Mike Benz Recommends How to Be Arrested

I don't know who this is, but this gentleman exhibits incredible composure while being arrested:

The above tweet was posted by Mike Benz, who has become a hero to me based upon his encyclopedic coverage of the military-censorship-industrial complex.  Mike, a former State Department official, is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online.  He is incredibly brave based on the monied and powerful people he is angering.  If you want to know how bad things are getting for those of use who still believe in the First Amendment, watch and learn:

Probably the best place to start is this one-hour synopsis by Mike Benz that is equally brilliant and horrifying:

Here's an excerpt from the above one-hour interview (Tucker Carlson and Mike Benz):

Tucker Carlson: You're not describing democracy. You're describing a country in which democracy is impossible.

Mike Benz: What I'm essentially describing is military rule. I mean, what's happened with the rise of the censorship industry is a total inversion of the idea of democracy itself. You know, democracy sort of draws its legitimacy from the idea that it is ruled by consent of the people being ruled that is, it's not really being ruled by an overlord, because the government is actually just our will expressed by our consent with who we vote for. The whole push after the 2016 election and after Brexit, and after a couple of other, you know, social media-run elections that went the wrong way from what the State Department wanted, like the 2016 Philippines Election, was to completely invert everything that we described as being the underpinnings of a democratic society in order to deal with the threat of free speech on the internet. And what they essentially said is, we need to redefine democracy from being about the will of the voters to being about the sanctity of democratic institutions. And who are the the democratic institutions? Oh, it's us. You know, it's the military. It's NATO. It's the IMF and the World Bank. It's the mainstream media. It is the NGOs and oh of course, these NGOs are largely state department funded, or IC funded. It's essentially all of the elite establishments that were under threat from the rise of domestic populism that declared their own consensus to be the new definition of democracy. Because if you define democracy as being the strength of democratic institutions rather than a focus on the will of the voters, then what you're left with is essentially, democracy is just the consensus building architecture within the within the democratic institutions themselves.

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Continue ReadingMike Benz Recommends How to Be Arrested

A Review of Some of the Amicus Briefs Filed in the U.S. Supreme Court Case of Murthy v Missouri

Murthy v Missouri will be argued on March 18. This is one of the most important First Amendment cases in this history of the U.S. Supreme Court, yet A) the NYT and most other big corporate news outlets will not discuss it and B) the ACLU refuses to get involved.

On his Substack, Aaron Kheriaty, M.D., discussed some of the amicus briefs filed in a nationally important in which he is a plaintiff, Murthy v Missouri (called Missouri v Biden in lower courts).

How important is this case?  Here is an excerpt from the opinion of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals:

We find that the White House, acting in concert with the Surgeon General’s office, likely (1) coerced the platforms to make their moderation decisions by way of intimidating messages and threats of adverse consequences, and (2) significantly encouraged the platforms’ decisions by commandeering their decision-making processes, both in violation of the First Amendment...

Generally speaking, officials from the White House and the Surgeon General’s office had extensive, organized communications with platforms. They met regularly, traded information and reports, and worked together on a wide range of efforts. That working relationship was, at times, sweeping. Still, those facts alone likely are not problematic from a First-Amendment perspective. But, the relationship between the officials and the platforms went beyond that. In their communications with the platforms, the officials went beyond advocating for policies ... or making no-strings-attached requests to moderate content ...Their interaction was “something more.”

We start with coercion. On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP” and accounts “immediately,” and to “slow[]down” or “demote[]” content. In doing so, the officials were persistent and angry. Cf. Bantam Books, 372 U.S. at 62–63. When the platforms did not comply, officials followed up by asking why posts were “still up,” stating (1) “how does something like [this] happen,” (2) “what good is” flagging if it did not result in content moderation, (3) “I don’t know why you guys can’t figure this out,” and (4) “you are hiding the ball,” while demanding “assurances” that posts were being taken down. And, more importantly, the officials threatened—both expressly and implicitly—to retaliate against inaction. Officials threw out the prospect of legal reforms and enforcement actions while subtly insinuating it would be in the platforms’ best interests to comply. As one official put it, “removing bad information” is “one of the easy, low-bar things you guys [can] do to make people like me”—that is, White House officials—“think you’re taking action.”

