controlling news with a stick.....

In late October, the liberal anti-establishment investigative site Consortium News filed a historic suit against the United States of America and Newsguard Industries, describing a state-funded effort to label, defame, and stigmatize “media organizations that oppose or dissent from American foreign and defense policy.”

By Matt Taibbi / Racket News

Now, a pair of conservative media outlets, The Federalist and The Daily Wire, have filed a bookend suit to match the Consortium News action. This time the defendant is the Global Engagement Center, the State Department organization ostensibly dedicated to countering “foreign state and non-state propaganda.” Much as Consortium News alleged the Pentagon funded Newsguard to censor its critics, the Federalist/Daily Wire action alleges the State Department sponsored Newsguard and the U.K.-based Global Disinformation Index as “censorship enterprises” targeting domestic speech, in direct violation of its charter.

Although the 1947 Smith-Mundt Act barring agencies like the State Department from engaging in propaganda at home was “modernized” through legislation passed in 2012, the broad ban on intelligence or diplomatic services meddling in the domestic news landscapes remains. Even the “modernized” Smith-Mundt Act declares bluntly that no State Department funds shall be “used to influence public opinion in the United States.” Additionally, as the Federalist/Daily Wire action cites, the law governing State Department conduct, 22 U.S. Code § 2656, says unequivocally that its mandate is limited to “matters respecting foreign affairs.” For the State Department to fund organizations that up and down-rank domestic media organizations is a ludicrously obvious no-no.

“The State Department’s mandate to administer foreign affairs is clear, making its role in the censorship scheme doubly unlawful,” says Margot Cleveland, serving here as the New Civil Liberties Alliance attorney representing The Federalist and The Daily Wire.

What is the alleged “censorship scheme”? The suit outlines a number of issues, but the most damaging appears to involve the use of GEC as a mechanism to funnel money to various censorship-by-proxy organizations. One of those groups is NewsGuard, which in a recent press release said a goal of its subscription-based “credibility assessment” services is to “systemically defund sources of harmful misinformation.”

NewsGuard in a presentation of its Library Partnership to the Alaska Department of Education explained in the unabashed dystopian style these organizations are becoming known for that “We are also licensing our White List of legitimate news sites to advertisers, which will cut off revenues to fake news sites”:....

I reached out to NewsGuard about this passage. If the company licenses a “whitelist” of “legitimate” sites with the express goal of cutting off “revenues to fake news sites,” aren’t they effectively engaged in a blacklisting service whose real aim is to target what it considers illegitimate sites? Is there any reason, I asked, that this service should not be described as blacklisting? The company hasn’t responded, as yet.

GDI, meanwhile, says one of its goals is to “defund disinformation” and uses what it seriously calls a Dynamic Exclusion List — the most badly creepy euphemism since the Obama administration dubbed its “kill list” the “Disposition Matrix” — to bleed news outlets deemed “morally reprehensible” or lacking “redeeming social value” of ad revenue. The company also drew up lists of “least risky” and “riskiest” news outlets that seem to contradict its stance that it does not target “information about which reasonable parties may agree, such as varying political views.” Notice any patterns below?

Highlighted above are both the plaintiffs in this case and unusual entries on the “least risky” side. Now-dead Buzzfeed blazed real trails in disinformation by publishing the Steele Dossier, which it knew was not only “unverified,” but “contains errors.” Meanwhile there are interstate gas stations whose lavatory wall writings are more reliable than HuffPost, which for years now has been jumping on obvious fake news tales like the pee tape with the enthusiasm of a dog humping a leg:....

The oldest-in-America New York Post, which published a correct Hunter Biden laptop expose by Miranda Devine, was deemed riskiest according to GDI. Meanwhile, papers that published the absolutely bogus lie that the report that the “alleged” laptop was “possible” Russian disinformation, or even had to publish corrections on that score, were put on safe island. Here for instance is an NPR fine-print oopsie:

Correction
April 1, 2021
A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the
laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to
that effect.

