Below is my column in The Hill on the release of the “Facebook Files.” After years to refusing to release the files or answer questions on its work with the government over the censorship of its users, Facebook yielded after Congress threatened contempt sanctions. The files are chilling but familiar. They include the government’s insistence on the censoring of official and true information on the side effects of the Covid vaccines as well as the origin of the virus. At one point, Nick Clegg, the company’s president of global affairs asked “Can someone quickly remind me why we were removing—rather than demoting/labeling—claims that Covid is man made.” The Vice President in charge of content policy responded, “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more. We shouldn’t have done it.”
Here is the column:
COVID-19, the flu and the common cold all walk into a bar. The bartender asks, “what is this? Some kind of sick joke?”
Indeed, it is one of the many COVID-19 jokes that raged on the internet during the pandemic. What citizens did not know is that the Biden administration was tracking the laugh lines for censorship, along with other views it found neither funny nor helpful.
The newly released “Facebook Files” revealed a concerted effort by the Biden administration to censor not just false information, but also true information, along with jokes that its functionaries simply found annoying.
Months ago, I testified before Congress on censorship after Elon Musk’s release of internal Twitter communications, also known as the Twitter Files. I warned that the government was engaging in “censorship by surrogate,” using corporate allies to do indirectly what it is legally prevented from doing directly.
Facebook had refused to open its own files on government censorship efforts. That came to an end when the House Judiciary Committee finally moved to hold Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt of Congress.
The resulting Facebook Files confirmed what many of us have suspected for years. Indeed, the emails proved to be a mirror image of what had occurred at Twitter — a massive effort by the government to pressure the company to censor its critics and other dissenting voices.
Facebook executives used similar language to lament the “overwhelming” effort of the government to censor citizens and its unwillingness to take “no” for an answer.
Over at Twitter, executives described a deluge of demands for censorship from federal officials at the FBI and other agencies. One official wrote that “[t]he FBI has some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ that are just doing keyword searches for violations. This is probably the 10th request I have dealt with in the last 5 days.”
In January 2020, Twitter’s then-director of policy and philanthropy, Carlos Monje Jr., expressed unease about the pressure coming from the FBI. “They are probing & pushing everywhere they can (including by whispering to congressional staff),” he said.
One email from August 2022 sent “long lists of newspapers, tweets or YouTube videos” deemed to be voicing “anti-Ukraine narratives.” Even satirical and comedy sites were reportedly designated by the government for removal.
Now we know that Facebook executives were facing the same insatiable government desire for censorship. In an April 2021 email, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president for global affairs, wrote to colleagues that Andy Slavitt, a senior adviser to Biden who was steering COVID-19 policy, “was outraged — not too strong a word to describe his reaction — that [Facebook] did not remove this post.”
The post was actually a humorous meme shared by a user named Timothy McComas. It featured actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s character from the film “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” pointing at a TV with a beer and cigarette in hand. The caption read: “10 years from now, you will be watching TV and hear…. ‘Did you or a loved one take the COVID vaccine? You may be entitled…’”
Slavitt was not amused. More importantly, he was irate that others were amused. Hundreds of thousands of others.
He explained that McComas had to be censored because such humor “demonstrably inhibits confidence in COVID vaccines amongst those the Biden Administration is trying to reach.”
At the same time, the White House was targeting those with well-founded questions over the efficacy of masks, the relative protection of natural immunities and the harm posed to children in the pandemic measures. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote: “We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the [Biden] White House” to remove posts criticizing COVID-19 vaccines.
As at Twitter, the pressure on Facebook was unrelenting. Even with a massive censorship partnership in place, President Joe Biden continued to accuse Big Tech of “killing people” by not censoring more citizens. Many of those targets are now recognized as having raised valid objections, including on the origins of the virus in a Chinese lab.
