Category: Censorship

DHS Wants You to Snitch on Pro-Life Moms and ‘Anti-Government’ Neighbors

DHS Wants You to Snitch on Pro-Life Moms and 'Anti-Government' Neighbors

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/05/09/dhs-wants-you-to-snitch-on-pro-life-moms-and-anti-government-neighbors-n1693834;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Biden regime has hardly made a secret of its authoritarian aspirations. It tried to set up a Disinformation Governance Board that would have policed speech that dissented from the Leftist establishment’s perspective and worked with Twitter and the other social media giants to silence and deplatform people with opposing views. Then, in his ominous red-and-black speech last September, Biden declared that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” If there was ever any doubt that this was a signal that the regime intended to treat law-abiding patriots as enemies of the state, there is no longer.

The Department of Homeland Security is now developing a video series encouraging Americans to snitch on their patriotic and pro-life friends and neighbors.

Through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), America First Legal (AFL) has obtained files that show that DHS’s Office of Terrorism and Violence Prevention, instead of devoting its time and attention to tracking and impeding the activities of actual terrorists, is focusing on getting you to inform for them about pro-life “suburban moms” and your “old friend from high school” who doubts the Leftist establishment line.

Yes, it’s just like the Stasi and the Gestapo and the KGB, except this time, your tax dollars are paying for it.

Michael Benz, the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, reported Tuesday that DHS is developing “an online ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’-style video series to ‘deradicalize’ friends and family.” But the “radicalization suspects” aren’t even close to being actual terrorists: “They are typical everyday Americans with typical everyday American opinions.” Those opinions, however, differ from those of the Leftist elites, and now those Leftists elites have made it clear: disagreeing with them makes you a terrorist.

The videos contain a series of profiles of these allegedly “radicalized” Americans. One of them is “Ann,” a “suburban Mom” who “has become increasingly more concerned about the welfare of other children” and has become a “middle-aged pro-life advocate.” It’s not clear whether or not DHS realized what it was admitting when it said that a pro-life advocate was concerned about children, as its focus is all on helping you stop Ann’s terrorist activities.

Is Ann blowing things up or flying planes into buildings? No, “audiences watch Ann’s activities from the perspective of her preacher, her longtime friend, and her hairdresser. In one scenario, Ann utters the phrase ‘baby killer’ at a public ribbon-cutting event at a local bakery. DHS gives you, the bystander, three choices: calling Ann’s husband, contacting Ann’s preacher, or stopping by Ann’s house. In another scenario, as Ann’s hairdresser, viewers listen to Ann ‘bring up pro-life arguments and… ranting,’ after which Ann shows ‘videos of violent protests on her phone.’ Bystanders are given three choices: calling the sheriff on Ann, talking about Ann to coworkers, or researching the groups Ann talked about.”

What, DHS? There’s no option to join Ann in trying lawfully and peacefully to stop the wanton sacrifice of children to Moloch. But of course that is a rhetorical question. For Leftists, there is only one point of view: their own. The DHS video scenario epitomizes the Left’s hostility to dissenting views.

Related: We Already Have a Disinformation Governance Board: Media Decides What You Can and Cannot Hear From RFK Jr.

In another scenario, “Courtney” is an “old high school friend” of the person who is envisioned as watching the video. Courtney is also a “budding conspiracy theorist.” She “has become fixated on conspiracy theories regarding government connections to child abuse and trafficking:” Oh, well, we can’t have that! Courtney’s practice of “spreading conspiracy theories” and her rising “level of anger” is enough to get the DHS’s attention. Game players can opt to “monitor Courtney’s other posts and conversations, check in with her ex-husband, or message her to snoop on her private life.”

Then there’s “Pete,” who is “anti-government, anti-authority.” Heavens to Betsy, how could anybody be anti-government when we have this all-powerful, all-seeing Big Brother watching our every move for signs of “radicalization”? As you might expect, Pete is also an “abusive parent/stepdad,” and a snooper has “seen him post on some radical sites with violent tendencies.” Note that DHS does not say that Pete himself called for any violence. Just posting on a site that has “violent tendencies,” whatever that means, is enough. Players are given the choices of “contacting Pete’s wife, interrogating Pete about it at a softball game, or simply keeping ‘closer tabs’ on Pete’s online activity.” DHS wants you looking in the window at what ol’ Pete is up to, apparently.

Keeping “closer tabs” is what this is all about. This is police state stuff from the DHS. Setting Americans spying on their neighbors and reporting them to the state—that’s what they did in East Germany, and that’s what the DHS wants for us all. Time to shut that department down.

We Already Have a Disinformation Governance Board: Media Decides What You Can and Cannot Hear From RFK Jr.

We Already Have a Disinformation Governance Board: Media Decides What You Can and Cannot Hear From RFK Jr.

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/05/03/we-already-have-a-disinformation-governance-board-media-decides-what-you-can-and-cannot-hear-from-rfk-jr-n1692356;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden’s handlers tried and failed to establish their own little Ministry of Truth, the Disinformation Governance Board, but they were likely not devastated by the ignominious failure of this initiative. That’s because they already have plenty of Disinformation Governance Boards: they’re known as “news outlets.” The mainstream media happily carries water for the establishment line, as we saw again this week with ABC’s censorship of its own interview with a Democrat presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., because his views on vaccines dissent from the establishment line.

Linsey Davis of ABC began by warning viewers not to support this man; she introduced Kennedy as “one of the biggest voices pushing anti-vaccine rhetoric, regularly distributing misinformation and disinformation about vaccines, which scientific and medical experts overwhelmingly say are safe and effective based on rigorous scientific studies.” The network then proceeded to cut Kennedy’s own words about the vaccines, not allowing him to make his case.

Numerous viewers found this disturbing. The problems with it were succinctly articulated by an unlikely voice: Bruce Pearl, Auburn University’s basketball coach, who tweeted Monday, “How is this Ok? How can the media simply edit or censor what a candidate has said about a topic, in this case, COVID, because ABC says that it’s dangerous or misinformation? Isn’t it our job to hear a candidate and determine that for ourselves?”

It is, or at least it was. Davis was upfront and unapologetic about the network’s censorship of the video, explaining that “during our conversation, Kennedy made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines.” She claimed that “data shows that the Covid-19 vaccine has prevented millions of hospitalizations and deaths from the disease.” She detailed other supposedly false claims that Kennedy made and concluded, “We’ve used our editorial judgment in not including extended portions of that exchange in our interview.”

Yet Davis’ own claims were unproven at best. Kennedy’s website, The Defender, features an April 14 article with the headline, “45 Times as Many Deaths After COVID Shots in Just 2 Years Compared With All Flu Vaccine-Related Deaths Since 1990, Data Show.” The subtitle: “The authors of a peer-reviewed meta-analysis of national and international COVID-19 vaccine adverse events during the first two years of the rollout said their findings highlight the importance of reevaluating public health policies that promote universal mass injection and multiple boosters for all demographic groups.” Did Davis offer any specific refutation of these claims? Of course not. The guardians of acceptable opinion don’t have to defend themselves.

The same imperiousness showed through in the part of the interview that did air. According to the Daily Caller on Friday, Davis challenged Kennedy “over his claims that there is a correlation between vaccinations and autism.” Davis asserted that what Kennedy was saying had been “debunked.” Kennedy asked, “Wait a minute, who debunked it?” Davis replied, “We have not seen any kind of scientific connections from the CDC, the World Health Organization…” Kennedy said, “They’re captured agencies.” Davis didn’t bother to explain why this wasn’t so.

Related: I Love This Guy: RFK Jr. Slams Dems for Rigging the System

After the interview, Kennedy charged that what ABC did was actually illegal, noting that “47 USC 315 makes it illegal for TV networks to censor Presidential candidates.” He stated, “I’m happy to supply citations to support every statement I made during that exchange,” and naively added, “I’m certain that ABC’s decision to censor came as a shock to Linsey as well.” This is unlikely. Censorship is the hallmark of the contemporary Left.

In a certain sense, however, ABC’s censorship of Kennedy is encouraging. It demonstrates that Leftists are not at all confident that people will end up agreeing with them if they hear opposing viewpoints. But of course, once Leftists realize this, they turn to the forcible silencing of those opposing views. ABC demonstrated that it thinks the people who are unfortunate enough to watch the network are too stupid to think for themselves or evaluate truth claims on their own. It also showed that it thinks Leftist “news” outlets properly have the authority to determine what the American people see and hear and what they do not.

