You are 550% more likely to get a respiratory infection if you receive the flu vaccine

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Politico Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/politico-report-says-russiagaters-should-prepare-to-kiss-my-ass-3188376c63d7

CJ Hopkins On The Assassination Of Donald Trump

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Authored by 'Satirist' and playwright CJ Hopkins via The Unz Review,

OK... here’s a question for you.

Let’s assume, strictly for the purposes of argument, that Donald Trump is literally Hitler, or at least a proto-Hitlerian fascist, like the neoliberal ruling classes and the corporate media have been saying he is. And let’s go ahead and also assume that he’s a treasonous Russian intelligence asset working in league with Vladimir Putin to destroy the very fabric of Western democracy, and that he isn’t even legitimately President, because he stole the election from Hillary Clinton with all those Russian bots and Facebook posts, and all that other stuff they’ve been accusing him of, which would make him the most monstrously evil villain in the history of monstrously evil villains, not to mention an existential threat to the nation, and Americans, and ... well, the rest of humanity.

And so, basically, what I want to know is, why don’t they just kill this guy?

Seriously, if Trump is really Hitler, and a traitor, working for a foreign enemy, like The New York Times and more or less every other organ of the corporate media has been telling us he is for the last two years, well, how about getting SEAL Team 6 to storm the White House in the dead of night and shoot him in the face or something? That seems to go over pretty well with people. Or what about a simple heart attack? Don’t our spooks have some kind of heart attack juice that they could slip into his Diet Coke, or smear onto the doorknob of the Oval Office?

Not that there’s really any need for subtlety. After all, if he’s actually a Russian operative, and a proto-Hitlerian genocidal dictator, there’s no reason to run a covert op or attempt to cover anything up. On the contrary, you would want do it openly, proudly, where all Americans could see it. Which is why I’d go with the DEVGRU option. They could waste him live on CNN. The bloodier the better. Just imagine the ratings! They could march into the Oval Office in that cool-looking kill squad body armor and beat him to death with a gold-plated golf club. It’s not like he’d put up much of a fight. What is he, like seventy years old or something?

All right, I know you’re probably thinking that beating a sitting president to death with a gold-plated gap wedge is nothing to joke about, and that doing so (i.e., joking about it, not actually beating the President to death) is possibly a federal crime or whatever, but we’re talking Adolf Hitler here, folks. Do I have to link to every one of the literally thousands of impassioned editorials, articles, and TV and radio segments in which respected journalists at serious news outlets have warned us, over and over, and over, that Donald Trump is literally Hitler, or virtually Hitler, and probably also a Russian agent? I don’t think so. Do you think that respectable publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Time, and so on, would print such inflammatory allegations if the fate of democracy were not at stake? That would be rather reckless, wouldn’t it? I mean, how many times can you call a guy Hitler before Americans demand that somebody kill him?

This is what we do, after all.

Killing Hitler is America’s thing. America has been killing Hitler since... well, since Hitler killed himself. Saddam was Hitler. We killed him, didn’t we? Or we got some guys to kill him for us. Same goes for Gaddafi. He was Hitler. We killed the hell out of him. That was fun. We got some guys to sodomize him with a bayonet, and shoot him in the head, and then we laughed about it on national television. Oh, and Osama bin Laden. He was definitely Hitler … OK, not while he was working with the CIA, but later, after he went native on us. We shot him in the face and dumped in the ocean. And Milosevic, he was also Hitler! OK, we didn’t kill him, but we killed his whole country, then we put him on trial in the Hague for war crimes. And what about Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Khomeini, Bashar al Assad, and all the other Hitlers we wanted to kill, or tried to kill but couldn’t kill? The list goes on and on, and on.

I kid you not, if there is anything Americans love more than working a hundred hours a week and buying stuff with credit cards, it is repeatedly killing Adolf Hitler.

You just point at somebody, call him Hitler, and Americans are ready to help you kill him.

And, even if someone isn’t technically Hitler, as long as those respectable news sources tell us it’s OK to kill them... well, that’s usually good enough for us.

For example, if you’re messing around with our “interests,” like maybe interfering with our corporations’ exploitation of your Central American country, we will have no choice but to fund and train some sadistic death squads to hideously torture and murder your people until you come to your senses.

