The county says that it became “aware of severe anomalies” with Dominion Voting Systems during the 2020 election after it was unable to reconcile “voter data with votes actually cast and counted”.
Speckin Forensics Laboratories based out of Lansing, Michigan, was retained to acquire forensic images of six hard drives in Fulton County, Pennsylvania on July 13-14, 2022.
The private forensics firm, whose “examiners have presented testimony in over 30 states”, produced a county commissioned a report on September 15, 2022, which revealed “several deficiencies” that directly contradict the “contractual terms and conditions” provided to Fulton County by Dominion Voting Systems.
The report alleges that Fulton County’s log files show “an external IP address” located in Quebec, Canada, and that an unauthorized “python script” had been installed after the certification date.
Moreover, the system’s security patch had not been updated since April 10, 2019, and default usernames and passwords had not been changed since the time of installation.
The report says, “This python script can exploit and create any number of vulnerabilities including, external access to the system, data export of the tabulations, or introduction of other metrics not part of or allowed by the certification process.”
What’s more, an “external IP address that is associated with Canada” was found on the very same adjudication workstation that contained the “post certification python script”.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-09-24 16:20:582022-09-24 16:20:58Pennsylvania County Sues Dominion Voting Systems for ‘Unauthorized Python Script’ & ‘Foreign IP Address’
We now have another “Open Letter” – claiming America is “an exceptionally challenging civil-military environment” — signed by 8 former U.S. defense secretaries and 5 former chairmen of the joint chiefs of staff. The letter is published by “War on the Rocks” a website advertising itself as “National Security. For insiders. By insiders.” The September 6, 2022 commentary is titled, “To Support And Defend: Principles Of Civilian Control And Best Practices Of Civil-Military Relations.”
Why a letter like this and why now? Who instigated the effort to make this pronouncement? Are we supposed to believe the letter was just “spontaneous?” Was the Open Letter coordinated with the General Mark Milley at the Pentagon or maybe the Biden White House? Cui bono?
The letter comes five days on the heels of President Biden declaring, “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law,” and condemning half the American electorate as “represent[ing] an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
Does anyone believe this is a coincidence? Just happenstance?
Such an “Open Letter” is typically used by the elites in the national policy arena as a public signal for something to come. Something bigger. Perhaps even something a lot weirder than normal. “Thought leaders” are framing the public debate. The authors are trying to make a point, and their effort is so extraordinary and unprovoked that it arouses suspicion.
It is a reasonable suspicion. Do you remember how the National School Board Association “actively engaged”with the White House before asking the feds to investigate outspoken parents as domestic terrorists? Yes, that is exactly the sort of coordination we should consider. Journalists should pursue that line of questioning, but they will not.
Remember another instance when a group of former U.S. government “experts” got together for an Open Letter. That was when 51 former intelligence officials lied to the entire country about the validity of all the lurid, corrupt details on Hunter Biden’s laptop saying it was all Russian disinformation. All 51 were wrong. The contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop were even worse than originally described, but the “experts” had already unlawfully influenced the outcome of an election.
The September 2022 Open Letter reads largely like a West Point or ROTC lesson plan for first-year cadets. It is essentially a civics lesson with an introduction and 16 enumerated points. Strong emphasis is placed on the legality of orders. There are a few interesting observations by the experts that require our attention to fully understand the subtext.
“… the U.S. military must simultaneously come to terms with wars that ended without all the goals satisfactorily accomplished…”
Analysis: The U.S. has not achieved a clear, decisive war victory in 77 years. The military leaders authoring this letter are largely responsible for that record and would like you to come to terms with their failures.
“Politically, military professionals confront an extremely adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of affective polarization that culminated in the first election in over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was disrupted and in doubt.”
Analysis: The peaceful transfer of power was never legitimately in doubt. That claim is an overwrought, hyperbolic canard advanced for political purposes. The authors’ message is that Trump supporters are the problem. Remember: No Trump supporters, no problem. Understand?
“Looking ahead, all of these factors could well get worse before they get better.”
Analysis: The groundwork is being laid for the public acceptance that there are a number of other disruptive factors caused by the Biden administration’s failing policies that could get worse: inflation, energy costs, the border crisis, record murder and crime rates, etc.
“Mutual trust … that civilian leaders will rigorously explore alternatives … regardless of the implications for partisan politics … that the military will faithfully implement directives that run counter to their professional military preference — helps overcome the friction built into this process …”
“There are significant limits on the public role of military personnel in partisan politics … Members of the military accept limits on the public expression of their private views … Military and civilian leaders must be diligent about keeping the military separate from partisan political activity.”
Analysis: Ironically, these two paragraphs should serve as an indictment of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Mark Milley, whose egregious subversion is the most treasonous conduct since Benedict Arnold. Unfortunately they will be twisted to justify and bolster his unlawful conduct.
What is the real message conveyed by this Open Letter from former senior military leaders?
What is their warning and what do they want? Write and speak plainly. Have the guts to “just say it out loud.” Are they worried Trump will be reelected in 2024? Are they as worried about the sustained, extreme, militant, violence and destruction of Antifa and BLM as they are the January 6th protests? What about Milley’s phone calls to his Communist Chinese counterpart? Does that meet their civics lesson test? The “Open Letter” is anything but “open.”
Technology leaders from Bill Gates to Elon Musk and others have warned us in recent years that one of the biggest threats to humanity is uncontrolled domination by artificial intelligence (AI). In 2017, Musk said at a conference, “I have exposure to the most cutting edge AI, and I think people should be really concerned about it.”
And in 2019, Bill Gates stated that while we will see mainly advantages from AI initially, “. . . a few decades after that, though, the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern.” And the transhumanist camp, led by such zealots as Ray Kurzweil, seems to think that the future takeover of the universe by AI is not only inevitable, but a good thing, because it will leave our old-fashioned mortal meat computers (otherwise known as brains) in the junkpile where they belong.
Marks is a practicing electrical engineer who has made fundamental contributions in the areas of signal processing and computational intelligence. After spending most of his career at the University of Washington, he moved to Baylor University in 2003, where he now directs the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. His book was published by the Discovery Institute, which is an organization that has historically promoted the concept of intelligent design.
That is neither here nor there, at least to judge by the book’s contents. Those looking for a philosophically nuanced and extended argument in favor of the uniqueness of the human mind as compared to present or future computational realizations of what might be called intelligence, had best look elsewhere. In Marks’s view, the question of whether AI will ever match or supersede the general-intelligence abilities of the human mind has a simple answer: it won’t.
He bases his claim on the fact that all computers do nothing more than execute algorithms. Simply put, algorithms are step-by-step instructions that tell a machine what to do. Any activity that can be expressed as an algorithm can in principle be performed by a computer. Just as important, any activity or function that cannot be put into the form of an algorithm cannot be done by a computer, whether it’s a pile of vacuum tubes, a bunch of transistors on chips, quantum “qubits,” or any conceivable future form of computing machine.
Some examples Marks gives of things that can’t be done algorithmically are feeling pain, writing a poem that you and other people truly understand, and inventing a new technology. These are things that human beings do, but according to Marks, AI will never do.
