The Censorship Industrial complex — the secret cabal of Big-Government, University, Media and NGO’s

By Jo Nova

Imagine if the national postal service had secret blacklists of people whose mail “should be lost”?

Censored, stamp.What if the FBI, CIA, or Department of Defence was talking to the postie, and the postie read your letters and threw some out, but not others, and none of the institutions told you they were doing this? Or perhaps the post-office told you point-blank you were banned from sending mail now “because your letters were wrong”.

In this case the “posties” are private organizations, but to all intents and purposes, their network connection and obedience to Big-Government made them, in effect, another branch of the government. The government wasn’t paying the postie direct, but it protected the monopoly of the corporate postie team and gave them a legal loophole to hide in, and the media outlets stopped anyone criticizing the government. It was a Pravda-KGB consortium with  filters that worked at light speed, but hidden.

 

“Undeniably, the making of such lists is a form of digital McCarthyism.”

 

Where would we be if Elon Musk hadn’t bought Twitter?

In the latest round of Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi shows how Twitter was not just censoring things that would later turn out to be true, but things it already knew to be true.

The truth can be malinformation you see — it might influence people not to take a medicine that Twitter has decided they should take.

For the last few years, your friends and families medical decisions have been made by a quasi government collective. The only people with informed consent were the censors. As Taibbi says malinformation is just a euphemism for “true but inconvenient.”

We can all speak with one voice comrade! The GEC voice…

It’s no accident why commentators everywhere seem to shift messages together like a school of herding fish. The censorship industrial complex is not just the government, and the media, and the social media giants but also some of the non-government organisations that once upon a time were supposed to be watchdogs of the government.

At the centre of this information cabal was the “Global Engagement Center” (“GEC”) — which was established by Barack Obama with  Executive Order 13271. This was in 2015-2016 and marked a shift from managing “counter terrorism” to the much broader “disinformation”.

GEK decides who’s on the blacklist, and the lists are looong…

GEC -- The Global Engagement Center

From Matt Taibbi on Twitter — “the Censorship-Industrial Complex.”

But Twitter was more like a partner to government. With other tech firms it held a regular “industry meeting” with FBI and DHS, and developed a formal system for receiving thousands of content reports from every corner of government: HHS, Treasury, NSA, even local police.

Emails from the FBI, DHS and other agencies often came with spreadsheets of hundreds or thousands of account names for review. Often, these would be deleted soon after.

We came to think of this grouping – state agencies like DHS, FBI, or the Global Engagement Center (GEC), along with “NGOs that aren’t academic” and an unexpectedly aggressive partner, commercial news media – as the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

NGOs ideally serve as a check on corporations and the government. Not long ago, most of these institutions viewed themselves that way. Now, intel officials, “researchers,” and executives at firms like Twitter are effectively one team – or Signal group, as it were.
Google logo

Michael Shellenberger went with Matt Taibbi to Congress and summed it up on his own Substack:

Exposed: America’s Secret Censorship-Industrial Complex

The censorship industrial complex combines established methods of psychological manipulation, some developed by the U.S. military during the Global War on Terror, with highly sophisticated tools from computer science, including artificial intelligence. The complex’s leaders are driven by the fear that the Internet and social media platforms empower populist, alternative, and fringe personalities and views, which they regard as destabilizing. Federal government officials, agencies, and contractors have gone from fighting ISIS recruiters and Russian bots to censoring and deplatforming ordinary Americans and disfavored public figures.

Importantly, the bar for bringing in military-grade government monitoring and speech-countering techniques has moved from “countering terrorism” to “countering extremism” to countering simple misinformation. The government no longer needs a predicate of calling you a terrorist or extremist to deploy government resources to counter your political activity. The only predicate it needs is simply the assertion that the opinion you expressed on social media is wrong.

You are free to say nice things about the government:

… increasingly, the censors say their goal is to restrict information that “delegitimizes” governmental, industrial, and news media organizations.

The cartel wants to protect the industry and media from being “delegitimized” too. They are all assets in the same mafia-style organization.

Disinformation isn’t the threat to Democracy, industrial fact-checkers are:

Jefferson’s ideas still ring true today. In a free society we don’t mandate truth, we arrive at it through discussion and debate. Any group that claims the “confidence” to decide fact and fiction, especially in the name of protecting democracy, is always, itself, the real threat to democracy.

For hundreds of years, the thing that’s distinguished Americans from all other people around the world is the way we don’t let anyone tell us what to think, certainly not the government.

The First Amendment, and an American population accustomed to the right to speak, is the best defense left against the Censorship-Industrial Complex. If the latter can knock over our first and most important constitutional guarantee, these groups will have no serious opponent left anywhere.

