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Is There A Conservative Case For 'Speaker McCarthy'?
Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
![]() ![]() Is There A Conservative Case For 'Speaker McCarthy'? Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute
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![]() ![]() ![]() At 5:58 pm on December 18, 2022, the Twitter account, @blackintheempir (“Black in the Empire”, belonging to an “Anti Establishment Vet w/ commentary from experience inside the war machine and life in the civilian world as a Black man”) posted the following tweet: A fair question, given the reality that the 10-month-old war raging in Ukraine has, from its very inception, been a conflict between Russia and the “collective West,” where Ukraine has functioned as a de factor proxy for the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This status did not evolve because of “Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression” against Ukraine, a common western narrative, but rather functions as a direct result of the intent of NATO, expressed through a policy more than a dozen years in the making, to use Ukraine as a vehicle to undermine and weaken Russia through a proxy war of attrition, one where NATO was willing to sacrifice the national integrity, sovereignty, viability, blood, and treasure of Ukraine for its intended purpose. We know this how? The memorandum written by William Burns, the current Director of the CIA, and former US Ambassador of the US to Russia, on January 30, 2008, regarding NATO efforts to bring Ukraine into its fold, provides a good starting point. In short, Burns predicted that any effort to make Ukraine a NATO member would lead to civil war in Ukraine between Ukrainian nationalists and ethnic-Russians that would compel a Russian military intervention—classic cause-effect analysis. Despite this stark warning, in April 2008, during the NATO Summit held in Bucharest, Romania, the organization announced that Ukraine would eventually become a member of the organization, a move that the US Secretary of Defense at the time, Robert Gates, decried as “recklessly ignoring what the Russians considered their own vital national interests.” Thanks to the stunning admissions of both former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and former German Chancellor Angela Merkle, we now know that the 2014 and 1015 Minsk Accords, negotiated by Germany and France (both NATO members), together with Ukraine, were nothing more than a sham designed to buy time for NATO to build a Ukrainian military capable of defeating ethnic Russians who opposed the February 2014 coup that ousted the constitutionally-elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich, replacing him with a government which embraced the odious ideology of the ultra-nationalist (and one-time ally of Adolf Hitler), Stepan Bandera. The Minsk agreements ostensibly set in motion a ceasefire which saw the ethnic Russian opponents of the Ukrainian nationalists trade their military advantage (they had surrounded and were preparing to defeat a significant portion of the Ukrainian military in and around the town of Debaltseve) for the prospects of a negotiated peace that would see the breakaway territories of the Donbas remain under Ukrainian sovereign control in exchange for constitutionally-guaranteed autonomy that protected their Russian cultural heritage. But neither Ukraine nor its NATO masters had any intention of seeing the Minsk agreements reach fruition. Instead, in 2015, the US and NATO established the Yavoriv Combat Training Center in western Ukraine, near the city of Lvov where, for the next seven years, more than 27,000 Ukrainian soldiers (10% of the regular establishment of the Ukrainian Army and including thousands of pro-Nazi members of the Azov Regiment) were trained for the sole purpose of fighting Russians in eastern Ukraine. There is no doubt that the current conflict in Ukraine is a byproduct of a NATO master plan which sought to bring Ukraine into its ranks for the sole purpose of promulgating a conflict with Russia where Ukraine would function as NATO’s proxy to weaken, and eventually defeat, Russia through a war of attrition that NATO planners knew would result in the destruction of Ukraine. With this background in mind, @blackintheempir’s tweet seemed like a fair question, especially since this was a war that NATO had been preparing for since at least 2008. Enter Adam Kinzinger, stage right. On December 19, 2022, the Republican Representative from Illinois tweeted out a response: Kinzinger’s Twitter bio defines the Congressman as a “Husband, dad, pilot, Lt. Col in @AirNatlGuard, founder of @Country_F1rst. US Congressman challenging conspiracy theories, always standing for truth. #NAFO.” I was struck by the unprofessional language used by someone who openly embraces his status as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard, namely that a war between NATO and Russia (two nuclear armed entities) would be, like, “a real” (as opposed to “fake”) 3-day operation. Besides the college frat-boy semantics involved (like, wow), Kinzinger’s tweet exposes a level of ignorance which, unfortunately, is not unique to the wannabe tough guy