![](https://www.soonerpolitics.org/uploads/1/6/2/2/16224166/ron-paul-lecture-thin-600-fade_orig.png)
![](https://www.soonerpolitics.org/uploads/1/6/2/2/16224166/909268956_orig.gif)
The Hideous Corruption Of Scott Gottlieb
Click on the headline to read the full story from
![]() ![]() The Hideous Corruption Of Scott Gottlieb Click on the headline to read the full story from
0 Comments
![]() ![]() ![]() The latest of the Twitter Files is reported by Alex Berenson, who was granted access to messaging systems from the times before Elon Musk took over. His first round of reporting concerns the role of Scott Gottlieb, who is a perfect example of an influencer who is technically outside of government but might as well be a powerful official within it. Gottlieb’s main gig now is as a senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC, but he also serves as a board member of Pfizer. Before joining AEI and Pfizer, he headed the Food and Drug Administration under Trump from 2017 to 2019. Before that, he was at Health and Human Services as a member of its Federal Health IT Policy Committee from 2013 to 2017. You probably know him from TV because he has been a ubiquitous presence since the beginning of the pandemic lockdowns, defending the government’s actions and pushing the vaccines from the company whose board he serves. In August 2021, he wrote Twitter to complain about a tweet from his successor at the FDA, Brett Giroir. Giroir wrote to report the results of a study in Israel that clearly demonstrated what most anyone could have known even without the study: natural immunity is superior to vaccinated immunity. Gottlieb complained that the tweet is “corrosive” and might “go viral.” Twitter acted by slapping a “misleading” tag on the tweet, one that still remains to this day. Here is the email: ![]() (bigger) Now, one might observe that Gottlieb is merely a private person and that it was certainly his right to object to anyone’s opinions. Maybe that’s true, except that he served Pfizer at the time and his company enjoyed billions in subsidies to make its product which not only gained a patent but benefitted from product-liability protection that is conventional with such vaccines. In addition, the product was only distributed thanks to an Emergency Use Authorization that bypassed the usual federal standards. That aside, he had been massively influential on lockdown policies from the very beginning, urging the Trump administration to be as extreme as possible in its attack on civil liberties and freedoms. We know this because Jared Kushner’s book reports every detail. He led the effort to present the guidelines for lockdowns that occurred on March 16, 2020, and he did it with the help of two tech executives he tapped to hang around the White House. Kushner reports: As we dealt with the shortage of cotton swabs and other supplies, we faced another problem: the need to develop public health guidelines. Given that people across the country were confused and concerned, Birx and Fauci had been discussing the need for a unified set of federal standards to help Americans understand what they should do to keep themselves safe and slow the spread of the virus. They insisted that these guidelines would help prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Despite all the talk over the past week, no one had taken steps to produce a document. When Nat Turner flagged the issue, I asked him to coordinate with Derek Lyons to produce a draft and encouraged him to call Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA and a renowned public health expert. I had been trying to persuade Gottlieb to come back into government for a short-term stint to help us better organize our response and support our effort to develop a vaccine.So here we have a former government official now working as a board member for one of the companies chosen to produce and distribute vaccines who was directly involved and hugely influential in crafting a policy for the Trump administration that ended up not only dooming the Trump presidency but setting the entire country on the course to recession and a public health crisis. Still Pfizer benefited, obviously. Sure enough, he got his way and the Trump administration issued the draconian guidance: “bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.” And why call out Gottlieb alone when many thousands of serious scientists and medical professionals would have strongly advised against locking down? This is why what Berenson reports here is so significant. Gottlieb was anxious not only to lock down the entire country but also to censor any report on what used to be common-sense observations about natural immunity, even when it comes from credentialed experts and cites peer-reviewed studies. After his lockdown advocacy, and before his intervention to pull down a tweet celebrating natural immunity, but only after the vaccine came to market, he took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to say that the CDC had gone too far, especially with its enforcement of social distancing: “The reliance on a flu model caused public-health authorities to underestimate and overestimate Covid in important ways.” The person and role of Gottlieb is a paradigmatic case of why and how unraveling the mysteries of the lockdowns and vaccine mandates is such a complicated undertaking. It’s not just about government intervention and it’s not just about private corruption. It’s about a complicated relationship between the two, involving a range of public and private actors in and out of government who seized control of the policy machinery to achieve private ends at enormous public expense. Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute. The Censorious Scott Gottlieb Was a Major Influence on Lockdowns Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() ![]() Even though one has become accustomed to seeing the United States government behaving irrationally on an epic scale with no concern for what happens to the average citizen who is not a member of one of the freak show constituencies of the Democratic Party, it is still possible to be surprised or even shocked. Shortly before year’s end 2022 an article appeared in the mainstream media and was quite widely circulated. The headline that it was featured under in the original Business Insider version read “A nuclear attack would most likely target one of these 6 US cities — but an expert says none of them are prepared.” The cities were New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco. The article seeks to provide information and tips that would allow one to survive a nuclear attack, repeating commentary from several “experts” in emergency management and “public health” suggesting that a nuclear war would be catastrophic but not necessarily the end of the world. One should be prepared. It observes that “those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded. The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.” It is full of sage advice and off-the-cuff observations, including “Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?” Or even better the advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)’s “nuclear detonation planning guide” that for everyday citizens in a city that has been nuked: “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Dr. Ron Paul asks “Are they insane? They act as if a nuclear attack on the United States is just another inconvenience to plan for, like an ice storm or a hurricane.” The article argues that the six cities would be prime targets as they are centers for vital infrastructure. The bomb blasts would kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans with many more deaths to follow from radiation poisoning, but the article makes no attempt to explain why Russia, with a relatively sane leadership, would want to start a nuclear war that would potentially destroy the planet. Also, the targeting list of the cities provided by the “experts” is itself a bit odd. Surely Russia would attack military and government targets as a first priority to limit the possible retaliation while also crippling the ability of the White House and Pentagon to command and control the situation. Such targets would include both San Diego and Norfolk where the US Atlantic and Pacific fleets are based as well as the various Strategic Air Command bases and the underground federal government evacuation site in Mount Weather Virginia. Reading the article, one is reminded of the early years of the Cold War that sought to reassure the public that nuclear war was somehow manageable. It was a time when we elementary school children were drilled in hiding under our desks when the air raid alarm went off. Herman Kahn was, at that time, the most famous advocate of the school of thought that the United States could survive the “unthinkable,” i.e. a nuclear war. An American physicist by training, Kahn became a founding member of the beyond neocon nationalist Hudson Institute, which is still unfortunately around. Kahn, who served in the US Army during the Second World War as a non-combat telephone lineman, started has career as a military strategist at the RAND Corporation. Kahn endorsed a policy of deterrence and argued that if the Soviet Union believed that the United States had a devastating second-strike capability then Moscow would not initiate hostilities, which he explained in his paper titled “The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence.” The Russians had to believe that even a perfectly coordinated massive attack would guarantee a measure of retaliation that would leave them devastated as well. Kahn also posited his idea of a “winnable” nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War for which he is often cited as one of the inspirations for the title character of Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Dr. Strangelove. The appearance of the Business Insider article dealing with a cool discussion of the survivability from a nuclear war suggests that the nutcases are again escaping from the psychiatric hospital here in the US and are obtaining top jobs in government and the media. While one continues to hope that somehow someone will wake up in the White House and realize that the deep dark hole that we the American people find ourselves in mandates a change of course and a genuine reset, there is little daylight visible in the darkness. My particular concern relates to the entangling relationships that have kept our country permanently at war in spite of the fact that since the Cold War ended in 1991 no potential adversary has actually threatened the United States. Now, the federal government appears to be in the business of cultivating dangerous relationships to justify defense spending and placing the nation on the brink of what might prove to be catastrophic. The current US mission to “weaken