If there’s anything the Twitter Files show, it’s that we’re in danger of losing this most precious right, without which all other democratic rights are impossible.

Wouldn’t true information be bliss,
But would likely be censored as ‘mis’,
Or worse again ‘mal’,
Such as woking Roald Dahl,
Or thoroughly fact-checked as ‘dis’.

–Rauiri

hat tip to KP, JB,  Honk R Smith, Tombo, Beth the serf, John Connor II, Richard C.

Censored logo: Piotr VaGla Waglowski

9.9 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

89 comments to The Censorship Industrial complex — the secret cabal of Big-Government, University, Media and NGO’s

  • #
    KP

    “Right Gentlemen, lets start today’s meeting. We will be focusing on another Anti-Govt disinformation site, joannenova.com.au. I want the ringleaders listed in the ‘hat tip’ columns sorted out. First we’ll (CENSORED) and then as a followup we will (REDACTED)..”

    420

    • #

      You Non Diversity person you. Where are the Ladies? You only said ‘Gentlemen’.

      200

      • #
        Saighdear

        Oh dear, kwik, where’s my large brown paper bag! … . you you you said ‘gentle’ men, what about the rough men. I like rough country , robust MEN and gentle women.

        80

    • #
      John Connor II

      Too late.

      WHO Insider Caught Admitting ‘One World Government’ Is ‘Months Away’

      And according to one WHO insider, the globalist organization is just months away from creating a functional One World Government with treaty rights that supersede the laws of member states, including the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

      https://rumble.com/v2cke0m-who-insider-caught-admitting-one-world-government-is-months-away.html

      Almost time to deploy EPP1 and EPP2. (Emergency Preparedness Plans 1 & 2)
      Poor old SVB bank. The bank run left them at minus $1B.
      Got cash?Got you cash out yet?

      No-one listens.😇

      152

      • #
        Saighdear

        I didn’t vote for all that.

        40

      • #
        bobby b

        Scary thing about all of these non-valid treaties, unapproved world agreements, unratified global contracts, and executive-signed international resolutions is that they are all perfectly valid and empowered and in force so long as the government that purported to bind us to them remains in power. So long as they – the Bidens, the EU’s – do not explicitly remove us from their ambit, they stay as our law.

        In the US, Biden has made noises about such agreements. We all know that the true adoption in the US of international law requires certain almost super-majoritarian steps in order to adopt these measures – but we also know that if Biden remains in power and runs the executive branch without Congress’s love, it will be, for us, just as if we had adopted those measures fully. We have to hold all three tripartite institutions if we want to officially end their power over us.

        This, the progressive motto: “Don’t wait, do it now, they can’t stop us.”

        00

  • #
    Neville

    Perhaps Michael Shellenberger could also tell us about the govt’s ( plus all the other BS merchants) part in promoting and spreading the lies and misinformation about their so called climate change?
    This drift to BS and FRAUD started in Washington DC in 1988 ( Dr Hansen’s speech) and has gathered pace and wasted TRILLIONs of $ over the last 25 years.
    The increase in the atmosphere’s co2 level proves the point thanks to China, India and developing countries’ co2 emissions, while the OECD countries were busy stuffing up their electricity grids for a ZERO return.
    Whether the extra co2 is a problem ( no proof) it still costs the OECD taxpayers TRILLIONs of $ and apparently this FRAUD will continue for decades into the future?
    Will the OECD countries’ voters ever WAKE UP?

    501

    • #
      Simon Thompson ᵐᵇ ᵇˢ

      ” gathered pace and wasted TRILLIONs of $”

      Neville- the dollars enriched the top 0.0005% with a trickle down effect. These “Green” Dollars are in the pockets of all the participants in the fraud. It is all communist subversion- to weaken our energy and food production as part of a planetary genocide. Confusion about blatant hypocrisy and outright gaslighting is a well known brain washing technique. Additionally, with feminism and the manifestly futile deviant sexual behaviour our populations will shrink. All through the plandemic, I awaited bioethics boffins to decry the overt tyranny of “Lockdowns” – it never happened. Please just see it as that- no amount of clacking your keyboard will right this situation- it is all unfolding by design.

      290

      • #
        Lawrie

        Simon. I agree with you. I have been saying for decades that the Greens and their policies are pure communism and designed to cripple the West. They failed with the USSR but they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams with climate change and the other many anti Christian and anti societal pogroms. It is so obvious that they are not concerned for the environment as many of their deluded followers believe for if they were they would adopt nuclear energy yesterday.

        380

        • #
          Ted1.

          The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were only united by the tyranny of Russia’s Marxism.

