Showing posts with label #MattTaibbi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #MattTaibbi. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Weaponizing Free Speech

 


This is the dystopia you were warned about. A mind-controlled populace thinking, speaking, shopping, moving and voting in accordance with the will of the powerful. All that's left now is to secure the few dissidents on the fringes and keep bolstering the mind control matrix.

This doesn't mean it's hopeless, it just means we've got to acknowledge reality and start working from where we're at. The biggest obstacle to real freedom is the belief that we already have it. --Caitlin Johnstone, The Empire of Hypocrisy

 

Weaponizing Free Speech

by C. A. Matthews

Most Americans believe that no one has ever gotten into trouble simply for speaking their mind. No matter how much you might disagree with a fellow American, you probably agree that they have the right to free speech. You believe that freedom of speech is a basic right protected by our Constitution. You feel confident that all Americans have the right to believe and express themselves as they deem fit. 

Sorry to break it to y’all, but you really don’t.  

Free speech is not guaranteed, as demonstrated by the latest US government shenanigans. The feds have charged four African Americans simply because they are members of the African People’s Socialist Party and expressed opinions that don’t align with the current administration’s viewpoint. 

According to the Black Alliance for Peace

The unsealed indictment states that on Tuesday, April 18, 2023, a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida, levied charges of “conspiring to covertly sow discord in U.S. society, spread Russian propaganda and interfere illegally in U.S. elections.” While no evidence of conspiracy, propagandizing, or interference has been presented, the APSP and its members have the right, as all US citizens do, to freely criticize U.S. domestic and foreign policy.

Not since the Palmer Raids of the early 20th century, nor since the indictment of W.E.B DuBois in 1951, or the confiscation of Paul Robeson’s U.S. passport during the anti-communist “McCarthyist” era, has there been such a hysterical response to African people asserting their rights and freedom of speech in the United States.

The Department of Justice claims APSP members had “weaponized” free speech by expressing solidarity with the Russian people and “conspiring to interfere” with US elections. Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ's press release regarding the indictments stated, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt US elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are US citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Quick translation: The DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for political speech and related activities because they’re worried that more and more Americans don’t agree with the status quo of the uniparty and might not support the incumbent in the upcoming presidential election. The grand jury alleges that a Russian national "directed" these Americans to "publish pro-Russian propaganda" and "information designed to cause dissension in the United States." 

HandsOffUhuru.org

(Watch this excellent short video to learn more about the case: https://youtu.be/fvwhHouTZh0. Omali Yeshitela, APSP co-founder, voices how the US government apparently doesn't believe that African Americans are intelligent enough to come up with a socialist philosophy all on their own or know if they're being used by a foreign power. Obviously the FBI feels scared enough of an 82 year old African American man that they had to use violent tactics to break into his home to handcuff him and arrest him.)

I take all the Biden administration's legal mumbo-jumbo to mean that the Dems can’t afford to have any real competition running against the corpse of Joe Biden for a second term because he and his war in Ukraine are that unpopular. They must shut all dissenting voices down no matter how fascistic it makes them look. I suppose the white supremacists at the FBI couldn't wait to do something this evil, too.

(Did I just say that part out loud about Biden being a corpse and the FBI being Klansmen? Should I be watching out the window for the feds to arrive any minute on my doorstep carrying flash bang grenades?)

I do believe in “The pen is mightier than the sword,” and “The truth shall set you free.” But when an army’s worth of federal agents can show up at your front door and take you away simply because you’re an 82 year old African People’s Socialist Party member who doesn’t agree with the US government's racist and warmongering actions, can anyone ever too be careful speaking their mind? Will believing in the truth and the power of free speech save us from government abuse?

