Dem-Backed Bill Would Force Judges to Consider Race in Sentencing
California lawmakers consider a bill that would require judges to consider a person’s race when deciding how long to sentence them to prison.
The bill, which was introduced in February by Democratic Assembly taxpaying citMember Reggie Jones-Sawyer, was approved by the state Assembly in May and is currently being debated in the state Senate, according to Fox News.
If the Dems didn’t have double standards, they would have none at all.
Assembly Bill 852 would add a section to the California Penal Code requiring courts, when they have the power to decide a prison sentence, to take into account how racial minorities have been affected differently than others in order to “rectify racial bias.”
“It is the intent of the Legislature to rectify the racial bias that has historically permeated our criminal justice system as documented by the California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” the proposed section reads.
“Whenever the court has discretion to determine the appropriate sentence according to relevant statutes and the sentencing rules of the Judicial Council, the court presiding over a criminal matter shall consider the disparate impact on historically disenfranchised and system-impacted populations.”
The task force, which was created from legislation signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, published its recommendations in June, Fox News reported. The state legislature will debate whether to implement them.
Jones-Sawyer is a member of the reparations task force, according to NBC News.
Eligible black California residents could receive more than $115,000, or roughly $2,352 per year of residency from 1971 to 2020, in compensation for excessive policing and felony drug arrests, as well as disproportionate incarceration during the alleged war on drugs, Fox News reported.
Jones-Sawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wow. Give criminals money for being caught. What a novel concept!
Isn’t giving someone preferential treatment because of their skin color RACIST????
Answer: YES! (Unless the parties enjoying the preference are non-White, of course.)
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced in no uncertain terms that her office is determined to enforce it, the US Supreme Court and freedom of religious conscience be damned.
Mayes calls ruling ‘woefully misguided’
After the court announced its decision in the Colorado case, Mayes issued a statement that read in part, “Today, a woefully misguided majority of the United States Supreme Court has decided that businesses open to the public may, in certain circumstances, discriminate against LGBTQ+ Americans.
“While my office is still reviewing the decision to determine its effects, I agree with Justice Sotomayor — the idea that the Constitution gives businesses the right to discriminate is ‘profoundly wrong.’ ”
Mayes is referring to a dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in part, “Today, the Court, for the first time in its history, grants a business open to the public a constitutional right to refuse to serve members of a protected class.”
[Protected class means that they are “more equal than others” — to quote George Orwell’s Animal Farm. –TPR]
She added, “By issuing this new license to discriminate … the immediate, symbolic effect of the decision is to mark gays and lesbians for second-class status.”
Not in Arizona, according to Mayes.
She will ‘continue to enforce’ Arizona’s law
She said in her statement, “Despite today’s ruling, Arizona law prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation, including discrimination because of sexual orientation and gender identity.
“If any Arizonan believes that they have been the victim of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, or ancestry in a place of public accommodation, they should file a complaint with my office. I will continue to enforce Arizona’s public accommodation law to its fullest extent.”
The extremist majority of the Supreme Court appears willing to nudge the country into a modern-day Jim Crow era.
For now, however, members of the LGBTQ community in Arizona do not have to sit in the back of the bus.
[It would seem that AG Mayes (and the OpEd writer) both feel that the “protected classes” should have preferential treatment over the other “non-protected” people in their state. — TPR]
Currently a significant police and medical deployment has been initiated in response to a mass shooting that occurred during a large gathering that was taking place in… pic.twitter.com/5pd6Ck9Azz
The original tweet: said: Currently a significant police and medical deployment has been initiated in response to a mass shooting that occurred during a large gathering that was taking place in Brooklyn Homes, Baltimore Maryland. Law enforcement authorities have reported a total of 30 individuals has been shot with gunshot wounds, out of which four fatalities have been also confirmed.
White supremacists, using illegal firearms, shot at least 30 Black victims killing at least 2 in Maryland last night. The suspects had very dark complexions and are considered armed and dangerous.pic.twitter.com/ftSrqTuyg3
Contrasted with this retweet: White supremacists, using illegal firearms, shot at least 30 Black victims killing at least 2 in Maryland last night. The suspects had very dark complexions and are considered armed and dangerous.
Hmm. “White Supremacists using illegal firearms” with “very dark complexions.” Does anyone else see the totally obvious contradiction in those two quoted phrases?
This was a black-on-black crime.
Whites didn’t commit it. Otherwise, this idiot would have claimed they had put on blackface to disguise their race/ethnicity. No, this is just another case of someone fomenting conflict to divide the country.
(Some) light-skinned blacks look down on darker-skinned ones. And some dark-skinned ones want to be fairer. Why did Nicki Minaj bleach her skin?
This same-race racism was true 50+ years ago and is still true today. Calling someone back then a “nappy-headed n*gger” or “Uncle Tom/Oreo” between blacks was a definite insult and sometimes led to a fight.
Lazy blacks also seem to look down on successful blacks (except in sports/entertainment, maybe) because they give lie to the constant whine that they — being black — can’t succeed solely because they are “oppressed.”
And, of course, these self-identified victims whine about being called out on their self-centeredness. See: “Why White Racist Humor Is No Joke for Black People” where they whine that whites like black comedy that deprecates blacks. The OpEd — written under the pseudonym of “Gus Renegade” in the ATLANTA BLACK STAR in 2015 — blatantly panders to black racism while blaming everything on whites and attacking Chris Rock and Trevor Noah for not following the narrative.
“There’s Black folks and then there’s …n*ggers.”