          It is a fundamentaal fact of human nature that first hand information takes precedence over second hand information. It was always my view that the oppression that we saw in the USSR depended on first hand memory of how things were before the Russian Revolution. Only that memory could justify tolerance of the oppression that we saw after the revolution.

          Therefore I always expected that there would be dramatic change in the USSR as the old guard faded from influence. The natural term of tolerance of such oppression is one lifetime.

          When Reagan deployed his Star Wars program that lifetime was nearing its end. The benefit that I saw in the Star Wars program was that it highlighted for the new management in Russia the futility of sabre rattling, thereby accelerating the change.

          I was then disappointed to see the USA working to flick a switsh to a free market in Russia. This was not like Poland or Czekoslovakia, because there was nobody left in Russia with any experience or knowledge of running a free market economy. Rushing the change would unleash everything that is worst in a market economy.

          For all that, the root of our current problem is in our leading academies and the media they have so assiduously trained. The Gnomes of Oxbridge issue a proclamation, e.g. CO2 is bad, the Pixies of the Press run with the story, and the Sheeple in our parliaments pass it into law. They call it Democracy.

          350

        • #
          Geoff Sherrington

          Lawrie,
          Historically, the greens I fought in the 1980-2000 era were so primitive that they could not even organise a f*** in a brothel.
          What device did they use to infiltrate and influence these major bastions of freedom?
          They must have promised something more than words. I ask because anyone wanting to organise a reversal could well use the same approach, with a diffrent offer.
          Fundamentally, I do not think that the green NGOs had much to do with this capture of private, personal information. More plausable is a controlling group that some are equating with WEF, that type of structure. They need to receive only one thing, more money in their Swiss bank accounts.
          Geoff S

          181

          • #
            Ted1.

            The ones I saw were mostly stoned.

            30 years ago I was told be somebody whose opinion I respected that our local leader of the pack was a professional demonstrator, and that she collected her pay from a Chinese restaurant.

            110

    • #
      Ross

      Actually Neville, Schellenberger has been doing this for the best part of the last 10 years. He’s in the Bjorn Lombourg club- a “luke warmer”. Thinks humans have some influence over the climate, but believes like BL that all the responses to that possible threat are totally out of proportion and probably fraudulent.

      240

      • #

        Neville, this is so much bigger than climate change.

        Of course Shellenberger mentions the climate debate. (Have you not heard him speak before?) I originally had this paragraph from his speech in the post, but decided it was not telling readers here anything they didn’t know already, so I took it out.

        The Twitter Files, state attorneys general lawsuits, and investigative reporters have revealed a large and growing network of government agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations that are actively censoring American citizens, often without their knowledge, on a range of issues, including on the origins of COVID, COVID vaccines, emails relating to Hunter Biden’s business dealings, climate change, renewable energy, fossil fuels, and many other issues.

        The big picture here is that the battle over climate science is just a small part of our right to speak freely. The imposts of stupid expensive energy and climate models that fail are not of the same order as the tyranny that comes when the government can rig elections, lie to us, inject our children by force against our wishes and jail us for two years without trial for protesting.

        If climate science is a wreck, as long as we have the right to speak, we can fix that. If we lose the right to speak, it’s not just expensive electricity that awaits, but the darkest gulags of history…

        260

        • #
          Kalm Keith

          Hi Jo,

          I think it’s worth nailing the Climate Change issue, decisively.

          It’s something we have the man and woman power to accomplish here on this site.

          We can show decisively that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming, we have the skills, academic depth and personpower to do it.

          101

          • #
            Ted1.

            Can Florence and Liddell do it for us?

            Talk of “government” buying Eraring shows that somebody has recently become aware that there is a problem looming. And, although that does not fit anybody’s planning, it might be the best short term solution to the problem.

            April/May should be very interesting times.

            Oh! And there’s an election coming.

            51

        • #
          Neville

          Jo I’ve linked to Shellenberger many times on your blog and I’ve listened to his take down of the left wing San Francisco loonies treatment of their street druggies etc and why they are wrong.
          In fact he’s written a book ( San Fransicko) about their stupidity and also debated them and he lost a lot his lefty mates on that issue as well.
          But CC is the one issue the OECD countries will suffer and weaken our armed forces, because we’re wrecking our economies by wasting TRILLIONs of $ to definitely make us weaker and in a very short period of time.

          61

    • #
      Leonard

      Thanks Neville. Appreciate your comment.
      I was recently reading an Alumni magazine from Colorado State University. One of the writers (a Prof in engineering and water resources) said “Water change is climate change.” This full professor and department head linked water decreases directly to climate change without considering the light snowfall and rain years and the heavy snowfall and rain years.
      He did not consider the increasing population and the resultant increases in plant water use (food crops, shade trees, flowers, etc. and growing businesses using water.

