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Mainstream Media Scrambles As Covid Narrative Crumbles
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![]() ![]() Mainstream Media Scrambles As Covid Narrative Crumbles Click on the headline to read the full story from
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![]() ![]() ![]() This week the US government reached its 31.4 trillion dollars borrowing limit, better known as the “debt ceiling.” This led to a showdown among House Republicans, President Biden, and congressional Democrats. House Republicans are demanding that President Biden and Senate Democrats agree to include spending cuts with the debt ceiling increase. However, President Biden and the congressional Democrats are refusing to negotiate with Republicans. Rather, they and their allies in the mainstream media are lambasting Republicans for their “irresponsibility” in seeking to include spending cuts with an increase in the debt ceiling. America’s national debt is approximately 122 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), meaning the government owes more than the population produces. Interest payments on the national debt follow in size behind other federal budget big spending areas of Social Security, Medicare, and “defense.” While interest payments are made, the national debt continues to grow each year. Government spending steals resources from the private sector. Thus, there is less capital available for private businesses to grow and create new jobs. Government spending also contributes to price inflation and the declining value of the dollar as the Federal Reserve monetizes the debt. One reason the Fed cannot allow interest rates to rise anywhere near where they would be in a free market is that it would cause the federal government’s interest payments to rise to unsustainable levels. Considering these facts, it should be clear that the irresponsible ones are those who think the government should increase its credit limit without cutting spending. This is not to say that establishment Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are heroes of fiscal restraint. Rather, McCarthy, like most Republicans, objected neither to increased spending nor to debt ceiling suspensions when Donald Trump was president. Further, any Republican spending plan will likely continue increasing spending on the military-industrial complex while refusing to address the looming cost problems with Social Security and Medicare. While some Republicans are willing to discuss reforms to Social Security and Medicare, most are still too afraid of the “senior lobby” to support any changes in the programs — even if such changes will not harm current beneficiaries. Consequently, it is unlikely Congress will pass meaningful entitlement reform — at least until it is forced to do so because the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds run out of money. Insolvency is projected for the Medicare Trust Fund in five years and for the Social Security Trust Fund in 12 years. Of course, Congress may be able to avoid making tough choices since the Federal Reserve will likely cut government benefits, along with workers’ wages and the value of savings, via the inflation tax. Following early reports that the House Republican leadership was open to supporting cuts in military spending, there arose a predictable cry from Republican hawks that any reduction in spending would leave the US and its allies vulnerable to our enemies. The limited cuts considered, though, would still keep America with a military budget exceeding the combined military budgets of the next nine biggest spending countries. After some pressure from the military-industrial complex’s loyalists and propagandists, most Republicans retreated from supporting defense cuts. A problem with many fiscal conservatives is they accept the premise of the welfare-warfare statists. Thus, they are unable to make consistent principled arguments supporting spending cuts and opposing spending increases. The key to restoring a free society is for a critical mass of individuals to reject statism. Debt Ceiling Hysteria and Hypocrisy Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() ![]() Hillary versus Trump versus Biden. All three kept classified information at their homes. Who wins the battle to have likely done the most damage to national security? In the end when dealing with the damage done by mishandling classified information it comes down to exposure; who saw it, what was it, when was it seen, and for how long? The “who” part is clear enough; a document left inadvertently on a desk top in an embassy guarded by Marines might not be seen by anyone. A document left on a park bench and seized by the local police risks direct exposure to the host country intelligence services if not sale to the highest bidder depending on the locale. But never underestimate cleaning staff; spies love ’em. In what other capacity are likely locals allowed to rummage through an embassy at night, picking through the trash, and moving things around on desks to um, dust? The “what” and how much of it is the real stuff of James Bond. At times “what” is in the eye of the beholder. The Secretary of State’s daily list of telephone calls to make is always highly classified. It might matter very little to a Russian spy that the Secretary is calling the leader of Cyprus on Wednesday but matter an awful lot to the leader of nearby Greece. That is why intelligence services often horsetrade, buying and selling info they pick up along the way about other countries for info they need about theirs. The “when” aspect is also important as many documents are correctly classified at one point in their history but lose value over time. One classic example is a convoy