from the Illinois National Guard. Kinzinger knows nothing about the kind of “real war” that would be waged between NATO and Russia for the simple fact that he spent that past two decades participating in the “fake” wars waged by the US in both Iraq and Afghanistan—the man flew KC-135 tankers, before transitioning to the smaller RC-26B twin-engine spy plane, which Kinzinger flew in the permissive airspace over Iraq, supporting US special operations forces as they hunted down Iraqi insurgents. I’m not denigrating Kinzinger’s service—the US military is a team, and as a former intelligence officer myself, I know that it takes every member of the military team to execute a successful military operation. But let’s not delude ourselves—Kinzinger was more at risk of being knocked out of the sky by a bird strike than hostile fire. Kinzinger may know a thing or two about flying small aircraft high in the sky over the deserts of Iraq, but he knows nothing about “real war.” Read the whole article here. Adam Kinzinger, the Quintessential American Idiot Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() As someone who played a minuscule role in a CIA information operation that targeted Soviet military operations in Afghanistan in November 1985, I feel somewhat qualified to comment on the mammoth propaganda campaign the United States and Europe have unleashed on Russia. I have never seen anything so perverse and so dishonest. Let me give you a recent example. Remember this recent “news” headline? DUCKING FOR COVERThis was courtesy of the UK’s SUN. Lacking any reliable source, The SUN opted for speculation: VLADIMIR Putin has cancelled his state of the nation address fuelling rumours he is in hiding from the Russian people and could be in failing health.Got it? Putin is either deathly ill — suffering from Parkinsons, cancer, Irritable Bowel, etc. — or deathly afraid of having to explain the ass whooping that Ukraine is delivering to Russia. You see, Putin can’t handle tough questions. Oops!! Wait a minute. We have breaking news. Turns out that Putin held a 48 minute press conference three days before Western Christmas (does this count as “end of the year”?): ...on Friday, dozens of politicians who once backed Guaidó voted in favor of removing the 39-year-old engineer and replacing his US-supported “interim government” with a committee to oversee presidential primaries next year and protect the nation’s assets abroad.The US mojo for overthrowing foreign governments has fallen on hard times. The last successful Western engineered coup was in Ukraine in February 2014. Since then the US efforts to put their own boy in charge of a foreign government have faltered badly. Not just in Venezuela. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, working with the Brits and Turkey and some Gulf States, tried to get rid of Syria’s Bashir Assad and funded a civil war. The attempted coup in Khazakstan in January 2022 was a bust. Syria and Khazakstan shared one thing in common — Russia was their friend and Russia intervened to shore up those governments. I wonder what the Russia phrase for Mighty Mouse is? Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.com. Is Western Propaganda Failing? Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() The prospects for peace, justice, and the advancement of liberty in 2023 may at first seem further away than ever. Washington’s determination to overthrow the Russian government via a proxy war in Ukraine has brought the threat of nuclear war closer than ever in history. The mainstream media is even “normalizing” the idea that a nuclear attack on the US is really no big deal. Yahoo News wrote yesterday that a “public health expert” is “concerned” that Americans are not sufficiently prepared for nuclear bombs hitting major US cities! The Yahoo article even links to a FEMA-authored “nuclear detonation planning guide” to help us better get through a barrage of nuclear missiles. 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 FEMA guide’s advice on what to do during a nuclear attack is, “Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.” Stay tuned to what? Have they not seen the photos from Hiroshima or Nagasaki? While we are foolishly edging toward war, with the media and Beltway neocons cheering it on, there are still some bright spots we can look to in 2023. First, polls consistently demonstrate increasing American opposition to US involvement in Ukraine. Republicans are set to take control of the House this week right as Republican voter support for more military aid to Ukraine has seen a dramatic and steady decline. US households continue to struggle under runaway inflation and a looming economic crack-up and more Americans are going to demand answers from their government as to why we have sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine while so many are struggling at home. Second, a recent Rasmussen poll has revealed that in light of the “Twitter Files” - which showed that the FBI viewed the social media platform as a paid subsidiary of the US government - some 63 percent of likely US voters “believe Congress should investigate whether the FBI was involved in censoring information on social media sites.” A large percentage of those polled