ a language designed to restrict and manipulate thought by reducing the range of expressible ideas. Newspeak aims to replace words and concepts that could challenge or criticize the PartyтАЩs ideology, effectively controlling the way people think and communicate (unhomed, misspoke, LGBQTIAXYZ+, nati0nalist, terrorist.)
Orwell also introduces the concept of doublethink, which refers to the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept them both as true. This psychological manipulation technique allows the Party to control the minds of its citizens and make them believe in false information or embrace contradictory ideas without questioning (masks which do not prevent disease transmission are still mandatory.) The Party in 1984 alters historical records and disseminates false information through the Ministry of Truth. This manipulation of historical events and facts aims to control the collective memory of the society in a post-truth era, ensuring that the PartyтАЩs version of reality remains unquestioned (war in Ukraine, Iraq, El Salvador, Vietnam, all to protect our freedom at home.)
Through these portrayals, Orwell highlights the dangers of disinformation and its potential to distort truth, manipulate public opinion, and maintain oppressive systems of power. The novel serves as a warning about the importance of critical thinking, independent thought, and the preservation of objective truth in the face of disinformation and propaganda.
Disinformation is bad. But replacing disinformation with censorship and/or replacement with other disinformation is worse. 1984 closed down the marketplace of ideas. So for 2023.
In 2023 America the medium is social media and the Ministry of Truth is the Executive Branch, primarily the FBI. Topics the FBI at one point labeled disinformation and sought to censor in the name of protecting Americans from disinformation include but are not limited to the contents of Hunter BidenтАЩs laptop, the Covid lab leak theory, the efficiency and value to society of masks, lockdowns, and vaccines, speech about election integrity and the 2020 presidential election, the security of voting by mail, even parody accounts mocking the president (about Finnegan Biden, Hunter BidenтАЩs daughter.)
When asked before Congress to define disinformation, FBI Director Christopher Wray could not do it, even though it is the basis for the FBIтАЩs campaign to censor Americans. ItтАЩs a made up term with no fixed meaning. That gives it its power, like тАЬterrorismтАЭ was used a decade or so earlier. Remember тАЬdomestic terrorismтАЭ? That stretched to cover everything from white power advocates to J6 marchers to BLM protestors to Moms for Liberty. It just canтАЩt be all those things all the time but it can be all those things at different times, as needed. The term тАЬhate speechтАЭ is another flexible tool of enforcement and is why efforts to codify banning hate speech under the First Amendment must be resisted so strongly. Same for QAnon. WeтАЩve heard about QAnon for years now but still canтАЩt figure out if it even exists. To read the MSM, you would think it is the most powerful and sinister thing one can imagine yet seems to be imaginary, another Cthulhu. Do they have an office, an email address, a lair somewhere?
In simple words: the government is using social media companies as proxies to censor the contrary thoughts of Americans, all under the guise of correcting misinformation and in direct contrivance of the First Amendment.
How bad does it get? As part of its 2023 investigation into the federal governmentтАЩs role in censoring lawful speech on social media platforms, the House Committee on the Judiciary issued a subpoena to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet, the parent of Google and YouTube. Documents obtained revealed the FBI, on behalf of a compromised Ukrainian intelligence service, requested and, in some cases, directed, the worldтАЩs largest social media platforms to censor Americans engaging in constitutionally protected speech online about the war in Ukraine.
Another tool of thought control is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was supposed to be used to spy on foreigners but has been improperly used against thousands of Americans. Over 100,000 Americans were spied on in 2022, down from three million in 2021.
Does it sound familiar? An amorphous threat is pounded into the heads of Americans (Communism and Red Scares, Covid, terrorism, disinformation) and in its name nearly anything is justified, including in the most recent battle for freedom, censorship. The wrapper is that it is all for our own protection (Biden himself accused social-media companies of тАЬkilling people,тАЭ the more modern version of the terrorism-eraтАЩs тАЬblood on their handsтАЭ) with the government assuming the role of knowing what is right and correct for Americans to know. The target in name is always some Ruskie-type foreigner, but in reality morphs to be censorship of our citizens ourselves (stained as тАЬpro-Putin.тАЭ) Yet Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted the government asked Facebook to suppress true information. He said during the Covid era the scientific establishment within the government asked тАЬfor a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true.тАЭ
Under President Joe Biden, the government has undertaken тАЬthe most massive attack against free speech in United States history.тАЭ That was the extraordinary conclusion reached by a federal judge in Missouri v. Biden. The case exposed the incredible lengths to which the Biden White House and its federal agencies have gone to bully social-media platforms into removing political views they dislike. The White House is appealing and attained a stay, hoping to retain this powerful tool of thought control right out of 1984. A victory for censorship of Americans and their thoughts could be the greatest threat to free speech in American history.
тАЬThere is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.тАЭтАФRay Bradbury
What we are witnessing is the modern-day equivalent of book burning which involves doing away with dangerous ideasтАФlegitimate or notтАФand the people who espouse them. Seventy years after Ray BradburyтАЩs novel┬аFahrenheit 451┬аdepicted 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.
Welcome to the age of technocensorship.
On paperтАФunder the First Amendment, at leastтАФwe are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government officialтАФor corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTubeтАФmay allow.
By тАЬcensor,тАЭ weтАЩre referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the governmentтАЩs own approved narrative.
This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.
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 тАЬdangerousтАЭ disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from тАЬdangerousтАЭ ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power eliteтАЩs 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 itтАЩs a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the governmentтАЩs dictates.
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 OrwellтАЩs 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.
This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.
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.
Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes тАЬextremism, тАЬwe the peopleтАЭ might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.
Whatever we tolerate nowтАФwhatever we turn a blind eye toтАФwhatever 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 groupтАФprominent or notтАФis 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 governmentтАЩs 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.
HereтАЩs the point: you donтАЩt 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 na├пve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.
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 oneтАЩs own viewsтАж 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: itтАЩs a slippery slope from censoring so-called illegitimate ideas to silencing truth.
Eventually, as George 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.
ItтАЩs happening already.
With every passing day, weтАЩre 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 тАЬgovernment speech.тАЭ
Little by little, Americans are being conditioned to accept routine incursions on their freedoms.
This is how oppression becomes systemic, what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.
ItтАЩs a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.
DiamondтАЩs concerns related to Easter IslandтАЩs now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but itтАЩs a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.
As Diamond explains, тАЬIn just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalismтАж Why didnтАЩt they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?тАЭ
Much like AmericaтАЩs own colonists, Easter IslandтАЩs early colonists discovered a new worldтАФтАЬa pristine paradiseтАЭтАФteeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.
The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.
The forestтАжvanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestationтАж The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detectтАж Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.тАЭ
Sound painfully familiar yet?
WeтАЩve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. The erosion of our freedoms has happened so incrementally, no one seems to have noticed. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognize the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry have become fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.
Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical rightтАФto think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we wantтАФthey add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.
It seems there are many reasons to get shadow-banned, but unfortunately we’re never told what “crime” we committed nor are we given a chance to defend ourselves from the “indictment” in whatever “court” found us “guilty.” As in a nightmarish tale right out of Kafka, the powers making the charges, declaring the verdict “guilty as charged” and imposing the penalty are completely obscured.
Those found “guilty” discover their secret “conviction” and “sentence” when their livelihood is destroyed (i.e. they’re demonetized) and their online presence suddenly diminishes or vanishes.
I call this being sent to Digital Siberia. As with the real gulag, most of those convicted in the secret digital Star Chamber are innocent of any real crime; their “crime” was challenging the approved narratives.
Which leads to my question: why was little old marginalized-blogger me shadow-banned? Those responsible are under no obligation to reveal my “crime,” the evidence used against me, or offer me an opportunity to defend myself against the charges, much less file an appeal.
My astonishment at being shadow-banned (everyone in Digital Siberia claims to be innocent, heh) is based on my relatively restrained online presence, as I stick to the journalistic standards I learned as a free-lancer for mainstream print media: source data, excerpts and charts from mainstream / institutional sources and raise the questions / build the thesis on those links / data.
I avoid conspiracy-related topics (not my interest, not my expertise) and hot-button ideological / political cleavages (us vs. them is also not my interest). My go-to source for charts and data is the Federal Reserve database (FRED) and government agencies such as the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, IRS, etc., and respected non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Pew Research Center, RAND, investment banks, etc.
Given my adherence to journalistic standards, I wonder: how did someone like me get shadow-banned?
The standard cause (or excuse) for being overtly banned is “distributing misinformation.” This charge is never specific; something you posted “violates our community standards,” or equivalent broad-brush language.
Shadow-banning is even more pernicious because you’re not even notified that your visibility to others has been restricted or dropped to zero. You see your post, but nobody else does.
What are the precise standards for declaring a link or statement as “misinformation?” As the twitter files revealed, what qualifies as “misinformation” is constantly shifting as a sprawling ecosystem of censors share information and blacklists. This report is well worth reading: The Censorship-Industrial Complex: Top 50 Organizations To Know (Zero Hedge).
Not only do we not know what qualifies as “misinformation,” we also don’t know what Big Tech algorithms are flagging and what their response is to whatever’s been flagged. My colleague Nate Hagens, who is equally scrupulous about using authoritative sources, posted this comment last year:
“It’s both funny and scary. It was explained to me today that the new Facebook/Meta algorithm downrates users who have cookies w evidence of visiting non-mainstream news sources/blogs. Even when one uses proxy servers and incognito mode, if you frequent e.g. Aljazeera or other news sites instead of CNN or FOX the algorithms categorizes your FB content (even if it’s a chicken soup recipe) as ‘non-mainstream’. Big brother is watching (and not even thinking). Those ideas/voices outside the status quo aren’t on equal footing- and the status quo (material growth/cultural values) is what’s leading us down the current path, without a map or plan.”
The systems that shadow-ban us are completely opaque. Who’s to say that a knowledgeable human reviews who’s been banned or shadow-banned? Given the scale of these Big Tech platforms and Search Engines, is that even possible?
It’s well known that YouTube constantly changes its ranking algorithms so they are harder to game, i.e. manipulate to advance one’s visibility.
It’s also known that simply posting a link to a site flagged as “misinformation” is enough to get your post excommunicated and your site flagged in unknown ways with unknown consequences.
What I do know is that Of Two Minds was publicly identified as “Russian Propaganda” by a bogus organization with no supporting data, PropOrNot in 2016. This front’s blacklist was prominently promoted by the Washington Post on page one in 2016, more or less giving it the authority of a major MSM outlet.
One might ask how a respected, trusted newspaper could publish a list from a shadowy front without specifying the exact links that were identified as “Russian Propaganda.” Standard journalistic protocol requires listing sources, not just publishing unverified blacklists.
