CO, ME Just The Start Of Trump Ballot-Blocking: These 20 States Have Suits In Progress
As jarring as it’s been to witness the anti-democratic, one-two punch in which a court in Colorado and an unelected bureaucrat in Maine decided Donald Trump cannot appear on primary election ballots, there are many more states where litigation is underway to ban the candidate who’s currently leading the national race.
In addition to Colorado and Maine, there are currently active lawsuits challenging Trump’s eligibility in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming, according to a New York Times survey of the situation.
Together, the states where Trump’s status is under active challenge account for 269 electoral votes — in a game where you need 270 to win.
While there’s a lot of red on that map, it understates the scope of the phenomenon. These are only the states where either officials have decided Trump can’t appear on a ballot, or where litigation is currently underway.
Expect other states to turn “red” in a bad way. Some of them are states like Michigan and Minnesota, where challenges to Trump’s appearance on primary ballots have been dismissed. Those rulings didn’t cover the general election, so look for those plaintiffs to crawl out of their litigation graves after the GOP primaries.
Jan. 6th wasn’t an insurrection. It was a peaceful and lawful protest that went awry. #Trump actually believed that the 2020 election was covertly stolen. #Maine‘s overt attempt to steal the 2024 election ironically suggests that @realDonaldTrump and those protesting were right.
That is, unless a Supreme Court ruling first puts an end to all this madness, in which Democratic judges and officials are banning Trump on the bogus basis that he engaged in an insurrection against the United States government on Jan. 6, 2021, and is therefore barred by the 14th Amendment.
Written to block Confederate officials from US government service, here’s the full text of the provision at issue:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Trump has never been charged, much less convicted, of engaging in insurrection. Aside from that due process dimension, and the fact that Jan 6 didn’t even begin to approach an “insurrection” in the first place, there’s an argument to be made that the 14th Amendment doesn’t apply to the office of President.
The RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump beating Biden, 46.8% to 44.5%. A December Bloomberg/Morning Consult Pro survey found Trump leading Biden in seven surveyed battleground states: North Carolina (+11), Georgia (+7), Wisconsin (+6), Nevada (+5), Michigan (+4), Arizona (+3) and Pennsylvania (+1). That survey used a ballot that included Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein.
In this distinctly Orwellian age we’re living in, it’s only suitable that multiple challenges are being led by a group called Free Speech for People; their website invites you to “join the fight for free and fair elections.”
As the days begin to lengthen and 2023 is one for the history books, the time for the annual Rearview Awards is upon us.
Books of the year: Drew Thomas Allen’s: America’s Last Stand: Will You Vote to Save or Destroy America in 2024. Allen pulls no punches and cuts through the partisan and bureaucratic chaos that plagues American politics. If you love America, this book is a tour de force and a must read as we enter into a presidential election year. How Covid Enabled the Expansion and Abuse of State Power by Ramesh Thakur is the most documented takedown of the COVID lockdown published. Nonagenarian Thomas Sowell’s Social Justice Fallacies breaks down the consequences of pursing equality at the expense of merit that is fundamental to the social justice agenda.
Sign of the times:Maxim magazine named a biological male to their “Hottest 100 Women” list, while a transgender professor will teach a course on Taylor Swift at Harvard.
The alarm has been sounded: The recent congressional testimony of the three college presidents should be a first-degree wake-up call for academia. How much more shame must universities endure before something is done?
Ms. Bitter, USA: Megan Rapinoe calls playing for U.S. Team “Worst Job In The World” as she kneels for the National Anthem. Note to Rapinoe: It wasn’t a job but a privilege that paid well.
Racist award: Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu. Wu invited only city council members of color that excluded whites to her yearend “holiday party.” Racial equity is becoming what it was bound to become — the return of racial segregation.
Metaphors of the Year: The White House Christmas tree toppling over was followed by Jill Biden’s Christmas video that resembled The Nutcracker on crack.
You know one and they vote: An ABC News/Ipsos poll says more than 75% believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Only 25% believe the opposite and admittedly you know at least one of them.
Time travel: After Paul McCartney released the Beatles’ final song: “Now and Then” the next day the Rolling Stones’ latest album topped the charts. When we turned the clocks back in November, just how far back have we gone?