believe the FBI has been politicized by the current Administration, which may give incoming Republicans in the House some backbone to launch an actual investigation. Without the First Amendment, the other Amendments are virtually meaningless, and when the US government can strong-arm “private” businesses to attack free speech, freedom has no future. A third bright point is that the nearly twelve-year war on Syria might finally be closer to settlement. Syrian and Turkish defense ministers held negotiations brokered by Moscow which resulted in an agreement by Turkey to withdraw its military forces from Syrian soil. There are rumors that a meeting between the leaders of Turkey and Syria may come as soon as early this new year. The destruction of Syria was part of the Obama/Hillary/neocon plan to “remake” the Middle East, but as always these interventionist schemes have only resulted in death and destruction. Washington continues to lecture Russia about occupying Ukrainian soil, yet the US military has for years occupied Syrian territory for the sole purpose of backing extremists and stealing Syrian oil. Turkey leaving Syria will add pressure for the US to leave Syria. That is a good thing. The new year is upon us. It might be easy to feel dejected. But for we who promote peace, freedom, and justice, there is much to build on. Do not allow your voices to be silenced! A Gloomy 2023? Here Are Some Bright Spots Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() A year ago today (on Dec. 30, 2021) US President Joe Biden, in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, assured him that "Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” Against that backdrop, bilateral talks in Geneva to start on January 9, 2022 seemed off to a promising start. The Kremlin clearly thought so. Then Biden changed his mind. The key issue of offensive missiles on Russia’s borders fell off the table. Glimmer of Hope on Dec. 30 The day after the Dec. 30 Biden-Putin conversation, the Kremlin published this readout: The conversation focused on the implementation of the agreement to launch negotiations on providing Russia with legally binding security guarantees, reached during the December 7 [Putin-Biden] videoconference to launch negotiations … Vladimir Putin … stressed that the negotiations needed to produce solid legally binding guarantees ruling out NATO’s eastward expansion and the deployment of weapons that threaten Russia in the immediate vicinity of its borders. …Hopes Dashed on Feb. 12 After a Feb. 12 telephone conversation between Putin and Biden, Putin aide Yury Ushakov provided the following readout to the media, describing the telephone talk as "follow-up of sorts" to the Dec. 7 and Dec. 30 conversations. Ushakov: I want to note straight away that the Russian President responded by saying that Russia was going to carefully study President Biden’s proposals … . He made clear, however, that these proposals did not really address the central, key elements of Russia’s initiatives either with regards to non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … To these items, we have received no meaningful response.A kind of denouement came yesterday, as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted: Our proposals for the demilitarization and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy.Lavrov again used that curious but important Russian compound word недоговороспособность, denoting Ukraine’s inability to negotiate – at least until Zelensky or a successor gets the okay from Washington. Enter the Russian army. Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com. Biden Reneged – Now Russian Army Will Talk Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution: 'We Cannot Prohibit Speech as Offensive or Injurious.'12/30/2022 ![]() ![]() ![]() We recently discussed schools joining the University of Chicago free speech alliance. Now, the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have adopted a resolution defending freedom of speech and expression, including speech deemed “offensive or injurious.” It is a triumph for free speech. However, while 98 faculty voted for the resolution, 52 professors voted against the free speech principles. The Free Expression Statement is a balanced affirmation of the essential role of free speech in higher education. A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute’s educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.What is unnerving is that a third of the faculty disagreed with the resolution despite the following reservation: MIT does not protect direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment. Moreover, the time, place, and manner of protected expression, including organized protests, may be restrained so as not to disrupt the essential activities of the Institute.However, the statement makes the key acknowledgment that “we cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious.” That is clearly unacceptable for many in academic. Silencing opposing views or voices has become a core principle for many professors who now refer to free speech as an ever present danger on campuses. MIT has not always stood by free speech. As we previously discussed, the university yielded to cancel culture by barring