Read Unauthorized Reporting, Analyses — You Endanger Democracy, Liberals Warn

State Battles Against Enemy Within, Rampant Wrong Reads Subverts Effort

Commentary

The grave and gathering threat imperiling American democracy, and our fellow citizens persists like a mutated virus reproducing itself, looking to infect others: Misinformation, or bad thought.

After years of warning by American liberals, led by Joe Biden and his Disinformation Governance Board, (status unknown), a federal judge disagreed this week, and ruled agencies of U.S. government can no longer coerce major social media outlets into banning writers and censoring works because the U.S. government and liberal establishment do not like the information being read or written.

In a federal case, STATE OF MISSOURI V JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR (CASE NO. 3:22-CV-01213) brought by two governors against the Biden administration, Judge Terry Doughty's ruling grants an injunction that forbids the Biden administration from contacting social media companies for "the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." (MEMORANDUM RULING ON REQUEST FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION; July 4, 2023)

The reaction from Democratic Party press is outrage.

Leah Litman and Laurence H. Tribe conclude in Just Security that this "decision, if left standing, will make us less secure as a nation and will endanger us all every day the injunction remains in force."

Wow.

It's not government goading Big Tech into censorship that is the concern, liberals assure.

It's people writing thought deemed wrong, and people reading these thoughts, that's the problem. Because those readers of misinformation, having contracted this malinformation, will transmit the misinformation to other unsuspecting Americans, not trained in liberal defense of democracy or possessing of individual minds vaccinated against bad thought.

Writes Matt Taibbi, author of the Twitter Files, in reply:

The Missouri v. Biden investigators found the same fact patterns found by Twitter Files reporters like me, Michael Shellenberger, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, David Zweig, and Paul Thacker, and then later Andrew Lowenthal, Aaron Mate, Sue Schmidt, Matt Orfalea, Tom Wyatt, Matt Farwell, @Techno_Fog, and many others. They also echoed descriptions by like Jacob Siegel at Tablet, or Robby Soave at Reason, who wrote about similar issues at Facebook.

Those of us who worked on the Twitter Files story initially experienced the same problem investigators and plaintiffs in the Missouri v. Biden case apparently did, being unsure of what to make of the sheer quantity of agencies and companies involved in what looked like organized censorship schemes. I know I wasn’t alone among Twitter Files reporters in being nervous to report that content moderation “requests” were coming from “agencies across the federal government — from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.” It’s what we were seeing, but seemed too nuts to be true. But as time went on, even more topics, government offices, and state-partnered organizations started popping up, leaving little question of what we were looking at.

Eventually, we found the same plot outlined in Missouri v. Biden: pressure from government in the form of threatened regulation, followed by a stream of recommendations about content from multiple agencies (the investigators in this lawsuit even found meddling by the Census Bureau). This was capped by the construction of quasi-private bureaucracies that in some cases appeared to have been conceived as a way for the government to partner on content moderation without being in direct violation of the First Amendment. 

Concludes Judge Terry Doughty:

Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.” [Note 721]

The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants.
Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the Defendants as set out herein.

[Note 721] An 'Orwellian 'Ministry of Truth' refers to the concept presented in George Orwell's dystopian novel, '1984.' In the novel, the Ministry of Truth is a governmental institution responsible for altering historical records and disseminating propaganda to manipulate and control public perception.

Yes.

There is a threat to our democracy, but it comes from Biden ideologues, fervent champions of the surveillance state and the censorship-industrial complex.

In the vital decision UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), Justice Lewis Powell denounced the Nixon administration’s electronic surveillance, warrantless-wiretapping program not just on Fourth Amendment grounds, but as a betrayal of the sovereign rights of citizens in a democracy to criticize their own government.