NPR is also racking up a fairly extensive record of reports relaying official statements later proven incorrect, like that all 13 of the Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island were killed or that “breakthrough infections might not be a big transmission risk.” I asked GDI if it only counted non-official errors when it computed its reliability scores. They too have yet to comment.

All news organizations get things wrong, but it’s beyond obvious now that organizations like NewsGuard and GDI are measuring something that has far more to do with where the outlets are oriented in relation to official narratives, than with factuality or reliability. This is why lawsuits by outlets with virtually opposite politics, like Consortium News and The Federalist, can be so strikingly similar in substance. The propaganda/anti-propaganda distinction is most crucial in both cases, and only secondarily is partisan politics a consideration, although it’s clearly more of an issue in this suit.

Moreover, it’s conspicuous that GDI targets popular-but-dissenting organizations like Reason and The New York Post. While the State Department has a massive budget for domestic propaganda operations (the #CTIFiles described $250 million for the year 2020), there’s a reason they’re not simply pouring more money into Voice of America or its “fact-checking website” Polygraph and trying to reach people that way.

That wouldn’t work, due to the increasingly obvious fact that government propaganda efforts are not trusted. Worse, traditional legacy organizations like The New York Times and the Washington Post are seen now as transparent vehicles for official propaganda, which is leading to significant loss of trust for them. The only way to correct that is to err less often, but since that doesn’t appear to be an option, NewsGuard and GDI and organizations like them are needed to correct the “mistake” of the media market. We can’t have people simply choosing what to read organically, can we? No matter how big a bullhorn you give the State Department or the Pentagon, they still need forms of censorship just to compete.

A last note, and a word of encouragement to reporters everywhere. The Daily Wire/Federalist suit would likely not have been possible had Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner not done such excellent investigative work on GDI in his “Disinformation Inc.” series. Kaminsky said he was “thrilled” to have an impact, and Cleveland generously credited the work. This is proof that if journalists work at cranking out true material, someone will put it to use.

“Gabe Kaminsky’s reporting at the Washington Examiner exposed the underbelly of the State Department’s role in the whole-of-government censorship scheme,” Cleveland said. “Without Gabe’s reporting, The Daily Wire and The Federalist may never have known GDI targets their speech, and the country may never have known State Department’s role.”

In a related observation, it’s a little odd that breakthrough investigative reporting is needed to expose public programs like this. The GEC doesn’t publish even a fraction of its contracting award details, and even an Inspector General report about agency abuses stunningly left all but 3 of 39 GEC contractor names redacted.

Another IG report disclosed the on-the-nose detail that GEC lacked internal controls to “ensure contractors did not perform inherently governmental functions,” which is great, but the public shouldn’t need deep sourcing and/or IG reports to see basic budgeting information, like which agencies are being paid how much, and for what, by the State Department.

That this is necessary speaks to something inherently malodorous about these efforts, and is a reason we should all be looking forward to the discovery process in this case, and in the Consortium News proceedings. These suits are for all of us, and we all have an interest in how they turn out.

https://scheerpost.com/2023/12/06/matt-taibbi-sue-the-bastards-federalist-daily-wire-take-the-state-department-to-court/

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By Gus Leonisky at 8 Dec 2023 - 6:48am
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in texas....

Dec 6 (Reuters) - Texas' Republican state attorney general and two conservative media companies on Wednesday sued the U.S. Department of State, accusing it of funding technologies used to counter disinformation online that they claim censor right-leaning news outlets.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton alongside The Daily Wire and The Federalist filed a lawsuit in federal court in Tyler, Texas, alleging the State Department had funded technology that could "render disfavored press outlets unprofitable."

They said it did so through two organizations that received grants or contracts from the department's Global Engagement Center, which is authorized to counter foreign "propaganda and disinformation."

The organizations are the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British think tank that received a $100,000 grant in 2021, and NewsGuard, which rates the "misinformation" levels of news outlets and received $25,000 in 2020, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit argues the State Department lacked statutory authority to fund tools like those produced by GDI and NewsGuard and that it infringed the two media outlet's free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

"This agency will not get away with their illegal campaign to silence citizens and publications they disagree with," Paxton said in a statement.