Clearly, the Washington Post should have, at a minimum, demanded a list of links from each site on the blacklist that were labeled as “Russian Propaganda” so the Post journalists could check for themselves. At a minimum, the Post should have included inks as examples of “Russian Propaganda” for each site on the list. They did neither, a catastrophic failure of the most fundamental journalistic standards. Yet no one in the media other than those wrongfully blacklisted even noted or questioned this abject failure.
In effect, the real propaganda was the unsourced, un-investigated blacklist on the front page of the Washington Post.
How did I get on a list of “Russian Propaganda” when I never wrote about Russia or anything related to Russia?
There are two plausible possibilities. One is “guilt by association.” I’ve been interviewed by Max Keiser since 2011, and Max and his partner Stacy Herbert posted their videos on RT (Russia Today) and an Iranian media outlet. Needless to say, these sources were flagged, as was anyone associated with them. So perhaps merely having a link to an interview I did with Max and Stacy was enough to get me shadow-banned. (Shout-out to Max and Stacy in El Salvador.)
Alternatively, perhaps questioning the coronation of Queen Hillary in any way also got me on the blacklist.
Once on the blacklist, then the damage was already done, as the network of censors share blacklists without verifying the “crime”–a shadowy “crime” without any indictment, hearing or recourse, right out of Kafka.
Shadow-banning manifests in a number of ways. Readers reported that they couldn’t re-tweet any of my tweets. Another reader said the Department of Commerce wouldn’t load a page from my site, declaring it “dangerous,” perhaps with the implication that it was a platform for computer viruses and worms–laughable because there is nothing interactive on my sites and thus no potential source for viruses other than links to legitimate sources and adverts served by Investing Channel.
Users of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have probably noticed that your feed is populated by the same “friends” or “folks you follow.” In other words, the feed you’re presented with is curated by algorithms which sort and display posts / tweets / search results according to parameters that are invisible to users and regulators.
It’s easy to send flagged accounts to Digital Siberia, and trouble-free to leave them there until the trouble-maker goes broke.
It’s impossible to chart the extent of the shadow-banning, or who’s doing it, sharing blacklists, etc. This entire ecosystem of censorship is invisible. Recall that in the Soviet gulag, having an “anti-Soviet dream” was enough to get you a tenner (10-year sentence) in the gulag. Here, posting a flagged link will get you a tenner in Digital Siberia.
In today’s zeitgeist, merely mentioning the possibility that the COVID-19 virus escaped from a lab resulted in an instant ban in 2020. How could the possibility that it escaped from a nearby lab dedicated to viral research be labeled as “disinformation” when the facts were not yet known?
The answer is of course that the lab-escape theory was “politically sensitive” and therefore verboten.
You see the problem: what’s deemed “politically sensitive” changes with the wind, and so the boundaries of what qualifies as “misinformation” have no visible or definable edge. Virtually anything consequential can suddenly become “politically sensitive” and then declared “misinformation.” When the guidelines of what’s a “crime” and the processes of “conviction” are all opaque, and there is no hearing or recourse to being “convicted” of a shadow-“crime,” we’ve truly entered a Kafkaesque world.
How did someone like me get shadow-banned? There is no way to know, and that’s a problem for our society and our ability to solve the polycrisis we now face.
I joke that what got me shadow-banned was using Federal Reserve charts. Perhaps that’s not that far from reality.
More than two years since Big Tech made the historic decision to limit access to the New York PostтАЩs story about President Joe BidenтАЩs son Hunter, users are getting a glimpse into how Twitter came to that decision. However, delusional legacy and social media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent and bury the consequential details of the process.
An October 2020 New York Post story titled тАЬSmoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dadтАЭ offered sensationalistic photos and details of HunterтАЩs addiction issues coupled with damning emails indicating that Hunter utilized his connection with his father to curry favor and economic opportunity in foreign countries. At the time, intelligence officials told members of the press that the story was Russian propaganda aimed at influencing that yearтАЩs election. As a result, Big Tech platforms limited access to the story including in direct messages which is usually done only in extreme cases such as child pornography.
On Friday, December 2, 2022,┬аElon Musk┬аpromised to release files related to the matter. Soon afterward, journalist Matt Taibbi published a┬аreport┬аbased on thousands of internal Twitter documents. Taibbi demonstrated that TwitterтАЩs decision to remove the Hunter Biden story was influenced in part by BidenтАЩs campaign. Indeed, as Taibbi described, TwitterтАЩs staff regularly fields phone calls from powerful people in government and acts upon their requests to moderate content. And itтАЩs is not just Twitter. During a 2022 interview with Joe Rogan, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook)┬аMark Zuckerberg┬аadmitted that his companyтАЩs decision to moderate content тАУ including the 2020 Hunter story тАУ is sometimes based on recommendations from the intelligence community. Similarly,┬аThe Intercept┬аreported in 2022 that the┬аDepartment of Homeland Security┬аregularly informs Big TechтАЩs content moderation practices.
In any other country, the revelation that government and Big Tech collude to shape public discourse and democratic participation would make Americans irate, but the story has received little coverage. The coverage received by legacy media has been dismissive. CNN reduced the files as simply showing тАЬhow employees debated how to handle 2020 New York Post Hunter Biden story.тАЭ Variety echoed the same sentiments. Meanwhile, giving readers less than 24-hours to process what Taibbi reported, WAPO declared that MuskтАЩs Twitter Files тАЬhavenтАЩt changed minds.тАЭ
The lack of substantive coverage of the Twitter Files is rooted in the legacy mediaтАЩs fears over the broader implications of the story. Since 2015, legacy media have been fostering a moral panic over fake news and blamed their competition тАУ digital media тАУ for its spread. They have practically begged Big Tech overlords to fix the country and restore faith in journalism by censoringproblematiccontent, which they often refer to as misinformation or disinformation. TaibbiтАЩs reporting demonstrates that the news mediaтАЩs framing of Big Tech content moderation as a solution to anti-democratic practices, actually functioned as an anti-democratic position that enables the elite political class to shape public dialogue and manufacture consent of the electorate.
Adding to the news mediaтАЩs inability to cover the story is their business model which depends on framing every story as an issue of left versus right, blue versus red, Democrat versus Republican. Indeed, whether it is cable news audiences or legacy newspaper subscribers, news outlets cater to audiencesтАЩ confirmation biases by villainizing a caricature of the тАЬotherside.тАЭ This has reduced every story to a partisan issue, and fostered such high levels of hyper-partisanship vitriol that half of Americans cite тАЬother AmericansтАЭ as their number one fear, while 40% contend that a civil war will occur in their lifetime.
Although they still try, the legacy media has found it impossible to frame the Twitter Files as a hyper-partisan story because the political duopoly, not one party, utilizes Big Tech to manufacture the consent of the people. For example, Big TechтАЩs content moderation of was influenced by BidenтАЩs Campaign in 2020 and leading Democrats after January 6th. Similarly, Donald TrumpтАЩs campaign spent $100 million to work with Facebook staff to amplify their campaign messages, and Trump met personally with Zuckerberg in secretmeetings throughout his presidency. Furthermore, legacy news media outlets cannot villainize the тАЬother sideтАЭ for censorship when loyalists for both parties are complicit. Indeed, the feckless liberals who begged Big Tech overlords to censor content about elections and Covid-19 are equally complicit as the neocons who championed censorship of the press and individuals, and organizations during the War on Terror and Trump supporters who lauded his attacks on the freepress and whistleblowers such as JulianAssange.
Anyone can, and will, argue that HunterтАЩs photos are not newsworthy, but that is for the citizens to decide when they encounter the story. That is how a free press in a democratic republic works. A democracy does not depend on Big Tech overlords acting at the behest of the political class to determine what content the public should see. The notion that censorship will erode hate, correct falsehoods, or solve national problems is a fallacy of utmost proportions. The contemporary censorious crowd seems to be in such a state of delusion that they have come to believe that World War II and the Holocaust could have been avoided if Twitter was around to censor Nazis. It is ludicrous and the establishment news media deserve part of the blame for perpetuating this lunacy.
A truly independent press would privilege narratives that expose Silicon Valley propaganda, which has led users of all political ideologies to a delusional state of Stockholm Syndrome, where Big Tech exploits their labor, erodes their privacy, and manufactures their consent for the duopoly, but users still laud and entrust the industry with their democracy. To be clear, Big Tech commercialized tools that were developed by the military industrial complex during the Cold War (which was not so cold in much of the world) to surveil and exploit users. They advertised their platforms as transformative tools that strengthen democracy and inclusion. As whistleblower after whistleblower remind us, this is all nonsense: Big TechтАЩs oligarchs are rapacious capitalists who time and time again put profits over people. No entity should be moderating information in a democracy, and as the Twitter Files reveal, the unaccountable profiteers in Big Tech are no exception.
So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that itтАЩs difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.
Many of the people in charge of moderating content at Facebook have been recruited from the government, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), FBI and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).
So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that itтАЩs difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.
In January 1977, Washington Post reporter Carl BernsteinтАЩs 25,000-word article was published in Rolling Stone, detailing the close relationship between the CIA and the press.
The program was known as Operation Mockingbird and involved the CIA paying hundreds of journalists to write fake stories and spread propaganda instead of real news.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that FacebookтАЩs values are based on the American tradition of free expression. Yet, censorship on social media has gone mainstream as part of the campaign to control what you see online, and therefore what you think and how you perceive reality.
In an official Facebook video, a Meta employee identified as тАЬAaronтАЭ states that heтАЩs the manager of тАЬthe team that writes the rules for Facebook,тАЭ deciding тАЬwhat is acceptable and what is not.тАЭ These gatekeepers effectively dictate what the platformтАЩs 2.9 billion active users see when theyтАЩre scrolling their feeds.
тАЬIt is here where decisions about what content is allowed, what will be promoted and who or what will be suppressed are made. These decisions affect what news and information billions of people across the world see every day.
тАЬTherefore, those in charge of the algorithms hold far more power and influence over the public sphere than even editors at the largest news outlets.тАЭ
But according to MacleodтАЩs MintPress investigation, many of the people in charge of moderating content at Facebook have been recruited from the government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI and DOD, to the extent that, he says, тАЬsome might feel it becomes difficult to see where the U.S. national security state ends and Facebook begins.тАЭ
тАШAaron is CIAтАЩ
Facebook employee Aaron, featured in their marketing video, formerly worked for the CIA, up until July 2019, though this isnтАЩt disclosed by Facebook. According to Macleod:
тАЬIn his 15-year career, Aaron Berman rose to become a highly influential part of the CIA.