Powell's warning should be sounded today:

History abundantly documents the tendency of Government - however benevolent and benign its motives - to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs. The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent. ... The price of lawful public dissent must not be a dread of subjection to an unchecked surveillance power. Nor must the fear of unauthorized official eavesdropping deter vigorous citizen dissent and discussion of Government action in private conversation. For private dissent, no less than open public discourse, is essential to our free society.
- Justice Lewis Powell (UNITED STATES v. UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, 407 U.S. 297 (1972))

The most bizarre and revealing part of the liberal media script on this court ruling -- that the judge didn't bar *censorship* but merely the US Govt's effort to combat disinformation -- is that the FBI is not only qualified to decree Truth, but it uses censorship to Protect Us: https://t.co/yz50RO6NMU

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 6, 2023

Democrat Party Must Be Beaten by Allied Forces

Ben Shahn’s
The Passion of Sacco and Vansetti
"Sacco and Vanzetti lie in coffins; in
foreground in front of a colonnaded
neoclassical courthouse (image left).
On the porch behind them hangs a
portrait of the infamous trial judge,
Webster Thayer. Towering over
Sacco and Vanzetti are members of
 the committee that reviewed
convictions: Samuel Stratton, MIT
pres; Lawrence Lowell, Harvard
pres and Robert Grant, retired
judge," (Kuykendall)

Madison, Wisconsin — Neo-liberal cultists, corporate media and academia brandish national-security nostrums, wokism taboo-talk, and therapeutic-complex-speak in the name of science, equality and all that is rational and good. 

This is the Democrat Party 2023, and it is fetid, nonsensical and corrupt.

Democrats want censorship across the media, for our own good of course, and any argument or airing of facts must be shut down. (See Cleveland. Washburne. Leon. Hibbett and Grim. Taibbi. Greenwald.)

As Covid 19 lab-leak case approaches beyond a reasonable doubt, corporate media and the Democrat Party only grudgingly acknowledge why agnosticism and provisional conclusions on Covid 19 origins are consonant with science. 

This agnosticism didn't last long as liberal media are now hyping a ridiculous new story about racoon dogs being the long-sought origin point in among the wet-market delivering SARS-CoV-2.

Laughs Alex Washburne:

This [media] episode is the most desperate, farcical episode in a series of increasingly outrageous, farcical episodes. These unjustified scientific media blitzes feel, to any reasoned skeptic, especially a seasoned skeptic with knowledge of what serious scientific discoveries look like, more like propaganda campaigns than diligent truth-digging efforts. These farces have turned The Atlantic, The New York Times, and The Guardian into the Three Stooges of SARS-CoV-2 origins reporting.

Even liberals are asking, can media and Democrat stooges be this dumb?

For some three years, Americans raising questions about Covid 19 origins and asserting need for objective probes were branded racists, conspiracy mongers or allied with Russia.

For liberal-Democrat domestic forces, dishonesty is the best communications policy.

Time to ditch the Democrats. Democrats are protecting lies and are getting more ludicrous by the moment.

This is something media outlets should be aware of when reporting on the origins of COVID-19. https://t.co/HdeY7fkuPA

— Justin B. Kinney (@jbkinney) March 21, 2023

For a compelling knockdown of liberal response to reality, see Bio Safety press release below.

MEDIA OUTLETS SHOULD CORRECT MISLEADING ARTICLES ABOUT RACCOON DOGS STARTING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

 

On Thursday, March 16, The Atlantic published an article titled “The strongest evidence yet that an animal started the pandemic” [1]. Similar stories in other influential publications soon followed:

• New York Times: “New data links pandemic’s origins to racoon dogs at Wuhan market” [2],
• Washington Post: “New covid origin data links raccoon dogs to the pandemic” [3],
• Associated Press: “New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs in China market” [4],
• Scientific American: “New evidence supports animal origin of COVID virus through raccoon dogs” [5].
• Science: “Unearthed genetic sequences from China market may point to animal origin of COVID-19” [6].

This is just a small sample of the barrage of news reports strongly hinting that the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic had been solved.

 

We believe these news reports are deeply misleading and should be corrected. We also believe the reports reflect yet another example of a small group of researchers exaggerating their findings and misleading the public with false certainty about the origins of COVID-19.

 

First, the data on which these claims are based have not been made available for other researchers to confirm and independently interpret. Rather, they were only presented in a private meeting between the researchers and the WHO [7]. The media therefore have no independent confirmation that the data are sound or that the researchers’ conclusions are valid.

 

Second, the data provide no substantive new information about the origins of COVID-19, even if taken at face value. According to reports, the central piece of data is a single SARS-CoV-2-positive environmental sample which contains DNA from a raccoon dog. There is no evidence that this raccoon dog started the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, there is no evidence that this raccoon dog was even infected with SARS-CoV-2, as there was also human DNA in the sample, and the viral material could just as easily have come from an infected human. The researchers appear to have cherry-picked this one sample, out of 73 total SARS-CoV-2-positive samples collected at the Wuhan market [7], because this one sample furthers the specific narrative they have advocated in previous publications [8,9].