As Chris Rock himself said in an HBO-recorded show, “…there’s black folks, and then there’s n*ggers.” He even said that regular blacks look down on these troublemakers for the same reasons everyone else does: because they are troublemakers.
That’s not to say that there are no racist whites; there are, and they’re almost exclusively far-left Democrats. Or, as my colleague MC calls them: “White plantationists.”
Typical leftist tactics being supported by their own victims, SMH.
This is what white progressives call normal. In Seattle, fully naked men exposed themselves to children at a pride parade in Seattle, Washington on Sunday while riding bicycles. In Toronto, nudists with hats marched in the parade. Fox News revealed several children walked past the group of men with their families.
WASHINGTON, DC - May 26, 2023, Capitol police stop childrens choir because it was offensive to some Richard Craniums.
Views: 9
Thanks to the Western Journal.
Capitol Police have come under scrutiny after stopping a children’s choir from singing the national anthem inside the U.S. Capitol.
A video of the May 26 incident has gone viral on social media, showing the moment Capitol officials approached David Rasbach, who was leading the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir in their performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The video shows a female officer in the background apparently instructing a congressional staffer to stop the singing. The staffer then approaches Rasbach, speaks into his ear, and Rasbach halts the choir.
🚨The Rushingbrook Children's Choir sang the National Anthem in Statuary Hall. a Capitol Police officer stopped them mid-song. Capitol Police claims they didn't stop the choir. The choir director tells the whole story in my exclusive interview here. 🚨https://t.co/ZRNbWy75lapic.twitter.com/ijiq4pw3X8
Rasbach, alongside Micah Rea — who organized the children’s trip from South Carolina to Virginia and Washington D.C. — explained what actually happened to The Daily Signal.
When they had arrived at the Capitol that day, the choir had been briefly stopped by Andrew Tremel, the visitor operations manager at the Architect of the Capitol; Rea told the Daily Signal.
Tremel was informed that the choir had been given permission to sing and, after speaking into his earpiece, he told them they could do so, Rea said.
Rasbach, alongside Micah Rea — who organized the children’s trip from South Carolina to Virginia and Washington D.C. — explained what actually happened to The Daily Signal.
Rushingbrook Children's Choir were singing the National Anthem in the Capitol and were stopped by Capitol police.
They were told that "certain Capitol police said it might offend someone/cause issues."
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) June 2, 2023
The Twitter hate-squad quickly claimed that the choir wasn’t stopped but merely asked to move from a high-traffic area. Really? Why were they allowed to assemble there in the first place if it was interfering with a “high-traffic area??? –TPR
Rasbach then reportedly asked the officer: “How do you think this is going to affect these children? Their first time visiting their Capitol and then they have this disappointment.”
“She shrugged her shoulders, saying, ‘They sounded beautiful, but… They can go outside and sing,” he said of her response.
According to Rasbach, the female officer went on to claim that multiple people had complained about the offensiveness of the anthem.
Rasbach explained to the Daily Signal that the choir was given permission to sing in the Capitol by Reps. William Timmons and Joe Wilson of South Carolina, as well as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The three lawmakers have since responded to the incident online, condemning the Capitol Police and reaffirming their support for the choir group.
We recently learned that schoolchildren from South Carolina were interrupted while singing our National Anthem at the Capitol. These children were welcomed by the Speaker’s office to joyfully express their love of this Nation while visiting the Capitol, and we are all very…
— Congressman William Timmons (@RepTimmons) June 2, 2023
It is unfortunate that the Rushingbrook Children’s Choir was prevented from finishing a wonderful rendition of our National Anthem. I will be introducing a bill which permits the singing of our National Anthem on all federal property bc love for one’s country should be celebrated
Just learned kids were interrupted while singing our National Anthem at the Capitol. Unacceptable.
These children were welcomed by my office because your Capitol is back open, particularly for school groups. @RepTimmons, @RepJoeWilson, & @RepRussellFry, and I look forward to…
Naturally, the Capitol Police immediately blamed the staffer and McCarthy for their actions:
“Although popup demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol without the proper approval and permit, due to a miscommunication, the U.S Capitol Police were not aware that the Speaker’s Office had approved this performance,” USCP said in a statement to Newsweek.
And the Twitterheads took the bait:
Well communication is key Kevin. Give it a try next time and none of this would have happened.
"Although popup demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol without the proper approval and permit, due to a miscommunication, the U.S Capitol Police…
— 🌸 🐾 A to the Z 🐾🌸 (@A_tothe_Z_Amber) June 3, 2023
The Capitol Police also responded to the incident, placing most of the blame on the congressional staffer, who they labeled a liar.
“Recently somebody posted a video of a children’s choir singing the Star-Spangled Banner in the U.S. Capitol Building and wrongfully claimed we stopped the performance because it ‘might offend someone,’” Capitol Police said in a statement to the Daily Signal.
“Here is the truth. Demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol,” they claimed, adding: “Of course, because the singers in this situation were children, our officers were reasonable and allowed the children to finish their beautiful rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner.”
They then said that the congressional staffer “lied to the officers multiple times about having permission from various offices.
“The staffer put both the choir and our officers, who were simply doing their jobs, in an awkward and embarrassing position.”
Rea and Rasbach have both responded to the statement with a fierce rebuke, with Rea calling it a “bald-faced lie.”
“You can see clearly in the video, they literally stopped him before they finished singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’” Rea said. “That is absolutely, irrefutably wrong.”
“[The female officer] did everything she could to stop us and not let us continue singing, period,” he said, adding that the staffer did nothing wrong and did not lie to Capitol Police.