An Aug. 2, 2021, Facebook email said that the company’s leadership “asked Misinfo Policy…to brainstorm some additional policy levers we can pull to be more aggressive against…misinformation. This is stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.”
Facebook officials began to object, but continued to ban users. In one email, a vice president balked that “the [White House] has previously indicated that it thinks humor should be removed if it is premised on the vaccine having side effects, so we expect it would similarly want to see humor about vaccine hesitancy removed.”
There was to be no allowance for humor or even true information that did not advance the government’s narrative. The House has uncovered a myriad of grants given to academic and private groups to blacklist and target those with opposing views, including the posting of true information.
There was an array of government agencies targeting citizens and groups for censorship. In another hearing, I testified on efforts by Jen Easterly, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, to extend her regulatory authority by declaring that “critical infrastructure” includes “our cognitive infrastructure,” in which she saw it as her role to build “resilience to misinformation and disinformation.”
The administration also demanded the removal of “malinformation” that is “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
Government-funded groups such as the Stanford Virality Project declared that even “true stories…could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The Twitter files showed that this included “worrisome jokes.”
The Biden administration and its allies were right about one thing: Jokes can be deadly to a censorship system. For centuries, humor has been the effective way to expose the abusive and often ridiculous efforts of censorship.
So, in an effort to make the government’s censorship listing, here is one that might resonate with the administration and its hosts on social media:
A coronavirus walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Sorry, we don’t serve viruses here!”
The coronavirus replies, “Well, you’re not a very good host!”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law for George Washington University.
Thank God for RFK, an honest and decent man who supports free speech and who opposes public corruption, politically weaponized government, policies that harm working people, and endless wars. Although Democrat leaders will do everything they can to sabotage RFK’s efforts to become their nominee for the presidency, what they cannot do is prevent the American people from learning that Democrat leaders in decades past were nothing like the evil people we see today.
RFK, or Robert Frances Kennedy, was assassinated by the Global Communist Deep Deep State Swamp in 1968, employing a security guard (i.e. fatal shot at 1 inch, entering behind right ear), who was escorting and holding RFK’s elbow, and Sirhan Sirhan as a decoy and distraction.
Responding to Olly:
You make some very good points but the real danger is “Unconstitutional Authoritarianism” – a problem in all political parties.
“Unconstitutional Authoritarianism” is a constitutionally oath sworn official that perceives their job authority as being above the U.S. Constitution [a wartime governing charter].
Both parties do it. Jonathan Turley was actually viewed as a “Liberal” by most Republicans when he called out the George W. Bush officials for violating their Oath of Office loyalty oath.
Politically maybe George Washington made the most accurate prediction. Washington warned that if political parties were overly divisive, the party system itself could destroy America. Republican founder, Abraham Lincoln, also warned that a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Almost all of the left wing radicals that bombard this site with 100 comments a day are victims of TDS and can’t view any story without bringing Trump into it. Well we have a new obsessed leftist here who cannot comment without bringing up George Bush. Does anyone else find this really odd?
Being older I remember when Nixon was the cause of all ills and the pony-tailed left hated him with an almost insane passion. The Nixon hate only started to abate when Reagan came on the scene and the pony-tails could direct their ire at him. Of course now they have Trump for the reason it is hot outside and as the cause for their marriage breaking up, but this will pass once there is a new Republican leader. We see this phenomenon happening with DeSantis lately.
It is always a Republican! They hated Romney and went so far as to say he caused a woman to die of cancer. They loved McCain right up to the day he got the nomination and then he was a war mongering, skirt chasing lunatic.
Trust me, if the Republicans nominated Mother Teresa they would blame her for Gandhi’s death, Mandela’s imprisonment, the assassination of MLK and the rise in the temperature.