What about the software we have right now behind conveniences such as Alexa, which gives the fairly strong impression of being intelligent? Alexa certainly seems to “know” a lot more facts than any particular human being does.
Marks dismisses this claim to intelligence by saying that extensive memory and recall doesn’t make something intelligent any more than a well-organized library is intelligent. Sure, there are lots of facts that Alexa has access to. But it’s what you do with the facts that counts, and AI doesn’t understand anything. It just imitates what it’s been told to imitate without knowing what it’s doing.
The heart of Marks’s book is really the first chapter entitled “The Non-Computable Human.” Once he gets clear the difference between algorithmic tasks and non-algorithmic tasks, it’s just a matter of sorting. Yes, computers can do this better than humans, but computers will never do that.
There are lots of other interesting things in the book: a short history of AI, an extensive critique of the different kinds of AI hype and how not to be fooled by them, and numerous war stories from Marks’s work in fields as different as medical care and the stabilization of power grids. But these other matters are mostly a lot of icing on a rather small cake, because Marks is not inclined to delve into the deeper philosophical waters of what intelligence is and whether we understand it quite as well as Marks thinks we do.
As a Christian, Marks is well aware of the dangers posed to both Christians and non-Christians by a thing called idolatry. Worshipping idols—things made by one’s own hands and substituted for the true God—was what got the Hebrews into trouble time and again in the Old Testament, and it continues to be a problem today. The problem with an idol is not so much what the idol itself can do—carved wooden images tend not to do much of anything on their own—but what it does to the idol-worshipper. And here is where Marks could have done more of a service in showing how human beings can turn AI into an idol, and effectively worship it.
While an idol-worshipping pagan might burn incense to a wooden image and figure he’d done everything needed to ensure a good crop, a bureaucracy of the future might take a task formerly done at considerable trouble and expense by humans—deciding on how long a prison sentence should be, for example—and turn it over to an AI program. Actually, that example is not futuristic at all. Numerous court systems have resorted to AI algorithms (there’s that word again) to predict the risk of recidivism for different individuals, and basing the length of their sentences and parole status on the result.
Needless to say, this particular application has come in for criticism, and not only by the defendants and their lawyers. Many AI systems are famously opaque, meaning even their designers can’t give a good reason for why the results are the way they are. So I’d say in at least that regard, we have already gone pretty far down the road toward turning AI into an idol.
No, Marks is right in the sense that machines are, after all, only machines. But if we make any machine our god, we are simply asking for trouble. And that’s the real risk we face in the future from AI: making it our god, putting it in charge, and abandoning our regard for the real God.
Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan
EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-09-19 13:04:402022-09-19 13:14:21Will Artificial Intelligence Make Humanity Irrelevant?
After high school (2013), I set to the internet because I thought that the mainstream press, schools, and colleges would never let me get my ideas out. I started a WordPress blog. I would share my content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Experience Project. I thought I would bypass the gatekeepers of information and have the last laugh. In 2014, I joined Brian Johnson’s Entheos. Experience Project and Entheos shut down down the line. In 2016, I started posting on Instagram. In 2017, I joined LinkedIn. In 2019, I joined Medium. In 2020, I started this blog. And nothing came out of any of it. No one even knows I did all this. I got little to no views across all the platforms. I was literally talking to an empty room. Now, I have finally understood why.
The Internet is not free of gatekeepers. The gatekeepers are people who write the algorithms.
The algorithms do not look for quality but for engagement. You see a post not because it is good but because it has already been liked by others. This system soon turns into a popularity contest. Since average minds like average ideas, most of what you see trending on social media has to be average. This is why Marianne Williamson has 554K followers on Instagram while Taylor Swift has 210M. In comparison to M. Williamson, T. Swift posts nothing valuable. If you are above average, social media is bound to make you sick. Since quality content is liked by quality people only, who are less in number, you are unlikely to see posts from top scientists, poets, authors, and philosophers. Their content would never rise to the top. This system is very similar to democracy. The popular choice is seldom the wisest one.
Today, I have already deleted most of my social media accounts. I still have Instagram and LinkedIn but no longer post anything. I have accepted the reality that social media will never work for me. I am not what social media algorithms are looking for. I can’t post vain comments on other people’s stupid posts. I can’t like my own posts, nor can I aggressively like other people’s comments on my posts. I can’t make small talks in dm. I don’t care to search for hastags. I am not autistic. It is very similar to accepting that I would not succeed in college as a non-liberal.
Every system is designed to produce what it does, via the means of its algorithm. The algorithm at Harvard selects and promotes talent. TED’s algorithm promotes people who have great ideas. Social media algorithms promote vain, empty, and stupid people, which is why Kim Kardashian is more famous on social media than Jordan Peterson. Social media is not designed to promote thinkers and philosophers.
In other words, if your content is getting a lot of organic exposure on social media, it might just be mediocre. On LinkedIn, I almost never see good content, because good content does not get enough engagement from average minds. Being on LinkedIn is a very draining and exhausting experience because 9/10 posts are mediocre or stupid. I feel as if the number of followers a person has on LinkedIn is inversely proportional to his intelligence. I would personally never hire a writer/proofreader/editor from LinkedIn if his/her content is getting a lot of engagement. It might be a testament to his/her mediocrity.
Where will I be heading? I am looking for gatekeepers that look for quality, not clickability or popularity.
Internet does not and can not give everyone a voice. It can definitely give everyone the illusion that they have a voice. They have only as much voice as they have in an empty room — complete freedom to say whatever they want. No one’s listening though. Now, get off the internet.
The Real Gatekeepers Of The Internet II
The gatekeeping is not done at the production stage. It is done at the exposure stage. You are free to create whatever you want to. It is just that no one will ever get to see it unless you are already famous.
On LinkedIn, my last post had 408 views, 3 likes, 1 comment, and a share. LinkedIn already deplatformed the person who had commented. 5 people engaged out of 408 (1.2% engagement).
Another post had 322 views, 5 likes, 2 shares, and 4 comments. 11 people engaged out of 322 (3.4% engagement).
My view count has been in the same range since I got on Linkedin five years ago. On one of my posts, a commenter asked why I wasn’t getting more likes.
Exposure primarily depends on how many people you have in your network. It increases with engagement. Engagement depends on the product-market mix. Critical thinkers and intelligent people are more likely to engage with me than are average minds. But LinkedIn keeps removing intelligent people, so we are left with average minds and average content. At the same time, many refrain from interacting with me because their insecure bosses may be looking.
To increase initial exposure, most people add more users. Most LinkedIn users are so socially inept that they don’t even attach a personalized note with connection requests. New connections like to be added too so they can have exposure for their content. This is why most people are likely to accept your connection requests, including famous professors and business leaders, but they will likely never respond to your messages or anything you ever post. I have previously disconnected with some users because they did not reply to my messages.
I was and still am totally incapable of doing this. It is completely autistic to gather someone’s attention only to direct it to my posts. It is like feeding on his/her time and energy. I wonder how many feel as if influencers, brands, and famous people are using them as energy sources. No wonder people feel drained on social media. I never added strangers on social media until 2019. Most people in my online circles were folks I met in real life. In 2019, I started interacting more on LinkedIn, which led me to meet new people in the comment area. I started adding more people but still was not able to add the way others do. After 5 years on LinkedIn, I still have only 800 connections. Most LinkedIn experts advise having at least 1000 or 5000 connections. Imagine having vain relationships with 5000 people. You are bound to be depressed. There is no way you can keep up with 5000 people. I can’t keep up with 800. This is why I am leaving social media.