RFK Jr. is a lone voice on the Left standing against this trend. But will our moral superiors even allow Americans to hear what he says?

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

Not a Conspiracy Theory: Yes, the Government Will Be Coming for Your Gas Stove

BY RICK MORAN

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/04/not-a-conspiracy-theory-yes-the-government-will-be-coming-for-your-gas-stove-n1692571;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Last January, when Consumer Product Safety Commission member Richard Trumka Jr. suggested that the entire U.S. could follow the lead of Berkeley, Calif., and ban the use of gas stoves, conservatives lit into the CPSC and Trumka for even suggesting such a thing.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer called suggestions that the government wanted to end the use of gas stoves in residences a “MAGA conspiracy theory.” “Nobody is taking away your gas stove,” he said.

That may be true. But if you like cooking with gas or heating your house with gas, don’t try to relocate. The chances are good that if you want to move to a blue state in the next couple of years, you’re going to be forced to cook with electricity. That’s because it will soon be all the rage in blue states to ban the installation of gas stoves in all new construction.

The movement to rid the planet of gas stoves got a big boost on Wednesday when the New York legislature passed a bill that would ban gas stoves in new residences starting in 2026.

Why? Gas stoves are powered by natural gas — a fossil fuel. There have also been a couple of studies showing that cooking with gas can give your child asthma. Or something.

Reason.com:

Steve Everley, writing in National Review in January, covered several flaws in the most recent studies finding serious health impacts from gas stoves. Experimental studies that found links between gas stoves and child asthma used airtight rooms without ventilation. The author of another much-touted meta-analysis finding a link between gas stoves and child asthma said their study “does not assume or estimate a causal relationship.” Masses of earlier studies, Everley notes, have found no health impacts from gas stoves.

In the short-term, mandated electrification of appliances is probably worse for the climate. On-site use of gas stoves and furnaces uses almost all the energy in the gas. Generating electricity from gas and then using that electricity to power appliances is much less efficient. Of New York’s 10 largest power plants, for instance, five are powered by natural gas.

Cherry-picking scientific studies to “prove” something is dangerous is dishonest and anti-science. But eco-fads like banning gas stoves wouldn’t be possible without climate hysterics driving the conversation and the media lapping it up like good little puppies.

Does it matter that people actually like their gas stoves?

“Most home chefs—and pretty much all professional chefs—will tell you that electric stoves take a long time to heat up and are far less responsive when changing heat levels. Induction stoves, which are actually quite fast to heat up, require different types of cookware and kitchen thermometers, in addition to being a lot more expensive than electric stoves,” wrote Reason‘s Liz Wolfe earlier this year.

This is a consequence of demonizing fossil fuels. The “devil’s breath” is not a hazard, nor does it contribute measurably to net carbon emissions. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that greens were demanding the coal-fired plants be repurposed to burn natural gas.

As soon as I buy my “Mr. Fusion,” I’ll give up my gas stove.

Biden Establishes ‘Interagency Task Force With Senior Government Officials’ to Stop ‘Islamophobia’

Biden Establishes 'Interagency Task Force With Senior Government Officials’ to Stop ‘Islamophobia’

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/04/23/biden-establishes-interagency-task-force-with-senior-government-officials-to-stop-islamophobia-n1689691;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriters issued a statement Thursday to congratulate Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the fasting-by-day-and-gorging-by-night month of Ramadan. Predictably, it was anodyne and obsequious in the extreme, with Biden celebrating how Muslims “decorate their homes, give gifts to loved ones, wear new clothes, and visit family and friends.” The faux president is made to add: “I am moved by the generosity that is shown by families that can provide food and give charity to those in need through Zakat-al-Fitr.” In the course of all this flattery, Biden’s writer drops in a serious note: there is now a U.S. government task force dedicated to fighting “Islamophobia.”

The statement quickly shifts from telling us how wonderful it is that Muslims wear new clothes and visit family and friends to depicting Muslims as victims: “Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of a holy month dedicated to devotion, charity, and reflection—a time when we also remember Muslim communities around the world that are enduring conflict, poverty, hunger, and disease and those that are displaced from their homes.” That served to set up the big announcement. Biden’s ghostwriter continued: “As we celebrate our blessings this Eid, let us also recommit ourselves to the tireless work of building peace and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people.” When the White House writers start depicting Old Joe babbling about peace and human rights, you know something bad is coming.

Doing this work for peace and human dignity will apparently require new restrictions on speech: “My Administration is also committed to addressing all forms of hate, including Islamophobia. This is why I established an interagency task force with senior government officials to tackle this and related challenges and encourage every American to build a more inclusive nation.” Good because Lord knows we aren’t “inclusive” enough yet. Every last person in the world doesn’t live here on the taxpayer dime yet, so there is a long way to go.

Meanwhile, exactly what pressing need is this interagency task force designed to address? Are Muslims in the U.S. really subjected to such widespread discrimination and harassment that the feds need to step in? The record shows otherwise. FBI hate crime statistics show that Muslims are rarely targeted in hate crimes, which far more often victimize Jews and others. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes actually declined by 42% from 2020 to 2021. But those facts don’t fit the narrative that Muslims face widespread discrimination and harassment in the United States, and so the facts have to take a back seat.

And how is the new “interagency task force with senior government officials” going to “tackle” “Islamophobia”? No doubt we will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “interagency task force” really is. The “Islamophobia” task force will therefore likely enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.

Related: Ilhan Omar Takes Aim at the REAL Problem Facing America Today

Most importantly, since the Biden regime is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will the interagency task force make any efforts to protect the right of Americans to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression? Will it be careful to distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that this task force is supposed to be combating, or will it act upon the assumption that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, subjects Muslims to “hate” and must accordingly be silenced?

Since the Left has been insisting that opposition to jihad violence is “hate” ever since 9/11, my money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to “hate” and violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. And the freedom of speech will be eroded even further.

The COVID Twitter Files Drop: Protecting Fauci While Censoring The Truth w/Matt Taibbi

BY KIM IVERSEN

SEE: https://thevaccinereaction.org/2023/04/the-covid-twitter-files-drop-protecting-fauci-while-censoring-the-truth-w-matt-taibbi/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

On February 5, 2021, just after Joe Biden took office, Stanford [University] wrote to Twitter to discuss the Virality Project. By the 17th, Twitter agreed to join and got its first weekly report on the “anti-vax disinformation,” which contained numerous true stories. Now, the first question on everyone’s mind is why would Twitter even accept this partnership. Having a team of people sifting through whatever this project sent them takes money and resources. Another question should be why this Virality Project would go beyond just writing up an analysis and sending it to government officials. Why would they be taking the time and resources to set up these meetings and notification systems? What was the motivation or who was behind this Virality Project? Here they are saying they’re doing it because the government can’t.

Biden Wants Us to Sit In the Dark For Climate Change~Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

Darkness Descending Upon America as Biden Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/04/04/darkness-descending-upon-america-as-biden-bans-incandescent-light-bulbs-n1684321;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Old Joe Biden and his sinister handlers are doing just what they threatened to do. On July 5, 2020, Old Joe’s Twitter ghostwriter tweeted: “We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation — we’ll transform it.” They have done so. They have transformed the nation that was once known as the leader of the free world into a crime-ridden, open-borders free-for-all where opponents of the regime are arrested on bogus charges. Meanwhile, there seems to be nothing that Biden’s handlers won’t do in order to torment Americans and fill their lives with petty annoyances: now they are banning incandescent light bulbs. What’s next? FBI agents standing on street corners and poking us with sharp sticks?

Fox News reported Saturday that Biden and his henchmen are “preparing to implement a sweeping nationwide ban on commonly used light bulbs as part of its energy efficiency and climate agenda.” Yes, the nation is going to go dark because of a hysterical junk science myth. “No credible scientific body,” wrote energy and environmental researcher Michael Shellenberger in 2019, “has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization, much less the extinction of the human species.” In fact, the whole idea that temperatures are rising to catastrophic levels is based on circular reasoning. But the Biden regime is all in on the climate change myth, and as always, ordinary Americans are the ones who have to pay the price.