Or, if you’re even considering aligning with some annoying, fanatically religious regime that deposed the puppet we installed in their country, and that is sitting in the middle of the Middle East screwing up our restructuring plans, and which the Russians won’t let us tactically nuke, well, we’ll have to help our friends, the Saudis, bomb the living Allah out of you, starve your women and children to death, and otherwise wipe you off the face of the Earth.

So let’s not suddenly get all squeamish about killing Hitler or... you know, whoever. Killing Hitlers, and other bogeymen, and innocent men, women, and children is as American as apple pie, not to mention an extremely profitable business. So what’s the problem here, exactly? Either Trump is Hitler or he isn’t Hitler. If he’s Hitler, and a traitorous Russian agent, like all those respected media sources, and those anonymous “Intelligence Community” sources, and those people on Twitter say he is, what the hell is taking so long?

Why doesn’t somebody get in there and kill him? What good are all these black ops types if they can’t even save America from Hitler?

I don’t know, maybe the ruling classes don’t believe they have generated enough public support with all their “resistance” and “Hitler” stuff to brutally assassinate the president on television (which is hard to fathom, given the relentless propaganda campaign they’ve been concertedly waging).

Perhaps it needs to be a grassroots effort. In which case, maybe the Democratic Party, Bill Kristol, Rob Reiner, Rachel Maddow, Michael Moore, General Hayden, Hillary Clinton, Alec Baldwin, the Editorial Board of The New York Times, and other key Resistance fighters could organize a “March to Assassinate Trump.”

People could break out their pussyhats again. Everyone loves those pussyhats!

They could march on CIA headquarters in Langley. Just think of all the signs and slogans … “SCREW DEMOCRACY, JUST KILL HIM ALREADY!” “WHAT WOULD WILLIAM CASEY DO?” and the always popular call and response, “TELL ME WHAT THE DEEP STATE LOOKS LIKE … THIS IS WHAT THE DEEP STATE LOOKS LIKE!” The possibilities are almost endless!

I’m not saying it would be a cakewalk... or that there wouldn’t be any kind of blowback. The Resistance would likely catch a little flak from the millions of toothless, Oxy-addicted, white supremacist Nazis that voted for the guy.

There would probably be a bit of 'civil unrest', but then, what’s the point of militarizing virtually every major police force in the country if you’re not prepared to turn them loose on the citizenry every once and while?

And anyway, the main thing is, regardless of how messy things would probably get, it would provide the global capitalist ruling classes with an opportunity to remind these unruly “populists” what happens when you vote for Hitler!

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Survey Reveals What Really Scares Americans: #1 On The List May Surprise You

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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Every year, Chapman University conducts a Survey of American Fears. The annual survey provides an in-depth examination into the concerns of average Americans, tracking changes and trends over the years.

The survey asks participants about topics including government, health, environmental concerns, disaster preparedness, the paranormal, and personal anxieties.

What’s the number one thing Americans fear?

For the fourth year in a row, that dishonor goes to government corruption. That fear far exceeds any other that was asked about in the survey. In 2018, 73.6% said they fear corrupt government officials. In 2017, it was 74.5%, and in 2016, 60.6%.

Image credit: Chapman University

“It is worth noting that the fears regarding corruption and the environment have increased significantly following the election of President Trump in 2016 and all top 10 fears continue to reflect topics often discussed in the media,” said Christopher Bader, Ph.D., professor of sociology.

Pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes, polluted drinking water, money worries, and loss of loved ones also are of high concern.

Here are some of the other fears Americans have:

• Cyber-terrorism: 52.5%

• The US being involved in another world war: 51.6%

• Islamic extremists: 49.3%

• White supremacists: 49.3%

• Economic/financial collapse: 49.2%

• Identify theft: 46.6%

• Corporate tracking of personal data: 46.3%

• Government tracking of personal data: 46%

• Widespread civil unrest: 43%

• Nuclear weapons attack: 42.9%

• Random mass shooting: 41.5%

• The collapse of the electrical grid: 39%

• Pandemic or major epidemic: 38.6%

• Government restrictions on firearms and ammunition: 37.8%

• Nuclear accident/meltdown: 36%

For the full list, click here.

