STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship
- We now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans. The FBI has also actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were interfering
- Twitter has worked hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots
- The Twitter files also reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim
- Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana show at least 67 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are also engaged in illegal censorship activities. This includes aides to President Biden, who pressured social media companies to change their policies to fit White House demands for censorship
Between the documentation obtained through a recent lawsuit against the White House and the Twitter files released by Elon Musk, it’s become quite clear that every facet of the U.S. government, including its intelligence agencies, are involved in illegal and unconstitutional censorship.
In the video above, Fox News host Tucker Carlson interviews independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has spent weeks sifting through the released Twitter files and reported on the contents.
FBI Has Gone Off the Rails
Importantly, we now have proof that the FBI has been acting as the key instigator and implementer of the government’s illegal censorship of Americans’ political and medical views. The agency has also, on a regular basis and for unknown purposes, asked Twitter to reveal the location of specific Twitter users, such as actor Billy Baldwin.
What’s more, internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memos, emails and documents show the DHS has worked on expanding its influence over tech platforms for years, so, government censorship is not something that came about in response to the COVID crisis. Nor is the censorship limited to COVID or public health information in general.
Evidence shows the FBI has actively interfered in multiple elections — all while inventing the narrative that foreign nations were doing the interfering.1 As noted by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., these kinds of activities are “the biggest threat to our constitutional democracy today.”2
As just one example, we now know the FBI plotted to quench the Hunter Biden laptop story well before the first report about it was published. In collaboration with Twitter, Facebook and the Aspen Institute, the FBI held a tabletop exercise to practice the shaping of the media’s coverage of a potential “hack and dump” operation involving Hunter Biden material.3,4 As reported by the New York Post:5
“[The] drill was put into practical use weeks later, when The Post broke the news about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — which was either ignored or downplayed by most mainstream news outlets and suppressed by both Twitter and Facebook.”
There’s also evidence showing the FBI has been shielding Hunter Biden and working with social media to censor bad press about him as far back as 2018.6 That job was probably made easier by the fact that reportedly former FBI agents work at both Twitter and Facebook.
For example, Jim Baker spent three decades with the FBI before becoming Twitter’s head lawyer,7 and Facebook employs no less than 115 “former” employees of the FBI, CIA, NSA and other intelligence agencies, most of whom now work in Facebook’s content moderation department.8
Twitter Paid to Censor Americans and Promote US Propaganda
Disturbingly, we now also have evidence showing that while Twitter insisted it was cracking down on covert government propaganda accounts, they only tracked down and banned foreign government-affiliated propaganda while working hand in hand with the U.S. Department of Defense to aid U.S. intelligence agencies in their efforts to influence foreign governments using fake news, computerized deepfake videos and bots.9 As reported by The Intercept:10
“Behind the scenes, Twitter gave approval and special protection to the U.S. military’s online psychological ops. Despite knowledge that Pentagon propaganda accounts used overt identities, Twitter did not suspend many for around two years or more. Some remain active …
In 2017 a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official sent Twitter a list of 52 Arab language accounts ‘we use to amplify certain messages.’ The official asked for priority service for six accounts, verification for one and ‘whitelist’ abilities for the others.”
Whitelisted accounts have a “validated” status similar to that of the blue check mark, which ensures they are promoted in searches. These accounts also don’t get shadow-banned or limited by other means. Adding insult to injury, the FBI has been using taxpayer dollars to pay Twitter for their censorship and propaganda services — more than $3.4 million between October 2019 and February 2021 alone.11
Congressional Members Involved in Censoring Americans
The FBI has not acted alone, however. Far from it. The Twitter files reveal members of Congress have a direct line to Twitter and have had accounts suspended on their behalf and content removed at their whim. As reported by MSN:12
“… Taibbi … reported that Twitter ‘received an astonishing variety of requests from officials asking for individuals they didn’t like to be banned.’ An example he shared was one sent in November 2020 by [Rep. Adam] Schiff’s office, who contacted Twitter hoping the tech giant would take action regarding ‘alleged harassment from QAnon conspiracists’ against Schiff’s staff, including aide Sean Misko.
‘Remove any and all content about Mr. Misko and other Committee staff from its service — to include quotes, retweets, and reactions to that content,’ the request to Twitter read. ‘Suspend the many accounts, including @GregRubini and @paulsperry, which have repeatedly promoted false QAnon conspiracies.'”
Other government leaders have been less clandestine in their censoring operations. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for example, wrote an open letter to Amazon demanding they ban my book, “The Truth About COVID-19.”
