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Tehran blasts US attempt to undermine free speech after Washington’s takeover of Iranian news websites
23 Jun, 2021 14:26

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has vowed to enact a “double defeat” on Washington after the US authorities seized a number of websites belonging to news agencies from or associated with Tehran.

Speaking on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Tehran deplores the US’ efforts to undermine free speech and silence the voice of Iran’s independent media.

“Rejecting this illegal and bullying action, the Islamic Republic of Iran will pursue the issue through legal channels,” he stressed, slamming the shameful double standards employed by Washington.

He stated that the Biden administration was following the same path as former US President Donald Trump, who had exacted crippling sanctions on Tehran. Khatibzadeh vowed that Washington's moves against Iran would only lead to a “double defeat.”
Also on rt.com US government ‘SEIZES’ website of Iran’s Press TV, multiple other media outlets

The spokesman’s comments come after Washington seized a number of web domains belonging to Iranian and Iran-associated media. The media outlets seized by the US government included outlets Press TV and Al-Alam, along with the Yemeni TV channel Al Masirah, run by the Houthi faction, and an Iraqi Shia satellite channel.

“Components of the government of Iran – disguised as news organizations or media outlets targeted the United States with disinformation campaigns and malign influence operations,” the US Justice Department said in a statement.

The move took place as negotiators in Vienna attempt to bring the US and Iran back in line with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which sought to put restrictions on Iranian nuclear ambitions. The 2015 pact was unilaterally abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018 which enacted tough sanctions on Iran.

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“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever.” - George Orwell, 1984
... rampant abuse of power and mass manipulation ... ubiquitous technology, fascism and totalitarianism in 1984.

“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!”—George Orwell

1984 portrays a global society of total control in which people are not allowed to have thoughts that in any way disagree with the corporate state. There is no personal freedom, and advanced technology has become the driving force behind a surveillance-driven society. Snitches and cameras ...

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”?George Orwell

[Our] government and its corporate spies now watch our every move. Much like Huxley’s A Brave New World, we are churning out a society of watchers who “have their liberties taken away from them, but … rather enjoy it, because they [are] distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.” Much like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the populace is now taught to “know their place and their duties, to understand that they have no real rights but will be protected up to a point if they conform, and to think so poorly of themselves that they will accept their assigned fate and not rebel or run away.”

And in keeping with Philip K. Dick’s darkly prophetic vision of a dystopian police state—which became the basis for Steven Spielberg’s futuristic thriller Minority Report—we are now trapped in a world in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams and pre-crime units will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control....

... facial recognition, iris scanners, massive databases, behavior prediction software, and so on ... complex, interwoven cyber network aimed at tracking our movements, predicting our thoughts and controlling our behavior...

... widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining, fusion centers, driverless cars, voice-controlled homes, facial recognition systems, cybugs and drones, and predictive policing (pre-crime) aimed at capturing would-be criminals before they can do any damage.... Political correctness—a philosophy that discourages diversity—has become a guiding principle of modern society.

The courts have shredded the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. ...

SWAT teams battering down doors without search warrants and FBI agents acting as a secret police that investigate dissenting citizens are common occurrences in contemporary America. And bodily privacy and integrity have been utterly eviscerated by a prevailing view that Americans have no rights over what happens to their bodies during an encounter with government officials, who are allowed to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”?George Orwell, Animal Farm

We are increasingly ruled by multi-corporations wedded to the police state.

... technological arsenals so sophisticated and invasive as to render any constitutional protections null and void...

Money, power, control. There is no shortage of motives fueling the convergence of mega-corporations and government.

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Tsunami of Crises for Biden* Administration ....
Crime
Even more urgent than the surging immigration and imminent inflation crises is the entirely predictable and much predicted crime wave. Violent crime is up everywhere and especially in Democratic-governed cities that cravenly bowed to the outrageous demands in the “peaceful protests” of last summer that injured 2000 police personnel, killed approximately 50 people, and caused over $2 billion of property damage.

