It may have started off as an ordinary fall school day at a high school in the Wentzville School District of Missouri in 2022, but when a police officer entered the school library, the day took an unsettling turn. The school librarian didn’t know why the officer was there until he approached her and explained that he was investigating a complaint — she had been accused of distributing pornography…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
New York, September 24, 2024—The Taliban must reverse their directive banning live broadcasts of political shows, criticism of the group, and interviews with analysts not on a list of 68 pre-approved names, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
On September 21, the Taliban’s Ministry of Information and Culture summoned media executives in the capital Kabul and issued an unprecedented list of restrictions on media freedom, two reporters in Kabul told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal.
The ministry ordered domestic journalists producing daily political discussion shows to seek its approval each morning of proposed topics and participants. Shows must then be pre-recorded and approved by the Taliban prior to broadcasting. Content contrary to Taliban policies or critical of the group or its officials must be removed, it said.
The ministry later issued a one-page directive, reviewed by CPJ, detailing the new rules. It said that journalists wishing to interview an expert who is not on the Taliban’s list must seek the information ministry’s permission. If any of the rules are violated, the Taliban will hold the media manager, political show desk officer, editor-in-chief, and the guest accountable, and “they will be dealt accordingly,” the directive said.
“The Taliban must immediately reverse their draconian media restrictions and stop dragging Afghanistan back to the Stone Age,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “These new restrictions signal the end of fundamental media freedoms in Afghanistan and seek to transform the media into a Taliban propaganda tool. This must be stopped, once and for all.”
A third journalist in Afghanistan, also speaking on condition of anonymity, told CPJ that the Taliban had already begun preventing live broadcasts by verbally ordering media executives not to run them in the days prior to the September 21 meeting.
Earlier in September, the Taliban jammed broadcasts in Kabul of the popular London-based Afghanistan International television network.
CPJ’s text messages to Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid requesting comment went unanswered.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
As Banned Books Week kicked off, a leading free expression group in the U.S. announced Monday that the number of books that were pulled from shelves or “challenged” by right-wing groups and Republican lawmakers skyrocketed to at least 10,000 over the last year with state legislatures passing new censorship laws. PEN America found that the number of banned books tripled from the 2022-23 school…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After being forced to acquit Omali Yeshitela, Jesse Nevel, and Penny Hess – the “Uhuru 3” – on being agents of Russia, a U.S. federal court jury resorted to the sham conviction of “conspiracy,” in what amounted to them being guilty of internationalism and the work of liberating African people. The state’s claim is that the defendants are guilty of “planning to sow discord and inflame American political tensions at the behest of Russia,” a charge carrying a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
Although the conspiracy charge is being regarded as the less serious of the two changes, it presents a threat to all anti-imperialists and internationalists working in the bowels of the capitalist, U.S. settler state. “Conspiracy” is a U.S. legal fiction that can mean almost anything. From the definition, it is clear that determining what counts as conspiracy is often left up to the creativity of prosecution. In other words, “conspiracy” should be understood as the state deploying anything vague and circumstantial to use against our movement when it cannot get a conviction on anything else.
The Black Alliance for Peace sounds the alarm about the danger this particular ruling represents – the severe undermining of the human right to free speech and the free flow of information. It is the creation of Orwellian, totalitarian legal precedence in support of “thoughtcrimes,” the offense of thinking in ways not approved by the U.S. settler state.
The trial of the “Uhuru 3,” members and supporters of the African People’s Socialist Party, is “proving to be one of the most important First Amendment cases thus far in the 21st century,” according to the group’s attorney Jenipher Jones. The case also exposes the fact that the U.S. has no regard for human rights. It violates Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which protects the right to freedom of expression and opinion and freedom of association, as does Article 19 of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
It is also significant that a small Pan-Africanist group is the first to face legal charges and other overt repression for speaking out against the racist and imperialist policies of the U.S. regime.
After the verdict Omali Yeshitela said:
The most important thing is that they were unable to convict us for working for anybody except Black people, that’s the most important thing. They could not convict us for working for anybody except black people. They had to say we were not working for the Russians and I am willing to be charged and found guilty of working for black people.
But BAP suspects that this is a test case for what is to come from the racist U.S. settler state. All activists and anti-imperialists should be concerned about what has happened to the “Uhuru 3.”
As we declared in our September 10th statement:
BAP and our movement will not be intimated. We recognize that the complete abandonment of constitutional and human rights by the U.S. and other Western states represents an irreversible crisis of legitimacy. We will continue to stand in support of the right to resist as a core human right.
No Compromise!
No Retreat!
BAP Coordinating Committee
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
We were outraged to read the report on Phayul (https://www.phayul.com/2024/09/08/50839/) about two highly respected French museums considering complying with the Chinese regime’s obliteration of the name ‘Tibet’.
If those museums go ahead with such a troubling collaboration it would mean they would censor any mention/description of Tibet from their displays, artifacts and presumably online and archive documents. Replacing it with ‘Xizang’ so-called ‘Autonomous Region’. That would be an appalling censorship.
We have today issued an appeal directly to the Presidents of the Musée du quai Branly and Musée Guimet, Ms Yannick Lintz and Mr Emmanuel Kasarhérou. With a copy to Ms Ms Rachida Dati France’s Minister of Culture. That document, in French, maybe seen here: https://tibettruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/museumappeal.pdf
If like us you are deeply concerned at this latest effort to eradicate the name of Tibet it would be a real help and positive solidarity for the Tibetan cause to express your concerns to the individuals named above at the following ‘X’ accounts: @LintzYannick @MinistereCC @quaibranly @MuseeGuimet
This post was originally published on Digital Activism In Support Of Tibetan Independence.
New York, September 3, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned that recent changes to Kazakhstan’s domestic media accreditation regulations and proposed changes to foreign media accreditation could be used to silence critical journalists.
“New and proposed amendments to Kazakhstan’s accreditation regulations are excessive and open too many doors to censorship. Instead of the greater openness promised by President Tokayev’s ‘New Kazakhstan,’ what journalists are really getting is ever more creeping state control,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Kazakh authorities should heed journalists’ legitimate complaints and revise the media accreditation rules.”
The new rules governing domestic media, which went into force August 20, allow journalists’ accreditation to be withdrawn for six months if they twice fail to comply with rules at news events, which could potentially include asking off-topic questions.
The proposed rules for foreign media, posted for public comment August 19, would allow the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deny or revoke accreditation for any violation of Kazakh law, including minor “administrative” offenses. A media law passed in June already bans foreign media from unaccredited journalistic activity.
Press freedom advocates say the proposed changes are worrying given authorities’ monthslong denial of accreditation to dozens of journalists working for U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Kazakh service, known locally as Radio Azattyq, over a “false information” fine, as well as escalating use of administrative “false information” charges against domestic journalists.
Diana Okremova, head of local press freedom organization Legal Media Center, told CPJ that the reforms amounted to an “intensification of government control” that would give authorities “wide discretionary tools to clamp down on” journalists.
CPJ’s emails to the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment did not receive any replies.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Labour is wrong to put on hold a law that aims to protect staff from external pressures
Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), has for several years taught a “data detectives” masters module on research methods that teaches students to critically appraise the use of data. One exercise involves discussing a Global Slavery Index finding that China has the second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world, to help students understand the flawed nature of the data on which it is based.
Last October, one Chinese student complained that the example was a “horrible provocation”. Shipworth was asked by her head of department to remove the example from her course. A few weeks later, she was told complaints had been raised about her “bias” against students from China, based on the fact that two Chinese students had been expelled from the university after she discovered they had been cheating; she was told she could no longer teach her module and she should not post on social media about “educational issues about only one country”. The email expressed concern that if there was perception or misperception of bias, this could threaten the commercial viability of UCL courses.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has finally admitted what we knew all along: Facebook conspired with the government to censor individuals expressing “disapproved” views about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Zuckerberg’s confession comes in the wake of a series of court rulings that turn a blind eye to the government’s technofascism.