It's not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being "weaponized". You can't have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as "agitprop" and "disinformation", because they'll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. -- Caitlin Johnstone

Speaking of abuse, although this is nothing quite as horrific as what’s happening to the APSP members, I was accused of using “weaponized” free speech this past week as well. I found myself a victim of corporate censorship. For the first time in eight years of writing and editing this weekly blog, a warning appeared at the top of the Blogger posting page. It read:

Your post titled "Who Is Stealing Our Election? " was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and have unpublished the URL http://bernie2016.blogspot.com/2016/05/who-is-stealing-our-elections
making it unavailable to blog readers.
Say what? What could we have published that was so heinous that it had to be hidden from public view now? Why was Google (who owns Blogger) all of a sudden so upset that it had to censor the post, “Who Is Stealing Our Election?” after seven years? The post was published in early May 2016, long before Trump and his followers’ denials of the 2020 election results began. The date of the post should have been a dead giveaway about whose election was being “stolen” and by whom.

Flashback: Bernie Sanders was being royally screwed over by the Hillary Clinton campaign in early 2016. The trolling of “Berners” online was dreadful. As editor of what was then known as The Bernie Blog, I gladly published almost every decently written submission sent in by Bernie supporters. A short piece called, “Who Is Stealing Our Election?” was the first of two short pieces that I edited and published that week, so I titled the entire posting with that catchy question.

Who would have thought that seven years later a bunch of neoliberals would get their knickers in a twist (or panties in a bunch) so much that anything that sounds remotely like something a Trump supporter might say about the 2020 election must be completely blocked from public view, censored forever?

After a quick edit or “self-censoring” of the title, Blogger allowed the post to go live again. I didn’t change a word of the posting, just its title. Somehow that change made it acceptable to Google for public consumption. The English-speaking public once again has been saved by the brave censorship of private agents working behind the scenes for the US government, or, in this case, the Joe Biden re-election campaign.

And what exactly are we being saved from by corporate censorship? What didn’t you have the right to read because the powers-that-be wanted to protect your delicate sensibilities? From what I can gather from the Blogger policy page, it’s most likely this:

Misleading Content

Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:

Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

Now, why would anyone have any doubts about Joe Biden based on his “age” or from“suffering from a sudden serious illness,” such as having a stroke or dementia or that he hasn't "died" already and is simply a walking zombie? It's not like he's ever been seen babbling like an idiot on camera or wandering off a stage or looking to shake invisible hands, is it?

I apologize if we’ve ever mislead you with the content here at The Revolution Continues or made you not trust in “civic or democratic processes,” but that was never our intent. The post from seven years ago was simply a Berner’s lament over how the Clinton campaign had “stolen” Bernie’s primary wins. Well, we live and learn and move on, don’t we? The Dems haven’t “stolen” any primaries from their rightful winners since 2016, right? And it's not like they're cancelling the Democratic Party primaries and debates in 2024, either!

(If you believe those last two statements, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, or its equivalent in the Midwest. Your choice!)

Free speech is a right no American should ever take lightly. People have fought and died for your right to express yourself freely. People have been imprisoned around the world for expressing themselves and sharing important—and sometimes embarrassing and incriminating—information about governments. 
  
One such journalist springs to mind: Julian Assange. This week marks the fourth anniversary of Assange becoming the guest of His Majesty King Charles in England's Belmarsh Prison. In other words, an Australian journalist has been imprisoned in the UK because of his “crime” of journalism that has made the US government very angry. Assange dared to publish on his online platform, Wikileaks, the infamous “Collateral Murder” video. He exposed the lies of many governments, but he was particularly prolific in sharing information about the US involvement in the bloody war in Iraq and the tortures of detainees at our super-secret base at Guantanamo Bay. And, so far, nothing Wikileaks has ever published has been proven false.
 
Assange is being charged under the 1917 Espionage Act. His case raises troubling questions about whether it breaches both the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution. The Espionage Act criminalizes journalism by ignoring the fact that the First Amendment makes an exception for a journalist possessing and informing the public about state secrets that reveal government crimes and corruption. 
 