Most flamboyant opening: The Las Vegas Golden Knights raised their 2023 NHL Stanley Cup banner to commence their season using a giant slot machine. With Vegas now a first stop destination of the professional sports’ leagues, the odds for the next great sports’ gambling scandal has increased exponentially.
No pads or helmet needed: By 2027, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s career earnings will be more than double what any player has ever made in the history of the NFL.
Snake bit: The New York Jets’ Aaron Rodgers Era ended after just four plays when Rodgers ruptured his left Achilles tendon. Rodgers is still collecting his $31million salary. Only Judge Judy gets paid more to sit on the bench.
Most notorious envoy: Dylan Mulvaney rivals the late Lion of the Senate Ted Kennedy as alcohol’s most infamous spokesman.
Charlatan cup: The Democrats ridiculed Sen. John Kennedy for reading pornographic material in a Senate hearing. Yet, they are the same books Democrats want in public schools.
Best signage: Peddling on two wheels a bed and breakfast caught my attention: “We Do Not Provide Wi-Fi – So Pretend Like It’s 1980.”
Worst Trade: The Biden administration’s release of billions dollars in sanctioned Iranian funds for the release of five wrongfully held U.S. hostages. Such diplomacy only emboldens our enemies to kidnap more Americans.
There is so much more to grouse about, but space and ink are limited.
An interesting false light lawsuit filed today, Walter v. Herbert (M.D. Pa.), over New York magazine’s “The Case of the Fake Sherlock” article (see pp. 11-19 of this PDF for a paywall-free version). The article had been introduced by the magazine with,
Richard Walter was hailed as a genius criminal profiler at murder trials, at forensic conferences, and on true-crime TV. In reality, he was a fraud. How did he get away with it for so long?
Walter attaches to his Complaint an American Association for Forensic Science Ethics Committee report that is introduced with this cover letter (of course, the “complaint” in that letter refers to the complaint against Walter submitted to the AAFS, not the Complaint in Walter’s newly filed case):
This will be an unusual report because, in the case of dismissals, we usually offer only a brief description. The very public nature of this complaint, based on publication in a nationwide magazine, requires a detailed explanation.
When this complaint was first received, it was accompanied only by an article from New York magazine, written by David Herbert. (Attachment 1) When the Ethics Committee (hereafter “the Committee”) members read the article, we all thought that we would be recommending some sort of sanction. By the time we finished our investigation, we all thought that the complaint should be dismissed. The article accuses the Respondent of fraud and also makes the Academy appear ineffective for not sanctioning him as a result of two previous complaints.
Because of the very public nature of the complaint, the Respondent, Mr. Richard D. Walter, Retired Fellow, General Section, has agreed that the Ethics Committee can waive the usual requirement of confidentiality when reporting this dismissal.
Much of the misconduct alleged in the New York article occurred many years ago and was therefore outside of the Committee’s jurisdiction. Mr. Walter, however, gave a deposition in 2022, wherein several of the old allegations were discussed in detail. We concluded that any material misstatements in that deposition could be considered as within our jurisdiction. After reviewing the transcript, the Committee sent the respondent a pointed letter (Attachment 2) inviting him to respond to several apparent discrepancies. It was Mr. Walter’s answer, accompanied by documentation that he provided (Attachment 3), and additional information the Committee obtained independently which ultimately persuaded the Committee that this complaint should be dismissed.
The following are issues that demonstrate that the New York article is highly biased and contains factual errors….
Walter claims that defendants “had knowledge of, or acted in reckless disregard as to, the falsity of the matter they communicated and the false light in which Mr. Walter was placed.” Read here for more from the Ethics Committee report, which offers details and supporting documents.
The Ethics Committee report concludes that several of the magazine’s allegations were false or unsupported by the evidence, though it of course doesn’t speak to the writer’s mental state. It also concludes, though, that one of the allegations (“On the stand at Drake’s trial, Walter related an impressive—and fictional—resume. He falsely claimed that at the L.A. County Medical Examiner’s Office, he had reviewed more than 5,000 murder cases.”) was likely correct and Walter’s earlier claim was likely wrong: “Mr. Walter gave false testimony in the Drake case in 1987, but that is beyond the reach of the current Committee’s jurisdiction. It is highly unlikely that Mr. Walter consulted on 5,000 murder cases while working at LA CME. There were not that many homicides during his tenure.”