“That is not true—he did not lie to anybody,” Rasbach said in response to the Capitol Police’s statement about the staffer.
The two also refuted the claim that musical performances aren’t allowed in the Capitol, pointing out that as recently as March 29 a group of 80 pastors sang in the Rotunda. Sean Feucht, a Christian pastor and singer, also held performances in the Capitol in February and March, as the Daily Signal noted.
The Capitol Police have since apologized to the choir in a separate statement to Newsweek, this time blaming the incident on “miscommunication.”
“Although popup demonstrations and musical performances are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol without the proper approval, due to a miscommunication, the U.S Capitol Police were not aware that the Speaker’s Office had approved this performance,” the statement read.
“We apologize to the choir for this miscommunication that impacted their beautiful rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and their visit to Capitol Hill.”
The USCP has shielded murderers [Ashli Barrett was shot — in a crowd of on-lookers, no less! — and Roseanne Boyland was beaten to death by USCP (video of the attack exists and was known as early as late January 2021) then dragged inside the Capitol (presumably to make it appear she was inside the building when she died.)] When is the USCP and those who direct it going to be held accountable? This latest attrocity with the children shows they just don’t give a f*ck about the rest of us who don’t share their ideology.
A college student named Olivia posted a viral TikTok video in which she revealed she received a zero on her final assignment based on woke ideology, not the content of her work merely because she used the term “biological woman” in her project.
Olivia does not reveal her last name, nor does she identify her woke college or professor, but in her now-viral TikTok video, she tells her followers that she got a zero because she used the term “biological woman” as a description. She said her professor told her that the term was “exclusionary” and perpetuates “heteronormativity.”
In other words, “We’re here, we’re queer, deal with it!”
The student even noted that the professor told her that her paper was good except for that one verboten term.
“Olivia, this is a solid proposal,” Olivia said the woke teacher allegedly wrote. “However, the terms ‘biological women’ are exclusionary and are not allowed in this course as they further reinforce heteronormativity.”
The student called the grade thoroughly “the most biased grade ever” and said her project “is about transgenders competing in biological women’s sports. How am I supposed to do my final project if I can’t use the word ‘biological women,’ but that’s what my project is about?”
Since that first video, Olivia has posted several follow-ups to explain what is happening in her school.
“This is exactly the issue nowadays. It is not OK or acceptable to be a biological woman,” Olivia said in one video. She said she was told in a meeting with her professor that “it’s transphobic to use the term ‘biological woman’” and that doing so is “implementing T.E.R.F. ideology, which is trans-exclusionary radical feminism,” which the professor said means “women who fight for women’s rights but exclude trans because they think that women’s rights are being affected by trans people.” Olivia then quipped, “Which is literally true.”
Olivia also said she took her case to the school’s Office for Equal Opportunity.
In yet another clip, Olivia said that the rules in her class actually said outright that what the professor did was not proper. Her syllabus says students “will not be graded on the content of your opinions, so long as your opinions do not create emotional and/or mental harm for your diverse classmates or espouse bigoted or anti-scientific views.”
The student said that in her estimation she was using the term in a “scientific” sense, not a political or “emotional” one.
That doesn’t make sense!
Olivia also said the professor insisted that she alter the point of her paper to focus on “women” not “females” so that it satisfies the professor’s political goal of saying anyone can be a woman.
“I know what she’s trying to say, but it doesn’t work because for my project, if I change the wording, it would be … ‘women’s rights and opportunities are being affected because women are competing in women’s sports.’ That doesn’t make sense,” Olivia said.
Who is the real sucker here?
Many people on social media were energized by the school’s political attack on Olivia. But host Jesse Kelly had an extremely important point, saying, “Who is the real sucker? The communist professor?” and adding, “Or the upper middle class Republican parents paying six figures to have their daughter ‘educated’ by said professor?”
Kelly is right. Parents and students who are paying these colleges tens of thousands and sometimes going decades into debt as these crooked, left-wing schools peddle this anti-American ideology that passes for “education.”
It’s bad enough that these extremist, left-wing ideals so permeate our system of higher education, but what is worse is that these biased schools are not even permitting the opposing ideas to be heard. College should be a place for the free exchange of ideas, not a place of stifling bias and indoctrination.
This garbage is happening all over the country. Just this month a boy in Massachusetts was censured by his school for daring to wear a T-shirt that states his personal beliefs about the gender discussion.
Olivia deserves much credit for standing her ground, for keeping her videos centered on the issues, and for not using her platform as a weapon against her school and professor.
Regardless of how you view yourself or how you mutilate yourself, if you have a “Y” chromosome, you are a male. (This does not include those EXTREMELY rare individuals born XXY rather than XX or XY.) — TPR
On January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power even he could not overcome.
Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new sector, Eisenhower said, was building up around itself a cultural, financial, and political support system accruing enormous power. This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said, adding:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
This was the direst of warnings, but the address has tended in the popular press to be ignored. After sixty-plus years, most of America – including most of the American left, which traditionally focused the most on this issue – has lost its fear that our arms industry might conquer democracy from within.
Now, however, we’ve unfortunately found cause to reconsider Eisenhower’s warning.
While the civilian population only in recent years began haggling over “de-platforming” incidents involving figures like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, government agencies had already long been advancing a new theory of international conflict, in which the informational landscape is more importantly understood as a battlefield than a forum for exchanging ideas. In this view, “spammy” ads, “junk” news, and the sharing of work from “disinformation agents” like Jones aren’t inevitable features of a free Internet, but sorties in a new form of conflict called “hybrid warfare.”