тАЬFor years, he prepared and edited the president of the United StatesтАЩ daily brief, тАШwr[iting] and overs[eeing] intelligence analysis to enable the President and senior U.S. officials to make decisions on the most critical national security issues,тАЩ especially on тАШthe impact of influence operations on social movements, security, and democracy,тАЩ his LinkedIn profile reads.
тАЬNone of this is mentioned in the Facebook video.тАЭ
Meta is teeming with ex-government agents
Berman is not the only ex-CIA agent working at Facebook тАФ far from it. So many ex-government workers are now employed by Facebook that itтАЩs difficult to view Meta as a private company instead of a government partner, intent on silencing anyone who speaks out against the official narrative.
Deborah Berman, a trust and safety project manager for Meta, was an intelligence analyst at the CIA for 10 years.
Bryan Weisbard, now a director of trust and safety, security and data privacy for Meta, worked as a CIA intelligence officer from 2006 to 2010 before becoming a diplomat.
While at the CIA, his job involved leading тАЬglobal teams to conduct counter-terrorism and digital cyber investigationsтАЭ and тАЬIdentif[ying] online social media misinformation propaganda and covert influence campaigns.тАЭ
Cameron Harris, a trust and safety project manager at Meta, was a CIA analyst until 2019.
Former members of other government agencies are also common at Meta. Macleod revealed:
Emily Vacher, who Facebook/Meta recruited to be a director of trust and safety, worked at the FBI from 2001 to 2011, becoming a supervisory special agent.
Mike Bradow, employed as a misinformation policy manager at Meta since 2020, worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2010 to 2020.
тАЬUSAID is a U.S. government-funded influence organization which has bankrolled or stage managed multiple regime change operations abroad, including in Venezuela in 2002, Cuba in 2021, and ongoing attempts in Nicaragua,тАЭ Macleod noted.
Neil Potts, FacebookтАЩs vice president of trust and safety, is a former intelligence officer with the U.S. Marine Corps.
Sherif Kamal, trust and safety program manager at Meta, worked as a program manager at the Pentagon until 2020.
Joey Chan, trust and safety program manager at Meta, worked as a commanding officer for the U.S. Army until 2021, where he oversaw more than 100 troops in the Asia Pacific region.
Ex-intelligence officers in control of what you see
Meta is appearing increasingly like another branch of government put in place to mold the views of society, as with a workforce composed of ex-intelligence agents, itтАЩs difficult, if not impossible, to remain impartial.
Macleod wrote:
тАЬHiring so many ex-U.S. state officials to run FacebookтАЩs most politically sensitive operations raises troubling questions about the companyтАЩs impartiality and its proximity to government power.
тАЬMeta is so full of national security state agents that at some point, it almost becomes more difficult to find individuals in trust and safety who were not formerly agents of the state.
тАЬDespite its efforts to brand itself as a progressive, тАШwokeтАЩ organization, the Central Intelligence Agency remains deeply controversial.
тАЬIt has been charged with overthrowing or attempting to overthrow numerous foreign governments (some of them democratically elected), helping prominent Nazis escape punishment after World War Two, funnelling large quantities of drugs and weapons around the world, penetrating domestic media outlets, routinely spreading false information and operating a global network of тАШblack sitesтАЩ where prisoners are repeatedly tortured.
тАЬTherefore, critics argue that putting operatives from this organization in control of our news feeds is deeply inappropriate.тАЭ
CIA history of control and corruption
For instance, U.S. intelligence agencies kept watch on Ukrainian nationalist organizations as a source of counterintelligence against the Soviet Union. Declassified CIA documents show close ties between U.S. intelligence and Ukrainian nationalists since 1946.
After WWII, Stepan Bandera, the leader of the most radical section of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which was founded in 1929 and had the ultimate goal of creating an ethnically pure, independent Ukraine, and other Ukrainian Nazi leaders fled to Europe, and the CIA helped protect them.
The CIA later informed the Immigration and Naturalization Service that it had concealed Bandera and other Ukrainians from the Soviets.
While the Nuremberg trials brought justice to the leaders of fascist Germany, тАЬthe Ukrainian Nazis were spared the same fate, and some were even granted indulgences by the CIA.тАЭ
According to the film тАЬUkraine on Fire,тАЭ тАЬBy 1951, the Agency [CIA] excused the illegal activities of OUNтАЩs security branch in the name of Cold War necessity.тАЭ
In another disturbing example, one of the first scientists assigned to Fort DetrickтАЩs secret biological warfare laboratory during WWII was bioweapons expert Frank Olson. In 1953, Olson died after plummeting to the ground from a high-rise hotel room window in Manhattan.
Days earlier, he had been secretly drugged by the CIA, which claimed OlsonтАЩs death was a suicide. Decades later, however, it was revealed that Olson didnтАЩt jump from the window тАФ he was deliberately murdered after the CIA became concerned that he might reveal disturbing top-secret operations.
This includes the CIAтАЩs top-secret MK-Ultra project, which engaged in mind control experiments, human torture and other medical studies, including how much LSD it would take to тАЬshatter the mind and blast away consciousness.тАЭ
Bernstein described full-time CIA agents who worked as journalists and more than 400 U.S. journalists who secretly carried out assignments for the CIA over a 25-year period.
The program was known as Operation Mockingbird and involved the CIA paying journalists to write fake stories and spread propaganda instead of real news. Activist Post added:
тАЬImplementing a fact-checking solution that is a centralized mechanism powered by journalists they could easily control is certainly the CIAтАЩs тАж dream, as a CIA director was once quoted stating that once the publicтАЩs perception is confused about what is real and what is propaganda then their mission would be complete.
тАЬNow you might think the CIA owning journalists is conspiratorial, but it happened with MKultraтАЩs Operation Mockingbird.тАЭ
As further noted by Monthly Review, the situation has only gotten worse, as evidenced by the steady stream of ex-CIA agents now heading up policy and content moderation at Facebook. тАЬThe CIA used to infiltrate the media. Now the CIA is the media,тАЭ the news outlet noted, adding:
тАЬBack in the good old days, when things were more innocent and simple, the psychopathic Central Intelligence Agency had to covertly infiltrate the news media to manipulate the information Americans were consuming about their nation and the world.
тАЬNowadays, there is no meaningful separation between the news media and the CIA at all.тАЭ
Social media infiltrated by government agencies
To be clear, itтАЩs not only Facebook thatтАЩs relying on former CIA agents to decide what you can see. Other social media giants are similarly affected, employing individuals from a multitude of government agencies.
тАЬIn previous investigations,тАЭ Macleod wrote, тАЬthis author has detailed how TikTok is flooded with NATO officials, how former FBI agents abound at Twitter, and how Reddit is led by a former war planner for the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council.тАЭ
However, he says, тАЬthe sheer scale of infiltration of Facebook blows these away. Facebook, in short, is utterly swarming with spooks.тАЭ
What does this mean for the information you see on a daily basis, assuming youтАЩre one of the billions who take a peek or two at Facebook during the day? Macleod explained:
тАЬThe problem is that having so many former CIA employees running the worldтАЩs most important information and news platform is only one small step removed from the agency itself deciding what you see and what we do not see online тАФ and all with essentially no public oversight.
тАЬIn this sense, this arrangement constitutes the best of both worlds for Washington. They can exert significant influence over global news and information flows but maintain some veneer of plausible deniability.
тАЬThe U.S. government does not need to directly tell Facebook what policies to enact. This is because the people in decision-making positions are inordinately those who rose through the ranks of the national security state beforehand, meaning their outlooks match those of WashingtonтАЩs.
тАЬAnd if Facebook does not play ball, quiet threats about regulation or breaking up the companyтАЩs enormous monopoly can also achieve the desired outcomes.тАЭ
So it turns out the US intelligence cartel has been working intimately with online platforms to regulate the тАЬcognitive infrastructureтАЭ of the population. This is according to a new investigative report by The Intercept, based on documents obtained through leaks and an ongoing lawsuit, on the тАЬretoolingтАЭ of the Department of Homeland Security from an agency focused on counterterrorism to one increasingly focused on fighting тАЬmisinformation, disinformation, and malinformationтАЭ online.
While the DHSтАЩs hotly controversial тАЬDisinformation Governance BoardтАЭ was shut down in response to public outcry, the Intercept report reveals what authors Lee Fang and Ken Klippenstein describe as тАЬan expansive effort by the agency to influence tech platformsтАЭ in order to тАЬcurb speech it considers dangerousтАЭ:
According to a draft copy of DHSтАЩs Quadrennial Homeland Security Review, DHSтАЩs capstone report outlining the departmentтАЩs strategy and priorities in the coming years, the department plans to target тАЬinaccurate informationтАЭ on a wide range of topics, including тАЬthe origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.тАЭ
Docs show Facebook and Twitter closely collaborating w/ Dept of Homeland Security, FBI to police тАЬdisinfo.тАЭ Plans to expand censorship on topics like withdrawal from Afghanistan, origins of COVID, info that undermines trust in financial institutions. https://t.co/Zb3zmI1dQF
The report reveals pervasive efforts on the part of the DHS and its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), along with the FBI, to push massive online platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to censor content in order to suppress тАЬthreatsтАЭ as broad as fomenting distrust in the US government and US financial institutions.
тАЬThere is also a formalized process for government officials to directly flag content on Facebook or Instagram and request that it be throttled or suppressed through a special Facebook portal that requires a government or law enforcement email to use,тАЭ The Intercept reports.
тАЬEmails between DHS officials, Twitter, and the Center for Internet Security outline the process for such takedown requests during the period leading up to November 2020,тАЭ says The Intercept. тАЬMeeting notes show that the tech platforms would be called upon to тАШprocess reports and provide timely responses, to include the removal of reported misinformation from the platform where possible.тАЩтАЭ
While these government agencies contend that they are not technically forcing these tech platforms to remove content, The Intercept argues that its investigation shows тАЬCISAтАЩs goal is to make platforms more responsive to their suggestions,тАЭ while critics argue that тАЬsuggestionsтАЭ from immensely powerful institutions will never be taken as mere suggestions.
тАЬWhen the government suggests things, itтАЩs not too hard to pull off the velvet glove, and you get the mail fist,тАЭ Michigan State UniversityтАЩs Adam Candeub tells The Intercept. тАЬAnd I would consider such actions, especially when itтАЩs bureaucratized, as essentially state action and government collusion with the platforms.тАЭ
This is absolutely wild. The government is secretly transforming "national security" agencies into a new Narrative Police.