Naturally, I don’t know who is right here on the facts. I’ve e-mailed New York magazine for its view of the matter, and will update the post if I get a response or if the magazine files anything in court that responds to the substance here.
Russia Says Czech-Supplied Weapons Behind Attack On Belgorod Which Killed 18
We detailed earlier that Ukraine’s major cross-border drone and missile attack on the Russian city of Belgorod Saturday was unprecedented in number of projectiles launched within a short period of time on a heavily populated area.
The death toll has since been revised upward from 14 to at least 18 deaths, including reports that two were children. An update by the defense ministry on Telegram said that 111 people had been wounded, which included explosives hitting a popular Christmas marketplace.
President Putin was briefed earlier in the day, as the Russians are seeing in it a major attack coming from a desperate Ukrainian military which is now generally recognized to be losing the war. Ukrainian media sources indicated at least 70 drones and rockets were launched into Russia.
The Kremlin is now calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council for later in the day Saturday, after condemning what it has described as a brazen terroristic attack targeting civilians.
“We have requested an UNSC meeting on Belgorod at 3:00 p.m. New York time (8:00 p.m. GMT) today, December 30. We also demanded that the Czech permanent representative be present to explain his country’s supplies of weapons, which are used to kill civilians,” Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said.
Thus it appears the Russians are in possession of drone and missile debris pointing to weapons supplied by the West, and the Czech Republic in particular. Moscow is further threatening that the attack “will not go unpunished.”
At the impending UNSC meeting, it’s unlikely that Russia will get a sympathetic ear, considering its massive assault on Ukraine the day prior which killed at least 39 Ukrainians, reported to be mostly civilians.
Russia is outraged over Ukraine’s targeting of central holiday attractions in Belgorod city…
According to reports, a missile struck the center of the Russian city of Belgorod, specifically targeting the skating rink. The majority of casualties, both fatalities and injuries, involve children https://t.co/LWsz9uX3QTpic.twitter.com/Z2UKJXDaOs
The Ukrainian Armed Forces had cited that in the Russia’s Friday assault, up to 158 missiles and drones were launched, describing that this was a “record number” and the “most massive missile attack” of the conflict, excluding the very opening few days of the invasion.
Kiev is framing its Saturday attack on Belgorod as ‘retaliation’ for Russia’s big aerial assault; however, Ukrainian officials claim they were only hitting Russian military targets. But this hasn’t been consistent with the video and photographic evidence showing residential and other buildings, including a mall, on fire or billowing smoke.
A recent CNN article titled “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump” discusses, albeit in roundabout fashion, former President Donald Trump’s declassified binder.
“A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
“Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.
“In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.”
All very breathless and conspiratorial sounding. Which, of course, is the entire point.
But the problem for CNN is that there never was any Russian collusion. It was all a giant hoax. Nor was there any real Russian election interference. No more so than any other year. And no more than what the United States does in Russia.
It was all part of a giant fraud that CNN helped to perpetrate in order to hamstring the Trump presidency. So when CNN claims, “The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election,” what they are really referring to is the proof that Trump amassed of the FBI’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election.
The “sources and methods that informed the US government” is precisely what they don’t want anyone to see.
It was never Russian collusion.
It was collusion on the part of DC’s entrenched bureaucracy.
That’s where the real scandal lies.
And the DC establishment is very worried that President Trump has proof of that collusion in his possession.
The National Archives building in Washington on March 28, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)
And that’s what this is all really about—information that President Trump has in his possession that proves the involvement of the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and other establishment agencies in their effort to tarnish him with their construction of the Russian collusion lie.
Which is why CNN all but gave away the entire premise behind the DOJ’s directed FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in their article.
As they note, “The binder was not among the classified items found inlast year’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, according to a US official familiar with the matter, who said the FBI was not looking specifically for intelligence related to Russia when it obtained a search warrant for the former president’s residence last year.”