In a nutshell, I never got started on social media, because I was unable to add strangers and use their attention as energy for my machine. I can’t take advantage of people like that. I don’t even think that people should waste time on social media. None of my profiles ever took off. I never got the initial exposure, which is needed to get initial engagement. To this day, my Instagram posts and stories get very few views.
Growing on social media without meaninglessly adding people and posting vain comments on their posts is pretty much impossible. I would rather leave social media than do things that are vain and superficial. And no, you cannot have deep meaningful connections and conversations on social media. The internet is a virtual world. Virtual means not real. Nothing on the internet is real.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Anand Ujjwalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnand Ujjwal2022-09-10 11:39:592022-09-10 11:45:08The Real Gatekeepers Of The Internet
Klaus Schwab’s globalist organization insists that the idea of implanting a “tracking chip in your child” isn’t “scary.” The WEF suggests implanting tracking chips in the human body will help society usher in a “brave new world.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has called on governments, health officials, and “humans” around the globe to consider their “rational” arguments for implanting chips in children’s brains.
Klaus Schwab’s globalist organization insists that the idea of implanting a “tracking chip in your child” isn’t “scary,” arguing that “they form part of a natural evolution that wearables once underwent.”
The group claims that children will even grow to see implanted chips as “accessories” that will eventually be “considered a fashion item.”
Parents should also learn to embrace such technology, according to the WEF, because “many children expect to develop superpowers” after watching “superheroes” in movies.
The WEF makes its case for implants in a new blog post where it suggests implanting tracking chips in the human body will help society usher in a “brave new world.”
Implanting chips into children should be viewed by parents as a “solid, rational” move into the future of augmented reality (AR), the WEF claims.
This shift toward AR puts humanity on the path toward “an augmented society,” according to the organization.
The WEF promotes the allegedly broad usefulness of chip implants in fields such as healthcare, education, and professional settings.
While praising how such technology could transform society, the WEF underpins the notion of providing guidelines on how to “ethically” regulate this vast potential power and, therefore, inevitably control it.
The WEF describes the tech as transformative but warns that it needs “the right support, vision, and audacity,” which is presumably provided by global governments are corporate power elites.
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However, it isn’t at all clear why “audacity” is called for by the WEF.
Yet, some of the “visions” for humans to be “seamlessly integrated” with technology that the WEF is suggesting seem pretty audacious.
The idea of replacing drugs with brain implants that will manipulate the body with electrical pulses has been around for some time.
Although, it’s not something that the public is all too keen on.
Nevertheless, the WEF has prepared for pushback from the proletariat by working in a sales pitch for the people who view the idea as “scary.”
Once the human body and AR technology have been “seamlessly integrated,” quality of life shoots up across the board, the Davos-based group promises……
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-27 07:35:332022-08-27 09:18:21World Economic Forum Promotes ‘Brain Implants’ for Children
Until election corruption is remedied, the fix is in and the destruction of our great nation will continue unimpeded. We must go to all paper ballots throughout the land. They’ve done it elsewhere, whole countries like France but places like New York and California will always be last. If, ever.
Konnech Inc., a U.S. software company based out of East Lansing, Michigan, helps manage the poll workers, poll locations, campaigns, assets, mail-in ballots, and supplies necessary to run elections in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Although, the American technology company, which was founded in 2002, is used by the U.S. Department of Defense and ‘thousands of election offices across North America’, Konnech Inc., previously built a ‘communication platform’ called ChineseBrief.com for the Confucius Institute.
Furthermore, many of the company’s software engineers and employees graduated from Chinese universities such as Zhejiang University, Nanjing University, University of Science and Technology of China, Beijing Language and Culture University, China Agricultural University, and HuaZhong University of Science and Technology.
For instance, Eugene Yu, the CEO of Konnech Inc., graduated from Zhejiang University in Zhejiang, China, with a bachelors degree in 1982 before receiving his MBA from Wake Forest University in 1988.
Moreover, in Queensland, Australia’s 2020 elections, “count reporting problems on election night” were partly the result of “a new computer system not being tested as planned because ‘coding resources’ were locked down in Wuhan”, according to the digital news company InQueensland.
In fact, these Wuhan coding resources led to four members of the Queensland Parliament — MP Crandon, MP Lister, MP Simpson, and MP Robinson — asking the Queensland Premier on July 15, 2020, why Konnech was given the contract to produce the software administering Queensland’s elections using “China based coders”?
MP Robinson asked, “Can the Premier guarantee that Konnech, Inc. does not have a connection to the Chinese Communist Party through its China based subsidiary Jinhua Konnech Inc.?”
And that is where today’s story begins.
Jinhua Konnech Inc.
Consider that a patent application was filed in China for a system of “network voting of absent electorates” by Jinhua Konnech Inc. on February 4, 2015, for an inventor named Shao Guojun (邵国君).
The rights of that patent were then transferred on October 7, 2015, from Jinhua Konnech Inc. to Jinhua Hongzheng Technology Co., Ltd. (金华鸿正科技有限公司), a Chinese election technology company, which was also founded in 2015.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-27 07:22:592022-08-27 08:35:20Investigation of U.S. Election Software Company Uncovers Chinese Coders
BOT: A computer program that operates as an agent for a user or other program in order to simulate or influence human activity.
Internet Research Agency, Агентство интернет-исследований: A Russian company engaged in online influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It is linked to Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and based in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Internet Research Agency (IRA) is the real Russian collusion story beginning in 2016 until today.
After years of Russiagate conspiracy theories about how the Russians had somehow rigged the 2016 presidential election using Facebook ads, the Senate Intelligence report awkwardly revealed that the Russian operation had focused most of its attention on black nationalists.
The Senate report revealed that “most of the videos” put out by the Russian IRA troll factory on YouTube “pertained to police brutality and the activist efforts of the Black Lives Matter organization” and found that “no single group of Americans was targeted… more than African-Americans” around “race and related issues”.
But that was an understatement.
The Russians had created their own Black Lives Matter groups, activists and protests. It is still not fully clear where the dividing lines between black nationalists and Russian agents lie. And the media has consistently buried these revelations about the real Russian role in our politics to focus on the discredited smears targeting President Trump and his political allies.
And yet the true Russian agents were the black nationalists championed by the Left.
Social media is filled with fake accounts called BOTs, short for robot, that are used by individuals and nation states to influence social and political policies.
This is volume 2 of the Senate Intel report on Russia’s propaganda activities targeting Americans, on the left and the right, with fake Facebook groups and social media accounts. Despite the media’s false claims, Vol. 2 makes it clear this was not about the election.