That alone may be enough for us to find coercion. Like in Bantam Books, the officials here set about to force the platforms to remove metaphorical books from their shelves. It is uncontested that, between the White House and the Surgeon General’s office, government officials asked the platforms to remove undesirable posts and users from their platforms, sent follow-up messages of condemnation when they did not, and publicly called on the platforms to act. When the officials’ demands were not met, the platforms received promises of legal regime changes, enforcement actions, and other unspoken threats. That was likely coercive...

We also find that the FBI likely significantly encouraged the platforms to moderate content by entangling themselves in the platforms’ decision making processes.... Beyond taking down posts, the platforms also changed their terms of service in concert with recommendations from the FBI. For example, several platforms “adjusted” their moderation policies to capture “hack-and-leak” content after the FBI asked them to do so (and followed up on that request). Consequently, when the platforms subsequently moderated content that violated their newly modified terms of service (e.g., the results of hack-and-leaks), they did not do so via independent standards.... Instead, those decisions were made subject to commandeered moderation policies. In short, when the platforms acted, they did so in response to the FBI’s inherent authority and based on internal policies influenced by FBI officials. Taking those facts together, we find the platforms’ decisions were significantly encouraged and coerced by the FBI...

[T]he Supreme Court has rarely been faced with a coordinated campaign of this magnitude orchestrated by federal officials that jeopardized a fundamental aspect of American life. Therefore, the district court was correct in its assessment—“unrelenting pressure” from certain government officials likely “had the intended result of suppressing millions of protected free speech postings by American citizens.”

State v. Biden, 80 F.4th 641, 653 (5th Cir.), opinion withdrawn and superseded on reh'g, 83 F.4th 350 (5th Cir. 2023), cert. granted sub nom. Murthy v. Missouri, 144 S. Ct. 7 (2023).

Based on Kheriaty's summaries of the amicus briefs, it's surreal to see how many formerly admirable institutions have become throughly corrupted by money (often government money) and power to represent the joint position of the U.S. Government and mega-corporations. This is what you might expect with so many entities receiving government largess to do the government's dirty work. This includes the ACLU, as Kheriaty comments:

Not long ago, the ACLU would have championed the plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden. The organization was founded in 1920 in response to the Wilson administration criminalization of dissent regarding World War I. After the jailings of journalists, pamphleteers, and presidential candidate Eugene Debs, the ACLU immediately began defending anti-war activists’ First Amendment freedoms.

The ACLU famously defended neo-Nazis’ right to march through a Jewish suburb, but the organization later became an arm of the Democratic Party, shedding its former principles in the process.

The group has no shortage of amici briefs and opinions on their website; they’ve petitioned courts to support gun control, abortion, Covid vaccine mandates, and race-based university admissions and to oppose bans on men in women’s sports and efforts to curb illegal immigration. Despite this flurry of opinions and news releases, the ACLU has not made a single mention of Murthy v. Missouri (or Missouri v. Biden) on its website.

While the politicization of the ACLU has been well-documented over the last decade, it remains remarkable that the country’s most prominent civil liberties organization has decided not to support plaintiffs in what may amount to the most consequential First Amendment case of the last half-century.

This case is coming up for oral argument on March 18.

You wouldn't know much about this based on the silence of corporate media. Kheriaty mentions this:

While news outlets like the New York Times have largely ignored the case and others like CNN have insisted that “it is far from clear that the administration’s conduct amounted to censorship,” the Wall Street Journal has dutifully covered the legal proceedings and taken an editorial stand against the White House’s attacks on free expression.

