https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7B_c-mAah0

INTERVIEW: Kamala Harris, the debacle and collapse

 

Kamala Harris meanders, tries to use platitudes and metaphors and gets lost in her own rhetoric. Garland Nixon on the woman who would be president

 

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Enabling a ‘Brutus’ to Slay the Elon Musk ‘Caesar’

    by Alastair Crooke

 

In the Washington Post on Monday, the headlines read: Musk and Durov are facing the revenge of the regulators. Former US Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, in the British Guardian newspaper, published a piece on how to “rein-in” Elon Musk, suggesting that “regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest” on lines of that which befell Pavel Durov recently in Paris.

As should be clear to all now, “war” has broken out. There is no need for further pretence about it. Rather, there is evident glee at the prospect of a crackdown on the “Far-Right” and its internet users: i.e. those who spread “disinformation” or mal-information that “threatens” the broad “cognitive infrastructure” (which is to say, what the people think!).

Make no mistake, the Ruling Strata are angry; they are angry that their technical expertise and consensus about “just about everything” is being spurned by the “deplorables.” There will be prosecutions, convictions, and fines for cyber “actors” who disrupt the digital “literacy,” the “leaders” warn.

Professor Frank Furedi observes:

There is an unholy alliance of western leaders – Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz – whose hatred of what they call populism is undisguised. In his recent visits to Berlin and Paris, Starmer constantly referred to the threat posed by populism. During his meeting with Scholz in Berlin on 28 August, Starmer spoke about the importance of defeating ‘the snake oil of populism and nationalism.’

Furedi explained that as far as Starmer was concerned, populism was a threat to the power of the technocratic élites throughout Europe:

Speaking in Paris, a day later, Starmer pointed to the far Right as a ‘very real threat’ and again used the term ‘snake oil’ of populism. Starmer has never stopped talking about the ‘snake oil of populism.’ These days virtually every political problem is blamed on populism … The coupling of the term snake-oil with populism is constantly used in the propaganda of the technocratic political elite. Indeed, tackling and discrediting snake oil populists is its number one priority.

So, what is the source of the élite’s anti-populist hysteria? The answer is that the latter know that they have become severed from the values and respect of their own people and that it is only a matter of time before they are seriously challenged, in one form or another.

This reality was very much on view in Germany this last weekend, where the “non-Establishment (i.e. non Staatsparteien) parties – when added together – secured 60 percent of the vote in Thüringen and 46 percent in Saxony. The Staatsparteien (the nominated establishment parties) choose to describe themselves as “democratic,” and to label the “others” as “populist” or “extremist.” State media even hinted that what counted more were “democratic” votes; and not non-Staatsparteien votes, so the party with the most Staatsparteien votes should form the government in Thüringen.

These have co-operated to exclude AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) and other non-Establishment parties from parliamentary business as far as legally possible – for instance by keeping them out of key parliamentary committees and the imposition of various forms of social ostracism.

It reminds of the story of the great poet Victor Hugo’s membership rejection – no less than 22 times – by the Académie Française. The first time he applied, he received 2 votes (out of 39) from Lamartine and Chateaubriand, the two greatest men of letters of their time. A witty woman of the time commented: “If we weighed the votes, Monsieur Hugo would be elected; but we’re counting them.”

Why war?

Because, after the 2016 US election, the US political backroom élites blamed democracy and populism for producing bad election outcomes. Anti-establishment Trump had actually won in the US. Bolsonaro won too, Farage surged, Modi won again, and Brexit etc., etc.

Elections were soon proclaimed to be out of control, throwing out bizarre “winners.” Such unwelcome outcomes threatened the deep-seated structures that both projected and safeguarded long-seated US oligarchic interests around the globe, by subjecting them (oh the horror!) to voter scrutiny.

By 2023, the New York Times was running essays headlined: “Elections Are Bad for Democracy.”

Rod Blagojevich explained in the WSJ, earlier this year, the gist of what it was that had broken with the system:

We [he and Obama] both grew up in Chicago politics. We understand how it works—with the bosses over the people. Mr. Obama learned the lessons well. And what he just did to Mr. Biden is what political bosses have been doing in Chicago since the 1871 fire: Selections masquerading as elections.