Analysis of the behavior of the IRA-associated social media accounts makes dear that while the Russian information warfare campaign exploited the context of the election and election-related issues in 2016, the preponderance of the operational focus, as reflected repeatedly in content, account names, and audiences targeted, was on sociapy divisive issues-such as race, immigration, and Second Amendment rights-in an attempt to pit Americans against one another and against their government. The Committee found that IRA influence operatives consistently used hot-button, societal divisions in the United States as fodder for the content they published through social media in order to stoke anger, provoke outrage and protest, push Americans further away from one another, and foment distrust in government institutions. The divisive 2016 U.S. presidential election was just an additional feature of a much more expansive,, target-rich landscape of potential ideological and societal sensitivities.
The IRA was Russia’s troll org.
Again, we already knew this. A previous report and this report already showed that most of the activities were targeted at black people. Facebook itself revealed that most of the ad buys were post-election. (And the media responded with furious threats and attacks on Facebook.)
The Committee found that no single group of Americans was targeted by IRA information operatives more than African-Americans. By far, race and related issues were the preferred target of the information warfare campaign designed to divide the country in 2016. Evidence of the IRA’s overwhelming operational emphasis on race is’ evident in the IRA’s Facebook advertisement content (over 66 percent contained a term related to race) and targeting (locational targeting was principally aimed at African Americans in key metropolitan areas with), its Face book pages (one of the IRA’s topperforming pages, “Blacktivist,” generated 11.2 million engagements with Facebook ‘ users), its Instagram content (five of the top 10 Instagram accounts were focused on African-American issues and audiences), its Twitter content (heavily focused on hotbutton issues with racial undertones, such as the NFL kneeling protests),
In other words, the Russkies were doing the same stuff they were doing during the Cold War.
According to the U.S. Senate intelligence report,
For decades, Soviet active measures pushed conspiratorial and disinformation narratives about the United States around the world. The KGB authored and published false stories and forged letters concerning the Kennedy assassination, including accounts suggesting CIA involvement in the killing. Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of manufactured KGB narratives, as was Ronald Reagan. Russian intelligence officers planted anti-Reagan articles in Denmark, France, and India during his unsuccessful 1976 bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
A declassified U.S. State. Department document from 1981 outlines a series of realized Russian active measures operations, including the spread of falsehoods concerning U.S. complicity in the 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca and responsibility for the 1981 death of Panamanian General Omar Torrijos, as well as an elaborate deception involving multiple forgeries and false stories designed to undermine the Camp David peace process and to exacerbate tensions between the United States and Egypt. Among the most widely known and successful active measures operations conducted during the Cold War centered on a conspiracy that the AIDS virus was manufactured by the United States at a military facility at Fort Detrick in Maryland. This fictional account of the virus’ origin received considerable news coverage, both in the United States and in over forty non-Cold War aligned countries around the world. 49 (U) I
In a 1998 CNN interview, retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin described active measures as “the heart and soul of Soviet intelligence”: Not intelligence collection, but subversion; active measures to weaken the West, to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO; to sow discord among allies, to weaken the. United States in the eyes of the people of Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.
The question is how much of the Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence came out of Moscow?
Much like the Soviet involvement in race riots and domestic terrorism by the black nationalist and anti-war Left during the Cold War, we will likely never get a full accounting of the impact.
And yet an important missing piece of Russiagate is that the Left was once again accusing conservatives of its own crimes. Right down to the Russian backing for its election interference.
The Russians weren’t elevating Trump and Republicans, they were backing the far Left.
Russia has historically been on the side of the Democrats and their splinter groups. The Russians have been targeting those who oppose socialism in all of its forms.
The whole Trump Russian Collusion narrative was trumped up, no pun intended.
Who benefited from this onslaught of Russia Myths—The Democrat Party and its candidates.
We have written about the Red—Green—Blue Alliance.
The Communists, Islamists and Democrats are all on the same political page.
America is not about Democrat vs. Republican, its all about Tyrants vs. Patriots.
The 2022 midterm elections are the tipping point. Do patriots take back the House and Senate? This is the fundamental question.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-07 12:17:582022-08-07 13:08:08Russians Behind Social Media ‘Influence Operations’ Supporting Black Lives Matter and the Black Hammer Party
The Chips Act is a classic case of the government helping special interest groups at the expense of taxpayers.
Of all the problems in the world right now, the chip shortage probably isn’t the chief concern for most people, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a serious issue. The auto and tech sectors have faced unprecedented delays and rising prices in recent months. Some used cars are even selling for more than their new counterparts because of the delays, a sure sign that production has slowed dramatically.
To address this, Congress is contemplating bipartisan legislation known as the Chips Act, which would provide $52 billion in grants and $24 billion in tax credits to the US semiconductor industry. Thanks to a last-minute bipartisan amendment, the bill will also put tens of billions of dollars toward various federal agencies, bringing the total price tag to $250 billion.
Because why not…
The Senate voted to advance the bill on Tuesday, which means it will likely hold a vote on final passage in the coming days. If passed, the bill will then go to the House for passage, and assuming that is successful it would then go to President Biden for signature into law.
The main arguments for the bill were summarized earlier this week in a Wall Street JournalOp-Ed penned by Jim Farley and Pat Gelsinger, the CEOs of Ford and Intel, respectively.
“The pandemic supply-chain shock exposed a problem that had been mounting for years,” they write. “The U.S. share of global chip manufacturing has declined to 12% from 37% in 1990. South Korea and Taiwan, notably, have spent years actively investing in [read: subsidizing] their own chip manufacturing, creating an uneven playing field for U.S. chip makers that harms our economy and global competitiveness.”
They go on to list the disruptions that have occurred in the auto, consumer-electronics, and healthcare industries because of the shortage, and they warn that national defense is also at stake.
“Fortunately, a solution is within reach,” they continue, referring to the Chips Act. “In addition to boosting production of leading-edge and legacy chips, the act would help level the playing field with global competitors…This legislation is vital to many American industries, including ours, that have dealt with significant disruptions.”
“By funding the Chips Act,” they conclude, “Congress will help consumers, protect patients and strengthen the American economy and national security.”
The Problem with Corporate Subsidies
At first glance, that Op-Ed might seem innocuous, even well-intentioned. But it doesn’t take much to realize what’s really going on here. The companies run by these CEOs stand to gain billions of taxpayer dollars—not just tax credits, but government grants—if this legislation passes. Do you really think they wrote that because they care about the American economy and national defense? Give me a break. They wrote it because they want the money, and they will make whatever arguments they think people will buy in order to get it.
So, what’s wrong with their arguments?
For starters, there’s the classic problem of opportunity cost. Fifty-two billion taxpayer dollars being poured into these industries is 52 billion taxpayers dollars that can’t be poured into other industries. The government is not creating resources, it is simply reallocating them, and it’s by no means obvious that this is the best use of these funds. Notably, the free market tends to allocate resources much better than the government because, unlike Congress, it is guided by actual consumer demand.
Additionally, the CEOs conflate strengthening their businesses with strengthening the American economy. In reality, these are two very different things. If it’s cheaper to buy semiconductors from companies in foriegn countries, it would be economically inefficient to produce these products in America. It would be better to let the domestic producers take losses and ultimately fail so their capital could be reallocated to better uses.
Here, of course, the lobbyists have a rejoinder. “The only reason it’s cheaper to buy semiconductors from foreign countries,” they say, “is because foreign governments subsidize their semiconductor producers. We need a level playing field.”