тАЬIf a foreign government sent these messages,тАЭ said the former ACLU president, тАЬthere is no doubt we would call it censorship.тАЭ
The current CISA chief is seen justifying this aggressive government thought policing by creepily referring to the means people use to gather information and form thoughts about the world as тАЬour cognitive infrastructureтАЭ:
Jen Easterly, BidenтАЩs appointed director of CISA, swiftly made it clear that she would continue to shift resources in the agency to combat the spread of dangerous forms of information on social media. тАЬOne could argue weтАЩre in the business of critical infrastructure, and the most critical infrastructure is our cognitive infrastructure, so building that resilience to misinformation and disinformation, I think, is incredibly important,тАЭ said Easterly, speaking at a conference in November 2021.
Another CISA official is seen suggesting the agency launder its manipulations through third party nonprofits тАЬto avoid the appearance of government propagandaтАЭ:
To accomplish these broad goals, the report said, CISA should invest in external research to evaluate the тАЬefficacy of interventions,тАЭ specifically with research looking at how alleged disinformation can be countered and how quickly messages spread. Geoff Hale, the director of the Election Security Initiative at CISA, recommended the use of third-party information-sharing nonprofits as a тАЬclearing house for trust information to avoid the appearance of government propaganda.тАЭ
But as a former ACLU president tells The Intercept, if this were happening in any government the US doesnтАЩt like thereтАЩd be no qualms about calling it what it is:
тАЬIf a foreign authoritarian government sent these messages,тАЭ noted Nadine Strossen, the former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, тАЬthere is no doubt we would call it censorship.тАЭ
Indeed, this report is just another example of the way western powers are behaving more and more like the autocracies they claim to despise, all in the name of preserving the values the west purports to uphold. As The Intercept reminds us, this business of the US government assigning itself the responsibility of regulating AmericaтАЩs тАЬcognitive infrastructureтАЭ originated with the тАЬallegation that Russian agents had seeded disinformation on Facebook that tipped the 2016 election toward Donald Trump.тАЭ To this day that agenda continues to expand into things like plots to censor speech about the war in Ukraine.
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Hundreds of former agents of a notorious Israeli spying organization are now working in key positions at the worldтАЩs biggest tech/comms corporations, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Other examples of this trend coming out at the same time include Alan MacLeodтАЩs new report with Mintpress News that hundreds of former agents from the notorious Israeli spying organization Unit 8200 are now working in positions of influence at major tech companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon (just the latest in MacLeodтАЩs ongoing documentation of the way intelligence insiders have been increasingly populating the ranks of Silicon Valley platforms), and the revelation that The GrayzoneтАЩs Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mat├й were barred from participating in a Web Summit conference due to pressure from the Ukrainian government.
WeтАЩre told we need to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to preserve western values of freedom and democracy, and in order to facilitate that aim weтАЩre getting less and less free speech. Less and less free thought. Less and less free press. Less and less democracy.
I keep thinking of the (fictional) story where during World War II Winston Churchill is advised to cut funding for the arts to boost military funding, and he responds, тАЬThen what are we fighting for?тАЭ If we need to sacrifice everything we claim to value in order to fight for those values, what are we fighting for?
Dissent is becoming less and less tolerated. Public discourse is being more and more aggressively disrupted by the powerful. WeтАЩre being shaped into the exact sort of homogeneous, power-serving, tyrannized, propagandized population that our leaders criticize other nations for having.
Any journalists or press freedom advocates out there care about a US govтАЩt ally, Ukraine, pressuring a media conference to cancel two journalists? https://t.co/sPwaQAIiTV
If the powerful are becoming more tyrannical in order to fight tyranny, whatтАЩs probably actually happening is that they are just tyrants making up excuses to do the thing theyтАЩve always wanted to do.
As westerners in тАЬliberal democraciesтАЭ we are told that our society holds free speech, free thought and accountability for the powerful as sacrosanct.
Our leaders are showing us that this is a lie.
The problem with тАЬwestern valuesтАЭ is that the west doesnтАЩt value them.
In reality, those who best exemplify тАЬwestern valuesтАЭ as advertised are the ones who are being most aggressively silenced and marginalized by western powers. The real journalists. The dissidents. The skeptics. The free thinkers. The peace activists. Those who refuse to bow down to their rulers.
Our ongoing descent into tyranny in the name of opposing tyrants calls forth a very simple question: if defeating autocracy requires becoming an autocracy, whatтАЩs the point of defeating autocracy?
The Trusted News Initiative (TNI) was founded by the BBC in July 2019. While TNI claims to promote democracy and freedom, its purpose for being is global information control
Partners in the initiative include global media outlets such as The Washington Post, Reuters, The Associated Press, AFP, the Financial Times and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and Big Tech partners such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft
TNI was formed mere weeks after a Reuters Institute report revealed trust in U.S. media had slipped to an all-time low of just 29% тАФ the lowest of the 46 countries included. Clearly, people were going elsewhere for the facts, and that probably had everything to do with the creation of TNI. They have no control over alternative media, so they needed a comprehensive way to shut them all down
By suppressing information about early treatment and the adverse effects suffered from the COVID shots, TNI partners have played a direct role in the destruction of lives. In short, TNI is the converse of тАЬtrusted news.тАЭ It is the very тАЬfake newsтАЭ it claims to combat
In addition to TNI, Google also has a similar program going on, called the Google News Initiative, which includes a $300 million funding commitment to the future of the news industry. The Google News Initiative is partnered with advertising agencies in a program called Trusted News for Trusted Advertising (TNTA), to ensure advertisers donтАЩt have their ads associated with тАЬfalse or misleading news,тАЭ thereby allowing them to тАЬregain control of the media on which they publish the advertisingтАЭ
What is the Trusted News Initiative (TNI)? As you may have discovered, Orwellian doublespeak is rampant these days, and many organizations are named in complete opposition to their intended purposes. Such is the case with the TNI as well.
As explained in the video above, created by Steve KirschтАЩs Vaccine Safety Research Foundation (VSRF), TNI is an organization created for the purpose of global information control. It was founded by the BBC in July 2019,1,2,3 mere months before the COVID pandemic shattered all semblance of free speech rights.
Partners in the initiative include global media outlets such as The Washington Post, Reuters, The Associated Press, AFP, the Financial Times and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), and Big Tech partners such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, just to name a few.4,5
TNI Formed as Trust in Mainstream Media Hit Rock Bottom
As astutely noted by Elizabeth Woodsworth in The Liberty Beacon,6 TNI was formed mere weeks after a Reuters Institute report revealed trust in U.S. media had slipped to an all-time low of just 29% тАФ the lowest of the 46 countries included. Canadians trust in mainstream media was only slightly better at 45%.
Also supporting the distrust in the media is an even more appalling recent Gallup Poll.7 Just 16% of U.S. adults now say they have тАЬa great dealтАЭ or тАЬquite a lotтАЭ of confidence in newspapers and 11% in television news. Jimmy Dore goes into more details below.
This massive slip тАЬcan only mean that people are going elsewhere for their news,тАЭ Woodsworth said. And that probably had everything to do with the creation of TNI. They realized people didnтАЩt trust mainstream media anymore and were looking elsewhere for the facts.
This presented a serious problem, as they had no control over alternative media. How then would they shut down undesirable facts and theories that might jeopardize the smooth transition into the New World Order? Enter TNI and a new cadre of тАЬfact checkingтАЭ organizations to wrangle the unruly masses back into the brainwashing line.
Promoting тАШFreedom and DemocracyтАЩ Through Censorship
According to TNI, its first order of business was to тАЬpromote freedom and democracyтАЭ by preventing foreign interference in the 2020 election. However, TNIтАЩs mission didnтАЩt end there. Its Big Pharma backers had a vaccination agenda right from the start, and TNI has been instrumental in promoting that agenda and upholding their financial interests.
In 2019 тАФ before we knew anything about the COVID shots to come тАФ TNI warned that тАЬanti-vaxxers are gaining tractionтАЭ and that online platforms would need to intervene using algorithms to suppress the growing anti-vaccine movement.
In addition to suppressing undesirable vaccine content, TNI also floods online users with pro-vaccine messages to drown out what little opposition is left. As noted by VSRF, from the start, TNI sought to normalize the use of this experimental gene transfer technology, despite a mountain of unanswered questions about the safety and efficacy of mRNA technology.
Suppressing early treatment successes was also part of the vaccine agenda, as early treatment options posed a direct threat to the Emergency Use Authorization of these experimental shots.
To that same end, TNI also fueled hatred against the unvaccinated, and hired so-called тАЬfact checkersтАЭ to publish false fact checks and hit pieces on those who questioned the sanity and safety of pandemic countermeasures, such as masks and lockdowns, or raised concerns about the experimental shots.
WeтАЩre Made to Pay for Our Own Destruction
Hundreds of outspoken doctors and scientists тАФ including experts from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford тАФ have been banned and deplatformed over the past two and a half years.
No matter how prestigious their careers, theyтАЩve been labeled тАЬdangerousтАЭ and targeted for neutralization. Many have lost their careers. TheyтАЩve been ousted from professional associations and stripped of their medical licenses.By suppressing information about early treatment and the adverse effects suffered from the shots, TNI partners have played a direct role in the destruction of lives. In short, TNI is the very тАШfake newsтАЩ it claims to combat.
Thousands of vaccine-injured people have also been accused of spreading тАЬmisinformationтАЭ and have been targeted for elimination from social media, while mainstream media (MSM) have roundly ignored their plight and pleas for recognition and help.
As noted by VSRF, by suppressing information about early treatment and the adverse effects suffered from the shots, TNI partners have played a direct role in the destruction of lives. In short, TNI is the converse of тАЬtrusted news.тАЭ It actually creates and promotes mis- and disinformation. It is the very тАЬfake newsтАЭ it claims to combat.
And тАЬWhoтАЩs paying for this harmful suppression of science?тАЭ VSRF asks. The answer: YOU are. We all are, through our taxes. Government has spent billions of tax dollars to promote the experimental COVID jabs, which benefits no one but Big Pharma, various patent holders and investors.
Legacy Media Is on the Wrong Side of History
In a June 25, 2021, article, unidentified staff at TrialSite News commented on the shocking censorship that was already becoming apparent:8
тАЬSince time immemorial, those with power have used it to control those without. In the modern world, big government and big tech represent the seats of power when it comes to who is allowed to say what. Of course, many think that тАШprivate companiesтАЩ can regulate speech in any way they see fit. But from either an ethical or legal point of view, this is false тАж
Legally, the Supreme Court has long held that when a private company creates something that functions as a public square (think of a company town), the First Amendment comes into play.