The survey also explored the reasons people do not evacuate when a disaster is heading their way. The most commonly cited reason by 43% of Americans is that they want to protect their homes from looting. “Tragic overconfidence” and “Pets” followed with 34% each. You can read the full report here: Fleeing Death: Disaster Evacuations in America.

As for political division, the survey revealed something that concerns the researchers: “What frightens Republicans the most doesn’t even register for Democrats, and vice versa. We see that bifurcation increasing, and that frightens me,” Bader said.

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U.S. Media Refuses to Inform the Public When Its Commentators and Pundits are Paid Foreign Agents

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Much of the American public despises mainstream corporate media, but rather than engage in some self-reflection and admit failure they just complain about Trump. It’s critical we recognize that mass media in the U.S. is very much part of the very same discredited establishment it’s supposed to report on, thus its response to justified criticism is likewise establishment-esque. Blame the readers, blame Trump, blame anyone but themselves.

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Paid Protest Firm "Crowds On Demand" Sued In $23 Million Extortion Plot

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"Paid protesters are real," writes the Los Angeles Times, after a lawsuit filed by a Czech investor against a business rival spotlighted the seedy, and very real business of people hired to express fake outrage, support, and everything in between. 

According to a lawsuit filed by investor Zdenek Bakala, Prague-based investment manager Pavol Krupa hired Beverly hills company Crowds on Demand (COD) to stage a protest near Bakala's home in Hilton Head, SC.

In the Bakala case, Crowds on Demand is accused of spreading misinformation through a website, putting on protests and organizing a phone and email campaign targeting several U.S. institutions with ties to Bakala, who got an MBA from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and had an estimated net worth topping $1 billion earlier this decade, according to Forbes. -LA Times

Crowds on Demand provides pop-up "protests, rallies, flash mobs, paparazzi events and other inventive PR stunts," according to its website. 

The dispute between Bakala and Krupa goes back for several years, and has been the subject of inquiries by the European Commission and the Czech government, involving a formerly state-owned coal mining business, OKD, which Bakala assumed control of in 2004. Bakala has been accused of bribing officials to buy the government's equity in the mining company at a below-market price, which broke a promise to sell company-owned apartments to employees before the company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2016. 

According to Bakala, the COD smear campaign didn't stop there, claiming that the company also called and sent emails to the Aspen Institute and Dartmouth College, where Bakala sits on advisory boards, urging them to cut ties with him. Bakala claims that Krupa threatened to ramp up the COD campaign unless the Czech investor coughs up $23 million.

Bakala, who holds U.S. and Czech citizenship, says in his lawsuit that all of those allegations are false and are part of Krupa’s extortion campaign. He alleges that Krupa offered to cease his campaign if Bakala paid $23 million for OKD shares owned by Krupa’s investment fund.

...

Crowds on Demand founder Adam Swart and Krupa neither confirmed nor denied that they are working together. They declined to answer specific questions about Bakala’s allegations, though Swart, in an emailed statement, called the claims meritless.

“Not only will I vigorously defend myself against the allegations in the complaint but I am also evaluating whether to bring my own claims against Mr. Bakala,” Swart said. -LA Times

"Defendants are pursuing a campaign of harassment, defamation, and interference in the business affairs of Zdenek Bakala, which they have expressly vowed to expand unless he pays them millions of dollars," reads Bakala's lawsuit (see below). 

That said, it's not clear that Krupa's alleged campaign had the desired effect. 

Elliot Gerson, an executive vice president at the Aspen Institute, said in an emailed statement that the institute has received calls and emails from “individuals associated with Crowds on Demand” and that the nonprofit’s general counsel has spoken with Swart “about this campaign of harassment.”

“From the beginning, we assumed that these manufactured communications were linked to political issues in the Czech Republic and Mr. Bakala’s high profile in that country,” Gerson said. “Nothing we received has altered our views about Mr. Bakala.” -LA Times

So paid protesters are a thing...

Bakala's lawsuit brings to light an ongoing debate in the national dialogue over paid protesters. President Trump, for example, has repeatedly claimed that protesters have been paid by left-wing billionaire activist George Soros and others in order to disrupt and undermine conservative events. 