You may recall that we have been here before. Barack Obama banned incandescent light bulbs, and the Trump administration rolled back that ban in Sept. 2019. Fox notes that the Department of Energy (DOE) devised the new restrictions to reverse Trump’s action back in April 2022, meanwhile, and adds that Trump himself “was also personally opposed to LED light bulb adoption, remarking in 2019 that they are often more expensive, not good and make him ‘look orange.’” Ah, so that’s it! How can we all properly hate the Left’s Emmanuel Goldstein if we keep seeing him in lighting that doesn’t show him as Bad Orange Man?

The new rules go into effect on Aug. 1, so you still have some time to stock up on good light bulbs, if you can find any. According to Fox, the DOE “will begin full enforcement of the ban on that date, but it has already urged retailers to begin transitioning away from the light bulb type and, in recent months, begun issuing warning notices to companies.” The way the Biden regime is going, if a store is selling incandescent light bulbs after Aug. 1, watch for ATF or FBI agents to come bursting through the door, armed to the teeth, pointing their guns at dumbfounded, slack-jawed clerks and screaming: “Throw down your light bulb and back away from the cash register!”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm assures us that all this petty authoritarianism is for our own good: “The lighting industry is already embracing more energy-efficient products, and this measure will accelerate progress to deliver the best products to American consumers and build a better and brighter future.” Yeah, authoritarian socialist regimes that arrest their political opponents are always building toward a better future, but it never seems to arrive. Journalist Mindy Robinson tweeted Sunday: “They can make lightbulbs that would last longer than I’ll be alive…but they won’t do it because ‘repeat business.’ Now this tyrannical regime wants to ban incandescents and push LEDs…which are garbage, distort colors, and give people like me headaches.”

Related: Get Ready to Stink for Climate Change, Thanks to Biden’s New Washing Machine Rules

Rising gas prices, rising food prices, rising crime, and now enforced harsh lighting in order to feed the regime’s climate fantasies. Are Biden’s handlers intentionally trying to annoy the American people? If they actually had that as a goal, would they be doing anything different from what they’re doing now? It is a constant of history: the Leftist regimes that are the most inhuman and inflict the most suffering upon their own citizens are those that most loudly proclaim how dedicated they are to the welfare of the people and how humane and democratic they are.

That’s why the Soviet Union was the workers’ paradise and the appalling hellscape that North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Biden’s America is not quite that far along yet; we just have the corrupt and authoritarian kleptocrats in Washington constantly nattering at us about how they’re saving “our democracy.” Sure they are. That’s why they’re nodding in approval as the leading critic of the regime is arrested on charges that wouldn’t have gotten anyone else arrested. As we sit in darkness or harsh institutional lighting in our apartments and eat our bugs, we can contemplate how selfless and wonderful the guardians of our democracy really are.

Massachusetts School Official’s Job Offer Rescinded Because He Called Two Women ‘Ladies’

Massachusetts School Official’s Job Offer Rescinded Because He Called Two Women ‘Ladies’

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/culture/robert-spencer/2023/04/04/massachusetts-school-officials-job-offer-rescinded-because-he-called-two-women-ladies-n1684382;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The good little Maoist conformists of the Easthampton Public School District in Western Massachusetts dodged a bullet Thursday: they had very nearly hired a wrong thinker, an unenlightened, non-woke individual who was even a cis white male as their new superintendent. But just in time, the school district was saved: the sinister candidate committed an offense against all that is good and holy, and the job offer that had been extended to him was summarily rescinded. The errant near-superintendent’s crime? He called a couple of women “ladies.”

I apologize for not affixing a trigger warning to the immediate beginning of this article. I realize that you likely read that unguardedly, unaware of the enormity of the offense that had been committed. If you need counseling now, I certainly understand. It isn’t every day that one comes across such a flagrant crime against decency as this one, and the shock is indeed severe. The Daily Hampshire Gazette, a paper that publishes out of Northampton, Mass., reported Saturday that a man named Vito Perrone was a finalist for the job of superintendent and indeed, had actually been offered the job before he committed the unpardonable offense that led to the job offer being withdrawn.

Perrone “said Friday that the School Committee rescinded its offer to hire him in executive session Thursday night, alleging that the reason was a perceived microaggression contained in an email he sent to the committee chairperson.” The process of his hiring was so far along that he had already entered into salary negotiations with the district, “after he was offered the position the morning of March 24.” The Easthampton School Committee “offered Perrone a three-year contract with an annual salary of $151,000 — approximately $14,000 less than what he has made [sic] as an interim superintendent of West Springfield Public Schools.” Yet “despite the lower salary, he said he was keen on accepting the role.” He seemed like a good catch for Easthampton. But then he sent the fateful email.

Perrone recounted: “This job was not about the money for me. I honestly felt like I was coming home to Easthampton. I coached football here. I was the principal here when we built the school. I have such wonderful memories … I was excited to come back.” But as the contract negotiations went on, Perrone sent an email to School Committee Chairperson Cynthia Kwiecinski and the committee’s executive assistant, Suzanne Colby. In it, he addressed Kwiecinski and Colby as “ladies,” and all hell broke loose.

Kwiecinski, according to Perrone, charged that his use of the word “ladies” constituted a “microaggression,” and he should have known better. His clumsy word choice demonstrated his dangerous ignorance: “The fact that he didn’t know that as an educator was a problem.” Understandably, Perrone was dumbfounded at this woke lunacy: “I was shocked. I grew up in a time when ‘ladies’ and ‘gentlemen’ was a sign of respect. I didn’t intend to insult anyone.” But that’s how authoritarian societies work: you never quite know the rules, which are constantly changing anyway. That way the citizen is always living in fear and always on his toes, extra careful not to offend the elites, who could strike against him without warning at any time. A fearful populace is a compliant populace.

Related: Boston School Latest to Ask Young Kids About Their Sex Lives

Kwiecinski has remained resolutely mum about this entire ridiculous (and ominous) incident, but Perrone thought it was important to clear the air: “I don’t want people to think I was not willing to negotiate in good faith. I have chosen not to just leave it as ‘negotiations stalled.’ I would rather share my truth, my sadness, and disappointment and try to find a way forward positively.”

While his disappointment is understandable, it’s really Perrone, and not the Easthampton Public School District, who has dodged the bullet here. Imagine having to work on a day-to-day basis with these woke harridans. It would be like living Kafka’s The Trial, in which the protagonist is charged with a crime but never told exactly what he is accused of having done. “Honestly,” Perrone reiterated, “I am truly, truly disappointed that I won’t be in Easthampton in that building. I’m just sad.” He should be dancing a jig, were it not for the fact that pretty much anywhere that he does ultimately get a job is likely to present him with the same humorless, censorious, and unforgiving Leftist environment.

They Never Give Up: Washington State Bill Would Destroy Free Speech and Criminalize Opposing the Left

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/09/they-never-give-up-washington-state-bill-would-destroy-free-speech-and-criminalize-opposing-the-left-n1676936;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Leftists hate dissent. Every far-Left regime that has ever held power, from Paris to Moscow to Phnom Penh, has cracked down, and cracked down hard, on those who dared to hold views that opposed those of the ruling elites. Leftists in America are no different. The hard-Left Biden regime tried last year to silence dissidents with its ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, and while that initiative failed, the Left has not recovered any appreciation for the freedom of speech. A new bill in Washington state would establish a mini-Disinformation Governance Board in that state, criminalizing speech that opposed the Leftist establishment’s line.

Such a board would most certainly be in violation of the First Amendment, but when have Leftists ever cared about observing the niceties of the Constitution? Liv Finne, director for education at the Washington Policy Center, said of the proposed Washington state measure: “This bill will create a two-tiered justice system where some people have free speech and others don’t, and that is a dangerous path for us to be set upon.” Indeed.

This sinister bill is based on the recommendations of a report last year about how to prevent “domestic terrorism” from the office of Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson. In the report, Ferguson claims that “domestic violent extremism encompasses various forms of extremist and political violence like threats, coercion, and intimidation, online disinformation, extremist recruitment and government infiltration efforts, and the general spread of extreme white supremacism and anti-government ideologies.”

The implication is clear: what Ferguson and his cohorts consider to be “online disinformation” must be shut down so as to stop “domestic violent extremism.” As the judgment of what constitutes “disinformation” will be left to Washington state’s far-Left authorities, this will inevitably translate to the forcible silencing of voices that oppose those of the Left.