Assange’s indictment should be dismissed on the ground that the Espionage Act’s overreach is an existential threat to First Amendment freedoms. For a US court to do otherwise is to undermine due process and threaten the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press. But we will see. This administration's paranoid take on free speech being used as a "weapon" seems to be the driving force in his continued imprisonment.

Just like the APSP members speaking their minds, and our blog posting a short piece with an incendiary title implying that elections can actually be stolen in the US, Julian Assange is being actively censored. He is by being blotted out of human memory, locked up to wither away behind bars without trial, his reputation smeared by Western governments because they didn’t like what he had to say, and they don’t want the rest of the world to know what he has yet to say. 

Other independent journalists have been censored, mocked, and threatened recently. Remember Matt Taibbi and Seymour Hersh? We featured both on them on the blog not too long ago. They're also being harassed by the US government and their corporate media partners.  
  

To all of you who are still reading at this point, I have just one word of advice to you in case you ever feel compelled to censor yourself and not use your right of free speech as a “weapon” for good in the world.
 
Don’t.
 
No matter what the corrupt government threatens, no matter what the corrupt corporations that do their bidding threaten, nothing—absolutely nothing—is as important as free speech and your right to express yourself fully. It is your inborn right, and it is your duty to continue to speak and write freely. It is your inborn right and your duty not to believe, agree with, or even acknowledge the lies and propaganda put out by untrustworthy powers-that-be.
 
Because if you don’t believe in and practice free speech in spite of the risks, then who else will?

 


Related Links:

Why Is The Government Targeting Black Socialists? (video) https://youtu.be/fvwhHouTZh0

Indictment Of African People’s Socialist Party Is A Racist Assault On The Black Liberation Movement https://popularresistance.org/indictment-of-african-peoples-socialist-party-is-a-racist-assault-on-the-black-liberation-movement/

Biden DOJ Just Indicted 4 Americans For Free Speech! Who's Next? (video)  https://www.youtube.com/live/EzvJIBfIYu4

Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For "Weaponized" Free Speech
https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/biden-doj-indicts-four-americans

Biden DOJ Charges Black Activists For Supporting Russia (video)
https://www.youtube.com/live/sbKT-MeY7kU

You're Not Immune To Propaganda (video) https://youtu.be/dl2fnWIlDZg

The Empire of Hypocrisy https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/the-empire-of-hypocrisy-notes-from 

The American Empire and its Media
https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/

1st Amendment Authorized Assange’s Possession of Classified Data
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/21/1st-amendment-authorized-assanges-possession-of-classified-data/

Corporate Media Are The Anti-Wikileaks https://popularresistance.org/corporate-media-are-the-anti-wikileaks/

Facebook Brands Seymour Hersh Reporting As ‘False’ & What Does This Mean For A Free Press (video) https://odysee.com/@HardLensMedia:9/facebook-brands-seymour-hersh-reporting:2

Matt Taibbi: House Democrats Have Lost Their Minds
https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/19/house-democrats-have-lost-their-minds/

Here Come the Militarized Robots (But There Go Our Civil Liberties) https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/18/here-come-the-militarized-robots-but-there-go-our-civil-liberties/

House Democrat Threatens Twitter Files Journalist with Prosecution and Imprisonment  https://leefang.substack.com/p/house-democrat-threatens-twitter

Today In Empire: War Machine-Funded War Games, Facebook Censors Hersh, And More  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/today-in-empire-war-machine-funded

Universal Public Services: The Power of Decommodifying Survival
https://popularresistance.org/universal-public-services-the-power-of-decommodifying-survival/

Fossil Fuel Giants with Most Emissions Paid $118 Billion to CEOs in the Last Decade https://truthout.org/articles/fossil-fuel-giants-with-most-emissions-paid-1-18-billion-to-ceos-in-last-decade/

You Won't Believe Who Got The Richest From The Afghanistan War
https://youtu.be/wEFTLIzGZ6M

 

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Digital McCarthyism


Digital McCarthyism

by C. A. Matthews

It was bound to happen sooner or later. And it did—a self-proclaimed “very important person in government” would impugn the integrity of a journalist who—gasp!—actually posts his/her/their work online for others to read. That this government VIP is Congress-thing Debbie Wassermann-Schultz of Florida comes to no surprise to anyone who followed the Bernie Sanders saga on this blog. 
 