 

Third, the researchers who reported the data have a documented track record of exaggerating their findings, concealing doubts about their findings, and hiding major conflicts of interest. In 2022, many of the same researchers claimed that they had “dispositive evidence” and “incontrovertible evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from the wildlife trade [10]. They later withdrew this claim [8,9]. In 2020, some of the same researchers co-authored the paper “Proximal Origins of SARS-CoV-2”, which expressed scientific certainty that SARS-CoV-2 had not been altered in a laboratory [11]. Those authors, however, failed to report a major conflict of interest: that the heads of their funding agencies played an active role in preparing this paper [12]. The researchers also failed to openly acknowledge doubts that they had privately expressed about their conclusions before the funding agency heads became involved (doubts that have only since become public thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests [12]). 

 

We believe that this latest episode represents an unfortunate example of influential media outlets spreading a speculative narrative under the guise of a scientific finding. We also believe that the meagerness of the data being sold to the public underscores the need for an urgent, comprehensive, and forensic investigation into the origins of COVID-19, an investigation that uses not only scientific data, but all the tools of intelligence gathering and law enforcement. 

 

The public deserves real answers, not false certainty.

 

 

Signed,

Amir Attaran

Colin D. Butler

Richard H. Ebright

David N. Fisman

Andre M. Goffinet

Elisa D. Harris

Laura H. Kahn

Justin B. Kinney

Yanna Lambrinidou

Milton Leitenberg

Helen E. Mundler

Bryce E. Nickels

Sabrina Packman

Dana Parish

Steven E. Phillips

Eric S. Starbuck

Tyler Stepke

Susan Wright

 

 

About Biosafety Now

Biosafety Now is an organization of experts in biomedicine, mathematics, public health, public policy, law, social science, and public advocacy, all of whom agree that research that creates potential pandemic pathogens more dangerous than those in nature poses existential risks to the public and provides few, if any, benefits for science, medicine, public health, or national security. 

 

References

[1] The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic (The Atlantic; March 16, 2023)

[2] New Data Links Pandemic’s Origins to Raccoon Dogs at Wuhan Market (The New York Times; March 16, 2023)

[3] Genetic data links raccoon dogs to covid origin; WHO seeks China cooperation (Washington Post; March 17, 2023)

[4] New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs in China market (AP News; March 17, 2023)

[5] New Evidence Supports Animal Origin of COVID Virus through Raccoon Dogs (Scientific American; March 17, 2023)

[6] Unearthed genetic sequences from China market may point to animal origin of COVID-19 (Science; March 16, 2023)

[7] SAGO statement on newly released SARS-CoV-2 metagenomics data from China CDC on GISAID (March 18, 2023)

[8] Worobey, M. et al. The Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was the early epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Science 377, abp8715 (2022).

[9] Pekar, J. E. et al. The molecular epidemiology of multiple zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2. Science 377, eabp8337 (2022).

[10] Worobey et al.. The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence. [preprint] Zenodo (2022).

[11] Andersen, K. G., Rambaut, A., Lipkin, W. I., Holmes, E. C. & Garry, R. F. The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2. Nat Med 26, 450–452 (2020).

[12] Timeline: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2 (US Right to Know; November 29, 2022)

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Biden Begins a "Disinformation Governance Board;" Congressional Democrats Silent

Update: Democrats are retreating now, as leading flacks and Party press tell us they don't know what this Disinformation Governance Board does and is supposed to do. Democrats are a laughing stock, and apparently noone in the administration was bothered with the mission and name of a domestic Disinformation Governance Board.

The United States Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) is launching a "new Disinformation Governance Board to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security," reports Politico.

One Nina Jankowicz will head up the "Board."

Misinformation such as U.S. government lies used to target the U.S. population to goad our fellows into supporting the illegal invasion of Iraq?

Is Jankowicz actually going to call out the U.S. intelligence community for lies and misrepresentations?

No, no, not that kind of misinformation.

Disinformation from Russia. And, notes Jankowicz, working to "maintain the Dept's commitment to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties."