Similarly, two state attorneys general, Letitia James and William Tong, publicly threatened social media companies with legal ramifications if they refused to censor the “Misinformation Dozen.” President Joe Biden also publicly called on social media platforms to ban my accounts. But it gets worse.
Government Has Been Weaponized Against the People
Discovery documents from a lawsuit against the White House13 filed by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana (Eric Schmitt and Jeff Landry) show at least 6714,15 federal employees across more than a dozen agencies are engaged in these kinds of illegal censorship activities. This includes officials from:
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Election Security and Resilience team
- Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis
- The FBI’s foreign influence taskforce
- The Justice Department’s (DOJ) national security division
- The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- White House staff (including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty and former White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt)
- Health and Human Services (HHS)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)
- The Office of the Surgeon General
- The Census Bureau
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- The State Department
- The U.S. Treasury Department
- The U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Consultants from the strategic communications and marketing firm Reingold16 were also hired to manage the government’s collusion with social media in this intentional effort to violate our Constitutional right to free speech.
A Look Inside the White House Censorship Machine
In a January 8, 2023, op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, Jenin Younes and Aaron Kheriaty reviewed a series of emails between White House digital media director Rob Flaherty and a Facebook executive, illustrating how the White House pressured the company to censor and remove vaccine content even though Facebook itself characterized the material as “often-true content:”17
“Newly released documents show that the White House has played a major role in censoring Americans on social media. Email exchanges between Rob Flaherty … and social-media executives prove the companies put COVID censorship policies in place in response to relentless, coercive pressure from the White House — not voluntarily.”
Flaherty also demanded Facebook limit the spread of viral content on WhatsApp, a private messaging app with broad reach among “immigrant communities and communities of color.” In the end, Facebook acquiesced to all of Flaherty’s demands to prevent the spread of vaccine hesitancy and control political speech. As noted by Younes and Kheriaty:18
“President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy … publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship. On July 16, 2021, a reporter asked Mr. Biden [about] his ‘message to platforms like Facebook.’
He replied, ‘They’re killing people.’ Mr. Biden later claimed he meant users, not platforms, were killing people. But the record shows Facebook itself was the target of the White House’s pressure campaign.”
White House Pressured Google and YouTube to Do Its Bidding
Flaherty also had Google in his crosshairs, and accused YouTube of “‘funneling’ people into vaccine hesitancy,” adding that this concern was “shared at the highest (and I mean the highest) levels of the White House.”
“These emails establish a clear pattern,” Younes and Kheriaty write. “Mr. Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the companies’ failure to censor COVID-related content to his satisfaction. The companies change their policies to address his demands. As a result, thousands of Americans were silenced for questioning government approved COVID narratives.
Two of the Missouri plaintiffs, Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, are epidemiologists whom multiple social-media platforms censored at the government’s behest for expressing views that were scientifically well-founded but diverged from the government line — for instance, that children and adults with natural immunity from prior infection don’t need COVID vaccines …
The First Amendment bars government from engaging in viewpoint-based censorship. The state-action doctrine bars government from circumventing constitutional strictures by suborning private companies to accomplish forbidden ends indirectly.
Defenders of the government have fallen back on the claim that cooperation by the tech companies was voluntary, from which they conclude that the First Amendment isn’t implicated. The reasoning is dubious, but even if it were valid, the premise has now been proved false.
The Flaherty emails demonstrate that the federal government unlawfully coerced the companies in an effort to ensure that Americans would be exposed only to state-approved information about COVID-19. As a result of that unconstitutional state action, Americans were given the false impression of a scientific ‘consensus’ on critically important issues around COVID-19.”
Weaponization of Government Select Committee Impaneled
Taken together, the revelations from the Twitter files and this lawsuit clearly demonstrate that most, if not all, aspects of the U.S. government have been secretly weaponized to undermine and circumvent the Constitutional rights of the people.
As noted by Taibbi in his Fox News interview:
“This is not a partisan story. It’s a story about the architecture of the intelligence community and law enforcement getting its hands on speech, and on the ability of people to communicate with one another through platforms like Twitter and Facebook. And they’re doing this in a very profound way — it’s much more serious than what I thought at the beginning …”
While the danger we’re in as a nation is far more dire than anyone suspected, there is some good news. A new select committee, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, has been launched to investigate the weaponization of government, the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ’s investigation into and harassment of parents who spoke out against COVID mandates, critical race theory and the sexualization of their children at school board meetings. As reported by The Post Millennial:19
Coffee the Christian way: Promised Grounds
“This investigative panel will demand emails and correspondence between the Biden administration and big tech companies, and follows the massive revelations that came to light through the recent release of the Twitter files. Newly minted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy … was asked to form the committee as part of the negotiations that brought him to power …
The probe into communications between tech giants and President Biden’s aides will look for government pressure that could have resulted in censorship or harassment of conservatives — or squelching of debate on polarizing policies, including the CDC on COVID …”
While it’s likely that government personnel and agencies will try to ignore the committee’s requests for information, the committee does have subpoena power, and hopefully will not be too timid to use it.