In a 2-1 decision in Children’s Health Defense v. Meta, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit brought by Children’s Health Defense against Meta Platforms for restricting CHD’s posts, fundraising, and advertising on Facebook following communications between Meta and federal government officials.
In a unanimous decision in the combined cases of NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided ruling on whether the states could pass laws to prohibit censorship by Big Tech companies on social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
And in a 6-3 ruling in Murthy v. Missouri , the Supreme Court sidestepped a challenge to the federal government’s efforts to coerce social media companies into censoring users’ First Amendment expression.
Welcome to the age of technocensorship.
On paper—under the First Amendment, at least—we are technically free to speak.
In reality, however, we are now only as free to speak as a government official—or corporate entities such as Facebook, Google or YouTube—may allow.
Case in point: internal documents released by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government confirmed what we have long suspected: that the government has been working in tandem with social media companies to censor speech.
By “censor,” we’re referring to concerted efforts by the government to muzzle, silence and altogether eradicate any speech that runs afoul of the government’s own approved narrative.
This is political correctness taken to its most chilling and oppressive extreme.
The revelations that Facebook worked in concert with the Biden administration to censor content related to COVID-19, including humorous jokes, credible information and so-called disinformation, followed on the heels of a ruling by a federal court in Louisiana that prohibits executive branch officials from communicating with social media companies about controversial content in their online forums.
Likening the government’s heavy-handed attempts to pressure social media companies to suppress content critical of COVID vaccines or the election to “an almost dystopian scenario,” Judge Terry Doughty warned that “the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”
This is the very definition of technofascism.
Clothed in tyrannical self-righteousness, technofascism is powered by technological behemoths (both corporate and governmental) working in tandem to achieve a common goal.
The government is not protecting us from “dangerous” disinformation campaigns. It is laying the groundwork to insulate us from “dangerous” ideas that might cause us to think for ourselves and, in so doing, challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
Thus far, the tech giants have been able to sidestep the First Amendment by virtue of their non-governmental status, but it’s a dubious distinction at best when they are marching in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
As Philip Hamburger and Jenin Younes write for The Wall Street Journal: “The First Amendment prohibits the government from ‘abridging the freedom of speech.’ Supreme Court doctrine makes clear that government can’t constitutionally evade the amendment by working through private companies.”
Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution.
The steady, pervasive censorship creep that is being inflicted on us by corporate tech giants with the blessing of the powers-that-be threatens to bring about a restructuring of reality straight out of Orwell’s 1984, where the Ministry of Truth polices speech and ensures that facts conform to whatever version of reality the government propagandists embrace.
Orwell intended 1984 as a warning. Instead, it is being used as a dystopian instruction manual for socially engineering a populace that is compliant, conformist and obedient to Big Brother.
In a world increasingly automated and filtered through the lens of artificial intelligence, we are finding ourselves at the mercy of inflexible algorithms that dictate the boundaries of our liberties.
Once artificial intelligence becomes a fully integrated part of the government bureaucracy, there will be little recourse: we will all be subject to the intransigent judgments of techno-rulers.
This is how it starts.
First, the censors went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “hate speech.”
Then they went after so-called extremists spouting so-called “disinformation” about stolen elections, the Holocaust, and Hunter Biden.
By the time so-called extremists found themselves in the crosshairs for spouting so-called “misinformation” about the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, the censors had developed a system and strategy for silencing the nonconformists.
Eventually, depending on how the government and its corporate allies define what constitutes “extremism, “we the people” might all be considered guilty of some thought crime or other.
Whatever we tolerate now—whatever we turn a blind eye to—whatever we rationalize when it is inflicted on others, whether in the name of securing racial justice or defending democracy or combatting fascism, will eventually come back to imprison us, one and all.
Watch and learn.
We should all be alarmed when any individual or group—prominent or not—is censored, silenced and made to disappear from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram for voicing ideas that are deemed politically incorrect, hateful, dangerous or conspiratorial.
Given what we know about the government’s tendency to define its own reality and attach its own labels to behavior and speech that challenges its authority, this should be cause for alarm across the entire political spectrum.
Here’s the point: you don’t have to like or agree with anyone who has been muzzled or made to disappear online because of their views, but to ignore the long-term ramifications of such censorship is dangerously naïve, because whatever powers you allow the government and its corporate operatives to claim now will eventually be used against you by tyrants of your own making.
Eventually, as Orwell predicted, telling the truth will become a revolutionary act.
If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it’s happening already.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Ten months into its assault on Gaza, Israel has killed more than 40,000 people from the besieged strip and also demolished some of the main repositories of Palestinian cultural heritage, including the Central Archives of Gaza City, the Gaza Municipal Library and the Islamic University of Gaza Library — acts condemned by the American Library Association in January. As the United States funds Israel’…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Many users of X, formerly Twitter, seem deeply misguided. They imagine that Elon Musk is the saviour of free speech. He’s not. He is simply the latest pioneer in monetising speech. Which isn’t the same thing at all.
All the blue ticks on X – mine included – are buying access to an audience. Which is why Musk has made it so easy to get a blue tick – and why there are now so many of them on the platform. If you don’t pay Musk, the algorithms make sure you get minimal reach. You are denied your five seconds of fame.
That has particularly infuriated corporate journalists. On what used to be called Twitter, they got access to large audiences as a natural right, along with politicians and celebrities. They never paid a penny. They felt entitled to those big audiences because they already enjoyed similarly big audiences in the so-called “legacy media”. They did not see why they start competing with the rest of us to be heard.
The new media system was rigged, as the old media system has been for centuries, to ensure that it was their voices that counted. Or rather it was the voices of the ultra-wealthy paying their salaries who counted.
Independent journalists, including myself, have been some of the chief beneficiaries of Musk’s X. But I don’t for a minute make the mistake of thinking Musk is really in favour of my free speech – or anyone else’s – compared to his own.
A reminder that free speech in America is special and we need to do everything possible to preserve it https://t.co/yAvX1TpuRp
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2024
Being able to buy yourself an audience isn’t what most people understand as free speech.
Musk’s X is simply the latest innovation on the traditional “free speech” model from the bad old days. Then, only a handful of very rich men could afford to buy themselves lots of hired hands, known as journalists; own a printing press; and be in a position to attract advertisers.
Billionaires paid a small fortune to buy the privilege of “free speech”. As a result, they managed to secure for themselves a very big voice in a highly exclusive market. You and I can now pay a hundred bucks a year and buy ourselves a very, very small voice in a massively overcrowded, cacophonous marketplace of voices.
The point is this: Speech on X is still a privilege – it’s just one that you can now pay for. And like all privileges, it is on licence from the owner. Musk can withdraw that privilege – and withdraw it selectively – whenever he thinks someone or something is harming his interests, whether directly or indirectly.
Musk is already disappearing opinions, either ones he doesn’t like or ones he cannot afford to be seen supporting – most visibly, anything too critical of Israel.
As I said earlier this week, “decolonization”, “from the river to the sea” and similar euphemisms necessarily imply genocide.
Clear calls for extreme violence are against our terms of service and will result in suspension. https://t.co/1fCFo5Lezb
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 17, 2023
He has threatened users with suspension for repeating slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – in other words, for calling for an end to what the judges of the World Court recently decreed to be Israel’s apartheid rule over Palestinians. He is also against hosting on X the term “decolonisation” in reference to Israel, claiming perversely that “it implies a Jewish genocide” – itself an implicit admission that Israelis (not Jews) have long been colonising Palestine and ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
The Israel lobby is also pushing hard for a ban on the words “Zionism” and “Zionist”. It won’t be long before X, like Meta, cracks down on these terms too.