notification; it matters a lot who knows tomorrow at midnight the convoy will set forth. It matters a whole lot less a month later after everybody in town saw the convoy arrive. “How Long” can matter as well, as the longer a document is exposed the more chances someone unauthorized has to see it. So those are the ground rules, on to Hillary versus Trump versus Biden! “Who” between Trump and Biden seems a toss-up, given that as far as we know both kept classified in locked closets (we’ll turn to Hillary and her server below.) An investigator would want to know who had keys to that lock, and if possible, who used them when. What controls if any were in place to prevent duplicates from being made? What kind of lock was used? Was it pickable? Would cleaning staff or painters called in have had time alone to work the lock? Were there any video or access logs that might show the staff spent an inordinate amount of time near the closets? We know nothing about this regarding Trump’s and Biden’s closets. One might also want to get into who packed the boxes containing classified info, on whose orders, and how much exposure did they get en route to those naughty closets. Did the information sit in an unguarded truck stop overnight in 2010? Who would have known? “Who” is more than a name, it is a line of dominoes. We have a starting on “what” material may have been compromised, and it is not good. Hillary, Trump, and Biden mis-stored information at at least the SCI level (Sensitive Compartmentalized Information, above Top Secret.) SCI means not only is the document classified, even seeing it is restricted to a specific list of people such that merely holding a full Top Secret clearance is not enough. We can say the documents included some real secrets as of their drafting. Next of concern is the raw number of documents potentially exposed. In Trump’s case we have a decent tally, thanks to the Department of Justice. The initial batch of documents retrieved by the National Archives from Trump in January included more than 150 classified. With the raid, the government recovered over 300 classified documents from Trump. This worked out to over 700 pages of classified material and “special access program materials,” especially clandestine stuff that might include info on the source itself, the gold star of intelligence gathering. If you learn who the spy is inside your own organization you can shoot him, arrest him, find other spies in his ring, or turn him into a double agent to feed bogus information back to your adversary. Our contest is a bit unfair to Trump, as inventories of what was found at Mar-a-Lago are online for all to see while the Biden media has been very cagey on how many document have been found, using phrases like “several” and “a few dozen.” We’ll have to wait until Biden’s home is raided or the Special Counsel concludes his investigation to know for sure. In Hillary’s case just coming to a raw number is very hard, as she destroyed her server before it could be placed into evidence. Because her stash was email the secret files were also not all in their original paper cover folders boldly marked Top Secret with bright yellow borders, as in Trump’s case. Hillary also stripped the classification markings off many documents in the process of transferring them from the State Department’s classified network to her own homebrew server setup. Nonetheless, according to the FBI, from the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 contained classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information Top Secret at the time they were sent, with some labeled as “special access program materials.” Some 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the messages were sent, suggesting they were drafts in progress, in the process of being edited before a classification was ultimately assigned. The “what” is a toss-up for now. Little information exists on specifically what each document trove held, though the WaPo claims one of Trump’s docs detailed a foreign country’s nuclear capability (ironically, the leak from DOJ revealing the document’s contents suggests things were more secure at Mar-a-Lago than after the search) giving him a slight lead in this category. Clinton discussed Top Secret CIA drone info and approved drone strikes via Blackberry. We do have a winner in the “when” category, albeit via an odd path. Biden’s classified materials date back to his Vice Presidency, and we don’t know when they were moved out of secure storage, so the material goes possibly back to 2009. That’s potentially 14 years of the paper hanging around waiting for someone to discover and make nefarious use of it. In Trump’s case, he left the White House in January 2021 and the classified was pulled out of Mar-a-Lago no later than August 2022, only some 20 months of hiding for no more than four years of material. Investigations are ongoing in both cases but there is no evidence to date that anyone unauthorized saw the classified documents. We know that after classified was id’ed inside Mar-a-Lago by the National Archives, DOJ asked Trump to provide a better lock, which he did, and later to turn over surveillance tapes of the storage room, which he did. But the clearest evidence of non-exposure is the lack of urgency on the part of all concerned to bust up Trump’s place. Claims he retained classified documents from the White House began circulating even as he moved out in January 2021. The first public evidence of classified in Mar-a-Lago waited until January 2022 when the initial docs were seized, and the recent search warrant tailed that by eight months. If the FBI thought classified material was in imminent danger from one of America’s adversaries they might have acted with a bit more alacrity. The real money-maker