While today’s Democratic bosses may look different from the old-time cigar-chomping guy with a pinky ring, they operate the same way: in the shadows of the backroom. Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the rich donors—the Hollywood and Silicon Valley élites—are the new bosses of today’s Democratic Party. They call the shots. The voters, most of them working people, are there to be lied to, manipulated and controlled.

The Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month will provide the perfect backdrop and place [for appointing a] candidate, not the voters’ candidate. Democracy, no. Chicago ward-boss politics, yes.

The problem was that the revealing of Biden’s dementia had pulled the mask from the system.

The Chicago model is not so very different from how EU democracy works. Millions voted in the recent European parliamentary elections; “Non-Staatsparteien” parties chalked-up major successes. The message sent was clear – yet nothing changed.

Cultural War

2016 represented the onset of cultural war, as Mike Benz has described in great detail. A complete outsider, Trump had crashed through the System’s guardrails to win the Presidency. Populism and “disinformation” were the cause, it was held. By 2017, NATO was describing “disinformation” as the greatest threat facing western nations.

Movements designated as populist were perceived as not simply hostile to the policies of their opponents, but to élite values too.

To combat this threat, Benz, who until recently was directly involved in the project as a senior State Department official focused on technology issues, explains how the backroom bosses pulled an extraordinary “sleight of hand”: “Democracy” they said, was no longer to be defined as a consensus gentium – i.e. a concerted resolve amongst the governed; but rather, was to be defined as the agreed “stance” formed, not by individuals, but by democracy-supporting institutions.

Once re-defined as “an alignment of supporting institutions,” the second “twist” to the democracy re-formulation was added. The Establishment had foreseen a risk that were a direct info-war on populism pursued, they themselves would be portrayed as autocratic and imposing top-down censorship.

The solution to the dilemma of how to pursue the campaign against populism, according to Benz, lay in the genesis of the “whole of society” concept whereby media, influencers, public institutions, NGOs and allied media would be corralled and pressured into joining an apparently organic, bottom-up censorship coalition focused on the scourge of populism and disinformation.

This approach – with the government standing at “one removed” from the censorship process – seemed to offer plausible deniability of direct government involvement; of the authorities acting autocratically.

Billions of dollars were spent in raising up this anti-disinformation eco-system in such a way that it appeared to be a spontaneous emanation out of civil society, and not the Potemkin façade that it was.

Seminars were conducted to train journalists on Homeland Security disinformation best practices and safeguards – to detect, mitigate, dismiss and distract. Research funds were channeled to some 60 universities to found “disinformation laboratories,” Benz reveals.

The key point here is that the “whole of society” framework could facilitate a blending back into the policy mainstream of the long timeframe and largely unspoken (and sometimes secret) bedrock structures of foreign policy – on which foundation many key élite financial and political interests are leveraged.

An outwardly bland ideological alignment focused on “our democracy” and “our values” would nonetheless allow for the re-integration of these enduring structures to foreign policy (hostility to Russia; support for Israel; and antipathy towards Iran) to be re-formulated as the appropriate rhetorical slap in the face to the Populists.

The war may escalate; It may not end with a disinformation eco-system. The New York Times in July posted an article arguing how The First Amendment is Out of Control and in August another piece entitled, The Constitution is Sacred. Is it Also Dangerous?

The war, for the moment, is targeted at the “unaccountable” billionaires: Pavel Durov, Elon Musk, and his “X” platform. The survival or not of Elon Musk will be crucial to the course of this aspect of the war: The EU’s Digital Service Act was always conceived to serve as “Brutus” to Musk’s “Caesar.”

Throughout history, self-regarding and self-enriching élites have become dangerously contemptuous of their peoples. Crackdowns have been the usual first response. The cold reality here is that recent elections in France, Germany, Britain and for the Euro-parliament reveal the deep distrust and dislike of the Establishment:

The alienation is worldwide, against the postmodern West. Europe will either distance itself from it, or become embroiled in the detestation of the ‘privileged ci-devant.’ The end of the dollar is indeed the analogue of the abolition of feudal rights. It is inevitable, but it will also cost Europeans dearly.

An eco-system of propaganda does not restore trust. It erodes it.

from Strategic Culture Foundation.