In 1996, just as the Internet was becoming part of daily life in America, the U.S. Army published “Field Manual 100-6,” which spoke of “an expanding information domain termed the Global Information Environment” that contains “information processes and systems that are beyond the direct influence of the military.” Military commanders needed to understand that “information dominance” in the “GIE” would henceforth be a crucial element for “operating effectively.”
You’ll often see it implied that “information operations” are only practiced by America’s enemies, because only America’s enemies are low enough, and deprived enough of real firepower, to require the use of such tactics, needing as they do to “overcome military limitations.” We rarely hear about America’s own lengthy history with “active measures” and “information operations,” but popular media gives us space to read about the desperate tactics of the Asiatic enemy, perennially described as something like an incurable trans-continental golf cheat.
Indeed, part of the new mania surrounding “hybrid warfare” is the idea that while the American human being is accustomed to living in clear states of “war” or “peace,” the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian citizen is born into a state of constant conflict, where war is always ongoing, whether declared or not. In the face of such adversaries, America’s “open” information landscape is little more than military weakness.
In March of 2017, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on hybrid war, chairman Mac Thornberry opened the session with ominous remarks, suggesting that in the wider context of history, an America built on constitutional principles of decentralized power might have been badly designed:
Americans are used to thinking of a binary state of either war or peace. That is the way our organizations, doctrine, and approaches are geared. Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, use a wider array of centrally controlled, or at least centrally directed, instruments of national power and influence to achieve their objectives…
Whether it is contributing to foreign political parties, targeted assassinations of opponents, infiltrating non-uniformed personnel such as the little green men, traditional media and social media, influence operations, or cyber-connected activity, all of these tactics and more are used to advance their national interests and most often to damage American national interests…
The historical records suggest that hybrid warfare in one form or another may well be the norm for human conflict, rather than the exception.
Around that same time, i.e. shortly after the election of Donald Trump, it was becoming gospel among the future leaders of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that interference by “malign foreign threat actors” and the vicissitudes of Western domestic politics must be linked. Everything, from John Podesta’s emails to Trump’s Rust Belt primary victories to Brexit, were to be understood first and foremost as hybrid war events.
This is why the Trump-Russia scandal in the United States will likely be remembered as a crucial moment in 21st-century history, even though the investigation superficially ended a non-story, fake news in itself. What the Mueller investigation didn’t accomplish in ousting Trump from office, it did accomplish in birthing a vast new public-private bureaucracy devoted to stopping “mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” while smoothing public acquiescence to the emergence of a spate of new government agencies with “information warfare” missions.
The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.
Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy.
They suggest we must rethink old conceptions about rights, and give ourselves over to new surveillance techniques like “toxicity monitoring,” replace the musty old free press with editors claiming a “nose for news” with an updated model that uses automated assignment tools like “newsworthy claim extraction,” and submit to frank thought-policing mechanisms like the “redirect method,” which sends ads at online browsers of dangerous content, pushing them toward “constructive alternative messages.”
Binding all this is a commitment to a new homogeneous politics, which the complex of public and private agencies listed below seeks to capture in something like a Unified Field Theory of neoliberal narrative, which can be perpetually tweaked and amplified online via algorithm and machine learning. This is what some of the organizations on this list mean when they talk about coming up with a “shared vocabulary” of information disorder, or “credibility,” or “media literacy.”
Anti-disinformation groups talk endlessly about building “resilience” to disinformation (which in practice means making sure the public hears approved narratives so often that anything else seems frightening or repellent), and audiences are trained to question not only the need for checks and balances, but competition. Competition is increasingly frowned upon not just in the “marketplace of ideas” (an idea itself more and more often described as outdated), but in the traditional capitalist sense. In the Twitter Files we repeatedly find documents like this unsigned “Sphere of Influence” review circulated by the Carnegie Endowment that wonders aloud if tech companies really need to be competing to “get it right”:
In place of competition, the groups we’ve been tracking favor the concept of the “shared endeavor” (one British group has even started a “Shared Endeavour” program), in which key “stakeholders” hash out their disagreements in private, but present a unified front.
Who are the leaders of these messaging campaigns? If you care to ask, the groups below are a good place to start.
“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organization type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons. There is even a tendency to use what one Twitter Files source described as the same “hairball” graphs.
Where they compete, often, is in the area of gibberish verbiage describing their respective analytical methods. My favorite came from the Public Good Projects, which in a display of predictive skills reminiscent of the “unsinkable Titanic” described itself as the “Buzzfeed of public health.”
Together, these groups are fast achieving what Eisenhower feared: the elimination of “balance” between the democratic need for liberalizing laws and institutions, and the vigilance required for military preparation. Democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead that “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary,” which sounds very like the scenario Ike outlined in 1961, in which “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific and technological elite.”
Without further ado, an introduction to the main players in this “CIC”:
1. Information Futures Lab (IFL) at Brown University (formerly, First Draft):
Type: A university institute, housed within the School of Public Health, to combat “misinformation” and “outdated communications practices.” The successor to First Draft, one of the earliest and more prominent “anti-disinformation” outfits.
You may have read about them when: You first heard the terms Mis-, dis-, and malinformation. The term was coined by FD Director Claire Wardle. IFL/FD are also the only academic/non-profit organization involved in the Trusted News Initiative, a large-scale legacy media consortium established to control debate around the pandemic response. Wardle was Twitter executives’ first pick for a signal group of anti-misinformation advisors it put together. She also participated in the Aspen Institute’s Hunter Biden laptop tabletop in August 2020 (before the laptop story broke). IFL’s co-founder Stefanie Friedhoff serves on the White House Covid-19 Response Team. First Draft staffers were also revealed in the #TwitterFiles to be frequent and trusted partners to a leading public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, Renee DiResta, now of Stanford University.
