Guilty (C.J. Hopkins)

 'In 2022, (Hopkins) tweeted pictures of the cover of his essay-collection The Rise of the New Normal Reich (2022). The cover included a swastika, and he was charged according to German law regarding "propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization." Reporter James Kirchick commented that "One can call his method of argument likening anti-COVID policies to Nazism misguided, intellectually lazy, or tasteless—I personally find it to be all three—but endorsing "the aims" of National Socialism it is not." Wikipedia

by C.J. Hopkins

So, the Berlin Appellate Court overturned my acquittal today. I am now, officially, at least according to the New Normal German authorities, a “hate-speech” criminal. I’m officially a “hate-speech” criminal because I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany, and I challenged the official Covid narrative, and I used the cover art of my book to do it.

The New Normal German authorities didn’t like that, and were determined to punish me for doing that, and to make an example of me, in order to discourage other people from doing that. It took them two tries, but they pulled it off. The judge in my original trial screwed up and acquitted me, but the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s office didn’t give up. They appealed the verdict — yes, they can do that in Germany — and this morning the Appellate Court overturned the verdict and declared me guilty.

I’ll report on all the ugly details of my day in court in a proper column sometime later this week, when I’ve sufficiently recovered from the hangover I am currently about to start working on.

I’ll also be resurrecting my legal defense fund and telling you about that in my next column, because the only recourse my attorney and I have left at this point is to try to get the German Constitutional Court (i.e., Germany’s supreme court) to hear the case...

read more here

Australian Bill Targets Harmful Misinformation Online but Hits Free Speech Around the World

('reasonably verifiable as false' that means they don't even have to prove something as false, just put forth a 'reasonable' argument that it may be and presto... censored.)

from CATO Institute

Last week, Australia dropped its revised Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation Bill 2024, and it’s about two sandwiches short of a picnic. The bill appears to draw some of its inspiration from the EU’s Digital Services Act in terms of creating significant responsibilities and regulations. And if past is prologue, what happens in Australia doesn’t stay in Australia—such as when Australia passed its “link tax” bill, which taxed social media companies when users shared links to news articles. That link tax spread to Canada and has been actively considered in the United States. Canada is also considering replicating Australia’s eSafety Commission, despite various cases of significant censorial overreach.

But whatever the rationale or history here, this bill not only will restrict Australians’ free speech and access to different online services, but its influence may spread and threaten American speech as well.

Let’s first look at how the bill defines misinformation and disinformation, a challenge for any bill or organization in this field. The bill defines misinformation as content that is

• “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading, or deceptive;” and
• “is likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.”

The definition also carves out some space for satire and parody, professional news content, and “reasonable” dissemination of content for “academic, artistic, scientific, or religious” reasons. Disinformation uses the same definition and adds that there must be grounds to suspect that the content was shared with the intent to deceive others or otherwise involves inauthentic behavior.

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Long-time CIA asset named as FBI’s spy on Trump campaign (archive)

by Bill Van Auken from WSWS (archived from 2018)

The naming of Stefan Halper as the individual sent by the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election campaign has further inflamed the political warfare raging within the US state apparatus and political establishment. Halper is a long-time CIA asset with deep ties to US and British intelligence.

Published reports that the FBI had used a confidential informant to gather information on the Trump campaign led US President Donald Trump to announce via Twitter on Sunday, “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes, and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Repeating his denunciation of the year-old probe by Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign, as a “witch hunt,” Trump declared last week that the report of FBI spying on his campaign was a political scandal “bigger than Watergate."

The identification of Halper—who was implicated as the leading figure in a conspiracy by intelligence agents to subvert then-President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign in 1980—as the covert FBI spy has been the subject of a heated debate in Washington and the media.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two papers of record for the US political establishment, have studiously observed the demands of the FBI to conceal Halper’s identity.
The Post reported that it was concealing the identity of the spy from the American people because of “warnings from US intelligence officials that exposing him could endanger him or his contacts.”…
Democrats have rallied behind the FBI’s defiance of congressional oversight. Leading Democrats have rushed to the defense of the intelligence agencies, denouncing Trump and Nunes for allegedly placing US security at risk.

Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel, appeared on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” Sunday—well after Halper’s identity as the FBI covert agent had already been revealed by a number of publications—to threaten that “when individuals want to try to reveal classified information about the identity of an FBI or CIA source, that is against the law.”...

[read more here]

Epstein Case: Intelligence Industry Plays the Nuclear Option on Trump

In fear of an investigation into their efforts to thwart our democratic process in 2016, the intelligence community has decided to play their trump card. Pardon the pun. In Feb. they got a judge to toss plea deal for Epstein that had been on the books since 2008. No one suddenly found Jesus. The Mueller investigation fizzled and impeachment was off the table. There are no coincidences in politics. This is their nuclear option. Pure and simple.

Microsoft Offers Software Tool 'ElectionGuard' to Secure Elections

(yes. 'secure elections' so we don't have a repeat of 2016 I guess. Notice the MIC's fingerprints on this as well?)

from NBC New York

Microsoft announced an ambitious effort it says will make voting secure, verifiable and subject to reliable audits. Two of the three top U.S elections vendors have expressed interest in potentially incorporating the open-source software into their proprietary voting systems.

The software kit is being developed with Galois, an Oregon-based company separately creating a secure voting system prototype under contract with the Pentagon's advanced research agency, DARPA.

Dubbed "ElectionGuard," the Microsoft kit will be available this summer, the company says, with early prototypes ready to pilot for next year's general elections. CEO Satya Nadella announced the initiative Monday at a developer's conference in Seattle.

Nadella said the project's software, provided free of charge as part of Microsoft's Defending Democracy Program, would help "modernize all of the election infrastructure everywhere in the world." Microsoft also announced a cut-rate Office 365 application suite for political parties and campaigns for what it charges nonprofits. Both Microsoft and Google provide anti-phishing email support for campaigns...

[read more here]