The DHS is committed to free speech, privacy, civil rights and civil liberties. Who knew?

Will Jankowicz' portfolio include efforts to counter disinformation from corporate interests, Israel, and Saudi Arabia?

She hasn't said.

Jankowicz also promotes herself as a "disinformation expert," focusing on disinformative comments from men, and is always on the lookout for men who "burst violently into your [social media] mentions and your life like the Kool-aid man, demanding your attention, hawking opinions that they believe are unarguably, manifestly correct and indispensable."

So, no facts or information from men criticizing Jankowicz, lest they harbor disinformation or conduct themselves in the manner of the Kool-aid character.

Apparently, Nina Jankowicz has a great start on her adventure at Homeland Security: Use ad hominem to evaluate argument and attack disinformation.

Here I was, worried about being a helpless victim of Russian propaganda.

Now, I feel safe, safe enough to know and understand the silence from congressional Democrats: We have always been at war with disinformation from Eastasia.

Right Wing Smear Formula: Lie Until You're Caught

There is a formula for right-wing smears. We see it over and over again, some more elaborate than others. They find a way to be aggrieved at the hands of their targeted group, then blow it way out of proportion on the right-wing blogs and faux media until it makes its way to Fox News and the mainstream, like the Breitbart SWATters managed last summer. This one, out of Wisconsin, is especially egregious. Follow along, because it's convoluted, which is what wingers love to do to confuse everyone. - Crooks and Liars

See PRWatch:

Decider Decides Not to Decide

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice … “

Lyrics are from the band called Rush; the song is Free Will from 1980; always hated the song (seemingly every station played it too often, killing it).

The too-often-played song from the Bush administration’s endless stream is that some other force is responsible for how to decide the dirty problems, even as Bush occasionally squawks that he is the decider.

But unaccountability, political-fealty-to-Bush, jump-on-the-grenade (it’s all the same PR scheme, keep the boy from getting splashed) from the beginning has been Bush’s magnum opus, calling out the tinhorned dictator’s little marching orders.

With Bush and company in the Nixonian zone of detestability, the Bushies tell us really it’s God, history, or Gen. David Petraeus—anything that will keep the Bush regime from being cast as the voice of its own administration—that now decides.

Iraq, the DoJ, the VA, you can pick at random a governmental charge from which Bush tries to hide from accountability, while the commissars endlessly promote the “policies and the programs” (from the Post today)of the man-child they struggle to project as the Holy decider and protector.

From Frank Rich today: We must “wait to see what David has to say,” Mr. Bush says. … The most credible person in the fight at this moment is Gen. David Petraeus.”

From the Times on Alberto Gonzales today:

President Bush often insists he has to be the decider — ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department.

The country is so sick of Bush and his sleazy machinations that even republicans today wish that Bush would just go away and give their nominee a shot at 2008.

But we are stuck with this unaccountable boy for another 18 months, though his self-conscious cry—the Bush-boy is holy, anything bad must not touch me—is already old, shrill and unchanging.

As Consortium News writes:

What a burden to have to face his many inadequacies—now held up to the light of day—whether it is his difficulty in speaking, thinking, reading, managing anxiety, or making good decisions. He will not change, because for him change means humiliating collapse. He is very fearful of public exposure of his many inadequacies.
###

A Way Forward in Iraq for Bush

Here's a way forward for George W. Bush.

The Iraqis don't want you there, the American people don't want you there, you are there illegally under international law; 1,000s of real, living people are killed and maimed every day. So, leave.

As NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF writes: "First, a poll this spring of Iraqis — who know their country much better than we do — shows that only 21 percent think that the U.S. troop presence improves security in Iraq, while 69 percent think it is making security worse."

The Iraqis do want to take more responsibility for their own country, and they want Bush out.

So, leave. But Bush the war president would rather run out the clock until 2009, and then proclaim that he was for victory and those Democrats and moderate Republicans lost Iraq, as though it were our's to lose.

A mildly positive sign is that the Karl Rove political war paradigm no longer works in favor of Bush, though even that will not prevent him from sacrificing 10,000s of more lives until the idiot is finally out of the White House.

Bush Is Firm as Criticism Over Iraq Mounts reads the NYT headline by DAVID STOUT and JEFF ZELENY:

WASHINGTON, July 10 — With his Iraq policy under intensified criticism and debate, President Bush said today the United States must persevere in Iraq, but that the Iraqis themselves must take more responsibility for their country.