I had an epiphany last night that helped explain the trolls and frankly our current culture in Western Civilization. I never appreciated social media, never embraced any of it, and was often ridiculed by folks for being a “Ludite” because I shunned Facebook account, Instragram, texting, etc. By chance I watched the trailer last night to the 2010 movie “Social Network” regarding Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. I noticed immediately a beautiful acapella song by women, and investigated further. I had never heard of the song, “Creep”, did not know the lyrics, and was stunned at the meaning of the song. And then my epiphany hit me like a 2×4 over my head. The song “Creep” was paired with the movie “Social Network” because it is Mark Zukerberg’s anthem and clearly current social media addicts.
Prior to Mass this morning, I played the song again and again and again, carefully reading the lyrics on another website, wondering why I had never put all of it together. Then my spouse entered the living room. It was then I was informed that the song “Creep” was perfomed in the early 1990s by a group called “Radiohead”, and that their interpretation of the song was very sad and very different than the version that the movie “Social Network” used. I will leave it up to you to make your own conclusions. However, it is very apparent to me that the trolls and most Americans who are addicted to their social media accounts have the song “Creep” as their anthem. I am overcome with gratitude to my parents that I was so loved as a child by parents who equipped me with every tool I might need to face life, in spite of our family poverty and being immigrants and not White.
Social media apps would have never been embraced by Americans if they did not embody the very lyrics of the song “Creep”. It explains our trolls and alas our culture.
lyrics 2nd verse:
I don’t care if it hurts
I wanna have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I’m not around
You’re so f******* special
I wish I was special
[Chorus]
But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here
Oh, oh
Upstate, as your comment is a bit ambiguous, I sure hope you are referring to ChurchVille and not to me. I know you and I agree about 99% of the time, so I’m trusting that you agree that ChurchVille is just our newest little headache.
Re: Hullbobby
As a small business owner, my former customers included Karl Rove and Condoleeza Rice. Condi and I spent 4 hours together on a job once.
My other friends and family members were personal friends to Barry Goldwater and some were advisors to Colin Powell and Ronald Reagan himself.
George W. Bush was something but he was not your granddaddy’s Republican Party!
Have you noticed almost 100% of the witnesses against RINO Trump are actually real Republicans!
Peter, remember when you accused me of being Hullbobby, Thinkitthrough, a Russian troll and many others? Those who were fun times. Since then you have become a real drip. Speaking of drip, you forgot to mention your regular customers at your nail salon in West Hollywood, CA, like Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Chlamydia trachomatis and Treponema pallidum
Have fun in WeHo tonight but remember to wrap it
Estovir,
I might have a workaround for you regarding the tweets. See my latest comment under the Biden’s Break the glass article.
There have to be consequences of all this censorship, including jail time with some ability to block pardons or parole. If that can be done legally. There are robust means of dealing with these perpetrators but we have to do it legally or risk the downfall of the nation. Anything done illegally by our side will, in turn, be used against us. The president must be impeached even if the senate does not convict. That is the best opportunity to lay all of the censorship on the table and in front of the public as well as the corruption and payoffs. If the Democrats can pressure to censor then a Republican administration can pressure the media to broadcast the impeachment, without censoring. Then, if you get a Republican administration, you have to deconstruct homeland security, FBI, NSA, DNI and rebuild from the ground up. Then pass legislation to personally hold liable those who issue the orders and those who carry out the orders to censor and illegally target individual groups and citizens who hold views counter to the government and who peacefully protest. Protecting those who wish to ‘peacefully assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Legislation should always strictly limit presidential actions that alter or do not enforce the legislation. The presidential tendency to rule by decree needs to be curtailed. Changes in regulations 1 year after legislation need to be actively passed by both houses of congress. A veto of this assent renders the executive order or proposed change in regulation invalid. Pass new legislation.
It can be done. It is not lost on me that most of the protection we are getting these days stems from the governors and legislatures of the Red States. If we win in 2024, then that is where the new cabinet comes from not just more D.C. hacks.
I agree with term limits for Senators and Congressmen (12 years and you only get a window of 12 consecutive years to serve and then you no longer qualify), as well as Term limits for Federal District Court Judges and Appeals Court judges with qualifications of previous judicial service prior to any federal judgeship.