a guest lecture to be given by University of Chicago geophysicist Dorian Abbot in 2021. MIT also attracted criticism over abandoning standardized testing to achieve greater diversity. It later reversed that decision. The new resolution is a victory for the “MIT Free Speech Alliance,” which has fought to defend free speech against a growing number of faculty. University of Chicago emeritus biology Professor Jerry Coyne raised some good-faith objections on his Why Evolution Is True blog, including the resolution “calling for ‘civility and mutual respect’, as well as ‘considering the possibility of offense and injury’. You simply cannot have free speech without offense and injury. Abbot’s invitation provoked precisely such offense and injury, with many people supporting his deplatforming.” However, the references are part of a graph that refers to the personal responsibility of faculty to maintain civility and mutual respect. It follows an express protection for offensive speech: We cannot prohibit speech that some experience as offensive or injurious. At the same time, MIT deeply values civility, mutual respect, and uninhibited, wide-open debate. In fostering such debate, we have a responsibility to express ourselves in ways that consider the prospect of offense and injury and the risk of discouraging others from expressing their own views. This responsibility complements, and does not conflict with, the right to free expression. Even robust disagreements shall not be liable to official censure or disciplinary action. This applies broadly. For example, when MIT leaders speak on matters of public interest, whether in their own voice or in the name of MIT, this should always be understood as being open to debate by the broader MIT community.Overall, the resolution is a powerful defense of free speech. MIT has joined a growing minority of schools resisting the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent law review article. Jonathan Turley, Harm and Hegemony: The Decline of Free Speech in the United States, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. MIT Adopts Free Speech Resolution: 'We Cannot Prohibit Speech as Offensive or Injurious.' Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() Blackrock is the world’s largest asset management and investment firm. It invests more than $10 trillion in client funds, a mountain of cash that casts a shadow over the GDP of many countries, including Germany, the fourth largest GDP in the world. It is fair to say it controls, or has outsized influence, on the Federal Reserve, Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs and Vanguard, the WEF meet and greet at Davos (and its control freak Great Reset), and all that follows, including President Biden and Congress. Larry Fink, the founder, and CEO of Blackrock has teamed up with the Man in Perpetual Green, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Specialists of this company are already helping Ukraine to structure the fund for the reconstruction of our state,” said Green Man after a video call with Fink, according to Bloomberg. Zelenskyy has taken his worldwide panhandling act to the next level. According to Zelenskyy’s government web page—up and running, although average Ukrainians are freezing in the dark—Larry Fink will help drum up the funds to rebuild what will be blown up again. (As for Zelenskyy’s website, it is safe for the moment, hosted as it is in Santa Clara, California.) In accordance with the preliminary agreements struck earlier this year between the Head of State and Larry Fink, the BlackRock team has been working for several months on a project to advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds.Zelenskyy and Fink “agreed to focus in the near term on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channelling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy,” CNBC reports. Good luck with that. It might be a good idea to glance at Ukraine’s massive corruption before investing a dime in that black hole. According to Transparency International, Ukraine is the second most corrupt country in Europe and ranked 120 out of 182 of the most corrupt countries in the world. According to Dragon Capital, the richest Ukrainian oligarchs in 2016, two years after the USG-orchestrated coup in Kyiv, have accumulated over $11 billion, almost 13% of Ukraine’s GDP. Much of the money accrued by Rinat Akhmetov, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Victor Pinchuk, and former president and confectionary/automotive magnate Petro Poroshenko, was taken through the neoliberal organized theft of public assets, known as privatization. Kolomoyskyi is a major funder of the neo-Nazi group, Right Sector. He is widely seen as the puppet master of the former comedian and current president Zelenskyy. His reach includes business operations in the US. Ukraine is a money launderer’s dream come true. Its banking sector thrives on Ponzi schemes. Oligarchs reap fortunes skimming billions from government-subsidized gas prices. Corrupt officials collaborate with oligarchs to monopolize business. In 2015, it was determined less than 50 percent of businesses in Ukraine turned a profit, and 9.8 of all business operations were controlled by and benefited