For a detailed and principled view of Murthy and the First Amendment, consider this amicus brief filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Continue ReadingA Review of Some of the Amicus Briefs Filed in the U.S. Supreme Court Case of Murthy v Missouri

New Attempt to Prop Up the Corrupt Corporate News Media

Government funding is being proposed for corporate media. This will work in tandem with government censorship to muzzle everyone else (as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals made clear in the case of Missouri v Biden, about to be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court). This dramatic and deplorable proposal is necessary because, as anyone who is paying attention knows, corporate media is a source of non-stop lies on virtually any issue of national importance.

Take-aways from this article:

Establishment media companies are facing a decline in their dominance due to competition from decentralized media.

Some media figures have used recent layoffs at news companies to claim the industry is facing a crisis.

In the U.S., these efforts have coalesced around the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), which would funnel money from Big Tech to the media industry, while excluding independent competitors.

Establishment media companies already receive billions of dollars in subsidies from tech companies and governments around the world, but industry lobbyists still claim the bill is needed to save the industry.

The bill has attracted the support of the censorship industry, which presents the establishment media as a bulwark against alleged mis- and dis-information.

Continue ReadingNew Attempt to Prop Up the Corrupt Corporate News Media

The Inconvenient Recent COVID Data of the VAERS System

Now that signals are pouring in on the VAERS system (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System) that the COVID vaccinations are temporally associated with deaths and injuries, the Gates Foundation shows up right on schedule to attack the integrity of VAERS, warning of "Misinformation and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System."

Dr. Peter McCullough explains his concerns:

Every week in clinic I make entries into the US CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as I catch up on years of injuries, disabilities, and deaths that have occurred after vaccination. Because federal fines and penalties are severe for false reporting, I only enter cases in which I have the vaccine card, the full clinical vignette, and my clinical impression that the vaccine either directly caused the problem or significantly contributed in the causal pathway to the new disease or injury suffered by the patient. I did a PUBMED search today and there are > 500 papers that have relied on VAERS for epidemiologic studies of vaccine side effects including death in 126 manuscripts.

As the data mount, it should come at no surprise that the Gates Foundation, a major player in the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex has come out with an attack on the integrity of VAERS. It came through a JAMA editorial from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, PhD, that implied VAERS is “misinformation” in the title uses the adjective “unverified.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Jamieson, whose Annenberg Center is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, goes on to propose a name change to VAERS to further diminish its importance. . . I expect at some moment, the data on vaccine safety will be so overwhelming in VAERS that the CDC will simply shut down access the system for queries and research. As sponsors of the program, the agency will refuse to tell America or the world anything on the safety of the novel, genetic biological products.

For the record, U.S. public health officials have used and trusted the VAERS system for decades. From the current VAERS About Page:

About VAERS

Background and Public Health Importance

Medical professionals working with vaccines Established in 1990, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines. VAERS is co-managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). VAERS accepts and analyzes reports of adverse events (possible side effects) after a person has received a vaccination. Anyone can report an adverse event to VAERS. Healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention.

VAERS is a passive reporting system, meaning it relies on individuals to send in reports of their experiences to CDC and FDA. VAERS is not designed to determine if a vaccine caused a health problem, but is especially useful for detecting unusual or unexpected patterns of adverse event reporting that might indicate a possible safety problem with a vaccine. This way, VAERS can provide CDC and FDA with valuable information that additional work and evaluation is necessary to further assess a possible safety concern.

Let's see whether this self-description of VAERS, or even fundamental aspects of the VAERS system, changes in response to new suspicious pressures . . .

Continue ReadingThe Inconvenient Recent COVID Data of the VAERS System

Concerns About the Risks Associated with the COVID Vax Continue to be Censored

Meaningful conversations regarding potential dangers of the COVID "vaccination" continue to be censored.

The journal Cureus on Monday retracted the first peer-reviewed paper to provide an extensive analysis of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine trial data and post-injection injuries. The authors of the paper also called for a global moratorium on the vaccines.

Continue ReadingConcerns About the Risks Associated with the COVID Vax Continue to be Censored