Russia” and eventually also China in order to maintain its own “rules based international order” includes such hypocritical and utterly illegal under international law anomalies as the continued military occupation of part of Syria to deny that country’s leaders’ access to their oil fields and best agricultural land. A recent UN humanitarian agency investigation determined that the Syrian people are suffering and even starving as a result of that and US imposed sanctions that the Biden Administration maintains against all reason and humanity. At the present time, however, the most entangling of all relationships, even more than with Israel, has to be the engagement of the US in the proxy war being fought against Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which is exactly what threatens to turn nuclear if someone blinks at the wrong time. Billions of dollars in direct aid as well as billions more in the form of weapons stripped from arsenals in Europe and the US have been given to the corrupt regime of President Volodymyr Zelensky while Zelensky continues to work assiduously to milk the situation and draw Washington into a deeper war directly confronting Moscow. In fact, by some reckonings the war has already begun, with the US and its allies clearly dedicated to crippling the Russian economy while also getting rid of President Vladimir Putin. The 101st Airborne is now in place in Romania next to Ukraine to “warn” the Kremlin while the Pentagon has recently admitted that some American military personnel are already in Ukraine, contrary to the denials by White House spokesmen. The British have also revealed that some of their elite Special Ops personnel are on the ground. And there are reports that more American soldiers will soon be on the way, ostensibly to “track the weapons” being provided to Zelensky, which will include US-made, Patriot Missile batteries some of which might even be placed in NATO member Poland to provide air cover over Western Ukraine, a definite act of war as seen by Russia, which has warned that such a move would mean that the US and its allies had “effectively become a party” to the war in Ukraine and there will be “consequences.” “Consequences” means escalation. The soldier-“trackers” mission may be in response to reports that weapons provided by NATO have been corruptly sold or given to third countries by the Ukrainians. The several US initiatives taken together could produce a rapid escalation of the conflict complete with dead Americans coming home in body bags and an inevitable direct US involvement in combat roles that could lead anywhere, but at this point it is the Russians who are acting with restraint by not targeting the NATO and US “advisers” who are already active in Ukraine. Suspicion is also growing that the United States “green-lighted” in advance recent cruise missile attacks carried out by Ukraine against military targets deep inside Russia. Since the attacks, the White House has declared that Ukraine has “permission” to attack Russia and has basically conceded to the unbalanced Zelensky the right to make all the decisions and run the war that the US is largely funding, which is a formula for disaster. It is already known that Ukraine is receiving top level intelligence provided both by the US and also other NATO states. The precision attacks on Russia suggest that the Ukrainian army was given the coordinates of possible active targets, something that the US would be capable of providing but which would have been beyond the abilities of Ukraine, which possesses no satellite surveillance capability. If it is true that the White House was involved in escalating the conflict it would be a very dangerous move, inviting retaliation by Moscow. To be sure, some idiots in Washington, mostly of the neocon variety, continue to see war against Russia as something like a crusade for world freedom. Rick Newman, Yahoo’s top Finance Columnist, observes how “Budget hawks in Congress are worried about granting President Biden’s request for an additional $38 billion in aid for Ukraine to help defeat the invading Russians.” He concludes “They’re right. Thirty-eight billion isn’t enough. Make it $50 billion. Or even $100 billion. The more, the better, until the job is done.” Apparently, the bellicose Rick does not quite get that Russia has made clear that if it is about to be defeated by force majeure it will go nuclear. And Congress and the White House don’t seem to get it either, with both the Republican and Democratic parties oblivious to the real danger that confronts the American people. Nuclear war? Sure! Just hide in your basement, if you have one, and tune in. Reprinted with permission from Unz Review. Will 2023 be Worse Than 2022? Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() Thomas Massie Versus The Dragons: Will A New 'Church Committee' Unmask The Deep State? Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president, prime minister, and now deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, posted the following statement to Telegram on January 6. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin deployed the frigate Admiral Gorshkov. It is armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles (3M22 Tsirkon). Admiral Gorshkov will travel “on a transoceanic cruise in a show of force as tensions with the West escalate over the war in Ukraine,” according to the LA Times. The latest version of the Zircon missile is capable of screaming toward a target at Mach 8, around 7,000 miles per hour, and is reportedly unstoppable. Parking hypersonic missiles 100 miles off the Potomac, which flows through DC, is an obvious warning that Russia has the ability to strike the neoliberal order where it hurts. Medvedev doesn’t pull punches. He tells us, in language avoided by Putin, what he thinks of the USG and its continued exercise of the Wolfowitz Doctrine, that is to say, the belief all competitors must be confronted and destroyed if demonstrating intransigence or resistance. Competitors will be eliminated, similar to the way Slobodan Milošević, Saddam Hussein, and Moammar Gadaffi were eliminated. From Medvedev’s Telegraph account: The United States is spending tens of billions on the war in Ukraine, supplying its weapons on a gigantic scale, and exterminating thousands of people with other people's hands. This is outrageous cynicism in the best traditions of the Nazis. Yes, in fact, the sons of bitches, who are such nonsense, are the true heirs of Reich propaganda minister Josef Goebbels.Only this stillborn nonsense has no effect on anyone. And the answer to it you will not get in official silence.Indeed, the entire USG propaganda campaign takes cues from Goebbels, and the Big Lie formulated by Hitler in his memoir “Mein Kampf,” written while in prison after a failed coup, a putsch. Hitler knew that when a Big Lie is repeated over and over, day after day, week after week, the public eventually accepts it as reality. The USG Big Lie portrays Russia as losing in Ukraine. However, according to journalists on the ground in eastern Ukraine (not corporate journalists ensconced in Kyiv hotels), it is Ukraine that is suffering slow-motion defeat, tens of thousands of its soldiers chewed up by constant Russian shelling. Russia’s strategic retreat from Kherson and Lyman is portrayed as an epic defeat, a turn in the war that will eventually tear apart the Russian Federation. The goal of the ruling global elite is to prevent the emergence of all competitors, as stated in the Wolfowitz Doctrine, officially titled “Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 fiscal years,” formulated in 1992 under the direction of Dick Cheney. It eventually became known as the Bush Doctrine. The tenets of this doctrine are now being used to “weaken” Russia, considered a major competitor along with China. Medvedev knows this. Putin knows this. Most Americans, thanks to endless propaganda, don’t know anything about this. The Big Lie corporate media feeds them fantasies, warning Russia is determined to reestablish the Soviet empire. This rubbish is pushed by the former ambassador to Russia, and Deputy Secretary General of NATO, Alexander Vershbow, who said, “Putin wants to rebuild the Russian empire as his legacy… We have to figure out whether he can be stopped.” This made-up excuse is nothing if not a raison d'être for the continued existence of NATO. Minus a manufactured or actual threat, NATO does not have an excuse for maintaining its existence. NATO is a tool for the destruction of targeted states—Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Libya. It has nothing to do with European security—and it certainly does not have a role in the security of America. The unlikely prospect of unstoppable Zircon missiles striking DC will be exploited by the USG to further its propaganda campaign and instill fear in a malleable public. The fact the USG has sent the nuclear submarine USS New Mexico—armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles—into Russian territorial waters is left unmentioned. “Currently, the nuclear submarine USS New Mexico is located about 500 km from the Russian territorial border and will quickly shorten this distance,” DefenceNews reported a month before the Russian SMO. Block V Virginia-class submarines can carry 40 cruise missiles, allowing the US to withdraw converted Ohio-class nuclear submarines, making up for the shortfall in long-range missile firepower in the “superpower competition” with Russia and China.The Wolfowitz Doctrine, and the hegemonic designs of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, make it more than obvious—the USG will not tolerate competition for influence and resources, and it will go to war to retain the ability to kill people living in countries that reject the neoliberal looting and pillage agenda. Increasingly, it appears that effort will result in WWIII, the final war terminating in nuclear winter, and the extinction of all living creatures. Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics. Subscribe and support here. Medvedev Suggests Parking Hypersonic Missiles Near the Potomac Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() The final act of the Democrat majority on the House Ways and Means Committee was to make public several years of Donald Trump’s tax returns, which the Committee obtained after a prolonged legal battle. The tax returns confirmed that, despite being one of the richest people in America, Donald Trump paid very little in federal income tax. In fact, in at least one year he paid under a thousand dollars. Trump’s success in minimizing his tax liability without ever being audited is surprising only to those who think IRS audits are mainly used to catch rich “tax cheats.” According to data released by the Syracuse University Transactional Records Clearinghouse, in 2022 lower-income taxpayers were five