in the classified world is exposure, and here we finally have a clear leader. Hillary wins in that her exposure of classified emails was done consistently over a period of years in real-time. Her server was connected to the internet, meaning for a moderately clever adversary there was literally a wire between her computer with its classified information and the Kremlin. Her server held at least 110 known messages containing classified information, including e-mail chains classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level, the highest level of civilian classification, that included the names of CIA and NSA employees. The FBI found classified intelligence improperly stored and transmitted on Clinton’s server may have been “compromised by unauthorized individuals, to include foreign governments or intelligence services, via cyber intrusion or other means.” How could anyone have gained access to the credentials? Clinton’s security certificate was issued by GoDaddy. We have a winner. Whether anyone unauthorized got a look at Trump’s or Biden’s stash remains unclear, but we know for near-certain Hillary’s was compromised. And by compromised we mean every email the Secretary of State sent wide open and read, an intelligence officer’s dream. Hillary had no physical security on her server, her server was enabled for logging in via web browser, smartphone, Blackberry, and tablet, and she communicated with it on 19 trips abroad including to Russia and China. It would have taken the Russians zero seconds to see she was using an unclassified server, and half a tick or two to hack (hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact) into it. Extremely valuable to the adversary were the drafts, documents in progress, a literal chance to look over Clinton’s shoulder as she made policy concerning their country. No search warrant was exercised to seize the server and Hillary’s word was taken when she said there was no chance of compromise. So enjoy the bread and circuses around two old men with irresponsible staffs and or irresponsible ambitions who got caught with classified information improperly stored. The real damage had already been done years earlier by Hillary, who escaped any penalty, not even the embarrassment of a Special Prosecutor. Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com. Exposure: Why Mishandling Classified Material Matters Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity Government is the Victim of Doctor Accused of Giving Out Coronavirus Vaccine Cards Without Shots1/22/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() This week, the United States Department of Justice charged in a Utah federal court Michael Kirk Moore, Jr. — a medical doctor — and three other individuals with crimes. The so-called crimes arise from allegation that the individuals helped adults who did not want to take experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots obtain cards verifying they had taken the shots when shots were instead destroyed, as well as that the individuals provided cards verifying shots along with the injecting of saline shots instead of coronavirus shots into children, all at the request of the children’s parents. Vaccination record cards provided to patients would have allowed them to keep their jobs and continue participating in normal activities of life in the face of vaccine mandates and vaccine passport requirements. This prosecution is all about a victimless crime. Nobody was hurt. Rather, the patients received what they wanted — verification of shots receipt placed in their hands, plus no coronavirus shots injected in their arms. But the US government is not letting the absence of victims among the doctor’s patients stop it from prosecuting. As related by Jordan Miller in a Thursday Salt Lake Tribune article, each of the four defendants has been “indicted on three counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to convert, sell, convey, and dispose of government property; and the conversion, sale, conveyance, and disposal of government property and aiding and abetting.” Got that? The purported injury has all been experienced by the US government. The government is painting itself as the victim to justify pressing charges. The case pretty much has to be that way. The much trumpeted as “safe and effective” coronavirus shots have turned out to be neither. Even if the doctor had deceptively given out saline shots when patients thought they were receiving coronavirus shots, what medical damage would his patients be able to claim — the lack of a chance to suffer from the many health problems the dud shots cause? Given the coronavirus shots are no good at even preventing transmission of coronavirus, there would also be nothing for third parties to complain about. They were no more endangered by being around no shots or saline shots recipients than by being around people who received the Operation Warp Speed injections. No harm, no foul, right? Well, the US government does not see it that way. It is very proud of its defective product and does not want anyone just throwing it away. Despite the US government having many employees supposedly dedicated to protecting Americans from defective and dangerous products, it views it as a crime for a doctor to protect patients from the US government and its select pharmaceutical corporate partner’s own defective and dangerous shots. While the US government’s Consumer Product Safety Commission is targeting gas stoves of all things for elimination, the Department of Justice is dedicating itself to fighting avoidance of clot (and much more) shot injections. The US government is trying to paint Dr. Moore and his fellow defendants as villains. But, from the information that has come out so far, it appears that