Sharp-eyed readers will have spotted that Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi testified before Congress yesterday about the activities of what they call America’s ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’, i.e., the combination of shadowy state agencies, state-funded NGOs and private companies that since 2016 have been engaged in censoring domestic dissent on social media on a massive scale, particularly when it comes to issues like election fraud, the origins of COVID-19, controversial pharmaceutical treatments of COVID-19, the efficacy and safety of the mRNA Covid vaccines, masking, gender identity ideology, the war in Ukraine and the causes of climate change, as well as energetically spreading misinformation and disinformation about those issues.
The exposure of this complex has been triggered by the release of the Twitter Files, with Shellenberger and Taibbi being among the two most prominent journalists who’ve been given access to those Files and who’ve shared their findings in a number of Twitter threads. Needless to say, we also have a ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’ in the UK, as documented by Big Brother Watch in a recent report, which has matched the growth of its American equivalent step-by-step, although unlike in America our political class remains almost completely uninterested in it, with a few notable exceptions, and British citizens are more vulnerable to these attacks on their free speech than their American counterparts because we don’t have a First Amendment.
Michael Shellenberger wrote a post for his Substack yesterday, just before testifying, that tried to sum up what he and Taibbi have been able to discover so far:
Our findings are shocking. A highly-organised network of U.S. Government agencies and Government contractors has been creating blacklists and pressuring social media companies to censor Americans, often without them knowing it.
We and others have already reported on some of the actions of this complex, including its disinformation campaigns. But the extent of its censorship was unknown to us until very recently. And, as importantly, we now understand the ways in which this complex simultaneously spreads disinformation and demands censorship.
What my 68-page testimony to Congress shows is an effort by U.S. Government intelligence and security agencies to wage “information warfare” against the American people.
I do not doubt that some people will try to justify the behaviours we have documented. They will say such censorship is necessary for “fighting disinformation”.
But there is no moral or legal justification for the acts of state-sponsored censorship we document, much less for the fundamentally un-American censorship-industrial complex.
I believe that any reasonable person reading our report, no matter their politics, will be horrified by what is taking place and demand an end to it.
With our testimony, we are calling on Congress to defund and dismantle the censorship-industrial complex immediately.
Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Both are under attack.
Shellenberger’s piece is worth reading in full, not least because it also contains a transcript of his testimony which he added later.
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Oh dear – another advert for Ivermectin. Why even take this ‘medicine’ if Covid is a hoax? Order some pills from India – completely trustworthy!
Here’s a picture of life in India – what a lovely Government they have there, eh?
Here’s another picture from India:
You appear to be confusing the trolls who insist bacteria & viruses don’t exist with the evidence led types who praise Uttar Pradesh for its appropriate use of Ivermectin.
Shilling and old-school patronising racism in one post. Nice.
This is beautifully written, though deeply sad. The exact same darkness is creeping in all over the world. Strange, isn’t it? I appreciate the comparison with communism because I have wondered how this compares with living under tyrannies of old. This one is difficult because it has crept into the hearts and minds of almost the whole population. God have mercy on us all. I hope for you that you can find hope this Christmas in the Christ child, who conquered evil 2000 years ago and will ultimately vanquish it forever. Merry Christmas to you.
And to you.
Let evil into your heart and you are courting damnation. Mistake the evil in your heart for good, and you are damned.
Merry Christmas to all those who have renounced evil.
In one part of Spain they are using the likes of Superman, Batman, Wonder woman to encourage children to take a jab or two.
There is no room to record booster jabs.
I wonder if permission under copy write was agreed too.
Vile
For years I have been telling people that the regime ruling over Romania is communist at its core, but in different clothes. Ceausescu wasn’t overthrown because the people in charge of the Revolution wanted change. They just wanted their turn. And Ceausescu wasn’t shot by firing squad because of his crimes. He was shot so as not to expose the plans of the new regime.
And when it comes to food rations… well, here’s the thing. As bad as communism was with their food queues… at least you had food queues. It is unbelievable to say in this day and age, but I think Romanians had a better life under communism than they have today. Back then, they’d find you a home if you didn’t have one. Sure, it would be small, cramped, and you’d have to share. And you couldn’t own a large home by yourself, the government would send in tenants to live with you. But at least you had a home. These days the streets are filled with people freezing to death and starving. People living in all sorts of hovels, trying to stay warm, and either suffocating to death over night from improvised fireplaces, or setting their homes on fire. Bucharest is suffering from widespread heating outages. Elderly people can barely basic food with their pension, let alone medicine.
Why? In the name of globalism, of course. Klaus Iohannis is a well known globalist lackey. He once said of the country he is in charge of that “Romania is a failed state”. Before he won the presidential elections in 2014 in a 2020 US-style election he was mayor of Sibiu, where he used to be in the business of trafficking children to Western Europe and the US. These days there is nothing the EU says that Klaus Iohannis doesn’t embrace fully. Vaccinate everyone? Of course! Which is why Romania, a country with maybe 15m people eligible for vaccination, ordered 150m doses of vaccine.
Romania is an example of what globalism does to a country. Our country has everything you can possibly want in a country. Mountains, seaside, a bit of desert even, fields as far as the eye can see ready to grow food for half of Europe, Europe’s largest delta with untold natural potential, supplies of oil, gas, uranium, gold, vast touristic potential, a strong industrial potential, and yet, here we are, living in abject poverty. We are not allowed to finish out nuclear power plant, or to exploit our natural gas, because that would go against Germany’s dictate that everyone must switch to renewables. And as such we are forced to buy second hand wind turbines from Germany (isn’t it nice to have the power to force others to buy your garbage from you?) even though our country does not have favourable wind patterns for wind power. I wonder how long until we have to buy second hand tidal power plants from some other western country, even though the Black Sea has no discernible tide…? And our politicians don’t know what to do to sell our natural resources to foreign companies for peanuts…
Romania could be one of the richest countries in Europe. We have the resources. We have the people. Very smart people, very hard working. But we are not allowed to take ownership of our country. Yes, call out communism for the horrible hell that it was. But be cautious about what people would replace it with, because the alternative might be even worse.
“They are not opposed to vaccination; they just don’t get vaccinated.”
We are all Romanians now!