Yes, it’s the same disgraced Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, former DNC chair, who ultimately took the fall for screwing Bernie over in the Democratic Party primaries of 2016. Somehow she always lands on her feet—unlike her boss Joe Biden, who has been filmed tripping both up and down stairs lately.
 
So, here we are in the year 2023 and Miss Debbie and her Democratic Party friends find it suspect that an award-winning journalist like Matt Taibbi has a Substack page and edits a digital magazine. The nasty implications the Dems leveled at Matt at a Congressional "Weaponization of Government" hearing this week reveal just how terrified the establishment is that We the People might actually wake up and learn the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from a Tweet or a Substack post.
 
The Dems acted so contemptuously that even a non-voting delegate from the US Virgin Islands called Matt a “so-called journalist” and didn’t even apologize for her rudeness. That’s rich coming from a “so-called Congress member” who doesn’t even have voting privileges! By comparison, the Republicans on the committee came off sounding like angels as they questioned Matt and his fellow journalist Michael Shellenberger. (Guess the Dems' billionaire donors told the Dems it’s the Red Hats’ time to win, so go ahead and act like ill-mannered brats, huh?)
The nasty implications
the Dems leveled at Matt reveal just how terrified the establishment is that We the People might actually read a Tweet or Substack post and realize how corrupt the US government truly is and how far they will go to censor this truth. In this instance, Matt and Michael, who both worked on The Twitter Files, discovered and revealed nefarious attempts at social media censorship by various US government agencies and related organizations working on their behalf to censor tweets they didn't like. These censorship actions could possibly get folks in the current administration into big trouble.
 
But nothing good ever comes from revealing the truth, now does it?
 
I couldn’t care less what Miss Debbie and her buddies in Congress have to say except they’re in positions of power and have recently come up with such criminal designations as “domestic terrorism” to describe what environmental activists (such as the ones at Cop City/Welaunee Forest in Atlanta) do whenever they hold a protest to protect the Earth
 
That designation really hurts. Just because we want everyone to have clean air, land, and water doesn’t make us domesticated at all. Far from it. And I apologize for any “terror” having drinkable water and less pollution in our food, skies, and bodies of water causes you, but there you have it. 
 
I’m one of those crazy people like Matt Taibbi who make pointed observations about our society and publish their thoughts online. We have an overwhelming desire to share information with others so they can know the truth and learn to think for themselves. Miss Debbie and the Kool-Aid Drinking Cult of Democrats will just have to get over their terror of We the People finding out what’s been going on behind the scenes in the world of government propaganda and censorship as well as the running of the government itself.
The Ministry of Truth—or the
DHS Bureau of Disinformation or whatever it’s being called nowadays—worked overtime to cover up their disinfo operations in “Russiagate.” They are royally ticked off to have had their manipulations exposed, which possibly explains Miss Debbie’s surliness. All the smart kids now have no excuse to believe Russia had anything to do with the 2016 presidential election thanks to Matt and others revealing this in The Twitter Files. The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” has been exposed.
 
Even The New York Times recently was forced to reveal that Russiagate was all a big lie perpetuated by a supposed "Russian propaganda tracking" dashboard called Hamilton 68 or Jefferson Airplane 747 or something like that. Matt Taibbi discovered it was all an operation to cloud the issues and confuse voters in order to cover up the simple fact that warmonger/DOMA supporter Hillary Clinton couldn’t beat her good friend, used car salesman Donald Trump, in something called the US 2016 presidential election.
 