      Consumptive water use increases & decreases through the dry years and wet years. However, consumptive water use over the longer term increases due to long term population increases in the watersheds in the drainage basin, then this results in decreased river flows. These increased water use over time result in less river flow with time.
      These processes need to be considered over time.

      As population increases over time then water use will increase with time. Did that learned professor consider any of these things?

      00

  • #
    Indur Goklany

    The way to combat misinformation, if that is what you believe something is, is not to censor it, but provide information that one believes is correct and back it up with documented evidence. And let there be a debate or information exchange to allow otehrs to judge which version is more accurate.

    341

    • #
      Neville

      Indur Goklany I’d read your research decades ago and I know you’ve worked for and tried to tame the more extreme groups for a very long time.
      But can you tell us when/where you think the so called climate change debate will end? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for rational thinkers and how or when do you think we will see a positive change.
      Most of the OECD voters seem to be asleep and we could waste decades and TRILLIONs more $ before we begin to see a positive change.

      200

      • #

        He knows what misleading information war is:

        n 2017, the Trump administration promoted him to a position charged with reviewing climate policy. In 2020, it was revealed he had repeatedly tried to insert misleading language on climate change into the agency’s scientific reports.[1] He has also worked with several organisations known for promoting climate change denial, including the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation.[1][3][4]

        From Wikipedia
        Saying it friendly, what happens there is insane.

        210

        • #
          KP

          LOL! Wikipedia… Straight-out propaganda!

          “The wording includes claims that there is a lack of consensus for global warming among scientists and that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is beneficial.[1]”

          So, Wiki, there is 100% agreement among all scientists that humans are causing global warming & we are all going to burn?

          There is nothing beneficial about more CO2..?

          You can easily tell who writes/publishes Wiki articles.. They are as bad as the Sydney Morning Herald!

          160

          • #

            If you read my comment correctly you should realise that I don’t agree with wiki BS.

            120

            • #
              KP

              Oh, I did Krishna, I’m just amazed at the level of lies in that Wiki article.

              It will all blow back on them as each person slowly finds something they know about in Wiki and the false information there will sow the seeds of doubt about the whole Wiki encyclopaedia.

              120

          • #
            bobby b

            That’s called the Wikipedia Badge of Honor.

            If they write such things about you, you have made a positive difference in the world and should be proud.

            00

        • #
          Ted1.

          “…tried to insert misleading language on climate change “.

          Sez wiki. Sez it all.

          70

  • #
    Leo G

    When did government become a system of social control under which the right to break as well as make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in partisan groups in society, and the right of protection under law is denied other groups?

    280

  • #
    Old Goat

    What worries me is the truth is out there and most of the sheep don’t want to know it . The irony is that although the sheep fear the wolf , it is the shepherd that is the worst predator .

    290

    • #

      As most “sheep” read newspapers, look news on TV, use SM, they know only what is told, as most have to look how to get their life in a row and haaven’t the time to dig deeper or in other directions.

      210

    • #
      David Maddison

      the truth is out there and most of the sheep don’t want to know it .

      That relates to the destruction of the education system.

      Critical thinking is no longer taught. It’s now indoctrination, not education.

      It’s part of the German communist, Rudi Dutschke’s 1967 plan of “the long march through the institutions” to infiltrate the Left into ALL institutions of the West and corrupt and destroy their traditional values in order to install Leftist ideology. It obviously worked.

      290

      • #
        czechlist

        People drive, work, drive, get home and seek food and entertainment – panem et circences.
        I am no longer surprised that most people I know are uninformed. And, what little they are aware of is mostly big media spin.

        280

      • #
        Ted1.

        I think you would find that this was going on 100 years before 1967.

        40

    • #
      Hasbeen

      For years my lady, an intelligent educated lady would get annoyed when we anti warmest lot expressed our recognition of the scam.

      The reason, she could not accept that academia was no better than the worst of the old used car salesman, & would sell their souls for a buck.

      She would not even look at the evidence. I don’t know what triggered the change, but when doubts entered her mind, & she looked at the evidence she became viscous with any warmist, hitting them with solid facts.

      She has lost a few mindless “friends” but now acknowledges the truth & how she refused for so long to look at it, due to not wanting to be forced to see what she did not want to be true.

      I think there are many such.

      280

      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Interesting. My wife was exactly the same over Covid. She used to sigh when I mentioned cheap, repurposed drugs, vaccine side effects, pointless lockdowns, etc. However, thanks to this blog and an increasing number of articles in other journals, such as Quadrant, she has at last seen the light and is now a very perceptive observer of real misinformation re Covid and vaccines. Like me, she will not be having boosters.