The rioters, almost none of whom would have been Republican voters, demanded that the police be defunded and “reimagined” and this was done in many cities, generating violent crime increases of from 25 to 150 percent.

All Biden’s nonsense about shooting to hit people in the leg and enlisting social workers and psychologists to go out on 911 calls is vanishing in the vast cauldron of skyrocketing violent crime. Many formerly feasible neighborhoods are terrorized by gangs and conditions are undoubtedly aggravated by sluggish work from police forces that are tired of being the scapegoats for racist urban terrorists. The ranks of American urban police are thinning rapidly as the people in blue can easily find less hazardous and more highly appreciated work.

The president’s address on crime on June 23 took refuge in the usual Democratic arguments about gun control. No doubt the gun laws can be better enforced, but the counter-argument that in such lawless conditions, the existence of firearms in most American homes is a factor of deterrence of crime and not an incitement to it.

Chicago has tough gun laws but its worst areas are shooting galleries where the arrest rates are so low that it is obvious that the police are either compromised by their association with violent gangs or confining themselves to the perimeters of the most crime-ridden areas and have abandoned the core of those areas to the Darwinian masters of them, (and these desperate conditions are certainly not confined to Chicago).

The president was correct in his plan to give greater assistance to criminals returning to civilian life and to prison reform in general, but that will work better with nonviolent people who are generally chronically over-sentenced, and who are much less likely to be repeat offenders than their violence-prone fellow inmates.

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Facebook Now Sending Messages to Some Users Asking About Potentially ‘Extremist’ Friends
By Jack Phillips
July 1, 2021 Updated: July 1, 2021


Some Facebook users have recently reported being sent warning messages from the social media giant relating to “extremists” or “extremist content.”

“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?” one message reads. “We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support.”

The message also provides a button to “Get Support,” which leads to another Facebook page about extremism.

Redstate editor Kira Davis, who said was sent a screenshot of the message from a friend, wrote: “Hey has anyone had this message pop up on their FB? My friend (who is not an ideologue but hosts lots of competing chatter) got this message twice. He’s very disturbed.”

How sweet…#Facebook is offering support???? #Censorship #extremism #CancelCulture pic.twitter.com/gJKNepZudG

— John Burnett (@IamJohnBurnett) July 1, 2021

And others reported getting a warning that they may have been “exposed to harmful extremist content recently.” The message then states that “violent groups try to manipulate your anger and disappointment,” similarly offering a “Get Support” option.

“Facebook randomly sent me this notice about extremism when I clicked over to the app. Pretty weird. … The Get Support button just goes to a short article asking people not to be hateful,” another user on Twitter wrote.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Epoch Times on July 1 that the company is currently running the warnings as a test to some users.

“This test is part of our larger work to assess ways to provide resources and support to people on Facebook who may have engaged with or were exposed to extremist content, or may know someone who is at risk. We are partnering with NGOs and academic experts

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in this space and hope to have more to share in the future,” the spokesperson said, without elaborating.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
White people in America have served their purpose.

What we're seeing now isn't raising anybody up. It's the elites putting their boots on everyone's faces indiscriminately.

Get used to the new normal. Except for the 1%, we're all going to be living on the dole and in the ghetto in a generation or two.

Even the black lesbian midget trannies that aren't part of the 1%.

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

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Originally posted by chrisisall:

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Lois Lane: I mean, why are you HERE? There must be a reason for you to be here.
Superman: Yes.
Lois Lane: Mm-hm?
Superman: I'm here to fight for truth and justice and the American way.
Lois Lane: (laughs) You're gonna end up fighting every elected official in this country!

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As a kid I never really got this exchange.
Now I do.

Do YOU?

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I'm wondering if there is anything to get.....

No wonder "America" is laughable....

We all grew up believing in some unattainable Utopia.



WE THE PEOPLE, must learn to evolve.

WE THE PEOPLE, have lived very cheaply for decades at the expense of every third-world country we could exploit.