He filed the lawsuit alongside lawyers at the conservative New Civil Liberties Alliance, which is representing The Daily Wire and The Federalist.

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By Gus Leonisky at 8 Dec 2023 - 6:50am
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delusions....

The White House wants to keep funding Ukraine in its conflict with Russia because it believes that in a year Moscow may be willing to concede to Kiev’s demands, an aide to Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday.

Jon Finer, Sullivan’s principal deputy, discussed the White House Ukraine strategy at an event hosted by the Aspen Institute, an influential US think-tank. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s request to allocate over $110 billion in foreign security aid, including for Ukraine, was blocked from a vote in the Senate.

Finer made a case for releasing the funds despite Kiev’s inability to secure any major successes on the battlefield during its summer counteroffensive. He said he disagreed with the notion that the operation “not going as far as people wanted reflects some degree of Ukrainian failure.” If Washington keeps bankrolling Kiev’s war effort for the next year, the Ukrainian government will maintain “a degree of parity” with Russia, he promised.

“Another year of funding and another year in which Russia will have to suffer on the battlefield is fundamentally a better position than we are in today without that funding,” Finer said. “I think there is no way to dispute that.”

By the end of 2024, Western nations will have ramped up arms production and be helping Ukraine do the same, the White House expects. Then Russia will have to either “come to the negotiating table on terms that would be acceptable to Ukraine” or face a stronger opponent, according to Finer’s expectations.

Kiev’s demands for peace include full control over pre-2014 Ukrainian territory, war reparations and a tribunal for the Russian leadership, as detailed last year by President Vladimir Zelensky. Moscow has dismissed it from the start as detached from reality.

Moscow has cited NATO expansion in Europe and the promised inclusion of Ukraine into the US-led military bloc as a threat to its national security. Preventing that outcome is imperative, senior Russian officials have said.

In the first weeks of hostilities, Ukraine and Russia came to a preliminary agreement on a truce, which would have seen Kiev drop its NATO aspirations and pledge neutrality. Then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Kiev to “make war instead,” David Arakhamia, who led the Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Istanbul, confirmed in a recent interview.

https://www.rt.com/news/588721-ukraine-strategy-year-funding/

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THESE MORONS? JON FINER IS DELUDED LIKE A DEAD FISH IN A FISH KILL....

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By Gus Leonisky at 8 Dec 2023 - 7:56pm
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neo-liberal media.....

Rumble link Bitchute link

In case you hadn’t noticed, the liberal media, and the liberal Establishment behind it, hates “right-wing extremists.” Since 2016, when Trump was elected on a control-the-borders platform, “right-wing extremism” has replaced “Islamic terrorism” as the new bogeyman. Don’t like mandatory vaccines and COVID lockdowns? You’re a “right-wing extremist” and deserve to be censored. Don’t like censorship? You’re defending “right-wing extremists” so you must be one yourself. Don’t like the war on Russia? You must be a “right-wing extremist” like Putin, who is the new Hitler because he doesn’t like LGBTQ indoctrination and mandatory sex change surgery for toddlers.

In the past, being antiwar, pro-free-speech, pro-civil-liberties, and pro-alternative-medicine put you on the left side of the spectrum. Now those are all signs of “right-wing extremism.”

What’s so terrible about all this “right-wing extremism”? Ultimately, it’s all about the Nazis. If you are pro-free-speech, you’re giving a platform to Nazis. If you support the COVID dissidents, you must like that one guy with the swastika tattoo at the rally where RFK Jr. spoke. And if you don’t support the war on Russia, and refuse to click your heels and sig heil for Zelensky, it must be because you are a follower of the new Hitler, Vladimir Putin.

The logic goes something like this: Right-wing extremists are Nazis. Nazis, as we all know, commit genocide. Therefore if we allow extremists to support border control, oppose war on Russia, speak their minds without censorship, and practice alternative medicine instead of masking and jabbing, one thing will lead to another and pretty soon they’ll be committing genocide.

You might say it’s the new domino theory.