What we know about funding: First Draft was funded by a huge number of entities including Craig Newmark, Rockefeller, the National Science Foundation, Facebook, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Knight Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Open Society Foundations, and more. Funding for the IFL includes the Rockefeller Foundation for a “building vaccine demand” initiative.
What they do/What they are selling: IFL/First Draft position themselves as the vanguard of disinformation studies, acting as key advisors to media, technology, and public health consortiums, bringing together a wide range of academic skill sets.
Characteristic/worldview quotes: High use of terms like coordinated inauthentic behavior, information pollution, the future Homeland Security catchwords mis-, dis-, and malinformation, and information disorder.
In the #TwitterFiles: First Draft is featured extensively in the files. They were the first proposed name when Twitter decided to assemble a small group of “trusted people to come together to talk about what they’re seeing,” were part of the Aspen Institute’s Burisma tabletop, and appeared in multiple emails with Pentagon officials.
Goofy graphage:
Closely connected to: Almost all the leading lights of the CIC, including the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Trusted News Initiative, Shorenstein Center, DFRLabs, the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, Meedan, and Bellingcat.
In sum: With a strong ability to both know and direct emerging trends, and with a large array of elite networks in tow, the IFL will continue to serve as one of the key tastemakers in the “anti-disinformation” field.
Type: Medium-sized non-profit specializing in technology and countering “disinformation.”
You may have read about them when: Meedan ran a range of Covid-19 misinformation initiatives “to support pandemic fact-checking efforts” with funding from BigTech, the Omidyar Foundation, the National Science Foundation and more. Partners included Britain’s now-disgraced Behavioural Insights Team, or “nudge unit,” known for scaring the pants off Brits about a range of medical manias. Among Meedan’s “anti-disinformation” projects is an effort to peer into private, encrypted messages. The Meedan board includes Tim Hwang (former Substack General Counsel), free speech skeptic Zeynep Tufecki, and Maria Ressa, a Nobel Prize winner with very close ties to eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and the National Endowment for Democracy. Ressa believes Wikileaks “isn’t journalism.” Meedan co-founder Muna AbuSulayman was the founding Secretary General of the Saudi Alwaleed bin Talal Foundation. Alwaleed bin Talal is one of the largest shareholders in Twitter, both pre-Elon Musk and now, with Musk.
What we know about funding: Widespread public and private funding including from Omidyar, Twitter, Facebook, Google, the National Science Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and more.
What they do/What they are selling: Meedan positions itself as an NGO leader in the “anti-disinformation” field; convening networks, developing technology, and establishing new initiatives. Strong support and development are given to “fact-checking” organizations and building the technology to support them.
Characteristic/worldview quote: “Detection of controversial and hateful content.”
Gibberish verbiage: “Our work shows that there are far more matches between tipline content and public group messages on WhatsApp than between public group messages and either published fact checks or open social media content.”
Connected to: Twitter, Factcheck.org, AuCoDe, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, the Behavioral Insights Team, the Oxford Internet Institute, Stanford Internet Observatory, and First Draft.
In sum: Meedan exemplifies the NGO-to-Stasi stylistic shift, where spying and snitching on private messages in the name of “anti-disinformation” is now considered a public good.
3. Harvard Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy (Technology and Social Change Project)
Type: An elite academic project once regarded as one of the leading centers in the “anti-disinformation” field.
You may have read about them when: It was announced that the center would be closed in 2024 on the spurious grounds that project lead Joan Donovan lacked sufficient academic credentials to run the initiative (what was spurious is that it took that long for this realization to come about). Donovan was already widely known for partisanship and getting things wrong, in particular repeatedly claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was not genuine. The Shorenstein Center birthed two other key “anti-disinformation” initiatives, the aforementioned First Draft and the Algorithmic Transparency Initiative. Cameron Hickey, ATI’s lead, is now CEO of the much larger National Congress on Citizenship. In this video, Joan Donavan sits alongside Richard Stengel, the first head of the Global Engagement Center, an agency housed in the State Department with a remit to “counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.” The closing of the Technology and Social Change Project is a minor victory in an otherwise exploding field.
What we know about funding: Money from: the Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook Journalism Project, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
What they do/What they are selling: Academic research into “disinformation,” a fellows program, field convening, and frequent media commentary. The Shorenstein Center also produces a leading “misinformation studies” journal.
Characteristic/worldview quote: Donovan’s infamous tweet, posed with an Atlantic staffer: “Me and @cwarzel Looking at the content on the Hunter Biden Laptop, the most popular straw man question at #Disinfo2022.”
Closely connected to: First Draft, Algorithmic Transparency Initiative/NCoC, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Data and Society, and the Aspen Institute.
In sum: An “anti-disinformation” project that got it wrong so often, even the center that housed it cut ties.
Type: Non-profit consultancy, specializing in health communications, marketing, technology and “disinformation.”
You may have read about them when: Whilst PGP seem to do some front-facing work, they are also guns for hire for a large range of corporate and government programs. Twitter files show PGP had contracts with biotech lobby group BIO (whose members include Pfizer and Moderna) to run the Stronger campaign, which according to Lee Fang “worked w/Twitter to set content moderation rules around covid ‘misinformation.’” Jennifer McDonald of Twitter’s Public Policy team noted in an email that PGP was also among Twitter’s four “strongest information sharing partnerships” for Covid “misinformation”. PGP partnered with UNICEF on the Vaccine Demand Observatory which aims to “decrease the impact of misinformation and increase vaccine demand around the world.” The board includes the former CEO of Pepsi and Levi’s, a Morgan Stanley Vice-President, and Merck Pharmaceuticals’ Director of Public Health Partnerships.