Nothing important really. The billionaires of the US Military-Congressional-Industrial Complex got their war in Ukraine eventually. They even used the four years Trump was in office to further smear Russia’s reputation via the Russiagate hoax and make people forget all about the Maidan Coup of 2014 and the eight years of Ukraine bombing the civilians of the Donbass region. In the end, the arms manufacturers were glad the Orange Man won. They’re rolling in money nowadays.
 
So, forgive me when I say that US presidential elections aren’t all that important. They’re not as important as a journalist revealing the US government's sanctioning of an actual terrorist attack on another country’s LNG pipelines located under the Baltic Sea. Elections aren’t as important as possibly instigating a war with a nuclear power.
 
An award-winning journalist named Seymour Hersh revealed this truth to the world last month. For his courage and hard work, he is being slandered and libeled by his lesser peers at the behest of the government propagandists that Miss Debbie and her darling Dems keep protecting and accusing Matt Taibbi of exposing in The Twitter Files. One of their biggest smears concerning Sy Hersh’s journalistic integrity and impeccable career is that he first published his Nord Stream 2 explosion article on his Substack, probably because US government propagandists pressured mainstream media outlets not to publish it. 
 
How can the US government fool We the People into thinking that a small group of “Pro-Ukrainian non-state actors” blew up pipelines of such a grand size, found underwater at a depth only a professional military operation handled by US Navy deep sea divers could have done? The New York Times and Washington Post are trying hard with this rather wimpy story (possibly written by the Disinformation Bureau), but it’s not having as much success as Sy Hersh’s better researched story.
 
The massive amounts of time and money spent brainwashing We thePeople into thinking the “Uni-party that Goes by Two Names” isn’t corrupt and owned by billionaires is a crime—not what Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger do for a living. Just think of what could have been done with all the energy and resources wasted by our government’s propagandistsMaybe we could have tackled homelessness in America and forgiven thousands of student loan debts. Medicare For All could have been enacted and saved millions of Americans their lives and their personal finances.
 
I
realize now those things aren’t important to well-off Miss Debbie and her fellow VIPs in Congress, but they are important to We the People, the workers, the 99%. A whole lot of our family members, friends, and neighbors who suffered or are still suffering from homelessness, student loan debt, and no health care could be alive, healthy, and happy today if Miss Debbie and her kind actually cared enough to work for us instead of their billionaire donors with their insatiable need to shut down indie journos like Matt and company.
 
Senator Joseph McCarthy became infamous for calling journalists, authors, actors, and others “Communists” in the 1950s. Sen. McCarthy destroyed the careers and lives of innocent Americans with his baseless accusations and all for what? To shut up people he didn’t agree with and didn’t want others to learn important facts from. 
 
Now we’re living in the era of “Digital McCarthyism” where the politician-puppets working for the billionaires shut down truth-tellers online via shadow-banning and outright closing down of social media accounts. Censorship and destroying the reputations of others was wrong seventy years ago, and it’s still wrong today.
 
I asked you to do a couple of things a few weeks back in regards to the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment story. Are you still doing them? Are you making notes of how and when the mainstream media ignores big stories or tries to slant them in a way to cover up for whatever billionaire, corporation, or government official might be at fault? Are you still comparing and contrasting news articles/stories by independent journalists with the "so-called journalists" of the mainstream media? Keep it up. 
Watch out for
ad hominem (personal) attacks that are made by those in authority (and their sycophants) against the messengers (like Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Seymour Hersh) of potentially embarrassing messages. Always focus on the message and not the medium (newspaper, TV, radio, podcast, blog, Tweet, etc.) that the message happens to occur in. Do your research and find out who the messenger really works for and what’s in it for them. Are they working to spread propaganda for the government or a private corporation? What has this person or organization got to lose if the truth comes out?
 