People who are otherwise proponents of free markets are often sympathetic to this line of reasoning. After all, it’s not really the case that American producers are inefficient, right? If only there was a level playing field, they could compete just fine.
“Whenever someone starts talking about ‘fair competition’ or indeed, about ‘fairness’ in general,” he writes, “it is time to keep a sharp eye on your wallet, for it is about to be picked.”
After addressing some other arguments, Rothbard turns to the issue of foreign government subsidies that allow foreign companies to engage in “dumping,” that is, selling products to American consumers “below cost.”
“Another charge claims that Japanese or other foreign firms can afford to engage in dumping because their governments are willing to subsidize their losses,” he writes. “But again, we should still welcome such an absurd policy. If the Japanese government is really willing to waste scarce resources subsidizing American purchases of Sony’s, so much the better! Their policy would be just as self-defeating as if the losses were private.”
Swap out Japanese Sony’s for Taiwanese semiconductors and Rothbard might as well be writing in 2022. The point is, economic well-being is ultimately about consumers, not producers. If foreign governments are willing to subsidize semiconductors, making them cheaper for Americans, then we might as well take the gift. True, it’s not a free market, but it doesn’t help to adopt bad public policy simply because other nations are also doing it.
What Politics Is Actually About
What’s curious about corporate subsidies like this is that large swaths of both the left and the right are opposed to them. Right-wingers oppose corporate subsidies because they are funded with taxpayer dollars and have the government picking winners and losers in the market. Left-wingers oppose corporate subsidies because they help big corporations at the expense of the little guy.
So if both sides of the political spectrum have good reasons for opposing this measure, it’s worth asking ourselves, who exactly is promoting this?
The answer is: the establishment.
It’s important to understand that the real world of politics is somewhat different from the ideological debates we see online and in the news. Sure, politicians know how to say the right things, but when it comes down to it, most of their job is about appeasing special-interest groups, from semiconductor companies to the military industrial complex to farmers to unions…the list is long.
Ambrose Bierce has a great quote that really captures this idea. Giving a satirical definition of politics in The Devil’s Dictionary, he writes, “POLITICS, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”
We’re told that politics is about competing philosophies of government. In theory, each party has its own vision of what good government looks like, and they are trying to live out those principles as best they can.
But most of the time, that’s not what happens. In practice, it is a strife of special interests. For most politicians, the principles they espouse are merely a pretense, a facade. The real work of politics is about placating donors and lobbyists and voting blocs. This is why we see things like corporate subsidies. They aren’t part of some grand governing philosophy. They are simply the inevitable result of a system that is run by the special interests and for the special interests.
Is that cynical? Sure. But it’s a very justified cynicism, and it gets reinforced every time a story like this comes out.
The good news is that we can do something about it. Once we see the corrupting incentives inherent in politics, we can begin to work towards change. But the key is to not be wooed by the politicians, pundits, and executives when they tell us their schemes are designed for our benefit.
Patrick Carroll has a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Waterloo and is an Editorial Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-07-22 13:57:372022-07-22 13:57:37The Semiconductor Industry Is Coming for Your Wallet. As Usual, Congress Is Complicit
The concept of privacy lies mostly in tatters anyway …
With the June 24 Dobbs decision overturning of Roe v. Wade and Casey, the US Supreme Court withdrew the nationwide blockade against the intention of many states to ban abortion to a greater or lesser degree. Depending on where you live, abortion may already be illegal or will shortly become so.
Texas, where I live, is one of the more aggressive states, having effectively banned most abortions since last fall by authorizing private citizens to sue anyone who assists in an abortion. To the best of my knowledge, the penalties for performing abortion focus mainly on the providers. But any woman who wants an abortion now faces a new forest of legal complications, including the possibility that law enforcement agencies may obtain extremely private information such as data from period apps in building a case that an abortion was performed.
In a recent Vox online piece, Sara Morrison pointed out that although women concerned about keeping their possible pregnancy status private should probably get rid of their period apps, that is not the only way you can be spied on, although period-app companies have a rather poor record when it comes to data privacy anyway.
Most media companies have a boilerplate clause as part of that agreement everybody pretends to read (and nobody does), which allows them to share information with legally constituted law enforcement agencies that have a reason to obtain it. So even if a woman sent a private text message to her closest friend saying that she thought she was pregnant, and a state police investigation thought it was relevant in prosecuting an abortionist, they could legally obtain that message.
The concept of privacy lies mostly in tatters these days for anyone who spends any amount of time online, which is pretty much everybody. While the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees the right to be secure in one’s “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” it does allow searches (presumably including online ones) in cases where a crime is suspected and a warrant for the search can be justified.
What is so different today from the circumstances in 1792, when the Bill of Rights was enacted, is that all of us leave electronic trails that are in legal grey areas in many cases. Simply being on social media and using one’s mobile phone creates gobs of data that clever analysts with adequate resources and access to commercial databases by means of search warrants can use to create an incredibly intimate portrait, including one’s pregnancy status or attempts to obtain an abortion.
Morrison says the ultimate solution is better data-privacy laws. And she may be right. The problem with this is that the entire economic basis of social media relies on the violation of the kind of privacy that data privacy laws would protect. So unless the Big Tech giants figure out an entirely new revenue model, their heavy hands on the scale of justice will outweigh any desire on the part of the general public to be more private online.
This is not an easy column for me to write, because I am personally opposed to abortion. At the same time, I realize that trying to enact (or revoke) a law that creates a situation which is hugely unpopular among a large segment of the public leads to situations in which law either loses respect or unduly harsh measures are used to enforce it. Probably some of both will happen in the coming months as the nation readjusts to the new circumstances surrounding abortion.
Judging from the way Morrison wrote her article, she seemed to take the point of view of a woman who finds herself pregnant against her intention and wants to get an abortion, but lives in a state where abortion is now illegal. What are the options?
Over half of current abortions are achieved by means of medication, which means the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol taken to induce a spontaneous abortion. Many states are or will shortly take steps to make such medications illegal for use in abortion, and the natural first thought of many—to order them online—leaves one open to surveillance as explained above.
The next option would be to travel out of state to a place where abortions are still performed. But in a state like Texas, even helping someone with travel arrangements could be grounds for a lawsuit—remote grounds, maybe, but who wants to do something that leaves their friends liable to be sued? And everyone’s whereabouts are being tracked 24/7, or at least the whereabouts of your phone, unless you turn it off. So as things stand, there are really not many places to hide.
Far from solving the problem, the Dobbs decision has brought abortion into the spotlight of public consciousness and debate in a way that perhaps hasn’t been equaled since the original 1973 decision that legalized it by judicial fiat nationwide. The real problem, the one that lies deeper than online privacy, or legal decisions or codes, is a cultural one.
We live in a hypocritical culture which both promises untrammelled freedom and withholds from nearly everyone the means to realize that freedom, which is illusory in any case. The culture has convinced millions of women that pregnancy and childbirth is simply not an option compared to all the other treasures of the world, and if a woman becomes a mother without meaning to, she must correct the error even if it means the death of an innocent being.
This is a serious distortion of how the world is, and correcting it is going to take more than the passage or revocation of a few laws or judicial rulings. But if Dobbs and its fallout get us to thinking about these things, there is at least hope that the truth will eventually emerge. And it is only the truth that makes people truly free.