What makes the whole thing even crazier is that there are really only two places on Earth where “right-wing extremist Nazis” are committing genocide: Israel under fuhrer Netanyahu, and Ukraine under fuhrer Zelenksy. But the liberal media, despite its ostensible hatred of right-wing extremist Nazis, supports both genocides! Zelinsky’s effort to murder and expel the Russian-speaking people of Eastern Ukraine, and obliterate the culture of any who remain, is a textbook case of genocide, and a direct descendant of Hitler’s lebensraum project with its planned murder and expulsion of millions of Slavs. And Netanyahu’s even bloodier attempt to murder and expel the Palestinians is orders of magnitude worse—probably worse than anything Hitler ever did.

Both Zelensky’s Ukraine and Netanyahu’s Israel are fanatical right-wing ultra-nationalist regimes, built on exaltation of a “master race” (Ukrainians/Jews in one case, and just plain Jews in the other) and the genocidal demonization of the untermenschen (Russian-speaking Christians in Ukraine, Palestinians in Palestine). These two regimes are the apotheosis of everything pro-tolerance, anti-racist, pro-multiculturalism liberals profess to hate. And yet the liberal Establishment loves them, and even runs nonstop pro-genocide propaganda on their behalf. Whatever can those liberals be thinking?

The Cosmopolitan Empire

When we peel back the veneer of increasingly threadbare liberalism, we find that the so-called liberal Establishment isn’t very liberal at all. Its real roots are in Trotskyism and illuminism, not classical Enlightenment liberalism, and its end-game is totalitarian global dictatorship. That, at least, is the argument of Peter Myers’ new book The Cosmopolitan Empire.

The way Myers tells it, since the Enlightenment exploded into the French Revolution, non-conservative forces have basically been divided into two camps. The first camp, the reformists, includes classical liberals, democratic socialists, moderate libertarians, and others seeking gradual, peaceful change. The second camp consists of nihilists, meaning those who seek a clean break with the current order via creative destruction so they can build a global dictatorship on the ruins. Myers traces this group from the Illuminati of Adam Weishaupt through Marxian communism and finally to the neo-Trotskyism that he sees as the real animating force behind today’s pseudo-liberal Establishment.

To his credit, Myers is not afraid of mentioning the elephant in the room: the Jewish connection to the nihilist camp. If Jews have traditionally scorned the goyim societies that hosted them, and occasionally sought to undermine those societies, it seems natural that some would participate in, or even lead, modern movements that sought to destroy traditional societies in service to a utopian vision not unlike the one that has long inspired the many flavors of Jewish messianic millenarianism. That utopian vision posits a Messiah who conquers the world and subjugates the goyim to the Jews, making the world a paradise for Jews, each of whom will own 2800 goyim slaves.

Ostensibly secular nihilist radicals, from Weishaupt to Lenin and Trotsky to H.G. Wells and George Soros, have led disproportionately secular-Jewish movements to destroy traditional religions and cultures in order to create a world state, meaning a technocratic global dictatorship ruled by a privileged elite. This one-world project, not classical liberalism, appears to be the driving force behind today’s Establishment. And that is why the “liberal” establishment supports genocidal uber-nationalists in Ukraine and Occupied Palestine. The Ukrainian Nazis (financed by Jewish oligarchs) have been weaponized against the rebirth of Russia, with its patriotism and Orthodox religion and family values; while the Zio-Nazis have been weaponized against traditional Islamicate civilization.

The faux-liberal Establishment propagandizes for such genocides and bloodbaths not because its highest value is individual freedom and dignity, as classical liberalism would have it, but because its liberal bromides are just a smokescreen for a totalitarian world domination project. In other words, it isn’t the “freedom” of two-year-olds to have their genders re-assigned that motivates them. Instead, the faux-liberals are waging war on the traditional family, the basis of organic traditional social life, because it stands in the way of their totalitarian world state. Likewise they hate Putin not because he disapproves of rainbow flags, but because he is rallying Russia to stand as a sovereign Christian-Muslim nation against impending global dictatorship.