        220

      • #
        Jon Rattin

        My sister is a nurse, She worked at the Monash Medical Centre during the pandemic, They did use IVM in a trial there. However, there was no specifications of dosages and the duration of said dosages. I believe she thinks IVM is ineffective as a covid treatment because there were no immediate results that she recognised in patients treated with IVM (despite a lack of data pertaining to at which point, post-infection, IVM was applied, at what dosage, and the duration of application of said drug).
        I recently attended a conference convened by the UAP in Melbourne in which a US doctor stated that in some so-called medical trials IVM was applied to patients 14 cays post-infection, way too late for the drug to be optimised in the patient’s favour.
        Pfizer emphasise their antiviral Covid drug should be be applied to patients early on post-infection. Early is good, boost your immune system with Vitamins C, D and Zinc. Quercetin will also help. You don’t need their drug, generally speaking, if you’re aged under 65 because it will cost you over $1000 And governments such as Australia reinforce that sentiment within public advertising. They have recently reduced their emphasis for people getting boosters but they have not explained why this is so. It’s easy to see logically, maybe not so for someone who thinks the 6’oclock news and the morning paper holds all the truth

        61

        • #

          Some big ivm studies gave people the drug in between meals which is how it is used to kill parasites. But without food (fat) at the same time, I believe only a fifth of the dose is absorbed. To stop covid, it needs to be taken with meals.

          120

  • #
    another ian

    FWIW

    “Covid September 2019”

    “Everything proving the devlopment of COVID in Wuhan lab is in writing. We have numerous other avenues of evidence as well. We know Fauci gave out huge grants, days after prominent doctors changed their minds to state the virus was of natural origin. It’s well past time to see some prosecution of those who caused this pandemic, and further investigation as to how or why this virus was released. This goose is cooked.”

    https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2023/03/10/covid-september-2019/

    251

    • #
      Leo G

      It’s well past time to see some prosecution of those who caused this pandemic …

      Some of the individuals responsible for creating and releasing the pandemic virus, were responsible for obstructing measures to limit its spread, for suppressing clinical responses to the infection, and profited from their capacity to dictate countermeasures.

      210

      • #
        Simon Thompson ᵐᵇ ᵇˢ

        I saw a figure of $10 0000 000 that Fauci’s net worth increased via his monetisation of the plandemic. I am sure the real figure is 10-100 times that. I don’t really know what the malignant pint sized iatrogenocidal hustler will do at his age- perhaps build a statue?

        Understand- Fauci spruiked fake jabs that didn’t work, and devised deadly protocols based on killing people to boost fear, whilst suppressing real therapeutics against a bioweapon he ordered to be made.

        Yet no one is held accountable.

        230

    • #
      Ted1.

      Degrees of accountability.

      Science justifies itself, provided it is done properly, without doing harm to people. If science can be used as a weapon, it’s best you know it before your enemy does.

      But: Surely: Item 1.

      If gain of function research is prohibited under US law, then that law applies to US citizens acting anywhere in the world.

      It applies to non US citizens acting within US jurisdiction.

      It does not necessarily apply to non US citizens acting outside US jurisdiction.

      Item 2. The management.

      In the business world, the prohibition of the use of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin would be a criminal offence. I see no good reason for that being excused here.

      But the prohibition of early treatment was downright evil. As also the effective prohibition of private research.

      Dr Russell Blaylock, old enough to be above fear that jackbooted authorities might deprive him of his livelihood if he spoke the truth, called it mass murder of 640,000 in the US at the time of his declaration, that, from memory a year ago now. At 80% of the 800,000 who had died, that call is supported by the evidence. Evidence which lying authorities insisted did not exist.

      Professor Robert Clancy exquisitely thumbed his nose at those authorities by addressing a severely critical essay to “The Class of ’65”. Reminding them that 1. he was their senior, and 2. their jackboot method of control, summary deregistration, couldn’t silence him.

      It is a matter we should be very worried about, that the entire medical profession could be cowered into submission, leaving it to people in or near retirement to fight the battle.. Watch for any opportunities to support or defend Professor Clancy and Dr Phillip Altman in their campaign.

      230

  • #
    David Maddison

    The fundamental difference between conservatives and other fellow free thinkers and the Left is that the Left are terrified of alternative or new ideas not in conformity with their ideology and will go to any and all lengths to suppress them.

    Conservatives are tolerant of other ideas even if they disagree with them. hence the Leftist totalitarian ideologies of Commununism and National Socialism.