Karl D. Stephan received the B. S. in Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1976. Following a year of graduate study at Cornell, he received the Master of Engineering degree in 1977… More by Karl D. Stephan
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-07-18 06:44:142022-07-18 06:44:47New Cause for Concern over Chemical Abortion and Data Privacy in the wake of Dobbs
As weapons inventories dwindle, there’s little chance the West today can build a surge hardware-making capacity
The long and short of it is that, while the US and NATO can fight a short conflict, neither can support a long war because there’s insufficient equipment in the now-depleted inventory and the timelines to build replacement hardware are long.
Despite a history of having done so before, starting in 1939, there is little chance that the US today can put in place a surge capacity, or that it any longer knows how to do so if it is even feasible.
Based on those circumstances alone – and there are additional, compelling reasons – the US and NATO should be thinking about how to end the war in Ukraine rather than sticking with the declared policy of trying to bleed Russia.
Let’s start by looking back at a time when the United States did know how to plan for surge weapons-building capacity.
WW2 precedent
In 1939 the Roosevelt administration, with Congressional support, passed the Protective Mobilization Act. Ultimately this would lead to the creation of a War Production Board, the Office of Production Management and the marshaling of US industry to fight the Nazis and Japanese
In 1941 the President declared an unlimited national emergency, giving the administration the power to shift industrial production to military requirements. Between 1940 and 1945, the US supplied almost two-thirds of all war supplies to the allies (including the USSR and China) and for US forces – producing some 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces (all types) and 86,000 tanks (light, medium and heavy).
Russia faced an altogether more difficult challenge because after Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June 1941 much of Russia’s defense industrial infrastructure was threatened. Russia evacuated 1,500 factories either to the Ural Mountains or to Soviet Central Asia. Even Lenin’s body was moved from Moscow to Tyumen, 2,500 km from Moscow.
Notably, Stalin Tank Factory 183 would be moved from Kharkiv, now a contested city in the Ukraine war, to the Urals, rebranded as Uralvagonzavod and situated in Nizhny Tagil. The facility had been a railroad car maker, so it was suitable for tank manufacturing. The tank factory relocation was managed by Isaac Zaltzman.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2022-06-27 13:10:372022-06-27 13:12:01US and NATO Lack Capability To Supply A Long War
[S]ELECTION CODE follows world renown investigative journalist Lara Logan on her most important assignment to date. For over 35 years investigative journalist Lara Logan has been on the front lines of history’s deadliest conflicts. Yet no assignment to date has put her career and life in more danger than this one. Her investigation goes to the heart of the current Information War, revealing yet another facet in the ever-unfolding saga of election fraud, demonstrating the role of the machines in stealing our vote.
The documentary follows the story of Tina Peters the County Clerk in Mesa Colorado, who made a backup of her counties Dominion Voting System server, only to stumble across evidence of manipulation in a recent local city council election…. and also the 2020 general election. Tina’s discovery ignites a chain reaction upending her life. And upending the world.
You will not be able to unsee what you see.
We stand at an apex in human history. Are we handing too much power to technology – and those that program it?
[S]ELECTION CODE is a political thriller uncovering a secret so critical to the survival of America it transcends political parties. It is not about correcting the past. It’s about correcting the future.
Once you see [S]ELECTION CODE you’ll never again let a machine near your vote.
This is why smart travelers take burner phones to China that don’t log into any of their existing accounts and one of the worst user data hacks in America happened when an employee accessed root out of China. But this is evidence from the inside that TikTok is just another data trap.
For years, TikTok has responded to data privacy concerns by promising that information gathered about users in the United States is stored in the United States, rather than China, where ByteDance, the video platform’s parent company, is located. But according to leaked audio from more than 80 internal TikTok meetings, China-based employees of ByteDance have repeatedly accessed nonpublic data about US TikTok users — exactly the type of behavior that inspired former president Donald Trump to threaten to ban the app in the United States.
The recordings, which were reviewed by BuzzFeed News, contain 14 statements from nine different TikTok employees indicating that engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022, at the very least. Despite a TikTok executive’s sworn testimony in an October 2021 Senate hearing that a “world-renowned, US-based security team” decides who gets access to this data, nine statements by eight different employees describe situations where US employees had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how US user data was flowing. US staff did not have permission or knowledge of how to access the data on their own, according to the tapes.
Why would anyone expect anything else? This is how Chinese companies work. The locus of control is always going to be with their own people and the idea that Americans would be allowed to act as gatekeepers over Chinese execs was always implausibly absurd. Americans working for TikTok are there to take orders from China. Not the other way around.
In 2019, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States began investigating the national security implications of TikTok’s collection of American data. And in 2020, then-president Donald Trump threatened to ban the app entirely over concerns that the Chinese government could use ByteDance to amass dossiers of personal information about US TikTok users. TikTok’s “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information,” Trump wrote in his executive order. TikTok has said it has never shared user data with the Chinese government and would not do so if asked.
A Chinese company isn’t going share data with its own government in a system where the options are…
1. Share the data
2. Go to prison, be executed, have your organs harvested and your corpse displayed at one of those human body exhibits traveling America
… sure.
There is, however, another concern: that the soft power of the Chinese government could impact how ByteDance executives direct their American counterparts to adjust the levers of TikTok’s powerful “For You” algorithm, which recommends videos to its more than 1 billion users. Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, has called TikTok “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist Party can use to influence what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think.”
Project Texas’s narrow focus on the security of a specific slice of US user data, much of which the Chinese government could simply buy from data brokers if it so chose, does not address fears that China, through ByteDance, could use TikTok to influence Americans’ commercial, cultural, or political behavior.
The algorithmic secret sauce is bad enough when it’s in the hands of lefty Big Tech corps in America, imagine what China’s overlords can do with it. And probably;are.
Why is TikTok is abrasively leftist and dedicated to promoting political extremes? Likely, because the Chinese are doing what the Russians were actually (as opposed to the Russiagate nonsense) which is amplifying the extremes in order to cause chaos in America and find likely recruits among the political extremes.
TikTok is a cultural weapon aimed at America and the trigger will always be in Beijing.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-06-20 07:39:402022-06-20 07:41:06TikTok Lied to Senate, China Controls the Data, Americans Don’t
On side note, I am sad that I did not make the list but I suspect it’s because Twitter permanently suspended my account with 225,000 followers for … wait for it. Tweeting about election fraud.
— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org ☮️ (@froomkin) June 15, 2022
The National Science Foundation funded this along with far left billionaires. That means the US Government PAID to have a list made smearing Americans for questioning the validity of ballot harvesting and mass mail-in voting. Think about that. This is what communists do.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-17 05:56:332022-06-17 06:02:57U.S. Government PAID To Create List Of Americans Who Questioned Democrat Dogma
Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition — which can be summed up as the world’s wealthiest person buying one of the most powerful social media and news platforms — underscores one of the big problems with Big Tech.
In the absence of modernized anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, Big Tech companies in the U.S. have amassed far too much economic and political control over society, and especially over the news and publishing industries.