Jordan Schachtel, who has written much about the US government’s wrongdoing in the name of countering coronavirus, has a much better take. Dr. Moore “is an absolute hero,” opined Schachtel on Saturday at Twitter. The problem is that heroism that challenges the US government is just the sort of thing for which US prosecutors can and do seek punishment. Government is the ‘Victim’ of Doctor Accused of Giving Out Coronavirus Vaccine Cards Without Shots Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() This Ron Paul column was published in December, 2004. For everyone who has been conditioned by the mainstream media to believe that the problems in Ukraine started last February, here is an important bit of history. -DM President Bush said last week that, “Any election [in Ukraine], if there is one, ought to be free from any foreign influence.” I agree with the president wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, it seems that several US government agencies saw things differently and sent US taxpayer dollars into Ukraine in attempt to influence the outcome. We do not know exactly how many millions – or tens of millions – of dollars the United States government spent on the presidential election in Ukraine. We do know that much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and that through a series of cut-out non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – both American and Ukrainian – millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko. Let me add that I do not think we should be supporting either of the candidates. While I am certainly no supporter of Viktor Yushchenko, I am not a supporter of his opponent, Viktor Yanukovich, either. Simply, it is none of our business who the Ukrainian people select to be their president. And, if they feel the vote was not fair, it is up to them to work it out. How did this one-sided US funding in Ukraine come about? While I am afraid we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg, one part that we do know thus far is that the US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the US-based Freedom House. PAUCI then sent US government funds to numerous Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This would be bad enough and would in itself constitute meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. But, what is worse is that many of these grantee organizations in Ukraine are blatantly in favor of presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko. Consider the Ukrainian NGO International Center for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the US government through PAUCI. On its Web site, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board! And this NGO is not the only one the US government funds that is openly supportive of Viktor Yushchenko. The Western Ukraine Regional Training Center, as another example, features a prominent USAID logo on one side of its Web site’s front page and an orange ribbon of the candidate Yushchenko’s party and movement on the other. By their proximity, the message to Ukrainian readers is clear: the US government supports Yushchenko. The Center for Political and Legal Reforms, another Ukrainian NGO funded by the US government, features a link at the top of its Web site’s front page to Viktor Yushchenko’s personal Web site. Yushchenko’s picture is at the top of this US-government-funded Web site. This May, the Virginia-based private management consultancy Development Associates, Inc., was awarded $100 million by the US government “for strengthening national legislatures and other deliberative bodies worldwide.” According to the organization’s Web site, several million dollars from this went to Ukraine in advance of the elections. As I have said, this may only be the tip of the iceberg. There may be many more such organizations involved in this twisted tale. It is clear that a significant amount of US taxpayer dollars went to support one candidate in Ukraine. Recall how most of us felt when it became known that the Chinese government was trying to funnel campaign funding to a US presidential campaign. This foreign funding of American elections is rightly illegal. Yet, it appears that that is exactly what we are doing abroad. What we do not know, however, is just how much US government money was spent to influence the outcome of the Ukrainian election. Dozens of organizations are granted funds under the PAUCI program alone, and this is only one of many programs that funneled dollars into Ukraine. We do not know how many millions of US taxpayer dollars the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) sent to Ukraine through NED’s National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute. Nor do we know how many other efforts, overt or covert, have been made to support one candidate over the other in Ukraine. That is what I find so disturbing: there are so many cut-out organizations and sub-grantees that we have no idea how much US government money was really spent on Ukraine, and most importantly how it was spent. Perhaps the several examples of blatant partisan support that we have been able to uncover are but an anomaly. I believe Congress and the American taxpayers have a right to know. I believe we urgently need an investigation by the Government Accounting Office into how much US government money was spent in Ukraine and exactly how it was spent. I would hope very much for the support of Chairman Hyde, Chairman Lugar, Deputy Assistant Secretary Tefft, and my colleagues on the House International Relations Committee in this request. President Bush is absolutely correct: elections in Ukraine should be free of foreign influence. It is our job here and now to discover just how far we have violated this very important principle, and to