The Supreme Court needs more thought as far as term limits or not. A clarifying amendment might state that the constitution be interpreted in its original state. No more “living constitution”. There is an amendment process that might be slightly loosened. (Further discussion would be needed)
GEB,
Great comment and I like your ideas.
Unfortunately it would take some real decent politicians to vote for something like term limits.
This is a great mental exercise of a “what if” say there was a Red State Secession, who drew up a Constitution that copies the original with some clarifying points limiting government over reach i.e. censorship by proxy, and term limits.
OT,
If you get a chance, check out The Free Press’s Bari Weiss in her interview with historian Peter Turchin.
Are We Living Through ‘End Times’
“Historian Peter Turchin predicted the turbulence of 2020. He tells me why, in 2024, America will reach a ‘break point.’”
https://www.thefp.com/p/peter-turchin-end-times-bari-weiss
We need a 28th amendment to the Constitution, freezing the Supreme Court at 9 justices so that a simple majority of the House and Senate cannot pack the court.
Nuremburg 2.0 when?
Holy Toledo! The paranoid delusions are in full swing. Professor Turley sure loves to stoke it, groom it, and exploit it for full effect on his gullible readers.
Facebook wasn’t forced, just like twitter was. Being disingenuous with the facts is JT’s forte. Being a hypocrite an inconvenient truth about him. So much so that he engages in the very thing he’s criticizing.
No name no cojones, What part of the West Wing to you work in?
I don’t think it could be a WH employee. Someone that ignorant and ill-informed would not be allowed out of his mom’s basement.
The court in Missouri v Biden determined that the relevant standard for finding state action in private censorship was coercion, strong encouragement or joint participation. It found that all three were met in this instance.
There is nothing paranoid or delusional about that. The Government here has latent power over the social media companies through Section 230, regulation, and the ability to provide or withhold commercially important contracts and assistance. As Nick Clegg argued, FB should bow to Government pressure because it has “other fish to fry” with the Government. FB is in business to make money for its shareholders, and getting on the wrong side of the Government could be disastrous for its business model.
That is why the First Amendment precludes this kind of Government pressure.
D: Nicely argued. A “honest” force-wielder comes at you directly. A dishonest one goes after your friends and family.
Thanks for the backup.
Being a troll must be exhausting. For you have to twist the facts, defend illegal behavior, and root for an authoritarian government. Or, you could just be an ignorant idiot. But either way is must make for a miserable existence.
Cfofthewoods,
An ignorant idiot but a useful one for the DNC.
Miserable and pathetic excuse for a human being.
you are ignoring the emails that facebook mgrs discussed their predicament. Wanting/needing govt approval, regulation, help etc. and what ignoring thousands of requests would yield in consequences. So saying they weren’t forced is your standard pedantry. doesn’t fit the Webster definition of ‘force’, but suffering consequences was a real danger.
Iowan2, exactly right. The question under the Constitution is whether this kind of pressure is enough to implicate the Government in censorship by the platforms.
The court in Missouri v Biden found that it likely was enough and issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Government to stop.
The 5th Circuit issued an administrative stay of that preliminary injunction while it considers the Government’s appeal of the grant of the preliminary injunction, which it said it would do on an expedited basis.
So we should know reasonably soon whether the 5th Circuit allows the preliminary injunction to stand. That decision may then be appealed, either to the full 5th Circuit en banc or to the Supreme Court.
After all that the district court will get to the trial on the merits, unless a procedural ruling by the 5th Circuit or Supreme Court precludes that.
If there is a trial on the merits, the decision will almost certainly be appealed, ultimately to the Supreme Court.
Before this is finally resolved, there may be a change of administration. If the Republicans take over the executive branch, the Government could reverse its position on what the Constitution requires.
So this will be a long-running saga.
There have been very good comments addressing the alarming efforts to silence dissent. Do not forget, we would likely not know about any of the corruption, bribery, money laundering, voter suppression, public private collusion to violate our rights, had the Republicans not gotten the majority in the House.
Public private “partnerships” to control the flow of information are connected ultimately with the most important voice we have…elections.
2016 was a dodged bullet. Democrat’s exploited Covid to alter the electoral process in 2020. In a normal world, 2022 should have been a landslide for Republicans. And yet the Federman party magically held the Senate. The choice is no longer between which party has better ideas for our country. That process changed once the Democratic party embraced policies hostile to a constitutional Republic. With the enemy deep inside the gates, our most vulnerable national security area now is the electoral process. It needs to be treated as such.
“It’s the [Constitution], stupid!”
– James Carville
_____________
America would survive very well indeed without elections. America will not survive in the absence of the Constitution and Bill of Rights (Karl Marx’s “Reconstruction Amendments” are an absurd, deleterious aberration). The singular American failure is the judicial branch with emphasis on the Supreme Court. Courts have failed to fulfill their sworn-oath duty to “support” the clear meaning and intent, the literal “manifest tenor” of the Constitution, which establishes a restricted-vote republic, effectively prohibiting Karl Marx’s “dictatorship of the proletariat,” aka one man, one vote democracy. Article 2, Section 1, reserves to the States the power to entitle citizens to vote, or to deny citizens the vote. Lincoln’s acts must have been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, beginning with his illicit denial of secession.
The entire American welfare state is unconstitutional. Per the Constitution, Congress cannot tax for individual welfare (only debt, defense and general welfare) or regulate anything other than the value of money, commerce (with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes) and land and naval Forces. The absolute right to private property (5th amendment, is qualified by the Constitution and, therefore, cannot be further qualified) provides only to owners the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property. Per the Constitution, Americans are maximally free and the government is maximally limited and restricted.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
“the people are nothing but a great beast…
I have learned to hold popular opinion of no value.”
– Alexander Hamilton
_________________
“The true reason (says Blackstone) of requiring any qualification, with regard to property in voters, is to exclude such persons, as are in so mean a situation, that they are esteemed to have no will of their own.”
“If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.”
– Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, 1775
I wish I had something other to say than our left wing parties globally are nothing more than totalitarian regimes in the 21st century. They reveal more and more of their vileness with every passing day.
They are indeed going after our appliances, and they are indeed contemplating ‘climate’ lockdowns a la covid because there’s hot weather in the summer. They will declare an emergency which gives the President all kinds of powers to do all kinds of unilateral things they would otherwise not have. They will find a way to circumvent the Constitution and they don’t care if it’s temporary so long as they achieve the desired end or cause the intended damage.
They do indeed actually carry out all that they accuse others of (classic Marxism, though to be fair, younger folks may not recognize that fact or understand its implications), and they will indeed not stop until our personal autonomy is a memory, they simply won’t. This all underlies every other piece of news. That’s all there is to it for me, and hey – I voted for Obama the first time, I drank the koolaid, too. Thank goodness for the Professor and others here of such Constitutional acumen – we need it more than at any other time in our nation’s history. None of our social media CEOs would fall into that category, not a one.
It must be at least 5 years ago, or longer — well before COVID — that I was closed out of my Facebook account by an elementary procedure. One day I went to my Facebook page and found that I couldn’t get into my account unless I verified who I was by giving the telephone number associated with my account. It was a remarkably-simple and effective exclusionary procedure, because when I’d opened the account, it had not been necessary to provide a phone number, so I had not provided one and there was NO telephone number associated with my Facebook account that I could offer in order to get into my own account.
Under the circumstances, I could neither access my Facebook account nor even close the account. As far as I know, my Facebook account is still there, with god knows who might be going in and out of it, or using it for some purpose having nothing to do with me. And there was literally NOBODY that I could locate to straighten out the situation, because all I could locate were an endless series of FAQs that popped up when I tried to contact Facebook and deal with the extremely-bizarre and FRAUDULENT situation.
As far as I’m concerned, Facebook is the biggest scam going ANYWHERE, and to this day, to the best of my knowledge most aspects of the Facebook scam go completely unreported.
It was reported that 70% of the Dems in Congress support censorship. They will continue to bang their drum and declare that censorship protects us from ourselves. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dangerous and most be silenced. The release of these files will not bring this lunacy to an end.
The reality is that there will likely never be First Amendment protections for online speech, largely due to the excessive archiving issue.
20 years ago (old technology) most email providers and social media sites retained those online records for 3-8 years. A government official could obtain those records.
In 2023 and going forward, with hard drive memory storage improvements, soon it will likely be possible to retain those records for the life for every person. Even archiving complete telephone conservations. It’s possible to create a dossier on every American, even if no crime were committed by the citizen.
When a national emergency happens (ie: 9/11 or Covid) – even judges (duty of Guardians of the Constitution) will not provide judicial review over the political branches. Judges simply go along with the other two branches following a national emergency.
During those national emergency situations, any agency can scoop up any information they please and keep it and analyze it – even legal First Amendment activity.
Since it’s illegal for any government official to punish legal activity – this creates Cointelpro style blacklisting tactics – government officials illegally and covertly punishing American citizens.
21st Century America is a lawless “Wild West” for online speech – be careful!
That’s a complete no-brainer.
The missing ingredient in the Founders’ America is a judicial branch that does its job fully and per the literal Constitution.
Every deviation, “interpretation” and act of negligee by the judicial branch demands impeachment and conviction, not only for dereliction but for treason.
Every judge and Justice that contradicts the clear meaning and intent of the Constitution must be subject to the full force and effect of the Constitution.
Every elected official that contradicts the same clear meaning must also be subject to the penalties prescribed by the Constitution.
The Constitution must be presented accurately and strictly adhered to.
So, besides the very general (“don’t elect those who believe in government censorship”), what can be done to prevent this in the future? Clearly we can’t count on the private sector to push back, refusing government censorship “requests.” Not optimistic…..
So the Biden admin did what it could to censor American’s by proxy through third parties.
Even humor.
That tells me this admin would go through great lengths to include un-Constitutional ones, to prevent information, even truthful information and humor in the name of tyranny.
This should be the story of the year.
The criticism I have always had of Turley is that it takes him so very long to “discover” what is so obvious to the rest of us.
After long-running Sergeant Schultz defense and claims that it is not government censorship, they finally fess up. Big woo. Irreparable damage done.
If a local, state or federal official violated the First Amendment like this, the DOJ could indict them under federal criminal statute 18 US Code 245 – although little case law on First Amendment crimes – this statute does make it a federal crime for any official local, state or federal.
Despite what the Biden Administration says, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is nothing more than another attempt to formalize censorship in today’s new Amerika for the “safety and welfare of the people”. Reminds me of French author Albert Camus when he wrote “the welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants, giving the servants of tyranny a good conscious”. Facebook and Twitter executives caved to the relentless pressure from the FBI no less. If that doesn’t convince you that the FBI needs to be disbanded then nothing will. Reassign them all to the southern border if they want to keep their federal jobs and do actual law enforcement instead of being the Pulitzer Police for Columbia University. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article.
I was suspended/ banned from Facebook and Twitter at least a half dozen times for posts related to Covid and the vaccines. Meanwhile, my wife had gotten Covid, fully symptomatic – what I believe was the “Delta” strain – four months after our initial double-dose; without Regeneron (a twenty-four page medical form in New York) it’s doubtful she would have survived. Some months later I got what I believe was Omicron, an incredibly bad sinus infection, that lasted a full eight days… I don’t believe the vaccines aided in any way, to prevent Covid, or to prevent transmission (just ludicrous, how could a vaccine possibly prevent transmission if unable to prevent infection), nor.. act in any way to lessen or mitigate; how is such response even quantifiable, or measurable, on individual cellular level? Again, it’s just ludicrous.