"There are hundreds of lobbying firms and public affairs firms that do this work, though not all in the same way," said USLA sociology professor Edward Walker - who wrote a book on the business of paid protesting, also known as Astroturfing. "Some only do a little bit of this grass-roots-for-hire, but things adjacent to this are not uncommon today."

In 2014, ABC's "Nightline" reported that a group backed by the beverage industry was hiring people to protest a soda tax measure - posting ads on Craigslist for paid protesters at $13 an hour. 

During the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many noted what appeared to be a man, Vinay Krishnan - who works for progressive activist organization Center for Popular Democracy, paying a woman named Vickie Lampron who was later seen in the Kavanaugh hearing. 

Proof the protestors were paid off in line. #Kavanaugh #ConfirmKavanaugh #ActivismInAction pic.twitter.com/hMLpP4zWPn

— Adam W. Schindler (@AdamSchindler) September 4, 2018

Krishnan said that the money was given to people to pay fines in case they were arrested. 

As the Times notes, paid protesters aren't a recent phenomenon. 

Longtime California political consultant Garry South, who was a campaign strategist for California Gov. Gray Davis, said it’s long been common for campaigns and political parties to pay people a few bucks or perhaps provide a meal in exchange for attending a rally. He recalled a 2002 rally in San Francisco where he said that tactic was used.

“It turns out, the San Francisco Democratic Party, to bolster the crowd, had basically gone down to skid row and paid people $5 or something to tromp up to Union Square,” South said.

But he sees a big difference between that kind of activity and the paid protests allegedly organized by Crowds on Demand.

“What’s different is the commercialization of the process,” he said. “It just contributes to the air of unreality that exists in this day and age with essentially not being able to believe your own eyes or ears. I don’t think it’s particularly healthy. But it probably inevitably was going to come to this.” -LA Times

Crowds on Demand, meanwhile, shamelessly boasts on their website that they were hired by a business rival to "cripple the operations" of a manufacturing business owned by a convicted child molester, which resulted in the hiring company buying the molester-owned business for "5 percent of its previous value." 

In another "case study," COD brags about staging a rally to support an unidentified foreign leader who was visiting the United Nations. 

"The concern was ensuring that the leader was well received by a U.S. audience and confident for his work at the U.N. We created demonstrations of support with diverse crowds.," says COD. 

"A lot of times, companies don’t want to be known for using this kind of strategy,” Walker said. “Crowds on Demand, they’re more out about it. ... It is strikingly brazen."

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Just Hold On A Minute … The Migrant Army’s Obvious Math Problem

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The invading army seems to be making remarkable progress, hmm…

 

 

SOURCE: NewsMax

 

There is a significant and unavoidable math problem when it comes to the so-called migrant caravan that is headed toward the United States border. The caravan is now said to have more than 5,000 people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico walking north. The people spilled across the border into Mexico when authorities there claimed to be overwhelmed.

 

Currently they are just over 1,230 miles from reaching Laredo, Texas. According to Google maps that is a walk that would take more than 400 hours to complete.

 

So how is it that they are expecting reach the U.S. border by Election Day or before? I mean even if these people with no shelter, food, or water walked 16 hours a day — every day — it would take them more than 25 days to reach Texas. Election Day is now only two weeks away.

 

You see a lot of things are just not adding up.

 

If the average person walks 3 miles per hour (and they do) — then walking 16 hours a day would get you 48 miles down the road. However, there are kids and families and chaos it looks like to me.

 

What’s also remarkable is this group began roughly 1,770 miles from the border. That was just a few days and a couple international borders ago. So they have already covered something like 540 miles. That by the way should have taken more than 11 days — if, and it’s a big if, if they were covering 48 miles a day. Somehow they have been able to travel remarkable distances with TV cameras everywhere and not one reporter has explained this incredible feat.

 

Did I mention blisters and fatigue? Both would be big factors on such a journey.

 

I have done some extreme hiking and walking in my life. I was in pretty damn good shape when I did those things. Today walking 48 miles a day on good roads or trails with proper gear, fresh water and ample food would be an epic challenge for me. I have worn my feet raw on some of those trips. It is nearly impossible to cover any distance when your feet are torn up.

 

What about bathrooms? Are they able to bathe anywhere along the road?