Note that banning these words makes it all but impossible to discuss the specific historical forces that led to Israel’s creation at the expense of the Palestinian people, or analyse the ideology that today underpins Israel’s efforts to disappear the Palestinian people, or explain how the West has been complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories for decades and is currently aiding the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
The loss of “Zionist” and “Zionism” from our lexicon would be a serious handicap for anyone trying to explain some of the major events unfolding in the Middle East at the moment. Which is precisely why the establishment, and Musk, are so keen to see such words discredited.
The Egyptian comedian Bassem Yousef, one of the most acute and acid critics of Israel, has suddenly disappeared from X. Many assume he has been banned. The Jerusalem Post highlights that, shortly before he vanished from X, he had written: “Are you still scared to be called an antisemite by those Zionists?”
Whatever the case, you will see Musk’s X getting a lot more censorious over the next months and years, especially against what he is terming the “faaaaaar left” – that is, disparate groups of people he has lumped together who hold opinions either he doesn’t like personally or that can damage his business interests.
From the standpoint of the faaaaaar left, this platform is far right, but it’s actually just centrist https://t.co/PUNAvdTKQS
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
Billionaires aren’t there to protect free speech. They got to be billionaires by being very good at making money – by seizing markets, by inflating our appetite for consumption, and by buying politicians to rig the system to protect their empires from competitors.
Musk understands that the only people against a world based on rapacious profit and material greed are the “faaaaaar left”. Which is why the “faaaaaar left” are in the crosshairs of anyone with power in our rigged system, from the centrists to the right wing, from “liberals” to conservatives, from Blue to Red, from Democrats to Republicans.
The right and the centrists disagree only on how best to maintain that rapacious, consumption-driven, environmentally destructive status quo, and on how to normalise it to different segments of the public. They are competing wings of a system designed by a single ruling cabal.
I am willing to serve pic.twitter.com/BJhGbcA2e0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2024
Musk used to see himself as a liberal and now leans towards the Trumpian right. Trump used to see himself as a Clintonian Democrat but now sees himself as… well, fill in the blank, according to taste.
The point is that centrists and the right are, in essence, interchangeable – as should be only too clear from the rapid shift of free-speech liberals towards authoritarian censorship, and the rapid (pretend) reinvention of conservatives from moralising guardians of family values to the embattled defenders of free speech.
Neither’s posturing should be taken at face value. Both are equally authoritarian, when their interests are threatened by “an excess of democracy”. Their apparent differences are simply the competition for dominance within a system that’s been gerrymandered to their mutual benefit. We are their dupes, buying into their games.
JUST IN: ?? ?? Emmanuel Macron's Liberal MEP threatens to shut down X in Europe .
"If Elon Musk does not comply with the European rules on digital services, the EU Commission will ask the continental operators to block X or, in the most extreme case, force them to completely… pic.twitter.com/8rbt4pjSPp
— BRICS News (@BRICSinfo) August 20, 2024
The two tribes are there to offer the pretence of a battle of ideas, of competition, of choice at election time, of freedom. They look hostile to each other, but when push comes to shove they are united in their support for oligarchy, and opposition to genuine free speech, to real democracy, to meaningful pluralism, to an open society.
The “faaaaaar left” are the true enemy of both the centrists and the right. Why? Because they are the only group struggling for a society in which money doesn’t buy privilege, where speech isn’t something someone can own.
That’s why, when Musk intensifies his crackdown, it will be the “faaaaar left” that’s erased so completely you won’t notice it’s gone. You won’t remember it was ever there.
The post First, Elon Musk made us pay for “free speech”; now he decides who’s allowed it first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.
Our dying republic.
We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.
In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).
For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.
In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.
We’re in trouble, folks.
This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.
Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.
Freedom no longer means what it once did.
This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.
Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.
My friends, we’re being played for fools.
On paper, we may be technically free.
In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.
We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.
Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.
As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”
Indeed, not only are we developing a new citizenry incapable of thinking for themselves, but we’re also instilling in them a complete and utter reliance on the government and its corporate partners to do everything for them—tell them what to eat, what to wear, how to think, what to believe, how long to sleep, who to vote for, whom to associate with, and on and on.
In this way, we have created a welfare state, a nanny state, a police state, a surveillance state, an electronic concentration camp—call it what you will, the meaning is the same: in our quest for less personal responsibility, a greater sense of security, and no burdensome obligations to each other or to future generations, we have created a society in which we have no true freedom.
Freedom, or what’s left of it, is being threatened from every direction.
The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.
This is part and parcel of the propaganda churned out by the government machine.
That said, what we face today—mind manipulation and systemic violence—is not new. What is different are the techniques used and the large-scale control of mass humanity, coercive police tactics and pervasive surveillance.
We are overdue for a systemic check on the government’s overreaches and power grabs.
By “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
Where we find ourselves now is in the unenviable position of needing to rein in all three branches of government—the Executive, the Judicial, and the Legislative—that have exceeded their authority and grown drunk on power.
If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.
So, what’s the answer?
For starters, stop tolerating corruption, graft, intolerance, greed, incompetence, ineptitude, militarism, lawlessness, ignorance, brutality, deceit, collusion, corpulence, bureaucracy, immorality, depravity, censorship, cruelty, violence, mediocrity, and tyranny. These are the hallmarks of an institution that is rotten through and through.
Stop holding your nose in order to block out the stench of a rotting institution.
Stop letting the government and its agents treat you like a servant or a slave.
You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights. This is our country. This is our government. No one can take it away from us unless we make it easy for them.
You’ve got a better chance of making your displeasure seen and felt and heard within your own community. But it will take perseverance and unity and a commitment to finding common ground with your fellow citizens.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we’re making it way too easy for the police state to take over.
So, stop being an accessory to the murder of the American republic.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Image: @tibettruth
We know how well the team @tibettruth are doing over on ‘X’. That the account is being targeted by Chinese political bots and trolls is a welcome indication that our message on Tibet is strong and un-welcomed by the China’s regime. Keep up the great job folks!
What’s disappointing though is the censorship and restrictions placed @elonmusk and his @X colleagues. Limiting our follower count, preventing the massive interest and support in our online work on Tibet’s cause translating into increased followers.
Today we noticed again that our posts (see image above) are being interfered with by @X a cynical and sly measure to obscure and reduce the reach of our content by labeling it as ‘sensitive’. So discouraging viewing counts, since people regard such a warning as indicating unsuitable, disturbing, or abusive content. This is the second occasion we’ve suffered such censorship, which is curious given Mr Musk postures as a champion of free speech!
This post was originally published on Digital Activism In Support Of Tibetan Independence.
New Delhi, August 15, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Indian government to ensure proper consultation with media publishers before enacting a broadcast regulation bill that journalists fear will give authorities sweeping powers to control online content.
“India’s planned broadcast bill could have a chilling effect on press freedom,” CPJ’s Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi said on Thursday. “We are extremely concerned by the opacity surrounding the proposed law and its enactment process, and urge the Indian authorities to be transparent to ensure the bill is not tantamount to online censorship.”
A draft of the Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, released to a few select groups in July but not officially made public, would classify online content creators as “digital news broadcasters” and compel them to register with the government.
They would also have to set up internal vetting committees at their own expense to approve content before it is posted online. Failure to comply could result in imprisonment and fines.
The provisions in the bill came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party lost support in a national election earlier this year – a development that supporters blamed partly on social media influencers for boosting the opposition’s chances.
Following criticism, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said on X, formerly Twitter, that a fresh draft bill will be published and it would extend the deadline for stakeholder comments until October 15, 2024.