Their need to insert that disclaimer gives the game away. We didn’t find the binder when we launched a politically motivated shock raid on the house of a former president, but we also weren’t looking for it. Right.
It’s worth remembering that the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago started off with claims that President Trump had illegally stored top-secret documents related to our nation’s nuclear weapons in his bathroom.
Of course, that claim wasn’t true, which is why CNN has shifted to hyping the classified nature of the binder by claiming, “The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.”
These ridiculously overwrought claims that the binder was of the highest sensitivity are all nonsense, of course. Many of these documents have slowly made their way into the public domain through congressional release. And the FBI has even been forced to reluctantly release severalhundredpages of heavily redacted internal records from its Russia investigation.
The binder is not a threat to national security. But it does contain documents that implicate many—both outside and inside the deep state—in their efforts to overturn the Trump presidency with claims of Russian collusion.
It’s important to note that there’s a very real effort on the part of the DOJ to run cover for hiding the binder in the first place. And, as we’ll see, an effort to confuse exactly what the binder really was.
The Department of Justice building in Washington on Feb. 9, 2022. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
A few months back, we told you about a new filing from John Solomon that told the backstory to President Trump’s last-minute declassification order of his “Binder of Declassified Documents.”—and how the DOJ sucked those documents back in and blackholed them.
At President Trump’s request, the DOJ provided the White House with a binder of materials related to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation on Dec. 30, 2020. According to the motion, “Trump reviewed them and decided that the binder should be declassified to the maximum extent possible.”
As you might expect, the FBI had been objecting to the release of these documents because “the binder contained embarrassing information about the Bureau’s officials and the government’s conduct in the case,” and there was a lot of fighting over redactions.
This was finally settled, with President Trump accepting the “proposed redactions” and declassifying the binder in a final Jan. 19, 2021, order. As this was ongoing, Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, informed Mr. Solomon of the pending declassification and invited him to the White House to “review several hundred pages of declassified documents and to discuss a plan for publicly disseminating the entire binder to the American public.”
As Mr. Solomon and his staff were reviewing the documents, they received a call from the White House asking that the documents be returned because the White House inexplicably wished to make some additional redactions to unclassified information under the Privacy Act.
Which is odd, because as Mr. Solomon’s filing notes, “the binder was not subject to the Privacy Act.” But for some unknown reason and “without the President’s knowledge or consent, one of the President’s subordinates [possibly Mr. Meadows himself] decided that redactions consistent with the standards of the Privacy Act should be applied to the binder before it was publicly released.”
According to the filing, Mr. Meadows “promised Solomon that he would receive the revised binder.” But as Mr. Solomon notes, this never occurred and the documents reside within the DOJ to this day.
A legal back-and-forth continued between the two camps until June 17, 2022—when an agreement was reached and President Trump designated “Kash Patel and Solomon as his representatives.”
President Trump’s lawyer reached out to Gary Stern, general counsel of the National Archives, telling him that they would like to begin reviewing the documents at the Archives on June 21, 2022.” But here’s where the intentional confusion by the DOJ and the National Archives comes into play.
Mr. Stern agreed to the review. But then, on June 23, Mr. Stern suddenly told Mr. Solomon the binder was not at the National Archives—it had been transferred back to the DOJ 18 months earlier “per Meadows’s original memorandum to the Attorney General.”
Mr. Stern said they did have a box of 2,700 “undifferentiated pages of documents with varying types of classification and declassification markings.” But he also told Mr. Solomon that because the National Archives could not ascertain the classification status of any information in the box, it would treat its contents as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.”
There were now effectively two binders—both of them considered classified, despite Trump’s declassification order. This was confirmed by Mr. Solomon, who told Mr. Stern that “he believed the records held by the Archives were the very same documents that Trump had declassified and that they were copied from the binder in preparation for release to the news media on the morning of January 20, 2021.”
Award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon in Washington on July 10, 2020. (Tal Atzmon/The Epoch Times)
Mr. Solomon notes that “the Archives could have ascertained the classification status of these records at any time simply by comparing the binder with the boxed papers. However, it has never chosen to do so.”