Unfortunately, since the GOP does not control the Senate, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to pass any new laws based on the committee’s findings. That said, legislation to penalize government censorship has already been introduced, and you can help push it forward by asking your representatives to support it.
Support Legislation to Penalize Government Censorship
The Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act20 (HR.8752), introduced by three Republican House Representatives on the House Oversight and Reform, Judiciary, and Commerce committees, including Jordan, is specifically aimed at preventing federal employees from using their positions to influence censorship decisions by tech platforms.
The bill would create restrictions to prevent federal employees from asking or encouraging private entities to censor private speech or otherwise discourage free speech, and impose penalties, including civil fines and disciplinary actions for government employees who facilitate social media censorship.
While the U.S. Constitution clearly forbids government censoring and restricting free speech, HR. 8752 could be a helpful enforcement tool — and we clearly need enforcement, seeing how more than a dozen agencies are flouting the Constitution and have done so for years. People might tend to think twice, though, when they know there’s a personal price to pay.
- 1 Coffee & Covid 2022 December 19, 2022
- 2 Rumble Glenn Greenwald December 19, 2022 Timestamp: 44:23
- 3 Twitter Michael Shellenberger December 19, 2022
- 4, 6, 7, 8 Coffee & Covid December 20, 2022
- 5 New York Post December 19, 2022
- 9 Coffee & Covid December 21, 2022
- 10 The Intercept December 20, 2022
- 11 Meryl Nass Substack December 20, 2022
- 12 MSN January 3, 2023
- 13 State of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213
- 14 WAFB.com October 10, 2022
- 15 State of Missouri and State of Louisiana Against President Joseph Biden, Civil Action No. 22-cv-1213-TAD-KDM
- 16 Reingold
- 17, 18 WSJ January 8, 2023
- 19 Post Millennial January 9, 2023
- 20 HR 8752 — Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act
Five Things New “Preppers” Forget When Getting Ready for Bad Times Ahead
The preparedness community is growing faster than it has in decades. Even during peak times such as Y2K, the economic downturn of 2008, and Covid, the vast majority of Americans made sure they had plenty of toilet paper but didn’t really stockpile anything else.
Things have changed. There’s a growing anxiety in this presidential election year that has prompted more Americans to get prepared for crazy events in the future. Some of it is being driven by fearmongers, but there are valid concerns with the economy, food supply, pharmaceuticals, the energy grid, and mass rioting that have pushed average Americans into “prepper” mode.
There are degrees of preparedness. One does not have to be a full-blown “doomsday prepper” living off-grid in a secure Montana bunker in order to be ahead of the curve. In many ways, preparedness isn’t about being able to perfectly handle every conceivable situation. It’s about being less dependent on government for as long as possible. Those who have proper “preps” will not be waiting for FEMA to distribute emergency supplies to the desperate masses.
Below are five things people new to preparedness (and sometimes even those with experience) often forget as they get ready. All five are common sense notions that do not rely on doomsday in order to be useful. It may be nice to own a tank during the apocalypse but there’s not much you can do with it until things get really crazy. The recommendations below can have places in the lives of average Americans whether doomsday comes or not.
Note: The information provided by this publication or any related communications is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice. We do not provide personalized investment, financial, or legal advice.
Secured Wealth
Whether in the bank or held in a retirement account, most Americans feel that their life’s savings is relatively secure. At least they did until the last couple of years when de-banking, geopolitical turmoil, and the threat of Central Bank Digital Currencies reared their ugly heads.
It behooves Americans to diversify their holdings. If there’s a triggering event or series of events that cripple the financial systems or devalue the U.S. Dollar, wealth can evaporate quickly. To hedge against potential turmoil, many Americans are looking in two directions: Crypto and physical precious metals.
There are huge advantages to cryptocurrencies, but there are also inherent risks because “virtual” money can become challenging to spend. Add in the push by central banks and governments to regulate or even replace cryptocurrencies with their own versions they control and the risks amplify. There’s nothing wrong with cryptocurrencies today but things can change rapidly.