Way back in April 2020, it was already clear that the then-existing online socio-political censorship was going to expand into the world of science, medicine, and academia in the new COVID-19 era. On April 1 of that year, early in the pandemic, Foreign Policy took a look at these questions in a piece titled, тАШCoronavirus Has Started a Censorship PandemicтАЩ9 тАж
[D]isallowing good-faith medical information because the public canтАЩt be presumed to properly weigh claims is infantilizing said public, along with dismantling the free speech culture тАж
The efforts now underway to completely suppress positive data associated with early-onset treatment prospects such as ivermectin or the squelching of any discussion of vaccine safety issues is completely unacceptable in a civilized, democratic market-based society. Those perpetuating such offenses are in fact on the wrong side of history.тАЭ
And who are the ones perpetuating these offenses? The TNI, for sure. TNI partners have censored and tried to ruin the reputations and careers of fully qualified and licensed public health experts, doctors and scientists тАФ all in the name of protecting you, the audience, from the life-saving information these experts are trying to share. In her closing remarks, Woodsworth says:10
тАЬRegarding COVID-19, Dr. Piers Robinson, co-director of the Organization for Propaganda Studies, has judged, тАШIt wouldnтАЩt be an underestimation to say that this is probably one of the biggest propaganda operations that we have seen in history,тАЩ concluding тАШwhat happens is down to how people resist and how much force and coercion the authorities use.тАЩ
Indeed, the very foundation of democracy is that public wisdom should be consulted and given its head in self-rule. The public has the constitutional right to full information to form and express its own conclusions and does not need a coordinated TNI to corral and contain it.
It is utterly outrageous that the voices the public needs from the top public health figures at its best universities are being denied to its hearing. A far superior job of investigative reporting is being done by the hard-working alternative media researchers without Big PharmaтАЩs blood-stained advertising dollars.тАЭ
Organized Control
The reason the TNI has been so effective in shutting out opposing views is because all of the partners work together in a highly-organized manner. When one identifies a piece of тАЬmisinformation,тАЭ the order to quash it is shared across platforms. The same goes for the official narrative. Everyone supports and promotes it, no matter how illogical.
A debunking piece by one legacy media partner is used as тАЬproofтАЭ by another, and Big Tech platforms, of course, have unprecedented ability to suppress unwanted content and push тАЬofficialтАЭ or approved content to the front using algorithms alone.
As for who actually decides what the official narrative is supposed to be, your guess is as good as mine. What we do know is that wealthy and powerful interests control media worldwide.
Two major media controllers are BlackRock and the Vanguard Group, which combined own a vast majority of the worldтАЩs assets, including media companies. Another is Bill Gates, whose self-serving тАЬdonationsтАЭ ensure media treat him like a medical expert (or climate expert, or nutritional expert, or agricultural expert) when, in reality, heтАЩs just promoting ideas that will make him a ton of money.
TNIтАЩs Not-so-Trustworthy Sources
And what about TNIтАЩs тАЬtrusted sourcesтАЭ? Aside from other TNI partners and their fact checkers, trusted sources are the public health agencies, such as the World Health Organization, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Every one of these agencies has a long тАЬrap sheetтАЭ when it comes to corruption and errors in judgment, and their unreliability have been highlighted time and again over the course of the COVID pandemic. TheyтАЩve broken a long list of rules and regulations intended to ensure public safety, and rewritten others on the fly тАФ again without following proper protocols.
Time and again, people have scratched their heads, saying, тАЬHow can they do that? ThatтАЩs not lawful. They CANтАЩT do that!тАЭ Well, the reality is, they used to be merely corrupt, but now theyтАЩre completely lawless. And no one is stopping them.
Decisions made by the FDA, CDC, NIH and the WHO over the course of the pandemic have been downright shocking in their absolute absence of any moral compass. TheyтАЩve repeatedly deferred to Big Pharma and blatantly ignored even the most basic of safety protocols, putting even babies lives at risk.
In the past, weтАЩd expect the Fourth Estate тАФ journalists with integrity тАФ to expose the kind of fraud and lawlessness these agencies are engaging in. But sadly, legacy media, just like nearly every federal regulatory agency, has been captured by the military industrial complex.
Legacy media is no longer the тАЬfree press.тАЭ It certainly is in no way shape or form your trusted source of news. Those days are long gone. They are completely captured; hardly a sentence is uttered that isnтАЩt directed to them by the government and repeated parroting by all of legacy media in all their varied forms.
Google News Initiative
In addition to TNI, Google also has a similar program going on, called the Google News Initiative, which includes a $300 million funding commitment to the future of the news industry.
The Google News Initiative is partnered with advertising agencies in a program called Trusted News for Trusted Advertising (TNTA),11 to ensure advertisers donтАЩt have their ads associated with тАЬfalse or misleading news,тАЭ thereby allowing them to тАЬregain control of the media on which they publish the advertising.тАЭ
This is wrong on so many levels. Advertising and news/editorial departments are not supposed to be mixed, period. They are intended to operate independently, not as complements or supporting helpmates. The very fact that newspapers are failing and ad revenue is dropping makes the entire press corps susceptible to doing whatever the advertisers want.
And, online, advertisers include the CDC and NIH, as evidenced by their many ads on social media. So, the TNTA program is really all about building revenue. It has nothing to do with providing trustworthy news.
Several other copycats also exist that have nearly the same name as TNI. ThereтАЩs the Trusting News Initiative, the Trust Project, the News Integrity Initiative, the Journalism Trust Initiative, you get the idea.12 Some share partners with the TNI, further widening the media network of controlled news.
Add to that NewsGuard and scores of fact-checking organizations, all of whom work in tandem to promote the official narrative while suppressing opposing views. As IтАЩve stated before, NewsGuard received startup funds13 from the Publicis Groupe, one of the largest PR companies in the world, which serves the needs of several of the largest drug companies in the world.
Last but not least, thereтАЩs a tightly woven web of interlocking тАЬfact-checkingтАЭ agencies that work for advertisers in an effort to manipulate the news in favor of the advertisers or other entities with vested interests, such as governments and health organizations.
This web of fact-checkers is funded by hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of dollars. I believe this was planned long before the pandemic, and their goal is to steer the news into a second horn for advertisers. Not surprisingly, the drug industry has one of the largest advertising budgets, which is part of why you canтАЩt get the truth about drugs and health from the legacy media or any of these fact-checkers.
TNI and HitlerтАЩs Principles
In his Substack article, тАЬPropaganda, Corporatism and the Hidden Global Coup,тАЭ Dr. Robert Malone describes the TNI thus:14
тАЬThe TNI uses advocacy journalism and journals to promote their causes. The Trusted News Initiative is more than this though; if you go back to HitlerтАЩs basic principles, the members of the TNI are using these core principles to control the public.тАЭ
HitlerтАЩs basic principles are described in the book, тАЬPropaganda and Persuasion,тАЭ and are listed as:15
Avoid abstract ideas тАФ appeal to the emotions
Constantly repeat just a few ideas. Use stereotyped phrases
Give only one side of the argument
Continuously criticize your opponents
Pick out one special тАЬenemyтАЭ for special vilification
I believe Dr. Malone is onto something. These principles have certainly become media norms over the past couple of years. Who knows тАФ perhaps I was picked to be a тАЬspecial enemy for special vilificationтАЭ because the TNI and those who pull their puppet strings are all Nazis. I didnтАЩt expect it to be that simplistic, but who knows?
WeтАЩre all getting an education in psychopathy these days, and thereтАЩs nothing normal about psychopathic logic. Their brains are wired differently and you wonтАЩt be able to understand their motivations no matter how hard you try. Is this perhaps why so many decisions handed down to us make no rational sense, either from a scientific, medical or humanitarian perspective?
If itтАЩs true that many of those who are trying to take over the world in a global coup are in fact on the psychopathic spectrum, then our response needs to be suitably appropriate.
Appropriate responses when faced with a psychopath include keeping your emotions in check (as they seek to manipulate your emotions); standing your ground in an assertive manner; not buying into their stories (especially not victim stories); and paying attention only to their actions, not their words.16,17
To be more precise, most experts have one primary suggestion for dealing with a psychopath, and that is, тАЬDonтАЩt.тАЭ18 Since weтАЩre talking about media here, thatтАЩs a fairly simple action item. Just turn them off, and find alternative news sources that arenтАЩt tainted by blood money and an overt attempt for global slavery.
You owe it to yourself and your family to take control of your health and avoid these propaganda tools and restrict your information to truly trusted and vetted sources.
In the history of civilization, Politics has more often than not, been a matter reduceable to the question of тАЬwhose side are you on?тАЭ
Granted it is not an easy affair to discern what most-nearly approaches truth in the fog of тАЬthe present.тАЭ Hindsight is 20/20 they say, although that is also not entirely true, for the interpretation of history is just another battlefield, albeit in much slower motion.
In a world of increased division, where we are told there is only black or white, the best we mere тАЬciviliansтАЭ can hope for is to not get hit by the crossfire. However, that is becoming increasingly harder to do.
It is not a matter of holding тАЬopinionтАЭ any longer, it is about upholding a тАЬconviction,тАЭ not earned with your own personal scrutiny and research, but by your тАЬfaithтАЭ in such a conviction and the authorities who shape it.
Increasingly, it does not truly matter what the тАЬfactsтАЭ are, but the question of тАЬwhose side are you on?тАЭ
If that is what тАЬrealityтАЭ has been reduced to by those forces controlling the state, then any enemy to those forces controlling that state will be a villain, regardless of their actions, regardless of their ideology; and any ally to those forces controlling that state will be a hero, regardless of their actions, regardless of their ideology.
And thus, in our shaped reality of today, what makes a тАЬHeroтАЭ or a тАЬVillainтАЭ will be determined by the simple question тАЬwhose side are you on?тАЭ
If this is troubling to you, I suggest we do a little exercise together. Let us dare to discern the тАЬfactsтАЭ for ourselves. Only then, will we cease being mere cheerleaders for a team; only then, can we qualify ourselves to ask in all honest sincerity, тАЬwhose side are we truly on?тАЭ
Are Nazis Now the New тАЬGood GuysтАЭ?
There is a bit of mixed messaging that has been going on, especially in the last few weeks. Are there significant numbers of Nazis in Ukraine and are these тАЬbadтАЭ or тАЬgoodтАЭ Nazis in the context that they are fighting the Russian тАЬinvadersтАЭ?
In one breath we hear the counter, how can there be Nazis in Ukraine when there is a Jewish President calling the shots? In another breath we hear Facebook is now allowing users to praise the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion while they are fighting Russians. In yet another breath we hear, well its complicated, Ukrainian Nationalism should be considered at the forefront of any debate, even if it overlaps with Nazi ideology.
On Feb. 27, 2022, Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland held a scarf bearing the slogan тАЬSlava Ukraini,тАЭ meaning тАЬGlory to Ukraine,тАЭ with the тАЬBlood and SoilтАЭ colors of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) (who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and massacred thousands of Jews and Poles).