The report makes this even clearer when it calls for “innovative thinking on community-based efforts to prevent domestic terrorism and inoculate against disinformation.” State funds are to be used to carry out this “inoculation” so that when a luckless Washingtonian happens upon the writing of some patriot, he or she or xe will recognize it immediately as that “disinformation” that the good and selfless state authorities have been warning about and turn away from it without a second thought.

It may not be so easy as all that, however, as the Soviets and Communist Chinese and all the rest found out in due course. Fox News noted Thursday that “specifics on how the state might prevent radicalization and extremism are scarce in both the bill and the attorney general’s report.” Nonetheless, Finne notes that while the bill “itself would not criminalize any speech or association,” doing just that “is the natural next step of the commission, which is supposed to identify existing legal options and potentially new legislation for addressing extremism.”

Related: The Left Doesn’t Value Free Speech, and That’s a Problem

The “extremism” about which the report is concerned is not coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter; the report “cautions against implementing any laws that could be ‘disproportionately used against BIPOC’ communities or other marginalized groups.” Of course! We can’t have any more “systemic racism.” And so “the attorney general’s report singles out online disinformation, anti-government ideologies and the ‘general spread of extreme white supremacism’ as examples of domestic violent extremism.”

So here again we see the claim that “white supremacism” constitutes a major terror threat, which is something that Old Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray, and other key figures of the current regime in Washington, D.C., have repeatedly claimed. The only thing lacking is the actual “white supremacists,” so law-abiding, non-racist, but non-Leftist Americans will be forced to play the role.

Finne makes the agenda clear: “It’s obvious that this is targeting certain groups in our society without basis. Speech is not violence. Violence is violence. To equate the two is outrageous and wrong.” Yes, but equating conservative speech with violence is one of the foremost strategies of the contemporary Left. The report and bill in Washington state is a prototype of what Leftists would like to roll out all over the country and impose on a federal level as well.

The First Amendment constitutes a formidable obstacle to their plans but only as long as there remain five Supreme Court Justices to uphold it and not nuance it away. Already Leftists parrot the claim that “hate speech is not free speech,” a neat propaganda slogan that has no basis in either logic or law but which makes it clear that more assaults on the First Amendment are in the offing. Patriots should be aware and resolute.

Drifting leftward: Fox News criticizes MassResistance for so-called “aggressive techniques” in pro-family activism.

SEE: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/23a/Fox-News-attacks-MassResistance/index.html;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Even worse: Fox now considers discredited Southern Poverty Law Center to be a legitimate news source! Trafficking in lies & distortions in their attacks.

But in the past, we were often featured on Fox news programs.

March 10, 2023
ALT TEXT
When Florida's governor confronted "Drag Queen" shows for children, Fox News used it as an excuse to attack MassResistance for our principled activism.

As the Fox News network continues to drift leftward (and pro-LGBT), MassResistance has gotten under their skin with our uncompromising pro-family activism!

Last month, the Fox News website published an article about how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was revoking the liquor license of a non-profit organization in Orlando for holding sexually provocative Drag Queen shows with children present.

ALT TEXT

Most of the article was reasonably unbiased and straightforward. (Fox is still willing to be concerned about Drag Queens being with children.) But the article concluded with something very odd. They put in a 2019 photo from California of a Drag Queen named "Pickle" reading to children in a public library. The photo’s caption was a nasty and dishonest attack on MassResistance for our efforts to help parents fight back against these shows. It had nothing to do with the content of the report.

ALT TEXT

The Fox article's caption of this photo is:

Drag queen "Pickle" reads from a book during the Drag Queen Story Hour program at the West Valley Regional Branch Library on July 26, 2019 in Los Angeles, California. Drag Queen Story Hour is a program featuring drag queens reading stories to children at libraries, schools, and bookstores in cities across the nation. MassResistance, which has targeted Drag Queen Story Hour program in several cities, uses aggressive techniques to disrupt and generate conflict at city council meetings, pro-Trump demonstrations, and anti-LGBTQ protests. Some far-right Christian groups support the organization while the Southern Poverty Law Center considers them a hate group. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) (David McNew/Getty Images)

This is a typical leftist attack with complete disregard for the facts. The truth is:

  • MassResistance does not attempt to “disrupt and generate conflict” at government meetings or events. That is exactly what the Left does. We protest peacefully and speak the truth during scheduled comment periods. The Left can’t stand hearing the truth.
  • We certainly have never disrupted or generated conflict at pro-Trump demonstrations or “anti-LGBTQ protests.” Why would we? That is illogical, and a complete fabrication.
  • Fox News writes that “Some far-right groups support the organization.” Actually, a broad range of groups have said they admire our work. The term “far-right” is only a reflection of Fox’s leftist sensibilities, not mainstream America.

The Southern Poverty Law Center

But the most troubling and offensive part is Fox’s use of the odious Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as if it were a legitimate news source. The SPLC is itself a hate group and has been discredited across the spectrum as being a scam operation that targets conservatives. They gratuitously label hundreds of prominent conservative groups and Christian organizations as “hate groups” including Liberty Counsel, American Family Association, Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, Illinois Family Association, and many more, as well as MassResistance. The SPLC’s odious behavior is well-documented. Fox News' use of the SPLC says more about the degradation of their news organization than anything else.

Just who is "Pickle"? MassResistance did some research.

What kind of man dresses in women's clothes, calls himself "Pickle," and arranges to read gay-themed books to young children? Fox News wasn't interested. They obviously think this is normal behavior.

Back in 2019 our Texas MassResistance leader, Tracy Shannon, looked through Pickle's social media posts. She found lots of photos of him in "drag" with his arms around children; in various stages of undress; and posing with other homosexual men.

ALT TEXT
"Pickle" in his women's clothes (center) posing with his "friends."

Pickle wrote that when reading books to children, "Usually we stick to the sort of, distinctly overt queer themes. We figure, you know, we got them in the room may as well hit the nail over the head." All this reflects a disturbed person who should be nowhere near children.

In the old days, Fox loved us!

Before Fox began to cave on the LGBT issue, they considered us an important news source on this assault on children. For about a dozen years starting in the late 1990s, MassResistance’s Brian Camenker and others appeared on various Fox news shows to discuss the LGBT agenda in the schools, including: Hannity and Colmes, Fox and Friends, The O’Reilly Factor, America’s Newsroom with Megyn Kelly, and others.   

For example, in 2008 when we exposed the Boston Children’s Hospital “gender clinic” for children, Megyn Kelly interviewed Camenker at Fox’s headquarters in New York. And she was clearly pretty upset over it:

VIDEO: Fox News interviews MassResistance 5/21/2008 (3 min 30 sec)

(MassResistance was, in fact, the first pro-family organization to expose the looming transgender assault on children starting in 2007 on our radio show.) Sadly, Fox News simply let the subject drop after Kelly’s 2008 interview with Camenker.

In 2013, our friend Peter LaBarbera documented the further decline of Fox News on the LGBT issue. And it’s continued since then.

Final thoughts

It’s more important than ever for conservatives to hold the line, despite attacks from all directions.

Many people who don’t watch Fox News regularly haven’t realized how far the organization has slid on the “culture war” issues. Rupert Murdoch’s liberal sons, who now control Fox, are certainly the major source of that, as is the general direction of the people in the media. Even Tucker Carlson has a “gay” producer, so his show never critically looks at LGBT issues, except for the transgender assault on children topic that's currently in vogue among conservatives.

Fox News is still willing to appease their viewers by tolerating some conservative activists as on-air guests. But like the Left, they view serious, no-compromise pro-family activist organizations with hostility. Conservatives (especially those who are invited to appear on Fox News) need to push back. For a start, Fox News needs to be pressured to retract their libelous parroting of the SPLC’s “hate group” accusation.

Facebook Twitter Email Print

Please help us continue to do our uncompromising work!

Our successes depend on people like you.

Donate to MassResistance

Your support will make the difference!

Jim Jordan Shows the Receipts for ‘Direct Government Censorship’ of Speech in Heated Exchange

Jim Jordan Shows the Receipts for 'Direct Government Censorship' of Speech in Heated Exchange

BY MATT MARGOLIS

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/03/10/jim-jordan-shows-the-receipts-for-direct-government-censorship-of-speech-in-heated-exchange-n1677129;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) humiliated  Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.) on Thursday during a hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

Goldman is a former impeachment counsel for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during the Democrats’ impeachment investigation into then-President Donald Trump in 2019. He notoriously believed in Russian collusion and the discredited Steele dossier. He had accused Jordan of being unable to “find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of lawful speech” and clearly was not prepared for Jordan to have receipts.