As for physical precious metals, many Americans pay cash to keep plenty on hand in their safe. Rolling over or transferring retirement accounts into self-directed IRAs is also a popular option, but there are caveats. It can often take weeks or even months to get the gold and silver shipped if the owner chooses to close their account. This is why Genesis Gold Group stands out. Their relationship with the depositories allows for rapid closure and shipping, often in less than 10 days from the time the account holder makes their move. This can come in handy if things appear to be heading south.
Lots of Potable Water
One of the biggest shocks that hit new preppers is understanding how much potable water they need in order to survive. Experts claim one gallon of water per person per day is necessary. Even the most conservative estimates put it at over half-a-gallon. That means that for a family of four, they’ll need around 120 gallons of water to survive for a month if the taps turn off and the stores empty out.
Being near a fresh water source, whether it’s a river, lake, or well, is a best practice among experienced preppers. It’s necessary to have a water filter as well, even if the taps are still working. Many refuse to drink tap water even when there is no emergency. Berkey was our previous favorite but they’re under attack from regulators so the Alexapure systems are solid replacements.
For those in the city or away from fresh water sources, storage is the best option. This can be challenging because proper water storage containers take up a lot of room and are difficult to move if the need arises. For “bug in” situations, having a larger container that stores hundreds or even thousands of gallons is better than stacking 1-5 gallon containers. Unfortunately, they won’t be easily transportable and they can cost a lot to install.
Water is critical. If chaos erupts and water infrastructure is compromised, having a large backup supply can be lifesaving.
Pharmaceuticals and Medical Supplies
There are multiple threats specific to the medical supply chain. With Chinese and Indian imports accounting for over 90% of pharmaceutical ingredients in the United States, deteriorating relations could make it impossible to get the medicines and antibiotics many of us need.
Stocking up many prescription medications can be hard. Doctors generally do not like to prescribe large batches of drugs even if they are shelf-stable for extended periods of time. It is a best practice to ask your doctor if they can prescribe a larger amount. Today, some are sympathetic to concerns about pharmacies running out or becoming inaccessible. Tell them your concerns. It’s worth a shot. The worst they can do is say no.
If your doctor is unwilling to help you stock up on medicines, then Jase Medical is a good alternative. Through telehealth, they can prescribe daily meds or antibiotics that are shipped to your door. As proponents of medical freedom, they empathize with those who want to have enough medical supplies on hand in case things go wrong.
Energy Sources
The vast majority of Americans are locked into the grid. This has proven to be a massive liability when the grid goes down. Unfortunately, there are no inexpensive remedies.
Those living off-grid had to either spend a lot of money or effort (or both) to get their alternative energy sources like solar set up. For those who do not want to go so far, it’s still a best practice to have backup power sources. Diesel generators and portable solar panels are the two most popular, and while they’re not inexpensive they are not out of reach of most Americans who are concerned about being without power for extended periods of time.
Natural gas is another necessity for many, but that’s far more challenging to replace. Having alternatives for heating and cooking that can be powered if gas and electric grids go down is important. Have a backup for items that require power such as manual can openers. If you’re stuck eating canned foods for a while and all you have is an electric opener, you’ll have problems.
Don’t Forget the Protein
When most think about “prepping,” they think about their food supply. More Americans are turning to gardening and homesteading as ways to produce their own food. Others are working with local farmers and ranchers to purchase directly from the sources. This is a good idea whether doomsday comes or not, but it’s particularly important if the food supply chain is broken.
Most grocery stores have about one to two weeks worth of food, as do most American households. Grocers rely heavily on truckers to receive their ongoing shipments. In a crisis, the current process can fail. It behooves Americans for multiple reasons to localize their food purchases as much as possible.
Long-term storage is another popular option. Canned foods, MREs, and freeze dried meals are selling out quickly even as prices rise. But one component that is conspicuously absent in shelf-stable food is high-quality protein. Most survival food companies offer low quality “protein buckets” or cans of meat, but they are often barely edible.
Prepper All-Naturals offers premium cuts of steak that have been cooked sous vide and freeze dried to give them a 25-year shelf life. They offer Ribeye, NY Strip, and Tenderloin among others.
Having buckets of beans and rice is a good start, but keeping a solid supply of high-quality protein isn’t just healthier. It can help a family maintain normalcy through crises.
Prepare Without Fear
With all the challenges we face as Americans today, it can be emotionally draining. Citizens are scared and there’s nothing irrational about their concerns. Being prepared and making lifestyle changes to secure necessities can go a long way toward overcoming the fears that plague us. We should hope and pray for the best but prepare for the worst. And if the worst does come, then knowing we did what we could to be ready for it will help us face those challenges with confidence.