Mr. Solomon asked that Mr. Patel, who held a TS/SCI clearance and was familiar with the documents in the binder, be allowed to verify the box of documents. But on July 12, Mr. Stern responded, telling Mr. Solomon the documents were now unavailable as they were subject to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Furthermore, Mr. Stern told Mr. Solomon without explanation that “the Trump Presidential records” were unavailable for the Mandatory Declassification Review procedures under the Presidential Records Act.
As you can see from this lengthy and convoluted sequence of events, the DOJ—coordinating through the National Archives—was absolutely desperate to prevent the binder from going public.
But they still had a problem—potentially a big one. The DOJ was virtually certain that President Trump had taken a copy of the presidentially declassified binder with him. And so it was that exactly one month after Mr. Solomon’s request that Mr. Patel review the documents, on Aug. 8, 2022, President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was raided by the FBI.
On Aug. 14, 2022, following the FBI raid, Mr. Solomon told Mr. Stern that the declassified Crossfire Hurricane records were presidential records and asked what efforts had been made to retrieve them from the DOJ.
Three days later, Mr. Stern replied, telling Mr. Solomon that the “bulk of the binder” was—for some unstated reason—intended to remain with the DOJ. As Mr. Solomon’s filing notes, “the Trump White House always considered the Crossfire Hurricane binder a Presidential record and never intended to give up control over it.”
Mr. Solomon closed his statement of facts by noting that by “making everchanging excuses, [President Joe] Biden’s DOJ stonewalled Solomon, denying him access in violation of the Presidential Records Act.”
Mr. Solomon said President Trump “ordered the creation of the Crossfire Hurricane binder to conduct his official duties and that the White House intended to retain control over the binder and its records at all relevant times.”
Kash Patel, former Principal Deputy to the Acting Director of National Intelligence and former senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, in Washington on March 15, 2021. (York Du/The Epoch Times)
President Trump’s official “Binder of Declassified Documents.” remains hidden within the DOJ to this day.
But—and this is a big but—note President Trump’s stated legal position that he “always considered the Crossfire Hurricane binder a Presidential record and never intended to give up control over it.”
In other words, the binder was composed of presidential records that President Trump is legally allowed to have under the Presidential Records Act.
Presidential records that were not found during the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Presidential records that President Trump almost certainly still has copies of—and likely intends to use—as evidenced by an unexpected court filing.
Two days before CNN ran its article, on Dec. 13, President Trump’s lawyers made a surprising announcement hidden in the footnote of a court document, one that apparently took prosecutor Jack Smith by surprise, notifying the court of their intention to “disclose classified information at trial in support of this defense.” What classified information do you suppose that President Trump would have at his disposal?
It also cited only public information, despite having a surprising level of detail. I didn’t think the suit was particularly well designed.
But it did contain a surprising amount of information. Almost like President Trump had kept a file on matters. Almost.
There’s one other item that we’ll note before we end.
In its article, CNN wrote that “The day before leaving office, Trump issued an order declassifying most of the binder’s contents.”
The rest of the article focused on the supposed risks to national security—and blaming President Trump for it all.
Not once, at any point in the article, did these so-called journalists stop to ask why the binder hadn’t been released to the American public in compliance with Trump’s presidential order.
San Diego-Bound Cargo Ship Hauling Lithium Batteries Reports Fire
A fire was reported on a 410-foot cargo ship carrying lithium-ion batteries from Vietnam. The US Coast Guard is assisting the vessel diverted to Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on Friday.
Around 0440 local time Thursday, the 17th Coast Guard District Command Center in Juneau received a report from “Genius Star XI” about a fire onboard. The distress call was made about 225 miles (362 kilometers) southwest of Dutch Harbor.
The Coast Guard dispatched a Lockheed HC-130 from Air Station Kodiak and Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley to assist the vessel. It noted that a “safety zone” will be erected around the ship “carrying lithium-ion batteries.”
Bloomberg data shows Genius Star XI departed from Vietnam earlier this month with a port call to San Diego. As of Saturday, the vessel is now offshore of Dutch Harbor.
Wisdom Marine Group of Taipei, Taiwan, owns the cargo ship. A spokesperson from the company told AP News that there were no injuries to the 19 crew members.