and half times more likely than millionaires and billionaires to be audited! This is because low-income taxpayers cannot afford to hire top-notch tax attorneys and accountants to help fight the IRS, so they are more likely to give in to the agency’s demands. Despite claims of the Biden Administration and its Congressional allies, the $80 million in additional funds provided to the agency as a part of the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” will likely increase the tax agency’s targeting of low- and middle-income Americans. Proponents of a flat tax or national sales tax argue that such a system would ensure millionaires and billionaires paid their “fair share” of taxes. Saying we must all pay our “fair share” of taxes assumes we have a moral obligation to the government that can only be fulfilled by turning over as much of our income as our so-called “public servants” demand. This is not the case. Individuals have a moral duty to support their families, and to support private charities if they wish. They do not have a moral duty to support the government. Tax reform proponents also complain that the current tax code contains too many loopholes that cause economic distortions and inefficiencies. It is true that the current tax system promotes inefficiency, but this is caused by the income tax itself, not the loopholes. Conversely, loopholes actually promote economic efficiency by giving taxpayers the ability to spend more of their money the way they prefer, rather than allowing politicians to spend it. As economist Thomas DiLorenzo put it, “private individuals always spend their own money more efficiently than government bureaucrats do.” Some have expressed concerns that the use of President Trump’s tax records as part of the Democrat and Deep State effort to discredit him sets a dangerous precedent that will lead to increased use of tax information as a political weapon. The sad fact is that ever since its creation, politicians have used the IRS as a tool for punishing political opponents. As an IRS agent told the head of conservative organization who was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Bill Clinton, “What do you expect when you target the President?” The major problem with the income tax, and the reason it must be eliminated, not merely “reformed,” is that it is rooted in the idea that the government has first claim on our income. This idea is incompatible with a free society. Furthermore, the income tax must also be repealed because the force of the IRS, along with the fraud of the Federal Reserve, is one of the two foundations of the welfare-warfare state that erodes our liberty and prosperity. The only way to avoid 1984 is to repeal 1913. Trump’s Tax Returns Show Evil of the Income Tax Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() Below is my column in the Hill on the recent disclosure of efforts by Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Cal.) to pressure Twitter to censor critics, including a columnist. This effort occurred shortly after Schiff’s office objected to one of my columns accusing him of pressuring social media companies to censor those with opposing views. While publicly denying that he supports censorship, Schiff was secretly pressuring Twitter to censor an array of critics. Here is the column: “We don’t do this.” That response from Twitter to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) is a singular indictment, coming at the height of Twitter’s censorship operations. Apparently, there were some things that even Twitter’s censors refused to do. One of those things was silencing critics of Schiff and his House committee. In the latest tranche of “Twitter Files,” journalist Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter balked at Schiff’s demand that Twitter suspend an array of posters or label their content as “misinformation” and “reduce the visibility” of them. Among those who Schiff secretly tried to censor was New York Post columnist Paul Sperry. Sperry drew Schiff’s ire by writing about a conversation allegedly overheard by one of his sources. Sperry’s article, which appeared in RealClearInvestigations, cited two sources as overhearing two White House staffers discussing how to remove newly-elected President Trump from office. The article raised the possibility of bias on the part of an alleged key player in launching the first Trump impeachment, CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella. The sources reportedly said that Ciaramella was in a conversation with Sean Misko, a holdover from the Obama administration who later joined Schiff’s staff. The conversation — in Sperry’s words — showed that “just days after [Trump] was sworn in they were already trying to get rid of him.” Rather than simply refute the allegation, Schiff wanted Sperry and other critics silenced. His office reportedly laid out steps to cleanse Twitter of their criticism, including an instruction to “remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content.” The date of Schiff’s non-public letter in November 2020 is notable: Earlier that year, I wrote a column for The Hill criticizing Schiff for pushing for censorship of misinformation in a letter that he sent to social media companies. His office promptly objected to the very suggestion that Schiff supported censorship. We now know Schiff was actively seeking to censor specific critics on social media. These likely were viewed as