According to FreelandтАЩs press secretary, this was just another case of a тАЬclassic KGB disinformation smearтАж accusing Ukrainians and Ukrainian-Canadians of being far right extremists or fascists or Nazis,тАЭ which is a confusing statement on multiple levels.
It is not clear how this is a case of тАЬRussian disinformation,тАЭ since the picture is indeed authentic, Freeland does not deny this. And she is indeed holding a тАЬBlood and SoilтАЭ emblem, which originated with the Nazis, clear for everyone to see. Lastly, it is confusing as to why the Canadian government seems to be unaware that the KGB no longer exists. Are they also under the impression that the Soviet Union still exists?
Not irrelevant in all of this is the fact that FreelandтАЩs grandfather was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper during WWII in Galicia and that she is indeed aware of this and apparently unapologetic. Whenever she is questioned about this, she does not deny anything, but simply blames such a focus of inquiry on Russian disinformation with the intent to тАЬdestabilize Western democracies.тАЭ That is, it is not a question of what is oneтАЩs historical or ideological background, but a question of тАЬwhose side are you on?тАЭ
Interestingly, it was the Canadian newspaper тАЬThe Globe and MailтАЭ who reported this story, titled тАЬFreeland knew her grandfather was editor of Nazi newspaper,тАЭ thus, not a Russian publication last time I checked. And upon whom did they base such information? None other than FreelandтАЩs own uncle, John-Paul Himka, who is now professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.
According to the Globe and Mail, Freeland was aware for more than two decades that her grandfather Michael Chomiak, was the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper that vilified Jews and supported the Nazi cause.
тАЬKrakivski Visti [Krakow News] was set up in 1940 by the German army and supervised by German intelligence officer Emil Gassert. Its printing presses and offices were confiscated by the Germans from a Jewish publisher, who was later murdered at the Belzec concentration camp.
The article titled тАШKravivski Visti and the Jews, 1943: A contribution of Ukrainian Jewish Relations during the Second World WarтАЩ was written by Ms. FreelandтАЩs uncle, John-Paul Himka, now professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.
In the foreword to the article, Prof. Himka credits Ms. Freeland for тАШpointing out problems and clarifications.тАЩ Ms. Freeland has never acknowledged that her grandfather was a Nazi collaborator and suggested on Monday that the allegation was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
In 1996, Prof. Himka wrote about Mr. ChomiakтАЩs work for Kravivski Visti, a Ukrainian-language newspaper based in Krakow that often published anti-Jewish diatribes including тАШcertain passages in some of the articles that expressed approval of what the Nazis were doing to the Jews.тАЩтАЭ [emphasis added]
Oddly, Freeland helped to edit and clarify Prof. HimkaтАЩs article discussing her grandfather as the chief editor of a Nazi newspaper, however, refused to acknowledge her grandfatherтАЩs role publicly and accused any reference to this as part of a тАЬRussian disinformation campaign.тАЭ According to this topsy-turvy logic, FreelandтАЩs uncle, Prof. Himka is part of this тАЬRussian disinformation campaign,тАЭ and she is guilty of providing assistance to this тАЬRussian disinformation campaign,тАЭ all to ruin her political career and тАЬdestabilize Western democracies.тАЭ
Freeland also told her uncle, Prof. Himka, which is included in his article, that according to her father, her grandfather Michael Chomiak was also working to some extent with the anti-Nazi resistance. However, Prof. Himka was unable to verify this information, which he described as тАЬfragmentary and one-sided.тАЭ
This past April, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova delivered an explosive response to Chrystia FreelandтАЩs recent obnoxious efforts to ban Russia from all international organizations and financial institutions, revealing the real sort of work FreelandтАЩs grandfather was in the business of. You can read the full speech here.
Then there is the strange case of NATO tweeting in celebration of international womenтАЩs day, this past March 8, a picture of a female Ukrainian soldier wearing the Black Sun symbol which is tied to Nazi occultism, and Satanism. NATO wrote in their post тАЬAll women and girls must live free and equal,тАЭ sending a very mixed message. NATO also ended up taking down their picture of the Black Sun symbol.
The timing of Freeland and NATOтАЩs twitter posts are most strange. It also begs the question, why post something at all if you are just going to delete it? Is this just a matter of not being aware of such things, or is it a matter of certain groupings getting increasingly bolder and unapologetic as to where their true allegiance lies? Has Chrystia Freeland or NATO undergone any real questioning or backlash for such public displays? Not really.
Fact Checking the тАЬFact-CheckersтАЭ on Ukraine
Before we go through the situation of Ukraine today, I wanted to share with you a very relevant story of how the CIA buys News.
Udo Ulfkotte was a well-known German journalist and author of numerous books. He worked for 25 years as a journalist, 17 of which were for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), including his role as editor. In his 2014 book тАЬJournalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys News,тАЭ Ulfkotte goes over how the CIA along with German Intelligence (BND) were guilty of bribing journalists to write articles that either spun the truth or were completely fictitious in order to promote a pro-western, pro-NATO bent, and that he was one of those bought journalists.
In an interview, Ulfkotte describes how he finally built up the nerve to publish the book, after years of it collecting dust, in response to the erupting 2014 crisis in Ukraine stating:
тАЬI felt that the right time had come to finish it and publish it, because I am deeply worried about the Ukrainian crisis and the possible devastating consequences for all of Europe and all of usтАжI am not at all pro-Russia, but it is clear that many journalists blindly follow and publish whatever the NATO press office provides. And this type of information and reports are completely one-sidedтАЭ. [emphasis added]
In another interview Ulfkotte stated:
тАЬit is clear as daylight that the agents of various Services were in the central offices of the FAZ, the place where I worked for 17 years. The articles appeared under my name several times, but they were not my intellectual product. I was once approached by someone from German Intelligence and the CIA, who told me that I should write about Gaddafi and report how he was trying to secretly build a chemical weapons factory in Libya. I had no information on any of this, but they showed me various documents, I just had to put my name on the article. Do you think this can be called journalism? I donтАЩt think so.тАЭ
Ulfkotte has publicly stated:
тАЬI am ashamed of it. The people I worked for knew from the get-go everything I did. And the truth must come out. ItтАЩs not just about FAZ, this is the whole system thatтАЩs corrupt all the way.тАЭ [emphasis added]
Udo Ulfkotte has since passed away. He died January 2017, found dead in his home, it is said by a heart attack. His body was quickly after cremated, thus preventing any possibility of an autopsy from occurring. His book has been made pretty much impossible to find available for purchase at this point.
TodayтАЩs situation concerning media reporting on Ukraine does not seem to be any different, if anything, it is much much worse.
To bolster support for the Ukrainian military, Kiev has churned out a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring public and official support from Western countries.
UkraineтАЩs propaganda strategy earned it praise from a NATO commander who told the Washington Post, тАЬThey are really excellent in stratcom тАФ media, info ops, and also psy-ops.тАЭ The Post ultimately conceded that тАЬWestern officials say that while they cannot independently verify much of the information that Kyiv puts out about the evolving battlefield situation, including casualty figures for both sides, it nonetheless represents highly effective stratcom.тАЭ
тАЬKey to the propaganda effort is an international legion of public relations firms working directly with UkraineтАЩs Ministry of Foreign Affairs to wage information warfare. According to the industry news site PRWeek, the initiative was launched by an anonymous figure who allegedly founded a Ukraine-based public relations firmтАж
According to the anonymous figure, more than 150 public relations firms have joined the propaganda blitz.
The international effort is spearheaded by public relations firm PR Network co-founder Nicky Regazzoni and Francis Ingham, a top public relations consultant with close ties to the UKтАЩs government. Ingham previously worked for BritainтАЩs Conservative Party, sits on the UK Government Communication Service Strategy and Evaluation Council, is Chief Executive of the International Communications Consultancy Organisation, and leads the membership body for UK local government communicators, LG Comms.тАЭ
Thus, Ingham who has been a member of the UK government and continues to have very high-level connections within the British government, is playing a leading role in shaping how the Ukraine war is being represented.
Dan Cohen provides a thorough explanation of how these тАЬPR firmsтАЭ have been responsible for reporting and spreading fabricated news and that even when such reports are found conclusively to be untrue, they continue to use them nonetheless. These PR tools include propaganda graphics, which are created in order to encourage radicalisation and promotion of ultra-nationalist identity; using xenophobic and racist language (not just to Russians), outright praise of Ukrainian neo-Nazis as heroes, the idolisation of Nazi affiliated Unit-B leader Stefan Bandera, and the encouragement of violent acts against other individuals (see CohenтАЩs article for examples).
If you have ever wondered who is behind the omnipotent тАЬfact-checkersтАЭ, in the case of StopFake who have self-described themselves as such, they are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) aka the fully-rogue department of the CIA, the Atlantic Council, the International Renaissance Foundation (funded by Open Society FoundationтАЩs billionaire George Soros), the British Embassy in Ukraine, the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office, the German Marshall Fund, among others.
StopFake was hired by Facebook in March 2020 to тАЬcurb the flow of Russian propagandaтАЭ but was found to be employing multiple figures closely tied to violent neo-Nazis. This has, however, not deterred Facebook from continuing to work with StopFake.
At the end of the day, it does not seem to matter how many times these arbiters of truth are found to be wrong, for US officials have already admitted that they are literally just lying to the public about what is going on in Ukraine.
Josh Cohen for the Atlantic Council writes [links are from the original article]:
тАЬIt sounds like the stuff of Kremlin propaganda, but itтАЩs not. Last week Hromadske Radio revealed that UkraineтАЩs Ministry of Youth and Sports is funding the neo-Nazi group C14 to promote тАЬnational patriotic education projectsтАЭ in the countryтАжтАЭ
After the March 8 2018 attacks against International WomenтАЩs Day marchers, Amnesty International wrote тАЬUkraine is sinking into a chaos of uncontrolled violence posed by radical groups and their total impunity. Practically no one in the country can feel safe under these conditions.тАЭ
Josh Cohen writes:
тАЬTo be clear, far-right parties like Svoboda perform poorly in UkraineтАЩs polls and elections, and Ukrainians evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argument is a bit of тАЬred herring.тАЭ ItтАЩs not extremistsтАЩ electoral prospects that should concern UkraineтАЩs friends, but rather the stateтАЩs unwillingness or inability to confront violent groups and end their impunity.тАЭ [emphasis added]
However, we heard it, straight from Yevhen KarasтАЩs mouth, the leader of UkraineтАЩs neo-Nazi group C14, what determines who holds power in Ukraine has never really been about polls and elections.