cease any funding of political candidates or campaigns henceforth. From the Vault: 'US Hypocrisy on Ukraine' Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() ![]() If you’re watching the World Economic Forum’s annual ruling class confab in Davos this week, you might be surprised by the lack of disagreement among the rich and powerful there. Every panel in Davos acts as a reinforced echo chamber in which there is one problem, one objective, and only one solution. Regardless of who populates these panels and speeches, whether it’s invited corporate media, governmental officials, and/or business executives, there’s never any apparent dissent or difference of opinion expressed. Given that the World Economic Forum is best understood as a narrative and ideas generator for the global ruling class, one might be under the impression that Davos would be a place for a healthy, robust debate. That’s why many new observers in the space have been understandably baffled by the incredible conformity expressed by speakers and attendees at the Swiss retreat. Many noticed as former CNN host Brian Stelter, who claims to defend the importance of a free press, smiled and nodded at a co-panelist’s vicious attack on open speech. Former New York Times editor Jill Abramson offered her own no holds barred commentary on the matter. ![]() Author Walter Kirn tweet expressed his fascination with “how little disagreement there is.” The truth of the matter is that the World Economic Forum and its leaders prefer conformity to debate. In fact, debate is actively discouraged, and stepping out of line — via a narrative violation — is grounds for permanent removal from Club Davos. Klaus Schwab discusses this very topic in his book, “The Great Narrative,” which is book two of his infamous “The Great Reset” series. Discussing the goals of the WEF, Schwab starts by claiming that his outfit is open to all ideologies and political perspectives. We quickly learn that he is not truly referring to all perspectives, but only those that he views as legitimate. There is one specific group of people who he says are to be dismissed whole cloth. That group, of course, is individuals and groups that do not accept the World Economic Forum’s climate narrative, and its very specific “solutions” to the supposed climate problem. “Climate action, sustainability, inclusivity, global cooperation, health, and well being” are “the most important issues to address in our times,” he writes. “Not moving right away and decisively would render our biosphere so hostile as to derail global economic growth and … further endangering political and social stability.” In short, Schwab’s narrative insists that the world is on fire, and there is no room for debate on this issue, and the only solution is to roll back human progress. The publicly diplomatic Schwab expresses absolute disdain for these non compliant actors, who he notes, with disgust, are largely located in the United States. Klaus Schwab *hates* non-conformity, deciding that those who refuse to comply are conspiracy theorists who are responsible for all of the world’s ills. Schwab says that these “anti-science movements” have acted to “prolong the waning of the COVID-19 pandemic,” adding that we are “hindering both public health, and more fundamentally, our ability to move forward in unison.” The WEF approaches all of its big ticket items as issues that already have complete and total consensus. Everything important to the WEF is categorized in one form or another as an “emergency,” so they claim there is no room for debating these issues at Davos. This “emergency” is too serious for the speakers at Davos to challenge the narrative. They already have an established problem and an agreed upon solution. The only thing that’s left to debate is how fast they can move forward on these supposed problems and solutions, and how aggressively they will attempt to trample all over our individual rights in the process. Reprinted with permission from The Dossier. Subscribe and support here. At Davos, Conformity is Required, and Debate is a Cancel-Worthy Sin Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() Desperation Or Suicide? US To Encourage Ukraine To Attack Crimea Click on the headline to read the full story from Peace and Prosperity ![]() ![]() ![]() Among the federal government’s biggest failures is the war on drugs. Despite decades of warfare, the federal government is still a long way from declaring victory. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Today, the federal government is still fiercely waging the drug war, trying as hard as it can to win. Throughout the decades, drug warriors have lamented that federal officials just haven’t really been serious about winning the drug war. If only they would really “crack down,” the drug war would finally be won. But what the drug warriors fail to acknowledge is that over the decades of drug warfare, federal officials have cracked down. For example, there have been the mandatory-minimum sentences, where they sent drug users, possessors, and distributors, especially blacks, to jail for inordinately long periods of time. The idea was that if enough people got locked away for much of their lives, people would be dissuaded from violating drug laws. Then the drug war would be over. There is also asset forfeiture, which enables the DEA and state law-enforcement personnel to steal cash from people, especially blacks, who are traveling down the highway. They don’t even need to charge them with a drug offense. They just take their money from them. The idea is that if someone, especially a black, is carrying a large sum of money, it has to be from drug dealing. So, asset forfeiture was supposed to discourage people from selling drugs. Then, the drug war would be