corrupt government officials and the oligarchs they work for. In July, the Associated Press reported, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's dismissal of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war with Russia: Ukraine's history of rampant corruption and shaky governance.Of course, Biden—or that is, since he is obviously cognitively impaired, his neocon “advisers”—do not give a hoot about the suffering of average Ukrainians victimized by free-hand oligarchs and corrupt government officials. It’s all about Russia, China, and the role of the world hegemon. Earlier this year, Larry Fink told stockholders “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reversing the long-running trend of globalization.” Strangely, Fink seems to believe Russia’s effort to keep NATO out of Ukraine and away from its western border has “exacerbated the polarization and extremist behavior we are seeing across society today.” Submit, lest you be tarred and feathered as a polarized extremist. It now appears Fink’s cherished globalization is headed for the rocks as the growth of capital markets slow and the centrally managed economy pivots toward recession (actually a full-blown depression, but this scary subject is rarely broached in the respectable, misinformation, narrative-strict corporate propaganda media). Larry’s not alone in his waking nightmare. Oaktree Capital Management founder Howard Marks also loses sleep over the demise of centralized, corporate-driven, neoliberal-infused, government-enforced globalization. Marks and WEF said in April “the war is forcing the pendulum of international affairs to swing away from globalization as companies and governments rethink their interdependence.” To be sure, authoritarian regimes often cut themselves off from the global market for a host of reasons—Russia’s Vladimir Putin is just one example.If not for lies, these guys would stand naked. According to the World Economic Forum, Putin is an “authoritarian” because he understands the global elite want to kill him, destroy Russia, and turn its JDAM-blasted smoldering remains into mutually hostile little bantustans, thus easily plundered and controlled. It has nothing to do with interdependence or the joke that is democracy. That’s feel-good PR pablum designed to deceive you. “The basic problem with globalization is not hard to grasp,” writes Mike Whitney. “The giant corporations have outsourced millions of high-paying manufacturing jobs to low wage platforms across Asia leaving behind thousands of shuttered factories and broken communities, a sharp spike in opiate addiction, and the steady erosion of living standards.” Putin argued the elite are oblivious to the effect of their predation. I disagree. Pathocrats enjoy witnessing the misery of millions, that’s how they get their jollies. If they are oblivious to anything, it is that many of them may be swinging from lamp posts before this is over. It seems like elites don’t see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class…(but the situation) creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority—we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem.Zelenskyy and Fink are preparing to turn a profit on the destruction of Ukraine. “Bringing in BlackRock signals the beginning of the much-anticipated shift from bilking taxpayers to bilking private investors,” writes JD Rucker. BlackRock will wield its tremendous influence over corporations across the globe to funnel as much private equity into the nation as possible where the money will be distributed to all powerful parties [oligarchs] that need their palms greased.Corrupt government officials (many of them Ukronazis) and the psychopathic oligarchs they serve will profit from the Zelenskyy-Fink scheme to rebuild what Russia will knock down. Russia is determined, for the sake of its national security, to turn Ukraine into a toothless, nazi- and NATO-free rump state, a former oligarch-dominated state busted up into little harmless and easily controlled remnants. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I believe Zelenskyy will ultimately flee the country with a proverbial suitcase stuffed with fiat greenbacks and equally devalued paper money of the European Union, following in the footsteps of previous defeated and humiliated autocrats. Larry Fink will continue to be Larry Fink. He will push “stakeholder capitalism,” squeaky clean window dressing for predatory neoliberalism. Larry knows what side of his bread gets the butter, that’s why he has embraced “woke” politics. “Stakeholder capitalism might just force CEOs to think twice before doing things that hurt the public,” the New York Post surmises. More PR poison. For “Klaus Schwab and the WEF, the framework of stakeholder capitalism must be globalized,” observes Michael Rectenwald at Mises Wire. Schwab and the WEF have high hopes for rebranded neoliberalism merged with the preposterous “woke” ideology. Not going to happen. The collective nations of the world, led by the example of Russia, will ultimately pitch neoliberalism into the dustbin of history. The problem is WEF and globalist psychopaths, deluded by mental illness and corrosive hubris. They may indeed begin the process of irradiating the planet and