The company warned about the “potential risk of explosion” and said the cargo hold, a space in the ship for storing and transporting cargo, has been “kept sealed.”
In a news release, Capt. Chris Culpepper, commander of Coast Guard Sector Anchorage, wrote, “This will be an ongoing team effort as we work to safely extinguish the fire, provide any necessary medical care for the crew, and mitigate the dangers associated with a shipboard fire.”
There have been a series of lithium fires on commercial vessels this year. The latest was in July when a massive roll-on, roll-off ship experienced a fire caused by what early reports said was an electric vehicle.
Documents recently provided by a whistleblower reveal offensive tactics used by government and outside organizations to counter and preempt the spreading of undesirable information, said independent journalist Matt Taibbi.
Mr. Taibbi and journalists Michael Shellenberger and Alex Gutentag recently exposed a new set of documents from the Cyber Threat Intelligence League (CTIL), an “anti-disinformation” group that waged an aggressive information operation on the public.
The new documents, dubbed the “CTI files,” analyzed tactics used against foreign terrorist groups, such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, that can now be applied domestically to prevent unwanted information from being published, Mr. Taibbi said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
The CTI files referred to these tactics with the military term “left of boom action” and justified their usage by the danger posed by somebody like former President Donald Trump, the journalist said.
Mr. Taibbi previously investigated and disclosed some of the “Twitter Files” after tech billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter in October 2022 and allowed Mr. Taibbi and other designated journalists to query the company’s internal files.
The Twitter Files show how Twitter, a major social media platform for political speech, had been intertwined with the censorship industrial complex to suppress or remove under government pressure content on various subjects, including irregularities in the 2020 elections, mail-in voting issues, and various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government censorship apparatus partnering with academia, nongovernmental organizations, and private research institutions is often called the “censorship industrial complex.”
Preemptive Tactics
CTIL was supposed to be a volunteer organization with a goal to identify misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Taibbi said, but “in reality, you got under the hood—they were interested in basically any topic.”
CTIL described on its website its main goals, which included protecting the medical sector and life-saving organizations worldwide from cyberattacks and cyber threats—mainly related to the COVID-19 pandemic—and making them resilient to disinformation.
While the Twitter Files revealed that Twitter used defensive tactics to control the information posted on its platform, such as censorship and de-amplification, the CTI files show the organization resorted to offensive tactics like burner phones, creating sock puppet accounts, and infiltrating groups, Mr. Taibbi said.
The CTI files also revealed “a sort of a handbook manual on how to create false identities online,” he added.
Other tactics described in the CTI documents included putting financial pressure on disfavored groups through requests to cut off their banking services or even directly going to merchandising outlets to try to stop them from selling their wares, Mr. Taibbi explained.
Such tactics are “the offensive information operation,” he pointed out.
From ‘Counterterrorism to Counter-Populism’
In a report on Substack, Mr. Taibbi wrote that the CTI files exposed that in 2019, “U.S. and UK military and intelligence contractors led by a former UK defense researcher, Sara-Jayne ‘SJ’ Terp, developed the sweeping censorship framework. These contractors co-led CTIL.”
Officially established in March 2020, CTIL grew to more than 1,400 volunteers from almost 80 countries, according to the group’s inaugural report.
In April 2020, CTIL partnered with the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to stop malicious cyber activity related to COVID-19, the then-director of CISA announced on Twitter.
Mr. Taibbi said that the sudden emergence of “all of these anti-disinformation groups,” both in government and in civil society, did not occur by accident. He believes that their appearance coincides with the development of the internet and its huge democratizing force in the world that created “all sorts of political energy” that was uncontrollable and gave rise to the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party, and the Arab Spring.
In 2015 and 2016, a series of events took place that the national security establishment considered very troubling, such as Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn to a Labour Party leadership position in the United Kingdom, Mr. Taibbi said.
Both Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Sanders were left-wing populist politicians who gained popularity among young voters.
To the national security establishment, all these events were “illegitimate threats of the same type … that they had been dealing with overseas,” so it directed its efforts inward from counterterrorism to counter-populism, Mr. Taibbi explained.
