REPUBLIC REBORN

While many rightly cheered the rise of the internet in the 90’s, seeing it as the herald of the end of the one-viewpoint corporate news of the 20th century, ‘Big Media’ has returned in a big way to the internet itself. The “internet ghettos”, as Matt Drudge aptly christened the gargantuan digital empires of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, Microsoft, and Google, have roped most people in, and, having done that, can now funnel whichever viewpoint it desires to its users. And these companies aren’t private in the least, but up to their necks in government contracts, willingly doing the bidding of the government lest those contracts and favors dry up.  Amazon, another digital behemoth, is in the final stages of sealing the deal on a $10-billion ‘JEDI’ cloud contract with the Pentagon, making the federal government its number one customer. And let’s not forget Microsoft, who is a shoo-in for an $8 billion contract with the Department of Defense. The 20th century gatekeepers of acceptable opinion have been reincarnated in the form of these internet giants, and they are seeking to rein in the miracle of the internet, and “de-platform” anyone with opinions they happen to disagree with. One such viewpoint is that of vaccine skepticism, which has found a thriving home on social media. Families with vaccine-injured members can network, organize, share research, and educate themselves on the subject. They are very persuasive, and, in response, the government-protected Gargantuas of the web have begun a slow purge. Pinterest has censored vaccine-skeptical content, Amazon has removed vaccine-skeptical documentaries from Prime, and now Facebook will almost certainly be the next internet giant to succumb to the pressure to censor the growing, organized movement of concerned citizens over the current vaccine policy. What are they afraid of? Well, they’re afraid of the persuasiveness of the vaccine skeptics. They’re afraid of people like Del Bigtree, producer of Vaxxed, host of the weekly podcast The High Wire, and founder of the Informed Consent Action Network.  For an example of why they wish to de-platform people like Bigtree, listen to his comments at the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices meeting on February 27th of this year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuz5kWPXfnQ

Futurism: China’s ‘social credit’ system barred millions from traveling in 2018

The Hill: Amazon reportedly pulls anti-vaccine documentaries

SHIKHA DALMIA: If America can launch military strikes in Pakistan, why can’t India? Her point: our government has set a dangerous precedent.

Truthdig: Jared Kushner’s multi-billion-dollar plot to give Saudis nukes

The Intercept: Google hedges on promise to end military drone AI contract

FEE: The government’s anti-opioid crusade is getting people killed

Ars Technica: Forget growing weed; make yeast spit out THC and CBD instead

DAVID FRENCH: The social media censorship dumpster fire

Zero Hedge: U.S. takes 50 tons of gold from Syria in alleged deal with ISIS

BONNIE KRISTIAN: Military intervention in Venezuela would be a reckless, dangerous option

Antiwar.com: Do members of Congress take too many private trips to Israel with AIPAC?

Weaponized bird flu: The U.S. is funding dangerous experiments it doesn’t want you to know about

Motherboard: Police in Canada are tracking people’s ‘negative’ behavior in a ‘risk’ database

EFF: Massive database leak gives us a window into China’s digital Surveillance State

JOHN KIRIAKOU: Yes, even the Post Office is spying on you

RYAN MCMAKEN: No, you don’t need a $200,000 degree

News 9: ‘Unity bill’ regulating medical marijuana passes in Oklahoma State House

Healio: Medical marijuana relieves symptoms of chronic disease in older adults

Philly: A long way from ‘I didn’t inhale’: Cory Booker pushes marijuana legalization and Presidential run

The Vaccine Reaction: Dr. Fauci, it’s not nice to fool Congress about vaccine reactions

The Hill: Officials deny lack of vaccinations caused whooping cough outbreak in Los Angeles

FEE: NYC experienced worst decline in restaurant jobs since 9/11 after $15 minimum wage win

Reuters: How much does your government spy on you? U.N. may rank the snoopers

Zero Hedge: Did CNN ambush Bernie Sanders with political operatives disguised as everyday people?

TomDispatch: U.S. counter-terror missions across the planet

Hmm, I wonder who creates and distributes the fake Red Cross gear? Red Cross denounces use of its emblem to smuggle US aid to Venezuela

Axios: Thousands of migrant youth allegedly suffered sexual abuse in U.S. custody for years

High Times: San Francisco DA plans to expunge or reduce over 9,000 marijuana convictions

East Bay Times: California keeps a secret list of criminal cops, but says you can’t have it

The Week: Tulsi Gabbard warns talk of regime change in Venezuela undermines the Kim-Trump summit

DAMON LINKER: America is not responsible for Venezuela

More from the weird world of false flag hate crimes: Gay rights activist burned down own home, killing his five pets, in hate crime hoax

Actual hate crime caught on tape: UC Berkeley police seeking felony warrant for suspect in assault on conservative

Techdirt: Beware the rise of censorship under the guise of stopping fake news: UK regulators push for dangerous plan. Ed: Fake news, the kind that does real damage (i.e. starting a war, manufacturing consent for various legislative atrocities, etc.), is promulgated by the major news outlets, whose owners have a vested interest in what “news” is printed. Read independent news and opinion sites, watch only Jimmy Dore, and vote Tulsi Gabbard.