Watch Yevhen Karas the leader of Ukraine's neo-Nazi terror gang C14's speech from Kiev earlier this month. Straight from the horses' mouth, he dispels the many narratives pushed by the left, the mainstream media and the State Department. pic.twitter.com/VWJqWPUGUp
As the famous тАЬf*ck the EUтАЭ tape revealed to the dumbfounded world, the Ukrainian people donтАЩt actually have a say in who runs their government. After the so-called тАЬRevolution of DignityтАЭ where Ukrainians literally died for тАЬdemocracy,тАЭ the US went on to тАЬinfluenceтАЭ the roster of the newly formed Ukrainian government, specifically around members of Svoboda and Pravyi Sector (Right Sector) who held five senior roles in the new government, including the post of deputy prime minister.
But neo-Nazis have not just been receiving western support in the political sphere.
Just this past October, as a reaction to her failed diplomatic visit to Russia, Victoria Nuland, according to French journalist Thierry Meyssan, went ahead and тАЬimposedтАЭ Dmytro Yarosh onto President Zelensky. On Nov. 2, 2021, President Zelensky appointed Dmytro Yarosh (leader of the neo-Nazi affiliated ultra-nationalist paramilitary group Right Sector 2013-2015) as Adviser to the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
This is the very same Dmytro Yarosh who has been on InterpolтАЩs тАЬwanted listтАЭ since 2014.
Neo-Nazis have also received ongoing training by the CIA, British SAS (Special Air Service) as well as other NATO countries such as Canada since at least 2014. This training has continued despite RussiaтАЩs entry into Ukraine, which has been confirmed by The Times, Ottawa Citizen, CTV News, and Radio Canada.
The Canadian government has attempted to deny any knowledge of training neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and have made the claim that they are not responsible for verifying who they are in fact training, but that this is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government. However, such claims of ignorance fell through when the very neo-Nazis they were training went ahead and posted pictures on their social media accounts, showcasing their neo-Nazis badges identifying them as such, plain for everyone to see.
US and Canadian military officers meet uniformed members of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion during a November 2017 multinational training session in Ukraine.
On the same day as the untoward NATO tweet on International WomenтАЩs Day of a Ukrainian soldier with the Nazi Black Sun occult symbol, photographs appeared on NEXTAтАЩs twitter feed showing the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion receiving training by instructors from тАЬNATO countriesтАЭ on how to use NLAW grenade launchers.
A shipment of NLAW grenade launchers and instructors from #NATO countries arrived in #Kharkiv. The Azov regiment was the first to learn about new weaponry pic.twitter.com/CCzjN40rW7
UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told the House of Commons on March 9 that тАЬas of today, we have delivered 3,615 NLAWs [to Ukrainian forces] and continue to deliver more. We will shortly be starting the delivery of a small consignment of anti-tank Javelin missiles as well.тАЭ
For a full list of all the weapons sent to Ukraine since 2014 by all involved countries, refer here.
For those especially adamant that neo-Nazis are not тАЬofficiallyтАЭ a part of the Ukrainian army, you should be informed that the Azov Battalion is part of UkraineтАЩs National Guard, and thus, yes it is officially part of UkraineтАЩs military.
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov BattalionтАЩs first commander and later a National Corps parliamentarian previously led the neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation тАЬPatriot of Ukraine,тАЭ and once stated in 2010 that it was the Ukrainian nationтАЩs mission to тАЬlead the white races of the world in a final crusadeтАж against Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].тАЭ
тАЬThe Azov Battalion is emerging as a critical node in the transnational right-wing violent extremist networkтАж [Its] aggressive approach to networking serves one of the Azov BattalionтАЩs overarching objectives, to transform areas under its control in Ukraine into the primary hub for transnational white supremacy.тАЭ
The Soufan Center described how the Azov BattalionтАЩs тАЬaggressive networkingтАЭ reaches around the world to recruit fighters and spread its white supremacist ideology. Foreign fighters who train and fight with the Azov Battalion then return to their own countries to apply what they have learned and recruit others.
NATO has recently gone so far as to make a short film honoring the Baltic Nazi collaborators the тАЬForest Brothers.тАЭ The NATO film lionises the тАЬForest Brothers,тАЭ former Waffen SS fighters who voluntarily collaborated with the Nazis, as anti-communist heroes.
This is the story of the Forest Brothers who fought the Soviet army for their homelands after WWII pic.twitter.com/4JcfuJPmeO
Dovid Katz, a leading historian and anti-Nazi investigator condemned the NATO film for rewriting history:
тАЬBy going beyond turning a blind eye to the worship of pro-Hitler forces in Eastern EuropeтАж[NATO] is crossing the line right into offering its moral legitimization of Nazi forces such as the Latvian Waffen SS.тАЭ [emphasis added]
David Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist and reliable voice of the US intelligence apparatus, noted that even prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, тАЬthe United States and NATO allies [were] ready to provide weapons and training for a long battle of resistance.тАЭ
This is the very same David Ignatius who was once President of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (aka specialists in color revolutions), who arrogantly stated in a 1991 interview that тАЬa lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIAтАжThe biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protectionтАЭ.
I guess the NED has had a change of heart on тАЬopenness is its own protection.тАЭ
Jeremy Kuzmarov for Covert Action Magazine writes in an article titled тАЬNational Endowment for Democracy Deletes Records of Funding Projects in UkraineтАЭ [links from the original article]:
The archived webpage captured February 25, 2022 from 14:53 shows that NED granted $22,394,281 in the form of 334 awards to Ukraine between 2014 to the present. The capture at 23:10 the same day shows тАЬNo results foundтАЭ for Ukraine. As of right now, there are still тАЬNo results foundтАЭ for UkraineтАж
Who will suffer the most in this plan for a long battle of resistance? The Ukrainian people.
If PutinтАЩs top reason for going into Ukraine is to тАЬdenazifyтАЭ the country, and the CIA, NATO and co. are persistently тАЬnazifyingтАЭ the political and military components of Ukraine, you can see how this is making a situation for peace in Ukraine impossible, and that it is the CIA and NATO that are to blame for this.
You can also understand how UkraineтАЩs entry into NATO was unacceptable merely by its geographic location (the distance between UkraineтАЩs border and Moscow is 450 km), however, add in the fact that NATO is involved in the promotion of neo-Nazi militants in Ukraine and that now both Sweden and Finland have also expressed a desire to join NATO (with no referendum since democracy is officially dead in Cold War 2.0) and we have ourselves a real sh*t storm.
However, this is not just a threat to Russia. The reality of the situation is that Ukraine has been in a civil war these past 8 years, though the western media refuses to acknowledge this very important fact.
тАЬPeople who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its originтАж They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent тАШunity marchesтАЩ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].тАЭ
Robert Parry from Consortium News writes [link is from original article]:
тАЬOn Sunday, a Times article by Andrew E. Kramer mentioned the emerging neo-Nazi paramilitary role in the final three paragraphsтАжIn other words, the neo-Nazi militias that surged to the front of anti-Yanukovych protestsтАжhave now been organized as shock troops dispatched to kill ethnic Russians in the east [of Ukraine] тАУ and they are operating so openly that they hoist a Swastika-like neo-Nazi flag over one conquered village with a population of about 10,000.
Burying this information at the end of a long article is also typical of how the Times and other U.S. mainstream news outlets have dealt with the neo-Nazi problem in the past. When the reality gets mentioned, it usually requires a reader knowing much about UkraineтАЩs history and reading between the lines of a U.S. news account.тАЭ [emphasis added]
In the above image which outlines the population distribution of ethnic Ukrainians and Russians within Ukraine, you can understand how an ultra-nationalist view that identifies as solely ethnic Ukrainian would be a catalyst for a civil war.
The people of Donbass have understandably asked for independence from Ukraine, yet the Ukrainian government has refused to allow this nor intervene for a peaceful resolution. What does this mean? The war can only end when one side is fully dead.
Not only is it publicly known that the US and NATO have been funding and training neo-Nazis, but they have also been supplying a massive supply of arms (as previously mentioned). It got to such a point where in 2018, Congress had to ban the United States from sending further arms to Ukraine militia linked to neo-Nazis, specifically mentioning the Azov Battalion. For some reason this ban was to only last for three years thus it is apparently fair game now?
But you may say, what about RussiaтАЩs crimes against the Ukrainian people, arenтАЩt they far worse than even vicious neo-Nazis? Namely the bombing of the Mariupol theater and the Bucha massacre. Thorough journalistic investigations have already been done on the former, which can be found here, that conclusively shows the bombing of the Mariupol theater was a false-flag.
As for the Bucha massacre, there has been no evidence presented as of yet that conclusively proves who committed this atrocity, there have only been assertions. Recall that the chemical attacks in Syria were also full of assertions, to which investigative journalist Seymour Hersch wrote a report titled тАЬWhose Sarin,тАЭ which conclusively proved that the popular assertions being pushed by the Obama government in their attempt to incriminate the Syrian government, were in fact false. Rather, it was pointing to the fact that the actual terrorists were the ones using sarin on the Syrian civilians, who were receiving American and co. funding and arms.
Unfortunately, time is of the essence in investigating crimes such as these, and despite the outcries of the inhumanity of such events, there is always heavy foot-dragging if not outright dismissal over an official and neutral investigation of such crime scenes. Why is this?
Instead, the response to this was for the UN to suspend Russia from its human rights body. Thus, not only denying an official investigation, but denying Russia a voice in responding to the matter.
The disturbing elephant in the room in all of this, is that the Azov Battalion has already been found guilty of similar atrocities against its own Ukrainian people, which has been thoroughly investigated by Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy and which can be found here (warning there is graphic content).
The Azov Battalion has also been found guilty of purposefully putting Ukrainian citizens in jeopardy by positioning their artillery and military in residential areas and buildings, including daycares and hospitals, to which even the Washington Post had to acknowledge in their misleadingly titled article тАЬRussia has killed civilians in Ukraine. KyivтАЩs defense tactics add to the danger.тАЭ
However, these are not simply тАЬdefense tactics,тАЭ they are blatant war crimes that are recognised as such by international law. These war crimes are publicly acknowledged to be going on, causing the deaths of a significant number of Ukrainians. Just to be clear here, during times of war, to which the Washington Post also acknowledges, Ukrainian soldiers and weaponry are legitimate targets for the Russian military. It is not Russia that is committing the war crime here, it is the Ukrainian government. They have literally been caught using their own people as human shields.
Does this still sound like a patriotic nationalist movement for the welfare and sovereignty of the Ukrainian people?
According to an interview with Scott Ritter, former US Marine Intelligence Officer, the Russian military have made it clear that they are using тАЬSyrian tacticsтАЭ in Ukraine.