The power at Big Tech companies with respect to their management of sites like Facebook News and Google News – is held by a few individuals who are often times more motivated by a desire to turn profits and promote their own ideology or world view, rather than by a genuine desire to guarantee a free and diverse press.
Due to Big Tech’s market manipulation in the news and publishing industries, thousands of local and smaller news operators — including many conservative publications — have been forced to shutter their doors in recent years.
This forsakes the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and thus, is a threat to our democracy.
Importantly, new survey research shows that the American public recognizes this threat, and wants their elected officials to act on it.
New polling by Schoen Cooperman Research — conducted among a representative sample of U.S. adults and commissioned by News Media Alliance — reveals widespread concern surrounding Big Tech’s power and manipulative practices, as well as strong support for reforms to rein in these monopolies.
Notably, strong majorities of Americans are concerned about the economic and political power of Big Tech companies (74%) and are supportive of increased government regulations on Big Tech companies in order to curb their economic and political power (63%).
With respect to news and publishing specifically, nearly 4-in-5 Americans are concerned that Big Tech companies have too much power over these industries (79%) and manipulate these industries for their own gain (78%).
To that end, three-in-four Americans agree that “Big Tech’s monopoly over the news and publishing industries is a threat to the free press and unfair to publishers, especially to small and local outlets.” (76%)
In addition to being broadly concerned about this problem, Americans are supportive of Congress taking action to restore fairness, balance, and freedom to the press.
Respondents were asked about a specific piece of legislation proposed in Congress known as the Journalism, Competition, and Preservation Act (JCPA). The JCPA would provide a legal basis for news publishers to negotiate fair terms for use of their content by Big Tech companies — and thus, would demonstrably curb the economic and political power of these companies.
Remarkably, 7-in-10 Americans support Congress passing the JCPA (70%) and believe it is important for Congress to pass the JCPA (64%) after reading a brief description of the bill. And by a four-to-one margin, U.S. adults would be more likely, rather than less likely, to back a candidate for Congress who supported the JCPA.
In my experience as a professional pollster who has worked in opinion research for over four decades, it is rare for an issue or piece of legislation to garner this level of public support.
Our findings present a clear call-to-action to Congress, and elected officials in both parties now have a mandate from the public to rein in Big Tech by pursuing the JCPA or similar reforms.
Moreover, the very survival of American democracy is contingent on our leaders safeguarding free speech and ensuring a fair economy.
Congress must fulfill its duty by passing legislation like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act into law.
Contributor. Douglas E. Schoen is a Democratic pollster and strategist. He is the author of “The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, From the Grass Roots to the White House.” The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-05-09 05:27:352022-05-09 05:30:03SCHOEN: Americans Are Sounding The Alarm Over Big Tech
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has quietly set up a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee what information is and isn’t “truthful”
Heading up this new “Ministry of Truth” is Nina Jankowicz, a “Russian disinformation expert” who in her spare time sings show tunes about disinformation and erotic Harry Potter songs on TikTok
Jankowicz is herself known for spreading disinformation. She called the Hunter Biden laptop story a “fairytale” and “Russian disinformation,” and she’s openly opposed to free speech and anti-censorship efforts
In her book, “How to Lose the Information War,” Jankowicz criticized Poland’s efforts to eliminate censorship of conservatives on social networks, and called for the U.S. government to regulate and conduct oversight of people who disagree with the Democratic party on Twitter
Every dictatorship and autocracy has had a ministry of truth, a department of propaganda, and Biden has now joined them. May 1, 2022, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to immediately defund and terminate the Disinformation Governance Board
By now, you’ve probably heard that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has created a Disinformation Governance Board to oversee what information is and isn’t “truthful.”1 This includes information relating to elections.2 It’s so incredibly Orwellian, you’d think it was pure fiction, yet here we are. It’s real.
This “Ministry of Truth” will reportedly operate under and receive funding from the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), created by President Biden to “curb radicalization in the U.S.”3 It appears those in the Biden administration must have thought “1984” was an instruction manual rather than a warning.
Known Disinformation Spreader Made Head of Truth Ministry
Heading up this new “Ministry of Truth” is Nina Jankowicz,4 a “Russian disinformation expert” who in her spare time makes a fool of herself singing made-up show tunes about disinformation and erotic Harry Potter songs5 on TikTok.
As noted by both Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson and Jimmy Dore of “The Jimmy Dore Show” in the videos above, Jankowicz is qualified to do absolutely nothing. Independent journalist Glen Greenwald also highlighted Jankowicz’s obvious lack of real credentials in a May 4, 2022, Substack article:6
“The concept of ‘anti-disinformation expert’ is itself completely fraudulent. This is not a real expertise but rather a concocted title bestowed on propagandists to make them appear more scholarly and apolitical than they are …
There is no conceivable circumstance in which a domestic law enforcement agency like DHS should be claiming the power to decree truth and falsity … The purpose of Homeland Security agents is to propagandize and deceive, not enlighten and inform.
The level of historical ignorance and stupidity required to believe that U.S. Security State operatives are earnestly devoted to exposing and decreeing truth is off the charts … That nobody should want the U.S. Government let alone Homeland Security arrogating unto itself the power to declare truth and falsity seems self-evident.”
Surprisingly enough, even mainstream news outlets have pointed out Jankowicz’s role in the spreading of disinformation and outright lies. For example, as reported by the British Daily Mail:7
“The Russia disinformation expert previously called the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter a ‘Trump campaign product.’ This is causing questions over Jankowicz’s ability to accurately judge disinformation now that several sources have come out confirming the validity of Hunter’s laptop …
When stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop started emerging, several outlets, social media sites and left-leaning disinformation experts claimed that it was just misinformation coming from Trump and others on the right.
In an October 2020 report, Jankowicz shared her skepticism of the contents of the laptop and the claims it belonged to Hunter. ‘We should view it as a Trump campaign product,’ she told the New York Daily News at the time. Twitter repeatedly took down the Hunter Biden laptop story and prevented it from being spread on the platform.”
In one October 2020 tweet, she referred to the Hunter Biden laptop story as a “fairytale.”8 Jankowicz was also among those who insisted Trump had colluded with Russia to win the presidency in 2016, a claim we now know is patently false. In reality, it was Hillary Clinton and allies who colluded to fabricate this false narrative and derail Trump’s presidency.9
Over the past couple years, we’ve repeatedly seen how information censored on the grounds that it was “misinformation” turned out to be factual and true. In early 2020, YouTube betrayed its founding principles and started censoring and banning anything that contradicted the World Health Organization’s stance on COVID-19.
Yet, time and again, the WHO turned out to be wrong.10 No organization is infallible, and the WHO has a long history of corruption that makes its ability to discern what’s best for public health all the more suspect. Twitter followed suit, axing health experts, scientists and respected journalists like Tess Lawrie, Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, Dr. Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Alex Berenson and many more.11
Jankowicz’s Hostile Stand Against First Amendment Rights
Jankowicz has also publicly opposed the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, saying free speech is bad for “marginalized communities.” Shortly after Elon Musk announced his takeover of Twitter, she told NPR:12
“I shudder to think about if free speech absolutists were taking over more platforms, what that would look like for the marginalized communities …
We need the platforms to do more, and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well … the U.K. has an online safety bill that’s being considered right now where they’re trying to make illegal this currently, quote, ‘awful but lawful content’ that exists online where people are being harassed.”