more than “requests” since Schiff was sending public letters threatening possible legislative action against these same companies. He wanted his critics silenced on social media. After all, criticizing his investigations or staff must, by definition, be misinformation — right? His office seems to have indicated they knew Twitter was using shadowing-banning or other techniques to suppress certain disfavored writers. In the letter, his staff asked Twitter to “label and reduce the visibility of any content.” Twitter, however, drew the line with Schiff; one of its employees simply wrote, “no, this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this.” The “this” referred to in this case was raw political censorship. And even a company that maintained one of the largest censorship programs in history could not bring itself to do what Schiff was demanding — but the demand itself is telling. Not only does it show how dishonest some politicians have been in denying censorship while secretly demanding it, it also shows the insatiable appetite created by censorship. The article in question, written by Sperry, is a good example. Sperry has denied ever supporting QAnon conspiracy theories, as Schiff’s office charged. Yet even if Sperry’s account about Schiff’s staffer was wildly untrue, that should make it easier to rebut publicly. The move by Schiff to ban Sperry and others on Twitter — and to remove content — is highly ironic. Schiff has been criticized repeatedly for promoting “misinformation” and for relying on unidentified “sources” for his claims of Trump’s criminality. For example, Schiff pushed the false claim that the infamous Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation; he also was criticized for pushing false narratives of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election. Nevertheless, I would equally oppose any effort to ban Schiff from social media, although that is hardly likely given the demonstrated political bias of past censorship efforts. As for Sperry, he was later permanently suspended by Twitter, which I also criticized. Schiff is unlikely to be deterred by the release of these communications. He recently sent a letter to Facebook, warning it not to relax its censorship efforts. His letter, written with Reps. André Carson (D-Ind.), Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), reminded Facebook that some lawmakers are watching the company “as part of our ongoing oversight efforts” — and suggested they may be forced to exercise that oversight into any move by Facebook to “alter or rollback certain misinformation policies.” Schiff’s actions embody the slippery slope of censorship. By labeling his critics as QAnon supporters or purveyors of “misinformation,” he sought to have allies in social media “disappear” critics like Sperry — yet he found that even those allies could not stomach his demands. Given Twitter’s censorship of even satirical sites, it was akin to being turned down by a Kanye West podcast as being too extreme. With the disclosure of apparent FBI involvement in Twitter’s censorship program, the release of the Schiff files is another rare insight into how government officials attempted to enlist social media companies for censorship by surrogate or proxy. That is precisely why many in the media, political and business establishments have mobilized against Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter who has released these compromising files. In a recent tweet, Schiff chastised Musk and demanded more answers from the Twitter CEO. While insisting that “I don’t support censorship,” Schiff asked Musk if he would “commit to providing the public with actual answers and data, not just tweets?” Well, Musk just did precisely that. The “actual answer” is that Schiff has long sought to silence his critics, and Musk has exposed the underbelly of censorship — which is where we found Adam Schiff. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. 'We Don’t Do This': Adam Schiff and the Underbelly of American Censorship Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() A top Democrat pressured Twitter to ban a journalist from the social media platform, according to newly released messages. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)’s office pressured Twitter in 2020 to suspend investigative journalist Paul Sperry’s account, the messages show. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time, wanted “many accounts” allegedly linked to QAnon suspended, including Sperry’s, one message showed. Schiff’s office claimed that Sperry and the other accounts had “repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies and harassed [redacted].” QAnon refers to a movement of people who promote conspiracy theories related to government officials and other elite figures, some of which have turned out to be true. The message also showed Schiff’s office wanting the removal of “any and all content” about staff on the House Intelligence Committee, including posts, shared content, and reactions to that content. The message, an internal Twitter email made public by journalist Matt Taibbi, showed a Twitter official saying “this isn’t feasible/we don’t do this” to the latter request. Regarding the request to ban Sperry and the other accounts, the official said, “we’ll review these accounts again but I believe [redacted] mentioned only one actually qualified for suspension.” Schiff’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment, including