Scott Ritter explains, the Russian militaryтАЩs tactic in Syria was:
тАЬтАжto surround urban areas where these jihadists had been gathered, terrorizing the population, surround them and give them the opportunity to evacuate on buses with their security guaranteed by Russian military police. A soft approach that protected civilians, that protected civilian areas.тАЭ
It was this tactic that allowed the Russians along with the Syrian army to defeat ISIS and other terrorist affiliates. Today they only occupy the Idlib province. These terrorists who remain would not have been possible without Turkish support. This initiative to rid Syria of ISIS was something that the United States has clearly never been interested in supporting.
In the image on the left the red and largely the blue represent the region controlled by terrorists, or as Obama liked to call them тАЬmoderate rebelsтАЭ in the year 2017, in the image to the right the purple and grey represent the region controlled by terrorists in the year 2021. The green is the United States and co.тАЩs illegal presence in the country.
Interestingly, when the Russians entered Syria to combat the terrorists at the behest of the Syrian government, this was also called a тАЬRussian invasionтАЭ by certain quarters of western media. However, it was not the Russians who bombed Syrian cities to the ground, that was the good olтАЩ US of A.
In the same interview, Scott Ritter stated that these very terrorists who have been stationed in Idlib are now being brought into Ukraine:
тАЬтАж[Zelensky] has opened the door for illegal warriors, the mercenaries from EuropeтАжthe exploiters of conflictтАж[and] they brought in the jihadistsтАжthey brought in the people..[who] ostensibly want to kill RussiansтАжItтАЩs a poison pillтАжnow we are going to have these jihadists, who are being armed by the way with javelin missiles and stinger missiles. Imagine what happens when a bunch of bloodthirsty jihadists take these weapons into Europe. Would you like to be the German Chancellor driving on a highway knowing that up in the hills could be a jihadist hit-team armed with javelins?тАжThis is literally the worst kind of decision-making ever to put that much weaponry into Ukraine in an uncontrolled fashion. Even before the jihadist came in you were giving it to neo-Nazis who canтАЩt surrender. They canтАЩt surrender because they will be killed, rightfully so. So what do desperate people do when they canтАЩt surrender and they donтАЩt die? They run away with the weaponry they have. TheyтАЩll be burying it, making caches, falling back on it, continuing the futile resistance and in their anger to the West theyтАЩll lash out at the WestтАжthat is how global terrorism is born.тАЭ
How is this in the best interest of anyoneтАЩs welfare in Europe, let alone Ukraine? It isnтАЩt.
Many have been especially confused as to how Ukraine can have such a serious neo-Nazi problem, when they have a Jewish President.
There is something you should know about the position of тАЬPresidentтАЭ of Ukraine since 2014, in a country where neo-Nazis have been made more confident than the mafia ever was, that they literally cannot be touched since they have the direct backing and protection of the United States and NATO.
When President Poroshenko (June 2014 тАУ May 2019) negotiated the Minsk agreements in September 2014, he agreed, with Germany and France, to the special autonomous status of Donetsk and Lugansk, and that under this special condition, they would stay part of Ukraine.
According to an interview[1] with Scott Ritter, this was unacceptable to the neo-Nazis who threatened PoroshenkoтАЩs life, if such a thing were to be implemented.
The Minsk agreements were never put into action. Instead, Ukraine entered a civil war that has gone on for 8 years and continues to this day. The Minsk agreements were officially expired on February 21st, 2022, the same day that the State Duma of Russia passed a bill officially recognizing Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states. This ultimate rejection by the Ukrainian government was a clear indication that their war against Donbass would be escalated.
The situation with President Zelensky is no different.
In October 2019, President Zelensky (who assumed office in May 2019), had a recorded face-to-face confrontation with the militants from the Azov Battalion, who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called тАЬNo to Capitulation.тАЭ
тАЬтАЩListen, Denys [Yantar], IтАЩm the president of this country. IтАЩm 41 years old. IтАЩm not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons. DonтАЩt shift the conversation to some protests,тАЩ Zelensky said, videos of the exchange show. As he said this, Zelensky aggressively approached Yantar, who heads the National Corps, a political offshoot of the far-right Azov volunteer battalion, in Mykolaiv city.
тАШBut weтАЩve discussed that,тАЩ Yantar said.
тАШI wanted to see understanding in your eyes. But, instead, I saw a guy whoтАЩs decided that this is some loser standing in front of him,тАЩ Zelensky said.тАЭ
The Kyiv Post continues in their article, that this reaction by President Zelensky received a strong backlash from certain quarters of Ukraine:
тАЬAndriy Biletsky, head of National Corps and the Azov Battalion, threatened Zelensky on his YouTube channel that more veterans would head to Zolote if the president tried to evict them from the town. тАШThere will be thousands there instead of several dozen,тАЩ he saidтАж
Singer Sofia Fedyna, who is a lawmaker with the European Solidarity party of former President Petro Poroshenko, which has 27 seats in parliament, was particularly aggressive in her response. She issued physical threats against Zelensky.
тАШMr. President thinks he is immortal,тАЩ she said in a video shared on Facebook. тАШA grenade may explode there, by chance. And it would be the nicest if this happened during MoscowтАЩs shelling when someone comes to the front line wearing a white or blue shirt.тАЩ
Zelensky has previously visited the front line dressed in civilian clothing, rather than military fatigues.тАЭ
Thus, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion publicly threatened Zelensky if he were to intervene on attempting to negotiate peace and end UkraineтАЩs civil war.
However, this is not the full story.
President Zelensky is also backed by Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who sponsored ZelenskyтАЩs rise to presidency, not just with his presidential campaign, but also in the tv show тАЬServant of the People,тАЭ that Zelensky literally тАЬplay-actedтАЭ as President for three seasons, which ran from November 16th, 2015 to March 28th, 2019. Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine less than two months after the last episode, on May 20th, 2019.
Former President Poroshenko even publicly called Zelensky тАЬKolomoiskyтАЩs puppetтАЭ during the presidential campaign.[2]
тАЬFor years, ZelenskyтАЩs company has produced shows for KolomoiskyтАЩs biggest TV channel, 1 + 1. In 2019, KolomoiskyтАЩs media channels gave a big boost to ZelenskyтАЩs presidential campaign. After, ZelenskyтАЩs victory, Kolomoisky kept up his relationship with the president, nominating over 30 lawmakers to ZelenskyтАЩs newly established party, and maintaining influence with many of them in parliament.тАЭ
Since ZelenskyтАЩs presidency, Kolomoisky has been able to secure control over a significant portion of UkraineтАЩs energy sector, including Ukrnafta and Centrenergo, as well as Burisma Holdings.
A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC) found that the true owner of Burisma Holdings was none other than Kolomoisky.
Recall the Joe and Hunter Biden scandal over Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian gas company. The Bidens ties with Kolomoisky and the situation of Ukraine today is not a coincidence.
In 2016, Ukraine nationalized PrivatBank from Kolomoisky and his business partner, Gennadiy Boholiubov. A U.S. Justice Department civil forfeiture complaint from December 2020, said the two men тАЬembezzled and defrauded the bank of billions of dollars.тАЭ [emphasis added]
There is also the matter of the Pandora Papers, which has confirmed that Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoisky was funneling millions of dollars in concealed assets offshore. Zelensky was also implicated in this. And what this of course also means, is that the City of London is tied into all of this.
Kolomoisky has a notorious history of being a literal тАЬraiderтАЭ of Ukrainian companies, as confirmed by HarperтАЩs Magazine, and Forbes.
тАЬBogolyubov and Kolomoisky fostered strong reputations as corporate raiders in the mid-2000s, becoming notorious for a series of hostile takeovers. Hostile takeovers Ukrainian style, that is, which often included the active involvement of PrivatтАЩs quasi-military teams.тАЭ
Kolomoisky, who is Jewish, is also a funder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion since it was formed in 2014, which has been confirmed by Reuters, Newsweek, and Aljazeera.
He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions and has personally deployed them to protect his financial interests.
In other words, Kolomoisky is funding the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who have been fighting Eastern Ukrainians for these past 8 years, and thus has been directly fueling the civil war in Ukraine. One of the reasons for this, is that Donbass is a region with many natural resources, especially for the energy sector, to which Kolomoisky would very much like to be in possession of. This could only occur with the extermination or occupation of the people of Donbass.
Interestingly, this past Victory Day (May 8th), First Deputy Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN, Dmitry PolyanskyтАЩs interview was cut short on Sky News when he brought up that Zelen
After years of civil war, the city of Mariupol has now been liberated. Do you think the people in the West will ever hear about this?
Where do We go from Here?
Well, let me put it this way. The United States and NATO know they cannot defeat Russia or China in a direct war, hence all of these proxy wars these past several years under the guise of тАЬWar on Terror.тАЭ As David Ignatius honestly expressed, their desire is for a long-drawn war. This is because they believe that they can bankrupt Russia and/or set the stage for internal unrest and eventual coup. However, things are clearly not going as planned.
What has been greatly underestimated in this situation is 1) ChinaтАЩs solid alliance with Russia, 2) that Russia is the most resource abundant country in the world to which Europe is dependant on, and 3) the economic brilliance of Sergey Glazyev.
RussiaтАЩs rouble has also not tanked as expected. In fact, it has actually grown stronger than ever.
тАЬKeynesians in the West have misread this situation. They think that the Russian economy is weak and will be destabilised by sanctions. That is not true. Furthermore, they would argue that a currency strengthened by insisting that oil and natural gas are paid for in roubles will push the Russian economy into a depression. But that is only a statistical effect and does not capture true economic progress or the lack of it, which cannot be measured. The fact is that the shops in Russia are well stocked, and fuel is freely available, which is not necessarily the case in the West.
The advantages for Russia are that as the WestтАЩs currencies sink into crisis, the rouble will be protected. Russia will not suffer from the WestтАЩs currency crisis, she will still get inflation compensation in commodity prices, and her interest rates will decline while those in the West are soaring. Her balance of trade surplus is already hitting new records.тАЭ
It is the West who has miscalculated in all of this, and it is their economy that will utterly tank from this тАЬlong-drawnтАЭ war these oligarchs have been having wet dreams about for God knows how many years.
We have done this to ourselves. And if we truly want to correct the matter, we should first have the respect to admit the truth in our complicity to much of the worldтАЩs woes during this Cold War period. Those of us who have lived in abundance, in comfort, and security, should take the first step to speak out and say no more to the rest of the world living in starved war-torn agony.
We must stop caring for ourselves first at the expense of all else. We must start caring for others first and foremost and acknowledge the crimes that have been committed in our name. Only then can we truly have the humility to see that the solution has been in front of our face the whole time.
If we fail in this, the western world will not be able to sustain itself for much longer economically. And when it falls, what sort of people do you think you will be surrounded by after all these years of supporting fascism under your very nose?
The author can be reached at cynthiachung.substack.com
After the Crash 