Forbes: Survey: Nearly half of people who use cannabidiol products stop taking traditional medicines

FEE: How government-guaranteed students loans killed the American dream for millions

JEFF TUCKER: Where did AOC get her sweet potatoes?:“It drives me crazy to see people so fully enjoying the benefits from private property, trade, technology, and capitalistic endeavor even as they blithely propose to truncate dramatically the very rights that bring them such material joy, without a thought as to how their ideology might dramatically affect the future of mass availability of wealth that these ideologues so casually take for granted.

To me, it’s like watching a person on IV denounce modern medicine — or a person using a smartphone to broadcast to the world an urgent message calling for an end to economic development.”

USA Today: The 20 companies profiting the most from war: “Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the world, is estimated to have had $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017 through deals with governments all over the world. The company drew public scrutiny after a bomb it sold to Saudi Arabia was dropped on a school bus in Yemen, killing 40 boys and 11 adults. Lockheed’s revenue from the U.S. government alone is well more than the total annual budgets of the IRS and the Environmental Protection Agency, combined.”

NBC: “We did not sign up to develop weapons”: Microsoft employees protest $480 million Hololens military deal

Futurism: Legal marijuana could threaten the alcohol industry, according to new report

Washington Examiner: Bay of Pigs veteran serving America’s longest marijuana prison sentence may be headed to Cuban prison

Texas Monthly: Houston police chief says he’ll end no-knock warrants after botched raid that left middle-aged couple and their dogs dead

Activist Post: How the Jussie Smollett hoax reveals the scope of the surveillance state

FEE: “Restaurant recession” hits NYC following $15 minimum wage

Reason: Legal weed did more to stop drug smuggling than any wall

Tulsa World: Medical marijuana ‘Unity Bill’ clears Oklahoma House committee

Reason: Phony Houston drug warrant prompts FBI investigation and review of 1,400 cases :“Officer Gerald Goines, who was shot in the neck during the no-knock raid, obtained the warrant by claiming that he had sent a confidential informant into the house on January 27 to buy heroin from a man matching Tuttle’s description. The C.I. supposedly returned with “a quantity of brown powder substance,” subsequently identified as black-tar heroin, and reported that there many more bags of it in the house, along with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. Police foundneither of those things, or any other evidence of drug dealing, when they searched the house the next day after they killed Nicholas and Tuttle during a shootout they started by breaking into the house and killing the couple’s dog with a shotgun.

After two informants named by Goines and every other C.I. known to work with him denied participating in the “controlled buy” he described, investigators concluded that Goines had invented the episode. Goines “lied in an affidavit,” Police Chief Art Acevedo said last Friday, and “more than likely…will be charged with a serious crime.” Under Texas law, lying in a search warrant affidavit is aggravated perjury, a third-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. Under federal law, willfully depriving someone of his constitutional rights “under color of any law” is punishable by a prison term up to life or by execution “if death results.””

Techdirt: Google fesses up to hidden microphone in Nest home security system

FINALLY: Supreme Court rules that Constitution limits police asset forfeiture

VIDEO: Conservative Berkeley student gets punched in face for protesting hate crime hoaxes

LEE CAMP: Everyone has fallen for the lies about Venezuela

The Nation: U.S. foreign policy is for sale

The irony of using Soviet-style tactics to investigate Russian “collusion”: How the Russia-gate investigation is Sovietizing American politics

Chron: Feds share watchlist with 1,400 private groups

PHILIP GIRALDI: The growing anti-Semitism scam

The New Republic: This is what the beginning of a real Israel debate looks like

The American Conservative: Who is policing the prosecutors?

Reason: Court rules against NYPD union: Body cam footage can be made public

Techdirt: Fatal Houston PD drug raid apparently predicated on drugs a cop had stashed in his car

City Journal: The frenzied search for racism

One who is stationed in an elementary school. For only the most recent example, take a gander at the story of the 11-year old arrested for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

He apparently had simply not stood for the pledge on a daily basis, with his teacher being perfectly fine with it, but February 4th was different in that his class had a substitute teacher, one who made such a fuss about the child’s refusal to stand that the school cop was brought in. The cop, of course, needlessly escalated the situation to the point that the child was arrested.

Here’s Jimmy Dore on the incident: