The National Security State Is the Main Driver of Censorship in the US

Via Mercola

Story at-a-glance

  • In a February 16, 2024, interview, Tucker Carlson and Mike Benz discussed how the fundamental right to free speech in the United States, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is being eroded — not based on truthfulness but on alignment with the political and social agendas of those in power
  • Modern censorship is not as overt as historical examples. Instead, societal, technological and political means are being used to subtly integrate censorship into daily life
  • Initially a tool for freedom, the internet has been transformed into a mechanism for controlling speech, with governmental bodies, the defense industry and tech companies developing sophisticated methods for online suppression
  • New laws and institutional arrangements, both in the U.S. and internationally, such as the EU Digital Services Act, have created frameworks that legalize and formalize online censorship
  • Government, the private sector, civil society and media institutions are all working together to shape and control the narrative. To combat their whole-of-society censorship effort, we need a whole-of-society plan of our own that includes restructuring the legislative, civil, and media landscapes to promote true freedom

In a February 16, 2024, interview, Tucker Carlson and Mike Benz, founder and executive director of Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), discussed the erosion of free speech.

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Manufacturing Consent — The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall”

Guest Post by Whitney Webb

The political response to the crisis at the southern border continues to advance the bipartisan “smart wall,” having been backed by Trump and Biden alike. This bipartisan consensus reaches far beyond the US, as much of the world is similarly speeding along in implementing “digital borders.”

22 May 2019; Palmer Luckey, Founder @ Oculus VR Andutil Industries, during an interview during day two of Collision 2019 at Enercare Center in Toronto, Canada. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Sportsfile

 

The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Throughout the last several administrations, regardless of campaign and other public rhetoric, the porous nature of the border has remained unresolved. On several occasions, the situation as it has developed has been blamed largely on incompetence and government inefficiency. Though some administrations have been tougher than others in regards to terrestrial migration (under some metrics), the US-Mexico border has not been sealed off so to force entrants to cross through officially recognized and managed ports of entry.

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Touch screens are vastly more effective than the telescreens in “1984,” because they “let” you keep YOURSELF under surveillance every minute

Guest Post by Mark Crispin Miller

The surest way to keep us under totalitarian control has been to have us go and stay there “willingly”

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By Jerry Newfield

A Few Thoughts on Our Step-by-Step Subjugation

The appearance of the touch screen marks a milestone in the Age of the New Subjugation, A.K.A. the Digital Age, where you let your fingers do the walking and you shut your mind, close your mouth and comply. Having a control button between us and the screen somehow affirmed that we are not the machine and the machine R NOT us.

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Google, Microsoft, Facebook Among Tech Giants Illegally Harvesting Private Health Information

Guest Post by Mike Capuzzo

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok and the majority of medical and healthcare websites illegally harvest and sell private health information despite a federal crackdown on the practice, according to a new cybersecurity report by Feroot Security.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok and the majority of medical and healthcare websites illegally harvest and sell private health information despite a federal crackdown on the practice, according to a new cybersecurity report.

The report, by Toronto-based cybersecurity firm Feroot Security, analyzed hundreds of healthcare websites and found that more than 86% are collecting private data and transferring it to advertisers, marketers and Big Tech social media companies without user consent and in violation of privacy laws.

As patients or consumers browse their favorite or trusted medical websites or sign in to hospital portals to access their private health records, invisible bits of HTML code — called “tracking pixels” — embedded on the websites harvest private information, such as whether patients have cancer, erectile dysfunction or are behind on their hospital bill.

The information is repackaged and sold for a variety of uses, including to companies that target individual users with internet ads, according to the report.

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The Online Meanderings of an American Nobody & the Genuine Wisdom of an Imaginary Character

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

– C. S. Lewis (1942), “The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil”, p.8, HarperCollins UK, 2009

 

While having breakfast with a friend the other day, they commented on an article they had recently read online.  The article was about the discouragement of free speech at Ivy League colleges, and Harvard in particular.  I told them I saw the headline but never read the actual findings.   In any event, I said I wasn’t surprised… but what did surprise me was that the article showed up on their particular newsfeed; and, for them, I would have expected the online algorithmic process to have distilled the findings into another headline such as:  “Harvard Leads Ivy League in Prohibiting Hate Speech”.

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Geofence Surveillance: First, They Spied on Protesters. Then Churches. You’re Next

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”—Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975

If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.

This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.

Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time.

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SEE YOU ON THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Written in December 2019. Reposted in honor of the 50th anniversary of the album

And if the cloud bursts thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

 Brain Damage, Pink Floyd


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And if the dam breaks open many years too soon
And if there is no room upon the hill
And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too
I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon

Brain Damage, Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd’s 1973 Dark Side of the Moon album is considered one of the greatest albums of all-time. It stayed on the Billboard 200 charts for 937 weeks. Roger Waters concept was for an album that dealt with things that “make people mad”. The Dark Side of the Moon’s themes include war, conflict, greed, the passage of time, death, and insanity, the latter inspired in part by former band member Syd Barrett’s worsening mental state.

The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience, and empathy. The themes of this album are timeless and are as germane today as they were forty-six years ago, if not more relevant. The country and world are awash in conflict, driven by the greed of evil men. Decent, law abiding, hard-working, critical thinking Americans see the world going insane as the passage of time leads towards the death of an American empire.

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360 Degree Surveillance: How Police Use Public-Private Partnerships to Spy on Americans

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

We live in a surveillance state founded on a partnership between government and the technology industry.”— Law Professor Avidan Y. Cover

In this age of ubiquitous surveillance, there are no private lives: everything is public.

Surveillance cameras mounted on utility poles, traffic lights, businesses, and homes. License plate readers. Ring doorbells. GPS devices. Dash cameras. Drones. Store security cameras. Geofencing and geotracking. FitBits. Alexa. Internet-connected devices.

There are roughly one billion surveillance cameras worldwide and that number continues to grow, thanks to their wholehearted adoption by governments (especially law enforcement and military agencies), businesses, and individual consumers.

With every new surveillance device we welcome into our lives, the government gains yet another toehold into our private worlds.

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You’d Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Is Making a List, and You’re On It

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows when you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness’ sake!”
—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

You’d better watch out—you’d better not pout—you’d better not cry—‘cos I’m telling you why: this Christmas, it’s the Surveillance State that’s making a list and checking it twice, and it won’t matter whether you’ve been bad or good.

You’ll be on this list whether you like it or not.

Mass surveillance is the Deep State’s version of a “gift” that keeps on giving…back to the Deep State.

Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother.

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You’d Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Has a Naughty List, and You’re On It

Guest Post by John W. Whitehead

“He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when you’re awake

He knows when you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness’ sake!”

—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Santa’s got a new helper.

No longer does the all-knowing, all-seeing, jolly Old St. Nick need to rely on antiquated elves on shelves and other seasonal snitches in order to know when you’re sleeping or awake, and if you’ve been naughty or nice.

Thanks to the government’s almost limitless powers made possible by a domestic army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms, Santa can get real-time reports on who’s been good or bad this year. This creepy new era of government/corporate spying—in which we’re being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted—makes the NSA’s rudimentary phone and metadata surveillance appear almost antiquated in comparison.

Consider just a small sampling of the tools being used to track our movements, monitor our spending, and sniff out all the ways in which our thoughts, actions and social circles might land us on the government’s naughty list.

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LIVING IN A POTEMKIN WORLD

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”George Orwell, 1984

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”George Orwell, 1984

I never thought I would experience the dystopian “fictional” nightmare Orwell laid out in his 1949 novel. Seventy-two years later and his warning about a totalitarian society, where mass surveillance, repressive measures against dissenters, mind control through government indoctrination and propaganda designed to convince the masses lies are truth, fake is real and the narrative can be manipulated to achieve the desired outcome of those in power, have come to fruition.

Everything is fake. I don’t believe anything I’m told by the government, the media, medical “experts”, politicians, military leadership, bankers, corporate executives, religious leaders, financial professionals, and anyone selling themselves as an authority on any subject matter. We are truly living in times of mass deception, mass delusion, and mass willful ignorance.

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THEY WILL REAP WHAT THEY SOWED

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”Galations 6

US Using 15 Military Bases As Coronavirus Quarantine Locations

Via the CDC

“I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize: the government does not give a fuck about them. The government doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare, or your safety. It simply doesn’t give a fuck about you. It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.” – George Carlin

In a previous article – Cascade of Consequences – I attempted to make the case the ruthless billionaire oligarchs and their bought off lackey whores in government, media, academia, corporations, the military industrial complex, sickcare industry, and  Federal Reserve have used this engineered covid pandemia to further consolidate and expand their wealth, power and control over a frightened, willfully ignorant, compliant populace. In the month since that article the “powers that be” have ramped up the fear, increased their coercive mandates, reinstated mask mandates, and instituted vaccine passports in liberal bastion cities across America.

I see these ham-handed authoritarian dictates as a sign of weakness and their false narrative falling apart. A sense of desperation wafts from the halls of power in DC, corporate executive suites, and left-wing media outlets on the coasts who have overplayed their tyrannical hand. Resistance is building among an irate minority of critical thinking individuals who follow George Carlin’s first rule.

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CASCADE OF CONSEQUENCES

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” – George Orwell 1984

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“People will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.”Frank Zappa

Orwell and Zappa’s words of wisdom have never been truer than they are today. The level of untruth proliferated by the government, mainstream media, central bankers, military leaders, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Corp., and billionaire oligarchs has reached prolific heights. We are lost in a whirlwind of lies, destined to grow into a tornado of tragedy and ultimately result in a cascade of consequences.

Since the installation of the illegitimate dementia patient as president of this dying empire of debt by the Deep State (billionaire oligarchs, surveillance state agencies, military industrial complex, Silicon Valley censorship tyrants, corrupt bought off state politicians, Soros installed bureaucrats, and their propaganda arm – fake news media outlets), the country has further fractured into warring factions.

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Transgressing the Logic of the New Tyrannical Normal

Guest Post by Daniel Broudy

Scholars have speculated that Shirley Jackson’s timeless story The Lottery (1948) was a contemplation of and attempt to make sense of the ghastly forms of rationalization at work in Nazi death camps uncovered during the postwar Nuremberg trials.

While the major theme of Jackson’s story, man’s general inhumanity toward humankind, continues to reverberate, the development of a certain character within the tale speaks even more profoundly to the present. Old Man Warner and his unblinking obedience to strange abstractions embody a banality of evil that appears in many of his fellow townsfolk and the codes of behavior and speech they are goaded by bizarre norms to embrace.

Questioning these abstractions and the traditions that animate them comes at a substantial price, however.

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WHO IS SHAKING THE JAR?

“If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen. However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other. The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar. This is exactly what’s happening in society today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti-Mask. Vax vs. Anti-vax. Rich vs. poor. Man vs. woman. Cop vs. citizen. The real question we need to be asking ourselves is who’s shaking the jar… and why?” Shera Starr

Who's Shaking the Jar? - The Thinking Conservative

A few weeks ago, I saw the above quote in Jeff Thomas’ article Learning from Ants, and it has been reverberating in my mind ever since. It is a perfect analogy for what has been happening in this country for years, with the jar lately being shaken at a rate faster than a Biden vote count increase at 3:00 am in a swing state. Everyone in this country, and the world, is at each other’s throats. Who is shaking the jar? Why are they shaking the jar? Why do they want us fighting each other?

If they keep us focused on fighting each other, they believe we will not notice their reprehensible criminality, as they manipulate the masses through psychological engineering and the employment of propaganda techniques to push their desired narrative. If you ask someone – who is shaking the jar? – they will likely answer based on the standard left vs right, liberal vs conservative, white vs black paradigm which has been created by those benefiting from conflict. It is always a safe bet to follow the money when trying to identify the culprits.

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