 

We are expected to believe that this caravan of people 5,000 strong is covering epic distances and yet somehow all of those TV cameras and reporters have missed the buses, cars, and trucks giving these people a ride.

 

The question is who is picking up the bill? You start figuring out the cost of fuel, food, shelter and all of the other things required to get these folks to the border and its substantial. The logistics is also a serious concern. I mean just coordinating a crowd that large to walk the right direction days after day would be challenging.

 

Let all of those facts sink in.

 

This is not random and this is not a coincidence that just a couple weeks out from the critical midterm elections this caravan of hope-to-be-illegal-aliens is on its way to the American border. I just wonder when we will be told the truth about who is behind it and if any network has the courage to tell us.

 

 

 

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Bayer Loses Appeal Over Historic 'RoundUp' Cancer Lawsuit

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Having successfully, closed on its $66 billion purchase of the agrochemical company Monsanto in June, we suspect Germany's Bayer AG, is more than a little concerned now after failing  to persuade a judge to set aside a jury’s $289 million verdict in the first trial over allegations that its Roundup weed killer causes cancer.

As a reminder, in August, a San Francisco Jury awarded $289 million in damages to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who said Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller gave him terminal cancer. The award consists of $40 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages. 

Johnson's trial was fast-tracked due to the severe state of his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system he says was triggered by Roundup and Ranger Pro, a similar glyphosate herbicide that he applied up to 30 times per year. His doctors didn't think he'd live to live to see the verdict. 

Johnson testified that he had been involved in two accidents during his work in which he was doused with the product, the first of which happened in 2012. Two years later, the 46-year-old father of two was diagnosed with lymphoma - which has covered as much as 80% of his body in lesions.

Monsanto says it will appeal the verdict. 

“Today’s decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews -- and conclusions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and regulatory authorities around the world -- support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson’s cancer,” Monsanto Vice President Scott Partridge said in a statement.

Appeal they did and today the verdict came down.

San Francisco superior court judge Suzanne Bolanos had suggested in an initial written ruling this month that she was considering granting a new trial, but her final ruling today largely sided with Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, denying Monsanto's request to overturn the verdict.

As Bloomberg reports, a California state judge rejected Bayer’s arguments that the jury didn’t have any basis to conclude that the herbicide caused an ex-school groundskeeper’s cancer.

However, she has ruled to reduce punitive damages from $250m to $39m, noting in her ruling Monday that if Johnson did not accept the lower punitive damages, she would order a new trial for Monsanto.

"The punitive damages award must be constitutionally reduced to the maximum allowed by due process in this case -- $39,253,209.35 -- equal to the amount of compensatory damages awarded by the jury based on its findings of harm to the plaintiff."

In a recent interview, Johnson told the Guardian that he wanted to see his case have a long-term impact, including new restrictions and labeling for the herbicide.

"I hope [Monsanto] gets the message that people in America and across the world are not ignorant. They have already done their own research,” he said, adding:

“I’m hoping that it snowballs and people really get the picture and they start to make decisions about what they eat, what they spray in their farms.”

This ruling opens Bayer to considerably higher damages as thousands of plaintiffs across the country have made similar legal claims, alleging that glyphosate exposure caused their cancer or resulted in the deaths of their loved ones.

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The Real Reason Why We're So Crazy And Miserable All The Time

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Screens

We are surrounded by screens full of voices that are always lying to us, and experts wonder why we’re so crazy and miserable all the time.

The screens tell us, “This is a perfectly normal and sane way of doing things. It is perfectly normal and sane to strip the earth bare and poison the air and the water in an economic system which requires infinite growth on a finite planet. People who say otherwise are raving lunatics!” And the social engineers wonder why there’s increasing disaffection and alienation among the populace.

The screens tell us, “Just spend your time in this world turning the gears of the machine and you will be happy. The machine is your friend. The machine takes care of you. Work hard pulling its levers and greasing its cogs until you are old and you will gain satisfaction,” and then they wonder why we’re all gobbling up antidepressants like candy.

The screens tell us, “We need to drop explosives on Nation X because they need Freedom and Democracy™. We know we said that about Nation Y and Nation Z and that went terribly wrong, but that’s because it wasn’t managed properly. Trust that it is good and proper for the citizens of Nation X to be killed with bombs and bullets,” and then they wonder why people keep snapping and committing mass shootings.