Short of some new planet of idiots we can exploit, WE THE PEOPLE, as WE know WE, are done....


Shit's getting very real very quickly. I'nnit' ?

My prediction is today's middle class American family will be Eastern Europe's middle class family by 2020.

But what do I know?

I'm just the Stupid Drunk Guy that needs help.

Don't come to me for help when that day comes.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh. That's cute.

Second showing everybody how he spends all day long obsessing over me.


I missed you too, buddy.

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Matt Hancock’s bungling effort to conceal his affair with Gina Coladangelo may give hope to some that all government attempts to keep information from the public will be equally futile.

Unfortunately, the government has launched a carefully targeted multi-front offensive to hide its activities more effectively. Among measures being considered or already under way are a reformed Official Secrets Act that will conflate investigative journalism and whistleblowing with espionage. On another front, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is being crippled by rejecting requests and under-resourcing. At an individual level, ministers and senior officials escape scrutiny by using encrypted messaging services that can make conversations disappear from the record.

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Hancock himself was apparently so concerned over the contents of his emails that he used a private email account. Any enquiry into the test and trace debacle or the mass deaths in care homes may find it difficult to discover with whom the former health secretary was in contact.

In the last year, the rejection of requests for information from central government under the FOIA have soared to 50 per cent compared to 15 per cent when it was first introduced. “The importance of FOIA is that it is a symbol of transparency which is why politicians hate it so much,” says Ben Worthy, a senior lecturer at Birkbeck specialising in transparency and freedom of information. He says that governments do not dare to abolish the act, but they can defang it by across-the-board rejections, deliberately long delays or simple non-compliance.

Most threatening of all to the public knowing what the government is doing are proposed changes in the Official Secrets Act which would treat journalists, whistleblowers and leakers as if they were spies. A little-noticed 67-page consultative paper issued in May by the Home Office and titled Legislation to Counter State Threats (Hostile State Activity)says anybody revealing information that the government chooses to label as a state secret would be liable for prosecution. The papers defines espionage particularly broadly as “the covert process of obtaining sensitive confidential information that is not normally publicly available”.

Critics say the proposed legislation would leave journalists and others facing the threat of 14 years in prison for publishing whatever the government may say is damaging to national security. The burden of proof for a successful prosecution would be reduced and juries would not necessarily be told why some disclosure poses such a serious threat.

In Priti Patel’s introduction to the document, the home secretary portrays Britain as beset by enemies at home and abroad who pose a mounting danger to the nation. Her declared purpose is “to empower the whole national security community to counter the insidious threat we face today”.

Supposing all these proposals are implemented then Britain will be well on the way to joining those countries where the disclosure of any information damaging to the government is punishable. Offences range from revealing war crimes to disclosing trivial failures. The Indian government would like to silence anybody revealing the true death toll in the Covid-19 epidemic; Turkey has jailed journalists for writing that it had supplied weapons to al-Qaeda-type organisations; the Egyptian government once stopped an academic from publishing a paper showing that more Egyptian farmers were going blind because of the spread of a waterborne parasite.

Britain does not have the same tradition of authoritarian censorship, but freedom of expression here is more fragile than it looks for two reasons. The Johnson administration has been more moderate than many nativist populist governments that have taken power around the world over the last decade. But it shares with them a strategy of systematic threat-inflation, frequently modelled on the agenda of the Republican Party in the US. In the paper cited above, Patel speaks of the necessity of introducing voter IDs and combating foreign powers interfering in British elections.

A second feature of British culture makes the country particularly open to the belief that somewhere in the heart of government lie informational crown jewels, well-guarded secrets so important that their disclosure would pose an existential threat to us all. Such a myth is central to the plot of thousands of spy novels and films. But in my experience as a journalist few such earth-shaking secrets exist and what many people think of as a secret is either trivial or can be deduced by any reasonably well-informed person.
The disclosures by Dominic Cummings, recently in the top ranks of government as Boris Johnson’s chief of staff, are a good example of what might be termed “the fallacy of the state secret”. For more than seven hours he testified to a parliamentary committee about the inner workings and personal likes and dislikes within the Johnson government. He made damaging allegations about Hancock, Johnson, inadequate preparations for the Covid-19 pandemic, the failure to protect care homes and shambolic mistakes in calling the second lockdown.