over. There are also the no-knock raids on people, especially blacks, in the middle of the night. The idea was that if people knew that the cops could barge into their homes and bedrooms in the middle of the night and even kill them, people would be dissuaded from possessing and using drugs. Then, the drug war would be over. Except that none of it has ever worked. The more they have cracked down, the bigger the drug-war problem has become. So, how about if we use the Mexico model? How about if we bring in the military to fight the war on drugs? They did that in Mexico, but the problem is that it still didn’t bring victory in the war on drugs. After more than a decade of having the military wage the war on drugs, Mexican officials are still further away from winning than ever. In fact, after they brought the military into the fray, more than 100,000 people died or disappeared, not from drugs but from the violence of the drug war. Well, how about we crack down like they did in the Philippines during the 2016-2022 presidential term of Rodrigo Duterte. During Duterte’s regime, drug-war personnel began killing drug-law violators on sight. No pesky arrests, prosecutions, due process, attorneys, trials, and all the hassles associated with using the criminal-justice system to target people who were violating the government’s drug laws. Just kill them. I think everyone would agree that that would be the ultimate drug-war crackdown. According to an article at CNN Philippines, “During Duterte’s term, government monitoring platform RealNumbersPH showed over 6,000 people died in anti-illegal drug operations. Local and international human rights organizations, however, estimate an even higher tally of between 12,000 and 30,000.” Now, I’d say that’s a real drug-war crackdown. Surely, it won the war on drugs in the Philippines, right? Well, not exactly. According to that same CNN article, “The Philippine National Police (PNP) on Monday said 2,092 people nationwide were arrested in anti-illegal drug operations in the first two weeks of the year. In a media briefing, PNP chief Rodolfo Azurin Jr. said the arrests were made during 1,518 separate operations from Jan. 1 to 14, where a combined ₱70 million worth of drugs were confiscated.” Oh, well. It would seem that nothing will ever win the war on drugs. I guess we just have to resign ourselves to living under this ongoing, never-ending, perpetual deadly and destructive failed government program. Of course, the drug warriors never bother to ask some important questions: Why don’t people have the right to consume whatever they want? What business is that of the government? Why can’t the government just leave people alone? Who made the government people’s daddy? Why not just legalize drugs and be done with the drug war, once and for all? Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation. Will a Crackdown Finally Win the War on Drugs? Click on the headline to read the full story from ![]() ![]() Biden's Desperate Search For Weapons For Ukraine Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() There has been much coverage over the resurfacing of former CNN host Brian Stelter as the host for a panel at the World Economic Forum on alleged disinformation and “hate speech.” Stelter previously called for censorship under a “harm reduction model” and led a panel at a conference where Democrats discussed how to shape the news. He was confronted over his own dissemination for false stories targeting Republicans on CNN. Yet, I was most struck by a statement from New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger who described “disinformation” as the “most existential” problem the world is facing today. Sulzberger insisted that disinformation is the reason why there is a loss of “trust” today. He ignores his own history in eroding that trust in the media through flagrantly biased decisions at the New York Times. Former NYT editor Jill Abramson also slammed the participation of Sulzberger and the New York Times at Davos, denouncing it as a “corrupt circle-jerk” between media and business. She said that “the coverage was a sweetener to flatter the CEOs by seeing their names in the NYT.” The panel was titled, “Clear & Present Danger of Disinformation” included panelists: New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger, Vice-President of the European Commission Vera Jourová, CEO of Internews Jeanne Bourgault, and Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. The entire conference was notable in its omission of free speech advocates while inviting long advocates for censorship like Stelter. Stelter asked his panel, “How does this discussion of disinformation relate to everything else happening today in Davos?” Sulzberger responded: Well, first, thanks for having me is as part of this conversation. As you can imagine, this is something I really care deeply about. So, I think if you look at this question of disinformation, I think it maps basically to every other major challenge that we are grappling with as a society, and particularly the most existential among them. So, disinformation and in the broader set of misinformation, conspiracy, propaganda, clickbait, you know, the broader mix of bad information that’s corrupting information ecosystem, what it attacks is trust. And once you see, trust decline, what you then see is a society start to fracture, and so you see people fracture along tribal lines and, you know, that immediately undermines pluralism. And the undermining of pluralism is probably the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy. So I really — I think if if you’re spending this week thinking about the health of democracies and democratic erosion, I think it’s really import to work your way back up to where this starts.It was a