Critics of the war should give Gen.

David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, “a chance to come back and tell us whether his strategy’s working, and then we can work together on a way forward,” Mr. Bush told a friendly, business-oriented audience in Cleveland.

###

The White House Phone Number Is ...

202 456-1414

"It is time for the American people to be heard — I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law." — Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del, reacting to the commutation of Lewis Libby who both leaked and covered up the leaking of a covert CIA agent's name after the agent's husband had exposed one of the main lies used to sell the Iraq war.

Call 202 456-1414.

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TNR Embarrasses Itself Again on Mike Gravel

Weird and skin-raising-yucky receiving the The New Republic Online's "This Week in Politics” e-mail June 14.

The New Republic’s e-mail includes an item entitled “Debatable” by the editors subtitled that “America doesn't need to hear from Mike Gravel.”
Mike Gravel, of-course, is the former Senator from Alaska who famously read into the congressional record the Pentagon Papers, that laid out the lies before and during the Vietnam War that ultimately cost some three million lives, and wreaks havoc today on untold millions more, including 100,000s of Vietnam-era veterans whom the Veterans Administration is trying to shaft on VA beneits. That’s a bad thing, TNR.

In TNR’s unenthusiastic reporting of the early debates by the presidential candidates, the editors (ignoring the inordinately inane) single out the substancial former Senator Mike Gravel:

These days, the debates often resemble the audition round of 'American Idol' where the talented and crazy alike vie for their 15 minutes of fame and maybe a little profit afterward. And, thus, debate time must be found for a specimen like Mike Gravel ("Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?").

Golly gee, I found the former Senator Gravel’s reluctance to nuke human beings insightful and worthy; no, basic towards establishing a sane and humanistic US foreign policy.

But TNR, who endorsed invade-Iraq and we-need-the-Patriot-Act Senator Joe Lieberman for president (nice call there), complain of the debates, rightly, that “Moronic episodes like this one are what make a joke of the concept of real debate--which entails people thinking aloud and challenging one another's ideas. What we get instead are mongrel hybrids combining the worst of press conferences (evasive answers without the tough follow-ups) and campaign speeches (platitudes with no pretense at substance).”

But when Senator Gravel (and Congressman Dennis Kucinich) actually injects some intelligence and challenging of neocon assumptions into the debate, TNR folds like so much joking Joe Momentum.

TNR ought to consider listening to Gravel and Kucinich who were spot-on accurate on the Iraq war and Patriot Act, among other Bush idiocies, and think, and to borrow from TNR:

Raise your hand if you find TNR idiotic for ridiculing the presidential candidates who have been proven correct time and time again as 100,000s of more lives are destroyed by the very imbecilic Bushian idiocies supported by The New Republic.

Just a thought.

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VA overstates record on wait times for appointments, report finds

Stella M. Hopkins and Chris Adams of McClatchy Newspapers write a piece demonstrating yet again how the PR-conscious VA does one thing and says another.

WASHINGTON - The Department of Veterans Affairs continues to significantly overstate its success in getting patients to see doctors for timely appointments, undercutting one of its key claims of success, according to a draft report obtained by McClatchy Newspapers. ...
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The Great American Disconnect

Iraq Has Always Been "South Korea" for the Bush Administration

By Tom Engelhardt

Finally, the great American disconnect may be ending. Only four years after the invasion of Iraq, the crucial facts-on-the-ground might finally be coming into sight in this country -- not the carnage or the mayhem; not the suicide car bombs or the chlorine truck bombs; not the massive flight of middle-class professionals, the assassination campaign against academics, or the collapse of the best health-care service in the region; not the spiking American and Iraqi casualties, the lack of electricity, the growth of Shia militias, the crumbling of the "coalition of the willing," or the uprooting of 15% or more of Iraq's population; not even the sharp increase in fundamentalism and extremism, the rise of al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the swelling of sectarian killings, or the inability of the Iraqi government to get oil out of the ground or an oil law, designed in Washington and meant to turn the clock back decades in the Middle East, passed inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone -- no, none of that. What's finally coming into view is just what George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the top officials of their administration, the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and their neocon followers had in mind when they invaded and occupied Iraq in 2003.
Read more at Tomgram.