“Even with Twitter, you cannot find actual evidence of any direct government censorship of any lawful speech. And when I say lawful I mean non-criminal speech because plenty of speech is non-criminal,” Goldman bizarrely claimed to Jordan.

“I’ll give you one,” Jordan replied confidently, then produced an email from Clarke Humphrey from the Executive Office of the Presidency, instructing Twitter to censor a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist.

“I’d ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the following email from Clarke Humphrey, Executive Office of the Presidency, White House office. January 23rd, 2021, that’s the Biden administration. 4:39 a.m., ‘Hey, folks,’ — this goes to Twitter — ‘Hey, folks wanted to’ — I use the term Mr. — they use the term Mr. — Mr. Goldman just used — ‘wanted to flag the below tweet, and then wondering if we can get moving on the process for having it removed, ASAP,'” Jordan read.

“In fullness of the record, can you — because I have not seen this — can you read the tweet that it is referencing?” Goldman asked Jordan.

“I don’t have the tweet here with me,” Jordan said.

“Shocking,” Goldman replied.

The original tweet wasn’t even necessary to make the point. Jordan had very easily found evidence that the Biden administration had asked Twitter to censor an individual who spoke against the Biden administration’s preferred narrative, even though Goldman said there was no evidence of the government trying to censor lawful speech.

Jordan later found the tweet—it claimed Hank Aaron’s death may have been linked to the COVID vaccine—but that wasn’t enough to satisfy Goldman, who proceeded to beclown himself.

“The gentleman’s point was at no time did the government try to tell Twitter to explicitly remove something,” Jordan explained.

“No, I specifically said lawful speech. Lawful speech,” Goldman said. “The First Amendment does not — is not absolute speech.”

So, if you’re Rep. Goldman, what exactly is lawful speech? Speech that doesn’t contradict what the Democrat-controlled government thinks is okay? We’ve already seen efforts by big tech and big government to restrict or censor speech about the lab leak theory, but now, everyone basically admits that is what likely happened. According to Goldman, questioning the safety of the COVID vaccines is not “lawful speech” and therefore merits government censorship.

Successful Suppression of Students’ Free Speech in Connecticut

Even universities that proclaim their commitment to free speech do not protect it.

The Greatest Lie Ever Told: George Floyd & the Rise of BLM | OFFICIAL TRAILER

Owens details shocking documentary exposing Black Lives Matter funding

BY JAY BERGMAN

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/successful-suppression-of-students-free-speech-in-connecticut/;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Last week the student chapter of Turning Point USA at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) attempted to show on campus a film, “The Greatest Lie Ever Sold: George Floyd and the Rise of BLM,” produced by The Daily Wire and narrated by Candace Owens.

Fifteen minutes into the film, before an audience of approximately fifty students and others intrigued by the title of the film and curious about its contents, roughly the same number of students, at least one faculty member, and possibly others unaffiliated with the university stormed onto the stage, screaming that the film was “racist” and holding signs proclaiming it “hate speech.” By doing so, they prevented the audience from watching it.

To his credit, Dr. Craig Wright, CCSU’s Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, implored the protestors to disperse and continue their protest outside.  Reluctantly, they did so.

But by beating drums and screaming loudly enough, the protestors made it impossible for the audience inside to hear the movie. Periodically, protestors embedded in the audience screamed slogans and stormed the stage, preventing the movie from being seen.

In response the campus police at the event did nothing.  Finally, the president of the TPUSA chapter had no choice but to stop the film, before the audience had any real idea of its contents.

In the end, the protestors won.

The arrogance of the protestors and their enablers on the CCSU faculty is staggering.  They clearly believe they can silence anyone whose opinions are different from their own, and that they will not be held liable for their thuggish behavior.

This past November CCSU formally upheld the same TPUSA students’ right to show a film critical of transgender surgery and the sterilization of children this sometimes entails.  But it did so with obvious reluctance, citing legal obligations rather than any awareness of how essential free expression is to the university’s foundational commitment to the production and dissemination of knowledge.

After the more recent event, CCSU Associate Vice President of Communications and Media Jodi Latina stated publicly that suppression of speech will not be tolerated.  But in the absence of any punishment, or even a reprimand, of the offending students, her promise rings hollow.

What happened at CCSU is not unique.  Suppression of opinions students find “offensive” is so pervasive in America’s colleges and universities that according to a recent nationwide poll of 45,000 students conducted by the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, 61% of those polled said they would feel “uncomfortable” expressing an unpopular opinion to fellow students on social media. When asked which opinions should be barred from expression on their campus, 73% agreed that speakers calling Black Lives Matter a “hate group” should be prohibited, while 60% felt the same concerning the immorality of all abortions.  Even worse, only 37% of the students polled believe that shouting down a speaker at a university is never acceptable, while 22% said there were circumstances in which violence would be justified in silencing a speaker they disagreed with.

The enforcement of a left-wing ideological orthodoxy on issues such as abortion, race, and transgenderism is not only contrary to the very purpose of a university.  It also reveals the “diversity” to which university administrators are so loudly committed to being in fact its exact opposite: a racially and ethnically heterogenous student body that nonetheless thinks the same things and is entitled to silence with impunity any opinion it finds objectionable.

The justification several of the CCSU protestors offered for their authoritarianism is that the expression of certain ideas, even absent any exhortation to violence, can somehow jeopardize a person’s physical safety, and for that reason alone can be prohibited.  But they cited no evidence to substantiate their concern.  Not once in the over three decades on which I have served on the CCSU faculty has the expression of an idea, whether in a film or by a speaker on campus, led to violence or to any physical altercation.

Unless universities are what John Stuart Mill famously termed “a free marketplace of ideas,” in which ideas are like the products in stores consumers evaluate freely before purchasing them, they are mere engines of ideological indoctrination.  As such, they are no different from universities in the Soviet Union, Communist China, and North Korea.

But there is cause for hope.  Aware of the likely result, the TPUSA students at CCSU persevered, and by asserting their own right to free expression, they affirmed the right of all students to free expression.  For their courage and commitment to principle, they deserve the respect and gratitude of everyone.

 

‘1984’ Is Now, as Britain Outlaws Thinking the Wrong Thoughts

'1984' Is Now as Britain Outlaws Thinking the Wrong Thoughts

UK Passes Law BANNING Silent Prayer

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/08/1984-is-now-as-britain-outlaws-thinking-the-wrong-thoughts-n1676571;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Yes, it has come to this. By a resounding vote of 299 to 116, the UK’s House of Commons on Wednesday outlawed thinking the wrong thoughts in the wrong place. According to the Catholic Herald, MPs including the Conservative government’s Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Attorney General Victoria Prentis rejected an amendment that would have protected “private prayer and consensual conversations within any ‘censorship’ zone.” “Censorship” zones are areas around abortion centers.

The vote comes just a day after a pro-life activist, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, was arrested for the second time in several weeks for praying silently outside one of the centers for sacrifices to Moloch. “I’m not protesting,” Vaughan-Spruce explained. “I’m not engaging in any of the activities prohibited.” But she was thinking the wrong thoughts and thus had to face what British authorities call “justice” in these dark days.

Jeremiah Igunnubole, who is legal counsel for a firm that has represented people who have been arrested for thought crimes outside of abortion centers, observed that the vote was a “watershed moment for fundamental rights and freedoms in our country.” Yes, indeed. In fact, it is a signpost of the end of freedom in Britain.

Igunnubole continued: “Parliament had an opportunity to reject the criminalization of free thought, which is an absolute right, and embrace individual liberty for all. Instead, Parliament chose to endorse censorship and criminalize peaceful activities such as silent prayer and consensual conversation.” And of course, an extremely dangerous precedent has been set: “Today it’s abortion. Tomorrow it could be another contested matter of political debate.”