What we know about funding: $1.25 million from BIO as well as partnerships with Google, Rockefeller, and UNICEF.
What they do/What they are selling: A suite of communications activities including marketing, research, media production, social media monitoring, vaccine promotion, and campaigns. They also use AI and natural language processing to “identify, track, and respond to narratives, trends, and urgent issues” in order to “perform fact-checking” and “power behavior change strategies.”
Type: For-profit firm with defense connections specializing in “digital marketing and disinformation & analysis.”
You may have read about them when: Graphika was one of two outside groups hired in 2017 by the Senate Intelligence Committee to assess the Russian cyber menace. Graphika was also a “core four” partner to Stanford’s Election Integrity Partnership and its Virality Project, both subjects of #TwitterFiles reports. Made headlines for claiming a leak of US-UK trade discussions, publicized by Jeremy Corbyn, was part of an operation called “secondary Infektion” traceable to Russia.
Former Director of Investigations Ben Nimmo was previously a NATO press officer and DFRLabs fellow, and is now Facebook’s Global Threat Intelligence Lead. Head of Innovation Camille Francois was previously Google Jigsaw’s principal researcher.
What we know about funding: $3 million from the Department of Defense for 2020-2022, “to support and stimulate basic and applied research and technology at educational institutions”; boasts of partnerships with the Defense Advanced Partnerships Research Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force. According to USAspending.gov, defense agencies have provided almost $7 million.
What they do/What they are selling: Long-form reports and subscription services for corporate and governmental clients, often focused on identifying “leading influencers” and “misinformation and disinformation risks,” along with highly sophisticated AI for surveilling social media.
Characteristic/worldview quote: “seeding doubt and uncertainty in authoritative voices leads to a society that finds it too challenging to identify what’s true.”
Gibberish verbiage: Tendency to impressively horrific puns (“More-troll Kombat,” “Lights, Camera, Coordinated Action!” “Step into my Parler”).
In the #TwitterFiles: In 2017-2018, Twitter was unaware the Senate Intelligence Committee would be sharing their data on supposed Russia-linked accounts with commercial entities.
In sum: With deep Pentagon ties and a patina of public-facing commercial legitimacy, Graphika is set up to be the Rand Corporation of the Anti-Disinformation age.
Connected to: Stanford Internet Observatory, DFRLabs, Department of Defense, DARPA, Knight Foundation, Bellingcat
Type: Public-facing disinformation research arm of highly influential, extravagantly funded, NATO-aligned think tank, the Atlantic Council.
You may have read about them when: In May of 2018, Facebook announced a “New Election Partnership With the Atlantic Council,” to “prevent our service from being abused during elections.” The announcement was made by former National Republican Senatorial Committee Chief Digital Strategist Katie Harbath, weeks after a contentious hearing in the Senate in which Mark Zuckerberg answered questions about the “abuse of data” on Facebook. The Atlantic Council’s DFRLabs at the time included such figures as Eliot Higgins (from Bellingcat) and Ben Nimmo, future Director of Investigations at Graphika. This became a watershed moment, as Facebook soon after announced a series of purges of accountsaccused of “coordinated inauthentic activity,” including small indie sites like Anti-Media, End The War on Drugs, ‘Murica Today, Reverb, and Anonymous News, beginning an era of mass deletions.
DFRLab was a core partner for Stanford’s “Election Integrity Partnership,” and the “Virality Project.” The Atlantic Council also organizes the elite 360/Open Summit whose 2018 disinformation edition included the private Vanguard-25 forum that brought together Madeleine Albright, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, the head of the Munich Security Conference, Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, Edelman (the world’s biggest PR company), Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, Bellingcat, Graphika, and more.
What we know about funding: “DFRLab has received grants from the Department of State’s Global Engagement Center that support programming with an exclusively international focus,” Graham Brookie of DFRLabs told Racket. The Atlantic Council receives funding from the U.S. Army and Navy, Blackstone, Raytheon, Lockheed, the NATO STRATCOM Center of Excellence and a long list of other financial, military, and diplomatic entities.
Characteristic/worldview quote: On “rumors about Covid-19s origins,” particularly the “disinformation” that the virus may have originated in a laboratory: “The cumulative effect of this was to distract the U.S. public’s attention away from the federal government’s disjointed approach to mitigating the virus and point the blame at China.”
Gibberish verbiage: Awesome quantities; site seethes at public’s unwillingness to popularize nom d’équipe “Digital Sherlocks”; insists so often it is relying only on “open-source information” that one doubts it; relies heavily on schlock military (“Narrative Arms Race”) and medical (“Infodemic”) metaphors to describe disinformation threat.
In sum: DFRLabs is not only funded by the Global Engagement Center, and had initial GEC chief Richard Stengel as a fellow, but uses substantial state and corporate resources to evangelize GEC’s “ecosystem” theory of disinformation, which holds that views that overlap with foreign threat actors are themselves part of the threat.
Connected to: the Stanford Internet Observatory, University of Washington Center for an Informed Public, Graphika, Bellingcat, and the NYU Center for Social Media and Politics
Peter Baldrige, former Assistant General Counsel of the Calif Dept of Public Health, notified the agency they were violating the law by not investigating COVID vaccine injuries and deaths. They ignored him. So I will be filing a writ of mandamus, a court order to force them to do their job. If the court grants the writ, we will likely get to have input on how they do it. That will be a nice change, won’t it?