Yet none of these revelations were “secrets” in any sense of the word since the facts about these disastrous decisions and decision-makers had long been obvious. What made Cummings’s testimony so fascinating was that it provided eye-witness confirmation of what most people already knew.

Much the same is true of the Wikileaks publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic and military cables in 2010 for which Julian Assange is currently incarcerated in Belmarsh high security prison in London. Despite the best effort of the US government to prove the opposite, these supposed “secrets” revealed little that was not known previously, deeply embarrassing though it was for the US government to see proof that its helicopters were machine-gunning civilians in the streets of Baghdad.

To try to maintain the classic spy movie narrative that secrets betrayed means that there is blood on the hands of the betrayers, the US army set up a task force to try to find a US agent who had died because of the Wikileaks revelations. But after long researches the team of 120 counterintelligence officers failed to find a single person, among the thousands of American agents and secret sources in Afghanistan and Iraq, who could be shown to have died because of the revelations.

The real reason why governments fight so hard to maintain their monopoly control over information is not to keep security secrets vital to the nation, but to use or leak that information themselves.

They know that it is one of the key levers of their power and will persecute and punish anybody who tries to take it from them. As Ben Worthy puts it, the struggle, which people imagine is about keeping secrets, is really about who discloses them and is consequently “a battle to control the news agenda”.

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What also showed up in the Stratfor emails was the unrelenting, Inspector-Javert-type approach taken by one Fred Burton, Stratfor’s Vice-President for Counterterrorism and Corporate Security. (Burton had been Deputy Chief of the Department of State’s counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security Service.)

Here’s Javert – I mean Burton:

"Move him [Assange] from country to country to face charges for the next 25 years. But seize everything he and his family own, to include every person linked to Wiki." [my comment: "country to country", or – equally effective – court to court]

"Pursue conspiracy and political terrorism charges and declassify the death of a source, someone which could link to Wiki."

"Assange is a peacenik. He needs his head dunked in a full toilet bowl at Gitmo."

“Take down the money. Go after his infrastructure. The tools we are using to nail and de-construct Wiki are the same tools used to dismantle and track al-Qaeda."

"Bankrupt the arsehole first; ruin his life. Give him 7-12 years for conspiracy."

"Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist. He’ll be eating cat food forever... extradition to the US is more and more likely."

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YouTube Censors North Carolina County Government Meeting
By Matt McGregor
July 14, 2021 Updated: July 14, 2021

A county board of commissioners in North Carolina is pushing back against tech giant Google after YouTube, owned by Google, deleted one of the board’s videos for allegedly violating YouTubes terms and conditions regarding medical misinformation.

After its June 16 meeting, the Henderson County Board of Commissioners video upload on YouTube was taken down, prompting commissioners to call an emergency meeting on Friday, June 18...

In the public comment period of the June 16 meeting, several people had asked that the commissioners not use local taxpayers’ money to assist in North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s vaccine incentives, which includes four $1 million cash drawings, $25 cash cards, and signage such as billboards.

These incentives are not funded by state or local governments, but from the U.S. Treasury Department’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in March.

Citizens who speak in the public comment period are allotted three minutes and can talk about any subject, according to Lapsley, “as long as they keep it civil.”

It’s not, however, a dialogue with the commissioners, Lapsley said.

“It’s just an opportunity for anybody to tell the commissioners what’s on their mind,” Lapsley said.

For several years, county staff has uploaded the meetings to YouTube, where it would stay for 90 days.

“We posted the video as we normally do, and within about two hours we got an email from YouTube telling us that the video has been taken down because of misinformation,” Lapsley said.

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