Lack of censorship on social media will make abuse against marginalized groups worse, she claims. At the same time, she insists that “a HUGE focus” of the new disinformation board will be “protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights and civil liberties.”13
This is clearly Orwellian doublespeak, where what’s being said is the complete opposite of reality. How can you have a board dedicated to dictating “truth,” which means censoring “untruth,” while simultaneously protecting free speech? Either all viewpoints are allowed, or only one viewpoint is permitted, and if only one viewpoint is tolerated, then there’s clearly no free speech.
In her book, “How to Lose the Information War,” she also criticized Poland’s efforts to eliminate rampant online censorship of conservatives on social networks by forming a Ministry of Digital Affairs.
In other words, she wants conservative views to be censored, not just in the U.S., but everywhere. In that book, she also called on the U.S. government to regulate and conduct oversight of people who disagree with the Democratic party on Twitter. As noted by Carlson, that’s likely why she was selected in the first place.
The future head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Ministry of Truth claims in this video that revolutions are an appropriate response to rigged elections. “Believe it or not, sometimes people get fed up with having their voices silenced for decades,” she explains. https://t.co/fJo2zxd0qQ
Not surprisingly, then, Jankowicz has expressed “dismay” at Musk’s decision to no longer censor posts discussing potential fraud in the 2020 election.14 Interestingly, in a September 2020 tweet, she defined the term “color revolution” and “why the U.S. isn’t a candidate for one.”15
In it, she noted that “Believe it or not, sometimes people get fed up with having their voices silenced for decades,” but she then insisted that a color revolution isn’t possible in the U.S. because “we are not an autocracy,” and color revolutions only occur in oppressive autocracy regimes.
Given an Inch, They’ll Take a Mile
Others disagree with that assessment. As noted by former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (video above), every dictatorship and autocracy has had a ministry of truth, a department of propaganda. And Biden just joined them.
Gabbard also accurately points out that the government has been working with media and Big Tech to censor for some time already. We’ve become increasingly aware of this covert backdoor influence over the past two years. Now, however, they’re formalizing that influence, which is, by the way, completely unconstitutional.
Moreover, the scary truth here is that the terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” could cover absolutely anything. As noted by Carlson in the featured video, the DHS has not actually defined or given any clues as to what mis- or disinformation actually is.
“Would you declare war on a country you couldn’t name?” Carlson asks. “Would you sentence someone to death for a crime you couldn’t describe? Of course you wouldn’t, not if you were a sane and decent person. Because you can’t have justice without precise definitions …
But they’re not defining the core concept, the heart of what is effectively a new law enforcement agency. Maybe that is because [U.S. secretary of homeland security, Alejandro] Mayorkas doesn’t want justice, and neither does the president he serves. They want power. And to get power, they plan to control what you think.”
Carlson points out that the DHS has now publicly admitted they intend to punish people for merely thinking “the wrong way,” even if they’ve committed no actual crime worthy of judicial intervention. In short, anyone who disagrees with the Biden administration is now an enemy of the state. As noted by Carlson:
“You can’t make any of this up. It’s too grotesque. Would you believe a novel with this plot? No, you wouldn’t, but it’s happening, and that’s the bad news. The good news is, everyone involved in Joe Biden’s Ministry of Information is a buffoon. They may be evil, but they’re also ridiculous.”
He then airs one of Jankowicz’s undignified TikTok videos, where she’s singing about disinformation. “This is now one of our top law enforcement officials,” he dryly notes. Jankowicz has also, ironically, accused Republicans of dealing in “highly emotional rhetoric,” which proves nothing except the fact that she’s read George Orwell’s “1984” more than once.
In fact, Democrats accuse their opponents of doing exactly what they themselves are doing so regularly, you can be near-assured that any accusation is a veiled admission at this point. And, in his report, Carlson reviews how Jankowicz is guilty of this exact behavior. Carlson also points out that her falsehoods have by no means been inconsequential.
Her disinformation helped presidential candidate Biden to lie about an incredibly important story — Hunter’s laptop — that could have altered the outcome of the presidential election, had it been up for public discussion. Jankowicz has never apologized for dismissing what was in fact truthful, and neither has anyone else who insisted the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”
An International Coordination Effort to Censor Free Speech
Now, some have pointed out that this Disinformation Governance Board didn’t come into existence until Musk bought Twitter, promising to turn it into a free speech platform.16,17 However, other evidence strongly indicates there’s international coordination taking place.
In mid-April 2022, the European Union approved new rules aimed at policing Big Tech platforms. As reported by the Financial Times:18
“The EU will force Big Tech companies to police content online more aggressively after approving a major piece of legislation that sets the rules for the first time on how companies should keep users safe on the internet …
Leading tech groups will be forced to disclose to EU regulators how they are tackling disinformation and war propaganda in order to curb the spread of fake information — an effort that has gained fresh momentum since the Russian invasion of Ukraine … Countries such as the U.S., Canada and Singapore are expected to follow with similar rules in the coming months.”
Some of the language used to describe this EU legislation sounds good — for example, it will ban the targeting of internet users based on personal information such as gender, religion and sexual preferences, and terms and conditions must be clearly understandable even to children.
However, there are also many reasons to suspect that these regulations will end up serving as a springboard for government-directed censorship. Among them is the fact that the EU is supporting the proposal to make the WHO into a global health authority, and the WHO, in turn, is setting up its own censorship network.
A key player in that network is NewsGuard,19 which entered into a partnership with the WHO in August 2020.20 As reported by Carlson, NewsGuard has also received funding from the U.S. Pentagon to blacklist any site that publishes “misinformation” about the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Time to Draw a Line in the Sand
Clearly, the shocking censorship we experienced during the COVID pandemic was only the beginning. It’s going to include all kinds of information. The creation of a DHS Disinformation Governance Board is truly a watershed moment in history, and we cannot allow it to stand. As noted by Carlson in the featured video at the top of this article:
“Just to be clear, this is a nightmare unfolding in slow motion. But this is the point where we’re just going to have to draw the line. No, Joe Biden, you cannot have a federally funded ministry of truth. And no, Nina Jankowicz can’t run it. Period. It’s not your country … and you don’t get to do this to a free people. Period. This can’t happen.”
May 1, 2022, GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert introduced a bill to immediately defund and terminate the Disinformation Governance Board. In an interview with Fox News, Boebert said:21
“This kind of stuff is terrifying. We in Congress have the power of the purse. It is our duty to shut down this department immediately. I’m calling on leadership in the Republican Party — Leader McCarthy, Whip Scalise, and others — to join me in calling for this department to be shut down and defunded.
No tax dollars should go to where Biden can use the power of the federal government to silence truthful stories like Big Tech did with the Hunter Biden story. Democrats took [Orwell’s book ‘1984’] not as a warning, but as a guide.
This is really a department of propaganda. To say that the federal department has a say in what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s truth and what’s not — this is a very dangerous place that we’ve come to.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-05-09 04:59:482022-05-09 04:59:48Decoding the Latest Attack on Free Speech