According to the Herald, the new law criminalizes “any form of ‘influence’ outside of all abortion facilities, including silent prayer.” Offenders will be fined £100 ($118) the first time they are arrested for wrongthink; if court proceedings are deemed necessary, the fines could increase to £1,000 ($1,183). Amid the debate over this measure, a Conservative MP, Andrew Lewer, injected a note of sanity: “Police shouldn’t be asking ‘What are you thinking about?’” Indeed. And what if the person praying denies the offense? The World Economic Forum has been touting brain implants, and it’s easy to see how handy they’ll be for British police: the bobbies (do they still call these sinister Orwellian figures “bobbies”?) will simply be able to consult a readout of your thoughts, and if prayer shows up, you’ll have to pony up.

Lewer continued to point out what should have been obvious to everyone and prevented even a single MP from voting for this measure: “Censorship of this sort is a notoriously slippery slope. It might not be your thoughts that are criminalized today, but I think we should all be careful not to open the door to that tomorrow about some other opinions that people may hold about something else.” Now that the door has indeed been opened, Conservative MP Sir John Hayes spelled out the implications: “We now have people arrested for praying, interrogated by the police, asked what they’re praying about, what they’re thinking. This is dystopian. It’s like a mix of Huxley, Philip Dick, and all that.” Quite right, old fellow, and don’t forget that Orwell chap, eh wot?

Related: The Church of England May Go Gender-Neutral

There are, meanwhile, a few more important matters that British police could be doing instead of spending their time arresting people for thinking the wrong thoughts. Another MP, Eddie Hughes, pointed out that “Given the other crimes that were going on in Birmingham at that time,” that is, the time that Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for praying silently, “it is important to see that the police had clearly determined that the most important thing they had to do at that particular time was not to deal with knife crime or with people stealing tools out of other people’s vans to stop them earning a living but to arrest and interrogate a woman who was silently praying outside a clinic that was closed. Surely that shows a sense of complete disproportionality on the part of the police.” Yes, it does, and it’s going to get worse.

MP Ian Paisley (not to be confused with the late Northern Irish preacher) added: “Despite the level of crime across this society—I think there were over 500 knife crimes last year—are we actually going to ask the police to get engaged and be detained in questioning people about what they are thinking in certain parts of the United Kingdom? That is a complete waste of police resources and police time, and it should not be done.” It should not, but now it will be. And the Biden regime, no friend of the freedom of speech itself, is watching and (silently) taking notes.

DHS Agency Involved In ‘Domestic Censorship Activities’

Yet ANOTHER Biden Regime Agency Worked to Censor Dissenting Views

Yet ANOTHER Biden Regime Agency Worked to Censor Dissenting Views

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/07/yet-another-biden-regime-agency-worked-to-censor-dissenting-views-n1676304;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Biden regime has made it clear in all kinds of ways that it hates the freedom of speech, political dissent, and the idea of loyal political opposition. It is doing all it can to stamp out these things, but it has to tread carefully in doing so so that as few patriots as possible catch on to what is going on and move to stop it. Nevertheless, as The Sumter Gambit: How the Left is Trying to Foment a Civil War demonstrates, the Left’s war against Constitutional values is real and ongoing. On Tuesday came new evidence of Biden’s handlers’ assault on our most fundamental freedom.

Back in August 2022, I wrote an article entitled “The Disinformation Governance Board Is Now Officially Dead, But the Enemies of Free Speech Will Keep Trying,” and here we are already. Fox News reported that “a federal agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that’s been scrutinized for what critics argue is suppression of dissenting political views under the guise of combating disinformation now appears to be ‘burying’ evidence of its alleged censorship, experts and watchdog groups say.” Well, knock me over with a feather.

Fox explains that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “has come under fire for working with Big Tech companies to flag and take down social media posts related to elections, COVID vaccines, and a range of other issues that were deemed mis-, dis-, and misinformation (MDM).” This is the Orwellian line that the contemporary Left has chosen in order to dress up its efforts to crush dissent and allow only one point of view to be heard with an aura of respectability. It’s all about “security,” you see, and protecting you from “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and yet another newly coined word, “misinformation.” These lovable lugs just want you to get the pure, unadulterated truth, as curated by them.

Most Americans can see through this and understand, especially after the long drama of Hunter Biden’s laptop, that what the Left calls “misinformation” and “disinformation” is more often and not true information that the party of lies and deceit doesn’t want you to know. Most Americans also understand that the First Amendment’s protection of the freedom of speech extends even to, and in fact especially to, what those in power want you to think is “disinformation” but is actually made up of facts that contradict their narrative. Consequently, the authoritarians have to hide their evil agenda as much as they possibly can; Americans don’t like the censorship of legitimate opinion, and the censors are well aware of that.

As a result, Fox reports, “now it appears the agency may be concealing its efforts to monitor domestic content posted by regular Americans and focusing exclusively on its campaign to combat foreign actors in what some observers say is a move designed to hide government overreach.” Because when Americans find out about government overreach, they often move to stop it, and we can’t have that. Fox notes that “CISA’s current webpage on its MDM mission discusses ‘foreign influence operations and disinformation … targeting election infrastructure’ and makes no mention of domestic activity.” Reassuring? No. This page has only been up for a few weeks.

The old CISA webpage that it replaced speaks of “foreign and domestic threat actors [using] MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division” and describes them as “malign.” Fox states that “the page also describes CISA’s mission in much broader terms as working ‘in close coordination with interagency and private sector partners, social media companies, academia, and international partners on a variety of projects to build resilience against malicious information activities.’”

Related: Biden’s CISA Director Tells Us Not to Worry About Election Irregularities

CISA offers a classic example of mission creep. It was “originally created to protect the nation’s ‘cyber and physical infrastructure,’ including domestic websites from foreign hackers.” But its mission “quickly morphed and broadened to countering ‘disinformation campaigns and efforts that appear in social media,’ according to an August 2022 DHS Office of Inspector General report.” According to a draft DHS report, it was set to combat “inaccurate information” on topics such as “the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine.”

We know how this game is played now. We know that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “inaccurate information” and was even certified as “Russian disinformation” in a slickly-worded, plausible deniability-enabling statement that was signed by fifty of the nation’s top intelligence officials. When Leftist officials start talking about “inaccurate information,” they mean dissent from their agenda. CISA has been caught and, like the Disinformation Governance Board, should be shut down. But we would need a patriotic administration for that.

PNC Bank Abruptly Ends Business Relationship with Don Trump Jr.’s News App

PNC Bank Abruptly Ends Business Relationship with Don Trump Jr.’s News App

BY CATHERINE SALGADO

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/03/03/pnc-bank-abruptly-ends-business-relationship-with-don-trump-jr-s-news-app-n1675297;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

In another huge instance of financial censorship, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. suddenly ended its business relationship with MxM, Donald Trump Jr.’s news aggregation app company. The app was designed to be a more balanced alternative to the likes of Apple and Google News, according to Fox News Digital. As Trump Jr. explained, he wants to help create a “parallel economy” to the woke-enslaved major corporations, including Big Media. PNC Bank doesn’t seem to agree with that vision.

MxM News, launched in 2022 by Don Jr. and former Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich, is owned by ROCDIGITAL, LLC. The company insists this is more woke financial censorship targeting conservative entities. Budowich told Fox Digital he only discovered their company account with PNC had been terminated when he tried to pay vendor invoices at a Florida branch office. He explained, “The teller said he was unable to complete the transfers as the account had been closed and the balance had been zeroed out.”

Budowich continued, “After being told to call a generic helpline, I was informed by the PNC representative that per the terms and conditions, PNC reserves the right to re-evaluate their business relationships at any time and terminate accounts without cause.” The phrase “without cause” seems significant—it indicates that PNC itself knows there was no reason to terminate the account. “Woke corporations are using their terms and conditions like a guillotine over the head of every conservative entrepreneur,” Budowich concluded.

Don Jr. explained that MxM was created to “provide curated stories that are being silenced and or suppressed by big tech and the mainstream media.” The app is set to expand to include more localized news, too, per Fox. MxM includes articles from more mainstream or left-leaning sources such as ABC, NPR, and AP, along with conservative sites such as The Daily Caller, Just the News, and The Washington Free Beacon.

”However, as this shows, it’s not just the media that’s become plagued by the woke agenda,” Trump Jr. told Fox Digital. “It’s banks, it’s entire corporate America.” He called the PNC account termination “a minor setback for MxM News that we were able to quickly resolve.” Still, he added, “But what about every other start-up or small business that wants to pursue a values-based company? This should be investigated, and it should be illegal to discriminate based on political affiliation.”