 

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/enabling-a-brutus-to-slay-the-elon-musk-caesar/

 

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Tampa Trial on Free Speech Exposes US Hypocrisy

     by Jacob G. Hornberger

 

As I have written in my last two blog posts (here and here), the US government is prosecuting members of a small political group named the African People’s Socialist Party and its related “Uhuru” movement. The trial is taking place in US District Court in Tampa. The group has been advocating socialism and opposing US imperialism for around 50 years. The feds are prosecuting them as part of their anti-Russia crusade that US officials have been waging since even before the end of World War II. Specifically, the defendants are being prosecuted for failing to register themselves as agents of the Russian government and “sowing discord and conflict” within American voters, especially by opposing the US government’s foreign policy of interventionism, including in Ukraine.

On Day 3 of the trial last week, the feds presented an “expert witness” to establish Russia’s history of disinformation. That’s rich, given that the US government has long been one of the leaders of disinformation.

How about that 20-year war that the national-security establishment waged in Afghanistan? Most everyone now acknowledges that US officials were lying about about the war during the entire time they were waging it. See this article from the Intercept entitled “A War’s Epitaph,” whose subtitle is “For Two Decades, Americans Told One Lie After Another About What They Were Doing in Afghanistan.”

And what about those infamous WMDs in Iraq? They were used to initiate a vicious, deadly, and destructive war that killed, injured, incarcerated, and tortured tens of thousands of Iraqi people and destroyed their entire country. How’s that for a good example of US disinformation?

In fact, let’s not forget the propaganda that was emanating from US officials after the 9/11 attacks — that the terrorists attacked America because of hatred for our “freedom and values.” More disinformation. Assuming that the attacks were not an “inside job,” the motivation was retaliatory anger over the continuous killing spree that was being inflicted on the Iraqi people with the brutal US sanctions, which succeeded in killing countless Iraqi children.

Let’s go back a bit further — to the Pentagon Papers, which established that the US intervention in Vietnam was based on official lies. And what about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was based on official lies regarding a supposed attack by North Vietnam on U.S warships operating off North Vietnamese waters? That disinformation ultimately led to the senseless and meaningless deaths of some 58,000 American soldiers, not to mention more than a million Vietnamese.

One of the biggest items of disinformation has been the claim that American soldiers have killed and died in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam for our country or to protect our “rights and freedoms.” That’s a pure lie because none of those regimes were ever threatening our country or our rights and freedoms. Those soldiers killed and died for nothing but US lies and disinformation.

What about the entire Cold War racket, in which US officials inculcated a deep fear among the American people that the “Russians are coming!”? That was one of the biggest disinformation campaigns in U.S history.

Let’s not forget the US false claim with respect to Ukraine, which states that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.” In fact, Russia’s invasion was provoked by the US decision to have NATO absorb Ukraine, which would enable US officials to place their troops, bases, equipment, tanks, and nuclear missiles ever closer to Russia’s border, especially in Ukraine. Yet, the US disinformation on Ukraine has been eagerly embraced by the assets and acolytes of the US national-security establishment within the mainstream press.

US officials want to eliminate “discord and conflict” by unifying every American behind their their lies and disinformation. That’s why they are trying to shut down people who challenge their beloved anti-Russia crusade, just like they tried to shut down people who objected to their beloved anti-communist crusade during the Cold War.

After all, let’s not forget that that’s what they did with President Kennedy. They shut him down completely. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK achieved a breakthrough in which he recognized that the national-security establishment’s anti-Russia crusade was nothing but a deadly and dangerous racket, one that he announced he was ending. They knew that Kennedy was threatening not only their racket but also their very existence. After all, if people were to figure out the nature of their racket, they might demand the dismantling of the national-security state and the restoration of our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic. Thus, Kennedy had to be dealt with, and he was. No president since then has dared to challenge their anti-Russia racket.

It would have been great if the defendant’s lawyers in the Tampa trial had used their cross-examination of the government’s “disinformation expert” to bring out how the US government is itself one of the greatest disseminators of propaganda and disinformation in the world. No doubt the presiding judge would have disallowed that cross-examination but at least the jury might have gotten the point — that the US government is also one of the biggest hypocrites in the world.

Reprinted from Future of Freedom Foundation.

 

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/tampa-trial-on-free-speech-exposes-us-hypocrisy/

 

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By Andrew P. Napolitano

 

In 1966, two famous Russian literary dissidents, Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, were tried and convicted on charges of disseminating propaganda against the Soviet state. 

The two were authors and humorists who published satire abroad that mocked Soviet leaders for failure to comply with the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which guaranteed the freedom of speech.