    Apart from being at variance with the values of freedom and Enlightenment values, the censorship of information:

    – costs lives (e.g. information about covid and its effective treatment),

    – allows for political interference (e.g. the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop affair likely swung the US Presidential election plus suppression of discussion of election fraud)

    – causes economic destruction (e.g. the whole anthropogenic global warming fraud and the claim that solar and wind can replace proper power stations)

    – harms young people by telling them it is possible to change gender (e.g. suppression of “transgender regret”, I recently spoke to an emergency medical responder who attended a case of a young person threatening suicide and it turned out this young man had had his genitalia removed and now regretted it – what do you say to that?)?

    Today, we are even seeing the Left rewrite classic works of literature, or university students being given “trigger warnings” about it.

    Everything Orwell wrote about in his dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four is coming true.

    The Left and their censorship are destroyers of Western Civilisation.

    301

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    So we’re not ‘paranoid’ after all…

    They really DO have their crosshairs set on us: Movie on at 11pm…

    110

  • #
    Neville

    Perhaps Indur Goklany could also tell us whether the co2 Coalition scientists are correct or not when they challenge us with their quiz?
    I’m sure most of Jo’s bloggers could correctly answer their quiz, yet so many other so called scientists would fail because they still BELIEVE the Human race is facing extinction?
    See President Biden’s 2 minute You tube video urging us to BELIEVE him because we Humans face an EXISTENTIAL threat.
    I know it’s unbelievable but true and he’s only the leader of the so called free world. How have come to this dark place?

    https://co2coalition.org/climate-quiz/

    170

    • #

      The only EXISTENTIAL threats are from Nuclear War or a large Asteroid smashing into Planet Earth. The Sun going out is way to far away in time to worry about. A hot Planet is not a problem. The Dinosaurs loved it.

      100

  • #
    Brett

    Their ABC is about the same

    90

  • #
    Tarquin+Wombat-Carruthers

    So, created by the Obama Administration in 2015-6, under the umbrella of the State Department. Thinks: Who was Obama’s Secretary of State? Ah yes, that paragon of truth HRC! And wasn’t that about the time that the Russian Disinformation hoax began?

    150

  • #
    Tarquin+Wombat-Carruthers

    So, created by the Obama Administration in 2015-6, under the umbrella of the State Department. Thinks: Who was Obama’s Secretary of State? Ah yes, that paragon of truth HRC! And wasn’t that about the time that the Russian Disinformation hoax began?

    60

  • #
    Ross

    At present my 2 latest heroes are Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger. What’s really funny is that they’re both lefties and at the moment some people (in the US) are accusing them of being MAGA hat wearing right wing ,white supremacist, conspiracy theorists.

    90

    • #
      Ross

      Shellenberger not Schellenberger. If he’s my hero, I’d better spell his name correctly. 🙂

      70

    • #
      Neville

      Yes Ross, Shellenberger was a lefty for most of his life but he’s recently lost some of his lefty mates over the last few years.
      But at least he had the decency to apologise for BELIEVING and promoting their CC lunacy for years and actively helping the Obama Presidency etc.
      That two very intelligent people like Michael and Joanne can be sucked in is very sobering for the rest of us to think about.
      But other very intelligent people like Churchill etc also became more conservative and rational as they matured.

      110

  • #
    Neville

    Like Indur Goklany Dr Hans Rosling also tried to tell us the truth about the better future for Humans since the start of the IND REV in the UK over the last 200 + years.
    Although that period only represents about 0.1% of Human’s existence on Earth the increased flourishing and much improved HEALTH and WEALTH etc is remarkable.
    See the data I’ve linked to over the last couple of years to prove the point.
    Here’s Spiked Online’s summary of Dr Rosling’s contribution over his lifetime. The references to the Malthusian Ehrlich donkey also tells us we must always try to shine a ray of light on our recent,wonderful Human progress IF we care about the proper data and evidence.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/02/09/hans-rosling-humanism-by-numbers/

    100

  • #
    Honk R Smith

    Don’t know what I did to contribute this post … but thanks for the hat tip.
    Funny, I was just thinking about the pickle we are in.
    I don’t see much here in America to stand in the way of it.
    Klaus is in China making plans.
    Looks like Tucker has been backed off of his J6 expose.
    Nearly everyday in my own personal sphere I deal with people that live a different reality based on a 180 degree differing set of facts.
    Be it the true threat of seal level rise or Trump Russia collusion.
    Or Joe Biden’s true role in governance.
    One I can’t fathom is the desperation of liberal minded folk to provide Drag Story Hour for children.
    (I was a 70s and 80s rocker so I got no pre-existing ‘tude against men wearing women’s clothes.)
    But not for kindergarten.
    And now rockers are all shills for The Man.
    I lived most of life without ever think twice about expressing a political opinion.
    Now I need to think three or four times.
    Just once hurts and inhibits my style.

