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NY TIMES TRIES TO REHABILITATE GOVT DISINFORMATION BOARD
Poor NY Times. They were so close to being a disinfo paper of record.
It was not to be, as the Biden Administration’s Disinfo Governance Board went down in flames this spring.
A 6 July article tried to spin the failed initiative as a victim of the very “disinformation” it was being established so valiantly to fight.
In fact, Americans actually raised their voices against the Biden administration’s propaganda gambit to undermine First Amendment free speech protections.
Even on purge-happy Twitter, reaction against the latest NY Times agit-press spin was strong.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of the Stanford School of Medicine, who was directly disparaged by the Times, tweeted:
The
@nytimes
should take responsibility for the disinformation campaign it has waged in support of lockdowns, school closures, and institutionalized covid hypochondria these past 2+ years. This campaign included smears of dissenting scientists, as I can personally attest.
Others pointed out that the “paper of record” has been a world-class champ in disinfo going back to Walter Duranty. In the last 20 years, the paper crusaded with disinfo about WMDs in Iraq, Russian collusion, COVID and vaccine narratives, and most recently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The Times also launched a new line of attack against an old enemy, talk radio. In a piece titled, “On Conservative Radio, Misleading Message Is Clear: ‘Democrats Cheat’”, the paper lamented:
“Misinfo experts warn that talk radio channels, many of which air political commentary 24 hours a day, receive far too little scrutiny … also uniquely difficult to analyze and … moderate, because the on-air musings from hosts usually disappear…”
Government Media Complex Wants to Expand “Fire In A Crowded Theater” Burn Down Free Speech Rights
Especially with the onset of the COVID War in 2020, the Federal government has coordinated with media, pharmaceutical and tech corporations to expansively define virtually any speech that threatens the elitist hegemony as “dangerous disinformation.”
The authoritarian tactic is not at all new. Of course.
It was seen during the Trump years, as a U.S. intelligence fueled deep state (with the very active help of corporate media) hobbled a political movement with bogus Hillary Clinton campaign concocted charges of Russian collusion.
Before that, the “climate change” lobby had created an effective blueprint for delegitimizing those who would debate the issue. They were called “science deniers.”
And “science” was the supreme bludgeon of the COVID War. There was no brooking opposition to the pronouncements of the CDC, and the personification of science itself, COVID czar Dr. Anthony Fauci.
To do so was to engage in disinformation dangerous to the public health and welfare.
The government used that rubric to crack down on peaceful objections and protests against COVID lockdowns, track and trace surveillance, and vaccine mandates.
But “dangerous disinformation” expanded to cover those who doubted the integrity of the 2020 Presidential election.
The Biden administration used it in 2021 to pillory those opposed to vaccine mandates, radical “green” energy policies, and gun control. Parents protesting CRT (Critical Race Theaory) curriculums at PTA meetings were fingered by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland as “dangerous disinfo” potential terrorists, worthy of special FBI response.
And when open war between Russia and Ukraine broke out in February of this year, the Biden administration was on it, smearing objections to its Nato expanionist “weapons and sanctions” policy as acts of Russian collaboration and dangerous disinfo.
Americans Fed Up With Institutional Control And Failure
The wreckage wrought by elites via COVID, environmental extremism and belligerent foreign policy has wakened many Americans to the blizzard of disinfo coming, not from average Americans on Twitter, and YouTube, but from elitist controlled institutions.
They have seen and endured the disparity of treatment of COVID and election fraud protests, compared to much more violent and destructive BLM and Antifa protests.
They know “dangerous disinformation” is a political tool to gut yet more of their rights and power, and to cede even more of it to elites.
It’s not surprising that the Biden presidency, in the wake of catastrophic losses in public support, tried to spring a full-blown “Disinformation Governance Board” on the American public.
But Americans are fed up with being on an unending short stick of policies which succeed only in driving more power and wealth to elites, while everybody else loses.
And they’ve had it with being told to shut up about it all.
A June 2022 Gallup poll showed all-time lows in public confidence along a spectrum of institutions.
The poll found that the government, especially Congress and the Presidency, media and Big Business all dropped to abysmal all-time lows in public support.
Small business notably retained the highest public confidence of any group.
Gallup said:
“This year’s poll marks new lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government—the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency (23%) and Congress. Five other institutions are at their lowest points in at least three decades of measurement, including the church or organized religion (31%), newspapers (16%), the criminal justice system (14%), big business (14%) and the police.”
If things keep going in the direction they are right now, elites soon might not have to worry about events in Europe.
The full whirlwind might be coming to America.
For further reading, see:
- “FBI ENCOURAGES SNITCHING ON “EXTREMIST” FAMILY MEMBERS” (13 Jul 2021)
- “GOVERNMENT: FREE SPEECH IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH” (21 Sep 2021)
- “FBI: THE POLITICIZED POLICE UNDERMINING AMERICA” (2 Nov 2021)
U.S. INTEL WORKING WITH “DATA BROKERS” TO TRACK AMERICANS, NEW EFF REPORT SHOWS
Remember those phone apps you clicked to “allow location,” assuming the data would be kept private and used only to provide you with more convenient services?
They’re not private. That data, funneled through several large private vendors, is being pipelined to U.S. Intel agencies to give them granular capabilities to identify and track American citizens.
No warrant needed or sought, no probable cause required.
The violations of Constitutional privacy rights have been detailed in a June 2022 Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) report titled “How the Federal Government Buys Our Cell Phone Location Data.”
According to the report, most app creators don’t even necessarily know or understand how the Software Development Kits (SDKs) they’re using are sending the location data to companies like Venntel.
Venntel, a “Data Broker” named in the report, has contracts with U.S. intelligence, selling the data and a platform for portal access to access and perform data queries and searches.
According to the EFF:
“Venntel has sold several annual licenses to its “Venntel Portal,” a web app granting access to its database, at a price of around $20,000 for 12,000 queries. It has also sold direct access to all of its data from a region, updated daily and uploaded to a government-controlled server, for a more lavish $650,000 per year.”
Babel Street, a government contractor, was also identified by the EFF as a phone app data siphon, via its “Location X” technology. The Trends Journal previously profiled abuses of the Babel Street / U.S. Intelligence relationship in “WATCH THE SNARK: AI CAN NOW DETECT SARCASM ON SOCIAL MEDIA” (11 May 2021).
Some other data brokers that siphon and sell via embeds in SDKs include Anomaly 6 and X-Mode.
The EFF notes:
“Perhaps the most prominent federal buyer of bulk location data is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as its subsidiaries, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).”
DHS has paid at least $2 million for location data products from Venntel, according to records cited by the EFF.
Few politicians are seeking to do anything about the corporate-government scheme to abuse data collection for the purpose of what EFF describes as comprehensive tracking and surveillance.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has been one who has been investigating and trying to shine light on the abuses.
The full EFF report can be viewed here.