The screens tell us, “You are crazy and stupid if you want a functioning healthcare system. Are you trying to put our billionaires and military out of business?” and then they wonder why people are becoming paranoid and angry.

The screens tell us, “Look at that gibbering maniac trying to get a third party up and running in the most powerful nation in the world! Only someone who is deeply awful and defective would believe that the two party system isn’t serving us,” and they wonder why everyone feels disempowered and unheard.

The screens tell us, “Of course this is the way things are; it’s the only way things could ever be. Anyone who would try to change any part of this is either mentally ill or a Russian propagandist,” and they wonder why people shut down and numb themselves with opiates.

The screens tell us, “Everything is great. Everyone is doing fine. Everyone is happy. Look how happy everyone is on this sitcom. If you aren’t happy like that, it’s not because of the machine, it’s because of you. People need to be protected from your insanity. You mustn’t be allowed on any screens. You need to be silenced on social media. Trust us. Don’t trust yourself. Don’t trust that growing, gnawing sense that everything is fake and everything you’ve been taught is a lie. We have never lied to you. We have never been caught red-handed deceiving you and then acted like nothing happened. We have never gaslit you. You are misremembering things because you are confused. Shut up. You are dangerous. Shut up. You are foolish. Shut up. You are insane. The machine is sanity. The machine is freedom. Everyone is equal here. Everyone matters. Everyone gets a voice. Except you.” And the social engineers wonder why people are trusting them less and less.

The screens tell us, “War is normal. Poverty is normal. Mass surveillance is normal. Censorship of dissenting ideas is normal. Mass media propaganda is normal. Escalating wealth and income inequality is normal. Escalating police militarization is normal. Escalating tensions between nuclear superpowers is normal. Looming ecological disaster is normal.” And people wonder why everything feels like a bubble balancing on a house of cards that was built on top of a ticking time bomb.

The screens tell us, “Insane things are sane. Sane things are insane. Up is down. Black is white. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. If you disagree, you are crazy. If you disagree, you are poison. Shut up. You will contaminate the herd. Shut up. You are garbage. Shut up. You are a disease. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.”

And the experts wonder why the old tricks are finding less and less psychological purchase. And we wonder why it is beginning to feel as though we are being startled out of a very long and horrible nightmare. And our rulers wonder, in their very few still and sincere moments, if it was wise to build their empire upon a sleeping giant.

*  *  *

Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out mypodcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal,buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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Where Does The Latest Social Media Purge Leave The State Of Social Discourse?

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Authored by Elizabeth Lea Vos, via Disobedient Media,

Disobedient Media previously reported the tightening stranglehold of censorship across social media. Unfortunately, events that have taken place since the publication of this writer's opinion that Julian Assange was the first domino to fall in a series of increasingly draconian censorship measures have far exceeded even this author's worst expectations.

The crackdown has seen the involvement of organizations that have a documented history of pay to play behavior and are backed by groups including the Chinese Communist Party in collaboration with Western establishment organizations including NATO. In this way, renewed drives for censorship represent a strange new cooperation between transatlantic internationalist groups and China, as the former reacted negatively to the rise of populist and nationalist movements in the West which have disrupted their control.

Before we discuss the details of the latest social media purge, though, we ask: Is the unabashed, coordinated censorship of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms an illegal affront to freedom of speech?

In the case of Twitter, at least, we do appear to have an affirmative answer to the question. As CNBC reported earlier this year, a Federal judge ruled that Donald Trump could not legally block Twitter users. The judgment in effect defined the platform as a "public forum" which may be regulated by government to defend First Amendment-protected free speech. CNBCwrote:

"Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald said in her ruling that Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution by preventing certain Americans from viewing his tweets on @realDonaldTrump.The social media platform, Buchwald said, is a "designated public forum" from which Trump cannot exclude individual plaintiffs. She rejected an argument by the Justice Department that the president had a right to block Twitter followers because of his "associational freedoms." [Emphasis added]

Buchwald's ruling states in part:

 "Our inquiry into whether the speech at issue is protected by the First Amendment is straightforward. The individual plaintiffs seek to engage in political speech, Stip. 46-52, and such “speech on matters of public concern” “fall within the core of First Amendment protection,” Engquist v. Ore. Dep’t of Agric., 553 U.S. 591, 600... We readily conclude the speech in which individual plaintiffs seek to engage is protected speech."