Myers’ schema helps explain why so many atheist Jews have “transitioned” from Trotskyite to neoconservative. Max Shpak wrote:

Perhaps even more significant a factor in the origins of neoconservatism was the emergence of an independent Israeli state. While many Jewish Marxists eagerly supported the Zionist state, the more intellectually consistent Left opposed Zionism on the grounds that all nationalisms, including Jewish ones, are enemies of global proletarian revolution. Thus, Jewish leftists who once advocated internationalism for gentile nations were forced to come to terms with the implications of this ideology for their own nationalist sentiments. Thus, they needed an ideology which would let them have their cake (opposing gentile nationalism) and eat it too (by supporting Israel), and they found just such a worldview with neoconservatism.

The neocons have inherited Trotsky’s project of destroying the nations, and the religions and families on which they are based, in hopes that utopia will emerge from the rubble. By posing as liberals — as in Kagan’s veiled call for Trump’s assassination on the pretext that Trump threatens liberal democracy — the neocons have succeeded in remaking what passes for liberalism in their own image.

No wonder today’s “liberalism” is totalitarian and genocidal.

https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/why-is-the-liberal-media-inciting-genocide/

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By Gus Leonisky at 10 Dec 2023 - 5:44pm
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TikTok Bans Glenn

TikTok Bans Glenn Greenwald

by Adam Dick | Dec 9, 2023

On Sunday, I wrote about Glenn Greenwald’s insightful discussion at his System Update news show last week about how American politicians’ threats to ban TikTok are part of the effort to gain greater government control over the social media platform that has already, Greenwald stated, “had to agree more and more” to implement United States government censorship demands.

Here is an update. TikTok has since banned Greenwald’s System Update from its social media platform.

Greenwald discussed the details in a segment from a new episode of System Update:

By Gus Leonisky at 10 Dec 2023 - 5:57pm
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TikTok Bans Glenn

TikTok Bans Glenn Greenwald

by Adam Dick | Dec 9, 2023

Here is an update. TikTok has since banned Greenwald’s System Update from its social media platform.

Greenwald discussed the details in a segment from a new episode of System Update:

By Gus Leonisky at 10 Dec 2023 - 5:58pm
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TikTok Bans Glenn

TikTok Bans Glenn Greenwald

by Adam Dick | Dec 9, 2023

Here is an update. TikTok has since banned Greenwald’s System Update from its social media platform.

Greenwald discussed the details in a segment from a new episode of System Update:

By Gus Leonisky at 10 Dec 2023 - 5:58pm
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prison for bibi........

SOMETHINGN HAPPENDED AND A COMMENT GOT REPEATED AFEW TIMES WITHOUT BEING COMOPETED... BUT WEN MOVE ON....

The minute the war stops, Netanyahu goes to prison. No wonder he doesn't want it to end

by Kevin barrett

This interview was conducted last Friday, shortly after the end of the truce.

Well, for more information on the continuing Israeli war in the Gaza Strip, we are now joined by Mr. Kevin Barrett. He is the editor-in-chief of Veterans Today and joins us from Saidiya, Morocco. Mr. Barrett, welcome to the program. I would like to know your views on why the Israeli attack on Gaza will continue. Hamas blamed Israelis with US green light.

Yes, of course, that's correct. Whether the United States gives a strong enough green light or simply fails to give a strong enough red light, the responsibility ultimately lies with the Biden administration as well as the fanatical genocide maniacs within and around the Netanyahu government. It is shameful and horrible that after this period of extension of the truce with the release of prisoners and the possibility of other prisoners being released... all Israelis can now see that the released Israeli prisoners were on very good terms with their captors . They were smiling. They congratulated each other. They hugged their Hamas captors. So it's pretty obvious that when you compare this to the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, which includes torture, systematic sexual abuse, rape, constant mistreatment, the whole Israeli propaganda narrative falls apart. completely collapses.

This narrative that Hamas is a bunch of dangerous, violent, criminal “animals” – those horrible genocidal terms used by Israelis – actually turns out to be self-describing. While Hamas has proven itself to be a far more honorable, noble, moral and ethical organization than the genocidal Israeli government.

