Censorship

Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups tried to influence EU: Report

A version of the document seen by POLITICO before its official publication says the Islamist group’s supposed ideological allies sought to push Brussels to criminalize blasphemy and promote a “singular” vision of religious freedom that clashes with France’s strict model of a secular state that protects both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. The European Parliament and MEPs were “particularly targeted,” the report said.

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Free Speech

Key group in government censorship project boasted of suppressing Trump message, defunding newsrooms

Michael Chamberlain, head of the nonprofit watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, which obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, said the memos proved that while NED’s effort was billed as targeting overseas propaganda, it ended up routinely focusing on suppressing American speech, mostly right-leaning or conservative in nature.

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Free Speech

Back with a Vengeance: Nina Jankowicz Calls on Europeans to Oppose the United States

How the “Mary Poppins of disinformation” came to alight upon Europe is a familiar tale. The European Union has become the global hub for censorship efforts and, after she departed from the government, Jankowicz made a beeline for Europe. I have been a long critic of Jankowicz, who became an instant Internet sensation due to a musical number in which she sang “You can just call me the Mary Poppins of disinformation” in a TikTok parody of the song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” After the Biden Administration reluctantly disbanded her board, she later moved to join a European group as a foreign agent to continue her work to block views that she considers disinformation.

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Censorship

Online Censorship Losing Public Support

The results of the Pew Research Center study also come shortly after the U.S. State Department shuttered its Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office, formerly known as the Global Engagement Center, which was responsible for “silenc[ing] and censor[ing] the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Lamenting the damage done by the censorship initiative, Rubio added, “Over the last decade, Americans have been slandered, fired, charged, and even jailed for simply voicing their opinions.”

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Censorship

How the US Government funded narrative control operations around the globe

Narrative control efforts to give the US a competitive advantage over Russia and China make sense – this is what we expect of nation states. Why the US Government should be so invested in pushing vaccines and influencing the information environment surrounding the elections of small and far-flung nations is less obvious, unless you understand the US to be an empire representing the interests of major cartels and an ambitious deep state.

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Censorship

State Department Closes Censorship Office

Rather than censor Americans’ speech directly, which would raise obvious First Amendment concerns, GEC and other federal agencies “effectively outsourced to the newly emerging censorship-industrial complex” to private proxies, according to a report published by the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government — as if that made the First Amendment problems go away.

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Academia

A battle over religion and schools in Oklahoma could decide the future of the First Amendment

Under Walters’ watch, the state approved the first ever religious virtual public charter school, a provocative move that is now before the Supreme Court, which will hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the move next month. He has also proposed placing Bibles in schools, a move that was recently blocked by the state Supreme Court, and is seeking to add more Christian-related themes to the curriculum, including information about the Ten Commandments.

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Censorship

How Big Pharma’s Favorite Ad Agency Helped Create NewsGuard

Studies show NewsGuard’s ratings are heavily skewed against anti-establishment media sources. Its advertiser exclusion lists include some of the most prominent destinations for non-mainstream news, including Newsmax, Breitbart News, The Federalist, and One America News. While conservative websites bear the brunt, left-wing websites with an anti-establishment, anti-war tendency, like Consortium News, have also found themselves on NewsGuard’s blacklists.

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