The ministry did not respond to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Last week, Utah became the first state in the U.S. to ban an entire set of books across all public schools within its borders. Thirteen titles, including books by famed authors Judy Blume and Margaret Atwood — the latter whose book “The Handmaid’s Tale” features a dystopian future where women are legally disallowed from reading — were ordered to be removed from bookshelves in school libraries…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Casting shadows over both public and school libraries, book bans have hit record numbers and continue to trend upward. But education experts say that despite these “bleak” realities, the power to preserve literary freedom still remains in the hands of concerned parents, kids and educators. On July 10, children marched across the campus of South Carolina State University in a protest against…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A guest on Judging Freedom, Dr Gilbert Doctorow, took a contrarian stance to Scott Ritter’s journalism work on Russia, which seemingly aligns Doctorow’s stance with the official government stance.
Doctorow accused Ritter (starting about 21:30) of stomping across redlines that any person familiar with Russia should have been aware of. Doctorow didn’t specifically state what any of these redlines might be.
He also accused Ritter of violating FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act), albeit he conceded that was not for him to judge.
Says Doctorow,
My concern is [that] two generations of Americans have not understood the Cold War and how you behave in circumstances when you are backing the cause or at least sympathetic to the cause or even understanding the cause of an [US] adversary. How do you avoid becoming Tokyo Rose [as English-speaking female radio propagandists for Japan were called]?
In other words, Doctorow is accusing Ritter of being a (perhaps unwitting) propagandist for Russia as well as not knowing how to behave in certain circumstances. In other words, Doctorow (who has his academic credentials highlighted as “Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.”) comes across as questioning the intellectual rigor of Ritter.
An additional redline, according to Doctorow,
And, you do not accept payments of any kind, or of favors, like travel. That is air travel, hotels, and the rest of it. You do not touch that. If it is being offered to you by a country, by a foreign country, particularly a foreign country that is in such hostile relations with the United States. (23:50)
… Ritter has “exposed himself to [violating FARA] charges by admitting he received money from RT and so forth.” (29:45)
Such an argument is problematic for many reasons. According to Doctorow, any journalistic work with a hostile country must be unpaid. Journalism, for many, is a paying job. It is a means to be reimbursed for one’s time, effort, training, and skill. Yet Doctorow proffers that in certain circumstances a journalist should forgo payment.
If US authorities do not explicitly decree that journalism relaying the situation or views of a certain foreign country is prohibited, then how is one to know?
Besides, do Americans not have an inalienable right to know? Or is knowledge/information/data to be solely the prerogative of the US government to determine what citizens can be exposed to? Is gaining insight to what the other side is saying to be prohibited? Americans will just have to trust that their government knows best; for instance, that Viet Nam had fired missiles at US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, that Iraq had weapons-of-mass-destruction, that Syrian government forces had carried out chemical weapon attacks, that there is no genocide in Palestine.
Does the First Amendment in the US not protect freedom of speech and the press? Because if one has to pay to fly to Russia, pay for hotels, transportation, and meals in Russia, then only those with the means to self-finance such an endeavor are likely to provide information — with potential for bias from the well-to-do perspective. If reporting on Russia has to be done out of the pocket of a journalist, this sounds like a good way to censor journalism. It is censorship that limits the rights of those who want to work as a journalist and also denies the rights of readers/viewers of such journalism.
If it wasn’t largely for Ritter then how many people would have known about Iraq having been “fundamentally disarmed”? More recently, if not for Ritter, how many people would have heard that the Bucha massacre of scores of civilians blamed on Russia and reported as such by the stenographers in western monopoly media was a fabrication for killings carried out by Ukrainians?
People and the interests behind them seek to control information. They want to prevent certain information from reaching an audience and they’d like a certain narrative, even disinformation, to reach that audience.
If knowledge is power (not a corrupting power, it is hoped), then it should not be controlled by the already powerful, it should be a liberatory force to empower the masses.
Don’t Be a Yes Man
There are different types of contrarians depending on whether those who we are talking to are in agreement or disagreement.
We are encouraged to be critical thinkers. We are taught to value leadership. However, there is a type of person called a Yes Man (or Yes Woman). This is a weak person who always supports whoever is in a position of power, rightly or wrongly. Yes Men are dangerous.
There are plenty of bad laws on the books. One aphorism holds that laws are meant to be broken. This is too simplistic. But some bad laws should be broken and taken off the books.
Don’t follow bad leaders or bad laws. Ritter is a contrarian to the fetid state. He has the courage to oppose censorship, bad thinking, and following bad laws.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Reporters cautiously optimistic as interim government takes over after years of intimation and censorship under outgoing prime minister
Bangladeshi journalists are hoping the resignation of the prime minister Sheikh Hasina will bring an era of censorship and fear to an end, as they prepare to hold a new interim government to account.
Arrests, abuse and forced disappearances at the hands of Bangladesh’s security forces have loomed over journalists for most of Hasina’s 15-year rule, preventing them from routine reporting for fear of writing anything that could be perceived as embarrassing for the government.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Journalist and political analyst Caleb Maupin put out a video “Scott Ritter’s home raided by the FBI.” Maupin affirmed his solidarity with Ritter, a staunch opponent of US militaristic support for Ukraine and Israel.
Ritter’s anti-imperialist stand is nothing new. He first came to wider attention with his opposition to US plans to attack Iraq for having weapons-of-mass-destruction. Ritter, the then United Nations weapons inspector, said that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed.” History has proven Ritter correct. The US government was wrong.
Nonetheless, many patriots often trot out the canard “my country, right or wrong.”
Scott Ritter, a former US marine intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector, is a fierce critic of US militarism. Yet, he does not equivocate when it comes to his patriotism: “I’m an American Patriot who puts my country and its security first.”
This fidelity called patriotism is universal. For example, it is one of the 12 goals of socialism in China. Generally, it is understood to mean “love of country.” Thus, the Chinese characters for love and country.
Patriotism: “devotion to and vigorous support for one’s country.”
To vigorously support one’s country? Right or wrong? And what exactly is a country? Is it specific to a geographically defined dimension?
Country: “a nation with its own government, occupying a particular territory.”
This definition of country does not clarify precisely the orbit of patriotism. Is it government? It couldn’t be that because people, who consider themselves to be patriots, in countries with elections are often voting governments out. And one can often hear citizens venting displeasure with their government. Does this mean they are not patriots? Ritter, undeniably, does not hide his displeasure with government.
Nation: “a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory.”
Well, the United States often describes itself as a melting pot: “a term that was used to describe Americanization in which immigrants adopt American culture and abandon culture from their home country.”
So, US culture is the result of abandoned cultures?
Previously, I asked why people like Scott Ritter and colonel Douglas Macgregor keep professing their love of the US while pointing out its dishonesty, bullying, war crimes, warmaking, corruption, etc. Why love such a country?
Ritter points out the multitudinous crimes of US empire, the racism, the crimes against whistleblowers and publishers (e.g., Julian Assange), the crimes of US allies (e.g., Israel; it took him a while to realize the evil of Zionism, but credit to him that he rejected a previously held position that he later found to be intellectually and morally untenable), the unfair “trade” practices (e.g., sanctions, theft of another country’s assets), the deterioration of US infrastructure (e.g., water in Flint, MI), the destruction of the environment, the inequality, homelessness, poverty, etc. Yet, he always says he is an American patriot and that he loves his country.
The logical disconnect seems huge, but it is also understandable. Why? If Ritter didn’t praise his American citizenship to the heavens, then he would likely be dismissed as anti-American, and people who swallow the patriotism Kool-aid would tune him out. A sad state of affairs.
If Ritter, Macgregor, and other American voices that speak in opposition to the imperialist agenda did not profess their love of the US of America, an entity that came into existence because of a massive genocide, then they all know that they would be silenced.