So it's terrible. They went out and killed a hundred more civilians on the first day, less than a day in fact since the truce expired. The Biden administration deserves a lot of responsibility for this situation. They will face political sanctions here in the United States. But it remains to be seen whether they will ever be able to stand up and force Netanyahu to stop committing genocide.

Mr. Barrett, the war itself is also considered, when we talk about the backlash and the consequences of all this in Israel for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this war itself is also considered a major failure for him. I would like you to tell us about that as well.

Yes, politically, the Biden administration, Netanyahu and the Israelis lost.

Politically, the Biden administration and Netanyahu's gangsters face slightly different problems. In Biden's case, his situation would actually be better if Netanyahu resigned and ended up in prison, and a completely new Israeli government, free of extremism, was formed. And that could happen if the war ends in a context in which it is clear that Netanyahu and the Israelis have lost or failed to achieve their goals in any significant way. This is undoubtedly how it will end, since they will have no way to achieve their goals. They cannot eliminate Hamas, as they claim. All they manage to do is massacre civilians. As soon as this war ends, it will be considered a failure within Israel. And at that point, Netanyahu is going to take responsibility for all of this. And who knows what kinds of investigations will be carried out into what led to the Israeli debacle and the Palestinian triumph of October 7. Netanyahu will likely leave the prime minister's office and head straight to a prison cell as soon as the war ends. He therefore has every reason to continue this war as long as he can.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration faces political problems because the most active wing of the Democratic Party is at least modestly aware of and horrified by the scale of the Zionist genocide underway in Gaza. And a lot of people in the United States are going to sit out the election and not vote for Biden because of that — certainly the Arab and Muslim American communities, as well as much of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. So for Biden, it would actually be a good thing to end the war and have Netanyahu sent to prison, and replace him with a slightly more pragmatic Israeli government.

The problem, however, is that Zionists have so much power in the United States that doing anything that can be perceived as opposition to Israel can leave you politically vulnerable. And Republicans are taking advantage of brainwashing the American people to support Israel. So Biden walks a tightrope between trying to appease people in his own party who are aware of reality, and having to fend off challenges from the Republican camp, which is being totally and completely brainwashed to encourage genocide. So this is a complex situation and so far the Biden administration has not had the courage, let alone the morality or ethics, to stand up and force an end to this war. And I'm not sure they will. But we'll see.

Mr. Barrett, here are some new reactions. Iran's foreign minister said the United States and Israelis appear to be ignoring the serious consequences of continuing the war on Gaza. So let's say that this war continues for a long time. More and more women and children are being massacred by the Israelis. What type of fallout do you expect?

Well, I don't think it's entirely true that the entire Biden administration is ignoring the political consequences it's facing. They may not realize the full extent of it until it's too late, but Biden has already reportedly said that, quote, "we took a lot of water for the Israelis." And of course, that means he's comparing America to a sinking ship. The sinking ship, the Titanic, is taking on a lot of water due to its ridiculous and widely hated support for the genocide in Gaza. So, of course, at some point the US administration, the permanent national security community or the deep state might wake up and realize that America is going to lose what little of its soft power it has left, its reputation being completely destroyed by his support of US genocidal policies. And the story changes. The truth about October 7, that the Palestinian Resistance fought with restraint, with compassion, with morality and ethics, as it attacked military targets and hostages and exchanged them for Palestinian prisoners, and that she then treated these hostages very, very well – all of that is coming out now. And as the world watches, the damage to the image of the United States and these Zionist rabid dogs in occupied Palestine grows worse by the day. So yes, I think at some point the American administration will probably be forced to stop Netanyahu from committing genocide and then, of course, Netanyahu will go to prison.

But Netanyahu is a survivor. He's done all kinds of crazy things and gotten away with it in the past, including taking part in 11/2001. We should never underestimate how far he might go to try to stay in power. power and escape from prison.

source: The People's Cause

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By Gus Leonisky at 10 Dec 2023 - 6:07pm
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