PNC claimed to Fox that account closures have nothing to do with political affiliation. “As a national bank, we recognize and respect that our customers and our employees hold a wide range of political beliefs,” PNC said. PNC has not explained why it did end the account, however.

Banks have drawn criticism for closing a number of conservative accounts in the last few years, Fox Digital said. A Florida bank closed Donald Trump’s account in January 2021, for instance, and MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell had two banks cut ties with him in January 2022.

Hence, Donald Trump Jr. insisted to Fox Digital, “We need a patriot economy. We need a parallel economy to fight back.”

Trump Jr. is set to speak at CPAC 2023 on Friday.

The Former Disinformation Governance Board Chief Wants Your Help

The Former Disinformation Governance Board Chief Is Back, and She’s Mad

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/03/the-former-disinformation-governance-board-chief-is-back-and-shes-mad-n1675389;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Nina Jankowicz is back, and she’s mad. Jankowicz, you’ll no doubt recall, was the chief of the Biden regime’s ill-fated Disinformation Governance Board, which was ominously part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and was widely reported to be an Orwellian exercise in policing the speech of Americans that strayed from the line of the establishment Left. But Jankowicz insists that the Disinformation Governance Board was nothing like the way it was portrayed. She claims that Fox News’ negative coverage of it spread lies about her, endangered her life as she was inundated with death threats, and even interfered with her ability to bond with her newborn son. (Yeah, she is really throwing the kitchen sink into this one.) Jankowicz has published a video, “Help Nina Fight Fox,” asking for donations to help her sue the beast that ruined her life.

The slickly produced video starts with Jankowicz, looking sober and professional (in a sharp departure from her notorious Mary Poppins-based musical tribute to fighting “disinformation”), saying, “I’m asking for your financial support of a lawsuit I want to bring against Fox News for their malicious, reckless lies against me.” Then the earnest music starts, as Jankowicz continues to talk over a series of videos and still images. She had a “lifelong dream” of entering public service, and finally realized it when she became head of the Disinformation Governance Board.

Jankowicz asserts that this entity, complete with its sinister name, was entirely benign. “My role was to make sure different entities across DHS were coordinated, to bring the latest research to bear in the department, and to help the department ensure that its policies about its existing counter disinformation work were grounded in American values: privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. That’s all the board was. It didn’t have the ability or the authority to act on its own.”

But then, enter the black-hatted hatemongers of Fox, spreading “baseless claims that the board was an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’” Jankowicz insists that “the board had nothing to do with arbitrating or restricting speech.” Nonetheless, she charges on her GoFundMe page that the fiends at Fox “made over 500 scaremongering statements about my role, my views, and my personal life over the next nine months—an entirely disproportionate disinformation and smear campaign against a person who simply took a job to serve her country within her area of expertise.” The video gets more melodramatic as it goes on, featuring nightmarish images of dozens of Fox broadcasts all allegedly maligning Jankowicz, causing her to be inundated with death threats and upsetting her to the extent that she has not been able to establish the proper relationship with her newborn.

That’s a shame, if true, but its truth can’t be taken for granted. Leftists love to claim that speech that is critical of them has gotten them death threats. The obvious unspoken corollary is that this speech should be silenced. This never works, however, for patriots who get death threats (I’ve gotten hundreds myself) from Leftists and their allies; no one ever calls for the curtailing of the criticism of foes of the Left, no matter how much they’re threatened. And Jankowicz doesn’t have a stellar reputation for honesty. The Daily Caller noted Thursday that she has been caught “spreading disinformation about the Hunter Biden laptop, the debunked Steele Dossier, and former Trump advisor Carter Page.”

What’s more, Jankowicz’s claim that the Disinformation Governance Board was never going to be about “arbitrating or restricting speech” contradicts early statements from Biden regime officials. DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on April 28, 2022, “We have just established a mis-,and disinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat not only to election security but to our homeland security.” And when Jen Psaki defended the board, she added, “We know there has been a range of [disinformation] out there about a range of topics, I mean, including COVID for example, and also elections and eligibility.” Psaki also said that “the objective of the board is to prevent disinformation and misinformation from traveling around the country in a range of communities.” How could this alleged disinformation have been fought without restricting speech?

Related: At Last We’re Getting Some (Chilling) Hints About What the Disinformation Chief Wants to Do

Jankowicz herself abetted the impression that the board would be restricting speech with her statements in a video that surfaced in May 2022, in which she spoke about how Twitter should allow “trustworthy” people to add “context” to other people’s tweets. As Elon Musk moved to take over Twitter, Jankowicz said that she “shuddered” at the thought of “free speech absolutists” taking over more social media platforms.

So Jankowicz should pardon Fox and her other critics for not mistaking her for one of those free-speech absolutists. The best outcome would be if this trial became the linchpin for the release of solid information about why the Biden regime decided to set up Jankowicz’s board, and exactly how they intended it to operate. In the meantime, we can just be glad that Jankowicz is whining on a YouTube video and not heading it up.

Iran: Islamic groups opposed to girls’ education suspected in wave of poison attacks on schoolgirls

BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/03/iran-islamic-groups-opposed-to-girls-education-suspected-in-wave-of-poison-attacks-on-schoolgirls;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

As Jihad Watch reported yesterday, the Islamic Republic is now being suspected of taking the abuse of women to a new level: poisoning schoolgirls to discourage their learning.

Sky News also reported about the incident:

Up to 400 pupils at around 30 schools are said to have been affected by the “deliberate” attacks, with some needing hospital treatment after complaining about headaches, heart palpitations, feeling lethargic and being unable to move.

The first cases in November last year are believed to have happened in Qom, around 125km (80 miles) southwest of Tehran – where some fearful parents are pulling their children out of school as a precaution,

As expected, Iran is trying to defer blame and/or downplay the seriousness of the incidents.

There are many highly abusive tactics used in the Islamic world to keep women in their place, under the control of the male arbiters of the Sharia, such as stoning, honor murder, public flogging, wife beating, and female genital mutilation. Poisoning girls is in keeping with all this. The recent demonstrations against the Islamic Republic began when Mahsa Amini was murdered for not wearing her hijab properly. And long before that, as noted below, “in 2014, people took to the streets of the city of Isfahan after a wave of acid attacks, which appeared to be aimed at terrorizing women who violated the country’s strict Islamic dress code.” Days ago, female students in Iran were forced to attend sessions on wearing the hijab (Quran 24:31,33:59). The protests have gone on since mid-September.

“Wave of Poison Attacks on Schoolgirls Alarms Iranians,” Reuters, February 28, 2023:

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hundreds of Iranian girls in different schools have suffered “mild poison” attacks over recent months, the health minister said, with some politicians suggesting they could have been targeted by religious groups opposed to girls’ education.

The attacks come at a critical time for Iran’s clerical rulers, who faced months of anti-government protests sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman in the custody of the morality police who enforce strict dress codes.

The poison attacks at more than 30 schools in at least four cities started in November in Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim holy city of Qom, prompting some parents to take their children out of school, state media reported.

Social media posts showed some hospitalised schoolgirls, who said they had felt nauseous and suffered heart palpitations.

“Investigating where this mild poison comes from … and whether it is an intentional move are not within the scope of my ministry,” Health Minister Bahram Einollahi was quoted as saying by state media.

His deputy, Younes Panahi, said on Sunday “it was found that some people wanted schools, especially girls’ schools, to be closed”, according to IRNA state news agency.

One boys’ school has been targeted in the city of Boroujerd, state media reported.

Lawmaker Alireza Monadi said the existence of “the devil’s will” to stop girls from going to school was a “serious threat”, according to IRNA.

He did not elaborate, but suspicions have fallen on hardline groups that operate as the self-declared guardians of their interpretation of Islam.

In 2014, people took to the streets of the city of Isfahan after a wave of acid attacks, which appeared to be aimed at terrorizing women who violated the country’s strict Islamic dress code….

Physicians Group Condemns ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children

BY BEN BARTEE

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/02/25/association-of-american-physicians-and-surgeons-condemns-gender-affirming-care-for-children-n1673755;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The independent Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has issued an impressively strong eight-point statement on the so-called “gender-affirming care” for kids that’s all the rage with the LGBTQ+++™ ideologies (certain sections are bolded for emphasis):

1. “Physicians and medical professionals should refuse to be mandated or coerced to participate in procedures to which they have ethical or scientific objections or which they believe would harm a patient.