telling statement. Sulzberger suggested that allowing some opposing views undermines “trust.” Indeed, allowing opposing views on Covid or election or global warming does erode trust in the media and the government. Society would be so less “fractured” if information is controlled and consistent. There is a perfectly Orwellian element to Sulzberger’s words. Democracy is being threatened because there is too much “disinformation,” “misinformation,” “bad information,” and other harmful views being expressed. After all, without such views, there was be less “fracture” and most “trust.” That was precisely the point of the earlier conference. What is striking about the comment, however, was the date. This is after many of those censored and blacklisted in the media and social media have been vindicated in the questions over masks or vaccines. Those who questioned the efficacy of masks were suspended or banned but now have been seemingly vindicated. Among the suspended were the doctors who co-authored of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others. Likewise, the New York Times was one of those newspapers suppressing stories like the Hunter Biden laptop. It only admitted that the laptop was authentic roughly two years after the election. Some of us have been raising concerns the emergence of a “shadow state” where corporations carry out censorship the Constitution bars the government from doing. What’s striking is leading Democrats have been open about precisely this type of corporate manipulation of political speech on social media. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called upon these companies to use enlightened algorithms to protect users from their own bad reading choices. Even President Joe Biden called for such regulation of speech and discussions by wise editors. Without such censorship and manipulation, Biden asked, “How do people know the truth?” The last year has shown how media censorship resisted scientific debate and buried legitimate stories. Yet, Sulzberger is still unrepentant and views disinformation rather than censorship as the problem…Indeed the world’s most existential problem. Sulzberger’s position is nothing if not consistent. He was involved in one of the lowest moments in modern media when the newspaper turned not only on a US senator but its own editor to yield to the mob. Former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet recently said Sulzberger “set me on fire and threw me in the garbage” in the Cotton column controversy. The treatment of the Cotton column shocked many of us. It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. During the week of June 6, 2020, the Times forced out Bennet and apologized for publishing Cotton’s column calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House. While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists denounced the column as historically inaccurate and politically inciteful. The column was in fact historically accurate, even if you disagreed with the underlying proposal (as I did). Reporters insisted that Cotton was endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper should not feature people who advocate political violence. Writers Taylor Lorenz, Caity Weaver, Sheera Frankel, Jacey Fortin, and others also said that such columns put black reporters in danger and condemned publishing Cotton’s viewpoint. Critics never explained what was historically false (or outside the range of permissible interpretation) in the column. In a breathtaking surrender, the newspaper apologized and not only promised an investigation into how such an opposing view could find itself on its pages but promised to reduce the number of editorials in the future: We’ve examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication. This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an Op-Ed that did not meet our standards. As a result, we’re planning to examine both short term and long term changes, to include expanding our fact-checking operation and reduction the number of op-eds we publish.Bennet reportedly made an apology to the staff. That however was not enough. He was later compelled to resign for publishing a column that advocates an option used previously in history with rioting. Bennet recently told the new media outlet Semafor that Sulzberger ...blew the opportunity to make clear that the New York Times doesn’t exist just to tell progressives how progressives should view reality. That was a huge mistake and a missed opportunity for him to show real strength. He still could have fired me…I actually knew what it meant to have a target on your back when you’re reporting for the New York Times.These controversies are the reason why trust in the media is at an all-time low. However, figures like Sulzberger still blame too much free speech as opposed to his own role in biased coverage that has undermined that trust. That is why, in 2023, it is so glaring to see Sulzberger is being interviewed by Stelter on how disinformation is the greatest existential threat to the planet. Not nuclear proliferation, over-population, war, famine. It is the danger of allowing too much free speech that undermines “trust.” The key however is that there was no “fracturing” at the World Economic Forum. It was the same figures voicing the same criticism of free speech as the scourge of our time. The problem is the vast global unwashed who fail to put their trust in the right people and sources. Fortunately, all the right people are gathered at Davos to show the way. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. Sulzberger: Disinformation in the 'Most Existential Problem' Facing the Planet Today Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute |
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