Over the months following Buchwald's decision, we have witnessed the mass-banning of Twitter users who, like those designated to be engaging in political speech regarding Trump, were focused on political issues.

The focus of the latest Twitter and Facebook purge of domestic, politically oriented content raises the specter of silencing of dissent that, at least in theory, should enjoy First Amendment protection.

Even worse, the banned accounts were often provided with little or no description of their alleged infractions in Twitter's notice of suspension. Among others, Occupy NZ was given no reason whatsoever for the ban:

Another journalistic outlet, The Anti-Media, was almost simultaneously banned from both Twitter and Facebook, with many of its editors also suspended permanently.

Stunningly, the CEO of The Anti-Media alleged that Facebook had actively worked with the outlet's Facebook account prior to their sudden multi-platform suspension. The Anti-Media represents just one of the hundreds of accounts and pages banned by Facebook as well as Twitter in this latest crackdown on anti-establishment thought.

Notably, the social media purge targeted both left-wing and right-wing pages. This suggests that the bans were not so much based on political bias, but instead stemmed from the establishment's overwhelming paranoiatowards the success of all varieties of anti-establishment news and discussion. The efforts seemed geared less towards supporting a particular political side ahead of midterms, than it was geared towards protecting the overall status-quo.

This latest witch-hunt involved marked coordination between Facebook and Twitter, with evidence emerging that the latter has become involved to some extent with the Atlantic Council's DFRLab. The DFRLab announced its controversial partnership with Facebook earlier this year. At the time, MintPress News wrote of the marriage between militaristic interests and social media:

"The new partnership will effectively ensure that Atlantic Council will serve as Facebook’s “eyes and ears,” according to a company press statement. With its leadership comprised of retired military officers, former policymakers, and top figures from the U.S. National Security State and Western business elites, the Atlantic Council’s role policing the social network should be viewed as a virtual takeover of Facebook by the imperialist state and the council’s extensive list of ultra-wealthy and corporate donors."

News of the Atlantic Council's alliance with Facebook came on the heels of reports that Google has developed a censored search engine in collaboration with the Chinese government and has begun a new program to assist China with the development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Disobedient Media previously reported on the NATO-backed Atlantic Council's history of pay to play behavior, as well as their DFRLab's direct attack against this outlet.

The Atlantic Council's supporters include the foundation of Ukranian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, The Open Society Foundation, the United Arab Emirates, Bahaa Hariri, the billionaire brother of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., NATO, the United States Department of State, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the Chinese Communist Party and the Turkish Ministry of Energy & National Resources. The latter of whose head, Berat Albayrak, was the subject of leaks released by publishing giant Wikileaks exposing increasing political oppression in Turkey as well as collaboration with the terror organization ISIS.

In August, Disobedient Media wrote of the partnership between DFRLab and Facebook: "A former editor of Time Magazine who advocates nations using propaganda on their citizens is a distinguished fellow of the same Atlantic Council lab that “collaborates” with Facebook on censorship policy." To see an organization whose supporters include many foreign donors and advocates of extreme censorship such as China engaged in the process of undermining the spirit and aim of Constitutional protections of free speech is disheartening.

As to the most recent round of censorship on Facebook, the LA Times:

"Facebook said Thursday that it has purged more than 800 U.S publishers and accounts for flooding users with politically oriented content that violated the company's spam policies, a move that could reignite accusations of political censorship."

In other words, in the name of "protecting" the democratic process ahead of the midterm elections, it is this writer's opinion that the actions of Facebook and Twitter represent a direct attack on the First Amendment.

In a truly Orwellian fashion, the battle cry of "protecting democracy" is invoked in an attack on one of its most fundamental supporting principals: the ability to express dissent.

Journalist Caitlin Johnstone, who recently survived Twitter's attempt to suspend her Twitter account, described the suspension-spree, noting: "In a corporatist system, corporate censorship is state censorship."

In documenting the drastically escalating, politically-motivated censorship of independent journalists, it is impossible not to confront the reality that it is no longer a matter of "if" one will be silenced, but a matter of when.

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