    160

  • #
    Richard C (NZ)

    >”GEK decides who’s on the blacklist, and the lists are looong…”

    Long and completely misattributed.

    35. [Renee] DiResta has become the public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, a name promoted everywhere as an unquestioned authority on truth, fact, and Internet hygiene, even though her former firm, New Knowledge, has been embroiled in two major disinformation scandals.

    36. This, ultimately, is the most serious problem with the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

    Packaged as a bulwark against lies and falsehood, it is itself often a major source of disinformation, with American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality.

    37. DiResta’s New Knowledge helped design the Hamilton 68 project exposed in the #TwitterFiles.

    Although it claimed to track “Russian influence,” Hamilton really followed Americans like “Ultra Maga Dog Mom,” “Right2Liberty,” even a British rugby player named Rod Bishop:

    38. Told he was put on the Hamilton list of suspected “Russian influence” accounts, Bishop was puzzled.

    “Nonsense. I’m supporting Ukraine,” he said.

    # # #

    >”American taxpayers funding their own estrangement from reality”

    The funding is diabolical – see next comment re 24.

    40

    • #
      Richard C (NZ)

      Possibly slipped the attention of many and if so I draw it to 24 and the gobsmacking govt funding:

      24. The difference [censorship vs free speech] is, these campaigns are taxpayer-funded. Though the state is supposed to stay out domestic propaganda, the Aspen Institute, Graphika, the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab, New America, and other “anti-disinformation” labs are receiving huge public awards.
      [see images]

      # # #

      In the left image at 24 Graphika is awarded $3.0 million from the Department of Defense (DOD), long ago named Department of War (DOW).

      The right image (below) is astounding. First the $1,209,100,000 award to Rand Corporations. Even Twitter Execs shied away from Rand:

      12. Twitter execs …. weren’t keen on the Rand Corporation (“too close to USDOD”)

      Table 2: Top 10 Think Tanks by Amount Received from the U.S. Government and Defense Contractors
      https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fqx5siBWIAA35__?format=jpg&name=small

      US$ millions
      1,209.1 Rand Corporation (excluded by Twitter)
      8.9 Atlantic Council
      8.7 New America Foundation
      7.3 German Marshall Fund of the United States
      5.0 CSIS
      2.6 Council on Foreign Relations
      2.5 Brookings Institution
      1.4 Heritage Foundation
      1.3 Stimson Centre

      Biden has asked for USD842 billion for DOD this year so these are trivial amounts. However they are being applied to the censorship of free speech by US citizens and conservatives in particular.

      So the question is – “defense” of what ?

      Seems to me to be defense of the US military hegemon’s propaganda and self appointed fascistic authority.

      70

  • #
    David Maddison

    Other Leftist lies/censorship relate to the Left’s false claim that scientific fact is established by “consensus”.

    That has massively contributed to the corruption of science because only “science” supporting the supposed “consensus” gets taxpayer funding.

    Any real scientist who has a non-consensus view is defunded, censored and ostracised, e.g. Prof. Ridd and others.

    Scientific fact has nothing to do with consensus, in fact consensus has nothing whatsoever to do with the scientific method, which incidentally used to be taught in schools.

    Einstein was not concerned with consensus.

    The National Socialists (i.e. Leftists), even before they got elected, used the same approach with him. Nothing has changed, just the subject matter. And today, as far as I know, despite the general anti-science attitude of the Left, even most Leftists accept Einstein’s theories (those who are educated enough to have heard of them).

    One Hundred Authors Against Einstein was published in 1931. When asked to comment on this denunciation of relativity by so many scientists, Einstein replied that to defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.

    130

    • #

      There have been other times in History when Science was not appreciated or followed. Before the ‘Enlightenment’ when the Church operated like the Censors now.

      I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition………………..

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAxkcPoLYcQ

      80

      • #
        John Connor II

        The Christian dark ages for one.
        I recall reading that the Irish didn’t invent anything for centuries after they invented Whiskey but I don’t know if that’s true.😎

        60

        • #
          David Maddison

          The so-called Dark Ages weren’t so dark.

          https://www.getty.edu/news/no-such-thing-as-the-dark-ages/

          The 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch is the best-known medieval source for the idea that the period in Europe from around 500–1500 was “dark.”

          But that phrase was a specific gripe. Petrarch was complaining about the general quality of literature in his own specific time and place: Italy in the 1300s (which makes him sound like a snob).

          A 1602 text by Caesar Baronius used saeculum obscurum (the dark age/century) to refer to the 10th and 11th centuries as lacking in surviving historical sources. But dark really just meant that he didn’t know a lot about the time.

          Unfortunately, the term persisted and historians started using “dark” as a pejorative term to mean a period of superstition and stagnation in art, literature, and science.