Executive summary
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) hasn’t investigated any link between the COVID vaccines and death. That’s a violation of California law to look the other way.
Peter Baldridge, former Assistant Chief Counsel of the CDPH, expressly brought this violation to the attention of the head of the department. As you might expect, the CDPH ignored him and did absolutely nothing.
We have proof of this.
Since the California government is not doing its job in following the law, I will be filing a writ of mandamus to compel the CDPH to do their job. The California court should also award me attorney fees. Also, the investigation should be under the supervision of the court and they should be required to:
do the requisite histopathology tests to assess causality
produce the death-vax records.
In addition, Mr. Baldridge and I have both made a FOIA request to see the death-vax records; something that no state or world government has ever produced.
One way or another, the truth will be exposed soon for all to see.
Peter Baldridge’s requests
By letter dated December 17, 2022, Mr. Baldridge requested under the Public Records Act (Govt. Code, §§6250, et seq.) all records pertaining to any and all special investigations conducted or being conducted by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) into the COVID vaccine adverse events.
On January 10, 2023, he received CDPH’s response: CDPH provided no records of any special investigation in Covid-19 vaccine adverse events after January, 2021, and had no records of any other investigation for periods later than June, 2021.
So in a letter dated April 17, 2023, Mr. Baldridge requested, under the California Public Records Act (Govt. Code, §§7920, et seq.), any and all records pertaining to special investigations into Covid-19 vaccine adverse events commenced after January 10, 2023, the date of the Department’s first response in order to see if anything happened.
On April 27, 2023 the Department responded that it had no responsive records to his request:
In other words, they were informed of what the law required them to do and they chose to do nothing.
Peter Baldrige’s letters to CDPH
Here is the full text of the letters Mr. Baldridge sent to the CDPH:
December 17, 2022: Peter requests to produce the records of the investigations that were required by law
Jan 29, 2023: Peter points out that the response to his previous request was inadequate and the department has not done its duty under the law. He reminds them again what is required.
April 17, 2023: Peter asks for the records of the investigation that the department should have commenced after receiving his previous letter.
May 5, 2023: Peter recounts what has happened to date and points out that there was again nothing done in response to his request to comply with the law. Peter shifts gears and makes a FOIA request for the correlated death and vaccination records.
My FOIA request filed on May 5, 2023
I also decided to make a FOIA request using the official CDPH portal:
It appears that the Department has little interest in or intention to investigate the reports of deaths in California related to Covid-19 vaccinations as required by law. I believe it is in the public’s interest that the correlation of vaccination and subsequent deaths be explored, particularly since, as of April 27, 2023, the Department continued to promote the Covid-19 vaccines as both safe and effective.
The Department has in its possession records related to deaths in California commencing January, 2021, when the vaccine rollout began. The Department also has in its possession vaccination records for Californians. The Department also possesses the ability to correlate this data using personally identifying information including, but not limited to: Social Security Number, street address, zip code, date of birth, name, and gender.
Accordingly, I hereby request under the California Public Records Act (Govt. Code, §§7920, et seq.) that the Department correlate these data sets and provide for each individual who has died since January1, 202l the following data fields for each individual as follows:
Date(s) of COVID-19 vaccination(s): <if any>
Five year age range of the individual who died (e.g. 50-54)
Date of death
In lieu of personally identifying information, I request that the Department create a random identification number for each individual so that the identity of the individual remains confidential.
You may contact me at xxxxxx if you have any questions.
Note: the JOIN of the databases cannot be done through the CAIR because they do not have the death records. CDPH controls both databases, so if this is not the proper request portal, please let me know which is the correct place to submit the database JOIN request.
Here is the receipt from my FOIA request: P018493-050523
Who wants to see the data?
As Ryan Cole is fond of saying, “You will never find what you don’t look for.”
Let’s be clear. California is not looking into any injuries or deaths caused by the vaccines. They are looking out for the interests of the drug companies, not your health. They don’t care how many people in California have been injured or died, and your injuries and deaths are immaterial. They don’t care, and they don’t even want to look.
The medical community in California is not better. They don’t want an investigation, either. Have you heard of a single doctor, Dean of Medicine, or medical association in California calling for an investigation? Of course not!
Does Governor Newsom want an investigation? No way. Newsom himself is vaccine injured, so he knows the vaccines cause harm, and that’s why he dropped out of sight for weeks after his booster shot. A proper investigation would show that the vaccines killed people, which means that Newsom instituted policies that likely led to the untimely demise of tens of thousands of innocent residents of California and the injury of many times that number.
The only person who called for an investigation, as required by law, is the former Assistant Chief Counsel of the California Department of Public Health. He worked there for 27 years and is appalled by what is happening there now. They can’t take away his medical license because he’s not a doctor. They could try to take away his license to practice law, but he’s retired. This is a problem for them. They ran into someone they couldn’t intimidate.
The vaccination rollout data
The vax-death data is good, but you need the vaccination data by age pictured below. This allows me to normalize the deaths of the unvaccinated since people move from unvaccinated to vaccinated over time. Without an upward adjustment, it will look like the unvaccinated are not dying at an even rate. With normalization, I can compare death curves for people who got the shot with those who didn’t. I can also compute the death rate of people in the vaxxed group with the death rate of people in the unvaxxed group.
Summary
It is clear at this point that neither the CDPH, the governor, the California legislature, the medical community, nor the mainstream media have any interest or intention to investigate the reports of injuries and deaths in California related to the COVID vaccinations.