making any sort of social and commercial activity a relic of a forgotten past. Reprinted with permission from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics. Subscribe and support here. Blackrock to Take Zelenskyy’s Panhandling Act to the Next Level Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() Manipulation! Four Ways The Mainstream Media Lied To Us In 2022 Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() From the beginning of the Covid panic, it felt that something was very wrong. Never had a pandemic, much less a seasonal pathogenic wave, been treated as a quasi-military emergency requiring the upending of all freedoms and rights. What made it more bizarre was how alone those of us who objected felt until very recently when Elon Musk finally bought the platform Twitter, fired all the embedded federal agents, and has started to release the files. As Elon said, every conspiracy theory about Twitter was true and then some. And what applies at Twitter pertains equally to Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and all platforms associated with those companies (YouTube, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp). The proof is all there. These platforms colluded with the federal government’s administrative arm to craft a particular Covid narrative, throttling and censoring dissidents and boosting any credentialled expert who was willing to toe the line. At this point, it is wise to trust no one and nothing but those who fought against this nonsense. As the crisis began, I was blessed with an unusually large reach on most platforms. But I sat by and watched it dwindle to nothingness as the months went on. Yes, I had posts pulled but I was never banned. It’s just that my channels of communication shrunk dramatically by the months and weeks. This was tragic for me simply because I watched the population gradually fall into a medieval-style disease panic that tore families apart, kept loved ones from traveling, wrecked businesses and churches, and even violated the sanctity of the homes. This “invisible enemy” about which everyone in government was going on about shredded the whole social fabric. I had been writing about pandemics and interventions for 16 years, warning repeatedly that this was possible. Knowing about this history, and having a platform to speak, I felt a very strong moral obligation to share my knowledge if only to make some contribution to calm people down and perhaps relax some of the impositions on liberty. But at that very moment, my voice was nearly silenced. And I was hardly alone. Hundreds and thousands of others were in the same position but we had a very difficult time even finding each other. There was one exception early on. I wrote a piece on Woodstock and the 1968-69 flu season. A fact-checker rated it as true and the Facebook algorithms really screwed up. Facebook pushed it out for about two weeks before someone figured out what was happening and then throttled it back heavily. Or perhaps there was one employee there who made it so. I really do not know. In the meantime, this one article garnered millions of views and shares. It was my first experience with the astounding power of these venues to shape the public mind. People innocently use all these tools without the slightest understanding that there is a reason why they are seeing what they are seeing. Every word or picture you see on your apps is there for a reason, a choice of this or that, and the driving force here is what powerful people what you to see and not see. We know now that the stream of information is carefully curated by algorithms and human intervention, not to fit with your interests as they once claimed, but to fit with regime interests. In other words, what people used to say about the CCP role in the management of TikTok applies fully in the US today with all the main tech companies. And please keep in mind, we only know this because of the dump of Twitter files. All of this is still happening at Google, Meta, and LinkedIn. The latter removes posts by Brownstone often. And the rest throttle our reach. This has been going on for years, but Covid intensified it all. Even from the beginning, something was very off. For example, on March 19 – the day after the Fauci/Birx/Trump press conference and the day before CISA seized control of all labor markets – an obscure digital education entrepreneur named Thomas Pueyo came out with an implausibly documented and comprehensively argued piece called The Hammer and the Dance. It was an elaborate argument for locking down to flatten the curve, complete with fancy graphs and pseudo-scientific blather of every sort. The author was essentially unknown but within 24 hours, the piece was garnering many millions of shares and being spread everywhere by all the big tech platforms, as if it were some kind of canonical treatise. I doubt seriously that he wrote it – no way in one day; it had to be planned for weeks – but rather that he volunteered his name to be attached to it. It became the most important framing of the lockdown that appeared that month. Watching that one preposterous article take over so aggressively, even as dissidents’ writings slipped into nothingness, including my own, was quite a bit of digital magic to behold. But we know now it was not magic. It was a policy. It was an intention. It was a propaganda ploy. Again, we must understand that this is still going on right now, with the only real exception among the larger players being Twitter. There is one solace. We know now that we were not all going crazy. It was all deliberate. Matt Taibbi puts it well: Sometime in the last decade, many people — I was one — began to feel robbed of their sense of normalcy by something we couldn’t define. Increasingly glued to our phones, we saw that the version of the world that was spat out at us from them seemed distorted. The public’s reactions to various news events seemed off-kilter, being either way too intense, not intense enough, or simply unbelievable. You’d read that seemingly everyone in the world was in agreement that a certain thing was true, except it seemed ridiculous to you, which put you in an awkward place with friends, family, others. Should you say something? Are you the crazy one?So far, thanks to the great work of David Zweig, who has somehow managed to elude the censors all along (he was in attendance at the original Great Barrington Declaration event, god bless him), we have a better accounting of what happened. Names we all recognize as friends are listed, including Martin Kulldorff and Andrew Bostom, but there are thousands more. There is no question in my mind that my own accounts were targeted. This is about much more than free speech and the operation of media channels without government intervention. The Covid controls utterly smashed American liberty and social functioning, resulting in mass suffering, educational losses, shattered communities, and a precipitous collapse in public health that has shaved off years in life expectancy and caused an explosion of excess deaths. It might have been stopped or at least lessened in duration with some open discussion. This is not just of interest to tech and legal geeks. The closing down of opinion and debate resulted in unspeakable human carnage. And even as I write, the largest sources of the mainstream media are still refusing to report on this. Ask yourself: why might this be? I think we all know the answer. As a final note, I can assure you that this is only the beginning. The full story ropes in the whole of the administrative state, FTX, huge nonprofit organizations, and many back channels of power, money, and truly evil collaboration. We may never get the full story, and justice as always will be elusive, but we cannot let this moment in history slip by without as much accountability as we can provide. Reprinted with permission from Brownstone Institute. How an Occupied Twitter Ruined Countless Lives Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute ![]() ![]() ![]() Below is my column in the Hill on the need for a new “Church Committee” to investigate and reform the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) after years of scandals involving alleged political bias. In response to criticism over its role in Twitter’s censorship system, the FBI lashed out against critics as “conspiracy theorists” spreading disinformation. However, it still refuses to supply new information on other companies, beyond Twitter, that it has paid to engage in censorship. Here is the column: “Conspiracy theorists … feeding the American public misinformation” is a familiar attack line for anyone raising free-speech concerns over the FBI’s role in social media censorship. What is different is that this attack came from the country’s largest law enforcement agency, the FBI — and, since the FBI has made combatting “disinformation” a major focus of its work, the labeling of its critics is particularly menacing. Fifty years ago, the Watergate scandal provoked a series of events that transformed not only the presidency but federal agencies like the FBI. Americans demanded answers about the involvement of the FBI and other federal agencies in domestic politics. Ultimately, Congress not only investigated the FBI but later impanelled the Church Committee to investigate a host of other abuses by intelligence agencies. A quick review of recent disclosures and controversies shows ample need for a new Church Committee: The Russian investigations The FBI previously was at the center of controversies over documented political bias. Without repeating the long history from the Russian influence scandal, FBI officials like Peter Strzok were fired after emails showed open bias against presidential candidate Donald Trump. The FBI ignored warnings that the so-called Steele dossier, largely funded by the Clinton campaign, was likely used by Russian intelligence to spread disinformation. It continued its investigation despite early refutations of key allegations or discrediting of sources. Biden family business The FBI has taken on the character of a Praetorian Guard when the Biden family has found itself in scandals. For example, there was Hunter Biden’s handgun, acquired by apparently lying on federal forms. In 2018, the gun allegedly was tossed into a trash bin in Wilmington, Del., by Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s deceased brother and with whom Hunter had a relationship at the time. Secret Service agents reportedly appeared at the gun shop with no apparent reason, and Hunter later said the matter would be handled by the FBI. Nothing was done despite the apparent violation of federal law. Later, the diary of Hunter’s sister, Ashley, went missing. While the alleged theft normally would be handled as a relatively minor local criminal matter, the FBI launched a major investigation that continued for months to pursue those who acquired the diary, which reportedly contains embarrassing entries involving President Biden. Such a massive FBI deployment shocked many of us, but the FBI built a federal case against those who took possession of the diary. Targeting Republicans and conservatives Recently the FBI was flagged for targeting two senior House Intelligence Committee staffers in grand jury subpoenas sent to Google. It has been criticized for using the Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigations to target conservative groups and GOP members of Congress, including seizing the phone of one GOP member. The FBI also has been criticized for targeting pro-life violence while not showing the same vigor toward pro-choice violence. Hunter’s laptop While the FBI was eager to continue the Russian investigations with no clear evidence of collusion, it showed the opposite inclination when given Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. The laptop would seem to be a target-rich environment for criminal investigators, with photos and emails detailing an array of potential crimes involving foreign transactions, guns, drugs and prostitutes. However, reports indicate that FBI officials moved to quash or slow any investigation. The computer repairman who acquired the laptop, John Paul Mac Isaac, said he struggled to get the FBI to respond and that agents made thinly veiled threats regarding any disclosures of material related to the Biden family; he said one agent told him that “in their experience, nothing ever happens to people that don’t talk about these things.” The ‘Twitter Files’ The “Twitter Files” released by Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, show as many as 80 agents targeting social-media posters for censorship on the site. This included alleged briefings that Twitter officials said was the reason they spiked the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election. The FBI sent 150 messages on back channels to just one Twitter official to flag accounts. One Twitter executive expressed unease over the FBI’s pressure, declaring: “They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff).” We also have learned that Twitter hired a number of retired FBI agents, including former FBI general counsel James Baker, who was a critical and controversial figure in past bureau scandals over political bias. Attacking critics It is not clear what is more chilling — the menacing role played by the FBI in Twitter’s censorship program, or its mendacious response to the disclosure of that role. The FBI has issued a series of “nothing-to-see-here” statements regarding the Twitter Files. In its latest statement, the FBI insists it did not command Twitter to take any specific action when flagging accounts to be censored. Of course, it didn’t have to threaten the company — because we now have an effective state media by consent rather than coercion. Moreover, an FBI warning tends to concentrate the minds of most people without the need for a specific threat. Finally, the files show that the FBI paid Twitter millions as part of this censorship system — a windfall favorably reported to Baker before he was fired from Twitter by Musk. Criticizing the FBI is now ‘disinformation’ Responding to the disclosures and criticism, an FBI spokesperson declared: “The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. It is unfortunate that conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.” Arguably, “working every day to protect the American public” need not include censoring the public to protect it from errant or misleading ideas. However, it is the attack on its critics that is most striking. While the FBI denounced critics of an earlier era as communists and “fellow travelers,” it now uses the same attack narrative to label its critics as “conspiracy theorists.” After Watergate, there was bipartisan support for reforming the FBI and intelligence agencies. Today, that cacophony of voices has been replaced by crickets, as much of the media imposes another effective blackout on coverage of the Twitter Files. This media silence suggests that the FBI found the “sweet spot” on censorship, supporting the views of the political and media establishment. As for the rest of us, the FBI now declares us to be part of a disinformation danger which it is committed to stamping out — “conspiracy theorists” misleading the public simply by criticizing the bureau. Clearly, this is the time for a new Church Committee — and time to reform the FBI. Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates online @JonathanTurley. Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org. When the FBI Attacks Critics as “Conspiracy Theorists,” It’s Time to Reform the Bureau Click on the headline to read the full story from Ron Paul Institute |
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