2. Reproduction requires a male gamete (sperm), which can only be produced by a person of XY genotype, and a female gamete (egg), which can only be produced by a person of XX genotype. Primordial germ cells are present at birth.

3. Biological sex is determined at conception by genotype and apart from rare anomalies, which result in ambiguous genitalia, sex is correctly identified at birth—and is indeed obvious.

4. The construct of gender fluidity in the current cultural discourse is controversial.

5. Through medical, surgical, and other interventions, it is possible to change the physical appearance of one’s body. Changing physical appearance does not change biological sex.

6. There has been an explosive increase in persons who identify with the construct of gender different from sex, at an age where identity is easily malleable and brain development is not fully concluded.

7. Conflicting motivations have led to a growing industry dedicated to providing “gender-affirming” procedures that are generally irreversible and have a high probability of causing sterilization. These include puberty “blockers,” sex hormones, and surgery, such as castration, penectomy, and mastectomy. They commit a patient to a lifelong need for medical, surgical, and psychological care.

8. “Gender-affirming care” in minors is medically and ethically contraindicated because of a lack of informed consent. There are inherently unknown and unknowable long-term risks, and the consequences of removing normal, healthy organs are irreversible.

This truthful account of human biology and the various pharmacological and surgical interventions aimed at transing children runs contrary to the general orthodoxy within the medical community. The likes of the American Psychiatric Association,  American Academy of Pediatrics, and, of course, The World Health Organization (WHO) regularly issue statements of support of the genital mutilation and chemical castration of children — dressed up, of course, in the language of liberal Tolerance™ and Inclusion™.

The apparent mechanism that allows the AAPS to speak truth to power while most of its peer organizations toe the fashionable line is that it is independently funded. It is therefore unreliant on financial support from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other groups that seek to manufacture a false consensus on the topic.

U.S. Ambassador to France Replaces Embassy’s Historic Portraits With Those of Woke Heroes

Denise Campbell Bauer ’86 with President Obama

Former U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, Denise Bauer under Obama

With over 20 years of public service, civic engagement, and work with President Obama, Denise Bauer, is honored to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Kingdom of Belgium. Watch her introductory video to learn more!

THE LIBERAL RENOVATION:

U.S. Ambassador to France replaces embassy’s historic portraits with those of woke heroes - JW.jpg

Denise Bauer : De journaliste à ambassadrice des États-Unis (IN FRENCH ONLY)

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/02/14/u-s-ambassador-to-france-replaces-embassys-historic-portraits-with-those-of-woke-heroes-n1670503;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

The Left’s war on American statuary is a calculated one. The idea of pulling down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and other former national heroes is to signal to Americans, and to the entire world, that a new regime is in power, one that has radically different values. The old order has gone, and a new one is in place, and those who fail to go along with the new authorities will be punished accordingly. The best way to communicate this to distracted, low-information, busy Americans is to tear down the statues of those whom they were taught to respect and revere as heroes and to put new heroes in their place. It is happening now in the U.S. embassy in France, where Old Joe Biden’s woke ambassador has made it clear with a series of wall portraits that the revolutionaries have triumphed, and the old regime has been overthrown.

Biden’s handlers’ far-Left ambassador to France, Denise Bauer, happily announced the change in a French-language tweet on Feb. 3. Over two photos, one of her standing in 2022 before portraits of her early predecessors, and then standing in the same area in 2023, with all the portraits replaced by those of Leftist activists, Bauer wrote: “It was one of the first photos taken when I arrived in Paris. 1 year later, we decided to do it again. Proud that the entrance to our embassy now better reflects the #IncredibleDiversity of my country. A value that I wear wherever I go in France.”

According to a Tuesday report in the Washington Free Beacon, “among the portraits Bauer banished was that of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who served as minister to France in 1796. A portrait of Pinckney, a signer of the Constitution and general in George Washington’s Continental Army, was replaced by a photograph of transgender activist Sylvia Rivera, who claimed to have played a prominent role in the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.” Rivera recounted proudly: “I have been given the credit for throwing the first Molotov cocktail by many historians but I always like to correct it. I threw the second one, I did not throw the first one!”

Also getting the axe in Bauer’s redecoration for the new, woke America was John Armstrong Jr., who was “minister to France from 1804 to 1810” and “was a major during the revolution who eventually became a U.S. senator and secretary of war.” Likewise deep-sixed was “Swiss-born Albert Gallatin, known as ‘America’s Swiss Founding Father,’ was minister to France as well as secretary of the Treasury and founder of New York University.” The likes of Pinckney, Armstrong, and Gallatin have an immense mark against them: they were all white males. That will never do, not for the embassy of a duly diverse and multicultural regime.

Bauer doesn’t appear to be proceeding on her own initiative. Her “preoccupation with diversity in the embassy,” says the Free Beacon, is “consistent with Biden’s directives for the executive branch. The president on his first day in office issued an executive order to all cabinet-level agencies ordering they assess their commitment to ‘racial equity’ and develop an ‘action plan’ with the objective of ‘embedding equity in the everyday business of government.’”

Denise Bauer, apparently, is nothing if not a team player. Among those with whom she has replaced all those dead white racists is Dolores Huerta, “a labor leader and former honorary chair of Democratic Socialists of America. Huerta was a frequent speaker at conferences and rallies allegedly linked to the Communist Party USA from the 1960s through the ’90s, and in the 2000s was an outspoken advocate for the release of five Cuban spies arrested while operating in the United States.”

Related: What’s With the New Statue at One of New York City’s State Courthouses?

Also now adorning the walls of our embassy in France are portraits of labor activist Cesar Chavez, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, novelist Sandra Cisneros, and baseball star Roberto Clemente.

Notice anything? That’s right: Denise Bauer has filled our embassy in France with portraits of Hispanics. Does she think she is the ambassador to Spain? Does wokeness so eschew basic reality now that she thinks it’s all the same, Spain, France, all bad old countries of Old White Europe? It’s apparently not quite as bad as all that. The State Department explained that it was a “temporary exhibition space” for National Hispanic Heritage Month. So watch for a new assortment of woke heroes to go up for every new month of the Left’s new calendar. One thing you can say about our new civil religion: it has plenty of saints.

MSNBC’s Psaki warns of the ‘danger’ of the freedom of speech

BY ROBERT SPENCER

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/02/msnbcs-psaki-warns-of-the-danger-of-the-freedom-of-speech;

REPUBLISHED BELOW IN FULL UNEDITED FOR INFORMATIONAL, EDUCATIONAL, & RESEARCH PURPOSES.

Psaki’s reflexive and unthinking authoritarianism reflects the stance of the Left, in general, these days. Leftists are determined to silence and crush all dissent and allow only their perspective to be heard in the public square. Learn more about this effort in The Sumter Gambit: How the Left Is Trying to Foment A Civil War.

“Psaki Urges MSNBC Viewers To ‘Think Of The Danger’ Posed By Free Speech,” by Harold Hutchison, Daily Caller, February 9, 2023:

“If you were running a local political campaign and you’re running ads on television, and you say something inaccurate about your opponent, guess what happens? The ad is pulled down,” Psaki said. “These platforms live by a different set of rules, and people consume more information from them than any other source of media. Think of the danger of that.”

The House Oversight Committee held a hearing Wednesday on Twitter’s censorship practices, focusing on the company’s actions towards an Oct. 14, 2020 report by the New York Post on the contents of a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden. Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the Post’s and the personal account of then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the story, citing its “hacked materials” policy.

“As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, they’re allowing hate speech, racism. Also, let’s not forget inaccurate information about vaccines and how they can save your lives. They run rampant on these platforms,” Psaki said.

During the hearing, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina described side effects from receiving a COVID-19 vaccine while questioning former Twitter executives about the censorship of alleged “misinformation” about COVID-19.

Among those who were “shadow-banned” by Twitter was Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy, who said that lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic harmed children. Dr. Andrew Bostom, a former academic at Brown University, was suspended for five months for alleged “medical misinformation.”

“What these Republicans are doing, essentially, just to break down past all of this crazy word salad of yesterday, they are defending the pushing of inaccurate, dangerous information on the platforms that most people receive information from,” Psaki continued. “That is racist, dangerous, prompted January 6th, is prompting people not to get vaccinated. That’s what they’re defending.”…

1 2 3 … 39