The world needs contrarian voices to be free to speak, and not just contrarian voices, all voices. People must have the opportunity to consider what the voices say. Are their facts verifiable, is their logic sound, and is their message morally based?
Ritter educates many of us about US militarism, what the fighting in Ukraine is about, who the actors are and why they are involved.
Back to Maupin
I do not always agree with Ritter, and I have expressed some of my reservations and my reasons for them. Likeliest, Ritter would like to revisit and amend some of his formulations, as most of us would. But Ritter is a cut above; he is experienced; he does his homework; he talks straight and extemporaneously.
A friend who started checking out Ritter’s geopolitical views on my recommendation, came across disturbing news about Ritter and asked me about it. The news of the FBI raid on Ritter’s domicile, has provided the monopoly media the opportunity to dredge up his past indiscretions and criminal activities. However, these should not just be brushed aside or dismissed. And neither should Ritter’s views be brushed aside. Whatever the facts are of the unsavory matter, Ritter had been punished. Now the state is piling on. Because past actions are past, we cannot undo them; the best we can do is atone.
Some might question whether a person with certain criminal deficiencies could be trusted about their reporting on geopolitics and militarism? The answer seems obvious. The focus ought to be on whatever information, from whoever. By all means, take into account the source; regarding the information, take what is good and factual and relegate what is bad and dubious to a lesser file.
Ritter is an important voice. The assumption is that the FBI raid was only about Ritter’s expressing his first amendment rights. Regardless, I have no problem to standing in solidarity with Ritter against imperialism, warring, and Zionism.
The common refrain “I love my country…” is almost mandatory in the US if uttering any criticism of the state. As ex-military and a declared patriot, Ritter had created a space to function as a critic of the international crimes of America. That space appears to have severely narrowed. To express non-allegiance with America – despite it being a moral abomination – would invite the wrath of the state. For one, these critics would be slandered and have their communication platforms targeted, as Maupin knows well since his book Kamala Harris & the Future of America was banned by Amazon. This is another example of the government and its allies undermining free speech.
As Maupin said in the video, an injustice to one is an injustice to all. It is a call for the free speech rights of Ritter, and it emphasizes the same rights for all of us.
The post On Being a Patriot first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
So, my second trial for alleged thoughtcrime-tweeting is going ahead as planned on August 15 in Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht). Full-blown anti-terrorism security protocols will be in effect in the courtroom. Yes, that’s right, the Berlin Superior Court denied my attorney’s motion to rescind their special Security Order, so the German authorities will be putting on an elaborate official show of force, which everyone is welcome to attend!
Or, actually, according to the Security Order, only 35 people are welcome to attend. That’s one of the anti-terrorism security protocols. Also, if you do attend, you’ll have to surrender all your personal possessions (i.e., notebooks, phones, wallets, pens, pencils, other writing instruments, wristwatches, hats, and other head coverings, etc.) and any outwear (i.e., jackets, scarves, etc.) and totally empty your pockets of all items, presumably into a plastic bin like the ones they use at airport security, which the Court’s security personnel will carry away and store somewhere while you attend the trial, and which the Superior Court expressly denies any liability for (i.e., for your items). Once you have surrendered all your possessions, and have been body-scanned and metal-detected, and possibly physically patted down, you will be admitted into Room 145a, where you will have to sit in the rear five rows of the gallery, behind a presumably bullet-proof security barrier, so that the security staff can monitor you during the proceedings.
OK, I know what you’re probably thinking, but the Superior Court’s Security Order is not at all intended to prevent members of the press from attending and reporting on the trial. Members of the press are absolutely welcome! It’s just that they will have to surrender their cameras and phones and their pens and other writing instruments to the security staff before they enter the courtroom. But they are welcome to attend and report on the trial! The security personnel will even provide them with pencils — presumably those little child-sized pencils, which are harder to use as Jason-Bourne-style stabbing weapons — and sheets of paper that they can position on their knees and attempt to make notes on during the trial.
Same goes for all you members of the public. This Security Order is not in any way intended to discourage you from attending the trial, or to intimidate or humiliate you by subjecting you to pointless “security protocols” and treating you like suspected terrorists. No, you are absolutely welcome to attend! You just might want to think about what you bring with you. Sharp objects are probably not a good idea. Likewise anything the Court might construe to be a camera or an audio-recording device. The Security Order is clear about that … there is to be no photographic or audio record of the proceedings.
Oh, and, definitely do not bring any state-of-the-art terrorist “wiretapping technology” with you. The Court is particularly worried about that stuff. Hence the need to subject everyone to TSA-style body-scanning, and pat-downs, and to confiscate their personal possessions, i.e., to ensure that no one smuggles in some sort of remotely-activated wiretapping technology that will infect the judges’ smartphones with some kind of untraceable surveillance software that will secretly record everything they say and transmit it to Tehran, or Moscow, or wherever.
You probably think I’m joking. I’m not. Here’s how one of the Superior Court judges justified the Court’s Security Order in his denial of our motion to have the Order rescinded …
I cannot see the unreasonable restriction of the press and your defense that you are concerned about, nor any violation of the guarantee of a fair trial. I admit that the restrictions imposed by the Security Order are quite significant; however, they are by no means unreasonable. They are objectively required both by the overall tense security situation (e.g. publicly announced threats of attacks against judges of the Superior Court) and the increased special security requirements in at least one criminal trial conducted in the same courtroom. Since only the courtroom in question is assigned to the Criminal Division (and the other divisions) as a permanent courtroom, and a regular search of the courtroom following every session using suitable technology for recently introduced wiretapping technology represents an objectively unjustifiable burden, its introduction must be prevented from the outset if possible.
Yes, you read the judge’s explanation right. Apparently, the Court is worried that my readers, or maybe members of the German independent press, might be planning to launch an “attack” on the judges, presumably with their phones and writing instruments, and possibly their head coverings and outerwear (for example, their scarves, which I suppose, in the hands of trained terrorist assassins, could be used to strangle them). In any event, they clearly believe that an “overall tense security situation” exists, one which necessitates these anti-terrorism security protocols at the trial of a 62-year-old playwright, author, and political satirist.
OK, I probably should have mentioned that earlier for the benefit of anyone not familiar with my case. I’m not a terrorist, or in any way terrorist adjacent. I’m just an author and a political satirist. The German authorities are prosecuting me because I criticized them and their Covid mask mandates.
As I explained in my most recent column …
The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets … Basically, I am being prosecuted for ‘spreading pro-Nazi propaganda’ because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich. Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.
My punishment for doing that (i.e., criticizing the Covid mask mandates, not spreading Nazi propaganda) has been … well, here I am, on trial, again, in The People’s Court of New Normal Germany. The German authorities had my Tweets censored by Twitter. They reported me to The Federal Criminal Police Office, which is kind of the German FBI. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in attorney’s fees to defend myself against these blatantly trumped-up charges. And now they are going to subject me, and my attorney, and anyone who attends my trial, to this humiliating, ham-fisted, official show of force.
If you’re an American (or a Brit, or Australian, or whatever), and you’re thinking this is just a story about Germany, or the EU … well, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. My case is just one of countless examples of the criminalization of dissent that is happening throughout the West. A lot of Americans don’t realize it, but freedom of speech is protected in the German constitution.
My story is not about the differences between the German and American freedom-of-speech protections. It is about the authorities prosecuting government critics like me on fabricated charges, banning our books, and censoring our political speech.
Once a government starts doing that, the protections in its constitution no longer matter. You are no longer dealing with questions of law. You are dealing with the exercise of authoritarian power. That is what my story is about. Any Americans (and any other non-Germans) who have been paying attention to recent events will recognize what I’m talking about.