          61

          • #
            Honk R Smith

            I’ve for a long while thought the Dark Ages ran from 535AD (catastrophic explosion of Krakatoa causing Climate Change 🙂 )
            until 7-800 ish which turned to the High Middle Ages and MWP.
            Ending with the fall of the Holy Land and the onset of LIA.
            The weather interpreted by many a God’s punishment for the sin of losing the Holy land.
            And a new darkness set in.
            Like that foreshadowed in this post.
            No one expects the GEC Inquisition.

            92

      • #
        GreatAuntJanet

        Nobody does.

        20

    • #
      David Maddison

      I should also have mentioned another lie by the Left, that there is such a thing as “settled science” (sic).

      91

  • #
    John Connor II

    ..the best defense left against the Censorship-Industrial Complex.

    I’ll see your best defense and raise you one angle grinder. With this angle grinder I shall censor YOUR surveillance and restore my privacy:

    https://twitter.com/_/status/1634190260748812294

    Bound to be a top seller.😉

    40

  • #
    Leo G

    Irish didn’t invent anything for centuries after they invented Whiskey

    Gaelic football, whiskey, football hooliganism, and three centuries to get the right balance.

    50

    • #

      The English invented football hooliganism in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

      21

      • #
        Leo G

        English football hooliganism, violent inter-village football rampages, led to Edward III banning the game in England from the year 1349.

        One of the worst football riots under the modern game broke out in Glasgow in 1909- an extra time dispute between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic led to a brawl on the field, 6,000 spectators joined the fray and the violence spilled into local towns.

        The Irish banned the inter-parish football melee (on Sundays only) in 1695.

        60

  • #
    David Maddison

    When the Left are not in power, they claim to support free speech.

    When they are in power, they are strongly opposed to free speech and actively censor it.

    111

  • #
    David Maddison

    Some rare good news that (temporarily) escaped censorship.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2023/03/07/matt-hancock-should-arrested-wilful-misconduct-public-office/

    Matt Hancock should be arrested for wilful misconduct in public office

    The slithy tove can – and must – be dragged before a Select Committee and made to answer for his actions and the vast hurt they have caused

    SEE LINK FOR REST

    41

  • #
    Annie

    I read that yesterday. Allison Pearson generally writes very well.

    30

  • #

    Wouldn’t true information be bliss,
    But would likely be censored as ‘mis’,
    Or worse again ‘mal’,
    Such as woking Roald Dahl,
    Or thoroughly fact-checked as ‘dis’.

    60

  • #
    Sceptical+Sam

    The antecedents of most countries postal services have much in common with the Online world of today. With the demise of the Roman empire the public system (cursus publicus) fell into disrepair. However, an system still existed.

    These systems were controlled by the ruler (King, Queen, Tzar, whatever) and were for the service of the rulers and his/her dominions. Royal messengers held a privileged official position and were authorized to commandeer animals or other resources in the fulfillment of their duties,

    This gave the opportunity for the ruler to access the mails, read what was being transmitted and take appropriate action to address any planned uprising, slander, sedition etc It also provided an opportunity for insider trading.

    The things change, the more they stay the same.

    40

  • #
    Sceptical+Sam

    The more things change….. etc.

    20

  • #
    another ian

    Naomi Wolf

    “Dear Conservatives, I Apologize
    My “Team” was Taken in By Full-Spectrum Propaganda”

    https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-conservatives-i-am-sorry

    Via a comment at Chiefio

    60

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Another ‘great awakening’ or merely ‘the education of Naomi Wolf’ ~ what an overly wordy way of saying she let herself be led down the garden path, taking countless wimyn & geldings with her along for the slide… down to the pit of swamp/hell.

      Chances of her ‘apologising’ live on ANY global 6 o’clock horror-movie news site Sunday evening?

      50

  • #
    Dave in the States

    What has been lost is the basic concept of freedom. I think Obama was the first US President who didn’t at least pay lip service to the concept. That was a turning point. Obama constantly placed the community over the freedom of the individual. Others thought much like Obama but knew they had to at least pay service to the concept. 30 years ago it would have been unthinkable, the very idea, that such pillars as free speech, freedom of the press, the implied right to privacy would be extinct. Here we are. But Ronald Reagan was right when he spoke:

    “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

    70

  • #
    UK-Weather Lass

    Meanwhile it takes the Daily Sceptic to bring the row between the BBC and Gary Lineker (an ex-English footballer who has also advertised crisps and fronted BBC football programmes etc) into perspective and uncover the whole beautiful irony of Wokedom’s ideas about free speech … What a muddled United Kingdom we are.

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/03/11/the-absurd-celebrity-meltdown-over-gary-lineker/

    40