Their convictions sparked international outrage. Former U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, and then America’s U.N. ambassador, Arthur Goldberg called the charges and the trial “an outrageous attempt to give the form of legality to the suppression of a basic human right.” 

When a secret transcript of the trial was circulated in the West, it became clear that Daniel and Sinyavsky were convicted of using words and expressing ideas contrary to what Soviet leaders wanted. They were sentenced to five and seven years, respectively, of hard labor in Soviet prison camps.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Political  Justice took a page from the Soviets and charged Americans and Russians with disseminating anti-Biden administration propaganda in Russia and here in the U.S. What ever happened to the freedom of speech?

Here is the backstory.

The Framers who crafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, both under the leadership and the pen of James Madison, were the same generation that revolted violently against King George III and Parliament and won the American Revolution. 

The revolution was more than just six years of war in the colonies. It was a radical change in the minds of men — elites like Thomas Jefferson and Madison, as well as farmers and laborers generally untutored in political philosophy.

Untutored they may have been, but they knew they wanted to be able to speak their minds, associate and worship as they pleased, defend themselves, and be left alone by the government. The key to all this was the freedom of speech. Speech was then, as it is today, the most essential freedom. 

The late Harvard Professor Bernard Bailyn read and analyzed all the extant speeches, sermons, lectures, editorials and pamphlets that he could find from the revolutionary period and concluded that in 1776 only about one-third of the colonists favored a violent separation from England. By the war’s end in 1781, around two-thirds welcomed independence.

Independence — From England & Government

But independence was bilateral. It meant not just independence from England but independence from the new government here as well.

In order to assure independence from the federal government, the colonies ratified the Constitution. Its purpose was to establish a limited central government. 

After the Constitution was ratified and the federal government was established, five colonies threatened to secede from it unless the Constitution was amended to include absolute prohibitions on the government from interfering with natural individual rights.

During the drafting of the Bill of Rights, Madison, who chaired the House of Representatives committee that did the drafting, insisted that the word “the” precede the phrase “freedom of speech, or of the press” in order to manifest to the ratifiers and to posterity the Framers’ collective understanding of the origin of these rights. 

That understanding was the belief that expressive rights are natural to all persons, no matter where they were born, and natural rights are, as Jefferson had written in the Declaration of Independence, inalienable.

Stated differently, Madison and his colleagues gave us a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that on their face recognized the pre-political existence of the freedom of speech and of the press in all persons and guaranteed that the Congress — by which they meant the government — could not and would not abridge them.

Until now.

In the past two weeks, the feds have secured indictments against two Americans living in Russia who are also Russian citizens working for a Russian television network that expressed political views — the feds call this propaganda — contrary to the views of the Biden administration.

The same feds secured an indictment against Americans and Canadians for funneling pro-Russian ideas to the American public through social media influencers. The feds, who call the words being used by their targets “disinformation,” apparently believe that the First Amendment has some holes in it for the speech that the government hates and fears.

That belief is profoundly erroneous.

The whole purpose of the First Amendment is to keep the government out of the business of evaluating the content of speech. The strength of an idea is its acceptance in the public marketplace of ideas not in the minds of government. This is political speech that is critical of government policies — that would be the very speech in which you and I and millions of Americans engage every day.

The speech we love to hear needs no protection because we welcome it. But the speech that challenges; irritates; expresses alternative views; exposes the government’s lies, cheats and killings — even harsh, caustic, hateful speech — is the very speech that the First Amendment was written to protect.

The United States has not declared war on Russia. Under international law, there is no legal basis for such a declaration. The U.S., however, which supplies weapons for its proxy Ukraine to attack Russia, is far more a threat to Russia than Russia is to the U.S. But you’d never know that by listening to the government. Now the government doesn’t even want you to hear speech that contradicts its narrative.

In reading about the Soviet show trial of Daniel and Sinyavsky and the recent indictments of Americans and others for expressing so-called Russian propaganda, my stomach turned. The federal government has become what it once condemned. 

Just like the Soviets in 1966, it mocks free speech, it assaults basic human rights, it evades the Constitution it is commanded to uphold and now it punishes those who dare to disagree. This may bring it to the same untimely end as the Soviet Union it now emulates.

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, was the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel and hosts the podcast Judging Freedom. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.

Published by permission of the author.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO 

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https://consortiumnews.com/2024/09/12/free-speech-the-department-of-political-justice/

 

 

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