The structures built to counter online activity overseas were effective to counter groups like Al-Qaeda, and ISIS, but once that massive structure is turned inward against the country’s own domestic population, it operates with no legal oversight and “it creates all kinds of questions that are kind of horrifying,” Mr. Taibbi said.
“And they’re not even in the same ballpark as the First Amendment.”
Media Competition Versus Shared Endeavor
The training materials included in the CTI files intended for people who are going to review domestic speech featured a quote from the joint chiefs of staff, “talking about how you have to use certain tactics to defeat your enemy,” Mr. Taibbi said. Thus, trainees learned to treat other Americans as the enemy, he added.
This is the mindset of people inside the political establishment in the West, which can be viewed as “a sort of loose confederation of institutions” like media platforms, government, and civil society organizations, he pointed out.
He cited Luke Harding, a journalist at The Guardian, who described such formation as “the shared endeavor” in his article reviewing a book about Bellingcat, a platform for online investigations.
The author of the book believes that “rivalry between media titles is a thing of the past. The future is collaboration, the hunt for evidence a shared endeavor, the truth out there if we wish to discover it,” Mr. Harding wrote.
However, Mr, Taibbi argued that America’s founders “envisioned the press to be an adversarial institution, by its nature.” The concept of the shared endeavor is completely opposite of the founders’ view, he explained.
Americans view “the clash of institutions and the clash of ideas as a good thing,” the journalist said.
“We all think differently, we live differently, we have different faiths, but ultimately, we arrived at a good place together. That system has worked incredibly well in America for hundreds of years.”
Replacing this concept with the other idea, like a shared endeavor, is “authoritarian in nature and ultimately anti-democratic. And it begins with speech,” Mr. Taibbi pointed out.
“There’s a reason that speech is the first guarantee in the Constitution. Because without it, none of the other rights really work.”
Malinformation
Another shift in the information policy is to evaluate information “according to where it rests on the narrative, as opposed to whether it’s true or false,” Mr. Taibbi said.
It is a new concept that defines as disinformation anything that, for example, promotes COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, he said.
“A true story about somebody dying of myocarditis after getting a shot” could be categorized as a form of disinformation, even if that person might be pro-vaccine, because it might cause other people not to get the vaccine, he explained.
“It’s what they would call malinformation,” he said.
CISA defines malinformation as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”
Mr. Taibbi cited the Virality Project at Stanford University, which proposed addressing the issue of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy through suppressing or disseminating information in order to shape public opinion.
In February 2022, the Virality Project released a report “with unique insights from real-time monitoring of anti-vaccine narratives across social media platforms.”
The report proposed two approaches for social media platforms to boost preferred authoritative content: “first, raising up authoritative voices by elevating them in search results or on dedicated information carousels or tabs, and second, deplatforming those who repeatedly spread false and misleading information.”
For example, Pinterest “only surfaces content from leading public health institutions such as the CDC and WHO,” the report said.
Twitter deplatformed President Trump after the 2020 election along with 70,000 other accounts as “harmful sources,” according to the report.
Facebook removed Instagram accounts that belonged to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree’s “HighWire” talk show after they expressed their critical views on COVID-19 vaccines, the report stated. They had 799,000 and 162,000 followers, respectively, according to the report.
Mr. Kennedy is the founder of Children’s Health Defense and, at that time, served as the organization’s chairman of the board and chief legal counsel.
Mr. Bigtree is a filmmaker, investigative medical journalist, and the host of “The HighWire” talk show.
The job of a traditional journalist is to discern what is true and what is not, said Mr. Taibbi, adding that he was raised as a traditional journalist.
“Once it’s true, we put it out there, and then it’s up to you what to do with it.”
However, the new approach is to focus on “motive, intent, and likely impact, as opposed to the true/false dichotomy,” Mr. Taibbi said. The factuality issue has become secondary.
Operation Prosperity Guardian Escorts Two Maersk Vessels Through Red Sea, Report Says
Major shipping carriers remain deeply divided on sending new vessels through the Suez Canal and the hazardous Red Sea despite the US’ effort to bring online ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian.’ There were reports last week that shipping giant Maersk was preparing to restart container ship transits in the critical waterway.