Am I a conspiracy theorist? Hell no, this was our actual experience. And one seemingly shared, by the way, by virtually everyone we knew.
I believed from the very first that Covid was likely a bioweapon, likely created by the US itself, introduced and perfectly timed to coincide with Democrat failure of Trump’s second impeachment (which is precisely what happened, or precisely when it burst upon the stage). Is that conspiracy theory? Absolutely. But that’s what I believed then and that’s what I believe now. Yes, I truly believe that those who have commandeered the machinations of government are just that evil and corrupt; to deny such possibility is to deny history itself.
Furthermore, that insider talk, perception at the time (March of 2020), amongst some of the world’s most renowned medical researchers, was very likely correct – that herd immunity, as evolutionary, and inevitable, was rational course.
What I saw re Covid was the pollicization of pandemic – the first in our nation’s history – to the benefit of pharmaceuticals and political elites. At detriment to lives and economy; we suffer still. While many paid far more.
(And so, I find myself once more at risk of banishment?)
It was during the first impeachment. It first landed on our shores in the Seattle area in January of 2020, during the ill-fated Senate trial. Around the same time, the CCP steamrolled Hong Kong’s independence 23 years premature. The further away we get from the ‘perfect phone call,’ the more it looks like sabotage.
The Facebook files “include the government’s insistence on the censoring of . . .”
“If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” (George Washington)
And *that* is the censor’s motivation: Keep Americans dumb, so that they remain silent in the face of tyranny.
A member within our friend and family circle has worked on both Google and Facebook facilities building infrastructure. In the case of Google, one section was fenced and guarded and it was known among workers that this particular building was being run by NSA. Facebook makes a modest amount of revenue from each of its users by targeted advertisements, however, they have a lot of users. What they have is information on all its users and massive computing power.
Is it any wonder that Google can steer searches away from damning information? They may not actually remove all of the content but it is not going to show up in an obvious place. “The best place to hide a dead body” a Google engineer once told me “is on the second page of a Google search.”
What will be the next phase of control of the populace with the advent of advanced computing systems such the evolution of A.I.? Why did Mark spend over 400 million dollars of his personal money to target key voting districts during the 2020 election. The reasons are blatantly obvious.
Buyer Beware!
Unfortunately, spirited free speech advocates with the most compelling objective evidence are spitting into the wind against the Censorship Industrial Complex. The average reader will not see the factual evidence in the MSM media, the Washington Post, the New York Times or the Associated Press. Which means that lesser media which utilizes those sources will not report the evidence either.
In the CIC universe of collaborative censorship, Professor Turley, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald do not even exist.
Stick a fork in America – because it’s cooked…
“Professor Turley . . .”
Add Michael Shellenberger to that list.
Support independent media when and where you can!
A good friend of mine just shared his “news experience”. He is a high earner of high intelligence and a helpful and active man in his local neighborhood. He enjoys his family TV late evenings after the workday.
He was loudly expressing himself to me at his new home that “All it is , is Trump Trump Trump Trump 90% of the time, then the other ten percent is Ukraine. There is OTHER STUFF GOING ON ! “, he exclaimed. He also commented he despises both Biden and Trump.
Oh, I chuckled. I don’t watch it.
I have been warning him and sharing things he just could not believe.
A year later he comes to me and says “You were right.”
This is a common sense, “well informed” , highly digitally capable, outgoing person.
He is not “receiving the data” to really know what is going on at all.
He will on occasion catch this or that, a partial understanding, a gotcha type talking point, without the larger and more important back round and really disturbing truth.
Thus, I think, unless somehow the wider public is informed, we are headed in a very bad direction.