whether the California lawmaker pressured any other platforms to ban journalists. Sperry said on Twitter that Schiff “used his power as head of House Intel to muscle Twitter into banning a journalist” and suggested the actions stemmed from his reporting on Schiff’s connection to the whistleblower who triggered the impeachment process against former President Donald Trump. Schiff claimed he didn’t have “direct contact” with the whistleblower but his spokesman said later that the person communicated with the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff said he regretted his choice of words. Sperry was ultimately banned by Twitter in February 2021, about three months after the newly revealed message. Sperry was told that his account violated Twitter’s rules, but he wasn’t informed how. “Explains why Twitter could never give me a reason for my suspension. It was Schiff!” Sperry said this week. His account was recently restored after Elon Musk bought Twitter, which hasn’t responded to requests for comment. Musk has given Taibbi and some other reporters access to internal Twitter files. In another set of messages, the Senate Intelligence Committee was shown to be in touch with Twitter on the removal of accounts. Read the whole article here. Rep. Adam Schiff Pressured Twitter To Ban Journalist Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() Seventh Time A Charm? Eighth? McCarthy Keeps Losing Speaker Vote Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() CNN has shattered the speed of light in its haste to recruit former representative Adam Kinzinger to its punditry lineup the millisecond he left congress. Kinzinger, who prior to being redistricted out of his House seat received handsome campaign contributions from arms manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman, was arguably the most egregious warmonger on Capitol Hill. Nobody in congress lobbied as aggressively to start World War Three as Kinzinger did last year; he tried to advance a bill authorizing hot war against Russia if Moscow crossed specified red lines in Ukraine but couldn't get cosponsors because even his fellow congressional hawks thought it was too insane. He was the loudest voice in the US government publicly advocating a no-fly zone over Ukraine in the early weeks of the war, an idea that was slammed by the mass media as it would necessarily have entailed the US military shooting down Russian war planes and aggressively tempted nuclear war. Kinzinger was such a demented omnicidal maniac in 2022 that while still in office he became an official member of the empire-backed online troll farm known as "NAFO", which was founded by an actual neo-Nazi whom Kinzinger openly supported both before and after revelations emerged of the founder's expressions of hatred for Jews and fondness for Hitler. While still a sitting congressman he was flagging trolls with hashtags inviting them to swarm the social media comments of critics of US foreign policy who opposed his psychopathic warmongering. Before the war in Ukraine Kinzinger was calling for the re-invasion of Afghanistan immediately following the US troop withdrawal and raging about public opposition to "endless war." Before that he was cheerleading Trump's assassination of Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani, calling for US interventionism in Venezuela, defending the US-backed war on Yemen, calling for the invasion of Syria, and just generally pushing for more war and militarism at every opportunity. Before that, he was helping the empire kill Iraqis as a member of the US Air Force. Kinzinger is such an obnoxious warmonger online that I myself have called him "the single worst Twitter account that has ever existed," long before his CNN gig was a twinkle in his eye. So it's no wonder a warmongering propaganda network snapped him up the instant he became available, ensuring that his warmongering receives as large a platform as possible. As Antiwar's Dave DeCamp quipped regarding CNN's hire, "All those calls for WWIII must have landed him this gig." Kinzinger's assimilation into the war propaganda industry was so predictable that Glenn Greenwald included it in a Twitter poll this past October asking his audience where they expect his career will take him after he leaves congress, with CNN being one of the options. As one Twitter follower put it, the "congressman to media commentator to lobbyist revolving door spins so fast in Washington, it actually affects the earth's rotation relative to the sun." War is the glue that holds the US empire together, and to serve that purpose it requires endless war propaganda. War propagandists are not any more separate from the endless mass military slaughter they facilitate than the people who actually pull the trigger, and we see this illustrated in the way Kinzinger has been able to slide seamlessly from dropping bombs to passing bomb-dropping legislation to manufacturing consent for the dropping of bombs. We live under an empire that is fueled by lies and human blood, and driven by the ongoing efforts of murderous war sluts like Adam Kinzinger. CNN will be perfect for him. Reprinted with permission from Caitlin's Newsletter. Support the author on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. CNN Recruits Washington's Worst Warmonger The Instant He Leaves Congress Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute |
Ron Paul
|