X user Sal Mercogliano, citing MarineTraffic data, said, “Operation Prosperity Guardian successfully escorted two US-flagged ships of @MaerskLineLtd through the Bab el-Mandeb.”
Mercogliano noted, “One of the ships was escorted by a French frigate, showing that the @CMF_Bahrain international cooperation has improved.”
Operation Prosperity Guardian successfully escorted two US-flagged ships of @MaerskLineLtd through the Bab el-Mandeb. One of the ships was escorted by a French frigate, showing that the @CMF_Bahrain international cooperation has improved.@Maersk is preparing to run about a… pic.twitter.com/yW0JdymnW1
— Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️ (@mercoglianos) December 30, 2023
He added that Maersk is “preparing to run about a dozen 8k+ TEU containerships through the region, along with single ships of @cmacgm and @COSCOSHIPPING.”
Last week, Maersk stated: “We continue to prepare our vessels for passage through the Red Sea, and any deviation from this decision will be looked at on a case-by-case basis.”
Many of the world’s largest shipping companies have rerouted ships around the Cape of Good Hope to avoid drone and missile attacks in the Red Sea from Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen.
UBS analysts have said more than 400 cargo ships have been rerouted on the 6,000-nautical-mile detour, which effectively reduces the capacity of Asia-to-Europe trade by a quarter. This drives up shipping costs at a time when global central banks have aggressively raised interest rates to curb inflation.
The news of Maersk sending ships through the Red Sea is a positive development. Yet, the overhang that another vessel attack could be imminent is unsettling for shipping companies.
We wonder just how much that escort cost US taxpayers.
I just gave some money to the Institute for Justice, a first-rate libertarian public interest law firm (and also the provider of the weekly Short Circuit posts on this blog, which are written by IJ’s John Ross). I’ve long much admired IJ: I’ve litigated some First Amendment cases, but it’s not that hard to win them, given how strong First Amendment protections generally are—IJ, on the other hand, has figured out ways of winning even economic liberties cases, where the degree of difficulty is much higher.
Here’s IJ’s little pitch, which I’m delighted to pass along, with my full endorsement:
By the way, if you do donate (or have donated in the past), please leave a comment below saying you did, so your fellow readers can see. (No obligation, of course, but I think it might be nice.)
Across the Middle East, Gaza’s deadliest-ever war is casting a shadow over the countdown to the New Year. It follows muted Christmas celebrations among Christian communities across the occupied Palestinian territories, southern Lebanon and Syria.
Authorities in Sharjah, the third largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have cancelled its customary New Year’s Eve celebrations – including all firework displays – in solidarity with Gaza. Sharjah Police announced last Wednesday that legal measures will be taken against people taking part in celebrations.
But no such ban has been announced anywhere else in the region. Nor are other emirates, renowned for their extravagant annual New Year’s Eve celebrations, announcing bans. In Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, the Sheikh Zayed Festival is set to feature a record-breaking firework display lasting for a full hour.
Meanwhile in Dubai, several major displays have been planned, including at the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. Dubai’s Global Village confirmed on Wednesday that it will have no fewer than seven fireworks shows.
In Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, customary street parties and live concerts have been planned for the occasion, while multiple firework displays are scheduled for Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.
Likewise, Lusail City in Qatar will host laser shows and fireworks. Qatar recently marked its National Day on 18 December with significantly reduced celebrations in solidarity with Gaza.
Outside of the Middle East, Pakistan has issued a “strict ban” on “any kind of event for New Year”, with caretaker prime minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar urging people to “show solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters”.
He added: “The whole Pakistani nation and the Muslim world are in a sheer state of anguish over the massacre of innocent children and genocide of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Globally, an online campaign called Countdown 2 Ceasefire is mounting in popularity. The campaign urges people across the world to join New Year’s Eve events on 31 December displaying banners calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and to shout “Ceasefire Now” during the countdown to the New Year. Countdown 2 Ceasefire has close to 30,000 followers on Instagram.
The campaign is gaining traction amid intensified Israeli bombing in central Gaza, as well as escalating raids in the occupied West Bank and Israeli forces firing tear gas at Palestinian worshippers attempting to reach Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday.