As I’ve been saying, repeatedly, for the last four years or so, the global-capitalist power system (or the “corporatocracy,” or “The Powers That Be,” or whatever other name you need to call it) is going totalitarian on us. It dominates the entire planet, so it doesn’t have anything else to do. It is conducting a global “Clear and Hold” op. It is neutralizing internal resistance … any and all forms of internal resistance. The criminalization of dissent is an essential part of that. I’ve been documenting this process in my columns and in my books, and specifically in The Rise of the New Normal Reich — which you can read, unless you live in Germany — so forgive me if I don’t rehash it all here.
The point is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. All that democracy and rule of law stuff is over. It is being gradually, and not so gradually, phased out.
I get that most people don’t believe that. Most people won’t, until it’s too late. That’s how these transitions generally work. Most people can’t see what is coming until it gets here. I see it, but not because I’m a prophet. I’m just a loudmouth, and the loudmouths get crushed first.
Anyway, if you are in Berlin on August 15, and would like to observe The People’s Court of New Normal Germany in action, or just get groped by a German law enforcement officer, the trial is scheduled to start at 10:30AM. Seating is on a first-come-first-served basis. So you may want to show up a little early, given all the scanning and screening and groping, and the “overall tense security situation.”
The address is Elßholzstraße 30-33.
The post The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (Part Two) first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
You might be shocked to learn that Big Tech is already censoring information about America’s presidential race… I know it’s SHOCKING!
The post Big Tech’s Trump Censorship Exposed first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi era, nor is there any similarity between Nazi Germany and New Normal Germany (i.e., modern-day Germany), and I would never, ever, suggest that there was, as that would be intellectually lazy, and tasteless, and completely inaccurate, and illegal, and … well, let me fill you in on the latest.
The Berlin Superior Court has set a date for my next thoughtcrime trial. As regular readers will probably recall, my first thoughtcrime trial in January ended with my acquittal. So, the German authorities are putting me on trial again. Yes, they can do that in Germany. But, wait, that’s not the best part.
The best part is, at my new thoughtcrime trial — this time in Berlin Superior Court — full-scale Anti-Terrorism Security protocols will be effect in the courtroom. Everyone will be subjected to TSA-style scanning and screening, and will have to surrender all their personal possessions and hats and coats and head coverings to the Security Staff, and completely empty their pockets of all items, before entering the courtroom. No computers, phones, smart-watches, or any other potential recording devices will be allowed in the courtroom. Pencils and sheets of paper will purportedly be provided to members of the press by Security Staff. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35, and, after they have successfully passed their “security screening,” they will be cordoned off in the last five rows of the gallery in the very back of the courtroom, “for security reasons,” and monitored by the armed Security Staff.
For the benefit of any new readers unfamiliar with me and my case, I am not a terrorist. I’m an award-winning American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. I have lived here in Berlin for 20 years. The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets, so I won’t reiterate every little detail again here. Basically, I am being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda” because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich.
Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are the recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.”
As anyone (even the German authorities) can see, the Spiegel cover artwork uses exactly the same concept as the cover artwork of my book. The only difference is, the Spiegel swastika is covered by the German flag, whereas the swastika on my book is covered by a medical mask.
Both artworks are obviously intended as warnings of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism. Der Spiegel was warning about the Alternativ für Deutschland party (AfD) — as was Stern with its swastika floating in a champagne glass. I was warning about what I dubbed “The New Normal Reich,” the new nascent form of totalitarianism that emerged during 2020-2023, which is still very much on the rise, and which is thoroughly documented and analyzed in my book (which book was banned by Amazon in Germany at the same time the German authorities launched a criminal investigation of me and instructed Twitter to censor my Tweets, which Twitter did).
The pretext the Court is citing for ordering these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols at my trial is ridiculous, and infuriating. The Court claims that the courtroom in which my trial is to take place is occasionally used for a certain “high-security” trial. Therefore, according to the Court, my trial must also be subjected to Anti-Terrorism Security protocols. Seriously, the Court sent my attorney a fax setting forth this “explanation,” which is, of course, a load of horseshit. The Berlin Superior Court is a huge building containing multiple courtrooms, one or two which are probably not subject to such Anti-Terrorism Security protocols when “high-security” trials are not taking place within them.
No, the imposition of these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols is clearly a cynical ploy intended (a) to suppress coverage of the trial, (b) to discourage the press and public from attending, and (c) to intimidate and harass me and my legal counsel, and any members of the press and public who nevertheless attend the trial in spite of the “security procedures” they will be subjected to.
This cynical tactic — which is not an official press blackout, because journalists can still attend and attempt to scribble notes on their knees with the pencils and sheets of paper provided by the Security Staff — comes as no real surprise. As I mentioned above, my case and my first trial got a fair amount of attention from the international press, enough to put the Court on notice that my prosecution was being watched. So, it’s no mystery why the German authorities would want to discourage any reporting on my “do-over” trial in Superior Court.
Also, the gallery was filled to capacity at my original trial in January, where I delivered a rather unusual closing Statement to the Court, which was then published and disseminated widely in Germany. So, again, it is no real mystery why the Superior Court wants to discourage members of the public from attending this new trial by threatening to subject them to these humiliating “security” protocols, and why it has limited the gallery size to only 35 seats.
I assume the German authorities — and by “authorities” I mean the Berlin District Prosecutor’s office, the Berlin Superior Court (Der Kammergericht), and whatever other authorities are intent on punishing me, and making an example of me, for daring to criticize the government’s edicts during 2020-2022, i.e., suspension of the constitutional rights, mask mandates, segregation, the banning of protests, etc. — I assume these authorities are particularly motivated to prevent the press from covering this second trial in Superior Court, because, from what I understand of the German legal system, they are going to “do” me (i.e., convict me) this time.
The way the German legal system works, if they want to do you, is (1) you are acquitted in the lower Criminal Court, (2) the District Prosecutor appeals the verdict to the Superior Court, (3) the Superior Court overturns your acquittal, and (4) the prosecution goes back to the original Criminal Court, which stages a new trial, at which you will be found guilty, because, once the Superior Court has overruled your acquittal, the Criminal Court will convict you based on the Superior Court’s ruling. At which point you will appeal. And on and on and on it will go, until you are broke, or until you give up fighting because you are just so fucking exhausted.
I’m not making this up. This is how The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (i.e., the post-Covid German justice system, which, again, bears no resemblance whatsoever to The People’s Court of Berlin in Nazi Germany, or to the courts in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, or any other totalitarian “justice” system) … this is how it works in New Normal Germany if you are a critic of the authorities and refuse to meekly accept whatever punishment they want to summarily dish out for whatever they deem to be your thoughtcrimes.
But, hey, at least they’re not going to take me out and put me up against a wall and shoot me, like they did with political criminals in Nazi Germany, and the USSR, so I suppose I should be grateful. I’ll have to work on that.
If you think my case is an aberration, it isn’t. There are many, many other people — critics of the government’s “Covid measures” during 2020-2023 — who are being persecuted and made examples of. Most of these people do not have the financial resources to pay lawyers to fight these prosecutions, so they plead guilty to the charges and pay the fines, which are typically much less than what they would face in attorney’s fees. Being somewhat of a public figure, I thought it was my responsibility not to do that. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has donated to my legal defense fund, which is how I have been able to cover my legal expenses. There’s enough left in that fund to cover this next trial in Superior Court, so I’m OK for now, financially. I mention that because people are already asking how they can send me money.
What people can do, if they want to do something helpful, is make as much noise as possible about what is happening, not just in Germany, but all throughout the West. Because what is happening is, well, what I tried to capture and analyze in my book. The Powers That Be are going totalitarian on us. They are gradually, and not so gradually, phasing out the so-called “liberal” or “democratic” rights and principles that it was necessary to placate the Western masses with during the Cold War era, which it is no longer necessary to do beyond a certain superficial point.