This is why I’ll be bringing a writ of mandamus action against the CDPH for not investigating the injuries and deaths.
In addition, I have sent a FOIA to the CDPH for the death-vax records. If the CDPH does not comply with my FOIA request, I will bring another writ of mandamus request action against them.
*This post has been lightly edited for grammar from its original form.*
Considering CA is already a lawsuit hotbed, why wouldn’t they want to hide their culpability? — TPR
“Of all the 69 reports we now have, this is the most disturbing,” expressed DailyClout CEO Dr. Naomi Wolf in a live stream on Sunday. “Because the bottom line is, according to a new tranche of Pfizer documents released just this month, this past month, April of 2023. And these are documents that go back to April of 2021 — exactly two years ago. Both Pfizer and the FDA knew that the mRNA COVID vaccine caused dire fetal and infant harms, including death.”
The batch of Pfizer clinical trial documents released in April 2023 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under court order contains a shocking, eight-page document titled, “Pregnancy and Lactation Cumulative Review” …
This document is among the most horrifying yet to emerge into public view. It reveals that both Pfizer and the FDA knew by early 2021 that Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine, BNT162b2, resulted in horrible damage to fetuses and babies.
• Adverse events in over 54% of cases of “maternal exposure” to the vaccine (248 out of 458). The language “maternal exposure” implies that Pfizer acknowledged intercourse, inhalation, and skin contact as methods of exposure to its mRNA injection, as also evidenced by Protocol Amendment 14.
• Six premature labor and delivery cases resulting in two newborn deaths.
• 19% (41/215) of babies in Pfizer’s records exposed to the company’s COVID mRNA vaccine via their mothers’ breast milk were recorded as suffering from 48 different categories of adverse events.
The damage and suffering feel even more real when you narrow it down to individual stories.
• “A 15-month-old infant with medical history of vomiting experienced skin exfoliation and infant irritability while being breastfed (latency <7 days). The outcome of the event’ skin exfoliation’ was not recovered and outcome of event’ infant irritability’ was unknown.”
• “A 9-month-old infant with a medical history of meningococcal vaccine and no history of allergies, asthma, eczema or anaphylaxis experienced rash and urticaria a day after exposure via lactation.”
• “A day after the mother received vaccination, a baby developed a rash after breastfeeding. At the time of the report, the event was ‘not recovered.”
• “An 8-month-old infant experienced angioedema [an area of swelling of the lower layer of skin and tissue just under the skin or mucous membranes] one day after his mother received vaccination.”
• “There were 2 cases reporting ‘illness’ after exposure via breast milk’. In the first case, a 6-month-old infant developed an unspecified sickness 2 days post-mother’s vaccination. The outcome of the event sickness was recovered, and no causality assessment was provided. The second case, a 3-month-old infant developed an unspecified illness and required hospitalization for 6 days post-exposure via breast milk (>7 days latency).”
Pfizer employee, Robert T. Maroko, approved the Review with these horrific findings on April 20, 2021.
“This is a real person working at Pfizer, Mr. Robert T. Maroko, who looked at this damage to babies, these dead babies, these dead fetuses, these miserably-injured babies — approved it and sent it on to the FDA. The FDA approved it and gave it to Rochelle Walensky and the CDC,” shared Dr. Wolf.
And three days later, on April 23, 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky held a press conference, which kicked off an aggressive campaign to get pregnant women vaccinated.
“No safety concerns were observed for people vaccinated in the third trimester or safety concerns for their babies. As such, CDC recommends that pregnant people receive the COVID-19 vaccine.”
“The FDA signed off on this document showing dead babies, sick babies, dead from the injection, sick from nursing, the spontaneous abortions, or dead subsequent to the injection, the spontaneous abortions, the respiratory distress, babies hospitalized … These monsters looked at whether the babies would get sick and die or whether the fetuses would spontaneously abort, and they did. And they saw that they did, and they kept going.”
“This was just [four] months into the rollout,” Dr. Wolf mentioned. “And I want to remind you that breastfeeding has gone from 34% of moms and babies at the start of the pandemic to only 15% now, meaning that babies are having a terrible time with their mother’s breast milk. Pfizer knew they would!” she exclaimed. “Pfizer knew they would! The FDA knew they would, and they told pregnant women and lactating women to get vaccinated anyway.”
“At the end of this horrific, demonic analysis of all these sick and dying babies, all these aborted fetuses, all these babies getting sick from poisoned breast milk. Seriously sick. Damaged. They held a press conference. And Dr. Walensky, who has this report in hand, who has this report in hand,” Dr. Wolf said twice with emphasis, “told the women of America and anyone else who is listening in the world that these vaccines were safe and effective for pregnant women and for their babies. And that to protect their babies, they had to get vaccinated. They knew. They knew. Absolutely criminal.”
And there are 68 other damning reports — just like this one — using primary source Pfizer documents released under court order by the U.S. FDA.
These important summaries, which detail astonishing ranges of deaths, disabilities, and other systematic harms to subjects — damage that both Pfizer and the FDA sought to keep hidden from the public for 75 years — contain vastly important headlines: twenty forms of menstrual damage to women — how Pfizer covered up a flood of adverse events — PEG in breast milk — within a month of rollout, Pfizer knew the mRNA vaccines did not work.
Now, the information Pfizer and the FDA wanted to keep hidden for 75 years is available in paperback form. Funds and proceeds raised go to the research project, which helps makes more Pfizer Documents Analysis Reports possible. So, please, show your support and get your hands on this critical information in one place — by ordering your copy today.
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