Why do the powerful feel that turning independent journalists into pariahs will keep them, the elites, safe from We the People exacting justice upon them? When the truth reveals itself in time, the shit always hit the fan. And the results aren’t pretty. Why tempt fate?
 
 
Guess whatwe’re suspect too! Follow us on Substack at therevolutioncontinues.substack.com It’s where all the cool kids like Matt Taibbi, Caitlin Johnstone, Aaron Mate, Chris Hedges, Seymour Hersh and so many other independent journalists post their work. I’m assuming you’re not living in the 18th century like Miss Debbie and her friends, and are, in fact, reading this article on a computer, cell phone, tablet, or similar device. I really doubt you’re reading this via smoke signals or on the remains of dead trees. Please, replant those dead trees if you are. Our planet needs all the trees we can grow to avert the climate catastrophe to come. We “domestic terrorists” want to save all the trees that we can, like the ones in Atlanta. Thank you.
 
Related Links (lots of revealing video links):
 
 
  
The Democrats' Disastrous Miscalculation on Civil Liberties https://www.racket.news/p/the-democrats-disastrous-miscalculation
 
The Twitter Files
https://scheerpost.com/2022/12/04/the-twitter-files/

Matt Taibbi Schools Dem Congressman On Purpose Of “Twitter Files” Hearing https://youtu.be/yy51IrTq61Y
 
Court Admits DNC and Debbie Wasserman Schulz Rigged Primaries Against Sanders https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/

Dems Attack ‘Twitter Files’ Journalists & Completely Clown Themselves https://youtu.be/EzcAIJUKEIw

Matt Taibbi BATTLES Congress https://youtu.be/qD1HXnd8ruo

How the media misled us about Russiagate w/Jeff Gerth | The Chris Hedges Report https://youtu.be/IiefPIKp9XY

Russiagate was a hoax w/Matt Taibbi | The Chris Hedges Report
https://youtu.be/KSwrUSdOJcQ 
 
Unchastened by its Russigate Embarrassment the NY Times Doubles Down in its Special Counsel Coverage

Matt Taibbi Squares Off w/ House Dems Over #TwitterFiles | SYSTEM UPDATE #52 https://rumble.com/v2cel4c-system-update-show-52.html

Debbie Wasserman Schultz vs Matt Taibbi (go to 1:50 in the video) https://www.youtube.com/live/ZiUroNVKtqw

How the USA PATRIOT Act redefines "Domestic Terrorism"
https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patriot-act-redefines-domestic-terrorism

23 charged with domestic terrorism over protest against proposed Atlanta, Georgia police training center https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/10/bcbm-m10.html

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

White House Counters Hersh’s Reputation With Weak ‘Intelligence’ https://popularresistance.org/nord-stream-attack-white-house-counters-hershs-reputation-with-weak-intelligence/

US complicity in Nord Stream bombing stands exposed
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/09/pers-m09.html

US Officials Point the Finger at Pro-Ukrainian Group for Nord Stream Attack https://scheerpost.com/2023/03/05/us-officials-point-the-finger-at-pro-ukrainian-group-for-nord-stream-attack/

More on the Norfolk Southern train derailment aftermath:

How Corporate Greed Destroyed East Palestine (Documentary by Second Thought) https://youtu.be/TcSLlveDu6k

Another Norfolk Southern Train Derailed as Its CEO Testified Before the Senate https://truthout.org/articles/another-norfolk-southern-train-derailed-as-its-ceo-testified-before-the-senate/

Railroad Executives Got Cash, In Part For ‘Record’ Train Length
https://popularresistance.org/railroad-executives-got-cash-in-part-for-record-train-length/

Norfolk Southern Conductor Killed in Crash as Train Safety Bill Faces Pushback https://truthout.org/articles/norfolk-southern-engineer-killed-in-crash-as-train-safety-bill-faces-pushback/

Norfolk Southern’s “six point plan” for rail safety: More PR damage control after East Palestine, Ohio derailment
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/03/09/ohio-m09.html


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