I have published three books of essays documenting this transition to a new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, so I’m not going to go on and on about it here. But that’s what all the censorship is about. That’s what all the manufactured hysteria, fomented hatred, fanaticism, the permanent state of “emergency” and “crisis,” the “culture wars,” the cults of personality, the bombardment of our minds with absolutely meaningless nonsense, the naked displays of force, the blatant instrumentalization of the justice system to punish political dissidents, not just here in Germany, but throughout the “democratic” West … that is what all this is about.
I’ll keep my readers posted on the details of my upcoming trial in Berlin Superior Court. My attorney is objecting to these “security protocols,” of course. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, instead of sending me money this time, maybe try to step back from all the mass hysteria and hatred that we are being inundated with and see the big picture. It isn’t pretty.
Help spread the word about the new totalitarianism, about the phasing-out of our democratic rights. I don’t care which “side” of whatever you are on — Trump, Biden, Palestine, Israel, the culture wars, the cancel campaigns, Covid, Elon Musk, Russia, whatever — and neither do The Powers That Be. Take a step back and try to see the bigger picture … the forest, instead of just the trees. And then make as much noise about it as you can.
We are heading somewhere very ugly … somewhere most of us can’t imagine. Some of us will get there first, but all of us will be there, together, eventually. My story is just one example of what it will be like there, in that ugly place. It isn’t really a story about Germany. It is a story about the end of the myth of democracy, and the rule of law, and all that good stuff. As Frank Zappa once so eloquently explained …
The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.
It’s something to behold, that brick wall is, especially up close and personal. You’ll see when you get here. I’ll save you a seat.
The post The People’s Court of New Normal Germany first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
For a number of years now our team; over on what was Twitter, now ‘X’, noticed our account was being targeted and restricted, with follower numbers cut, various bans and posts being blocked from view. Any thought that Elon Musk’s take-over would see a lifting of such covert censorial actions was soon dashed when our already serverely reduced follower count was blocked by a ceiling limit. So much for free-speech and respecting human rights, eh Elon?
Today we discover that Tibet’s flag is now being regarded by ‘X’ as ‘sensitive content’ (another way to reduce the visibility and reach of a post) having been sent a tweet by Raimo Kangasniemi – a long-standing friend and supporter of or work for Tibet – we noticed it was hidden from open view.
Clearly Musk’s ‘X’algorithms lack the capacity to decide for themselves to suddenly apply such restrictions on viewing the Tibetan national flag, or deeming it ‘sensitive material’ which means that this latest incidence of censorship is yet another example of the sly censorship operating in regard to Tibet; and our account!
For those brave enough to view the content this is what they would have seen, shocking and deeply offensive, right Elon?
This post was originally published on Digital Activism In Support Of Tibetan Independence.
British cartoonist Steve Bell estimates that he has drawn more than 13,000 comic strips, illustrations and cartoons since the early 1980s, most of them for The Guardian newspaper. But shortly after the Israeli military attacked Gaza in the aftermath of October 7, Bell’s drawing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu carving a Gaza-shaped incision into his belly led to his dismissal from the…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
It just became more dangerous for a librarian to check out a book to a child in Idaho. On July 1, House Bill 710 went into effect in the state, undermining the agency of library workers to build collections that meet the needs of their communities. The legislation targets “harmful materials” in public and school libraries, requiring library workers to move them within 60 days at the request of any…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The U.S. government is working to re-shape the country in the image of a totalitarian state.
This has remained true over the past 50-plus years no matter which political party held office.
This will remain true no matter who wins the 2024 presidential election.
In the midst of the partisan furor over Project 2025, a 920-page roadmap for how to re-fashion the government to favor so-called conservative causes, both the Right and the Left have proven themselves woefully naive about the dangers posed by the power-hungry Deep State.
Yet we must never lose sight of the fact that both the Right and the Left and their various operatives are extensions of the Deep State, which continues to wage psychological warfare on the American people.
For years now, the government has been bombarding the citizenry with propaganda campaigns and psychological operations aimed at keeping us compliant, easily controlled and supportive of the government’s various efforts abroad and domestically.
For example, in 2022, the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group, the branch of the military responsible for psychological warfare, released a recruiting video that touts its efforts to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.
“Have you ever wondered who’s pulling the strings?” the psyops video posits. “Anything we touch is a weapon. We can deceive, persuade, change, influence, inspire. We come in many forms. We are everywhere.”
This is the danger that lurks in plain sight.
Of the many weapons in the government’s vast arsenal, psychological warfare may be the most devastating in terms of the long-term consequences.
Aided and abetted by technological advances and scientific experimentation, the government has been subjecting the American people to “apple-pie propaganda” for the better part of the last century.
Consider some of the ways in which the government continues to wage psychological warfare on a largely unsuspecting citizenry in order to acclimate us to the Deep State’s totalitarian agenda.
Weaponizing violence in order to institute martial law. With alarming regularity, the nation continues to be subjected to spates of violence that terrorizes the public, destabilizes the country’s ecosystem, and gives the government greater justifications to crack down, lock down, and institute even more authoritarian policies for the so-called sake of national security without many objections from the citizenry.
Weaponizing surveillance, pre-crime and pre-thought campaigns. Surveillance, digital stalking and the data mining of the American people add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence. When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Weaponizing digital currencies, social media scores and censorship. Tech giants, working with the government, have been meting out their own version of social justice by way of digital tyranny and corporate censorship, muzzling whomever they want, whenever they want, on whatever pretext they want in the absence of any real due process, review or appeal. Digital currencies, combined with social media scores and surveillance capitalism, will create a litmus test to determine who is worthy enough to be part of society.
Weaponizing compliance. Even the most well-intentioned government law or program can be—and has been—perverted, corrupted and used to advance illegitimate purposes once profit and power are added to the equation. The war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on COVID-19, the war on illegal immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, road safety schemes, school safety schemes, eminent domain: all of these programs started out as legitimate responses to pressing concerns and have since become weapons of compliance and control in the police state’s hands.
Weaponizing behavioral science and nudging. Apart from the overt dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, there’s also the covert dangers associated with a government empowered to use these same technologies to influence behaviors en masse and control the populace.
Weaponizing desensitization campaigns aimed at lulling us into a false sense of security. The events of recent years—the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the lockdowns, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers—have conspired to acclimate the populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.
Weaponizing politics. Fear is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government and control a populace, dividing the people into factions, and persuading them to see each other as the enemy. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset.
Weaponizing the dystopian future. With greater frequency, the government has been issuing warnings about the dire need to prepare for the dystopian future that awaits us. For instance, the Pentagon training video, “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” predicts that by 2030 (coincidentally, the same year that society begins to achieve singularity with the metaverse) the military would be called on to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems. What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security. The chilling five-minute training video paints an ominous picture of the future bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have-nots. “We the people” are the have-nots.
The end goal of these mind control campaigns—packaged in the guise of the greater good—is to see how far the American people will allow the government to go in undermining our freedoms.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the facts speak for themselves.
Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly not looking out for our best interests, nor is it in any way a friend to freedom.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
No matter what carefully crafted sound bites and political spin get trotted out by Joe Biden and Donald Trump in advance of the 2024 presidential election, you can rest assured that none of the problems that continue to undermine our freedoms will be addressed in any credible, helpful way by either candidate, despite the dire state of our nation.
Indeed, the 2024 elections will not do much to alter our present course towards a police state.
Nor will the popularity contest for the new occupant of the White House significantly alter the day-to-day life of the average American greatly at all. Those life-changing decisions are made elsewhere, by nameless, unelected government officials who have turned bureaucracy into a full-time and profitable business.
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few uncomfortable truths about life in the American police state that we will not be hearing from either of the two leading presidential candidates.
1. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.”
2. By gradually whittling away at our freedoms—free speech, assembly, due process, privacy, etc.—the government has, in effect, liberated itself from its contractual agreement to respect our constitutional rights while resetting the calendar back to a time when we had no Bill of Rights to protect us from the long arm of the government.
3. Republicans and Democrats like to act as if there’s a huge difference between them and their policies. However, they are not sworn enemies so much as they are partners in crime, united in a common goal, which is to maintain the status quo.
4. Presidential elections merely serve to maintain the status quo. Once elected president, that person becomes part of the dictatorial continuum that is the American imperial presidency today.
5. The U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on foreign aid programs it can’t afford, all the while the national debt continues to grow, our domestic infrastructure continues to deteriorate, and our borders continue to be breached. What is going on? It’s obvious that a corporatized, militarized, entrenched global bureaucracy is running the country.
6. 1984 has become an operation manual for the omnipresent, modern-day surveillance state.
7. When exposing a crime is treated as committing a crime, you are being ruled by criminals. In the current governmental climate, obeying one’s conscience and speaking truth to the power of the police state can easily render you an “enemy of the state.”
8. If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it. Americans only think they’re choosing the next president. In truth, however, they’re engaging in the illusion of participation culminating in the reassurance ritual of voting. It’s just another manufactured illusion conjured up in order to keep the populace compliant and convinced that their vote counts and that they still have some influence over the political process.
9. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
10. The government knows exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate the populace and gain the public’s cooperation and compliance. This draconian exercise in how to divide, conquer and subdue a nation is succeeding. This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.
11. The government long ago sold us out to the highest bidder. The highest bidder, by the way, has always been the Deep State.
12. Every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent.
13. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled.
14. Privacy, as we have known it, is dead. Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by the U.S. government’s vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.
15. Private property means nothing if the government can take your home, car or money under the flimsiest of pretexts, whether it be asset forfeiture schemes, eminent domain or overdue property taxes.
16. If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.
17. From the moment they are born to the time they legally come of age, young people are now wards of the state.
18. All you need to do in order to be flagged as a suspicious character, labeled an enemy of the state and locked up like a dangerous criminal is use certain trigger words, surf the internet, communicate using a cell phone, drive a car, stay at a hotel, purchase materials at a hardware store, take flying or boating lessons, appear suspicious, question government authority, or generally live in the United States.
19. The government is pushing us ever closer to a constitutional crisis.
20. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.
These are not problems that can be glibly dismissed with a few well-chosen words, as most politicians are inclined to do.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to own up to the fact that there can be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.
Likewise, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. After all, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”
There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.
We are the government.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Shalhevet school head David Block (Boiling Point, 6/2/24): “If our community can’t handle something, I do have to consider that.”
The staff of the Boiling Point don’t consider themselves student journalists. They consider themselves journalists.
The official paper of Shalhevet, a prestigious orthodox Jewish day school in Los Angeles, is not a mere extra-curricular activity for the college-bound, but a living record of the larger community. And so the fact that the school is censoring the paper’s coverage of pro-Palestine viewpoints is an illustration of the nation’s current crisis of free speech and the free press as Israel’s slaughter in Gaza rages on.
The Boiling Point (6/2/24) reported that the school administration had censored an article about Muslim perspectives on Gaza because it quoted a teenager who “said Israel was committing genocide and that she did not believe Hamas had committed atrocities.” The paper said:
Head of school Rabbi David Block told faculty advisor Mrs. Joelle Keene to take down the story from all Boiling Point postings later that day.
It was the first time the administration had ordered the paper to remove an active story. The story is also not published in today’s print edition.
“Shalhevet’s principal ordered that the entire paper be taken out of circulation in what advisor Joelle Keene said was a striking change of pace,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (6/11/24) reported. She told the wire service, “There have been difficult stories and difficult moments and conflicts and that sort of thing. We’ve always been able to work them out.”
The administration’s justification for the censorship was twofold. The first reason for the censorship was that the pro-Palestine viewpoints were simply too hurtful for a community that was still in shock over the October 7 attacks against Israel by Hamas.
This is, to be quite blunt, demeaning to the students and the community. I was not much older than these students during the 9/11 attacks, but I spent that day and days after that at my student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. While our reporters piled into a car to drive to New York City, I joined my fellow editorial board members—Jews, Arabs and many others—in navigating a future of war, attacks on civil liberties and anti-Islamic hate.
And today, student journalists are no less important in this historical moment where students are standing up against the genocide in Gaza (USA Today, 5/2/24; AP, 5/2/24).
The Boiling Point is hardly pro-Hamas. As one of its editors, Tali Liebenthal, said in response to this point, it was indeed painful for the community to hear anti-Israel opinions, but “I don’t think that the Boiling Point has any responsibility to shield our readers from that pain.” The Shalhevet students, in the tradition of Jewish inquiry, do certainly appear able to explore the tough and difficult subjects of their moment.
But there’s a second, more banal reason for the censorship. Block told the Boiling Point, “My feeling is that this article would both give people the wrong impression about Shalhevet.” He added:
It would have very serious implications for whether they’re going to consider sending the next generation of people who should be Shalhevet students to Shalhevet.
Block is placing prospective parents’ sensitivities before truth and debate. He’s worried that families will see a quote in the paper they disagree with, decide the school is a Hamas hot house, and send their child for an education elsewhere. The suggestion is that the school’s enrollment numbers are more important, not just than freedom of the press, but than a central aspect of Jewishness: the pursuit of knowledge.
Would Block block articles exploring why ultra-religious Jews like Satmars (Shtetl, 11/22/23) and Neturei Karta (Haaretz, 3/27/24) oppose Zionism for theological reasons? We should hope a school for Jewish scholarship would be wise to value discussions of deep ideas over fear of offending potential enrollees.
Intercept (6/3/24): “After the editors [of the Columbia Law Review] declined a board of directors request to take down the articles, the board pulled the plug on the entire website.”
The Boiling Point affair is indicative of a larger problem with a censorship that exploits the term “antisemitism” and a sensitivity to Jewish suffering to silence anything remotely critical of Israel’s far-right government. Raz Segal, a Jewish Israeli scholar of genocide, had his position as director at the Center of Genocide and Holocaust students at the University of Minnesota rescinded (MPR, 6/11/24) because he wrote that Israel’s intentions for its campaign in Gaza were genocidal (Jewish Currents, 10/13/23). The board of directors of the Columbia Law Review briefly took down the journal’s website in response to an article (5/24) published about the Nakba, the expulsion of Palestinians—after the piece had already been spiked by the Harvard Law Review (Intercept, 6/3/24). The chair of the Jewish studies department at Dartmouth College was violently arrested during an anti-genocide protest (Jerusalem Post, 5/3/24).
The 92nd Street Y, a kind of secular Jewish temple of arts and culture in New York City, encountered massive staff resignations (NPR, 10/24/23) after it canceled a talk by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen because he had signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza (London Review of Books, 10/18/23). The author of the American Jewish Committee’s definition of antisemitism admits that his work is being used to crush free speech (Guardian, 12/13/19; Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/27/24).
These are prominent institutions that are meant to be pillars of openness and discourse in a free society, yet that are perverting themselves in order not to offend donors, government officials and sycophantic newspaper columnists. And the victims of this kind of censorship are Jews and non-Jews alike.
From the highest universities down to high schools like Shalhevet, administrators are cloaking their worlds in darkness. The journalists at the Boiling Point are part of a resistance keeping free speech and expression alive in the United States.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
My poems were written in anger after Tiananmen Square. But what motivates most prison writing is a fear of forgetting. Today I am free, but the regime has never stopped its war on words. By Liao Yiwu
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.